TABLE of CONTENTS

First Series

Second Series

Third Series

Fourth Series

Fifth Series

Sixth Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

First Series

CHAPTER I—LOSING LENA.

CHAPTER II—FINDING BOTH OF THEM.

CHAPTER III—WOLFE BARRINGTON’S TAMING.

CHAPTER IV—MAJOR PARRIFER.

CHAPTER V—COMING HOME TO HIM.

CHAPTER VI—LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.

CHAPTER VII—AUNT DEAN.

CHAPTER VIII—GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL.

CHAPTER IX—DICK MITCHEL.

CHAPTER X—A HUNT BY MOONLIGHT.

CHAPTER XI—THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

CHAPTER XII—“JERRY’S GAZETTE.”

CHAPTER XIII—SOPHIE CHALK.

CHAPTER XIV—AT MISS DEVEEN’S.

CHAPTER XV—THE GAME FINISHED.

CHAPTER XVI—GOING TO THE MOP.

CHAPTER XVII—BREAKING DOWN.

CHAPTER XVIII—REALITY OR DELUSION?

CHAPTER XIX—DAVID GARTH’S NIGHT-WATCH.

CHAPTER XX—DAVID GARTH’S GHOST.

CHAPTER XXI—SEEING LIFE.

CHAPTER XXII—OUR STRIKE.

CHAPTER XXIII—BURSTING-UP.

CHAPTER XXIV—GETTING AWAY.

CHAPTER XXV—OVER THE WATER.

CHAPTER XXVI—AT WHITNEY HALL.

“We spake of many a vanished scene,

Of what we once had thought and said,

Of what had been, and might have been,

And who was changed, and who was dead.”

Longfellow.

CHAPTER I.

LOSING LENA.

We lived chiefly at Dyke Manor. A fine old place, so close upon the borders of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, that many people did not know which of the two counties it was really in. The house was in Warwickshire, but some of the land was in Worcestershire. The Squire had, however, another estate, Crabb Cot, all in Worcestershire, and very many miles nearer to Worcester.

Squire Todhetley was rich. But he lived in the plain, good old-fashioned way that his forefathers had lived; almost a homely way, it might be called, in contrast with the show and parade that have sprung up of late years. He was respected by every one, and though hotheaded and impetuous, he was simple-minded, open-handed, and had as good a heart as any one ever had in this world. An elderly gentleman now, was he, of middle height, with a portly form and a red face; and his hair, what was left of it, consisted of a few scanty, lightish locks, standing up straight on the top of his head.

The Squire had married, but not very early in life. His wife died in a few years, leaving one child only; a son, named after his father, Joseph. Young Joe was just the pride of the Manor and of his father’s heart.

I, writing this, am Johnny Ludlow. And you will naturally want to hear what I did at Dyke Manor, and why I lived there.

About three-miles’ distance from the Manor was a place called the Court. Not a property of so much importance as the Manor, but a nice place, for all that. It belonged to my father, William Ludlow. He and Squire Todhetley were good friends. I was an only child, just as Tod was; and, like him, I had lost my mother. They had christened me John, but always called me Johnny. I can remember many incidents of my early life now, but I cannot recall my mother to my mind. She must have died—at least I fancy so—when I was two years old.

One morning, two years after that, when I was about four, the servants told me I had a new mamma. I can see her now as she looked when she came home: tall, thin, and upright, with a long face, pinched nose, a meek expression, and gentle voice. She was a Miss Marks, who used to play the organ at church, and had hardly any income at all. Hannah said she was sure she was thirty-five if she was a day—she was talking to Eliza while she dressed me—and they both agreed that she would probably turn out to be a tartar, and that the master might have chosen better. I understood quite well that they meant papa, and asked why he might have chosen better; upon which they shook me and said they had not been speaking of my papa at all, but of the old blacksmith round the corner. Hannah brushed my hair the wrong way, and Eliza went off to see to her bedrooms. Children are easily prejudiced: and they prejudiced me against my new mother. Looking at her with the eyes of maturer years, I know that though she might be poor in pocket, she was good and kindly, and every inch a lady.

Papa died that same year. At the end of another year, Mrs. Ludlow, my step-mother, married Squire Todhetley, and we went to live at Dyke Manor; she, I, and my nurse Hannah. The Court was let for a term of years to the Sterlings.

Young Joe did not like the new arrangements. He was older than I, could take up prejudices more strongly, and he took a mighty strong one against the new Mrs. Todhetley. He had been regularly indulged by his father and spoilt by all the servants; so it was only to be expected that he would not like the invasion. Mrs. Todhetley introduced order into the profuse household, hitherto governed by the servants. They and young Joe equally resented it; they refused to see that things were really more comfortable than they used to be, and at half the cost.

Two babies came to the Manor; Hugh first, Lena next. Joe and I were sent to school. He was as big as a house, compared with me, tall and strong and dark, with an imperious way and will of his own. I was fair, gentle, timid, yielding to him in all things. His was the master-spirit, swaying mine at will. At school the boys at once, the very first day we entered, shortened his name from Todhetley to Tod. I caught up the habit, and from that time I never called him anything else.

And so the years went on. Tod and I at school being drilled into learning; Hugh and Lena growing into nice little children. During the holidays, hot war raged between Tod and his step-mother. At least silent war. Mrs. Todhetley was always kind to him, and she never quarrelled; but Tod opposed her in many things, and would be generally sarcastically cool to her in manner.

We did lead the children into mischief, and she complained of that. Tod did, that is, and of course I followed where he led.“But we can’t let Hugh grow up a milksop, you know, Johnny,” he would say to me; “and he would if left to his mother.” So Hugh’s clothes in Tod’s hands came to grief, and sometimes Hugh himself. Hannah, who was the children’s nurse now, stormed and scolded over it: she and Tod had ever been at daggers drawn with each other; and Mrs. Todhetley would implore Tod with tears in her eyes to be careful with the child. Tod appeared to turn a deaf ear to them, and marched off with Hugh before their very eyes. He really loved the children, and would have saved them from injury with his life. The Squire drove and rode his fine horses. Mrs. Todhetley had set up a low basket-chaise drawn by a mild she-donkey: it was safer for the children, she said. Tod went into fits whenever he met the turn-out.

But Tod was not always to escape scot-free, or incite the children to rebellion with impunity. There came a day when he brought himself, through it, to a state of self-torture and repentance.

It occurred when we were at home for the summer holidays, just after the crop of hay was got in, and the bare fields looked as white in the blazing sun as if they had been scorched. Tod and I were in the three-cornered meadow next the fold-yard. He was making a bat-net with gauze and two sticks. Young Jacobson had shown us his the previous day, and a bat he had caught with it; and Tod thought he would catch bats too. But he did not seem to be making much hand at the net, and somehow managed to send the pointed end of the stick through a corner of it.

“I don’t think that gauze is strong enough, Tod.”

“I am afraid it is not, Johnny. Here, catch hold of it. I’ll go indoors, and see if they can’t find me some better. Hannah must have some.”

He flew off past the ricks, and leaped the little gate into the fold-yard—a tall, strong fellow, who might leap the Avon. In a few minutes I heard his voice again, and went to meet him. Tod was coming away from the house with Lena.

“Have you the gauze, Tod!”

“Not a bit of it; the old cat won’t look for any; says she hasn’t time. I’ll hinder her time a little. Come along, Lena.”

The “old cat” was Hannah. I told you she and he were often at daggers drawn. Hannah had a chronic complaint in the shape of ill-temper, and Tod called her names to her face. Upon going in to ask her for the gauze, he found her dressing Hugh and Lena to go out, and she just turned him out of the nursery, and told him not to bother her then with his gauze and his wants. Lena ran after Tod; she liked him better than all of us put together. Shehad on a blue silk frock, and a white straw hat with daisies round it; open-worked stockings were on her pretty little legs. By which we saw she was about to be taken out for show.

“What are you going to do with her, Tod?”

“I’m going to hide her,” answered Tod, in his decisive way.“Keep where you are, Johnny.”

Lena enjoyed the rebellion. In a minute or two Tod came back alone. He had left her between the ricks in the three-cornered field, and told her not to come out. Then he went off to the front of the house, and I stood inside the barn, talking to Mack, who was hammering away at the iron of the cart-wheel. Out came Hannah by-and-by. She had been dressing herself as well as Hugh.

“Miss Lena!”

No answer. Hannah called again, and then came up the fold-yard, looking about.

“Master Johnny, have you seen the child?”

“What child?” I was not going to spoil Tod’s sport by telling her.

“Miss Lena. She has got off somewhere, and my mistress is waiting for her in the basket-chaise.”

“I see her just now along of Master Joseph,” spoke up Mack, arresting his noisy hammer.

“See her where?” asked Hannah.

“Close here, a-going that way.”

He pointed to the palings and gate that divided the yard from the three-cornered field. Hannah ran there and stood looking over. The ricks were within a short stone’s throw, but Lena kept close. Hannah called out again, and threw her gaze over the empty field.

“The child’s not there. Where can she have got to, tiresome little thing?”

In the house, and about the house, and out of the house, as the old riddle says, went Hannah. It was jolly to see her. Mrs. Todhetley and Hugh were seated patiently in the basket-chaise before the hall-door, wondering what made Hannah so long. Tod, playing with the mild she-donkey’s ears, and laughing to himself, stood talking graciously to his step-mother. I went round. The Squire had gone riding into Evesham; Dwarf Giles, who made the nattiest little groom in the county, for all his five-and-thirty years, behind him.

“I can’t find Miss Lena,” cried Hannah, coming out.

“Not find Miss Lena!” echoed Mrs. Todhetley. “What do you mean, Hannah? Have you not dressed her?”

“I dressed her first, ma’am, before Master Hugh, and she went out of the nursery. I can’t think where she can have got to. I’ve searched everywhere.”

“But, Hannah, we must have her directly; I am late as it is.”

They were going over to the Court to a children’s early party at the Sterlings’. Mrs. Todhetley stepped out of the basket-chaise to help in the search.

“I had better fetch her, Tod,” I whispered.

He nodded yes. Tod never bore malice, and I suppose he thought Hannah had had enough of a hunt for that day. I ran through the fold-yard to the ricks, and called to Lena.

“You can come out now, little stupid.”

But no Lena answered. There were seven ricks in a group, and I went into all the openings between them. Lena was not there. It was rather odd, and I looked across the field and towards the lane and the coppice, shouting out sturdily.

“Mack, have you seen Miss Lena pass indoors?” I stayed to ask him, in going back.

No: Mack had not noticed her; and I went round to the front again, and whispered to Tod.

“What a muff you are, Johnny! She’s between the ricks fast enough. No danger that she’d come out when I told her to stay!”

“But she’s not there indeed, Tod. You go and look.”

Tod vaulted off, his long legs seeming to take flying leaps, like a deer’s, on his way to the ricks.

To make short of the story, Lena was gone. Lost. The house, the outdoor buildings, the gardens were searched for her, and she was not to be found. Mrs. Todhetley’s fears flew to the ponds at first; but it was impossible she could have come to grief in either of the two, as they were both in view of the barn-door where I and Mack had been. Tod avowed that he had put her amid the ricks to hide her; and it was not to be imagined she had gone away. The most feasible conjecture was, that she had run from between the ricks when Hannah called to her, and was hiding in the lane.

Tod was in a fever, loudly threatening Lena with unheard-of whippings, to cover his real concern. Hannah looked red, Mrs. Todhetley white. I was standing by him when the cook came up; a sharp woman, with red-brown eyes. We called her Molly.

“Mr. Joseph,” said she, “I have heard of gipsies stealing children.”

“Well?” returned Tod.

“There was one at the door a while agone—an insolent one, too. Perhaps Miss Lena——”

“Which way did she go?—which door was she at?” burst forth Tod.

“’Twas a man, sir. He came up to the kitchen-door, and steps inside as bold as brass, asking me to buy some wooden skewers he’d cut, and saying something about a sick child. When I told him to march, that we never encouraged tramps here, he wanted to answer me, and I just shut the door in his face. A regular gipsy, if ever I see one,” continued Molly; “his skin tawny and his wild hair jet-black. Maybe, in revenge, he have stole off the little miss.”

Tod took up the notion, and his face turned white. “Don’t say anything of this to Mrs. Todhetley,” he said to Molly. “We must just scour the country.”

But in departing from the kitchen-door, the gipsy man could not by any possibility have made his way to the rick-field without going through the fold-yard. And he had not done that. It was true that Lena might have run round and got into the gipsy’s way. Unfortunately, none of the men were about, except Mack and old Thomas. Tod sent these off in different directions; Mrs. Todhetley drove away in her pony-chaise to the lanes round, saying the child might have strayed there; Molly and the maids started elsewhere; and I and Tod went flying along a by-road that branched off in a straight line, as it were, from the kitchen-door. Nobody could keep up with Tod, he went so fast; and I was not tall and strong as he was. But I saw what Tod in his haste did not see—a dark man with some bundles of skewers and a stout stick, walking on the other side of the hedge. I whistled Tod back again.

“What is it, Johnny?” he said, panting. “Have you seen her?”

“Not her. But look there. That must be the man Molly spoke of.”

Tod crashed through the hedge as if it had been so many cobwebs, and accosted the gipsy. I followed more carefully, but got my face scratched.

“Were you up at the great house, begging, a short time ago?”demanded Tod, in an awful passion.

The man turned round on Tod with a brazen face. I say brazen, because he did it so independently; but it was not an insolent face in itself; rather a sad one, and very sickly.

“What’s that you ask me, master?”

“I ask whether it was you who were at the Manor-house just now, begging?” fiercely repeated Tod.

“I was at a big house offering wares for sale, if you mean that, sir. I wasn’t begging.”

“Call it what you please,” said Tod, growing white again.“What have you done with the little girl?”

For, you see, Tod had caught up the impression that the gipsyhad stolen Lena, and he spoke in accordance with it.

“I’ve seen no little girl, master.”

“You have,” and Tod gave his foot a stamp. “What have you done with her?”

The man’s only answer was to turn round and walk off, muttering to himself. Tod pursued him, calling him a thief and other names; but nothing more satisfactory could he get out of him.

“He can’t have taken her, Tod. If he had, she’d be with him now. He couldn’t eat her, you know.”

“He may have given her to a confederate.”

“What to do? What do gipsies steal children for?”

Tod stopped in a passion, lifting his hand. “If you torment me with these frivolous questions, Johnny, I’ll strike you. How do I know what’s done with stolen children? Sold, perhaps. I’d give a hundred pounds out of my pocket at this minute if I knew where those gipsies were encamped.”

We suddenly lost the fellow. Tod had been keeping him in sight in the distance. Whether he disappeared up a gum-tree, or into a rabbit-hole, Tod couldn’t tell; but gone he was.

Up this lane, down that one; over this moor, across that common; so raced Tod and I. And the afternoon wore away, and we had changed our direction a dozen times: which possibly was not wise.

The sun was getting low as we passed Ragley gates, for we had finally got into the Alcester road. Tod was going to do what we ought to have done at first: report the loss at Alcester. Some one came riding along on a stumpy pony. It proved to be Gruff Blossom, groom to the Jacobsons. They called him “Gruff” because of his temper. He did touch his hat to us, which was as much as you could say, and spurred the stumpy animal on. But Tod made a sign to him, and he was obliged to stop and listen.

“The gipsies stole off little Miss Lena!” cried old Blossom, coming out of his gruffness. “That’s a rum go! Ten to one if you find her for a year to come.”

“But, Blossom, what do they do with the children they steal?”I asked, in a sort of agony.

“They cuts their hair off and dyes their skins brown, and then takes ’em out to fairs a ballad-singing,” answered Blossom.

“But why need they do it, when they have children of their own?”

“Ah, well, that’s a question I couldn’t answer,” said old Blossom. “Maybe their’n arn’t pretty children—Miss Lena, she is pretty.”

“Have you heard of any gipsies being encamped about here?”Tod demanded of him.

“Not lately, Mr. Joseph. Five or six months ago, there was a lot’camped on the Markis’s ground. They warn’t there long.”

“Can’t you ride about, Blossom, and see after the child?” asked Tod, putting something into his hand.

Old Blossom pocketed it, and went off with a nod. He was riding about, as we knew afterwards, for hours. Tod made straight for the police-station at Alcester, and told his tale. Not a soul was there but Jenkins, one of the men.

“I haven’t seen no suspicious characters about,” said Jenkins, who seemed to be eating something. He was a big man, with short black hair combed on his forehead, and he had a habit of turning his face upwards, as if looking after his nose—a square ornament, that stood up straight.

“She is between four and five years old; a very pretty child, with blue eyes and a good deal of curling auburn hair,” said Tod, who was growing feverish.

Jenkins wrote it down—“Name, Todhetley. What Christian name?”

“Adalena, called ‘Lena.’”

“Recollect the dress, sir?”

“Pale blue silk; straw hat with wreath of daisies round it; open-worked white stockings, and thin black shoes; white drawers,”recounted Tod, as if he had prepared the list by heart coming along.

“That’s bad, that dress is,” said Jenkins, putting down the pen.

“Why is it bad?”

“‘Cause the things is tempting. Quite half the children that gets stole is stole for what they’ve got upon their backs. Tramps and that sort will run a risk for a blue silk that they’d not run for a brown holland pinafore. Auburn curls, too,” added Jenkins, shaking his head; “that’s a temptation also. I’ve knowed children sent back home with bare heads afore now. Any ornaments, sir?”

“She was safe to have on her little gold neck-chain and cross. They are very small, Jenkins—not worth much.”

Jenkins lifted his nose—not in disdain, it was a habit he had.“Not worth much to you, sir, who could buy such any day, but an uncommon bait to professional child-stealers. Were the cross a coral, or any stone of that sort?”

“It was a small gold cross, and the chain was thin. They could only be seen when her cloak was off. Oh, I forgot the cloak; it was white: llama, I think they call it. She was going to a child’s party.”

Some more questions and answers, most of which Jenkins took down. Handbills were to be printed and posted, and a reward offered on the morrow, if she was not previously found. Then we came away; there was nothing more to do at the station.

“Wouldn’t it have been better, Tod, had Jenkins gone out seeking her and telling of the loss abroad, instead of waiting to write all that down?”

“Johnny, if we don’t find her to night, I shall go mad,” was all he answered.

He went back down Alcester Street at a rushing pace—not a run but a quick walk.

“Where are you going now?” I asked.

“I’m going up hill and down dale until I find that gipsies’encampment. You can go on home, Johnny, if you are tired.”

I had not felt tired until we were in the police-station. Excitement keeps off fatigue. But I was not going to give in, and said I should stay with him.

“All right, Johnny.”

Before we were clear of Alcester, Budd the land-agent came up. He was turning out of the public-house at the corner. It was dusk then. Tod laid hold of him.

“Budd, you are always about, in all kinds of nooks and by-lanes: can you tell me of any encampment of gipsies between here and the Manor-house?”

The agent’s business took him abroad a great deal, you know, into the rural districts around.

“Gipsies’ encampment?” repeated Budd, giving both of us a stare. “There’s none that I know of. In the spring, a lot of them had the impudence to squat down on the Marquis’s——”

“Oh, I know all that,” interrupted Tod. “Is there nothing of the sort about now?”

“I saw a miserable little tent to-day up Cookhill way,” said Budd. “It might have been a gipsy’s or a travelling tinker’s.’Twasn’t of much account, whichever it was.”

Tod gave a spring. “Whereabouts?” was all he asked. And Budd explained where. Tod went off like a shot, and I after him.

If you are familiar with Alcester, or have visited at Ragley or anything of that sort, you must know the long green lane leading to Cookhill; it is dark with overhanging trees, and uphill all the way. We took that road—Tod first, and I next; and we came to the top, and turned in the direction Budd had described the tent to be in.

It was not to be called dark; the nights never are at midsummer; and rays from the bright light in the west glimmered through the trees. On the outskirts of the coppice, in a bit of low ground, we saw the tent, a little mite of a thing, looking no better than a funnel turned upside down. Sounds were heard within it, and Tod put his finger on his lip while he listened. But we were too far off, and he took his boots off, and crept up close.

Sounds of wailing—of some one in pain. But that Tod had been three parts out of his senses all the afternoon, he might have known at once that they did not come from Lena, or from any one so young. Words mingled with them in a woman’s voice; uncouth in its accents, nearly unintelligible, an awful sadness in its tones.

“A bit longer! a bit longer, Corry, and he’d ha’ been back. You needn’t ha’ grudged it to us. Oh——h! if ye had but waited a bit longer!”

I don’t write it exactly as she spoke; I shouldn’t know how to spell it: we made a guess at half the words. Tod, who had grown white again, put on his boots, and lifted up the opening of the tent.

I had never seen any scene like it; I don’t suppose I shall ever see another. About a foot from the ground was a raised surface of some sort, thickly covered with dark green rushes, just the size and shape of a gravestone. A little child, about as old as Lena, lay on it, a white cloth thrown over her, and just touching the white, still face. A torch, blazing and smoking away, was thrust into the ground and lighted up the scene. Whiter the face looked now, because it had been tawny in life. I would rather see one of our faces in death than a gipsy’s. The contrast between the white face and dress of the child, and the green bed of rushes it lay on was something remarkable. A young woman, dark too, and handsome enough to create a commotion at the fair, knelt down, her brown hands uplifted; a gaudy ring on one of the fingers, worth sixpence perhaps when new, sparkled in the torchlight. Tod strode up to the dead face and looked at it for full five minutes. I do believe he thought at first that it was Lena.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It is my dead child!” the woman answered. “She did not wait that her father might see her die!”

But Tod had his head full of Lena, and looked round. “Is there no other child here?”

As if to answer him, a bundle of rags came out of a corner and set up a howl. It was a boy of about seven, and our going in had wakened him up. The woman sat down on the ground and looked at us.

“We have lost a child—a little girl,” explained Tod. “I thought she might have been brought here—or have strayed here.”

“I’ve lost my girl,” said the woman. “Death has come for her!” And, when speaking to us, she spoke more intelligibly than when alone.

“Yes; but this child has been lost—lost out of doors! Have you seen or heard anything of one?”

“I’ve not been in the way o’ seeing or hearing, master; I’ve beenin the tent alone. If folks had come to my aid, Corry might not have died. I’ve had nothing but water to put to her lips all day?”

“What was the matter with her?” Tod asked, convinced at length that Lena was not there.

“She have been ailing long—worse since the moon come in. The sickness took her with the summer, and the strength began to go out. Jake have been down, too. He couldn’t get out to bring us help, and we have had none.”

Jake was the husband, we supposed. The help meant food, or funds to get it with.

“He sat all yesterday cutting skewers, his hands a’most too weak to fashion ’em. Maybe he’d sell ’em for a few ha’pence, he said; and he went out this morning to try, and bring home a morsel of food.”

“Tod,” I whispered, “I wish that hard-hearted Molly had——”

“Hold your tongue, Johnny,” he interrupted sharply. “Is Jake your husband?” he asked of the woman.

“He is my husband, and the children’s father.”

“Jake would not be likely to steal a child, would he?” asked Tod, in a hesitating manner, for him.

She looked up, as if not understanding. “Steal a child, master! What for?”

“I don’t know,” said Tod. “I thought perhaps he had done it, and had brought the child here.”

Another comical stare from the woman. “We couldn’t feed these of ours; what should we do with another?”

“Well: Jake called at our house to sell his skewers; and, directly afterwards, we missed my little sister. I have been hunting for her ever since.”

“Was the house far from here!”

“A few miles.”

“Then he have sunk down of weakness on his way, and can’t get back.”

Putting her head on her knees, she began to sob and moan. The child—the living one—began to bawl; one couldn’t call it anything else; and pulled at the green rushes.

“He knew Corry was sick and faint when he went out. He’d have got back afore now if his strength hadn’t failed him; though, maybe, he didn’t think of death. Whist, then, whist, then, Dor,”she added, to the boy.

“Don’t cry,” said Tod to the little chap, who had the largest, brightest eyes I ever saw. “That will do no good, you know.”

“I want Corry,” said he. “Where’s Corry gone?”

“She’s gone up to God,” answered Tod, speaking very gently.“She’s gone to be a bright angel with Him in heaven.”

“Will she fly down to me?” asked Dor, his great eyes shining through their tears at Tod.

“Yes,” affirmed Tod, who had a theory of his own on the point, and used to think, when a little boy, that his mother was always near him, one of God’s angels keeping him from harm. “And after a while, you know, if you are good, you’ll go to Corry, and be an angel, too.”

“God bless you, master!” interposed the woman. “He’ll think of that always.”

“Tod,” I said, as we went out of the tent, “I don’t think they are people to steal children.”

“Who’s to know what the man would do?” retorted Tod.

“A man with a dying child at home wouldn’t be likely to harm another.”

Tod did not answer. He stood still a moment, deliberating which way to go. Back to Alcester?—where a conveyance might be found to take us home, for the fatigue was telling on both of us, now that disappointment was prolonged, and I, at least, could hardly put one foot before another. Or down to the high-road, and run the chance of some vehicle overtaking us? Or keep on amidst these fields and hedgerows, which would lead us home by a rather nearer way, but without chance of a lift? Tod made up his mind, and struck down the lane the way we had come up. He was on first, and I saw him suddenly halt, and turn to me.

“Look here, Johnny!”

I looked as well as I could for the night and the trees, and saw something on the ground. A man had sunk down there, apparently from exhaustion. His face was a tawny white, just like the dead child’s. A stout stick and the bundles of skewers lay beside him.

“Do you see the fellow, Johnny? It is the gipsy.”

“Has he fainted?”

“Fainted, or shamming it. I wonder if there’s any water about?”

But the man opened his eyes; perhaps the sound of voices revived him. After looking at us a minute or two, he raised himself slowly on his elbow. Tod—the one thought uppermost in his mind—said something about Lena.

“The child’s found, master!”

Tod seemed to give a leap. I know his heart did. “Found!”

“Been safe at home this long while.”

“Who found her?”

“’Twas me, master.”

“Where was she?” asked Tod, his tone softening. “Let us hear about it.”

“I was making back for the town” (we supposed he meant Alcester), “and missed the way; land about here’s strange to me.A-going through a bit of a groove, which didn’t seem as if it was leading to nowhere, I heard a child crying. There was the little thing tied to a tree, stripped, and——”

“Stripped!” roared Tod.

“Stripped to the skin, sir, save for a dirty old skirt that was tied round her. A woman carried her off to that spot, she told me, robbed her of her clothes, and left her there. Knowing where she must ha’ been stole from—through you’re accusing me of it, master—I untied her to lead her home, but her feet warn’t used to the rough ground, and I made shift to carry her. A matter of two miles it were, and I be not good for much. I left her at home safe, and set off back. That’s all, master.”

“What were you doing here?” asked Tod, as considerately as if he had been speaking to a lord. “Resting?”

“I suppose I fell, master. I don’t remember nothing, since I was tramping up the lane, till your voices came. I’ve had naught inside my lips to-day but a drink o’ water.”

“Did they give you nothing to eat at the house when you took the child home?”

He shook his head. “I saw the woman again, nobody else. She heard what I had to say about the child, and she never said‘Thank ye.’”

The man had been getting on his feet, and took up the skewers, that were all tied together with string, and the stick. But he reeled as he stood, and would have fallen again but for Tod. Tod gave him his arm.

“We are in for it, Johnny,” said he aside to me. “Pity but I could be put in a picture—the Samaritan helping the destitute!”

“I’d not accept of ye, sir, but that I have a child sick at home, and want to get to her. There’s a piece of bread in my pocket that was give me at a cottage to-day.”

“Is your child sure to get well?” asked Tod, after a pause; wondering whether he could say anything of what had occurred, so as to break the news.

The man gazed right away into the distance, as if searching for an answer in the far-off star shining there.

“There’s been a death-look in her face this day and night past, master. But the Lord’s good to us all.”

“And sometimes, when He takes children, it is done in mercy,”said Tod. “Heaven is a better place than this.”

“Ay,” rejoined the man, who was leaning heavily on Tod, and could never have got home without him, unless he had crawled on hands and knees. “I’ve been sickly on and off for this year past; worse lately; and I’ve thought at times that if my own turn was coming, I’d be glad to see my children gone afore me.”

“Oh, Tod!” I whispered, in a burst of repentance, “how could we have been so hard with this poor fellow, and roughly accused him of stealing Lena?” But Tod only gave me a knock with his elbow.

“I fancy it must be pleasant to think of a little child being an angel in heaven—a child that we have loved,” said Tod.

“Ay, ay,” said the man.

Tod had no courage to say more. He was not a parson. Presently he asked the man what tribe he belonged to—being a gipsy.

“I’m not a gipsy, master. Never was one yet. I and my wife are dark-complexioned by nature; living in the open air has made us darker; but I’m English born; Christian, too. My wife’s Irish; but they do say she comes of a gipsy tribe. We used to have a cart, and went about the country with crockery; but a year ago, when I got ill and lay in a lodging, the things were seized for rent and debt. Since then it’s been hard lines with us. Yonder’s my bit of a tent, master, and now I can get on alone. Thanking ye kindly.”

“I am sorry I spoke harshly to you to-day,” said Tod. “Take this: it is all I have with me.”

“I’ll take it, sir, for my child’s sake; it may help to put the strength into her. Otherwise I’d not. We’re honest; we’ve never begged. Thank ye both, masters, once again.”

It was only a shilling or two. Tod spent, and never had much in his pockets. “I wish it had been sovereigns,” said he to me;“but we will do something better for them to-morrow, Johnny. I am sure the Pater will.”

“Tod,” said I, as we ran on, “had we seen the man close before, and spoken with him, I should never have suspected him. He has a face to be trusted.”

Tod burst into a laugh. “There you are Johnny, at your faces again!”

I was always reading people’s faces, and taking likes and dislikes accordingly. They called me a muff for it at home (and for many other things), Tod especially; but it seemed to me that I could read people as easily as a book. Duffham, our surgeon at Church Dykely, bade me trust to it as a good gift from God. One day, pushing my straw hat up to draw his fingers across the top of my brow, he quaintly told the Squire that when he wanted people’s characters read, to come to me to read them. The Squire only laughed in answer.

As luck had it, a gentleman we knew was passing in his dog-cart when we got to the foot of the hill. It was old Pitchley. He drove us home: and I could hardly get down, I was so stiff.

Lena was in bed, safe and sound. No damage, except fright andthe loss of her clothes. From what we could learn, the woman who took her off must have been concealed amidst the ricks, when Tod put her there. Lena said the woman laid hold of her very soon, caught her up, and put her hand over her mouth, to prevent her crying out; she could only give one scream. I ought to have heard it, only Mack was making such an awful row, hammering that iron. How far along fields and by-ways the woman carried her, Lena could not be supposed to tell: “Miles!” she said. Then the thief plunged amidst a few trees, took the child’s things off, put on an old rag of a petticoat, and tied her loosely to a tree. Lena thought she could have got loose herself, but was too frightened to try; and just then the man, Jake, came up.

“I liked him,” said Lena. “He carried me all the way home, that my feet should not be hurt; but he had to sit down sometimes. He said he had a poor little girl who was nearly as badly off for clothes as that, but she did not want them now, she was too sick. He said he hoped my papa would find the woman, and put her in prison.”

It is what the Squire intended to do, chance helping him. But he did not reach home till after us, when all was quiet again: which was fortunate.

“I suppose you blame me for that?” cried Tod, to his step-mother.

“No, I don’t, Joseph,” said Mrs. Todhetley. She called him Joseph nearly always, not liking to shorten his name, as some of us did. “It is so very common a thing for the children to be playing in the three-cornered field amidst the ricks; and no suspicion that danger could arise from it having ever been glanced at, I do not think any blame attaches to you.”

“I am very sorry now for having done it,” said Tod. “I shall never forget the fright to the last hour of my life.”

He went straight to Molly, from Mrs. Todhetley, a look on his face that, when seen there, which was rare, the servants did not like. Deference was rendered to Tod in the household. When anything should take off the good old Pater, Tod would be master. What he said to Molly no one heard; but the woman was banging at her brass things in a tantrum for three days afterwards.

And when we went to see after poor Jake and his people, it was too late. The man, the tent, the living people, and the dead child—all were gone.

CHAPTER II.

FINDING BOTH OF THEM.

Worcester Assizes were being held, and Squire Todhetley was on the grand jury. You see, although Dyke Manor was just within the borders of Warwickshire, the greater portion of the Squire’s property lay in Worcestershire. This caused him to be summoned to serve. We were often at his house there, Crabb Cot. I forget who was foreman of the jury that time: either Sir John Pakington, or the Honourable Mr. Coventry.

The week was jolly. We put up at the Star-and-Garter when we went to Worcester, which was two or three times a-year; generally at the assizes, or the races, or the quarter-sessions; one or other of the busy times.

The Pater would grumble at the bills—and say we boys had no business to be there; but he would take us, if we were at home, for all that. The assizes came on this time the week before our summer holidays were up; the Squire wished they had not come on until the week after. Anyway, there we were, in clover; the Squire about to be stewed up in the county courts all day; I and Tod flying about the town, and doing what we liked.

The judges came in from Oxford on the usual day, Saturday. And, to make clear what I am going to tell about, we must go back to that morning and to Dyke Manor. It was broiling hot weather, and Mrs. Todhetley, Hugh, and Lena, with old Thomas and Hannah, all came on the lawn after breakfast to see us start. The open carriage was at the door, with the fine dark horses. When the Squire did come out, he liked to do things well; and Dwarf Giles, the groom, had gone on to Worcester the day before with the two saddle-horses, the Pater’s and Tod’s. They might have ridden them in this morning, but the Squire chose to have his horses sleek and fresh when attending the high sheriff.

“Shall I drive, sir?” asked Tod.

“No,” said the Pater. “These two have queer tempers, and must be handled carefully.” He meant the horses, Bob and Blister. Tod looked at me; he thought he could have managed them quite as well as the Pater.

“Papa,” cried Lena, as we were driving off, running up in her white pinafore, with her pretty hair flying, “if you can catch that naughty kidnapper at Worcester, you put her in prison.”

The Squire nodded emphatically, as much as to say, “Trust me for that.” Lena alluded to the woman who had taken her off and stolen her clothes two or three weeks before. Tod said, afterwards, there must have been some prevision on the child’s mind when she said this.

We reached Worcester at twelve. It is a long drive, you know. Lots of country-people had arrived, and the Squire went off with some of them. Tod and I thought we’d order luncheon at the Star—a jolly good one; stewed lampreys, kidneys, and cherry-tart; and let it go into the Squire’s bill.

I’m afraid I envied Tod. The old days of travelling post were past, when the sheriff’s procession would go out to Whittington to meet the judges’ carriage. They came now by rail from Oxford, and the sheriff and his attendants received them at the railway station. It was the first time Tod had been allowed to make one of the gentlemen-attendants. The Squire said now he was too young; but he looked big, and tall, and strong. To see him mount his horse and go cantering off with the rest sent me into a state of envy. Tod saw it.

“Don’t drop your mouth, Johnny,” said he. “You’ll make one of us in another year or two.”

I stood about for half-an-hour, and the procession came back, passing the Star on its way to the county courts. The bells were ringing, the advanced heralds blew their trumpets, and the javelin-guard rode at a foot-pace, their lances in rest, preceding the high sheriff’s grand carriage, with its four prancing horses and their silvered harness. Both the judges had come in, so we knew that business was over at Oxford; they sat opposite to the sheriff and his chaplain. I used to wonder whether they travelled all the way in their wigs and gowns, or robed outside Worcester. Squire Todhetley rode in the line next the carriage, with some more old ones of consequence; Tod on his fine bay was nearly at the tail, and he gave me a nod in passing. The judges were going to open the commission, and Foregate Street was crowded.

The high sheriff that year was a friend of ours, and the Pater had an invitation to the banquet he gave that evening. Tod thought he ought to have been invited too.

“It’s sinfully stingy of him, Johnny. When I am pricked for sheriff—and I suppose my turn will come some time, either for Warwickshire or Worcestershire—I’ll have more young fellows to my dinner than old ones.”

The Squire, knowing nothing of our midday luncheon, was surprisedthat we chose supper at eight instead of dinner at six; but he told the waiter to give us a good one. We went out while it was getting ready, and walked arm-in-arm through the crowded streets. Worcester is always full on a Saturday evening; it is market-day there, as every one knows; but on Assize Saturday the streets are almost impassable. Tod, tall and strong, held on his way, and asked leave of none.

“Now, then, you two gents, can’t you go on proper, and not elbow respectable folks like that?”

“Holloa!” cried Tod, turning at the voice. “Is it you, old Jones?”

Old Jones, the constable of our parish, touched his hat when he saw it was us, and begged pardon. We asked what he was doing at Worcester; but he had only come on his own account. “On the spree,” Tod suggested to him.

“Young Mr. Todhetley,” cried he—the way he chiefly addressed Tod—“I’d not be sure but that woman’s took—her that served out little Miss Lena.”

“That woman!” said Tod. “Why do you think it?”

Old Jones explained. A woman had been apprehended near Worcester the previous day, on a charge of stripping two little boys of their clothes in Perry Wood. The description given of her answered exactly, old Jones thought, to that given by Lena.

“She stripped ’em to the skin,” groaned Jones, drawing a long face as he recited the mishap, “two poor little chaps of three years, they was, living in them cottages under the Wood—not as much as their boots did she leave on ’em. When they got home their folks didn’t know ’em; quite naked they was, and bleating with terror, like a brace of shorn sheep.”

Tod put on his determined look. “And she is taken, you say, Jones?”

“She was took yesterday, sir. They had her before the justices this morning, and the little fellows knowed her at once. As the’sizes was on, leastways as good as on, their worships committed her for trial there and then. Policeman Cripp told me all about it; it was him that took her. She’s in the county gaol.”

We carried the tale to the Pater that night, and he despatched a messenger to Mrs. Todhetley, to say that Lena must be at Worcester on the Monday morning. But there’s something to tell about the Sunday yet.

If you have been in Worcester on Assize Sunday, you know how the cathedral is on that morning crowded. Enough strangers are in the town to fill it: the inhabitants who go to the churches at other times attended it then; and King Mob flocks in to see the show.

Squire Todhetley was put in the stalls; Tod and I scrambled for places on a bench. The alterations in the cathedral (going on for years before that, and going on for years since, and going on still) caused space to be limited, and it was no end of a cram. While people fought for standing-places, the procession was played in to the crash of the organ. The judges came, glorious in their wigs and gowns; the mayor and aldermen were grand as scarlet and gold chains could make them; and there was a large attendance of the clergy in their white robes. The Bishop had come in from Hartlebury, and was on his throne, and the service began. The Rev. Mr. Wheeler chanted; the Dean read the lessons. Of course the music was all right; they put up fine services on Assize Sundays now; and the sheriff’s chaplain went up in his black gown to preach the sermon. Three-quarters of an hour, if you’ll believe me, before that sermon came to an end!

Ere the organ had well played its Amen to the Bishop’s blessing, the crowd began to push out. We pushed with the rest and took up our places in the long cathedral nave to see the procession pass back again. It came winding down between the line of javelin-men. Just as the judges were passing, Tod motioned me to look opposite. There stood a young boy in dreadful clothes, patched all over, but otherwise clean; with great dark wondering eyes riveted on the judges, as if they had been stilted peacocks; on their wigs, their solemn countenances, their held-up scarlet trains.

Where had I seen those eyes, and their brightness? Recollection flashed over me before Tod’s whisper: “Jake’s boy; the youngster we saw in the tent.”

To get across the line was impossible: manners would not permit it, let alone the javelin-guard. And when the procession had passed, leaving nothing but a crowd of shuffling feet and the dust on the white cathedral floor, the boy was gone.

“I say, Johnny, it is rather odd we should come on those tent-people, just as the woman has turned up,” exclaimed Tod, as we got clear of the cathedral.

“But you don’t think they can be connected, Tod?”

“Well, no; I suppose not. It’s a queer coincidence, though.”

This we also carried to the Squire, as we had the other news. He was standing in the Star gateway.

“Look here, you boys,” said he, after a pause given to thought;“keep your eyes open; you may come upon the lad again, or some of his folk. I should like to do something for that poor man; I’ve wished it ever since he brought home Lena, and that confounded Molly drove him out by way of recompense.”

“And if they should be confederates, sir?” suggested Tod.

“Who confederates? What do you mean, Joe?”

“These people and the female-stripper. It seems strange they should both turn up again in the same spot.”

The notion took away the Pater’s breath. “If I thought that; if I find it is so,” he broke forth, “I’ll—I’ll—transport the lot.”

Mrs. Todhetley arrived with Lena on Sunday afternoon. Early on Monday, the Squire and Tod took her to the governor’s house at the county prison, where she was to see the woman, as if accidentally, nothing being said to Lena.

The woman was brought in: a bold jade with a red face: and Lena nearly went into convulsions at the sight of her. There could be no mistake the woman was the same: and the Pater became redhot with anger; especially to think he could not punish her in Worcester.

As the fly went racing up Salt Lane after the interview, on its way to leave the Squire at the county courts, a lad ran past. It was Jake’s boy; the same we had seen in the cathedral. Tod leaped up and called to the driver to stop, but the Pater roared out an order to go on. His appearance at the court could not be delayed, and Tod had to stay with Lena. So the clue was lost again. Tod brought Lena to the Star, and then he and I went to the criminal court, and bribed a fellow for places. Tod said it would be a sin not to hear the kidnapper tried.

It was nearly the first case called on. Some of the lighter cases were taken first, while the grand jury deliberated on their bills for the graver ones. Her name, as given in, was Nancy Cole, and she tried to excite the sympathies of the judge and jury by reciting a whining account of a deserting husband and other ills. The evidence was quite clear. The two children (little shavers in petticoats) set up a roar in court at sight of the woman, just as Lena had done in the governor’s house; and a dealer in marine stores produced their clothes, which he had bought of her. Tod whispered to me that he should go about Worcester after this in daily dread of seeing Lena’s blue-silk frock and open-worked stockings hanging in a shop window. Something was said during the trial about the raid the prisoner had also recently made on the little daughter of Mr. Todhetley, of Dyke Manor, Warwickshire, and of Crabb Cot, Worcestershire, “one of the gentlemen of the grand jury at present sitting in deliberation in an adjoining chamber of the court.” But, as the judge said, that could not be received in evidence.

Mrs. Cole brazened it out: testimony was too strong for her to attempt denial. “And if she had took a few bits o’ things, ’cause she was famishing, she didn’t hurt the childern. She’d never hurt a child in her life; couldn’t do it. Just contrairy to that; she gave ’em sugar plums—and candy—and a piece of a wig, [1] she did. Whatwas she to do? Starve? Since her wicked husband, that she hadn’t seen for this five year, deserted of her, and her two boys, fine grown lads both of ’em, had been accused of theft and got put away from her, one into prison, t’other into a ’formitory, she hadn’t no soul to care for her nor help her to a bit o’ bread. Life was hard, and times was bad; and—there it was. No good o’ saying more.”

“Guilty,” said the foreman of the jury, without turning round.“We find the prisoner guilty, my lord.”

The judge sentenced her to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Mrs. Cole brazened it out still.

“Thank you,” said she to his lordship, dropping a curtsey as they were taking her from the dock; “and I hope you’ll sit there, old gentleman, till I come out again.”

When the Squire was told of the sentence that evening, he said it was too mild by half, and talked of bringing her also to book at Warwick. But Mrs. Todhetley said, “No; forgive her.” After all, it was only the loss of the clothes.

Nothing whatever had come out during the trial to connect Jake with the woman. She appeared to be a waif without friends. “And I watched and listened closely for it, mind you, Johnny,” remarked Tod.

It was a day or two after this—I think, on the Wednesday evening. The Squire’s grand-jury duties were over, but he stayed on, intending to make a week of it; Mrs. Todhetley and Lena had left for home. We had dined late, and Tod and I went for a stroll afterwards; leaving the Pater, and an old clergyman, who had dined with us, to their wine. In passing the cooked-meat shop in High-street, we saw a little chap looking in, his face flattened against the panes. Tod laid hold of his shoulder, and the boy turned his brilliant eyes and their hungry expression upon us.

“Do you remember me, Dor?” You see, Tod had not forgotten his name.

Dor evidently did remember. And whether it was that he felt frightened at being accosted, or whether the sight of us brought back to him the image of the dead sister lying on the rushes, was best known to himself; but he burst out crying.

“There’s nothing to cry for,” said Tod; “you need not be afraid. Could you eat some of that meat?”

Something like a shiver of surprise broke over the boy’s face at the question; just as though he had had no food for weeks. Tod gave him a shilling, and told him to go in and buy some. But the boy looked at the money doubtingly.

“A whole shilling! They’d think I stole it.”

Tod took back the money, and went in himself. He was as proud a fellow as you’d find in the two counties, and yet he would do all sorts of things that many another glanced askance at.

“I want half-a-pound of beef,” said he to the man who was carving, “and some bread, if you sell it. And I’ll take one of those small pork-pies.”

“Shall I put the meat in paper, sir?” asked the man: as if doubting whether Tod might prefer to eat it there.

“Yes,” said Tod. And the customers, working-men and a woman in a drab shawl, turned and stared at him.

Tod paid; took it all in his hands, and we left the shop. He did not mind being seen carrying the parcels; but he would have minded letting them know that he was feeding a poor boy.

“Here, Dor, you can take the things now,” said he, when we had gone a few yards. “Where do you live?”

Dor explained after a fashion. We knew Worcester well, but failed to understand. “Not far from the big church,” he said; and at first we thought he meant the cathedral.

“Never mind,” said Tod; “go on, and show us.”

He went skimming along, Tod keeping him within arm’s-length, lest he should try to escape. Why Tod should have suspected he might, I don’t know; nothing, as it turned out, could have been farther from Dor’s thoughts. The church he spoke of proved to be All Saints’; the boy turned up an entry near to it, and we found ourselves in a regular rookery of dirty, miserable, tumble-down houses. Loose men stood about, pipes in their mouths, women, in tatters, their hair hanging down.

Dor dived into a dark den that seemed to be reached through a hole you had to stoop under. My patience! what a close place it was, with a smell that nearly knocked you backwards. There was not an earthly thing in the room that we could see, except some straw in a corner, and on that Jake was lying. The boy appeared with a piece of lighted candle, which he had been upstairs to borrow.

Jake was thin enough before; he was a skeleton now. His eyes were sunk, the bones of his face stood out, the skin glistened on his shapely nose, his voice was weak and hollow. He knew us, and smiled.

“What’s the matter?” asked Tod, speaking gently. “You look very ill.”

“I be very ill, master; I’ve been getting worse ever since.”

His history was this. The same night that we had seen the tent at Cookhill, some travelling people of Jake’s fraternity happened to encamp close to it for the night. By their help, the dead child wasremoved as far as Evesham, and there buried. Jake, his wife, and son, went on to Worcester, and there the man was taken worse; they had been in this room since; the wife had found a place to go to twice a week washing, earning her food and a shilling each time. It was all they had to depend upon, these two shillings weekly; and the few bits o’ things they had, to use Jake’s words, had been taken by the landlord for rent. But to see Jake’s resignation was something curious.

“He was very good,” he said, alluding to the landlord and the seizure; “he left me the straw. When he saw how bad I was, he wouldn’t take it. We had been obliged to sell the tent, and there was a’most nothing for him.”

“Have you had no medicine? no advice?” cried Tod, speaking as if he had a lump in his throat.

Yes, he had had medicine; the wife went for it to the free place (he meant the dispensary) twice a week, and a young doctor had been to see him.

Dor opened the paper of meat, and showed it to his father. “The gentleman bought it me,” he said; “and this, and this. Couldn’t you eat some?”

I saw the eager look that arose for a moment to Jake’s face at sight of the meat: three slices of nice cold boiled beef, better than what we got at school. Dor held out one of them; the man broke off a morsel, put it into his mouth, and had a choking fit.

“It’s of no use, Dor.”

“Is his name ‘Dor’?” asked Tod.

“His name is James, sir; same as mine,” answered Jake, panting a little from the exertion of swallowing. “The wife, she has called him ‘Dor’ for ‘dear,’ and I’ve fell into it. She has called me Jake all along.”

Tod felt something ought to be done to help him, but he had no more idea what than the man in the moon. I had less. As Dor piloted us to the open street, we asked him where his mother was. It was one of her working-days out, he answered; she was always kept late.

“Could he drink wine, do you think, Dor?”

“The gentleman said he was to have it,” answered Dor, alluding to the doctor.

“How old are you, Dor?”

“I’m anigh ten.” He did not look it.

“Johnny, I wonder if there’s any place where they sell beef-tea?”cried Tod, as we went up Broad Street. “My goodness! lying there in that state, with no help at hand!”

“I never saw anything so bad before, Tod.”

“Do you know what I kept thinking of all the time? I could not get it out of my head.”

“What?”

“Of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. Johnny, lad, there seems an awful responsibility lying on some of us.”

To hear Tod say such a thing was stranger than all. He set off running, and burst into our sitting-room in the Star, startling the Pater, who was alone and reading one of the Worcester papers with his spectacles on. Tod sat down and told him all.

“Dear me! dear me!” cried the Pater, growing red as he listened.“Why, Joe, the poor fellow must be dying!”

“He may not have gone too far for recovery, father,” was Tod’s answer. “If we had to lie in that close hole, and had nothing to eat or drink, we should probably soon become skeletons also. He may get well yet with proper care and treatment.”

“It seems to me that the first thing to be done is to get him into the Infirmary,” remarked the Pater.

“And it ought to be done early to-morrow morning, sir; if it’s too late to-night.”

The Pater got up in a bustle, put on his hat, and went out. He was going to his old friend, the famous surgeon, Henry Carden. Tod ran after him up Foregate Street, but was sent back to me. We stood at the door of the hotel, and in a few moments saw them coming along, the Pater arm-in-arm with Mr. Carden. He had come out as readily to visit the poor helpless man as he would to visit a rich one. Perhaps more so. They stopped when they saw us, and Mr. Carden asked Tod some of the particulars.

“You can get him admitted to the Infirmary at once, can you not?” said the Pater, impatiently, who was all on thorns to have something done.

“By what I can gather, it is not a case for the Infirmary,” was the answer of its chief surgeon. “We’ll see.”

Down we went, walking fast: the Pater and Mr. Carden in front, I and Tod at their heels; and found the room again with some difficulty. The wife was in then, and had made a handful of fire in the grate. What with the smoke, and what with the other agreeable accompaniments, we were nearly stifled.

If ever I wished to be a doctor, it was when I saw Mr. Carden with that poor sick man. He was so gentle with him, so cheery and so kind. Had Jake been a duke, I don’t see that he could have been treated differently. There was something superior about the man, too, as though he had seen better days.

“What is your name?” asked Mr. Carden.

“James Winter, sir, a native of Herefordshire. I was on my way there when I was taken ill in this place.”

“What to do there? To get work?”

“No, sir; to die. It don’t much matter, though; God’s here as well as there.”

“You are not a gipsy?”

“Oh dear no, sir. From my dark skin, though, I’ve been taken for one. My wife’s descended from a gipsy tribe.”

“We are thinking of placing you in the Infirmary, Jake,” cried the Pater. “You will have every comfort there, and the best of attendance. This gentleman——”

“We’ll see—we’ll see,” interposed Mr. Carden, breaking in hastily on the promises. “I am not sure that the Infirmary will do for him.”

“It is too late, sir, I think,” said Jake, quietly, to Mr. Carden.

Mr. Carden made no reply. He asked the woman if she had such a thing as a tea-cup or wine-glass. She produced a cracked cup with the handle off and a notch in the rim. Mr. Carden poured something into it that he had brought in his pocket, and stooped over the man. Jake began to speak in his faint voice.

“Sir, I’d not seem ungrateful, but I’d like to stay here with the wife and boy to the last. It can’t be for long now.”

“Drink this; it will do you good,” said Mr. Carden, holding the cup to his lips.

“This close place is a change from the tent,” I said to the woman, who was stooping over the bit of fire.

Such a look of regret came upon her countenance as she lifted it: just as if the tent had been a palace. “When we got here, master, it was after that two days’ rain, and the ground was sopping. It didn’t do for him”—glancing round at the straw. “He was getting mighty bad then, and we just put our heads into this place—bad luck to us!”

The Squire gave her some silver, and told her to get anything in she thought best. It was too late to do more that night. The church clocks were striking ten as we went out.

“Won’t it do to move him to the Infirmary?” were the Pater’s first words to Mr. Carden.

“Certainly not. The man’s hours are numbered.”

“There is no hope, I suppose?”

“Not the least. He may be said to be dying now.”

No time was lost in the morning. When Squire Todhetley took a will to heart he carried it out, and speedily. A decent room with an airy window was found in the same block of buildings. A bed and other things were put in it; some clothes were redeemed; and by twelve o’clock in the day Jake was comfortably lying there. The Pater seemed to think that this was not enough: he wanted to do more.

“His humanity to my child kept him from seeing the last moments of his,” said he. “The little help we can give him now is no return for that.”

Food and clothes, and a dry, comfortable room, and wine and proper things for Jake—of which he could not swallow much. The woman was not to go out to work again while he lasted, but to stay at home and attend to him.

“I shall be at liberty by the hop-picking time,” she said, with a sigh. Ah, poor creature! long before that.

When Tod and I went in later in the afternoon, she had just given Jake some physic, ordered by Mr. Carden. She and the boy sat by the fire, tea and bread-and-butter on the deal table between them. Jake lay in bed, his head raised on account of his breathing, I thought he was better; but his thin white face, with the dark, earnest, glistening eyes, was almost painful to look upon.

“The reading-gentleman have been in,” cried the woman suddenly. “He’s coming again, he says, the night or the morning.”

Tod looked puzzled, and Jake explained. A good young clergyman, who had found him out a day or two before, had been in each day since with his Bible, to read and pray. “God bless him!” said Jake.

“Why did you go away so suddenly?” Tod asked, alluding to the hasty departure from Cookhill. “My father was intending to do something for you.”

“I didn’t know that, sir. Many thanks all the same. I’d like to thank you too, sir,” he went on, after a fit of coughing. “I’ve wanted to thank you ever since. When you gave me your arm up the lane, and said them pleasant things to me about having a little child in heaven, you knew she was gone.”

“Yes.”

“It broke the trouble to me, sir. My wife heard me coughing afar off, and came out o’ the tent. She didn’t say at first what there was in the tent, but began telling how you had been there. It made me know what had happened; and when she set on a-grieving, I told her not to: Carry was gone up to be an angel in heaven.”

Tod touched the hand he put out, not speaking.

“She’s waiting for me, sir,” he continued, in a fainter voice.“I’m as sure of it as if I saw her. The little girl I found and carried to the great house has rich friends and a fine home to shelter her; mine had none, and so it was for the best that she should go. God has been very good to me. Instead of letting me fret after her, or murmur at lying helpless like this, He only gives me peace.”

“That man must have had a good mother,” cried out Tod, as we went away down the entry. And I looked up at him, he spoke so queerly.

“Do you think he will get better, Tod? He does not seem as bad as he did last night.”

“Get better!” retorted Tod. “You’ll always be a muff, Johnny. Why, every breath he takes threatens to be his last. He is miles worse than he was when we found him. This is Thursday: I don’t believe he can last out longer than the week; and I think Mr. Carden knows it.”

He did not last so long. On the Saturday morning, just as we were going to start for home, the wife came to the Star with the news. Jake had died at ten the previous night.

“He went off quiet,” said she to the Squire. “I asked if he’d not like a dhrink; but he wouldn’t have it: the good gentleman had been there giving him the bread and wine, and he said he’d take nothing, he thought, after that. ‘I’m going, Mary,’ he suddenly says to me about ten o’clock, and he called Dor up and shook hands with him, and bade him be good to me, and then he shook hands with me. ‘God bless ye both,’ says he, ‘for Christ’s sake; and God bless the friends who have been kind to us!’ And with that he died.”

That’s all, for now. And I hope no one will think I invented this account of Jake’s death, for I should not like to do it. The wife related it to us in the exact words written.

“And I able to do so little for him,” broke forth the Squire, suddenly, when we were about half-way home; and he lashed up Bob and Blister regardless of their tempers. Which the animals did not relish.

And so that assize week ended the matter. Bringing imprisonment to the kidnapping woman, and to Jake death.

CHAPTER III.

WOLFE BARRINGTON’S TAMING.

This is an incident of our school life; one that I never care to look back upon. All of us have sad remembrances of some kind living in the mind; and we are apt in our painful regret to say,“If I had but done this, or had but done the other, things might have turned out differently.”

The school was a large square house, built of rough stone, gardens and playgrounds and fields extending around it. It was called Worcester House: a title of the fancy, I suppose, since it was some miles away from Worcester. The master was Dr. Frost, a tall, stout man, in white frilled shirt, knee-breeches and buckles; stern on occasion, but a gentleman to the back-bone. He had several under-masters. Forty boys were received; we wore the college cap and Eton jacket. Mrs. Frost was delicate: and Hall, a sour old woman of fifty, was manager of the eatables.

Tod and I must have been in the school two years, I think, when Archie Hearn entered. He was eleven years old. We had seen him at the house sometimes before, and liked him. A regular good little fellow was Archie.

Hearn’s father was dead. His mother had been a Miss Stockhausen, sister to Mrs. Frost. The Stockhausens had a name in Worcestershire: chiefly, I think, for dying off. There had been six sisters; and the only two now left were Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Hearn: the other four quietly faded away one after another, not living to see thirty. Mr. Hearn died, from an accident, when Archie was only a year old. He left no will, and there ensued a sharp dispute about his property. The Stockhausens said it all belonged to the little son; the Hearn family considered that a portion of it ought to go back to them. The poor widow was the only quiet spirit amongst them, willing to be led either way. What the disputants did was to put it into Chancery: and I don’t much think it ever came out again.

It was the worst move they could have made for Mrs. Hearn. For it reduced her to a very slender income indeed, and the world wondered how she got on at all. She lived in a cottage aboutthree miles from the Frosts, with one servant and the little child Archibald. In the course of years people seemed to forget all about the property in Chancery, and to ignore her as quite a poor woman.

Well, we—I and Tod—had been at Dr. Frost’s two years or so, when Archibald Hearn entered the school. He was a slender little lad with bright brown eyes, a delicate face and pink cheeks, very sweet-tempered and pleasant in manner. At first he used to go home at night, but when the winter weather set in he caught a cough, and then came into the house altogether. Some of the big ones felt sure that old Frost took him for nothing: but as little Hearn was Mrs. Frost’s nephew and we liked her, no talk was made about it. The lad did not much like coming into the house: we could see that. He seemed always to be hankering after his mother and old Betty the servant. Not in words: but he’d stand with his arms on the play-yard gate, his eyes gazing out towards the quarter where the cottage was; as if he would like his sight to penetrate the wood and the two or three miles beyond, and take a look at it. When any of us said to him as a bit of chaff, “You are staring after old Betty,” he would say Yes, he wished he could see her and his mother; and then tell no end of tales about what Betty had done for him in his illnesses. Any way, Hearn was a straightforward little chap, and a favourite in the school.

He had been with us about a year when Wolfe Barrington came. Quite another sort of pupil. A big, strong fellow who had never had a mother: rich and overbearing, and cruel. He was in mourning for his father, who had just died: a rich Irishman, given to company and fast living. Wolfe came in for all the money; so that he had a fine career before him and might be expected to set the world on fire. Little Hearn’s stories had been of home; of his mother and old Betty. Wolfe’s were different. He had had the run of his father’s stables and knew more about horses and dogs than the animals knew about themselves. Curious things, too, he’d tell of men and women, who had stayed at old Barrington’s place: and what he said of the public school he had been at might have made old Frost’s hair stand on end. Why he left the public school we did not find out: some said he had run away from it, and that his father, who’d indulged him awfully, would not send him back to be punished; others said the head-master would not receive him back again. In the nick of time the father died; and Wolfe’s guardians put him to Dr. Frost’s.

“I shall make you my fag,” said Barrington, the day he entered, catching hold of little Hearn in the playground, and twisting him round by the arm.

“What’s that?” asked Hearn, rubbing his arm—for Wolfe’s grasp had not been a light one.

“What’s that!” repeated Barrington, scornfully. “What a precious young fool you must be, not to know. Who’s your mother?”

“She lives over there,” answered Hearn, taking the question literally, and nodding beyond the wood.

“Oh!” said Barrington, screwing up his mouth. “What’s her name? And what’s yours?”

“Mrs. Hearn. Mine’s Archibald.”

“Good, Mr. Archibald. You shall be my fag. That is, my servant. And you’ll do every earthly thing that I order you to do. And mind you do it smartly, or may be that girl’s face of yours will show out rather blue sometimes.”

“I shall not be anybody’s servant,” returned Archie, in his mild, inoffensive way.

“Won’t you! You’ll tell me another tale before this time to-morrow. Did you ever get licked into next week?”

The child made no answer. He began to think the new fellow might be in earnest, and gazed up at him in doubt.

“When you can’t see out of your two eyes for the swelling round them, and your back’s stiff with smarting and aching—that’s the kind of licking I mean,” went on Barrington. “Did you ever taste it?”

“No, sir.”

“Good again. It will be all the sweeter when you do. Now look you here, Mr. Archibald Hearn. I appoint you my fag in ordinary. You’ll fetch and carry for me: you’ll black my boots and brush my clothes; you’ll sit up to wait on me when I go to bed, and read me to sleep; you’ll be dressed before I am in the morning, and be ready with my clothes and hot water. Never mind whether the rules of the house are against hot water, you’ll have to provide it, though you boil it in the bedroom grate, or out in the nearest field. You’ll attend me at my lessons; look out words for me; copy my exercises in a fair hand—and if you were old enough to do them, you’d have to. That’s a few of the items; but there are a hundred other things, that I’ve not time to detail. If I can get a horse for my use, you’ll have to groom him. And if you don’t put out your mettle to serve me in all these ways, and don’t hold yourself in readiness to fly and obey me at any minute or hour of the day, you’ll get daily one of the lickings I’ve told you of, until you are licked into shape.”

Barrington meant what he said. Voice and countenance alike wore a determined look, as if his words were law. Lots of the fellows, attracted by the talking, had gathered round. Hearn, honest and straightforward himself, did not altogether understand what evil might be in store for him, and grew seriously frightened.

The captain of the school walked up—John Whitney. “What is that you say Hearn has to do?” he asked.

“He knows now,” answered Barrington. “That’s enough. They don’t allow servants here: I must have a fag in place of one.”

In turning his fascinated eyes from Barrington, Hearn saw Blair standing by, our mathematical master—of whom you will hear more later. Blair must have caught what passed: and little Hearn appealed to him.

“Am I obliged to be his fag, sir?”

Mr. Blair put us leisurely aside with his hands, and confronted the new fellow. “Your name is Barrington, I think,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” said Barrington, staring at him defiantly.

“Allow me to tell you that ‘fags’ are not permitted here. The system would not be tolerated by Dr. Frost for a moment. Each boy must wait on himself, and be responsible for himself: seniors and juniors alike. You are not at a public-school now, Barrington. In a day or two, when you shall have learnt the customs and rules here, I dare say you will find yourself quite sufficiently comfortable, and see that a fag would be an unnecessary appendage.”

“Who is that man?” cried Barrington, as Blair turned away.

“Mathematical master. Sees to us out of hours,” answered Bill Whitney.

“And what the devil did you mean by making a sneaking appeal to him?” continued Barrington, seizing Hearn roughly.

“I did not mean it for sneaking; but I could not do what you wanted,” said Hearn. “He had been listening to us.”

“I wish to goodness that confounded fool, Taptal, had been sunk in his horse-pond before he put me to such a place as this,”cried Barrington, passionately. “As to you, you sneaking little devil, it seems I can’t make you do what I wanted, fags being forbidden fruit here, but it shan’t serve you much. There’s to begin with.”

Hearn got a shake and a kick that sent him flying. Blair was back on the instant.

“Are you a coward, Mr. Barrington?”

“A coward!” retorted Barrington, his eyes flashing. “You had better try whether I am or not.”

“It seems to me that you act like one, in attacking a lad so much younger and weaker than yourself. Don’t let me have to report you to Dr. Frost the first day of your arrival. Another thing—I must request you to be a little more careful in your language. You have come amidst gentlemen here, not blackguards.”

The matter ended here; but Barrington looked in a frightfulrage. It was unfortunate that it should have occurred the day he entered; but it did so, word for word, as I have written it. It set some of us rather against Barrington, and it set him against Hearn. He didn’t “lick him into next week,” but he gave him many a blow that the boy did nothing to deserve.

Barrington won his way, though, as the time went on. He had a liberal supply of money, and was open-handed with it; and he would often do a generous turn for one and another. The worst of him was his roughness. At play he was always rough; and, when put out, savage as well. His strength and activity were something remarkable; he would not have minded hard blows himself, and he showered them out on others with no more care than if we had been made of pumice-stone.

It was Barrington who introduced the new system at football. We had played it before in a rather mild way, speaking comparatively, but he soon changed that. Dr. Frost got to know of it in time, and he appeared amongst us one day when we were in the thick of it, and stopped the game with a sweep of his hand. They play it at Rugby now very much as Barrington made us play it then. The Doctor—standing with his face unusually red, and his shirt and necktie unusually white, and his knee-buckles gleaming—asked whether we were a pack of cannibals, that we should kick at one another in that dangerous manner. If we ever attempted it again, he said, football should be stopped.

So we went back to the old way. But we had tried the new, you see: and the consequence was that a great deal of rough play would creep into it now and again. Barrington led it on. No cannibal (as old Frost put it) could have been more carelessly furious at it than he. To see him with his sallow face in a heat, his keen black eyes flashing, his hat off, and his straight hair flung back, was not the pleasantest sight to my mind. Snepp said one day that he looked just like the devil at these times. Wolfe Barrington overheard him, and kicked him right over the hillock. I don’t think he was ill-intentioned; but his strong frame had been untamed; it required a vent for its superfluous strength: his animal spirits led him away, and he had never been taught to put a curb on himself or his inclinations. One thing was certain—that the name, Wolfe, for such a nature as his, was singularly appropriate. Some of us told him so. He laughed in answer; never saying that it was only shortened from Wolfrey, his real name, as we learnt later. He could be as good a fellow and comrade as any of them when he chose, and on the whole we liked him a great deal better than we had thought we should at first.

As to his animosity against little Hearn, it was wearing off. Thelad was too young to retaliate, and Barrington grew tired of knocking him about: perhaps a little ashamed of it when there was no return. In a twelvemonth’s time it had quite subsided, and, to the surprise of many of us, Barrington, coming back from a visit to old Taptal, his guardian, brought Hearn a handsome knife with three blades as a present.

And so it would have gone on but for an unfortunate occurrence. I shall always say and think so. But for that, it might have been peace between them to the end. Barrington, who was defiantly independent, had betaken himself to Evesham, one half-holiday, without leave. He walked straight into some mischief there, and broke a street boy’s head. Dr. Frost was appealed to by the boy’s father, and of course there was a row. The Doctor forbade Barrington ever to stir beyond bounds again without first obtaining permission; and Blair had orders that for a fortnight to come Barrington was to be confined to the playground in after-hours.

Very good. A day or two after that—on the next Saturday afternoon—the school went to a cricket-match; Doctor, masters, boys, and all; Barrington only being left behind.

Was he one to stand this? No. He coolly walked away to the high-road, saw a public conveyance passing, hailed it, mounted it, and was carried to Evesham. There he disported himself for an hour or so, visited the chief fruit and tart shops; and then chartered a gig to bring him back to within half-a-mile of the school.

The cricket-match was not over when he got in, for it lasted up to the twilight of the summer evening, and no one would have known of the escapade but for one miserable misfortune—Archie Hearn happened to have gone that afternoon to Evesham with his mother. They were passing along the street, and he saw Barrington amidst the sweets.

“There’s Wolfe Barrington!” said Archie, in the surprise of the moment, and would have halted at the tart-shop; but Mrs. Hearn, who was in a hurry, did not stop. On the Monday, she brought Archie back to school: he had been at home, sick, for more than a week, and knew nothing of Barrington’s punishment. Archie came amongst us at once, but Mrs. Hearn stayed to take tea with her sister and Dr. Frost. Without the slightest intention of making mischief, quite unaware that she was doing so, Mrs. Hearn mentioned incidentally that they had seen one of the boys—Barrington—at Evesham on the Saturday. Dr. Frost pricked up his ears at the news; not believing it, however: but Mrs. Hearn said yes, for Archie had seen him eating tarts at the confectioner’s. The Doctor finished his tea, went to his study, and sent for Barrington. Barrington denied it. He was not in the habit of telling lies, was too fearless of consequences to do anything of the sort; but he denied it now to the Doctor’s face; perhaps he began to think he might have gone a little too far. Dr. Frost rang the bell and ordered Archie Hearn in.

“Which shop was Barrington in when you saw him on Saturday?”questioned the Doctor.

“The pastrycook’s,” said Archie, innocently.

“What was he doing?” blandly went on the Doctor.

“Oh! no harm, sir; only eating tarts,” Archie hastened to say.

Well—it all came out then, and though Archie was quite innocent of wilfully telling tales; would have cut out his tongue rather than have said a word to injure Barrington, he received the credit of it now. Barrington took his punishment without a word; the hardest caning old Frost had given for many a long day, and heaps of work besides, and a promise of certain expulsion if he ever again went off surreptitiously in coaches and gigs. But Barrington thrashed Hearn worse when it was over, and branded him with the name of Sneak.

“He will never believe otherwise,” said Archie, the tears of pain and mortification running down his cheeks, fresh and delicate as a girl’s. “But I’d give the world not to have gone that afternoon to Evesham.”

A week or two later we went in for a turn at “Hare and Hounds.” Barrington’s term of punishment was over then. Snepp was the hare; a fleet, wiry fellow who could outrun most of us. But the hare this time came to grief. After doubling and turning, as Snepp used to like to do, thinking to throw us off the scent, he sprained his foot, trying to leap a hedge and dry ditch beyond it. We were on his trail, whooping and halloaing like mad; he kept quiet, and we passed on and never saw him. But there was no more scent to be seen, and we found we had lost it, and went back. Snepp showed up then, and the sport was over for the day. Some went home one way, and some another; all of us were as hot as fire, and thirsting for water.

“If you’ll turn down here by the great oak-tree, we shall come to my mother’s house, and you can have as much water as you like,” said little Hearn, in his good-nature.

So we turned down. There were only six or seven of us, for Snepp and his damaged foot made one, and most of them had gone on at a quicker pace. Tod helped Snepp on one side, Barrington on the other, and he limped along between them.

It was a narrow red-brick house, a parlour window on each side the door, and three windows above; small altogether, but very pretty, with jessamine and clematis climbing up the walls. Archie Hearn opened the door, and we trooped in, without regard toceremony. Mrs. Hearn—she had the same delicate face as Archie, the same pink colour and bright brown eyes—came out of the kitchen to stare at us. As well she might. Her cotton sleeves were turned up to the elbows, her fingers were stained red, and she had a coarse kitchen cloth pinned round her. She was pressing black currants for jelly.

We had plenty of water, and Mrs. Hearn made Snepp sit down, and looked at his foot, and put a wet bandage round it, kneeling before him to do it. I thought I had never seen so nice a face as hers; very placid, with a sort of sad look in it. Old Betty, that Hearn used to talk about, appeared in a short blue petticoat and a kind of brown print jacket. I have seen the homely servants in France, since, dressed very similarly. Snepp thanked Mrs. Hearn for giving his foot relief, and we took off our hats to her as we went away.

The same night, before Blair called us in for prayers, Archie Hearn heard Barrington giving a sneering account of the visit to some of the fellows in the playground.

“Just like a cook, you know. Might be taken for one. Some coarse bunting tied round her waist, and hands steeped in red kitchen stuff.”

“My mother could never be taken for anything but a lady,”spoke up Archie bravely. “A lady may make jelly. A great many ladies prefer to do it themselves.”

“Now you be off,” cried Barrington, turning sharply on him.“Keep at a distance from your betters.”

“There’s nobody in the world better than my mother,” returned the boy, standing his ground, and flushing painfully: for, in truth, the small way they were obliged to live in, through Chancery retaining the property, made a sore place in a corner of Archie’s heart. “Ask Joseph Todhetley what he thinks of her. Ask John Whitney. They recognize her for a lady.”

“But then they are gentlemen themselves.”

It was I who put that in. I couldn’t help having a fling at Barrington. A bit of applause followed, and stung him.

“If you shove in your oar, Johnny Ludlow, or presume to interfere with me, I’ll pummel you to powder. There.”

Barrington kicked out on all sides, sending us backward. The bell rang for prayers then, and we had to go in.

The game the next evening was football. We went out to it as soon as tea was over, to the field by the river towards Vale Farm. I can’t tell much about its progress, except that the play seemed rougher and louder than usual. Once there was a regular skirmish: scores of feet kicking out at once; great struggling, pushing and shouting: and when the ball got off, and the tailafter it in full hue and cry, one was left behind lying on the ground.

I don’t know why I turned my head back; it was the merest chance that I did so: and I saw Tod kneeling on the grass, raising the boy’s head.

“Holloa!” said I, running back. “Anything wrong? Who is it?”

It was little Hearn. He had his eyes shut. Tod did not speak.

“What’s the matter, Tod? Is he hurt?”

“Well, I think he’s hurt a little,” was Tod’s answer. “He has had a kick here.”

Tod touched the left temple with his finger, drawing it down as far as the back of the ear. It must have been a good wide kick, I thought.

“It has stunned him, poor little fellow. Can you get some water from the river, Johnny?”

“I could if I had anything to bring it in. It would leak out of my straw hat long before I got here.”

But little Hearn made a move then, and opened his eyes. Presently he sat up, putting his hands to his head. Tod was as tender with him as a mother.

“How do you feel, Archie?”

“Oh, I’m all right, I think. A bit giddy.”

Getting on to his feet, he looked from me to Tod in a bewildered manner. I thought it odd. He said he wouldn’t join the game again, but go in and rest. Tod went with him, ordering me to keep with the players. Hearn walked all right, and did not seem to be much the worse for it.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Mrs. Hall, in her cranky way; for she happened to be in the yard when they entered, Tod marshalling little Hearn by the arm.

“He has had a blow at football,” answered Tod. “Here”—indicating the place he had shown me.

“A kick, I suppose you mean,” said Mother Hall.

“Yes, if you like to call it so. It was a blow with a foot.”

“Did you do it, Master Todhetley?”

“No, I did not,” retorted Tod.

“I wonder the Doctor allows that football to be played!” she went on, grumbling. “I wouldn’t, if I kept a school; I know that. It is a barbarous game, only fit for bears.”

“I am all right,” put in Hearn. “I needn’t have come in, but for feeling giddy.”

But he was not quite right yet. For without the slightest warning, before he had time to stir from where he stood, he becamefrightfully sick. Hall ran for a basin and some warm water. Tod held his head.

“This is through having gobbled down your tea in such a mortal hurry, to be off to that precious football,” decided Hall, resentfully.“The wonder is, that the whole crew of you are not sick, swallowing your food at the rate you do.”

“I think I’ll lie on the bed for a bit,” said Archie, when the sickness had passed. “I shall be up again by supper-time.”

They went with him to his room. Neither of them had the slightest notion that he was seriously hurt, or that there could be any danger. Archie took off his jacket, and lay down in his clothes. Mrs. Hall offered to bring him up a cup of tea; but he said it might make him sick again, and he’d rather be quiet. She went down, and Tod sat on the edge of the bed. Archie shut his eyes, and kept still. Tod thought he was dropping off to sleep, and began to creep out of the room. The eyes opened then, and Archie called to him.

“Todhetley?”

“I am here, old fellow. What is it?”

“You’ll tell him I forgive him,” said Archie, speaking in an earnest whisper. “Tell him I know he didn’t think to hurt me.”

“Oh, I’ll tell him,” answered Tod, lightly.

“And be sure give my dear love to mamma.”

“So I will.”

“And now I’ll go to sleep, or I shan’t be down to supper. You will come and call me if I am not, won’t you?”

“All right,” said Tod, tucking the counterpane about him. “Are you comfortable, Archie?”

“Quite. Thank you.”

Tod came on to the field again, and joined the game. It was a little less rough, and there were no more mishaps. We got home later than usual, and supper stood on the table.

The suppers at Worcester House were always the same—bread and cheese. And not too much of it. Half a round off the loaf, with a piece of cheese, for each fellow; and a drop of beer or water. Our other meals were good and abundant; but the Doctor waged war with heavy suppers. If old Hall had had her way, we should have had none at all. Little Hearn did not appear; and Tod went up to look after him. I followed.

Opening the door without noise, we stood listening and looking. Not that there was much good in looking, for the room was in darkness.

“Archie,” whispered Tod.

No answer. No sound.

“Are you asleep, old fellow?”

Not a word still. The dead might be there; for all the sound there was.

“He’s asleep, for certain,” said Tod, groping his way towards the bed. “So much the better, poor little chap. I won’t wake him.”

It was a small room, two beds in it; Archie’s was the one at the end by the wall. Tod groped his way to it: and, in thinking of it afterwards, I wondered that Tod did go up to him. The most natural thing would have been to come away, and shut the door. Instinct must have guided him—as it guides us all. Tod bent over him, touching his face, I think. I stood close behind. Now that our eyes were accustomed to the darkness, it seemed a bit lighter.

Something like a cry from Tod made me start. In the dark, and holding the breath, one is easily startled.

“Get a light, Johnny. A light!-quick! for the love of Heaven.”

I believe I leaped the stairs at a bound. I believe I knocked over Mother Hall at the foot. I know I snatched the candle that was in her hand, and she screamed after me as if I had murdered her.

“Here it is, Tod.”

He was at the door waiting for it, every atom of colour gone clean out of his face. Carrying it to the bed, he let its light fall full on Archie Hearn. The face was white and cold; the mouth covered with froth.

“Oh, Tod! What is it that’s the matter with him?”

“Hush’, Johnny! I fear he’s dying. Good Lord! to think we should have been such ignorant fools as to leave him by himself!—as not have sent for Featherstone!”

We were down again in a moment. Hall stood scolding still, demanding her candle. Tod said a word that silenced her. She backed against the wall.

“Don’t play your tricks on me, Mr. Todhetley.”

“Go and see,” said Tod.

She took the light from his hand quietly, and went up. Just then, the Doctor and Mrs. Frost, who had been walking all the way home from Sir John Whitney’s, where they had spent the evening, came in, and learnt what had happened.

Featherstone was there in no time, so to say, and shut himself into the bedroom with the Doctor and Mrs. Frost and Hall, and I don’t know how many more. Nothing could be done for Archibald Hearn: he was not quite dead, but close upon it. He was dead before any one thought of sending to Mrs. Hearn. It came to the same. Could she have come upon telegraph wires, she would still have come too late.

When I look back upon that evening—and a good many years have gone by since then—nothing arises in my mind but a picture of confusion, tinged with a feeling of terrible sorrow; ay, and of horror. If a death happens in a school, it is generally kept from the pupils, as far as possible; at any rate they are not allowed to see any of its attendant stir and details. But this was different. Upon masters and boys, upon mistress and household, it came with the same startling shock. Dr. Frost said feebly that the boys ought to go up to bed, and then Blair told us to go; but the boys stayed on where they were. Hanging about the passages, stealing upstairs and peeping into the room, questioning Featherstone (when we could get the chance of coming upon him), as to whether Hearn would get well or not. No one checked us.

I went in once. Mrs. Frost was alone, kneeling by the bed; I thought she must have been saying a prayer. Just then she lifted her head to look at him. As I backed away again, she began to speak aloud—and oh! what a sad tone she said it in!

“The only son of his mother, and she was a widow!”

There had to be an inquest. It did not come to much. The most that could be said was that he died from a kick at football.“A most unfortunate but an accidental kick,” quoth the coroner. Tod had said that he saw the kick given: that is, had seen some foot come flat down with a bang on the side of little Hearn’s head; and when Tod was asked if he recognized the foot, he replied No: boots looked very much alike, and a great many were thrust out in the skirmish, all kicking together.

Not one would own to having given it. For the matter of that, the fellow might not have been conscious of what he did. No end of thoughts glanced towards Barrington: both because he was so ferocious at the game, and that he had a spite against Hearn.

“I never touched him,” said Barrington, when this leaked out; and his face and voice were boldly defiant. “It wasn’t me. I never so much as saw that Hearn was down.”

And as there were others quite as brutal at football as Barrington, he was believed.

We could not get over it any way. It seemed so dreadful that he should have been left alone to die. Hall was chiefly to blame for that; and it cowed her.

“Look here,” said Tod to us, “I have a message for one of you. Whichever the cap fits may take it to himself. When Hearn was dying he told me to say that he forgave the fellow who kicked him.”

This was the evening of the inquest-day. We had all gathered in the porch by the stone bench, and Tod took the opportunity torelate what he had not related before. He repeated every word that Hearn had said.

“Did Hearn know who it was, then?” asked John Whitney.

“I think so.”

“Then why didn’t you ask him to name him!”

“Why didn’t I ask him to name him,” repeated Tod, in a fume.“Do you suppose I thought he was going to die, Whitney?—or that the kick was to turn out a serious one? Hearn was growing big enough to fight his own battles: and I never thought but he would be up again at supper-time.”

John Whitney pushed his hair back, in his quiet, thoughtful way, and said no more. He was to die, himself, the following year—but that has nothing to do with the present matter.

I was standing away at the gate after this, looking at the sunset, when Tod came up and put his arms on the top bar.

“What are you gazing at, Johnny?”

“At the sunset. How red it is! I was thinking that if Hearn’s up there now he is better off. It is very beautiful.”

“I should not like to have been the one to send him there, though,” was Tod’s answer. “Johnny, I am certain Hearn knew who it was,” he went on in a low tone. “I am certain he thought the fellow, himself, knew, and that it had been done for the purpose. I think I know also.”

“Tell us,” I said. And Tod glanced over his shoulders, to make sure no one was within hearing before he replied.

“Wolfe Barrington.”

“Why don’t you accuse him, Tod?”

“It wouldn’t do. And I am not absolutely sure. What I saw, was this. In the rush, one of them fell: I saw his head lying on the ground. Before I could shout out to the fellows to take care, a boot with a grey trouser over it came stamping down (not kicking) on the side of the head. If ever anything was done deliberately, that stamp seemed to be; it could hardly have been chance. I know no more than that: it all passed in a moment. I didn’t seethat it was Barrington. But—what other fellow is there among us who would have wilfully harmed little Hearn? It is that thought that brings conviction to me.”

I looked round to where a lot of them stood at a distance.“Wolfe has got on grey trousers, too.”

“That does not tell much,” returned Tod. “Half of us wear the same. Yours are grey; mine are grey. It’s just this: While I am convinced in my own mind that it was Barrington, there’s no sort of proof that it was so, and he denies it. So it must rest, and die away. Keep counsel, Johnny.”

The funeral took place from the school. All of us went to it.In the evening, Mrs. Hearn, who had been staying at the house, surprised us by coming into the tea-room. She looked very small in her black gown. Her thin cheeks were more flushed than usual, and her eyes had a great sadness in them.

“I wished to say good-bye to you; and to shake hands with you before I go home,” she began, in a kind tone, and we all got up from the table to face her.

“I thought you would like me to tell you that I feel sure it must have been an accident; that no harm was intended. My dear little son said this to Joseph Todhetley when he was dying—and I fancy that some prevision of death must have lain then upon his spirit and caused him to say it, though he himself might not have been quite conscious of it. He died in love and peace with all; and, if he had anything to forgive—he forgave freely. I wish to let you know that I do the same. Only try to be a little less rough at play—and God bless you all. Will you shake hands with me?”

John Whitney, a true gentleman always, went up to her first, meeting her offered hand.

“If it had been anything but an accident, Mrs. Hearn,” he began in tones of deep feeling: “if any one of us had done it wilfully, I think, standing to hear you now, we should shrink to the earth in our shame and contrition. You cannot regret Archibald much more than we do.”

“In the midst of my grief, I know one thing: that God has taken him from a world of care to peace and happiness; I try torest in that. Thank you all. Good-bye.”

Catching her breath, she shook hands with us one by one, giving each a smile; but did not say more.

And the only one of us who did not feel her visit as it was intended, was Barrington. But he had no feeling: his body was too strong for it, his temper too fierce. He would have thrown a sneer of ridicule after her, but Whitney hissed it down.

Before another day had gone over, Barrington and Tod had a row. It was about a crib. Tod could be as overbearing as Barrington when he pleased, and he was cherishing ill-feeling towards him. They went and had it out in private—but it did not come to a fight. Tod was not one to keep in matters till they rankled, and he openly told Barrington that he believed it was he who had caused Hearn’s death. Barrington denied it out-and-out; first of all swearing passionately that he had not, and then calming down to talk about it quietly. Tod felt less sure of it after that: as he confided to me in the bedroom.

Dr. Frost forbid football. And the time went on.

What I have further to relate may be thought a made-up story, such as we find in fiction. It is so very like a case of retribution. But it is all true, and happened as I shall put it. And somehow I never care to dwell long upon the calamity.

It was as nearly as possible a year after Hearn died. Jessup was captain of the school, for John Whitney was too ill to come. Jessup was almost as rebellious as Wolfe; and the two would ridicule Blair, and call him “Baked pie” to his face. One morning, when they had given no end of trouble to old Frost over their Greek, and laid the blame upon the hot weather, the Doctor said he had a great mind to keep them in until dinner-time. However, they ate humble-pie, and were allowed to escape. Blair was taking us for a walk. Instead of keeping with the ranks, Barrington and Jessup fell out, and sat down on the gate of a field where the wheat was being carried. Blair said they might sit there if they pleased, but forbid them to cross the gate. Indeed, there was a standing interdiction against our entering any field whilst the crops were being gathered. We went on and left them.

Half-an-hour afterwards, before we got back, Barrington had been carried home, dying.

Dying, as was supposed. He and Jessup had disobeyed Blair, disregarded orders, and rushed into the field, shouting and leaping like a couple of mad fellows—as the labourers afterwards said. Making for the waggon, laden high with wheat, they mounted it, and started on the horses. In some way, Barrington lost his balance, slipped over the side and the hind wheel went over him.

I shall never forget the house when we got back. Jessup, in his terror, had made off for his home, running most of the way—seven miles. He was in the same boat as Wolfe, except that he escaped injury—had gone over the stile in defiance of orders, and got on the waggon. Barrington was lying in the blue-room; and Mrs. Frost, frightened out of bed, stood on the landing in her night-cap, a shawl wrapped round her loose white dressing-gown. She was ill at the time. Featherstone came striding up the road wiping his hot face.

“Lord bless me!” cried Featherstone when he had looked at Wolfe and touched him. “I can’t deal with this single-handed, Dr. Frost.”

The doctor had guessed that. And Roger was already away on a galloping horse, flying for another. He brought little Pink: a shrimp of a man, with a fair reputation in his profession. But the two were more accustomed to treating rustic ailments than grave cases, and Dr. Frost knew that. Evening drew on, and the dusk was gathering, when a carriage with post-horses came thundering in at the front gates, bringing Mr. Carden.

They did not give to us boys the particulars of the injuries; and I don’t know them to this day. The spine was hurt; the right ankle smashed: we heard that much. Taptal, Barrington’s guardian, came over, and an uncle from London. Altogether it was a miserable time. The masters seized upon it to be doubly stern, and read us lectures upon disobedience and rebellion—as though we had been the offenders! As to Jessup, his father handed him back again to Dr. Frost, saying that in his opinion a taste of birch would much conduce to his benefit.

Barrington did not seem to suffer as keenly as some might have done; perhaps his spirits kept him up, for they were untamed. On the very day after the accident, he asked for some of the fellows to go in and sit with him, because he was dull. “By-and-by,” the doctors said. And the next day but one, Dr. Frost sent me in. The paid nurse sat at the end of the room.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Ludlow! Where’s Jessup?”

“Jessup’s under punishment.”

His face looked the same as ever, and that was all that could be seen of him. He lay on his back, covered over. As to the low bed, it might have been a board, to judge by its flatness. And perhaps was so.

“I am very sorry about it, Barrington. We all are. Are you in much pain?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” was his impatient answer. “One has to grin and bear it. The cursed idiots had stacked the wheat sloping to the sides, or it would never have happened. What do you hear about me?”

“Nothing but regret that it——”

“I don’t mean that stuff. Regret, indeed! regret won’t undo it. I mean as to my getting about again. Will it be ages first?”

“We don’t hear a word.”

“If they were to keep me here a month, Ludlow, I should go mad. Rampant. You shut up, old woman.”

For the nurse had interfered, telling him he must not excite himself.

“My ankle’s hurt; but I believe it is not half as bad as a regular fracture: and my back’s bruised. Well, what’s a bruise? Nothing. Of course there’s pain and stiffness, and all that; but so there is after a bad fight, or a thrashing. And they talk about my lying here for three or four weeks! Catch me.”

One thing was evident: they had not allowed Wolfe to suspect the gravity of the case. Downstairs we had an inkling, I don’t remember whence gathered, that it might possibly end in death. There was a suspicion of some internal injury that we could not get to know of; and it is said that even Mr. Carden, with all hissurgical skill, could not get at it, either. Any way, the prospect of recovery for Barrington was supposed to be of the scantiest; and it threw a gloom over us.

A sad mishap was to occur. Of course no one in their senses would have let Barrington learn the danger he was in; especially while there was just a chance that the peril would be surmounted. I read a book lately—I, Johnny Ludlow—where a little child met with an accident; and the first thing the people around him did, father, doctors, nurses, was to inform him that he would be a cripple for the rest of his days. That was common sense with a vengeance: and about as likely to occur in real life as that I could turn myself into a Dutchman. However, something of the kind did happen in Barrington’s case, but through inadvertence. Another uncle came over from Ireland; an old man; and in talking with Featherstone he spoke out too freely. They were outside Barrington’s door, and besides that, supposed that he was asleep. But he had awakened then; and heard more than he ought. The blue-room always seemed to have an echo in it.

“So it’s all up with me, Ludlow?”

I was by his bedside when he suddenly said this, in the twilight of the summer evening. He had been lying quite silent since I entered, and his face had a white, still look on it, never before noticed there.

“What do you mean, Barrington?”

“None of your shamming here. I know; and so do you, Johnny Ludlow. I say, though it makes one feel queer to find the world’s slipping away. I had looked for so much jolly life in it.”

“Barrington, you may get well yet; you may, indeed. Ask Pink and Featherstone, else, when they next come; ask Mr. Carden. I can’t think what idea you have been getting hold of.”

“There, that’s enough,” he answered. “Don’t bother. I want to be quiet.”

He shut his eyes; and the darkness grew as the minutes passed. Presently some one came into the room with a gentle step: a lady in a black-and-white gown that didn’t rustle. It was Mrs. Hearn. Barrington looked up at her.

“I am going to stay with you for a day or two,” she said in a low sweet voice, bending over him and touching his forehead with her cool fingers. “I hear you have taken a dislike to the nurse: and Mrs. Frost is really too weakly just now to get about.”

“She’s a sly cat,” said Barrington, alluding to the nurse, “and watches me out of the tail of her eye. Hall’s as bad. They are in league together.”

“Well, they shall not come in more than I can help. I will nurse you myself.”

“No; not you,” said Barrington, his face looking red and uneasy.“I’ll not trouble you.”

She sat down in my chair, just pressing my hand in token of greeting. And I left them.

In the ensuing days his life trembled in the balance; and even when part of the more immediate danger was surmounted, part of the worst of the pain, it was still a toss-up. Barrington had no hope whatever: I don’t think Mrs. Hearn had, either.

She hardly left him. At first he seemed to resent her presence; to wish her away; to receive unwillingly what she did for him; but, in spite of himself he grew to look round for her, and to let his hand lie in hers whenever she chose to take it.

Who can tell what she said to him? Who can know how she softly and gradually awoke the better feelings within him, and won his heart from its hardness? She did do it, and that’s enough. The way was paved for her. What the accident had not done, the fear of death had. Tamed him.

One evening when the sun had sunk, leaving only a fading light in the western sky, and Barrington had been watching it from his bed, he suddenly burst into tears. Mrs. Hearn busy amongst the physic bottles, was by his side in a moment.

“Wolfe!”

“It’s very hard to have to die.”

“Hush, my dear, you are not worse: a little better. I think you may be spared; I do indeed. And—in any case—you know what I read to you this evening: that to die is gain.”

“Yes, for some. I’ve never had my thoughts turned that way.”

“They are turned now. That is quite enough.”

“It is such a little while to have lived,” went on Barrington, after a pause. “Such a little while to have enjoyed earth. What are my few years compared with the ages that have gone by, with the ages and ages that are to come. Nothing. Not as much as a drop of water to the ocean.”

“Wolfe, dear, if you live out the allotted years of man, three score and ten, what would even that be in comparison? As you say—nothing. It seems to me that our well-being or ill-being here need not much concern us: the days, whether short or long, will pass as a dream. Eternal life lasts for ever; soon we must all be departing for it.”

Wolfe made no answer. The clear sky was assuming its pale tints, shading off one into another, and his eyes were looking at them. But it was as if he saw nothing.

“Listen, my dear. When Archibald died, I thought I should have died; died of grief and pain. I grieved to think how short had been his span of life on this fair earth; how cruel his fate inbeing taken from it so early. But, oh, Wolfe, God has shown me my mistake. I would not have him back again if I could.”

Wolfe put up his hand to cover his face. Not a word spoke he.

“I wish you could see things as I see them, now that they have been cleared for me,” she resumed. “It is so much better to be in heaven than on earth. We, who are here, have to battle with cares and crosses; and shall have to do so to the end. Archie has thrown-off all care. He is in happiness amidst the redeemed.”

The room was growing dark. Wolfe’s face was one of intense pain.

“Wolfe, dear, do not mistake me; do not think me hard if I say that you would be happier there than here. There is nothing to dread, dying in Christ. Believe me, I would not for the world have Archie back again: how could I then make sure what the eventual ending would be? You and he will know each other up there.”

“Don’t,” said Wolfe.

“Don’t what?”

Wolfe drew her hand close to his face, and she knelt down to catch his whisper.

“I killed him.”

A pause: and a sort of sob in her throat. Then, drawing away her hand, she laid her cheek to his.

“My dear, I think I have known it.”

“You—have—known—it?” stammered Wolfe in disbelief.

“Yes. I thought it was likely. I felt nearly sure of it. Don’t let it trouble you now. Archie forgave, you know, and I forgave; and God will forgive.”

“How could you come here to nurse me—knowing that?”

“It made me the more anxious to come. You have no mother.”

“No.” Wolfe was sobbing bitterly. “She died when I was born. I’ve never had anybody. I’ve never had a chapter read to me, or a prayer prayed.”

“No, no, dear. And Archie—oh, Archie had all that. From the time he could speak, I tried to train him for heaven. It has seemed to me, since, just as though I had foreseen he would go early, and was preparing him for it.”

“I never meant to kill him,” sobbed Wolfe. “I saw his head down, and I put my foot upon it without a moment’s thought. If I had taken thought, or known it would hurt him seriously, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“He is better off, dear,” was all she said. “You have that comfort.”

“Any way, I am paid out for it. At the best, I suppose I shallgo upon crutches for life. That’s bad enough: but dying’s worse. Mrs. Hearn, I am not ready to die.”

“Be you very sure God will not take you until you are ready, if you only wish and hope to be made so from your very heart,” she whispered. “I pray to Him often for you, Wolfe.”

“I think you must be one of heaven’s angels,” said Wolfe, with a burst of emotion.

“No, dear; only a weak woman. I have had so much sorrow and care, trial upon trial, one disappointment after another, that it has left me nothing but Heaven to lean upon. Wolfe, I am trying to show you a little bit of the way there; and I think—I do indeed—that this accident, which seems, and is, so dreadful, may have been sent by God in mercy. Perhaps, else, you might never have found Him: and where would you have been in all that long, long eternity? A few years here; never-ending ages hereafter!—Oh, Wolfe! bear up bravely for the little span, even though the cross may be heavy. Fight on manfully for the real life to come.”

“If you will help me.”

“To be sure I will.”

Wolfe got about again, and came out upon crutches. After a while they were discarded, first one, then the other, and he took permanently to a stick. He would never go without that. He would never run or leap again, or kick much either. The doctors looked upon it as a wonderful cure—and old Featherstone was apt to talk to us boys as if it were he who had pulled him through. But not in Henry Carden’s hearing.

The uncles and Taptal said he would be better now at a private tutor’s. But Wolfe would not leave Dr. Frost’s. A low pony-carriage was bought for him, and all his spare time he would go driving over to Mrs. Hearn’s. He was as a son to her. His great animal spirits had been taken out of him, you see; and he had to find his happiness in quieter grooves. One Saturday afternoon he drove me over. Mrs. Hearn had asked me to stay with her until the Monday morning. Barrington generally stayed.

It was in November. Considerably more than a year after the accident. The guns of the sportsmen were heard in the wood; a pack of hounds and their huntsmen rode past the cottage at a gallop, in full chase after a late find. Barrington looked and listened, a sigh escaping him.

“These pleasures are barred to me now.”

“But a better one has been opened to you,” said Mrs. Hearn, with a meaning smile, as she took his hand in hers.

And on Wolfe’s face, when he glanced at her in answer, there sat a look of satisfied rest that I am sure had never been seen on it before he fell off the waggon.

CHAPTER IV.

MAJOR PARRIFER.

He was one of the worst magistrates that ever sat upon the bench of justices. Strangers were given to wonder how he got his commission. But, you see, men are fit or unfit for a post according to their doings in it; and, generally speaking, people cannot tell what those doings will be beforehand.

They called him Major: Major Parrifer: but he only held rank in a militia regiment, and every one knows what that is. He had bought the place he lived in some years before, and christened it Parrifer Hall. The worst title he could have hit upon; seeing that the good old Hall, with a good old family in it, was only a mile or two distant. Parrifer Hall was only a stone’s throw, so to say, beyond our village, Church Dykely.

They lived at a high rate; money was not wanting; the Major, his wife, six daughters, and a son who did not come home very much. Mrs. Parrifer was stuck-up: it is one of our county sayings, and it applied to her. When she called on people her silk gowns rustled as if lined with buckram; her voice was loud, her manner patronizing; the Major’s voice and manner were the same; and the girls took after them.

Close by, at the corner of Piefinch Lane, was a cottage that belonged to me. To me, Johnny Ludlow. Not that I had as yet control over that or any other cottage I might possess. George Reed rented the cottage. It stood in a good large garden which touched Major Parrifer’s side fence. On the other side the garden, a high hedge divided it from the lane: but it had only a low hedge in front, with a low gate in the middle. Trim, well-kept hedges: George Reed took care of that.

There was quite a history attaching to him. His father had been indoor servant at the Court. When he married and left it, my grandfather gave him a lease of this cottage, renewable every seven years. George was the only son, had been very decently educated, but turned out wild when he grew up and got out of everything. The result was, that he was only a day-labourer, and never likely to be anything else. He took to the cottage after oldReed’s death, and worked for Mr. Sterling; who had the Court now. George Reed was generally civil, but uncommonly independent. His first wife had died, leaving a daughter, Cathy; later on he married again. Reed’s wild oats had been sown years ago; he was thoroughly well-conducted and industrious now, working in his own garden early and late.

When Cathy’s mother died, she was taken to by an aunt, who lived near Worcester. At fifteen she came home again, for the aunt had died. Her ten years’ training there had done very little for her, except make her into a pretty girl. Cathy had been trained to idleness, but to very little else. She could sing; self-taught of course; she could embroider handkerchiefs and frills; she could write a tolerable letter without many mistakes, and was great at reading, especially when the literature was of the halfpenny kind issued weekly. These acquirements (except the last) were not bad things in themselves, but quite unsuited to Cathy Reed’s condition and her future prospects in life. The best that she could aspire to, the best her father expected for her, was that of entering on a light respectable service, and later to become, perhaps, a labourer’s wife.

The second Mrs. Reed, a quiet kind of young woman, had one little girl only when Cathy came home. She was almost struck dumb when she found what had been Cathy’s acquirements in the way of usefulness; or rather what were her deficiencies. The facts unfolded themselves by degrees.

“Your father thinks he’d like you to get a service with some of the gentlefolks, Cathy,” her step-mother said to her. “Perhaps at the Court, if they could make room for you; or over at Squire Todhetley’s. Meanwhile you’ll help me with the work at home for a few weeks first; won’t you, dear? When another little one comes, there’ll be a good deal on my hands.”

“Oh, I’ll help,” answered Cathy, who was a good-natured, ready-speaking girl.

“That’s right. Can you wash?”

“No,” said Cathy, with a very decisive shake of the head.

“Not wash?”

“Oh dear, no.”

“Can you iron?”

“Pocket-handkerchiefs.”

“Your aunt was a seamstress; can you sew well?”

“I don’t like sewing.”

Mrs. Reed looked at her, but said no more then, rather leaving practice instead of theory to develop Cathy’s capabilities. But when she came to put her to the test, she found Cathy could not, or would not, do any kind of useful work whatever. Cathy couldnot wash, iron, scour, cook, or sweep; or even sew plain coarse things, such as are required in labourers’ families. Cathy could do several kinds of fancy-work. Cathy could idle away her time at the glass, oiling her hair, and dressing herself to the best advantage; Cathy had a smattering of history and geography and chronology; and of polite literature, as comprised in the pages of the aforesaid halfpenny and penny weekly romances. The aunt had sent Cathy to a cheap day-school where such learning was supposed to be taught: had let her run about when she ought to have been cooking and washing; and of course Cathy had acquired a distaste for work. Mrs. Reed sat down aghast, her hands falling helpless on her lap, a kind of fear of what might be Cathy’s future stealing into her heart.

“Child, what is to become of you?”

Cathy had no qualms upon the point herself. She gave a laughing kiss to the little child, toddling round the room by the chairs, and took out of her pocket one of those halfpenny serials, whose thrilling stories of brigands and captive damsels she had learnt to make her chief delight.

“I shall have to teach her everything,” sighed disappointed Mrs. Reed. “Catherine, I don’t think the kind of useless things your aunt has taught you are good for poor folk like us.”

Good! Mrs. Reed might have gone a little further. She began her instruction, but Cathy would not learn. Cathy was always good-humoured; but of work she would do none. If she attempted it, Mrs. Reed had to do it over again.

“Where on earth will the gentlefolks get their servants from, if the girls are to be like you?” cried honest Mrs. Reed.

Well, time went on; a year or two. Cathy Reed tried two or three services, but did not keep them. Young Mrs. Sterling at the Court at length took her. In three months Cathy was home again, as usual. “I do not think Catherine will be kept anywhere,” Mrs. Sterling said to her step-mother. “When she ought to have been minding the baby, the nurse would find her with a strip of embroidery in her hand, or buried in the pages of some bad story that can only do her harm.”

Cathy was turned seventeen when the warfare set in between her father and Major Parrifer. The Major suddenly cast his eyes on the little cottage outside his own land and coveted it. Before this, young Parrifer (a harmless young man, with no whiskers, and sandy hair parted down the middle) had struck up an acquaintance with Cathy. When he left Oxford (where he got plucked twice, and at length took his name off the books) he would often be seen leaning over the cottage-gate, talking to Cathy in the garden, with the two little half-sisters that she pretended to mind. There was no harm:but perhaps Major Parrifer feared it might grow into it; and he badly wanted the plot of ground, that he might pull down the cottage and extend his own boundaries to Piefinch Lane.

One fine day in the holidays, when Tod and I were indoors making flies for fishing, our old servant, Thomas, appeared, and said that George Reed had come over and wanted to speak to me. Which set us wondering. What could he want with me?

“Show him in here,” said Tod.

Reed came in: a tall, powerful man of forty; with dark, curling hair, and a determined, good-looking face. He began saying that he had heard Major Parrifer was after his cottage, wanting to buy it; so he had come over to beg me to interfere and stop the sale.

“Why, Reed, what can I do?” I asked. “You know I have no power.”

“You wouldn’t turn me out of it yourself, I know, sir.”

“That I wouldn’t.”

Neither would I. I liked George Reed. And I remembered that he used to have me in his arms sometimes when I was a little fellow at the Court. Once he carried me to my mother’s grave in the churchyard, and told me she had gone to live in heaven.

“When a rich gentleman sets his mind on a poor man’s bit of a cottage, and says, ‘That shall be mine,’ the poor man has not much chance against him, sir, unless he that owns the cottage will be his friend. I know you have no power at present, Master Johnny; but if you’d speak to Mr. Brandon, perhaps he would listen to you.”

“Sit down, Reed,” interrupted Tod, putting his catgut out of hand.“I thought you had the cottage on a lease.”

“And so I have, sir. But the lease will be out at Michaelmas next, and Mr. Brandon can turn me from it if he likes. My father and mother died there, sir; my wife died there; my children were born there; and the place is as much like my homestead as if it was my own.”

“How do you know old Parrifer wants it?” continued Tod.

“I have heard it from a safe source. I’ve heard, too, that his lawyer and Mr. Brandon’s lawyer have settled the matter between their two selves, and don’t intend to let me as much as know I’m to go out till the time comes, for fear I should make a row over it. Nobody on earth can stop it except Mr. Brandon,” added Reed, with energy.

“Have you spoken to Mr. Brandon, Reed?”

“No, sir. I was going up to him; but the thought took me that I’d better come off at once to Master Ludlow; his word might be of more avail than mine. There’s no time to be lost. If once the lawyers get Mr. Brandon’s consent, he may not be able to recall it.”

“What does Parrifer want with the cottage?”

“I fancy he covets the bit of garden, sir; he sees the order I’ve brought it into. If it’s not that, I don’t know what it can be. The cottage can be no eyesore to him; he can’t see it from his windows.”

“Shall I go with you, Johnny?” said Tod, as Reed went home, after drinking the ale old Thomas had given him. “We will circumvent that Parrifer, if there’s law or justice in the Brandon land.”

We went off to Mr. Brandon’s in the pony-carriage, Tod driving. He lived near Alcester, and had the management of my property whilst I was a minor. As we went along who should ride past, meeting us, but Major Parrifer.

“Looking like the bull-dog that he is,” cried Tod, who could not bear the man. “Johnny, what will you lay that he has not been to Mr. Brandon’s? The negotiations are becoming serious.”

Tod did not go in. On second thought, he said it might be better to leave it to me. The Squire must try, if I failed. Mr. Brandon was at home; and Tod drove on into Alcester by way of passing the time.

“But I don’t think you can see him,” said the housekeeper, when she came to me in the drawing-room. “This is one of his bad days. A gentleman called just now, and I went in to the master, but it was of no use.”

“I know; it was Major Parrifer. We thought he might have been calling here.”

Mr. Brandon was thin and little, with a shrivelled face. He lived alone, except for three or four servants, and always fancied himself ill with one ailment or another. When I went in, for he said he’d see me, he was sitting in an easy-chair, with a geranium-coloured Turkish cap on his head, and two bottles of medicine at his elbow.

“Well, Johnny, an invalid as usual, you see. And what is it you so particularly want?”

“I want to ask you a favour, Mr. Brandon, if you’ll be good enough to grant it me.”

“What is it?”

“You know that cottage, sir, at the corner of Piefinch Lane. George Reed’s.”

“Well?”

“I have come to ask you not to let it be sold.”

“Who wants to sell it?” asked he, after a pause.

“Major Parrifer wants to buy it; and to turn Reed out. The lawyers are going to arrange it.”

Mr. Brandon pushed the cap up on his brow and gave the tassel over his ear a twirl as he looked at me. People thought him incapable; but it was only because he had no work to do that heseemed so. He would get a bit irritable sometimes; very rarely though; and he had a squeaky voice: but he was a good and just man.

“How did you hear this, Johnny?”

I told him all about it. What Reed had said, and of our having met the Major on horseback as we drove along.

“He came here, but I did not feel well enough to see him,” said Mr. Brandon. “Johnny, you know that I stand in place of your father, as regards your property; to do the best I can with it.”

“Yes, sir. And I am sure you do it.”

“If Major Parrifer—I don’t like the man,” broke off Mr. Brandon,“but that’s neither here nor there. At the last magistrates’meeting I attended he was so overbearing as to shut us all up. My nerves were unstrung for four-and-twenty hours afterwards.”

“And Squire Todhetley came home swearing,” I could not help putting in.

“Ah,” said Mr. Brandon. “Yes; some people can throw bile off in that way. I can’t. But, Johnny, all that goes for nothing, in regard to the matter in hand: and I was about to point out to you that if Major Parrifer has set his mind upon buying Reed’s cottage and the bit of land attached to it, he is no doubt prepared to offer a good price; more, probably, than it is worth. If so, I should not, in your interests, be justified in refusing this.”

I could feel my face flush with the sense of injustice, and the tears come into my eyes. They called me a muff for many things.

“I would not touch the money myself, sir. And if you used it for me, I’m sure it would never bring any good.”

“What’s that, Johnny?”

“Money got by oppression or injustice never does. There was a fellow at school——”

“Never mind the fellow at school. Go on with your own argument.”

“To turn Reed out of the place where he has always lived, out of the garden he has done so well by, just because a rich man wants to get possession of it, would be fearfully unjust, sir. It would be as bad as the story of Naboth’s vineyard, that we heard read in church last Sunday, for the First Lesson. Tod said so as we came along.”

“Who’s Tod?”

“Joseph Todhetley. If you turned Reed out, sir, for the sake of benefiting me, I should be ashamed to look people in the face when they talked of it. If you please, sir, I do not think my father would allow it if he were living. Reed says the place is like his homestead.”

Mr. Brandon measured two tablespoonfuls of medicine into aglass, drank it off, and ate a French plum afterwards. The plums were on a plate, and he handed them to me. I took one, and tried to crack the stone.

“You have taken up a strong opinion on this matter, Master Johnny.”

“Yes, sir. I like Reed. And if I did not, he has no more right to be turned out of his home than Major Parrifer has out of his. How would he like it, if some rich and powerful man came down on his place and turned him out?”

“Major Parrifer can’t be turned out of his, Johnny. It is his own.”

“And Reed’s place is mine, sir—if you won’t be angry with me for saying it. Please don’t let it be done, Mr. Brandon.”

The pony-carriage came rattling up at this juncture, and we saw Tod look at the windows impatiently. I got up, and Mr. Brandon shook hands with me.

“What you have said is all very good, Johnny, right in principle; but I cannot let it quite outweigh your interests. When this proposal shall be put before me—as you say it will be—it must have my full consideration.”

I stopped when I got to the door and turned to look at him. If he would only have given me an assurance! He read in my face what I wanted.

“No, Johnny, I can’t do that. You may go home easy for the present, however; for I will promise not to accept the offer to purchase without first seeing you again and showing you my reasons.”

“I may have gone back to school, sir.”

“I tell you I will see you again if I decide to accept the offer,”he repeated emphatically. And I went out to the pony-chaise.

“Old Brandon means to sell,” said Tod, when I told him. And he gave the pony an angry cut, that made him fly off at a gallop.

Will anybody believe that I never heard another word upon the subject, except what people said in the way of gossip? It was soon known that Mr. Brandon had declined to sell the cottage; and when his lawyer wrote him word that the sum, offered for it, was increased to quite an unprecedented amount, considering the value of the cottage and garden in question, Mr. Brandon only sent a peremptory note back again, saying he was not in the habit of changing his decisions, and the place was not for sale. Tod threw up his hat.

“Bravo, old Brandon! I thought he’d not go quite over to the enemy.”

George Reed wanted to thank me for it. One evening, in passing his cottage on my way home from the Court, I leaned over the gateto speak to his little ones. He saw me and came running out. The rays of the setting sun shone on the children’s white corded bonnets.

“I have to thank you for this, sir. They are going to renew my lease.”

“Are they? All right. But you need not thank me; I know nothing about it.”

George Reed gave a decisive nod. “If you hadn’t got the ear of Mr. Brandon, sir, I know what box I should have been in now. Look at them girls!”

It was not a very complimentary mode of speech, as applied to the Misses Parrifer. Three of them were passing, dressed outrageously in the fashion as usual. I lifted my straw hat, and one of them nodded in return, but the other two only looked out of the tail of their eyes.

“The Major has been trying it on with me now,” remarked Reed, watching them out of sight. “When he found he could not buy the place, he thought he’d try and buy out me. He wanted the bit of land for a kitchen-garden, he said; and would give me a five-pound bank-note to go out of it. Much obliged, Major, I said; but I’d not go for fifty.”

“As if he had not heaps of land himself to make kitchen-gardens of!”

“But don’t you see, Master Johnny, to a man like Major Parrifer, who thinks the world was made for him, there’s nothing so mortifying as being balked. He set his mind upon this place; he can’t get it; and he is just boiling over. He’d poison me if he could. Now then, what’s wanted?”

Cathy had come up, with her pretty dark eyes, whispering some question to her father. I ran on; it was growing late, and the Manor ever-so-far off.

From that time the feud grew between Major Parrifer and George Reed. Not openly; not actively. It could not well be either when their relative positions were so different. Major Parrifer was a wealthy landed proprietor, a county magistrate (and an awfully overbearing one); and George Reed was a poor cottager who worked for his bread as a day-labourer. But that the Major grew to abhor and hate Reed; that the man, inhabiting the place at his very gates in spite of him, and looking at him independently, as if to say he knew it, every time he passed, had become an eyesore to him; was easily seen.

The Major resented it on us all. He was rude to Mr. Brandon when they met; he struck out his whip once when he was on horse-back,and I passed him, as if he would like to strike me. I don’t know whether he was aware of my visit to Mr. Brandon; but the cottage was mine, I was friendly with Reed, and that was enough. Months, however, went on, and nothing came of it.

One Sunday morning in winter, when our church-bells were going for service, Major Parrifer’s carriage turned out with the ladies all in full fig. The Major himself turned out after it, walking, one of his daughters with him, a young man who was on a visit there, and a couple of servants. As they passed George Reed’s, the sound of work being done in the garden at the back of the cottage caught the Major’s quick ears. He turned softly down Piefinch Lane, stole on tiptoe to the high hedge, and stooped to peep through it.

Reed was doing something to his turnips; hoeing them, the Major said. He called the gentleman to him and the two servants, and bade them look through the hedge. Nothing more. Then the party came on to church.

On Tuesday, the Major rode out to take his place on the magisterial bench at Alcester. It was bitterly cold January weather, and only one magistrate besides himself was on it: a clergyman. Two or three petty offenders were brought before them, who were severely sentenced—as prisoners always were when Major Parrifer was presiding. Another magistrate came in afterwards.

Singular to say, Tod and I had gone to the town that day about a new saddle for his horse; singular on account of what happened. In saying we were there I am telling the truth; it is not invented to give colour to the tale. Upon turning out of the saddler’s, which is near the justice-room, old Jones the constable was coming along with a prisoner handcuffed, a tail after him.

“Halloa!” cried Tod. “Here’s fun!”

But I had seen what Tod did not, and rubbed my eyes, wondering if they saw double.

“Tod! It is George Reed!”

Reed’s face was as white as a sheet, and he walked along, not unwillingly, but as one in a state of sad shame, of awful rage. Tod made only one bound to the prisoner; and old Jones knowing us, did not push him back again.

“As I’m a living man, I do not know what this is for, or why I am paraded through the town in disgrace,” spoke Reed, in answer to Tod’s question. “If I’m charged with wrong-doing, I am willing to appear and answer for it, without being turned into a felon in the face and eyes of folks, beforehand.”

“Why do you bring Reed up in this manner—handcuffed?” demanded Tod of the constable.

“Because the Major telled me to, young Mr. Todhetley.”

Be you very sure Tod pushed after them into the justice-room: the police saw him, but he was a magistrate’s son. The crowd would have liked to push in also, but were sent to the right-about. I waited, and was presently admitted surreptitiously. Reed was standing before Major Parrifer and the other two, handcuffed still; and I gathered what the charge was.

It was preferred by Major Parrifer, who had his servants there and a gentleman as witnesses. George Reed had been working in his garden on the previous Sunday morning—which was against the law. Old Jones had gone to Mr. Sterling’s and taken him on the Major’s warrant, as he was thrashing corn.

Reed’s answer was to the following effect.

He was not working. His wife was ill—her little boy being only four days old—and Dr. Duffham ordered her some mutton broth. He went to the garden to get the turnips to put into it. It was only on account of her illness that he didn’t go to church himself, he and Cathy. They might ask Dr. Duffham.

“Do you dare to tell me you were not hoeing turnips?” cried Major Parrifer.

“I dare to say I was not doing it as work,” independently answered the man. “If you looked at me, as you say, Major, through the hedge, you must have seen the bunch of turnips I had got up, lying near. I took the hoe in my hand, and I did use it for two or three minutes. Some dead weeds had got thrown along the bed, by the children, perhaps, and I pulled them away. I went indoors directly: before the clock struck eleven the turnips were on, boiling with the scrag of mutton. I peeled them and put them in myself.”

“I see the bunch of turnips,” cried one of the servants. “They was lying——”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” roared his master; “if your further evidence is wanted, you’ll be asked for it. As to this defence”—and the Major turned to his brother-magistrates with a scornful smile—“it is quite ingenious; one of the clever excuses we usually get here. But it will not serve your turn, George Reed. When the sanctity of the Sabbath is violated——”

“Reed is not a man to say he did not do a thing if he did,”interrupted Tod.

The Major glared at him for an instant, and then put out of hand a big gold pencil he was waving majestically.

“Clear the room of spectators,” said he to the policeman.

Which was all Tod got for interfering. We had to go out: and in a minute or two Reed came out also, handcuffed as before; not in charge of old Jones, but of the county police. He had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment. Major Parrifer had wantedto make it three months; he said something about six; but the other two thought they saw some slightly extenuating circumstances in the case. A solicitor who was intimate with the Sterlings, and knew Reed very well, had been present towards the end.

“Could you not have spoken in my defence, sir?” asked Reed, as he passed this gentleman in coming out.

“I would had I been able. But you see, my man, when the law gets broken——”

“The devil take the law,” said Reed, savagely. “What I want is justice.”

“And the administrators of it are determined to uphold it, what can be said?” went on the solicitor equably, as if there had been no interruption.

“You would make out that I broke the law, just doing what I did; and I swear it was no more? That I can be legally punished for it?”

“Don’t, Reed; it’s of no use. The Major and his witnesses swore you were at work. And it appears that you were.”

“I asked them to take a fine—if I must be punished. I might have found friends to advance it for me.”

“Just so. And for that reason of course they did not take it,”said the candid lawyer.

“What is my wife to do while I am in prison? And the children? I may come out to find them starved. A month’s long enough to starve them in such weather as this.”

Reed was allowed time for no more. He would not have been allowed that, but for having been jammed by the crowd at the doorway. He caught my eye as they were getting clear.

“Master Johnny, will you go to the Court for me—your own place, sir—and tell the master that I swear I am innocent? Perhaps he’ll let a few shillings go to the wife weekly; tell him with my duty that I’ll work it out as soon as I am released. All this is done out of revenge, sir, because Major Parrifer couldn’t get me from my cottage. May the Lord repay him!”

It caused a commotion, I can tell you, this imprisonment of Reed’s; the place was ringing with it between the Court and Dyke Manor. Our two houses seemed to have more to do with it than other people’s; first, because Reed worked at the Court; secondly, because I, who owned both the Court and the cottage, lived at the Manor. People took it up pretty warmly, and Mrs. Reed and the children were cared for. Mr. Sterling paid her five shillings a week; and Mr. Brandon and the Squire helped her on the quiet, and there were others also. In small country localities gentlemen don’t like to say openly that their neighbours are in the wrong: at any rate, they rarely do anything by way of remedy. Somespoke of an appeal to the Home Secretary, but it came to nothing, and no steps were taken to liberate Reed. Bill Whitney, who was staying a week with us, wrote and told his mother about it; she sent back a sovereign for Mrs. Reed; we three took it to her, and went about saying old Parrifer ought to be kicked, which was a relief to our feelings.

But there’s something to tell about Cathy. On the day that Reed was taken up, it was not known at his home immediately. The neighbours, aware that the wife was ill, said nothing to her—for old Duffham thought she was going to have a fever, and ordered her to be kept quiet. For one thing, they did not know what there was to tell; except that Reed had been marched off from his work in handcuffs by Jones the constable. In the evening, when news came of his committal, it was agreed that an excuse should be made to Mrs. Reed that her husband had gone out on a business job for his master; and that Cathy—who could not fail to hear the truth from one or another—should be warned not to say anything.

“Tell Cathy to come out here,” said the woman, looking over the gate. It was the little girl they spoke to; who could talk well: and she answered that Cathy was not there. So Ann Perkins, Mrs. Reed’s sister, was called out.

“Where’s Cathy?” cried they.

Ann Perkins answered in a passion—that she did not know where Cathy was, but would uncommonly like to know, and she only wished she was behind her—keeping her there with her sister when she ought to be at her own home! Then the women told Ann Perkins what they had intended to tell Cathy, and looked out for the latter.

She did not come back. The night passed, and the next day passed, and Cathy was not seen or heard of. The only person who appeared to have met her was Goody Picker. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, Tuesday, and Cathy had her best bonnet on. Mother Picker remarked upon her looking so smart, and asked where she was going to. Cathy answered that her uncle (who lived at Evesham) had sent to say she must go over there at once. “But when she came to the two roads, she turned off quite on the contrairy way to Evesham, and I thought the young woman must be daft,”concluded Mrs. Picker.

The month passed away, and Reed came out; but Cathy had not returned. He got home on foot, in the afternoon, his hair cut close, and seemed as quiet as a lamb. The man had been daunted. It was an awful insult to put upon him; a slur on his good name for life; and some of them said George Reed would never hold up his head again. Had he been cruel or vindictive, he might have revenged himself on Major Parrifer, personally, in a manner the Major would have found it difficult to forget.

The wife was about again, but sickly: the little ones did not at first know their father. One of the first people he asked after was Cathy. The girl was not at hand to welcome him, and he took it in the light of a reproach. When men come for the first time out of jail, they are sensitive.

“Mr. Sterling called in yesterday, George, to say you were to go to your work again as soon as ever you came home,” said the wife, evading the question about Cathy. “Everybody has been so kind; they know you didn’t deserve what you got.”

“Ah,” said Reed, carelessly. “Where’s Cathy?”

Mrs. Reed felt obliged to tell him. No diplomatist, she brought out the news abruptly: Cathy had not been seen or heard of since the afternoon he was sent to prison. That aroused Reed: nothing else seemed to have done it: and he got up from his chair.

“Why, where is she? What’s become of her?”

The neighbours had been indulging in sundry speculations on the same question, which they had obligingly favoured Mrs. Reed with; but she did not think it necessary to impart them to her husband.

“Cathy was a good girl on the whole, George; putting aside that she’d do no work, and spent her time reading good-for-nothing books. What I think is this—that she heard of your misfortune after she left, and wouldn’t come home to face it. She is eighteen now, you know.”

“Come home from where?”

Mrs. Reed had to tell the whole truth. That Cathy, dressed up in her best things, had left home without saying a word to any one, stealing out of the house unseen; she had been met in the road by Mrs. Picker, and told her what has already been said. But the uncle at Evesham had seen nothing of her.

Forgetting his cropped hair—as he would have to forget it until it should grow again—George Reed went tramping off, there and then, the nearly two miles of way to Mother Picker’s. She could not tell him much more than he already knew. “Cathy was all in her best, her curls ’iled, and her pink ribbons as fresh as her cheeks, and said in answer to questions that she had been sent for sudden to her uncle’s at Evesham: but she had turned off quite the contrairy road.” From thence, Reed walked on to his brother’s at Evesham; and learnt that Cathy had not been sent for, and had not come.

When Reed got home, he was dead-beat. How many miles theman had walked that bleak February day, he did not stay to think—perhaps twenty. When excitement buoys up the spirit, the body does not feel fatigue. Mrs. Reed put supper before her husband, and he ate mechanically, lost in thought.

“It fairly ’mazes me,” he said, presently, in local phraseology.“But for going out in her best, I should think some accident had come to her. There’s ponds about, and young girls might slip in unawares. But the putting on her best things shows she was going somewhere.”

“She put ’em on, and went off unseen,” repeated Mrs. Reed, snuffing the candle. “I should have thought she’d maybe gone off to some wake—only there wasn’t one agate within range.”

“Cathy had no bad acquaintance to lead her astray,” he resumed.“The girls about here are decent, and mind their work.”

“Which Cathy didn’t,” thought Mrs. Reed. “Cathy held her head above ’em,” she said, aloud. “It’s my belief she used to fancy herself one o’ them fine ladies in her halfpenny books. She didn’t seem to make acquaintance with nobody but that young Parrifer. She’d talk to him by the hour together, and I couldn’t get her indoors.”

Reed lifted his head. “Young Parrifer!—what—his son?” turning his thumb in the direction of Parrifer Hall. “Cathy talked to him?”

“By the hour together,” reiterated Mrs. Reed. “He’d be on that side the gate, a-talking, and laughing, and leaning on it; and Cathy, she’d be in the path by the tall hollyhocks, talking back to him, and fondling the children.”

Reed rose up, a strange look on his face. “How long was that going on?”

“Ever so long; I can’t just remember. But young Parrifer is only at the Hall by fits and starts.”

“And you never told me, woman!”

“I thought no harm of it. I don’t think harm of it now,” emphatically added Mrs. Reed. “The worst of young Parrifer, that I’ve seen, is that he’s as soft as a tomtit.”

Reed put on his hat without another word, and walked out. Late as it was, he was going to the Hall. He rang a peal at it, more like a lord than a labourer just let out of prison. There was some delay in opening the door: the household had gone upstairs; but a man came at last.

“I want to see Major Parrifer.”

The words were so authoritative; the man’s appearance so strange, with his tall figure and his clipped hair, as he pushed forward into the hall, that the servant momentarily lost his wits. A light, in a room on the left, guided Reed; he entered it, and found himself face to face with Major Parrifer, who was seated in an easy-chair before a good fire, spirits on the table, and a cigar in his mouth. What with the smoke from that, what with the faint light—for all the candles had been put out but one—the Major did not at first distinguish his late visitor’s face. When the bare head and the resolute eyes met his, he certainly paled a little, and the cigar fell on to the carpet.

“I want my daughter, Major Parrifer.”

To hear a demand made for a daughter when the Major had possibly been thinking the demand might be for his life, was undoubtedly a relief. It brought back his courage.

“What do you mean, fellow?” he growled, stamping out the fire of the cigar. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Not quite. You might have driven some men out of theirs, though, by what you’ve done. We’ll let that part be, Major. I have come to-night about my daughter. Where is she?”

They stood looking at each other. Reed stood just inside the door, hat in hand; he did not forget his manners even in the presence of his enemy; they were a habit with him. The Major, who had risen in his surprise, stared at him: he really knew nothing whatever of the matter, not even that the girl was missing; and he did think Reed’s imprisonment must have turned his brain. Perhaps Reed saw that he was not understood.

“I come home from prison, into which you put me, Major Parrifer, to find my daughter Catherine gone. She went away the day I was taken up. Where she went, or what she’s doing, Heaven knows; but you or yours are answerable for it, whichever way it may be.”

“You have been drinking,” said Major Parrifer.

“You have, maybe,” returned Reed, glancing at the spirits on the table. “Either Cathy went out on a harmless jaunt, and is staying away because she can’t face the shame at home which you have put there; or else she went out to meet your son, and has been taken away by him. I think it must be the last; my fears whisper it to me; and, if so, you can’t be off knowing something of it. Major Parrifer, I must have my daughter.”

Whether the hint given about his son alarmed the Major, causing him to forget his bluster for once, and answer civilly, he certainly did it. His son was in Ireland with his regiment, he said; had not been at the Hall for weeks and weeks; he could answer for it that Lieutenant Parrifer knew nothing of the girl.

“He was here at Christmas,” said George Reed. “I saw him.”

“And left two or three days after it. How dare you, fellow, charge him with such a thing? He’d wring your neck for you if he were here.”

“Perhaps I might find cause to wring his first. Major Parrifer, I want my daughter.”

“If you do not get out of my house, I’ll have you brought before me to-morrow for trespassing, and give you a second month’s imprisonment,” roared the Major, gathering bluster and courage.“You want another month of it: this one does not appear to have done you the good it ought. Now—go!”

“I’ll go,” said Reed, who began to see the Major really did not know anything of Cathy—and it had not been very probable that he did. “But I’d like to leave a word behind me. You have succeeded in doing me a great injury, Major Parrifer. You are rich and powerful, I am poor and lowly. You set your mind on my bit of a home, and because you could not drive me from it, you took advantage of your magistrate’s post to sentence me to prison, and so be revenged. It has done me a great deal of harm. What good has it done you?”

Major Parrifer could not speak for rage.

“It will come home to you, sir, mark me if it does not. God has seen my trouble, and my wife’s trouble, and I don’t believe He ever let such a wrong pass unrewarded. It will come home to you, Major Parrifer.”

George Reed went out, quietly shutting the hall-door behind him, and walked home through the thick flakes of snow that had begun to fall.

CHAPTER V.

COMING HOME TO HIM.

The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm spring, and hot weather was upon us early.

One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put him into prison. The month’s imprisonment had altered him; his daughter Cathy’s mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby’s illness. Reed said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep the place quiet.

Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that she was “all right, and he had no call to fret after her.” Whether this was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he used to be.

Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was passing along slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop of grass was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.

Major Parrifer had been suffering from a slight temporary indisposition. He did not consider himself sufficiently recovered to attend service, but neither was he ill enough to lie in bed. With the departure of his family for church, the Major had comestrolling out in the garden in an airy dressing-gown, and there saw his gardener picking peas.

“Halloa, Hotty! This ought to have been done before.”

“Yes, sir, I know it; I’m a little late,” answered Hotty; “I shall have done in two or three minutes. The cook makes a fuss if I pick’em too early; she says they don’t eat so well.”

The peas were for the gratification of the Major’s own palate, so he found no more fault. Hotty went on with his work, and the Major gave a general look round. On a near wall, at right angles with the hedge through which Reed was then peering, some fine apricots were growing, green yet.

“These apricots want thinning, Hotty,” observed the Major.

“I have thinned ’em some, sir.”

“Not enough. Our apricots were not as fine last year as they ought to have been. I said then they had not had sufficient room to grow. Green apricots are always useful; they make the best tart known.”

Major Parrifer walked to the greenhouse, outside which a small basket was hanging, brought it back, and began to pick some of the apricots where they looked too thick. Reed, outside, watched the process—not alone. As luck had it, a man appeared on the field-path, who proved to be Gruff Blossom, the Jacobsons’ groom, coming home to spend Sunday with his friends. Reed made a sign to Blossom to be silent, and caused him to look on also.

With the small basket half full, the Major desisted, thinking possibly he had plucked enough, and turned away carrying it. Hotty came out from the peas, his task finished. They strolled slowly down the path by the hedge; the Major first, Hotty a step behind, talking about late and early peas, and whether Prussian blues or marrowfats were the best eating.

“Do you see those weeds in the onion-bed?” suddenly asked the Major, stopping as they were passing it.

Hotty turned his head to look. A few weeds certainly had sprung up. He’d attend to it on the morrow, he told his master; and then said something about the work accumulating almost beyond him, since the under-gardener had been at home ill.

“Pick them out now,” said the Major; “there’s not a dozen of them.”

Hotty stooped to do as he was bid. The Major made no more ado but stooped also, uprooting quite half the weeds himself. Not much more, in all, than the dozen he had spoken of: and then they went on with their baskets to the house.

Never had George Reed experienced so much gratification since the day he came out of prison. “Did you see the Major at it?—thinning his apricots and pulling up his weeds?” he asked of Gruff Blossom. And Blossom’s reply, gruff as usual, was to ask what might be supposed to ail his eyes that he shouldn’t see it.

“Very good,” said Reed.

One evening in the following week, when we were sitting out on the lawn, the Squire smoking, Mrs. Todhetley nursing her face in her hand, with toothache as usual, Tod teasing Hugh and Lena, and I up in the beech-tree, a horseman rode in. It proved to be Mr. Jacobson. Giles took his horse, and he came and sat down on the bench. The Squire asked him what he’d take, and being thirsty, he chose cider. Which Thomas brought.

“Here’s a go,” began Mr. Jacobson. “Have you heard what’s up?”

“I’ve not heard anything,” answered the Squire.

“Major Parrifer has a summons served on him for working in his garden on a Sunday, and is to appear before the magistrates at Alcester to-morrow,” continued old Jacobson, drinking off a glass of cider at a draught.

“No!” cried Squire Todhetley.

“It’s a fact. Blossom, our groom, has also a summons served on him to give evidence.”

Mrs. Todhetley lifted her face; Tod left Hugh and Lena to themselves: I slid down from the beech-tree; and we listened for more.

But Mr. Jacobson could not give particulars, or say much more than he had already said. All he knew was, that on Monday morning George Reed had appeared before the magistrates and made a complaint. At first they were unwilling to grant a summons; laughed at it; but Reed, in a burst of reproach, civilly delivered, asked why there should be a law for the poor and not for the rich, and in what lay the difference between himself and Major Parrifer; that the one should be called to account and punished for doing wrong, and the other was not even to be accused when he had done it.

“Brandon happened to be on the bench,” continued Jacobson.“He appeared struck with the argument, and signed the summons.”

The Squire nodded.

“My belief is,” continued old Jacobson, with a wink over the rim of the cider glass, “that granting that summons was as good as a play to Brandon and the rest. I’d as lieve, though, that they’d not brought Blossom into it.”

“Why?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, who had been grieved at the time at the injustice done to Reed.

“Well, Parrifer is a disagreeable man to offend. And he is sure to visit Blossom’s part in this on me.”

“Let him,” said Tod, with enthusiasm. “Well done, George Reed!”

Be you very sure we went over to the fight. Squire Todhetley did not appear: at which Tod exploded a little: he only wished hewas a magistrate, wouldn’t he take his place and judge the Major! But the Pater said that when people had lived to his age, they liked to be at peace with their neighbours—not but what he hoped Parrifer would “get it,” for having been so cruelly hard upon Reed.

Major Parrifer came driving to the Court-house in his high carriage with a great bluster, his iron-grey hair standing up, and two grooms attending him. Only the magistrates who had granted the summons sat. The news had gone about like wild-fire, and several of them were in and about the town, but did not take their places. I don’t believe there was one would have lifted his finger to save the Major from a month’s imprisonment; but they did not care to sentence him to it.

It was a regular battle. Major Parrifer was in an awful passion the whole time; asking, when he came in, how they dared summon him. Him! Mr. Brandon, cool as a cucumber, answered in his squeaky voice, that when a complaint of breaking the law was preferred before them and sworn to by witnesses, they could only act upon it.

First of all, the Major denied the facts. He work in his garden on a Sunday!—the very supposition was preposterous! Upon which George Reed, who was in his best clothes, and looked every bit as good as the Major, and far pleasanter, testified to what he had seen.

Major Parrifer, dancing with temper when he found he had been looked at through the hedge, and that it was Reed who had looked, gave the lie direct. He called his gardener, Richard Hotty, ordering him to testify whether he, the Major, ever worked in his garden, either on Sundays or week-days.

“Hotty was working himself, gentlemen,” interposed George Reed. “He was picking peas; and he helped to weed the onion-bed. But it was done by his master’s orders, so it would be unjust to punish him.”

The Major turned on Reed as if he would strike him, and demanded of the magistrates why they permitted the fellow to interrupt. They ordered Reed to be quiet, and told Hotty to proceed.

But Hotty was one of those slow men to whom anything like evasion is difficult. His master had thinned the apricot tree that Sunday morning; he had helped to weed the onion-bed; Hotty, conscious of the fact, but not liking to admit it, stammered and stuttered, and made a poor figure of himself. Mr. Brandon thought he would help him out.

“Did you see your master pick the apricots?”

“I see him pick—just a few; green ’uns,” answered Hotty, shuffling from one leg to the other in his perplexity. “’Twarn’t to be called work, sir.”

“Oh! And did he help you to weed the onion-bed?”

“There warn’t a dozen weeds in it in all, as the Major said to me at the time,” returned Hotty. “He see ’em, and stooped down on the spur o’ the moment, and me too. We had ’em up in a twinkling.’Twarn’t work, sir; couldn’t be called it nohow. The Major, he never do work at no time.”

Blossom had not arrived, and it was hard to tell how the thing would terminate: the Major had this witness, Hotty, such as he was, protesting that nothing to be called work was done. Reed had no witness, as yet.

“Old Jacobson is keeping Blossom back, Johnny,” whispered Tod. “It’s a sin and a shame.”

“No, he is not,” I said. “Look there!”

Blossom was coming in. He had walked over, and not hurried himself. Major Parrifer plunged daggers into him, if looks could do it, but it made no difference to Blossom.

He gave his evidence in his usual surly manner. It was clear and straightforward. Major Parrifer had thinned the apricot tree for its own benefit; and had weeded the onion-bed, Hotty helping at the weeds by order.

“What brought you spying at the place, James Blossom?”demanded a lawyer on the Major’s behalf.

“Accident,” was the short answer.

“Indeed! You didn’t go there on purpose, I suppose?—and skulk under the hedge on purpose?—and peer into the Major’s garden on purpose?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Blossom. “The field is open to every one, and I was crossing it on my way to old father’s. George Reed made me a sign afore I came up to him, to look in, as he was doing; and I did so, not knowing what there might be to see. It would be nothing to me if the Major worked in his garden of a Sunday from sunrise to sunset; he’s welcome to do it; but if you summon me here and ask me, did I see him working, I say yes, I did. Why d’you send me a summons if you don’t want me to tell the truth? Let me be, and I’d ha’ said nothing to mortal man.”

Evidently nothing favourable to the defence could be got out of James Blossom. Mr. Brandon began saying to the Major that hefeared there was no help for it; they should be obliged to convict him: and he was met by a storm of reproach.

Convict him! roared the Major. For having picked two or three green apricots—and for stooping to pull up a couple or so of worthless weeds? He would be glad to ask which of them, his brother-magistrates sitting there, would not pick an apricot, or a peach, or what not, on a Sunday, if he wanted to eat one. The thing was utterly preposterous.

“And what was it I did?” demanded George Reed, drowning voices that would have stopped him. “I went to the garden to get up a bunch of turnips for my sick wife, and seeing some withered weeds flung on the bed I drew them off with the hoe. What was that, I ask? And it was no more. No more, gentlemen, in the sight of Heaven.”

No particular answer was given to this; perhaps the justices had none ready. Mr. Brandon was beginning to confer with the other two in an undertone, when Reed spoke again.

“I was dragged up here in handcuffs, and told I had broken the law; Major Parrifer said to me himself that I had violated the sanctity of the Sabbath (those were the words), and therefore I must be punished; there was no help for it. What has he done? I did not do as much as he has.”

“Now you know, Reed, this is irregular,” said one of the justices.“You must not interrupt the Court.”

“You put me in prison for a month, gentlemen,” resumed Reed, paying no attention to the injunction. “They cut my hair close in the prison, and they kept me to hard labour for the month, as if I did not have enough of hard labour out of it. My wife was sick and disabled at the time, my three little children are helpless: it was no thanks to the magistrates who sentenced me, gentlemen, or to Major Parrifer, that they did not starve.”

“Will you be quiet, Reed?”

“If I deserved one month of prison,” persisted Reed, fully bent on saying what he had to say, “Major Parrifer must deserve two months, for his offence is greater than mine. The law is the same for both of us, I suppose. He——”

“Reed, if you say another word, I will order you at once from the room,” interrupted Mr. Brandon, his thin voice sharp and determined.“How dare you persist in addressing the Bench when told to be quiet!”

Reed fell back and said no more. He knew that Mr. Brandon had a habit of carrying out his own authority, in spite of his nervous health and querulous way of speaking. The justices spoke a few words together, and then said they found the offence proved, and inflicted a fine on Major Parrifer.

He dashed the money down on the table, in too great a rage to do it politely, and went out to his carriage. No other case was on, that day, and the justices got up and mixed with the crowd. Mr. Brandon, who felt chilly on the hottest summer’s day, and was afraid of showers, buttoned on a light overcoat.

“Then there are two laws, sir?” said Reed to him, quite civilly, but in a voice that every one might hear. “When the law was made against Sabbath-breaking, those that made it passed one for the rich and another for the poor!”

“Nonsense, Reed.”

“Nonsense, sir? I don’t see it. I was put in prison; Major Parrifer has only to pay a bit of money, which is of no more account to him than dirt, and that he can’t feel the loss of. And my offence—if it was an offence—was less than his.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Mr. Brandon, dropping his voice to a low key. “You ought not to have been put in prison, Reed; had I been on the bench it should not have been done.”

“But it was done, sir, and my life got a blight on it. It’s on me yet; will never be lifted off me.”

Mr. Brandon smiled one of his quiet smiles, and spoke in a whisper. “He has got it too, Reed, unless I am mistaken. He’ll carry that fine about with him always. Johnny, are you there? Don’t go and repeat what you’ve heard me say.”

Mr. Brandon was right. To have been summoned before the Bench, where he had pompously sat to summon others, and for working on a Sunday above all things, to have been found guilty and fined, was as the most bitter potion to Major Parrifer. The bench would never again be to him the seat it had been; the remembrance of the day when he was before it would, as Mr. Brandon expressed it, be carried about with him always.

They projected a visit to the sea-side at once. Mrs. Parrifer, with three of the Miss Parrifers, came dashing up to people’s houses in the carriage, finer and louder than ever; she said that she had not been well, and was ordered to Aberystwith for six weeks. The next day they and the Major were off; and heaps of cards were sent round with “P. P. C.” in the corner. I think Mr. Brandon must have laughed when he got his.

The winter holidays came round again. We went home for Christmas, as usual, and found George Reed down with some sort of illness. There’s an old saying, “When the mind’s at ease the body’s delicate,” but Mr. Duffham always maintained that though that might apply to a short period of time, in the long-run mind and body sympathized together. George Reed had been a veryhealthy man, and as free from care as most people; this last year care and trouble and mortification had lain on his mind, and at the beginning of winter his health broke down. It was quite a triumph (in the matter of opinion) for old Duffham.

The illness began with a cough and low fever, neither of which can labourers afford time to lie up for. It went on to more fever, and to inflammation of the lungs. There was no choice then, and Reed took to his bed. For the most part, when our poor people fell ill, they had to get well again without notice being taken of them; but events had drawn attention to Reed, and made him a conspicuous character. His illness was talked of, and so he received help. Ever since the prison affair I had felt sorry for Reed, as had Mrs. Todhetley.

“I have had some nice strong broth made for Reed, Johnny,”she said to me one day in January; “it’s as good and nourishing as beef-tea. If you want a walk, you might take it to him.”

Tod had gone out with the Squire; I felt dull, as I generally did without him, and put on my hat and coat. Mrs. Todhetley had the broth put into a bottle, and brought it to me wrapped in paper.

“I would send him a drop of wine as well, Johnny, if you’d take care not to break the bottles, carrying two of them.”

No fear. I put the one bottle in my breast-pocket, and took the other in my hand. It was a cold afternoon, the sky of a steely-blue, the sun bright, the ground hard. Major Parrifer and two of his daughters, coming home from a ride, were cantering in at the gates as I passed, the groom riding after them. I lifted my hat to the girls, but they only tossed their heads.

Reed was getting over the worst then, and I found him sitting by the kitchen fire, muffled in a bed-rug. Mrs. Reed took the bottles from me in the back’us—as they called the place where the washing was done—for Reed was sensitive, and did not like things to be sent to him.

“Please God, I shall be at work next week,” said Reed, with a groan: and I saw he knew that I had brought something.

He had been saying that all along; four or five weeks now. I sat down opposite to him, and took up the boy, Georgy. The little shaver had come round to me, holding by the chairs.

“It’s going to be a hard frost, Reed.”

“Is it, sir? Out-o’-door weather don’t seem to be of much odds to me now.”

“And a fall o’ some sort’s not far off, as my wrist tells me,”put in Mrs. Reed. Years ago she had broken her wrist, and felt it always in change of weather. “Maybe some snow’s coming.”

I gave Georgy a biscuit; the two little girls, who had been standing against the press, began to come slowly forward. Theyguessed there was a supply in my pocket. I had dipped into the biscuit-basket at home before coming away. The two put out a hand each without being told, and I dropped a biscuit into them.

It had taken neither time nor noise, and yet there was some one standing inside the door when I looked up again, who must have come in stealthily; some one in a dark dress, and a black and white plaid shawl. Mrs. Reed looked and the children looked; and then Reed turned his head to look also.

I think I was the first to know her. She had a thick black veil before her face, and the room was not light. Reed’s illness had left him thin, and his eyes appeared very large: they assumed a sort of frightened stare.

“Father! you are sick!”

Before he could answer, she had run across the brick floor and thrown her arms round his neck. Cathy! The two girls were frightened and flew to their mother; one began to scream and the other followed suit. Altogether there was a good deal of noise and commotion. Georgy, like a brave little man, sucked his biscuit through it all with great composure.

What Reed said or did, I had not noticed; I think he tried to fling Cathy from him—to avoid suffocation perhaps. She burst out laughing in her old light manner, and took something out of the body of her gown, under the shawl.

“No need, father: I am as honest as anybody,” said she. “Look at this.”

Reed’s hand shook so that he could not open the paper, or understand it at first when he had opened it. Cathy flung off her bonnet and caught the children to her. They began to know her then and ceased their cries. Presently Reed held the paper across to me, his hand trembling more than before, and his face, that illness had left white enough, yet more ghastly with emotion.

“Please read it, sir.”

I did not understand it at first either, but the sense came to me soon. It was a certificate of the marriage of Spencer Gervoise Daubeney Parrifer and Catherine Reed. They had been married at Liverpool the very day after Cathy disappeared from home; now just a year ago.

A sound of sobbing broke the stillness. Reed had fallen back in his chair in a sort of hysterical fit. Defiant, hard, strong-minded Reed! But the man was three parts dead from weakness. It lasted only a minute or two; he roused himself as if ashamed, and swallowed down his sobs.

“How came he to marry you, Cathy?”

“Because I would not go away with him without it father. We have been staying in Ireland.”

“And be you repenting of it yet?” asked Mrs. Reed, in ungracious tones.

“Pretty near,” answered Cathy, with candour.

It appeared that Cathy had made her way direct to Liverpool when she left home the previous January, travelling all night. There she met young Parrifer, who had preceded her and made arrangements for the marriage. They were married that day, and afterwards went on to Ireland, where he had to join his regiment.

To hear all this, sounding like a page out of a romance, would be something wonderful for our quiet place when it came to be told. You meet with marvellous stories in towns now and then, but with us they are almost unknown.

“Where’s your husband?” asked Reed.

Cathy tossed her head. “Ah! Where! That’s what I’ve come home about,” she answered: and it struck me at once that something was wrong.

What occurred next we only learnt from hearsay. I said good day to them, and came away, thinking it might have been better if Cathy had not married and left home. It was a fancy of mine, and I don’t know why it should have come to me, but it proved to be a right one. Cathy put on her bonnet again to go to Parrifer Hall: and the particulars of her visit were known abroad later.

It was growing rather dark when she approached it; the sun had set, the grey of evening was drawing on. Two of the Misses Parrifer were at the window and saw her coming, but Cathy had her veil down and they did not recognize her. The actions and manners and air of a lady do not come suddenly to one who has been differently bred; and the Misses Parrifer supposed the visitor to be for the servants.

“Like her impudence!” said Miss Jemima. “Coming to the front entrance!”

For Cathy, whose year’s experience in Ireland had widely changed her, had no notion of taking up her old position. She meant to hold her own; and was capable of doing it, not being deficient in the quality just ascribed to her by Miss Jemima Parrifer.

“What next!” cried Miss Jemima, as a ring and a knock resounded through the house, waking up the Major: who had been dozing over the fire amongst his daughters.

The next was, that a servant came to the room and told the Major a lady wanted him. She had been shown into the library.

“What name?” asked the Major.

“She didn’t give none, sir. I asked, but she said never mind the name.”

“Go and ask it again.”

The man went and came back. “It is Mrs. Parrifer, sir.”

“Mrs. who?”

“Mrs. Parrifer, sir.”

The Major turned and stared at his servant. They had no relatives whatever. Consequently the only Mrs. Parrifer within knowledge was his wife.

Staring at the man would not bring him any elucidation. Major Parrifer went to the library, and there saw the lady standing on one side of the fender, holding her foot to the fire. She had her back to him, did not turn, and so the Major went round to the other side of the hearth-rug where he could see her.

“My servant told me a Mrs. Parrifer wanted me. Did he make a mistake in the name?”

“No mistake at all, sir,” said Cathy, throwing up her thick veil, and drawing a step or two back. “I am Mrs. Parrifer.”

The Major recognized her then. Cathy Reed! He was a man whose bluster rarely failed him, but he had none ready at that moment. Three-parts astounded, various perplexities held him tongue-tied.

“That is to say, Mrs. Spencer Parrifer,” continued Cathy. “And I have come over from Ireland on a mission to you, sir, from your son.”

The Major thought that of all the audacious women it had ever been his lot to meet, this one was the worst: at least as much as he could think anything, for his wits were a little confused just then. A moment’s pause, and then the storm burst forth.

Cathy was called various agreeable names, and ordered out of the room and the house. The Major put up his hands to “hurrish”her out—as we say in Worcestershire by the cows, though I don’t think you would find the word in the dictionary. But Cathy stood her ground. He then went ranting towards the door, calling for the servants to come and put her forth. Cathy, quicker than he, gained it first and turned to face him, her back against it.

“You needn’t call me those names, Major Parrifer. Not that I care—as I might if I deserved them. I am your son’s wife, and have been such ever since I left father’s cottage last year; and my baby, your grandson, sir, which it’s seven weeks old he is, is now at the Red Lion, a mile off. I’ve left it there with the landlady.”

He could not put her out of the room unless by force; he looked ready to kick and strike her; but in the midst of it a horrible dread rose up in his heart that the calmly spoken words were true. Perhaps from the hour when Reed had presented himself at the house to ask for his daughter, the evening of the day he was discharged from prison, up to this time, Major Parrifer had never thought of the girl. It had been said in his ears now and again that Reed was grieving for his daughter; but the matter was altogether toocontemptible for Major Parrifer to take note of. And now to hear that the girl had been with his son all the time, his wife! But that utter disbelief came to his aid, the Major might have fallen into a fit on the spot. For young Mr. Parrifer had cleverly contrived that neither his father away at home nor his friends on the spot should know anything about Cathy. He had been with his regiment in quarters; she had lived privately in another part of the town. Mrs. Reed had once called Lieutenant Parrifer as soft as a tomtit. He was a great deal softer.

“Woman! if you do not quit my house, with your shameless lies, you shall be flung out of it.”

“I’ll quit it as soon as I have told you what I came over the sea to tell. Please to look at this first, sir?”

Major Parrifer snatched the paper that she held out, carried it to the window, and put his glasses across his nose. It was a copy of the certificate of marriage. His hands shook as he read it, just as Reed’s had shaken a short time before; and he tore it passionately in two.

“It is only the copy,” said Cathy calmly, as she picked up the pieces. “Your son—if he lives—is about to be tried for his life, sir. He is in custody for wilful murder!”

“How dare you!” shrieked Major Parrifer.

“It is what they have charged him with. I have come all the way to tell it you, sir.”

Major Parrifer, brought to his senses by fright, could only listen. Cathy, her back against the door still, gave him the heads of the story.

Young Parrifer was so soft that he had been made a butt of by sundry of his brother-officers. They might not have tolerated him at all, but for winning his money. He drank, and played cards, and bet upon horses; they encouraged him to drink, and then made him play and bet, and altogether cleared him out: not of brains, he had none to be cleared of: but of money. Ruin stared him in the face: his available cash had been parted with long ago; his commission (it was said) was mortgaged: how many promissory notes, bills, I O U’s he had signed could not even be guessed at. In a quarrel a few nights before, after a public-house supper, when some of them were the worse for drink, young Parrifer, who could on rare occasions go into frightful passions, flung a carving-knife at one of the others, a lieutenant named Cook; it struck a vital part and killed him. Mr. Parrifer was arrested by the police at once; he was in plain clothes and there was nothing to show that he was an officer. They had to strap him down to carry him to prison: between drink, rage, and fever, he was as a maniac. The next morning he was lying in brain fever, and when Cathy left he had been put into a strait-waistcoat.

She gave the heads of this account in as few words as it is written. Major Parrifer stood like a helpless man. Taking one thing with another, the blow was horrible. Parents don’t often see the defects in their own children, especially if they are only sons. Far from having thought his son soft, unfit (as he nearly was) to be trusted about, the Major had been proud of him as his heir, and told the world he was perfection. Soft as young Parrifer was, he had contrived to keep his ill-doings from his father.

Of course it was only natural that the Major’s first relief should be abuse of Cathy. He told her all that had happened to his sonshe was the cause of, and called her a few more genteel names in doing it.

“Not at all,” said Cathy; “you are wrong there, sir. His marriage with me was a little bit of a stop-gap and served to keep him straight for a month or two; but for that, he would have done for himself before now. Do you think I’ve had a bargain in him, sir? No. Marriage is a thing that can’t be undone, Major Parrifer: but I wish to my heart that I was at home again in father’s cottage, light-hearted Cathy Reed.”

The Major made no answer. Cathy went on.

“When the news was brought to me by his servant, that he had killed a man and was lying raving, I thought it time to go and see about him. They would not let me into the lock-up where he was lying—and you might have heard his ravings outside. I did. I said I was his wife; and then they told me I had better see Captain Williams. I went to head-quarters and saw Captain Williams. He seemed to doubt me; so I showed him the certificate, and told him my baby was at home, turned six weeks old. He was very kind then, sir; took me to see my husband; and advised me to come over here at once and give you the particulars. I told him what was the truth—that I had no money, and the lodgings were owing for. He said the lodgings must wait: and he would lend me enough money for the journey.”

“Did you see him?” growled Major Parrifer.

Cathy knew that he alluded to his son, though he would not speak the name.

“I saw him, sir; I told you so. He did not know me or anybody else; he was raving mad, and shaking so that the bed shook under him.”

“How is it that they have not written to me?” demanded Major Parrifer.

“I don’t think anybody liked to do it. Captain Williams said the best plan would be for me to come over. He asked me if I’d like to hear the truth of the past as regarded my husband; or if I would just come here and tell you the bare facts that were knownabout his illness and the charge against him. I said I’d prefer to hear the truth—it couldn’t be worse than I suspected. Then he went on to the drinking and the gambling and the debts, just as I have repeated it to you, sir. He was very gentle; but he said he thought it would be mistaken kindness not to let me fully understand the state of things. He said Mr. Parrifer’s father, or some other friend, had better go over to Ireland.”

In spite of himself, a groan escaped Major Parrifer. The blow was the worst that could have fallen upon him. He had not cared much for his daughters; his ambition was centred in his son. Visions of a sojourn at Dublin, and of figuring off at the Vice-Regal Court, himself, his wife, and his son, had floated occasionally in rose-coloured clouds before his eyes, poor pompous old simpleton. And now—to picture the visit he must set out upon ere the night was over, nearly drove him wild with pain. Cathy unlatched the door, but waited to speak again before she opened it.

“I’ll rid the house of me now that I have broke it to you, sir. If you want me I shall be found at father’s cottage; I suppose they’ll let me stay there: if not, you can hear of me at the place where I’ve left my baby. And if your son should ever wake out of his delirium, Major Parrifer, he will be able to tell you that if he had listened to me and heeded me, or even only come to spend his evenings with me—which it’s months since he did—he would not have been in this plight now. Should they try him for murder; and nothing can save him from it if he gets well; I——”

A succession of screams cut short what Cathy was about to add. In her surprise she drew wide the door, and was confronted by Miss Jemima Parrifer. That young lady, curious upon the subject of the visit and visitor, had thought it well to put her ear to the library door. With no effect, however, until Cathy unlatched it. And then she heard more than she had thought for.

“Is it you!” roughly cried Miss Jemima, recognizing her for the ill-talked-of Cathy Reed, the daughter of the Major’s enemy.“What do you want here?”

Cathy did not answer. She walked to the hall-door and let herself out. Miss Jemima went on into the library.

“Papa, what was it she was saying about Spencer, that vile girl? What did she do here? Why did she send in her name as Mrs. Parrifer?”

The Major might have heard the questions, or he might not; he didn’t respond to them. Miss Jemima, looking closely at him in the darkness of the room, saw a grey, worn, terror-stricken face, that looked as her father’s had never looked yet.

“Oh, papa! what is the matter? Are you ill?”

He walked towards her in the quietest manner possible, took herarm and pushed her out at the door. Not rudely; softly, as one might do who is in a dream.

“Presently, presently,” he muttered in quite an altered voice, low and timid. And Miss Jemima found the door bolted against her.

It must have been an awful moment with him. Look on what side he would, there was no comfort. Spencer Parrifer was ruined past redemption. He might die in this illness, and then, what of his soul? Not that the Major was given to that kind of reflection. Escaping the illness, he must be tried—for his life, as Cathy had phrased it. And escaping that, if the miracle were possible, there remained the miserable debts and the miserable wife he had clogged himself with.

Curiously enough, as the miserable Major, most miserable in that moment, pictured these things, there suddenly rose up before his mind’s eye another picture. A remembrance of Reed, who had stood in that very room less than twelve months ago, in the dim light of late night, with his hair cut close, and his warning: “It will come home to you, Major Parrifer.” Had it come home to him? Home to him already? The drops of agony broke out on his face as he asked the question. It seemed to him, in that moment of excitement, so very like some of Heaven’s own lightning.

One grievous portion of the many ills had perhaps not fallen, but for putting Reed in prison—the marriage; and that one was more humiliating to Major Parrifer’s spirit than all the rest. Had Reed been at liberty, Cathy might not have made her escape untracked, and the bitter marriage might, in that case, have been avoided.

A groan, and now another, broke from the Major. How it had come home to him! not his selfishness and his barbarity and his pride, but this sorrowful blow. Reed’s month in prison, compared with this, was as a drop of water to the ocean. As to the girl—when Reed had come asking for tidings of her, it had seemed to the Major not of the least moment whither she had gone or what ill she had entered on: was she not a common labourer’s daughter, and that labourer George Reed? Even then, at that very time, she was his daughter-in-law, and his son the one to be humiliated. Major Parrifer ground his teeth, and only stopped when he remembered that something must be done about that disgraceful son.

He started that night for Ireland. Cathy, affronted at some remark made by Mrs. Reed, took herself off from her father’s cottage. She had a little money still left from her journey, and could spend it.

Spencer Gervoise Daubeney Parrifer (the Major and his wife had bestowed the fine names upon him in pride at his baptism) died in prison. He lived only a day after Major Parrifer’s arrival, and never recognized him. Of course it saved the trial, when he would probably have been convicted of manslaughter. It saved the payment of his hundreds of debts too; post-obits and all; he died before his father. But it could not save exposure; it could not keep the facts from the world. Major and Mrs. Parrifer, so to say, would never lift up their heads again; the sun of their life had set.

Neither would Cathy lift hers yet awhile. She contrived to quarrel with her father; the Parrifers never took the remotest notice of her; she was nearly starved and her baby too. What little she earned was by hard work: but it would not keep her, and she applied to the parish. The parish in turn applied to Major Parrifer, and forced from him as much as the law allowed, a few shillings a week. Having to apply to the parish was, for Cathy, a humiliation never to be forgotten. The neighbours made their comments.

“Cathy Reed had brought her pigs to a fine market!”

So she had; and she felt it more than the loss of her baby, who died soon after. Better that she had married an honest day-labourer: and Cathy knew it now.

CHAPTER VI.

LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.

It happened when we were staying at our other house, Crabb Cot. In saying “we” were staying at it, I mean the family, for Tod and I were at school.

Crabb Cot lay beyond the village of Crabb. Just across the road, a few yards higher up, was the large farm of Mr. Coney; and his house and ours were the only two that stood there. Crabb Cot was a smaller and more cosy house than Dyke Manor; and, when there, we were not so very far from Worcester: less than half-way, comparing it with the Manor.

Crabb was a large and straggling parish. North Crabb, which was nearest to us, had the church and schools in it, but very few houses. South Crabb, further off, was more populous. Nearly a mile beyond South Crabb, there was a regular junction of rails. Lines, crossing each other in a most bewildering manner, led off in all directions: and it required no little manœuvring to send the trains away right at busy times. Which of course was the pointsman’s affair.

The busiest days had place in summer, when excursion trains were in full swing: but they would come occasionally at other times, driving the South Crabb station people off their heads with bother before night.

The pointsman was Harry Lease. I dare say you have noticed how certain names seem to belong to certain places. At North Crabb and South Crabb, and in the district round about, the name of Lease was as common as blackberries in a hedge; and if the different Leases had been cousins in the days gone by, the relationship was lost now. There might be seven-and-twenty Leases, in and out, but Harry Lease was not, so far as he knew, akin to any of them.

South Crabb was not much of a place at best. A part of it, Crabb Lane, branching off towards Massock’s brickfields, was crowded as a London street. Poor dwellings were huddled together, and children jostled each other on the door-steps. Squire Todhetley said he remembered it when it really was a lane, hedgeson either side and a pond that was never dry. Harry Lease lived in the last house, a thatched hut with three rooms in it. He was a steady, civil, hard-working man, superior to some of his neighbours, who were given to reeling home at night and beating their wives on arrival. His wife, a nice sort of woman to talk to, was a bad manager; but the five children were better behaved and better kept than the other grubbers in the gutter.

Lease was the pointsman at South Crabb Junction, and helped also in the general business there. He walked to his work at six in the morning, carrying his breakfast with him; went home to dinner at twelve, the leisure part of the day at the station, and had his tea taken to him at four; leaving in general at nine. Sometimes his wife arrived with the tea; sometimes the eldest child, Polly, an intelligent girl of six. But, one afternoon in September, a crew of mischievous boys from the brickfields espied what Polly was carrying. They set upon her, turned over the can of tea in fighting for it, ate the bread-and-butter, tore her pinafore in the skirmish, and frightened her nearly to death. After that, Lease said that the child should not be sent with the tea: so, when his wife could not take it, he went without tea. Polly and her father were uncommonly alike, too quiet to battle much with the world: sensitive, in fact: though it sounds odd to say that.

During the month of November one of the busy days occurred at South Crabb Junction. There was a winter meeting on Worcester race-course, a cattle and pig show in a town larger than Worcester, and two or three markets and other causes of increased traffic, all falling on the same day. What with cattle-trains, ordinary and special trains, and goods-trains, and the grunting of obstinate pigs, Lease had plenty to do to keep his points in order.

How it fell out he never knew. Between eight and nine o’clock, when a train was expected in on its way to Worcester, Lease forgot to shift the points. A goods-train had come in ten minutes before, for which he had had to turn the points, and he never turned them back again. On came the train, almost as quickly as though it had not to pull up at South Crabb Junction. Watson, the station-master, came out to be in readiness.

“The engine has her steam on to-night,” he remarked to Lease as he watched the red lights, like two great eyes, come tearing on.“She’ll have to back.”

She did something worse than back. Instead of slackening on the near lines, she went flying off at a tangent to some outer ones on which the goods-train stood, waiting until the passenger train should pass. There was a short, sharp sound from the whistle, a great collision, a noise of steam hissing, a sense of dire confusion:and for one minute afterwards a dead lull, as if every one and everything were paralyzed.

“You never turned the points!” shouted the station-master to Lease.

Lease made no rejoinder. He backed against the wall like a man helpless, his arms stretched out, his face and eyes wild with horror. Watson thought he was going to have a fit, and shook him roughly.

“You’ve done it nicely, you have!” he added, as he flew off to the scene of disaster, from which the steam was beginning to clear away. But Lease reached it before him.

“God forgive me! God have mercy upon me!”

A porter, running side by side with Lease, heard him say it. In telling it afterwards the man described the tone as one of intense, piteous agony.

The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, who had been a few miles off to spend the day, were in the train with Lena. The child did nothing but cry and sob; not with damage, but fright. Mr. Coney also happened to be in it; and Massock, who owned the brickfields. They were not hurt at all, only a little shaken, and (as the Squire put it afterwards,) mortally scared. Massock, an under-bred man, who had grown rich by his brickfields, was more pompous than a lord. The three seized upon the station-master.

“Now then, Watson,” cried Mr. Coney, “what was the cause of all this?”

“If there have been any negligence here—and I know there have—you shall be transported for it, Watson, as sure as I’m a living man,” roared Massock.

“I’m afraid, gentlemen, that something was wrong with the points,” acknowledged Watson, willing to shift the blame from himself, and too confused to consider policy. “At least that’s all I can think.”

“With the points!” cried Massock. “Them’s Harry Lease’s work. Was he on to-night?”

“Lease is here as usual, Mr. Massock. I don’t say this lies at his door,” added Watson, hastily. “The points might have been out of order; or something else wrong totally different. I should like to know, for my part, what possessed Roberts to bring up his train at such speed.”

Darting in and out of the heap of confusion like a mad spirit; now trying by his own effort to lift the broken parts of carriages off some sufferer, now carrying a poor fellow away to safety, but always in the thick of danger went Harry Lease. Braving the heat and steam as though he felt them not, he flew everywhere, himself and his lantern alike trembling with agitation.

“Come and look here, Harry; I’m afraid he’s dead,” said a porter, throwing his light upon a man’s face. The words arrested Mr. Todhetley, who was searching for Lease to let off a little of his anger. It was Roberts, the driver of the passenger-train, who lay there, his face white and still. Somehow the sight made the Squire still, too. Raising Roberts’s head, the men put a drop of brandy between his lips, and he moved. Lease broke into a low glad cry.

“He is not dead! he is not dead!”

The angry reproaches died away on the Squire’s tongue: it did not seem quite the time to speak them. By-and-by he came upon Lease again. The man had halted to lean against some palings, feeling unaccountably strange, much as though the world around were closing to him.

“Had you been drinking to-night, Lease?”

The question was put quietly: which was, so to say, a feather in the hot Squire’s cap. Lease only shook his head by way of answer. He had a pale, gentle kind of face, with brown eyes that always wore a sad expression. He never drank, and the Squire knew it.

“Then how came you to neglect the points, Lease, and cause this awful accident?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered Lease, rousing out of his lethargy, but speaking as one in a dream. “I can’t think but what I turned them as usual.”

“You knew the train was coming? It was the ordinary train.”

“I knew it was coming,” assented Lease. “I watched it come along, standing by the side of Mr. Watson. If I had not set the points right, why, I should have thought surely of them then; it stands to reason I should. But never such a thought came into my mind, sir. I waited there, just as if all was right; and I believe Idid shift the points.”

Lease did not put this forth as an excuse: he only spoke aloud the problem that was working in his mind. Having shifted the points regularly for five years, it seemed simply impossible that he could have neglected it now. And yet the man could not rememberto have done it this evening.

“You can’t call it to mind?” said Squire Todhetley, repeating his last words.

“No, I can’t, sir: and no wonder, with all this confusion around me and the distress I’m in. I may be able to do so to-morrow.”

“Now look you here, Lease,” said the Squire, getting just a little cross: “if you had put the points right you couldn’t fail to remember it. And what causes your distress, I should like to ask, but the knowledge that you didn’t, and that all this wreck is owing to you?”

“There is such a thing as doing things mechanically, sir, without the mind being conscious of it.”

“Doing things wilfully,” roared the Squire. “Do you want to tell me I am a fool to my face?”

“It has often happened, sir, that when I have wound up the mantel-shelf clock at night in our sleeping-room, I’ll not know the next minute whether I’ve wound it or not, and I have to try it again, or else ask the wife,” went on Lease, looking straight out into the darkness, as if he could see the clock then. “I can’t think but what it must have been just in that way that I put the points right to-night.”

Squire Todhetley, in his anger, which was growing hot again, felt that he should like to give Lease a sound shaking. He had no notion of such talk as this.

“I don’t know whether you are a knave or a fool, Lease. Killing men and women and children; breaking arms and legs; putting a whole trainful into mortal fright; smashing property and engines to atoms; turning the world, in fact, upside down, so that people don’t know whether they stand on their heads or their heels! You may think you can do this with impunity perhaps, but the law will soon teach you better. I should not like to go to bed with human lives on my soul.”

The Squire disappeared in a whirlwind. Lease—who seemed to have taken a leaf out of his own theory, and listened mechanically—closed his eyes and put his head back against the palings, like one who has had a shock. He went home when there was nothing more to be done. Not down the highway, but choosing the field-path, where he would not be likely to meet a soul. Crabb Lane, accustomed to put itself into a state of commotion for nothing at all, had got something at last, and was up in arms. All the men employed at the station lived in Crabb Lane. The wife and children of Bowen, the stoker of the passenger-train,—dead—also inhabited a room in that noisy locality. So that when Lease came in view of the place, he saw an excited multitude, though it was then long after ordinary bed-time. Groups stood in the highway; heads, thrust forth at upper windows, were shouting remarks across the street and back again. Keeping on the far side of the hedge, Lease got in by the back-door unseen. His wife was sitting by the fire, trembling and frightened. She started up.

“Oh, Harry! what is the truth of this?”

He did not answer. Not in neglect; Lease was as civil indoors as out, which can’t be said of every one; but as if he did not hear. The supper, bread and half a cold red-herring, was on the table. Generally he was hungry enough for supper, but he never glanced at it this evening.

Sitting down, he looked into the fire and remained still, listening perhaps to the outside hubbub. His wife, half dead with fear and apprehension, could keep silence no longer, and asked again.

“I don’t know,” he answered then. “They say that I never turned the points; I’m trying to remember doing it, Mary. My senses have been scared out of me.”

“But don’t you remember doing it?”

He put his hands to his temples, and his eyes took that far-off, sad look, often seen in eyes when the heart is troubled. With all his might and main, the man was trying to recall the occurrence which would not come to him. A dread conviction began to dawn within him that it never would or could come; and Lease’s face grew damp with drops of agony.

“I turned the points for the down goods-train,” he said presently;“I remember that. When the goods came in, I know I was in the signal-house. Then I took a message to Hoar; and next I stepped across with some oil for the engine of an up-train that dashed in; they called out that it wanted some. I helped to do it, and took the oil back again. It would be then that I went to put the points right,” he added after a pause. “I hope I did.”

“But, Harry, don’t you remember doing it?”

“No, I don’t; there’s where it is.”

“You always put the points straight at once after the train has passed?”

“Not if I’m called off by other work. It ought to be done. A pointsman should stand while the train passes, and then step off to right the points at once. But when you are called off half-a-dozen ways to things crying out to be done, you can’t spend time in waiting for the points. We’ve never had a harder day’s work at the station than this has been, Mary; trains in, trains out; the place has hardly been free a minute together. And the extra telegraphing!—half the passengers that stopped seemed to want to send messages. When six o’clock came I was worn out; done up; fit to drop.”

Mrs. Lease gave a start. An idea flashed into her mind, causing her to ask mentally whether she could have had indirectly a hand in the calamity. For that had been one of the days when her husband had had no tea taken to him. She had been very busy washing, and the baby was sick and cross: that had been quite enough to fill incapable Mrs. Lease’s hands, without bothering about her husband’s tea. And, of all days in the year, it seemed that he had, on this one, most needed tea. Worn out! done up!

The noise in Crabb Lane was increasing, voices sounded louder, and Mrs. Lease put her hands to her ears. Just then a sudden interruption occurred. Polly, supposed to be safe asleep upstairs, burst into the kitchen in her night-gown, and flew into her father’s arms, sobbing and crying.

“Oh, father, is it true?—is it true?”

“Why—Polly!” cried the man, looking at her, in astonishment.“What’s this?”

She hid her face on his waistcoat, her hands clinging round him. Polly had awakened and heard the comments outside. She was too nervous and excitable for Crabb Lane.

“They are saying you have killed Kitty Bowen’s father. It isn’t true, father! Go out and tell them that it isn’t true!”

His own nerves were unstrung; his strength had gone out of him; it only needed something of this kind to finish up Lease; and he broke into sobs. Holding the child to him with a tight grasp, they cried together. If Lease had never known agony before in his life, he knew it then.

The days went on. There was no longer any holding-out on Lease’s part on the matter of points: all the world said he had been guilty of neglecting to turn them; and he supposed he had. He accepted the fate meekly, without resistance, his manner strangely still, as one who has been utterly subdued. When talked to, he freely avowed that it remained a puzzle to him how he could have forgotten the points, and what made him forget them. He shrank neither from reproach nor abuse; listening patiently to all who chose to attack him, as if he had no longer any right to claim a place in the world.

He was not spared. Coroner and jury, friends and foes, all went on at him, painting his sins in flaring colours, and calling him names to his face. “Murderer” was one of the least of them. Four had died in all; Roberts was not expected to live; the rest were getting well. There would have been no trouble over the inquest (held at the Bull, between Crabb Lane and the station), it might have been finished in a day, and Lease committed for trial, but that one of those who had died was a lawyer; and his brother (also a lawyer) and other of his relatives (likewise lawyers) chose to make a commotion. Mr. Massock helped them. Passengers must be examined; rails tried; the points tested; every conceivable obstacle was put in the way of a conclusion. Fifteen times had the jury to go and look at the spot, and see the working of the points tested. And so the inquest was adjourned from time to time, and might be finished perhaps something under a year.

The public were like so many wolves, all howling at Lease; from the aforesaid relatives and Brickfield Massock, down to the men and women of Crabb Lane. Lease was at home on bail, surrendering himself at every fresh meeting of the inquest. A few wretched malcontents had begun to hiss him as he passed in and out of Crabb Lane.

When we got home for the Christmas holidays, nothing met us but tales of Lease’s wickedness, in having sent one train upon the other. The Squire grew hot in talking of it. Tod, given to be contrary, said he should like to have Lease’s own version of the affair. A remark that affronted the Squire.

“You can go off and get it from him, sir. Lease won’t refuse it; he’d give it to the dickens, for the asking. He likes nothing better than to talk about it.”

“After all, it was only a misfortune,” said Tod. “It was not wilfully done.”

“Not wilfully done!” stuttered the Pater in his rage. “When I, and Lena, and her mother were in the train, and might have been smashed to atoms! When Coney, and Massock (not that I like the fellow), and scores more were put in jeopardy, and some were killed; yes, sir, killed. A misfortune! Johnny, if you stand there grinning like an idiot, I’ll send you back to school: you shall both pack off this very hour. A misfortune, indeed! Lease deserves hanging.”

The next morning we came upon Lease accidentally in the fields. He was leaning over the gate amongst the trees, as Tod and I crossed the rivulet bridge—which was nothing but a plank or two. A couple of bounds, and we were up with him.

“Now for it, Lease!” cried Tod. “Let us hear a bit about the matter.”

How Lease was altered! His cheeks were thin and white, his eyes had nothing but despair in them. Standing up he touched his hat respectfully.

“Ay, sir, it has been a sad time,” answered Lease, in a low, patient voice, as if he felt worn out. “I little thought when I last shut you and Master Johnny into the carriage the morning you left, that misfortune was so close at hand.” For, just before it happened, we had been at home for a day’s holiday.

“Well, tell us about it.”

Tod stood with his arm round the trunk of a tree, and I sat down on an opposite stump. Lease had very little to say; nothing, except that he must have forgotten to change the points.

And that made Tod stare. Tod, like the Pater, was hasty by nature. Knowing Lease’s good character, he had not supposed him guilty; and to hear the man quietly admit that he was excited Tod’s ire.

“What do you mean, Lease?”

“Mean, sir?” returned Lease, meekly.

“Do you mean to say that you did not attend to the points?—that you just let one train run on to the other?”

“Yes, sir; that is how it must have been. I didn’t believe it, sir, for a long time afterwards: not for several hours.”

“A long time, that,” said Tod, an unpleasant sound of mockery in his tone.

“No, sir; I know it’s not much, counting by time,” answered Lease patiently. “But nobody can ever picture how long those hours seemed to me. They were like years. I couldn’t get the idea into me at all that I had not set the points as usual; it seemed a thing incredible; but, try as I would, I was unable to call to mind having done it.”

“Well, I must say that is a nice thing to confess to, Lease! And there was I, yesterday afternoon, taking your part and quarrelling with my father.”

“I am sorry for that, sir. I am not worth having my part taken in anything, since that happened.”

“But how came you to do it?”

“It’s a question I shall never be able to answer, sir. We had a busy day, were on the run from morning till night, and there was a great deal of confusion at the station: but it was no worse than many a day that has gone before it.”

“Well, I shall be off,” said Tod. “This has shut me up. I thought of going in for you, Lease, finding every one else was dead against you. A misfortune is a misfortune, but wilful carelessness is sin: and my father and his wife and my little sister were in the train. Come along, Johnny.”

“Directly, Tod. I’ll catch you up. I say, Lease, how will it end?” I asked, as Tod went on.

“It can’t end better than two years’ imprisonment for me, sir; and I suppose it may end worse. It is not that I think of.”

“What else, then?”

“Four dead already, sir; four—and one soon to follow them, making five,” he answered, his voice hushed to a whisper. “Master Johnny, it lies on me always, a dreadful weight never to be got rid of. When I was young, I had a sort of low fever, and used to see in my dreams some dreadful task too big to be attempted, and yet I had to do it; and the weight on my mind was awful. I didn’t think, till now, such a weight could fall in real life. Sleeping or waking, sir, I see those four before me dead. Squire Todhetley told me that I had their lives on my soul. And it is so.”

I did not know what to answer.

“So you see, sir, I don’t think much of the imprisonment; if I did, I might be wanting to get the suspense over. It’s not anyterm of imprisonment, no, not though it were for life, that can wash out the past. I’d give my own life, sir, twice over if that could undo it.”

Lease had his arm on the gate as he spoke, leaning forward. I could not help feeling sorry for him.

“If people knew how I’m punished within myself, Master Johnny, they’d perhaps not be so harsh upon me. I have never had a proper night’s rest since it happened, sir. I have to get up and walk about in the middle of the night because I can’t lie. The sight of the dawn makes me sick, and I say to myself, How shall I get through the day? When bed-time comes, I wonder how I shall lie till morning. Often I wish it had pleased God to take me before that day had happened.”

“Why don’t they get the inquest over, Lease?”

“There’s something or other always brought up to delay it, sir. I don’t see the need of it. If it would bring the dead back to life, why, they might delay it; but it won’t. They might as well let it end, and sentence me, and have done with it. Each time when I go back home through Crabb Lane, the men and women call out,‘What, put off again!’ ‘What, ain’t he in gaol yet!’ Which is the place they say I ought to have been in all along.”

“I suppose the coroner knows you’ll not run away, Lease.”

“Everybody knows that, sir.”

“Some would, though, in your place.”

“I don’t know where they’d run to,” returned Lease. “They couldn’t run away from their own minds—and that’s the worst part of it. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever get it off mine, sir, or if I shall have it on me, like this, to the end of my life. The Lord knows what it is to me; nobody else does.”

You cannot always make things fit into one another. I was thinking so as I left Lease and went after Tod. It was awful carelessness not to have set the points; causing death, and sorrow, and distress to many people. Looking at it from their side, the pointsman was detestable; only fit, as the Squire said, to be hanged. But looking at it side by side with Lease, seeing his sad face, his self-reproach, and his patient suffering, it seemed altogether different; and the two aspects would not by any means fit in together.

Christmas week, and the absence of a juror who had gone out visiting, made another excuse for putting off the inquest to the next week. When that came, the coroner was ill. There seemed to be no end to the delays, and the public steam was getting up in consequence. As to Lease, he went about like a man who is looking for something that he has lost and cannot find.

One day, when the ice lay in Crabb Lane, and I was taking theslides on my way through it to join Tod, who had gone rabbit-shooting, a little girl ran across my feet, and was knocked down. I fell too; and the child began to cry. Picking her up, I saw it was Polly Lease.

“You little stupid! why did you run into my path like that?”

“Please, sir, I didn’t see you,” she sobbed. “I was running after father. Mother saw him in the field yonder, and sent me to tell him we’d got a bit o’ fire.”

Polly had grazed both her knees; they began to bleed just a little, and she nearly went into convulsions at sight of the blood. I carried her in. There was about a handful of fire in the grate. The mother sat on a low stool, close into it, nursing one of the children, and the rest sat on the floor.

“I never saw such a child as this in all my life, Mrs. Lease. Because she has hurt her knees a bit, and sees a drop of blood, she’s going to die of fright. Look here.”

Mrs. Lease put the boy down and took Polly, who was trembling all over with her deep low sobs.

“It was always so, sir,” said Mrs. Lease; “always since she was a baby. She is the timorest-natured child possible. We have tried everything; coaxing and scolding too; but we can’t get her out of it. If she pricks her finger her face turns white.”

“I’d be more of a woman than cry at nothing, if I were you, Polly,” said I, sitting on the window-ledge, while Mrs. Lease washed the knees; which were hardly damaged at all when they came to be examined. But Polly only clung to her mother, with her face hidden, and giving a deep sob now and then.

“Look up, Polly. What’s this!”

I put it into her hand as I spoke; a bath bun that I had been carrying with me, in case I did not get home to luncheon. Polly looked round, and the sight dried the tears on her swollen face. You never saw such a change all in a moment, or such eager, glad little eyes as hers.

“Divide it mother,” said she. “Leave a bit for father.”

Two of them came flocking round like a couple of young wolves; the youngest couldn’t get up, and the one Mrs. Lease had been nursing stayed on the floor where she put him. He had a sickly face, with great bright grey eyes, and hot, red lips.

“What’s the matter with him, Mrs. Lease?”

“With little Tom, sir? I think it’s a kind of fever. He never was strong; none of them are: and of course these bad times can but tell upon us.”

“Don’t forget father, mother,” said Polly. “Leave the biggest piece for father.”

“Now I tell you all what it is,” said I to the children, when Mrs.Lease began to divide it into half-a-dozen pieces, “that bun’s for Polly, because she has hurt herself: you shall not take any of it from her. Give it to Polly, Mrs. Lease.”

Of all the uproars ever heard, those little cormorants set up the worst. Mrs. Lease looked at me.

“They must have a bit, sir: they must indeed. Polly wouldn’t eat all herself, Master Ludlow; you couldn’t get her to do it.”

But I was determined Polly should have it. It was through me she got hurt; and besides, I liked her.

“Now just listen, you little pigs. I’ll go to Ford’s, the baker’s, and bring you all a bun a-piece, but Polly must have this one. They have lots of currants in them, those buns, for children that don’t squeal. How many are there of you? One, two, three,—— four.”

Catching up my cap, I was going out when Mrs. Lease touched me. “Do you really mean it, sir?” she asked in a whisper.

“Mean what? That I am going to bring the buns? Of course I mean it. I’ll be back with them directly.”

“Oh, sir—but do forgive me for making free to ask such a thing—if you would only let it be a half-quartern loaf instead?”

“A half-quartern loaf!”

“They’ve not had a bit between their lips this day, Master Ludlow,”she said, catching her breath, as her face, which had flushed, turned pale again. “Last night I divided between the four of them a piece of bread half the size of my hand; Tom, he couldn’t eat.”

I stared for a minute. “How is it, Mrs. Lease? can you not get enough food?”

“I don’t know where we should get it from, sir. Lease has not broken his fast since yesterday at midday.”

Dame Ford put the loaf in paper for me, wondering what on earth I wanted with it, as I could see by her inquisitive eyes, but not liking to ask; and I carried it back with the four buns. They were little wolves and nothing else when they saw the food.

“How has this come about, Mrs. Lease?” I asked, while they were eating the bread she cut them, and she had taken Tom on her lap again.

“Why, sir, it is eight weeks now, or hard upon it, since my husband earned anything. They didn’t even pay him for the last week he was at work, as the accident happened in it. We had nothing in hand; people with only eighteen shillings a week and five children to feed, can’t save; and we have been living on our things. But there’s nothing left now to make money of—as you may see by the bare room, sir.”

“Does not any one help you?”

“Help us!” returned Mrs. Lease. “Why, Master Ludlow,people, for the most part, are so incensed against my husband, that they’d take the bread out of our mouths, instead of putting a bit into them. All their help goes to poor Nancy Bowen and her children: and Lease is glad it should be so. When I carried Tom to Mr. Cole’s yesterday, he said that what the child wanted was nourishment.”

“This must try Lease.”

“Yes,” she said, her face flushing again, but speaking very quietly. “Taking one thing with another, I am not sure but it is killing him.”

After this break, I did not care to go to the shooting, but turned back to Crabb Cot. Mrs. Todhetley was alone in the bow-windowed parlour, so I told her of the state the Leases were in, and asked if she would not help them.

“I don’t know what to say about it, Johnny,” she said, after a pause. “If I were willing, you know Mr. Todhetley would not be so. He can’t forgive Lease for his carelessness. Every time Lena wakes up from sleep in a fright, fancying it is another accident, his anger returns to him. We often hear her crying out, you know, down here in an evening.”

“The carelessness was no fault of Lease’s children, that they should suffer for it.”

“When you grow older, Johnny, you will find that the consequences of people’s faults fall more on others than on themselves. It is very sad the Leases should be in this state; I am sorry for them.”

“Then you’ll help them a bit, good mother.”

Mrs. Todhetley was always ready to help any one, not needing to be urged; on the other hand, she liked to yield implicitly to the opinions of the Squire. Between the two, she went into a dilemma.

“Suppose it were Lena, starving for want of food and warmth?”I said. “Or Hugh sick with fever, as that young Tom is? Those children have done no more harm than ours.”

Mrs. Todhetley put her hand up to her face, and her mild eyes looked nearly as sad as Lease’s.

“Will you take it to them yourself, Johnny, in a covered basket, and not let it be seen? That is, make it your own doing?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the kitchen then, and ask Molly. There are some odds and ends of things in the larder that will not be particularly wanted. You see, Johnny, I do not like to take an active part in this; it would seem like opposing the Squire.”

Molly was stooping before the big fire, basting the meat, in one of her vile humours. If I wanted to rob the larder, I must do it,she cried; it was my business, not hers; and she dashed the basting spoon across the table by way of accompaniment.

I gave a good look round the larder, and took a raised pork-pie that had a piece cut out of it, and a leg of mutton three parts eaten. On the shelf were a dozen mince-pies, just out of their patty-pans; I took six and left six. Molly, screwing her face round the kitchen-door, caught sight of them as they went into the basket, and rushing after me out of the house, shrieked out for her mince-pies.

The race went on. She was a woman not to be daunted. Just as we turned round by the yellow barn, I first, she raving behind, the Squire pounced upon us, asking what the uproar meant. Molly told her tale. I was a thief, and had gone off with the whole larder, more particularly with her mince-pies.

“Open the basket, Johnny,” said the Squire: which was the one Tod and I used when we went fishing.

No sooner was it done than Molly marched off with the pies in triumph. The Pater regarded the pork-pie and the meat with a curious gaze.

“This is for you and Joe, I suppose. I should like to know for how many more.”

I was one of the worst to conceal things, when taken-to like this, and he got it all out of me in no time. And then he put his hand on my shoulder and ordered me to say who the things were for. Which I had to do.

Well, there was a row. He wanted to know what I meant by being wicked enough to give food to Lease. I said it was for the children. I’m afraid I almost cried, for I did not like him to be angry with me, but I know I promised not to eat any dinner at home for three days if he would let me take the meat. Molly’s comments, echoing through the house, betrayed to Mrs. Todhetley what had happened, and she came down the road with a shawl over her head. She told the Squire the truth then: that she had sanctioned it. She said she feared the Leases were quite in extremity, and begged him to let the meat go.

“Be off for this once, you young thief,” stamped the Squire,“but don’t let me catch you at anything of this sort again.”

So the meat went to the Leases, and two loaves that Mrs. Todhetley whispered me to order for them at Ford’s. When I reached home with the empty basket, they were going in to dinner. I took a book and stayed in the parlour. In a minute or two the Squire sent to ask what I was doing that for.

“It’s all right, Thomas. I don’t want any dinner to-day.”

Old Thomas went away and returned again, saying the master ordered me to go in. But I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. If he forgot the bargain, I did not.

Out came the Squire, his face red, napkin in hand, and laid hold of me by the shoulders.

“You obstinate young Turk! How dare you defy me? Come along.”

“But it is not to defy you, sir. It was a bargain, you know; I promised.”

“What was a bargain?”

“That I should not have any dinner for three days. Indeed I meant it.”

The Squire’s answer was to propel me into the dining-room.“Move down, Joe,” he said, “I’ll have him by me to-day. I’ll see whether he is to starve himself out of bravado.”

“Why, what’s up?” asked Tod, as he went to a lower seat.“What have you been doing, Johnny?”

“Never mind,” said the Squire, putting enough mutton on my plate for two. “You eat that, Mr. Johnny?”

It went on so throughout dinner. Mrs. Todhetley gave me a big share of apple pudding; and, when the macaroni came on, the Squire heaped my plate. And I know it was all done to show he was not really angry with me for having taken the things to the Leases.

Mr. Cole, the surgeon, came in after dinner, and was told of my wickedness. Lena ran up to me and said might she send her new sixpence to the poor little children who had no bread to eat.

“What’s that Lease about, that he does not go to work?” asked the Squire, in loud tones. “Letting folks hear that his young ones are starving!”

“The man can’t work,” said Mr. Cole. “He is out on probation, you know, waiting for the verdict, and the sentence on him that is to follow.”

“Then why don’t they return their verdict and sentence him?”demanded the Squire, in his hot way.

“Ah!” said Mr. Cole, “it’s what they ought to have done long ago.”

“What will it be! Transportation?”

“I should take care it was not, if I were on the jury. The man had too much work on him that day, and had had nothing to eat or drink for too many hours.”

“I won’t hear a word in his defence,” growled the Squire.

When the jury met for the last time, Lease was ill. A day or two before that, some one had brought Lease word that Roberts, who had been lingering all that time in the infirmary at Worcester, was going at last. Upon which Lease started to see him. It wasnot the day for visitors at the infirmary, but he gained admittance. Roberts was lying in the accident ward, with his head low and a blue look in his face; and the first thing Lease did, when he began to speak, was to burst out crying. The man’s strength had gone down to nothing and his spirit was broken. Roberts made out that he was speaking of his distress at having been the cause of the calamity, and asking to be forgiven.

“Mate,” said Roberts, putting out his hand that Lease might take it, “I’ve never had an ill thought to ye. Mishaps come to all of us that have to do with rail-travelling; us drivers get more nor you pointsmen. It might have happened to me to be the cause, just as well as to you. Don’t think no more of it.”

“Say you forgive me,” urged Lease, “or I shall not know how to bear it.”

“I forgive thee with my whole heart and soul. I’ve had a spell of it here, Lease, waiting for death, knowing it must come to me, and I’ve got to look for it kindly. I don’t think I’d go back to the world now if I could. I’m going to a better. It seems just peace, and nothing less. Shake hands, mate.”

They shook hands.

“I wish ye’d lift my head a bit,” Roberts said, after a while.“The nurse she come and took away my pillow, thinking I might die easier, I suppose: I’ve seen her do it to others. Maybe I was a’most gone, and the sight of you woke me up again like.”

Lease sat down on the bed and put the man’s head upon his breast in the position that seemed most easy to him; and Roberts died there.

It was one of the worst days we had that winter. Lease had a night’s walk home of many miles, the sleet and wind beating upon him all the way. He was not well clad either, for his best things had been pawned.

So that when the inquest assembled two days afterwards, Lease did not appear at it. He was in bed with inflammation of the chest, and Mr. Cole told the coroner that it would be dangerous to take him out of it. Some of them called it bronchitis; but the Squire never went in for new names, and never would.

“I tell you what it is, gentlemen,” broke in Mr. Cole, when they were quarrelling as to whether there should be another adjournment or not, “you’ll put off and put off, until Lease slips through your fingers.”

“Oh, will he, though!” blustered old Massock. “He had better try at it! We’d soon fetch him back again.”

“You’d be clever to do it,” said the doctor.

Any way, whether it was this or not, they thought better of the adjournment, and gave their verdict. “Manslaughter againstHenry Lease.” And the coroner made out his warrant of committal to Worcester county prison: where Lease would lie until the March assizes.

“I am not sure but it ought to have been returned Wilful Murder,” remarked the Squire, as he and the doctor turned out of the Bull, and picked their way over the slush towards Crabb Lane.

“It might make no difference, one way or the other,” answered Mr. Cole.

“Make no difference! What d’ye mean? Murder and manslaughter are two separate crimes, Cole, and must be punished accordingly. You see, Johnny, what your friend Lease has come to!”

“What I meant, Squire, was this: that I don’t much think Lease will live to be tried at all.”

“Not live!”

“I fancy not. Unless I am much mistaken, his life will have been claimed by its Giver long before March.”

The Squire stopped and looked at Cole. “What’s the matter with him? This inflammation—that you went and testified to?”

“That will be the cause of death, as returned to the registrar.”

“Why, you speak just as if the man were dying now, Cole!”

“And I think he is. Lease has been very low for a long time,”added Mr. Cole; “half clad, and not a quarter fed. But it is not that, Squire: heart and spirit are alike broken: and when this cold caught him, he had no stamina to withstand it; and so it has seized upon a vital part.”

“Do you mean to tell me to my face that he will die of it?”cried the Squire, holding on by the middle button of old Cole’s great-coat. “Nonsense, man! you must cure him. We—we did not want him to die, you know.”

“His life or his death, as it may be, are in the hands of One higher than I, Squire.”

“I think I’ll go in and see him,” said the Squire, meekly.

Lease was lying on a bed close to the floor when we got to the top of the creaky stairs, which had threatened to come down with the Squire’s weight and awkwardness. He had dozed off, and little Polly, sitting on the boards, had her head upon his arm. Her starting up awoke Lease. I was not in the habit of seeing dying people; but the thought struck me that Lease must be dying. His pale weary face wore the same hue that Jake’s had worn when he was dying: if you have not forgotten him.

“God bless me!” exclaimed the Squire.

Lease looked up with his sad eyes. He supposed they had come to tell him officially about the verdict—which had already reached him unofficially.

“Yes, gentlemen, I know it,” he said, trying to get up out of respect, and falling back. “Manslaughter. I’d have been present if I could. Mr. Cole knows I wasn’t able. I think God is taking me instead.”

“But this won’t do, you know, Lease,” said the Squire. “We don’t want you to die.”

“Well, sir, I’m afraid I am not good for much now. And there’d be the imprisonment, and then the sentence, so that I could not work for my wife and children for some long years. When people come to know how I repented of that night’s mistake, and that I have died of it, why, they’ll perhaps befriend them and forgive me. I think God has forgiven me: He is very merciful.”

“I’ll send you in some port wine and jelly and beef-tea—and some blankets, Lease,” cried the Squire quickly, as if he felt flurried.“And, Lease, poor fellow, I am sorry for having been so angry with you.”

“Thank you for all favours, sir, past and present. But for the help from your house my little ones would have starved. God bless you all, and forgive me! Master Johnny, God bless you.”

“You’ll rally yet, Lease; take heart,” said the Squire.

“No, sir, I don’t think so. The great dark load seems to have been lifted off me, and light to be breaking. Don’t sob, Polly! Perhaps father will be able to see you from up there as well as if he stayed here.”

The first thing the Squire did when we got out, was to attack Mr. Cole, telling him he ought not to have let Lease die. As he was in a way about it, Cole excused it, quietly saying it was no fault of his.

“I should like to know what it is that has killed him, then?”

“Grief,” said Mr. Cole. “The man has died of what we call a broken heart. Hearts don’t actually sever, you know, Squire, like a china basin, and there’s always some ostensible malady that serves as a reason to talk about. In this case it will be bronchitis. Which, in point of fact, is the final end, because Lease could not rally against it. He told me yesterday that his heart had ached so keenly since November, it seemed to have dried up within him.”

“We are all a pack of hard-hearted sinners,” groaned the Squire, in his repentance. “Johnny, why could you not have found them out sooner? Where was the use of your doing it at the eleventh hour, sir, I’d like to know?”

Harry Lease died that night. And Crabb Lane, in a fit of repentance as sudden as the Squire’s, took the cost of the funeral off the parish (giving some abuse in exchange) and went in a body to the grave. I and Tod followed.

CHAPTER VII.

AUNT DEAN.

Timberdale was a small place on the other side of Crabb Ravine. Its Rector was the Reverend Jacob Lewis. Timberdale called him Parson Lewis when not on ceremony. He had married a widow, Mrs. Tanerton: she had a good deal of money and two boys, and the parish thought the new lady might be above them. But she proved kind and good; and her boys did not ride roughshod over the land or break down the farmers’ fences. She died in three or four years, after a long illness.

Timberdale talked about her will, deeming it a foolish one. She left all she possessed to the Rector, “in affectionate confidence,” as the will worded it, “knowing he would do what was right and just by her sons.” As Parson Lewis was an upright man with a conscience of his own, it was supposed he would do so; but Timberdale considered that for the boys’ sake she should have made it sure herself. It was eight-hundred a year, good measure.

Parson Lewis had a sister, Mrs. Dean, a widow also, who lived near Liverpool. She was not left well-off at all; could but just make a living of it. She used to come on long visits to the Parsonage, which saved her cupboard at home; but it was said that Mrs. Lewis did not like her, thinking her deceitful, and they did not get on very well together. Parson Lewis, the meekest man in the world and the most easily led, admitted to his wife that Rebecca had always been a little given to scheming, but he thought her true at heart.

When poor Mrs. Lewis was out of the way for good in Timberdale churchyard, Aunt Dean had the field to herself, and came and stayed as long as she pleased, with her child, Alice. She was a little woman with a mild face and fair skin, and had a sort of purring manner with her. Scarcely speaking above her breath, and saying “dear” and “love” at every sentence, and caressing people to their faces, the rule was to fall in love with her at once. The boys, Herbert and Jack, had taken to her without question from the first, and called her “Aunt.” Though she was of course no relation whatever to them.

Both the boys made much of Alice—a bright-eyed, pretty little girl with brown curls and timid, winsome ways. Herbert, who was very studious himself, helped her with her lessons: Jack, who was nearer her age, but a few months older, took her out on expeditions, haymaking and blackberrying and the like, and would bring her home with her frock torn and her knees damaged. He told her that brave little girls never cried with him; and the child would ignore the smart of the grazed knees and show herself as brave as a martyr. Jack was so brave and fearless himself and made so little of hurts, that she felt a sort of shame at giving way to her natural timidity when with him. What Alice liked best was to sit indoors by Herbert’s side while he was at his lessons, and read story books and fairy tales. Jack was the opposite of all that, and a regular renegade in all kinds of study. He would have liked to pitch the books into the fire, and did not even care for fairy tales. They came often enough to Crabb Cot when we were there, and to our neighbours the Coneys, with whom the Parsonage was intimate. I was only a little fellow at the time, years younger than they were, but I remember I liked Jack better than Herbert. As Tod did also for the matter of that. Herbert was too clever for us, and he was to be a parson besides. He chose the calling himself. More than once he was caught muffled in the parson’s white surplice, preaching to Jack and Alice a sermon of his own composition.

Aunt Dean had her plans and her plots. One great plot was always at work. She made it into a dream, and peeped into it night and day, as if it were a kaleidoscope of rich and many colours. Herbert Tanerton was to marry her daughter and succeed to his mother’s property as eldest son: Jack must go adrift, and earn his own living. She considered it was already three parts as good as accomplished. To see Herbert and Alice poring over books together side by side and to know that they had the same tastes, was welcome to her as the sight of gold. As to Jack, with his roving propensities, his climbing and his daring, she thought it little matter if he came down a tree head-foremost some day, or pitched head over heels into the depths of Crabb Ravine, and so threw his life away. Not that she really wished any cruel fate for the boy; but she did not care for him; and he might be terribly in the way, when her foolish brother, the parson, came to apportion the money. And he was foolish in some things; soft, in fact: she often said so.

One summer day, when the fruit was ripe and the sun shining, Mr. Lewis had gone into his study to write his next Sunday’s sermon. He did not get on very quickly, for Aunt Dean was in there also, and it disturbed him a little. She was of restless habits,everlastingly dusting books, and putting things in their places without rhyme or reason.

“Do you wish to keep out all three of these inkstands, Jacob? It is not necessary, I should think. Shall I put one up?”

The parson took his eyes off his sermon to answer. “I don’t see that they do any harm there, Rebecca. The children use two sometimes. Do as you like, however.”

Mrs. Dean put one of the inkstands into the book-case, and then looked round the room to see what else she could do. A letter caught her eye.

“Jacob, I do believe you have never answered the note old Mullet brought this morning! There it is on the mantelpiece.”

The parson sighed. To be interrupted in this way he took quite as a matter of course, but it teased him a little.

“I must see the churchwardens, Rebecca, before answering it. I want to know, you see, what would be approved of by the parish.”

“Just like you, Jacob,” she caressingly said. “The parish must approve of what you approve.”

“Yes, yes,” he said hastily; “but I like to live at peace with every one.”

He dipped his pen into the ink, and wrote a line of his sermon. The open window looked on to the kitchen-garden. Herbert Tanerton had his back against the walnut-tree, doing nothing. Alice sat near on a stool, her head buried in a book that by its canvas cover Mrs. Dean knew to be “Robinson Crusoe.” Just then Jack came out of the raspberry bushes with a handful of fruit, which he held out to Alice. “Robinson Crusoe” fell to the ground.

“Oh, Jack, how good they are!” said Alice. And the words came distinctly to Aunt Dean’s ears in the still day.

“They are as good again when you pick them off the trees for yourself,” cried Jack. “Come along and get some, Alice.”

With the taste of the raspberries in her mouth, the temptation was not to be resisted; and she ran after Jack. Aunt Dean put her head out at the window.

“Alice, my love, I cannot have you go amongst those raspberry bushes; you would stain and tear your frock.”

“I’ll take care of her frock, aunt,” Jack called back.

“My darling Jack, it cannot be. That is her new muslin frock, and she must not go where she might injure it.”

So Alice sat down again to “Robinson Crusoe,” and Jack went his way amongst the raspberry bushes, or whither he would.

“Jacob, have you begun to think of what John is to be?”resumed Aunt Dean, as she shut down the window.

The parson pushed his sermon from him in a sort of patienthopelessness, and turned round on his chair. “To be?—In what way, Rebecca?”

“By profession,” she answered. “I fancy it is time it was thought of.”

“Do you? I’m sure I don’t know. The other day when something was being mentioned about it, Jack said he did not care what he was to be, provided he had no books to trouble him.”

“I only hope you will not have trouble with him, Jacob, dear,”observed Mrs. Dean, in ominous tones, that plainly intimated she thought the parson would.

“He has a good heart, though he is not so studious as his brother. Why have you shut the window, Rebecca? It is very warm.”

Mrs. Dean did not say why. Perhaps she wished to guard against the conversation being heard. When any question not quite convenient to answer was put to her, she had a way of passing it over in silence; and the parson was too yielding or too inert to ask again.

“Of course, Brother Jacob, you will make Herbert the heir.”

The parson looked surprised. “Why should you suppose that, Rebecca? I think the two boys ought to share and share alike.”

“My dear Jacob, how can you think so? Your dead wife left you in charge, remember.”

“That’s what I do remember, Rebecca. She never gave me the slightest hint that she should wish any difference to be made: she was as fond of one boy as of the other.”

“Jacob, you must do your duty by the boys,” returned Mrs. Dean, with affectionate solemnity. “Herbert must be his mother’s heir; it is right and proper it should be so: Jack must be trained to earn his own livelihood. Jack—dear fellow!—is, I fear, of a roving, random disposition: were you to leave any portion of the money to him, he would squander it in a year.”

“Dear me, I hope not! But as to leaving all to his brother—or even a larger portion than to Jack—I don’t know that it would be right. A heavy responsibility lies on me in this charge, don’t you see, Rebecca?”

“No doubt it does. It is full eight-hundred a year. And youmust be putting something by, Jacob.”

“Not much. I draw the money yearly, but expenses seem to swallow it up. What with the ponies kept for the boys, and the cost of the masters from Worcester, and a hundred a year out of it that my wife desired the poor old nurse should have till she died, there’s not a great deal left. My living is a poor one, you know, and I like to help the poor freely. When the boys go to the university it will be all wanted.”

Help the poor freely!—just like him! thought Aunt Dean.

“It would be waste of time and money to send Jack to college. You should try and get him some appointment abroad, Jacob. In India, say.”

The clergyman opened his eyes at this, and said he should not like to see Jack go out of his own country. Jack’s mother had not had any opinion of foreign places. Jack himself interrupted the conversation. He came flying up the path, put down a cabbage leaf full of raspberries on the window-sill, and flung open the window with his stained fingers.

“Aunt Dean, I’ve picked these for you,” he said, introducing the leaf, his handsome face and good-natured eyes bright and sparkling.“They’ve never been so good as they are this year. Father, just taste them.”

Aunt Dean smiled sweetly, and called him her darling, and Mr. Lewis tasted the raspberries.

“We were just talking of you, Jack,” cried the unsophisticated man—and Mrs. Dean slightly knitted her brows. “Your aunt says it is time you began to think of some profession.”

“What, yet awhile?” returned Jack.

“That you may be suitably educated for it, my boy.”

“I should like to be something that won’t want education,”cried Jack, leaning his arms on the window-sill, and jumping up and down. “I think I’d rather be a farmer than anything, father.”

The parson drew a long face. This had never entered into his calculations.

“I fear that would not do, Jack. I should like you to choose something higher than that; some profession by which you may rise in the world. Herbert will go into the Church: what should you say to the Bar?”

Jack’s jumping ceased all at once. “What, be a barrister, father? Like those be-wigged fellows that come on circuit twice a year to Worcester?”

“Like that, Jack.”

“But they have to study all their lives for it, father; and read up millions of books before they can pass! I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t indeed.”

“What do you think of being a first-class lawyer, then? I might place you with some good firm, such as——”

“Don’t, there’s a dear father!” interrupted Jack, all the sunshine leaving his face. “I’m afraid if I were at a desk I should kick it over without knowing it: I must be running out and about.—Are they all gone, Aunt Dean? Give me the leaf, and I’ll pick you some more.”

The years went on. Jack was fifteen: Herbert eighteen and at Oxford: the advanced scholar had gone to college early. Aunt Dean spent quite half her time at Timberdale, from Easter till autumn, and the parson never rose up against it. She let her house during her absence: it was situated on the banks of the river a little way from Liverpool, near the place they call New Brighton now. It might have been called New Brighton then for all I know. One family always took the house for the summer months, glad to get out of hot Liverpool.

As to Jack, nothing had been decided in regard to his future, for opinions about it differed. A little Latin and a little history and a great deal of geography (for he liked that) had been drilled into him: and there his education ended. But he was the best climber and walker and leaper, and withal the best-hearted young fellow that Timberdale could boast: and he knew about land thoroughly, and possessed a great stock of general and useful and practical information. Many a day when some of the poorer farmers were in a desperate hurry to get in their hay or carry their wheat on account of threatening weather, had Jack Tanerton turned out to help, and toiled as hard and as long as any of the labourers. He was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone, rich and poor.

Mrs. Dean had worked on always to accomplish her ends. Slowly and imperceptibly, but surely; Herbert must be the heir; John must shift for himself. The parson had had this dinned into him so often now, in her apparently frank and reasoning way, that he began to lend an ear to it. What with his strict sense of justice, and his habit of yielding to his sister’s views, he felt for the most part in a kind of dilemma. But Mrs. Dean had come over this time determined to get something settled, one way or the other.

She arrived before Easter this year. The interminable Jack (as she often called him in her heart) was at home; Herbert was not. Jack and Alice did not seem to miss him, but went out on their rambles together as they did when children. The morning before Herbert was expected, a letter came from him to his stepfather, saying he had been invited by a fellow-student to spend the Easter holidays at his home near London and had accepted it.

Mr. Lewis took it as a matter of course in his easy way; but it disagreed with Aunt Dean. She said all manner of things to the parson, and incited him to write for Herbert to return at once. Herbert’s answer to this was a courteous intimation that he could not alter his plans; and he hoped his father, on consideration, would fail to see any good reason why he should do so. Herbert Tanerton had a will of his own.

“Neither do I see any reason, good or bad, why he should not pay the visit, Rebecca,” confessed the Rector. “I’m afraid it was foolish of me to object at all. Perhaps I have not the right to deny him, either, if I wished it. He is getting on for nineteen, and I am not his own father.”

So Aunt Dean had to make the best and the worst of it; but she felt as cross as two sticks.

One day when the parson was abroad on parish matters, and the Rectory empty, she went out for a stroll, and reached the high steep bank where the primroses and violets grew. Looking over, she saw Jack and Alice seated below; Jack’s arm round her waist.

“You are to be my wife, you know, Alice, when we are grown up. Mind that.”

There was no answer, but Aunt Dean certainly thought she heard the sound of a kiss. Peeping over again, she saw Jack taking another.

“And if you don’t object to my being a farmer, Alice, I should like it best of all. We’ll keep two jolly ponies and ride about together. Won’t it be good?”

“I don’t object to farming, Jack. Anything you like. A successful farmer’s home is a very pleasant one.”

Aunt Dean drew away with noiseless steps. She was too calm and callous a woman to turn white; but she did turn angry, and registered a vow in her heart. That presuming, upstart Jack! They were only two little fools, it’s true; no better than children; but the nonsense must be stopped in time.

Herbert went back to Oxford without coming home. Alice, to her own infinite astonishment, was despatched to school until midsummer. The parson and his sister and Jack were left alone; and Aunt Dean, with her soft smooth manner and her false expressions of endearment, ruled all things; her brother’s better nature amidst the rest.

Jack was asked what he would be. A farmer, he answered. But Aunt Dean had somehow caught up the most bitter notions possible against farming in general; and Mr. Lewis, not much liking the thing himself, and yielding to the undercurrent ever gently flowing, told Jack he must fix on something else.

“There’s nothing I shall do so well at as farming, father,” remonstrated Jack. “You can put me for three or four years to some good agriculturist, and I’ll be bound at the end of the time I should be fit to manage the largest and best farm in the country. Why, I am a better farmer now than some of them are.”

“Jack, my boy, you must not be self-willed. I cannot let you be a farmer.”

“Then send me to sea, father, and make a sailor of me,” returned Jack, with undisturbed good humour.

But this startled the parson. He liked Jack, and he had a horror of the sea. “Not that, Jack, my boy. Anything but that.”

“I’m not sure but I should like the sea better than farming,”went on Jack, the idea full in his head. “Aunt Dean lent me‘Peter Simple’ one day. I know I should make a first-rate sailor.”

“Jack, don’t talk so. Your poor mother would not have liked it, and I don’t like it; and I shall never let you go.”

“Some fellows run away to sea,” said Jack, laughing.

The parson felt as though a bucket of cold water had been thrown down his back. Did Jack mean that as a threat?

“John,” said he, in as solemn a way as he had ever spoken,“disobedience to parents sometimes brings a curse with it. You must promise me that you will never go to sea.”

“I’ll not promise that, off-hand,” said Jack. “But I will promise never to go without your consent. Think it well over, father; there’s no hurry.”

It was on the tip of Mr. Lewis’s tongue to withdraw his objection to the farming scheme then and there: in comparison with the other it looked quite fair and bright. But he thought he might compromise his judgment to yield thus instantly: and, as easy Jack said, there was no hurry.

So Jack went rushing out of doors again to the uttermost bounds of the parish, and the parson was left to Aunt Dean. When he told her he meant to let Jack be a farmer, she laughed till the tears came into her eyes, and begged him to leave matters to her. Sheknew how to manage boys, without appearing directly to cross them: there was this kind of trouble with most boys, she had observed, before they settled satisfactorily in life, but it all came right in the end.

So the parson said no more about farming: but Jack talked a great deal about the sea. Mr. Lewis went over in his gig to Worcester, and bought a book he had heard of, “Two Years before the Mast.” He wrote Jack’s name in it and gave it him, hoping its contents might serve to sicken him of the sea.

The next morning the book was missing. Jack looked high and low for it, but it was gone. He had left it on the sitting-room table when he went up to bed, and it mysteriously disappeared during the night. The servants had not seen it, and declared it was not on the table in the morning.

“It could not—I suppose—have been the cat,” observed Aunt Dean, in a doubtful manner, her eyes full of wonder as to where the book could have got to. “I have heard of cats doing strange things.”

“I don’t think the cat would make away with a book of that size, Rebecca,” said the parson. And if he had not been the least suspicious parson in all the Worcester Diocese, he might have asked his sister whether she had been the cat, and secured the book lest it should dissipate Jack’s fancy for the sea.

The next thing she did was to carry Jack off to Liverpool. The parson objected at first: Liverpool was a seaport town, and might put Jack more in mind of the sea than ever. Aunt Dean replied that she meant him to see the worst sides of sea life, the dirty boats in the Mersey, the wretchedness of the crews, and the real discomfort and misery of a sailor’s existence. That would cure him, she said: what he had in his head now was the romance picked up from books. The parson thought there was reason in this, and yielded. He was dreadfully anxious about Jack.

She went straight to her house near New Brighton, Jack with her, and a substantial sum in her pocket from the Rector to pay for Jack’s keep. The old servant, Peggy, who took care of it, was thunderstruck to see her mistress come in. It was not yet occupied by the Liverpool people, and Mrs. Dean sent them word they could not have it this year: at least not for the present. While she put matters straight, she supplied Jack with all Captain Marryat’s novels to read. The house looked on the river, and Jack would watch the fine vessels starting on their long voyages, their white sails trim and fair in the sunshine, or hear the joyous shouts from the sailors of a homeward-bound ship as Liverpool hove in view; and he grew to think there was no sight so pleasant to the eye as these wonderful ships; no fate so desirable as to sail in them.

But Aunt Dean had changed her tactics. Instead of sending Jack on to the dirtiest and worst managed boats in the docks, where the living was hard and the sailors were discontented, she allowed him to roam at will on the finest ships, and make acquaintance with their enthusiastic young officers, especially with those who were going to sea for the first time with just such notions as Jack’s. Before Midsummer came, Jack Tanerton had grown to think that he could never be happy on land.

There was a new ship just launched, the Rose of Delhi; a magnificent vessel. Jack took rare interest in her. He was for ever on board; was for ever saying to her owners—friends of Aunt Dean’s, to whom she had introduced him—how much he should like to sail in her. The owners thought it would be an advantageous thing to get so active, open, and ready a lad into their service, although he was somewhat old for entering, and they offered to article him for four years, as “midshipman” on theRose of Delhi. Jack went home with his tale, his eyes glowing; and Aunt Dean neither checked him nor helped him.

Not then. Later, when the ship was all but ready to sail, she told Jack she washed her hands of it, and recommended him to write and ask his stepfather whether he might sail in her, or not.

Now Jack was no letter writer; neither, truth to tell, was the parson. He had not once written home; but had contented himself with sending affectionate messages in Aunt Dean’s letters. Consequently, Mr. Lewis only knew what Aunt Dean had chosen to tell him, and had no idea that Jack was getting the real sea fever upon him. But at her suggestion Jack sat down now and wrote a long letter.

Its purport was this. That he was longing and hoping to go to sea; was sure he should never like anything else in the world so well; that the Rose of Delhi, Captain Druce, was the most magnificent ship ever launched; that the owners bore the best character in Liverpool for liberality, and Captain Druce for kindness to his middies; and that he hoped, oh he hoped, his father would let him go; but that if he still refused, he (Jack) would do his best to be content to stay on shore, for he did not forget his promise of never sailing without his consent.

“Would you like to see the letter, Aunt Dean, before I close it?”he asked.

Aunt Dean, who had been sitting by, took the letter, and privately thought it was as good a letter and as much to the purpose as the best scribe in the land could have written. She disliked it, for all that.

“Jack, dear, I think you had better put a postscript,” she said.“Your father detests writing, as you know. Tell him that if he consents he need not write any answer: you will know what it means—that you may go—and it will save him trouble.”

“But, Aunt Dean, I should like him to wish me good-bye and God speed.”

“He will be sure to do the one in his heart and the other in his prayers, my boy. Write your postscript.”

Jack did as he was bid: he was as docile as his stepfather. Exactly as Mrs. Dean suggested, wrote he: and he added that if no answer arrived within two posts, he should take it for granted that he was to go, and should see about his outfit. There was no time to lose, for the ship would sail in three or four days.

“I will post it for you, Jack,” she said, when it was ready. “I am going out.”

“Thank you, Aunt Dean, but I can post it myself. I’d rather: and then I shall know it’s off. Oh, shan’t I be on thorns till the time for an answer comes and goes!”

He snatched his cap and vaulted off with the letter before hecould be stopped. Aunt Dean had a curious look on her face, and sat biting her lips. She had not intended the letter to go.

The first post that could possibly bring an answer brought one. Jack was not at home. Aunt Dean had sent him out on an early commission, watched for the postman, and hastened to the door herself to receive what he might bring. He brought two letters—as it chanced. One from the Rector of Timberdale; one from Alice Dean. Mrs. Dean locked up the one in her private drawer upstairs: the other she left on the breakfast-table.

“Peggy says the postman has been here, aunt!” cried the boy, all excitement, as he ran in.

“Yes, dear. He brought a letter from Alice.”

“And nothing from Timberdale?”

“Well, I don’t know that you could quite expect it by this post, Jack. Your father might like to take a little time for consideration. You may read Alice’s letter, my boy: she comes home this day week for the summer holidays.”

“Not till this day week!” cried Jack, frightfully disappointed.“Why, I shall have sailed then, if I go, Aunt Dean! I shall not see her.”

“Well, dear, you will see her when you come home again.”

Aunt Dean had no more commissions for Jack after that, and each time the postman was expected, he placed himself outside the door to wait for him. The man brought no other letter. The reasonable time for an answer went by, and none came.

“Aunt Dean, I suppose I may get my outfit now,” said Jack, only half satisfied. “But I wish I had told him to write in any case: just a line.”

“According to what you said, you know, Jack, silence must be taken for consent.”

“Yes, I know. I’d rather have had a word, though, and made certain. I wish there was time for me just to run over to Timberdale and see him!”

“But there’s not, Jack, more’s the pity: you would lose the ship. Get a piece of paper and make out a list of the articles the second mate told you you would want.”

The Rose of Delhi sailed out of port for Calcutta, and John Tanerton with her, having signed articles to serve in her for four years. The night before his departure he wrote a short letter of farewell to his stepfather, thanking him for his tacit consent, and promising to do his best to get on, concluding it with love to himself and to Herbert, and to the Rectory servants. Which letter somehow got put into Aunt Dean’s kitchen fire, and never reached Timberdale.

Aunt Dean watched the Rose of Delhi sail by; Jack, in his bran-new uniform, waving his last farewell to her with his gold-banded cap. The sigh of relief she heaved when the fine vessel was out of sight seemed to do her good. Then she bolted herself into her chamber, and opened Mr. Lewis’s letter, which had lain untouched till then. As she expected, it contained a positive interdiction, written half sternly, half lovingly, for John to sail in the Rose of Delhi, or to think more of the sea. Moreover, it commanded him to come home at once, and it contained a promise that he should be placed to learn the farming without delay. Aunt Dean tripped down to Peggy’s fire and burnt that too.

There was a dreadful fuss when Jack’s departure became known at Timberdale. It fell upon the parson like a thunderbolt. He came striding through the ravine to Crabb Cot, and actually burst out crying while telling the news to the Squire. He feared he had failed somehow in bringing John up, he said, or he never would have repaid him with this base disobedience and ingratitude. For, you see, the poor man thought Jack had received his letter, and gone off in defiance of it. The Squire agreed with him that Jack deserved the cat-o’-nine tails, as did all other boys who traitorously decamped to sea.

Before the hay was all in, Aunt Dean was back at Timberdale, bringing Alice with her and the bills for the outfit. She let the parson think what he would about Jack, ignoring all knowledge of the letter, and affecting to believe that Jack could not have had it. But the parson argued that Jack must have had it, and did have it, or it would have come back to him. The only one to say a good word for Jack was Alice. She persisted in an opinion that Jack could not be either disobedient or ungrateful, and that there must have been some strange mistake somewhere.

Aunt Dean’s work was not all done. She took the poor parson under her wing, and proved to him that he had no resource now but to disinherit Jack, and made Herbert the heir. To leave money to Jack would be wanton waste, she urged, for he would be sure to squander it: better bequeath all to Herbert, who would of course look after his brother in later life, and help him if he needed help. So Mr. Hill, one of the Worcester solicitors, was sent for to Timberdale to receive instructions for making the parson’s will in Herbert’s favour, and to cut Jack off with a shilling.

That night, after Mr. Hill had gone back again, was one of the worst the parson had ever spent. He was a just man and a kind one, and he felt racked with fear lest he had taken too severe a measure, and one that his late wife, the true owner of the money and John’s mother, would never have sanctioned. His bed was fevered, his pillow a torment; up he got, and walked the room in his night-shirt.

“My Lord and God knoweth that I would do what is right,” he groaned. “I am sorely troubled. Youth is vain and desperately thoughtless; perhaps the boy, in his love of adventure, never looked at the step in the light of ingratitude. I cannot cut him quite off; I should never again find peace of mind if I did it. He shall have a little; and perhaps if he grows into a steady fellow and comes back what he ought to be, I may alter the will later and leave them equal inheritors.”

The next day the parson wrote privately to Mr. Hill, saying he had reconsidered his determination and would let Jack inherit to the extent of a hundred and fifty pounds a year.

Herbert came home for the long vacation; and he and Alice were together as they had been before that upstart Jack stepped in. They often came to the Squire’s and oftener to the Coneys’. Grace Coney, a niece of old Coney, had come to live at the farm; she was a nice girl, and she and Alice liked each other. You might see them with Herbert strolling about the fields any hour in the day. At home Alice and Herbert seemed never to care to separate. Mrs. Dean watched them quietly, and thought how beautifully her plans had worked.

Aunt Dean did not go home till October. After she left, the parson had a stroke of paralysis. Charles Ashton, then just ordained to priest’s orders, took the duty. Mrs. Dean came back again for Christmas. As if she would let Alice stay away from the Parsonage when Herbert was at home!

The Rose of Delhi did not come back for nearly two years. She was what is called a free ship, and took charters for any place she could make money by. One day Alice Dean was leaning out of the windows of her mother’s house, gazing wistfully on the sparkling sea, when a grand and stately vessel came sailing homewards, and some brown-faced young fellow on the quarter deck set on to swing his cap violently by way of hailing her. She looked to the flag which happened to be flying, and read the name there, “The Rose of Delhi.” It must be Jack who was saluting. Alice burst into tears of emotion.

He came up from the docks the same day. A great, brown, handsome fellow with the old single-hearted, open manners. And he clasped Alice in his arms and kissed her ever so many times before she could get free. Being a grown-up young lady now, she did not approve of unceremonious kissing, and told Jack so. Aunt Dean was not present, or she might have told him so more to the purpose.

Jack had given satisfaction, and was getting on. He told Alice privately that he did not like the sea so much as he anticipated, and could not believe how any other fellow did like it; but as he had chosen it as his calling, he meant to stand by it. He went to Timberdale, in spite of Aunt Dean’s advice and efforts to keep him away. Herbert was absent, she said; the Rector ill and childish. Jack found it all too true. Mr. Lewis’s mind had failed and his health was breaking. He knew Jack and was very affectionate with him, but seemed not to remember anything of the past. So never a word did Jack hear of his own disobedience, or of any missing letters.

One person alone questioned him; and that was Alice. It was after he got back from Timberdale. She asked him to tell her the history of his sailing in the Rose of Delhi, and he gave it in detail, without reserve. When he spoke of the postscript that Aunt Dean had bade him add to his letter, arranging that silence should be taken for consent, and that as no answer had come, he of course had so taken it, the girl turned sick and faint. She saw the treachery that had been at work and where it had lain; but for her mother’s sake she hushed it up and let the matter pass. Alice had not lived with her mother so many years without detecting her propensity for deceit.

Some years passed by. Jack got on well. He served as third mate on the Rose of Delhi long before he could pass, by law, for second. He was made second mate as soon as he had passed for it. The Rose of Delhi came in and went out, and Jack stayed by her, and passed for first mate in course of time. He was not sent back in any of his examinations, as most young sailors are, and the board once went the length of complimenting him on his answers. The fact was, Jack held to his word of doing his best; he got into no mischief and was the smartest sailor afloat. He was in consequence a favourite with the owners, and Captain Druce took pains with him and brought him on in seamanship and navigation, and showed him how to take observations, and all the rest of it. There’s no end of difference in merchant-captains in this respect: some teach their junior officers nothing. Jack finally passed triumphantly for master, and hoped his time would come to receive a command. Meanwhile he went out again as first mate on the Rose of Delhi.

One spring morning there came news to Mrs. Dean from Timberdale. The Rector had had another stroke and was thought to be near his end. She started off at once, with Alice. Charles Ashton had had a living given to him; and Herbert Tanerton was now his stepfather’s curate. Herbert had passed as shiningly in mods and divinity and all the rest of it as Jack had passed before the Marine Board. He was a steady, thoughtful, serious young man, did his duty well in the parish, and preached better sermons than ever the Rector had. Mrs. Dean, who looked upon him as Alice’s husband as surely as though they were married, was as proud of his success as though it had been her own.

The Rector was very ill and unable to leave his bed. His intellect was quite gone now. Mrs. Dean sat with him most of the day, leaving Alice to be taken care of by Herbert. They went about together just as always, and were on the best of confidential terms; and came over to the Coneys’, and to us when we were at Crabb Cot.

“Herbert,” said Mrs. Dean one evening when she had all her soft, sugary manner upon her and was making the young parson believe she had no one’s interest at heart in the world but his:“my darling boy, is it not almost time you began to think of marriage? None know the happiness and comfort brought by a good wife, dear, until they experience it.”

Herbert looked taken aback. He turned as red as a school-girl, and glanced half-a-moment at Alice, like a detected thief.

“I must wait until I have a living to think of that, Aunt Dean.”

“Is it necessary, Herbert? I should have thought you might bring a wife home to the Rectory here.”

Herbert turned the subject with a jesting word or two, and got out of his redness. Aunt Dean was eminently satisfied; his confusion and his hasty glance at Alice had told tales; and she knew it was only a question of time.

The Rector died. When the grass was long and the May-flowers were in bloom and the cuckoo was singing in the trees, he passed peacefully to his Rest. Just before death he recovered speech and consciousness; but the chief thing he said was that he left his love to Jack.

After the funeral the will was opened. It had not been touched since that long past year when Jack had gone away to sea. Out of the eight-hundred a year descended from their mother, Jack had a hundred and fifty; Herbert the rest. Aunt Dean made a hideous frown for once in her life; a hundred and fifty pounds a year for Jack, was only, as she looked upon it, so much robbery on Herbert and Alice. Out of the little money saved by the Rector, five hundred pounds were left to his sister, Rebecca Dean; the rest was to be divided equally between Herbert and Jack; and his furniture and effects went to Herbert. On the whole, Aunt Dean was tolerably satisfied.

She was a woman who liked strictly to keep up appearances, and she made a move to leave the young parson at the end of a week or two’s time, and go back to Liverpool. Herbert did not detain her. His own course was uncertain until a fresh Rector should be appointed. The living was in the gift of a neighbouring baronet, and it was fancied by some that he might give it to Herbert.One thing did surprise Mrs. Dean; angered her too: that Herbert had not made his offer to Alice before their departure. Now that he had his own fortune at command, there was no necessity to wait for a living.

News greeted them on their arrival. The Rose of Delhi was on her way home once more, with John Tanerton in command. Captain Druce had been left behind at Calcutta, dangerously ill. Alice’s colour came and went. She looked out for the homeward-bound vessels passing upwards, and felt quite sick with anxiety lest Jack should fail in any way, and never bring home the ship at all.

“The Rose of Delhi, Captain Tanerton.” Alice Dean cast her eyes on the shipping news in the morning paper, and read the announcement amidst the arrivals. Just for an instant her sight left her.

“Mamma,” she presently said, quietly passing over the newspaper,“the Rose of Delhi is in.”

“The Rose of Delhi, Captain Tanerton,” read Mrs. Dean. “The idea of their sticking in Jack’s name as captain! He will have to go down again as soon as Captain Druce returns. A fine captain I dare say he has made!”

“At least he has brought the ship home safely and quickly,”Alice ventured to say. “It must have passed after dark last night.”

“Why after dark?”

Alice did not reply—Because I was watching till daylight faded—which would have been the truth. “Had it passed before, some of us might have seen it, mamma.”

The day was waning before Jack came up. Captain Tanerton. Jack was never to go back again to his chief-mateship, as Aunt Dean had surmised, for the owners had given him permanent command of the Rose of Delhi. The last mail had brought news from Captain Druce that he should never be well enough for the command again, and the owners were only too glad to give it to the younger and more active man. Officers and crew alike reported that never a better master sailed than Jack had proved himself on this homeward voyage.

“Don’t you think I have been very lucky on the whole, Aunt Dean? Fancy a young fellow like me getting such a beautiful ship as that!”

“Oh, very lucky,” returned Aunt Dean.

Jack looked like a captain too. He was broad and manly, with an intelligent, honest, handsome face, and the quick keen eye of a sailor. Jack was particular in his attire too: and some sailors are not so: he dressed as a gentleman when on shore.

“Only a hundred and fifty left to me!” cried Jack, when he was told the news. “Well, perhaps Herbert may require more than I,poor fellow,” he added in his good nature; “he may not get a good living, and then he’ll be glad of it. I shall be sure to do well now I’ve got the ship.”

“You’ll be at sea always, Jack, and will have no use for money,”said Mrs. Dean.

“Oh, I don’t know about having no use for it, Aunt. Anyway, my father thought it right to leave it so, and I am content. I wish I could have said farewell to him before he died!”

A few more days, and Aunt Dean was thrown on her beam-ends at a worse angle than ever the Rose of Delhi hoped to be. Jack and Alice discussed matters between themselves, and the result was disclosed to her. They were going to be married.

It was Alice who told her. Jack had just left, and she and her mother were sitting together in the summer twilight. At first Mrs. Dean thought Alice was joking: she was like a mad woman when she found it true. Her great dream had never foreshadowed this.

“How dare you attempt to think of so monstrous a thing, you wicked girl? Marry your own brother-in-law!—it would be no better. It is Herbert that is to be your husband.”

Alice shook her head with a smile. “Herbert would not have me, mamma; nor would I have him. Herbert will marry Grace Coney.”

“Who?” cried Mrs. Dean.

“Grace Coney. They have been in love with each other ever so many years. I have known it all along. He will marry her as soon as his future is settled. I had promised to be one of the bridesmaids, but I suppose I shall not have the chance now.”

“Grace Coney—that beggarly girl!” shrieked Mrs. Dean. “But for her uncle’s giving her shelter she must have turned out in the world when her father died and earned her living how she could. She is not a lady. She is not Herbert’s equal.”

“Oh yes, she is, mamma. She is a very nice girl and will make him a perfect wife. Herbert would not exchange her for the richest lady in the land.”

“If Herbert chooses to make a spectacle of himself, you never shall!” cried poor Mrs. Dean, all her golden visions fast melting into air. “I would see that wicked Jack Tanerton at the bottom of the sea first.”

“Mother, dear, listen to me. Jack and I have cared for each other for years and years, and we should neither of us marry any one else. There is nothing to wait for; Jack is as well off as he will be for years to come: and—and we have settled it so, and I hope you will not oppose it.”

It was a cruel moment for Aunt Dean. Her love for other peoplehad been all pretence, but she did love her daughter. Besides that, she was ambitious for her.

“I can never let you marry a sailor, Alice. Anything but that.”

“It was you who made Jack a sailor, mother, and there’s no help for it,” said Alice, in low tones. “I would rather he had been anything else in the world. I should have liked him to have had land and farmed it. We should have done well. Jack had his four hundred a year clear, you know. At least, he ought to have had it. Oh, mother, don’t you see that while you have been plotting against Jack you have plotted against me?”

Aunt Dean felt sick with memories that were crowding upon her. The mistake she had made was a frightful one.

“You cannot join your fate to Jack’s, Alice,” she repeated, wringing her hands. “A sailor’s wife is too liable to be made a widow.”

“I know it, mother. I shall share his danger, for I am going out in the Rose of Delhi. The owners have consented, and Jack is fitting up a lovely little cabin for me that is to be my own saloon.”

“My daughter sail over the seas in a merchant ship!” gasped Aunt Dean. “Never!”

“I should be no true wife if I could let my husband sail without me. Mother, it is you alone who have carved out our destiny. Better have left it to God.”

In a startled way, her heart full of remorse, she was beginning to see it; and she sat down, half fainting, on a chair.

“It is a miserable prospect, Alice.”

“Mother, we shall get on. There’s the hundred and fifty a year certain, you know. That we shall put by; and, as long as I sail with him, a good deal more besides. Jack’s pay is settled at twenty pounds a month, and he will make more by commission: perhaps as much again. Have no fear for us on that score. Jack has been unjustly deprived of his birthright; and I think sometimes that perhaps as a recompense Heaven will prosper him.”

“But the danger, Alice! The danger of a sea-life!”

“Do you know what Jack says about the danger, mother? He says God is over us on the sea as well as on land and will take care of those who put their trust in Him. In the wildest storm I will try to let that great truth help me to feel peace.”

Alas for Aunt Dean! Arguments slipped away from her hands just as her plans had slipped from them. In her bitter repentance, she lay on the floor of her room that night and asked God to have pity upon her, for her trouble seemed greater than she could bear.

The morning’s post brought news from Herbert. He was made Rector of Timberdale. Aunt Dean wrote back, telling him whathad taken place, and asking, nay, almost commanding, that he should restore an equal share of the property to Jack. Herbert replied that he should abide by his stepfather’s will. The living of Timberdale was not a rich one, and he wished Grace, his future wife, to be comfortable. “Herbert was always intensely selfish,”groaned Aunt Dean. Look on which side she would, there was no comfort.

The Rose of Delhi, Captain Tanerton, sailed out of port again, carrying also with her Mrs. Tanerton, the captain’s wife. And Aunt Dean was left to bemoan her fate, and wish she had never tried to shape out other people’s destinies. Better, as Alice said, that she had left that to God.

CHAPTER VIII.

GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL.

We had to make a rush for it. And making a rush did not suit the Squire, any more than it does other people who have come to an age when the body’s heavy and the breath nowhere. He reached the train, pushed head-foremost into a carriage, and then remembered the tickets. “Bless my heart?” he exclaimed, as he jumped out again, and nearly upset a lady who had a little dog in her arms, and a mass of fashionable hair on her head, that the Squire, in his hurry, mistook for tow.

“Plenty of time, sir,” said a guard who was passing. “Three minutes to spare.”

Instead of saying he was obliged to the man for his civility, or relieved to find the tickets might still be had, the Squire snatched out his old watch, and began abusing the railway clocks for being slow. Had Tod been there he would have told him to his face that the watch was fast, braving all retort, for the Squire believed in his watch as he did in himself, and would rather have been told thathe could go wrong than that the watch could. But there was only me: and I wouldn’t have said it for anything.

“Keep two back-seats there, Johnny,” said the Squire.

I put my coat on the corner furthest from the door, and the rug on the one next to it, and followed him into the station. When the Squire was late in starting, he was apt to get into the greatest flurry conceivable; and the first thing I saw was himself blocking up the ticket-place, and undoing his pocket-book with nervous fingers. He had some loose gold about him, silver too, but the pocket-book came to his hand first, so he pulled it out. These flurried moments of the Squire’s amused Tod beyond everything; he was so cool himself.

“Can you change this?” said the Squire, drawing out one from a roll of five-pound notes.

“No, I can’t,” was the answer, in the surly tones put on by ticket-clerks.

How the Squire crumpled up the note again, and searched in his breeches pocket for gold, and came away with the two tickets andthe change, I’m sure he never knew. A crowd had gathered round, wanting to take their tickets in turn, and knowing that he was keeping them flurried him all the more. He stood at the back a moment, put the roll of notes into his case, fastened it and returned it to the breast of his over-coat, sent the change down into another pocket without counting it, and went out with the tickets in hand. Not to the carriage; but to stare at the big clock in front.

“Don’t you see, Johnny? exactly four minutes and a half difference,”he cried, holding out his watch to me. “It is a strange thing they can’t keep these railway clocks in order.”

“My watch keeps good time, sir, and mine is with the railway. I think it is right.”

“Hold your tongue, Johnny. How dare you! Right? You send your watch to be regulated the first opportunity, sir; don’tyou get into the habit of being too late or too early.”

When we finally went to the carriage there were some people in it, but our seats were left for us. Squire Todhetley sat down by the further door, and settled himself and his coats and his things comfortably, which he had been too flurried to do before. Cool as a cucumber was he, now the bustle was over; cool as Tod could have been. At the other door, with his face to the engine, sat a dark, gentleman-like man of forty, who had made room for us to pass as we got in. He had a large signet-ring on one hand, and a lavender glove on the other. The other three seats opposite to us were vacant. Next to me sat a little man with a fresh colour and gold spectacles, who was already reading; and beyond him, in the corner, face to face with the dark man, was a lunatic. That’s to mention him politely. Of all the restless, fidgety, worrying, hot-tempered passengers that ever put themselves into a carriage to travel with people in their senses, he was the worst. In fifteen moments he had made as many darts; now after his hat-box and things above his head; now calling the guard and the porters to ask senseless questions about his luggage; now treading on our toes, and trying the corner seat opposite the Squire, and then darting back to his own. He wore a wig of a decided green tinge, the effect of keeping, perhaps, and his skin was dry and shrivelled as an Egyptian mummy’s.

A servant, in undress livery, came to the door, and touched his hat, which had a cockade on it, as he spoke to the dark man.

“Your ticket, my lord.”

Lords are not travelled with every day, and some of us looked up. The gentleman took the ticket from the man’s hand and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

“You can get me a newspaper, Wilkins. The Times, if it is to be had.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Yes, there’s room here, ma’am,” interrupted the guard, sending the door back for a lady who stood at it. “Make haste, please.”

The lady who stepped in was the same the Squire had bolted against. She sat down in the seat opposite me, and looked at every one of us by turns. There was a sort of violet bloom on her face and some soft white powder, seen plain enough through her veil. She took the longest gaze at the dark gentleman, bending a little forward to do it; for, as he was in a line with her, and also had his head turned from her, her curiosity could only catch a view of his side-face. Mrs. Todhetley might have said she had not put on her company manners. In the midst of this, the man-servant came back again.

“The Times is not here yet, my lord. They are expecting the papers in by the next down-train.”

“Never mind, then. You can get me one at the next station, Wilkins.”

“Very well, my lord.”

Wilkins must certainly have had to scramble for his carriage, for we started before he had well left the door. It was not an express-train, and we should have to stop at several stations. Where the Squire and I had been staying does not matter; it has nothing to do with what I have to tell. It was a long way from our own home, and that’s saying enough.

“Would you mind changing seats with me, sir?”

I looked up, to find the lady’s face close to mine; she had spoken in a half-whisper. The Squire, who carried his old-fashioned notions of politeness with him when he went travelling, at once got up to offer her the corner. But she declined it, saying she was subject to face-ache, and did not care to be next the window. So she took my seat, and I sat down on the one opposite Mr. Todhetley.

“Which of the peers is that?” I heard her ask him in a loud whisper, as the lord put his head out at his window.

“Don’t know at all, ma’am,” said the Squire. “Don’t know many of the peers myself, except those of my own county: Lyttleton, and Beauchamp, and——”

Of all snarling barks, the worst was given that moment in the Squire’s face, suddenly ending the list. The little dog, an ugly, hairy, vile-tempered Scotch terrier, had been kept concealed under the lady’s jacket, and now struggled itself free. The Squire’s look of consternation was good! He had not known any animal was there.

“Be quiet, Wasp. How dare you bark at the gentleman? He will not bite, sir: he——”

“Who has a dog in the carriage?” shrieked the lunatic, startingup in a passion. “Dogs don’t travel with passengers. Here! Guard! Guard!”

To call out for the guard when a train is going at full speed is generally useless. The lunatic had to sit down again; and the lady defied him, so to say, coolly avowing that she had hidden the dog from the guard on purpose, staring him in the face while she said it.

After this there was a lull, and we went speeding along, the lady talking now and again to the Squire. She seemed to want to grow confidential with him; but the Squire did not seem to care for it, though he was quite civil. She held the dog huddled up in her lap, so that nothing but his head peeped out.

“Halloa! How dare they be so negligent? There’s no lamp in this carriage.”

It was the lunatic again, and we all looked at the lamp. It had no light in it; but that it had when we first reached the carriage was certain; for, as the Squire went stumbling in, his head nearly touched the lamp, and I had noticed the flame. It seems the Squire had also.

“They must have put it out while we were getting our tickets,”he said.

“I’ll know the reason why when we stop,” cried the lunatic, fiercely. “After passing the next station, we dash into the long tunnel. The idea of going through it in pitch darkness! It would not be safe.”

“Especially with a dog in the carriage,” spoke the lord, in a chaffing kind of tone, but with a good-natured smile. “We will have the lamp lighted, however.”

As if to reward him for interfering, the dog barked up loudly, and tried to make a spring at him; upon which the lady smothered the animal up, head and all.

Another minute or two, and the train began to slacken speed. It was only an insignificant station, one not likely to be halted at for above a minute. The lunatic twisted his body out of the window, and shouted for the guard long before we were at a standstill.

“Allow me to manage this,” said the lord, quietly putting him down. “They know me on the line. Wilkins!”

The man came rushing up at the call. He must have been out already, though we were not quite at a standstill yet.

“Is it for the Times, my lord? I am going for it.”

“Never mind the Times. This lamp is not lighted, Wilkins. See the guard, and get it done. At once.”

“And ask him what the mischief he means by his carelessness,”roared out the lunatic after Wilkins, who went flying off. “Sendingus on our road without a light!—and that dangerous tunnel close at hand.”

The authority laid upon the words “Get it done,” seemed an earnest that the speaker was accustomed to be obeyed, and would be this time. For once the lunatic sat quiet, watching the lamp, and for the light that was to be dropped into it from the top; and so did I, and so did the lady. We were all deceived, however, and the train went puffing on. The lunatic shrieked, the lord put his head out of the carriage and shouted for Wilkins.

No good. Shouting after a train is off never is much good. The lord sat down on his seat again, an angry frown crossing his face, and the lunatic got up and danced with rage.

“I do not know where the blame lies,” observed the lord. “Not with my servant, I think: he is attentive, and has been with me some years.”

“I’ll know where it lies,” retorted the lunatic. “I am a director on the line, though I don’t often travel on it. This is management, this is! A few minutes more and we shall be in the dark tunnel.”

“Of course it would have been satisfactory to have a light; but it is not of so much consequence,” said the nobleman, wishing to soothe him. “There’s no danger in the dark.”

“No danger! No danger, sir! I think there is danger. Who’s to know that dog won’t spring out and bite us? Who’s to know there won’t be an accident in the tunnel? A light is a protection against having our pockets picked, if it’s a protection against nothing else.”

“I fancy our pockets are pretty safe to-day,” said the lord, glancing round at us with a good-natured smile; as much as to say that none of us looked like thieves. “And I certainly trust we shall get through the tunnel safely.”

“And I’ll take care the dog does not bite you in the dark,” spoke up the lady, pushing her head forward to give the lunatic a nod or two that you’d hardly have matched for defying impudence.“You’ll be good, won’t you, Wasp? But I should like the lamp lighted myself. You will perhaps be so kind, my lord, as to see that there’s no mistake made about it at the next station!”

He slightly raised his hat to her and bowed in answer, but did not speak. The lunatic buttoned up his coat with fingers that were either nervous or angry, and then disturbed the little gentleman next him, who had read his big book throughout the whole commotion without once lifting his eyes, by hunting everywhere for his pocket-handkerchief.

“Here’s the tunnel!” he cried out resentfully, as we dashed with a shriek into pitch darkness.

It was all very well for her to say she would take care of the dog, but the first thing the young beast did was to make a spring at me and then at the Squire, barking and yelping frightfully. The Squire pushed it away in a commotion. Though well accustomed to dogs he always fought shy of strange ones. The lady chattered and laughed, and did not seem to try to get hold of him, but we couldn’t see, you know; the Squire hissed at him, the dog snarled and growled; altogether there was noise enough to deafen anything but a tunnel.

“Pitch him out at the window,” cried the lunatic.

“Pitch yourself out,” answered the lady. And whether she propelled the dog, or whether he went of his own accord, the beast sprang to the other end of the carriage, and was seized upon by the nobleman.

“I think, madam, you had better put him under your mantle and keep him there,” said he, bringing the dog back to her and speaking quite civilly, but in the same tone of authority he had used to his servant about the lamp. “I have not the slightest objection to dogs myself, but many people have, and it is not altogether pleasant to have them loose in a railway carriage. I beg your pardon; I cannot see; is this your hand?”

It was her hand, I suppose, for the dog was left with her, and he went back to his seat again. When we emerged out of the tunnel into daylight, the lunatic’s face was blue.

“Ma’am, if that miserable brute had laid hold of me by so much as the corner of my great-coat tail, I’d have had the law of you. It is perfectly monstrous that any one, putting themselves into a first-class carriage, should attempt to outrage railway laws, and upset the comfort of travellers with impunity. I shall complain to the guard.”

“He does not bite, sir; he never bites,” she answered softly, as if sorry for the escapade, and wishing to conciliate him. “The poor little bijou is frightened at darkness, and leaped from my arms unawares. There! I’ll promise that you shall neither see nor hear him again.”

She had tucked the dog so completely out of sight, that no one could have suspected one was there, just as it had been on first entering. The train was drawn up to the next station; when it stopped, the servant came and opened the carriage-door for his master to get out.

“Did you understand me, Wilkins, when I told you to get this lamp lighted?”

“My lord, I’m very sorry; I understood your lordship perfectly, but I couldn’t see the guard,” answered Wilkins. “I caught sight of him running up to his van-door at the last moment, but the trainbegan to move off, and I had to jump in myself, or else be left behind.”

The guard passed as he was explaining this, and the nobleman drew his attention to the lamp, curtly ordering him to “light it instantly.” Lifting his hat to us by way of farewell, he disappeared; and the lunatic began upon the guard as if he were commencing a lecture to a deaf audience. The guard seemed not to hear it, so lost was he in astonishment at there being no light.

“Why, what can have douted it?” he cried aloud, staring up at the lamp. And the Squire smiled at the familiar word, so common in our ears at home, and had a great mind to ask the guard where he came from.

“I lighted all these here lamps myself afore we started, and I see ’em all burning,” said he. There was no mistaking the home accent now, and the Squire looked down the carriage with a beaming face.

“You are from Worcestershire, my man.”

“From Worcester itself, sir. Leastways from St. John’s, which is the same thing.”

“Whether you are from Worcester, or whether you are from Jericho, I’ll let you know that you can’t put empty lamps into first-class carriages on this line without being made to answer for it!”roared the lunatic. “What’s your name! I am a director.”

“My name is Thomas Brooks, sir,” replied the man, respectfully touching his cap. “But I declare to you, sir, that I’ve told the truth in saying the lamps were all right when we started: how this one can have got douted, I can’t think. There’s not a guard on the line, sir, more particular in seeing to the lamps than I am.”

“Well, light it now; don’t waste time excusing yourself,” growled the lunatic. But he said nothing about the dog; which was surprising.

In a twinkling the lamp was lighted, and we were off again. The lady and her dog were quiet now: he was out of sight: she leaned back to go to sleep. The Squire lodged his head against the curtain, and shut his eyes to do the same; the little man, as before, never looked off his book; and the lunatic frantically shifted himself every two minutes between his own seat and that of the opposite corner. There were no more tunnels, and we went smoothly on to the next station. Five minutes allowed there.

The little man, putting his book in his pocket, took down a black leather bag from above his head, and got out; the lady, her dog hidden still, prepared to follow him, wishing the Squire and me, and even the lunatic, with a forgiving smile, a polite good morning. I had moved to that end, and was watching the lady’s wonderful back hair as she stepped out, when all in a moment the Squire sprang up with a shout, and jumping out nearly upon her, called out that he had been robbed. She dropped the dog, and I thought he must have caught the lunatic’s disorder and become frantic.

It is of no use attempting to describe exactly what followed. The lady, snatching up her dog, shrieked out that perhaps she had been robbed too; she laid hold of the Squire’s arm, and went with him into the station-master’s room. And there we were: us three, and the guard, and the station-master, and the lunatic, who had come pouncing out too at the Squire’s cry. The man in spectacles had disappeared for good.

The Squire’s pocket-book was gone. He gave his name and address at once to the station-master: and the guard’s face lighted with intelligence when he heard it, for he knew Squire Todhetley by reputation. The pocket-book had been safe just before we entered the tunnel; the Squire was certain of that, having felt it. He had sat in the carriage with his coat unbuttoned, rather thrown back; and nothing could have been easier than for a clever thief to draw it out, under cover of the darkness.

“I had fifty pounds in it,” he said; “fifty pounds in five-pound notes. And some memoranda besides.”

“Fifty pounds!” cried the lady, quickly. “And you could travel with all that about you, and not button up your coat! You ought to be rich!”

“Have you been in the habit of meeting thieves, madam, when travelling?” suddenly demanded the lunatic, turning upon her without warning, his coat whirling about on all sides with the rapidity of his movements.

“No, sir, I have not,” she answered, in indignant tones. “Have you?”

“I have not, madam. But, then, you perceive I see no risk in travelling with a coat unbuttoned, although it may have bank-notes in the pockets.”

She made no reply: was too much occupied in turning out her own pockets and purse, to ascertain that they had not been rifled. Re-assured on the point, she sat down on a low box against the wall, nursing her dog; which had begun its snarling again.

“It must have been taken from me in the dark as we went through the tunnel,” affirmed the Squire to the room in general and perhaps the station-master in particular. “I am a magistrate, and have some experience in these things. I sat completely off my guard, a prey for anybody, my hands stretched out before me, grappling with that dog, that seemed—why, goodness me! yes hedid, now that I think of it—that seemed to be held about fifteen inches off my nose on purpose to attack me. That’s when the thing must have been done. But now—which of them could it have been?”

He meant which of the passengers. As he looked hard at us in rotation, especially at the guard and station-master, who had not been in the carriage, the lady gave a shriek, and threw the dog into the middle of the room.

“I see it all,” she said, faintly. “He has a habit of snatching at things with his mouth. He must have snatched the case out of your pocket, sir, and dropped it from the window. You will find it in the tunnel.”

“Who has?” asked the lunatic, while the Squire stared in wonder.

“My poor little Wasp. Ah, villain! beast! it is he that has done all this mischief.”

“He might have taken the pocket-book,” I said, thinking it time to speak, “but he could not have dropped it out, for I put the window up as we went into the tunnel.”

It seemed a nonplus for her, and her face fell again. “There was the other window,” she said in a minute. “He might have dropped it there. I heard his bark quite close to it.”

“I pulled up that window, madam,” said the lunatic. “If the dog did take it out of the pocket it may be in the carriage now.”

The guard rushed out to search it; the Squire followed, but the station-master remained where he was, and closed the door after them. A thought came over me that he was stopping to keep the two passengers in view.

No; the pocket-book could not be found in the carriage. As they came back, the Squire was asking the guard if he knew who the nobleman was who had got out at the last station with his servant. But the guard did not know.

“He said they knew him on the line.”

“Very likely, sir. I have not been on this line above a month or two.”

“Well, this is an unpleasant affair,” said the lunatic impatiently;“and the question is—What’s to be done? It appears pretty evident that your pocket-book was taken in the carriage, sir. Of the four passengers, I suppose the one who left us at the last station must be held exempt from suspicion, being a nobleman. Another got out here, and has disappeared; the other two are present. I propose that we should both be searched.”

“I’m sure I am quite willing,” said the lady, and she got up at once.

I think the Squire was about to disclaim any wish so to act; but the lunatic was resolute, and the station-master agreed with him. There was no time to be lost, for the train was ready to start again, her time being up, and the lunatic was turned out. The lady went into another room with two women, called by the station-master, and she was turned out. Neither of them had the pocket-book.

“Here’s my card, sir,” said the lunatic, handing one to Mr. Todhetley.“You know my name, I dare say. If I can be of any future assistance to you in this matter, you may command me.”

“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire, as he read the name on the card. “How could you allow yourself to be searched, sir?”

“Because, in such a case as this, I think it only right and fair that every one who has the misfortune to be mixed up in it shouldbe searched,” replied the lunatic, as they went out together. “It is a satisfaction to both parties. Unless you offered to search me, you could not have offered to search that woman; and I suspected her.”

“Suspected her!” cried the Squire, opening his eyes.

“If I didn’t suspect, I doubted. Why on earth did she cause her dog to make all that row the moment we got into the tunnel? It must have been done then. I should not be startled out of my senses if I heard that that silent man by my side and hers was in league with her.”

The Squire stood in a kind of amazement, trying to recall what he could of the little man in spectacles, and see if things would fit into one another.

“Don’t you like her look?” he asked suddenly.

“No, I don’t,” said the lunatic, turning himself about. “I have a prejudice against painted women: they put me in mind of Jezebel. Look at her hair. It’s awful.”

He went out in a whirlwind, and took his seat in the carriage, not a moment before it puffed off.

“Is he a lunatic?” I whispered to the Squire.

“He a lunatic!” he roared. “You must be a lunatic for asking it, Johnny. Why, that’s—that’s——”

Instead of saying any more, he showed me the card, and the name nearly took my breath away. He is a well-known London man, of science, talent, and position, and of world-wide fame.

“Well, I thought him nothing better than an escaped maniac.”

“Did you?” said the Squire. “Perhaps he returned the compliment on you, sir. But now—Johnny, who has got my pocket-book?”

As if it was any use asking me? As we turned back to the station-master’s room, the lady came into it, evidently resenting the search, although she had seemed to acquiesce in it so readily.

“They were rude, those women. It is the first time I ever had the misfortune to travel with men who carry pocket-books to lose them, and I hope it will be the last,” she pursued, in scornful passion, meant for the Squire. “One generally meets with gentlemenin a first-class carriage.”

The emphasis came out with a shriek, and it told on him. Now that she was proved innocent, he was as vexed as she for having listened to the advice of the scientific man—but I can’t help calling him a lunatic still. The Squire’s apologies might have disarmed a cross-grained hyena; and she came round with a smile.

“If any one has got the pocket-book,” she said, as she stroked her dog’s ears, “it must be that silent man with the gold spectacles. There was no one else, sir, who could have reached you without getting up to do it. And I declare on my honour, that when that commotion first arose through my poor little dog, I felt for a moment something like a man’s arm stretched across me. It could only have been his. I hope you have the numbers of the notes.”

“But I have not,” said the Squire.

The room was being invaded by this time. Two stray passengers, a friend of the station-master’s, and the porter who took the tickets, had crept in. All thought the lady’s opinion must be correct, and said the spectacled man had got clear off with the pocket-book. There was no one else to pitch upon. A nobleman travelling with his servant would not be likely to commit a robbery; the lunatic was really the man his card represented him to be, for the station-master’s friend had seen and recognized him; and the lady was proved innocent by search. Wasn’t the Squire in a passion!

“That close reading of his was all a blind,” he said, in sudden conviction. “He kept his face down that we should not know him in future. He never looked at one of us! he never said a word! I shall go and find him.”

Away went the Squire, as fast as he could hurry, but came back in a moment to know which was the way out, and where it led to. There was quite a small crowd of us by this time. Some fields lay beyond the station at the back; and a boy affirmed that he had seen a little gentleman in spectacles, with a black bag in his hand, making over the first stile.

“Now look here, boy,” said the Squire. “If you catch that same man, I’ll give you five shillings.”

Tod could not have flown faster than the boy did. He took the stile at a leap; and the Squire tumbled over it after him. Some boys and men joined in the chase; and a cow, grazing in the field, trotted after us and brought up the rear.

Such a shout from the boy. It came from behind the opposite hedge of the long field. I was over the gate first; the Squire came next.

On the hedge of the dry ditch sat the passenger, his legs dangling, his neck imprisoned in the boy’s arms. I knew him at once. His hat and gold spectacles had fallen off in the scuffle; the black bag was wide open, and had a tall bunch of something green sticking up from it; some tools lay on the ground.

“Oh, you wicked hypocrite!” spluttered the Squire, not in the least knowing what he said in his passion. “Are you not ashamed to have played upon me such a vile trick? How dare you go about to commit robberies!”

“I have not robbed you, at any rate,” said the man, his voice trembling a little and his face pale, while the boy loosed the neck but pinioned one of the arms.

“Not robbed me!” cried the Squire. “Good Heavens! Who do you suppose you have robbed, if not me? Here, Johnny, lad, you are a witness. He says he has not robbed me.”

“I did not know it was yours,” said the man meekly. “Loose me, boy; I’ll not attempt to run away.”

“Halloa! here! what’s to do?” roared a big fellow, swinging himself over the gate. “Any tramp been trespassing?—anybody wanting to be took up? I’m the parish constable.”

If he had said he was the parish engine, ready to let loose buckets of water on the offender, he could not have been more welcome. The Squire’s face was rosy with satisfaction.

“Have you your handcuffs with you, my man?”

“I’ve not got them, sir; but I fancy I’m big enough and strong enough to take him without ’em. Something to spare, too.”

“There’s nothing like handcuffs for safety,” said the Squire, rather damped, for he believed in them as one of the country’s institutions. “Oh, you villain! Perhaps you can tie him with cords?”

The thief floundered out of the ditch and stood upon his feet. He did not look an ungentlemanly thief, now you came to see and hear him; and his face, though scared, might have been thought an honest one. He picked up his hat and glasses, and held them in his hand while he spoke, in tones of earnest remonstrance.

“Surely, sir, you would not have me taken up for this slight offence! I did not know I was doing wrong, and I doubt if the law would condemn me; I thought it was public property!”

“Public property!” cried the Squire, turning red at the words. “Of all the impudent brazen-faced rascals that are cheating the gallows, you must be the worst. My bank-notes public property!”

“Your what, sir?”

“My bank-notes, you villain. How dare you repeat your insolent questions?”

“But I don’t know anything about your bank-notes, sir,” said the man meekly. “I do not know what you mean.”

They stood facing each other, a sight for a picture; the Squire with his hands under his coat, dancing a little in rage, his face crimson; the other quite still, holding his hat and gold spectacles, and looking at him in wonder.

“You don’t know what I mean! When you confessed with your last breath that you had robbed me of my pocket-book!”

“I confessed—I have not sought to conceal—that I have robbed the ground of this rare fern,” said the man, handling carefully the green stuff in the black bag. “I have not robbed you or any one of anything else.”

The tone, simple, quiet, self-contained, threw the Squire in amazement. He stood staring.

“Are you a fool?” he asked. “What do you suppose I have to do with your rubbishing ferns?”

“Nay, I supposed you owned them; that is, owned the land. You led me to believe so, in saying I had robbed you.”

“What I’ve lost is a pocket-book, with ten five-pound bank-notes in it; I lost it in the train; it must have been taken as we came through the tunnel; and you sat next but one to me,” reiterated the Squire.

The man put on his hat and glasses. “I am a geologist and botanist, sir. I came here after this plant to-day—having seen it yesterday, but then I had not my tools with me. I don’t know anything about the pocket-book and bank-notes.”

So that was another mistake, for the botanist turned out of his pockets a heap of letters directed to him, and a big book he had been reading in the train, a treatise on botany, to prove who he was. And, as if to leave no loophole for doubt, one stepped up who knew him, and assured the Squire there was not a more learned man in his line, no, nor one more respected, in the three kingdoms. The Squire shook him by the hand in apologizing, and told him we had some valuable ferns near Dyke Manor, if he would come and see them.

Like Patience on a monument, when we got back, sat the lady, waiting to see the prisoner brought in. Her face would have made a picture too, when she heard the upshot, and saw the hot Squire and the gold spectacles walking side by side in friendly talk.

“I think still he must have got it,” she said, sharply.

“No, madam,” answered the Squire. “Whoever may have taken it, it was not he.”

“Then there’s only one man, and that is he whom you have let go on in the train,” she returned decisively. “I thought his fidgety movements were not put on for nothing. He had secured the pocket-book somewhere, and then made a show of offering to be searched. Ah, ha!”

And the Squire veered round again at this suggestion, and began to suspect he had been doubly cheated. First, out of his money, next out of his suspicions. One only thing in the whole bother seemed clear; and that was, that the notes and case had gone for good. As, in point of fact, they had.

We were on the chain-pier at Brighton, Tod and I. It was about eight or nine months after. I had put my arms on the rails at the end, looking at a pleasure-party sailing by. Tod, next to me, was bewailing his ill-fortune in not possessing a yacht and opportunities of cruising in it.

“I tell you No. I don’t want to be made sea-sick.”

The words came from some one behind us. It seemed almost as though they were spoken in reference to Tod’s wish for a yacht. But it was not that that made me turn round sharply; it was the sound of the voice, for I thought I recognized it.

Yes: there she was. The lady who had been with us in the carriage that day. The dog was not with her now, but her hair was more amazing than ever. She did not see me. As I turned, she turned, and began to walk slowly back, arm-in-arm with a gentleman. And to see him—that is, to see them together—made me open my eyes. For it was the lord who had travelled with us.

“Look, Tod!” I said, and told him in a word who they were.

“What the deuce do they know of each other?” cried Tod with a frown, for he felt angry every time the thing was referred to. Not for the loss of the money, but for what he called the stupidity of us all; saying always had he been there, he should have detected the thief at once.

I sauntered after them: why I wanted to learn which of the lords he was, I can’t tell, for lords are numerous enough, but I had had a curiosity upon the point ever since. They encountered some people and were standing to speak to them; three ladies, and a fellow in a black glazed hat with a piece of green ribbon round it.

“I was trying to induce my wife to take a sail,” the lord was saying, “but she won’t. She is not a very good sailor, unless the sea has its best behaviour on.”

“Will you go to-morrow, Mrs. Mowbray?” asked the man in the glazed hat, who spoke and looked like a gentleman. “I willpromise you perfect calmness. I am weather-wise, and can assure you this little wind will have gone down before night, leaving us without a breath of air.”

“I will go: on condition that your assurance proves correct.”

“All right. You of course will come, Mowbray?”

The lord nodded. “Very happy.”

“When do you leave Brighton, Mr. Mowbray?” asked one of the ladies.

“I don’t know exactly. Not for some days.”

“A muff as usual, Johnny,” whispered Tod. “That man is no lord: he is a Mr. Mowbray.”

“But, Tod, he is the lord. It is the one who travelled with us; there’s no mistake about that. Lords can’t put off their titles as parsons can: do you suppose his servant would have called him‘my lord,’ if he had not been one?”

“At least there is no mistake that these people are calling him Mr. Mowbray now.”

That was true. It was equally true that they were calling her Mrs. Mowbray. My ears had been as quick as Tod’s, and I don’t deny I was puzzled. They turned to come up the pier again with the people, and the lady saw me standing there with Tod. Saw me looking at her, too, and I think she did not relish it, for she took a step backward as one startled, and then stared me full in the face, as if asking who I might be. I lifted my hat.

There was no response. In another moment she and her husband were walking quickly down the pier together, and the other party went on to the end quietly. A man in a tweed suit and brown hat drawn low over his eyes, was standing with his arms folded, looking after the two with a queer smile upon his face. Tod marked it and spoke.

“Do you happen to know that gentleman?”

“Yes, I do,” was the answer.

“Is he a peer?”

“On occasion.”

“On occasion!” repeated Tod. “I have a reason for asking,” he added; “do not think me impertinent.”

“Been swindled out of anything?” asked the man, coolly.

“My father was, some months ago. He lost a pocket-book with fifty pounds in it in a railway carriage. Those people were both in it, but not then acquainted with each other.”

“Oh, weren’t they!” said the man.

“No, they were not,” I put in, “for I was there. He was a lord then.”

“Ah,” said the man, “and had a servant in livery no doubt, who came up my-lording him unnecessarily every other minute.He is a member of the swell-mob; one of the cleverest of thegentleman fraternity, and the one who acts as servant is another of them.”

“And the lady?” I asked.

“She is a third. They have been working in concert for two or three years now; and will give us trouble yet before their career is stopped. But for being singularly clever, we should have had them long ago. And so they did not know each other in the train! I dare say not!”

The man spoke with quiet authority. He was a detective come down from London to Brighton that morning; whether for a private trip, or on business, he did not say. I related to him what had passed in the train.

“Ay,” said he, after listening. “They contrived to put the lamp out before starting. The lady took the pocket-book during the commotion she caused the dog to make, and the lord received it from her hand when he gave her back the dog. Cleverly done! He had it about him, young sir, when he got out at the next station. She waited to be searched, and to throw the scent off. Very ingenious, but they’ll be a little too much so some fine day.”

“Can’t you take them up?” demanded Tod.

“No.”

“I will accuse them of it,” he haughtily said. “If I meet them again on this pier——”

“Which you won’t do to-day,” interrupted the man.

“I heard them say they were not going for some days.”

“Ah, but they have seen you now. And I think—I’m not quite sure—that he saw me. They’ll be off by the next train.”

“Who are they?” asked Tod, pointing to the end of the pier.

“Unsuspecting people whose acquaintance they have casually made here. Yes, an hour or two will see Brighton quit of the pair.”

And it was so. A train was starting within an hour, and Tod and I galloped to the station. There they were: in a first-class carriage: not apparently knowing each other, I verily believe, for he sat at one door and she at the other, passengers dividing them.

“Lambs between two wolves,” remarked Tod. “I have a great mind to warn the people of the sort of company they are in. Would it be actionable, Johnny?”

The train moved off as he was speaking. And may I never write another word, if I did not catch sight of the man-servant and his cockade in the next carriage behind them!

CHAPTER IX.

DICK MITCHEL.

I did not relate this story by my own wish. To my mind there’s nothing very much in it to relate. At the time it was written the newspapers were squabbling about farmers’ boys and field labour and political economy. “And,” said a gentleman to me, “as you were at the top and tail of the thing when it happened, and are well up in the subject generally, Johnny Ludlow, you may as well make a paper of it.” That was no other than the surgeon, Duffham.

About two miles from Dyke Manor across the fields, but in the opposite direction to that of the Court where the Sterlings lived, Elm Farm was situated. Mr. Jacobson lived in it, as his father had lived before him. The property was not their own; they rented it: it was fine land, and Jacobson had the reputation of being the best farmer for miles round. Being a wealthy man, he had no need to spare money on house or land, and did not spare it. He and the Squire were about the same age, and had been cronies all their lives.

Not to go into extraneous matter, I may as well say at once that one of the labourers on Jacobson’s farm was a man named John Mitchel. He lived in a cottage not far from us—a poor place consisting of two rooms and a wash-house; they call it back’us there—and had to walk nearly two miles to his work of a morning. Mitchel was a steady man of thirty-five, with a round head and not any great amount of brains inside it. Not but what he had as much brains as many labourers have, and quite enough for the sort of work his life was passed in. There were six children; the eldest, Dick, ten years old; and most of them had straw-coloured hair, the pattern of their father’s.

Just before the turn of harvest one hot summer, John Mitchel presented himself at Mr. Jacobson’s house in a clean smock frock, and asked a favour. It was, that his boy, Dick, should be taken on as ploughboy. Old Jacobson objected, saying the boy was too young and little. Little he might be, Mitchel answered, but not too young—warn’t he ten? The lad had been about the farm for some time as scarecrow: that is, employed to keep the birds away: and had a shilling a week for it. Old Jacobson stood to what he said, however, and little Dick did not get his promotion.

But old Jacobson got no peace. Every opportunity Mitchel could get, or dare to use, he began again, praying that Dick might be tried. The boy was “cute,” he said; strong enough also, though little; and if the master liked to pay him only fourpence a day, they’d be grateful for it; ’twould be a help, and was wanted badly. All of no use: old Jacobson still said No.

One afternoon during this time, we started to go to the Jacobsons’after a one-o’clock dinner,—I and Mrs. Todhetley. She was fond of going over to an early tea there, but not by herself, for part of the way across the fields was lonely. Considering that she had been used to the country, she was a regular coward as to lonely walks, expecting to see tramps or robbers at every corner. In passing the row of cottages in Duck Lane, for we took that road, we saw Hannah Mitchel leaning over the footboard of her door to look after her children, who were playing near the pond in the sunshine with a lot more; quite a heap of the little reptiles, all badly clad and as dirty as pigs. Other labourers’ dwellings stood within hail, and the children seemed to spring up in the place thicker than wheat; Mrs. Mitchel’s was quite a small family, reckoning by comparison, but how the six were clothed and fed was a mystery, out of Mitchel’s wages of ten shillings a week. It was thought good pay. Old Jacobson was liberal, as farmers go. He paid the best wages; gave all his labourers a stunning big portion of home-fed pork at Christmas, with fuel to cook it: and his wife was good to the women when they fell sick.

Mrs. Todhetley stopped to speak. “Is it you, Hannah Mitchel? Are you pretty well?”

Hannah Mitchel stood upright and dropped a curtsey. She had a bundle in her arms, which proved to be the baby, then not much above a fortnight old.

“Dear me! it’s very early for it to be about,” said Mrs. Todhetley, touching its little red cheeks. “And for you too.”

“It is, ma’am; but what’s to be done?” was the answer. “When there’s only one pair of hands for everything, one can’t afford to lie by long.”

“You seem but poorly,” said Mrs. Todhetley, looking at her. She was a thin, dark-haired woman, with a sensible face. Before she married Mitchel, she had lived as under-nurse in a gentleman’s family, where she picked up some idea of good manners.

“I be feeling a bit stronger, thank you,” said the woman.“Strength don’t come back to one in a day, ma’am.”

The Mitchel children were sidling up, attracted by the sight of the lady. Four young grubs in tattered garments.

“I can’t keep ’em decent,” said the mother, with a sigh of apology. “I’ve not got no soap nor no clothes to do it with. They come on so fast, and make such a many, one after another, that it’s getting a hard pull to live anyhow.”

Looking at the children; remembering that, with the father and mother, there were eight mouths to feed, and that the man’s wages were the ten shillings a week all the year round (but there were seasons when he did over-work and earned more), Mrs. Todhetley might well give her assenting answer with an emphatic nod.

“We was hoping to get on a bit better,” resumed the wife; “but Mitchel he says the master don’t seem to like to listen. A’most a three weeks it be now since Mitchel first asked it him.”

“In what way better?”

“By putting little Dick to the plough, ma’am. He gets a shilling a week now, he’d got two then, perhaps three, and ’twould be such a help to us. Some o’ the farmers gives fourpence halfpenny a day to a ploughboy, some as much as sixpence. The master he bain’t one of the near ones; but Dick be little of his age, he don’t grow fast, and Mitchel telled the master he’d take fourpence a day and be thankful for’t.”

Thoughts were crowding into Mrs. Todhetley’s mind—as she mentioned afterwards. A child of ten ought to be learning and playing; not working from twelve to fourteen hours a day.

“It would be a hard life for him.”

“True, ma’am, at first; but he’d get used to it. I could have wished the summer was coming on instead o the winter—’twould be easier for him to begin upon. Winter mornings be so dark and cold.”

“Why not let him wait until the next winter’s over?”

The very suggestion brought tears into Hannah Mitchel’s eyes.“You’d never say it, ma’am, if you knew how bad his wages is wanted and the help they’d be. The older children grows, the more they wants to eat; and we’ve got six of ’em now. What would you, ma’am?—they don’t bring food into the world with ’em; they must help to earn it for themselves as quick as anybody can be got to hire ’em. Sometimes I wonder why God should send such large families to us poor people.”

Mrs. Todhetley was turning to go on her way, when the woman in a timid voice said: “Might she make bold to ask, if she or Squire Todhetley would say a good word to Mr. Jacobson about the boy: that it would be just a merciful kindness.”

“We should not like to interfere,” replied Mrs. Todhetley. “Inany case I could not do it with a good heart: I think it would be so hard upon the poor little boy.”

“Starving’s harder, ma’am.”

The tears came running down her cheeks with the answer; and they won over Mrs. Todhetley.

Crossing the high, crooked, awkward stile—over which, in coming the other way, if people were not careful they generally pitched head first into Duck Lane—we found ourselves in what was called the square paddock, a huge piece of land, ploughed last year. The wheat had been carried from it only this afternoon, and the gleaners in their cotton bonnets were coming in. On, from thence, across other fields and stiles; we went a little out of our way to call at Glebe Cottage—a small white house that lay back amidst the fields—and inquire after old Mrs. Parry, who had just had a stroke.

Who should be at Elm Farm, when we got in, but the surgeon, Duffham: come on there from paying his daily visit to Mrs. Parry. He and old Jacobson were in the green-house, looking at the grapes: a famous crop they had that year; not ripe yet. Mrs. Jacobson sat at the open window of the long parlour, making a new jelly-bag. She was a pleasant-faced old lady, with small flat silver curls and a net cap.

Of course they got talking about little Dick Mitchel. Duffham knew the boy; seeing that when a doctor was wanted at the Mitchels’,it was he who attended. Mrs. Todhetley told exactly what had passed: and old Jacobson—a tall, portly man, with a healthy colour—grew nearly purple in the face, disputing.

Dick Mitchel would be of as good as no use for the team, he said, and the carters put shamefully upon those young ones. In another year the boy would be stronger and bigger. Perhaps he would take him then.

“For my part, I cannot think how the mothers can like their poor boys to go out so young,” cried the old lady, looking up from her flannel bag. “A ploughboy’s life is very hard in winter.”

“Hannah Mitchel says it has to be one of two things—early work or starving,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “And that’s pretty true.”

“Labourers’ boys are born to it, ma’am, and so it comes easy to’em: as skinning does to eels,” cried Duffham quaintly.

“Poor things, yes. But it is very hard upon the children. The worst is, all the labourers seem to have no end of them. Hannah Mitchel has just said she sometimes wonders why God should send so many to poor people.”

This was an unfortunate remark. To hear the two gentlemen laugh, you’d have thought they were at a Christmas pantomime. Old Jacobson brought himself up in a kind of passion.

What business, in the name of all that was imprudent, had these poor people to have their troops of children, he asked. They knew quite well they could not feed them; that the young ones would be three-parts starved in their earlier years, and in their later ones come to the parish and be a burden on the community. Look at this same man, Mitchel. His grandfather, a poor miserable labourer, had a troop of children; Mitchel’s father had a troop, twelve; he, Mitchel, had six, and seemed to be going on fair for six more. There was no reason in it. Why couldn’t they be content with a moderate number, three or four, that might have a chance of finding room in the world? It was not much less than a crime for these men, next door to paupers themselves, to launch their tens and their dozens of boys and girls into life, and then turn round and say, Why does God send them? Nice kind of logic, that was!

And so he kept on, for a good half-hour, Duffham helping him.He brought up the French peasantry: saying our folks ought to take a lesson from them. You don’t see whole flocks of children over there, cried Duffham. One, or two, or at most three, would be found to comprise the number of a family. And why? Because the French were a prudent race. They knew there was no provision for superfluous children; no house-room at home, or food, or clothing; and no parish pay to fall back upon: they knew that however many children they had they must provide for them: they didn’t set up, of themselves, a regiment of little famishing mouths, and then charge it on Heaven; they were not so reckless and wicked. Yes, he must repeat it, wicked; and the two ladies listening would endorse the word if they knew half the deprivation and the sufferings these poor small mortals were born to; he saw enough of it, having to be often amongst them.

“Why don’t you tell the parents this, doctor?”

Tell them! returned Duffham. He had told them; told them till his tongue was tired of talking.

Any way, the little things were grievously to be pitied, was what the two ladies answered.

“I have often wished it was not a sin to drown the superfluous little mites as we do kittens,” wound up Duff.

One of the ladies dropped the jelly-bag, the other shrieked out, Oh!

“For their sakes,” he added. “It’s true, upon my word of honour. Of all wrongs the world sees, never was there a worse wrong than the one inflicted on these inoffensive children by the parents, in bringing them into it. God help the little wretches! man can’t do much.”

And so they talked on. The upshot was, that old Jacobsonstood to his word, and declined to make Dick Mitchel a ploughboy yet awhile.

We had tea at four o’clock—at which fashionable people may laugh; considering that it was real tea, not the sham one lately come into custom. Mrs. Todhetley wanted to get home by daylight, and the summer evenings were shortening. Never was brown bread-and-butter so sweet as the Jacobsons’: we used to say it every time we went; and the home-baked rusks were better than Shrewsbury cake. They made Mrs. Todhetley put two or three in her bag for Hugh and Lena.

Old Duff went with us across the first field, turning off there to take the short-cut to his home. It was a warm, still, lovely evening, the moon rising. The gleaners were busy in the square paddock: Mrs. Todhetley spoke to some as we passed. At the other end, near the crooked stile, two urchins stood fighting, the bigger one trying to take a small armful of wheat from the other. I went to the rescue, and the marauder made off as fast as his small bare feet would carry him.

“He haven’t gleaned, hisself, and wants to take mine,” said the little one, casting up his big grey eyes to us appealingly through the tears. He was a delicate-looking pale-faced boy of nine, or so, with light hair.

“Very naughty of him,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Dick, lady.”

“Dick—what?”

“Dick Mitchel.”

“Dear me—I thought I had seen the face before,” said Mrs. Todhetley to me. “But there are so many boys about here, Johnny; and they all look pretty much alike. How old are you, Dick?”

“I’m over ten,” answered Dick, with an emphasis on the over. Children catch up ideas, and no doubt he was as eager as the parents could be to impress on the world his fitness to be a ploughboy.

“How is it that you have been gleaning, Dick?”

“Mother couldn’t, ’cause o’ the babby. They give me leave to come on since four o’clock: and I’ve got all this.”

Dick looked at the stile and then at his bundle of wheat, so I took it while he got over. As we went on down the lane, Mrs. Todhetley inquired whether he wanted to be a ploughboy. Oh yes! he answered, his face lighting up, as if the situation offered some glorious prospect. It ’ud be two shilling a week; happen more; and mother said as he and Totty and Sam and the t’others ’ud get treacle to their bread on Sundays then. Apparently Mrs. Mitchel knew how to diplomatize.

“I’ll give him one of the rusks, I think, Johnny,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley.

But while she was taking it from the bag, he ran in with his wheat. She called to him to come back, and gave him one. His mother had taken the wheat from him, and looked out at the door with it in her hands. Seeing her, Mrs. Todhetley went up, and said Mr. Jacobson would not at present do anything. The next minute Mitchel appeared pulling at his straw hair.

“It is hard lines,” he said, humbly, “when the lad’s of a’ age to be earning, and the master can’t be got to take him on. And me to ha’ worked on the same farm, man and boy; and father afore me.”

“Mr. Jacobson thinks the boy would not be strong enough for the work.”

“Not strong enough, and him rising eleven!” exclaimed Mitchel, as if the words were some dreadful aspersion on Dick. “How can he be strong if he gets no work to make him strong, ma’am? Strength comes with the working—and nobody don’t oughtn’t to know that better nor the master. Anyhow, if he don’t take him, it’ll be cruel hard lines for us.”

Dick was outside, dividing the rusk with a small girl and boy, all three seated in the lane, and looking as happy over the rusk as if they had been children in a fairy tale. “It’s Totty,” said he, pausing in the work of division to speak, “and that ’un’s Sam.”Mrs. Todhetley could not resist the temptation of finding two more rusks, which made one apiece.

“He is a good-natured little fellow, Johnny,” she remarked, as we went along. “Intelligent, too: in that he takes after his mother.”

“Would it be wrong to let him go on the farm as ploughboy?”

“Johnny, I don’t know. I’d rather not give an opinion,” she added, looking right before her into the moon, as if seeking for one there. “Of course he is not old enough or big enough, practically speaking; but on the other hand, where there are so many mouths to feed, it seems hard not to let him earn money if he can earn it. The root of the evil lies in there being so many mouths—as was said at Mr. Jacobson’s this afternoon.”

It was winter before I heard anything more of the matter. Tod and I got home for Christmas. One day in January, when the skies were lowering, and the air was cold and raw, but not frosty, I was crossing a field on old Jacobson’s land then being ploughed. The three brown horses at the work were as fine as you’d wish to see.

“You’ll catch it smart on that there skull o’ yourn, if ye doan’t keep their yeads straight, ye young divil.”

The salutation was from the man at the tail of the plough to the boy at the head of the first horse. Looking round, I saw little Mitchel. The horses stopped, and I went up to him. Hall, the ploughman, took the opportunity to beat his arms. I dare say they were cold enough.

“So your ambition is attained, is it, Dick? Are you satisfied?”

Dick seemed not to understand. He was taller, but the face looked pinched, and there was never a smile on it.

“Do you like being a ploughboy?”

“It’s hard and cold. Hard always; frightful cold of a morning.”

“How’s Totty?”

The face lighted up just a little. Totty weren’t any better, but she didn’t die; Jimmy did. Which was Jimmy?—Oh, Jimmy was after Nanny, next to the babby.

“What did Jimmy die of?”

Whooping cough. They’d all been bad but him—Dick. Mother said he’d had it when he was no older nor the babby.

Whether the whooping-cough had caused an undue absorption of Mitchel’s means, certain it was, Dick looked famished. His cheeks were thin, his hands blue.

“Have you been ill, Dick?”

No, he had not been ill. ’Twas Jimmy and the t’others.

“He’s the incapablest little villain I ever had put me to do with,”struck in the ploughman. “More lazy nor a fattened pig.”

“Are you lazy, Dick?”

I think an eager disclaimer was coming out, but the boy remembered in time who was present—his master, the ploughman.

“Not lazy wilful,” he said, bursting into tears. “I does my best: mother tells me to.”

“Take that, you young sniveller,” said Hall, dealing him a good sound slap on the left cheek. “And now go on: ye know ye’ve got this lot to go through to-day.”

He took hold of the plough, and Dick stretched up his poor trembling hands to the first horse to guide him. I am sure the boy was trying to do his best; but he looked weak and famished and ill.

“Why did you strike him, Hall? He did nothing to deserve it.”

“He don’t deserve nothing else,” was Hall’s answer. “Let him alone, and the furrows ’ud be as crooked as a dog’s leg. You dun’know what these young ’uns be for work, sir.—Keep ’em in the line, you fool!”

Looking back as I went down the field, I watched the ploughgoing slowly up it, Dick seeming to have his hands full with the well-fed horses.

“Yes, I heard the lad was taken on, Johnny,” Mrs. Todhetley said when I told her that evening. “Mitchel prevailed with his master at last. Mr. Jacobson is good-hearted, and knew the Mitchels were in sore need of the extra money the boy would earn. Sickness makes a difference to the poor as well as to the rich.”

I saw Dick Mitchel three or four times during that January. The Jacobsons had two nephews staying with them from Oxfordshire, and it caused us to go over often. The boy seemed a weak little mite for the place; but of course, having undertaken the work, he had to do it. He was no worse off than others. To be at the farm before six o’clock, he had to leave home at half-past five, taking his breakfast with him, which was chiefly dry bread. As to the boy’s work, it varied—as those acquainted with the executive of a busy farm can tell you. Besides the ploughing, he had to pump, and carry water and straw, and help with the horses, and go errands to the blacksmith’s and elsewhere, and so on. Carters and ploughmen do not spare their boys; and on a large farm like this they are the immediate rulers, not the master himself. Had Dick been under Mr. Jacobson’s personal eye, perhaps it might have been lightened a little, for he was a humane man. There were three things that made it seem particularly hard for Dick Mitchel, and those three were under no one’s control; his natural weakliness, his living so far from the farm, and its being winter weather. In summer the work is nothing like as hard for the boys; and it was a great pity that Dick had not first entered on his duties in that season to get inured to them before the winter. Mr. Jacobson gave him the best wages—three shillings a week. Looking at the addition it must have seemed to Mitchel’s ten, it was little wonder he had not ceased to petition old Jacobson.

The Jacobsons were kind to the boy—as I can affirm. One cold day when I was over there with the nephews, shooting birds, we went into the best kitchen at twelve o’clock for some pea-soup. They were going to carry the basins into the parlour, but we said we’d rather eat it there by the big blazing fire. Mrs. Jacobson came in. I can see her now, with a soft white woollen kerchief thrown over her shoulders to keep out the cold, and her net cap above her silver curls. We were getting our second basinfuls.

“Do have some, aunt,” said Fred. “It’s the best you ever tasted.”

“No, thank you, Fred. I don’t care to spoil my dinner.”

“It won’t spoil ours.”

She laughed a little, and stood looking from the window intothe fold-yard, saying presently that she feared the frost was going to set in now in earnest, which would not be pleasant for their journey.—For this was the last day of the nephews’ stay, and she was going home with them for a week. There had been no very severe cold all the winter; which was a shame because of the skating; if the ponds had a thin coating of ice on them one day, it would all melt the next.

“Bless me! there’s that poor child sitting out in the cold! What is he eating?—his dinner?”

Her words made us look from the window. Dick Mitchel had put himself down by the distant pig-sty, and seemed to be eating something that he held in his hands. He was very white—as might be seen even from where we stood.

“Mary,” said she to one of the servants, “go and call that boy in.”

Little Mitchel came in; pinched and blue. His clothes were thin, not half warm enough for the weather; an old red woollen comforter was twisted round his neck. He took off his battered drab hat, and put his bread into it.

“Is that your dinner?” asked Mrs. Jacobson.

“Yes’m,” said Dick, pulling the forelock of his light hair.

“But why did you not go home to-day?”

“Mother said there was nothing but bread for dinner to-day, and she give it me to bring away with my breakfast.”

“Well, why did you sit out in the cold? You might have gone indoors somewhere to eat it.”

“I were tired, ’m,” was all Dick answered.

To look at him, one would say the “tired” state was chronic. He was shivering slightly with the cold; his teeth chattered. Mrs. Jacobson took his hand, and put him to sit on a low wooden stool close to the fire, and gave him a basin of pea-soup.

“Let him have more if he can eat it,” she said to Mary when she went away. So the boy for once was well warmed and fed.

Now, it may be thought that Mrs. Jacobson, being a kind old lady, might have told him to come in for some soup every cold day. And perhaps her will was good to do it. But it would never have answered. There were boys on the farm besides Dick, and no favour could be shown to one more than to another. No, nor to the boys more than to the men. Nor to the men on this farm more than to the men on that. Old Jacobson would have had his brother farmers pulling his ears. Those of you who are acquainted with the subject will know all this.

And there’s another thing I had better say. In telling of Dick Mitchel, it will naturally sound like an exceptional or isolated case, because those who read have their attention directed to this oneand not to others. But, in actual fact, Dick’s was only one of a great many; the Jacobsons had employed ploughboys and other boys always; lots of them; some strong and some weak, just as the boys might happen to be. For a young boy to be out with the plough in the cold winter weather, seems nothing to a farmer and a farmer’s men: it lies in the common course of events. He has to get through as he best can; he must work to eat; and as a compensating balance there comes the warmth and the easy work of summer. Dick Mitchel was only one of the race; the carter and ploughman, his masters, had begun life exactly as he had, had gone through the same ordeal, the hardships of a long winter’s day and the frost and snow. Dick Mitchel was as capable of his duties as many another had been. Dick’s father had been little and weakly in his boyhood, but he got over that and grew as strong as the rest of them. Dick might have got over it, too, but for some extraordinary weather that set in.

Mrs. Jacobson had been in Oxfordshire a week when old Jacobson started to fetch her home, intending to stay there two or three days. The weather since she left had been going on in the same stupid way; a thin coating of snow to be seen one day, the green of the fields the next. But on the morning after old Jacobson started, the frost set in with a vengeance, and we got our skates out. Another day came in, and the Squire declared he had never felt anything to equal the cold. We had not had it as sharp for years: and then, you see, he was too fat to skate. The best skating was on a pond on old Jacobson’s land, which they called the lake from its size.

It was on this second day that I came across Dick Mitchel. Hastening home from the lake after dark—for we had skated till we couldn’t see and then kept on by moonlight—the skates in my hand and all aglow with heat, who should be sitting by the bank on this side the crooked stile instead of getting over it, but little Mitchel. But for the moon shining right on his face, I might have passed without seeing him.

“You are taking it airily, young Dick. Got the gout?”

Dick just lifted his head and stared a little; but didn’t speak.

“Come! Why don’t you go home?”

“I’m tired,” murmured Dick. “I’m cold.”

“Get up. I’ll help you over the stile.”

He did as he was bid at once. We had got well on down the lane, and I had my hand on his shoulder to steady him, for his legs seemed to slip about like Punch’s in the show, when he turned suddenly back again.

“The harness.”

“The what?” I said.

Something seemed the matter with the boy: it was just as if he had partly lost the power of speech, or had been struck stupid. I made out at last that he had left some harness on the ground, which he was ordered to take to the blacksmith’s.

“I’ll get over for it, Dick. You stop where you are.”

It was lying where he had been sitting; a short strap with a broken buckle. Dick took it and we went on again.

“Were you asleep, just now, Dick?”

“No, sir. It were the moon.”

“What was the moon?”

“I were looking into it. Mother says God’s all above there: I thought happen I might see Him.”

A long explanation for Dick to-night. The recovery of the strap seemed to have brightened up his intellect.

“You’ll never see Him in this world, Dick. He sees you always.”

“And that’s what mother says. He sees I can’t do more nor my arms’ll let me. I’d not like Him to think I can.”

“All right, Dick. You only do your best always; He won’t fail to see it.”

I had hardly said the last words when down went Dick without warning, face foremost. Picking him up, I took a look into his eyes by the moonlight.

“What did you do that for, Dick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it your legs?”

“Yes, it’s my legs. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it when I fell under the horses to-day, but Hall he beated of me and said I did.”

After that I did not loose him; or I’m sure he would have gone down again. Arrived at his cottage, he was for passing it.

“Don’t you know your own door, Dick Mitchel?”

“It’s the strap,” he said. “I ha’ got to take it to Cawson’s.”

“Oh, I’ll step round with that. Let’s see what there is to do.”

He seemed unwilling, saying he must take it back to Hall in the morning. Very well, I said, so he could. We went in at his door; and at first I thought I must have got into a black fog. The room was a narrow, poking place; but I couldn’t see across it. Two children were coughing, one choking, one crying. Mrs. Mitchel’s face, ornamented with blacks, gradually loomed out to view through the atmosphere.

“It be the chimbley, sir. I hope you’ll please to excuse it. It don’t smoke as bad as this except when the weather’s cold beyond common.”

“It’s to be hoped it doesn’t. I should call it rather miserable if it did.”

“Yes, sir. Mitchel, he says he thinks the chimbley must have frozed.”

“Look here, Mrs. Mitchel, I’ve brought Dick home: I found him sitting in the cold on the other side of the stile, and my belief is, he thought he could not get over it. He is about as weak as a young rat.”

“It’s the frost, sir,” she said. “The boys all feel it that has to be out and about. It’ll soon be gone, Dick. This here biting cold don’t never last long.”

Dick was standing against her, bending his face on her old stuff gown. She put her arm about him kindly.

“No, it can’t last long, Mrs. Mitchel. Could he not be kept indoors until it gives a bit—let him have a holiday? No? Wouldn’t it do?”

She opened her eyes wide at this. Such a thing as keeping a ploughboy at home for a holiday, had never entered her imagination.

“Why, Master Ludlow, sir, he’d lose his place!”

“But, suppose he were ill, and had to stay at home?”

“Then the Lord help us, if it came to that! Please, sir, his wages might be stopped. I’ve heard of a master paying in illness, though it’s not many of ’em as would, but I’ve never knowed ’em pay for holidays. The biting cold will go soon, Dick,” she added, looking at him; “don’t be downhearted.”

“I should give him a cup of hot tea, Mrs. Mitchel, and let him go to bed. Good night; I’m off.”

I should have liked to say beer instead of tea; it would have put a bit of strength into the boy; but I might just as well have suggested wine, for all they had of either. Leaving the strap at the blacksmith’s—it was but a minute or two out of my road—I told him to send it up to Mitchel’s as soon as it was done.

“I dare say!” was what I got in answer.

“Look here, Cawson: the lad’s ill, and his father was not in the way. If you don’t choose to let your boy run up with that, or take it yourself, you shall never have another job of work from the Squire if I can prevent it.”

“I’ll send it, sir,” said Cawson, coming to his senses. Not that he had much from us: we chiefly patronized Dovey, down in Piefinch Cut.

Now, all this happened: as Duffham and others could testify if necessary; it is not put in to make up a story. But I never thought worse of Dick than that he was done over for the moment with the cold.

Of all days in remembrance, the next was the worst. The cold was more intense—though that had seemed impossible; and a fierce wind was blowing that cut you in two. It kept us from skating—and that’s saying a good deal. We got half-way to the lake, and couldn’t stand it, so turned home again. Jacobson’s team was out, braving the weather: we saw it at a distance.

“What a fool that waggoner must be to bring out the team to-day!”cried Tod. “He can’t do any good on this hard ground. He must be doing it for bravado. It is a sign his master’s not at home.”

In the afternoon, when a good hot meal had put warmth into us, we thought we’d be off again; and this time gained the pond. The wind was like a knife; I never skated in anything like it before; but we kept on till dusk.

Going homewards, in passing Glebe Cottage, which lay away on the left, we caught sight of three or four people standing before it.

“What’s to do there?” asked Tod of a man, expecting to hear that old Mrs. Parry had had a second stroke.

“Sum’at’s wrong wi’ Jacobson’s ploughboy,” was the answer.“He has just been took in there.”

“Jacobson’s ploughboy! Why, Tod, that must be Dick Mitchel.”

“And what if it is!” returned Tod, starting off again. “The youngster’s half frozen, I dare say. Let us get home. Johnny. What are you stopping for?”

By saying “half frozen” he meant nothing. Not a thought of real ill was in his mind. I went across to the house; and met Hall the ploughman coming out of it.

“Is Dick Mitchel ill, Hall?”

“He ought to be, sir; if he bain’t shamming,” returned Hall, crustily. “He have fell down five times since noon, and the last time wouldn’t get up upon his feet again nohow. Being close a-nigh the old lady’s I carried of him in.”

Hall went back to the house with me. I don’t think he much liked the boy’s looks. Dick had been put to lie on the warm brick floor before the kitchen fire, a blanket on his legs, and his head on a cushion. Mrs. Parry was ill in bed upstairs. The servant looked a stupid young country girl, seemingly born without wits.

“Have you given him anything?” I asked her.

“Please, sir, I’ve put the kettle on to bile.”

“Is there any brandy in the house?”

“Brandy!” the girl exclaimed with wonder. No. Her missis never took anything stronger nor tea and water gruel.

“Hall,” I said, looking at the man, “some one must go for Mr. Duffham. And Dick’s mother might as well be told.”

Bill Leet, a strapping young fellow standing by, made off at this, saying he’d bring them both. Hall went away to his team, and I stooped over the boy.

“What is the matter, Dick? Tell me how you feel.”

Except that Dick smiled a little, he made no answer. His eyes, gazing up into mine, looked dim. The girl had taken away the candle, but the fire was bright. As I took one of his hands to rub it, his fingers clasped themselves round mine. Then he began to say something, with a pause between each word. I had to bend close to catch it.

“He—brought—that—there—strap.”

“All right, Dick.”

“Thank—ee—sir.”

“Are you in any pain, Dick?”

“No.”

“Or cold?”

“No.”

The girl came back with a candle and some hot milk in a tea-cup. I put a teaspoonful into Dick’s mouth. But he could not swallow it. Who should come rushing in then but old Jones the constable, wanting to know what was up.

“Well I never!—why, that’s Mitchel’s Dick!” cried Jones, peering down in the candle-light. “What’s took him?”

“Jones, if you and the girl will rub his hands, I’ll go and get some brandy. We can’t let him lie like this and give him nothing.”

Old Jones, liking the word brandy on his own score, knelt down on his fat gouty legs with a groan, and laid hold of one of the hands, the girl taking the other. I went leaping off to Elm Farm.

And went for nothing. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson being out, the cellar was locked up, and no brandy could be got at. The cook gave me a bottle of gooseberry wine; which she said might do as well if hotted up.

Duffham was stooping over the boy when I got back, his face long, and his cane lying on the ironing-board. Bill Leet had met him half-way, so no time was lost. He was putting something into Dick’s lips with a teaspoon—perhaps brandy. But it ran the wrong way; out instead of in. Dick never stirred, and his eyes were shut. The doctor got up.

“Too late, Johnny,” he whispered.

The words startled me. “Mr. Duffham! No?”

He looked into my eyes, and nodded Yes. “The exposure to-day has been too much for him. He is going fast.”

And just at that moment Hannah Mitchel came in. I have often thought that the extreme poor, whose lives are but one vasthardship from the cradle to the grave, who have to struggle always, do not feel strong emotion. At any rate, they don’t show much. Hannah Mitchel knelt down, and looked quietly at the white, shrunken face.

“Dicky,” she said, putting his hair gently back from his brow; which now had a damp moisture on it. “What’s amiss, Dicky?”

He opened his eyes at the voice and feebly lifted one hand towards her. Mrs. Mitchel glanced round at the doctor’s face; and I think she read the truth there. She gathered his poor head into her arms, and let it rest on her bosom. Her old black shawl was on, her bonnet fell backwards and hung from her neck by the strings.

“Oh, Dicky! Dicky!”

He lay still, looking at her. She gave one sob and choked the rest down.

“Be he dying, sir?—ain’t there no hope?” she cried to Mr. Duffham, who was standing in the blaze of the fire. And the doctor just moved his head for answer.

There was a still hush in the kitchen. Her tears began to fall down her cheeks slowly and softly.

“Dicky, wouldn’t you like to say ‘Our Father’?”

“I—’ve—said—it,—mother.”

“You’ve always been a good boy, Dicky.”

Old Jones blew his nose; the stupid girl burst into a sob. Mr. Duffham told them to hush.

Dick’s eyes were slowly closing. The breath was very faint now, and came at long intervals. Presently Mr. Duffham took him from his mother, and laid him down flat, without the cushion.

Well, he died. Poor little Dick Mitchel died. And I think, taking the wind and the work into consideration, that he was better off.

Mr. Jacobson got back the next day. He sharply taxed the ploughman with the death, saying he ought to have seen the state the boy was in on that last bitter day, and have sent him home. But Hall declared he never thought anything ailed the boy, except that the cold was cutting him more than ordinary, just as it was cutting everybody else.

The county coroner came over to hold the inquest. The jury, after hearing what Mr. Duffham had to say, brought it in that Richard Mitchel died from exposure to the cold during the recent remarkable severity of the weather, not having sufficient stamina to resist it. Some of the local newspapers took it up, being in want of matter that dreary season. They attacked the farmers; asking the public whether labourers’ children were to be held as of no more value than this, in a free and generous country likeEngland, and why they were made to work so young by such hard and wicked task-masters as the master of Elm Farm. That put the master of Elm Farm on his mettle. He retorted by a letter of sharp good sense; finishing it with a demand to know whether the farmers were expected to club together to provide meat and puddings gratis for the flocks of children that labourers chose to gather about them. The Squire read it aloud to every one, as the soundest letter he’d ever seen written.

“I am afraid their view is the right one—that the children are too thick on the ground, poor things,” sighed Mrs. Todhetley.“Any way, Johnny, it is very hard on the young ones to have to work as poor little Dick did: late and early, wet or dry: and I am glad for his sake that God has taken him.”

CHAPTER X.

A HUNT BY MOONLIGHT.

This is another tale of our school life. It is not much in itself, you may say, but it was to lead to lasting events. Curious enough, it is, to sit down and trace out the beginning of things: when we cantrace it; but it is often too remote for us.

Mrs. Frost died, and the summer holidays were prolonged in consequence. September was not far off when we met again, and gigs and carriages went bowling up with us and our boxes.

Sanker was in the large class-room when we got in. He looked up for a minute, and turned his head away. Tod and I went up to him. He did shake hands, and it was as much as you could say. I don’t think he was the sort of fellow to bear malice; but it took time to bring him round if once offended.

Sanker had gone home with us to Dyke Manor when the holidays began. He belonged to a family in Wales (very poor they were now), and was a distant cousin of Mrs. Todhetley’s. Before he had been with us long, a matter occurred that put him out, and he betook himself away from the Manor there and then. But I do not intend to go into that history now.

Things had been queer at school towards the close of the past term. Petty pilferings took place: articles and money alike disappeared. A thief was amongst us, and no mistake: but we did not know where to look for him. It was to be hoped that the same thing would not occur again.

“My father and Mrs. Todhetley are in the drawing-room,” said Tod. “They are asking to see you.”

Sanker hesitated; but he went at last. The interview softened things a little, for he was civil to us when he came back again.

“What’s that about the plants?” he asked me.

I told him what. They had been destroyed in some unaccountable manner. “Whether it was done intentionally, or whether moving them into the hall and back again did it, is not positively decided; I don’t suppose it ever will be. You ought to have come over to that ball, Sanker, after all of us writing to press it.”

“Well,” he said, coldly. “I don’t care for balls. Monk was suspected, was he not?”

“Yes. Some of us suspect him still. He was savage at being accused of—But never mind that”—and I pulled myself up in sudden recollection. “Monk has left, and we have engaged another gardener. Jenkins is not good for much.”

“Hallo! What has he come back?”

Ned Sanker was looking towards the door as he spoke. Two of them were coming in, who must have arrived at the same time—Vale and Lacketer. They were new ones, so to say, both having entered only last Easter. Vale was a tall, quiet fellow, with a fair, good-looking face and mild blue eyes; his friends lived at Vale Farm, about two miles off. Lacketer had sleek black hair, and a sharp nose; he had only an aunt, and was from Oxfordshire. I didn’t like him. He had a way of cringing to those of us who were born to position in the world; but any poor friendless chap, who had nothing but himself and his work to get on by, he put upon shamefully. As for him, we couldn’t find out that he’d ever had any relations at all, except the aunt.

I looked at Sanker, to see which he alluded to; his eyes were fixed on Vale with a stare. Vale had not been going to leave, that the school knew of.

“Why are you surprised that he has come back, Sanker?”

“Because I—didn’t suppose he would,” said Sanker, with a pause where I have put it, and an uncommonly strong emphasis on the “would.”

It was just as though he had known something about Vale. Flashing across my memory came the mysterious avowal Sanker had made at our house about the discovery of the thief at school; and I now connected the one with the other. They call me a muff, I know, but I cannot help my thoughts.

“Sanker! was he the thief?”

“Hold your tongue, Ludlow,” returned Sanker, in a fright. “I told you I’d give him a chance again, didn’t I? But I never thought he would come back to take it.”

“I would have believed it of any fellow rather than of Vale.”

Sanker turned his face sharp, and looked at me. “Oh, would you?” said he, after a pause. “Well, then, you’d better believe it of any other. Mind you do. It will be safer, Johnny Ludlow.”

He walked away into a group of them, as if afraid of my saying more. I turned out at the door leading to the playground, and came upon Tod in the porch.

“What was that you and Sanker were saying about Vale, Johnny?”

I was aware that I ought not to tell him; I knew I ought not:but I did. Tod read me always as one reads a book, and I had never attempted to keep from him any earthly thing.

“Sanker says it was Vale. About the things lost last half. He told me, you know, that he had discovered who it was that took them.”

“What, he the thief! Vale?”

“Hush, Tod. Give him another chance, as Sanker says.”

Tod rushed out of the porch with a bound. He had heard a movement on the other side the trellis-work, but was only in time to catch a glimpse of a tassel disappearing round the corner.

We went in for noise at Worcester House just as much as they do at other schools; but not this afternoon. Mrs. Frost had been a favourite, and Sanker told us about her funeral. Things seemed to wear a mournful look. The servants were in black, the Doctor was in jet black, even to his gaiters. He wore the old style of dress always, knee breeches and buckles: but I have mentioned this before. We used to call him old Frost; this afternoon we said“the Doctor.”

“You can’t think what it was like while the house was shut up,”said Sanker. “Coal-pits are jolly to it. I never saw the Doctor until the funeral. Being the only fellow at school, was, I suppose, the reason they asked me to go to it. He cried ever so much over the grave.”

“Fancy old Frost crying!” interrupted Lacketer.

“I cried too,” avowed Sanker, in a short sharp tone, as if disapproving of the remark; and it silenced Lacketer. “She had been ailing a long time, as we all knew, but she only grew very ill at the last, she told me.”

“When did you see her?”

“Two days before she died. Hall came to me, saying I was to go up. It was on Wednesday at sunset. The hot red sun was shining right into the room, and she sat back from it on the sofa in a white gown. It was very hot these holidays, and she felt at times fit to die of it: she never bore heat well.”

To hear Sanker tell this was nearly as good as a play. A solemn play I mean. None of us made the least noise as we stood round him: it seemed as if we could see Mrs. Frost’s room, and her nice placid face, drawn back from the rays of the red hot sun.

“She told me to reach a little Bible that was on the drawers, and sit close to her and read a chapter,” continued Sanker. “It was the seventh of St. John’s Revelation; where that verse is, that says there shall be no more hunger and thirst; neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat. She held my hand while I read it. I had complained of the light for her, saying what a pity it was the room had no shutters. ‘You see,’ she said, when thechapter was read, ‘how soon all discomforts here will pass away. Give my dear love to the boys when they come back,’ she went on. ‘Tell them I should like to have seen them all and said good-bye. Not good-bye for ever; be sure tell them that, Sanker: I leave them all a charge to come to me there in God’s good time. Not one of them must fail.’ And now I’ve told you, and it’s off my mind,” concluded Sanker, in a different voice.

“Did you see her again?”

“When she was in her coffin. She gave me the Bible.”

Sanker took it out of his pocket. His name was written in it,“Edward Brooke Sanker, with Mary Frost’s love.” She had made him promise to read in it daily, if he began only with one verse. He did not tell us that then.

While we were looking at the writing, Bill Whitney came in. Some of them thought he had left at Midsummer. Lacketer shook hands; he made much of Whitney, after the fashion of his mind and manners. Old Whitney was a baronet, and Bill would be Sir William sometime: for his elder brother, John, whom we had so much liked, was dead. Bill was good-natured, and divided hampers from home liberally.

“I don’t know why I am back again,” he said, in answer to questions; “you must ask Sir John. I shall be the better for another year or two of it, he says. Who likes grapes?”

He was beginning to undo a basket he had brought with him: it was filled with grapes, peaches, plums, and nectarines. Those of us who had plenty of fruit at home did not care to take much; but the others went in for it eagerly.

“Our peaches are finer than these, Whitney,” cried Vale.

Lacketer gave Vale a push. “You big lout, mind your manners!”cried he. “Don’t eat the peaches if you don’t like ’em.”

“So they were,” said Vale, who never answered offensively.

“There! that’s enough insolence from you.”

Old Vale was Sir John Whitney’s tenant. Of course, according to Lacketer’s creed, Vale deserved putting down for only speaking to Whitney.

“He is right,” said Whitney, who thought no more of being his father’s son than he would of being a shopkeeper’s. “Mr. Vale’s peaches this year were the finest in the county. He sent my mother some, and she said they ought to have gone up to a London fruit-show.”

“I never saw such peaches as Mr. Vale’s,” put in Sanker, talking at Lacketer, and not kindly. “And the flavour was as good as the look. Mrs. Frost enjoyed those peaches to the last: it was almost the only thing she took.”

Vale’s face shone. “We shall always be glad at home that they were so good this year, for her sake.”

Altogether, Lacketer was shut up. He stood over Whitney, who was undoing a small desk he had brought. Amidst the things, that lay on the ledge inside, was a thin, yellow, old-fashioned-looking coin.

“It’s a guinea,” said Bill Whitney. “I mean to have a hole bored in it and wear it to my watch-chain.”

“I’d lock it up safely until then, Whitney,” burst forth Snepp, who came from Alcester. “Or it may go after the things that were lost last half-year.”

Turning to glance at Sanker, I found he had left the room. Whitney was balancing the guinea on his finger.

“Fore-warned, fore-armed, Snepp,” he said. “Who the thief was, I can’t think; but I advise him not to begin his game again.”

“Talking of warning, I should like to give one on my own score,”said Tod. “By-gones may be by-gones; I don’t wish to recur to them; but if I lose anything this half and can find the thief, I’ll put him into the river.”

“What, to drown him?”

“To duck him. I’ll do it as sure as my name’s Todhetley.”

Vale dropped his handkerchief and stooped to pick it up again. It might have been an accident; and the redness of his face might have come of stooping; but I saw Tod did not think so. Ducking is the favourite punishment in Worcestershire for a public offender, as all the county knows. When a man misbehaves himself on the race-course at Worcester, they duck him in the Severn underneath.

“The guinea would not be of much use to any one,” said Lacketer. “You couldn’t pass it.”

“Oh, couldn’t you, though!” answered Whitney. “You’d better try. It’s worth twenty-one shillings, and they might give a shilling or two in for the antiquity of the coin.”

“Gentlemen.”

We turned to see the Doctor, standing there in his deep mourning, with his subdued red face. He came in to introduce a new master.

The time went on. We missed Mrs. Frost; and Hall, the crabbed woman with the cross face, made a mean substitute. She had it all her own way now. The puddings had less jam in them, and the pies hardly any fruit. Little Landon fell ill; and one day, after hours, when some of us went up to see him, we found him crying for Mrs. Frost. He was only seven; the youngest in the school, and made a sort of plaything of; an orphan with no friends to see to him much. Illness had been Mrs. Frost’s great point. Any of us who were laid by she’d sit with half the day, reading nice stories, and talking to us of good things, just as our mothers might do. Iknow mine would if she had lived. However, we managed to get along in spite of Hall, hoping the Doctor would find her out and discharge her.

Matters went on quietly for some weeks. No one lost anything: and we had almost forgotten there had been a doubt that we might lose something, when it occurred. The loss was Tod’s—rather curious, at first sight, that it should be, after his threat of what he would do. And Tod, as they all knew, was not one to break his word. It was only half-a-crown; but there could be no certainty that sovereigns would not go next. Not to speak of the disagreeable sense of feeling the thief was amongst us still, and taking to his tricks again.

Tod was writing to Evesham for some articles he wanted. Bill Whitney, knowing this, got him to add an order for some stationery for himself: which came back in the parcel. The account, nine-and-tenpence, was made out to Tod (“Joseph Todhetley, Esquire!”),half-a-crown of it being Whitney’s portion. Bill handed him the half-crown at once; and Tod, who was busy with his own things and had his hands full, asked him to put it on the mantelpiece.

The tea-bell rang, and they went away and forgot it. Only they two had been in the room. But others might have gone in afterwards. We were getting up from tea when Tod called to me to go and fetch him the half-crown.

“It is on the mantelpiece, Johnny.”

I went through the passages and turned into the box-room; a place where knots of us gathered sometimes. But the mantelpiece had no half-crown on it, and I carried the news back to Tod.

“Did you take it up again, Bill?” he asked of Whitney.

“I didn’t touch it after I put it down,” said Whitney. “It was there when the tea-bell rang.”

They said I had overlooked it, and both went to the box-room. I followed slowly; thinking they should search for themselves. Which they did; and were standing with blank faces when I got in.

“It has gone after my guinea,” Whitney was saying.

“What guinea?”

“My guinea. The one you saw. That disappeared a week ago.”

Bill was not a fellow to make much row over anything; but Tod—and I, too—wondered at his having taken it so easily. Tod asked him why he had not spoken.

“Because Lacketer—who was with me when I discovered the loss—asked me to be silent for a short time,” said Whitney. “He has a suspicion; and is looking out for himself.”

“Lacketer has?”

“He says so. I am sure he has. He thinks he could put hisfinger any minute on the fellow; but it would not do to accuse him without proof; and he is waiting for it.”

Tod glanced at me, and I at him, both of us thinking of Vale.

“Yesterday Lacketer lost something himself,” continued Whitney.“A shilling, I think it was. He went into a fine way over it, and said now he’d watch in earnest.”

“Who is it he suspects?” asked Tod.

“He won’t tell me; says it would not be fair.”

“Well, I shall talk about my half-crown, if you and Lacketer choose to be silent over your losses,” said Tod, decisively. “And I’ll be as good as my word, and give the reptile a ducking if I can track him.”

He went straight to the playground. It was a fine October evening, the daylight nearly gone, and the hunter’s moon rising in the sky. Tod told about his half-crown, and the boys ceased their noise to listen to him. He talked himself into a passion, and said some stinging things. “He suspected who it was, and he heard that Lacketer suspected, and he fancied that another or two suspected, and one knew; and he thought, now that affairs had come to this pitch, when nothing, put for a minute out of hand, was safe, it might be better for them all to declare their suspicions, and hunt the animal as they’d hunt a hare.”

There was a pause when Tod finished. He was about the biggest and strongest in the school; his voice was one of power, his manner ready and decisive; so that it was just as though a master spoke. Lacketer came out from amongst them, looking white. I could see that in the twilight.

“Who says I suspect? Speak for yourself, Todhetley. Don’t bring up my name.”

“Do you scent the fox, or don’t you?” roared Tod back again, not at all in a humour to be crossed. “If you do, you must speak, and not shirk it. Is the whole school to lie under doubt because of one black sheep?”

Tod’s concluding words were drowned in noise; applause for him, murmurs for Lacketer. I looked round for Vale, and saw him behind the rest, as if preparing to make a run for it. That said nothing: he was one of those quiet-natured fellows who liked to keep aloof from rows. When I looked back again, Sanker was standing a little forward, not far from Lacketer.

“As good speak as not, Lacketer,” put in Whitney. “I don’t mind telling now that that guinea of mine has been taken; and you know you lost a shilling yourself. You say you could put your finger on the fellow.”

“Speak!” “Speak!” “Speak!” came the shouts from all quarters. And Lacketer turned whiter.

“There’s no proof,” he said. “I might have been mistaken in what I fancied. I won’t speak.”

“Then I shall say you are an accomplice,” roared Tod, in his passion. “I intend to hunt the fellow to earth to-night, and I’ll do it.”

“I don’t suspect any one in particular,” said Lacketer, looking as if he were run to earth himself. “There.”

Great commotion. Lacketer was hustled, but got away and disappeared. Sanker went after him. Tod had been turning on Sanker, saying why didn’t he speak.

“Half-a-crown is half-a-crown, and I mean to get mine back again,” avowed Tod. “If some of you are rich enough to lose your half-crowns, I’m not. But it isn’t that. Sovereigns may go next. It isn’t that. It is the knowing that we have a light-fingered, disreputable, sneaking rat amongst us, whose proper place would be a reformatory, not a school for honest men’s sons.”

“Name!” “Proofs!” “Proofs!” “Name!” It was as if a torrent had been let loose. In the midst of the lull that ensued a voice was heard, and a name.

“Vale. Harry Vale.”

Harding was the one to say it: a clever, first-class boy. You might have heard a pin drop in the surprise: and Harding went on after a minute.

“I beg to state that I do not accuse Vale myself. I know nothing whatever about the case. But I have reason to think Vale’s name is the one that has been mentioned in connection with the losses last half.”

“I know it is,” cried Tod, who had only wanted the lead, not choosing to take it himself. “Now then, Vale, make your defence if you can.”

I dare say you recollect how hotly you used to take up a cause when you were at school yourselves, not waiting to know whether it might be right or wrong. Mrs. Frost said to us on one of these occasions she wondered whether we should ever be as eager to take up heaven. They pounced upon Vale with an awful row. He stood with his arm round one of the trees behind, looking scared to death. I glanced back for Sanker, expecting his confirming testimony, but could not see him, and at that moment Lacketer appeared again, peeping round the trees. Whitney called to him.

“Here, Lacketer. Was it Vale you suspected?”

“As much as I did anybody else,” doggedly answered Lacketer.

It was taken as an affirmative. The boys believed the thief was found, and were mad against him. Vale spoke something, shaking and trembling like the leaves in the wind, but his words were drowned. He was not brave, and they looked ready to tear him to pieces.

“My half-crown, Vale,” roared Tod. “Did you take it just now?”

Vale made no answer; I thought he could not. His face frightened me; the lips were blue and drawn, his teeth chattered.

“Search his pockets.”

It was a simultaneous thought, for a dozen said it. Vale was turned out, and half-a-crown found upon him; no other money. The boys yelled and groaned. Tod, with his great strength, pushed them aside, as the coin was flung to him.

“Shall I resume possession of this half-crown?” he asked of Vale, holding it before him in defiant mockery.

“If you like. I——”

Vale broke down with a gasp and a sob. His piteous aspect might have moved even Tod.

“Look here,” said he, “I don’t care in general to punish a coward; I regard him as an abject animal beneath me: but I cannot go from my word. Ducking is too good for you, Vale, but you shall have it. Be off to that tree yonder; we’ll give you so much grace. Let him start fair, boys, and then hound him on. It will be a fine chase.”

Vale, seeming to be too confused and terror-stricken to do anything but obey, went to the tree, and then darted away in the direction of the river. It takes time to read all this; but scarcely a minute appeared to have passed since Tod first came out with Whitney, and spoke of the half-crown. Giving Vale the fair start, the boys sprang after him, like a pack of hounds in full cry. Tod, the swiftest runner in the school, was following, when he found himself seized by Sanker. I had stayed behind.

“Have you been accusing Vale? Are you going to duck him?”

“Well?” cried Tod, angry at being stopped.

“It was not Vale who took the things. Vale! He is as innocent as you are. You’ll kill him, Todhetley; he cannot bear terror.”

“Who says he is innocent?”

“I do. I say it on my honour. It was another fellow, whose name I’ve been suppressing. This is your work, Johnny Ludlow.”

I felt a sudden rush of repentance. A conviction that Sanker spoke nothing but the truth.

“You said it was Vale, Sanker.”

“I never did. You said it. I told you you’d better believe it was any other rather than Vale. And I meant it.”

But that Sanker was not a fellow to tell a lie, I should have thought he told one then. The impression, resting on my memory, was that he acknowledged to its being Vale, if he had not exactly stated it.

“You know you told me to be quiet, Sanker: you said, give him a chance.”

“But I thought you were speaking of another then, not Vale. I swear it was not Vale. He is as honest as the day.”

Tod, looking ready to strike me, waiting for no more explanation, was already off, shouting to the crew to turn, far more anxious now to save Vale than he had been to duck him.

How he managed to arrest them, I never knew. He did do it. But for being the fleetest runner and strongest fellow, he could never have overtaken, passed, and flung himself back upon them, with his arms stretched out, words of explanation on his lips.

The river was more than a mile away, taking the straight course over the fields, as a bird flies, and leaping fences and ditches. Vale went panting on, for it. It was as if his senses were scared out of him. Tod flew after him, the rest following on more gently. The school-bell boomed out to call us in for evening study, but none heeded it.

“Stop, Vale! Stop!” shouted Tod. “It has been a mistake. Come back and hear about it. It was not you; it was another fellow. Come back, Harry; come back!”

The more Tod shouted, the faster Vale went on. You should have seen the chase in the moonlight. It put us in mind of the fairy tales of Germany, where the phantom huntsman and his pack are seen coursing at midnight. Vale made for a part where the banks of the river are overshadowed by trees. Tod was only about thirty yards behind when he gained it; he saw him leap in, and heard the plunge.

But when he got close, there was no sign of Vale in the water. Had he suddenly sunk? Tod’s heart stood still with fear. The boys were coming up by ones and twos, and a great silence ensued. Tod stript ready to plunge in when Vale should rise.

“Here’s his cap,” whispered one, picking it up from the bank.

“He was a good swimmer; he must have been seized with cramp.”

“Look here; they say there are holes in the river, just above this bend. What if he has sunk into one?”

“Hold your row, all of you,” cried Tod, in a hoarse whisper that betrayed his fear. “Who’s to listen with that noise?”

He was listening for a sound, watching for the faintest ripple, that might give indication of Vale’s rising. But none came. Tod stood there in his shirt till he shivered with cold. And the church clock struck seven, and then eight, and it was of no use waiting.

It was a horrible feeling. Somehow we seemed, I and Tod, to be responsible for Vale’s death, I for having mistaken Sanker;Tod for entering upon the threatened ducking, and hounding the boys on.

The worst was to come: going back to Dr. Frost and the masters with the tale; breaking it to Mr. and Mrs. Vale at Vale Farm. While Tod was dressing himself, the rest went on slowly, no one staying by him but me and Sanker.

“It’s your doing more than mine,” Tod said, turning to Sanker in his awful distress. “If you knew who the thief was last half, you should have disclosed it; not have given him the opportunity to resume his game. Had you done so this could not have happened.”

“I promised him then I should proclaim him if he did resume it; I have told him to-night I shall do it,” quietly answered Sanker.“It was Lacketer.”

“Lacketer!”

“Lacketer. And since my eyes were opened, it has seemed to me that all yours must have been closed, not to find him out. His manner was enough to betray him: only, I suppose—you wanted the clue.”

“But, Sanker, why did you let me think it was Vale?” I asked.

“You made the first mistake; I let you lie under it for Lacketer’s sake; to give him the chance,” said Sanker. “Who was to foresee you would go and tell?”

It had never passed my lips, save those few words at the time when Tod questioned me. Harding was the one outside the porch who had overheard it; but he had kept it to himself until now, when he thought the time had come for speaking.

What was to be done?—what was to be done? It seemed as if a great darkness had suddenly fallen upon us, and could never again be lifted. We had death upon our hands.

“There’s just a chance,” said Tod, dragging his legs along like so much lead, and beginning with a sort of groan. “Vale may have made for the land again as soon as he got in, and come out lower down. In that case he would run home probably.”

Just a chance, as Tod said. But in the depth of despair chances are caught at. If we cut across to the left, Vale Farm was not more than a mile off: and we turned to it. Absenting ourselves from school seemed as nothing. Tod went on with a bound now there was an object, a ray of hope; I and Sanker after him.

“I can’t go in,” said Tod, when we came in front of the farm, a long, low house, with lights gleaming in some of the windows. “It’s not cowardice; at least, I don’t think it is. It’s—— Never mind; I’ll wait for you here.”

“I say,” said Sanker to me, “what excuse are we to make for going in at this time? We can’t tell the truth.”

I could not. Harry Vale stood alone; he had neither brother nor sister. I could not go in and tell his mother that he was dead. She was sitting in one of the front parlours, sewing by the lamp. We saw her through the window as we stole up to look in. But there was no time for plotting. Footsteps approached, and we only got back on the path when Mr. Vale came up. He was a tall, fine man, with a fair face and blue eyes like his son’s. What we said I hardly knew; something about being close by, and thought we’d call on our way home. Sanker had been there several times in the holidays.

Mr. Vale took us in with a beaming face to his wife. They were the kindest-hearted people, liberal and hospitable, as most well-to-do farmers are. Mrs. Vale, rolling up her work, said we must take something to help us on our way home, and rang the bell. We never said we could not stop; we never said Tod was waiting outside. But there were no signs that Vale had gone home half-drowned.

Two maids put the supper on the table, and Mrs. Vale helped them; for Sanker had summoned courage to say it was late for us to stop. About a dozen things. Cold ducks, and ham, collared-head, a big dish of custard, and fruit and cake. I couldn’t have swallowed a morsel; the lump rising in my throat would have hindered it. I don’t think Sanker could, for he said resolutely we must not sit down because of Dr. Frost.

“How is Harry?” asked Mrs. Vale.

“Oh, he is—very well,” said Sanker, after waiting to see if I’d answer. “Have you seen him lately?”

“Not since last Sunday week, when he and young Snepp spent the day here. He was looking well, and seemed in spirits. It was rather a hazard, sending him to school at all; Mr. Vale wanted to have him taught at home, as he has been until this year. But I think it is turning out for the best.”

“He gets frightened, does he not?” said Sanker, who knew what she meant.

“He did,” replied Mrs. Vale; “but he is growing out of it. Never was a braver little child born than he; but when he was four years old, he strolled away from his nurse into a field where a bull was grazing, a savage animal. What exactly happened, we never knew; that Harry was chased across the field by it was certain, and then tossed. The chief injury was to the nerves, strange though that may seem in so young a child. For a long time afterwards, the least alarm would put him into a state of terrible fear, almost a fit. But he is getting over it now.”

She told this for my benefit; just as if she had divined the night’s work; Sanker knew it before. I felt sick with remorse as I listened—and Tod had called him a coward! Let us get away.

“I wish you could stay, my lads,” cried Mr. Vale; “it vexes me to turn you out supperless. What’s this, Charlotte? Ah yes, to be sure! I wish you could put up the whole table for them.”

For Mrs. Vale had been putting up some tartlets, and gave us each a packet of them. “Eat them as you go along,” she said.“And give my love to Harry.”

“And tell him that he must bring you both on Sunday, to spend the day,” added Mr. Vale. “Perhaps young Mr. Todhetley will come also. You might have breakfast, and go with us to church. I’ll write to Dr. Frost.”

Outside at last; I and my shame. These good, simple-hearted people—oh, had we indeed, between us, made them childless?“Young Mr. Todhetley,” waiting amid the stubble in the outer field, came springing up to the fence, his face white in the light of the hunter’s moon.

“What a long while you have been! Well?”

“Nothing,” said Sanker, briefly. “No news! I don’t think we’ve been much above five minutes.”

What a walk home it was! Mr. Blair, the out-of-school master, came down upon us with his thunder, but Tod seemed never to hear him. The boys, hushed and quiet as nature is before an impending storm, had not dared to tell and provoke it. I could not see Lacketer.

“Where’s Vale?” roared Mr. Blair, supposing he had been with us. “But that prayers are waiting, I’d cane all four of you. Where are you going, Todhetley?”

“Don’t stop me, Mr. Blair,” said Tod, putting him aside with a quiet authority and a pain in his voice that made Blair stare. We called Blair, Baked Pie, because of his name, Pyefinch.

“Read the prayers without me, please Mr Blair,” went on Tod.“I must see Dr. Frost. If you don’t know what has happened to-night, sir, ask the rest to tell you.”

He went out to his interview with the Doctor. Tod was not one to shirk his duty. Seeing Vale’s father and mother he had shrunk from; but the confession to Dr. Frost he made himself. What passed between them we never knew: how much contrition Tod spoke, how much reproach the Doctor. Roger and Miles, the man-servant and boy, were called into the library, and sent abroad: we thought it might be to search the banks of the river, or give notice for it to be dragged. The next called in was Sanker. The next, Lacketer.

But Lacketer did not answer the call. He had vanished. Mr. Blair went searching for him high and low, and could not find him. Lacketer had run away. He knew his time at Worcester House was over, and thought he’d save himself from dismissal. It was hewho had been the thief, and whom Sanker suspected. As good mention here that Dr. Frost got a letter from his aunt the next Saturday, saying the school did not agree with her nephew, and she had withdrawn him from it.

Whether the others slept that night, I can’t tell; I did not. Harry Vale’s drowned form was in my mind all through it; and the sorrow of Mr. and Mrs. Vale. In the morning Tod got up, looking more like one dead than alive: he had one of his frightful headaches. I felt ready to die myself; it seemed that never another happy morning could dawn on the world.

“Shall I ask if I may bring you some breakfast up here, Tod? And it’s just possible, you know, that Vale——”

“Hold your peace, Johnny!” he snapped. “If ever you tell me a false thing of a fellow again, I’ll thrash your life out of you.”

He came downstairs when he was dressed, and went out, waiting neither for breakfast nor prayers. I went out to watch him away, knowing he must be going to Vale Farm.

Oh, I never shall forget it. As Tod passed round the corner by the railings, he ran up against him. Him, Harry Vale.

My sight grew dim; I couldn’t see; the field and railings were reeling. But it only lasted for a moment or two. Tod’s breath was coming in great gasps then, and he had Vale’s two hands grasped in his. I thought he was going to hug him; a loud sob broke from him.

“We have been thinking you were drowned!”

Vale smiled. “I am too good a swimmer for that.”

“But you disappeared at once.”

“I struck back out of the river the instant I got into it; I was afraid you’d come in after me; and crept round the alder trees lower down. When you were all gone I swam across in my clothes; see how they’ve shrunk!”

“Swam across! Have you not been home?”

“No, I went to my uncle’s: it’s nearer than home: and they made me go to bed, and dried my things, and sent to tell Dr. Frost. I did not say why I went into the water,” added Vale, lifting his kind face. “But the Doctor came round the ferry late, and he knew all about it. They talked to me well, he and my uncle, about being frightened at nothing, and I’ve promised not to be so stupid again.”

“God bless you, Vale!” cried Tod. “You know it was a mistake.”

“Yes, Dr. Frost said so. The half-crown was my own. My uncle met us boys when we were out walking yesterday morning, and gave it me. I thought you might have seen him give it.”

Tod linked his arm within Vale’s and walked off to the breakfast-room. The wonder to me was how, with Vale’s good honest face and open manners, we could have thought him capable of theft. But when you once go in for a mistake it carries you on in spite of improbabilities. The boys were silent for an instant when Vale went in, and then you’d have thought the roof was coming off with cheers. Tod stood looking from the window, and I vow I saw him rub his handkerchief across his eyes.

We went to Vale Farm on Sunday morning early: the four of us invited, and Harding. Mr. Vale shook hands twice with us all round so heartily, that we might see, I thought, they bore no malice; and Mrs. Vale’s breakfast was a sight to do you good, with its jugs of cream and home-made sausages.

After that, came church: it looked like a procession turning out for it. Mr. and Mrs. Vale and the grandmother, an upright old lady with a China-crape shawl and white hair, us five and a man and maid-servant behind. The river lay on the right, the church was in front of us; people dotted the fields on their way to it, and the bells were ringing as they do at a wedding.

“This is a different sort of Sunday from what we thought last Thursday it would be,” I said in Tod’s ear when we were together for a minute at the gate.

“Johnny, if I were older, and went in for that kind of thing, as perhaps I shall do sometime, I should like to put up a public thanksgiving in church to-day.”

“A public thanksgiving?”

“For mercies received.”

I stared at Tod. He did not seem to heed it, but took his hat off and walked with it in his hand all across the churchyard.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

Perhaps this might be called the beginning of the end of the chain of events that I alluded to in that other paper. An end that terminated in distress, and death, and sorrow.

It was the half-year following that hunt of ours by moonlight. Summer weather had come in, and we were looking forward to the holidays, hoping the heat would last.

The half-mile field, so called from its length, on Vale Farm was being mowed. Sunday intervened, and the grass was left to dry until the Monday. The haymakers had begun to rake it into cocks. The river stretched past along the field on one side; a wooden fence bounded it on the other. It was out of all proportion, that field, so long and so narrow.

Tod and I and Sanker and Harry Vale were spending the Sunday at the Farm. Since that hunt last autumn Mr. and Mrs. Vale often invited us. There was no evening service, and we went into the hay-field, and began throwing the hay at one another. It was rare fun; they might almost have heard our shouts at Worcester House: and I don’t believe but that every one of us forgot it was Sunday.

What with the sultry weather and the hay, some of us got into a tolerable heat. The river wore a tempting look; and Tod and Sanker, without so much as a thought, undressed themselves behind the trees, and plunged in. It was twilight then; the air had began to wear its weird silence; the shadows were putting on their ghastliness; the moon, well up, sailed along under white clouds.

I and Vale were walking slowly back towards the Farm, when a great cry broke over the water,—a cry as of something in pain; but whether from anything more than a night-bird, was uncertain. Vale stopped and turned his head.

A second cry: louder, longer, more distinct, and full of agony. It came from one of those two in the water. Vale flew back with his fleet foot—fleeter than any fellow’s in the school, except Tod’s and Snepp’s. As I followed, a startling recollection came over me, and I wondered how it was that all of us had been so senseless as to forget it: that one particular spot on the river was known to be dangerous.

“Bear up; I’m coming,” shouted Vale. “Don’t lose your heads.”

A foot-passenger walking on the other side the fence, saw something was wrong: if he did not hear Vale’s words, he heard the cry, and came cutting across the field, scattering the hay with his feet. And then I saw it was Baked Pie; which meant our mathematical master, Mr. Blair. They had given him at baptism the name of “Pyefinch,” after some old uncle who had money to leave; no second name, nothing but that: and the school had converted him into “Baked Pie.” But I don’t think fathers and mothers have any right to put odd names upon helpless babies and send them out to be a laughing-stock to the world.

Blair was not a bad fellow, setting his name aside, and had gone in for honours at Cambridge. We reached the place together.

“What is amiss, Ludlow?”

“I don’t know, sir. Todhetley and Sanker are in the water; and we’ve heard cries.”

“In the water to-night! And there!”

Vale, already in the middle of the river, was swimming back, holding up Sanker. But Tod was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Blair looked up and down; and an awful fear came over me. The current led down to Mr. Charles Vale’s mill—Vale’s uncle. More than one man had found his death there.

“Oh, Mr. Blair! where is he? What has become of him?”

“Hush!” breathed Blair. He was quietly slipping off some of his things, his eyes fixed on a particular part of the river. In he went, striking out without more splash than he could help, and reached it just as Tod’s head appeared above water. The third time of rising. I did not go in for such a girl’s trick as to faint; but I never afterwards could trace the minutes as they had passed until Tod was lying on the grass under the trees. That I remember always. The scene is before my eyes now as plainly as it was then, though more time has since gone by than perhaps you’d think for: the treacherous river flowing on calmly, the quivering leaves overhead, through which the moon was glittering, and Tod lying there white and motionless. Mr. Blair had saved his life; there could be no question about that, saved it only by a minute of time; and I thought to myself I’d never call him Baked Pie again.

“Instead of standing moonstruck, Ludlow, suppose you make a run to the Farm and see what help you can get,” spoke Mr. Blair.“Todhetley must be carried there, and put between hot blankets.”

Help was found. Sanker walked to the Farm, Tod was carried; and a regular bustle set in when they arrived there. Both were put to bed; Tod had come-to then. Mrs. Vale and the servants ran up and down like wild Indians; and the good old lady with the white hair insisted upon sitting up by Tod’s bedside all night.

“No, mother,” said Mr. Vale; “some of us will do that.”

“My son, I tell you that I shall watch by him myself,” returned the old lady; and, as they deferred to her always, she did.

When explanation of the accident was given—as much of it as ever could be given—it sounded rather strange. Both of them had been taken with cramp, and the river was not in fault, after all. Tod said that he had been in the water two or three minutes, when he was seized with what he supposed to be cramp in the legs, though he never had it before. He was turning to strike out for the bank, when he found himself seized by Sanker. They loosed each other in a minute, but Tod was helpless, and he sank.

Sanker’s story was very much the same. He was seized with cramp, and in his fear caught hold of Tod for protection. Tod was an excellent swimmer, Sanker a poor one; but while Sanker’s cramp grew better, Tod’s disabled him. Most likely, as we decided when we heard this, Sanker, who never went down at all, would have got out of the water without help; Tod would have been drowned but for Blair. He had sunk twice when the rescue came. Mr. Featherston, the man of pills who attended the school, said it was all through their having jumped into the water when they were in a white heat; the cold had struck to them. While Mrs. Hall, with her grave face, thought it was through their having gone bathing on a Sunday.

Whatever it was through, old Frost made a commotion. He was not severe in general, but he raised noise enough over this. What with one thing and another, the school, he declared, was being everlastingly upset.

Tod and Sanker came back from Mr. Vale’s the next day; Monday. The Doctor ordered them into his study, and sat there with his cane in his hand while he talked, rapping the table with it now and again as fiercely as if it had been their backs. And the backs would surely have had it but for having just escaped coffins.

All this would not have been much, but it was to lead to a great deal more. To quite a chain of events, as I have said; and to trouble and sorrow in the far-off ending. Hannah, at home, was fond of repeating to Lena what she called the sayings of poor Richard: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; and all for the want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail.” The horse-shoenail and the man’s loss seemed a great deal nearer each other than that Sunday night’s accident, and what was eventually to come of it. A small mustard-seed, dropped into the ground, shoots forth and becomes in the end a great tree.

On the Wednesday, who should come over but the Squire, clasping Pyefinch Blair’s hand in his, and saying with tears in his good old eyes that he had saved his son’s life. Old Frost, you see, had written the news to Dyke Manor. Tod, strong and healthy in constitution, was all right again, not a hair of his head the worse for it; but Sanker had not escaped so well.

As early as the Monday night, the first night of his return home from Vale Farm, it began to come on; and the next morning the boys, sleeping in the same room, told a tale of Sanker’s having been delirious. He had sat up in bed and woke them all up with his cries, thinking he was trying to swim out of deep water, and could not. Next he said he wanted some water to drink; they gave him one draught after another till the big water-jug was emptied, but his thirst kept on saying “More! more!” Sanker did not seem to remember any of this. He came down with the rest in the morning, his face very white, except for a pinkish spot in the middle of his cheeks, and he thought the fellows must be chaffing him. The fellows told him they were not; and one, it was Bill Whitney, said they would not think of chaffing him just after his having been so nearly drowned.

It went on to the afternoon. Sanker ate no dinner, for I looked to see; he was but one amidst the many, and it was not noticed by the masters. And if it had been, they’d have thought that the ducking had taken away his appetite. The drawing-master, Wilson, followed suit with Hall, and said he was not surprised at their being nearly drowned, after making hay on the Sunday. But, about four o’clock, when the first-class were before Dr. Frost with their Greek books, Sanker suddenly let his fall. Instead of stooping for it, his eyes took a far-off look, as if they were seeking for it round the walls of the room.

“Lay hold of him,” said Dr. Frost.

He did not faint, but seemed dull: it looked as much like a lazy fit as anything; and he was sensible. They put him to sit on one of the benches, and then he began to tremble.

“He must be got to bed,” said the Doctor. “Mr. Blair, kindly see Mrs. Hall, will you. Tell her to warm it. Stay. Wait a moment.”

Dr. Frost followed Mr. Blair from the hall. It was to say that Sanker had better go at once to the blue-room. If the bed there was not aired, or otherwise ready, Sanker’s own bedding could be taken to it. “I’ll give Mrs. Hall the orders myself,” said the Doctor.

The blue-room—called so from its blue-stained walls—was the one used on emergencies. When we found Sanker had been taken there, we made up our minds that he was going to have an illness. Featherston came and thought the same.

The next day, Wednesday, he was in a sort of fever, rambling every other minute. The Squire said he should like to see him, and Blair took him upstairs. Sanker lay with the same pink hue on his cheeks, only deeper; and his eyes were bright and glistening. Hall, who was addicted to putting in her word on all occasions when it could tell against us boys, said if he had stayed two or three days in bed at Vale Farm, where he was first put, he’d have had nothing of this. Perhaps Hall was right. It had been Sanker’s own doings to get up. When Mrs. Vale saw him coming downstairs, she wanted to send him back to bed again, but he told her he was quite well, and came off to school.

Sanker knew the Squire, and put out his hand. The Squire took it without saying a word. He told us later that to him Sanker’s face looked as if it had death in it. When he would have spoken, Sanker’s eyes had grown wild again, and he was talking nonsense about his class-books.

“Johnny, boy, you sit in this room a bit at times; you are patient and not rough,” said the Squire, when he went out to his carriage, for he had driven over. “I have asked them to let you be up there as much as they can. The poor boy is very ill, and has no relatives near him.”

Dwarf Giles, touching his hat to Tod and me, was at the horses’heads, Bob and Blister. The cattle knew us: I’m sure of it. They had had several hours’ rest in old Frost’s stables while the Squire went on foot about the neighbourhood to call on people. Dr. Frost, standing out with us, admired the fine dark horses very much; at which Giles was prouder than if the Doctor had admired him. He cared for nothing in the world so much as those two animals, and groomed them with a will.

“You’ll take care that he wants for nothing, Doctor,” I heard the Squire say as he shook hands. “Don’t spare any care and expense to get him well again; I wish to look upon this illness as my charge. It seems something like an injustice, you see, that my boy should come off without damage, and this poor fellow be lying there.”

He took the reins and stepped up to his seat, Giles getting up beside him. As we watched the horses step off with the high step that the Squire loved, he looked back and nodded to us. And it struck me that, in this care for Sanker, the Pater was trying to make some recompense for the suspicion cast on him a year before at Dyke Manor.

It was a sharp, short illness, the fever raging, though not infectious; I had never been with any one in anything like it before, and I did not wish to be again. To hear how Sanker’s mind rambled, was marvellous; but some of us shivered when it came to raving. Very often he’d be making hay; fighting against numbers that were throwing cocks at him, while he could not throw back at them. Then he’d be in the water, buffeting with high waves, and shrieking out that he was drowning, and throwing his thin hot arms aloft in agony. Sometimes the trouble would be his lessons, hammering at Latin derivations and Greek roots; and next he was toiling through a problem in Euclid. One night when he was at the worst, old Featherston lost his head, and the next day Mr. Carden came posting from Worcester in his carriage.

There were medical men of renown nearer; but somehow in extremity we all turned to him. And his skill did not fail here. Whether it might be any special relief he was enabled to give, or that the disease had reached its crisis, I cannot tell, but from the moment Mr. Carden stood at his bedside, Sanker began to mend. Featherston said the next day that the worst of the danger had passed. It seemed to us that it had just set in; no rat was ever so weak as Sanker.

The holidays came then, and the boys went home: all but me. Sanker couldn’t lift a hand, but he could smile at us and understand, and he said he should like to have me stay a bit with him; so they sent word from home I might. Mr. Blair stayed also; Dr. Frost wished it. The Doctor was subpœnaed to give evidence on a trial at Westminster, and had to hasten up to London. Blair had no relatives at all, and did not care to go anywhere. He told me in confidence that his staying there saved his pocket. Blair was strict in school, but over Sanker’s bed he got as friendly with me as possible. I liked him; he was always gentlemanly; and I grew to dislike their calling him Baked Pie as much as he disliked it himself.

“You go out and get some air, Ludlow,” he said to me the day after the school broke up, “or we may have you ill next.”

Upon that I demanded what I wanted with air. I had taken precious long walks with the fellows up to the day before yesterday.

“You go,” said he, curtly.

“Go, Johnny,” said Sanker, in his poor weak voice, which couldn’t raise itself above a whisper. “I’m getting well, you know.”

My way of taking the air was to sit down at one of the schoolroom desks and write to Tod. In about five minutes some one walked round the house as if looking for an entrance, and then stopped at the side-door. Putting my head out of the window, Itook a look at her. It was a young lady in a plain grey dress and straw bonnet, with a cloak over her arm, and an umbrella put up against the sun. The back regions were turned inside out, for they had begun the summer cleaning that morning, and the cook came clanking along in pattens to answer the knock.

“This is Dr. Frost’s, I believe. Can I see him?”

It was a sweet, calm, gentle voice. The cook, who had no notion of visitors arriving at the cleaning season, when the boys were just got rid of, and the Doctor had gone away, stared at her for a moment, and then asked in her surly manner whether she had business with Dr. Frost. That cook and old Molly at home might have run in a curricle, they were such a match in temper.

“Business!—oh, certainly. I must see him, if you please.”

The cook shook off her pattens, and went up the back stairs, leaving the young lady outside. As it was business, she supposed she must call Mr. Blair.

“Somebody wants Dr. Frost,” was her announcement to him.“A girl at the side door.”

Which of course caused Blair to suppose it might be a child from one of the cottages come to ask for help of some sort; as they did come sometimes. He thought Hall might have been called to her, but he went down at once; without his coat, and his invalid-room slippers on. Naturally, when he saw the young lady, it took him aback.

“I beg your pardon, sir; I hope you will not deem me an intruder. I have just arrived here.”

Blair stared almost as much as the cook had done. The face was so pleasant, the voice so refined, that he inwardly called himself a fool for showing himself to her in that trim. For once, speech failed him; a thing Blair had never done at mathematics, I can tell you; he had not the smallest notion who she was or what she wanted. And the silence seemed to frighten her.

“Am I too late?” she asked, her face growing white. “Has the—the worse happened?”

“Happened to what?” questioned Blair, for he never once thought of the sick fellow above, and was all at sea. “Pardon me, young lady, but I do not know what you are speaking of.”

“Of my brother, Edward Sanker. Oh, sir! is he dead?”

“Miss Sanker! Truly I beg your pardon for my stupidity. He is out of danger; is getting well.”

She sat down for a minute on the old stone bench beyond the door, roughed with the crowd of boys’ names cut in it. Her lips were trembling just a little, and the soft brown eyes had tears in them; but the face was breaking into a happy smile.

“Oh, Dr. Frost, thank you, thank you! Somehow I never thought of him as dead until this moment, and it startled me.”

Fancy her taking him for Frost! Blair was a good-looking fellow under thirty, slender and well made. The Doctor stood out an old guy of fifty, with a stern face and black knee-breeches.

“My mother had your letter, sir, but she was not able to come. My father is very ill, needing her attention every moment; she strove to see on which side her duty lay—to stay with him, or to come to Edward; and she thought it must lie in remaining with papa. So she sent me. I left Wales last night.”

“Is Mr. Sanker’s a fever, too?” asked Blair, in wonder.

“No, an accident. He was hurt in the mine.”

It was odd that it should be so; the two illnesses occurring at the same time! Mr. Sanker, it appeared, fell from the shaft; his leg was broken, and there were other injuries. At first they were afraid for him.

Blair fell into a dilemma. He wouldn’t have minded Mrs. Sanker; but he did not know much about young ladies, not being accustomed to them. She got up from the bench.

“Mamma bade me say to you, Dr. Frost——”

“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Blair again. “I am not Dr. Frost; the Doctor went to London this morning. My name is Blair—one of the masters. Will you walk in?”

He shut her into the parlour on his way to call Hall, and to put on his boots and coat. Seeing me, he turned into the schoolroom.

“Ludlow, are not the Sankers connections of yours?”

“Not of mine. Of Mrs. Todhetley’s.”

“It’s all the same. You go in and talk to her. I don’t know what on earth to do. She has come to be with Sanker, but she won’t like to stay here with only you and me. If the Doctor were at home it would be different.”

“She seems an uncommon nice girl, Mr. Blair.”

“Good gracious!” went on Blair in his dilemma. “The Doctor told me he had written to Wales some time ago; but he supposed Mrs. Sanker could not make it convenient to come; and yesterday he wrote again, saying there was no necessity for it, as Sanker was out of danger. I don’t know what on earth to do with her,” repeated Blair, who had a habit of getting hopelessly bewildered on occasions. “Hall! Where’s Mrs. Hall?”

As he went calling out down the flagged passage, a boy came whistling to the door, carrying a carpet-bag: Miss Sanker’s luggage. The coach she had had to take on leaving the rail put her down half-a-mile away, and she walked up in the sun, leaving her bag to be brought after her.

It seemed that we were going in for mistakes. When I went toher, and began to say who I was, she mistook me for Tod. It made me laugh.

“Tod is a great, strong fellow, as tall as Mr. Blair, Miss Sanker. I am only Johnny Ludlow.”

“Edward has told me all about you both,” she said, taking my hand, and looking into my face with her sweet eyes. “Tod’s proud and overbearing, though generous; but you have ever been pleasant with him. I am afraid I shall begin to call you ‘Johnny’at once.”

“No one ever calls me anything else; except the masters here.”

“You must have heard of me—Mary?”

“But you are not Mary?”

“Yes, I am.”

That she was telling truth any fellow might see, and yet at first I hardly believed her. Sanker had told us his sister Mary was beautiful as an angel. Her face had no beauty in it, so to say; it was only kind, nice, and loving. People called Mrs. Parrifer a beautiful woman; perhaps I had taken my notions of beauty from her; she had a Roman nose, and great big eyes that rolled about, had a gruff voice, and a lovely peach-and-white complexion (but people said it was paint), and looked three parts a fool. Mary Sanker was just the opposite to all this, and her cheeks were dimpled. But still she had not what people call beauty.

“May I go up and see Edward?”

“I should think so. Mr. Blair, I suppose, will be back directly. He is looking very ill: you will not be frightened at him?”

“After picturing him in my mind as dead, he will not frighten me, however ill he may look.”

“I should say the young lady had better take off her bonnet afore going in. Young Mr. Sanker haven’t seen bonnets of late, and might be scared.”

The interruption came from Hall; we turned, and saw her standing there. She spoke resentfully, as if Miss Sanker had offended her; and no doubt she had, by coming when the house was not in company order, and had nothing better to send in for dinner but cold mutton and half a rhubarb pie. Hall would have to get the mutton hashed now, which she would never have done for me and Blair.

“Yes, if you please; I should much like to take my bonnet off,”said Miss Sanker, going up to Hall with a smile. “I think you must be Mrs. Hall. My brother has talked of you.”

Hall took her to a room, and presently she came forth all fresh and nice, the travel dust gone, and her bright brown hair smooth and glossy. Her grey dress was soft, one that would not disturb a sick-room; it had a bit of white lace at the throat andwrists, and a little pearl brooch in front. She was twenty-one last birthday, but did not look as much.

Blair had been in to prepare Sanker, and his great eyes (only great since his illness) were staring for her with a wild expectation. You never saw brother and sister less alike; the one so nice, the other ugly enough to frighten the crows. Sanker had my hand clasped tight in his, when she stooped to kiss him. I don’t think he knew it; but I could not get away. In that moment I saw how fond they were of each other.

“Could not the mother come, Mary?”

“No, papa is—is not well,” she said, for of course she would not tell him yet of any accident. “Papa wanted her there, and you wanted her here; she thought her duty lay at home, and she was not afraid but that God would raise up friends to take care of you.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Some complicated illness or other,” Mary Sanker answered, in careless tones. “He was a little better when I came away. You have been very ill, Edward.”

He held up his wasted hand as proof, with a half smile; but it fell again.

“I don’t believe I should have pulled through it all, Mary, but for Blair.”

“That’s the gentleman I saw. The one without a coat. Has he nursed you?”

Sanker motioned with his white lips. “Right well, too. He, and Hall, and Johnny here. Old Hall is as good as gold when any of us are ill.”

“And pays herself out by being tarter than ever when we are well,” I could not help saying: for it was the truth.

“Blair saved Todhetley’s life,” Sanker went on. “We used to call him Baked Pie before, and give him all the trouble we could.”

“Ought you to talk, Edward?”

“It is your coming that seems to give me strength for it,” he answered. “I did not know that Frost had written home.”

“There was a delay with the letters, or I might have been here three days ago,” said Miss Sanker, speaking in penitent tones, as if she were in the habit of taking other people’s faults upon herself.“While papa is not well, the clerk down at the mine opens the business letters. Seeing one directed to papa privately, he neither spoke of it nor sent it up, and for three days it lay unopened.”

Sanker had gone off into one of his weak fits before she finished speaking: lying with his eyes and mouth wide open, between sleeping and waking. Hall came in and said with a tone that snapped Miss Sanker up, it wouldn’t do: if people could not be there without talking, they must not be there at all. I don’t say but that she was a capable nurse, or that when a fellow was downright ill, she spared the wine in the arrowroot, and the sugar in the tea. Mary Sanker sat down by the bedside, her finger on her lips to show that she meant to keep silence.

We had visitors later. Mrs. Vale came over, as she did most days, to see how Sanker was getting on; and Bill Whitney brought his mother. Mrs. Vale told Mary Sanker that she had better sleep at the Farm, as the Doctor was away; she’d give her a nice room and make her comfortable. Upon that, Lady Whitney offered a spacious bed and dressing-room at the Hall. Mary thanked them both, saying how kind they were to be so friendly with a stranger; but thought she must go to the Farm, as it would be within a walk night and morning. Bill spoke up, and said the carriage could fetch and bring her; but Vale Farm was decided upon; and when night came, I went with her to show her the way.

“That’s the water they went into, Miss Sanker; and that’s the very spot behind the trees.” She shivered just a little as she looked, but did not say much. Mrs. Vale met us at the door, and the old lady kissed Mary and told her she was a good girl to come fearlessly all the way alone from Wales to nurse her sick brother. When Mary came back the next morning, she said they had given her such a beautiful room, the dimity curtains whiter than snow, and the sheets scented with lavender.

Her going out to sleep appeased Hall;—that, or something else. She was gracious all day, and sent us in a couple of chickens for dinner. Mr. Blair cut them up and helped us. He had written to tell Dr. Frost in London of Miss Sanker’s arrival, and while we were at table a telegram came back, saying Mrs. Hall was to take care of Miss Sanker, and make her comfortable.

It went on so for three or four days; Mary sleeping at the Farm, and coming back in the morning. Sanker got well enough to be taken to a sofa in the pretty room that poor Mrs. Frost sat in nearly to the last; and we were all four growing very jolly, as intimate as if we’d known each other as infants. I had taken to call her Mary, hearing Sanker do it so often; and twice the name slipped accidentally from Mr. Blair. The news from Wales was better and better. For visitors we had Mrs. Vale, Lady Whitney, and Bill, and old Featherston. Some of them came every day. Dr. Frost was detained in London. The trial did not come on so soon as it was put down for; and when it did, it lasted a week, and the witnesses had to stay there. He had written to Mary, telling her to make herself quite happy, for she was in good hands. He also wrote to Mrs. Vale, and to Hall.

Well, it was either the fourth or fifth day. I know it was onMonday; and at five o’clock we were having tea for the first time in Sanker’s sitting-room, the table drawn near the sofa, and Mary pouring it out. It was the hottest of hot weather, the window was up as high as it would go, but not a breath of air came in. Therefore, to see Blair begin to shake as if he were taken with an ague, was something inexplicable. His face looked grey, his ears and hands had turned a sort of bluish white.

“Halloa!” said Sanker, who was the first to notice him. “What’s the matter, sir?”

Blair got up, and sat down again, his limbs shaking, his teeth chattering. Mary Sanker hastily put some of the hot tea into a saucer, and held it to his lips. His teeth rattled against the china; I thought they would bite a piece out of it; and in trying to take the saucer from Miss Sanker, the tea was spilt on the carpet.

“Just call Mrs. Hall, Johnny,” said Sanker, who had propped himself up on his elbow to stare.

Hall came, and Mr. Featherston came; but they could not make anything out of it except that Blair had had a shaking-fit. He was soon all right again (except for a burning heat); but the surgeon, given naturally to croak (or he wouldn’t have got so frightened about Sanker when Mr. Carden was telegraphed for), said he hoped the mathematical master had not set in for fever.

He had set in for something. That was clear. The shaking-fits took him now and again, giving place to spells of low fever. Featherston was not sure whether it had not a “typhoid character,”he said; but the suspicion was quite enough, and our visitors fell off. Mrs. Vale was the only one who came; she laughed at supposing she could be afraid of it. So there we still were, we four; prisoners, as may be said; with some fever amongst us that perhaps might be of a typhoid character. Mr. Featherston said (or Hall, I forget which) that it must have been smouldering within him ever since the Sunday night when he jumped into the river, and Blair thought so himself.

Do not imagine he was as ill as Sanker had been. Nothing of the sort. He got up every morning, and was in Mrs. Frost’s sitting-room with us until evening: but he grew nearly as weak as Sanker, and wanted pretty nearly as much waiting on. Sometimes his hands were like a burning coal; sometimes so cold that Mary would take them in hers to try and rub a little life into them. She was the gentlest nurse possible, and did not seem to think anything more of waiting on him than on her brother. Mrs. Hall would stand by and say there was nothing left for her to do.

One day Lady Whitney came over, braving the typhoid suspicion, and asked to see Miss Sanker in the great drawing-room; where she stood sniffing at a bottle of aromatic vinegar.

“My dear,” she said, when Mary went to her, “I do not think this is at all a desirable position for you to be placed in. I should not exactly like it for one of my own daughters. Mr. Blair is a very gentleman-like man, and all that, with quite proper feelings no doubt; but sitting with him in illness is altogether different from sitting with your brother. Featherston tells me there’s little or no danger of infection, and I have come to take you back to the Hall with me.”

But Mary would not go. It was not the position she should have voluntarily chosen, but circumstances had led her into it, and she thought her duty lay in staying where she was at present, was the substance of her answer. Mr. Blair had nursed her brother through his dangerous illness, and it would be cruelly ungrateful to leave him, now that he was ill himself. It seemed a duty thrown expressly in her way, she added; and her mother approved of what she was doing.

So Lady Whitney went away (leaving the bottle of aromatic vinegar as a present for the sick-room) three parts convinced. Any way, when she got home, she said that Mary Sanker was a sweet, good girl, trusty to her fingers’ ends.

I’m sure she was like sunshine in the room, and read to us out of the Bible just as Harry Vale’s fine old grandmother might have done. The first day that Sanker took a drive in a fly, he was tired afterwards, and went to bed and to sleep at tea-time. Towards sunset, before I walked with her to the Farm, Mary took the Book as usual; and then hesitated, as if in doubt whether to presume to read or not, Sanker being away.

“Oh yes; yes, if you please,” said Mr. Blair.

She began the tenth chapter of St. John. It is a passably long one, as every one knows; and when she laid the Book down again, Blair had his eyes shut and his head resting on the back of the easy chair where he generally sat. His face never looked more still and white. I glanced at Mary and she at me; we thought he was worse, and she went up to him.

“I ought not to have read so long a chapter,” she gently said.“I fear you are feeling worse.”

“No; I was only thinking. Thinking what an angel you are,”he added in low, impassioned, yet reverent tones, as he bent forward to look up in her face, and took both her hands for a moment in his.

She drew them away at once, saying, as she passed me, that she was going to put on her bonnet, and should be ready in a minute. Of course it might have been the reflection of the red sun-clouds, but I never saw any face so glowing in all my life.

The next move old Featherston made, was to decide that thefever was not of a typhoid character; and visitors came about us again. It was something like opening a public-house after a spell of closing; all the Whitneys flocked in together, except Sir John, who was in town for Parliament. Mrs. Hall was uncommonly short with every one. She had said from the first there was nothing infectious in the fever, told Featherston so to his face, and resented people’s having stayed away. I wrote home to tell them there. On the Saturday Dr. Frost arrived, and we were glad to see him. Blair was getting rather better then.

“Well, that Sunday night’s plunge in the water has had its revenge!” remarked Dr. Frost. “It only wants Todhetley and Vale to follow suit.”

But neither of them had the least intention of following suit. On the Monday Tod arrived to surprise us, strong as ever. The Squire had trusted him to drive the horses: you should have seen them spanking in at the gate of Worcester House, pawing the gravel, as Tod in the high carriage, the ribbons in his hands, and the groom beside him, brought them up beautifully to the door. Some people called Tod ugly, saying his features were strong; but I know he promised to be the finest man in our two counties.

He brought an invitation for the sick and the well. When the two invalids were able to get to Dyke Manor, Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley expected to see them, for change of air. Mary Sanker and I were to go as soon as we liked. Which we did in a few days, and were followed by Sanker and Mr. Blair: both able to help themselves then, and getting well all one way.

It did not surprise people very much to hear that the mathematical master and Mary Sanker had fallen in love with one another. He (as Bill Whitney’s mother had put in) was gentleman-like; a good-looking fellow to boot: and you have heard what she was. The next week but one after arriving at Dyke Manor, Blair took Mrs. Todhetley into his confidence, though he had said nothing to Mary. They would be sure to marry in the end, she privately told the Squire, for their likeness to each other had struck her at first sight.

“Mary will not have a shilling, Mr. Blair; she will go to her husband (whenever she shall marry) with even a very poor outfit,”Mrs. Todhetley explained, wishing Blair to fully understand things.“Her father, Philip Sanker, was a gentleman bred and born, but his patrimony was small. He was persuaded to embark it in a Welsh mine, and lost all. Report said some roguery was at work, but I don’t know that it was. It ended in his becoming overlooker on the very same mine, at a salary so small that they could hardly have reared their family anywhere but in Wales. Mary does not play, or draw, you see; she has no accomplishments.”

“She has what is a great deal better; she does not want them,”answered Blair, his pale face lighting up.

“In point of fact, the Sankers—as I fancy—have sacrificed the girls’ interests to the boys; they of course must have a thorough education,” remarked Mrs. Todhetley. “They are good people, both; you could not fail to like them. I sometimes think, Mr. Blair, that the children of these refined men and women (and Philip Sanker and his wife are that), compelled to live closely and to look at every sixpence before it is spent, turn out all the better for it.”

“I am sure they do,” answered Blair, earnestly. “It was my own case.”

Taking Mrs. Todhetley into confidence meant as to his means as well as his love. He had saved a little money during the eight years he had been at work for himself—about two hundred pounds. It might be possible, he thought, to take a school with this, and set up a tent at once: he and Mary. Mrs. Todhetley shook her head; she could make as much of small sums as any one, but fancied this would scarcely be enough for what he wished.

“There would be the furniture,” she ventured to say with some hesitation, not liking to damp him.

“I think that is often included in the purchase-money for the good-will,” said Blair.

He had been acting on this notion before speaking to Mrs. Todhetley, and a friend of his in London, the Reverend Mr. Lockett, was already looking out for any schools that might be in the market. In a few days news came down of one to be disposed of in the neighbourhood of London. Mr. Lockett thought it was as good an investment as Blair was likely to find, he wrote word: only, the purchase-money, inclusive of furniture, was four hundred pounds instead of two.

“It is of no use to think of it,” said Mr. Blair, pushing his curly hair (they used to say he was vain of it at Frost’s) from his perplexed brow. “My two hundred pounds will not go far towards that.”

“It seems to me that the first step will be to go up and see the place,” remarked Mrs. Todhetley. “If what Mr. Lockett says of the school be true; that is, if the people who have the disposal of it are not deceiving him; it must be a very good thing.”

“I suppose you mean that half the purchase-money should remain on it as a mortgage, to be paid off later,” cried Blair, seizing the idea and brightening up.

“No; not exactly,” said Mrs. Todhetley, getting as red as a rose, for she did not like to tell him what she did mean; it looked rather like a conspiracy.

“Look here, Blair,” cried the Squire, taking him in the garden by the button-hole, “I will see about the other two hundred. You go up and make inquiries on the spot; and perhaps I’ll go too; I should like a run up; and if the affair is worth your while, we’ll pay the money down on the nail, and so have done with it.”

It was Blair’s turn to grow red now. “Do you mean, sir, that you—that you—would advance the half of the money? But it would be too generous. I have no claim on you——”

“No claim on me!” burst forth the Squire, in a passion, pinning him against the wall of the pigeon-house. “No claim on me! When you saved my son from drowning only a few weeks ago! And had an ague through it! No claim on me! What next will you say?”

“But that was nothing, sir. Any man, with the commonest feelings of humanity, would jump into the water if he saw a fellow-creature sinking.”

“Commonest fiddlestick!” roared the Squire. “If this school is one likely to answer your purpose, you put down your two hundred pounds, and I will see to the rest. There! We’ll go up to-day.”

“Oh, sir, I never expected this. Perhaps in a year or two I shall be able to pay the money back again: but the goodness I can never repay.”

“Don’t you trouble your head about paying me back till you’re asked to do it,” retorted the Squire, mortally offended at the notion.“If you are too proud to take it and say nothing about it, I’ll give it to Mary Sanker instead of you. I will, too. Mind, sir! that half shall be your wife’s, not yours.”

If you’ll believe me, there were tears in old Blair’s eyes. He was soft at times. The Squire gave him another thrust, which nearly sent Blair into the pigeon-house, and then walked off with his head up and his nankeen coat-skirts held out behind, to watch Drew give the green meat to the pigs. Blair got over his push, and went to find Miss Mary, his thin cheeks alight with a spot as red as Sanker’s had worn when his illness was coming on.

They went up to London that day. The Squire had plenty of sense when he chose to exercise it; and instead of trusting to his own investigation and Blair’s (which would have been the likeliest thing for him to do in general) he took a lawyer to the spot.

It proved to be all right. The gentleman giving up the school had made some money at it, and was going abroad to his friends, who had settled in Queensland. Any efficient man, he said to the Squire, able to keep pupils when once he had secured them, couldnot fail to do well at it. The clergyman, Mr. Lockett, had called on one or two of the parents, who confirmed what was asserted. Altogether it was a straightforward thing, but they wouldn’t abate a shilling of the four hundred pounds.

The Squire concluded the bargain on the spot, for other applicants were after it, and there was danger in delay. He came back to Dyke Manor; and the next thing he did was to accompany Mary Sanker home, and tell the news there.

Mr. Blair stayed in London to take possession, and get things in order. He had only time for a few days’ flying visit to Mr. and Mrs. Sanker in Wales before opening his new school. There was no opposition there: people are apt to judge prospects according to their own circumstances; and they seemed to think it a good offer for Mary.

There was no opposition anywhere. Dr. Frost found a new mathematical master without trouble, and sent Blair his best wishes and a full set of plated spoons and forks and things, engraved with the initials P. M. B. He was wise enough to lay out the sum he wished to give in useful things, instead of a silver tea-pot or any other grand article of that kind, which would not be brought to light once a year.

Blair cribbed a week’s holiday at Michaelmas, and went down to be married. We saw them at the week’s end as they passed through Worcester station. Mary looked the same sweet girl as ever, in the same quiet grey dress (or another that was related to it); and Blair was jolly. He clasped the Squire’s hands as if he wanted to take them with him. We handed in a big basket of grapes and nectarines from Mrs. Todhetley; and Mary’s nice face smiled and nodded her thanks to the last, as the train puffed on.

“Good luck to them!” said Tod.

Good luck to them. You will hear what luck they had.

For this is not the end of that Sunday night’s work, or it would have hardly been worth relating, seeing that people get married every day, and no one thinks cheese of it but themselves. The end has to come.

CHAPTER XII.

“JERRY’S GAZETTE.”

The school, taken to by Mr. Blair, was in one of the suburbs of London. It may be as well not to mention which of them; but some of the families yet living there cannot fail to remember the circumstances when they read this. For what I am going to tell you of is true. It did not happen last year; nor the year before. When it did happen, is of no consequence to any one.

When Pyefinch Blair got into the house, he found that it had some dilapidations, which had escaped his notice, and would have to be repaired. Not an uncommon case by any means. Mr. Blair paid the four hundred pounds for the school, including the furniture and good-will, and that drained him of his money. It was not a bad bargain, as bargains go. He then had the house put into fair order, and bought a little more furniture that seemed necessary to him, intending that his boys should be comfortable, as well as the young wife he was soon to bring home.

The school did not profess to be one of those higher-class schools that charge a hundred a year and extras. It was moderate in terms and moderate in size; the pupils being chiefly sons of well-to-do tradesmen, some of them living on the spot. At first, Blair (bringing with him his Cambridge notions) entertained thoughts of raising the school to a higher price and standard. But it would have been a risk; almost like beginning a fresh venture. And when he found that the school paid well, and masters and boys got on comfortably, he dropped the wish.

More than two years went by. One evening, early in February, Mrs. Blair was sitting by the parlour fire after tea, with a great boy on her lap, who was forward with his tongue, and had just begun to walk with a totter. I don’t think you could have seen much difference in her from what she was as Mary Sanker. She had the same neat sort of dress and quiet manner, the fresh gentle face and sweet eyes, and the pretty, smooth brown hair. Her husband told her sometimes that she would spoil the boys with kindness. If any one fell into disgrace, she was sure to beg him off; it was wonderfulwhat a good mother she was to them, and only twenty-four years old yet.

Mr. Blair was striding the carpet with his head down, as one in perplexed thought, a scowl upon his brow. It was something unusual, for he was always bright. He was as slender and good-looking a fellow as he used to be. Mrs. Blair noticed him and spoke.

“Have you a headache, Pyefinch?” She had long ago got over the odd sound of his Christian name. Habit familiarizes most things.

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

He did not make any answer; seemed not to hear her. Mrs. Blair put the boy down on the hearthrug. The child was baptized Joseph, after Squire Todhetley, whom they persisted in calling their best friend.

“Run to papa, Joe. Ask him what the matter is.”

The young gentleman went swaying across the carpet, with some unintelligible language of his own. Mr. Blair had no resource but to pick him up: and he carried him back to his mother.

“What is the matter, Pyefinch?” she asked again, taking his hand. “I am sure you are not well.”

“I am quite well,” he said; “but I have got into a little bother lately. What ails me this evening is, that I find I must tell you of it, and I don’t like to do so. There, Mary, send the child away.”

She knew the nursemaid was busy; would not ring, but carried him out herself. Mr. Blair was sitting down when she returned, staring into the fire.

“I had hoped you would never know it, Mary; I had not intended that you should. The fact is——”

Mr. Blair stopped. His wife glanced at him; a serene calm in her eyes, a firm reliance in her loving tone.

“Do not hesitate, Pyefinch. The greater the calamity, the more need that I should hear it.”

“Nay, it is no such great mischief as to be called a calamity. When I took to this house and school, I incurred a debt, and I am suddenly called upon to pay it.”

“Do you mean Mr. Todhetley’s?”

A smile at the question crossed the schoolmaster’s face. “Mr. Todhetley’s was a present; I thought you understood that, Mary. When I would have spoken of returning it, you may remember that he went into a passion.”

“What debt is it, then?”

“I paid four hundred pounds, you know, for the school; half of it I had saved; the other half was given by Mr. Todhetley. Welland good, so far. But I had not thought of one thing—the money that would be wanted for current expenses, and for the hundred and one odd things that stare you in the face upon taking to a new concern. Repairs had to be done, furniture to be bought in; and not a penny coming in until the end of the quarter: not much then, for most of the boys pay half-yearly. Lockett, who was down here most days, saw that if I could not get some money to go on with, there would be no resource but to re-sell the school. He bestirred himself, and got me the loan of a hundred and fifty pounds from a friend, at only five per cent. interest. This money I am suddenly called upon to repay.”

“But why?”

“Because he from whom I had it is dead, and the executors have called it in. It was Mr Wells.”

She recognized the name as that of a gentleman with whom they had been slightly acquainted; he had died suddenly, in the prime of life.

“Has any of it been paid off?”

“None. I could have repaid a portion every half-year as it came round, but Mr. Wells would not let me. ‘You had a great deal better use it in improving the school and getting things comfortable about you; I am in no hurry,’ was his invariable rejoinder. Lockett thought he meant eventually to make me a present of the money, being a wealthy man without near relatives. Of course I never looked for anything of the sort; but I was as easy as to the debt as though I had not contracted it.”

“Will the executors not let you have the use of the money still?”

“You should see their curt note, ordering its immediate repayment! Lockett seems more vexed at the turn affairs have taken than even I am. He was here to-day.”

Mrs. Blair sat in silent reflection, wishing she had known of this. Many an odd shilling that she had thought justified in spending, she would willingly have recalled now. Not that they could have amounted to much in the aggregate. Presently she looked at her husband.

“Pyefinch, it seems to me that there’s only one thing to do. You must borrow the sum from some one else, which of course will make us only as much in debt as we are now; and we must pay it off by instalments as quickly as we possibly can.”

“It is what Lockett and I have decided on already as the only course. Why, Mary, this worry has been on our minds for a fortnight past,” he added, turning quickly. “But now that it has come to borrowing again, and not from a friend, I felt that I ought to tell you. Besides, there’s another thing.”

“Go on,” she said.

“We have found a man to advance the money. Lockett and I picked him out from the Times advertisements. These fellows are awful rogues, for the most part; but this is not one of the worst. Lockett made inquiries of a parishioner of his who understands these things, and finds Gavity (that’s his name) is tolerably fair for a professional money-lender. I shall have to pay him higher interest. And he wants me to give him a bill of sale on the furniture.”

“A bill of sale on the furniture! What is that?”

“That is what I meant when I said there was another thing,”replied Mr. Blair. “Wells was content with my note of hand; this man requires security on my goods. It is a mere matter of form in my case, he says. As I am doing well, and there’s no fear of my not keeping the interest paid up, I suppose it is. In two or three years from this, all being well, the debt itself will be wiped off.”

“Oh yes; I hope so. The school is prosperous.”

Her tone was anxious, and Mr. Blair detected it. But for considering that she ought to know it, he would rather have kept this trouble to himself. And he was not sure upon another point: whether, in giving this bill of sale upon the furniture, Mr. Gavity might deem it essential to come in and take a list, article by article, bed by bed, table by table. If so, it would not have been possible to conceal it from her. He mentioned this. She, with himself, could not understand the necessity of their furniture being brought into the transaction at all, seeing that there could be no doubt as to their ability to repay. The one knew just as much about bills of sale and the rights they gave, as the other: and, that, was nothing.

And now that the communication to his wife was off his mind—for in that had lain the chief weight—Mr. Blair was more at ease. As they sat talking together, discussing the future in all its aspects, the shadow lifted itself, and things looked brighter. It did not seem to either of them so formidable a matter after all. It was only changing one creditor for another, and paying a little higher interest.

The transaction was accomplished. Gavity advanced the money, and took the bill of sale upon the furniture. He shot up the expenses—as money-lenders of his stamp generally do—and brought up the loan to a hundred and eighty, instead of a hundred and fifty. Still, taking things for all in all, the position was perhaps as fair and hopeful a one as can be experienced under debt. It was but a temporary clog; Mr. and Mrs. Blair both knew that. The school was flourishing; their prospects were good; they were young, and healthy, and hopeful. And though Mr. Gavity would of course exact his rights to the uttermost farthing, he had no intention of playing the rogue. In all candour let it be avowed, the gentleman money-lender did not see that it was a case affording scope for it.

I had to tell that much as well as I could, seeing that it only came to me by hearsay in the future.

And now to go back a little while, and to ourselves at Dyke Manor.

After their marriage the Squire did not lose sight of Mr. and Mrs. Blair. A basket of things went up now and then, and the second Christmas they were invited to come down; but Mary wrote to decline, on account of Joe, the baby. “Let them leave Joe at home,” cried Tod; but Mrs. Todhetley, shaking her head, said the dear little infant would come to sad grief without its mother. Soon after that, when the Squire was in London, he took the omnibus and went to see them, and told us how comfortably they were getting on.

Years went round to another Christmas, when the exacting Joe would be some months over two years old. In the passing of time you are apt to lose sight of interests, unless they are close ones; and for some months we had heard nothing of the Blairs. Mrs. Todhetley spoke of it one evening.

“Send them a Christmas hamper,” said the Squire.

The Christmas hamper went. With a turkey and ham, and a brace of pheasants in it; some bacon and apples to fill up, and sweet herbs and onions. Lena put in her favourite doll, dressed as a little mother, for young Joe. It had a false arm; and no legs, so to say: Hugh cut the feet off one day, and Hannah had to sew the stumps up. We hoped they would enjoy it all, including the doll, and drank good luck to them on Christmas Day.

A week and a half went on, and no news came. Mrs. Todhetley grew uneasy about the hamper, feeling sure it had been confiscated by the railway. Mary Blair had always written so promptly to acknowledge everything sent to them.

One January day the letter came in by the afternoon post. We knew Mary’s handwriting. The Squire and Madam were at the Sterlings’, and it was nine o’clock at night when they drove in. Mrs. Todhetley’s face ached, which was quite usual she had a white handkerchief tied round it. When they were seated round the fire, I remembered the letter, and gave it to her.

“Now to hear the fate of the hamper!” she exclaimed, carrying it to the lamp. But, what with the face-ache, and what with hereyes, which were not so good by candle-light as they used to be, Mrs. Todhetley could not read the contents readily. She looked at the writing, page after page, and then gave a short scream of dismay. Something was wrong.

“Those thieves have grabbed the hamper!” cried the Squire.

“No; I think the Blairs have had the hamper. I fear it is something worse,” she said faintly. “Perhaps you will read it aloud.”

The Squire put his spectacles on as he took the letter. We gathered round the table, waiting. Mrs. Todhetley sat with her head aside, nursing her cheek; and Tod, who had been reading, put his book down. The Squire hammered a good deal over the writing, which was not so legible as Mary’s was in general. She appeared to have meant it for Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire jointly.

“‘MY VERY DEAR FRIENDS,

If I have delayed writing to you it was not for want of ingredients>

“Ingredients!” cried one of us.

“It must be gratitude,” corrected the Squire. “Don’t interrupt.”

“‘Gratitude for your most welcome and liberal present, but because my heart and hands have alike shrunk from the ex—ex—explanation it must entail. Alas! a series of very terrible misfortunes have overwormed—overwhelmed us. We have had to give up our school and our prospects together, and to turn out of our once happy dome.’”

“Dome!” put in Tod.

“I suppose it’s home,” said the Squire. “This confounded lamp is as dim as it can be to-night!” And he went on fractiously.

“‘Through no fault of my husband’s he had to borrow a hundred and fifty pounds nearly twelve months ago. The man he had it from was a money-lender, a Mr. Gavity; he charged a high rate of interest, and brought the cost up to about thirty pounds; but we have no reason to think he wished to act un—unfar—unfairly by us. He required security—which I suppose was only reasonable. The Reverend Mr. Lockett offered himself; but Gavity said parsons were slippers.’”

“Good gracious!” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“The word’s slippery, I expect,” cried the Squire with a frown.“One would think she had emptied the water-bottle into the inkpot.”

“‘Gavity said parsons were slippery; meaning that they were often worth no more than their word. He took, as security, a bill of sale on the furnace. Stay,—furniture. Our school was quiteprosperous; there was not the slightest doubt that in a short time the whole of the debt could be cleared off; so we had no hesitation in letting him have the bill of sale. And no harm would have come of it, but for one dreadful misfortune, which (as it seems) was a necessary part of the attendant proceedings. My husband got put into Jer—Jer—Jerry’s Gazelle.’”

“Jerry’s Gazelle?”

“Jerry’s Gazette,” corrected the Squire.

“Jerry’s Gazette?”

We all spoke at once. He stared at the letters and then at us. We stared back again.

“It is Jerry’s Gazette—as I think. Come and see, Joe.”

Tod looked over the Squire’s shoulder. It certainly looked like“Jerry’s Gazette,” he said; but the ink was pale.

“‘Jerry’s Gazette.’ Go on, father. Perhaps you’ll find an explanation further on.”

“‘This Jerry’s Gazette, it appears, is circulated chiefly (and I think privately) amongst comical men—commercial men; merchants, and tradespeople. When they read its list of names, they know at once who is in difficulties. Of course they saw my husband’s name there, Pyefinch Blair; unfortunately a name so peculiar as not to admit of any doubt. I did not see the Gazette, but I believe the amount of the debt was stated, and that Gavity (but I don’t know whether he was mentioned by name) had a bill of sale on our household furniture.’”

“What the dickens is Jerry’s Gazette?” burst forth the Squire, giving the letter a passionate flick. “I know but of one Gazette, into which men of all conditions go, whether they are made lords or bankrupts. What’s this other thing?”

He put up his spectacles, and stared at us all again, as if expecting an answer. But he might as well have asked it of the moon. Mrs. Todhetley sat with the most hopeless look you ever saw on her face. So he went on reading again.

“‘We knew nothing about Jerry’s Gazette ourselves, or that there was such a pub—pub—publication, or that the transaction had appeared in it; and could not imagine why the school began to fall off. Some of the pupils were taken away, at once, some at Lady-day; and by Midsummer nearly every one had left. We used to lie awake night after night, grieving and wondering what could be the matter, searching in vain for any cause of offence, given unwittingly to the boys or their parents. Often and often we got up in the morning to go about our day’s work, never having closed our eyes. At last, a gentleman, whose son had been one of the first renewed—removed, told Pyefinch the truth: that he had appeared in Jerry’s Gazette. The fathers who subscribed toJerry’s Gazette had seen it for themselves; and they informed the others.’”

“The devil take Jerry’s Gazette,” interrupted Tod, deliberately. “This reads like an episode of the Secret Inquisition, sir, in the days of the French Revolution.”

“It reads like a thing that an honest Englishman’s ears ought to redden to hear of,” answered the Squire, as he put the lamp nearer, for his outstretched arms were getting cramped.

“‘Pyefinch went round to every one of the boy’s fathers. Some would not see him, some not hear him; but to those who did, he imported—imparted—the whole circumstances; showing how it was that he had had to borrow the money (or rather to re-borrow it, but I have not time in this letter to go so far into detail), and that it could not by any possibility injure the boys or touch their interests. Most of them, he said, were very kind and sympathizing, so far as words went, saying that in this case Jerry’s Gazetteappeared to have been the means of inflicting a cruel wrong; but they would not agree to replace their sons with us. They either declined point-blank, or said they’d consider of it; but you see the greater portion of the boys were already placed at other schools. All of them told Pyefinch one thing—that they were thoroughly satisfied with his treatment in every respect, and but for this interruption would probably have left their sons with him as long as they wanted intrusion—instruction. The long and short of it was this, my dear friends: they did not choose to have their sons educated by a man who was looked upon in the commercial world as next door to a bankrupt. One of them delicately hinted as much, and said Mr. Blair must be aware that he was liable to have his house topped—stripped—at any moment under the bill of sale. We said to ourselves that evening, as Pyefinch and I talked together, that we might have removed boys of our own from a school under the same circumstances.’”

“That’s true enough,” murmured Mrs. Todhetley.

“‘My letter has grown very long and I must hasten to conclude it. Just before the rent was due at Michaelmas (we paid it half-yearly, by agreement) Gavity put the bill of sale into force. One morning several men came in and swept off the furniture. We were turned out next: though indeed to have attempted to remain in that large house were folly. The landlord came in a passion, and told Pyefinch that he would put him in prison if he were worth it; as he was not, he had better go out of the pitch—place—forthwith, as another tenant was ready to take possession. Since then we have been staying here, Pyefinch vainly seeking to get some employment. What we hoped was, that he would obtain an under-mastership to some public fool——”

“Fool, sir!”

“‘School. But it seems difficult. He sends his best regards to you, and bids me say that the reason you have not heard from us so long is, that we could not bear to tell you the ill news after your former kindness to us. The arrival of the hamper leaves us no resource.

“‘Thank you for that. Thank you very truly. The people at the old house have our address, and re-directed it here. We received it early on Christmas Eve. How good the things were, you do not need to be told. I stuffed the turkey—I shall make a famous cook in time—and sent it to the backhouse—bakehouse. You should have seen the pill—picture—it was when it came home. Believe me, my dear friends, we are both of us grateful for all your kindness to us, past and present. Little Joe is so delighted with the doll, he scarcely puts it out of his arms. Our best love to all, including Hugh and Lena. Thank Johnny for the beautiful new book he put in. I must apologize in conclusion for my writing; the ink we get in these penny bottles is pale; and baby has been on my lap all the time, never easy a minute. Do not say anything of all this, please, should you be writing to Wales.

“‘Ever most truly yours,

“‘MARY BLAIR.

13, Difford’s Buildings, Paddington.’”

The Squire put the letter down and his spectacles on it, quite solemnly. You might have heard a pin drop in that room.

“This is a thing that must be inquired into. I shall go up to-morrow.”

“And I’d go too, sir, but for my engagement to the Whitneys,”said Tod.

“She must mean, in speaking of a baby, that there’s another,”spoke Mrs. Todhetley, in a frightened sort of whisper. “Besides little Joe. Dear me!”

“I don’t understand it,” stamped the Squire, getting red. “Turned out of house and home through Jerry’s Gazette! Do we live in England, I’d like to ask?—under English laws?—enjoying English rights and freedom? Jerry’s Gazette? What the deuce is Jerry’s Gazette? Where does it come from? What issues it? The Lord Chamberlain’s Office?—or Scotland Yard?—or some Patent society that we’ve not heard of, down here? The girl must have been imposed upon: her statement won’t hold water.”

“It looks as though she had been, sir.”

“Looks like it, Johnny! It must be so,” said the Squire, growing warmer. “I have temporary need of a sum of money, and I borrow it straightforwardly, honestly purposing and undertaking to pay itback with good interest, but not exactly wanting my neighbours to know about it; and you’d like me to believe that there’s some association, or publication, or whatever else it may be, that won’t allow this to be done privately, but must pounce upon the transaction, and take it down in print, and send it round to the public, just as if it were a wedding or a burying!”

The Squire had grown redder than a roost-cock. He always did when tremendously put out, and the matter would not admit of calling in old Jones the constable.

“Folly! Moonshine! Blair, poor fellow, has been slipping into some disaster, had his furniture seized, and so invents this fable to appease his wife, not liking to tell her the truth. Jerry’s Gazette!When I was a youngster, my father took me to see an exhibition in Worcester called ‘Jerry’s Dogs.’ The worst damage you could get there was a cold, from the holes in the canvas roof, or a pitch over the front into the sawdust. But in Jerry’s Gazette, according to this tale, you may be damaged for life. Don’t tell me! Do we live in Austria, or France, or any of those places, where—as it’s said—a man can’t so much as put on a pair of clean stockings in a morning, but its laid before high quarters in black and white at mid-day by the secret police! No, you need not tell me that.”

“I never heard of Jerry’s Gazette in all my life; I don’t know whether it is a stage performance or something to eat; but I feel convinced Mary Blair would not write this without having good grounds for it,” said Tod, bold as usual.

And do you know—though you may be slow to believe it—the Squire had taken latterly to listen to him. He turned his red old face on him now, and some of its fierceness went out of it.

“Then, Joe, all I can say is this—that English honour and English notions have changed uncommonly from what they used to be. ‘Live and let live’ was one of our mottoes; and most of us tried to act up to it. I know no more of this,” striking his hand on the letter, “than you know, boys; and I cannot think but that she must have been under some unaccountable mistake in writing it. Any way, I’ll go up to London to-morrow: and if you like, Johnny, you can go with me.”

We went up. I did not feel sure of it until the train was off, for Tod seemed three-parts inclined to give up the shooting at the Whitneys’, and start for London instead; in which case the Squire might not have taken me. Tod and some more young fellows were invited to Whitney Hall for three days, to a shooting-match.

It was dusk when we reached London, and as cold as charity. The Squire turned into the railway hotel and had some chops served, but did not wait for a regular dinner. When once he was in for impatience, he was in for it.

“Difford’s Buildings, Paddington,” had been the address, so we thought it would not be far to go. The Squire held on in his way along the crowded streets, as if he were about to set things to rights, elbowing the people, and asking the road at every turn. Some did not know Difford’s Buildings, and some directed us wrongly; but we got there at last. It was in a narrow, quiet street; a row of what Londoners call eight-roomed houses, with little gates opening to the square patches of smoky garden, and “Difford’s Buildings”written up as large as life at the corner.

“Let’s see,” said the Squire, looking sideways at the windows.“Number thirteen, was it not, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir.”

Difford’s Buildings were not well lighted, and there was no seeing the numbers. The Squire stopped before the one he thought must be thirteen; when some one came out at the house-door, shutting it behind him, and met us at the gate. A youngish clergyman in a white necktie. He and the Squire stood looking at each other in the gathering darkness.

“Can you tell me if Mr. Blair lives here?”

“Yes, he does,” was the answer. “I think—I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Todhetley.”

The Squire knew him then—the Reverend Mr. Lockett. They had met when Blair first took to the school.

“What is all this extraordinary history?” burst forth the Squire, seizing him by the button of his great-coat, and taking him a few yards further on. “Mrs. Blair has been writing us a strange rigmarole, which nobody can make head or tail of; about ruin, and sales, and something she calls Jerry’s Gazette.”

“Ay,” quietly answered the clergyman in a tone of pain, as he put his arm inside the Squire’s, and they paced slowly up and down. “It is one of the saddest histories my experience has ever had to do with.”

The Squire was near coming to an explosion in the open street.“Will you be pleased to tell me, sir, whether there exists such a thing as Jerry’s Gazette, or whether it is a fable? I have heard of Jerry’s Performing Dogs; went to see ’em once: but I don’t know what this other invention can be.”

“Certainly there is such a thing,” said Mr. Lockett. “It is, I fancy, a list of people who unfortunately get into difficulties; at least, people who fall into difficulties seem to get shown up in it. I am told it is meant chiefly for private circulation: which may imply, as I imagine (but here I may be wrong) what may be called secret circulation. Blair had occasion to borrow a little money, andhis name appeared in it. From that moment he was a marked man, and his school fell off.”

“Goodness bless my soul!” cried the Squire solemnly, completely taken aback at hearing Mary’s letter confirmed. “Who gives Jerry’s Gazette the right to do this?”

“I don’t know about the right. It seems it has the power.”

“It is a power I never heard of before, sir. We have a parson, down our way, who tells us every Sunday the world’s coming to an end. I think it must be. I know it’s getting too clever for me to understand. If a man has the misfortune (perhaps after years of struggling that nobody knows anything about but himself) to break up at last, he goes into the country’s Gazette in a straightforward manner, and the public read it over their breakfast-tables, and there’s nothing underhand about it. But as to this other thing—if I comprehend the matter rightly—Blair did not as much as know of its existence, or that his name was going into it.”

“I am sure he did not; or I, either,” said Mr. Lockett.

“I should like its meaning explained, then,” cried the Squire, getting hotter and angrier. “Is it a fair, upright, honest thing; or is it a sort of Spanish Inquisition?”

“I cannot tell you,” answered the parson, as they both stood still.“Mr. Blair was informed by the father of one of his pupils that he believed the sheet was first of all set up as a speculation, and was found to answer so well that it became quite an institution. I do not know whether this is true.”

“I have heard of an institution for idiots, but I never heard of one for selling up men’s chairs and tables,” stormed the Squire.“No, sir, and I don’t believe it now. I might take up my standing to-morrow on the top of the Monument, and say to the public, ‘Here I am, and I’ll ferret out what I can about you, and whisper it to one another of you;’ and so bring a serpent’s trail on the unsuspecting heads, and altogether play Old Gooseberry with the crowds below me. Do you suppose, sir, the Lord Chancellor would wink his eye at me, stuck aloft there at my work, and would tolerate such a spectacle?”

“I fear the Lord Chancellor has not much to do with it,” said Mr. Lockett, smiling at the Squire’s random logic.

“Then suppose we say good men—public opinion—commercial justice and honour? Come!”

He shook the frail railings, on which his hand was resting, until they nearly came to grief. Mr. Lockett related the particulars of the transaction from the beginning; the original debt, which Blair was suddenly called upon to pay off, and the contraction of the one to Gavity. He said that he himself had had as much to do with it as Blair, in the capacity of friend and adviser, and felt almost as though he were responsible for the turn affairs had taken; which had caused him scarcely to enjoy an easy moment since. TheSquire began to abuse Gavity, but Mr. Lockett said the man did not appear to have had any ill intention. As to his having sold off the goods—if he had not sold them, the landlord would have done so.

“And what’s Blair doing now?” asked Mr. Todhetley.

“Battling with illness for his life,” said the clergyman. “I have just been praying with him.”

The Squire retreated towards the lamp-post, as if some one had given him a blow. Mr. Lockett explained further.

It was in September that they had left their home. His own lodging and the church of which he was curate were in Paddington, and he found rooms for Blair and his wife in the same neighbourhood—two parlours in Difford’s Buildings. Blair (who had lost heart so terribly as to be good for little) spared no time or exertion in seeking for something to do. He tried to get into King’s College; they liked his appearance and testimonials, but at present had no vacancy: he tried private schools for an ushership, but did did not get one: nothing seemed to be vacant just then. Then he tried for a clerk’s place. Day after day, ill or well, rain or fine, feasting or fasting, he went tramping about London streets. At last, one of those who had had sons at his school, gave him some out-door employment—that of making known a new invention and soliciting customers for it from shop to shop: Blair to be paid on commission. Naturally, he did not let weather hinder him, and would come home to Difford’s Buildings at night, wet through. There had been a great deal of rain in November and December. But he got wet once too often, and was attacked with rheumatic fever. The fever was better now; but the weakness it had left was dangerous.

“She did not say anything about this in her letter,” interrupted the Squire resentfully, when Mr. Lockett had explained so far.

“Blair told her not to do so. He thought if their position were revealed to the friends who had once shown themselves so kind, it might look almost like begging for help again.”

“Blair’s a fool!” roared the Squire.

“Mrs. Blair has not made the worst of it to her family in Wales. It would only distress them, she says, for they could not help her. Mr. Sanker has been ill again for some time past, has not been allowed, I believe, to draw his full salary, and there’s no doubt they want every penny of their means for themselves; and more too.”

“How have they lived here?” asked the Squire, as we went slowly back to the gate.

“Blair earned a little while he could get about; and his wife has been enabled to procure some kind of wool-work from a warehouse in the city, which pays her very well,” said the clergyman, droppinghis voice to a whisper, as if he feared to be overheard. “Unfortunately there’s the baby to take up much of her time. It was born in October, soon after they came there.”

“And I should like to know what business there has to be a baby?” cried the Squire, who was like a man off his head.“Couldn’t the baby have waited for a more convenient season?”

“It might have been better; it is certainly a troublesome, crying little thing,” said the parson. “Yes, you can go straight in: the parlour door is on the right. I have a service this evening at seven, and shall be late for it. This is your son, I presume, sir?”

“My son! law bless you! My son is a strapping young fellow, six feet two in his stockings. This is Johnny Ludlow.”

He shook hands pleasantly, and was good enough to say he had heard of me. The Squire went on, and I with him. There was no lamp in the passage, and we had to feel on the right for the parlour door.

“Come in,” called out Mary, in answer to the knock. I knew her voice again.

We can’t help our thoughts. Things come into the mind without leave or licence; and it is no use saying they ought not to, or asking why they do. Nearly opposite the door in the small room was the fireplace. Mary Blair sat on a low stool before it, doing some work with coloured wools with a big hooked needle, a baby in white lying flat on her lap, and the little chap, Joe, sitting at her feet. All in a moment it put me in mind of Mrs. Lease, sitting on her stool before the fire that day long ago (though in point of fact, as I discovered afterwards, hers had been a bucket turned upside down) with the sick child on her lap, and the other little ones round her. Why this, to-night, should have reminded me of that other, I cannot say, but it did; and in the light of an omen. You must ridicule me if you choose: it is not my fault; and I am telling nothing but the truth. Lease had died. Would Pyefinch Blair die?

The Squire went in gingerly, as if he had been treading on ploughshares. The candle stood on the mantel-piece, a table was pushed back under the window. Altogether the room was poor, and a small saucepan simmered on the hob. Mary turned her head, and rose up with a flushed face, letting the work fall on the baby’s white nightgown, as she held out her hand. Little Joe, a sturdy fellow in a scarlet frock, with big brown eyes, backed against the wall by the fireplace and stood staring, Lena’s doll held safely under his pinafore.

She lost her presence of mind. The Squire was the veriest old stupid, when he wanted to make-believe, that you’d see in a winter’s day. He began saying something about “happening to be in town,and so called.” But he broke down, and blurted out the truth.“We’ve come to see after you, my dear; and to learn what all this trouble means.”

And then she broke down. Perhaps it was the sight of us, recalling the old time at Dyke Manor, when the future looked so fair and happy; perhaps it was the mention of the trouble. She put her hands before her face, and the tears rained through her fingers.

“Shut the door, will you, Johnny,” she whispered. “Very softly.”

It was the other door she pointed to, one at the end of the room, and I closed it without noise. Except for a sob now and again, that she kept down as well as she could, the grief passed away. Young Joe, frightened at matters, suddenly went at her, full butt, and hid his eyes in her petticoats with a roar. I took him on my knee and got him round again. Somehow children are never afraid of me. The Squire rubbed his old red nose, and said he had a cold.

But, was she not altered! Now that the flush had faded, and emotion passed, the once sweet, fresh, blooming face stood out in its reality. Sweet, indeed, it was still; but the bloom and freshness had given place to a haggard look, and to dark circles round the soft brown eyes, weary now.

She had no more to tell of the past calamities than her letter and Mr. Lockett had told. Jerry’s Gazette was the sore point with the Squire, but she did not seem to understand it better than we did.

“I want to know one thing,” said he, quite fiercely. “How didJerry’s Gazette get at the transaction between your husband and Gavity? Did Gavity go to it, open-mouthed, with the news?”

Mary did not know. She had heard something about a register—that the bill of sale had to be registered somewhere, and thoughtJerry’s Gazette might have obtained the information from that source.

“Heaven bless us all!” cried the Squire. “Can’t a man borrow a bit of money but it must become known to his enemies, if he has any, bringing them down upon him like a pack of hounds in full cry? This used to be the freest land on earth.”

The baby began to scream. She put down the wool-work, and hushed it to her. I am sure the Squire had half a mind to tell her to give it a gentle shaking. He looked upon screaming babies as natural enemies: the truth is, with all his abuse, he was afraid of them.

“Has it got a name?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes—Mary: he wished it,” she said, glancing at the door.“I thought we should have to call it Polly, in contradistinction to mine.”

Polly! That was another coincidence. Lease’s eldest girl was Polly. And what made her speak of things in the past tense? She caught me looking at her; caught, I fancy, the fear on my face. I told her hurriedly that little Joe must be a Dutchman, for not a word could I understand of the tale he was whispering about his doll.

What with Mary’s work, and the little earned by Blair while he was about, they had not wanted for necessaries in a plain way. I suppose Lockett took care they should not do so: but he was only a curate.

The baby needed its supper, to judge by the squealing. Mary poured the contents of the saucepan—some thin gruel—into a saucer, and began feeding the little mite by teaspoonfuls, putting each one to her own lips first to test it.

“That’s poor stuff,” cried the Squire, in a half-pitying, half-angry tone, his mind divided between resentment against babies in general and sympathy with this one. As the baby was there, of course it had to be fed, but what he wanted to know was, why it need have come just when trouble was about. When put out, he had no reason at all. Mrs. Blair suddenly turned her face towards the end door, listening; and we heard a faint voice calling “Mary.”

“Joe, dear, go and tell papa that I will be with him in one minute.”

The little chap slid down, giving me his doll to nurse, and went pattering across the carpet, standing on tiptoe to open the door. The Squire said he should like to go in and see Blair. Mary went on first to warn him of our advent.

My goodness! That Pyefinch Blair, who used to flourish his cane, and cock it over us boys at Frost’s! I should never have known him for the same.

He lay in bed, too weak to raise his head from the pillow, the white skin drawn tightly over his hollow features; the cheeks slightly flushing as he watched us coming. And again I thought of Lease; for the same look was on this face that had been on his when he was dying.

“Lord bless us!” cried the Squire, in what would have been a solemn tone but for surprise. And Mr. Blair began faintly to offer a kind of apology for his illness, hoping he should soon get over it now.

It was nothing but the awful look, putting one unpleasantly in mind of death, that kept the Squire from breaking out with a storm of abuse all round. Why could they not have sent word to Dyke Manor, he wanted to know. As to asking particulars about Jerry’s Gazette, which the Squire’s tongue was burning to do, Blair was too far gone for it. While we stood there the doctor came in; a little man in spectacles, a friend of Mr. Lockett’s. He told Blair he was getting on all right, spoke to Mrs. Blair, and took his departure. The Squire, wishing good night in a hurry, went out after the doctor, and collared him as he was walking up the street.

“Won’t he get over it?”

“Well, sir, I am afraid not. His state of weakness is alarming.”

The Squire turned on him with a storm, just as though he had known him for years: asking why on earth Blair’s friends (meaning himself) had not been written to, and promising a prosecution if he let him die. The doctor took it sensibly, and was cool as iced water.

“We medical men are only gifted at best with human skill, sir,”he said, looking the Squire full in the face.

“Blair is young—not much turned thirty.”

“The young die as well as the old, when it pleases Heaven to take them.”

“But it doesn’t please Heaven to take him,” retorted the Squire, worked up to the point when he was not accountable for his words.“But that you seem in earnest, young man, probably meaning no irreverence, I’d ask you how you dare bring Heaven’s name into such a case as this? Did Heaven fling him out of house and home into Jerry’s Gazette, do you suppose? Or did man? Man, sir: selfish, hard, unjust man. Don’t talk to me, Mr. Doctor, about Heaven.”

“All I wished to imply, sir, was, that Mr. Blair’s life is not in my keeping, or in that of any human hands,” said the doctor, when he had listened quietly to the end. “I will do my best to bring him round; I can do no more.”

“You must bring him round.”

“There can be no ‘must’ about it: and I doubt if he is to be brought round. Mr. Blair has not naturally a large amount of what we call stamina, and this illness has laid a very serious hold upon him. It would be something in his favour if the mind were at ease: which of course it cannot be in his circumstances.”

“Now look here—you just say outright he is going to die,”stormed the Squire. “Say it and have done with it. I like people to be honest.”

“But I cannot say he is. Possibly he may recover. His life and his death both seem to hang on the turn of a thread.”

“And there’s that squealing young image within earshot! Could Blair be got down to my place in the country? You might come with him if you liked. There’s some shooting.”

“Not yet. It would kill him. What we have to fight against now is the weakness: and a hard fight it is.”

The Squire’s face was rueful to look at. “This London has a reputation for clever physicians: you pick out the best, and bring him here with you to-morrow morning. Do you hear, sir?”

“I will bring one, if you wish it. It is not essential.”

“Not essential!” wrathfully echoed the Squire. “If Blair’s recovery is not essential, perhaps you’ll tell me, sir, whose is! What is to become of his poor young wife if he dies?—and the little fellow with the doll?—and that cross-grained puppet in white? Who will provide for them? Let me tell you, sir, that I won’t have him die—if doctors can keep him alive. He belongs to me, sir, in a manner: he saved my son’s life—as fine a fellow as you could set eyes on, six feet two without his boots. Not essential! What next?”

“It is not so much medical skill he requires now as care, and rest, and renovation,” spoke the doctor in his calm way.

“Never mind. You take a physician to him, and let him attend him with you, and don’t spare expense. In all my life I never saw anybody want patching up so much as he wants it.”

The Squire shook hands with him, and went on round the corner. I was following, when the doctor touched me on the shoulder.

“He has a good heart, for all his hot speech,” whispered he, nodding towards the Squire. “In talking with him this evening, when you find him indulging hopes of Blair’s recovery, don’t encourage them: rather lead him, if possible, to look at the other side of the question.”

The surgeon was off before I recovered from my surprise. But it was now my turn to run after him.

“Do you know that he will not get well, sir?”

“I do not know it; the weak and the strong are alike in the hands of God; but I think it scarcely possible that he can recover,” was the answer; and the voice had a solemn tone, the face a solemn aspect, in the uncertain light. “And I would prepare friends always to meet the worst when it is in my power to do so.”

“Now then, Johnny! You were going to take the wrong turning, were you, sir! Let me tell you, you might get lost in London before knowing it.”

The Squire had come back to the corner, looking for me. I walked on by his side in silence, feeling half dazed, the hopeless words playing pranks in my brain.

“Johnny, I wonder where we can find a telegraph office? I shall telegraph to your mother to send up Hannah to-morrow. Hannah knows what the sick need: and that poor thing with her children ought not to be left alone.”

But as to giving any hint to the Squire of the state of affairs, I should like the doctor to have tried it himself. Before I hadfinished the first syllable, he attacked me as if I had been a tiger; demanding whether those were my ideas of Christianity, and if I supposed there’d be any justice in a man’s dying because he had got into Jerry’s Gazette.

In the morning the Squire went on an expedition to Gavity’s office in the city. It was a dull place of two rooms, with a man to answer people. We had not been there a minute when the Squire began to explode, going on like anything at the man for saying Mr. Gavity was engaged and could not be seen. The Squire demanded if he thought we were creditors, that he should deny Gavity.

What with his looks and his insistence, and his promise to bring in Sir Richard Mayne, he got to see Gavity. We went into a good room with a soft red carpet and marble-topped desk in it. Mr. Gavity politely motioned to chairs before the blazing fire, and I sat down.

Not the Squire. Out it all came. He walked about the room, just as he walked at home when he was in a way, and said all kinds of things; wanting to know who had ruined Pyefinch Blair, and what Jerry’s Gazette meant. Gavity seemed to be used to explosions: he took it so coolly.

When the Squire calmed down, he almost grew to see things in Gavity’s own light—namely, that Gavity had not been to blame. To say the truth, I could not understand that he had. Except in selling them up. And Gavity said if he had not done it, the landlord would.

So nothing was left for the Squire to vent his wrath on butJerry’s Gazette. He no more understood what Jerry’s Gazettereally was, or whether it was a good or bad thing in itself, than he understood the construction of the planet Jupiter. It’s well Dwarf Giles was not present. The day before we came to London, he overheard Giles swearing in a passion, and the Squire had pounced upon him with an indignant inquiry if he thought swearing was the way to get to heaven. What he said about Jerry’s Gazette caused Gavity’s eyes to grow round with wonder.

“Lord love ye!” said Gavity, “Jerry’s Gazette a thing that wants putting down! Why, it is the blessedest of institutions to us City men. It is a public Benefactor. The commercial world has had no boon like it. Did you know the service it does, you’d sing its praises, sir, instead of abusing it.”

“How dare you tell me so to my face?” demanded the Squire.

“Jerry’s Gazette’s like a gold mine, sir. It is making its fortune. A fine one, too.”

“I shouldn’t like to make a fortune out of my neighbours’ tears, and blood, and homes, and hearths,” was the wrathful answer.“If Pyefinch Blair dies in his illness, will Jerry’s Gazette settle apension from its riches on his widow and children? Answer me that, Mr. Gavity.”

Mr. Gavity, to judge by his looks, thought the question nearly as unreasonable as he thought the Squire. He wanted to tell of the vast benefit Jerry’s Gazette had proved in certain cases; but the Squire stopped his ears, saying Blair’s case was enough for him.

“I do not deny that the Gazette may work mischief once in a way,” acknowledged Mr. Gavity. “It is but a solitary instance, sir; and in all commercial improvements the few must suffer for the many.”

No good. The Squire went at him again, hammer and tongs, and at last dashed away without saying good morning, calling out to me to come on, and not stop a moment longer in a nest of thieves and casuists.

Difford’s Buildings had us in the afternoon. The baby was in its basket, little Joe lay asleep before the fire, the doll against his cheek, and Mary was kneeling by the bed in the back room. She got up hastily when she saw us.

“I think he is weaker,” she said in a whisper, as she came through the door and pushed it to. “There is a look on his face that I do not like.”

There was a look on hers. A wan, haggard, patiently hopeless look, that seemed to say she could struggle no longer. It was not natural; neither was the calm, lifeless tone.

“Stay here a bit, my dear, and rest yourself,” said the Squire to her. “I’ll go in and sit with him.”

There could be no mistake now. Death was in every line of his face. His head was a little raised on the pillow; and the hollow eyes tried to smile a greeting. The Squire was good for a great deal, but not for making believe with that sight before him. He broke down with a great sob.

“Don’t grieve for me,” murmured poor Blair. “Hard though it seems to leave her, I have learnt to say, ‘God’s will be done.’ It is all for the best—oh, it is all for the best. We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom.”

And then I broke down, and hid my face on the counterpane. Poor old Blair! And we boys had called him Baked Pie!

I went to Paddington station to meet the train. Hannah was in it, and came bursting out upon me with a shriek that might have been heard at Oxford. Upon the receipt of the telegram, she and Mrs. Todhetley came to the conclusion that I had been run over, and was lying in some hospital with my legs off. That was through the Squire’s wording of the message; he would not let me write it.“Send Hannah to London to-morrow by mid-day train, to nurse somebody that’s in danger.”

Blair lingered three days yet before he died, sensible to the last, and quite happy. Not a care or anxiety on his mind about what had so troubled him all along—the wife and children.

“Through God’s mercy; He knows how to soothe the death-bed,”said Mr. Lockett.

Whether Mary would have to go home to Wales with her babies, or stay and do what she could for them in London, depending on the wool-work, the clergyman said he did not know, when talking to us at the hotel. He supposed it must be one of the two.

“We’ll have them down at the Manor, and fatten ’em up a bit, Johnny,” spoke the Squire, a rueful look on his good old face.“Mercy light upon us! and all through Jerry’s Gazette!”

I must say a word for myself. Jerry’s Gazette (if there is such a thing still in existence) may be, as Mr. Gavity expressed it to us then, the “blessedest of institutions to him and commercial men.”I don’t wish to deny it, and I could not if I wished; for except in this one instance (which may have been an exceptional case, as Gavity insisted) I know nothing of it or its working. But I declare on my honour I have told nothing but the truth in regard to what it did for the schoolmaster, Pyefinch Blair.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOPHIE CHALK.

The horses went spanking along the frosty road, the Squire driving, his red comforter wrapped round his neck. Mrs. Todhetley sat beside him; Tod and I behind. It was one of the jolliest days that early January ever gave us; dark blue sky, and icicles on the trees: a day to tempt people out. Mrs. Todhetley, getting to her work after breakfast, said it was a shame to stay indoors: and it was hastily decided to drive over to the Whitneys’place and see them. So the large phaeton was brought round.

I had not expected to go. When there was a probability of their staying anywhere sufficiently long for the horses to be put up, Giles was generally taken: the Squire did not like to give trouble to other people’s servants. It would not matter at the Whitneys’:they had a host of them.

“I don’t know that I care about going,” said Tod, as we stood outside, waiting for the others, Giles at the horses’ heads.

“Not care, Tod! Anna’s at home.”

He flicked his glove at my face for the impudence. We laughed at him about Anna Whitney sometimes. They were great friends. The Squire, hearing some nonsense one day, took it seriously, and told Tod it would be time enough for him to get thinking about sweethearts when he was out of leading-strings. Which of course Tod did not like.

It was a long drive; I can tell you that. And as we turned in at the wide gravel sweep that led up to the house, we saw their family coach being brought round with some luggage on it, the postillion in his undress jacket, just laced at the seams with crimson. The Whitneys never drove from the box.

Whitney Hall was a long red-brick house with a good many windows and wide circular steps leading to the door, its park and grounds lying around it. Anna came running to meet us as we went in, dressed for a journey. She was seventeen; very fair; with a gentle face, and smooth, bright, dark auburn hair; one of the sweetest girls you could see on a summer’s day. Tod was thefirst to shake hands with her, and I saw her cheeks blush as crimson as Sir John’s state liveries.

“You are going out, my dear,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“Oh yes,” she answered, the tears rising in her eyes, which were as blue as the dark blue sky. “We have had bad news. William——”

The dining-room door across the hall opened, and a host of them came forth. Lady Whitney in a plaid shawl, the strings of her bonnet untied; Miss Whitney (Helen), Harry, and some of the young ones behind. Anna’s quiet voice was drowned, for they all began to tell of it together.

Sir John and William were staying at some friend’s house at Ombersley. Lady Whitney thought they would have been home to-day: instead of which the morning’s post had a brought letter to say that an accident had occurred to William in hunting; some muff who couldn’t ride had gone swerving right against Bill’s horse, and he was thrown. Except that Bill was insensible, nothing further of the damage could be gathered from the letter; for Sir John, if put out, could write no more intelligibly than the Squire. The chief of what he said was—that they were to come off at once.

“We are going, of course; I with the two girls and Harry; the carriage is waiting to take us to the station,” said poor Lady Whitney, her bonnet pushed off. “But I do wish John had explained further: it is such suspense. We don’t think it can be extremely serious, or there would have been a telegram. I’m sure I have shivered at every ring that has come to the door this morning.”

“And the post was never in, as usual, until nearly ten o’clock,”complained Harry. “I wonder my father puts up with it.”

“And the worst is that we had a visitor coming to-day,” added Helen. “Mamma would have telegraphed to London for her not to start, but there was not time. It’s Sophie Chalk.”

“Who is Sophie Chalk?” asked Tod.

Helen told us, while Lady Whitney was finding places for everyone at the table. They had been taking a scrambling luncheon; sitting or standing: cold beef, mince-pies, and cheese.

“Sophie Chalk was a schoolfellow of mine,” said Helen. “It was an old promise—that she should come to visit us. Different things have caused it to be put off, but we have kept up a correspondence. At length I got mamma to say that she might come as soon as Christmas was turned; and to-day was fixed. We don’t know what on earth to do.”

“Let her come to us until you see how things turn out,” cried the Squire, in his hearty good-nature, as he cut himself a slice of beef.“We can take her home in the carriage: one of these boys can ride back if you’ll lend him a horse.”

Mrs. Todhetley said he took the very words out of her mouth. The Whitneys were too flurried to affect ceremony, and very gladly accepted the offer. But I don’t think it would ever have been made had the Squire and madam known what was to come of it.

“There will be her luggage,” observed Anna; who usually remembered things for every one. And Lady Whitney looked round in consternation.

“It must come to us by rail; we will send for it from the station,” decided Tod, always ready at a pinch. “What sort of a damsel is this Sophie Chalk, Anna?”

“I never saw her,” replied Anna. “You must ask Helen.”

Tod whispered something to Anna that made her smile and blush. “I’ll write you my sentiments about her to Ombersley,”he said aloud. “Those London girls are something to look at.”And I knew by Tod’s tone that he was prepared not to like Miss Sophie Chalk.

We saw them out to the carriage; the Squire putting in my lady, Tod, Helen and Anna. One of the housemaids, Lettice Lane, was wildly running in and out, bringing things to the carriage. She had lived with us once; but Hannah’s temper and Letty’s propensity for gossip did not get on together. Mrs. Todhetley, when they had driven away, asked her how she liked her place—which she had entered at Michaelmas. Oh, pretty well, Lettice answered: but for her old mother, she should emigrate to Australia. She used to be always saying so at Dyke Manor, and it was one of the things that Hannah would not put up with, telling her decent girls could find work at home.

Tod went off next, on horseback: and, before three o’clock, we drove to the station to meet the London train. The Squire stayed in the carriage, sending me and Mrs. Todhetley on the platform.

Two passengers got out at the small station; a little lady in feathers, and a butcher in a blue frock, who had charge of a calf in the open van. Mrs. Todhetley stepped up to the lady and inquired whether she was Miss Chalk.

“I am Miss Chalk. Have I the honour of speaking to Lady Whitney?”

While matters were being explained, I stood observing her. A very small, slight person, with pretty features white as ivory; and wide-open light blue eyes, that were too close together, and had a touch of boldness in them. It would take a great deal to daunt their owner, if I could read countenances: and that I was always doing so was no fault of mine, for the instinct, strong and irrepressible,lay within me—as old Duffham once said. I did not like her voice; it had no true ring in it; I did not much like her face. But the world in general no doubt found her charming, and the Squire thought her so.

She sat in front with him, a carpet-bag between them: and I, behind, had a great black box crowding my legs. She could not do without that much of her luggage: the rest might come by rail.

“Johnny,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley to me, “I am afraid she is very grand and fashionable. I don’t know how we shall manage to amuse her. Do you like her?”

“Well—she has got a stunning lot of hair.”

“Beautiful hair, Johnny!”

With the hair close before us, I could only say so. It was brown; rather darker than Anna Whitney’s, but with a red tinge in it, and about double the quantity. Nature or art was giving it a wonderful gloss in the light of the setting sun, as she turned her head about, laughing and talking with the Squire. Her dress was some bright purple stuff trimmed with white fur; her hands, lying in repose on her lap, had yellow gauntlets on.

“I’m glad I ordered a duck for dinner, in addition to the boiled veal and bacon, Johnny,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley again. “The fish won’t be much: it is only the cold cod done up in parsley sauce.”

Tod, at home long before, was at the door ready for us when we arrived. I saw her staring at him in the dusk.

“Who was the gentleman that handed me out?” she asked me as we went in.

“Mr. Todhetley’s son.”

“I—think—I have heard Helen Whitney talk of him,” she said in reflection. “He will be very rich, will he not?”

“Pretty well. He will have what his father has before him, Miss Chalk.”

Mrs. Todhetley suggested tea, but she said she would prefer a glass of wine; and went up to her chamber after taking it. Hannah and the housemaid were hastily putting one in order for her. Sleepy with the frosty air, I was nodding over the fire in the drawing-room when the rustle of silk awoke me.

It was Miss Chalk. She came in gleaming like a fairy, her dress shining in the fire-light; for they had not been in to light the candles. It had a green-and-gold tinge, and was cut very low. Did she think we had a party?—or that dressing for dinner was the fashion in our plain country house—as it might have been at a duke’s? Her shoulders and arms were white as snow; she wore a silver necklace, the like of which I had never seen, silverbracelets, and a thick cord of silver twisting in and out of her complicated hair.

“I’m sure it is very kind of your people to take me in,” she said, standing still on the hearthrug in her beauty. “They have lighted a fire in my room; it is so comfortable. I do like a country house. At Lady Augustus Difford’s——”

Her head went round at the opening of the door. It was Tod. She stepped timidly towards him, like a schoolgirl: dressed as now, she looked no older than one. Tod might have made up his mind not to like her; but he had to surrender. Holding out her hand to him, he could only yield to the vision, and his heart shone in his eyes as he bent them upon her.

“I beg your pardon for having passed you without notice; I did not even thank you for lifting me down; but I was frozen with the drive,” she said, in low tones. “Will you forgive me, Mr. Todhetley?”

Forgive her! As Tod stood there with her hand in his, he looked inclined to eat her. Forgiveness was not enough. He led her to the fire, speaking soft words of gallantry.

“Helen Whitney has often talked to me about you, Mr. Todhetley. I little thought I should ever make your acquaintance; still less, be staying in your father’s house.”

“And I as little dreamt of the good fortune that was in store for me,” answered Tod.

He was a tall, fine young fellow then, rising twenty, looking older than his age; she (as she looked to-night) a delicate, beautiful fairy, of any teens fancy might please to picture. As Tod stood over her, his manner took a gentle air, his eyes a shy light—quite unusual with him. She did not look up, except by a modest glance now and again, dropping her eyes when they met his own. He had the chance to take his fill of gazing, and used it.

Tod was caught. From the very first night that his eyes fell on Sophie Chalk, his heart went out to her. Anna Whitney! What child’s play had the joking about her been to this! Anna might have been his sister, for all the regard he had for her of a certain sort; and he knew it now.

A looker-on sees more than a player, and I did not like one thing—she drew him on to love her. If ever a girl spread a net to entangle a man’s feet, that girl was Sophie Chalk. She went about it artistically, too; in the sweetest, most natural way imaginable; and Tod did not see or suspect an atom of it. No fellow in a similar case ever does. If their heart’s not engaged, their vanity is; and it utterly blinds them. I said a word or two to him, andwas nearly knocked over for my pains. At the end of the fortnight—and she was with us nearly that length of time—Tod’s heart had made its choice for weal or for woe.

She took care that it should be so; she did, though he cut my head off now for saying it. You shall judge. She began on that first night when she came down in her glistening silk, with the silver on her neck and hair. In the drawing-room, after dinner, she sat by him on the sofa, talking in a low voice, her face turned to him, lifting her eyes and dropping them again. My belief is, she must have been to a school where they taught eye-play. Tod thought it was sweet, natural, shy modesty. I thought it was all artistic. Mrs. Todhetley was called from the room on domestic matters; the Squire, gone to sleep in his dinner-chair, had not come in. After tea, when all were present, she went to the piano, which no one ever opened but me, and played and sang, keeping Tod by her side to turn the music, and to talk to her at available moments. In point of execution, her singing was perfect, but the voice was rather harsh—not a note of real melody in it.

After breakfast the next morning, when we were away together, she came to us in her jaunty hat, all feathers, and her purple dress with its white fur. She lured him off to show her the dyke and goodness knows what else, leaving Lena, who had come out with her, to be taken home by me. In the afternoon Tod drove her out in the pony-chaise; they had settled the drive between them down by the dyke, and I know she had plotted for it, just as surely as though I had been behind the hedge listening. I don’t say Tod was loth; it was quite the other way from the first. They took a two-hours’ drive, returning home at dusk; and then she laughed and talked with him and me round the fire until it was time to get ready for dinner. That second evening she came down in a gauzy sort of dress, with a thin white body. Mrs. Todhetley thought she would be cold, but she said she was used to it.

And so it went on; never were they apart for an hour—no, nor scarcely for a minute in the day.

At first Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley saw nothing. Rather were they glad Tod should be so attentive to a stranger; for special politeness had not previously been one of Tod’s virtues; but they could only notice as the thing went on. Mrs. Todhetley grew to have an uneasy look in her eyes, and one day the Squire spoke out. Sophie Chalk had tied a pink woollen scarf over her head to go out with Tod to see the rabbits fed: he ran back for something, and the Squire caught his arm.

“Don’t carry that on too far, Joe. You don’t know who the girl is.”

“What nonsense, sir!” returned Tod, with a ready laugh; but he turned the colour of a peony.

We did not know much about her, except that she seemed to be on the high ropes, talking a good deal of great people, and of Lord and Lady Augustus Difford, with whom she had been staying for two months before Christmas. Her home in London, she said, was at her sister’s, who had married a wealthy merchant, and lived fashionably in Torriana Square. Mrs. Todhetley did not like to appear inquisitive, and would not ask questions. Miss Chalk was with us as the Whitneys’ friend, and that was sufficient.

Bill Whitney’s hurt turned out to be something complicated about the ribs. There was no danger after the first week, and they returned home during the second, bringing Bill with them. Helen Whitney wrote the same day for Sophie Chalk, and she said that her mamma would be happy also to see Tod and me for a short time.

We went over in the large phaeton, Tod driving, Miss Chalk beside him; I and Dwarf Giles behind. She had thanked Mrs. Todhetley in the prettiest manner; she told the Squire, as he handed her into the carriage, that she should never forget his kindness, and hoped some time to find an opportunity of repaying it.

Such kissing between Helen and Sophie Chalk! I thought they’d never leave off. Anna stood by Tod, while he looked on: a hungry light in his eyes, as if envying Helen the kisses she took. He had no eyes now for Anna. Lady Whitney asked if we would go upstairs to William: he was impatient to see us both.

“Halloa, old Johnny!”

He was lying on his back on a broad flat sofa, looking just as well as ever in the face. They had given him up the best bedroom and dressing-room because he was ill: nice rooms, both—with the door opening between.

“How did it happen, Bill?”

“Goodness knows! Some fellow rode his horse pretty near over mine—don’t believe he had ever been astride anything but a donkey before. Where’s Tod?”

“Somewhere.—I thought he was close behind me.”

“I’m so glad you two have come. It’s awfully dull, lying here all day.”

“Are you obliged to lie?”

“Carden says so.”

“Do you have Carden?”

“As if our folk would be satisfied without him in a surgical case, and one of danger! He was telegraphed for on the spot, and came over in less than an hour. It happened near the Ombersley station. He comes here every other day, and Featherston between whiles as his locum tenens.”

Tod burst in with a laugh. He had been talking to the girls in the gallery outside. Leaving him and Bill Whitney to have out their own chaffer, I went through the door to the other room—the fire there was the largest. “How do you do, sir?”

Some one in a neat brown gown and close white cap, sewing at a table behind the door, had got up to say this with a curtsey. Where had I seen her?—a woman of three or four and thirty, with a meek, delicate face, and a subdued expression. She saw the puzzle.

“I am Harry Lease’s widow, sir. He was pointsman at South Crabb?”

Why, yes, to be sure! And she was not much altered either. But it was a good while now since he died, and she and the children had moved away at the time. I shook hands: the sight of her brought poor Harry Lease to my mind—and many other things.

“Are you living here?”

“I have been nursing young Mr. Whitney, sir. Mr. Carden sent me over from Worcester to the place where he was lying; and my lady thought I might as well come on here with them for a bit, though he don’t want more done for him now than a servant could do. What a deal you have grown, sir!”

“Have I? You should see Joseph Todhetley. You knew me, though, Mrs. Lease?”

“I remembered your voice, sir. Besides, I heard Miss Anna say that you were coming here.”

Asking after Polly, she gave me the family history since Lease’s death. First of all, after moving to her mother’s at Worcester, she tried to get a living at making gloves. Her two youngest children caught some disorder, and died; and then she took to go out nursing. In that she succeeded so well—for it seemed to be her vocation, she said—as to be brought under the notice of some of the medical gentlemen of the town. They gave her plenty to do, and she earned an excellent living, Polly and the other two being cared for by the grandmother.

“After the scuffle, and toil, and sorrow of the old days, nursing seems like a holiday to me, Master Ludlow,” she concluded; “and I am at home with the children for a day or two as often as I can be.”

“Johnny!”

The call was Bill Whitney’s, and I went into the other room. Helen was there, but not Tod. She and Bill were disputing.

“I tell you, William, I shall bring her in. She has asked to come. You can’t think how nice she is.”

“And I tell you, Helen, that I won’t have her brought in. What do I want with your Sophie Chalks?”

“It will be your loss.”

“So be it! I can’t do with strange girls here.”

“You will see that.”

“Now look here, Helen—I won’t have it. To-morrow is Mr. Carden’s day for coming, and I’ll tell him that I can’t be left in peace. He will soon give you a word of a sort.”

“Oh, well, if you are so serious about it as that, let it drop,”returned Helen, good-humouredly. “I only thought to give you pleasure—and Sophie Chalk did ask to come in.”

“Who is this Sophie Chalk? That’s about the nineteenth time I have asked it.”

“The sweetest girl in the world.”

“Let that pass. Who is she?”

“I went to school with her at Miss Lakon’s. She used to do my French for me, and touch up my drawings. She vowed a lasting friendship, and I am not going to forget it. Every one loves her. Lord and Lady Augustus Difford have just had her staying with them for two months.”

“Good souls!” cried Bill, satirically.

“She is the loveliest fairy in the world, and dresses like an angel. Will you see her now, William?”

“No.”

Helen went off with a flounce. Bill was half laughing, half peevish over it. Confinement made him fretful.

“As if I’d let them bring a parcel of girls in to bother me!You’ve had her for these past three weeks, I hear, Johnny.”

“Pretty near it.”

“Do you like her?”

“Tod does.”

“What sort of a creature is the syren?”

“She’d fascinate the eyes out of your head, Bill, give her the chance.”

“Then I’ll be shot if she shall have the chance as far as I am concerned! Lease!”—raising his voice—“keep all strange ladies out of here. If they attempt to enter, tell them we’ve got rats about.”

“Very well, sir.”

Other visitors were staying in the house. A Miss Deveen, and her companion Miss Cattledon. We saw them first at dinner. Miss Deveen sat by Sir John—an ancient lady, active and upright, with a keen, pleasant face and white hair. She had on a worked-muslin shirt-front, with three emerald studs in it that glittered as bright as diamonds. They were beautiful. After dinner, when the four old ones began whist, and we were at the other end of the drawing-room in a group, some one spoke of the studs.

“They are nothing compared with some of her jewellery,” said Helen Whitney. “She has a whole set of most beautiful diamonds. I hardly know what they are worth.”

“But those emeralds she has on to-night must be of great value,”cried Sophie Chalk. “See how they sparkle!”

It made us all turn. As Miss Deveen moved in throwing down her cards, the rays from the wax-lights fell on the emeralds, bringing out the purest green ever imagined by a painter.

“I should like to steal them,” said Sophie Chalk; “they would look well on me.”

It made us laugh. Tod had his eyes fixed on her, a strange love in their depths. Anna Whitney, kneeling on the ground behind me, could see it.

“I would rather steal a set of pink topaz studs that she has,”spoke Helen; “and the opals, too. Miss Deveen is great in studs.”

“Why in studs?”

“Because she always wears this sort of white body; it is her habitual evening dress, with satin skirts. I know she has a different set of studs for every day in the month.”

“Who is she?” asked Sophie Chalk.

“A cousin of mamma’s. She has a great deal of money, and no one in particular to leave it to. Harry says he hopes she’ll remember, in making her will, that he is only a poor younger son.”

“Just you shut up, Helen,” interrupted Harry, in a whisper. “I believe that companion has ears at the back of her head.”

Miss Cattledon glanced round from the whist-table, as though the ears were there and wide open. She was a wiry lady of middle age, quite forty, with a screwed-in waist and creaking stays, a piece of crimson velvet round her long thin neck, her scanty hair light as ginger.

“It is she that has charge of the jewel-box,” spoke Helen, when we thought it safe to begin again. “Miss Deveen is a wonderful old lady for sixty; she has come here without a maid this time, and dresses herself. I don’t see what use Miss Cattledon is to her, unless it is to act as general refrigerator, but she gets a hundred a year salary and some of the old satins. Sophie, I’m sure she heard what we said—that we should like to steal the trinkets.”

“Hope she relished it!” quoth Harry. “She’ll put them under double lock and key, for fear we should break in.”

It was all jesting. Amid the subdued laughing, Tod bent his face over Sophie Chalk, his hand touching the lace on her sleeve. She had on blue to-night with a pearl necklace.

“Will you sing that song for me, Miss Chalk?”

She rose and took his arm. Helen jumped up and arrested them ere they reached the piano.

“We must not have any music just now. Papa never likes it when they are at whist.”

“How very unreasonable of him!” cried Tod, looking fiercely at Sir John’s old red nose and steel spectacles.

“Of course it is,” agreed Helen. “If he played for guinea stakes instead of sixpenny, he could not be more particular about having no noise. Let us go into the study: we can do as we like there.”

We all trooped off. It was a small square room with a shabby carpet and worn horse-hair chairs. Helen stirred up the fire; and Sophie sat down on a low stool and said she’d tell us a fairy tale.

We had been there just a week when it came out. The week was a good one. Long walks in the frosty air; a huge swing between the cedar trees; riding by turns on the rough Welsh pony for fun; bagatelle indoors, work, music, chatter; one dinner-party, and a small dance. Half my time was spent in Bill’s room. Tod seemed to find little leisure for coming up; or for anything else, except Sophie Chalk. It was a gone case with Tod: looking on, I could see that; but I don’t think any one else saw it, except Anna. He liked Sophie too well to make it conspicuous. Harry made open love to her; Sir John said she was the prettiest little lady he had seen for many a day. I dare say Tod told her the same in private.

And she? Well, I don’t know what to say. That she kept Tod at her side, quietly fascinating him always, was certain; but her liking for him did not appear real. To me it seemed that she wasacting it. “I can’t make that Sophie Chalk out, Tod,” I said to him one day by the beeches: “she seems childishly genuine, but I believe she’s just as sharp as a needle.” Tod laughed idly, and told me I was the simplest muff that ever walked in shoe-leather. She was no rider, and some one had to walk by her side when she sat on the Welsh pony, holding her on at all the turnings. It was generally Tod: she made believe to be frightfully timid with him.

It was at the end of the week that the loss was discovered: Miss Deveen’s emerald studs were gone. You never heard such a commotion. She, the owner, took it quietly, but Miss Cattledon made noise enough for ten. The girls were talking round the study fire the morning after the dance, and I was writing a note at the table, when Lettice Lane came in, her face white as death.

“I beg your pardon, young ladies, for asking, but have any of you seen Miss Deveen’s emerald studs, please?”

They turned round in surprise.

“Miss Deveen’s studs!” exclaimed Helen. “We are not likely to have seen them, Lettice. Why do you ask?”

“Because, Miss Helen, they are gone—that is, Miss Cattledon says they are. But, with so much jewellery as there is in that case, it is very easy to overlook two or three little things.”

Why Lettice Lane should have shaken all over in telling this, was a marvel. Her very teeth chattered. Anna inquired; but all the answer given by the girl was, that it had “put her into a twitter.”Sophie Chalk’s countenance was full of compassion, and I liked her for it.

“Don’t let it trouble you, Lettice,” she said kindly. “If the studs are missing, I dare say they will be found. Just before I came down here my sister lost a brooch from her dressing-table. The whole house was searched for it, the servants were uncomfortable——”

“And was it found, miss?” interrupted Lettice, too eager to let her finish.

“Of course it was found. Jewels don’t get hopelessly lost in gentlemen’s houses. It had fallen down, and, caught in the lace of the toilette drapery, was lying hid within its folds.”

“Oh, thank you, miss; yes, perhaps the studs have fallen too,”said Lettice Lane as she went out. Helen looked after her in some curiosity.

“Why should the loss trouble her? Lettice has nothing to do with Miss Deveen’s jewels.”

“Look here, Helen, I wish we had never said we should like to steal the things,” spoke Sophie Chalk. “It was all in jest, of course, but this would not be a nice sequel to it.”

“Why—yes—you did say it, some of you,” cried Anna, who, until then, had seemed buried in thought; and her face flushed.

“What if we did?” retorted Helen, looking at her in some slight surprise.

Soon after this, in going up to Bill’s room, I met Lettice Lane. She was running down with a plate, and looked whiter than ever.

“Are the studs found, Lettice?”

“No, sir.”

The answer was short, the manner scared. Helen had wondered why the loss should affect her; and so did I.

“Where’s the use of your being put out over it, Lettice? You did not take them.”

“No, Master Johnny, I did not; but—but——” looking round and dropping her voice, “I am afraid I know who did; and it was through me. I’m a’most mad.”

This was rather mysterious. She gave no opportunity for more, but ran down as though the stairs were on fire.

I went on to Bill’s chamber, and found Tod and Harry with him: they were laughing over a letter from some fellow at Oxford. Standing at the window close by the inner door, which was ajar, I heard Lettice Lane go into the dressing-room and speak to Mrs. Lease in a half whisper.

“I can’t bear this any longer,” she said. “If you have taken those studs, for Heaven’s sake put them back. I’ll make some excuse—say I found them under the carpet, or slipped under the drawers—anything—only put them back!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” replied Mrs. Lease, who always spoke as though she had only half a voice.

“Yes, you do. You have got the studs.”

By the pause that ensued, Nurse Lease seemed to have lost the power of speech. Lettice took the opportunity to put it more strongly.

“If you’ve got them about you, give them into my hand now, and I’ll manage the rest. Not a living soul shall ever know of this if you will. Oh, do give them to me!”

Mrs. Lease spoke then. “If you say this again, Lettice Lane, I’ll tell my lady all. And indeed, I have been wanting to tell her ever since I heard that something had gone. It was for your sake I did not.”

“For my sake!” shrieked Lettice.

“Well, it was. I’m sure I’d not like to say it if I could help, Lettice Lane; but it did strike me that you might have been tempted to—to—you know.”

So it was accusation and counter-accusation. Which of the two confessed first was uncertain; but in a short time the whole was known to the house, and to Lady Whitney.

On the previous night the upper housemaid was in bed with some slight illness, and it fell to Lettice Lane to put the rooms to rights after the ladies had dressed. Instead of calling one of the other servants she asked Mrs. Lease to help her—which must have been for nothing but to gossip with the nurse, as Lady Whitney said. On Miss Deveen’s dressing-table stood her case of jewels, the key in the lock. Lettice lifted the lid. On the top tray glittered a heap of ornaments, and the two women feasted their eyes with them. Nurse Lease declared that she never put “a finger’s end”on a single article. Lettice could not say as much. Neither (if they were to be believed) had observed the green studs; and the upper tray was not lifted to see what was underneath. Miss Cattledon, who made one at the uproar, put in her word at this, to say they were telling a falsehood, and her face had enough vinegarin it to pickle a salmon. Other people might like Miss Cattledon, but I did not. She was in a silent rage with Miss Deveen for having chosen to keep the jewel-case during their stay at Whitney Hall, and for carelessly leaving the key in it. Miss Deveen took the loss calmly, and was as cool as a cucumber.

“I don’t know that the emerald studs were in the upper tray last night; I don’t remember to have seen them,” Miss Deveen said, as if bearing out the assertion of the two women.

“Begging your pardon, madam, they were there,” stiffly corrected Miss Cattledon. “I saw them. I thought you would put them on, as you were going to wear your green satin gown, and asked if I should lay them out; but you told me you would choose for yourself.”

Miss Deveen had worn diamonds; we had noticed their lustre.

“I’m sure it is a dreadful thing to have happened!” said poor Lady Whitney, looking flurried. “I dare not tell Sir John; he would storm the windows out of their frames. Lease, I am astonished at you. How could you dare open the box?”

“I never did open it, my lady,” was the answer. “When I got round from the bed, Lettice was standing with it open before her.”

“I don’t think there need be much doubt as to the guilty party,”struck in Miss Cattledon with intense acrimony, her eyes swooping down upon Lettice. And if they were not sly and crafty eyes, never you trust me again.

“I do not think there need be so much trouble made about it,”corrected Miss Deveen. “It’s not your loss, Cattledon—it is mine: and my own fault too.”

But Miss Cattledon would not take the hint. She stuck to it like a leech, and sifted evidence as subtly as an Old Bailey lawyer. Mrs. Lease carried innocence on the surface; no one could doubt it: Lettice might have been taken for a seven-years’ thief. She sobbed, and choked, and rambled in her tale, and grew as confused as a hunted hare, contradicting herself at every second word. The Australian scheme (though it might have been nothing but foolish talk) told against her now.

Things grew more uncomfortable as the day went on, the house being ransacked from head to foot. Sophie Chalk cried. She was not rich, she said to me, but she would give every shilling of money she had with her for the studs to be found; and she thought it was very wrong to accuse Lettice, when so many strangers had been in the house. I liked Sophie better than I had liked her yet: she looked regularly vexed.

Sir John got to know of it: Miss Cattledon told him. He did not storm the windows out, but he said the police must come in and see Lettice Lane. Miss Deveen, hearing of this, went straight toSir John, and assured him that if he took any serious steps while the affair was so doubtful, she would quit his house on the instant, and never put foot in it again. He retorted that it must have been Lettice Lane—common sense and Miss Cattledon could not be mistaken—and that it ought to be investigated.

They came to a compromise. Lettice was not to be given into custody at present; but she must quit the Hall. That, said Miss Deveen, was of course as Sir John and Lady Whitney pleased. To tell the truth, suspicion did seem strong against her.

She went away at eventide. One of the men was charged to drive her to her mother’s, about five miles off. I and Anna, hastening home from our walk—for we had lost the others, and the stars were coming out in the wintry sky—saw them as we passed the beeches. Lettice’s face was swollen with crying.

“We are so sorry this has happened, Lettice,” Anna gently said, going up to the gig. “I do hope it will be cleared up soon. Remember one thing—I shall think well of you, until it is. I do not suspect you.”

“I am turned out like a criminal, Miss Anna,” sobbed the girl.“They searched me to the skin; that Miss Cattledon standing on to see that the housekeeper did it properly; and they have searched my boxes. The only one to speak a kind word to me as I came away, was Miss Deveen herself. It’s a disgrace I shall never get over.”

“That’s rubbish, Lettice, you know,”—for I thought I’d put in a good word, too. “You will soon forget it, once the right fellow is pitched upon. Good luck to you, Lettice.”

Anna shook hands with her, and the man drove on, Lettice sobbing aloud. Not hearing Anna’s footsteps, I looked round and saw she had sat down on one of the benches, though it was white with frost. I went back.

“Don’t you go and catch cold, Anna.”

“Johnny, you cannot think how this is troubling me.”

“Why you—in particular?”

“Well—for one thing I can’t believe that she is guilty. I have always liked Lettice.”

“So did we at Dyke Manor. But if she is not guilty, who is?”

“I don’t know, Johnny,” she continued, her eyes taking a thoughtful, far-off look. “What I cannot help thinking, is this—though I feel half ashamed to say it. Several visitors were in the house last night; suppose one should have found her way into the room, and taken them? If so, how cruel this must be on Lettice Lane.”

“Sophie Chalk suggested the same thing to me to-day. But a visitor would not do such a thing. Fancy a lady stealing jewels!”

“The open box might prove a strong temptation. People dothings in such moments, Johnny, that they would fly from at other times.”

“Sophie said that too. You have been talking together.”

“I have not exchanged a word with Sophie Chalk on the subject. The ideas might occur naturally to any of us.”

I did not think it at all likely to have been a visitor. How should a visitor know there was an open jewel-box in Miss Deveen’s room? The chamber, too, was an inner one, and therefore not liable to be entered accidentally. To get to it you had to go through Miss Cattledon’s.

“The room is not easy of access, you know, Anna.”

“Not very. But it might be reached.”

“I say, are you saying this for any purpose?”

She turned round and looked at me rather sharply.

“Yes. Because I do not believe it was Lettice Lane.”

“Was it Miss Cattledon herself, Anna? I have heard of such curious things. Her eyes took a greedy look to-day when they rested on the jewels.”

As if the suggestion frightened her—and I hardly know how I came to whisper it—Anna started up, and ran across the lawn, never looking back or stopping until she reached the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

AT MISS DEVEEN’S.

The table was between us as we stood in the dining-room at Dyke Manor—I and Mrs. Todhetley—and on it lay a three-cornered article of soft geranium-coloured wool, which she called a “fichu.”I had my great coat on my arm ready for travelling, for I was going up to London on a visit to Miss Deveen.

It was Easter now. Soon after the trouble, caused by the loss of the emerald studs at Whitney Hall in January, the party had dispersed. Sophie Chalk returned to London; Tod and I came home; Miss Deveen was going to Bath. The studs had not been traced—had never been heard of since; and Lettice Lane, after a short stay in disgrace at her mother’s cottage, had suddenly disappeared. Of course there were not wanting people to affirm that she had gone off to her favourite land of promise, Australia, carrying the studs with her.

The Whitneys were now in London. They did not go in for London seasons; in fact, Lady Whitney hardly remembered to have had a season in London at all, and she quite dreaded this one, saying she should feel like a fish out of water. Sir John occupied a bedroom when he went up for Parliament, and dined at his club. But Helen was nineteen, and they thought she ought to be presented to the Queen. So Miss Deveen was consulted about a furnished house, and she and Sir John took one for six weeks from just before Easter. They left Whitney Hall at once to take possession; and Bill Whitney and Tod, who got an invitation, joined them the day before Good Friday.

The next Tuesday I received a letter from Miss Deveen. We were very good friends at Whitney, and she had been polite enough to say she should be glad to see me in London. I never expected to go, for three-parts of those invitations do not come to anything. She wrote now to ask me to go up; it might be pleasant for me, she added, as Joseph Todhetley was staying with the Whitneys.

It is of no use going on until I have said a word about Tod. If ever a fellow was hopelessly in love with a girl, he was with SophieChalk. I don’t mean hopeless as to the love, but as to getting out of it. On the day that we were quitting Whitney Hall—it was on the 26th of January, and the icicles were clustering on the trees—they had taken a long walk together. What Tod said I don’t know, but I think he let her know how much he loved her, and asked her to wait until he should be of age and could ask the question—would she be his wife? We went with her to the station, and the way Tod wrapped her up in the railway-carriage was as good as a show. (Pretty little Mrs. Hughes, who had been visiting old Featherston, went up by the same train and in the same carriage.) They corresponded a little, she and Tod. Nothing particular in her letters, at any rate—nothing but what the world might see, or that she might have written to Mrs. Todhetley, who had one from her on occasion—but I know Tod just lived on those letters and her remembrance; he could not hide it from me; and I saw without wishing to see or being able to help myself. Why, he had gone up to London now in one sole hope—that of meeting again with Miss Chalk!

Mrs. Todhetley saw it too—had seen it from the time when Sophie Chalk was at Dyke Manor—and it grieved and worried her. But not the Squire: he no more supposed Tod was going to take up seriously with Sophie Chalk, than with the pink-eyed lady exhibited the past year at Pershore Fair.

Well, that’s all of explanation. This was Wednesday morning, and the Squire was going to drive me to the station for the London train. Mrs. Todhetley at the last moment was giving me charge of the fichu, which she had made for Sophie Chalk’s sister.

“I did not send it by Joseph; I thought it as well not to do so,” she observed, as she began to pack it up in tissue paper.“Will you take it down to Mrs. Smith yourself, Johnny, and deliver it?”

“All right.”

“I—you know, Johnny, I have the greatest dislike to anything that is mean or underhand,” she went on, dropping her voice a little. “But I do not think it would be wrong, under the circumstances, if I ask you to take a little notice of what these Smiths are. I don’t mean in the way of being fashionable, Johnny; I suppose they are all that; but whether they are nice, good people. Somehow I did not like Miss Chalk, with all her fascinations, and it is of no use to pretend that I did.”

“She was too fascinating for ordinary folk, good mother.”

“Yes, that was it. She seemed to put the fascinations on. And, Johnny, though we were to hear that she had a thousand a year to her fortune, I should be miserable if I thought Joe would choose her for his wife.”

“She used to say she was poor.”

“But she seemed to have a whole list of lords and ladies for her friends, so I conclude she and her connections must be people of note. It is not that, Johnny—rich or poor—it is that I don’t like her for herself, and I do not think she is the one to make Joe happy. She never spoke openly about her friends, you know, or about herself. At any rate, you take down this little parcel to Mrs. Smith, with my kind regards, and then you’ll see them for yourself. And in judgment and observation you are worth fifty of Joe, any day.”

“Not in either judgment or observation; only in instinct.”

“And that’s for yourself,” she added, slipping a sovereign into my pocket. “I don’t know how much Mr. Todhetley has given you. Mind you spend your money in right things, Johnny. But I am not afraid; I could trust you all over the world.”

Giles put in my portmanteau, and we drove off. The hedges were beginning to bud; the fields looked green. From observations about the young lambs, and a broken fence that he went into a passion over, the Squire suddenly plunged into something else.

“You take care of yourself, sir, in London! Boys get into all kinds of pitfalls there, if they don’t mind.”

“But I do not call myself a boy, sir, now.”

“Not call yourself a boy!” retorted the Squire, staring. “I’d like to know what else you are. Tod’s a boy, sir, and nothing else, though he does count twenty years. I wonder what the world’s coming to!” he added, lashing up Bob and Blister. “In my days, youngsters did not think themselves men before they had done growing.”

“What I meant was that I am old enough to take care of myself. Mrs. Todhetley has just said she could trust me all over the world.”

“Just like her foolishness! Take care you don’t get your pockets picked: there’s sure to be a thief at every corner. And don’t you pick them yourself, Master Johnny. I knew a young fellow once who went up to London with ten pounds in his pocket. He was staying at the Castle and Falcon Hotel, near the place where the mails used to start from—and a fine sight it was to see them bowl out, one after another, with their lamps lighted. Well, Johnny, this young fellow got back again in four days by one of these very mails, every shilling spent, and his fare down not paid. You’d not think that was steady old Jacobson; but it was.”

I laughed. The Squire looked more inclined to cry.

“Cleaned out, he was; not a rap left! Money melts in London—that’s a fact—and it is very necessary to be cautious. His wentin seeing the shows; so he told his father. Don’t you go in for too many of them, Johnny, or you may find yourself without funds to bring you home, and railways don’t give trust. You might go to the Tower, now; and St. Paul’s; and the British Museum; they are steady places. I wouldn’t advise a theatre, unless it’s just once—some good, respectable play; and mind you go straight home after it. Some young men slink off to singing-shops now, they say, but I am sure such places can bring no good.”

“Being with Miss Deveen, sir, I don’t suppose I shall have the opportunity of getting into much harm.”

“Well, it’s right in me to caution you, Johnny. London is a dreadful place, full of sharpers and bad people. It used to be in the old days, and I don’t suppose it has improved in these. You have no father, Johnny, and I stand to you in the light of one, to give you these warnings. Enjoy your visit rationally, my boy, and come home with a true report and a good conscience. That’s the charge my old father always gave to me.”

Miss Deveen lived in a very nice house, north-westward, away from the bustle of London. The road was wide, the houses were semi-detached, with gardens around and plenty of trees in view. Somehow I had hoped Tod would be at the Paddington terminus, and was disappointed, so I took a cab and went on. Miss Deveen came into the hall to receive me, and said she did not consider me too big to be kissed, considering she was over sixty. Miss Cattledon, sitting in the drawing-room, gave me a finger to shake, and did not seem to like my coming. Her waist and throat were thinner and longer than ever; her stays creaked like parchment.

If I’d never had a surprise in my life, I had one before I was in the house an hour. Coming down from the bedroom to which they had shown me, a maid-servant passed me on the first-floor landing. It was Lettice Lane! I wondered—believe me or not, as you will—I wondered whether I saw a ghost, and stood back against the pillar of the banisters.

“Why, Lettice, is it you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But—what are you doing here?”

“I am here in service, sir.”

She ran on upstairs. Lettice in Miss Deveen’s house. It was worse than a Chinese puzzle.

“Is that you, Johnny? Step in here?”

The voice—Miss Deveen’s—came from a half-opened door, close at hand. It was a small, pretty sitting-room, with light blue curtains and chairs. Miss Deveen sat by the fire, ready for dinner. In her white body shone amethyst studs, quite as beautiful as the lost emeralds.

“We call this the blue-room, Johnny. It is my own exclusively, and no one enters it except upon invitation. Sit down. Were you surprised to see Lettice Lane?”

“I don’t think I was ever so much surprised in all my life. She says she is living here.”

“Yes; I sent for her to help my housemaid.”

I was thoroughly mystified. Miss Deveen put down her book and spectacles.

“I have taken to glasses, Johnny.”

“But I thought you saw so well.”

“So I do, for anything but very small type—and that book seems to have been printed for none but the youngest eyes. And I see people as well as things,” she added significantly.

I felt sure of that.

“Do you remember, Johnny, the day after the uproar at Whitney Hall, that I asked you to pilot me to Lettice Lane’s mother’s, and to say nothing about it?”

“Yes, certainly. You walked the whole four miles of the way. It is five by road.”

“And back again. I am good for more yet than some of the young folk are, Johnny; but I always was an excellent walker. Next day the party broke up; that pretty girl, Sophie Chalk, departed for London, and you and young Todhetley left later. When you reached your home in the evening, I don’t suppose you thought I had been to Dyke Manor the same day.”

“No! Had you really, Miss Deveen?”

“Really and truly. I’ll tell you now the reason of those journeys of mine. As Lettice Lane was being turned out of the Hall, she made a remark in the moment of departure, accidentally I am sure, which caused me to be almost certain she was not guilty of stealing the studs. Before, whilst they were all condemning her as guilty, I had felt doubtful of it; but of course I could not be sure, and Miss Cattledon reproaches me with thinking every one innocent under every circumstance—which is a mistake of hers. Mind, Johnny, the few words Lettice said might have been used designedly, by one crafty and guilty, on purpose to throw me off suspicion: but I felt almost persuaded that the girl had spoken them in unconscious innocence. I went to her mother’s to see them both; I am fond of looking into things with my own eyes; and I came away with my good opinion strengthened. I went next to Mrs. Todhetley’s to hear what she said of the girl; I saw her and your old nurse, Hannah, making my request to both not to speak of my visit. They gave the girl a good character for honesty; Mrs. Todhetley thought her quite incapable of taking the studs; Hannah could not say what a foolish girl with roving ideas ofAustralia in her head might do in a moment of temptation. In less than a fortnight I was back in London, having paid my visit to Bath. I had been reflecting all that time, Johnny, on the cruel blight this must be on Lettice Lane, supposing that she was innocent. I thought the probabilities were that she was innocent, not guilty; and I determined to offer her a home in my own house during the uncertainty. She seemed only too glad to accept it, and here she is. If the girl should eventually turn out to be innocent, I shall have done her a real service; if guilty, why I shall not regret having held out a helping hand to her, that may perhaps save her for the future.”

“It was very kind and thoughtful of you, Miss Deveen!”

“My chief difficulty lay in keeping the suspicion lying on Lettice Lane a secret from my household. Fortunately I had taken no servants with me to Whitney Hall, my maid having been ill at the time; but Cattledon is outrageously virtuous, and of course proportionally bitter against Lettice. You saw that at Whitney.”

“She would have been the first to tell of her.”

“Yes. I had to put the thing rather strongly to Miss Cattledon—‘Hold your tongue or leave me.’ It answered, Johnny. Cattledon likes her place here, and acts accordingly. She picks up her petticoats from contamination when she meets the unfortunate Lettice; but she takes care to hold her tongue.”

“Do you think it will ever be found out, Miss Deveen?”

“I hope it will.”

“But who—could have taken them?” And the thought of what I had said to Anna Whitney, that it might be Miss Cattledon herself, flashed over me as I put the question.

“I think”—Miss Deveen glanced round as if to make sure we were alone, and dropped her voice a little—“that it must have been one of the guests who came to Whitney Hall that night. Cattledon let out one thing, but not until after we were at home again, for the fact seemed not to have made the least impression on her memory at the time; but it came back afterwards. When she was quitting her room after dressing that evening—I being already out of mine and downstairs—she saw the shawl she had worn in the afternoon lying across a chair just as she had thrown it off. She is very careful of her clothes; and hesitated, she said, whether to go back then and fold it; but, knowing she was late, did not do so. She had been downstairs about ten minutes, when I asked her to fetch my fan, which I had forgotten. Upon going through her room to mine, she saw the shawl lying on the floor, and picked it up, wondering how it could have come there. At that time the maids had not been in to put either her room or mine to rights. Now, what I infer, Johnny, is that my jewel-case was visited andthe studs were stolen before Lettice Lane and Mrs. Lease went near the rooms, and that the thief, in her hurry to escape, brushed against the shawl and threw it down.”

“And cannot Miss Cattledon see the probability of that?”

“She will not see it. Lettice Lane is guilty with her and no one else. Prejudice goes a long way in this world, Johnny. The people who came to the dance that night were taking off their things in the next room to Miss Cattledon’s, and I think it likely that some one of them may have found a way into my chamber, perhaps even by accident, and the sight of the brilliant emerald studs—they were more beautiful than any they were lying with—was too much for human equanimity. It was my fault for leaving the dressing-case open—and do you know, Johnny, I believe I left it literally open—I can never forget that.”

“But Lettice Lane said it was shut; shut but not locked.”

“Well, it is upon my conscience that I left it open. Whoever took the studs may have shut down the lid, in caution or forgetfulness. Meanwhile, Johnny, don’t you say anything of what I have told you; at the Whitneys’ or elsewhere. They do not know that Lettice Lane is with me; they are prejudiced against her, especially Sir John; and Lettice has orders to keep out of the way of visitors. Should they by chance see her, why, I shall say that as the case was at best doubtful, I am giving the girl a chance to redeem her good name. We are going there after dinner. So mind you keep counsel.”

“To the Whitneys’?”

“It is only next door, as you may say. I did not mention that you were coming up,” she added, “so there will be a surprise for them. And now we will go down. Here, carry my book for me, Johnny.”

In the drawing-room we found a grey-haired curate, with a mild voice; Miss Cattledon was simpering and smiling upon him. I gathered that he did duty in the church hard by, and had come to dinner by invitation. He took in Miss Deveen, and that other blessed lady fell to me. It was a very good dinner, uncommonly good to me after my journey. Miss Deveen carved. And didn’t she make me eat! She said she knew what boys’ appetites were. The curate took his leave, but Miss Deveen sat on; she fancied to have heard that the Whitneys were to have friends to dinner that night, and would not go in too early.

About half-a-dozen houses lay between, and Miss Deveen put a shawl over her head and walked the distance. “Such a mistake, to have taken a place for them so near Hyde Park!” whispered Miss Cattledon as we were following—and I’m sure she must have been in a gracious mood to give me the confidence. “Neither Sir Johnnor Miss Deveen has much notion of the requirements of fashionable society, Mr. Ludlow: as to poor Lady Whitney, she is a very owl in all that relates to it.”

Poor Lady Whitney—not looking like an owl, but a plain, good-hearted English mother—was the first to see us. There was no dinner-party after all. She sat on a chair just inside the drawing-room, which was precisely the same in build and size as Miss Deveen’s, but had not her handsome furniture and appointments. She said she was glad to see me, and would have invited me with Joe, but for want of beds.

They were all grouped at the other end of the room, playing at forfeits, and a great deal too busy to notice me. I had leisure to look at them. Helen was talking very fast: Harry shouting; Anna sat leaning her cheek on her hand; Tod stood frowning and angry against the wall; the young ones were jumping about like savages; and Bill Whitney was stuck on a stool, his eyes bandaged, and the tips of a girl’s white fingers touching his hands. A fairy, rather than a girl, for that’s what she looked like, with her small, light figure and her gauze skirts floating: Miss Sophie Chalk.

But what on earth had come to her hair? It used to be brown; it was now light, and gleaming with gold spangles. Perhaps it belonged to her fairy nature.

Suddenly Bill shouted out “Miss Chalk,” threw off the bandage, and caught her hands to kiss her! It was all in the forfeits: he had a right to do it, because he guessed her name. She laughed and struggled, the children and Helen were as wild Indians with glee, and Tod looked ready to bring the roof down. Just as Bill gave the kiss, Anna saw me.

Of course it created an interlude, and the forfeits were thrown up. Tod came out of his passion, feeling a little frightened.

“Johnny! Why, what in the world brings you here? Anything wrong with my father?”

“I am only come up on a visit to Miss Deveen, Tod.”

“Well, I’m sure!” cried Tod; as if he thought he ought to have all the visiting, and I none of it.

Sophie put her hand into mine. “I am so glad to see you again,”she said in her softest tone. “And dear Mrs. Todhetley, how is she? and the sweet children?”

But she never waited to hear how; for she turned away at some question put by Bill Whitney.

Sir John came in, and the four old ones sat down to their whist in the small drawing-room opening from this. The children were sent to bed. Sophie Chalk went to the piano to sing a song in hushed tones, Tod putting himself on one side, Bill on the other.

“Are both of them going in for the lady’s favour?” I asked ofAnna, pointing to the piano, as she made room for me on the sofa.

“I think Miss Chalk would like it, Johnny.”

“How well Bill is looking!”

“Oh, he has quite recovered; he seems all the stronger for his accident. I suppose the rest and the nursing set him up.”

“Is Sophie Chalk staying here?”

“No; there’s hardly room for her. But she has been here every day and all day since we came up. They send her home in a cab at night, and one of the maids has to go with her. It is Helen’s arrangement.”

“Do you like London, Anna?”

“No. I wish I had stayed at home.”

“But why?”

“Well—but I can’t tell you every reason.”

“Tell me one?”

Anna did not answer. She sat looking out straight before her, her eyes full of trouble.

“Perhaps it is all nothing, Johnny. I may be fanciful and foolish, and so take up mistaken notions. Wrong ones, on more points than one.”

“Do you mean anything—there?”

“Yes. It would be—I think—a terrible misfortune for us, if William were to engage himself to Sophie Chalk.”

“You mean Tod, Anna?” I said, impulsively.

She blushed like a rose. “Down at Whitney I did think it was he; but since we came here she seems to have changed; to be—to be——”

“Going in for Bill. I put it plainly you see, Anna.”

“I cannot help fearing that it would be a very sad mistake for either of them. Oh, Johnny, I am just tormented out of my peace, doubting whether or not I ought to speak. Sometimes I say to myself, yes it would be right, it is my duty. And then again I fancy that I am altogether mistaken, and that there’s nothing for me to say.”

“But what could you say, Anna?”

Anna had been nervously winding her thin gold chain round her finger. She unwound it again before answering.

“Of course—what could I? And if I were to speak, and—and—find there was no cause,” she dreamily added, “I should never forgive myself. The shame of it would rest upon me throughout life.”

“Well, I don’t see that, Anna. Just because you fancied things were serious when they were not so! Where would be the shame?”

“You don’t understand, Johnny. I should feel it. And so Iwish I had stayed down at Whitney, out of the reach of torment. I wish another thing with all my heart—that Helen would not have Sophie Chalk here.”

“I think you may take one consolation to yourself, Anna—that whatever you might urge against her, it would most likely make not the smallest difference one way or the other. With Tod I am sure it would not. If he set his mind on marrying Sophie Chalk, other people’s grumbling would not turn him from it.”

“It might depend a little on what the grumblings were,” returned Anna, as if fighting for the last word. “But there; let it drop. I would rather say no more.”

She took up a photograph book, and we began looking over it together.

“Good gracious! Here’s Miss Cattledon? Small waist and all!”

Anna laughed. “She had it taken in Bath, and sent it to William. He had only asked her for it in joke.”

“So those studs have never turned up, Anna?”

“No. I wish they would. I should pray night and morning for it, if I thought it would do no one an injury.”

“Johnny!” called out Sir John.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come you, and take my hand for five minutes. I have just remembered a note I ought to have written this afternoon.”

“I shall be sure to play badly,” I said to Lady Whitney, who had fallen to Sir John in cutting for partners.

“Oh, my dear, what does it matter?” she kindly answered. “I don’t mind if you do. I do not play well myself.”

The next morning Miss Cattledon went out to ten-o’clock daily service. Miss Deveen said she had taken to the habit of doing so. I wondered whether it was for the sake of religion, or for that grey-haired curate who did the prayers. Sitting by ourselves, I told Miss Deveen of the commission I had from Mrs. Todhetley; and somehow, without my intending it, she gathered a little more.

“Go by all means, and learn what you can, Johnny. Go at once. I don’t think you need, any of you, be afraid, though,” she added, laughing. “I have seen very much of boy-and-girl love; seen that it rarely comes to anything. Young men mostly go through one or two such episodes before settling seriously to the business of life.”

The omnibus took me to Oxford Street, and I found my way from thence to Torriana Square. It proved to be a corner house, its front entrance being in the square. But there was a smaller entrance on the side (which was rather a bustling street), and asort of office window, on the wire blind of which was written, in white letters, “Mr. Smith, wine-merchant.”

A wine-merchant! Well, I was surprised. Could there be any mistake? No, it was the right number. But I thought there must be, and stood staring at the place with both eyes. That was a come-down. Not but that wine-merchants are as good as other people; only Sophie Chalk had somehow imparted the notion of their living up to lords and ladies.

I asked at the front-door for Mrs. Smith, and was shown upstairs to a handsome drawing-room. A little girl, with a sallow face, thin and sickly, was seated there. She did not get up, only stared at me with her dark, keen, deep-set eyes.

“Do you know where your mamma is, Miss Trot?” asked the servant, putting a chair.

“You can go and search for her?”

She looked at me so intently as the maid left the room, that I told her who I was, and what I had come for. The child’s tongue—it seemed as sharp a one as Miss Cattledon’s—was let loose.

“I have heard of you, Johnny Ludlow. Mrs. Smith would be glad to see you. You had better wait.”

I don’t know how it is that I make myself at home with people; or, rather, that people seem so soon to be at home with me. I don’t try to do it, but it is always so. In two or three minutes, when the girl was talking to me as freely as though I were her brother, the maid came back again.

“Miss Trot, I cannot find your mamma.”

“Mrs. Smith’s out. But I was not obliged to tell you so. I’ll not spare you any work when you call me Miss Trot.”

The maid’s only answer was to leave the room: and the little girl—who spoke like a woman—shook her dark hair from her face in temper.

“I’ve told them over and over again I will not be called Miss Trot. How would you like it? Because my mamma took to say it when I was a baby, it is no reason why other people should say it.”

“Perhaps your mamma says it still, and so they fall into it also.”

“My mamma is dead.”

Just at the moment I did not take in the meaning of the words.“Mrs. Smith dead!”

“Mrs. Smith is not my mother. Don’t insult me, please. She came here as my governess. If papa chose to make a fool of himself by marrying her afterwards, it was not my fault. What are you looking at?”

I was looking at her: she seemed so strange a child; and feeling slightly puzzled between the other Mrs. Smith and this one. Theysay I am a muff at many things; I am sure I am at understanding complicated relationships.

“Then—Miss Chalk is—this Mrs. Smith’s sister?”

“Well, you might know that. They are a pair, and I don’t like either of them. There are two crying babies upstairs now.”

“Mrs. Smith’s?”

“Yes, Mrs. Smith’s”—with intense aggravation. “Papa had quite enough with me, and I could have managed the house and servants as well as she does. And because Nancy Chalk was not enough, in addition we must be never safe from Sophonisba! Oh, there are crosses in life!”

“Who is Sophonisba?”

“She is Sophonisba.”

“Perhaps you mean Sophie Chalk?”

“Her name’s not Sophie, or Sophia either. She was christened Sophonisba, but she hates the name, and takes care to drop it always. She is a deep one, is Sophonisba Chalk!”

“Is this her home?”

“She makes it her home, when she’s not out teaching. And papa never seems to think it an encroachment. Sophonisba Chalk does not keep her places, you know. She thought she had got into something fine last autumn at Lord Augustus Difford’s, but Lady Augustus gave her warning at the first month’s end.”

“Then Miss Chalk is a governess?”

“What else do you suppose she is? She comes over people, and gets a stock of invitations on hand, and goes to them between times. You should hear the trouble there is about her dresses, that she may make a good appearance. And how she does it I can’t think: they don’t tell me their contrivances. Mrs. Smith must give her some—I am sure of it—which papa has to pay for; and Sophonisba goes in trust for others.”

“She was always dressed well down with us.”

“Of course she was. Whitney Hall was her great-card place; but the time for the visit was so long before it was fixed, she thought it had all dropped through. It came just right: just when she was turned out of Lady Augustus Difford’s. Helen Whitney had promised it a long while before.”

“I know; when they were schoolfellows at Miss Lakon’s.”

“They were not schoolfellows. Sophonisba was treated as the rest, but she was only improving pupil. She gave her services, learnt of some of the masters, and paid nothing. How old do you think she is?” broke off Miss Trot.

“About twenty.”

“She was six-and-twenty last birthday; and they say she will look like a child till she’s six-and-thirty. I call it a shame for a youngwoman of that age to be doing nothing for herself, but to be living on strangers: and papa and I are nothing else to her.”

“How old are you?” I could not help asking.

“Fifteen; nearly sixteen. People take me to be younger, because I am short, and it vexes me. They would not think me young if they knew how I feel. Oh, I can tell you it is a sharpening thing for your papa to marry again, and to find yourself put down in your own home.”

“Has Miss Chalk any engagement now?”

“She has not had an engagement all this year, and now it’s April! I don’t believe she looks after one. She pretends to teach me—while she’s waiting, she says; but it’s all a farce; I won’t learn of her. I heard her tell Mr. Everty I was a horrid child. Fancy that!”

“Who is Mr. Everty?”

“Papa’s head-clerk. He is a gentleman, you know, and Sophonisba thinks great things of him. Ah, I could tell something, if I liked! but she put me on my honour. Oh, she’s a sly one! Just now, she is all her time at the Whitneys’, red-hot for it. You are not going? Stay to luncheon.”

“I must go; Miss Deveen will be waiting for me. You can deliver the parcel, please, with Mrs. Todhetley’s message. I will call in to see Mrs. Smith another day.”

“And to see me too?” came the quick retort.

“Yes, of course.”

“Now, mind, you can’t break your word. I shall say it is me you are coming to call upon; they think I am nobody in this house. Ask for Miss Smith when you come. Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow!”

She never stirred as I shook hands; she seemed never to have stirred hand or foot throughout the interview. But, as I opened the door, there came an odd sort of noise, and I turned to look what it was.

She. Hastening to cross the room, with a crutch, to ring the bell! And I saw that she was both lame and deformed.

In passing down the side street by the office, some one brushed by, with the quick step of a London business man. Where had I seen the face before? Whose did it put me in mind of? Why—it came to me all in a minute—Roger Monk’s! He who had lived at Dyke Manor for a short time as head-gardener under false auspices. But, as I have not said anything about him before, I will not enter into the history now. Before I could turn to look, Monk had disappeared; no doubt round the corner of the square.

“Tod,” I said, as soon as I came across him, “Sophie Chalk’s a governess.”

“Well, what of that?” asked Tod.

“Not much; but she might as well have been candid with us at Dyke Manor.”

“A governess is a lady.”

“Ought to be. But why did she make out to us that she had been a visitor at the Diffords’, when she was only the teacher? We should have respected her just as much; perhaps made more of her.”

“What are you cavilling at? As if a lady was never a teacher before!”

“Oh, Tod! it is not that. Don’t you see?—if she had kept a chandler’s shop, and been open about it, what should we have cared? It was the sailing under false colours; trying to pass herself off for what she is not.”

He gave no answer to this, except a whistle.

“She is turned six-and-twenty, Tod. And she was not a school-girl at Miss Lakon’s, but governess-pupil.”

“I suppose she was a schoolgirl once?”

“I suppose she was.”

“Good. What else have you to say, wise Johnny?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing; for where was the use? Sophie Chalk would have been only an angel in his eyes, though he heard that she had sold apples at a street-corner. Sophie, that very morning, had begged Lady Whitney to let her instruct the younger children, “as a friend,” so long as they were in town; for the governess at Whitney was a daily one, and they had not brought her. Lady Whitney at first demurred, and then kissed Sophie for her goodness. The result was, that a bed was found for Miss Chalk, and she stayed with them altogether.

But I can’t say much for the teaching. It was not Sophie Chalk’s fault, perhaps. Helen would be in the schoolroom, and Harry would be there; and I and Anna sometimes; and Tod and Bill always. Lady Whitney looked upon this London sojourn as a holiday, and did not mind whether the children learnt or played, provided they were kept passably quiet. I told Sophie of my visit to take the fichu, and she made a wry face over the lame girl.

“That Mabel Smith! Poor morbid little object! What she would have grown into but for the fortunate chance of my sister’s marrying into the house, I can’t imagine, Johnny. I’ll draw you her portrait in her night-cap, by-and-by.”

The days went on. We did have fun: but war was growing up between William Whitney and Tod. There could no longer be a mistake (to those who understood things and kept their eyes open) of the part Sophie Chalk was playing: and that was trying to throw Tod over for William Whitney, and to make no fuss about it, Idon’t believe she cared a brass button for either: but Bill’s future position in life would be better than Tod’s, seeing that his father was a baronet. Bill was going in for her favour; perhaps not seriously: it might have been for the fun of the moment, or to amuse himself by spiting Tod. Sir John and my lady never so much as dreamt of the by-playing going on before their faces, and I don’t think Helen did.

“I told you she’d fascinate the eyes out of your head, Bill, give her the chance,” said I to him one day in the schoolroom, when Miss Chalk was teaching her pupils to dance.

“You shut up, Johnny,” he said, laughing, and shied the atlas at me.

Before the day was out, there was a sharp, short quarrel. They were all coming for the evening to Miss Deveen’s. I went in at dusk to tell them not to make it nine at night. Turning into the drawing-room, I interrupted a scene—Bill Whitney and Tod railing at one another. What the bone of contention was I never knew, for they seemed to have reached the end of it.

“You did,” said Tod.

“I did not,” said Bill.

“I tell you, you did, William Whitney.”

“Let it go; it’s word against word, and we shall never decide it. You are mistaken, Todhetley; but I am not going to ask your leave as to what I shall do, or what I shan’t.”

“You have no right to say to Miss Chalk what I heard you saying to-day.”

“I tell you, you did not hear me say anything of the sort. Put it that you did—what business is it of yours? If I chose to go in for her, to ask her to be the future Lady Whitney—though it may be many a year, I hope, before I step into my father’s place, good old man!—who has the right to say me nay?”

Tod was foaming. Dusk though it was, I could see that. They took no more account of my being present, than of Harry’s little barking dog.

“Look here, Bill Whitney. If——”

“Are you boys quarrelling?”

The interruption was Anna’s. Passing through the hall, she had heard the voices and looked in. As if glad of the excuse to get away, Bill Whitney followed her from the room. Tod went out and banged the hall-door after him.

I waited, thinking Anna might come in, and strolled into the little drawing-room. There, quiet as a mouse, stood Sophie Chalk. She had been listening, for certain; and I hope it gratified her: her eyes sparkled a little.

“Why, Johnny! was it you making all that noise? What was the matter? Anything gone wrong?”

It was all very fine to try it on with me. I just looked straight at her, and I think she saw as much. Saying something about going to search for Helen, she left the room.

“What was the trouble, Johnny?” whispered Anna, stealing up to me.

“Only those two having a jar.”

“I heard that. But what was it about? Sophie Chalk?”

“Well, yes; that was it, Anna.”

We were at the front window then. A man was lighting the street-lamps, and Anna seemed to be occupied in watching him. There was enough care on her face to set one up in the dismals for life.

“No harm may come of it, Anna. Any way, you can do nothing.”

“Oh, Johnny, I wish I knew!” she said, clasping her hands. “I wish I could satisfy myself which way right lies. If I were to speak, it might be put down to a wrong motive. I try to see whether that thought is not a selfish one, whether I ought to let it deter me. But then—that’s not the worst.”

“That sounds like a riddle, Anna.”

“I wish I had some good, judicious person who would hear all and judge for me,” she said, rather dreamily. “If you were older, Johnny, I think I would tell you.”

“I am as old as you are, at any rate.”

“That’s just it. We are neither of us old enough nor experienced enough to trust to our own judgment.”

“There’s your mother, Anna.”

“I know.”

“What you mean is, that Sir John and Lady Whitney ought to have their eyes opened to what’s going on, that they may put an end to Miss Chalk’s intimacy here, if they deem the danger warrants it?”

“That’s near enough, Johnny. And I don’t see my way sufficiently clearly to do it.”

“Put the case to Helen.”

“She would only laugh in my face. Hush! here comes some one.”

It was Sophie Chalk. She looked rather sharply at us both, and said she could not find Helen anywhere.

And the days were to go on in outward smoothness and private discomfort, Miss Sophie exercising her fascinations on the whole of us.

But for having promised that lame child to call again in Torriana Square, I should not have cared to go. It was afternoonthis time. The servant showed me upstairs, and said her mistress was for the moment engaged. Mabel Smith sat in the same seat in her black frock; some books lay on a small table drawn before her.

“I thought you had forgotten to come.”

“Did you? I should be sure not to forget it.”

“I am so tired of my lessons,” she said, irritably, sweeping the books away with her long thin fingers. “I always am when theyteach me. Mrs. Smith has kept me at them for two hours; she has gone down now to engage a new servant.”

“I get frightfully tired of my lessons sometimes.”

“Ah, but not as I do; you can run about: and learning, you know, will never be of use to me. I want you to tell me something. Is Sophonisba Chalk going to stay at Lady Whitney’s?”

“I don’t know. They will not be so very long in town.”

“But I mean is she to be governess there, and go into the country with them?”

“No, I think not.”

“She wants to. If she does, papa says he shall have some nice young lady to sit with me and teach me. Oh, I do hope she will go with them, and then the house would be rid of her. I say she will: it is too good a chance for her to let slip. Mrs. Smith says she won’t: she told Mr. Everty so last night. He wouldn’t believe her, and was very cross over it.”

“Cross over it?”

“He said Sophonisba ought not to have gone there at all without consulting him, and that she had not been home once since, and only written him one rubbishing note that had nothing in it; and he asked Mrs. Smith whether she thought that was right.”

A light flashed over me. “Is Miss Chalk going to marry Mr. Everty?”

“I suppose that’s what it will come to,” answered the curious child. “She has promised to; but promises with her don’t go for much when it suits her to break them. Sophonisba put me on my honour not to tell; but now that Mr. Everty has spoken to Mrs. Smith and papa, it is different. I saw it a long while ago; before she went to the Diffords’. I have nothing to do but to sit and watch and think, you see, Johnny Ludlow; and I perceive things quicker than other people.”

“But—why do you fancy Miss Chalk may break her promise to Mr. Everty?”

“If she meant to keep it, why should she be scheming to go away as the Whitneys’ governess? I know what it is: Sophonisba does not think Mr. Everty good enough for her, but she would like to keep him waiting on, for fear of not getting anybody better.”

Anything so shrewd as Mabel Smith’s manner in saying this, was never seen. I don’t think she was naturally ill-natured, poor thing; but she evidently thought she was being wronged amongst them, and it made her spitefully resentful.

“Mr. Everty had better let her go. It is not I that would marry a wife who dyed her hair.”

“Is Miss Chalk’s dyed? I thought it might be the gold dust.”

“Have you any eyes?” retorted Mabel. “When she was down in the country with you her hair was brown; it’s a kind of yellow now. Oh, she knows how to set herself off, I can tell you. Do you happen to remember who was reigning in England when the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place in France?”

The change of subject was sudden. I told her it was Queen Elizabeth.

“Queen Elizabeth, was it? I’ll write it down. Mrs. Smith says I shall have no dessert to-day, if I don’t tell her. She puts those questions only to vex me. As if it mattered to anybody. Oh, here’s papa!”

A little man came in with a bald head and pleasant face. He said he was glad to see me and shook hands. She put out her arms, and he came and kissed her: her eyes followed him everywhere; her cheeks had a sudden colour: it was easy to see that he was her one great joy in life. And the bright colour made her poor thin face look almost charming.

“I can’t stay a minute, Trottie; going out in a hurry. I think I left my gloves up here.”

“So you did, papa. There was a tiny hole in the thumb and I mended it for you.”

“That’s my little attentive daughter! Good-bye. Mr. Ludlow, if you will stay to dinner we shall be happy.”

Mrs. Smith came in as he left the room. She was rather a plain likeness of Miss Chalk, not much older. But her face had a straightforward, open look, and I liked her. She made much of me and said how kind she had thought it of Mrs. Todhetley to be at the trouble of making a fichu for her, a stranger. She hoped—she did hope, she added rather anxiously, that Sophie had not asked her to do it. And it struck me that Mrs. Smith had not quite the implicit confidence in Miss Sophie’s sayings and doings that she might have had.

It was five o’clock when I got away. At the door of the office in the side street stood a gentleman—the same I had seen pass me the other day. I looked at him, and he at me.

“Is it Roger Monk?”

A startled look came over his face. He evidently did not remember me. I said who I was.

“Dear me! How you have grown! Do walk in.” And he spoke to me in the tones an equal would speak, not as a servant.

As he was leading the way into a sort of parlour, we passed a clerk at a desk, and a man talking to him.

“Here’s Mr. Everty; he will tell you,” said the clerk, indicating Monk. “He is asking about those samples of pale brandy, sir: whether they are to go.”

“Yes, of course; you ought to have taken them before this, Wilson,” was Roger Monk’s answer. And so I saw that he was Mr. Everty.

“I have resumed my true name, Everty,” he said to me in low tones. “The former trouble, that sent me away a wanderer, is over. Many men, I believe, are forced into such episodes in life.”

“You are with Mr. Smith?”

“These two years past. I came to him as head-clerk; I now have a commission on sales, and make a most excellent thing of it. I don’t think the business could get on without me now.”

“Is it true that you are to marry Miss Chalk?” I asked, speaking on a sudden impulse.

“Quite true; if she does not throw me over,” he answered, and I wondered at his candour. “I suppose you have heard of it indoors?”

“Yes. I wish you all success.”—And didn’t I wish it in my inmost heart!

“Thank you. I can give her a good home now. Perhaps you will not talk about that old time if you can help it, Mr. Ludlow. You used to be good-natured, I remember. It was a dark page in my then reckless life; I am doing what I can to redeem it.”

I dare say he was; and I told him he need not fear. But I did not like his eyes yet, for they had the same kind of shifty look that Roger Monk’s used to have. He might get on none the worse in business; for, as the Squire says, it is a shifty world.

Sophie Chalk engaged to Mr. Everty, and he Roger Monk! Well, it was a complication. I went back to Miss Deveen’s without, so to say, seeing daylight.

CHAPTER XV.

THE GAME FINISHED.

The clang of the distant church bell was ringing out for the daily morning service, and Miss Cattledon was picking her way across the road to attend to it, her thin white legs displayed, and a waterproof cloak on. It had rained in the night, but the clouds were breaking, promising a fine day. I stood at the window, watching the legs and the pools of water; Miss Deveen sat at the table behind, answering a letter that had come to her by the morning post.

“Have you ever thought mine a peculiar name, Johnny?” she suddenly asked.

“No,” I said, turning to answer her. “I think it a pretty one.”

“It was originally French: De Vigne: but like many other things has been corrupted with time, and made into what it is. Is that ten o’clock striking?”

Yes: and the bell was ceasing. Miss Cattledon would be late. It was a regular penalty to her, I knew, to go out so early, and quite a new whim, begun in the middle of Lent. She talked a little in her vinegar way of the world’s wickedness in not spending some of its working hours inside a church, listening to that delightful curate with the mild voice, whose hair had turned prematurely grey. Miss Deveen, knowing it was meant for her, laughed pleasantly, and said if the many years’ prayers from her chamber had not been heard as well as though she had gone into a church to offer them up, she should be in a poor condition now. I went with Miss Cattledon one Monday morning out of politeness. There were nine-and-twenty in the pews, for I counted them: eight-and-twenty being single ladies (to judge by the look), some young, some as old as Cattledon. The grey-haired curate was assisted by a young deacon, who had a black beard and a lisp and his hair parted down the middle. It was very edifying, especially the ten-minutes’ gossip with the two clergymen coming out, when we all congregated in the aisle by the door.

“My great-grandfather was a grand old proprietor in France,Johnny; a baron,” continued Miss Deveen. “I don’t think I have much of the French nature left in me.”

“I suppose you speak French well, Miss Deveen?”

“Not a word of it, Johnny. They pretended to teach it me when I was a child, but I’m afraid I was unusually stupid. Why, who can this be?”

She alluded to a ring at the visitors’ bell. One of the servants came in and said that the gentleman who had called once or twice before had come again.

Miss Deveen looked up, first at the servant, then at me. She seemed to be considering.

“I will see him in two or three minutes, George”—and the man shut the door.

“Johnny,” she said, “I have taken you partly into my confidence in this affair of the lost studs; I think I will tell you a little more. After I sent for Lettice Lane here—and my impression, as I told you, was very strongly in favour of her innocence—it occurred to me that I ought to see if anything could be done to prove it; or at least to set the matter at rest, one way or the other, instead of leaving it to time and chance. The question was, how could I do it? I did not like to apply to the police, lest more should be made of it than I wished. One day a friend of mine, to whom I was relating the circumstances, solved the difficulty. He said he would send to me some one with whom he was well acquainted, a Mr. Bond, who had once been connected with the detective police, and who had got his dismissal through an affair he was thought to have mismanaged. It sounded rather formidable to my ears, ‘once connected with the detective police;’ but I consented, and Mr. Bond came. He has had the thing in hand since last February.”

“And what has he found out?”

“Nothing, Johnny. Unless he has come to tell me now that he has—for it is he who is waiting. I think it may be so, as he has called so early. First of all, he was following up the matter down in Worcestershire, because the notion he entertained was, that the studs must have been taken by one of the Whitneys’ servants. He stayed in the neighbourhood, pursuing his inquiries as to their characters and habits, and visiting all the pawnbrokers’ shops that he thought were at available distances from the Hall.”

“Did he think it was Lettice Lane?”

“He said he did not: but he took care (as I happen to know) to worm out all he could of Lettice’s antecedents while he was inquiring about the rest. I had the girl in this room at his first visit, not alarming her, simply saying that I was relating the history of the studs’ disappearance to this friend who had called, and desired her to describe her share in it to make the story complete. Lettice suspected nothing; she told the tale simply and naturally, without fear: and from that very moment, Johnny, I have felt certain in my own mind the girl is as innocent as I am. Mr. Bond ‘thought she might be,’ but he would not go beyond that; for women, he said, were crafty, and knew how to make one think black was white.”

“Miss Deveen, suppose, after all, it should turn out to have been Lettice?” I asked. “Should you proceed against her?”

“I shall not proceed against any one, Johnny; and I shall hush the matter up if I can,” she answered, ringing for Mr. Bond to be shown in.

I was curious to see him also; ideas floating through my brain of cocked-hats and blue uniform and Richard Mayne. Mr. Bond turned out to be a very inoffensive-looking individual indeed; a little man, wearing steel spectacles, in a black frock-coat and grey trousers.

“When I last saw you, madam,” he began, after he was seated, and Miss Deveen had told him he might speak before me, “I mentioned that I had abandoned my search in the country, and intended to prosecute my inquiries in London.”

“You did, Mr. Bond.”

“That the theft lay amongst Sir John Whitney’s female servants, I have thought likely all along,” continued Mr. Bond. “If the thief felt afraid to dispose of the emeralds after taking them—and I could find no trace of them in the country—the probability was that she would keep them secreted about her, and get rid of them as soon as she came to London, if she were one of the maids brought up by Lady Whitney. There were two I thought in particular might have done it; one was the lady’s maid; the other, the upper-housemaid, who had been ill the night of their disappearance. All kinds of ruses are played off in the pursuit of plunder, as we have cause to learn every day; and it struck me the housemaid might have feigned illness, the better to cover her actions and throw suspicion off herself. I am bound to say I could not learn anything against either of these two young women; but their business took them about the rooms at Whitney Hall; and an open jewel-case is a great temptation.”

“It is,” assented Miss Deveen. “That carelessness lay at my door, and therefore I determined never to prosecute in this case; never, in fact, to bring the offender to open shame of any sort in regard to it.”

“And that has helped to increase the difficulty,” remarked Mr. Bond. “Could the women have been searched and their private places at Whitney Hall turned out, we might or might not have found the emeralds; but——”

“I wouldn’t have had it done for the Lord Chancellor, sir,”interrupted Miss Deveen, hotly. “One was searched, and that was quite enough for me, for I believe her to be innocent. If you can get at the right person quietly, for my own satisfaction, well and good. My instructions went so far, but no farther.”

Mr. Bond took off his spectacles for a minute, and put them on again. “I understood this perfectly when I took the business in hand,” he said quietly. “Well, madam, to go on. Lady Whitney brought her servants to London, and I came up also. Last night I gleaned a little light on the matter.”

He paused, and put his hand into his pocket. I looked, and Miss Deveen looked.

“Should you know the studs again?” he asked her.

“You may as well ask me if I should know my own face in the glass, Mr. Bond. Of course I should.”

Mr. Bond opened a pill-box: three green studs lay in it on white cotton. He held it out to Miss Deveen.

“Are these they?”

“No, certainly not,” replied Miss Deveen, speaking like one in disappointment. “Those are not to be compared with mine, sir.”

Mr. Bond put the lid on the box, and returned it to his pocket. Out came another box, long and thin.

“These are my studs,” quickly exclaimed Miss Deveen, before she had given more than a glance. “You can look yourself for the private marks I told you about, Mr. Bond.”

Three brilliant emeralds, that seemed to light up the room, connected together by a fine chain of gold. At either end, the chain was finished off by a small square plate of thin gold, on one of which was an engraved crest, on the other Miss Deveen’s initials. In shape the emeralds looked like buttons more than studs.

“I never knew they were linked together, Miss Deveen,” I exclaimed in surprise.

“Did you not, Johnny?”

Never. I had always pictured them as three loose studs. Mr. Bond, who no doubt had the marks by heart before he brought them up, began shutting them into the box as he had the others.

“Anticipating from the first that the studs would most probably be found at a pawnbroker’s, if found at all, I ventured to speak to you then of a difficulty that might attend the finding,” said he to Miss Deveen. “Unless a thing can be legally proved to have been stolen, a pawnbroker cannot be forced to give it up. And I am under an engagement to return these studs to the pawnbroker, whence I have brought them, in the course of the morning.”

“You may do so,” said Miss Deveen. “I dare say he and I can come to an amicable arrangement in regard to giving them uplater. My object has been to discover who stole them, not to bring trouble or loss upon pawnbrokers. How did you discover them, Mr. Bond?”

“In a rather singular manner. Last evening, in making my way to Regent Street to a place I had to go to on business, I saw a young woman turn out of a pawnbroker’s shop. The shutters were put up, but the doors were open. Her face struck me as being familiar; and I remembered her as Lady Whitney’s housemaid—the one who had been ill in bed, or pretended to be, the night the studs were lost. Ah, ah, I thought, some discovery may be looming up here. I have some acquaintance with the proprietor of the shop; a very respectable man, who has become rich by dint of hard, honest work, and is a jeweller now as well as a pawnbroker. My own business could wait, and I went in and found him busy with accounts in his private room. He thought at first I had only called in to see him in passing. I gave him no particulars; but said I fancied a person in whom I was professionally interested, had just been leaving some emerald studs in his shop.”

“What is the pawnbroker’s name?” interrupted Miss Deveen.

“James. He went to inquire, and came back, saying that his assistant denied it. There was only one assistant in the shop: the other had left for the night. This assistant said that no one had been in during the last half-hour, excepting a young woman, a cousin of his wife’s; who did not come to pledge anything, but simply to say how-d’ye-do, and to ask where they were living now, that she might call and see the wife. Mr. James added that the man said she occupied a good situation in the family of Sir John and Lady Whitney, and was not likely to require to pledge anything. Plausible enough, this, you see, Miss Deveen; but the coincidence was singular. I then told James that I had been in search for these two months of some emerald studs lost out of Sir John Whitney’s house. He stared a little at this, paused a moment in thought, and then asked whether they were of unusual value and very beautiful. Just so, I said, and minutely described them. Mr. James, without another word, went away and brought the studs in. Your studs, Miss Deveen.”

“And how did he come by them?”

“He won’t tell me much about it—except that they took in the goods some weeks ago in the ordinary course of business. The fact is he is vexed: for he has really been careful and has managed to avoid these unpleasant episodes, to which all pawnbrokers are liable. It was with difficulty I could get him to let me bring them up here: and that only on condition that they should be in his hands again before the clock struck twelve.”

“You shall keep faith with him. But now, Mr. Bond, what is your opinion of all this?”

“My opinion is that that same young woman stole the studs: and that she contrived to get them conveyed to London to this assistant, her relative, who no doubt advanced money upon them. I cannot see my way to any other conclusion under the circumstances,”continued Mr. Bond, firmly. “But for James’s turning crusty, I might have learned more.”

“I will go to him myself,” said Miss Deveen, with sudden resolution.“When he finds that my intention is to hold his pocket harmless and make no disturbance in any way, he will not be crusty with me. But this matter must be cleared up if it be possible to clear it.”

Miss Deveen was not one to be slow of action, once a resolve was taken. Mr. Bond made no attempt to oppose her: on the contrary, he seemed to think it might be well that she should go. She sent George out for a cab, in preference to taking her carriage, and said I might accompany her. We were off long before Miss Cattledon’s conference with the curates within the church was over.

The shop was in a rather obscure street, not far from Regent Street. I inquired for Mr. James at the private door, and he came out to the cab. Miss Deveen said she had called to speak to him on particular business, and he took us upstairs to a handsomely furnished room. He was a well-dressed, portly, good-looking man, with a pleasant face and easy manners. Miss Deveen, bidding him sit down near her, explained the affair in a few words, and asked him to help her to elucidate it. He responded frankly at once, and said he would willingly give all the aid in his power.

“Singular to say, I took these studs in myself,” he observed.“I never do these things now, but my foreman had a holiday that day to attend a funeral, and I was in the shop. They were pledged on the 27th of January: since Mr. Bond left this morning I have referred to my books.”

The 27th of January. It was on the night of the 23rd that the studs disappeared. Then the thief had not lost much time! I said so.

“Stay a minute, Johnny,” cried Miss Deveen: “you young ones sum up things too quickly for me. Let me trace past events. The studs, as you say, were lost on the 23rd; the loss was discovered on the 24th, and Lettice Lane was discharged; on the 25th those of us staying at Whitney Hall began to talk of leaving; and on the 26th you two went home after seeing Miss Chalk off by rail to London.”

“And Mrs. Hughes also. They went up together.”

“Who is Mrs. Hughes?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Don’t you remember?—that young married lady who came to the dance with the Featherstons. She lives somewhere in London.”

Miss Deveen considered a little. “I don’t remember any Mrs. Hughes, Johnny.”

“But, dear Miss Deveen, you must remember her,” I persisted.“She was very young-looking, as little as Sophie Chalk; Harry Whitney, dancing with her, trod off the tail of her thin pink dress. I heard old Featherston telling you about Mrs. Hughes, saying it was a sad history. Her husband lost his money after they were married, and had been obliged to take a small situation.”

Recollection flashed upon Miss Deveen. “Yes, I remember now. A pale, lady-like little woman with a sad face. But let us go back to business. You all left on the 26th; I and Miss Cattledon on the 27th. Now, while the visitors were at the Hall, I don’t think the upper-housemaid could have had time to send off the studs by rail. Still less could she have come up herself to pledge them.”

Miss Deveen’s head was running on Mr. Bond’s theory.

“It was no housemaid that pledged the studs,” spoke Mr. James.

“I was about to say, Mr. James, that if you took them in yourself over the counter, they could not have been sent up to your assistant.”

“All the people about me are trustworthy, I can assure you, ma’am,” he interrupted. “They would not lend themselves to such a thing. It was a lady who pledged those studs.”

“A lady?”

“Yes, ma’am, a lady. And to tell the truth, if I may venture to say it, the description you have now given of a lady just tallies with her.”

“Mrs. Hughes?”

“It seems so to me,” continued Mr. James. “Little, pale, and lady-like: that is just what she was.”

“Dear me!” cried Miss Deveen, letting her hands drop on her lap as if they had lost their power. “You had better tell me as much as you can recollect, please.”

“It was at dusk,” said Mr. James. “Not quite dark, but the lamps were lighted in the streets and the gas indoors: just the hour, ma’am, that gentlefolk choose for bringing their things to us. I happened to be standing near the door, when a lady came into the shop and asked to see the principal. I said I was he, and retired behind the counter. She brought out these emerald studs”—touching the box—“and said she wanted to sell them, or pledge them for their utmost value. She told me a tale, in apparent confidence, of a brother who had fallen into debt at college, andshe was trying to get together some money to help him, or frightful trouble might come of it. If it was not genuine,” broke off Mr. James, “she was the best actor I ever saw in all my life.”

“Please go on.”

“I saw the emeralds were very rare and beautiful. She said they were an heirloom from her mother, who had brought the stones from India and had them linked together in England. I told her I could not buy them; she rejoined that it might be better only to pledge them, for they would not be entirely lost to her, and she might redeem them ere twelve months had passed if I would keep them as long as that. I explained that the law exacted it. The name she gave was Mary Drake, asking if I had ever heard of the famous old forefather of theirs, Admiral Drake. The name answers to the initials on the gold.”

“‘M. D.’ They were engraved for Margaret Deveen. Perhaps she claimed the crest, also, Mr. James,” added that lady, sarcastically.

“She did, ma’am; in so far as that she said it was the crest of the Drake family.”

“And you call her a lady?”

“She had every appearance of one, in tone and language too. Her hand—she took one of her gloves off when showing the studs—was a lady’s hand; small, delicate, and white as alabaster. Ma’am, rely upon it, though she may not be a lady in deeds, she must be living the life of one.”

“But now, who was it?”

Yes, who was it? Miss Deveen, looking at us, seemed to wait for an answer, but she did not get one.

“How much did you lend upon the studs?”

“Ten pounds. Of course that is nothing like their value.”

“Should you know her again? How was she dressed?”

“She wore an ordinary Paisley shawl; it was cold weather; and had a thick veil over her face, which she never lifted.”

“Should not that have excited your suspicion?” interrupted Miss Deveen. “I don’t like people who keep their veils down while they talk to you.”

The pawnbroker smiled. “Most ladies keep them down when they come here. As to knowing her again, I am quite certain that I should; and her voice too. Whoever she was, she went about it very systematically, and took me in completely. Her asking for the principal may have thrown me somewhat off my guard.”

We came away, leaving the studs with Mr. James: the time had not arrived for Miss Deveen to redeem them. She seemed very thoughtful as we went along in the cab.

“Johnny,” she said, breaking the silence, “we talk lightly enoughabout the Finger of Providence; but I don’t know what else it can be that has led to this discovery so far. Out of the hundreds of pawnbroking establishments scattered about the metropolis, it is wonderfully strange that this should have been the one the studs were taken to; and furthermore, that Bond should have been passing it last night at the moment Lady Whitney’s housemaid came forth. Had the studs been pledged elsewhere, we might never have heard of them; neither, as it is, but for the housemaid’s being connected with Mr. James’s assistant.”

Of course it was strange.

“You were surprised to see the studs connected together, Johnny. That was the point I mentioned in reference to Lettice Lane. ‘Onemight have fallen down,’ she sobbed out to me, in leaving Whitney Hall; ‘even two; but it’s beyond the bounds of probability that three should, ma’am.’ She was thinking of the studs as separated; and it convinced me that she had never seen them. True, an artful woman might say so purposely to deceive me, but I am sure that Lettice has not the art to do it. But now, Johnny, we must consider what steps to take next. I shall not rest until the matter is cleared.”

“Suppose it should never get on any further!”

“Suppose you are like a young bear, all your experience to come?”retorted Miss Deveen. “Why, Johnny Ludlow, do you think that when that Finger I ventured to speak of is directing an onward course, It halts midway? There cannot, I fear, be much doubt as to the thief; but we must have proof.”

“You think it was——”

“Mrs. Hughes. What else can I think? She is very nice, and I could not have believed it of her. I suppose the sight of the jewels, combined with her poverty, must have proved the temptation. I shall get back the emeralds, but we must screen her.”

“Miss Deveen, I don’t believe it was Mrs. Hughes.”

“Not believe it?”

“No. Her face is not that of one who would do such a thing. You might trust it anywhere.”

“Oh, Johnny! there you are at your faces again!”

“Well, I was never deceived in any face yet. Not in one that I thoroughly trusted.”

“If Mrs. Hughes did not take the studs, and bring them to London, and pledge them, who else could have brought them? They were taken to Mr. James’s on the 27th, remember.”

“That’s the puzzle of it.”

“We must find out Mrs. Hughes, and then contrive to bring her within sight of Mr. James.”

“The Whitneys know where she lives. Anna and Helen have been to call upon her.”

“Then our way is pretty plain. Mind you don’t breathe a syllable of this to mortal ear, Johnny. It might defeat our aims. Miss Cattledon, always inquisitive, will question where we have been this morning with her curious eyes; but for once she will not be satisfied.”

“I should not keep her, Miss Deveen.”

“Yes you would, Johnny. She is faithful; she suits me very well; and her mother and I were girls together.”

It was a sight to be painted. Helen Whitney standing there in her presentation dress. She looked wonderfully well. It was all white, with a train behind longer than half-a-dozen peacocks’ tails, lace and feathers about her hair. The whole lot of us were round her; the young ones had come from the nursery, the servants peeped in at the door; Miss Cattledon had her eye-glass up; Harry danced about the room.

“Helen, my dear, I admire all very much except your necklace and bracelets,” said Miss Deveen, critically. “They do not match: and do not accord with the dress.”

The necklace was a row of turquoises, and did not look much: the bracelets were gold, with blue stones in the clasps. The Whitney family did not shine in jewels, and the few diamonds they possessed were on Lady Whitney to-day.

“But I had nothing else, Miss Deveen,” said Helen, simply.“Mamma said these must do.”

Miss Deveen took off the string of blue beads as if to examine them, and left in its place the loveliest pearl necklace ever seen. There was a scream of surprise; some of us had only met with such transformations in fairy tales.

“And these are the bracelets to match, my dear. Anna, I shall give you the same when your turn for making your curtsey to your queen comes.”

Anna smiled faintly as she looked her thanks. She always seemed regularly down in spirits now, not to be raised by pearl necklaces. For the first time her sad countenance seemed to strike Tod. He crossed over.

“What is wrong, Anna?” he whispered. “Are you not well?”

“Quite well, thank you,” she answered, her cheeks flushing painfully.

At this moment Sophie Chalk created a diversion. Unable to restrain her feelings longer, she burst into tears, knelt down outsideHelen’s dress, and began kissing her hand and the pearl bracelet in a transport of joy.

“Oh, Helen, my dear friend, how rejoiced I am? I said upstairs that your ornaments were not worthy of you.”

Tod’s eyes were glued on her. Bill Whitney called out Bravo. Sophie, kneeling before Helen in her furbelows, made a charming tableau.

“It is good acting, Tod,” I said in his ear.

He turned sharply. But instead of cuffing me into next week, he just sent his eyes straight out to mine.

“Do you call it acting?”

“I am sure it is. But not for you.”

“You are bold, Mr. Johnny.”

But I could tell by the subdued tone and the subdued manner, that his own doubts had been at last awakened whether or not itwas acting.

Lady Whitney came sailing downstairs, a blaze of yellow satin; her face, with flurry, like a peony. She could hardly say a word of thanks for the pearls, for her wits had gone wool-gathering. When she was last at Court herself, Bill was a baby in long-clothes. We went out with them to the carriage; the lady’s-maid taking at least five minutes to settle the trains: and Bill said he hoped the eyes at the windows all round enjoyed the show. The postillion—an unusual sight in London—and the two men behind wore their state liveries, white and crimson; their bouquets bigger than cabbages.

“You will dance with me the first dance to-night?” Tod whispered to Sophie Chalk, as they were going in after watching the carriage away.

Sophie made a slight pause before she answered; and I saw her eyes wander out in the distance towards Bill Whitney.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, with a great display of gratitude.“But I think I am engaged.”

“Engaged for the first dance?”

“Yes. I am so sorry.”

“The second, then?”

“With the greatest pleasure.”

Anna heard it all as well as I. Tod gave Sophie’s hand a squeeze to seal the bargain, and went away whistling.

Not being in the world of fashion, we did not know how other people finished up Drawing-room days (and when Helen Whitney went to Court they were Drawing-rooms), but the Whitneys’ programme was this: A cold collation in lieu of dinner, when Fate should bring them home again, and a ball in the evening. The ball was our joint invention. Sitting round the schoolroom fire one night we settled it for ourselves: and after Sir John and mylady had stood out well, they gave in. Not that it would be much of a ball, for they had few acquaintances in London, and the house was small.

But now, had any aid been wanted by Miss Deveen to carry out her plans, she could not have devised better than this. For the Whitneys invited (all unconsciously) Mrs. Hughes to the ball. Anna came into Miss Deveen’s after they had been sending out the invitations (only three days before the evening), and began telling her the names as a bit of gossip. She came at last to Mrs. Hughes.

“Mrs. Hughes,” interrupted Miss Deveen, “I am glad of that, Anna, for I want to see her.”

Miss Deveen’s seeing her would not go for much in the matter of elucidation; it was Mr. James who must see her; and the plan by which he might do so was Miss Deveen’s own. She went down and arranged it with him, and before the night came, it was all cut and dried. He and she and I knew of it; not another soul in the world.

“You will have to help me in it a little, Johnny,” she said. “Be at hand to watch for Mr. James’s arrival, and bring him up to me.”

We saw them come back from the Drawing-room between five and six, Helen with a brilliant colour in her cheeks; and at eight o’clock we went in. London parties, which begin when you ought to be in your first sleep, are not understood by us country people, and eight was the hour named in the Whitneys’ invitations. Cattledon was screwed into a rich sea-green satin (somebody else’s once), with a water-lily in her thin hair; and Miss Deveen wore all her diamonds. Sir John, out of his element and frightfully disconsolate, stood against the wall, his spectacles lodged on his old red nose. The thing was not in his line. Miss Deveen went up to shake hands.

“Sir John, I am rather expecting a gentleman to call on me on business to-night,” she said; “and have left word for him to step in and see me here. Will you forgive the liberty?”

“I’m sure it’s no liberty; I shall be glad to welcome him,” replied Sir John, dismally. “There’ll not be much here but stupid boys and girls. We shall get no whist to-night. The plague only knows who invented balls.”

It was a little odd that, next to ourselves, Mrs. Hughes should be the first to arrive. She was very pale and pretty, and her husband was a slender, quiet, delicate man, looking like a finished gentleman. Miss Deveen followed them with her eyes as they went up to Lady Whitney.

“She does not look like it, does she, Johnny?” whispered Miss Deveen to me. No, I was quite sure she did not.

Sophie Chalk was in white, with ivy leaves in her spangled hair, the sweetest fairy to look at ever seen out of a moonlight ring. Helen, in her Court dress and pearls, looked plain beside her. They stood talking together, not noticing that I and Tod were in the recess behind. Most of the people had come then, and the music was tuning up. The rooms looked well; the flowers, scattered about, had come up from Whitney Hall. Helen called to her brother.

“We may as well begin dancing, William.”

“Of course we may,” he answered. “I don’t know what we have waited for. I must find a partner. Miss Chalk, may I have the honour of dancing the first dance with you?”

That Miss Chalk’s eyes went up to his with a flash of gratitude, and then down in modesty to the chalked floor, I knew as well as though they had been behind her head instead of before it.

“Oh, thank you,” said she, “I shall be so happy.” And I no more dared glance at Tod than if he had been an uncaged crocodile. She had told him she was engaged for it.

But just as William was about to give her his arm, and some one came and took away Helen, Lady Whitney called him. He spoke with his mother for a minute or two and came back with a cloud on his face.

“I am awfully sorry, Sophie. The mother says I must take out Lady Esther Starr this first time, old Starr’s wife, you know, as my father’s dancing days are over. Lady Esther is seven-and-thirty if she’s a day,” growled Bill, “and as big as a lighthouse. I’ll have the second with you, Sophie.”

“I am afraid I am engaged for the second,” hesitated Miss Sophie. “I think I have promised Joseph Todhetley.”

“Never mind him,” said Bill. “You’ll dance it with me, mind.”

“I can tell him I mistook the dance,” she softly suggested.

“Tell him anything. All right.”

He wheeled round, and went up to Lady Esther, putting on his glove. Sophie Chalk moved away, and I took courage to glance sideways at Tod.

His face was white as death: I think with passion. He stood with his arms folded, never moving throughout the whole quadrille, only looking out straight before him with a fixed stare. A waltz came next, for which they kept their partners. And Sophie Chalk had enjoyed the luck of sitting down all the time. Whilst they were making ready for the second quadrille, Tod went up to her.

“This is our dance, Miss Chalk.”

Well, she had her share of boldness. She looked steadily in hisface, assuring him that he was mistaken, and vowing through thick and thin that it was the third dance she had promised him. Whilst she was excusing herself, Bill came up to claim her. Tod put out his strong arm to ward him off.

“Stay a moment, Whitney,” he said, with studied calmness, “let me have an understanding first with Miss Chalk. She can dance with you afterwards if she prefers to do so. Miss Chalk, you knowthat you promised yourself to me this morning for the second dance. I asked you for the first: you were engaged for that, you said, and would dance the second with me. There could be no mistake, on your side or on mine.”

“Oh, but indeed I understood it to be the third, dear Mr. Todhetley,”said she. “I am dreadfully sorry if it is my fault. I will dance the third with you.”

“I have not asked you for the third. Do as you please. If you throw me over for this second dance, I will never ask you for another again as long as I live.”

Bill Whitney stood by laughing; seeming to treat the whole as a good joke. Sophie Chalk looked at him appealingly.

“And you certainly promised me, Miss Chalk,” he put in.“Todhetley, it is a misunderstanding. You and I had better draw lots.”

Tod bit his lip nearly to bleeding. All the notice he took of Bill’s speech was to turn his back upon him, and address Sophie.

“The decision lies with you alone, Miss Chalk. You have engaged yourself to him and to me: choose between us.”

She put her hand within Bill’s arm, and went away with him, leaving a little honeyed flattery for Tod. But Bill Whitney looked back curiously into Tod’s white face, all his brightness gone; for the first time he seemed to realize that it was serious, almost an affair of life or death. His handkerchief up, wiping his damp brow, Tod did not notice which way he was going, and ran against Anna. “I beg your pardon,” he said, with a start, as if waking out of a dream. “Will you go through this dance with me, Anna?”

Yes. He led her up to it; and they took their places opposite Bill and Miss Chalk.

Mr. James was to arrive at half-past nine. I was waiting for him near the entrance door. He was punctual to time; and looked very well in his evening dress. I took him up to Miss Deveen, and she made room for him on the sofa by her side, her diamonds glistening. He must have seen their value. Sir John had his rubber then in the little breakfast-parlour: Miss Cattledon, old Starr, and another making it up for him. Wanting to see the game played out, I kept by the sofa.

This was not the dancing-room: but they came into it in couples between the dances, to march round in the cooler air. Mr. James looked and Miss Deveen looked; and I confess that whenever Mrs. Hughes passed us, I felt queer. Miss Deveen suddenly arrested her and kept her talking for a minute or two. Not a word bearing upon the subject said Mr. James. Once, when the room was clear and the measured tread to one of Strauss’s best waltzes could be heard, Lady Whitney approached. Catching sight of the stranger by Miss Deveen, she supposed he had been brought by some of the guests, and came up to make his acquaintance.

“A friend of mine, dear Lady Whitney,” said Miss Deveen.

Lady Whitney, never observing that no name was mentioned, shook hands at once with Mr. James in her homely country fashion. He stood up until she had moved away.

“Well?” said Miss Deveen, when the dancers had come in again.“Is the lady here?”

“Yes.”

I had expected him to say No, and could have struck him for destroying my faith in Mrs. Hughes. She was passing at the moment.

“Do you see her now?” whispered Miss Deveen.

“Not now. She was at the door a moment ago.”

“Not now!” exclaimed Miss Deveen, staring at Mrs. Hughes.“Is it not that lady?”

Mr. James sent his eyes in half-a-dozen directions.

“Which lady, ma’am?”

“The one who has just passed in black silk, with the simple white net quilling round the neck.”

“Oh dear, no!” said Mr. James. “I never saw that lady in my life before. The lady, the lady, is dressed in white.”

Miss Deveen looked at him, and I looked. Here, in the rooms, and yet not Mrs. Hughes!

“This is the one,” he whispered, “coming in now.”

The one, turning in at that particular instant, was Sophie Chalk. But others were before her and behind her. She was on Harry Whitney’s arm.

“Why don’t you dance, Miss Deveen?” asked bold Harry, halting before the sofa.

“Will you dance with me, Master Harry?”

“Of course I will. Glad to get you.”

“Don’t tell fibs, young man. I might take you at your word, if I had my dancing-shoes on.”

Harry laughed. Sophie Chalk’s blue eyes happened to rest on Mr. James’s face: they took a puzzled expression, as if wonderingwhere she had seen it. Mr. James rose and bowed to her. She must have recognized him then, for her features turned livid, in spite of the powder upon them.

“Who is it, Johnny?” she whispered, in her confusion, loosing Harry’s arm and coming behind.

“Well, you must ask that of Miss Deveen. He has come here to see her: something’s up, I fancy, about those emerald studs.”

Had it been to save my fortune, I could not have helped saying it. I saw it all as in a mirror. She it was who had taken them, and pledged them afterwards. A similar light flashed on Miss Deveen. She followed her with her severe face, her condemning eyes.

“Take care, Johnny!” cried Miss Deveen.

I was just in time to catch Sophie Chalk. She would have fallen on my shoulder. The room was in a commotion at once: a young lady had fainted. What from? asked every one. Oh, from the heat, of course. And no other reason was breathed.

Mr. James’s mission was over. It had been successful. He made his bow to Lady Whitney, and withdrew.

Miss Deveen sent for Sophie Chalk the next day, and they had it out together, shut up alone. Sophie’s coolness was good for any amount of denial, but it failed here. And then she took the other course, and fell on her knees at Miss Deveen’s feet, and told a pitiable story of being alone in the world, without money to dress herself, and the open jewel-casket in Miss Deveen’s chamber (into which accident, not design, had really taken her) proving too much in the moment’s temptation. Miss Deveen believed it; she told her the affair should never transpire beyond the two or three who already knew it; that she would redeem the emeralds herself, and say nothing even to Lady Whitney; but, as a matter of course, Miss Chalk must close her acquaintance with Sir John’s family.

And, singular to say, Sophie received a letter from someone that same evening, inviting her to go out of town. At least, she said she did.

So, quitting the Whitneys suddenly was plausibly accounted for; and Helen Whitney did not know the truth for many a day.

What did Tod think? For that, I expect, is what you are all wanting to ask. That was another curious thing—that he and Bill Whitney should have come to an explanation before the ball was over. Bill went up to him, saying that had he supposed Tod could mean anything serious in his admiration of Sophie Chalk, he should never have gone in for admiring her himself, even inpastime; and certainly would not continue to do so or spoil sport again.

“Thank you for telling me,” answered Tod, with indifference.“You are quite welcome to go in for Sophie Chalk in any way you please. I have done with her.”

“No,” said Bill, “good girls must grow scarcer than they are before I should go in seriously for Sophie Chalk. She’s all very well to talk and laugh with, and she is uncommonly fascinating.”

It was my turn to put in a word. “As I told you, Bill, months ago, Sophie Chalk would fascinate the eyes out of your head, give her the chance.”

Bill laughed. “Well she has had the chance, Johnny: but she has not done it.”

Altogether, Sophie, thanks to her own bad play, had fallen to a discount.

When Miss Deveen announced to the world that she had found her emerald studs (lost through an accident, she discovered, and recovered in the same way) people were full of wonder at the chances and mistakes of life. Lettice Lane was cleared triumphantly. Miss Deveen sent her home for a week to shake hands with her friends and enemies, and then took her back as her own maid.

And the only person I said a syllable to was Anna. I knew it would be safe: and I dare say you would have done the same in my place. But she stopped me at the middle of the first sentence.

“I have known it from the first, Johnny: I was nearly as sure of it as I could be; and it is that that has made me so miserable.”

“Known it was Sophie Chalk?”

“As good as known it. I had no proof, only suspicion. And I could not see whether I ought to speak the suspicion even to mamma, or to keep it to myself. As things have turned out, I am very thankful to have been silent.”

“How was it, then?”

“That night at Whitney Hall, after they had all come down from dressing, mamma sent me up to William’s room with a message. As I was leaving it—it is at the end of the long corridor, you know—I saw some one peep cautiously out of Miss Cattledon’s chamber, and then steal up the back stairs. It was Sophie Chalk. Later, when we were going to bed, and I was quite undressed, Helen, who was in bed, espied Sophie’s comb and brush on the table—for she had dressed in our room because of the large glass—and told me to run in with them: she only slept in the next room. It was very cold. I knocked and entered so sharply that the door-bolt, a thin, creaky old thing, gave way. Of course I begged her pardon; but she seemed to start up in terrible fear,as if I had been a ghost. She had not touched her hair, but sat in her shawl, sewing at her stays; and she let them drop on the carpet and threw a petticoat over them. I thought nothing, Johnny; nothing at all. But the next morning when commotion arose and the studs were missing, I could not help recalling all this; and I quite hated myself for thinking Sophie Chalk might have taken them when she stole out of Miss Cattledon’s room, and was sewing them later into her stays.”

“You thought right, you see.”

“Johnny, I am very sorry for her. I wish we could help her to some good situation. Depend upon it, this will be a lesson to her: she will never so far forget herself again.”

“She is quite able to take care of herself, Anna. Don’t let it trouble you. I dare say she will marry Mr. Everty.”

“Who is Mr. Everty?”

“Some one who is engaged in the wine business with Sophie Chalk’s brother-in-law, Mr. Smith.”

CHAPTER XVI.

GOING TO THE MOP.

“I never went to St. John’s mop in my life,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“That’s no reason why you never should go,” returned the Squire.

“And never thought of engaging a servant at one.”

“There are as good servants to be picked up at a mop as out of it; and you have a great deal better choice,” said he. “My mother has hired many a man and maid at the mop: first-rate servants too.”

“Well, then, perhaps we had better go into Worcester to-morrow and see,” concluded she, rather dubiously.

“And start early,” said the Squire. “What is it you are afraid of?” he added, noting her doubtful tone. “That good servants don’t go to the mop to be hired?”

“Not that,” she answered. “I know it is the only chance farmhouse servants have of being hired when they change their places. It was the noise and crowd I was thinking of.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” returned the Pater. “It is not half as bad as the fair.”

Mrs. Todhetley stood at the parlour window of Dyke Manor, the autumn sun, setting in a glow, tingeing her face and showing up its thoughtful expression. The Squire was in his easy-chair, looking at one of the Worcester newspapers.

There had been a bother lately about the dairy-work. The old dairy-maid, after four years of the service, had left to be married; two others had been tried since, and neither suited. The last had marched herself off that day, after a desperate quarrel with Molly; the house was nearly at its wits’ end in consequence, and perhaps the two cows were also. Mrs. Todhetley, really not knowing what in the world to do, and fretting herself into the face-ache over it, was interrupted by the Pater and his newspaper. He had just read there the reminder that St. John’s annual Michaelmas Mop would take place on the morrow: and he told Mrs. Todhetley that she could go there and hire a dairy-maid at will. Fifty if she wantedthem. At that time the mop was as much an institution as the fair or the wake. Some people called it the Statute Fair.

Molly, whose sweet temper you have had a glimpse or two of before, banged about among her spoons and saucepans when she heard what was in the wind. “Fine muck it ’ud be,” she said,“coming out o’ that there Worcester mop.” Having the dairy-work to do as well as her own just now, the house scarcely held her.

We breakfasted early the next morning and started betimes in the large open carriage, the Squire driving his pair of fine horses, Bob and Blister. Mrs. Todhetley sat with him, and I behind. Tod might have gone if he would: but the long drive out and home had no charms for him, and he said ironically he should like to see himself attending the mop. It was a lovely morning, bright and sunny, with a suspicion of crispness in the air: the trees were putting on their autumn colours, and shoals of blackberries were in the hedges.

Getting some refreshment again at Worcester, and leaving the Squire at the hotel, I and Mrs. Todhetley walked to the mop. It was held in the parish of St. John’s—a suburb of Worcester on the other side of the Severn, as all the country knows. Crossing the bridge and getting well up the New Road, we plunged into the thick of the fun.

The men were first, standing back in a line on the foot-path, fronting the passers-by. Young rustics mostly in clean smock-frocks, waiting to be looked at and questioned and hired, a broad grin on their faces with the novelty of the situation. We passed them: and came to the girls and women. You could tell they were nearly all rustic servants too, by their high colours and awkward looks and manners. As a rule, each held a thick cotton umbrella, tied round the middle after the fashion of Mrs. Gamp’s, and a pair of pattens whose bright rings showed they had not been in use that day. To judge by the look of the present weather, we were not likely to have rain for a month: but these simple people liked to guard against contingencies. Crowds of folk were passing along like ourselves, some come to hire, some only to take up the space and stare.

Mrs. Todhetley elbowed her way amongst them. So did I. She spoke to one or two, but nothing came of it. Whom should we come upon, to my intense surprise, but our dairy-maid—the one who had taken herself off the previous day!

“I hope you will get a better place than you had with me, Susan,”said the Mater, rather sarcastically.

“I hopes as how I shall, missis,” was the insolent retort. “’Twon’t be hard to do, any way, that won’t, with that there overbearing Molly in yourn.”

We went on. A great hulking farmer as big as a giant, and looking as though he had taken more than was good for him in the morning, came lumbering along, pushing every one right and left. He threw his bold eyes on one of the girls.

“What place be for you, my lass?”

“None o’ yourn, master,” was the prompt reply.

The voice was good-natured and pleasant, and I looked at the girl as the man went shouldering on. She wore a clean light cotton gown, a smart shawl all the colours of the rainbow, and a straw bonnet covered with sky-blue bows. Her face was fairer than most of the faces around; her eyes were the colour of her ribbons; and her mouth, rather wide and always smiling, had about the nicest set of teeth I ever saw. To take likes and dislikes at first sight without rhyme or reason, is what I am hopelessly given to, and there’s no help for it. People laugh mockingly: as you have heard me say. “There goes Johnny with his fancies again!” they cry: but I know that it has served me well through life. I took a liking to this girl’s face: it was an honest face, as full of smiles as the bonnet was of bows. Mrs. Todhetley noticed her too, and halted. The girl dropped a curtsey.

“What place are you seeking?” she asked.

“Dairy-maid’s, please, ma’am.”

The good Mater stood, doubtful whether to pursue inquiries or to pass onwards. She liked the face of the girl, but did not like the profusion of blue ribbons.

“I understand my work well, ma’am, please; and I’m not afraid of any much of it, in reason.”

This turned the scale. Mrs. Todhetley stood her ground and plunged into questioning.

“Where have you been living?”

“At Mr. Thorpe’s farm, please, near Severn Stoke.”

“For how long?”

“Twelve months, please. I went there Old Michaelmas Day, last year.”

“Why are you leaving?”

“Please, ma’am”—a pause here—“please, I wanted a change, and the work was a great sight of it; frightful heavy; and missis often cross. Quite a herd o’ milkers, there was, there.”

“What is your name?”

“Grizzel Clay. I be strong and healthy, please, ma’am; and I was twenty-two in the summer.”

“Can you have a character from Mrs. Thorpe?”

“Yes, please, ma’am, and a good one. She can’t say nothing against me.”

And so the queries went on; one would have thought the Materwas hiring a whole regiment of soldiers. Grizzel was ready and willing to enter on her place at once, if hired. Mrs. Thorpe was in Worcester that day, and might be seen at the Hare and Hounds inn.

“What do you think, Johnny?” whispered the Mater.

“I should hire her. She’s just the girl I wouldn’t mind taking without any character.”

“With those blue bows! Don’t be simple, Johnny. Still I like the girl, and may as well see Mrs. Thorpe.”

“By the way, though,” she added, turning to Grizzel, “what wages do you ask?”

“Eight pounds, please, ma’am,” replied Grizzel, after some hesitation, and with reddening cheeks.

“Eight pounds!” exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley. “That’s very high.”

“But you’ll find me a good servant, ma’am.”

We went back through the town to the Hare and Hounds, an inn near the cathedral. Mrs. Thorpe, a substantial dame in a long cloth skirt and black hat, by which we saw she had come in on horse-back, was at dinner.

She gave Grizzel Clay a good character. Saying the girl was honest, clean, hardworking, and very sweet-tempered; and, in truth, she was rather sorry to part with her. Mrs. Todhetley asked about the blue bows. Ay, Mrs. Thorpe said, that was Grizzel Clay’s great fault—a love of finery: and she recommended Mrs. Todhetley to “keep her under” in that respect. In going out we found Grizzel waiting under the archway, having come down to learn her fate. Mrs. Todhetley said she should engage her, and bade her follow us to the hotel.

“It’s an excellent character, Johnny,” she said, as we went along the street. “I like everything about the girl, except the blue ribbons.”

“I don’t see any harm in blue ribbons. A girl looks nicer in ribbons than without them.”

“That’s just it,” said the Mater. “And this girl is good-looking enough to do without them. Johnny, if Mr. Todhetley has no objection, I think we had better take her back in the carriage. You won’t mind her sitting by you?”

“Not I. And I’m sure I shall not mind the ribbons.”

So it was arranged. The girl was engaged, to go back with us in the afternoon. Her box would be sent on by the carrier. She presented herself at the Star at the time of starting with a small bundle: and a little birdcage, something like a mouse-trap, that had a bird in it.

“Could I be let take it, ma’am?” she asked of Mrs. Todhetley.“It’s only a poor linnet that I found hurt on the ground the last morning I went out to help milk Thorpe’s cows. I’m a-trying, please, to nurse it back to health.”

“Take it, and welcome,” cried the Squire. “The bird had better die, though, than be kept to live in that cage.”

“I was thinking to let it fly, please, sir, when it’s strong again.”

Grizzel had proper notions. She screwed herself into the corner of the seat, so as not to touch me. I heard all about her as we went along.

She had gone to live at her Uncle Clay’s in Gloucestershire when her mother died, working for them as a servant. The uncle was“well-to-do,” rented twenty acres of land, and had two cows and some sheep and pigs of his own. The aunt had a nephew, and this young man wanted to court her, Grizzel: but she’d have nothing to say to him. It made matters uncomfortable, and last year they turned her out: so she went and hired herself at Mrs. Thorpe’s.

“Well, I should have thought you had better be married and have a home of your own than go out as dairy-maid, Grizzel.”

“That depends upon who the husband is, sir,” she said, laughing slightly. “I’d rather be a dairy-maid to the end o’ my days—I’d rather be a prisoner in a cage like this poor bird—than have anything to say to that there nephew of aunt’s. He had red hair, and I can’t abide it.”

Grizzel proved to be a good servant, and became a great favourite in the house, except with Molly. Molly, never taking to her kindly, was for quarrelling ten times a day, but the girl only laughed back again. She was superior to the general run of dairy-maids, both in looks and manners: and her good-humoured face brought sweethearts up in plenty.

Two of them were serious. The one was George Roper, bailiff’s man on a neighbouring farm; the other was Sandy Lett, a wheelwright in business for himself at Church Dykely. Of course matters ran in this case, as they generally do run in such cases, all cross and contrary: or, as the French say, à tort et à travers. George Roper, a good-looking young fellow with curly hair and a handsome pair of black whiskers, had not a coin beyond the weekly wages he worked for: he had not so much as a chair to sit in, or a turn-up bedstead to lie on; yet Grizzel loved him with her whole heart. Sandy Lett, who was not bad-looking either, and had a good home and a good business, she did not care for. Of course the difficulty lay in deciding which of the two to choose: ambition and her friends recommended Sandy Lett; imprudence and her own heart, George Roper. Like the donkey between the two bundles ofhay, Grizzel was unable to decide on either, and kept both the swains on the tenter-hooks of suspense.

Sunday afternoons were the great trouble of Grizzel’s life. Roper had holiday then, and came: and Lett, whose time was his own, though of course he could not afford to waste it on a week-day, also came. One would stand at the stile in one field, the other at a stile in another field: and Grizzel, arrayed in one of the light print gowns she favoured, the many-coloured shawl, and the dangerous blue-ribboned bonnet, did not dare to go out to either, lest the other should pounce upon his rival, and a fight ensue. It was getting quite exciting in the household to watch the progress of events. Spring passed, the summer came round; and between the two, Grizzel had her hands full. The other servants could not imagine what the men saw in her.

“It is those blue ribbons she’s so fond of!” said Mrs. Todhetley to us two, with a sigh. “I doubted them from the first.”

“I should say it is the blue eyes,” dissented Tod.

“And I the white teeth and laughing face. Nobody can help liking her.”

“You shut up, Johnny. If I were Roper——”

“Shut up yourself, Joseph: both of you shut up: you know nothing about it,” interrupted the Squire, who had seemed to be asleep in his chair. “It comes of woman’s coquetry and man’s folly. As to these two fellows, if Grizzel can’t make up her mind, I’ll warn them both to keep off my grounds at their peril.”

One evening during the Midsummer holidays, in turning out of the oak-walk to cross the fold-yard, I came upon Grizzel leaning on the gate. She had a bunch of sweet peas in her hand, and tears in her eyes. George Roper, who must have been talking to her, passed me quickly, touching his hat.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, Roper.”

He walked away with his firm, quick stride: a well-made, handsome, trustworthy fellow. His brown velveteen coat (an old one of his master’s) was shabby, but he looked well in it; and his gaitered legs were straight and strong. That he had been the donor of the sweet peas, a rustic lover’s favourite offering, was evident. Grizzel attempted to hide them in her gown when she saw me, but was not quick enough, so she was fain to hold them openly in her hand, and make believe to be busy with her milk-pail.

“It’s a drop of skim milk I’ve got over; I was going to take it to the pigs,” said she.

“What are you crying about?”

“Me crying!” returned Grizzel. “It’s the sun a shinin’ in my eyes, sir.”

Was it! “Look here, Grizzel, why don’t you put an end to this state of bother? You won’t be able to milk the cows next.”

“’Tain’t any in’ard bother o’ that sort as ’ll keep me from doing my proper work,” returned she, with a flick to the handle of the pail.

“At any rate, you can’t marry two men: you would be taken up by old Jones the constable, you know, and tried for bigamy. And I’m sure you must keep them in ferment. George Roper’s gone off with a queer look on his face. Take him, or dismiss him.”

“I’d take him to-morrow, but for one thing,” avowed the girl in a half whisper.

“His short wages, I suppose—sixteen shillings a week.”

“Sixteen shillings a week short wages!” echoed Grizzel. “I call’em good wages, sir. I’d never be afraid of getting along on them with a steady man—and Roper’s that. It ain’t the wages, Master Johnny. It is, that I promised mother never to begin life upon less than a cottage and some things in it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Poor mother was a-dying, sir. Her illness lasted her many a week, and she might be said to be a-dying all the time. I was eighteen then. ‘Grizzy,’ says she to me one night, ‘you be a likely girl and ’ll get chose afore you be many summers older. But you must promise me that you’ll not, on no temptation whatsoever, say yes to a man till he has a home of his own to take you to, and beds and tables and things comfortable about him. Once begin without’em, and you and him ’ll spend all your after life looking out for ’em; but they’ll not come any the more for that. And you’ll be at sixes-and-sevens always: and him, why perhaps he’ll take to the beer-shop—for many a man does, through having, so to say, no home. I’ve seen the ill of it in my days,’ she says, ‘and if I thought you’d tumble into it I’d hardly rest quiet in the grave where you be so soon a-going to place me.’ ‘Be at ease, mother,’ says I to her in answer, ‘and take my promise, which I’ll never break, not to set-up for marriage without a home o’ my own and proper things in it.’That promise I can’t break, Master Johnny; and there has laid the root of the trouble all along.”

I saw then. Roper had nothing but a lodging, not a stick or stone that he could call his own. And the foolish man, instead of saving up out of his wages, spent the remnant in buying pretty things for Grizzel. It was a hopeless case.

“You should never have had anything to say to Roper, knowing this, Grizzel.”

Grizzel twirled the sweet peas round and round in her fingers, and looked foolish, answering nothing.

“Lett has a good home to give you and means to keep it going. He must make a couple of pounds a week. Perhaps more.”

“But then I don’t care for him, Master Johnny.”

“Give him up then. Send him about his business.”

She might have been counting the blossoms on the sweet-pea stalks. Presently she spoke, without looking up.

“You see, Master Johnny, one does not like to—to lose all one’s chances, and grow into an old maid. And, if I can’t have Roper, perhaps—in time—I might bring myself to take Lett. It’s a better opportunity than a poor dairy-maid like me could ever ha’ looked for.”

The cat was out of the bag. Grizzel was keeping Lett on for a remote contingency. When she could make up her mind to say No to Roper, she meant to say Yes to him.

“It is awful treachery to Roper; keeping him on only to drop him at last,” ran my thoughts. “Were I he, I should give her a good shaking, and leave——”

A sudden movement on Grizzel’s part startled me. Catching up her pail, she darted across the yard by the pond as fast as her pattens would go, poured the milk into the pig-trough with a dash, and disappeared indoors. Looking round for any possible cause for this, I caught sight of a man in light fustian clothes hovering about in the field by the hay-ricks. It was Sandy Lett; he had walked over on the chance of getting to see her. But she did not come out again.

The next move in the drama was made by Lett. The following Monday he presented himself before the Squire—dressed in his Sunday-going things, and a new hat on—to ask him to be so good as to settle the matter, for it was “getting a’most beyond him.”

“Why, how can I settle it?” demanded the Squire. “What have I to do with it?”

“It’s a tormenting of me pretty nigh into fiddle-strings,” pleaded Lett. “What with her caprices—for sometimes her speaks to me as pleasant as a angel, while at others her won’t speak nohow; and what with that dratted folk over yonder a-teasing of me”—jerking his head in the direction of Church Dykely—“I don’t get no peace of my life. It be a shame, Squire, for any woman to treat a man as she’s a-treating me.”

“I can’t make her have you if she won’t have you,” exploded the Squire, not liking the appeal. “It is said, you know, that she would rather have Roper.”

Sandy Lett, who had a great idea of his own merits, turned his nose up in the air. “Beg pardon, Squire,” he said, “but that won’t wash, that won’t. Grizzel couldn’t have nothing serious to say to that there Roper; nought but a day-labourer on a farm; she couldn’t: and if he don’t keep his distance from her, I’ll wring his ugly head round for him. Look at me beside him!—my good home wi’ its m’hogany furniture in’t. I can keep her a’most like a lady. She may have in a wench once a week for the washing and scrubbing, if she likes: I’d not deny her nothing in reason. And for that there Roper to think to put hisself atween us! No;’twon’t do: the moon’s not made o’ green cheese. Grizzel’s a bit light-hearted, sir; fond o’ chatter; and Roper he’ve played upon that. But if you’d speak a word for me, Squire, so as I may have the banns put up——”

“What the deuce, Lett, do you suppose I have to do with my women-servants and their banns?” testily interrupted the Squire.“I can’t interfere to make her marry you. But I’ll tell you thus much, and her too: if there is to be this perpetual uproar about Grizzel, she shall quit my house before the twelvemonth she engaged herself for is up. And that’s a disgrace for any young woman.”

So Sandy Lett got nothing by coming, poor unfortunate man. And yet—in a sense he did. The Squire ordered the girl before him, and told her in a sharp, decisive tone that she must either put an end to the state of things—or leave his service. And Grizzel, finding that the limit of toleration had come, but unable in her conflicting difficulties to decide which of the swains to retain and which discard, dismissed the two. After that, she was plunged over head and ears in distress, and for a week could hardly see to skim off the cream for her tears.

“This comes of hiring dairy wenches at a statty fair!” cried wrathful Molly.

The summer went on. August was waning. One morning when Mr. Duffham had called in and was helping Mrs. Todhetley to give Lena a spoonful of jam (with a powder in it), at which Lena kicked and screamed, Grizzel ran into the room in excitement so great, that they thought she was going into a fit.

“Why, what is it?” questioned Mrs. Todhetley, with a temporary truce to the jam hostilities. “Has either of the cows kicked you down, Grizzel?”

“I’m—I’m come into a fortin!” shrieked Grizzel hysterically, laughing and crying in the same breath.

Mr. Duffham put her into a chair, angrily ordering her to be calm—for anger is the best remedy in the world to apply to hysterics—and took a letter from her that she held out. It told her that her Uncle Clay was dead, and had left her a bequest of forty pounds. The forty pounds to be paid to her in gold whenever sheshould go and apply for it. This letter had come by the morning post: but Grizzel, busy in her dairy, had only just now opened it.

“For the poor old uncle to have died in June, and them never to ha’ let me hear on’t!” she said, sobbing. “Just like ’em! And me never to have put on a bit o’ mourning for him!”

She rose from the chair, drying her eyes with her apron, and held out her hand for the letter. As Mrs. Todhetley began to say she was very glad to hear of her good luck, a shy look and a half-smile came into the girl’s face.

“I can get the home now, ma’am, with all this fortin,” she whispered.

Molly banged her pans about worse than ever, partly in envy at the good luck of the girl, partly because she had to do the dairy work during Grizzel’s absence in Gloucestershire: a day and a half, which was given her by Mrs. Todhetley.

“There won’t be no standing anigh her and her finery now,” cried rampant Molly to the servants. “She’ll tack her blue ribbons on to her tail as well as her head. Lucky if the dairy some fine day ain’t found turned all sour!”

Grizzel came back in time; bringing her forty pounds in gold wrapped-up in the foot of a folded stocking. The girl had as much sense as one here and there, and a day or two after her arrival she asked leave to speak to her mistress. It was to say that she should like to leave at the end of her year, Michaelmas, if her mistress would please look out for some one to replace her.

“And what are you going to do, Grizzel, when you do leave? What are your plans?”

Grizzel turned the colour of a whole cornfield of poppies, and confessed that she was going to be married to George Roper.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Todhetley. But she had nothing to urge against it.

“And please, ma’am,” cried Grizzel, the poppies deepening and glowing, “we’d like to make bold to ask if the master would let to us that bit of a cottage that the Claytons have went out of.”

The Mater was quite taken aback. It seemed indeed that Grizzel had been laying her plans to some purpose.

“It have a nice piece o’ ground to grow pertaters and garden stuff, and it have a pigsty,” said Grizzel. “Please, ma’am, we shall get along famous, if we can have that.”

“Do you mean to set up a pig, Grizzel?”

Grizzel’s face was all one smile. Of course they did. With such a fortune as she had come into, she intended herself and her husband to have everything good about them, including a pig.

“I’ll give Grizzel away,” wrote Tod when he heard the news of the legacy and the projected marriage. “It will be fun! And ifyou people at home don’t present her with her wedding-gown it will be a stingy shame. Let it have a good share of blue bows.”

“No, though, will he!” exclaimed Grizzel with sparkling eyes, when told of the honour designed her by Tod. “Give me away! Him! I’ve always said there’s not such another gentleman in these parts as Mr. Joseph.”

The banns were put up, and matters progressed smoothly; with one solitary exception. When Sandy Lett heard of the treason going on behind his back, he was ready to drop with blighted love and mortification. A three-days’ weather blight was nothing to his. Quite forgetting modesty, he made his fierce way into the house, without saying with your leave or by your leave, and thence to the dairy where Grizzel stood making-up butter, startling the girl so much with his white face and wild eyes that she stepped back into a pan of cream. Then he enlarged upon her iniquity, and wound up by assuring her that neither she nor her “coward of a Roper”could ever come to good. After that, he left her alone, making no further stir.

Grizzel quitted the Manor and went into the cottage, which the Squire had agreed to let to them: Roper was to come to it on the wedding-day. A daughter of Goody Picker’s, one Mary Standish (whose husband had a habit of going off on roving trips and staying away until found and brought back by the parish), stayed with Grizzel, helping her to put the cottage in habitable order, and arrange in it the articles she bought. That sum of forty pounds seemed to be doing wonders: I told Grizzel I could not have made a thousand go as far.

“Any left, Master Johnny? Why of course I shall have plenty left,” she said. “After buying the bed and the set o’ drawers and the chairs and tables; and the pots and pans and crockeryware for the kitchen; and the pig and a cock and hen or two; and perviding a joint of roast pork and some best tea and white sugar for the wedding-day, we shall still have pounds and pounds on’t left.’Tisn’t me, sir, nor George nether, that ’ud like to lavish away all we’ve got and put none by for a rainy day.”

“All right, Grizzel. I am going to give you a tea-caddy.”

“Well now, to think of that, Master Johnny!” she said, lifting her hands. “And after the mistress giving me such a handsome gownd!—and the servants clubbing together, and bringing a roasting oven and beautiful set o’ flat irons. Roper and me’ll be set up like a king and queen.”

On Saturday, the day before that fixed for the wedding, I and Tod were passing the cottage—a kind of miniature barn, to look at, with a thatched roof, and a broken grindstone at the door—and went in: rather to the discomfiture of Grizzel and Mrs. Standish,who had their petticoats shortened and their arms bare, scouring and scrubbing and making ready for the morrow. Returning across the fields later, we saw Grizzel at the door, gazing out all ways at once.

“Consulting the stars as to whether it will be fine to-morrow, Grizzel?” cried Tod, who was never at a loss for a ready word.

“I was a-looking out for Mary Standish, sir,” she said. “George Roper haven’t been here to-night, and we be all at doubtings about several matters he was to have come in to settle. First he said he’d go on betimes to the church o’ Sunday morning; then he said he’d come here and we’d all walk together: and it was left at a uncertainty. There’s the blackberry pie, too, that he’ve not brought.”

“The blackberry pie!” said I.

“One that Mrs. Dodd, where he lodges, have made a present of to us for dinner, Master Johnny. Roper was to ha’ brought it in to-night ready. It won’t look well to see him carrying of a baked-pie on a Sunday morning, when he’ve got on his wedding-coat. I can’t think where he have got to!”

At this moment, some one was seen moving towards us across the field path. It proved to be Mary Standish: her gown turned up over her head, and a pie in her hands the size of a pulpit cushion. Red syrup was running down the outside of the dish, and the crust looked a little black at the edges.

“My, what a big beauty!” exclaimed Grizzel.

“Do take it, Grizzel, for my hands be all cramped with its weight,” said Mrs. Standish: who, as it turned out, had been over to Roper’s lodgings, a mile and a half away, with a view to seeing what had become of the bridegroom elect. And she nearly threw the pie into Grizzel’s arms, and took down her gown.

“And what do Roper say?” asked Grizzel. “And why have he not been here?”

“Roper’s not at home,” said Mary Standish. “He come in from work about six; washed and put hisself to rights a bit, and then went out with a big bundle. Mrs. Dodd called after him to bring the pie, but he called back again that the pie might wait.”

“What was in the bundle?” questioned Grizzel, resenting the slight shown to the pie.

“Well, by the looks on’t, Mother Dodd thought ’twas his working clothes packed up,” replied Mary Standish.

“His working clothes!” cried Grizzel.

“A going to take ’em to the tailor’s, maybe, to get ’em done up. And not afore they wanted it.”

“Why, it’s spending money for nothing,” was Grizzel’s comment.“I could ha’ done up them clothes.”

“Well, it’s what Mother Dodd thought,” concluded Mary Standish.

We said good night, and went racing home, leaving the two women at the door, Grizzel lodging the heavy blackberry pie on the old grindstone.

It was a glorious day for Grizzel’s wedding. The hour fixed by the clerk (old Bumford) was ten o’clock, so that it might be got well over before the bell rang out for service. We reached the church early. Amongst the few spectators already there was cross-grained Molly, pocketing her ill-temper and for once meaning to be gracious to Grizzel.

Ten o’clock struck, and the big old clock went ticking on. Clerk Bumford (a pompous man when free from gout) began abusing the wedding-party for not keeping its time. The quarter past was striking when Grizzel came up, with Mary Standish and a young girl. She looked white and nervous, and not at all at ease in her bridal attire—a green gown of some kind of stuff, and no end of pink ribbons: the choice of colours being Grizzel’s own.

“Is Roper here yet?” whispered Mary Standish.

“Not yet.”

“It’s too bad of him!” she continued. “Never to send a body word whether he meant to call for us, or not: and us a waiting there till now, expecting of him.”

But where was George Roper? And (as old Bumford asked) what did he mean by it? The clergyman in his surplice and hood looked out at the vestry twice, as if questioning what the delay meant. We stood just inside the porch, and Grizzel grew whiter and whiter.

“Just a few minutes more o’ this delay, and there won’t be no wedding at all this blessed morning,” announced Clerk Bumford for the public benefit. “George Roper wants a good blowing up, he do.”

Ere the words were well spoken, a young man named Dicker, who was a fellow-lodger of Roper’s and was to have accompanied him to church, made his appearance alone. That something had gone wrong was plainly to be seen: but, what with the publicity of his present position, and what with the stern clerk pouncing down upon him in wrath, the young man could hardly get his news out.

In the first place, Roper had never been home all night; never been seen, in short, since he had left Mrs. Dodd’s with the bundle, as related by Mary Standish. That morning, while Dicker in his consternation knew not what to be at—whether to be off to church alone, or to wait still, in the hope that Roper would come—twonotes were delivered at Mrs. Dodd’s by a strange boy: the one addressed to himself, John Dicker, the other to “Miss Clay,” meaning Grizzel. They bore ill news; George Roper had given up his marriage, and gone away for good.

At this extraordinary crisis, pompous Clerk Bumford was so taken aback, that he could only open his mouth and stare. It gave Dicker the opportunity to put in a few words.

“What we thought at Mother Dodd’s was, that Roper had took a drop too much somewhere last evening, and couldn’t get home. He’s as sober a man as can be—but whatever else was we to think? And when this writed note come this morning, and we found he had gone off to Ameriky o’ purpose to avoid being married, we was downright floundered. This is yours, Grizzel,” added the young man in as gently considerate a tone as any gentleman could have used.

Grizzel’s hand shook as she took the letter he held out. She was biting her pale lips hard to keep down emotion. “Take it and read it,” she whispered to Mary Standish—for in truth she herself could not, with all that sea of curious eyes upon her.

But Mary Standish laboured under the slight disadvantage of not being able to read writing: conscious of this difficulty, she would not touch the letter. Mr. Bumford, his senses and his tongue returning together, snatched it without ceremony out of Grizzel’s hand.

“I’ll read it,” said he. And he did so. And I, Johnny Ludlow, give you the copy verbatim.

“DER GRISL, saterdy evenin, this comes hoppin you be wel as it leves me at presint, Which this is to declar to you der grisl that our marage is at an end, it hav ben to much for me and praid on my sperits, I cant stand it no longer nohow and hav took my leve of you for ivir, Der Grisl I maks my best way this night to Livirpol to tak ship for Ameriky, and my last hops for you hearby xprest is as you may be hapy with annother, I were nivir worthey of you der grisl and thats a fac, but I kep it from you til now when I cant kep it no longer cause of my conshunse, once youv red this hear letter dont you nivir think no mor on me agen, which I shant on you, Adew for ivir,

“your unfortnit friend GEORGE ROPER.

“Ide av carred acros that ther blakbured pi but shoud have ben to late, my good hops is youl injoy the pi with another better nor you ivir could along with me, best furwel wishes to Mary Standish. G R.”

What with the penmanship and what with the spelling, it took old Bumford’s spectacles some time to get through. A thunderbolt could hardly have made more stir than this news. No one spoke, however; and Mr. Bumford folded the letter in silence.

“I always knowed what that there Roper was worth,” broke forth Molly. “He pipe-clayed my best black cloak on the sly one day when I ordered him off the premises. You be better without him, Grizzel, girl—and here’s my hand and wishing you better luck in token of it.”

“Mrs. Dodd was right—them was a change a’ clothes he was a taking with him to Ameriky,” added Mary Standish.

“Roper’s a jail-bird, I should say,” put in old Bumford. “A nice un too.”

“But what can it be that’s went wrong—what is it that have took him off?” wondered the young man, Dicker.

The parson in his surplice had come down the aisle and was standing to listen. Grizzel, in the extremity of mental bitterness and confusion, but striving to put a face of indifference on the matter before the public, gazed around helplessly.

“I’m better without him, as Molly says—and what do I care?”she cried recklessly, her lips quivering. The parson put his hand gravely on her arm.

“My good young woman, I think you are in truth better without him. Such a man as that is not worthy of a regret.”

“No, sir, and I don’t and won’t regret him,” was her rapid answer, the voice rising hysterically.

As she turned, intending to leave the church, she came face to face with Sandy Lett. I had seen him standing there, drinking in the words of the note with all his ears and taking covert looks at Grizzel.

“Don’t pass me by, Grizzel,” said he. “I feel hearty sorry for all this, and I hope that villain’ll come to be drowned on his way to Ameriky. Let me be your friend. I’ll make you a good one.”

“Thank you,” she answered. “Please let me go by.”

“Look here, Grizzel,” he rejoined with a start, as if some thought had at that moment occurred to him. “Why shouldn’t you and me make it up together? Now. If the one bridegroom’s been a wicked runagate, and left you all forsaken, you see another here ready to put on his shoes. Do, Grizzel, do!”

“Do what?” she asked, not taking his meaning.

“Let’s be married, Grizzel. You and me. There’s the parson and Mr. Bumford all ready, and we can get it over afore church begins. It’s a good home I’ve got to take you to. Don’t say nay, my girl.”

Now what should Grizzel do? Like the lone lorn widow in“David Copperfield,” who, when a ship’s carpenter offered her marriage, “instead of saying, ‘Thank you, sir, I’d rather not,’ up with a bucket of water and dashed it over him,” Grizzel “up”with her hand and dealt Mr. Sandy a sounding smack on his left cheek. Smarting under the infliction, Sandy Lett gave vent to a word or two of passion, out of place in a church, and the parson administered a reprimand.

Grizzel had not waited. Before the sound of her hand had died away, she was outside the door, quickly traversing the lonely churchyard. A fine end to poor Grizzel’s wedding!

The following day, Monday, Mrs. Todhetley went over to the cottage. Grizzel, sitting with her hands before her, started up, and made believe to be desperately busy with some tea-cups. We were all sorry for her.

“Mr. Todhetley has been making inquiry into this business, Grizzel,” said the Mater, “and it certainly seems more mysterious than ever, for he cannot hear a word against Roper. His late master says Roper was the best servant he ever had; he is as sorry to lose him as can be.”

“Oh, ma’am, but he’s not worth troubling about—my thanks and duty to the master all the same.”

“Would you mind letting me see Roper’s note?”

Grizzel took it out of the tea-caddy I had given her—which caddy was to have been kept for show. Mrs. Todhetley, mastering the contents, and biting her lips to suppress an occasional smile, sat in thought.

“I suppose this is Roper’s own handwriting, Grizzel?”

“Oh, ma’am, it’s his, safe enough. Not that I ever saw him write. He talks about the blackberry pie, you see; one might know it is his by that.”

“Then, judging by what he says here, he must have got into some bad conduct, or trouble, I think, which he has been clever enough to keep from you and the world.”

“Oh yes, that’s it,” said Grizzel. “Poor mother used to say one might be deceived in a saint.”

“Well, it’s a pity but he had given some clue to its nature: it would have been a sort of satisfaction. But now—I chiefly came over to ask you, Grizzel, what you purpose to do?”

“There’s only one thing for me now, ma’am,” returned poor crestfallen Grizzel, after a pause: “I must get another place.”

“Will you come back to the Manor?”

A hesitation—a struggle—and then she flung her apron up to her face and burst into tears. Dairy-maids have their feelings as well as their betters, and Grizzel’s “lines” were very bitter just then. She had been so proud of this poor cottage home; she had grown to love it so in only those few days, and to look forward to years of happiness within it in their humble way: and now to find that she must give it up and go to service again!

“The Squire says he will consider it as though you and Roper had not taken the cottage; and he thinks he can find some one to rent it who will buy the furniture of you—that is, if you prefer to sell it,” she resumed very kindly. “And I think you had better come back to us, Grizzel. The new maid in your place does not suit at all.”

Grizzel took down her apron and rubbed her eyes. “It’s very good of you, ma’am—and of the master—and I’d like to come back only for one thing. I’m afraid Molly would let me have no peace in my life: she’d get tanking at me about Roper before the others. Perhaps I’d hardly be able to stand it.”

“I will talk to her,” said Mrs. Todhetley, rising to leave.“Where is Mary Standish to-day?”

“Gone over to Alcester, ma’am. She had a errand there she said. But I think it was only to tell her folks the tale of my trouble.”

Molly had her “talking to” at once. It put her out a little; for she was really feeling some pity for Grizzel, and did not at all intend to “get tanking” at her. Molly had once experienced a similar disappointment herself; and her heart was opening to Grizzel. After her dinner was served that evening, she ran over to the cottage, in her coarse cooking apron and without a bonnet.

“Look here,” she said, bursting in upon Grizzel, sitting alone in the dusk. “You come back to your place if you like—the missis says she has given you the option—and don’t you be afeard of me.’Tisn’t me as’ll ever give back to you a word about Roper; and, mind, when I says a thing I mean it.”

“Thank you, Molly,” humbly replied poor Grizzel, catching her breath.

“The sooner you come back the better,” continued Molly, fiercely. “For it’s not me and that wench we’ve got now as is going to stop together. I had to call the missis into the dairy this blessed morning, and show her the state it was in. So you’ll come back, Grizzel—and we’ll be glad to see you.”

Grizzel nodded her head: her heart was too full to speak.

“And as to that false villain of a Roper, as could serve a woman such a pitiful trick, I only wish I had the doctoring of him! He should get a—a—a——” Molly’s voice, pitched in a high tone, died gradually away. What on earth was it, stepping in upon them? Some most extraordinary object, who opened the door softly, and came in with a pitch. Molly peered at it in the darkness with open mouth.

A cry from Grizzel. A cry half of terror, half of pain. For she had recognized the object to be a man, and George Roper. George Roper with his hair and handsome whiskers cut off, and white sleeves in his brown coat—so that he looked like a Merry Andrew.

He seemed three parts stupefied: not at all like a traveller in condition to set off to America. Sinking into the nearest wooden chair, he stared at Grizzel in a dazed way, and spoke in a slow, questioning, wondering voice.

“I can’t think what it is that’s the matter with me.”

“Where be your whiskers—and your hair?” burst forth Molly.

The man gazed at her for a minute or two, taking in the question gradually; he then raised his trembling hand to either side his face—feeling for the whiskers that were no longer there.

“A nice pot o’ mischief you’ve been a getting into!” cried sharp Molly. “Is that your own coat? What’s gone of the sleeves?”

For, now that the coat could be seen closely, it turned out that its sleeves had been cut out, leaving the bare white shirt-sleeves underneath. Roper looked first at one arm, then at the other.

“What part of Ameriky be you bound for, and when do the ship sail?” pursued sarcastic Molly.

The man opened his mouth and closed it again; like a born natural, as Molly put it. Grizzel suddenly clung to him with a sobbing cry.

“He is ill, Molly; he’s ill. He has had some trick played on him. George, what be it?” But still George Roper only gazed about him as if too stupid to understand.

In short, the man was stupid. That is, he had been stupefied, and as yet was only partially recovering its effects. He remembered going into the barber’s shop on Saturday night to have his hair cut, after leaving his bundle of clothes at the tailor’s. Some ale was served round at the barber’s, and he, Roper, took a glass. After that he remembered nothing: all was blank, until he woke up an hour ago in the unused shed at the back of the blacksmith’s shop.

That the ale had been badly drugged, was evident. The question arose—who had played the trick? In a day or two, when Roper had recovered, an inquiry was set on foot: but nothing came of it. The barber testified that Roper seemed sleepy after the ale, and a joke went round that he must have been drinking some previously. He went out of the shop without having his hair cut, with several more men—and that was all the barber knew. Of course Sandy Lett was suspected. People said he had done it in hope to get himself substituted as bridegroom. Lett, however, vowed through thick and thin that he was innocent; andnothing was traced home to him. Neither was the handwriting of the note.

They were married on the Thursday. Grizzel was too glad to get him back unharmed to make bones about the shorn whiskers. No difficulty was made about opening the church on a week-day. Clerk Bumford grumbled at it, but the parson put him down. And the blackberry pie served still for the wedding-dinner.

CHAPTER XVII.

BREAKING DOWN.

“Have him here a bit.”

“Oh! But would you like it?”

“Like it?” retorted the Squire. “I know this: if I were a hard-worked London clerk, ill for want of change and rest, and I had friends living in a nice part of the country, I should feel it uncommonly hard if they did not invite me.”

“I’m sure it is very kind of you to think of it,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“Write at once and ask him,” said the Squire.

They were speaking of a Mr. Marks. He was a relation of Mrs. Todhetley’s; a second or third cousin. She had not seen him since she was a girl, when he used sometimes to come and stay at her father’s. He seemed not to have got on very well in life; was only a clerk on a small salary, was married and had some children. A letter now and then passed between them and Mrs. Todhetley, but no other acquaintanceship had been kept up. About a month before this, Mrs. Todhetley had written to ask how they were going on; and the wife in answering—for it was she who wrote—said her husband was killing himself with work, and she quite believed he would break down for good unless he had a rest.

We heard more about it later. James Marks was clerk in the great financial house of Brown and Co. Not particularly great as to reputation, for they made no noise in the world, but great as to their transactions. They did a little banking in a small way, and had mysterious money dealings with no end of foreign places: but if you had gone into their counting-house in London you’d have seen nothing to show for it, except Mr. Brown seated at a table-desk in a small room, and half-a-dozen clerks, or so, writing hard, or bending over columns of figures, in a larger one. Mr. Brown was an elderly little gentleman in a chestnut wig, and the “Co.” existed only in name.

James Marks had been thrown on the world when he was seventeen, with a good education, good principles, and a great anxiety toget on in life. He had to do it; for he had only himself to look to—and, mind you, I have lived long enough to learn that that’s not at all the worst thing a young man can have. When some friends of his late father’s got him into Brown and Co.’s house, James Marks thought his fortune was made. That is, he thought he was placed in a position to work up to one. But no. Here he was, getting on for forty years of age, and with no more prospect of fortune, or competency either, than he had had at the beginning.

How many clerks, and especially bankers’ clerks, are there in that City of London now who could say the same! Who went into their house (whatsoever it may be) in the hey-day of youth, exulting in their good luck in having obtained the admission for which so many others were striving. They saw not the long years of toil before them, the weary days of close work, with no rest or intermission, except Sunday; they saw not the struggle to live and pay; they saw not themselves middle-aged men, with a wife and family, hardly able to keep the wolf from the door. It was James Marks’s case. He had married. And what with having to keep up the appearance of gentlepeople (at least to make a pretence at it) and to live in a decent-looking dwelling, and to buy clothes, and to pay doctors’ bills and children’s schooling, I’ll leave you to guess how much he had left for luxuries out of his two hundred a year.

When expenses were coming upon him thick and fast, Marks sought out some night employment. A tradesman in the neighbourhood—Pimlico—a butterman doing a flourishing business, advertised for a book-keeper to attend two or three hours in the evening. James Marks presented himself and was engaged. It had to be done in secrecy, lest offence should be taken at head-quarters. Had the little man in the chestnut wig heard of it, he might have objected to his clerk keeping any books but his own. Shut up in the butterman’s small back-closet that he called his counting-house, Mr. Marks could be as private as need be. So there he was! After coming home from his day’s toil, instead of taking recreation, the home-sitting with his wife, or the stroll in the summer weather, in place of throwing work to the winds and giving his brain rest, James Marks, after snatching a meal, tea and supper combined, went forth to work again, to weary his eyes with more figures and his head with casting them up. He generally managed to get home by eleven except on Saturday; but the day’s work was too much for any man. Better for him (could he have pocketed pride, and gained over Brown and Co.) that he had hired himself to stand behind the evening counter and serve out the butter and cheese to the customers. It would at least have been a relief from the accounts. And so the years had gone on.

A portion of the wife’s letter to Mrs. Todhetley had run as follows:“Thank you very much for your kind inquiries after my husband, and for your hope that he is not overworking himself. He is. But I suppose I must have said something about it in my last letter (I am ashamed to remember that it was written two years ago!) that induced you to refer to it. That he is overworking himself I have known for a long time: and things that he has said lately have tended to alarm me. He speaks of sometimes getting confused in the head. In the midst of a close calculation he will suddenly seem to lose himself—lose memory and figures and all, and then he has to leave off for some minutes, close his eyes, and keep perfectly still, or else leave his stool and take a few turns up and down the room. Another thing he mentions—that the figures dance before his eyes in bed at night, and he is adding them up in his brain as if it were daytime and reality. It is very evident to me that he wants change and rest.”

“And what a foolish fellow he must have been not to take it before this!” cried the Squire, commenting on parts of the letter, while Mrs. Todhetley wrote.

“Perhaps that is what he has not been able to do, sir,” I said.

“Not able! Why, what d’ye mean, Johnny?”

“It is difficult for a banker’s clerk to get holiday. Their work has to go on all the same.”

“Difficult! when a man’s powers are breaking down! D’ye think bankers are made of flint and steel, not to give their clerks holiday when it is needed? Don’t you talk nonsense, Johnny Ludlow.”

But I was not so far wrong, after all. There came a letter of warm thanks from Mr. Marks himself in answer to Mrs. Todhetley’s invitation. He said how much he should have liked to accept it and what great good it would certainly have done him; but that upon applying for leave he found he could not be spared. So there seemed to be an end of it; and we hoped he would get better without the rest, and rub on as other clerks have to rub on. But in less than a month he wrote again, saying he would come if the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley were still pleased to have him. He had been so much worse as to be obliged to tell Mr. Brown the truth—that he believed he must have rest; and Mr. Brown had granted it to him.

It was the Wednesday in Passion Week, and a fine spring day, when James Marks arrived at Dyke Manor. Easter was late that year. He was rather a tall man, with dark eyes and very thin hair; he wore spectacles, and at first was rather shy in manner.

You should have seen his delight in the change. The walks he took, the enjoyment of what he called the sweet country. “Oh,”he said one day to us, “yours must be the happiest lot on earth. No forced work; your living assured; nothing to do but to revel in this health-giving air! Forgive my freedom, Mr. Todhetley,”he added a moment after: “I was contrasting your lot with my own.”

We were passing through the fields towards the Court: the Squire was taking him to see the Sterlings, and he had said he would rather walk than drive. The hedges were breaking into green: the fields were yellow with buttercups and cowslips. This was on the Monday. The sun shone and the breeze was soft. Mr. Marks sniffed the air as he went along.

“Six months of this would make a new man of me,” we heard him say to himself in a low tone.

“Take it,” cried the Squire.

Mr. Marks laughed, sadly enough. “You might as well tell me, sir, to—to take heaven,” he said impulsively. “The one is no more in my power than the other.—Hark! I do believe that’s the cuckoo!”

We stood to listen. It was the cuckoo, sure enough, for the first time that spring. It only gave out two or three notes, though, and then was silent.

“How many years it is since I heard the cuckoo!” he exclaimed, brushing his hand across his eyes. “More than twenty, I suppose. It seems to bring back my youth to me. What a thing it would be for us, sir, if we could only go to the mill that grinds people young again!”

The Squire laughed. “It is good of you to talk of age, Marks; why, I must be nearly double yours,” he added—which of course was random speaking.

“I feel old, Mr. Todhetley: perhaps older than you do. Think of the difference in our mode of life. I, tied to a desk for more hours of the twenty-four than I care to think of, my brain ever at work; you, revelling in this beautiful, healthy freedom!”

“Ay, well, it is a difference, when you come to think of it,” said the Squire soberly.

“I must not repine,” returned Marks. “There are more men in my case than in yours. No doubt it is well for me,” he continued, dropping his voice, with a sigh. “Were your favoured lot mine, sir, I might find so much good in it as to forget that this world is not our home.”

Perhaps it had never struck the Squire before how much he was to be envied; but Marks put it strongly. “You’d find crosses and cares enough in my place, I can tell you, Marks, of one sort or another. Johnny, here, knows how I am bothered sometimes.”

“No doubt of it,” replied Marks, with a smile. “No lot onearth can be free from its duties and responsibilities; and they must of necessity entail care. That is one thing, Mr. Todhetley; but to be working away your life at high pressure—and to know that you are working it away—is another.”

“You acknowledge, then, that you are working too hard, Marks,”said the Squire.

“I know I am, sir. But there’s no help for it.”

“It is a pity.”

“Why it should begin to tell upon me so early I don’t know. There are numbers of other men, who work as long and as hard as I do, and are seemingly none the worse for it.”

“The time will come though when they will be, I presume.”

“As surely as that sun is shining in the sky.”

“Possibly you have been more anxious than they, Marks.”

“It may be so. My conscience has always been in my work, to do it efficiently. I fear, too, I am rather sensitively organized as to nerves and brain. Upon those who are so, I fancy work tells sooner than on others.”

The Squire put his arm within Marks’s. “You must have a bit of a struggle to get along, too, on your small salary.”

“True: and it all helps. Work and struggle together are not the most desirable combination. But for being obliged to increase my means by some stratagem or other, I should not have taken on the additional evening’s work.”

“How long are you at it, now, of an evening?”

“Usually about two hours. On Saturdays and at Christmas-time longer.”

“And I suppose you must continue this night-work?”

“Yes. I get fifty pounds a year for it. And I assure you I should not know how to spare one pound of the fifty. No one knows the expenses of children, except those who have to look at every shilling before it can be spent.”

There was a pause. Mr. Marks stooped, plucked a cowslip and held it to his lips.

“Don’t you think, Marks,” resumed the Squire, in a confidential, friendly tone, “that you were just a little imprudent to marry?”

“No, I do not think I was,” he replied slowly, as if considering the question. “I did not marry very early: I was eight-and-twenty; and I had got together the wherewithal to furnish a house, and something in hand besides. The question was mooted among us at Brown’s the other day—whether it was wiser, or not, for young clerks to marry. There is a great deal to be urged both ways—against marrying and against remaining single.”

“What can you urge against remaining single?”

“A very great deal, sir. I feel sure, Mr. Todhetley, that you can form no idea of the miserable temptations that beset a young fellow in London. Quite half the London clerks, perhaps more, have no home to go to when their day is over; I mean no parent’s home. A solitary room and no one to bear them company in it; that’s all they have; perhaps, in addition, a crabbed landlady. Can you blame them very much if they go out and escape this solitude?—they are at the age, you know, when enjoyment is most keen; the thirst for it well-nigh irrepressible——”

“And then they go off to those disreputable singing places!”exploded the Squire, not allowing him to finish.

“Singing places, yes; and other places. Theatres, concerts, supper-rooms—oh, I cannot tell you a tithe of the temptation that meets them at every turn and corner. Many and many a poor young fellow, well-intentioned in the main, has been ruined both in pocket and in health by these snares; led into them at first by dangerous companions.”

“Surely all do not get led away.”

“Not all. Some strive on manfully, remembering early precepts and taking God for their guide, and so escape. But it is not the greater portion who do this. Some marry early, and secure themselves a home. Which is best?—I put the question only in a worldly point of view. To commit the imprudence of marrying, and so bring on themselves and wives intolerable perplexity and care: or to waste their substance in riotous living!”

“I’ll be shot if I know!” cried the Squire, taking off his hat to rub his puzzled head. “It’s a sad thing for poor little children to be pinched, and for men like you to be obliged to work yourselves to shatters to keep them. But as to those others, I’d give ’em all a night at the treadmill. Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may be thankful that you don’t live in London.”

I had been thinking to myself that I was thankful not to be one of those poor young clerks to have no home to go to when work was over. Some fellows would rather tramp up and down the streets, than sit alone in a solitary room; and the streets, according to Marks, teemed with temptations. He resumed.

“In my case I judged it the reverse of imprudence to marry, for my wife expected a fairly good fortune. She was an only child, and her father had realized enough to live quietly; say three or four hundred a year. Mr. Stockleigh had been a member of the Stock Exchange, but his health failed and he retired. Neither I nor his daughter ever doubted—no, nor did he himself—that this money must come to us in time.”

“And won’t it?” cried the Squire.

Marks shook his head. “I fear not. A designing servant, that they had, got over him after his daughter left—he was weak in health and weak in mind—and he married her. Caroline—my wife—resented it naturally; there was some recrimination on either side, and since then they have closed the door against her and me. So you see, with no prospect before us, there’s nothing for me but to work the harder,” he concluded, with a kind of plucked-up cheerfulness.

“But, to do that, you should get up your health and strength, Marks. You must, you know. What would you do if you broke down?”

“Hush!” came the involuntary and almost affrighted answer.“Don’t remind me of it, sir. Sometimes I dream of it, and cannot bear to awaken.”

We had got to like Marks very much only in those few days. He was a gentleman in mind and manners and a pleasant one into the bargain, though he did pass his days adding up figures and was kept down by poverty. The Squire meant to keep him for a month: two months if he would stay.

On the following morning, Tuesday, during breakfast-time, a letter came for him by the post—the first he had had. He had told his wife she need not write to him, wanting to have all the time for idle enjoyment: not to spend it in answering letters.

“From home, James?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“No,” said he, smiling. “It is only a reminder that I am due to-morrow at the house.”

“What house?” cried the Squire.

“Our house, sir. Brown and Co.’s.”

The Squire put down his buttered roll—for Molly had graciously sent in hot rolls that morning—and stared at the speaker.

“What on earth are you talking of?” he cried. “You don’t mean to say you are thinking of going back?”

“Indeed I am—unfortunately. I must get up to London to-night.”

“Why, bless my heart,” cried the Squire, getting up and standing a bit, “you’ve not been here a week!”

“It is all the leave I could get, Mr. Todhetley: a week. I thought you understood that.”

“You can’t go away till you are cured,” roared the Squire.“Why didn’t you go back the day you came? Don’t talk nonsense, Marks.”

“Indeed I should like to stay longer,” he earnestly said. “I wish I could. Don’t you see, Mr. Todhetley, that it does not lie with me?”

“Do you dare to look me in the face, Marks, and tell me thisone week’s rest has cured you? What on earth!—are you turning silly?”

“It has done me a great, great deal of good——”

“It has not, Marks. It can’t have done it; not real good,”came the Squire’s interruption. “One would think you were a child.”

“It was with difficulty I obtained this one week’s leave,” he explained.“I am really required in the office; my absence I know causes trouble. This holiday has done so much for me that I shall go back with a good heart.”

“Look here,” said the Squire: “suppose you take French leave, and stay?”

“In that case my discharge would doubtless arrive by the first post.”

“Look here again: suppose in a month or two you break down and have to leave? What then?”

“Brown and Co. would appoint a fresh clerk in my place.”

“Why don’t Brown and Co. keep another clerk or two, so as to work you all less?”

Marks smiled at the very idea. “That would increase their expenses, Mr. Todhetley. They will never do that. It is a part of the business of Brown’s life to keep expenses down.”

Well, Marks had to go. The Squire was very serious in thinking more rest absolutely needful—of what service could a week be, he reiterated. Down he sat, wrote a letter to Brown and Co., telling them his opinion, and requesting the favour of their despatching James Marks back for a longer holiday. This he sent by post, and they would get it in the morning.

“No, I’ll not trust it to you, Marks,” he said: “you might never deliver it. Catch an old bird with chaff!”

To this letter there came no answer at all; and Mr. Marks did not come back. The Squire relieved his mind by calling Brown and Co. thieves and wretches—and so it passed. It must be remembered that I am writing of past years, when holidays were not so universal for any class, clerk or master, as they are at present. Not that I am aware whether financiers’ clerks get them now.

The next scene in the drama I can only tell by hearsay. It took place in London, where I was not.

It was a dull, rainy day in February, and Mrs. Marks sat in her parlour in Pimlico. The house was one of a long row, and the parlour just about large enough to turn in. She sat by the fire, nursing a little two-year-old girl, and thinking; and three otherchildren, the eldest a boy of nine, were playing at the table—building houses on the red cloth with little wooden bricks. Mrs. Marks was a sensible woman, understanding proper management, and had taken care to bring up her children not to be troublesome. She looked about thirty, and must have been pretty once, but her face was faded now, her grey eyes had a sad look in them. The chatter at the table and the bricks fell unheeded on her ear.

“Mamma, will it soon be tea-time?”

There was no answer.

“Didn’t you hear, mamma? Carry asked if it would soon be tea-time. What were you thinking about?”

She heard this time, and started out of her reverie. “Very soon now, Willy dear. Thinking? Oh, I was thinking about your papa.”

Her thoughts were by no means bright ones. That her husband’s health and powers were failing, she felt as sure of as though she could foresee the ending that was soon to come. How he went on and did his work was a marvel: but he could not give it up, or bread would fail.

The week’s rest in the country had set Mr. Marks up for some months. Until the next autumn he worked on better than he had been able to do for some time past. And then he failed again. There was no particular failing outwardly, but he felt all too conscious that his overtaxed brain was getting worse than it had ever been. He struggled on; making no sign. That he should have to resign part of his work was an inevitable fact: he must give up the evening book-keeping to enable him to keep his more important place. “Once let me get Christmas work over,” thought he, “and as soon as possible in the New Year, I will resign.”

He got the Christmas work over. Very heavy it was, at both places, and nearly did for him. It is the last straw, you know, that breaks the camel’s back: and that work broke James Marks. Towards the end of January he was laid up in bed with a violent cold that settled on his chest. Brown and Co. had to do without him for eleven days: a calamity that—so far as Marks was concerned—had never happened in Brown and Co.’s experience. Then he went back to the city again, feeling shaken; but the evening labour was perforce given up.

No one knew how ill he was: or, to speak more correctly, how unfit for work, how more incapable of it he was growing day by day. His wife suspected a little. She knew of his sleepless nights, the result of overtaxed nerves and brain, when he would toss and turn and get up and walk the room; and dress himself in the morning without having slept.

“There are times,” he said to her in a sort of horror, “when I cannot at all collect my thoughts. I am as long again at my work as I used to be, and have to go over it again and again. There have been one or two mistakes, and old Brown asks what is coming to me. I can’t help it. The figures whirl before me, and I lose my power of mind.”

“If you could only sleep well!” said Mrs. Marks.

“Ay, if I could. The brain is as much at work by night as by day. There are the figures mentally before me, and there am I, adding them up.”

“You should see a clever physician, James. Spare the guinea, and go. It may be more than the guinea saved.”

Mr. Marks took the advice. He went to a clever doctor; explained his position, the kind of work he had to do, and described his symptoms. “Can I be cured?” he asked.

“Oh yes, I think so,” said the doctor, cheerfully, without telling him that he had gone on so far as to make it rather doubtful.“The necessary treatment is very simple. Take change of scene and perfect rest.”

“For how long?”

“Twelve months, at least.”

“Twelve months!” repeated Marks, in a queer tone.

“At least. It is a case of absolute necessity. I will write you a prescription for a tonic. You must live well. You have not lived well enough for the work you have to do.”

As James Marks went out into the street he could have laughed a laugh of bitter mockery. Twelve months’ rest for him? The doctor had told him one thing—that had he taken rest in time, a very, very much shorter period would have sufficed. “I wonder how many poor men there are like myself in London at this moment,” he thought, “who want this rest and cannot take it, and who ought to live better and cannot afford to do it!”

It was altogether so very hopeless that he did nothing, except take the tonic, and he continued to go to the City as usual. Some two or three weeks had elapsed since then: he of course growing worse, though there was nothing to show it outwardly: and this was the end of February, and Mrs. Marks sat thinking of it all over the fire; thinking of what she knew, and guessing at what she did not know, and her children were building houses at the table.

The servant came in with the tea-things, and took the little girl. Only one servant could be kept—and hardly that. Mrs. Marks had made her own tea and was pouring out the children’s milk-and-water, when they heard a cab drive up and stop at the door. A minute after Mr. Marks entered, leaning on the arm of one of his fellow-clerks.

“Here, Mrs. Marks, I have brought you an invalid,” said the latter gaily, making light of it for her sake. “He seems better now. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him.”

Had it come? Had what she had been dreading come—that he was going to have an illness, she wondered. But she was a trump of a wife, and showed herself calm and comforting.

“You shall both of you have some tea at once,” she said, cheerfully.“Willy, run and get more tea-cups.”

It appeared that Mr. Marks had been, as the clerk expressed it, very queer that day; more so than usual. He could not do his work at all; had to get assistance continually from one or the other, and ended by falling off his stool to the floor, in what he called, afterwards, a “sensation of giddiness.” He seemed fit for nothing, and Mr. Brown said he had better be taken home.

That day ended James Marks’s work. He had broken down. At night he told his wife what the physician had said; which he had not done before. She could scarcely conceal her dismay.

A twelvemonth’s rest for him! What would become of them? Failing his salary, they would have no means whatever of living.

“Oh, if my father had only acted by us as he ought!” she mentally cried. “James could have taken rest in time then, and all would have been well. Will he help us now it has come to this? Will she let him?—for it is she who holds him in subjection and steels his heart against us.”

Mr. Stockleigh, the father, lived at Sydenham. She, the new wife, had taken him off there from his residence in Pimlico as soon as might be after the marriage; and the daughter had never been invited inside the house. But she resolved to go there now. Saying nothing to her husband, Mrs. Marks started for Sydenham the day after he was brought home ill, and found the place without trouble.

The wife, formerly the cook, was a big brawny woman with a cheek and a tongue of her own. When Mrs. Marks was shown in, she forgot herself in the surprise; old habits prevailed, and she half dropped a curtsey.

“I wish to see papa, Mrs. Stockleigh.”

“Mr. Stockleigh’s out, ma’am.”

“Then I must wait until he returns.”

Mrs. Stockleigh did not see her way clear to turn this lady from the house, though she would have liked to do it. She made a show of hospitality, and ordered wine and cake to be put on the table. Of which wine, Mrs. Marks noticed with surprise, she drankfour glasses. “Now and then we used to suspect her of drinking in the kitchen!” ran through Mrs. Marks’s thoughts. “Has it grown upon her?”

The garden gate opened, and Mr. Stockleigh came through it. He was so bowed and broken that his daughter scarcely knew him. She hastened out and met him in the path.

“Caroline!” he exclaimed in amazement. “Is it really you? How much you have changed?”

“I came down to speak to you, papa. May we stay and talk here in the garden?”

He seemed glad to see her, rather than not, and sat down with her on the garden bench in the sun. In a quiet voice she told him all: and asked him to help her. Mrs. Stockleigh had come out and stood listening to the treason, somewhat unsteady in her walk.

“I—I would help you if I could, Caroline,” he said, in hesitation, glancing at his wife.

“Yes, but you can’t, Stockleigh,” she put in. “Our own expenses is as much as iver we can manage, Mrs. Marks. It’s a orful cost, living out here, and our two servants is the very deuce for extravigance. I’ve changed ’em both ten times for others, and the last lot is always worse than the first.”

“Papa, do you see our position?” resumed Mrs. Marks, after hearing the lady patiently. “It will be a long time before James is able to do anything again—if he ever is—and we have not been able to save money. What are we to do? Go to the workhouse? I have four little children.”

“You know that you can’t help, Stockleigh,” insisted Mr. Stockleigh’s lady, taking up the answer, her face growing more inflamed.“You’ve not got the means to do anything: and there’s an end on’t.”

“It is true, Caroline; I’m afraid I have not,” he said—and his daughter saw with pain how tremblingly subject he was to his wife. “I seem short of money always. How did you come down, my dear?”

“By the train, papa. Third class.”

“Oh dear!” cried Mr. Stockleigh. “My health’s broken, Caroline. It is, indeed, and my spirit too. I am sure I am very sorry for you. Will you come in and take some dinner?”

“We’ve got nothing but a bit of ’ashed beef,” cried Mrs. Stockleigh, as if to put a damper upon the invitation. “Him and me fails in our appetites dreadful: I can’t think what’s come to ’em.”

Mrs. Marks declined dinner: she had to get back to the children. That any sort of pleading would be useless while that woman held sway, she saw well. “Good-bye, papa,” she said.“I suppose we must do the best we can alone. Good morning, Mrs. Stockleigh.”

To her surprise her father kissed her; kissed her with quivering lips. “I will open the gate for you, my dear,” he said, hastening on to it. As she was going through, he slipped a sovereign into her hand.

“It will pay for your journey, at least, my dear. I am sorry to hear of your travelling third class. Ah, times have changed. It is not that I won’t help you, child, but that I can’t. She goes up to receive the dividends, and keeps me short. I should not have had that sovereign now, but it is the change out of the spirit bill that she sent me to pay. Hush! the money goes in drink. She drinks like a fish. Ah, Caroline, I was a fool—a fool! Fare you well, my dear.”

“Fare you well, dear papa, and thank you,” she answered, turning away with brimming eyes and an aching heart.

After resting for some days and getting no better, James Marks had to give it up as a bad job. He went to the City house, saw Mr. Brown, and told him.

“Broken down!” cried old Brown, hitching back his wig, as he always did when put out. “I never heard such nonsense. At your age! The thing’s incomprehensible.”

“The work has been very wearing to the brain, sir; and my application to it was close. During the three-and-twenty years I have been with you I have never had but one week’s holiday: the one last spring.”

“You told me then you felt like a man breaking down, as if you were good for nothing,” resentfully spoke old Brown.

“Yes, sir. I told you that I believed I was breaking down for want of a rest,” replied Marks. “It has proved so.”

“Why, you had your rest.”

“One week, sir. I said I feared it would not be of much use. But—it was not convenient for you to allow me more.”

“Of course it was not convenient; you know it could not be convenient,” retorted old Brown. “D’you think I keep my clerks for play, Marks? D’you suppose my business will get done of itself?”

“I was aware myself, sir, how inconvenient my absence would be, and therefore I did not press the matter. That one week’s rest did me a wonderful amount of service: it enabled me to go on until now.”

Old Brown looked at him. “See here, Marks—we are sorry to lose you: suppose you take another week’s change now, and try what it will do. A fortnight, say. Go to the sea-side, or somewhere.”

Marks shook his head. “Too late, sir. The doctors tell me it will be twelve months before I am able to work again at calculations.”

“Oh, my service to you,” cried Mr. Brown. “Why, what are you going to do if you cannot work?”

“That is a great deal more than I can say, sir. The thought of it is troubling my brain quite as much as work ever did. It is never out of it, night or day.”

For once in his screwy life, old Brown was generous. He told Mr. Marks to draw his salary up to the day he had left, and he added ten pounds to it over and above.

During that visit I paid to Miss Deveen’s in London, when Tod was with the Whitneys, and Helen made her first curtsey to the Queen, and we discovered the ill-doings of that syren, Mademoiselle Sophie Chalk, I saw Marks. Mrs. Todhetley had given me two or three commissions, as may be remembered: one amongst them was to call in Pimlico, and see how Marks was getting on.

Accordingly I went. We had heard nothing, you must understand, of what I have told above, and did not know but he was still in his situation. It was a showery day in April: just a twelvemonth, by the way, since his visit to us at Dyke Manor. I found the house out readily; it was near Ebury Street; and I knocked. A young lad opened the door, and asked me to walk into the parlour.

“You are Mr. Marks’s son,” I said, rubbing my feet on the mat:“I can tell by the likeness. What’s your name?”

“William. Papa’s is James.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He is ill,” whispered the lad, with his hand on the door handle.“Mamma’s downstairs, making him some arrowroot.”

Well, I think you might have knocked me down with a feather when I knew him—for at first I did not. He was sitting in an easy-chair by the fire, dressed, but wrapped round with blankets: and instead of being the James Marks we had known, he was like a living skeleton, with cheek-bones and hollow eyes. But he was glad to see me, smiled, and held out his hand from the blanket.

It is uncommonly awkward for a young fellow to be taken unawares like this. You don’t know what to say. I’m sure I as much thought he was dying as I ever thought anything in this world. At last I managed to stammer a word or two about being sorry to see him so ill.

“Ay,” said he, in a weak, panting voice, “I am different from what I was when with your kind people, Johnny. The trouble I foresaw then has come.”

“You used sometimes to feel then as though you would not longkeep up,” was my answer, for really I could find nothing else to say.

He nodded. “Yes, I felt that I was breaking down—that I should inevitably break down unless I could have rest. I went on until February, Johnny, and then it came. I had to give up my situation; and since then I have been dangerously ill from another source—chest and lungs.”

“I did not know your lungs were weak, Mr. Marks.”

“I’m sure I did not,” he said, after a fit of coughing. “I had one attack in January through catching a cold. Then I caught another cold, and you see the result: the doctor hardly saved me. I never was subject to take cold before. I suppose the fact is that when a man breaks down in one way he gets weak in all, and is more liable to other ailments.”

“I hope you will get better as the warm weather comes on. We shall soon have it here.”

“Better of this cough, perhaps: I don’t know: but not better yet of my true illness that I think most of—the overtaxed nerves and brain. Oh, if I could only have taken a sufficient rest in time!”

“Mr. Todhetley said you ought to have stayed with us for three months. He says it often still.”

“I believe,” he said, solemnly lifting his hand, “that if I could have had entire rest then for two or three months, it would have set me up for life. Heaven hears me say it.”

And what a dreadful thing it now seemed that he had not!

“I don’t repine. My lot seems a hard one, and I sometimes feel sick and weary when I dwell upon it. I have tried to do my duty: I could but keep on and work, as God knows. There was no other course open to me.”

I supposed there was not.

“I am no worse off than many others, Johnny. There are men breaking down every day from incessant application and want of needful rest. Well for them if their hearts don’t break with it!”

And, to judge by the tone he spoke in, it was as much as to say that his heart had broken.

“I am beginning to dwell less on it now,” he went on. “Perhaps it is that I am too weak to feel so keenly. Or that Christ’s words are being indeed realized to me: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ God does not forsake us in our trouble, Johnny, once we have learnt to turn to Him.”

Mrs. Marks came into the room with the cup of arrowroot. The boy had run down to tell her I was there. She was very pleasant and cheerful: you could be at home with her at once. While he was waiting for the arrowroot to cool, he leant back in his chair and dropped into a doze.

“It must have been a frightful cold that he caught,” I whispered to her.

“It was caught the day he went into the City to tell Mr. Brown he must give up his situation,” she answered. “There’s an old saying, of being penny wise and pound foolish, and that’s what poor James was that day. It was a fine morning when he started; but rain set in, and when he left Mr. Brown it was pouring, and the streets were wet. He ought to have taken a cab, but did not, and waited for an omnibus. The first that passed was full; by the time another came he had got wet and his feet were soaking. That brought on a return of the illness he had had in January.”

“I hope he will get well.”

“It lies with God,” she answered.

They made me promise to go again. “Soon, Johnny, soon,”said Mr. Marks with an eagerness that was suggestive. “Come in the afternoon and have some tea with me.”

I had meant to obey literally and go in a day or two; but one thing or other kept intervening, and a week or ten days passed. One Wednesday Miss Deveen was engaged to a dinner-party, and I took the opportunity to go to Pimlico. It was a stormy afternoon, blowing great guns one minute, pouring cats and dogs the next. Mrs. Marks was alone in the parlour, the tea-things on the table before her.

“We thought you had forgotten us,” she said in a half-whisper, shaking hands. “But this is the best time you could have come; for a kind neighbour has invited all the children in for the evening, and we shall be quiet. James is worse.”

“Worse!”

“At least, weaker. He cannot sit up long now without great fatigue. He lay down on the bed an hour ago and has dropped asleep,” she added, indicating the next room. “I am waiting for him to awake before I make the tea.”

He awoke then: the cough betrayed it. She went into the room, and presently he came back with her. No doubt he was worse! my heart sank at seeing him. If he had looked like a skeleton before, he was like a skeleton’s ghost now.

“Ah, Johnny! I knew you would come.”

I told him how it was I had not been able to come before, going into details. It seemed to amuse him to hear of the engagements, and I described Helen Whitney’s Court dress as well as I could—and Lady Whitney’s—and the servants’ great bouquets—and the ball at night. He ate one bit of thin toast and drank three big cups of tea. Mrs. Marks said he was always thirsty.

After tea he had a violent fit of coughing and thought he must lie down to rest for a bit. Mrs. Marks came back and sat with me.

“I hope he will get well,” I could not help saying to her.

She shook her head. “I fear he has not much hope of it himself,”she answered. “Only yesterday I heard him tell Willy—that—that God would take care of them when he was gone.”

She could hardly speak the last words, and broke down with a sob. I wished I had not said anything.

“He has great trust, but things trouble him very much,” she resumed. “Nothing else can be expected, for he knows that our means are almost spent.”

“It must trouble you also, Mrs. Marks.”

“I seem to have so much to trouble me that I dare not dwell upon it. I pray not to, every hour of the day. If I gave way, what would become of them?”

At dark she lighted the candles and drew down the blinds. Just after that, there came a tremendous knock at the front-door, loud and long. “Naughty children,” she exclaimed. “It must be they.”

“I’ll go; don’t you stir, Mrs. Marks.”

I opened the door, and a rush of wind and rain seemed to blow in an old gentleman. He never said a word to me, but went banging into the parlour and sank down on a chair out of breath.

“Papa!” exclaimed Mrs. Marks. “Papa!”

“Wait till I get up my speech, my dear,” said the old gentleman.“She is gone.”

“Who is gone!” cried Mrs. Marks.

“She. I don’t want to say too much against her now she’s gone, Caroline; but she is gone. She had a bad fall downstairs in a tipsy fit some days ago, striking her head on the flags, and the doctors could do nothing for her. She died this morning, poor soul; and I am coming to live with you and James, if you will have me. We shall all be so comfortable together, my dear.”

Perhaps Mrs. Marks remembered at once what it implied—that the pressure of poverty was suddenly lifted and she and those dear ones would be at ease for the future. She bent her head in her hands for a minute or two, keeping silence.

“Your husband shall have rest now, my dear, and all that he needs. So will you, Caroline.”

It had come too late. James Marks died in May.

It was about three or four years afterwards that we saw the death of Mr. Brown in the Times. The newspapers made a flourishof trumpets over him; saying he had died worth two hundred thousand pounds.

“There must be something wrong somewhere, Johnny,” remarked the Squire, in a puzzle. “I should not like to die worth all that money, and know that I had worked my clerks to the bone to get it together. I wonder how he will like meeting poor Marks in the next world?”

CHAPTER XVIII.

REALITY OR DELUSION?

This is a ghost story. Every word of it is true. And I don’t mind confessing that for ages afterwards some of us did not care to pass the spot alone at night. Some people do not care to pass it yet.

It was autumn, and we were at Crabb Cot. Lena had been ailing; and in October Mrs. Todhetley proposed to the Squire that they should remove with her there, to see if the change would do her good.

We Worcestershire people call North Crabb a village; but one might count the houses in it, little and great, and not find four-and-twenty. South Crabb, half a mile off, is ever so much larger; but the church and school are at North Crabb.

John Ferrar had been employed by Squire Todhetley as a sort of overlooker on the estate, or working bailiff. He had died the previous winter; leaving nothing behind him except some debts; for he was not provident; and his handsome son Daniel. Daniel Ferrar, who was rather superior as far as education went, disliked work: he would make a show of helping his father, but it came to little. Old Ferrar had not put him to any particular trade or occupation, and Daniel, who was as proud as Lucifer, would not turn to it himself. He liked to be a gentleman. All he did now was to work in his garden, and feed his fowls, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons, of which he kept a great quantity, selling them to the houses around and sending them to market.

But, as every one said, poultry would not maintain him. Mrs. Lease, in the pretty cottage hard by Ferrar’s, grew tired of saying it. This Mrs. Lease and her daughter, Maria, must not be confounded with Lease the pointsman: they were in a better condition of life, and not related to him. Daniel Ferrar used to run in and out of their house at will when a boy, and he was now engaged to be married to Maria. She would have a little money, and the Leases were respected in North Crabb. People began to whisper a query as to how Ferrar got his corn for the poultry: he was not known to buy much; and he would have to go out of his house atChristmas, for its owner, Mr. Coney, had given him notice. Mrs. Lease, anxious about Maria’s prospects, asked Daniel what he intended to do then, and he answered, “Make his fortune: he should begin to do it as soon as he could turn himself round.”But the time was going on, and the turning round seemed to be as far off as ever.

After Midsummer, a niece of the schoolmistress’s, Miss Timmens, had come to the school to stay: her name was Harriet Roe. The father, Humphrey Roe, was half-brother to Miss Timmens. He had married a Frenchwoman, and lived more in France than in England until his death. The girl had been christened Henriette; but North Crabb, not understanding much French, converted it into Harriet. She was a showy, free-mannered, good-looking girl, and made speedy acquaintance with Daniel Ferrar; or he with her. They improved upon it so rapidly that Maria Lease grew jealous, and North Crabb began to say he cared for Harriet more than for Maria. When Tod and I got home the latter end of October, to spend the Squire’s birthday, things were in this state. James Hill, the bailiff who had been taken on by the Squire in John Ferrar’s place (but a far inferior man to Ferrar; not much better, in fact, than a common workman, and of whose doings you will hear soon in regard to his little step-son, David Garth) gave us an account of matters in general. Daniel Ferrar had been drinking lately, Hill added, and his head was not strong enough to stand it; and he was also beginning to look as if he had some care upon him.

“A nice lot, he, for them two women to be fighting for,” cried Hill, who was no friend to Ferrar. “There’ll be mischief between’em if they don’t draw in a bit. Maria Lease is next door to mad over it, I know; and t’other, finding herself the best liked, crows over her. It’s something like the Bible story of Leah and Rachel, young gents, Dan Ferrar likes the one, and he’s bound by promise to the t’other. As to the French jade,” concluded Hill, giving his head a toss, “she’d make a show of liking any man that followed her, she would; a dozen of ’em on a string.”

It was all very well for surly Hill to call Daniel Ferrar a “nice lot,” but he was the best-looking fellow in church on Sunday morning—well-dressed too. But his colour seemed brighter; and his hands shook as they were raised, often, to push back his hair, that the sun shone upon through the south-window, turning it to gold. He scarcely looked up, not even at Harriet Roe, with her dark eyes roving everywhere, and her streaming pink ribbons. Maria Lease was pale, quiet, and nice, as usual; she had no beauty, but her face was sensible, and her deep grey eyes had a strange and curious earnestness. The new parson preached, a young man just appointed to the parish of Crabb. He went in for great observances of Saints’days, and told his congregation that he should expect to see them at church on the morrow, which would be the Feast of All Saints.

Daniel Ferrar walked home with Mrs. Lease and Maria after service, and was invited to dinner. I ran across to shake hands with the old dame, who had once nursed me through an illness, and promised to look in and see her later. We were going back to school on the morrow. As I turned away, Harriet Roe passed, her pink ribbons and her cheap gay silk dress gleaming in the sunlight. She stared at me, and I stared back again. And now, the explanation of matters being over, the real story begins. But I shall have to tell some of it as it was told by others.

The tea-things waited on Mrs. Lease’s table in the afternoon; waited for Daniel Ferrar. He had left them shortly before to go and attend to his poultry. Nothing had been said about his coming back for tea: that he would do so had been looked upon as a matter of course. But he did not make his appearance, and the tea was taken without him. At half-past five the church-bell rang out for evening service, and Maria put her things on. Mrs. Lease did not go out at night.

“You are starting early, Maria. You’ll be in church before other people.”

“That won’t matter, mother.”

A jealous suspicion lay on Maria—that the secret of Daniel Ferrar’s absence was his having fallen in with Harriet Roe: perhaps had gone of his own accord to seek her. She walked slowly along. The gloom of dusk, and a deep dusk, had stolen over the evening, but the moon would be up later. As Maria passed the school-house, she halted to glance in at the little sitting-room window: the shutters were not closed yet, and the room was lighted by the blazing fire. Harriet was not there. She only saw Miss Timmens, the mistress, who was putting on her bonnet before a hand-glass propped upright on the mantel-piece. Without warning, Miss Timmens turned and threw open the window. It was only for the purpose of pulling-to the shutters, but Maria thought she must have been observed, and spoke.

“Good evening, Miss Timmens.”

“Who is it?” cried out Miss Timmens, in answer, peering into the dusk. “Oh, it’s you, Maria Lease! Have you seen anything of Harriet? She went off somewhere this afternoon, and never came in to tea.”

“I have not seen her.”

“She’s gone to the Batleys’, I’ll be bound. She knows I don’t like her to be with the Batley girls: they make her ten times flightier than she would otherwise be.”

Miss Timmens drew in her shutters with a jerk, without which they would not close, and Maria Lease turned away.

“Not at the Batleys’, not at the Batleys’, but with him,” she cried, in bitter rebellion, as she turned away from the church. From the church, not to it. Was Maria to blame for wishing to see whether she was right or not?—for walking about a little in the thought of meeting them? At any rate it is what she did. And had her reward; such as it was.

As she was passing the top of the withy walk, their voices reached her ear. People often walked there, and it was one of the ways to South Crabb. Maria drew back amidst the trees, and they came on: Harriet Roe and Daniel Ferrar, walking arm-in-arm.

“I think I had better take it off,” Harriet was saying. “No need to invoke a storm upon my head. And that would come in a shower of hail from stiff old Aunt Timmens.”

The answer seemed one of quick accent, but Ferrar spoke low. Maria Lease had hard work to control herself: anger, passion, jealousy, all blazed up. With her arms stretched out to a friendly tree on either side,—with her heart beating,—with her pulses coursing on to fever-heat, she watched them across the bit of common to the road. Harriet went one way then; he another, in the direction of Mrs. Lease’s cottage. No doubt to fetch her—Maria—to church, with a plausible excuse of having been detained. Until now she had had no proof of his falseness; had never perfectly believed in it.

She took her arms from the trees and went forward, a sharp faint cry of despair breaking forth on the night air. Maria Lease was one of those silent-natured girls who can never speak of a wrong like this. She had to bury it within her; down, down, out of sight and show; and she went into church with her usual quiet step. Harriet Roe with Miss Timmens came next, quite demure, as if she had been singing some of the infant scholars to sleep at their own homes. Daniel Ferrar did not go to church at all: he stayed, as was found afterwards, with Mrs. Lease.

Maria might as well have been at home as at church: better perhaps that she had been. Not a syllable of the service did she hear: her brain was a sea of confusion; the tumult within it rising higher and higher. She did not hear even the text, “Peace, be still,”or the sermon; both so singularly appropriate. The passions in men’s minds, the preacher said, raged and foamed just like the angry waves of the sea in a storm, until Jesus came to still them.

I ran after Maria when church was over, and went in to pay the promised visit to old Mother Lease. Daniel Ferrar was sitting in the parlour. He got up and offered Maria a chair at the fire, but she turned her back and stood at the table under the window, taking off her gloves. An open Bible was before Mrs. Lease: I wondered whether she had been reading aloud to Daniel.

“What was the text, child?” asked the old lady.

No answer.

“Do you hear, Maria! What was the text?”

Maria turned at that, as if suddenly awakened. Her face was white; her eyes had in them an uncertain terror.

“The text?” she stammered. “I—I forget it, mother. It was from Genesis, I think.”

“Was it, Master Johnny?”

“It was from the fourth chapter of St. Mark, ‘Peace, be still.’”

Mrs. Lease stared at me. “Why, that is the very chapter I’ve been reading. Well now, that’s curious. But there’s never a better in the Bible, and never a better text was taken from it than those three words. I have been telling Daniel here, Master Johnny, that when once that peace, Christ’s peace, is got into the heart, storms can’t hurt us much. And you are going away again to-morrow, sir?” she added, after a pause. “It’s a short stay?”

I was not going away on the morrow. Tod and I, taking the Squire in a genial moment after dinner, had pressed to be let stay until Tuesday, Tod using the argument, and laughing while he did it, that it must be wrong to travel on All Saints’ Day, when the parson had specially enjoined us to be at church. The Squire told us we were a couple of encroaching rascals, and if he did let us stay it should be upon condition that we did go to church. This I said to them.

“He may send you all the same, sir, when the morning comes,”remarked Daniel Ferrar.

“Knowing Mr. Todhetley as you do Ferrar, you may remember that he never breaks his promises.”

Daniel laughed. “He grumbles over them, though, Master Johnny.”

“Well, he may grumble to-morrow about our staying, say it is wasting time that ought to be spent in study, but he will not send us back until Tuesday.”

Until Tuesday! If I could have foreseen then what would have happened before Tuesday! If all of us could have foreseen! Seen the few hours between now and then depicted, as in a mirror, event by event! Would it have saved the calamity, the dreadful sin that could never be redeemed? Why, yes; surely it would. Daniel Ferrar turned and looked at Maria.

“Why don’t you come to the fire?”

“I am very well here, thank you.”

She had sat down where she was, her bonnet touching the curtain. Mrs. Lease, not noticing that anything was wrong, had begun talkingabout Lena, whose illness was turning to low fever, when the house door opened and Harriet Roe came in.

“What a lovely night it is!” she said, taking of her own accord the chair I had not cared to take, for I kept saying I must go.“Maria, what went with you after church? I hunted for you everywhere.”

Maria gave no answer. She looked black and angry; and her bosom heaved as if a storm were brewing. Harriet Roe slightly laughed.

“Do you intend to take holiday to-morrow, Mrs. Lease?”

“Me take holiday! what is there in to-morrow to take holiday for?” returned Mrs. Lease.

“I shall,” continued Harriet, not answering the question: “I have been used to it in France. All Saints’ Day is a grand holiday there; we go to church in our best clothes, and pay visits afterwards. Following it, like a dark shadow, comes the gloomy Jour des Morts.”

“The what?” cried Mrs. Lease, bending her ear.

“The day of the dead. All Souls’ Day. But you English don’t go to the cemeteries to pray.”

Mrs. Lease put on her spectacles, which lay upon the open pages of the Bible, and stared at Harriet. Perhaps she thought they might help her to understand. The girl laughed.

“On All Souls’ Day, whether it be wet or dry, the French cemeteries are full of kneeling women draped in black; all praying for the repose of their dead relatives, after the manner of the Roman Catholics.”

Daniel Ferrar, who had not spoken a word since she came in, but sat with his face to the fire, turned and looked at her. Upon which she tossed back her head and her pink ribbons, and smiled till all her teeth were seen. Good teeth they were. As to reverence in her tone, there was none.

“I have seen them kneeling when the slosh and wet have been ankle-deep. Did you ever see a ghost?” added she, with energy.“The French believe that the spirits of the dead come abroad on the night of All Saints’ Day. You’d scarcely get a French woman to go out of her house after dark. It is their chief superstition.”

“What is the superstition?” questioned Mrs. Lease.

“Why, that,” said Harriet. “They believe that the dead are allowed to revisit the world after dark on the Eve of All Souls; that they hover in the air, waiting to appear to any of their living relatives, who may venture out, lest they should forget to pray on the morrow for the rest of their souls.” [2]

“Well, I never!” cried Mrs. Lease, staring excessively. “Did you ever hear the like of that, sir?” turning to me.

“Yes; I have heard of it.”

Harriet Roe looked up at me; I was standing at the corner of the mantel-piece. She laughed a free laugh.

“I say, wouldn’t it be fun to go out to-morrow night, and meet the ghosts? Only, perhaps they don’t visit this country, as it is not under Rome.”

“Now just you behave yourself before your betters, Harriet Roe,”put in Mrs. Lease, sharply. “That gentleman is young Mr. Ludlow of Crabb Cot.”

“And very happy I am to make young Mr. Ludlow’s acquaintance,”returned easy Harriet, flinging back her mantle from her shoulders. “How hot your parlour is, Mrs. Lease.”

The hook of the cloak had caught in a thin chain of twisted gold that she wore round her neck, displaying it to view. She hurriedly folded her cloak together, as if wishing to conceal the chain. But Mrs. Lease’s spectacles had seen it.

“What’s that you’ve got on, Harriet? A gold chain?”

A moment’s pause, and then Harriet Roe flung back her mantle again, defiance upon her face, and touched the chain with her hand.

“That’s what it is, Mrs. Lease: a gold chain. And a very pretty one, too.”

“Was it your mother’s?”

“It was never anybody’s but mine. I had it made a present to me this afternoon; for a keepsake.”

Happening to look at Maria, I was startled at her face, it was so white and dark: white with emotion, dark with an angry despair that I for one did not comprehend. Harriet Roe, throwing at her a look of saucy triumph, went out with as little ceremony as she had come in, just calling back a general good night; and we heard her footsteps outside getting gradually fainter in the distance. Daniel Ferrar rose.

“I’ll take my departure too, I think. You are very unsociable to-night, Maria.”

“Perhaps I am. Perhaps I have cause to be.”

She flung his hand back when he held it out; and in another moment, as if a thought struck her, ran after him into the passage to speak. I, standing near the door in the small room, caught the words.

“I must have an explanation with you, Daniel Ferrar. Now. To-night. We cannot go on thus for a single hour longer.”

“Not to-night, Maria; I have no time to spare. And I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do know. Listen. I will not go to my rest, no, though it were for twenty nights to come, until we have had it out. I vow I will not. There. You are playing with me. Others have long said so, and I know it now.”

He seemed to speak some quieting words to her, for the tone was low and soothing; and then went out, closing the door behind him. Maria came back and stood with her face and its ghastliness turned from us. And still the old mother noticed nothing.

“Why don’t you take your things off, Maria?” she asked.

“Presently,” was the answer.

I said good night in my turn, and went away. Half-way home I met Tod with the two young Lexoms. The Lexoms made us go in and stay to supper, and it was ten o’clock before we left them.

“We shall catch it,” said Tod, setting off at a run. They never let us stay out late on a Sunday evening, on account of the reading.

But, as it happened, we escaped scot-free this time, for the house was in a commotion about Lena. She had been better in the afternoon, but at nine o’clock the fever returned worse than ever. Her little cheeks and lips were scarlet as she lay on the bed, her wide-open eyes were bright and glistening. The Squire had gone up to look at her, and was fuming and fretting in his usual fashion.

“The doctor has never sent the medicine,” said patient Mrs. Todhetley, who must have been worn out with nursing. “She ought to take it; I am sure she ought.”

“These boys are good to run over to Cole’s for that,” cried the Squire. “It won’t hurt them; it’s a fine night.”

Of course we were good for it. And we got our caps again; being charged to enjoin Mr. Cole to come over the first thing in the morning.

“Do you care much about my going with you, Johnny?” Tod asked as we were turning out at the door. “I am awfully tired.”

“Not a bit. I’d as soon go alone as not. You’ll see me back in half-an-hour.”

I took the nearest way; flying across the fields at a canter, and startling the hares. Mr. Cole lived near South Crabb, and I don’t believe more than ten minutes had gone by when I knocked at his door. But to get back as quickly was another thing. The doctor was not at home. He had been called out to a patient at eight o’clock, and had not yet returned.

I went in to wait: the servant said he might be expected to come in from minute to minute. It was of no use to go away without themedicine; and I sat down in the surgery in front of the shelves, and fell asleep counting the white jars and physic bottles. The doctor’s entrance awoke me.

“I am sorry you should have had to come over and to wait,” he said. “When my other patient, with whom I was detained a considerable time, was done with, I went on to Crabb Cot with the child’s medicine, which I had in my pocket.”

“They think her very ill to-night, sir.”

“I left her better, and going quietly to sleep. She will soon be well again, I hope.”

“Why! is that the time?” I exclaimed, happening to catch sight of the clock as I was crossing the hall. It was nearly twelve. Mr. Cole laughed, saying time passed quickly when folk were asleep.

I went back slowly. The sleep, or the canter before it, had made me feel as tired as Tod had said he was. It was a night to be abroad in and to enjoy; calm, warm, light. The moon, high in the sky, illumined every blade of grass; sparkled on the water of the little rivulet; brought out the moss on the grey walls of the old church; played on its round-faced clock, then striking twelve.

Twelve o’clock at night at North Crabb answers to about three in the morning in London, for country people are mostly in bed and asleep at ten. Therefore, when loud and angry voices struck up in dispute, just as the last stroke of the hour was dying away on the midnight air, I stood still and doubted my ears.

I was getting near home then. The sounds came from the back of a building standing alone in a solitary place on the left-hand side of the road. It belonged to the Squire, and was called the yellow barn, its walls being covered with a yellow wash; but it was in fact used as a storehouse for corn. I was passing in front of it when the voices rose upon the air. Round the building I ran, and saw—Maria Lease: and something else that I could not at first comprehend. In the pursuit of her vow, not to go to rest until she had“had it out” with Daniel Ferrar, Maria had been abroad searching for him. What ill fate brought her looking for him up near our barn?—perhaps because she had fruitlessly searched in every other spot.

At the back of this barn, up some steps, was an unused door. Unused partly because it was not required, the principal entrance being in front; partly because the key of it had been for a long time missing. Stealing out at this door, a bag of corn upon his shoulders, had come Daniel Ferrar in a smock-frock. Maria saw him, and stood back in the shade. She watched him lock the door and put the key in his pocket; she watched him give theheavy bag a jerk as he turned to come down the steps. Then she burst out. Her loud reproaches petrified him, and he stood there as one suddenly turned to stone. It was at that moment that I appeared.

I understood it all soon; it needed not Maria’s words to enlighten me. Daniel Ferrar possessed the lost key and could come in and out at will in the midnight hours when the world was sleeping, and help himself to the corn. No wonder his poultry throve; no wonder there had been grumblings at Crabb Cot at the mysterious disappearance of the good grain.

Maria Lease was decidedly mad in those few first moments. Stealing is looked upon in an honest village as an awful thing; a disgrace, a crime; and there was the night’s earlier misery besides. Daniel Ferrar was a thief! Daniel Ferrar was false to her! A storm of words and reproaches poured forth from her in confusion, none of it very distinct. “Living upon theft! Convicted felon! Transportation for life! Squire Todhetley’s corn! Fattening poultry on stolen goods! Buying gold chains with the profits for that bold, flaunting French girl, Harriet Roe! Taking his stealthy walks with her!”

My going up to them stopped the charge. There was a pause; and then Maria, in her mad passion, denounced him to me, as representative (so she put it) of the Squire—the breaker-in upon our premises! the robber of our stored corn!

Daniel Ferrar came down the steps; he had remained there still as a statue, immovable; and turned his white face to me. Never a word in defence said he: the blow had crushed him; he was a proud man (if any one can understand that), and to be discovered in this ill-doing was worse than death to him.

“Don’t think of me more hardly than you can help, Master Johnny,” he said in a quiet tone. “I have been almost tired of my life this long while.”

Putting down the bag of corn near the steps, he took the key from his pocket and handed it to me. The man’s aspect had so changed; there was something so grievously subdued and sad about him altogether, that I felt as sorry for him as if he had not been guilty. Maria Lease went on in her fiery passion.

“You’ll be more tired of it to-morrow when the police are taking you to Worcester gaol. Squire Todhetley will not spare you, though your father was his many-years bailiff. He could not, you know, if he wished; Master Ludlow has seen you in the act.”

“Let me have the key again for a minute, sir,” he said, as quietly as though he had not heard a word. And I gave it to him. I’m not sure but I should have given him my head had he asked for it.

He swung the bag on his shoulders, unlocked the granary door, and put the bag beside the other sacks. The bag was his own, as we found afterwards, but he left it there. Locking the door again, he gave me the key, and went away with a weary step.

“Good-bye, Master Johnny.”

I answered back good night civilly, though he had been stealing. When he was out of sight, Maria Lease, her passion full upon her still, dashed off towards her mother’s cottage, a strange cry of despair breaking from her lips.

“Where have you been lingering, Johnny?” roared the Squire, who was sitting up for me. “You have been throwing at the owls, sir, that’s what you’ve been at; you have been scudding after the hares.”

I said I had waited for Mr. Cole, and had come back slower than I went; but I said no more, and went up to my room at once. And the Squire went to his.

I know I am only a muff; people tell me so, often: but I can’t help it; I did not make myself. I lay awake till nearly daylight, first wishing Daniel Ferrar could be screened, and then thinking it might perhaps be done. If he would only take the lesson to heart and go on straight for the future, what a capital thing it would be. We had liked old Ferrar; he had done me and Tod many a good turn: and, for the matter of that, we liked Daniel. So I never said a word when morning came of the past night’s work.

“Is Daniel at home?” I asked, going to Ferrar’s the first thing before breakfast. I meant to tell him that if he would keep right, I would keep counsel.

“He went out at dawn, sir,” answered the old woman who did for him, and sold his poultry at market. “He’ll be in presently: he have had no breakfast yet.”

“Then tell him when he comes, to wait in, and see me: tell him it’s all right. Can you remember, Goody? ‘It is all right.’”

“I’ll remember, safe enough, Master Ludlow.”

Tod and I, being on our honour, went to church, and found about ten people in the pews. Harriet Roe was one, with her pink ribbons, the twisted gold chain showing outside a short-cut velvet jacket.

“No, sir; he has not been home yet; I can’t think where he can have got to,” was the old Goody’s reply when I went again to Ferrar’s. And so I wrote a word in pencil, and told her to give it him when he came in, for I could not go dodging there every hour of the day.

After luncheon, strolling by the back of the barn: a certain reminiscence I suppose taking me there, for it was not a frequented spot: I saw Maria Lease coming along.

Well, it was a change! The passionate woman of the previous night had subsided into a poor, wild-looking, sorrow-stricken thing, ready to die of remorse. Excessive passion had wrought its usual consequences; a re-action: a re-action in favour of Daniel Ferrar. She came up to me, clasping her hands in agony—beseeching that I would spare him; that I would not tell of him; that I would give him a chance for the future: and her lips quivered and trembled, and there were dark circles round her hollow eyes.

I said that I had not told and did not intend to tell. Upon which she was going to fall down on her knees, but I rushed off.

“Do you know where he is?” I asked, when she came to her sober senses.

“Oh, I wish I did know! Master Johnny, he is just the man to go and do something desperate. He would never face shame; and I was a mad, hard-hearted, wicked girl to do what I did last night. He might run away to sea; he might go and enlist for a soldier.”

“I dare say he is at home by this time. I have left a word for him there, and promised to go in and see him to-night. If he will undertake not to be up to wrong things again, no one shall ever know of this from me.”

She went away easier, and I sauntered on towards South Crabb. Eager as Tod and I had been for the day’s holiday, it did not seem to be turning out much of a boon. In going home again—there was nothing worth staying out for—I had come to the spot by the three-cornered grove where I saw Maria, when a galloping policeman overtook me. My heart stood still; for I thought he must have come after Daniel Ferrar.

“Can you tell me if I am near to Crabb Cot—Squire Todhetley’s?”he asked, reining-in his horse.

“You will reach it in a minute or two. I live there. Squire Todhetley is not at home. What do you want with him?”

“It’s only to give in an official paper, sir. I have to leave one personally upon all the county magistrates.”

He rode on. When I got in I saw the folded paper upon the hall-table; the man and horse had already gone onwards. It was worse indoors than out; less to be done. Tod had disappeared after church; the Squire was abroad; Mrs. Todhetley sat upstairs with Lena: and I strolled out again. It was only three o’clock then.

An hour, or more, was got through somehow; meeting one, talking to another, throwing at the ducks and geese; anything. Mrs. Lease had her head, smothered in a yellow shawl, stretched out over the palings as I passed her cottage.

“Don’t catch cold, mother.”

“I am looking for Maria, sir. I can’t think what has come to her to-day, Master Johnny,” she added, dropping her voice to a confidential tone. “The girl seems demented: she has been going in and out ever since daylight like a dog in a fair.”

“If I meet her I will send her home.”

And in another minute I did meet her. For she was coming out of Daniel Ferrar’s yard. I supposed he was at home again.

“No,” she said, looking more wild, worn, haggard than before;“that’s what I have been to ask. I am just out of my senses, sir. He has gone for certain. Gone!”

I did not think it. He would not be likely to go away without clothes.

“Well, I know he is, Master Johnny; something tells me. I’ve been all about everywhere. There’s a great dread upon me, sir; I never felt anything like it.”

“Wait until night, Maria; I dare say he will go home then. Your mother is looking out for you; I said if I met you I’d send you in.”

Mechanically she turned towards the cottage, and I went on. Presently, as I was sitting on a gate watching the sunset, Harriet Roe passed towards the withy walk, and gave me a nod in her free but good-natured way.

“Are you going there to look out for the ghosts this evening?” I asked: and I wished not long afterwards I had not said it. “It will soon be dark.”

“So it will,” she said, turning to the red sky in the west. “But I have no time to give to the ghosts to-night.”

“Have you seen Ferrar to-day?” I cried, an idea occurring to me.

“No. And I can’t think where he has got to; unless he is off to Worcester. He told me he should have to go there some day this week.”

She evidently knew nothing about him, and went on her way with another free-and-easy nod. I sat on the gate till the sun had gone down, and then thought it was time to be getting homewards.

Close against the yellow barn, the scene of last night’s trouble, whom should I come upon but Maria Lease. She was standing still, and turned quickly at the sound of my footsteps. Her face was bright again, but had a puzzled look upon it.

“I have just seen him: he has not gone,” she said in a happy whisper. “You were right, Master Johnny, and I was wrong.”

“Where did you see him?”

“Here; not a minute ago. I saw him twice. He is angry, very, and will not let me speak to him; both times he got away before I could reach him. He is close by somewhere.”

I looked round, naturally; but Ferrar was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing to conceal him except the barn, and that was locked up. The account she gave was this—and her face grew puzzled again as she related it.

Unable to rest indoors, she had wandered up here again, and saw Ferrar standing at the corner of the barn, looking very hard at her. She thought he was waiting for her to come up, but before she got close to him he had disappeared, and she did not see which way. She hastened past the front of the barn, ran round to the back, and there he was. He stood near the steps looking out for her; waiting for her, as it again seemed; and was gazing at her with the same fixed stare. But again she missed him before she could get quite up; and it was at that moment that I arrived on the scene.

I went all round the barn, but could see nothing of Ferrar. It was an extraordinary thing where he could have got to. Inside the barn he could not be: it was securely locked; and there was no appearance of him in the open country. It was, so to say, broad daylight yet, or at least not far short of it; the red light was still in the west. Beyond the field at the back of the barn, was a grove of trees in the form of a triangle; and this grove was flanked by Crabb Ravine, which ran right and left. Crabb Ravine had the reputation of being haunted; for a light was sometimes seen dodging about its deep descending banks at night that no one could account for. A lively spot altogether for those who liked gloom.

“Are you sure it was Ferrar, Maria?”

“Sure!” she returned in surprise. “You don’t think I could mistake him, Master Johnny, do you? He wore that ugly seal-skin winter-cap of his tied over his ears, and his thick grey coat. The coat was buttoned closely round him. I have not seen him wear either since last winter.”

That Ferrar must have gone into hiding somewhere seemed quite evident; and yet there was nothing but the ground to receive him. Maria said she lost sight of him the last time in a moment; both times in fact; and it was absolutely impossible that he could have made off to the triangle or elsewhere, as she must have seen him cross the open land. For that matter I must have seen him also.

On the whole, not two minutes had elapsed since I came up, though it seems to have been longer in telling it: when, before we could look further, voices were heard approaching from the direction of Crabb Cot; and Maria, not caring to be seen, went away quickly. I was still puzzling about Ferrar’s hiding-place, when they reached me—the Squire, Tod, and two or three men. Tod came slowly up, his face dark and grave.

“I say, Johnny, what a shocking thing this is!”

“What is a shocking thing?”

“You have not heard of it?—But I don’t see how you could hear it.”

I had heard nothing. I did not know what there was to hear. Tod told me in a whisper.

“Daniel Ferrar’s dead, lad.”

“What?”

“He has destroyed himself. Not more than half-an-hour ago. Hung himself in the grove.”

I turned sick, taking one thing with another, comparing this recollection with that; which I dare say you will think no one but a muff would do.

Ferrar was indeed dead. He had been hiding all day in the three-cornered grove: perhaps waiting for night to get away—perhaps only waiting for night to go home again. Who can tell? About half-past two, Luke Macintosh, a man who sometimes worked for us, sometimes for old Coney, happening to go through the grove, saw him there, and talked with him. The same man, passing back a little before sunset, found him hanging from a tree, dead. Macintosh ran with the news to Crabb Cot, and they were now flocking to the scene. When facts came to be examined there appeared only too much reason to think that the unfortunate appearance of the galloping policeman had terrified Ferrar into the act; perhaps—we all hoped it!—had scared his senses quite away. Look at it as we would, it was very dreadful.

But what of the appearance Maria Lease saw? At that time, Ferrar had been dead at least half-an-hour. Was it reality or delusion? That is (as the Squire put it), did her eyes see a real, spectral Daniel Ferrar; or were they deceived by some imagination of the brain? Opinions were divided. Nothing can shake her own steadfast belief in its reality; to her it remains an awful certainty, true and sure as heaven.

If I say that I believe in it too, I shall be called a muff and a double muff. But there is no stumbling-block difficult to be got over. Ferrar, when found, was wearing the seal-skin cap tied over the ears and the thick grey coat buttoned up round him, just as Maria Lease had described to me; and he had never worn them since the previous winter, or taken them out of the chest where they were kept. The old woman at his home did not know he had done it then. When told that he died in these things, she protested that they were in the chest, and ran up to look for them. But the things were gone.

CHAPTER XIX.

DAVID GARTH’S NIGHT-WATCH.

It was the following year, and we were again at Crabb Cot. Fever had broken out at Dr. Frost’s, and the school was dismissed. The leaves were falling late that year, for November was nearly half through, and they strewed the ground. But if the leaves were late, the frost was early. The weather had come in curiously cold. Three days before the morning I am about to speak of, the warm weather suddenly changed, and it was now as freezing as January. It is not often that you see ice mingling with the dead leaves of autumn. Both the ice and the leaves have to do with what happened: and I think you often find that if the weather is particularly unseasonable, we get something by which to remember it.

At the corner of a field between our house and North Crabb, stood a small solitary dwelling, called Willow Brook Cottage: but the brook from which it took its name was dry now. The house had a lonely look, and was lonely; and perhaps that kept it empty. It had been unoccupied for more than a year, when the Squire, tired of seeing it so, happened to say in the hearing of James Hill, that new bailiff of ours, that he would let it for an almost nominal rent. Hill caught at the words and said he would be glad to rent it: for some cause or other he did not like the house he was in, and had been wanting to leave it. At least, he said so: but he was of a frightfully stingy turn, and we all thought the low rent tempted him. Hill, this working bailiff, was a steady man, but severe upon every one.

It was during this early frost that he began to move in. One morning after breakfast, I was taking the broad pathway across the fields to North Crabb, which led close by Willow Cottage, and saw Hill wheeling a small truck up with some of his household goods. He was a tall, strong man, and the cold was tolerably sharp, but the load had warmed him.

“Good morning, Master Johnny.”

“Making ready for the flitting, Hill?”

Hill wheeled the truck up to the door, and sat down on one of the handles whilst he wiped his face. It was an honest, thoughcross face; habitually red. The house had a good large garden at its side, enclosed by wooden palings; with a shed and some pigstys at the back. Trees overshadowed the palings: and the fallen leaves, just now, inside the garden and out were ankle-deep.

“A fine labour I shall have, getting the place in order!” cried Hill, pointing to some broken palings and the overgrown branches.“Don’t think but what the Squire has the best of the bargain, after all!”

“You’d say that, Hill, if he gave you a house rent-free.”

Hill took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and we went in. This lower room was boarded; the kitchen was at the back; above were two fair-sized chambers. One of them looked towards Crabb Ravine; the other was only lighted by a skylight in the roof.

“You have had fires here, Hill!”

“I had ’em in every room all day yesterday, sir, and am going to light ’em again now. My wife said it must be done; and she warn’t far wrong; for a damp house plays the mischief with one’s bones. The fools that women be, to be sure!—and my wife’s the worst of ’em.”

“What has your wife done?”

“She had a bit of a accident yesterday, Master Johnny. A coming out with a few things for this place, she stepped upon some ice, and fell; it gave her ankle a twist, and she had to be helped home. I’m blest if she’s not a-saying now that it’s a bad omen! Because she can’t get about and help shift the things in here, she says we shan’t have nothing but ill-luck in the place.”

I had already heard of the accident. Hill’s wife was a little shrinking woman, mild and gentle, quite superior to him. She was a widow when he married her a short time ago, a Mrs. Garth, with one son, David. Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress at North Crab, was her sister. On the previous morning a letter had come from Worcester, saying their mother, Mrs. Timmens, was taken dangerously ill, and asking them to go over. Miss Timmens went; Hill refused for his wife. How could he get along at moving-time without her, he demanded. She cried and implored, but Hill was hard as flint. So she had to remain at home, and set about her preparations for removal; surly Hill was master and mistress too. In starting with the first lot of movables—a few things carried in her arms—the accident occurred. So that, in the helping to move, she was useless; and the neighbours, ever ready to take part in a matrimonial grievance, said it served Hill right. Any way, it did not improve his temper.

“When do you get in here, Hill?”

“To-morrow, Master Johnny, please the pigs. But for the wife’sawk’ardness we’d ha’ been in to-day. As to any help Davvy could give, it’s worth no more nor a rat’s; he haven’t got much more strength in him nor one neither. Drat the boy!”

Leaving Hill to his task, I went on; and in passing Mrs. Hill’s dwelling, I thought I’d give a look in to inquire after the ankle. The cottage stood alone, just as this other one did, but was less lonely, for the Crabb houses were round about. Davy’s voice called out, “Come in.”

He was the handiest little fellow possible for any kind of housework—or for sewing, either; but not half strong enough or rough enough for a boy. His soft brown eyes had a shrinking look in them, his face was delicate as a girl’s, and his hair hung in curls. But he was a little bit deformed in the back—some called it only a stoop in the shoulders—and, though fourteen, might have been taken for ten. The boy’s love for his mother was something wonderful. They had lived at Worcester; she had a small income, and he had been well brought up. When she married Hill—all her friends were against it, and it was in fact a frightful mistake—of course they had to come to North Crabb; but Davy was not happy. Always a timid lad, he could not overcome his first fear of Hill. Not that the man was unkind, only rough and resolute.

Davy was washing up the breakfast-things; his mother sat near, sorting the contents of a chest: a neat little woman in a green stuff gown, with the same sweet eyes as David and the same shrinking look in them. She left off when I went in, and said her ankle was no worse.

“It’s a pity it happened just now, Mrs. Hill.”

“I’d have given a great deal for it not to, sir. They call me foolish, I know; always have done; but it just seems to me like an omen. I had a few articles in my arms, the first trifles we’d begun to move, and down I fell on going out at this door. To me it seems nothing but a warning that we ought not to move into Willow Cottage.”

David had halted in his work at the tea-cups, his brown eyes fixed on his mother. That it was not the first time he had listened to the superstition, and that he was every whit as bad as she, might plainly be seen.

“I have never liked the thought of that new place from the first, Master Johnny. It is as if something held me back from it. Hill keeps saying that it’s a convenient dwelling, and dirt-cheap; and so it is; but I don’t like the notion of it. No more does David.”

“Oh, I dare say you will like it when you get in, Mrs. Hill, and David, too.”

“It is to be hoped so, sir.”

The day went on; and its after events I can only speak of fromhearsay. Hill moved in a good many of his goods, David carrying some of the lighter things, Luke Macintosh was asked to go and sleep in the house that night as a safeguard against thieves, but he flatly refused, unless some one slept there with him. Hill ridiculed his cowardice; and finally agreed that David should bear him company.

He made the bargain without his wife. She had other views for David. Her intention was to send the lad over to Worcester by the seven-o’clock evening train; not so much because his bed and bedding had been carried off and there was nothing for him to sleep on, as that his dying grandmother had expressed a wish to see him. To hear then that David was not to go, did not please Mrs. Hill.

It was David himself who carried in the news. She had tea waiting on the table when they came in: David first, for his step-father had stopped to speak to some one in the road.

“But, David, dear—you must go to Worcester,” she said, when he told her.

“He will never let me, mother,” was David’s answer. “He says the things might be stolen if nobody takes care of them: and Macintosh is afraid to be there alone.”

She paused and looked at him, a thought striking her. The boy was leaning upon her in his fond manner, his hand in hers.

“Should you be afraid, David?”

“Not—I think—with Luke. We are to be in the same room, mother.”

But Mrs. Hill noticed that his voice was hesitating; his small weak hand trembled in hers. There was not a more morally brave heart than David Garth’s; he had had a religious training; but at being alone in the dark he was a very coward, afraid of ghosts and goblins.

“Hill,” said she to her husband when he stamped in, the lad having gone to wash his hands, “I cannot let David sleep in the other house to-night. He will be too timid.”

“Timid!” repeated Hill, staring at the words. “Why, Luke Macintosh will be with him.”

“David won’t like it. Macintosh is nothing but a coward himself.”

“Don’t thee be a fool, and show it,” returned Hill, roughly.“Thee’ll keep that boy a baby for his life. Davvy would as soon sleep in the house alone, as not, but for the folly put into his head by you. And why not? He’s fourteen.”

Hill—to give him his due—only spoke as he thought. That any one in the world, grown to fourteen and upwards, could be afraid of sleeping in a house alone, was to him literally incomprehensible.

“I said he must go over to Worcester to see mother, James,” she meekly resumed; “you know I did.”

“Well, he can’t go to-night; he shall go in the morning. There! He may stop with her for a week, an’ ye like, for all the good he is to me.”

“Mother’s looking for him to-night, and he ought to go. The dying——”

“Now just you drop it, for he can’t be spared,” interrupted Hill.“The goods might be stole, with all the loose characters there is about, and that fool of a Macintosh won’t go in of himself. He’s a regular coward! Davvy must keep him company—it’s not so much he does for his keep—and he may start for Worcester by daylight.”

Whenever Hill came down upon her with this resolute decision, it struck her timid forthwith. The allusion to the boy’s keep was an additional thrust, for it was beginning to be rather a sore subject. An uncle at Worcester, who had no family and was well to do, had partly offered to adopt the lad; but it was not yet settled. Davy was a great favourite with all the relatives; Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress, doted on him. Mrs. Hill, not venturing on further remonstrance, made the best of the situation.

“Davy, you are to go to Worcester the first thing in the morning,”she said, when he came back from washing his hands. “So as soon as you’ve been home and had a bit o’ breakfast, you shall run off to the train.”

Tea over, Hill went out on some business, saying he should be in at eight, or thereabouts, to go with Davy to the cottage. As the hour drew near, David, sitting over the fire with his mother in pleasant talk, as they loved to do, asked if he should read before he went: for her habit was to read the Bible to him, or cause him to read to her, the last thing.

“Yes, dear,” she said. “Read the ninety-first Psalm.”

So David read it. Closing the book when it was over, he sat with it on his knee, thoughtfully.

“If we could only see the angels, mother! It is so difficult to remember always that they are close around, taking care of us.”

“So it is, Davy. Most of us forget it.”

“When life’s over it will be so pleasant for them to carry us away to heaven! I wish you and I could go together, mother.”

“We shall each go when God pleases, David.”

“Oh yes, I know that.”

Mrs. Hill, remembering this little bit of conversation, word for word, repeated it afterwards to me and others, with how they had sat, and David’s looks. I say this for fear people might think I had invented it.

Hill came in, and they prepared to go to the other house.David, his arms full—for, of course, with things to be carried, they did not go out empty-handed—came suddenly back from the door in going out, flung his load down, and clasped his mother. She bent to kiss him.

“Good night, my dear one! Don’t you and Luke get chattering all night. Go to sleep betimes.”

He burst into tears, clinging to her with sobs. It was as if his heart were breaking.

“Are you afraid to go?” she whispered.

“I must go,” was his sobbing answer.

“Now then, Davvy!” called back Hill’s rough tones. “What the plague are you lagging for?”

“Say good-bye to me, mother! Say good-bye!”

“Good-bye, and God bless you, David! Remember the angels are around you!”

“I know; I know!”

Taking up his bundles, he departed, keeping some paces behind Hill all the way; partly to hide his face, down which the tears were raining; partly in his usual awe of that formidable functionary who stood to him as a step-father.

Arrived at the house, Hill was fumbling for the key, when some one came darting out from the shadow of its eaves. It proved to be Luke Macintosh.

“I was a-looking round for you,” said crusty Hill. “I began to think you’d forgot the time o’ meeting.”

“No, I’d not forgot it; but I be come to say that I can’t oblige you by sleeping there,” was Luke’s reply. “The master have ordered me off with the waggon afore dawn, and so—I’m a-going to sleep at home.”

Had I been there, I could have said the master had not ordered Luke off before dawn; but after his breakfast. It was just a ruse of his, to avoid doing what he had never relished, sleeping in the house. Hill suspected as much, and went on at him, mockingly asking if he was afraid of hobgoblins. Luke dodged away in the midst of it, and Hill relieved his anger by a little hot language.

“Come along, Davvy,” said he at last; “we must put these here things inside.”

Unlocking the door, he went in; and, the first thing, fell against something or other in the dark. Hill swore a little at that, and struck a light, the fire having gone out. This lower room was full of articles, thrown down out of hand; the putting things straight had been left to the morrow.

“Carry the match afore me, Davvy. These blankets must go upstairs.”

By some oversight no candles had been taken to the house; onlythe box of matches. David lighted one match after the other, while Hill arranged the blankets on the mattress for sleeping. This room—the one with the skylight—was to be David’s.

“There,” said Hill, taking the box of matches from him, “you’ll be comfortable here till morning. If you find it cold, you might keep on your trousers.”

David Garth stood speechless, a look of horror struggling to his face. In that first moment he dared not remonstrate; his awe of Hill was too great.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Hill, striking another match.“What ails you?”

“You’ll not leave me here, all by myself?” whispered the unhappy boy, in desperate courage.

“Not leave you here by yourself! Why, what d’ye think is to harm you? Don’t you try on your nonsense and your games with me, Master Davvy. I’m not soft, like your mother. Say your prayers and get to sleep, and I’ll come and let you out in the morning.”

By a dexterous movement, Hill got outside, and closed the door softly, slipping the bolt. The match in his fingers was nearly burnt out; nevertheless, it had shown a last faint vision of a boy kneeling in supplication, his hands held up, his face one of piteous agony. As Hill struck another match to light the staircase, a wailing cry mingled with the sound: entreaties to be let out; prayers not to be left alone; low moans, telling of awful terror.

“Drat the boy! This comes of his mother’s coddling. Hold your row, Davvy,” he roared out, wrathfully: “you’d not like me to come back and give you a basting.”

And Mr. James Hill, picking his way over the bundles, locked the outer door, and betook himself home. That was our respectable bailiff. What do you think of him?

“Did you leave Davy comfortable?” asked Mrs. Hill, when he got back.

“He’ll be comfortable enough when he’s asleep,” shortly answered Hill. “Of all hardened, ungrateful boys, that of yourn’s the worst.”

“Had Luke come when you got there?” she resumed, passing over the aspersion on Davy.

“He was waiting: he came right out upon us like an apparition,”was Hill’s evasive answer. And he did not tell the rest.

But now, a singular thing happened that night. Mrs. Hill was in a sound sleep, when a loud, agonized cry of “Mother” aroused her from it. She started up, wide awake instantly, and in terror so great that the perspiration began to pour off her face. In that moment the call was repeated. The voice was David’s voice; it had appeared to be in the room, close to her, and she peeredinto every corner in vain. Then she supposed it must have come through the window; that David, from some cause or other, had come home from Willow Brook, and was waiting to be let in. A dread crossed her of Hill’s anger, and she felt inclined to order the boy to go back again.

Opening the casement window, she called to him by name; softly at first, then louder. There was no answer. Mrs. Hill stretched out her head as far as the narrow casement allowed, but neither David nor anyone else could she see; nothing but the shadows cast by the moonlight. Just then the old church clock struck out. She counted the strokes and found it twelve. Midnight. It was bitterly cold: she closed the window at last, concluding David had gone off from fear of being punished. All she could hope was that he would have the sense, that dangerously keen night, to run off to the brick kilns, and get warm there.

But the terror lay upon her yet; she was unable to tell why or wherefore; unless from the strangely appealing agony of the cry; still less could she shake it off. It seemed odd. Hill awoke with the commotion, and found her trembling.

“What have ye got to be affrighted on?” he asked roughly, when she had told her tale. And Mrs. Hill was puzzled to say what.

“You had been a-dreaming of him, that’s what it was. You’ve got nothing else in your mind, day nor night, but that there boy.”

“It was not a dream; I am quite positive it was himself; I could not mistake his voice,” persisted Mrs. Hill. “He has come away from the cottage, for sure. Perhaps that Luke Macintosh might have got teasing him.”

Knowing what Hill knew, that the boy was locked in, he might safely have stood out that he could not have come away from it; but he said no more. Rolling himself round, he prepared to go to sleep again, resentful at having been awakened.

Hill overslept himself in the morning, possibly through the interrupted rest. When he went out it was broad daylight. David Garth’s being locked up half-an-hour more or less went for nothing with Hill, and he stayed to load the truck with some of the remainder of his goods.

“Send Davy home at once, James,” called out the wife, as he began to wheel it away. “I’ll give him his breakfast, and let him start off to the train.”

For, with daylight, and the sight of the door-key, Mrs. Hill could only reverse her opinion, and conclude unwillingly that it might have been a dream. Hill showed her the key, telling her that he had locked the door “for safety.” Therefore it appeared to be impossible that David could have got out.

The first thing Hill saw when he and his truck approached the cottage, was young Jim Batley, mounted on the roof and hammering away at the skylight with his freezing hands. Jim, a regular sailor for climbing, had climbed a tree, and thence swung himself on to the tiles. Hill treated him to some hard words, and ordered him to come down and get a licking. Down came Jim, taking care to dodge out of Hill’s reach.

“I can’t make David hear,” said Jim. “I’ve got to go to Timberdale, and I want him to go along with me.”

“That’s no reason why you should get atop of my roof,” roared Hill. “You look out for a sweet hiding, young Jim. The first time I get hold on you, you shall have it kindly.”

“He sleeps uncommon hard,” said Jim. “One ’ud think the cold had froze him. I’ve got to take a letter to my uncle’s at Timberdale: we shall find a jolly good hot breakfast when we get there.”

Hill condescended to abate his anger so far as to inform Jim Batley that David could not go to Timberdale; adding that he was going off by train to see his grandmother at Worcester. Ordering Jim to take himself away, he unlocked the door and entered the cottage.

Jim Batley chose to stay. He was a tall, thin, obstinate fellow, of eleven, and meant to wait and speak to David. Given to following his own way whenever he could, in spite of his father and mother, it occurred to him that perhaps David might be persuaded to take Timberdale first and the train after.

He amused himself with the dead leaves while he waited. But it seemed that David took a long time dressing. The truck stood at the door; Jim stamped and whistled, and shied a few stones at the topmost article, which was Mrs. Hill’s potato saucepan. Presently Hill came out and began to unload, beginning with the saucepan.

“Where’s Davy?” demanded Jim, from a safe distance. “Ain’t he ready yet?”

“Now if you don’t get off about your business I’ll make you go,”was Hill’s answer, keeping his back turned to the boy. “You haven’t got nothing to stop here for.”

“I’m stopping to speak to Davy.”

“Davy was away out o’ here afore daylight and took the first train to Worcester. He’s a’most there by now.”

Young boys are not clever reasoners; but certain contradictory odds and ends passed through Jim’s disappointed mind. For one thing, he had seen Hill unlock the door.

“I don’t think he’s gone out yet. I see his boots.”

“What boots?” asked Hill, putting a bandbox inside the door.

“Davy’s. I see ’em through the skylight; they stood near the mattress.”

“Them was a pair of my boots as I carried here last night. I tell ye Davvy’s gone: can’t ye believe? He won’t be home for some days neither, for his grandmother’s safe to keep him.”

Jim Batley went off slowly on his way to Timberdale: there was nothing to stay for, Davy being gone. Happening to turn round, he caught Hill looking after him, and saw his face for the first time. It had turned white as death. The contrast was very remarkable, for it was usually of a deep red.

“Well, I never!” cried Jim, halting in surprise. “Mayhap the cold have took him! Serve him right.”

When Hill had got all the things inside he locked himself in, probably not to be disturbed while he arranged them. Mrs. Hill had been waiting breakfast ever so long when she heard the truck coming back.

“Whatever’s become of David?” she began. “I expected him home at once.”

“David has started for Worcester,” said Hill.

“Started for Worcester? Without his breakfast?”

“Now don’t you worry yourself about petty things,” returned Hill, crustily. “You wanted him to go, and he’s gone. He won’t starve; let him alone for that.”

The notion assumed by Mrs. Hill was, that her husband had started the boy off from the cottage direct to the train. She felt thoroughly vexed.

“He had all his old clothes on, Hill. I would not have had him go to Worcester in that plight for any money. You might have let the child come home for a bit of breakfast—and to dress himself. There was not so much as a brush and comb at the place, to make his hair tidy.”

“There’s no pleasing you,” growled Hill. “Last night you were a’most crying, cause Davvy couldn’t be let go over to see your mother; and, now that he is gone, that don’t please ye! Women be the very deuce for grumbling.”

Mrs. Hill dropped the subject—there could be no remedy—and gave her husband his breakfast in silence. Hill seemed to eat nothing, and looked very pale; at moments ghastly.

“Don’t you feel well?” she asked.

“Well?—I’m well enough. What should ail me—barring the cold? It’s as sharp a frost as ever I was out in.”

“Drink this,” she said, pouring him out another cup of hot tea.“It is cold; and I’m sorry we’ve got it so for our moving. What time shall we get in to-day, Hill?”

“Not at all.”

“Not at all!” repeated the wife in surprise.

“No, not at all,” was Hill’s surly confirmation. “What with you disabled, and Davvy o’ no use, things is not as forrard as they ought to be. I’ve got to be off to my work too, pretty quick, or the Squire’ll be about me. We shan’t get in till to-morrow.”

“But nearly all our things are in,” she remonstrated. “There’s as good as nothing left here.”

“I tell ye we don’t go in afore to-morrow,” said Hill, giving the table a thump. “Can’t ye be satisfied with that?”

He went off to his work. Mrs. Hill, accepting the change as inevitable, resigned herself, and borrowed a saucepan to cook the potatoes for dinner. She might have spared herself the trouble; her husband did not come in for any. He bought a penny loaf and some cheese, and made his dinner of it inside our home barn, Molly giving him some beer. He had done it before when very busy: but the work he was about that day was in no such hurry, and he might have left it if he would.

“Who is to sleep in the house to-night?” his wife asked him when he got home to tea.

“I shall,” said Hill. “I won’t be beholden to nobody.”

Mrs. Hill, remembering the experience of the past night, quaked a little at finding she should have to sleep in the old place alone, devoutly praying there might be no recurrence of the dream that had thrown her into such mortal terror. She and Davy were just alike—frightened at their own shadows in the dark. When Hill was safe off, she hurried into bed, and kept her head under the clothes.

Hill came back betimes in the morning; and they moved in at once; old Coney’s groom, who happened to be out with the dog-cart, offering to drive Mrs. Hill. Though her ankle was better and the distance short, she could hardly have walked. Instead of finding the house in order, as she expected, it was all sixes and sevens; the things lying about all over it.

Towards evening, Hannah got me to call at Willow Brook and say she’d go there in the morning for an hour or two, to help put things in order—the mistress had said she might do so. The fact was, Hannah was burning for a gossip, she and Hill’s wife being choice friends. It was almost dark; the front room looked tolerably straight, and Mrs. Hill sat by the fire, resting her foot and looking out at the window, the shutters not yet closed.

“I’d be very thankful for her to come, Master Johnny,” she said eagerly, hardly letting me finish. “There’s a great deal to do; and, besides that, it is so lonesome here. I never had such a feeling in all my life; and I have gone into strange homes before this.”

“It does seem lonesome, somehow. The fancy may go off in a day or two.”

“I don’t know, sir: it’s to be hoped it will. Master Johnny, as true as that we are sitting here, when I got out of Mr. Coney’s dog-cart and put my foot over the threshold to enter, a fit of trembling took me all over. There was no cause for it: I mean I was not thinking of anything to give it me. Not a minute before, I was laughing; for the man had been telling me a joking story of something that happened yesterday at his master’s. A strange fear seemed to come upon me all at once as I stepped over the threshold, and I began to shake from head to foot. Hill stared at me, and at last asked if it was the cold; I told him truly that I did not know what it was; except that it seemed like some unaccountable attack, for I was well wrapped up. He had some brandy in a bottle, and made me drink a drop. The fit went off; but I have had a queer lonesome feeling on me ever since, as if the house was not one to be alone in.”

“And you have been alone, I suppose?”

“Every bit of the time, save when Hill came in to his dinner. I don’t remember ever to have had such a feeling before in broad daylight. It’s just as if the house was haunted.”

Not believing in haunted houses, I laughed. Mrs. Hill got up to stir the fire. It blazed, and cast her shadow upon the opposite wall.

“When dusk came on, I could hardly bear it. But for your coming in, Master Johnny, I should have stood at the door in the cold, and watched for Hill: things don’t feel so lonely to one out of doors as in.”

So it seemed that I was in for a stay—any way, till Hill arrived. After this, it would not have been very kind to leave her alone; she looked so weak and little.

“I’ve never liked the thought of moving here from the first,” she went on; “and then there came the accident to my foot. Some people think nothing at all of omens, Master Johnny, but I do think of them. They come oftener than is thought for too; only, so few take notice of them. I wish Davy was back! I can’t bear to be in this house alone.”

“David is at Worcester, I heard Hill say.”

“He went yesterday morning, sir. I expected a letter from him to-day; and it is very curious that none have come. Davy knew how anxious I was about mother; and he never fails to write when he’s away from me. Somehow, all things are going crooked and cross just now. I had a fright the night before last. Master Johnny, and I am hardly quit of it yet.”

“What was that?” I asked her.

She stared into the fire for a minute or two before she answered me. There was no other light in the room; I sat back against the wall beside the window—the shutters were still open.

“You might not care to hear it, sir.”

“I should if it’s worth telling.”

Turning from the fire, she looked straight at me while she told it from beginning to end, exactly as I have written it above. The tale would have been just the thing for Mrs. Todhetley: who went in for marvels.

“Hill stood to it that it was a dream, Master Johnny; but the more I think of it, the less I believe it could have been one. If I had only heard the call in my sleep, or in the moment of waking, why of course it might have been a dream; but when I heard it the second time it was after I awoke. I heard it as plain as I hear my own voice now; and plainer, too.”

“But what else, except a dream, do you fancy it could have been?”

“Well, sir, that’s what is puzzling me. But for Hill’s convincing me Davy could not have got out of here after he had locked him and Macintosh in for safety, I should have said it was the boy himself, calling me from outside. It sounded in the room, close to me: but the fright I was in might have deceived me. What’s that?”

A loud rapping at the window. I am not ashamed to say that coming so unexpectedly it startled me. Mrs. Hill, with a shrill scream, darted forward to catch hold of my arm.

“Let me go. Some one wants to be let in. I dare say it’s Hill.”

“Master Johnny, I beg your pardon,” she said, going back.“Hill ought to know better than to come frightening me at night like this.”

I opened the door, and Miss Timmens walked in: not Hill. The knocking had not been intended to frighten any one, but as a greeting to Mrs. Hill—Miss Timmens having seen her through the glass.

“You know you always were one of the quaking ones, Nanny,”she said, scoffing at the alarm. “I have just got back from Worcester, and thought you’d like to hear that mother’s better.”

“And it is well you are back, Miss Timmens,” I put in. “The school has been in rebellion. Strangers, going by, have taken it for a bear garden.”

“That Maria Lease is just good for nothing,” said Miss Timmens, wrathfully. “When she offered to take my place I knew she’d not be of much use. Yes, sir; it was the thought of the school that brought me back so soon.”

“And mother is really better!” cried Mrs. Hill. “I am sothankful. If she had died and I not able to get over to her, I should never have forgiven myself. How is David?”

“Are you getting straight, Nancy?” asked Miss Timmens, looking round the room, and not noticing the question about David.

“Straight! and only moved in this morning! and me with this ankle!”

Miss Timmens laughed. She was just as capable as her sister was the contrary.

“About David?” added Mrs. Hill, “I was so vexed that he went over in his old clothes! It was Hill’s fault. Have you brought me a letter from him?”

“How could I bring you a letter from him?” returned Miss Timmens. “A letter from where?”

It was a minute or two before elucidation was arrived at, for both were at cross-purposes. David Garth had not been at Worcester at all, so far as Miss Timmens knew; certainly not at his grandmother’s.

To see Mrs. Hill sink back into her chair at this information, and let her hands fall on her lap, and gaze helplessly from her frightened eyes, was only to be expected. Miss Timmens kept asking what it all meant, and where David was, but she could get no answer. So I told her what Mother Hill had just told me—about Hill’s sending him off to Worcester. She stared like anything.

“Why, where in the name of wonder can the boy have got to?”

“I see it all,” spoke the mother then, in a whisper. “Davy did find his way out of this house; and it was his voice I heard, and not a dream. I knew it. I knew it at the time.”

These words would have sounded mysterious to any one given to mystery. Miss Timmens was not. She was a long, thin female, with a chronic redness on her nose and one cheek, and she was as practical as could be. Demanding what Mrs. Hill meant by“not a dream,” she stood warming her boots at the fire while she was enlightened.

“The boy is keeping away for fear of Hill tanning him,” spoke Miss Timmens, summing up the question. “Don’t you think so, Master Ludlow?”

“I should, if I could see how he got out of the cottage, after Hill had locked him in it.”

“Luke Macintosh put him out at this window,” said Miss Timmens, decisively. “Hill couldn’t lock that up. They’d open the shutters, and Luke would pop him out: to get rid of the boy, no doubt. Mr. Luke ought to be punished for it.”

I did not contradict her. Of course it might have been so;but knowing Luke, I did not think he would care to be left in the house alone. Unless—the thought flashed over me—unless Luke sent away David that he might be off himself. Amidst a good deal of uncertainty, this view seemed the most probable.

“Where is David?” bemoaned Mrs. Hill; “where is he? And with these bitter cold nights——”

“Now don’t you worry yourself, Nanny,” interrupted strong-minded Miss Timmens. “I’ll see to David; and bring him home, too.”

Hill’s cough was heard outside. Miss Timmens—who had been in a dead rage at the marriage, and consequently hated Hill like poison—hastened to depart. We went away together, passing Hill by the dried-up brook. He looked stealthily at us, and threw back a surly good night to me.

“I’m sure I don’t know where I am to look for the boy first,”began Miss Timmens, as we went along. “Poor fellow! he is keeping away out of fear. It would not surprise me if Macintosh is taking care of him. The man’s not ill-natured.”

“I don’t understand why Hill should have told his mother David was gone to Worcester, unless he did go.” Neither did I.

“David never went to Worcester; rely upon that, Master Ludlow,”was her answer. “He is well known at Shrub Hill Station, and I could not have failed to hear of it, for one of the porters lodges in mother’s house; besides, David would have come down to us at once. Good night, sir. I dare say he will turn up before to-morrow.”

She went on towards the school-house, I the other way to Crabb Cot. Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire were talking together by the blazing fire, waiting until old Thomas announced dinner.

“Where have you been lingering this cold evening, Johnny?”began the Squire. “Don’t you get trying the ponds, sir; the ice is not wafer thick yet.”

Kneeling on the rug between them, holding my hands to the warmth, I told where I had been, and what I had heard. Mrs. Todhetley, who seemed to have been born with a sympathy for children, went into lamentation over—it was what she said—that poor little gentle lamb, David.

“Macintosh is about somewhere,” spoke the Squire, ringing the bell. “We will soon hear whether he knows what has become of the boy.”

Thomas was ordered to find Macintosh and send him in. He came presently, shy and sheepish, as usual. Standing just inside the door, he blinked his eyes and rubbed his hands one over the other, like an idiot. It was only his way.

“Do you know where David Garth is?” began the Squire, whothought himself a regular Q.C. at cross-examining. Luke stared and said No. The fact was, he had not heard that David was missing.

“What time was it that you put him out of the window the night before last?”

Luke’s eyes and mouth opened. He had no more idea what the Squire meant than the man in the moon.

“Don’t stand there as if you were a born simpleton, but answer me,” commanded the Squire. “When you and David Garth were put into Hill’s new cottage to take care of the things for the night, how came you to let the boy out of it? Why did you do it? Upon what plea?”

“But I didn’t do it, sir,” said Luke.

“Now don’t you stand there and say that to my face, Macintosh. It won’t answer; for I know all about it. You put that poor shivering boy out at the window that you might be off yourself; that’s about the English of it. Where did he go to?”

“But I couldn’t do it, sir,” was Luke’s answer to this. “I was not in the place myself.”

“You were not there yourself?”

“No, sir, I warn’t. Knowing I should have to go off with the waggon pretty early, I went down and telled Hill that I should sleep at home.”

“Do you mean to say you did not go into Hill’s place at all?”

“No, sir, I didn’t. I conclude Hill slept there hisself. I know nothing about it, for I don’t happen to have come across Hill since. I’ve kept out of his way.”

This was a new turn to the affair. Luke quitted the room, and a silence ensued. Mrs. Todhetley touched me on the shoulder.

“Johnny?”

“Yes!” I said, wondering at the startled look in her eyes.

“I hope Hill did not put that poor child into the house alone! If so, no wonder that he made his escape from it.”

The matter could not rest. One talked, and another talked: and before noon next day it was known all over the place that David Garth had been put to sleep by himself in the empty cottage. Miss Timmens attacked Hill with her strong tongue, and told him it was enough to frighten the child to death. Hill was sullen. He would answer nothing; and all she could get out of him was, that it was no business of hers. In vain she demanded his reasons for saying the boy had gone to Worcester by the early train: whether he sent him—whether he saw him off. Hill said David did go; and then took refuge in dogged silence.

The schoolmistress was not one to be played with. Of a tenacious turn, she followed out things with a will. She called in the police; she harangued people outside her door; she set the parish in a ferment. But David could not be heard of, high or low. Since the midnight hour, when that call of his awoke his mother, and was again repeated, he seemed to have vanished.

There arose a rumour that Jim Batley could tell something. Miss Timmens pounced upon him as he was going by the school-house, conveyed him indoors, and ordered him to make a clean breast of it. It was not much that Jim had to tell: but that little seemed of importance to Miss Timmens, and he told it readily. One thing Jim persisted in—that the boots he saw through the skylight must have been David’s boots. Hill had called them his, he said, but they were not big enough—not men’s boots at all. Hill was looking “ghastly white,” as if he had had a fright, Jim added, when he told him David was gone off to Worcester.

Perhaps it was in that moment that a fear of something worse than had been yet suspected dawned upon Miss Timmens. Tying on her bonnet, she came up to Crabb Cot, and asked to see the Squire.

“It is getting more serious,” she said, after old Thomas had shown her in. “I think, sir, Hill should be forced to explain what he knows. I have come here to ask you to insist upon it.”

“The question is—what does he know?” rejoined the Squire.

“More than he has confessed,” said Miss Timmens, in her positive manner. “Jim Batley stands to it that those boots must, from the size, have been David’s boots. Now, Squire Todhetley, if David’s boots were there, where was David? That is what’s lying on my mind, sir.”

“What did Jim Batley see besides the boots?” asked the Squire.

“Nothing in particular,” she answered. “He said the cupboard door stood open, and hid the best part of the room. David would not be likely to run away and leave his boots behind him.”

“Unless he was in too great a fright to stop to put them on.”

“I don’t think that, sir.”

“What is it you wish to imply?” asked the Squire, not seeing the drift of the argument.

“I wish I knew myself,” replied Miss Timmens, candidly. “I am certain Hill has not told all he could tell: he has been deceitful over it from the first, and he must be made to explain. Look here, sir: when he got to Willow Cottage that morning, there’s no doubt he thought David was in it. Very well. He goes in to call him; stays a bit, and then comes out and tells young Jim that David hasgone to Worcester. How was he to know David had gone to Worcester?—who told him? The boy says, too, that Hill looked ghastly, as if he had been frightened.”

“David must have gone somewhere, or he would have been in the room,” argued the Squire. “He would not be likely to go back after quitting it, and his mother heard him call to her in the middle of the night.”

“Just so, sir. But—if Hill did not find him, why should he come out and assert that David had started for Worcester?—Why not have said David had escaped?”

“I am sure I don’t know.”

“It’s the boots that come over me,” avowed Miss Timmens; “I can’t come to the bottom of them. I mean to come to the bottom of Hill, though, and make him disclose what he knows. You are his master, sir, and perhaps he will tell you without trouble, if you will please to be so good as question him. If he won’t, I’ll have him brought up before the Bench.”

Away went Miss Timmens, with a parting remark that the school must be rampant by that time. The Squire sat thinking a bit, and then put on his hat and great-coat, telling me I might come with him and hear what Hill had to say. We expected to find Hill in the ploughed field between his cottage and North Crabb. But Hill was in his own garden; we saw him as we went along. Without ceremony, the Squire opened the wooden gate, and stepped in. Hill was raking the leaves together by the shed at the end of the garden.

He threw down the rake when he saw us, as if startled, his red face turning white. Coming forward, he began a confused excuse for being at home at that hour of the day, saying there was so much to do when getting into a fresh place; and that he had not been well for two days, “had had a sickness upon him.” The Squire, never hard with the men, told him he was welcome to be there, and began talking about the garden.

“It is as rich a bit of land, Hill, as any in the parish, and you may turn it to good account if you are industrious. Does your wife intend to keep chickens?”

“Well, sir, I suppose she will. Town-bred women don’t understand far about ’em, though. It may be a’most as much loss as profit.”

“Nonsense,” said the Squire, in his quick way. “Loss! when you have every convenience about you! This used to be the fowl-house in Hopton’s time,” he added, rapping the side of the shed with his stick. “Why! you’ve been putting a padlock on it, Hill!”

For the door was fastened with a padlock; a new one, to judgeby its look. Hill made no comment. He had taken up the rake again and was raking vigorously at the dead leaves. I wondered what he was shaking for.

“Have you any treasures here, that you should lock it up?”

“Only the watering-can, sir, and a few o’ my garden tools,”answered Hill. “There’s a heap of loose characters about, and nothing’s safe from ’em.”

Putting his back against the shed, the Squire suddenly called on Hill to face him, and entered on the business he had come upon.“Where was David Garth? Did he, Hill, know anything about him?”

Hill had looked pale before; I said so; but that was nothing to the frightful whiteness that took him now. Ears, lips, neck; all turned the hue of the dead. The rake shook in his grasp; his teeth chattered.

“Come, Hill,” said the Squire; “I see you have something to say.”

But Hill protested he had nothing to say: except that the boy’s absence puzzled him. The Squire put some home questions upon the points spoken of by Miss Timmens, showing Hill that we knew all. He then told him he might take his choice; answer, or go before the magistrates.

Apparently Hill saw the futility of holding out longer. His very aspect would have convicted him, as the Squire said: if he had committed murder, he could not have looked more guilty. Glancing shudderingly around on all sides, as though the air had phantoms in it, he whispered his version of the morning’s work.

It was true that he had gone to the house expecting to find David in it; and it was true that when he entered he found him flown. Not wishing to alarm the boy’s mother, he told Jim Batley that David had gone by early train to Worcester: he told the mother so. As to the boots, Hill declared they were his own, not David’s; and that Jim’s eyes must have been deceived in the size. And he vowed and declared he knew no more than this, or where David could have got to.

“What do you think you deserve for locking the child in the house by himself?” asked the Squire, sternly.

“Everything that’ll come upon me through it,” readily acknowledged Hill. “I could cut my hands off now for having done it; but I never thought he’d be really frightened. It’s just as if his ghost had been haunting me ever since; I see him a-following of me everywhere.”

“His ghost!” exclaimed the Squire. “Do you suppose he is dead?”

“I don’t know,” said the man, passing his shaking hand across his damp forehead. “I wish to Heaven I had let him go off to his grandmother’s that same blessed night!”

“Then you wish me to understand, Hill, that you absolutely know nothing of where the boy may be?”

“Nothing at all, sir.”

“Don’t you think it might have been as well if you had told the truth from the first?” asked the Squire, rather sarcastically.

“Well, sir, one’s mind gets confused at times, and I thought of his mother. I could not be off seeing that if anything had happened, it lay on my shoulders for having left him alone, in there.”

Whether the Squire believed Hill could tell more, I don’t know. I did. As we went on to the school-house, the Pater kept silence. Miss Timmens was frightfully disappointed at the result, and said Hill was a shifty scoundrel.

“I cannot tell what to think,” the Squire remarked to her. “His manner is the strangest I ever saw; it is just as though he had something on his conscience. He said the boy’s ghost seemed to haunt him. Did you notice that, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir. A queer idea.”

“He—he—never could have found David dead in the morning?”cried Miss Timmens, in a low tone, herself turning a little pale.“Dead of fright?”

“That could not be,” said the Squire. “You forget that David had made his escape before midnight, and was at his mother’s, calling to her.”

“True, true,” assented Miss Timmens. “Any way, I am certain Hill is somehow or other deceiving us, and he is a born villain for doing it.”

But Hill, deceiving us though he had been, could not hold out. In going back, we saw him leaning over the palings waiting for us. But that the man is living yet, I should have said he was going to die there and then, for he looked exactly like it.

It seemed that just after we left him, a policeman had made his appearance. Not as a policeman, but as a friend; for he and Hill were cronies. He told Hill confidentially that there was“going to be a row over that there lost boy; that folks were saying that he might have been murdered; that unless Hill could tell something satisfactory about him, he and others might be in custody before the day was over.” Whether Hill found himself brought to a point from which there was neither advance nor retreat, or that he inevitably saw that concealment could no longer be maintained, or that he was stricken to despair and felt helpless, I know not. There he stood, his head over the palings, saying he would tell all.

It was a sad tale to listen to. Miss Timmens’s last supposition was right—Hill, upon going up to release David Garth, had found him dead. And, so far as the man’s experience of death went, he must have been dead for six or seven hours.

“I’d like you to come and see him, sir,” panted Hill.

Gingerly stepped the Squire in Hill’s wake across the garden to the shed. Unlocking the door, Hill stepped back for us to enter. On a mattress on the ground was David, laid straight in his every-day clothes, and covered with a blanket; his pretty hair, which his mother had so loved, carefully smoothed. Hill,—rough, burly, cross-grained Hill,—burst into tears and sobbed like a child.

“I’d give my life to undo it, and bring him back again, Squire; I’d give my life twice over, Master Johnny; but I declare before Heaven, I never thought to harm the boy. When I see him the next morning, lying dead, I’d not have minded if the Lord had struck me dead too. I’ve been a’most mad ever since.”

“Johnny,” said the Squire, in low tones, “go you to South Crabb, and bring over Mr. Cole. Do not talk of this.”

The surgeon was at home, and came back with me. I did not quite understand why the Squire sent for him, seeing he could do no good.

And the boots were David’s, after all; the only things he had taken off. Hill had brought him to this shed the next night; with some vague idea of burying him in the ground under the leaves.“But I couldn’t do it,” he avowed amid his sobs; “I couldn’t do it.”

There was an examination, Cole and another making it; and they gave evidence at the inquest. One of them (it was Cole) thought the boy must have died from fright, the other from the cold; and a nice muff this last must have been.

“I did not from the first like that midnight call, or the apparently causeless terror the poor mother awoke in,” said Mrs. Todhetley, to me. “The child’s spirit must have cried out to her in his death-agony. I have known a case like this before.”

“But——”

“Hold your tongue, Johnny, You have not lived long enough to gain experience of these things.”

And I held it.

CHAPTER XX.

DAVID GARTH’S GHOST.

“Is it true that she’s going to marry him, Miss Timmens?”

“True! I don’t know,” retorted Miss Timmens, in wrath. “It won’t be for lack of warning, if she does. I told her so last night; and she tossed her head in answer. She’s a vain, heartless girl, Hannah Baber, with no more prudence about her than a female ostrich.”

“There may be nothing in it, after all,” said Hannah. “She is generally ready to flirt, you know.”

“Flirt!” shrieked Miss Timmens in her shrillest tone. “She’d flirt with a two-legged wheelbarrow if it had trousers on.”

This colloquy was taking place at the private door of the school-house. And you must understand that we have gone back a few months, for at this time David Garth was not dead. Hannah, who had gone down from Crabb Cot on an errand, came upon Miss Timmens standing there to look out. Of course she stayed to gossip.

The object of Miss Timmens’s wrath was her niece, Harriet Roe. A vain, showy, handsome, free-natured girl, as you have heard, with bright dark eyes and white teeth—who had helped to work the mischief between Maria Lease and Daniel Ferrar which had led to Ferrar’s dreadful death. Humphrey Roe, Harriet’s father, was half-brother to Miss Timmens and Mrs. Hill; he had settled in France, and married a Frenchwoman. Miss Harriet chose to call herself French, and politely said the English were not fit to tie that nation’s shoes. Perhaps that was why she had now taken up with a cousin, Louis Roe. Not that Louis Roe was really French: he had been born in France of English parents, and so was next door to it. A fashionable-looking young man North Crabb considered him, for he wore well-cut coats and a moustache. A moustache was a thing to be stared at in simple country places then. It may have had something to do with Miss Timmens’s dislike to the young man. Louis Roe was only a distant relative: a tenth cousin, or so; of whom Miss Timmens had heard before, but never seen. When he appeared unexpectedly one January day at the school-house (it wasthe January after Daniel Ferrar’s death), ostensibly to see Harriet, whom he had known in France, Miss Timmens, between surprise and the moustache, was less gracious than she might have been. From that time to this—March—he had (as Miss Timmens put it) haunted the place, though chiefly taking up his abode at Worcester. Harriet had struck into a flirtation with him at once, after her native fashion: and now it was reported that they were going to be married. Miss Timmens could not find out that he was doing anything for a living. He talked of his fine “affaires” over in France: but when she questioned him of what nature the “affaires”were, he either evaded her like an eel, or gave rambling answers that she could make neither head nor tail of. The way in which he and Harriet would jabber French in her presence, not a word of which language could she comprehend, and the laughing that went on at the same time, put Miss Timmens’s back up worse than anything, for she thought they were making game of her. She could be tart when she pleased; and when that happened, the redness in the nose and cheek grew redder. Very tart indeed was she, recounting these grievances to Hannah.

“My firm belief, Hannah Baber, is, that he wants to get hold of Harriet for her two-hundred pounds. She has that much, you know: it came to her from her mother. Roe would rather play the gentleman than work. It is the money he’s after, not Harriet.”

“The money may put him into some good way of business, and they may live comfortably together,” suggested Hannah.

“Pigs may fly,” returned Miss Timmens. “There’s something in that young man, Hannah Baber, that I could not trust. Oh, but girls are wilful!—and simple, at the best, where the men are concerned! They can’t see an inch beyond their noses: no, and they won’t let others, who have sight, see for them. Look there!”

Emerging into the spring sunshine from the withy walk, came the gentleman in question; Harriet Roe in her gay ribbons at his side. Miss Timmens gave her door a bang, regardless of good manners, and Hannah pursued her way.

The road thus paved for it, North Crabb church was not taken by surprise when it heard the marriage banns read out one Sunday morning between Louis Roe, of the parish of St. Swithin, Worcester (he was staying there at the time), and Henriette Adèle Marie Roe. Miss Timmens, who had not been taken into confidence, started violently; Mademoiselle Henriette Adèle Marie, sitting by her side, held up her head and her blooming cheeks with unruffled equanimity. It was said there was a scene when they got home: Miss Timmens’s sister (once Mrs. Garth, but then our bailiff’s wife, James Hill) looking in at the school-house to assist at it. Neither of them could make anything of Harriet.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Aunt Susan and Aunt Nancy,” said the girl passionately, when her temper got roused: “my mind is made up to marry Louis; and if you don’t drop this magging now and for good; if you attempt to worry me any further, I’ll go off to Worcester, and stay with him till the day arrives. There! how would you like that? I will, I declare. It would be thought nothing at all of in my country, with the wedding so near.”

This shut them up. Mrs. Hill, a meek, gentle little woman, who had her sorrows, and habitually let Miss Timmens do all the talking when they were together, began to cry. Harriet ate her cold dinner standing, and went off for an afternoon promenade with Monsieur Louis. From that time, even Miss Timmens gave up all thought of opposition, seeing that events must take their course. Harriet’s parents were dead; she was over age, and her own mistress in the eye of the law.

“Would you mind taking a turn with me in the withy walk, Harriet Roe?” asked Maria Lease, as they were coming out of church that same night.

Harriet was alone. Louis Roe had gone back to Worcester. The request surprised her considerably. Since Daniel Ferrar’s death the past November, Maria had been very distant with her; averting her head if they happened to meet.

“So you have come to your senses, have you, Maria Lease?”was the half insolent, half good-natured answer. “I’ll walk down it with you if you like.”

“Come to my senses in what way?” asked Maria, in low, subdued, sad tones, as they went towards the withy walk.

“About—you know what. You blamed me for what happened. As good as laid his death at my door.”

“Did you ever hear me say so?”

“Oh, I could see: your manner was enough. As if I either helped it on—or could have prevented it! We used to have just a bit of talking and laughing together, he and I, but that was all.”

That’s all! And the gold chain was still on Harriet’s neck. Maria suppressed a sigh.

“Whether I blamed you for it, Harriet Roe, or whether I blamed myself, is of no moment now. The past can never be recalled or redeemed in this world—its remembrance alone remains. I want to do you a little service, Harriet. Nothing may come of it, but it is my duty to speak.”

Amidst the shadows of the withy beds, under the silent stars, Maria spoke, dropping her voice to a whisper. In a sufficiently curious but accidental manner, she had heard something said the previous week about Louis Roe. A stranger, who had known him in France, spoke very much in his disfavour. He said that any girl,if she cared for her future happiness and credit would be mad to unite herself to him. Maria had asked no particulars; they might not have been given if she had; but the impression of Louis Roe left on her mind was not a good one. All this she quietly repeated to Harriet. It was received in anything but a friendly spirit.

“Thank you for nothing, Maria Lease. Because you lost your own husband—that was to have been—you think you’ll try what you can do to deprive me of mine. A slice of revenge, I suppose: but it won’t succeed.”

“Harriet, you are mistaken,” rejoined Maria; and Miss Harriet thought she had never in her life heard so mournfully sad a tone as the words were spoken in. “So much self-reproach fell upon me that bitter evening when he was found dead: reproach that can never be lifted from me while time shall last: that I do not think I can ever again do an ill turn in this life, or give an unkind word. The whole world does not seem to be as sinful in its wickedness as I was in my harsh unkindness; and there’s no sort of expiation left to me. If I pass my whole existence laying my hands under other people’s feet in humble hope to serve them, it cannot undo the bitterness of my passion when I exposed him before Johnny Ludlow. The exposure was more than he could bear; and he—he put an end to it. I suffer always, Harriet Roe; my days are one prolonged burning agony of repentance. Repentance that brings no relief.”

“My goodness!” cried Harriet, her breath almost scared away at hearing this, careless-natured though she was. “I’ll tell you what, Maria: I should turn Roman Catholic in your place; and let a priest absolve me from the sin.”

A priest absolve her from the sin! The strange anguish on her compressed lips was visible as Maria Lease turned her face upwards in the starlight. One Most High and merciful Priest was ever there, who could, and would, wash out her sin. But—what of Daniel Ferrar, who had died in his?

“If there is one person whom I would more especially seek in kindness to serve, it is you, Harriet,” she resumed, putting her hand gently on Harriet’s arm—and her fingers accidentally touched the chain that Daniel Ferrar had hung round the girl’s neck in his perfidy. “Revenge!—from me!”

“The very idea of my giving up Louis is absurd,” was Harriet’s rejoinder, as they came out of the withy walk. “Thank you all the same, Maria Lease; and there’s my hand. I see now that you meant kindly: but no one shall set me against my promised husband.”

Maria shook the hand in silence.

“Look here, Maria—don’t go and tell your beautiful scandal to sharp Susan Timmens. Not that I care whether you do or not,except on the score of contention. She would strike up fresh opposition, and it might come to scratching and fighting. My temper has borne enough: one can’t be a lamb always.”

The wedding came off on Easter Tuesday. Harriet wore a bright silk dress, the colour of lilac, with a wreath and veil. When the latter ornaments came home, Miss Timmens nearly fainted. Decent young women in their station of life were married in bonnets, she represented: not in wreaths and veils. But Harriet Roe, reared to French customs, said bonnets could never be admissible for a bride, and she’d sooner go to church in a coal-scuttle. The Batley girls, in trains and straw-hats, were bridesmaids. Miss Timmens wore a new shawl and white gloves; and poor little David Garth—who was to die of fright before that same year came to an end—stood with his hand locked in his mother’s.

And so, in the self-same church where she had sat displaying her graces before the ill-fated Daniel Ferrar, and by the same young clergyman who had preached to her then, Harriet became the wife of Louis Roe, and went away with him to London.

The next move in the chain of events was the death of David Garth in Willow Cottage. It occurred in November, when Tod and I were staying at home, and has been already told of. James Hill escaped without punishment: it was said there was no law to touch him. He protested through thick and thin that he meant no harm to the boy; to do him justice, it was not supposed he had: he was finely repentant for it, and escaped with a reprimand.

Mrs. Hill refused to remain in the cottage. What with her innate tendency to superstition, with the real facts of the case, and with that strange belief—that David’s spirit had appeared to her in the moment of dying; a belief firm and fixed as adamant—she passed into a state of horror of the dwelling. Not another night could she remain in it. The doctor himself, Cole, said she must not. Miss Timmens took her in as a temporary thing; until the furniture could be replaced in their former house, which was not let. Hill made no objection to this. For that matter, he seemed afraid of the new place himself, and was glad to get back to the old one. All his native surliness had left him for the time: he was as a subdued man whose tongue has departed on an excursion. You see, he had feared the law might come down upon him. The coroner’s inquest had brought in a safe verdict: all Hill received was a censure for having locked the boy in alone: but he could not yet feel sure that the affair would not be taken up by the magistrates: and the parish said in his hearing that his punishment ought to be transportation at the very least. Altogether, it subdued him.

So, as soon as David’s funeral was over, and while his wife was still with Miss Timmens, Hill began to move back his goods in a sort of humble silence. Crowds collected to see the transport, much to Hill’s annoyance and discomfiture. The calamity had caused intense excitement in the place; and Miss Timmens, who had a very long tongue, and hated Hill just as much as she had loved David, kept up the ball. Hill’s intention was to lock up Willow Cottage until he could get Mr. Todhetley to release him from it. At present he dared not ask: all of us at Crabb Cot, from the Squire downwards, were bitterly against him for his wicked inhumanity to poor David.

Curious to say—curious because of what was to happen out of it—as Hill was loading the truck with the last remaining things, a stranger came up to the cottage door. Just at the first moment, Hill did not recognize him; he had shaved off his moustache and whiskers, and grown a beard instead. And that alters people.

“How are you, Hill? What are you up to here?”

It was Louis Roe—who had married Mademoiselle Henriette the previous Easter. Where they had been since, or what they had done, was a sort of mystery, for Harriet had written only one letter. By that letter, it was gathered that they were flourishing in London: but no address was given, and Miss Timmens had called her a heartless jade, not to want to hear from her best relatives.

Hill answered that he was pretty well, and went on loading; but said nothing to the other question. Louis Roe—perceiving sundry straggling spectators who stood peering, as if the loading of a hand-barrow with goods were a raree-show—rather wondered at appearances, and asked again. Hill shortly explained then that they had moved into Willow Cottage; but his wife found it didn’t suit her, and so they were moving back again to the old home.

He went off with the truck, before he had well answered, giving no time for further colloquy. Louis Roe happened to come across young Jim Batley amidst the tag-rag, and heard from him all that had occurred.

“He must be a cruel devil, to leave a timid child all night in a house alone!” was Mr. Roe’s indignant comment; who, whatever his shortcomings might be in the eyes of Miss Timmens, was not thought to be hard-hearted.

“His mother, she sees his ghost,” went on Jim Batley. “Leastways, heered it.”

Mr. Roe took no notice of this additional communication. Perhaps ghosts held a low place in his creed—and he appeared to have plunged into a reverie. Starting out of it in a minute or two, he ran after Hill, and began talking in a low, business tone.

Hill could not believe his ears. Surely such luck had neverbefallen a miserable man! For here was Louis Roe offering to take Willow Cottage off his hands: to become his, Hill’s, tenant for a short time. The double rent; this, and that for the old house he was returning to; had been weighing upon Hill’s mind as heavily as David weighed upon it. The man had saved plenty of money, but he was of a close nature. Squire Todhetley was a generous man; but Hill felt conscious that he had displeased him too much to expect any favour at present.

“What d’ye want of the cottage?” asked Hill, suppressing all signs of satisfaction. “Be you and Harriet a-coming to live down here?”

“We should like to stay here for a few weeks—say till the dead of winter’s over,” replied Roe. “London is a beastly dull place in bad weather; the fogs don’t agree with Harriet. I had thought of taking two or three rooms at Birmingham: but I don’t know but she’ll like this cottage best—if you will let me have it cheap.”

It would be cheap enough. For Hill named the very moderate rent he had agreed to pay the Squire. Only too glad was he, to get that. Roe promised to pay him monthly.

North Crabb was electrified at the news. Mr. and Mrs. Roe were coming to stay in the cottage where poor David Garth had just died. No time was lost over it, either. On the following day some hired furniture was put into it, and Harriet herself arrived.

She was looking very ill. And I’m sure if she had appeared with a beard as well as her husband, her face could not have seemed more changed. Not her face only, but her manners. Instead of figuring off in silks and ribbons, finer than the stars, laughing with every one she met, and throwing her handsome eyes about, she wore only plain things, and went along noticing no one. Some people called it “pride;” Miss Timmens said it was disappointment. The first time Tod and I met her, she never lifted her eyes at all. Tod would have stayed to speak; but she just said, “Good morning, gentlemen,” and went on.

“I say, Johnny, there’s some change there,” was Tod’s remark, as he turned to look after her.

They had been in the place about a week—and Roe seemed to keep indoors, or else was away, for no one ever saw him—when a strange turn arose, that was destined to set the neighbourhood in an uproar. I was running past the school-house one evening at dusk, and saw Maria Lease sitting with Miss Timmens by fire-light. Liking Maria very much—for I always did like her, and always shall—I went bolt in to them. James Hill’s wife was also there, in her mourning gown with crape on it, sitting right back in the chimney corner. She had gone back to Hill then, but made no scruple of leaving him alone often: and Hill, who had had hislesson, put up with it. And you would never guess; no, not though you had tried from then till Midsummer; what they were whispering about, as though scared out of their seven senses.

David Garth’s ghost was haunting Willow Cottage.

Miss Timmens was telling the story; the others listened with open mouths. She began at the beginning again for my benefit.

“I was sitting by myself here about this time last evening, Master Johnny, having dismissed the children, and almost too tired with their worry to get my own tea, when Harriet Roe came gliding in at the door, looking whiter than a sheet, and startling me beyond everything. ‘Aunt Susan,’ says she in so indistinct a tone that I should have boxed one of the girls had she attempted to use such,‘would you take pity on me and let me stay here till to-morrow morning? Louis went away this afternoon, and I dare not stop alone in the place all night.’ ‘What are you afraid of?’ I asked, not telling her at once that she might stay; but down she sat, and threw her mantle and bonnet off—taking French leave. I never saw her in such a state before,” continued Miss Timmens vehemently;“shivering and shaking as if she had an ague, and not a particle of her impudence left in her. ‘I think that place must be damp with the willow brook, aunt,’ says she; ‘it gives me a sensation of cold.’ ‘Now don’t you talk nonsense about your willow brooks, Harriet Roe,’ says I. ‘You are not shaking for willow brooks, or for cold either, but from fright. What is it?’ ‘Well then,’ says she, plucking up a bit, ‘I’m afraid of seeing the boy.’ ‘What boy?’ says I—‘not David?’ ‘Yes; David,’ she says, and trembles worse than ever. ‘He appeared to Aunt Nancy; a sign he is not at rest; and he is as sure to be in the house as sure can be. Dying in the way he did, and lying hid in the shed as he did, what else is to be expected?’ Well, Master Johnny, this all seemed to me very odd—as I’ve just observed to Nancy,” continued Miss Timmens. “It struck me, sir, there was more behind. ‘Harriet,’says I, ‘have you seen David Garth?’ But at first no satisfactory answer could I get from her, neither yes nor no. At last she said she had not seen him, but knew she should if she stayed in the house by herself at night, for that he came again, and was in it. It struck me she was speaking falsely; and that she had seen him; or what she took for him.”

“I know she has; I feel convinced of it,” spoke up poor Mrs. Hill, tilting back her black bonnet—worn for David—to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Master Ludlow, don’t smile, sir—though it’s best perhaps for the young to disbelieve these solemn things. As surely as that we are talking here, my dear boy’s spirit came to me in the moment of his death. I feared it might take to haunting the cottage, sir; and that’s one reason why I could not stay in it.”

“Yes; Harriet has seen him,” interposed Maria Lease in low, firm tones. “Just as I saw Daniel Ferrar. Master Johnny, youknow I saw him.”

Well, truth to say, I thought she must have seen Daniel Ferrar. Having assisted at the sight—or if not at the actual sight, at the place and time and circumstance attending it—I did not see how else it was to be explained away.

“Where’s Harriet now?” I asked.

“She stayed here last night, and went off by rail this morning to her grandmother’s at Worcester,” replied Miss Timmens.“Mother will be glad of her for a day or so, for she keeps her bed still.”

“Then who is in the cottage?”

“Nobody, sir. It’s locked up. Roe is expected back to-morrow.”

Miss Timmens began to set her tea-things, and I left them. Whom should I come upon in the road, but Tod—who had been over to South Crabb. I told him all this; and we took the broad path home through the fields, which led us past Willow Cottage. The fun Tod made of what the women had been saying, was beyond everything. A dreary dwelling, it looked; cold, and deserted, and solitary in the dusky night, on which the moon was rising. The back looked towards Crabb Ravine and the three-cornered grove in which Daniel Ferrar had taken his own life away; and to the barn where Maria had seen Ferrar after death. In front was the large field, bleak and bare; and beyond, the scattered chimneys of North Crabb. A lively dwelling altogether!—let alone what had happened in it to David Garth. I said so.

“Yes, it is a lively spot!” acquiesced Tod. “Beautifully lively in itself, without having the reputation of being haunted. Eugh! Let’s get home to dinner, Johnny.”

Mr. and Mrs. Coney and Tom came in after dinner. Old Coney and the Squire smoked till tea-time. When tea was over we all sat down to Pope Joan. Mr. Coney kept mistaking hearts for diamonds, clubs for spades; he had not his spectacles, and I offered to fetch them. Upon that, he set upon Tom for being lazy and letting Johnny Ludlow do what it was his place to do. The result was, that Tom Coney and I had a race which should reach the farm first. The night was bright, the moon high. Coming back with the spectacles, a man encountered us, tearing along as fast as we were. And that was like mad.

“Halloa!” cried Tom. “What’s up.”

Tom had cause to ask it. The man was Luke Macintosh: and never in all my life had I seen a specimen of such terror. His face was white, his breath came in gasps. Without saying with your leave or by your leave, he caught hold of Tom Coney’s arm.

“Master, as I be a living sinner, I ha’ just seen Davy Garth.”

“Seen David Garth?” echoed Tom, wondering whether Luke had been drinking.

“I see him as plain as plain. He be at that end window o’ the Willow Cottage.”

“Do you mean his ghost, or himself?” asked Tom, making game of it.

“Why, his ghost, in course, sir. It’s well known hisself be dead and buried—worse luck! Mercy on us!—I’d ha’ lost a month’s wages rather nor see this.”

Considering Luke Macintosh was so great a coward that he would not go through the Ravine after nightfall, this was not much from him. Neither had his conscience been quite easy since David’s death: as it may be said that he, through refusing at the last moment to sleep in the house, had in a degree been the remote cause of it. His account was this: Passing the Willow Cottage on his way from North Crabb, he happened to look up at the end window, and saw David standing there all in white in the moonlight.

“I never see nothing plainer in all my born days, never,” gasped Luke. “His poor little face hadn’t no more colour in it nor chalk. Drat them ghosts and goblins, then! What does they come and show theirselves to decent folk for?”

He was trembling just as Miss Timmens, some three hours before, had described Harriet Roe to have trembled. An idea flashed into my mind.

“Now, Luke, just you confess—who is it that has put this into your head?” I asked. But Luke only stared at me: he seemed unable to understand.

“Some one has been telling you this to-night at North Crabb?”

“Telling me what, Master Ludlow?”

“That David Garth is haunting the cottage. It is what people are saying, Tom,” I added to Coney.

“Then, Master Johnny, I never heered a blessed syllable on’t,”he replied; and so earnestly that it was not possible to doubt him.“Nobody have said nothing to me. For the matter o’ that, I didn’t stop to talk to a soul, but just put Molly’s letter in the window slit—which was what I went for—and turned back again. I wish the woman had ha’ been skinned afore she’d got me to go off to the post for her to-night. Plague on me, to have took the way past the cottage! as if the road warn’t good enough to ha’ served me!—and a sight straighter!”

“Were there lights in the cottage, Luke?” asked Coney. “Did you see the Roes about?”

“There warn’t no more sign o’ light or life a-nigh the place, Mr. Tom, no more nor if they’d all been dead and buried inside it.”

“It is shut up, Tom,” I said. “Roe and his wife are away.”

“Lawk a mercy!—not a living creature in it but the ghost!”quaked Luke.

As I have said, this was not much from Luke, taking what he was into consideration; but it was to be confirmed by others. One of the Coneys’ maid-servants came along, as we stood there, on her way from North Crabb. A sensible, respectable woman, with no nonsense about her in general; but she looked almost as scared as Luke now.

“You don’t mean to say you have seen it, Dinah?” cried Tom, staring at her.

“Yes, I have, sir.”

“What! seen David Garth?”

“Well, I suppose it was him. It was something at the window, in white, that looked like him, Mr. Tom.”

“Did you go on purpose to look for it, Dinah?” asked Tom ironically.

“The way I happened to go was this, sir. James Hill overtook me coming out of North Crabb: he was going up to Willow Cottage to speak to Roe; and I thought I’d walk with him, instead of taking the road. Not but what he’s a beauty to walk with, he is, after his cruelty to his wife’s boy,” broke off Dinah: “but company is company on a solitary road at night. When we got to the cottage, Hill knocked; I stayed a minute to say how-d’ye-do to Mrs. Roe, for I’ve not seen her yet. Nobody answered the door; the place looked all dark and empty. ‘They must be out for the evening, I should think,’ says Hill: and with that he steps back and looks up at the windows. ‘Lord be good to us! what’s that?’says he, when he had got round where he could see the end casement. I went to him, and found him standing like a pump, just as stiff and upright, his hands clutched hold of one another, and his eyes staring up at the panes in mortal terror. ‘What is it?’ says I. ‘It’s Davvy,’ says he; but the voice didn’t sound like Hill’s voice, and it scared me a bit. ‘Yes, it’s him,’ says Hill; ‘he have got on the sheet as was wrapped round him to carry him to the shed. I—I lodged him again that there window to make the turning; the stairs was awk’ard,’ went on Hill, as if he was speaking again the grain, but couldn’t help himself.—And sure enough, Mr. Tom—sure enough, Master Ludlow, there was David.”

“Nonsense, Dinah!” cried Tom Coney.

“I saw him quite well, sir, in the white sheet,” said Dinah.“The moon was shining on the window a’most as bright as day.”

“It were brighter nor day,” eagerly put in Luke Macintosh.“You’ll believe me now, Mr. Tom.”

“I’d not believe it if I saw it,” said Tom Coney.

“As we stood looking up, me laying hold of Hill’s arm,” resumed Dinah, as if she had not told all her tale, “there came a loud whistling and shouting behind. Which was young Jim Batley, bringing some message from them sisters of his to Harriet Roe. I bade him hush his noise, but he only danced and mocked at me; so then I told him the cottage was empty, except for David Garth. That hushed him. He came stealing up, and stood by me, staring. You should have seen his face change, Mr. Tom.”

“Was he frightened?”

“Frightened is hardly the word for it, sir. His teeth began to chatter, as if he had a fit; and down he went at last like a stone, face first, howling fearful. We couldn’t hardly get him up again to come away, me and Hill. And as to the ghost, Mr. Tom, it wasstill there.”

“Well, it is a queer tale,” acknowledged Tom Coney.

“We made for the road, all three of us then, and I turned on here—and I didn’t half like coming by the barn where Maria Lease saw Daniel Ferrar,” candidly added Dinah. “T’other two went on their opposite way, Jim never letting go of Hill’s coat-tails.”

There was no more Pope Joan that night. We carried the story indoors; and I mentioned also what had been said to Miss Timmens. The Squire and old Coney laughed.

With David Garth’s ghost to be seen, it could not be supposed that I, or Tod, or Tom Coney, should stay away from the sight. When we reached the place, some twenty people had collected round the house. Jim Batley had told the tale in North Crabb.

But curious watchers had seen nothing. Neither did we. For the bright night had changed to darkness. A huge curtain of cloud had come up from the south, covering the moon and the best part of the sky, as a pall covers a coffin. If gazing could have brought a ghost to the window, there would assuredly have been one. The casement was at the end of the house; serving to light the narrow upstairs passage. A huge cherry-tree hid the casement in summer; very slightly its bare branches obscured it now.

A sound, as of some panting animal, came up beside me as I leaned on the side palings. I turned; and saw the bailiff. Some terrible power of fascination had brought him back again, against his will.

“So it is gone, Hill, you see.”

“It’s not gone, Mr. Johnny,” was his answer. “For some of our sights, it’ll never go away again. You look well at the right-hand side, sir, and see if you don’t see some’at white there.”

Peering steadily, I thought I did see something white—as of a face above a white garment. But it might have been fancy.

“Us as saw him couldn’t mistake it for fancy,” was Hill’s rejoinder. “There was three on us: me, and Dinah up at Coney’s, and that there imp of a Jim Batley.”

“Some one saw it before you did, Hill. At least he says so. Luke Macintosh. He was scared out of his senses.”

The effect of these words on Hill was such, that I quite believed he was scared out of his. He clasped his hands in wild emotion, and turned up his eyes to give thanks.

“It’s ret’ibution a working its ends, Mr. Ludlow. See it first, did he! And I hope to my heart he’ll see it afore his eyes evermore. If that there Macintosh had not played a false and coward’s game, no harm ’ud ha’ come to Davvy.”

The crowd increased. The Squire and old Coney came up, and told the whole assemblage that they were born idiots. Of course, with nothing to be seen, it looked as though we all were that. In the midst of it, making quietly for the back-door, as though he had come home through Crabb Ravine from Timberdale, I espied Louis Roe. Saying nothing to any one, I went round and told him.

“David Garth’s ghost in the place!” he exclaimed. “Why, it will frighten my wife to death. Of course there’s nothing of the sort; but women are so foolishly timid.”

I said his wife was not there. Roe took a key from his pocket, unlocked the back-door, and went in. He was talking to me, and I stepped over the threshold to the kitchen, into which the door opened. He began feeling on the shelf for matches, and could not find any.

“There’s a box in the bedroom, I know,” he said; and went stumbling upstairs.

Down he came, after a minute or so, with the matches, struck one, and lighted a candle. Opening the front door, he showed himself, explained that he had just come home, and complained of the commotion.

“There’s no such thing in this lower world as ghosts,” said Roe.“Whoever pretends to see them must be either drunk or mad. As to this house—well, some of you had better walk in and re-assure yourselves. You are welcome.”

He was taken at his word. A few came in, and went looking about for the ghost, upstairs and down. Writing about it now, it seems to have been the most ridiculous thing in the world. Nothing was to be found. The narrow passage above, where David had stood, was empty. “As if supernatural visitants waited while you looked for them!” cried the superstitious crowd outside.

It is easier to raise a disturbance of this kind than to allay it, and the ghost-seers stayed on. The heavy cloud in the heavens rolled away by-and-by; and the moon came out, and shone on the casement again. But neither David Garth nor anything else was then to be seen there.

The night’s commotion passed away, but not the rumours. That David Garth’s spirit could not rest, but came back to trouble the earth, especially that spot known as Willow Cottage, was accepted as a fact. People would go stealing up there at night, three or four of them arm-in-arm, and stand staring at the casement, and walk round the cottage. Nothing more was to be seen—perhaps because there was no moon to light up the window. Harriet Roe was at home again with her husband; but she did not go abroad much: and her face seemed to wear a sort of uneasy terror. “The fear of seeing him is wearing her heart out; why does Roe stop in the place?” said North Crabb: and though Harriet had never been much of a favourite, she had plenty of sympathy now.

It soon came to be known in a gradual sort of way that a visitor was staying at Willow Cottage. A young woman fashionably dressed, who was called Mrs. James; and who was said to be the wife of James Roe, Louis Roe’s elder brother. Some people declared that a man was also there: they had seen one. Harriet denied it. An acquaintance of her husband’s, a Mr. Duffy, had been over to see them from Birmingham, she said, but he went back again. She was not believed.

What with the ghost, and what with the mystery attaching to its inhabitants, Willow Cottage was a great card just then. If you ask me to explain what mystery there could be, I cannot do so: all I know is, an idea that there was something of the kind, apart from David, dawned upon many minds in North Crabb. Miss Timmens spoke it openly. She did not like Harriet’s looks, and said that something or other was killing her. And Susan Timmens considered it her duty to try and come to the bottom of it.

At all sorts of hours, seasonable and unseasonable, Miss Timmens presented herself at Willow Cottage. Rarely alone. Sometimes Mrs. Hill would be with her; or it would be Maria Lease; or one of the Batley girls; and once it was young Jim. Louis Roe grew to feel annoyed at this; he told Harriet he would not have confounded people coming there, prying; and he closed the door against them. So, the next time Miss Timmens went, she found the door bolted in the most inhospitable manner. Harriet threw open the parlour window to speak to her.

“Louis says he won’t have any more visitors calling here just now; not even you, Aunt Susan.”

“What does he say that for?” snapped Miss Timmens.

“We came down here to be quiet: he has some accounts to goover, and can’t be disturbed at them. So perhaps you’ll stay away, Aunt Susan. I’ll come to the school-house sometimes instead.”

It was the dusk of the evenings but Miss Timmens could see the fearful look of illness on Harriet’s face. She was also trembling.

“Harriet, what’s the matter with you?” she asked, in a kinder tone.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Why, you look as ill as you can look. You are trembling all over.”

“It’s true I don’t feel very well this evening, aunt, but I think it is nothing. I often feel as if I had a touch of ague.”

Miss Timmens bent her face nearer; it had a strange concern in it. “Harriet, look here. There’s some mystery about this place; won’t you tell me what it is? I—seem—to—be—afraid—for—you,”she concluded, in a slow and scarcely audible whisper.

For answer, Miss Timmens found the window slammed down in her face. An impression arose—she hardly knew whence gathered, or whether it had any foundation—that it was not Harriet who had slammed it, but some one concealed behind the curtain.

“Well I’m sure!” cried she. “It might have taken my nose off.”

“It was so cold, aunt!” Harriet called out apologetically through the glass. “Good night.”

Miss Timmens walked off in dudgeon. Revolving matters along the broad field-path, she liked their appearance less and less. Harriet was looking as ill as possible: and what meant that trembling? Was it caused by sickness of body, or terror of mind? Mrs. Hill, when consulted, summed it up comprehensively: “It is David about the place: that’s killing her.”

Harriet Roe did not make her appearance at the school-house, and the next day but one Miss Timmens went up again. The door was bolted. Miss Timmens knocked, but received no answer. Not choosing to be treated in that way she made so much noise, first at the door and then at the window, that the former was at length unclosed by Mrs. James, in list shoes and a dressing-gown, as if her toilette had been delayed that day. The chain was kept up—a new chain that Miss Timmens had not seen before—and she could not enter.

“I want to see Harriet, Mrs. James.”

“Harriet’s gone,” replied Mrs. James.

“Gone! Gone where?”

“To London. She went off there yesterday morning.”

Miss Timmens felt, as she would have said, struck into herself. An idea flashed over her that the words had not a syllable of truth in them.

“What did she go to London for?”

Mrs. James glanced over her two shoulders, seemingly in terror herself, and sunk her voice to a whisper. “She had grown afraid of the place, this dark winter weather. Miss Timmens—it’s as true as you’re there—nothing would persuade her out of the fancy that she was always seeing David Garth. He used to stand in a sheet at the end of the upstairs passage and look at her. Leastways, she said so.”

This nearly did for Miss Timmens. It might be true; and she could not confute it. “Do you see him, Mrs. James?”

“Well, no; I never have. Goodness knows, I don’t want to.”

“But Harriet was not well enough to take a long journey,” contended Miss Timmens. “She never could have undertaken one in her state of health.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘state,’ Miss Timmens. She would shake a bit at times; but we saw nothing else the matter with her. Perhaps you would shake if you had an apparition in the house. Any way, well or ill, she went off to London. Louis took her as far as the station and saw her away.”

“Will you give me her address? I should like to write to her.”

Mrs. James said she could not give the address, because she did not know it. Nothing more was to be got out of her, and Miss Timmens reluctantly departed.

“I should hope they’ve not murdered her—and are concealing her in the house as Hill concealed David,” was the comment she gave vent to in her perplexity and wrath.

From that time, nothing could be heard of Harriet Roe. A week went on; nearly two weeks; but she never was seen, and no tidings came of her. So far as could be ascertained, she had not gone away by train: neither station-master nor porter remembered to have seen her. Miss Timmens grew as thin as a ghost herself: the subject worried her night and day. That some ill had happened to Harriet; or been done to her, she did not doubt. Once or twice she managed to see Roe; once or twice she saw Mrs. James: speaking to them at the door with the chain up. Roe said he heard from his wife nearly every other day; but he would not show the letters, or give the address: a conclusive proof to the mind of Miss Timmens that neither had any existence. What had they done with Harriet? Miss Timmens could not have been in much worse mental trouble had she herself made away with her.

One morning the postman delivered a letter at the school-house. It bore the London post-mark, and purported to be from Harriet. A few lines only—saying she was well and enjoying herself, and should come back sometime—the writing shaky and blotted, andbearing but a slight resemblance to hers. Miss Timmens dashed it on the table.

“The fools, to think they can deceive me this way! That’s no more Harriet’s writing than it is mine.”

But Miss Timmens’s passion soon subsided into a grave, settled, awful dread. For she saw that this had been written to delude her into the belief that Harriet was in health and life—when she might be in neither one nor the other. She brought the letter to Crabb Cot. She took it round the parish. She went with it to the police-station; imparting her views of it to all freely. It was a sham; a blind; a forgery: and where was she to look for poor lost Harriet Roe?

That same evening the ghost appeared again. Miss Timmens and others went up to the cottage, intending to demand an interview with Roe; and they found the house shut up, apparently deserted. Reconnoitring the windows from all points, their dismayed eyes rested on something at the end casement: a thin, shadowy form, robed in white. Every one of them saw it; but, even as they looked, it seemed to vanish away. Yes, there was no question that the house was haunted. Perhaps Harriet had died from fright, as poor David died.

Things could not go on like this for ever. After another day or two of discomfort, Mr. Todhetley, as a county magistrate, incited by the feeling in the parish, issued a private mandate for Roe to appear before him, that he might be questioned as to what had become of his wife. It was not a warrant; but a sort of friendly invitation, that could offend no one. Jiff the policeman was entrusted with the delivery of the message, a verbal one, and I went with him.

As if she had scented our errand for herself, and wanted to make a third in it, who should meet us in the broad path, but Miss Timmens. Willow Cottage might or might not be haunted, but I am sure her legs were: they couldn’t be still.

“What are you doing up here, Jiff?” she tartly asked.

Jiff told her. Squire Todhetley wanted Roe at Crabb Cot.

“It will be of no use, Jiff; the door’s sure to be fast,” groaned Miss Timmens. “My opinion is that Roe has left the place for good.”

Miss Timmens was mistaken. The shutters were open, and the house showed signs of life. Upon knocking at the door—Miss Timmens took off her patten to do it with, and you might have heard the echoes at North Crabb—it was flung wide by Mrs. James.

Mr. Roe? No, Mr. Roe was not at home. Mrs. Roe was.

Mrs. Roe was! “What, Harriet?” cried excited Miss Timmens.

Yes, Harriet. If we liked to walk in and see her, we could do so.

By the kitchen fire, as being biggest and hottest, in a chair stuffed about with blankets, sat Harriet Roe. Worn, white, shadowy, she was evidently just getting over some desperate illness. I stared; the policeman softly whistled; you might have knocked Miss Timmens down with a feather.

“Good patience, child—why, where have you been hiding all this while?” cried she. “And what on earth has been the matter with you?”

“I have been upstairs in my room, Aunt Susan, keeping my bed. As to the illness, it turned out to be ague and low fever.”

“Upstairs where?”

“Here.”

Jiff went out again; there was nothing to stay for. I followed, leaving Miss Timmens and Harriet to have it out together.

She had really been ill in bed all the time, Mrs. James and Roe attending on her. It did not suit them to admit visitors; for James Roe, who had fallen into some difficulty in London, connected with forged bills, was lying concealed at Willow Cottage. That’s why people were kept out. It would not have done by any means for Miss Timmens and her sharp eyes to go upstairs and catch a glimpse of him; so they concocted the tale that Harriet was away. James Roe was safely away now, and Louis with him. Louis had been mixed up in the bill trouble in a lesser degree: but quite enough so to induce him to absent himself from London for a time, and to stay quietly at North Crabb.

“Was it fear or ague that caused you to shake so that last evening I saw you here?” questioned Miss Timmens.

“Ague. I never got out of bed after that night. I could hardly write that letter, aunt, that Louis sent to London to be posted to you.”

“And—did you really see David Garth?”

“No, I never saw him,” said Harriet. “But, after all the reports and talk, I was timid at being in the house alone—James and his wife had not come then—and that’s why I asked you to let me stay at the school-house the night my husband was away.”

“But it was told me that you did see him.”

“I was always frightened for fear I should.”

“It strikes me you have had other causes for fright as well, Harriet,” cried shrewd Miss Timmens.

“Well, you see—this business of James Roe’s has put me about. Every knock that came to the door seemed to me to be somebody coming for him. My husband says the ghost is all rubbish and fancy, Aunt Susan.”

“Rubbish and fancy, does he?”

“He says that when he came in here with Johnny Ludlow, thenight there was that commotion, in going up for some matches, he fell over something at the top of the stairs by the end casement, and flung it behind the rafters. Next day he saw what it was. I had tied a white cloth over a small dwarf mop to sweep the walls with, and must have left it near the window. I remembered that I did leave it there. It no doubt looked in the moonlight just like a white face. And that’s what was taken for David’s ghost.”

Miss Timmens paused, considering matters: she might believe just as much of this as she liked.

“It appeared again at the same place, Harriet, two or three days ago.”

“That was me, aunt. I saw you all looking up, and drew away again for fear you should know me. Mrs. James was making my bed, and I had crawled there.”

There it ended. So far the mystery was over. The explanation was confided to the public, who received it differently. Some accepted the mop version; others clung to the ghost. And Hill never had a penny of his rent. Louis Roe was away; and, as it turned out, did not come back again.

Mrs. James wanted to leave also; and Maria Lease took her place as nurse. Tenderly she did it, too; and Harriet got well. She was going off to join her husband as soon as she could travel: it was said in France. No one knew; unless it was Maria Lease. She and Harriet had become confidential friends.

“Which is the worse fate—yours or mine?” cried Harriet to Maria, half mockingly, half woefully, the day she was packing her trunk. “You have your lonely life, and your never-ending repentance for what you call your harsh sin: I have my sickness and my trouble—and I have enough of that, Maria.” But Maria Lease only shook her head in answer.

“Trouble and repentance are our best lot in this world, Harriet. They come to fit us for heaven.”

But North Crabb, though willingly admitting that Harriet Roe, in marrying, had not entered on a bed of lilies, and might have been happier had she kept single, would not, on the whole, be shaken from its belief that the ghost still haunted the empty cottage. Small parties made shivering pilgrimages up there on a moonlight night, to watch for it, and sometimes declared that it appeared. Fancy goes a long way in this world.

CHAPTER XXI.

SEEING LIFE.

The Clement-Pells lived at Parrifer Hall, and were as grand as all the rest of us put together. After that affair connected with Cathy Reed, and the death of his son, Major Parrifer and his family could not bear to stay in the place. They took a house near London, and Parrifer Hall was advertised to be let. Mr. Clement-Pell came forward, and took it for a term of years.

The Clement-Pells rolled in riches. His was one of those cases of self-made men that have been so common of late years: where an individual, from a humble position, rises by perceptible degrees, until he towers above all, like a Jack sprung out of a box, and is the wonder and envy of the world around. Mr. Clement-Pell was said to have begun life in London as a lawyer. Later, circumstances brought him down to a bustling town in our neighbourhood where he became the manager of a small banking company; and from that time he did nothing but rise. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” says Shakespeare: and this was the tide in Mr. Clement-Pell’s. The small banking company became a great one. Its spare cash helped to make railways, to work mines, and to do all kinds of profitable things. The shareholders flourished; Mr. Clement-Pell was more regarded than a heathen deity. He established a branch at two or three small places; and, amongst them, one at Church Dykely. After that, he took Parrifer Hall. The simple people around could not vie with the grandeur of the Pells, and did not try to do so. The Pells made much of me and Joseph Todhetley—perhaps because there was a dearth of young fellows near—and often asked us to the Hall. Mrs. Pell, a showy, handsome woman, turned up her nose at all but the best families, and would not associate with farmers, however much they might live like gentlefolk. She was decisive in manner, haughty, and ruled the house and everything in it, including her husband, with iron will. In a slight degree she and her children put us in mind of the Parrifers: for they held their heads in the clouds as the Parrifers had done, and the ostentation they displayed was just the least bit vulgar. Mr. Pell was a good-looking,gentlemanlike man, with a pleasant, hearty, straightforward manner that took with every one. He was neither fine nor stuck up: but his wife and daughters were; after the custom of a good many who have shot up into greatness.

And now that’s the introduction to the Clement-Pells. One year they took a furnished house in London, and sent to invite me and Tod up in the summer. It was not very long after we had paid that visit to the Whitneys and Miss Deveen. The invitation was cordially pressed; but Squire Todhetley did not much like our going.

“Look here, you boys,” said he, as we were starting, for the point was yielded, “I’d a great deal rather you were going to stay at home. Don’t you let the young Pells lead you into mischief.”

Tod resented the doubt. “We are not boys, sir.”

“Well, I suppose you’d like to call yourselves young men,” returned the Pater; “you in particular, Joe. But young men have gone up to London before now, and come home with their fingers burnt.”

Tod laughed.

“They have. It is this, Joe: Johnny, listen to me. A young fellow, just launched on the world, turns out very much according to the companions he is thrown amongst and the associations he meets with. I have a notion that the young Pells are wild; fast, as it is called now; so take care of yourselves. And don’t forget that though their purses may be unlimited, yours are not.”

Three footmen came rushing out when the cab stopped at the house in Kensington, and the Pells made much of us. Mr. Pell and the eldest son, James, were at the chief bank in the country; they rarely spared the time to come up; but the rest were in town. Mrs. Pell, the four girls, the two sons, and a new German governess. The house was not as large as Parrifer Hall, and Tod and I had a top room between us, with two beds in it. Fabian Pell held a commission in the army. Augustus was reading for the bar—he was never called at home anything but “Gusty.”

We got there just before dinner, and dressed for it—finding dress was expected. A worn-looking, fashionable man of thirty was in the drawing-room when we went down, the Honourable Mr. Crayton: and Fabian brought in two officers. Mrs. Pell wore blue, with a string of pearls on her neck that were too big to be real: the two girls were in white silk and white shoes. Altogether, considering it was not a state occasion, but a friendly dinner, the dresses looked too fine, more suited to a duke’s table; and I wondered what Mrs. Todhetley would have said to them.

“Will you take Constance in to dinner, Mr. Todhetley?”

Tod took her. She was the second girl: the eldest, Martha Jane, went in with one of the officers. The younger girls, Leonora and Rose, dined in the middle of the day with the governess. Gusty was not there, and Fabian and I went in together.

“Where is he?” I asked of Fabian.

“Gusty? Oh, knocking about somewhere. His getting home to dinner’s always a chance. He has chambers in town.”

Why the idea should have come over me, I know not, unless it was the tone Mrs. Pell spoke in, but it flashed across my mind that she was looking at Tod as a possible husband for her daughter Constance. He was not of an age to marry yet: but some women like to plot and plan these things beforehand. I hated her for it: I did not care that Tod should choose one of the Pells. Gusty made his appearance in the course of the evening; and we fellows went out with him.

The Squire was right: it was fast life at the Pells’, and no mistake. I don’t believe there was a thing that cost money but Fabian and Gusty Pell and Crayton went in for it. Crayton was with them always. He seemed to be the leader: the Pells followed him like sheep; Tod went with them. I sometimes: but they did not always ask me to go. Billiards and cards were the chief amusements; and there’d be theatres and singing-halls. The names of some of the places would have made the Squire’s hair stand on end. One, a sort of private affair, that the Pells and Crayton said it was a favour to gain admittance to, was called“Paradise.” Whether that was only the Pells’ or Crayton’s name for it, we did not hear. And a paradise it was when you were inside, if decorations and mirrors can make one. Men and women in evening dress sang songs in a kind of orchestra; to which you might listen sitting and smoking or lounging about and talking: if you preferred a rubber at whist or a hand at écarté in another room, there you had it. Never a thing was there, apparently, that the Squire could reasonably have grumbled at, except the risk of losing money at cards, and the sense of intoxicating pleasure. But I don’t think it was a good place to go to. The Pells called all this“Seeing Life.”

It would not have done Tod much harm—for he had his head on his shoulders the right way—but for the gambling. It is a strong word to use; but the play grew into nothing less. Had the Squire said to us, Take care you don’t learn to gamble up in London, Tod would have resented it as much as if he had been warned not to go and hang himself, feeling certain that there was no more chance of one than the other. But gambling, like some other things—drinking for instance—steals upon you by degrees, too imperceptibly to alarm you. The Pells and Crayton and otherfellows that they knew went in for cards and billiards wholesale. Tod was asked at first to take a quiet hand with them; or just play for the tables—and he thought no more of complying than if the girls had pressed him to make one at the round game of Old Maid, or to while away a wet afternoon at bagatelle.

There was no regularity in Mrs. Pell’s household: there was no more outward observance of religion than if we’d lived in Heathendom. It was so different from Tod’s last London visit, when he was at the Whitneys’. There you had to be at the breakfast-table to the moment—half-past eight; and to be in at bedtime, unless engaged out with friends. Sir John read a chapter of the Bible morning and night, and then, pushing the spectacles lower on his old red nose, he’d look over them at us and tell us simply to be good boys and girls. Here you might come down at any hour, from nine or ten, to eleven or twelve, and ring for fresh breakfast to be supplied. As to staying out at night, that was quite ad libitum; a man-servant sat up till morning to open the door.

I was initiated less into the card-playing than Tod, and never once was asked to make one at pool, probably because it was taken for granted that I had less money to stake. Which was true. Tod had not much, for the matter of that: and it never struck me to think he was losing wholesale.

I got home one night at twelve, having been dining at Miss Deveen’s and going to a concert with her afterwards. Tod was not in, and I sat up in our room, writing to Mr. Brandon, which I had put off doing until I felt ashamed. Tod came in as I was folding the letter. It was hot weather, and he stretched himself out at the open window.

“Are you going to stop there all night, Tod?” I asked by-and-by.“It’s one o’clock.”

“I may as well stop here, for all the sleep I shall get in bed,”was his answer, as he brought his head in. “I’m in an awful mess, Johnny.”

“What kind of mess?”

“Debt.”

“Debt! What for?”

“Card-playing,” answered Tod, shortly. “And betting at pool.”

“Why do you play?”

“I’ll be shot if I would ever have touched one of their cards, or their billiard balls either, had I known what was to come of it. Let me once get out of this hole, and neither Gusty Pell nor Crayton shall ever draw me in again. I’ll promise them that.”

“How much is it?”

“That I owe? Twenty-five pounds.”

“Twenty-five—what?” I cried, starting up.

“Don’t wake up the next room, Johnny. Twenty-five pounds. And not a stiver in my pocket to go on with. I owe it to Crayton.”

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he told me how the thing had crept upon him. At first they only played for shillings; one night Crayton suddenly changed the stakes to sovereigns. The other fellows playing took it as a matter of course, and Tod did not like to make a fuss, and get up——

“I should, Tod,” I interrupted.

“I dare say you would,” he retorted. “I didn’t. But I honestly told them that if I lost much, my purse would not stand it. Oh that need not trouble you, they said. When we rose, that night, I owed Crayton nineteen pounds.”

“They must be systematic gamblers!”

“No, not that. Gentlemen who play high. Since then I have played, hoping to redeem my losses—they tell me I shall be sure to do it. But the redemption has not come yet, for it is twenty-five pounds now.”

“Tod,” I said, after a pause, “it would about kill the Pater.”

“It would awfully vex him. And that’s what is doing the mischief, you see, Johnny. I can’t write home for the money without telling him what I want it for; he’d never give it me unless I said: and I can’t cut our visit short to the Pells and leave Crayton in debt.”

“But—what’s to be done, Tod?”

“Nothing until I get some luck, and win enough back to pay him.”

“You may get deeper into the mire.”

“Yes—there’s that chance.”

“It will never do to go on playing.”

“Will you tell me what else I am to do? I must continue to play: or pay.”

I couldn’t tell him; I didn’t know. Fifty of the hardest problems in Euclid were nothing to this. Tod sat down in his shirt-sleeves.

“Get one of the Pells to let you have the money, Tod. A loan of twenty or thirty pounds can be nothing to them.”

“It’s no good, Johnny. Gusty is cleaned out. As to Fabian, he never has any spare cash, what with one expensive habit and another. Oh, I shall win it back again: perhaps to-morrow. Luck must turn.”

Tod said no more. But what particularly struck me was this: that, to win money from a guest in that way, and he a young fellow not of age, whose pocket-money they knew to be limited, was not at all consistent with the idea of their being “gentlemen.”

The next evening we were in a well-known billiard-room.Fabian Pell, Crayton, and Tod were at pool. It had been a levee day, or something of that sort, and Fabian was in full regimentals. Tod was losing, as usual. He was no match for those practised players.

“I wish you would get me a glass of water, Johnny,” he said.

So I got it. In turning back after taking the glass from his hand, who should I see on the high bench against the wall, sitting just where I had been sitting a minute before, but my guardian and trustee, Mr. Brandon. Could it be he? Old Brandon in London! and in a billiard-room.

“It is never you, sir! Here!”

“Yes, it is I, Johnny Ludlow,” he said in his squeaky voice. “As to being here, I suppose I have as much right to be here as you have: perhaps rather more. I should like to ask what brings you here.”

“I came in with those three,” I said, pointing towards the board.

He screwed up his little eyes, and looked. “Who are they?” he asked. “Who’s the fellow in scarlet?” For he did not happen to know these two younger Pells by sight.

“That’s Fabian Pell, sir. The one standing with his hands in his pockets, near Joseph Todhetley, is the Honourable Mr. Crayton.”

“Who’s the Honourable Mr. Crayton?”

“I think his father is the Earl of Lackland.”

“Oh, ah; one of Lackland’s sons, is he? There’s six or eight sons, of them, Johnny Ludlow, and not a silver coin amongst the lot. Lackland never had much, but what little it was he lost at horse-racing. The sons live by their wits, I’ve heard: lords’ sons have not much work in them. The Honourable Mr. Crayton, eh! Your two friends had better take care of themselves.”

The thought of how Tod had “taken care” of himself flashed into my mind. I wouldn’t have old Brandon know it for the world.

“I posted a letter to you to-day, sir. I did not know you were from home.”

“What was it about?”

“Nothing particular, sir. Only I had not written since we were in London.”

“How long are you going to stay here, Johnny Ludlow?”

“About another week, I suppose.”

“I mean here. In this disreputable room.”

“Disreputable, sir!”

“Yes, Johnny Ludlow, disreputable. Disreputable for all young men, especially for a very young one like you. I wonder what your father would have said to it!”

“I, at least, sir, am doing no harm in it.”

“Yes, you are, Johnny. You are suffering your eyes and mindto grow familiar with these things. So, their game is over, is it!”

I turned round. They had finished, and were leaving. In looking for me, Tod saw Mr. Brandon. He came up to shake hands with him, and told me they were going.

“Come in and see me to-morrow morning, Johnny Ludlow,” said Mr. Brandon, in a tone of command. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Yes, sir. Where are you staying?”

“The Tavistock; Covent Garden.”

“Johnny, what the mischief brings him here?” whispered Tod, as we went downstairs.

“I don’t know. I thought it must be his ghost at first.”

From the billiard-rooms we went on to Gusty’s chambers, and found him at home with some friends. He served out wine, with cold brandy-and-water for Crayton—who despised anything less. They sat down to cards—loo. Tod did not play. Complaining of a racking headache, he sat apart in a corner. I stood in another, for all the chairs were occupied. Altogether the party seemed to want life, and broke up soon.

“Was it an excuse to avoid playing, Tod?” I asked, as we walked home.

“Was what an excuse?”

“Your headache.”

“If your head were beating as mine is, Johnny, you wouldn’t call it an excuse. You’ll be a muff to the end of your days.”

“Well, I thought it might be that.”

“Did you! If I made up my mind not to play, I should tell it out straightforwardly: not put forth any shuffling ‘excuse.’”

“Any way, a headache’s better than losing your money.”

“Don’t bother.”

I got to the Tavistock at five minutes past eleven, and found Mr. Brandon reading the Times. He looked at me over the top of it, as if he were surprised.

“So you have come, Mr. Johnny!”

“Yes, sir. I turned up the wrong street and missed my way: it has made me a little late.”

“Oh, that’s the reason, is it,” said Mr. Brandon. “I thought perhaps a young man, who has been initiated into the ways of London life, might no longer consider it necessary to attend to the requests of his elders.”

“But would you think that of me, sir?”

Mr. Brandon put the newspaper on the table with a dash, and burst out with as much feeling as his weak voice would allow him.

“Johnny Ludlow, I’d rather have seen you come to sweep a crossing in this vile town, than to frequent one of its public billiard-rooms!”

“But I don’t frequent them, Mr. Brandon.”

“How many times have you been in?”

“Twice in the one where you saw me: once in another. Three times in all.”

“That’s three times too much. Have you played?”

“No, sir; there’s never any room for me.”

“Do you bet?”

“Oh no.”

“What do you go for, then?”

“I’ve only gone in with the others when I have been out with them.”

“Pell’s sons and the Honourable Mr. Crayton. Rather ostentatious of you, Johnny Ludlow, to hasten to tell me he was the‘Honourable.’”

My face flushed. I had not said it in that light.

“One day at Pershore Fair, in a booth, the clown jumped on to the boards and introduced himself,” continued Mr. Brandon:“‘I’m the clown, ladies and gentlemen,’ said he. That’s the Honourable Mr. Crayton, say you.—And so you have gone in with Mr. Crayton and the Pells!”

“And with Joseph Todhetley.”

“Ay. And perhaps London will do him more harm than it will you; you’re not much better than a boy yet, hardly up to bad things. I wonder what possessed Joe’s father to let you two come up to stay with the Pells! I should have been above it in his place.”

“Above it? Why, Mr. Brandon, they live in ten times the style we do.”

“And spend twenty times as much over it. Who was thinking about style or cost, Mr. Johnny? Don’t you mistake Richard for Robert.”

He gave a flick to the newspaper, and stared me full in the face. I did not venture to speak.

“Johnny Ludlow, I don’t like your having been initiated into the iniquities of fast life—as met with in billiard-rooms, and similar places.”

“I have got no harm from them, sir.”

“Perhaps not. But you might have got it.”

I supposed I might: and thought of Tod and his losings.

“You have good principles, Johnny Ludlow, and you’ve a bit of sense in your head; and you have been taught to know that this world is not the end of things. Temptation is bad for the best, though. When I saw you in that place last night, looking on with eager eyes at the balls, listening to the betting, I wished I had never let your father make me your guardian.”

“I did not know my eyes or ears were so eager, sir. I don’t think they were.”

“Nonsense, boy: that goes as a matter of course. You have heard of gambling hells?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, a public billiard-room is not many degrees better. It is crowded with adventurers who live by their wits. Your needy‘honourables,’ who’ve not a sixpence of their own in their purses, and your low-lived blackguards, who have sprung from the scum of the population, are equally at home there. These men, the lord’s son and the blackguard, must each make a living: whether by turf-betting, or dice, or cards, or pool—they must do it somehow. Is it a nice thing, pray, for you honest young fellows to frequent places where you must be their boon companions?”

“No, I don’t think it is.”

“Good, Johnny. Don’t you go into one again—and keep young Todhetley out if you can. It is no place, I say, for an honest man and a gentleman: you can’t touch pitch and not be defiled; neither can a youngster frequent these billiard-rooms and the company he meets in them, and come away unscathed. His name will get a mark against it. That’s not the worst: his soul may get a mark upon it; and never be able to throw it off again during life. You turn mountebank, and dance at wakes, Johnny, rather than turn public billiard player. There’s many an honest mountebank, dancing for the daily crust he puts into his mouth: I don’t believe you’d find one honest man amongst billiard sharpers.”

He dropped the paper in his heat. I picked it up.

“And that’s only one phase of their fast life, these billiard-rooms,”he continued. “There are other things: singing-halls, and cider cellars—and all sorts of places. You steer clear of the lot, Johnny. And warn Todhetley. He wants warning perhaps more than you do.”

“Tod has caught no harm, I think, except——”

“Except what?” asked he sharply, as I paused.

“Except that I suppose it costs him money, sir.”

“Just so. A good thing too. If these seductions (as young fools call them) could be had without money, the world would soon be turned upside down. But as to harm, Johnny, once a young fellow gets to feel at home in these places, I don’t care how short his experience may be, he loses his self-respect. He does; and it takes time to get it back again. You and Joe had not been gone five minutes last night, with your ‘Honourable’ and the other fellowin scarlet, when there was a row in the room. Two men quarrelled about a bet; sides were taken by the spectators, and it came to blows. I have heard some reprobate language in my day, Johnny Ludlow, but I never heard such as I heard then. Had you been there, I’d have taken you by the back of the neck and pitched you out of the window, before your ears should have been tainted with it.”

“Did you go to the billiard-room, expecting to see me there, Mr. Brandon?” I asked. And the question put his temper up.

“Go to the billiard-room, expecting to see you there, Johnny Ludlow!” he retorted, his voice a small shrill pipe. “How dare you ask it? I’d as soon have expected to see the Bishop of London there, as you. I can tell you what, young man: had I known you were going to these places, I should pretty soon have stopped it. Yes, sir: you are not out of my hands yet. If I could not stop you personally, I’d stop every penny of your pocket-money.”

“We couldn’t think—I and Tod—what else you had gone for sir,” said I, in apology for having put the question.

“I don’t suppose you could. I have a graceless relative, Johnny Ludlow; a sister’s son. He is going to the bad, fast, and she got me to come up and see what he was after. I could not find him; I have not found him yet; but I was told that he frequented those rooms, and I went there on speculation. Now you know. He came up to London nine months ago as pure-hearted a young fellow as you are: bad companions laid hold of him, and are doing their best to ruin him. I should not like to see you on the downward road, Johnny; and you shan’t enter on it if I can put a spoke in the wheel. Your father was my good friend.”

“There is no fear for me, Mr. Brandon.”

“Well, Johnny, I hope not. You be cautious, and come and dine with me this evening. And now will you promise me one thing: if you get into any trouble or difficulty at any time, whether it’s a money trouble, or what not, you come to me with it. Do you hear?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know any one I would rather take it to.”

“I do not expect you to get into one willingly, mind. That’s not what I mean: but sometimes we fall into pits through other people. If ever you do, though it were years to come, bring the trouble to me.”

And I promised, and went, according to the invitation, to dine with him in the evening. He had found his nephew: a plain young medical student, with a thin voice like himself. Mr. Brandon dined off boiled scrag of mutton; I and the nephew had soup and fish and fowl and plum pudding.

After that evening I did not see anything more of old Brandon.Upon calling at the Tavistock they said he had left for the rest of the week, but would be back on the following Monday.

And it was on the following Monday that Tod’s affairs came to a climax.

We had had a regal entertainment. Fit for regal personages—as it seemed to us simple country people, inexperienced in London dinner giving. Mrs. Pell headed her table in green gauze, gold beetles in her hair, and a feathered-fan dangling. Mr. Pell, who had come to town for the party, faced her; the two girls, the two sons, and the guests were dispersed on either side. Eighteen of us in all. Crayton was there as large as life, and of the other people I did not know all the names. The dinner was given for some great gun who had to do with railway companies. He kept it waiting twenty minutes, and then loomed in with a glistening bald head, and a yellow rose in his coat: his wife, a very little woman in pink, on his arm.

“I saw your father yesterday,” called out Pell down the table to Tod. “He said he was glad to hear you were enjoying yourselves.”

“Ah—yes—thank you,” replied Tod, in a hesitating sort of way. I don’t know what he was thinking of; but it flashed into my mind that the Squire would have been anything but “glad,” had he known about the cards, and the billiards, and the twenty-five-pound debt.

Dinner came to an end at last, and we found a few evening guests in the drawing-room—mostly young ladies. Some of the dinner people went away. The railway man sat whispering with Pell in a corner: his wife nodded asleep, and woke up to talk by fits and starts. The youngest girl, Rose, who was in the drawing-room with Leonora and the governess, ran up to me.

“Please let me be your partner, Mr. Ludlow! They are going to dance a quadrille in the back drawing-room.”

So I took her, and we had the quadrille. Then another, that I danced with Constance. Tod was not to be seen anywhere.

“I wonder what has become of Todhetley?”

“He has gone out with Gusty and Mr. Crayton, I think,” answered Constance. “It is too bad of them.”

By one o’clock all the people had left; the girls and Mrs. Pell said good night and disappeared. In going up to bed, I met one of the servants.

“Do you know what time Mr. Todhetley went out, Richard?”

“Mr. Todhetley, sir? He has not gone out. He is in thesmoking-room with Mr. Augustus and Mr. Crayton. I’ve just taken up some soda-water.”

I went on to the smoking-room: a small den, built out on the leads of the second floor, that no one presumed to enter except Gusty and Fabian. The cards lay on the table in a heap, and the three round it were talking hotly. I could see there had been a quarrel. Some stranger had come in, and was standing with his back to the mantel-piece. They called him Temply; a friend of Crayton’s. Temply was speaking as I opened the door.

“It is clearly a case of obligation to go on; of honour. No good in trying to shirk it, Todhetley.”

“I will not go on,” said Tod, as he tossed back his hair from his hot brow with a desperate hand. “If you increase the stakes without my consent, I have a right to refuse to continue playing. As to honour; I know what that is as well as any one here.”

They saw me then: and none of them looked too well pleased. Gusty asked me what I wanted; but he spoke quite civilly.

“I came to see after you all. Richard said you were here.”

What they had been playing at, I don’t know: whether whist, écarté, loo, or what. Tod, as usual, had been losing frightfully: I could see that. Gusty was smoking; Crayton, cool as a cucumber, drank hard at brandy-and-soda. If that man had swallowed a barrel of cognac, he would never have shown it. Temply and Crayton stared at me rudely. Perhaps they thought I minded it.

“I wouldn’t play again to-night, were I you,” I said aloud to Tod.

“No, I won’t; there,” he cried, giving the cards an angry push.“I am sick of the things—and tired to death. Good night to you all.”

Crayton swiftly put his back against the door, barring Tod’s exit. “You cannot leave before the game’s finished, Todhetley.”

“We had not begun the game,” rejoined Tod. “You stopped it by trebling the stakes. I tell you, Crayton, I’ll not play again to-night.”

“Then perhaps you’ll pay me your losses.”

“How much are they?” asked Tod, biting his lips.

“To-night?—or in all, do you mean?”

“Oh, let us have it all,” was Tod’s answer; and I saw that he had great difficulty in suppressing his passion. All of them, except Crayton, seemed tolerably heated. “You know that I have not the ready-money to pay you; you’ve known that all along: but it’s as well to ascertain how we stand.”

Crayton had been coolly turning over the leaves of a note-case, adding up some figures there, below his breath.

“Eighty-five before, and seven to-night makes just ninety-two. Ninety-two pounds, Todhetley.”

I sprang up from the chair in terror. It was as if some blast had swept over me, “Ninety-two pounds! Tod! do you owethat?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Ninety-two pounds! It cannot be. Why, it is close upon a hundred!” Crayton laughed at my consternation, and Temply stared.

“If you’ll go on playing, you may redeem some of it, Todhetley,”said Crayton. “Come, sit down.”

“I will not touch another card to-night,” said he, doggedly. “I have said it: and I am not one to break my word: as Johnny Ludlow here can testify to. I don’t know that I shall play again after to-night.”

Crayton was offended. Cool though he was, I think he was somewhat the worse for what he had taken—perhaps they all were.“Then you’ll make arrangements for paying your debts,” said he, in scornful tones.

“Yes, I’ll do that,” answered Tod. And he got away. So did I, after a minute or two: Gusty kept me, talking.

In passing upstairs, for we slept on the third floor, Mr. Pell came suddenly out of a room on the left; a candle in one hand and some papers in the other, and a look on his face as of some great trouble.

“What! are you young men not in bed yet?” he exclaimed. “It is late.”

“We are going up now. Is anything the matter, sir?” I could not help asking.

“The matter?” he repeated.

“I thought you looked worried.”

“I am worried with work,” he said, laughing slightly. “While others take their rest, I have to be up at my books and letters. Great wealth brings great care with it, Johnny Ludlow, and hard work as well. Good night, my lad.”

Tod was pacing the room with his hands in his pockets. It was a terrible position for him to be in. Owing a hundred pounds—to put it in round numbers—for a debt of honour. No means of his own, not daring to tell his father. I mounted on the iron rail of my little bed opposite the window, and looked at him.

“Tod, what is to be done?”

“For two pins I’d go and enlist in some African regiment,”growled he. “Once over the seas, I should be lost to the world here, and my shame with me.”

“Shame!”

“Well, and it is shame. An ordinary debt that you can’t pay is bad enough; but a debt of honour——”

He stopped, and caught his breath with a sort of sob—as if there were no word strong enough to express the sense of shame.

“It will never do to tell the Pater.”

“Tell him!” he exclaimed sharply. “Johnny, I’d cut off my right hand—I’d fling myself into the Thames, rather than bring such a blow on him.”

“Well, and so I think would I.”

“It would kill him as sure as we are here, Johnny. He would look upon it that I have become a confirmed gambler, and I believe the shock and grief would be such that he’d die of it. No: I have not been so particularly dutiful a son, that I should bring that upon him.”

I balanced myself on the bed-rail. Tod paced the carpet slowly.

“No, never,” he repeated, as if there had not been any pause.“I would rather die myself.”

“But what is to be done?”

“Heaven knows! I wish the Pells had been far enough before they had invited us up.”

“I wish you had never consented to play with the lot at all, Tod. You might have stood out from the first.”

“Ay. But one glides into these things unconsciously. Johnny, I begin to think Crayton is just a gambler, playing to win, and nothing better.”

“Playing for his bread. That is, for the things that constitute it. His drink, and his smoke, and his lodgings, and his boots, and his rings. Old Brandon said it. As to his dinners, he generally gets them at friends’ houses.”

“Old Brandon said it, did he?”

“Why, I told you so the same day. And you bade me shut up.”

“Do you know what they want me to do, Johnny? To sign a post-obit bond for two hundred, or so, to be paid after my father’s death. It’s true. Crayton will let me off then.”

“And will you do it?” I cried, feeling that my eyes blazed as I leaped down.

“No, I won’t: and I told them so to-night. That’s what the quarrel was about. ‘Every young fellow does it whose father lives too long and keeps him out of his property,’ said that Temply. ‘Maybe so; I won’t,’ I answered. Neither will I. I’d rather break stones on the road than speculate upon the good Pater’s death, or anticipate his money in that manner to hide my sins.”

“Gusty Pell ought to help you.”

“Gusty says he can’t. Fabian, I believe, really can’t; he is indifficulties of his own: and sometimes, Johnny, I fancy Gus is. Crayton fleeces them both, unless I am mistaken. Yes, he’s a sharper; I see through him now. I want him to take my I O U to pay him as soon as I can, and he knows I would do it, but he won’t do that. There’s two o’clock.”

It was of no use sitting up, and I began to undress. The question reiterated itself again and again—what was to be done? I lay awake all night thinking, vainly wishing I was of age. Fanciful thoughts crossed my mind: of appealing to rich old Pell, and asking him to lend the money, not betraying Gusty and the rest by saying what it was wanted for; of carrying the story to Miss Deveen, and asking her; and lastly, of going to old Brandon, and getting him to help. I grew to think that I would do this, however much I disliked it, and try Brandon; that it lay in my duty to do so.

Worn and haggard enough looked Tod the next morning. He had sat up nearly all night. When breakfast was over, I started for the Tavistock, whispering a word to Tod first.

“Avoid the lot to-day, Tod. I’ll try and help you out of the mess.”

He burst out laughing in the midst of his perplexity. “You, Johnny! what next?”

“Remember the fable of the lion and the mouse.”

“But you can never be the mouse in this, you mite of a boy! Thank you all the same, Johnny: you mean it well.”

“Can I see Mr. Brandon?” I asked at the hotel, of a strange waiter.

“Mr. Brandon, sir? He is not staying here.”

“Not staying here!”

“No, sir, he left some days ago.”

“But I thought he was coming back again.”

“So I believe he is, sir. But he has not come yet.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“At Brighton, sir.”

It was about as complete a floorer as I ever wished to get. All the way along, I had been planning which way to break it to him. I turned from the door, whistling and thinking. Should I go after him to Brighton? I had the money, and the time, why should I not do so? Heaven alone knew how much depended upon Tod’s being released from trouble; Heaven alone knew what desperate course he might take in his shame, if not released from it.

Dropping a note to Tod, saying I should be out for the day, and getting a porter to take it up, I made the best of my way to the nearest Brighton station, and found a train just starting. Brighton was a large place, and they could not tell me at the Tavistock what hotel Mr. Brandon was staying at; except that one of the waiters“thought” it might be the Old Ship. And that’s where I first went, on arrival.

No. No one of the name of Brandon was at the Old Ship. So there I was, like an owl in a desert, wondering where to go next.

And how many hotels and inns I tried before I found him, it would be impossible to remember now. One of the last was up Kemp Town way—the Royal Crescent Hotel.

“Is Mr. Brandon staying here?”

“Mr. Brandon of Warwickshire? Yes, sir.”

It was so very unexpected an answer after all the failures, that I hardly believed my own ears. Mr. Brandon was not well, the waiter added: suffering from cold and sore throat—but he supposed I could see him. I answered that I must see him; I had come all the way from London on purpose.

Old Brandon was sitting in a long room, with a bow-window looking out on the sea; some broth at his elbow, and a yellow silk handkerchief resting cornerwise on his head.

“Mr. Ludlow, sir,” said the waiter. And he dropped the spoon into the broth, and stared at me as if I were an escaped lunatic.

“Why!—you! What on earth brings you here, Johnny Ludlow?”

To tell him what, was the hardest task I’d ever had in my life. And I did it badly. Sipping spoonfuls of broth and looking hard at me whilst he listened, did not help the process. I don’t know how I got it out, or how confused was the way I told him that I wanted a hundred pounds of my own money.

“A hundred pounds, eh?” said he. “You are a nice gentleman, Johnny Ludlow!”

“I am very sorry, sir, to have to ask it. The need is very urgent, or I should not do so.”

“What’s it for?” questioned he.

“I—it is to pay a debt, sir,” I answered, feeling my face flush hot.

“Whose debt?”

By the way he looked at me, I could see that he knew as plainly as though I had told him, that it was not my debt. And yet—but for letting him think it was mine, he might turn a deaf ear to me. Old Brandon finished up his broth, and put the basin down.

“You are a clever fellow, Johnny Ludlow, but not quite clever enough to deceive me. You’d no more get into such debt yourself, than I should. I have a better opinion of you than that. Who has sent you here?”

“Indeed, sir, I came of my own free will. No one knows, even,that I have come. Mr. Brandon, I hope you will help me: it is almost a matter of life or death.”

“You are wasting words and time, Johnny Ludlow.”

And I felt I was. Felt it hopelessly.

“There’s an old saying, and a very good one, Johnny—Tell the whole truth to your lawyer and doctor. I am neither a lawyer nor a doctor: but I promise you this much, that unless you tell me the truth of the matter, every word of it, and explain your request fully and clearly, you may go marching back to London.”

There was no help for it. I spoke a few words, and they were quite enough. He seemed to grasp the situation as by magic, and turned me, as may be said, inside out. In five minutes he knew by heart as much of it as I did.

“So!” said he, in his squeaky voice—ten times more squeaky when he was vexed. “Good! A nice nest you have got amongst. Want him to give post-obit bonds, do they! Which is Todhetley—a knave or a fool?”

“He has refused to give the bonds, I said, sir.”

“Bonds, who’s talking of bonds?” he retorted. “For playing,I mean. He must have been either a knave or a fool, to play till he owed a hundred pounds when he knew he had not the means to pay.”

“But I have explained how it was, sir. He lost, and then played on, hoping to redeem his losses. I think Crayton had him fast, and would not let him escape.”

“Ay. Got him, and kept him. That’s your grand friend, the Honourable, Johnny Ludlow. There: give me the newspaper.”

“But you will let me have the money, sir?”

“Not if I know it.”

It was a woeful check. I set on and begged as if I had been begging for life: saying I hardly knew what. That it might save Tod from a downhill course—and spare grief to the poor old Squire—and pain to me. Pain that would lie on my mind always, knowing that I possessed the money, yet might not use it to save him.

“It’s of no use, Johnny. I have been a faithful guardian to you, and done well by your property. Could your dead father look back on this world and see the income you’ll come into when you are of age, he would know I speak the truth. You cannot suppose I should waste any portion of it, I don’t care how slight a one, in paying young men’s wicked gambling debts.”

I prayed him still. I asked him to put himself in my place and see if he would not feel as I felt. I said that I should never—as I truly believed—have an opportunity of spending money that would give me half the pleasure of this, or do half the good. Besides,it was only a loan: Tod was sure to repay it when he could. No: old Brandon was hard as flint. He got up and rang the bell.

“We’ll drop it, Johnny. What will you take? Have you had anything since breakfast?”

“No, sir. But I don’t want anything.”

“Bring up dinner for this young gentleman,” he said, when the waiter appeared. “Anything you have that’s good. And be quick about it, please.”

They brought up a hastily prepared dinner: and very good it was. But I could scarcely eat for sorrow. Old Brandon, nursing himself at the opposite end of the table, the yellow handkerchief on his head, looked at me all the while.

“Johnny Ludlow, do you know what I think—that you’d give away your head if it were loose. It’s a good thing you have me to take care of you.”

“No, sir, I should not. If you would let me have this hundred pounds—it is really only ninety-two, though—I would repay it with two hundred when I came of age.”

“Like the simpleton you are.”

“I think I would give half my money, Mr. Brandon, to serve Todhetley in this strait. We are as brothers.”

“No doubt you would: but you’ve not got it to give, Johnny. You can let him fight his own battles.”

“And I would if he were able to fight them: but he is not able; it’s an exceptional case. I must go back to London, and try there.”

Old Brandon opened his eyes. “How?”

“I think perhaps Miss Deveen would let me have the money. She is rich and generous—and I will tell her the whole truth. It is a turning-point in Todhetley’s life, sir: help would save him.”

“How do you know but he’d return to the mire? Let him have this money, and he might go on gambling and lose another hundred. Perhaps hundreds at the back of it.”

“No, sir, that he never would. He may go deeper into the mire if he does not get it. Enlist, or something.”

“Are you going already, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir. I must catch the next train, and it’s a good way to the station.”

“You can take a fly. Wait a few minutes.”

He went into his bedroom, on the same floor. When he came back, he held a piece of paper in his hand.

“There, Johnny. But it is my loan; not yours.”

It was a cheque for a hundred pounds. He had listened, afterall! The surprise was so great that I am afraid my eyes were dim.

“The loan is mine, Johnny,” he repeated. “I am not going to risk your money, and prove myself a false trustee. When Todhetley can repay it, it will be to me, not to you. But now—understand: unless he gives you a solemn promise never to play with that‘Honourable’ again, or with either of the Pells, you will not use the cheque, but return it to me.”

“Oh, Mr. Brandon, there will be no difficulty. He only wants to be quit of them.”

“Get his promise, I say. If he gives it, present this cheque at Robarts’s in Lombard Street to-morrow, and they’ll pay you the money over the counter.”

“It is made out to my order!” I said, looking at the cheque:“not to Crayton!”

“To Crayton!” retorted Mr. Brandon. “I wouldn’t let a cheque of mine, uncrossed, fall into his hands. He might add an ought or two to the figures. I drew it out for an even hundred, you see: the odd money may be wanted. You’ll have to sign your name at the back: do it at the bank. And now, do you know why I have let you have this?”

I looked at him in doubt.

“Because you have obeyed the injunctions I gave you—to bring any difficulty you might have to me. I certainly never expected it so soon, or that it would take this form. Don’t you get tumbling into another. Let people take care of themselves. There: put it into your breast-pocket, and be off.”

I don’t know how I got back to town. There was no accident, and we were not pitched into next week. If we had been, I’m not sure that I should have minded it; for that cheque in my pocket seemed a panacea for all human ills. The Pells were at dinner when I entered: and Tod was lying outside his bed, with one of his torturing headaches. He did not often have them: which was a good thing, for they were rattlers. Taking his hand from his head, he glanced at me.

“Where have you been all day, Johnny?” he asked, hardly able to speak. “That was a short note of yours.”

“I’ve been to Brighton.”

Tod opened his eyes again with surprise. He did not believe it.

“Why don’t you say Bagdad, at once? Keep your counsel, if you choose, lad. I’m too ill to get it out of you.”

“But I don’t want to keep it: and I have been to Brighton. Had dinner there, too. Tod, old fellow, the mouse has done his work. Here’s a cheque for you for a hundred pounds.”

He looked at it as I held it out to him, saw it was true, and thensprang off the bed. I had seen glad emotion in my life, even at that early period of it, but hardly such as Tod’s then. Never a word spoke he.

“It is lent by Mr. Brandon to you, Tod. He bade me say it. I could not get any of mine out of him. The only condition is—that, before I cash it, you shall promise not to play again with Crayton or the Pells.”

“I’ll promise it now. Glad to do it. Long live old Brandon! Johnny, my good brother, I’m too ill to thank you—my temples seem as if they were being split with a sledge-hammer—but you havesaved me.”

I was at Robarts’s when it opened in the morning. And signed my name at the back of the cheque, and got the money. Fancy mehaving a hundred pounds paid to me in notes and gold! The Squire would have thought the world was coming to an end.

CHAPTER XXII.

OUR STRIKE.

It was September, and they were moving to Crabb Cot for a week or two’s shooting. The shooting was not bad about there, and the Squire liked a turn with his gun yet. Being close on the Michaelmas holidays, Tod and I were with them.

When the stay was going to be short, the carriages did not come over from Dyke Manor. On arriving at South Crabb station, there was a fly waiting. It would not take us all. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, the two children, and Hannah got into it, and some of the luggage was put on the top.

“You two boys can walk,” said the Pater. “It will stretch your legs.”

And a great deal rather walk, too, than be boxed up in a crawling fly!

We took the way through Crabb Lane: the longest but merriest, for it was always lively with noise and dirt. Reports had gone abroad long before that Crabb Lane was “out on strike:” Tod and I thought we would take a look at it in this new aspect.

There were some great works in the vicinity—I need not state here their exact speciality—and the men employed at them chiefly inhabited Crabb Lane. It was setting-up these works that caused the crowded dwellings in Crabb Lane to be built—for where a number of workmen congregate together, habitations must of necessity follow.

You have heard of Crabb Lane before—in connection with what I once told you about Harry Lease the pointsman. It was a dingy, over-populated, bustling place, prosperous on the whole, its inhabitants as a rule well-to-do. A strike was quite a new feature, bringing to most of them a fresh experience in life. England had strikes in those past days, but they were not common.

Crabb Lane during working hours had hitherto been given over to the children, who danced in the gutters and cried and screamed themselves hoarse. Women also would be out of doors, idling away their time in gossip, or else calling across to each other from the windows. But now, as I and Tod went down it, things looked different. Instead of women and children, men were there. Every individual man, I believe, out of every house the lane contained; for there appeared to be shoals of them. They lounged idly against the walls, or stood about in groups. Some with pipes, some without; some laughing and jeering, apparently in the highest spirits, as if they had climbed the tree of fortune; some silent and anxious-looking.

“Well, Hoar, how are you?”

It was Tod who spoke. The man he addressed, Jacob Hoar, was one of the best of the workmen: a sober, steady, honest fellow, with a big frame and a resolute face. He had the character of being fierce in temper, sometimes savage with his fellow-men, if put out. Alfred Hoar—made pointsman at the station in poor Harry Lease’s place—was his brother.

Hoar did not answer Tod at all. He was standing quite alone near the door of his house, a strangely defiant look upon his pale face, and his firm lips drawn in. Unless I was mistaken, some of the men over the way were taking covert glances at him, as though he were a kangaroo they had to keep aloof from. Hoar turned his eyes slowly upon us, took off his round felt hat, and smoothed back his dark hair.

“I be as well as matters’ll let me be, young Mr. Todhetley,” he then said.

“There’s a strike going on, I hear,” said Tod. “Has been for some time.”

“Yes, there’s a strike a-going on,” assented Hoar, speaking in a deliberate, sullen manner, as a man resenting some special grievance.“Has been for some time, as you say. And I don’t know when the strike ’ll be a-going off.”

“How is Eliza?” I asked.

“Much as usual, Mr. Johnny. What should ail her?”

Evidently there was no sociability to be got out of Jacob Hoar that afternoon, and we left him. A few yards further, we passed Ford’s, the baker’s. No end of heads were at the shop door, andthey seemed to be staring at Hoar.

“He must have been dealing out a little abuse to the public generally, Tod,” said I.

“Very likely,” answered Tod. “He seems bursting with some rage or other.”

“Nay, I don’t think it’s rage so much as vexation. Something must have gone wrong.”

“Well, perhaps so.”

“Look here, Tod. If we had a home to keep up and a lot of mouths to feed and weekly rent to pay, and a strike stopped the supplies, we might be in a worse humour than Hoar is.”

“Right, Johnny.” And Tod went off at a strapping pace.

How it may be with other people, I don’t know: but when I get back to a place after an absence, I want to see every one, and am apt to go dashing in at doors without warning.

“It won’t take us a minute to look in on Miss Timmens, Tod,”I said, as we neared the school-house. “She’ll tell us the news of the whole parish.”

“Take the minute, then, if you like,” said Tod. “I am not going to bother myself with Miss Timmens.”

Neither perhaps should I, after that, for Tod swayed me still; but in passing the door it was opened wide by one of the little scholars. Miss Timmens sat in her chair, the lithe, thin cane, three yards long, raised in her hand, its other end descending, gently enough on the shoulders of a chattering girl.

“I don’t keep it to beat ’em,” Miss Timmens was wont to say of her cane, “but just to tap ’em into attention when they are beyond the reach of my hand.” And, to give her her due, it was nothing more.

“It’s you, is it, Master Johnny? I heard you were all expected.”

“It’s me, safe enough. How goes the world with you, Miss Timmens?”

“Cranky,” was the short answer. “South Crabb’s going out of its senses, I think. The parson is trying to introduce fresh ways and doings, in my school: new-fangled rubbish, Master Johnny, that will bring more harm than good. I won’t have it, and so he and I are at daggers drawn. And there’s a strike in the place!”

I nodded. While she spoke, it had struck me, looking at the room, that it was not so full as usual.

“It’s the strike does that,” she said, in a sort of triumph. “It’s the strike that works all the ill and every kind of evil”—and it was quite evident the strike found no more favour with her than the parson’s fresh ways.

“But what has the strike to do with the children’s absence from school?”

“The strike has carried all the children’s best things to the pawn-shop, and they’ve nothing decent left to come abroad in. That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow,” she concluded, very tartly.

“Is there any other?”

“Don’t you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags—and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones’ frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school.”

“I don’t see the two little Hoars.” And why I had been lookingfor those particular children I can’t say, unless it was that Hoar and his peculiar manner had been floating in my mind ever since we passed him.

“‘Liza and Jessy—no, but they’ve been here till to-day,” was the reply, given after a long pause. “Are you going, Mr. Johnny?—I’ll just step outside with you.”

She drew the door close behind her, keeping the handle in her hand, and looked straight into my face.

“Jacob Hoar has gone and beat his boy almost to death this morning—and the strike’s the cause of that,” she whispered, emphatically.

“Jacob Hoar has!—Why, how came he to do it?”—I exclaimed, recalling more forcibly than ever the man’s curious look, and the curious looks of the other men holding aloof from him. “Which of his boys is it?”

“The second of them; little Dick. Yes, he is black and blue all over, they say; next door to beat to death; and his arm’s broken. And they have the strike to thank for it.”

She repeated the concluding words more stingingly than before. That Miss Timmens was wroth with the strike, there could be no mistake. I asked her why the strike was to be thanked for the beating and the broken arm.

“Because the strike has brought misery; and that is the source of all the ill going on just now in Crabb Lane,” was her reply.“When the men threw themselves out of work, of course they threw themselves out of wages. Some funds have been furnished to them, weekly I believe, from the Trades Union League—or whatever they call the thing—but it seems a mere nothing compared with what they used to earn. Household goods, as well as clothes, have been going to the pawn-shop, but they have now pledged all they’ve got to pledge, and are, it is said, in sore straits: mothers and fathers and children alike hungry. It is some time now since they have had enough to eat. Fancy that, Mr. Johnny!”

“But why should Dicky be beaten for that?” I persisted, trying to keep her to the point—a rather difficult matter with Miss Timmens at all times.

“It was in this way,” she answered, dropping her voice to a lower key, and giving a pull at the door to make sure it had not opened.“Dicky, poor fellow, is half starved; he’s not used to it, and feels it keenly: resents it, I dare say. This morning, when out in the lane, he saw a tray of halfpenny buns, hot from the oven, put on old Ford’s counter. The sight was too much for him, the temptation too great. Dicky Hoar is naturally honest; has been, up to now, at all events: but I suppose hunger was stronger than honestyto-day. He crept into the shop on all fours, abstracted a bun with his fingers, and was creeping out again, when Ford pounced upon him, bun in hand. There was a fine outcry. Ford was harsh, roared out for the policeman, and threatened him with jail, and in the midst of the commotion Hoar came up. In his mortification at hearing that a boy of his had been caught pilfering, he seized upon a thick stick that a bystander happened to have, and laid it unmercifully upon poor Dick.”

“And broke his arm?”

“And broke his arm. And covered him with weals beside. He’ll be all manner of colours to-morrow.”

“What a brutal fellow Hoar must be!”

“To beat him like that?—well, yes,” assented Miss Timmens, in accents that bore rather a dubious sound. “Passion must have blinded him and urged him further than he intended. The man has always been upright; prided himself on being so, as one may say; and there’s no doubt that to find his child could be a thief shook him cruelly. This strike is ruining the tempers of the men; it makes them feel at war with everything and everybody.”

When I got home I found them in the thick of the news also, for Cole the doctor was there telling it all. Mrs. Todhetley, sitting on the sofa with her bonnet untied and her shawl unpinned, was listening in a kind of horror.

“But surely the arm cannot be broken, Mr. Cole!” she urged.

“Broken just above the wrist, ma’am. I ought to know, for I set it. Wicked little rascal, to steal the bun! As to Hoar, he is as fierce as a tiger when really enraged.”

“Well, it sounds very shocking.”

“So it does,” said Cole. “I think perhaps it may be productive of one good—keep the boy from picking and stealing to the end of his life.”

“He was hungry, you say.”

“Famished, ma’am. Most of the young ones in Crabb Lane are so just now.”

The Squire was walking up and down the room, his hands in his pockets. He halted, and faced the Doctor.

“Look here, Cole—what has brought this state of things about? A strike!—and prolonged! Why, I should as soon have expected to hear the men had thrown up their work to become Merry Andrews! Who is in fault?—the masters or the men?”

Cole lifted his eyebrows. “The masters lay the blame on the men, the men lay it on the masters.”

“What is it the men are holding out for?”

“To get more wages, and to do less work.”

“Oh, come, that’s a twofold demand,” cried the Pater. “Modestfolk generally ask for one favour at a time. Meanwhile things are all at sixes-and-sevens, I suppose, in Crabb Lane?”

“Ay,” said the Doctor. “At worse than sixes-and-sevens, indoors and out. There are empty cupboards and empty rooms within; and there’s a good deal of what’s bad without. It’s the wives and children that suffer, poor things.”

“The men must be senseless to throw themselves out of work!”

“The men only obey orders,” cried Mr. Cole. “There’s a spirit of disaffection abroad: certain people have constituted themselves rulers, and they say to the men, ‘You must do this,’ and ‘You must not do that.’ The men have yielded themselves up to be led, and do do what they are told, right or wrong.”

“I don’t say they are wrong to try to get more wages if they can; it would be odd if we were to be debarred from bettering ourselves,” spoke the Squire. “But to throw up their work whilst they are trying, there’s the folly; there’s where the shoe must tighten. Let them keep on their work whilst they agitate.”

“They’d tell you, I expect, that the masters would be less likely to listen then than they are now.”

“Well, they’ve no right, in common sense, to throw up their wives’ and children’s living, if they do their own,” concluded the Squire.

Cole nodded. “There’s some truth in that,” he said as he got up to leave. “Any way, things are more gloomy with us than you’d believe, Squire.”

You may remember that I told you, when speaking of the Court and my early home, how, when I was a little child of four years old, Hannah my nurse, and Eliza one of her fellow-servants, commented freely in my hearing on my father’s second marriage, and shook me well because I was wise enough to understand them. Eliza was then housemaid at the Court; and soon after this she had left it to marry Jacob Hoar. She was a nice sort of young woman (in spite of the shaking), and I kept up a great acquaintance with her, and was free, so to say, of her house in Crabb Lane, running in and out of it at will, when we were at Crabb Cot. A tribe of little Hoars arrived, one after another. Jacky, the eldest, over ten now, had a place at the works, and earned two shillings a week.“’Twarn’t much,” said Hoar the father, “but ’twas bringing his hand in.” Dick, the second, he who had just had the beating, was nine; two girls came next, and there was a young boy of three.

Hoar earned capital wages—to judge by the comfortable way in which they lived: I should think not less than forty shillings a week. Of course they spent it all, every fraction; as a rule, families of that class never put by for a rainy day. They might have done it, I suppose; in those days provisions were nothing like as dear as they are now; the cost of living altogether was less.

Of course the Hoars had to suffer in common with the rest under the strike. But I did not like to hear of empty cupboards in connection with Eliza; no, nor of her boy’s broken arm; and in the evening I went back to Crabb Lane to see her. They lived next door but one to the house that had been Lease the pointsman’s; but theirs was far better than that tumble-down hut.

Well, it was a change! The pretty parlour looked half dismantled. Its ornaments and best things had gone, as Miss Timmens expressed it, to adorn the pawnshop. The carpet also. Against the wall, on a small mattress brought down for him, lay Dicky and his bruises. Some of the children sat on the floor: Mrs. Hoar was kneeling over Dicky and bathing his cheek, which was big enough for two, for it had caught the stick kindly.

“Well, Eliza!”

She got up, sank into a chair, flung her apron up to her face, and burst into tears. I suppose it was at the sight of me. Not knowing what to say to that, I pulled the little girls’ ears and then sat down on the floor by Dicky. He began to cry.

“Oh come, Dick, don’t; you’ll soon be better. Face smarts, does it?”

“I never thought to meet you like this, Master Johnny,” said Eliza, getting up and speaking through her tears. “’Twas hunger made him do it, sir; nothing else. The poor little things be so famished at times it a’most takes the sense out of ’em.”

“Yes, I am sure it was nothing else. Look up, Dick. Don’t cry like that.” One would have thought the boy was going into hysterics.

I had an apple in my pocket and gave it to him. He kept it in his hand for some time, and then began to eat it ravenously, sobbing now and then. The left arm, the broken one, lay across him, bound up in splints.

“I didn’t mean to steal the bun,” he whispered, looking up at me through his tears. “I’d ha’ give Mrs. Ford the first ha’penny for it that I’d ever got. I was a-hungered, I was. We be always a-hungered now.”

“It is hard times with you, I am afraid, Eliza,” I said, standing by her.

Opening her mouth to answer, a sob caught her breath, and she put her hand to her side, as if in pain. Her poor face, naturally patient and meek, was worn, and had a bright hectic spot upon it. Eliza used to be very pretty, and was young-looking still, withsmooth brown hair, and mild grey eyes: she looked very haggard now and less tidy. But, as to being tidy, how can folk be that, when all their gowns worth a crown are hanging up at the pawnbroker’s?

“It’s dreadful times, Master Johnny. It’s times that frighten me. Worse than all, I can’t see when it is to end, and what the end is to be.”

“Don’t lose heart. The end will be that the men will go to work again: I dare say soon.”

“The Lord send it!” she answered. “That’s the best we can hope for, sir; and that’ll be hard enough. For we shall have to begin life again, as ’twere; with debts all around us, and our household things and our clothes in pledge.”

“You will get them out again then.”

“Ay, but how long will it take to earn the money to do it? This strike, as I look upon it, has took at the rate of five years of prosperity out of our lives, Master Johnny.”

“The league—or whatever it is—allows you all money to live, does it not?”

“We get some, sir. It’s not a great deal. They tell us that there’s strikes a-going on in many parts just now; these strikes have to be helped as well as the operatives here; and so it makes the allowance small. We have no means of knowing whether that’s true or not, us women, I mean; but I dare say it is.”

“And the allowance is not enough to keep you in food?”

“Master Johnny, there’s so many other things one wants, beside bare food,” she answered, with a sigh. “We must pay our rent, or the landlord would turn us out; we must have a bit o’ coal for firing: we must have soap; clothes must be washed, sir, and we must be washed; we must have a candle these dark evenings; shoes must be mended: and there’s other trifles, too, that I needn’t go into, as well as what Hoar takes for himself——”

“But does he take much?” I interrupted.

“No, sir, he don’t: nothing to what some of ’em takes: he has always been a good husband and father. The men, you see, sir, must have a few halfpence in their pockets to pay for their smoke and that, at their meetings in the evening. There’s not much left for food when all this comes to be taken out—and we are seven mouths to fill.”

No wonder they were hungry!

“Some of the people you’ve known ought to help you, Eliza. Mrs. Sterling at the old home might: or Mrs. Coney. Do they?”

Eliza Hoar shook her head. “The gentlemen be all again us, sir, and so the ladies dare not do anything. As to Mrs. Sterling—Idon’t know that she has so much as heard of the strike—all them miles off.”

“You mean the gentlemen are against the strike!”

“Yes, sir; dead again it. They say strikes is the worst kind of evil that can set in, both for us and for the country; that it will increase the poor-rates to a height to be afraid of, and in the end drive the work away from the land. Sitting here with my poor children around me at dusk to save candle, I get thinking sometimes that the gentlemen may not be far wrong, Master Johnny.”

Seeing the poor quiet faces lifted to me, from which every bit of spirit seemed to have gone, I wished I had my pockets full of buns for them. But buns were not likely to be there; and of money I had none: buying one of the best editions of Shakespeare had just cleared me out.

“Where’s Hoar?” I asked, in leaving.

A hot flush overspread her face. “He has not shown himself here, Master Johnny, since what he did to him,” was her resentful answer, pointing to Dick. “Afraid to face me, he is.”

“I’d not say too much to him, Eliza. It could not undo what’s done, and might only make matters worse. I dare say Hoar is just as much vexed about it as you are.”

“It’s to be hoped he is! Why did he go and set upon the child in that cruel way? It’s the men that goes in for the strike; ’tisn’t us: and when the worry of it makes ’em so low they hardly know where to turn, they must vent it upon us. Master Johnny, there are minutes now when I could wish myself dead but for the children.”

I went home with my head full of a scheme—getting Mrs. Todhetley and perhaps the Coneys to do something for poor Eliza Hoar. But I soon found I might as well have pleaded the cause of the public hangman.

Who should come into our house that evening but old Coney himself. As if the strike were burning a hole in his tongue, he began upon it before he was well seated, and gave the Squire his version of it: that is, his opinion. It did not differ in substance from what had been hinted at by Eliza Hoar. Mr. Coney did not speak for the men or against them; he did not speak for or against the masters; that question of conflicting interests he said he was content to leave: but what he did urge, and very strongly, was, that strikes in themselves must be productive of an incalculable amount of harm; they brought misery on the workmen, pecuniary embarrassment on the masters, and they most inevitably would, if persisted in, eventually ruin the trade of the kingdom; therefore they should, by every possible means, be discouraged. The Squire, in his hot fashion, took up these opinions for his own and enlarged upon them.

When old Coney was gone and we had our slippers on, I told them of my visit to Eliza, and asked them to help her just a little.

“Not by a crust of bread, Johnny,” said the Squire, more firmly and quietly than he usually spoke. “Once begin to assist the wives and children, and the men would have so much the less need to bring the present state of things to an end.”

“I am so sorry for Eliza, sir.”

“So am I, Johnny. But the proper person to be sorry for her is her husband: her weal and woe can lie only with him.”

“If we could help her ever so little!”

The Squire looked at me for a full minute. “Attend to me, Johnny Ludlow. Once for all, NO! The strike, as Coney says, must be discouraged by every means in our power. Discouraged, Johnny. Otherwise these strikes may come into fashion, and grow to an extent of which no man can foresee the end. They will bring the workmen to one of two things—starvation, or the workhouse. That result seems to me inevitable.”

“I’m sure it makes me feel very uncomfortable,” said the Mater.“One can hardly see where one’s duty lies.”

“Our poor-rates are getting higher every day; what do you suppose they’ll come to if this is to go on?” continued the Squire.“I’d be glad for the men to get better pay if they are underpaid now: whether they are or not, I cannot tell; but rely upon it, striking is not the way to attain to it. It’s a way that has ruined many a hopeful workman, who otherwise would have gone on contentedly to the end of his days; ay, and has finally killed him. It will ruin many another. Various interests are at stake in this; you must perceive it for yourself, Johnny lad, if you have any brains; but none so great as that of the workmen themselves. With all my heart I wish, for their own sakes, they had not taken this extreme step.”

“And if the poor children starve, sir?” I ventured to say.

“Fiddlestick to starving! They need not starve while there’s a workhouse to go to. And won’t; that’s more. Can’t you see how all this acts, Mr. Johnny? The men throw themselves out of work; and when matters come to an extremity the parish must feed the children, and we, the rate-payers, must pay. A pleasant prospect! How many scores of children are there in Crabb Lane alone?”

“A few dozens, I should say, sir.”

“And a few to that. No, Johnny; let the men look to their families’ needs. For their own sakes; I repeat it; for their own best interests, I’ll have them left alone. They have entered on this state of things of their own free will, and they must themselves fight it out.—And now get you off to bed, boys.”

“The Pater’s right, Johnny,” cried Tod, stepping into my roomas we went up, his candle flaring in the draught from the open staircase window; “right as right can be on principle; but it is hard for the women and children——”

“It is hard for themselves, too, Tod: only they have the unbending spirit of Britons, to hold out to the death and make no bones over it.”

“I wish you’d not interrupt a fellow,” growled Tod. “Look here; I’ve got four-and-sixpence, every farthing I can count just now. You take it and give it to Eliza. The Pater need know nothing.”

He emptied his trousers pocket of the silver, and went off with his candle. I’m not sure but that he and I both enjoyed the state of affairs as something new. Had any one told us a year ago that our quiet neighbourhood could be disturbed by a public ferment such as this, we should never have believed it.

The next morning I went over to South Crabb with the four-and-sixpence. Perhaps it was not quite fair to give it, after what the Squire had said—but there’s many a worse thing than that done daily in the world. Eliza caught her breath when I gave it to her, and thanked me with her eyes as well as her lips. She had on a frightfully old green gown—green once—shabby and darned and patched, and no cap; and she was on her knees wiping up some spilt water on the floor.

“Mind, Eliza, you must not say a word to any one. I should get into no end of a row.”

“You were always generous, Master Johnny. Even when a baby——”

“Never mind that. It is not I who am generous now. The silver was given me for you by some one else; I am cleared out, myself. Where’s Dicky?”

“He’s upstairs in his bed, sir: too stiff to move. Mr. Cole, too, said he might as well lie there to-day. Would you like to go up and see him?”

As I ran up the staircase, open from the room, a vision of her wan face followed me—of the catching sob again—of the smooth brown hair which she was pressing from her temples. We have heard of a peck of troubles: she seemed to have a bushel of them.

Dicky was a sight, as far as variety of colours went. There was no mistake about his stiffness.

“It won’t last long, Dick; and then you’ll be as well as ever.”

Dick’s grey eyes—they were just like his mother’s—looked up at mine. I thought he was going to cry.

“There. You will never take anything again, will you?”

Dick shook his head as emphatically as his starched condition allowed. “Father says as he’d kill me the next time if I did.”

“When did he say that?”

“This morning; afore he went out.”

Dicky’s room had a lean-to roof, and was about the size of our jam closet at Crabb Cot. Not an earthly article was in it but the mattress he was lying on.

“Who sleeps here besides you, Dicky?”

“Jacky and little Sam. ‘Liza and Jessy sleeps by father and mother.”

“Well, good day, Dicky.”

Whom should I come upon at the end of Crabb Lane, but the Squire and Hoar. The Squire had his gun in his hand and was talking his face red: Hoar leaned against the wooden palings that skirted old Massock’s garden, and looked as sullen as he had looked yesterday. I thought the Pater had been blowing him up for beating the boy; but it seemed that he was blowing him up for the strike. Cole, the surgeon, hurrying along on his rounds, stopped just as I did.

“Not your fault, Hoar!” cried the Squire. “Of course I know it’s not your fault alone, but you are as bad as the rest. Come; tell me what good the strike has done for you.”

“Not much as yet,” readily acknowledged Hoar, in a tone of incipient defiance.

“To me it seems nothing less than a crime to throw yourself out of work. There’s the work ready to your hands, spoiling for want of being done—and yet you won’t do it!”

“I do but obey orders,” said Hoar: who seemed to be miserable enough, in spite of the incipient defiance.

“But is there any sense in it?” reasoned the Squire. “If you men could drop the work and still keep up your homes and, their bread-and-cheese, and their other comforts, I’d say nothing. But look at your poor suffering wives and children. I should beashamed to be idle, when my idleness bore such consequences.”

The man answered nothing. Cole put in his word.

“There are times when I feel I should like to run away from my work, and go in for a few weeks’ or months’ idleness, Jacob Hoar; and drink my two or three glasses of port wine after dinner of a day, like a lord; and be altogether independent of my station and my patients, and of every other obligation under the sun. But I can’t. I know what it would do for me—bring me to the parish.”

“D’ye think we throw up the work for the sake o’ being idle?”returned Hoar. “D’ye suppose, sirs,”—with a burst of a sigh—“that this state o’ things is a pleasure to us? We are doing it for future benefit. We are told by them who act for us, and who must know, that great benefit will come of it if we be only firm; that our rights be in our own hands if we only persevere long enough in standing out for ’em. Us men has our rights, I suppose, as well as other folks.”

“Those who, as you term it, act for you, may be mistaken, Hoar,” said the Squire. “I’ll leave that point: and go on to a different question. Do you think that the future benefit (whatever that may be: it’s vague enough now) is worth the cost you are paying for it?”

No reply. A look crossed Hoar’s face that made me think he sometimes asked the same question of himself.

“It does appear to be a very senseless quarrel, Hoar,” went on the Squire. Cole had walked on. “One-sided too. There’s an old saying, ‘Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face,’ and your strike seems just an illustration of it. You see, it is only you menthat suffer. The rulers you speak of don’t suffer: while they are laying down rules for you, they are flourishing on the meat and corn of the land; the masters, in one sense, do not suffer, for they are not reduced to any extremity of any kind. But you, my poor fellows, you bear the brunt of it all. Look at your homes, how they are bared; look at your hungry children. What but hunger drove little Dick to crib that bun yesterday?”

Hoar took off his hat and passed his hand over his brow and his black hair. It seemed to be a favourite action of his when in any worry of thought.

“It is just ruin, Jacob Hoar. If some great shock—say a mountain of snow, or a thunderbolt—descended suddenly from the skies and destroyed everything there was in your home, leaving but the bare walls standing, what a dreadful calamity you would think it. How bitterly you’d bemoan it!—perhaps almost feel inclined, if you only dared, to reproach Heaven for its cruelty! But you—you bring on this calamity yourself, of your own free and deliberate will. You have dismantled your home with your own fingers; you have taken out your goods and sold or pledged them, to buy food. I hear you have parted with all.”

“A’most,” assented Hoar readily; as if it quite pleased him the Squire should show up the case at its worst.

“Put it that you resume work to-morrow, you don’t resume it as a free man. You’ll have a load of debt and embarrassment on your shoulders. You will have your household goods to redeem—if they are then still redeemable: you will have your clothes and shoes to buy, to replace present rags: while on your mind will lie the weight of all this past time of trouble, cropping up every half-hour like a nightmare. Now—is the future benefit you hint at worth all this?”

Hoar twitched a thorny spray off the hedge behind the pales, and twirled it about between his teeth.

“Any way,” he said, the look of perplexity clearing somewhat on his face, “I be but doing as my mates do; and we are a-doing for the best. So far as we are told and believe, it’ll be all for the best.”

“Then do it,” returned the Squire in a passion; and went stamping away with his gun.

“Johnny, they are all pig-headed together,” he presently said, as we crossed the stile into the field of stubble whence the corn had been reaped. “One can’t help being sorry for them: they are blinded by specious arguments that will turn out, I fear, to be all moonshine. Hold my gun, lad. Where’s that dog, now? Here, Dash, Dash, Dash!”

Dash came running up; and Tod with him.

In a fortnight’s time, Crabb Cot was deserted again. Tod and I returned to our studies, the Squire and the rest to Dyke Manor. As the weeks went on, scraps of news would reach us about the strike. There were meetings of the masters alone: meetings of the men and what they called delegates; meetings of masters and men combined. It all came to nothing. The masters at length offered to concede a little: the men (inwardly wearied out, sick to death of the untoward state of things) would have accepted the slight concession and returned to work with willing feet; but their rulers—the delegates, or whatever they were—said no. And so the idleness and the pinching distress continued: the men got more morose, and the children more ragged. After that (things remaining in a chronic state of misery, I suppose) we heard nothing.

“Another lot of faggots, Thomas; and heap up the coal. This is weather! Goodness, man! Don’t put the coal on gingerly, as if you were afraid of it. Molly’s a fool.”

We were in the cozy sitting-room again at Crabb Cot. The Squire was right: it was weather: the coldest I have ever felt in December. Old Thomas’s hands were frozen with the drive from the station. Molly, who had come on the day before, had put about a handful of fire in the grate to greet us with. Naturally it put the Squire’s temper up.

“That there strike’s a-going on still, sir,” began Thomas, as he waited to watch his wood blaze up.

“No!” cried the Squire. For we had naturally supposed it to be at an end.

“It is, though, sir. Ford the driver telled me, coming along, that Crabb Lane was in a fine state for distress.”

“Oh dear! I wish I knew whose fault it is!” bewailed Mrs. Todhetley. “What more did the driver say, Thomas?”

“Well, ma’am, he said it must be the men’s fault—because there the work is, still a-waiting for ’em, and they won’t do it.”

“The condition the poor children must be in!”

“Like hungry wolves,” said old Thomas. “’Twas what Ford called ’em, and he ought to know: own brother to Ford the baker, as lives in the very thick of the trouble!”

Scarcely anything was talked of that evening but the strike. Its long continuance half frightened some of us. Old Coney, coming in to smoke his pipe with the Squire, pulled a face as long as his arm at the poor-rate prospect: the Squire wondered how much work would stay in the country.

It was said the weekly allowance made to the men was not so much as it had been at first. It was also said that the Society, making it, considered Crabb Lane in general had been particularly improvident in spending the allowance, or it would not have been reduced to its present distressed condition. Which was not to be wondered at, in Mr. Coney’s opinion: people used to very good wages, he said, could not all at once pull up habits and look at every farthing as a miser does. Crabb Lane was reproachfully assured by the Society that other strikes had kept themselves quite respectable, comparatively speaking, upon just the same allowance, and had not parted with all their pots and pans.

That night I dreamt of the strike. It’s as true as that I am writing this. I dreamt I saw thousands and thousands of red-faced men—not pale-faced ones—each tossing a loaf of bread up and down.

“I suppose I may go over and see Eliza,” I said to Mrs. Todhetley, after breakfast in the morning.

“There is no reason why you should not, Johnny, that I know of,” she answered, after a pause. “Excepting the cold.”

As if I minded the cold! “I hope the whole lot, she and the young ones, won’t look like skeletons, that’s all. Tod, will you come?”

“Not if I know it, old fellow. I have no fancy for seeing skeletons.”

“Oh, that was all my nonsense.”

“I know that. A pleasant journey to you.”

The hoar frost had gathered on the trees, the ice hung fantastically from their branches: it was altogether a beautiful sight. Groups of Miss Timmens’s girls, coming to school with frozen noses, were making slides as they ran. As to Crabb Lane, it looked nearly deserted: the cold kept the men indoors. Knocking at Hoar’s door with a noise like a fire-engine, I went in with a leap.

The scene I came upon brought me up short. Just at first I did not understand it. In the self-same corner by the fireplace where Dicky’s bed had been that first day, was a bed now, and Eliza lay on it: and by her side, wedged against the wall, was what looked like a bundle of green baize with a calico nightcap on. The children—and really and truly they were not much better than living skeletons—sat on the floor.

“What’s to do here, you little mites? Is mother ill?”

Dicky, tending the fire (I could have put it into a cocoa-nut), turned round to answer me. He had got quite well again, arm and all.

“Mother’s very ill,” said he in a whisper. “That’s the new baby.”

“The new what?”

“The new baby,” repeated Dick, pointing to the green bundle.“It’s two days old.”

An old tin slop-pail, turned upside down, stood in the corner of the hearth. I sat down on it to revolve the news and take in the staggering aspect of things.

“What do you say, Dick? A baby—two days old?”

“Two days,” returned Dick. “I’d show him to you but for fear o’ waking mother.”

“He came here the night afore last, he did, while we was all asleep upstairs,” interposed the younger of the little girls, Jessy.“Mr. Cole brought him in his pocket: father said so.”

“’Twasn’t the night afore last,” corrected ‘Liza. “’Twas the night afore that.”

Poor, pale, pinched faces, with never a smile on any one of them! Nothing takes the spirit out of children like long-continued famine.

Stepping across, I looked down at Mrs. Hoar. Her eyes were half open as if she were in a state of stupor. I don’t think she knew me: I’m not sure she even saw me. The face was fearfully thin and hollow, and white as death.

“Wouldn’t mother be better upstairs, Dick?”

“She’s here ’cause o’ the fire,” returned Dick, gently dropping on a bit of coal the size of a marble. “There ain’t no bed up there, neither; they’ve brought it down.”

The “bed” looked like a sack of shavings. From my heart I don’t believe it was anything else. At that moment, the door opened and a woman came in; a neighbour, I suppose; her clothes very thin.

“It’s Mrs. Watts,” said Dick.

Mrs. Watts curtsied. She looked as starved as they did. It seemed she knew me.

“She be very bad. Mr. Ludlow, sir.”

“She seems so. Is it—fever?”

“Law, sir! It’s more famine nor fever. If her strength can last out—why, well and good; she may rally. If it don’t, she’ll go, sir.”

“Ought she not to have things, Mrs. Watts? Beef-tea and wine, and all that.”

Mrs. Watts stared a minute, and then her lips parted with a sickly smile. “I don’t know where she’d get ’em from, sir! Beef-tea and wine! A drop o’ plain tea is a’most more nor us poor can manage to find now. The strike have lasted long, you see, sir. Any way, she’s too weak to take much of anything.”

“If I—if I could bring some beef-tea—or some wine—would it do her good?”

“It might just be the saving of her life, Mr. Ludlow, sir.”

I went galloping home through the snow. Mrs. Todhetley was stoning raisins in the dining-room for the Christmas puddings. Telling her the news in a heap, I sat down to get my breath.

“Ah, I was afraid so,” she said quietly, and without surprise.“I feared there might be another baby at the Hoars’ by this time.”

“Another baby at the Hoars’!” cried Tod, looking up from my new Shakespeare that he was skimming. “How is it going to get fed?”

“I fear that’s a problem none of us can solve, Joseph,” said she.

“Well, folk must be daft, to go on collecting a heap more mouths together, when there’s nothing to feed them on,” concluded Tod, dropping his head into the book again. Mrs. Todhetley was slowly wiping her fingers on the damp cloth, and looking doubtful.

“Joseph, your papa’s not in the way and I cannot speak to him—doyou think I might venture to send something to poor Eliza under the circumstances?”

“Send and risk it,” said Tod, in his prompt manner. “Of course.As to the Pater—at the worst, he’ll only storm a bit. But I fancy he would be the first to send help himself. He wouldn’t let her die for the want of it.”

“Then I’ll despatch Hannah at once.”

Hoar was down by the bed when Hannah got there, holding a drop of ale to his wife’s lips. Mr. Cole was standing by with his hat on.

“Ale!” exclaimed Hannah to the surgeon. “May she take that?”

“Bless me, yes,” said he, “and do her good.”

Hannah followed him outside the door when he was leaving.“How will it go with her, sir?” she asked. “She looks dreadfully ill.”

“Well,” returned the Doctor, “I think the night will about see the end of it.”

The words frightened Hannah. “Oh, my goodness!” she cried.“What’s the matter with her that she should die?”

“Famine and worry have been the matter with her. What she will die of is exhaustion. She has had a sharpish turn just now, you understand; and has no stamina to bring her up again.”

It was late in the afternoon when Hannah came home again. There was no change, she said, for the better or the worse. Eliza still lay as much like one dead as living.

“It’s quite a picter to see the poor little creatures sitting on the bare floor and quiet as mice, never speaking but in a whisper,” cried Hannah, as she shook the snow from her petticoats on the mat.“It’s just as if they had an instinct of what is coming.”

The Squire, far from being angry, wanted to send over half the house. It was not Eliza’s fault, he said, it was the strike’s—and he hoped with all his heart she’d get through it. Helping the men’s wives in ordinary was not to be thought of; but when it came to dying, that was a different matter. In the evening, between dinner and tea, I offered to go over and see whether any progress had been made. Being curious on the point themselves, they said yes.

The snow was coming down smartly. My great-coat and hat were soon white enough for me to be taken for a ghost enjoying the air at night. Knocking at the Hoars’ door gently, it was opened by Jacky. He asked me to go in.

To my surprise they were again alone—Eliza and the children. Mrs. Watts had gone home to put her own flock to bed; and Hoar was out. ‘Liza sat on the hearthstone, the sleeping bundle on her lap.

“Father’s a-went to fetch Mr. Cole,” said Jacky. “Mother began a talking queer—dreams, like—and it frightened him. He told us to mind her till he run back with the Doctor.”

Looking down, I thought she was delirious. Her eyes were wide open and glistening, a scarlet spot shone on her cheeks. She began talking to me. Or rather to the air: for I’m sure she knew no one.

“A great bright place it is, up there; all alight and shining. Silvery, like the stars. Oh, it’s beautiful! The people be in white, and no strikes can come in!”

“She’ve been a-talking about the strikes all along,” whispered Jacky, who was kneeling on the mattress. “Mother! Mother, would ye like a drop o’ the wine?”

Whether the word mother aroused her, or the boy’s voice—andshe had always loved Jacky with a great love—she seemed to recognize him. He raised her head as handy as could be, and held the tea-cup to her lips. It was half full of wine; she drank it all by slow degrees, and revived to consciousness.

“Master Johnny!” she said then in a faint tone.

I could not help the tears filling my eyes as I knelt down by her in Jacky’s place. She knew she was dying. I tried to say a word or two.

“It’s the leaving the children, Master Johnny, to strikes and things o’ that kind, that’s making it so hard for me to go. The world’s full o’ trouble: look at what ours has been since the strike set in! I’d not so much mind that for them, though—for the world here don’t last over long, and perhaps it’s a’most as good to be miserable as easy in it—if I thought they’d all come to me in the bright place afterwards. But—when one’s clammed with famine and what not, it’s a sore temptation to do wrong. Lord, bring them to me!” she broke forth, suddenly clasping her hands.“Lord Jesus, pray for them, and save them!”

She was nothing but skin and bone. Her hands fell, and she began plucking at the blanket. You might have heard a pin drop in the room. The frightened children hardly breathed.

“I shall see your dear mamma, Master Johnny. I was at her death-bed; ’twas me mostly waited on her in her sickness. If ever a sainted lady went straight to heaven, ’twas her. When I stood over her grave I little thought my own ending was to be so soon. Strikes! Nothing but strikes—and famine, and bad tempers, and blows. Lord Jesus, wash us white from our sins, and take us all to that better world! No strikes there; no strikes there.”

She was going off her head again. The door opened, and Hoar, the Doctor, and Mrs. Watts all came in together.

Mrs. Todhetley went over through the snow in the morning. Eliza Hoar had died in the night, and lay on the mattress, her wasted face calm and peaceful. Hoar and the children had migrated to the kitchen at the back, a draughty place hardly large enough for the lot to turn round in. The eldest girl was trying to feed the baby with a tea-spoon.

“What are you giving it, Eliza?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“Sugar and water, with a sup o’ milk in’t, please, ma’am.”

“I hope you are contented, Jacob Hoar, now you have killed your wife.”

Very harsh words, those for Mrs. Todhetley to speak: and shehastened to soften them. But, as she said afterwards, the matter altogether was a cruel folly and sin, making her heart burn with shame. “That is, Hoar, with the strike; for it is the strike that has killed her.”

Hoar, who had been sitting with his head in the chimney, noticing no one, burst into a sudden flood of tears, and sobbed for a minute or two. Mrs. Todhetley was giving the children a biscuit apiece from her bag.

“I did it all for the best,” said Hoar, presently. “’Twasn’t me that originated the strike. I but joined in it with the rest of my mates.”

“And their wives and families are in no better plight than yours.”

“Nobody can say I’ve not done my duty as a husband and a father,” cried Hoar. “I’ve not been a drunkard, nor a rioter, nor a spendthrift. I’ve never beat her nor swore at her, as some of’em does.”

“Well, she is lying there; and the strike has brought her to it. Is it so, or not?”

Hoar did not answer: only caught his breath with a sound of pain.

“It seems to me, Hoar, that the strikes cannot be the good things you think for,” she said, her voice now full of pity for the man.“They don’t bring luck with them; on the contrary, they bring a great deal of ill-luck. It is you workmen that suffer; mostly in your wives and children. I do not pretend to judge whether strikes may be good from a political point of view, I am not clever; but they do tell very hardly upon your poor patient wives and little ones.”

“And don’t you see as they tell upon us men, too!” he retorted with a sob that was half pitiful, half savage. “Ay, and worst of all; for if they should be mistaken steps stead of right ones, we’ve got ’em on our conscience.”

“But you go in for them, Hoar. You, individually: and this last night’s blow is the result. It certainly seems that there must be a mistake somewhere.”

This has not been much to tell of, but it is true; and, as strikes are all the go just now, I thought I would write out for you a scrap of one of ours. For my own part, I cannot see that strikes do much good in the long run; or at best, that they are worth the outlay.I do know, for I have heard and seen it, that through many a long day the poor wives and children can only cry aloud to Heaven to pity them and their privations.

In course of time the strike (it was the longest on record in our parts, though we have had a few since then) came to an end. Upon which, the men began life again with bare homes and sickly young ones; and a few vacant chairs.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BURSTING-UP.

There have been fiery August days in plenty; but never a more fiery one than this that I am going to tell of. It was Wednesday: and we were sitting under the big tree on the lawn at Dyke Manor. A tree it would have done you good only to look at on a blazing day: a large weeping ash, with a cool and shady space within it, large enough for a dozen chairs round, and a small table.

The chairs and the table were there now. On the latter stood iced cider and some sparkling lemonade: uncommonly good, both, on that thirsty day. Mr. Brandon, riding by on his cob, had called in to see us; and sat between me and Mrs. Todhetley. She was knitting something in green shades of wool. The Squire had on a straw hat; Tod lay on the grass outside, in the shade of the laurels; Hugh and Lena stood at the bench near him, blowing bubbles and chattering like magpies.

“Well, I don’t know,” said old Brandon, taking a draught of the lemonade. “It often happens with me if I plan to go anywhere much beforehand, that when the time comes I am not well enough for it.”

Mr. Todhetley had been telling him that he thought he should take the lot of us to the seaside for a week or two in September; and suggested that he should go with us. It had been a frightfully hot summer, and everybody felt worn out.

“Where shall you go?” questioned Mr. Brandon.

“Somewhere in Wales, I think,” said the Squire. “It’s easiest of access from here. Aberystwith, perhaps.”

“Not much of a sea at Aberystwith,” cried Mr. Brandon, in his squeaky voice.

“Well, it’s not quite a Gibraltar Rock, Brandon, but it does for us. The last time we went to the seaside; it is three years ago now——”

“Four,” mildly put in Mrs. Todhetley, looking up from her wools.

“Four, is it! Well, it was Aberystwith we went to then; and we were very comfortably lodged. It was at a Mrs. Noon’s, I remember; and——who’s coming now?”

A dash in at the gate was heard—a little startling Mr. Brandon, lest whatever it was should dash over his cob, tied to the gate-post—and then came the smooth run of light wheels on the gravel.

“Look out and see who it is, Johnny.”

Putting the leaves aside, I saw a light, elegant, open carriage, driven by a groom in livery; a gentleman seated beside him in dainty gloves.

“Why, that’s the Clement-Pells’ little carriage!” exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley, who had been looking for herself.

“And that’s Mr. Clement-Pell in it,” said I.

“Oh,” said Mr. Brandon. “I’ll go then.” But the Squire put up his arm to detain him.

Tod did the honours. Went to receive him, and brought him to us under the tree. The children stopped blowing bubbles to stare at Mr. Clement-Pell as he crossed the lawn. It struck me that just a shade of annoyance appeared in his face when he saw so many of us there. Shaking hands, he sat down by Mr. Todhetley, observing that it was some time since he had seen us. It was six weeks, or so: for we had not happened to meet him since that visit of mine and Tod’s at his house in Kensington. All the family were back again now at Parrifer Hall: and we were going to a grand entertainment there on the following day, Thursday. An open-air fête, the invitations had said.

“You have been very busy lately, Mr. Clement-Pell,” observed the Squire. “I’ve not been able to get to see you to thank you for the kindness of your folk to my boys in town. Twice I called at your chief Bank, but you were not visible.”

“I have been unusually busy,” was the answer. “Business gets worse; that is, more extensive; every day. I have had to be about a good deal besides; so that with one thing and another, my time has been more than fully occupied. I am very glad your young men enjoyed themselves with us in London,” he added in hearty tones.

Mr. Brandon gave me such a look that for the life of me I could not say a word in answer. The London visit, taking it altogether, had not been one of enjoyment: but Clement-Pell had no suspicion of the truth.

“Rather a rapid life, that London life,” remarked Mr. Brandon dryly. And I went hot all over, for fear he might be going to let out things to the company.

“Rapid?” repeated Mr. Clement-Pell. “Well, so it is; especially for us business men.”

Mr. Brandon coughed, but said no more. The Squire pressed refreshment on Mr. Clement-Pell. He’d have nothing to say to the cider—it would make him hotter, he thought—but took someof the lemonade. As he was putting the glass down Mrs. Todhetley asked whether to-morrow’s fête was to be as grand and large as was reported. And the annoyance, seen before, most certainly again crossed Clement-Pell’s face at the question.

“I do not really know much about it,” he answered. “These affairs are my wife’s, not mine.”

“And perhaps you don’t much care for them,” put in the Squire, who had noticed the expression.

“I should like them very much, if I had more time to spare for them,” said Mr. Clement-Pell, playing with his handsome chain and seals. “We men of large undertakings must be content to work ourselves, and to let our wives and daughters do the playing. However, I hope I shall manage an hour or two for this one to-morrow.”

“What are to be the amusements?” inquired Mrs. Todhetley.

“The question is, rather, what they are not to be,” smiled Mr. Clement-Pell. “I heard the girls talking about it with one another last night. Dancing, music, archery, fortune-telling——”

“Something, I suppose, of what may be called a fancy-fair,” she interrupted.

“Just so. A fancy-fair without charge. At any rate, I make no doubt it will be pleasant: and I sincerely hope to see you all at it.You will come, I trust, Mr. Brandon. These things are not in your usual way, I am aware, but——”

“I have neither the health nor the inclination for them,” said Mr. Brandon, quite shrilly, stopping him before he could finish.

“But I trust you will make an exception in favour of us to-morrow, I was about to say. Mrs. Clement-Pell and the Miss Clement-Pells will be so pleased to see you.”

“Thank you,” said old Brandon, in a tone only just short of rudeness. “I must be going, Squire.”

He got up as he spoke, shook hands with Mrs. Todhetley only, nodded to the rest of us, and set off across the lawn. Children liked him in spite of his voice and dry manner, and of course Hugh and Lena, pipes and soap-suds and all, attended him to the gate.

As the brown cob went trotting off, and the Squire was coming back again—for he had gone too—Mr. Clement-Pell met him half-way across the lawn, and then they both went indoors together.

“Clement-Pell must want something,” said Mrs. Todhetley.“Johnny, do you notice how very aged and worn he is? It never struck me until to-day. He looks quite grey.”

“Well, that’s because he is getting so. I shall be grey some time.”

“But I don’t mean that kind of greyness, Johnny; grey hairs. His face looks grey.”

“It was the reflection of these green leaves, good mother.”

“Well—perhaps it might be,” she doubtfully agreed, looking up. “What a grand fête it is to be, Johnny!”

“You’ll have to put on your best bib-and-tucker, good mother. That new dress you bought for the Sterlings’ christening.”

“I should if I went. But the fact is, Johnny, I and Mr. Todhetley have made up our minds not to go, I fancy. We were talking together about it this morning. However—we shall see when to-morrow comes.”

“I wouldn’t be you, then. That will be too bad.”

“These open-air fêtes are not in our way, Johnny. Dancing, and archery, and fortune-telling are not much in the way of us old people. You young ones think them delightful—as we did once. Hugh! Lena! what is all that noise about? You are not to take her bowl, Hugh: keep to your own. Joseph, please part them.”

Joe accomplished it by boxing the two. In the midst of the noise, Mr. Clement-Pell came out. He did not cross the lawn again to Mrs. Todhetley; just called out a good day in getting into his carriage, and lifted his hat as he drove away.

“I say, father, what did he want with you?” asked Tod, as the Squire came sauntering back, the skirts of his light coat held behind him.

“That’s my business, Joe,” said the Squire. “Mind your own.”

Which was a checkmate for Tod. The truth was, Tod had been uneasily wondering whether it might not be his business. That is, whether Mr. Clement-Pell had obtained scent of that gambling of his up in London and had come to enlighten the Squire. Tod never felt safe upon the point: which, you see, was all owing to his lively conscience.

“What a beautiful little carriage that is!” said Mrs. Todhetley to the Pater. “It puts me in mind of a shell.”

“Ay; must have cost a pretty penny, small as it is. Pell can afford these fancy things, with his floating wealth.”

In that city of seething crowds and wealth, London, where gigantic operations are the rule instead of the exception, and large fortunes are made daily, Mr. Clement-Pell would not have been thought much of; but in our simple country place, with its quiet experiences, Clement-Pell was a wonder. His riches were great. His power of making money for himself and others seemed elastic; and he was bowed down to as a reigning potentate—a king—an Olympian deity.

You have heard of him before. He had come to a neighbouring town some years back as manager of a small banking company, having given up, it was understood, a good law practice in London to undertake it. The small banking grew and grew under his management. Some of its superfluous hoards were profitably employed: to construct railroads; to work mines; to found colonies. All sorts of paying concerns were said to have some of Clement-Pell’s money in them, and to bring him in cent. per cent. It was believed that if all the wealth of the East India Company and the Bank of England to boot had been poured into the hands of Clement-Pell, it could not have been more than he would be able to use to profit, so great were the resources at his command. People fought with one another to get their money accepted by Mr. Clement-Pell. No wonder. The funds gave them a paltry three per cent. for it; Mr. Clement-Pell doubled the amount. So the funds lost the money, and Mr. Clement-Pell gained it. He was worshipped as the greatest benefactor that had ever honoured the country by settling down in it.

I think his manner went for something. It was so pleasant. The world itself might have loved Mr. Clement-Pell. Deputations asked for his portrait to hang up in public buildings; individuals besought his photograph. Mrs. Clement-Pell was less liked: she was extravagant and haughty. It was said she was of very high family indeed, and she could not have looked down upon common people with more scorn had she been born a duchess. I’m sure no duchess ever gave herself the airs that Mrs. Clement-Pell did, or wore such fine bonnets.

When Mr. Clement-Pell opened a little branch Bank at Church Dykely (as he had already done at two or three other small places), the parish at once ascended a few feet into the air. As Church Dykely in its humility had never possessed a Bank before, it was naturally something to be proud of. The Bank was a little house near to Duffham’s, the doctor, with a door and one window; no larger premises being obtainable. The natives collected round to gaze, and marvel at the great doings destined to be enacted behind that wire blind: and Mr. Clement-Pell was followed by a tail of admiring rustics whenever he stepped abroad.

Church Dykely only had its branch in what might be called the later years, dating from the beginning of the Clement-Pell dynasty, and when he had made a far and wide reputation, and was in the full tide of his prosperity. It was after its establishment that he took Parrifer Hall. This little branch Bank was found to be a convenience to many people. It had a manager and a clerk; and Mr. Clement-Pell would condescend to be at it occasionally, chiefly on Mondays. He was popular with all classes: county gentlemen and rich farmers asked him to dinner; the poor got from him many a kind word and handshake. Mrs. Clement-Pell dined with him at the gentlemen’s tables, but she turned up her nose at the farmers, and would not go near them. In short, take them for allin all, there was no family so grand in the county, or who made so much noise as the Clement-Pells. Their income was something enormous; and of course they might launch out if they liked. It had grown to be a saying amongst us, “As rich as the Clement-Pells.”

Mrs. Todhetley had said she supposed the entertainment would be something like a fancy-fair. We had not had a great experience of fancy-fairs in our county; but if they were all like this, I shouldn’t mind going to one twice a week. The sky was unclouded, the wind still, the leaves of the trees scarcely stirred. On the lawn the sun blazed hot and brilliant: but the groves were cool and shady. Since the place came into Mr. Clement-Pell’s occupancy, he had taken-in part of a field, and made the grounds more extensive. At least, Mrs. Clement-Pell had done so, which came to the same: spending money went for nothing with her. And why should it, when they had so much? If you climbed to the top of an artificial rockery you could see over the high hedge. I did so: and took a look at the chimneys of George Reed’s cottage. You’ve not forgotten him; and his trouble with Major Parrifer. But for that trouble, the Clement-Pells might never have had the chance of occupying Parrifer Hall.

It was as good as fairy-land. Flags hung about; banners waved; statues had decked themselves in garlands. The lawns and the walks were alive with company, the ladies sported gala dresses all the colours of the rainbow. Dancing, shooting, flirting, talking, walking, sitting; we were as gay as birds of paradise. There was a tent for the band, and another for refreshments, and no end of little marquees, dotted about, for anything. One was a post-office; where love-letters might be had for the asking. When I look back on that day now through the mist of years, it stands out as the gayest and sunniest left to memory. As to refreshment—you may think of anything you like and know it was there. There was no regular meal at all throughout the afternoon and evening; but you could begin eating and drinking when you went in if you chose, and never leave off till you left. The refreshment tent communicated with one of the doors of the house, through which fresh supplies came as they were wanted. All was cold. Besides this, there was a tea and coffee marquee, where the kettles were kept always on the boil. No one could say the Clement-Pells spared pains or expense to entertain their guests right royally.

Tod and I strolled about, to take in the whole scene. The Clement-Pell carriages (the big barouche and the small affair thatMrs. Todhetley had called a shell) came dashing up at intervals, graciously despatched to bring relays of guests who did not keep carriages of their own. Mrs. Clement-Pell stood on the lawn to receive them; the Miss Clement-Pells with her. If I were able to describe their attire I would do so; it beat anything for gorgeousness I had ever seen. Glistening silk skirts under robes of beautiful lace; fans in their hands and gossamer veils in their hair.

“I say, Tod, here they come!”

A sober carriage was driving slowly in. We knew it well: and its steady old horses and servants too. It was Sir John Whitney’s. Rushing round a side path, we were up with it when it stopped. Bill Whitney and his two sisters came tumbling out of it.

“It’s going on to your house now, with the trunk,” said Helen, to us. “William has been most awfully tiresome: he would put his every-day boots and coat in our box, instead of bringing a portmanteau for himself.”

“As if a fellow wanted a portmanteau for just one night!” exclaimed Bill. “What you girls can have in that big trunk, amazes me. I should say you are bringing your bed and pillows in it.”

“It has only our dresses for to-morrow morning in it, and all that,” retorted Helen, who liked to keep Bill in order and to domineer over him. “The idea of having to put in great clumsy boots with them, and a rough coat smelling of smoke!”

“This is to be left here, I think, Miss Helen,” said the footman, displaying a small black leather bag.

“Why, yes; it contains our combs and brushes,” returned Helen, taking it and giving it to one of the Clement-Pell servants, together with two cloaks for the evening.

Tod went up to the postillion. “Look here, Pinner: the Squire says you had better stop at the Manor to rest the horses. You will find the groom there, I dare say.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Pinner. “They’ll be a bit done up if we goes straight off back.”

The girls and Bill went up to the Clement-Pell group, and were made much of. It was the first time they had visited the Pells, and their coming was regarded as a special honour. Sir John and Lady Whitney had declined: and it was arranged that Bill and his sisters should sleep at our house, and the carriage come for them the next day.

Escaping from the Pells, we all sat down on a bench. Helen Whitney began whispering about the Miss Pells’ dresses.

“I never saw such beauties,” she exclaimed. “I wonder what they cost?”

“Millions, I should say,” cried Bill.

“These are plain ugly old things beside them,” grumbled Helen.

She meant her own dress and Anna’s. They wore white spotted muslins, and blue ribbons. One of those gorgeous robes was worth fifty times as much: but I know which set of girls looked the most lady-like.

“They are very beautiful,” sighed Helen, with a spice of envy.“But too much for an affair like this.”

“Not for them,” said Bill stoutly. “The Clement-Pells could afford robes of diamonds if they liked. I’m not sure but I shall go in for one of the girls.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” reproved Helen.

We went into the fortune-telling tent. It was full of people, screaming and laughing. A real gipsy with a swarthy skin and black flowing locks was telling fortunes. Helen had hers told when she could make a place, and was promised a lord for a husband, and five-and-thirty grandchildren. At which the tent roared again, and Helen laughed too.

“And now it is your turn, my pretty little maid,” said the sibyl to Anna Whitney. And Anna, always modest and gentle, turned as red as a rose, and said she already knew as much of her own fortune as she desired to know at present.

“What’s in this hand?” cried the gipsy, suddenly seizing upon Tod’s big one, and devouring its lines with her eyes. “Nay, master; don’t draw it away, for there’s matter here, and to spare. You are not afraid, are you?”

“Not of you, my gipsy queen,” gallantly answered Tod, resigning his palm to her. “Pray let my fate be as good as you can.”

“It is a smooth hand,” she went on, never lifting her gaze. “Very smooth. You’ll not have many of the cares and crosses of life. Nevertheless, I see that you have been in some peril lately. And I should say it was connected with money. Debt.”

There were not many things could bring the colour to Joseph Todhetley’s face; but it matched then the scarlet mantle the gipsy wore slung over her right shoulder. You might have heard a pin drop in the sudden hush. Anna’s blue eyes were glancing shyly up through their long lashes.

“Peril of debt, or—perhaps—of—steeple-chasing,” continued the sibyl with deliberation; and at that the shouts of laughter broke out again through the tent, and Anna smiled. “Take you care of yourself, sir; for I perceive you will run into other perils before you settle down. You have neither caution nor foresight.”

“That’s true enough, I believe,” said Tod. “Any more?”

“No more. For you are just one of those imprudent mortals whowill never heed a friendly warning. Were I you, I’d keep out of the world till I grew older.”

“Thank you,” said Tod, laughing as much as the rest of them: and he drew away his hand.

“Johnny, that was a near shave,” he whispered, putting his arm within mine when we had pushed our way out. “Was it all guesswork? Who the deuce is the woman?”

“I know who I think she is. The Pells’ English governess, Miss Phebus.”

“Nonsense!”

“I do. She has got herself up in character and dyed her skin and hair.”

“Then, by George, if it is, she must have gathered an inkling of that matter in London.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Nor I. Johnny, some of these days I shall be bursting out with it to the Pater, and so get the weight off my mind.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. She says you have no caution.”

“It’s not pleasant, I can tell you, youngster, to live in dread that somebody else will bring it out to him. I’ll go in for this next dance, I think. Where’s Anna?”

Anna did not say no. She would never say no to anything heasked her, if I possessed the gift of divination. They joined the dancers; Bill and Helen went to the archery.

“And how are you enjoying it, pray, Johnny Ludlow?”

The voice nearly shot me off the arm of the bench. For it was Mr. Brandon’s. I don’t think there was any living man I should have been so surprised at seeing at the fête as he.

“Why! is it you, sir?”

“Yes, it is, Johnny. You need not stare as if you thought me an intruder. I was invited.”

“Yes, of course, sir. But I—I fancied you never came to such parties.”

“Never was at one like this—unless I went to it in my sleep,” he said, standing with me before the bench, and casting his eyes around.“I came to-day to look after you.”

“After me, sir!”

“Yes, after you. And perhaps a little bit after your friend, Todhetley. Mr. Pell informed us the entertainments would include fortune-telling: I didn’t know but there might be a roulette-table as well. Or cards, or dice, or billiards.”

“Oh no, sir; there’s nothing of that sort.”

“It’s not the fault of the young Pells, I expect, then. That choice companion of yours, called Gusty, and the other one in scarlet.”

“Neither of them is here, Mr. Brandon. Gusty has gone to the Highlands for grouse-shooting; and Fabian sent word he couldn’t get leave to come down. I have not seen the eldest son yet, but I suppose he is somewhere about.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Brandon—and whenever he spoke of the Pells his voice was thinner than ever, and most decidedly took a mocking sound—“gone grouse-shooting, is Gusty! And the other can’t get leave. A lieutenant, is he not?”

“Yes, a lieutenant. His sister Constance has just told us she does not believe it is true that he could not get leave. She thinks he never asked for it, because he wanted to stay in London.”

“Ah. It’s fine to be the Pells, Johnny. One son off to shoot grouse; another living his fast London life; the rest holding grand doings down here that could hardly be matched by the first nobleman amongst us. Very fine. Wonder what they spend a year—taking it in the aggregate?”

“Have you been here long, sir?”

“Half-an-hour, or so—I’ve been looking about me, Johnny, and listening to the champagne corks popping off. Squire here?”

“No. He and Mrs. Todhetley did not come.”

“Sensible people. Where’s young Joe?”

“He is with the Whitneys. Dancing with Anna, I think.”

“And he had better keep to that,” said Mr. Brandon, with a little nod. “He’ll get no harm there.”

We sat down, side by side. Taking a side-glance at him, I saw his eyes fixed on Mrs. and the Miss Clement-Pells, who were now mixing with the company. He did not know much about ladies’dress, but theirs seemed to strike him.

“Showy, Johnny, is it not?”

“It looks very bright in the sun, sir.”

“No doubt. So do spangles.”

“It’s real, sir, that lace. Helen Whitney says so.”

“A great deal too real. So is the rest of it. Hark at the music and the corks and the laughter! Look at the people, and the folly!”

“Don’t you like the fête, sir?”

“Johnny, I hate it with my whole heart.”

I was silent. Mr. Brandon was always more queer than other people.

“Is it in keeping with the Pells, this upstart grandeur and profusion? Come, Johnny Ludlow, you’ve some sense in your head: answer me. They have both risen from nothing, Johnny. When he began life, Pell’s ambition was to rise to a competency; an el dorado of three or four hundred a year: and that only when he had worked for it. I have seen her take in the milk fortheir tea from the milkman at the door; when they kept one servant to do everything. Pell rose by degrees and grew rich; so much the more credit due to his perseverance and his business talents——”

“And would you not have them spend their riches, Mr. Brandon?”

“Spend their riches!—of course I would, in a proper way. Don’t you interrupt your elders, Johnny Ludlow. Where would be the use of a man’s getting money unless he spent some of it. But not in this way; not in the lavish and absurd and sinful profusion that they have indulged in of late years. Is it seemly, or right, or decent, the way they live in? The sons apeing the manners and company of their betters, of young fellows who are born to the peerage and their thousands a year? The mother holding her head in the air as if she wore an iron collar: the daughters with their carriages and their harps and their German governesses, and their costly furbelows that are a scandal on common sense? The world has run mad after these Pells of late years: but I know this much—I have been ashamed only to look on at the Pells’ unseemly folly.”

At that moment Martha Jane Pell—in the toilette that Bill Whitney said must have cost “millions”—went looming by, flirting with Captain Connaught. Mr. Brandon looked after them with his little eyes.

“They are too fine for their station, Johnny. They were not born to this kind of thing; were not reared to it; have only plunged into it of recent years, and it does not sit well upon them. One can only think of upstarts all the time. The Pells might have lived as gentlepeople; ay, and married their children to gentlemen and gentlewomen had they pleased: but, to launch out in this unseemly way, has been a just humiliation to themselves, and has rendered them a poor, pitiful laughing-stock in the eyes of all right-minded people. It’s nothing less than a burlesque on all the proprieties of life. And it may be that we have not seen the end of it, Johnny.”

“Well, sir, they can hardly be grander than——”

“Say more assuming, lad.”

“I suppose I meant that, Mr. Brandon. Perhaps you think they’ll be for taking the Marquis’s place, Ragley, next, if it should come into the market. Or Eastnor Castle: or——”

“I did not mean exactly in that way, Johnny,” he interrupted again, a queer look on his thin lips as he got up.

“Are you going into the eating tent, sir?”

“I am going away. Now that I have seen that you and Joe Todhetley are tolerably safe from gaming tables and the like, there’snothing further to keep me here. I feel a sort of responsibility in regard to you two, seeing that that unpleasant secret lies with me, and not with Joe’s father.”

“It is early to go, sir. The fun has hardly begun.”

“None too early for me. I am a magistrate; looked up to, in a manner, in the neighbourhood, insignificant though I am. It is not I who will countenance this upstart foolery by my presence longer than I can help, Johnny Ludlow.”

Mr. Brandon disappeared. The hours went on to twilight and then to dark. Once during the evening I caught sight of Mr. Clement-Pell: and what occurred as I did so was like a bit of romance. People crowded the side paths under the light of the Chinese lanterns. For lanterns were hanging on the trees and shrubs, and the whole scene was one of enchantment out of the Arabian Nights. One of the remote walks was not lighted; perhaps it had been forgotten. I had missed Bill Whitney and was at the end of the grounds hunting for him, when I saw, through the trees, a solitary figure pacing this dark walk with his arms folded. It was not very likely to be Bill: but there was no harm in going to see.

It turned out to be Mr. Clement-Pell. But before I got out of the trees into the walk—for it was the nearest way back to the lights and the company—some one pushed through the trees on the opposite side of the path, and stood in front of him. The moon shone as much as an August moon ever does shine; and I saw Clement-Pell start as if he had been told his house was on fire.

“I thought this might be a likely place to find you,” said the stranger in a savage whisper. “You have kept out of my way for two days at the Bank—too busy to see me, eh?—so, hearing what was going on here, I took the train and came over.”

“I’m sure I am—happy to see you, Mr. Johnson,” cried Clement-Pell in a voice that seemed to tremble a little; and unless the moonlight was in fault, he had turned as pale as a ghost. “Would have sent you an invitation had I known you were down.”

“I dare say you would! I did not come to attend festivals, Pell, but to settle business-matters.”

“You must be aware I cannot attend to business to-night,” interrupted Clement-Pell. “Neither do I ever enter upon it at my own residence. I will see you to-morrow morning at eleven at the Bank.”

“Honour bright? Or is it a false plea, put forth to shuffle out of me now?”

“I will see you to-morrow morning at the Bank at eleven o’clock,”repeated Clement-Pell, emphatically. “We are very busy just now, and I must be there the first thing. And now, Mr. Johnson, if you will go into the refreshment tent, and make yourself at home——”

“No refreshments for me, thank you: I must hasten away to catch the train. But first of all, I will ask you a question: and answer it you must, whether it is your habit of entering on business at home, or whether it is not. Is it true that——”

I did not want to hear more secrets, and went crashing through the trees. I should have gone before, but for not liking they should know any one was there. They turned round.

“Oh, is it you, Mr. Ludlow?” cried Pell, putting out his hand as I passed them.

“Yes, sir. I am looking for young Whitney. Have you seen him?”

“I think I saw him at the door of one of the tents, just now. You’ll find him amongst the company, I dare say. The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley have not come, I hear.”

“No sir.”

“Ah well—give my very kind regards to them, and say I am sorry. I hope you are taking care of yourself—in the way of refreshments.”

The stranger and I had stood facing each other. He was a very peculiar-looking man with a wide stare; black hair, white whiskers, and very short legs. I thought it anything but good manners of him to come over, as he had confessed to have done, to disturb Clement-Pell at such a time.

At nine o’clock Giles arrived with the pony-carriage for the young ladies and two of us: the other and Giles were to walk. But we didn’t see the fun of leaving so early. Giles said he could not wait long: he must be back to get old Jacobson’s gig ready, who was spending the evening at the Manor. The Jacobsons, being farmers, though they were wealthy, and lived in good old style, had been passed over when Mrs. Clement-Pell’s invitations went out. So Tod sent Giles and the carriage back again, with a message that we all preferred walking, and should follow shortly.

Follow, we did; but not shortly. It was past eleven when we got away. The dancing had been good, and no one was at hand to say we must leave. Helen and Anna Whitney came out with their cloaks on. What with the dancing and the sultriness of the weather, the night was about as hot as an oven. We were almost the last to leave: but did not mean to say so at home. It was a splendid night, though; very clear, the moon larger than usual. We went on in no particular order; the five of us turning out of the Parrifer gates together.

“Oh,” screamed Helen, when we were some yards down the road,“where’s the bag? Anna, have you brought the bag?”

“No,” replied Anna. “You told me you would bring it.”

“Well—I meant to do so. William, you must run back for it.”

“Oh, bother the bag,” said Bill. “You girls can’t want the bag to-night. I’ll come over for it in the morning.”

“Not want it!—Why, our combs and brushes and thin shoes are in it,” retorted Helen. “It is on a chair in that little room off the hall. Come, William, go for it.”

“I’ll go, Helen,” I said. “Walk quietly on, and I shall catch you up.”

The grounds looked quite deserted: the Chinese lanterns had burned themselves out, and the doors appeared closed. One of the side windows was open and gay with light; I thought it would be less trouble to enter that way, and leaped up the balcony steps to the empty room. Empty, as I took it to be.

Well, it was a sort of shock. The table had a desk and a heap of papers on it, and on it all lay a man’s head. The face was hidden in his hands, but he lifted it as I went in.

It was Clement-Pell. But I declare that at the first moment I did not know him. If ever you saw a face more haggard than other faces, it was his. He sat bolt upright in his chair then, and stared at me as one in awful fear.

“I beg your pardon, sir. I did not know any one was here.”

“Oh, it is you,” he said, and broke out into a smile—which somehow made the face look even more worn and weary than before. “I thought you had all left.”

“So we have, sir. But Miss Whitney forgot her bag, and I have run back for it. She left it in the small room in the hall.”

“Oh ay, all right,” he said. “You can go and get it, and run out this way again if you like. I dare say the hall-door is closed.”

“Good night, sir,” I said, coming back with the bag. “We have had a most delightful day, Mr. Clement-Pell, and I’m sure we ought to thank you for it.”

“I am glad it has been pleasant. Good night.”

The trees were pretty thick on this side the house. In passing a grove a few paces from the window, I saw something that was neither trunks nor leaves; but Mr. Johnson’s face with its black hair and white whiskers. He was hiding in the trees, his face peeping out to look at the room and at Clement-Pell.

It made me feel queer. It made me think of treachery. Though what treachery, or where, I hardly knew. Not a trace was to be seen of the face now: he drew it in; no doubt to let me pass. Ought I to warn Mr. Pell that he was being watched? I had distinctly heard the man say he was going away directly: why had hestayed? Yes, it would be right and kind. Walking a bit further, I quietly turned back.

Clement-Pell had a pen in his hand this time, and was poring over what seemed to be a big account-book, or ledger. He looked surprised again, but spoke quietly.

“Still left something behind you, Mr. Ludlow?”

“No, sir, not this time,” I said, speaking below my breath. “I thought I would come back and tell you, Mr. Pell, that some one outside is watching this room. If——”

I broke off in sheer astonishment. He started up from his chair and came creeping to where I stood, to hide himself as it seemed from the watcher, his haggard cheeks white as death. But he put a good face on it to me.

“I could not hear you,” he whispered. “What did you say? Some one watching?”

“It is the same man I saw you talking to in the dark walk to-night, with the black hair and white whiskers. Perhaps he means no harm, sir; he is hiding in the trees, and just peeping out to look in here.”

“You are sure it is that same man?” he asked with a relieved air.

“Quite sure.”

“Then it is all right. Mr. Johnson is an eccentric friend of mine. Rather—in fact, rather given to take at times more than is good for him. I suppose he has been going in for champagne. I—I thought it might be some bad character.”

It might be “all right,” as Mr. Pell said: I fancied, by the relieved tone, that it was so: but I felt quite sure that he had cause to fear, if not Mr. Johnson, some one else. At that moment there arose a slight rustle of leaves outside, and he stood, holding his breath to listen, his finger raised. The smell of the shrubs was borne freely on the night air.

“It is only the wind: there must be a little breeze getting up,”said Mr. Clement-Pell. “Thank you; and good night. Oh, by the way, don’t talk of this, Mr. Ludlow. If Johnson has been exceeding, he would not like to hear of it again.”

“No fear, sir. Once more, good night.”

Before I had well leaped the steps of the balcony, the window, a very heavy one, was closed with a bang, and the shutters being put to. Glancing back, I saw the white face of Clement-Pell through the closing shutters, and then heard the bolts shot. What could he be afraid of? Perhaps Johnson turned mad when he drank. Some men do.

“Have you been making that bag, Johnny?” they called out when I caught them up.

“No.”

“I’m sure it was on the chair,” said Helen.

“Oh, I found it at once. I stayed talking with Mr. Pell. I say, has the night grown damp?—or is it my fancy?”

“What does it matter?” returned Bill Whitney. “I wish I was in a bath, for my part, if it was only cold water.”

The Squire stood at the end of the garden when we reached home, with old Jacobson, whose gig was waiting. After reproaching us with our sins, first for sending the carriage back empty, then for being so late, the Squire came round and asked all about the party. Old Jacobson drew in his lips as he listened.

“It’s fine to be the Clement-Pells!” cried he. “Why, a Duke-Royal could not give a grander party than that. Real lace for gowns, had they! No wonder Madame Pell turns her nose up at farmers!”

“Did Clement-Pell send me any particular message?” asked the Pater.

“He sent his kind regards,” I said. “And he was sorry you and Mrs. Todhetley did not go.”

“It was a charming party,” cried Helen Whitney. “Papa and mamma put it to us, when the invitation came—would we go, or would we not go. They don’t much care for the Clement-Pells. I am glad we did go: I would not have missed it for the world. But there’s something about the Clement-Pells that tells you they are not gentlepeople.”

“Oh, that’s the show and the finery,” said Bill.

“No, I think it lies more in their tones and their manner of speaking,” said Helen.

“Johnny, are you quite sure Clement-Pell sent me no message, except kind regards, and that?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“Well, it’s very odd.”

“What is very odd, sir?”

“Never you mind, Johnny.”

This was after breakfast on the Saturday morning. The Squire was opening a letter that the post had brought, and looked up to ask me. Not that the letter had anything to do with Clement-Pell, for it only enclosed a bill for some ironmongery bought at Evesham.

On the Friday the Whitneys had gone home, and Tod with them. So I was alone: with nothing to do but to wish him back again.

“I am going to Alcester, Johnny,” said the Pater, in the course of the morning. “You can come with me if you like.”

“Then will you please bring me back some money?” cried Mrs. Todhetley. “You will pass the Bank, I suppose.”

“It’s where I am going,” returned the Pater: and I thought his voice had rather a grumbling tone in it.

We took the pony-carriage, and he let me drive. It was as hot as ever; and the Squire wondered when the autumn cool would be coming in. Old Brandon happened to be at his gate as we went by, and the Pater told me to pull up.

“Going in to Alcester?” cried Mr. Brandon.

“Just as far as the Bank,” said the Pater. “So I hear you went to the Clement-Pells’ after all, Brandon.”

“I looked in to see what it was like,” said old Brandon, giving me a moment’s hard stare: as much as to recall to my mind what had really taken him there.

“It was a dashing affair, I hear.”

“Rather too much so for me,” cried Mr. Brandon drily. “Where’s your son, sir?”

“Oh, he’s gone home with the Whitneys’ young folk. How hot it is to-day!”

“Ay. Too hot to stand in it long. Drive on, Johnny.”

The Squire went in to the Bank alone, leaving me with the carriage. He banked with the Old Bank at Worcester; but it was a convenience to have some little money nearer in case of need, and he had recently opened a small account at Alcester. Upon which Clement-Pell had said he might as well have opened it with him, at his Church Dykely branch. But the Squire explained that he had as good as promised the Alcester people, years ago, that if he did open an account nearer than Worcester it should be with them. He came out, looking rather glum, stuffing some notes into his pocket-book.

“Turn the pony round, Johnny,” said he. “We’ll go back. It’s too hot to stay out to-day.”

“Yes, sir. Is anything the matter?”

“Anything the matter! No. Why do you ask?”

“I thought you looked put out, sir.”

“There’s nothing the matter. Only I think men of business should not be troubled with short memories. Take care of that waggon. What’s the fellow galloping his horses at that rate for? Now, Johnny, I say, take care. Or else, give me the reins.”

I nearly laughed. At home they never seemed to think I could do anything. If they did let me drive, it was always Now take care of this, Johnny; or, Take care of that. And yet I was a more careful driver than Tod: though I might not have had somuch strength as he to pull up a four-in-hand team had it run away.

“Go round through Church Dykely, Johnny, and stop at Pell’s Bank,” said the Squire, as I was turning off on the direct road home.

I turned the pony’s head accordingly. It took us about a mile out of our way. The pavement was so narrow and the Bank room so small, that I heard all that passed when the Squire went in.

“Is Mr. Clement-Pell here?”

“Oh dear no, sir,” replied the manager. “He is always at the chief Bank on Saturday. Did you want him?”

“Not particularly. Tell him I think he must have forgotten to send to me.”

“I’ll tell him, sir. He may look in here to-night on his return. If you wish to see him yourself, he will be here all day on Monday.”

The Squire came out and got in again. Cutting round the sharp corner by Perkins the butcher’s, I nearly ran into Mrs. and the Miss Clement-Pells, who were crossing the dusty road in a line like geese, the one behind the other; their muslins sweeping the highway like brooms, and their complexions sheltered under point lace parasols.

“There you go again, Johnny! Pull up, sir.”

I pulled up: and the heads came from under the parasols, and grouped round to speak to us. They had quite recovered Thursday’s fatigue, Mrs. Clement-Pell graciously said, in answer to the Squire’s inquiries; and she hoped all her young friends had done the same, Mr. Todhetley’s young friends in particular.

“They felt no fatigue,” cried the Pater, “Why, ma’am, they’d keep anything of that sort up for a week and a day, and not feel it. How’s Mr. Clement-Pell?”

“He is as well as he allows himself to be,” she answered. “I tell him he is wearing himself out with work. His business is of vast magnitude, Mr. Todhetley. Good day.”

“So it is,” acquiesced the Pater as we drove on, partly to himself, partly to me. “Of vast magnitude. For my part, I’d rather do less, although it involved less returns. One can forgive a man, like him, forgetting trifles. And, Johnny, I shouldn’t wonder but his enormous riches render him careless of small obligations.”

Part of which was unintelligible to me.

Sunday passed. We nodded to the Miss Clement-Pells at church (their bonnets making the pew look like a flower-garden); but did not see Mr. Clement-Pell or his wife. Monday passed; bringing a note from Tod, to say Lady Whitney and Bill would not let him leave yet. Tuesday morning came in. I happened to be seated under the hedge in the kitchen-garden, mending a fishing-rod, whena horse dashed up to the back gate. Looking through, I saw it was the butcher boy, Sam Rimmer. Molly, who was in one of her stinging tempers that morning, came out.

“We don’t want nothing,” said she tartly. “So you might have spared yourself the pains of coming.”

“Don’t want nothing!” returned the boy. “Why’s that?”

“Why’s that!” she retorted. “It’s like your imperence to ask. Do families want joints every day; specially such weather as this? I a-going to cook fowls for dinner, and we’ve the cold round o’beef for the kitchen. Now you know why, Sam Rimmer.”

Sam Rimmer sat looking at her as if in a quandary, gently rubbing his hair, which shone again in the sun.

“Well, it’s a pity but you wanted some,” said he, slowly. “We’ve gone and been and pervided a shop full o’ meat to-day, and it’ll be a dead loss on the master. The Clement-Pells don’t want none, you see: and they took a’most as much as all the rest o’ the gentlefolks put together. There’s summat up there.”

“Summat up where?” snapped Molly.

“At the Clement-Pells’. The talk is, that they’ve busted-up, and be all gone off in consekence.”

“Why, what d’ye mean?” cried Molly. “Gone off where? Busted-up from what?”

But, before Perkins’s boy could answer, the Pater, walking about the path in his straw hat and light thin summer coat, came on the scene. He had caught the words.

“What’s that you are saying about the Clement-Pells, Sam Rimmer?”

Sam Rimmer touched his hair, and explained. Upon going to Parrifer Hall for orders, he had found it all sixes-and-sevens; some of the servants gone, the rest going. They told him their master had bursted-up, and was gone away since Sunday morning; and the family since Monday morning. And his master, Perkins, would have all the meat left on his hands that he had killed on purpose for the Clement-Pells.

You should have seen the Squire’s amazed face. At first he did not know how to take the words, and stared at Sam Rimmer without speaking.

“All the Banks has went and busted-up too,” said Sam. “They be a-saying, sir, as how there won’t be nothing for nobody.”

The Squire understood now. He turned tail and rushed into the house. And rushed against Mr. Brandon, who was coming in.

“Well, have you heard the news?” asked Mr. Brandon in his thinnest voice.

“I can’t believe it; I don’t believe it,” raved the Squire.“Clement-Pell would never be such a swindler. He owes me two hundred pounds.”

Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes. “Owes it you!”

“That day, last week, when he came driving in, in his smart cockle-shell carriage—when you were here, you know, Brandon. He got a cheque for two hundred pounds from me. A parcel of money that ought to have come over from the chief Bank had not arrived, he said, and the Church Dykely branch might be run close; would I let him have a cheque for two or three hundred pounds on the Bank at Alcester. I told him I did not believe I had anything like two hundred pounds lying at Alcester: but I drew a cheque out for that amount, and wrote a note telling the people there to cash it, and I would make it right.”

“And Pell drove straight off to Alcester then and there, and cashed the cheque?” said Mr. Brandon in his cynical way.

“He did. He had told me I should receive the money on the following day. It did not come, or on the Friday either; and on Saturday I went to Alcester, thinking he might have paid it in there.”

“Which of course he had not,” returned old Brandon. “Well, you must have been foolish, to be so taken-in.”

“Taken-in!” roared the Squire, in a passion. “Why, if he had asked me for two thousand pounds he might have had it—a man with the riches of Clement-Pell.”

“Well, he wouldn’t have got any from me. One who launched out as he did, and let his family launch out, I should never put much trust in. Any way, the riches are nowhere; and it is said Pell is nowhere too.”

It was all true. As Sam Rimmer put it, Clement-Pell and his Banks had bursted-up.

CHAPTER XXIV.

GETTING AWAY.

You have heard of the avalanches that fall without warning and crush luckless dwellers in the Swiss mountains; and of mälströms that suddenly swallow up vessels sailing jauntily along on a calm sea; and of railway trains, filled with happy passengers, that one minute are running smoothly and safely along, and the next are nowhere: but nothing of this sort ever created the consternation that attended the bursting-up of the Clement-Pells.

It was Saturday night.—For we have to trace back a day or two.—Seated in the same room where I had seen him when I went back for Helen Whitney’s bag, was Clement-Pell. That the man had come to his last gasp, he knew better than any one else in the world could have told him. How he had braved it out, and fought against the stream, and still kept off the explosion since the night but one before—Thursday—when Mr. Johnson had intruded himself into the grounds and then stealthily watched him from the trees, and he knew all was over, it might have puzzled him to tell. How he had fought against all for months, ay, and years, turned him sick only to recall. It had been a fierce, continuous, secret battle; and it had nearly worn him out, and turned his face and his hair grey before their time.

On the day following this fête-night, Friday, Clement-Pell took the train and was at his chief Bank early. He held his interview with Mr. Johnson; he saw other people; and his manner was free and open as usual. On this next day, Saturday, he had been denied to nearly all callers at the Bank: he was too busy to be interrupted, he told his clerks: and his son James boldly made appointments with them in his name for the Monday. After dark on Saturday evening, by the last train, he reached home, Parrifer Hall. And there he was, in that room of his; the door and shutters bolted and barred upon him, alternately pacing it in what looked like tribulation, and bending over account-books by the light of two wax candles.

Leaning his forehead on his hand, he sat there, and thought it out. He strove to look the situation fully in the face; what it was,and what it would be. Ruin, and worse than ruin. Clement-Pell had possessed good principles once: so to say, he possessed them still. But he had allowed circumstances to get the better of him and of them. He had come from his distant home (supposed to have been London) as the manager of an insignificant and humble little Bank: that was years ago. It was only a venture: but a certain slice of luck, that need not be recorded here, favoured him, and he got on beyond his best expectations. He might have made an excellent living, nay, a good fortune, and kept his family as gentlepeople, had he been prudent. But the luck, coming suddenly, turned his head, you see. Since then, I, Johnny Ludlow, who am no longer the inexperienced boy of that past time, have known it turn the heads of others. He launched out into ventures, his family launched into expense. The ventures paid; the undue expense did not pay. When matters came to be summed up by a raging public, it was said that it was this expense which had swamped the Pells. That alone, I suppose, it could not have been: but it must have gone some way towards it.

It lay on his mind heavily that Saturday night. Looking back, he got wondering how much more, in round figures, his family had cost him than they ought to have cost. There had been his wife’s different expenses. Her houses, and her staff of servants, her carriages and horses, her dresses and jewels, and all the rest that it would take too long to tell of; and the costly bringing-up of his daughters; and the frightful outlay of his two younger sons. Fabian and Gusty Pell ought to have had ten thousand a year apiece, to have justified it. James had his expenses too, but in a quieter way. Clement-Pell ran his nervous fingers through his damp hair, as he thought of this, and in his bitter mind told himself that his family had ruined him. Unlimited spending—show—the shooting up above their station! He gave a curse to it now. He had not checked it when he might have done so; and it (or they) got the upper hand, and then he could not. Nothing is so difficult as to put down such expenses as these when they have become a habit.

And so the years had soon come that he found need for supplies. Unlimited as his millions were supposed to be by a confiding public, Clement-Pell in secret wanted money more than most people. His operations were gigantic, but then they required gigantic resources to keep them going. Money was necessary—or the smash must have come two or three years earlier. But sufficient money was not then conveniently attainable by Clement-Pell: and so—he created some. He believed when all his returns from these gigantic operations should flow in, that he could redeem the act; could replace the money, and no one ever be the wiser. But (it is theold story; one that has been enacted before and since), he found somehow that he could not replace it. Like Tod and that gambling affair when we were in London, in trying to redeem himself, he only got further into the mire. Tod, in playing on to cover his losses, doubled them; Clement-Pell’s fresh ventures in the stream of speculation only sent him into deeper water. Of late, Clement-Pell had been walking as on a red-hot ploughshare. It burnt and scorched him everlastingly, and he could not get out of it. But the end had come. The thunder-cloud so long hovering in the air was on the very point of bursting, and he was not able to meet it. He must get away: he could not face it.

Get away for good, as he hoped, never to be tracked by friends or foes. What his future life was to be he did not attempt to consider: he only knew that he would give all he ever had been worth to be able to live on, no matter how quietly, with his fellow-men around him. The little moderate home that he and his wife had once looked to as the haven of their desires, would have been a harbour of safety and pride to him now.

Say what you will, men do not like to be shown up as black sheep in the eyes of their fellows; especially if they have hitherto stood out as conspicuously white leaders of the flock. The contrast is so great, the fall so startling. The public gives them all sorts of hard names; as it did in the case of Clement-Pell. A desperately hardened man he must be, said the world, with a brazen conscience; unprincipled as—well, yes, as Satan. But we may be very sure of one thing—that upon none does the disgrace tell so keenly, the ruin so heavily, the sense of shame so cruelly, as on these men themselves. Put it, if you will, that they make a purse and carry it off to set up a new home in some foreign land—they carry their sense of humiliation with them also; and their sun of happiness in this life has set. Men have tried this before now, and died of it.

That was the best that lay prospectively before Clement-Pell: what the worst might be, he did not dare dwell upon. Certain ugly possibilities danced before his mental vision, like so many whirling ballet girls. “If I can only get away!” he muttered; “if I can only get away!”

He tried to confine his whole attention to the ledgers before him, and he put on his spectacles again. Mental trouble and mental work will dim the sight as well as whiten the hair and line the face, and Clement-Pell could not see as he had seen a year before. He altered figures; he introduced entries; he tore out whole leaves, and made a bonfire of them in the grate—carefully removing from the grate first of all its paper ornament. One book he burnt wholesale, even to the covers; and the covers made a frightful smell and daunted him.

Money was wanted here, there, everywhere. Snatching a piece of paper he idly dotted down the large sums occurring to him at the moment; and quite laughed as he glanced at the total. These were only business liabilities. At his elbow lay a pile of bills: domestic and family debts. House rent, taxes, horses, carriages, servants’ wages, bills for food, bills for attire: all running back a long while; for no one had pressed Clement-Pell. The outlay for the fête might well have been profuse, since none of it was ever paid for. Beside the bills lay letters from Fabian and Gusty—wanting money as usual. To all these he scarcely gave a thought; they were as nothing. Even though he were made bankrupt upon them, they were still as nothing: for they would not brand his brow with the word felon. And he knew that there were other claims, of which no record appeared here, that might not be so easily wiped out.

Just for a moment, he lost himself in a happy reverie of what might have been had he himself been wise and prudent. It was Gusty’s pressing letter that induced the reflection. He saw himself a prosperous man of moderate expenses and moderate desires, living at his ease in his own proper station, instead of apeing the great world above him. His daughters reared to be good and thoughtful women, his sons to be steady and diligent whatever their calling, whether business or profession. And what were they?“Curse the money and the pride that deluded me and my wife to blindness!” broke with a groan from the lips of Clement-Pell.

A sharp knocking at the door made him start. He looked about to see if there were anything to throw over his tell-tale table, and had a great mind to take off his coat and fling it there. Catching up the ornamental paper of the grate to replace it if he could, the knocking came again, and with it his wife’s voice, asking what that smell of burning was. He let her in, and bolted the door again.

How far Mrs. Clement-Pell had been acquainted with his position, never came out to the world. That she must have known something of it was thought to be certain; and perhaps the additional launching out lately—the sojourn at Kensington, the fête, and all the rest of it—had only been entered upon to disarm suspicion. Shut up together in that room, they no doubt planned together the getting-away. That Mrs. Clement-Pell fought against their leaving home and grandeur, to become fugitives, flying in secret like so many scapegoats, would be only natural: we should all so fight; but he must have shown her that there was no help for it. When she quitted the room again, she looked like one over whom twenty years had passed—as Miss Phebus told us later. And the whole of that night, Mrs. Clement-Pell never went to bed; but was in her room gathering things together barefooted, lest she should beheard. Jewels—dresses—valuables! It must have been an awful night; deciding which of her possessions she should take, and which leave for ever.

At six in the morning, Sunday, Mr. Clement-Pell’s bell rang, and the groom was summoned. He was bade get the small open carriage ready to drive his master to the railway station to catch an early train. Being Sunday, early trains were not common. Mr. Clement-Pell had received news the previous night, as was intimated, of an uncle’s illness. At that early hour, and Sunday besides, Clement-Pell must have thought he was safe from meeting people: but, as it happened (things do happen unexpectedly in this world), in bowling out from his own gates, he nearly bowled over Duffham. The Doctor, coming home from a distant patient, to whom he had been called in the night, was jogging along on his useful old horse.

“Well!” said he to the banker. “You are off early.”

“Drive on, don’t stop,” whispered Clement-Pell to the groom.“I had news last night of the dangerous illness of my poor old uncle, and am going to see him,” he called out to Duffham as they passed. “We shall have it piping hot again to-day, Doctor!”

The groom told of this encounter afterwards—as did Duffham too, for that matter. And neither of them had any more suspicion that Clement-Pell was playing a part than a baby could have had. In the course of the morning the groom drove in again, having safely conveyed his master to a distant station. The family went to church as usual, chaperoned by Miss Phebus. Mrs. Clement-Pell stayed at home, saying she had a headache: and no doubt quietly completed her preparations.

About six o’clock at night a telegram was delivered. The uncle was dying: Mrs. Clement-Pell must come as soon as possible, to be in time to see him: as to bringing the children she must do as she pleased about that. In Mrs. Pell’s agitation and dismay she read the telegram aloud to the governess and the servant who brought it to her. Then was confusion! Mrs. Pell seemed to have lost her head. Take the children?—Of course she should take them;—and, oh, when was the earliest time they could start?

The earliest time by rail was the following morning. And part of the night was again passed in preparation—openly, this time. Mrs. Clement-Pell said they should probably stay away some days, perhaps a week or two, and must take things accordingly. The boxes were all brought into her room, that she might superintend; the poor old uncle was so very particular as to dress, she said, and she trusted he might yet recover. On the Monday morning, she and her daughters departed in the large carriage, at the same early hour that her husband had gone, and for the same remote station. After all, not so much luggage went; only a box a-piece. In stepping into her carriage, she told the servants that it would be an excellent opportunity to clean the paint of the sitting-rooms and of the first-floor while she was away: the previous week she had remarked to them that it wanted doing.

The day went on; the household no doubt enjoying their freedom and letting the paint alone. No suspicion was aroused amongst them until late in the afternoon, when a curious rumour was brought over of some confusion at the chief Bank—that it had stopped and its master had flown. At first the governess and servants laughed at this: but confirmation soon came thick and three-fold. Clement-Pell had burst-up.

And why the expression “bursting-up” should have been universally applied to the calamity by all people, high and low, I know no more than you; but it was so. Perhaps in men’s minds there existed some assimilation between a bubble, that shines brightly for its brief existence before bursting, like the worthless froth it is, and the brilliant but foundationless career of Mr. Clement-Pell.

The calamity at first was too great to be believed in. It drove people mad only to fancy it might be true: and one or two, alas! subsequently went mad in reality. For the bursting-up of Mr. Clement-Pell’s huge undertakings caused the bursting-up of many private ones, and of households with them. Means of living went: homes were desolated.

It would be easier to tell you of those who had not trusted money in the hands of Clement-Pell, than of those who had. Some had given him their all. Led away by the fascinating prospect of large interest, they forgot future safety in the dazzling but delusive light of immediate good. I should like it to be distinctly understood that I, Johnny Ludlow, am writing of a matter which took place years ago; and not of any recent event, or events, that may have since occurred to shake public equanimity in our own local world.

Disbelief in the misfortune was natural. Clement-Pell had stood on a lofty pedestal, unapproachable by common individuals. We put greater trust in him—in his unbounded wealth, his good faith, his stability—than we could have put in any other man on the face of the globe. We should almost as soon have expected the skies to fall as Clement-Pell. The interests of so many were involved and the ruin would be so universal, that the terrified natives could only take refuge in disbelief: and Squire Todhetley was amongst them.

The news was brought to Dyke Manor on the Tuesday morning, as you have heard, by the butcher boy, Sam Rimmer; and was confirmed by Mr. Brandon. When the first momentary shock had been digested by the Squire, he arrived at the conclusion that it must be false. But that Sam had trotted off, he might have heard the length of the Pater’s tongue. Sam being gone, he turned his indignation on Mr. Brandon.

“One would have thought you had sense to know better, Brandon,” said he, raging about the breakfast-room with the skirts of his light morning coat held out behind him. “Giving ear to a cock-and-bull story that can’t be true! Take care Pell does not get to hear it. He’d sue you for defamation.”

“He’d be welcome,” nodded old Brandon, in his thin voice, as he stood, whip in hand, against the window.

“The grand fête of last Thursday,” gasped Mrs. Todhetley—who had been puzzling her brains over Sam Rimmer’s master’s book, the writing in which could never be deciphered. “Surely the Clement-Pells would not have given that fête had things been going wrong with them.”

“And poured iced champagne, unlimited, down folk’s throats; and strutted about in point-lace and diamonds,” added old Brandon.“Madam, I’d believe it all the more for that.”

As he spoke, the remembrance of the scene I had witnessed in the grounds, and Clement-Pell’s curious fear later when I told him of the same man watching him, flashed over me, bringing a conviction that the report was true.

“I heard it at the chief Bank yesterday,” began Mr. Brandon.“Having some business to transact in the town, I went over by train in the afternoon, and chanced to meet Wilcox in High Street. He is a red-faced man in general——”

“Oh, I know Wilcox,” impatiently interrupted the Squire.“Face as red as the sun in a fog. What has that to do with it?”

“Well, it was as pale yesterday as the moon on a frosty night,”went on old Brandon. “I asked if he had an attack of bile—being subject to it myself—and he said No, it was an attack of fright. And then he told me there was a report in town that something was wrong with Pell’s affairs, and that he had run away. Wilcox will lose every penny of his savings.”

“All talk; all talk,” said the Pater in his obstinacy.

“And for a man to come to Wilcox’s age, which must be five-and-fifty, it is no light blow to lose a life’s savings,” calmly went on old Brandon. “I went to the Bank, and found it besieged by an excited and angry crowd fighting to get in, the door locked, and the porter vainly trying to put up the shutters. That was enough to show me what the matter was, and I left Wilcox to it.”

The Squire stared in perplexity, rubbing up his scanty hair the wrong way while his senses came to him.

“It is all true,” said Mr. Brandon, nodding to him. “Church Dykely is in an uproar this morning already.”

“I’ll go and see for myself,” said the Squire, stripping off his nankeen coat in haste so great that he tore one sleeve nearly out.“I’ll go and see; this is not credible. Clement-Pell would never have swindled me out of two hundred pounds only a day or two before he knew he was going all to smash.”

“The most likely time for him to do it,” persisted Mr. Brandon.“People, as a rule, only do these things when they are desperate.”

But the Squire did not stay to listen. Settling himself into his other coat, he went driving on across the fields as though he were walking for a wager. Mr Brandon mounted his cob, and put up his umbrella against the sun.

“Never embark any money with these beguiling people that promise you undue interest, Johnny Ludlow,” said Mr. Brandon, as I kept by his side, and opened the gates for him. “Where would you have been now, young man—or, worse, where should I have been—had I, the trustee of your property, consented to risk it with Pell? He asked me to do it.”

“Clement-Pell did, sir? When?”

“A year or two ago. I gave him an answer, Johnny; and I fancy he has not altogether liked me since. ‘I could not think of placing even a shilling of Johnny Ludlow’s where I did not know it to be safe,’ I said to him. ‘It will be safe with me,’ says Pell, sharply. ‘Possibly so, Mr Pell,’ I answered; ‘but you see there’s only your word as guarantee, and that is not enough for an honest trustee.’ That shut him up.”

“Do you mean to say you have doubted Clement-Pell’s stability, Brandon?” demanded the Squire, who was near enough to hear this.

“I don’t know about doubting,” was the answer. “I have thought it as likely to come to a smash as not. That the chances for it were rather better than half.”

This sent the Squire on again. He had no umbrella; and his straw hat glistened in the heat.

Church Dykely was in a commotion. Folk were rushing up to the little branch Bank black in the face, as if their collars throttled them; for the news was spreading like fire in dry turf. The Squire went bolting in through every obstruction, and seized upon the manager.

“Do you mean to tell me that it’s true, Robertson?” he fiercely cried.—“That things have gone to smash?”

“I am afraid it is, sir,” said Robertson, who looked more dead than alive. “I am unable to understand it. It has fallen upon me with as much surprise as it has on others.”

“Now, don’t you go and tell falsehoods, Robertson,” roared the Squire, as if he meant to shake the man. “Surprise upon you,indeed! Why, have you not been here—at the head and tail of everything?”

“But I did not know how affairs were going. Indeed, sir, I tell you truth.”

“Tell a jackass not to bray!” foamed the Squire. “Have you been short of funds here lately, or have you not? Come, answer me that.”

“It is true. We have been short. But Mr. Clement-Pell excused it to me by saying that a temporary lock-up ran the Banks short, especially the small branch Banks. I declare, before Heaven, that I implicitly believed him,” added Robertson, “and never suspected there could be any graver cause.”

“Then you are either a fool or a knave.”

“Not a knave, Squire Todhetley. A fool I suppose I have been.”

“I want my two hundred pounds,” returned the Squire. “And, Robertson, I mean to have it.”

But Robertson had known nothing of the loan; was surprised to hear of it now. As to repayment, that was out of his power. He had not two hundred pence left in the place, let alone pounds.

“It is a case of swindle,” said the Squire. “It’s not one of ordinary debt.”

“I can’t help it,” returned Robertson. “If it were to save Mr. Clement-Pell from hanging, I could not give a stiver of it. There’s my own salary, sir, since Midsummer; that, I suppose, I shall lose: and I can’t afford it, and I don’t know what will become of me and my poor little children.”

At this, the Squire’s voice and anger dropped, and he shook hands with Robertson. But, as a rule, every one began by brow-beating the manager. The noise was deafening.

How had Pell got off? By which route: road or rail? By day or night? It was a regular hubbub of questions. Mr. Brandon sat on his cob all the while, patiently blinking his eyes at the people.

Palmerby of Rock Cottage came up; his old hands trembling, his face as white as the new paint on Duffham’s windows. “It can’t be true!” he was crying. “It can’t be true!”

“Had you money in his hands, Palmerby?”

“Every shilling I possess in the world.”

Mr. Brandon opened his lips to blow him up for foolishness: but something in the poor old face stopped him. Palmerby elbowed his way into the Bank. Duffham came out of his house, a gallipot of ointment in his hand.

“Well, this is a pretty go!”

The Squire took him by the buttonhole. “Where’s the villainous swindler off to, Duffham?”

“I should like to know,” answered the surgeon. “I’d be pretty soon on his trail and ask him to refund my money.”

“But surely he has none of yours?”

“Pretty nigh half the savings of my years.”

“Mercy be good to us!” cried the Pater. “He got two hundred pounds out of me last week. What’s to become of us all?”

“It’s not so much a question of what is to become of us—of you and me, Squire,” said Duffham, philosophically, “as of those who had invested with him their all. We can bear the loss: you can afford it without much hurt; I must work a few years longer, Heaven permitting me, than I had thought to work. That’s the worst of us. But what will those others do? What will be the worst for them?”

Mr. Brandon nodded approvingly from his saddle.

“Coming home last night from Duck Lane—by the way, there’s another infant at John Mitchel’s, because he had not enough before—the blacksmith accosted me, saying Clement-Pell was reported to be in a mess and to have run off. The thing sounded so preposterous that I thought at first Dobbs must have been drinking; and told him that I happened to know Clement-Pell was only off to a relative’s death-bed. For on Sunday morning, you see——”

A crush and rush stopped Duffham’s narrative, and nearly knocked us all down. Ball the milkman had come bumping amongst us in a frantic state, his milk-cans swinging from his shoulders against my legs.

“I say, Ball, take care of my trousers. Milk stains, you know.”

“Master Ludlow, sir, I be a’most mad, I think. Folks is saying as Mr. Clement-Pell and his banks have busted-up.”

“Well? You have not lost anything, I suppose?”

“Not lost!” panted poor Ball. “I’ve lost all I’ve got. ’Twere a hundred pound, Mr. Johnny, scraped together hard enou’, as goodness knows. Mr. Clement-Pell were a-talking to me one day, and he says, says he, Ah, says he, it’s difficult to get much interest now; money’s plentiful. I give eight per cent., says he; most persons gets but three. Would ye take mine, sir, says I; my hundred pound? If you like, he says. And I took it to him, gentlemen, thinking what luck I was in, and how safe it were. My hundred pound!”—letting the cans down with a clatter. “My hundred pound that I’d toiled so hard for! Gentlefolk, wherever be all the money a-gone?”

Well, it was a painful scene. One we were glad to get out of. The Squire, outrageously angry at the way he had been done out of his money, insisted on going to Parrifer Hall. Mr. Brandon rode his cob; Duffham stepped into his surgery to get his hat.

One might have fancied a sale was going on. The doors wereopen: boxes belonging to some of the servants were lying by the side-entrance, ready to be carted away; people (creditors and curiosity-mongers) stood about. Sam Rimmer’s master, the butcher, came out of the house as we went in, swearing. Perkins had not been paid for a twelvemonth, and said it would be his ruin. Miss Phebus was in the hall, and seemed to have been having it out with him. She was a light-haired, bony lady of thirty-five, or so, and had made a rare good gipsy that day in the tent. Her eyes were peculiar: green in some lights, yellow in others: a frightfully hard look they had in them this morning.

“Oh, Mr. Todhetley, I am so glad to see you!” she said. “It is a cruel turn that the Clement-Pells have served me, leaving me here without warning, to bear the brunt of all this! Have you come in the interests of the family?”

“I’ve come after my own interests, ma’am,” returned the Pater.“To find out, if I can, where Clement-Pell has gone to: and to see if I can get back any of the money I have been done out of.”

“Why, it seems every one must be a creditor!” she exclaimed in surprise, on hearing this.

“I know I am one,” was his answer.

“To serve me such a trick,—to behave to me with this duplicity: it is infamous,” went on Miss Phebus, after she had related to us the chief events of the Sunday, as connected with the story of the dying uncle and the telegram. “If I get the chance, I will have the law against them, Mr. Todhetley.”

“It is what a few more of us mean to do, ma’am,” he answered.

“They owe me forty pounds. Yes, Mr. Duffham, it is forty pounds: and I cannot afford to lose it. Mrs. Pell has put me off from time to time: and I supposed it to be all right; I suspected nothing. They have not treated me well lately, either. Leaving me here to take care of the house while they were enjoying themselves up in Kensington! I had a great mind to give warning then. The German governess got offended while they were in town, and left. Some friend of Fabian Pell’s was rude to her.”

A little man looked into the room just then; noting down the furniture with his eye. “None of these here articles must be moved, you understand, mum,” he said to Miss Phebus.

“Don’t talk to me,” she answered wrathfully. “I am going out of the house as soon as I can put my things together.” And the man went away.

“If I had only suspected!” she resumed to us, her angry tone full of pain; “and I think I might have done so, had I exercised my wits. My room is next to Mrs. Pell’s; but it’s not much larger than a closet, and has no fireplace in it: she only gave it me because it was not good enough for any one else. Saturday night was veryhot—as you must remember—and I could not sleep. The window was open, but the room felt like an oven. After tossing about for I don’t know how long, I got up and opened the door, thinking it might admit a breath of air. At that moment I heard sounds below—the quiet shutting of a door, and advancing footsteps. Wondering who could be up so late, I peeped out and saw Mrs. Pell. She came up softly, a candle in her hand, and her face quite curious and altered—aged and pale and haggard. She must be afraid of the ghosts, I thought to myself, as she turned off into her chamber—for we had been telling ghost-stories that night up to bed-time. After that, I did not get to sleep; not, as it seemed, for hours; and all the time I heard drawers being opened and shut in her bed and dressing-room. She must even then have been preparing for flight.”

“And the dying uncle was invented for the occasion, I presume,”remarked Mr. Duffham.

“All I know is, I never heard of an uncle before,” she tartly answered. “I asked Mrs. Clement-Pell on Sunday night where the uncle lived, and how long a journey they had to go: she answered shortly that he was at his country house, and bade me not tease her. Mr. Duffham, can my own boxes be stopped?”

“I should think no one would attempt to do it,” he answered.“But I’d get them out as soon as I could, were I you, Miss Phebus.”

“What a wreck it will be!” she exclaimed.

“You have used the right word, ma’am,” put in Mr. Brandon, who had left his horse outside. “And not only here. Wrecks they will be; and many of them.”

We stood looking at one another ruefully. The Pater had come to hunt up his two hundred pounds; but there did not seem much chance of his doing it. “Look here,” said he suddenly to the governess, “where was that telegram sent from?”

“We have not been able to discover. It was only seen by Mrs. Pell. After she had read it aloud, she crushed it up in her hand, as if in frightful distress, and called out about the poor dear old uncle. She took care it should not be seen: we may be very sure of that.”

“But who sent the telegram?”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Phebus viciously. “Her husband, no doubt. Neither was the luggage that they took with them labelled: we have remembered the fact since.”

“I think we might track them by that luggage,” observed the Pater. “Five big boxes.”

“If you do track them by it I’ll eat the luggage wholesale,”cried wise old Brandon. “Clement-Pell’s not a fool, or his wife either. They’ll go off just in the opposite direction that they appearedto go—and their boxes in another. As to Pell, he was probably unknown at the distant station the groom drove him to.”

There was no end to be served in staying longer at the house, and we quitted it, leaving poor Miss Phebus to her temper. I had never much liked her; but I could not help feeling for her that unlucky morning.

“What’s to be done now?” gloomily cried the Squire, while old Brandon was mounting. “It’s like being in a wood that you can’t get out of. If Clement-Pell had played an honest part with me: if he had come and said, ‘Mr. Todhetley, I am in sore need of a little help,’ and told me a bit about things: I don’t say that I would have refused him the money. But to dupe me out of it in the specious way he did was nothing short of swindling; and I will bring him to book for it if I can.”

That day was only the beginning of sorrow. There have been such cases since: perhaps worse; where a sort of wholesale ruin has fallen upon a neighbourhood: but none, to me, have equalled that. It was the first calamity of the kind in my experience; and in all things, whether of joy or sorrow, our earliest impressions are the most vivid. It is the first step that costs, the French tell us: and that is true of all things.

The ruin turned out to be wider even than was feared; the distress greater. Some had only lost part of their superfluous cash. It was mortifying; but it did not further affect their prosperity, or take from them the means of livelihood; no luxuries need be given up, or any servants dispensed with. Others had invested so much that it would throw them back years, perhaps cripple them for life. Pitiable enough, that, but not the worst. It was as nothing to those who had lost their all.

People made it their business to find out more about Mr. and Mrs. Clement-Pell than had been known before. Both were of quite obscure origin, it turned out, and he had not been a lawyer in London, but only a lawyer’s clerk. So much the more credit to him for getting on to be something better. If he had only had the sense to let well alone! But she?—well, all I mean to say here, is this: the farmers she had turned up her nose at were far, far better born and bred, even the smallest of them, than she was. Let that go: other women have been just as foolishly upstart as Mrs. Clement-Pell. One fact came out that I think riled the public worse than any other: that his Christian name was Clement and his surname Pell. He had united the two when growing into a great man, and put a “J.” before the Clement, which had no right there. Mr. Brandon had known it all along—at least he chancedto know that in early life his name was simply Clement Pell. The Squire, when he heard of this, went into a storm of reproach at old Brandon, because he had not told it.

“Nay, why should I have sought to do the man an injury?”remonstrated Mr. Brandon. “It was no business of mine, that I should interfere. We must live and let live, Squire, if we care to go through the world peaceably.”

The days went on, swelling the list of creditors who came forward to declare themselves. The wonder was, that so many had been taken in. But you see, people had not made it their business to proclaim that their money lay with Clement-Pell. Gentlefolk who lived on their fortunes; professional men of all classes, including the clergy; commercial men of high and low degree; small tradespeople; widows with slender incomes, and spinsters with less. If Clement-Pell had taken the money of these people, not intentionally to swindle them, as the Squire put it in regard to his own, but only knowing there was a chance that it would not be safe, he must have been a hard and cruel man. I think the cries of the defrauded of that unhappy time must have gone direct to heaven.

He was not spared. Could hard words injure an absentee, Clement-Pell must have come in for all sorts of harm. His ears burned, I should fancy—if there’s any truth in the saying that ears burn when distant friends give pepper. The queerest fact was, that no money seemed to be left. Of the millions that Clement-Pell had been worth, or had had to play with, nothing remained. It was inconceivable. What had become of the stores? The hoards of gold; the chests, popularly supposed to be filled with it; the bank-notes; the floating capital—where was it all? No one could tell. People gazed at each other with dismayed faces as they asked it. Bit by bit, the awful embarrassment in which he had been plunged for years came to light. The fictitious capital he had created had consumed itself: and the good money of the public had gone with it. Of course he had made himself secure and carried off loads, said the maddened creditors. But they might have been mistaken there.

For a week or two confusion reigned. Accountants set to work in a fog; official assignees strove to come to the bottom of the muddy waters. There existed some of what people called securities; but they were so hemmed in by claims that the only result would be that there would not be anything for any one. Clement-Pell had done well to escape, or the unhappy victims had certainly tarred and feathered him. All that time he was being searched for, and not a clue could be obtained to him. Stranger perhaps to say, there was no clue to his wife and daughters either. The five boxes had disappeared. It was ascertained that certain boxes,answering to the description, had been sent to London on the Monday from a populous station by a quick train, and were claimed at the London terminus by a gentleman who did not bear any resemblance to Clement-Pell. I’m sure the excitement of the affair was something before unknown to the Squire, as he raged up hill and down dale in the August weather, and it must have been as good as a course of Turkish baths to him.

Ah me! it is all very well to write of it in a light strain at this distance of time; but God alone knows how many hearts were broken by it.

One of the worst cases was poor Jacob Palmerby’s. He had saved money that brought him in about a hundred a year in his old age. Clement-Pell got hold of the money, doubled the interest, and Palmerby thought that a golden era had set in. For several years now he had enjoyed it. His wife was dead; his only son, who had been a sizar at Cambridge, was a curate in London. With the bursting up of Clement-Pell, Jacob Palmerby’s means failed: he had literally not a sixpence left in the world. The blow seemed to have struck him stupid. He mostly sat in silence, his head down; his clothes neglected.

“Come, Palmerby, you must cheer up, you know,” said the Squire to him one evening that we looked in at Rock Cottage, and found Mr. Brandon there.

“Me cheer up,” he returned, lifting his face for a moment—and in the last fortnight it had grown ten years older. “What am I to cheer up for? There’s nothing left. I can go into the workhouse—but there’s poor Michael.”

“Michael?”

“My son, the parson. The capital that ought to have been his after me, and brought him in his hundred a year, as it did me before I drew it from the funds, is gone. Gone. It is of him I think. He has been a good son always. I hope he won’t take to cursing me.”

“Parsons don’t curse, you know, and Michael will be a good son still,” said Mr. Brandon, shrilly. “Don’t you fret, Palmerby. Fretting does no good.”

“It ’ud wear out a donkey—as I tell him,” put in the old woman-servant, Nanny, who had brought in his supper of bread-and-milk.

He did not lift his head; just swayed it once from side to side by way of general response.

“It’s the way he goes on all day, masters,” whispered Nanny when we went out. “His heart’s a-breaking—and I wish it was that knave of a Pell’s instead. All these purty flowers to be left,”pointing to the clusters of roses and geraniums and honeysuckleswithin the gate, “and the chairs and tables to be sold, and the very beds to be took from under us!”

“Nay, nay, Nanny, it may turn out better than that,” spoke the Squire.

“Why, how can it turn out better, sirs?” she asked. “Pell didn’t pay the dividends this two times past: and the master, believing as all his excuses was gospel, never thought of pressing for it. If we be in debt to the landlord and others, is it our fault? But the sticks and stones must be sold to pay, and the place be given up. There be the work’us for me; I know that, and it don’t much matter; but it’ll be a crying shame if the poor master have to move into it.”

So it would be. And there were others in a similar plight to his; nothing else but the workhouse before them.

“He won’t never live to go—that’s one consolation,” was Nanny’s last comment as she held the gate open. “Good evening to ye, sirs; good evening, Master Johnny.”

What with talking to Dobbs the blacksmith, and staying with Duffham to drink what he called a dish of tea, it was almost dark when I set out home; the Squire and Mr. Brandon having gone off without me. I was vaulting over the stile the near way across the fields, expecting to catch it for staying, when a man shot into my path from behind the hedge.

“Johnny Ludlow.”

Well, I did feel surprised. It was Gusty Pell!

“Halloa!” said I. “I thought you were in Scotland.”

“I was there,” he answered. And then, while we looked at one another, he began to tell me the reason of his coming away. Why it is that all kinds of people seem to put confidence in me and trust me with matters they’d never speak of to others, I have never found out. Had it been Tod, for instance, Gusty Pell would never have shown himself out of the hedge to talk to him.

Gusty, shooting the grouse on the moors, had found his purse emptied of its last coin. He wrote to his father for more money: wrote and wrote; but none arrived: neither money nor letter. Being particularly in want of supplies, he borrowed a sovereign or two from his friends, and came off direct to see the reason why. Arrived within a few miles of home he heard very ugly rumours; stories that startled him. So he waited and came on by night, thinking it more prudent not to show himself.

“Tell me all about it, Johnny Ludlow, for the love of goodness!”he cried, his voice a little hoarse with agitation, his hand grasping my arm like a vice. “I have been taking a look at the place outside”—pointing up the road towards Parrifer Hall—“but it seems to be empty.”

It was empty, except for a man who had charge of the things until the sale could take place. Softening the narrative a little, and not calling everything by the name the public called it, I gave the facts to Gusty.

He drew a deep breath at the end, like a hundred sighs in one. Then I asked him how it was he had not heard these things—had not been written to.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have been moving about Scotland: perhaps a letter of theirs may have miscarried; and I suppose my later letters did not reach them. The last letter I had was from Constance, giving me an account of some grand fête here that had taken place the previous day.”

“Yes. I was at it with Todhetley and the Whitneys. The—the crisis came three or four days after that.”

“Johnny, where’s my father?” he asked, after a pause, his voice sunk to a whisper.

“It is not known where he is.”

“Is it true that he is being—looked for?”

“I am afraid it is.”

“And, if they find him—what then? Why don’t you speak?” he added impatiently.

“I don’t know what. Some people say it will only be a bad case of bankruptcy.”

“Any way, it is a complete smash.”

“Yes, it’s that.”

“Will it, do you think, be ruin, Johnny? Ruin utter and unmitigated?”

“It is that already—to many persons round about.”

“But I mean to my own people,” said he, impatiently.

“Well, I should fear it would be.”

Gusty took off his hat to wipe his brow. He looked white in the starlight.

“What will become of me? I must fly too,” he muttered, as if to the stars. “And what of Fabian?—he cannot remain in his regiment. Johnny Ludlow, this blow is like death to me.”

And it struck me that of the two calamities, Gusty Pell, non-religious though he was, would rather have met death. I felt dreadfully sorry for him.

“Where’s James?” he suddenly asked. “Is he gone too?”

“James disappeared on the Sunday, it is said. It would hardly have been safe for him to remain: the popular feeling is very bitter.”

“Well, I must make myself scarce again also,” he said, after a pause. “Could you lend me a pound or so, Johnny, if you’ve got it about you?”

I told him I wished I had; he should have been heartily welcome to it. Pulling out my pockets, I counted it all up—two shillings and fivepence. Gusty turned from it with disdain.

“Well, good evening, Johnny. Thank you for your good wishes—and for telling me what you have. I don’t know to whom else I could have applied: and I am glad to have chanced to meet you.”

He gave another deep sigh, shook my hand, got over the stile, and crept away, keeping close to the hedge, as if he intended to make for Alcester, I stood and watched him until he was lost in the shadows.

And so the Pells, one and all, went into exile in some unknown region, and the poor duped people stayed to face their ruin at home. It was an awful time, and that’s the truth.

CHAPTER XXV.

OVER THE WATER.

We had what they called the “dead-lights” put in the ladies’ cabin at Gravesend: that will show what the weather was expected to be in the open sea. In the saloon, things were pitching about before we reached Margate. Rounding the point off Broadstairs, the steamer caught it strong and sharp.

“Never heed a bit of pitching: we’ve the wind all for us, and shall make a short passage,” said the captain in hearty tones, by way of consolation to the passengers generally. “A bit o’ breeze at sea is rather pleasant.”

Pleasant it might be to him, Captain Tune, taking in a good dinner, as much at ease as if he had been sitting in his dining-room ashore. Not so pleasant, though, for some of us, his passengers.

Ramsgate and other landmarks passed, and away in the open sea it was just a gale. That, and nothing less. Some one said so to the man at the wheel: a tall, middle-aged, bronzed-faced fellow in shirt sleeves and open blue waistcoat.

“Bless y’re ignorance! This a gale! Why, ’taint half a one. It’ll be a downright fair passage, this ’un will, shorter nor ord’nary.”

“What do you call a gale—if this is not one?”

“I ain’t allowed to talk: you may see it writ up.”

“Writ up,” it was. “Passengers are requested not to talk to the man at the wheel.” But if he had been allowed to talk, and talked till now, he would never have convinced some of the unhappy creatures around, that the state of wind then blowing was not a gale.

It whistled in the sails, it roared over the paddle-wheels, it seemed to play at pitch-and-toss with the sea. The waves rose with mountain force, and then broke like mad: the steamer rolled and lurched, and righted herself; and then lurched and rolled again. Captain Tune stood on the bridge, apparently enjoying it, the gold band on his cap glistening in the sun. We got his name from the boat bills; and a jolly, courteous, attentive captain he seemed to be. But for the pitching and tossing and general discomfort, it wouldhave been called beautiful weather. The air was bright; the sun as hot as it is in July, although September was all but out.

“Johnny. Johnny Ludlow.”

The voice—Mr. Brandon’s—was too faint to be squeaky. He sat amidships on a camp stool, his back against the cabin wall—or whatever the boarding was—wrapped in a plaid. A yellow handkerchief was tied over his head, partly to keep his cap on, partly to protect his ears. The handkerchief hid most of his face, except his little nose; which looked pinched and about as yellow as the silk.

“Did you call me, sir?”

“I wish you’d see if you can get to my tail pocket, Johnny. I’ve been trying this ten minutes, and do nothing but find my hands hopelessly entangled in the plaid. There’s a tin box of lozenges there.”

“Do you feel ill, sir?” I asked, as I found the box, and gave it to him.

“Never was ill at sea in my life, Johnny, in the way you mean. But the motion always gives me the most frightful headache imaginable. How are you?”

The less said about how I was, the better. All I hoped was he wouldn’t keep me talking.

“Where’s the Squire?” he asked.

I pointed to a distant heap on the deck, from which groans came forth occasionally: and just managed to speak in answer.

“He seems uncommonly ill, sir.”

“Well, he would come, you know, Johnny. Tell him he ought to take——”

What he ought to take was lost in the rush of a wave which came dashing over us.

After all, I suppose it was a quick and good, though rough passage, for Boulogne-sur-Mer was sighted before we thought for. As the stiller I kept the better I was, there was nothing to do but to sit motionless and stare at it.

You’ll never guess what was taking us across the Channel. Old Brandon called it from the first a wild-goose chase; but, go, the Squire would. He was after that gentleman who had played havoc with many people’s hearts and money, who had, so to say, scattered ruin wholesale—Mr. Clement-Pell.

Not a trace had the public been able to obtain as to the direction of the Pells’ flight; not a clue to the spot in which they might be hiding themselves. The weeks had gone on since their departure: August passed into September, September was passing: and for all that could be discovered of them, they might as well never have existed. The committee for winding up the miserable affairs ragedand fumed and pitied, and wished they could just put their hands on the man who had wrought the evil; Squire Todhetley raged and fumed also on his own score; but none of them were any the nearer finding Pell. In my whole life I had never seen the Squire so much put out. It was not altogether the loss of the two hundred pounds he had been (as he persisted in calling it) swindled out of; it was the distress he had to witness daily around him. I do think nothing would have given him more satisfaction than to join a mob in administering lynch law to Clement-Pell, and to tar and feather him first. Before this happened, the Squire had talked of going to the seaside: but he would not listen to a word on the subject now: only to speak of it put him out of temper. Tod was away. He received an invitation to stay with some people in Gloucestershire, who had good game preserves; and was off the next day. And things were in this lively state at home: the Squire grumbling, Mrs. Todhetley driving about with one or other of the children in the mild donkey-cart, and I fit to eat my head off with having nothing to do: when some news arrived of the probable sojourning place of the Clement-Pells.

The news was not much. And perhaps hardly to be relied on. Mr. and Mrs. Sterling at the Court had been over to Paris for a fortnight: taking the baby with them. I must say that Mrs. Sterling was always having babies—if any one cares for the information. Before one could walk another was sure to arrive. And not only the baby had been to Paris, but the baby’s nursemaid, Charlotte. Old Brandon, remarking upon it, said he’d rather travel with half a score of mischievous growing boys than one baby: and they were about the greatest calamity he could think of.

Well, in coming home, the Sterling party had, to make the short crossing, put themselves on board the Folkestone boat at Boulogne, and the nursemaid was sitting on deck with the baby on her lap, when, just as the steamer was moving away, she saw, or thought she saw, Constance Pell, standing on the shore a little apart from the people gathered there to watch the boat off. Mrs. Sterling told the nurse she must be mistaken: but Charlotte held to it that she was not. As chance had it, Squire Todhetley was at the Court with old Sterling when they got home; and he heard this. It put him into a commotion. He questioned Charlotte closely, but she never wavered in her statement.

“I am positive it was Miss Constance Pell, sir,” she repeated.“She had on a thick blue veil, and one of them new-fashioned large round capes. Just as I happened to be looking at her—not thinking it was anybody I knew—a gust of wind took the veil right up above her bonnet, and I saw it was Miss Constance Pell.She pulled at the veil with both her hands, in a scuffle like, to get it down again.”

“Then I’ll go off to Boulogne,” said the Squire, with stern resolution. And back he came to Dyke Manor full of it.

“It will be a wild-goose chase,” observed Mr. Brandon, who had called in. “If Pell has taken himself no further away than Boulogne—that is, allowing he has got out of England at all—he is a greater fool than I took him for.”

“Wild-goose chase or not, I shall go,” said the Pater, hotly.“And I shall take Johnny; he’ll be useful as an interpreter.”

“I will go with you,” came the unexpected rejoinder of Mr. Brandon. “I want a bit of a change.”

And so we went up to London to take the steamer there. And here we were, all three of us, ploughing the waves en route for Boulogne, on the wild-goose chase after Clement-Pell.

Just as the passengers had come to the conclusion that they must die of it, the steamer shot into Boulogne harbour. She was tolerably long swinging round; then was made fast, and we began to land. Mr. Brandon took off his yellow turban and shook his cap out.

“Johnny, I’d never have come if I had known it was going to be like this,” moaned the poor Squire—and every trace of red had gone out of his face. “No, not even to catch Clement-Pell. What on earth is that crowd for?”

It looked about five hundred people; they were pushing and crushing each other, fighting for places to see us land and go through the custom-house. No need to tell of this: not a reader of you, but you must know it well.

The first thing, patent to my senses amidst the general confusion, was hearing my name shouted out by the Squire in the custom-house.

“Johnny Ludlow!”

He was standing before two Frenchmen in queer hats, who sat behind a table or counter, asking him questions and preparing to write down the answers: what his name was, and what his age, and where he was born, just as though he were a footman in want of a place. Not a word could he understand, and looked round for me helplessly. As to my French—well, I knew it pretty well, and talked often with our French master at Dr. Frost’s: but you must not think I was as fluent in it as though I’d been a born Frenchman. It was rather the other way.

We put up at the Hôtel des Bains. A good hotel—as is well known—but nothing to look at from the street. Mr. Brandon had been in Boulogne before, and always used it. The table d’hôterestored the Squire’s colour and spirits together: and by the timedinner was over, he felt ready to encounter the sea again. As to Mr. Brandon, he made his meal of some watery broth, two slices of melon, and a bowlful of pounded sugar.

The great question was—to discover whether the Clement-Pells were in the town; and, if so, to find them out. Mr. Brandon’s opinion never varied—that Charlotte had been mistaken and they were not in the place at all. Allowing, for argument’s sake, that they were there, he said, they would no doubt be living partly in concealment; and it might not answer for us to go inquiring about them openly, lest they got to hear of it, and took measures to secure themselves. There was sense in that.

The next day we went strolling up to the post-office in the Rue des Vieillards, the wind blowing us round the corners sharply; and there inquired for the address of the Clement-Pells. The people were not very civil; stared as if they’d never been asked for an address before; and shortly affirmed that no such name was known there.

“Why, of course not,” said old Brandon quietly, as we strolled down again. “They wouldn’t be in the town under their own name—if they are here at all.”

And there would lie the difficulty.

That wind, that the man at the wheel had scoffed at when called a gale, had been at any rate the beginning of one. It grew higher and higher, chopping round to the south-west, and for three days we had it kindly. On the second day not a boat could get out or in; and there were no bathing-machines to be had. The sea was surging, full of tumult—but it was a grand sight to see. The waves dashed over the pier, ducking the three or four venturesome spirits who went there. I was one of them—and received a good blowing up from Mr. Brandon for my pains.

The gale passed. The weather set in again calm and lovely; but we seemed to be no nearer hearing anything of the Clement-Pells. So far as that went, the time was being wasted: but I don’t think any of us cared much about that. We kept our eyes open, looking out for them, and asked questions in a quiet way: at the établissement, where the dancing went on; at the libraries; and of the pew women at the churches. No; no success: and time went on to the second week in October. On account of the remarkably fine weather, the season and amusements were protracted.

One Friday morning I was sitting on the pier in the sunshine, listening to a couple of musicians, who appeared there every day. He had a violin; she played a guitar, and sang “Figaro.” An old gentleman by me said he had heard her sing the same song for nearly a score of years past. The town kept very full, for the weather was more like summer than autumn. There were moments, and this was one of them, that I wished more than ever Tod was over.

Strolling back off the pier and along the port, picking my way amidst the ropes of the fishing-boats, stretched across my path, I met face to face—Constance Pell. The thick blue veil, just as Charlotte had described it, was drawn over her bonnet: but something in her form struck me, and I saw her features through the veil. She saw me too, and turned her head sharply towards the harbour.

I went on without notice, making believe not to have seen her. Glancing round presently, I saw her cross the road and begin to come back on the other side by the houses. Knowing that the only chance was to trace her home, and not to let her see I was doing it, I stopped before one of the boats, and began talking to a fisherman, never turning my head towards her at all. She passed quickly, on to the long street, once glancing back at me. When she was fairly on her way, I went at the top of my speed to the port entrance of the hotel; ran straight through the yard and up to my room, which faced the street. There she was, walking onwards, and very quickly. Close by the chemist’s shop at the opposite corner, she turned to look back; no doubt looking after me, and no doubt gratified that I was nowhere to be seen. Then she went on again.

Neither the Squire nor Mr. Brandon was in the hotel, that I could find; so I had to take the matter in hand myself, and do the best I could. Letting her get well ahead, I followed cautiously. She turned up the Grande Rue, and I turned also, keeping her in view. The streets were tolerably full, and though she looked back several times, I am sure she did not see me.

Up the hill of the Grande Rue, past the Vice-Consulate, under the gateway of the Upper Town, through the Upper Town itself, and out by another gateway. I thought she was never going to stop. Away further yet, to the neighbourhood of a little place called Mâquétra—but I am not sure that I spell the word properly. There she turned into a small house that had a garden before it.

They call me a muff at home, as you have heard often: and there’s no doubt I have shown myself a muff more than once in my life. I was one then. What I ought to have done was, to have gone back the instant I had seen her enter; what I really did was, to linger about behind the hedge, and try to get a glimpse through it. It skirted the garden: a long, narrow garden, running down from the side of the house.

It was only a minute or two in all. And I was really turningback when a maid-servant in a kind of short brown bedgown (so Hannah called the things at home), black petticoat, grey stockings and wooden sabots, came out at the gate, carrying a flat basket made of black and white straw.

“Does Monsieur Pell live there?” I asked, waiting until she had come up.

“Monsieur Qui?” said the girl.

“Pell. Or Clement-Pell.”

“There is no gentlemans at all lives there,” returned she, changing her language to very decent English. “Only one Madame and her young meesses.”

I seemed to take in the truth in a minute: they were there, but he was not. “I think they must be the friends I am in search of,”was my remark. “What is the name?”

“Brune.”

“Brune?—Oh, Brown. A lady and four young ladies?”

“Yes, that’s it. Bon jour, monsieur.”

She hurried onwards, the sabots clattering. I turned leisurely to take another look at the hedge and the little gate in it, and saw a blue veil fluttering inwards. Constance Pell, deeper than I, had been gazing after me.

Where had the Squire and old Brandon got to? Getting back to the hotel, I could not find either of them. Mr. Brandon might be taking a warm sea-bath, the waiters thought, and the Squire a cold one. I went about to every likely place, and went in vain. The dinner-bell was ringing when they got in—tired to death; having been for some prolonged ramble over beyond Capécure. I told them in their rooms while they were washing their hands—but as to stirring in it before dinner, both were too exhausted for it.

“I said I thought they must be here, Brandon,” cried the Squire, in triumph.

“He is not here now, according to Johnny,” squeaked old Brandon.

After dinner more time was lost. First of all, in discussing what they should do; next, in whether it should be done that night. You see, it was not Mrs. Pell they wanted, but her husband. As it was then dark, it was thought best to leave it until morning.

We went up in state about half-past ten; taking a coach, and passing en route the busy market scene. The coach seemed to have no springs: Mr. Brandon complained that it shook him to pieces. This was Saturday, you know. The Squire meant to be distantly polite to Mrs. and the Miss Pells, but to insist upon having the address given him of Mr. Pell. “We’ll not take the coach quite up to the door,” said he, “or we may not get in.” Indeed,the getting in seemed to be a matter of doubt: old Brandon’s opinion was that they’d keep every window and door barred, rather than admit us.

So the coach set us down outside the furthermost barrier of the Upper Town, and we walked on to the gate, went up the path, and knocked at the door.

As soon as the servant opened it—she had the same brown bedgown on, the same grey stockings, and wooden sabots—the Squire dexterously slipped past her into the passage to make sure of a footing. She offered no opposition: drew back, in fact, to make room.

“I must come in; I have business here,” said he, almost as if in apology.

“The Messieurs are free to enter,” was her answer; “but they come to a house empty.”

“I want to speak to Madame Brown,” returned the Squire, in a determined tone.

“Madame Brown and the Mees Browns are depart,” she said.“They depart at daylight this morning, by the first convoi.”

We were in the front parlour then: a small room, barely furnished. The Squire flew into one of his tempers: he thought the servant was playing with him. Old Brandon sat down against the wall, and nodded his head. He saw how it was—they had really gone.

But the Squire stormed a little, and would not believe it. The girl, catching one word in ten, for he talked very fast, wondered at his anger.

The young gentlemans was at the place yesterday, she said, glancing at me: it was a malheur but they had come up before the morning, if they wanted so much to see Madame.

“She has not gone: I know better,” roared the Squire. “Look here, young woman—what’s your name, though?”

“Mathilde,” said she, standing quite at ease, her hands turned on her hips and her elbows out.

“Well, then, I warn you that it’s of no use your trying to deceive me. I shall go into every room of this house till I find Madame Brown—and if you attempt to stop me, I’ll bring the police up here. Tell her that in French, Johnny.”

“I hear,” said Mathilde, who had a very deliberate way of speaking.“I comprehend. The Messieurs go into the rooms if they like, but I go with, to see they not carry off any of the articles. This is the salon.”

Waiting for no further permission, he was out of the salon like a shot. Mr. Brandon stayed nodding against the wall; he had not the slightest reverence for the Squire’s diplomacy at any time. The girl slipped off her sabots and put her feet into some green worsted slippers that stood in the narrow passage. My belief was she thought we wanted to look over the house with a view to taking it.

“It was small, but great enough for a salle à manger,” she said, showing the room behind—a little place that had literally nothing in it but an oval dining-table, some matting, and six common chairs against the walls. Upstairs were four bedrooms, bare also. As to the fear of our carrying off any of the articles, we might have found a difficulty in doing so. Except beds, chairs, drawers, and wash-hand-stands, there was nothing to carry. Mrs. Brown and the Miss Browns were not there: and the rooms were in as much order as if they had not been occupied for a month. Mathilde had been at them all the morning. The Squire’s face was a picture when he went down: he began to realize the fact that he was once more left in the lurch.

“It is much health up here, and the house fine,” said the girl, leaving her shoes in the passage side by side with the sabots, and walking into the salon in her stockings, without ceremony; “and if the Messieurs thought to let it, and would desire to have a good servant with it, I would be happy to serve them, me. I sleep in the house, or at home, as my patrons please; and I very good to make the kitchen; and I——”

“So you have not found them,” interrupted old Brandon, sarcastically.

The Squire gave a groan. He was put out, and no mistake. Mathilde, in answer to questions, readily told all she knew.

About six weeks ago, she thought it was—but no, it must be seven, now she remembered—Madame Brown and the four Mees Browns took this house of the propriétaire, one Monsieur Bourgeois, marchand d’épicerie, and engaged her as servant, recommended to Madame by M. Bourgeois. Madame and the young ladies had lived very quietly, giving but little trouble; entrusted her to do all the commissions at the butcher’s and elsewhere, and never questioned her fidelity in the matter of the sous received in change at market. The previous day when she got home with some pork and sausages, which she was going after when the young gentlemans spoke to her—nodding to me—Madame was all bouleversée; first because Mees Constance had been down to the town, which Madame did not like her to do; next because of a letter——

At this point the Squire interrupted. Did she mean to imply that the ladies never went out?

No, never, continued Mathilde. Madame found herself not strong to walk out, and it was not proper for the young demoisellesto go walk without her—as the Messieurs would doubtless understand. But Mees Constance had ennui with that, and three or four times she had walked out without Madame’s knowing. Yesterday, par exemple, Madame was storming at her when she (Mathilde) came home with the meat, and the young ladies her sisters stormed at her——

“There; enough of that,” snapped the Squire. “What took them away?”

That was the letter, resumed the girl in her deliberate manner. It was the other thing, that letter was, that had contributed to Madame’s bouleversement. The letter had been delivered by hand, she supposed, while she was gone to the pork-shop; it told Madame the triste news of the illness of a dear relative; and Madame had to leave at once, in consequence. There was confusion. Madame and the young ladies packing, and she (Mathilde), when her dinner had been cooked and eaten, running quick for the propriétaire, who came back with her. Madame paid him up to the end of the next week, when the month would be finished and—that was all.

Old Brandon took up the word. “Mr. Brown?—He was not here at all, was he?”

“Not at all,” replied Mathilde. “Madame’s fancy figured to her he might be coming one of these soon days: if so, I refer him to M. Bourgeois.”

“Refer him for what?”

“Nay, I not ask, monsieur. For the information, I conclude, of where Madame go and why she go. Madame talk to the propriétaire with the salon door shut.”

So that was all we got. Mathilde readily gave M. Bourgeois’s address, and we went away. She had been civil through it all, and the Squire slipped a franc into her hand. From the profusion of thanks he received in return, it might have been a louis d’or.

Monsieur Bourgeois’s shop was in the Upper Town, not far from the convent of the Dames Ursulines. He said—speaking from behind his counter while weighing out some coffee—that Madame Brown had entrusted him with a sealed letter to Monsieur Brown in case he arrived. It contained, Madame had remarked to him, only a line or two to explain where they had gone, as he would naturally be disappointed at not finding them; and she had confided the trust to him that he would only deliver it into M. Brown’s own hand. He did not know where Madame had gone. As M. Bourgeois did not speak a word of English, or the Squire a word of French, it’s hard to say when they would have arrived at an explanation, left to themselves.

“Now look here,” said Mr. Brandon, in his dry, but uncommonlyclear-sighted way, as we went home, “Clement-Pell’s expected here. We must keep a sharp watch on the boats.”

The Squire did not see it. “As if he’d remain in England all this time, Brandon!”

“We don’t know where he has stayed. I have thought all along he was as likely to be in England as elsewhere: there’s no place a man’s safer in, well concealed. The very fact of his wife and daughters remaining in this frontier town would be nearly enough to prove that he was still in England.”

“Then why on earth did he stay there?” retorted the Squire.“Why has he not got away before?”

“I don’t know. Might fear there was danger perhaps in making the attempt. He has lain perdu in some quiet corner; and now that he thinks the matter has partly blown over and the scent is less keen, he means to come over. That’s what his wife has waited for.”

The Squire seemed to grasp the whole at once. “I wonder when he will be here?”

“Within a day or two, you may be sure, or not at all,” said Mr. Brandon, with a nod. “She’ll write to stop his coming, if she knows where to write to. The sight of Johnny Ludlow has startled her. You were a great muff to let yourself be seen, young Johnny.”

“Yes, sir, I know I was.”

“Live and learn, live and learn,” said he, bringing out his tin box. “One cannot put old heads upon young shoulders.”

Sunday morning. After breakfast I and Mr. Brandon were standing under the porte-cochère, looking about us. At the banking house opposite; at a man going into the chemist’s shop with his hand tied up; at the marchand-de-coco with his gay attire and jingling bells and noisy tra-la-la-la: at anything, in short, there might be to see, and so while away the half-hour before church-time. The Squire had gone strolling out, saying he should be back in time for service. People were passing down towards the port, little groups of them in twos and threes; apart from the maid-servants in their white caps, who were coming back from mass. One of the hotel waiters stood near us, his white napkin in his hand. He suddenly remarked, with the easy affability of the French of his class (which, so far as I know, and I have seen more of France since then, never degenerates into disrespect), that some of these people might be expecting friends by the excursion boat, and were going down to see it come in.

“What excursion boat?” asked Mr. Brandon of the waiter, quicker than he generally spoke.

“One from Ramsgate,” the man replied. “It was to leave the other side very early, so as to get to Boulogne by ten o’clock; and to depart again at six in the afternoon.” Mr. Brandon looked at the speaker; and then at me. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he drew me towards the port; charging the waiter to be sure and tell Mr. Todhetley when he returned, that we had gone to see the Ramsgate boat come in. It was past ten then.

“If Clement-Pell comes at all it will be by this excursion boat, Johnny,” said he impressively, as we hurried on.

“Why do you think so, Mr. Brandon?”

“Well, I do think so. The people who make excursion trips are not those likely to know him, or of whom he would be afraid. He will conceal himself on it amongst the crowd. It is Sunday also—another reason. What flag is that up on the signal-post by the pier house, Johnny? Your eyes are younger than mine.”

“It is the red one, sir”

“For a steamer in sight. She is not in yet then. It must be forher. It’s hardly likely there would be another one coming in this morning.”

“There she is!” I exclaimed. For at that moment I caught sight in the distance of a steamer riding on close up to the harbour mouth, pitching a little in her course.

“Run you on, Johnny,” said Mr. Brandon, in excitement. “I’ll come as quickly as I can, but my legs are not as fleet as yours. Get a place close to the cords, and look out sharply.”

It was a bright day, somewhat colder than it had been, and the wind high enough to make it tolerably rough for any but good sailors—as the sparkles of white foam on the blue sea betrayed. I secured a good place behind the cord, close to the landing-stage: a regular crowd had collected, early though it was, Sunday being an idle day with some of the French. The boat came in, was being moored fast below us, and was crowded with pale faces.

Up came the passengers, mounting the almost perpendicular gangway: assisted by the boatmen, below; and by two appariteurs, in their cocked hats and Sunday clothes, above. It was nearly low water: another quarter-of-an-hour and they’d have missed their tide: pleasant, that would have been, for the excursionists. As only one could ascend the ladder at once, I had the opportunity of seeing them all.

Scores came: my sight was growing half-confused: and there had been no one resembling Clement-Pell. Some of them looked fearfully ill still, and had not put up the ears of their caps or turned down their coat collars; so that to get a good view of these faceswas not possible—and Clement-Pell might have already landed, for all I could be sure of to the contrary. Cloaks were common in those days, and travelling caps had long ears to them.

It was quite a stroke of fortune. A lady with a little boy behind her came up the ladder, and the man standing next to me—he was vary tall and big—went at once into a state of excitement. “C’est toi! c’est toi, ma sœur!” he called out. She turned at the voice, and a batch of kissing ensued. A stout dame pushed forward frantically to share the kissing: but a douanier angrily marched off the passenger towards the custom-house. She retorted on him not to be so difficile, turned round and said she must wait for her other little one. Altogether there was no end of chatter and commotion. I was eclipsed and pushed back into the shade.

The other child was appearing over the top of the ladder then; a mite of a girl, her face held close to the face of the gentleman carrying her. I supposed he was the husband. He wore a cloak, his cap was drawn well over his eyebrows, and very little could be seen of him but his hands and his nose. Was he the husband? The mother, thanking him volubly in broken English for his politeness in carrying up her little girl, would have taken her from him; but he motioned as if he would carry her to the custom-house, and stepped onward, looking neither to the left nor right. At that moment my tall neighbour and the stout dame raised a loud greeting to the child, clapping their hands and blowing kisses: the man put out his long arm and pulled at the sleeve of the young one’s pelisse. It caused the gentleman to halt and look round. Enough to make him.

Why—where had I seen the eyes? They were close to mine, and seemed quite familiar. Then remembrance flashed over me. They were Clement-Pell’s.

It is almost the only thing about a man or woman that cannot be disguised—the expression of the eyes. Once you are familiar with any one’s eye, and have learned its expression by heart; the soul that looks out of it; you cannot be mistaken in the eye, though you meet it in a desert, and its owner be disguised as a cannibal.

But for the eyes, I should never have known him, got up, as he was, with false red hair. He went straight on instantly, not suspecting I was there, for the two had hidden me. The little child’s face was pressed close to Mr. Pell’s as he went on; a feeling came over me that he was carrying it, the better to conceal himself. As he went into the custom-house, I pushed backwards out of the crowd; saw Mr. Brandon, and whispered to him. He nodded quietly; as much as to say he thought Pell would come.

“Johnny, we must follow him: but we must not let him see us onany account. I dare say he is going all the way up to Mâquétra—or whatever you call the place.”

Making our way round to the door by which the passengers were let out, we mixed with the mob and waited. The custom-house was not particular with Sunday excursionists, and they came swarming out by dozens. When Pell appeared, I jogged Mr. Brandon’s elbow.

The touters, proclaiming the merits of their respective hotels, and thrusting their cards in Pell’s face, seemed to startle him, for he shrank back. Comprehending the next moment, he said, No, no, passed on to the carriages, and stepped into one that was closed. The driver was a couple of minutes at least, taking his orders: perhaps there was some bother, the one jabbering French, the other English. But the coach drove off at last.

“Now then, Johnny, for that other closed coach. We shall have to do without church this morning. Mind you make the coachman understand what he is to do.”

“Suivez cette voiture qui vient de partir; mais pas trop près.”The man gave back a hearty “Oui, monsieur,” as if he understood the case.

It was a slow journey. The first coach did not hurry itself, and took by-ways to its destination. It turned into the Rue de la Coupe, opposite our hotel, went through the Rue de l’Hôpital, and thence to regions unknown. All I knew was, we went up a hill worse than that of the Grande Rue, and arrived circuitously at Mâquétra. Mr. Brandon had stretched his head out as we passed the hotel, but could not see the Squire.

“It’s his affair, you know, Johnny. Not mine.”

Clement Pell got out at his gate, and went in. We followed cautiously, and found the house-door on the latch, Mathilde having probably forgotten to close it after admitting Mr. Pell. They stood in the salon: Mathilde in a handsome light chintz gown and white stockings and shoes, for she had been to nine-o’clock mass; he with a strangely perplexed, blank expression on his face as he listened to her explanation.

“Yes, monsieur, it is sure they are depart; it is but the morning of yesterday. The propriétaire, he have the letter for you that Madame confide to him. He—Tiens, voici encore ces Messieurs!”

Surprise at our appearance must have caused her change of language. Clement-Pell gave one look at us and turned his face to the window, hoping to escape unrecognized. Mr. Brandon ordered me to the English church in the Upper Town, saying I should not be very late for that, and told Mathilde he did not want her.

“I shall make the little promenade and meet my bon-ami,”observed Mathilde, independently, as I proceeded to do as I was bid. And what took place between the two we left can only be related at second hand.

“Now, Mr. Pell, will you spare me your attention?” began Mr. Brandon.

Clement-Pell turned, and took off his cloak and cap, seeing that it would be worse than useless to attempt to keep up the farce. With the red wig on his head and the red hair on his face, no unobservant man would then have recognized him for the great ex-financier.

Mr. Brandon was cold, uncompromising, but civil; Clement-Pell at first subdued and humble. Taking courage after a bit, he became slightly restive, somewhat inclined to be insolent.

“It is a piece of assurance for you to come here at all, sir; tracking me over my very threshold, as if you were a detective officer. What is the meaning of it? I don’t owe you money.”

“I have told you the meaning,” replied Mr. Brandon—feeling that his voice had never been more squeaky, but showing no sign of wrath. “The affair is not mine at all, but Squire Todhetley’s, I was down on the port when you landed—went to look for you, in fact; the Squire did not happen to be in the way, so I followed you up in his place.”

“With what object?”

“Why, dear me, Mr. Pell, you are not deaf. I mentioned the object; the Squire wants his two hundred pounds refunded. A very clever trick, your getting it from him!”

Clement-Pell drew in his lips; his face had no more colour in it than chalk. He sat with his back to the wall, his hands restlessly playing with his steel watch-chain. What had come of the thick gold one he used to wear? Mr. Brandon had a chair near the table, and faced him.

“Perhaps you would like me to refund to you all my creditors’money wholesale, as well as Mr. Todhetley’s?” retorted Clement-Pell, mockingly.

“I have nothing to do with them, Mr. Pell. Neither, I imagine, does Mr. Todhetley intend to make their business his. Let each man mind his own course, and stand or fall by it. If you choose to assure me you don’t owe a fraction to any one else in the world, I shall not tell you that you do. I am speaking now for my friend, Squire Todhetley: I would a great deal rather he were here to deal with you himself; but action has accidentally been forced upon me.”

“I know that I owe a good deal of money; or, rather, that a good many people have lost money through me,” returned Clement-Pell, after a pause. “It’s my misfortune; not my fault.”

Mr. Brandon gave a dry cough. “As to its not being your fault, Mr. Pell, the less said about that the better. It was in your power to pull up in time, I conclude, when you first saw things were going wrong.”

Clement-Pell lifted his hand to his forehead, as if he felt a pain there. “You don’t know; you don’t know,” he said irritably,—a great deal of impatience in his tone.

“No, I’m thankful that I don’t,” said Mr. Brandon, taking out his tin box, and coolly eating a lozenge. “I am very subject to heartburn, Mr. Pell. If ever you get it try magnesia lozenges. An upset, such as this affair of yours has been, would drive a man of my nerves into a lunatic asylum.”

“It may do the same by me before I have done with it,” returned Clement Pell. And Mr. Brandon thought he meant what he said.

“Any way, it is rumoured that some of those who are ruined will be there before long, Mr. Pell. You might, perhaps, feel a qualm of conscience if you saw the misery it has entailed.”

“And do you think I don’t feel it?” returned Mr. Pell, catching his breath. “You are mistaken, if you suppose I do not.”

“About Squire Todhetley’s two hundred pounds, sir?” resumed old Brandon, swallowing the last of the lozenge. “Is it convenient to you to give it me?”

“No, it is not,” was the decided answer. And he seemed to be turning restive again.

“But I will thank you to do so, Mr. Pell.”

“I cannot do so.”

“And not to make excuses over it. They will only waste time.”

“I have not got the money; I cannot give it.”

Upon that they set on again, hammer and tongs. Mr. Brandon insisting upon the money; Pell vowing that he had it not, and could not and would not give so much as a ten-pound note of it. Old Brandon never lost his temper, never raised his voice, but he said a thing or two that must have stung Pell’s pride. At the end of twenty minutes, he was no nearer the money than before. Pell’s patience gave signs of wearing out: Mr. Brandon could have gone quietly on till bed-time.

“You must be aware that this is not a simple debt, Mr. Pell. It is—in fact—something worse. For your own sake, it may be well to refund it.”

“Once more I say I cannot.”

“Am I to understand that is as much as to say you will not?”

“If you like to take it so. It is most painful to me, Mr. Brandon, to have to meet you in this spirit, but you force it on me. The case is this: I am not able to refund the debt to Squire Todhetley, and he has no power to enforce his claim to it.”

“I don’t know that.”

“I do though. It is best to be plain, as we have come to this, Mr. Brandon; and then perhaps you will bring the interview to an end, and leave me in peace. You have no power over me in this country; none whatever. Before you can obtain that, there are certain forms and ceremonies to be gone through in a legal court; you must make over the——”

“Squire Todhetley’s is not a case of debt,” interrupted old Brandon.“If it were, he would have no right in honour to come here and seek payment over the heads of the other creditors.”

“It is a case of debt, and nothing else. As debt only could you touch me upon it here—and not then until you have proved it and got judgment upon it in England. Say, if you will, that I have committed murder or forged bank-notes—you could not touch me here unless the French government gave me up at the demand of the English government. Get all the police in the town to this room if you will, Mr. Brandon, and they would only laugh at you. They have no power over me. I have committed no offence against this country.”

“Look here,” said old Brandon, nodding his head. “I know a bit about French law; perhaps as much as you: knew it years ago. What you say is true enough; an Englishman, whether debtor or criminal, in his own land, cannot be touched here, unless certain forms and ceremonies, as you express it, are first gone through. But you have rendered yourself amenable to French law on another point, Clement-Pell; I could consign you to the police this moment, if I chose, and they would have to take you.”

Clement-Pell quite laughed at what he thought the useless boast. But he might have known old Brandon better. “What is my crime, sir?”

“You have come here and are staying here under a false name—Brown. That is a crime in the eyes of the French law; and one that the police, if they get to know of it, are obliged to take cognizance of.”

“No!” exclaimed Clement-Pell, his face changing a little.

“Yes,” said Mr. Brandon. “Were I to give you up for it to-day, they would put you on board the first boat leaving for your own country. Once on the opposite shore, you may judge whether Squire Todhetley would let you escape again.”

It was all true. Mr. Pell saw that it was so. His fingers nervously trembled; his pale face wore a piteous aspect.

“You need not be afraid of me: I am not likely to do it,” said Mr. Brandon: “I do not think the Squire would. But you see now what lies within his power. Therefore I would recommend you to come to terms with him.”

Clement-Pell rubbed his brow with his handkerchief. He was driven into a corner.

“I have told you truth, Mr. Brandon, in saying that I am not able to repay the two hundred pounds. I am not. Will he take half of it?”

“I cannot tell. I have no authority for saying that he will.”

“Then I suppose he must come up here. As it has come to this, I had better see him. If he will accept one hundred pounds, and undertake not to molest me further, I will hand it over to him. It will leave me almost without means: but you have got me in a hole. Stay a moment—a thought strikes me. Are there any more of my creditors in the town at your back, Mr. Brandon?”

“Not that I am aware of. I have seen none.”

“On your honour?”

Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes, and took a stare at Pell. “My word is the same as my honour, sir. Always has been and always will be.”

“I beg your pardon. A man, driven to my position, naturally fears an enemy at every corner. And—if my enemies were to find me out here, they might be too much for me.”

“Of course they would be,” assented Mr. Brandon, by way of comfort.

“Will you go for Squire Todhetley? What is done, must be done to-day, for I shall be away by the first train in the morning.”

Shrewd old Brandon considered the matter before speaking. “By the time I get back here with the Squire you may have already taken your departure, Mr. Pell.”

“No, on my honour. How should I be able to do it? No train leaves the town before six to-night: the water is low in the harbour and no boat could get out. As it has come to this, I will see Squire Todhetley: and the sooner the better.”

“I will trust you,” said Mr. Brandon.

“Time was when I was deemed more worthy of trust: perhaps was more worthy of it,”—and tears involuntarily rose to his eyes.“Mr. Brandon, believe me—no man has suffered by this as I have suffered. Do you think I did it for pleasure?—or to afford myself wicked gratification! No. I would have forfeited nearly all my remaining life to prevent the smash. My affairs got into their awful state by degrees; and I had not the power to retrieve them. God alone knows what the penalty has been to me—and what it will be to my life’s end.”

“Ay. I can picture it pretty tolerably, Mr. Pell.”

“No one can picture it,” he returned, with emotion. “Look at my ruined family—the position of my sons and daughters. Not one of them can hold up their heads in the world again without the consciousness that they may be pointed at as the children of Clement-Pell the swindler. What is to be their future?—how are they to get along? You must have heard many a word of abuse applied to me lately, Mr. Brandon: but there are few men on this earth more in need of compassion than I—if misery and suffering can bring the need. When morning breaks, I wish the day was done; when night comes, I toss and turn and wonder how I shall live through it.”

“I am sorry for you,” said Mr. Brandon, moved to pity, for he saw how the man needed it. “Were I you, I would go back home and face my debts. Face the trouble, and in time you may be able to live it down.”

Clement-Pell shook his head hopelessly. Had it been debt alone, he might never have come away.

The sequel to all this had yet to come. Perhaps some of you may guess it. Mr. Brandon pounced upon the Squire as he was coming out of church in the Rue du Temple, and took him back in another coach. Arrived at the house, they found the door fast. Mathilde appeared presently, arm-in-arm with her sweetheart—a young man in white boots with ear-rings in his ears. “Was M. Brown of depart,” she repeated, in answer to the Squire’s impulsive question: but no, certainly he was not. And she gave them the following information.

When she returned after midday, she found M. Brown all impatience, waiting for her to show him the way to the house of Monsieur Bourgeois, that he might claim Madame’s letter. When they reached the shop, it had only the fille de boutique in it. Monsieur the patron was out making a promenade, the fille de boutique said he might be home possibly for the shutting up at two o’clock.

Upon that, M. Brown decided to make a little promenade himself until two o’clock; and Mathilde, she made a further promenade on her own account: and had now come up, before two, to get the door open. Such was her explanation. If the gentlemans would be at the pains of sitting down in the salon, without doubt M. Brown would not long retard.

They sat down. The clock struck two. They sat on, and the clock struck three. Not until then did any thought arise that Clement-Pell might not keep faith with them. Mathilde’s freely expressed opinion was that M. Brown, being strange to the town, had lost himself. She ran to the grocer’s shop again, and found it shut up: evidently no one was there.

Four o’clock, five o’clock; and no Mr. Brown. They gave him up then; it seemed quite certain that he had given them the slip.Starving with hunger, exploding with anger, the Squire took his wrathful way back to the hotel: Mr. Brandon was calm and sucked his magnesia lozenges. Clement-Pell was a rogue to the last.

There came to Mr. Brandon the following morning, through the Boulogne post-office, a note; on which he had to pay five sous. It was from Clement-Pell, written in pencil. He said that when he made the agreement with Mr. Brandon never a thought crossed him of not keeping faith: but that while he was waiting about for the return of the grocer who held his wife’s letter, he saw an Englishman come off the ramparts—a creditor who knew him well and would be sure to deliver him up, were it in his power, if he caught sight of him. It struck him, Clement-Pell, with a panic: he considered that he had only one course left open to him—and that was to get away from the place at once and in the quietest manner he was able. There was a message to Mr. Todhetley to the effect that he would send him the hundred pounds later if he could. Throughout the whole letter ran a vein of despairing sadness, according with what he had said to Mr. Brandon; and the Squire’s heart was touched.

“After all, Brandon, the fellow is to be pitied. It’s a frightful position: enough to make a man lose heart for good and all. I’m not sure that I should have taken the hundred pounds from him.”

“That’s more than probable,” returned old Brandon, drily. “It remains a question, though, in my mind, whether he did see the creditor and did ’take a panic:’ or whether both are not invented to cover his precipitate departure with the hundred pounds.”

How he got away from the town we never knew. The probability was, that he had walked to the first station after Boulogne on the Paris railroad, and there taken the evening train. And whether he had presented himself again at Monsieur Bourgeois’s shop, that excellent tradesman, who did not return home until ten on Sunday night, was unable to say. Any way, M. Bourgeois held the letter yet in safety. So the chances are, that Mr. and Mrs. Pell are still dodging about the earth in search of each other, after the fashion of the Wandering Jew.

And that’s a true account of our visit to Boulogne after Clement-Pell. Mr. Brandon calls it to this hour a wild-goose chase: certainly it turned out a fruitless one. But we had a good passage back again, the sea as calm as a mill-pond.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AT WHITNEY HALL.

It has often been in my mind to tell of John Whitney’s death. You will say it is too sad and serious for a paper. But it is well to have serious thoughts brought before us at certain seasons. This is one of them: seeing that it’s the beginning of a new year, and that every year takes us nearer to another life whether we are old or whether we are young. [3]

Some of them thought his illness might never have come on but for an accident that happened. It is quite a mistake. The accident had nothing to do with the later illness. Sir John and Lady Whitney could tell you so as well as I. John was always one of those sensitive, thoughtful, religious boys that somehow don’t seem so fit for earth as heaven.

“Now mind, you boys,” cried Sir John to us at breakfast.“There’s just a thin coating of ice on the lake and ponds, but it won’t bear. Don’t any of you venture on it.”

“We will not, sir,” replied John, who was the most obedient son living.

There’s not much to be done in the way of out-door sports when snow lies on the ground. Crowding round the children’s play-room window later, all the lot of us, we looked out on a white landscape. Snow lodged on the trees, hid the grass in the fields, covered the hills in the distance.

“It’s an awful sell,” cried Bill Whitney and Tod nearly in a breath. “No hunting, no shooting, and no nothing. The ponds won’t bear; snowballing’s common. One might as well lie in bed.”

“And what sort of a ‘sell’ do you suppose it is for the poor men who are thrown out of work?” asked Sir John, who had come in, reading a newspaper, and was airing his back at the fire. “Their work and wages are stopped, and they can’t earn bread for their children. You boys are dreadfully to be pitied, you are!”

He tilted his steel spectacles up on his good old red nose, and nodded to us. Harry, the pert one of the family, answered.

“Well, papa, and it is a settler for us boys to have our fun spoiled. As to the working-men—oh, they are used to it.”

Sir John stared at him for a full minute. “If I thought you said that from your heart, Mr. Harry, I’d order you from my presence. No son of mine shall get into the habit of making unfeeling speeches, even in jest.”

Sir John meant it. We saw that Harry’s words had really vexed him. John broke the silence.

“Papa, if I should live to be ever in your place,” he said, in his quiet voice, that somehow always had a tone of thoughtfulness in it, even when at play with the rest of us at old Frost’s, “I shall make a point of paying my labourers’ wages in full this wintry time, just the same as though they worked. It is not their fault that they are idle.”

Sir John started at him now. “What d’ye mean by ‘if you live,’ lad?”

John considered. The words had slipped from him without any special thought at all. People use such figures of speech. It was odd though, when we came to remember it a long while afterwards, that he should have said it just that one day.

“I recollect a frost that lasted fourteen weeks, boys,” said Sir John. “That was in 1814. They held a fair on the Thames, we heard, and roasted an ox whole on it. Get a frost to last all that time, and you’d soon tire of paying wages for nothing, John.”

“But, father, what else could I do—or ought I to do? I could not let them starve—or break up their poor homes by going into the workhouse. I should fear that some time, in return, God might break up mine.”

Sir John smiled. John was so very earnest always when he took up a serious matter. Letting the question drop, Sir John lowered his spectacles, and went out with his newspaper. Presently we saw him going round to the farm-yard in his great-coat and beaver gaiters. John sat down near the fire and took up a book he was fond of—“Sintram.”

This was Old Christmas Day. Tod and I had come over to Whitney Hall for a week, and two days of it were already gone. We liked being there, and the time seemed to fly. Tod and Bill still stood staring and grumbling at the snow, wishing the frost would get worse, or go. Harry went out whistling; Helen sat down with a yawn.

“Anna, there’s a skein of blue silk in that workbag behind you. Get it out and hold it for me to wind.”

Anna, who was more like John in disposition than any of them, always good and gentle, got the silk; and they began to wind it. In the midst of it, Harry burst in with a terrific shout, dressed up as a bear, and trying to upset every one. In the confusion Anna dropped the silk on the carpet, and Helen boxed her ears.

John looked up from his book. “You should not do that, Helen.”

“What does she drop the silk for, then—careless thing!” retorted Helen, who was quick in temper. “Once soil that light shade of blue, and it can’t be used. You mind yourself John.”

John looked at them both. At Helen, taking up the silk from the floor; at Anna, who was struggling to keep down her tears under the infliction, because Tod was present. She wouldn’t have minded me. John said no more. He had a very nice face without much colour in it; dark hair, and large grey-blue eyes that seemed to be always looking out for something they did not see. He was sixteen then, upright and slender. All the world liked John Whitney.

Later on in the day we were running races in the broad walk, that was so shady in summer. The whole of us. The high laurel hedges on either side had kept the snow from drifting, and it hardly lay there at all. We gave the girls a third of the run, and they generally beat us. After an hour of this, tired and hot, we gave in, and dispersed different ways. John and I went towards the lake to see whether the ice was getting thicker, talking of school and school interests as we went along. Old Frost’s grounds were in view, which naturally put us in mind of the past: and especially of the great event of the half year—the sad fate of Archie Hearn.

“Poor little Hearn!” he exclaimed. “I did feel his death, and no mistake. That is, I felt for his mother. I think, Johnny, if I could have had the chance offered me, I would have died myself to let him live.”

“That’s easier said than done—if it came to the offer, Whitney.”

“Well, yes it is. She had no one but him, you see. And to think of her coming into the school that time and saying she forgave the fellow—whoever it was. I’ve often wondered whether Barrington had cause to feel it.”

“She is just like her face, Whitney—good. I’ve hardly ever seen a face I like as much as Mrs. Hearn’s.”

John Whitney laughed a little. They all did at my likes and dislikes of faces. “I was reading a book the other day, Johnny—— See that poor little robin!” he broke off. “It looks starved, and it must have its nest somewhere. I have some biscuit in my pocket.”

It came into my head, as he dived into his pocket and scattered the crumbs, that he had brought the supply out for these stray birds. But if I write for ever I could not make you understand the thoughtfulness of John Whitney.

“Hark, Johnny! What’s that?”

Cries, screams, sobs. We were near the end of the walk then and rushed out. Anna met us in a dreadful state of agitation. Charley was in the lake! Whitney caught the truth before I did, and was off like a shot.

The nurse, Willis, was dancing frantically about at the water’s edge; the children roared. Willis said Master Charles had slipped on to the ice “surrepstitiously” when her back was turned, and had gone souse in. John Whitney had already plunged in after his little brother; his coat, jacket, and waistcoat were lying on the bank. William Whitney and Tod, hearing the noise, came rushing up.

“Mamma sent me to tell nurse they had been out long enough, and were to come in,” sobbed Anna, shaking like a leaf. “While I was giving her the message, Charley fell in. Oh, what will be done?”

That was just like Anna. Helen would have been cool as a cucumber. Done? Why, John had already saved him. The ice, not much thicker than a shilling, and breaking whenever touched, hardly impeded him at all. Bill and Tod knelt down and lent hands, and they were landed like a couple of drowned rats, Charley howling with all his might. John, always thoughtful, wrapped his great-coat round the lad, and the other two went off with him to the house.

John caught a cold. Not very much of one. He was hot, you see, when he plunged in; and he had only his jacket to put on over his wet clothes to walk home in. Not much of a cold, I say; but he never seemed to be quite the same after that day: and when all was over they would date his illness back from it. Old Featherstone physicked him; and the days passed on.

“I can’t think why John should be so feverish,” Lady Whitney would remark. His hands would be hot, and his cheeks scarlet, and he did not eat. Featherstone failed to alter the state of things; so one day Sir John took him into Worcester to Mr. Carden.

Mr. Carden did not seem to think much of it—as we heard over at Dyke Manor. There was nothing wrong with the lungs or any other vital part. He changed the medicine that Featherstone had been giving, and said he saw no present reason why John should not go back to school. Sir John, standing by in his old spectacles, listening and looking, caught up the words “at present” and asked Mr. Carden whether he had any particular meaning in saying it. But Mr. Carden would not say. Sending his pleasant blue eyes straight into Sir John’s, he assured him that he did not anticipate mischief, or see reason to fear it. He thought, he hoped, that, once John was back with his studies and his companions, he would recover tone and be as well as ever.

And Mr. Carden’s physic did good; for when Whitney came back after the holidays, he seemed himself again. Lady Whitney gave five hundred directions to Mrs. Frost about the extras he was to eat and drink, Hall being had in to assist at the conference. The rest of us rather wished for fevers ourselves, if they entailed beaten-up eggs and wine and jelly between meals. He did his lessons; and he came out in the playground, though he did not often join in play, especially rough play: and he went for walks with us or stayed in as inclination led him, for he was allowed liberty in all things. By Easter he had grown thinner and weaker: and yet there was no specific disease. Mr. Carden came over to Whitney Hall and brought Dr. Hastings, and they could not discover any: but they said he was not strong and wanted care. It was left to John to decide whether he would go back to school after Easter, or not: and he said he should like to go. And so the weeks went on again.

We could not see any change at all in him. It was too gradual, I suppose. He seemed very quiet, strangely thoughtful always, as though he were inwardly puzzling over some knotty question hard to solve. Any quarrel or fight would put him out beyond belief: he’d come up with his gentle voice, and stretch out his hands to part the disputants, and did not rest until he had made peace. Wolfe Barrington, with one of his sneers, said Whitney’s nerves were out of joint. Once or twice we saw him reading a pocket-Bible. It’s quite true. And there was something in his calm face and in his blue-grey eyes that hushed those who would have ridiculed.

“I say, Whitney, have you heard?” I asked. “The Doctor means to have the playground enlarged for next half. Part of the field is to be taken in.”

“Does he?” returned Whitney. It was the twenty-ninth of May, and a half-holiday. The rest had gone in for Hare-and-Hounds. I stayed with Whitney, because he’d be dull alone. We were leaning over the playground gate.

“Blair let it out this morning at mathematics. By the way, Whitney, you did not come in to them.”

“I did not feel quite up to mathematics to-day, Johnny.”

“I am glad it’s going to be done, though. Are not you?”

“It won’t make much difference to me, I expect. I shall not be here.”

“Not here!”

“I don’t think so.”

His chin rested on his hands above the gate. His eyes weregazing out straight before him; looking—as I said before—for something they did not see.

“Do you think you shall be too ill to come next half, Whitney?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Are you feeling worse?” I asked after a minute or two, taken up with staring at the sky.

“That’s what they are always asking me indoors?” he remarked.“It’s just this, Johnny; I don’t feel worse from day to day; I could not say any one morning that I feel a shade worse than I did the previous one: but when I look back a few weeks or months; say, for example, to the beginning of the half, or at Easter, and remember how very well I was then, compared with what I am now, I know that I must be a great deal worse. I could not do now what I did then. Why! I quite believe I might have gone in for Hare-and-Hounds then, if I had chosen. Fancy my trying it now!”

“But you don’t have any pain.”

“None. I’m only weak and tired; always feeling to want to lie down and rest. Every bit of strength and energy has gone out of me, Johnny.”

“You’ll get well,” I said hastily.

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to?” It was his cool answer made me ask it.

“Why, of course I do.”

“Well then?”

“I’ll tell you, Johnny Ludlow; there is a feeling within me, and I can’t say why it’s there or whence it comes, that’s always saying to me I shall not get well. At least, whenever I think about it. It seems just as though it were telling me that instead of getting well it will be—be just the opposite.”

“What a dreadful thing to have, Whitney! It must be like a fellow going about with a skeleton!”

“Not at all dreadful. It never frightens me, or worries me. Just as the rest of you look forward naturally to coming back here, and living out your lives to be men, and all that, so I seem not to look to it. The feeling has nothing bad at all about it. If it had, I dare say it would not be there.”

I stood on the small gate and took a swing. It pained me to hear him say this.

“I suppose you mean, Whitney, that you may be going to die?”

“That’s about it, Johnny. I don’t know it; I may get well, after all.”

“But you don’t think you will?”

“No, I don’t. Little Hearn first; I next. Another ought to follow, to make the third.”

“You speak as easily as if it were only going out to tea, Whitney!”

“Well, I feel easy. I do, indeed.”

“Most of us would be daunted, at any rate.”

“Exactly. Because you are not going to die. Johnny Ludlow, I am getting to think a great deal; to have a sort of insight that I never had before; and I see how very wisely and kindly all things are ordered.”

If he had gone in for a bout of tumbling like the mountebanks, I could not have been as much surprised as to hear him say this. It was more in Mrs. Frost’s line than in ours. It laid hold on me at once; and from that moment, I believed that John Whitney would die.

“Look here, Whitney. It is evident by what you say about failing strength, that you must be getting worse. Why don’t you tell them at home, and go there and be nursed?”

“I don’t want to be nursed. I am not ill enough for it. I’m better as I am: here, amongst you fellows. As to telling them—time enough for that. And what is there to tell? They see for themselves I am not as strong as I was: there’s nothing else to tell.”

“There’s this feeling that you say lies upon you.”

“What, and alarm them for nothing? I dare say. There wouldbe a hullabaloo. I should be rattled home in the old family coach, and Carden would be sent for, post haste, Hastings also, and—well, you are a muff, Johnny. I’ve told you this because I like you, and because I thought you would understand me; which is more than the other fellows would. Mind you keep counsel.”

“Well, you ought to be at home.”

“I am better here, while I am as I am. The holidays will be upon us soon. I expect I shall not come back afterwards.”

Now, if you ask me till next week, I could not give a better account of the earlier part of John Whitney’s illness than this. He was ill; and yet no one could find out why he should be ill, or what was the matter with him. Just about this time, Featherstone took up the notion that it was “liver,” and dosed him for it. For one thing, he said Whitney must ride out daily, good hard riding. So a horse would be brought over from the Hall by the old groom, and they would go out together. During the Whitsun week, when Sir John was away from Parliament, he came also and rode with him. But no matter whether they went slow or fast, Whitney would come back ready to die from the exertion. Upon that, Featherstone changed his opinion, and said riding must be given up.

By the time the Midsummer holidays came, any one might see the change in Whitney. It struck Mrs. Frost particularly when he went in to say good-bye to her.

“For the last time, I think,” he said in a low tone, but with a smiling countenance, as she stood holding his hand.

Mrs. Frost knew what he meant, and her face, always so pale, and delicate, went red.

“I trust not,” she answered. “But—God knows what is best.”

“Oh yes, and we do not. Farewell, dear Mrs. Frost. Thank you truly for all your care and kindness.”

The tears stood in her eyes. She was to be the next one to go from us, after John Whitney.

Wolfe Barrington stood at the door as he passed. “Good luck to you, Whitney,” said he, carelessly. “I’d throw all those nerves of yours over, if I were you, before I came back again.”

Whitney turned back and held out his hand. “Thank you, Barrington,” he replied in his kind, truthful voice; “you wish me well, I know. Good luck to you, in all ways; and I mean it with my whole heart. As to nerves, I do not think I possess any, though some of you have been pleased to joke about it.”

They shook hands, these two, little thinking that, in one sense, the life of both would soon be blighted. In a short time, only a few weeks, Wolfe was to be brought nearer to immediate death than even John Whitney.

Not until he was at home and had settled down among them, did his people notice the great change in him. Lady Whitney, flurried and anxious, sent for Sir John from London. Mr. Carden was summoned, and old Featherstone met him often in consultation. Dr. Hastings came once or twice, but he was an invalid himself then; and Mr. Carden, as every one knew, was equal to anything. Still—it was a positive fact—there was no palpable disease to grapple with in John, only weakness and wasting away. No cough, no damaged lungs. “If only it were gout or dropsy, one would know what to do,” grumbled Featherstone; but Mr. Carden kept his own counsel. They decided that John should go to the seaside for change.

“As if it could do me any good!” he remonstrated. “Changewon’t make any difference to me. And I’d a great deal rather stay quietly at home.”

“Why do you say it will not do you good?” cried Lady Whitney, who happened to hear him.

“Because, mother, I feel nearly sure that it will not.”

“Oh dear!” cried she, flurried out of her senses, “John’s going to turn rebellious now.”

“No, I am not,” said John, smiling at her. “I mean to go without any rebellion at all.”

“There’s my best lad,” said she fondly. “Change of scene is all pleasure, John. It’s not like going through a course of pills and powders.”

Well, they all went to the seaside, and at the end of five weeks they all came back again. John had to be assisted out of the carriage, from fatigue. There could be no mistake now.

After that, it was just a gradual decay. The sinking was so imperceptible that he seemed to be always at a stand-still, and some days he was as well as any one need be. His folk did not give up hope of him: no one does in such cases. John was cheerful, and often merry.

“It can’t be consumption,” Sir John would say. “We’ve nothing of the kind in our family; neither on his mother’s side nor on mine. A younger sister of hers died of a sort of decline: but what can that have to do with John?”

Why, clearly nothing. As every one agreed.

In one of Mr. Carden’s visits, Sir John tackled him as he was going away, asking what it was. The two were shut up together talking for a quarter-of-an-hour, Mr. Carden’s horses—he generally came over in his carriage—growing rampant the while. Sir John did not seem much wiser when the sitting was over. He only shuffled his spectacles about on his old red nose—as he used to do when perplexed. Talking of noses: you never saw two so much alike as his and the Squire’s, particularly when they went into a temper.

Not very long after they were back from the seaside, and directly after school met, the accident occurred to Barrington. You have heard of it before: and it has nothing to do with the present paper. John Whitney took it to heart.

“He is not fit to die,” Bill heard him say. “He is not fit to die.”

One morning John walked over to see him, resting on stiles and gates between whiles. It was not very far; but he was good for very little now. Barrington was lying flat on his bed, Mrs. Hearn waiting on him. Wolfe was not tamed then.

“It’s going to be a race between us, I suppose, Whitney,” said he. “You look like a shadow.”

“A race?” replied Whitney, not taking him.

“In that black-plumed slow coach that carries dead men to their graves, and leaves them there. A race which of us two will have the honour of starting first. What a nice prospect! I always hated clayey soil. Fancy lying in it for ever and a day!”

“Fancy, rather, being borne on angels’ wings, and living withGod in heaven for ever and ever!” cried Whitney earnestly. “Oh Barrington, fancy that.”

“You’d do for a parson,” retorted Barrington.

The interview was not satisfactory: Whitney so solemnly earnest, Wolfe so mockingly sarcastic: but they parted good friends. It was the last time they ever saw each other in life.

And thus a few more weeks went on.

Now old Frost had one most barbarous custom. And that was, letting the boys take the few days of Michaelmas holiday, or not, as the parents pleased. Naturally, very few did please. I and Tod used to go home: but that was no rule for the rest. We did not go home this year. A day or two before the time, Sir John Whitney rode over to Dyke Manor.

“You had better let the two boys come to us for Michaelmas,”he said to the Squire. “John wants to see them, and they’ll cheer us up. It’s anything but a lively house, I can tell you, Todhetley, with the poor lad lying as he is.”

“I can’t see why he should not get well,” said the Squire.

“I’m sure I can’t. Carden ought to be able to bring him round.”

“So he ought,” assented the Squire. “It would be quite a feather in his cap, after all these months of illness. As to the boys, you may be troubled with ’em, and welcome, Sir John, if you care to be.”

And so, we went to Whitney Hall that year, instead of home.

John had the best rooms, the two that opened into one another. Sometimes he would be on the bed in one, sometimes on the sofa in the other. Then he would walk about on some one’s arm; or sit in the easy-chair at the west window, the setting sun full on his wasted face. Barrington had called him a shadow: you should have seen him now. John had talked to Barrington of angels: he was just like an angel in the house himself. And—will you believe it?—they had not given up hope of his getting well again. I wondered the doctors did not tell Lady Whitney the plain truth, and have done with it: but to tell more professional truth than they can help, is what doctors rarely put themselves out of the way to do.

And still—the shadow of the coming death lay on the house. In the hushed voices and soft tread of the servants, in the subdued countenances of Sir John and Lady Whitney, and in the serious spirit that prevailed, the shadow might be seen. It is good to be in such a house as this: for the lessons learnt may take fast hold of the heart. It was good to hear John Whitneytalk: and I never quite made out whether he was telling of dreams or realities.

Tod was out of his element: as much so as a fish is out of water. He had plenty of sympathy with John, would have made him well at any sacrifice to himself: but he could not do with the hushed house, in which all things seemed to give way to that shadow of the coming presence. Tod, in his way, was religious enough; more so than some fellows are; but dying beds he did not understand, and would a great deal rather have been shooting partridges than be near one. He and Bill Whitney—who was just as uncomfortable as Tod—used to get off anywhere whenever they could. They did not forget John. They would bring him all kinds of things; flowers, fruit, blackberries as big as Willis’s thimble, and the finest nuts off the trees; but they did not care to sit long with him.

John was awake one afternoon, and I was sitting beside him. He sat in his easy-chair at the window—as he liked to do at this hour when the evening was drawing on. The intensely serene look that for some time now had taken possession of his face, I had never seen surpassed in boy or man.

“How quiet the house is, Johnny!” he said, touching my hand.“Where are they all?”

“Helen and Anna went out to ask after Mrs. Frost and Barrington. And the boys—but I think you know it—have gone with Sir John to Evesham. You wouldn’t call the house quiet, John, if you could hear the row going on in the nursery.”

He smiled a little. “Charley’s a dreadful Turk: none of us elder ones were ever half as bad. Where’s the mother?”

“Half-an-hour ago she was shut up with some visitors in the drawing-room. It’s those Miss Clutterbucks, John: they always stay long enough to hold a county meeting.”

“Is Mrs. Frost worse—that the girls have gone to ask after her?” he resumed.

“I think so. Harry said Dr. Frost shook his head about her, when they saw him this morning.”

“She’ll never be strong,” remarked John. “And perhaps the bother of the school is too much for her.”

“Hall takes a good deal of that, you know.”

“But Hall cannot take the responsibility; the true care of the school. That must lie on Mrs. Frost.”

What a beautiful sky it was! The sun was nearing the horizon; small clouds, gold and red and purple, lay in the west, line above line. John Whitney sat gazing in silence. There was nothing he liked so much as looking at these beautiful sunsets.

“Go and play for me, will you, Johnny?”

The piano was at the far end of the room in the shade. Myplaying is really nothing. It was nothing to speak of then, it is nothing to speak of now: but it is soft and soothing; and some people like it. John could play a little himself, but it was too much exertion for him now. They had tried to teach Bill. He was kept hammering at it for half a year, and then the music master told Sir John that he’d rather teach a post. So Bill was released.

“The same thing that you played the evening before last, Johnny. Play that.”

“But I can’t. It was only some rubbish out of my own head, made up as I went along.”

“Make up some more then, old fellow.”

I had hardly sat down, when Lady Whitney came in, stirred the fire—if they kept up much, he felt the room too warm—and took one of the elbow-chairs in front of it.

“Go on, my dear,” she said. “It is very pleasant to hear you.”

But it was not so pleasant to play before her—not that, as I believed, her ears could distinguish the difference between an Irish Jig and the Dead March in Saul—and I soon left off. The playing or the fire had sent Lady Whitney into a doze. I crossed the room and sat down by John.

He was still looking at the sunset, which had not much changed. The hues were deeper, and streaks of gold shot upwards in the sky. Toward the north there was a broad horizon of green, fading into gold, and pale blue. Never was anything more beautiful. John’s eyes fixed on it.

“If it is so beautiful here, Johnny, what will it be there?” he breathed, scarcely above a whisper. “It makes one long to go.”

Sometimes, when he said these things, I hardly knew how to answer, and would let his words die off into silence.

“The picture of heaven is getting realized in my mind, Johnny—though I know how poor an idea of it it must needs be. A wide, illimitable space; the great white throne, and the saints in their white robes falling down before it, and the harpists singing to their harps.”

“You must think of it often.”

“Very often. The other night in bed, when I was between sleep and waking, I seemed to see the end—to go through it. I suppose it was one part thought, and three parts dream. I was dead, Johnny: I had already my white robe on, and angels were carrying me up to heaven. The crystal river was flowing along, beautiful flowers on its banks, and the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. I seemed to see it all, Johnny. Such flowers! such hues; brighter than any jewels ever seen. These colours are lovely”—pointing to the sky—“but they are tame compared with those I saw. Myriads of happy people were flittingabout in white, redeemed as I was; the atmosphere shone with a soft light, the most delicious music floated in it. Oh, Johnny, think of this world with its troubles and disappointments and pains; and then think of that other one!”

The sunset was fading. The pale colours of the north were blending together like the changing hues of the opal.

“There are two things I have more than loved here,” he went on.“Colours and music. Not the clashing of many instruments, or the mere mechanical playing, however classically correct, of one who has acquired his art by hard labour: but the soft, sweet, dreamy touch that stirs the heart. Such as yours, Johnny. Stop, old fellow. I know what you would say. That your playing is no playing at all, compared with that of a skilled hand; that the generality of people would wonder what there is in it: but for myself, I could listen to you from night till morning.”

It was very foolish of him to say this; but I liked to hear it.

“It is the sort of music, as I have always fancied, that we shall hear in heaven. It was the sort I seemed to hear the other night in my dream; soft, low, full of melody. That sort, you know, Johnny; not the same. That was this earth’s sweetest music etherealized.”

Hearing him talk like this, the idea struck me that it might be better for us all generally if we turned our thoughts more on heaven and on the life we may find there. It would not make us do our duty any the less earnestly in this world.

“Then take colours,” he went on. “No one knows the intense delight I have felt in them. On high days and holidays, my mother wears that big diamond ring of hers—you know it well, Johnny. Often and often have I stolen it from her finger, to let the light flash upon it, and lost myself for half-an-hour—ay, and more—gazing entranced on its changing hues. I love to see the rays in the drops of the chandeliers; I love to watch the ever-varying shades on a wide expanse of sea. Now these two things that I have so enjoyed here, bright colours and music, we have the promise of finding in heaven.”

“Ay. The Bible tells us so.”

“And I saw the harpers harping with their harps,” he repeated to himself—and then fell into silence. “Johnny, look at the opal in the sky now.”

It was very soft and beautiful.

“And there’s the evening star.”

I turned my head. Yes, there it was, and it trembled in the sky like a point of liquid silver.

“Sometimes I think I shall see the Holy City before I die,” he continued. “See its picture as in a mirror—the New Jerusalem.Oh, Johnny, I should have to shade my eyes. Not a beautiful colour or shade but will be there; and her light like unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal. When I was a little boy—four, perhaps—papa brought me home a kaleidoscope from London. It was really a good one, and its bits of glass were unusually brilliant. Johnny, if I lived to be an old man, I could never describe the intense joy those colours gave me—any more than I can describe the joy I seemed to feel the other night in that dream of heaven.”

He was saying all this in a tender tone of reverence that thrilled through one.

“I remember another thing about colours. The year that papa was pricked for High Sheriff, mamma went over with him to Worcester for the March Assize-time, and she took me. I was seven, I think. On the Sunday morning we went with the crowd to service in the cathedral. It was all very grand and imposing to my young mind. The crashing organ, the long procession of white-robed clergy and college boys, the two majestic beings in scarlet gowns, their trains held up by gentlemen, and the wigs that frightened me! I had been told I was going to college to see the judge. In my astonished mind I don’t think I knew which was judge and which was organ. Papa was in attendance on the judges; the only one who seemed to be in plain clothes in the procession. An impression remained on me that he had a white wand in his hand; but I suppose I was wrong. Attending papa, walked his black-robed chaplain who was to preach; looking like a crow amongst gay-plumaged birds. And, lining the way all along the body of the cathedral from the north entrance to the gates of the choir, were papa’s livery men with their glittering javelins. You’ve seen it all, Johnny, and know what the show is to a child such as I was. But now, will you believe that it was all asnothing to me, compared with the sight of the many-coloured, beautiful east window? [4] I sat in full view of it. We had gone in rather late, and so were only part of the throng. Mamma with me in her hand—I remember I wore purple velvet, Johnny—was stepping into the choir after the judges and clergy had taken their places, when one of the black-gowned beadsmen would have rudely shut the gates upon her. Upon that, a verger pushed out his silver mace to stop him. ‘Hist,’ says he, ‘it’s the High Sheriff’s lady—my Lady Whitney;’ and the beadsman bowed and let us pass. We were put into the pew under the sub-dean’s stall. It was Winnington-Ingram, I think, who was sub-dean then, but I am not sure. Whoever it was did not sit in the sub-dean’s stall, but in the next to it, for he had given that up, as was customary, to one of the judges. With the great wig flowing down right uponmy head, as it seemed, and the sub-dean’s trencher sticking over the cushion close to it, I was in a state of bewilderment; and they were some way through the Litany—the cathedral service at Worcester began with the Litany then, you remember, as they had early morning prayers—before I ventured to look up at all. As I did so, the colours of the distant east window flashed upon my dazzled sight. Not dazzled with the light, Johnny, though it was a sunny day, but with the charm of the colours. What it was to me in that moment I could never describe. That window has been abused enough by people who call themselves connoisseurs in art; but I know that to me it seemed as the very incarnation of celestial beauty. What with the organ, and the chanting, and the show that had gone before, and now this sight to illuminate it, I seemed to be in Paradise. I sat entranced; unable to take my fascinated eyes from the window: the pew faces it, you know; and were I to live for ever, I can never forget that day, or what it was to me. This will show you what colours have been to me here, Johnny. What, then, will they be to me in heaven?”

“How well you remember things!”

“I always did—things that make an impression on me,” he answered.“A quiet, thoughtful child does so. You were thoughtful yourself.”

True. Or I don’t suppose I could have written these papers. The light in the sky faded out as we sat in silence. John recurred to his dream.

“I thought I saw the Saviour,” he whispered. “I did indeed. Over the crystal river, and beyond the white figures and the harps, was a great light. There stood in it One different from the rest. He had a grand, noble countenance, exquisite in sweetness, and it was turned upon me with a loving smile of welcome. Johnny, Iknow it was Jesus. Oh, it will be good to be there!”

No doubt of it. Very good for him.

“The strange thing was, that I felt no fear. None. Just as securely as I seemed to lie in the arms of the angels, so did I seem secure in the happiness awaiting me. A great many of us fear death, Johnny; I see now that all fear will cease with this world, to those who die in Christ.”

A sudden burst of subdued sobbing broke the stillness of the room and startled us beyond everything. Lady Whitney had wakened up and was listening.

“Oh, John, my darling boy, don’t talk so!” she said, coming forward and laying her cheek upon his shoulder. “We can’t spare you; we can’t indeed.”

His eyes were full of tears: so were mine. He took his mother’s hand and stroked it.

“But it must be, mother dear?” he gently whispered. “God will temper the loss to you all.”

“Any of them but you, John! You were ever my best and dearest son.”

“It’s all for the best, mother: it must be. The others are not ready to go.”

“And don’t you care to leave us?” she said, breaking down again.

“I did care; very much; but lately I seem to have looked only to the time when we shall meet again. Mother, I do not think now I would live if the chance were offered me.”

“Well, it’s the first time I ever heard of young people wanting to die!” cried Lady Whitney.

“Mother, I think we must be very close on death before we want it,” he gently answered. “Don’t you see the mercy?—that when this world is passing from us, we are led insensibly to long for the next?”

She sat down in the chair that I had got up from, and drew it closer to him. A more simple-minded woman than Lady Whitney never lived. She sobbed gently. He kept her hand between his.

“It will be a great blow to me; I know that; and to your father. He feels it now more than he shows, John. You have been so good and obedient, you see; never naughty and giving us trouble like the rest.”

There was another silence. His quiet voice broke it.

“Mother, dear, the thought has crossed me lately, that it must be good to have one, whom we love very much, taken on to heaven. It must make it seem more like our final home; it must, I think, make us more desirous of getting there. ‘John’s gone on to it,’ you and papa will be thinking; ‘we shall see him again when the end comes.’ And it will cause you to look for the end, instead of turning away from it, as too many do. Don’t grieve, mother! Had it been God’s will, I should have lived. But it was not; and He is taking me to a better home. A little sooner, a little later; it cannot make much difference which, if we are only ready for it when it comes.”

The distant church bells, which always rang on a Friday night, broke upon the air. John asked to have the window opened. I threw it up, and we sat listening. The remembrance of that hour is upon me now, just as vividly as he remembered the moment when he first saw the old east window in the cathedral. The melody of the bells; the sweet scent of the mignonette in the garden; the fading sky: I close my eyes and realize it all.

The girls returned, bringing word that Mrs. Frost was very ill, but not much more so than usual. Directly afterwards we heard Sir John come home.

“They are afraid Barrington’s worse,” observed Helen; “and of course it is worrying Mrs. Frost. Mr. Carden has not been there to-day either, though he was expected: they hope he will be over the first thing in the morning.”

In they trooped, Sir John and the boys; all eagerly talking of the pleasant afternoon they had had, and what they had seen and done at Evesham. But the room, as they said later, seemed to have a strange hush upon it, and John’s face an altered look: and the eager voices died away again.

John was the one to read the chapter that night. He asked to do so; and chose the twenty-first of Revelation. His voice was low, but quite distinct and clear. Without pausing at the end, he went on to the next chapter, which concludes the Bible.

“Only think what it will be, Johnny!” he said to me later, following up our previous conversation. “All manner of precious stones! all sorts of glorious colours! Better even” (with a smile) “than the great east window.”

I don’t know whether it surprised me, or not, to find the house in commotion when I woke the next morning, and to hear that John Whitney was dying. A remarkable change had certainly taken place in him. He lay in bed; not insensible, but almost speechless.

Breakfast was scarcely over when Mr. Carden’s carriage drove in. He had been with Barrington, having started from Worcester at day-dawn. John knew him, and took his hand and smiled.

“What’s to be done for him?” questioned Sir John, pointing to his son.

Mr. Carden gave one meaning look at Sir John, and that was all. Nothing more of any kind could be done for John Whitney.

“Good-bye, Mr. Carden; good-bye,” said John, as the surgeon was leaving. “You have been very kind.”

“Good-bye, my boy.”

“It is so sudden; so soon, you know, Carden,” cried poor Sir John, as they walked downstairs together. “You ought to have warned me that it was coming.”

“I did not know it would be quite so soon as this,” was Mr. Carden’s answer—and I heard him say it.

John had visitors that day, and saw them. Some of the fellows from Frost’s, who came over when they heard how it was; Dr. Frost himself; and the clergyman. At dusk, when he had been lying quietly for some time, except for the restlessness that often ushers in death, he opened his eyes and began speaking in a whisper. Lady Whitney, thinking he wanted something, bent down her ear. But he was only repeating a verse from the Bible.

“And there shall be no night there: and they need no candle,neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

Bill, who had his head on the bolster on the other side, broke into a hushed sob. It did not disturb the dying. They were John’s last words.

Quite a crowd went to his funeral. It took place on the following Thursday. Dr. Frost and Mr. Carden (and it’s not so often hewasted his time going to a funeral!) and Featherstone and the Squire amongst them. Poor Sir John sobbed over the grave, and did not mind who saw and heard him, while they cast the earth on the coffin.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

That the solemn promise was applicable to John Whitney, and that he had most assuredly entered on that glorious life, I knew as well then as I know now. The corruptible had put on incorruption, the mortal immortality.

Not much of a story, you will say. But I might have told a worse. And I hope, seeing we must all go out at the same gate, that we shall be as ready for it as he was.

JOHNNY LUDLOW.

THE END—First Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

Second Series

CHAPTER I—LOST IN THE POST.

CHAPTER II—A LIFE OF TROUBLE.

CHAPTER III—HESTER REED’S PILLS.

CHAPTER IV—ABEL CREW.

CHAPTER V—ROBERT ASHTON’S WEDDING-DAY.

CHAPTER VI—HARDLY WORTH TELLING.

CHAPTER VII—CHARLES VAN RHEYN.

CHAPTER VIII—MRS. TODHETLEY’S EARRINGS.

CHAPTER IX—A TALE OF SIN.

CHAPTER X—A DAY OF PLEASURE.

CHAPTER XI—THE FINAL ENDING TO IT.

CHAPTER XII—MARGARET RYMER.

CHAPTER XIII—THE OTHER EARRING.

CHAPTER XIV—ANNE.

CHAPTER XV—THE KEY OF THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER XVI—THE SYLLABUB FEAST.

CHAPTER XVII—SEEN IN THE MOONLIGHT.

CHAPTER XVIII—ROSE LODGE.

CHAPTER XIX—LEE, THE LETTER-MAN.

ENDNOTES—Second Series

CHAPTER I.

LOST IN THE POST.

Many a true tale has been told of the disappearance of money in passing through the post. Sometimes the loss is never cleared up, but remains a mystery to the end. One of these losses happened to us, and the circumstances were so curious that they would have puzzled a bench of judges. It was a regular mystery, and could not be accounted for in any way.

If you chanced to read the first series of these papers, it may scarcely be necessary to recall certain points to your recollection—that Mr. Todhetley, commonly called the Squire, had two estates. The chief one, Dyke Manor, lay on the borders of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, partly in both counties; the other, Crabb Cot, was a smaller place altogether, and much nearer Worcester. Sometimes we stayed at one place, sometimes at the other. By an arrangement with Mr. Brandon, my guardian and the trustee to my property, I, Johnny Ludlow, lived with the Todhetleys. Mrs. Todhetley, the Squire’s present wife, was my stepmother, my father having married her after my own mother’s death. After my father’s death—which took place speedily—she became the second wife of Squire Todhetley, and the stepmother of his only son and heir, Joseph. Two children were subsequently born to them, Hugh and Lena, to whom Joseph was of course half-brother. Joseph, unlike myself, had been old enough to resent the advent of a stepmother when she came. Indulged and haughty, he did not like the gentle control she brought; though she was good as gold, as loving to him as he would let her be, and kind to everybody. I don’t say but that she was tall and thin as a lamp-post, with a mild face, given to having aches in it, scanty light hair, and kindly blue eyes; so she had not much to boast of in the way of appearance. Joe and I grew up together like brothers. He was several years the elder, and domineered over me absolutely. At schoolhe was always called “Tod;” and I fell into the same habit. Perhaps that is sufficient explanation.

“And if you don’t come back to-night, you had better send me a five-pound note in a letter,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“All right,” replied the Squire.

This was said on the platform of Timberdale Station. We were staying at Crabb Cot, and were taking the train at Timberdale instead of that at South Crabb. The Squire was going to Worcester, and was taking Tod and myself with him. It was a fine morning in April, and Mrs. Todhetley and little Hugh had come with us through the Ravine for the sake of the walk. Our returning at night, or not, was left an open question, contingent upon the Squire’s business at Worcester being over.

“Bring me a whip, and a new bird-cage for my thrush, and a pot of marmalade, papa,” called out Hugh.

“What else would you like, sir?” retorted the Squire.

“You bring ’em, Joe.”

“I dare say!” said Tod.

The train puffed off, drowning Hugh’s further commands. We saw him throw his cap at the train, and Mrs. Todhetley holding him back from running after it.

“That young gentleman wants to be sent to school,” remarked the Squire. “I’m afraid you two boys make him worse than he would be.”

We reached Worcester about twelve, and went to the Star and Garter. The Squire had no end of matters on hand that day: but the two chief things that had brought him to Worcester were—to draw some money from the bank, and to negotiate with Mr. Prothero, a corn-dealer, for the sale of a load of wheat. Mr. Prothero was a close man to deal with: he wanted the wheat at one price, the Squire said it should only go at another: if he held out, the Squire meant to hold out, even though it involved staying the night in Worcester.

It was Wednesday; market-day. Not so large a market as the Saturday’s, but the town looked pretty full. The first thing the Squire did was to go to the Old Bank. At the door he turned round and said there was no need for three of us to crowd into the place. However, we were then inside, and so went on with him.

He had something particular to say to Mr. Isaac, and asked for him. They were talking together in private for a minute or two, and then the Squire took out his cheque for fifty pounds, and laid it on the counter.

“How will you take it?” asked Mr. Isaac.

“In five-pound notes.”

Mr. Isaac brought the money himself. The Squire put it in his pocket-book, and we said good-morning, and departed. There were shops to call at and people to see: and of course the market to walk through. You wouldn’t get the Squire to keep himself out of themarket-house, when in Worcester on market-day: he’d go about asking the price of butter and fowls like any old woman. A little after four o’clock we got back to the Star; and found Mr. Prothero had not made his appearance.

“Just like him!” cried the Squire. “His appointment was for four o’clock sharp. He means to hold out against my price; that’s what he thinks to do. Let him! he won’t get the wheat at less.”

“I’d see him a jolly long way before he should have it at all,” said haughty Tod. “Do you hear, sir?”

“Hold your tongue, Joe,” was the Squire’s answer.

“Anyway, sir, Prothero gives you more trouble than all the rest of the buyers put together. He’s a stingy, close-fisted fellow.”

“But his money’s safe and sure. Prothero is a respectable man, Joe; his word’s as good as his bond.”

Half-past four, and no Prothero. The Squire began to fume a little: if he hated one thing more than another it was to be kept waiting.

“Look here, boys, I’ll send that note to your mother,” he said, taking out his pocket-book. “There’s not much chance of our going home to-night at this rate. Ring, one of you, for some paper and envelopes.”

Separating one of the notes from the roll Mr. Isaac had handed to him, he gave it to me to put up. I asked him if I should take down the number.

“I don’t think it matters, Johnny.”

But I took it down, perhaps through some unconscious instinct—for I don’t suppose I am more cautious than other people. In my pocket was a letter from Anna Whitney: and I pencilled on it the number of the note.

“Write inside the envelope ‘Not home till to-morrow,’” growled the Squire, forgetting that it could not be there till the morning. But he was in an ill-humour.

I wrote it at his bidding, enclosed the bank-note, and addressed the letter to Mrs. Todhetley at Crabb Cot. Tod and I went out to post it, and began laying plans as to how we should spend the evening at Worcester.

The post-office is not far from the Star, as everybody knows: and though we met a fellow who used to go to school with us, a doctor’s son, and stayed talking with him, not ten minutes elapsed before we were back again. And behold in that short time there was a change in the programme. Old Prothero had been in, the bargain about the wheat was concluded, and the Squire intended to start for home as soon as dinner was over. Tod resented the change.

“Johnny and I were going to that advertised séance—or whatever they call the thing—on electro-biology, sir. It will be first-rate fun, they say.”

“Very sorry for you and Johnny. You’ll have to go home instead. Prothero has bought the wheat: and that’s all I should have had to stay here for.”

“At his own price!” cried Tod, rather mockingly.

“No, Mr. Joe; at mine.”

“Well, it’s an awful sell for us,” grumbled Tod. “It’s not so often we get a night at Worcester, that we should be done out of this chance.”

“The fact is, I don’t feel well,” said the Squire, “and should most likely have gone home, whether Prothero had come in or not. I’m afraid I have caught cold, Joe.”

There was not any more to be said. The Squire’s colds were no joke: once he caught one, he would be downright ill; laid up for days. We went back by rail to Timberdale, and took a fly home.

The next morning the Squire did not get up. Sure enough he had a cold, and was feverish. At breakfast Mrs. Todhetley said one of us should go over to South Crabb and ask Mr. Cole to call and see him.

“Why, the pater hates doctors!” exclaimed Tod.

“I know he does,” she answered. “But I feel sure that if he would only take remedies for his colds in time, they would not be so bad as they usually are, Joseph. Who’s that?” she added—for she was seated where she could not see out, and had heard the gate click.

It was the postman: so I opened the glass doors.

“Only one, sir,” said he, handing me the letter we had posted at Worcester the previous afternoon.

Mrs. Todhetley laughed as she opened it, saying it would have come sooner had we brought it with us. Looking to see that the bank-note was safe, she left it in the envelope on the breakfast-table.

“You may as well get it changed for me at Salmon’s,” she said, handing it to Tod as we were going out, “and then I need not disturb your father. But you must make haste back, for you know I want the money.”

She had no money in the house except a few shillings: and this was why the note was to be posted to her if we stayed at Worcester. You are often run short of money in rural country places: it’s quite different from town, where the banks are at hand.

We went through North Crabb, and met the doctor coming out at his door. Tod told him the Squire wanted some physicking.

“Caught a cold, has he?” cried Cole. “If he will only be reasonable and keep himself warm in bed, we’ll soon have that out of him.”

Cole lived close upon South Crabb—I think I’ve said so before. A few yards beyond his house the shops began. Salmon’s was the fifth from the corner: a double shop, grocer’s and draper’s. The savings’bank was at Salmon’s, and the post-office: he was the busiest tradesmanin South Crabb, rather conceited over it, but very intelligent. His brother was in business at Timberdale. This is what occurred.

“Will you be good enough to change this five-pound note for me, Mr. Salmon?” said Tod, laying the note down on the grocer’s counter, on the left of the door, behind which Salmon stood, his grey hair carefully brushed and a white apron on.

Salmon took the note up for a moment, and then unlocked the inner drawer of his till, where he kept his gold. He was counting out the five sovereigns when he paused; put them down, and picked up the note again quickly. I had seen his eyes fall on it.

“Where did you get this note from, sir?” asked he of Tod.

“From the Old Bank at Worcester.”

“Well, it’s one of them notes that was lost in the robbery at Tewkesbury, unless I’m much mistaken,” cried Salmon, beginning to turn over the leaves of a small account-book that he fetched from the post-office desk. “Ay, I thought I was right,” he adds, running his finger across some figures on one of the pages. “I had the numbers correct enough in my head.”

“You must be out of your mind, Salmon,” retorted Tod, in his defiant way. “That note was paid to my father yesterday at Worcester Old Bank.”

“I don’t think it was, sir.”

“You don’t think it was! Why, I was present. I saw Mr. Isaac count the notes out himself. Ten; and that was one of them.”

“Mr. Isaac never counted out this note,” persisted Salmon.

He smoothed it out on the counter as he spoke. I had not noticed it before: but it struck me now as I looked at it that it was not the note I had put into the envelope at Worcester. That was a new, crisp note; this was not crisp, and it looked a little soiled. Tod turned passionate over it: he was just like the Squire in some things.

“I don’t understand your behaviour, Salmon. I can swear that this note was one given with the other nine at the bank yesterday, and given by Mr. Isaac.”

Salmon shook his head. As much as to say he knew to the contrary.

“You’d better accuse Mr. Isaac of dealing in stolen notes—or me,”cried hot Tod.

“You’d neither of you be likely to deal in them, Mr. Todhetley. There’s a mistake somewhere. That’s what it is. Mr. Isaac would be too glad to get this note into his possession to pay it away again. No people are more severe against money-robberies than bankers.”

Salmon talked, and Tod talked; but they could not agree. The apprentice behind the counter on the drapery side listened with admiration, evidently not knowing which side to take. I spoke then, saying that the note did not appear to be the same as the one I had enclosed in the letter; and Tod looked as though he could have knocked medown for saying it. I had changed my clothes and had not Anna Whitney’s letter with me.

“Tod, it is of no use your taking it up in this way. If the thing is so, it is. And it can soon be proved. I say I don’t think it is the same note, or the same numbers.”

“If I had taken down the numbers of a bank-note, I could remember what they were; so would any one but a muff, Johnny,” said he, sarcastically.

“I don’t remember what they were. But I do seem to remember that they were not these.”

Tod flung out of the shop in a passion: to him it seemed impossible that anything could be wrong with a note had direct from the bank. As to its not being the same note, he scouted it utterly. Had it dropped through the envelope and changed itself en route from Worcester? he sarcastically demanded—coming in again to ask it.

Salmon was quietly going over the circumstances of the Tewkesbury robbery to me. About three weeks before, a butcher’s shop was robbed in Tewkesbury—the till carried off in open day. It had gold and silver in it and two five-pound notes. The numbers of the notes happened to be known, and notice of them was circulated, to put people on their guard against taking them.

“Look here, Mr. Ludlow,” said Salmon, showing me the numbers of the stolen notes written down in his book, and comparing the one with the bank-note we had taken to him. “It’s the same, you see. Reason’s reason, sir.”

“But I don’t see how it’s practicable,” cried Tod, coming round the least bit in the world, as he condescended to look himself at the numbers.

“Well, sir, neither do I—the facts being as you state them,” acknowledged Salmon. “But here’s the proof to stagger us, you observe. It’s in black and white.”

“There must be two notes with the same numbers,” said Tod.

Salmon smiled: great in his assumption of superior knowledge.

“There never was yet, Mr. Todhetley.”

“Who numbers the notes, I wonder? I suppose mistakes are not impossible to those who do it, any more than to other people.”

“No fear of that, sir, with their system. The note has been changed in the post.”

“Nonsense!” retorted Tod.

They’d have cavilled until night, with no result, one holding out against the other. Tod brought away the note and the five sovereigns—which Salmon offered. We could send over another note at leisure, he said. I examined the envelope after we had hastened home: it was the same we had posted at Worcester, and did not appear to have been tampered with.

Getting Anna Whitney’s letter out of my best clothes’ pocket, I brought it to Tod. The numbers were quite different from the note’s. He stared like one bewildered: his eyes passing from those on the letter to those on the note.

“Johnny, this beats bull-baiting.”

So it did—for mystification.

“Are you sure you copied the figures correctly, old fellow?”

“Now, Tod! Of course I did.”

“Let us go up to the pater.”

The pater was getting up, in defiance of old Cole and Mrs. Todhetley, and was dressed, up to his coat. He had a fire in his room and his white night-cap on. I told him about the note. Tod was outside, telling Mrs. Todhetley. He did not receive the news kindly.

“The note I gave you to put into the envelope was one of those stolen from the butcher at Tewkesbury! How dare you bring your rubbishing stories to me, Mr. Johnny!”

I tried to explain how it was—that it was not the same note; as the numbers proved. He would hear nothing at first, only went on at me, stamping his slippers and nodding his head, the big white tassel of the night-cap bobbing up and down. If Salmon dared to say he had sent him a stolen note to change, he’d teach Salmon what slander meant the next time the magistrates sat.

Tod came in then with Mrs. Todhetley. The Squire had talked himself quiet, and I got a hearing: showing him the numbers I had taken down outside Anna’s letter and the numbers on the stolen bank-note. It brought him to reason.

“Why, bless my heart! How can they have been changed, Johnny?”

Taking the packet of notes out of his pocket-book, he went over their numbers. They were all consecutive, the nine of them; and so was the tenth, the one I had taken down. He pushed his night-cap back and stared at us.

“Did you two get larking yesterday and drop the letter on your way to the post?”

“We took it straight to the post, sir, and put it safely in.”

“I don’t know that I’d answer for that,” stormed the Squire.“Once dropped in the street, there’s no knowing who might pick it up, or what tricks might be played with it. Hold your tongues, you two. How else do you suppose it could have been done? We don’t live in the days of miracles.”

Off went his night-cap, on went his coat. Ringing the bell, he ordered the phaeton to be got ready on the instant, to take him to the station: he was going to Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley quite implored him not to go; as good as went down on her knees: he would increase his cold, and perhaps be laid up. But he wouldn’t listen.“Hang the cold!” he said: “he had no cold; it was gone. People shouldn’t have it to say that tricks could be played on him with impunity, and stolen notes substituted for honest ones.”

“What a way he puts himself into!” laughed Tod, when he had ordered us off to make ready.

“I know somebody else who does just the same.”

“You’ll get it presently, Johnny.”

Away we went to the station, Bob and Blister spanking along and Tod driving; the Squire, wrapped in about a dozen rugs and comforters, sitting beside him. The groom, Dwarf Giles, was behind with me: he would have to take the carriage back again. A train came up pretty soon, and we reached Worcester.

Of all commotions, the Squire made the worst. When he got to the bank, Mr. Isaac was out: would not be in till three o’clock: and that put the finishing stroke to the pater’s impatience. Next he went to the Star, and told of the matter there, gathering half the house about him. The post-office was taken next. They seemed to know nothing whatever about the letter—and I don’t think they did—had not particularly noticed it in sorting: could not have seemed to see less had they been in a fog at sea: except one thing, and that they’d swear to—that every letter posted at the office the previous day, and all other days, had been duly forwarded, untampered with, to its destination.

The first dawn of reason that fell over us was in the interview with Mr. Isaac. It was pleasant to be with any one so cheerfully calm. Taking the roll of five-pound notes in his hand, he pronounced them to be the same he had given us on the previous day; and the number I had dotted down to have been the one belonging to the tenth note.

“And is this one of those two stolen ones that were advertised?”demanded the Squire, putting it into Mr. Isaac’s hands.

Mr. Isaac spoke with a clerk for a minute—perhaps referring to the numbers as Salmon had done—and came back saying that it was the note. So there we were: the matter laid, so far, to rest. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory. The Squire sat quite still, as if he had been struck dumb.

“I’m sure I shall never see daylight out of this,” cried the Squire, in a sort of hopeless, mazy tone. “It’s worse than conjuring.”

Mr. Isaac was called away. The Squire fastened upon one of the old clerks, and went over the matter with him. He could not readily understand it.

“The note must have been changed, Mr. Todhetley,” said he.

“Changed in the post?”

“Changed somewhere.”

“But who did it?”

“That’s the question.”

The Squire could not tear himself away. Once out of the bank he would be nonplussed. He began casting a doubt on the Worcester post-office; the clerk retorted that there was a post-office at our end, Timberdale: and at that the Squire fired up. Each would have held out for the good faith of his respective post-office to the death. It put Tod and me in mind of the fable of the crows, each old mother saying that her own crow was the whitest. After glaring at one another for a bit through their spectacles, they shook hands and parted.

We arrived home to a late dinner at Crabb Cot, just as wise as we had left it in the morning. The Squire had an awful cold, though he wouldn’t admit it. At nine o’clock he virtually gave in, went up to bed, and said Molly was to make him a basin of hot gruel, and we might put a drop of brandy in it.

The mode of conveying the letters from Worcester was this. The Timberdale bag, made up at the Worcester office, was brought out at night by the late train, and dropped at the Timberdale Station. The postmaster of Timberdale would be at the station to receive it, and carry it home.

His name was Rymer. A man of acknowledged respectability in the place, and of good connections, the son of a clergyman. He had been brought up for a surgeon, but somehow never had the chance to pass; and, years and years ago, opened a chemist and druggist’s shop at Timberdale. Then he added other things: stationery, Christmas cards, valentines, boys’ marbles, purses, and such like, which his wife attended to. In time he had the post-office. As to suspecting Rymer of doing anything wrong with the note, it was not to be thought of. He had two children: a son, who never seemed to do any good for himself, and if placed away from home would return to it again: and a daughter, a nice little girl of sixteen, who was as useful amidst the drugs and the post-office work as her father.

Timberdale had two letter-carriers. One for the place itself, the other for the country round. This last had a regular journey of it, for the farm-houses were scattered. There had always been talk that our two houses—the Squire’s and old Coney’s—ought not to be put in the Timberdale district of delivery, and why it was originally done nobody could make out; seeing that we were ever so far off Timberdale, and in Crabb parish. But people did not bestir themselves to alter it, and so the old custom went on. The country postman was Lee: a trustworthy old soul with shaky legs.

The next morning, Cole the surgeon came in, vexed. The Squire ought not to have got up at all the day before, he said, much less have gone to Worcester; and where was the use of his prescribing remedies if they were not attended to? Upon that, the Squire (after retorting that he should do as he pleased in spite of Cole and his remedies, and speaking in a sort of hoarse and foggy voice) told about posting the bank-note to Mrs. Todhetley, and what had come of it.

“Well, it’s a strange thing,” said Cole, when he had turned the news over in his mind. “What do you think, Johnny?”

He would often say to me when talking of things and people, “What do you think?” He had a theory that I saw more clearly than others, just as Duffham at Church Dykely had. I had nothing particular to think about this: it seemed a hopeless mystery.

“Lee’s sure,” said Cole, speaking of the postman; “so is Rymer. It could have been in no other hands on this side the journey.”

“The Worcester people say it was not tampered with on their side.”

“Have you questioned Rymer about it?”

“Not yet,” croaked the Squire. “I meant to have gone to him to-day.”

“Which you will not do!” cried Mr. Cole. “But now, look here: I wouldn’t tell people at first that the exchanged note was one of those stolen ones, if I were you: not even Rymer. No one likes to be mixed up in robberies. You’d put folks on their guard at once; and any chance word of enlightenment, that might otherwise be dropped, would be kept in.”

We did not quite take him. “I would not,” repeated Cole.

“But we must inquire about it,” said Tod. “What’s to be said of the note?”

“Say that the bank-note you put in was changed en route for another one: that the numbers did not tally. That’s all you need say at first.”

Tod could not see any reason in the argument; but the Squire took up the idea eagerly, and ordered Tod to do as was suggested. He was unable to go to Timberdale himself, but was far too impatient to let it rest until another day, and so Tod was to be his deputy.

With at least a hundred suggestions and injunctions from the Squire—who only ceased when his voice disappeared completely—we set off, taking the way of the Ravine. It was a fine spring day: the trees were coming into leaf, the thorns and other bushes were budding: violets and primroses nestled at their feet. I picked some early cowslips for a ball for Lena, and some double white violets for Mrs. Todhetley.

Past Timberdale Court went we; past the church; past Jael Batty’s and the other straggling cottages, and came to the village street. It was paved: and you can’t say that of all villages.

Mr. Rymer was behind his counter: a thin, delicate-faced man, with a rather sad expression and mild brown eyes. In spite of his poor clothes and his white apron and the obscure shop he had served in for twenty years, his face had “gentleman” plainly stamped on it: but he gave you the idea of being too meek-spirited; as if in any struggle with the world he could never take his own part.

The shop was a double shop, resembling Salmon’s at South Crabb in shape and arrangements. The drugs and chemicals were on the left-hand side as you entered; the miscellaneous wares on the other. Horse and cattle medicines were kept with the drugs: and other things too numerous to mention, such as pearl barley, pickles, and fish-sauce. The girl, Margaret Rymer, was serving a woman with a pennyworth of writing-paper when we went in, and a postage-stamp. Tod asked for Mr. Rymer.

He came forward from the little parlour, at one end of which was the desk where he did his postal work.

Upon Tod’s saying that we wished to speak with him privately, he took us into the parlour. As we sat down opposite to him, I could not help thinking what a nice face he had. It was getting very careworn. A stranger would have given him more than his forty-five years: though the bright brown hair was abundant still. Tod told his story. The chemist looked thoroughly surprised, but open and upright as the day. I saw at once that no fault attached to him.

“A bank-note exchanged as it passed through the post!” he exclaimed.“But, Mr. Joseph Todhetley, the thing appears impossible.”

“It appears so,” said Tod. “I was just as unwilling to believe it at first: but facts are facts.”

“I cannot see the motive,” said Rymer. “Why should one bank-note be taken out of a letter, if another were substituted?”

Tod looked at me. Wanting to say that the other was a stolen note, and was no doubt put in to be got rid of. But the Squire had bound us down.

“Had the note been simply abstracted from the letter, we should be at no loss to understand that a thief had helped himself to it; but a thief would not put another note of the same value in its place,” went on Rymer.

“Well, the facts are as I tell you, Mr. Rymer,” returned Tod, impatient at being trammelled and having to tell so lame a tale. “One bank-note was taken out of the letter and another put in its place. We want you to help us unravel the mystery.”

“I will help you to the utmost of my power,” was Rymer’s answer.“But—are you sure you have told me the circumstances correctly?”

“Quite sure,” answered Tod. “The thing was done between Worcester post-office and our house. How it was done, and by whom, is the question.”

“You enclosed the note in the letter yourself at Worcester on Wednesday afternoon, and put it into the post-office: when we delivered the letter at Crabb Cot yesterday morning, you found the note inside had been taken out and another put in? These are the circumstances?”

“Precisely so. Except that it was not I who enclosed the note and took down its number, but Johnny Ludlow. The Worcester officedisclaims all knowledge of the matter, and so we are thrown on this side of the journey. Did you go to the station yourself for the letter-bag, Rymer?”

“I did, sir. I brought it home and sorted the letters at that desk, ready for the two men to take out in the morning. I used to sort all the letters in the morning, London and others: but lately I’ve done what we call the local bags—which come in before bed-time—at night. It saves time in the morning.”

“Do you recollect noticing the letter for Crabb Cot?”

“I think I noticed it. Yes, I feel sure I did. You see, there’s often something or other for you, so that it’s not remarkable. But I am sure I did notice the letter.”

“No one could have got to it in the night?”

“What—here?” exclaimed Rymer, opening his eyes in surprise that such a question should be put. “No, certainly not. The letter-bags are locked up in this desk, and I keep the key about me.”

“And you gave them as usual to Lee in the morning?”

Mr. Rymer knitted his patient brow the least in the world, as if he thought that Tod’s pursuing these questions reflected some suspicion on himself. He answered very meekly—going over the whole from the first.

“When I brought the Worcester bag in on Wednesday night, I was at home alone: my wife and daughter happened to be spending the evening with some friends, and the servant had asked leave to go out. I sorted the letters, and locked them up as usual in one of the deep drawers of the desk. I never unlocked it again until the last thing in the morning, when the other letters that had come in were ready to go out, and the two men were waiting for them. The letter would be in Lee’s packet, of course—which I delivered to him. But Lee is to be depended on: he would not tamper with it. That is the whole history so far as I am connected with it, Mr. Joseph Todhetley. I could not tell you more if I talked till mid-day.”

“What’s that, Thomas? Anything amiss with the letters?” called out a voice at this juncture, as the inner door opened, that shut out the kitchen.

I knew it. Knew it for Mrs. Rymer’s. I didn’t like her a bit: and how a refined man like Rymer (and he was so in all respects) could have made her his wife seemed to me to be a seven days’ wonder. She had a nose as long as from Timberdale to Crabb Ravine; and her hair and face were red, and her flounces gaudy. As common a woman as you’d see in a summer’s day, with a broad Brummagem accent. But she was very capable, and not unkindly natured. The worst Timberdale said of her was, that she had done her best to spoil that ugly son of hers.

Putting her head, ornamented with yellow curl-papers, round thedoor-post, she saw us seated there, and drew it away again. Her sleeves were rolled up, and she had on a coarse apron; altogether was not dressed for company. Letting the door stand ajar, she asked again if anything was amiss, and went on with her work at the same time: which sounded like chopping suet. Mr. Rymer replied in a curt word or two, as if he felt annoyed she should interfere. She would not be put off: strong-minded women never are: and he had to give her the explanation. A five-pound bank-note had been mysteriously lost out of a letter addressed to Mrs. Todhetley. The chopping stopped.

“Stolen out of it?”

“Well—yes; it may be said so.”

“But why do you call it mysterious?”

Mr. Rymer said why. That the bank-note had not, in one sense, been stolen; since another of the same value had been substituted for it.

Chop, chop, chop: Mrs. Rymer had begun again vigorously.

“I’d like to know who’s to make top or tail of such a story as that,”she called out presently. “Has anything been lost, or not?”

“Yes, I tell you, Susannah: a five-pound note.”

Forgetting her curl-papers and the apron, Mrs. Rymer came boldly inside the room, chopping-knife in hand, and requested further enlightenment. We told her between us: she stood with her back against the door-post while she listened.

“When do you say this took place, young gents?”

“On Wednesday night, or Thursday morning. When the letter reached us at breakfast-time, the job was done.”

She said no more then, but went back and chopped faster than ever. Tod and I had got up to go when she came in again.

“The odd part about it is their putting in a note for the same value,” cried she. “I never heard of such a thing as that. Why not spend the other note, and make no bother over it?”

“You would be quite justified in doing so under the circumstances, Mr. Todhetley,” said the quieter husband.

“But we can’t,” returned Tod, hotly—and all but said more than he was to say.

“Why not?” asked she.

“Because it’s not ours; there, Mrs. Rymer.”

“Well, I know what I’d say—if the chance was given me,” returned she, resenting Tod’s manner. “That the note found in the letter was the one put into it at Worcester. Changed in the post! It does not stand to reason.”

“But, my dear——” her husband was beginning.

“Now, Thomas Rymer, that’s what I think: and so would you, if you had a grain of sense beyond a gander’s. And now good-morning, young gents: my pudding won’t get done for dinner at this rate.”

Mr. Rymer came with us through the shop to the door. I shook hands with him: and Tod’s nose went up in the air. But I think it lies in what you see a man is, by mind and nature, whether he is your equal, and you feel proud to think he is so—not in the fact of his wearing an apron. There are some lords in the land I wouldn’t half care to shake hands with as I would with Thomas Rymer.

“I hope you will pardon me for reverting to my first opinion, Mr. Todhetley,” he said, turning to Tod—“but indeed I think there must be some mistake. Mrs. Rymer may be right—that the note found in the letter was the one put into it.”

Tod flung away. The facts he had obstinately refused to believe at first, he had so fully adopted now, that any other opinion offended him. He was in a passion when I caught him up.

“To think that the pater should have sent us there like two fools, Johnny! Closing our mouths so that we could not speak the truth.”

“Rymer only three parts believes it. His wife not at all.”

“His wife be sugared! It’s nothing to her. And all through the suggestion of that precious calf, Cole. Johnny, I think I shall act on my own judgment, and go back and tell Rymer the note was a stolen one.”

“The pater told us not to.”

“Stuff! Circumstances alter cases. He would have told it himself before he had been with Rymer two minutes. The man’s hands are partly tied, you see; knowing only half the tale.”

“Well, I won’t tell him.”

“Nobody asked you. Here goes. And the Squire will say I’ve done right.”

Rymer was standing at his door still. The shop was empty, and there were no ears near. Tod lowered his voice, though.

“The truth is, Mr. Rymer, that the note, substituted in the letter for ours, was one of those two lost by the butcher at Tewkesbury. I conclude you heard of the robbery.”

“One of those two!” exclaimed Rymer.

“Yes: Salmon at South Crabb recognized it yesterday when we were asking him to give change for it.”

“But why not have told me this at once, Mr. Joseph?”

“Because the Squire and Cole, laying their wise heads together this morning, thought it might be better not to let that get abroad: it would put people on their guard, they said. You see now where the motive lay for exchanging the notes.”

“Of course I do,” said Mr. Rymer in his quiet way. “But it is very unaccountable. I cannot imagine where the treason lies.”

“Not on this side, seemingly,” remarked Tod: “The letter appears to have passed through no one’s hands but Lee’s: and he is safe.”

“Safe and sure. It must have been accomplished at Worcester.Or—in the railway train,” he slowly added. “I have heard of such things.”

“You had better keep counsel at present as to the stolen note, Mr. Rymer.”

“I will until you give me leave to speak. All I can do to assist in the discovery is heartily at Squire Todhetley’s service. I’d transport these rogues, for my part.”

We carried our report home—that the thing had not been, and could not have been, effected on the Timberdale side, unless old Lee was to be suspected: which was out of the question.

Time went on, and it grew into more of a mystery than ever. Not as to the fact itself or the stolen note, for all that was soon known high and low. The Worcester office exonerated itself from suspicion, as did the railway letter-van. The van let off its resentment in a little private sneering: but the office waxed hot, and declared the fraud must lie at the door of Timberdale. And so the matter was given up for a bad job, the Squire submitting to the loss of his note.

But a curious circumstance occurred, connected with Thomas Rymer. And, to me, his behaviour had seemed almost curious throughout. Not at that first interview—as I said, he was open, and, so to say, indifferent then; but soon afterwards his manner changed.

On the day following that interview, the Squire, who was very restless over it, wanting the thing to come to light in no time, sent me again to Rymer’s, to know if he had learned any news. Rymer said he had not; and his manner was just what it had been the past day. I could have staked my life, if necessary, that the man believedwhat he said—that news must be looked for elsewhere, not at Timberdale. I am sure that he thought it impossible that the theft could have been effected after the letters came into his hands. But some days later on, when the whole matter had been disclosed, and the public knew as much about it as we did, the Squire, well of his cold, thought he would have a talk with Rymer himself, went over, and took me with him.

I shall not forget it. In Rymer’s window, the chemical side, there was a picture of a bullock eating up some newly-invented cattle-food and growing fat upon it. It caught the Squire’s eye. Whilst he stopped to read the advertisement, I went in. The moment Rymer saw me—his daughter called to him to come out of the parlour where he was at dinner—his face turned first red, and then as pale as death.

“Mr. Todhetley thought he would like to come and see you, Mr. Rymer.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, in an agitated sort of tone, and then he stoopedto put some jars closer together under the counter; but I thought he knew how white he was, and wanted to hide it.

When the Squire came in, asking first of all about the new cattle-food, he noticed nothing. Rymer was very nearly himself then, and said he had taken the agency, and old Massock had ordered some of it.

Then they talked about the note. Rymer’s tone was quite different from what it had been before; though whether I should have noticed it but for his white face I can hardly tell. That had made me noticehim. He spoke in a low, timid voice, saying no more than he was obliged to say, as if the subject frightened him. One thing I saw—that his hands trembled. Some camomile blows lay on a white paper on the counter, and he began doing them up with shaky fingers.

Was his wife given to eavesdropping? I should have thought not—she was too independent for it. But there she was, standing just within the little parlour, and certainly listening. The Squire caught sight of her gown, and called out, “How d’ye do, Mrs. Rymer?” upon which she came forward. There was a scared look on her face also, as if its impudence had shrunk out of it. She did not stay an instant—just answered the Squire, and went away again.

“We must come to the bottom of the business somehow, you know, Rymer,” concluded the Squire, as he was leaving. “It would never do to let the thief get off. What I should think is, that it must be the same fellow who robbed the butcher——”

“No, no,” hastily interrupted Rymer.

“No! One of the gang, then. Any way, you’ll help us all you can. I should like to bring the lot to trial. If you get to learn anything, send me word at once.”

Rymer answered “Yes,” and attended us to the door. Then the Squire went back to the cattle-food; but we got away at last.

“Thomas Rymer breaks, Johnny, I think. He doesn’t seem in spirits somehow. It’s hard for a man to be in a shop all day long, from year’s end to year’s end, and never have an hour’s holiday.”

Ever after this, when the affair was spoken of with Rymer, he showed more or less the same sort of shrinking—as if the subject gave him some terrible pain. Nobody but myself noticed it; and I only because I looked out for it. I believe he saw I thought something; for when he caught my eye, as he did more than once, his own fell.

But some curious circumstances connected with him have to be told yet. One summer evening, when it was getting towards dusk, he came over to Crabb Cot to see the Squire. Very much to the pater’s surprise, Rymer put a five-pound note into his hand.

“Is the money found?” cried he, eagerly.

“No, sir, it is not found,” said Rymer, in a subdued tone. “It seems likely to remain a mystery to the last. But I wish to restore it myself. It lies upon my conscience—being postmaster here—that sucha loss should have taken place. With three parts of the public, and more, it is the Timberdale side that gets the credit of being to blame. And so—it weighs heavily upon me. Though I don’t see how I could have prevented it: and I lie awake night after night, thinking it over.”

The Squire stared for awhile, and then pushed back the note.

“Why, goodness, man!” cried he, when his amazement let him speak, “you don’t suppose I’d take the money from you! What in the world!—what right have you to bear the loss? You must be dreaming.”

“I should feel better satisfied,” said poor Rymer, in his subdued voice of pain. “Better satisfied.”

“And how do you think I should feel?” stamped the Squire, nearly flinging the note into the fire. “Here, put it up; put it up. Why, my good fellow, don’t, for mercy’s sake, let this bother take your senses away. It’s no more your fault that the letter was rifled than it was mine. Well, this is a start—your coming to say this.”

They went on, battling it out. Rymer praying him to take the note as if he’d pray his life away; the Squire accusing the other of having gone clean mad, to think of such a thing. I happened to go into the room in the middle of it, but they had not leisure to look at me. It ended in Rymer’s taking back the note: it could not have ended in any other manner: the Squire vowing, if he did not, that he should go before the magistrates for lunacy.

“Get the port wine, Johnny.”

Rymer declined to take any: his head was not accustomed to wine, he said. The Squire poured out a bumper and made him drink it: telling him he believed it was something of the kind his head wanted, or it would never have got such a wild notion into it as the errand he had come upon that evening.

A few minutes after Rymer had left, I heard the Squire shouting to me, and went back to the room. He had in his hand a little thin note-case of green leather, something like two leaves folded together.

“Rymer must have dropped this, Johnny, in putting it into his pocket. The note is in it. You had better run after him.”

I took it, and went out. But which way had Rymer gone? I could see far along the solitary road, and it was light enough yet, but no one was in view, so I guessed he was taking the short-cut through the Ravine, braving the ghost, and I went across the field and ran down the zigzag path. Wasn’t it gloomy there!

Well, it was a surprise! Thinking himself alone, he had sat down on the stump of a tree, and was sobbing with all his might: sobs that had prevented his hearing me. There was no time for me to draw back, or for him to hide his trouble. I could only hold out the green case and make the best of it.

“I am afraid you are in some great trouble, Mr. Rymer?”

He got up and was quiet at once. “The best of us have trouble at times, Master Johnny.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Except forget that you have seen me giving way. It was very foolish of me: but there are moments when—when one loses self-control.”

Either through his awkwardness or mine, the leaves of the case opened, and the bank-note fluttered out. I picked it up and gave it to him. Our eyes met in the gloom.

“I think you know,” he whispered.

“I think I suspect. Don’t be afraid: no one else does: and I’ll never drop a hint to mortal man.”

Putting my hand into his that he might feel its clasp, he took it as it was meant, and wrung it in answer. Had we been of the same age, I could have felt henceforth like his brother.

“It will be my death-blow,” he whispered. “Heaven knows I was not prepared for it. I was unsuspicious as a child.”

He went his way with his grief and his load of care, and I went mine, my heart aching for him. I am older now than I was then: and I have learnt to think that God sends these dreadful troubles to try us, that we may fly from them to Him. Why else should they come?

And I dare say you have guessed how it was. The time came when it was all disclosed; so I don’t break faith in telling it. That ill-doing son of Rymer’s had been the thief. He was staying at home at the time with one of the notes stolen from Tewkesbury in his possession: some of his bad companions had promised him a bonus if he could succeed in passing it. It was his mother who surreptitiously got the keys of the desk for him, that he might open it in the night: he made the excuse to her that there was a letter in the Worcester bag for himself under a false direction, which he must secure, unsuspected. To do Madam Rymer justice, she thought no worse: and it was she who in her fright, when the commotion arose about the Tewkesbury note, confessed to her husband that she had let Ben have the keys that night. There could be no doubt in either of their minds after that. The son, too, had decamped. It was to look for our letter he had wanted the keys. For he knew it might be coming, with the note in it: he was on the platform at Timberdale railway-station in the morning—I saw him standing there—and must have heard what Mrs. Todhetley said. And that was the whole of the mystery.

But I would have given the money from my own pocket twice over, to have prevented it happening, for Thomas Rymer’s sake.

CHAPTER II.

A LIFE OF TROUBLE.

Mrs. Todhetley says that you may sometimes read a person’s fate in their eyes. I don’t know whether it’s true. She holds to it that when the eyes have a sad, mournful expression naturally, their owner is sure to have a life of sorrow. Of course such instances may be found: and Thomas Rymer’s was one of them.

You can look back and read what was said of him: “A thin, delicate-faced man, with a rather sad expression and mild brown eyes.” The sad expression was in the eyes: that was certain: thoughtful, dreamy, and would have been painfully sad but for its sweetness. But it is not given to every one to discern this inward sadness in the look of another.

It was of no avail to say that Thomas Rymer had brought trouble upon himself, and marred his own fortune. His father was a curate in Warwickshire, poor in pence, rich in children. Thomas was apprenticed to a doctor in Birmingham, who was also a chemist and druggist. Tom had to serve in the shop, take out teeth, make up the physic, and go round with his master to fevers and rheumatisms. Whilst he was doing this, the curate died: and thenceforth Thomas would have to make his own way in the world, with not a soul to counsel him.

Of course he might have made it. But Fate, or Folly, was against him. Some would have called it fate, Mrs. Todhetley for one; others might have said it was folly.

Next door to the doctor’s was a respectable pork and sausage shop, carried on by a widow, one Mrs. Bates. Rymer took to going in there of an evening when he had the time, and sitting in the parlour behind with Mrs. Bates and her two daughters. Failing money for theatres and concerts, knowing no friends to drop in to, young fellows drift anywhere for relaxation when work is done. Mrs. Bates, a good old motherly soul, as fat as her best pig, bade him run in whenever he felt inclined. Rymer liked her for her hearty kindness, and liked uncommonly the dish of hot sausages, or chops, that would come on the table for supper. The worst was, he grew to like something else—and that was Miss Susannah.

If it’s true that people are attracted by their contrasts, there might have been some excuse for Rymer. He was quiet and sensitive, witha refined mind and person, and retiring manners. Susannah Bates was free, loud, good-humoured, and vulgar. Some people, it was said, called her handsome then; but, judging by what she was later, we thought it must have been a very broad style of beauty. The Miss Bateses were intended by their mother to be useful; but they preferred being stylish. They played “Buy a broom” and other fashionable tunes on the piano, spent time over their abundant hair, wore silks for best, carried a fan to chapel on Sundays, and could not be persuaded to serve in the shop on the busiest day. Good Mrs. Bates managed the shop herself with the help of her foreman: a steady young man, whose lodgings were up a court hard by.

Well, Tom Rymer, the poor clergyman’s son, grew to be as intimate there as if it were his home, and he and Susannah struck up a friendship that continued all the years he was at the next door. Just before he was out of his time, Mrs. Bates died.

The young foreman somehow contrived to secure the business for himself, and married the elder Miss Bates off-hand. There ensued some frightful squabbling between the sisters. The portion of money said to be due to Miss Susannah was handed over to her with a request that she should find herself another home. Rymer came of age just then, and the first thing he did was to give her a home himself by making her his wife.

There was the blight. His prospects were over from that day. The little money she had was soon spent: he must provide a living how he could. Instead of qualifying himself for a surgeon, he took a situation as a chemist and druggist’s assistant: and, later, set up for himself in the shop at Timberdale. For the first ten years of his married life, he was always intending to pass the necessary examinations: each year saying it should be done the next. But expenses came on thick and fast; and that great need with every one, present wants, had to be supplied first. He gave up the hope then: went on in the old jog-trot line, and subsided into an obscure rural chemist and druggist.

The son, Benjamin, was intended for a surgeon. As a preliminary, he was bound apprentice to his father in order to learn the mysteries of drugs and chemicals. When out of his time, he was transferred to a chemist and druggist’s at Tewkesbury, who was also in practice as a medical man. There, Mr. Benjamin fell in with bad companions; a lapse that, in course of time, resulted in his coming home, changing the note in our letter for the stolen one, and then decamping from Timberdale. What with the blow the discovery itself was to Rymer, and what with the concealing of the weighty secret—for he had to conceal it: he could not go and inform against his own son—it pretty nearly did for him. Rymer tried to make reparation in one sense of the word—by the bringing of that five-pound bank-note to the Squire. For which the Squire, ignorant of the truth, thought him a downright lunatic.

For some months, after that evening, Thomas Rymer was to be seen in his shop as usual, growing to look more and more like a ghost. Which Darbyshire, the Timberdale doctor, said was owing to liver, and physicked him well.

But the physic did not answer. Of all obstinate livers, as Darbyshire said, Rymer’s was about the worst he had ever had to do with. Some days he could not go into the shop at all, and Margaret, his daughter, had to serve the customers. She could make up prescriptions just as well as he, and people grew to trust her. They had a good business. It was known that Rymer’s drugs were genuine; had direct from the fountain-head. He had given up the post-office, and the grocer opposite had taken to it—Salmon, who was brother to Salmon of South Crabb. In this uncertain way, a week ill, and a week tolerably well, Rymer continued to go on for about two years.

Margaret Rymer stood behind the counter: a neat little girl in grey merino. Her face was just like her father’s; the same delicate features, the sweet brown eyes, and the look of innate refinement. Margaret belonged to his side of the house; there was not an atom of the Brummagem Bateses in her. The Squire, who remembered her grandfather the clergyman, said Margaret took after him. She was in her nineteenth year now, and for steadiness you might have trusted her alone right across the world and back again.

She stood behind the counter, making up some medicine. A woman in a coarse brown cloak with a showy cotton handkerchief tied on her head was waiting for it. It had been a dull autumn day: evening was coming on, and the air felt chilly.

“How much be it, please, miss?” asked the woman, as Margaret handed her the bottle of mixture, done up in white paper.

“Eighteenpence. Thank you.”

“Be the master better?” the woman turned round from the door to inquire, as if the state of Mr. Rymer’s health had been an afterthought.

“I think he is a little. He has a very bad cold, and is lying in bed to-day. Thank you for asking. Good-night.”

When dusk came on, Margaret shut the street-door and went into the parlour. Mrs. Rymer sat there writing a letter. Margaret just glanced in.

“Mother, can you listen to the shop, please?”

“I can if I choose—what should hinder me?” responded Mrs. Rymer. “Where are you off to, Margaret?”

“To sit with my father for a few minutes.”

“You needn’t bother to leave the shop for that. I dare say he’s asleep.”

“I won’t stay long,” said Margaret. “Call me, please, if any one comes in.”

She escaped up the staircase, which stood in the nook between the shop and the parlour. Thomas Rymer lay back in the easy-chair by his bit of bedroom fire. He looked as ill as a man could look, his face thin and sallow, the fine nose pinched, the mild brown eyes mournful.

“Papa, I did not know you were getting up,” said Margaret, in a soft low tone.

“Didn’t you hear me, child?” was his reply, for the room was over the shop. “I have been long enough about it.”

“I thought it was my mother moving about.”

“She has not been here all the afternoon. What is she doing?”

“I think she is writing a letter.”

Mr. Rymer groaned—which might have been caused by the pain that he was always feeling. Mrs. Rymer’s letters were few and far between, and written to one correspondent only—her son Benjamin. That Benjamin was random and must be getting a living in any chance way, or not getting one at all, and that he had never been at home for between two and three years, Margaret knew quite well. But she knew no worse. The secret hidden between Mr. and Mrs. Rymer, that they never spoke of to each other, had been kept from her.

“I wish you had not got up,” said Margaret. “You are not well enough to come down to-night.”

He looked at her, rather quickly; and spoke after a pause.

“If I don’t make an effort—as Darbyshire tells me—it may end in my becoming a confirmed invalid, child. I must get down while I can.”

“You will get better soon, papa; Mr. Darbyshire says so,” she answered, quietly swallowing down a sigh.

“Ay, I know he does. I hope it will be so, please God. My life has been only a trouble throughout, Margaret; but I should like to struggle with it yet for all your sakes.”

Looking at him as he sat there, the firelight playing upon his worn face with its subdued spirit, you might have seen it was true—that his life had been a continuous trouble. Was he born to it? or did it only come upon him through marrying Susannah Bates? On the surface of things, lots seemed very unequally dealt out in this world. What had been the lot of Thomas Rymer? The poor son of a poor curate, he had known little but privation in his earlier years; then came the long drudgery of his apprenticeship, then his marriage, and the longer drudgery of his after-life. An uncongenial and unsuitable marriage—and he had felt it to the backbone. From twenty to thirty years had Rymer toiled in a shop late and early; never taking a day’s rest or a day’s holiday, for some one must always be on duty, and he had no help or substitute. Even on Sundays he must be at hand, lest his neighbours should be taken ill and want drugs. If he went to church,there was no certainty that his servant-maid—generally a stout young woman in her teens, with a black face and rough hair—would not astonish the congregation by flying up to his pew-door to call him out. Indeed the vision was not so very uncommon. Where, then, could have been Rymer’s pleasure in life? He had none; it was all work. And upon the work came the trouble.

Just as the daughter, Margaret, was like her father, so the son, Benjamin, resembled his mother. But for the difference of years, and that his red hair was short and hers long, he might have put on a lace cap, and sat for her portrait. He was the eldest of the children; Margaret the youngest, those between had died. Seven years between children makes a difference, and Margaret with her gentleness had always been afraid of rough Benjamin.

But whether a child is ugly or handsome, it’s all the same to the parents, and for some years the only white spot in Thomas Rymer’s life had been the love of his little Benjamin. For the matter of that, as a child, Ben was rather pretty. He grew up and turned out wild; and it was just as great a blow as could have fallen upon Rymer. But when that horrible thing was brought home to him—taking the bank-note out of the letter, and substituting the stolen one for it—then Rymer’s heart gave in. Ever since that time it had been as good as breaking.

Well, that was Thomas Rymer’s lot in life. Some people seem, on the contrary, to have nothing but sunshine. Do you know what Mrs. Todhetley says?—that the greater the cloud here, the brighter will be the recompense hereafter. Looking at Thomas Rymer’s face as the fire played on it—its goodness of expression, almost that of a martyr; remembering his prolonged battle with the world’s cares, and his aching heart; knowing how inoffensive he had been towards his fellow-creatures, ever doing them a good turn when it lay in his power, and never an ill one—one could only hope that his recompense would be of the largest.

“Had many people in this afternoon, Margaret?”

“Pretty well, papa.”

Mr. Rymer sighed. “When I get stronger——”

“Margaret! Shop.”

The loud coarse summons was Mrs. Rymer’s. Margaret’s spirit recoiled from it the least in the world. In spite of her having been brought up to the “shop,” there had always been something in her innate refinement that rebelled against it and against having to serve in it.

“A haperth o’ liquorish” was the extensive order from a small child, whose head did not come much above the counter. Margaret served it at once: the liquorice, being often in demand, was kept done up in readiness. The child laid down the halfpenny and went out with a bang.

“I may as well run over with the letter,” thought Margaret—alluding to an order she had written to London for some drug they were out of.“And there’s my mother’s. Mother,” she added, going to the parlour-door,“do you want your letter posted?”

“I’ll post it myself when I do,” replied Mrs. Rymer. “Ain’t it almost time you had the gas lighted? That shop must be in darkness.”

It was so, nearly. But the gas was never lighted until really needed, in the interests of economy. Margaret ran across the road, put her letter into the post in Salmon’s window, and ran back again. She stood for a moment at the door, looking at a huge lumbering caravan that was passing—a ménage on wheels, as seen by the light within its small windows. “It must be on its way to Worcester fair,”she thought.

“Is it you, Margaret? How d’ye do?”

Some great rough man had come up, and was attempting to kiss her. Margaret started back with a cry. She would have closed the door against him; but he was the stronger and got in.

“Why, what possesses the child! Don’t you know me?”

Every pulse in Margaret Rymer’s body tingled to pain as she recognized him. It was her brother Benjamin. Better, than this, that it had been what she fancied—some rude stranger, who in another moment would have passed on and been gone for ever. Benjamin’s coming was always the signal for discomfort at home, and Margaret felt half-paralyzed with dismay.

“How are the old folk, Maggie?”

“Papa is very ill,” she answered, her voice slightly trembling.“My mother is well as usual. I think she was writing to you this afternoon.”

“Governor ill! So I’ve heard. Upstairs a good deal, is he not?”

“Quite half his time, I think.”

“Who attends here?”

“I do.”

“You!—you little mite! Brought your knowledge of rhubarb to good use, eh? What’s the matter with papa?”

“He has not been well for a long while. I don’t know what it is. Mr. Darbyshire says”—she dropped her voice a little—“that he is sure there’s something on his mind.”

“Poor old dad!—just like him! If a woman came in with a broken arm, he’d take it to heart.”

“Benjamin, I think it is you that he has most at heart,” the girl took courage to say.

Mr. Benjamin laughed. “Me! He needn’t trouble about me. I am as steady as old Time, Maggie. I’ve come home to stay; and I’ll prove to him that I am.”

“Come home to stay!” faltered Margaret.

“I can take care of things here. I am better able to do it than you.”

“My father will not put me out of my place here,” said Margaret, steadily. “He has confidence in me; he knows I do things just as he does.”

“And for that reason he makes you his substitute! Don’t assume, Miss Maggie; you’d be more in your place stitching wristbands in the parlour than as the presiding genius in a drug-shop. How d’ye do, mother?”

The sound of his voice had reached Mrs. Rymer. She did not believe her own ears, and came stealing forth to look, afraid of what she might see. To give Madam Rymer her due, she was quite as honest-natured as her husband; and the matter of the bank-note, the wrong use made of the keys she was foolish enough to lend surreptitiously to Mr. Benjamin, had brought her no light shock at the time. Ill-conduct in the shape of billiards, and beer, and idleness, she had found plenty of excuse for in her son; but when it came to felony, it was another thing altogether.

“It is him!” she muttered, as he saw her, and turned. “Where on earth have you sprung from?” demanded Mrs. Rymer.

“Not from the skies, mother. Hearing the governor was on the sick list, I thought I ought to come over and see him.”

“None of your lies, Ben,” said Mrs. Rymer. “That has not brought you here. You are in some disgraceful mess again.”

“It has brought me here—and nothing else,” said Ben: and he spoke truth. “Ashton of Timberdale——”

A faint groan—a crash as of breaking glass. When they turned to look, there was Rymer, fallen against the counter in his shock of surprise and weakness. His arm had thrown down an empty syrup-bottle.

And that’s how Benjamin Rymer came home. His father and mother had never seen him since before the discovery of the trouble; for as soon as he had changed the bank-note in the letter, he was off. The affair had frightened him a little—that is, the stir made over it, of which he had contrived to get notice; since then he had been passably steady, making a living for himself in Birmingham as assistant to a surgeon and druggist. He had met Robert Ashton a short time ago (this was the account he now gave), heard from that gentleman rather a bad account of his father, and so thought it his duty to give up what he was about, and come home. His duty! Ben Rymer’s duty!!

Ben was a tall, bony fellow, with a passably liberal education. He might not have been unsteady but for bad companions. Ben did not aid in robbing the butcher’s till—he had not quite come to that—neither was he privy to it; but he did get persuaded into trying to dispose of one of the stolen notes. It had been the one desperate actof his life, and it had sobered him. Time, however, effaces impressions; from two to three years had gone on since then; nothing had transpired, never so much as a suspicion had fallen on Mr. Benjamin, and he grew bold and came home.

Timberdale rubbed its eyes with astonishment that next autumn day, when it woke up to see Benjamin Rymer in his father’s shop, a white apron on, and serving the customers who went in, as naturally as though he had never left it. Where had he been all that while? they asked. Improving himself in his profession, coolly avowed Ben with unruffled face.

And so the one chance—rest of mind—for the father’s return to health and life, went out. The prolonged time, passing without discovery, giving a greater chance day by day that it might never happen, could but have a beneficial effect on Mr. Rymer. But when Ben made his appearance, put his head, so to say, into the very stronghold of danger, all his sickness and his fear came back again.

Ben did not know why his father kept so poorly and looked so ill. Never a word, in his sensitiveness, had Mr. Rymer spoken to his son of that past night’s work. Ben might suspect, but he did not know. Mr. Rymer would come down when he was not fit to do so, and take up his place in the shop on a stool. Ben made fun of it: in sport more than ill-feeling: telling the customers to look at the old ghost there. Ben made himself perfectly at home; would sometimes hold a levée in the shop if his father was out of it, when he and his friends, young men of Timberdale, would talk and laugh the roof off.

People talk of the troubles of the world, and say their name is legion: poverty, sickness, disappointment, disgrace, debt, difficulty; but there is no trouble the human heart can know like that brought by rebellious children. To old Rymer, with his capacity for taking things to heart, it had been as a long crucifixion. And yet—the instinctive love of a parent cannot die out: recollect David’s grief for wicked Absalom: “Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Still, compared with what he used to be, Ben Rymer was steady. As the winter approached, there set in another phase of the reformation; for he pulled up even from the talking and laughing, and became as good as gold. You might have thought he had taken his dead grandfather, the clergyman, for a model, and was striving to walk in his steps. He went to church, read his medical works, was pleasant at home, gentle with Margaret, and altogether the best son in the world.

“Will it last, Benjamin?” his father asked him sorrowfully.

“It shall last, father; I promise it,” was the earnestly-spoken answer. “Forget the past, and I will never, I hope, try you again.”

Ben kept his promise throughout the winter, and seemed likely tokeep it always. Mr. Rymer grew stronger, and was in business regularly, which gave Ben more leisure for his books. It was thought that a good time had set in for the Rymers; but, as Mrs. Todhetley says, you cannot control Fate.

One day, when we were again staying at Crabb Cot, I had to call at the shop for a box of “Household Pills,” Rymer’s own making. When any one was ailing at home, Mrs. Todhetley would administer a dose of these pills. But that Rymer was so conscientious a man, I should have thought they were composed of bread and pepper. Mrs. Todhetley pinned her faith to them, and said they did wonders.

Well, I had to go to Timberdale on other matters, and was told to call, when there, for a box of these delectable Household Pills. Mr. Rymer and his son stood behind the counter, the one making up his books, Ben pounding something in a mortar. Winter was just on the turn, and the trees and hedges were beginning to shoot into bud. Ben left his pounding to get the pills.

“Is this Mr. Rymer’s? Halloa, Ben! All right. How goes it, old boy?”

The door had been opened with a burst, and the above words met our ears, in a tone not over-steady. They came from a man who wore sporting clothes, and his hat very much on one side. Ben Rymer stared in surprise; his mouth dropped.

But that it was early in the day, and one does not like to libel people, it might have been thought the gentleman had taken a little too much of something strong. He swaggered up to the counter, and held out his hand to Ben. Ben, just then wrapping up the box of pills, did not appear to see it.

“Had a hunt after you, old fellow,” said the loud-voiced stranger.“Been to Birmingham and all kinds of places. Couldn’t think where you’d hid yourself.”

“You are back pretty soon,” growled Ben, who certainly did not seem to relish the visit.

“Been back a month. Couldn’t get on in the New World; its folks are too down for me. I say, I want a word with you. Can’t say it here, I suppose?”

“No,” returned Ben, rather savagely.

“Just come out a bit, Ben,” resumed the stranger, after a short pause.

“I can’t,” replied Ben—and his tone sounded more like I won’t.“I have my business to attend to.”

“Bother business! Here goes, then: it’s your fault if you make me speak before people. Gibbs has come out of hiding, and is getting troublesome——”

“If you will go outside and wait, I’ll come to you,” interrupted Ben at this, very quickly.

The man turned and swaggered out. Ben gave me the pills with one hand, and took off his apron with the other. Getting his hat, he was hastening out, when Mr. Rymer touched his arm.

“Who is that man, Benjamin?”

“A fellow I used to know in Tewkesbury, father.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cotton. I’ll soon despatch him and be back again,” concluded Ben, as he disappeared.

I put down half-a-crown for the pills, and Mr. Rymer left his place to give me the change. There had been a sort of consciousness between us, understood though not expressed, since the night when I had seen him giving way to his emotion in Crabb Ravine. This man’s visit brought the scene back again. Rymer’s eyes looked into mine, and then fell.

“Ben is all right now, Mr. Rymer.”

“I could not wish him better than he is. It’s just as though he were striving to atone for the past. I thought it would have killed me at the time.”

“I should forget it.”

“Forget it I never can. You don’t know what it was, Mr. Johnny,”he continued in a sort of frightened tone, a red spot coming into his pale thin cheeks, “and I trust you never will know. I never went to bed at night but to lie listening for a summons at my door—the officers searching for my son, or to tell me he was taken. I never rose in the morning but my spirit fainted within me, as to what news the day might bring forth.”

Mr. Benjamin and his friend were pacing side by side in the middle of the street when I went out, probably to be out of the reach of eavesdroppers. They did not look best pleased with each other; seemed to be talking sharply.

“I tell you I can’t and I won’t,” Ben was saying, as I passed them in crossing over. “What do you come after me for? When a fellow wants to be on the square, you won’t let him. As to Gibbs——”

The voices died out of hearing. I went home with the pills, and thought no more about the matter.

Spring weather is changeable, as we English know only too well. In less than a week, a storm of sleet and snow was drifting down. In the midst of it, who should present himself at Crabb Cot at midday but Lee, the letter-carrier. His shaky old legs seemed hardly able to bear him up against the storm, as he came into the garden. I opened the door, wondering what he wanted.

“Please can I see the Squire in private, sir?” asked Lee, who was looking half angry, half rueful. Lee had never been in boisterousspirits since the affair of the bank-note took place. Like a great many more people, he grew fanciful with years, and could not be convinced but that the suspicion in regard to it lay on him.

“Come in out of the storm, Lee. What’s up?”

“Please, Mr. Ludlow, sir, let me get to see the Squire,” was all his answer.

The Squire was in his little room, hunting for a mislaid letter in the piece of furniture he called his bureau. As I shut old Lee in, I heard him, Lee, begin to say something about the bank-note and Benjamin Rymer. An instinct of the truth flashed over me—as sure as fate something connecting Ben with it had come out. In I shot again, to make one at the conference. The Squire was looking too surprised to notice me.

“It was Mr. Rymer’s son who took out the good note and put in the bad one?” he exclaimed. “Take care what you say, Lee.”

Lee stood near the worn hearthrug; his old hat, covered with snow-flakes, held between his hands. The Squire had put his back against the bureau and was staring at him through his spectacles, his nose and face a finer red than ordinary.

The thing had been tracked home to Benjamin Rymer by the man Cotton, Lee explained in a rambling sort of tale. Cotton, incensed at Rymer’s not helping him to some money—which was what he had come to Timberdale to ask for—had told in revenge of the past transaction. Cotton had not been connected with it, but knew of the part taken in it by Rymer.

“I don’t believe a syllable of it,” said the Squire, stoutly, flinging himself into his bureau chair, which he twisted round to face the fire.“You can sit down, Lee. Where did you say you heard this?”

Lee had heard it at the Plough and Harrow, where the man Cotton had been staying. Jelf, the landlord, had been told it by Cotton himself, and Jelf in his turn had whispered it to Lee. That was last night: and Lee had come up with it now to Mr. Todhetley.

“I tell you, Lee, I don’t believe a syllable of it,” repeated the Squire.

“It be true as gospel, sir,” asserted Lee. “Last night, when I went in to Jelf’s for a drop of beer, being stiff all over with the cold, I found Jelf in a passion because a guest had gone off without paying part of his score, leaving nothing but a letter to say he’d send it. Cotton by name, Jelf explained, and a sporting gent to look at. A good week, Jelf vowed he’d been there, living on the best. And then Jelf said I had no cause to be looked down upon any longer, for it was not me that had done that trick with the bank-notes, but Benjamin Rymer.”

“Now just stop, Lee,” interrupted the Squire. “Nobody looked down upon you for it, or suspected you: neither Jelf nor other people. I have told you so times enough.”

“But Jelf knows I thought they did, sir. And he told me this news to put me a bit at my ease. He——”

“Jelf talks at random when his temper’s up,” cried the Squire.“If you believe this story, Lee, you’ll believe anything.”

“Ben Rymer was staying at home at the time, sir,” urged Lee, determined to have his say. “If he is steady now, it’s known what he was then. He must have got access to the letters somehow, while they lay at his father’s that night, and opened yours and changed the note. Cotton says Mr. Ben had had the stolen note hid about him for ever so long, waiting an opportunity to get rid of it.”

“Do you mean to accuse Mr. Ben of being one of the thieves who robbed the butcher’s till?” demanded the Squire, growing wrathful.

“Well, sir, I don’t go as far as that. The man told Jelf that one of the stolen notes was given to young Rymer to pass, and he was to have a pound for himself if he succeeded in doing it.”

The Squire would hardly let him finish.

“Cotton said this to Jelf, did he?—and Jelf rehearsed it to you?”

“Yes, sir. Just that much.”

“Now look you here, Lee. First of all, to whom have you repeated this tale?”

“Not to anybody,” answered Lee. “I thought I’d better bring it up here, sir, to begin with.”

“And you’d better let it stop here to end with,” retorted the Squire.“That’s my best advice to you, Lee. My goodness! Accuse a respectable man’s son of what might transport him, on the authority of a drunken fellow who runs away from an inn without paying his bill! The likeliest thing is that this Cotton did it himself. How else should he know about it? Don’t you let your tongue carry this further, Lee, or you may find yourself in the wrong box.”

Lee looked just a little staggered. A faint flush appeared in his withered face. The Squire’s colour was at its fiercest. He was hard at the best of times to take in extraordinary tales, and utterly scouted this one. There was no man he had a greater respect for than Thomas Rymer.

“I hoped you might be for prosecuting, sir. It would set me right with the world.”

“You are a fool, Lee. The world has not thought you wrong yet. Prosecute! I! Upon this cock-and-bull story! Mr. Rymer would prosecute me in turn, I expect, if I did. You’d better not let this get to his ears: you might lose your post.”

“Mr. Rymer, sir, must know how wild his son has been.”

“Wild! Most of the young men of the present day are that, as it seems to me,” cried the Squire, in his heat. “Mine had better not let me catch them at it, though. I’d warm their ears well beforehand if I thought they ever would—— Do you hear, Mr. Johnny?”

I had been leaning on the back of a chair in the quietest corner for fear of being sent away. When the Squire put himself up like this, he would say anything.

“To be a bit wild is one thing, Lee; to commit felony quite another: Rymer’s son would be no more guilty of it than you would. It’s out of all reason. And do you take care of your tongue. Look here, man: suppose I took this up, as you want me, and it was found to have been Cotton or some other gaol-bird who did it, instead of young Rymer: where would you be? In prison for defamation of character, if the Rymers chose to put you there. Be wise in time, Lee, and say no more.”

“It might have been as you say, sir—Cotton himself; though I’m sure that never struck me,” returned Lee, veering round to the argument.“One thing that made me believe it, was knowing that Ben Rymer might easily get access to the letters.”

“And that’s just the reason why you should have doubted it,” contradicted the Squire. “He would be afraid to touch them because of the ease with which he could do it. Forgive you for coming up, you say?” added the Squire, as Lee rose with some humble words of excuse.“Of course I will. But don’t forget that a word of this, dropped abroad, might put your place, as postman, in jeopardy.”

“And that would never do,” said Lee, shaking his head.

“I should think not. It’s cold to-day, isn’t it?”

“Frightful cold, sir.”

“And you could come through it with this improbable story! Use your sense another time, Lee. Here, Johnny, take Lee into the kitchen, and tell them to give him some cold beef and beer.”

I handed him over, with the order, to Molly; who went into one of her tantrums at it, for she was in the midst of pastry-making. The Squire was sitting with his head bent, looking as perplexed as an owl, when I got back to the room.

“Johnny—shut the door. Something has come into my mind. Do you recollect Thomas Rymer’s coming up one evening, and wanting to give me a five-pound note?”

“Quite well, sir.”

“Well; I—I am not so sure now that there’s nothing in this fresh tale.”

I sat down; and in a low voice told him all. Of the fit of sobbing in which I had found Rymer that same night in the Ravine; and that I had known all along it was the son who had done it.

“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire, softly, very much taken aback.“It’s that, perhaps, that has been making Rymer so ill.”

“He said it was slowly killing him, sir.”

“Mercy on him!—poor fellow! An ill-doing scapegrace of a rascal! Johnny, how thankful we ought to be when our sons turn out well, andnot ill! But I think a good many turn out ill nowadays. If you should live to have sons, sir, take care how you bring them up.”

“I think Mr. Rymer must have tried to bring Ben up well,” was my answer.

“Yes; but did the mother?” retorted the Squire. “More responsibility lies with them than with the father, Johnny; and she spoilt him. Take care, sir, how you choose a wife when the time comes. And there was that miserable lot the lad fell in with at Tewkesbury! Johnny, that Cotton must be an awful blackguard.”

“I hope he’ll live to feel it.”

“Look here, we must hush this up,” cried the Squire, sinking his voice and glancing round the room. “I wouldn’t bring fresh pain on poor Rymer for the world. You must forget that you’ve told me, Johnny.”

“Yes, that I will.”

“It’s only a five-pound note, after all. And if it were fifty pounds, I wouldn’t stir in it. No, nor for five hundred; be hanged if I would! It’s not I that would bring the world about Thomas Rymer’s ears. I knew his father and respected him, Johnny; though his sermons were three-quarters of an hour long, sometimes; and I respect Thomas Rymer. You and I must keep this close. And I’ll make a journey to Timberdale when this snow-storm’s gone, Johnny, and frighten Jelf out of his life for propagating libellous tales.”

That’s where it ought to have ended. The worst is, “oughts” don’t go for much in the world; as perhaps every reader of this paper has learned to know.

When Lee appeared the next morning with the letters as usual, I went out to him. He dropped his voice to speak, as he put them in my hand.

“They say Benjamin Rymer is off, sir.”

“Off where?”

“Somewhere out of Timberdale.”

“Off for what?”

“I don’t know, sir. Jelf accused me of having carried tales there, and called me a jackass for my pains. He said that what he had told me wasn’t meant to be repeated again, and I ought not to have gone telling it about, especially to the Rymers themselves; that it might not be true——”

“As the Squire said yesterday, you know, Lee.”

“Yes, sir. I answered Jelf that it couldn’t have been me that had gone talking to the Rymers, for I had not as much as seen them. Any way, he said, somebody had, for they knew of it, and Benjamin had gone off in consequence. Jelf’s as cross over it as two sticks. It’s his own fault; why did he tell me what wasn’t true?”

Lee went off—looking cross also. After breakfast I related this to the Squire. He didn’t seem to like it, and walked about thinking.

“Johnny, I can’t stir in it, you see,” he said presently. “If it got abroad, people might talk about compromising a felony, and all that sort of rubbish: and I am a magistrate. You must go. See Rymer: and make him understand—without telling him in so many words, you know—that there’s nothing to fear from me, and he may call Ben back again. If the young man has begun to lead a new life, Heaven forbid that I, having sons myself, should be a stumbling-block in the way of it.”

It was striking twelve when I reached Timberdale. Margaret said her father was poorly, having gone out in the storm of the previous day and caught a chill. He was in the parlour alone, cowering over the fire. In the last few hours he seemed to have aged years. I shut the door.

“What has happened?” I whispered. “I have come on purpose to ask you.”

“That which I have been dreading all along,” he said in a quiet, hopeless tone. “Benjamin has run away. He got some information, it seems, from the landlord of the Plough and Harrow, and was off the next hour.”

“Well, now, the Squire sent me to you privately, Mr. Rymer, to say that Ben might come back again. He has nothing to fear.”

“The Squire knows it, then?”

“Yes. Lee came up about it yesterday: Jelf had talked to him. Mr. Todhetley did not believe a word of it: he blew up Lee like anything for listening to such a tale; he means to blow up Jelf for repeating anything said by a vagabond like Cotton. Lee came round to his way of thinking. Indeed there’s nothing to be afraid of. Jelf is eating his words. The Squire would not harm your son for the world.”

Rymer shook his head. He did not doubt the Squire’s friendly feeling, but thought it was out of his hands. He told me all he knew about it.

“Benjamin came to me yesterday morning in a great flurry, saying something was wrong, and he must absent himself. Was it about the bank-note, I asked—and it was the first time a syllable in regard to it had passed between us,” broke off Rymer. “Jelf had given him a friendly hint of what had dropped from the man Cotton—you were in the shop that first day when he came in, Mr. Johnny—and Benjamin was alarmed. Before I had time to collect my thoughts, or say further, he was gone.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I went round at once to Jelf, and the man told me all. Jelf knows the truth; that is quite clear. He says he has spoken only to Lee; is sorry now for having done that, and he will hush it up as far as he can.”

“Then it will be quite right, Mr. Rymer. Why should you be taking it in this way?”

“I am ill,” was all he answered. “I caught a chill going round to the Plough and Harrow. So far as mental illness goes, we may battle with it to the end, strength from above being given to us; but when it takes bodily form—why, there’s nothing for it but giving in.”

Even while we spoke, he was seized with what seemed to be an ague. Mrs. Rymer appeared with some scalding broth, and I said I would run for Darbyshire.

A few days went on, and then news came up to Crabb Cot that Mr. Rymer lay dying. Robert Ashton, riding back from the hunt in his scarlet coat and white cords on his fine grey horse (the whole a mass of splashes with the thaw) pulled up at the door to say How d’ye do? and mentioned it amidst other items. It was just a shock to the Squire, and nothing less.

“Goodness preserve us!—and all through that miserable five-pound note, Johnny!” he cried in a wild flurry. “Where’s my hat and top-coat?”

Away to Timberdale by the short cut through the Ravine, never heeding the ghost—although its traditional time of appearing, the dusk of evening, was drawing on—went the Squire. He thought Rymer must be ill through fear of him; and he accused me of having done my errand of peace badly.

It was quite true—Thomas Rymer lay dying. Darbyshire was coming out of the house as the Squire reached it, and said so. Instead of being sorry, he flew in a passion and attacked the doctor.

“Now look you here, Darbyshire—this won’t do. We can’t have people dying off like this for nothing. If you don’t cure him, you had better give up doctoring.”

“How d’you mean for nothing?” asked Darbyshire, who knew the Squire well.

“It can’t be for much: don’t be insolent. Because a man gets a bit of anxiety on his mind, is he to be let die?”

“I’ve heard nothing about anxiety,” said Darbyshire. “He caught a chill through going out that day of the snow-storm, and it settled on a vital part. That’s what ails him, Squire.”

“And you can’t cure the chill! Don’t tell me.”

“Before this time to-morrow, Thomas Rymer will be where there’s neither killing nor curing,” was the answer. “I told them yesterday to send for the son: but they don’t know where he is.”

The Squire made a rush through the shop and up to the bedroom, hardly saying, “With your leave,” or, “By your leave.” Thomas Rymer lay in bed at the far end; his white face whiter than the pillow; his eyes sunken; his hands plucking at the counterpane. Margaret left the room when the Squire went in. He gave one look; and knew that he saw death there.

“Rymer, I’d almost have given my own life to save you from this,”cried he, in the shock. “Oh, my goodness! what’s to be done?”

“I seem to have been waiting for it all along; to have seen the exposure coming,” said Thomas Rymer, his faint fingers resting in the Squire’s strong ones. “And now that it’s here, I can’t battle with it.”

“Now, Rymer, my poor fellow, couldn’t you—couldn’t you make a bit of an effort to live? To please me: I knew your father, mind. It can’t be right that you should die.”

“It must be right; perhaps it is well. I can truly say with old Jacob that few and evil have the days of my life been. Nothing but disappointment has been my lot here; struggle upon struggle, pain upon pain, sorrow upon sorrow. I think my merciful Father will remember it in the last great account.”

He died at five o’clock in the morning. Lee told us of it when he brought up the letters at breakfast-time. The Squire let fall his knife and fork.

“It’s a shame and a sin, though, Johnny, that sons should inflict this cruel sorrow upon their parents,” he said later. “Rymer has been brought down to the grave by his son before his hair was grey. I wonder how their accounts will stand at the great reckoning?”

CHAPTER III.

HESTER REED’S PILLS.

We were at our other and chief home, Dyke Manor: and Tod and I were there for the short Easter holidays, which were shorter in those days than they are in these.

It was Easter Tuesday. The Squire had gone riding over to old Jacobson’s with Tod. I, having nothing else to do, got the mater to come with me for a practice on the church organ; and we were taking the round home again through the village, Church Dykely.

Easter was very late that year. It was getting towards the end of April: and to judge by the weather, it might have been the end of May, the days were so warm and glorious.

In passing the gate of George Reed’s cottage, Mrs. Todhetley stopped.

“How are the babies, Hester?”

Hester Reed, sunning her white cap and clean cotton gown in the garden, the three elder children around, watering the beds with a doll’s watering-pot, and a baby hiding its face on her shoulder, dropped a curtsy as she answered—

“They be but poorly, ma’am, thank you. Look up, Susy,” turning the baby’s face upwards to show it: and a pale mite of a face it was, with sleepy eyes. “For a day or two past they’ve not seemed the thing; and they be both cross.”

“I should think their teeth are troubling them, Hester.”

“Maybe, ma’am. I shouldn’t wonder. Hetty, she seems worse than Susy. She’s a-lying there in the basket indoors. Would you please spare a minute to step in and look at her, ma’am?”

Mrs. Todhetley opened the gate. “I may as well go in and see, Johnny,” she said to me in an undertone: “I fear both the children are rather sickly.”

The other baby, “Hetty,” lay in the kitchen in a clothes-basket. It had just the same sort of puny white face as its sister. These two were twins, and about a year old. When they were born, Church Dykely went on finely at Hester Reed, asking her if she would not have had enough with one new child but she must go and set up two.

“It does seem very poorly,” remarked Mrs. Todhetley, stooping overthe young mortal (which was not cross just now, but very still and quiet), and letting it clasp its little fist round one of her fingers. “No doubt it is the teeth. If the children do not get better soon, I think, were I you, Hester, I should speak to Mr. Duffham.”

The advice seemed to strike Hester Reed all of a heap. “Speak to Dr. Duffham!” she exclaimed. “Why, ma’am, they must both be a good deal worse than they be, afore we does that. I’ll give ’em a dose o’ mild physic apiece. I dare say that’ll bring ’em round.”

“I should think it would not hurt them,” assented Mrs. Todhetley.“They both seem feverish; this one especially. I hear you have had Cathy over,” she went on, passing to another subject.

“Sure enough us have,” said Mrs. Reed. “She come over yesterday was a week and stayed till Friday night.”

“And what is she doing now?”

“Well, ma’am, Cathy’s keeping herself; and that’s something. She has got a place at Tewkesbury to serve in some shop; is quite in clover there, by all accounts. Two good gownds she brought over to her back; and she’s pretty nigh as lighthearted as she was afore she went off to enter on her first troubles.”

“Hannah told me she was not looking well.”

“She have had a nasty attack of—what was it?—neuralgy, I think she called it, and been obliged to go to a doctor,” answered Hester Reed. “That’s why they gave her the holiday. She was very well while she was here.”

I had stood at the door, talking to the little ones with their watering-pot. As the mater was taking her final word with Mrs. Reed, I went on to open the gate for her, when some woman whisked round the corner from Piefinch Lane, and in at the gate.

“Thank ye, sir,” said she to me: as if I had been holding it open for her especial benefit.

It was Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife down Piefinch Cut: a smart young woman, fond of fine gowns and caps. Mrs. Todhetley came away, and Ann Dovey went in. And this is what passed at Reed’s—as it leaked out to the world afterwards.

The baby in the basket began to cry, and Ann Dovey lifted it out and took it on her lap. She understood all about children, having been the eldest of a numerous flock at home, and was no doubt all the fonder of them because she had none of her own. Mrs. Dovey was moreover a great gossip, liking to have as many fingers in her neighbours’ pies as she could conveniently get in.

“And now what’s amiss with these two twins?” asked she in confidential tones, bending her face forward till it nearly touched Mrs. Reed’s, who had sat down opposite to her with the other baby.“Sarah Tanken, passing our shop just now, telled me they warn’t the thing at all, so I thought I’d run round.”

“Sarah Tanken looked in while I was a-washing up after dinner, and saw ’em both,” assented Mrs. Reed. “Hetty’s the worst of the two; more peeky like.”

“Which is Hetty?” demanded Ann Dovey; who, with all her neighbourly visits, had not learnt to distinguish the two apart.

“The one that you be a-nursing.”

“Did the mistress of the Manor look at ’em?”

“Yes; and she thinks I’d better give ’em both some mild physic. Leastways, I said a dose might bring ’em round,” added Hester Reed, correcting herself, “and she said it might.”

“It’s the very thing for ’em, Hester Reed,” pronounced Mrs. Dovey, decisively. “There’s nothing like a dose of physic for little ones; it often stops a bout of illness. You give it to the two; and don’t lose no time. Grey powder’s best.”

“I’ve not got any grey powder by me,” said Mrs. Reed. “It crossed my mind to try ’em with one o’ them pills I had from Abel Crew.”

“What pills be they?”

“I had ’em from him for myself the beginning o’ the year, when I was getting the headache so much. They’re as mild as mild can be; but they did me good. The box is upstairs.”

“How do you know they’d be the right pills to give to babies?”sensibly questioned Mrs. Dovey.

“Oh, they be right enough for that! When little Georgy was poorly two or three weeks back, I ran out to Abel Crew, chancing to see him go by the gate, and asked whether one of his pills would do the child harm. He said no, it would do him good.”

“And did it get him round?”

“I never gave it. Georgy seemed to be so much pearter afore night came, that I thought I’d wait till the morrow. He’s a rare bad one to take physic, he is. You may cover a powder in treacle that thick, Ann Dovey, but the boy scents it out somehow, and can’t be got to touch it. His father always has to make him; I can’t. He got well that time without the pill.”

“Well, I should try the pills on the little twins,” advised Ann Dovey. “I’m sure they want something o’ the sort. Look at this one! lying like a lamb in my arms, staring up at me with its poor eyes, and never moving. You may always know when a child’s ill by its quietness. Nothing ailing ’em, they worry the life out of you.”

“Both of them were cross enough this morning,” remarked Hester Reed, “and for that reason I know they be worse now. I’ll try the pill to-night.”

Now, whether it was that Ann Dovey had any especial love for presiding at the ceremony of administering pills to children, or whether she only looked in again incidentally in passing, certain it was that inthe evening she was for the second time at George Reed’s cottage. Mrs. Reed had put the three elder ones to bed; or, as she expressed it,“got ’em out o’ the way;” and was undressing the twins by firelight, when Ann Dovey tripped into the kitchen. George Reed was at work in the front garden, digging; though it was getting almost too dark to see where he inserted the spade.

“Have ye give ’em their physic yet?” was Mrs. Dovey’s salutation.

“No; but I’m a-going to,” answered Hester Reed. “You be just come in time to hold ’em for me, Ann Dovey, while I go upstairs for the box.”

Ann Dovey received the pair of babies, and sat down in the low chair. Taking the candle, Mrs. Reed ran up to the room where the elder children slept. The house was better furnished than cottages generally are, and the rooms were of a fairly good size. Opposite the bed stood a high deal press with a flat top to it, which Mrs. Reed made a shelf of, for keeping things that must be out of the children’s reach. Stepping on a chair, she put her hand out for the box of pills, which stood in its usual place near the corner, and went downstairs with it.

It was an ordinary pasteboard pill-box, containing a few pills—six or seven, perhaps. Mrs. Dovey, curious in all matters, lifted the lid and sniffed at the pills. Hester Reed was getting the moist sugar they were to be administered in.

“What did you have these here pills for?” questioned Ann Dovey, as Mrs. Reed came back with the sugar. “They bain’t over big.”

“For headache and pain in the side. I asked old Abel Crew if he could give me something for it, and he gave me these pills.”

Mrs. Reed was moistening a teaspoonful of the sugar, as she spoke, with warm water. Taking out one of the pills she proceeded to crush it into small bits, and then mixed it with the sugar. It formed a sort of paste. Dose the first.

“That ain’t moist enough, Hester Reed,” pronounced Mrs. Dovey, critically.

“No? I’ll put a drop more warm water.”

The water was added, and one of the children was fed with the delectable compound—Hetty. Mrs. Dovey spoke again.

“Is it all for her? Won’t a whole pill be too much for one, d’ye think?”

“Not a bit. When I asked old Abel whether one pill would be too much for Georgy, he said, No—two wouldn’t hurt him. I tell ye, Ann Dovey, the pills be as mild as milk.”

Hetty took in the whole dose by degrees. Susy had a similar one made ready, and swallowed it in her turn. Then the two babies were conveyed upstairs and put to bed side by side in their mother’s room.

Mrs. Dovey, the ceremony being over, took her departure. George Reed came in to his early supper, and soon afterwards he and his wifewent up to bed. Men who have to be up at five in the morning must go to rest betimes. The fire and candle were put out, the doors locked, and the cottage was steeped in quietness at a time when in larger houses the evening was not much more than beginning.

How long she slept, Mrs. Reed could not tell. Whether it might be the first part of the night, early or late, or whether morning might be close upon the dawn, she knew not; but she was startled out of her sleep by the cries of the babies. Awful cries, they seemed, coming from children so young; and there could be no mistaking that each was in terrible agony.

“Why, it’s convulsions!” exclaimed George Reed, when he had lighted a candle. “Both of them, too!”

Going downstairs as he was, he hastily lighted the kitchen fire and put a kettle of water on. Then, dressing himself, he ran out for Mr. Duffham. The doctor came in soon after George Reed had got back again.

Duffham was accustomed to scenes, and he entered on one now. Mrs. Reed, in a state of distress, had put the babies in blankets and brought them down to the kitchen fire; the three elder children, aroused by the cries, had come down too, and were standing about in their night-clothes, crying with fright. One of the babies was dead—Hetty. She had just expired in her father’s arms. The other was dying.

“What on earth have you been giving to these children?”exclaimed Duffham, after taking a good look at the two.

“Oh, sir, what is it, please?” sobbed Mrs. Reed, in her terror. “Convulsions?”

“Convulsions—no,” said the doctor, in a fume. “It is something else, as I believe—poison.”

At which she set up a shriek that might have been heard out of doors.

“Well, Hetty was dead, I say;” and Duffham could not do anything to save the other. It died whilst he stood there. Duffham repeated his conjecture as to poison; and Mrs. Reed, all topsy-turvy though she was, three-parts bereft of her senses, resented the implication almost angrily.

“Poison!” cried she. “How can you think of such a thing, sir!”

“I tell you that to the best of my belief these children have both died from some irritant poison,” asserted Duffham, coolly imperative. “I ask what you have been giving them?”

“They have not been well this three or four days past,” replied she, wandering from the point; not evasively, but in her mind’s bewilderment. “It must have been their teeth, sir; I thought they were cutting ’em with fever.”

“Did you give them any physic?”

“Yes, sir. A pill apiece when I put ’em to bed.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Duffham. “What pill was it?”

“One of Abel Crew’s.”

This answer surprised him. Allowing that his suspicion of poison was correct, he assumed that these pills must have contained it; and he had never had cause to suppose that Abel Crew’s pills were otherwise than innocent.

Mrs. Reed, her voice broken by sobs, explained further in answer to his questions, telling him how she had procured these pills from Abel Crew some time before, and had given one of the said pills to each of the babies. Duffham stood against the dresser, taking it all in with a solemn face, his cane held up to his chin.

“Let me see this box of pills, Mrs. Reed.”

She went upstairs to get it. A tidy woman in her ways, she had put the box in its place again on the top of the press. Duffham took off the lid, and examined the pills.

“Do you happen to have a bit of sealing-wax in the house, Reed?”he asked presently.

George Reed, who had stood like a man bewildered, looking first on one, then on the other of his dead little ones, answered that he had not. But the eldest child, Annie, spoke up, saying that there was a piece in her little work-box; Cathy had given it her last week when she was at home.

It was produced—part of a small stick of fancy wax, green and gold. Duffham wrapped the pill-box up in the back of a letter that he took from his pocket, and sealed it with a seal that hung to his watch-chain. He put the parcel into the hand of George Reed.

“Take care of it,” he said. “This will be wanted.”

“There could not have been poison in them pills, sir,” burst out Mrs. Reed, her distress increasing at the possibility that he might be right. “If there had been, they’d ha’ poisoned me. One night I took three of ’em.”

Duffham did not answer. He was nodding his head in answer to his own thoughts.

“And who ever heard of Abel Crew mixing up poison in his pills?”went on Mrs. Reed. “If you please, sir, I don’t think he could do it.”

“Well, that part of it puzzles me—how he came to do it,” acknowledged Duffham. “I like old Abel, and shall be sorry if it is proved that his pills have done the mischief.”

Mrs. Reed shook her head. She had more faith than that in Abel Crew.

Ever so many years before—for it was in the time of Sir Peter Chavasse—there appeared one day a wanderer at Church Dykely. It was hot weather, and he seemed to think nothing of camping out in the fields by night, under the summer stars. Who he was, or what he was, or why he had come, or why he stayed, nobody knew. He was evidently not a tramp, or a gipsy, or a travelling tinker—quite superior to it all; a slender, young, and silent man, with a pale and gentle face.

At one corner of the common, spreading itself between the village and Chavasse Grange, there stood a covered wooden shed, formerly used to impound stray cattle, but left to itself since the square space for the new pound had been railed round. By-and-by it was found that the wanderer had taken to this shed to sleep in. Next, his name leaked out—“Abel Crew.”

He lived how he could, and as simply as a hermit. Buying a penny loaf at the baker’s, and making his dinner of it with a handful of sorrel plucked from the fields, and a drink from the rivulet that ran through the wilderness outside the Chavasse grounds. His days were spent in examining roots and wild herbs, now and then in digging one up; and his nights chiefly in studying the stars. Sir Peter struck up a sort of speaking acquaintanceship with him, and, it was said, was surprised at his stock of knowledge and the extent of his travels; for he knew personally many foreign places where even Sir Peter himself had never been. That may have caused Sir Peter—who was lord of the manor and of the common included—to tolerate in him what it was supposed he would not in others. Anyway, when Abel Crew began to dig the ground about his shed, and plant roots and herbs in it, Sir Peter let him do it and never interfered. It was quite the opposite; for Sir Peter would sometimes stand to watch him at his work, talking the while.

In the course of time there was quite an extensive garden round the shed—comparatively speaking, you know, for we do not expect to see a shed garden as large as that of a mansion. It was fenced in with a hedge and wooden palings, all the work of Abel Crew’s hands. Sir Peter was dead then; but Lady Chavasse, guardian to the young heir, Sir Geoffrey, extended to him the same favour that her husband had, and, if she did not absolutely sanction what he was doing, she at any rate did not oppose it. Abel Crew filled his garden with rare and choice and useful field herbs, the valuable properties of which he alone understood; and of ordinary sweet flowers, such as bees love to suck. He set up bee-hives and sold the honey; he distilled lavender and bergamot for perfumes; he converted his herbs and roots into medicines, which he supplied to the poor people around, charging so small a price for them that it could scarcely more than cover the cost of making, and not charging at all the very poor. At the end of about ten years from his first appearance, he took down the old shed, and built up a more convenient cottage in its place, doing it all with his own pair of hands. And the years went on and on, and Abel Crew and his cottage, and his herbs, and his flowers, and his bees, and hismedicines, were just as much of an institution in the parish as was the Grange itself.

He and I became good friends. I liked him. You have heard how I take likes and dislikes to faces, and I rarely saw a face that I liked as I liked Abel Crew’s. Not for its beauty, though it really was beautiful, with its perfect shape and delicately carved features; but for its unmistakable look of goodness and its innate refinement: perhaps also for the deep, far-seeing, and often sad expression that sat in the earnest eyes. He was old now—sixty, I dare say; tall, slender, and very upright still; his white hair brushed back from his forehead and worn rather long. What his original condition of life might have been did not transpire; he never talked of it. More than once I had seen him reading Latin books; and though he fell into the diction of the country people around when talking with them, he changed his tones and language when conversing with his betters. A character, no doubt, he was, but a man to be respected; a man of religion, too—attending church regularly twice on a Sunday, wet or dry, and carrying his religion into the little things of everyday life.

His style of dress was old-fashioned and peculiar. So far as I saw, it never varied. A stout coat, waistcoat, and breeches every day, all of one colour—drab; with leathern gaiters buttoned nearly to the knee. On Sundays he wore a suit of black silk velvet, and a frilled shirt of fine cambric. His breeches were tied at the knee with black ribbon, in which was a plain, glistening steel buckle; buckles to match shone in his shoes. His stockings were black, and in the winter he wore black-cloth gaiters. In short, on Sundays Abel Crew looked like a fine old-fashioned English gentleman, and would have been taken for one. The woman who got up his linen declared he was more particular over his shirt-frills than Sir Peter himself.

Strangers in the place would sometimes ask what he was. The answer was not easy to give. He was a botanist and herbalist, and made pills, and mixtures, and perfumes, and sold honey, and had built his cottage and planted out his garden, and lived alone, cooking his food and waiting on himself; doing all in fact with his own hands, and was very modest always. On the other side, he had travelled in his youth, he understood paintings, studied the stars, read his store of Latin and classical books, and now and then bought more, and was as good a doctor as Duffham himself. Some people said a better one. Certain it was, that more than once when legitimate medical nostrums had failed—calomel and blisters and bleeding—Abel Crew’s simple decoctions and leaves had worked a cure. Look at young Mrs. Sterling at the Court. When that first baby of hers came to town—and a fine squalling young brat he was, with a mouth like a crocodile’s!—gatherings arose in her chest or somewhere, one after another; it was said the agony was awful. Duffham’s skill seemed to have gone ablackberrying, the other doctor’s also, for neither of the two could do anything for her, and the Court thought she would have died of it. Upon that, some relation of old Sterling’s was summoned from London—a great physician in great practice. He came in answer, and was liberal with his advice, telling them to try this and to try the other. But it did no good; and she only grew worse. When they were all in despair, seeing her increasing weakness and the prolonged pain, the woman who nursed her spoke of old Abel Crew; she had known him cure in these cases when the doctor could not; and the poor young lady, willing to catch at a straw, told them to send for Abel Crew. Abel Crew took a prepared plaster of herbs with him, green leaves of some sort, and applied it. That night the patient slept more easily than she had for weeks; and in a short time was well again.

But, skilful though he seemed to be in the science of herbs, as remedies for sickness and sores, Abel Crew never obtruded himself upon the ailing, or took money for his advice, or willingly interfered with the province of Duffham; he never would do it unless compelled in the interests of humanity. The patients he chiefly treated were the poor, those who could not have paid Duffham a coin worth thinking about. Duffham knew this. And, instead of being jealous of him, as some medical men might have been, or ridiculing him for a quack, Duffham liked and respected old Abel Crew. He was simple in his habits still: living chiefly upon bread and butter, with radishes or mustard and cress for a relish, cooking vegetables for his dinner, but rarely meat: and his drink was tea or spring water.

So that Abel Crew was rather a notable character amongst us; and when it was known abroad that two of his pills had caused the death of Mrs. Reed’s twins, there arose no end of a commotion.

It chanced that the same night this occurred, just about the time in fact that the unfortunate infants were taking down the pills under the superintendence of their mother and the blacksmith’s wife, Abel Crew met with an accident; though it was curious enough that it should be so. In taking a pan of boiling herbs off the fire, he let one of the handles slip out of his fingers; it sent the pan down on that side, spilled a lot of the stuff, and scalded his left foot on the instep. Therefore he was about the last person to hear of the calamity; for his door was not open as usual the following morning, and no one knocked to tell him of it.

Duffham was the first. Passing by on his morning rounds, the doctor heard the comments of the people, and it arrested him. It was so unusual a thing for Abel Crew not to be about, and for his door to be closed, that some of them had been arriving at a sensible conclusion—Abel Crew, knowing the mischief his pills had done, was shutting himself up within the house, unable to face his neighbours.

“Rubbish!” said Duffham. And he strode up the garden-path,knocked at the door with his cane, and entered. Abel had dressed, but was lying down on the bed again to rest his lame foot.

Duffham would have asked to look at it, but that he knew Abel Crew was as good at burns and scalds as he himself was. It had been doctored at once, and was now wrapped up in a handkerchief.

“The fire is nearly out of it,” said Abel, “but it must have rest; by to-night I shall be able to dress it with my healing-salve. I am much obliged to you for coming in, sir: though in truth I don’t know how you could have heard of the accident.”

“Ah! news flies,” said Duffham, evasively, knowing that he had not heard of the foot, or the neighbours either, and had come in for something altogether different. “What is this about the pills?”

“About the pills?” repeated Abel Crew, who had got up out of respect, and was putting on his coat. “What pills, sir?”

The doctor told him what had happened. Hester Reed had given one of his pills to each of her babies, and both had died of it. Abel Crew listened quietly; his face and his eyes fixed on Duffham.

“The children cannot have died of the pills,” said he, speaking as gently as you please. “Something else must have killed them.”

“According to Hester Reed’s account, nothing can have done it but the pills,” said Duffham. “The children had only taken their ordinary food throughout the day, and very little of that. George Reed came running to me in the night, but it was too late; one was dead before I got there. There could be no mistaking the children’s symptoms—that both were poisoned.”

“This is very strange,” exclaimed Abel, looking troubled. “By what kind of poison?”

“Arsenic, I think. I——”

But here they were interrupted. Dovey, the blacksmith, hearing of the calamity, together with the fact that it was his wife who had assisted in administering the suspected doses, deemed it his duty to look into the affair a little, and to resent it. He had left his forge and a bar of iron red-hot in it, and come tearing along in his leather apron, his shirt-sleeves stripped up to the elbow, and his arms grimy. A dark-eyed, good-natured little man in general, was Dovey, but exploding with rage at the present moment.

“Now then, Abel Crew, what do you mean by selling pills to poison people?” demanded he, pushing back the door with a bang, and stepping in fiercely. Duffham, foreseeing there was going to be a contest, and having no time to waste, took his departure.

“I have not sold pills to poison people,” replied Abel.

“Look here,” said Dovey, folding his black arms. “Be you going to eat them pills, or be you not? Come!”

“What do you mean, Dovey?”

“What do I mean! Ain’t my meaning plain? Do you own tohaving selled a box of pills to Hester Reed last winter?—be you thinking to eat that there fact, and deny of it? Come, Abel Crew!”

“I remember it well,” readily spoke up Abel. “Mrs. Reed came here one day, complaining that her head ached continually, and her side often had a dull pain in it, and asked me to give her something. I did so; I gave her a box of pills. It was early in January, I think. I know there was ice on the ground.”

“Then do you own to them pills,” returned Dovey, more quietly, his fierceness subdued by Abel’s civility. “It were you that furnished ’em?”

“I furnished the box of pills I speak of, that Hester Reed had from me in the winter. There’s no mistake about that.”

“And made ’em too?”

“Yes, and made them.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that; and now don’t you go for to eat your words later, Abel Crew. Our Ann, my wife, helped to give them there two pills to the children; and I’m not a-going to let her get into trouble over it. You’ve confessed to the pills, and I’m a witness.”

“My pills did not kill the children, Dovey,” said Abel, in a pleasant tone, resting his lame foot upon an opposite chair.

“Not kill ’em?”

“No, that they did not. I’ve not made pills all these years to poison children at last.”

“But what done it if the pills didn’t?”

“How can I say? ’Twasn’t my pills.”

“Dr. Duffham says it was the pills. And he——”

“Dr. Duffham says it was?”

“Reed telled me that the doctor asked outright, all in a flurry, what his wife had gave the babies, and she said she had gave ’em nothing but them there two pills of Abel Crew’s. Duffham said the pills must have had poison in ’em, and he asked for the box; and Hester Reed, she give him the box, and he sealed it up afore their eyes with his own seal.”

Abel nodded. He knew that any suspected medicine must in such a case be sealed up.

“And now that I’ve got that there word from ye, I’ll say good-day to ye, neighbour, for I’ve left my forge to itself, and some red-hot iron in it. And I hope with all my heart and mind,”—the blacksmith turned round from the door to say more kindly, his good-nature cropping up again,—“that it’ll turn out it warn’t the pills, but some’at else: our Ann won’t have no cause to be in a fright then.” Which was as much as to say that Ann Dovey was frightened, you observe.

That same afternoon, going past the common, I saw Abel Crew in his garden, sitting against the cottage wall in the sun, his foot resting on a block of wood.

“How did it all happen, Abel?” I asked, turning in at the gate.“Did you give Mrs. Reed the wrong pills?”

“No, sir,” he answered, “I gave her the right pills; the pills I make expressly for such complaints as hers. But if I had, in one sense, given her the wrong, they could not have brought about any ill effect such as this, for my pills are all innocent of poison.”

“I should say it could not have been the pills that did the mischief, after all, then.”

“You might swear it as well, Master Johnny, with perfect safety. What killed the poor children, I don’t pretend to know, but my pills never did. I tried to get down as far as Reed’s to inquire particulars, and found I could not walk. It was a bit of ill-luck, disabling myself just at this time.”

“Shall you have to appear at the inquest to-morrow?”

He lifted his head quickly at the question—as though it surprised him. Perhaps not having cast his thoughts that way.

“Is there to be an inquest, Master Johnny?”

“I heard so from old Jones. He has gone over to see the coroner.”

“Well, I wish the investigation was all over and done with,” said he.“It makes me uneasy, though I know I am innocent.”

Looking at him sitting there in the sun, at his beautiful face with its truthful eyes and its silver hair, it was next to impossible to believe he could be the author of the two children’s death. Only—the best of us are liable to mistakes, and sometimes make them. I said as much.

“I made none, Master Johnny,” was his answer. “When my pills come to be analyzed—as of course they must be—they will be found wholesome and innocent.”

The inquest did not take place till the Friday. Old Jones had fixed it for the Thursday, but the coroner put it off to the next day. And by the time Friday morning dawned, opinion had veered round, and was strongly in favour of Abel Crew. All the parish had been to see him; and his protestations, that he had never in his life put any kind of poison into his medicines, made a great impression. The pills could not have been in fault, said everybody. Dr. Duffham might have sealed them up as a matter of precaution, but the mischief would not be found there.

In the middle of Church Dykely, next door to Perkins the butcher’s, stood the Silver Bear Inn; a better sort of public-house, kept by Henry Rimmer. It was there that the inquest was held. Henry Rimmer himself and Perkins the butcher were two of the jurymen. Dobbs the blacksmith was another. They all dressed themselves in their Sunday-going clothes to attend it. It was called for two in the afternoon; and soon after that hour the county coroner (who had dashed up to theSilver Bear in a fast gig, his clerk driving) and the jury trooped down to George Reed’s cottage and took a look at the two pale little faces lying there side by side. Then they went back again, and the proceedings began.

Of course as many spectators went crowding into the room as it would hold. Three or four chairs were there (besides those occupied by the jury at the table), and a bench stood against the wall. The bench was speedily fought for and filled; but Henry Rimmer’s brother, constituting himself master of the ceremonies, reserved the chairs for what he called the “big people,” meaning those of importance in the place. The Squire was bowed into one; and to my surprise I had another. Why, I could not imagine, unless it was that they remembered I was the owner of George Reed’s cottage. But I did not like to sit down when so many older persons were standing, and I would not take the chair.

Some little time was occupied with preliminaries before what might be called the actual inquest set in. First of all, the coroner flew into a passion because Abel Crew had not put in an appearance, asking old Jones if he supposed that was the way justice must be administered in England, and that he ought to have had Crew present. Old Jones who was in a regular fluster with it all, and his legs more gouty than ever, told the coroner, calling him “his worship,” that he had understood Crew meant to be present. Upon which the coroner sharply answered that “understanding” went for nothing, and Jones should know his business better.

However, in walked Abel Crew in the midst of the contest. His delayed arrival was caused by his difficulty in getting his damaged foot there; which had been accomplished by the help of a stick and somebody’s arm. Abel had dressed himself in his black velvet suit; and as he took off his hat on entering and bowed respectfully to the coroner, I declare he could not be taken for anything but a courtly gentleman of the old school. Nobody offered him a chair. I wished I had not given up mine: he should have had it.

Evidence was first tendered of the death of the children, and of the terrible pain they had died in. Duffham and a medical man, who was a stranger and had helped at the post-mortem, testified to arsenic being the cause of death. The next question was, how had it been administered? A rumour arose in the room that the pills had been analyzed; but the result had not transpired. Every one could see a small paper parcel standing on the table before the coroner, and knew by its shape that it must contain the pill-box.

Hester Reed was called. She said (giving her evidence very quietly, just a sob and a sigh every now and then alone betraying what she felt) that she was the wife of George Reed. Her two little ones—twins, aged eleven months and a half—had been ailing for a day or two,seemed feverish, would not eat their food, were very cross at times and unnaturally still at others, and she came to the conclusion that their teeth must be plaguing them, and thought she would give them some mild physic. Mrs. Todhetley, the Squire’s lady at Dyke Manor, had called in on the Tuesday afternoon, and agreed with her that some mild physic——

“Confine your statement to what is evidence,” interrupted the coroner, sternly.

Hester Reed, looking scared at the check, and perhaps not knowing what was evidence and what not, went on the best way she could. She and Ann Dovey—who had been neighbourly enough to look in and help her—had given the children a pill apiece in the evening after they were undressed, mashing the pill up in a little sugar and warm water. She then put them to bed upstairs and went to bed herself not long after. In the night she and her husband were awoke by the babies’ screams, and they thought it must be convulsions. Her husband lighted the fire and ran for Dr. Duffham; but one had died before the doctor could get there, and the other died close upon it.

“What food had you given them during the day?” asked the coroner.

“Very little indeed, sir. They wouldn’t take it.”

“What did the little that they did take consist of?”

“It were soaked bread, sir, with milk and some sprinkled sugar. I tried them with some potato mashed up in a spoonful o’ broth at midday—we’d had a bit o’ biled neck o’ mutton for dinner—but they both turned from it.”

“Then all they took that day was bread soaked in milk and sweetened with sugar?”

“Yes, it were, sir. But the bread was soaked in warm water and the milk and sugar was put in afterwards. ’Twas but the veriest morsel they’d take, poor little dears!”

“Was the bread—and the milk—and the sugar, the same that the rest of your household used?”

“In course it were, sir. My other children ate plenty of it. Their appetites didn’t fail ’em.”

“Where did you get the warm water from that you say you soaked the bread in?”

“Out o’ the tea-kettle, sir. The water was the same that I biled for our tea morning and night.”

“The deceased children, then, had absolutely no food given to them apart from what you had yourselves?”

“Not a scrap, sir. Not a drop.”

“Except the pills.”

“Excepting them, in course, sir. None o’ the rest of us wanted physic.”

“Where did you procure these pills?”

She went into the history of the pills. Giving the full account of them, as already related.

“By your own showing, witness, it must be three months, or thereabouts, since you had that box from Abel Crew,” spoke the coroner.“How do you know that the two pills you administered to the deceased children came from the same box?”

Hester Reed’s eyes opened wide. She looked as surprised as though she had been asked whether she had procured the two pills from the moon.

“Yes, yes,” interposed one of the jury, “how do you know it was the same box?”

“Why, gentlemen, I had no other box of pills at all, save that,” she said, when her speech came to her. “We’ve had no physic but that in the cottage since winter, nor for ever so long afore. I’ll swear it was the same box, sirs; there can’t be no mistake about it.”

“Did you leave it about in the way of people?” resumed the coroner.“So that it might be handled by anybody who might come into your cottage?”

“No, sir,” she answered, earnestly. “I never kept the pill-box but in one place, and that was on the top of the high press upstairs out of harm’s way. I put it there the first night Abel Crew gave it me, and when I wanted to get a pill or two out for my own taking, I used to step on a chair—for it’s too high for me to reach without—and help myself. The box have never been took from the place at all, sir, till Tuesday night, when I brought it downstairs with me. When I’ve wanted to dust the press-top, I’ve just lifted the pill-box with one hand and passed the duster along under it with the other, as I stood on the chair. It’s the same box, sir; I’ll swear to that much; and it’s the same pills.”

Strong testimony. The coroner paused a moment. “You swear that, you say? You are quite sure?”

“Sir, I am sure and positive. The box was never took from its place since Abel Crew gave it me, till I reached up for it on Tuesday evening and carried it downstairs.”

“You had been in the habit of taking these pills yourself, you say?”

“I took two three or four times when I first had ’em, sir; once I took three; but since then I’ve felt better and not wanted any.”

“Did you feel any inconvenience from them? Any pain?”

“Not a bit, sir. As I said to Ann Dovey that night, when she asked whether they was fit pills to give the children, they seemed as mild as milk.”

“Should you know the box again, witness?”

“Law yes, sir, what should hinder me?” returned Hester Reed, inwardly marvelling at what seemed so superfluous a question.

The coroner undid the paper, and handed the box to her. She was standing close to him, on the other side his clerk—who sat writing down the evidence. “Is this the box?” he asked. “Look at it well.”

Mrs. Reed did as she was bid: turned it about and looked “well.” “Yes, sir, it is the same box,” said she. “That is, I am nearly sure of it.”

“What do you mean by nearly sure?” quickly asked the coroner, catching at the word. “Have you any doubt?”

“Not no moral doubt at all, sir. Only them pill-boxes is all so like one another. Yes, sir, I’m sure it is the same box.”

“Open it, and look at the pills. Are they, in your judgment, the same?”

“Just the same, sir,” she answered, after taking off the lid. “One might a’most know’em anywhere. Only——”

“Only what?” demanded the coroner, as she paused.

“Well, sir, I fancied I had rather more left—six or seven say. There’s only five here.”

The coroner made no answer to that. He took the box from her and put on the lid. We soon learnt that two had been taken out for the purpose of being analyzed.

For who should loom into the room at that juncture but Pettipher, the druggist from Piefinch Cut. He had been analyzing the pills in a hasty way in obedience to orders received half-an-hour ago, and came to give the result. The pills contained arsenic, he said; not enough to kill a grown person, he thought, but enough to kill a child. As Pettipher was only a small man (in a business point of view) and sold groceries as well as drugs, and spectacles and ear-trumpets, some of us did not think much of his opinion, and fancied the pills should have been analyzed by Duffham. That was just like old Jones: giving work to the wrong man.

George Reed was questioned, but could tell nothing, except that he had never touched either box or pills. While Ann Dovey was being called, and the coroner had his head bent over his clerk’s notes, speaking to him in an undertone, Abel Crew suddenly asked to be allowed to look at the pills. The coroner, without lifting his head, just pushed the box down on the green cloth; and one of the jury handed it over his shoulder to Abel Crew.

“This is not the box I gave Mrs. Reed,” said Abel, in a clear, firm tone, after diving into it with his eyes and nose. “Nor are these the pills.”

Up went the coroner’s head with a start. He had supposed the request to see the box came from a juryman. It might have been irregular for Abel Crew to be allowed so much; but as it arose partly through the coroner’s own fault, he was too wise to make a commotion over it.

“What is that you say?” he asked, stretching out his hand for the box as eagerly as though it had contained gold.

“That this box and these pills are not the same that I furnished to Mrs. Reed, sir,” replied Abel, advancing and placing the box in the coroner’s hand. “They are not indeed.”

“Not the same pills and box!” exclaimed the coroner. “Why, man, you have heard the evidence of the witness, Hester Reed; you may see for yourself that she spoke nothing but truth. Don’t talk nonsense here.”

“But they are not the same, sir,” respectfully persisted Abel. “I know my own pills, and I know my own boxes: these are neither the one nor the other.”

“Now that won’t do; you must take us all for fools!” exploded the coroner, who was a man of quick temper. “Just you stand back and be quiet.”

“Never a pill-box went out from my hands, sir, but it had my little private mark upon it,” urged Abel. “That box does not bear the mark.”

“What is the mark, pray?” asked the coroner.

“Four little dots of ink inside the rim of the lid, sir; and four similar dots inside the box near the edge. They are so faint that a casual observer might not notice them; but they are always there. Of all the pill-boxes now in my house, sir—and I suppose there may be two or three dozen of them—you will not find one but has the mark.”

Some whispering had been going on in different parts of the room; but this silenced it. You might have heard a pin drop. The words seemed to make an impression on the coroner: they and Abel Crew were both so earnest.

“You assert also that the pills are not yours,” spoke the coroner, who was known to be fond of desultory conversations while holding his inquests. “What proof have you of that?”

“No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never my pills.”

All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return.

But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what she had said before, strenuously denying that the box could have been changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her ownwhile it stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night.

“Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?”asked the coroner.

“No, sir. It’s the other room, where my three children sleep.”

“Could these children get to the box?”

“Dear no, sir! ’Twould be quite impossible.”

“Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down on Tuesday night?” went on the coroner after a pause.

“Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there.”

“Did she touch it?”

“She laid hold of it to look at the pills.”

“Did you leave her alone with it?”

“No, sir. Leastways—yes, I did for a minute or so, while I went into the back’us to get the sugar and a saucer and spoon.”

“Had she the box in her hands when you returned?”

“Yes, sir, I think she had. I think she was still smelling at the pills. I know the poor little innocents was lying one on one knee, and one on t’other, all flat, and her two hands was lifted with the box in’em.”

“It was after that that you took the pills out of it to give the children?”

“Yes, sir; directly after. But Ann Dovey wouldn’t do nothing wrong to the pills, sir.”

“That will do,” said the coroner in his curt way. “Call Ann Dovey.”

Ann Dovey walked forward with a face as red as her new bonnet-strings. She had heard the whole colloquy: something seemed, too, to have put her out. Possessing scant veneration for coroners at the best of times, and none for the jury at present assembled, she did not feel disposed to keep down her temper.

The few first questions asked her, however, afforded no opportunity for resentment, for they were put quietly, and tended only to extract confirmation of Mrs. Reed’s evidence, as to fetching the pill-box from upstairs and administering the pills. Then the coroner cleared his throat.

“Did you see the last witness, Hester Reed, go into the back kitchen for a spoon and saucer?”

“I saw her go and fetch ’em from somewhere,” replied Ann Dovey, who felt instinctively the ball was beginning, and gave the reins to her temper accordingly.

“Did you take charge of the pill-box while she was gone?”

“I had it in my hand, if you mean that.”

“Did anybody come into the kitchen during that interval?”

“No they didn’t,” was the tart response.

“You were alone, except for the two infants?”

“I were. What of it?”

“Now, witness, did you do anything with that box? Did you, for instance, exchange it for another?”

“I think you ought to be ashamed o’ yourselves, all on you, to sit and ask a body such a thing!” exploded Mrs. Dovey, growing every moment more resentful, at being questioned. “If I had knowed the bother that was to spring up, I’d have chucked the box, pills and all, into the fire first. I wish I had!”

“Was the box, that you handed to Hester Reed on her return, the same box she left with you? Were the pills the same pills?”

“Why, where d’ye think I could have got another box from?”shrieked Ann Dovey. “D’you suppose, sir, I carry boxes and pills about with me? I bain’t so fond o’ physic as all that comes to.”

“Dovey takes pills on occasion for that giddiness of his; I’ve seen him take ’em; mayhap you’d picked up a box of his,” spoke Dobbs the blacksmith, mildly.

That was adding fuel to fire. Two of a trade don’t agree. Dovey and Dobbs were both blacksmiths: the one in Church Dykely; the other in Piefinch Cut, not much more, so to say, than a stone’s-throw from each other. The men were good friends enough; but their respective ladies were apt to regard jealously all work taken to the rival establishment. Any other of the jurymen might have made the remark with comparative impunity; not so Dobbs. And, besides the turn the inquiry seemed to be taking, Mrs. Dovey had not been easy about it in her mind from the first; proof of which was furnished by the call, already mentioned, made by her husband on Abel Crew.

“Dovey takes pills on occasion, do he!” she shrilly retorted. “And what do you take, Bill Dobbs? Pints o’ beer when you can get ’em. Who lamed Poole’s white horse the t’other day a-shoeing him?”

“Silence!” sternly interrupted the coroner. While Dobbs, conscious of the self-importance imparted to him by the post he was now filling, and of the necessity of maintaining the dignity of demeanour which he was apt to put on with his best clothes, bore the aspersion with equanimity and a stolid face.

“Attend to me, witness, and confine yourself to replying to the questions I put to you,” continued the coroner. “Did you take with you any pills or pill-box of your own when you went to Mrs. Reed’s that evening?”

“No, I didn’t,” returned Ann Dovey, the emphasis culminating in a sob: and why she should have set on to shiver and shake was more than the jury could understand.

“Do you wear pockets?”

“What if I do?” she said, after a momentary pause. But her lips grew white, and I thought she was trying to brave it out.

“Had you a pocket on that evening?”

“Heaven be good to me!” I heard her mutter under her breath. And if ever I saw a woman look frightened nearly to death, Ann Dovey looked it then.

“Had you a pocket on that evening, witness?” repeated the coroner, sharply.

“Y—es.”

“What articles were in it? Do you recollect?”

“It were a key or two,” came the answer at length, her very teeth chattering and all the impudence suddenly gone out of her. “And my thimble, sir;—and some coppers; and a part of a nutmeg;—and—and I don’t remember nothing else, sir.”

“No box of pills? You are sure you had not that?”

“Haven’t I said so, sir?” she rejoined, bursting into a flood of tears. For which, and for the sudden agitation, nobody could see any reason: and perhaps it was only that which made the coroner harp upon the same string. Her demeanour had become suspicious.

“You had no poison of any kind in your pocket, then?”

But he asked the question in jest more than earnest. For when she went into hysterics instead of replying, he let her go. He was used to seeing witnesses scared when brought before him.

The verdict was not arrived at that day. When other witnesses had been examined, the coroner addressed the jury. Ten of them listened deferentially, and were quite prepared to return a verdict of Manslaughter against Abel Crew; seemed red-hot to do it, in fact. But two of them dissented. They were not satisfied, they said; and they held out for adjourning the inquest to see if any more light could be thrown upon the affair. As they evidently had the room with them, the coroner yielded, and adjourned the inquest in a temper.

And then it was discovered that the name was not Crew but Carew. Abel himself corrected the coroner. Upon that, the coroner sharply demanded why he had lived under a false name.

“Nay, sir,” replied Abel, as dignified as you please, “I have had no intention of doing so. When I first came to this neighbourhood I gave my name correctly—Carew: but the people at once converted it into Crew by their mode of pronunciation.”

“At any rate, you must have sanctioned it.”

“Tacitly I have done so. What did it signify? When I have had occasion to write my name—but that has been very rare—I have written it Carew. Old Sir Peter Chavasse knew it was Carew, and used to call me so; as did Sir Geoffry. Indeed, sir, I have had no reason to conceal my name.”

“That’s enough,” said the coroner, cutting him short. “Stand back, Abel Carew. The proceedings are adjourned to this day week.”

CHAPTER IV.

ABEL CREW.

Things are done in remote country places that would not be done in towns. Whether the law is understood by us, or whether it is not, it often happens that it is very much exceeded, or otherwise not acted upon. Those who have to exercise it sometimes show themselves as ignorant of it as if they had lived all their lives in the wilds of America.

Old Jones the constable was one of these. When not checked by his masters, the magistrates, he would do most outrageous things—speaking of the law and of common sense. And he did one in reference to Abel Crew. I still say Crew. Though it had come out that his name was Carew, we should be sure to call him Crew to the end.

The inquest might have been concluded at its first sitting, but for the two who stood out against the rest of the jury. Perkins the butcher and Dobbs the blacksmith. Truth to say, these two had plenty of intelligence; which could not be said of all the rest. Ten of the jury pronounced the case to be as clear as daylight: the infants had been poisoned by Abel Crew’s pills: and the coroner seemed to agree with them—he hated trouble. But Dobbs and Perkins held out. They were not satisfied, they said; the pills furnished by Abel Crew might not have been the pills that were taken by the children; moreover, they considered that the pills should be “more officially” analyzed. Pettipher the druggist was all very well in his small way, but hardly up, in their opinion, to pronouncing upon pills when a man’s life or liberty was at stake. They pressed for an adjournment, that the pills might be examined by some competent authority. The coroner, as good as telling them they were fools to their faces, had adjourned the inquest in suppressed passion to that day week.

“And I’ve got to take care of you, Abel Crew,” said old Jones, floundering up on his gouty legs to Abel as the jury and crowd dispersed. “You’ve got to come along o’ me.”

“To come where?” asked Abel, who was hobbling towards home on his scalded foot, by the help of his stick and the arm of Gibbon the gamekeeper.

“To the lock-up,” said old Jones.

“To the lock-up!” echoed Abel Crew.

“In course,” returned old Jones. “Where else but the lock-up? Did you think it was to the pound?”

Abel Crew, lifting the hand that held his stick to brush a speck of dirt off his handsome velvet coat, turned to the constable; his refined face, a little paler than usual, gazing inquiringly at old Jones’s, his silver hair glistening in the setting sun.

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Jones,” he said calmly. “You cannot mean to lock me up?”

“Well, I never!” cried old Jones, who had a knack of considering every suspected person guilty, and treating them accordingly. “You have a cheek, you have, Abel Crew! ‘Not going to take me to the lock-up, Mr. Jones,’ says you! Where would you be took to?”

“But there’s no necessity for it,” said Abel. “I shall not run away. I shall be in my house if I’m wanted again.”

“I dare say you would!” said old Jones, ironically. “You might or you mightn’t, you know. You be as good as committed for the killing and slaying o’ them there two twins, and it’s my business to see as you don’t make your escape aforehand, Abel Crew.”

Quite a company of us, sauntering out of the inquest-room, were listening by this time. I gave old Jones a bit of my mind.

“He is not yet committed, Jones, therefore you have no right to take him or to lock him up.”

“You don’t know nothing about it, Mr. Ludlow. I do. The crowner gave me a hint, and I’m acting on it. ‘Don’t you go and let that man escape,’ says his worship to me: ‘it’ll be at your peril if you do.’ ‘I’ll see to him, your worship,’ says I. And I be a-doing of it.”

But it was hardly likely that the coroner meant Abel Crew to be confined in that precious lock-up for a whole week. One night there was bad enough. At least, I did not think he meant it; but the crowd, to judge by their comments, seemed divided on the point.

“The shortest way to settle the question will be to ask the coroner, old Jones,” said I, turning back to the Silver Bear. “Come along.”

“You’d be clever to catch him, Master Johnny,” roared out old Jones after me. “His worship jumped into his gig; it was a-waiting for him when he come out; and his clerk druv him off at a slapping pace.”

It was true. The coroner was gone; and old Jones had it all his own way; for, you see, none of us liked to interfere with the edict of an official gentleman who held sway in the county and sat on dead people. Abel Crew accepted the alternative meekly.

“Any way, you must allow me to go home first to lock my house up, and to see to one or two other little matters,” said he.

“Not unless you goes under my own eyes,” retorted old Jones.“You might be for destroying your stock o’ pills for fear they should bear evidence again’ you, Abel Crew.”

“My pills are, of all things, what I would not destroy,” said Abel.“They would bear testimony for me, instead of against me, for they are harmless.”

So Abel Crew hobbled to his cottage on the common, attended by old Jones and a tail of followers. Arrived there, he attended the first thing to his scalded foot, dressing it with some of his own ointment. Then he secured some bread and butter, not knowing what the accommodation at the lock-up might be in the shape of eatables, and changed his handsome quaint suit of clothes for those he wore every day. After that, he was escorted back to the lock-up.

Now, the lock-up was in Piefinch Cut, nearly opposite to Dovey the blacksmith’s. The Squire remembered the time when the lock-up stood alone; when Piefinch Cut had no more houses in it than Piefinch Lane now has; but since then Piefinch Cut had been built upon and inhabited; houses touching even the sacred walls of the lock-up. A tape-and-cotton and sweetstuff shop supported it on one side, and a small pork-butcher’s on the other. Pettipher’s drug shop, should anybody be curious on the point, was next to the tape-and-cotton mart.

To see Abel Crew arriving in the custody of old Jones the constable, the excited stragglers after them, astonished Piefinch Cut not a little. Figg the pawnbroker—who was originally from Alcester—considered himself learned in the law. Anyway, he was a great talker, and liked to give his opinion upon every topic that might turn up. His shop joined Dovey’s forge: and when we arrived there, Figg was outside, holding forth to Dovey, who had his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows as usual, his leather apron on. Mrs. Dovey stood listening behind, in the smart gown and red-ribboned bonnet she had worn at the inquest.

“Why—what on earth!—have they been and gone and took up Crew?” cried Figg in surprise.

“It is an awful shame of old Jones,” I broke in; speaking more to Dovey than Figg, for Figg was no favourite of mine. “A whole week of the lock-up! Only think of it, Dovey!”

“But have they brought it in again’ him, Master Johnny?” cried Dovey, unfolding his grimy arms to touch his paper cap to me as he spoke.

“No; that’s what they have not done. The inquest is adjourned for a week; and I don’t believe old Jones has a right to take him at all. Not legally, you know.”

“That’s just what her brought word,” said Dovey, with a nod in the direction of his wife. “‘Well, how be it turned, Ann?’ says I to her when her come back—for I’d a sight o’ work in to-day and couldn’tgo myself. ‘Oh, it haven’t turned no ways yet, Jack,’ says her; ‘it be put off to next week.’ There he goes! right in.”

This last remark applied to Abel Crew. After fumbling in his pocket for the two big keys, tied together with string, and then fumbling at the latch, old Jones succeeded in opening the door. Not being much used, the lock was apt to grow rusty. Then he stood back, and with a flourish of hands motioned Abel in. He made no resistance.

“They must know for certain as ’twere his pills what done it,” struck in Mrs. Dovey.

“No, they don’t,” said I. “What’s more, I do not think it was his pills. Abel Crew says he never put poison in his pills yet, and I believe him.”

“Well, and no more it don’t stand to reason as he would, Mr. Ludlow,” said Figg, a man whose self-complaisance was not to be put down by any amount of discouragement. “I were just a-saying so to Dovey—— Why have old Jones took him up?” went on Figg to Gibbon the gamekeeper, who came striding by.

“Jones says he has the coroner’s orders for it,” answered Gibbon.

“Look here, I know a bit about law, and I know a man oughtn’t to be shut up till some charge is brought again’ him,” contended Figg. “Crew’s pills is suspected, but he have not been charged yet.”

“Anyway, it’s what Jones has gone and done,” said Gibbon.“Perhaps he is right. And a week’s not much; it’ll soon pass. But as to any pills of Abel Crew’s having killed them children, it’s just preposterous to think of it.”

“What d’ye suppose did kill ’em, then, Richard Gibbon?” demanded Ann Dovey, a hot flush on her face, her tone full of resentment.

“That’s just what has to be found out,” returned Gibbon, passing on his way.

“If it hadn’t been for Dobbs and Butcher Perkins holding out again’it, Crew ’ud ha’ been brought in guilty safe enough,” said Ann Dovey. And the tone was again so excited, so bitterly resentful against Dobbs and Perkins, that I could not help looking at her in wonder. It sounded just as though the non-committal of Abel were a wrong inflicted upon herself.

“No, he would not have been brought in guilty,” I answered her;“he would have been committed for trial; but that’s a different thing. If the matter could be sifted to the bottom, I know it would be found that the mischief did not lie with Abel Crew’s pills. There, Mrs. Dovey!”

She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes—for all the world as if she were afraid of me, or of what I said. I could not make her out.

“Why should you wish so particularly to bring it home to Crew?”I pointedly asked her; and Figg turned round to look at her, as if seconding the question.

“Me want particular to bring it home to Crew!” she retorted, her voice rising with temper; or perhaps with fear, for she trembled like an aspen leaf. “I don’t want to bring it home particular to him, Mr. Ludlow. It were his pills, though, all the same, that did it.”

And with that she whisked through the forge to her kitchen.

On the morning following I got old Jones to let me into the lock-up. The place consisted of two rooms opening into one another, and a small square space, no bigger than a closet, at the end of the passage, where they kept the pen and ink. For that small space had a window in it, looking on to the fields at the back; the two rooms had only skylights in the roof. In the inner room a narrow iron bedstead stood against the wall, a mattress and blanket on it. Abel was sitting on that when we went in.

“You must have been lively here last night, Abel!”

“Yes, very, sir,” answered he, with a half-smile. “I did not really mind it; I am used to be alone. I could have done with fewer rats, though.”

“Oh, are there rats here?”

“Lots of them, Master Johnny. I don’t like rats. They came upon my face, and all about me.”

“Why does old Jones not set traps for them? He considers this place to be under his special protection.”

“There are too many for any trap to catch,” answered Abel.

Old Jones had gone off to the desk in the closet, having placed some bread and butter and milk on the shelf for Abel. His errand there was to enter the cost of the bread in the account-book, to be settled for later. A prisoner in the lock-up was commonly treated to bread and water: old Jones had graciously allowed this one to pay for some butter and milk out of his own pocket.

“I don’t want to treat ’em harsher nor I be obliged, Master Ludlow,”he said to me, when coming in, in reference to the butter and the milk he was carrying. “Abel Crew have been known as a decent man ever since he come among us: and if he chooses to pay for the butter and the milk, there ain’t no law against his having ’em. ’Tain’t as if he was a burglar.”

“No, he is not a burglar,” I answered. “And you must mind that you do not get into the wrong box about him. There’s neither law nor justice in locking him up, Jones, before he is charged.”

“If I had never locked up nobody till they was charged, I should ha’ been in the wrong box many a time afore now,” said old Jones, doggedly. “Look at that there man last Christmas; what I caughtprowling in the grounds at Parrifer Hall, with a whole set of house-breaking things concealed in his pockets! After I’d took him, and lodged him in here safe, it was found that he was one o’ the worst characters in the county, only let out o’ Worcester goal two days before. Suppose I’d not took him, Master Johnny? where ’ud the spoons at Parrifer Hall ha’ been?”

“That was a different case altogether.”

“I know what I’m about,” returned Jones. “The coroner, he just give me a nod or two, looking at Crew as he give it. I knew what it meant, sir: a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.”

Anyway, Jones had him, here in the lock-up: and had gone off to enter the loaf in the account-book; and I was sitting on the bench opposite Abel.

“It is a wicked shame of them to have put you here, Abel.”

“It is not legal—as I believe,” he answered. “And I am sure it is not just, sir. I swear those pills and that box produced at the inquest were none of mine. They never went out of my hands. Old Jones thinks he is doing right to secure me, I suppose, and he is civil over it; so I must not grumble. He brought me some water to wash in this morning, and a comb.”

“But there’s no sense in it. You would not attempt to escape; you would wait for the reassembling of the inquest.”

“Escape!” he exclaimed. “I should be the first to remain for it. I am more anxious than any one to have the matter investigated. Truth to say, Master Johnny, my curiosity is excited. Hester Reed is so persistent in regard to their being the pills and box that I gave her; and as she is a truthful honest woman, one can’t see where the mistake lies. There must be a mystery in it somewhere.”

“Suppose you are committed to take your trial? And found guilty?”

“That I shall be committed, I look upon as certain,” he answered.“As to being found guilty—if I am, I must bear it. God knows my innocence, and I shall hope that in time He will bring it to light.”

“All the same, Abel, they ought not to put you in here.”

“That’s true, sir.”

“And then there will be the lying in prison until the assizes—two or three good months to come! Don’t go and die of it, Abel.”

“No, I shall not do that,” he answered, smiling a little. “The consciousness of innocence will keep me up.”

I sat looking at him. What light could get in through the dusty skylight fell on his silver hair, which fell back from his pale face. He held his head down in thought, only raising it to answer me. Some movement in the closet betokened old Jones’s speedy approach, and I hastened to assure Abel that all sensible people would not doubt his innocence.

“No one need doubt it, Master Johnny,” he answered firmly, his eye kindling. “I never had a grain of arsenic in my house; I have never had any other poison. There are herbs from which poison may be distilled, but I have never gathered them. When it comes to people needing poison—and there are some diseases of the human frame that it may be good for—they should go to a qualified medical man, not to a herbalist. No. I have never, never had poison or poisonous herbs withing my dwelling; therefore (putting other reasons aside) it is impossiblethat those pills can have been my pills. God hears me say it, and knows that it is true.”

Old Jones, balancing the keys in his hand, was standing within the room, listening. Abel Crew was so respectable and courteous a prisoner, compared with those he generally had in the lock-up, burglars, tipsy men, and the like, returning him a “thank you” instead of an oath, that he had already begun to regard him with some favour, and the assertion seemed to make an impression on him.

“Look here,” said he. “Whose pills could they have been, if they warn’t yours?”

“I cannot imagine,” returned Abel Crew. “I am as curious about it as any one else—Master Ludlow here knows I am. I dare say it will come out sometime. They could not have been made up by me.”

“What was that you told the coroner about your pill-boxes being marked?” asked old Jones.

“And so they are marked; all of them. The pill-box I saw there——”

“I mean the stock o’ boxes you’ve got at home. Be they all marked?”

“Every one of them. When I have in a fresh lot of pill-boxes the first thing I do, on bringing them home, is to mark them.”

“Then look here. You just trust me with the key of your place, and tell me where the boxes are to be found, and I’ll go and secure’em, and lay ’em afore the coroner. If they be all found marked, it’ll tell in your favour.”

The advice sounded good, and Abel Crew handed over his key. Jones looked solemn as he and I went away together.

“It’s an odd thing, though, Master Johnny, ain’t it, how the pison could ha’ got into them there pills,” said he slowly, as he put the big key into the lock of the outer door.

And we had an audience round us before the words were well spoken. To see the lock-up made fast when there was a prisoner within it, was always a coveted recreation in Piefinch Cut. Several individuals had come running up; not to speak of children from the gutters. Dovey stood gazing in front of his forge; Figg, who liked to be lounging about outside when he had no customers transacting delicate negotiations within, backed against his shop-window, and staredin concert with Dovey. Jones flourishing the formidable keys, crossed over to them.

“How do he feel to-day?” asked Figg, nodding towards the lock-up.

“He don’t feel no worse appariently than he do other days,” replied old Jones. “It be a regular odd thing, it be.”

“What be odd?” asked Dovey.

“How the pison could ha’ got into them there pills. Crew says he has never had no pison in his place o’ no kind, herbs nor else.”

“And I would pledge my word that it is the truth,” I put in.

“Well, and so I think it is,” said Dovey. “Last night George Reed was in here a-talking. He says he one day come across Abel Crew looking for herbs in the copse behind the Grange. Crew was picking and choosing: some herbs he’d leave alone, and some he dug up. Reed spied out a fine-looking plant, and called to him. Up comes Crew, trowel in hand, bends down to take a look, and then gives his head a shake. ‘That won’t do for me,’ says he, ‘that plant has poisonous properties,’ says he; ‘and I never meddles with them that has,’ says he. George Reed told us that much in this here forge last night. Him and his wife have a’most had words about it.”

“Had words about what?” asked old Jones.

“Why, about them pills. Reed tells her that if it is the pills what poisoned the young ones, she have made some mull o’ the box Abel give her and got it changed. But he don’t believe as ’twere the pills at all. And Hester Reed, she sticks to it that she never made no mull o’ the box, and that the pills is the same.”

At this juncture, happening to turn my head, I saw Mrs. Dovey at the door at the back of the forge, her face screwed round the doorpost, listening: and there was a great fear on it. Seeing me looking at her, she disappeared like a shot, and quietly closed the door. A thought flashed across me.

“That woman knows more about it than she will say! And it is frightening her. What can the mystery be?”

The children were buried on the Sunday afternoon, all the parish flocking to the funeral; and the next morning Abel Crew was released. Whether old Jones had become doubtful as to the legality of what he had done, or whether he received a mandate from the coroner by the early post, no one knew. Certain it was, that before nine o’clock old Jones held the lock-up doors open, and Abel Crew walked out. It was thought that some one must have written privately to the coroner—which was more than likely. Old Jones was down in the mouth all day, as if he had had an official blowing-up.

Abel and his stick went home. The rest and his own doctoring had very nearly cured the instep. On the Saturday old Jones had made a descent upon the cottage and cleared it of the pill-boxes. Jones found that every box had Abel’s private mark upon it.

“Well, this is a curious start, Crew!” exclaimed Mr. Duffham, meeting him as he was turning in at his gate. “Now in the lock-up, and now out of it! It may be old Jones’s notion of law, but it is not mine. How have you enjoyed it?”

“It would not have been so bad but for the rats, sir,” replied Abel.“I could see a few stars shining through the skylight.”

The days went on to the Thursday, and it was now the evening before the adjourned inquest. Tod and I, in consideration of the popular ferment, had taken the Squire at a favourable moment, and extracted from him another week’s holiday. Opinions were divided: some believed in Crew, others in the poisoned pills. As to Crew himself, he was out in his garden as usual, attending to his bees, and his herbs and flowers, and quietly awaiting the good or the ill luck that Fate might have in store for him.

It was Thursday evening, I say; and I was taking tea with Duffham. Having looked in upon him, when rushing about the place, he asked me to stay. The conversation turned upon the all-engrossing topic; and I chanced to mention that the behaviour of Ann Dovey puzzled me. Upon that, Duffham said that it was puzzling him. He had been called in to her the previous day, and found her in a regular fever, eyes anxious, breath hysterical, face hectic. Since the day of the inquest she had been more or less in this state, and the blacksmith told Duffham he could not make out what had come to her. “Them pills have drove her mad, sir,” were Dovey’s words; “she can’t get’em off her mind.”

The last cup of tea was poured out, and Duffham was shaking round the old black pot to see if he could squeeze out any more, when we received an interruption. Dovey came bursting in upon us straight from his forge; his black hair ruffled, his small dark face hot with flurry. It was a singular tale he had come to tell. His wife had been making a confession to him. Driven pretty nearly out of her mind by the weight of a secret, she could hold it no longer.

To begin at the beginning. Dovey’s house swarmed with black-beetles. Dovey himself did not mind the animals, but Mrs. Dovey did; and no wonder, when she could not step out of bed in the night without putting her foot on one. But, if Dovey did not dislike black-beetles, there was another thing he did dislike—hated in fact; and that was the stuff called beetle-powder: which professed to kill them. Mrs. Dovey would have scattered some on the floor every night; but Dovey would not allow it. He forbid her to bring a grain of it into the house: it was nothing but poison, he said, and might chance to kill themselves as well as the beetles. Ann Dovey had her way in most matters, for Dovey was easy, as men and husbands go; but when oncehe put his veto on a thing, she knew she might as well try to turn the house round as turn him.

Now what did Ann Dovey do? On that very Easter Tuesday, as it chanced, as soon as dusk had set in, off she went to Dame Chad’s general shop in Church Dykely, where the beetle-power was sold, and bought a packet of it. It seemed to her, that of the choice between two evils—to put up with the horrible black animals, or to disobey Dovey, the latter was the more agreeable. She could easily shake some of the powder down lightly of a night; the beetles would eat it up before morning, and Dovey would never know it. Accordingly, paying for the powder—a square packet, done up in blue paper, on which was labelled “Poison” in as large letters as the printer could get into the space—she thrust it into the depths of her gown-pocket—it was her holiday gown—and set off home again. Calling in at George Reed’s cottage on her way, she there assisted, as it also chanced, in administering the pills to the unfortunate children. And perhaps her motive for calling in was not so much from a love of presiding at physic-giving, as that she might be able, when she got home, to say “At Reed’s,” if her husband asked her where she had been. It fell out as she thought. No sooner had she put foot inside the forge than Dovey began,“Where’st been, Ann?” and she told him at Reed’s, helping with the sick little ones. Dovey’s work was over for the night; he wanted his supper; and she had no opportunity of using the beetle-powder. It was left untouched in the pocket of her gown. The following morning came the astounding news of the children’s death; and in the excitement caused by that, Mrs. Dovey lost sight of the powder. Perhaps she thought that the general stir might cause Dovey to be more wakeful than usual, and that she might as well let the powder be for a short time. It was safe where it was, in her hung-up gown. Dovey never meddled with her pockets: on or off, they were no concern of his.

But, on the Friday morning, when putting on this same holiday gown to attend the inquest, to which she had been summoned, what was her horror to find the packet burst, and her pocket filled with the loose powder. Mrs. Dovey had no greater love for beetle-powder in itself than she had for beetles, and visibly shuddered. She could not empty it out; there it had to remain; for Dovey, excited by his wife’s having to give evidence, was in and out of her room like a dog in a fair; and she went off perforce with the stuff in her pocket. And when during her examination the questions took the turn they did take, and the coroner asked her whether she had had any poison in her pocket that night at George Reed’s; this, with the consciousness of what had been that night in her pocket, of what was in her pocket at that very moment, then present, nearly frightened her into fits. From that hour, Ann Dovey had lived in a state of terror. It was not thatshe believed any of the beetle-powder could have got inside the ill-fated young ones (though she did not feel quite easy on the point), as that she feared the accusation might be shifted off Crew’s shoulders and on to hers. On this Thursday evening she could hold out no longer; and disclosed all to Dovey.

Dovey burst upon us in a heat. He was as straightforward a man as ever lived, of an intensely honest nature, and could no more have kept it in, now that he knew it, than he could have given up all righteous dealing together. His chief concern was to tell the truth, and to restore peace to his wife. He went through the narrative to Duffham without stopping; and seemed not in the least to care for my being present.

“It ain’t possible, sir, there ain’t a moral possibility that any o’ that there dratted powder could have come anigh the babies,” wound up Dovey. “I should be thankful, sir, if you’d come down and quieten her a bit; her be in a fine way.”

What with surprise, and what with the man’s rapid speech, Duffham had not taken in one-half of the tale. He had simply sat behind the teapot and stared.

“My good fellow, I don’t understand,” he said. “A pocketful of poison! What on earth made her take poison to George Reed’s?”

So Dovey went over the heads of the story again.

“’Twas in her pocket, sir, our Ann’s, it’s true; but the chances are that at that time the paper hadn’t burst. None of it couldn’t ha’ got to them there two young ones.”

To see the blacksmith’s earnestness was good. His face was as eager, his tone as imploring, as though he were pleading for his life.

“And it ’ud be a work of charity, sir, if you’d just step down and see her. I’d pay handsome for the visit, sir; anything you please to charge. She’s like one going right out of her mind.”

“I’ll come,” said Duffham, who had his curiosity upon the point.

And the blacksmith set off on the run home again.

“Well, this is a curious thing!” exclaimed Duffham, when he had gone.

“Could the beetle-powder have poisoned the children?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Johnny. It is an odd tale altogether. We will go down and inquire into it.”

Which of course implied that he expected me to go with him. Nothing loath was I; more eager than he.

Finishing what was left of the tea and bread-and-butter, we went on to Piefinch Cut. Ann Dovey was alone, except for her husband and mother. She flung herself on the sofa when she saw us—the blacksmith’s house was comfortably off for furniture—and began to scream.

“Now, just you stop that, Ann Dovey,” said Duffham, who was always short with hysterics. “I want to come to the bottom of thisbusiness; you can’t tell it me while you scream. What in the world possessed you to go about with your pocket full of poison?”

She had her share of sense, and knew Duffham was not one to be trifled with; so she told the tale as well as she could for sobbing.

“Have you mentioned this out of doors?” was the first question Duffham asked when it was over.

“No,” interposed Dovey. “I telled ’er afore I come to you not to be soft enough for that. Not a soul have heard it, sir, but me and her”—pointing to the old mother—“and you and Master Johnny. We don’t want all the parish swarming about us like so many hornets.”

“Good,” said Duffham. “But it is rather a serious thing, I fear. Uncertain, at any rate.”

“Be it, sir?” returned Ann, raising her heavy eyes questioningly.“Do you think so?”

“Why, you see, the mischief must have lain between that beetle-powder and Crew’s pills. As Crew is so careful a man, I don’t think it could have been the pills; and that’s the truth.”

“But how could the beetle-powder have got anigh the children out of my pocket, sir?” she asked, her eyes wild. “I never put my hand into my pocket while I sat there; I never did.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” returned Duffham. “We may put our hands into our pockets fifty times a day without remembering it.”

“D’you suppose, sir, I should take out some o’ that there beetle-powder and cram it down the poor innocents’ throats?” she demanded, on the verge of further screaming.

“Where is the powder?” questioned Duffham.

The powder was where it had been all along: in the gown-pocket. Want of opportunity, through fear of Dovey’s eyes, or dread of touching the stuff, had kept her from meddling with it. When she took the gown off, the night of the inquest, she hung it up on the accustomed hook, and there it was still. The old mother went to the bedroom and brought it forward, handling it gingerly: a very smart print gown with bright flowers upon it.

Duffham looked round, saw a tin pie-dish, and turned the pocket inside out into it. A speckled sort of powder, brown and white. He plunged his fingers into it fearlessly, felt it, and smelt it. The blue paper it had been sold in lay amidst it, cracked all across. Duffham took it up.

“Poison!” read out he aloud, gazing at the large letters through his spectacles. “How came you to let it break open in your pocket, Ann Dovey?”

“I didn’t let it; it braked of itself,” she sobbed. “If you saw the black-beedles we gets here of a night, sir, you’d be fit to dance a hornpipe, you would. The floor be covered with ’em.”

“If the ceiling was covered with ’em too, I wouldn’t have thatthere dangerous stuff brought into the place—and so I’ve telled ye often,” roared Dovey.

“It’s frightful uncomfortable, is black-beedles; mother knows it,”said his wife, in a subdued voice—for Dovey in great things was master.“I thought if I just sprinkled a bit on’t down, it ’ud take ’em away, and couldn’t hurt nobody.”

“And you went off on the sly that there Tuesday night and bought it,” he retorted; “and come back and telled me you had been to Reed’s helping to physic the babies.”

“And so I had been there, helping to physic ’em.”

“Did you go straight to Reed’s from the shop—with this powder?”asked Duffham.

“It was right at the bottom o’ my pocket: I put it there as soon as Dame Chad had served me with it,” sobbed Ann Dovey. “And I can be upon my Bible oath, Dr. Duffham, that I never touched it after; and I don’t believe it had then burst. A-coming hasty out of Reed’s back-gate, for I were in a hurry to get home, the pocket swung again’ the post, and I think the blue paper must ha’ burst then. I never knowed it had burst, for I’d never thought no more about the beedles till I put on the gownd to go up to the inquest. Master Johnny, you be a-staring at me fearful, but I’m telling nothing but the naked truth.”

She did seem to be telling the truth. And as to my “staring at her fearful,” that was just her imagination. I was listening to the talk from the elbow of the wooden chair, on which I had perched myself. Duffham recommended Dovey to put the tin dish and its contents away safely, so that it did not get near any food, but not to destroy the stuff just yet. He talked a bit with Ann, left her a composing draught, and came away.

“I don’t see that the powder could have had anything to do with the children’s death,” I said to him as we went along.

“Neither do I, Johnny!”

“Shall you have to declare this at the inquest to-morrow, Mr. Duffham?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” he answered, looking up at the sky through his spectacles, just as a perplexed owl might do. “It might only serve to complicate matters: and I don’t think it’s possible it could have been the powder. On the other hand, if it be proved not to have been the pills, we have only this poisonous powder to fall back upon. It is a strange affair altogether, take it in all its bearings.”

I did not answer. The evening star was beginning to show itself in the sky.

“I must feel my way in this, Johnny: be guided by circumstances,”he resumed, when we halted at the stile that led across the fields to the Manor. “We must watch the turn matters take to-morrow at theinquest. Of course if I find it necessary to declare it, I shall declare it. Meanwhile, lad, you had better not mention it to any one.”

“All right, Mr. Duffham. Good-evening.”

The jury went straggling into the Silver Bear by twos and threes. Up dashed the coroner’s gig, as before, he and his clerk seated side by side. All the parish had collected about the doors, and were trying to push into the inquest-room.

Gliding quietly in, before the proceedings were opened, came Abel Crew in his quaint velvet suit, his silver hair gleaming in the sunlight, his pale face calm as marble. The coroner ordered him to sit on a certain chair, and whispered to old Jones. Upon which the constable turned his gouty legs round, marched up, and stood guard over Crew, just as though Abel were his prisoner.

“Do you see that, sir?” I whispered to Duffham.

“Yes, lad, and understand it. Crew’s pills have been analyzed—officially this time, as the jury put it—and found to contain arsenic. Pettipher was right. The pills killed the children.”

Well, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I had been fully trusting in Crew’s innocence.

About the first witness called, and sworn, was the professional man from a distance who had analyzed the pills. He said that they contained arsenic. Not in sufficient quantity to hurt a grown-up person; more than sufficient to kill a little child. The coroner drew in his lips.

“I thought it must be so,” he said, apparently for the benefit of the jury. “Am I to understand that these were improper pills to send out?—pills that no medical man would be likely to send?”

“Not improper at all, sir,” replied the witness. “A medical man would prescribe them for certain cases. Not for children: to an infant one would be what it has been here—destruction.”

I felt a nudge at my elbow, and turned to see the Squire’s hot face close to mine.

“Johnny, don’t you ever stand up for that Crew again. He ought to be hanged.”

But the coroner, after a bit, seemed puzzled; or rather, doubtful. Led to be so, perhaps, by a question put by one of the jury. It was Perkins the butcher.

“If these pills were furnished by Abel Crew for Hester Reed, a growed woman, and she went and gave one of her own accord to the two babies, ought Crew to be held responsible for that?”

Upon which there ensued some cavilling. Some of the jury holding that he was not responsible; others that he was. The coroner reminded them of what Hester Reed had stated in her evidence—that she had asked Crew’s opinion about the suitability of the pills for children, and he had told her they were suitable.

Hester Reed was called. As the throng parted to make way for her to advance, I saw Ann Dovey seated at the back of the room, looking more dead than alive. Dovey stood by her, having made himself spruce for the occasion. Ann would have gone off a mile in some opposite direction, but old Jones’s orders to all the witnesses of the former day, to appear again, had been peremptory. They had been wanted before, he told them, and might be wanted again.

“You need not look such a scarecrow with fright,” I whispered in Ann Dovey’s ear, making my way to her side to reassure her, the woman was so evidently miserable. “It was the pills that did the mischief, after all—didn’t you hear? Nothing need come out about your pocket and the powder.”

“Master Johnny, I’m just about skeered out o’ my life, I am. Fit to go and drown myself.”

“Nonsense! It will be all right as far as you are concerned.”

“I said it was Crew’s pills, all along, I did; it couldn’t have been anything else, sir. All the same, I wish I was dead.”

As good try to console a post, seemingly, as Ann Dovey. I went back to my standing-place between the Squire and Duffham. Hester Reed was being questioned then.

“Yes, sir, it were some weeks ago. My little boy was ailing, and I ran out o’ the house to Abel Crew, seeing the old gentleman go past the gate, and asked whether I might give him one of them there same pills, or whether it would hurt the child. Crew said I might give it freely; he said two even wouldn’t hurt him.”

“And did you give the pill?” asked the coroner.

“No, sir. He’s a rare bad one to give physic to, Gregory is, and I let him get well without it.”

“How old is he?”

“Turned of three, sir.”

“You are absolutely certain, Mrs. Reed, that these pills, from which you took out two to give the deceased children, were the very self-same pills you had from Abel Crew?”

“I be sure and certain of it, sir. Nobody never put a finger upon the box but me. It stood all the while in the corner o’ the press-shelf in the children’s bedroom. Twice a week when I got upon a chair to dust the shelf, I see it there. There was nobody in the house but me, except the little ones. My husband don’t concern himself with the places and things.”

Circumstantial evidence could not well go farther. Mrs. Reed was dismissed, and the coroner told Abel Crew to come near the table. He did as he was bid, and stood there upright and manly, a gentle look on his face.

“You have heard the evidence, Abel Crew,” said the coroner.“The pills have been analyzed and found to contain a certain portionof arsenic—a great deal more than enough to kill a child. What have you to say to it?”

“Only this, sir; only what I said before. That the pills analyzed were not my pills. The pills I gave to Mrs. Reed contained neither arsenic nor any other poison.”

“It is showing great obstinacy on your part to repeat that,” returned the coroner, impatiently. “Mrs. Reed swears that the pills were the same pills; and she evidently speaks the truth.”

“I am sure she thinks she speaks it,” replied Abel, gently.“Nevertheless, sir, I assure you she is mistaken. In some way the pills must have been changed whilst in her possession, box and all.”

“Why, man, in what manner do you suppose they could have been changed?”

“I don’t know, sir. All I do know is, that the pills and the box produced here last week were not, either of them, the pills and the box she had from me. Never a box went out from me, sir, but had my private mark on it—the mark I spoke of. Jones the constable searched my place whilst I was detained in the lock-up, and took away all the pill-boxes out of it. Let him testify whether he found one without the mark.”

At this juncture a whole cargo of pill-boxes were shot out of a bag on the table by old Jones, some empty, some filled with pills. The coroner and jury began to examine them, and found the mark on all, lids and boxes.

“And if you’d be so good as to cause the pills to be analyzed, sir, they would be found perfectly free from poison,” resumed Abel.“They are made from herbs that possess healing properties, not irritant; a poisonous herb, whether poisonous in itself, or one from which poison may be extracted, I never plucked. Believe me, sir, for I am telling the truth; the truth before Heaven.”

The coroner said nothing for a minute or two: I think the words impressed him. He began lifting the lid again from one or two of the boxes.

“What are these pills for? All for the same disorder?”

“They were made up for different disorders, sir.”

“And pray how do you distinguish them?”

“I cannot distinguish them now. They have been mixed. Even if returned to me I could not use them. I have a piece of furniture at home, sir, that I call my pill-case. It has various drawers in it, each drawer being labelled with the sort of pills kept in it: camomile, dandelion, and so on. Mr. Jones must be able to corroborate this.”

Old Jones nodded. He had never seen nothing neater nor more exact in all his life, than the keeping o’ them there pills. He, Mr. Jones, had tumbled the drawerfuls indiscriminately into his bag, and so mixed them.

“And they will be so much loss to me,” quietly observed Abel. “It does not matter.”

“Were you brought up to the medical profession?” cried the coroner—and some of us thought he put the question in irony.

“No, sir,” replied Abel, taking it seriously. “I have learnt the healing art, as supplied by herbs and roots, and I know their value. Herbs will cure sometimes where the regular doctor fails. I have myself cured cases with them that the surgeons could not cure; cases that but for me, under God, might never have been cured in this world. I make no boast of it; any one else might do as much who had made herbs a study as I have.”

“Are you making a fortune by it?” went on the coroner.

Abel shook his head.

“I have a small income of my own, sir, and it is enough for my simple wants. What little money I make by my medicines, and honey, and that—it is not much—I find uses for in other ways. I indulge in a new book now and then; and there are many poor people around who need a bit of help sometimes.”

“You ‘read’ the stars, I am told, Abel Crew. What do you read in them?”

“The same that I read, sir, in all other of nature’s works: God’s wonderful hand. His wisdom, His power, His providence.”

Perhaps the coroner thought to bring Abel to ridicule in his replies: if so, it was a mistake, for he seemed to be getting the worst of it himself. At any rate, he quitted the subject abruptly, brushed his energy up, and began talking to the jury.

The drift of the conversation was, so far as the room could hear it, that Crew’s pills, and only Crew’s, could have been the authors of the mischief to the two deceased children, whose bodies they were sitting upon, and that Crew must be committed to take his trial for manslaughter.“Hester Reed’s evidence,” he continued, “is so clear and positive, that it quite puts aside any suspicion of the box of pills having been changed——”

“The box had not my mark upon it, sir,” respectfully spoke Abel Crew, his tone anxious.

“Don’t interrupt me,” rebuked the coroner, sharply. “As to the box not having what he calls his private mark upon it,” he added to the jury, “that in my opinion tells little. Because a man has put a mark on fifty pill-boxes, he is not obliged to have put it on the fifty-first. An unintentional omission is readily made. It appears to me——”

“Am I in time? Is it all over? Is Abel Crew found guilty?”

This unceremonious interruption to the official speech came from a woman’s voice. The door of the room was thrown open with a fling, considerably discomposing those who had their backs against it andwere taken unawares, and they were pushed right and left by the struggles of some one to get to the front. The coroner looked daggers; old Jones lifted his staff; but the intruder forced her way forward with resolute equanimity. Cathy Reed: we never remembered to call her Parrifer. Cathy in her Sunday-going gown and a pink bonnet.

“How dare you?” cried the coroner. “What do you mean by this? Who are you?”

“I have come rushing over from Tewkesbury to clear Abel Crew,”returned Cathy, recovering her breath after the fight. “The pills that killed the children were my pills.”

The commotion this avowal caused in the room was beyond describing. The coroner stared, the jury all turned to look at the speaker, the crowd trod upon one another.

“And sorry to my heart I am that it should have been so,” went on Cathy. “I loved those two dear little ones as if they were my own, and I’d rather my pills had killed myself. Just look at that, please, Mr. Coroner.”

The ease with which Cathy spoke to the official gentleman, the coolness with which she put down a pill-box on the green cloth before him, took the room by surprise. As Ann Dovey remarked, later,“She must ha’ learnt that there manner in her travels with young Parrifer.”

“What is this?” questioned the coroner, curtly, picking up the box.

“Perhaps you’ll ask Mr. Crew whether he knows it, sir, before I say what it is,” returned Cathy.

The coroner had opened it. It contained seven pills; just the size of the other pills, and looking exactly like them. On the lid and on the box was the private mark spoken of by Abel Crew.

“That is my box, sir; and these—I am certain of it—are my pills,”spoke Abel, earnestly, bending over the shoulder of the first juryman to look into the box. “The box and the pills that I gave to Mrs. Reed.”

“And so they are, Abel Crew,” rejoined Cathy, emphatically. “The week before last, which I was spending at home at father’s, I changed the one pill-box for the other, inadvertent, you see”—with a nod to the coroner—“and took the wrong box away with me. And I wish both boxes had been in the sea before I’d done it.”

Cathy was ordered to give her account more clearly, and did so. She had been suffering from illness, accompanied by neuralgia, and a doctor at Tewkesbury had prescribed some pills for it, one to be taken occasionally. The chemist who made them up told her they contained arsenic. He was about to write the directions on the box, when Cathy, who was in a hurry, snatched it from him, saying she could not wait for that bother, flung down the money, and departed. This box of pills she had brought with her on her visit to her father’s, lest sheshould find occasion to take one; and she had put it on the shelf of the press, side by side with the other pill-box, to be out of the way of the children. Upon leaving, she took up the wrong box inadvertently: carrying away Abel Crew’s pills, leaving her own. There lay the explanation of the mystery of the fatal mistake. Mrs. Reed had not known that Cathy had any pills with her; the girl, who was just as light-headed as ever, not having chanced to mention it; and Cathy had the grace to dust the room herself whilst she was there.

“When father and his wife sent me word about the death of the two little twins, and that it was some pills of Abel Crew’s that had done it, I never once thought o’ my pills,” added Cathy. “They didn’t as much as come into my head. But late last night I got lent to me last Saturday’s Worcester Herald, and there I read the inquest, and what Crew had said about the marks he put on his pill-boxes, and mother’s evidence about never having shifted the pill-box from its place on the press. ‘Sure and I couldn’t have changed the boxes,’ thought I to myself; and upstairs I ran in a fright to look at the box I had brought away. Yes, there it was—Abel Crew’s box with the marks on it; and I knew then that I had left my own pills at home here, and that they had killed the babies. As soon as I could get away this morning—which was not as soon as I wanted to—I started to come over. And that’s the history—and the blessed truth.”

Of course it was the truth. Abel’s beautiful face had a glow upon it. “I knew I should be cleared in God’s good time,” he breathed. The Squire pounced upon him, and shook both his hands as if he would never let them go again. Duffham held out his.

So that was the end of the story. Cathy was reprimanded by the coroner for her carelessness, and burst into tears in his face.

“And thee come off home wi’ thee, and see me chuck that there powder into the fire; and don’t go making a spectacle o’ th’ self again,”cried Dovey, sharply, in his wife’s ear. “Thee just let me catch thee bringing in more o’ the dratted stuff; that’s all.”

“I shall never look at a black-beedle again, Jack, without shivering,”she answered; going in for a slight instalment of shivering there and then. “It might ha’ come to hanging. Leastways, that’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”

CHAPTER V.

ROBERT ASHTON’S WEDDING-DAY.

The hall-clock was striking half-past five as we went out into the sharp night-air: Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, I, and Tod. We were spending Christmas that year at Crabb Cot. Old Coney’s dinner was fixed for six: but country people don’t observe the fashion of dashing in at the last stroke of the hour. The weather was cold, and no mistake; the snow lay on the ground; the stars shone like silver. This was Tuesday, New Year’s Day; and to-morrow, the second of January, Jane Coney would be married to Robert Ashton of Timberdale. The Ashtons were to dine to-night at the Farm, and we had been asked to meet them. If every one stood upon his own level, we should shoot up some degrees over the Coneys’ heads in the scale of the world’s ladder; for old Coney was only a plain farmer; and you’ve learnt by this time what the Squire was. But the Coneys were right-down good people, and made the best neighbours in the world.

We had only to cross the road slantwise, and old Coney had had it swept for us. It was an old-fashioned farm-house, full of nooks and angles, with one ugly, big room in it, oak-panelled. The cloth was laid there for to-night, the breakfast would be for the morrow. Old Coney and Mrs. Coney came out of the drawing-room to meet us: that was small and snug, with a running pattern of pale roses on its white-watered walls. He was jolly; she, plain, homely, and sensible.

Jane was quiet, like her mother; very well she looked, standing on the carpet in her pretty blue silk dress. Her brother Tom, a tall, strong young fellow with a red face, lifted her out of the way by the waist, that he might shake hands all round. The eldest daughter, Mary West, was staying there with her nurse and baby; she looked ill, and got up only for a minute from her chair by the fire. Her husband was a lawyer, in practice at Worcester. Another young lady was sitting near, with light frizzed hair: Mrs. James Ashton.

Before we had settled down, wheels were heard. It was Robert Ashton’s dog-cart, bringing his two brothers, Charles and James; and Mary West’s husband. Miss Jane’s cheeks turned as red as a rose for nothing: Robert Ashton had not come with them.

I had better say who the Ashtons were. Old Ashton (the father)had lived at Timberdale Court always. It was one of the best farms in all Worcestershire. Old Ashton lived in good style, educated his children, and started them well in life. Lucy, the only girl, married a Captain Bird, who turned out to be a frightful scamp. Robert remained on the farm with his father; Charles was a clergyman; James a doctor in Worcester. Everybody respected Mr. Ashton. It was about three years now since he died, and he left a good pot of money behind him. Robert succeeded to the farm, and it was he who was to marry Jane Coney to-morrow.

They went upstairs with their carpet-bags, having come direct from Worcester by train; Robert Ashton’s dog-cart had been waiting, as arranged, at Timberdale Station to bring them on. Mrs. James Ashton came over earlier in the day with Mrs. West. Robert and Charles Ashton were both fine young men, but the doctor was slight and short. Now I hope all that’s clear; because it was necessary to say it.

What with talking and looking at the presents, the time passed. They were laid out on a table against the wall, on a snow-white damask cloth of rare beauty.

“Look here,” whispered Mrs. Coney, taking up a scented blue-and-white case of satin ribbon and beads for holding pocket-handkerchiefs.“Poor Lucy Bird sent this. She must have made it herself, a thing like this, bought, would be as much as fifteen or sixteen shillings. It came almost anonymously: ‘With best love and ever kind wishes for Robert and Jane,’ written on it; but we knew Lucy’s handwriting.”

“Where are they now?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, in the same mysterious whisper.

“I fancy they are staying somewhere in Worcester. We should have liked to have Lucy over for the wedding; but—you know how it is: we could not ask him.”

Mrs. Todhetley nodded. She wore her grey silk gown that night, which always seemed to make her look taller and thinner than ever, and a white lace cap with pink ribbons. A pink bow was in her light hair, and she had put on her beautiful earrings.

There is some thorn in most families, and Lucy was the one in that of Ashton. She was educated at the best school in Worcester, and came home at eighteen brimful of romance. It lay in her nature. You’d hardly have found so pretty and sentimental a girl in the county. Because her name was Lucy Ashton, she identified herself with Scott’s Lucy Ashton, and looked out for a Master of Ravenswood. These sentimental girls sometimes come to grief, for they possess only three parts of their share of plain common-sense. The Master of Ravenswood came in the shape of Captain Bird, a tall, dark man, with a flaming coat and fierce moustache. He paid court to Lucy, and she fell in love with him before a week was over. The Ashtons turned their backs upon him: there was something in the man they did notlike, in spite of the red coat and the black moustache. But he won Lucy over—he had heard of her fortune, you see—and she promised to marry him. She was a gentle, yielding, timid girl then; but her love was strong, and she ran away. She ran away and was married the same morning at St. Helen’s church in Worcester, in which parish Bird had been staying. It was the talk of the county; but when the commotion had subsided, every one began to pity Lucy, saying she would have plenty of time and cause for repentance. After all, he was not a real captain now. He had sold out of the army; and there arose a rumour that he had done something wrong and was obliged to sell out.

Mr. Ashton had loved Lucy better than all his children. He forgave the marriage for Lucy’s sake, and had them home on a visit, and presented her with a handsome sum. But he made a great mistake—I’ve heard the Squire say it often—in not settling it upon her. Bird spent it as soon as he well could; and he would have spent some more that came to Lucy when her father died, only that it was left in Robert Ashton’s hands to be paid to her quarterly. People called Bird a blackleg: said he was about the worst man that ever stepped. Robert had offered Lucy a home at Timberdale Court, but she would not leave her husband: she had married him, she said, for better or worse. If he came to be transported—and he was going on for it—the chances were that Lucy would follow him to Van Diemen’s Land.

“I say, there’s six o’clock!” exclaimed Mr. Coney, as the hour struck. “Jane, what have you done with Robert?”

“Not anything, papa. He said he should be here half-an-hour before dinner.”

“And it will soon be half-an-hour after it,” returned old Coney.“If he does not make haste, we shall sit down without him.”

The clock on the mantelpiece went ticking on, and struck half-past six. Dinner. The Squire led off the van with Mrs. Coney. Tod laid hold of Jane.

“I’ll take Robert’s place whilst I can, Jenny.”

The oak-room was a surprise. It looked beautiful. The dark walls were quite covered with holly and ivy, mixed with the blossoms of laurustinus and some bright flowers. Old Thomas (borrowed from us) and the maids stood by the sideboard, which glittered with silver. The Coneys had their stores as well as other people, and did things well when they did them at all. On the table was a large codfish, garnished with horse-radish and lemon. Our names were before our places, and we took them without bustle, Robert Ashton’s, next to Jane, being left vacant.

“For what——”

A faint shriek interrupted the Reverend Mr. Ashton, and the gracewas interrupted. Lifting his head towards the quarter whence the shriek came, he saw his sister-in-law with a scared face.

“We are thirteen!” exclaimed Mrs. James Ashton. “I beg your pardon, Charles—I beg everybody’s pardon; but indeed we must not sit down thirteen to dinner on New Year’s Day. I would not for any money.”

“What nonsense, my dear!” cried her husband, rather crossly.“Robert will be here directly.”

It was of no use. The ladies took her part, saying they ought not to sit down. And there we all stood, uncertain what to do, the dinner hovering in mid-air like Mahomet’s coffin, and not to be eaten.

“There are two days in the year when it is not well to sit down thirteen: New Year’s Day and Christmas Day,” said Mrs. Todhetley, and the rest held with her.

“Are we all to go back to the drawing-room, and leave our dinner?”demanded old Coney, in wrath. “Where the plague is Robert? Look here: those that won’t sit down thirteen can go, and those that don’t mind it can stop.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the Squire.

But Jane Coney went gliding to her mother’s side. “I will wait for Robert in the drawing-room, mamma, and you can sit down twelve. Yes, please; it is best so. Indeed I could not eat anything if I stayed.”

“Shall we send you some dinner in, child?” asked Mr. Coney.

“No, thank you, papa. I should like best to take it with Robert when he comes.”

“All right,” said old Coney. “Johnny, you go over to that side, to make the table even. We’ll have the grace now, parson.”

And the parson said it.

It was a dinner that pleased the Squire’s heart. He had a mortal objection to what he called kickshaws, meaning the superfluous dishes you find at a modern entertainment. The Coneys never had kickshaws, only a plain, substantial dinner, the best of its kind.

“Coney, I never taste such oyster-sauce as yours, go where I will,”cried the Squire. “It can’t be matched.”

Old Coney winked, as much as to say he knew it. “The missis gives an eye to that, you see, Squire,” he answered, in a side whisper.“She had been in the kitchen till you came.”

The Squire took another ladleful. He went once or twice to every dish, and drank champagne with all of us. But still Robert Ashton did not come.

I slipped round to Mrs. Coney when the plum-pudding appeared, whispering that I would take a slice to Jane.

“So you shall, Johnny,” she said, giving me some on a plate, and putting a mince-pie beside it. “She will have no luck unless she eats a little of both pudding and pie on the first day of the year.”

Jane sat in a low elbow-chair before the fire, her head leaning on herhand, her hair a little tumbled. It was very pretty hair, dark chestnut, and her eyes were hazel. Robert Ashton was fair-haired and blue-eyed; Saxon all over, and very good-looking.

“I have brought you some pudding, Jane.”

“Oh, Johnny! why did you leave the table? I can’t eat it.”

“But Mrs. Coney says you are to; and some mince-pie also, or you’ll have no luck.”

As if in obedience she ate a little of the pudding, cut a quarter of the mince-pie with her fork, and ate that.

“There, Johnny, that’s quite enough for ‘luck.’ Go back now to your dinner; I dare say you’ve not had any pudding yourself.”

“I’ll stay with you, and finish this: as it is going begging.”

She neither said yes nor no. She was looking frightfully uneasy.

“Are you vexed that Robert Ashton’s not here, Jane?”

“I am not vexed, because I know he would have been here if he could. I think something has happened to him.”

I stared at her. “What! because he is a little late in coming? Why, Jane, you must be nervous.”

She kept looking into the fire, her eyes fixed. I sat on a stool on the other side of the hearth; the empty pudding-plate standing on the rug between us, where I had put it.

“Robert was sure to come for this dinner, Johnny, all being well, and to be in time.”

“Tell me what you fear, Jane—and why?”

“I think I will tell you,” she said, after a pause. “I should like to tell some one. I wish I had told Robert when he called this morning; but I was afraid he would laugh at me. You will laugh too.”

And Jane Coney told it. In a low, dread voice, her eyes staring into the fire as before, just as though they could see through the blaze into the future.

Early that morning she had had a dream; a disagreeable, ugly dream about Robert Ashton. She thought he was in some frightful peril, that she cried to him to avoid it, or it would stop their marriage. He seemed not to take the least notice of her, but to go right on to it, and in the alarm this brought her, she awoke. I listened in silence, saying nothing to the end; no, nor then.

“The dream was so intensely real, Johnny. It seemed to be to-day; this very day then dawning; and we both of us knew that it was; the one before our marriage. I woke up in a fever; and but that it was night and not day, should have had difficulty in persuading myself at first that we were not really enacting the scene—it was, as I say, so vividly real. And Robert went out to the peril, never heeding me.”

“What was the peril?”

“That’s what I can’t tell. A consciousness lay upon me that it was something very bad and frightful; but of its nature I saw nothing. Idid not go to sleep again: it must have been about six o’clock, but the mornings are very dark, you know. I got up soon: what with this dinner-party and other things, there has been a great deal to do to-day, and I soon forgot my dream. Robert called after breakfast, and the sight of him put me in mind of it. I felt a great inclination to tell him to take especial care of himself; but he would only have laughed at me. He drove away direct to the Timberdale Station, to take the train for Worcester.”

She did not say, though, what he had gone for to Worcester. To get the ring and licence.

“I have not felt the smallest fear of the dream all along, Johnny, since I awoke. Excepting for the few minutes Robert was here, I don’t remember even to have thought of it. But when his brothers and Mr. West came in without him to-night, it flashed into my mind like a dart. I felt sure then that something had happened. I dare say we shall never be married now.”

“Jane!”

“Well, Johnny Ludlow, I think it.”

To me it seemed to be growing serious. There might be nothing at all in what she had said; most people would have said there was nothing; but, sitting there in the quiet room listening to her earnest voice, seeing her anxious face, a feeling came over me that there was. What had become of Robert Ashton? Where could he be?

“I wish you would give me that shawl of mamma’s,” she said, pointing to one on a chair. “I feel cold.”

She was shivering when I put it over her pretty white shoulders and arms. And yet the fire was roaring to the very top of the grate.

“Alone here, while you were at dinner, I went over all sorts of probabilities,” she resumed, drawing the shawl round her as if she were out in the snow. “Of course there are five hundred things that might happen to him, but I can only think of one.”

“Well?” for she had stopped. She seemed to be speaking very unwillingly.

“If he walked he would be almost sure to take the near way, across the Ravine.”

Was she ever coming to the point? I said nothing. It was better to let her go on in her own way.

“I dare say you will say the idea is far-fetched, Johnny. What I think is, that he may have fallen down the Ravine, in coming here.”

Well, I did think it far-fetched. I’d as soon have expected her to say fallen down the chimney.

“Those zigzag paths are not very safe in good weather, especially the one on the Timberdale side,” she went on. “With the snow on them, perhaps ice, they are positively dangerous. One false step at the top—and the fall might kill him.”

Put in this way, it seemed feasible enough. But yet—somehow I did not take to it.

“Robert Ashton is strong and agile, Jane. He has come down the zigzag hundreds of times.”

“I seem to see him lying there, at the bottom of the Ravine,” she said, staring as before into the fire. “I—wish—some of you would go and look for him.”

“Perhaps we had better. I’ll make one. Who’s this?”

It was Tom Coney. His mother had sent him to see after me. I thought I’d tell him—keeping counsel about the dream—that Robert Ashton might have come to grief in the Ravine.

“What kind of grief?” asked Tom.

“Turned a summersault down the zigzag, and be lying with a leg broken.”

Tom’s laugh displayed his small white teeth: the notion amused him excessively. “What else would you like to suppose, Johnny?”

“At any rate, Jane thinks so.”

She turned round then, the tears in her eyes, and went up to Tom in an outburst of grief. It took him aback.

“Tom! Tom! if no one goes to see after him, I think I must go myself. I cannot bear the suspense much longer!”

“Why, Jenny girl, what has taken you?”

That had taken her. The fear that Robert Ashton might be lying disabled, or dead, in the Ravine. Tom Coney called Tod quietly out of the dining-room, and we started. Putting on our dark great-coats in silence, we went out at the back-door, which was nearest the Ravine. Jane came with us to the gate. I never saw eyes so eager as hers were, as she gazed across the snow in the moonlight.

“Look here,” said Tom, “we had better turn our trousers up.”

The expedition was not pleasant, I can assure you, especially the going down the zigzag. Jane was right about its being slippery: we had to hold on by the trees and bushes, and tread cautiously. When pretty near the bottom, Tod made a false step, and shot down into the snow.

“Murder!” he roared out.

“Any bones broken?” asked Tom Coney, who could hardly speak for laughing. Tod growled, and shied a handful of snow at him.

But the slip brought home to us the probability of the fear about Robert Ashton. To slip from where Tod did was fun; to slip from the top of the opposite zigzag, quite another thing. The snow here at the bottom was up to our calves, and our black evening trousers got rolled up higher. The moonlight lay cold and white on the Ravine: the clustering trees, thick in summer, were leafless now. Had any fellow been gazing down from the top, we must have looked, to him, like three black-coated undertakers, gliding along to a funeral.

“I’ll tell you what,” cried Tod: “if Ashton did lose his footing, he wouldn’t come to such mortal grief. The depth of snow would save him.”

“I don’t believe he did fall,” said Tom Coney, stoutly. “Bob Ashton’s as sure-footed as a hare. But for Jane’s being so miserable, I’d have said, flatly, I wouldn’t come out on any such wild-goose errand.”

On we went, wading through the snow. Some of us looked round for the ghost’s light, and did not see it. But rumour said that it never came on a bright moonlit night. Here we were at last!—at the foot of the other zigzag. But Robert Ashton wasn’t here. And, the best proof that he had not fallen, was the unbroken surface of the snow. Not so much as a rabbit had scudded across to disturb it.

“I knew it,” said Tom Coney. “He has not come to grief at all. It stands to reason that a fellow must have heaps to do the day before his wedding, if it’s only in burning his old letters from other sweethearts. Bob had a heap of them, no doubt; and couldn’t get away in time for dinner.”

“We had better go on to the Court, and see,” I said.

“Oh, that be hanged!” cried the other two in a breath.

“Well, I shall. It’s not much farther. You can go back, or not, as you like.”

This zigzag, though steeper than the one on our side, was not so slippery. Perhaps the sun had shone on it in the day and melted the snow. I went up it nearly as easily as in good weather. Tod and Coney, thinking better of the turning back, came after me.

We should have been at Timberdale Court in five minutes, taking the short-cut over hedges and ditches, but for an adventure by the way, which I have not just here space to tell about. It had nothing to do with Robert Ashton. Getting to the Court, we hammered at it till the door was opened. The servant started back in surprise.

“Goodness me!” said she, “I thought it was master.”

“Where is the master?” asked Tom.

“Not come home, sir. He has not been in since he left this morning.”

It was all out. Instead of pitchpolling into Crabb Ravine and breaking his limbs, Bob Ashton had not got back from Worcester. It was very strange, though, what could be keeping him, and the Court was nearly in a commotion over it.

When we got back to the Farm, they were laying the table for the wedding-breakfast. Plenty of kickshaws now, and some lovely flowers. The ladies, helping, had their gowns turned up. This helping had not been in the evening’s programme; but things seemed to have been turned upside down, and they were glad to seize upon it. Jane and her sister, Mrs. West, sat alone by the drawing-room fire, never saying a word to one another.

“Johnny, I don’t half like this,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley to me.

“Like what, good mother?”

“This absence of Robert Ashton.”

I don’t know that I liked it either.

Morning came. In an uncertainty such as this, people go to each other’s houses indiscriminately. The first train came in from Worcester before it was well light; but it did not bring Robert Ashton. As to the snow on the ground, it was pretty well beaten now.

“He wouldn’t travel by that slow parliamentary thing: he’ll come by the express to South Crabb Junction,” said Tom Coney, thinking he would cheer away the general disappointment. Jane we had not seen.

The express would be at the Junction between nine and ten. A whole lot of us went down there. It was not farther off than Timberdale Station, but the opposite way. I don’t think one of us was more eager than another, unless it was the Squire. The thing was getting serious, he told us; and he went puffing about like a man looking for his head.

To witness the way he seized upon the doors when the express steamed in, and put his old red nose inside all the carriages, looking for Robert Ashton, was a rare sight. The guard laid hold of his arm, saying he’d come to damage. But Robert Ashton was not in the train.

“He may come yet,” said old Coney, looking fit to cry. “There’ll be a train in again at Timberdale. Or, he may drive over.”

But every one felt that he would not come. Something told us so. It was only making believe to one another, saying he would.

“I shall go to Worcester by the next down train,” said the Squire to old Coney.

“The next does not stop here.”

“They’d better stop it for me,” said the Squire, defiantly. “You can’t come, Coney. You must remain to give Jane away.”

“But if there’s no bridegroom to give her to?” debated old Coney.

“There may be. You must remain on the strength of it.”

The down train came up, and obeyed the signal to stop made by the station-master. The Squire, Tod, and Tom Coney got in, and it steamed on again.

“Now mind, I shall conduct this search,” the Squire said to the others with a frown. “You young fellows don’t know your right hand from your left in a business of this sort. We must go about it systematically, and find out the different places that Robert Ashton went to yesterday, and the people he saw.” Tod and Tom Coney told us this later.

When they arrived at Worcester, the first man they saw at ShrubbHill Station was Harry Coles, who had been seeing somebody off by the train, which was rather curious; for his brother, Fred Coles, was Robert Ashton’s great chum, and was to be groom’s-man at the wedding. Harry Coles said his brother had met Ashton by appointment the previous day, and went with him to the Registrar’s office for the marriage licence—which was supplied to them by Mr. Clifton himself. After that, they went to the jeweller’s, and chose the wedding-ring.

“Well, what after that?” cried the impatient Squire.

Harry Coles did not know what. His brother had come back to their office early in the afternoon—about one o’clock—saying Ashton was going, or had gone, home.

“Can’t you tell which he said—going, or gone?” demanded the Squire, getting red.

“No, I can’t,” said Harry Coles. “I was busy with some estimates, and did not pay particular attention to him.”

“Then you ought to have paid it, sir,” retorted the Squire. “Your brother?—where is he?”

“Gone over to Timberdale ages ago. He started the first thing this morning, Squire; a big coat thrown over his wedding toggery.”

The Squire growled, as a relief to his feelings, not knowing what in the world to do. He suddenly said he’d go to the Registrar’s office, and started for Edgar Street.

Mr. Clifton was not there, but a clerk was. Yes, Mr. Ashton of Timberdale had been there the previous day, he said, in answer to the Squire, and had got his licence. The governor (meaning Mr. Clifton, who knew the Ashtons and the Coneys well) had joked a bit with young Ashton, when he gave it. As to telling where Ashton of Timberdale and Mr. Coles had gone to afterwards, the clerk did not know at all.

So there was nothing to be gathered at the Registrar’s office, and the Squire turned his steps up the town again, Tod and Coney following him like two tame lambs; for he wouldn’t let them make a suggestion or put in a word edgeways. He was on his way to the jeweller’s now: but as he had omitted to ask Harry Coles which of the jewellers’ shops the ring was bought at, he took them all in succession, and hit upon the right one after some difficulty.

He learnt nothing there, either. Mr. Ashton of Timberdale had bought the ring and keeper, and paid for them, the master said. Of course every one knew the young lady was Miss Jane Coney: he had brought one of her rings as a guide for size: a chased gold ring, with small garnet stones in it.

“I am not asking for rings and stones,” interrupted the Squire, wrathfully. “I want to know if Mr. Ashton said where he was going to afterwards?”

“He said never a word about it,” returned the master. “When they went out of here—young Fred Coles was with him—they took the way towards the Hop Market.”

The Squire went to the Crown next—the inn used by the Ashtons of Timberdale. Robert Ashton had called in the previous day, about one o’clock, the waiter said, taking a little bread-and-cheese, observing that he had no time for anything else, and a glass of table-beer. Mr. Coles had come down Broad Street with him, as far as the inn door, when they shook hands and parted; Mr. Coles going back again. The waiter thought Mr. Ashton was not in the house above five minutes at the most.

“And don’t you know where he went to next?” urged the Squire.

“No,” the waiter replied. The impression on his mind was, that Mr. Ashton’s business in Worcester was over, and that he was returning home again.

The Squire moved slowly up Broad Street, more gloomy than an owl, his hands in his pockets, his nose blue. He boasted of his systematic abilities, as applied to seekings and searchings, but he knew no more what to be at next than the man in the moon. Turning up the Cross, he came to an anchor outside the linen-draper’s shop; propping his back against the window, as if the hanging silks had offended him. There he stood staring up at St. Nicholas’s clock opposite.

“Tom,” said he, virtually giving in, “I think we had better talk to the police. Here’s one coming along now.”

When the policeman was abreast, the Squire took his hands from his pockets, and pinned the man by his button-hole.

“Mr. Ashton of Timberdale?—oh, he has got into trouble, sir,” was the man’s ready answer. “He is before the magistrates now, on a charge of——”

The railway omnibus, coming along at the moment, partially drowned the word.

“Charge of what?” roared the Squire.

The policeman repeated it. The omnibus was making a frightful rattle, and the Squire only just caught it now. With a great cry he dashed over to the fly-stand, got into one, and ordered it to gallop away with him. Tom Coney and Tod barely escaped having to hang on behind.

“Drive like mad!” stamped the Squire.

“Yes, sir,” said the man, obeying. “Where to?”

“Go on, will you, sir! To the deuce.”

“To the police-court,” corrected Tom Coney.

Arrived there, the Squire left them to pay the fare, and fought his way inside. The first thing his spectacles caught sight of distinctlywas the fair Saxon face and fine form of Robert Ashton, standing, a prisoner, in the criminal dock.

At the Farm, things were in a state more easily imagined than described. The carriages came bowling up, bringing the guests. The four bridesmaids wore pale-blue silk, trimmed with white fur. Jane was dressed. In passing her door, I saw her. They had sent me up to fetch something from Tom’s room.

“Is it not a mockery, Johnny?” she said, letting me enter. And her poor pale face looked more fit for a burying than a wedding, and her eyes had dark circles round them.

“If you mean your dress, Jane, I never saw anything less like a mockery, or more like a princess’s in a fairy tale.”

It was of rich white silk; a delicate wreath of myrtle and orange-blossoms on her chestnut hair. The veil lay upon the bed.

“You know what I mean, Johnny. There will be no wedding at North Crabb Church to-day—and nothing can have been more foolish than to prepare me for it. Oh, Johnny! if I could only go to sleep till ten years hence, and never wake up between!”

Before the gate waited the carriages, their postillions in scarlet jackets; the company, in their fine plumage, jostled each other in the nooks and corners of the house; the maids, wearing a bright uniform of purple gowns and white muslin aprons, ran about wildly. Every two minutes, old Coney went up to a staircase window that faced Timberdale, looking out to see whether Robert Ashton was coming—like Sister Anne, in “Bluebeard.”

Twelve o’clock! It was like a knell booming out; and the carriages went away with the company. A fine ending to a wedding!

I was standing at the back-door, disconsolate as the moaning wind, when the Timberdale Station fly came rattling along. A gentleman put his head out of it, to tell the driver to stop. He got down, and came limping up to me. It was Mr. West’s partner, old Lawyer Cockermuth, who had declined an invitation to the wedding, because of gout.

“Look here,” said he, catching me by the shoulder, “I want to say half-a-dozen words to Mr. Coney. Can you manage to bring him out to me, or smuggle me into any little place where we can be alone? I suppose the house is chock-full of wedding-people.”

“You have brought bad news of Robert Ashton!” I said, in sudden conviction. “What is it?”

“Well, so I have,” he answered confidentially. “It will soon be known to every one, but I should like to break it to Coney first. I’ve come over to do it. Robert Ashton is in custody for murder!”

I felt my face turn as pale as a girl’s. “For murder?”

Old Cockermuth’s face grew long as he nodded. “He is in custody for nothing less than the murder of his brother-in-law, Bird. Yesterday——”

A smothered cry behind us, and I turned sharply. There stood Jane. She had seen Cockermuth’s arrival, and came down, knowing he must have brought bad news. The white robe and wreath were gone, and she wore an everyday dress of violet merino.

“Now, my dear! my dear, be calm!” cried the old lawyer, in a fright. “For goodness’ sake shut us in somewhere, Johnny Ludlow! We shall have the whole pack out upon us.”

Some of the pack did come, before he could be shut up. And there we were—hearing that Robert Ashton had been taken up for murder.

It appeared that, after quitting the Crown on the previous day, he met his sister’s husband, Captain Bird—from habit, people still accorded him his title. Captain Bird told him Lucy was dangerously ill, and asked him to go and see her. Robert went at once to their lodgings. What exactly happened there, no one as yet knew; but Robert and Bird got quarrelling. Robert did not come out again. In the morning (this morning) the neighbours heard a hue-and-cry; and on the door being opened by two policemen, Bird was found lying in the passage dead, as was supposed, and Robert Ashton was given into custody for his murder.

Jane touched me on the arm, and I followed her into the large, empty dining-room. That miserable breakfast! waiting for those who could not sit down to it. The evergreens on the walls seemed to look faded; the flowers on the table to have lost their first freshness.

“You see I was right, Johnny,” she said. “That dream was a dream of warning. And sent as one.”

It did look like it. But dreams are things you can’t lay hold of; no, nor altogether believe in. Standing by the cold grate, she began to shiver. In the confusion, the servants had let the fire go out.

“I would forget the dream, if I were you, Jane. Where’s the use of people having dreams——”

“Say warnings, Johnny.”

“——if they cannot see how to make use of them? Call them warnings, an you like the word better. They are of no good at all.”

“Oh, Johnny, if I could only die! It was hard enough to bear when he was only missing; but now——”

It was just as though she never meant to leave off shivering. I went to hunt for some sticks, and saw our cook, Molly, in the kitchen amongst the maids. Trust her for being in the thick of any gossip. Bringing the sticks back, I pushed them in, and they soon crackled up into a blaze. Jane sat down and watched them.

“I wouldn’t be afraid, Jane, if I were you. There must be some mistake.”

“I’m not afraid—in one sense. That Robert has done nothing wrong willingly, I know. But—he is rather passionate; and there’s no telling how they might provoke him. If there is much prolonged suspense; a trial, or anything of that sort—well, I suppose I shall live through it.”

How hopeless she looked! her head bent, her eyes cast down. Just then there was a cry outside for Jane. “Jane!”

“Go out, Johnny, and say I am all right. Pray to them to leave me alone. Tell mamma not to come in; I am easier by myself—and the fire’s burning up. They have gone calling upstairs; they wouldn’t think I am here.”

Was there anything incoherent in her words? I looked at her narrowly. I suppose that they sounded something like it.

“One has been coming to soothe me, and another has been coming; I haven’t known how to bear it. They mean it in kindness—great kindness; but I would so much rather be alone. You go now, Johnny.”

So I shut her in. And whispered to Mrs. Coney that she was praying to be left.

I don’t know how the day went on, except that it was miserably uncomfortable. We had some cold beef in the everyday dining-room, and old Coney, after saying he’d have given a thousand pounds out of his pocket for it not to have happened, went and smoked a pipe with Cockermuth in the best kitchen. Dusk began to come on.

Why! who was that—driving up in Robert Ashton’s dog-cart? Robert! Robert himself? Yes, it was; and the Squire, and Tod, and Tom Coney with him. The dog-cart had gone to the station to wait for the Squire and the other two: they came, bringing Robert Ashton.

“Is it all right, Mr. Ashton?”

“Quite right, Johnny. You did not think it could be wrong, did you?”

“You are out on bail?”

“Out for good. There has been no real damage done. I wonder where Jane is?”

“I’ll take you to her. She has been wishing she was dead.”

No one in the house scented his presence. I opened the door of the large oak-room. Jane was kneeling on the hearthrug, her face buried in the cushion of the arm-chair. She started up at the noise, and stood like one turned to stone.

“Robert?”

I do believe she thought it was not real—his ghost, or something. He went up in silence, slightly smiling—he was always a quiet-mannered man—and holding out his hand.

“It is I, myself, Jane. You look as though you doubted it.”

With a great cry she fell forward. Robert caught her to his breast.I was going away when he hastily called to me. For the first time in her life she had fainted away. The thing had been too much for her.

“Get some water, Johnny. Don’t call any one. She’ll soon come to.”

There was water on the table; wine too. He gave Jane some of both. And then she listened to his story, leaning on his arm, and crying as softly and peacefully as a little child.

Those outside were listening to the wonderful tale. When I went out, they had gathered in the best kitchen, round the Squire, who had gone there in search of old Coney. The Squire’s glowing face was a sight to be seen. Mrs. Coney had sat down on the mahogany bench; her hands lifted. Coney stood with his pipe held at arm’s-length. As to Mrs. Todhetley, the tears were running down her cheeks in a stream.

It was quite true that Lucy Bird was very ill. Robert saw her in bed. As he was leaving, Bird began upon the old grievance—that he should have some of Lucy’s money advanced in a lump. He wanted it for his cards and dice, you see. Robert told him, No: as he had told him all along. An associate of Bird’s was there; a very bad man, named Dawler. They got Robert to take a friendly glass of wine—which purported to be sherry: and from that moment he lost all power, and partly consciousness. The wine was drugged. Their object, no doubt, had been to partly stupefy him, and so induce him to sign an undertaking to hand over the money to Bird. But they had made the potion a trifle too strong, not calculating the effect it would take on a young and habitually sober man. Robert fell into a deep sleep, from which it was impossible to arouse him all night: as to writing, his hands were as if dead. Late in the morning he awoke; and, bit by bit, realized where he was and what had passed. He was a little stupid even then, but sensible enough to remember that it was his wedding-day, and to foresee that he might have some trouble to get away from the house. On attempting to leave, Bird and Dawler placed themselves in the passage to prevent him. There was a hot contest. Robert Ashton, a stronger man than either of the others, but aware that all his strength was not then at his own command, seized a knotted stick, or club, that was lying in a corner, and lifted it to fight his way through. Dawler struck at it, to get it out of his hand, and struck it against Bird’s head with frightful force. The fellow dropped as one dead, and the door was burst open by the neighbours and policemen. The excitement, perhaps the exertion, acting on Robert Ashton’s only partly recovered state, turned him stupid again: the people took him to be drunk, and Dawler gave him in charge for murder.

That was the history. When the Squire had got into the police-court, Robert Ashton (who was nearly himself again through the remedies the doctor had given him in the police-station) was telling his tale. Dawler was contradicting him, and swearing hard and fast that it was a case of deliberate murder. The magistrates invited the Squire to a seat beside them: and the first thing he did was to break into a hot tantrum, vowing Robert Ashton couldn’t be guilty. How it would have terminated no one knew, but Lucy saved him.

Lucy saved him. A wan, haggard young woman wrapped in an old shawl, staggered into the justice-room, to the front of the room. It was Lucy Bird. She had come crawling through the streets to tell the truth.

“My brother Robert did not attempt to strike any one,” she said in low, weak, earnest tones. “He only held the club in his hand. I saw it all, for I stood by. It was Dawler who threw his weight upon the club, and struck down my husband. Robert fell too; pushed down by Dawler. This is the sole truth, before Heaven!”

They believed her. The best was, that Bird was not dead at all, only stunned; and the next to appear in court was himself, with a big white plaister on his forehead. Discovering his wife’s flight to the magistrates, he thought it well to go after her: there was no knowing what plots might be in the wind. He had the grace to acknowledge that the blow was an accident. The whole bench shook hands with Robert Ashton, telling Bird and the other man significantly that they had better take care what they were about for the future: and the Squire brought him home in triumph.

“But where is Robert?” asked old Coney and the rest. Why, in there with Jane: where else should he be? They burst into the oak-room in a body, and found him trying on the ring.

“Why shouldn’t we have a dinner to-night?” asked old Coney.“Last night’s was only half a dinner, through one bother or another.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the Squire. “Why not?”

The only thing against it was—as Mrs. Coney said—that no dinner was prepared. Unless they could put up with a cold one.

“And glad to do so,” spoke up everybody. So the cold meats were brought from the larder, and the fowls from the breakfast-table, and laid in the everyday dining-parlour. The ladies were in their ordinary gowns, and there was no room for elbows, but we made up with laughter. Sixteen this evening; Fred Coles being there, and old Cockermuth, who sat down in spite of the gout. Afterwards we went off by the light of the stars to summon the company to the morrow’s wedding; it was good to go knocking at the doors with the news. Whilst the servants at the Farm, with Molly to help them, began cooking fresh fowls for the breakfast-table.

And that’s about all. There was never a better wedding seen, and the scarlet jackets of the post-boys dazzled one’s eyes in the morning sun. Robert Ashton was calm and quiet in church; Jane too, and not a bit nervous. The chief speech at the breakfast was undertaken by the Squire, so you may give a guess what it was like; but it didn’t spoil the wedding-cake.

Jane was shut up with her mother when the time came for starting, and came out in a flood of tears. She was leaving her childhood’s home, you see. Robert would have hurried her straight to the carriage, but the company wouldn’t be done out of their leave-taking. I was the last.

“Thank you for all, Johnny,” she cried, wringing my hand as she went down the path. “They were all very kind to me yesterday, but it seemed that you were kindest.”

In the next minute, both of them, with the door shut, and the carriage away towards South Crabb Junction. The people cheered, the cocks crew, and the old shoes flew after them in a shower.

CHAPTER VI.

HARDLY WORTH TELLING.

You remember what I, Johnny Ludlow, said in the last paper—that on our way to Timberdale Court we met with an adventure, which I had not then time to tell of. It was this.

After our race through Crabb Ravine by moonlight, looking for Robert Ashton, we went on to Timberdale Court as fast as the snowy ground would admit of, Joseph Todhetley and Tom Coney rushing on in front, I after them—they were older and stronger than I was. Not by the ordinary highway, but over fields and hedges and ditches, straight as the crow flies, wishing to save time. Instead of saving time, we lost it, for though the road, had we taken it, was longer, the snow was beaten there; whereas it was lying deep across the country and had to be waded through. But you can’t always bring common-sense to bear at the moment it’s wanted. And if we had looked like three undertakers at a funeral, stalking after one another in the Ravine, with our dark coats showing out against the white snow, I’m sure we must have looked still more like it in the open ground.

At the far corner of the square meadow was a cow-shed, unused since the autumn, when Ashton of Timberdale had caused the fields about here to be ploughed. Beyond the shed, touching its walls, ran a brook; and it brought us up. We had meant to take it at a flying leap; but the snow had melted there, and the brook was swollen. It was not agreeable to run the chance of pitching in, and it seemed that we should have to make for the gate, lower down. Standing for a moment to reconnoitre, there broke on our ears a low moan; and then another.

“I say,” cried Tod, “is that the ghost?” I said in that last paper, as any one may see, that we had looked out for the ghost in the Ravine. The moaning came again.

“If I don’t believe it is in the cow-shed!” exclaimed Tom Coney. And he went round to the door and shook it open.

Pitch dark inside and the same moaning, soft and low. Tom Coney had some lights in his pocket, and struck one. Well! we were astonished. On the ground lay a woman—or girl—and a very little child. She had a young face, with anxious eyes and feverish cheeks. She said she was dying, and so answered our questions; but we had tokneel down to hear her. She had walked across the country from somewhere in Gloucestershire, carrying her baby of a fortnight old, but the weakness and fever overtook her. Two nights ago she had crept into the shed, and lain there, unsuspected, ever since.

“But why did you leave your home?” inquired Tod.

“I couldn’t stay for the shame,” was the nearly inaudible answer: and but that our ears were good ones, we should not have caught it. If we would but fetch her a drop of water for the love of Christ, she said, as we got up.

It was impossible to help wondering whether God had not allowed Robert Ashton to be lost on purpose to bring us round there. But for our passing, both she and the baby must very soon have died, for the shed was quite out of the reach of any road likely to be traversed. We must have seemed to her like angels of mercy. Perhaps we were made use of as such that night.

“Have you lain here all that time—two nights and days—without food?” asked Tod, in his softest voice.

“Without food, sir, and without drink. Oh, for a drop of water! If you could only bring it me, I should die easier.”

We got some clean snow and moistened her lips with it. She gave a sobbing cry as it trickled down her throat: Tom Coney said it was choking, but I thought it was joy. To a poor creature in a burning fever, lying without any sort of drink for days and nights, the fresh cold snow must have tasted like dew from heaven. She motioned that the baby should have some, but we were afraid: it looked to be dying.

What could be done with her? To carry her away was not practicable—and she seemed too ill besides. Tom Coney offered to cover up the baby under his coat and take it to the Court for food and shelter; but she clutched it closer to her side as it lay on her arm, and faintly said it couldn’t do without her. Shutting the shed door again, we got quickly to Timberdale Court, found Robert Ashton was not at home, as you heard, and asked for the housekeeper, Mrs. Broom.

She was sitting in her little carpeted room, off the big kitchen, with one of the maids. They were sewing white bows on a lot of caps, and wondering what had become of the master. To be burst in upon by us, all three telling the story at once of the woman and child, pretty nearly scared good old Mother Broom’s senses away.

“You are just playing a trick upon me, young gentlemen.”

“It is as true as that we are here, Mrs. Broom; it is true as gospel. They’ll both be dead if something’s not done for them.”

“Well, I never heard of such a thing,” she exclaimed, beginning to stir about. “Lying in that cow-shed for two days without help! You ought to have brought the poor baby away with you, sirs.”

“She wouldn’t let it come.”

“I wouldn’t have minded her saying that. A fortnight-old baby lying in the shed in this cold!”

“I don’t think it will make much difference in the long-run, whether the baby stays in the shed or comes out of it,” said Tom Coney. “If it sees to-morrow’s dawn, I shall wonder.”

“Well, this is a fine start!” cried Mother Broom. “And the master never to have come home—that’s another,” she went on. For, what to do, she didn’t know the least in the world, and was like a woman with a lost head.

We left the matter to her, carrying some things to the shed as we passed it on our way home—blankets and a pillow, fresh water, milk-and-water for the baby, and a candle and matches. One of the women-servants was to come after us, with hot broth and wine.

When we reached Crabb Cot, the dismay there at hearing Robert Ashton had not turned up, was diversified by this news, which we told of. Not that they thought very much of it: the woman was only a poor tramp, they said; and such things—fevers, and that—happen to poor tramps every day.

“Do you think the baby’s dying?” asked Charles Ashton, the parson.

“I’m nearly sure it is,” said Tom Coney.

“That’s a kind of woman, you know, that ought to be committed for fourteen-days’ hard labour,” observed the Squire, fiercely, who was in a frightfully cross mood with the various mishaps and uncertainties of the evening. “Seems to be very sickly and humble, you say, Mr. Johnny! Hold your tongue, sir; what should you know about it? These women tramps bring death on their infants through exposure.”

“And that’s true,” said old Coney. “I’d punish ’em, Squire, if I were a magistrate like you.”

But what do you think Parson Ashton did? When the dog-cart had taken him and Mr. and Mrs. James Ashton to the Court—where they were to stay all night—he started off for the shed, and did not come away from it until he had baptized the baby.

We heard nothing more about it until the next day—and I don’t suppose any one has forgotten what sort of a miserable day that was, at old Coney’s Farm. How the wedding never took place, and Robert Ashton was still missing, and Jane Coney was dressed in her bridal robes for nothing, and the breakfast could not be eaten, and we guests staring in each other’s faces like so many helpless dummies. What news we had of it then, came from Charles Ashton: he had been to the shed again that morning. Whilst the carriages stood waiting at the gate, the post-boys’ scarlet jackets flaming in the sun, and the company indoors sat looking hopelessly for the bridegroom, Parson Ashton talked about it in a corner to Mrs. Coney and the Squire’s wife: both of them in their grand silk plumage then, one plum-coloured, the other sea-green, with feathers for top-knots.

The little baby was dead, Charles Ashton said. The mother had been removed to a shelter in Timberdale village, and was being cared for. The doctor, called in to her, Darbyshire, thought she might get over it.

“You baptized the child, I hear, Charles?” said Mrs. Coney, to the parson.

“Oh yes.”

“What did you name it?”

“Lucy. Something in the mother’s face put me in mind of my sister, and it was the name I first thought of. I asked the mother what she would have it called. Anything, she answered; it did not matter. Neither did it, for the little thing was dying then. Hot-water bottles and other remedies were tried last night as soon as they could be had, to get warmth into the child—to renew its life, in fact; but nothing availed.”

“Where was the woman taken to?”

“To Jael Batty’s. Jael consented to take her in.”

“I suppose it is but another case of the old, sad story?” groaned Mrs. Todhetley.

“Nothing else. And she, poor thing, is not much more than a girl.”

“Now, Charles, I tell you what. It may be all very consistent for you clergymen—men of forgiveness, and that—to waste your compassion over these poor stray creatures, but I think it might do more good sometimes if you gave them blame,” spoke Mrs. Coney, severely.

“There are times and seasons when you cannot express blame, however much it may be deserved,” he answered. “The worst of it in these cases is, that we rarely know there exists cause for censure before it is too late for any censure to avail, or avert the evil.”

What with the astounding events of the day, connected with the interrupted wedding, nothing more was said or thought of the affair. Except by Jane. When she and I were in the big dining-room together—I trying to blow up the fire, and she in full dread that Robert Ashton would have to be tried for his life at the Worcester Spring Assizes, and lie in prison until then—she suddenly spoke of it, interrupting the noise made by the crackling of the wood.

“So that poor baby’s dead, Johnny! What a happy fate—not to grow up to trouble. Charles named it Lucy, I hear. I should like to see the poor mother.”

“See her for what, Jane?”

“She is in distress, and so am I. I don’t suppose she has a corner to turn to for comfort in the wide world. I have not.”

It was not so very long after this that her distress was over. Robert Ashton arrived in triumph, and so put an end to it. One might supposeJane would no longer have remembered that other one’s distress; what with the impromptu dinner, where we had no room for our elbows, and the laughter, and the preparations for the next day’s wedding.

But the matter had taken hold of Jane Coney’s mind, and she reverted to it on the morrow before going away. When the wedding-breakfast was over, and she—nevermore Jane Coney, but Jane Ashton—had changed her dress and was saying good-bye to her mother upstairs, she suddenly spoke of it.

“Mamma, I want to ask you to do something for me.”

“Well, my dear?”

“Will you see after that poor young woman who was found in the shed?”

Naturally Mrs. Coney was taken by surprise. She didn’t much like it.

“After that young woman, Jane?”

“Yes; for me.”

“Mrs. Broom has seen to her,” returned Mrs. Coney, in a voice that sounded very frozen.

“Mother, dear,” said Jane, “I was comparing myself with her yesterday; wondering which of us was the worst off, the more miserable. I thought I was. I almost felt that I could have changed places with her.”

“Jane!” angrily interjected Mrs. Coney.

“I did. She knew the extent of her trouble, she could see all that it involved; I did not see the extent of mine. I suppose it is always thus—that other people’s sorrows seem light when compared with our own. The reason must no doubt be that we cannot realize theirs, whilst we realize ours only too keenly.”

“My dear, I don’t care to talk of this.”

“Nor I much—but hear me for a minute, mother. God has been so merciful to me, and she is still as she was, that I—I should like to do what I can for her when we come back again, and comfort and keep her.”

“Keep her!”

“Keep her from want, I mean.”

“But, child, she has been—you don’t know what she has been,”gravely rebuked Mrs. Coney.

“I think I do, mother.”

“She is a poor outcast, Jane; with neither home to go to, nor friends to look upon her.”

Jane burst into tears: they had been hardly kept down since she had begun to speak.

“Just so, mother. But what was I yesterday? If Robert had been tried for his life, and condemned, I should have felt like an outcast; perhaps been looked upon as no better than one by the world.”

“Goodness, Jane, I wish you’d exercise your common sense,” cried Mrs. Coney, losing patience. “I tell you she is an outcast, and has forfeited home and friends. She has been a great sinner.”

“Mother, if she had a home and friends, there would be no need to succour her. As to sin—perhaps we can save her from that for the future. My gratitude for the mercy shown to me is such that I feel as if I could take her to my bosom; it seems to my mind that I ought to do something for her, that she has been thrown in my way that I should do it. Mother, it is my last petition to you: see after her a little for me until we come back again.”

“Very well, dear; as you make this point of it,” concluded Mrs. Coney, relenting just a little. And then Jane began to cry hysterically; and Tom Coney knocked at the door, saying time was up.

Mrs. Coney was not a hard-hearted woman, just the opposite: but only those who live in rural parts of the country can imagine the tricks and turns of regular tramps, and what a bad lot some of them are. They deceive you with no end of a plausible tale, and stare pitifully in your face whilst they tell it. Not long before this, a case had happened where both our house and the Coneys’ had been taken in. A woman in jagged widows’ garments presented herself at the door of Crabb Cot and asked to see the Squire. Her shoes wanted mending, and one side of her face was bandaged up. Mrs. Todhetley went to her. Of all pitiable tales that poor woman told the most: it would have melted a heart of stone. She came from near Droitwich, she said: her husband had worked under Sir John Pakington; that is, had been a labourer on part of his estate, Westwood Park. She lost her husband and grown-up son the past autumn with fever; she caught it herself, and was reduced to a skeleton, lost her cottage home through the things being seized for rent, and went to live with a married daughter in Oxfordshire. Cancer had appeared in her cheek, the daughter could not keep her, for she and all her children were down with sickness, and the husband had no work—and she, the widow, was making her way by easy walking-stages to Worcester, there to try and get into the infirmary. What she wanted at Crabb Cot was—not to beg, either money or food: money she could do without, food she could not eat—but to implore the gentleman (meaning the Squire) to give her a letter to the infirmary doctors, so that they might take her in.

I can tell you that she took us in—every one of us. The Squire, coming up during the conference, surrendered without fight. Questions were put to her about Droitwich and Ombersley, which she answered at once. There could be no mistaking that she knew all the neighbourhood about there well, and Sir John and Lady Pakington into the bargain. I think it was that that threw us off our guard. Mrs. Todhetley, brimming over with compassion, offered her some light refreshment, broth or milk. She said she could not swallow either, “it wentagainst her,” but she’d be thankful for a drink of water. Molly, the greatest termagant to tramps and beggars in general, brought out a half-pint bottle of store cordial, made by her own hands, of sweetened blackberry juice and spice, for the woman to put in her pocket and sip, on her journey to Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley gave her a pair of good shoes and some shillings, and two old linen handkerchiefs for the face; and the Squire, putting on his writing spectacles, wrote a letter to Mr. Carden, begging him to see if anything, in the shape of medical aid, could be done for the bearer. The woman burst into tears of thankfulness, and went away with her presents, including the letter, Molly the cross-grained actually going out to open the back-gate for her.

And now would anybody believe that this woman had only then come out of the Coneys’ house—where she had been with the same tale and request, and had received nearly the same relief? We never saw or heard of her again. The note did not reach Mr. Carden; no such patient applied to the infirmary. She was a clever impostor; and we got to think that the cheek had only been rubbed up with a little blistering-salve. Many another similar thing I could tell of—and every one of them true. So you must not wonder at Mrs. Coney’s unwillingness to interfere with this latest edition in the tramp line.

But she had given her promise: perhaps, as Jane put it, she could not do otherwise. And on the morning after the wedding she went over to Timberdale. I was sliding in the Ravine—for there was ice still in that covered spot, though the frost had nearly disappeared elsewhere—when I saw Mrs. Coney come down the zigzag by the help of her umbrella, and her everyday brown silk gown on.

“Are you here, Johnny! Shall I be able to get along?”

“If I help you, you will, Mrs. Coney.”

“Take care. I had no idea it would be slippery here. But it is a long way round to walk by the road, and the master has taken out the pony-chaise.”

“What wind is blowing you to Timberdale to-day?”

“An errand that I’m not at all pleased to go upon, Johnny; only Jane made a fuss about it before leaving yesterday. If I told the master he would be in a fine way. I am going to see the woman that you boys found in the shed.”

“I fancied Jane seemed to think a good deal about her.”

“Jane did think a good deal about her,” returned Mrs. Coney.“She has not had the experience of this sort of people that I have, Johnny; and girls’ sympathies are so easily aroused.”

“There was a romance about it, you see.”

“Romance, indeed!” wrathfully cried Mrs. Coney. “That’s what leads girls’ heads away: I wish they’d think of good plain sense instead. It was nothing but romance that led poor Lucy Ashton to marry that awful man, Bird.”

“Why does Lucy not leave him?”

“Ah! it’s easier to talk about leaving a man than to do it, once he’s your husband. You don’t understand it yet, Johnny.”

“And shall not, I suppose, until I am married myself. But Lucy has never talked of leaving Bird.”

“She won’t leave him. Robert has offered her—— Goodness me, Johnny, don’t hurry along like that! It’s nothing but ice here. If I were to get a tumble, I might be lamed for life.”

“Nonsense, Mrs. Coney! It would be only a Christmas gambol.”

“It’s all very well to laugh, Johnny. Christmas gambols mean fun to you young fellows with your supple limbs; but to us fifty-year-old people they may be something else. I wish I had tied some list round my boots.”

We left the ice in the Ravine, and she came up the zigzag path easily to the smooth road. I offered to take the umbrella.

“Thank you, Johnny; but I’d rather carry it myself. It’s my best silk one, and you might break it. I never dare trust my umbrellas to Tom: he drives them straight out against trees and posts, and snaps the sticks.”

She turned into Timberdale Court, and asked to see Mrs. Broom. Mrs. Broom appeared in the parlour with her sleeves turned up to the elbow, and her hands floury. She had been housekeeper during old Mr. Ashton’s time.

“Look here,” said Mrs. Coney, dropping her voice a little: “I’ve come to ask a word or two about that woman—from the shed, you know. Who is she?—and what is she?”

But the dropping of Mrs. Coney’s voice was as nothing to the dropping of the housekeeper’s face. The questions put her out uncommonly.

“I wish to my very heart, ma’am, that the woman—she’s but a poor young thing at best!—had chosen any part to fall ill in but this! It’s like a Fate.”

“Like a what?” cried Mrs. Coney.

“And so it is. A Fate for this house. ’Tis nothing less.”

“Why, what do you mean, Broom?”

Mother Broom bent her head forward, and said a word or two in Mrs. Coney’s ear. Louder, I suppose, than she thought for, if she had intended me not to hear.

“Raves about Captain Bird!” repeated Mrs. Coney.

“He is all her talk, ma’am—George Bird. And considering that George Bird, blackleg though he has turned out to be, married the young lady of this house, Miss Lucy Ashton, why, it goes against the grain for me to hear it.”

Mrs. Coney sat down in a sort of bewilderment, and gave me the silk umbrella. Folding her hands, she stared at Mother Broom.

“It seems as though we were always hearing fresh news about that man, Broom; each time it is something worse than the last. If he took all the young women within his reach, and—and—cut their heads off, it would be only like him.”

“‘George!’ she moans out in her sleep. That is, in her dreaming, or her fever, or whatever it is. ‘George, you ought not to have left me; you should have taken care of me.’ And then, ma’am, she’ll be quiet a bit, save for turning her head about; and begin again,‘Where’s my baby? where’s my baby?’ Goodness knows ’twould be sad enough to hear her if it was anybody’s name but Bird’s.”

“There might be worse names than his, in the matter of giving us pain,” spoke Mrs. Coney. “As to poor Lucy—it is only another cross in her sad life.”

“I’ve not told this to anybody,” went on Mother Broom. “Jael Batty’s three parts deaf, as the parish knows, and may not have caught Bird’s name. It will vex my master frightfully for Miss Lucy’s sake. The baby is to be buried to-day. Mr. Charles has stayed to do it.”

“Oh, indeed!” snapped Mrs. Coney, and got up, for the baby appeared to be a sore subject with her. “I suppose the girl was coming across the country in search of Bird?”

Broom tossed her head. “Whether she was or not, it’s an odd thing that this house should be the one to have to succour her.”

“I am going,” said Mrs. Coney, “and I half wish I had never come in. Broom, I am sorry to have hindered you. You are busy.”

“I am making my raised pies,” said Broom. “It’s the second batch. What with master’s coming marriage, and one thing and another, I did not get ’em done before the new year. Your Molly says hers beat mine, Master Ludlow; but I don’t believe it.”

“She does, does she! It’s just like her boasting. Mrs. Todhetley often makes the pork-pies herself.”

“Johnny,” said Mrs. Coney, as we went along, she in deep thought:“that poor Lucy Bird might keep a stick for cutting notches—as it is said some prisoners used to do, to mark their days—and notch off her dreadful cares, that are ever recurring. Why, Johnny, what’s that crowd for?”

The church stood on the right between Timberdale Court and the village. A regular mob of children seemed to be pressing round the gate of the churchyard. I went to look, leaving Mrs. Coney standing.

Charles Ashton was coming out of the church in his surplice, and the clerk, old Sam Mullet, behind him, carrying a little coffin. The grave was in the corner of the burial-ground, and Mr. Ashton went straight to it, and continued the service begun in the church. If it had been a lord’s child, he could not have done it all in better order.

But there were no mourners, unless old Mullet could be called one. He put the coffin on the grass, and was in a frightful temper. I tookoff my hat and waited: it would have looked so to run away when there was no one else to stand there: and Mrs. Coney’s face, as cross as old Mullet’s, might be seen peering through the hedge.

“It’s come to a pretty pass, when tramps’ brats have to be put in the ground like honest folks’s,” grunted Sam, when Mr. Ashton had walked away, and he began to fling in the spadefuls of earth. “What must he needs go and baptize that there young atom for?—he ain’t our parson; he don’t belong to we in this parish. I dun-no what the world be a-coming to.”

Mr. Ashton was talking to Mrs. Coney when I got up. I told him what a way Sam Mullet was in.

“Yes,” said he. “I believe what I did has not given satisfaction in all quarters; so I waited to take the service myself, and save other people trouble.”

“In what name is the dead child registered, Charles?” asked Mrs. Coney.

“Lucy Bird.”

“Lucy Bird! Bird?”

“It was the name the mother gave me in one of her lucid intervals,”answered the clergyman, shortly.

He hastened away, saying he must catch a train, for that his own parish was wanting him; but I fancied he did not care to be further questioned. Mrs. Coney stood still to stare after him, and would have liked to ask him how much and how little he knew.

Lucy Bird! It did sound strange to hear the name—as if it were the real Lucy Bird we knew so well. I said so to Mrs. Coney.

“The impudence of the woman must pass all belief,” she muttered to herself. “Let us get on, Johnny? I would rather run a mile any other way than go to see her.”

Leaving me on the wooden bench outside Jael Batty’s door, she went in. It was remarkably lively: the farrier’s shop opposite to look at, five hay-ricks, and a heap of children who strolled after us from the churchyard, and stayed to stare at me. Mrs. Coney came out again soon.

“It’s of no use my remaining, Johnny. She can’t understand a word said to her, only lies there rambling, and asking people to bring her baby. If she had any sense left in her, she might just go down on her knees in thankfulness that it’s gone. Jael Batty says she has done nothing else but wail for it all the blessed morning.”

“Well, it is only natural she should.”

“Natural! Natural to mourn for that baby! Don’t you say stupid things, Johnny. It’s a great mercy that it has been taken; and you must know that as well as any one.”

“I don’t say it isn’t; babies must make no end of noise and work; but you see mothers care for them.”

“Don’t be a simpleton, Johnny. If you take to upholding tramps and infants dying in sheds, goodness knows what you’ll come to in time.”

At the end of a fortnight, Ashton of Timberdale and his wife came home. It was a fine afternoon in the middle of January, but getting dusk, and a lot of us had gone over to the Court to see them arrive. Jane looked as happy as a queen.

“Johnny,” she whispered, whilst we were standing to take some tea that Mother Broom (with a white cockade in her cap) brought in upon a silver tray, “how about that poor woman? She is not dead, I hope?”

I told Jane that she was better. The fever had gone down, but she was so weak and reduced that the doctor had not allowed her to be questioned. We knew no more of who she was than we had known before. Mrs. Coney overheard what I was saying, and took Jane aside.

There seemed to be a bit of a battle: Mrs. Coney remonstrating with a severe face, Jane holding out and flushing a little. She was telling Jane not to go to Jael Batty’s, and representing why she ought not to go. Jane said she must go—her heart was set upon it: and began to re-tie her bonnet-strings.

“Mother dear, don’t be angry with me in this the first hour of entering on my new home—it would seem like a bad omen for me. You don’t know how strongly I have grown to think that my duty lies in seeing this poor woman, in comforting her if I can. It cannot hurt me.”

“What do you suppose Robert would say? It is to him you owe obedience now, Jane, not to me.”

“To him first, and to you next, my mother; and I trust I shall ever yield it to you both. But Robert is quite willing that I should go: he knows all I think about it.”

“Jane, I wouldn’t have said a word against it; indeed I had made up my mind that it was a good wish on your part; but now that we have discovered she is in some way connected with—with the Birds—why, I don’t think Robert will like you to meddle with it. I’m sure I shrink from telling him.”

Jane Coney—Ashton I mean: one can’t get out of old names all at once—looked down in distress, thinking of the pain it would cause her husband for his sister’s sake. Then she took her mother’s hand.

“Tell Robert what you have told me, mamma. He will still let me go, I think; for he knows how much I wish it.”

They had their conference away from us; Mrs. Coney, Robert Ashton, and Jane. Of course he was frightfully put out; but Janewas right—he said she should go all the same. Mrs. Coney shut her lips tight, and made no further comment.

“I promised her, you see, Mrs. Coney,” he urged. “She has an idea in her head that—I’m sure I scarcely know what it is, except that her going is connected with Gratitude and Duty, and—and Heaven’s blessing. Why, do you know we might have stayed away another week, but for this? I could have spared it; but she would come home.”

“I never knew Jane take a thing up like this before,” said Mrs. Coney.

“Any way, I suppose it is I who shall have to deal with it—for the sake of keeping it from Lucy,” was Robert’s answer. “I wish with all my heart Bird had been at the bottom of the sea before his ill-omened steps brought him to Timberdale! There’s not, as I believe, another such scamp in the world.”

Jane waited for nothing else. Shielded by the dusk of the evening, she went hastening to Jael Batty’s and back again.

“I’ll go down for her presently,” said Robert. But she was back again before he started.

“I came back at once to set the misapprehension right,” said Jane, her eyes bright with eagerness, her cheeks glowing. “Mother dear—Robert—Johnny—listen, all of you: that poor sick woman is George Bird’s sister.”

“Jane!”

“Indeed she is. Captain Bird used to talk to Lucy of his little sister Clara—I have heard you say so, Robert—in the old days when he first came here. It is she who is lying at Jael Batty’s—Clara Bird.”

The company sat down like so many lambs, Mrs. Coney’s mouth and eyes alike opening. It sounded wonderful.

“But—Jane, child—there was still the baby!”

“Well—yes—I’m afraid so,” replied Jane, in an uncomfortable hurry.“I did not like to ask her about that, she cries so. But she is Clara Bird; Captain Bird’s sister, and Lucy’s too.”

“Well, I never!” cried Mrs. Coney, rubbing her face. “Poor misguided young thing—left to the guardianship of such a man as that, he let her go her own way, no doubt. This accounts for what Broom heard her say in the fever—‘George, you should have taken care of me.’”

“Is she being taken care of now in her sickness, down at Jael Batty’s?” spoke up Robert.

“Yes. For Jael, though three-parts deaf, is a kind and excellent nurse.”

Robert Ashton wrote that night to Worcester; a sharp letter; bidding Captain Bird come over and see to his sister. The poor thing took to Jane wonderfully, and told her more than she’d have told any one else.

“I am twenty,” she said, “and George is six-and-thirty; there is allthat difference between us. Our father and mother were dead, and I lived with my aunt in Gloucestershire: where George lived, I did not know. He had been adopted by a wealthy relative in London, and went into the army. My mother had been a lady, but married beneath her, and it was her family who took to George and brought him up a gentleman. Mine was a hard, dull life. My aunt—she was my father’s sister—counted ever-so-many children, and I had to nurse and see to them. Her husband was a master plumber and glazier. One day—it is fifteen months ago now—I shall never forget it—my brother George arrived. I did not know him: I had not seen him since I was thirteen, and then he was a fine handsome gentleman in an officer’s regimentals. He was rather shabby now, and he had come to see if he could borrow money, but my aunt’s husband would not lend him any; he told him he had much ado to keep his own family. I cried a good deal, and George said he would take me to London to his wife. I think he did it to spite them, because of their not lending the money, as much as to please me—he saw that I should be a loss there. We went up—and oh how nice I thought his wife! She was a kind, gentle lady, formerly Miss Lucy Ashton; but nearly always ailing, and afraid of George. George had gay acquaintances, men and women, and he let me go to theatres and balls with them. Lucy said it was wrong, that they were not nice friends for me; but I grew to like the gaiety, and she could do nothing. One night, upon going home from church, I found both George and Lucy gone from the lodgings. I had been spending the Sunday with some people they knew, the quietest of all their friends. There lay a note on the table from Lucy, saying they were obliged to leave London unexpectedly, and begging me to go at once—on the morrow—back to Gloucestershire, for which she enclosed a sovereign. I did not go: one invited me, and another invited me, and it was two months, good, before I went down. Ah me! I heard no more of George; he had got into some trouble in London, and was afraid to let it be known where he was. I have never heard of him or his wife to this hour. My aunt was glad to see me for the help I should be to her; but I felt ill always and could not do so much as I used. I didn’t know what ailed me; I didn’t indeed; I did not think it could be much; and then, when the time went on and it all happened, and they knew, and I knew, I came away with the baby because of the reproach and the shame. But George ought not to have left me to myself in London.”

And when Jane Ashton repeated all this to Robert, he said Bird deserved to be hanged and quartered.

There came no answer from Captain Bird. Perhaps Ashton of Timberdale did not really expect any would come.

But on the Sunday afternoon, from the train that passed Timberdale from Worcester about the time folks came out of church, there descendeda poor, weak woman (looking like a girl too) in a worn shawl that was too thin for the weather. She waited until the roads should be clear, as if not wanting to be seen, and then wrapped the shawl close around her arms and went out with her black veil down. It was Lucy Bird. And she was so pretty still, in spite of the wan thin cheeks and the faded clothes! There were two ways of getting to Jael Batty’s from the station. She took the long and obscure one, and in turning the corner of the lane between the church and Timberdale Court, she met Robert Ashton.

But for her own movement, he might never have noticed her. It was growing dusk; and when she saw him coming, she turned sharp off to a stile and stood as if looking for something in the field. There’s not much to stare at in a ploughed field at dusk, as Ashton of Timberdale knew, and he naturally looked at the person who had gone so fast to do it. Something in the cut of the shoulders struck him as being familiar, and he stopped.

“Lucy! Is it you?”

Of course it was no use her saying it was not. She burst into tears, trembling and shaking. Robert passed round her his good strong arm. He guessed what had brought her to Timberdale.

“Lucy, my dear, have you come over from Worcester?”

“Yes,” she sobbed. “I shall be better in a minute, Robert. I am a little tired, and the train shook me.”

“You should have sent me word, and I would have had a fly at the station.”

Sent him word! It was good of Robert to pretend to say that; but he knew that she wouldn’t have presumed to do it. It was that feeling on Lucy’s part that vexed him so much. Since Bird had turned out the villain that he had, Lucy acted, even to her own family, as though she had lost caste, identifying herself with her husband, and humbling herself to them. What though she was part and parcel with the fellow, as Robert said, she was not responsible for his ill-doings.

“Lean on me, Lucy. You must have a good rest.”

“Not that way,” she said at the bottom of the lane, as he was turning to the Court. “I am going to Jael Batty’s.”

“When you have had some rest and refreshment at home.”

“I cannot go to your home, Robert.”

“Indeed but you can; and will,” he answered, leading her on.

“I would rather not. Your wife may not care to receive me.”

“Come and try her.”

“Robert, I am not fit to see any one: I am not indeed. My spirits are low now, and I often burst into tears for nothing. I have been praying, all the way over, not to meet you. After what was done to you at our house but a week or two ago, I did not expect ever to have been noticed by you again. Jane must hate me.”

“Does she! Jane and I have been concocting a charming little plot about you, Lucy. We are going to have your old room made ready, and the sweet-scented lavender sheets put on the bed, and get you over to us. For good, if you will stop; long enough to recruit your health if you will not. Don’t you remember how you used to talk in the holidays about the home sheets; saying you only got them smelling of soap at school?”

A faint smile, like a shade, flitted over Lucy Bird’s face at the reminiscence.

“I should not know the feel of fine white linen sheets now: coarse calico ones have had to content me this many a day. Let me turn, Robert! For my own sake, I would rather not meet your wife. You cannot know how I feel about seeing old friends; those who—who——”

Those who once knew me, she meant to say; but broke down with a sob. Robert kept walking on. Lucy was a great deal younger than he, and had been used to yield to him from the time she was a child. Well for her would it have been, that she had yielded to his opinion when Captain Bird came a-courting to Timberdale.

“You have company at your house, perhaps, Robert?”

“There’s not a soul but Jane and me. The Coneys asked us to dine there to-day, but we thought we’d have the first Sunday to ourselves. We went to church this morning; and I came out after dinner to ask after old Arkwright: they fear he is dying.”

She made no further opposition, and Robert took her into the Court, to the warm dining-room. Jane was not there. Robert put her into the arm-chair that used to be their father’s, and brought her a glass of wine.

“No, thank you,” she faintly said.

“You must take it, Lucy.”

“I am afraid. My head is weak.”

“A sign you want something good to strengthen it,” he urged; and she drank the wine.

“And now take off your bonnet, Lucy, and make yourself at home, whilst I go to seek Jane,” said he.

“Lucy is here,” he whispered, when he had found his wife. “The merest shadow you ever saw. A wan, faded thing that one’s heart bleeds to look upon. We must try and keep her for a bit, Jane.”

“Oh, Robert, if we can! And nurse her into health.”

“And deliver her from that brute she calls husband—as I should prefer to put it, Jane. Her life with him must be something woeful.”

When they got in, she was leaning forward in the chair, crying silently. In the clear old room, with all its familiar features about her, memory could only have its most painful sway. Her grand old father with his grand old white hair used to sit where she was sitting; her brothers had each his appointed place; and she was a lovely bright child amongst them, petted by all; the sentimental girl with her head as brimful of romance as ever the other Lucy Ashton’s had been, when she went out to her trysts with the Master of Ravenswood. Which had been the more bitter fate in after-life—that Lucy’s or this one’s?

Mrs. Ashton went quietly up, put her arms round Lucy, and kissed her many times. She untied the bonnet, which Lucy had not done, and gave it with the shawl to Robert, standing behind. The bright hair fell down in a shower—the bonnet had caught it—and she put her feeble hand up as if to feel the extent of the disaster. It made her look so like the sweet young sister they had all prized, that Robert turned to the window and gave a few stamps, as if his boots were cold.

How she cried!—tears that came from the very heart. Putting her face down on the arm of the chair, she let her grief have its way. Jane held her hand and stroked it lovingly. Robert felt inclined to dash his arms through the dark window-panes on which the fire-light played, in imaginary chastisement of the scamp, Bird.

“Could you lend me a shawl of your own, Jane?” she asked, by-and-by, when Robert said they would have tea in—and she glanced down at her shabby brown gown. “I don’t wish the servants to see me like this.”

Jane flew out and brought one. A handsome cashmere of scarlet and gold-colour, that her mother had given her before the wedding.

“Just for an hour or two, until I leave,” said Lucy, as she covered herself up in it.

“You will not go out of this house to-night, Lucy.”

“I must, Robert. You can guess who it was I came to Timberdale to see.”

“Of course I can. She is going on all right and getting stronger; so there’s no immediate haste about that. Mr. Bird would not—not come, I suppose.”

Lucy did not answer. Robert was right—Bird would not come: his young sister might die where she was or be sheltered in the workhouse, for all the concern he gave himself. For one thing, the man was at his wits’ end for money, and not too sure of his own liberty. But Lucy’s conscience had not let her be still: as soon as she had scraped together the means for a third-class ticket, she came over.

“The poor girl has lain like a weight upon my mind, since the time when we abandoned her in London,” confessed Lucy.

“Why did you abandon her?”

“It was not my fault,” murmured Lucy; and Robert felt vexed to have asked the hasty question. “I hoped she went home, as I desired her; but I did not feel sure of it, for Clara was thoughtless. And those unsuspicious country girls cannot take care of themselves too well. Robert, whatever has happened I regard as our fault,” she added, looking up at him with some fever in her eyes.

“As Mr. Bird’s fault; not yours,” corrected Robert—who, strange perhaps to say, observed courtesy of speech towards Bird when talking with Lucy: giving him in general a handle to his name. It might have sounded ironical, but that he couldn’t help. “Did you never write to ascertain what had become of her, Lucy?”

“My husband would not let me. He is often in difficulties: and we never have a settled home, or address. What will be done with her, Robert?”

“She will stay where she is until she is strong; Jane wishes it; and then we shall see about the future. Something will turn up for her in some place or other, I’ve little doubt.”

Jane glanced at her husband and smiled. Robert had given her a promise to help the girl to an honest living. But, as he frankly told his wife, had he known it was a sister of Bird’s, he might never have done so.

“About yourself, Lucy; that may be the better theme to talk of just now,” he resumed. “Will you remain here for good in your old home?”

The hot tears rushed to her eyes, the hot flush to her cheeks. She looked deprecatingly at both, as if craving pardon.

“I cannot. You know I cannot.”

“Shall I tell you what Bird is, Lucy? And what he most likely will be?”

“To what end, Robert?” she faintly asked. “I know it without.”

“Then you ought to leave him—for your own sake. Leave him before you are compelled to do so.”

“Not before, Robert.”

“But why?”

“Oh, Robert, don’t you see?” she answered, breaking down. “He is my husband.”

And nothing else could they get from her. Though she cried and sobbed, and did not deny that her life was a fear and a misery, yet she would go back to him; go back on the morrow; it was her duty. In the moment’s anger Robert Ashton said he would wash his hands of her as well as of Bird. But Jane and Lucy knew better.

“What can have induced you and Robert to take up this poor Clara in the way you are doing—and mean to do?” she asked when she was alone with Jane at the close of the evening.

“I—owe a debt of gratitude; and I thought I could best pay it in this way,” was Mrs. Ashton’s timid and rather unwilling answer.

“A debt of gratitude! To Clara?”

“No. To Heaven.”

CHAPTER VII.

CHARLES VAN RHEYN.

I shall always say it was a singular thing that I should chance to go back to school that time the day before the quarter opened. Singular, because I heard and saw more of the boy I am going to tell of than I otherwise might have heard and seen. I was present at his arrival; and I was present at his—well, let us say, at his departure.

The midsummer holidays were nearly up when Hugh was taken ill. Duffham was uncertain what the illness was going to be: so he pitched upon scarlatina. Upon that, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley packed me back to school there and then. Not from any fear of my taking it; I had had it, and Tod too (and both of us were well again, I recollect, within a week or so); but if once the disease had really shown itself, Dr. Frost would not have liked us to return lest we might convey it to the school. Tod was in Gloucestershire. He was written to, and told not to return home, but to go straight to school.

Dr. Frost was surprised to see me. He said my coming back was quite right; and I am sure he tried to put me at ease and make me comfortable. Not a single boy had stayed the holidays that summer, and the doctor and I were alone. The school would open the following day, when masters and boys were alike expected to return. I had dinner with the doctor—he usually dined late during the holidays—and we played at chess afterwards.

Breakfast was just over the next morning when the letters came in. Amongst them was one from France, bearing the Rouen post-mark. Now the doctor, learned man though he was in classics and what not, could make nothing of French. Carrying the letter to the window, turning its pages over and back again, and staring at it through his spectacles, he at last brought it to me.

“You are a pretty good French scholar, Johnny; can you read this? I can’t, I confess. But the paper’s so thin, and the ink so pale, and the writing so small, I could scarcely see it if it were English.”

And I had to go over it twice before I could make it out. As he said, the ink was pale, and it was a frightfully small and cramped handwriting. The letter was dated Rouen, and was signed curtly,“Van Rheyn,” French fashion, without the writer’s Christian name.Monsieur Van Rheyn wrote to say that he was about to consign his son, Charles Aberleigh Van Rheyn, to Dr. Frost’s care, and that he would arrive quickly after the letter, having already departed on his journey under the charge of a “gentilhomme Anglais.” It added that the son would bring credentials with him; that he spoke English, and was of partly English descent, through his mother, the late Madame Van Rheyn, née Aberleigh.

“Rather a summary way of consigning a pupil to my charge,”remarked Dr. Frost. “Aberleigh?—Aberleigh?” he continued, as if trying to recollect something, and bending his spectacles over the letter. “She must have been one of the Aberleighs of Upton, I should think. Perhaps Hall knows? I have heard her mention the Aberleighs.”

Ringing the bell, the housekeeper was sent for. Dr. Frost asked her what she knew of the Aberleighs of Upton.

“There’s none of them left now to know, sir,” answered Hall.“There never was but two—after the old mother died: Miss Aberleigh and Miss Emma Aberleigh. Good fortunes the young ladies had, sir, and both of them, I remember, married on the same day. Miss Aberleigh to Captain Scott, and Miss Emma to a French gentleman, Mosseer Van Rheyn.”

“I should think, by the name, he was Dutch—or Flemish; not French,” remarked the doctor.

“Anyway, sir, he was said to be French,” returned Hall. “A dark sallow gentleman who wore a braided coat. The young ladies never came back to their home after the wedding-day, and the place was sold. Captain Scott sailed with his wife for Injee, and Mosseer Van Rheyn took Miss Emma off to his house in France.”

“Do you recollect where his home was? In what part of France?”

“No, sir. And if I did, I should never be able to speak the name. Not long ago I heard it said that poor Miss Emma was dead—Mrs. Van Rheyn that is. A nice quiet girl, she was.”

“Then I conclude the new pupil spoken of to me, must be the son of Monsieur Van Rheyn and Miss Emma Aberleigh,” remarked the doctor, when Hall was dismissed. “You must help to make things pleasant for him, Johnny: it will be a change at first from his own home and country. Do you remember that other French boy we had here?”

I did. And the remembrance made me laugh. He used to lament every day that he had not a plate of soup for dinner, and to say the meat was tough.

Strolling out at the front iron gates in the course of the morning, wondering how long the boys were going to be before some of them put in an appearance, I caught sight of the first. He was walking up from the Plough and Harrow Inn, and must have come by the omnibus that plied backwards and forwards between the inn and the station. The Plough and Harrow man-of-all-work followed behind, carrying a large trunk.

Of all queer figures that boy looked the queerest. I wondered who he was, and whether he could really be coming as a pupil. His trousers and vest were nankeen, his coat was a sort of open blouse, and flew out behind him; the hat he wore was a tall chimney-pot with a wide brim. Off went the hat with a bow and a flourish of the arm, as he reached me and the gates.

“I ask your pardon, sir. This is, I believe, the pension of Dr. Frost?”

The French accent, though that was slight, the French manners, the French turn of the words, told me who it was. For a minute or two I really could not answer for staring at him. He seemed to have arrived with a shaved head, as if just out of gaol, or of brain-fever.

The hair was cut as closely as it could be cut, short of shaving: his face was red and round and covered with freckles: you could not have put a pin’s point between them. Really and truly it was the most remarkable figure ever seen out of a picture. I could not guess his age exactly: something perhaps between twelve and fourteen. He was slender and upright, and to all appearance strong.

“I think you must be Charles Van Rheyn,” I said then, holding out my hand to welcome him. “Dr. Frost is expecting you.”

He put his hand into mine after a moment’s hesitation, not seeming quite to understand that he might: but such a brightness came into his rather large and honest grey eyes, that I liked him from that hour, in spite of the clothes and the freckles and the shorn head. He had crossed to Folkestone by the night boat, he said, had come on to London, and the gentleman, who was his escort so far, had there put him into an early train to come on to his destination.

Dr. Frost was at the window, and came to the door. Van Rheyn stood still when within a yard of him, took his hat off with the most respectful air, and bowed his head half-way to the ground. He had evidently been brought up with a reverence for pastors and masters. The doctor shook hands. The first thing Van Rheyn did on entering the reception-parlour, was to produce from some inner pocket a large, square letter, sealed with two flaming red seals and a coat of arms; which he handed to the doctor. It contained a draft for a good sum of money in advance of the first three months’ payment, and some pages of closely-written matter in the crabbed hand of Monsieur Van Rheyn. Dr. Frost put the pages aside to await the arrival of the French master.

“My father was unable to remit the exact amount of money for the trimestre, sir, not knowing what it would be,” said young Van Rheyn.“And there will be the extra expenses besides. He will arrange that with you later.”

“The end of the term would have been time enough to remit this,”said the doctor, smiling. “It is not our custom to receive payment in advance.”

“It is the custom in France, sir, I assure you. And, besides, I am to you a stranger.”

“Not altogether a stranger; I believe I know something of your mother’s family,” said Dr. Frost. “How came your father to fix upon my school for you?”

“My mother knew of your school, sir: she and my father used to talk of placing me at it. And an English gentleman who came lately to Rouen spoke of it—he said he knew you very well. That again put into my father’s head to send me.”

It was the same Van Rheyn that they had thought—the son of Miss Emma Aberleigh. She had been dead two years.

“Are you a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?” questioned Dr. Frost.

“I am Protestant, sir: the same that my mother was. We attended the église of Monsieur le Pasteur Mons, of the Culte Evangélique.”

The doctor asked him if he would take anything before dinner, and he chose a glass of eau sucrée. The mal-de-mer had been rather bad, he said, and he had not been able to eat since.

Evidently Hall did not approve of eau sucrée. She had never made eau sucary, she said, when sent to for it. Bringing in the water and sugar, she stood by to watch Van Rheyn mix it, her face sour, her lips drawn in. I am sure it gave her pleasure, when he asked for a few drops of orange-flower water, to be able to say there was not such a thing in the house.

“This young gentleman is the son of the Miss Emma Aberleigh you once knew, Hall,” spoke the doctor, with a view no doubt to putting her on good terms with the new pupil.

“Yes, sir,” she answered crustily. “He favours his mamma about the eyes.”

“She must have had very nice eyes,” I put in.

“And so she had,” said Van Rheyn, looking at me gratefully.“Thank you for saying so. I wish you could have known her!”

“And might I ask, sir, what has become of the other Miss Aberleigh?”asked Hall of Van Rheyn. “The young lady who went off to Injee with her husband on the wedding-day.”

“You would say my Aunt Margaret,” he rejoined. “She is quite well. She and the major and the children will make the voyage to Europe next year.”

After the eau sucrée came to an end, the doctor turned him over to me, telling me to take care of him till dinner-time, which that daywould be early. Van Rheyn said he should like to unpack his box, and we went upstairs together. Growing confidential over the unpacking, he gave me scraps of information touching his home and family, the mention of one item leading to another.

His baptismal name in full, he said, was Charles Jean Aberleigh; his father’s was Jean Marie. Their home was a très joli château close to Rouen: in five minutes you could walk there. It was all much changed since his mother died (he seemed to have loved her with a fervent love and to revere her memory); the last thing he did on coming away for England was to take some flowers to her grave. It was thought in Rouen that his father was going to make a second marriage with one of the Demoiselles de Tocqueville, whom his Aunt Claribelle did not like. His Aunt Claribelle, his father’s sister, had come to live at the château when his mother died; but if that Thérèsine de Tocqueville came into the house she would quit it. The Demoiselles de Tocqueville had hardly any dot,—which would be much against the marriage, Aunt Claribelle thought, and bad for his father; because when he, Charles, should be the age of twenty-one, the money came to him; it had been his mother’s, and was so settled: and his father’s own property was but small. Of course he should wish his father to keep always as much as he pleased, but Aunt Claribelle thought the English trustees would not allow that. Aunt Claribelle’s opinion was, that his father had at length decided to send him to a pension in England while he made the marriage; but he (Charles) knew that his mother had wished him to finish his education in England, and to go to one of the two colleges to which English gentlemen went.

“Here comes old Fontaine,” I interrupted at this juncture, seeing his arrival from the window.

Van Rheyn looked up from his shirts, which he was counting. He seemed to have the tidiest ways in the world. “Who is it that you say? Fontaine?”

“Monsieur Fontaine, the French master. You can talk away with him in your native tongue as much as you like, Van Rheyn.”

“But I have come here to speak the English tongue, not the French,” debated he, looking at me seriously. “My father wishes me to speak and read it without any accent; and I wish it also.”

“You speak it very well already.”

“But you can hear that it is not my native tongue—that I am a foreigner.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I must learn to speak it without that—as the English do. It will be necessary.”

I supposed he might allude to his future life. “What are you to be, Van Rheyn?” I inquired.

“What profession, do you ask? I need not be any: I have enoughfortune to be a rentier—I don’t know what you call that in English; it means a gentleman who lives on his money. But I wish, myself, to be an English priest.”

“An English priest! Do you mean a parson?”

“Yes, I mean that. So you see I must learn the English tongue. My mother used to talk to me about the priests in her land——”

“Parsons, Van Rheyn.”

“I beg your pardon: I forget. And I fear I have caught up the French names for things since my mother died. It was neither priest nor parson she used to call the English ministers.”

“Clergymen, perhaps.”

“That was it. She said the clergymen were good men, and she should like me to be one. In winter, when it was cold, and she had some fire in her chamber, I used to sit up there with her, after coming home from classe, and we talked together, our two selves. I should have much money, she said, when I grew to be a man, and could lead an idle life. But she would not like that: she wanted me to be a good man, and to go to heaven when I died, where she would be; and she thought if I were a clergyman I should have serious thoughts always. So I wish to be a clergyman.”

He said all this with the utmost simplicity and composure, just as he might have spoken of going for a ride. There could be no mistaking that he was of a thoroughly straightforward and simple-minded nature.

“It might involve your living over here, Van Rheyn: once you were in Orders.”

“Yes, I know. Papa would not mind. England was mamma’s country, and she loved it. There was more peace in England than in France, she thought.”

“I say, she must have been a good mother, Van Rheyn.”

In a moment his grey eyes were shining at me through a mist of tears. “Oh, she was so good, so good! You can never know. If she had lived I should never have had sorrow.”

“What did she die of?”

“Ah, I cannot tell. She was well in the morning, and she was dead at night. Not that she was strong ever. It was one Dimanche. We had been to the office, she and I——”

“What office?”

“Oh, pardon—I forget I am speaking English. I mean to church. Monsieur Mons had preached; and we were walking along the street towards home afterwards, mamma talking to me about the sermon, which had been a very holy one, when we met the Aunt Claribelle, who had come into the town for high mass at St. Ouen. Mamma asked her to come home and dine with us; and she said yes, but she must first go to say bon-jour to old Madame Soubitez. As she parted from us, there was suddenly a great outcry. It was fête at Rouen thatSunday. Some bands of music were to play on the estrade in the public garden, competing for a prize, consequently the streets were crowded. We looked back at the noise, and saw many horses, without riders, galloping along towards us; men were running after them, shouting and calling; and the people, mad with fright, tumbled over one another in the effort to get away. Later, we heard that these horses, frightened by something, had broken out of an hotel post-yard. Well, mamma gave just a cry of fear and held my hand tighter, as we set off to run with the rest, the horses stamping wildly after us. But the people pushed between us, and I lost her. She was at home before me, and was sitting at the side of the fountain, inside the château entrance-gate, when I got up, her face all white and blue, and her neck and throat beating, as she clung to the nearest lion with both hands. It alarmed me more than the horses had, for I had never seen her look so. ‘Come in, mamma,’ I said, ‘and take a little glass of cordial;’ but she could not answer me, she did not stir. I called one of the servants, and by-and-by she got a little breath again, and went into the house, leaning upon both of us, and so up to her chamber. Quite immediately papa came home: he always went into town to his club on the Sunday mornings, and he ran for Monsieur Petit, the médecin—the doctor. By seven o’clock in the evening, mamma was dead.”

“Oh dear! What was the cause?”

“Papa did not tell me. He and Monsieur Petit talked about the heart: they said it was feeble. Oh, how we cried, papa and I! He cried for many days. I hope he will not bring home Thérèsine de Tocqueville!”

The dinner-bell rang out, and we went down. Dr. Frost was putting up the letter which old Fontaine had been translating to him. It was full of directions about Van Rheyn’s health. What he was to do, and what not to do. Monsieur Van Rheyn said his son was not strong: he was not to be allowed to do gymnastics or “boxing,” or to play at rough games, or take violent exercise of any kind; and a small glass of milk was to be given him at night when he went to bed. If the clothes sent over with him were not suitable to the school, or in accordance with the English mode, Dr. Frost was prayed to be at the trouble of procuring him new ones. He was to be brought well on in all the studies necessary to constitute the “gentilhomme,” and especially in the speaking and reading of English.

Dr. Frost directed his spectacles to Charles Van Rheyn, examining him from top to toe. The round, red face, and the strongly-built frame appeared to give nothing but indications of robust health. The doctor questioned him in what way he was not strong—whether he was subject to a cough, or to want of appetite, and other such items. But Van Rheyn seemed to know nothing about it, and said he had always been quite well.

“The father fears we should make him into a muscular Englishman, hence these restrictions,” thought Dr. Frost.

In the afternoon the fellows began to come in thick and threefold: Tod amongst them, who arrived about tea-time. To describe their amazement when they saw Van Rheyn is quite beyond me. It seemed that they never meant to leave off staring. Some of them gave him a little chaff, even that first night. Van Rheyn was very shy and silent. Entirely at his ease as he had been with me alone, the numbers seemed to daunt him; to strike him and his courage into himself.

On the whole, Van Rheyn was not liked. Once let a school set itself against a new fellow at first—and Van Rheyn’s queer appearance had done that much for him—it takes a long time to bring matters round—if they ever are brought round at all. When his hair began to sprout, it looked exactly like pig’s bristles. And that was the first nickname he got: Bristles. The doctor had soon changed his style of coat, and he wore jackets, as we did.

Charles Van Rheyn did not seem inclined to grow sociable. Shy and silent as he had shown himself to them that first evening, so he remained. True, he had no encouragement to be otherwise. The boys continually threw ridicule on him, making him into an almost perpetual butt. Any mistake in the pronunciation of an English word—Van Rheyn never made a mistake as to its meaning—they hissed and groaned at. I shall never forget one occasion. Being asked when that Indian lot intended to arrive (meaning the Scotts), and whether they would make the voyage in a palanquin (for the boys plied him with questions purposely) he answered, “Not in a palanquin, but in a sheep”—meaning ship. The uproar at that was so loud, that some of the masters looked in to know what was up.

Van Rheyn, too, was next door to helpless. He did not climb, or leap, or even run. Had not been used to it, he said. What had he been used to do, then, he was asked one day. Oh, he had sat out in the garden with his mother; and since her death, with Aunt Claribelle, and gone for an airing in the carriage three times a week. Was he a girl? roared the boys. Did he do patchwork? Not now; he had left off sewing when he was nine, answered Van Rheyn innocently, unconscious of the storm of mockery the avowal would invoke. “Pray, were you born a young lady?—or did they change you at nurse?” shouted Jessup, who would have kept the ball rolling till midnight. “I say, you fellows, he has come to the wrong school: we don’t take in girls, do we? Let me introduce this one to you, boys—‘Miss Charlotte.’”And, so poor Charley Van Rheyn got that nickname as well as the other. Miss Charlotte!

Latin was a stumbling-block. Van Rheyn had learnt it accordingto French rules and French pronunciation, and he could not readily get into our English mode. “It was bad enough to have to teach a stupid boy Latin,” grumbled the under Latin master (under Dr. Frost), “but worse to have to un-teach him.” Van Rheyn was not stupid, however; if he seemed so, it was because his new life was so strange to him.

One day the boys dared him to a game at leap-frog. Some of them were at it in the yard, and Van Rheyn stood by, looking on.

“Why don’t you go in for it?” suddenly asked Parker, giving him a push. “There is to be a round or two at boxing this evening, why don’t you go in for that?”

“They never would let me do these rough things,” replied Van Rheyn, who invariably answered all the chaffing questions civilly and patiently.

“Who wouldn’t? Who’s ‘they’?”

“My mother and my Aunt Claribelle. Also, when I was starting to come here, my father said I was not to exert myself.”

“All right, Miss Charlotte; but why on earth didn’t the respectable old gentleman send you over in petticoats? Never was such a thing heard of, you know, as for a girl to wear a coat and pantaloons. It’s not decent, Miss Charlotte; it’s not modest.”

“Why do you say all this to me for ever? I am not a girl,” said poor Van Rheyn.

“No? Don’t tell fibs. If you were not a girl you’d go in for our games. Come! Try this. Leap-frog’s especially edifying, I assure you: expands the mind. Won’t you try it?”

Well, the upshot was, that they dared him to try it. A dozen, or so, set on at him like so many wolves. What with that, and what with their stinging ridicule, poor Van Rheyn was goaded out of his obedience to home orders, and did try it. After a few tumbles, he went over very tolerably, and did not dislike it at all.

“If I can only learn to do as the rest of you do, perhaps they will let me alone,” he said to me that same night, a sort of eagerness in his bright grey eyes.

And gradually he did learn to go in for most of the games: running, leaping, and climbing. One thing he absolutely refused—wrestling.

“Why should gentlemen, who were to be gentlemen all their lives, fight each other?” he asked. “They would not have to fight as men; it was not kind; it was not pleasant; it was hard.”

The boys were hard on him for saying it, mocking him fearfully; but they could not shake him there. He was of right blue blood; never caving-in before them, as Bill Whitney expressed it one day; he was only quiet and endured.

Whether the native Rouen air is favourable to freckles, I don’t know; but those on Van Rheyn’s face gradually disappeared over here. Hiscomplexion lost its redness also, becoming fresh and fair, with a brightish colour on the cheeks. The hair, growing longer, turned out to be of a smooth brown: altogether he was good-looking.

“I say, Johnny, do you know that Van Rheyn’s ill?”

The words came from William Whitney. He whispered them in my ear as we stood up for prayers before breakfast. The school had opened about a month then.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Don’t know,” answered Bill. “He is staying in bed.”

Cribbing some minutes from breakfast, I went up to his room. Van Rheyn looked pale as he lay, and said he had been sick. Hall declared it was nothing but a bilious attack, and Van Rheyn thought she might be right.

“Meaning that you have a sick headache, I suppose?” I said to him.

“Yes, the migraine. I have had it before.”

“Well, look here, Charley,” I went on, after thinking a minute;“if I were you, I wouldn’t say as much to any of them. Let them suppose you are regularly ill. You’ll never hear the last of it if they know you lie in bed for only a headache.”

“But I cannot get up,” he answered; “my head is in much pain. And I have fever. Feel my hand.”

The hand he put out was burning hot. But that went with sick headaches sometimes.

It turned out to be nothing worse, for he was well on the morrow; and I need not have mentioned it at all, but for a little matter that arose out of the day’s illness. Going up again to see him after school in the afternoon, I found Hall standing over the bed with a cup of tea, and a most severe, not to say horror-struck expression of countenance, as she gazed down on him, staring at something with all her eyes. Van Rheyn was asleep, and looked better; his face flushed and moist, his brown hair, still uncommonly short compared with ours, pushed back. He lay with his hands outside the bed, as if the clothes were heavy—the weather was fiery hot. One of the hands was clasping something that hung round his neck by a narrow blue ribbon; it seemed to have been pulled by him out of the opening in his night-shirt. Hall’s quick eyes had detected what it was—a very small flat cross (hardly two inches long), on which was carved a figure of the Saviour, all in gold.

Now Hall had doubtless many virtues. One of them was docking us boys of our due allowance of sugar. But she had also many prejudices. And, of all her prejudices, none was stronger than her abhorrence of idols, as exemplified in carved images and Chinese gods.

“Do you see that, Master Ludlow?” she whispered to me, pointingher finger straight at the little cross of gold. “It’s no better than a relict of paganism.”

Stooping down, she gently drew the cross out of Van Rheyn’s hot clasped hand, and let it lie on the sheet. A beautiful little cross; the face of our Saviour—an exquisite face in its expression of suffering and patient humility—one that you might have gazed upon and been the better for. How they could have so perfectly carved a thing so small I knew not.

“He must be one of them worshipping Romanics,” said Hall, with horror, snatching her fingers from the cross as if she thought it would give her the ague. “Or else a pagan.”

And the two were no doubt alike in Hall’s mind.

“And he goes every week and says his commandments in class here, standing up before all the school! I wonder what the doctor——”

Hall cut short her complaints. Van Rheyn had suddenly opened his eyes, and was looking up at us.

“I find myself better,” he said, with a smile. “The pain has nearly departed.”

“We wasn’t thinking of pains and headaches, Master Van Rheyn, but of this,” said Hall, resentfully, taking the spoon out of the saucer, and holding it within an inch of the gold cross. Van Rheyn raised his head from the pillow to look.

“Oh, it is my little cross!” he said, holding it out to our view as far as the ribbon allowed, and speaking with perfect ease and unconcern.“Is it not beautiful?”

“Very,” I said, stooping over it.

“Be you of the Romanic sex?” demanded Hall of Van Rheyn.

“Am I—— What is it Mrs. Hall would ask?” he broke off to question me, in the midst of my burst of laughter.

“She asks if you are a Roman Catholic, Van Rheyn.”

“But no. Why you think that?” he added to her. “My father is a Roman Catholic: I am a Protestant, like my mother.”

“Then why on earth, sir, do you wear such a idol as that?” returned Hall.

“This? Oh, it is nothing! it is not an idol. It does me good.”

“Good!” fiercely repeated Hall. “Does you good to wear a brazen image next the skin!—right under the flannel waistcoat. I wonder what the school will come to next?”

“Why should I not wear it?” said Van Rheyn. “What harm does it do me, this? It was my poor Aunt Annette’s. The last time we went to the Aunt Claribelle’s to see her, when the hope of her was gone, she put the cross into my hand, and bade me keep it for her sake.”

“I tell you, Master Van Rheyn, it’s just a brazen image,” persisted Hall.

“It is a keepsake,” dissented Van Rheyn. “I showed it to Monsieur Mons one day when he was calling on mamma, and told him it was a gift to me of the poor Tante Annette. Monsieur Mons thought it very pretty, and said it would remind me of the great Sacrifice.”

“But to wear it next your skin,” went on Hall, not giving in. Giving in on the matter of graven images was not in her nature. Or on any matter as far as that went, that concerned us boys. “I’ve heard of poor misdeluded people putting horse-hair next ’em. And fine torment it must be!”

“I have worn it since mamma died,” quietly answered Van Rheyn, who did not seem to understand Hall’s zeal. “She kept it for me always in her little shell-box that had the silver crest on it; but when she died, I said I would put the cross round my neck, for fear of losing it: and Aunt Claribelle, who took the shell-box then, bought me the blue ribbon.”

“That blue ribbon’s new—or almost new—if ever I saw new ribbon,” cried Hall, who was in a mood to dispute every word.

“Oh yes. It was new when I left Rouen. I have another piece in my trunk to put on when this shall wear out.”

“Well, it’s a horrid heathenish thing to do, Master Van Rheyn; and, though it may be gold, I don’t believe Miss Emma Aberleigh would ever have gave countenance to it. Leastways before she lived among them foreign French folks,” added Hall, virtually dropping the contest, as Van Rheyn slipped the cross out of view within his night-shirt.“What she might have come to, after she went off there, Heaven alone knows. Be you going to drink this tea, sir, or be you not?”

Van Rheyn drank the tea and thanked her for bringing it, his gratitude shining also out of his nice grey eyes. Hall took back the cup and tucked him up again, telling him to get a bit more sleep and he would be all right in the morning. With all her prejudices and sourness, she was as good as gold when any of us were ill.

“Not bathe! Not bathe! I say, you fellows, here’s a lark. Bristles thinks he’d better not try the water.”

It was a terribly hot evening, close upon sunset. Finding ourselves, some half-dozen of us, near the river, Van Rheyn being one, the water looked too pleasant not to be plunged into. The rule at Dr. Frost’s was, that no boy should be compelled to bathe against his inclination: Van Rheyn was the only one who had availed himself of it. It was Parker who spoke: we were all undressing quickly.

“What’s your objection, Miss Charlotte? Girls bathe.”

“They would never let me go into cold water at home,” was the patient answer. “We take warm baths there.”

“Afraid of cold water? well I never! What an everlasting pussy-cat you are, Miss Charlotte! We’ve heard that pussies don’t like to wet their feet.”

“Our doctor at Rouen used to say I must not plunge into cold water,” said poor Van Rheyn, speaking patiently as usual, though he must have been nearly driven wild. “The shock would not be good for me.”

“I say, who’ll write off to Evesham for a pair of waterproofs to put over his shoes? Just give us the measure of your foot, Miss Charlotte?”

“Let’s shut him up in a feather-bed!”

“Why, the water’s not cold, you donkey!” cried Bill Whitney, who had just leaped in. “It’s as warm as new milk. What on earth will you be fit for, Bristles? You’ll never make a man.”

“Make a man! What are you thinking of, Whitney? Miss Charlotte has no ambition that way. Girls prefer to grow up into young ladies, not into men.”

“Is it truly warm?” asked Van Rheyn, gazing at the river irresolutely, and thinking that if he went in the mockery might cease.

I looked up at him from the water. “It is indeed, Van Rheyn. Quite warm.”

He knew he might trust me, and began slowly to undress. We had continued to be the best of comrades, and I never went in for teasing him as the rest did; rather shielded him when I could, and took his part.

By the time he was ready to go in—for he did nothing nimbly, and undressing made no exception—some of us were ready to come out. One of Dr. Frost’s rules in regard to bathing was stringent—that no boy should remain in the water more than three minutes at the very extent. He held that a great deal of harm was done by prolonged bathing. Van Rheyn plunged in—and liked it.

“It is warm and pleasant,” he exclaimed. “This cannot hurt me.”

“Hurt you, you great baby!” shouted Parker.

Van Rheyn had put his clothes in the tidiest manner upon the grass; not like ours, which were flung down any way. His things were laid smoothly one upon another, in the order he took them off, though I dare say I should not have noticed this but for a shout from Jessup.

“Halloa! What’s that?”

Those of us who were out, and in the several stages of drying or dressing, turned round at the words. Jessup, buttoning his braces, was standing by Van Rheyn’s heap, looking down at it. On the top of the flannel vest, exposed to full view, lay the gold cross with the blue ribbon.

“What on earth is it?” cried Jessup, picking it up; and at the moment Van Rheyn, finding all the rest out of the water, came out himself. “Is it a charm?”

“It is mine—it is my gold cross,” spoke Van Rheyn, catching up one of the wet towels. The bath this evening had been impromptu, and we had only two towels between us, which Parker and Whitney had brought. In point of fact, it had been against rules also, for we were not expected to go into the river without the presence of a master. But just at this bend it was perfectly safe. Jessup passed the blue ribbon round his neck, letting the cross hang behind. This done, he turned himself about for general inspection, and the boys crowded round to look.

“What do you say it is, Bristles?”

“My gold cross.”

“You don’t mean to tell us to our faces that you wear it?”

“I wear it always,” freely answered Van Rheyn.

Jessup took it off his neck, and the boys passed it about from one to another. They did not ridicule the cross—I think the emblem on it prevented that—but they ridiculed Van Rheyn.

“A friend of mine went over to the tar-and-feather islands,” said Millichip, executing an aggravating war-dance round about Charley.“He found the natives sporting no end of charms and amulets—nearly all the attire they did sport—rings in the nose and chains in the ears. What relation are those natives to you, Miss Charlotte?”

“Don’t injure it, please,” pleaded Van Rheyn.

“We’ve an ancient nurse at home who carries the tip of a calf’s tongue in her pocket for luck,” shrieked Thorne. “And I’ve heard—Ihave heard, Bristles—that any fellow who arms himself with a pen’orth of blue-stone from the druggist’s, couldn’t have the yellow jaundice if he tried. What might you wear this for, pray?”

“My Aunt Annette gave it me as a present when she was dying,”answered poor helpless Charley, who had never the smallest notion of taking chaff otherwise than seriously, or of giving chaff back again.

He had dressed himself to his trousers and shirt, and stood with his hand stretched out, waiting for his cross.

“In the Worcester Journal, one day last June, I read an advertisement as big as a house, offering a child’s caul for sale,” cried Snepp. “Any gentleman or lady buying that caul and taking it to sea, could never be drowned. Bristles thinks as long as he wears this, he won’t come to be hanged.”

“How’s your grandmother, Miss Charlotte?”

“I wish you would please to let me alone,” said he patiently. “My father would not have placed me here had he known.”

“Why don’t you write and tell him, Bristles?”

“I would not like to grieve him,” simply answered Charley. “I can bear. And he does so much want me to learn good English.”

“This cross is gold, I suppose?” said Bill Whitney, who now had it.

“Yes, it is gold,” answered Van Rheyn.

“I wouldn’t advise you to fall amongst thieves, then. They might ease you of it. The carving must be worth something.”

“It cost a great deal to buy, I have heard my aunt say. Will you be so good as to give it me, that I may finish to dress myself?”

Whitney handed him the cross. Time was up, in fact; and we had to make a race for the house. Van Rheyn was catching it hot and sharp, all the way.

One might have thought that his very meekness, the unresisting spirit in which he took things, would have disarmed the mockery. But it did not. Once go in wholesale for putting upon some particular fellow in a school, and the tyranny gains with use. I don’t think any of them meant to be really unkind to Van Rheyn; but the play had begun, and they enjoyed it.

I once saw him drowned in tears. It was at the dusk of evening. Charley had come in for it awfully at tea-time, I forget what about, and afterwards disappeared. An hour later, going into Whitney’s room for something Bill asked me to fetch, I came upon Charles Van Rheyn—who also slept there. He was sitting at the foot of his low bed, his cheek leaning on one of his hands, and the tears running down swiftly. One might have thought his heart was broken.

“What is the grievance, Charley?”

“Do not say to them that you saw me,” returned he, dashing away his tears. “I did not expect any of you would come up.”

“Look here, old fellow: I know it’s rather hard lines for you just now. But they don’t mean anything: it is done in sport, not malice. They don’t think, you see, Van Rheyn. You will be sure to live it down.”

“Yes,” he sighed, “I hope I shall. But it is so different here from what it used to be. I had such a happy home; I never had one sorrow when my mother was alive. Nobody cares for me now; nobody is kind to me: it is a great change.”

“Take heart, Charley,” I said, holding out my hand. “I know you will live it down in time.”

Of all the fellows I ever met, I think he was the most grateful for a word of kindness. As he thanked me with a glad look of hope in his eyes, I saw that he had been holding the cross clasped in his palm; for it dropped as he put his hand into mine.

“It helps me to bear,” he said, in a whisper. “My mother, who loved me so, is in heaven; my father has married Mademoiselle Thérèsine de Tocqueville. I have no one now.”

“Your father has not married that Thérèsine de Tocqueville?”

“Why, yes. I had the letter close after dinner.”

So perhaps he was crying for the home unhappiness as much as for his school grievances. It all reads strange, no doubt, and just the opposite of what might be expected of one of us English boys. TheFrench bringing-tip is different from ours: perhaps it lay in that. On the other hand, a French boy, generally speaking, possesses a very shallow sense of religion. But Van Rheyn had been reared by his English mother; and his disposition seemed to be naturally serious and uncommonly pliable and gentle. At any rate, whether it reads improbable or probable, it is the truth.

I got what I wanted for Billy Whitney, and went down, thinking what a hard life it was for him—what a shame that we made it so. Indulged, as Van Rheyn must have always been, tenderly treated as a girl, sheltered from the world’s roughness, all that coddling must have become to him as second nature; and the remembrance lay with him still. Over here he was suddenly cut off from it, thrown into another and a rougher atmosphere, isolated from country, home, home-ties and associations; and compelled to stand the daily brunt of this petty tyranny.

Getting Tod apart that night, I put the matter to him: what a shame it was, and how sorry I felt for Charley Van Rheyn; and I asked him whether he thought he could not (he having a great deal of weight in the school) make things pleasanter for him. Tod responded that I should never be anything but a muff, and that the roasting Van Rheyn got treated to was superlatively good for him, if ever he was to be made into a man.

However, before another week ran out, Dr. Frost interfered. How he obtained an inkling of the reigning politics we never knew. One Saturday afternoon, when old Fontaine had taken Van Rheyn out with him, the doctor walked into the midst of us, to the general consternation.

Standing in the centre of the schoolroom, with a solemn face, all of us backing as much as the wall allowed, and the masters who chanced to be present rising to their feet, the doctor spoke of Van Rheyn. He had reason to suspect, he said, that we were doing our best to worry Van Rheyn’s life out of him: and he put the question deliberately to us (and made us answer it), how we, if consigned alone to a foreign home, all its inmates strangers, would liked to be served so. He did not wish, he went on, to think he had pitiful, ill-disposed boys, lacking hearts and common kindness, in his house: he felt sure that what had passed arose from a heedless love of mischief; and it would greatly oblige him to find from henceforth that our conduct towards Van Rheyn was changed: he thought, and hoped, that he had only to express a wish upon the point, to ensure obedience.

With that—and a hearty nod and smile around, as if he put it as a personal favour to himself, and wanted us to see that he did, and was not angry, he went out again. A counsel was held to determine whether we had a sneak amongst us—else how could Frost have known?—that Charley himself had not spoken, his worst enemy feltsure of. But not one could be pitched upon: every individual fellow, senior and junior, protested earnestly that he had not let out a syllable. And, to tell the truth, I don’t think we had.

However, the doctor was obeyed. From that day all real annoyance to Charles Van Rheyn ceased. I don’t say but what there would be a laugh at him now and then, and a word of raillery, or that he lost his names of Bristles and Miss Charlotte; but virtually the sting was gone. Charley was as grateful as could be, and seemed to become quite happy; and upon the arrival of a hamper by grande vitesse from Rouen, containing a huge rich wedding-cake and some packets of costly sweetmeats, he divided the whole amongst us, keeping the merest taste for himself. The school made its comments in return.

“He’s not a bad lot after all, that Van Rheyn. He will make a man yet.”

“It isn’t a bit of use your going in for this, Van Rheyn, unless you can run like a lamplighter.”

“But I can run, you know,” responded Van Rheyn.

“Yes. But can you keep the pace up?”

“Why not?”

“We may be out for three or four hours, pelting like mad all the time.”

“I feel no fear of keeping up,” said Van Rheyn. “I will go.”

“All right.”

It was on a Saturday afternoon; and we were turning out for hare and hounds. The quarter was hard upon its close, for September was passing. Van Rheyn had never seen hare and hounds: it had been let alone during the hotter weather: and it was Tod who now warned him that he might not be able to keep up the running. It requires fleet legs and easy breath, as every one knows; and Van Rheyn had never much exercised either.

“What is just the game?” he asked in his quaintly-turned phrase. And I answered him—for Tod had gone away.

“You see those strips of paper that they have torn out of old copybooks, and are twisting? That is for the scent. The hare fills his pockets with it, and drops a piece of it every now and then as he runs. We, the hounds, follow his course by means of the scent, and catch him if we can.”

“And then?” questioned Van Rheyn.

“Then the game is over.”

“And what if you not catch him?”

“The hare wins; that’s all. What he likes to do is to double upon us cunningly and lead us home again after him.”

“But in all that there is only running.”

“We vault over the obstructions—gates, and stiles, and hedges. Or, if the hedges are too high, scramble through them.”

“But some hedges are very thick and close: nobody could get through them,” debated Van Rheyn, taking the words, as usual, too literally.

“Then we are dished. And have to find some other way onwards, or turn back.”

“I can do what you say quite easily.”

“All right, Charley,” I repeated: as Tod had done. And neither of us, nor any one else, had the smallest thought that it was not all right.

Millichip was chosen hare. Snepp turned cranky over something or other at the last moment, and backed out of it. He made the best hare in the school: but Millichip was nearly as fleet a runner.

What with making the scent, and having it out with Snepp, time was hindered; and it must have been getting on for four o’clock when we started. Which docked the run considerably, for we had to be in at six to tea. On that account, perhaps, Millichip thought he must get over the ground the quicker; for I don’t think we had ever made so swift a course. Letting the hare get well on ahead, the signal was given, and we started after him in full cry, rending the air with shouts, and rushing along like the wind.

A right-down good hare Millichip turned out to be; doubling and twisting and finessing, and exasperating the hounds considerably. About five o’clock he had made tracks for home, as we found by the scent: but we could neither see him nor catch him. Later, I chanced to come to grief in a treacherous ditch, lost my straw hat, and tore the sleeve of my jacket. This threw me behind the rest; and when I pelted up to the next stile, there stood Van Rheyn. He had halted to rest his arms on it; his breath was coming in alarming gasps, his face whiter than a sheet.

“Halloa, Van Rheyn! What’s up? The pace is too much for you.”

“It was my breath,” said he, when he could answer. “I go on now.”

I put my hand on him. “Look here: the run’s nearly over: we shall soon be at home. Don’t go on so fast.”

“But I want to be in at what they call the death.”

“There’ll be no death to-day: the hare’s safe to win.”

“I want to keep up,” he answered, getting over the stile. “I said I could keep up, and do what the rest did.” And off he was again, full rush.

Before us, on that side of the stile, was a tolerably wide field. The pack had wound half over it during this short halt, making straight for the entrance to the coppice at the other end. We were doing our best to catch them up, when I distinctly saw a heavy stone flung into theirmidst. Looking at the direction it came from, there crept a dirty ragamuffin over the ground on his hands and knees. He did not see us two behind; and he flung another heavy stone. Had it struck anyone’s head it would have done serious damage.

Letting the chase go, I stole across and pounced upon him before he could get away. He twisted himself out of my hands like an eel, and stood grinning defiance and whistling to his dog. We knew the young scamp well: and could never decide whether he was a whole scamp, or half a natural. At any rate, he was vilely bad, was the pest of the neighbourhood, and had enjoyed some short sojourns in prison for trespass. Raddy was the name he went by; we knew him by no other; and how he got a living nobody could tell.

“What did you throw those stones for?”

“Shan’t tell ye. Didn’t throw ’em at you.”

“You had better mind what you are about, Mr. Raddy, unless you want to get into trouble.”

“Yah—you!” grinned Raddy.

There was nothing to be made of him; there never was anything. I should have been no match for Raddy in an encounter; and he would have killed me without the slightest compunction. Turning to go on my way, I was in time to see Van Rheyn tumble over the stile and disappear within the coppice. The rest must have nearly shot out of the other end by that time. It was a coppice that belonged to Sir John Whitney. Once through it, we were on our own grounds, and within a field of home.

I went on leisurely enough: no good to try to catch them up now. Van Rheyn would not do it, and he had more than half a field’s start of me. It must have been close upon six, for the sun was setting in a ball of fire; the amber sky around it was nearly as dazzling as the sun, and lighted up the field.

So that, plunging into the coppice, it was like going into a dungeon. For a minute or two, with the reflection of that red light lingering in my eyes, I could hardly see the narrow path; the trees were dark, thick, and met overhead. I ran along whistling: wondering whether that young Raddy was after me with his ugly dog; wondering why Sir John did not——

The whistling and the thoughts came to a summary end together. At the other end of the coppice, but a yard or two on this side the stile that divided it from the open field, there was Charles Van Rheyn on the ground, his back against the trunk of a tree, his arms stretched up, clasping it. But for that clasp, and the laboured breathing, I might have thought he was dead. For his face was ghastly, blue round the mouth, and wore the strangest expression I ever saw.

“Charley, what’s the matter?”

But he could not answer. He was panting frightfully, as thoughevery gasp would be his last. What on earth was I to do? Down I knelt, saying never another word.

“It—gives—me—much—hurt,” said he, at length, with a long pause between every word.

“What does?”

“Here”—pointing to his chest—towards the left side.

“Did you hurt yourself? Did you fall?”

“No, I not hurt myself. I fell because I not able to run more. It is the breath. I wish papa was near me!”

Instinct told me that he must have assistance, and yet I did not like to leave him. But what if delay in getting it should be dangerous? I rose up to go.

“You—you are not going to quit me!” he cried out, putting his feeble grasp on my arm.

“But, Charley, I want to get somebody to you,” I said in an agony,“I can’t do anything for you myself: anything in the world.”

“No, you stay. I should not like to be alone if I die.”

The shock the word gave me I can recall yet. Die! If there was any fear of that, it was all the more necessary I should make a rush for Dr. Frost and Featherston. Never had I been so near my wits’ end before, in the uncertainty as to what course I ought to take.

All in a moment, there arose a shrill whistle on the other side the stile. It was like a godsend. I knew it quite well for that vicious young reptile’s, but it was welcome to me as sunshine in harvest.

“There’s Raddy, Van Rheyn. I will send him.”

Vaulting over the stile, I saw the young man standing with his back to me near the hedge, his wretched outer garment—a sack without shape—hitched up, his hands in the pockets of his dilapidated trousers, that hung in fringes below the knee. He was whistling to his dog in the coppice. They must have struck through the tangles and briars higher up, which was a difficult feat, and strictly forbidden by law. It was well Sir John’s agent did not see Mr. Raddy—whose eyes, scratched and bleeding, gave ample proof of the trespass.

“Yah!” he shrieked out, turning at the sound of me, and grinning fresh defiance.

“Raddy,” I said, speaking in persuasive tones to propitiate him in my great need, “I want you to do something for me. Go to Dr. Frost as quickly as you are able, and say——”

Of all the derisive horrible laughs, his interruption was the worst and loudest. It drowned the words.

“One of the school has fallen and hurt himself,” I said, putting it in that way. “He’s lying here, and I cannot leave him. Hush, Raddy! I want to tell you,”—advancing a step or two nearer to him and lowering my voice to a whisper,—“I think he’s dying.”

“None o’ yer gammon here; none o’ yer lies”—and in proportionas I advanced, he retreated. “You’ve got a ambush in that there coppy—all the lot on you a-waiting to be down on me! Just you try it on!”

“I am telling you the truth, Raddy. There’s not a soul in there but the one I speak of. I say I fear he is dying. He is lying helpless. I will pay you to go”—feeling in my pockets to see how much I had there.

Raddy displayed his teeth: it was a trick of his when feeling particularly defiant. “What’ll yer pay me?”

“Sixpence”—showing it to him. “I will give it you when you have taken the message.”

“Give it first.”

Just for a moment I hesitated in my extremity, but I knew it would be only the sixpence thrown away. Paid beforehand, Raddy would no more do the errand than he’d fly. I told him as much.

“Then be dashed if I go!” And he passed off into a round of swearing.

Good Heavens! If I should not be able to persuade him! If Charles Van Rheyn should die for want of help!

“Did you ever have anybody to care for, Raddy? Did you ever have a mother?”

“Her’s sent over the seas, her is; and I be glad on’t. Her beated me, her did: I wasn’t a-going to stand that.”

“If you ever had anybody you cared for the least bit in the world, Raddy; if you ever did anybody a good turn in all your life, you will help this poor fellow now. Come and look at him. See whether I dare leave him.”

“None o’ yer swindles! Ye wants to get me in there, ye does. I warn’t borned yesterday.”

Well, it seemed hopeless. “Will you go for the sixpence, if I give it to you beforehand, Raddy?”

“Give it over, and see. Where the thunder have ye been?” dealing his dog a savage kick, as it came up barking. “Be I to whistle all day?” Another kick.

I had found two sixpences in my pocket; all its store. Bringing forth one, I held it out to him.

“Now listen, Raddy. I give you this sixpence now. You are to run with all your might to the house—and you can run, you know, like the wind. Say that I sent you—you know my name, Johnny Ludlow—sent you to tell them that the French boy is in the coppice dying;”for I thought it best to put it strong. “Dr. Frost, or some of them, must come to him at once, and they must send off for Mr. Featherston. You can remember that. The French boy, mind.”

“I could remember it if I tried.”

“Well, I’ll give you the sixpence. And look here—here’s anothersixpence. It is all the money I have. That shall be yours also, when you have done the errand.”

I slipped one of the sixpences back into my pocket, holding out the other. But I have often wondered since that he did not stun me with a blow, and take the two. Perhaps he could not entirely divest himself of that idea of the “ambush.” I did not like the leering look on his false face as he sidled cautiously up towards the sixpence.

“Take a look at him; you can see him from the stile,” I said, closing my hand over the sixpence while I spoke; “convince yourself that he is there, and that no trickery is meant. And, Raddy,” I added, slowly opening the hand again, “perhaps you may want help one of these days yourself in some desperate need. Do this good turn for him, and the like will be done for you.”

I tossed him the sixpence. He stole cautiously to the stile, making a wide circuit round me to do it, glanced at Van Rheyn, and then made straight off in the right direction as fast as his legs would carry him, the dog barking at his heels.

Van Rheyn was better when I got back to him; his breathing easier, the mouth less blue; and his arms were no longer clutching the tree-trunk. Nevertheless, there was that in his face that gave me an awful fear and made my breath for a moment nearly as short as his. I sat down beside him, letting him lean against me, as well as the tree, for better support.

“Are you afraid, Charley? I hope they’ll not be long.”

“I am not afraid with this,” he answered with a happy smile—and, opening his hand, I saw the little cross clasped in it.

Well, that nearly did for me. It was as though he meant to imply he knew he was dying, and was not afraid to die. And he did mean it.

“You do not comprehend?” he added, mistaking the look of my face—which no doubt was desperate. “I have kept the Saviour with me here, and He will keep me with Him there.”

“Oh—but, Charley! You can’t think you are going to die.”

“Yes, I feel so,” he answered quite calmly. “My mother said, that last Sunday, might not be long after her. She drew me close to her, and held my hand, and her tears were falling with mine. It was then she said it.”

“Oh, Charley! how can I help you?” I cried out in my pain and dread. “If I could only do something for you!”

“I would like to give you this,” he said, half opening his hand again, as it rested on his breast, just to show me the cross. “My mother has seen how good you have always been for me: she said she should look down, if permitted, to watch for me till I came. Would you please keep it to my memory?”

The hardest task I’d ever had in my life was to sit there. To sit there quietly—helpless. Dying! And I could do nothing to stay him!Oh, why did they not come? If I could only have run somewhere, or done something!

In a case like this the minutes seem as long as hours. Dr. Frost was up sooner than could have been hoped for by the watch, and Featherston with him. Raddy did his errand well. Chancing to see the surgeon pass down the road as he was delivering the message at the house, he ran and arrested him. He put his ill-looking face over the stile, as they came up, and I flung him the other sixpence, and thanked him too. The French master came running; others came: I hardly saw who they were, for my eyes were troubled.

The first thing that Featherston did was to open Van Rheyn’s things at the throat, spread a coat on the ground and put his head flat down upon it. But oh, there could be no mistake. He was dying: nearly gone. Dr. Frost knelt down, the better to get at him, and said something that we did not catch.

“Thank you, sir,” answered Van Rheyn, panting again and speaking with pain, but smiling faintly his grateful smile. “Do not be sorrowful. I shall see my mother. Sir—if you please—I wish to give my cross to Johnny Ludlow.”

Dr. Frost only nodded in answer. His heart must have been full.

“Johnny Ludlow has been always good for me,” he went on. “He will guard it to my memory: a keepsake. My mother would give it to him—she has seen that Johnny has stood by me ever since that first day.”

Monsieur Fontaine spoke to him in French, and Van Rheyn answered in the same language. While giving a fond message for his father, his voice grew feeble, his face more blue, and the lids slowly closed over his eyes. Dr. Frost said something about removing him to the house, but Featherston shook his head. “Presently, presently.”

“Adieu, sir,” said Van Rheyn faintly to Dr. Frost, and partly opening his eyes again, “Adieu, Monsieur Fontaine. Adieu, all. Johnny, say my very best adieux to the boys; tell them it has been very pleasant lately; say they have been very good comrades; and say that I shall see them all again when they come to heaven. Will you hold my hand?”

Taking his left hand in mine—the other had the gold cross in it—I sat on beside him. The dusk was increasing, so that we could no longer very well see his features in the dark coppice. My tears were dropping fast and thick, just as his tears had dropped that evening when I found him sitting at the foot of his bed.

Well, it was over directly. He gave one long deep sigh, and then another after an interval, and all was over. It seemed like a dream then in the acting; it seems, looking back, like a dream now.

He had died from the running at Hare and Hounds. The violent exercise had been too much for the heart. We heard later that theFrench family doctor had suspected the heart was not quite sound; and that was the reason of Monsieur Rheyn’s written restrictions on the score of violent exercise. But, as Dr. Frost angrily observed, why did the father not distinctly warn him against that special danger: how was it to be suspected in a lad of hearty and healthy appearance? Monsieur Van Rheyn came over, and took what remained of Charles back to Rouen, to be laid beside his late wife. It was a great blow to him to lose his only son. And all the property went away from the Van Rheyn family to Mrs. Scott in India.

The school went into a state that night, when we got in from the coppice, and I gave them Van Rheyn’s message. They knew something was up with him, but never suspected it could be death.

“I say, though,” cried Harry Parker, in a great access of remorse, speaking up amidst the general consternation, “we would never have worried him had we foreseen this. Poor Van Rheyn!”

And I have his gold cross by me this day. Sometimes, when looking at it, a fancy comes over me that he, looking down from heaven, sees it too.

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. TODHETLEY’S EARRINGS.

Again we had been spending the Christmas at Crabb Cot. It was January weather, cold and bright, the sun above and the white snow on the ground. Mrs. Todhetley had been over to Timberdale Court, to the christening of Robert and Jane Ashton’s baby: a year had gone by since their marriage. The mater went to represent Mrs. Coney, who was godmother. Jane was not strong enough to sit out a christening dinner, and that was to be given later. After some mid-day feasting, the party dispersed.

I went out to help Mrs. Todhetley from the carriage when she got back. The Squire was at Pershore for the day. It was only three o’clock, and the sun quite warm in spite of the snow.

“It is so fine, Johnny, that I think I’ll walk to the school,” she said, as she stepped down. “It may not be like this to-morrow, and I must see about those shirts.”

The parish school was making Tod a set of new shirts; and some bother had arisen about them. Orders had been given for large plaits in front, when Tod suddenly announced that he would have the plaits small.

“Only—— Can I go as I am?” cried Mrs. Todhetley, suddenly stopping in indecision, as she remembered her fine clothes: a silver-grey gown that shone like silver, white shawl of china crape, and be-feathered bonnet.

“Why, yes, of course you can go as you are, good mother. And look all the nicer for it.”

“I fear the children will stare! But then—if the shirts get made wrong! Well, will you go with me, Johnny?”

We reached the school-house, I waiting outside while she went in. It was during that time of strike that I have told of before, when Eliza Hoar died of it. The strike was in full swing still; the men looked discontented, the women miserable, the children pinched.

“I don’t know what in the world Joseph will say!” cried Mrs. Todhetley, as we were walking back. “Two of the shirts are finished with the large plaits. I ought to have seen about it earlier; but I did not think they would begin them quite so soon. We’ll just step into Mrs. Coney’s, Johnny, as we go home. I must tell her about the christening.”

For Mrs. Coney was a prisoner from an attack of rheumatism. It had kept her from the festivity. She was asleep, however, when we got in: and Mr. Coney thought she had better not be disturbed, even for the news of the little grandson’s christening, as she had lain awake all the past night in pain; so we left again.

“Why, Johnny! who’s that?”

Leaning against the gate of our house, in the red light of the setting sun, was an elderly woman, dark as a gipsy.

“A tramp,” I whispered, noticing her poor clothes.

“Do you want anything, my good woman?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

She was half kneeling in the snow, and lifted her face at the words: a sickly face, that somehow I liked now I saw it closer. Her tale was this. She had set out from her home, three miles off, to walk to Worcester, word having been sent her that her daughter, who was in service there, had met with an accident. She had not been strong of late, and a faintness came over her as she was passing the gate. But for leaning on it she must have fallen.

“You should go by train: you should not walk,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“I had not the money just by me, ma’am,” she answered. “It ’ud cost two shillings or half-a-crown. My daughter sent word I was to take the train and she’d pay for it: but she did not send the money, and I’d not got it just handy.”

“You live at Islip, you say. What is your name?”

“Nutt’n, ma’am,” said the woman, in the local dialect. Which name I interpreted into Nutten; but Mrs. Todhetley thought she said Nutt.

“I think you are telling me the truth,” said the mater, some hesitation in her voice, though. “If I were assured of it I would advance you half-a-crown for the journey.”

“The good Lord above us knows that I’m telling it,” returned the woman earnestly, turning her face full to the glow of the sun. “It’s more than I could expect you to do, ma’am, and me a stranger; but I’d repay it faithfully.”

Well, the upshot was that she got the half-crown lent her; and I ran in for a drop of warm ale. Molly shrieked out at me for it, refusing to believe that the mistress gave any such order, and saying she was not going to warm ale for parish tramps. So I got the ale and the tin, and warmed it myself. The woman was very grateful, drank it, and disappeared.

“Joseph, I am so very sorry! They have made two of your shirts, and the plaits are the large ones you say you don’t like.”

“Then they’ll just unmake them,” retorted Tod, in a temper.

We were sitting round the table at tea, Mrs. Todhetley having ordered some tea to be made while she went upstairs. She came down without her bonnet, and had changed her best gown for the one she mostly wore at home: it had two shades in it, and shone like the copper tea-kettle. The Squire was not expected home yet, and we were to dine an hour later than usual.

“That Miss Timmens is not worth her salt,” fired Tod, helping himself to some thin bread-and-butter. “What business has she to go and make my shirts wrong?”

“I fear the fault lies with me, Joseph, not with Miss Timmens. I had given her the pattern shirt, which has large plaits, you know, before you said you would prefer—— Oh, we hardly want the lamp yet, Thomas!” broke off the mater, as old Thomas came in with the lighted lamp.

“I’m sure we do, then,” cried Tod. “I can’t see which side’s butter and which bread.”

“And I, not thinking Miss Timmens would put them in hand at once, did not send to her as soon as you spoke, Joseph,” went on the mater, as Thomas settled the lamp on the table. “I am very sorry, my dear; but it is only two. The rest shall be done as you wish.”

Something, apart from the shirts, had put Tod out. I had seen it as soon as we got in. For one thing, he had meant to go to Pershore: and the pater, not knowing it, started without him.

“Let them unmake the two,” growled Tod.

“But it would be a great pity, Joseph. They are very nicely done; the stitching’s beautiful. I really don’t think it will signify.”

“You don’t, perhaps. You may like odd things. A pig with one ear, for example.”

“A what, Joseph?” she asked, not catching the last simile.

“I said a pig with one ear. No doubt you do like it. You are looking like one now, ma’am.”

The words made me gaze at Mrs. Todhetley, for the tone bore some personal meaning, and then I saw what Tod meant: an earring was absent. The lamp-light shone on the flashing diamonds, the bright pink topaz of the one earring; but the other ear was bare and empty.

“You have lost one of your earrings, mother!”

She put her hands to her ears, and started up in alarm. These earrings were very valuable: they had been left to her, when she was a child, in some old lady’s will, and constituted her chief possession in jewellery worth boasting of. Not once in a twelvemonth did she venture to put them on; but she had got them out to-day for the christening.

Whether it was that I had gazed at the earrings when I was a little fellow and sat in her lap, I don’t know; but I never saw any that I liked so well. The pink topaz was in a long drop, the slender rim ofgold that encircled it being set with diamonds. Mrs. Todhetley said they were worth fifty guineas: and perhaps they were. The glittering white of the diamonds round the pink was beautiful to look upon.

The house went into a commotion. Mrs. Todhetley made for her bedroom, to see whether the earring had dropped on the floor or was lodging inside her bonnet. She shook out her grey dress, hoping it had fallen amidst the folds. Hannah searched the stairs, candle in hand; the two children were made to stand in corners for fear they should tread on it. But the search came to nothing. It seemed clear enough that the earring was not in the house.

“Did you notice, Johnny, whether I had them both in my ears when we went to the school?” the mater asked.

No, I did not. I had seen them sparkling when she got out of the carriage, but had not noticed them after.

I went out to search the garden-path that she had traversed, and the road over to the Coneys’ farm. Tod helped me, forgetting his shirts and his temper. Old Coney said he remarked the earrings while Mrs. Todhetley was talking to him, and thought how beautiful they were. That is, he had remarked one of them; he was sure of that; and he thought if the other had been missing, its absence would have struck him. But that was just saying nothing; for he could not be certain that both were there.

“You may hunt till to-morrow morning, and get ten lanterns to it,”cried Molly, in her tart way, meeting us by the bay-tree, as we went stooping up the path again: “but you’ll be none the nearer finding it. That tramp got’s the earring, Master Joe.”

“What tramp?” demanded Tod, straightening himself.

“A tramp that Master Johnny there must needs give hot ale to,” returned Molly. “I know what them tramps are worth. They’d pull rings out of ears with their own fingers, give ’em the chance: and perhaps this woman did, without the missis seeing her.”

Tod turned to me for an explanation. I gave it, and he burst into a derisive laugh, meant for me and the mater. “To think we could be taken in by such a tale as that!” he cried: “we should never see tramp, or half-crown, or perhaps the earring again.”

The Squire came home in the midst of the stir. He blustered a little, partly at the loss, chiefly at the encouragement of tramps, calling it astounding folly. Ordering Thomas to bring a lantern, he went stooping his old back down the path, and across to Coney’s and back again; not believing any one had searched properly, and finally kicking the snow about.

“It’s a pity this here snow’s on the ground, sir,” cried Thomas. “A little thing like an earring might easily slip into it in falling.”

“Not a bit of it,” growled the Squire. “That tramp has got the earring.”

“I don’t believe the tramp has,” I stoutly said. “I don’t think she was a tramp at all: and she seemed honest. I liked her face.”

“There goes Johnny with his ‘faces’ again!” said the Squire, in laughing mockery: and Tod echoed it.

“It’s a good thing you don’t have to buy folks by their faces, Johnny: you’d get finely sold sometimes.”

“And she had a true voice,” I persisted, not choosing to be put down, also thinking it right to assert what was my conviction. “A voice you might trust without as much as looking at herself.”

Well, the earring was not to be found; though the search continued more or less till bed-time, for every other minute somebody would be looking again on the carpets.

“It is not so much for the value I regret it,” spoke Mrs. Todhetley, the tears rising in her meek eyes: “as for the old associations connected with it. I never had the earrings out but they brought back to me the remembrance of my girlhood’s home.”

Early in the morning I ran down to the school-house. More snow had fallen in the night. The children were flocking in. Miss Timmens had not noticed the earrings at all, but several of the girls said they had. Strange to say, though, most of them could not say for certain whether they saw both the earrings: they thought they did; but there it ended. Just like old Coney!

“I am sure both of them were there,” spoke up a nice, clean little girl, from a back form.

“What’s that, Fanny Fairfax?” cried Miss Timmens, in her quick way. “Stand up. How are you sure of it?”

“Please governess, I saw them both,” was the answer; and the child blushed like a peony as she stood up above the others and said it.

“Are you sure you did?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure, please, governess. I was looking which o’ the two shined the most. ’Twas when the lady was stooping over the shirt, and the sun came in at the window.”

“What did they look like?” asked Miss Timmens.

“They looked——” and there the young speaker came to a standstill.

“Come, Fanny Fairfax!” cried Miss Timmens, sharply. “What d’you stop for? I ask you what the earrings looked like. You must be able to tell if you saw them.”

“They were red, please, governess, and had shining things round them like the ice when it glitters.”

“She’s right, Master Johnny,” nodded Miss Timmens to me: “and she’s a very correct child in general. I think she must have seen both of them.”

I ran home with the news. They were at breakfast still.

“What a set of muffs the children must be, not to have taken betternotice!” cried Tod. “Why, when I saw only the one earring in, it struck my eye at once.”

“And for that reason it is almost sure that both of them were in at the school-house,” I rejoined. “The children did not particularly observe the two, but they would have remarked it directly had only one been in. Old Coney said the same.”

“Ay: it’s that tramp that has got it,” said the Squire. “While your mother was talking to her, it must have slipped out of the ear, and she managed to secure it. Those tramps lay their hands on anything; nothing comes amiss to them; they are as bad as gipsies. I dare say this was a gipsy—dark as she was. I’ll be off to Worcester and see the police: we’ll soon have her found. You had better come with me, Johnny; you’ll be able to describe her.”

We went off without delay, caught a passing train, and were soon at Worcester and at the police-station. The Squire asked for Sergeant Cripp: who came to him, and prepared to listen to his tale.

He began it in his impulsive way; saying outright that the earring had been stolen by a gipsy-tramp. I tried to say that it might have been only lost, but the pater scoffed at that, and told me to hold my tongue.

“And now, Cripp, what’s to be done?” he demanded, not having given the sergeant an opportunity to put in a word edgeways. “We must get the earring back; it is of value, and much prized, apart from that, by Mrs. Todhetley. The woman must be found, you know.”

“Yes, she must be found,” agreed the sergeant. “Can you give me a description of her?”

“Johnny—this young gentleman can,” said the Squire, rubbing his brow with his yellow silk handkerchief, for he had put himself into a heat, in spite of the frosty atmosphere that surrounded us. “He was with Mrs. Todhetley when she talked to the woman.”

“A thin woman of middle height, stooped a good deal, face pale and quiet, wrinkles on it, brown eyes,” wrote the sergeant, taking down what I said. “Black poke bonnet, clean cap border, old red woollen shawl with the fringe torn off in places. Can’t remember gown: except that it was dark and shabby.”

“And, of course, sir, you’ve no clue to her name?” cried the sergeant, looking at me.

“Yes: she said it was Nutten—as I understood it; but Mrs. Todhetley thought she said Nutt.” And I went on to relate the tale the woman told. Sergeant Cripp’s lips extended themselves in a silent smile.

“It was well got up, that tale,” said he, when I finished. “Just the thing to win over a warm-hearted lady.”

“But she could not have halted at the gate, expecting to steal the earring?”

“Of course not. She was prowling about to see what she couldsteal, perhaps watching her opportunity to get into the house. The earring fell in her way, a more valuable prize than she expected, and she made off with it.”

“You’ll be able to hunt her up if she’s in Worcester, Cripp,” put in the pater. “Don’t lose time.”

“If she’s in Worcester,” returned Mr. Cripp, with emphasis. “She’s about as likely to be in Worcester, Squire Todhetley, as I am to be at this present minute in Brummagem,” he familiarly added. “After saying she was coming to Worcester, she’d strike off in the most opposite direction to it.”

“Where on earth are we to look for her, then?” asked the pater, in commotion.

“Leave it to us, Squire. We’ll try and track her. And—I hope—get back the earring.”

“And about the advertisement for the newspapers, Cripp? We ought to put one in.”

Sergeant Cripp twirled the pen in his fingers while he reflected. “I think, sir, we will let the advertisement alone for a day or two,” he presently said. “Sometimes these advertisements do more harm than good: they put thieves on their guard.”

“Do they? Well, I suppose they do.”

“If the earring had been simply lost, then I should send an advertisement to the papers at once. But if it has been stolen by this tramp, and you appear to consider that point pretty conclusive——”

“Oh, quite conclusive,” interrupted the pater. “She has that earring as sure as this is an umbrella in Johnny Ludlow’s hand. Had it been dropped anywhere on the ground, we must have found it.”

“Then we won’t advertise it. At least not in to-morrow’s papers,”concluded Sergeant Cripp. And telling us to leave the matter entirely in his hands, he showed us out.

The Squire went up the street with his hands in his pockets, looking rather glum.

“I’m not sure that he’s right about the advertisement, Johnny,” he said at length. “I lay awake last night in bed, making up the wording of it in my own mind. Perhaps he knows best, though.”

“I suppose he does, sir.”

And he went on again, up one street, and down another, deep in thought.

“Let’s see—we have nothing to do here to-day, have we, Johnny?”

“Except to get the pills made up. The mother said we were to be sure and not forget them.”

“Oh, ay. And that’s all the way down in Sidbury! Couldn’t we as well get them made up by a druggist nearer?”

“But it is the Sidbury druggist who holds the prescription.”

“What a bother! Well, lad, let us put our best leg foremost, for I want to catch the one-o’clock train, if I can.”

Barely had we reached Sidbury, when who should come swinging along the pavement but old Coney, in a rough white great-coat and top-boots. Not being market-day, we were surprised to see him.

“I had to come in about some oats,” he explained. And then the Squire told him of our visit to the place, and the sergeant’s opinion about the advertisement.

“Cripp’s wrong,” said Coney, decisively. “Not advertise the earring!—why, it is the first step that ought to be taken.”

“Well, so I thought,” said the pater.

“The thing’s not obliged to have been stolen, Squire; it may have been dropped out of the ear in the road, and picked up by some one. The offering of a reward might bring it back again.”

“And I’ll be shot if I don’t do it,” exclaimed the pater. “I can see as far through a millstone as Cripp can.”

Turning into the Hare and Hounds, which was old Coney’s inn, they sat down at a table, called for pen and ink, and began to draw out an advertisement between them. “Lost! An earring of great value, pink topaz and diamonds,” wrote the Squire on a leaf of his pocket-book; and when he had got as far as that he looked up.

“Johnny, you go over to Eaton’s for a sheet or two of writing-paper. We’ll have it in all three of the newspapers. And look here, lad—you can run for the pills at the same time. Take care of the street slides. I nearly came down on one just now, you know.”

When I got back with the paper and pills, the advertisement was finished. It concluded with an offer of £5 reward. Applications to be made to Mr. Sergeant Cripp, or to Squire Todhetley of Crabb Cot. And, leaving it at the offices of the Herald, Journal, and Chronicle, we returned home. It would appear on the next day, Saturday; to the edification, no doubt, of Sergeant Cripp.

“Any news of the earring?” was the Squire’s first question when we got in.

No, there was no news of it, Mrs. Todhetley answered. And she had sent Luke Macintosh over to the little hamlet, Islip; who reported when he came back that there was no Mrs. Nutt, or Nutten, known there.

“Just what I expected,” observed the pater. “That woman was a thieving tramp, and she has the earring.”

Saturday passed over, and Sunday came. When the Worcester paper arrived on Saturday morning the advertisement was in it as large as life, and the pater read it out to us. Friday and Saturday had been very dull, with storms of snow; on Sunday the sun shone again, and the air was crisp.

It was about three o’clock, and we were sitting at the dessert-table cracking filberts, for on Sundays we always dined early, after morning service—when Thomas came in and said a stranger had called, and was asking if he could see Mrs. Todhetley. But the mater, putting a shawl over her head and cap, had just stepped over to sit a bit with sick Mrs. Coney.

“Who is it, Thomas?” asked the Squire. “A stranger! Tell him to send his name in.”

“His name’s Eccles, sir,” said Thomas, coming back again. “He comes, he says, from Sergeant Cripp.”

“My goodness!—it must be about the earring,” cried the Squire.

“That it is, sir,” said old Thomas. “The first word he put to me was an inquiry whether you had heard news of it.”

I followed the pater into the study. Tod did not leave his filberts. Standing by the fire was a tall, well-dressed man, with a black moustache and blue silk necktie. I think the Squire was a little taken aback at the fashionable appearance of the visitor. He had expected to see an ordinary policeman.

“Have you brought tidings of Mrs. Todhetley’s earring?” began the pater, all in a flutter of eagerness.

“I beg a thousand pardons for intruding upon you on a Sunday,”returned the stranger, cool and calm as a cucumber, “but the loss of an hour is sometimes most critical in these cases. I have the honour, I believe, of speaking to Squire Todhetley?”

The Squire nodded. “Am I mistaken in supposing that you come about the earring?” he reiterated. “I understood my servant to mention Sergeant Cripp. But—you do not, I presume, belong to the police force?”

“Only as a detective officer,” was the answer, given with a taking smile. “A private officer,” he added, putting a stress upon the word.“My name is Eccles.”

“Take a seat, Mr. Eccles,” said the Squire, sitting down himself, while I stood back by the window. “I do hope you have brought tidings of the earring.”

“Yes—and no,” replied Mr. Eccles, with another fascinating smile, as he unbuttoned his top-coat. “We think we have traced it; but we cannot yet be sure.”

“And where is it?—who has it?” cried the Squire, eagerly.

“It is a very delicate matter, and requires delicate handling,”observed the detective, after a slight pause. “For that reason I have come over to-day myself. Cripp did not choose to entrust it to one of his men.”

“I am sure I am much obliged to him, and to you too,” said the Squire, his face beaming. “Where is the earring?”

“Before I answer that question, will you be so kind as to relate tome, in a few concise words, the precise circumstances under which the earring was lost?”

The pater entered on the story, and I helped him. Mr. Eccles listened attentively.

“Exactly so,” said he, when it was over. “Those are the facts Cripp gave me; but it was only second-hand, you see, and I preferred to hear them direct from yourselves. They serve to confirm our suspicion.”

“But where is the earring?” repeated the pater.

“If it is where we believe it to be, it is in a gentleman’s house at Worcester. At least he may be called a gentleman. He is a professional man: a lawyer, in fact. But I may not give names in the present stage of the affair.”

“And how did the earring get into his house?” pursued the Squire, all aglow with interest.

“News reached us last evening,” began Mr. Eccles, after searching in his pockets for something that he apparently could not find: perhaps a note-case—“reached us in a very singular way, too—that this gentleman had been making a small purchase of jewellery in the course of yesterday; had been making it in private, and did not wish it talked of. A travelling pedlar—that was the description we received—had come in contact with him and offered him an article for sale, which he, after some haggling, purchased. By dint of questioning, we discovered this article to be an earring: one earring, not a pair. Naturally Mr. Cripp’s suspicion was at once aroused: he thought it might be the very self-same earring that you have lost. We consulted together, and the result is, I decided to come over and see you.”

“I’d lay all I’ve got it is the earring!” exclaimed the Squire, in excitement. “The travelling pedlar that sold it must have been that woman tramp.”

“Well, no,” returned the detective, quietly. “It was a man. Her husband, perhaps; or some confederate of hers.”

“No doubt of that! And how can we get back the earring?”

“We shall get it, sir, never fear; if it be the earring you have lost. But, as I have just observed, it is a matter that will require extreme delicacy and caution in the handling. First of all, we must assure ourselves beyond doubt that the earring is the one in question. To take any steps upon an uncertainty would not do: this gentleman might turn round upon us unpleasantly.”

“Well, let him,” cried the Squire.

The visitor smiled his candid smile again, and shook his head. “For instance, if, after taking means to obtain possession of the earring, we found it to be coral set with pearls, or opal set with emeralds, instead of a pink topaz with diamonds, we should not only look foolish ourselves, but draw down upon us the wrath of the present possessor.”

“Is he a respectable man?” asked the pater. “I know most of the lawyers——”

“He stands high enough in the estimation of the town, but I have known him do some very dirty actions in his profession,” interrupted Mr. Eccles, speaking rapidly. “With a man like him to deal with, we must necessarily be wary.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“The first step, Squire Todhetley, is to make ourselves sure that the earring is the one we are in quest of. With this view, I am here to request Mrs. Todhetley to allow me to see the fellow-earring. Cripp has organized a plan by which he believes we can get to see the one I have been telling you of; but it will be of no use our seeing it unless we can identify it.”

“Of course not. By all means. Johnny, go over and ask your mother to come in,” added the Squire, eagerly. “I’m sure I don’t know where she keeps her things, and might look in her places for ever without finding it. Meanwhile, Mr. Eccles, can I offer you some refreshment? We have just dined off a beautiful sirloin of beef: it’s partly cold now, but perhaps you won’t mind that.”

Mr. Eccles said he would take a little, as the Squire was so good as to offer it, for he had come off by the first train after morning service, and so lost his dinner. Taking my hat, I dashed open the dining-room door in passing. Tod was at the nuts still, Hugh and Lena on either side of him.

“I say, Tod, do you want to see a real live detective? There’s one in the study.”

Who should be seated in the Coneys’ drawing-room, her bonnet and shawl on, and her veil nearly hiding her sad face, but Lucy Bird—Lucy Ashton that used to be. It always gave me a turn when I saw her: bringing up all kinds of ugly sorrows and troubles. I shook hands, and asked after Captain Bird.

She believed he was very well, she said, but she had been spending the time since yesterday at Timberdale Court with Robert and Jane. To-day she had been dining with the Coneys—who were always kind to her, she added, with a sigh—and she was now about to go off to the station to take the train for Worcester.

The mater was in Mrs. Coney’s bedroom with old Coney and Cole the doctor, who was paying his daily visit. One might have thought they were settling all the cases of rheumatism in the parish by the time they took over it. While I waited, I told Mrs. Bird about the earring and the present visit of Detective Eccles. Mrs. Todhetley came down in the midst of it; and lifted her hands at the prospect of facing a detective.

“Dear me! Is he anything dreadful to look at, Johnny? Very rough? Has he any handcuffs?”

It made me laugh. “He is a regular good-looking fellow—quite a gentleman. Tall and slender, and well-dressed: gold studs and a blue necktie. He has a ring on his finger and wears a black moustache.”

Mrs. Bird suddenly lifted her head, and stared at me: perhaps the description surprised her. The mater seemed inclined to question my words; but she said nothing, and came away after bidding good-bye to Lucy.

“Keep up your heart, my dear,” she whispered. “Things may grow brighter for you some time.”

When I got back, Mr. Eccles had nearly finished the sirloin, some cheese, and a large tankard of ale. The Squire sat by, hospitably pressing him to take more, whenever his knife and fork gave signs of flagging. Tod stood looking on, his back against the mantelpiece. Mrs. Todhetley soon appeared with a little cardboard box, where the solitary earring was lying on a bed of wool.

Rising from the table, the detective carried the box to the window, and stood there examining the earring; first in the box, then out of it. He turned it about in his hand, and looked at it on all sides; it took him a good three minutes.

“Madam,” said he, breaking the silence, “will you entrust this earring to us for a day or two? It will be under Sergeant Cripp’s charge, and perfectly safe.”

“Of course, of course,” interposed the Squire, before any one could speak. “You are welcome to take it.”

“You see, it is possible—indeed, most probable—that only one of us may be able to obtain sight of the other earring. Should it be Cripp, my having seen this one will be nearly useless to him. It is essential that he should see it also: and it will not do to waste time.”

“Pray take charge of it, sir,” said Mrs. Todhetley, mentally recalling what I had said of his errand to her and Lucy Bird. “I know it will be safe in your hands and Sergeant Cripp’s. I am only too glad that there is a probability of the other one being found.”

“And look here,” added the Squire to Eccles, while the latter carefully wrapped the box in paper, and put it into his inner breast-pocket,“don’t you and Cripp let that confounded gipsy escape. Have her up and punish her.”

“Trust us for that,” was the detective’s answer, given with an emphatic nod. “She is already as good as taken, and her confederate also. There’s not a doubt—I avow it to you—that the other earring is yours. We only wait to verify it.”

And, with that, he buttoned his coat, and bowed himself out, the Squire himself attending him to the door.

“He is as much like a detective as I’m like a Dutchman,” commented Tod. “At least, according to what have been all my previous notions of one. Live and learn.”

“He seems quite a polished man, has quite the manners of society,”added the mater. “I do hope he will get back my poor earring.”

“Mother, is Lucy Bird in more trouble than usual?” I asked.

“She is no doubt in deep distress of some kind, Johnny. But she is never out of it. I wish Robert Ashton could induce her to leave that most worthless husband of hers!”

The Squire, after watching off the visitor, came in, rubbing his hands and looking as delighted as old Punch. He assumed that the earring was as good as restored, and was immensely taken with Mr. Eccles.

“A most intelligent, superior man,” cried he. “I suppose he is what is called a gentleman-detective: he told me he had been to college. I’m sure it seems quite a condescension in him to work with Cripp and the rest.”

And the whole of tea-time and all the way to church, the praises were being rung of Mr. Eccles. I’m not sure but that he was more to us that night than the sermon.

“I confess I feel mortified about that woman, though,” confessed Mrs. Todhetley. “You heard him say that she was as good as taken: they must have traced the earring to her. I did think she was one to be trusted. How one may be deceived in people!”

“I’d have trusted her with a twenty-pound note, mother.”

“Hark at Johnny!” cried Tod. “This will be a lesson for you, lad.”

Monday morning. The Squire and Tod had gone over to South Crabb. Mrs. Todhetley sat at the window, adding up some bills, her nose red with the cold: and I was boxing Hugh’s ears, for he was in one of his frightfully troublesome moods, when Molly came stealing in at the door, as covertly as if she had been committing murder.

“Ma’am! ma’am!—there’s that tramp in the yard!”

“What?” cried the mater, turning round.

“I vow it’s her; I know the old red shawl again,” pursued Molly, with as much importance as though she had caught half the thieves in Christendom. “She turned into the yard as bold as brass; so I just slipped the bolt o’ the door against her, and come away. You’ll have her took up on the instant, ma’am, won’t you?”

“But if she has come back, I don’t think she can be guilty,” cried Mrs. Todhetley, after a bewildered pause. “We had better see what she wants. What do you say, Johnny?”

“Why, of course we had. I’ll go to her, as Molly’s afraid.”

Rushing out of hearing of Molly’s vindictive answer, I went round through the snow to the yard, and found the woman meekly tapping at the kitchen-door—the old red shawl, and the black bonnet, and thewhite muslin cap border, all the same as before. Before I got quite up, the kitchen-door was cautiously drawn open, and Mrs. Todhetley looked out. The poor old woman dropped a curtsy and held out half-a-crown on the palm of her withered hand.

“I’ve made bold to call at the door to leave it, lady. And I can never thank you enough, ma’am,” she added, the tears rising to her eyes; “my tongue would fail if I tried it. ’Tis not many as would have trusted a stranger; and, that, a poor body like me. I got over to Worcester quick and comfortable, ma’am, thanks to you, and found my daughter better nor I had hoped for.”

The same feeling of reliance, of trust, arose within me as I saw her face and heard her voice and words. If this woman was what they had been fancying her, I’d never eat tarts again.

“Come in,” said Mrs. Todhetley; and Molly, looking daggers as she heard it, approached her mistress with a whisper.

“Don’t, ma’am. It’s all a laid-out plan. She has heard that she’s suspected, and brings back the half-crown, thinking to put us off the scent.”

“Step this way,” went on Mrs. Todhetley, giving no heed to Molly, except by a nod—and she took the woman into the little store-room where she kept her jam-pots and things, and bade her go to the fire.

“What did you tell me your name was,” she asked, “when you were here on Friday?”

“Nutt’n, ma’am.”

“Nutten,” repeated the mater, glancing at me. “But I sent over to Islip, and no one there knew anything about you—they denied that any one of your name lived there.”

“Why, how could they do that?” returned the woman, with every appearance of surprise. “They must have mistook somehow. I live in the little cottage, ma’am, by the dung-heap. I’ve lived there for five-and-twenty year, and brought up my children there, and never had parish pay.”

“And gone always by the name of Nutten?”

“Not never by no other, ma’am. Why should I?”

Was she to be believed? There was the half-crown in Mrs. Todhetley’s hand, and there was the honest wrinkled old face looking up at us openly. But, on the other side, there was the assertion of the Islip people; and there was the earring.

“What was the matter with your daughter, and in what part of Worcester does she live?” queried the mater.

“She’s second servant to a family in Melcheapen Street, ma’am, minds the children and does the beds, and answers the door, and that. When I got there—and sick enough my heart felt all the way, thinking what the matter could be—I found that she had fell from the parlour window that she’d got outside to clean, and broke her arm and scarredher face, and frighted and shook herself finely. But thankful enough I was that ’twas no worse. Her father, ma’am, died of an accident, and I can never abear to hear tell of one.”

“I—I lost an earring out of my ear that afternoon,” said Mrs. Todhetley, plunging into the matter, but not without hesitation. “I think I must have lost it just about the time I was talking to you. Did you pick it up?”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t. I should have gave it to you if I had.”

“You did not carry it off with you, I suppose!” interrupted wrathful Molly; who had come in to get some eggs, under pretence that the batter-pudding was waiting for them.

And whether it was Molly’s sharp and significant tone, or our silence and looks, I don’t know; but the woman saw it all then, and what she was suspected of.

“Oh, ma’am, were you thinking that ill of me?”—and the hands shook as they were raised, and the white border seemed to lift itself from the horror-stricken face. “Did you think I could do so ill a turn, and after all the kindness showed me? The good Lord above knows I’m not a thief. Dear heart! I never set eyes, lady, on the thing you’ve lost.”

“No, I am sure you didn’t,” I cried; “I said so all along. It might have dropped anywhere in the road.”

“I never see it, nor touched it, sir,” she reiterated, the tears raining down her cheeks. “Oh, ma’am, do believe me!”

Molly tossed her head as she went out with the eggs in her apron; but I would sooner have believed myself guilty than that poor woman. Mrs. Todhetley thought with me. She offered her some warm ale and a crust; but the old woman shook her head in refusal, and went off in a fit of crying.

“She knows no more of the earring than I know of it, mother.”

“I feel sure she does not, Johnny.”

“That Molly’s getting unbearable. I wonder you don’t send her away.”

“She has her good points, dear,” sighed Mrs. Todhetley. “Only think of her cooking! and of what a thrifty, careful manager she is!”

The Squire and Tod got home for lunch. Nothing could come up to their ridicule when they heard what had occurred, saying that the mother and I were two muffs, fit to go about the world in a caravan as specimens of credulity. Like Molly, they thought we ought to have secured the woman.

“But you see she was honest in the matter of the half-crown,”debated Mrs. Todhetley, in her mild way. “She brought that back. It does not stand to reason that she would have dared to come within miles of the place, if she had taken the earring.”

“Why, it’s just the thing she would do,” retorted the Squire, pacingabout in a commotion. “Once she had got rid of the earring, she’d show up here to throw suspicion off herself. And she couldn’t come without returning the half-crown: it must have gone nicely against the grain to return that.”

And Mrs. Todhetley, the most easily swayed spirit in the world, began to veer round again like a weathercock, and fear we had been foolish.

“You should see her jagged-out old red shawl,” cried Molly, triumphantly. “All the red a’most washed out of it, and the edges in tatters. I know a tramp when I sees one: and the worst of all tramps is them that do the tricks with clean hands and snow-white cap-borders.”

The theme lasted us all the afternoon. I held my tongue, for it was of no use contending against the stream. It was getting dusk when Cole called in, on his way from the Coneys. The Squire laid the grievance before him, demanding whether he had ever heard of two people so simple as I and the mother.

“What did she say her name was?” asked Cole. “Nutten?—of Islip? Are you sure she did not say Norton?”

“She said Nutt’n. We interpreted it into Nutten.”

“Yes, Johnny, that’s how she would say it. I’ll lay a guinea it’s old Granny Norton.”

“Granny Norton!” echoed the Squire. “She is respectable.”

“Respectable, honest, upright as the day,” replied Cole. “I have a great respect for old Mrs. Norton. She’s very poor now; but she was not always so.”

“She told us this morning that she lived in the cottage by the dung-heap,”I put in.

“Exactly: she does so. And a nice dung-heap it is; the disgrace of Islip,” added Cole.

“And you mean to say, Cole, that you know this woman—that she’s not a tramp, but Mrs. Norton?” spoke the pater.

“I know Mrs. Norton of Islip,” he answered. “I saw her pass my window this morning: she seemed to be coming from the railway-station. It was no tramp, Squire.”

“How was she dressed?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“Dressed? Well, her shawl was red, and her bonnet black. I’ve never seen her dressed otherwise, when abroad, these ten years past.”

“And—has she a daughter in service at Worcester?”

“Yes, I think so. Yes, I am sure so. It’s Susan. Oh, it is the same person: you need not doubt it.”

“Then what the deuce did Luke Macintosh mean by bringing word back from Islip that she was not known there?” fiercely demanded the Squire, turning to me.

“But Luke said he asked for her by the name of Nutt—Mrs. Nutt.I questioned him about it this afternoon, sir, and he said he understood Nutt to have been the name we gave him.”

This was very unsatisfactory as far as the earring went. (And we ascertained later that poor Mrs. Norton was Mrs. Norton, and had been suspected wrongly.) For, failing the tramp view of the case, who could have sold the earring to the professional gentleman in Worcester?

“Cripp knows what he is about; never fear,” observed the Squire.“Now that he has the case well in hand, he is sure to pull it successfully through.”

“Yes, you may trust Cripp,” said the doctor. “And I hope, Mrs. Todhetley, you will soon be gladdened by the sight of your earring again.” And Cole went out, telling us we were going to have a thaw. Which we could have told him, for it had already set in, and the snow was melting rapidly.

“To think that I should have done so stupid a thing. But I have been so flustered this morning by that parson and his nonsense that I hardly know what I’m about.”

The speaker was Miss Timmens. She had come up in a passion, after twelve o’clock school. Not with us, or with her errand—which was to bring one of the new shirts to show, made after Tod’s fancy—but with the young parson. Upon arriving and unfolding the said shirt, Miss Timmens found that she had brought the wrong shirt—one of those previously finished. The thaw had gone on so briskly in the night that this morning the roads were all mud and slop, and Miss Timmens had walked up in her pattens.

“He is enough to make a saint swear, with his absurdities and his rubbish,” went on Miss Timmens, turning from the table where lay the unfolded shirt, and speaking of the new parson; between whom and herself hot war waged. “You’d never believe, ma’am, what he did this morning”—facing Mrs. Todhetley. “I had got the spelling-class up, and the rest of the girls were at their slates and copies, and that, when in he walked amidst the roomful. ‘Miss Timmens,’ says he to me, in the hearing of them all, ‘I think these children should learn a little music. And perhaps a little drawing might not come amiss to those who have talent for it.’ ‘Oh yes, of course,’ says I, hardly able to keep my temper, ‘and a little dancing as well, and let ’em go out on the green daily and step their figures to a fife and tambourine!’ ‘There’s nothing like education,’ he goes on, staring hard at me, as if he hardly knew whether to take my words for jest or earnest; ‘and it is well to unite, as far as we can, the ornamental with the useful, it makes life pleasanter. It is quite right to teach girls to hem dusters and darn stockings, but I think some fancy-work should be added to it: embroidery and the like.’ ‘Oh, you great baby!’ I thought tomyself, and did but just stop my tongue from saying it. ‘Will embroidery and music and drawing help these girls to scour floors, and cook dinners, and wash petticoats?’ I asked him. ‘If I had a set of young ladies here, it would be right for them to learn accomplishments; but these girls are to be servants. And all I can say, sir, is, that if ever those new-fangled notions are introduced, you’ll have to find another mistress, for I’ll not stop to help in it. It would just lead many a girl to her ruin, sir; that’s what it would do, whoever lives to see it.’ Well, he went away with that, ma’am, but he had put my temper up—talking such dangerous nonsense before the girls, their ears all agape to listen!—and when twelve o’clock struck, I was not half through the spelling-class! Altogether, it’s no wonder I brought away the wrong shirt.”

Miss Timmens, her errand a failure, began folding up the shirt in a bustle, her thin face quite fiery with anger. Mrs. Todhetley shook her head; she did not approve of nonsensical notions for these poor peasant girls any more than did the rest of us.

“I’ll bring up the right shirt this evening when school’s over; and if it suits we’ll get on with the rest,” concluded Miss Timmens, making her exit with the parcel.

“What the world will come to later, Mr. Johnny, if these wild ideas get much ground, puzzles me to think of,” resumed Miss Timmens, as I went with her, talking, along the garden-path. “We shall have no servants, sir; none. It does not stand to reason that a girl will work for her bread at menial offices when she has had fine notions instilled into her. Grammar, and geography, and history, and botany, and music, and singing, and fancy-work!—what good will they be of to her in making beds and cleaning saucepans? The upshot will be that they won’t make beds and they won’t clean saucepans; they’ll be above it. The Lord protect ’em!—for I don’t see what else will; or what will become of them. Or of the world, either, when it can get no servants. My goodness, Master Johnny! what’s that? Surely it’s the lost earring?”

Close to the roots of a small fir-tree it lay: the earring that had caused so much vexation and hunting. I picked it up: its pink topaz and diamonds shone brightly as ever in the sun, and were quite uninjured. Mrs. Todhetley remembered then, though it had slipped her memory before, that in coming indoors after the interview with the woman at the gate, she had stopped to shake this fir-tree, bowed down almost to breaking with its weight of snow. The earring must have fallen from her ear then into the snow, and been hidden by it.

Without giving himself time for a mouthful of lunch, the Squire tore away to the station through the mud, as fast as his legs would carry him, and thence to Worcester by train. What an unfortunate mistake it would be should that professional gentleman have been accused, who had bought something from the travelling pedlar!

“Well, Cripp, here’s a fine discovery!” panted the Squire, as he went bursting into the police-station and to the presence of Sergeant Cripp. “The lost earring has turned up.”

“I’m sure I am very glad to hear it,” said the sergeant, facing round from a letter he was writing. “How has it been found?”

And the Squire told him how.

“It was not stolen at all, then?”

“Not at all, Cripp. And the poor creature we suspected of taking it proves to be a very respectable old body indeed, nothing of the tramp about her. You—you have not gone any lengths yet with that professional gentleman, I hope!” added the Squire, dropping his voice to a confidential tone.

Cripp paused for a minute, as if not understanding.

“We have not employed any professional man at all in the matter,”said he; “have not thought of doing so.”

“I don’t mean that, Cripp. You know. The gentleman you suspected of having bought the earring.”

Cripp stared. “I have not suspected any one.”

“Goodness me! you need not be so cautious, Cripp,” returned the Squire, somewhat nettled. “Eccles made a confidant of me. He told me all about it—except the name.”

“What Eccles?” asked Cripp. “I really do not know what you are talking of, sir.”

“What Eccles—why, your Eccles. Him you sent over to me on Sunday afternoon: a well-dressed, gentlemanly man, with a black moustache. Detective Eccles.”

“I do not know any Detective Eccles.”

“Dear me, my good man, you must be losing your memory!”retorted the Squire, in wrath. “He came straight to me from you on Sunday; you sent him off in haste without his dinner.”

“Quite a mistake, sir,” said the sergeant. “It was not I who sent him.”

“Why, bless my heart and mind, Cripp, you’ll be for telling me next the sun never shone! Where’s your recollection gone to?”

“I hope my recollection is where it always has been, Squire. We must be at cross-purposes. I do not know any one of the name of Eccles, and I have not sent any one to you. As a proof that I could not have done it, I may tell you, sir, that I was summoned to Gloucester on business last Friday directly after I saw you, and did not get back here until this morning.”

The Squire rubbed his face, whilst he revolved probabilities, and thought Cripp must be dreaming.

“He came direct from you—from yourself, Cripp; and he disclosed to me your reasons for hoping you had found the earring, and your doubts of the honesty of the man who had bought it—the lawyer, youremember. And he brought back the other earring to you that you might compare them.”

“Eh—what?” cried Cripp, briskly. “Brought away the other earring, do you say, sir?”

“To be sure he did. What else did you send him for?”

“And he has not returned it to you?”

“Returned it! of course not. You hold it, don’t you?”

“Then, Squire Todhetley, you have been cleverly robbed of this second earring,” cried Cripp, quietly. “Dodged out of it, sir. The man who went over to you must have been a member of the swell-mob. Well-dressed, and a black moustache!”

“He was a college man, had been at Oxford,” debated the unfortunate pater, sitting on a chair in awful doubt. “He told me so.”

“You did not see him there, sir,” said the sergeant, with a suppressed laugh. “I might tell you I had a duke for a grandmother; but it would be none nearer the fact.”

“Mercy upon us all!” groaned the Squire. “What a mortification it will be if that other earring’s gone! Don’t you think some one in your station here may have sent him, if you were out yourself?”

“I will inquire, for your satisfaction, Squire Todhetley,” said the sergeant, opening the door; “but I can answer for it beforehand that it will be useless.”

It was as Cripp thought. Eccles was not known at the station, and no one had been sent to us.

“It all comes of that advertisement you put in, Squire,” finished up Cripp, by way of consolation. “The swell-mob would not have known there was a valuable jewel missing but for that, or the address of those who had missed it.”

The pater came home more crestfallen than a whipped schoolboy, after leaving stringent orders with Cripp and his men to track out the swindler. It was a blow to all of us.

“I said he looked as much like a detective as I’m like a Dutchman,”quoth Tod.

“Well, it’s frightfully mortifying,” said the Squire.

“And the way he polished off that beef, and drank down the ale! I wonder he did not contrive to walk off with the silver tankard!”

“Be quiet, Joe! You are laughing, sir! Do you think it is a laughing matter?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said bold Tod. “It was cleverly done.”

Up rose the pater in a passion. Vowing vengeance against the swindlers who went about the world, got up in good clothes and a moustache; and heartily promising the absent and unconscious Cripp to be down upon him if he did not speedily run the man to earth.

And that’s how Mrs. Todhetley lost the other earring.

CHAPTER IX.

A TALE OF SIN.

Part the First.

f I don’t relate this quite as usual, and it is found to be different from what I generally write, it is because I know less about it than others know. The history is Duffham’s; not mine. And there are diaries in it, and all kinds of foreign things. That is, foreign to me. Duffham holds all the papers, and has lent them to me to use. It came about in this way.

“Whilst you are picking up the sea-breezes, Johnny,” he said, when I called to tell him where I was going, “you can be getting on with another paper or two for us, I hope; for we like your stories.”

“But I am going away for a rest, Mr. Duffham; not to work. I don’t want to be ransacking memory for materials during any holiday, and then weaving them into what you call a story. Much rest that would be!”

“I’ll give you the materials for one,” he said; “plenty of them: it won’t take much weaving; you’ll have it all before your eyes. It will be nothing but play-work to you; just a bit of copying.”

“But I don’t care to put fiction on paper and send it forth as though it were true. What I tell of has mostly happened, you know.”

Duffham laughed a little. “If everything told in print were as true as this, Johnny Ludlow, the world would have witnessed some strange events. Not that you’ll find anything strange in this tale: it is quite matter-of-fact. There’s no romance about it; nothing but stern reality.”

“Well, let me see the papers.”

Duffham went out of the surgery, and came back with his spectacles on, and carrying some papers tied up with pink tape.

“You’ll find a sort of narrative begun, Johnny,” he said, untying the tape, “for I tried my own hand at it. But I found I could not get on well. Writing manuscripts is not so much in my line as doctoring patients.”

“Why, here’s Lady Chavasse’s name in it!” I exclaimed, glancing over the papers. “Is it about her?”

“You’ll see who it’s about and who it’s not about, Johnny,” he answered, rolling them up again. “I should like you to retain the title I have put to it.”

“What is the title?”

Duffham undid the first sheet, and held it in silence for me to read.“A Tale of Sin.” It took me aback. Sundry considerations naturally struck me.

“I say, Mr. Duffham, if it is about sin, and the people are still living, how will they like to see it talked about in print?”

“You leave the responsibility to me,” he said; “I’ll take it on my own shoulders. All you have to do is to put it into ship-shape, Johnny. That is a matter of course.”

And so I took the papers. But the tale is Duffham’s; not mine.

To begin with, and make it explainable, we have to go ever so many years back: but it won’t be for long.

Duffham’s predecessor as general practitioner at Church Dykely was a Mr. Layne. Some of the poor would spell it without the “y,” “Lane,” but the other was the proper way. This Mr. Layne was of rather good family, whilst his wife was only a small working farmer’s daughter. Mr. Layne lived in a pretty red-brick house, opposite to Duffham’s present residence. It stood a yard or two back from the path, and had woodbines and jessamine creeping up its walls; the door was in the middle, a window on each side; and there was a side-door round the little garden-path, that opened into the surgery. The house was his own.

Nearly a mile beyond the village, along the straight highway, stood the gates and lodge of a fine place called Chavasse Grange, belonging to Sir Peter Chavasse. He remained an old bachelor up to nearly the end of his life. And then, when it seemed to be getting time for him to prepare for the grave, he suddenly got married. The young lady was a Miss Gertrude Cust: as might have been read in the newspapers of the day, announcing the wedding.

But, when Sir Peter brought her home, the wonder to the neighbourhood was, what could have induced the young lady to have him; for she turned out to be a mere child in years, and very beautiful. It was whispered that her family, high, poor, and haughty, had wished her to make a different match; to a broken-down old nobleman, ten times richer than Sir Peter; but that she hated the man. Sir Peter had five thousand a-year, and his baronetcy was not of ancient creation. The new lady was found to be very pleasant: she went into the village often, and made acquaintance with everybody.

It was just about eight months after the marriage that Sir Peterdied. The death was sudden. Mr. Layne was sent for in haste to the Grange, and found he was too late. Too late for Sir Peter: but Lady Chavasse, overcome with grief and terror, was in great need of his services.

There was a baby expected at the Grange. Not yet: in three or four months to come. And, until this child should be born, the baronetcy had to lie in abeyance. If it proved to be a boy, he would take his father’s title and fortune; if a girl, both title and fortune would lapse to some distant cousin; a young man, compared with Sir Peter; who was in the navy, and was called Parker Chavasse.

And now we must give a line or two from one of the diaries I spoke of. It is Mr. Layne’s: and it appears to have been partly kept as a professional note-book, partly as a private journal. At this time Mr. Layne was a middle-aged man, with three young children, girls; he had married later than some men do.

[From an Old Note-book of Mr. Layne’s.]

May 18th.—Have had a fatiguing day. Upon getting home from my visit to Lady Chavasse, there were five different messages waiting for me. It never rains but it pours. Ten o’clock P.M., and I am dead tired; but I must write my notes before going to bed.

I wish I could get some strength and spirit into Lady Chavasse. This listlessness tells sadly against her. Over and over again it has been on the tip of my tongue to say it may go hard with her unless she uses more exertion; but I don’t like to frighten her. Nearly four months now since Sir Peter died, and she has never been out but to church—and to that she goes in the pony-carriage. “My lady, you ought to walk; my lady, you must walk,” say I. And it is just as though I spoke to the post at the lodge-gates.

I was much surprised by what she told me to-day—that there was no settlement made on her at her marriage. “Do you think my baby will be a boy, Mr. Layne?” she asked—as if it were possible for me to tell! “If it is not,” she went on, “I shall have to turn out of my home here, and I have not another to go to in the wide world.”And then it was, seeing my surprise, that she said there had been no settlement. “It was not my husband’s intentional fault,” she continued,“and I will never have him blamed, come what will. Things were unpleasant at my home, and we hurried on the marriage, he and I, so that he might take me out of it, and there was no time to get a settlement drawn up, even had we, either of us, thought of it, which we did not.” Listening to this, the notion struck me that it must have been something like a runaway marriage; but I said nothing, only bade her take heart and hope for a boy. “I cannot imagine any lot in life now so delightful as this would be—that I and my baby-boy should live on in this charming place together—I training him alwaysfor good,” she continued—and a faint pink came into her delicate cheek as she said it, a yearning look into her hazel eyes. “You would help me to keep him in health and make him strong, would you not, Mr. Layne?” I answered that I would do my best. Poor thing! she was only eighteen yesterday, she told me. I hope she’ll be able to keep the place; I hope it won’t go over her head to rough Parker Chavasse. And a rough-mannered man he is: I saw him once.

Coming home I met Thompson. The lawyer stopped, ever ready for a chat. I spoke about this expected child, and the changes its arrival might make. “It’s quite true that Lady Chavasse would have to turn out,” said he. “Every individual shilling is entailed. Books, plate, carriages—it all goes with the title. I’m not sure but Sir Peter’s old clothes have to be thrown in too, so strict is the entail. No settlement on her, you say, Layne? My good fellow, old Peter had nothing to settle. He had spent his income regularly, and there lay nothing beyond it. I’ve heard that that was one of the reasons why the Custs objected to the match.” Well, it seemed a curious position: I thought so as Thompson went off; but I don’t understand law, and can take his word for it. And now to bed. If——

What’s that? A carriage drawing up to the house, and the night-bell! I am wanted somewhere as sure as a gun, and my night’s rest is stopped, I suppose. Who’d be a doctor? Listen! There’s my wife opening the street-door. What does she call out to me? Lady Chavasse not well? A carriage waiting to take me to the Grange? Thank fortune at least that I have not to walk there.

May 22nd.—Four days, and nothing noted down. But I have been very busy, what with Lady Chavasse and other patients. The doubt is over, and over well. The little child is a boy, and a nice little fellow, too; healthy, and likely to live. He was born on the 20th. Lady Chavasse, in her gladness, says she shall get well all one way. I think she will: the mind strangely influences the body. But my lady is a little hard—what some might call unforgiving. Her mother came very many miles, posting across country, to see her and be reconciled, and Lady Chavasse refused to receive her. Mrs. Cust had to go back again as she came. I should not like to see my wife treat her mother so.

May 30th.—The child is to be named Geoffry Arthur. Sir Peter had a dislike to his own name, and had said he hoped never to call a boy of his by the same. Lady Chavasse, mindful of his every wish, has fixed on the other two. I asked her if they were the names of relatives: she laughed and said, No; she chose them because she thought them both nice-sounding and noble names.

The above is all that need be copied from Mr. Layne: one has to be chary of space. Little Sir Geoffry grew and thrived: and it was apleasure, people say, to see how happy his mother and he were, and how she devoted herself to him. He had come to her in the midst of her desolation, when she had nothing else to care for in life. It was already seen that he would be much like his father, who had been a very good-looking man in his day. Little Geoffry had Sir Peter’s fair complexion and his dark-blue eyes. He was a sweet, tractable child; and Lady Chavasse thought him just an angel come down from heaven.

Time went on. When Geoffry was about seven years old—and a very pretty boy, with fair curls—he went out surreptitiously on a fishing expedition, fell into the pond, and was nearly drowned. It left a severe cold upon him, which his nurse, Wilkins, said served him right. However, from that time he seemed to be less strong; and at length Lady Chavasse took him to London to show him to the doctors. The doctors told her he ought to be, for a time, in a warmer climate: and she went with him into Devonshire. But he still kept delicate. And the upshot was that Lady Chavasse let the Grange for a long term to the Goldingham family, and went away.

And so, many years passed. The Goldinghams lived on at the Grange: and Lady Chavasse nearly slipped out of remembrance. Mr. Layne fell into ill health as he grew older, and advertised for a partner. It was Duffham who answered it (a youngish man then) and they went into arrangements.

It is necessary to say something of Mr. Layne’s children. There were four of them, girls. The eldest, Susan, married a Lieutenant Layne (some distant relative, who came from the West Indies), and went with him to India, where his regiment was serving, taking also her next sister, Eleanor. The third, Elizabeth, was at home; the young one, Mary, born several years after the others, was in a school as governess-pupil, or under-teacher. It is not often that village practitioners can save money, let alone make a fortune.

The next thing was, that Mr. Layne died. His death made all the difference to his family. Mr. Duffham succeeded to the practice; by arrangement he was to pay something yearly for five years to Mrs. Layne; and she had a small income of her own. She would not quit the house; it was hers now her husband was gone. Mr. Duffham took one opposite: a tall house, with a bow-window to the parlour: before that, he had been in apartments. Mary Layne came home about this time, and stayed there for some weeks. She had been much overworked in the school, and Mrs. Layne thought she required rest. She was a pleasing girl, with soft brown eyes and a nice face, and was very good and gentle; thinking always of others, never of self. Old Duffham may choose to deny it now he’s grown older, but he thought her superior then to the whole world.

Matters were in this state when news spread that the Goldinghamshad received notice to quit the Grange: Sir Geoffry, who would be of age the following year, was coming home to it with his mother. Accordingly the Goldinghams departed; and the place was re-embellished and put in order for the rightful owner. He arrived in April with Lady Chavasse: and I’ll copy for you what Duffham says about it. Mr. Layne had then been dead about two years.

[From Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]

April 29th.—The new people—or I suppose I ought to say the old people—reached the Grange yesterday, and I was called in to-day to the lady’s-maid—Wilkins. My lady I don’t like; Sir Geoffry I do. He is a good-looking, slight young man of middle height, with a fair refined face and honest eyes, blue as they tell me Sir Peter’s used to be. An honourable, well-intentioned young fellow I am sure; affable and considerate as his mother is haughty. Poor Layne used to cry her up; he thought great things of her. I do not. It may be that power has made her selfish, and foreign travel imperious; but she’s both selfish and imperious now. She is nice-looking still; and though she wants but a year of forty, and her son is only one-and-twenty, they are almost like brother and sister. Or would be, but for Sir Geoffry’s exceeding consideration for his mother; his love and deference for her are a pattern to the young men of the present day. She has trained him to be obedient, that’s certain, and to love her too: and so I suppose she has done her duty by him well. He came down the broad walk with me from the hall-door, talking of his mother: I had happened to say that the place must seem quite strange to Lady Chavasse. “Yes, it must,” he answered. “She has exiled herself from it for my sake. Mr. Duffham,” he continued warmly, “you cannot imagine what an admirable mother mine has been! She resigned ease, rest, society, to devote herself to me. She gave me a home-tutor, that she might herself watch over and train me; she went to and fro between England and foreign places with me everlastingly; even when I was at Oxford, she took a house a mile or two out, that we might not be quite separated. I pray Heaven constantly that I may never cross her in thought, word, or deed: but live only to repay her love.” Rather Utopian this: but I honour the young fellow for it. I’ve only seen him for an hour at most, and am already wishing there were more like him in the world. If his mother has faults, he does not see them; he will never honour any other woman as he honours her. A contrast, this, to the contempt, ingratitude, and disrespect that some sons think it manly to show their best and truest earthly parent.

My lady is vexed, I can see, at this inopportune illness of her maid’s; for the Grange is all upside down with the preparations for the grandfête to be held on the 20th of next month, when Sir Geoffry will come of age. Wilkins has been in the family for many years: she wasoriginally the boy’s nurse: and is quite the right hand of Lady Chavasse, so far as household management goes. Her illness just nowis inopportune.

[End, for the present, of Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]

Nothing was talked of, in the village or out of it, but the grand doings that were to usher in the majority of Sir Geoffry. As to Lady Chavasse, few people had seen her. Her maid’s illness, as was supposed, kept her indoors; and some of the guests were already arriving at the Grange.

One morning, when it wanted about a week to the 20th, Mrs. Layne, making a pillow-case at her parlour window, in her widow’s cap and spectacles, with the Venetian blind open to get all the light she could, was startled by seeing Lady Chavasse’s barouche draw up to her door, and Lady Chavasse preparing to descend from it. Mrs. Layne instinctively rose, as to a superior, and took her glasses off: it has been said she was of a humble turn: and upon Lady Chavasse fixing her eyes upon her in what seemed some surprise, dropped a curtsy, and thought to herself how fortunate it was she happened to have put a clean new cap on. With that, Lady Chavasse said something to the footman, who banged the carriage-door to, and ordered the coachman across the road. Mrs. Layne understood it at once: she had come to the house in mistake for Duffham’s. Of course, with that grand carriage to look at opposite, and the gorgeous servants, and my lady, in a violet velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, alighting and stepping in to Duffham’s, Mrs. Layne let fall her pillow-case, and did no more of it. But she was not prepared, when Lady Chavasse came out again with Mr. Duffham, to see him escort her over the road to her gate. Mrs. Layne had just time to open her parlour-door, and say to the servant, “In the other room: show her ladyship into the other room,”before she went off into complete bewilderment, and ran away with the pillow-case.

The other room was the best room. Mary Layne sat there at the old piano, practising. She had seen and heard nothing of all this; and rose in astonishment when the invasion took place. A beautiful lady, whom Mary did not know or recognize, was holding out a delicately-gloved hand to her, and saying that she resembled her father. It was Mary Layne’s first meeting with Lady Chavasse: she had just come home again from some heavy place of teaching, finding her strength unequal to it.

“I should have known you, I think, for a daughter of Mr. Layne’s had I met you in the street,” said Lady Chavasse, graciously.

Mary was blushing like anything. Lady Chavasse thought her an elegant girl, in spite of the shabby black silk she was dressed in: very pretty too. At least, it was a nice countenance; and my lady quitetook to it. Mrs. Layne, having collected her wits, and taken off her apron, came in then: and Mary, who was humble-minded also, though not exactly in the same way that her mother was, modestly retired.

My lady was all graciousness: just as much so that morning as she used to be. Perhaps the sight of Mrs. Layne put her in mind of the old days when she was herself suffering trouble in a widow’s cap, and not knowing how matters would turn out for her, or how they would not. She told Mrs. Layne that she had, unthinkingly, bid her servants that morning drive to Mr. Layne’s! and it was only when she saw Mrs. Layne at the window in her widow’s cap, that she remembered the mistake. She talked of her son Geoffry, praising his worth and his goodness; she bade Mrs. Layne to the fête on the 20th, saying she must come and bring her two daughters, and she would take no denial. And Mrs. Layne, curtsying again—which did not become her, for she was short and stout—opened the front-door to her ladyship with her own hands, and stood there curtsying until the carriage had dashed away.

“We’ll go on the 20th,” she said to her daughters. “I didn’t like to say nay to her ladyship; and I should be glad to see what the young heir’s like. He was as pretty a boy as you’d wish to see. There’ll no doubt be some people there of our own condition that we can mix with, and it will be in the open air: so we shan’t feel strange.”

But when the day arrived, and they had reached the Grange, it seemed that they felt very strange. Whether amidst the crowds they did not find any of their “own condition,” or that none were there, Mrs. Layne did not know. Once, they came near Lady Chavasse. Lady Chavasse, surrounded by a bevy of people that Mrs. Layne took to be lords and ladies—and perhaps she was right—bowed distantly, and waved her hand, as much as to say, “Make yourselves at home, but don’t trouble me:” and Mrs. Layne curtsyed herself to a respectful distance. It was a fine bright day, very warm; and she sat on a bench in the park with her daughters, listening to the band, looking at the company, and wondering which was the heir. Some hours seemed to pass in this way, and gradually the grounds grew deserted. People were eating and drinking in a distant tent—the lords and ladies Mrs. Layne supposed, and she did not presume to venture amongst them. Presently a young man approached, who had observed from a distance the solitary group. A fat old lady in widow’s mourning; and the younger ones in pretty white bonnets and new black silks.

“Will you allow me to take you where you will find some refreshment?”he said, raising his hat, and addressing Mrs. Layne.

She paused before answering, taken aback by his looks, as she described it afterwards, for he put her in mind of Sir Peter. It was as nice a face as Sir Peter’s used to be, clean-shaved, except for the light whiskers: and if those were not Sir Peter’s kindly blue eyes, why, her memory failed her. But the dress puzzled Mrs. Layne: he wore a dark-blue frock-coat and grey trousers, a white waistcoat with a thin gold chain passed across it and a drooping seal: all very nice and gentlemanly certainly, but quite plain. What she had expected to see the heir attired in, Mrs. Layne never afterwards settled with herself: perhaps purple and miniver.

“I beg your pardon sir,” she said, speaking at length, “but I think you must be Sir Geoffry?”

“Yes, I am Sir Geoffry.”

“Lord bless me!” cried Mrs. Layne.

She told him who she was, adding, as an apology for being found there, that her ladyship had invited her and her girls, and wouldn’t take a denial. Geoffry held out his arm cordially to lead her to the tent, and glanced behind at the “girls,” remembering what his mother had said to him of one of them: “a sweet-looking young woman, Geoffry, poor Layne’s daughter, quite an elegant girl.” Yes, she was sweet-looking and elegant also, Geoffry decided. The elder one was like her mother, short, stout, and—Geoffry could not help seeing it—commonplace. He told Mrs. Layne that he could remember her husband still: he spoke of a ride the doctor had taken him, seated before him on his horse; and altogether in that short minute or two won, by his true affability, the heart of the doctor’s widow.

The tent was crowded to confusion. Waiters were running about, and there was much rattle of knives and forks. Sir Geoffry could find only two places anywhere; at which he seated Mrs. Layne and her daughter Elizabeth, according to precedence.

“I will find you a place in the other tent, if you will come with me,”he said to Mary.

She wished to refuse. She had a suspicion that the other tent was the one for the “lords and ladies,” people who were altogether above her. But Sir Geoffry was holding up the canvas for her to pass out, and she was too timid to disobey. He walked by her side almost in silence, speaking a courteous word or two only, to put her at her ease. The band was playing “The Roast Beef of Old England.”

But the other tent seemed in worse confusion as far as crowding went. Some one turned on her seat to accost Sir Geoffry: a slight, upright girl, with finely-carved features of that creamy white rarely seen, and a haughty expression in her very light eyes.

“You are being waited for, Geoffry. Don’t you know that you preside?”

“No; nonsense!” he answered. “There’s to be nothing of that sort, Rachel; no presiding. I am going to walk about and look out for stray people. Some of the strangers will get nothing, if they are not seen after. Could you make room for one by you?”

“Who is it?” she asked.

Sir Geoffry said a word in her ear, and she moved a few incheshigher up. He stepped back to Mary Layne. She had been looking at the young lady, who was so richly dressed—in some thin material of shimmering blue and lace—and who was so utterly at her ease as to be sitting without her bonnet, which she had put at her feet.

“We have made a place for you,” said Sir Geoffry. “I fear you will be a little crowded. Miss Layne, Rachel.”

Mary waited to thank him before taking it. Her cheeks were full of blushes, her soft dark eyes went out to his. She felt ashamed that he should take so much trouble for her, and strove to say so. Sir Geoffry held her hand while he answered, his own eyes looking back again.

But Mary sat for some minutes before any one came to wait on her. The young lady whom Sir Geoffry had called Rachel was busy with her own plate, and did not observe. Presently, she looked round.

“Dear me! what are they about? Field!” she imperatively called to the butler, who was passing. He turned at once.

“My lady?”

“Have the goodness to attend here,” said Lady Rachel, indicating the vacant space before Miss Layne. “This young lady has had nothing.”

“So I really am amidst the lords and ladies,” thought Mary, as the butler presented her with a card of the dishes, made out in French, and inquired what she would be pleased to take. She was inexperienced and shy; and did not know where to look or what to say. Lady Rachel spoke to her once or twice, and was civilly distant: and so the half-hour was got over. When Sir Geoffry’s health was proposed by Lord L., the young baronet suddenly appeared in his rightful place at the head of the table. He thanked them all very heartily in a few words; and said he hoped he should live long, as they had all just been wishing him, live that he might repay his dear mother one tithe of the sacrifices she had made, and the love she had lavished on him.

The cheers broke forth as he finished, his eyes wet with the sincerity of his feeling, the music burst out with a crash, “See the conquering hero comes,” and Mary Layne felt every nerve thrill within her; as if she would faint with the excess of unwonted emotion.

[Mr. Duffham’s Diary.]

June 2nd.—The rejoicings are well over, and Sir Geoffry Chavasse is his own master. In law, at any rate; but it strikes me he will never know any will but his mother’s. It’s not that he possesses none of his own—rather the contrary, I fancy; but in his filial love and reverence he merges it in hers. It is, on the one hand, good to see; on the other, one can but fancy his ideal of the fifth commandment is somewhat exaggerated. Lady Chavasse on her part seems bound up in him. To him there is no sign of imperiousness, no assertion of self-will: and,so far as can be seen, she does not exact deference. “Geoffry, would you wish this?” she says. “Geoffry, would you like the other? My darling Geoffry, don’t you think it might be well to do so-and-so?”No. It is a case of genuine filial respect and love; and one can but honour Lady Chavasse for have gained it.

My lady has condescended to be almost confidential with me. The illness of her maid has been a long and serious one, and I have had to be a good deal at the Grange. “Sir Geoffry is engaged to be married, Mr. Duffham,” she said to me yesterday, when our conversation had turned—as it often does turn—on Sir Geoffry. I could not help showing some surprise: and, one word leading to another, I soon grasped the whole case. Not so much by what she directly said, as by the habit I have of putting two-and-two together.

Conspicuous amidst the guests at the fête on the 20th of May, was Lady Rachel Derreston: a cold, self-possessed girl, with strictly classical features, and the palest blue eyes I ever saw. It would be a very handsome face—and indeed is so—but for its cold, proud expression; she is the daughter of one of Lady Chavasse’s sisters, who married the Earl of Derreston, and is now a very slenderly-portioned widow with some expensive daughters. It is to this Lady Rachel that Sir Geoffry is engaged. The engagement is not of his own seeking, or of hers; the two mothers settled it between them when the children were young; they have been brought up to look on each other as future husband and wife, and have done so as a matter-of-course. Neither of them, by what I can gather, has the slightest intention, or wish, to turn aside from fulfilling the contract: they will ratify it in just the same business manner and with the same calm feelings that they would take the lease of a house. It is not their fault: they should not have been led into it. Human nature is cross and contrary as a crab: had the two young people been thrown together now for the first time, and been warned not to fall in love with each other, the chances are they would have tumbled headlong into it before the week was out: as it is, they like each other as cousins, or brother and sister, but they’ll never get beyond that. I can see. The two old sisters have a private understanding with each other—and my young Lady Rachel dutifully falls in with it—that after the marriage Lady Chavasse shall still live and rule at the Grange. Indeed she implied it when she let fall the words, perhaps unthinkingly—“Geoffry would never marry to put me out of my home here, Mr. Duffham.” And I am sure that he never would.

Lady Rachel is here still. I often see her and Sir Geoffry together, indoors or out; but I have never yet seen a symptom of courtship on either side. They call each other “Geoffry” and “Rachel;” and are as indifferently familiar as brother and sister. That they will be sufficiently happy with a quiet, moonlight kind of happiness, is almost sure. I find that I am not at liberty to mention this engagement abroad: and that’s why I say my lady has grown confidential with me.

June 29th.—Wilkins continues very ill; and it puts my lady about amazingly. The maid who has been taking Wilkins’s duties, Hester Picker, is a country girl of the locality, Goody Picker’s daughter; her services being as different from those of the easy, experienced Wilkins, as darkness is from light. “She manages my hair atrociously,” cried my lady to me, one day, in her vexation; “she attempted to write a note for me in answer to inquiries for the character of my late page, and the spelling was so bad it could not be sent.”

Lady Rachel has left. Sir Geoffry escorted her to her home (near Bath), stayed two days there, and came back again. And glad to be back, evidently: he does not care to be long separated from his mother. The more I see of this young fellow, the more I like him. He has no bad habits; does not smoke or swear: reads, rides, drives, loves flowers, and is ever ready to do a good turn for rich or poor. “You appear to have grown up quite strong, Sir Geoffry,” I said to him to-day when we were in the greenhouse, and he leaped on a ledge to do something or other to the broken cord of the window. “Oh, quite,”he answered. “I think I am stronger and heartier than most men: and I owe thanks for it to my mother. It was not only my health of body she cared for and watched over, but of mind. She taught me to love rational pursuits; she showed me how to choose the good, and reject the evil: it is she alone who has made me what I am.”

July 5th.—Mary Layne is going to the Grange as companion to Lady Chavasse. “Humble companion,” as my lady takes care to put it. It has been brought about in this way. Wilkins is slightly improving: but it will be months before she can resume her duties about Lady Chavasse: and my lady has at length got this opinion out of me.“Five or six months!” she exclaimed in dismay. “But it is only what I have lately suspected. Mr. Duffham, I have been thinking that I must take a companion; and now this has confirmed it. A humble companion, who will not object to do my hair on state occasions, and superintend Picker in trimming my dresses, especially the lace; and who will write notes for me when I desire it, and read to me when Sir Geoffry’s not here; and sit with me if I wish it. She wouldn’t dine with us, of course; but I might sometimes let her sit down to luncheon. In short, what I want is a well-educated, lady-like young woman, who will make herself useful. Do you happen to know of one?”

I mentioned Mary Layne. She has been wishing not to return to the heavy work and confinement of a school, where she had to sit up late, night after night, correcting exercises, and touching up drawings by gas-light. My lady caught at it at once. “Mary Layne! the very thing. I like the look of the girl much, Mr. Duffham; and of courseshe won’t be above doing anything required of her: Layne, the apothecary’s daughter, cannot be called a gentlewoman in position, you know.”

She forgot I was an apothecary also; I’ll give her that credit. But this is a specimen of the way my lady’s exclusive spirit peeps out.

And so it is settled. And if Miss Mary had been suddenly offered a position in the Royal household, she could not have thought more of it. “Mr. Duffham, I will try my very best to satisfy Lady Chavasse,”says she to me, in an ecstasy; “I will do anything and everything required of me: who am I, that I should be above it?” And by the glistening of her sweet brown eyes, and the rose-blush on her cheeks, it would seem that she fancies she is going into fairy-land. Well, the Grange is a nice place: and she is to have thirty guineas a-year. At the last school she had twenty pounds: at the first ten.

[End of the Diary for the present.]

Miss Layne entered the Grange with trepidation. She had never been inside the house, and at first thought it was fairy-land realized and that she was out of place in it. A broad flight of three or four steps led up to the wide entrance-door; the brilliant colours from the painted windows shone on the mosaic pavement of the hall; on the right were the grand drawing-rooms; on the left the dining-room and Sir Geoffry’s library. Behind the library, going down a step or two was a low, shady apartment, its glass doors opening to a small grass plat, round which flowers were planted; and beyond it lay the fragrant herbary. This little room was called the garden-room; and on the morning of Miss Layne’s arrival, after she had taken off her things, Hester Picker (who thought almost as much of the old surgeon’s daughter as she did of my lady) curtsyed her into it, and said it was to be Miss Layne’s sitting-room, when she was not with my lady.

Mary Layne looked around. She thought it charming. It had an old Turkey carpet, and faded red chairs, and a shabby checked cloth on the table, with other ancient furniture; but the subdued light was grateful after the garish July sun, and a sweetness came in from the herbs and flowers. Mary stood, wondering what she had to do first, and not quite daring to sit down even on one of the old red chairs. The Grange was the Grange, and my lady was my lady; and they were altogether above the sphere in which she had been brought up. She had a new lilac muslin dress on, fresh and simple; her smooth brown hair had a bit of lilac ribbon in it; and she looked as pretty and ladylike as a girl can look. Standing at the back, there beyond the able, was she, when Sir Geoffry walked in at the glass doors, his light summer coat thrown back, and a heap of small paper packets in hishands, containing seeds. At first he looked astonished: not remembering her.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up, as he took off his straw hat. “Miss Mary Layne, I think. I did not know you at the moment. My mother said she expected you to-day.”

He came round to her with outstretched hand, and then put a chair for her, just as though she had been a duchess—or Lady Rachel Derreston. Mary did not take the chair: she felt strange in her new home, and as yet very timid.

“I am not sure what Lady Chavasse would wish me to do,” she ventured to say, believing it might be looked upon as next door to a crime to be seen idle, in a place where she was to receive thirty guineas a-year. “There appears to be no work here.”

“Get a book, and read!” cried Sir Geoffry. “I’ll find you one as soon as I have put up these seeds. A box of new novels has just come from town. I hope you will make yourself at home with us, and be happy,” he added, in his kindness.

“Thank you, sir; I am sure I shall.”

He was putting up the seeds, when Lady Chavasse entered. She had a way of taking likes and dislikes, and she never scrupled to show either. On this first day, it seemed that she did not know how to make enough of Mary. She chose to forget that she was only to be the humble companion, and treated her as a guest. She carried her in to take luncheon with herself and Sir Geoffry; she made her play and sing; she showed her the drawing-rooms and the flower-gardens, and finally took her out in the barouche. She certainly did not ask her in to dinner, but said she should expect her to come to the drawing-room afterwards, and spend the evening. And Miss Layne, not ignorant of the customs obtaining in great houses, dressed herself for it in her one evening dress of white spotted muslin, and changed the lilac ribbon in her hair for blue.

So that, you perceive, the girl was inaugurated at the Grange as a young lady, almost as an equal, and not as a servant—as Lady Chavasse’s true opinion would have classed her. That was mistake the first. For it led Sir Geoffry to make a companion of Miss Layne; that is, to treat her as though she belonged to their order; which otherwise he certainly would not have done. Had Miss Layne been assigned her true place at first—the place that Lady Chavasse meant her to fill, that of an inferior and humble dependent—Sir Geoffry, out of simple respect to the girl and to his mother, would have kept his distance.

As the time passed on they grew great friends. Lady Chavasse retained her liking for Mary, and saw no harm in the growing intimacy with Sir Geoffry. That was mistake the second. Both of them were drifting into love; but Lady Chavasse dreamt it not. The social gulf that spread itself between Sir Geoffry Chavasse, of Chavasse Grange, and Mary Layne, daughter of the late hard-worked village apothecary, was one that Lady Chavasse would have said (had she been asked to think about it) could never be bridged over: and for this very reason she saw no danger in the intercourse. She regarded Mary Layne as of a totally different caste from themselves, and never supposed but Sir Geoffry did so too.

And so time went on, on the wings of love. There were garden walks together and moonlight saunterings; meetings in my lady’s presence, meetings without it. Sir Geoffry, going in and out of the garden-parlour at will, as he had been accustomed to do—for it was where all kinds of things belonging to him were kept: choice seeds, his fishing-rods, his collection of butterflies—would linger there by the hour together, talking to Mary at her work. And, before either of them was conscious of the danger, they had each passed into a dream that changed everything about them to Paradise.

Of course, Sir Geoffry, when he awoke to the truth—that it was love—ought to have gone away, or have contrived to get his mother to dismiss Miss Layne. He did nothing of the sort. And for this, some people—Duffham for one—held him even more to blame than for anything that happened afterwards. But how could he voluntarily blight his new happiness, and hers? It was so intense as to absorb every other feeling; it took his common sense away from him. And thus they went dreaming on together in that one spring-time (of the heart, not of the weather), and never thought about drifting into shoals and pitfalls.

In the autumn my lady went to the seaside in Cornwall, taking Maryas her maid, and escorted by her son. “Will you do for me what I want while I am away? I do not care to be troubled with Picker,”she had said; and Mary replied, as in duty bound, that she would. It is inconvenient to treat a maid as a lady, especially in a strange place, and Mary found that during this sojourn Lady Chavasse did not attempt it. To all intents and purposes Mary was the maid now; she did not sit with her lady, she took her meals apart; she was, in fact, regarded as the lady’s-maid by all, and nothing else. Lady Chavasse even took to calling her “Layne.” This, the sudden dethroning of her social status, was the third mistake; and this one, as the first, was my lady’s. Sir Geoffry had been led to regard her as a companion; now he saw her but as a servant. But, servant or no servant, you cannot put love out of the heart, once it has possession of it.

At the month’s end they returned home: and there Mary found that she was to retain this lower station: never again would she be exalted as she had been. Lady Chavasse had tired of the new toy, and just carelessly allowed her to find her own level. Except that Miss Layne sat in the garden-parlour, and her meals were served there, she wasnot very much distinguished from Hester Picker and the other servants; indeed, Picker sometimes sat in the parlour too, when they had lace, or what not, to mend for my lady. Geoffry in his heart was grieved at the changed treatment of Miss Layne; he thought it wrong and unjust; and to make up for the mistake, was with her a great deal himself.

Things were in this position when Lady Chavasse was summoned to Bath: her sister, Lady Derreston, was taken ill. Sir Geoffry escorted her thither. Picker was taken, not Miss Layne. In the countess’s small household, Mary, in her anomalous position—for she could not be altogether put with the servants—would have been an inconvenience; and my lady bade her make herself happy at the Grange, and left her a lot of fine needlework to get through.

Leaving his mother in Bath, Sir Geoffry went to London, stayed a week or so, and then came back to the Grange. Another week or two, and he returned to Bath to bring his mother home. And so the winter set in, and wore on. And now all that has to be told to the paper’s end is taken from diaries, Duffham’s and others. But for convenience’sake, I put it as though the words were my own, instead of copying them literally.

Spring came in early. February was not quite at an end, and the trees were beginning to show their green. All the month it had been warm weather; but people said it was too relaxing for the season, and they and the trees should suffer for it later. A good deal of sickness was going about; and, amongst others who had to give in for a time, was Duffham himself. He had inflammation of the lungs. His brother Luke, who was partner in a medical firm elsewhere, came to Church Dykely for a week or two, to take the patients. Luke was a plain-speaking man of forty, with rough hair and a good heart.

The afternoon after he arrived, an applicant came into the surgery with her daughter. It was Mrs. Layne, but the temporary doctor did not know her. Mrs. Layne never did look like a lady, and he did not mistake her for one: he thought it some respectable countrywoman: she had flung a very ancient cloak over her worn morning gown. She expressed herself disappointed at not seeing Mr. Duffham, but opened the consultation with the brother instead. Mrs. Layne took it for granted she was known, and talked accordingly.

Her daughter, whom she kept calling Mary, and nothing else, had been ailing lately; she, Mrs. Layne, could not think what was the matter with her, unless it was the unusually warm spring. She grew thinner and weaker daily; her cheeks were pale, her eyes seemed to have no life in them: she was very low in spirits; yet, in spite of all this, Mary had kept on saying it was “nothing.” My Lady Chavasse—returning home from London yesterday, whither she had accompaniedher son a week or two ago, and whom she had left there—was so much struck with the change she saw in Mary, who lived with her as humble companion, Mrs. Layne added, in a parenthesis, that she insisted on her seeing Dr. Duffham, that he might prescribe some tonics. And accordingly Mary had walked to her mother’s this afternoon.

Mr. Luke Duffham listened to all this with one ear, as it were. He supposed it might be the warm spring, as suggested. However, he took Mary into the patients’ room, and examined her; felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, sounded her chest, with all the rest of it that doctors treat their clients to; and asked her this, that, and the other—about five-and-twenty questions, when perhaps five might have done. The upshot of it all was that Mary Layne went off in a dead faint.

“What on earth can be the matter with her?” cried the alarmed mother, when they had brought her round.

Mr. Luke Duffham, going back to the surgery with Mrs. Layne, shut the doors, and told her what he thought it was. It so startled the old lady that she backed against the counter and upset the scales.

“How dare you say so, sir!”

“But I am sure of it,” returned Mr. Luke.

“Lord be good to me!” gasped Mrs. Layne, looking like one terrified out of her seven senses. “The worst I feared was that it might be consumption. A sister of mine died of it.”

“Where shall I send the medicine to?” inquired the doctor.

“Anywhere. Over the way, if you like,” continued Mrs. Layne, in her perturbation.

“Certainly. Where to, over the way?”

“To my house. Don’t you know me? I am the widow of your brother’s late partner. This unhappy child is the one he was fondest of; she is only nineteen, much younger than the rest.”

“Mrs. Layne!” thought Luke Duffham, in surprise, “I wish I had known; I might have hesitated before speaking plainly. But where would have been the good?”

The first thing Mrs. Layne did, was to shut her own door against Mary, and send her back to the Grange in a shower of anger. She was an honest old lady, of most irreproachable character; never needing, as she phrased it, to have had a blush on her cheek, for herself or any one belonging to her. In her indignation, she could have crushed Mary to the earth. Whatever it might be that the poor girl had done, robbed a church, or shot its parson, her mother deemed that she deserved hanging.

Mary Layne walked back to the Grange: where else had she to go? Broken-hearted, humiliated, weak almost unto death, she was as a reed in her mother’s hands, yielding herself to any command given; and only wishing she might die. Lady Chavasse, compassionating her evident suffering, brought her a glass of wine with her own hand, and inquired what Mr. Duffham said, and whether he was going to give her tonics. Instead of answering, Mary went into another faint: and my lady thought she had overwalked herself. “I wish I had sent her in the carriage,” said she kindly. And while the wish was yet upon her lips, Mrs. Layne arrived at the Grange, to request an audience of her ladyship.

Then was commotion. My lady talked and stormed, Mrs. Layne talked and cried. Both were united in one thing—heaping reproaches on Mary. They were in the grand drawing-room—where my lady had been sitting when Mrs. Layne was shown in. Lady Chavasse sat back, furious and scornful, in her pink velvet chair; Mrs. Layne stood; Mary had sunk on the carpet kneeling, her face bent, her clasped hands raised as if imploring mercy. This group was suddenly broken in upon by Sir Geoffry—who had but then reached the Grange from town. They were too noisy to notice him. Halting in dismay he had the pleasure of catching a sentence or two addressed to the unhappy Mary.

“The best thing you can do is to find refuge in the workhouse,”stormed Lady Chavasse. “Out of my house you turn this hour.”

“The best thing you can do is to go on the tramp, where you won’t be known,” amended Mrs. Layne, who was nearly beside herself with conflicting emotions. “Never again shall you enter the home that was your poor dead father’s. You wicked girl!—and you hardly twenty years old yet! But, my lady, I can but think—though I know we are humble people, as compared with you, and perhaps I’ve no right to say it—that Sir Geoffry has not behaved like a gentleman.”

“Hold your tongue, woman,” said her ladyship. “Sir Geoffry——”

“Sir Geoffry is at least enough of a gentleman to take his evil deeds on himself, and not shift them on to others,” spoke the baronet, stepping forward—and the unexpected interruption was startling to them all. My lady pointed imperatively to the door, but he stood his ground.

It was no doubt a bitter moment for him; bringing home to him an awful amount of self-humiliation: for throughout his life he had striven to do right instead of wrong. And when these better men yield to temptation instead of fleeing from it, the reacting sting is of the sharpest. The wisest and strongest sometimes fall: and find too late that, though the fall was so easy, the picking-up is of all things most difficult. Sir Geoffry’s face was white as death.

“Get up, Mary,” he said gently, taking her hand to help her in all respect. “Mrs. Layne,” he added, turning to face the others; “my dear mother—if I may dare still to call you so—suffer me to say a word. For all that has taken place, I am alone to blame; on me only must it rest, The fault——”

“Sin, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Layne.

“Yes. Thank you. Sin. The sin lies with me, not with Mary. In my presence reproach shall not be visited on her. She has enough trouble to bear without that. I wish to Heaven that I had never—Mrs. Layne, believe me,” he resumed, after the pause, “no one can feel this more keenly than I. And, if circumstances permit me to make reparation, I will make it!”

Sir Geoffry wanted (circumstances permitting, as he shortly put it) to marry Mary Layne; he wished to do it. Taking his mother into another room he told her this. Lady Chavasse simply thought him mad. She grew a little afraid of him, lest he should set her and all high rules of propriety at nought, and do it.

But trouble like this cannot be settled in an hour. Lady Chavasse, in her great fear, conciliated just a little: she did not turn Miss Layne out at once, as threatened, but suffered her to remain at the Grange for the night.

“In any case, whatever may be the ending of this, it is not from my family that risk of exposure must come,” spoke Sir Geoffry, in a tone of firmness. “It might leave me no alternative.”

“No alternative?” repeated Lady Chavasse. “How?”

“Between my duty to you, and my duty to her,” said Sir Geoffry. And my lady’s heart fainted within her at the suggested fear.

They were together in the library at Chavasse Grange, Lady Chavasse and her only son Geoffry. It was early morning; they had sat in the breakfast-room making a show of partaking of the morning meal, each of them with that bitter trouble at the heart that had been known only—to my lady, at least—since the previous day. But the farce of speaking in monosyllables to one another could not be kept up—the trouble had to be dealt with, and without delay; and when the poor meal could not be prolonged by any artifice, Sir Geoffry held open the door for his mother to pass through, and crossed the hall with her to the library. Shut within its walls they could discuss the secret in safety; no eye to see them, no ear to hear.

Sir Geoffry mechanically stirred the fire, and placed a chair for his mother near it. The weather appeared to be changing. Instead of the unseasonable relaxing warmth that had been upon the earth up to the previous day, a cold north-east wind had set in, enough to freeze people’s marrow. The skies were grey and lowering; the trees shook and moaned: winter was taking up his place again.

So much the better. Blue skies and brightness would hardly have accorded with Sir Geoffry’s spirit. He might have to endure many cruel visitations ere he died, but never a one so cruel as this. No evil that Heaven can send upon us, or man inflict, is so hard to bear as self-reproach.

If ever a son had idolized a mother, it had surely been Geoffry Chavasse. They had been knit together in the strongest bonds of filial love. His whole thought from his boyhood had been her comfort: to have sacrificed himself for her, if needs must, would have been a cheerful task. When he came of age, not yet so very many months ago, he had resolved that his whole future life should be devoted to promote her happiness—as her life had been devoted to him in the days of his sickly boyhood. Her wishes were his; her word his law; he would have died rather than cause her a moment’s pain.

And how had he, even thus early, fulfilled this? Look at him, as he leans against the heavy framework of the window, drawn back from it that the light may not fall on his subdued face. The brow is bent in grievous doubt; the dark-blue eyes, generally so honestly clear, are hot with trouble; the bright hair hangs limp. Yes; he would have died rather than bring his mother pain: that was his true creed and belief; but, like many another whose resolves are made in all good faith, he had signally failed, even while he was thinking it, and brought pain to her in a crushing heap. He hated himself as he looked at her pale countenance; at the traces of tears in her heavy eyes. Never a minute’s sleep had she had the previous night, it was plainly to be seen; and, as for him, he had paced his chamber until morning, not attempting to go to rest. But there was a task close before him, heavier than any that had gone before; heavier even than this silent repentance—the deciding what was to be done in the calamity; and Sir Geoffry knew that his duty to his mother and his duty to another would clash with each other. All the past night he had been earnestly trying to decide which of the two might be evaded with the least sin—and he thought he saw which.

Lady Chavasse had taken the chair he placed for her; sitting upright in it, and waiting for him to speak. She knew, as well as he, that this next hour would decide their fate in life: whether they should still be together a loving mother and son; or whether they should become estranged and separate for ever. He crossed to the fireplace and put his elbow on the mantelpiece, shielding his eyes with his hand. Just a few words, he said, of his sense of shame and sorrow; of regret that he should have brought this dishonour on himself and his mother’s home; of hope that he might be permitted, by Heaven and circumstances, to work out his repentance, in endeavouring daily, hourly constantly, to atone to her for it—to her, his greatly-loved mother. And then—lifting his face from the hand that had partially hidden it—he asked her to be patient, and to hear him without interruption a little further. And Lady Chavasse bowed her head in acquiescence.

“Nothing remains for me but to marry Miss Layne,” he began: and my lady, as she heard the expected avowal, bit her compressed lips“It is the only course open to me; unless I would forfeit every claimto honour, and to the respect of upright men. If you will give your consent to this, the evil may be in a degree repaired; nothing need ever be known; Mary’s good name may be saved—mine, too, if it comes to that—and eventually we may be all happy together——”

“Do not try me too much, Geoffry,” came the low interruption.

“Mother, you signified that you would hear me to the end. I will not try you more than I can help; but it is necessary that I should speak fully. All last night I was walking about my room in self-commune; deliberating what way was open, if any, that it would be practicable to take—and I saw but this one. Let me marry her. It will be easy of accomplishment—speaking in reference to appearances and the world. She might go for a week or two to her mother’s; for a month or two, if it were thought better and less suspicious; there is no pressing hurry. We could then be married quietly, and go abroad for a year or so, or for longer; and come back together to the Grange, and be your dutiful and loving children always, just as it was intended I and Rachel should be. But that you have liked Mary Layne very much, I might have felt more difficulty in proposing this.”

“I have liked her as my servant,” said Lady Chavasse, scornfully.

“Pardon me, you have liked her as a lady. Do you remember once saying—it was when she first came—that if you had had a daughter you could have wished her to be just like Mary Layne. Before I ever saw her, you told me she was a sweet, elegant young woman; and—mother—she is nothing less. Oh, mother, mother!” continued Sir Geoffry, with emotion, “if you will but forget your prejudices for my sake, and consent to what I ask, we would endeavour to be ever repaying you in love and services during our after-life. I know what a great sacrifice it will be; but for my sake I venture to crave it of you—for my sake.”

A great fear lay upon Lady Chavasse: it had lain on her ever since the previous day—that he might carry this marriage out of his own will. So that she dared not answer too imperatively. She was bitterly hurt, and caught her breath with a sob.

“Do you want to kill me, Geoffry?”

“Heaven knows that I wish I had been killed, before I brought this distress upon you,” was his rejoinder.

“I am distressed. I have never felt anything like it since your father died. No; not once when you, a child of seven, were given over in illness, and it was thought you would not live till morning.”

Sir Geoffry passed his hand hastily across his eyes, in which stood the hot tears. His heart was sore, nearly unto breaking; his ingratitude to his mother seemed fearfully great. He longed to throw himself at her feet, and clasp her knees, and tell how deep for her was his love, how true and deep it always would be.

“Though the whole world had united to deceive me, Geoffry, I couldnever have believed that you would do so. Why did you pretend to be fond of Rachel?”

“I never pretended to be fonder of Rachel than I was. I liked her as a cousin, nothing more. I know it now. And—mother”—he added, with a flush upon his face, and a lowering of the voice, “it is better and safer that the knowledge should have come to me before our marriage than after it.”

“Nonsense,” said Lady Chavasse. “Once married, a man of right principles is always safe in them.”

Sir Geoffry was silent. Not very long ago, he had thought himself safe in his. With every word, it seemed that his shame and his sin came more glaringly home to him.

“Then you mean to tell me that you do not like Rachel——”

“That I have no love for her. If—if there be any one plea that I can put forth as a faint shadow of excuse for what has happened, it lies in my love for another. Faint it is, Heaven knows: the excuse, not the love. That is deep enough: but I would rather not speak of it to you—my mother.”

“And that you never will love Rachel?” continued Lady Chavasse, as though he had not interposed.

“Never. It is impossible that I can ever love any one but Mary Layne. I am grateful, as things have turned out, that I did not deceive Rachel by feigning what I could not feel. Neither does she love me. We were told to consider ourselves betrothed, and did so accordingly; but, so far as love goes, it has not been so much as mentioned between us.”

“What else have you to say?” asked Lady Chavasse.

“I might say a great deal, but it would all come round to the same point: to the one petition that I am beseeching you to grant—that you will sanction the marriage.”

Lady Chavasse’s hands trembled visibly within their rich lace frills, as they lay passive on her soft dress of fine geranium cashmere. Her lips grew white with agitation.

“Geoffry!”

“My darling mother.”

“I have heard you. Will you hear me?”

“You know I will.”

“More than one-and-twenty years ago, my husband died within these walls; and I—I was not eighteen, Geoffry—felt utterly desolate. But, as the weeks went on, I said my child will be born, if God permit, and he will bring me comfort. You were born, Geoffry; you did bring me comfort: such comfort that I thought Heaven had come again. You best know, my son, what our life has been; how we have loved each other: how pleasantly time has flown in uninterrupted happiness. I have devoted myself, my time, my energies, everything I possessed, to you, my best treasure; I have given up the world for you, Geoffry; Ihad only you left in it. Is it fitting that you should fling me from you now; that you should blight my remaining days with misery; that you should ignore me just as though I were already dead—and all for the sake of a stranger?”

“But——”

“I have not finished, Geoffry. For the sake of a stranger, whom a few months ago neither you nor I had ever seen? If you think this—if you deem that you would be acting rightly, and can find in your heart to treat me so, why, you must do it.”

“But what I wish and propose is quite different!” he exclaimed in agony. “Oh, mother, surely you can understand me—and the dilemma I am placed in?”

“I understand all perfectly.”

“Ah yes!”

“Geoffry, there is no middle course. You must choose between me and—her. Once she and I separate—it will be to-day—we can never meet again. I will not tolerate her memory; I will never submit to the degradation of hearing her named in my presence. Our paths lie asunder, Geoffry, far as the poles: hers lies one way, mine another. You must decide for yourself which of them you will follow. If it be mine, you shall be, as ever, my dear and honoured son, and I will never, never reproach you with your folly: never revert to it; never think of it. If it be hers, why, then—I will go away somewhere and hide myself, and leave the Grange free for you. And I—I dare say—shall not live long to be a thorn in your remembrance.”

She broke down with a flood of bitter sobs. Geoffry Chavasse had never seen his mother shed such. The hour was as trying to her as to him. She had loved him with a strangely selfish love, as it is in the nature of mothers to do; and that she should have to bid him choose between her and another—and one so entirely beneath her as Lady Chavasse considered Mary Layne to be—was gall and wormwood. Never would she have stooped to put the choice before him, even in words, but for her dread that he might be intending to take it.

“It is a fitting end, Geoffry—that this worthless girl should supplant me in your home and heart,” she was resuming when her emotion allowed; but Geoffry stood forward to face her, his agitation great as her own.

“An instant, mother: that you may fully understand me. The duty I owe you, the allegiance and the love, are paramount to all else on earth. In communing with myself last night, as I tell you I was, my heart and my reason alike showed me this. If I must choose between you and Mary Layne, there cannot be a question in my mind on which side duty lies. In all honour I am bound to make her my wife, and I should do it in all affection: but not in defiance of you; not to thrust rudely aside the love and obligations of the past one-and-twentyyears. You must choose for me. If you refuse your approval, I have no resource but to yield to your decision; if you consent, I shall thank you and bless you for ever.”

A spasm of pain passed across the mouth of Lady Chavasse. She could not help saying something that arose prominently in her mind though it interrupted the question.

“And you can deem the apothecary Layne’s daughter fit to mate with Sir Geoffry Chavasse?”

“No, I do not. Under ordinary circumstances, I should never have thought of such a thing. This unhappy business has a sting for me, mother, on many sides. Will you give me your decision?” he added, after a pause.

“I have already given it, Geoffry—so far as I am concerned. You must choose between your mother, between all the hopes and the home-interests of one-and-twenty years, and this alien.”

“Then I have no alternative.”

She turned her gaze steadily upon him. A sob rose in his throat as he took her hands, his voice was hoarse with emotion.

“To part from her will be like parting with life, mother. I can never know happiness again in this world.”

But the decision was irrevocable. What further passed between Sir Geoffry and his mother in the remaining half-hour they spent together, how much of entreaty and anguish was spoken on his side, how much of passionate plaint and sorrow on hers, will never be known. But she was obdurate to the last letter: and Sir Geoffry’s lot in life was fixed. Mary Layne was to be sacrificed: and, in one sense of the word, himself also: and there might be no appeal.

Lady Chavasse exacted from him that he should quit the Grange at once without seeing Miss Layne, and not return to it until Mary had left it for ever. Anything he wished to say to her, he was to write. On Lady Chavasse’s part, she voluntarily undertook to explain to Miss Layne their conversation faithfully, and its result; and to shield the young lady’s good name from the censure of the world. She would keep her for some time longer at the Grange, be tender with her, honour her, drive out with her in the carriage so that they might be seen together, subdue her mother’s anger, strive to persuade Mr. Luke Duffham that his opinion had been mistaken, and, in any case, bind him down to secrecy: in short, she would make future matters as easy as might be for Mary, as tenaciously as though she were her own daughter. That she promised this at the sacrifice of pride and of much feeling, was indisputable; but she meant to keep her word.

However miserable a night the others had passed, it will readily be imagined that Mary Layne had spent a worse. She made no pretence of eating breakfast; and when it was taken away sat at her work in the garden-parlour, trying to do it; but her cold fingers dropped the needle every minute, her aching brow felt as though it were bursting. Good-hearted Hester Picker was sorry to see her looking so ill, and wished the nasty trying spring, hot one day, cold the next, would just settle itself down.

Mary rose from her chair, and went upstairs to her own bedroom for a brief respite: in her state of mind it seemed impossible to stay long quiescent anywhere. This little incidental occurrence frustrated one part of the understanding between Sir Geoffry and his mother—that he should quit the house without seeing Miss Layne. In descending, she chanced to cross the end of the corridor just as he came out of his mother’s room after bidding her farewell. The carriage waited at the door, his coat was on his arm. Mary would have shrunk back again, but he bade her wait.

“You must allow me to shake her hand, and say just a word of adieu, mother; I am not quite a brute,” he whispered. And Lady Chavasse came out of her room, and tacitly sanctioned it.

But there was literally nothing more than a hand-shake. Miss Layne, standing still in all humility, turned a little white, for she guessed that he was being sent from his home through her. Sir Geoffry held her hand for a moment.

“I am going away, Mary. My mother will explain to you. I have done my best, and failed. Before Heaven, I have striven to the uttermost, for your sake and for mine, to make reparation; but it is not to be. I leave you to my mother; she is your friend; and you shall hear from me in a day or two. I am now going to see Mrs. Layne. Good-bye: God bless you always!”

But, ere Sir Geoffry reached the hall, Lady Chavasse had run swiftly down, caught him, and was drawing him into a room. The fear had returned to her face.

“I heard you say you were going to call on Mrs. Layne. Geoffry, this must not be.”

“Not be!” he repeated, in surprise. “Mother, I am obeying you in all essential things; but you cannot wish to reduce me to an utter craven. I owe an explanation to Mrs. Layne almost in the same degree that I owe it to you; and I shall certainly not quit Church Dykely until I have given it.”

“Oh, well—if it must be,” she conceded, afraid still. “You—you will not be drawn in to act against me, Geoffry?”

“No power on earth could draw me to that. You have my first and best allegiance; to which I bow before every other consideration, before every interest, whether of my own or of others. But for that, should I be acting as I am now? Fare you well, mother.”

She heard the carriage-door closed; she heard Sir Geoffry’s order to the footman. Even for that order, he was cautious to give a plausible excuse.

“Stop at Mrs. Layne’s. I have to leave a message from her ladyship.”

The wheels of the carriage crunched the gravel, bearing off Sir Geoffry in the storm of sleet—which had begun to fall—and Lady Chavasse passed up the stairs again. Taking the hand of Mary—who had stood above like a statue—never moving—she led her, gently enough, into her dressing-room, and put her in a comfortable chair by the fire; and prepared for this second interview.

Briefly, Lady Chavasse recounted what she had to say. Sir Geoffry had found himself obliged to choose between Miss Layne and her, his mother. Mary Layne sat with her hands before her face, and acknowledged that, if it came to such a choice, he had chosen rightly. And then, in forcible language, because it came from her heart, my lady drew a picture of the life-long happiness she and her son had enjoyed together, of her devotion and sacrifices for him, of his deep love and reverence for her: and she quietly asked Mary to put herself in imagination in her place, and say what her feelings would have been had a stranger come in to mar this. Had she any right to do this?—Lady Chavasse asked her—would she be justified in destroying the ties of a life, in thrusting herself between mother and son?—in invoking a curse, his mother’s curse, on him? My lady did not spare her: but she spoke in no angry tone, rather in a piteous and imploring one: and Mary, feeling as if matters were being put to her own better feeling, sobbed, and shook, and shrunk within herself, and could have knelt at Lady Chavasse’s feet for pardon in her distress and humiliation.

And that was the end of the wretched business—as Duffham phrases it in his diary—so far as the Grange and its people were concerned. Mary Layne stayed, perforce, two or three weeks longer at the house, and my lady made much of her: she took her out daily in her carriage; she said to her friends, in the hearing of her servants and the sympathizing Hester Picker, how vexatious it was that the relaxing, unseasonable weather had brought out the delicacy that was latent in Miss Layne’s constitution, and that she feared she must let her go away somewhere for a change. Mary submitted to all. She was in such a self-abased frame of mind that had my lady desired her to immolate herself on a blazing pyre, she would have gone to it meekly. My lady had interviews with Mrs. Layne, and with Duffham (who had got well then), and with his brother Luke. At the two or three weeks’end, Miss Elizabeth Layne came by appointment to the Grange, and she and Mary were driven to the nearest station in my lady’s own carriage on their way to the seaside: or to elsewhere, as it might be. And never an ill breath, in the Grange or out of it, transpired to tarnish the fair fame of Mary Layne.

But my lady was not honest in one respect. The letter that arrived for Mary from Sir Geoffry a day or two after his departure, was nevergiven to her. My lady knew she might trust her son implicitly; he could only be straightforward and keep his word in all things; nevertheless, she deemed the fire the safest place for the weighty epistle of many sheets. On the other hand, Mary wrote to Sir Geoffry, saying that the alternative he had chosen was the only one possible to him. Nothing, no prayers of his, she said, would have induced her to put herself between him and his mother, even had he so far forgotten his duty as to urge it. It was a good and sensible letter, and none but a good and unselfish girl could have written it.

So that ended the dream and the romance. And I hope the reader does not forget that it is Duffham’s diary that’s telling all this, and not I. For though dreams and romance seem to be in Duffham’s line, they are not in mine.

Part the Second.

ot very long after the time that Mary Layne quitted Chavasse Grange—having closed all connection with it, never to be to it henceforth but as an utter stranger—her eldest sister, Susan, the wife of Captain Richard Layne, arrived in England from India with her children, four little ones; the eldest seven years old, the youngest eighteen months. The children had been ailing, and she brought them over for a twelvemonth’s change. Mrs. Layne was a good deal worn herself, for the only nurse she had with her, a coloured woman, was sea-sick during the voyage. Her sister Eleanor, who originally went out with her to Calcutta, had made an excellent match; having married Allan McAlpin, the younger partner in the staid old firm of McAlpin Brothers, merchants of high standing, and wealthy men.

The first thing Mrs. Richard Layne did on arrival was to establish herself in lodgings in Liverpool, the port she landed at (in order to rest a week or two from the fatigues of the voyage) and send for her mother and sister Elizabeth. In answer came a letter from her mother, saying she was not equal to the journey and that Elizabeth was from home. It contained Elizabeth’s present address, and also one or two items of news that startled young Mrs. Layne well-nigh out of her senses. Leaving her children to their nurse’s care, she started for the address given, and found her two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary. The one living in a chronic state of outpouring sarcasm and reproach; the other meekly taking all as not a tithe of her just due.

After a day or two given to natural grief and lamentation, Mrs. Richard Layne took matters into her own capable hands. She consideredthat a more complete change would be good for Mary, and decided to convey her to the Continent. She wrote a long and confidential letter to her husband in India, of what she meant to do: and then she went back to Liverpool with Elizabeth, to leave the latter in charge of her own children and their coloured nurse, during her absence across the Channel. Mrs. Layne then returned to Mary, and they started together for France.

Shortly after this, old Mrs. Layne fell ill: and Elizabeth, when she found she must go home in consequence, left a responsible English nurse with the coloured woman and children. Not for several months afterwards did Mrs. Richard Layne and Mary return from abroad; and at the end of the twelvemonth they all went back to India—Mrs. Layne, her children, the native nurse, and Mary. Mary accompanied them in the capacity of governess.

After that a couple of years went on.

[From Miss Mary Layne’s Journal, written in Calcutta, at the house of Captain Layne.]

June 10th.—Cool of the evening. Susan came to the schoolroom in the midst of the geography lesson this morning, and told me an old friend of mine at home had called, and I was to come into the verandah to see her. I never was more surprised. It was Jane Arkill; my chief friend in our old school-days. She has married a Mr. Cale, a doctor, who has just come out here to practise. Mrs. Cale says she shall never grow reconciled to the heat of India. While she sat telling us home news, she alternately wiped her pale face and stared at me, because I am so much altered. She thinks she should not have known me. It is not that my features have changed, she says, but that I have grown so much graver, and look so old. When people talk like this, I long to tell them that things have changed me; that I have passed through a fiery trial of sin and suffering; that my life is one long crucifixion of inward, silent repentance. When I first came out, two years ago, and people would say, “It must be the climate that is making Miss Layne look so ill,” it seemed to me like the worst hypocrisy to let them think it was the climate, and not to tell the truth. This feeling came back again to-day, when Jane Arkill—I shall often forget to call her “Cale”—said my eyes had grown to have a sad look in them; and Susan answered that young ladies faded quickly in India; and that Mary would apply herself too closely to the children’s studies in spite of remonstrance. Too closely? Why, if I devoted every hour of my life, night and day, to these dear children, I could never repay what their mother—or their father, either—has done for me.

My mother is very well, Jane says, but lame, and cannot get about much: she saw her only six weeks ago—for they came out by theoverland route. Only six weeks ago!—to hear that one has seen my dear mother so recently as that, makes it seem almost as though I had seen her but yesterday. My darling mother!—whom my conduct so grieved and outraged at the time, and who was so quick to forgive me and to do so much for me. What a message she has sent me! “Give my love to dear Mary, and say I hope she is happy with her sisters.”Elizabeth, too, sent me her love. “I saw your little Arthur, Mrs. Layne,” Jane Cale then said to my sister: “he is a sweet little fellow; your mother and Elizabeth are so fond of him. They call him Baby Arthur.” I felt my face growing whiter than death: but Susan, who was never I believe put out in her life, quietly sent me away with a message to the nurse—that she might bring the children. When I got back, Captain Layne had come in and had the baby on his shoulder: for nurse had made more haste than I. “None of your children here are so fair as the little one your wife left in England, Captain Layne,” Jane Cale was saying, as she looked at them one by one. “You mean little Arthur,” returned the Captain, in his ready kindness; “I hear he is fair.” “Have you never seen him?” “No; how should I have seen him?” asked Captain Layne, laughing:“he was born over there, and my wife left him behind her as a legacy to her mother. It is rather a hazard, Mrs. Cale, as perhaps you know, to bring out very young infants to this country.” Susan came to the rescue: she took the baby and put him on his feet, that Mrs. Cale should see how well he walked for his twelvemonth’s age. But it did not answer. No doubt Jane thought that the more she told them about Baby Arthur in England, the better pleased they would be. How much difference was there, she asked, between this child and little Arthur—eighteen months?—and how much between Arthur and the one above him? “Oh,” said the captain, “if it comes to months, you must ask my wife. Come here, sir,” he called to Robert, who was tumbling over the little black bearer, “tell this lady how old you are, for I am sure I can’t.” “I’m over four,” lisped Bobby. “Ah, I see,”said Jane Cale, “Baby Arthur is just between them.” “Exactly so,”said Captain Layne: “Susan, I think these children may go to their own quarters now.” They went at once, for I have trained them to be obedient, and I escaped with them. It is the first time any human tongue has spoken to me of Baby Arthur. I think if Captain Layne had looked at me I should have died: but he is ever kind. Never, by so much as a word, or look, or tone, since the hour when I first set foot on these shores, his wife’s humbled sister, his children’s meek governess—and it is more than good of him to entrust their training to me!—never has he betrayed that he as much as knew anything, still less thought of it.

Oh, how events have been smoothed for me!—how much more than I deserve have I to be thankful for!

[Letter from Captain Layne’s Wife to her Mother at Church Dykely.]

Calcutta, September 2nd.

MY DARLING MOTHER,

I am sitting down to answer your letter, which arrived by last mail: for I am sure you must wonder at my long silence and think it an age since I wrote. But the truth is, I have had a touch of my old complaint—intermittent fever—and it left me very weak and languid. I know you have an untiring correspondent in Eleanor. Perhaps that makes me a little negligent in writing home, though I am aware it ought not to do so.

We were truly glad to welcome Mrs. Cale, because she had so recently come from you. I cannot say that I have seen much of her as yet, for it was just after she got out that my illness began; and when I grew better my husband sent me to the hills for a change. Mary went with me and the children. She is the greatest comfort. Mother dear, in spite of what we know of, I do not think Mary has her equal for true worth in this world. You say that Mrs. Cale, in writing home to you, described Mary as being so altered; so sad and subdued. Why, my dear mother, of course she is sad: how could it be otherwise? I do not suppose, in her more recent life, she has ever felt other than the most intense sadness of mind; no, not for one minute: and it is only to be expected that this must in time show itself in the countenance. I spoke to her about it one day; it is a long, long time ago now; saying I did not like to see her retain so much sadness. “It cannot be helped,”she answered; “sadness must always follow sin.”

And now I must tell you, even at the risk of being misunderstood—though I am sure you know me too well to fear I should seek to countenance or excuse wrong-doing—that I think Mary takes an exaggerated view of the past. She seems to think it can never be wiped out, never be palliated. Of course, in one sense, it never can: but Idon’t see why she need continue to feel this intense humiliation, as if she ought to have a cordon drawn round her gown to warn all good folks from its contact. Look again at that persistent fancy of hers, always to wear black; it is writing about her gown puts me in mind of it. Black, black, black: thin silk when the heat will allow, oftener a dreary, rusty-black-looking kind of soft muslin that is called here “black jaconite”—but I really don’t know whether that’s the way to spell the thing. During the late intense heat, we have talked her into a black-and-white muslin: that is, white, with huge black spots upon it in the form of a melon. Only once did I speak to her about wearing white as we do; I have never ventured since. She turned away with a shiver, and said white was no longer for her. Mother, dear, if any one ever lived to work out on earth their repentance for sin, surely it is Mary. The more I see of her innate goodness, the less can I understand thepast. With her upright principles and strict sense of conscientiousness—and you know that Mary always had these, even as a child—I am unable to imagine how it could have been that—— But I won’t go into that. And it may be that the goodness, so remarkable, would not have come out conspicuously but for the trial.

Mrs. Cale gave us such a nice account of “Baby Arthur.” She says he is very fair and pretty. She has talked to other people about him—and of course we cannot tell her not to talk. A brother-officer of my husband’s said to me yesterday:

“I hear your little boy at home is charming, Mrs. Layne. When shall you have him out?”

“Not yet,” I answered. “He was a very delicate baby, and I should not like to risk it.”

“Ah,” said Major Grant, “that is why you left him in England.”

“My mother takes great care of him,” I went on; “it would break her heart if I were to bring him away from her.”

You will wonder at my writing all this: but it is so new a thing to hear “Baby Arthur” made a topic of discussion, and all through Mrs. Cale! Talking of children, Eleanor is, I think, getting somewhat over her long-continued disappointment. Four years she has been married, and has none. It is certainly a pity, when she and Allan McAlpin are so well off. Not a family in Calcutta lives in better style than they—people here talk of the house of McAlpin Brothers as we at home talk of Rothschild’s and Baring’s. I am sure they must be very rich, and poor Eleanor naturally thinks where is the use of the riches when there’s no child to leave them to. Eleanor said to me the other day when she was here, “You might as well make over that child of yours to me, Susan,”—meaning Baby Arthur; “he does you no good, and must be a trouble to mamma and Elizabeth.” Of course I laughed it off; saying that you and Elizabeth would not part with him for untold gold. And I believe it is so, is it not, dear mother? Do you remember when I first went to your house with the poor little infant, after his birth on the Continent, you took him out of my arms with an averted face, as if you would rather have thrown him on the floor, and Elizabeth turned away and groaned? “Mother,” I said, “you may grow to love the child in time, and then you will be more ready to forgive and forget.” And that has come to pass.

Mary has always been against our not telling the truth to Eleanor; she says, even yet, that she feels like a hypocrite before her; but I feel sure it was best and wisest. Eleanor is as sensitive in her way as Mary is; Eleanor holds a high position in the place; she and her husband are both courted, she for herself, he for his riches, for his high commercial name, for his integrity; and I know she would have feltthe slur almost as keenly as Mary. It is true I do not like deliberate deceit; but there was really no need to tell her—it would not haveanswered any good end. Until Mrs. Cale talked, Eleanor scarcely remembered that there was a Baby Arthur; and now she seems quite jealous that he is mine and she cannot have him. I say to Eleanor that she must be contented with the good she has; her indulgent husband, her position. We poor officers’ wives cannot compete with her in grandeur. By the way, talking of officers, you will be glad to hear that my husband expects his majority. It will be a welcome rise. For, with our little ones and our expenses, it is rather difficult at times to make both ends meet. We shall come into money some time from the West Indies; but until then every pound of additional pay is welcome.

Mrs. Cale told us another item of news; that is, she recounted it amidst the rest, little thinking what it was to us. That Sir G. C. is married, and living with his wife at the Grange with Lady C. You have been keeping the fact back, dear mother; either through not choosing to mention their names, or out of consideration to Mary. But I can assure you she was thankful to hear of it; it has removed a little of the abiding sting from her life. You cannot imagine how unselfish she is: she looks upon herself as the sole cause of all that occurred. I mean that she says it was through her going to the Grange. Had she not gone, the peace of mother and son would never have been disturbed. I think Lady C. was selfish and wrong; that she ought to have allowed Sir G. to do as he wished. Mary says no; that Lady C.’s comfort and her lifelong feelings were above every other consideration. She admires Lady C. more than I do. However, she is truly glad to hear that the marriage took place. Events have fallen now into their original course, and she trusts that the bitter episode in which she took part may be gradually forgotten at the Grange. The day we first heard of his marriage, I went hastily—and I fear you will say rudely—into Mary’s room at night when she was preparing for rest, having omitted to tell her something I wished changed in Nelly’s studies for the morning. She was on her knees, and rose up; the tears were literally streaming down her sweet face, “Oh, Mary, what is the matter?” I asked, in dismay. “I was only praying for God to bless them,” she answered simply. Is she not a good, unselfish girl?

I could fill pages with her praises. What she has been to my children, during these two years she has had them in charge, I can never tell. She insisted upon being regarded and treated wholly as a governess; but, as my husband says, no real governess could be half so painstaking, untiring, and conscientious. She has earned the respect of all Calcutta, and she shrinks from it as if it were something to be shunned, saying, “If people did but know!” Nelly, from being the only girl, and perhaps also because she was the eldest and her papa loved her so, was the most tiresome, spoiled little animal in the world; and the boys were boisterous, and I am afraid frightfully impudent tothe native servants: but since Mary took them in hand they are altogether different, fit to be loved. Richard often says he wishes he could recompense her.

And now I must bring my letter to a close, or you will be tired. The children all send love to grandmamma and Aunt Elizabeth: and (it is Miss Nelly calls out this) to little brother Arthur. Nelly is growing prettier every day: she is now going on for eleven. Young Richard promises to be as tall and fine a man as his father. I believe he is to be sent home next year to the school attached to King’s College in London. Little Allan is more delicate than I like to see him; Bobby, a frightful Turk; baby, a dear little fellow. Master Allan’s godfather, Eleanor’s husband, gave him a handsome present on his last birthday—a railway train that would “go.” He had sent for it from England: I am sure it never cost less than five pounds; and the naughty child broke it before the day was out. I felt so vexed; and downright ashamed to confess it to Eleanor. The Ayah said he broke it for the purpose, “to see what it was made of;” and, in spite of entreaties to the contrary, Richard was on the point of whipping him for the mischief, and Allan was roaring in anticipation, when Mary interposed, and begged to be let deal with him for it. What she said, or what she did, I don’t know, I’m sure there was no whipping; but Master Allan was in a penitential and subdued mood for days after it, voluntarily renouncing some pudding that he is uncommonly fond of, because he had “not been good.” Richard says that he would rather trust his children to Mary, to be made what they ought to be, than to any one under heaven. Oh, it is grievous—that her life should have been blighted!

My best love to you and Elizabeth, dearest mother, in which Richard begs to join; and believe me, your affectionate daughter,

SUSAN LAYNE.

P.S.—I have never before written openly on these private matters: we have been content tacitly to ignore them to each other, but somehow my pen has run on incautiously. Please, therefore, to burn this letter when you and Elizabeth shall have read it. [1]

[From Miss Mary Layne’s Journal, about two years yet later.]

October 9th.—I quite tremble at the untoward turn things seem to be taking. To think that a noble gentleman should be casting his thoughts on me! And he is a gentleman, and a noble one also, in spite of that vain young adjutant, St. George’s, slighting remark when Mr. McAlpincame in last night—“Here’s that confounded old warehouseman!” It was well the major did not hear him. He has to take St. George to task on occasion, and he would have done it then with a will.

Andrew McAlpin is not an ordinary man. Head of a wealthy house, whose integrity has never been questioned; himself of unsullied honour, of handsome presence, of middle age, for surely, in his three-and-fortieth year, he may be called it—owner of all these solid advantages, he has actually turned his attentions upon me. Me! Oh, if he did but know!—if he could but see the humiliation it brings to this already too humiliated heart.

Has a glamour been cast over his sight—as they say in his own land? Can he not see how I shrink from people when they notice me by chance more than is usual? Does he not see how constantly I have tried to shrink from him? If I thought that this had been brought about by any want of precaution on my part, I should be doubly miserable. When I was assistant-teacher at school in England, the French governess, poor old Madame de Visme, confided to me something that she was in the habit of doing; it was nothing wrong in itself, but totally opposed to the arbitrary rules laid down, and, if discovered, might have caused her to be abruptly dismissed. “But suppose it were found out, madame?” I said. “Ah non, mon enfant,” she answered; “je prends mes précautions.” Since then I have often thought of the words: and I say to myself, now as I write, have I taken precautions—proper ones? I can hardly tell. For one thing, I was at first, and for some time, so totally unprepared; it would no more have entered my mind to suppose Mr. McAlpin would think of paying attention to me, than that the empty-headed Lieutenant St. George—who boasts that his family is better than anybody’s in India, and intends to wed accordingly if he weds at all—would pay it.

When it first began—and that is so long ago that I can scarcely remember, nearly a year, though—Mr. McAlpin would talk to me about the children. I felt proud to answer him, dear little things; and I knew he liked them, and Allan is his brother’s godchild, and Robert is Eleanor’s. I am afraid that is where I was wrong: when he came talking, evening after evening, I should have been on my guard, and begged Susan to excuse me from appearing as often as she would. The great evil lies in my having consented to appear at all in company. For two years after I came out—oh, more than that; it must have been nearly three—I resolutely refused to join them when they were not alone. It was Major Layne’s fault that the rule was broken through. One day, when invitations were out for an evening party, Susan came to me and said that the major particularly requested I would appear at it. “The fact is, Mary,” she whispered, “there has been some talk at the mess: you are very much admired—your face, I mean—and some of them began wondering whether there was any reason for your never appearing in society; and whether you could really be my sister. Richard was not present—that goes without saying—the colonel repeated it to him afterwards in a joking way. But what the major says is this, Mary—that he knows India and gossiping tongues better than you do, and he desires for all our sakes, for yours of course especially, that you will now and then show yourself with us. You are to begin next Tuesday evening. Richard begs you will. And I have been getting you a black net dress, with a little white lace for the body—you cannot say that’s too fine.” The words “for all our sakes”decided it; and I said I would certainly obey Major Layne. What else could I do?

That was the beginning of it. Though I go out scarcely ever with the major and Susan, declining invitations on the plea of my duties as governess, it has certainly grown into a habit with me to spend my evenings with them when they are at home.

But I never supposed anything like this would come of it. It has always seemed to me as if the world could see me a little as I see myself, and not think of me as one eligible to be chosen. As soon as I suspected that Mr. McAlpin came here for me, I strove to show him as plainly as I might that he was making a mistake. And now this proves, as it seems to me, how wrong it was not to tell my sad story to Eleanor, but to let her think of me as one still worthy. Susan knows how averse I was to its suppression; but she overruled me, and said Richard thought with her. Eleanor would have whispered it to her husband, and he might have whispered to his brother Andrew, and this new perplexity have been spared. It is not for my own sake I am so sorry, but for his: crosses and vexations are only my due, and I try to take them patiently; but I grow hot with shame every time I think how he is deceived. Oh, if he would only speak out, and end it! that I might thank him and tell him it is impossible: I should like to say unfit. Susan might give him a hint; but when I urge her to do so, she laughs at me and asks, How can she, until he has spoken?

October 25th.—It has come at last. Mr. McAlpin, one of the best men amidst the honourable men of the world, has asked me to become his wife. Whilst I was trying to answer him, I burst into tears. We were quite alone. “Why do you weep?” he asked, and I answered that I thought it was because of my gratitude to him for his kindness, and because I was so unworthy of it. It was perhaps a hazardous thing to say—but I was altogether confused. I must have explained myself badly, for he could not or would not understand my refusal; he said he certainly should decline to take it: I must consider it well—for a week—or a month—as long as I liked, provided I said “Yes” at last. When the crying was over, I felt myself again; and I told him, just as quietly and calmly as I could speak, that I should never marry; never. He asked why, and as I was hesitating what reason to give, and praying to be helped to speak right in the emergency, we were interrupted.

Oh, if I could only tell him the naked truth, as I here write it! That the only one living man it would be possible for me to marry is separated from me wider than seas can part. The barrier was thrown up between us years ago, never to be overstepped by either of us: whilst at the same time it shut me out from my kind. For this reason I can never marry, and never shall marry, so long as the world, for me, endures.

November 19th.—This is becoming painful. Mr. McAlpin will not give me up. He is all consideration and respect, he is not obtrusive, but yet—he will not give me up. There can exist no good reason why I should not have him, he says; and he is willing to wait for months and years. Eleanor comes in with her remonstrances: “Whatever possesses you, Mary? You must be out of your mind, child, to refuse Andrew McAlpin. For goodness’ sake, get a little common sense into your poor crotchety head.” Allan McAlpin, in his half-earnest, half-joking way, says to me, “Miss Layne, I make a perfect husband; ask Eleanor if I don’t; and I know Andrew will make a better.” It is so difficult for me to parry these attacks. The children even have taken it up: and Richard to-day in the schoolroom called me Mrs. McAlpin. Susan has tried to shield me throughout. The major says not a word one way or the other.

A curious idea has come across me once or twice lately—that it might be almost better to give Mr. McAlpin a hint of the truth. Of course it is but an idea; one that can never be carried out; but I know that he would be true as steel. I cannot bear for him to think me ungrateful: and he must consider me both ungrateful and capricious. I respect him and like him very much, and he sees this: if I were at liberty as others are, I would gladly marry him: the great puzzle is, how to make him understand that it is not possible. I suppose the consciousness of my secret, which never leaves me, renders it more difficult for me to be decisive than it would be if I possessed none. Not the least painful part of it all is, that he brings me handsome presents, and will not take them back again. He is nearly old enough to be my father, he says, and so I must consider them as given to me in that light. How shall I stop it?—how convince him?

November 29th.—Well, I have done it. Last night there was a grand dinner at the mess; some strangers were to join it on invitation; Susan went to spend a quiet hour with the colonel’s wife, and Mr. McAlpin came in, and found me alone. What possessed me I cannot tell: but I began to tremble all over. He asked what was the matter, and I took courage to say that I always now felt distressed to see him come in, knowing he came for my sake, and that I could not respond to him as he wished. We had never had so serious a conversation as the onethat ensued. He begged me to at least tell him what the barrier was, and where it lay: I thought he almost hinted that it was due to him.“There is some particular barrier, I feel sure,” he said, “although Eleanor tells me there is none.” And then I took some more courage, inwardly hoping to be helped to speak for the best, and answered Yes, there was a barrier; one that could never be surmounted; and that I had tried to make him see this all along. I told him how truly I esteemed him; how little I felt in my own eyes at being so undeserving of the opinion of a good man; I said I should thank him for it in my heart for ever. Did the barrier lie in my loving another? he asked, and I hesitated there. I had loved another, I said: it was before I came out, and the circumstances attending it were very painful; indeed, it was a painful story altogether. It had blighted my life; it had isolated me from the world; it entirely prevented me from ever thinking of another. I do believe he gathered from my agitation something of the truth, for he was so kind and gentle. Eleanor knew nothing of it, I said; Major and Mrs. Layne had thought there was no need to tell her, and, of course, he would understand that I was speaking to him in confidence. Yes, he answered, in confidence that I should not find misplaced. I felt happier and more at ease with him than I had ever done, for now I knew that misapprehension was over; and we talked together on other matters peacefully, until Major Layne entered and brought a shock with him.

A shock for me. One of the guests at the mess came with him: a naval officer in his uniform: a big man of fifty or sixty years, with a stern countenance and a cloud of untidy white hair. “Where’s Susan?”cried the major: “out? Come here, then, Mary: you must be hostess.”And before I knew what or who it was, I had been introduced to Admiral Chavasse. My head was in a whirl, my eyes were swimming: I had not heard the name spoken openly for years. Major Layne little thought he was related to G. C.: Mr. McAlpin had no idea that this fine naval officer, Parker Chavasse, could be cousin to one of whom I had been speaking covertly, but had not named. The admiral is on cruise, has touched at Calcutta, and his vessel is lying in Diamond Harbour.

November 30th.—Oh dear! oh dear! That I should be the recipient of so much goodness, and not be able to appreciate it!

A message came to the schoolroom this morning; Miss Layne was wanted downstairs. It was Susan who sent, but I found Mr. McAlpin alone. He had been holding a confidential interview with Susan: and Susan, hearing how much I had said to him last night, confided to him all. Oh, and he was willing to take me still; to take me as I am! I fell down at his feet sobbing when I told him that it could not be.

[Private Note from Major Layne’s Wife to her Mother at Church Dykely.]

Just half-a-dozen lines, my dear mother, for your eye alone: I enclose them in my ordinary letter, meant for the world in general as well as you. Mr. McAlpin knows all; but he was still anxious to make her his wife. He thinks her the best and truest girl, excellent among women. Praise from him is praise. It was, I am certain, a most affecting interview; but they were alone. Mary’s refusal—an absolute one—was dictated by two motives. The one is that the old feelings hold still so much sway in her heart (and, she says, always will) as to render the idea of a union with any one else absolutely distasteful. The other motive was consideration for Andrew McAlpin. “I put it to you what it would be,” she said to him, “if at any time after our marriage, whether following closely upon it, or in years to come, this story of mine should transpire? I should die with shame, with grief for your sake: and there could be no remedy. No, no; never will I subject you, or any one else, to that frightful chance.”

And, mother, she is right. In spite of Mr. McAlpin’s present disappointment, I know he thinks her so. It has but increased his admiration for her. He said to me, “Henceforth I shall look upon her as a dear younger sister, and give her still my heart’s best love and reverence.”

And this is the private history of the affair: I thought I ought to disclose it to you. Richard, while thinking she has done right, says it is altogether an awful pity (he means inclusive of the past), for she’s a trump of a girl. And so she is.

Ever yours, dear mother,

SUSAN LAYNE.

Part the Third.

t was a lovely place, that homestead of Chavasse Grange, as seen in the freshness of the summer’s morning: and my Lady Chavasse, looking from her window as she dressed, might be thinking so. The green lawn, its dew-drops sparkling in the sun, was dotted with beds of many coloured flowers; the thrush and blackbird were singing in the surrounding trees; the far-off landscape, stretched around in the distance, was beautiful for the eye to rest upon.

Nearly hidden by great clusters of roses, some of which he was plucking, and talking at the same time to the head-gardener who stood by, was a good-looking gentleman of some five-and-twenty years. His light morning coat was flung back from the snowy white waistcoat, across which a gold chain passed, its seal drooping; a blue necktie, just as blue as his blue eyes, was carelessly tied round his neck. He might have been known for a Chavasse by those self-same eyes, for they had been his father’s—Sir Peter’s—before him.

“About those geraniums that you have put out, Markham,” he was saying. “How came you to do it? Lady Chavasse is very angry; she wanted them kept in the pots.”

“Well, Sir Geoffry, I only obeyed orders,” replied the gardener—who was new to the place. “Lady Rachel told me to do it.”

“Lady Rachel did? Oh, very well. Lady Chavasse did not understand that, I suppose.”

Up went Lady Chavasse’s window at this juncture. “Geoffry.”

Sir Geoffry stepped out from the roses, and smiled as he answered her.

“Ask Markham about the geraniums, Geoffry—how he could dare to do such a thing without orders.”

“Mother, Rachel bade him do it. Of course she did not know that you wished it not done.”

“Oh,” curtly replied Lady Chavasse. And she shut down the window again.

By this it will be seen that the wishes of the two ladies at Chavasse Grange sometimes clashed. Lady Rachel, though perhaps regarded as second in authority, was fond of having her own way, and took it when she could. Lady Chavasse made a show of deferring to her generally; but she had reigned queen so long that she found it irksome, not to say humiliating, to yield the smallest point to her son’s wife.

They were sitting down to breakfast when Sir Geoffry went in, in the room that had once been the garden-parlour. It had been re-embellished since those days, and made the breakfast-room. Lady Chavasse was but in her forty-fourth year; a young woman, so to say, beautiful still, and excellently-well preserved. She wore a handsome dress of green muslin, with a dainty little cap of lace on her rich brown hair. Sir Geoffry’s wife was in white; she looked just the same as when she was Rachel Derreston; her perfect features pale, and cold, and faultless.

Geoffry Chavasse laid a rose by the side of each as he sat down. He was the only one changed; changed since the light-hearted days before that episode of sin and care came to the Grange. It had soon passed away again; but somehow it had left its mark on him. His face seemed to have acquired a weary sort of look; and the fair bright hair was getting somewhat thin upon the temples. Sir Geoffry was in Parliament; but he had now paired off for the short remainder of the session. Sometimes they were all in London: sometimes Sir Geoffry would be there alone; or only with his wife: the Grange was their chief and usual home.

They began talking of their plans for the day. Sir Geoffry had to ride over some portion of the estate; Lady Rachel thought she must write some letters; Lady Chavasse, who said her head ached, intended to go out in her new carriage.

It was ordered to the door in the course of the morning: this pretty toy carriage, which had been a recent present from Geoffry to his mother. Low and lightly built, it was something like a basket-chaise, but much more elegant, and the boy-groom, in his natty postillion’s dress, sat the horse. Lady Chavasse, a light shawl thrown over her green muslin, and a white bonnet on, stood admiring the turn-out, her maid, who had come out with the parasol, by her side.

“Wilkins,” said her ladyship, suddenly, “run and ask Lady Rachel whether she is sure she would not like to go with me?”

The woman went and returned. “Lady Rachel’s love and thanks, my lady, but she would prefer to get her letters done.”

So Lady Chavasse went alone, taking the road to Church Dykely. The hedges were blooming with wild roses and woodbine, the sweet scent of the hay filled the air, the sky was blue and cloudless. But the headache was making itself sensibly felt; and my lady, remembering that she had often had these headaches lately, began wondering whether Duffham the surgeon could give her anything to cure them.

“Giles,” she cried, leaning forward. And the groom turned and touched his cap.

“My lady?”

“To Mr. Duffham’s.”

So in the middle of the village, at Mr. Duffham’s door, Giles pulled up. The surgeon, seeing who it was, came out, and handed his visitor indoors.

Lady Chavasse had not enjoyed a gossip with Mr. Duffham since before her last absence from home. She rather liked one in her coldly condescending way. And she stayed with him in the surgery while he made up some medicine for her, and told her all the village news. Then she began talking about her daughter-in-law.

“Lady Rachel seems well, but there is a little fractiousness perceptible now and then; and I fancy that, with some people, it denotes a state of not perfect health. There are no children, Mr. Duffham, you see. There have been no signs of any.”

“Time enough for that, my lady.”

“Well—they have been married for—let me recollect—nearly fourteen months. I do hope there will be children! I am anxious that there should be.”

The surgeon happened to meet her eyes as she spoke, and read the anxiety seated in them.

“You see—if there were none, and anything happened to Sir Geoffry, it would be the case of the old days—my case over again. Had mychild proved to be a girl, the Grange would have gone from us. You do not remember that; you were not here; but your predecessor, Mr. Layne, knew all about it.”

Perhaps it was the first time for some three or more years past that Lady Chavasse had voluntarily mentioned the name of Layne to the surgeon. It might have been a slip of the tongue now.

“But nothing is likely to happen to Sir Geoffry, Lady Chavasse,”observed Duffham, after an imperceptible pause. “He is young and healthy.”

“I know all that. Only it would be pleasant to feel we were on the safe side—that there was a son to succeed. If anything did happen to him, and he left no son, the Grange would pass away from us. I cannot help looking to contingencies: it has been my way to do so all my life.”

“Well, Lady Chavasse, I sincerely hope the son will come. Sir Geoffry is anxious on the point, I dare say.”

“He makes no sign of being so. Sir Geoffry seems to me to have grown a little indifferent in manner of late, as to general interests. Yesterday afternoon we were talking about making some improvements at the Grange, he and I; Lady Rachel was indoors at the piano. I remarked that it would cost a good deal of money, and the question was, whether it would be worth while to do it. ‘My successor would think it so, no doubt,’ cried Sir Geoffry. ‘I hope that will never be Parker Chavasse; I should not like him to reign here,’ I said hastily.‘If it is, mother, I shall not be alive to witness it,’ was his unemotional answer.”

“Lady Chavasse, considering the difference between the admiral’s age and Sir Geoffry’s, I should say there are thirty chances against it,”was Duffham’s reply, as he began to roll up the bottle of mixture in white paper.

While he was doing this, a clapping of tiny hands attracted Lady Chavasse’s attention to the window, which stood open. A little boy had run out of Mrs. Layne’s door opposite, and stood on the pavement in admiration of the carriage, which the groom was driving slowly about. It was a pretty child of some three years old, or thereabouts, in a brown holland pinafore strapped round the waist, his little arms and legs and neck bare, and his light hair curling.

“Oh, g’andma, look! G’andma, come and look!” he cried—and the words were wafted distinctly to Lady Chavasse.

“Who is that child, Mr. Duffham? I have seen him sometimes before. Stay, though, I remember—I think I have heard. He belongs to that daughter of Mr. Layne’s who married a soldier of the same name. A lieutenant, or some grade of that kind, was he not?”

“Lieutenant Layne then: Captain Layne now,” carelessly replied Mr. Duffham. “Hopes to get his majority in time, no doubt.”

“Oh, indeed. I sometimes wonder how people devoid of family connections manage to obtain rapid promotion. The grandmother takes care of the child, I suppose. Quite a charge for her.”

Mr. Duffham, standing now by her side, glanced at Lady Chavasse. Her countenance was open, unembarrassed: there was no sign of ulterior thought upon it. Evidently a certain event of the past was not just then in her remembrance.

“How is the old lady?” she asked.

“Middling. She breaks fast. I doubt, though, if one of her daughters will not go before her.”

Lady Chavasse turned quickly at the words.

“I speak of the one who is with her—Miss Elizabeth Layne,” continued Mr. Duffham, busily rolling up the bottle. “Her health is failing: I think seriously; though she may linger for some time yet.”

There was a pause. Lady Chavasse looked hard at the white knobs on the drug-drawers. But that she began to speak, old Duffham might have thought she was counting how many there were of them.

“The other one—Miss Mary Layne—is she still in that situation in India? A governess, or something of the kind, we heard she went out to be.”

“Governess to Captain Layne’s children. Oh yes, she’s there. And likely to be, the people over the way seem to say. Captain and Mrs. Layne consider that they have a treasure in her.”

“Oh, I make no doubt she would do her duty. Thank you; never mind sealing it. I will be sure to attend to your directions, Mr. Duffham.”

She swept out to the carriage, which had now drawn up, and stepped over the low step into it. The surgeon put the bottle by her side, and saluted her as she drove away. Across the road trotted the little fellow in the pinafore.

“Did oo see dat booful tarriage, Mis’er Duffham? I’d like to ’ide in it.”

“You would, would you, Master Arthur,” returned the surgeon, hoisting the child for a moment on his shoulder, and then setting him on his feet again, as Miss Layne appeared at the door. “Be off back: there’s Aunt Elizabeth looking angry. It’s against the law, you know, sir, to run out beyond the house.”

And the little lad ran over at once, obediently.

Nearly three years back—not quite so much by two or three months—Church Dykely was gratified by the intelligence that Captain Layne’s wife—then sojourning in Europe—was coming on a short visit to her mother with her three or four weeks’ old baby. Church Dykely welcomed the news, for it was a sort of break to the monotonous, jog-trot village life, and warmly received Mrs. Richard Layne and the child on their arrival. The infant was born in France, where Mrs. Richard Layne had been staying with one of her sisters—Mary—and whence she had now come direct to her mother’s; Mary having gone on to Liverpool to join Mrs. Richard Layne’s other children. The baby—made much of by the neighbours—was to remain with old Mrs. Layne: Mrs. Richard Layne did not deem it well to take so young a child to India, as he seemed rather delicate. Church Dykely said how generous it was of her to sacrifice her motherly feelings for the baby’s good—but the Laynes had always been unselfish. She departed, leaving the child. And Baby Arthur, as all the place called him, lived and thrived, and was now grown as fine a little fellow for his age as might be, with a generous spirit and open heart. My Lady Chavasse (having temporarily forgotten it when speaking with Mr. Duffham) had heard all about the child’s parentage just as the village had—that he was the son of Captain Richard Layne and his wife Susan. Chavasse Grange generally understood the same, including Sir Geoffry. There was no intercourse whatever between the Layne family and the Grange; there had not been any since Miss Mary Layne quitted it. My Lady Chavasse was in the habit of turning away her eyes when she passed Mrs. Layne’s house: and in good truth, though perhaps her conscience reminded her of it at these moments, she had three-parts forgotten the unpleasant episode of the past.

And the little boy grew and thrived: and became as much a feature in Church Dykely as other features were—say the bridge over the mill-stream, or the butcher’s wife—and was no more thought of, in the matter of speculation, than they were.

Miss Elizabeth Layne caught hold of the young truant’s hand with a jerk and a reprimand, telling him he would be run over some day. She had occasion to tell it him rather often, for he was of a fearless nature. Mr. Duffham nodded across the road to Miss Elizabeth.

“Are you better to-day?” he called out. People don’t stand on ceremony in these rural places.

“Not much, thank you,” came the answer.

For Miss Elizabeth Layne had been anything but strong lately: her symptoms being very like those that herald consumption.

The time rolled on, bringing its changes. You have already seen it rolling on in Calcutta, for in this, the third part, we have had to go back a year or two.

Elizabeth Layne died. Mrs. Layne grew very feeble, and it was thought and said by every one that one of her daughters ought to be residing with her. There was only one left unmarried—Mary. Mary received news in India of this state of things at home, together with a summons from her mother. Not at all a peremptory summons. Mrs. Layne wrote a few shaky lines, praying her to come “if shewould not mind returning to the place:” if she did mind it, why, she, the mother, must die alone as she best could. There was a short struggle in Mary Layne’s heart; a quick, sharp battle, and she gave in. Her duty to her mother lay before aught else in God’s sight; and she would yield to it. As soon as preparations for her voyage could be made, she embarked for England.

It was autumn when she got home, and Church Dykely received her gladly. Mary Layne had always been a favourite in the place, from the time her father, the good-hearted, hard-working surgeon, had fondly shown her, his youngest and fairest child, to the public, a baby of a few days old. But Church Dykely found her greatly changed. They remembered her as a blooming girl; she came back to them a grave woman, looking older than her years, and with a pale sweet countenance that seemed never to have a smile on it. She was only six-and-twenty yet.

Miss Layne took up her post at once by the side of her ailing mother. What with attending her and attending to Baby Arthur—whom she took into training at once, just as she had taken the children in India—she found her time fully occupied. The boy, when she returned, was turned five. She went out very rarely; never—except to church, or at dusk—when the family were at the Grange, for she seemed to have a dread of meeting them. Church Dykely wondered that Miss Layne did not call at the Grange, considering that she had been humble companion there before she went out, or that my lady did not come to see her; but supposed the lapse of time had caused the acquaintanceship to fall through.

Mary had brought good news from India. Her sister Eleanor, Mrs. Allan McAlpin, had a little girl, to the great delight of all concerned. Just when they had given it up as hopeless, the capricious infant arrived. Major Layne told his wife confidentially that Allan McAlpin was prouder of that baby than any dog with two tails.

And henceforth this was to be Mary Layne’s home, and this her occupation—caring for her mother, so long as the old lady should be spared, and gently leading to good the child, Arthur. Mrs. Layne, lapsing into her dotage, would sit in her favourite place, the parlour window, open when the weather allowed it, watching people as they passed. Mary’s smooth and bright brown hair might be seen in the background, her head drooping over the book she was reading to Mrs. Layne, or over her work when the old lady grew tired of listening, or over Master Arthur’s lessons at the table. Not only lessons to fit him for this world did Mary teach him; but such as would stand him in good aid when striving onwards for the next. Twice a day, morning and evening, would she take the child alone, and talk to him of heaven, and things pertaining to it. Aunt Elizabeth’s lessons had been chiefly on the score of behaviour: the other sort of instruction had been allroutine, at the best. Mary remedied this, and she had an apt little scholar. Seated on her knee, his bright blue eyes turned up to her face, the child would listen and talk, and say he would be a good boy always, always. The tears wet his eyelashes at her Bible stories: he would put his little face down on her bosom, and whisper out a sobbing wish that Jesus would love him as He had loved the little children on earth. There is no safeguard like this seed sown in childhood: if withheld, nothing can replace it in after-life.

They grew the best and greatest friends, these two. Whether Mary loved him, or not, she did not say; she was ever patient and thoughtful with him, with a kind of grave tenderness. But the child grew to love her more than he had ever loved any one in his young life. One day, when he did something wrong and saw how it grieved her, his repentant sobs nearly choked him. It was very certain that Mary had found the way to his heart, and might mould him for good or for ill.

The child was a chatterbox. Aunt Elizabeth used to say he ought to have the tip of his tongue cut off. He seemed never tired of asking about papa and mamma in India, and Allan and Bobby and the rest, and the elephants and camels—and Dick the eldest, who was in London, at the school attached to King’s College.

“When will they come over to see us, Aunt Mary?” he questioned one day, when he was on Mary’s knee.

“If grandmamma’s pretty well we, will have Dick down at Christmas.”

“Is Dick to be a soldier like papa?”

“I think so.”

“I shall be a soldier too.”

There was an involuntary tightening of her hands round him—as if she would guard him from that.

“I hope not, Arthur. One soldier in a family’s enough: and that is to be Richard.”

“Is papa a very big, big brave man, with a flashing sword?”

“Major Layne is tall and very brave. He wears his sword sometimes.”

“Oh, Aunt Mary, I should like to be a soldier and have a sword! When I can write well enough I’ll write a letter to papa to ask him. I’d like to ride on the elephants.”

“They are not as good to ride as horses.”

“Is mamma as pretty as you?” demanded Master Arthur, after a pause.

“Prettier. I am pale and—” sad, she was going to say, but put another word—“quiet.”

“When you go back to India, Aunt Mary, shall you take me? I should like to sail in the great ship.”

“Arthur dear, I do not think I shall go back.”

And so Miss Mary Layne—she was Miss Layne now—stayed on. Church Dykely would see a slender, grave young lady, dressed generally in black silk, whose sweet face seemed to have too careworn an expression for her years. But if her countenance was worn and weary, her heart was not. That seemed full of love and charity for all; of gentle compassion for any wrong-doer, of sympathy for the sick and suffering. She grew to be revered, and valued, and respected as few had ever been in Church Dykely: certainly as none had, so young as she was. Baby Arthur, clacking his whip as he went through the streets on his walks by the nurse Betsy’s side, his chattering tongue never still; now running into the blacksmith’s shed to watch the sparks; now perching himself on the top of the village stocks; and now frightening Betsy out of her senses by attempting to leap the brook—in spite of these outdoor attractions, Baby Arthur was ever ready to run home to Aunt Mary, as though she were his best treasure.

When Miss Layne had been about six months at her mother’s, a piece of munificent good fortune befel her—as conveyed to her in official and unofficial communications from India. Andrew McAlpin—the head of the great McAlpin house in Calcutta, who had respected Mary Layne above all women, and had wished to marry her, as may be remembered—Andrew McAlpin was dead, and had left some of his accumulated wealth to Mary. It would amount to six hundred a-year, and was bequeathed to her absolutely: at her own disposal to will away when she in turn should die. In addition to this, he directed that the sum of one thousand pounds should be paid to her at once. He also left a thousand pounds to Mrs. Richard Layne—but that does not concern us. This good man’s death brought great grief to Mary. It had been the result of an accident: he lay ill only a few weeks. As to the fortune—well, of course that was welcome, for Mary had been casting many an anxious thought to the future on sundry scores, and what little money she had been able to put by, out of the salary as governess at Major Layne’s, was now nearly exhausted. She thought she knew why Mr. McAlpin had thus generously remembered her: and it was an additional proof of the thoughtful goodness which had ever characterized his life. Oh, if she could only have thanked him! if she had only known it before he died! He had been in the habit of corresponding with her since her return to Europe, for she and he had remained firm friends, but the thought of ever benefiting by him in this way had never entered her head. As how should it?—seeing that he was a strong man, and only in the prime of life. She mourned his loss: she thought she could best have spared any other friend; but all the regrets in the world would not bring him back to life. He was gone. And Allan McAlpin was now sole head of that wealthy house, besides inheriting a vast private fortune from his brother. Eleanor McAlpin, once Eleanor Layne, might well wish for more children amidst all her riches.

The first thing that Mary Layne did with some of this thousand pounds—which had been conveyed to her simultaneously with the tidings of the death—was to convey her mother to the seaside for a change, together with Baby Arthur and the nurse, Betsy. Before quitting home she held one or two interviews with James Spriggings, the house agent, builder, and decorator, and left certain orders with him. On their return, old Mrs. Layne did not know her house. It had been put into substantial repair inside and out, and was now one of the prettiest, not to say handsomest, in the village. All the old carpets were replaced by handsome new ones, and a great deal of the furniture was new. Pillars had been added to the rather small door, giving it an imposing appearance, iron outside railings had taken the place of the old ones. Mrs. Layne, I say, did not know her house again.

“My dear, why have you done it?” cried the old lady, looking about her in amazement. “Is it not a waste of money?”

“I think not, mother,” was the answer. “Most likely this will be my home for life. Perhaps Arthur’s home after me. At least it will be his until he shall be of an age to go out in the world.”

Mrs. Layne said no more. She had grown of late very indifferent to outward things. Aged people do get so, and Mr. Duffham said her system was breaking up. The seaside air had done her good; they had gone to it in May, and came back in August. Mary added a third servant to the household, and things went on as before in their quiet routine.

One afternoon in September, when they had been at home about a month, Mary went out, and took Arthur. She was going to see a poor cottager who had nursed herself, Mary, when she was a child, and who had recently lost her husband. When they came to the gates of Chavasse Grange, past which their road lay, Master Arthur made a dead standstill, and wholly declined to proceed. The child was in a black velvet tunic, the tips of his white drawers just discernible beneath it, and his legs bare, down to the white socks: boys of his age were dressed so then. As bonny a lad for his six years as could be seen anywhere, with a noble, fearless bearing. Mary wore her usual black silk, a rich one too, with a little crape on it; the mourning for Mr. McAlpin. Arthur was staring over the way through the open gates of the Grange.

“I want to go in and see the peacock.”

“Go in and see the peacock!” exclaimed Miss Layne, rather taken aback by the demand. “What can you mean, Arthur? The peacock is up by the house.”

“I know it is. We can go up there and see it, Aunt Mary.”

“Indeed we cannot, Arthur. I never heard of such a thing.”

“Betsy lets me go.”

The confession involved all sorts of thoughts, and a flush crossed Miss Layne’s delicate face. The family were not at the Grange, as she knew: they had gone up to London in January, when Parliament met, and had never returned since: nevertheless she did not like to hear of this intrusion into the grounds of the nurse and child. The peacock had been a recent acquisition; or, as Arthur expressed it, had just “come to live there.” When he had talked of it at home, Mary supposed he had seen it on the slopes in passing. These green slopes, dotted here and there with shrubs and flowers, came down to the boundary wall that skirted the highway. The avenue through the gates wound round abruptly, hiding itself beyond the lodge.

“Come, my dear. It is already late.”

“But, Aunt Mary, you must see the peacock. He has got the most splendid tail. Sometimes he drags it behind him on the grass, and sometimes it’s all spread out in a beautiful circle, like that fan you brought home from India. Do come.”

Miss Layne did not reply for the moment. She was inwardly debating upon what plea she could forbid the child’s ever going in again to see the peacock: the interdiction would sound most arbitrary if she gave none. All at once, as if by magic, the peacock appeared in view, strutting down the slopes, its proud tail, in all its glory, spread out in the rays of the declining sun.

It was too much for Arthur. With a shout of delight he leaped off the low foot-path, flew across the road, and in at the gates. In vain Mary called: in his glad excitement he did not so much as hear her.

There ensued a noise as of the fleet foot of a horse, and then a crash, a man’s shout, and a child’s cry. What harm had been done? In dire fear Mary Layne ran to see, her legs trembling beneath her.

Just at the sharp turn beyond the lodge, a group stood: Sir Geoffry Chavasse had Arthur in his arms; his horse, from which he had flung himself, being held and soothed by a mounted groom. The lodge children also had come running out to look. She understood it in a moment: Sir Geoffry must have been riding quickly down from the house, his groom behind him, when the unfortunate little intruder encountered him just at the turn, and there was no possibility of pulling up in time. In fact, the boy had run absolutely on to the horse’s legs.

She stood, white, and faint, and sick against the wall of the lodge: not daring to look into the accident—for Mary Layne was but a true woman, timid and sensitive; as little daring to encounter Sir Geoffry Chavasse, whom she had not been close to but for a few months short of seven years. That it should have occurred!—that this untoward thing should have occurred!

“I wonder whose child it is?” she heard Sir Geoffry say—and the well-remembered tones came home to her with a heart-thrill. “Poor little fellow! could it have been my fault, or his? Dovey”—to thegroom—“ride on at once and get Mr. Duffham here. Never mind my horse; he’s all right now. You can lead him up to the house, Bill, my lad!”

The groom touched his hat, and rode past Mary on his errand. Sir Geoffry was already carrying the child to the Grange; Bill, the eldest of the lodge children, following with the horse. All in a minute, a wailing cry burst from Arthur.

“Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! Oh, please let her come! I want Aunt Mary.”

And then it struck Sir Geoffry Chavasse that a gentleman’s child, such as this one by his appearance evidently was, would not have been out without an attendant. He turned round, and saw a lady in black standing by the lodge. The wailing cry began again.

“Aunt Mary! I want Aunt Mary.”

There was no help for it. She came on with her agitated face, from which every drop of blood had faded. Sir Geoffry, occupied with the child, did not notice her much.

“I am so grieved,” he began; “I trust the injury will be found not to be very serious. My horse——”

He had lifted his eyes then, and knew her instantly. His own face turned crimson; the words he had been about to say died unspoken on his lips. For a moment they looked in each other’s faces, and might have seen, had the time been one of less agitation, how markedly sorrow had left its traces there. The next, they remembered the present time, and what was due from them.

“I beg your pardon: Miss Layne, I think?” said Sir Geoffry, contriving to release one hand and raise his hat.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, and bowed in return.

He sat down on the bank for a moment to obtain a better hold of the child. Blood was dripping from one of the little velvet sleeves. Sir Geoffry, carrying him as gently as was possible, made all haste to the house. The window of what had been the garden-parlour stood open, and he took him into it at once. Ah, how they both remembered it. It had been refurnished and embellished now: but the room was the room still. Sir Geoffry had returned home that morning. His wife and Lady Chavasse were not expected for a day or two. Scarcely any servants were as yet in the house; but the woman who had been left in charge, Hester Picker, came in with warm water. She curtsied to Miss Layne.

“Dear little fellow!” she exclaimed, her tongue ready as of old.“How did it happen, sir?”

“My horse knocked him down,” replied Sir Geoffry. “Get me some linen, Picker.”

The boy lay on the sofa where he had been put, his hat off, and his pretty light brown hair falling from his face, pale now. Apparentlythere was no injury except to the arm. Sir Geoffry looked at Mary.

“I am a bit of a surgeon,” he said. “Will you allow me to examine his hurt as a surgeon would? Duffham cannot be here just yet.”

“Oh yes, certainly,” she answered.

“I must cut his velvet sleeve up.”

And she bowed in acquiescence to that.

Hester Picker came in with the linen. Before commencing to cut the sleeve, Sir Geoffry touched the arm here and there, as if testing where the damage might lie. Arthur cried out.

“That hurts you,” said Sir Geoffry.

“Not much,” answered the little fellow, trying to be brave. “Papa’s a soldier, and I want to be a soldier, so I won’t mind a little hurt.”

“Your papa’s a soldier? Ah, yes, I think I remember,” said Sir Geoffry, turning to Mary. “It is the little son of Captain Layne.”

“My papa is Major Layne now,” spoke up Arthur, before she could make any answer. “He and mamma live in India.”

“And so you want to be a soldier, the same as papa?” said Sir Geoffry, testing the basin of water with his finger, which Picker was holding, and which had been brought in very hot.

“Yes, I do. Aunt Mary there says No, and grandmamma says No; but—oh, what’s that?”

He had caught sight of the blood for the first time, and broke off with a shuddering cry. Sir Geoffry was ready now, and had the scissors in his hand. But before using them he spoke to Miss Layne.

“Will you sit here whilst I look at it?” he asked, putting a chair with its face to the open window, and its back to the sofa. And she understood the motive and thanked him: and said she would walk about outside.

By-and-by, when she was tired of waiting, and all seemed very quiet, she looked in. Arthur had fainted. Sir Geoffry was bathing his forehead with eau-de-Cologne; Picker had run for something in a tumbler and wine stood on the table.

“Was it the pain?—did it hurt him very badly?” asked Mary, supposing that the arm had been bathed and perhaps dressed.

“I have not done anything to it; I preferred to leave it for Duffham,”said Sir Geoffry—and at the same moment she caught sight of the velvet sleeve laid open, and something lying on it that looked like a mass of linen. Mary turned even whiter than the child.

“Do not be alarmed,” said Sir Geoffry. “Your little nephew is only faint from the loss of blood. Drink this,” he added, bringing her a glass of wine.

But she would not take it. As Sir Geoffry was putting it on the table, Arthur began to revive. Young children are elastic—ill one minute, well the next; and he began to talk again.

“Aunt Mary, are you there?”

She moved to the sofa, and took his uninjured hand.

“We must not tell grandmamma, Aunt Mary. It would frighten her.”

“Bless his dear little thoughtful heart!” interjected Hester Picker.“Here comes something.”

The something proved to be a fly, and it brought Mr. Duffham. Before the groom had reached the village, he overtook this said fly and the surgeon in it, who was then returning home from another accident. Turning round at the groom’s news—“Some little child had run against Sir Geoffry’s horse, and was hurt”—he came up to the Grange.

When Mr. Duffham saw that it was this child, he felt curiously taken aback. Up the room and down the room looked he; then at Sir Geoffry, then at Miss Layne, then at Hester Picker, saying nothing. Last of all he walked up to the sofa and gazed at the white face lying there.

“Well,” said he, “and what’s this? And how did it happen?”

“It was the peacock,” Arthur answered. “I ran away from Aunt Mary to look at it, and the horse came.”

“The dear innocent!” cried Hester Picker. “No wonder he ran. It’s a love of a peacock.”

“Don’t you think it was very naughty, young sir, to run from your aunt?” returned Mr. Duffham.

“Yes, very; because she had told me not to. Aunt Mary, I’ll never do it again.”

The two gentlemen and Hester Picker remained in the room; Mary again left it. The arm was crushed rather badly; and Mr. Duffham knew it would require care and skill to cure it.

“You must send to Worcester for its best surgeon to help you,” said the baronet, when the dressing was over. “I feel that I am responsible to Major Layne.”

Old Duffham nearly closed his eyelids as he glanced at the speaker.“I don’t think it necessary,” he said; “no surgeon can do more than I can. However, it may be satisfactory to Major Layne that we should be on the safe side, so I’ll send.”

When the child was ready, Mary got into the fly, which had waited, and Mr. Duffham put him to lie on her lap.

“I hope, Miss Layne, I may be allowed to call to-morrow and see how he gets on,” said Sir Geoffry, at the same time. And she did not feel that it was possible for her to say No. Mr. Duffham mounted beside the driver; to get a sniff, he said, of the evening air.

“How he is changed! He has suffered as I have,” murmured Mary Layne to herself, as her tears fell on Baby Arthur, asleep now. “I am very thankful that he has no suspicion.”

The child had said, “Don’t tell grandmamma;” but to keep it from Mrs. Layne was simply impossible. With the first stopping of the fly at the door, out came the old lady; she had been marvelling what hadbecome of them, and was wanting her tea. Mr. Duffham took her in again, and said a few words, making light of it, before he lifted out Baby Arthur.

A skilful surgeon was at the house the next day, in conjunction with Mr. Duffham. The arm and its full use would be saved, he said; its cure effected; but the child and those about him must have patience, for it might be rather a long job. Arthur said he should like to write to his papa in India, and tell him that it was his own fault for running away from Aunt Mary; he could write letters in big text hand. The surgeon smiled, and told him he must wait until he could use both arms again.

The doctors had not left the house many minutes when Sir Geoffry Chavasse called, having walked over from the Grange. Miss Layne sent her mother to receive him, and disappeared herself. The old lady, her perceptions a little dulled with time and age, and perhaps also her memory, felt somewhat impressed and flattered at the visit. To her it almost seemed the honour that it used to be: that one painful episode of the past seemed to be as much forgotten at the moment as though it had never had place. She took Sir Geoffry upstairs.

Arthur was lying close to the window, in the strong light of the fine morning. It was the first clear view Sir Geoffry had obtained of him. The garden-parlour at the Grange faced the east, so that the room on the previous evening, being turned from the setting sun, had been shady at the best, and the sofa was at the far end of it. As Sir Geoffry gazed at the child now, the face struck him as being like somebody’s; he could not tell whose. The dark blue eyes especially, turned up in all their eager brightness to his, seemed quite familiar.

“He says I must not write to papa until I get well,” said Arthur, who had begun to look on Sir Geoffry as an old acquaintance.

“Who does?” asked the baronet.

“The gentleman who came with Mr. Duffham.”

“He means the doctor from Worcester, Sir Geoffry,” put in old Mrs. Layne. She was sitting in her easy-chair near, as she had been previously; her spectacles keeping the place between the leaves of the closed Bible, which she had again taken on her lap; her withered hands, in their black lace mittens and frilled white ruffles, were crossed upon the Book. Every now and then she nodded with incipient sleep.

“I am so very sorry this should have happened,” Sir Geoffry said, turning to Mrs. Layne. “The little fellow was running up to get a look at the peacock, it seems; and I was riding rather fast. I shall never ride fast round that corner again.”

“But, Sir Geoffry, they tell me that the child ran right against you at the corner: that it was no fault of yours at all, sir.”

“It was my fault, grandmamma,” said Arthur. “And, Sir Geoffry, that’s why I wanted to write to papa; I want to tell him so.”

“I think I had better write for you,” said Sir Geoffry, looking down at the boy with a smile.

“Will you? Shall you tell him it was my fault?”

“No. I shall tell him it was mine.”

“But it was not yours. You must not write what is not true. If Aunt Mary thought I could tell a story, or write one, oh, I don’t know what she’d do. God hears all we say, you know.”

Sir Geoffry smiled—a sad smile—at the earnest words, at the eager look in the bright eyes. Involuntarily the wish came into his mind that he had a brave, fearless-hearted, right-principled son, such as this boy evidently was.

“Then I think I had better describe how it happened, and let Major Layne judge for himself whether it was my fast riding or your fast running that caused the mischief.”

“You’ll tell about the peacock? It had its tail out.”

“Of course I’ll tell about the peacock. I shall say to Major Layne that his little boy—I don’t think I have heard your name,” broke off Sir Geoffry. “What is it?”

“It’s Arthur. Papa’s is Richard. My big brother’s is Richard too; he is at King’s College. Which name do you like best?”

“I think I like Arthur best. It is my own name also.”

“Yours is Sir Geoffry.”

“And Arthur as well.”

But at this juncture old Mrs. Layne, having started up from a nod, interposed to put a summary stop to the chatter, telling Arthur crossly that Mr. Duffham and the other doctor had forbid him to talk much. And then she begged pardon of Sir Geoffry for saying it, but thought the doctors wished the child to be kept quiet and cool. Sir Geoffry took the opportunity to say adieu to the little patient.

“May I come to see the peacock when I get well, Sir Geoffry?”

“Certainly. You shall come and look at him for a whole day if grandmamma will allow you to.”

Grandmamma gave no motion or word of assent, but Arthur took it for granted. “Betsy can bring me if Aunt Mary won’t; Betsy’s my nurse. I wish I could have him before that window to look at while I lie here to get well. I like peacocks and musical boxes better than anything in the world.”

“Musical boxes!” exclaimed Sir Geoffry. “Do you care for them?”

“Oh yes; they are beautiful. Do you know the little lame boy who can’t walk, down Piefinch Cut? His father comes to do grandmamma’s garden. Do you know him, Sir Geoffry? His name’s Reuben.”

“It’s Noah, the gardener’s son, sir,” put in Mrs. Layne aside to Sir Geoffry. “He was thrown downstairs when a baby, and has been a cripple ever since.”

But the eager, intelligent eyes were still cast up, waiting for the answer. “Where have I seen them?” mentally debated Sir Geoffry, alluding to the eyes.

“I know the name?” he answered.

“Well, Reuben has got a musical box, and it plays three tunes. He is older than I am: he’s ten. One of them is ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland.’”

Sir Geoffry nodded and went away. He crossed straight over to Mr. Duffham’s, and found him writing a letter in his surgery.

“I hope the child will do well,” said the baronet, when he had shaken hands. “I have just been to see him. What an intelligent, nice little fellow it is.”

“Oh, he will be all right again in time, Sir Geoffry,” was the doctor’s reply, as he began to fold his letter.

“He is a pretty boy, too, very. His eyes are strangely like some one’s I have seen, but for the life of me I cannot tell whose!”

“Really?—do you mean it?” cried Mr. Duffham, speaking, as it seemed, in some surprise.

“Mean what?”

“That you cannot tell.”

“Indeed I can’t. They puzzled me all the while I was there. Do you know? Say, if you do.”

“They are like your own, Sir Geoffry.”

“Like my own!”

“They are your own eyes over again. And yours—as poor Layne used to say, and as the picture in the Grange dining-room shows us also, for the matter of that—are Sir Peter’s. Sir Peter’s, yours, and the child’s: they are all the same.”

For a long space of time, as it seemed, the two gentlemen gazed at each other. Mr. Duffham with a questioning and still surprised look: Sir Geoffry in a kind of bewildered amazement.

“Duffham! you—you—— Surely it is not that child!”

“Yes, it is.”

He backed to a chair and stumbled into it, rather than sat down; somewhat in the same manner that Mrs. Layne had backed against the counter nearly seven years before and upset the scales. The old lady seemed to have aged since quicker than she ought to have done: but her face then had not been whiter than was Geoffry Chavasse’s now.

“Good Heavens!”

The dead silence was only broken by these murmured words that fell from his lips. Mr. Duffham finished folding his note, and directed it.

“Sir Geoffry, I beg your pardon! I beg it a thousand times. If I had had the smallest notion that you were ignorant of this, I should never have spoken.”

Sir Geoffry took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Some moisture had gathered there.

“How was I to suspect it?” he asked.

“I never supposed but that you must have known it all along.”

“All along from when, Duffham?”

“From—from—well, from the time you first knew that a child was over there.”

Sir Geoffry cast his thoughts back. He could not remember anything about the child’s coming to Church Dykely. In point of fact, the Grange had been empty at the time.

“I understood that the child was one of Captain and Mrs. Layne’s,”he rejoined. “Every one said it; and I never had any other thought. Even yesterday at the Grange you spoke of him as such, Duffham.”

“Of course. Miss Layne was present—and Hester Picker—and the child himself. I did not speak to deceive you, Sir Geoffry. When you said what you did to me in coming away, about calling in other advice for the satisfaction of Major Layne, I thought you were merely keeping up appearances.”

“And it is so, then?”

“Oh dear, yes.”

Another pause. Mr. Duffham affixed the stamp to his letter, and put the paper straight in his note-case. Sir Geoffry suddenly lifted his hand, as one whom some disagreeable reflection overwhelms.

“To think that I was about to write to Major Layne! To think that I should have stood there, in the old lady’s presence, talking boldly with the child! She must assume that I have the impudence of Satan.”

“Mrs. Layne is past that, Sir Geoffry. Her faculties are dulled: three-parts dead. That need not trouble you.”

The baronet put aside his handkerchief and took up his hat to leave. He began stroking its nap with his coat-sleeve.

“Does my mother know of this, do you think?”

“I am sure she neither knows nor suspects it. No one does, Sir Geoffry: the secret has been entirely kept.”

“The cost of this illness must be mine, you know, Duffham.”

“I think not, Sir Geoffry,” was the surgeon’s answer. “It would not do, I fear. There’s no need, besides: Miss Layne is rich now.”

“Rich! How is she rich?”

And Mr. Duffham had to explain. A wealthy gentleman in India, some connection of the Laynes, had died and left money to Mary Layne. Six or seven hundred a year; and plenty of ready means. Sir Geoffry Chavasse went out, pondering upon the world’s changes.

He did not call to see the invalid again; but he bought a beautiful musical box at Worcester, and sent it in to the child by Duffham. Itplayed six tunes. The boy had never in his life been so delighted. He returned his love and thanks to Sir Geoffry; and appended several inquiries touching the welfare of the peacock.

The first news heard by Lady Chavasse and Lady Rachel on their coming home, was of the accident caused to Major Layne’s little son by Sir Geoffry’s horse. Hester Picker and the other servants were full of it. It happened to be the day that Sir Geoffry had gone to Worcester after the box, so he could not join in the narrative. A sweet, beautiful boy, said Hester to my ladies, and had told them he meant to be a soldier when he grew up, as brave as his papa. Lady Chavasse, having digested the news, and taken inward counsel with herself, decided to go and see him: it would be right and neighbourly, she thought. It might be that she was wishing to bestow some slight mark of her favour upon the old lady before death should claim her: and she deemed that the honour of a call would effect this. In her heart she acknowledged that the Laynes had behaved admirably in regard to the past; never to have troubled her or her son by word or deed or letter; and in her heart she felt grateful for it. Some people might have acted differently.

“I think I will go and see him too,” said Lady Rachel.

“No, pray don’t,” dissented Lady Chavasse, hastily. “You already feel the fatigue of your journey, Rachel: do not attempt to increase it.”

And as Lady Rachel really was fatigued and did not care much about it, one way or the other, she remained at home.

It was one of Mrs. Layne’s worst days—one of those when she seemed three-parts childish—when Lady Chavasse was shown into the drawing-room. Mary was there. As she turned to receive her visitor, and heard the maid’s announcement “Lady Chavasse,” a great astonishment inwardly stirred her, but her manner remained quiet and self-possessed. Just a minute’s gaze at each other. Lady Chavasse was the same good-looking woman as of yore; not changed, not aged by so much as a day. Mary was changed: the shy, inexperienced girl had grown into the calm, self-contained woman; the woman who had known sorrow, who had its marks impressed on her face. She had been pretty once, she was gravely beautiful now. Perhaps Lady Chavasse had not bargained for seeing her; Mary had certainly never thought thus to meet Lady Chavasse: but here they were, face to face, and each must make the best of it. As they did; and with easy courtesy, both being gentlewomen. Lady Chavasse held out her hand, and Mary put hers into it.

After shaking hands with Mrs. Layne—who was too drowsy properly to respond, and shut her eyes again—my lady spoke a few pleasant words of regret for the accident, of her wish to see the little patient, of her hope that Major and Mrs. Layne might not be allowed to think any care on Sir Geoffry’s part could have averted it. Mary went upstairs with her. Lady Chavasse could only be struck with the improved appearance of the house, quite suited now to be the abode of gentle-people; and with its apparently well-appointed if small household.

The child lay asleep: his nurse, Betsy, sat sewing by his side. The girl confessed that she had allowed him sometimes to run in and take a look at the peacock. Lady Chavasse would not have him awakened: she bent and kissed his cheek lightly: and talked to Mary in a whisper. It was just as though there had been no break in their acquaintanceship, just as though no painful episode, in which they were antagonistic actors, had ever occurred between them.

“I hear you have come into a fortune, Miss Layne,” she said, as she shook hands with Mary again in the little hall before departure. For Hester Picker had told of this.

“Into a great deal of money,” replied Mary.

“I am glad to hear it: glad,” came the parting response, whispered emphatically in Mary’s ear, and it was accompanied by a pressure of the fingers.

Mr. Duffham was standing at his door, watching my lady’s exit from Mrs. Layne’s house, his eyes lost in wonder. Seeing him, she crossed over, and went in, Mr. Duffham throwing open the door of his sitting-room. She began speaking of the accident to Major Layne’s little son—what a pity it was, but that she hoped he would do well. Old Duffham replied that he hoped so too, and thought he would.

“Mrs. Layne seems to be growing very old,” went on Lady Chavasse.“She was as drowsy as she could be this afternoon, and seemed scarcely to know me.”

“Old people are apt to be sleepy after dinner,” returned the doctor.

And then there was a pause. Lady Chavasse (as Duffham’s diary expresses it) seemed to be particularly absent in manner, as if she were thinking to herself, instead of talking to him. Because he had nothing else to say, he asked after the health of Lady Rachel. That aroused her at once.

“She is not strong. She is not strong. I am sure of it.”

“She does not seem to ail much, that I can see,” returned Duffham, who often had to hear this same thing said of Lady Rachel. “She never requires medical advice.”

“I don’t care: she is not strong. There are no children,” continued Lady Chavasse, dropping her voice to a whisper; and a kind of piteous, imploring expression darkened her eyes.

“No.”

“Four years married, going on for five, and no signs of any. No signs of children, Mr. Duffham.”

“I can’t help it, my lady,” returned Duffham.

“Nobody can help it. But it is an awful misfortune. It is beginning to be a great trouble in my life. As the weeks and months and yearspass on—the years, Mr. Duffham—and bring no hope, my very spirit seems to fail. ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’”

“True.”

“It has been the one great desire of my later years,” continued Lady Chavasse, too much in earnest to be reticent, “and it does not come. I wonder which is the worst to be borne; some weighty misfortune that falls and crushes, or a longed-for boon that we watch and pray for in vain? The want of it, the eager daily strain of disappointment, has become to me worse than a nightmare.”

Little Arthur Layne, attended by Betsy, spent a day at the Grange on his recovery, invited to meet the peacock. The ladies were very kind to him: they could but admire his gentle manners, his fearless bearing. Sir Geoffry played a game at ninepins with him on the lawn—which set of ninepins had been his own when a child, and had been lying by ever since. Betsy was told she might carry them home for Master Layne: Sir Geoffry gave them to him.

After that, the intercourse dropped again, and they became strangers as before. Except that Lady Chavasse would bow from her carriage if she saw Mrs. or Miss Layne, and Sir Geoffry raise his hat. The little boy had more notice: when they met him out, and were walking themselves, they would, one and all, stop and speak to him.

So this episode of the accident seemed to fade into the past, as other things had faded: and the time went on.

Part the Fourth.

utumn leaves were strewing the ground, autumn skies were overhead. A ray of the sun came slanting into the library, passing right across the face of Sir Geoffry Chavasse. The face had an older expression on it than his thirty years would justify. It looked worn and weary, and the bright hair, with its golden tinge, was less carefully arranged than it used to be, as if exertion were becoming a burden, or that vanity no longer troubled him; and his frame was almost painfully thin; and a low hacking cough took him at intervals. It might have been thought that Sir Geoffry was a little out of health, and wanted a change. Lady Chavasse, his mother, had begun to admit a long-repressed doubt whether any change would benefit him.

A common desk of stained walnut-wood was open on the table before him: he had been reading over and putting straight some papers it contained—notes and diaries, and so forth. Two or three of these he tore across and threw into the fire. Out of a bit of tissue paper, hetook a curl of bright brown hair, recalling the day and hour when he had surreptitiously cut it off, and refused to give it up again to its blushing owner. Recalling also the happy feelings of that time—surreptitiously still, as might be said, for what business had he with them now? Holding the hair to his lips for a brief interval, he folded it up again, and took out another bit of paper. This contained a lady’s ring of chased gold set with a beautiful and costly emerald. In those bygone years he had bought the ring, thinking to give it in payment of the stolen hair; but the young lady in her shyness had refused so valuable a present. Sir Geoffry held the ring so that its brightness glittered in the sun, and then wrapped it up again. Next he unfolded a diary, kept at that past period, and for a short time afterwards: then it was abruptly broken off, and had never since been written in. He smiled to himself as he read a page here and there—but the smile was full of sadness.

Lady Chavasse came into the room rather abruptly: Sir Geoffry shut up the diary, and prepared to close and lock the desk. There was a disturbed, restless, anxious look on my lady’s face: there was a far more anxious and bitter pain ever making havoc with her heart.

“Why, Geoffry! have you got out that old desk?”

Sir Geoffry smiled as he carried it to its obscure place in a dark corner of the library. When he was about twelve years old, and they were passing through London, he went to the Lowther Arcade and bought this desk, for which he had been saving up his shillings.

“I don’t believe any lad ever had so valuable a prize as I thought I had purchased in that desk, mother,” was his laughing remark.

“I dare say it has a great deal of old rubbish in it,” said Lady Chavasse, slightingly.

“Not much else—for all the good it can ever be. I was only glancing over the rubbish—foolish mementoes of foolish days. These days are weary; and I hardly know how to make their hours fly.”

Lady Chavasse sighed at the words. He used to go shooting in the autumn—fishing—hunting once in a way, in the later season: he had not strength for these sports now.

Opening the desk he commonly used, a very handsome one that had been Lady Chavasse’s present to him, he took a small book from it and put it into his breast-pocket. Lady Chavasse, watching all his movements, as she had grown accustomed to do, saw and knew what the book was—a Bible. Perhaps nothing had struck so much on my lady’s fears as the habit he had fallen into of often reading the Bible. She had come upon him doing it in all kinds of odd places. Out amidst the rocks at the seaside where they had recently been staying—and should have stayed longer but that he grew tired and wanted to come home; out in the seats of this garden, amidst the roses, or where the roses hadhim with this small Bible. He always slipped it away when she or any one else approached: but the habit was casting on her spirit a very ominous shadow. It seemed to show her that he knew he must be drawing near to the world that the Bible tells of, and was making ready for his journey. How her heart ached, ached always, Lady Chavasse would not have liked to avow.

“Where’s Rachel?” he asked.

“On her sofa, upstairs.”

Sir Geoffry stirred the fire mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere—just as he had stirred it in a memorable interview of the days gone by. Unconsciously they had taken up the same position as on that unhappy morning: he with his elbow on the mantelpiece, and his face partly turned from his mother; she in the same chair, and on the same red square of the Turkey carpet. The future had been before them then: it lay in their own hands, so to say, to choose the path for good or for ill. Sir Geoffry had pointed out which was the right one to take, and said that it would bring them happiness. But my lady had negatived it, and he could only bow to her decree. And so, the turning tide was passed, not seized upon, and they had been sailing on a sea tolerably smooth, but without depth in it or sunshine on it. What had the voyage brought forth? Not much. And it seemed, so far as one was concerned, nearly at an end now.

“I fancy Rachel cannot be well, mother,” observed Sir Geoffry,“She would not lie down so much if she were.”

“A little inertness, Geoffry, nothing more. About Christmas?”continued Lady Chavasse. “Shall you be well enough to go to the Derrestons’, do you think?”

“I think we had better let Christmas draw nearer before laying out any plans for it,” he answered.

“Yes, that’s all very well: but I am going to write to Lady Derreston to-day, and she will expect me to mention it. Shall you like to go?”

A moment’s pause, and then he turned to her: his clear, dark-blue eyes, ever kind and gentle, looking straight into hers; his voice low and tender.

“I do not suppose I shall ever go away from the Grange again.”

She turned quite white. Was it coming so near as that? A kind of terror took possession of her.

“Geoffry! Geoffry!”

“My darling mother, I will stay with you if I can; you know that. But the fiat does not lie with you or with me.”

Sir Geoffry went behind her chair, and put his arms round her playfully, kissing her with a strange tenderness of heart that he sought to hide.

“It may be all well yet, mother. Don’t let it trouble you before the time.”

She could not make any rejoinder, could not speak, and quitted the room to hide her emotion.

In the after-part of the day the surgeon, Duffham, bustled in. His visit was later than usual.

“And how are you, Sir Geoffry?” he asked, as they sat alone, facing each other between the table and the fire.

“Much the same, Duffham.”

“Look here, Sir Geoffry—you should rally both yourself and your spirits. It’s of no use giving way to illness. There’s a certain listlessness upon you; I’ve seen it for some time. Shake it off.”

“Willingly—if you will give me the power to do so,” was Sir Geoffry’s reply. “The listlessness you speak of proceeds from the fact that my health and energies fail me. As to my spirits, there’s nothing the matter with them.”

Mr. Duffham turned over with his fingers a glass paper-weight that happened to lie on the table, as if he wanted to see the fishing-boats on the sea that its landscape represented, and then he glanced at Sir Geoffry.

“Of course you wish to get well?”—with a slight emphasis on the“wish.”

“Most certainly I wish to get well. For my mother’s sake—and of course also for my wife’s, as well as for my own. I don’t expect to, though, Duffham.”

“Well, that’s saying a great deal,” retorted Duffham, pretending to make a mockery of it.

“I’ve not been strong for some time—as you may have seen, perhaps: but since the beginning of May, when the intensely hot weather came in, I have felt as—as——”

“As what, Sir Geoffry?”

“As though I should never live to see another May, hot or cold.”

“Unreasonable heat has that effect on some people, Sir Geoffry. Tries their nerves.”

“I am not aware that it tries mine. My nerves are as sound as need be. The insurance offices won’t take my life at any price, Duffham,”he resumed.

“Have you tried them?”

“Two of the best in London. When I began to grow somewhat doubtful about myself in the spring, I thought of the future of those near and dear to me, and would have insured my life for their benefit. The doctors refused to certify. Since then I have felt nearly sure in my own mind that what must be will be. And, day by day, I have watched the shadow drawing nearer.”

The doctor leaned forward and spoke a few earnest words of encouragement, before departing. Sir Geoffry was only too willing to receive them—in spite of the inward conviction that lay upon him,Lady Rachel Chavasse entered the library in the course of the afternoon. She wore a sweeping silk, the colour of lilac, and gold ornaments. Her face had not changed: with its classically-carved contour and its pale coldness.

“Does Duffham think you are better, Geoffry?”

“Not much, I fancy.”

“Suppose we were to try another change—Germany, or somewhere?”she calmly suggested.

“I would rather be here than anywhere, Rachel.”

“I should like you to get well, you know, Geoffry.”

“I should like it too, my dear.”

“Mamma has written to ask us to go into Somersetshire for Christmas,” continued Lady Rachel, putting her foot, encased in its black satin shoe and white silk stocking, on the fender.

“Ay. My mother was talking about it just now. Well, we shall see between now and Christmas, Rachel. Perhaps they can come to us instead.”

Lady Rachel turned her very light eyes upon her husband: eyes in which there often sat a peevish expression. It was not discernible at the present moment: they were coldly calm.

“Don’t you think you shall be quite well by Christmas?”

“I cannot speak with any certainty, Rachel.”

She stood a minute or two longer, and then walked round the room before the shelves, in search of some entertaining book. It was quite evident that the state of her husband did not bring real trouble to her heart. Was the heart too naturally cold?—or was it that as yet no suspicion of the seriousness of the case had penetrated to her? Something of both, perhaps.

Selecting a book, she was leaving the library with it when Sir Geoffry asked if she would not rather stay by the fire to read. But she said she preferred to go to her sofa.

“Are you well, Rachel?” he asked.

“My back feels tired, always. I suppose we are something alike, Geoffry—not over-strong,” she concluded, with a smile.

That night Duffham made the annexed entry in his journal.

He does know the critical state he is in. Has known it, it seems, for some time. I suspected he did. Sir Geoffry’s one that you may read as a book in his open candour. He would “get well if he could,”he says, for his mother’s sake. As of course he would, were the result under his own control: a fine young fellow of the upper ten, with every substantial good to make life pleasant, and no evil habits or thoughts to draw him backward, would not close his eyes on this world without a pang, and a struggle to remain a while longer in it.

I cannot do more for him than I am doing. All the faculty combinedcould not. Neither do I say, as he does, that he will not get better: on the contrary, I think there’s just a chance that he will: and I honestly told him so. It’s just a toss-up. He was always delicate until he grew to manhood: then he seemed to become thoroughly healthy and strong. Query: would this delicacy have come back again had his life been made as happy as it might have been? My lady can debate that point with herself in after-years: it may be that she’ll have plenty of time to do it in. Sir Geoffry’s is one of those sensitive natures where the mind seems almost wholly to influence the body; and that past trouble was a sharp blow to him. Upright and honourable, he could not well bear the remorse that fell upon him—it has been keenly felt, ay, I verily believe, until this hour: another’s life was blighted that his might be aggrandized. My own opinion is, that had he been allowed to do as he wished, and make reparation, thereby securing his own happiness, he might have thrown off the tendency to delicacy still and always; and lived to be as old as his father, Sir Peter. Should my lady ever speak to me upon the subject, I shall tell her this. Geoffry Chavasse has lived with a weight upon him. It was not so much that his own hopes were gone and his love-dream wrecked, as that he had brought far worse than this upon another. Yes; my lady may thank herself that his life seems to have been wasted. Had there been children he might, in a degree, have forgotten what went before, and the mind would no longer have preyed upon the body. Has the finger of Heaven been in this? My pen ought to have written “specially in this:” for that Finger is in all things.

I hope he will get better. Yes, I do, in spite of a nasty doubt that crops up in my mind as I say it. I love him as I did in the old days, and respect him more. Qui vivra verra—to borrow a French phrase from young Master Arthur over the way. And now I put up my diary for the night.

Mrs. Layne was dead. Mary lived alone in her house now, with her servants and Arthur.

Never a woman so respected as she; never a lady, high or low, so revered and looked up to as Mary Layne. All the village would fly to her on an emergency; and she had both counsel and help to give. The poor idolized her. A noble, tender, good gentlewoman, with the characteristic humility in her bearing that had been observable of late years, and the gentle gravity on her thoughtful face. My lady, with all her rank and her show and her condescension, had never been half so much respected as this. The little boy—in knickerbockers now, and nine years old—was a great favourite; he also got some honour reflected on him through Colonel Layne. There had been a time of trouble in India, and Major Layne had grandly distinguished himselfand gained honour and promotion. The public papers proclaimed his bravery and renown; and Arthur received his share of reflected glory. As the boy passed on his pony, the blacksmith, Dobbs, would shoot out from his forge to look after him, and say to the stranger whose horse had cast a shoe, “There goes the little son of the brave Colonel Layne: maybe you’ve heerd of his deeds over in Ingee.” Perhaps the blacksmith considered he had acquired a sort of right in Arthur, since the pony—a sure-footed Welsh animal—was kept in the stable that belonged to his forge, and was groomed by himself or son. Miss Layne paid him for it; but, as the blacksmith said, it went again’ the grain; he’d ha’ been proud to do aught for her and the little gentleman without pay.

And somehow, what with one thing and another, my lady grew to think that if anything removed her from Chavasse Grange, Mary would take her place as best and chiefest in Church Dykely, and she herself would not be missed. But it was odd the thought should dawn upon her. Previsions of coming events steal into the minds of a great many of us; we know not whence they arise, and at first look on them only as idle thoughts, never recognizing them for what they are—advance shadows of the things to be.

One sunshiny afternoon, close upon winter, Arthur and Mr. Duffham went out riding. Mary watched them start; the doctor on his old grey horse (that had been her father’s), and Arthur on his well-groomed pony. The lad sat well; as brave-looking a little gentleman, with his upright carriage, open face, and nice attire—for Mary was particular there—as had ever gratified a fond aunt’s eye, or a blacksmith’s heart.

Close by the gates of Chavasse Grange, they met Sir Geoffry and his mother strolling forth. Mr. Duffham’s hopes had not been fulfilled. Outwardly there was not much change in the baronet, certainly none for the better; inwardly there was a great deal. He knew now how very certain his fate was, and that it might not be delayed for any great length of time; a few weeks, a few months: as God should will.

“Lady Rachel is not well,” observed Sir Geoffry to the surgeon.“You must see her, Duffham. I suppose you can’t come in now?”

“Yes, I can: I’m in no hurry,” was the doctor’s answer.

“May I come too, and see the peacock, Sir Geoffry? I’ll wait here, though, if Mr. Duffham thinks I ought.”

Of course the boy was told that the peacock would take it as a slight if he did not pay him a visit, and they all turned up the avenue. Arthur got off his pony and led it, and talked with Lady Chavasse.

“Why did you get off yet?” asked Sir Geoffry, turning to him.

“Lady Chavasse is walking,” answered the boy, simply.

It spoke volumes for his innate sense of politeness. Sir Geoffry remembered that he had possessed the same when a child.

“Have you heard what papa has done?” asked Arthur, putting thequestion generally. “It has been in all the newspapers, and he is full colonel now. Did you read it, Sir Geoffry?”

“Yes, I read it, Arthur.”

“And the Queen’s going to thank papa when he comes to England, and to make him Sir Richard. Everybody says so. Dobbs thinks papa will be made general before he dies.”

Dobbs was the blacksmith. They smiled at this. Not at the possibility for Colonel Layne, but at Dobbs.

“And, with it all, Aunt Mary does not want me to be a soldier!”went on the boy in rather an aggrieved tone. “Richard’s enough, she says. Dick gets on well at King’s College: he is to go to Woolwich next. I don’t see the peacock!”

They had neared the house, but the gay plumaged bird, for which Arthur retained his full admiration, was nowhere in sight. Servants came forward and led the horses away. Mr. Duffham went on to see Lady Rachel: Arthur was taken into the garden-parlour by Sir Geoffry.

“And so you would like to be a soldier:” he said, holding the boy before him, and looking down at his bright, happy face.

“Oh, I should: very much. If papa says I’m not to be—or mamma—or Aunt Mary—if they should tell me ‘No, no, you shall not,’ why, it would be at an end, and I’d try and like something else.”

“Listen, Arthur,” said Sir Geoffry, in a low, earnest tone. “What you are to be, and what you are not to be, lie alike in the will of God. He will direct you aright, no doubt, when the time of choice shall come——”

“And that’s what Aunt Mary says,” interrupted the lad. “She says—— There’s the peacock!”

He had come round the corner, his tail trailing; the poor peahen following humbly behind him, as usual. Arthur went outside the window. The peacock had a most unsociable habit of stalking away with a harsh scream if approached; Arthur knew this, and stayed where he was, talking still with Sir Geoffry. When Lady Chavasse entered, he was deep in a story of the musical box.

“Yes, a wicked boy went into Reuben Noah’s, and broke his box for the purpose. Aunt Mary is letting me get it mended for him with some sixpences I had saved up. Reuben is very ill just now—in great pain; and Aunt Mary has let me lend him mine—he says when he can hear the music, his hip does not hurt him so much. You are not angry with me for lending it, are you, Sir Geoffry?”

“My boy, I am pleased.”

“Why should Sir Geoffry be angry—what is it to him?” cried Lady Chavasse, amused with the chatter.

“Sir Geoffry gave it to me,” said Arthur, looking at her with wide-open eyes, in which the great wonder that any one should be ignorant of that fact was expressed. “Reuben wishes he could get here to seethe peacock: but he can’t walk, you know. I painted a beautiful one on paper and took it to him. Aunt Mary said it was not much like a real peacock; it was too yellow. Reuben liked it, and hung it up on his wall. Oh!”

For the stately peacock, stepping past the window as if the world belonged to him, suddenly threw wide his tail in an access of vanity. The tail had not long been renewed, and was in full feather. Arthur’s face went into a radiant glow. Lady Chavasse, smiling at the childish delight, produced some biscuit that the peacock was inordinately fond of, and bade him go and feed it.

“Oh, Geoffry,” she exclaimed in the impulse of the moment, as the boy vaulted away, “if you only had such a son and heir as that!”

“Ay. It might have been, mother. That child himself might have been Sir Arthur after me, had you so willed it.”

“Been Sir Arthur after you!” she exclaimed. “Are you in a dream, Geoffry? That child!”

“I have thought you did not know him, but I never felt quite sure. He passes to the world for the son of Colonel Layne—as I trust he may so pass always. Don’t you understand?”

It was so comical a thing, bringing up thoughts so astounding, and the more especially because she had never had the remotest suspicion of it, that Lady Chavasse simply stared at her son in silence. All in a moment a fiery resentment rose up in her heart: she could not have told at whom or what.

“I will never believe it, Geoffry. It cannot be.”

“It is, mother.”

He was leaning against the embrasure of the window as he stood, watching the boy in the distance throwing morsels of biscuit right into the peacock’s mouth, condescendingly held wide to receive them. Lady Chavasse caught the strange sadness glistening in her son’s eyes, and somehow a portion of her hot anger died away.

“Yes: there was nothing to prevent it,” sighed Sir Geoffry. “Had you allowed it, mother, the boy might have been born my lawful son, my veritable heir. Other sons might have followed him: the probability is, there would have been half-a-dozen of them feeding the peacock now, instead of—of—I was going to say—of worse than none.”

Lady Chavasse looked out at the boy with eager, devouring eyes: and whether there was more of longing in their depths, or of haughty anger, a spectator could not have told. In that same moment a vision, so vivid as to be almost like reality, stole before her mental sight—of the half-dozen brave boys crowding round the peacock, instead of only that one on whose birth so cruel a blight had been cast.

“A noble heir he would have made us, mother; one of whom our free land might have been proud,” spoke Sir Geoffry, in a low tone of yearning that was mixed with hopeless despair. “He bears my name,Arthur. I would give my right hand—ay, and the left too—if he could be Sir Arthur after me!”

Arthur turned round. His cap was on the grass, his blue eyes were shining.

“He is frightfully greedy and selfish, Lady Chavasse. He will not let the peahen have a bit.”

“A beautiful face,” murmured Sir Geoffry. “And a little like what mine must have been at his age, I fancy. Sometimes I have thought that you would see the likeness, and that it might impart its clue.”

“Since when have you known him?—known this?”

“Since the day after the accident, when my horse threw him down. Duffham dropped an unintentional word, and it enlightened me. Some nights ago I dreamt that the little lad was my true heir,” added Sir Geoffry. “I saw you kiss him in the dream.”

“You must have been letting your thoughts run on it very much,”retorted Lady Chavasse, rather sharply.

“They are often running on it, mother: the regret for what might have been and for what is, never seems to leave me,” was his reply.“For some moments after I awoke from that dream I thought it was reality: I believe I called out ‘Arthur.’ Rachel started, and inquired between sleeping and waking what the matter was. To find it was only a dream—to remember that what is can never be changed or redeemed in this world, was the worst pain of all.”

“You may have children yet,” said Lady Chavasse, after a pause.“It is not impossible.”

“Well, I suppose not impossible,” was the hesitating rejoinder.“But——”

“But you don’t think it. Say it out, Geoffry.”

“I do not think it. My darling mother, don’t you see how it is with me?” he added, in an impulse of emotion—“that I am not to live. A very short time now, and I shall be lying with my father.”

A piteous cry broke from her. It had to be suppressed. The ungrateful peacock, seeing no more dainty biscuit in store, had fluttered off with a scream, putting his tail down into the smallest possible compass; and Arthur came running back to the room. Mr. Duffham next appeared; his face grave, his account of Lady Rachel evasive. He suspected some latent disease of the spine, but did not wish to say so just yet.

The horse and pony were brought round. Arthur and the doctor mounted; Arthur turning round to lift his cap to Lady Chavasse and Sir Geoffry as he rode away. A noble boy in all his actions; sitting his pony like the young chieftain he ought to have been but for my lady’s adverse will.

But Mr. Duffham was by no means prepared for an inroad on hisprivacy made that evening by my lady. She surprised him in his shabbiest parlour, when he was taking his tea: the old tin teapot on the Japan tray, and the bread-and-butter plate cracked across. Zuby Noah, Duffham’s factotum, was of a saving turn, and never would bring in the best things except on Sundays. He had a battle with her over it sometimes, but it did no good. Duffham thought Lady Chavasse had come to hear about Lady Rachel, but he was mistaken.

She began with a despairing cry, by way of introduction to the interview; Zuby might have heard it as she went along the kitchen passage, but for her clanking pattens. The man-servant was out that evening, and Zuby was in waiting. Duffham, standing on the old hearthrug, found his arm seized by Lady Chavasse. He had never seen her in agitation like this.

“Is it to be so really? Mr. Duffham, can nothing be done? Is my son to die before my very eyes, and not be saved?”

“Sit down, pray, Lady Chavasse!” cried Duffham, trying to hand her into the chair that had the best-looking cushion on it, and wishing he had been in the other room and had not slipped on his worn, old pepper-and-salt coat.

“He ought not to die—to die and leave no children!” she went on, as if she were a lunatic. “If there were but one little son—but one—to be the heir! Can’t you keep him in life? there may be children yet, if he only lives.”

Her eyes were looking wildly into his; her fingers entwined themselves about the old grey cuffs as lovingly as though they were of silk velvet. No: neither Duffham nor any one else had ever seen her like this. It was as though she thought it lay with Duffham to keep Sir Geoffry in life and to endow Chavasse Grange with heirs.

“Lady Chavasse, I am not in the place of God.”

“Don’t you care for my trouble? Don’t you care for it?”

“I do care. I wish I could cure Sir Geoffry.”

Down sat my lady in front of the fire, in dire tribulation. By the way she stared at it, Duffham thought she must see in it a vision of the future.

“We shall have to quit the Grange, you know, if he should die: I and Lady Rachel. Better that I quitted it in my young life; that I had never had a male child to keep me in it. I thought that would have been a hardship: but oh, it would have been nothing to this.”

“You shall take a cup of tea, Lady Chavasse—if you don’t mind its being poured out of this homely tea-pot,” said Duffham. “Confound that Zuby!” he cried, under his breath.

“Yes, I will take the tea—put nothing in it. My lips and throat are dry with fever and pain. I wish I could die instead of Geoffry! I wish he could have left a little child behind to bless me!”

Duffham, standing up whilst she took the tea, thought it was wellthat these trials of awful pain did not fall often in a lifetime, or they would wear out alike the frame and the spirit. She grew calm again. As if ashamed of the agitation betrayed, her manner gradually took a sort of hard composure, her face a defiant expression. She turned it on him.

“So, Mr. Duffham! It has been well done of you, to unite with Sir Geoffry in deceiving me! That child over the way has never been Colonel Layne’s.”

And then she went on in a style that put Duffham’s back up. It was not his place to tell her, he answered. At the same time he had had no motive to keep it from her, and if she had ever put the question to him, he should readily have answered it. Unsolicited, unspoken to, of course he had held his peace. As to uniting with Sir Geoffry to deceive her, she deceived herself if she thought anything of the kind. Since the first moment they had spoken together, when the fact had become known to Sir Geoffry, never a syllable relating to it had been mentioned between them. And then, after digesting this for a few minutes in silence, she went back to Sir Geoffry’s illness.

“It is just as though a blight had fallen on him,” she piteously exclaimed, lifting her hand and letting it drop again. “A blight.”

“Well, Lady Chavasse, I suppose something of the kind did fall upon him,” was Duffham’s answer.

And that displeased her. She turned her offended face to the doctor, and inquired what he meant by saying it.

So Duffham set himself to speak out. He had said he would, if ever the opportunity came. Reverting to what had happened some nine or more years ago, he told her that in his opinion Sir Geoffry had never recovered it: that the trouble had so fixed itself upon him as to have worked insensibly upon his bodily health.

“Self-reproach and disappointment were combined, Lady Chavasse; for there’s no doubt that the young lady was very dear to him,” concluded Duffham. “And there are some natures that cannot pick up again after such a blow.”

She was staring at Duffham with open eyes, not understanding.

“You do not mean to say that—that the disappointment about herhas killed Sir Geoffry?”

“My goodness, no!” cried Duffham, nearly laughing. “Men are made of tougher stuff than to die of the thing called love, Lady Chavasse. What is it Shakespeare says? ‘Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ There is no question but that Sir Geoffry has always had an inherent tendency to delicacy of constitution,”he continued more seriously: “my partner Layne told me so. It was warded off for a time, and he grew into a strong, hearty man: it might perhaps have been warded off for good. But the blight—as you aptly express it, Lady Chavasse—came: and perhaps since thenthe spirit has not been able to maintain its own proper struggle for existence—in which lies a great deal, mind you; and now that the original weakness has shown itself again, he cannot shake it off.”

“But—according to that—he is dying of the blight?”

“Well—in a sense, yes. If you like to put it so.”

Her lips grew white. There rose before her mind that one hour of bitter agony in her lifetime and her son’s, when he had clasped his pleading hands on hers, and told her in a voice hoarse with its bitter pain and emotion that if she decided against him he could never know happiness again in this world: that to part from one to whom he was bound by sweet endearment, by every tie that ought to bind man to woman, would be like parting with life. Entrenched in her pride, she had turned a deaf ear, and rejected his prayer: and now there had come of it what had come. Yes, as Lady Chavasse sat there, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the work was hers.

“A warmer climate?—would it restore him?” she exclaimed, turning her hot eyes on Mr. Duffham.

“Had it been likely to do so, Lady Chavasse, I should have sent him to one long ago.”

She gathered her mantle of purple velvet about her as she rose up, and went out of the room in silence, giving Duffham her hand in token of friendship.

Duffham opened the front-door, and was confronted by a tall footman—with a gold-headed cane and big white silk calves—who had been waiting in the air for his lady. She took the way to the Grange; the man and his protecting cane stepping grandly after her.

“Sir Geoffry Chavasse.”

Buried in her own reflections by the drawing-room fire, in the coming dusk of the winter’s evening, Miss Layne thought her ears must have deceived her. But no. It was Sir Geoffry who advanced as the servant made the announcement; and she rose to meet him. Strangely her heart fluttered: but she had been learning a lesson in calmness for many years; he had too, perhaps; and they shook hands quietly as other people do. Sir Geoffry threw back his overcoat from his wasted form as he sat down.

Wasted more than ever now. Some weeks have gone on since my lady’s impromptu visit to Mr. Duffham’s tea-table; winter is merging into spring; and the most sanguine could no longer indulge hope for Sir Geoffry.

“You have heard how it is with me?” he began, looking at Mary, after recovering his short breath.

“Yes,” she faintly answered.

“I could not die without seeing you, Mary, and speaking a word offarewell. It was in my mind to ask you to come to the Grange for half-an-hour’s interview; but I scarcely saw how to accomplish it: it might have raised some speculation. So as the day has been fine and mild, I came to you.”

“You should have come earlier,” she murmured. “It is getting late and cold.”

“I did come out earlier. But I have been with Duffham.”

Moving his chair a little nearer to hers, he spoke to her long and earnestly. In all that was said there seemed to be a solemn meaning—as is often the case when the speaker is drawing to the confines of this world and about to enter on the next. He referred a little to the past, and there was some mutual explanation. But it seemed to be of the future that Sir Geoffry had come chiefly to speak—the future of Baby Arthur.

“You will take care of him, Mary?—of his best interests?” And the tears came into Mary Layne’s eyes at the words. He could not really think it necessary to ask it.

“Yes. To the very utmost of my power.”

“I am not able to leave him anything. You know how things are with us at the Grange. My wish would have been good——”

“It is not necessary,” she interrupted. “All I have will be his, Sir Geoffry.”

“Sir Geoffry! Need you keep up that farce, Mary, in this our last hour? He seems to wish to be a soldier: and I cannot think but that the profession will be as good for him as any other, provided you canlike it for him. You will see when the time comes: all that lies in the future. Our lives have been blighted, Mary: and I pray God daily and hourly that, being so, it may have served to expiate the sin—my sin, my love, it was never yours—and that no shame may fall on him.”

“I think it will not,” she softly said, the painful tears dropping fast.“He will always be regarded as Colonel Layne’s son: the very few who know otherwise—Mr. Duffham, Colonel and Mrs. Layne, and Lady Chavasse now—will all be true to the end.”

“Ay. I believe it too. I think the boy may have a bright and honourable career before him: as much so perhaps as though he had been born my heir. I think the regret that he was not—when he so easily might have been—has latterly helped to wear me out, Mary.”

“I wish you could have lived, Geoffry!” she cried from between her blinding tears.

“I have wished it also,” he answered, his tone full of pain. “But it was not to be. When the days shall come that my mother is alone, except for Lady Rachel, and grieving for me, I want you to promise that you will sometimes see her and give her consolation. Something tells me that you can do this, Mary, that she will take it from you—andI know that she will need it sadly. Be kind to her when I am gone.”

“Yes. I promise it.”

“You are the bravest of us all, Mary. And yet upon you has lain the greatest suffering.”

“It is the suffering that has made me brave,” she answered. “Oh, Geoffry, I am getting to realize the truth that it is better to have too much of suffering in this world than too little. It is a truth hard to learn: but once learnt, it brings happiness in enduring.”

Sir Geoffry nodded assent. He had learnt somewhat of it also—too late.

“I have begun a confidential letter to Colonel Layne, Mary, and shall post it before I die. To thank him for——”

The words were drowned in a gleeful commotion—caused by the entrance of Arthur. The boy came dashing in from his afternoon’s study with the curate, some books under his arm.

“I have not been good, Aunt Mary. He said I gave him no end of trouble; and I’m afraid I did: but, you see, I bought the marbles going along, instead of in coming back, as you told me, and—— Who’s that!”

In letting his books fall on a side-table, he had caught sight of the stranger—then standing up. The fire had burnt low, and just for the moment even the young eyes did not recognize Sir Geoffry Chavasse. Mary stirred the fire into a blaze, and drew the crimson curtains before the window.

“What have you come for?” asked the little lad, as Sir Geoffry took his hand. “Are you any better, sir?”

“I shall never be better in this world, Arthur. And so you gave your tutor trouble this afternoon!”

“Yes; I am very sorry: I told him so. It was all through the marbles. I couldn’t keep my hands out of my pockets. Just look what beauties they are!”

Out came a handful of “beauties” of many colours. But Mary, who was standing by the mantelpiece, her face turned away, bade him put them up again. Arthur began to feel that there was some kind of hush upon the room.

“I have been talking to Miss Layne about your future—for, do you know, Arthur, you are a favourite of mine,” said Sir Geoffry. “Ever since the time when my horse knocked you down—and might have killed you—I have taken a very warm interest in your welfare. I have often wished that you—that you”—he seemed to hesitate in some emotion—“were my own little son and heir to succeed me; but of course that cannot be. I don’t know what profession you will choose, or may be chosen for you——”

“I should like to be a soldier,” interrupted Arthur, lifting his sparkling eyes to Sir Geoffry’s.

“Your ideas may change before the time for choosing shall come. But a soldier may be as brave a servant of God as of his queen: should you ever become a soldier, will you remember this truth?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, in a whisper, for the grave tones and manner impressed him with some awe.

Sir Geoffry was sitting down and holding Arthur before him. To the latter’s intense surprise, he saw two tears standing on the wasted cheeks. It made him feel a sort of discomfort, and he began, as a relief, to play with the chain and seal that hung on the baronet’s waistcoat. A transparent seal, with a plain device on it.

“Should you like to have them when I am gone, Arthur—and wear them in remembrance of me when you are old enough? I think it must be so: no one can have a better right to them than my little friend who once nearly lost his arm by my carelessness. I will see about it. But I have a better present than that—which I will give you now.”

Taking from his pocket the small Bible that had been his companion for some months, he put it into Arthur’s hands, telling him that he had written his name in it. And the child, turning hastily to the fly-leaf, saw it there: “Arthur Layne. From G. A. C.” Lower down were the words: “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Jesus said that!” cried the boy, simply.

“Jesus Christ. My Saviour and yours—for I am sure you will let Him be yours. Do not part with this Book, Arthur. Use it always: I have marked many passages in it. Should it be your fate ever to encamp on the battle-field, let the Book be with you: your guide and friend. In time you will get to love it better than any book that is to be had in the world.”

The child had a tender heart, and began to cry a little. Sir Geoffry drew him nearer.

“I have prayed to God to bless you, Arthur. But you know, my child, He will only give His best blessing to those who seek it, who love and serve Him. Whatsoever may be your lot in life, strive to do your duty in it, as before God; loving Him, loving and serving your fellow-creatures; trusting ever to Christ’s atonement. These are my last solemn words to you. Do you always remember them.”

His voice faltered a little, and Arthur began to sob. “Oh, Sir Geoffry, must you die?”

Sir Geoffry seemed to be breathing fast, as though agitation were becoming too much for him. He bent his head and kissed the boy’s face fervently: his brow, his cheeks, his lips, his eyelids—there was not a spot that Sir Geoffry did not leave a kiss upon. It quite seemed as though his heart had been yearning for those kisses, and as though he could not take enough of them.

“And now, Arthur, you must do a little errand for me. Go over to Mr. Duffham, and tell him I am coming. Leave the Bible on the table here.”

Arthur went out of the house with less noise than he had entered it. Sir Geoffry rose.

“It is our turn to part now, Mary. I must be gone.”

Her sweet face was almost distorted with the efforts she had been making to keep down emotion before the child. She burst into tears, as her hand met Sir Geoffry’s.

“God bless you! God bless you always, my darling!” he murmured.“Take my thanks, once for all, for the manner in which you have met the past; there is not another woman living who would have done and borne as you have. This is no doubt our last meeting on earth, Mary; but in eternity we shall be together for ever. God bless you, and love you, and keep you always!”

A lingering hand-pressure, a steady look into each other’s eyes, reading the present anguish there, reading also the future trust, and then their lips met—surely there was no wrong in it!—and a farewell kiss of pain was taken. Sir Geoffry went out, buttoning his overcoat across his chest.

A fly was waiting before Mr. Duffham’s house; the surgeon and Arthur were standing by it on the pavement. Sir Geoffry got inside.

“Good-bye, Sir Geoffry!” cried the little lad, as Mr. Duffham, saying he should be at the Grange in the morning, was about to close the door. “I shall write and tell papa how good you’ve been, to give me your own Bible. I can write small-hand now.”

“And fine small-hand it is!” put in old Duffham in disparagement.

Sir Geoffry laid his hand gently on Arthur’s head, and kept it there for a minute. His lips were moving, but he said nothing aloud. Arthur thought he had not been heard.

“Good-bye, Sir Geoffry,” he repeated.

“Good-bye, my child.”

Sir Geoffry lay back in an easy-chair in front of the fire in his library. The end was near at hand now, but he was bearing up quite well to the last. Lady Chavasse, worn almost to a shadow with grief and uncertainty—for there were times yet when she actually entertained a sort of hope—sat away in the shade; her eyes watching every change in his countenance, her heart feeling ever its bitter repentance and despair.

Repentance? Yes, and plenty of it. For she saw too surely what might have been and what was—and knew that it was herself, herself only, who had worked out this state of things. Her self-reproach was terrible; her days and nights were one long dream of agony. Lady Rachel wasnot with them very much. She lay down more than ever in her own room; and Lady Chavasse had begun to learn that this almost continuous lying was not caused by inert idleness, but of necessity. The Grange was a sad homestead now.

The blaze from the fire flickered on Sir Geoffry’s wasted face. Hers was kept in the shadow, or it might have betrayed the bitterness of her aching heart. He had been speaking of things that touched her conscience.

“Yes, it was a sin, mother. But it might have been repaired; and, if it had been, I believe God would have blessed us all. As it is—well, we did not repair it, you and I; and so—and so, as I take it, there has not been much of real blessing given to us here; certainly not of heartfelt comfort. I seem to see all things clearly now—if it be not wrong to say it.”

Lady Chavasse saw them too—though perhaps not exactly in the way he meant. Never was the vision, of what might have been, more vividly before her than now as he spoke. She saw him, a hale happy man; his wife Mary, their children, a goodly flock, all at the Grange, and herself first amongst them, reigning paramount, rejoicing in her good and dutiful daughter-in-law. Oh, what a contrast between that vision and reality! A repressed groan escaped her lips; she coughed to smother it.

“Mother!”

“Well, Geoffry?”

“You need not have suppressed my last letter to Mary—the letter of explanation I wrote when I quitted her and the Grange. You might have been sure of me—that I would be true to my word to you.”

No answer. There was a great deal that she would not suppress, besides the letter, if the time had to come over again. The log sparkled and crackled and threw its jets of flame upwards; but no other noise disturbed the room’s stillness.

“Mother!”

“Well, Geoffry?”

“I should like the child, little Arthur, to have my watch and its appendages. Have you any objection?”

“None.”

“It will be looked upon, you know, as a token of remembrance to the little fellow who had so sharp an illness through my horse.”

“Yes.”

“And—I have two desks, you know. The old one of common stained wood I wish sent to Miss Layne, locked as it is. The key I will enclose in a note. Let them be sent to her when I am dead.”

“It shall be done, Geoffry.”

“There’s not much in the desk. Just a few odds and ends of papers; mementoes of the short period when I was happy—though I ought notto have been. Nothing of value; except a ring that I bought for her at Worcester at the time, and which she would not take.”

“I promise it, Geoffry. I will do all you wish.”

“Thank you. You have ever been my loving friend, mother.”

“Ever, Geoffry?”

“Well—you did for the best there, mother; though it was a mistake. You acted for what you thought my welfare.”

“Would you not like to see her, Geoffry?”

“I have seen her and bidden her farewell. It was the afternoon I went to Duffham’s and you said that I stayed out too late. And now I think I’ll lie down on the sofa, and get, if I can, a bit of sleep; I feel tired. To-morrow I will talk about you and Rachel—and what will be best for you both. I wish to my heart, for your sake and hers, that Rachel had borne a son; I am thinking of you both daily, and of what you will do when I am gone.”

“I shall never know pleasure in life again, Geoffry,” she cried, with a heartbroken sob. “Life for me will be, henceforth, one of mortification and misery.”

“But it will not last for ever. Oh, mother! how merciful God is!—to give us the blessed hope of an eternal life of perfect happiness, after all the mistakes and tribulations and disappointments of this! My darling mother! we shall all be there in sweet companionship for ever.”

They buried Sir Geoffry Chavasse by the side of his father—and any one who likes to go there may see his tomb against the graveyard wall of Church Dykely. My Lady Chavasse arranged the funeral. The Earl of Derreston and a Major Chavasse were chief mourners, with other grand people. Duffham’s diary gives the particulars, but there is no space here to record them. Duffham was bidden to it; and brought Arthur Layne in his hand to the Grange, in obedience to a private word of my lady’s—for she knew the dead, if he could look out of his coffin, would like to see Arthur following. So the procession started, a long line; the village gazing in admiration as it passed; and Dobbs the blacksmith felt as proud as ever was the Grange peacock, when he saw Colonel Layne’s little son in a coach, amidst the gentlefolks.’Twere out of respect to the colonel’s bravery, you might be sure, he told a select audience: and p’r’aps a bit because o’ that back accident to the child hisself. And so, amidst pomps, and coaches, and comments, Geoffry Chavasse was left in his last home.

[Final matters extracted from Duffham’s Diary.]

It is eighteen months now since Sir Geoffry died; and strange changes have taken place. The world is always witnessing such: you go up, and I go down.

Admiral Chavasse came home and took possession of the Grange. My lady had previously quitted it. She did not quit Church Dykely. It seemed indifferent to her where she settled down; and Lady Rachel Chavasse had become used to my attendance, and wished to stay. There was a small white villa to let on this side of the Grange, and they took it. Lady Rachel lies down more than ever; when she goes out it is in a Bath-chair. Old John Noah draws it. The spinal complaint is confirmed. I can do her no good; but I go in once or twice a week, and have a gossip. She is very fractious: and what with one thing and another, my Lady Chavasse has a trying life of it. They keep three servants only; no carriage—except the Bath-chair. What a change! what a change!

If ever there was a disappointed woman in this world, one who feels the humiliation of her changed position keenly, whose whole life is a long living repentance, it is Lady Chavasse. The picture of what might have been is ever in her mind; the reality of what is, lies around her. To judge by human fallibility, she has a long existence before her: not quite fifty yet, and her health rude: but in spirit she is a bowed, broken-down woman.

The Grange is let. Sir Parker Chavasse could not reconcile himself to living in a rural district, and went back to his ship. At first he shut the Grange up; now he has let it for a term to Mr. and Mrs. McAlpin, formerly of Calcutta. They live there with their children; in as good a style as ever the Chavasses did. Allan McAlpin has given up business, and spends his large fortune like the gentleman he is. She is Mary Layne’s sister: a dainty and rather haughty woman. My lady looks out surreptitiously from the corner of her window as Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage bowls along the road beyond the field. Colonel Layne’s wife is also here just now, on a visit at the Grange; her husband, Sir Richard Layne, K.C.B., has returned to his duties in India. The whole county calls upon them and seems proud to do it, forgetting perhaps that they were only the daughters of my predecessor, Layne the apothecary. Yes! there are strange ups and downs in this world: and Mary Layne, so despised once, might not now be thought, even by my lady, so very unequal to Sir Geoffry Chavasse.

She does not go in for grandeur. But the village would like to lay its hands under her feet. Never was there so good, so unselfish, so sweet and humble-minded a woman as Mary. In a temporary indisposition that attacked her a few weeks ago, Mr. Dobbs, struck with consternation, gave, it as his opinion that Church Dykely “could afford to lose the whole biling of ’em, better than her.” Lady Chavasse has seen her merit at last; and Mary’s frequent presence in their house seems to bring light to the two lonely women. Arthur goes there too; my lady loves him, curious though the fact may sound. An incident occurred the other evening.

Miss Layne and Arthur were at tea there, when I happened to go in with some medicine. Mary had her work out, and sat talking in a low voice to Lady Rachel on her sofa; Lady Chavasse was watching Arthur, playing on the grass-plat. My lady rose up with a sudden cry:

“Take care of the wasp, Sir Arthur! Sir Arthur!”

I saw what painful reverie she had been lost in—the vision of that which might have been. It is apt to steal on her at sunset. Becoming conscious of the slip, she flushed slightly, and turned it off. Lady Rachel laughed; she thought it a good joke. Mary was more silent than usual that night, as I walked home by her and Arthur’s side.

Here ends the history. Mary Layne lives on in her home, training Arthur, helping the sick and suffering, keeping her face steadily turned to another world. Never a one is there amidst us so respected as that good, grave lady, who blighted her life in early womanhood, and who carries its trace on her sad, sweet countenance, and its never-ceasing shame on her sorrowing heart.

That’s all at last. You must be glad of it. Old Duffham shall not lead me blindfold into one of his spun-out histories again. The trouble I’ve had to cut it down! What with the diaries and letters, it was twice as long.

And he called it a tale of sin. I, Johnny Ludlow, think it is more like a tale of suffering.

CHAPTER X.

A DAY OF PLEASURE.

We all liked Captain Sanker; a post-captain in the navy, ages since on half-pay; who came into Worcestershire, and brought a letter of introduction to the Squire. He was about a seventeenth cousin of the Sankers of Wales, and a twenty-seventh of Mrs. Todhetley. The captain and his wife and family, six children, had lived in Ireland and the Channel Islands, and other cheap localities, making both ends of their income meet as well as they could—and nobody need be told how poor is the half-pay of naval officers, and what a fight and a struggle it is to rub along. At last, through the death of a relative of Mrs. Sanker, they dropped into quite a fortune, and came over to settle at Worcester.

A Dr. Teal, who had also recently come to Worcester, and was an old friend of Captain Sanker, proposed it to them. He wrote a flaming account of the pretty place that Worcester was, of the loveliness of the surrounding country; and of the great advantage the college school would be to the young Sankers, in giving them a free education if they could be got into it. The prospect of a free education for his boys took with the captain, and he lost no time in removing to Worcester, the Welsh Sankers giving him an introduction to us. We grew pretty intimate: calling on them when we went to Worcester for a day, and having them over to spend days with us.

All the young Sankers were got into the college school by degrees, and became four of the forty king’s scholars. At that time—it is long past now—the school was not thought much of, for the boys were taught little but the classics, so entrance was easy: Latin, Greek, bad writing, and the first rule in arithmetic: there it ended. Captain Sanker thought the education first-rate, and had them all enrolled: Frederick, Daniel, King, and Toby. As to Toby, I fancy his real name was Alfred, but I never heard him called by it.

They had been in Worcester between one and two years, when Tod and I went over to them on a visit. The captain had come to spend a summer’s day at Crabb Cot, and in his jolly, open-hearted fashion insisted on taking us two back with him. He was a short, stout man, with grey hair, and merry bright blue eyes all alight with smiles. Thecollege school would be breaking up for its long holidays in a week or so, and it would have been better for us to have gone then; but the captain always did things on impulse, and had no more forethought than young Toby. The holidays were taken late that year, and would be very long, because the college hall, which was the schoolroom, would be wanted for the music-meeting in September.

The Sankers’ was a funny household, and we pitched down amongst them without ceremony on either side. The house was at the corner of an open road, not very far from the cathedral. It was a commodious house as to size; but all the rooms were in an everlasting litter, so that you could never find a chair to sit down on. The captain was good-humoured always, going in and out a hundred times a day. There seemed to be no fixed hour for meals, and sometimes no meals to eat: Mrs. Sanker would forget to order them. She was a little lady, who went about as if she were dreaming, in a white petticoat and loose buff jacket; or else she’d be sitting aloft in the turret, darning stockings and saying poetry. She was the least excitable person I ever knew; all events, good and bad, she took as a matter of course: had the house caught fire she would have looked on quietly—as Nero did when Rome was burning. Why they called the room the turret did not appear. It had a great high beam running through it on the floor: and Mrs. Sanker would sit on that, reading poetry to us or telling her dreams, her light hair all down.

At seven o’clock the boys had to be in school. Being summer weather, that was no hardship. At nine they came in again with a rush, wild for breakfast. If Mrs. Sanker was not down to give it them, the four boys would begin and eat up the piles of bread-and-butter; upon which Hetta Sanker would call them tigers, and go to the kitchen to tell the maids to cut more. Which was the cook of the two servants and which the housemaid, they did not themselves seem to know: both did the work indiscriminately. Breakfast over, the boys went out again, Tod and I with them. At ten they must be in school. At one they came home to dinner; it might be ready, or it might not: if not, they’d go in and polish off anything cold that might be in the larder. It didn’t seem to spoil their dinners. Afternoon school again until four o’clock; and then at liberty for good. Tea was at any time; a scrambling sort of meal that stayed on the table for hours, and was taken just as we chanced to go in for it. Jam and boiled eggs would be on the table, with the loaf and butterad libitum. Sometimes toast and dripping, and there used to be a scuffle for that. As to dinner, when Mrs. Sanker forgot it, the servants would bring in a big dish of poached eggs, and we made it up with bread-and-cheese. Or Dan or Toby would be sent tearing off to High Street for a lot of penny pork-pies and apple-tarts. At night we had prayers, which the captain read.

Now I dare say that to people accustomed to a domestic life like clock-work, this would have been unbearable. I thought it delightful; as did Tod. It was like a perpetual picnic. But it was from one of these dinnerless episodes we found out that Captain Sanker had a temper. Generally speaking, he took disasters with equanimity.

It was on a Thursday. We were to have had four ducks for dinner, which the captain had bought at market the day before. Fine ducks that he was proud of: he carried them home himself, and brought them into the parlour to show us. On this day, Thursday, Tod and I had been into the Town Hall in the morning, listening to a trial before the magistrates—some fellow who had stolen his neighbour’s clothes-props and cut them up for firewood. We reached home just as the boys and their books did, as hungry as they were. There was no cloth laid, and Fred shouted out for Biddy, asking whether we were to dine to-day or to-morrow. Biddy heard, and came rushing in with the cloth and knife-tray.

“What’s for dinner besides the four ducks?” asked Dan. “Any pudding? Have you put plenty of stuffing?”

“Indeed then, and I don’t think there’s much for dinner,” replied Biddy. “I’ve been in the turret with the missis all the morning, helping to stuff a pillow.”

She laid the cloth, and Mrs. Sanker came mooning down in the short white petticoat and buff jacket, darning a sock of Dan’s. The dreadful truth came out—busy over beds and pillows, nobody had thought of dinner, and the ducks were hanging in the larder, uncooked. Before speechless tongues could find words, Captain Sanker came in, bringing his friend Dr. Teal to taste the ducks. All the Teals were as intimate at the house as we were. Years before, when the captain was a middy, Dr. Teal had been assistant-surgeon on the same ship.

“They’ve a cold dinner at Teal’s to-day,” said the captain to his wife, as she was shaking hands with the doctor, “so he has come to share ours. Fine ducks they are, Teal!”

Then the news had to be told. The ducks were not cooked: dinner altogether had been forgotten.

I saw Captain Sanker’s face turn white—quite white; but he did not say a word. Dr. Teal—a scientific Scotchman, who walked with his nose in the air and his spectacles turned to the skies, as if always looking for a lunar rainbow—made the best of it. Laughing, he said he would come in another day, and went out.

Then it began. Captain Sanker gave vent to passion in a way that startled me, and made Tod stare. I don’t believe he knew for a few moments what he was doing or saying. Nora, the other servant—both girls had come with them from Ireland, and were as thoughtless as their mistress—came in with a dish of some hastily concocted pudding: a sort of batter. The captain, who still had his stick in his hand, lifted itand spattered the pudding all about the cloth. Then he stamped out of the house with a bang.

“Sit down, dears,” said Mrs. Sanker, not at all moved, as she began to collect the pudding with a spoon. “Bring in the cheese, Nora, and do some eggs. Here’s a corner seat for you, Johnny; can you squeeze in? The captain will have his dinner with the Teals, no doubt. He has been tasting the doctor’s port wine, I think; or he wouldn’t have been so put up.”

And somehow we gathered, then or later, that the captain was easy as an old glove at all times and over all crosses, unless he was a little“put up” by artificial help. He told us himself one day (not, of course, alluding to anything of this sort) that he had had naturally an awful temper, would go into passions of absolute madness for a minute or two, when he was younger; but that he had by much self-restraint chiefly if not quite subdued it. It was true; and the temper never need be feared now unless he took anything to excite him. Dan had the same temper; but without the good-nature. And they said Hetta had; but we saw nothing of it in her. Hetta was eighteen, a nice-looking girl, who was governess to little Ruth, or pretended to be; but Ruth would manage to escape her lessons five days in the week. It was all the same to Mrs. Sanker whether she did them or whether she didn’t.

At the time of this visit of ours to Worcester, the college school was in a ferment. Between the Cathedral and St. Peter’s Church was situated a poor, back district called Frog Lane. It had been rechristened Diglis Street, but was chiefly called by the old name still. Crowded dwellings, narrow streets, noise and dirt—that’s how the place struck me. The inhabitants were chiefly workmen belonging to the glove and china manufactories of the town. In this district was the parish school, always filled with boys, sons of the working-men, and under the superintendence of Mr. Jones, the portly parish clerk. Now there was wont to spring up from time to time a tide of animosity between these boys and the boys of the college school. Captain Sanker said it was the fault of the college boys: had they let the St. Peter’s boys alone, St. Peter’s boys would never have presumed to interfere with them: but the college boys could be downright contemptuous and overbearing when they pleased. They scornfully called the St. Peter’s boys the Frogs, “charity boys;” and the Frogs retorted by calling them the College Caws—after the rooks that had their homes in the old trees of the college green and kept up a perpetual cawing. The animosity generally ended in a grand battle; and then hostilities would be dropped for months, perhaps years. One of these quarrels was going on while we were at Worcester; it had kept both schools in a ferment for some weeks, and there was every sign of a culminating fight. Of course we went in heart and soul with the king’s scholars: but the boys on both sides held a code of honour—if you can call it so—thatno stranger must take part in the engagements. The college boys were only forty, all told; the Frogs seemed to number four times as many.

Skirmishes took place daily—the scene being the top of Edgar Street. St. Peter’s boys (let out of school at twelve, whereas the others did not get out till one) would collect in the narrow neck of their district opening on Edgar Street, and wait for the enemy. As soon as the college boys’ steps were heard racing under the dark gateway of Edgar Tower, hisses and groans began. “Caw, caw, caw! Hiss, hiss, hiss! How’s your Latin to-day?—what birchings has you had? Call yourselves gents, does you, you College Caws? You daren’t come on fair, and fight it out with us, you Caws. Caw, caw, caw!” Sometimes the college boys would pass on, only calling back their contemptuous retorts; sometimes they’d halt, and a fierce storm of abuse would be interchanged, to the edification of Edgar Street in general and the clerks in Mr. Clifton’s Registry Office. “You beggarly Frogs! We don’t care to soil our hands with you! Had you been gentlemen, we’d have polished you off long ago, and sent you into next week. Croak, Frogs! Croak!” Not a third of the college boys need have taken Edgar Tower on their way home; through the cloisters and out by St. Michael’s churchyard would have been their direct way; but they chose to meet the Frogs. Once in a way there’d be a single combat; but as a rule nothing came of it but abuse. When that was exhausted, each lot would rush home their separate ways: the Frogs back down Frog Lane; the others up the steps, or onwards down Edgar Street, as their road might lie, and remain apart till the same hour next day.

I have not said much yet about King Sanker. He was lame: something was wrong with his knee. Gatherings would come in it, and then he’d be in bed for weeks together. He was nearly thirteen then; next to Dan: and Dan was over fourteen. King was a nice little fellow, with mild eyes as blue as the captain’s: Fred would order him to keep “out of the ruck” in the skirmishes with the Frogs, and he generally did. If it came to a fight, you see, King might have been hurt; he had no fighting in him, was frightened at it, and he could not run much. King was just like his mother in ideas: he would tell us his dreams as she did, and recite pieces of poetry a mile long. Dan and King slept together in the room next to ours; it was in the garret, close to the turret-room. King would keep us awake singing; sometimes chants, sometimes hymns, sometimes songs. They’d have let him try for the choir, but the head-master of the college school thought his knee would not do for it.

It was Saturday, and a pouring wet afternoon. Our visit was drawing to an end; on the following Wednesday we should bid the Sankers good-bye. Captain Sanker, always trying to find out ways of making folk happy, had devised a day of pleasure for the last day of our stay,Tuesday. We were to go to Malvern; a whole lot of us: ourselves, and the Teals, and the Squire, and Mrs. Todhetley, and take our dinner on the hill. It was so settled; and the arrangements were planned and made.

But this was yet only Saturday. We dined at twelve: whether for any one’s convenience or that the servants made a mistake in an hour, I don’t remember. It happened to be a saint’s day, so the boys had no school; and, being wet, came home after morning service in the cathedral. After a jolly dinner of peas and bacon and pancakes, we looked at the skies for a bit, and then (all but Fred and Hetta) went up to the turret-room. Dan said the rain had come to spite us; for the whole school had meant to race to Berwick’s Bridge after afternoon service and hold a mock review in the fields there. It was coming down in torrents, peppering the roof and the windows. Mrs. Sanker sat in the middle of the old beam, mending one of Toby’s shirts,“Lalla Rookh” open on her knee, out of which she was singing softly; the floor was strewed with patches, and scissors, and tapes, and the combs were out of one side of her hair.

“Read it out loud to us, mamma,” cried King.

“I can’t spare time to read, King,” she said. “Look here”—holding out the work, all rags and tatters. “If I don’t mend this, Toby won’t have a shirt to put on to-morrow.”

“I shan’t mind about that,” said Toby.

“Oh, but, dear, I don’t think you could go without a shirt. Has any one seen my cotton?”

“Then say something over to us that you know, mamma,” returned King, as Toby found the cotton.

“Very well. I can do that and work too. Sit down, all of you.”

We sat down, King and Toby on the floor before her, the rest of on the beam on either side her. Dan, who did not care for poetry, got some Brazil nuts out of his pocket and cracked them while he listened.

Mrs. Sanker might as well have read “Lalla Rookh.” She began to recite “The Friar of Orders Grey.” But what with gazing up at the sky through the rain to give it due emphasis, and shaking her head at pathetic parts, the sewing did not get on. She had finished the verse—

“Weep no more, lady, weep no more,

Thy sorrow is in vain;

For violets plucked, the sweetest showers

Will ne’er make grow again,”

when King surprised us by bursting into tears. But as Mrs. Sanker took no notice, I supposed it was nothing unusual.

“You young donkey!” cried Dan, when the poem was finished.“You’ll never be a man, King.”

“It is such a nice verse, Dan,” replied young King, meekly. “I whisper it over sometimes to myself in bed. Mamma, won’t you say the ‘Barber’s Ghost’? Johnny Ludlow would like to hear that, I know.”

We had the “Barber’s Ghost,” which was humorous, and we had other things. After that, Mrs. Sanker told a dreadful story about a real ghost, one that she said haunted her family, and another of a murder that was discovered by a dream. Some of the young Sankers were the oddest mixtures of timidity and bravery—personally brave in fighting; frightfully timid as to being alone in the dark—and I no longer wondered at it if she brought them up on these ghostly dishes.

“I should not like to have dreams that would tell me of murders,”said King, thoughtfully. “But I do dream very strange dreams sometimes. When I awake, I lie and wonder what they mean. Once I dreamt I saw heaven—didn’t I, mamma? It was so beautiful.”

“Ay; my family have always been dreamers,” replied Mrs. Sanker.

Thus, what with ghosts and poetry and talking, the afternoon wore on unconsciously. Dan suddenly started up with a shout—

“By Jove!”

The sun had come out. Come out, and we had never noticed it. It was shining as brightly as could be on the slates of all the houses. The rain had ceased.

“I say, we shall have the review yet!” cried Dan. “And, by Jupiter, that’s the college bell! Make a rush, you fellows, or you’ll be marked late. There’s three o’clock striking.”

The king’s scholars thought it a great shame that they should have to attend prayers in the cathedral morning and afternoon on saints’days, instead of wholly benefiting by the holiday. They had to do it, however. The three went flying out towards the cathedral, and I gave King my arm to help him after them. Tod and I—intending to take part in the review at Berwick’s Bridge—went to college also, and sat behind the surpliced king’s scholars on the decani side, in the stalls next to the chanter.

But for a little mud, you’d hardly have thought there had been any rain when we got out again; and the sun was glowing in the blue sky. Not a single fellow was absent: even King limped along. We took the way by the Severn, past the boat-house at the end of the college boundaries, and went leisurely along the towing-path, intending to get into the fields beyond Diglis Wharf, and so onwards.

I don’t believe there was a thought in any one’s mind that afternoon of the enemy. The talk—and a good hubbub it was—turned wholly upon soldiers and reviews. A regular review of the Worcestershire militia took place once a year on Kempsey Ham, and some of the boys’heads got a trifle turned with it. They were envying Lord Ward,now, as they went along: saying they should like to be him, and look as well as he did, and sit his horse as proudly.

“Of course he’s proud,” squeaked out the biggest Teal, whose voice was uncertain. “Think of his money!—and his horses!—and see how good-looking he is! If Lord Ward hasn’t a right to be proud, I should like to know who has. Why, he—oh, by George! I say, look here!”

Turning into the first field, we found we had turned into a company of Frogs. All the whole lot, it seemed. Caws and croaks and hoots and groans from either side rose at once on the air. Which army commenced hostilities, I couldn’t tell; the one was as eager for it as the other; and in two minutes the battle had begun—begun in earnest. Up dashed the senior boy.

“Look here,” said he to me and Tod; “you understand our rules. You must neither of you attempt to meddle in this. Stay and look on, if you please; but keep at a sufficient distance where it may be seen that you are simply spectators. These beggars shan’t have it to say that we were helped.”

He dashed back again. Tod ground his teeth with the effort it took to keep himself from going in to pummel some of the Frogs. Being upon honour, he had to refrain; and he did it somehow.

The Frogs had the blazing sun in their eyes; our side had it at their backs—which was against the Frogs. There were no weapons of any sort; only arms and hands. It looked like the scrimmage of an Irish row. Sometimes there was closing-in, and fighting hand to hand; sometimes the forces were drawn back again, each to its respective ground. During the first of these interludes, just as the sides were preparing to charge, a big Frog, with broad awkward shoulders, a red, rugged face, and a bleeding nose, came dashing forward alone into the ranks of the college boys, caught up poor lame helpless King Sanker, bore him bravely right through, and put him down in safety beyond, in spite of the blows freely showered upon him. Not a soul on our side had thought of King; and the college boys were too excited to see what the big Frog was about, or they’d perhaps have granted him grace to pass unmolested. King sat down on the wet grass for a bit, and gazed about him like a fellow bewildered. Seeing me and Tod he came limping round to us.

“It was good-natured of that big Frog, wasn’t it, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Very. He’d make a brave soldier. I mean a real soldier.”

“Perhaps I should have been killed, but for him. I was frightened, you see; and there was no way out. I couldn’t have kept on my legs a minute longer.”

The battle raged. The cawing and the croaking, that had been kept up like an array of trumpets, fell off as the fighting waxed hotter. The work grew too fierce and real for abuse of tongue. We could hear theblows dealt on the upturned faces. King, who had a natural horror of fighting, trembled inwardly from head to foot, and hid his face behind me. Tod was dancing with excitement, flinging his closed fists outward in imaginary battle, and roaring out like a dragon.

I can’t say who would have won had they been left alone. Probably the Frogs, for there were a great many more of them. But on the other hand, none of them were so old as some of the college boys. When the fight was at the thickest, we heard a sudden shout from a bass, gruff, authoritative voice: “Now then, boys, how dare you!”and saw a big, portly gentleman in black clothes and a white necktie, appear behind the Frogs, with a stout stick in his hand.

It was Clerk Jones, their master. His presence and his voice acted like magic. Not a Frog of them all but dropped his blows and his rage. The college boys had to drop theirs, as the enemy receded. Clerk Jones put himself between the two sets of combatants.

The way he went on at both sides was something good to hear. Shaking his stick at his own boys, they turned tail softly, and then rushed away through the mud like wild horses, not waiting to hear the close: so the college boys had the pepper intended for the lot. He vowed and declared by the stick that was in his hand—and he had the greatest mind, he interrupted himself to say, to put it about their backs—that if ever they molested his boys again, or another quarrel was got up, he would appeal publicly to the dean and chapter. If one of the college boys made a move in future to so much as cast an insulting look towards a boy in St. Peter’s School, that boy should go before the dean; and it would not be his fault (the clerk’s) if he was not expelled the cathedral. He would take care, and precious good care, that his boys should preserve civility henceforth; and it was no great favour to expect that the college boys would do so. For his part he should feel ashamed in their places to oppress lads in an inferior class of life to themselves; and he should make it his business before he slept to see the head-master of the college school, and report this present disgraceful scene to him: the head-master could deal with it as he pleased.

Mr. Jones went off, flourishing his stick; and our side began to sum up its damages: closed eyes, scratched faces, swollen noses, and torn clothes. Dan Sanker’s nose was as big as a beer barrel, and his shirt-front hung in ribbons. Fred’s eyes were black. Toby’s jacket had a sleeve slit up, and one of his boots had disappeared for good.

The spectacle we made, going home down the Gloucester Road, could not be easily forgotten. Folks collected on the pavement, and came to the windows and doors to see the sight. It was like an army of soldiers returning from battle. Bleeding faces, black eyes, clothes tattered and bespattered with mud. Farmers going back from market drew up their gigs to the roadside, to stare at us while we passed. One little girl, in a pony-chaise, wedged between a fat old lady in a redshawl and a gentleman in top-boots, was frightened nearly into fits. She shrieked and cried, till you might have heard her up at Mr. Allies’s; and the old lady could not pacify her. The captain was out when we got in: and Mrs. Sanker took it all with her usual apathy, only saying we had better have come straight home from college to hear some more poetry.

An awful fuss was made by the head-master. Especially as the boys had to appear on Sunday at the cathedral services. Damages were visible on many of them; and their white surplices only helped to show the faces off the more. The chorister who took the solo in the afternoon anthem was decorated with cuttings of sticking-plaster; he looked like a tattooed young Indian.

The school broke up on the Monday: and on that day Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley drove into Worcester, and put up at the Star and Garter. They came to us in the afternoon, as had been agreed upon; dinner being ordered by Captain Sanker for five o’clock. It was rather a profuse dinner; fish and meat and pies and dessert, but quite a scramble of confusion: which none of the Sankers seemed to notice or to mind.

“Johnny dear, is it always like this?” Mrs. Todhetley could not help asking me, in a whisper. “I should be in a lunatic asylum in a week.”

We started for Malvern on Tuesday at eleven o’clock. The Squire drove Bob and Blister in his high carriage: Dr. Teal, Captain Sanker, and Fred sitting with him. There was no railroad then. The ladies and the girls crammed themselves into a post-carriage from the Star, and a big waggonette was lent by some friend of Dr. Teal for the rest. The boys were losing the signs of their damages; nothing being very conspicuous now but Dan’s nose. It refused to go down at all in size, and in colour was brighter than a rainbow. The Teals kept laughing at it, which made Dan savage; once he burst out in a passion, wishing all the Frogs were shot.

I remember that drive still. John Teal and I sat on the box of the post-carriage, the post-boy riding his horses. I remember the different features of the road as we passed them—not but that I knew them well before; I remember the laden orchards, and the sweet scent of the bean-fields, in flower then. Over the bridge from Worcester went we, up the New Road and through St. John’s, and then into the open country; past Lower Wick, where Mrs. Sherwood lived, and on to Powick across its bridge. I remember that a hearse and three mourning-coaches stood before the Lion, the men refreshing themselves with drink; and we wondered who was being buried that day. Down that steep and awkward hill next, where so many accidents occurred before it was altered, and so on to the Link; the glorious hills always before us from the turning where they had first burst into view; theirclumps of gorse and broom, their paths and their sheep-tracks growing gradually plainer to the sight the nearer we drew. The light and shade cast by the sun swept over them perpetually, a landscape ever changing; the white houses of the village, nestling amidst their dark foliage, looked fair for the eye to rest upon. Youth, as we all get to learn when it has gone by, lends a charm that later life cannot know: but never a scene that I have seen since, abroad or at home, lies on my memory with half the beauty as does that old approach to Malvern. Turning round to the left at the top of the Link, we drove into Great Malvern.

The carriages were left at the Crown. An old pony was chartered for some of the provisions, and we boys carried the rest. The people at St. Ann’s Well had been written to, and the room behind the well was in readiness for us. Once the baskets were deposited there, we were at liberty till dinner-time, and went on up the hill. Turning a corner which had hidden the upper landscape from view, we came upon Dan Sanker, who had got on first. He was standing to confront us, his face big with excitement, his nose flaming.

“If you’ll believe me, those cursed Frogs are here!”

In angry consternation—for the Frogs seemed to have no business to be at Malvern—we rushed on, turned another corner, and so brought ourselves into a wide expanse of upper prospect. Sure enough! About a hundred of the Frogs in their Sunday clothes were trooping down the hill. They had the start of us in arriving at Malvern, and had been to the top already.

“I’ll—be—jiggered!” cried Dan, savagely. “What a horrid lot they are! Look at their sneaking tail-coats. Wouldn’t I like to pitch into them!”

The college school wore the Eton jacket. Those preposterous coats, the tails docked to the size of the boys, did not improve the appearance of the Frogs. But as to pitching-in, Dan did not dare to do it after what had passed. It was his nose that made him so resentful.

“I desire that you will behave as gentlemen,” said Captain Sanker, who was behind with the Squire, and bid us halt. “Those poor boys are here, I see; but they will not, I am sure, molest you, neither must you molest them. Civility costs nothing, remember. What are you looking so cross for, Dan?”

“Oh, well, papa, it’s like their impudence, to come here to-day!”muttered Dan.

The captain laughed. “They may say it’s like yours, to come, Dan: they were here first. Go on, lads, and don’t forget yourselves.”

Tod’s whistle below was heard just then; and Dan, not caring to show his nose to the enemy, responded, and galloped back. We went on. The paths there are narrow, you know, and we expected to have all the string of Frogs sweeping past us, their coats brushing our jackets. But—perhaps not caring to meet us any more than we cared to meet them—most of them broke off on a detour down the steep of the hill, and so avoided us. About half-a-dozen came on. One of them was a big-shouldered, awkward, red-faced boy, taller than the rest of them and not unlike a real frog; he walked with his cap in his hand, and his brown hair stood on end like a porcupine’s. Indisputably ugly was he, with a mouth as wide as a frying-pan; but it was a pleasant and honest face, for all that. King suddenly darted to him as he was passing, and pulled him towards Captain Sanker, in excitement.

“Papa, this is the one I told you of; the one who saved me and didn’t mind the blows he got in doing it. I should have been knocked down, and my knee trampled on, but for him.”

Out went Captain Sanker’s hand to shake the boy’s. He did it heartily. As to the Frog, he blushed redder than before with modesty.

“You are a brave lad, and I thank you heartily,” said the captain, wringing his hand as though he’d wring it off. “You do honour to yourself, whoever you may be. There was not one of his own companions to think of him, and save him, and you did it in the midst of danger. Thank you, my lad.”

The captain slid half-a-crown into his hand, telling him to get some Malvern cakes. The boy stood back for us to go by. I was the last, and he spoke as if he knew me.

“Good-day, Master Johnny.”

Why, who was he? And, now I came to look at his freckled face, it seemed quite familiar. His great wide mouth brought me remembrance.

“Why, it’s Mark Ferrar! I didn’t know you at first, Mark.”

“We’ve come over here for the day in two vans,” said Mark, putting his grey cap on. “Eighty of the biggest of us; the rest are to come to-morrow. Some gent that’s visiting at St. Peter’s parsonage has given us the treat, sir.”

“All right, Mark. I’m glad you thought of King Sanker on Saturday.”

Ferrar touched his cap, and went vaulting down after his comrades. He was related to Daniel Ferrar, the Squire’s bailiff, of whom you have heard before, poor fellow, and also to the Batleys of South Crabb. He used to come over to Crabb, that’s where I had seen him.

Some donkeys came running down the hill, their white cloths flying. Captain Sanker stopped one and put King on him—for King was tired already. We soon got to the top then, and to Lady Harcourt’s Tower. Oh, it was a glorious day! The great wide prospect around stood out in all its beauty. The vale of Herefordshire on the one side with its rural plains and woods basked in the sunshine, its crops of ruddy pears and apples giving token of the perry and cider to come; on the other side rose the more diversified landscape that has been so much told and talked of. Over the green meadows and the ripening corn-fields lay Worcester itself: the cathedral showing out well, and the summit of the high church-spire of St. Andrew’s catching a glint of the sunlight. Hills caught the eye wherever it turned: Bredon Hill, Abberleigh Hills, the Old Hills; homesteads lay upon their lands, half hidden by their rick-yards and clustering trees; cattle and sheep browsed on the grass or lay in the shade to shelter themselves from the midday sun. To the right, on the verge of the horizon, far, far away, might be caught a glimpse of something that sparkled like a bed of stars—the Bristol Channel. It is not often you can discern that from Malvern, but this day that I am telling of was one of the clearest ever seen there; the atmosphere looking quite rarefied in spite of the sunlight.

King’s donkey regaled himself with morsels of herbage, the donkey-boy lay stretched beside him, and we boys raced about. When an hour or two had passed, and we were as hot as fire and more hungry than hunters, we bethought ourselves of dinner. King got on his donkey again, and the rest of us whipped him up. When half-way down we saw Dr. Teal gesticulating and shouting, telling us to come on and not keep dinner waiting longer.

We had it in the room behind the well. It was a squeeze to sit round the table. Cold meats, and salad, and pastry, and all sorts of good things. Dan was next to me; he said he could hardly eat for thirst, and kept drinking away at the bottled ale.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Todhetley to him by-and-by, “don’t you think you had better drink some water instead—or lemonade? This bottled ale is very strong.”

“I am afraid it is,” said Dan. “I’ll go in for the tarts now.”

The room was stuffy; and after dinner a table was carried out to a sheltered place near the well: not much better than a little ledge of a path, but where we could not be overlooked, and should be quite out of the way of the hill-climbers. The bank rose perpendicularly above us, banks descended beneath to goodness knew where; there we sat at dessert, all sheltered. I think dark trees and shrubs overshaded us; but I am not altogether sure.

How it came about, I hardly know: but something was brought up about King’s store of ballads, and he was asked to give us his favourite one, “Lord Bateman,” for the benefit of the company. He turned very shy, but Captain Sanker told him not to be silly: and after going white and red for a bit, he began. Perhaps the reader would like to hear it. I never repeat it to myself, no, nor even a verse of it, but poor King Sanker comes before me just as I saw him that day, his back to the ravine below, his eyes looking at nothing, his thin hands nervously twisting some paper about that had covered the basket of raspberries.

Lord Bateman was a noble lord,

A noble lord of high degree:

He shipped himself on board a ship;

Some foreign country he would see.

He sailed east, he sailèd west,

Until he came unto Turkey,

Where he was taken, and put in prison

Until his life was quite weary.

In this prison there grew a tree:

It grew so very stout and strong:

And he was chained by the middle

Until his life was almost gone.

The Turk, he had one only daughter,

The fairest creature eye e’er did see:

She stole the keys of her father’s prison,

And said she’d set Lord Bateman free.

“Have you got houses?—have you got lands

Or does Northumberland belong to thee?

And what would you give to the fair young I

Who out of prison would set you free?”

“Oh, I’ve got houses, and I’ve got lands,

And half Northumberland belongs to me;

And I’d give it all to the fair young lady

That out of prison would set me free.”

Then she took him to her father’s palace,

And gave to him the best of wine;

And every health that she drank to him

Was “I wish, Lord Bateman, you were mine.

“For seven long years I’ll make a vow;

And seven long years I’ll keep it strong:

If you will wed no other woman,

I will wed no other man.”

Then she took him to her father’s harbour,

And gave to him a ship of fame;

“Farewell, farewell to you, Lord Bateman;

I fear I never shall see you again.”

When seven long years were gone and past,

And fourteen days, well known to me;

She packed up her gay gold and clothing,

And said Lord Bateman she would see.

When she came to Lord Bateman’s castle,

So boldly there she rang the bell:

“Who’s there, who’s there?” cried the young proud porter:

“Who’s there, who’s there, unto me tell?”

“Oh, is this Lord’s Bateman’s castle?

And is his lordship here within?”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” cried the young proud porter:

“He has just now taken his young bride in.”

“Tell him to send me a slice of cake,

And a bottle of the best of wine;

And not to forget the fair young lady

That did release him when close confined.”

Away, away went this young proud porter,

Away, away, away went he;

Until he came unto Lord Bateman,

When on his bended knees fell he.

“What news, what news, my young porter;

What news, what news have you brought unto me?”

“Oh, there is the fairest of all young ladies

That ever my two eyes did see.

“She has got rings on every finger,

And on one of them she has got three;

And she has as much gold round her middle

As would buy Northumberland of thee.

“She tells you to send her a slice of cake,

And a bottle of the best of wine;

And not to forget the fair young lady

That did release you when close confined.”

Lord Bateman in a passion flew;

He broke his sword in splinters three;

“I’ll give all my father’s wealth and riches

Now, if Sophia has crossed the sea.”

Then up spoke his young bride’s mother—

Who never was heard to speak so free:

“Don’t you forget my only daughter,

Although Sophia has crossed the sea.”

“I own I’ve made a bride of your daughter

She’s none the better nor worse for me;

She came to me on a horse and saddle,

And she may go back in a carriage and three.”

Then another marriage was prepared,

With both their hearts so full of glee:

“I’ll range no more to foreign countries,

Since my Sophia has crossed the sea.”

King stopped, just as shyly as he had begun. Some laughed, others applauded him; and the Squire told us that the first time he had ever heard “Lord Bateman” was in Sconton’s show, on Worcester racecourse, many a year ago.

After that, we broke up. I and some of the boys climbed up straightto Lady Harcourt’s Tower again. A few Frogs were about the hills, but they did not come in contact with us. When we got back to St. Ann’s the tea was ready in the room.

“And I wish to goodness they’d have it,” cried Dan, “for I’m as thirsty as a fish. I’ve been asleep out there all the while on the bench in the sun. Can’t we have tea, mother?”

“As soon as ever the gentlemen come back,” spoke up Mrs. Teal, who seemed to like order. “They went down to look at the Abbey.”

They were coming up then, puffing over the walk; Tod and Fred Sanker with them. We sat down to tea; and it was half over when the two young Sankers, King and Toby, were missed.

“Tiresome monkeys!” cried the captain. “I never came over here with a party yet, but we had to spend the last hour or two hunting some of them up. Well, I’ll not bother myself over it: they shall find their way home as they can.”

Toby ran in presently. He had only been about the hills, he said, and had not seen King.

“I dare say King’s still in the place where we had dessert,” said Hetta Sanker, just then thinking of it. “He stayed behind us all, saying he was tired. You boys can go and see.”

I and Jim Teal ran off together. King was not there. One of the women at the well said that when she went out for the chairs and things, just before tea-time, nobody was there.

“Oh, he’ll turn up presently,” said the captain. And we went on with our tea, and forgot him.

It was twilight when we got down to the village to start for home. The Squire set off first: the same party with him as in the morning, except that Mrs. Teal took her husband’s place. When they were bringing out the post-carriage, King was again thought of.

“He has stayed somewhere singing to himself,” said Mrs. Sanker.

We went off in different directions, shouting our throats hoarse. Up as far as St. Ann’s, and along the hill underneath, and in all the corners of the village: no King. It was getting strange.

“I should hope none of those impudent Frogs have made off with him!” cried Toby Sanker.

“They are capable of anything, mind you,” added Dan.

One vanload of Frogs had started; the other was getting ready to start. The boys, gaping and listening about, saw and heard all our consternation at the dilemma we were in. Mrs. Todhetley, who did not understand the state of social politics, as between them and the college school, turned and inquired whether they had seen King.

“A delicate lad, who walks lame,” she explained. “We think he must have fallen asleep somewhere on the hill: and we cannot start without him.”

The Frogs showed themselves good-natured; and went tearing uptowards the hill to look for King. In passing the Unicorn, a pleasure-party of young men and women, carrying their empty provision-baskets, came running downwards, saying that they had heard groaning under a part of the hill—and described where. I seemed to catch the right place, as if by instinct, and was up there first. King was lying there; not groaning then, but senseless or dead.

Looking upwards to note the position, we thought he must have fallen down from the place where we had sat at dessert. Hetta Sanker said she had left him there by himself, to rest.

“He must have dropped asleep, and fallen down,” cried Dr. Teal.

King came to as they lifted him, and walked a few steps; but looked around and fell aside as though his head were dazed. Dr. Teal thought that there was not much the matter, and that he might be conveyed to Worcester. Ferrar helped to carry him down the hill, and the other Frogs followed. A fine fury their van-driver was in, at their having kept him waiting!

King was made comfortable along the floor of the waggonette, upon some rugs and blankets lent by the Crown; and so was taken home. When Captain Sanker found what had happened, he grew excited, and went knocking at half the doctors’ doors in Worcester. Mr. Woodward was the first in, then Dr. Malden and Mr. Carden came running together. By what the captain had said, they expected to find all the house dead.

King seemed better in the morning. The injury lay chiefly in his head. We did not hear what the doctors made of it. He was sensible, and talked a little. When asked how he came to fall, all he said was that he “went over and could not save himself.”

Coming in, from carrying the news of how he was to the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley at the Star, I found Mark Ferrar at the door.

“Mr. Johnny,” said he, in a low voice, his plain face all concern,“how did it happen? Sure he was not pushed over?”

“Of course not. Why do you ask it?”

Ferrar paused. “Master Johnny, when boys are lame they are more cautious. He’d hardly be likely to slip.”

“He might in walking. It’s only a narrow ledge there. And his sister says she thinks he went to sleep when she left him. She was the last who saw him.”

Mark’s wide mouth went into all sorts of contortions, and the freckles shone in the sun in his effort to get the next words out.

“I fancy it was me that saw him last, Master Johnny. Leastways, later than his sister.”

“Did you? How was that?”

“He must have seen me near the place, and he called to me. There was nobody there but him, and some chairs and a table and glasses and things. He asked me to sit down, and began telling me he had beensaying ‘Lord Bateman’ to them all. I didn’t know what ‘Lord Bateman’meant, Master Johnny—and he said he would tell it me; he should not mind then, but he had minded saying it to the company. It was poetry, I found; but he stopped in the middle, and told me to go then, for he saw some of them coming——”

“Some of what?” I interrupted.

“Well, I took it to mean some of his grown-up party, or else the college boys. Anyway, he seemed to want me gone, sir, and I went off at once. I didn’t see him after that.”

“He must have fallen asleep, and somehow slipped over.”

“Yes, sir. What a pity he was left in that shallow place!”

King seemed to have all his wits about him, but his face had a white, odd look in it. He lay in a room on the first floor, that belonged in general to the two girls. When I said Mark Ferrar was outside, King asked me to take him up. But I did not like taking him without speaking to Captain Sanker; and I went to him in the parlour.

“The idea of a Frog coming into our house!” cried resentful Dan, as he heard me. “It’s like his impudence to stop outside it! What next? Let him wait till King’s well.”

“You hold your tongue, Dan,” cried the captain. “The boy shall go up, whether he’s a Frog, or whether he’s one of you. Take him up, Johnny.”

He did not look unlike a frog when he got into the room, with his wide, red, freckled face and his great wide mouth—but, as I have said, it was a face to be trusted. The first thing he did, looking at King, was to burst into a great blubber of tears.

“I hope you’ll get well,” said he.

“I might have been as bad as this in the fight, but for your pulling me out of it, Frog,” said King, in his faint voice. And he did not call him Frog in any contempt, but as though it were his name: he knew him by no other. “Was that bump done in the battle?”

Mark had his cap off: on one side of his forehead, under the hair, we saw a big lump the size of an egg. “Yes,” he answered, “it was got in the fight. Father thinks it never means to go down. It’s pretty stiff and sore yet.”

King sighed. He was gazing up at the lump with his nice blue eyes.

“I don’t think there’ll be any fighting in heaven,” said King.“And I wrote out ‘Lord Bateman’ the other day, and they shall give it you to keep. I didn’t finish telling it to you. He owned half Northumberland; and he married her after all. She had set him free from the prison, you know, Frog.”

“Yes,” replied Frog, quite bewildered, and looking as though he could not make top or tail of the story. “I hope you’ll get well, sir. How came you to fall?”

“I don’t think they expect me to get well: they wouldn’t have so many doctors if they did. I shan’t be lame, Frog, up there.”

“Did you slip?—or did anybody push you?” went on Frog, lowering his voice.

“Hush!” said King, glancing at the door. “If papa heard you say that, he might go into a passion.”

“But—was it a slip—or were you pushed over?” persisted Frog.

“My leg is always slipping: it has never been of much good to me,”answered King. “When you come up there, and see me with a beautiful strong body and straight limbs, you won’t know me again at first. Good-bye, till then, Frog; good-bye. It was very kind of you to carry me out of the fight, and God saw you.”

“Good-bye, sir,” said Frog, with another burst, as he put out his hand to meet poor King’s white one. “Perhaps you’ll get over it yet.”

Tod and I took leave of them in the afternoon, and went up to the Star. The Squire wanted to be home early. The carriage was waiting before the gateway, the ostler holding the heads of Bob and Blister, when Captain Sanker came up in dreadful excitement.

“He’s gone,” he exclaimed. “My poor King’s gone. He died as the clock was striking four.”

And we had supposed King to be going on well! The Squire ordered the horses to be put up again, and we went down to the house. The boys and girls were all crying.

King lay stretched on the bed, his face very peaceful and looking less white than I had sometimes seen it look in life. On the cheeks there lingered a faint colour; his forehead felt warm; you could hardly believe he was dead.

“He has gone to the heaven he talked of,” said Mrs. Sanker, through her tears. “He has been talking about it at intervals all day—and now he is there; and has his harp amongst the angels.”

And that was the result of our Day of Pleasure! The force of those solemn words has rarely been brought home to hearts as it was to ours then: “In the midst of life we are in death.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE FINAL ENDING TO IT.

Of all the gloomy houses any one ever stayed in, Captain Sanker’s was the worst. Nothing but coffins coming into it, and all of us stealing about on tip-toe. King lay in the room where he died. There was to be an inquest: at which the captain was angry. But he was so excited and sorrowful just then as to have no head at all.

Which might well be excused in him. Picture what it was! Three carriages full of us had started on the Tuesday morning, expecting to have a day of charming pleasure on the Malvern Hills in the July sunshine; no more thinking of death or any other catastrophe, than if the world had never contained such! And poor King—poor lame King, whose weakness made him more helpless than were we strong ones, and who only on the previous Saturday had been plucked out of the fight in Diglis Meadow and been saved—King must fall asleep on a dangerous part of the hill and roll down it and come home to die! “Better King than any of the rest of you,” cried Mrs. Sanker, more than once, in her dreamy way, and with her eyes dry, for she seemed tired of tears; “he could never have done battle with the world as you will have to do it; and he was quite ready for heaven.”

Instead of going home with our people the day after the death, as Tod did, I had to wait at Worcester for the inquest. When the beadle (or whoever the officer might be; he had gold cord on his hat and white ribbed stockings below his breeches: which stockings might have been fellows to old Jones’s of Church Dykely) came to Captain Sanker’s to make inquiries the night of the death, and heard that I had been first up with King after his fall, he said I should have to give evidence. So I stayed on with them—much to my uneasiness.

If I had thought the Sankers queer people before, I thought them queerer now. Not one of the boys and girls, except Fred, cared to go alone by the door of the room where King lay. And, talking of King, it was not until I saw the name on the coffin-lid that I knew his name was not King, but Kingsley. He looked as nice and peaceful as any dead lad with a nice face could look; and yet they were afraid to pass by outside. Dan and Ruth were the worst. I did not wonder at her—she was a little girl; but I did at Dan. Fred told me that whenthey were children a servant used to tell them stories of ghosts and dreams and banshees; Hetta and he were too old to be frightened, but the rest had taken it all into their nature. I privately thought that Mrs. Sanker was no better than the fool of a servant, reciting to them her dreams and accounts of apparitions.

King died on the Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday afternoon the inquest took place. It was held at the Angel Inn, in Sidbury, and Mr. Robert Allies was the foreman. Boys don’t give evidence on inquests every day: I felt shy and uncomfortable at having to do it; and perhaps that may be the reason why the particulars remain so strongly on my memory. The time fixed was three o’clock, but it was nearly four when they came down to look at King: the coroner explained to the jury that he had been detained. When they went back to the Angel Inn we followed them—Captain Sanker, Fred, and I.

All sorts of nonsense ran about the town. It was reported that there had been a fight with the Frogs on Malvern Hill, during which King had been pitched over. This was only laughed at by those who knew how foundationless it was. Not a shadow of cause existed for supposing it to have been anything but a pure accident.

The coroner and jury sat at a long table covered with green baize. The coroner had his clerk by him; and on one side Mr. Allies sat Captain Chamberlain, on the other side Mr. Allcroft. Dr. Teal and Mr. Woodward were present, and gave the medical evidence in a most learned manner. Reduced to plainness, it meant that King had died of an injury to the head.

When my turn came, what they chiefly asked me was, whether I had seen or heard any quarrelling with St. Peter’s boys that day at Malvern. None whatever, I answered. Was I quite sure of that? pursued one—it was Mr. Allcroft. I did not think there had been, or could have been, I repeated: we and the charity boys had kept apart from each other all day. Then another of the jury, Mr. Stone, put some questions, and then Mr. Allen—I thought they were never going to believe me. So I said it was the opposite of quarrelling, and told of Captain Sanker’s giving one of them half-a-crown because he had been kind to King on Saturday, and of some of the boys—all who had not gone home in the first van—having helped us to look for King at night. After they had turned me inside out, the coroner could say that these questions were merely put for form’s sake and for the satisfaction of the public.

When the witnesses were done with, the coroner spoke to the jury. I suppose it was his charge. It seemed all as plain as a turnpike, he said: the poor little lame boy had slipped and fallen. The probability was that he had dropped asleep too near the edge of the perpendicular bank, and had either fallen over in his sleep, or in the act of awaking. He (the coroner) thought it must have been the former, as no cry appeared to have been made, or heard. Under these circumstances, he believed the jury could have no difficulty in arriving at their verdict.

The last word, “verdict,” was still on his tongue, when some commotion took place at the end of the room. A working-man, in his shirt-sleeves and a leather apron on, was pushing in through the crowd at the door, making straight for the table and the coroner. Some of the jury knew him for John Dance, a glove-cutter at a Quaker gentleman’s manufactory hard by. He begged pardon of the gentlefolk for coming amid ’em abrupt like that, he said, just as he was, but something had but now come to his hearing about the poor little boy who had died. It made him fear he had not fell of himself, but been flung over, and he had thought it his duty to come and tell it.

The consternation this suggestion created, delivered in its homely words, would not be easy to describe. Captain Sanker, who had been sitting against the wall, got up in agitation. John Dance was asked his grounds for what he said, and was entering into a long rigmarole of a tale when the coroner stopped him, and bade him simply say how it had come to his own knowledge. He answered that upon going home just now to tea, from his work, his son Harry, who was in St. Peter’s School, told him of it, having been sent to do so by the master, Clerk Jones. His son was with him, waiting to be questioned.

The boy came forward, very red and sheepish, looking as though he thought he was going to be hung. He stammered and stuttered in giving his answers to the coroner.

The tale he told was this. His name was Henry Dance, aged thirteen. He was on the hill, not very far from St. Ann’s Well, on the Tuesday afternoon, looking about for Mark Ferrar. All on a sudden he heard some quarrelling below him: somebody seemed to be in a foaming passion, and little King the lame boy called out in a fright, “Oh, don’t! don’t! you’ll throw me over!” Heard then a sort of rustle of shrubs—as it sounded to him—and then heard the steps of some one running away along the path below the upright bank. Couldn’t see anything of this; the bank prevented him; but did see the arm of the boy who was running as he turned round the corner. Didn’t see the boy; only saw his left arm swaying; he had a green handkerchief in his hand. Could not tell whether it was one of their boys (St. Peter’s) or one of the college boys; didn’t see enough of him for that. Didn’t know then that anything bad had happened, and thought no more about it at all; didn’t hear of it till the next morning: he had been in the first van that left Malvern, and went to bed as soon as he got home.

The account was listened to breathlessly. The boy was in a regular fright while he told it, but his tones and looks seemed honest and true.

“How did you know it was King Sanker’s voice you heard?” asked the coroner.

“Please, sir, I didn’t know it,” was the answer. “When I came to hear of his fall the next day, I supposed it must ha’ been his. I didn’t know anybody had fell down; I didn’t hear any cry.”

“What time in the afternoon was this?”

“Please, sir, I don’t know exact. We had our tea at four: it wasn’t over-long after that.”

“Did you recognize the other voice?”

“No, sir. It was a boy’s voice.”

“Was it one you had ever heard before?”

“I couldn’t tell, sir; I wasn’t near enough to hear or to catch the words. King Sanker spoke last, just as I got over the spot.”

“You heard of the accident the next morning, you say. Did you hear of it early?”

“It was afore breakfast, sir. Some of our boys that waited for the last van telled me; and Ferrar, he telled me. They said they had helped to look for him.”

“And then it came into your mind, that it was King Sanker you had heard speak?”

“Yes, sir, it did. It come right into my mind, all sudden like, that he might have been throwed over.”

“Well now, Mr. Harry Dance, how was it that you did not at once hasten to report this? How is it that you have kept it in till now?”

Harry Dance looked too confused and frightened to answer. He picked at the band of his grey cap and stood, first on one foot, then on the other. The coroner pressed the question sharply, and he replied in confusion.

Didn’t like to tell it. Knew people were saying it might have been one of their boys that had pitched him over. Was afraid to tell. Did say a word to Mark Ferrar; not much: Ferrar wanted to know more, and what it was he meant, but didn’t tell him. That was yesterday morning. Had felt uncomfortable ever since then, wanting to tell, but not liking to. This afternoon, in school, writing their copies at the desk, he had told Tom Wood’art, the carpenter’s son, who sat next him; leastways, had said the college boy had not fell of himself, but been pitched over; and Tom Wood’art had made him tell it to another boy, Collins; and then the two had went up to the desk and telled their master, Mr. Jones; and Mr. Jones, after calling him up to ask about it, had ordered him home to tell it all to his father; and his father said he must come and tell it here.

The father, John Dance, spoke up again to confirm this, so far as his part went. He was so anxious it should be told to the gentlemen at once, he repeated, that he had come out all untidy as he was, not stopping to put himself to rights in any way.

The next person to step forward was Mr. Jones, in his white cravat and black clothes. He stated that the two boys, Thomas Woodwardand James Collins, had made this strange communication to him. Upon which he had questioned Dance, and at once despatched him home to acquaint his father.

“What sort of a boy is Harry Dance, Mr. Jones?” inquired the coroner. “A truthful boy?—one to be depended on? Some boys, as I dare say you know, are capable of romancing in the most unaccountable manner: inventing lies by the bushel.”

“The boy is truthful, sir; a sufficiently good boy,” was the reply.“Some of them are just what you describe; but Dance, so far as I believe, may be relied upon.”

“Well, now, if this is to be credited, it must have been one of St. Peter’s boys who threw the deceased over,” observed a juryman at the other end. “Did you do it yourself, Harry Dance? Stand straight, and answer.”

“No, sir; I shouldn’t never like to do such a cowardly thing,” was the answer, given with a rush of fear—if the look of his face might be trusted. “I was not anigh him.”

“It must have been one of you. This is the result of that fight you two sets of boys held on Saturday. You have been harbouring malice.”

“Please, sir, I wasn’t in the fight on Saturday. I had went over to Clains on an errand for mother.”

“That’s true,” said Clerk Jones. “Dance was not in the fight at all. As far as I can ascertain, there was no ill-feeling displayed on either side at Malvern; no quarrelling of any kind.” And Captain Sanker, who was standing up to listen, confirmed this.

“The natural deduction to be drawn is, that if the deceased was flung over, it was by one of St. Peter’s boys—though the probability is that he did not intend to inflict much injury,” observed one of the jury to the rest. “Boys are so reprehensibly thoughtless. Come, Harry Dance! if you did not give him a push yourself, you can tell, I dare say, who did.”

But Dance, with tears in his eyes, affirmed that he knew no more than he had told: he had not the least notion who the boy was that had been quarrelling with King. He saw none of the boys, St. Peter’s boys or college boys, about the hill at that time; though he was looking out for them, because he wanted to find Ferrar: and he knew no more than the dead what boy it was who had run away, for he saw nothing but his arm and a green handkerchief.

“Did you find Ferrar after that?” resumed the coroner.

“Yes, sir; not long after. I found him looking for me round on t’other side of St. Ann’s Well.”

“By the way—on which side of St. Ann’s Well is situated the spot where you heard the quarrel?”

“On the right-hand side, sir, looking down the hill,” said the boy. And by the stress laid on the “down” I judged him to be given toexactness. “I know the place, sir. If you take a sideway path from the Well bearing down’ards, you come to it. It’s shady and quiet there; a place that nobody hardly finds out.”

“Did you say anything to Ferrar, when you found him, of what you had heard?”

“No, sir. I didn’t think any more about it. I didn’t think any harm had been done.”

“But you did mention it to Ferrar the next morning?”

“Yes, sir, I had heard of it, then.”

“What did you say?”

“I only said I was afeard he might have been throwed over. Ferrar asked me why, but I didn’t like to say no more, for fear of doing mischief. It wasn’t me,” added Dance, appealing piteously to the jury.“I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of his head: he was weak and lame.”

“Is Ferrar here?” cried the coroner. “We must have him.”

Ferrar was not there. And Mr. Jones, speaking up, said he had seen nothing of Ferrar since the previous day. He was informed that he had taken French leave to go off somewhere—which kind of leave, in point of fact, he added, Master Ferrar was much in the habit of taking.

“But where has he gone?” cried the coroner. “You don’t mean he has decamped?”

“Decamped for the time being,” said Mr. Jones. “He will no doubt put in an appearance in a day or two.”

Not one of the jury but pricked up his ears; not one, I could see it in their faces, but was beginning to speculate on this absence of Ferrar’s. The coroner was staring straight before him, speculating too: and just then Fred Sanker said something in a half-whisper.

“Ferrar was with my brother King at the spot where he fell from. As far as we know he was the last person who ever saw him alive.”

“And not here!” cried the coroner. “Why is he not? Where does the neglect lie, I wonder? Gentlemen, I think we had better send round for his father, and ask an explanation.”

In a small town like Worcester (small in comparison with great capitals) the inhabitants, rich and poor, mostly know one another, what they are, and where their dwelling is. Old Ferrar lived within a stone’s-throw of the Angel; he was a china painter, employed by the Messrs. Chamberlain. Some one ran for him; and he came; a tidy-looking man in a good coat, with grey whiskers and grey hair. He bowed civilly to the room, and gave his name as Thomas Ferrar.

As far as anything connected with what took place at Malvern he was in total ignorance, he said. When his son Mark got home on the Tuesday night, he had told him that Captain Sanker’s little boy had fallen down a part of the hill, and that he, Mark, had been one of those who helped to find him. In the afternoon of the same day they heard the little boy had died.

“Where is your son?” asked the coroner.

“I am not sure where he is,” replied Thomas Ferrar. “When I and his brother got home from the factory on Wednesday evening, my daughter told me Mark had gone off again. Somebody had given him half-a-crown, I believe. With that in his pocket, he was pretty sure to go off on one of his rovings.”

“He is in the habit of going off, then?”

“Yes, sir, he has done it on occasion almost ever since he could run alone. I used to leather him well for it, but it was of no use; it didn’t stop it. It’s his only fault. Barring that, he’s as good and upright a lad as anybody need have. He does not go off for the purpose of doing harm: neither does he get into any.”

“Where does he go to?”

“Always to one of two places; to South Crabb, or to his grandfather’s at Pinvin. It’s generally to South Crabb, to see the Batleys, who are cousins of my late wife’s. They’ve boys and girls of Mark’s own age, and he likes to be there.”

“You conclude, then, that he is at one of these places now?”

“Sure to be, sir; and I think it’s sure to be South Crabb. He was at Pinvin a fortnight ago; for I walked over on the Sunday morning and took him with me. Mark is of a roving turn; he is always talking of wanting to see the world. I don’t believe he’ll ever settle down to steady work at home.”

“Well, we want him here, Mr. Ferrar; and must have him too. Could you send after him—and get him here by to-morrow?”

“I can send his brother after him, if you say it must be. The likelihood is that he will come home of himself to-morrow evening.”

“Ay, but we must have him here in the afternoon, you see. We want to hear what he can tell us about the deceased. It is thought that he was the last person with him before the fall. And, gentlemen,”added the coroner, turning to the jury, “I will adjourn proceedings to the same hour to-morrow—three o’clock.”

So the inquest was adjourned accordingly, and the room slowly cleared itself. Very slowly. People stood in groups of threes and fours to talk to each other. This new evidence was startling: and the impression it made was, that one of the Frogs had certainly thrown King down.

The green handkerchief was mentioned. Coloured silk pocket-handkerchiefs were much patronized by gentlemen then, and the one used by Dr. Teal that day happened to be green. The doctor said he had missed his handkerchief when they were down at the Abbey before tea, but could not tell where he had left it. He found it in the room at St. Ann’s when they got up again, and supposed it had been there all along. So that handkerchief was not much thought of: especially as several of the Frogs had green neckerchiefs on, and might have takenthem off, as it was very hot. That a Frog had flung King over, appeared to be, to use the coroner’s words on another part of the subject, as plain as a turnpike. The Sankers, one and all, adopted it as conclusive; Captain Sanker in particular was nearly wild, and said bitter things of the Frogs. Poor King still lay in the same room, and none of them, as before, cared to go by the door.

It must have been in the middle of the night. Anyway, it looked pitch-dark. I was asleep, and dreaming that we were sorting handkerchiefs: all colours seemed to be there but a green one, and that—the one being looked for—we could not find: when something suddenly woke me. A hand was grasping at my shoulder.

“Halloa! who’s there?”

“I say, Johnny, I can’t stop in my bed; I’ve come to yours. If you mind my getting in, I’ll lie across the foot, and get to sleep that way.”

The voice was Dan’s, and it had no end of horror in it. He was standing by the bed in his night-shirt, shivering. And yet the summer’s night was hot.

“Get in, if you like, Dan: there’s plenty of room. What’s the matter with your own bed?”

“King’s there,” he said, in a dreadful whisper, as he crept trembling in.

“King! Why, what do you mean?”

“He comes in and lies down in his place just as he used to lie,”shivered Dan. “I asked Toby to sleep with me to-night, and Fred wouldn’t let him. Fred ought to be ashamed; it’s all his ill-nature. He’s bigger than I am, one of the seniors, and he never cares whether he sleeps alone or not.”

“But, Dan, you should not get these fancies into your head about King. You know it’s not true.”

“I tell you it is true. King’s there. First of all, he stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me; and then, when I hid my face, I found he had got into it. He’s lying there, just as he used to lie, his face turned to the wall.”

“To begin with, you couldn’t see him—him, or any one else. It’s too dark.”

“It’s not dark. My room’s lighter than this; it has a bigger window: and the sky was bright and the stars were out. Anyway, Johnny, it was light enough to see King—and there he was. Do you think I’d tell a lie over it?”

I can’t say I felt very comfortable myself. It’s not pleasant to be woke up with this kind of thing at the top of a house when somebody’s lying dead underneath. Dan’s voice was enough to give one the shivers, let alone his words. Some stars came out, and I could see the outline of the furniture: or perhaps the stars had been shining all along; only, on first awaking, the eye is not accustomed to the darkness.

“Try and go to sleep, Dan. You’ll be all right in the morning.”

To go to sleep seemed, however, to be far enough from Dan’s thoughts. After a bit of uneasy turning and trembling—and I’m sure any one would have said his legs had caught St. Vitus’s dance—he gave sleep up as a bad job, and broke out now and again with all sorts of detached comments. I could only lie and listen.

Wondered whether he should be seeing King always?—if so, would rather be dead. Wished he had not gone to sleep on that confounded bench outside St. Ann’s Well—might have been at hand near King, and saved him, if he had not. It was that beastly bottled ale that made him. Wished bottled ale had not been invented. Wished he could wring Dance’s neck—or Ferrar’s—or that Wood’arts, whichever of the lot it was that had struck King. Knew it was one of the three. What on earth could have taken the Frogs to Malvern that day?—Wished every Frog ever born was hanged or drowned. Thought it must be Ferrar—else why had the fellow decamped? Thought the whole boiling of Frogs should be driven from the town—how dared they, the insolent charity beggars, have their school near the college school? Wondered what would be done to Ferrar if it was proved against him? Wished it had been Ferrar to fall down in place of King. Wished it had been himself (Dan) rather than King. Poor King!—who was always so gentle—and never gave offence to any of them—and was so happy with his hymns and his fancies, and his poetry!—and had said “Lord Bateman” for them that day when told to say it, and—and——

At this thought Dan broke fairly down and sobbed as though his heart were breaking. I felt uncommonly sorry for him; he had been very fond of King; and I was sorry for his superstition. What a mistake it seemed for Mrs. Sanker to have allowed them to grow up in it.

At three o’clock the next day the inquest met again. The coroner and jury, who seemed to have got thoroughly interested in the case now, kept their time to a minute. There was much stir in the neighbourhood, and the street was full before the Angel Inn. As to Frog Lane, it was said the excitement there had never been equalled. The report that it was one of St. Peter’s boys who had done it, went echoing everywhere; no one thought of doubting it. I did not. Watching Harry Dance’s face when he had given his evidence, I felt sure that every word he said was true. Some one had flung King over: and that some one, there could be no question of it, was one of those common adversaries, the Frogs. If King must have gone to sleep that afternoon, better that Dan, as he had said, or one of the rest of us, had stayed by to protect him!

Mark Ferrar had turned up. His brother found him at South Crabb. He came to the inquest in his best clothes, those he had worn at Malvern. I noticed then, but I had not remembered it, that he had agrass-green neckerchief on, tied with a large bow and ends. His good-natured, ugly, honest face was redder than ever as he stood to give his evidence. He did not show any of the stammering confusion that Dance had done, but spoke out with modest self-possession.

His name was Mark Ferrar, aged nearly fourteen (and looking ever so much older), second son of Thomas Ferrar, china painter. He had seen the deceased boy, King Sanker, at Malvern on Tuesday. When he and some more of St. Peter’s boys were coming down the hill they had met King and his party. King spoke to him and told his father, Captain Sanker, that he was the Frog—the college boys called them Frogs—who had picked him up out of the fight on Saturday to save him from being crushed: and Captain Sanker thanked him and gave him half-a-crown to spend in Malvern cakes. Master Johnny Ludlow was with the Sankers, and saw and heard this. Did not buy the Malvern cakes: had meant to, and treat the rest of the boys; but dinner was ready near the foot of the hill when they got down, and forgot it afterwards. After dinner he and a lot more boys went up another of the beacons and down on the Herefordshire side. They got back about four o’clock, and had bread-and-butter and cider for tea. Then he and Harry Dance went up the hill again, taking two ways, to see which would be at St. Ann’s Well first. Couldn’t see Dance when he got up, thought he might be hiding, and went looking about for him. Went along a side-path leading off from St. Ann’s; ’twas sheltered, and thought Dance might be there. Suddenly heard himself called to: looked onwards, and saw the lame boy, King Sanker, there, and some chairs and glasses on a table. Went on, and King asked him to sit down, and began talking to him, saying he had had to say “Lord Bateman”before them all. He, Ferrar, did not know what “Lord Bateman”was, and King said he would say it to him. Began to say it; found it was poetry verses: King had said a good many when he broke off in the middle of one, and told him to go then, for they were coming. Did not know who “they” meant, did not see or hear anybody himself; but went away accordingly. Went looking all about for Dance again; found him by-and-by on a kind of plateau on the other side of St. Ann’s. They went up the hill together, and only got down again when it was time to start for Worcester. He did not go in the first van; there was no room; waited for the second. Saw the other party starting: heard that some one was missing: found it was King; offered to help to look for him. Was going up with the rest past the Unicorn, when some people met them, saying they’d heard groans. Ran on, and found it was King Sanker. He seemed to have fallen right down from the place where he had been sitting in the afternoon, and where he, Ferrar, had left him.

Such in substance was the evidence he gave. Some of it I could corroborate, and did. I told of King’s asking that Ferrar might go upto him the next day, and of his promising him “Lord Bateman,” which he had got by him, written out.

But Ferrar was not done with. Important questions had to be asked him yet. Sometimes it was the coroner who put them, sometimes one or other of the jury.

“Did you see anything at all of the deceased after leaving him as you have described, Mark Ferrar?”

“No, sir. I never saw him again till night, when we found him lying under a part of the hill.”

“When you quitted him at his bidding, did you see any boys about, either college boys or St. Peter’s boys?”

“No, sir, I did not see any; not one. The hills about there seemed as lonely as could be.”

“Which way did you take when you left him?”

“I ran straight past St. Ann’s, and got on to the part that divides the Worcestershire beacon from the next. Waiting for Dance, I sat down on the slope, and looked at Worcester for a bit, trying how much of the town I could make out, and how many of the churches, and that. As I was going back toward St. Ann’s I met Dance.”

“What did Dance say to you?”

“He said he had been hunting for me, and wanted to know where I had hid myself, and I said I had been hunting for him. We went on up the hill then and met some more of our boys; and we stayed all together till it was time to go down.”

“Did Dance say that he had heard sounds of quarrelling?”

“No, sir, never a word.”

“What communication did Dance make to you on the subject the following morning?”

“Nothing certain, sir. Dance went home in the first van, and he didn’t hear about King Sanker till the morning. I was saying then how we found him, and that he must have fell straight off from the place above. Dance stopped me, and said was it sure that he fell—was it sure he had not been pushed off? I asked why he said that, but he wouldn’t answer.”

“Did he refuse to answer?”

“I kept asking him to tell me, but he just said it was only a fancy that came to him. He had interrupted so eager like, that I thought he must have heard something. Later, I asked Master Johnny Ludlow whether the boy had been pushed off, but he said no. I couldn’t get it out of my head, however.”

“What clothes did you wear, witness, that day at Malvern?”

“These here that I’ve got on now, sir.”

“Did you wear that same green neckerchief?”

“Yes, sir. My sister Sally bought it new for me to go in.”

“Did you take it off at Malvern?”

“No, sir.”

“Not at all?”

“No, sir. Some of them took their handkerchers off at dinner, because it was hot, but I didn’t.”

“Why did you not?”

For the first time Ferrar hesitated. His face turned scarlet.

“Come, speak up. The truth, mind.”

“Sally had told me not to mess my new silk handkercher, for I wasn’t likely to have another of one while; and I thought if I got untying and re-tying of it, I should mess it.” It seemed quite a task to Ferrar to confess this. He feared the boys would laugh at him. But I think no one doubted that it was the true reason.

“You did not take it off while you were sitting with the deceased?”

“No, sir. I never took it off all day.”

“Take it off now.”

Mark Ferrar looked too surprised to understand the order, and did nothing. The coroner repeated it.

“Take off this here handkercher, sir? Now?”

“Yes. The jury wish to see it open.”

Mark untied the bow and pulled it off, his very freckles showing out red. It was a three-cornered silk neckerchief, as green as grass.

“Was this like the kerchief you saw being swung about, Harry Dance?” asked the coroner, holding it up, and then letting it drop on the table.

Harry Dance gazed at it as it lay, and shook his head. “I don’t think it were the one, sir,” he said.

“Why don’t you think it?”

“That there looks smaller and brighter, and t’other was bigger and darker. Leastways, I think it were.”

“Was it more like this?” interrupted Dr. Teal, shaking out his handkerchief from his pocket.

“I don’t know, sir. It seemed like a big handkerchief, and was about that there colour o’ your’n.”

Some inquiry was made at this point as to the neckerchiefs worn by the other boys. It turned out that two or three had worn very large ones, something the colour of Dr. Teal’s. So that passed.

“One word, Harry Dance. Did you see Ferrar with his handkerchief off that day?”

“I didn’t notice, sir: I don’t remember. Some of us took ’em off on the hills—’twas very hot—and never put ’em on again all day.”

The coroner and jury talked together, and then Harry Dance was told to repeat the evidence he had given the day before. He went over it again: the sounds of quarrelling, and the words in the voice he had supposed to be King’s: “Oh, don’t—don’t! you’ll throw me over.”

“Had Ferrar his neckerchief on when you met him soon after this?”questioned Captain Chamberlain.

“I think he had, sir. I think if he had not I should ha’ noticed it. I’m nearly as sure as I can be that it wasn’t off.”

When Dance was done with, Mark Ferrar was begun upon again.

“What induced you to go off from your home on Wednesday evening without notice?” asked the coroner.

“I went to South Crabb, sir.”

“I don’t ask you where you went, I ask why you went?”

“I go over there sometimes, sir. I told Sally I was going.”

“Can’t you understand my question? Why did you go?”

“Nothing particular made me go, sir. Only that I had got some money; and I was feeling so sorry that the little lame boy was dead, I couldn’t bear to be still.”

“You have been punished often, Mark Ferrar, for going off on these expeditions?” cried one of the jury.

“I used to be, sir. Father has leathered me for it at home, and Clerk Jones at school. I can’t do without going out a bit. I wish I was a sailor.”

“Oh, indeed! Well—is there one of your companions that you can suspect of having harmed this poor little boy—accidentally or otherwise?”

“No, sir. It is being said that he was pushed over in ill-feeling, or else by accident; but it don’t seem likely.”

“Did you push him over yourself?”

“Me!” returned Ferrar, in surprise. “Me push him over!”

“As far as we can learn yet, no one was with him there but you.”

“I’d have saved him from it, sir, if I had been there, instead of harming him. When he sent me away he was all right, and not sitting anigh the edge. If it was me that had done it, sir, he’d not have asked for me to go up to him in his room—and shook hands—and said I should see him in heaven.”

Mark Ferrar broke down at the remembrance, and sobbed like a child. I don’t think one single person present thought it was he, especially the coroner and jury. But the question was—which of the other boys could it have been?

Several of them were called before the coroner. One and all declared they had done no harm to the deceased—had not been near him to do it—would not have done it if they had been—did not know he had been sitting in the place talked of—did not (most of them) know where the spot was now. In short, they denied it utterly.

Mr. Jones stepped forward then. He told the coroner and jury that he had done his best to come to the bottom of the affair, but could not find out anything. He did not believe one of his boys had been in it; they were mischievous enough, as he well knew, and sometimes deceitfulenough; but they all seemed to be, and he honestly believed were, innocent of this.

The room was cleared while the jury deliberated. Their verdict was to the effect that Kingsley Sanker had died from falling over a portion of one of the Malvern hills; but whether the fall was caused by accident, or not, there was not sufficient evidence to show.

It was late when it was over. Growing dusk. In turning out of the inn passage to the street, I remember the great buzz around, and the people pushing one’s elbows; and I can’t remember much more. If one Frog was there, it seemed to me that there were hundreds.

I stayed at Captain Sanker’s again that night. We all went up to bed after supper and prayers—which the captain read. He said he could not divest himself of the idea that it was a pure accident—for who would be likely to harm a helpless lad?—and that what Dance heard must have been some passing dispute connected with other people.

“Come along, Johnny: this one candle’ll do for us both,” cried Dan, taking up a bed candlestick and waiting for me to follow him.

I kept close to him as we went by the room—the room, you know—for Dan was worse than any of them for passing it. He and King had been much together. King followed him in age; they had always slept together and gone to school together; the rest were older or younger—and naturally Dan felt it most.

“I shan’t be a minute, Johnny, and then you can take the candle,”said he, when we got to the top. “Come in.”

Before I had well turned round, after getting in, I declare Dan had rushed all his things off in a heap and leaped into bed. Poor King used not to be so quick, and Dan always made him put the light out.

“Good-night, Dan.”

“Good-night, Johnny. I hope I shall get to sleep.”

He put his head under the bedclothes as I went away with the candle. I was not long getting into bed either. The stars were bright in the sky.

Before there was time to get to sleep, Dan came bursting in, shivering as on the past night, and asking to be let get into the bed. I did not mind his being in the bed—liked it rather, for company—but I did think it a great stupid pity that he should be giving way to these superstitious fears as though he were a girl.

“Look here, Dan: I should be above it. One of the smallest of those Frogs couldn’t show out more silly than this.”

“He’s in my bed again, Johnny. Lying down. I can’t sleep there another night.”

“You know that he is below in his coffin—with the room-door locked.”

“I don’t care—he’s there in the bed. You had no sooner gone withthe light than King crept in and lay down beside me. He used to have a way of putting his left arm over me outside the clothes, and he put it so to-night.”

“Dan!”

“I tell you he did. Nobody would believe it, but he did. I felt it like a weight. It was heavy, just as dead arms are. Johnny, if this goes on, I shall die. Have you heard what mamma says?”

“No. What?”

“She says she saw King last night. She couldn’t sleep; and by-and-by, happening to look out of bed, she saw him standing there. He was looking very solemn, and did not speak. She turned to awake papa, in spite of the way he goes on ridiculing such things, but when she looked next King had gone. I wish he was buried, Johnny; I shouldn’t think he could come back into the house then. Should you?”

“He’s not in it now—in that sense. It’s all imagination.”

“Is it! I should like you to have been in my bed, instead of me; you’d have seen whether it was imagination or not. Do you suppose his heavy arm across me was fancy?”

“Well, he does not come in here. Let us go to sleep. Good-night, Dan.”

Dan lay still for a good bit, and I was nearly asleep when he awoke me sobbing. His face was turned the other way.

“I wish you’d kill me, Johnny.”

“Kill you!”

“I don’t care to live any longer without King. It is so lonely. There’s nobody now. Fred’s getting to be almost a man, and Toby’s a little duffer. King was best. I’ve many a time snubbed him and boxed him, and I always put upon him; and—and now he’s gone. I wish I had fallen down instead of him.”

“You’ll get over it, Dan.”

“Perhaps. But it’s such a thing to get over. And the time goes so slowly. I wish it was this time next year!”

“Do you know what some of the doctors say?”

“What do they say?” returned Dan, putting the tip of his nose out of bed.

“Dr. Teal told Captain Sanker of it; I was by and heard him. They think that poor King would not have lived above another year, or so: that there was no chance of his living to grow up. So you might have lost him soon in any case, Dan.”

“But he’d have been here till then; he wouldn’t have died through falling down Malvern Hill. Oh, and to think that I was rough with him often!—and didn’t try to help him when he wanted it! and laughed at his poetry! Johnny, I wish you’d kill me! I wish it had been me to fall over instead of him!”

There was not one of them that felt it as keenly as Dan did: but thechances were that he would forget King the soonest. Dan was of that impetuous warm nature that’s all fire at first; and all forgetfulness when the fire goes out.

I went home the next day to Crabb Cot. Mr. Coney came into Worcester to attend the corn-market, and offered to drive me back in his gig. So I took my leave of the Sankers, and my last look at poor King in his coffin. He was to be buried on Monday in St. Peter’s churchyard.

The next news we had from Worcester was that Mark Ferrar had gone to sea. His people had wanted him to take up some trade at home; but Mark said he was not going to stay there to be told every day of his life that he killed King Sanker. For some of the Frogs had taken up the notion that it must have been he—why else, they asked, did the coroner and the rest of ’em want to see his green handkercher shook out? So his father, who was just as much hurt at the aspersions as Mark, allowed him to have his way and go to sea; in spite of Sally crying her eyes out, and foretelling that he would come home drowned. Mark was sent to London to some friend, who undertook to make the necessary arrangements; he was bound apprentice to the sea, and shipped off in a trading vessel sailing for Spain.

It was Michaelmas when we next went in to Worcester (save for a day at the festival), driving in from Dyke Manor: the Squire, Mrs. Todhetley, and I. You have heard the expedition mentioned before, for it was the one when we hired the dairymaid, Grizzel, at St. John’s mop. That business over, we went down to Captain Sanker’s and found them at home.

They were all getting pretty well over the death now, except Dan. Dan’s grief and nervousness were as bad as ever. Worse, even. Captain and Mrs. Sanker enlarged upon it.

“Dan grieves after his brother dreadfully: they were always companions, you see,” said the captain. “He has foolish fancies also: thinks he sees King continually. We have had to put him to sleep with Fred downstairs, for nothing would persuade him that King, poor fellow, did not come and get into his old place in bed. The night the poor lad was buried, Dan startled the whole house up; he flew down the stairs crying and shrieking, and saying that King was there. We don’t know what to do: he seems to get worse, rather than better. Did you notice how thin he has become? You saw him as you came in.”

“Like a bag of bones,” said the Squire.

“Ay. Some days he is so nervous and ill he can’t go to school. I never knew such a thing, for my part. I was for trying flogging, but his mother wouldn’t have it.”

“But—do you mean to tell us, Sanker, that he fancies he sees King’s ghost?” cried the Squire, in great amazement.

“Well, I suppose so,” answered the captain. “He fancies he seeshim: and poor King, as far as this world’s concerned, can be nothing but a ghost now. The other evening, when Dan had been commanded to the head-master’s house for something connected with the studies and detained till after dark, he came rushing in with a white face and his hair all wet, saying he had met King under the elm-trees, as he was running back through the green towards Edgar Tower. How can you deal with such a case?”

“I should say flogging would be as good as anything,” said the Squire, decidedly.

“So I thought at first. He’s too ill for it now. There’s nothing, hardly, left of him to flog.”

“Captain Sanker, there is only one thing for you to do,” put in Mrs. Todhetley. “And that is, consult a clever medical man.”

“Why, my dear lady, we have taken him to pretty nearly all the medical men in Worcester,” cried the captain. “He goes regularly to Dr. Hastings.”

“And what do the doctors say?”

“They think that the catastrophe of King’s unhappy death has seized upon the lad’s mind, and brought on a sort of hypochondriacal affection. One of them said it was what the French would call a maladie des nerfs. Dan seems so full of self-reproach, too.”

“What for?”

“Well, for not having made more of King when he was living. And also, I think, for having suffered himself to fall asleep that afternoon on the bench outside the Well: he says had he kept awake he might have been with King, and so saved him. But, as I tell Dan, there’s nothing to reproach himself with in that: he could not foresee that King would meet with the accident. The doctors say now that he must have change of air, and be got away altogether. They recommend the sea.”

“The sea! Do you mean sea-air?”

“No; the sea itself; a voyage: and Dan’s wild to go. A less complete change than that, they think, will be of little avail, for his illness borders almost—almost upon lunacy. I’m sure, what with one thing and another, we seem to be in for a peck of misfortunes,” added the captain, rumpling his hair helplessly.

“And shall you let him go to sea?”

“Well, I don’t know. I stood out against it at first. Never meant to send a son of mine to sea; that has always been my resolution. Look at what I had to starve upon for ever so many years—a lieutenant’s half-pay—and to keep my wife and bring up my children upon it! You can’t imagine it, Squire; it’s cruel. Dan’s too old for the navy, however; and, if he does go, it must be into the merchant service.I don’t like that, either; we regular sailors never do like it, we hold ourselves above it; but there’s a better chance of getting on in it and of making money.”

“I’m sure I am very sorry for it altogether,” said Mrs. Todhetley.“A sailor cannot have any comfort.”

“I expect he’ll have to go,” said the captain, ruefully: “he must get these ideas out of his head. It’s such a thing, you see, for him to be always fancying he sees King.”

“It is a dreadful thing.”

“My wife had a brother once who was always seeing odd colours wherever he looked: colours and shadows and things. But that was not as bad as this. His doctor called it nerves: and I conclude Dan takes after him.”

“My dear, I think Dan takes after your side, not mine,” calmly put in Mrs Sanker, who had her light hair flowing and something black in it that looked like a feather. “He is so very passionate, you know: and I could not go into a passion if I tried.”

“I suppose he takes after us both,” returned Captain Sanker. “I know he never got his superstitious fancies from me, or from any one belonging to me. We may be of a passionate nature, we Sankers, but we don’t see ghosts.”

In a week or two’s time after that, Dan was off to sea. A large shipping firm, trading from London to India, took him as midshipman. The ship was called the Bangalore; a fine vessel of about fourteen hundred tons, bound for some port out there. When Captain Sanker came back from shipping him off, he was full of spirits, and said Dan was cured already. No sooner was Dan amidst the bustle of London, than his fears and fancies left him.

It was some time in the course of the next spring—getting on for summer, I think—that Captain Sanker gave up his house in Worcester, and went abroad, somewhere into Germany. Partly from motives of economy, for they had no idea of saving, and somehow spent more than their income; partly to see if change would get up Mrs. Sanker’s health, which was failing. After that, we heard nothing more of them: and a year or two went on.

“Please, sir, here’s a young man asking to see you.”

“A young man asking to see me,” cried the Squire—we were just finishing dinner. “Who is it, Thomas?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied old Thomas. “Some smart young fellow dressed as a sailor. I’ve showed him into your room, sir.”

“Go and see who it is, Johnny.”

It was summer-time, and we were at home at Dyke Manor. I went on to the little square room. You have been in it too. Opposite theSquire’s old bureau and underneath the map of Warwickshire on the wall, sat the sailor. He had good blue clothes on and a turned-down white collar, and held a straw hat in his hand. Where had I seen the face? A very red-brown honest face, with a mouth as wide as Molly’s rolling-pin. Wider, now that it was smiling.

He stood up, and turned his straw hat about a little nervously.“You’ve forgotten me, Master Johnny. Mark Ferrar, please, sir.”

Mark Ferrar it was, looking shorter and broader; and I put out my hand to him. I take my likes and dislikes, as you have already heard, and can’t help taking them; and Ferrar was one whom I had always liked.

“Please, sir, I’ve made bold to come over here,” he went on.“Captain Sanker’s left Worcester, they tell me, and I can’t hear where he is to be found: and the Teals, they have left. I’ve brought news to him from his son, Mr. Dan: and father said I had better come over here and tell it, and maybe Squire Todhetley might get it sent to the captain.”

“Have you seen anything of Mr. Dan, then?”

“I’ve been with him nearly all the time, Master Johnny. We served on the same ship: he as middy and I as working apprentice. Not but what the middies are apprenticed just as sure as we are. They don’t do our rough work, the cleaning and that, and they mess apart; but that’s pretty nigh all the difference.”

“And how are you getting on, Mark?”

“First-rate, sir. The captain and officers are satisfied with me, and when I’ve served my four years I shall go up to pass for second mate. I try to improve myself a bit in general learning at odd moments too, sir, seeing I didn’t have much. It may be of use to me if I ever get up a bit in life. Mr. Dan——”

“But look here, Ferrar,” I interrupted, the recollection striking me.“How came you and Mr. Dan to sail together? You were on a small home-coasting barque: he went in an Indiaman.”

“I was in the barque first of all, Master Johnny, and took a voyage to Spain and back. But our owners, hearing a good report of me, that I was likely to make a smart and steady sailor, put me on their big ship, the Bangalore. In a day or two Mr. Dan Sanker came on board.”

“And how is he getting on? Does he——”

“If you please, Master Johnny, I’d like to tell what I’ve got to tell about him to the Squire,” he interrupted. “It is for that, sir, I have come all the way over here.”

So I called the Squire in. The following was the condensed substance of Ferrar’s narrative. What with his way of telling it, and what with the Squire’s interruptions, it was rather long.

“Mr. Dan joined the Bangalore the day we sailed, sir. When he saw me as one of the sailors he started back as if I shocked him. Butin a week or two, when he had got round from his sea-sickness, he grew friendly, and sometimes talked a bit. I used to bring up Master King’s death, and say how sorry I was for it—for you see, sir, I couldn’t bear that he should think it true that I had had a hand in it. But he seemed to hate the subject; he’d walk away if I began it, and at last he said he couldn’t stand the talking about King; so I let it be. Our voyage was a long one, for the ship went about from port to port. Mr. Dan——”

“What sort of a sailor did he make?” interrupted the Squire.

“Well, sir, he was a good smart sailor at his work, but he got to be looked upon as rather a queer kind of young man. He couldn’t bear to keep his night watches—it was too lonely, he said; and several times he fell into trouble for calling up the hands when there was nothing to call them up for. At Hong Kong he had a fever, and they shaved his head; but he got well again. One evening, after we had left Hong Kong and were on our way to San Francisco, I was on deck—almost dark it was—when Mr. Dan comes down the rigging all in a heap, just as if a wild-cat was after him. ‘There’s King up there,’ he says to me: and Mr. Conroy, do what he would, couldn’t get him up again. After that he went about the ship peeping and peering, always fancying King was hiding somewhere and going to pounce out upon him. The captain said his fever was coming back: Mr. Dan said it was not fever, it was King. I told him one day what I thought—that Master King had been flung down; that it was not an accident—I felt as sure of it as though I had seen it done; and what I said seemed to put him up, sir. Who did I fancy had done it, or would do it? he asked me all in anger: and I said I did not know who, but if ever I got back to Worcester I’d leave not a stone unturned to find out. Well, sir, he got worse: worse in his fancies, and worse as to sickness. He was seeing King always at night, and he had dysentery and ague, and grew so weak that he could hardly stand. One of the cabin-boys took sick and died on board. The night he lay below, dead, Mr. Dan burst into the saloon saying it was King who was below, and that he’d never be got out of the ship again. Mr. Conroy—he was the chief mate, sir—humoured him, telling him not to fear, that if it was King he would be buried deep in the sea on the morrow: but Mr. Dan said he’d not stop in the sea, any more than he had stopped in his grave in St. Peter’s churchyard at home; he’d be back in the ship again.”

“Dan Sanker must have been mad,” observed the Squire.

“Yes, sir, I think he was; leastways not right. In a day or two he had to be fastened down in his berth with brain-fever, and Mr. Conroy said that as he had known me in the past days I had better be the one to sit with him, for he couldn’t be left. I was quite taken aback to hear what he said in his mutterings, and hoped it wasn’t true.”

“Did he get well again?”

“Just for a day or two, sir. The fever left him, but he was in the shockingest state of weakness you could imagine. The night before he died——”

The Squire started up. “Dan Sanker’s not dead, Ferrar!”

“Yes he is, sir. It’s what I have come to tell of.”

“Goodness bless me! Poor Dan dead! Only think of it, Johnny!”

But I was not surprised. From the moment Ferrar first spoke, an instinct had been upon me that it was so. He resumed.

“Everything was done for him that could be, sir. We had a doctor on board—a passenger going to California—but he could not save him. He said when it came to such awful weakness as that, there could be no saving. Mr. Conroy and the other officers were very kind to him—the skipper too; but they could do nothing. All his fears seemed to be gone then; we could hardly hear his whispers, but he was sensible and calm. He said he knew God had forgave him for what he did, and would blot his sin out, and King had forgave him too, and had come to tell him so: he had been to him in the night and talked and smiled happily and said over to him a verse of ‘Lord Bateman’——”

“And you say he was in his senses, Ferrar?”

“Yes, sir, that he was. That night he made a confession, Mr. Conroy and the doctor and me being by him. It was he that killed King.”

“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire.

“He had seen me sitting with King that afternoon at Malvern, and heard him saying the verses to me. It put his temper up frightful, sir, I being one of their enemies the Frogs; but he says if he’d known it was me that snatched King out of the fight on Saturday, he’d not have minded so much. It must have been him that King saw coming, Master Johnny,” added Ferrar, turning momentarily from the Squire to address me; “when he broke off in the midst of ‘Lord Bateman,’and told me, all in a hurry, to go away. He waited till I was gone, and then rushed on to King and began abusing him and knocking him about. King was unsteady through his weak leg, and one of the knocks sent him over the bank. Dan says he was frightened almost to death; he caught up Dr. Teal’s green handkercher from a chair and ran to the Well with it; he was too frightened to go and see after King, thinking he had killed him; and he sat down outside the Well and made as if he went to sleep. He never meant to hurt King, he said; it was only passion; but he had drunk a lot of strong ale and some wine upon it, and hardly knew what he was about. He said there was never a minute since but what he had been sorry for it, and he had been always seeing King. He asked me to show him the verses that had been given to me, that King wrote out, ‘Lord Bateman’—for I had got them with me at sea, sir—and he kissed them and held them to him till he died.”

“Dear, dear!” sighed the Squire.

“And that’s all, sir,” concluded Ferrar. “Mr. Conroy wrote out a copy of his confession, which I brought along with me to Worcester. Mr. Dan charged me to tell his father, and my own folks, and any other friends I liked that had thought me guilty, and I promised him. He was as placid as a child all the day after that, and died at sundown, so happy and peaceful that it was almost like heaven.”

Ferrar broke off with a sob. Poor Dan!

And that was the final ending of the Day of Pleasure. He and King are together again.

CHAPTER XII.

MARGARET RYMER.

They had gone through the snow to evening service at North Crabb, the Squire, Mrs. Todhetley, and Tod, leaving me at home with one of my splitting headaches. Thomas had come in to ask if I would have the lamp, but I told him I would rather be without it. So there I sat on alone, beside the fire, listening to Hannah putting the children to bed upstairs, and looking sleepily out at the snowy landscape.

As the fire became dim, sending the room into gloom, the light outside grew stronger. The moon was high; clear and bright as crystal; what with that, and the perfectly white snow that lay on everything, the night seemed nearly as light as day. The grass plat outside was a smooth white plain, the clustering shrubs beyond it being also white.

I knew the fire wanted replenishing: I knew that if I sat on much longer, I should fall asleep; but sit on I did, letting the fire go, too listless to move. My eyes were fixed dreamily on the plain of snow, with the still moonlight lying across it. The room grew darker, the landscape lighter.

And asleep, in another minute, I should inevitably have been, but for a circumstance that suddenly arose. All in a moment—I saw not how or whence it came—a dark figure appeared on the grass plat, close before the bank of shrubs, right in front of me; the figure of a man, wrapped in a big great-coat. He was standing still and gazing fixedly at the house. Gazing, as it seemed (though that was impossible) atme. I was wide awake at once, and sitting bolt upright in the chair.

Yes, there could be no mistake; and it was no delusion. The man appeared to be a tall man, strong and muscular, with a mass of hair on his face. What could he want? Was it a robber reconnoitring the premises; peering and peeping to ascertain whether all the world was at church, before he broke in to rifle the house?

No one, void of such an experience, can imagine how dark he looked standing there, amidst the whiteness of all the scene around. In one sense, he stood out plainer than he could have done by daylight, because the contrast was greater. But this sort of light did not show his features, which were shrouded in obscurity.

Presently he moved. Looking to right and left, he took a step forward. Evidently he was trying to see whether the parlour where I sat was empty or occupied. Should I go out to him? Or should I fling up the window and ask what he wanted? I was not frightened: don’t let any one think that: but watching him brought rather a creepy kind of sensation.

And, just then, as I left the chair quietly to open the window, I heard the catch of the garden-gate, and some one came whistling up the path. The man vanished as if by magic. Whilst I looked, he was gone. It seemed to me that I did not take my eyes off him; but where he went to, or what became of him, I knew not.

“Anybody at home?” called out Tom Coney, as he broke off his whistling and opened the hall-door.

“All right, Tom. Come along.”

And, to tell the truth, I was not sorry to see Tom’s hearty face. He had stayed away from evening service to sit with his mother.

“I say, Tom, did you see any fellow on the snow there, as you came in?”

“On the snow where?” asked Tom.

“There; just before the shrubs.” And I pointed the spot out to him, and told him what had happened. Tom, one of the most practical fellows living, more so, I think, than even Tod, and with less imagination than an ostrich, received the account with incredulity.

“You dropped asleep, Johnny, and fancied it.”

“I did not drop asleep, and I did not fancy it. When you came into the garden I was about to open the window and call to him.”

“Those headaches are downright stupefying things, Johnny. Jane has them, you know. One day I remember she fell asleep with a bad one, and woke up and said the sofa was on fire.”

“Tom, I tell you the man was there. A tall, strong-looking fellow, with a beard. He was staring at the house with all his might, at this room, as it seemed to me, wanting to come forward, I think, but afraid to. He kept close to the laurels, as if he did not wish to be seen, forgetting perhaps that they were white and betrayed him. When you opened the gate, he was there.”

“It’s odd, then, where he could have put himself,” said Tom Coney, not giving in an inch. “I’ll vow not a soul was there, man or woman, when I came up the path.”

“That’s true. He vanished in a moment. Whilst I was looking at him he disappeared.”

“Vanished! Disappeared! You talk as though you thought it a ghost, Johnny.”

“Ghost be hanged! It was some ill-doing tramp, I expect, trying to look if he might steal into the house.”

“Much you know of the ways of tramps, Johnny Ludlow! Trampsdon’t come showing themselves on snow-lighted, open lawns, in the face and eyes of the front windows: they hide themselves in obscure hedges and byways. It’s a case of headachy sleep, young man, and nothing else.”

“Look here, Tom. If the man was there, his footprints will be there; if he was not, as you say, the snow will be smooth and level: come out and see.”

We went out at once, Tom catching up a stick in the hall, and crossed the lawn. I was right, and Tom wrong. Sure enough, there were the footprints, plenty of them, indented in the deep snow. Tom gave in then.

“I wish to goodness I had seen him! The fellow should not have got off scot-free, I can tell him that. What tremendous feet he must have! Just look at the size, Johnny. Regular crushers.”

“Don’t you go and say again I was asleep! He must have stepped back and got away through these laurels; yes, here are the marks. I say, Tom”—dropping my voice to a whisper—“perhaps he’s here now.”

“We’ll soon see that,” said Tom Coney, plunging amidst the laurels with a crash, and beating about with the stick.

But there was no trace of him. Tom came out presently, covered with the beaten snow, and we went indoors; he veering round partly to his first opinion, and a little incredulous, in spite of the footprints.

“If any man was there, Johnny, how did he get away? I don’t see, for my part, what he could possibly want. A thief would have gone to work in a different manner.”

“Well, let it be so. I shall say nothing about it to them when they come home. Mrs. Todhetley’s timid, you know, she would fancy the man was outside still, and be lying awake all night, listening for the smashing in of doors and windows.”

Cracking the fire into a blaze; as much of a blaze, that is, as its dilapidated state allowed; I called Thomas to light the lamp and shut the shutters. When I told him of the affair, bidding him not mention it, he took a different view of it altogether, and put it down to the score of one of the younger maid-servants.

“They’ve got sweethearts, Master Johnny, the huzzies have; lots of sweethearts. One or the t’other of ’em is always a sidling sheepfaced up to the house, as though he didn’t dare to say his soul was his own.”

They came in from church before the fire had burnt up, and the Squire scolded me for letting it go so low. The coal we get in Worcestershire is the Staffordshire coal; it does not burn up in a minute as London coal does, but must have time.

Nothing of course was said about the man; I and Tom Coney—who stayed supper—held our tongues, as agreed upon. But I told Tod ingoing up to bed. He was sleepy, and did not think much of it. The fact was, as I could plainly perceive, that to any of them, when related, it did not seem to be much. They had not seen it as I had.

Timberdale Rectory, a cosy, old-fashioned house, its front walls covered with ivy, stood by itself amidst pasture-land, a field’s length from the church. Mrs. Todhetley sent me there on the Monday morning, to invite the Rector, Herbert Tanerton, and his wife to dine with us the next evening, for we had a prime codfish sent as a present from London. The Squire and Tod had gone out shooting. It was January weather; cold and bright, with a frosty sky. Icicles drooped from the trees, and the snow in Crabb Ravine was above my ankles. The mater had said to me, “I should go the road way, Johnny;” but I did not mind the snow.

In Timberdale I met Margaret Rymer. She had her black cloak on, and her natty little black bonnet; and the gentle and refined face under it, with its mild brown eyes, put me more than ever in mind of her dead father.

Does any one remember her? I told something about her and her people early in this volume. When Thomas Rymer died, partly of a broken heart, Benjamin had again gone off, and Margaret continued to keep the business going. She understood the drugs thoroughly. During all the months that had elapsed since, the son had not made his appearance at home. Timberdale would say, “Why does not Benjamin come back to carry on affairs in his father’s place?” but it had no satisfactory answer. Latterly, Timberdale had let Benjamin alone, and busied itself with Margaret.

Six months ago, the Reverend Isaac Sale had come to Timberdale as curate. He was a plain, dark little man of sterling worth, and some thirty years of age—older than the Rector. Margaret Rymer met him at the Sunday School, where she taught regularly, and he fell desperately in love with her—if it’s not wrong to say that of a parson. As a rule, men and women like contrasts; and perhaps the somewhat abrupt-mannered man with the plain and rugged features had been irresistibly attracted by the delicate face of Margaret, and by her singularly gentle ways. In position she was not his equal; but Mr. Sale made no secret of his attachment, or that he wanted Margaret to be his wife. Mrs. Rymer entirely opposed it: how was the business to be kept going without Margaret, she demanded; or herself, either?

Mr. Sale had taken the curacy as a temporary thing. He was waiting for some expected appointment abroad. When it fell to him, Margaret Rymer would have to choose between sailing with him as his wife, or staying at home and giving him up for good. So said Timberdale.

After standing to talk a bit with Margaret, who had come out on an errand for her mother, I ran on to the Rectory. Mr. Tanerton and his wife were in the snug little bow-windowed front-room. He, spare and colourless, young yet, with cold grey eyes and thin light whiskers, sat by the blazing fire of wood and coal, that went roaring and sparkling up the chimney. Somehow Herbert Tanerton gave you the idea of being always in a chill. Well meaning, and kind in the main, he was yet severe, taking too much note of offences, and expecting all the world, and especially his own flock, to be better than gold.

His wife, kind, genial, and open-hearted, sat at the window, stitching a wristband for one of her husband’s new shirts—he was as particular over them as he was over the parish sins—and glancing cheerfully out between whiles at the snowy landscape. When she was Grace Coney, and niece at the farm, we were very intimate; a nice, merry-hearted, capable girl, rather tall and slender, with bright dark hazel eyes, and a wide mouth that seemed always to be smiling to show its pretty white teeth. Seeing me coming, she ran to open the porch-door. As yet, she and Herbert had no children.

“Come in, Johnny! Is it not a lovely day? Herbert thinks it the coldest morning we have had; but I tell him that is because he does not feel very well. And he has been put out a little.”

“What about?” I asked, as the Rector turned in his chair to shake hands with me. For she had said all that in his hearing.

“Oh, there are one or two things. Sam Mullett——”

“Where’s the use of talking of the stupid old man, Grace?” cried the parson, crossly. “He is getting too old for his place.”

“And Mr. Sale is going to leave,” added Mrs. Tanerton, as I sat down by the table, after delivering the invitation. “The appointment he expected has been offered to him; it is a chaplaincy at the Bahama Islands. Mr. Sale has known of it for a week, and never told Herbert until yesterday.”

“He spoke to me in the vestry after morning service,” said the Rector, in an injured tone. “And he said at the same time that he was not sure he should accept it; it did not quite depend upon himself. I saw as clearly what he meant to imply as though he had avowed it; that it depended upon that girl, Margaret Rymer. It is a preposterous thing. The idea of a clergyman and a gentleman wanting to marryher! She keeps a chemist’s shop!”

“It was her father who kept it,” I said eagerly, for I liked Margaret Rymer, and did not care to hear her disparaged. “And he was a gentleman born.”

“What has that to do with it?” retorted the parson, who was in one of his most touchy humours. “Had her grandfather been a duke, it would make no difference to what she is. Look at the mother!”

“Margaret is a lady in mind, in looks, and in manners,” I persisted.“If I loved Margaret Rymer, I would marry her, though I were an archdeacon.”

“That’s just like you, Johnny Ludlow! you have no more sense than a child in some things,” said the parson, crustily. Grace glanced up from her work and laughed; and looked as if she would like to take part with me.

“I never could have suspected Sale of such folly,” went on the Rector, warming his hands over the blaze. “Grace, do you think that soup’s ready?”

“I will see,” answered Grace, putting the wristband on the little work-table; and she touched my shoulder playfully in passing.

Herbert Tanerton sat in silence; knitting his brow into lines. I took the chair on the other side the fireplace opposite to him, thinking of this and that, and fingering the tongs to help me: a habit I was often scolded for at home—that of fingering things.

“Look here, Mr. Tanerton. If they go all the way out to settle at the Bahamas, it will not signify there who Margaret has been here. Whether she may have helped in her father’s business, or whether she may have been—as you said—a duke’s granddaughter, and brought up accordingly, it will be all one to the Bahamas. Mr. Sale need not say to the Bahamas, ‘My wife used to sell pennyworths of rhubarb and magnesia.’”

“It is not that,” crossly responded the Rector—“what people will think or say; it is for Sale’s own sake that I object. He cannot like the connection. A clergyman should marry in his own sphere.”

“I suppose men are differently constituted, clergymen as well as others,” said I, with deprecation, remembering that I was a plain, inexperienced lad, and he was the Rector of Timberdale. “Some persons don’t care for social distinctions as others do, don’t even see them: perhaps Mr. Sale is one.”

“He cares for probity and honour—he would not choose to ally himself to crime, to disgrace,” sternly spoke the Rector. “And he would do that in marrying Margaret Rymer. Remember what the son did, that ill-doing Benjamin,” added he, dropping his voice. “You know all about it, Johnny. The affair of the bank-note, I mean.”

And if Herbert Tanerton had said to me the affair of the moon and planets, I could not have been more surprised. “How did you get to know of it?” I asked, when speech came to me.

“Mr. Rymer told me on his death-bed. I was attending him spiritually. Of course, I have never spoken of it, even to my wife—I should not think of speaking of it; but I consider that it lies in my duty to disclose the facts to Mr. Sale.”

“Oh no, don’t—don’t, please, Mr. Tanerton!” I cried out, starting up in a sort of distress, for the words seemed to take hold of me. “No one knows of it: no one but the Squire, and I, as you say, and Mrs.Rymer, and you, and Ben himself; Jelf’s dead, you know. It need never be brought up again in this world; and I dare say it never will be. Pray don’t tell Mr. Sale—for Margaret’s sake.”

“But I have said that I consider it my duty to tell him,” replied the parson, steadily. “Here he comes!”

I turned to the window, and saw Sale trudging up to the parsonage through the snowy field pathway, his black hair and red rugged face presenting a sort of contrast to the white glare around. Ugly, he might be called; but it was a face to be liked, for all that. And the ring of his voice was true and earnest.

The affair of the bank-note had helped to kill Thomas Rymer, and sent Mr. Ben off on his wanderings again. It was a bit of ill-luck for Ben, for he had really pulled up, was reading hard at his medical books, and become as steady as could be. Never since then—some ten months ago now—had Ben been heard of; never had it been spoken of to man or woman. Need Herbert Tanerton disclose it to the curate? No: and I did not think he would do it.

“We were just talking of you,” was the Rector’s greeting to Mr. Sale, as the curate came into the room. “Bring a chair to the front of the fire: Johnny, keep your seat. I’m sure it’s cold enough to make one wish to be in the fire to-day, instead of before it.”

“What were you saying about me?” asked Mr. Sale, drawing forward the chair to sit down, as bidden, and giving me a nod in his short way.

“Have you come to tell me your decision—to go or stay?” asked the Rector, neglecting to answer the question.

“Not this morning. My decision is not yet made. I came to tell you how very ill Jael Batty is. I’m not at all sure that she will get over this bout.”

“Oh,” said the Rector, in a slighting tone, as if Jael Batty had no right to intrude herself into more momentous conversation. “Jael Batty is careless and indifferent in her duties, anything but what she ought to be, and makes her deafness an excuse for not coming to church. I’ll try and get out to see her in the course of the day. She is always having these attacks. What we were speaking of was your friendship with Miss Rymer.”

Herbert Tanerton, as I have said, meant to be kind, and I believe he had people’s welfare at heart; but he had a severe way of saying things that seemed to take all the kindness out of his words. He was a great stickler for “duty,” and if once he considered it was his duty to tell a fellow of his faults, tell he did, face to face, in the most uncompromising manner. He had decided that it was his duty to hold forth to Mr. Sale, and he plunged into the discourse without ceremony. The curate did not seem in the least put out, but talked back again, quietly and freely. I sat balancing the tongs over the fender and listening.

“Miss Rymer is not my equal, you say,” observed Sale. “I don’t know that. Her father was a curate’s son: I am a curate’s son. Circumstances, it would seem, kept Mr. Rymer down in the world. Perhaps they will keep me down—I cannot tell.”

“But you are a gentleman in position, a clergyman; Rymer served customers,” retorted Mr. Tanerton, harping upon that bête noire of his, the chemist’s shop. “Can’t you perceive the difference? A gentleman ought to be a gentleman.”

“Thomas Rymer was a gentleman, as I hear, in mind and manners and conduct; educated, and courteous, and——”

“He was one of the truest gentlemen I ever met,” I could not help putting in, though it interrupted the curate. “For my part, when speaking with him I forgot the counter he served at.”

“And a true Christian, I was about to say,” added Mr. Sale.

There was a pause. Herbert Tanerton, who had been fidgeting in his chair, spoke:

“Am I mistaken in assuming that your acceptance of this chaplaincy depends upon Miss Rymer?”

“No, you are not mistaken,” said Sale, readily. “It does depend upon her. If she will go with me—my wife—I shall accept it; if she will not, I remain at home.”

“Margaret is as nice as her father was; she is exactly like him,”I said. “Were I you, Mr. Sale, I should just take her out of the place and end it.”

“But if she won’t come with me?” returned he, with a half-smile.

“She is wanted at home,” observed Herbert Tanerton, casting a severe look at me with his cold light eyes. “That shop could not get on without her.” But Sale interrupted:

“I cannot imagine why the son is not at home to attend to things. It is his place to be there doing it, not his sister’s. He is inclined to be wild, it is said, and given to roving.”

“Wildness is not Benjamin Rymer’s worst fault, or roving either,”cried the Rector, in his hardest voice, though he dropped it to a low key. And forthwith he opened the ball, and told the unfortunate story in a very few words. I let the tongs fall with a rattle.

“I would not have mentioned this,” pursued he, “but that I consider it lies in my duty to tell you of it. To any one else it would never be allowed to pass my lips; it never has passed them since Mr. Rymer disclosed it to me a day or two before he died. Margaret Rymer may be desirable in herself; but there’s her position, and—there’s this. It is for your own sake I have spoken, Mr. Sale.”

Sale had sat still and quiet while he listened. There was nothing outward to show that the tale affected him, but instinct told me that itdid. Just a question or two he put, as to the details, and then he rose to leave.

“Will you not let it sway you?” asked the Rector, perseveringly, as he held out his hand to his curate. And I was sure he thought he had been doing him the greatest good in the world.

“I cannot tell,” replied Mr. Sale.

He went out, walked across the garden, and through the gate to the field, with his head down. A dreadful listlessness—as it seemed to me—had taken the place of his brisk bearing. Just for a minute I stood in the parlour where I was, feeling as though I had had a shower of ice thrown down upon me and might never be warm again. Saying a short good-morning, I rushed out after him, nearly upsetting Mrs. Tanerton in the hall, and a basin of soup she was carrying in on a plate. How cruel it seemed; how cruel! Why can’t people let one another alone? He was half-way across the field when I overtook him.

“Mr. Sale, I want to tell you—I ought to tell you—that the story, as repeated to you by Mr. Tanerton, bears a worse aspect than the reality would warrant. It is true that Benjamin Rymer did change the note in the letter; but that was the best and the worst of it. He had become mixed up with some reckless men when at Tewkesbury, and they persuaded him to get the stolen note changed for a safe one. I am sure he repented of it truly. When he came home later to his father’s, he had left all his random ways and bad companions behind him. Nobody could be steadier than he was; kind to Margaret, considerate to his father and mother, attentive to business, and reading hard all his spare time. It was only through an ill fellow coming here to hunt him up—one Cotton, who was the man that induced him to play the trick with the note—that he was disturbed again.”

“How disturbed?”

“He grew frightened, I mean, and went away. That fellow Cotton deserved hanging. When he found that Ben Rymer would have nothing more to do with him, or with the rest of the bad lot, he, in revenge, told Jelf, the landlord of the Plough and Harrow (where Cotton ran up a score, and decamped without paying), saying that it was Ben Rymer who had changed the note—for, you see, it had always remained a mystery to Timberdale. Jelf—he is dead now—was foolish enough to let Ben Rymer know what Cotton had said, and Ben made off in alarm. In a week’s time Mr. Rymer was dead. He had been ailing in mind and body for a long while, and the new fear finished him up.”

A pause ensued. Sale broke it. “Did Miss Rymer know of this?”

“Of Ben and the bank-note? I don’t believe she knows of it to this hour.”

“No, I feel sure she does not,” added Sale, speaking more to himself than to me. “She is truth and candour itself; and she has repeatedly said to me she cannot tell why her brother keeps away; cannot imagine why.”

“You see,” I went on, “no one knows of it, except myself, but Squire Todhetley and Mr. Tanerton. We should never, never think of bringing it up, any one of us; Mr. Tanerton only spoke of it, as he said, because he thought he ought to tell you; he will never speak of it again. Indeed, Mr. Sale, you need not fear it will be known. Benjamin Rymer is quite safe.”

“What sort of a man is he, this Benjamin?” resumed Sale, halting at the outer gate of the field as we were going through it. “Like the father, or like the mother?”

“Like the mother. But not as vulgar as she is. Ben has been educated; she was not; and though he does take after her, there’s a little bit of his father in him as well. Which makes a great difference.”

Without another word, Mr. Sale turned abruptly off to the right, as though he were going for a country ramble. I shut the gate, and made the best of my way home, bearing back the message from the Rector and Grace—that they would come and help eat the codfish.

The Reverend Isaac Sale was that day sorely exercised in mind. The story he had heard shook his equanimity to the centre. To marry a young lady whose brother stood a chance of being prosecuted for felony looked like a very black prospect indeed; but, on the other hand, Margaret at least was innocent, and he loved and respected her with his whole heart and soul. Not until the evening was his mind made up; he had debated the question with himself in all its bearings (seated on the stump of a snowy tree); and the decision he arrived at, was—to take Margaret all the same. He could not leave her.

About nine o’clock he went to Mrs. Rymer’s. The shop was closed, and Mr. Sale entered by the private door. Margaret sat in the parlour alone, reading; Mrs. Rymer was out. In her soft black dress, with its white frilling at the throat, Margaret did not look anything like her nearly twenty years. Her mild brown eyes and tale-telling cheeks lighted up at the entrance of the curate. Letting her nervous little hand meet his strong one, she would have drawn a chair forward for him, but he kept her standing by him on the hearthrug.

“I have come this evening to have some final conversation with you, Margaret, and I am glad your mother is out,” he began. “Will you hear me, my dear?”

“You know I am always glad to hear you,” she said in low, timid tones. And Mr. Sale made no more ado, but turned and kissed her. Then he released her hand, sat down opposite to her on the other side of the hearth, and entered on his argument.

It was no more, or other, than she had heard from him before—the whole sum and substance of it consisted of representations why he must accept this chaplaincy at the Bahamas, and why she must accompany him thither. In the midst of it Margaret burst into tears.

“Oh, Isaac, why prolong the pain?” she said. “You know I cannotgo: to refuse is as painful to me as to you. Don’t you see that I have no alternative but to remain here?”

“No, I do not see it,” replied Mr. Sale, stoutly. “I think your mother could do without you. She is an active, bustling woman, hardly to be called middle-aged yet. It is not right that you should sacrifice yourself and your prospects in life. At least, it seems to me that it is not.”

Margaret’s hand was covering her face; the silent tears were dropping. To see him depart, leaving her behind, was a prospect intensely bitter. Her heart ached when she thought of it: but she saw no hope of its being otherwise.

“It is a week and a day since I told you that the promotion was at length offered me,” resumed Mr. Sale, “and we do not seem to be any nearer a decision than we were then. I have kept it to myself and said nothing about it abroad, waiting for you to speak to me, Margaret; and the Rector—to whom I at length spoke yesterday—is angry with me, and says I ought to have told him at once. In three days from this—on Thursday next—I must give an answer: accept the post, or throw it up.”

Margaret took her hand from her face. Mr. Sale could see how great was the conflict at work within her.

“There is nothing to wait for, Isaac. I wish there was. You must go by yourself, and leave me.”

“I have told you that I will not. If you stay here, I stay.”

“Oh, pray don’t do that! It would be so intense a disappointment to you to give it up.”

“The greatest disappointment I have ever had in life,” he answered.“You must go with me.”

“I wish I could! I wish I could! But it is impossible. My duty lies here, Isaac. I wish you could see that fact as strongly as I see it. My poor father always enjoined me to do my duty, no matter at what personal cost.”

“It is your brother’s duty to be here, Margaret; not yours. Where is he?”

“In London, I believe,” she replied, and a faint colour flew into her pale face. She put up her handkerchief to hide it.

It had come to Margaret’s knowledge that during the past few months her mother had occasionally written to Benjamin. But Mrs. Rymer would not allow Margaret to write or give her his address. It chanced, however, that about a fortnight ago Mrs. Rymer incautiously left a letter on the table addressed to him, and her daughter saw it. When, some days subsequently, Mr. Sale received the offer of the chaplaincy, and laid it and himself before Margaret, urging her to accompany him, saying that he could not go without her, she took courage to write to Benjamin. She did not ask him to return and release her; she only asked him whether he had any intention of returning, and if so, when; and she gave him in simple words the history of her acquaintanceship with Mr. Sale, and said that he wanted her to go out with him to the Bahamas. To this letter Margaret had not received any answer. She therefore concluded that it had either not reached her brother, or else that he did not mean to return at all to Timberdale; and so she gave up all hopes of it.

“Life is not very long, Margaret, and God has placed us in it to do the best we can in all ways; for Him first, for social obligations afterwards. But He has not meant it to be all trial, all self-denial. If you and I part now, the probability is that we part for ever. Amidst the world’s chances and changes we may never meet again, howsoever our wills might prompt it.”

“True,” she faintly answered.

“And I say that you ought not to enforce this weighty penance upon me and yourself. It is for your brother’s sake, as I look upon it, that you are making the sacrifice, and it is he, not you, who ought to be here. Why did he go away?”

“I never knew,” said Margaret, lifting her eyes to her lover’s, and speaking so confidingly and earnestly that, had he needed proof to convince him she was ignorant of the story he had that day been regaled with, it would have amply afforded it. “Benjamin was at home, and so steady and good as to be a comfort to papa; when quite suddenly he left without giving a reason. Papa seemed to be in trouble about it—it was only a few days before he died—and I have thought that perhaps poor Benjamin was unexpectedly called upon to pay some debt or other, and could not find the money to do it. He had not always been quite so steady.”

“Well, Margaret, I think——”

A loud bang of the entrance-door, and a noisy burst into the room, proclaimed the return of Mrs. Rymer. Her mass of scarlet curls garnished her face on either side, and looked particularly incongruous with her widow’s cap and bonnet. Mr. Sale, rising to hand her a chair, broke off what he had been about to say to Margaret, and addressed Mrs. Rymer instead; simply saying that the decision, as to her going out with him, or not going, could no longer be put off, but must be made.

“It has been made,” returned Mrs. Rymer, disregarding the offered chair, and standing to hold her boots, one after the other, to the fire.“Margaret can’t go, Mr. Sale; you know it.”

“But I wish her to go, and she wishes it.”

“It’s a puzzle to me what on earth you can see in her,” cried Mrs. Rymer, flinging her grey muff on the table, and untying her black bonnet-strings to tilt back the bonnet. “Margaret won’t have any money. Not a penny piece.”

“I am not thinking about money,” replied the curate; who somehow could never keep his temper long in the presence of this strong-minded Amazon. “It is Margaret that I want; not money.”

“And it’s Margaret, then, that you can’t have,” she retorted.“Who is to keep the shop on if she leaves it?—it can’t go to rack and ruin.”

“I see you serving in it yourself sometimes.”

“I can serve the stationery—and the pickles and fish sauce—and the pearl barley,” contended she, “but not the drugs. I don’t meddle with them. When a prescription comes in to be made up, if I attempted to do it I might put opium for senna, and poison people. I have not learnt Latin, as Margaret has.”

“But, Mrs. Rymer——”

“Now we’ll just drop the subject, sir, if it’s all the same to you,”loudly put in Mrs. Rymer. “I have told you before that Margaret must stay where she is, and keep the business together for me and her brother. No need to repeat it fifty times over.”

She caught up her muff, and went out of the room and up the stairs as she delivered this final edict. Mr. Sale rose.

“You see how it is,” said Margaret, in a low tone of emotion, and keeping her eyelids down to hide the tears. “You must go without me. I cannot leave. I can only say, God speed you.”

“There are many wrongs enacted in this world, and this is one,” he replied in a hard voice—not hard for her—as he took her hands in his, and stood before her. “I don’t know that I altogether blame you, Margaret; but it is cruel upon you and upon me. Good-night.”

He went out quite abruptly without kissing her, leaving her alone with her aching heart.

Tuesday afternoon, and the ice and the snow on the ground still. We were to dine at five o’clock—the London codfish and a prime turkey—and the Coneys were coming in as well as the Rector and his wife.

But Mrs. Coney did not come; old Coney and Tom brought in word that she was not feeling well enough; and the Tanertons only drove up on the stroke of five. As I helped Grace down from the pony-chaise, muffled up to the chin in furs, for the cold was enough to freeze an Icelander’s nose off, I told her her aunt was not well enough to come.

“Aunt Coney not well enough to come!” returned Grace. “What a pity! Have I time to run in to see her before dinner, Johnny?”

“That you’ve not. You are late, as it is. The Squire has been telling us all that the fish must be in rags already.”

Grace laughed as she ran in; her husband followed her unwindingthe folds of his white woollen comforter. There was a general greeting and much laughter, especially when old Coney told Grace that her cheeks were as purple as his Sunday necktie. In the midst of it Thomas announced dinner.

The codfish came up all right, and the oyster sauce was in Molly’s best style—made of cream, and plenty of oysters in it. The turkey was fine: the plum-pudding better than good. Hugh and Lena sat at the table; and altogether we had a downright merry dinner. Not a sober face amongst us, except Herbert Tanerton’s: as to his face—well, you might have thought he was perpetually saying “For what we are going to receive——” It had struck eight ever so long when the last nut was eaten.

“Will you run over with me to my aunt’s, Johnny?” whispered Grace as she passed my chair. “I should like to go at once, if you will.”

So I followed her out of the room. She put her wraps on, and we went trudging across the road in the moonlight, over the crunching snow. Grace’s foot went into a soft rut, and she gave a squeal.

“I shall have to borrow a shoe whilst this dries,” said she. “Do you care to come in, Johnny?”

“No, I’ll go back. I can run over for you presently.”

“Don’t do that. One of the servants will see me safe across.”

“All right. Tell Mrs. Coney what a jolly dinner it was. We were all sorry she did not come.”

Grace went in and shut the door. I was rushing back through our own gate, when some tall fellow glided out of the laurels, and put his hand on my arm. The moonlight fell upon his face and its reddish beard—and, to my intense surprise, I recognized Benjamin Rymer. I knew him then for the man who had been dodging in and out of the shrubs the night but one before.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It is, as I am well aware, a very unusual and unceremonious way of accosting you, or any one else, but I want particularly to speak with you, in private, Mr. Ludlow.”

“You were here on Sunday night!”

“Yes. I saw the Squire and the rest of them go out to church, but I did not see you go, and I was trying to ascertain whether you were at home and alone. Tom Coney’s coming in startled me and sent me away.”

We had been speaking in a low key, but Ben Rymer dropped his to a lower, as he explained. When he went away ten months before, it was in fear and dread that the truth of the escapade he had been guilty of, in regard to the bank-note, was coming out to the world, and that he might be called upon to answer for it. His mother had since assured him he had nothing to fear; but Ben was evidently a cautious man, and preferred to ascertain that fact before showing himself openly at Timberdale. Knowing I was to be trusted not to injure a fellow (as hewas pleased to say), he had come down here to ask me my opinion as to whether the Squire would harm him, or not. There was no one else to fear now Jelf was dead.

“Harm you!” I exclaimed in my enthusiasm, my head full of poor, patient Margaret; “why, the Squire would be the very one to hold you free of harm, Mr. Rymer. I remember his saying, at the time, Heaven forbid that he, having sons of his own, should put a stumbling-block in your path, when you were intending to turn over a new leaf. He will help you on, instead of harming you.”

“It’s very good of him,” said Ben. “I was an awful fool, and nothing else. That was the only dangerous thing I ever did, and I have been punished severely for it. I believe it was nothing but the fear and remorse it brought that induced me to pull up, and throw ill ways behind me.”

“I’m sure I am glad that you do,” I answered, for something in Ben’s tone seemed to imply that the bad ways were thrown behind him for good. “Are you thinking of coming back to Timberdale?”

“Not until I shall have passed for a surgeon—which will not be long now. I have been with a surgeon in London as assistant, since I left here. It was a letter from Margaret that induced me to come down. She—do you know anything about her, Mr. Johnny?”

“I know that a parson wants her to go out with him to the Bahamas; he is Tanerton’s curate; and that the pills and powders stand in the way of it.”

“Just so. Is he a good fellow, this parson?”

“Good in himself. Not much to look at.”

“Maggie shall go with him, then. I should be the last to stand willingly in her way. You see, I have not known whether it was safe for me at Timberdale: or I should never have left Maggie to the shop alone. Does any one know of the past—my past—besides you and the Squire?”

“Yes; Herbert Tanerton knows of it; and—and the curate, Mr. Sale.” And I told him what had passed only on the previous day, softening the Rector’s speeches—and it seemed a curious coincidence, taken with this visit of Ben’s, that it should have passed. His mouth fell as he listened.

“It is another mortification for me,” he said. “I should like to have stood as well as might be with Margaret’s husband. Perhaps, knowing this, he will not think more of her.”

“I don’t believe he will let it make any difference. I don’t think he is the man to let it. Perhaps—if you were to go to him—and show him how straight things are with you now—and——”

I broke down in my hesitating suggestion. Ben was years older than I, miles taller and broader, and it sounded like the mouse attempting to help the lion.

“Yes, I will go to him,” he said slowly. “It is the only plan. And—and you think there’s no fear that Herbert Tanerton will get talking to others?”

“I’m sure there’s none. He is indoors now, dining with us. I am sure you are quite safe in all respects. The thing is buried in the past, and even its remembrance will pass away. The old postman, Lee, thinks it was Cotton; the Squire persuaded him into the belief at the time. Where is Cotton?”

“Where all such rogues deserve to be—transported. But for him and his friends I should never have done much that’s wrong. Thank you for the encouragement you give me.”

He half put out his hand to endorse the thanks, and drew it back again; but I put mine freely into his. Ben Rymer was Ben Rymer, and no favourite of mine to boot; but when a man has been down and is trying to get up again, he deserves respect and sympathy.

“I was about here all last evening, hoping to get sight of you,” he remarked, as he went out at the gate. “I never saw such light nights in all my life as these few last have been, what with the moon and the snow. Good-night, Mr. Johnny. By the way, though, where does the curate live?”

“At Mrs. Boughton’s. Nearly the last house, you know, before you come to the churchyard.”

Ben Rymer went striding towards Timberdale, putting his coat-collar well up, that he might not be recognized when going through the village, and arrived at the curate’s lodgings. Mr. Sale was at home, sitting by the fire in a brown study, that seemed to have no light at all in it. Ben, as I knew later, sat down by him, and made a clean breast of everything: his temptation, his fall, and his later endeavours to do right.

“Please God, I shall get on in the world now,” he said; “and I think make a name in my profession. I don’t wish to boast—and time of course will alone prove it—but I believe I have a special aptitude for surgery. My mother will be my care now; and Margaret—as you are good enough to say you still wish for her—shall be your care in future. There are few girls so deserving as she is.”

“I know that,” said the curate. And he shook Ben’s hand upon it as heartily as though it had been a duke royal’s.

It was close upon ten when Ben left him. Mrs. Rymer about that same time was making her usual preparations before retiring—namely, putting her curls in paper by the parlour fire. Margaret sat at the table, reading the Bible in silence, and so trying to school her aching heart. Her mother had been cross and trying all the evening: which did not mend the inward pain.

“What are you crying for?” suddenly demanded Mrs. Rymer, her sharp eyes seeing a tear fall on the book.

“For nothing,” faintly replied Margaret.

“Nothing! Don’t tell me. You are frizzling your bones over that curate, Sale. I’m sure he is a beauty to look at.”

Margaret made no rejoinder; and just then the young servant put in her head.

“Be there anything else wanted, missis?”

“No,” snapped Mrs. Rymer. “You can be off to bed.”

But, before the girl had shut the parlour-door, a loud ring came to the outer one. Such late summonses were not unusual; they generally meant a prescription to be made up. Whilst the girl went to the door, Margaret closed the Bible, dried her eyes, and rose up to be in readiness.

But instead of a prescription, there entered Mr. Benjamin Rymer. His mother stood up, staring, her hair a mass of white corkscrews. Ben clasped Margaret in his arms, and kissed her heartily.

“My goodness me!” cried Mrs. Rymer. “Is it you, Ben?”

“Yes, it is, mother,” said Ben, turning to her. “Maggie, dear, you look as though you did not know me.”

“Why, what on earth have you come for, in this startling way?”demanded Mrs. Rymer. “I don’t believe your bed’s aired.”

“I’ll sleep between the blankets—the best place to-night. What have I come for, you ask, mother? I have come home to stay.”

Margaret was gazing at him, her mild eyes wide open, a spot of hectic on each cheek.

“For your sake, Maggie,” he whispered, putting his arm round her waist, and bending his great red head (but not so red as his mother’s) down on her. “I shall not much like to lose you, though, my little sister. The Bahamas are further off than I could have wished.”

And, for answer, poor Margaret, what with one thing and another, sank quietly down in her chair, and fainted. Ben strode into the shop—as much at home amongst the bottles as though he had never quitted them—and came back with some sal volatile.

They were married in less than a month; for Mr. Sale’s chaplaincy would not wait for him. The Rector was ailing as usual, or said he was, and Charles Ashton came over to perform the ceremony. Margaret was in a bright dark silk, a light shawl, and a plain bonnet; they were to go away from the church door, and the boxes were already at the station. Ben, dressed well, and looking not unlike a gentleman, gave her away; but there was no wedding-party. Mrs. Rymer stayed at home in a temper, which I dare say nobody regretted: she considered Margaret ought to have remained single. And after a day or two spent in the seaport town they were to sail from, regaling their eyes with the ships crowding the water, the Reverend Isaac Sale and his wife embarked for their future home in the Bahama Isles.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE OTHER EARRING.

“And if I could make sure that you two boys would behave yourselves and give me no trouble, possibly I might take you this year just for a treat.”

“Behave ourselves!” exclaimed Tod, indignantly. “Do you think we are two children, sir?”

“We would be as good as gold, sir,” I added, turning eagerly to the Squire.

“Well, Johnny, I’m not much afraid but that you would. Perhaps I’ll trust you both, then, Joe.”

“Thank you, father.”

“I shall see,” added the pater, thinking it well to put in a little qualification. “It’s not quite a promise, mind. But it must be two or three years now, I think, since you went to them.”

“It seems like six,” said Tod. “I know it’s four.”

We were talking of Worcester Races. At that period they used to take place early in August. Dr. Frost had an unpleasant habit of reassembling his pupils either the race-week or the previous one; and to get over to the races was almost as difficult for Tod and for me as though they had been run in California. To hear the pater say he might perhaps take us this year, just as the Midsummer holidays were drawing to an end, and say it voluntarily, was as good as it was unexpected. He meant it, too; in spite of the reservation: and Dr. Frost was warned that he need not expect us until the race-week was at its close.

The Squire drove into Worcester on the Monday, to be ready for the races on Tuesday morning, with Tod, myself, and the groom—Giles; and put up, as usual, at the Star and Garter. Sometimes he only drove in and back on each of the three race-days; or perhaps on two of them: this he could do very well from Crabb Cot, but it was a good pull for the horses from Dyke Manor. This year, to our intense gratification, he meant to stay in the town.

The Faithful City was already in a bustle. It had put on its best appearance, and had its windows cleaned; some of the shop-fronts were being polished off as we drove slowly up the streets. Families were, like ourselves, coming in: more would come before night. The theatre was open, and we went to it after dinner; and saw, I remember, “Guy Mannering” (over which the pater went to sleep), and an after-piece with a ghost in it.

The next morning I took the nearest way from the hotel to Sansome Walk, and went up it to call on one of our fellows who lived near the top. His friends always let him stay at home for the race-week. A maid-servant came running to answer my knock at the door.

“Is Harry Parker at home?”

“No, sir,” answered the girl, who seemed to be cleaning up for the races on her own account, for her face and arms were all “colly.” “Master Harry have gone down to Pitchcroft, I think.”

“I hope he has gone early enough!” said I, feeling disappointed.“Why, the races won’t begin for hours yet.”

“Well, sir,” she said, “I suppose there’s a deal more life to be seen there than here, though it is early in the day.”

That might easily be. For of all solitary places Sansome Walk was, in those days, the dreariest, especially portions of it. What with the overhanging horse-chestnut trees, and the high dead wall behind those on the one hand, and the flat stretch of lonely fields on the other, Sansome Walk was what Harry Parker used to call a caution. You might pass through all its long length from end to end and never meet a soul.

Taking that narrow by-path on my way back that leads into the Tything by St. Oswald’s Chapel, and whistling a bar of the sweet song I had heard at the theatre overnight, “There’s nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream,” some one came swiftly advancing down the same narrow path, and I prepared to back sideways to give her room to pass—a young woman, with a large shabby shawl on, and the remains of faded gentility about her.

It was Lucy Bird! As she drew near, lifting her sad sweet eyes to mine with a mournful smile, my heart gave a great throb of pity. Faded, worn, anxious, reduced!—oh, how unlike she was, poor girl, to the once gay and charming Lucy Ashton!

“Why, Lucy! I did not expect to see you in Worcester! We heard you had left it months ago.”

“Yes, we left last February for London,” she answered. “Captain Bird has only come down for the races.”

As she took her hand from under her shawl to respond to mine, I saw that she was carrying some cheese and a paper of cold cooked meat. She must have been buying the meat at the cook’s shop, as the Worcester people called it, which was in the middle of High Street. Oh! what a change—what a change for the delicately-bred Lucy Ashton! Better that her Master of Ravenswood had buried his horse and himself in the flooded land, as the other one did, than have brought her to this.

“Where are you going to, down this dismal place, Lucy?”

“Home,” she answered. “We have taken lodgings at the top of Sansome Walk.”

“At one of the cottages a little beyond it?”

“Yes, at one of those. How are you all, Johnny? How is Mrs. Todhetley?”

“Oh, she’s first-rate. Got no neuralgia just now.”

“Is she at Worcester?”

“No; at Dyke Manor. She would not come. The Squire drove us in yesterday. We are at the Star.”

“Ah! yes,” she said, her eyes taking a dreamy, far-off look. “I remember staying at the Star myself one race-week. Papa brought me. It was the year I left school. Have you heard or seen anything of my brothers lately, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Not since we were last staying at Crabb Cot. We went to Timberdale Church one day and heard your brother Charles preach; and we dined once with Robert at the Court, and he and his wife came once to dine with us. But—have you not seen your brother James here?”

“No—and I would rather not see him. He would be sure to ask me painful questions.”

“But he is always about the streets here, seeing after his patients, Lucy. I wonder you have not met him.”

“We only came down last Saturday: and I go out as little as I can,”she said; a hesitation in her tone and manner that struck me. “I did think I saw James’s carriage before me just now as I came up the Tything. It turned into Britannia Square.”

“I dare say. We met it yesterday in Sidbury as we drove in.”

“His practice grows large, I suppose. You say Charles was preaching at Timberdale?” she added: “was Herbert Tanerton ill?”

“Yes. Ailing, that is. Your brother came over to take the duty for the day. Will you call at the Star to see the Squire, Lucy? You know how pleased he would be.”

“N—o,” she answered, her manner still more hesitating; and she seemed to be debating some matter mentally. “I—I would have come after dark, had Mrs. Todhetley been there. At least I think I would—I don’t know.”

“You can come all the same, Lucy.”

“But no—that would not have done,” she went on to herself, in a half-whisper. “I might have been seen. It would never have done to risk it. The truth is, Johnny, I ought to see Mrs. Todhetley on a matter of business. Though even if she were here, I do not know that I might dare to see her. It is—not exactly my own business—and—and mischief might come of it.”

“Is it anything I can say to her for you?”

“I—think—you might,” she returned slowly, pausing, as before, between her words. “I know you are to be trusted, Johnny.”

“That I am. I wouldn’t forget a single item of the message.”

“I did not mean in that way. I shall have to entrust to you a private matter—a disagreeable secret. It is a long time that I have wanted to tell some of you; ever since last winter: and yet, now that the opportunity has come that I may do it, I scarcely dare. The Squire is hasty and impulsive, his son is proud; but I think I may confide in you, Johnny.”

“Only try me, Lucy.”

“Well, I will. I will. I know you are true as steel. Not this morning, for I cannot stop—and I am not prepared. Let me see: where shall we meet again? No, no, Johnny, I cannot venture to the hotel: it is of no use to suggest that.”

“Shall I come to your lodgings?”

She just shook her head by way of dissent, and remained in silent thought. I could not imagine what it was she had to tell me that required all this preparation; but it came into my mind to be glad that I had chanced to go that morning to Harry Parker’s.

“Suppose you meet me in Sansome Walk this afternoon, Johnny Ludlow? Say at”—considering—“yes, at four o’clock. That will be a safe hour, for they will be on the racecourse and out of the way. People will, I mean,” she added hastily: but somehow I did not think she had meant people. “Can you come?”

“I will manage it.”

“And, if you don’t meet me at that time—it is just possible that I may be prevented coming out—I will be there at eight o’clock this evening instead,” she continued. “That I know I can do.”

“Very well. I’ll be sure to be there.”

Hardly waiting another minute to say good-morning, she went swiftly on. I began wondering what excuse I could make for leaving the Squire’s carriage in the midst of the sport, and whether he would let me leave it.

But the way for that was paved without any effort of mine. At the early lunch, the Squire, in the openness of his heart, offered a seat in the phaeton to some old acquaintance from Martley. Which of course would involve Tod’s sitting behind with me, and Giles’s being left out altogether.

“Catch me at it,” cried Tod. “You can do as you please, Johnny: I shall go to the course on foot.”

“I will also,” I said—though you, naturally, understand that I had never expected to sit elsewhere than behind. And I knew it would be easier for me to lose Tod in the crowd, and so get away to keep the appointment, than it would have been to elude the Squire’s questioning as to why I could want to leave the carriage.

Lunch over, Tod said he would go to the Bell, to see whether the Letstoms had come in; and we started off. No; the waiter had seen nothing of them. Onwards, down Broad Street we went, took the Quay, and so got on that way to Pitchcroft—as the racecourse is called. The booths and shows were at this end, and the chief part of the crowd. Before us lay stretched the long expanse of the course, green and level as a bowling-green. The grand-stand (comparatively speaking a new erection there) lay on the left, higher up, the winning-chair and distance-post facing it. Behind the stand, flanking all that side of Pitchcroft, the beautiful river Severn flowed along between its green banks, the houses of Henwick, opposite, looking down upon it from their great height, over their sloping gardens. It was a hot day, the blue sky dark and cloudless.

“True and correct card of all the running horses, gentlemen: the names, weights, and colours o’ the riders!” The words, echoing on all sides from the men who held these cards for sale, are repeated in my brain now; as are other sounds and sights. I was somewhat older then than I had been; but it was not very long since those shows, ranged round there side by side, a long line of them, held the greatest attraction for me in life. “Guy Mannering,” the past night, had been very nice to see, very enjoyable; but it possessed not the nameless charm of that first “play” I went to in Scowton’s Show on the racecourse.That charm could never come again. And I was but a lad yet.

The lightning with which the play opened had been real lightning to me; the thunder, real thunder. The gentleman who stood, when the curtain rose, gorgeously attired in a scarlet doublet slashed with gold (something between a king and a bandit), with uplifted face of terror and drawn sword, calling the war of the elements “tremendious,” was to me a greater potentate than the world could almost contain! The young lady, his daughter, in ringlets and spangles, who came flying on in the midst of the storm, and fell at his feet, with upraised arms and a piteous appeal, “Alas! my father, and will you not consent to my marriage with Alphonso?” seemed more lovely to me than the Sultanas in the “Arabian Nights,” or the Princesses in Fairyland. I sat there entranced and speechless. A new world had opened to me—a world of delight. For weeks and weeks afterwards, that play, with its wondrous beauties, its shifting scenes, was present to me sleeping and waking.

The ladies in spangles, the gentlemen in slashed doublets, were on the platforms of their respective shows to-day, dancing for the benefit of Pitchcroft. Now and again a set would leave off, the music ceasing also, to announce that the performance was about to commence. I am not sure but I should have gone up to see one, but for the presence of Tod and Harry Parker—whom we had met on the course. There were learned pigs, and spotted calves, and striped zebras; and gingerbread and cake stalls; and boat-swings and merry-go-rounds—whichhad made me frightfully sick once when Hannah let me go in one. And there was the ever-increasing throng, augmenting incessantly; carriages, horsemen, shoals of foot-passengers; conjurers and fortune-tellers; small tables for the game of “thimble-rig,” their owners looking out very sharply for the constables who might chance to be looking for them; and the movable exhibitions of dancing dolls and Punch and Judy. Ay, the sounds and the sights are in my brain now. The bands of the different shows, mostly attired in scarlet and gold, all blowing and drumming as hard as they could blow and drum; the shouted invitations to the admiring spectators, “Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, the performance is just a-going to begin;” the scraping of the blind fiddlers; the screeching of the ballad-singers; the sudden uproar as a stray dog, attempting to cross the course, is hunted off it; the incessant jabber and the Babel of tongues; and the soft roll of wheels on the turf.

Hark! The bell rings for the clearing of the course. People know what it means, and those who are cautious hasten at once to escape under the cords on either side. The gallop of a horse is heard, its rider, in his red coat and white smalls, loudly smacking his whip to effect the clearance. The first race is about to begin. All the world presses towards the environs of the grand-stand to get a sight of the several horses entered for it. Here they come; the jockeys in their distinguishing colours, trying their horses in a brisk canter, after having been weighed in the paddock. A few minutes, and the start is effected; they are off!

It is only a two-mile heat. The carriages are all drawn up against the cords; the foot-passengers press it; horsemen get where they can. And now the excitement is at its height; the rush of the racers coming in to the winning-post breaks on the ear. They fly like the wind.

At that moment I caught sight of the sharply eager face of a good-looking, dashing man, got up to perfection—you might have taken him for a lord at least. Arm-in-arm with him stood another, well-got-up also, as a sporting country gentleman; he wore a green cut-away coat, top-boots, and a broad-brimmed hat which shaded his face. If I say“got-up,” it is because I knew the one, and I fancied I knew the other. But the latter’s face was partly turned from me, and hidden, as I have said, by the hat. Both watched the swiftly-coming racehorses with ill-concealed anxiety: and both, as well-got-up gentlemen at ease, strove to appear indifferent.

“Tod, there’s Captain Bird.”

“Captain Bird! Where? You are always fancying things, Johnny.”

“A few yards lower down. Close to the cords.”

“Oh, be shot to the scoundrel, and so it is! What a swell! Don’t bother. Here they come.”

“Blue cap wins!” “No! red sleeves gains on him!” “Yellowstripes is first!” “Pink jacket has it!” “By Jove! the bay colt is distanced!” “Purple wins by a neck!”

With a hubbub of these different versions from the bystanders echoing on our ears, the horses flew past in a rush and a whirl. Black cap and white jacket was the winner.

Amidst the crowding and the pushing and the excitement that ensued, I tried to get nearer to Captain Bird. Not to see him: it was impossible to look at him with any patience and contrast his dashing appearance with that of poor, faded Lucy’s: but to see the other man. For he put me in mind of the gentleman-detective Eccles, who had loomed upon us at Crabb Cot that Sunday afternoon in the past winter, polished off the sirloin of beef, crammed the Squire with anecdotes of his college life, and finally made off with the other earring.

You can turn back to the paper called “Mrs. Todhetley’s Earrings,”and recall the circumstances. How she lost an earring out of her ear: a pink topaz encircled with diamonds. It was supposed a tramp had picked it up; and the Squire went about it to the police at Worcester. On the following Sunday a gentleman called introducing himself as Mr. Eccles, a private detective, and asking to look at the other earring. The Squire was marvellously taken with him, ordered in the beef, not long gone out from the dinner, and was as eager to entrust the earring to him as he was to take it. That Eccles had been a gentleman once—at least, that he had mixed with gentlemen, was easy to be seen: and perhaps had also been an Oxford man, as he asserted; but he was certainly a swindler now. He carried off the earring; and we had never seen him, or it, from that day to this. But I did think I saw him now on the racecourse. In the side face, and the tall, well-shaped figure of the top-booted country gentleman, with the heavy bunch of seals hanging from his watch-chain, who leaned on that man Captain Bird’s arm, there was a great resemblance to him. The other earring, lost first, was found in the garden under a small fir-tree when the snow melted away, where it must have dropped unseen from Mrs. Todhetley’s ear, as she stopped in the path to shake the snow from the tree.

But the rush of people sweeping by was too great. Captain Bird and he were nowhere to be seen. In the confusion also I lost Tod and Harry Parker. The country gentleman I meant to find if I could, and went looking about for him.

The carriages were coming away from their standing-places near the ropes to drive about the course, as was the custom in those days. Such a thing as taking the horses out of a carriage and letting it stay where it was until the end of the day was not known on Worcester racecourse. You might count the carriages-and-four there then, their inmates exchanging greetings with each other in passing, as they drove to and fro. It was a sight to see the noblemen’s turn-outs; the glittering harness, the array of servants in their sumptuous liveries; for they came in style to the races. The meeting on the course was the chief local event of the year, when all the county assembled to see each other and look their best.

“Will you get up now, Johnny?”

The soft bowling of the Squire’s carriage-wheels arrested itself, as he drew up to speak to me. The Martley old gentleman sat with him, and there was a vacant place by Giles behind.

“No, thank you, sir. I would rather be on foot.”

“As you will, lad. Is your watch safe?”

“Oh yes.”

“Where’s Joe?”

“Somewhere about. He is with Harry Parker. I have only just missed them.”

“Missed them! Oh, and I suppose you are looking for them. A capital race, that last.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind you take care of yourself, Johnny,” he called back, as he touched up Bob and Blister, to drive on. I generally did take care of myself, but the Squire never forgot to remind me to do it.

The afternoon went on, and my search with it in the intervals of the racing. I could see nothing of those I wanted to see, or of Tod and Harry Parker. Our meeting, or not meeting, was just a chance, amidst those crowds and crowds of human beings, constantly moving. Three o’clock had struck, and as soon as the next race should be over—a four-mile heat—it would be nearly time to think about keeping my appointment with Lucy Bird.

And now once more set in all the excitement of the running. A good field started for the four-mile heat, more horses than had run yet.

I liked those four-mile heats on Worcester racecourse: when we watched the jockeys in their gay and varied colours twice round the course, describing the figure of eight, and coming in, hot and panting, at the end. The favourites this time were two horses named “Swallower”and “Master Ben.” Each horse was well liked: and some betters backed one, some the other. Now they are off!

The running began slowly and steadily; the two favourites just ahead; a black horse (I forget his name, but his jockey wore crimson and purple) hanging on to them; most of the other horses lying outside. The two kept together all the way, and as they came in for the final run the excitement was intense.

“Swallower has it by a neck!” “No! Master Ben heads him!” “Ben wins! Swallower loses!” “Swallower has it! Ben’s jockey is beat!” and so on, and so on. Amidst the shouts and the commotion the result was announced—a dead heat.

So the race must be run again. I looked at my watch (which you may be sure I had kept carefully buttoned up under my jacket),wondering whether I could stay for it. That was uncertain; there was no knowing how long an interval would be allowed for breathing-time.

Suddenly there arose a frightful commotion above all the natural commotion of the course. People rushed towards one point; horsemen galloped thither, carriages bowled cautiously in their wake. The centre of attraction appeared to be on the banks of the river, just beyond the grand-stand. What was it? What had occurred? The yells were deafening; the pushing fearful. At last the cause was known: King Mob was ducking some offender in the Severn.

To get near, so as to see anything of the fun, was impossible; it was equally impossible to gather what he had done; whether picked a pocket, or cheated at betting. Those are the two offences that on Pitchcroft were then deemed deserving of the water. This time, I think, it was connected with betting.

Soon the yells became louder and nearer. Execrations filled the air. The crowd opened, and a wretched-looking individual emerged out of it on the hard run, his clothes dripping, his hair hanging about his face like rat’s tails.

On he came, the mob shouting and hallooing in his wake, and brushed close past me. Why! it was surely the country gentleman I had seen with Bird! I knew him again at once. But whether it was the man Eccles or not, I did not see; he tore by swiftly, his head kept down. A broad-brimmed hat came flying after him, propelled by the feet of the crowd. He stooped to catch it up, and then kept on his way right across the course, no doubt to make his escape from it. Yes, it was the same man in his top-boots. I was sure of that. Scampering close to his heels, fretting and yelling furiously, was a half-starved white dog with a tin kettle tied to its tail. I wondered which of the two was the more frightened—the dog or the man.

And standing very nearly close to me, as I saw then, was Captain Bird. Not running, not shouting; simply looking on with a countenance of supreme indifference, that seemed to express no end of languid contempt of the fun. Not a sign of recognition crossed his face as the half-drowned wight swept past him: no one could have supposed he ever set eyes on him before. And when the surging crowd had passed, he sauntered away in the direction of the saddling-place.

But I lost the race. Though I stayed a little late, hoping to at last see the horses come out for the second start, and to count how many of the former field would compete for it, the minutes flew all too swiftly by, and I had to go, and to put the steam on. Making a bolt across Pitchcroft and up Salt Lane, went I, full split, over the Tything, and so down to Sansome Walk. St. Oswald’s clock was tinkling out four as I reached it.

Lucy did not come. She had indicated the spot where the meeting should be; and I waited there, making the best I could of it; coolingmyself, and looking out for her. At half-past four I gave her up in my own mind; and when five o’clock struck, I knew it was useless to stay longer. So I began to take my way back slower than I had come; and on turning out by St. Oswald’s, I saw the carriages and people flocking up on their way from Pitchcroft. The first day’s racing was over.

There was a crowd at the top of Salt Lane, and I had to wait before I could get across. In the wake of a carriage-and-four that was turning out of it came Captain Bird, not a feather of his plumage ruffled, not a speck (except dust) on his superfine coat, not a wristband soiled. He had not been ducked, if his friend had.

“How d’ye do, Master Ludlow?” said he, with a grandly patronizing air, and a flourish of his cane, as if it were a condescension to notice me. And I answered him civilly; though he must have been aware I knew what a scamp he was.

“I wish he’d steal away to America some moonlight night,” ran my thoughts, “and leave poor Lucy in peace.”

The Squire’s carriage dashed up to the hotel as I reached it, Tod sitting behind with Giles. I asked which of the two horses had won. Swallower: won by half-a-neck. The Squire was in a glow of satisfaction, boasting of the well-contested race.

And now, to make things intelligible, I must refer again for a minute or two to that past paper. It may be remembered that when “Detective Eccles” called on us that Sunday afternoon, asking to look at the fellow-earring to the one lost, Mrs. Todhetley had gone in to the Coneys’, and the Squire sent me for her. When I arrived there, Lucy Bird was in the drawing-room alone, the mater being upstairs with Mrs. Coney. Poor Lucy told me she had been spending a day or two at Timberdale Court (her happy childhood’s home), and had come over to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Coney, who were always kind to her, she added with a sigh; but she was going back to Worcester by the next train. I told her what I had come for—of the detective’s visit and his request to see the other earring. Mrs. Todhetley felt nervous at meeting a real live detective, and asked me no end of questions as to what this particular one was like. I said he was no tiger to be afraid of, and described him as well as I could: a tall, slender, gentlemanly man, well-dressed; gold studs, a ring on his finger, a blue necktie, and a black moustache. Lucy (I had noticed at the time) seemed struck with the description; but she made no remark. Before we turned in at our gate we saw her leave the Coneys’ house, and come stepping through the snow on her way to the station. Since then, until now, we had not seen anything of Lucy Bird.

The stars flickered through the trees in Sansome Walk as I turned into it. A fine trouble I had had to come! Some entertainment wasin full swing that evening at the Saracen’s Head—a sort of circus, combined with rope-dancing. Worcester would be filled with shows during the race-week (I don’t mean those on Pitchcroft), and we went to as many as we could get money for. We had made the bargain with Harry Parker on the course to go to this one, and during the crowded dinner Tod asked the Squire’s leave. He gave it with the usual injunctions to take care of ourselves, and on condition that we left our watches at home. So, there I was in a fix; neither daring to say at the dinner-table that I could not go, nor daring to say what prevented it, for Lucy had bound me to secrecy.

“What time is this thing going to be over to-night, Joe?” had questioned the Squire, who was drinking port wine with some more old gentlemen at one end of the table, as we rose to depart.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Tod. “About ten o’clock, I dare say.”

“Well, mind you come straight home, you two. I won’t have you getting into mischief. Do you hear, Johnny?”

“What mischief do you suppose, sir, we are likely to get into?”fired Tod.

“I don’t know,” answered the Squire. “When I was a young lad—younger than you—staying here for the races with my father—but we stayed at the Hop-pole, next door, which was the first inn then—I remember we were so wicked one night as to go about ringing and knocking at all the doors——”

“You and your father, sir?” asked Tod, innocently.

“My father! no!” roared the Squire. “What do you mean, Joe? How dare you! My father go about the town knocking at doors and ringing at bells! How dare you suggest such an idea! We left my father, sir, at the hotel with his friends at their wine, as you are leaving me with my friends here now. It was I and half-a-dozen other young rascals who did it—more shame for us. I can’t be sure how many bell-wires we broke. The world has grown wiser since then, though I don’t think it’s better; and—and mind you walk quietly home. Don’t get into a fight, or quarrel, or anything of that kind. The streets are sure to be full of rough people and pickpockets.”

Harry Parker was waiting for us in the hotel gateway. He said he feared we should be late, and thought we must have been eating dinner for a week by the time we took over it.

“I’m not coming with you, Tod,” I said; “I’ll join you presently.”

Tod turned round and faced me. “What on earth’s that for, Johnny?”

“Oh, nothing. I’ll come soon. You two go on.”

“Suppose you don’t get a place!” cried Parker to me.

“Oh, I shall get one fast enough: it won’t be so crowded as all that.”

“Now, look here, lad,” said Tod, with his face of resolution; “you are up to some dodge. What is it?”

“My head aches badly,” I said—and that was true. “I can’t go into that hot place until I have had a spell of fresh air. But I shall be sure to join you later, if I can.”

My headaches were always allowed. I had them rather often. Not the splitting, roaring pain that Tod would get in his head on rare occasions, once a twelvemonth, or so, when anything greatly worried him; but bad enough in all conscience. He said no more; and set off with Harry Parker up the street towards the Saracen’s Head.

The stars were flickering through the trees in Sansome Walk, looking as bright as though it were a frosty night in winter. It was cool and pleasant: the great heat of the day—which must have given me my headache—had passed. Mrs. Bird was already at the spot. She drew me underneath the trees on the side, looking up the walk as though she feared she had been followed. A burst of distant music crashed out and was borne towards us on the air: the circus band, at the Saracen’s Head. Lucy still glanced back the way she had come.

“Are you afraid of anything, Lucy?”

“There is no danger, I believe,” she answered; “but I cannot help being timid: for, if what I am doing were discovered, I—I—I don’t know what they would do to me.”

“You did not come this afternoon.”

“No. I was very sorry, but I could not,” she said, as we paced slowly about, side by side. “I had my shawl and bonnet on, when Edwards came in—a friend of my husband’s, who is staying with him. He had somehow got into the Severn, and looked quite an object, his hair and clothes dripping wet, and his forehead bruised.”

“Why, Lucy, he was ducked!” I cried excitedly. “I saw it all. That is, I saw the row; and I saw him when he made his escape across Pitchcroft. He had on a smart green cut-away coat, and top-boots.”

“Yes, yes,” she said; “I was sure it was something of that kind. When my husband came home later they were talking together in an undertone, Edwards cursing some betting-man, and Captain Bird telling Edwards that it was his own fault for not being more cautious. However, I could not come out, Johnny, though I knew you were waiting for me. Edwards asked, as impertinently as he dared, where I was off to. To buy some tea, I answered, but that it did not matter particularly, as I had enough for the evening. They think I have come out to buy it now.”

“Do you mean to say, Lucy, that Captain Bird denies you free liberty?—watches you as a cat does a mouse?”

“No, no; you must not take up wrong notions of my husband, Johnny Ludlow. Bad though the estimation in which he is held by most people is, he has never been really unkind to me. Trouble, frightful trouble he does bring upon me, for I am his wife and have to share it, but personally unkind to me he has never yet been.”

“Well, I should think it unkind in your place, if I could not go out when I pleased, without being questioned. What do they suspect you would be after?”

“It is not Captain Bird; it is Edwards. As to what he suspects, I am sure he does not know himself; but he seems to be generally suspicious of every one, and he sees I do not like him. I suppose he lives in general fear of being denounced to the police, for he is always doing what he calls ‘shady’ things; but he must know that he is safe with us. I heard him say to my husband the day before we left London,‘Why do you take your wife down?’ Perhaps he thinks my brothers might be coming to call on me, and of course he does not want attention drawn to the place he may chance to be located in, whether here or elsewhere.”

“What is his name, Lucy?”

“His name? Edwards.”

“It’s not Eccles, is it?”

She glanced quickly round as we walked, searching my face in the dusk.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because, when I first saw him to-day on the racecourse with Captain Bird, he put me in mind of the fine gentleman who came to us that Sunday at Crabb Cot, calling himself Detective Eccles, and carried off Mrs. Todhetley’s other earring.”

Mrs. Bird looked straight before her, making no answer.

“You must remember that afternoon, Lucy. When I ran over to old Coney’s for Mrs. Todhetley, you were there, you know; and I told you all about the earrings and the detective officer, then making his dinner of cold beef at our house while he waited for the mother to come home and produce the earring. Don’t you remember? You were just going back to Worcester.”

Still she said not a word.

“Lucy, I think it is the same man. Although his black moustache is gone, I feel sure it is he. The face and the tall slender figure are just like his.”

“How singular!” she exclaimed, in a low tone to herself. “How strangely things come about!”

“But is it Eccles?”

“Johnny Ludlow,” she said, catching my arm, and speaking in an excited, breathless whisper, “if you were to bring harm on me—that is, on him or on my husband through me, I should pray to die.”

“But you need not be afraid. Goodness me, Lucy! don’t you know that I wouldn’t bring harm on any one in the world, least of all on you? Why, you said to me this morning that I was true as steel.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, bursting into tears. “We have always been good friends, have we not. Johnny, since you, a little mite of a child ina tunic and turned-down frill, came to see me one day at school, a nearly grown-up young lady, and wanted to leave me your bright sixpence to buy gingerbread? Oh, Johnny, if all people were only as loyal and true-hearted as you are!”

“Then, Lucy, why need you doubt me?”

“Do you not see the shadows of those leaves playing on the ground cast by the light of that gas-lamp?” she asked. “Just as many shadows, dark as those, lie in the path of my life. They have taught me to fear an enemy where I ought to look for a friend; they have taught me that life is so full of unexpected windings and turnings, that we know not one minute what new fear the next may bring forth.”

“Well, Lucy, you need not fear me. I have promised you to say nothing of having met you here; and I will say nothing, or of what you tell me.”

“Promise it me again, Johnny. Faithfully.”

Just a shade of vexation crossed me that she should think it needful to reiterate this; but I would not let my face or voice betray it.

“I promise it again, Lucy. Faithfully and truly.”

“Ever since last winter I have wanted to hold communication with one of you at your home, and to restore something that had been lost. But it had to be done very, very cautiously, without bringing trouble on me or on any one connected with me. Many a solitary hour, sitting by myself in our poor lodgings in London, have I deliberated whether I might venture to restore this, and how it was to be done: many a sleepless night have I passed, dwelling on it. Sometimes I thought I would send it anonymously by the post, but it might have been stolen by the way; sometimes it would occur to me to make a parcel of it and despatch it in that way. I never did either. I waited until some chance should bring me again near Mrs. Todhetley. But to-day I saw that it would be better to trust you. She is true also, and kind; but she might not be able to keep the secret from the Squire, and he—he would be sure to betray it, though perhaps not intentionally, to all Timberdale, and there’s no knowing what mischief might come of it.”

Light flashed upon me as she spoke. As surely as though it were already before me in black and white, I knew what she was about to disclose.

“Lucy, it is the lost earring! The man staying with you is Eccles.”

“Hush!” she whispered in extreme terror, for a footstep suddenly sounded close to us. Lucy glided behind the tree we were passing, which in a degree served to hide her. How timid she was!—what induced it?

The intruder was a shop-boy with an apron on, carrying a basket of grocery parcels to one of the few houses higher up. He turned his head and gave us a good stare, probably taking us for a pair of loversenjoying a stolen ramble by starlight. Setting up a shrill whistle, he passed on.

“I don’t know what has come to me lately; my heart seems to beat at nothing,” said poor Mrs. Bird, coming from behind the tree with her hand to her side. “And it was doubly foolish of me to go there; better that I had kept quietly walking on with you, Johnny.”

“What is it that you are afraid of, Lucy?”

“Only of their seeing me; seeing me with you. Were they to do so, and it were to come out that the earring had been returned, they would know I had done it. They suspected me at the time—at least, Edwards did. For it is the earring I am about to restore to you, Johnny.”

She put a little soft white paper packet in my hand, that felt as if it had wool inside it. I hardly knew whether I was awake or asleep. The beautiful earring that we had given up for good, come back again! And the sound of the drums and trumpets burst once more upon our ears.

“You will give it to Mrs. Todhetley when you go home, Johnny. And I must leave it to your discretion to tell her what you think proper of whence you obtained it. Somewhat of course you must tell her, but how much or how little I leave with you. Only take care you bring no harm upon me.”

“I am sure, Lucy, that Mrs. Todhetley may be trusted.”

“Very well. Both of you must be secret as the grave. It is for my sake, tell her, that I implore it. Perhaps she will keep the earring by her for a few months, saying nothing, so that this visit of ours into Worcestershire may be quite a thing of the past, and no suspicion, in consequence of it, as connected with the earring, may arise in my husband’s mind. After that, when months have elapsed, she must contrive to let it appear that the earring is then, in some plausible way or other, returned to her.”

“Rely upon it, we will take care. It will be managed very easily. But how did you get the earring, Lucy?”

“It has been in my possession ever since the night of the day you lost it; that Sunday afternoon, you know. I have carried it about with me everywhere.”

“Do you mean carried it upon you?”

“Yes; upon me.”

“I wonder you never lost it—a little thing like this!” I said, touching the soft packet that lay in my jacket pocket.

“I could not lose it,” she whispered. “It was sewn into my clothes.”

“But, Lucy, how did you manage to get it?”

She gave me the explanation in a few low, rapid words, glancing about her as she did it. Perhaps I had better repeat it in my own way; and to do that we must go back to the Sunday afternoon. At least,that will render it more intelligible and ship-shape. But I did not learn one-half of the details then; no, nor for a long time afterwards. And so, we go back again in imagination to the time of that January day, when we were honoured by the visit of “Detective Eccles,” and the snow was lying on the ground, and Farmer Coney’s fires were blazing hospitably.

Lucy Bird quitted the warm fires and her kind friends, the Coneys, and followed us out—me and Mrs. Todhetley—she saw us turn in at our own gate, and then she picked her way through the snow to the station at South Crabb. It was a long walk for her in that inclement weather; but she had been away from home (if the poor lodgings they then occupied in Worcester could be called home) two days, and was anxious to get back again. During her brief absences from it, she was always haunted by the fear of some ill falling on that precious husband of hers, Captain Bird; but he was nothing but an ex-captain, as you know. All the way to the station she was thinking about the earrings, and of my description of Detective Eccles. The description was exactly that of her husband’s friend, Edwards, both as to person and dress; not that she supposed it could be he. When she left Worcester nearly two days before, Edwards had just arrived. She knew him to be an educated man, of superior manners, and full of anecdote, when he chose, about college life. Like her husband, he had, by recklessness and ill-conduct, sunk lower and lower in the world, until he had to depend on “luck” or “chance” for a living.

Barely had Lucy reached the station, walking slowly, when the train shot in. She took her seat; and, after a short halt the train moved on again. At that moment there strode into the station that self-same man, Edwards, who began shouting furiously for the train to stop, putting up his hands, running and gesticulating. The train declined to stop; trains generally do decline to stop for late passengers, however frantically adjured; and Edwards was left behind. His appearance astonished Lucy considerably. Had he, in truth, been passing himself off as a detective officer to Squire Todhetley? If so, with what motive? Lucy could not see any motive, and still thought it could not be; that Edwards must be over here on some business of his own. The matter passed from her mind as she drew near Worcester, and reached their lodgings, which were down Lowesmoor way.

Experience had taught Lucy not to ask questions. She was either not answered at all, or the answer would be sure to give her trouble. Captain Bird had grown tolerably careless as to whether his hazardous doings reached, or did not reach, the ears of his wife, but he did not willingly tell her of them. She said not a word of having seen Edwards, or of what she had heard about the loss of Mrs. Todhetley’s earring, or of the detective’s visit to Crabb Cot. Lucy’s whole life was one ofdread and fear, and she never knew whether any remark of hers might not bear upon some dangerous subject. But while getting the tea, she did just inquire after Edwards.

“Has Edwards left?” she asked carelessly.

“No,” replied Captain Bird, who was stretched out before the fire in his slippers, smoking a long pipe, and drinking spirits. “He is out on the loose, though, somewhere, to-day.”

It was late at night when Edwards entered. He was in a rage. Trains did not run frequently on Sundays, and he had been kept all that time at South Crabb Junction, waiting for one. Lucy went upstairs to bed, leaving Edwards and her husband drinking brandy-and-water. Both of them had had quite enough already.

The matter of the earrings and the doubt whether Mr. Edwards had been playing at amateur detectiveship would have ended there, but for the accident of Lucy’s having to come downstairs again for the small travelling-bag in which she had carried her combs and brushes. She had put it just inside the little back parlour, where a bed on chairs had been extemporized for Edwards, their lodgings not being very extensive. Lucy was picking up the bag in the dark, when some words in the sitting-room caught her ear; the door between the two rooms being partly open. Before a minute elapsed she had heard too much. Edwards, in a loud, gleeful, boasting tone, was telling how he had been acting the detective, and done the old Squire and his wife out of the other earring. Lucy, looking in through the opening, saw him holding it up; she saw the colours of the long pink topaz, and the diamonds flash in the candle-light.

“I thought I could relieve them of it,” he said. “When I read that advertisement in the paper, it struck me there might be a field open to do a little stroke of business; and I’ve done it.”

“You are a fool for your pains,” growled Captain Bird. “There’s sure to be a row.”

“The row won’t touch me. I’m off to London to-morrow morning, and the earring with me. I wonder what the thing will turn us in? Twenty pounds. There, put it in the box, Bird, and get out the dice.”

The dice on a Sunday night!

Lucy felt quite sick as she went back upstairs. What would be the end of all this? Not of this one transaction in particular, but of all the other disgraceful transactions with which her husband was connected? It might come to some public exposure, some criminal trial at the Bar of Justice; and of that she had a horrible dread ever haunting her like a nightmare.

She undressed, and went to bed. One hour passed, two hours passed, three hours passed. Lucy turned and turned on her uneasy pillow, feeling ready to die. Besides her own anguish arising from their share in it, she was dwelling on the shameful wrong it did their kind friends at Crabb Cot.

The fourth hour was passing. Captain Bird had not come up, and Lucy grew uneasy on that score. Once, when he had taken too much (but as a general rule the ex-captain’s delinquencies did not lie in that direction), he had set his shirt-sleeve on fire, and burnt his hands badly in putting it out. Slipping out of bed, Lucy put on her slippers and the large old shawl, and crept down to see after him.

Opening the sitting-room door very softly, she looked in. The candles were alight still, but had burnt nearly down to the socket; the dice and some cards were scattered on the table.

Edwards lay at full length on the old red stuff sofa; Captain Bird had thrown himself outside the bed in the other room, the door of which was now wide open, neither of them having undressed. That both were wholly or partially intoxicated, Lucy felt not a doubt of.

Well, she could only leave them as they were. They would come to no harm asleep. Neither would the candles: which must soon burn themselves out. Lucy was about to shut the door again, when her eye fell on the little pasteboard box that contained the earring.

Without a moment’s reflection, acting on the spur of impulse, she softly stepped to the table, lifted the lid, and took the earring out.

“I will remedy the wrong they have done Mrs. Todhetley,” she said to herself. “They will never suspect me.”

Up in her room again, she lighted her candle and looked about for some place to conceal the earring; and, just as the idea to secure it had come unbidden to her, so did that of a safe place of concealment. With feverish hands she undid a bit of the quilting of her petticoat, one that she had but just made for herself out of an old merino gown, slipped the earring into the wadding, and sewed it up again. It could neither be seen nor suspected there; no, nor even felt, let the skirt be examined as it might. That done, poor Lucy went to bed again and at length fell asleep.

She was awakened by a commotion. It was broad daylight, and her husband (not yet as sober as he might be) was shaking her by the arm. Edwards was standing outside the door, calling out to know whether Mrs. Bird had “got it.”

“What is the matter, George?” she cried, starting up in a fright, and for the moment completely forgetting where she was, for she had been aroused from a vivid dream of Timberdale.

“Have you been bringing anything up here from the sitting-room, Lucy?” asked Captain Bird.

“No, nothing,” she replied promptly, and he saw that she spoke with truth. For Lucy’s recollection had not come to her; she remembered nothing yet about the earring.

“There’s something missing,” said Captain Bird, speaking thickly.

“It has disappeared mysteriously off the sitting-room table. You are sure you have not been down and collared it, Lucy?”

The earring and the theft—her own theft—flashed into her memory together. Oh, if she could only avert suspicion from herself! And she strove to call up no end of surprise in her voice.

“Why, how could I have been down, George? Did you not see that I was fast asleep? What have you missed? Some money?”

“Money, no. It was—something of Edwards’s. Had it close by him on the table when he went to sleep, he says—he lay on the sofa last night, and I had his bed—and this morning it was gone. I thought the house was on fire by the way he came and shook me.”

“I’ll look for it when I come down, if you tell me what it is,” said poor Lucy. “How late I have slept! It must have been the cold journey.”

“She has not got it,” said Captain Bird, retreating to his friend outside, and closing the door on Lucy. “Knows nothing about it. Was asleep till I awoke her.”

“Search the room, you fool,” cried the excited Edwards. “I’d never trust the word of a woman. No offence to your wife, Bird, but it is not to be trusted.”

“Rubbish!” said Captain Bird.

“Either she or you must have got it. It could not disappear without hands. The people down below have not been to our rooms, as you must know.”

“She or I—what do you mean by that?” retorted Captain Bird; and a short sharp quarrel ensued. That the captain had not touched the earring, Edwards knew full well. It was Edwards who had helped him to reach the bed the previous night: and since then Bird had been in the deep sleep of stupor. But Edwards did think the captain’s wife had. The result was that Captain Bird re-entered; and, ordering Lucy to lie still, he made as exact a search of the room as his semi-sobered faculties allowed. Lucy watched it from her bed. Amidst the general hunting and turning-over of drawers and places, she saw him pick up her gown and petticoats one by one and shake them thoroughly, but he found no signs of the earring.

From that time to this the affair had remained a mystery. There had been no one in the house that night, except the proprietor and his wife, two quiet old people who never concerned themselves with their lodgers. They protested that the street-door had been fast, and that no midnight marauder could have broken in and slipped upstairs to steal a pearl brooch (as Edwards put it) or any other article. So, failing other sources of suspicion, Edwards continued to suspect Lucy. There were moments when Bird did also: though he trusted her, in regard to it, on the whole. At any rate, Lucy was obliged to be most cautious. The quilted skirt had never been off her since, except atnight: through the warm genial days of spring and the sultry heat of summer she had worn the clumsy wadded thing constantly: and the earring had never been disturbed until this afternoon.

“You see how it is, Johnny,” she said to me, with one of her long-drawn sighs.

But at that moment the grocer’s young man in the white apron came back down the walk, swinging his empty basket by the handle; and he took another good stare at us in passing.

“I mean as to the peril I should be in if you suffer the restoration of the earring to transpire,” she continued in a whisper, when he was at a safe distance. “Oh, Johnny Ludlow! do you and Mrs. Todhetley take care, for my poor sake.”

“Lucy, you need not doubt either of us,” I said earnestly. “We will be, as you phrased it to-day, true as steel—and as cautious. Are you going back? Let me walk up to the top with you.”

“No, no; we part here. Seeing us together might arouse some suspicion, and there is no absolute certainty that they may not come out, though I don’t think they will. Edwards is for ever thinking of that earring: he does not feel safe about it, you perceive. Go you that way: I go this. Farewell, Johnny Ludlow; farewell.”

“Good-night, Lucy. I am off to the circus now.”

She went with a brisk step up the walk. I ran out by St. Oswald’s, and so on to the Saracen’s Head. The place was crammed. I could not get near Tod and Harry Parker; but they whistled at me across the sawdust and the fancy steeds performing on it.

We sat together in Mrs. Todhetley’s bedroom at Dyke Manor, the door bolted against intruders: she, in her astonishment at the tale I told, hardly daring to touch the earring. It was Saturday morning; we had come home from Worcester the previous evening; and should now be off to school in an hour. Tod had gone strolling out with the Squire; which gave me my opportunity.

“You see, good mother, how it all is, and the risk we run. Do you know, I had half a mind to keep the earring myself for some months and say never a word to you; only I was not sure of pitching on a safe hiding-place. It would be so dreadful a thing for Lucy Bird if it were to get known.”

“Poor Lucy, poor Lucy!” she said, the tears on her light eyelashes.“Oh, Johnny, if she could only be induced to leave that man!”

“But she can’t, you know. Robert Ashton has tried over and over again to get her back to the Court—and tried in vain. See how it glitters!”

I was holding the earring so that the rays of the sun fell upon it, flashing and sparkling. It seemed more beautiful than it used to be.

“I am very, very glad to have it back, Johnny; the other was useless without it. You have not,” with a tone of apprehension in her voice, “told Joseph?”

I shook my head. The truth was, I had never longed to tell anything so much in my life; for what did I ever conceal from him? It was hard work, I can assure you. The earring burning a hole in my pocket, and I not able to show Tod that it was there!

“And now, mother, where will you put it?”

She rose to unlock a drawer, took from it a small blue box in the shape of a trunk, and unlocked that.

“It is in this that I keep all my little valuables, Johnny. It will be quite safe here. By-and-by we must invent some mode of ‘recovering the earring,’ as poor Lucy said.”

Lifting the lid of a little pasteboard box, she showed me the fellow-earring, lying in a nest of cotton. I took it out.

“Put them both into your ears for a minute, good mother! Do!”

She smiled, hesitated; then took out the plain rings that were in her ears, and put in those of the beautiful pink topaz and diamonds. Going to the glass to look at herself, she saw the Squire and Tod advancing in the distance. It sent us into a panic. Scuffling the earrings out of her ears, she laid them together on the wool in the cardboard box, put the lid on, and folded it round with white paper.

“Light one of the candles on my dressing-table, Johnny. We will seal it up for greater security: there’s a bit of red sealing-wax in the tray.” And I did so at her direction: stamping it with the seal that had been my father’s, and which with his watch they had only recently allowed me to take into wearing.

“There,” she said, “should any one by chance see that packet, though it is not likely, and be curious to know what it contains, I shall say that I cannot satisfy them, as it concerns Johnny Ludlow.”

“Are you upstairs, Johnny? What in the world are you doing there?”

I went leaping down at Tod’s call. All was safe now.

That’s how the other earring came back. And “Eccles” had to be let off scot free. But I was glad he had the ducking.

CHAPTER XIV.

ANNE. [2]

Part the First.

hy, what’s the matter with you?” cried the Squire.

“Matter enough,” responded old Coney, who had come hobbling into our house, and sat down with a groan. “If you had the gout in your great toe, Squire, as I have it in mine, you’d soon feel what the matter was.”

“You have been grunting over that gout for days past, Coney!”

“So I have. It won’t go in and it won’t come out; it stops there on purpose to torment me with perpetual twinges. I have been over to Timberdale Parsonage this morning, and the walk has pretty nigh done for me.”

The Squire laughed. We often did laugh at Coney’s gout: which never seemed to be very bad, or to get beyond incipient “twinges.”

“Better have stayed at home and nursed your gout than have pranced off to Timberdale.”

“But I had to go,” said the farmer. “Jacob Lewis sent for me.”

Mr. Coney spoke of Parson Lewis, Rector of Timberdale. At this time the parson was on his last legs, going fast to his rest. His mother and old Coney’s mother had been first cousins, which accounted for the intimacy between the parsonage and the farm. It was Eastertide, and we were spending it at Crabb Cot.

“Do you remember Thomas Lewis, the doctor?” asked old Coney.

“Remember him! ay, that I do,” was the Squire’s answer. “What of him?”

“He has been writing to the parson to take a house for him; he and his daughter are coming to live in old England again. Poor Lewis can’t look out for one himself, so he has put it upon me. And much I can get about, with this lame foot!”

“A house at Timberdale?”

“Either in the neighbourhood of Timberdale or Crabb, Dr. Lewis writes: or he wouldn’t mind Islip. I saw his letter. Jacob says there’s nothing vacant at Timberdale at all likely to suit. We have been thinking of that little place over here, that the people have just gone out of.”

“What little place?”

“Maythorn Bank. ’Twould be quite large enough.”

“And it’s very pretty,” added the Squire. “Thomas Lewis coming back! Wonders will never cease. How he could reconcile himself to staying away all his life, I can’t tell. Johnny lad, he will like to see you. He and your father were as thick as inkle weavers.”

“Ay! Ludlow was a good friend to him while he was doing nothing,” nodded old Coney. “As to his staying away, I expect he could not afford to live in England. He has had a legacy left him now, he tells the parson. What are you asking, Johnny?”

“Did I ever know Dr Lewis?”

“Not you, lad. Thomas Lewis went abroad ages before you were born, or thought of. Five-and-twenty years he must have been away.”

“More than that,” said the Squire.

This Thomas Lewis was half-brother to the Rector of Timberdale, but was not related to the Coneys. He served his time, when a boy, to a surgeon at Worcester. In those days young men were apprenticed to doctors just as they were to other trades. Young Lewis was steady and clever; but so weak in health that when he was qualified and ought to have set up on his own account, he could not. People were wondering what would become of him, for he had no money, when by one of those good chances that rarely fail in time of need, he obtained a post as travelling companion to a nobleman, rich and sickly, who was going to reside in the warmth of the south of France. They went. It brought up Thomas Lewis’s health well; made quite another man of him; and when, a little later, his patron died, he found that he had taken care of his future. He had left the young surgeon a competency of two hundred a-year. Mr. Lewis stayed on where he was, married a lady who had some small means, took a foreign medical degree to become Dr. Lewis, and obtained a little practice amidst the English that went to the place in winter. They had been obliged to live frugally, though an income of from two to three hundred a-year goes a great deal farther over the water than it does in England: and perhaps the lack of means to travel had kept Dr. Lewis from visiting his native land. Very little had been known of him at home; the letters interchanged by him and the parson were few and far between. Now, it appeared, the doctor had again dropped into a legacy of a few hundred pounds, and was coming back with his daughter—an only child. The wife was dead.

Maythorn Bank, the pretty little place spoken of by Mr. Coney, was taken. It belonged to Sir Robert Tenby. A small, red-brick house, standing in a flower-garden, with a delightful view from its windows of the charming Worcestershire scenery and the Malvern Hills in the distance. Excepting old Coney’s great rambling farm-homestead close by, it was the nearest house to our own. But the inside, when it came to be looked at, was found to be in a state of dilapidation, not at all fit for a gentleman’s habitation. Sir Robert Tenby was applied to, and he gave directions that it should be put in order.

Before this was completed, the Rector of Timberdale died. He had been suffering from ailments and sorrow for a long while; and in the sweet spring season, the season that he had loved above all other seasons, when the May birds were singing and the May flowers were blooming, he crossed the river that divides us from the eternal shores.

Mr. Coney had to see to the new house then upon his own responsibility; and when it was finished and the workmen were gone out of it, he went over to Worcester, following Dr. Lewis’s request, and ordered in a sufficiency of plain furniture. By the middle of June all was ready, a maid-servant engaged, and the doctor and his daughter were at liberty to come when they pleased.

We had just got home for the Midsummer holidays when they arrived. Old Coney took me to the station to meet them; he said there might be parcels to carry. Once, a French lady had come on a visit to the farm, and she brought with her fifteen small hand-packages and a bandbox.

“And these people are French, too, you see, Johnny,” reasoned old Coney. “Lewis can’t be called anything better, and the girl was born there. Can’t even speak English, perhaps. I’m sure he has had time to forget his native tongue.”

But they spoke English just as readily and fluently as we did; even the young lady, Anne, had not the slightest foreign accent. And there were no small packages; nothing but three huge trunks and a sort of large reticule, which she carried herself, and would not give up to me. I liked her looks the moment I saw her. You know I always take likes or dislikes. A rather tall girl, light and graceful, with a candid face, a true and sweet voice, and large, soft brown eyes that met mine frankly and fearlessly.

But the doctor! He was like a shadow. A tall man, with stooping shoulders, handsome, thin features, hollow cheeks, and scanty hair. But every look and movement bespoke the gentleman; every tone of his low voice was full of considerate courtesy.

“What a poor weak fellow!” lamented old Coney aside to me.“It’s just the Thomas Lewis of the years gone by; no health, no stamina. I’m afraid he has only come home to die.”

They liked the house, and liked everything in it; and he thanked old Coney very earnestly for the trouble he had taken. I never saw aman, as I learnt later, so considerate for the feelings of others, or so grateful for any little service rendered to himself.

“It is delightful,” said Miss Lewis, smiling at me. “I shall call it our little château. And those hills in the distance are the beautiful Malvern Hills that my father has so often told me of!”

“How well you speak English!” I said. “Just as we do.”

“Do you suppose I could do otherwise, when my father and my mother were English? It is in truth my native tongue. I think I know England better than France. I have always heard so much of it.”

“But you speak French as a native?”

“Oh, of course. German also.”

“Ah, I see you are an accomplished young lady, Miss Lewis.”

“I am just the opposite,” she said, with a laugh. “I never learnt accomplishments. I do not play; I do not sing; I do not draw; I do not—but yes, I do dance: every one dances in France. Ours was not a rich home, and my dear mother brought me up to be useful in it. I can make my own dresses; I can cook you an omelette, or——”

“Anne, this is Mr. Todhetley,” interrupted her father.

The Squire had come in through the open glass doors, round which the jessamine was blooming. When they had talked a bit, he took me up to Dr. Lewis.

“Has Coney told you who he is? William Ludlow’s son. You remember him?”

“Remember William Ludlow! I must forget myself before I could forget him,” was the doctor’s answer, as he took both my hands in his and held me before him to look into my eyes. The tears were rising in his own.

“A pleasant face to look at,” he was pleased to say. “But they did not name him William?”

“No. We call him Johnny.”

“One generation passes away and another rises up in its place. How few, how few of those I knew are now left to welcome me! Even poor Jacob has not stayed.”

Tears seemed to be the fashion just then. I turned away, when released, and saw them in Miss Lewis’s eyes as she stood against the window-sill, absently playing with the white jessamine.

“When they begin to speak of those who are gone, it always puts me in mind of mamma,” she said in a whisper, as if she would apologize for the tears. “I can’t help it.”

“Is it long since you lost her?”

“Nearly two years; and home has not been the same to papa since. I do my best; but I am not my mother. I think it was that which made papa resolve to come to England when he found he could afford it. Home is but triste, you see, when the dearest one it contained has gone out of it.”

It struck me that the house could not have had one dearer in it than Anne. She was years and years older than I, but I began to wish she was my sister.

And her manners to the servant were so nice—a homely country girl, named Sally, engaged by Mr. Coney. Miss Lewis told the girl that she hoped she would be happy in her new place, and that she would help her when there was much work to do. Altogether Anne Lewis was a perfect contrast to the fashionable damsels of that day, who could not make themselves appear too fine.

The next day was Sunday. We had just finished breakfast, and Mrs. Todhetley was nursing her toothache, when Dr. Lewis came in, looking more shadowy than ever in his black Sunday clothes, with the deep band on his hat. They were going to service at Timberdale, and he wanted me to go with them.

“Of course I have not forgotten the way to Timberdale,” said he;“but there’s an odd, shy feeling upon me of not liking to walk about the old place by myself. Anne is strange to it also. We shall soon get used to it, I dare say. Will you go, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Crabb Church is close by, Lewis,” remarked the Squire, “and it’s a steaming hot day.”

“But I must go to Timberdale this morning. It was poor Jacob’s church, you know for many years. And though he is no longer there, I should like to see the desk and pulpit which he filled.”

“Ay, to be sure,” readily acquiesced the Squire. “I’d go with you myself, Lewis, but for the heat.”

Dr. Lewis said he should take the roadway, not the short cut through Crabb Ravine. It was a good round, and we had to start early. I liked Anne better than ever: no one could look nicer than she did in her trim black dress. As we walked along, Dr. Lewis frequently halted to recognize old scenes, and ask me was it this place, or that.

“That fine place out yonder?” he cried, stopping to point to a large stone house half-a-mile off the road, partly hidden amidst its beautiful grounds. “I ought to know whose it is. Let me see!”

“It is Sir Robert Tenby’s seat—Bellwood. Your landlord, sir.”

“Ay, to be sure—Bellwood. In my time it was Sir George’s, though.”

“Sir George died five or six years ago.”

“Has Sir Robert any family? He must be middle-aged now.”

“I think he is forty-five, or so. He is not married.”

“Does he chiefly live here?”

“About half his time; the rest he spends at his house in London, He lives very quietly. We all like Sir Robert.”

We sat in the Rector’s pew, having it to ourselves. Herbert Tanerton did the duty, and gave a good sermon. Nobody was yetappointed to the vacant living, which was in Sir Hubert Tenby’s gift. Herbert, meanwhile, took charge of the parish, and many people thought he would get it—as he did, later.

The Bellwood pew faced the Rector’s, and Sir Robert sat in it alone. A fine-looking man, with greyish hair, and a homely face that you took to at once. He seemed to pay the greatest attention to Herbert Tanerton’s sermon; possibly was deliberating whether he was worthy of the living, or not. In the pew behind him sat Mrs. Macbean, an old lady who had been housekeeper at Bellwood during two generations; and the Bellwood servants sat further down.

We were talking to Herbert Tanerton outside the church after service, when Sir Robert came up and spoke to the parson. He, Herbert, introduced Dr. Lewis to him as the late Rector’s brother. Sir Robert shook hands with him at once, smiled pleasantly at Anne, and nodded to me as he continued his way.

“Do you like your house?” asked Herbert.

“I shall like it by-and-by, no doubt,” was the doctor’s answer. “I should like it now, but for the paint. The smell is dreadful.”

“Oh, that will soon go off,” cried Herbert.

“Yes, I hope so: or I fear it will make me ill.”

In going back we took Crabb Ravine, and were at home in no time. They asked me to stay dinner, and I did so. We had a loin of lamb, and a raspberry tart, if any one is curious to know. Dr. Lewis had taken a fancy to me: I don’t know why, unless it was that he had liked my father; and I’m sure I had taken one to them. But the paint did smell badly, and that’s the truth.

In all my days I don’t think I ever saw a man so incapable as Dr. Lewis; so helpless in the common affairs of life. What he would have done without Anne, I know not. He was just fit to sit down and be led like a child; to have said to him—Come here, go there; do this, do the other. Therefore, when he asked me to run in in the morning and see if he wanted anything, I was not surprised. Anne thought he might be glad of my shoulder to lean upon when he walked about the garden.

It was past eleven when I arrived there, for I had to do an errand first of all for the Squire. Anne was kneeling down in the parlour amidst a lot of small cuttings of plants, which she had brought from France. They lay on the carpet on pieces of paper. She wore a fresh white cotton gown, with black spots upon it, and a black bow at the throat; and she looked nicer than ever.

“Look here, Johnny; I don’t know what to do. The labels have all come off, and I can’t tell which is which. I suppose I did not fasten them on securely. Sit down—if you can find a chair.”

The chairs and tables were strewed with books, most of them French, and other small articles, just unpacked. I did not want a chair, butknelt down beside her, asking if I could help. She said no, and that she hoped to be straight by the morrow. The doctor had stepped out, she did not know where, “to escape the smell of the paint.”

I was deep in the pages of one of the books, “Les Contes de Ma Bonne,” which Anne said was a great favourite of hers, though it was meant for children; and she had her head, as before, bent over the green sprigs and labels, when a shadow, passing the open glass doors, glanced in and halted. I supposed it must be the doctor; but it was Sir Robert Tenby. Up I started; Anne did the same quietly, and quietly invited him in.

“I walked over to see Dr. Lewis, and to ask whether the house requires anything else done to it,” he explained. “And I had to come early, as I am leaving the neighbourhood this afternoon.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Anne, “it is very kind of you to come. Will you please to sit down, sir?” hastily taking the books off a chair.“Papa is out, but I think he will not be long.”

“Are you satisfied with the house?” he asked.

“Quite so, sir; and I do not think it wants anything done to it at all. I hope you will not suppose we shall keep it in this state,” she added rather anxiously. “When things are being unpacked, the rooms are sure to look untidy.”

Sir Robert smiled. “You seem very notable, Miss Lewis.”

“Oh, I do everything,” she answered, smiling back. “There is no one else.”

He had not taken the chair, but went out, saying he should probably meet Dr. Lewis—leaving a message for him, about the house, in case he did not.

“He is your great and grand man of the neighbourhood, is he not, Johnny?” said Anne, as she knelt down on the carpet again.

“Oh, he is grand enough.”

“Then don’t you think he is, considering that fact, very pleasant and affable? I’m sure he is as simple and free in manners and speech as we are.”

“Most grand men—if they are truly great—are that. Your upstarts assume no end of airs.”

“I know who will never assume airs, Johnny. He has none in him.”

“Who’s that?”

“Yourself.”

It made me laugh. I had nothing to assume them for.

It was either that afternoon or the following one that Dr. Lewis came up to the Squire and old Coney as they were talking together in the road. He told them that he could not possibly stay in the house; he should be laid up if he did; he must go away until the smell of the paint was gone. That he was looking ill, both saw; and they believed he did not complain without cause.

The question was, where could he go? Mr. Coney hospitably offered him house-room; but the doctor, while thanking him, said the smell might last a long time, and he should prefer to be independent. He had been thinking of going with Anne to Worcester for a time. Did they know of lodgings there?

“Better go to an hotel,” said the Squire. “No trouble at an hotel.”

“But hotels are not always comfortable. I cannot feel at home in them,” argued the poor doctor. “And they cost too much besides.”

“You might chance to hit upon lodgings where you wouldn’t be any more comfortable, Lewis. And they’d be very dull for you.”

“There’s Lake’s boarding-house,” put in old Coney, whilst the doctor was looking blank and helpless.

“A boarding-house? Ay, that might do, if it’s not a noisy one.”

“It’s not noisy at all,” cried the Squire. “It’s uncommonly well conducted: sometimes there are not three visitors in the house. You and Miss Lewis would be comfortable there.”

And for Lake’s boarding-house Dr. Lewis and Anne took their departure on the very next day. If they had only foreseen the trouble their stay at it would lead to!

Lake’s boarding-house stood near the cathedral. A roomy house, with rather shabby furniture in it: but in boarding-houses and lodgings people don’t, as a rule, look for gilded chairs and tables. Some years before, Mrs. Lake, the wife of a professional man, and a gentlewoman, was suddenly left a widow with four infant children, boys, and nothing to keep them upon. What to do she did not know. And it often puzzles me to think what such poor ladies do do, left in similar straits.

She had her furniture; and that was about all. Friends suggested that she should take a house in a likely situation, and try for some lady boarders; or perhaps for some of the college boys, whose homes lay at a distance. Not to make too long a story of it, it was what she did do. And she had been in the house ever since, struggling on (for these houses mostly do entail a struggle), sometimes flourishing in numbers, sometimes down in the dumps with empty rooms. But she had managed to bring the children up: the two elder ones were out in the world, the two younger were still in the college school. Mrs. Lake was a meek little woman, ever distracted with practical cares, especially as to stews and gravies: Miss Dinah Lake (her late husband’s sister, and a majestic lady of middle age), who lived with her, chiefly saw to the company.

But now, would any one believe that Dr. Lewis was “that shy,” as their maid, Sally, expressed it—or perhaps you would rather call it helpless—that he begged the Squire to let me go with him to Lake’s. Otherwise he should be lost, he said; and Anne, accustomed to French ways and habits, could not be of much use to him in a strange boarding-house: Johnny knew the house, and would feel at home there.

When Captain Sanker and his wife (if you have not forgotten them) first came to Worcester, they stayed at Lake’s while fixing on a residence, and that’s how we became tolerably well acquainted with the Lakes. This year that I am now writing about was the one that preceded the accident to King Sanker, told of earlier in the volume. And, in point of rotation, this paper ought to have appeared first.

So I went with Dr. Lewis and Anne. It was late in the afternoon when we reached Worcester, close upon the dinner-hour—which was five o’clock, and looked upon as quite a fashionable hour in those days. The dinner-bell had rung, and the company had filed in to dinner when we got downstairs.

But there was not much company staying in the house. Mrs. Lake did not appear at dinner, and Miss Dinah Lake took the head of the table. It happened more often than not that Mrs. Lake was in the kitchen, superintending the dinner and seeing to the ragouts and sauces; especially upon the advent of fresh inmates, when the fare would be unusually liberal. Mrs. Lake often said she was a “born cook;” which was lucky, as she could not afford to keep first-rate servants.

Miss Dinah sat at the head of the table, in a rustling green gown and primrose satin cap. Having an income of her own she could afford to dress. (Mrs. Lake’s best gown was black silk, thin and scanty.) Next to Miss Dinah sat a fair, plump little woman, with round green eyes and a soft voice: at any rate, a soft way of speaking: who was introduced to us as Mrs. Captain Podd. She in turn introduced her daughters, Miss Podd and Miss Fanny Podd: both fair, like their mother, and with the same sort of round green eyes. A Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell completed the company; two silent people who seemed to do nothing but eat.

Dr. Lewis sat by Mrs. Captain Podd: and very pleasant and attentive the doctor found her. He was shy as well as helpless; but she talked to him freely in her low soft voice and put him altogether at his ease. My place chanced to be next to Miss Fanny Podd’s: and she began at once to put me at my ease, as her mother was putting the doctor.

“You are a stranger here, at the dinner-table,” observed Miss Fanny; “but we shall be good friends presently. People in this house soon become sociable.”

“I am glad of that.”

“I did not quite hear your name. Did you catch mine? Fanny Podd.”

“Yes. Thank you. Mine is Ludlow.”

“I suppose you never were at Worcester before?”

“Oh, I know Worcester very well indeed. I live in Worcestershire.”

“Why!” cried the young lady, neglecting her soup to stare at me,“we heard you had just come over from living in France. Miss Dinah said so—that old guy at the head of the table.”

“Dr. and Miss Lewis have just come from France. Not I. I know Miss Dinah Lake very well.”

“Do you? Don’t go and tell her I called her an old guy. Mamma wants to keep in with Miss Dinah, or she might be disagreeable. What a stupid town Worcester is!”

“Perhaps you do not know many people in it.”

“We don’t know any one. We had been staying last in a garrison town. That was pleasant: so many nice officers about. You could not go to the window but there’d be some in sight. Here nobody seems to pass but a crew of staid old parsons.”

“We are near the cathedral; that’s why you see so many parsons. Are you going to remain long in Worcester?”

“That’s just as the fancy takes mamma. We have been here already six or seven weeks.”

“Have you no settled home?”

Miss Fanny Podd pursed up her lips and shook her head. “We like change best. A settled home would be wretchedly dull. Ours was given up when papa died.”

Thus she entertained me to the end of dinner. We all left the table together—wine was not in fashion at Lake’s. Those who wanted any had to provide it for themselves: but the present company seemed to be satisfied with the home-brewed ale. Mrs. Captain Podd put her arm playfully into that of Dr. Lewis, and said she would show him the way to the drawing-room.

And so it went on all the evening: she making herself agreeable to the doctor: Miss Podd to Anne; Fanny to me. Of course it was highly good-natured of them. Mrs. Podd discovered that the doctor liked backgammon; and she looked for a moment as cross as a wasp on finding there was no board in the house.

“Quite an omission, my dear Miss Dinah,” she said, smoothing away the frown with a sweet smile. “I thought a backgammon-board was as necessary to a house as chairs and tables.”

“Mrs. Lake had a board once,” said Miss Dinah; “but the boys got possession of it, and somehow it was broken. We have chess—and cribbage.”

“Would you like a hand at cribbage, my dear sir?” asked Mrs. Podd of the doctor.

“Don’t play it, ma’am,” said he.

“Ah”—with a little sigh. “Julia, love, would you mind singing one of your quiet songs? Or a duet. Fanny, sweetest, try a quiet duet with your sister. Go to the piano.”

If they called the duet quiet, I wondered what they called noisy.You might have heard it over at the cathedral. Their playing and singing was of the style known as “showy.” Some people admire it: but it is a good thing ear-drums are not easily cracked.

The next day Mrs. Podd made the house a present of a backgammon-board: and in the evening she and Dr. Lewis sat down to play. Our number had decreased, for Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell had left; and Mrs. Lake dined with us, taking the foot of the table. Miss Dinah always, I found, kept the head.

“She is so much better calculated to preside than I am,” whispered meek Mrs. Lake to me later in the evening; as, happening to pass the kitchen-door after dinner, I saw her in there, making the coffee.“What should I do without Dinah!”

“But need you come out to make the coffee, Mrs. Lake?”

“My dear, when I leave it to the servants, it is not drinkable. I am rather sorry Mrs. Podd makes a point of having coffee in an evening. Our general rule is to give only tea.”

“I wouldn’t give in to Mrs. Podd.”

“Well, dear, we like to be accommodating when we can. Being my cousin, she orders things more freely than our ladies usually do. Dinah calls her exacting; but——”

“Is Mrs. Podd your cousin?” I interrupted, in surprise.

“My first cousin. Did you not know it? Her mother and my mother were sisters.”

“The girls don’t call you ‘aunt.’”

“They do sometimes when we are alone. I suppose they think I am beneath them—keeping a boarding-house.”

I had not much liked the Podds at first: as the days went on I liked them less. They were not sincere: I was quite sure of it; Mrs. Podd especially. But the manner in which she had taken Dr. Lewis under her wing was marvellous. He began to think he could not move without her: he was as one who has found a sheet-anchor. She took trouble of all kinds from him: her chief aim seemed to be to make his life pass pleasantly. She would order a carriage and take him for a drive in it; she’d parade the High Street on his arm; she sat with him in the Green within the enclosure, though Miss Dinah told her one day she had not the right of entrance to it; she walked him off to inspect the monuments in the cathedral, and talked with him in the cloisters of the old days when Cromwell stabled his horses there. After dinner they would play backgammon till bed-time. And with it all, she was so gay and sweet and gentle, that Dr. Lewis thought she must be a very angel come out of heaven.

“Johnny, I don’t like her,” said Anne to me one day. “She seems to take papa completely out of my hands. She makes him feel quite independent of me.”

“You like her as well as I do, Anne.”

“This morning I found him in the drawing-room; alone, for a wonder: he was gazing up in his abstracted way, as if wanting to discover what the pinnacles of the cathedral were made of, which appear to be so close, you know, from the windows of that room. ‘Papa, you are lonely,’ I said. ‘Would you like to walk out?—or what would you like to do?’ ‘My dear, Mrs. Podd will see to it all,’ he answered;‘don’t trouble yourself; I am waiting for her.’ It is just as though he had no more need of me.”

Anne Lewis turned away to hide her wet eyelashes. For my part, I thought the sooner Mrs. Captain Podd betook herself from Lake’s boarding-house, the better. It was too much of a good thing.

That same afternoon I heard some conversation not meant for me. Behind the house was a square patch of ground called a garden, containing a few trees and some sweet herbs. I was sitting on the bench there, underneath the high, old-fashioned dining-room windows, thinking how hot the sun was, wishing for something to do, and wondering when Dr. Lewis meant to send me home. He and Mrs. Podd were out together; Anne was in the kitchen, teaching Mrs. Lake some mysteries of French cookery. Miss Dinah sat in the dining-room, in her spectacles, darning table-cloths.

“Oh, have you come in!” I suddenly heard her say, as the door opened. And it was Mrs. Podd’s voice that answered.

“The sun is so very hot: poor dear Dr. Lewis felt quite ill. He has gone up to his room for half-an-hour to sit quietly in the shade. Where are my girls?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Miss Dinah: and it struck me that her tone of voice was rather crusty. “Mrs. Podd, I must again ask you when you will let me have some money?”

“As soon as I can,” said Mrs. Podd: who seemed by the sound, to have thrown herself upon a chair, and to be fanning her face with a rustling newspaper.

“But you have said that for some weeks. When is the ‘soon’to be?”

“You know I have been disappointed in my remittances. It is really too hot for talking.”

“I know that you say you have. But we cannot go on without some money. The expenses of this house are heavy: how are they to be kept up if our guests don’t pay us? Indeed you must let me have part of your account, if not all.”

“My dear sweet creature, the house is not yours,” returned Mrs. Podd, in her most honeyed accents.

“I manage it,” said Miss Dinah, “and am responsible for getting in the accounts. You know that our custom is to be paid weekly.”

“Exactly, dear Miss Dinah. But I am sure that my cousin, Emma Lake, would not wish to inconvenience me. I am indebted to her;not to you; and I will pay her as soon as I can. My good creature, how can you sit stewing over that plain sewing this sultry afternoon?”

“I am obliged to,” responded Miss Dinah. “We have not money to spend on new linen: trouble enough, it is, I can assure you, to keep the old decent.”

“I should get somebody to help me. That young woman, Miss Lewis, might do it: she seems to have been used to all kinds of work.”

“I wish you would shut that door: you have left it open,” retorted Miss Dinah: “I don’t like sitting in a draught, though it is hot. And I must beg of you to understand, Mrs. Podd, that we really cannot continue to keep you and your daughters here unless you can manage to give us a little money.”

By the shutting of the door and the silence that ensued, it was apparent that Mrs. Podd had departed, leaving Miss Dinah to her table-cloths. But now, this had surprised me. For, to hear Mrs. Captain Podd and her daughters talk, and to see the way in which they dressed, one could not have supposed they were ever at a fault for ready-cash.

At the end of ten days I went home. Dr. Lewis no longer wanted me: he had Mrs. Podd. And I think it must have been about ten days after that, that we heard the doctor and Anne were returning. The paint smelt still, but not so badly as before.

They did not come alone. Mrs. Podd and her two daughters accompanied them to spend the day. Mrs. Podd was in a ravishing new toilette; and I hoped Lake’s boarding-house had been paid.

Mrs. Podd went into raptures over Maythorn Bank, paint and all. It was the sweetest little place she had ever been in, she said, and some trifling, judicious care would convert it into a paradise.

I know who had the present care; and that was Anne. They got over about twelve o’clock; and as soon as she had seen the ladies’things off, and they were comfortably installed in the best parlour, its glass doors standing open to the fragrant flower-beds, she put on a big apron in the kitchen and helped Sally with the dinner.

“Need you do it, Anne?” I said, running in, having seen her crumbling bread as I passed the window.

“Yes, I must, Johnny. Papa bade me have a nice dinner served to-day: and Sally is inexperienced, you know: she knows nothing about the little dishes he likes. To tell you the truth,” added Anne, glancing meaningly into my eyes for a moment, “I would rather be cooking here than talking with them there.”

“Are you sorry to leave Worcester?”

“Yes, and no,” she answered. “Sorry to leave Mrs. Lake and Miss Dinah, for I like them both: glad to be at home again and to have papa to myself. I shall not cry if we never see Mrs. Podd again. Perhaps I am mistaken: and I’m sure I did not think that the judgingof others uncharitably was one of my faults; but I cannot help thinking that she has tried to estrange papa from me. I suppose it is her way: she cannot have any real wish to do it. However, she goes back to-night, and then it will be over.”

“Who is at Lake’s now?”

“No one—except the Podds. I am sorry, for I fear they have some difficulty to make both ends meet.”

Was it over! Anne Lewis reckoned without her host.

I was running into Maythorn Bank the next morning, when I saw the shimmer of Anne’s white garden-bonnet and her morning dress amidst the raspberry-bushes, and turned aside to greet her. She had a basin in her hand, picking the fruit, and the hot tears were running down her cheeks. Conceal her distress she could not; any attempt would have been worse than futile.

“Oh, Johnny, she is going to marry him!” cried she, with an outburst of sobs.

“Going to marry him!—who? what?” I asked, taking the basin from her hand: for I declare that the truth did not strike me.

“She is. Mrs. Podd. She is going to marry papa.”

For a moment she held her face against the apple-tree. The words confounded me. More real grief I had never seen. My heart ached for her.

“Don’t think me selfish,” she said, turning presently, trying to subdue the sobs, and wiping the tears away. “I hope I am not that: or undutiful. It is not for myself that I grieve; indeed it is not; but for him.”

I knew that.

“If I could only think it would be for his happiness! But oh, I fear it will not be. Something seems to tell me that it will not. And if—he should be—uncomfortable afterwards—miserable afterwards!—I think the distress would kill me.”

“Is it true, Anne? How did you hear it?”

“True! Too true, Johnny. At breakfast this morning papa said,‘We shall be dull to-day without our friends, Anne.’ I told him I hoped not, and that I would go out with him, or read to him, or do anything else he liked; and I reminded him of his small stock of choice books that he used to be so fond of. ‘Yes, yes, we shall be very dull, you and I alone in this strange house,’ he resumed. ‘I have been thinking for some time we should be, Anne, and so I have asked that dear, kind, lively woman to come to us for good.’ I did not understand him; I did not indeed, Johnny; and papa went on to explain. ‘You must know that I allude to Mrs. Podd, Anne,’ he said. ‘When I saw her so charmed with this house yesterday, and we were talking about my future loneliness in it—and she lamented it, even with tears—one word led to another, and I felt encouraged to venture to ask her to share it and be my wife. And so, my dear, it is all settled; and I trust it will be for the happiness of us all. She is a most delightful woman, and will make the sunshine of any home.’ I wish I could think it,” concluded Anne.

“No; don’t take the basin,” I said, as she went to do so. “I’ll finish picking the raspberries. What are they for?”

“A pudding. Papa said he should like one.”

“Why could not Sally pick them? Country girls are used to the sun.”

“Sally is busy. Papa bade her clear out that room where our boxes were put: we shall want all the rooms now. Oh, Johnny, I wish we had not left France! Those happy days will never come again.”

Was the doctor falling into his dotage? The question crossed my mind. It might never have occurred to me; but one day at Worcester Miss Dinah had asked it in my hearing. I felt very uncomfortable, could not think of anything soothing to say to Anne, and went on picking the raspberries.

“How many do you want? Are these enough?”

“Yes,” she answered, looking at them. “I must fill the basin up with currants.”

We were bending over a currant-bush, Anne holding up a branch and I stripping it, when footsteps on the path close by made us both look up hastily. There stood Sir Robert Tenby. He stared at the distress on Anne’s face, which was too palpable to be concealed, and asked without ceremony what was amiss.

It was the last feather that broke the camel’s back. These words from a stranger, and his evident concern, put the finishing touch to Anne’s state. She burst into more bitter tears than she had yet shed.

“Is it any trouble that I can help you out of?” asked Sir Robert, in the kindest tones, feeling, no doubt, as sorry as he looked. “Oh, my dear young lady, don’t give way like this!”

Touched by his sympathy, her heart seemed to open to him: perhaps she had need of finding consolation somewhere. Drying her tears, Anne told her story simply: commenting on it as she had commented to me.

“It is for my father’s sake that I grieve, sir; that I fear. I feel sure Mrs. Podd will not make him really happy.”

“Well, well, we must hope for the best,” spoke Sir Robert, who looked a little astonished at hearing the nature of the grievance, and perhaps thought Anne’s distress more exaggerated than it need have been. “Dr. Lewis wrote to me last night about some alteration he wants to make in the garden; I have come to speak to him about it.”

“Alteration in the garden!” mechanically repeated Anne. “I have heard nothing about it.”

He passed into the house to the doctor. We picked on at the currants, and then took them into the kitchen. Anne sat down on a chair to strip them from their stalks. Presently we saw Sir Robert and the doctor at one end of the garden, the latter drawing boundaries round a corner with his walking-stick.

“Oh, I know,” exclaimed Anne. “Yesterday Mrs. Podd suggested that a summer-house in that spot would be a delightful improvement. But I never, never could have supposed papa meant to act upon the suggestion.”

Just so. Dr. Lewis wished to erect a summer-house of wood and trellis-work, but had not liked to do it without first speaking to his landlord.

As the days went on, Anne grew to feel somewhat reassured. She was very busy, for all kinds of preparations had to be made in the house, and the wedding was to take place at once.

“I think, perhaps, I took it up in a wrong light, Johnny,” she said to me one day, when I went in and found her sewing at some new curtains. “I hope I did. It must have been the suddenness of the news, I suppose, and that I was so very unprepared for it.”

“How do you mean? In what wrong light?”

“No one seems to think ill of it, or to foresee cause for apprehension. I am so glad. I don’t think I can ever much like her: but if she makes papa happy, it is all I ask.”

“Who has been talking about it?”

“Herbert Tanerton for one. He saw Mrs. Podd at Worcester last week, and thought her charming. The very woman, he said, to do papa good; lively and full of resource. So it may all be for the best.”

I should as soon have expected an invitation to the moon as to the wedding. But I got it. Dr. Lewis, left to himself, was feeling helpless again, and took me with him to Worcester on the eve of the happy day. We put up at the Bell Hotel for the night; but Anne went direct to Lake’s boarding-house. I ran down there in the evening.

Whether an inkling of the coming wedding had got abroad, I can’t say; it was to be kept private, and had been, so far as any one knew; but Lake’s house was full, not a room to be had in it for love or money. Anne was put in a sleeping-closet two yards square.

“It is not our fault,” spoke Miss Dinah, openly. “We were keeping a room for Miss Lewis; but on Monday last when a stranger came, wanting to be taken in, Mrs. Podd told us Miss Lewis was going to the hotel with her father.”

“My dear love, I thought you were,” chimed in Mrs. Podd, as she patted Anne on the shoulder. “I must have mis-read a passage in your dear papa’s letter, and so caught up the misapprehension. Never mind; you shall dress in my room if your own is not large enough.And I am sure all young ladies ought to be obliged to me, for the new inmate is a delightful man. My daughters find him charming.”

“The room is quite large enough, thank you,” replied Anne, meekly.

“Do you approve of the wedding, Miss Dinah?” I asked her later, when we were alone in the dining-room. “Do you like it?”

Miss Dinah, who was counting a lot of glasses on the sideboard that the maid had just washed and brought in, counted to the end, and then began upon the spoons.

“It is the only way we can keep our girls in check,” observed she;“otherwise they’d break and lose all before them. I know how many glasses have been used at table, consequently how many go out to be washed, and the girl has to bring that same number in, or explain the reason why. As to the spoons, they get thrown away with the dishwater and sometimes into the fire. If they were silver it would be all the same.”

“Do you like the match, Miss Dinah?”

“Johnny Ludlow,” she said, turning to face me, “we make a point in this house of not expressing our likes and dislikes. Our position is peculiar, you know. When people have come to years of discretion, and are of the age that Mrs. Podd is, not to speak of Dr. Lewis’s, we must suppose them to be capable of judging and acting for themselves. We have not helped on the match by so much as an approving word or look: on the other hand, it has not lain in our duty or in our power to retard it.”

Which was, of course, good sense. But for all her caution, I fancied she could have spoken against it, had she chosen.

A trifling incident occurred to me in going back to the Bell. Rushing round the corner into Broad Street, a tall, well-dressed man, sauntering on before me, suddenly turned on his heel, and threw away his cigar. It caught the front of my shirt. I flung it off again; but not before it had burnt a small hole in the linen.

“I beg your pardon,” said the smoker, in a courteous voice—and there was no mistaking him for anything but a gentleman. “I am very sorry. It was frightfully careless of me.”

“Oh, it is nothing; don’t think about it,” I answered, making off at full speed.

St. Michael’s Church stood in a nook under the cathedral walls: it is taken down now. It was there that the wedding took place. Dr. Lewis arrived at it more like a baby than a bridegroom, helpless and nervous to a painful degree. But Mrs. Podd made up for his deficiencies in her grand self-possession; her white bonnet and nodding feather seemed to fill the church. Anne wore grey silk; Julia and Fanny Podd some shining pink stuff that their petticoats could be seen through. Poor Anne’s tears were dropping during the service; she kept her head bent down to hide them.

“Look up, Anne,” I said from my place close to her. “Take courage.”

“I can’t help it, indeed, Johnny,” she whispered. “I wish I could. I’m sure I wouldn’t throw a damper on the general joy for the world.”

The wedding-party was a very small one indeed; just ourselves and a stern-looking gentleman, who was said to be a lawyer-cousin of the Podds, and to come from Birmingham. All the people staying at Lake’s had flocked into the church to look on.

“Pray take my arm. Allow me to lead you out. I see how deeply you are feeling this.”

The ceremony seemed to be over almost as soon as it was begun—perhaps the parson, remembering the parties had both been married before, cut it short. And it was in the slight bustle consequent upon its termination that the above words, in a low, tender, and most considerate tone, broke upon my ear. Where had I heard the voice before?

Turning hastily round, I recognized the stranger of the night before. It was to Anne he had spoken, and he had already taken her upon his arm. Her head was bent still; the rebellious tears would hardly be kept back; and a sweet compassion sat on every line of his handsome features as he gazed down at her.

“Who is he?” I asked of Fanny Podd, as he walked forward with Anne.

“Mr. Angerstyne—the most fascinating man I ever saw in my life. The Lakes could not have taken him in, but for mamma’s inventing that little fable of Anne’s going with old Lewis to the Bell. Trust mamma for not letting us two girls lose a chance,” added free-speaking Fanny. “I may take your arm, I suppose, Johnny Ludlow.”

And after a plain breakfast in private, which included only the wedding-party, Dr. and Mrs. Lewis departed for Cheltenham.

Part the Second.

ohnny, what can I do? What do you think I can do?”

In the pretty grey silk that she had worn at her father’s wedding, and with a whole world of perplexity in her soft brown eyes, Anne Lewis stood by me, and whispered the question. As soon as the bride and bridegroom had driven off, Anne was to depart for Maythorn Bank, with Julia and Fanny Podd; all three of them to remain there for the few days that Dr. and Mrs. Lewis purposed to be away. But now, no sooner had the sound of the bridal wheels died on our ears, and Anne had suggested that they should get ready for their journey home, thanthe two young ladies burst into a laugh, and said, Did she think they were going off to that dead-alive place! Not if they knew it. And, giving her an emphatic nod to prove they meant what they said, they waltzed to the other end of the room in their shining pink dresses to talk to Mr. Angerstyne.

Consternation sat in every line of Anne’s face. “I cannot go there alone, or stay there alone,” she said to me. “These things are not done in France.”

No: though Maythorn Bank was her own home, and though she was as thoroughly English as a girl can be, it could not be done. French customs and ideas did not permit it, and she had been brought up in them. It was certainly not nice behaviour of the girls. They should have objected before their mother left.

“I don’t know what you can do, Anne. Better ask Miss Dinah.”

“Not go with you, after the arrangements are made—and your servant Sally is expecting you all!” cried Miss Dinah Lake. “Oh, you must be mistaken,” she added; and went up to talk to them. Julia only laughed.

“Go to be buried alive at Maythorn Bank as long as mamma chooses to stay away!” she cried. “You won’t get either of us to do anything of the kind, Miss Dinah.”

“Mrs. Podd—I mean Mrs. Lewis—will be back to join you there in less than a week,” said Miss Dinah.

“Oh, will she, though! You don’t know mamma. She may be off to Paris and fifty other places before she turns her head homewards again. Anne Lewis can go home by herself, if she wants to go: I and Fanny mean to stay with you, Miss Dinah.”

So Anne had to stay also. She sat down and wrote two letters: one to Sally, saying their coming home was delayed; the other to Dr. Lewis, asking what she was to do.

“And the gain is mine,” observed Mr. Angerstyne. “What would the house have been without you?”

He appeared to speak to the girls generally. But his eyes and his smile evidently were directed to Anne. She saw it too, and blushed. Blushed! when she had not yet known him four-and-twenty hours. But he was just the fellow for a girl to fall in love with—and no disparagement to her to say so.

“Who is he?” I that evening asked Miss Dinah.

“A Mr. Angerstyne,” she answered. “I don’t know much of him, except that he is an independent gentleman with a beautiful estate in Essex, and a fashionable man. I see what you are thinking, Johnny: that it is curious a man of wealth and fashion should be staying at Lake’s boarding-house. But Mr. Angerstyne came over from Malvern to see Captain Bristow, the old invalid, who keeps his room upstairs, and when here the captain persuaded him to stay for a day or two, ifwe could give him a room. That’s how it was. Captain Bristow leaves us soon, and I suppose Mr. Angerstyne will be leaving too.”

I had expected to go home the following day; but that night up came two of the young Sankers, Dan and King, and said I was to go and stay a bit with them. Leave to do so was easily had from home; for just as our school at old Frost’s was reassembling, two boys who had stayed the holidays were taken with bad throats, and we were not to go back till goodness knew when. Tod, who was on a visit in Gloucestershire, thought it would be Michaelmas.

Back came letters from Cheltenham. Mrs. Lewis told her girls they might remain at Worcester if they liked. And Dr. Lewis wrote to Anne, saying she must not go home alone; and he enclosed a note to Mrs. Lake, asking her to be so kind as to take care of his daughter.

After that we had a jolly time. The Sankers and Lakes amalgamated well, and were always at one another’s houses. This does not apply to Mrs. Lake and Miss Dinah: as Miss Dinah put it, they had no time for gadding down to Sanker’s. But Mr. Angerstyne (who had not left) grew quite familiar there; the Sankers, who never stood on the slightest ceremony, making no stranger of him. Captain Sanker discovered that two or three former naval chums of his were known to Mr. Angerstyne; one dead old gentleman in particular, who had been his bosom friend. This was quite enough. Mr. Angerstyne had, so to say, the key of the house given him, and went in and out of it at will.

Every one liked Mr. Angerstyne. And for all the pleasurable excursions that now fell to our lot, we were indebted to him. Without being ostentatious, he opened his purse freely; and there was a delicacy in his manner of doing it that prevented its being felt. On the plea of wanting, himself, to see some noted spot or place in the neighbourhood, he would order a large post-carriage from the Star or the Crown, and invite as many as it would hold to accompany him, and bring baskets of choice fruit, or dainties from the pastry-cook’s, to regale us on. Or he would tell the Sankers that King looked delicate: poor lame King, who was to die ere another year had flown. Down would come the carriage, ostensibly to take King for a drive; and a lot of us reaped the benefit. Mrs. Sanker was always of the party: without a chaperon, the young ladies could not have gone. Generally speaking the Miss Podds would come—they took care of that: and Anne Lewis always came—which I think Mr. Angerstyne took care of. The golden page of life was opening for Anne Lewis: she seemed to be entering on an Elysian pathway, every step of which was strewn with flowers.

One day we went to Holt Fleet. The carriage came down to the Sankers’ in the morning, Mr. Angerstyne in it, and the captain stepped out of doors, his face beaming, to see the start. Once in a way he would be of the party himself, but not often. Mr. Angerstyne handed Mrs Sanker in, and then called out for me. I held back, feeling uncomfortable at being always taken, and knowing that Fred and Dan thought me selfish for it. But it was of no use: Mr. Angerstyne had a way of carrying out his own will.

“Get up on the box, Johnny,” he said to me. And, close upon my heels, wanting to share the box with me, came Dan Sanker. Mr. Angerstyne pulled him back.

“Not you, Dan. I shall take King.”

“King has been ever so many times—little wretch!” grumbled Dan.“It’s my turn. It’s not fair, Mr. Angerstyne.”

“You, Dan, and Fred, and Toby, all the lot of you, shall have a carriage to yourselves for a whole day if you like, but King goes with me,” said Mr. Angerstyne, helping the lad up.

He got in himself, took his seat by Mrs. Sanker, and the post-boy touched up his horses. Mrs. Sanker, mildly delighted, for she liked these drives, sat in her ordinary costume: a fancy shawl of some thick kind of silk crape, all the colours of the rainbow blended into its pattern, and a black velvet bonnet with a turned-up brim and a rose in it, beneath which her light hair hung down in loose curls.

We stopped at Lake’s boarding-house to take up the three girls; who got in, and sat on the seat opposite Mrs. Sanker and Mr. Angerstyne: and then the post-boy started for Holt Fleet. “The place is nothing,”observed Captain Sanker, who had suggested it as an easy, pleasant drive to Mr. Angerstyne; “but the inn is comfortable, and the garden’s nice to sit or stroll in.”

We reached Holt Fleet at one o’clock. The first thing Mr. Angerstyne did was to order luncheon, anything they could conveniently give us, and to serve it in the garden. It proved to be ham and eggs; first-rate; we were all hungry, and he bade them keep on frying till further orders. At which the girl who waited on us laughed, as she drew the corks of some bottled perry.

I saw a bit of by-play later on. Strolling about to digest the ham and eggs, some in one part of the grounds, which in places had a wild and picturesque aspect, some in another, Mr. Angerstyne suddenly seized Anne, as if to save her from falling. She was standing in that high narrow pathway that is perched up aloft and looks so dangerous, steadying herself by a tree, and bending cautiously forwards to look down. The path may be gone now. The features of the whole place may be altered; perhaps even done away with altogether; for I am writing of years and years ago. He stole up and caught her by the waist.

“Oh, Mr. Angerstyne!” she exclaimed, blushing and starting.

“Were you going to take a leap?”

“No, no,” she smiled. “Would it kill me if I did?”

“Suppose I let you go—and send you over to try it?”

Ah, he would not do that. He was holding her all too safely. Annemade an effort to free herself; but her eyelids drooped over her tell-tale eyes, her conscious face betrayed what his presence was to her.

“How beautiful the river is from this, as we look up it!” she exclaimed.

“More than beautiful.”

Julia Podd rushed up to mar the harmony. Never does a fleeting moment of this kind set in but somebody does mar it. Julia flirted desperately with Mr. Angerstyne.

“Mr. Angerstyne, I have been looking for you everywhere. Mrs. Sanker wants to know if you will take us for a row on the water. The inn has a nice boat.”

“Mrs. Sanker does!” he exclaimed. “With pleasure. Are you fond of the water, Miss Lewis?”

Anne made no particular reply. She stood at a little distance now, apparently looking at the view; but I thought she wanted to hide her hot cheeks. Mr. Angerstyne caught her hand in his, playfully put his other hand within Miss Julia’s arm, and so piloted them down. Ah, he might flirt back again with Julia Podd, and did; with Fanny also; but it was not to them his thoughts were given.

“Go on the water!” said Mrs. Sanker, who was sitting under the shade of the trees, repeating one of her favourite ballads to King in a see-saw tone. “I! Julia Podd must have misunderstood me. To go on the water might be nice for those who would like it, I said. I don’t.”

“Will you go?” asked Mr. Angerstyne, turning to Anne.

Anne shook her head, confessing herself too much of a coward. She had never been on any water in her life until when crossing over from France, and never wished to be. And Mr. Angerstyne ungallantly let the boat alone, though Julia and Fanny told him they adored the water.

We sat down in the shade by Mrs. Sanker; some on the bench by her side, some on the grass at her feet, and she recited for us the time-worn ballad she had begun for King: just as the following year she would recite things to us, as already told of, sitting on the floor beam of the turret-room. It was called “Lord Thomas.” Should you like to hear it?

Lord Thomas he was a bold forester,

And a keeper of the king’s deer;

Fair Ellenor, she was a fair young lady,

Lord Thomas he loved her dear.

“Come, read me a riddle, dear mother,” said he,

“And riddle us both as one:

Whether fair Ellen shall be mine—

Or to bring the brown girl home?”

“The brown girl she hath both houses and lands;

Fair Ellenor, she has none:

Therefore I’d advise thee, on my blessing,

To bring the brown girl home.”

Then he decked himself and he dressed himself,

And his merry men, all in green:

And as he rode through the town with them

Folks took him to be some king.

When he came to fair Ellenor’s bower

So boldly he did ring;

There was none so ready as fair Ellen herself

To loose Lord Thomas in.

“What news, what news, Lord Thomas,

What news have you brought unto me?”

“I’m come to invite you to my wedding;

And that is bad news for thee.”

“Oh, now forbid,” fair Ellenor said,

“That any such thing should be done:

For I thought to have been the bride myself,

And that you would have been the bridegroom.

“Come, read me a riddle, dear mother,” said she,

“And riddle us both as one:

Whether I shall go to Lord Thomas’s wedding,

Or whether I shall tarry at home?”

“There’s one may be thy friend, I know;

But twenty will be thy foe:

Therefore I charge thee, on my blessing,

To Lord Thomas’s wedding don’t go.”

“There’s one will be my friend, I know,

Though twenty should be my foe:

Betide me life, or betide me death,

To Lord Thomas’s wedding I go.”

Then she went up into her chamber

And dressed herself all in green:

And when she came downstairs again,

They thought it must be some queen.

When she came to Lord Thomas’s castle

So nobly she did ring:

There was none so ready as Sir Thomas himself

To loose this lady in.

Then he took her by her lily-white hand

And led her across the hall;

And he placed her on the daïs,

Above the ladies all.

“Is this your bride, Lord Thomas?

I think she looks wondrous brown:

You might have had as fair a young maiden

As ever trod English ground.”

“Despise her not,” said Lord Thomas;

“Despise her not unto me;

I love thy little finger, Ellen,

Better than her whole body.”

The brown girl, having a knife in her hand,

Which was both keen and sharp,

Between the long ribs and the short,

She pierced fair Ellenor’s heart.

“Oh, what’s the matter?” Lord Thomas said,

“I think you look pale and wan:

You used to have as fine a colour

As ever the sun shone on.”

“What, are you blind, now, Thomas?

Or can’t you very well see?

Oh, can’t you see, and oh, can’t you see my own heart’s blood

Run trickling down to my knee?”

Then Lord Thomas, he took the brown girl by the hand,

And led her across the hall;

And he took his own bride’s head off her shoulders,

And dashed it against the wall.

Then Lord Thomas, he put the sword to the ground,

The point against his heart:

So there was an end of those three lovers,

So sadly they did part!

*****

Upon fair Ellenor’s grave grew a rose,

And upon Lord Thomas’s a briar:

And there they twixed and there they twined, till they came to the steeple-top;

That all the world might plainly see, true love is never forgot.

“Oh, how delightful these old ballads are!” cried Anne, as Mrs. Sanker finished.

“Delightful!” retorted Julia Podd. “Why, they are full of queer phrases and outrageous metre and grammar!”

“My dears, it is, I suppose, how people wrote and spoke in those old days,” said Mrs. Sanker, who had given great force to every turn of the song, and seemed to feel its disasters as much as though she had been fair Ellen herself.

“Just so,” put in Mr. Angerstyne. “The world was not full of learning then, as it is now, and we accept the language—ay and likeit, too—as that of a past day. To me, these old ballads are wonderful: every one has a life’s romance in it.”

And that day at Holt Fleet, the only time I, Johnny Ludlow, ever saw the place, lives in my memory as a romance now.

As the days went on, there could be no mistake made by the one or two of us who kept our eyes open. I mean, as to Mr. Angerstyne’s liking for Anne Lewis, and the reciprocal feelings he had awakened. With her, it had been a case of love at first sight; or nearly so. And that, if you may believe the learned in the matter, is the only love deserving the name. Perhaps it had been so with him: I don’t know.

Three parts of their time they talked together in French, for Mr. Angerstyne spoke it well. And that vexed Julia and Fanny Podd; who called themselves good French scholars, but who somehow failed to understand. “They talk so fast; they do it on purpose,” grumbled Fanny. At German Mr. Angerstyne was not apt. He spoke it a very little, and Anne would laughingly correct his mistakes, and repeat the German words slowly over, that he might catch the accent, causing us no end of fun. That was Anne’s time of day, as Fanny Podd expressed it; but when it came to the musical evenings, Anne was nowhere. The other two shone like stars then, and did their best to monopolize Mr. Angerstyne.

That a fine gentleman, rich, and a man of the great world, should stay dawdling on at a boarding-house, puzzled Miss Dinah, who knew what was what. Of course it was no business of hers; she and Mrs. Lake were only too glad to have one who paid so liberally. He would run upstairs to sit with Captain Bristow; and twice a week he went to Malvern, sometimes not getting back in time for dinner.

The college school had begun again, and I was back at Lake’s. For Tom and Alfred Lake, who had been away, were at home now: and nothing would do but I must come to their house before I went home—to which I was daily expecting a summons. As to the bride and bridegroom, we thought they meant to remain away for good; weeks had elapsed since their departure. No one regretted that: Julia and Fanny Podd considered Maythorn Bank the fag-end of the world, and hoped they might never be called to it. And Anne, living in the Elysian Fields, did not care to leave them for the dreary land outside their borders.

One evening we were invited to a tea-dinner at Captain Sanker’s. The Miss Podds persisted in calling it a soirée. It turned out to be a scrambling sort of entertainment, and must have amused Mr. Angerstyne. Biddy had poured the bowl of sweet custard over the meat patties by mistake, and put salt on the open tartlets instead of sugar. It seemed nothing but fun to us all. The evening, with its mistakes,and its laughter, and its genuine hospitality, came to an end, and we started to go home under the convoy of Mr. Angerstyne, all the Sanker boys, except Toby, attending us. It was a lovely moonlight night; Mrs. Lake, who had come in at the tail of the soirée to escort the girls home, remarked that the moon was never brighter.

“Why, just look there!” she exclaimed, as we turned up Edgar Street, intending to take that and the steps homewards; “the Tower gates are open!” For it was the custom to close the great gates of Edgar Tower at dusk.

“Oh, I know,” cried Fred Sanker. “The sub-dean gave a dinner to-night; and the porter has left the gates wide for the carriages. Who is good for a race round the green?”

It seemed that we all were, for the whole lot of us followed him in, leaving Mrs. Lake calling after us in consternation. The old Tower porter, thinking the Green was being charged by an army of ill-doers, rushed out of his den, shouting to us to come back.

Much we heeded him! Counting the carriages (three of them) waiting at the sub-dean’s door, we raced onwards at will, some hither, some thither. King went back to Mrs. Lake. The evening coolness felt delicious after the hot and garish day; the moonlight brought out the lights and shades of the queer old houses and the older cathedral. Collecting ourselves together presently, at Fred Sanker’s whoop, Mr. Angerstyne and Anne were missing.

“They’ve gone to look at the Severn, I think,” said Dan Sanker.“I heard him tell her it was worth looking at in the moonlight.”

Yes, they were there. He had Anne’s arm tucked up under his, and his head bent over her that she might catch his whispers. They turned round at hearing our footsteps.

“Indeed we must go home, Mr. Angerstyne,” said Julia Podd, who had run down after me, and spoke crossly. “The college clock is chiming a quarter to eleven. There’s Mrs. Lake waiting for us under the Tower!”

“Is it so late?” he answered her, in a pleasant voice. “Time flies quickly in the moonlight: I’ve often remarked it.”

Walking forward, he kept by the side of Julia; Anne and I followed together. Some of the boys were shouting themselves hoarse from the top of the ascent, wanting to know if we were lost.

“Is it all settled, Anne?” I asked her, jestingly, dropping my voice.

“Is what settled?” she returned. But she understood; for her face looked like a rose in the moonlight.

“You know. I can see, if the others can’t. And if it makes you happy, Anne, I am very glad of it.”

“Oh, Johnny, I hope—I hope no one else does see. But indeed you are making more of it than it deserves.”

“What does he say to you?”

“He has not said anything. So you see, Johnny, you may be quite mistaken.”

It was all the same: if he had not said anything yet, there could be no question that he meant soon to say it. We were passing the old elm-trees just then; the moonlight, flickering through them on Anne’s face, lighted up the sweet hope that lay on it.

“Sometimes I think if—if papa should not approve of it!” she whispered.

“But he is sure to approve of it. One cannot help liking Mr. Angerstyne: and his position is undeniable.”

The sub-dean’s dinner guests were gone, the three carriages bowling them away; and the porter kept up a fire of abuse as he waited to watch us through the little postern-door. The boys, being college boys, returned his attack with interest. Wishing the Sankers good-night, who ran straight down Edgar Street on their way home, we turned off up the steps, and found Mrs. Lake standing patiently at her door. I saw Mr. Angerstyne catch Anne’s hand for a moment in his, under cover of our entrance.

The morning brought news. Dr. and Mrs. Lewis were on their way to Maythorn Bank, expected to reach it that evening, and the young ladies were bidden to depart for it on the following day.

A wonderful change had taken place in Dr. Lewis. If they had doubted before whether the doctor was not falling into his dotage they could not doubt longer, for he was decidedly in it. A soft-speaking, mooning man, now; utterly lost in the shadow cast by his wife’s importance. She appeared to be smiling in face and gentle in accent as ever, but she overruled every soul in the house: no one but herself had a will in it. What little strength of mind he might have had, his new bride had taken out of him.

Anne did not like it. Hitherto mistress of all things under her father, she found herself passed over as a nonentity. She might not express an opinion, or hazard a wish. “My dear, I am here now,”Mrs. Lewis said to her once or twice emphatically. Anne was deposed; her reign was over.

One little thing, that happened, she certainly did not like. Though humble-minded, entirely without self-assertion, sweet-tempered and modest as a girl should be, she did not like this. Mrs. Lewis sent out invitations for dinner to some people in the neighbourhood, strangers to her until then; the table was too full by one, and she had told Anne that she could not sit down. It was too bad; especially as Julia and Fanny Podd filled two of the more important places, with bunches of fresh sweet-peas in their hair.

“Besides,” Mrs. Lewis had said to Anne in the morning, “we musthave a French side-dish or two, and there’s no one but you understands the making of them.”

Whether having to play the host was too much for him, or that he did not like the slight put upon his daughter, before the dinner was half over, the doctor fell asleep. He could not be roused from it. Herbert Tanerton, who had sat by Mrs. Lewis’s side to say grace, thought it was not sleep but unconsciousness. Between them the company carried him into the other room; and Anne, hastening to send in her French dishes, ran there to attend upon him.

“I hope and trust there’s nothing amiss with his heart,” said old Coney doubtfully, in the bride’s ear.

“My dear Mr. Coney, his heart is as strong as mine—believe me,”affirmed Mrs. Lewis, flicking some crumbs off the front of her wedding-dress.

“I hope it is, I’m sure,” repeated Coney. “I don’t like that blue tinge round his lips.”

They went back to the dinner-table when Dr. Lewis revived. Anne remained kneeling at his feet, gently chafing his hands.

“What’s the matter?” he cried, staring at her like a man bewildered.“What are you doing?”

“Dear papa, you fell asleep over your dinner, and they could not wake you. Do you feel ill?”

“Where am I?” he asked, as if he were speaking out of a dream. And she told him what she could. But she had not heard those suspicious words of old Coney’s.

It was some minutes yet before he got much sense into him, or seemed fully to understand. He fell back in the chair then, with a deep sigh, keeping Anne’s hand in his.

“Shall I get you anything, papa?” she asked. “You had eaten scarcely any dinner, they say. Would you like a little drop of brandy-and-water?”

“Why was not your dress ready?”

“My dress!” exclaimed Anne.

“She said so to me, when I asked why you did not come to table. Not made, or washed, or ironed; or something.”

Anne felt rather at sea. “There’s nothing the matter with my dresses, papa,” she said. “But never mind them—or me. Will you go back to dinner? Or shall I get you anything here?”

“I don’t want to go back; I don’t want anything,” he answered.“Go and finish yours, my dear.”

“I have had mine,” she said, with a faint blush. For indeed her dinner had consisted of some bread-and-butter in the kitchen, eaten over the French stew-pans. Dr. Lewis was gazing out at the trees, and seemed to be in thought.

“Perhaps you stayed away from home rather too long, papa,” shesuggested. “You are not accustomed to travelling; and I think you are not strong enough for it. You looked very worn when you first came home; worn and ill.”

“Ay,” he answered. “I told her it did not do for me; but she laughed. It was nothing but a whirl, you know. And I only want to be quiet.”

“It is very quiet here, dear papa, and you will soon feel stronger. You shall sit out of doors in the sun of a day, and I will read to you. I wish you would let me get you——”

“Hush, child. I’m thinking.”

With his eyes still fixed on the outdoor landscape, he sat stroking Anne’s hand abstractedly. Nothing broke the silence, except the faint rattle of knives and forks from the dining-room.

“Mind, Anne, she made me do it,” he suddenly exclaimed.

“Made you do what, papa?”

“And so, my dear, if I am not allowed to remedy it, and you feel disappointed, you must think as lightly of it as you are able; and don’t blame me more than you can help. I’ll alter it again if I can, be sure of that; but I don’t have a moment to myself, and at times it seems that she’s just my keeper.”

Anne answered soothingly that all he did must be right, but had no time to say more, for Mr. Coney, stealing in on tip-toe from the dining-room, came to see after the patient. Anne had not the remotest idea what it was that the doctor alluded to; but she had caught up one idea with dread of heart—that the marriage had not increased his happiness. Perhaps had marred it.

Maythorn Bank did not suit Mrs. Lewis. Ere she had been two weeks at it, she found it insufferably dull; not to be endured at any price. There was no fashion thereabout, and not much visiting; the neighbours were mostly simple, unpretending people, quite different from the style of company met with in garrison towns and pump-rooms. Moreover the few people who might have visited Mrs. Lewis, did not seem to take to her, or to remember that she was there. This did not imply discourtesy: Dr. Lewis and his daughter had just come into the place, strangers, so to say, and people could not practically recollect all at once that Maythorn Bank was inhabited. Where was the use of dressing up in peacock’s plumes if nobody came to see her? The magnificent wardrobe, laid in during her recent honeymoon, seemed as good as wasted.

“I can’t stand this!” emphatically cried Mrs. Lewis one day to her daughters. And Anne, chancing to enter the room unexpectedly at the moment, heard her say it, and wondered what it meant.

That same afternoon, Dr. Lewis had another attack. Anne found him sitting beside the pear-tree insensible, his head hanging over the arm of the bench. Travelling had not brought this second attack on,that was certain; for no man could be leading a more quiet, moping life than he was. Save that he listened now and then to some book, read by Anne, he had no amusement whatever, no excitement; he might have sat all day long with his mouth closed, for all there was to open it for. Mrs. Lewis’s powers of fascination, that she had exercised so persistently upon him as Mrs. Podd, seemed to have deserted her for good. She passed her hours gaping, sleeping, complaining, hardly replying to a question of his, if he by chance asked her one. Even the soft sweet voice that had charmed the world mostly degenerated now into a croak or a scream. Those very mild, not-say-boo-to-a-goose voices are sometimes only kept for public life.

“I shall take you off to Worcester,” cried Mrs. Lewis to him, when he came out of his insensibility. “We will start as soon as breakfast’s over in the morning.”

Dr. Lewis began to tremble. “I don’t want to go to Worcester,”said he. “I want to stay here.”

“But staying here is not good for you, my dear. You’ll be better at Mrs. Lake’s. It is the remains of this paint that is making you ill. I can smell it still quite strongly, and I decidedly object to stay in it.”

“My dear, you can go; I shall not wish to prevent you. But, as to the paint, I don’t smell it at all now. You can all go. Anne will take care of me.”

“My dear Dr. Lewis, do you think I would leave you behind me? It is the paint. And you shall see a doctor at Worcester.”

He said he was a doctor himself, and did not need another; he once more begged to be left at home in peace. All in vain: Mrs. Lewis announced her decision to the household; and Sally, whose wits had been well-nigh scared away by the doings and the bustle of the new inmates, was gladdened by the news that they were about to take their departure.

“Pourtant si le ciel nous protège,

Peut-être encore le reverrai-je.”

These words, the refrain of an old French song, were being sung by Anne Lewis softly in the gladness of her heart, as she bent over the trunk she was packing. To be going back to Worcester, where he was, seemed to her like going to paradise.

“What are you doing that for?”

The emphatic question, spoken in evident surprise, came from her stepmother. The chamber-door was open; Mrs. Lewis had chanced to look in as she passed.

“What are you doing that for?” she stopped to ask. Anne ceased her song at once and rose from her knees. She really did not know what it was that had elicited the sharp query—unless it was the singing.

“You need not pack your own things. You are not going toWorcester. It is intended that you shall remain here and take care of the house and of Sally.”

“Oh, but, Mrs. Lewis, I could not stay here alone,” cried Anne, a hundred thoughts rushing tumultuously into her mind. “It could not be.”

“Not stay here alone! Why, what is to hinder it? Do you suppose you would get run away with? Now, my dear, we will have no trouble, if you please. You will stay at home like a good girl—therefore you may unpack your box.”

Anne went straight to her father, and found him with Herbert Tanerton. He had walked over from Timberdale to inquire after the doctor’s health.

“Could this be, papa?” she said. “That I am to be left alone here while you stay at Worcester?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, child,” was the peevish answer. “My belief is that you dream dreams, Anne, and then fancy them realities.”

“But Mrs. Lewis tells me that I am not to go to Worcester—that I am to stay at home,” persisted Anne. And she said it before Mrs. Lewis: who had come into the room then, and was shaking hands with the parson.

“I think, love, it will be so much better for dear Anne to remain here and see to things,” she said, in that sweet company-voice of hers.

“No,” dissented the doctor, plucking up the courage to be firm. “If Anne stays here, I shall stay. I’m sure I should be thankful if you’d let us stay: we should have a bit of peace and quiet.”

She did not make a fuss before the parson. Perhaps she saw that to hold out might cause some unprofitable commotion. Treating Anne to a beaming smile, she remarked that her dear papa’s wish was of course law, and bade her run and finish her packing.

And when they arrived the next day at Lake’s, and Anne heard that Henry Angerstyne was in truth still there and knew that she should soon be in his presence, it did indeed seem to her that she had stepped into paradise. She was alone when he entered. The others had sought their respective chambers, leaving Anne to gather up their packages and follow, and she had her bonnet untied and her arms full of things when he came into the room. Paradise! she might have experienced some bliss in her life, but none like unto this. Her veins were tingling, her heart-blood leaping. How well he looked! how noble! how superior to other men! As he caught her hand in his, and bent to whisper his low words of greeting, she could scarcely contain within bounds the ecstasy of her emotion.

“I am so glad you are back again, Anne! I could not believe the good news when the letter came to Mrs. Lake this morning. You have been away two weeks, and they have seemed like months.”

“You did not come over: you said you should,” faltered Anne.

“Ay. And I sprained my foot the day you left, and have had to nurse it. It is not strong yet. Bad luck, was it not? Bristow has been worse, too. Where are you going?”

“I must take these things up to papa and Mrs. Lewis. Please let me go.”

But, before he would release her hand, he suddenly bent his head and kissed her: once, twice.

“Pardon me, Anne, I could not help it; it is only a French greeting,”he whispered, as she escaped with her face rosy-red, and her heart beating time to its own sweet music.

“What a stay Mr. Angerstyne is making!” exclaimed Fanny Podd, who had run about to seek Miss Dinah, and found her making a new surplice for Tom.

“Well, we are glad to have him,” answered Miss Dinah, “and he has had a sprained ankle. We know now what is detaining him in Worcestershire. It seems that some old lady is lying ill at Malvern, and he can’t get away.”

“Some old lady lying ill at Malvern!” retorted Fanny, who liked to take Miss Dinah down when she could. “Why should that detain Mr. Angerstyne? Who is the old lady?”

“She is a relation of his: his great-aunt, I think. And I believe she is very fond of him, and won’t let him go to any distance. All these visits he makes to Malvern are to see her. She is very rich, and he will come in for her money.”

“I’m sure he’s rich enough without it; he does not want more money,” grumbled Fanny. “If the old lady would leave a little to those who need it, she might do some good.”

“She would have to be made of gold and diamonds if she left some to all who need it,” sighed Miss Dinah. “Mr. Angerstyne deserves to be rich, he is so liberal with his money. Many a costly dainty he causes us to send up to that poor sick Captain Bristow, letting him think it is all in the regular fare.”

“But I think it was fearfully sly of him never to tell us why he went so much to Malvern—only you must always put in a good word for everybody, Miss Dinah. I asked him one day what his attraction was, that he should be perpetually running over there, and he gravely answered me that he liked the Malvern air.”

Just for a few days, Dr. Lewis seemed to get a little better. Mrs. Lewis’s fascinations had returned to her, and she in a degree kept him alive. It might have been from goodness of heart, or it might have been that she did not like to neglect him before people just yet, but she was ever devising plans for his amusement—which of course included that of herself and of her daughters. Mr. Angerstyne had not been more lavish of money in coach hire than was Mrs. Lewis now. Carriages for the country and flys for the town—that was the order ofthe day. Anne was rarely invited to make one of the party: for her there never seemed room. What of that?—when by staying at home she had the society of Mr. Angerstyne.

Whilst they were driving everywhere, or taking their pleasure in the town, shopping and exhibiting their finery, of which they seemed to display a new stock perpetually, Anne was left at liberty to enjoy her dangerous happiness. Dangerous, if it should not come to anything: and he had not spoken yet. They would sit together over their German, Anne trying to beat it into him, and laughing with him at his mistakes. If she went out to walk, she presently found herself overtaken by Mr. Angerstyne: and they would linger in the mellow light of the soft autumn days, or in the early twilight. Whatever might come of it, there could be no question that for the time being she was living in the most intense happiness. And about a fortnight of this went on without interruption.

Then Dr. Lewis began to droop. One day when he was out he had another of those attacks in the carriage. It was very slight, Mrs. Lewis said when they got back again; he did not lose consciousness for more than three or four minutes. But he continued to be so weak and ill afterwards that a physician was called in—Dr. Malden. What he said was known only to the patient and his wife, for nobody else was admitted to the conference.

“I want to go home,” the doctor said to Anne the next morning, speaking in his usual querulous, faint tone, and as if his mind were half gone. “I’m sure I did not smell any paint the last time; it must have been her fancy. I want to go there to be quiet.”

“Well, papa, why don’t you say so?”

“But it’s of no use saying so: she won’t listen. I can’t stand the racket here, child, and the perpetual driving out: the wheels of the carriages shake my head. And look at the expense! It frightens me.”

Anne scarcely knew what to answer. She herself was powerless; and, so far as she believed, her father was; utterly so. Powerless in the hands of his new wife. Dr. Lewis glanced round the room as if to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, and went on in a whisper.

“I’m terrified, Anne. I am being ruined. All my ready-money’s gone; she has had it all; she made me draw it out of the bank. And there, in that drawer, are two rolls of bills; she brought them to me yesterday, and there’s nothing to pay them with.”

Anne’s heart fluttered. Was he only fancying these things in his decaying mind? Or, were they true?

“September has now come in, papa, and your quarter’s dividends will soon be due, you know. Do not worry yourself.”

“They have been forestalled,” he whispered. “She owed a lot of things before her marriage, and the people would have sued me had Inot paid them. I wish we were back in France, child! I wish we had never left it!” And, but for one thing, Anne would have wished it, too.

One afternoon, when it was getting late, Anne went into High Street to buy some ribbon for her hair. Mrs. Lewis and her party had gone over to Croome, some one having given her an order to see the gardens there. Lake’s house was as busy as it could be, some fresh inmates of consequence being expected that evening; Anne had been helping Miss Dinah, and it was only at the last minute she could run out. In coming back, the ribbon bought, close to the college gates she heard steps behind her, and found her arm touched. It was by Mr. Angerstyne. For the past two days—nearly three—he had been absent at Malvern. The sight of him was as if the sun had shone.

“Oh!—is it you?—are you back again?” she cried, with as much quiet indifference as she could put on.

“I have just arrived. My aunt is better. And how are you, Anne?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“Need you go in yet? Let us take a short stroll. The afternoon is delightful.”

He called it afternoon, but it was getting on fast for evening: and he turned in at the college gates as he spoke. So they wound round St. Michael’s Churchyard and passed on to the Dark Alley, and so down the long flight of steps that leads from it, and on to the banks of the Severn.

“How are you all going on at Lake’s?” he asked presently, breaking the silence.

“Just as usual. To-day is a grand field-day,” Anne added gaily:“at least, this evening is to be one, and we are not to dine until seven o’clock.”

“Seven? So much the better. But why?”

“Some people of importance are coming——”

Mr. Angerstyne’s laugh interrupted her. She laughed also.

“They are Miss Dinah’s words: ‘people of importance.’ They will arrive late, so the dinner-hour is put off.”

“Take care, Anne!”

A horse, towing a barge, was overtaking them. Mr. Angerstyne drew Anne out of the way, and the dinner and the new guests were forgotten.

It was almost dusk when they returned. The figures on the college tower were darkened, as they came through the large boat-house gateway: the old elm-trees, filled with their cawing rooks, looked weird in the dim twilight. Mr. Angerstyne did not turn to the Dark Alley again,but went straight up to the Green. He was talking of his estate in Essex. It was a topic often chosen by him; and Anne seemed to know the place quite well by this time.

“You would like the little stream that runs through the grounds,”he was observing. “It is not, of course, like the grand river we have just left, but it is pleasant to wander by, for it winds in and out in the most picturesque manner possible, and the banks are overshadowed by trees. Yes, Anne, you would like that.”

“Are you going through the cloisters?—is it not too late?” she interrupted, quite at a loss for something to say; not caring to answer that she should like to wander by the stream.

For he was crossing towards the little south cloister door: though onwards through the Green would have been their more direct road.

“Too late? No. Why should it be? You are not afraid of ghosts, are you?”

Anne laughed. But, lest she should be afraid of ghosts, he put her hand within his arm as they passed through the dark narrow passage beyond the postern; and so they marched arm-in-arm through the cloisters.

“To sit by that winding stream on a summer’s day listening to its murmurs, to the singing of the birds, the sweet sighing of the trees; or holding low converse with a cherished companion—yes, Anne, you would like that. It would just suit you, for you are of a silent and dreamy nature.”

There might not be much actual meaning in the words if you sat down to analyze them: but, to the inexperienced mind of Anne, they sounded very like plain speaking. At any rate, she took them to be an earnest that she should sometime sit by that stream with him—his wife. The dusky cloisters seemed to have suddenly filled themselves with refulgent light; the gravestones over which she was passing felt soft as the mossy glades of fairyland: ay, even that mysterious stone that bears on it the one terrible word “Miserrimus.” Heaven was above her, and heaven beneath: there was no longer any prosaic earth for Anne Lewis.

“Good-night to you, gentlefolks.”

The salutation was from the cloister porter; who, coming into close the gates, met them as they were nearing the west door. Not another word had passed until now: Mr. Angerstyne had fallen into silence. Anne could not have spoken to gain the world.

“Good-night to you, my man,” he answered.

Lake’s was in a bustle when they reached it. The luggage of the new people, who had just been shown to their chambers, was being taken in; the carriage containing Dr. and Mrs. Lewis was then just driving up. Anne felt alarmed as she caught sight of her father; he looked so very ill. Mr. Angerstyne, in his ready, kindly way, waited to help him down and give him his arm along the passage; he then ran up to his room, remarking that he had letters to write.

The people assembled for dinner in full fig, out of deference to the new-comers: who proved to be a Lady Knight, and a Mrs. and Miss Colter. Anne wore her pretty grey bridesmaid’s dress, and the ribbon, just bought, in her hair. At the very last moment, Mr. Angerstyne came down, his hands full of the letters he had been writing.

“Why, are you here?” exclaimed Lady Knight: who seemed to be a chatty, voluble woman. “I am surprised.”

Mr. Angerstyne, putting his letters on the side-table, until he could take them to the post, turned round at the address. A moment’s stare, half doubt, half astonishment, and he went forward to shake Lady Knight’s hand.

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“I have been here some little time. Old Miss Gibson is at Malvern, so I can’t go far away.”

There was no opportunity for more: dinner was waiting. Mr. Angerstyne and Anne sat side by side that evening; Lady Knight was opposite. Miss Dinah presided as usual, her best yellow cap perched on the top of her curls.

During an interval of silence between the general bustle and rattle of the dinner, for the two girls who waited (after their own fashion) had both run away with the fish to bring in the meat, Lady Knight looked across the table to put a question to Mr. Angerstyne.

“How is your wife?”

The silence dropped to a dead stillness. He appeared not to hear.

“How is your wife, Henry Angerstyne? Have you seen her lately?”

He could not pretend to be deaf any longer, and answered with angry curtness:

“No, I have not. She is all right, I suppose.”

By the way the whole table stared, you might have thought a bombshell had fallen. Miss Dinah sat with her mouth open in sheer amazement, and then spoke involuntarily.

“Are you really married, Mr. Angerstyne?”

“Of course he is married,” said Lady Knight, answering Miss Dinah.“All the world knows that. His wife is my cousin. I saw her at Lowestoft a few weeks ago, Henry. She was looking prettier than ever.”

“Ah, Mr. Angerstyne, how sly you were, not to tell us!” cried Mrs. Lewis, playfully shaking her fan at him. “You—— Oh, goodness me!”

A loud crash! Jenny the maid had dropped a hot vegetable dish on the floor, scattering the pieces and spilling the peas; and followed it up with a shriek and a scream. That took off the attention; andMr. Angerstyne, coolly eating away at his bread, turned to make some passing remark to Anne.

But the words he would have said were left unspoken. No ghost ever seen, in cloisters or out of them, was whiter than she. Lips and fingers were alike trembling.

“You should be more careful!” he called to the maid in a tone of authority. “Ladies don’t care to be startled in this way.” Just as though Anne had turned white from the noise of the broken dish!

Well, it had been a dreadful revelation for her. All the sunshine of this world seemed to have gone out for ever; to have left nothing behind it but a misty darkness. Rallying her pride and her courage, she went on with her dinner, as the others did. Her head was throbbing, her brain on fire; her mind had turned to chaos. She heard them making arrangements for a picnic-party to the woods at Croome on the morrow; not in the least understanding what was said or planned.

“You did surprise us!” observed Mrs. Lewis to Lady Knight, when they were in the drawing-room after dinner, and Mr. Angerstyne had gone out to post his letters. “What could have been his motive for allowing us to think him a bachelor?”

“A dislike to mention her name,” replied Lady Knight, candidly.“That was it, I expect. He married her for her pretty face, and then found out what a goose she was. So they did not get on together. She goes her way, and he goes his; now and then they meet for a week or two, but it is not often.”

“What a very unsatisfactory state of things!” cried Miss Dinah, handing round the cups of coffee herself for fear of another upset. “Is it her fault or his?”

“Faults lie on both sides,” said Lady Knight, who had an abrupt way of speaking, and was as poor as a church mouse. “She has a fearfully affronting temper of her own; those women with dolls’ faces sometimes have; and he was not as forbearing as he might have been. Any way, that is the state of affairs between Mr. and Mrs. Angerstyne: and, apart from it, there’s no scandal or reproach attaching to either of them.”

Anne, sitting in a quiet corner, listened to all this mechanically. What mattered the details to her? the broad fact had been enough. The hum of conversation was going on all around; her father, looking somewhat the better for his dinner, was playing at backgammon with Tom Lake. She saw nothing, knew nothing, until Mr. Angerstyne dropped into the seat beside her.

“Shall you join this expedition to Croome to-morrow, Anne?”

Julia and Fanny were thumping over a duet, pedal down, and Anne barely caught the low-spoken words.

“I do not know,” she answered, after a brief pause. “My head aches.”

“I don’t much care about it myself; rather the opposite. I shall certainly not go if you don’t.”

Why! he was speaking to her just as though nothing had occurred! If anything could have added to her sense of shame and misery it was this. It sounded like an insult, arousing all the spirit she possessed; her whole nature rose in rebellion against his line of conduct.

“Why have you been talking to me these many weeks as you have been talking, Mr. Angerstyne?” she asked in her straightforward simplicity, turning her face to his.

“There has been no harm in it,” he answered.

“Harm!” she repeated, from her wrung heart. “Perhaps not to you. There has been at least no good in it.”

“If you only knew what an interval of pleasantness it has been for me, Anne! Almost deluding me into forgetting my odious chains and fetters?”

“Would a gentleman have so amused himself, Mr. Angerstyne?”

But she gave him no opportunity of reply. Rising from her seat, and drawing her slight form to its full height, she looked into his face steadily, knowing not perhaps how much of scorn and reproach her gaze betrayed, then crossed the room and sat down by her father. Once after that she caught his eye: caught the expression of sorrow, of repentance, of deep commiseration that shone in every line of his face—for she could not altogether hide the pain seated in her own. And later, amidst the bustle of the general good-nights, she found her hand pressed within his, and heard his whispered, contrite prayer—

“Forgive me, Anne: forgive me!”

She lay awake all night, resolving to be brave, to make no sign; praying Heaven to help her to bear the anguish of her sorely-stricken heart, not to let the blow quite kill her. It seemed to her that she must feel it henceforth during all her life.

And before the house was well up in the morning, a messenger arrived post-haste from Malvern to summon Mr. Angerstyne to his aunt’s dying bed. He told Miss Dinah, when he shook hands with her at parting, that she might as well send his traps after him, if she would be so kind, as he thought he might not be able to return to Worcester again.

And that was the ending of Anne Lewis’s love. Not a very uncommon ending, people say. But she had been hardly dealt by.

Part the Third.

he blinds of a house closely drawn, the snow drifting against the windows outside, and somebody lying dead upstairs, cannot be called a lively state of things. Mrs. Lewis and her daughters, Julia and Fanny Podd, sitting over the fire in the darkened dining-room at Maythorn Bank, were finding it just the contrary.

When Dr. Lewis, growing worse and worse during their sojourn at Lake’s boarding-house at Worcester the previous autumn, had one day plucked up courage to open his mind to his physician, telling him that he was pining for the quiet of his own little cottage home, and that the stir and racket at Lake’s was more than he could bear, Dr. Malden peremptorily told Mrs. Lewis that he must have his wish,and go. So she had to give in, and prepared to take him; though it went frightfully against the grain. That was in September, three months back; he had been getting weaker and more imbecile ever since, and now, just as Christmas was turned, he had sunk quietly away to his rest.

Anne, his loving, gentle daughter, had been his constant companion and attendant. He had not been so ill as to lie in bed, but a great deal had to be done for him, especially in the matter of amusing what poor remnant of mind was left. She read to him, she talked to him, she wrapped great-coats about him, and took him out to walk on sunshiny days in the open walk by the laurels. It was well for Anne that she was thus incessantly occupied, for it diverted her mind from the misery left there by the unwarrantable conduct of Mr. Angerstyne. When a girl’s lover proves faithless, to dwell upon him and lament him brings to her a sort of painful pleasure: but that negative indulgence was denied to Anne Lewis: Henry Angerstyne was the husband of another, and she might not, willingly, keep him in her thoughts. To forget him, as she strove to do, was a hard and bitter task: but the indignation she felt at the man’s deceit and cruel conduct was materially helping her. Once, since, she had seen his name in the Times: it was amongst the list of visitors staying at some nobleman’s country-house. Henry Angerstyne. And the thrill that passed through her veins as the name caught her eye, the sudden stopping and then rushing violently onwards of her life’s blood, convinced her how little she had forgotten him.

“But I shall forget him in time,” she said to herself, pressing her hand upon her wildly-beating heart. “In time, God helping me.”

And from that moment she redoubled her care and thought for her father; and he died blessing her and her love for him.

Anne felt the loss keenly; though perhaps not quite so much so asshe would have felt it had her later life been less full of suffering. It seemed to be but the last drop added to her cup of bitterness. She knew that to himself death was a release: he had ceased to find pleasure in life. And now she was left amidst strangers, or worse than strangers; she seemed not to have a friend to turn to in the wide world.

Dr. Lewis had died on Monday morning. This was Tuesday. Mrs. Lewis had been seeing people to-day and yesterday, giving her orders; but never once consulting Anne, or paying her the compliment to say, Would you like it to be this way, or that?

“How on earth any human being could have pitched upon this wretched out-of-the-world place, Crabb, to settle down in, puzzles me completely,” suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Lewis, bending forward to stir the fire.

“He must have been a lunatic,” acquiesced Julia, irreverently alluding to the poor man who was lying in the room above.

“Not a decent shop in the place! Not a dressmaker who can cut out a properly-fitting skirt! Be quiet, Fanny: you need notdance.”

“One does not know what to do,” grumbled Fanny, ceasing to shuffle, and returning to her seat. “But I should like to know, mamma, about our mourning.”

“I think I shall go to Worcester to-day and order it,” spoke up Mrs. Lewis, briskly, after a pause. “Necessity has no law; and we cannot get proper things unless I do. Yes, we will go: I don’t mind the weather. Julia, ring the bell.”

Anne—poor Anne—came in to answer the bell. She had no choice: Sally was out on an errand.

“Just see that we have a tray in with the cold meat, Anne, at half-past twelve. We must go to Worcester about the mourning——”

“To Worcester!” involuntarily interrupted Anne, in her surprise.

“There’s no help for it, though of course it’s not the thing I would choose to do,” said Mrs. Lewis, coldly. “One cannot provide proper things here: bonnets especially. I will get you a bonnet at the same time. And we must have a bit of something, hot and nice, for tea, when we come home.”

“Very well,” sighed Anne.

In the afternoon, Anne sat in the same room alone, busy over some black work, on which her tears dropped slowly. When it was growing dusk, Mr. Coney and the young Rector of Timberdale came in together. Herbert Tanerton did not forget that his late stepfather and Dr. Lewis were half-brothers. Anne brushed away the signs of her tears, laid down her work, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

“Now, my lass,” said the farmer, in his plain, homely way, but he always meant kindly, “I’ve just heard that that stepmother of yourswent off to Worcester to-day with those two dandified girls of hers, and so I thought I’d drop in while the coast was clear. I confess I don’t like her: and I say that somebody ought to look a bit to you and your interests.”

“And I, coming over upon much the same errand, met Mr. Coney at the gate,” added Herbert Tanerton, with a smile as near geniality as he ever gave. “I wish to express my deep regret for your loss, Miss Lewis, and to assure you of my true sympathy. You will think my visit a late one, but I had a—a service this afternoon.” He would not say a funeral.

“You are both very, very kind,” said Anne, her eyes again filling,“and I thank you for thinking of me. I feel isolated from all: this place at best is strange to me after my life’s home in France. It seems that I have not a friend in the world.”

“Yes, you have,” said the farmer; “and if my wife had not been staying with our sick daughter at Worcester, she’d have been in to tell you the same. My dear, you are just going, please, to make a friend of me. And you won’t think two or three questions, that I should like to put, impertinent, will you?”

“That I certainly will not,” said Anne.

“Well, now, to begin with: Did your father make a will?”

“Oh yes. I hold it.”

“And do you chance to know how the property is left?”

“To me. No name but my own is mentioned in it.”

“Then you’ll be all right,” said Mr. Coney. “I feared he might have been leaving somebody else some. You will have about two hundred and fifty pounds a-year; and that’s enough for a young girl. When your father first came over, he spoke to me of his income and his means.”

“I—I fear the income will be somewhat diminished from what it was,” hesitated Anne, turning red at having to confess so much, because it would tell against her stepmother. “My father has had to sell out a good deal lately, to entrench upon his capital. I think the trouble it gave him hastened his end.”

“Sell out for what?” asked old Coney.

“For bills, and—and debts, that came upon him.”

“Her bills? Her debts?”

Anne did not expressly answer, but old Coney caught up the truth, and nodded his head in wrath. He as good as knew it before.

“Well, child, I suppose you may reckon, at the worst, on a clear two hundred a-year, and you can live on that. Not keep house, perhaps; and it would be very lonely for you also. You will have to take up your abode with some pleasant family: many a one would be glad to have you.”

“I should like to go back to France,” sighed Anne, recalling themisery that England had brought her: first in her new stepmother, then in Mr. Angerstyne, and now in her father’s death. “I have many dear friends in France who will take every care of me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” cried old Coney, with a blank look. “France may be very well for some people; but I’d almost as lieve go to the gallows as there. Don’t you like England?”

“I should like it well, if I—if I could be happy in it,” she answered, turning red again at the thought of him who had marred her happiness.“But, you see, I have no ties here.”

“You must make ties, my lass.”

“How much of the income ought I to pay over yearly to Mrs. Lewis, do you think?” she questioned. “Half of it?”

“Half! No!” burst forth old Coney, coughing down a strong word which had nearly slipped out. “You will give her none. None. A pretty idea of justice you must have, Anne Lewis.”

“But it would be fair to give it her,” argued Anne. “My father married her.”

“Oh, did he, though! She married him. I know. Other folks know. You will give her none, my dear, and allow her none. She is a hard, scheming, deceitful brickbat of a woman. What made her lay hold of your poor weakened father, and play off upon him her wiles and her guiles, and marry him, right or wrong?” ran on old Coney, getting purple enough for apoplexy. “She did it for a home; she did it that she might get her back debts paid; that’s what. She has had her swing as long as his poor life lasted, and put you down as if you were a changeling; we have all seen that. Now that her short day’s over, she must go back again to her own ways and means. Ask the parson there what he thinks.”

The parson, in his cold sententious way, that was so much more suited to an old bishop than a young rector, avowed that he thought with Mr. Coney. He could not see that Mrs. Lewis’s few months of marriage entitled her (all attendant circumstances being taken into consideration) to deprive Miss Lewis of any portion of her patrimony.

“You are sure you have got the will all tight and safe?” resumed Mr. Coney. “I wouldn’t answer for her not stealing it. Ah, you may laugh, young lassie, but I don’t like that woman. Miss Dinah Lake was talking to me a bit the other day; she don’t like her, either.”

Anne was smiling at his vehement partisanship. She rose, unlocked a desk that stood on the side-table, and brought out a parchment, folded and sealed. It was subscribed, “Will of Thomas Lewis, M.D.”

“Here it is,” she said. “Papa had it drawn up by an English lawyer just before we left France. He gave it to me, as he was apt to mislay things himself, charging me to keep it safely.”

“And mind you do keep it safely,” enjoined old Coney. “It won’t be opened, I suppose, till after the funeral’s over.”

“But wait a minute,” interposed the clergyman. “Does not marriage—a subsequent marriage—render a will invalid?”

“Bless my heart, no: much justice there’d be in that!” retorted old Coney, who knew about as much of law as he did of the moon. And Mr. Tanerton said no more; he was not certain; and supposed the older and more experienced man might be right.

Anne sighed as she locked up the will again. She was both just and generous; and she knew she should be sure to hand over to Mrs. Lewis the half of whatever income it might give her.

“Well, my girl,” said the farmer, as they prepared to leave, “if you want me, or anything I can do, you just send Sally over, and I’ll be here in a jiffy.”

“It is to be at Timberdale, I conclude?” whispered Herbert Tanerton, as he shook hands. Anne knew that he alluded to the funeral; and the colour came up in her face as she answered—

“I don’t know. My father wished it; he said he wished to lie beside his brother. But Mrs. Lewis—here they come, I think.”

They came in with snowy bonnets and red noses, stamping the slush off their shoes. It was a good walk from the station. Mrs. Lewis had expected to get a fly there; one was generally in waiting: but some one jumped out of the train before she did, and secured it. It made her feel cross and look cross.

“Such a wretched trapes!” she was beginning in a vinegar tone; but at sight of the gentlemen her face and voice smoothed down to oil. She begged them to resume their seats; but they said they were already going.

“We were just asking about the funeral,” the farmer stayed to say.“It is to be at Timberdale?”

Up went Mrs. Lewis’s handkerchief to her eyes. “Dear Mr. Coney, I think not. Crabb will be better.”

“But he wished to lie at Timberdale.”

“Crabb will be so much cheaper—and less trouble,” returned the widow, with a sob. “It is as well to avoid useless expense.”

“Cheaper!” cried old Coney, his face purple again with passion, so much did he dislike her and her ways. “Not cheaper at all. Dearer.Dearer, ma’am. Must have a hearse and coach any way: and Herbert Tanerton here won’t charge fees if it’s done at Timberdale.”

“Oh, just as you please, my dear sir. And if he wished it, poor dear! Yes, yes; Timberdale of course. Anywhere.”

They got out before she had dried her eyes—or pretended at it. Julia and Fanny then fetched in some bandboxes which had been waiting in the passage. Mrs. Lewis forgot her tears, and put back her cloak.

“Which is Anne’s?” she asked. “Oh, this one”—beginning to undo one of the boxes. “My own will be sent to-morrow night. I bought yours quite plain, Anne.”

Very plain indeed was the bonnet she handed out. Plain and common, and made of the cheapest materials; one that a lady would not like to put upon her head. Julia and Fanny were trying theirs on at the chimney-glass. Gay bonnets, theirs glistening with jet beads and black flowers. The bill lay open on the table, and Anne read the cost: her own, twelve shillings; the other two, thirty-three shillings each. Mrs. Lewis made a grab at the bill, and crushed it into her pocket.

“I knew you would prefer it plain,” said she. “For real mourning it is always a mistake to have things too costly.”

“True,” acquiesced Anne; “but yet—I think they should be good.”

It seemed to her that to wear this bonnet would be very like disrespect to the dead. She silently determined to buy a better as soon as she had the opportunity of doing so.

Of all days, for weather, the one of the funeral was about the worst. Sleet, snow, rain, and wind. The Squire had a touch of lumbago; he could not face it; and old Coney came bustling in to say that I was to attend in his place. Anne wanted Johnny Ludlow to go all along, he added; her father had liked him; only there was no room before in the coach.

“Yes, yes,” cried the Squire, “Johnny, of course. He is not afraid of lumbago. Make haste and get into your black things, lad.”

Well, it was shivery, as we rolled along in the creaky old mourning-coach, behind the hearse: Mr. Coney and the Podds’ lawyer-cousin from Birmingham on one side; I and Cole, the doctor, opposite. The sleet pattered against the windows, the wind whistled in our ears. The lawyer kept saying “eugh,” and shaking his shoulders, telling us he had a cold in his head; and looked just as stern as he had at the wedding.

All was soon over: Herbert Tanerton did not read slowly to-day: and we got back to Maythorn Bank. Cole had left us: he stopped the coach en route, and cut across a field to see a patient: but Mr. Coney drew me into the house with him after the lawyer.

“We will go in, Johnny,” he whispered. “The poor girl has no relation or friend to back her up, and I shall stay with her while the will’s read.”

Mrs. Lewis, in a new widow’s cap as big as a house, and the two girls in shining jet chains, were sitting in state. Anne came in the next minute, her face pale, her eyes red. We all sat down; and for a short time looked at one another in silence, like so many mutes.

“Any will to be read? I am told there is one,” spoke the lawyer—who had, as Fanny Podd whispered to me, a wife at home as sour as himself. “If so, it had better be produced: I have to catch a train.”

“Yes, there is a will,” answered old Coney, glad to find that Anne,as he assumed, had mentioned the fact. “Miss Lewis holds the will. Will you get it, my dear?”

Anne unlocked the desk on the side-table, and put the will into Mr. Coney’s hand. Without saying with your leave or by your leave, he broke the seals, and clapped on his spectacles.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Lewis asked old Coney, from her seat on the sofa.

“Dr. Lewis’s will, ma’am. Made in France, I believe: was it not, Miss Anne?”

“My dear, sweet creature, it is so much waste paper,” spoke Mrs. Lewis, smiling sweetly upon Anne. “My deeply lamented husband’s last will and testament was made long since he left France.”

Pulling up the sofa-cushion at her elbow, she produced another will, and asked the lawyer if he would be good enough to unseal and read it. It had been made, as the date proved, at Cheltenham, the day after she and Dr. Lewis were married; and it left every earthly thing he possessed to “his dear wife, Louisa Jane Lewis.”

Old Coney’s face was a picture. He stared alternately at the will in his hands, at the one just read by the lawyer. Anne stood meekly by his side; looking as if she did not understand matters.

“That can’t stand good!” spoke the farmer, in his honest indignation.“The money can’t go to you, ma’am”—turning his burly form about to face Mrs. Lewis, and treading on my toes as he did it.“The money is this young lady’s; part of it comes from her own mother: it can’t be yours. Thomas Lewis must have signed the will in his sleep.”

“Does a daughter inherit before a wife, dear sir?” cried Mrs. Lewis, in a voice soft as butter. “It is the most just will my revered husband could have made. I need the money: I cannot keep on the house without it. Anne does not need it: she has no house to keep.”

“Look here,” says old Coney, buttoning his coat and looking fiercely at the company. “It’s not my wish to be rude to-day, remembering what place we came straight here from; but if you don’t want to be put down as—as schemers, you will not lose an hour in making over the half of that income to Anne Lewis. It is what she proposed to do by you, madam, when she thought all was left to her,” he added, brushing past Mrs. Lewis. “Come along, Johnny.”

The time went on. Mrs. Lewis kept all the money. She gave notice to leave the house at Midsummer: but she had it on her hands until then, and told people she should die of its dulness. So far as could be known, she had little, if any, income, except that which she inherited from Dr. Lewis.

Anne’s days did not pass in clover. Treated as of no moment, shewas made fully to understand that she was only tolerated in what was once her own home; and she had to make herself useful in it from morning till night, just like a servant. Remembering what had been, and what was, Anne felt heart-broken, submitting patiently and unresistingly to every trial; but a reaction set in, and her spirit grew rebellious.

“Is there any remedy, I wonder?” she asked herself one night in her little chamber, when preparing for bed, and the day had been a particularly trying day. She had ventured to ask for a few shillings for some purpose or other, and was told she could not have them: being Easter-Monday, Sally had had a holiday, and she had been kept at work like a slave in the girl’s place: Herbert Tanerton and his wife had come to invite her for a day or two to Timberdale, and a denial was returned to them without herself being consulted, or even allowed to see them. Yes, it had been a trying day. And in France Easter had always been kept as a fête.

“Is there not a remedy?” she debated, as she slowly undressed.“I have no home but this; but—could I not find one?”

She knew that she had no means of living, except by her own exertions; she had not even a rag to wear or a coin to spend, except what should come to her by Mrs. Lewis’s bounty. And, whether that lady possessed bounty or not, she seemed never to possess ready-money. It appeared to Anne that she had been hardly dealt by in more ways than one; that the world was full of nothing but injustice and trouble.

“And I fancy,” added Anne, thinking out her thoughts, “that they will be glad to get rid of me; that they want me gone. So I dare say there will be no objection made here.”

With morning light, she was up and busy. It fell to her lot to prepare the breakfast: and she must not keep the ladies waiting for it one minute. This morning, however, she had to keep them waiting; but not through any fault of hers.

They grew impatient. Five minutes past nine: ten minutes past nine: what did Anne mean? Julia and Fanny were not much better dressed than when they got out of bed; old jackets on, rough and rumpled hair stuck up with hair-pins. In that respect they presented a marked contrast to Anne, who was ever trim and nice.

“I’m sure she must be growing the coffee-berries!” cried Fanny, as she flung the door open. “Is that breakfast coming to-day, or to-morrow?”

“In two minutes,” called back Anne.

“Oh, what a dreary life it is out here!” groaned Mrs. Lewis.“Girls, I think we will go over to Worcester to-day, and arrange to stay a week at Lakes. And then you can go to the subscription ball at the Town Hall, that you are so wild over.”

“Oh, do, do!” cried Julia, all animation now. “If I don’t go to that ball, I shall die.”

“I shall run away, if we don’t; I have said all along I would not miss the Easter ball,” spoke Fanny. “Mamma, I cannot think why you don’t shut this miserable house up!”

“Will you find the rent for another?” coolly asked Mrs Lewis.“What can that girl be at with the coffee?”

It came in at last; and Anne was abused for her laziness. When she could get a word in, she explained that Sally had had an accident with the tea-kettle, and fresh water had to be boiled.

More indignation: Julia’s egg turned out to be bad. What business had Anne to boil bad eggs? Anne, saying nothing, took it away, boiled another and brought it in. Then Mrs. Lewis fancied she could eat a thin bit of toasted bacon; and Anne must go and do it at the end of a fork. Altogether the breakfast was nearly at an end before she could sit down and eat her own bread-and-butter.

“I have been thinking,” she began, in a hesitating tone, to Mrs. Lewis, “that I should like to go out. If you have no objection.”

“Go out where?”

“Into some situation.”

Mrs. Lewis, in the act of conveying a piece of bacon to her mouth, held it suspended in mid-air, and stared at Anne in amazement.

“Into what?”

“A situation in some gentleman’s family. I have no prospect before me; no home; I must earn my own living.”

“The girl’s daft!” cried Mrs. Lewis, resuming her breakfast. “No home! Why, you have a home here; your proper home. Was it not your father’s?”

“Yes. But it is not mine.”

“It is yours; and your days in it are spent usefully. What more can you want? Now, Anne, hold your tongue, and don’t talk nonsense. If you have finished your breakfast you can begin to take the things away.”

“Mamma, why don’t you let her go?” whispered Fanny, as Anne went out with some plates.

“Because she is useful to me,” said Mrs. Lewis. “Who else is there to see to our comforts? We should be badly off with that incapable Sally. And who would do all the needlework? recollect how much she gets through. No, as long as we are here, Anne must stay with us. Besides, the neighbourhood would have its say finely if we let her turn out. People talk, as it is, about the will, and are not so friendly as they might be. As if they would like me to fly in the face of my dear departed husband’s wishes, and tacitly reproach his judgment!”

But Anne did not give up. When she had taken all the things away and folded up the table-cloth, she came in again and spoke.

“I hope you will not oppose me in this, Mrs. Lewis. I should like to take a situation.”

“And, pray, what situation do you suppose you could take?”ironically asked Mrs. Lewis. “You are not fitted to fill one in a gentleman’s family.”

“Unless it be as cook,” put in Julia.

“Or seamstress,” said Fanny. “By the way, I want some more cuffs made, Anne.”

“I should like to try for a situation, notwithstanding my deficiencies. I could do something or other.”

“There, that’s enough: must I tell you again not to talk nonsense?”retorted Mrs. Lewis. “And now you must come upstairs and see to my things, and to Julia’s and Fanny’s. We are going to Worcester by the half-past eleven train—and you may expect us home to tea when you see us.”

They went off. As soon as their backs were turned, Anne came running into our house, finding me and Mrs. Todhetley at the piano. It was pleasant Easter weather, though March was not out: the Squire and Tod had gone to Dyke Manor on some business, and would not be home till late. Anne told all her doubts and difficulties to the mater, and asked her advice, as to whether there would be anything wrong in her seeking for a situation.

“No, my dear,” said the mother, “it would be right, instead of wrong. If——”

“If people treated me as they treat you, Anne, I wouldn’t stay with them a day,” said I, hotly. “I don’t like toads.”

“Oh, Johnny!” cried Mrs. Todhetley. “Never call names, dear. No obligation whatever, Anne, lies on you to remain in that home; and I think you would do well to leave it. You shall stay and dine with me and Johnny at one o’clock, Anne; and we will talk it over.”

“I wish I could stay,” said poor Anne; “I hardly knew how to spare these few minutes to run here. Mrs. Lewis has left me a gown to unpick and turn, and I must hasten to begin it.”

“So would I begin it!” I cried, going out with her as far as the gate.“And I should like to know who is a toad, if she’s not.”

“Don’t you think I might be a nursery governess, Johnny?” she asked me, turning round after going through the gate. “I might teach French, and English, and German: and I am very fond of little children. The difficulty will be to get an introduction. I have thought of one person who might give it me—if I could only dare to ask him.”

“Who’s that?”

“Sir Robert Tenby. He is of the great world, and must know every one in it. And he has always shown himself so very sociable and kind. Do you think I might venture to apply to him?”

“Why not? He could not eat you for it.”

She ran on, and I ran back. But, all that day, sitting over her work, Anne was in a state of doubt, not able to make up her mind. It was impossible to know how Sir Robert Tenby might take it.

“I have made you a drop of coffee and a bit of hot toast and butter, Miss Anne,” said Sally, coming in with a small tray. “Buttered it well. She’s not here to see it.”

Anne laughed, and thanked her; Mrs. Lewis had left them only cold bacon for dinner, and ordered them to wait tea until her return. But before the refreshment was well disposed of, she and the girls came in.

“How soon you are back!” involuntarily cried Anne, hoping Mrs. Lewis would not smell the coffee. “And how are they all at Lake’s?”

Mrs. Lewis answered by giving a snappish word to Lake’s, and ordered Anne to get tea ready. Fanny whispered the information that they were going to Worcester on the morrow to stay over the Easter ball; but not to Lake’s. Anne wondered at that.

Upon arriving at Lake’s that morning, Miss Dinah had received them very coolly; and was, as Mrs. Lewis remarked afterwards, barely civil. The fact was, Miss Dinah, being just-minded, took up Anne’s cause rather warmly; and did not scruple to think that the beguiling poor weak-minded Dr. Lewis out of the will he made, was just a piece of iniquity, and nothing less. Perceiving Miss Dinah’s crusty manner, Mrs. Lewis inquired after Mrs. Lake. “Where’s Emma?” she asked.

“Very much occupied to-day. Can I do anything for you?”

“We are thinking of coming to you to-morrow for a week, Dinah; I and my two girls. They are wild to go to the Easter ball. Which rooms can you give us?”

“Not any rooms,” spoke Miss Dinah, decisively. “We cannot take you in.”

“Not take me in! When the servant opened the door to us she said the house was not full. I put the question to her.”

“But we are expecting it to be full,” said Miss Dinah, curtly. “The Beales generally come over to the ball; and we must keep rooms for them.”

“You don’t know that they are coming, I expect. And in a boarding-house the rule holds good, ‘First come, first served.’”

“A boarding-house holds its own rules, and is not guided by other people’s. Very sorry: but we cannot make room this time for you and your daughters.”

“I’ll soon see that,” retorted Mrs. Lewis, getting hot. “Where’s Emma Lake? I am her cousin, and shall insist on being taken in.”

“She can’t take you in without my consent. And she won’t: that’s more. Look here, Mrs. Podd—I beg your pardon—the new name does not always come pat to me. When you were staying here before, and kept us so long out of our money, it put us to more inconvenience than you had any idea of. We——”

“You were paid at last.”

“Yes,” said Miss Dinah; “with poor Dr. Lewis’s money, I expect. We made our minds up then, Mrs. Lewis, not to take you again. At least, I did; and Mrs. Lake agreed with me.”

“You will not have to wait again: I have money in my pocket now. And the girls must go to the ball on Thursday.”

“If your pockets are all full of money, it can make no difference to me. I’m sorry to say I cannot take you in, Mrs. Lewis: and now I have said all I mean to say.”

Mrs. Lewis went about the house, looking for Mrs. Lake, and did not find her. She, not as strong-minded as Miss Dinah, had bolted herself into the best bedroom, just then unoccupied. So Mrs. Lewis, not to be baffled as to the ball, went out to look for other lodgings, and found them in Foregate Street.

“But we shall be home on Saturday,” she said to Anne, as they were starting this second time for Worcester, on the Wednesday morning, the finery for the ball behind them in two huge trunks. “I have to pay a great deal for the rooms, and can’t afford to stay longer than that. And mind that you and Sally get the house in order whilst we are away; it’s a beautiful opportunity to clean it thoroughly down: and get on as quickly as you can with the needlework.”

“Why, my dear young lassie, I am not able to help you in such a thing as this. You had better see the master himself.”

Anne had lost no time. Leaving Sally to the cleaning, she dressed and walked over on the Wednesday afternoon to Bellwood, Sir Robert Tenby’s seat. She explained her business to Mrs. Macbean, the old family housekeeper, and asked whether she could help her into any good family.

“Nae, nae, child. I live down here all my days, and I know nothing of the gentlefolks in the great world. The master knows them all.”

“I did think once of asking if I might see Sir Robert; but my courage fails me now,” said Anne.

“And why should it?” returned the old lady. “If there’s one man more ready than another to do a kindness, or more sociable to speak with, it’s Sir Robert Tenby. He takes after his mother for that, my late dear lady; not after his father. Sir George was a bit proud. I’ll go and tell Sir Robert what you want.”

Sir Robert was in his favourite room; a small one, with a bright fire in it, its purple chairs and curtains bordered with gold. It was bright altogether, Anne thought as she entered: for he said he would see her. The windows looked out on a green velvet lawn, with beds of early flowers, and thence to the park; and, beyond all, to the chain of the Malvern Hills, rising against the blue sky. The baronet sat near oneof the windows, some books on a small table at his elbow. He came forward to shake hands with Anne, and gave her a chair opposite his own. And, what with his good homely face and its smile of welcome, and his sociable, unpretending words, Anne felt at home at once.

In her own quiet way, so essentially that of a lady in its unaffected truth, she told him what she wanted: to find a home in some good family, who would be kind to her in return for her services, and pay her as much as would serve to buy her gowns and bonnets. Sir Robert Tenby, no stranger to the gossip rife in the neighbourhood, had heard of the unjust will, and of Anne’s treatment by the new wife.

“It is, I imagine, impossible for a young lady to get into a good family without an introduction,” said Anne. “And I thought—perhaps—you might speak for me, sir: you do know a little of me. I have no one else to recommend me.”

He did not answer for the moment: he sat looking at her. Anne blushed, and went on, hoping she was not offending him.

“No one else, I mean, who possesses your influence, and mixes habitually with the great world. I should not care to take service in an inferior family: my poor father would not have liked it.”

“Take service,” said he, repeating the word. “It is as governess that you wish to go out?”

“As nursery governess, I thought. I may not aspire to any better position, for I know nothing of accomplishments. But little children need to be taught French and German; I could do that.”

“You speak French well, of course?”

“As a native. German also. And I think I speak good English, and could teach it. And oh, sir, if you did chance to know of any family who would engage me, I should be so grateful to you.”

“French, English, and German,” said he, smiling. “Well, I can’t tell what the great world, as you put it, may call accomplishments; but I think those three enough for anybody.”

Anne smiled too. “They are only languages, Sir Robert. They are not music and drawing. Had my dear mamma suspected I should have to earn my own living, she would have had me educated for it.”

“I think it is a very hard thing that you should have to earn it,”spoke Sir Robert.

Anne glanced up through her wet eye-lashes: reminiscences of her mother always brought tears. “There’s no help for it, sir; I have not a shilling in the world.”

“And no home but one that you are ill-treated in—made to do the work of a servant? Is it not so?”

Anne coloured painfully. How did he know this? Generous to Mrs. Lewis in spite of all, she did not care to speak of it herself.

“And if people did not think me clever enough to teach, sir,” she went on, passing over his question, “I might perhaps go out to beuseful in other ways. I can make French cakes and show a cook how to make French dishes; and I can read aloud well, and do all kinds of needlework. Some old lady, who has no children of her own, might be glad to have me.”

“I think many an old lady would,” said he. The remark put her in spirits. She grew animated.

“Oh, do you! I am so glad. If you should know of one, sir, would you please to tell her of me?”

Sir Robert nodded, and Anne rose to leave. He rose also.

“If I could be so fortunate as to get into such a home as this, with some kind old lady for my friend and mistress, I should be quite happy,”she said, in the simplicity of her heart. “How pleasant this room is! and how beautiful it is outside!”—pausing to look at the early flowers, as she passed the window.

“Do you know Bellwood? Were you ever here before?”

“No, sir, never.”

Sir Robert put on his hat and went out with her, showing her some pretty spots about the grounds. Anne was enchanted, especially with the rocks and the cascades. Versailles, she thought, could not be better than Bellwood.

“And when you hear of anything, sir, you will please to let me know?” she said, in parting.

“Yes. You had better come again soon. This is Wednesday: suppose you call on Friday. Will you?”

“Oh, I shall be only too glad. I will be sure to come. Good-bye, Sir Robert: and thank you very, very much.”

She went home with a light heart: she had not felt so happy since her father died.

“How good he is! how kind! a true gentleman,” she thought.“And what a good thing he fixed Friday instead of Saturday, for on Saturday they will be at home. But it is hardly possible that he will have heard of any place by that time, unless he has one in his eye.”

It was Friday afternoon before Anne could get to Bellwood, and rather late, also. She asked, as before, for Mrs. Macbean, not liking to ask direct for Sir Robert Tenby. Sir Robert was out, but was expected in every minute, and Anne waited in Mrs. Macbean’s parlour.

“Do you think he has heard of anything for me?” was one of the first questions she put.

“Eh, my dear, and how should I know?” was the old lady’s reply.“He does not tell me of his affairs. Not but what he talks to me a good deal, and always like a friend: he does not forget that my late leddy, his mother, made more of a friend of me than a servant. Many’s the half-hour he keeps me talking in his parlour; and always bids me take the easiest seat there. I wish he would marry!”

“Do you?” replied Anne, mechanically: for she was thinking more of her own concerns than Sir Robert’s.

“Why, yes, that I do. It’s a lonely life for him at best, the one he leads. I’ve not scrupled to tell him, times and oft, that he ought to bring a mistress home—— Eh, but there he is! That’s his step.”

As before, Anne went into the pretty room that Sir Robert, when alone, mostly sat in. Three or four opened letters lay upon the table, and she wondered whether they related to her.

“No, I have as yet no news for you,” he said, smiling at her eager face, and keeping her hand in his while he spoke. “You will have to come again for it. Sit down.”

“But if—if you have nothing to tell me to-day, I had better not take up your time,” said Anne, not liking to appear intrusive.

“My time! If you knew how slowly time some days seems to pass for me, you would have no scruple about ‘taking it up.’ Sit here. This is a pleasant seat.”

With her eyes fixed on the outer landscape, Anne sat on and listened to him. He talked of various things, and she felt as much at her ease (as she told me that same evening) as though she had been talking with me. Afterwards she felt half afraid she had been too open, for she told him all about her childhood’s home in France and her dear mother. It was growing dusk when she got up to go.

“Will you come again on Monday afternoon?” he asked. “I shall be out in the morning.”

“If I can, sir. Oh yes, if I can. But Mrs. Lewis, who will be at home then, does not want me to take a situation at all, and she may not let me come out.”

“I should come without telling her,” smiled Sir Robert. “Not want you to leave home, eh? Would you like to stay there to make the puddings? Ay, I understand. Well, I shall expect you on Monday. There may be some news, you know.”

And, somehow, Anne took up the notion that there would be news, his tone sounded so hopeful. All the way home her feet seemed to tread on air.

On the Sunday evening, when they were all sitting together at Maythorn Bank, and Anne had no particular duty on hand, she took courage to tell of what she had done, and that Sir Robert Tenby was so good as to interest himself for her. Mrs. Lewis was indignant; the young ladies were pleasantly satirical.

“As nursery governess: you!” mocked Miss Julia. “What shall you teach your pupils? To play at cats’ cradle?”

“Why, you know, Anne, you are not fit for a governess,” said Fanny. “It would be quite—quite wicked of you to make believe to be one. You never learnt a note of music. You can’t draw. You can’t paint.”

“You had better go to school yourself, first,” snapped Mrs. Lewis.“I will not allow you to take such a step: so put all thought of it out of your head.”

Anne leaned her aching brow upon her hand in perplexity. Was she so unfit? Would it be wicked? She determined to put the case fully before her kind friend, Sir Robert Tenby, and ask his opinion.

Providing that she could get to Sir Robert’s. Ask leave to go, she dare not; for she knew the answer would be a point-blank refusal.

But fortune favoured her. Between three and four o’clock on Monday afternoon, Mrs. Lewis and her daughters dressed themselves and sailed away to call on some people at South Crabb; which lay in just the contrary direction to Bellwood. They left Anne a heap of sewing to do: but she left the sewing and went out on her own score. I met her near the Ravine. She told me what she had done, and looked bright and flushed over it.

“Mrs. Lewis is one cat, and they are two other cats, Anne. Tod says so. Good-bye. Good luck to you!”

“Eh, my dear, and I was beginning to think you didna mean to come,” was Mrs. Macbean’s salutation. “But Sir Robert is nae back yet, he has been out on horseback since the morning; and he said you were to wait for him. So just take your bonnet off, and you shall have a cup of tea with me!”

Nothing loth, Anne took off her outdoor things. “They will be home before I am, and find me gone out,” she reflected; “but they can’t quite kill me for it.” The old lady rang her bell for tea, and thought what a nice and pretty young gentlewoman Anne looked in her plain black dress with its white frilling, and the handsome jet necklace that had been her mother’s.

But before the tea could be made, Sir Robert Tenby’s horse trotted up, and they heard him go to his sitting-room. Mrs. Macbean took Anne into his presence, saying at the same time that she had been about to give the young lady a cup of tea.

“I should like some tea, too,” said Sir Robert; “Miss Lewis can take it with me. Send it in.”

It came in upon a waiter, and was placed upon the table. Anne, at his request, put sugar and cream into his cup, handed it to him, and then took her own. He was looking very thoughtful; she seemed to fancy he had no good news for her, as he did not speak of it; and her heart went down, down. In a very timid tone, she told him of the depreciating opinion held of her talents at home, and begged him to say what he thought, for she should not like to be guilty of undertaking any duty she was not fully competent to fulfil.

“Will you take some more tea?” was all Sir Robert said in answer.

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Another biscuit? No? We will send the tray away then.”

Ringing the bell, a servant came in and removed the things. Sir Robert, standing at the window, and looking down at Anne as she sat, began to speak.

“I think there might be more difficulty in getting you a situation as governess than we thought for; one that would be quite suited to you, at least. Perhaps another kind of situation would do better for you.”

Her whole face, turned up to him with its gaze of expectancy, changed to sadness; the light in her eyes died away. It seemed so like the knell of all her hopes. Sir Robert only smiled.

“If you could bring yourself to take it—and to like it,” he continued.

“But what situation is it, sir?”

“That of my wife. That of Lady of Bellwood.”

Just for a moment or two she simply stared at him. When his meaning reached her comprehension, her face turned red and white with emotion. Sir Robert took her hand and spoke more fully. He had learnt to like her very very much, to esteem her, and wished her to be his wife.

“I am aware that there is a good deal of difference in our ages, my dear; more than twenty years,” he went on, while she sat in silence.“But I think you might find happiness with me; I will do my very best to insure it. Better be my wife than a nursery governess. What do you say?”

“Oh, sir, I do not know what to say,” she answered, trembling a little. “It is so unexpected—and a great honour—and—and I am overwhelmed.”

“Could you like me?” he gently asked.

“I do like you, sir; very much. But this—this would be different. Perhaps you would let me take until to-morrow to think about it?”

“Of course I will. Bring me your answer then. Bring it yourself, whatever it may be.”

“I will, sir. And I thank you very greatly.”

All night long Anne Lewis lay awake. Should she take this good man for her husband, or should she not? She did like him very much: and what a position it would be for her; and how sheltered she would be henceforth from the frowns of the world! Anne might never have hesitated, but for the remains of her love for Mr. Angerstyne. That was passing away from her heart day by day, as she knew; it would soon have passed entirely. She could never feel that same love again; it was over and done with for ever; but there was surely no reason why she should sacrifice all her future to its remembrance. Yes: she would accept Sir Robert Tenby: and would, by the help of Heaven, make him a true, faithful, good wife.

It was nearly dusk the next afternoon before she could leave the house. Mrs. Lewis had kept her in sight so long that she feared she mightnot find the opportunity that day. She ran all the way to Bellwood, anxious to keep her promise: she could not bear to seem to trifle, even for a moment, with this good and considerate man. Sir Robert was waiting for her in a glow of firelight. He came forward, took both her hands in his, and looked into her face inquiringly.

“Well?”

“Yes, sir, if you still wish to take me. I will try to be to you a loving wife; obedient and faithful.”

With a sigh of relief, he sat down on a sofa that was drawn to the fire and placed her beside him, holding her hand still.

“My dear, I thank you: you have made me very happy. You shallnever have cause to repent it.”

“It is so strange,” she whispered, “that you should wait all these years, with the world to choose from, and then think of me at last! I can scarcely believe it.”

“Ay, I suppose it is strange. But I must tell you something, Anne. When quite a youth, only one-and-twenty, there was a young lady whom I dearly loved. She was poor, and not of much family, and my father forbade the union. She married some one else, and died. It is for the love of her I have kept single all these years. But I shall not make you the less good husband.”

“And I—I wish to tell you that I once cared for some one,” whispered Anne, in her straightforward honesty. “It is all over and done with; but I did like him very much.”

“Then, my dear, we shall be even,” he said, with a merry smile.“The one cannot reproach the other. And now—this is the beginning of April; before the month shall have closed you had better come to me. We have nothing to wait for; and I do not like, now that you belong to me, to leave you one moment longer than is needful with that lady whom you are forced to call stepmother.”

How Anne reached home that late afternoon she hardly knew: she knew still less how to bring the news out. In the course of the following morning she tried to do so, and made a bungle of it.

“Sir Robert not going to get you a situation as governess!” interrupted Julia, before Anne had half finished. “Of course he is not. He knows you are not capable of taking one. I thought how much he was intending to help you. You must have had plenty of cheek, Anne, to trouble him.”

“I am going to be his wife instead,” said poor Anne, meekly. “He has asked me to be. And—and it is to be very soon; and he is coming to see Mrs. Lewis this morning.”

Mrs. Lewis, sitting back in an easy-chair, her feet on the fender, dropped the book she was reading to stare at Anne. Julia burst into a laugh of incredulity. Her mother echoed it, and spoke——

“You poor infatuated girl! This comes of being brought up onFrench soup. But Sir Robert Tenby has no right to play jokes upon you. I shall write and tell him so.”

“I—think—he is there,” stammered Anne.

There he was. A handsome carriage was drawing up to the gate, the baronet’s badge upon its panels. Sir Robert sat inside. A footman came up the path and thundered at the door.

Not very long afterwards—it was in the month of June—Anne and her husband were guests at a London crush in Berkeley Square. It was too crowded to be pleasant. Anne began to look tired, and Sir Robert whispered to her that if she had had enough of it, they would go home. “Very gladly,” she answered, and turned to say good-night to her hostess.

“Anne! How are you?”

The unexpected interruption, in a voice she knew quite well, and which sent a thrill through her, even yet, arrested Anne in her course. There stood Henry Angerstyne, his hand held out in greeting, a confident smile, as if assuming she could only receive him joyfully, on his handsome face.

“I am so much surprised to see you here; so delighted to meet you once again, Miss Lewis.”

“You mistake, sir,” replied Anne, in a cold, proud tone, drawing her head a little up. “I am Lady Tenby.”

Walking forward, she put her arm within her husband’s, who waited for her. Mr. Angerstyne understood it at once; it needed not the almost bridal robes of white silk and lace to enlighten him. She was not altered. She looked just the same single-minded, honest-hearted girl as ever, with a pleasant word for all—except just in the moment when she had spoken to him.

“I am glad of it: she deserves her good fortune,” he thought heartily. With all his faults, few men could be more generously just than Henry Angerstyne.

CHAPTER XV.

THE KEY OF THE CHURCH.

“Johnny, you will have to take the organ on Sunday.”

The words gave me a surprise. I turned short round on the music-stool, wondering whether Mrs. Todhetley spoke in jest or earnest. But her face was quite serious, as she sat, her hands on her lap, and her lame finger—the fore-finger of the left hand—stretched out.

“I take the organ, good mother! What’s that for?”

“Because I was to have taken it, Johnny, and this accident to my finger will prevent it.”

We had just got home to Dyke Manor from school for the Michaelmas holidays. Not a week of them: for this was Wednesday afternoon, and we should go back the following Monday. Mrs. Todhetley had cut her finger very seriously in carving some cold beef on the previous day. Old Duffham had put it into splints.

“Where’s Mr. Richards?” I asked, alluding to the church organist.

“Well, it is rather a long tale, Johnny. A good deal of dissatisfaction has existed, as you know, between him and the congregation.”

“Through his loud playing.”

“Just so. And now he has resigned in a huff. Mr. Holland called yesterday morning to ask if I would help them at the pinch by taking the organ for a Sunday or two, until matters were smoothed with Richards, or some fresh organist was found; and I promised him I would. In the evening, this accident happened to my finger. So you must take it in my place, Johnny.”

“And if I break down?”

“Not you. Why should you?”

“I am out of practice.”

“There’s plenty of time to get up your practice between now and Sunday. Don’t make objections, my dear. We should all do what little we can to help others in a time of need.”

I said no more. As she observed, there was plenty of time between now and Sunday. And, not to lose time, I went off there and then.

The church stood in a lonely spot, as I think you know, and I took the way across the fields to it. Whistling softly, I went along, fixing in my mind upon the chants and hymns. Ours was rather a primitiveservice. The organ repertoire included only about a dozen chants and double that number of hymns. It had this advantage—that they were all familiar to the congregation, who could join in the singing at will, and the singers had no need to practise. Mr. Richards had lately introduced a different style of music, and it was not liked.

“Let me see: I’ll make it just the opposite of Richards’s. For the morning we will have the thirty-seventh psalm, ‘Depend on God:’there’s real music in that; and ‘Jerusalem the Golden.’ And for the afternoon, ‘Abide with me,’ and the Evening Hymn. Mornington’s Chant; and the Grand Chant; and the—— Halloa, Fred! Is it you?”

A lithe, straight-limbed young fellow was turning out of the little valley: on his way (as I guessed) from the Parsonage. It was Fred Westerbrook: old Westerbrook’s nephew at the Narrow Dyke Farm—or, as we abbreviated it, the N. D. Farm.

“How are you, Johnny?”

His face and voice were alike subdued as he shook hands. I asked after Mr. and Mrs. Westerbrook.

“They are both well, for anything I know,” he answered. “The N. D. Farm is no longer my home, Johnny.”

Had he told me the Manor was no longer mine, I could not have been more surprised.

“Why, how is that, Fred?”

“They have turned me out of it.”

“What—this morning?”

“This morning—no. Two months ago.”

“And why? I never thought it would come to that.”

“Because they wanted to get rid of me, that’s why. Gisby has been the prime mover in it—the chief snake in the grass. He is worse than she is.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Nothing: except knocking about. I’d be off to America to-morrow and try my luck there if I had a fifty-pound note in my pocket. I went up to the farm last week, and made an appeal to my uncle to help me to it, and be rid of me——”

“And would he?” I interrupted, too eager to let him finish.

“Would he!” repeated Fred, savagely. “He bade me go to a place unmentionable. He threatened to drive me off the premises if ever I put foot on them again.”

“I am very sorry. What shall you do?” I asked.

“Heaven knows! Perhaps turn poacher.”

“Nonsense, Fred!”

“Is it nonsense!” he retorted, taking off his low-crowned hat and passing his hand passionately over his wavy, auburn hair—about the nicest hair I ever saw. People said Fred was proud of it. He was agood-looking young fellow altogether; with a clear, fresh face, and steady grey eyes.

“You don’t know what it is to be goaded, Johnny,” he said. “I can tell you I am ripe for any mischief. And a man must live. But for one thing, I swear I wouldn’t keep straight.”

I knew what thing he meant quite well. “What does she say about it?” I asked.

“What can she say? My uncle has insulted her to her face, and made me out at the Parsonage to be a downright scamp. Oh, I go in for all that’s bad, according to him, I assure you, Johnny Ludlow.”

“Do you never see her?”

“It is chiefly by chance if I do. I have just been up there now, sitting for half-an-hour with her in the old study. There was no opportunity for a private word, though; the young ones were dodging around, playing at ‘Salt Fish’—if you know the delectable game. Good-bye, Johnny lad.”

He strode off with an angry fire in his eye. I felt very sorry for him. We all liked Fred Westerbrook. He had his faults, I suppose, but he was one of the most open-natured fellows in the world.

Dashing in at Clerk Bumford’s for the key of the church, I sat down to the organ: an antiquated instrument, whose bellows were worked by the player’s feet, as are some of the modern harmoniums; but, as far as tone went, it was not bad—rather rich and sweet. All through the practice my mind was running on Fred Westerbrook and his uncle. The parish had said long ago they would come to a blow-up some time.

The N. D. Farm stood about three-quarters of a mile on the other side the church, beyond Mr. Page’s. It had a good house upon it, and consisted of two or three hundred acres of land. But its owner, Mr. Westerbrook, rented a great deal more land that lay contiguous to it, which rendered it altogether one of the most considerable farms round about. Up to fifty years of age, Mr. Westerbrook had not married. Fred, his dead brother’s son, had been adopted by him, and was regarded as his heir. The farm had been owned by the Westerbrooks for untold-of years, and it was not likely a stranger in blood and name would be allowed to inherit it. So Fred had lived there as the son and heir, and been made much of.

But, to the surprise of every one, Mr. Westerbrook took it into his head to marry, although he was fifty years old. It was thought to be a foolish act, and the parish talked freely. She was a widow without children, of a grasping nature, and not at all nice in temper. A high-spirited boy of fourteen, as Fred was, would be hardly likely to get on with her. She interfered with him in the holidays, and thwarted him, and told sneaking tales of him to his uncle. It went on pretty smoothly enough, however, until Fred left school, which he did at eighteen, totake up his abode at home for good and busy himself about the farm. Upon the death of the bailiff some three years later, she sent for one Gisby, from a distance, and got Mr. Westerbrook to instal him in the bailiff’s vacant place. This Gisby was a dark little man of middle age, and was said to be distantly related to her. He proved to be an excellent farmer and manager, and did his duty well; but from the first he and Fred were just at daggers-drawn. Presuming upon his relationship to the mistress, Gisby treated Fred in an off-hand manner, telling him sometimes to do this and not to do the other, as he did the men. Of course, Fred did not stand that, and offered to pitch him into next week unless he kept his place better.

But, as the years went on, the antagonism against Fred penetrated to Mr. Westerbrook. She was always at work with her covert whispers, as was Gisby with his outspoken accusations of him, and with all sorts of tales of his wrong-doing. They had the ear of the master, and Fred could not fight against it. Perhaps he did not try to do so. Whispering, and meanness, and underhand doing of any kind, were foreign to his nature; he was rather too outspoken, and he turned on his enemies freely and gave them plenty of abuse. It was Gisby who first told Mr. Westerbrook of the intimacy, or friendship, or whatever you may please to call it, though I suppose the right word would be love, between Fred and Edna Blake. Edna was one of a large family, and had come, a year or two ago, to live at the Parsonage, being niece to Mrs. Holland, the parson’s wife. Mrs. Holland was generally ill (and frightfully incapable), and Edna had it all on her hands: the housekeeping, and the six unruly children, and the teaching and the mending, and often the cooking. They paid her twenty pounds a-year for it. But she was a charming girl, with one of the sweetest faces ever seen, and the gentlest spirit. Fred Westerbrook had found that out, and the two were deeply in love with one another. Old Mr. Westerbrook went into one of his passions when he heard of it, and swore at Fred. Edna was not his equal, he told him; Fred must look higher: she had no money, and her friends, as was reported, were only tradespeople. Fred retorted that Edna was a mine of wealth and goodness in herself, and he had never troubled himself to ask what her friends might be. However, to make short of the story, matters had grown more unpleasant for Fred day by day, and this appeared to be the end of it, turning him out of house and home. He was just twenty-four now. I don’t wish to imply that Fred was without faults, or that he did nothing to provoke his uncle. He had been wild the last year or two, and tumbled into a few scrapes; but the probability is that he would have kept straight enough under more favourable circumstances. The discomfort at home drove him out, and he got associating with anything but choice company.

Making short work of my playing, I took the key back to Bumford’s,and ran home. Tod was in the dining-room with the mother, and I told them of the meeting with Fred Westerbrook. Mrs. Todhetley seemed to know all about it, and said Fred had been living at the Silver Bear.

“What an awful shame of old Westerbrook!” broke out Tod. “To turn a fellow away from his home!”

“I am afraid there are faults on both sides,” sighed Mrs. Todhetley, in her gentle way. “Fred has not borne a good character of late.”

“And who could expect him to bear a good one?” fired Tod. “If I were turned out like a dog, should I care what I did? No! Old Westerbrook and that precious wife of his ought to be kicked. As to Gisby, the sneak, hanging would be too good for him.”

“Don’t, Joseph.”

“Don’t!” retorted Tod. “But I do. They deserve all the abuse that can be given them. I can see her game. She wants Westerbrook to leave the property to her: that’s the beginning and the end of it; and to cut off poor Fred with a shilling.”

“Of course we are all sorry for Fred, Joseph,” resumed the mother.“Very sorry. I know I am. But he need not do reckless things, and lose his good name.”

“Bother his good name!” cried Tod. “Look at their interference about Edna Blake. That news came out when we were at home at Midsummer. Edna is as good as they are.”

“It is a hopeless case, I fear, Joseph. Discarded by his uncle, all his prospects are at an end. He has been all on the wrong track lately, and done many a sad thing.”

“I don’t care what he has done. He has been driven to it. And I’ll stand up for him through thick and thin.”

Tod flung out of the room with the last words. It was just like him, putting himself into a way for nothing. It was like somebody else too—his father. I began telling Mrs. Todhetley of the chants and hymns I had thought of, asking her if they would do.

“None could be better, Johnny. And I only wish you might play for us always.”

A fine commotion arose next morning. We were at breakfast, when Thomas came in to say old Jones, the constable, wanted to see the Squire immediately. Old Jones was bade to enter; he appeared all on the shake, and his face as white as a sheet. There had been murder done in the night, he said. Master Fred Westerbrook had shot Gisby: and he had come to get a warrant signed for Fred’s apprehension.

“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, dropping his knife and fork, and turning to face old Jones. “How on earth did it happen?”

“Well, your worship, ’twere a poaching affray,” returned Jones.“Gisby the bailiff have had his suspicions o’ the game, and he went out last night with a man or two, and met the fellows in the open fieldon this side the copse. There they was, in the bright moonlight, as bold as brass, with a bag o’ game, Master Fred Westerbrook the foremost on ’em. A fight ensued—Gisby don’t want for pluck, he don’t, though he be undersized, and he attacked ’em. Master Fred up with his gun and shot him.”

“Is Gisby dead?”

“No, sir; but he’s a-dying.”

“What a fool that Fred Westerbrook must be!” stormed the Squire.“And I declare I liked the young fellow amazingly! It was only last night, Jones, that we were talking of him here, taking his part against his uncle.”

“He haven’t been after much good, Squire, since he went to live at that there Silver Bear. Not but what the inn’s as respectable——”

“Respectable!—I should like to know where you would find a more respectable inn, or one better conducted?” put in Tod, with scant ceremony. “What do you mean, old Jones? A gentleman can take up his abode at the Silver Bear, and not be ashamed of it.”

“I have nothing to say again’ it, sir; nor against Rimmer neither. It warn’t the inn I was reflecting on, but on Master Fred himself.”

“Anyway, I don’t believe this tale, Jones.”

“Not believe it!” returned Jones, aghast at the bold assertion.“Why, young Mr. Todhetley, the whole parish is a-ringing with it. There’s Gisby a-dying at Shepherd’s—which was the place he were carried to, being the nearest; and Shepherd himself saw young Mr. Fred fire off the gun.”

“What became of the rascally poachers?” asked the Squire. “Who were they?”

“They got clean off, sir, every one on ’em. And they couldn’t be recognized; they had blackened their faces. Master Fred was the only one who had not disguised hisself, which was just like his boldness. They left the game behind ’em, your worship: a nice lot o’pheasants and partridges. Pheasants too, the miscreants!—and October not in.”

There was not much more breakfast for us. Tod rushed off, and I after him. As Jones had said, the whole parish was ringing with the news, and we found people standing about in groups to talk. The particulars appeared to be as old Jones had related. Gisby, taking Shepherd—who was herdsman on the N. D. Farm—with him, and another man named Ford, had gone out to watch for poachers; had met half-a-dozen of them, including Fred Westerbrook, and Fred had shot Gisby.

The Silver Bear stood in the middle of Church Dykely, next door to Perkins the butcher’s. It was kept by Henry Rimmer. We made for it, wondering whether Rimmer could tell us anything. He was in the tap-room, polishing the taps.

“Oh, it’s true enough, young gentlemen!” he said, as we burst in upon him with questions. “And a dreadful thing it is. One can’t help pitying young Mr. Westerbrook.”

“Look here, Rimmer: do you believe he did it?”

“Why, in course he did, Master Johnny. There was no difficulty in knowing him: he was the only one of ’em not disguised. Shepherd says the night was as light as day. Gisby and him and Ford all saw young Mr. Westerbrook, and knew him as soon as the lot came in sight.”

“Was he at home here last evening?” asked Tod.

“He was at home here, sir, till after supper. He had been out in the afternoon, and came in to his tea between five and six. Then he stayed in till supper-time, and went out afterwards.”

“Did he come in later?”

“No, never,” replied Rimmer, lowering his voice, as a man sometimes does when speaking very seriously. “He never came in again.”

“They say Gisby can’t recover. Is that true, or not?”

“It is thought he’ll not live through the day, sir.”

“And where can Westerbrook be hiding himself?”

“He’s safe inside the hut of one or other of the poachers, I should say,” nodded the landlord. “Not that that would be safe for him, or for them, if it could be found out who the villains were. I think I could give a guess at two or three of them.”

“So could I,” said Tod. “Dick Standish was one, I know. And Jelf another. Of course, their haunts will be searched. Don’t you think, Rimmer, Mr. Fred Westerbrook would rather make off, than run the risk of concealing himself in any one of them?”

Rimmer shook his head. “I don’t know about that, sir. He might not be able to make off. It’s thought he was wounded.”

“Wounded!”

“Gisby fired his own gun in the act of falling, and Shepherd thinks the charge hit young Mr. Westerbrook. The poachers were running off then, and Shepherd saw them halt in a kind of heap like, and he is positive that the one on the ground was Mr. Westerbrook. For that reason, sir, I should say the chances are he is somewhere in the neighbourhood.”

Of course it looked like it. Strolling away to pick up anything else that people might be saying, we gave Fred our best wishes for his escape—in spite of the shot—and for effectually dodging old Jones and the rest of the Philistines. Tod made no secret of his sentiments.

“It’s a thing that might have happened to you or to me, you see, Johnny, were we turned out of doors and driven to bay as Fred has been.”

By the afternoon, great staring hand-bills were posted about, written in enormous text-hand, offering a reward of twenty pounds for theapprehension of Frederick Westerbrook. When old Westerbrook was incensed, he went in for the whole thing, and no mistake.

What with the bustle the place was in, and the excitement of the chase—for all the hedges and ditches, the barns and the suspected dwellings were being looked up by old Jones and a zealous crowd, anxious for the reward—it was not until after dinner in the evening that I got away to practice. Going along, I met Duffham, and asked after Gisby.

“I am on my way to Shepherd’s now,” he answered. “I suppose he is still alive, as they have not sent me word to the contrary.”

“Is he sure to die, Mr. Duffham?”

“I fear so, Johnny. I don’t see much chance of saving him.”

“What a dreadful thing for Fred Westerbrook! They may bring it in wilful murder.”

“That they will be sure to do. Good-evening, lad; I have no time to linger with you.”

Bumford was probably looking out for the fugitive (and the reward) on his own score, as he was not to be seen; but I found the key inside the knife-box on the kitchen dresser, his store-place for it, opened the door, and went into the church.

On one side the church-door, as you entered, was an enclosed place underneath the belfry, that did for the vestry and for Clerk Bumford’s den. He kept his store of candles in it, his grave-digging tools (for he was sexton as well as clerk), his Sunday black gown, and other choice articles. On the other side of the door, not enclosed, was the nook that contained the organ. I sat down at once. But I had come too late; for in half-an-hour’s time the notes of the music and the keys were alike dim. Just then Bumford entered.

“Oh, you be here, be you!” said he, treating me, as he did the rest of the world, with slight ceremony. “I thought I heered the organ a-going, so I come on to see.”

“You were not indoors, Bumford, when I called for the key.”

“I were only in the field at the back, a-getting up some dandelion roots,” returned old Bumford, in his usual resentful tone. “There ain’t no obligation in me to be shut in at home everlasting.”

“Who said there was?”

“Ain’t it a’most too dark for you?”

“Yes, I shall have to borrow one of your candles.”

Bumford grunted at this. The candles were not strictly his; they were paid for by the parish; but he set great store by them, and would have denied me one if he could. Not seeing his way clear to doing this, he turned away, muttering to himself. I took my fingers off the keys—for I had been playing while I talked to him—and followed. Bumford went out of the church, shutting the door with a bang, and I proceeded to search for the candlestick.

That was soon found: it always stood on the shelf; but it had no candle in it, and I opened the candle-box to take one out. All the light that came in was from the open slits in the belfry above. The next thing was to find the matches.

Groping about quietly with my hands on the shelf, for fear of knocking down some article or another, and wondering where on earth the match-box had gone to, I was interrupted by a groan. A dismal groan, coming from the middle of the church.

It nearly made me start out of my skin. My shirt-sleeves went damp. Down with us, the ghosts of the buried dead are popularly supposed to haunt the churches at night.

“It must have been the pulpit creaking,” said I, gravely to myself.“Oh, here’s the match——”

An awful groan! Another! Three groans altogether! I stood as still as death; calling up the recollection that God was with me inside the church as well as out of it. Frightened I was, and it is of no use to deny it.

“I wonder what the devil is to be the ending of this!”

The unorthodox words burst upon my ears, bringing a reassurance, for dead people don’t talk, let alone their natural objection (as one must suppose) to mention the arch-enemy. The tones were free and distinct; and—I knew them for Fred Westerbrook’s.

“Fred, is that you?” I asked in a half-whisper, as I went forward.

No sound; no answer.

“Fred! it’s only I.”

Not a word or a breath. I struck a match, and lighted a candle.

“You need not be afraid, Fred. Come along. I’ll do anything I can for you. Don’t you know me?—Johnny Ludlow.”

“For the love of Heaven, put that light out, Johnny!” he said, feeling it perhaps useless to hold out, or else deciding to trust me, as he came down the aisle in a stooping position, so that the pews might screen him from the windows. And I put it out.

“I thought you had gone out of the church with old Bumford,” said he. “I heard you both come away from the organ, and then the door was slammed, leaving the church to silence.”

“I was searching after the candle and matches. When did you come here, Fred? How did you get in?”

“I got in last night. Is there much of a row, Johnny?”

“Pretty well. How came you to do it?”

“To do what?”

“Shoot Gisby.”

“It was not I that shot him.”

“Not you!”

“Certainly not.”

“But—people are saying it was you. You were with the poachers.”

“I was with the poachers; and one of them, like the confounded idiot that he was, pointed his gun and fired it. I recognized the cry for Gisby’s, and knew that the charge must have struck him. I never had a gun in my hand at all, Johnny.”

Well, I felt thankful for that. We sat down on the bench, and Fred told his tale.

After supper the previous night, he strolled out and met some fellow he knew, who lived two or three miles away. (A black sheep in public estimation, like himself.) It was a beautiful night. Fred chose to see him home, and stayed there, drinking a glass or two, till he knew not what hour. Coming back across the fields, he fell in with the poachers. Instead of denouncing them, he told them half in joke, half in earnest, that he might be joining their band himself before the winter was over. Close upon that, they fell in with the watchers, Gisby and the rest. Fred knew he was recognized, for Gisby called out his name; and that, Fred did not like: it made things look black against him. Gisby attacked them; a scuffle ensued, and one of the poachers used his gun. Then the poachers turned to run, Fred with them; a shot was fired after them and hit one of their body—but not Fred, as Rimmer had supposed. The man tripped as the shot struck him, and caused Fred to trip and fall; but both were up, and off, the next moment. Where the rest escaped to, Fred did not know; chance led him past the church: on the spur of the moment he entered it for refuge, and had been there ever since.

“And it is a great and good thing you did enter it, Fred,” I said eagerly. “Gisby swears it was you who shot him, and he is dying; and Shepherd swears it too.”

“Gisby dying?”

“He is. I met Duffham as I came here; he told me there was little, if any, chance of his life; he had been expecting news of his death all the afternoon. They have posted handbills up, offering a reward of twenty pounds for your apprehension, Fred; and—and I am afraid, and so is Duffham, that they will try you for wilful murder. The whole neighbourhood is being searched for you for miles round.”

“Pleasant!” said Fred, after a brief silence. “I had meant to go out to-night and endeavour to ascertain how the land lay. Of course I knew that what could be put upon my back would be put; and there’s no denying that I was with the poachers. But I did not think matters would be as bad as this. Hang it all!”

“But, Fred, how did you get in here?”

“Well,” said he, “we hear talk of providential occurrences: there’s nothing Mr. Holland is fonder of telling us about in his sermons than the guiding finger of God. If the means that enabled me to take refuge here were not providential, Johnny, I must say they looked like it. When I met you yesterday afternoon, you must remember my chancingto say that the little Hollands were playing at ‘Salt Fish’ in the study, while I sat there, talking to Edna?”

Of course I remembered it.

“Directly after I left you, Johnny,” resumed Fred Westerbrook, “I put my hand in my coat-tail pocket for my handkerchief, and found a large key there. It was the key of the church, that the children had been hiding at their play; and I understood in a moment that Charley, whose turn it was to hide last, had made a hiding-place of my pocket. The parson keeps one key, you know, and Bumford the other——”

“But, Fred,” I interrupted, the question striking me, “how came the young ones to let you come away with it?”

“Because, lad, their attention got diverted to something else. Ann brought in the tea-things, with a huge plate of bread-and-treacle: they screamed out in delight, and scuffled to get seats round the table. Well, I let the key lie in my pocket,” went on Fred, “intending to take it back to-day. In the night, when flying from pursuit, not knowing who or how many might be after me, I felt this heavy key strike against me continually; and, in nearing the church, the thought flashed over me like an inspiration: What if I open it and hide there? Just as young Charley had hidden the key in my pocket, so I hid myself, by its means, in the church.”

Taking a minute to think over what he said, it did seem strange. One of those curious things one can hardly account for; the means for his preservation were so simply natural and yet almost marvellous. Perhaps the church was the only building where he could have found secure refuge. Private dwellings would refuse to shelter him, and other places were sure to be searched.

“You are safe here, Fred. No one would ever think of seeking you here.”

“Safe, yes; but for how long? I can’t live without food for ever, Johnny. As it is, I have eaten none since last night.”

My goodness! A shock of remorse came over me. When I was at old Bumford’s knife-box, a loaf of bread stood on the dresser. If I had only secured it!

“We must manage to bring you something, Fred. You cannot stir from here.”

Fred had taken the key out, having returned it to his pocket in the night when he locked himself in. He sat looking at it as he balanced it on his finger.

“Yes, you have served me in good need,” he said to the key. “I shall turn out for a stroll during some quiet hour of the night, Johnny. To keep my restless legs curbed indoors for a whole day and night would be quite beyond their philosophy.”

“Well, take care of yourself, if you do. There’s not a soul in theplace but is wild for the reward; and I dare say they will look for you by night more than by day. How about getting you in something to eat?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “It would never do for you to be seen coming in here at night.”

I knew that. Old Bumford would be down on me if no one else was. I sat turning over possibilities in my mind.

“I will come in betimes to-morrow morning under the plea of practising, Fred, and bring what I can. You must do battle with your hunger until then.”

“I suppose I must, Johnny. Mind you lock the door when you come in, or old Bumford might pounce upon us. When I heard you unlock it on coming in this evening, I can tell you I shivered in my shoes. Fate is very hard,” he added, after a pause.

“Fate is?”

“Why, yes. I have been a bit wild lately, perhaps, savage too, but I declare before Heaven that I have committed no crime, and did not mean to commit any. And now, to have this serious thing fastened upon my back! The world will say I have gone straight over to Satan.”

I did not see how he would get it off his back either. Wishing him good-night and a good heart, I turned to go.

“Wait a moment, Johnny. Let me go back to my hiding-place first.”

He went swiftly up the aisle, lighter now than it had been, for the moonlight was streaming in at the windows. Locking the church safely, I crossed the graveyard to old Bumford’s. He was seated at his round table at supper: bread-and-cheese, and beer.

“Oh, Mr. Bumford, as I have to come into the church very early in the morning, or I shall never get my music up for Sunday, I will take the key home with me. Good-night.”

He shouted out fifteen denials: How dared I think of taking the key out of his custody! But I was conveniently deaf, rushed off, and left him shouting.

“What a long practice you have been taking, Johnny!” cried Mrs. Todhetley. “And how hot you look. You must have run very fast.”

The Squire turned round from his arm-chair. “You’ve been joining in the hunt after that scamp, Mr. Johnny;—you’ve not been in the church, sir, all this time. I hear there’s a fine pack out, scouring the hedges and ditches.”

“I got a candle from old Bumford’s den,” said I, evasively. And presently I contrived to whisper unseen to Tod—who sat reading—to come outside. Standing against the wall of the pigeon-house, I told him all. For once in his life Tod was astonished.

“What a stunning thing!” he exclaimed. “Good luck, Fred! we’ll help you. I knew he was innocent, Johnny. Food? Yes, of course; we must get it for him. Molly, you say? Molly be shot!”

“Well, you know what Molly is, Tod. Let half a grain of suspicion arise, and it might betray him. If she saw us rifling her larder, she would go straight to the Squire; and what excuse should we have?”

“Look here, Johnny. I’ll go out fishing to-morrow, you understand, and order her to make a lot of meat pasties.”

“But he must have something to eat to-morrow morning, Tod: he might die of hunger, else, before night.”

Tod nodded. He had little more diplomacy than the Squire, and would have liked to perch himself upon the highest pillar in the parish there and then, and proclaim Fred Westerbrook’s innocence.

We stole round to the kitchen. Supper was over, but the servants were still at the table; no chance of getting to the larder then. Molly was in one of her tempers, apparently blowing up Thomas. There might be more chance in the morning.

Morning light. Tod went downstairs with the dawn, and I followed him. Not a servant was yet astir. He laid hold of a great tray, lodged it on the larder-floor, and began putting some things upon it—a cold leg of mutton and a big round loaf.

“I can’t take in all that, Tod. It is daylight, you know, and eyes may be about: old Bumford’s are sure to be. I can only take in what can be concealed in my pockets.”

“Oh, bother, Johnny! You’d half famish him.”

“Better half famish him than betray him. Some slices of bread and meat will be best—thick sandwiches, you know.”

We soon cut into the mutton and the bread. Wrapping them in paper, I stowed the thick slices away in my pockets, leaving the rest of the loaf and meat on the shelves again.

“How I wish I could smuggle him in a bottle of beer!”

“And so you can, Johnny. Swear to old Bumford it is for your own drinking.”

“He would know better.”

“Wrap a sheet of music round the bottle, then. He could make nothing of that.”

Hunting out a bottle, we went down to the cellar. Tod stooped to fill it from the tap. I stood watching the process.

“I’ve caught you, Master Johnny, have I! What be you about there, letting the ale run, I’d like to know?”

The words were Molly’s. She had come down and found us out: suspecting something, I suppose, from seeing the cellar-door open. Tod rose up.

“I am drawing some beer to take out with me. Is it any business of yours? When it is, you may interfere.”

I was nobody in the household—never turning upon them. She’d have gone on at me for an hour, and probably walked off with the beer. Tod was altogether different. He held his own authority, even with Molly. She went up the cellar-stairs, grumbling to herself.

“I want a cork for this bottle,” said bold Tod, following her. And Molly, opening some receptacle of hers with a jerk, perforce found him one.

“Oh, and I shall want some meat pasties made to-day, for I think of going fishing,” went on Tod. “Let them be ready by lunch-time. I have cut myself some slices of meat to go on with—if you chance to miss any mutton.”

Molly, never answering, left her kitchen-grate, where she was beginning to crack up the huge flat piece of coal that the fire had been raked with the previous night, and stalked into the larder to see what depredations had been done. We tied up the bottle in paper on the parlour-table, and then wrapped it in a sheet of loose music. It looked a pretty thick roll; but nobody would be likely to remark that.

“I have a great mind to go with you and see him, Johnny,” said Tod, as we went together down the garden-path.

“Oh, don’t, Tod!” I cried. “For goodness’ sake, don’t. You know you never do go in with me, and it might cause old Bumford to wonder.”

“Then, I’ll leave it till after dark to-night, Johnny. Go in then, I shall.”

Bumford was astir, but not down yet. I heard him coughing, through his open casement; for I went with a purpose round the path by his house, and called out to him. He looked out in his shirt-sleeves and a cotton night-cap.

“You see how early I am this morning. I’ll bring you the key when I leave.”

“Eugh!” growled Bumford. “No rights to ha’ took it.”

Locking the church-door securely after me, I went down the aisle, calling softly to Fred. He came forward from a dark, high-walled pew behind a pillar, where he had slept. You should have seen him devour the bread and meat, if you’d like to know what hunger means, and drink the bottle of beer. I sat down to practise. Had old Bumford not heard the sound of the organ, he might have come thundering at the door to know what I was about, and what the silence meant. Fred came with me, and we talked whilst I played. About the first question he asked was whether Gisby was dead; but I could not tell him. He said he had gone out cautiously in the night and walked about the churchyard for an hour, thinking over what he could do. “And I really had an unpleasant adventure, Johnny,” he added.

“What was it?”

“I was pacing the path under the hedge towards Bumford’s, when all at once there arose the sound of voices and steps on the other side of it—fellows on the look-out for me, I suppose.”

I held my breath. “What did you do?”

“Crouched down as well as I could—fortunately the hedge is high—and came softly and swiftly over the grass and the graves to the porch. I only slipped inside just in time, Johnny: before I could close the door, the men were in the churchyard. The key has a trick of creaking harshly when turned in the lock, you know; and I declare I thought they must have heard it then, for it made a fearful noise, and the night was very still!”

“And they did not hear it?”

“I suppose not. But it was some minutes, I can tell you, before my pulses calmed down to their ordinary rate of beating.”

He went on to say that the only plan he could think of was to endeavour to get away from the neighbourhood, and go out of the country. To stand his trial was not to be thought of. His word, that he had not been the guilty man, had never even had a gun in his hand that night, would go for nothing, against Gisby’s word and Shepherd’s. Whatever came of it, he would have to be out of the church before Sunday. The great question was: how could he get away unseen? I told him Tod was coming with me at night, and we would consult together. Locking up the church again, and the prisoner in it, I gladdened Bumford’s heart by handing over the key, and ran home to breakfast.

Life yet lingered in Gisby; but the doctors thought he could not live through the day. The injury he had received was chiefly internal, somewhere in the region of the lungs. Fresh parties went out with fresh ardour to scour the country after Fred Westerbrook; and so the day passed. Chancing to meet Shepherd late in the afternoon, he told me Gisby still lived.

At sundown I went in to practise again, and took a big mould-candle with me, showing it to Bumford, that he might not be uneasy on the score of his stock in the vestry. As soon as dusk came on, and before the tell-tale moon was much up, I left the organ, opened the church-door, and stood at it, according to the plan concerted with Tod. He came swiftly up with his basket of provisions which he had got together by degrees during the day; and then we locked the door again. After Fred had regaled himself, we consulted together. Fred was to steal out of the church about one o’clock on Sunday morning, and make off across the country. But to do this with safety it was necessary he should be disguised. By that time the ardour of the night-searching might have somewhat passed; and the hour, one o’clock in the morning, was as silent and lonely a one as could beexpected. It was most essential that he should not be recognized by any person who might chance to meet him.

“But you must manage one thing for me,” said Fred, after this was settled. “I will not go away without seeing Edna. She can come in here with you to-morrow night.”

We both objected. “It will be very hazardous, Fred. Old Bumford would be sure to see her: his eyes are everywhere.”

“Tell him you want her to sing over the chants with you, Johnny. Tell him anything. But go away for an indefinite period, without first seeing her and convincing her that it is not guilt that sends me, I will not.”

So there was no more to be said.

Getting provisions together seemed to have been easy compared with what we should have to get up now—a disguise. A smock-frock, say, and the other items of a day-labourer’s apparel. But it was more easy to decide than to procure them.

“Mack leaves belongings of his in the barn occasionally,” said Tod to me, as we walked home together. “We’ll look to-morrow night.”

It was our best hope. Failing that, there would be no possibility of getting a smock-frock anywhere; and Fred would have to escape in his coat turned inside out, or something of that sort. His own trousers, braced up high, and plastered with mud at the feet, would do very well, and his own wideawake hat, pulled low down on his face. There would be no more trouble about provisions, for what Tod had taken in would be enough.

Saturday. And Tod and I with our work before us. Gisby was sinking fast.

Late in the afternoon I went to the Parsonage, wondering how I should get to see Edna Blake alone. But Fortune favoured me—as it seemed to have favoured us throughout. The children were all at play in the nearest field. Edna was in what they called the schoolroom in her lilac-print dress, looking over socks and stockings, about a wheelbarrow-full. I saw her through the window, and went straight in. Her large dark eyes looked as sad and big as the hole she was darning; and her voice had a hopeless ring in it.

“Oh, Johnny, how you startled me! Nay, don’t apologize. It is my fault for being so nervous and foolish. I can’t think what has ailed me the last few days: I seem to start at shadows. Have—have you come to tell me anything?”

By the shrinking voice and manner, I knew what she feared—that Fred Westerbrook was taken. Looking round the room, I asked whether what we said could be heard.

“There’s no one to hear,” she answered. “Poor Mrs. Holland is in bed. Mr. Holland is out; and Anne is shut up, cleaning the kitchen.”

“Well, then,” I said, dropping my voice, “I have brought you a message from Fred Westerbrook.”

Down went the socks in a heap. “Oh, Johnny!”

“Hush! No: he is not taken; he is in safe hiding. What’s more, Edna, he is no more guilty than I am. He met the poachers accidentally that night just before the affray, and he never had a gun in his hands at all.”

A prolonged, sobbing sigh, as if she were going to faint, and then a glad light in her eyes. She took up her work again. I went over to the seat next her, and told her all. She was darning all the while. With such a heap of mending the fingers must not be idle.

“To America!” she repeated, in answer to what I said. “What is he going to do for money to carry him there?”

“He talks of working his passage over. He has enough money about him, he says, to take him to the coast. Unfortunately, neither Tod nor I can help him in that respect. We have brought empty pockets from school, and shall have no money before the time of going back again. Will you go in and see him, Edna?”

“Yes,” she said, after a minute’s consideration. “And I will bring a roll of music in my hand, as you suggest, Johnny, for the satisfaction of Clerk Bumford’s curiosity. I will be at the stile as near eight o’clock as I can, if you will come out there to meet me: but it is Saturday night, you know, when there’s always a great deal to do.”

Dinner was made later than usual that night at home: it had struck half-past seven before we got out, having secured another bottle of beer. The moon was rising behind the trees as we went into the barn.

Tod struck a match, and we looked about. Yes, Fortune was with us still. Hanging on the shaft of the cart, was Mack’s smock-frock. It was anything but clean; but beggars can’t be choosers. Next we descried a cotton neckerchief and a pair of boots; two clumsy, clod-hopping boots, with nails in the soles, and the outside leather not to be seen for patches.

“They must do,” said Tod, with a rueful look. “But just look at the wretches, Johnny. I must smuggle these and the smock-frock into the church-porch, whilst you go round to old B.’s for the key.”

“I have the key. I flung him a shilling this morning instead of the key, saying I might be wanting to practise at any hour to-day, and would give it him back to-night.”

Going by the most solitary way, I let Tod into the church, and went to meet Edna Blake. She was already there, the roll of music in her hand. Bumford shot out of his house, and crossed our path.

“Good-evening, Mr. Bumford!” said she, cheerily. “I am come to try the hymns for to-morrow, with Johnny Ludlow.”

“They’d need to be sum’at extra, they had, with all this here fuss of practising,” returned Bumford, ungraciously. “Is the parson at home, Miss Blake?”

“Yes. He is in the little room, writing.”

“‘Cause I want to see him,” said the clerk; and he stalked off.

“Do you know how Gisby is?” Edna asked me in a whisper.

“Dead by this time, I dare say. But I have not heard.”

They were at the top of the church when we got in, laughing in covert tones; I guessed it was over those dreadful boots. Edna stood by me whilst I locked the door, and then we went at once to the organ and began the hymn. Old Bumford could not be too far off yet to catch the sounds. Presently Fred Westerbrook and Edna went into the aisle, and paced it arm-in-arm. I kept on playing; Tod, not knowing what to do with himself, whistled an accompaniment.

“How long shall I be away, Edna!” exclaimed Fred, in answer to her question. “Why, how can I tell? It may be for years; it may be for ever. I cannot come back, I suppose, whilst this thing is hanging over my head.”

She was in very low spirits, and the tears began to drop from her eyes. Fred could see that much, as they paced through one of the patches of moonlight.

“You may not succeed in getting away.”

“No, I may not. And do you know, Edna, there are moments when I feel half inclined not to attempt it, but to give myself up instead, and let the matter take its course. If I do get away, and get on in the States, so as to make myself a home, will you come out and share it with me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I may do it. I think I shall. Few people know more about the cultivation of land than I do, and I will take care to put my shoulder to the wheel. Practical farmers get on well there if they choose, though they have to rough it at first. Be very sure of one thing, Edna: all my hopes and aims will be directed to one end—that of making a home for you.”

She could not speak for crying.

“It may not be a luxurious home, neither may I make anything of a position. But if I make enough for comfort, you will come out to it?”

“I will,” she said with a sob.

“My darling!”

Echo bore the words to us, softly though they were spoken. I played a crashing chord or two, after the manner of Richards.

“You may not hear from me,” continued Fred. “I must not give any clue to where I am, and therefore cannot write—at least, not at present. Men accused of murder can be brought home from any partof the world. Only trust me, Edna. Trust me! though it be for years.”

No fear but she would. She put a small packet in his hand.

“You must take it, Frederick. It is my last half-year’s salary—ten pounds—and I chance to have it by me: a loan, if you will; but take it you shall. Knowing that you have a few pounds to help you away and to fall back upon, will make things a little less miserable for me.”

“But, Edna——”

“I declare I will throw it away if you do not take it,” she returned, warmly. “Do not be cruel to me, Frederick. If you knew how it will lighten my doubts and fears, you would not for a moment hesitate.”

“Be it so, Edna. It will help me onwards. Truth to say, I did not see how I should have got along, even to the coast, unless I had begged on my way. It is a loan, Edna, and I will contrive to repay it as soon as may be.”

So his boast of having money to take him to the coast had been all a sham. Poor Fred! They began to take leave of one another, Edna sobbing bitterly. I plunged into the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Tod let her out, and watched her safely across the churchyard. Then we locked the door again for the dressing-up, I playing a fugue between whiles. The first operation was that of cutting his hair short, for which we had brought the mater’s big scissors. No labourer would be likely to possess Fred’s beautiful hair, or wear it so long. Tod did it well; not counting a few notches, and leaving him as good as none on his head.

It was impossible to help laughing when we took a final look at him in the moonlight, Fred turning himself about to be inspected: his hair, clipped nearly to the roots, suggesting a suspicion that he had just come out of prison; his trousers, not reaching to the ankle, showing off the heavy, patched, disreputable boots; the smock-frock; and Mack’s spotted cotton neckerchief muffled round his chin!

“Your own mother wouldn’t know you, Fred.”

“What a figure I shall cut if I am dropped upon and brought back!”

“Take heart, man!” cried Tod. “Resolve to get off, and you will get off.”

“Yes, Fred, I think you will. You have been so helped hitherto, that I think you will be helped still.”

“Thank you, Johnny. Thank you both. I will take heart. And if I live to return, I hope I shall thank you better.”

Later we dared not stay; it was past nine now. I bade Fred good-bye, and God-speed.

“Between half-past twelve and one, mind, will be your time; you’ll hear the clock strike,” was Tod’s parting injunction, given in a whisper.“Good luck to you, old fellow! I hope and trust you’ll dodge theenemy. And as soon as you are clear of the churchyard, make off as if the dickens were behind you.”

“Here’s the key, Mr. Bumford,” I said, while Tod stole off with his bundle the other way, Fred’s boots, and hair, and all that. “You won’t be bothered for it next week, for I shall be off to school again.”

“Thought you’d took up your lodging inside for the night,” grunted Bumford. “Strikes me, Master Ludlow, it’s more play nor work with you.”

“As it is with a good many of us, Bumford. Good-night!”

We walked home in the moonlight, silent enough, Tod handing me the bundles to carry. The Squire attacked us, demanding whether we had stayed out to look at the moon.

And I tossed and turned on my restless bed till the morning hours, thinking of poor Fred Westerbrook, and of whether he would get away. When sleep at last came, it brought me a very vivid dream of him. I thought he did not get away: he was unable to unlock the church-door. Whether Tod and I had double-locked it in leaving, I knew not; but Fred could not get it open. When Clerk Bumford entered the church in the morning, and the early comers of the congregation with him, there stood Fred, hopelessly waiting to be taken. I saw him as plainly in my dream as I had ever seen him in reality: with the dirty smock-frock, and the patched boots, and the clipped hair. Shepherd, who seemed to follow me in, darted forward and seized him; and in the confusion I awoke. Just for a minute I thought it was true—a scene actually enacted. Would it prove so?

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SYLLABUB FEAST.

“You have gone and done a fine thing, Master Johnny Ludlow!”

The salutation came from Clerk Bumford. He was standing at the church-door on Sunday morning, looking out as if he expected me, his face pale and stern. I had run on betimes: in fact, before the bell began.

“What have I done, Bumford?”

“Why, you just went and left this here church open last night! You never locked it up! When I come in but now, I found the door right on the latch; never as much as shut!”

Beginning to protest till all was blue that I had shut and locked the door—as I knew too well—caution pulled me up, and whispered me to take the blame.

“I’m sure I thought I locked it, Bumford. I never left it unlocked before, and I’ll take care I never leave it so again.”

“Such a thing as having the church open for a night was never heered of,” he grumbled, turning away to ring out the first peal of the bell. “Why, I might have had all my store o’ candles stole! there’s nigh a pound on ’em, in here. And my black gownd—and the parson’s gownd—and his surplice! Besides the grave-digging tools, and other odds and ends.”

Shutting himself into his den underneath the belfry, and tugging away at the cords, the bell tinkled out, warning the parish that it was time to start for morning service. The bell-ringer was a poor old man named Japhet, who was apt to be a little late. Upon which Bumford would begin the ringing, and blow Japhet up when he came.

Not a soul was yet in church. I went down the middle aisle softly calling Fred Westerbrook’s name. He did not answer; and I hoped to my heart he had got clear away. The open entrance-door seemed to indicate that he had; and I thought he might have left it undone in case he had to make a bolt back again. Nevertheless, I could not shake off the remembrance of my unpleasant dream.

Of all troublesome idiots, that Bumford was the worst. When I went back, after passing by all the remote nooks and corners, Japhet had taken his place at the bell, and he was telling the parson of my sins.

“Right on the latch all the blessed night, your reverence,” protested Bumford. “We might have found the whole church ransacked this morning.”

Mr. Holland, a mild man, with stout legs, and cares of his own, looked at me with a half-smile. “How was it, Johnny?”

“I have assured Bumford, sir, that it shall not happen again. I certainly thought I had locked it when I took him back the key. No harm has come of it.”

“But harm might ha’ come,” persisted Bumford. “Look at all them candles in there! and the gownds and surplices! Pretty figures we should ha’ cut, saving his reverence’s presence, with nothing to put upon our backs this here blessed morning!”

“Talking of the key, I missed mine this morning,” remarked Mr. Holland. “Have you taken it away for any purpose, Bumford?”

“What, the t’other church-key!” exclaimed Bumford. “Not I, sir. I’d not be likely to fetch that key when I’ve got my own—and without your reverence’s knowledge either!”

“Well, I cannot find it anywhere,” said Mr. Holland. “It generally lies on the mantelpiece at home, and it is not there this morning.”

He went into the vestry with the last words. To hear that the church-key generally lay on the mantelpiece, was nothing; for the parson’s house was not noticeable for order. There would have been none in it at all but for Edna.

Close upon that, arrived Shepherd, a folded paper in his hand. It contained a request that Gisby might be prayed for in the Litany.

“What, ain’t he dead yet?” asked Bumford.

“No,” returned Shepherd. “The doctors be afraid that internal inflammation’s a-setting in now. Any way, he is rare and bad, poor man.”

Next came in my set of singers, chiefly boys and girls from the parish school. But they sang better than such children generally sing; and would have sung very well indeed with an organist who had his head on his shoulders the proper way. Mrs. Todhetley had long taken pains with them, but latterly it had all been upset by Richards’s crotchets.

“Now, look here,” said I, gathering them before me. “We are not going to have any shrieking to-day. We sing to praise God, you know, and He is in the church with you and hears you; He is not a mile or two away, that you need shout out to be heard all that distance.”

“Please, sir, Mr. Richards tells us to sing out loud: as loud as ever we can. Some on us a’most cracks our voices at it.”

“Well, never mind Mr. Richards to-day. I am going to play, and I tell you to sing softly. If you don’t, I shall stop the organ and let you shout by yourselves. You won’t like that. To shout and shriek in church is more irreverent than I care to talk about.”

“Please, sir, Mr. Richards plays the organ so loud that we can’t help it.”

“I wish you’d let Mr. Richards alone. You won’t hear the organ loud to-day. Do you say your prayers when you go to bed at night?”

This question took them aback. But at last the whole lot answered that they did.

“And do you say your prayers softly, or do you shout them out at the top of your voices? To my mind, it is just as unseemly to shout when singing in church, as it would be when praying. This church has been like nothing lately but the ranter’s chapel. There, take your seats, and look out the places in your Prayer-books.”

I watched the different groups walk into church. Our people were pretty early. Tod slipped aside as they went up the aisle to whisper me a question—Had Fred got clear away? I told him I thought so, hearing and seeing nothing to the contrary. When the parson’s children came in, Mrs. Holland was with them, so that Edna Blake was enabled to join the singers, as she did when she could. But it was not often Mrs. Holland came to church. Edna had dark circles round her eyes. They looked out at mine with a painful inquiry in their depths.

“Yes, I think it is all right,” I nodded in answer.

“Mr. Holland has missed his church-key,” she whispered. “Coming along to church, Charley suddenly called out that he remembered hiding it in Mr. Fred Westerbrook’s coat-pocket. Mrs. Holland seemed quite put out about it, and asked me how I could possibly have allowed himto come into the study and sit there.”

“There’s old Westerbrook, Edna! Just look! His face is fiercer than usual.”

Mrs. Westerbrook was with him, in a peach-coloured corded-silk gown. She made a point of dressing well. But she was just one of those women that no attire, good or bad, would set off: her face common, her figure stumpy. And so, one after another, the congregation all came in, and the service began. It caused quite a sensation when Mr. Holland made a pause, after turning to the Litany, and read out the announcement: “Your prayers are requested for Walter Gisby, who is dangerously ill.” Men’s heads moved, and bonnets fluttered.

“How I wish you played for us always, Johnny!” cried Miss Susan Page, looking in upon me to say it, as she passed out from her pew, when the service was over.

“Why, my playing is nothing, Miss Susan!”

“Perhaps not. I don’t know. But it has this effect, Johnny—it sends us home with a feeling of peace in our hearts. What with Richards’s crashing and the singers’ shouting, we are generally turned out in a state of irritation.”

After running through the voluntary, I found a large collection of people in the churchyard. Old Westerbrook was holding forth on the subject of Fred’s iniquities to a numerous audience, the Squire making one of them. Mrs. Westerbrook looked simply malicious.

“No, I do not know where he is hiding,” said the master of the N. D. Farm in answer to a question. “I wish I did know: I would hang him with all the pleasure in life. An ungrateful, reckless—— What’s that, Squire? You’d recommend me to increase the reward? Why, I have increased it. I have doubled it. Old Jones has my orders to post up fresh bills.”

“If all’s true that’s reported, he can’t escape very far; he had no money in his pocket,” put in young Mr. Stirling, of the Court, who sometimes came over to our church. “By the way, who has been playing to-day?”

“Johnny Ludlow.”

“Oh, have you, Johnny?” he said, turning to me. “It was very pleasant. And so was the singing.”

“It would have been better had Mrs. Todhetley played—as she was to have done,” I said, wishing they wouldn’t bring me up before people, and knowing that my playing was just as simple as it could be, neither florid nor flowery.

“I have seen what Frederick Westerbrook was, this many a year past,” broke in Mrs. Westerbrook in loud tones, as if resenting the drifting of the conversation from Fred’s ill-doings. “Mr. Westerbrook knows that I have given him my opinion again and again. Only he would not listen.”

“How could I believe that my own brother’s son was the scamp you and Gisby made him out to be?” testily demanded old Westerbrook, who in his way was just as unsophisticated and straightforward as the Squire: and would have been as good-natured, let alone. “I’m sure till the last year or two Fred was as steady and dutiful as heart could wish.”

“You had better say he is still,” said she.

“But—hang it!—I don’t say it, ma’am,” fired old Westerbrook.“I should be a fool to say it. Unfortunately, I can’t say it. I have lived to find he is everything that’s bad—and I say that hanging’s too good for him.”

Mr. Holland came out of the church and passed us, halting a moment to speak. “I am on my way to pray by poor Gisby,” he said. “They have sent for me.”

“Gisby must need it,” whispered Tod to me. “He has been a worse sinner than Fred Westerbrook: full of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.”

And so he had been—in regard to Fred.

“Help! Thieves!—Robbers! Help!”

The shouts came from our yard, as we were sitting down to breakfast on Monday morning, and we rushed out. There stood Mack, inthe greatest state of excitement possible; his eyes lifted, his arms at work, and his breath gone. The servants ran out before we did.

“Why! what on earth’s the matter, Ben Mack?” demanded the Squire. “Have you gone mad?”

“We’ve had thieves in the barn, sir! Thieves! All my clothes is stole.”

“What clothes?”

“Them what I left in’t o’ Saturday night, Squire. My smock-frock and my boots, and my spotted cotton neck-handkecher. They be gone, they be.”

“Nonsense!” said the Squire, whilst I and Tod kept our faces.“We have not had thieves here, man.”

“But, ’deed, and the things be gone, Squire. Clean gone! Not so much as a shred on ’em left! Please come and see for yourself, sir.”

He turned, and went striding across the yard. The Squire followed, evidently at fault for comprehension; and the rest of us after him.

“It’s a mercy as the horses and waggons bain’t took!” cried Mack, plunging into the barn. “And the harness! look at it, a-hanging up; and that there wheelbarrer——”

“But what do you say is taken, Mack?” interrupted the Squire, cutting him short, and looking round the barn.

“All my traps, sir. My best smock-frock; and my boots, and my spotted cotton neck-handkecher. A beautiful pair o’ boots, Squire, that I generally keeps here, in case I be sent off to Alcester, or Evesham, or where not, and have to tidy myself up a bit.”

Tod backed out of the barn doubled up. Nearly choking at the“beautiful” boots.

“But why do you think they are stolen, Mack?” the Squire was asking.

“I left ’em safe here o’ Saturday evening, sir, when I locked up the barn. The things be all gone now; you may see as they be, Squire. There bain’t a vestige of ’em.”

“Have any of the men moved them?”

“’Twas me as unlocked the barn myself but now, Squire. The key on’t was on the nail where I put it Saturday night. If any of the men had unlocked it afore me this morning, they’d not ha’ shut it up again. We’ve all been away at work too on t’other side o’ the land since we come on at six o’clock. No, sir, it’s thieves—and what will become of me? A’most a new smock-frock, and the beautifulest pair o’ strong boots: they’d ha’ lasted me for years.”

Tod shrieked out at last, unable to help himself. Mack cast a reproachful glance at him, as if he thought the merriment too cruel.

“You must have been drinking on Saturday, Ben Mack, and fancied you left ’em here,” put in Molly, tartly.

“Me been a-drinking!” retorted poor bereaved Mack, ready to cry at the aspersion. “Why, I’d never had a drop o’ nothing inside my lips since dinner-time, save a draught of skim milk as the dairy-maid gave me. They was in that far corner, them boots; and the smock-frock was laid smooth across the shaft of this here cart, the handkecher folded a-top on’t.”

“Well, well, we must inquire after the things,” remarked the Squire, turning to go back to breakfast. “I don’t believe they are stolen, Mack: they’ll be found somewhere. If you had lost yourself, you could not have made more noise over it. I’m sure I thought the ricks must be on fire.”

Tod could hardly eat his breakfast for laughing. Every now and then he came out with the most unexpected burst. The pater demanded what there was to laugh at in Mack’s having mislaid his clothes.

But, as the morning went on, the Squire changed his tone. When no trace could be discovered of the articles, high or low, he took up the opinion that we had been visited by tramps, and sent off for old Jones the constable. Jones sent back his duty, and he would come across as soon as he could, but he was busy organizing the search after Master Westerbrook, and posting up the fresh bills.

“Johnny, we must dispose of that hair of Fred’s in some way,” Tod whispered to me in the course of the morning. “To let any one come upon it would never do: they might fish and ferret out everything. Come along.”

We went up, bolted ourselves in his room, and undid the hair. Fine, silky hair, not quite auburn, not quite like chestnut, something between the two, but as nice a colour as you would wish to see.

“Better burn it,” suggested Tod.

“Won’t it make an awful smell?”

“Who cares? You can go away if you don’t like the smell.”

“I shall save a piece for Edna Blake.”

“Rubbish, Johnny! What good will it do her?”

“She may like to have it. Especially if she never sees him again.”

“Make haste, then, and take a lock. It’s quite romantic. I am going to put a match to it.”

I chose the longest piece I could see, put it into an envelope, and fastened it up. Tod turned the hair into his wash-hand basin, and set it alight: the grate was filled up with the summer shavings. A frizzling and fizzing set in at once: and very soon a rare smell of singeing.

“Open the window, Johnny.”

I had hardly opened it, when the handle of the door was turned and turned, and the panel thumped at. Hannah’s voice came shrieking through the keyhole.

“Mr. Joseph!—Master Johnny! Are you both in there? What’s the matter?”

“What should be the matter?” called back Tod, putting his hand over my mouth that I should not speak. “Go back to your nursery.”

“There’s something burning! My goodness! it’s just as if all the blankets in the house were singeing! You’ve been setting your blankets on fire, Mr. Joseph!”

“And if I have!” cried Tod, blowing away at the hair to make it burn the quicker. “They are not yours.”

“Good patience! you’ll burn us all up, sir! Fire—fire!” shrieked out Hannah, frightened beyond her wits. “For goodness’ sake, Miss Lena, keep away from the keyhole! Here, ma’am! Ma’am! Here’s Mr. Joseph with all his blankets on fire!”

Mrs. Todhetley ran up the stairs, and her terrified appeal came to our ears through the door. Tod threw it open. The hair had burnt itself out.

“Why don’t you go off for the parish engine?” demanded Tod of Hannah, as they came sniffing in. “Well, where’s the fire?”

“But, my dears, something must be singeing,” said Mrs. Todhetley.“Where is it?—what is it?”

“It can’t be anything but the blankets,” cried Hannah, choking and stifling. “Miss Lena, then, don’t I tell you to keep outside, out of harm’s way? Well, it is strong!”

Mrs. Todhetley put her hand on my arm. “Johnny, what is it? Where is the danger?”

“There’s no danger at all,” struck in Tod. “I suppose I can burn some old fishing-tackle rubbish in my basin if I please—horsehair, and that. You should not have the grates filled with paper, ma’am, if you don’t like the smell.”

She went to the basin, found the smell did come from it, and then looked at us both. I was smiling, and it reassured her.

“You might have taken it to the kitchen and burnt it there, Joseph,”she said mildly. “Indeed, I was very much alarmed.”

“Thanks to Hannah,” said Tod. “You’d have known nothing about it but for her. I wish you’d just order her to mind her own business.”

“It was my business, Mr. Joseph—smelling all that frightful smell of singeing! And if—— Why, whose boots are these?” broke off Hannah.

Opening the closet to get out the hair, we had left Fred’s boots exposed. Hannah’s eyes, ranging themselves round in search of the singeing, had espied them. She answered her own question.

“You must have brought them from school in your box by mistake. Mr. Joseph. These are men’s boots, these are!”

“I can take them back to school again,” said Tod, carelessly.

So that passed off. “And it is the best thing we can do with theboots, Johnny, as I think,” he said to me in a low tone when we were once more left to ourselves. “We can’t burn them. They’d make a choicer scent than the hair made.”

“I suppose they wouldn’t fit Mack?”

Tod laughed.

“If he kept those other ‘beautiful boots’ for high days and holidays, what would he not keep these for? No, Johnny; they are too slender for Mack’s foot.”

“I wonder how poor Fred likes his clumsy ones?—how he contrives to tramp it in them?”

“I would give something to know that he was clear out of the country.”

Dashing over to the Parsonage under pretence of saying good-bye to the children, I gave the envelope containing the lock of hair to Edna, telling her what it was. The colour rushed into her face, the tears to her eyes.

“Thank you, Johnny,” she said softly. “Yes, I shall like to keep it—just a little memorial of him. Most likely we shall never meet again.”

“I should just take up the other side of the question, Edna, and look forward to meeting him.”

“Not here, at any rate,” she answered. “How could he ever come back to England with this dreadful charge hanging over him? Good luck to you this term, Johnny Ludlow. Sometimes I think our school-days are our happiest.”

We were to dine in the middle of the day, and start for school at half-past two. Tod boldly asked the Squire to give him a sovereign, apart from any replenishing of his pockets that might take place at starting. He wanted it for a particular purpose, he said.

And the pater, after holding forth a bit about thrift versus extravagance, handed out the sovereign. Tod betook himself to the barn. There sat Mack on the inverted wheelbarrow, at his dinner of cold bacon and bread, and looking most disconsolate.

“Found the things, Mack?”

“Me found ’em, Mr. Joseph! No, sir; and I bain’t ever likely to find ’em, that’s more. They are clean walked off, they are. When I thinks o’ them there beautiful boots, and that there best smock-frock, I be fit to choke, I be!”

Tod was fit to choke, keeping his countenance. “What was their value, Mack?”

“They were of untold val’e, sir, to me. I’d not hardly ha’ lost ’em for a one-pound note.”

“Would a pound replace them?”

Mack, drawing his knife across the bread and bacon, looked up. Tod spoke more plainly.

“Could you buy new ones with a pound?”

“Bless your heart, sir, and where be I to get a pound from? I was just a-calkelating how long it ’ud take me to save enough money up——”

“I wish you’d answer my question, Mack. Would a pound replace the articles that have been stolen?”

“Why, in course it would, sir,” returned Mack, staring. “But where be I——”

“Don’t bother. Look here: there’s a pound”—tossing the sovereign to him. “Buy yourself new ones, and think no more of the old ones.”

Mack could not believe his eyes or ears. “Oh, Mr. Joseph! Well, I never! Sir, you be——”

“But now, understand this much, Mack. I only give you the money on one condition—that you say nothing about it. Tell nobody.”

“Well, I never, Mr. Joseph! A whole golden pound! Why, sir, it’ll set me up reg’lar in——”

“If you don’t attend to what I am saying, Mack, I’ll take it away again. You are not to tell any one that you have had it, do you hear?”

“Sir, I’ll never tell a blessed soul.”

“Very well. I shall expect you to keep your word. Once let it be known that your lost clothes have been replaced, and we should have the rest of the men losing theirs on speculation. So keep a silent tongue in your head; to the Squire as well as to others.”

“Bless your heart, Mr. Joseph! I’ll take care, sir. Nobody shan’t know on’t from me. When the wife wants to ferret out where I got’em, I’ll swear to her I’ve went in trust for ’em. And I’m sure I thank ye, sir, with all my——”

Tod walked away, cutting the thanks short.

As we were turning out at the gates on our way back to school, Tod driving Bob and Blister (which he much liked to do, though it was not always the Squire trusted him) and Giles sitting behind us, Duffham was coming along on his horse. Tod pulled up, and asked what was the latest news of Gisby.

“Well, strange to say, we are beginning to have some faint hopes of him,” replied the doctor. “There’s no doubt that at mid-day he was a trifle easier and better.”

“That’s good news,” said Tod. “The man is a detestable sneak, but of course one does not want him to die. Save him if you can, Mr. Duffham—for Fred Westerbrook’s sake. Good-bye.”

“God-speed you both,” returned Duffham. “Take care of those horses. They are fresh.”

Tod gently touched the two with the whip, and called back a saucy word. He particularly resented any reflection on his driving.

A year went by. We were at home for the Michaelmas holidays again. And who should chance to call at the Manor the very day of our arrival but old Westerbrook.

Changes had taken place at the N. D. Farm. Have you ever observed that when our whole heart is set upon a thing, our entire aims and actions are directed to bringing it about, it is all quietly frustrated by that Finger of Fate that none of us, whether prince or peasant, can resist? Mrs. Westerbrook had been doing her best to move heaven and earth to encompass the deposition of Fred Westerbrook for her own succession, and behold she could not. Just as she had contrived that Fred should be crushed, and she herself put into old Westerbrook’s will in his place, as the inheritor of the N. D. Farm and all its belongings, Heaven rendered her work nugatory by taking her to itself.

Yes, Mrs. Westerbrook was dead. She was carried off after a rather short illness: and Mr. Westerbrook was a widower, bereaved and solitary.

He was better off without her. The home was ten times more peaceful. He felt that: but he felt it to be very lonely; and he more than once caught himself wishing Fred was back again. Which of course meant wishing that he had never gone away, and never turned out to be a scamp.

Gisby did not die. Gisby had recovered in process of time, and was now more active on the farm than ever. Rather too active, its master was beginning dimly to suspect. Gisby seemed to haunt him. Gisby assumed more power than was at all necessary; and Gisby never ceased to pour into Mr. Westerbrook’s ear reiterations of Fred’s iniquity. Altogether, Mr. Westerbrook was growing a bit tired of Gisby. He had taken to put him down with curtness; and once when Gisby ventured to hint that it might be a convenient arrangement if he took up his abode in the house, Mr. Westerbrook swore at him. As to Fred, he was still popularly looked upon as cousin-german to the fiend incarnate.

Nothing had been heard of him. Nothing of any kind since that moonlight night when he had made his escape. Waiting for news from him so long, and waiting in vain, I, and Tod with me, had at last made up our minds that nothing more ever would be heard of him in this world. In short, that he had slipped out of it. Perhaps been starved out of it. Starved to death.

Well, Mr. Westerbrook called at the Manor within an hour of our getting home for Michaelmas, just twelve months after the uproar.

To me, he looked a good deal changed: his manner was quiet and subdued, almost as though he no longer took much interest in life; his hair had turned much greyer, and he complained of a continual pain in the left leg, which made him stiff, and sometimes prevented himfrom walking. Duffham called it a touch of rheumatism. Mr. Westerbrook fancied it might be an indication of something worse.

“But you have walked here, Westerbrook!” remarked the Squire.

“And shall walk back again—round by the village,” he said. “It seems to me to be just this, Squire—that if I do not make an effort to walk while I can, I may be laid aside for good.”

He gave a deep sigh as he spoke, as if he had the care of the whole parish upon him. The Squire began talking of the crop of oats on the N. D. Farm, saying what a famous crop it was.

“You’ll net a good penny by them this year, Westerbrook.”

“Passable,” was the indifferent reply. “Good crops no longer bring me the satisfaction they did, Squire. I’ve nobody to save for now. Will you spend a day with me before you go back, young gentlemen?”he went on, turning to us. “Come on Friday. It is pretty lonely there. It wants company to enliven it.”

And we promised we would go.

He said good-bye, and I went with him, to help him over the stile into the lane, on account of his stiffness—for that was the road he meant to take to Church Dykely. In passing the ricks he laid his hand on my shoulder.

“You won’t mind a lonely day with a lonely old man?”

“We shall like it, sir. We will do our best to enliven you.”

“It is not much that will do that now, Johnny Ludlow,” said he.“When a man gets to my age, and feels his health and strength failing, it seems hard to be left all alone.”

“No doubt it does, sir. I wish you had Fred back again!” I boldly added.

“Hush, Johnny! Fred is lost to me for good. He made his own bed, you know, and is lying on it. As I have to lie on mine—such as it is. Such as he left to me!”

“Do you know where Fred is, sir?”

“Do I know where Fred is?” he repeated in a tart tone. “How should I be likely to know? How could I know? I have never heard tidings of him, good or bad, since that wretched night.”

We had reached the stile. Old Westerbrook rested his arms upon the top of it instead of getting over, tapping the step on the other side with his thick walking-stick.

“Gisby’s opinion is that Fred threw himself into the first deep pond that lay in his way that night, and so put an end to his career for good,”said he. “My late wife thought so too.”

“Don’t you believe anything of the kind, sir,” said I, in hot impulse.

“It is what Gisby is always dinning into me, Johnny. I hate to hear him. With all Fred’s faults, he was not one to fly to that extremity, under——”

“I am quite sure he was not, sir. And did not.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, I was about to say,” went on the old gentleman, with apathy, as he put one foot on the stile. “But when a man has the crime of murder upon his soul, there’s no answering for what he may be tempted to do in his remorse and terror.”

“It was not murder at all, sir. Gisby is well again.”

“But it was thought to be murder at the time. Who would have given a brass button for Gisby’s life that night? Don’t quibble, Master Johnny.”

“Gisby was shot, sir; there’s no denying that, or that he might have died of it; but I am quite sure it was not Fred who shot him.”

“Tush!” said he, testily. “Help me over.”

I wished I dared tell him all. Jumping across myself, I assisted him down. Not that it would have answered any end if I did tell.

“Shall I walk with you as far as the houses, sir?”

“No, thank ye, lad. I want to be independent as long as I can. Come you both over in good time on Friday. Perhaps we can get an hour or two’s shooting.”

Friday came, and we had rather a jolly day than not, what with shooting and feasting. Gisby drew near to join us in the cover, but his master civilly told him that he was not wanted and need not hinder his time in looking after us. Never a word did old Westerbrook say that day of Fred, and he put on his best spirits to entertain us.

But in going away at night, when Tod had gone round to get the bag of partridges, which old Westerbrook insisted on our taking home, he suddenly spoke to me. We were standing at his front-door under the starlight.

“What made you say the other day that Fred was not guilty?”

“Because, sir, I feel sure he was not. I am as sure of it as though Heaven had shown it to me.”

“He was with the gang of poachers: Gisby saw him shoot,” said the old man, with emphasis.

“Gisby may have been mistaken. And Fred’s having been with the poachers at the moment was, I think, accidental.”

“Then why, if not guilty, did he go away?”

“Fear sent him. What would his word have been against Gisby’s dying declaration? You remember what a hubbub there was, sir—enough to frighten any man away, however innocent he might be.”

“Allow, for argument’s sake, that your theory is correct, and that he was frightened into going into hiding, why does he not come out of it? Gisby is alive and well again.”

Ah, I could not speak so confidently there. “I think he must be dead, sir,” I said, “and that’s the truth. If he were not, some of us would surely have heard of him.”

“I see,” said the old gentleman, looking straight up at the stars.“We are both of the same mind, Johnny—that he is dead. I say hemight have died that night: you think he went away first and died afterwards. Not much difference between us, is there?”

I thought there was a great deal; but I could not tell him why. “I wish we could hear of him, sir—and be at some certainty.”

“So do I, Johnny Ludlow. He was brought up at my knee; as my own child.”

On our way home, Tod with the bag of game slung over his shoulder, we came upon Mr. Holland near the Parsonage, with Edna Blake and the children. They had been to Farmer Page’s harvest-home. Whilst the parson talked to Tod, Edna snatched a moment with me.

“Have you heard any news, Johnny?”

“Of him? Never. We can’t make it out.”

“Perhaps we never shall hear,” she sighed. “Even if he reached the coast in safety, he may not have got over to the other side. A great many wrecks took place about that time: our weekly paper was full of them. It was the time of the equinoctial gales, and——”

“Come along, Johnny!” called out Tod, at this juncture. “We must get on. Good-night, Edna: good-night, you youngsters.”

The next day, Saturday, we went to Worcester, the Squire driving us, and there saw Gisby as large as life. The man had naturally great assumption of manner, and latterly he had taken to dress in the fashion. He was looming up High Street, booted and spurred, his silver-headed whip in his hand. Taking off his hat with an air, he wished the Squire a loud good-morning, as if the town belonged to him, and we were only subjects in it.

“I should think Westerbrook has never been fool enough to make his will in Gisby’s favour!” remarked the Squire, staring after him.“Egad, though, it looks like it!”

“It is to be hoped, sir, that he would make it in Fred’s,” was Tod’s rejoinder. And the suggestion put the pater out.

“Make it in Fred’s,” he retorted, going into one of his heats, and turning sharply round on the crowded pavement near the market-house, by which he came into contact with two women and their big butter-baskets.“What do you mean by that, sir? Fred Westerbrook is beyond the pale of wills, and all else. It’s not respectable to mention his name. He—bless the women! What on earth are these baskets at?”

They seemed to be playing at bumps with the Squire; baskets thick and threefold. Tod went in to the rescue, and got him out.

It was a strange thing. It really was. Considering that for the past day or two something or other had arisen to bring up thoughts of Fred Westerbrook, it was strange that the strangest of all things in connection with him was yet to come.

Sitting round the fire after supper, upon getting home from Worcester—it is a long drive, you know—and Tod had gone up to bed, deadtired, who should walk in but Duffham. He would not sit down, had no time; but told his business hastily. Dick Standish was dying, and had something on his conscience.

“I would have heard his confession,” said Duffham, “as I have heard that of many another dying man; but he seems to wish to make it to a magistrate. Either to a magistrate, or to old Mr. Westerbrook, he urged. But there’s no time to go up to the N. D. Farm, so I came for you, Squire.”

“Bless me!” cried the Squire, starting up in a commotion—for he thought a great deal of his magisterial duties, and this was a very unusual call. “Dick Standish dying! What can he have to say? He has been nothing but a poacher all his life, poor fellow! And what has Westerbrook to do with him?”

“Well,” said Duffham, in his equable way, “it strikes me that what he wants to say may affect Fred. Perhaps Standish can clear him.”

“Clear Fred Westerbrook!—clear an iniquitous young man who could turn poacher and murderer! What next will you say, Duffham? Here, Johnny, get my hat and coat. Dear me! Take down a confession! I wonder whether there’ll be any ink there?”

“Let me go with you, sir!” I said eagerly. “I will take my little pocket-inkstand—and some paper—and—and—everything likely to be wanted. Please let me go!”

“Well, yes, you can, Johnny. Don’t forget a Bible. Ten to one ifhe has one.”

There were three brothers of these Standishes, Tom, Jim, and Dick, none of them particularly well-doing. Tom was no better than a sort of tramp, reappearing in the village only by fits and starts; Jim, who had married Mary Picker, was likewise given to roving abroad, until found and brought back by the parish; Dick, as the Squire phrased it, was nothing but a poacher, and made his home mostly with Jim and Mary. The cottage—a tumble-down lodgment that they did not trouble themselves to keep in repair—was at our end of the parish half-a-mile away, and we put our best feet foremost.

Dick lay upon the low bed in the loft. His illness had been very short and sharp; it was scarcely a week yet since he was taken with it. Duffham had done his best; but the man was dying. Jim Standish was off on one of his roving expeditions, neither the parish nor the public knowing whither.

The Squire sat by the bed, taking down the man’s confession at a small table, by the light of a small candle. I and Duffham stood to hear it; Mary Standish was sent down to the kitchen. What he said cleared Fred Westerbrook—Duffham had no doubt gathered so much before he came for the Squire.

Just what Fred had told us of the events of the night, Dick Standish confirmed now. He and other poachers were out, he said, his brotherTom for one. They had bagged some game, and were about to disperse when they encountered Mr. Fred Westerbrook. He stayed talking with them, walking the same way that they did, when lo! they all fell into the ambush planned by Gisby. A fight ensued; and he—he, Dick Standish, now speaking, conscious that he was dying—he fired his gun at them, and the shot entered Gisby. They ran away then and were not pursued; a gun was fired after them, and it struck his brother Tom, but not to hurt him very much: not enough to disable him. He and Tom made themselves scarce at once, before daylight; and they did not come back till danger was over, and Gisby about again. Old Jones and other folks had come turning the cottage inside out at the time in search of him (Dick), but his brother Jim swore through thick and thin that Dick had not been at home for ever so long. The Squire took all this down; and Dick signed it.

I was screwing the little inkstand up to return it to my pocket, when Mr. Holland entered, Mary Standish having sent for him. Leaving him with the sick man, we came away.

“Johnny, do you know, we might almost have made sure Fred Westerbrook was not guilty,” said the Squire, quite humbly, as we were crossing the turnip-field. “But why on earth did he run away? Where is he?”

“I think he must be dead, sir. What news this will be for Mr. Westerbrook.”

“Dear me yes! I shall go to him with it in the morning.”

When the morning came—which was Sunday—the Squire was so impatient to be off that he could hardly finish his breakfast. The master of the N. D. Farm, who no longer had energy or health to keep the old early hours, was only sitting down to his breakfast when the Squire got there. In his well-meaning but hot way, he plunged into the narrative so cleverly that old Westerbrook nearly had a fit.

“Not guilty!” he stammered, when he came to himself. “Fred not guilty! Only met the poachers by accident!—was not the man that shot Gisby! Why, that’s what Johnny Ludlow was trying to make me believe only a day or two ago!”

“Johnny was? Oh, he often sees through a stone wall. It’s true, anyway, Westerbrook. Fred never had a gun in his hand that night.”

“Then—knowing himself innocent, why on earth does he stay away?”

“Johnny thinks he must be dead,” replied the Squire.

Old Westerbrook gave a groan of assent. His trembling hands upset a cupful of coffee on the table-cloth.

They came on to church together arm-in-arm. Mr. Holland joined them, and told the news—Dick Standish was dead: had died penitent. Penitent, so far as might be, in the very short time he had given to repentance, added the clergyman.

But knowing that Fred was innocent seemed to have renewed his uncle’s lease of life. He was altogether a different man. The congregation felt quite electrified by some words read out by Mr. Holland before the General Thanksgiving: “Thomas Westerbrook desires to return thanks to Almighty God for a great mercy vouchsafed to him.”Whispering to one another in their pews, under cover of the drooped heads, they asked what it meant, and whether Fred could have come home? The report of Dick Standish’s confession had been heard before church: and Gisby and Shepherd received some hard words for having so positively laid the deed on Fred.

“I declare to goodness I thought it was Mr. Fred that fired!” said Shepherd, earnestly. “Moonlight’s deceptive, in course: but I know he was close again’ the gun.”

Yes, he was close to the gun: Dick Standish had said that much. Mr. Fred was standing next him when he fired; Mr. Fred had tried to put out his arm to stop him, but wasn’t quick enough, and called him a villain for doing it.

I was taking the organ again that day, if it concerns any one to know it, and gave them the brightest chants and hymns the books contained. The breach with Mr. Richards had never been healed, and the church had no settled organist. Sometimes Mrs. Holland took it; sometimes Mrs. Todhetley; once it was a stranger, who volunteered, and broke down over the blowing; and during the holidays, if we spent them at the Manor, it was chiefly turned over to me.

The Squire made old Westerbrook walk back to dine with us. Sitting over a plate of new walnuts afterwards—there was not much time for dessert on Sundays, before the afternoon service—Tod, calling upon me to confirm it, told all about Fred’s hiding in the church, and how he had got away. But we did not say anything of the money given him by Edna Blake: she might not have liked it. The Squire stared with surprise, and seemed uncertain whether to praise us or to blow us up sharply.

“Shut up in the church for three days and nights! Nothing to eat, except what you could crib for him! Got away at last in Mack’s smock-frock and boots! Well, you two are a pair of pretty conjurers, you are!”

“God bless ’em both for it!” cried old Westerbrook.

“But they ought to have told me, you know, Westerbrook. I could have managed much better—helped the poor fellow off more effectually.”

Tod gave me a kick under the table. He was nearly splitting, at hearing the Squire say this.

The first thing Mr. Westerbrook did was to insert sundry advertisements in the Times and other newspapers, about a hundred of them, begging and imploring his dear nephew (sometimes he worded it his“dear boy”) to return to him. Always underneath this advertisementwherever it appeared was inserted another: stating that all the particulars of the poaching affray which took place on a certain date (mentioning it) were known; that the poacher, Richard Standish, who shot Walter Gisby had confessed the crime, and that Gisby had not died of his wounds, but recovered from them. This was done with the view of letting Fred know that he might come back with safety. But he never came. The advertisements brought forth no answer of any kind.

The master of the N. D. Farm became very short with his bailiff as time went on. There was no reason to suppose that Gisby had intentionally accused Fred of the shot—he had really supposed it to come from Fred; nevertheless, Mr. Westerbrook took a great dislike to him, and was very short and crusty with him. Gisby did not like that, and they had perpetual rows. When we got home for the Christmas holidays, it was thought that Gisby would not be long on the N. D. Farm.

“Johnny, I want to tell you! I have had a letter. From him.”

The whisper came from Edna Blake. It was Christmas Eve; and we were in the church, a lot of us, sticking the branches of holly in the pews. The leaves had never seemed so green or the berries so red.

“Not from Fred?”

“Yes, I have. It came addressed to me about a week ago, with a ten-pound Bank of England note enclosed. There was only a line or two, just saying he had not been able to return it before, but that he hoped he was at length getting on: and that if he did get on, he should be sure to write again later. It was signed F. W. That was all. Neither his name was mentioned, nor mine, nor any address.”

“Where did it come from?”

“London, I think.”

“From London! Nonsense, Edna!”

“The post-mark was London. You are welcome to see the letter. I have brought it with me.”

Drawing the letter from her pocket under cover of her mantle, I took it to the porch. True enough; the letter had undoubtedly been posted in London. Calling Tod, we talked a little, and then told Edna that we both thought she ought to disclose this to Mr. Westerbrook.

“I think so too,” she said, “but I should not like to tell him myself—though his manner to me lately has been very kind. Will you tell him, Johnny? I will lend you the letter to show him. He will be sure to want to see it.”

“And he will have to know about the gold, Edna. The loan of that night.”

“Yes; it cannot be helped. I have thought it all over, and I see that there’s no help for its being known now. The letter alludes to it, you perceive.”

After that the advertisements were resumed. Mr. Westerbrook put some solicitor in London to work, and they were inserted in every known paper. Also in some of the American and Australian papers. Inquiries were made after Fred in London. But nothing came of it. As to old Westerbrook, he seemed to grow better, as if the suspense had stirred him up.

The months went on. Neither Fred nor news of him turned up. That he was vegetating somewhere beyond the pale of civilization, or else was at length really dead, appeared to be conclusive.

July. And we boys at home again for the holidays. The first news told us was, that Mr. Westerbrook and his bailiff had parted company. Gisby had said farewell to the N. D. Farm.

In the satisfaction of finding himself sole master, which he had not been for many a year, and to celebrate Gisby’s departure, Mr. Westerbrook gave a syllabub feast, inviting to it old and young, grown people and children. Syllabub feasts were tolerably common with us.

It was an intensely hot day; the lawn was dotted with guests; most of them gathered in groups under the trees in the shade. Old Westerbrook, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, Parson and Mrs. Holland and Mr. Brandon were together under the great horse-chestnut tree. Edna Blake, of course, had the trouble of the parson’s children, and I was talking to her. Little tables with bowls of syllabub on them and cakes and fruit stood about. By-and-by, at sunset or so, we were to go in to a high tea.

It was getting on for two years since the night of Fred Westerbrook’s departure; and Edna was looking five times two years older. Worn and patient were the lines of her face. She was dressed rather poorly, as usual. She had never dressed much otherwise: but since that unlucky night her clothes had been made to last as I should think nobody else’s clothes ever lasted. Whether that ten pounds had absorbed all her funds (as it most likely had), or whether Edna had been saving up for that visionary, possible voyage to America and the home with Fred that was to follow it, I knew not, but one never saw her in new things now. To-day she wore a muslin that once had had rose-red spots on it, but repeated washings had diluted them to a pale pink; and the pink ribbons on her hat had faded too. Not but that, in spite of all, she looked a lady.

“Have you a headache, Edna?”

“Just a little,” she answered, putting her hand to her head.“Charley and Tom would race about as we came along, and I had to run after them. To be much under a blazing sun often gives me a headache now.”

I wondered to myself why the parson and his wife could not haveordered Charley and Tom to be still. Fathers and mothers never think their children can tire people.

“I want some more syllabub, Edna,” cried Charley, just then.

“And me too,” put in little Miles Stirling.

She got up patiently; ladled some of the stuff into two of the custard-cups, and gave one to each of the children, folding her handkerchief under little Stirling’s chin to guard his velvet dress. They stood at the table, two eager little cormorants, taking it in with their tea-spoons.

At that moment, the gate behind us opened, and a gentleman came in. We turned round to see who was arriving so late. A stranger. Some good-looking fellow, with auburn hair, a beard that shone like soft silk in the sun, and a bronzed face. To judge by his movements, he was struck with surprise at sight of the gay company, and stood in evident hesitation.

“Oh, Johnny!”

The low, half-terrified exclamation came from Edna. I turned to her. Her eyes were strained on the stranger; her face had turned white as death. He saw us then, and came towards us. We were the nearest to him.

“Do you know me, Edna?”

I knew him then: knew his voice. Ay, and himself also, now that I saw him distinctly. Edna did not faint; though she was white enough for it: she only put her hands together as one does in prayer, a joyous thankfulness dawning in her eyes.

“Frederick?”

“Yes, my darling. How strange that you should be the first to greet me! And you, Johnny, old fellow! You have grown!”

His two hands lay for a time in mine and Edna’s. No one had observed him yet: we were at the end of the lawn, well under the trees.

“More syllabub, Edna!” shrieked out that greedy young Charley.

“And me want more, too,” added little Miles; “me not had enough.”

Edna drew her hand away to go to the table, a happy light shining through her tears. Fred put his arm within mine, and we went across the grass together.

The first to see him was Mr. Brandon. He took in the situation at once, and in a degree prepared Mr. Westerbrook. “Here’s some bronzed young man coming up, Westerbrook,” said he. “Looks like a traveller. I should not be surprised if it is your nephew; or perhaps one who brings news of him.”

Old Westerbrook fell back in his chair, as Fred stood there with his two hands stretched out to him. Then he sprang up, burst into tears, and clasped Fred in his arms. Of all commotions! Mr. Brandon walked away out of it into the sun, putting his yellow silk handkerchief on his head. The Squire stared as if he had never seen a bronzed man before; Tod came leaping up, and the best part of the company after him.

“Edna, Edna!” called out Mr. Westerbrook, sitting back in his chair again, and holding Fred tightly. “Edna, I want you instantly.”

She advanced modestly, blushing roses, her hat held in her hand by its faded strings. Mr. Westerbrook looked at her through his tears.

“Here he is, my dear—do you see?—come back to us at last. We must both welcome him. The homestead is yours from this day, Fred; I will have only just a corner in it. I am too old now for a busy life: you must be the acting master. And, Edna, my child, you will come here to be his helpmeet in it, and to take care of me in my declining years—my dear little daughter! Thank God for all things!”

Fred gave us just a brief summary of the past. Getting over to America without much difficulty, he had sought there for some remunerative work, and sought in vain. One of those panics that the Americans go in for had recently occurred in the States, and numbers of men were unable to get employment. After sundry adventures, and some semi-starvation, he at length made his way to the West Indies. A cousin of his late mother was, he knew, settled somewhere within the regions of British Guiana. He found him in Berbice, a small merchant of New Amsterdam. To him Fred told his whole story; and the old cousin gave him a berth in his counting-house. Office-work was new to Fred; but he did his best; and with the first proceeds of his pay he enclosed the ten pounds to Edna; the house forwarding the letter to their agents in London, to be posted there. Some months later, he chanced to see the advertisement for him in an English newspaper. As soon as he was able, he came off to answer it in person; and—here he was.

“All’s well that ends well,” remarked Mr. Brandon, in his dry way.

“And don’t you go fraternizing with poachers again, Mr. Fred!”cried out the Squire. “See what it brought you to the last time.”

“No, Squire; never again,” answered Fred, pushing back his auburn hair (very long again), with a smile. “This one time has been quite enough.”

“But you cannot have Edna, you know,” said Mrs. Holland to him, with a disturbed face. “The Parsonage could not possibly get on without her.”

“I am afraid the Parsonage will have to try, Mrs. Holland.”

“I shall be obliged to keep my bed; that will be the end of it,” said Mrs. Holland, gloomily. “Nobody can manage the children but Edna. When she is otherwise occupied, their noise is frightful: ten times more distracting than the worst toothache.”

Fred said nothing further; she was looking so ruefully woebegone. Putting his arm into mine, he turned into a shady walk.

“Will you be my groomsman at the wedding, Johnny? But foryou, my good friend, I don’t know that I should have been saved to see this day.”

“Nay, Fred, I think it was the key of the church that saved you. I will be your groomsman if you really and truly prefer to pitch upon me, rather than on some one older and better.”

“Yes, you are right,” he answered, lifting his hat, and glancing upwards. “It was the key of the church—under God.”

CHAPTER XVII.

SEEN IN THE MOONLIGHT.

“I tell you it is,” repeated Tod. “One cannot mistake Temple, even at a distance.”

“But this man looks so much older than he. And he has whiskers. Temple had none.”

“And has not Temple grown older, do you suppose; and don’t whiskers sprout and grow? You are always a muff, Johnny. That is Slingsby Temple.”

We had gone by rail to Whitney Hall, and were walking up from the station. The Squire sent us to ask after Sir John’s gout. It was a broiling hot day in the middle of summer. On the lawn before the house, with some of the Whitneys, stood a stranger; a little man, young, dark, and upright.

Tod was right, and I was wrong. It was Slingsby Temple. But I thought him much altered: older-looking than his years, which numbered close upon twenty-five, and more sedate and haughty than ever. We had neither seen nor heard of him since quitting Oxford.

“Oh, he’s regularly in for it this time,” said Bill Whitney, in answer to inquiries about his father, as they shook hands with us. “He has hardly ever had such a bout; can only lie in bed and groan. Temple, don’t you remember Todhetley and Johnny Ludlow?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Temple, holding out his hand to me first, and passing by Tod to do it. But that was Slingsby Temple’s way. I was of no account, and therefore it did not touch his pride to notice me.

“I am glad to see you again,” he said to Tod, cordially enough, as he turned to him; which was quite a gracious acknowledgment for Temple.

But it surprised us to see him there. The Whitneys had no acquaintance with the Temples; neither had he and Bill been special friends at college. Whitney explained it after luncheon, when we were sitting outside the windows in the shade, and Temple was pacing the shrubbery with Helen.

“I fancy it’s a gone case,” said Bill, nodding towards them.

“Oh, William, you should not say it,” struck in Anna, in tones ofremonstrance, and with her pretty blush. “It is not sure—and not right to Mr. Temple.”

“Not say it to Tod and Johnny! Rubbish! Why, they are like ourselves, Anna. I say I think it is going to be a case.”

“Helen with another beau!” cried free Tod. “How has it all come about?”

“The mother and Helen have been staying at Malvern, you know,”said Whitney. “Temple turned up at the same hotel, the Foley Arms, and they struck up an intimacy. I went over for the last week, and was surprised to see how thick he was with them. The mother, who is more unsuspicious than a goose, told Temple, in her hospitable way, when they were saying good-bye, that she should be glad to see him if ever he found himself in these benighted parts: and I’ll be shot if at the end of five days he was not here! If Helen’s not the magnet, I don’t know what else it can be.”

“He appears to like her; but it may be only a temporary fancy that will pass away; it ought not to be talked about,” reiterated Anna. “It may come to nothing.”

“It may, or may not,” persisted Bill.

“Will she consent to have him?” I asked.

“She’d be simple if she didn’t,” said Bill. “Temple would be a jolly fine match for any girl. Good in all ways. His property is large, and he himself is as sober and steady as any parson. Always has been.”

I was not thinking of Temple’s eligibility—that was undeniable; but of Helen’s inclinations. Some time before she had gone in for a love affair, which would not do at any price, caused some stir at the Hall, and came to signal grief: though I have not time to tell of it here. Whitney caught the drift of my thoughts.

“That’s over and done with, Johnny. She’d never let its recollection spoil other prospects. You may trust Helen Whitney for that. She is as shallow-hearted as——”

“For shame, William!” remonstrated Anna.

“It’s true,” said he. “I didn’t say you were. Helen would have twenty sweethearts to your one, and think nothing of it.”

Tod looked at Anna, and laughed gently. Her cheeks turned the colour of the rose she was holding.

“What’s this about a boating tour?” he inquired of Whitney. It had been alluded to at lunch-time.

“Temple’s going in for one with some more fellows,” was the reply.“He has asked me to join them. We mean to do some of the larger rivers; take our tent, and encamp on the bank at night.”

“What a jolly spree!” cried Tod, his face flushing with delight.“How I should like it!”

“I wish to goodness you were coming. But Temple has made up his party. It is his affair, you know. He talks of staying out a month.”

“One get’s no chance in this slow place,” cried Tod, fiercely. “I’ll emigrate, I think, and go tiger-hunting. Is it a secret, this boating affair?”

“A secret! No.”

“What made you kick me under the table, then, when I would have asked particulars at luncheon?”

“Because the mother was present. She has taken all sorts of queer notions into her head—mothers always have them—that the boat will be found bottom upwards some day, and we under it. Failing that, we are to catch colds and fevers and agues from the night encampments. So we say as little about it as possible before her.”

“I see,” nodded Tod. “Look here, Bill, I should like to get up a boating party myself; it sounds glorious. How do you set about it?—and where can you get a boat?”

“Temple knows,” said Bill, “I don’t. Let us go and ask him.”

They went across the grass, leaving me alone with Anna. She and I were the best of friends, as the reader may remember, and exchanged many a little confidence with one another that the world knew nothing of.

“Should you like it for Helen?” I asked, indicating her sister and Slingsby Temple.

“Yes, I think I should,” she answered. “But William had no warrant for speaking as he did. Mr. Temple will only be here a few days longer: when he leaves, we may never see him again.”

“But he is evidently taken with Helen. He shows that he is. And when a man of Slingsby Temple’s disposition allows himself to betray anything of the kind, rely upon it he means something.”

“Did you like him at Oxford, Johnny?”

“Well—I did and did not,” was my hesitating answer. “He was reserved, close, proud, and unsociable; and no man displaying those qualities can be very much liked. On the other hand, he was exemplary in conduct, deserving respect from all, and receiving it.”

“I think he is religious,” said Anna, her voice taking a lower tone.

“Yes, I always thought him that. I fancy their mother brought them up to be so. But Temple is the last man in the world to display it.”

“What with papa’s taking up two rooms to himself now he has the gout, and all of us being at home, mamma was a little at fault what chamber to give Mr. Temple. There was no time for much arrangement, for he came without notice; so she just turned Harry out of his room, which used to be poor John’s, you know, and put Mr. Temple there. That night Harry chanced to go up to bed later than the rest of us. He forgot his room had been changed, and went straight into his own. Mr. Temple was kneeling down in prayer, and a Bible lay open on the table. Mamma says it is not all young men who say their prayers and read their Bible nowadays.”

“Not by a good many, Anna. Yes, Temple is good, and I hope Helen will get him. She will have position, too, as his wife, and a large income.”

“He comes into his estate this year, he told us; in September. He will be five-and-twenty then. But, Johnny, I don’t like one thing: William says there was a report at Oxford that the Temples never live to be even middle-aged men.”

“Some of them have died young, I believe. But, Anna, that’s no reason why they all should.”

“And—there’s a superstition attaching to the family, is there not?”continued Anna. “A ghost that appears; or something of that sort?”

I hardly knew what to answer. How vividly the words brought back poor Fred Temple’s communication to me on the subject, and his subsequent death.

“You don’t speak,” said she. “Won’t you tell me what it is?”

“It is this, Anna: but I dare say it’s all nonsense—all fancy. When one of the Temples is going to die, the spirit of the head of the family who last died is said to appear and beckon to him; a warning that his own death is near. Down in their neighbourhood people call it the Temple superstition.”

“I don’t quite understand,” cried Anna, looking earnestly at me.“Who is it that is said to appear?”

“I’ll give you an instance. When the late Mr. Temple, Slingsby’s father, was walking home from shooting with his gamekeeper one September day, he thought he saw his father in the wood at a little distance: that is, his father’s spirit, for he had been dead some years. It scared him very much at the moment, as the keeper testified. Well, Anna, in a day or two he, Mr. Temple, was dead—killed by an accident.”

“I am glad I am not a Temple; I should be always fearing I might see the sight,” observed Anna, a sad, thoughtful look on her gentle face.

“Oh no, you wouldn’t, Anna. The Temples themselves don’t think of it, and don’t believe in it. Slingsby does not, at any rate. His brother Fred told me at Oxford that no one must presume to allude to it in Slingsby’s presence.”

“Fred? He died at Oxford, did he not?”

“Yes, he died there, poor fellow. Thrown from his horse. I saw it happen, Anna.”

But I said nothing to her of that curious scene to which I had been a witness a night or two before the accident—when poor Fred, to Slingsby’s intense indignation, fancied he saw his father on the college staircase; fancied his father beckoned to him. It was not a thing to talk of. After that time Slingsby had seemed to regard me with rather a special favour; I wondered whether it was because I had not talked of it.

The afternoon passed. We went up to see Sir John in his gouty room, and then said good-bye to them all, including Temple, and started for home again. Tod was surly and cross. He had come out in a temper and he was going back in one.

Tod liked his own way. No one in the world resented interference more than he: and just now he and the Squire were at war. Some twelve months before, Tod had dropped into a five-hundred-pound legacy from a distant relative. It was now ready to be paid to him. The Squire wished it paid over to himself, that he might take care of it; Tod wanted to be grand, and open a banking account of his own. For the past two days the argument had held out on both sides, and this morning Tod had lost his temper. Lost it was again now, but on another score.

“Slingsby Temple might as well have invited me to join the boating lot!” he broke out to me, as we drew near home. “He knows I am an old hand at it.”

“But if his party is made up, Tod? Whitney said it was.”

“Rubbish, Johnny. Made up! They could as well make room for another. And much good some of them are, I dare say! I can’t remember that Slingsby ever took an oar in his hand at Oxford. All he went in for was star-gazing—and chapels—and lectures. And look at Bill Whitney! He hates rowing.”

“Did you tell Temple you would like to join them?”

“He could see it. I didn’t say in so many words, Will you have me? Of all things, I should enjoy a boating tour! It would be the most jolly thing on earth.”

That night, after we got in, the subject of the money grievance cropped up again. The Squire was smoking his long churchwarden pipe at the open window; Mrs. Todhetley sat by the centre table and the lamp, hemming a strip of muslin. Tod, open as the day on all subjects, abused Temple’s “churlishness” for not inviting him to make one of the boating party, and declared he would organize one of his own, which he could readily do, now he was not tied for money. That remark set the Squire on.

“Ay, that’s just where it would be, Joe,” said he. “Let you keep the money in your own fingers, and we should soon see what it would end in.”

“What would it end in?” demanded Tod.

“Ducks and drakes.”

Tod tossed his head. “You think I am a child still, I believe, father.”

“You are no better, where the spending of money’s concerned,” said the Squire, taking a long whiff. “Few young men are. Their fathers know that, and keep it from them as long as they can. And that’s why so many are not let come into possession of their estates before theyare five-and-twenty. This young Temple, it seems, does not come into his; Johnny, here, does not.”

“I should like to know what more harm it would do for the money to lie in my name in the Old Bank than if it lay in yours?” argued Tod. “Should I be drawing cheques on purpose to get rid of it? That’s what you seem to suppose, father.”

“You’d be drawing them to spend,” said the pater.

“No, I shouldn’t. It’s my own money, after all. Being my own, I should take good care of it.”

Old Thomas came in with some glasses, and the argument dropped. Tod began again as we were going upstairs together.

“You see, Johnny,” he said, stepping inside my room on his way, and shutting the door for fear of eavesdroppers, “there’s that hundred pounds I owe Brandon. The old fellow has been very good, never so much as hinting that he remembers it, and I shall pay him back the first thing. To do this, I must have absolute possession of the money. A fine bobbery the pater would make if he got to know of it. Besides, a man come to my age likes to have a banking account—if he can. Good-night, lad.”

Tod carried his point. He turned so restive and obstinate over it as to surprise and vex the Squire, who of course knew nothing about the long-standing debt to Mr. Brandon. The Squire had no legal power to keep the money, if Tod insisted upon having it. And he did insist. The Squire put it down to boyish folly, self-assumption; and groaned and grumbled all the way to Worcester, when Tod was taking the five-hundred-pound cheque, paid to him free of duty, to the Old Bank.

“We shall have youngsters in their teens wanting to open a banking account next!” said the pater to Mr. Isaac, as Tod was writing his signature in the book. “The world’s coming to something.”

“I dare say young Mr. Todhetley will be prudent, and not squander it,” observed Mr. Isaac, with one of his pleasant smiles.

“Oh, will he, though! You’ll see. Look here,” went on the Squire, tapping the banker on the arm, “couldn’t you, if he draws too large a cheque at any time, refuse to cash it?”

“I fear we could not do that,” laughed Mr. Isaac. “So long as he does not overdraw his account, we are bound to honour his cheques.”

“And if you do overdraw it, Joe, I hope the bank will prosecute you!—I would, I know,” was the Squire’s last threat, as we left the bank and turned towards the Cross, Tod with a cheque-book in his pocket.

But Mr. Brandon could not be paid then. On going over to his house a day or two afterwards, we found him from home. The housekeeper thought he was on his way to one of the “water-cure establishments”in Yorkshire, she said, but he had not yet written to give his address.

“So it must wait,” remarked Tod to me, as we went home. “I’m not sorry. How the bank would have stared at having to pay a hundred pounds down on the nail! Conclude, no doubt, that I was going to the deuce headlong.”

“By Jove!” cried Tod, taking a leap in the air.

About a week had elapsed since the journey to the Old Bank, and Tod was opening a letter that had come addressed to him by the morning post.

“Johnny! will you believe it, lad? Temple asks me to be of the boating lot, after all.”

It was even so. The letter was from Slingsby Temple, written from Templemore. It stated that he had been disappointed by some of those who were to have made up the number, and if Todhetley and Ludlow would supply their places, he should be glad.

Tod turned wild. You might have thought, as Mrs. Todhetley remarked, that he had been invited to Eden.

“The idea of Temple’s asking you, Johnny!” he said. “You are of no good in a boat.”

“Perhaps I had better decline?”

“No, don’t do that, Johnny. It might upset the party altogether, perhaps. You must do your best.”

“I have no boating-suit.”

“I will treat you to one,” said Tod, munificently. “We’ll get it at Evesham. Pity but my things would fit you.”

So it was, for he had loads of them.

The Squire, for a wonder, did not oppose the scheme. Mrs. Todhetley (like Lady Whitney) did, in her mild way. As Bill said, all mothers were alike—always foreseeing danger. And though she was not Tod’s true mother, or mine either, she was just as anxious for us; and she looked upon it as nearly certain that one of us would come home drowned and the other with the ague.

“They won’t sleep on the bare ground, of course,” said Duffham, who chanced to call that morning, while Tod was writing his letter of acceptance to Slingsby Temple.

“Of course we shall,” fired Tod, resenting the remark. “What harm could it do us?”

“Give some of you rheumatic-fever,” said Duffham.

“Then why doesn’t it give it to the gipsies?” retorted Tod.

“The gipsies are used to it—born to it, as one may say. You young men must have a waterproof sheet to lie upon, or a tarpaulin, or something of the sort.”

Tod tossed his head, disdaining an answer, and wrote on.

“You will have plenty of rugs and great-coats with you, of course,”went on Duffham. “And I’ll give you a packet of quinine powders. It is as well to be prepared for contingencies. If you find any symptoms of unusual cold, or shivering, just take one or two of them.”

“Look here, Mr. Duffham,” said Tod, dashing his pen down on the table. “Don’t you think you had better attend us yourself with a medicine-chest? Put up a cargo of rhubarb—and magnesia—and castor oil—and family pills. A few quarts of senna-tea might not come in amiss. My patience! I believe you take us for delicate infants.”

“And I should recommend you to carry a small keg of whisky amongst the boat stores,” continued Duffham, not in the least put out.“You’ll want it. Take a nip of it neat when you first get up from the ground in the morning. It is necessary you should, and it will ward off some evils that might otherwise arise. Johnny Ludlow, I’ll put the quinine into your charge: mind you don’t forget it.”

“Of all the old women!” muttered Tod to me. “Had the pater been in the room, this might have set him against our going.”

On the following day we went over to Whitney Hall, intending to take Evesham on our way back, and buy what was wanted. Surprise the first. Bill Whitney was not at home, and was not to be of the boating party.

“You never saw any one in such a way in your life,” cried Helen, who could devote some time to us, now Temple was gone. “I must say it was too bad of papa. He never made any objection while Mr. Temple was here, but let poor William anticipate all the pleasure; and then he went and turned round afterwards.”

“Did he get afraid for him?” cried Tod, in wonder. “I wouldn’t have thought it of Sir John.”

“Afraid! no,” returned Helen, opening her eyes. “What he got was a fit of the gout. A relapse.”

“What has the gout to do with Bill?”

“Why, old Featherston ordered papa to Buxton, and papa said he could not do without William to see to him there: mamma was laid up in bed with one of her bad colds—and she is not out of it yet. So papa went off, taking William—and you should just see how savage he was.”

For William Whitney to be “savage” was something new. He had about the easiest temper in the world. I laughed, and said so.

“Savage for him, I mean,” corrected Helen, who was given to talking at random. “Nothing puts him out. Some cross fellows would not have consented, and have told their fathers so to their faces. It is a shame.”

“I don’t suppose Bill cares much; he is no hand at rowing,”remarked Tod. “Did he write to Temple and decline?”

“Of course he did,” was Helen’s resentfully spoken answer; and sheseemed, to say the least, quite as much put out as Bill could have been.“What else could he do?”

“Well. I am sorry for this,” said Tod. “Temple has asked me now. Johnny also.”

“Has he!” exclaimed Helen, her eyes sparkling. “I hope you will go.”

“Of course we shall go,” said Tod. “Where’s Anna?”

“Anna? Oh, sitting up with mamma. She likes a sick-room. I don’t.”

“You’d like a boat better—if Temple were in it,” remarked Tod, with a saucy laugh.

“Just you be quiet,” retorted Helen.

From Whitney Hall we went to Evesham, and hastily procured what we wanted. The next day but one was that fixed for our departure, and when it at last dawned, bright and hot, we started amidst the good wishes of all the house. Tod with a fishing-rod and line, in case the expedition should afford an opportunity for fishing, and I with Duffham’s quinine powders in my pocket.

Templemore, the seat of the Temples, was on the Welsh borders. We were not going there, but to a place called Sanbury, which lay within a few miles of the mansion. Slingsby Temple and his brother Rupert were already there, with the boat and the tent and all the rest of the apparatus, making ready for our departure on the morrow. Our head-quarters, until the start, was at the Ship, a good, old-fashioned inn, and we found that we were expected to be Temple’s guests there.

“I would have asked you to Templemore to dine and sleep,” he observed, in cordial tones, “and my mother said she should have been pleased to see you; but to get down here in the morning would have been inconvenient. At least, it would take up the time that ought to be devoted to getting away. Will you come and see the boat?”

It was lying in a locked-up shed near the river. A tub-pair, large of its kind. Three of them were enough for it: and I saw that, in point of fact, I was not wanted for the working; but Temple either did not like to ask Tod without me, or else would not leave me out. The Temples might have more than their share of pride, but it was accompanied by an equal share of refined and considerate feeling.

“We shall make you useful, never fear,” said he to me, with a smile.“And it will be capital boating experience for you.”

“I am sure I shall like it,” I answered. And I liked him better than I ever had in my life.

Numerous articles were lying ready with the boat. Temple seemed to have thought of every needful thing. A pot to boil water in, a pan for frying, a saucepan for potatoes, a mop and towing-rope, stone jugs for beer, milk, and fresh water, tins to hold our grog, and the like.

Amongst the stores were tea, sugar, candles, cheese, butter, a ham, some tinned provisions, a big jar of beer, and (Duffham should have seen it) a two-gallon keg of whisky.

“A doctor up with us said we ought to have whisky,” remarked Tod. “He is nothing but an old woman. He put some quinine powders in Johnny’s pocket, and talked of a waterproof sheet to sleep on.”

“Quite right,” said Temple. “There it lies.”

And there it did lie, wrapped round the folded tent. A large waterproof tarpaulin to cover the ground, at night, and keep the damp from our limbs.

“Did you ever make a boating tour before, Temple?” asked Tod.

“Oh yes. I like it. I don’t know any pleasure equal to that of camping out at night on a huge plain, where you may study all the stars in the heavens.”

As Temple spoke, he glanced towards a small parcel in a corner. I guessed it was one of his night telescopes.

“Yes, it is,” he assented; “but only a small one. The boat won’t stretch, and we can only load it according to its limits.”

Rupert Temple came up as we were leaving the shed. I had never seen him before. He was the only brother left, and Slingsby’s heir presumptive. Why, I know not, but I had pictured Rupert as being like poor Fred—tall, fair, bright-looking as a man can be. But there existed not a grain of resemblance. Rupert was just a second edition of Slingsby: little, dark, plain, and proud. It was not an offensive pride—quite the contrary: and with those they knew well they were cordial and free.

Those originally invited by Temple were his cousin Arthur Slingsby; Lord Cracroft’s son; Whitney; and a young Welshman named Pryce-Hughes. All had accepted, and intended to keep the engagement, knowing then of nothing to prevent them. But, curious to say, each one in succession wrote to decline it later. Whitney had to go elsewhere with his father; Pryce-Hughes hurt his arm, which disabled him from rowing: and Arthur Slingsby went off without ceremony in somebody’s yacht to Malta. As the last of the letters came, which was Whitney’s, Mrs. Temple seemed struck with the coincidence of all refusing, or being compelled to refuse. “Slingsby, my dear,” she said to her son, “it looks just as though you were not to go.” “But I will go,” answered Temple, who did not like to be baulked in a project more than anybody else likes it; “if these can’t come, I’ll get others who can.” And he forthwith told his brother Rupert that there’d be room for him in the boat—he had refused him before; and wrote to Tod. After that, came another letter from Pryce-Hughes, saying his arm was better, and he could join the party at Bridgenorth or Bewdley. But it was too late: the boat was filled up. Temple meant to do the Severn,the Wye, and the Avon, with a forced interlude of canals, and to be out a month, taking it easily, and resting on Sundays.

“Catch Slingsby missing Sunday service if he can help it!” said Rupert aside to me.

We started in our flannel suits and red caps, and started well, but not until the afternoon, Temple steering, his brother and Tod taking the sculls. The water was very shallow: and by-and-by we ran aground. The stern of the boat swung round, and away went our tarpaulin; and it was carried off by the current before we could save it.

Well, that first afternoon there were difficulties to contend with, and one or other of the three was often in the water; but we made altogether some five or six miles. It was the hottest day I ever felt; and about seven o’clock, on coming to a convenient meadow, nearly level with the river, none of us were sorry to step ashore. Making fast the boat for the night, we landed the tent and other things, and looked about us. A coppice bounded the field on the left; right across, in a second field, stood a substantial farm-house, surrounded by its barns and ricks. Temple produced one of his cards, which was to be taken to the house, and the farmer’s leave asked to encamp on the meadow. Rupert Temple and Tod made themselves decent to go on the errand.

“We shall want a bundle or two of straw,” said Temple; “it won’t do to lie on the bare ground. And some milk. You must ask if they will accommodate us, and pay what they charge.”

They went off, carrying also the jar to beg for fresh water. Temple and I began to unfurl the tent, and to busy ourselves amongst the things generally.

“Halloa! what’s to do here?”

We turned, and saw a stout, comely man, in white shirt-sleeves, an open waistcoat, knee-breeches and top-boots; no doubt the farmer himself. Temple explained. He and some friends were on a boating tour, and had landed there to encamp for the night.

“But who gave you leave to do it?” asked the farmer. “You are trespassing. This is my ground.”

“I supposed it might be necessary to ask leave,” said Temple, haughtily courteous; “and I have sent to yonder house—which I presume is yours—to solicit it. If you will kindly accord the permission, I shall feel obliged.”

That Temple looked disreputable enough, there could be no denying. No shoes on, no stockings, trousers tucked up above the knee: for he had been several times in the water, and, as yet, had done nothing to himself. But two of our college-caps chanced to be lying exposed on the boat: and perhaps, Temple’s tone and address had made their due impression. The farmer looked hard at him, as if trying to remember his face.

“It’s not one of the young Mr. Temples, is it?” said he. “Of Templemore.”

“I am Mr. Temple, of Templemore. I have sent my card to your house.”

“Dash me!” cried the farmer, heartily. “Shake hands, sir. I fancied I knew the face. I’ve seen you out shooting, sir—and at Sanbury. I knew your father. I’m sure you are more than welcome to camp alongside here, and to any other accommodation I can give you. Will you shake hands, young gentleman?” giving his hand to me as he released Temple’s.

“My brother and another of our party are gone to your house to beg some fresh water and buy some milk,” said Temple, who did not seem at all to resent the farmer’s familiarity, but rather to like it. “And we shall be glad of a truss or two of fresh straw, if you can either sell it to us or give it. We have had the misfortune to lose our waterproof sheet.”

“Sell be hanged!” cried the farmer, with a jovial laugh. “Sell you a truss or two of straw! Sell you milk! Not if I know it, Mr. Temple. You’re welcome, sir, to as much as ever you want of both. One of my men shall bring the straw down.”

“You are very good.”

“And anything else you please to think of. Don’t scruple to ask, sir. Will you all come and take supper at my house? We’ve a rare round o’ beef in cut, and I saw the missis making pigeon-pies this morning.”

But Temple declined the invitation most decisively; and the farmer, perhaps noting that, did not press it. It was rare weather for the water, he observed.

“We could do with less heat,” replied Temple.

“Ay,” said the farmer, “I never felt it worse. But it’s good for the corn.”

And, with that, he left us. The other two came back with water and oceans of milk. Sticks were soon gathered from the coppice, and the fire made; the round pot, filled with water, was put on to boil for tea, and the tent was set up.

Often and often in my later life have I looked back to that evening. The meal over—and a jolly good one we made—we sat round the camp fire, then smouldering down to red embers, and watched the setting sun, Rupert Temple and Tod smoking. It was a glorious sunset, the west lighted up with gold and purple and crimson; the sky above us clear and dark-blue.

But oh, how hot it was! The moon came up as the sun went down, and the one, to our fancy, seemed to give out as much heat as the other. There we sat on, sipping our grog, and talking in the bright moonlight, Temple with his elbows on the grass, his face turned up towards the sky and the few stars that came out. The colours in the west gave place to a beautiful opal, stretching northwards.

It was singular—I shall always think so—that the conversation should turn on MacRae, the Scotchman who used to make our skin creep at Oxford with his tales of second-sight. We were not talking of Oxford, and I don’t know how MacRae came up. Temple had been talking of astronomy; from that we got to astrology; so perhaps it was in that way. Up he came, however, he and his weird beliefs; and Rupert Temple, who had not enjoyed the honour of Mac’s acquaintance, and had probably never heard his name before, got me to relate one or two of Mac’s choice experiences.

“Was the man a fool?” asked Rupert.

“Not a bit of it.”

“I’m sure I should say so. Making out that he could foresee people’s funerals before they were dead, or likely to die.”

“Poor Fred was three-parts of a believer in them,” put in Temple, in a dreamy voice, as though his thoughts were buried in that past time.

“Fred was!” exclaimed Rupert, taking his brother up sharply.“Believer in what?”

“MacRae’s superstitions.”

“Nonsense, Slingsby!”

Temple made no rejoinder. In his eye, which chanced to catch mine at the moment, there sat a singular expression. I wondered whether he was recalling that other superstition of Fred’s, that little episode a night or two before he died.

“We had better be turning in,” said Temple, getting up. “It won’t do to sit here too long; and we must be up betimes in the morning.”

So we got to bed at last—if you can call it bed. The farmer’s good straw was strewed thickly underneath us in the tent; we had our rugs; and the tent was fastened back at the entrance to admit air. But there was no air to admit, not a whiff of it; nothing came in but the moonlight. None of us remembered a lighter night, or a hotter one. I and Tod lay in the middle, the Temples on either side, Slingsby nearest the opening.

“I wonder who’s got our sheet?” began Tod, breaking a silence that ensued when we had wished each other good-night.

No one answered.

“I say,” struck in Rupert, by-and-by, “I’ve heard one ought not to go to sleep in the moonlight: it turns people luny. Do any of your faces catch it, outside there?”

“Go to sleep and don’t talk,” said Temple.

It might have been from the novelty of the situation, but the night was well on before any of us got to sleep. Tod and Rupert Temple went off first, and next (I thought) Temple did. I did not.

I dare say you’ve never slept four in a bed—and, that, one of littered straw. It’s all very well to lie awake when you’ve a good wide mattress to yourself, and can toss and turn at will; but in the close quarters of a tent you can’t do it for fear of disturbing the others. However, the longest watch has its ending; and I was just dropping off, when Temple, next to whom I lay, started hurriedly, and it aroused me.

“What’s that?” he cried, in a half-whisper.

I lifted my head, startled. He was sitting up, his eyes fixed on the opening we had left in the tent.

“Who’s there?—who is it?” he said again; and his low voice had a slow, queer sound, as though he spoke in fear.

“What is it, Temple?” I asked.

“There, standing just outside the tent, right in the moonlight,”whispered he. “Don’t you see?”

I could see nothing. The stir awoke Rupert. He called out to know what ailed us; and that aroused Tod.

“Some man looking in at us,” explained Temple, in the same queer tone, half of abstraction, half of fear, his gaze still strained on the aperture. “He is gone now.”

Up jumped Tod, and dashed outside the tent. Rupert struck a match and lighted the lantern. No one was to be seen but ourselves; and the only odd thing to be remarked was the white hue Temple’s face had taken. Tod was marching round the tent, looking about him far and near, and calling out to all intruders to show themselves. But all that met his eye was the level plain we were encamped upon, lying pale and white under the moonlight, and all the sound he heard was the croaking of the frogs.

“What could have made you fancy it?” he asked of Temple.

“Don’t think it was fancy,” responded Temple. “Never saw any man plainer in my life.”

“You were dreaming, Slingsby,” said Rupert. “Let us get to sleep again.”

Which we did. At least, I can answer for myself.

The first beams of the glorious sun awoke us, and we rose to the beginning of another day, and to the cold, shivery feeling that, in spite of the heat of the past night and of the coming day, attends the situation. I could understand now why the nip of whisky, as Duffham called it, was necessary. Tod served it out. Lighting the fire of sticks to boil our tea-kettle—or the round pot that served for a kettle—we began to get things in order to embark again, when breakfast should be over.

“I say, Slingsby,” cried Rupert, to his brother, who seemed very sullen, “what on earth took you, that you should disturb us in the night for nothing?”

“It was not for nothing. Some one was there.”

“It must have been a stray sheep.”

“Nonsense, Rupert! Could one mistake a sheep for a man?”

“Some benighted ploughman then, ‘plodding his weary way.’”

“If you could bring forward any ploughman to testify that it was he beyond possibility of doubt, I’d give him a ten-pound note.”

“Look here,” said Tod, after staring a minute at this odd remark of Temple’s, “you may put all idea of ploughmen and every one else away. No one was there. If there had been, I must have seen him: it was not possible he could betake himself out of sight in a moment.”

“Have it as you like,” said Temple; “I am going to take a bath. My head aches.”

Stripping, he plunged into the river, which was very wide just there, and swam towards the middle of it.

“It seems to have put Slingsby out,” observed Rupert, alluding to the night alarm. “Do you notice how thoughtful he is? Just look at that fire!”

The sticks had turned black, and began to smoke and hiss, giving out never a bit of blaze. Down knelt Rupert on one side and I on the other.

“Damp old obstinate things!” he ejaculated. And we set on to blow at them with all our might.

“Where’s Temple?” I exclaimed presently; looking off, and not seeing him. Rupert glanced over the river.

“He must be diving, Johnny. Slingsby’s fond of diving. Keep on blowing, lad, or we shall get no tea to-day.”

So we kept on. But, I don’t know why, a sort of doubtful feeling came over me, and while I blew I watched the water for Temple to come up. All in a moment he rose to the surface, gave one low, painful cry of distress, and disappeared again.

“Good Heavens!” cried Rupert, leaping up and overturning the kettle.

But Tod was the quickest, and jumped in to the rescue. A first-rate swimmer and diver was he, almost as much at home in the water as out of it. In no time, as it seemed, he was striking back, bearing Temple. It was fortunate for such a crisis that Temple was so small and slight—of no weight to speak of.

By dint of gently rubbing and rolling, we got some life into him and some whisky down his throat. But he remained in the queerest, faintest state possible; no exertion in him, no movement hardly, no strength; alive, and that was about all; and just able to tell us that he had turned faint in the water.

“What is to be done?” cried Rupert. “We must get a doctor to him: and he ought not to lie on the grass here. I wonder if that farmer would let him be taken to the house for an hour or two?”

I got into my boots, and ran off to ask; and met the farmer in the second field. He was coming towards us, curious perhaps to see whether we had started. Telling him what had happened, he showed himself alive with sympathy, called some of his men to carry Temple to the farm, and sent back to prepare his wife. Their name we found was Best: and most hospitable, good-hearted people they turned out to be.

Well, Temple was taken there and a doctor was called in. The doctor shook his head, looked grave, and asked to have another doctor. Then, for the first time, doubts stole over us that it might be more serious than we had thought for. A dreadful feeling of fear took possession of me, and, in spite of all I could do, that scene at Oxford, when poor Fred Temple had been carried into old Mrs. Golding’s to die, would not go out of my mind.

We got into our reserve clothes, as if conscious that the boating flannels were done with for the present, left one of the farmer’s men to watch our boat and things, and stayed with Temple. He continued very faint, and lay almost motionless. The doctors tried some remedies, but they did no good. He did not revive. One of them called it“syncope of the heart;” but the other said hastily, “No, no, that was not the right name.” It struck me that perhaps they did not know what the right name was. At last they said Mrs. Temple had better be sent for.

“I was just thinking so,” cried Rupert. “My mother ought to be here. Who will go for her?”

“Johnny can,” said Tod. “He is of no good here.”

For that matter, none of us were any good, for we could do nothing for Temple.

I did not relish the task: I did not care to tell a mother that her son, whom she believes is well and hearty, is lying in danger. But I had to go: Rupert seemed to take it as a matter of course.

“Don’t alarm her more than you can help, Ludlow,” he said. “Say that Slingsby turned faint in the water this morning, and the medical men seem anxious. But ask her not to lose time.”

Mr. Best started me on his own horse—a fine hunter, iron-grey. The weather was broiling. Templemore lay right across country, about six miles off by road. It was a beautiful place; I could see that much, though I had but little time to look at it; and it stood upon an eminence, the last mile of the road winding gradually up to its gates.

As ill-luck had it, or perhaps good-luck—I don’t know which—Mrs. Temple was at one of the windows, and saw me ride hastily in. Having a good memory of faces, she recollected mine. Knowing that I had started with her sons in the boat, she was seized with a prevision that something was wrong, and came out before I was well off the horse.

“It is Mr. Ludlow, I think,” she said, her plain dark face (so much like Slingsby’s) very pale. “What ill news have you brought?”

I told her in the best manner I was able, just in the words Rupert had suggested, speaking quietly, and not showing any alarm in my own manner.

“Is there danger?” she at once asked.

“I am not sure that there is,” I said, hardly knowing how to frame my answer. “The doctors thought you had better come, in case—in case of danger arising; and Rupert sent me to ask you to do so.”

She rang the bell, and ordered her carriage to be round instantly.“The bay horses,” she added: “they are the fleetest. What will you take, Mr. Ludlow?”

I would not take anything. But a venerable old gentleman in black, with a powdered bald head—the butler, I concluded—suggested some lemonade, after my hot ride: and that I was glad of.

I rode on first, piloting the way for the carriage, which contained Mrs. Temple. She came alone: her daughter was away on a visit—as I had learnt from Rupert.

Slingsby lay in the same state, neither better nor worse: perhaps the breathing was somewhat more difficult. He smiled when he saw his mother, and put out his hand.

The day dragged itself slowly on. We did not know what to do with ourselves; that was a fact. Temple was to be kept quiet, and we might not intrude into his room—one on the ground-floor that faced the east: not even Rupert. Mr. and Mrs. Best entertained us well as far as meals went, but one can’t be eating for ever. Now down in the meadow by the boat—which seemed to have assumed a most forlorn aspect—and now hovering about the farm, waiting for the last report of Temple. In that way the day crept through.

“Is it here that Mr. Temple is lying?”

I was standing under the jessamine-covered porch, sheltering my head from the rays of the setting sun, when a stranger came up and put the question. An extraordinarily tall, thin man, with grey hair, clerical coat, and white neckcloth.

It was the Reverend Mr. Webster, perpetual curate of the parish around Templemore. And I seemed to know him before I heard his name, for he was the very image of his son, Long Webster, who used to be at Oxford.

“I am so grieved not to have been able to get here before,” he said;“but I had just gone out for some hours when Mrs. Temple’s message was brought to the Parsonage. Is he any better?”

“I am afraid not,” I answered. “We don’t know what to make of it; it all seems so sudden and strange.”

“But what is it?” he asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know, sir. The doctors have said something about the heart.”

“I should like to see the doctors before I go in to Mrs. Temple. Are they here?”

“One of them is, I think. They have been going in and out all day.”

I fetched the doctor out to him; and they talked together in low tones in the shaded and quiet porch. Not a ray of hope sat on the medical man’s face: he as good as intimated that Temple was dying.

“Dear me!” cried the dismayed Mr. Webster.

“He seems to know it himself,” continued the doctor. “At least, we fancy so, I and my brother-practitioner. Though we have been most cautious not to alarm him by any hint of the kind.”

“I should like to see him,” said the parson. “I suppose I can?”

He went in, and was shut up for some time alone with Temple. Yes, he said, when he came out again, Temple knew all about it, and was perfectly resigned and prepared.

You may be sure there was no bed for any of us that night. Temple’s breathing grew worse; and at last we went in by turns, one of us at a time, to prop up the pillows behind, and keep them propped; it seemed to make it firmer and easier for him as he lay against them. Towards morning I was called in to replace Rupert. The shaded candle seemed to be burning dim.

“You can lie down, my dear,” Mrs. Temple whispered to Rupert.“Should there be any change, I will call you.”

He nodded, and left the room. Not to lie down. Only to sit over the kitchen fire with Tod, and so pass away the long hours of discomfort.

“Who is this now?” panted Slingsby, as I took my place.

“It is I. Johnny Ludlow. Do you feel any better?”

He made a little sound of dissent in answer.

“Nay, I think you look easier, my dear,” said Mrs. Temple, gently.

“No, no,” he said, just opening his eyes. “Do not grieve, mother. I shall be better off. I shall be with my father and Fred.”

“Oh, my son, my son, don’t lose heart!” she said, with a sob.“That will never do.”

“I saw my father last night,” said Temple.

The words seemed to strike her with a sort of shock. “No!” she exclaimed, perhaps thinking of the Temple superstition, and drawing back a step. “Pray, pray don’t fancy that!”

“The tent was open to give us air,” he said, speaking with difficulty.“I suddenly saw some one standing in the moonlight. I was next the opening; and I had not been able to get to sleep. For a moment I thought it was some man, some intruder passing by; but he took a strange likeness to my father, and I thought he beckoned——”

“We are not alone, Slingsby,” interrupted Mrs. Temple, remembering me, her voice cold, not to say haughty.

“Ludlow knows. He knew the last time. Fred said he saw him, and I—I ridiculed it. Ludlow heard me. My father came for Fred, mother; he must have come for me.”

“Oh, I can’t—I can’t believe this, Slingsby,” she cried, in some excitement. “It was fancy—nervousness; nothing else. My darling, I cannot lose you! You have ever been dearer to me than my other children.”

“Only for a little while, mother. It is God’s will. That is our true home, you know; and then there will be no more parting. I am quite happy. I seem to be half there now. What is that light?”

Mrs. Temple looked round, and saw a faint streak coming in over the tops of the shutters. “It must be the glimmering of dawn in the east,” she said. “The day is breaking.”

“Ay,” he answered: “my day. Where’s Rupert? I should like to say good-bye to him. Yes, mother, that’s the dawn of heaven.”

And just as the sun rose, he went there.

That was the end of our boating tour. Ridicule has been cast on some of the facts, and will be again. It is a painful subject; and I don’t know that I should have related it, but for its having led to another (and more lively) adventure, which I proceed to tell of.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ROSE LODGE.

It looked the prettiest place imaginable, lying under the sunlight, as we stood that first morning in front of the bay. The water was smooth and displayed lovely colours: now green, now blue, as the clouds passed over the face of the sky, now taking tinges of brown and amber; and towards evening it would be pink and purple. Further on, the waters were rippling and shining in the sun. Fishing-vessels stood out at sea, plying their craft; little cockle-shells, their white sails set, disported on it; rowing boats glided hither and thither. In the distance the grand waves of the sea were ebbing and flowing; a noble merchant-man, all her canvas filled, was passing proudly on her outward-bound course.

“I should like to live here,” cried Tod, turning away at last.

And I’m sure I felt that I should. For I could watch the ever-changing sea from morning to night and not tire of it.

“Suppose we remain here, Johnny?”

“To live?”

“Nonsense, lad! For a month. I am going for a sail. Will you come?”

After the terrible break-up of our boating tour, poor Slingsby Temple was taken home to Templemore, ourselves going back to Sanbury to wait for the funeral, and for our black garments, for which we had sent. Rupert was fearfully cut up. Although he was the heir now, and would be chief of Templemore, I never saw any brother take a death more to heart. “Slingsby liked you much, Ludlow,” said Rupert to me, when he came to us at the inn at Sanbury the day before the funeral, and the hot tears were in his eyes as he spoke. “He always liked you at Oxford: I have heard him say so. Like himself, you kept yourself free from the lawlessness of the place——”

“As if a young one like Johnny would go in for anything of the kind!” interrupted Tod.

“Young?” repeated Rupert Temple. “Well, I don’t know. When I was there myself, some young ones—lads—went in for a pretty good deal. He liked you much, Ludlow.”

And somehow I liked to hear Rupert say it.

Quitting Sanbury after the funeral, we came to this little place, Cray Bay, which was on the sea-coast, a few miles beyond Templemore. Our pleasure cut short at the beginning of the holiday, we hardly knew what to do with the rest of it, and felt like a couple of fish suddenly thrown out of water. Mrs. Temple, taking her son and daughter, went for change to her brother’s, Lord Cracroft.

At Cray Bay we found one small inn, which bore the odd sign of the Whistling Wind, and was kept by Mrs. Jones, a stout Welshwoman. The bedroom she gave us enjoyed a look-out upon some stables, and would not hold much more than the two small beds in it. In answer to Tod’s remonstrances, she said that she had a better room, but it was just now occupied.

The discomforts of the lodging were forgotten when we strolled out to look about us, and saw the beauties of the sea and bay. Cray Bay was a very primitive spot: little else than a decent fishing-place. It had not then been found out by the tour-taking world. Its houses were built anyhow and anywhere; its shops could be counted on your fingers: a butcher’s, a baker’s, a grocer’s, and so on. Fishermen called at the doors with fish, and countrywomen with butter and fowls. There was no gas, and the place at night was lighted with oil-lamps. A trout-stream lay at the back of the village, half-a-mile away.

Stepping into a boat, on this first morning, for the sail proposed by Tod, we found its owner a talkative old fellow. His name was Druff, he said; he had lived at Cray Bay most of his life, and knew every inch of its land and every wave of its sea. There couldn’t be a nicer spot to stop at for the summer, as he took it; no, not if you searched the island through: and he supposed it was first called Cray Bay after the cray-fish, they being caught in plenty there.

“More things than one are called oddly in this place,” remarked Tod. “Look at that inn: the Whistling Wind; what’s that called after?”

“And so the wind do hoostle on this here coast; ‘deed an’ it do,”returned Druff. “You’d not forget it if you heered it in winter.”

The more we saw of Cray Bay that day, the more we liked it. Its retirement just suited our mood, after the experience of only four or five days back: for I can tell you that such a shock is not to be forgotten all in a moment. And when we went up to bed that night, Tod had made up his mind to stay for a time if lodgings could be found.

“Not in this garret, that you can’t swing a cat in,” said he, stretching out his hands towards the four walls. “Madame Jones won’t have me here another night if I can help it.”

“No. Our tent in the meadow was ten times livelier.”

“Are there any lodgings to be had in this place?” asked Tod of the slip-shod maid-servant, when we were at breakfast the next morning. But she professed not to know of any.

“But, Tod, what would they say at home to our staying here?” I asked after awhile, certain doubts making themselves heard in my conscience.

“What they chose,” said Tod, cracking his fourth egg.

“I am afraid the pater——”

“Now, Johnny, you need not put in your word,” he interrupted, in the off-hand tone that always silenced me. “It’s not your affair. We came out for a month, and I am not going back home, like a bad sixpence returned, before the month has expired. Perhaps I shall tack a few weeks on to it. I am not dependent on the pater’s purse.”

No; for he had his five hundred pounds lying untouched at the Worcester Old Bank, and his cheque-book in his pocket.

Breakfast over, we went out to look for lodgings; but soon feared it might be a hopeless search. Two little cottages had a handboard stuck on a stick in the garden, with “Lodgings” on it. But the rooms in each proved to be a tiny sitting-room and a more tiny bedroom, smaller than the garret at the Whistling Wind.

“I never saw such a world as this,” cried Tod, as we paced disconsolately before the straggling dwellings in front of the bay. “If you want a thing you can’t get it.”

“We might find rooms in those houses yonder,” I said, nodding towards some scattered about in the distance. “They must be farms.”

“Who wants to live a mile off?” he retorted. “It’s the place itself I like, and the bay, and the—— Oh, by George! Look there, Johnny!”

We had come to the last house in the place—a fresh-looking, charming cottage, with a low roof and a green verandah, that we had stopped to admire yesterday. It faced the bay, and stood by itself in a garden that was a perfect bower of roses. The green gate bore the name“Rose Lodge,” and in the parlour window appeared a notice “To Let;” which notice, we both felt sure, had not been there the previous day.

“Fancy their having rooms to let here!” cried Tod. “The nicest little house in all the place. How lucky!”

In he went impulsively, striding up the short gravel-path, which was divided from the flower-beds by two rows of sea-shells, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a tall grenadier of a female, rising six feet, with a spare figure and sour face. She had a large cooking-apron on, dusted with flour.

“You have lodgings to let,” said Tod; “can I see them?”

“Lodgings to let?” she repeated, scanning us up and down attentively; and her voice sounded harsh and rasping. “I don’t know that we have. You had better see Captain Copperas.”

She threw open the door of the parlour: a small, square, bright-lookingroom, rather full of furniture; a gay carpet, a cottage piano, and some green chairs being among the articles.

Captain Copperas came forward: a retired seaman, as we heard later; tall as the grenadier, and with a brown, weather-beaten face. But in voice and manners he, at any rate, did not resemble her, for they were just as pleasant as they could be.

“I have no lodgings,” said he; “my servant was mistaken. My house is to let; and the furniture to be taken too.”

Which announcement was of course a check to Tod. He sat looking very blank, and then explained that we only required lodgings. We had been quite charmed with Cray Bay, and would like to stay in it for a month or so: and that it was his misapprehension, not the servant’s.

“It’s a pity but you wanted a little house,” said Captain Copperas.“This is the most compact, desirable, perfect little dwelling mortal man ever was in. Rent twenty-six pounds a-year only, furniture to be bought out-and-out for a hundred and twenty-five. It would be a little Eden—a paradise—to those who had the means to take it.”

As he spoke, he regarded us individually and rather pointedly. It looked as much as to doubt whether we had the means. Tod (conscious of his five hundred pounds in the bank) threw his head up.

“Oh, I have the means,” said he, as haughtily as poor Slingsby Temple had ever spoken. “Johnny, did you put any cards in your pocket? Give Captain Copperas one.”

I laid one of Tod’s cards on the table. The captain took it up.

“It’s a great grief to me to leave the house,” he remarked. “Especially after having been only a few months in it!—and laying in a stock of the best furniture in a plain way, purchased in the best market! Downright grief.”

“Then why do you leave it?” naturally asked Tod.

“Because I have to go afloat again,” said the sailor, his face taking a rueful expression. “I thought I had given up the sea for good; but my old employers won’t let me give it up. They know my value as a master, and have offered me large terms for another year or two of service. A splendid new East Indiaman, two thousand tons register, and—and, in short, I don’t like to be ungrateful, so I have said I’ll go.”

“Could you not keep on the house until you come back?”

“My sister won’t let me keep it on. Truth to say, she never cared for the sea, and wants to get away from it. That exquisite scene”—extending his hand towards the bay, and to a steamer working her way onwards near the horizon—“has no charms for Miss Copperas; and she intends to betake herself off to our relatives in Leeds. No: I can only give the place up, and dispose of the furniture to whomsoever feels inclined to take it. It will be a fine sacrifice. I shall not get the onehalf of the money I gave for it: don’t look to. And all of it as good as new!”

I could read Tod’s face as a book, and the eager look in his eyes. He was thinking how much he should like to seize upon the tempting bargain; to make the pretty room we sat in, and the prettier prospect yonder, his own. Captain Copperas appeared to read him also.

“You are doubting whether to close with the offer or not,” he said, with a frank smile. “You might make it yours for a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Perhaps—pardon me; you are both but young—you may not have the sum readily at command?”

“Oh yes, I have,” said Tod, candidly. “I have it lying at my banker’s, in Worcester. No, it’s not for that reason I hesitate. It is—it is—fancy me with a house on my hands!” he broke off, turning to me with a laugh.

“It is an offer that you will never be likely to meet with again, sir.”

“But what on earth could I do with the house and the things afterwards—allowing that we stayed here for a month or two?” urged Tod.

“Why, dispose of them again, of course,” was the ready answer of Captain Copperas. “You’d find plenty of people willing to purchase, and to take the house off your hands. Such an opportunity as this need not go begging. I only wish I had not to be off all in a jiffy; I should make a very different bargain.”

“I’ll think of it,” said Tod, as we got up to leave. “I must say it is a nice little nest.”

In the doorway we encountered a tall lady with a brown face and a scarlet top-knot. She wore a thick gold chain, and bracelets to match.

“My sister, Miss Copperas,” said the captain. And he explained to her in a few words our business, and the purport of what had passed.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t lose the opportunity!” cried she, impressively affectionate, as though she had known us all our lives. “So advantageous an offer was never made to any one before: and but for my brother’s obstinately and wickedly deciding to go off to that wretched sea again, it would not be made now. Yes, Alexander,” turning to him, “I do call it quite wicked. Only think, sir”—to Tod—“a house full of beautiful furniture, every individual thing that a family can want; a piano here, a table-cloth press in the kitchen; plate, linen, knives, forks; a garden full of roses and a roller for the paths; and all to go for the miserably inadequate sum of a hundred and twenty-five pounds! But that’s my brother all over. He’s a true sailor. Setting himself up in a home to-day, and selling it off for an old song to-morrow.”

“Well, well, Fanny,” he said, when he could get a word in edgeways to stem the torrent of eloquence, “I have agreed to go, and I must go.”

“Have you been over the house?” she resumed, in the same volublemanner. “No? Then do pray come and see it. Oh, don’t talk of trouble. This is the dining-room,” throwing open a door behind her.

It was a little side-room, looking up the coast and over the fields; just enough chairs and tables in it for use. Upstairs we found three chambers, with their beds and other things. It all looked very comfortable, and I thought Captain Copperas was foolish to ask so small a sum.

“This is the linen closet,” said Miss Copperas, opening a narrow door at the top of the stairs, and displaying some shelves that seemed to be well-filled. “Sheets, table-cloths, dinner-napkins, towels, pillow-cases; everything for use. Anybody, taking the house, has only to step in, hang up his hat, and find himself at home. Look at those plates and dishes!” she ran on, as we got down again and entered the kitchen. “They are very nice—and enough to dine ten people.”

They were of light blue ware, and looked nice enough on the dresser shelves. The grenadier stood at the table, chopping parsley on a trencher, and did not condescend to take any notice of us.

Out in the garden next, amidst the roses—which grew all round the house, clustering everywhere. They were of that species called the cabbage-rose: large, and fragrant, and most beautiful. It made me think of the Roses by Bendemeer’s stream.

“I should like the place of all things!” cried Tod, as we strolled towards the bay for a sail; and found Druff seated in his boat, smoking.“I say, Druff, do you know Captain Copperas? Get in, Johnny.”

“Lives next door to me, at Rose Lodge,” answered Druff.

“Next door! What, is that low whitewashed shanty your abode? How long has Copperas lived here?”

“A matter of some months,” said Druff. “He came in the spring.”

“Are they nice kind of people?”

“They be civil to me,” answered Druff. “Sent my old missis a bottle o’ wine in, and some hot broth t’ other day, when she was ill. The captain——”

A sudden lurch put a stop to the discourse, and in a few minutes we glided out of the bay, Tod sitting in a brown reverie, his gaze fixed on the land and on Rose Lodge.

“My mind’s made up, Johnny. I shall take the place.”

I dropped my knife and fork in very astonishment. Our sail over, we were at dinner in the bar-parlour of the Whistling Wind.

“Surely you won’t do it, Tod!”

“Surely I shall, lad. I never saw such a nice little nest in all my life. And there’s no risk; you heard what Copperas said; I shall get my money back again when we want to leave it.”

“Look here, Tod: I was thinking a bit whilst we sat in the boat. Does it not seem to you to be too good to be genuine?”

It was Tod’s turn now to drop his knife and fork: and he did it angrily. “Just tell me what you mean, Johnny Ludlow.”

“All that furniture, and the piano, and the carpets, and the plate and linen: it looks such a heap to be going for only a hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

“Well?”

“I can’t think that Copperas means it.”

“Not mean it! Why, you young muff? There are the things, and he has offered them to me. If Copperas chooses to part with them for half their value, is it my place to tell him he’s a fool? The poor man is driven into a corner through want of time. Sailors are uncommonly improvident.”

“It is such an undertaking, Tod.”

“It is not your undertaking.”

“Of course it is a tremendous bargain; and it is a beautiful little place to have. But I can’t think what the pater will say to it.”

“I can,” said Tod. “When he hears of it—but that will not be yet awhile—he will come off here post-haste to blow me up; and end by falling in love with the roses. He always says that there is no rose like a cabbage-rose.”

“He will never forgive you, Tod; or me either. He will say the world’s coming to an end.”

“If you are afraid of him, Johnny, you can take yourself off. Hold up your plate for some more lamb, and hold your tongue.”

There was no help for it; anything I could say would have no more weight with Tod than so much wasted water; so I did as he bade me, and held my tongue. Down he went to Captain Copperas ere his dinner was well swallowed, and told him he would take the house. The Captain said he would have a short agreement drawn up; and Tod took out his cheque-book, to give a cheque for the money there and then. But the Captain, like an honest man, refused to receive it until the agreement was executed; and, if all the same, he would prefer money down to a cheque. Cheques were all very good, no doubt, he said; but sailors did not much understand them. Oh, of course, Tod answered, shaking him by the hand; he would get the money.

Inquiring of our landlady for the nearest bank, Tod was directed to a town called St. Ann’s, three miles off; and we started for it at once, pelting along the hot and dusty road. The bank found—a small one, with a glazed bow-window, Tod presented a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds, twenty-five of it being for himself, and asked the clerk to cash it.

The clerk looked at the cheque then looked at Tod, and then at me.“This is not one of our cheques,” he said. “We have no account in this name.”

“Can’t you read?” asked Tod. “The cheque is upon the Worcester Old Bank. You know it well by reputation, I presume?”

The clerk whisked into a small kind of box, divided from the office by glass, where sat a bald-headed gentleman writing at a desk full of pigeon-holes. A short conference, and then the latter came to us, holding the cheque in his hand.

“We will send and present this at Worcester,” he said; “and shall get an answer the day after to-morrow. No doubt we shall then be able to give you the money.”

“Why can’t you give it me now?” asked Tod, in rather a fiery tone.

“Well, sir, we should be happy to do it; but it is not our custom to cash cheques for strangers.”

“Do you fear the cheque will not be honoured?” flashed Tod.“Why, I have five hundred pounds lying there! Do you suppose I want to cheat you?”

“Oh, certainly not,” said the banker, with suavity. “Only, you see, we cannot break through our standing rules. Call upon us the day after to-morrow, and doubtless the money will be ready.”

Tod came away swearing. “The infamous upstarts!” cried he.“To refuse to cash my cheque! Johnny, it’s my belief they take us for a couple of adventurers.”

The money came in due course. After receiving it from the cautious banker, we went straight to Rose Lodge, pelting back from St. Ann’s at a fine pace. Tod signed the agreement, and paid the cash in good Bank of England notes. Captain Copperas brought out a bottle of champagne, which tasted uncommonly good to our thirsty throats. He was to leave Cray Bay that night on his way to Liverpool to take possession of his ship; Miss Copperas would leave on the morrow, and then we should go in. And Elizabeth, the grenadier, was to remain with us as servant. Miss Copperas recommended her, hearing Tod say he did not know where to look for one. We bargained with her to keep up a good supply of pies, and to pay her twenty shillings a month.

“Will you allow me to leave one or two of my boxes for a few days?” asked Miss Copperas of Tod, when we went down on the following morning, and found her equipped for departure. “This has been so hurried a removal that I have not had time to pack all my things, and must leave it for Elizabeth to do.”

“Leave anything you like, Miss Copperas,” replied Tod, as he shook hands. “Do what you please. I’m sure the house seems more like yours than mine.”

She thanked him, wished us both good-bye, and set off to walk to the coach-office, attended by the grenadier, and a boy wheeling her luggage. And we were in possession of our new home.

It was just delightful. The weather was charming, though precious hot, and the new feeling of being in a house of our own, with not as much as a mouse to control us and our movements, was satisfactory in the highest degree. We passed our days sailing about with old Druff, and came home to the feasts prepared by the grenadier, and to sit among the roses. Altogether we had never had a time like it. Tod took the best chamber, facing the sea; I had the smaller one over the dining-room, looking up coastwards.

“I shall go fishing to-morrow, Johnny,” Tod said to me one evening.“We’ll bring home some trout for supper.”

He was stretched on three chairs before the open window; coat off, pipe in mouth. I turned round from the piano. It was not much of an instrument. Miss Copperas had said, when I hinted so to her on first trying it, that it wanted “age.”

“Shall you? All right,” I answered, sitting down by him. The stars were shining on the calm blue water; here and there lights, looking like stars also, twinkled from some vessels at anchor.

“If I thought they wouldn’t quite die of the shock, Johnny, I’d send the pater and madam an invitation to come off here and pay us a visit. They would fall in love with the place at once.”

“Oh, Tod, I wish you would!” I cried, eagerly seizing on the words.“They could have your room, and you have mine, and I would go into the little one at the back.”

“I dare say! I was only joking, lad.”

The last words and their tone destroyed my hopes. It is inconvenient to possess a conscience. Advantageous though the bargain was that Tod had made, and delightfully though our days were passing, I could not feel easy until they knew of it at home.

“I wish you would let me write and tell them, Tod.”

“No,” said he. “I don’t want the pater to whirl himself off here and spoil our peace—for that’s what would come of it.”

“He thinks we are in some way with the Temples. His letter implied it.”

“The best thing he can think.”

“But I want to write to the mother, Tod. She must be wondering why we don’t.”

“Wondering won’t give her the fever, lad. Understand me, Mr. Johnny: you are not to write.”

Breakfast over in the morning, we crossed the meadows to the trout stream, with the fishing-tackle and a basket of frogs. Tod complained of the intense heat. The dark blue sky was cloudless; the sun beat down upon our heads.

“I’ll tell you what, Johnny,” he said, when we had borne the blaze for an hour on the banks, the fish refusing to bite: “we should be all the cooler for our umbrellas. You’ll have a sunstroke, if you don’t look out.”

“It strikes me you won’t catch any fish to-day.”

“Does it? You be off and get the parapluies.”

The low front window stood open when I reached home. It was the readiest way of entering; and I passed on to the passage to the umbrella-stand. The grenadier came dashing out of her kitchen, looking frightened.

“Oh!” said she, “it’s you!”

“I have come back for the umbrellas, Elizabeth; the sun’s like a furnace. Why! what have you got there?”

The kitchen was strewed with clothes from one end of it to the other. On the floor stood the two boxes left by Miss Copperas.

“I am only putting up Miss Copperas’s things,” returned Elizabeth, in her surly way. “It’s time they were sent off.”

“What a heap she must have left behind!” I remarked, and left the grenadier to her work.

We got home in the evening, tired out. The grenadier had a choice supper ready; and, in answer to me, said the trunks of Miss Copperas were packed and gone. When bed-time came, Tod was asleep at the window, and wouldn’t awake. The grenadier had gone to her room ages ago; I wanted to go to mine.

“Tod, then! Do please wake up: it is past ten.”

A low growl answered me. And in that same moment I became aware of some mysterious stir outside the front-gate. People seemed to be trying it. The grenadier always locked it at night.

“Tod! Tod! There are people at the gate—trying to get in.”

The tone and the words aroused him. “Eh? What do you say, Johnny? People are trying the gate?”

“Listen! They are whispering to one another. They are trying the fastenings.”

“What on earth does anybody want at this time of night?” growled Tod. “And why can’t they ring like decent people? What’s your business?” he roared out from the window. “Who the dickens are you?”

“Hush, Tod! It—it can’t be the Squire, can it? Come down here to look after us.”

The suggestion silenced him for a moment.

“I—I don’t think so, Johnny,” he slowly said. “No, it’s not the Squire: he would be letting off at us already at the top of his voice; he wouldn’t wait to come in to do it. Let’s go and see. Come along.”

Two young men stood at the gate. One of them turned the handle impatiently as we went down the path.

“What do you want?” demanded Tod.

“I wish to see Captain Copperas.”

“Then you can’t see him,” answered Tod, woefully cross after being startled out of his sleep. “Captain Copperas does not live here.”

“Not live here!” repeated the man. “That’s gammon. I know he does live here.”

“I tell you he does not,” haughtily repeated Tod. “Do you doubt my word?”

“Who does live here, then?” asked the man, in a different tone, evidently impressed.

“Mr. Todhetley.”

“I can take my oath that Captain Copperas lived here ten days ago.”

“What of that? He is gone, and Mr. Todhetley’s come.”

“Can I see Mr. Todhetley?”

“You see him now. I am he. Will you tell me your business?”

“Captain Copperas owes me a small account, and I want it settled.”

The avowal put Tod in a rage; and he showed it. “A small account! Is this a proper time to come bothering gentlemen for your small accounts—when folks are gone to bed, or going?”

“Last time I came in the afternoon. Perhaps that was the wrong time? Any way, Captain Copperas put me off, saying I was to call some evening, and he’d pay it.”

“And I’ll thank you to betake yourself off again now. How dare you disturb people at this unearthly hour! As to Captain Copperas, I tell you that he is no longer here.”

“Then I should say that Captain Copperas was a swindler.”

Tod turned on his heel at the last words, and the men went away, their retreating footsteps echoing on the road. I thought I heard the grenadier’s window being shut, so the noise must have disturbed her.

“Swindlers themselves!” cried Tod, as he fastened the house-door.“I’ll lay you a guinea, Johnny, they were two loose fellows trying to sneak inside and see what they could pick up.”

Nevertheless, in the morning he asked the grenadier whether it was true that such men had come there after any small account. And the grenadier resented the supposition indignantly. Captain Copperas owed no “small accounts” that she knew of, she said; and she had lived with him and Miss C. ever since they came to Cray Bay. She only wished she had seen the men herself last night; she would have answered them. And when, upon this, I said I thought I had heard her shut her window down, and supposed she had been listening, she denied it, and accused me of being fanciful.

“Impudent wretches!” ejaculated Tod; “to come here and asperse a man of honour like Copperas.”

That day passed off quietly, and to our thorough enjoyment; but the next one was fated to bring us some events. Some words of Tod’s, as I was pouring out the breakfast coffee, startled me.

“Oh, by Jupiter! How have they found us out here?”

Looking up, I saw the postman entering the gate with a letter. Thesame thought struck us both—that it was some terrible mandate from the Squire. Tod went to the window and held out his hand.

“For Elizabeth, at Captain Copperas’s,” read out the man, as he handed it to Tod. It was a relief, and Tod sent me with it to the grenadier.

But in less than one minute afterwards she came into the room, bathed in tears. The letter was to tell her that her mother was lying ill at their home, some unpronounceable place in Wales, and begging earnestly to see her.

“I’m sorry to leave you at a pinch; but I must go,” sobbed the grenadier. “I can’t help myself; I shall start by the afternoon coach.”

Well, of course there was nothing to be said against it. A mother was a mother. But Tod began to wonder what on earth we should do: as did I, for the matter of that. The grenadier offered to cook our luncheon before starting, which we looked upon as a concession.

“Let’s go for a sail, Johnny, and leave perplexities to right themselves.”

And a glorious sail we had! Upon getting back at one o’clock, we found a huge meat pie upon the luncheon-table, and the grenadier with her bonnet on. Tod handed her five shillings; the sum, as she computed, that was due to her.

We heard the bumping of her boxes on the stairs. At the gate stood the boy with the truck, ready to wheel them to the coach-office, as he had wheeled those of Miss Copperas. Tod was helping himself to some more pie, when the grenadier threw open the door.

“My boxes are here, gentlemen. Will you like to look at them?”

“Look at them for what?” asked Tod, after staring a minute.

“To see that I’m taking none of your property away inside them.”

At last Tod understood what she meant, and felt inclined to throw the dish at her head. “Shut the door, and don’t be a fool,” said he.“And I hope you’ll find your mother better,” I called out after her.

“And now, Johnny, what are we to do?” cried he, when lunch was over and there was no one to take it away. “This is like a second edition of Robinson Crusoe.”

We left it where it was, and went off to the shops and the Whistling Wind, asking if they could tell us of a servant. But servants seemed not to be forthcoming at a pinch; and we told our troubles to old Druff.

“My missis shall come in and see a bit to things for ye,” said he.“She can light the fire in the morning, anyway, and boil the kettle.”

And with the aid of Mother Druff—an ancient dame who went about in clogs—we got on till after breakfast in the morning, when a damsel came after the place. She wore a pink gauze bonnet, smart and tawdry, and had a pert manner.

“Can you cook?” asked Tod.

The substance of her answer was, that she could do everything under the sun, provided she were not “tanked” after. Her late missis was for ever a-tanking. Would there be any washing to do?—because washing didn’t agree with her: and how often could she go out, and what was the wages?

Tod looked at me in doubt, and I slightly shook my head. It struck me that she would not do at any price. “I think you won’t suit,” said he to her.

“Oh,” returned she, all impertinence. “I can go then where I shall suit: and so, good-morning, gentlemen. There’s no call for you to be so uppish. I didn’t come after your forks and spoons.”

“The impudent young huzzy!” cried Tod, as she slammed the gate after her. “But she might do better than nobody, Johnny.”

“I don’t like her, Tod. If it rested with me, I’d rather live upon bread-and-cheese than take her.”

“Bread-and-cheese!” he echoed. “It is not a question of only bread-and-cheese. We must get our beds made and the knives cleaned.”

It seemed rather a blue look-out. Tod said he would go up again to the Whistling Wind, and tell Mother Jones she must find us some one. Picking a rose as he went down the path, he met a cleanly-looking elderly woman who was entering. She wore a dark apron, and old-fashioned white cap, and said she had come after the place.

“What can you do?” began Tod. “Cook?”

“Cook and clean too, sir,” she answered. And I liked the woman the moment I saw her.

“Oh, I don’t know that there’s much cleaning to do, beyond the knives,” remarked Tod. “We want our dinners cooked, you know, and the beds made. That’s about all.”

The woman smiled at that, as if she thought he knew little about it.“I have been living at the grocer’s, up yonder, sir, and they can give me a good character, though I say it. I’m not afraid of doing all you can want done, and of giving satisfaction, if you’d please to try me.”

“You’ll do,” said Tod, after glancing at me. “Can you come in at once?”

“As soon as you like, sir. When would you please to go for my character?”

“Oh, bother that!” said he. “I’ve no doubt you are all right. Can you make pigeon pies?”

“That I can, sir.”

“You’ll do then. What is your name?”

“Elizabeth Ho——”

“Elizabeth?” he interrupted, not giving her time to finish. “Why, the one just gone was Elizabeth. A grenadier, six feet high.”

“I’ve been mostly called Betty, sir.”

“Then we’ll call you Betty too.”

She went away, saying that she’d come back with her aprons. Tod looked after her.

“You like her, don’t you, Johnny?”

“That I do. She’s a good sort; honest as can be. You did not ask her about wages.”

“Oh, time enough for that,” said he.

And Betty turned out to be good as gold. Her history was a curious one; she told it to me one evening in the kitchen; in her small way she had been somewhat of a martyr. But God had been with her always, she said; through more trouble than the world knew of.

We had a letter from Mrs. Todhetley, redirected on from Sanbury. The chief piece of news it contained was, that the Squire and old Jacobson had gone off to Great Yarmouth for a fortnight.

“That’s good,” said Tod. “Johnny lad, you may write home now.”

“And tell about Rose Lodge?”

“Tell all you like. I don’t mind madam. She’ll have leisure to digest it against the pater returns.”

I wrote a long letter, and told everything, going into the minute details that she liked to hear, about the servants, and all else. Rose Lodge was the most wonderful bargain, I said, and we were both as happy as the days were long.

The church was a little primitive edifice near the sands. We went to service on Sunday morning; and upon getting home afterwards, found the cloth not laid. Tod had ordered dinner to be on the table. He sent me to the kitchen to blow up Betty.

“It is quite ready and waiting to be served; but I can’t find a clean tablecloth,” said Betty.

“Why, I told you where the tablecloths were,” shouted Tod, who heard the answer. “In the cupboard at the top of the stairs.”

“But there are no tablecloths there, sir,” cried she. “Nor anything else either, except a towel or two.”

Tod went upstairs in a passion, bidding her follow him, and flung the cupboard door open. He thought she had looked in the wrong place.

But Betty was right. With the exception of two or three old towels and some stacks of newspapers, the cupboard was empty.

“By Jove!” cried Tod. “Johnny, that grenadier must have walked off with all the linen!”

Whether she had, or had not, none to speak of could be found now. Tod talked of sending the police after her, and wrote an account of her delinquencies to Captain Copperas, addressing the letter to the captain’s brokers in Liverpool.

“But,” I debated, not quite making matters out to my own satisfaction,“the grenadier wanted us to examine her boxes, you know.”

“All for a blind, Johnny.”

It was the morning following this day, Monday, that, upon looking from my window, something struck me as being the matter with the garden. What was it? Why, all the roses were gone! Down I rushed, half dressed, burst out at the back-door, and gazed about me.

It was a scene of desolation. The rose-trees had been stripped; every individual rose was clipped neatly off from every tree. Two or three trees were left untouched before the front window; all the rest were rifled.

“What the mischief is the matter, Johnny?” called out Tod, as I was hastily questioning Betty. “You are making enough noise for ten, lad.”

“We have had robbers here, Tod. Thieves. All the roses are stolen.”

He made a worse noise than I did. Down he came, full rush, and stamped about the garden like any one wild. Old Druff and his wife heard him, and came up to the palings. Betty, busy in her kitchen, had not noticed the disaster.

“I see Tasker’s people here betimes this morning,” observed Druff.“A lot of ’em came. ’Twas a pity, I thought, to slice off all them nice big blows.”

“Saw who?—saw what?” roared Tod, turning his anger upon Druff.“You mean to confess to me that you saw these rose-trees rifled, and did not stop it?”

“Nay, master,” said Druff, “how could I interfere with Tasker’s people? Their business ain’t mine.”

“Who are Tasker’s people?” foamed Tod. “Who is Tasker?”

“Tasker? Oh, Tasker’s that there man at the white cottage on t’other side the village. Got a big garden round it.”

“Is he a poacher? Is he a robber?”

“Bless ye, master, Tasker’s no robber.”

“And yet you saw him take my roses?”

“I see him for certain. I see him busy with the baskets as the men filled ’em.”

Dragging me after him, Tod went striding off to Tasker’s. We knew the man by sight; had once spoken to him about his garden. He was a kind of nurseryman. Tasker was standing near his greenhouse.

“Why did I come and steal your roses?” he quietly repeated, when he could understand Tod’s fierce demands. “I didn’t steal ’em, sir; I picked ’em.”

“And how dared you do it? Who gave you leave to do it?”foamed Tod, turning green and purple.

“I did it because they were mine.”

“Yours! Are you mad?”

“Yes, sir, mine. I bought ’em and paid for ’em.”

Tod did think him mad at the moment; I could see it in his face.“Of whom, pray, did you buy them?”

“Of Captain Copperas. I had ’em from the garden last year and the year afore: other folks lived in the place then. Three pounds I gave for ’em this time. The captain sold ’em to me a month ago, and I was to take my own time for gathering them.”

I don’t think Tod had ever felt so floored in all his life. He stood back against the pales and stared. A month ago we had not known Captain Copperas.

“I might have took all the lot: ’twas in the agreement; but I left you a few before the front winder,” said Tasker, in an injured tone.“And you come and attack me like this!”

“But what do you want with them? What are they taken for?”

“To make otter of roses,” answered Tasker. “I sell ’em to the distillers.”

“At any rate, though it be as you say, I would have taken them openly,” contended Tod. “Not come like a thief in the night.”

“But then I had to get ’em afore the sun was powerful,” calmly answered Tasker.

Tod was silent all the way home. I had not spoken a word, good or bad. Betty brought in the coffee.

“Pour it out,” said he to me. “But, Johnny,” he presently added, as he stirred his cup slowly round, “I can’t think how it was that Copperas forget to tell me he had sold the roses.”

“Do you suppose he did forget?”

“Why, of course he forgot. Would an honest man like Copperas conceal such a thing if he did not forget it? You will be insinuating next, Johnny Ludlow, that he is as bad as Tasker.”

I must say we were rather in the dumps that day. Tod went off fishing; I carried the basket and things. I did wish I had not said so much about the roses to Mrs. Todhetley. What I wrote was, that they were brighter and sweeter and better than those other roses by Bendemeer’s stream.

I thought of the affair all day long. I thought of it when I was going to bed at night. Putting out the candle, I leaned from my window and looked down on the desolate garden. The roses had made its beauty.

“Johnny! Johnny lad! Are you in bed?”

The cautious whisper came from Tod. Bringing my head inside the room, I saw him at the door in his slippers and braces.

“Come into my room,” he whispered. “Those fellows who disturbed us the other night are at the gate again.”

Tod’s light was out and his window open. We could see a man bending down outside the gate, fumbling with the lock. Presently the bell was pulled very gently, as if the ringer thought the house might beasleep and he did not want to awaken it. There was something quite ghostly to the imagination in being disturbed at night like this.

“Who’s there?” shouted Tod.

“I am,” answered a cautious voice. “I want to see Captain Copperas.”

“Come along, Johnny. This is getting complicated.”

We went out to the gate, and saw a man: he was not either of the two who had come before. Tod answered him as he had answered them, but did not open the gate.

“Are you a friend of the captain’s?” whispered the man.

“Yes, I am,” said Tod. “What then?”

“Well, see here,” resumed he, in a confidential tone. “If I don’t get to see him it will be the worse for him. I come as a friend; come to warn him.”

“But I tell you he is not in the house,” argued Tod. “He has let it to me. He has left Cray Bay. His address? No, I cannot give it you.”

“Very well,” said the man, evidently not believing a word, “I am come out of friendliness. If you know where he is, you just tell him that Jobson has been here, and warns him to look out for squalls. That’s all.”

“I say, Johnny, I shall begin to fancy we are living in some mysterious castle, if this kind of thing is to go on,” remarked Tod, when the man had gone. “It seems deuced queer, altogether.”

It seemed queerer still the next morning. For a gentleman walked in and demanded payment for the furniture. Captain Copperas had forgotten to settle for it, he said—if he had gone away. Failing the payment, he should be obliged to take away the chairs and tables. Tod flew into a rage, and ordered him out of the place. Upon which their tongues went in for a pitched battle, and gave out some unorthodox words. Cooling down by-and-by, an explanation was come to.

He was a member of some general furnishing firm, ten miles off. Captain Copperas had done them the honour to furnish his house from their stores, including the piano, paying a small portion on account. Naturally they wanted the rest. In spite of certain strange doubts that were arising touching Captain Copperas, Tod resolutely refused to give any clue to his address. Finally the applicant agreed to leave matters as they were for three or four days, and wrote a letter to be forwarded to Copperas.

But the news that arrived from Liverpool staggered us more than all. The brokers sent back Tod’s first letter to Copperas (telling him of the grenadier’s having marched off with the linen), and wrote to say that they didn’t know any Captain Copperas; that no gentleman of that name was in their employ, or in command of any of their ships.

As Tod remarked, it seemed deuced queer. People began to comein, too, for petty accounts that appeared to be owing—a tailor, a bootmaker, and others. Betty shed tears.

One evening, when we had come in from a long day’s fishing, and were sitting at dinner in rather a gloomy mood, wondering what was to be the end of it, we caught sight of a man’s coat-tails whisking up to the front-door.

“Sit still,” cried Tod to me, as the bell rang. “It’s another of those precious creditors. Betty! don’t you open the door. Let the fellow cool his heels a bit.”

But, instead of cooling his heels, the fellow stepped aside to our open window, and stood there, looking in at us. I leaped out of my chair, and nearly out of my skin. It was Mr. Brandon.

“And what do you two fine gentlemen think of yourselves?” began he, when we had let him in. “You don’t starve, at any rate, it seems.”

“You’ll take some, won’t you, Mr. Brandon?” said Tod politely, putting the breast of a duck upon a plate, while I drew a chair for him to the table.

Ignoring the offer, he sat down by the window, threw his yellow silk handkerchief across his head, as a shade against the sun and the air, and opened upon our delinquencies in his thinnest tones. In the Squire’s absence, Mrs. Todhetley had given him my letter to read, and begged him to come and see after us, for she feared Tod might be getting himself into some inextricable mess. Old Brandon’s sarcasms were keen. To make it worse, he had heard of the new complications, touching Copperas and the furniture, at the Whistling Wind.

“So!” said he, “you must take a house and its responsibilities upon your shoulders, and pay the money down, and make no inquiries!”

“We made lots of inquiries,” struck in Tod, wincing.

“Oh, did you? Then I was misinformed. You took care to ascertain whether the landlord of the house would accept you as tenant; whether the furniture was the man’s own to sell, and had no liabilities upon it; whether the rent and taxes had been paid up to that date?”

As Tod had done nothing of the kind, he could only slash away at the other duck, and bite his lips.

“You took to a closet of linen, and did not think it necessary to examine whether linen was there, or whether it was all dumb-show——”

“I’m sure the linen was there when we saw it,” interrupted Tod.

“You can’t be sure; you did not handle it, or count it. The Squire told you you would hasten to make ducks and drakes of your five hundred pounds. It must have been burning a hole in your pocket. As to you, Johnny Ludlow, I am utterly surprised: I did give you credit for possessing some sense.”

“I could not help it, sir. I’m sure I should never have mistrustedCaptain Copperas.” But doubts had floated in my mind whether the linen had not gone away in those boxes of Miss Copperas, that I saw the grenadier packing.

Tod pulled a letter-case out of his breast-pocket, selected a paper, and handed it to Mr. Brandon. It was the cheque for one hundred pounds.

“I thought of you, sir, before I began upon the ducks and drakes. But you were not at home, and I could not give it you then. And I thank you very much indeed for what you did for me.”

Mr. Brandon read the cheque and nodded his head sagaciously.

“I’ll take it, Joseph Todhetley. If I don’t, the money will only go in folly.” By which I fancied he had not meant to have the money repaid to him.

“I think you are judging me rather hardly,” said Tod. “How was I to imagine that the man was not on the square? When the roses were here, the place was the prettiest place I ever saw. And it was dirt-cheap.”

“So was the furniture, to Copperas,” cynically observed Mr. Brandon.

“What is done is done,” growled Tod. “May I give you some raspberry pudding?”

“Some what? Raspberry pudding! Why, I should not digest it for a week. I want to know what you are going to do.”

“I don’t know, sir. Do you?”

“Yes. Get out of the place to-morrow. You can’t remain in it with bare walls: and it’s going to be stripped, I hear. Green simpletons, you must be! I dare say the landlord will let you off by paying him three months’ rent. I’ll see him myself. And you’ll both come home with me, like two young dogs with their tails burnt.”

“And lose all the money I’ve spent?” cried Tod.

“Ay, and think yourself well off that it is not more. You possess no redress; as to finding Copperas, you may as well set out to search for the philosopher’s stone. It is nobody’s fault but your own; and if it shall bring you caution, it may be an experience cheaply bought.”

“I could never have believed it of a sailor,” Tod remarked ruefully to old Druff, when we were preparing to leave.

“Ugh! fine sailor he was!” grunted Druff. “He warn’t a sailor. Not a reg’lar one. Might ha’ been about the coast a bit in a collier, perhaps—nothing more. As to that grenadier, I believe she was just another of ’em—a sister.”

But we heard a whiff of news later that told us Captain Copperas was not so bad as he seemed. After he had taken Rose Lodge and furnished it, some friend, for whom in his good-nature he had stood surety to a large amount, let him in for the whole, and ruined him. Honest men are driven into by-paths sometimes.

And so that was the inglorious finale to our charming retreat by Bendemeer’s stream.

CHAPTER XIX.

LEE, THE LETTER-MAN.

In a side lane of Timberdale, just off the churchyard, was the cottage of Jael Batty, whose name you have heard before. Side by side with it stood another cottage, inhabited by Lee, the assistant letter-carrier; or, as Timberdale generally called him, the letter-man. These cottages had a lively look-out, the farrier’s shop and a few thatched hayricks opposite; sideways, the tombstones in the graveyard.

Some men are lucky in life, others are unlucky. Andrew Lee was in the latter category. He had begun life as a promising farmer, but came down in the world. First of all, he had to pay a heap of money for some man who had persuaded him to become his security, and that stripped him of his means. Afterwards a series of ill-fortunes set in on the farm: crops failed, cattle died, and Lee was sold up. Since then, he had tried at this and tried at that; been in turn a farmer’s labourer, an agent for coal, and the proprietor of a shop devoted to the benefit of the younger members of the community, its speciality being bull’s-eyes and besoms for birch-rods. For some few years now he had settled down in this cottage next door to Jael Batty’s, and carried out the letters at fourteen shillings a-week.

There were two letter-men, Spicer and Lee. But there need not have been two, only that Timberdale was so straggling a parish, the houses in it lying far and wide. Like other things in this world, fortune, even in so trifling a matter as these two postmen, was not dealt out equally. Spicer had the least work, for he took the home delivery, and had the most pay; Lee did all the country tramping, and had only the fourteen shillings. But when the place was offered to Lee he was at a very low ebb indeed, and took it thankfully, and thought he was set up in riches for life; for, as you well know, we estimate things by comparison.

Andrew Lee was not unlucky in his fortunes only. Of his three children, not one had prospered. The son married all too young; within a year he and his wife were both dead, leaving a baby-boy to Lee as a legacy. The elder daughter had emigrated to the other end of the world with her husband; and the younger daughter had a history. She was pretty and good and gentle, but just a goose. Goose that she was, though, all the parish liked Mamie Lee.

About four years before the time I am telling of, there came a soldier to Timberdale, on a visit to Spicer the letter-carrier, one James West. He was related to Spicer’s wife; her nephew, or cousin, or something of that sort; a tall, good-looking, merry-tempered dragoon, with a dashing carriage and a dashing tongue; and he ran away with the heart of Mamie Lee. That might not so much have mattered in the long-run, for such privilege is universally allowed to the sons of Mars; but he also ran away with her. One fine morning Mr. James West was missing from Timberdale, and Mamie Lee was missing also. The parish went into a rapture of indignation over it, not so much at him as at her; called her a “baggage,” and hoping her folly would come home to her. Poor old Lee thought he had received his death-blow, and his hair turned grey swiftly.

Not more than twelve months had gone by when Mamie was back again. Jael Batty was running out one evening to get half-a-pound of sugar at Salmon’s shop, when she met a young woman with a bundle staggering down the lane, and keeping under the side of the hedge as if she were afraid of falling, or else did not want to be seen. Too weak to carry the bundle, she seemed ready to sink at every step. Jael Batty, who had her curiosity like other people, though she was deaf, peered into the bent face, and brought herself up with a shriek.

“What, is it you, Mamie Lee! Well, the impedence of this! How on earth could you pick up the brass to come back here?”

“Are my poor father and mother alive? Do they still live here?”faltered Mamie, turning her piteous white face to Jael.

“They be both alive; but it’s no thanks to you. If they——Oh, if I don’t believe—— What have you got in that ragged old shawl?”

“It’s my baby,” answered Mamie; and she passed on.

Andrew Lee took her in with sobs and tears, and thanked Heaven she had come back, and welcomed her unreasonably. The parish went on at him for it, showering down plenty of abuse, and asking whether he did not feel ashamed of himself. There was even a talk of his post as letter-carrier being taken from him; but it came to nothing. Rymer was postmaster then, though he was about giving it up; and he was a man of too much sorrow himself to inflict it needlessly upon another. On the contrary, he sent down cordials and tonics and things for Mamie, who had had a fever and come home dilapidated as to strength, and never charged for them. Thomas Rymer’s own heart was slowly breaking, so he could feel for her.

The best or the worst of it was, that Mamie said she was married. Which assertion was of course not believed, and only added to her sin in the eyes of Timberdale. The tale she told was this. That James West had taken her straight to some town, where he had previously had the banns put up, and married her there. The day after themarriage they had sailed for Ireland, whither he had to hasten to join his regiment, his leave of absence having expired. At the end of some seven or eight months, the regiment was ordered to India, and he departed with it, leaving her in her obscure lodging at Cork. By-and-by her baby was born; she was very ill then; very; had fever and a cough, and sundry other complications; and what with lying ill eight weeks, and being obliged to pay a doctor and a nurse all that time, besides other expenses, she spent all the money Mr. James West left with her, and had no choice between starvation and coming back to Timberdale.

You should have heard how this account was scoffed at. The illness, and the baby, and the poverty nobody disputed—they were plain enough to be seen by all Timberdale; and what better could she expect, they would like to know? But when she came to talk about the church (or rather, old Lee for her, second-hand, for she was not at all a person now to be spoken to by Timberdale), then their tongues were let loose in all kinds of inconvenient questions. Which was the town?—and which was the church in it?—and where were her“marriage lines”? Mamie could give no answer at all. She did not know the name of the town, or where it was situated. James had taken her with him in the train to it, and that was all she knew; and she did not know the name of the church or the clergyman; and as to marriage lines, she had never heard of any. So, as Timberdale said, what could you make out of this, except one thing—that Mr. Jim West had been a deep rogue, and taken her in. At best, it could have been but a factitious ceremony; perhaps in some barn, got up like a church for the occasion, said the more tolerant, willing to give excuse for pretty Mamie if they could; but the chief portion of Timberdale looked upon the whole as an out-and-out invention of her own.

Poor Andrew Lee had never taken a hopeful view of the affair from the first; but he held to the more tolerant opinion that Mamie had been herself deceived, and he could not help being cool to Spicer in consequence. Spicer in retaliation threw all the blame upon Mamie, and held up Mr. James West as a paragon of virtue.

But, as the time went on, and no news, no letter or other token arrived from West, Mamie herself gave in. That he had deceived her she slowly became convinced of, and despair took hold of her heart. Timberdale might have the satisfaction of knowing that she judged herself just as humbly and bitterly as they judged her, and was grieving herself to a shadow. Three years had passed now since her return, and the affair was an event of the past; and Mamie wore, metaphorically, the white sheet of penitence, and hardly dared to show her face outside the cottage-door.

But you may easily see how all this, besides the sorrow, told upon Lee. Fourteen shillings a week for a man and his wife to exist uponcannot be called much, especially if they have seen better days and been used to better living. When the first grandchild, poor little orphan, arrived to be kept, Lee and his wife both thought it hard, though quite willing to take him; and now they had Mamie and another grandchild. This young one was named Jemima, for Mamie had called her after her faithless husband. Five people and fourteen shillings a-week, and provisions dear, and house-rent to pay, and Lee’s shoes perpetually wanting to be mended! One or two generous individuals grew rather fond of telling Lee that he would be better off in the union.

It was November weather. A cold, dark, biting, sharp, drizzly morning. Andrew Lee got up betimes, as usual: he had to be out soon after seven to be ready for his letter delivery. In the kitchen when he entered it, he found his daughter there before him, coaxing the kettle to boil on the handful of fire, that she might make him his cup of tea and give him his breakfast. She was growing uncommonly weak and shadowy-looking now: a little woman, still not much more than a girl, with a shawl folded about her shivering shoulders, a hacking cough, and a mild, non-resisting face. Her father had lately told her that he would not have her get up in the morning; she was not fit for it: what he wanted done, he could do himself.

“Now, Mamie, why are you here? You should attend to what I say, child.”

She got up from her knees and turned her sad brown eyes towards him: bright and sweet eyes once, but now dimmed with the tears and sorrow of the last three years.

“I am better up; I am indeed, father. Not sleeping much, I get tired of lying: and my cough is worse in bed.”

He sat down to his cup of tea and to the bread she placed before him. Some mornings there was a little butter, or dripping, or mayhap bacon fat; but this morning he had to eat his bread dry. It was getting near the end of the week, and the purse ran low. Lee had a horror of debt, and would never let his people run into it for the smallest sum if he knew it.

“It’s poor fare for you this morning, father; but I’ll try and get a morsel of boiled pork for dinner, and we’ll have it ready early. I expect to be paid to-day for the bit of work I have been doing for young Mrs. Ashton. Some of those greens down by the apple-trees want cutting: they’ll be nice with a bit of pork.”

Lee turned his eyes in the direction of the greens and the apple-trees; but the window was misty, and he could only see the drizzle of rain-drops on the diamond panes. As he sat there, a thought came into his head that he was beginning to feel old: old, and worn, and shaky. Trouble ages a man more than work, more than time; and Lee never looked at the wan face of his daughter, and at its marks ofsad repentance, but he felt anew the sting which was always pricking him more or less. What with that, and his difficulty to keep the pot boiling, and his general state of shakiness, Lee was older than his years. Timberdale had fallen into the habit of calling him Old Lee, you see; but he was not sixty yet. He had a nice face; when it was a young face it must have been like Mamie’s. It had furrows in it now, and his scanty grey locks hung down on each side of it.

Putting on his top-coat, which was about as thin as those remarkable sheets told of by Brian O’Linn, Lee went out buttoning it. The rain had ceased, but the cold wind took him as he went down the narrow garden-path, and he could not help shivering.

“It’s a bitter wind to-day, father; in the north-east, I think,” said Mamie, standing at the door to close it after him. “I hope there’ll be no letters for Crabb.”

Lee, as he pressed along in the teeth of the cruel east wind, was hoping the same. Salmon the grocer, who had taken the post-office, as may be remembered, when the late Thomas Rymer gave it up, was sorting the letters in the room behind the shop when Lee went in. Spicer, a lithe, active, dark-eyed man of forty-five, stood at the end of the table waiting for his bag. Lee went and stood beside him, giving him a brief good-morning: he had not taken kindly to the man since West ran away with Mamie.

“A light load this morning,” remarked Mr. Salmon to Spicer, as he handed him his appropriate bag. “And here’s yours, Lee,” he added a minute after: “not heavy either. Too cold for people to write, I suppose.”

“Anything for Crabb, sir?”

“For Crabb? Well, yes, I think there is. For the Rector.”

Upon going out, Spicer turned one way, Lee the other. Spicer’s district was easy as play; Lee’s was a regular country tramp, the farm-houses lying in all the four points of the compass. The longest tramp was over to us at Crabb. And why the two houses, our own and Coney’s farm, should continue to be comprised in the Timberdale delivery, instead of that of Crabb, people could never understand. It was so still, however, and nobody bestirred himself to alter it. For one thing, we were not often at Crabb Cot, and the Coneys did not have many letters, so it was not like an every-day delivery: we chanced to be there just now.

The letter spoken of by Salmon, which would bring Lee to Crabb this morning, was for the Reverend Herbert Tanerton, Rector of Timberdale. He and his wife, who was a niece of old Coney’s, were now staying at the farm on a week’s visit, and he had given orders to Salmon that his letters, during that week, were to be delivered at the farm instead of at the Rectory.

Lee finally got through his work, all but this one letter for theparson, and turned his steps our way. As ill-luck had it—the poor fellow thought it so afterwards—he could not take the short and sheltered way through Crabb Ravine, for he had letters that morning to Sir Robert Tenby, at Bellwood, and also for the Stone House on the way to it. By the time he turned on the solitary road that led to Crabb, Lee was nearly blown to smithereens by the fierce north-east wind, and chilled to the marrow. All his bones ached; he felt low, frozen, ill, and wondered whether he should get over the ground without breaking down.

“I wish I might have a whiff at my pipe!”

A pipe is to many people the panacea for all earthly discomfort; it was so to Lee. But only in the previous February had occurred that damage to Helen Whitney’s letter, when she was staying with us, which the authorities had made much of; and Lee was afraid to risk a similar mishap again. He carried Salmon’s general orders with him: not to smoke during his round. Once the letters were delivered, he might do so.

His weak grey hair blowing about, his thin and shrunken frame shivering and shaking as the blasts took him, his empty post-bag thrust into his pocket, and the Rector of Timberdale’s letter in his hand, Lee toiled along on his weary way. To a strong man the walk would have been nothing, and not much to Lee in fairer weather. It was the cold and wind that tired him. And though, after giving vent to the above wish, he held out a little while, presently he could resist the comfort no longer, but drew forth his pipe and struck a match to light it.

How it occurred he never knew, never knew to his dying day, but the flame from the match caught the letter, and set it alight. It was that thin foreign paper that catches so quickly, and the match was obstinate, and the wind blew the flame about. He pressed the fire out with his hands, but a portion of the letter was burnt.

If Timbuctoo, or some other far-away place had been within the distance of a man’s legs, Lee would have made straight off for it. His pipe on the ground, the burnt letter underneath his horrified gaze, and his hair raised on end, stood he. What on earth should he do? It had been only a pleasant young lady’s letter last time, and only a little scorched; now it was the stern Rector’s.

There was but one thing he could do—go on with the letter to its destination. It often happens in these distressing catastrophes that the one only course open is the least palatable. His pipe hidden away in his pocket—for Lee had had enough of it for that morning—and the damaged letter humbly held out in his hand, Lee made his approach to the farm.

I chanced to be standing at its door with Tom Coney and Tod. Those two were going out shooting, and the Squire had sent me running across the road with a message to them. Lee came up, and, with aface that seemed greyer than usual, and a voice from which most of its sound had departed, he told his tale.

Tom Coney gave a whistle. “Oh, by George, Lee, won’t you catch it! The Rector——”

“The Rector’s a regular martinet, you know,” Tom Coney was about to add, but he was stopped by the appearance of the Rector himself.

Herbert Tanerton had chanced to be in the little oak-panelled hall, and caught the drift of the tale. A frown sat on his cold face as he came forward, a frown that would have befitted an old face better than a young one.

He was not loud. He did not fly into a passion as Helen Whitney did. He just took the unfortunate letter in his hand, and looked at it, and looked at Lee, and spoke quietly and coldly.

“This is, I believe, the second time you have burnt the letters?”and Lee dared not deny it.

“And in direct defiance of orders. You are not allowed to smoke when on your rounds.”

“I’ll never attempt to smoke again, when on my round, as long as I live, sir, if you’ll only be pleased to look over it this time,” gasped Lee, holding up his hands in a piteous way. But the Rector was one who went in for “duty,” and the appeal found no favour with him.

“No,” said he, “it would be to encourage wrong-doing, Lee. Meet me at eleven o’clock at Salmon’s.”

“Never again, sir, so long as I live!” pleaded Lee. “I’ll give you my word of that, sir; and I never broke it yet. Oh, sir, if you will but have pity upon me and not report me!”

“At eleven o’clock,” repeated Herbert Tanerton decisively, as he turned indoors again.

“What an old stupid you must be!” cried Tod to Lee. “He won’t excuse you; he’s the wrong sort of parson to do it.”

“And a pretty kettle of fish you’ve made of it,” added Tom Coney.“I wouldn’t have minded much, had it been my letter; but he is different, you know.”

Poor Lee turned his eyes on me: perhaps remembering that he had asked me, the other time, to stand his friend with Miss Whitney. No one could be his friend now: when the Rector took up a grievance he did not let it drop again; especially if it were his own. Good-hearted Jack, his sailor-brother, would have screened Lee, though all the letters in the parish had got burnt.

At eleven o’clock precisely the Reverend Herbert Tanerton entered Salmon’s shop; and poor Lee, not daring to disobey his mandate, crept in after him. They had it out in the room behind. Salmon was properly severe; told Lee he was not sure but the offence involved penal servitude, and that he deserved hanging. A prosperous tradesman inhis small orbit, the man was naturally inclined to be dictatorial, and was ambitious of standing well with his betters, especially the Rector. Lee was suspended there and then; and Spicer was informed that for a time, until other arrangements were made, he must do double duty. Spicer, vexed at this, for it would take him so much the more time from his legitimate business, that of horse doctor, told Lee he was a fool, and deserved not only hanging but drawing and quartering.

“What’s up?” asked Ben Rymer, crossing the road from his own shop to accost Lee, as the latter came out of Salmon’s. Ben was the chemist now—had been since Margaret’s marriage—and was steady; and Ben, it was said, would soon pass his examination for surgeon. He had his hands in his pockets and his white apron on, for Mr. Ben Rymer had no false pride, and would as soon show himself to Timberdale in an apron as in a dress-coat.

Lee told his tale, confessing the sin of the morning. Mr. Rymer nodded his head significantly several times as he heard it, and pushed his red hair from his capacious forehead.

“They won’t look over it this time, Lee.”

“If I could but get some one to be my friend with the Rector, and ask him to forgive me,” said Lee. “Had your father been alive, Mr. Rymer, I think he would have done it for me.”

“Very likely. No good to ask me—if that’s what you are hinting at. The Rector looks upon me as a black sheep, and turns on me the cold shoulder. But I don’t think he is one to listen, Lee, though the king came to ask him.”

“What I shall do I don’t know,” bewailed Lee. “If the place is stopped, the pay stops, and I’ve not another shilling in the world, or the means of earning one. My wife’s ailing, and Mamie gets worse day by day; and there are the two little ones. They are all upon me.”

“Some people here say, Lee, that you should have sent Mamie and her young one to the workhouse, and not have charged yourself with them.”

“True, sir, several have told me that. But people don’t know what a father’s feelings are till they experience them. Mary was my own child that I had dandled on my knee, and watched grow up in her pretty ways, and I was fonder of her than of any earthly thing. The workhouse might not have taken her in.”

“She has forfeited all claim on you. And come home only to break your heart.”

“True,” meekly assented Lee. “But the Lord has told us we are to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven. If I had turned her adrift from my door and heart, sir, who knows but I might have been turned adrift myself at the Last Day.”

Evidently it was of no use talking to one so unreasonable as Lee.And Mr. Ben Rymer went back to his shop. A customer was entering it with a prescription and a medicine-bottle.

One morning close upon Christmas, Mrs. Todhetley despatched me to Timberdale through the snow for a box of those delectable “Household Pills,” which have been mentioned before: an invention of the late Mr. Rymer’s, and continued to be made up by Ben. Ben was behind the counter as usual when I entered, and shook the snow off my boots on the door-mat.

“Anything else?” he asked me presently, wrapping up the box.

“Not to-day. There goes old Lee! How thin he looks!”

“Starvation,” said Ben, craning his long neck to look between the coloured globes at Lee on the other side the way. “Lee has nothing coming in now.”

“What do they all live upon?”

“Goodness knows. Upon things that he pledges, and the vegetables in the garden. I was in there last night, and I can tell you it was a picture, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”

“A picture of what?”

“Misery: distress: hopelessness. It is several weeks now since Lee earned anything, and they have been all that time upon short commons. Some days on no commons at all, I expect.”

“But what took you there?”

“I heard such an account of the girl—Mamie—yesterday afternoon, of her cough and her weakness, that I thought I’d see if any of my drugs would do her good. But it’s food they all want.”

“Is Mamie very ill?”

“Very ill indeed. I’m not sure but she’s dying.”

“It is a dreadful thing.”

“One can’t ask too many professional questions—people are down upon you for that before you have passed,” resumed Ben, alluding to his not being qualified. “But I sent her in a cordial or two, and I spoke to Darbyshire; so perhaps he will look in upon her to-day.”

Ben Rymer might have been a black sheep once upon a time, but he had not a bad heart. I began wondering whether Mrs. Todhetley could help them.

“Is Mamie Lee still able to do any sewing?”

“About as much as I could do it. Not she. I shall hear what Darbyshire’s report is. They would certainly be better off in the workhouse.”

“I wish they could be helped!”

“Not much chance of that,” said Ben. “She is a sinner, and he is a sinner: that’s what Timberdale says, you know. People in these enlightened days are so very self-righteous!”

“How is Lee a sinner?”

“How! Why, has he not burnt up the people’s letters? Mr. Tanerton leads the van in banning him, and Timberdale follows.”

I went home, questioning whether our folk would do anything to help the Lees. No one went on against ill-doings worse than the Squire; and no one was more ready than he to lend a helping hand when the ill-doers were fainting for want of it.

It chanced that just about the time I was talking to Ben Rymer, Mr. Darbyshire, the doctor at Timberdale, called at Lee’s. He was a little, dark man, with an irritable temper and a turned-up nose, but good as gold at heart. Mamie Lee lay back in a chair, her head on a pillow, weak and wan and weary, the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. Darbyshire was feeling her pulse, and old Mrs. Lee pottered about, bringing sticks from the garden to feed the handful of fire. The two children sat on the brick floor.

“If it were not for leaving my poor little one, I should be glad to die, sir,” she was saying. “I shall be glad to go; hope it is not wrong to say it. She and I have been a dreadful charge upon them here.”

Darbyshire looked round the kitchen. It was almost bare; the things had gone to the pawnbroker’s. Then he looked at her.

“There’s no need for you to die yet. Don’t get that fallacy in your head. You’ll come round fast enough with a little care.”

“No, sir, I’m afraid not; I think I am past it. It has all come of the trouble, sir; and perhaps, when I’m gone, the neighbours will judge me more charitably. I believed with all my heart it was a true marriage—and I hope you’ll believe me when I say it, sir; it never came into my mind to imagine otherwise. And I’d have thought the whole world would have deceived me sooner than James.”

“Ah,” says Darbyshire, “most girls think that. Well, I’ll send you in some physic to soothe the pain in the chest. But what you most want, you see, is kitchen physic.”

“Mr. Rymer has been very good in sending me cordials and cough-mixture, sir. Mother’s cough is bad, and he sent some to her as well.”

“Ah, yes. Mrs. Lee, I am telling your daughter that what she most wants is kitchen physic. Good kitchen physic, you understand. You’d be none the worse yourself for some of it.”

Dame Lee, coming in just then in her pattens, tried to put her poor bent back as upright as she could, and shook her head before answering.

“Kitchen physic don’t come in our way now, Dr. Darbyshire. We just manage not to starve quite, and that’s all. Perhaps, sir, things may take a turn. The Lord is over all, and He sees our need.”

“He dave me some pep’mint d’ops,” said the little one, who had been waiting to put in a word. “Andy, too.”

“Who did?” asked the doctor.

“Mr. ’Ymer.”

Darbyshire patted the little straw-coloured head, and went out. An additional offence in the eyes of Timberdale was that the child’s fair curls were just the pattern of those on the head of James the deceiver.

“Well, have you seen Mamie Lee?” asked Ben Rymer, who chanced to be standing at his shop-door after his dinner, when Darbyshire was passing by from paying his round of visits.

“Yes, I have seen her. There’s no radical disease.”

“Don’t you think her uncommonly ill?”

Darbyshire nodded. “But she’s not too far gone to be cured. She’d get well fast enough under favourable circumstances.”

“Meaning good food?”

“Meaning food and other things. Peace of mind, for instance. She is just fretting herself to death. Shame, remorse, and all that, have taken hold of her; besides grieving her heart out after the fellow.”

“Her voice is so hollow! Did you notice it?”

“Hollow from weakness only. As to her being too far gone, she is not so at present; at least, that’s my opinion; but how soon she may become so I can’t say. With good kitchen physic, as I’ve just told them, and ease of mind to help me, I’ll answer for it that I’d have her well in a month; but the girl has neither the one nor the other. She seems to look upon coming death in the light of a relief, rather than otherwise; a relief to her own mental trouble, and a relief to the household, in the shape of saving it what she eats and drinks. In such a condition as this, you must be aware that the mind does not help the body by striving for existence; it makes no effort to struggle back to health; and there’s where Mamie Lee will fail. Circumstances are killing her, not disease.”

“Did you try her lungs?”

“Partially. I’m sure I am right. The girl will probably die, but she need not die of necessity; though I suppose there will be no help for it. Good-day.”

Mr. Darbyshire walked away in the direction of his house, where his dinner was waiting: and Ben Rymer disappeared within doors, and began to pound some rhubarb (or what looked like it) in a mortar. He was pounding away like mad, with all the strength of his strong hands, when who should come in but Lee. Lee had never been much better than a shadow of late years, but you should have seen him now, with his grey hair straggling about his meek, wan face. You should have seen his clothes, too, and the old shoes, out at the toes and sides. Burning people’s letters was of course an unpardonable offence, not to be condoned.

“Mamie said, sir, that you were good enough to tell her I was to call in for some of the cough lozenges that did her so much good. But——”

“Ay,” interrupted Ben, getting down a box of the lozenges. “Don’tlet her spare them. They won’t interfere with anything Mr. Darbyshire may send. I hear he has been.”

But that those were not the days when beef-tea was sold in tins and gallipots, Ben Rymer might have added some to the lozenges. As he was handing the box to Lee, something in the man’s wan and worn and gentle face put him in mind of his late father’s, whose heart Mr. Ben had helped to break. A great pity took the chemist.

“You would like to be reinstated in your place, Lee?” he said suddenly.

Lee could not answer at once, for the pain at his throat and the moisture in his eyes that the notion called up. His voice, when he did speak, was as hollow and mild as Mamie’s.

“There’s no hope of that, sir. For a week after it was taken from me, I thought of nothing else, night or day, but that Mr. Tanerton might perhaps forgive me and get Salmon to put me on again. But the time for hoping that went by: as you know, Mr. Rymer, they put young Jelf in my place. I shall never forget the blow it was to me when I heard it. The other morning I saw Jelf crossing that bit of waste ground yonder with my old bag slung on his shoulder, and for a moment I thought the pain would have killed me.”

“It is hard lines,” confessed Ben.

“I have striven and struggled all my life long; only myself knows how sorely, save God; and only He can tell, for I am sure I can’t, how I have contrived to keep my head any way above water. And now it’s under it.”

Taking the box, which Ben Rymer handed to him, Lee spoke a word of thanks, and went out. He could not say much; heart and spirit were alike broken. Ben called to his boy to mind the shop, and went over to Salmon’s. That self-sufficient man and prosperous tradesman was sitting down at his desk in the shop-corner, complacently digesting his dinner—which had been a good one, to judge by his red face.

“Can’t you manage to do something for Lee?” began Ben, after looking round to see that they were alone. “He is at a rare low ebb.”

“Do something for Lee?” repeated Salmon. “What could I do for him?”

“Put him in his place again.”

“I dare say!” Salmon laughed as he spoke, and then demanded whether Ben was a fool.

“You might do it if you would,” said Ben. “As to Lee, he won’t last long, if things continue as they are. Better give him a chance to live a little longer.”

“Now what do you mean?” demanded Salmon. “Why don’t you ask me to put a weathercock on yonder malthouse of Pashley’s? Jelf has got Lee’s place, and you know it.”

“But Jelf does not intend to keep it.”

“Who says he does not?”

“He says it. He told me yesterday that he was sick and tired of the tramping, and meant to resign. He only took it as a convenience, whilst he waited for a clerkship he was trying for at a brewery at Worcester. And he is to get that with the new year.”

“Then what does Jelf mean by talking about it to others before he has spoken to me?” cried Salmon, going into a temper. “He thought to leave me and the letters at a pinch, I suppose! I’ll teach him better.”

“You may teach him anything you like, if you’ll put Lee on again. I’ll go bail that he won’t get smoking again on his rounds. I think it is just a toss-up of life or death to him. Come! do a good turn for once, Salmon.”

Salmon paused. He was not bad-hearted, only self-important.

“What would Mr. Tanerton say to it?”

Ben did not answer. He knew that there, after Salmon himself, was where the difficulty would lie.

“All that you have been urging goes for nonsense, Rymer. Unless the Rector came to me and said, ‘You may put Lee on again,’ I should not, and could not, attempt to stir in the matter; and you must know that as well as I do.”

“Can’t somebody see Tanerton, and talk to him? One would think that the sight of Lee’s face would be enough to soften him, without anything else.”

“I don’t know who’d like to do it,” returned Salmon. And there the conference ended, for the apprentice came in from his dinner.

Very much to our surprise, Mr. Ben Rymer walked in that same evening to Crabb Cot, and was admitted to the Squire. In spite of Mr. Ben’s former ill-doings, which he had got to know of, the Squire treated Ben civilly, in remembrance of his father, and of his grandfather, the clergyman. Ben’s errand was to ask the Squire to intercede for Lee with Herbert Tanerton. And the pater, after talking largely about the iniquity of Lee, as connected with burnt letters, came round to Ben’s way of thinking, and agreed to go to the Rectory.

“Herbert Tanerton’s harder than nails, and you’ll do no good,”remarked Tod, watching us away on the following morning; for the pater took me with him to break the loneliness of the walk. “He’ll turn as cold to you as a stone the moment you bring up the subject, sir. Tell me I’m a story-teller when you come back if he does not, Johnny.”

We took the way of the Ravine. It was a searching day; the wintry wind keen and “unkind as man’s ingratitude.” Before us, toiling up the descent to the Ravine at the other end, and coming to a halt at the stile to pant and cough, went a woebegone figure, thinly clad, which turned out to be Lee himself. He had a small bundle of loose sticks in his hand, which he had come to pick up. The Squire was preparing a sort of blowing-up greeting for him, touching lighted matches andcarelessness, but the sight of the mild, starved grey face disarmed him; he thought, instead, of the days when Lee had been a prosperous farmer, and his tone changed to one of pity.

“Hard times, I’m afraid, Lee.”

“Yes, sir, very hard. I’ve known hard times before, but I never thought to see any so cruel as these. There’s one comfort, sir; when things come to this low ebb, life can’t last long.”

“Stuff,” said the Squire. “For all you know, you may be back in your old place soon: and—and Mrs. Todhetley will find some sewing when Mamie’s well enough to do it.”

A faint light, the dawn of hope, shone in Lee’s eyes. “Oh, sir, if it could be! and I heard a whisper to-day that young Jelf refuses to keep the post. If it had been anybody’s letter but Mr. Tanerton’s, perhaps—but he does not forgive.”

“I’m on my way now to ask him,” cried the pater, unable to keep in the news. “Cheer up, Lee—of course you’d pass your word not to go burning letters again.”

“I’d not expose myself to the danger, sir. Once I got my old place back, I would never take out a pipe with me on my rounds; never, so long as I live.”

Leaving him with his new hope and the bundle of firewood, we trudged on to the Rectory. Herbert and Grace were both at home, and glad to see us.

But the interview ended in smoke. Tod had foreseen the result exactly: the Rector was harder than nails. He talked of “example”and “Christian duty;” and refused point-blank to allow Lee to be reinstated. The Squire gave him a few sharp words, and flung out of the house in a passion.

“A pretty Christian he is, Johnny! He was cold and hard as a boy. I once told him so before his stepfather, poor Jacob Lewis; but he is colder and harder now.”

At the turning of the road by Timberdale Court, we came upon Lee. After taking his faggots home, he waited about to see us and hear the news. The pater’s face, red and angry, told him the truth.

“There’s no hope for me, sir, I fear?”

“Not a bit of it,” growled the Squire. “Mr. Tanerton won’t listen to reason. Perhaps we can find some other light post for you, my poor fellow, when the winter shall have turned. You had better get indoors out of this biting cold; and here’s a couple of shillings.”

So hope went clean out of Andrew Lee.

Christmas Day and jolly weather. Snow on the ground to one’s heart’s content. Holly and ivy on the walls indoors, and great fires blazing on the hearths; turkeys, and plum-puddings, and oranges, andfun. That was our lucky state at Crabb Cot and at Timberdale generally, but not at Andrew Lee’s.

The sweet bells were chiming people out of church, as was the custom at Timberdale on high festivals. Poor Lee sat listening to them, his hand held up to his aching head. There had been no church for him: he had neither clothes to go in nor face to sit through the service. Mamie, wrapped in an old bed-quilt, lay back on the pillow by the fire. The coal-merchant, opening his heart, had sent a sack each of best Staffordshire coal to ten poor families, and Lee’s was one. Except the Squire’s two shillings, he had had no money given to him. A loaf of bread was in the cupboard; and a saucepan of broth, made of carrots and turnips out of the garden, simmered on the trivet; and that would be their Christmas dinner.

Uncommonly low was Mamie to-day. The longer she endured this famished state of affairs the weaker she grew; it stands to reason. She felt that a few days, perhaps hours, would finish her up. The little ones were upstairs with their grandmother, so that she had an interval of rest; and she lay back, her breath short and her chest aching as she thought of the past. Of the time when James West, the handsome young man in his gay regimentals, came to woo her, as the soldier did the miller’s daughter. In those happy days, when her heart was light and her song blithe as a bird’s in May, that used to be one of her songs,“The Banks of Allan Water.” Her dream had come to the same ending as the one told of in the ballad, and here she lay, deserted and dying. Timberdale was in the habit of prosaically telling her that she had “brought her pigs to a fine market.” Of the market there could be no question; but when Mamie looked into the past she saw more of romance there than anything else. The breaking out of the church bells forced a rush of tears to her heart and eyes. She tried to battle with the feeling, then turned and put her cheek against her father’s shoulder.

“Forgive me, father!” she besought him, in a sobbing whisper. “I don’t think it will be long now; I want you to say you forgive me before I go. If—if you can.”

And the words finished up for Lee what the bells had only partly done. He broke down, and sobbed with his daughter.

“I’ve never thought there was need of it, or to say it, child; and if there had been—Christ forgave all. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to men.’ The bells are ringing it out now. He will soon take us to Him. Mamie, my forlorn one: forgiven; yes, forgiven; and in His beautiful world there is neither hunger, nor disgrace, nor pain. You are dying of that cold you caught in the autumn, and I shan’t be long behind you. There’s no longer any place for me here.”

“Not of the cold, father; I am not dying of that, but of a broken heart.”

Lee sobbed. He did not answer.

“And I should like to leave my forgiveness to James, should he ever come back here,” she whispered: “and—and my love. Please tell him that I’d have got well if I could, if only for the chance of seeing him once again in this world; and tell him that I have thought all along there must be some mistake; that he did not mean deliberately to harm me. I think so still, father. And if he should notice little Mima, tell him——”

A paroxysm of coughing interrupted the rest. Mrs. Lee came downstairs with the children, asking if it was not time for dinner.

“The little ones are crying out for it, Mamie, and I’m sure the rest of us are hungry enough.”

So they bestirred themselves to take up the broth, and take seats round the table. All but Mamie, who did not leave her pillow. Very watery broth, the carrots and turnips swimming in it.

“Say grace, Andy,” cried his grandmother.

For they kept up proper manners at Lee’s, in spite of the short commons.

“For what we are going to receive,” began Andy: and then he pulled himself up, and looked round.

Bursting in at the door, a laugh upon his face and a white basin in his hands, came Mr. Ben Rymer. The basin was three parts filled with delicious slices of hot roast beef and gravy.

“I thought you might like to eat a bit, as it’s Christmas Day,” said Ben. “And here’s an orange or two for you youngsters.”

Pulling the oranges out of his pocket, and not waiting to be thanked, Ben went off again. But he did not tell them what he was laughing at, or the trick he had played his mother—in slicing away at the round of beef, and rifling the dish of oranges, while her back was turned, looking after the servant’s doings in the kitchen, and the turning-out of the pudding. For Mrs. Rymer followed Timberdale in taking an exaggerated view of Lee’s sins, and declined to help him.

Their faces had hardly done glowing with the unusual luxury of the beef, when I dropped in. We had gone that day to church at Timberdale; after the service, the Squire left the others to walk on, and, taking me with him, called at the Rectory to tackle Herbert Tanerton again. The parson did not hold out. How could he, with those bells, enjoining goodwill, ringing in his ears?—the bells of his own church. But he had meant to come round of his own accord.

“I’ll see Salmon about it to-morrow,” said he. “I did say just a word to him yesterday. As you go home, Johnny may look in at Lee’s and tell him so.”

“And Johnny, if you don’t mind carrying it, I’ll send a drop of beef-tea to Mamie,” whispered Grace. “I’ve not dared to do it before.”

So, when it was getting towards dusk, for the Squire stayed, talkingof this and that, there I was, with the bottle of beef-tea, telling Lee the good news that his place would be restored to him with the new year, and hearing about Ben Rymer’s basin of meat. The tears rolled down old Lee’s haggard cheeks.

“And I had been fearing that God had abandoned me!” he cried, full of remorse for the doubt. “Mamie, perhaps you can struggle on a bit longer now.”

But the greatest event of all was to come. Whilst I stood there, somebody opened the door, and looked in. A tall, fine, handsome soldier: and I did not at the moment notice that he had a wooden leg from the knee downwards. Ben’s basin of beef had been a surprise, but it was nothing to this. Taking a glance round the room, it rested on Mamie, and he went up to her, the smile on his open face changing to concern.

“My dear lassie, what’s amiss?”

“James!” she faintly screamed; “it’s James!” and burst into a fit of sobs on his breast. And next the company was augmented by Salmon and Ben Rymer, who had seen James West go by, and came after him to know what it meant, and to blow him up for his delinquencies.

“Mamie not married!” laughed James. “Timberdale has been saying that? Why, what extraordinary people you must be! We were married at Bristol—and I’ve got the certificate in my knapsack at Spicer’s: I’ve always kept it. You can paste it up on the church-door if you like. Not married! Would Mamie else have gone with me, do you suppose? Or should I have taken her?”

“But,” said poor Lee, thinking that heaven must have opened right over his head that afternoon to shower down gifts, “why did you not marry her here openly?”

“Because I could not get leave to marry openly. We soldiers cannot marry at will, you know, Mr. Lee. I ought not to have done it, that’s a fact; but I did not care to leave Mamie, I liked her too well; and I was punished afterwards by not being allowed to take her to India.”

“You never wrote, James,” whispered Mamie.

“Yes, I did, dear; I wrote twice to Ireland, not knowing you had left it. That was at first, just after we landed. Soon we had a skirmish with the natives out there, and I got shot in the leg and otherwise wounded; and for a long time I lay between life and death, only partly conscious; and now I am discharged with a pension and a wooden leg.”

“Then you can’t go for a soldier again!” cried Salmon.

“Not I. I shall settle at Timberdale, I think, if I can meet with a pretty little place to suit me. I found my poor mother dead when I came home, and what was hers is now mine. And it will be a comfortable living for us, Mamie, of itself: besides a few spare hundred pounds to the good, some of which you shall be heartily welcome to, Mr. Lee, for you look as if you wanted it. And the first thing I shall do, Mamie, my dear, will be to nurse you back to health. Bless my heart! Not married! I wish I had the handling of him that first set that idea afloat!”

“You’ll get well now, Mamie,” I whispered to her. For she was looking better already.

“Oh, Master Johnny, perhaps I shall! How good God is to us! And, James—James, this is the little one. I named her after you: Jemima.”

“Peace on earth, and goodwill to men!” cried old Lee, in his thankfulness. “The bells said it to-day.”

And as I made off at last to catch up the Squire, the little Mima was being smothered with kisses in her father’s arms.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men!” To every one of us, my friends, do the Christmas bells say it, as Christmas Day comes round.

THE END—Second Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

Third Series

THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE.

CRABB RAVINE.

OUR VISIT.

JANET CAREY.

DR. KNOX.

HELEN WHITNEY’S WEDDING.

HELEN’S CURATE.

JELLICO’S PACK.

CAROMEL’S FARM.

CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE.

THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS.

A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD.

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.—DISAPPEARANCE

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.—IN AFTER YEARS

LADY JENKINS.—MINA

LADY JENKINS.—DOUBT

LADY JENKINS.—MADAME

LADY JENKINS.—LIGHT

THE ANGELS’ MUSIC.

“God sent his Singers upon earth

With songs of sadness and of mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men,

And bring them back to heaven again.”

Longfellow.

THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE.

I

Our old grey church at Church Dykely stood in a solitary spot. Servant maids (two of ours once, Hannah and Molly), and silly village girls went there sometimes to watch for the “shadows”on St. Mark’s Eve, and owls had a habit of darting out of the belfry at night. Within view of the church, though at some distance from it, stood the lonely, red-brick, angular dwelling-house belonging to Copse Farm. It was inhabited by Mr. Page, a plain worthy widower, getting in years; his three daughters and little son. Abigail and Susan Page, two experienced, sensible, industrious young women, with sallow faces and bunches of short dark curls, were at this period, about midway between twenty and thirty: Jessy, very much younger, was gone out to get two years’ “finishing” at a plain boarding-school; Charles, the lad, had bad health and went to school by day at Church Dykely.

Mr. Page fell ill. He would never again be able to get about much. His two daughters, so far as indoor work and management went, were hosts in themselves, Miss Abigail especially; but they could not mount a horse to superintend out-of-doors. Other arrangements were made. The second son of Mr. Drench, a neighbouring farmer and friend, came to the Copse Farm by day as overlooker. He was paid for his services, and he gained experience.

No sooner had John Drench, a silent, bashful young farmer,good-looking and fairly-well educated, been installed in his new post, than he began to show a decided admiration for Miss Susan Page—who was a few months younger than himself. The slight advances he made were favourably received; and it was tacitly looked upon that they were “as good as engaged.”Things went on pleasantly through the spring, and might have continued to go on so, but for the coming home at Midsummer of the youngest daughter, Jessy. That led to no end of complications and contrariety.

She was the sweetest flower you ever saw; a fair, delicate lily, with a mild countenance, blue eyes, and golden hair. Jessy had never been very strong; she had always been very pretty; and the consequence was that whilst her sisters had grown up to be useful, not to be idle a minute throughout the long day, Jessy had been petted and indulged, and was little except being ornamental. The two years’ schooling had not improved her taste for domestic occupation. To tell the truth, Jessy was given to being uncommonly idle.

To John Drench, who had not seen her since her early girlhood, she appeared as a vision of beauty. “It was like an angel coming in at the door,” he said of the day she first came home, when telling the tale to a stranger in after years. “My eyes were fairly dazzled.”

Like an angel! And unfortunately for John Drench, his heart was dazzled as well as his eyes. He fell desperately in love with her. It taught him that what he had felt for Miss Susan was not love at all; only esteem, and the liking that so often arises from companionship. He was well-meaning, but inexperienced. As he had never spoken to Susan, the utmost sign he had given being a look or a warmer handshake than usual, he thought there would be no difficulty in transferring his homage to the younger sister. Susan Page, who really loved him, and perhaps looked on with the keen eyes of jealousy, grew at last to see how matters were. She would have liked to put him in a corn-sack and give him a good shaking by way of cure. Thus the summer months went over in some silent discomfort, and September came in warm and fine.

Jessy Page stood at the open parlour window in her airy summer muslin, twirling a rose in her hand, blue ribbons fallingfrom her hair: for Jessy liked to set herself off in little adornments. She was laughing at John Drench outside, who had appeared covered with mud from the pond, into which he had contrived partially to slip when they were dragging for eels.

“I think your picture ought to be taken, just as you look now, Mr. John.”

He thought hers ought to be: the bright fair face, the laughing blue eyes, the parted lips and the pretty white teeth presented a picture that, to him, had never had its equal.

“Do you, Miss Jessy? That’s a fine rose,” he shyly added. He was always shy with her.

She held it out. She had not the least objection to be admired, even by John Drench in an unpresentable state. In their hearts, women have all desired men’s flattery, from Eve downwards.

“These large roses are the sweetest of any,” she went on.“I plucked it from the tree beyond the grass-plat.”

“You are fond of flowers, I’ve noticed, Miss Jessy.”

“Yes, I am. Both for themselves and for the language they symbolise.”

“What language is it?”

“Don’t you know? I learnt it at school. Each flower possesses its own meaning, Mr. John Drench. This, the rose, is true love.”

“True love, is it, Miss Jessy!”

She was lightly flirting it before his face. It was too much for him, and he took it gently from her. “Will you give it me?” he asked below his breath.

“Oh, with great pleasure.” And then she lightly added, as if to damp the eager look on his face: “There are plenty more on the same tree.”

“An emblem of true love,” he softly repeated. “It’s a pretty thought. I wonder who invented——”

“Now then, John Drench, do you know that tea’s waiting. Are you going to sit down in those muddy boots and leggings?”

The sharp words came from Susan Page. Jessy turned and saw her sister’s pale, angry face. John Drench disappeared, and Miss Susan went out again, and banged the door.

“It is high time Jessy was put to some regular employment,”cried Susan, bursting into the room where Miss Page sat making the tea. “She idles away her time in the most frivolous and wasteful manner, never doing an earthly thing. It is quite sinful.”

“So it is,” acquiesced Miss Page. “Have you a headache, Susan? You look pale.”

“Never mind my looks,” wrathfully retorted Susan. “We will portion out some share of work for her from to-day. She might make up the butter, and undertake the pies and puddings, and do the plain sewing.”

William Page, a grey-haired man, sitting with a stick by his side, looked up. “Pretty creature!” he said, for he passionately loved his youngest daughter. “I’ll not have her hard-worked, Susan.”

“But you’d not have her sit with her hands before her from Monday morning till Saturday night, I suppose, father!”sharply returned Miss Susan. “She’ll soon be nineteen.”

“No, no; idleness brings nothing but evil in its train. I didn’t mean that, Susan. Let the child do what is suitable for her. Where’s John Drench?”

“In a fine mess—up to his middle in mud,” was Miss Susan’s tart answer. “One would think he had been trying to see how great an object he could make of himself.”

John Drench came in, somewhat improved, his coat changed and the rose in his button-hole. He took his seat at the tea-table, and was more shy and silent than ever. Jessy sat by her father, chattering gaily, her blue ribbons flickering before his loving eyes.

But the butter-making and the other light work was fated not to be inaugurated yet for Jessy. Charles Page, a tiresome, indulged lad of twelve, became ill again: he was subject to attacks of low fever and ague. Mr. Duffham, peering at the boy over his gold-headed cane, said there was nothing for it but a dose of good seaside air. Mr. Page, anxious for his boy, began to consult with his daughters as to how it might be obtained. They had some very distant connections named Allen, living at Aberystwith. To them Miss Page wrote, asking if they could take in Charles and one of his sisters to live with them for a month or so. Mrs. Allen replied that she would be glad to have them;since her husband’s death she had eked out a scanty income by letting lodgings.

It was Jessy who went with him. The house and farm could not have spared Abigail; Susan said neither should it spare her. Jessy, the idle and useless one had to go. Miss Susan thought she and John Drench were well rid of the young lady.

September was in its second week when they went; November was at its close when they returned. The improvement in Charles had been so marked and wonderful—as Mrs. Allen and Jessy both wrote to say—that Mr. Duffham had strongly urged his staying as long as the weather remained fine. It was a remarkably fine late autumn that year, and they stayed until the end of November.

Charles came home well and strong. Jessy was more beautiful than ever. But there was some change in her. The light-hearted, talking, laughing girl had grown rather silent: she was often heard singing snatches of love songs to herself in a low voice, and there was a light in her eyes as of some intense, secret happiness that might not be told. John Drench, who had begun to show signs of returning to his old allegiance (at least, Miss Susan so flattered herself), fell a willing captive again forthwith, and had certainly neither eyes nor ears for any one but Jessy. Susan Page came to the conclusion that a shaking in a sack would be far too good for him.

The way of dressing the churches for Christmas in those past days was quite different from the new style of “decoration” obtaining now. Sprays of holly with their red berries, of ivy with its brown clusters, were stuck, each alternately into the holes on the top of the pews. It was a better way than the present one, far more effective—though I, Johnny Ludlow, shall be no doubt laughed at for saying so. Your woven wreaths tied round the pulpit and reading-desk; your lettered scrolls; your artificial flowers, may be talked of as “artistic,” but for effect they all stand absolutely as nothing, in comparison with the more simple and natural way, and they are, perhaps, the least bit tawdry. If you don’t believe me, pay a visit to some rural church next Christmas morning—for the old fashion is observed in many a country district still—and judge for yourselves. Withmany another custom that has been changed by the folly and fashion of these later days of pretension, and not changed for the better, lies this one. That is my opinion, and I hold to it.

The dressing in our church was always done by the clerk, old Bumford. The sexton (called familiarly with us the grave-digger) helped him when his health permitted, but he was nearly always ill, and then Bumford himself had to be grave-digger. It was not much trouble, this manner of decoration, and it took very little time. They had only to cut off the sprays almost of the same size, trim the ends, and lodge them in the holes. In the last century when a new country church was rebuilt (though that did not happen often), the drilling of these holes in the woodwork of the pews, for the reception of the“Christmas,” was as much a matter of course as were the pews themselves. Our Christmas was supplied by Mr. Page with a liberal hand; the Copse Farm abounded with trees of holly and ivy; one of his men, Leek, would help Bumford to cut it, and to cart it in a hand-truck to the church. It took a good deal to do all the pews.

On this Christmas that I am telling you of, it fell out that Clerk Bumford and the sexton were both disabled. Bumford had rheumatic gout so badly that getting him into church for the morning service the past three Sundays had been a marvel of dexterity—while the sexton was in bed with what he called catarrh. At first it seemed that we should not get the church dressed at all: but the Miss Pages, ever ready and active in a good work, came to the rescue, and said they would do it themselves, with John Drench’s help. The Squire was not going to be behind-hand, and said we boys, for Tod and I were just home for the holidays, should help too.

And when Christmas Eve came, and Leek had wheeled up the holly, and we were all in the cold church (not I think that any of us cared whether it was cold or warm), we enjoyed the work amazingly, and decided that old Bumford should never be let do it again, gout or no gout.

Jessy Page was a picture to look at. The two elder ladies had on tight dark cloth dresses, like a riding-habit cut short, at the ankles: Jessy was in a bright blue mantle edged with swans-down, and a blue bonnet on her pretty head. She came in a little late, and Miss Susan blew her up sharply, for putting on that “best Sunday cape” to dress a church in: but Jessy only laughed good-naturedly, and answered that she would take care not to harm it. Susan Page, trimming the branches, had seen John Drench’s eyes fixed on the girl: and her knife worked away like mad in her vexation.

“Look here,” said Jessy: “we have never had any Christmas over the pulpit; I think old Bumford was afraid to get up to do it; let us put some. It would hide that ugly nail in the wall.”

“There are no holes up in the wall,” snapped Miss Susan.

“I meant a large bunch; a bunch of holly and ivy mixed, Susan. John Drench could tie it to the nail: it would look well.”

“I’ll do it, too,” said John. “I’ve some string in my pocket. The parson won’t know himself. It will be as good as a canopy over him.”

Miss Page turned round: she and Charley had their arms full of the branches we had been cutting.

“Put a bunch there, if you like, but let us finish the pews first,” she said. “If we go from one thing to another we shall not finish while it’s daylight.”

It was good sense: she rarely spoke anything else. Once let darkness overtake us, and the dressing would be done for. The church knew nothing about evening service, and had never felt the want of means to light itself up.

“I shall pick out the best sprays in readiness,” whispered Jessy to me, as we sat together on the bench by the big christening bowl, she choosing branches, I trimming them. “Look at this one! you could not count the berries on it.”

“Did you enjoy your visit to Aberystwith, Jessy?”

I wondered what there was in my simple question to move her. The branch of holly went anywhere; her hands met in a silent clasp; the expression of her face changed to one of curious happiness. In answering, her voice fell to a whisper.

“Yes, I enjoyed it.”

“What a long time you stayed away! An age, Mrs. Todhetley says.”

“It was nearly eleven weeks.”

“Eleven weeks! How tedious!”

Her face was glowing, her eyes had a soft light in them. She caught up some holly, and began scattering its berries.

“What did you do with yourself, Jessy?”

“I used to sit by the sea—and to walk about. It was very fine. They don’t often have it like that in November, Mrs. Allen said.”

“Did Mrs. Allen sit and walk with you?”

“No. She had enough to do with the house and her lodgers. We only saw her at meal times.”

“The Miss Allens, perhaps?”

“There are no Miss Allens. Only one little boy.”

“Why, then, you had no one but Charley!”

“Charley? Oh, he used to be always about with little Tom Allen—in a boat, or something of that sort. Mrs. Allen thought the sea breezes must be so good for him.”

“Well, you must have been very dull!”

Jessy looked rather foolish. She was a simple-minded girl at the best. The two elder sisters had all the strong sense of the family, she the simplicity. Some people called Jessy Page“soft”: perhaps, contrasted with her sisters, she was so: and she was very inexperienced.

The dusk was gathering, and Charley had gone out tired, when John Drench got into the pulpit to tie the bunch of holly to the wall above it. Tod was with him. Drench had his hands stretched out, and we stood watching them in a group in the aisle below, when the porch-door was burst open, and in leaped Charles.

“Jessy! I say! Where’s Jessy?”

“I am here,” said Jessy, looking round. “What do you want?”

“Here’s Mr. Marcus Allen.”

Who Mr. Marcus Allen might be, Charles did not say. Jessy knew: there was no doubt of that. Her face, just then close to mine, had flushed as red as a June rose.

A tall, dark, imposing man came looming out of the dusk. His handsome, furred great-coat was open, his waistcoat was of crimson velvet; he wore two chains, three rings, and an eye-glass. And I’ll leave you to judge of the effect this vision of grandeur made, dropping down on us plain church-dressers in our every-day clothes. John Drench leaned over the pulpitcushion, string in hand; the two Miss Pages stood staring; Jessy turned white and red with the unexpected amazement. It was to her he approached, and spoke.

“How do you do, Miss Jessy?”

She put her hand out in answer to his; but seemed to have been struck as dumb as the old stone image on the monument against the wall.

“These are your sisters, I presume, Miss Jessy? Will you do me the honour of introducing me to them?”

“Mr. Marcus Allen,” murmured Jessy. “My sister Abigail; my sister Susan.”

Mr. Marcus Allen, bowing over his hat, said something about the pleasure it gave him to make their acquaintance personally, after hearing so much of them from Miss Jessy at Aberystwith, and begged to be allowed to shake their hands. Miss Page, when the hand-shaking was over, said in her straightforward way that she did not know who he was, her young sister never having mentioned him. Jessy, standing like a little simpleton, her eyes bent down on the aisle bricks, murmured in confusion that she “forgot it.” John Drench had his face over the cushion all that time, and Tod’s arms began to ache, holding up the bunch of green.

Mr. Marcus Allen, it turned out, was related in some way to the Allens of Aberystwith: he happened to go to the town soon after Jessy Page and her brother went there, and he stayed until they left it. Not at the Allens’ house: he had lodgings elsewhere. Mrs. Allen spoke of him to Jessy as a “grand gentleman, quite above them.” An idea came over me, as we all now stood together, that he had been Jessy’s companion in the walking and the sitting by the sea.

“I told Miss Jessy that I should be running down some day to renew my acquaintanceship with her and make that of her family,” said Mr. Marcus Allen to Miss Page. “Having no particular engagement on my hands this Christmas time, I came.”

He spoke in the most easy manner conceivable: his accent and manner were certainly those of a gentleman. As to the fashionable attire and the rings and chains, rather startling though they looked to us in the dark church on that dark andbusy evening, they were all the rage for dandies in the great world then.

Noticing the intimation that he had come purposely to see them, Miss Page supposed that she ought, in hospitably good manners, to invite him to stay a day or two at the farm, but doubted whether so imposing a gentleman would condescend to do so. She said nothing about it then, and we all went out of the church together; except John Drench, who stayed behind with Leek to help clear up the litter for the man to carry away. It was light outside, and I took a good look at the stranger: a handsome man of seven-or-eight-and-twenty, with hard eyes, and black whiskers curled to perfection.

“In what way is he related to the Allens of Aberystwith, Jessy?” questioned Miss Page, drawing her sister away, as we went through the coppice.

“I don’t quite know, Abigail. He is some distant cousin.”

“How came you never to speak of him?”

“I—I did not remember to do so.”

“Very careless of you, child. Especially if he gave you cause to suppose he might come here. I don’t like to be taken by surprise by strangers; it is not always convenient.”

Jessy walked along in silence, meek as a lamb.

“What is he?—in any profession, or trade?”

“Trade? Oh, I don’t think he does anything of that kind, Abigail. That branch of the family would be above it, Mrs. Allen said. He has a large income, she says; plenty of money.”

“I take it, then, that he is above us,” reasoned Miss Page.

“Oh dear, yes: in station. Ever so much.”

“Then I’m sure I don’t care to entertain him.”

Miss Page went straight into the best kitchen on arriving at home. Her father sat in the large hearth corner, smoking his pipe. She told him about the stranger, and said she supposed they must ask him to stay over the morrow—Christmas-Day.

“Why shouldn’t we?” asked Mr. Page.

“Well, father, he seems very grand and great.”

“Does he? Give him the best bedroom.”

“And our ways are plain and simple, you know,” she added.

“He must take us as he finds us, Abigail. Any friend of Mrs. Allen’s is welcome: she was downright kind to the children.”

We had a jolly tea. Tod and I had been asked to it beforehand. Pork-pies, Miss Susan’s making, hot buttered batch-cakes, and lemon cake and jams. Mr. Marcus Allen was charmed with everything: he was a pleasant man to talk to. When we left, he and Mr. Page had gone to the best kitchen again, to smoke together in the wide chimney corner.

You Londoners, who go in for your artistic scrolls and crosses, should have seen the church on Christmas morning. It greeted our sight, as we entered from the porch, like a capacious grove of green, on which the sun streamed through the south windows. Old Bumford’s dressing had never been as full and handsome as this of ours, for we had rejected all niggardly sprays. The Squire even allowed that much. Shaking hands with Miss Page in the porch after service, he told her that it cut Clerk Bumford out and out. Mr. Marcus Allen, in fashionable coat, with the furred over-coat flung back, light gloves, and big white wristbands, was in the Pages’ pew, sitting between old Page and Jessy. He found all the places for her in her Prayer-book (a shabby red one, some of the leaves loose); bowing slightly every time he handed her the book, as if she had been a princess of the blood royal. Such gallantry was new in our parts: and the congregation were rather taken off their devotions watching it. As to Jessy, she kept flushing like a rose.

Mr. Marcus Allen remained more than a week, staying over New-Year’s Day. He made himself popular with them all, and enjoyed what Miss Abigail called their plain ways, just as though he had been reared to them. He smoked his pipe in the kitchen with the farmer; he drove Miss Susan to Alcester in the tax-cart; he presented Miss Abigail with a handsome work-box; and gave Charley a bright half-sovereign for bullseyes. As to Jessy, he paid her no more attention than he did her sisters; hardly as much: so that if Miss Susan had been entertaining any faint hope that his object in coming to the Copse was Jessy, and that in consequence John Drench might escape from bewitching wiles, she found the hope fallacious. Mr. Marcus Allen had apparently no more thought of Jessy than he had of Sally, the red-armed serving-girl. “But what in the world brought the man here at all?” questioned Miss Susan ofher sister. “He wanted a bit of country holiday,” answered Miss Page with her common sense.

One day during the week the Squire met them abroad, and gave an impromptu invitation to the Manor for the evening. Only the three Miss Pages came. Mr. Marcus Allen sent his compliments, and begged to be excused on the score of headache.

One evening at dusk we met him and Jessy. She had been out on some errand, and he overtook her in the little coppice path between the church and the farm. Tod, dashing through it to get home for dinner, I after him, nearly dashed right upon them. Mr. Marcus Allen had his face inside her bonnet, as if he were speaking in the ear of a deaf old lady of seventy. Tod burst out laughing when we got on.

“That fellow was stealing a sly kiss in the dark, Johnny.”

“Like his impudence.”

“Rubbish,” retorted Tod. “It’s Christmas-tide, and all fair. Didn’t you see the bit of mistletoe he was holding up?” And Tod ran on, whistling a line of a song that the Squire used to sing in his young days:

“We all love a pretty girl, under the rose.”

Mr. Marcus Allen left the Copse Farm with hearty thanks for its hospitality. He promised to come again in the summer, when the fields should be sweet with hay and the golden corn was ripening.

No sooner had he gone than John Drench asked Jessy to promise to be his wife. Whether he had felt any secret jealousy of Mr. Marcus Allen and his attractions, and deemed it well to secure Jessy as soon as the coast was clear, he spoke out. Jessy did not receive the honour kindly. She tossed her pretty head in a violent rage: the idea, she said, of her marrying him. Jessy had never flirted with John Drench since the Aberystwith journey, or encouraged him in any way—that was certain. Unpleasantness ensued at the farm. Mr. Page decidedly approved of the suitor: he alone had perceived nothing of Susan’s hopes: and, perhaps for the first time in his life, he spoke sharply to Jessy. John Drench was not to be despised, he told her; his father was a wealthy man, and John would have a substantial portion; more than double enough to put him into the largestand best farm in the county: Mr. Drench was only waiting for a good one to fall in, to take it for him. No: Jessy would not listen. And as the days went on and John Drench, as she said, strove to further his suit on every opportunity, she conceived, or professed, a downright aversion to him. Sadly miserable indeed she seemed, crying often; and saying she would rather go out as lady’s-maid to some well-born lady than stay at home to be persecuted. Miss Susan was in as high a state of rapture as the iniquity of false John Drench permitted; and said it served the man right for making an oaf of himself.

“Let be,” cried old Page of Jessy. “She’ll come to her senses in time.” But Miss Abigail, regarding Jessy in silence with her critical eyes, took up the notion that the girl had some secret source of discomfort, with which John Drench had nothing to do.

It was close upon this, scarcely beyond the middle of January, when one Monday evening Duffham trudged over from Church Dykely for a game at chess with the Squire. Hard weather had set in; ice and snow lay on the ground. Mrs. Todhetley nursed her face by the fire, for she had toothache as usual; Tod watched the chess; I was reading. In the midst of a silence, the door opened, and old Thomas ushered in John Drench, a huge red comforter round his neck, his hat in his hand.

“Good-evening, Squire; good-evening, ma’am,” said he in his shy way, nodding separately to the rest of us, as he unwound the comforter. “I’ve come for Miss Jessy, please.”

“Come for Miss Jessy!” was the Squire’s surprised echo.“Miss Jessy’s not here. Take a seat, Mr. John.”

“Not here?” cried Drench, opening his eyes in something like fear, and disregarding the invitation to sit down. “Not here! Why where can she have got to? Surely she has not fallen down in the snow and ice, and disabled herself?”

“Why did you think she was here?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, after a pause, during which he seemed to be lost. “Miss Jessy was not at home at tea: later, when I was leaving for the night, Miss Abigail asked me if I would come over here first and fetch Jessy. I asked no questions, but came off at once.”

“She has not been here,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “I have notseen Jessy Page since yesterday afternoon, when I spoke to her coming out of church.”

John Drench looked mystified. That there must have been some misapprehension on Miss Page’s part; or else on his, and he had come to the wrong house; or that poor Jessy had come to grief in the snow on her way to us, seemed certain. He drank a glass of ale, and went away.

They were over again at breakfast time in the morning, John Drench and Miss Abigail herself, bringing strange news. The latter’s face turned white as she told it. Jessy Page had not been found. John Drench and two of the men had been out all night in the fields and lanes, searching for her. Miss Abigail gave us her reasons for thinking Jessy had come to Dyke Manor.

On the Sunday afternoon, when the Miss Pages went home from church, Jessy, instead of turning indoors with them, continued her way onwards to the cottage of a poor old woman named Matt, saying Mrs. Todhetley had told her the old granny was very ill. At six o’clock, when they had tea—tea was always late on Sunday evenings, as Sally had leave to stay out gossiping for a good hour after service—it was discovered that Jessy had not come in. Charley was sent out after her, and met her at the gate. She had a scolding from her sister for staying out after dark had fallen; but all she said in excuse was, that the old granny was so very ill. That passed. On the Monday, soon after dinner, she came downstairs with her things on, saying she was going over to Dyke Manor, having promised Mrs. Todhetley to let her know the real state of Granny Matt. “Don’t thee get slipping in the snow, Jessy,” said Mr. Page to her, half jokingly. “No danger, father,” she replied: and went up and kissed him. As she did not return by tea-time, Miss Page took it for granted she was spending the evening with us. Since that, she had not been seen.

It seemed very odd. Mrs. Todhetley said that in talking with Jessy in the porch, she had incidentally mentioned the sickness of Granny Matt. Jessy immediately said she would go there and see her; and if she found her very ill would send word to Dyke Manor. Talk as they would, there was no more to be made of it than that: Jessy had left home to come to us, and was lost by the way.

Lost to her friends, at any rate, if not to herself. John Drench and Miss Page departed; and all day long the search after Jessy and the speculation as to what had become of her continued. At first, no one had glanced at anything except some untoward accident as the sole cause, but gradually opinions veered round to a different fear. They began to think she might have run away!

Run away to escape Mr. John Drench’s persevering attentions; and to seek the post of lady’s-maid—which she had been expressing a wish for. John stated, however, that he had notpersecuted her; that he had resolved to let a little time go by in silence, and then try his luck again. Granny Matt was questioned, and declared most positively that the young lady had not stayed ten minutes with her; that it was only “duskish” when she went away. “Duskish” at that season, in the broad open country, with the white snow on the ground, would mean about five o’clock. What had Jessy done with herself during the other hour—for it was past six when she reached home,—and why should she have excused her tardiness by implying that Granny Matt’s illness had kept her?

No one could fathom it. No one ever knew. Before that first day of trouble was over, John Drench suggested worse. Deeply mortified at its being said that she might have run away from him, he breathed a hasty retort—that it was more likely she had been run away with by Mr. Marcus Allen. Had William Page been strong enough he had certainly knocked him down for the aspersion. Susan heard it with a scared face: practical Miss Abigail sternly demanded upon what grounds he spoke. Upon no grounds in particular, Drench honestly answered: it was a thought that came into his mind and he spoke it on the spur of the moment. Any way, it was most unjust to say he had sent her.

The post-mistress at the general shop, Mrs. Smail, came forward with some testimony. Miss Jessy had been no less than twice to the shop during the past fortnight, nay, three times, she thought, to inquire after letters addressed J. P. The last time she received one. Had she been negotiating privately for the lady’s-maid’s situation, wondered Abigail: had she been corresponding with Mr. Marcus Allen, retorted Susan, in herill-nature; for she did not just now hold Jessy in any favour. Mrs. Smail was asked whether she had observed, amongst the letters dropped into the box, any directed to Mr. Marcus Allen. But this had to be left an open question: there might have been plenty directed to him, or there might not have been a single one, was the unsatisfactory answer: she had “no ‘call’ to examine the directions, and as often did up the bag without her spectacles as with ’em.”

All this, put together, certainly did not tend to show that Mr. Marcus Allen had anything to do with the disappearance. Jessy had now and then received letters from her former schoolfellows addressed to the post-office—for her sisters, who considered her but a child, had an inconvenient habit of looking over her shoulder while she read them. The whole family, John Drench included, were up to their ears in agony: they did not know in what direction to look for her; were just in that state of mind when straws are caught at. Tod, knowing it could do no harm, told Miss Abigail about the kiss in the coppice. Miss Abigail quite laughed at it: kisses under the mistletoe were as common as blackberries with us, and just as innocent. She wrote to Aberystwith, asking questions about Marcus Allen, especially as to where he might be found. In answer, Mrs. Allen said she had not heard from him since he left Aberystwith, early in December, but had no doubt he was in London at his own home: she did not know exactly where that was, except that it was “somewhere at the West End.”

This letter was not more satisfactory than anything else. Everything seemed vague and doubtful. Miss Page read it to her father when he was in bed: Susan had just brought up his breakfast, and he sat up with the tray before him, his face nearly as white as the pillow behind him. They could not help seeing how ill and how shrunken he looked: Jessy’s loss had told upon him.

“I think, father, I had better go to London, and see if anything’s to be learnt there,” said Miss Page. “We cannot live on, in this suspense.”

“Ay; best go,” answered he, “I can’t live in it, either. I’ve had another sleepless night: and I wish that I was strong to travel. I should have been away long ago searching for the child——.”

“You see, father, we don’t know where to seek her; we’ve no clue,” interrupted Abigail.

“I’d have gone from place to place till I found her. But now, I’ll tell ye, Abigail, where you must go first—the thought has been in my mind all night. And that is to Madame Caron’s.”

“To Madame Caron’s!” echoed both the sisters at once.“Madame Caron’s!”

“Don’t either of you remember how your mother used to talk of her? She was Ann Dicker. She knows a sight of great folks now—and it may be that Jessy’s gone to her. Bond Street, or somewhere near to it, is where she lives.”

In truth they had almost forgotten the person mentioned. Madame Caron had once been plain Ann Dicker, of Church Dykely, intimate with William Page and his wife. She went to London when a young woman to learn the millinery and dress-making; married a Frenchman, and rose by degrees to be a fashionable court-milliner. It struck Mr. Page, during the past night-watch, that Jessy might have applied to Madame Caron to help her in getting a place as lady’s-maid.

“It’s the likeliest thing she’d do,” he urged, “if her mind was bent that way. How was she to find such a place of herself?—and I wish we had all been smothered before we’d made her home here unhappy, and put her on to think of such a thing.”

“Father, I don’t think her home was made unhappy,” said Miss Page.

To resolve and to do were one with prompt Abigail Page. Not a moment lost she, now that some sort of clue was given to act upon. That same morning she was on her way to London, attended by John Drench.

A large handsome double show-room. Brass hooks on the walls and slender bonnet-stands on the tables, garnished with gowns and mantles and head-gear and fal-lals; wide pier-glasses; sofas and chairs covered with chintz. Except for these articles, the room was empty. In a small apartment opening from it, called “the trying-on room,” sat Madame Caron herself, taking a comfortable cup of tea and a toasted muffin, after the labours of the day were over. Not that the labours were great at thatseason: people who require court millinery being for the most part out of town.

“You are wanted, if you please, madame, in the show-room,”said a page in buttons, coming in to disturb the tea.

“Wanted!—at this hour!” cried Madame Caron, as she glanced at the clock, and saw it was on the stroke of six. “Who is it?”

“It’s a lady and gentleman, madame. They look like travellers.”

“Go in and light the gas,” said madame.

“Passing through London and requiring things in a hurry,”thought she, mentally running through a list of some of her most fashionable customers.

She went in with a swimming curtsy—quite that of a Frenchwoman—and the parties, visitors and visited, gazed at each other in the gaslight. They saw a very stylish lady in rich black satin that stood on end, and lappets of point lace: she saw two homely country people, the one in a red comforter, muffled about his ears, the other in an antiquated fur tippet that must originally have come out of Noah’s ark.

“Is it—Madame Caron?” questioned Miss Abigail, in hesitation. For, you see, she doubted whether it might not be one of Madame Caron’s duchesses.

“I have the honour to be Madame Caron,” replied the lady with her grandest air.

Thus put at ease in regard to identity, Miss Page introduced herself—and John Drench, son of Mr. Drench of the Upland Farm. Madame Caron—who had a good heart, and retained amidst her grandeur a vivid remembrance of home and early friends—came down from her stilts on the instant, took off with her own hands the objectionable tippet, on the plea of heat, conducted them into the little room, and rang for a fresh supply of tea and muffins.

“I remember you so well when you were a little thing, Abigail,” she said, her heart warming to the old days. “We always said you would grow up like your mother, and so you have. Ah, dear! that’s something like a quarter-of-a-century ago. As to you, Mr. John, your father and I were boy and girl sweethearts.”

Over the refreshing tea and the muffins, Abigail Page told her tale. The whole of it. Her father had warned her not to hint a word against Jessy; but there was something in the face before her that spoke of truth and trust; and, besides, she did not see her way clear not to speak of Marcus Allen. To leave him out altogether would have been like bargaining for a spring calf in the dark, as she said later to John Drench.

“I have never had a line from Jessy in all my life: I have neither seen her nor heard of her,” said madame. “As to Mr. Marcus Allen, I don’t know him personally myself, but Miss Connaway, my head dressmaker, does: for I have heard her speak of him. I can soon find out for you where he lives.”

Miss Page thought she should like to see the head dressmaker, and a message was sent up for her. A neat little middle-aged woman came down, and was invited to the tea-table. Madame turned the conversation on Mr. Marcus Allen; telling Miss Connaway that these country friends of hers knew him slightly, and would be glad to get his address to call upon him; but she did not say a syllable about Jessy.

Mr. Marcus Allen had about two hundred a year of his own, and was an artist in water-colours. The certain income made him idle; and he played just as much as he worked. The few pictures he completed were good, and sold well. He shared a large painting-room somewhere with a brother artist, but lived in chambers. All this Miss Connaway told readily; she had known him since he was a child.

Late though it was, Miss Abigail and her cavalier proceeded to Marcus Allen’s lodgings; or “chambers,” as they were ostentatiously called, and found him seated at dinner. He rose in the utmost astonishment at seeing them; an astonishment that looked thoroughly genuine.

Jessy missing! Jessy left her home! He could but reiterate the words in wondering disbelief. Abigail Page felt reassured from that moment; even jealous John Drench in his heart acquitted him. He had not written to Jessy, he said; he had nothing to write to her about, therefore it could not have been his letter she went to receive at the post-office; and most certainly she had not written to him. Miss Abigail—willing perhaps to offer some excuse for coming to him—said they had thought it possible Jessy might have consulted him about getting a lady’s-maid’s place. She never had consulted him, he answered, but had once told him that she intended to go out as one. He should imagine, he added, it was what she had done.

Mr. Marcus Allen pressed them to sit down and partake of his dinner, such as it was; he poured out glasses of wine; he was altogether hospitable. But they declined all. He then asked how he could assist them; he was most anxious they should find her, and would help in any way that lay in his power.

“He knows no more about her than we know,” said John Drench as they turned out into the lighted streets, on their way back to the inn they had put up at, which had been recommended to them by Mr. Page. “I’m sorry I misjudged him.”

“I am sorry too, John Drench,” was Miss Abigail’s sorrowful answer. “But for listening to the words you said, we should never have had such a wicked thought about her, poor child, and been spared many a bitter moment. Where in the wide world are we to look for her now?”

The wide world did not give any answer. London, with its teeming millions, was an enormous arena—and there was no especial cause for supposing Jessy Page had come to it.

“I am afraid it will be of no use to stay here any longer,”said Miss Abigail to John Drench, after another unsatisfactory day had gone by, during which Marcus Allen called upon them at the inn and said he had spoken to the police. It was John Drench’s own opinion.

“Why, you see, Miss Abigail, that to look for her here, not knowing where or how, is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay,” said John.

They reached home none too soon. Two unexpected events were there to greet them. The one was Mr. Page who was lying low in an attack of paralysis; the other was a letter from Jessy.

It gave no clue to where she was. All she said in it was that she had found a situation, and hoped to suit and be happy in it; and she sent her love to all.

And the weeks and the months went on.

II

Snow was falling. At one of the windows of the parlour at Copse Farm, stood Susan Page, her bunch of short dark curls fastened back with a comb on both sides of her thin face, her trim figure neat in a fine crimson merino gown. Her own portion of household-work was already done, though it was not yet mid-day, and she was about to sit down, dressed for the day, to some sewing that lay on the work-table.

“I was hoping the snow was over: the morning looked so clear and bright,” she said to herself, watching the large flakes.“Leek will have a job to get the truck to the church.”

It was a long, narrow room. At the other end, by the fire, sat Mr. Page in his arm-chair. He had dropped asleep, his cheek leaning on his hand. As Miss Susan sat down and took up her work, a large pair of scissors fell to the ground with a crash. She glanced round at her father, but he did not wake. That stroke of a year ago had dulled his faculties.

“I should uncommonly like to know who did this—whether Sally or the woman,” she exclaimed, examining the work she had to do. One of Mr. Page’s new shirts had been torn in the washing, and she was about to mend the rent. “That woman has a heavy hand: and Sally a careless one. It ought not to have been ironed.”

The door opened, and John Drench came in. When he saw that Mr. Page was asleep, he walked up the room towards Miss Susan. In the past twelvemonth—for that amount of time had rolled on since the trouble about Jessy and her mysterious disappearance—John Drench had had time to return to his first allegiance (or, as Miss Susan mentally put it, get over his folly); and he had decidedly done it.

“Did you want anything?” asked Susan in a cold tone. For she made a point of being short with him—for his own benefit.

“I wanted to ask the master whether he’d have that ditch made, that he was talking about,” was the answer. “There’s no hurry about it: not much to be done anywhere while this weather lasts.”

She made no reply. John Drench stood, waiting for Mr.Page to wake, looking alternately at the snow and at Miss Susan’s steel thimble and nimble fingers. Very deftly was she doing the work, holding the linen gingerly, that the well-ironed bosom and wristbands might not get creased and unfit the shirt for wear. He was thinking what a good wife she would make: for there was nothing, in the shape of usefulness, that Susan Page could not put her hand to, and put it well.

“Miss Susan, I was going to ask you a question,” he began, standing uncomfortably on one leg. “I’ve been wanting to do it for a good bit now, but——”

“Pick up my cotton,” said Miss Susan tartly, dropping a reel purposely.

“But I believe I have wanted courage,” resumed he after doing as he was bid. “It is a puzzling task to know how to do it for the best, and what to say. If you——”

Open flew the door, and in came Miss Page, in her white kitchen apron. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, her floured hands were lightly wiped. John Drench, interrupted, thought he should never have pluck to speak again.

“Susan, do you know where that old red receipt-book is?”she asked, in a low tone, glancing at her sleeping father. “I am not certain about the proportions for the lemon cake.”

“The red receipt-book?” repeated Susan. “I have not seen it for ever so long.”

“Nor I. I don’t think I have had occasion to use it since last Christmas-Eve. I know I had to look at it then for the lemon-cake. Sally says she’s sure it is somewhere in this room.”

“Then you had better send Sally to find it, Abigail.”

Instead of that, Miss Page began searching herself. On the book-shelves; on the side-board; in all the nooks and corners. It was found in the drawer of an unused table that stood against the wall.

“Well, I declare!” she exclaimed, as she drew it out. “I wonder who put it in here?”

In turning over the leaves to look for what she wanted, a piece of paper, loosely folded, fell to the ground. John Drench picked it up.

“Why!” he said, “it is a note from Jessy.”

It was the letter written to them by Jessy, saying she hadfound a situation and hoped to suit and be happy in it. The oneletter: for no other had ever come. Abigail, missing the letter months ago, supposed it had got burnt.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh, as she glanced over the few lines now, standing by Susan’s work-table, “it is Jessy’s letter. She might have written again. Every morning of my life for weeks and weeks, I kept looking for the letter-man to bring another. But the hope died out at last, for it never came.”

“She is a heartless baggage!” cried Miss Susan. “In her grand lady’s-maid’s place, amongst her high people, she is content to forget and abandon us. I’d never have believed it of her.”

A pause ensued. The subject was a painful one. Mortifying too: for no one likes to be set at nought and forgotten by one that they have loved and cherished and brought up from a little child. Abigail Page had tears in her eyes.

“It’s just a year ago to-day that she came into the church to help us to dress it,” said John Drench, his tender tone of regret grating on Miss Susan’s ear. “In her blue mantle she looked sweeter and brighter than a fairy.”

“Did you ever see a fairy, pray?” asked Miss Susan, sharply taking him up. “She acted like a fairy, didn’t she?”

“Best to forget her,” interposed Abigail, suppressing a sigh.“As Susan says, she is heartless. Almost wicked: for what is worse than ingratitude? Never to write: never to let us know where her situation is and with what people: never to ask or care whether her poor father, who had nothing but love for her, is living or dead? It’s best to forget her.”

She went out of the room with the note and receipt-book as she spoke, softly closing the door behind her, as one does who is feeling trouble. Miss Susan worked on with rapid and angry stitches; John Drench looked out on the low-lying snow. The storm had passed: the sky was blue again.

Yes. Christmas-Eve had come round, making it just a year since Jessy in her pretty blue mantle had chosen the sprays of holly in the church. They had never had from her but that one first unsatisfactory letter: they knew no more how she went, or why she went, or where she was, than they had known then. Within a week or two of the unsatisfactory journey to Londonof Miss Abigail and John Drench, a letter came to the farm from Mr. Marcus Allen, inquiring after Jessy, expressing hopes that she had been found and was at home again. It was not answered: Miss Page, busy with her father’s illness, neglected it at first, and then thought it did not matter.

Mr. Page had recovered from his stroke: but he would never be good for anything again. He was very much changed; would sit for hours and never speak: at times his daughters thought him a little silly, as if his intellect were failing. Miss Page, with John Drench’s help, managed the farm: though she always made it a point of duty to consult her father and ask for his orders. In the month of June they heard again from Mr. Marcus Allen. He wrote to say that he was sorry not to fulfil his promise (made in the winter’s visit) of coming to stay with them during the time of hay-making, but he was busy finishing a painting and could not leave it: he hoped to come at some other time. And this was now December.

Susan Page worked on: John Drench looked out of the window. The young lady was determined not to break the silence.

“The Dunn Farm is to let,” said he suddenly.

“Is it?” slightingly returned Miss Susan.

“My father has some thoughts of taking it for me. It’s good land.”

“No better than other land about here.”

“It’s very good, Susan. And just the place I should like. There’s an excellent house too, on it.”

Susan Page began rummaging in the deep drawer of the work-table for her box of buttons. She had a great mind to hum a tune.

“But I couldn’t take it, or let father take it for me, unless you’d promise to go to it with me, Susan.”

“Promise to go to it with you, John Drench!”

“I’d make you as good a husband as I know how. Perhaps you’ll think of it.”

No answer. She was doubling her thread to sew on the button.

“Will you think of it, Miss Susan?”

“Well—yes, I will,” she said in a softer tone, “And if Idecide to bring my mind to have you, John Drench, I’ll hope to make you a good and faithful wife.”

He held out his hand to shake hers upon the bargain. Their eyes met in kindliness: and John Drench knew that the Dunn Farm would have its mistress.

We were going to dress the church this year as we did the last. Clerk Bumford’s cough was bad, and the old sexton was laid by as usual. Tod and I got to the church early in the afternoon, and saw the Miss Pages wading their way through the coppice, over their ankles in snow: the one lady having finished her cake-making and the other her shirt-mending.

“Is Leek not here yet?” cried they in surprise. “We need not have made so much haste.”

Leek with his large truck of holly was somewhere on the road. He had started, as Miss Page said, while they were at dinner. And he was not to be seen!

“It is all through his obstinacy,” cried Susan. “I told him he had better take the highway, though it was a little further round; but he said he knew he could well get through the little valley. That’s where he has stuck, truck and all.”

John Drench came up as she was speaking. He had been on some errand to Church Dykely; and gave a bad account of the snow on the roads. This was the third day of it. The skies just now were blue as in spring; the sun, drawing towards the west, was without a cloud. After waiting a few minutes, John Drench started to meet Leek and help him on; and we cooled our heels in the church-porch, unable to get inside. As it was supposed Leek would be there sooner than any one else, the key of the church had been given to him that he might get the holly in. There we waited in the cold. At last, out of patience, Tod went off in John Drench’s wake, and I after him.

It was as Miss Susan surmised. Leek and his truck had stuck fast in the valley: a low, narrow neck of land connecting a byeway to the farm with the lane. The snow was above the wheels: Leek could neither get on nor turn back. He and John Drench were hard at work, pulling and pushing; and the obstinate truck refusing to move an inch. With the help of our strength—if mine was not worth much, Tod’s was—we got it on.But all this caused ever so much delay: and the dressing was begun when it ought to have been nearly finished. I could not help thinking of the other Christmas-Eve; and of pretty Jessy who had helped—and of Miss Susan scolding her for coming in her best blue mantle—and of the sudden looming upon us of the stranger, Marcus Allen. Perhaps the rest were thinking about it as I was. One thing was certain—that there was no liveliness in this year’s dressing; we were all as silent as mutes and as dull as ditch-water. Charley Page, who had made enough noise last year, was away this. He went to school at Worcester now, and had gone to spend the Christmas with some people in Gloucestershire, instead of coming home.

The work was in progress, when who should look in upon us but Duffham. He was passing by to visit some one ill in the cottages. “Rather late, shan’t you be?” cried he, seeing that there was hardly any green up yet. And we told him about the truck sticking in the snow.

“What possessed Leek to take it through the valley?” returned Duffham.

“Because he is fonder of having his own way than a mule,”called out Miss Susan from the aisle.

Duffham laughed. “Don’t forget the gala bunch over the parson’s head; it looked well last year,” said he, turning to go out. And we told him there was no danger of forgetting it: it was one of our improvements on old Bumford’s dressing.

Darkness overtook us before half the work was done. There was nothing for it but to get candles from the Copse Farm to finish by. No one volunteered to fetch them: a walk through the snow did not look lively in prospective to any one of us, and Leek had gone off somewhere. “I suppose it must be me,”said John Drench, coming out from the holly to start: when Miss Page suddenly bethought herself of what the rest of us were forgetting—that there might be candles in the church. On a winter’s afternoon, when it grew dark early and the parson could not see through his spectacles to finish his sermon, Clerk Bumford would go stumping into the place under the belfry, and re-appear with a lighted candle and hand it up to the pulpit. He ought to have a stock of candles in store.

John Drench struck some matches, and we went to exploreBumford’s den—a place dimly lighted by the open slits in the belfry above. The first thing seen was his black gown hanging up, next a horn lantern on the floor and the grave-digging tools, then an iron candlestick with a candle end in it, then a stick half-a-mile long that he menaced the boys with if they laughed in church; and next a round tin candlebox on a nail in the wall. It was a prize.

There were ten candles in it. Leaving one, in case it should be wanted on the morrow afternoon, the nine others were lighted. One was put into the iron candlestick, the rest we stuck upright in melted tallow, wherever one was wanted: how else could they be set up? It was a grand illumination: and we laughed over Clerk Bumford’s dismay when he should find his store of candles gone.

That took time: finding the candles, and dropping the tallow, and talking and laughing. In the midst of it the clock struck five. Upon that, Miss Abigail told us to hinder no more time, or the work would not be done by midnight. So we set to with a will. In a couple of hours all the dressing was finished, and the branches were ready to be hung over the pulpit. John Drench felt for the string. He seemed to take his time over it.

“Where on earth is it?” cried he, searching his pockets.“I’m sure I brought some.”

He might have brought it; but it was certain he had not got it then. Miss Abigail, who had no patience with carelessness, told him rather sharply that if he had put it in his pockets at all, there it would be now.

“Well, I did,” he answered, in his quiet way. “I put it in on purpose. I’m sure I don’t know where it can have got to.”

And there we were: at a standstill for a bit of string. Looking at one another like so many helpless noodles, and the flaring candles coming to an end! Tod said, tear a strip off the tail of Bumford’s gown; he’d never miss it: for which Miss Abigail gave it him as sharply as if he had proposed to tear it off the parson’s.

“I might get a bit of string at old Bumford’s,” I said. “In a few minutes I’ll be back with it.”

It was one of the lightest nights ever seen: the air clear, the moon bright, the ground white with snow. Rushing round thenorth and unfrequented side of the church, where the grass on the graves was long and no one ever walked, excepting old Bumford when he wanted to cut across the near way to his cottage, I saw something stirring against the church wall. Something dark: that seemed to have been looking in at the window, and now crouched down with a sudden movement behind the buttress, as if afraid of being seen.

“Is that you, Leek?” I called out.

There was no answer: no movement: nothing but a dark heap lying low. I thought it might be a fox; and crossed over to look.

Well—I had had surprises in my life, but never one that so struck upon me as this. Foxes don’t wear women’s clothes: this thing did. I pulled aside the dark cloak, and a face stood out white and cold in the moonlight—the face of Jessy Page.

You may fancy it is a slice of romance this; made up for effect out of my imagination: but it is the real truth, as every one about the place can testify to, and its strangeness is talked of still. Yet there are stranger coincidences in life than this. On Christmas-Eve, a year before, Jessy Page had been helping to dress the church, in her fine blue mantle, in her beauty, in her light-hearted happiness: on this Christmas-Eve when we were dressing it again, she re-appeared. But how changed! Wan, white, faint, wasted! I am not sure that I should have known her but for her voice. Shrinking, as it struck me, with shame and fear, she put up her trembling hands in supplication.

“Don’t betray me!—don’t call!” she implored in weak, feverish, anxious tones. “Go away and leave me. Let me lie here unsuspected until they have all gone away.”

What ought I to do? I was just as bewildered as it’s possible for a fellow to be. It’s no exaggeration to say that I thought her dying: and it would never do to leave her there to die.

The stillness was broken by a commotion. While she lay with her thin hands raised, and I was gazing down on her poor face, wondering what to say, and how to act, Miss Susan came flying round the corner after me.

“Johnny Ludlow! Master Johnny! Don’t go. We have found the string under the unused holly. Why!—what’s that?”

No chance of concealment for Jessy now. Susan Page made for the buttress, and saw the white face in the moonlight.

“It’s Jessy,” I whispered.

With a shriek that might have scared away all the ghosts in the churchyard, Susan Page called for Abigail. They heard it through the window, and came rushing out, thinking Susan must have fallen at least into the clutches of a winter wolf. Miss Susan’s voice trembled as she spoke in a whisper.

“Here’s Jessy—come back at last!”

Unbelieving Abigail Page went down on her knees in the snow to trace the features, and convince herself. Yes, it was Jessy. She had fainted now, and lay motionless. Leek came up then, and stood staring.

Where had she come from?—how had she got there? It was just as though she had dropped from the skies with the snow. And what was to be done with her?

“She must—come home,” said Abigail.

But she spoke hesitatingly, as though some impediment might lie in the way: and she looked round in a dreamy manner on the open country, all so white and dreary in the moonlight.

“Yes, there’s no other place—of course it must be the farm,”she added. “Perhaps you can bring her between you. But I’ll go on and speak to my father first.”

It was easy for one to carry her, she was so thin and light. John Drench lifted her and they all went off: leaving me and Leek to finish up in the church, and put out the candles.

William Page was sitting in his favourite place, the wide chimney-corner of the kitchen, quietly smoking his pipe, when his daughter broke in upon him with the strange news. Just in the same way that, a year before, she had broken in upon him with that other news—that a gentleman had arrived, uninvited, on a visit to the farm. This news was more startling than that.

“Are they bringing her home?—how long will they be?”cried the old man with feverish eagerness, as he let fall his long churchwarden pipe, and broke it. “Abigail, will they be long?”

“Father, I want to say something: I came on to say it,”returned Miss Page, and she was trembling too. “I don’t likeher face: it is wan, and thin, and full of suffering: but there’s a look in it that—that seems to tell of shame.”

“To tell of what?” he asked, not catching the word.

“May Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her! The fear crossed me, as I saw her lying there, that her life may not have been innocent since she left us: why else should she come back in this most strange way? Must we take her in all the same, father?”

“Take her in!” he repeated in amazement. “Yes. What are you thinking of, child, to ask it?”

“It’s the home of myself and Susan, father: it has been always an honest one in the sight of the neighbours. Maybe, they’ll be hard upon us for receiving her into it.”

He stared as one who does not understand, and then made a movement with his hands, as if warding off her words and the neighbours’ hardness together.

“Let her come, Abigail! Let her come, poor stray lamb. Christ wouldn’t turn away a little one that had strayed from the fold: should her own father do it?”

And when they brought her in, and put her in an easy-chair by the sitting-room fire, stirring it into a blaze, and gave her hot tea and brandy in it, William Page sat down by her side, and shed fast tears over her, as he fondly stroked her hand.

Gay and green looked the church on Christmas morning, the sun shining in upon us as brightly as it shone a year before. The news of Jessy Page’s return and the curious manner of it, had spread; causing the congregation to turn their eyes instinctively on the Pages’ pew. Perhaps not one but recalled the last Christmas—and the gallant stranger who had sat in it, and found the places in the Prayer-book for Jessy. Only Mr. Page was there to-day. He came slowly in with his thick stick—for he walked badly since his illness, and dragged one leg behind the other. Before the thanksgiving prayer the parson opened a paper and read out a notice. Such things were uncommon in our church, and it caused a stir.

“William Page desires to return thanks to Almighty God for a great mercy vouchsafed to him.”

We walked to the Copse Farm with him after service. Considering that he had been returning thanks, he seemed dreadfully subdued. He didn’t know how it was yet; where she had been, or why she had come home in the manner she did, he told the Squire; but, anyway, she had come. Come to die, it might be; but come home, and that was enough.

Mrs. Todhetley went upstairs to see her. They had given her the best bed, the one they had given to Marcus Allen. She lay in it like a lily. It was what Mrs. Todhetley said when she came down: “like a lily, so white and delicate.” There was no talking. Jessy for the most part kept her eyes shut and her face turned away. Miss Page whispered that they had not questioned her yet; she seemed too weak to bear it. “But what do you think?” asked Mrs. Todhetley in return. “I am afraid to think,” was all the answer. In coming away, Mrs. Todhetley stooped over the bed to kiss her.

“Oh don’t, don’t!” said Jessy faintly: “you might not if you knew all. I am not worth it.”

“Perhaps I should kiss you all the more, my poor child,”answered Mrs. Todhetley. And she came downstairs with red eyes.

But Miss Susan Page was burning with impatience to know the ins and outs of the strange affair. Naturally so. It had brought more scandal and gossip on the Copse Farm than even the running away of the year before. That was bad enough: this was worse. Altogether Jessy was the home’s heartsore. Mr. Page spoke of her as a lamb, a wanderer returned to the fold, and Susan heard it with compressed lips: in her private opinion, she had more justly been called an ungrateful girl.

“Now, then, Jessy; you must let us know a little about yourself,” began Susan on this same afternoon when she was with her alone, and Jessy lay apparently stronger, refreshed with the dinner and the long rest. Abigail had gone to church with Mr. Page. Susan could not remember that any of them had gone to church before on Christmas-Day after the morning service: but there was no festive gathering to keep them at home to-day. Unconsciously, perhaps, Susan resented the fact. Even John Drench was dining at his father’s. “Where have you been all this while in London?”

Jessy suddenly lifted her arm to shade her eyes; and remained silent.

“It is in London, I conclude, that you have been? Come: answer me.”

“Yes,” said Jessy faintly.

“And where have you been? In what part of it?—who with?”

“Don’t ask me,” was the low reply, given with a suppressed sob.

“Not ask you! But we must ask you. And you must answer. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”

“I—can’t tell,” sobbed Jessy. “The story is too long.”

“Story too long!” echoed Susan quickly, “you might say in half-a-dozen words—and leave explanations until to-morrow. Did you find a place in town?”

“Yes, I found a place.”

“A lady’s-maid’s place?—as you said.”

Jessy turned her face to the wall, and never spoke.

“Now, this won’t do,” cried Miss Susan, not choosing to be thwarted: and no doubt Jessy, hearing the determined tone, felt something like a reed in her hands. “Just you tell me a little.”

“I am very ill, Susan; I can’t talk much,” was the pleading excuse. “If you’d only let me be quiet.”

“It will no more hurt you to say in a few words where you have been than to make excuses,” persisted Miss Susan, giving a flick to the skirt of her new puce silk gown. “Your conduct altogether has been most extraordinary, quite baffling to us at home, and I must hear some explanation of it.”

“The place I went to was too hard for me,” said Jessy after a pause, speaking out of the pillow.

“Too hard!”

“Yes; too hard. My heart was breaking with its hardness, and I couldn’t stop in it. Oh, be merciful to me, Susan! don’t ask any more.”

Susan Page thought that when mysterious answers like these were creeping out, there was all the greater need that she should ask for more.

“Who found you the place at first, Jessy?”

Not a word. Susan asked again.

“I—got it through an advertisement,” said Jessy at length.

Advertisements in those days, down in our rural district, were looked upon as wonderful things, and Miss Susan opened her eyes in surprise. A faint idea was upon her that Jessy could not be telling the truth.

“In that letter that you wrote to us; the only one you did write; you asserted that you liked the place.”

“Yes. That was at first. But afterwards—oh, afterwards it got cruelly hard.”

“Why did you not change it for another?”

Jessy made no answer. Susan heard the sobs in her throat.

“Now, Jessy, don’t be silly. I ask why you did not get another place, if you were unable to stay in that one?”

“I couldn’t have got another, Susan. I would never have got another.”

“Why not?” persisted Susan.

“I—I—don’t you see how weak I am?” she asked with some energy, lifting her face for a moment to Susan.

And its wan pain, its depth of anguish, disarmed Susan. Jessy looked like a once fair blossom on which a blight had passed.

“Well, Jessy, we will leave these matters until later. But there’s one thing you must answer. What induced you to take this disreputable mode of coming back?”

A dead silence.

“Could you not have written to say you were coming, as any sensible girl would, that you might have been properly met and received? Instead of appearing like a vagabond, to be picked up by anybody.”

“I never meant to come home—to the house.”

“But why?” asked Susan.

“Oh, because—because of my ingratitude in running away—and never writing—and—and all that.”

“That is, you were ashamed to come and face us.”

“Yes, I was ashamed,” said Jessy, shivering.

“And no wonder. Why did you go?”

Jessy gave a despairing sigh. Leaving that question in abeyance, Susan returned to the former one.

“If you did not mean to come home, what brought you down here at all?”

“It didn’t matter where I went. And my heart was yearning for a look at the old place—and so I came.”

“And if we had not found you under the church wall—and we never should but for Johnny Ludlow’s running out to get some string—where should you have gone, pray?”

“Crawled under some haystack, and let the cold and hunger kill me.”

“Don’t be a simpleton,” reproved Susan.

“I wish it had been so,” returned Jessy. “I’d rather be dying there in quiet. Oh, Susan, I am ill; I am indeed! Let me be at peace!”

The appeal shut up Susan Page. She did not want to be too hard upon her.

Mr. Duffham came in after church. Abigail had told him that she did not like Jessy’s looks; nor yet her cough. He went up alone, and was at the bedside before Jessy was aware. She put up her hand to hide her face, but not in time: Duffham had seen it. Doctors don’t get shocks in a general way: they are too familiar with appearances that frighten other people: but he started a little. If ever he saw coming death in a face, he thought he saw it in that of Jessy Page.

He drew away the shading hand, and looked at her. Duffham was pompous on the whole and thought a good deal of his gold-headed cane, but he was a tender man with the sad and sick. After that, he sat down and began asking her a few things—where she had been, and what she had done. Not out of curiosity, or quite with the same motive that Miss Susan had just asked; but because he wished to find out whether her illness was more on the body or the mind. She would not answer. Only cried softly.

“My dear,” said Duffham, “I must have you tell me a little of the past. Don’t be afraid: it shall go no further. If you only knew the strange confidences that are sometimes placed in me, Jessy, you would not hesitate.”

No, she would not speak of her own accord, so he began to pump her. Doing it very kindly and soothingly: had Jessy spent her year in London robbing all the banks, one might havethought she could only have yielded to his wish to come to the bottom of it. Duffham listened to her answers, and sat with a puzzled face. She told him what she had told Susan: that her post of lady’s-maid had been too hard for her and worn her to what she was; that she had shrunk from returning home on account of her ingratitude, and should not have returned ever of her own will. But she had yearned for a sight of the old place, and so came down by rail, and walked over after dark. In passing the church she saw it lighted up; and lingered, peeping in. She never meant to be seen; she should have gone away somewhere before morning. Nothing more.

Nothing more! Duffham sat listening to her. He pushed back the pretty golden hair (no more blue ribbons in it now), lost in thought.

“Nothing more, Jessy? There must have been something more, I think, to have brought you into this state. What was it?”

“No,” she faintly said: “only the hard work I had to do; and the thought of how I left my home; and—and my unhappiness. I was unhappy always, nearly from my first entering. The work was hard.”

“What was the work?”

“It was——”

A long pause. Mr. Duffham, always looking at her, waited.

“It was sewing; dress-making. And—there was sitting up at nights.”

“Who was the lady you served? What was her name?”

“I can’t tell it,” answered Jessy, her cheeks flushing to a wild hectic.

The surgeon suddenly turned the left hand towards him, and looked at the forefinger. It was smooth as ivory.

“Not much sign of sewing there, Jessy.”

She drew it under the clothes. “It is some little time since I did any; I was too ill,” she answered. “Mr. Duffham, I have told you all there is to tell. The place was too hard for me, and it made me ill.”

It was all she told. Duffham wondered whether it was, in substance, all she had to tell. He went down and entered the parlour with a grave face: Mr. Page, his daughters, and JohnDrench were there. The doctor said Jessy must have perfect rest, tranquillity, and the best of nourishment; and he would send some medicine. Abigail put a shawl over her head, and walked with him across the garden.

“You will tell me what your opinion is, Mr. Duffham.”

“Ay. It is no good one, Miss Abigail.”

“Is she very ill?”

“Very. I do not think she will materially rally. Her chest and lungs are both weak.”

“Her mother’s were before her. As I told you, Jessy looks to me just as my mother used to look in her last illness.”

Mr. Duffham went through the gate without saying more. The snow was sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight.

“I think I gather what you mean,” resumed Abigail. “That she is, in point of fact, dying.”

“That’s it. As I truly believe.”

They looked at each other in the clear light air. “But not—surely, Mr. Duffham, not immediately?”

“Not immediately. It may be weeks off yet. Mind—I don’t assert that she is absolutely past hope; I only think it. It is possible that she may rally, and recover.”

“It might not be the happier for her,” said Abigail, under her breath. “She is in a curiously miserable state of mind—as you no doubt saw. Mr. Duffham, did she tell you anything?”

“She says she took a place as lady’s-maid; that the work proved too hard for her; and that, with the remorse for her ingratitude towards her home, made her ill.”

“She said the same to Susan this afternoon. Well, we must wait for more. Good-night, Mr. Duffham: I am sure you will do all you can.”

Of course Duffham meant to do all he could; and from that time he began to attend her regularly.

Jessy Page’s coming home, with, as Miss Susan had put it, the vagabond manner of it, was a nine days’ wonder. The neighbours went making calls at the Copse Farm, to talk about it and to see her. In the latter hope they failed. Jessy showed a great fear of seeing any one of them; would put her head under the bed-clothes and lie there shaking till the house was clear; and Duffham said she was not to be crossed.

Her sisters got to know no more of the past. Not a syllable. They questioned and cross-questioned her; but she only stuck to her text. It was the work that had been too much for her; the people she served were cruelly hard.

“I really think it must be so; that she has nothing else to tell,” remarked Abigail to Susan one morning, as they sat alone at breakfast, “But she must have been a downright simpleton to stay.”

“I can’t make her out,” returned Susan, hard of belief.“Why should she not say where it was, and who the people are? Here comes the letter-man.”

The letter-man—as he was called—was bringing a letter for Miss Page. Letters at the Copse Farm were rare, and she opened it with curiosity. It proved to be from Mrs. Allen of Aberystwith; and out of it dropped two cards, tied together with silver cord.

Mrs. Allen wrote to say that her distant relative, Marcus, was married. He had been married on Christmas-Eve to a Miss Mary Goldbeater, a great heiress, and they had sent her cards. Thinking the Miss Pages might like to see the cards (as they knew something of him) she had forwarded them.

Abigail took the cards up. “Mr. Marcus Allen. Mrs. Marcus Allen.” And on hers was the address: “Gipsy Villas, Montgomery Road, Brompton.” “I think he might have been polite enough to send us cards also,” observed Abigail.

Susan put the cards on the waiter when she went upstairs with her sister’s tea. Jessy, looking rather more feverish than usual in a morning, turned the cards about in her slender hands.

“I have heard of her, this Mary Goldbeater,” said Jessy, biting her parched lips. “They say she’s pretty, and—and very rich.”

“Where did you hear of her?” asked Susan.

“Oh, in—let me think. In the work-room.”

“Now what do you mean by that?” cried Miss Susan. “A work-room implies a dressmaker’s establishment, and you tell us you were a lady’s-maid.”

Jessy seemed unable to answer.

“I don’t believe you were at either the one place or the other. You are deceiving us, Jessy.”

“No,” gasped Jessy.

“Did you ever see Mr. Marcus Allen when you were in town?”

“Mr. Marcus Allen?” repeated Jessy after a pause, just as if she were unable to recall who Mr. Marcus Allen was.

“The Mr. Marcus Allen you knew at Aberystwith; he who came here afterwards,” went on Susan impatiently. “Are you losing your memory, Jessy?”

“No, I never saw the Marcus Allen I knew here—and there,”was Jessy’s answer, her face white and still as death.

“Why!—Did you know any other Marcus Allen, then?”questioned Susan, in surprise. For the words had seemed to imply it.

“No,” replied Jessy. “No.”

“She seems queerer than usual—I hope her mind’s not going,” thought Susan. “Did you ever go to see Madame Caron, Jessy, while you were in London?”

“Never. Why should I? I didn’t know Madame Caron.”

“When Marcus Allen wrote to excuse himself from visiting us in the summer, he said he would be sure to come later,”resumed Susan. “I wonder if he will keep his promise.”

“No—never,” answered Jessy.

“How do you know?”

“Oh—I don’t think it. He wouldn’t care to come. Especially now he’s married.”

“And you never saw him in town, Jessy? Never even met him by chance?”

“I’ve told you—No. Do you suppose I should be likely to call upon Marcus Allen? As to meeting him by chance, it is not often I went out, I can tell you.”

“Well, sit up and take your breakfast,” concluded Susan.

A thought had crossed Susan Page’s mind—whether this marriage of Marcus Allen’s on Christmas-Eve could have had anything to do with Jessy’s return and her miserable unhappiness. It was only a thought; and she drove it away again. As Abigail said, she had been inclined throughout to judge hardly of Jessy.

The winter snow lay on the ground still, when it became aquestion not of how many weeks Jessy would live, but of days. And then she confessed to a secret that pretty nearly changed the sober Miss Pages’ hair from black to grey. Jessy had turned Roman Catholic.

It came out through her persistent refusal to see the parson, Mr. Holland, a little man with shaky legs. He’d go trotting up to the Copse Farm once or twice a-week; all in vain. Miss Abigail would console him with a good hot jorum of sweet elder wine, and then he’d trot back again. One day Jessy, brought to bay, confessed that she was a Roman Catholic.

There was grand commotion. John Drench went about, his hands lifted in the frosty air; Abigail and Susan Page sat in the bedroom with (metaphorically speaking) ashes on their heads.

People have their prejudices. It was not so much that these ladies wished to cast reflection on good Catholics born and bred, as that Jessy should have abandoned her own religion, just as though it had been an insufficient faith. It was the slight on it that they could not bear.

“Miserable girl!” exclaimed Miss Susan, looking upon Jessy as a turncoat, and therefore next door to lost. And Jessy told, through her sobs, how it had come to pass.

Wandering about one evening in London when she was very unhappy, she entered a Catholic place of worship styled an“Oratory.”—The Miss Pages caught up the word as “oratorio,”and never called it anything else.—There a priest got into conversation with Jessy. He had a pleasant, kindly manner that won upon her and drew from her the fact that she was unhappy. Become a Catholic, he said to her; it would bring her back to happiness: and he asked her to go and see him again. She went again; again and again. And so, going and listening to him, she at length did turn, and was received by him into his church.

“Are you the happier for it?” sharply asked Miss Abigail.

“No,” answered Jessy with distressed eyes. “Only—only——”

“Only what, pray?”

“Well, they can absolve me from all sin.”

“Oh, you poor foolish misguided child!” cried Abigail in anguish; “you must take your sins to the Saviour: He can absolve you, and He alone. Do you want any third person to stand between you and Him?”

Jessy gave a sobbing sigh. “It’s best as it is, Abigail. Anyway, it is too late now.”

“Stop a bit,” cried sharp Miss Susan. “I should like to have one thing answered, Jessy. You have told us how hard you were kept to work: if that was so, pray how did you find leisure to be dancing abroad to Oratorios? Come?”

Jessy could not, or would not, answer.

“Can you explain that!” said Miss Susan, some sarcasm in her tone.

“I went out sometimes in an evening,” faltered Jessy. And more than that could not be drawn from her.

They did not tell Mr. Page: it would have distressed him too much. In a day or two Jessy asked to see a priest. Miss Abigail flatly refused, on account of the scandal. As if their minister was not good enough!

One afternoon I was standing by Jessy’s bed—for Miss Abigail had let me go up to see her. Mrs. Todhetley, that first day, had said she looked like a lily: she was more like one now. A faded lily that has had all its beauty washed out of it.

“Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, opening her eyes, and putting out her feeble hand. “I shall not see you again.”

“I hope you will, Jessy. I’ll come over to-morrow.”

“Never again in this world.” And I had to lean over to catch the words, and my eyes were full.

“In the next world there’ll be no parting, Jessy. We shall see each other there.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You will be there, Johnny; I can’t tell whether I shall be. I turned Roman Catholic, you see; and Abigail won’t let a priest come. And so—I don’t know how it will be.”

The words struck upon me. The Miss Pages had kept the secret too closely for news of it to have come abroad. It seemed worse to me to hear it than to her to say it. But she had grown too weak to feel things strongly.

“Good-bye, Johnny.”

“Good-bye, Jessy dear,” I whispered. “Don’t fear: God will be sure to take you to heaven if you ask Him.”

Miss Abigail got it out of me—what she had said about the priest. In fact, I told. She was very cross.

“There; let it drop, Johnny Ludlow. John Drench is gone off in the gig to Coughton to bring one. All I hope and trust is, that they’ll not be back until the shades of night have fallen upon the earth! I shouldn’t like a priest to be seen coming intothis door. Such a reproach on good Mr. Holland! I’m sure I trust it will never get about!”

We all have our prejudices, I repeat. And not a soul amongst us for miles round had found it necessary to change religions since the Reformation.

Evening was well on when John Drench brought him in. A mild-faced man, wearing a skull-cap under his broad-brimmed hat. He saw Jessy alone. Miss Page would not have made a third at the interview though they had bribed her to it—and of course they wouldn’t have had her. It was quite late when he came down. Miss Page stopped him as he was going out, after declining refreshment.

“I presume, sir, she has told you all about this past year—that has been so mysterious to us?”

“Yes; I think all,” replied the priest.

“Will you tell me the particulars?”

“I cannot do that,” he said. “They have been given to me under the seal of confession.”

“Only to me and to her sister Susan,” pleaded Abigail.“We will not even disclose it to our father. Sir, it would be a true kindness to us, and it can do her no harm. You do not know what our past doubts and distress have been.”

But the priest shook his head. He was very sorry to refuse, he said, but the tenets of his Church forbade his speaking. And Miss Page thought he was sorry, for he had a benevolent face.

“Best let the past lie,” he gently added. “Suffice it to know that she is happy now, poor child, and will die in peace.”

They buried her in the churchyard beside her mother. When the secret got about, some said it was not right—that she ought to have been taken elsewhere, to a graveyard devoted to the other faith. Which would just have put the finishing stroke on old Page—broken all that was left of his heart to break. TheSquire said he didn’t suppose it mattered in the sight of God: or would make much difference at the Last Day.

And that ended the life of Jessy Page: and, in one sense, its episode of mystery. Nothing more was ever heard or known of where she had been or what she had done. Years have gone by since then; and William Page is lying beside her. Miss Page and Charley live on at the Copse Farm; Susan became Mrs. John Drench ages ago. Her husband, a man of substance now, was driving her into Alcester last Tuesday (market-day) in his four-wheeled chaise, two buxom daughters in the back seat. I nodded to them from Mr. Brandon’s window.

The mystery of Jessy Page (as we grew to call it) remained a mystery. It remains one to this day. What the secret was—if there was a secret—why she went in the way she did, and came back in what looked like shame and fear and trembling, a dying girl—has not been solved. It never will be in this world. Some old women put it all down to her having changed her religion and been afraid to tell: while Miss Abigail and Miss Susan have never got rid of a vague doubt, touching Marcus Allen. But it may be only their fancy; they admit that, and say to one another when talking of it privately, that it is not right to judge a man without cause. He keeps a carriage-and-pair now; and gives dinners, and has handsome daughters growing up; and is altogether quite up to the present style of expensive life in London.

And I never go into church on a Christmas morning—whether it may be decorated in our simple country fashion, or in accordance with your new “artistic” achievements—but I think of Jessy Page. Of her sweet face, her simplicity, and her want of guile: and of the poor wreck that came back, broken-hearted, to die.

CRABB RAVINE.

I

“Yes! Halloa! What is it?”

To be wakened up short by a knocking, or some other noise, in the night, is enough to make you start up in bed, and stare round in confusion. The room was dark, barring the light that always glimmers in at the window on a summer’s night, and I listened and waited for more. Nothing came: it was all as silent as the grave.

We were staying at Crabb Cot. I had gone to bed at half-past nine, dead tired after a day’s fishing. The Squire and Tod were away: Mrs. Todhetley went over to the Coneys’ after tea, and did not seem in a hurry to come back. They fried one of the fish I had caught for my supper; and after that, there being no one to speak to, I went to bed.

It was a knocking that had wakened me out of my sleep: I was sure of that. And it sounded exactly as though it were at the window—which was very improbable. Calling out again to know who was there, and what was wanted—though not very loudly, for the children slept within earshot—and getting no answer, I lay down again, and was all but asleep when the noise came a second time.

It was at the dining-room window, right underneath mine. There could be no mistake about it. The ceilings of the old-fashioned house were low; the windows were very near each other, and mine was down at the top. I thought it time to jump out of bed, and take a look out.

Well, I was surprised! Instead of its being the middle of the night, it must be quite early still; for the lamp was yet alight in the dining-room. It was a cosy kind of room, with a bow window jutting on to the garden, of which the middle compartmentopened to the ground, as French windows do. My window was a bow also, and close above the other. Throwing it up, I looked out.

There was not a soul to be seen. Yet the knocking could not have been from within, for the inside shutters were closed: they did not reach to the top panes, and the lamplight shone through them on the mulberry tree. As I leaned out, wondering, the crazy old clock at North Crabb Church began to tell the hour. I counted the strokes, one by one—ten of them. Only ten o’clock! And I thought I had been asleep half the night.

All in a moment I caught sight of some one moving slowly away. He was keeping in the shade; close to the shrubs that encircled the lawn, as if not caring to be seen. A short, thin man, in dark clothes and round black felt hat. Who he was, and what he wanted, was more than I could imagine. It could not be a robber. Robbers don’t come knocking at houses before people have gone to bed.

The small side-gate opened, and Mrs. Todhetley came in. Old Coney’s farm was only a stone’s-throw off, and she had run home alone. We people in the country think nothing of being abroad alone at night. The man emerged from the shade, and placed himself right in her path, on the gravel walk. They stood there together. I could see him better now: there was no moon, but the night was light; and it flashed into my mind that he was the same man I had seen Mrs. Todhetley with in the morning, as I went across the fields, with my rod and line. She was at the stile, about to descend into the Ravine, when he came up from it, and accosted her. He was a stranger; wearing a seedy, shabby black coat; and I had wondered what he wanted. They were still talking together when I got out of sight, for I turned to look.

Not long did they stand now. The gentleman went away; she came hastening on with her head down, a soft wool kerchief thrown over her cap. In all North Crabb, no one was so fearful of catching face-ache as Mrs. Todhetley.

“Who was it?” I called out, when she was under the window: which seemed to startle her considerably, for she gave a spring back, right on to the grass.

“Johnny! how you frightened me! What are you looking out at?”

“At that fellow who has just taken himself off. Who is he?”

“I do believe you have on nothing but your nightshirt! You’ll be sure to take cold. Shut the window down, and get into bed.”

Four times over, in all, had I to ask about the man before I got an answer. Now it was the nightshirt, now catching cold, now the open window and the damp air. She always wanted to be as tender with us as though we were chickens.

“The man that met me in the path?” she got to, at length.“He made some excuse for being here: was not sure whose house it was, I think he said: had turned in by mistake to the wrong one.”

“That’s all very fine; but, not being sure, he ought to mind his manners. He came rapping at the dining-room window like anything, and it woke me up. Had you been at home, sitting there, good mother, you might have been startled out of your seven senses.”

“So I should, Johnny. The Coneys would not let me come away: they had friends with them. Good-night, dear. Shut down that window.”

She went on to the side-door. I put down the window, opened it at the top, and let the white curtain drop before it. It was an hour or two before I got to sleep again, and I had the man and the knocking in my thoughts all the time.

“Don’t say anything about it in the house, Johnny,” Mrs. Todhetley said to me, in the morning. “It might alarm the children.” So I promised her I would not.

Tod came home at mid-day, not the Squire: and the first thing I did was to tell him. I wouldn’t have broken faith with the mother for the world; not even for Tod; but it never entered my mind that she wished me to keep it a close secret, excepting from those, servants or others, who might be likely to repeat it before Hugh and Lena. I cautioned Tod.

“Confound his impudence!” cried Tod. “Could he not be satisfied with disturbing the house at the door at night, but he must make for the window? I wish I had been at home.”

Crabb Ravine lay to the side of our house, beyond the widefield. It was a regular wilderness. The sharp descent began in that three-cornered grove, of which you’ve heard before, for it was where Daniel Ferrar hanged himself; and the wild, deep, mossy dell, about as wide as an ordinary road, went running along below, soft, green and damp. Towering banks, sloping backwards, rose on either side; a mass of verdure in summer; of briars, brown and tangled, in winter. Dwarf shrubs, tall trees, blackberry and nut bushes, sweet-briar and broom clustered there in wild profusion. Primroses and violets peeped up when spring came in; blue bells and cowslips, dog-roses, woodbine, and other sweet flowers, came later. Few people would descend except by the stile opposite our house and the proper zigzag path leading down the side bank, for a fall might have broken limbs, besides bringing one’s clothes to grief. No houses stood near it, except ours and old Coney’s; and the field bordering it just here on this side belonged to Squire Todhetley. If you went down the zigzag path, turned to the right, walked along the Ravine some way, and then up another zigzag on the opposite side, you soon came to Timberdale, a small place in itself, but our nearest post-town. The high-road to Timberdale, winding past our house from South Crabb, was twice the distance, so that people might sometimes be seen in the Ravine by day; but no one cared to go near it in the evening, as it had the reputation of being haunted. A mysterious light might sometimes be observed there at night, dodging about the banks, where it would be rather difficult for ordinary human beings to walk: some said it was a will-o’-the-wisp, and some said a ghost. It was difficult to get even a farm-servant to go the near way to Timberdale after dark.

One morning, when I was running through the Ravine with Tod in search of Tom Coney, we came slap against a man, who seemed to be sneaking there, for he turned short off, into the underwood, to hide himself. I knew him by his hat.

“Tod, that’s the man,” I whispered.

“What man, Johnny?”

“The one who came knocking at the window three nights ago.”

“Oh!” said Tod, carelessly. “He looks like a fellow who comes out with begging petitions.”

It might have been an hour after that. We had come up from the Ravine, on our side of it, not having seen or spoken to a soul, except Luke Mackintosh. Tod told me to stay and waylay Coney if he made his appearance, whilst he went again to the farm in search of him. Accordingly, I was sitting on the fence (put there to hinder the cattle and sheep from getting over the brink of the Ravine), throwing stones and whistling, when I saw Mrs. Todhetley cross the stile to go down the zigzag. She did not see me: the fence could hardly be gained for trees, and I was hidden.

Just because I had nothing to do, I watched her as she went; tall, thin, and light in figure, she could spin along nearly as quick as we. The zigzag path went in and out, sloping along the bank until it brought itself to the dell at a spot a good bit beyond me as I looked down, finishing there with a high, rough step. Mrs. Todhetley took it with a spring.

What next! In one moment the man with the black coat and hat had appeared from somewhere, and placed himself in front of her parasol. Before I could quit the place, and leap down after her, a conviction came over me that the meeting was not accidental: and I rubbed my eyes in wonder, and thought I must be dreaming.

The summer air was clear as crystal; not a bee’s hum just then disturbed its stillness. Detached words ascended from where they stood; and now and again a whole sentence. She kept looking each way as if afraid to be seen; and so did he, for that matter. The colloquy seemed to be about money. I caught the word two or three times; and Mrs. Todhetley said it was “impossible.” “I must, and I will have it,” came up distinctly from him in answer.

“What’s that, Johnny?”

The interruption came from Tod. All my attention absorbed in them, he stood at my elbow before I knew he was near. When I would have answered, he suddenly put his hand upon my mouth for silence. His face had a proud anger on it as he looked down.

Mrs. Todhetley seemed to be using entreaty to the man, for she clasped her hands in a piteous manner, and then turned to ascend the zigzag. He followed her, talking very fast. As to me, I was in a regular sea of marvel, understanding nothing. Our heads were hardly to be distinguished from the bushes, even if she had looked up.

“No,” she said, turning round upon him; and they were near us then, half way up the path, so that every word was audible.“You must not venture to come to the house, or near the house. I would not have Mr. Todhetley know of this for the world: for your sake as well as for his.”

“Todhetley’s not at home,” was the man’s answer: and Tod gave a growl as he heard it.

“If he is not, his son is,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “It would be all the same; or worse.”

“His son’s here,” roared out passionate Tod. “What the deuce is the meaning of this, sir?”

The man shot down the path like an arrow. Mrs. Todhetley—who had been walking on, seeming not to have caught the words, or to know whose the voice was, or where it came from—gazed round in all directions, her countenance curiously helpless. She ran up the rest of the zigzag, and went swiftly home across the field. Tod disentangled himself from the brambles, and drew a long breath.

“I think it’s time we went now, Johnny.” It was not often he spoke in that tone. He had always been at war tacitly with Mrs. Todhetley, and was not likely to favour her now. Generous though he was by nature, there could be no denying that he took up awful prejudices.

“It is something about money, Tod.”

“I don’t care what it is about—the fellow has no business to be prowling here, on my father’s grounds; and he shan’t be, without my knowing what it’s for. I’ll watch madam’s movements.”

“What do you think it can mean?”

“Mean! Why, that the individual is some poor relation of hers, come to drain as much of my father’s money out of her as he can. She is the one to blame. I wonder how she dare encourage him!”

“Perhaps she can’t help herself.”

“Not help herself? Don’t show yourself a fool, Johnny. An honest-minded, straightforward woman would appeal to myfather in any annoyance of this sort, or to me, in his absence, and say ‘Here’s So-and-so come down upon us, asking for help, can we give it him?’—and there’s no doubt the Squire wouldgive it him; he’s soft enough for anything.”

It was of no use contending. I did not see it quite in that light, but Tod liked his own opinion. He threw up his head with a haughty jerk.

“You have tried to defend Mrs. Todhetley before, in trifling matters, Johnny; don’t attempt it now. Would any good woman, say any lady, if you will, subject herself to this kind of thing?—hold private meetings with a man—allow him to come tapping at her sitting-room window at night? No; not though he were her own brother.”

“Tod, it may be her brother. She would never do anything wrong willingly.”

“Shut up, Johnny. She never had a brother.”

Of course I shut up forthwith, and went across the field by Tod’s side in silence, his strides wide and indignant, his head up in the air. Mrs. Todhetley was hearing Lena read when we got in, and looked as if she had never been out that morning.

Some days went on. The man remained near, for he was seen occasionally, and the servants began to talk. One remarked upon him, wondering who he was; another remarked upon him, speculating on what he did there. In a quiet country place, a dodging stranger excites curiosity, and this one dodged about as much as ever the ghostly light did. If you caught sight of him in the three-cornered plantation, he vanished forthwith to appear next in the Ravine; if he stood peering out from the trees on the bank, and found himself observed, the next minute he’d be crouching amongst the broom on the other side.

This came to be observed, and was thought strange, naturally; Hannah, who was often out with Hugh and Lena, often saw him, and talked to the other servants. One evening, when we were finishing dinner, the glass doors of the bow-window being open, Hannah came back with the children. They ran across the grass-plat after the fawn—one we had, just then—and Hannah sat down in the porch of the side-door to wait. OldThomas had just drawn the slips from the table, and went through the passage to the side-door to shake them.

“I say,” cried Hannah’s voice, “I saw that man again.”

“Where?” asked Thomas, between his shakes of the linen.

“In the old place—the Ravine. He was sitting on the stile at the top of the zigzag, as cool as might be.”

“Did you speak to him? I should, if I came across the man; and ask what his business might be in these parts.”

“I didn’t speak to him,” returned Hannah. “I’d rather not. There’s no knowing the answer one might get, Thomas, or what he’s looking after. He spoke to the children.”

“What did he say to them?”

“Asked if they’d go away with him to some beautiful coral islands over the sea, and catch pretty birds, and parrots, and monkeys. He called them by their names, too—‘Hugh’ and‘Lena.’ I should like to know how he got hold of them.”

“I can’t help thinking that he belongs to them engineering folk who come spying for no good on people’s land: the Squire won’t like it if they cut a railroad through here,” said Thomas; and the supposition did not appear to please Hannah.

“Why you must be as silly as a turkey, old Thomas! Engineers have no need to hide themselves as if they were afraid of being took up for murder. He has about as much the cut of an engineer as you have, and no more: they don’t go about looking like Methodist parsons run to seed. My opinion is that he’s something of that sort.”

“A Methodist parson!”

“No; not anything half so respectable. If I spoke out my thoughts, though, I dare say you’d laugh at me.”

“Not I,” said Thomas. “Make haste. I forgot to put the claret jug on the table.”

“Then I’ve got it in my head that he is one of them seducing Mormons. They appear in neighbourhoods without the smallest warning, lie partly concealed by day, and go abroad at night, persuading all the likely women and girls to join their sect. My sister told me about it in a letter she wrote me only three days ago. There has been a Mormon down there; he called himself a saint, she says; and when he went finally away he took fifteen young women with him. Fifteen, Thomas! and after only threeweeks’ persuasion! It’s as true as that you’ve got that damask cloth in your hand.”

Nothing further was heard for a minute. Then Thomas spoke.“Has the man here been seen talking with young women?”

“Who is to know? They take care not to be seen; that’s their craft. And so you see, Thomas, I’d rather steer clear of the man, and not give him the opportunity of trying his arts on me. I can tell him it’s not Hannah Baber that would be cajoled off to a barbarous desert by a man who had fifteen other wives beside! Lord help the women for geese! Miss Lena” (raising her voice), “don’t you tear about after the fawn like that; you’ll put yourself into a pretty heat.”

“I’d look him up when I came home, if I were the Squire,”said Thomas, who evidently took it all gravely in. “We don’t want a Mormon on the place.”

“If he were not a Mormon, which I’m pretty sure he is, I should say he was a kidnapper of children,” went on Hannah.“After we had got past him over so far, he managed to ’tice Hugh back to the stile, gave him a sugar-stick, and said he’d take him away if he’d go. It struck me he’d like to kidnap him.”

Tod, sitting at the foot of the table in the Squire’s place, had listened to all this deliberately. Mrs. Todhetley, opposite to him, her back to the light, had tried, in a feeble manner, once or twice, to drown the sounds by saying something. But when urgently wanting to speak, we often can’t do so; and her efforts died away helplessly. She looked miserably uncomfortable, and seemed conscious of Tod’s feeling in the matter; and when Hannah wound up with the bold assertion touching the kidnapping of Hugh, she gave a start of alarm, which left her face white.

“Who is this man that shows himself in the neighbourhood?”asked Tod, putting the question to her in a slow, marked manner, his dark eyes, stern then, fixed on hers.

“Johnny, those cherries don’t look ripe. Try the summer apples.”

It was of no use at any time trying to put aside Tod. Before I had answered her that the cherries were ripe enough for me, Tod began at her again.

“Can you tell me who he is?”

“Dear me, no,” she faintly said. “I can’t tell you anything about it.”

“Nor what he wants?”

“No. Won’t you take some wine, Joseph?”

“I shall make it my business to inquire, then,” said Tod, disregarding the wine and everything else. “The first time I come across the man, unless he gives me a perfectly satisfactory answer as to what he may be doing here on our land, I’ll horse-whip him.”

Mrs. Todhetley put the trembling fingers of her left hand into the finger-glass, and dried them. I don’t believe she knew what she was about more than a baby.

“The man is nothing to you, Joseph. Why should you interfere with him?”

“I shall interfere because my father is not here to do it,” he answered, in his least compromising of tones. “An ill-looking stranger has no right to be prowling mysteriously amongst us at all. But when it comes to knocking at windows at night, to waylaying—people—in solitary places, and to exciting comments from the servants, it is time some one interfered to know the reason of it.”

I am sure he had been going to say you; but with all his prejudice he never was insolent to Mrs. Todhetley, when face to face; and he substituted “people.” Her pale blue eyes had the saddest light in them you can well conceive, and yet she tried to look as though the matter did not concern her. Old Thomas came in with the folded damask slips, little thinking he and Hannah had been overheard, put them in the drawer, and set things straight on the sideboard.

“What time tea, ma’am?” he asked.

“Any time,” answered Mrs. Todhetley. “I am going over to Mr. Coney’s, but not to stay. Or perhaps you’ll go for me presently, Johnny, and ask whether Mrs. Coney has come home,”she added, as Thomas left the room.

I said I’d go. And it struck me that she must want Mrs. Coney very particularly, for this would make the fifth time I had gone on the same errand within a week. On the morning following that rapping at the window, Mrs. Coney had news that Mrs.West, her married daughter, was ill, and she started at once by the rail to Worcester to visit her.

“I think I’ll go and look for the fellow now,” exclaimed Tod, rising from his seat and making for the window. But Mrs. Todhetley rose too, as one in mortal fright, and put herself in his way.

“Joseph,” she said, “I have no authority over you; you know that I have never attempted to exercise any since I came home to your father’s house; but I must ask you to respect my wishes now.”

“What wishes?”

“That you will refrain from seeking this stranger: that you will not speak to or accost him in any way, should you and he by chance meet. I have good reasons for asking it.” Tod stood stock-still, neither saying Yes nor No; only biting his lips in the anger he strove to keep down.

“Oh, very well,” said he, going back to his seat. “Of course, as you put it in this light, I have no alternative. A night’s delay cannot make much difference, and my father will be home to-morrow to act for himself.”

“You must not mention it to your father, Joseph. You must keep it from him.”

“I shall tell him as soon as he comes home.”

“Tell him what? What is it that you suspect? What would you tell him?”

Tod hesitated. He had spoken in random heat; and found, on consideration, he was without a case. He could not complain to his father of her: in spite of his hasty temper, he was honourable as the day. Her apparent intimacy with the man would also tie his tongue as to him, whomsoever he might be.

“You must be quite aware that it is not a pleasant thing, or a proper thing, to have this mysterious individual encouraged here,” he said, looking at her.

“And you think I encourage him, Joseph?”

“Well, it seems that you—that you must know who he is. I saw you talking with him one day in the Ravine,” continued Tod, disdaining not to be perfectly open, now it had come to an explanation. “Johnny was with me. If he is a relative of yours, why, of course——”

“He is no relative of mine, Joseph.” And Tod opened his eyes wide to hear the denial. It was the view he had taken all along.

“Then why do you suffer him to annoy you?—and I am sure he does do it. Let me deal with him. I’ll soon ascertain what his business may be.”

“But that is just what you must not do,” she said, seeming to speak out the truth in very helplessness, like a frightened child. “You must leave him in my hands, Joseph: I shall be able, I dare say, to—to—get rid of him shortly.”

“You know what he wants?”

“Yes, I am afraid I do. It is quite my affair; and you must take no more notice of it: above all, you must not say anything to your father.”

How much Tod was condemning her in his heart perhaps he would not have cared to tell; but he could but be generous, even to his step-mother.

“I suppose I must understand that you are in some sort of trouble?”

“Indeed I am.”

“If it is anything in which I can help you, you have only to ask me to do it,” he said. But his manner was lofty as he spoke, his voice had a hard ring in it.

“Thank you very much, Joseph,” was the meek, grateful answer. “If you will only take no further notice, and say nothing to your father when he comes home, it will be helping me sufficiently.”

Tod strolled out; just as angry as he could be; and I ran over to the farm. Jane Coney had received a letter from her mother by the afternoon post, saying she might not be home for some days to come.

“Tell Mrs. Todhetley that I am sorry to have to send her bad news over and over again,” said Jane Coney, who was sitting in the best kitchen, with her muslin sleeves turned up, and a big apron on, stripping fruit for jam. The Coneys had brought up their girls sensibly, not to be ashamed to make themselves thoroughly useful, in spite of their education, and the fair fortune they would have. Mary was married; Jane engaged to be. I sat on the table by her, eating away at the fruit.

“What is it Mrs. Todhetley wants with my mother, Johnny?”

“As if I knew!”

“I think it must be something urgent. When she came in, that morning, only five minutes after mamma had driven off, she was so terribly disappointed, saying she would give a great deal to have spoken to her first. My sister is not quite so well again; that’s why mamma is staying longer.”

“I’ll tell her, Jane.”

“By the way, Johnny, what’s this they are saying—about some strange man being seen here? A special constable, peeping after bad characters?”

“A special constable?”

Jane Coney laughed. “Or a police-officer in disguise. It is what one of our maids told me.”

“Oh,” I answered, carelessly, for somehow I did not like the words; “you must mean a man that is looking at the land; an engineer.”

“Is that all?” cried Jane Coney. “How foolish people are!”

It was a sort of untruth, no doubt; but I should have told a worse in the necessity. I did not like the aspect of things; and they puzzled my brain unpleasantly all the way home.

Mrs. Todhetley was at work by the window when I got there. Tod had not made his re-appearance; Hugh and Lena were in bed. She dropped her work when I gave the message.

“Not for some days to come yet! Oh, Johnny!”

“But what do you want with her?”

“Well, I do want her. I want a friend just now, Johnny, that’s the truth; and I think Mrs. Coney would be one.”

“Joe asked if he could help you; and you said ‘No.’Can I?”

“Johnny, if you could, there’s no one in the world I’d rather ask. But you cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because”—she smiled for a moment—“you are not old enough. If you were—of age, say—why then I would.”

I had hold of the window-frame, looking at her, and an idea struck me. “Do you mean that I should be able then to command money?”

“Yes, that’s it, Johnny.”

“But, perhaps—if I were to write to Mr. Brandon——”

“Hush!” she exclaimed in a sort of fright. “You must not talk of this, Johnny; you don’t know the sad mischief you might do. Oh, if I can only keep it from you all! Here comes Joseph,” she added in a whisper; and gathering up her work, went out of the room.

“Did I not make a sign to you to come after me?” began Tod, in one of his tempers.

“But I had to go over to the Coneys’. I’ve only just got back again.”

He looked into the room and saw that it was empty.“Where’s madam gone? To the Ravine after her friend?”

“She was here sewing not a minute ago.”

“Johnny, she told a lie. Did you notice the sound of her voice when she said the fellow was no relative of hers?”

“Not particularly.”

“I did, then. At the moment the denial took me by surprise; but I remembered the tone later. It had an untrue ring in it. Madam told a lie, Johnny, as sure as that we are here. I’d lay my life he is a relative of hers, or a connection in some way. I don’t think now it is money he wants; if it were only that, she’d get it, and send him packing. It’s worse than that: disgrace, perhaps.”

“What sort of disgrace can it be?”

“I don’t know. But if something of the sort is not looming, never trust me again. And here am I, with my hands tied, forbidden to unravel it. Johnny, I feel just like a wild beast barred up in a cage.”

Had he been a real wild beast he could not have given the window-frame a much worse shake, as he passed through in his anger to the bench under the mulberry-tree.

When you have to look far back to things, recollection sometimes gets puzzled as to the order in which they happened. How it came about I am by no means clear, but an uncomfortable feeling grew up in my mind about Hugh. About both the children, in fact, but Hugh more than Lena. Mrs. Todhetley seemed to dread Hugh’s being abroad—and I’m sure I was not mistaken in thinking it. I heard her order Hannah to keep thechildren within view of the house, and not to allow Hugh to stray away from her. Had it been winter weather I suppose she’d have kept them indoors altogether; there could be no plea for it under the blue sky and the hot summer sun.

The Squire came home; he had been staying some time with friends in Gloucestershire; but Mrs. Coney did not come—although Mrs. Todhetley kept sending me for news. Twice I saw her talking to the strange man; who I believed made his abode in the Ravine. Tod watched, as he had threatened to do; and would often appear with in-drawn lips. There was active warfare between him and his step-mother: at least if you can say that when both kept silence. As to the Squire, he observed nothing, and knew nothing: and no one enlightened him. It seems a long time, I dare say, when reading of this, as if it had extended over a month of Sundays; but I don’t think it lasted much more than a fortnight in all.

One evening, quite late, when the sun was setting, and the Squire was smoking his pipe on the lawn, talking to me and Tod, Lena and her mother came in at the gate. In spite of the red rays lighting up Mrs. Todhetley’s face, it struck me that I had never seen it look more careworn. Lena put her arms on Tod’s knee, and began telling about a fright she had had: of a big toad that leaped out of the grass, and made her scream and cry. She cried “because nobody was with her.”

“Where was mamma?” asked Tod; but I am sure he spoke without any ulterior thought.

“Mamma had gone to the zigzag stile to talk to the man. She told me to wait for her.”

“What man?” cried the Squire.

“Why, the man,” said Lena logically. “He asks Hugh to go with him over the sea to see the birds and the red coral.”

If any one face ever turned whiter than another, Mrs. Todhetley’s did then. Tod looked at her, sternly, ungenerously; and her eyes fell. She laid hold of Lena’s hand, saying it was bed-time.

“What man is the child talking about?” the Squire asked her.

“She talks about so many people,” rather faintly answered Mrs. Todhetley. “Come, Lena dear; Hannah’s waiting for you. Say good-night.”

The Squire, quite unsuspicious, thought no more. He got up and walked over to the beds to look at the flowers, holding his long churchwarden pipe in his mouth. Tod put his back against the tree.

“It is getting complicated, Johnny.”

“What is?”

“What is! Why, madam’s drama. She is afraid of that hinted scheme of her friend’s—the carrying-off Master Hugh beyond the seas.”

He spoke in satire. “Do you think so?” I returned.

“Upon my honour I do. She must be an idiot! I should like to give her a good fright.”

“Tod, I think she is frightened enough without our giving her one.”

“I think she is. She must have caught up the idea from overhearing Hannah’s gossip with old Thomas. This afternoon Hugh was running through the little gate with me; madam came flying over the lawn and begged me not let him out of my hand, or else to leave him indoors. But for being my father’s wife, I should have asked her if her common-sense had gone wool-gathering.”

“I suppose it has, Tod. Fancy a kidnapper in these days! The curious thing is, that she should fear anything of the sort.”

“If she really does fear it. I tell you, Johnny, the performance is growing complicated; somewhat puzzling. But I’ll see it played out if I live.”

The week went on to Friday. But the afternoon was over, and evening set in, before the shock fell upon us: Hugh was missing.

The Squire had been out in the gig, taking me; and it seems they had supposed at home that Hugh was with us. The particulars of Hugh’s disappearance, and what had happened in the day, I will relate further on.

The Squire thought nothing: he said Hugh must have got into Coney’s house or some other neighbour’s house: and sat down to dinner, wondering why so much to-do was made. Mrs. Todhetley looked scared to death; and Tod tore about as if he were wild. The servants were sent here, the outdoor men there: it was like a second edition of that day in Warwickshirewhen we lost Lena: like it, only worse, more commotion. Hannah boldly said to her mistress that the strange man must have carried off the boy.

Hour after hour the search continued. With no result. Night came on, with a bright moon to light it up. But it did not light up Hugh.

Mrs. Todhetley, a dark shawl over her head, and I dare say a darker fear upon her heart, went out for the second or third time towards the Ravine. I ran after her. We had nearly reached the stile at the zigzag, when Tod came bounding over it.

“Has not the time for shielding this man gone by, think you?” he asked, placing himself in Mrs. Todhetley’s path, and speaking as coolly as he was able for the agitation that shook him. And why Tod, with his known carelessness, should be so moved, I could not fathom.

“Joseph, I do not suppose or think the man knows anything of Hugh; I have my reasons for it,” she answered, bearing on for the stile, and leaning over it to look down into the dark Ravine.

“Will you give me permission to inquire that of himself?”

“You will not find the man. He is gone.”

“Leave the finding him to me,” persisted Tod. “Will you withdraw the embargo you laid upon me?”

“No, no,” she whispered, “I cannot do it.”

The trees had an uncommonly damp feel in the night-air, and the place altogether looked as weird as could be. I was away then in the underwood; she looked down always into the Ravine and called Hugh’s name aloud. Nothing but an echo answered.

“It has appeared to me for several days that you have feared something of this,” Tod said, trying to get a full view of her face. “It might have been better for—for all of us—if you had allowed me at first to take the affair in hand.”

“Perhaps I ought; perhaps I ought,” she said, bursting into tears. “Heaven knows, though, that I acted from a good motive. It was not to screen myself that I’ve tried to keep the matter secret.”

“Oh!” The sarcasm of Tod’s short comment was like nothing I ever heard. “To screen me, perhaps?” said he.

“Well, yes—in a measure, Joseph,” she patiently answered.“I only wished to spare you vexation. Oh, Joseph! if—if Hugh cannot be found, and—and all has to come out—who he is and what he wants here—remember that I wished nothing but to spare others pain.”

Tod’s eyes were blazing with angry, haughty light. Sparehim! He thought she was miserably equivocating; he had some such idea as that she sought (in words) to make him a scape-goat for her relative’s sins. What he answered I hardly know; except that he civilly dared her to speak.

“Do not spare me: I particularly request you will not,” he scornfully retorted. “Yourself as much as you will, but not me.”

“I have done it for the best,” she pleaded. “Joseph, I have done it all for the best.”

“Where is this man to be found? I have been looking for him these several hours past, as I should think no man was ever looked for yet.”

“I have said that I think he is not to be found. I think he is gone.”

“Gone!” shouted Tod. “Gone!”

“I think he must be. I—I saw him just before dinner-time, here at this very stile; I gave him something that I had to give, and I think he left at once, to make the best of his way from the place.”

“And Hugh?” asked Tod savagely.

“I did not know then that Hugh was missing. Oh, Joseph, I can’t tell what to think. When I said to him one day that he ought not to talk nonsense to the children about corals and animals—in fact, should not speak to them at all—he answered that if I did not get him the money he wanted he’d take the boy off with him. I knew it was a jest; but I could not help thinking of it when the days went on and on, and I had no money to give him.”

“Of course he has taken the boy,” said Tod, stamping his foot. And the words sent Mrs. Todhetley into a tremor.

“Joseph! Do you think so?”

“Heaven help you, Mrs. Todhetley, for a—a simple woman! We may never see Hugh again.”

He caught up the word he had been going to say—fool. Mrs.Todhetley clasped her hands together piteously, and the shawl slipped from her shoulders.

“I think, madam, you must tell what you can,” he resumed, scarcely knowing which to bring uppermost, his anxiety for Hugh or his lofty, scornful anger. “Is the man a relative of yours?”

“No, not of mine. Oh, Joseph, please don’t be angry with me! Not of mine, but of yours.”

“Of mine!” cried proud Tod. “Thank you, Mrs. Todhetley.”

“His name is Arne,” she whispered.

“What!” shouted Tod.

“Joseph, indeed it is. Alfred Arne.”

Had Tod been shot by a cannon-ball, he could hardly have been more completely struck into himself; doubled up, so to say. His mother had been an Arne; and he well remembered to have heard of an ill-doing mauvais sujet of a half-brother of hers, called Alfred, who brought nothing but trouble and disgrace on all connected with him. There ensued a silence, interrupted only by Mrs. Todhetley’s tears. Tod was looking white in the moonlight.

“So it seems it is my affair!” he suddenly said; but though he drew up his head, all his fierce spirit seemed to have gone out of him. “You can have no objection to speak fully now.”

And Mrs. Todhetley, partly because of her unresisting nature, partly in her fear for Hugh, obeyed him.

“I had seen Mr. Arne once before,” she began. “It was the year that I first went home to Dyke Manor. He made his appearance there, not openly, but just as he has made it here now. His object was to get money from the Squire to go abroad with. And at length he did get it. But it put your father very much out; made him ill, in fact; and I believe he took a sort of vow, in his haste and vexation, to give Alfred Arne into custody if he ever came within reach of him again. I think—I fear—he always has something or other hanging over his head worse than debt; and for that reason can never show himself by daylight without danger.”

“Go on,” said Tod, quite calmly.

“One morning recently I suddenly met him. He steppedright into my path, here at this same spot, as I was about to descend the Ravine, and asked if I knew him again. I was afraid I did. I was afraid he had come on the same errand as before: and oh, Joseph, how thankful I felt that you and your father were away! He told me a long and pitiful tale, and I thought I ought to try and help him to the money he needed. He was impatient for it, and the same evening, supposing no one was at home but myself, he came to the dining-room window, wishing to ask if I had already procured the money. Johnny heard him knock.”

“It might have been better that we had been here,” repeated Tod. “Better that we should have dealt with him than you.”

“Your father was so thankful that you were at school before, Joseph; so thankful! He said he would not have you know anything about Alfred Arne for the world. And so—I tried to keep it this time from both you and him, and, but for this fear about Hugh, I should have done it.”

Tod did not answer. He looked at her keenly in the twilight of the summer’s night, apparently waiting for more. She continued her explanation; not enlarging upon things, suffering, rather, inferences to be drawn. The following was its substance:—

Alfred Arne asked for fifty pounds. He had returned to England only a few months before, had got into some fresh danger, and had to leave it again, and to hide himself until he did so. The fifty pounds—to get him off, he said, and start him afresh in the colonies—he demanded not as a gift, but a matter of right: the Todhetleys, being his near relatives, must help him. Mrs. Todhetley knew but of one person she could borrow it from privately—Mrs. Coney—and she had gone from home just as she was about to be asked for it. Only this afternoon had Mrs. Todhetley received the money from her and paid it to Alfred Arne.

“I would not have told you this, but for being obliged, Joseph,”she pleaded meekly, when the brief explanation was ended.“We can still keep it from your father; better, perhaps, that you should know it than he: you are young and he is not.”

“A great deal better,” assented Tod. “You have made yourself responsible to Mrs. Coney for the fifty pounds?”

“Don’t think of that, Joseph. She is in no hurry for repayment, and will get it from me by degrees. I have a little trifle of my own, you know, that I get half-yearly, and I can economize in my dress. I did so hope to keep it from you as well as from your father.”

I wondered if Tod saw all the patient, generous, self-sacrificing spirit. I wondered if he was growing to think that he had been always on the wrong tack in judging harshly of his stepmother. She turned away, thinking perhaps that time was being lost. I said something about Hugh.

“Hugh is all right, Johnny; he’ll be found now,” Tod answered in a dreamy tone, as he looked after her with a dreamy look. The next moment he strode forward, and was up with Mrs. Todhetley.

“I beg your pardon for the past, mother; I beg it with shame and contrition. Can you forgive me?”

“Oh, pray don’t, dear Joseph! I have nothing to forgive,”she answered, bursting into fresh tears as she took his offered hand. And that was the first time in all his life that Tod, prejudiced Tod, had allowed himself to call her “mother.”

II

I never saw anything plainer in my life. It was not just opposite to where I stood, but lower down towards the end of the Ravine. Amongst the dark thick underwood of the rising bank it dodged about, just as if some one who was walking carried it in his hand lifted up in front of him. A round white light, exactly as the ghost’s light was described to be. One might have fancied it the light of a wax-candle, only that a candle would flicker itself dim and bright by turns in the air, and this was steady and did not.

If a ghost was carrying it, he must have been pacing backwards and forwards; for the light confined itself to the range of a few yards. Beginning at the environs of the black old yew-tree, it would come on amidst the broom and shrubs to the group of alders, and then go back again Timberdale way, sometimes lost to sight for a minute, as if hidden behind a thicker mass of underwood, and then gleaming out afresh further on in its path. Now up, now down; backwards and forwards; here, there, everywhere; it was about as unaccountable a sight as any veritable ghost ever displayed, or I, Johnny Ludlow, had chanced to come upon.

The early part of the night had been bright. It was the same night, spoken of in the last chapter, when Hugh was being searched for. Up to eleven o’clock the moon had shone radiantly. Since then a curious sort of darkness had come creeping along the heavens, and now, close upon twelve, it overshadowed the earth like a pall. A dark, black canopy, which the slight wind, getting up, never stirred, though it sighed and moaned with a weird unpleasant sound down the Ravine. I did not mind the light myself; don’t think I should much have minded the ghost: but Luke Mackintosh, standing by me, did. Considering that he was a good five-and-twenty years of age, and had led an out-of-door life, it may sound queer to say it, but he seemed timid as a hare.

“I don’t like it, Master Johnny,” he whispered, as he grasped the fence with an unsteady hand, and followed the light with his eyes. What with the trees around us, and the pall overhead, it was dark enough, but I could see his face, and knew it had turned white.

“I believe you are afraid, Luke!”

“Well, sir, so might you be if you knowed as much of that there light as I do. It never comes but it bodes trouble.”

“Who brings the light?”

“It’s more than I can say, sir. They call it here the ghost’s light. And folks say, Master Johnny, that when it’s seen, there’s sure to be some trouble in the air.”

“I think we have trouble enough just now without the light, Luke; and our trouble was with us before we saw that.”

The Ravine lay beneath us, stretching out on either hand, weird, lonesome, dreary, the bottom hidden in gloom. The towering banks, whether we looked down the one we leaned over, or to the other opposite, presented nothing to the eye but darkness: we knew the masses of trees, bushes, underwood were there, but could not see them: and the spot favoured by the restless light was too wild and steep to be safe for the foot of man. Of course it was a curious speculation what it could be.

“Did you ever see the light before, Mackintosh?”

“Yes,” he answered, “half-a-dozen times. Do you mind, Master Johnny, my getting that there bad cut in the leg with my reaping-hook awhile agone? Seven weeks I lay in Worcester Infirmary: they carried me there on a mattress shoved down in the cart.”

“I remember hearing of it. We were at Dyke Manor.”

Before Luke went on, he turned his face to me and dropped his voice to a deeper whisper.

“Master Ludlow, as true as us two be a-standing here, I saw the ghost’s light the very night afore I got the hurt. I was working for Mr. Coney then, it was before I came into the Squire’s service. Young Master Tom, he came out of the kitchen with a letter when we was at our seven-o’clock supper, and said I were to cut off to Timberdale with it and to look sharp, or the letter-box ’ud be shut. So I had to do it, sir, and I came through this here Ravine, a-whistling and a-holding my head down, though I’d rather ha’ went ten mile round. When I got out of it on t’other side, on top of the zigzag, I chanced to look back over the stile, and there I see the light. It were opposite then, on this side, sir, and moving about in the same see-saw way it be now, for I stood and watched it.”

“I wonder you plucked up the courage to stand and watch it, Luke?”

“I were took aback, sir, all in a maze like: and then I started off full pelt, as quick as my heels ’ud carry me. That was the very blessed night afore I got the hurt. When the doctors was a-talking round me at the infirmary, and I think they was arguing whether or not my leg must come off, I telled’em that I was afeared it wouldn’t much matter neither way, for I’d seen the ghost’s light the past night and knowed my fate. One of them, a young man he was, burst out laughing above my face as I lay, and t’other next him, a grave gentleman with white hair, turned round and hushed at him. Master Ludlow, it’s all gospel true.”

“But you got well, Luke.”

“But I didn’t think to,” argued Luke. “And I see the light.”

As he turned his face again, the old church clock at Timberdalestruck twelve. It seemed to come booming over the Ravine with quite a warning sound, and Luke gave himself a shake. As for me, I could only wish one thing—that Hugh was found.

Tod came up the zigzag path, a lantern in his hand; I whistled to let him know I was near. He had been to look in the unused little shed-place nearly at the other end of the Ravine; not for Hugh, but for the man, Alfred Arne. Tod came up to us, and his face, as the lantern flashed upon it, was whiter and graver than that of Luke Mackintosh.

“Did you see that, sir?” asked Luke.

“See what?” cried Tod, turning sharply. He thought it might be some trace of Hugh.

“That there ghost light, sir. It’s showing itself to-night.”

Angry, perplexed, nearly out of his mind with remorse and fear, Tod gave Luke a word of a sort, ordering him to be silent for an idiot, and put the lantern down. He then saw the moving light, and let his eyes rest on it in momentary curiosity.

“It’s the ghost light, sir,” repeated Luke, for the man seemed as if he and all other interests were lost in that.

“The deuce take the ghost’s light, and you with it,” said Tod passionately. “Is this a time to be staring at ghosts’ lights? Get you into Timberdale, Mackintosh, and see whether the police have news of the child.”

“Sir, I’d not go through the Ravine to-night,” was Luke’s answer. “No, not though I knowed I was to be killed at to-morrow’s dawn for disobeying the order.”

“Man, what are you afraid of?”

“Of that,” said Luke, nodding at the light. “But I don’t like the Ravine in the night at no time.”

“Why, that’s nothing but a will-o’-the-wisp,” returned Tod, condescending to reason with him.

Luke shook his head. There was the light; and neither his faith in it nor his fear could be shaken. Tod had his arms on the fence now, and was staring at the light as fixedly as Luke had done.

“Johnny.”

“What?”

“That light is carried by some one. It’s being lifted about.”

“How could any one carry it there?” I returned. “He’dpitch head over heels down the Ravine. No fellow could get to the place, Tod, let alone keep his footing. It’s where the bushes are thickest.”

Tod caught up the lantern. As its light flashed on his face, I could see it working with new eagerness. He was taking up the notion that Hugh might have fallen on that very spot, and that some one was waving a light to attract attention. As to ghosts, Tod would have met an army of them without the smallest fear.

He went back down the Ravine, and we heard him go crashing through the underwood. Luke never spoke a word. Suddenly, long before Tod could get to it, the light disappeared. We waited and watched, but it did not come again.

“It have been like that always, Master Johnny,” whispered Luke, taking his arms off the fence. “Folks may look as long as they will at that there light; but as soon as they go off, a-trying to get to see what it is, it takes itself away. It will be seen no more to-night, sir.”

He turned off across the meadow for the high-road, to go and do Tod’s bidding at Timberdale, walking at a sharp pace. Any amount of exertion would have been welcome to Mackintosh, as an alternative to passing through the Ravine.

It may be remembered that for some days we had been vaguely uneasy about Hugh, and the uneasiness had penetrated to Mrs. Todhetley. Tod had made private mockery of it to me, thinking she must be three parts a fool to entertain any such fear. “I should like to give madam a fright,” he said to me one day—meaning that he would like to hide little Hugh for a time. But I never supposed he would really do it. And it was only to-night—hours and hours after Hugh disappeared, that Tod avowed to me the part he had taken in the loss. To make it clear to the reader, we must go back to the morning of this same day—Friday.

After breakfast I was shut up with my books, paying no attention to anything that might be going on, inside the house or out of it. Old Frost gave us a woeful lot to do in the holidays. The voices of the children, playing at the swing, came wafting in through the open window; but they died away to quietness as the morning went on. About twelve o’clock Mrs. Todhetley looked in.

“Are the children here, Johnny?”

She saw they were not, and went away without waiting for an answer. Lena ran up the passage, and I heard her say papa had taken Hugh out in the pony-gig. The interruption served as an excuse for putting up the books for the day, and I went out.

Of all young ragamuffins, the worst came running after me as I went through the fold-yard gate. Master Hugh! Whether he had been in the green pond again or over the house-roof, he was in a wonderful state; his blue eyes not to be seen for mud, his straw-hat bent, his brown holland blouse all tatters and slime, and the pretty fair curls that Hannah was proud of and wasted her time over, a regular mass of tangle.

“Take me with you, Johnny!”

“I should think I would, like that! What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Playing with the puppy. We fell down in the mud amongst the ducks. Joe says I am to stop in the barn and hide myself. I am afraid to go indoors.”

“You’ll catch it, and no mistake. Come, be off back again.”

But he’d not go back, and kept running by my side under the high hedge. When we came to the gate at the end of the field, I stood and ordered him to go. He began to cry a little.

“Now, Hugh, you know you cannot go with me in that plight. Walk yourself straight off to Hannah and get her to change the things before your mamma sees you. There; you may have the biscuit: I don’t much care for it.”

It was a big captain’s biscuit that I had caught up in going through the dining-room. He took that readily enough, the young cormorant, but he wouldn’t stir any the more for it: and I might have had the small object with me till now, but for the appearance of the Squire’s gig in the lane. The moment Hugh caught sight of his papa, he turned tail and scampered away like a young wild animal. Remembering Mrs. Todhetley’s foolish fear, I mounted the gate and watched him turn safely in at the other.

“What are you looking at, Johnny?” asked the Squire, as he drove leisurely up.

“At Hugh, sir. I’ve sent him indoors.”

“I’m going over to Massock’s, Johnny, about the bricks for that cottage. You can get up, if you like to come with me.”

I got into the gig at once, and we drove to South Crabb, to Massock’s place. He was not to be seen; his people thought he had gone out for the day. Upon that, the Squire went on to see old Cartwright, and they made us stop there and put up the pony. When we reached home it was past dinner-time. Mrs. Todhetley came running out.

“Couldn’t get here before: the Cartwrights kept us,” called out the Squire. “We are going to catch it, Johnny,” he whispered to me, with a laugh: “we’ve let the dinner spoil.”

But it was not the dinner. “Where’s Hugh?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“I’ve not seen Hugh,” said the Squire, flinging the reins to Luke Mackintosh, who had come up. Luke did all kinds of odd jobs about the place, and sometimes helped the groom.

“But you took Hugh out with you,” she said.

“Not I,” answered the Squire.

Mrs. Todhetley’s face turned white. She looked from one to the other of us in a helpless kind of manner. “Lena said you did,” she returned, and her voice seemed to fear its own sound. The Squire talking with Mackintosh about the pony, noticed nothing particular.

“Lena did? Oh, ay, I remember. I let Hugh get up at the door and drove him round to the fold-yard gate. I dropped him there.”

He went in as he spoke: Mrs. Todhetley seemed undecided whether to follow him. Tod had his back against the door-post, listening.

“What are you alarmed at?” he asked her, not even attempting to suppress his mocking tone.

“Oh, Johnny!” she said, “have you not seen him?”

“Yes; and a fine pickle he was in,” I answered, telling her about it. “I dare say Hannah has put him to bed for punishment.”

“But Hannah has not,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “She came down at four o’clock to inquire if he had come in.”

However, thinking that it might possibly turn out to be so,she ran in to ascertain. Tod put his hand on my shoulder, and walked me further off.

“Johnny, did Hugh really not go with you?”

“Why, of course he did not. Should I deny it if he did?”

“Where the dickens can the young idiot have got to?” mused Tod. “Jeffries vowed he saw him go off with you down the field, Johnny.”

“But I sent him back. I watched him in at the fold-yard gate. You don’t suppose I could take him further in that pickle!”

Tod laughed a little at the remembrance. Mrs. Todhetley returned, saying Hugh was not to be found anywhere. She looked ready to die. Tod was inwardly enjoying her fright beyond everything: it was better than a play to him. His particularly easy aspect struck her.

“Oh, Joseph!” she implored, “if you know where he is, pray tell me.”

“How should I know?” returned Tod. “I protest on my honour I have not set eyes on him since before luncheon to-day.”

“Do you know where he is, Tod?” I asked him, as she turned indoors.

“No; but I can guess. He’s not far off. And I really did think he was with you, Johnny. I suppose I must go and bring him in, now; but I’d give every individual thing my pockets contain if madam had had a few hours’ fright of it, instead of a few minutes’.”

The dinner-bell was ringing, but Tod went off in an opposite direction. And I must explain here what he knew of it, though he did not tell me then. Walking through the fold-yard that morning, he had come upon Master Hugh, just emerging from the bed of green mud, crying his eyes out, and a piteous object. Hannah had promised Hugh that the next time he got into this state she would carry him to the Squire. Hugh knew she’d be sure to keep her word, and that the upshot would probably be a whipping. Tod, after gratifying his eyes with the choice spectacle, and listening to the fears of the whipping, calmly assured the young gentleman that he was “in for it,” at which Hugh only howled the more. All in a moment it occurred to Tod to make use of this opportunity to frighten Mrs. Todhetley. Hetook Hugh off to the barn, and told him that if he’d hide himself there until the evening, he’d not only get him off his whipping, but give him all sorts of good things besides. Hugh was willing to promise, but said he wanted his dinner, upon which Tod went and brought him a plate of bread-and-butter, telling Molly, who cut it, that it was for himself. Tod left him devouring it in the dark corner behind the waggon, particularly impressing upon him the fact that he was to keep close and make no sign if his mamma, or Hannah, or anybody else, came to look for him. One of the men, Jeffries, was at work in the barn, and Tod, so to say, took him into confidence, ordering him to know nothing if Master Hugh were inquired for. As Hannah and Jeffries were at daggers drawn, and the man supposed this hiding was to spite her, he entered into it with interest.

There were two barns at Crabb Cot. One some way down the road in front of the house was the store barn, and you’ve heard of it before in connection with something seen by Maria Lease. It was called the yellow barn from the colour of its outer walls. The other, of red brick, was right at the back of the fold-yard, and it was in this last that Tod left Hugh, all safe and secure, as he thought, until told he might come out again.

But now, when Tod went into the dining-room to luncheon at half-past twelve—we country people breakfast early—at which meal he expected the hue and cry after Hugh to set in, for it was the children’s dinner, he found there was a hitch in the programme. Mrs. Todhetley appeared perfectly easy on the score of Hugh’s absence, and presently casually mentioned that he had gone out with his papa in the pony-gig. Tod’s lips parted to say that Hugh was not in the pony-gig, but in a state of pickle instead. Prudence caused him to close them again. Hannah, standing behind Lena’s chair, openly gave thanks that the child was got rid of for a bit, and said he was “getting a’most beyond her.” Tod bit his lips with vexation: the gilt was taken off the gingerbread. He went to the barn again presently, and then found that Hugh had left it. Jeffries said he saw him going towards the lane with Master Ludlow, and supposed that the little lad had taken the opportunity to slip out of the barn when he (Jeffries) went to dinner, at twelve o’clock. And thus the whole afternoon had gone peaceably and unsuspiciously on;Mrs. Todhetley and Hannah supposing Hugh was with the Squire, Tod supposing he must be somewhere with me.

And when we both appeared at home without him, Tod took it for granted that Hugh had gone back to his hiding-place in the barn, and a qualm of conscience shot through him for leaving the lad there so many hours unlooked after. He rushed off to it at once, while the dinner-bell was ringing. But when he got there, Jeffries declared Hugh had not been back to it at all. Tod, in his hot way, retorted on Jeffries for saying so; but the man persisted that he could not be mistaken, as he had never been away from the barn since coming back from dinner.

And then arose the commotion. Tod came back with a stern face, almost as anxious as Mrs. Todhetley’s. Hugh had not been seen, so far as could be ascertained, since I watched him in at the fold-yard gate soon after twelve. That was nearly seven hours ago. Tod felt himself responsible for the loss, and sent the men to look about. But the worst he thought then was, that the boy, whose fears of showing himself in his state of dilapidation Tod himself had mischievously augmented, had lain down somewhere or other and dropped asleep.

It had gone on, and on, and on, until late at night, and then had occurred that explanation between Tod and his step-mother told of in the other paper. Tod was all impulse, and pride, and heat, and passion; but his heart was made of sterling gold, just like the Squire’s. Holding himself aloof from her in haughty condemnation, in the matter of the mysterious stranger, to find now that the stranger was a man called Alfred Arne, his relative, and that Mrs. Todhetley had been generously taking the trouble upon herself for the sake of sparing him and his father pain, completely turned Tod and his pride over.

He had grown desperately frightened as the hours went on. The moon-lit night had become dark, as I’ve already said, and the men could not pursue their search to much effect. Tod did not cease his. He got a lantern, and went rushing about as if he were crazy. You saw him come up with it from the Ravine, and now he had gone back on a wild-goose chase after the ghost light. Where was Hugh? Where could he be? It was not likely Alfred Arne had taken him, because he had that afternoon got from Mrs. Todhetley the fifty pounds he worried for, andshe thought he had gone finally off with it. It stood to reason that the child would be an encumbrance to him. On the other hand, Tod’s theory, that Hugh had dropped asleep somewhere, seemed, as the hours crept on, less and less likely to hold water, for he would have wakened up and come home long ago. As to the Ravine, in spite of Tod’s suspicions that he might be there, I was sure the little fellow would not have ventured into it.

I stood on, in the dark night, waiting for Tod to come back again. It felt awfully desolate now Luke Mackintosh had gone. The ghost light did not show again. I rather wished it would, for company. He came at last—Tod, not the ghost. I had heard him shouting, and nothing answered but the echoes. A piece of his coat was torn, and some brambles were sticking to him, and the lantern was broken; what dangerous places he had pushed himself into could never be told.

“I wonder you’ve come out with whole limbs, Tod.”

“Hold your peace, Johnny,” was all the retort I got; and his voice rose nearly to a shout in its desperate sorrow.

Morning came, but no news with it, no Hugh. Tod had been about all night. With daylight, the fields, and all other seemingly possible places, were searched. Tom Coney went knocking at every house in North and South Crabb, and burst into cottages, and turned over, so to say, all the dwellings in that savoury locality, Crabb Lane, but with no result. The Squire was getting anxious; but none of us had ventured to tell him of our especial cause for anxiety, or to speak of Alfred Arne.

It appeared nearly certain now, to us, that he had gone with Alfred Arne, and, after a private consultation with Mrs. Todhetley, Tod and I set out in search of the man. She still wished to spare the knowledge of his visit to the Squire, if possible.

We had not far to go. Mrs. Todhetley’s fears went ranging abroad to London, or Liverpool, or the Coral Islands beyond the sea, of which Arne had talked to Hugh: but Arne was found at Timberdale. In an obscure lodging in the further outskirts of the place, the landlord of which, a man named Cookum, was a bad character, and very shy of the police, Arne was found. We might have searched for him to the month’s end, but for Luke Mackintosh. When Luke arrived at Timberdale in the middleof the night, ordered there by Tod to make inquiries at the police-station, he saw a tipsy man slink into Cookum’s house, and recognized him for the one who had recently been exciting speculation at home. Luke happened to mention this to Tod, not connecting Hugh with it at all, simply as a bit of gossip: of course it was not known who Arne was, or his name, or what he had been waiting for.

We had a fight to get in. Cookum came leaping down the crazy stairs, and put himself in our way in the passage, swearing we should not go on. Tod lifted his strong arm.

“I mean to go on, Cookum,” he said, in a slow, quiet voice that had determination in every tone of it. “I have come to see a man named Arne. I don’t want to do him any ill, or you either; but, see him, I will. If you do not move out of my way I’ll knock you down.”

Cookum stood his ground. He was short, slight, and sickly, with a puffy face and red hair; a very reed beside Tod.

“There ain’t no man here of that name. There ain’t no man here at all.”

“Very well. Then you can’t object to letting me see that there is not.”

“I swear that you shan’t see, master. There!”

Tod flung him aside. Cookum, something like an eel, slipped under Tod’s arm, and was in front of him again.

“I don’t care to damage you, Cookum, as you must see I could do, and force my way in over your disabled body; you look too weak for it. But I’ll either go in so, or the police shall clear an entrance for me.”

The mention of the police scared the man; I saw it in his face. Tod kept pushing on and the man backing, just a little.

“I won’t have no police here. What is it you want?”

“I have told you once. A man named Arne.”

“I swear then that I never knowed a man o’ that name; let alone having him in my place.”

And he spoke with such passionate fervour that it struck me Arne did not go by his own name: which was more than probable. They were past the stairs now, and Cookum did not seem to care to guard them. The nasty passage, long and narrow, had a door at the end. Tod thought that must be the fortress.

“You are a great fool, Cookum. I’ve told you that I mean no harm to you or to any one in the place; so to make this fuss is needless. You may have a band of felons concealed here, or a cart-load of stolen goods; they are all safe for me. But if you force me to bring in the police it might be a different matter.”

Perhaps the argument told on the man; perhaps the tone of reason it was spoken in; but he certainly seemed to hesitate.

“You can’t prove that to me, sir: not that there’s any felons or things in here. Show me that you don’t mean harm, and you shall go on.”

“Have you a stolen child here?”

Cookum’s mouth opened with genuine surprise. “A stolen child!”

“We have lost a little boy. I have reason to think that a man who was seen to enter this passage in the middle of the night knows something of him, and I have come to ask and see. Now you know all. Let me go on.”

The relief on the man’s face was great. “Honour bright, sir.”

“Don’t stand quibbling, man,” roared Tod passionately. “Yes!”

“I’ve got but one man in all the place. He have no boy with him, he haven’t.”

“But he may know something of one. What’s his name?”

“All the name he’ve given me is Jack.”

“I dare say it’s the same. Come! you are wasting time.”

But Cookum, doubtful still, never moved. They were close to the door now, and he had his back against it. Tod turned his head.

“Go for the two policemen, Johnny. They are both in readiness, Cookum. I looked in at the station as I came by, to say I might want them.”

Before I could get out, Cookum howled out to me not to go, as one in mortal fear. He took a latch-key from his pocket, and put it into the latch of the door, which had no other fastening outside, not even a handle. “You can open it yourself,” said he to Tod, and slipped away.

It might have been a sort of kitchen but that it looked more like a den, with nothing to light it but a dirty sky-lightabove. The floor was of red brick; a tea-kettle boiled on the fire; there was a smell of coffee. Alfred Arne stood on the defensive against the opposite wall, a life-preserver in his hand, and his thin hair on end with fright.

“I am here on a peaceable errand, if you will allow it to be so,” said Tod, shutting us in. “Is your name Arne?”

Arne dropped the life-preserver into the breast-pocket of his coat, and came forward with something of a gentleman’s courtesy.

“Yes, my name is Arne, Joseph Todhetley. And your mother—as I make no doubt you know—was a very near relative of mine. If you damage me, you will bring her name unpleasantly before the public, as well as your own and your father’s.”

That he thought our errand was to demand back the fifty pounds, there could be no doubt: perhaps to hand him into custody if he refused to give it up.

“I have not come to damage you in any way,” said Tod in answer. “Where’s Hugh?”

Arne looked as surprised as the other man had. “Hugh!”

“Yes, Hugh: my little brother. Where is he?”

“How can I tell?”

Tod glanced round the place; there was not any nook or corner capable of affording concealment. Arne gazed at him. He stood on that side the dirty deal table, we on this.

“We have lost Hugh since mid-day yesterday. Do you know anything of him?”

“Certainly not,” was the emphatic answer, and I at least saw that it was a true one. “Is it to ask that, that you have come here?”

“For that, and nothing else. We have been up all night searching for him.”

“But why do you come after him here? I am not likely to know where he is.”

“I think you are likely.”

“Why?”

“You have been talking to the boy about carrying him off with you to see coral islands. You hinted, I believe, to Mrs. Todhetley that you might really take him, if your demands were not complied with.”

Arne slightly laughed. “I talked to the boy about the Coral Islands because it pleased him. As to Mrs. Todhetley, if she has the sense of a goose, she must have known I meant nothing. Take off a child with me! Why, if he were made a present to me, I should only drop him at his own door at Crabb Cot, as they drop the foundlings at the gate of the Maison Dieu in Paris. Joseph Todhetley, I could not be encumbered with a child: the life of shifts and concealment I have to lead would debar it.”

I think Tod saw he was in earnest. But he stood in indecision: this dashed out his great hope.

“I should have been away from here last night, but that I got a drop too much and must wait till dark again,” resumed Arne.“The last time I saw Hugh was on Thursday afternoon. He was in the meadow with you.”

“I did not see you,” remarked Tod.

“I saw you, though. And that is the last time I saw him. Don’t you believe me? You may. I like the little lad, and would find him for you if I could, rather than help to lose him. I’d say take my honour upon this, Joseph Todhetley, only you might retort that it has not been worth anything this many a year.”

“And with justice,” said Tod, boldly.

“True. The world has been against me and I against the world. But it has not come yet with me to stealing children. With the loan of the money now safe in my pocket, I shall make a fresh start in life. A precious long time your step-mother kept me waiting for it.”

“She did her best. You ought not to have applied to her at all.”

“I know that: it should have been to the other side of the house. She prevented me: wanting, she said, to spare you and your father.”

“The knowledge of the disgrace. Yes.”

“There’s no need to have recourse to hard names, Joseph Todhetley. What I am, I am, but you have not much cause to grumble, for I don’t trouble you often. As many thousand miles away as the seas can put between me and England, I’m going now: and it’s nearly as many chances to one against your ever seeing me again.”

Tod turned to depart: the intensely haughty look his face wore at odd moments had been upon it throughout the interview. Had he been a woman he might have stood with his skirts picked up, as if to save them contamination from some kind of reptile. He stayed for a final word.

“Then I may take your answer in good faith—that you know nothing of Hugh?”

“Take it, or not, as you please. If I knew that I was going to stand next minute in the presence of Heaven, I could not give it more truthfully. For the child’s own sake, I hope he will be found. Why don’t you ask the man who owns the rooms?—he can tell you I have had no boy here. If you choose to watch me away to-night, do so; you’ll see I go alone. A child with me! I might about as well give myself up to the law at once, for I shouldn’t long remain out of its clutches, Joseph Todhetley.”

“Good-morning,” said Tod shortly. I echoed the words, and we were civilly answered. As we went out, Arne shut the door behind us. In the middle of the passage stood Cookum.

“Have you found he was who you wanted, sir?”

“Yes,” answered Tod, not vouchsafing to explain. “Another time when I say I do not wish to harm you, perhaps you’ll take my word.”

Mrs. Todhetley, pale and anxious, was standing under the mulberry-tree when we got back. She came across the grass.

“Any news?” cried Tod. As if the sight of her was not enough, that he need have asked!

“No, no, Joseph. Did you see him?”

“Yes, he had not left. He knows nothing of Hugh.”

“I had no hope that he did,” moaned poor Mrs. Todhetley.“All he wanted was the money.”

We turned into the dining-room by the glass-doors, and it seemed to strike out a gloomy chill. On the wall near the window, there was a chalk drawing of Hugh in colours, hung up by a bit of common string. It was only a rough sketch that Jane Coney had done half in sport; but it was like him, especially in the blue eyes and the pretty light hair.

“Where’s my father?” asked Tod.

“Gone riding over to the brick-fields again,” she answered:“he cannot get it out of his mind that Hugh must be there. Joseph, as Mr. Arne has nothing to do with the loss, we can still spare your father the knowledge that he has been here. Spare it, I mean, for good.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Hugh was uncommonly fond of old Massock’s brick-fields; he would go there on any occasion that offered, had once or twice strayed there a truant; sending Hannah, for the time being, into a state of mortal fright. The Squire’s opinion was that Hugh must have decamped there some time in the course of the Friday afternoon, perhaps followed the gig; and was staying there, afraid to come home.

“He might have hung on to the tail of the gig itself, and I and Johnny never have seen him, the ’cute Turk,” argued the Squire.

Which I knew was just as likely as that he had, unseen, hung on to the moon. In the state he had brought his clothes to, he wouldn’t have gone to the brick-fields at all. The Squire did not seem so uneasy as he might have been. Hugh would be sure to turn up, he said, and should get the soundest whipping any young rascal ever had.

But he came riding back from the brick-fields as before—without him. Tod, awfully impatient, met him in the road by the yellow barn. The Squire got off his horse there, for Luke Mackintosh was at hand to take it.

“Father, I cannot think of any other place he can have got to: we have searched everywhere. Can you?”

“Not I, Joe. Don’t be down-hearted. He’ll turn up; he’ll turn up. Halloa!” broke off the Squire as an idea struck him,“has this barn been searched?”

“He can’t be in there, sir; it’s just a moral impossibility that he could be,” spoke up Mackintosh. “The place was empty, which I can be upon my oath, when I locked it up yesterday afternoon, after getting some corn out; and the key have never been out o’ my trousers’ pocket since. Mr. Joseph, he was inside with me at the time, and knows it.”

Tod nodded assent, and the Squire walked away. As there was no other accessible entrance to the front barn, and thewindows were ever so many yards from the ground, they felt that it must be, as the man said, a “moral impossibility.”

The day went on, it was Saturday, remember, and the miserable hours went on, and there came no trace of the child. The Ravine was again searched thoroughly: that is, as thoroughly as its overgrown state permitted. It was like waste of time; for Hugh would not have hidden himself in it; and if he had fallen over the fence he would have been found before from the traces that must have been left in the bushes. The searchers would come in, one after another, now a farm-servant, now one of the police, bringing no news, except of defeat, but hoping some one else had brought it. Every time that Tod looked at the poor mild face of Mrs. Todhetley, always meek and patient, striving ever to hide the anguish that each fresh disappointment brought, I know he felt ready to hang himself. It was getting dusk when Maria Lease came up with a piece of straw hat that she had found in the withy walk. But both Mrs. Todhetley and Hannah, upon looking at it, decided that the straw was of finer grain than Hugh’s.

That afternoon they dragged the pond, but there was nothing found in it. We could get no traces anywhere. No one had seen him, no one heard of him. From the moment when I had watched him into the fold-yard gate, it seemed that he had altogether vanished from above ground. Since then all scent of him was missing. It was very strange: just as though the boy had been spirited away.

Sunday morning rose. As lovely a Sunday as ever this world saw, but all sad for us. Tod had flung himself back in the pater’s easy-chair, pretty near done over. Two nights, and he had not been to bed. In spite of his faith in Alfred Arne’s denial, he had chosen to watch him away in the night from Timberdale; and he saw the man steal off in the darkness on foot and alone. The incessant hunting about was bringing its reaction on Tod, and the fatigue of body and mind began to show itself. But as to giving in, he’d never do that, and would be as likely as not to walk and worry himself into a fever.

The day was warm and beautiful; the glass-doors stood open to the sweet summer air. Light fleecy clouds floated over the blue sky, the sun shone on the green grass of the lawn andsparkled amidst the leaves of the great mulberry-tree. Butterflies flitted past in pairs, chasing each other; bees sent forth their hum as they sipped the honey-dew from the flowers; the birds sang their love-songs on the boughs: all seemed happiness outside, as if to mock our care within.

Tod lay back with his eyes closed: I sat on the arm of the old red sofa. The bells of North Crabb Church rang out for morning service. It was rather a cracked old peal, but on great occasions the ringers assembled and did their best. The Bishop of Worcester was coming over to-day to preach a charity sermon: and North Crabb never had anything greater than that. Tod opened his eyes and listened in silence.

“Tod, do you know what it puts me in mind of?”

“Don’t bother. It’s because of the bishop, I suppose.”

“I don’t mean the bells. It’s like the old fable, told of in‘The Mistletoe Bough,’ enacted in real life. If there were any deep chest about the premises——”

“Hold your peace, Johnny!—unless you want to drive me mad. If we come upon the child like that, I’ll—I’ll——”

I think he was going to say shoot himself, or something of that sort, for he was given to random speech when put to it. But at that moment Lena ran in dressed for church, in her white frock and straw hat with blue ribbons. She threw her hands on Tod’s knee and burst out crying.

“Joe, I don’t want to go to church; I want Hugh.”

Quite a spasm of pain shot across his face, but he was very tender with her. In all my life I had never seen Tod so gentle as he had been at moments during the last two days.

“Don’t cry, pretty one,” he said, pushing the fair curls from her face. “Go to church like a good little girl; perhaps we shall have found him by the time you come home.”

“Hannah says he’s lying dead somewhere.”

“Hannah’s nothing but a wicked woman,” savagely answered Tod. “Don’t you mind her.”

But Lena would not be pacified, and kept on sobbing and crying, “I want Hugh; I want Hugh.”

Mrs. Todhetley, who had come in then, drew her away and sat down with the child on her knee, talking to her in low, soothing tones.

“Lena, dear, you know I wish you to go with Hannah to church this morning. And you will put papa’s money into the plate. See: it is a golden sovereign. Hannah must carry it, and you shall put it in.”

“Oh, mamma! will Hugh never come home again? Will he die?”

“Hush, Lena,” she said, as Tod bit his lip and gave his hair a dash backwards. “Shall I tell you something that sounds like a pretty story?”

Lena was always ready for a story, pretty or ugly, and her blue eyes were lifted to her mother’s brightly through the tears. At that moment she looked wonderfully like the portrait on the wall.

“Just now, dear, I was in my room upstairs, feeling very, very unhappy; I’m not sure but I was sobbing nearly as much as you were just now. ‘He will never come back,’ I said to myself; ‘he is lost to us for ever.’ At that moment those sweet bells broke out, calling people to Heaven’s service, and I don’t know why, Lena, but they seemed to whisper a great comfort to me. They seemed to say that God was over us all, and saw our trouble, and would heal it in His good time.”

Lena stared a little, digesting what she could of the words. The tears were nowhere.

“Will He send Hugh back?”

“I can’t tell, darling. He can take care of Hugh, and bless him, and keep him, wherever he may be, and I know He will. If He should have taken him to heaven above the blue sky—oh then, Hugh must be very happy. He will be with the angels. He will see Jesus face to face; and you know how He loved little children. The bells seemed to say all this to me as I listened to them, Lena.”

Lena went off contented: we saw her skipping along by Hannah’s side, who had on a new purple gown and staring red and green trimmings to her bonnet. Children are as changeable as a chameleon, sobbing one minute, laughing the next. Tod was standing now with his back to the window, and Mrs. Todhetley sat by the table, her long thin fingers supporting her cheek; very meek, very, very patient. Tod was thinking so as he glanced at her.

“How you must hate me for this!” he said.

“Oh, Joseph! Hate you?”

“The thing is all my fault. A great deal has been my fault for a long while; all the unpleasantness and the misunderstanding.”

She got up and took his hand timidly, as if she feared he might think it too great a liberty. “If you can only understand me for the future, Joseph; understand how I wish and try to make things pleasant to you, I shall be fully repaid: to you most especially in all the house, after your father. I have ever striven and prayed for it.”

He answered nothing for the moment; his face was working a little, and he gave her fingers a grip that must have caused pain.

“If the worst comes of this, and Hugh never is amongst us again, I will go over the seas in the wake of the villain Arne,”he said in a low, firm tone, “and spare you the sight of me.”

Tears began to trickle down her face. “Joseph, my dear—if you will let me call you so—this shall draw us near to each other, as we never might have been drawn without it. You shall not hear a word of reproach from us, or any word but love; there shall never be a thought of reproach in my heart. I have had a great deal of sorrow in my life, Joseph, and have learnt patiently to bear, leaving all things to Heaven.”

“And if Hugh is dead?”

“What I said to Lena, I meant,” she softly whispered. “If God has taken him he is with the angels, far happier than he could be in this world of care, though his lot were of the brightest.”

The tears were running down her cheeks as she went out of the room. Tod stood still as a stone.

“She is made of gold,” I whispered.

“No, Johnny. Of something better.”

The sound of the bells died away. None of us went to church; in the present excitement it would have been a farce. The Squire had gone riding about the roads, sending his groom the opposite way. He telegraphed to the police at Worcester; saying, in the message, that these country officers were no better than dummies; and openly lamented at home that it hadnot happened at Dyke Manor, within the range of old Jones the constable.

Tod disappeared with the last sound of the bells. Just as the pater’s head was full of the brick-fields, his was of the Ravine; that he had gone off to beat it again I was sure. In a trouble such as this you want incessantly to be up and doing. Lena and Hannah came back from church, the child calling for Hugh: she wanted to tell him about the gentleman who had preached in big white sleeves and pretty frills on his wrists.

Two o’clock was the Sunday dinner-hour. Tod came in when it was striking. He looked dead-beat as he sat down to carve in his father’s place. The sirloin of beef was as good as usual, but only Lena seemed to think so. The little gobbler ate two servings, and a heap of raspberry pie and cream.

How it happened, I don’t know. I was just as anxious as any of them, and yet, in sitting under the mulberry-tree, I fell fast asleep, never waking till five. Mrs. Todhetley, always finding excuses for us, said it was worry and want of proper rest. She was sitting close to the window, her head leaning against it. The Squire had not come home. Tod was somewhere about, she did not know where.

I found him in the yard. Luke Mackintosh was harnessing the pony to the gig, Tod helping him in a state of excitement. Some man had come in with a tale that a tribe of gipsies was discovered, encamped beyond the brick-fields, who seemed to have been there for a week past. Tod jumped to the conclusion that Hugh was concealed with them, and was about to go off in search.

“Will you come with me, Johnny? Luke must remain in case the Squire rides in.”

“Of course I will. I’ll run and tell Mrs. Todhetley.”

“Stay where you are, you stupid muff. To excite her hopes, in the uncertainty, would be cruel. Get up.”

Tod need not have talked about excited hopes. He was just three parts mad. Fancy his great strong hands shaking as he took the reins! The pony dashed off in a fright with the cut he gave it, and brought us cleverly against the post of the gate, breaking the near shaft. Over that, but for the delay, Tod would have been cool as an orange.

“The phaeton now, single horse,” he called out to Mackintosh.

“Yes, sir. Bob, or Blister?”

Tod stamped his foot in a passion. “As if it mattered! Blister; he is the more fiery of the two.”

“I must get the harness,” said Mackintosh. “It is in the yellow barn.”

Mackintosh went round on the run to gain the front barn; the harness, least used, was kept there, hung on the walls. Tod unharnessed the pony, left me to lead him to the stable, and went after the man. In his state of impatience and his strength, he could have done the work of ten men. He met Mackintosh coming out of the barn, without the harness, but with a white face. Since he saw the ghost’s light on Friday night the man had been scared at shadows.

“There’s sum’at in there, master,” said he, his teeth chattering.

“What?” roared Tod, in desperate anger.

“There is, master. It’s like a faint tapping.”

Tod dashed in, controlling his hands, lest they might take French leave and strike Luke for a coward. He was seeking the proper set of harness, when a knocking, faint and irregular, smote his ear. Tod turned to look, and thought it came from the staircase-door. He went forward and opened it.

Lying at the foot of the stairs was Hugh. Hugh! Low, and weak, and faint, there he lay, his blue eyes only half opened, and his pretty curls mingling with the dust.

“Hugh! is it you, my darling?”

Tod’s gasp was like a great cry. Hugh put up his little feeble hand, and a smile parted his lips.

“Yes, it’s me, Joe.”

The riddle is easily solved. When sent back by me, Hugh saw Hannah in the fold-yard; she was, in point of fact, looking after him. In his fear, he stole round to hide in the shrubbery, and thence got to the front of the house, and ran away down the road. Seeing the front barn-door open, for it was when Luke Mackintosh was getting the corn, Hugh slipped in and hid behind the door. Luke went out with the first lot of corn, and the senseless child, hearing Tod’s voice outside, got into the place leading to the stairs, and shut the door. Luke, talking toTod, who had stepped inside the barn, saw the door was shut and slipped the big outside bolt, never remembering that it was not he who had shut it. Poor little Hugh, when their voices had died away, ran upstairs to get to the upper granary, and found its door fastened. And there the child was shut up beyond reach of call and hearing. The skylight in the roof, miles, as it seemed, above him, had its ventilator open. He had called and called; but his voice must have been lost amidst the space of the barn. It was too weak to disturb a rat now.

Tod took him up in his arms, tenderly as if he had been a new-born baby that he was hushing to the rest of death.

“Were you frightened, child?”

“I was till I heard the church-bells,” whispered Hugh. “I don’t know how long it was—oh, a great while—and I had ate the biscuit Johnny gave me and been asleep. I was not frightened then, Joe; I thought they’d come to me when church was over.”

I met the procession. What the dirty object might be in Tod’s arms was quite a mystery at first. Tod’s eyes were dropping tears upon it, and his breath seemed laboured. Luke brought up the rear a few yards behind, looking as if he’d never find his senses again.

“Oh, Tod! will he get over it?”

“Yes. Please God.”

“Is he injured?”

“No, no. Get out of my way, Johnny. Go to the mother now, if you like. Tell her he has only been shut up in the barn and I’m coming in with him. The dirt’s nothing: it was on him before.”

Just as meek and gentle she stood as ever, the tears rolling down her face, and a quiet joy in it. Tod brought him in, laying him across her knee as she sat on the sofa.

“There,” he said. “He’ll be all right when he has been washed and had something to eat.”

“God bless you, Joseph!” she whispered.

Tod could say no more. He bent to kiss Hugh; lifted his face, and kissed the mother. And then he went rushing out with a burst of emotion.

OUR VISIT.

I

We went down from Oxford together, I and Tod and William Whitney; accompanying Miss Deveen and Helen and Anna Whitney, who had been there for a few days. Miss Deveen’s carriage was waiting at the Paddington Station; they got into it with Tod, and William and I followed in a cab with the luggage. Miss Deveen had invited us all to stay with her.

Miss Cattledon, the companion, with her tall, thin figure, her pinched-in waist and her creaking stays, stood ready to receive us when we reached the house. Miss Deveen held out her hand.

“How have you been, Jemima? Taking care of yourself, I hope?”

“Quite well, thank you, Miss Deveen; and very glad to see you at home again,” returned Cattledon. “This is my niece, Janet Carey.”

A slight, small girl, with smooth brown hair and a quiet face that looked as if it had just come out of some wasting illness, was hiding herself behind Cattledon. Miss Deveen said a few pleasant words of welcome, and took her hand. The girl looked as shy and frightened as though we had all been a pack of gorillas.

“Thank you, ma’am; you are very kind,” she said in a tremble; and her voice, I noticed, was low and pleasant. I like nice voices, whether in man or woman.

“It wants but half-an-hour to dinner-time,” said Miss Deveen, untying the strings of her bonnet. “Miss Cattledon, will you show these young friends of ours the rooms you have appropriated to them.”

My room and Tod’s—two beds in it—was on the second floor; Helen and Anna had the best company room below, near Miss Deveen’s; Bill had a little one lower still, half-way up the firstflight of stairs. Miss Cattledon’s room, we found out, was next to ours, and her niece slept with her.

Tod threw himself full length on his counterpane—tired out, he said. Certain matters had not gone very smoothly for him at Oxford, and the smart remained.

“You’ll be late, Tod,” I said when I was ready.

“Plenty of time, Johnny. I don’t suppose I shall keep dinner waiting.”

Miss Deveen stood at the door of the blue room when I went down: that pretty sitting-room, exclusively hers, that I remembered so well. She had on a purple silk gown, with studs of pale yellow topaz in its white lace front, studs every whit as beautiful as the emeralds made free with by Sophie Chalk.

“Come in here, Johnny.”

She was beginning to talk to me as we stood by the fire, when some one was heard to enter the inner room; Miss Deveen’s bed-chamber, which opened from this room as well as from the landing. She crossed over into it, and I heard Cattledon’s voice.

“It is so very kind of you, Miss Deveen, to have allowed me to bring my niece here! Under the circumstances—with such a cloud upon her——”

“She is quite welcome,” interrupted Miss Deveen’s voice.

“Yes, I know that; I know it: and I could not go down without thanking you. I have told Lettice to take some tea up to her while we dine. She can come to the drawing-room afterwards if you have no objection.”

“Why can’t she dine with us?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Better not,” said Cattledon. “She does not expect it; and with so many at table——”

“Nonsense!” came Miss Deveen’s quick, decisive interruption.“Many at table! There are sufficient servants to wait on us, and I suppose you have sufficient dinner. Go and bring her down.”

Miss Deveen came back, holding out her hand to me as she crossed the room. The gong sounded as we went down to the drawing-room. They all came crowding in, Tod last; and we went in to dinner.

Miss Deveen, with her fresh, handsome face and her snow-white hair, took the head of the table. Cattledon, at the foot,a green velvet ribbon round her genteel throat, helped the soup. William Whitney sat on Miss Deveen’s right, I on her left. Janet Carey sat next to him—and this brought her nearly opposite me.

She had an old black silk on, with a white frill at the throat—very poor and plain as contrasted with the light gleaming silks of Helen and Anna. But she had nice eyes; their colour a light hazel, their expression honest and sweet. It was a pity she could not get some colour into her wan face, and a little courage into her manner.

After coffee we sat down in the drawing-room to a round game at cards, and then had some music; Helen playing first. Janet Carey was at the table, looking at a view in an album. I went up to her.

Had I caught her staring at some native Indians tarred and feathered, she could not have given a worse jump. It might have been fancy, but I thought her face turned white.

“Did I startle you, Miss Carey? I am very sorry.”

“Oh, thank you—no. Every one is very kind. The truth is”—pausing a moment and looking at the view—“I knew the place in early life, and was lost in old memories. Past times and events connected with it came back to me. I recognized the place at once, though I was only ten years old when I left it.”

“Places do linger on the memory in a singularly vivid manner sometimes. Especially those we have known when young.”

“I can recognize every spot in this,” she said, gazing still at the album. “And I have not seen it for fifteen years.”

“Fifteen. I—I understood you to say you were ten years old when you left it.”

“So I was. I am twenty-five now.”

So much as that! So much older than any of us! I could hardly believe it.

“I should not have taken you for more than seventeen, Miss Carey.”

“At seventeen I went out to earn my own living,” she said, in a sad tone, but with a candour that I liked. “That is eight years ago.”

Helen’s music ceased with a crash. Miss Deveen came up to Janet Carey.

“My dear, I hear you can sing: your aunt tells me so. Will you sing a song, to please me?”

She was like a startled fawn: looking here, looking there, and turning white and red. But she rose at once.

“I will sing if you wish it, madam. But my singing is only plain singing: just a few old songs. I have never learnt to sing.”

“The old songs are the best,” said Miss Deveen. “Can you sing that sweet song of all songs—‘Blow, blow, thou wintry wind’?”

She went to the piano, struck the chords quietly, without any flourish or prelude, and began the first note.

Oh the soft, sweet, musical voice that broke upon us! Not a powerful voice, that astounds the nerves like an electric machine; but one of that intense, thrilling, plaintive harmony which brings a mist to the eye and a throb to the heart. Tod backed against the wall to look at her; Bill, who had taken up the cat, let it drop through his knees.

You might have heard a pin drop when the last words died away: “As friends remembering not.” Miss Deveen broke the silence: praising her and telling her to go on again. The girl did not seem to have the least notion of refusing: she appeared to have lived under submission. I think Miss Deveen would have liked her to go on for ever.

“The wonder to me is that you can remember the accompaniment to so many songs without your notes,” cried Helen Whitney.

“I do not know my notes. I cannot play.”

“Not know your notes!”

“I never learnt them. I never learnt music. I just play some few chords by ear that will harmonize with the songs. That is why my singing is so poor, so different from other people’s. Where I have been living they say it is not worth listening to.”

She spoke in a meek, deprecating manner. I had heard of self-depreciation: this was an instance of it. Janet Carey was one of the humble ones.

The next day was Good Friday. We went to church under lowering clouds, and came home again to luncheon. Cattledon’s face was all vinegar when we sat down to it.

“There’s that woman downstairs again!—that Ness!” sheexclaimed with acrimony. “Making herself at home with the servants!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” smiled Miss Deveen. “She’ll get some dinner, poor thing.”

Cattledon sniffed. “It’s not a month since she was here before.”

“And I’m sure if she came every week she’d be welcome to a meal,” spoke Miss Deveen. “Ah now, young ladies,” she went on in a joking tone, “if you wanted your fortunes told, Mrs. Ness is the one to do it.”

“Does she tell truth?” asked Helen eagerly.

“Oh, very true, of course,” laughed Miss Deveen. “She’ll promise you a rich husband apiece. Dame Ness is a good woman, and has had many misfortunes. I have known her through all of them.”

“And helped her too,” resentfully put in Cattledon.

“But does she really tell fortunes?” pursued Helen.

“She thinks she does,” laughed Miss Deveen. “She told mine once—many a year ago.”

“And did it come true?”

“Well, as far as I remember, she candidly confessed that there was not much to tell—that my life would be prosperous but uneventful.”

“I don’t think, begging your pardon, Miss Deveen, that it is quite a proper subject for young people,” struck in Cattledon, drawing up her thin red neck.

“Dear me, no,” replied Miss Deveen, still laughing a little. And the subject dropped, and we finished luncheon.

The rain had come on, a regular downpour. We went into the breakfast-room: though why it was called that, I don’t know, since breakfast was never taken there. It was a fair-sized, square room, built out at the back, and gained by a few stairs down from the hall and a passage. Somehow people prefer plain rooms to grand ones for everyday use: perhaps that was why we all took a liking to this room, for it was plain enough. An old carpet on the floor, chairs covered with tumbled chintz, and always a good blazing fire in the grate. Miss Deveen would go in there to write her business letters—when she had any to write; or to cut out sewing with Cattledon for the housemaids.An old-fashioned secretary stood against the wall, in which receipts and other papers were kept. The French window opened to the garden.

“Pour, pour, pour! It’s going to be wet for the rest of the day,” said Tod gloomily.

Cattledon came in, equipped for church in a long brown cloak, a pair of clogs in her hand. Did none of us intend to go, she asked. Nobody answered. The weather outside was not tempting.

“You must come, Janet Carey,” she said very tartly, angry with us all, I expect. “Go and put on your things.”

“No,” interposed Miss Deveen. “It would not be prudent for your niece to venture out in this rain, Jemima.”

“The church is only over the way.”

“But consider the illness she has only just recovered from. Let her stay indoors.”

Cattledon went off without further opposition, Janet kneeling down unasked, to put on her clogs, and then opening her umbrella for her in the hall. Janet did not come in again. Miss Deveen went out to sit with a sick neighbour: so we were alone.

“What a cranky old thing that Cattledon is!” cried Bill, throwing down his newspaper. “She’d have walked that girl off in the wet, you see.”

“How old is Cattledon?” asked Tod. “Sixty?”

“Oh, you stupid fellow!” exclaimed Helen, looking up from the stool on the hearthrug, where she was sitting, nursing her knees. “Cattledon sixty! Why, she can’t be above forty-five.”

It was disrespectful no doubt, but we all called her plain“Cattledon” behind her back.

“That’s rather a queer girl, that niece,” said Tod. “She won’t speak to one: she’s like a frightened hare.”

“I like her,” said Anna. “I feel very sorry for her. She gives one the idea of having been always put upon: and she looks dreadfully ill.”

“I should say she has been kept in some Blue Beard’s cupboard, amongst a lot of hanging wives that have permanently scared her,” remarked Bill.

“It’s Cattledon,” said Tod; “it’s not the wives. She puts upon the girl and frightens her senses out of her. Cattledon’s a cross-grained, two-edged——”

He had to shut up: Janet Carey was coming in again. For about five minutes no one spoke. There seemed to be nothing to say. Bill played at ball with Miss Deveen’s red penwiper: Anna began turning over the periodicals: Helen gave the cat a box when it would have jumped on her knee.

“Well, this is lively!” cried Tod. “Nothing on earth to do; I wonder why the rain couldn’t have kept off till to-morrow?”

“I say,” whispered Helen, treason sparkling from her bright eyes, “let us have up that old fortune-teller! I’ll go and ask Lettice.”

She whirled out of the room, shutting the tail of her black silk dress in the door, and called Lettice. A few minutes, and Mrs. Ness came in, curtsying. A stout old lady in a cotton shawl and broad-bordered cap with a big red bow tied in front.

“I say, Mrs. Ness, can you tell our fortunes?” cried Bill.

“Bless you, young gentlefolks, I’ve told a many in my time. I’ll tell yours, if you like to bid me, sir.”

“Do the cards tell true?”

“I believe they does, sir. I’ve knowed ’em to tell over true now and again—more’s the pity!”

“Why do you say more’s the pity?” asked Anna.

“When they’ve fortelled bad things, my sweet, pretty young lady. Death, and what not.”

“But how it must frighten the people who are having them told!” cried Anna.

“Well, to speak the truth, young gentlefolks, when it’s very bad, I generally softens it over to ’em—say the cards is cloudy, or some’at o’ that,” was the old woman’s candid answer. “It don’t do to make folks uneasy.”

“Look here,” said Helen, who had been to find the cards,“I should not like to hear it if it’s anything bad.”

“Ah, my dear young lady, I don’t think you need fear any but a good fortune, with that handsome face and them bright eyes of yours,” returned the old dame—who really seemed to speak, not in flattery, but from the bottom of her heart. “I don’t know what the young lords ’ud be about, to pass you by.”

Helen liked that; she was just as vain as a peacock, and thought no little of herself. “Who’ll begin?” asked she.

“Begin yourself, Helen,” said Tod. “It’s sure to be something good.”

So she shuffled and cut the cards as directed: and the old woman, sitting at the table, spread them out before her, talking a little bit to herself, and pointing with her finger here and there.

“You’ve been upon a journey lately,” she said, “and you’ll soon be going upon another.” I give only the substance of what the old lady said, but it was interspersed freely with her own remarks. “You’ll have a present before many days is gone; and you’ll—stay, there’s that black card—you’ll hear of somebody that’s sick. And—dear me! there’s an offer for you—an offer of marriage,—but it won’t come to anything. Well, now, shuffle and cut again, please.”

Helen did so. This was repeated three times in all. But, so far as we could understand it, her future seemed to be very uneventful—to have nothing in it—something like Miss Deveen’s.

“It’s a brave fortune, as I thought, young lady,” cried Mrs. Ness. “No trouble or care in store for you.”

“But there’s nothing,” said Helen, too intently earnest to mind any of us. “When am I to be married?”

“Well, my dear, the cards haven’t told so much this time. There’ll be an offer, as I said—and I think a bit of trouble over it; but——”

“But you said it would not come to anything,” interrupted Helen.

“Well, and no more it won’t: leastways, it seemed so by the cards; and it seemed to bring a bother with it—old folks pulling one way maybe, and young ’uns the other. You’ll have to wait a bit for the right gentleman, my pretty miss.”

“What stupid cards they are!” cried Helen, in dudgeon.“I dare say it’s all rubbish.”

“Any ways, you’ve had nothing bad,” said the old woman.“And that’s a priceless consolation.”

“It’s your turn now, Anna.”

“I won’t have mine told,” said Anna. “I’m afraid.”

“Oh, you senseless donkey!” cried Bill. “Afraid of a pack of cards!” So Anna laughed, and began.

“Ah, there’s more here,” said the old woman as she laid them out. “You are going through some great ceremony not long first. See here—crowds of people—and show. Is it a great ball, I wonder?”

“It may be my presentation,” said Anna.

“And here’s the wedding-ring!—and there’s the gentleman! See! he’s turning towards you; a dark man it is; and he’ll be very fond of you, too!—and——”

“Oh, don’t go on,” cried Anna, in terrible confusion as she heard all this, and caught Tod’s eye, and saw Bill on the broad laugh. “Don’t, pray don’t; it must be all nonsense,” she went on, blushing redder than a rose.

“But it’s true,” steadily urged the old lady. “There the wedding is. I don’t say it’ll be soon; perhaps not for some years; but come it will in its proper time. And you’ll live in a fine big house; and—stay a bit—you’ll——”

Anna, half laughing, half crying, pushed the cards together.“I won’t be told any more,” she said; “it must be all a pack of nonsense.”

“Of course it is,” added Helen decisively. “And why couldn’t you have told me all that, Mrs. Ness?”

“Why, my dear, sweet young lady, it isn’t me that tells; it’s the cards.”

“I don’t believe it. But it does to while away a wet and wretched afternoon. Now, Miss Carey.”

Miss Carey looked up from her book with a start. “Oh, not me! Please, not me!”

“Not you!—the idea!” cried Helen. “Why, of course you must. I and my sister have had our turn, and you must take yours.”

As if further objection were out of the question, Miss Carey stood timidly up by the table and shuffled the cards that Dame Ness handed to her. When they were spread out, the old woman looked at the cards longer than she had looked for either Helen or Anna, then at the girl, then at the cards again.

“There has been sickness and trouble;—and distress,” she said at length, “And—and—’tain’t over yet. I see a dark ladyand a fair man: they’ve been in it, somehow. Seems to ha’been a great trouble”—putting the tips of her forefingers upon two cards. “Here you are, you see, right among it,”—pointing to the Queen of Hearts. “I don’t like the look of it. And there’s money mixed up in the sorrow——”

A low, shuddering cry. I happened to be looking from the window at the moment, and turned to see Janet Carey with hands uplifted and a face of imploring terror. The cry came from her.

“Oh don’t, don’t! don’t tell any more!” she implored. “I—was—not—guilty.”

Down went her voice by little and little, down fell her hands; and down dropped she on the chair behind her. The next moment she was crying and sobbing. We stood round like so many helpless simpletons, quite put down by this unexpected interlude. Old Dame Ness stared, slowly shuffling the cards from hand to hand, and could not make it out.

“Here, I’ll have my fortune told next, Mother Ness,” said Bill Whitney, really out of good nature to the girl, that she might be left unobserved to recover herself. “Mind you promise me a good one.”

“And so I will then, young gentleman, if the cards ’ll let me,” was the hearty answer. “Please shuffle ’em well, sir, and then cut ’em into three.”

Bill was shuffling with all his might when we heard the front-door open, and Cattledon’s voice in the hall. “Oh, by George, I say, what’s to be done?” cried he. “She’ll be fit to smother us. That old parson can’t have given them a sermon.”

Fortunately she stayed on the door-mat to take off her clogs. Dame Ness was smuggled down the kitchen stairs, and Bill hid the cards away in his pocket.

And until then it had not occurred to us that it might not be quite the right thing to go in for fortune-telling on Good Friday.

II

On Easter Tuesday William Whitney and Tod went off to Whitney Hall for a few days: Sir John wrote for them. In the afternoon Miss Deveen took Helen in the carriage to make calls;and the rest of us went to the Colosseum, in the Regent’s Park. Cattledon rather fought against the expedition, but Miss Deveen did not listen to her. None of us—except herself—had seen it before: and I know that I, for one, was delighted with it.

The last scene of the performance was over. If I remember rightly, at this distance of time, it was the representation of the falling of an avalanche on a Swiss village, to bury it for ever in the snow; and we saw the little lighted church to which the terrified inhabitants were flying for succour, and heard the tinkling of its alarm bell. As we pushed out with the crowd, a policeman appeared in our way, facing us, a tall, big, fierce-looking man; not to impede the advance of the throng, but to direct its movements. Janet Carey seized my arm, and I turned to look at her. She stood something like a block of stone; her face white with terror, her eyes fixed on the policeman. I could not get her on, and we were stopping those behind. Naturally the man’s eyes fell on her; and with evident recognition.

“Oh, it’s you here, is it, Miss Carey!”

The tone was not exactly insolent: but it was cool and significant, wanting in respect. When I would have asked him how he dared so to address a young lady, the words were arrested by Janet. I thought she had gone mad.

“Oh, get me away, Mr. Ludlow, for Heaven’s sake! Don’t let him take me! Oh what shall I do? what shall I do?”

“What you’ve got to do is to get for’ard out o’ this here passage and not block up the way,” struck in the policeman.“I bain’t after you now; so you’ve no call to be afeared this time. Pass on that way, sir.”

I drew her onwards, and in half-a-minute we were in the open air, clear of the throng. Cattledon, who seemed to have understood nothing, except that we had stopped the way, shook Janet by the arm in anger, and asked what had come to her.

“It was the same man, aunt, that Mrs. Knox called in,” she gasped. “I thought he had come to London to look for me.”

Miss Cattledon’s answer was to keep hold of her arm, and whirl her along towards the outer gates. Anna and I followed in wonder.

“What is it all, Johnny?” she whispered.

“Goodness knows, Anna. I——”

Cattledon turned her head, asking me to go on and secure a cab. Janet was helped into it and sat back with her eyes closed, a shiver taking her every now and then.

Janet appeared at dinner, and seemed as well as usual. In the evening Helen tore the skirt of her thin dress: and before she was aware, the girl was kneeling by the side of her chair with a needle and thread, beginning to mend it.

“You are very kind,” said Helen heartily, when she saw what Janet was doing.

“Oh no,” answered Janet, with an upward, humble glance from her nice eyes.

But soon after that, when we were describing to Helen and Miss Deveen the sights at the Colosseum, and the silence of the buried village after the avalanche had fallen, Janet was taken with an ague fit. The very chair shook; it seemed that she must fall out of it. Anna ran to hold her. Miss Deveen got up in consternation.

“That Colosseum has been too much for her: there’s nothing so fatiguing as sightseeing. I did wrong in letting Janet go, as she is still weak from her illness. Perhaps she has taken cold.”

Ringing the bell, Miss Deveen told George to make some hot wine and water. When it was brought in, she made Janet drink it, and sent her upstairs to bed, marshalled by Cattledon.

The next morning, Wednesday, I was dressing in the sunshine that streamed in at the bedroom windows, when a loud hulla-balloo was set up below, enough to startle the king and all his men.

“Thieves! robbers! murder!”

Dashing to the door, I looked over the balustrades. The shrieks and calls came from Lettice Lane, who was stumbling up the stairs from the hall. Cattledon opened her door in her night-cap, saw me, and shut it again with a bang.

“Murder! robbers! thieves!” shrieked Lettice.

“But what is it, Lettice?” I cried, leaping down.

“Oh, Mr. Johnny, the house is robbed!—and we might just as well all have been murdered in our beds!”

Every one was appearing on the scene. Miss Deveen came fully dressed—she was often up before other people; Cattledonarrived in a white petticoat and shawl. The servants were running up from the kitchen.

Thieves had broken in during the night. The (so-called) breakfast-room at the back presented a scene of indescribable confusion. Everything in it was turned topsy-turvy, the secretary had been ransacked; the glass-doors stood open to the garden.

It seemed that Lettice, in pursuance of her morning’s duties, had gone to the room, and found it in this state. Lettice was of the excitable order, and went into shrieks. She stood now, sobbing and shaking, as she gave her explanation.

“When I opened the door and saw the room in this pickle, the window standing open, my very blood seemed to curdle within me. For all I knew the thieves might have done murder. Just look at the place, ma’am!—look at your secretary!”

It’s what we were all looking at. The sight was as good as moving house. Chairs and footstools lay upside down, their chintz covers untied and flung off; the hearthrug was under the table; books were open, periodicals scattered about; two pictures had been taken from the wall and lay face downwards; every ornament was moved from the mantelpiece. The secretary stood open; all its papers had been taken out, opened, and lay in a heap on the floor; and Janet Carey’s well-stocked work-box was turned bottom upwards, its contents having rolled anywhere.

“This must be your work, George,” said Miss Cattledon, turning on the servant-man with a grim frown.

“Mine, ma’am!” he answered, amazed at the charge.

“Yes, yours,” repeated Cattledon. “You could not have fastened the shutters last night; and that is how the thieves have got in.”

“But I did, ma’am. I fastened them just as usual.”

“Couldn’t be,” said Cattledon decisively, who had been making her way over the débris to examine the shutters. “They have not been forced in any way: they have simply been opened. The window also.”

“And neither window nor shutters could be opened from the outside without force,” remarked Miss Deveen. “I fear, George, you must have forgotten this room when you shut up last night.”

“Indeed, ma’am, I did not forget it,” was the respectfulanswer. “I assure you I bolted the window and barred the shutters as I always do.”

Janet Carey, standing in mute wonder like the rest of us, testified to this. “When I came in here last night to get a needle and thread to mend Miss Whitney’s dress, I am sure the shutters were shut: I noticed that they were.”

Cattledon would not listen. She had taken up her own opinion of George’s neglect, and sharply told Janet not to be so positive. Janet looked frightfully white and wan this morning, worse than a ghost.

“Oh, goodness!” cried Helen Whitney, appearing on the scene. “If ever I saw such a thing!”

“I never did—in all my life,” cried Cattledon.

“Have you lost any valuables from the secretary, Miss Deveen?”

“My dear Helen, there were no valuables in the secretary to lose,” was Miss Deveen’s answer. “Sometimes I keep money in it—a little: but last night there happened to be none. Of course the thieves could not know that, and must have been greatly disappointed. If they did not come in through the window—why, they must have got in elsewhere.”

Miss Deveen spoke in a dubious tone, that too plainly showed her own doubts on the point. George felt himself and his word reflected upon.

“If I had indeed forgotten this window last night, ma’am—though for me to do such a thing seems next door to impossible—I would confess to it at once. I can be upon my oath, ma’am, if put to it, that I made all secure here at dusk.”

“Then, George, you had better look to your other doors and windows,” was the reply of his mistress.

The other doors and windows were looked to: but no trace could be found of how the thieves got in. After breakfast, we succeeded in putting the room tolerably straight. The letters and bills took most time, for every one was lying open. And after it was all done, Miss Deveen came to the conclusion that nothing had been taken.

“Their object must have been money,” she observed. “It is a good thing I happened to carry my cash-box upstairs yesterday. Sometimes I leave it here in the secretary.”

“And was much in it?” one of us asked.

“Not very much. More, though, than one cares to lose: a little gold and a bank-note.”

“A bank-note!” echoed Janet, repeating the words quickly.“Is it safe?—are you sure, ma’am, the note is safe?”

“Well, I conclude it is,” answered Miss Deveen with composure.“I saw the cash-box before I came down this morning. I did not look inside it.”

“Oh, but you had better look,” urged Janet, betraying some excitement. “Suppose it should be gone! Can I look, ma’am?”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Helen. “If the cash-box is safe, the money must be safe inside it. The thieves did not go into Miss Deveen’s room, Janet Carey.”

The servants wanted the police called in; but their mistress saw no necessity for it. Nothing had been carried off, she said, and therefore she should take no further trouble. Her private opinion was that George, in spite of his assertions, must have forgotten the window.

It seemed a curious thing that the thieves had not visited other rooms. Unless, indeed, the door of this one had been locked on the outside, and they were afraid to risk the noise of forcing it: and no one could tell whether the key had been turned, or not. George had the plate-basket in his bed-chamber; but on the sideboard in the dining-room stood a silver tea-caddy and a small silver waiter: how was it they had not walked off with these two articles? Or, as the cook said, why didn’t they rifle her larder? She had various tempting things in it, including a fresh-boiled ham.

“Janet Carey has been ill all the afternoon,” observed Anna, when I and Helen got home before dinner, for we had been out with Miss Deveen. “I think she feels frightened about the thieves, for one thing.”

“Ill for nothing!” returned Helen slightingly. “Why should she be frightened any more than we are? The thieves did not hurt her. I might just as well say I am ill.”

“But she has been really ill, Helen. She has a shivering-fit one minute and is sick the next. Cattledon says she must have caught cold yesterday, and is cross with her for catching it.”

“Listen,” said Helen, lowering her voice. “I can’t get it out of my head that that old fortune-teller must have had to do with it. She must have seen the secretary and may have taken note of the window fastenings. I am in a state over it: as you both know, it was I who had her up.”

Janet did not come down until after dinner. She was pale and quiet, but not less ready than ever to do what she could for every one. Helen had brought home some ferns to—transfer, I think she called it. Janet at once offered to help her. The process involved a large hand-basin full of water, and Miss Deveen sent the two girls into the breakfast-parlour, not to make a mess in the drawing-room.

“Well, my dears,” said Miss Deveen, when she had read the chapter before bed-time, “I hope you will all sleep well to-night, and that we shall be undisturbed by thieves. Not that they disturbed us last night,” she added, laughing. “Considering all things, I’m sure they were as polite and considerate thieves as we could wish to have to do with.”

Whether the others slept well I cannot say: I know I did. So well that I never woke at all until the same cries from Lettice disturbed the house as on the previous morning. The thieves had been in again.

Downstairs we went, as quickly as some degree of dressing allowed, and found the breakfast-room all confusion, the servants all consternation: the window open as before; the furniture turned about, the ornaments and pictures moved from their places, the books scattered, the papers of the secretary lying unfolded in a heap on the carpet, and a pair of embroidered slippers of Helen Whitney’s lying in the basin of water.

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Miss Deveen, while the rest of us stood in silent amazement.

Lettice’s tale was the same as the previous one. Upon proceeding to the room to put it to rights, she found it thus, and its shutters and glass-doors wide open. There was no trace, except here, of the possible entrance or exit of thieves: all other fastenings were secure as they had been left over-night; other rooms had not been disturbed; and, more singular than all, nothing appeared to have been taken. What could the thieves be seeking?

“Shall you call in the police now, ma’am?” asked Cattledon, her tone implying that they ought to have been called in before.

“Yes, I shall,” emphatically replied Miss Deveen.

“Oh!” shrieked Helen, darting in, after making a hasty and impromptu toilet, “look at my new slippers!”

After finishing the ferns last night they had neglected to send the basin away. The slippers were rose-coloured, worked with white flowers in floss silk; and the bits of loose green from the ferns floated over them like green weeds on a pond. Helen had bought them when we were out yesterday.

“My beautiful slippers!” lamented Helen. “I wish to goodness I had not forgotten to take them upstairs. What wicked thieves they must be! They ought to be hung.”

“It’s to know, mum, whether it was thieves,” spoke the cook.

“Why, what else can it have been, cook?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Mum, I don’t pretend to say. I’ve knowed cats do queer things. We’ve two on ’em—the old cat and her kitten.”

“Did you ever know cats unlock a secretary and take out the papers, cook?” returned Miss Deveen.

“Well, no, mum. But, on the other hand, I never knowed thieves break into a house two nights running, and both times go away empty-handed.”

The argument was unanswerable. Unless the thieves had been disturbed on each night, how was it they had taken nothing?

Miss Deveen locked the door upon the room just as it was; and after breakfast sent George to the nearest police-station. Whilst he was gone I was alone in the dining-room, stooping down to hunt for a book in the lowest shelf of the book-case, when Janet Carey came in followed by Cattledon. I suppose the table-cover hid me from them, for Cattledon began to blow her up.

“One would think you were a troubled ghost, shaking and shivering in that way, first upstairs and then down! The police coming!—what if they are? They are not coming after you this time. There’s no money missing now.”

Janet burst into tears. “Oh, aunt, why do you speak so to me? It is as though you believe me guilty!”

“Don’t be a simpleton, Janet,” rebuked Cattledon, in softer tones. “If I did not know you were not, and could not, be guilty, should I have brought you here under Miss Deveen’s roof? What vexes me so much is to see you look as though you were guilty—with your white face, and your hysterics, and your trembling hands and lips. Get a little spirit into yourself, child: the police won’t harm you.”

Catching up the keys from the table, she went out again, leaving Janet sobbing. I stood forward. She started when she saw me, and tried to dry her eyes.

“I am sorry, Miss Carey, that all this bother is affecting you. Why are you so sad?”

“I—have gone through a great deal of trouble lately;—and been ill,” she answered, with hesitation, arresting her tears.

“Can I do anything for you?—help you in any way?”

“You are very kind, Mr. Ludlow; you have been kind to me all along. There’s nothing any one can do. Sometimes I wish I could die.”

“Die!”

“There is so much unhappiness in the world!”

George’s voice was heard in the hall with the policeman. Janet vanished. But whether it was through the floor or out at the door, I declare I did not see then, and don’t quite know to this day.

I and Cattledon were allowed to assist at the conference between Miss Deveen and the policeman: a dark man with a double chin and stripes on his coat-sleeve. After hearing particulars, and examining the room and the mess it was in, he inquired how many servants were kept, and whether Miss Deveen had confidence in them. She told him the number, and said she had confidence in all.

He went into the kitchen, put what questions he pleased to the servants, looked at the fastenings of the doors generally, examined the outside of the window and walked about the garden. George called him Mr. Stone—which appeared to be his name. Mr. Stone had nothing of a report to bring Miss Deveen.

“It’s one of two things, ma’am,” he said. “Either this has been done by somebody in your own house; or else the neighboursare playing tricks upon you. I can’t come to any other conclusion. The case is peculiar, you see, in-so-far as that nothing has been stolen.”

“It is very peculiar indeed,” returned Miss Deveen.

“I should have said—I should feel inclined to say—that the culprit is some one in the house——”

“It’s the most unlikely thing in the world, that it should have been any one in the house,” struck in Miss Deveen, not allowing him to go on. “To suspect any of the young people who are visiting me, would be simply an insult. And my servants would no more play the trick than I or Miss Cattledon would play it.”

“Failing indoors then, we must look out,” said Mr. Stone, after listening patiently. “And that brings up more difficulty, ma’am. For I confess I don’t see how they could get the windows and shutters open from the outside, and leave no marks of damage.”

“The fact of the window and shutters being wide open each morning, shows how they got out.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Stone; “but it does not show how they got in. Of course there’s the possibility that they managed to secrete themselves in the house beforehand.”

“Yesterday I thought that might have been the case,” remarked Miss Deveen; “to-day I do not think so. It seems that, after what occurred, my servants were especially cautious to keep their doors and windows not only closed, but bolted all day yesterday, quite barring the possibility of any one’s stealing in. Except, of course, down the chimneys.”

Mr. Stone laughed. “They’d bring a lot of soot with ’em that way.”

“And spoil my hearthrugs. No; that was not the way of entrance.”

“Then we come to the question—did one of the servants get up and admit ’em?”

“But that would be doubting my servants still, you see. It really seems, Mr. Stone, as though you could not help me.”

“Before saying whether I can or I can’t, I should be glad, ma’am, to have a conversation with you alone,” was the unexpected answer.

So we left him with Miss Deveen. Cattledon’s stays appearedto resent it, for they creaked alarmingly in the hall, and her voice was tart.

“Perhaps the man wants to accuse you or me, Mr. Johnny!”

We knew later, after the upshot came, what it was he did want; and I may as well state it at once. Stone had made up his mind to watch that night in the garden; but he wished it kept secret from every one, except Miss Deveen herself, and he charged her strictly not to mention it. “How will it serve you, if, as you say, they do not come in that way?” she had asked.“But the probability is they come out that way,” he answered.“At any rate, they fling the doors open, and I shall be there to drop upon them.”

Janet Carey grew very ill as the day went on. Lettice offered to sit up with her, in case she wanted anything in the night. Janet had just the appearance of somebody worn out.

We went to bed at the usual time, quite unconscious that Mr. Stone had taken up his night watch in the summer-house at the end of the garden. The nights were very bright just then; the moon at about the full. Nothing came of it: neither the room nor the window was disturbed.

“They scented my watch,” remarked the officer in private next morning to Miss Deveen. “However, ma’am, I don’t think it likely you will be troubled again. Seeing you’ve put it into our hands, they’ll not dare to risk further annoyance.”

“I suppose not—if they know it,” dubiously spoke Miss Deveen.

He shook his head. “They know as much as that, ma’am. Depend upon it their little game is over.”

Mr. Stone was mistaken. On the following morning, the breakfast-room was found by Lettice in exactly the same state of confusion. The furniture dragged about, the ornaments moved from the mantelpiece, the bills and papers opened, as before. Miss Deveen was very silent over it, and said in the hearing of the servants that she should have to carry the grievance to Scotland Yard.

And I’m sure I thought she set out to do it. The carriage came to the door in the course of the morning. Miss Deveen, who was ready dressed, passed over the others, and asked me to go with her.

“Do you know what I’m going to do, Johnny?” she questioned, as George took his place on the box and the fat old coachman gave the word to his horses.

“I think I do, Miss Deveen. We are going to Scotland Yard.”

“Not a bit of it, Johnny,” she said. “My opinion has come round to Mr. Policeman Stone’s—that we must look indoors for the disturber. I have brought you out with me to talk about it. It is a great mystery—for I thought I could have trusted the servants and all the rest of you with my life.”

It was a mystery—and no mistake.

“A great mystery,” repeated Miss Deveen; “a puzzle; and I want you to help me to unravel it, Johnny. I intend to sit up to-night in the breakfast-room. But not being assured of my nerves while watching in solitude for thieves, or ghosts, or what not, I wish you to sit up with me.”

“Oh, I shall like it, Miss Deveen.”

“I have heard of houses being disturbed before in a similar manner,” she continued. “There was a story in the old days of the Cock-Lane ghost: I think that was something of the same kind, but my memory is rather cloudy on the point. Other cases I know have been traced to the sudden mania, solely mischievous or otherwise, of some female inmate. I hope it will not turn out to have been Lettice herself.”

“Shall I watch without you, Miss Deveen?”

“No, no; you will bear me company. We will make our arrangements now, Johnny—for I do not intend that any soul shall know of this; not even Miss Cattledon. You will keep counsel, mind, like the true and loyal knight you are.”

The house had gone to rest. In the dark breakfast-room sat Miss Deveen and I, side by side. The fire was dying away, and it gave scarcely any light. We sat back against the wall between the fireplace and the door, she in one armchair, I in another. The secretary was opposite the fire, the key in the lock as usual; the window, closed and barred, lay to the left, the door to the right, a table in the middle. An outline of the objects was just discernible in the fading light.

“Do you leave the key in the secretary as a rule, Miss Deveen?” I asked in a whisper.

“Yes. There’s nothing in it that any one would care to look at,” she replied in the same cautious tone. “My cash-box is generally there, but that is always locked. But I think we had better not talk, Johnny.”

So we sat on in silence. The faint light of the fire died away, giving place to total darkness. It was weary watching there, hour after hour, each hour seeming an age. Twelve o’clock struck; one; two! I’d have given something to be able to fall asleep. Just to speak a word to Miss Deveen would be a relief, and I forgot her injunctions.

“Are you thinking of ghosts, Miss Deveen?”

“Just then I was thinking of God, Johnny. How good it is to know that He is with us in the dark as in the light.”

Almost with the last word, my ears, younger and quicker than Miss Deveen’s, caught the sound of a faint movement outside—as though steps were descending the stairs. I touched Miss Deveen’s arm and breathed a caution.

“I hear something. I think it is coming now.”

The door softly opened. Some white figure was standing there—as might be seen by the glimmer of light that came in through the passage window. Who or what it was, we could not gather. It closed the door behind it, and came slowly gliding along the room on the other side the table, evidently feeling its way as it went, and making for the window. We sat in breathless silence. Miss Deveen had caught my hand and was holding it in hers.

Next, the shutters were unfastened and slowly folded back; then the window was unbolted and its doors were flung wide. This let in a flood of moonlight: after the darkness the room seemed bright as day. And the white figure doing all this was—Janet Carey in her nightgown, her feet bare.

Whether Miss Deveen held my hand the tighter, or I hers, I dare say neither of us could tell. Janet’s eyes turned on us, as we sat: and I fully expected her to go into a succession of shrieks.

But no. She took no manner of notice. It was just as though she did not see us. Steadily, methodically as it seemed, she proceeded to search the room, apparently looking for something. First, she took the chintz cover off the nearest chair, and shookit out; turned over the chair and felt it all over; a small round stand was served the same; a blotting-case that happened to lie on the table she carried to the window, knelt down, and examined it on the floor by the moonlight, passing her fingers over its few pages, unfolding a letter that was inside and shaking it out to the air. Then all that was left on the floor, and she turned over another chair, and so went on.

I felt as cold as charity. Was it her ghost that was doing this? How was it she did not see us sitting there? Her eyes were open enough to see anything!

Coming to the secretary, she turned the key, and began her search in it. Pulling out one drawer first, she opened every paper it contained, shook them one by one, and let them drop on the floor. As she was commencing at the next drawer, her back towards us, Miss Deveen whispered to me.

“We will get away, Johnny. You go on first. No noise, mind.”

We got out without being seen or heard. At least, there was no outcry; no sign to tell we had been. Miss Deveen drew me into the dining-room; her face, as it caught the glimmer, entering by the fan-light over the hall-door, looked deadly pale.

“I understand it all, Johnny. She is doing it in her sleep.”

“In her sleep?”

“Yes. She is unconscious. It was better to come away. As she came round to search our part of the room, she might have found us, and awoke. That would have been dangerous.”

“But, Miss Deveen, what is she searching for?”

“I know. I see it all perfectly. It is for a bank-note.”

“But—if she is really asleep, how can she go about the search in that systematic way? Her eyes are wide open: she seems to examine things as though she saw them.”

“I cannot tell you how it is, Johnny. They do seem to see things, though they are asleep. What’s more, when they awake there remains no consciousness of what they have done. This is not the first case of somnambulism I have been an eye-witness to. She throws the window and shutters open to admit the light.”

“How can she have sense to know in her sleep that opening them will admit it?”

“Johnny, though these things are, I cannot explain them. Go up to your bed now and get to sleep. As I shall go to mine. You shall know about Janet in the morning. She will take no harm if left alone: she has taken none hitherto. Say nothing to any one.”

It was the solution of the great puzzle. Janet Carey had done it all in her sleep. And what she had been searching for was a bank-note.

In the situation where Janet had been living as nursery-governess, a bank-note had disappeared. Janet was suspected and accused of taking it. Constitutionally timid and nervous, her spirits long depressed by circumstances, the accusation had a grave effect upon her. She searched the house for it incessantly, almost night and day, just as we had seen her searching the parlour at Miss Deveen’s in her sleep, and then fell into a fever—which was only saved by great care from settling on the brain. When well enough, Miss Cattledon had her removed to London to Miss Deveen’s; but the stigma still clung to her, and the incipient fever seemed still to hover about her. The day William Whitney left, she moved from Miss Cattledon’s chamber to the one he had occupied: and that night, being unrestrained, she went down in her sleep to search. The situation of the room in which the note had been lost was precisely similar to this breakfast-room at Miss Deveen’s—in her troubled sleep, poor girl, she must have taken it for the same room, and crept down, still asleep, to renew the endless search she had formerly made when awake. The night the policeman was watching in the summer-house, Lettice sat up with Janet; so that night nothing occurred. Lettice said afterwards that Miss Carey twice got out of bed in her sleep and seemed to be making for the door, but Lettice guided her back to bed again. And so there was the elucidation: and Janet was just as unconscious of what she had done as the bed-post.

Miss Deveen’s medical man was called in, for brain-fever, escaped, appeared to be fastening on Janet in earnest now. He gave it as his opinion that she was no natural sleep-walker, but that the mind’s disturbance had so acted on the brain and system,coupled with her fright at meeting the policeman at the Colosseum, as to have induced the result. At any rate, whatever may have caused it, and strange though it was, I have only given facts. And in the next paper we shall hear more about the bank-note.

JANET CAREY.

I

It was a summer’s evening, some two years or so previous to the events told of in the last chapter, and the sun was setting in clouds of crimson and gold. On the green lawn at the back of Rose Villa—a pretty detached house, about twenty minutes’walk from the town of Lefford—sat a lady in a gay dress. She was dark and plain, with crinkled black hair, and a rough voice. A girl of twelve, fair, pretty, and not in the least like her, sat on the same bench. Three younger girls were scampering about at some noisy play; and a boy, the youngest of all, lay on the grass, whistling, and knotting a whip-cord. The sun’s slanting rays tinted all with a warm hue.

“Get up, Dicky,” said the lady to the boy.

Dicky, aged five, whistled on, without taking any notice.

“Did you hear mamma tell you to get up, Dicky?” spoke the fair girl by her mother’s side. “Get up, sir.”

“Shan’t,” said Dicky.

“You go in for me, Mina,” said Mrs. Knox. “I want to know the time. Arnold took my watch into town this morning to have the spring mended.”

Mina seemed in no more hurry to obey than Dicky was. Just then a low pony-chaise, driven by a boy-groom, rattled out from the stable-yard at the side of the house. Mina looked across at it.

“It must be about a quarter-past eight,” she said. “You told James not to be later than that in going to the station.”

“You might go and see,” spoke Mrs. Knox: “James is not sure to be to time. How glad I shall be when that governess is here to take the trouble of you children off me!” she added, fretfully. Mina did not take the hint about going in: she made off to her sisters instead.

This house had once been a doctor’s residence. Soon after Thomas Knox, surgeon and apothecary, set up in practice at Lefford, now five-and-twenty years ago, he married Mary Arnold. Rose Villa was hers, and some money besides, and they came to live at it, Mr. Knox keeping on his surgery in Lefford. They had one son, who was named Arnold. When Arnold was ten years old, his mother died. A year later his father married a second wife, Miss Amelia Carey: after which these five other young ones came to town. Arnold was to be a doctor like his father. His studies were in progress, when one morning a letter came to him in London—where he was walking Bartholomew’s Hospital under that clever man, William Lawrence—saying that his father was alarmingly ill. Arnold reached Lefford just in time to see him die. The little one, Dicky, was a baby then in long-clothes. Arnold was only nineteen. No chance that he could set up in, and keep together the practice, which fell through. So he went back to London to study on, and pass, and what not; and by-and-by he came down again Dr. Knox: for he had followed the fashion just then getting common, of taking the M.D. degree. Arnold Knox had his share of good plain sense, and of earnestness too; but example is catching, and he only followed that of his fellow-students in going in thus early for the degree. He arrived at Lefford “Dr. Knox.”Mr. Tamlyn laughed at him, before his face and behind his back, asking him what experience he had had that he should hasten to tack on M.D. to his name: why, not more experience than a country apothecary’s apprentice. Arnold, feeling half ashamed of himself, for he was very modest, pleaded the new custom. Custom! returned old Tamlyn; in his days medical men had worked for their honours before taking them. Arnold engaged himself as assistant to Mr. Tamlyn, who had dropped into the best part of Dr. Knox’s practice since that gentleman’s death, in addition to his own.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Knox, the widow, had continued to live at Rose Villa. It belonged to Arnold, having descended to him in right of his mother. Mr. Knox had bequeathed by will five hundred pounds to Arnold for the completion of his studies; and all the rest of his money to his wife and second family. Lefford talked of it resentfully, saying it was an unjust will: for a goodportion of the money had been Mary Arnold’s and ought to have gone to her son. It was about three hundred and fifty pounds a-year in all; and Mrs. Knox bewailed and bemoaned her hard fate at having to bring up her children upon so little. She was one of those who must spend; and her extravagance had kept her husband poor, in spite of his good practice.

Never a hint did she offer her step-son of paying him rent for his house; never a word of thanks did she tender for the use of it.

Arnold said nothing: he was thoroughly warm-hearted and generous, considering every one before himself, and he would not have hurt her feelings or cramped her pocket for the world. As long as he did not want the house, she and his half-sisters and brother were welcome to it. When he came back from London he naturally went to it; it was his home; and Mrs. Knox did not at all like the addition he made to her housekeeping expenses: which could not be very much amongst the nine others to provide for. The very day after Arnold’s bargain was made with Mr. Tamlyn, she asked him how much he was going to pay her for his board. Half his salary, Arnold promptly replied; seventy-five pounds a-year. And Mrs. Knox would have liked to say it was not enough.

“Seventy-five pounds a-year!” cackled Lefford, when it got hold of the news. “Why, it won’t cost her half that. And she using his house and enjoying all the money that was his poor mother’s! Well, she has a conscience, that Widow Knox!”

The arrangement had continued until now. Three years had elapsed since then, and Arnold was four-and-twenty. Mrs. Knox found herself often in money difficulties; when she would borrow from Arnold, and never think of repaying him. She was now going to increase expenses by taking a nursery-governess. Awfully tiresome those children were, and Mrs. Knox said they wore her out. She should have managed the little brats better: not indulged and neglected them by turns. One hour she’d let them run wild, the next hour was shrieking at them in words next door to swearing.

The governess engaged was a distant relative of her own, a Miss Janet Carey. She was an orphan, and had for a year or two been teacher in a boys’ preparatory school, limited to thirtypupils. Mrs. Knox wrote to offer her twelve pounds a-year and a “very comfortable home at Rose Villa; to be as one of the family.” It must have sounded tempting to Miss Carey after the thirty little boys, and she gratefully accepted it. Mrs. Knox had never seen her; she pictured to herself a tall, bony young woman with weak eyes, for that had been the portrait of her second cousin, Miss Carey’s father.

“Crack! crack! Tally-ho! tally-ho!” shouted Dicky, who had completed his whip, and got up to stamp and smack it.“Yo-ho! Tally-ho, tally-ho!”

“Oh, do for goodness’ sake be quiet, Dick!” screamed Mrs. Knox. “I can’t have that noise now: I told you I had a headache. Do you hear me, then! Mina, come and take away this horrible whip.”

Mina came running at the call. Master Dicky was so much given way to as a general rule, that to thwart him seemed to his sisters something delightful. Dicky dodged out of harm’s way amongst the shrubs; and Mina was about to go after him, when some one came through the open glass-doors of what was called the garden-room.

“Here’s Arnold,” she cried.

Dr. Knox was a tall, strongly built, fair man, looking older than his four-and-twenty years. Nobody could help liking his thin face, for it was a good face, full of sense and thought, but it was not a handsome one. His complexion was sallow, and his light hair had a habit of standing up wild.

“You are home betimes,” remarked Mrs. Knox.

“Yes; there was nothing more to do,” he answered, sitting down in a rustic garden-chair. “I met James in the pony-chaise: where’s he gone?”

“Why, Arnold, don’t you know that the governess is coming this evening?” cried the second girl, Lotty, who was fanning her hot face with a cabbage-leaf. “James has gone to the station for her.”

“I forgot all about the governess,” said Dr. Knox. “Lotty, what a heat you are in!”

“We have been running races,” said the child; “and the sun was blazing.”

Dicky came tearing up. Something had happened to the whip.

“Look at it, Arnold,” he said, throwing his arms and the whip on the doctor’s knees. “The lash won’t stay on.”

“And you want me to mend it, I suppose.”

“Yes. Do it now.”

“Is that the way to ask?”

“Please do it now, Arnold.”

“If I can. But I fear I can’t, Dicky.”

“No! You can mend arms and legs.”

“Sometimes. Have you a strip of leather? Or some twine?”

Dicky pulled a piece of string out of some unfathomable pocket. He was not promoted to trousers yet, but wore white drawers reaching to the knee and a purple velvet tunic. Dr. Knox took out his penknife.

“What’s the matter with that young Tamlyn again?” asked Mrs. Knox in a fretful tone.

“With Bertie?” returned Dr. Knox, rather carelessly, for he was intent on the whip. “It is one of the old attacks.”

“Of course! I knew it was nothing more,” spoke Mrs Knox in resentment. “There was to have been a party at Mrs. Green’s this evening. Just as I was ready to start for it, her footman came to say it was put off on account of Miss Tamlyn, who could not come because Master Albert was ill.”

“Miss Tamlyn would not leave Bertie when he is ill for all the parties in Christendom, mother.”

“Miss Tamlyn is welcome to stay with him. But that’s no reason why Mrs. Green should have put the rest of us off. Who’s Bessy Tamlyn, that she should be considered before every one?—stupid old maid!”

Mrs. Knox pushed up her lace sleeves in wrath, and jingled her bracelets. Evening parties made the solace of her life.

The wheels of the returning chaise were heard, and the children went rushing round to the front of the house to look at the new governess. They brought Janet Carey back to the lawn. Mrs. Knox saw a small, slight young girl with a quiet, nice face and very simple manners. Dr. Knox rose. Mrs. Knox did not rise. Expecting to see a kind of dark strong giantess, she was struck with astonishment and remained sitting.

“You are surely not Matthew Carey’s daughter?”

“Yes, madam, I am,” was the young lady’s answer, as a blush stole into the clear, meek face.

“Dear me! I should never have thought it. Mat Carey was as tall and big as a lamp-post. And—why!—you told me you were twenty-three!”

“I was twenty-three last March.”

“Well, I trust you will be found competent to manage my children. I had no idea you were so young-looking.”

The tone expressed a huge doubt of it. The ill-trained youngsters stood staring rudely into Miss Carey’s face. Dr. Knox, pushing some of them aside, held out his hand with a smile of welcome.

“I hope you will be able to feel at home here, Miss Carey,”he said: “the children must not be allowed to give you too much trouble. Have you had a pleasant journey?”

“Take Miss Carey to her room, Mina,” sharply struck in Mrs. Knox, not at all pleased that her step-son should presume to say so much: as if the house were his. And Mina, followed by the shy and shrinking young governess, went indoors and up to the roof, and showed her a little comfortless chamber there.

(But the reader must understand that in writing this paper, I, Johnny Ludlow, am at a disadvantage. Not having been present myself at Lefford, I can only relate at second hand what happened at Mrs. Knox’s.)

The time went on. Janet Carey proved herself equal to her work: although Mrs. Knox, judging by her young look and gentle manners, had been struck by a doubt of her capacity, and politely expressed it aloud. Janet’s duties were something like the labours of Hercules: at least, as varied. Teaching was only one of them. She helped to dress and undress the children, or did it entirely if Sally the housemaid forgot to attend; she kept all the wardrobes and mended the clothes and the socks. She had to be in all places at once. Helping Mrs. Knox in the parlour, taking messages to the kitchen, hearing the girls’ lessons, and rushing out to the field to see that Dicky was not worrying the pony or milking the cow on his own account. It was not an orderly household; two maids were kept and James. Mrs. Knoxhad no talent for management, and was frightfully lazy besides; and Janet, little foreseeing what additional labour she would bring on herself, took to remedy as far as she could the shortcomings and confusion. Mrs. Knox saw her value, and actually thanked her. As a reward, she made Janet her own attendant, her secretary, and partly her housekeeper. Mrs. Knox’s hair, coarse and stiff, was rather difficult hair to manage; in the morning it was let go anyhow, and Janet dressed it in the afternoon. Janet wrote Mrs. Knox’s letters; kept her accounts; paid the bills—paid them, that is, when she could get the money. Janet, you perceive, was made Jack-of-all-trades at Rose Villa. She was conscious that it was hardly fair, but she did it cheerfully; and, as Mrs. Knox would say, it was all in the day’s work.

The only one who showed consideration for Miss Carey was Dr. Knox. He lectured the children about giving her so much unnecessary trouble: he bribed Dicky with lozenges and liquorice from the surgery drawers not to kick or spit at her; and he was, himself, ever kind and considerate to her. They only met at dinner and tea, for Dr. Knox snatched a scrambling breakfast (the servants never got it ready for him in time), and went off betimes to Lefford. Now and then he would come home tolerably early in the evening, but he had a great deal to do, and it did not happen often. Mr. Tamlyn was the parish doctor, and it gave Dr. Knox an incessant round of tramping: for the less pleasant division of the daily professional work was turned over to him.

They got to have a fellow-feeling for one another—Janet and Dr. Knox—a kind of mutual, inward sympathy. Both of them were overworked; in the lot of each was less of comfort than might have been. Dr. Knox compassionated Janet’s hard place and the want of poetry in her life. Janet felt hurt to see him made so little of at home, and she knew about the house being his property, and the seventy-five pounds a-year he paid for the liberty of living in it,—and she knew that most of the income enjoyed by Mrs. Knox ought to have been Arnold’s income. His breakfast was scanty; a cup of coffee, taken standing, and some bread-and-butter, hurriedly eaten. Or he would be off by cockcrow without chance of breakfast, unless he cut a slice of bread in the pantry: or perhaps would have to be out all night.Sometimes he would get home to dinner; one o’clock; more often it was two o-clock, or half-past, or three. In that case, Sally would bring in a plate of half-cold scraps for him—anything that happened to be left. Once, when Janet was carving a leg of mutton, she asked leave to cut off a slice or two that they might be kept warm for the doctor; but Mrs. Knox blew her up—a fine trouble that would be! As to tea, the chances were, if he came in to it at all, that the teapot would be drained: upon which, some lukewarm water would be dashed in, and the loaf and butter put before him. Dr. Knox took it all quietly: perhaps he saw how useless complaint would be.

Mr. Tamlyn’s was a large, handsome, red-brick house, standing in a beautiful garden, in the best and widest street of Lefford. The surgery, built on the side of the house, consisted of two rooms: one containing the drugs and the scales, and so on; the other where the better class of patients waited. Mr. Tamlyn’s wife was dead, and he had one son, who was a cripple. Poor Bertie was thrown down by his nurse when he was a child; he had hardly ever been out of pain since; sometimes the attacks were very bad. It made him more cross and fractious than a stranger would believe; rude, in fact, and self-willed. Mr. Tamlyn just worshipped Bertie. He only lived to one end—that of making money for Bertie, after he, himself, should be gone. Miss Bessy, Mr. Tamlyn’s half-sister, kept his house, and she was the only one who tried to keep down Bertie’s temper. Lefford thought it odd that Mr. Tamlyn did not raise Dr. Knox’s salary: but it was known he wanted to put by what he could for Bertie.

The afternoon sun streamed full on the surgery-window, and Dr. Knox, who had just pelted back from dinner, stood behind the counter, making up bottles of physic. Mr. Tamlyn had an apprentice, a young fellow named Dockett, but he could not be trusted with the physic department yet, as he was apt to serve out calomel powder for camomile flowers. Of the three poor parish patients, waiting for their medicine, two sat and one stood, as there was not a third chair. The doctor spoke very kindly to them about their ailments; he always did that; but he did not seem well himself, and often put his hand to his throat and chest.

The physic and the parish patients done with, he went into the other room, and threw himself into the easy-chair. “I wonder what’s the matter with me?” he said to himself: and then he got up again, for Mr. Tamlyn was coming in. He was a short man with a grey face, and iron grey hair.

“Arnold,” said he, “I wish you’d take my round this afternoon. There are only three or four people who need be seen, and the carriage is at the door.”

“Is Bertie worse than usual?” asked Arnold; who knew that every impediment in Mr. Tamlyn’s way was caused by Bertie.

“He is in a great deal of pain. I really don’t care to leave him.”

“Oh, I’ll go with pleasure,” replied Arnold, passing into the surgery to get his hat.

Mr. Tamlyn walked with him across the flagged court to the gate, talking of the sick people he was going to see. Arnold got into the brougham and was driven away. When he returned, Mr. Tamlyn was upstairs in Bertie’s sitting-room. Arnold went there.

“Anything more come in?” he asked. “Or can the brougham be put up?”

“Dear me, yes; here’s a note from Mrs. Stephenson,” said Mr. Tamlyn, replying to the first question. And he spoke testily: for Mrs. Stephenson was a lady of seventy, who always insisted on his own attendance, objecting to Dr. Knox on the score of his youth. “Well, you must go for once, Arnold. If she grumbles, tell her I was out.”

On a sofa in the room lay Albert Tamlyn; a lad of sixteen with a fretful countenance and rumpled hair. Miss Tamlyn, a pleasant-looking lady of thirty-five, sat by the sofa at work. Arnold Knox went up to the boy, speaking with the utmost gentleness.

“Bertie, my boy, I am sorry you are in pain to-day.”

“Who said I was in pain?” retorted Bertie, ungraciously, his voice as squeaky as a penny trumpet.

“Why, Bertie, you know you are in great pain: it was I who told Dr. Knox so,” interposed the father.

“Then you had no business to tell him so,” shrieked Bertie,with a hideous grin of resentment. “What is it to him?—or to you?—or to anybody?”

“Oh, Bertie, Bertie!” whispered Miss Tamlyn. “Oh, my boy, you should not give way like this.”

“You just give your tongue a holiday, Aunt Bessy,” fired Bertie. “I can’t be bothered by you all in this way.”

Dr. Knox, looking down at him, saw something wrong in the position he was lying in. He stooped, lifted him quietly in his strong arms, and altered it.

“There, Bertie, you will be better now.”

“No, I’m not better, and why d’you interfere?” retorted Bertie in his temper, and burst out crying. It was weary work, waiting on that lad; the house had a daily benefit of it. He had always been given way to: his whims were studied, his tempers went unreproved, and no patience was taught him.

Dr. Knox drove to Mrs. Stephenson’s. He dismissed the carriage when he came out; for he had some patients to see on his own score amongst the poor, and went on to them. They were at tea at Mr. Tamlyn’s when he got back. He looked very ill, and sat down at once.

“Are you tired, Arnold?” asked the surgeon.

“Not very; but I feel out of sorts. My throat is rather painful.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Not much, I dare say. A little ulcerated perhaps.”

“I’ll have a look at it presently. Bessy, give Dr. Knox a cup of tea.”

“Thank you, I shall be glad of it,” interposed the doctor. It was not often he took a meal in the house, not liking to intrude on them. When he went up this evening he had thought tea was over.

“We are later than usual,” said Miss Tamlyn, in answer to some remark he made. “Bertie dropped asleep.”

Bertie was awake, and eating relays of bread-and-butter as he lay, speaking to no one. The handsome sitting-rooms downstairs were nearly deserted: Mr. Tamlyn could not bear even to take his meals away from Bertie.

It was growing dusk when Dr. Knox went home. Mr. Tamlyn told him to take a cooling draught and to go to bed early. Mrs. Knox was out for the evening. Janet Carey sat at the old piano in the schoolroom, singing songs to the children to keep them quiet. They were crowding round her, and no one saw him enter the room.

Janet happened to be singing the very song she sang later to us that night at Miss Deveen’s—“Blow, blow, thou wintry wind.” Although she had now been at Rose Villa nearly a twelvemonth, for early summer had come round again, Dr. Knox had never heard her sing. Mrs. Knox hated singing altogether, and especially despised Janet’s: it was only when Janet was alone with the children that she ventured on it, hoping to keep them still. Arnold Knox sat in utter silence; entranced; just as we were at Miss Deveen’s.

“You sing ‘I’ve been roaming,’ now,” called out Dicky, before the song was well over.

“No, not that thing,” dissented Mina. “Sing ‘Pray, Goody,’ Janet.” They had long since called her by her Christian name.

The whole five (the other three taking sides), not being able to agree, plunged at once into a hot dispute. Janet in vain tried to make peace by saying she would sing both songs, one after the other: they did not listen to her. In the midst of the noise, Sally looked in to say James had caught a magpie; and the lot scampered off.

Janet Carey heaved a sad sigh, and passed her hand over her weary brow. She had had a tiring day: there were times when she thought her duties would get beyond her. Rising to follow the rebellious flock, she caught sight of Dr. Knox, seated back in the wide old cane chair.

“Oh! I—I beg your pardon. I had no idea any one was here.”

He came forward smiling; Janet had sat down again in her surprise.

“And though I am here? Why should you beg my pardon, Miss Carey?”

“For singing before you. I did not know—I am very sorry.”

“Perhaps you fancy I don’t like singing?”

“Mine is such poor singing, sir. And the songs are so old. I can’t play: I often only play to them with one hand.”

“The singing is so poor—and the songs are so old, that I was going to ask of you—to beg of you—to sing one of them again for me.”

She stood glancing up at him with her nice eyes, as shy as could be, uncertain whether he was mocking her.

“Do you know, Miss Carey, that I never ask a young lady for a song now. I don’t care to hear the new songs, they are so poor and frivolous: the old ones are worth a king’s ransom.Won’t you oblige me?”

“What shall I sing?”

“The one you have just sung. ‘Blow, blow, thou wintry wind.’”

He drew a chair close, and listened; and seemed lost in thought when it was over. Janet could not conveniently get up without pushing the stool against him, and so sat in silence.

“My mother used to sing that song,” he said, looking up.“I can recall her every note as well as though I had heard her yesterday. ‘As friends remembering not’! Ay: it’s a harsh world—and it grows more harsh and selfish day by day. I don’t think it treats you any too well, Miss Carey.”

“Me, sir?”

“Who remembers you?”

“Not many people. But I have never had any friends to speak of.”

“Will you give me another song? The one I heard Mina ask you for—‘Pray, Goody.’ My mother used to sing that also.”

“I don’t know whether I must stay. The children will be getting into mischief.”

“Never mind the children. I’ll take the responsibility.”

Janet sang the song. Before it was finished the flock came in again. Dicky had tried to pull the magpie’s feathers out, so James had let it fly.

After this evening, it somehow happened that Dr. Knox often came home early, although his throat was well again. He liked to make Miss Carey sing; and to talk to her; and to linger in the garden with her and the children in the twilight. Mrs. Knox was rarely at home, and had no idea how sociable her step-son was becoming. Lefford and its neighbourhood followedthe unfashionable custom of giving early soirées: tea at six, supper at nine, at home by eleven. James used to go for his mistress; on dark nights he took a lighted lantern. Mrs. Knox would arrive at home, her gown well pinned up, and innocent of any treasonable lingerings out-of-doors or in. It was beyond Janet’s power to get Mina and Lotty to bed one minute before they chose to go: though her orders from Mrs. Knox on the point were strict. As soon as their mother’s step was heard they would make a rush for the stairs. Janet had to follow them, as that formed part of her duty: and by the time Mrs. Knox was indoors, the rooms were free, and Arnold was shut up in his study with his medical books and a skeleton.

For any treason that met the eye or the ear, Mrs. Knox might have assisted at all the interviews. The children might have repeated every word said to one another by the doctor and Janet, and welcome. The talk was all legitimate: of their own individual, ordinary interests, perhaps; of their lost parents; their past lives; the present daily doings; or, as the Vicar of Wakefield has it, of pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses. Dr. Knox never said such a thing to her as, miss, I am in love with you; Janet was the essence of respectful shyness, and called him sir.

One evening something or other caused one of the soirées to break up midway, and Mrs. Knox came home by twilight in her pink gauze gown. Instead of ringing at the front-door, she came round the garden to the lawn, knowing quite well the elder children were not gone to bed, and would probably be in the garden-room. Very softly went she, intending to surprise them. The moon shone full on the glass-doors.

The doors were shut. And she could see no children. Only Janet Carey sitting at the piano, and Dr. Knox sitting close by her, his eyes resting on her face, and an unmistakable look of—say friendship—in them. Mrs. Knox took in the whole scene by the light of the one candle standing on the table.

She let go the pink skirt and burst open the doors. Imagination is apt to conjure up skeletons of the future; a whole army of skeletons rushed into hers, any one of them ten times more ugly than that real skeleton in the doctor’s study. A vision of his marrying Janet and taking possession of the house, and wanting all his money for himself instead of paying the family bills with it, was the worst.

Before a great and real dread, passion has to be silent. Mrs. Knox felt that she should very much like to buffet both of them with hands and tongue: but policy restrained her.

“Where are the children?” she began, as snappish as a fox; but that was only usual.

Janet had turned round on the music-stool; her meek hands dropping on her lap, her face turning all the colours of the rainbow. Dr. Knox just sat back in his chair and carelessly hummed to himself the tune Janet had been singing.

“Mina and Lotty are at Mrs. Hampshire’s, ma’am,” answered Janet. “She came to fetch them just after you left, and said I might send in for them at half-past nine. The little ones are in bed.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Knox. “It’s rather early for you to be at home; is it not, Arnold?”

“Not particularly, I think. My time for coming home is always uncertain, you know.”

He rose, and went to his room as he spoke. Janet got out the basket of stockings; and Mrs. Knox sat buried in a brown study.

After this evening things grew bad for Miss Carey. Mrs. Knox watched. She noted her step-son’s manner to Janet, and saw that he liked her ever so much more than was expedient. What to do, or how to stop it, she did not know, and was at her wits’ end. To begin with, there was nothing to stop. Had she put together a whole week’s looks and words of Arnold’s, directed to Janet, she could not have squeezed one decent iota of complaint out of the whole. Neither dared she risk offending Arnold. What with the perpetual soirées out, and the general daily improvidence at home, Mrs. Knox was never in funds, and Arnold found oceans of household bills coming in to him. Tradesmen were beginning, as a rule now, to address their accounts to Dr. Knox. Arnold paid them; he was good-natured, and sensitively averse to complaining to his step-mother; but he thought it was hardly fair. What on earth she did with her income he could not imagine: rather than live in this chronic state of begging, she might have laid down the pony-carriage.

Not being able to attack the doctor, Mrs. Knox vented all her venom on Miss Carey. Janet was the dray horse of the family, and therefore could not be turned away: she was too useful to Mrs. Knox to be parted with. Real venom it was; and hard to be borne. Her work grew harder, and she was snubbed from morning till night. The children’s insolence to her was not reproved; Mina took to ordering her about. Weary and heart-sick grew she: her life was no better than Cinderella’s: the only ray of comfort in it being the rare snatches of intercourse with Dr. Knox. He was like a true friend to her, and ever kind. He might have been kinder had he known what sort of a life she really led. But Mrs. Knox was a diplomatist, and the young fry did not dare to worry people very much, or to call names before their big brother Arnold.

II

“Has Dr. Knox come in, Mr. Dockett?”

Mr. Dockett, lounging over the counter to tease the dog, brought himself straight with a jerk, and faced his master, Mr. Tamlyn.

“Not yet, sir.”

“When he comes in, ask him if he’ll be so kind as step to me in the dining-room.”

Mr. Tamlyn shut the surgery-door, and the apprentice whistled to the dog, which had made its escape. Presently Dr. Knox came across the court-yard and received the message.

“Mr. Tamlyn wants you, sir, please. He is in the dining-room.”

“Have you nothing to do, Dockett? Just set on and clean those scales.”

The dining-room looked out on the garden and on the playing fountain. It was one of the prettiest rooms in Lefford; with white-and-gold papered walls, and mirrors, and a new carpet. Mr. Tamlyn liked to have things nice at home, and screwed the money out of the capital put by for Bertie. He sat at the table before some account-books.

“Sit down, Arnold,” he said, taking off his spectacles. “Ihave some news for you: I hope it won’t put you out too much.”

It did put Dr. Knox out very considerably, and it surprised him even more. For some time past now he had been cherishing a private expectation that Mr. Tamlyn would be taking him into partnership, giving him probably a small share only at first. Of all things it seemed the most likely to Dr. Knox: and, wanting in self-assertion though he was, it seemed to him that it would be a right thing to do. Mr. Tamlyn had no one to succeed him: and all the best part of his practice was formerly Mr. Knox’s. Had Arnold only been a little older when his father died, he should have succeeded to it himself: there would have been little chance of Mr. Tamlyn’s getting any of it. In justice, then, if Mr. Tamlyn now, or later, took a partner at all, it ought to be Arnold. But for looking forward to this, Dr. Knox had never stayed on all this time at the paltry salary paid him, and worked himself nearly to a skeleton. As old Tamlyn talked, he listened as one in a dream, and he learnt that his own day-dream was over.

Old Tamlyn was about to take a partner: some gentleman from London, a Mr. Shuttleworth. Mr. Shuttleworth was seeking a country practice, and would bring in three thousand pounds. Arnold’s services would only be required to the end of the year, as Mr. Shuttleworth would join on the first of January.

“There won’t be room for three of us, Arnold—and Dockett will be coming on,” said Mr. Tamlyn. “Besides, at your age, and with your talents, you ought to be doing something better for yourself. Don’t you see that you ought?”

“I have seen it for some time. But—the truth is,” added Arnold, “though I hardly like to own to it now, I have been cherishing a hope of this kind for myself. I thought, Mr. Tamlyn, you might some time offer it to me.”

“And so I would, Arnold, and there’s no one I should like to take as partner half so well as yourself, but you have not the necessary funds,” said the surgeon with eagerness. “I see what you are thinking, Arnold—that I might have taken you without premium: but I must think of my poor boy. Shuttleworth brings in three thousand: I would have taken you with two.”

“I could not bring in two hundred, let alone two thousand,”said Dr. Knox.

“There’s where it is. To tell you the truth, Arnold, I am getting tired of work; don’t seem so much up to it as I was. Whoever comes in will have to do more even than you have done, and of course will expect to take at least a half-share of the yearly profits. I should not put by much then: I could not alter my style of living, you know, or put down the carriages and horses, or anything of that sort: and I must save for poor Bertie. A sum of three thousand pounds means three thousand to me.”

“Are the arrangements fully made?” asked Dr. Knox.

“Yes. Mr. Shuttleworth came down to Lefford yesterday, and has been going into the books with me this morning. And, by the way, Arnold, I hope you will meet him here at dinner to-night. I should not a bit wonder, either, but he might tell you of some opening for yourself: he seems to know most of the chief medical men in London. He is selling a good practice of his own. It is his health that obliges him to come to the country.”

“I hope you will suit one another,” said Dr. Knox; for he knew that it was not every one who could get on with fidgety old Tamlyn.

“We are to give it a six months’ trial,” said Tamlyn. “He would not bind himself without that. At the end of the six months, if both parties are not satisfied, we cancel the agreement: he withdraws his money, and I am at liberty to take a fresh partner. For that half-year’s services he will receive his half-share of profits: which of course is only fair. You see I tell you all, Arnold.”

Dr. Knox dined with them, and found the new man a very pleasant fellow, but quite as old as Tamlyn. He could not help wondering how he would relish the parish work, and said so in a whisper to Mr. Tamlyn while Shuttleworth was talking to Bertie.

“Oh, he thinks it will be exercise for him,” replied the surgeon. “And Dockett will be coming on, you know.”

It was a dark night, the beginning of November, wet and splashy. Mrs. Knox had a soirée at Rose Villa; and when thedoctor reached home he met the company coming forth with cloaks and lanterns and clogs.

“Oh, it’s you, Arnold, is it!” cried Mrs. Knox. “Could you not have come home for my evening? Two of the whist-tables had to play dummy: we had some disappointments.”

“I stayed to dine with Mr. Tamlyn,” said Arnold.

Sitting together over the fire, he and she alone, Mrs. Knox asked him whether he would not give her a hundred pounds a-year for his board, instead of seventy-five. Which was uncommonly cool, considering what he paid for her besides in housekeeping bills. Upon which, Arnold told her he should not be with her beyond the close of the year: he was going to leave Lefford. For a minute, it struck her dumb.

“Good Heavens, Arnold, how am I to keep the house on without your help? I must say you have no consideration. Leave Lefford!”

“Mr. Tamlyn has given me notice,” replied Arnold. “He is taking a partner.”

“But—I just ask you—how am I to pay my way?”

“It seems to me that your income is quite sufficient for that, mother. If not—perhaps—if I may suggest it—you might put down the pony-chaise.”

Mrs. Knox shrieked out that he was a cruel man. Arnold, who never cared to stand scenes, lighted his candle and went up to bed.

Shuttleworth had taken rather a fancy to Dr. Knox; perhaps he remembered, too, that he was turning him adrift. Anyway, he bestirred himself, and got him appointed to a medical post in London, where Arnold would receive two hundred a-year, and his board.

“I presume you know that I am about to run away, Miss Carey,” said Dr. Knox, hastening up to join her one Sunday evening when they were coming out of church at Lefford.

“As if every one did not know that!” cried Mina. “Where’s mamma, Arnold? and Lotty?”

“They are behind, talking to the Parkers.”

The Parkers were great friends of Mina’s, so she ran back. The doctor and Janet walked slowly on.

“You will be glad to leave, sir,” said Janet, in her humblefashion. “Things have not been very comfortable for you at home—and I hear you are taking a much better post.”

“I shall be sorry to leave for one thing—that is, because I fear things may be more uncomfortable for you,” he spoke out bravely. “What Rose Villa will be when all restraint is taken from the children, and with other undesirable things, I don’t like to imagine.”

“I shall do very well,” said Janet, meekly.

“I wonder you put up with it,” he exclaimed. “You might be ten thousand times better and happier elsewhere.”

“But I fear to change: I have no one to recommend me or to look out for me, you know.”

“There’s that lady I’ve heard you speak of—your aunt, Miss Cattledon.”

“I could not think of troubling her. My mother’s family do not care to take much notice of me. They thought my father was not my mother’s equal in point of family, and when she married him, they turned her off, as it were. No, sir, I have only myself to look to.”

“A great many of us are in the same case,” he said.“Myself, for instance. I have been indulging I don’t know what day-dreams for some time past: one of them that Mr. Tamlyn would give me a share in his practice: and—and there were others to follow in due course. Vain dreams all, and knocked on the head now.”

“You will be sure to get on,” said Janet.

“Do you think so?” he asked very softly, looking down into Janet’s nice eyes by the gaslight in the road.

“At least, I hope you will.”

“Well, I shall try for it.”

“Arnold!—come back, Arnold; I want you to give me your arm up the hill,” called out Mrs. Knox.

Dr. Knox had to enter on his new situation at quarter-day, the twenty-fifth of December; so he went up to London on Christmas-Eve. Which was no end of a blow to old Tamlyn, as it left all the work on his own shoulders for a week.

III

From two to three months passed on. One windy March day, Mrs. Knox sat alone in the garden-room, worrying over her money matters. The table, drawn near the fire, was strewed with bills and tradesmen’s books; the sun shone on the closed glass-doors.

Mrs. Knox’s affairs had been getting into an extremely hopeless condition. It seemed, by the accumulation of present debts, that Arnold’s money must have paid for everything. Her own income, which came in quarterly, appeared to dwindle away, she knew not how or where. A piteous appeal had gone up a week ago to Arnold, saying she should be in prison unless he assisted her, for the creditors were threatening to take steps. Arnold’s answer, delivered this morning, was a fifty-pound note enclosed in a very plain letter. It had inconvenienced him to send the money, he said, and he begged her fully to understand that it was the last he should ever send.

So there sat Mrs. Knox before the table in an old dressing-gown, and her black hair more dishevelled than a mop. The bills, oceans of them, and the fifty-pound note lay in a heap together. Master Dicky had been cutting animals out of a picture-book, leaving the scraps on the cloth and the old carpet. Lotty had distributed there a few sets of dolls’ clothes. Gerty had been tearing up a newspaper for a kite-tail. The fifty pounds would pay about a third of the debts, and Mrs. Knox was trying to apportion a sum to each of them accordingly.

It bothered her finely, for she was no accountant. She could manage to add up without making very many mistakes; but when it came to subtraction, her brain went into a hopeless maze. Janet might have done it, but Mrs. Knox was furious with Janet and would not ask her. Ill-treated, over-worked, Janet had plucked up courage to give notice, and was looking out for a situation in Lefford. Just now, Janet was in the kitchen, ironing Dick’s frilled collars.

“Take fifty-three from fourteen, and how much does remain?”groaned Mrs. Knox over the shillings. At that moment therewas a sound of carriage-wheels, and a tremendous ring at the door. Sally darted in.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s my Lady Jenkins! I knew her carriage at a distance. It have got red wheels!”

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Mrs. Knox, starting up. “Don’t open the door yet, Sally: let me get upstairs first. Her ladyship’s come to take me a drive, I suppose. Go and call Miss Carey—or stay, I’ll go to her.”

Mrs. Knox opened one of the glass-doors, and whisked round to the kitchen. She bade Janet leave the ironing and go to do her books and bills: hastily explaining that she wanted to know how far fifty pounds would go towards paying a fair proportion off each debt. Janet was to make it all out in figures.

“Be sure and take care of the note—I’ve left it somewhere,”called back Mrs. Knox as she escaped to the stairs in hurry and confusion; for my Lady Jenkins’s footman was working both bell and knocker alarmingly.

Janet only half comprehended. She went round to the garden-room, shut the glass-doors, and began upon the bills and books. But first of all, she looked out for the letters that were lying about, never supposing that the special charge had reference to anything else: at least, she said so afterwards: and put them inside Mrs. Knox’s desk. From first to last, then and later, Janet Carey maintained that she did not see any bank-note.

Mrs. Knox dressed herself with Sally’s help, and went out with my Lady Jenkins—the ex-Mayor of Lefford’s wife. The bills and the calculations made a long job, and Janet’s mind was buried in it, when a startling disturbance suddenly arose in the garden: Dicky had climbed into the mulberry-tree and fallen out of it. The girls came, dashing open the glass-doors, saying he was dead. Janet ran out, herself nearly frightened to death.

Very true. If Dicky was not dead, he looked like it. He lay white and cold under the tree, blood trickling down his face. James galloped off for Mr. Tamlyn. The two maids and Janet carried Dicky into the kitchen, and put him on the ironing-board, with his head on an old cushion. That revived him; and when Mr. Shuttleworth arrived, for Tamlyn was out, Dicky wasdemanding bread-and-treacle. Shuttleworth put some diachylon plaster on his head, ordered him to bed, and told him not to get into trees again.

Their fears relieved, the maids had time to remember common affairs. Sally found all the sitting-room fires out, and hastened to light them. As soon as Janet could leave Dicky, who had persisted in going to bed in his boots, she went back to the accounts. Mrs. Knox came in before they were done. She blew up Janet for not being quicker, and when she had recovered the shock of Dicky’s accident, she blew her up for that.

“Where’s the note?” she snapped.

“What note, ma’am?” asked Janet.

“The bank-note. The bank-note for fifty pounds that I told you to take care of.”

“I have not seen any bank-note,” said Janet.

Well, that began the trouble. The bank-note was searched for, and there was neither sign nor symptom of it to be found. Mrs. Knox accused Janet Carey of stealing it, and called in a policeman. Mrs. Knox made her tale good to the man, representing Janet as a very black girl indeed; but the man said he could not take her into custody unless Mrs. Knox would charge her formally with the theft.

And that, Mrs. Knox hesitated to do. She told the policeman she would take until the morrow to consider of it. The whole of that evening, the whole of the night, the whole of the next morning till midday, Janet spent searching the garden-room. At midday the policeman appeared again, and Janet went into a sort of fit.

When Mr. Shuttleworth was sent for to her, he said it was caused by fright, and that she had received a shock to the nervous system. For some days she was delirious, on and off; and when she could escape Sally’s notice, who waited on her, they’d find her down in the garden-room, searching for the note, just as we afterwards saw her searching for it in her sleep at Miss Deveen’s. It chanced that the two rooms resembled each other remarkably: in their situation in the houses, in their shape and size and building arrangements, and in their opening by glass-doors to the garden. Janet subsided into a sort of wasting fever; and Mrs. Knox thought it time to send for Miss Cattledon. Thecriminal proceedings might wait, she told Janet: like the heartless woman that she was! Not but that the loss of the money had thrown her flat on her beam-ends.

Miss Cattledon came. Janet solemnly declared, not only that she had not the bank-note, but that she had never seen the note: never at all. Mrs. Knox said no one but Janet could have taken it, and but for her illness, she would be already in prison. Miss Cattledon told Mrs. Knox she ought to be ashamed of herself for suspecting Janet Carey, and took Janet off by train to Miss Deveen’s. Janet arrived there in a shivering-fit, fully persuaded that the Lefford policemen were following her by the orders of Mrs. Knox.

And for the result of it all we must go on to the next paper.

DR. KNOX.

“MY DEAR ARNOLD,

“Come down to Lefford without delay if you can: I want to see you particularly. I am in a peck of trouble.

“Ever your friend,

“RICHARD TAMLYN.”

The above letter reached Dr. Knox in London one morning in April. He made it right with the authorities to whom he was subject, and reached Lefford the same afternoon.

Leaving his bag at the station, he went straight to Mr. Tamlyn’s house; every other person he met halting to shake hands with him. Entering the iron gates, he looked up at the windows, but saw no one. The sun shone on the pillared portico, the drawing-room blinds beside it were down. Dr. Knox crossed the flagged courtyard, and passed off to enter by the route most familiar to him, the surgery, trodden by him so often in the days not long gone by. Mr. Dockett stood behind the counter, compounding medicines, with his coat-cuffs and wristbands turned up.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed the young gentleman, dropping a bottle in his astonishment as he stared at Dr. Knox. “You are about the last person I should have expected to see, sir.”

By which remark the doctor found that Mr. Tamlyn had not taken his apprentice into his confidence. “Are you all well here?” he asked, shaking hands.

“All as jolly as circumstances will let us be,” said Mr. Dockett. “Young Bertie has taken a turn for the worse.”

“Has he? I am sorry to hear that. Is Mr. Tamlyn at home? If so, I’ll in and see him.”

“Oh, he’s at home,” was the answer. “He has hardly stirredout-of-doors for a week, and Shuttleworth says he’s done to death with the work.”

Going in as readily as though he had not left the house for a day, Dr. Knox found Mr. Tamlyn in the dining-room: the pretty room that looked to the garden and the fountain. He was sitting by the fire, his hand rumpling his grey hair: a sure sign that he was in some bother or tribulation. In the not quite four months that had passed since Dr. Knox left him, he had changed considerably: his hair was greyer, his face thinner.

“Is it you, Arnold? I am glad. I thought you’d come if you could.”

Dr. Knox drew a chair near the fire, and sat down. “Your letter gave me concern,” he said. “And what do you mean by talking about a peck of trouble?”

“A peck of trouble!” echoed Mr. Tamlyn. “I might have said a bushel. I might have said a ton. There’s trouble on all sides, Arnold.”

“Can I help you out of it in any way?”

“With some of it, I hope you can: it’s why I sent for you. But not with all: not with the worst. Bertie’s dying, Arnold.”

“I hope not!”

“As truly as that we are here talking to one another, I believe him to be literally dying,” repeated the surgeon, solemnly, his eyes filling and his voice quivering with pain. “He has dropped asleep, and Bessy sent me out of the room: my sighs wake him, she says. I can’t help sighing, Arnold: and sometimes the sigh ends with a groan, and I can’t help that.”

Dr. Knox didn’t see his way clear to making much answer just here.

“I’ve detected the change in him for a month past; in my inward heart I felt sure he could not live. Do you know what your father used to say, Arnold? He always said that if Bertie lived over his sixteenth or seventeenth year, he’d do; but the battle would be just about that time. Heaven knows, I attached no importance to the opinion: I have hardly thought of it: but he was right, you see. Bertie would be seventeen next July, if he were to live.”

“I’m sure I am very grieved to hear this—and to see your sorrow,” spoke Arnold.

“He is so changed!” resumed Mr. Tamlyn, in a low voice.“You remember how irritable he was, poor fellow?—well, all that has gone, and he is like an angel. So afraid of giving trouble; so humble and considerate to every one! It was this change that first alarmed me.”

“When did it come on?”

“Oh, weeks ago. Long before there was much change for the worse to be seen in him. Only this morning he held my hand, poor lad, and—and——” Mr. Tamlyn faltered, coughed, and then went on again more bravely. “He held my hand between his, Arnold, and said he thought God had forgiven him, and how happy it would all be when we met in heaven. For a long while now not a day has passed but he has asked us to forgive him for his wicked tempers—that’s his word for it, wicked—the servants, and all.”

“Is he in much pain?”

“Not much now. He has been in a great deal at times. But it made no difference, pain or no pain, to his sweetness of temper. He will lie resigned and quiet, the drops pouring down his face with the agony, never an impatient word escaping him. One day I heard him tell Bessy that angels were around him, helping him to bear it. We may be sure, Arnold, when so extraordinary a change as that takes place in the temperament, the close of life is not far off.”

“Very true—as an ordinary rule,” acquiesced Dr. Knox.“And now, how can I help you in this trouble?”

“In this trouble?—not at all,” returned Mr. Tamlyn, rousing himself, and speaking energetically, as if he meant to put the thought behind him. “This trouble no earthly being can aid me in, Arnold; and I don’t think there’s any one but yourself I’d speak to of it: it lies too deep, you see; it wrings the soul. I could die of this trouble: I only fret at the other.”

“And what is the other?”

“Shuttleworth won’t stay.”

“Won’t he!”

“Shuttleworth says the kind of practice is not what he has been accustomed to, and the work’s too hard, and he does not care how soon he leaves it. And yet Dockett has come on surprisingly, and takes his share now. The fact is, Arnold, Shuttleworth is just as lazy as he can hang together: he’d like to treat a dozen rose-water patients a-day, and go through life easily. My belief is, he means to do it.”

“But that will scarcely bring grist to his mill, will it?” cried Dr. Knox.

“His mill doesn’t want grist; there’s the worst of it,” said Tamlyn. “The man was not badly off when he came here: but since then his only brother must go and die, and Shuttleworth has come into all his money. A thousand a-year, if it’s a penny.”

“Then, I certainly don’t wonder at his wanting to give up the practice,” returned the doctor, with a smile.

“That’s not all,” grumbled old Tamlyn. “He wants to take away Bessy.”

“To take away Bessy!”

“The two have determined to make themselves into one, I believe. Bessy only hesitated because of leaving poor Bertie. That impediment will not be in her way long.”

He sighed as he spoke. Dr. Knox did not yet see what he was wanted for: and asked again.

“I’ve been leading up to it,” said Mr. Tamlyn. “You must come back to me, Arnold.”

“On the same terms as before?” inquired the doctor, after a pause.

“Nonsense. You’d say ‘No,’ off-hand, if I proposed them. In Shuttleworth’s place.”

“Of course, Mr. Tamlyn, I could not come—I would not come unless it were made worth my while. If it were, I should like it of all things.”

“Yes, just so; that’s what I mean. Don’t you like your post in London?”

“I like it very well, indeed. And I have had no doubt that it will lead to something better. But, if I saw a fair prospect before me here, I should prefer to come back to Lefford.”

“That shall be made fair enough. Things have changed with me, Arnold: and I shouldn’t wonder but you will some time, perhaps not very far distant, have all my practice in your own hands. I feel to be getting old: spirits and health are alike broken.”

“Nay, not old yet, Mr. Tamlyn. You may wait a good twenty years for that.”

“Well, well, we’ll talk further at another interview. My mind’s at rest now, and that’s a great thing. If you had refused, Arnold, I should have sold my practice for an old song, and gone clean away: I never could have stood being associated with another stranger. You are going up home, I conclude. Will you come in this evening?”

“Very well,” said Dr. Knox, rising. “Can I go up and see Bertie?”

“Not now; I’d not have him awakened for the world; and I assure you the turning of a straw seems to do it. You shall see him this evening: he is always awake and restless then.”

Calling for his bag at the station, Dr. Knox went on to Rose Villa. They were at tea. The children rose up with a shout: his step-mother looked as though she could not believe her eyesight.

“Why, Arnold! Have you come home to stay?”

“Only for a day or two,” he answered. “I thought I should surprise you, but I had not time to write.”

Shaking hands with her, kissing the children, he turned to some one else, who was seated at the tea-table and had not stirred. His hand was already out, when she turned her head, and he drew back his hand and himself together.

“Miss Mack, my new governess,” spoke Mrs. Knox.

“I beg your pardon,” said Dr. Knox to Miss Mack, who turned out to be a young person in green, with stout legs and slippers down at heel. “I thought it was Miss Carey,” he added to his step-mother. “Where is Miss Carey?”

Which of the company, Miss Mack excepted, talked the fastest, and which the loudest, could not have been decided though a thousand-pound wager rested on it. It was a dreadful tale to tell. Janet Carey had turned out to be a thief; Janet Carey had gone out of her mind nearly with fever and fear when she knew she was to be taken to prison and tried: tried for stealing the money; and Janet’s aunt had come down and carried her away out of the reach of the policemen. Dr. Knox gazed and listened, and felt his blood turning cold with righteous horror.

“Be silent,” he sternly said. “There must have been some strange mistake. Miss Carey was good and upright as the day.”

“She stole my fifty pounds,” said Mrs. Knox.

“What?”

“She stole my fifty-pound note. It was the one you sent me, Arnold.”

His face reddened a little. “That note? Well, I do not know the circumstances that led you to accuse Miss Carey; but I know they were mistaken ones. I will answer for Janet Carey with my life.”

“She took that note; it could not have gone in any other manner,” steadily persisted Mrs. Knox. “You’ll say so yourself, Arnold, when you know all. The commotion it has caused in the place, and the worry it has caused me are beyond everything. Every day some tradesman or other comes here to ask whether the money has been replaced—for of course they know I can’t pay them under such a loss, until it is; and I must say they have behaved very well. I never liked Janet Carey. Deceitful minx!”

With so many talking together, Dr. Knox did not gather a very clear account of the details. Mrs. Knox mixed up surmises with facts in a manner to render the whole incomprehensible. He said no more then. Later, Mrs. Knox saw that he was preparing to go out. She resented it.

“I think, Arnold, you might have passed this one evening at home: I want to have a talk with you about money matters. What I am to do is more than I know, unless Janet Carey or her friends can be made to return the money.”

“I am going down to Tamlyn’s, to see Bertie.”

Dr. Knox let himself out at the street-door, and was walking down the garden-path, when he found somebody come flying past. It was Sally the housemaid, on her way to open the gate for him. Such an act of attention was unusual and quite unnecessary; the doctor thanked her, but told her she need not have taken the trouble.

“I—I thought I’d like to ask you, sir, how that—that poor Miss Carey is,” said Sally, in a whisper, as she held the gate back, and her breath was so short as to hinder her words. “It was London she was took to, sir; and, as you live in the same town, I’ve wondered whether you might not have come across her.”

“London is a large place,” observed Dr. Knox. “I did not even know Miss Carey was there.”

“It was a dreadful thing, sir, poor young lady. Everybody so harsh, too, over it. And I—I—I can’t believe but she was innocent.”

“It is simply an insult on Miss Carey to suppose otherwise,”said Dr. Knox. “Are you well, Sally? What’s the matter with your breath?”

“Oh, it’s nothing but a stitch that takes me, thank you, sir,”returned Sally, as she shut the gate after him and flew back again.

But Dr. Knox saw it was no “stitch” that had stopped Sally’s breath and checked her utterance, but genuine agitation. It set him thinking.

No longer any sitting up for poor Bertie Tamlyn in this world! It was about eight o’clock when Dr. Knox entered the sick-chamber. Bertie lay in bed; his arms thrown outside the counterpane beside him, as though they were too warm. The fire gave out its heat; two lamps were burning, one on the mantelpiece, one on the drawers at the far end of the room. Bertie had always liked a great deal of light, and he liked it still. Miss Tamlyn met Dr. Knox at the door, and silently shook hands with him.

Bertie’s wide-open eyes turned to look, and the doctor approached the bed; but he halted for one imperceptible moment in his course. When Mr. Tamlyn had said Bertie was dying, Arnold Knox had assumed it to mean, not that he was actually dying at that present time, but that he would not recover! But as he gazed at Bertie now in the bright light, he saw something in the face that his experienced medical eye could not mistake.

He took the wasted, fevered hand in his, and laid his soothing fingers on the damp brow. Miss Tamlyn went away for a minute’s respite from the sick-room.

“Bertie, my boy!”

“Why didn’t you come before, Arnold?” was the low, weakanswer; and the breath was laboured and the voice down nowhere. “I have wanted you. Aunt Bessy would not write; and papa thought you would not care to come down from London, just for me.”

“But I would, Bertie—had I known you were as ill as this.”

Bertie’s hands were restless. The white quilt had knots in it as big as peas, and he was picking at them. Dr. Knox sat down by the low bed.

“Do you think I am dying?” suddenly asked Bertie.

It took the doctor by surprise. One does not always know how to answer such home questions.

“I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve seen you by daylight, Bertie. Are you in any pain?”

“Not a bit now: that’s gone. But I’m weak, and I can’t stir about in bed, and—and—they all look at me so. This morning papa and Shuttleworth brought in Dr. Green. Any way, you must know that I shall not get to be as well as I used to be.”

“What with one ailment and another, with care, and pain, and sorrow, and wrong, it seems to me, Bertie, that very few of us are well for long together. There’s always something in this world: it is only when we go to the next that we can hope for rest and peace.”

Bertie lifted his restless hands and caught one of Dr. Knox’s between them. He had a yearning, imploring look that quite pained the doctor.

“I want you to forgive me, Arnold,” he said, the tears running down. “When I remember how wicked I was, my heart just faints with shame. Calling all of you hideous names!—returning bitter words for kind ones. When we are going to die the past comes back to us. Such a little while it seems to have been now, Arnold! Why, if I had endured ten times as much pain, it would be over now. You were all so gentle and patient with me, and I never cared what trouble I gave, or what ill words I returned. And now the time is gone! Arnold, I want you to forgive me.”

“My dear boy, there’s nothing to forgive. If you think there is, why then I forgive you with all my heart.”

“Will God ever forgive me, do you think?”

“Oh, my boy, yes,” said the doctor, in a husky tone. “Ifwe, poor sinful mortals, can forgive one another, how much more readily will He forgive—the good Father in heaven of us all!”

Bertie sighed. “It would have been so easy for me to have tried for a little patience! Instead of that, I took pleasure in being cross and obstinate and wicked! If the time would but come over again! Arnold, do you think we shall be able to do one another good in the next world?—or will the opportunity be lost with this?”

“Ah, Bertie, I cannot tell,” said Dr. Knox. “Sometimes I think that just because so few of us make use of our opportunities here, God will, perhaps, give us a chance once again. I have not been at very many death-beds yet, but of some of those the recollection of opportunities wasted has made the chief sting. It is only when life is closing that we see what we might have been, what we might have done.”

“Perhaps He’ll remember what my pain has been, Arnold, and how hard it was to bear. I was not like other boys. They can run, and climb, and leap, and ride on horseback, and do anything. When I’ve gone out, it has been in a hand-carriage, you know; and I’ve had to lie and lie on the sofa, and just look up at the blue sky, or on the street that tired me so: or else in bed, where it was worse, and always hot. I hope He will recollect how hard it was for me.”

“He saw how hard it was for you at the time, Bertie; saw it always.”

“And Jesus Christ forgave all who went to Him, you know, Arnold; every one; just for the asking.”

“Why, yes, of course He did. As He does now.”

Mr. Tamlyn came into the room presently: he had been out to a patient. Seeing that Bertie was half asleep, he and Dr. Knox stood talking together on the hearthrug.

“What’s that?” cried the surgeon, suddenly catching sight of the movement of the restless fingers picking at the counterpane.

Dr. Knox did not answer.

“A trick he always had,” said the surgeon, breaking the silence, and trying to make believe to cheat himself still. “The maids say he wears out all his quilts.”

Bertie opened his eyes. “Is that you, papa? Is tea over?”

“Why, yes, my boy; two or three hours ago,” said the father, going forward. “Why? Do you wish for some tea?”

“Oh, I—I thought Arnold would have liked some.”

He closed his eyes again directly. Dr. Knox took leave in silence, promising to be there again in the morning. As he was passing the dining-room downstairs, he saw Mr. Shuttleworth, who had just looked in. They shook hands, began to chat, and Dr. Knox sat down.

“I hear you do not like Lefford,” he said.

“I don’t dislike Lefford: it’s a pretty and healthy place,” was Mr. Shuttleworth’s answer. “What I dislike is my position in it as Tamlyn’s partner. The practice won’t do for me.”

“A doubt lay on my mind whether it would suit you when you came down to make the engagement,” said Dr. Knox.“Parish work is not to every one’s taste. And there’s a great deal of practice besides. But the returns from that must be good.”

“I wouldn’t stay in it if it were worth a million a-year,” cried Mr. Shuttleworth. “Dockett takes the parish; I make him; but he is not up to much yet, and of course I feel that I am responsible. As to the town practice, why, I assure you nearly all of it has lain on me. Tamlyn, poor fellow, can think of nothing but his boy.”

“He will not have him here long to think of, I fear.”

“Not very long; no. I hear, doctor, he is going to offer a partnership to you.”

“He has said something about it. I shall take it, if he does. Lefford is my native place, and I would rather live here than anywhere. Besides, I don’t mind work,” he added, with a smile.

“Ah, you are younger than I am. But I’d advise you, as I have advised Tamlyn, to give up the parish. For goodness’ sake do, Knox. Tamlyn says that at one time he had not much elsebut the parish, but it’s different now. Your father had all the better practice then.”

“Shall you set up elsewhere?”

“Not at present,” said Mr. Shuttleworth. “We—I—perhaps you have heard, though—that I and Bessy are going to make a match of it? We shall travel for a few months, or so, and then come home and pitch our tent in some pleasant sea-side place. If a little easy practice drops in to me there, well and good: if not, we can do without it. Stay and smoke a cigar with me?”

Arnold looked at his watch, and sat down again. He wanted to ask Mr. Shuttleworth about Miss Carey’s illness.

“The cause of her illness was the loss of that bank-note,”said the surgeon. “They accused her of stealing it, and wanted to give her into custody. A little more, and she’d have had brain-fever. She was a timid, inexperienced girl, and the fright gave her system a shock.”

“Miss Carey would no more steal a bank-note than you or I would steal one, Shuttleworth.”

“Not she. I told Mrs. Knox so: but she scoffed at me.”

“That Miss Carey is innocent as the day, that she is an upright, gentle, Christian girl, I will stake my life upon,” said Dr. Knox. “How the note can have gone is another matter.”

“Are you at all interested in finding it out?” questioned Mr. Shuttleworth.

“Certainly I am. Every one ought to be, I think.”

The surgeon took his cigar from his mouth. “I’ll tell you my opinion, if you care to know it,” he said. “The note was burnt.”

“Burnt!”

“Well, it is the most likely solution of the matter that I can come to. Either burnt, or else was blown away.”

“But why do you say this?” questioned Dr. Knox.

“It was a particularly windy day. The glass-doors of the room were left open while the house ran about in a fright, attending to the child, young Dick. A flimsy bit of bank-paper, lying on the table, would get blown about like a feather in a gale. Whether it got into the fire, caught by the current of the chimney, or whether it sailed out-of-doors and disappeared in the air, is a question I can’t undertake to solve. Rely upon it, Knox, it was one of the two: and I should bet upon the fire.”

It was just the clue Dr. Knox had been wishing for. But he did not think the whole fault lay with the wind: he had another idea.

Lefford had a shock in the morning. Bertie Tamlyn was dead. The news came to Dr. Knox in a note from Mr. Tamlyn, whichwas delivered whilst he was dressing. “You will stay for the funeral, Arnold,” were the concluding words. And as Dr. Knox wanted to be at home a little longer on his own account, he wrote to London to say that business was temporarily detaining him. He then went to see what he could do for Mr. Tamlyn, and got back to Rose Villa for dinner.

Watching for an opportunity—which did not occur until late in the afternoon—Dr. Knox startled the servants by walking into the kitchen, and sitting down. Mrs. Knox had gone off in the pony-chaise; the children were out with the new governess. The kitchen and the servants were alike smartened-up for the rest of the day. Eliza, the cook, was making a new pudding-cloth; Sally was ironing.

“I wish to ask you both a few questions,” said Dr. Knox, taking out his note-book and pencil. “It is not possible that Miss Carey can be allowed to lie under the disgraceful accusation that was brought against her, and I am about to try and discover what became of the bank-note. Mrs. Knox was not in the house at the time, and therefore cannot give me the details.”

Eliza, who had risen and stood, work in hand, simply stared at the doctor in surprise. Sally dropped her iron on the blanket.

“We didn’t take the note, sir,” said Eliza, after a pause.“We’d not do such a thing.”

“I’m sure I didn’t; I’d burn my hands off first,” broke in Sally, with a burst of tears.

“Of course you would not,” returned Dr. Knox in a pleasant tone. “The children would not. Mrs. Knox would not. But as the note undoubtedly disappeared, and without hands, we must try and discover where the mystery lies and how it went. I dare say you would like Miss Carey to be cleared.”

“Miss Carey was a downright nice young lady,” pronounced the cook. “Quite another sort from this one we’ve got now.”

“Well, give me all the particulars as correctly as you can remember,” said the doctor. “We may get some notion or other out of them.”

Eliza plunged into the narration. She was fond of talking. Sally stood over her ironing, sniffing and sighing. Dr. Knox listened.

“Mrs. Knox left the note on the table—which was muchstrewed with papers—when she went out with Lady Jenkins, and Miss Carey took her place at the accounts,” repeated Dr. Knox, summing up the profuse history in a few concise words.“While——”

“And Miss Carey declared, sir, that she never saw the note; never noticed it lying there at all,” came Eliza’s interruption.

“Yes, just so. While Miss Carey was at the table, the alarm came that Master Dick had fallen out of the tree, and she ran to him——”

“And a fine fright that fall put us into, sir! We thought he was dead. Jim went galloping off for the doctor, and me and Sally and Miss Carey stayed bathing his head on that there very ironing-board, a-trying to find out what the damage was.”

“And the children: where were they?”

“All round us here in the kitchen, sir, sobbing and staring.”

“Meanwhile the garden-room was deserted. No one went into it, as far as you know.”

“Nobody at all, sir. When Sally ran in to look at the fire, she found it had gone clean out. The doctor had been there then, and Master Richard was in bed. A fine pickle Sally found the room in, with the scraps of paper, and that, blown about the floor. The glass-doors was standing stark staring open to the wind.”

“And, I presume, you gathered up some of these scraps of paper, and lighted the fire with them, Sally?”

Dr. Knox did not appear to look at Sally as he spoke, but he saw and noted every movement. He saw that her hand shook so that she could scarcely hold the iron.

“Has it never struck you, Sally, that you might have put the bank-note into the grate with these scraps of paper, and burnt it?” he continued. “Innocently, of course. That is how I think the note must have disappeared. Had the wind taken it into the garden, it would most probably have been found.”

Sally flung her apron over her face and herself on to a chair, and burst into a howl. Eliza looked at her.

“If you think there is a probability that this was the case, Sally, you must say so,” continued Dr. Knox. “You will never be blamed, except for not having spoken.”

“’Twas only yesterday I asked Sally whether she didn’t thinkthis was the way it might have been,” said the cook in a low tone to Dr. Knox. “She have seemed so put out, sir, for a week past.”

“I vow to goodness that I never knew I did it,” sobbed Sally.“All the while the bother was about, and Miss Carey, poor young lady, was off her head, it never once struck me. What Eliza and me thought was, that some tramps must have come round the side of the house and got in at the open glass-doors, and stole it. The night after Miss Carey left with her aunt, I was thinking about her as I lay in bed, and wondering whether the mistress would send the police after her or not, when all of a sudden the thought flashed across me that it might have gone into the fire with the other pieces of paper. Oh mercy, I wish I was somewhere!”

“What became of the ashes out of the grate?—the cinders?”asked Dr. Knox.

“They’re all in the ash-place, sir, waiting till the garden’s ready for them,” sobbed Sally.

With as little delay as possible, Dr. Knox had the cinders carefully sifted and examined, when the traces of what had once undoubtedly been a bank-note were discovered. The greater portion of the note had been reduced to tinder, but a small part of it remained, enough to show what it had been, and—by singular good fortune—its number. It must have fallen out of the grate partly consumed, while the fire was lighting up, and been swept underneath by Sally with other remnants, where it had lain quietly until morning and been taken away with the ashes.

The traces gathered carefully into a small box and sealed up, Dr. Knox went into the presence of his step-mother.

“I think,” he said, just showing the box as it lay in his hand,“that this proof will be accepted by the Bank of England; in that case they will make good the money to me. One question, mother, I wish to ask you: how could you possibly suspect Miss Carey?”

“There was no one else for me to suspect,” replied Mrs. Knox in fretful tones; for she did not at all like this turn in the affair.

“Did you really suspect her?”

“Why, of course I did. How can you ask such foolish questions?”

“It was a great mistake in any case to take it up as you did. I am not alluding to the suspicion now; but to your harsh and cruel treatment.”

“Just mind your own business, Arnold. It’s nothing to you.”

“For my own part, I regard it as a matter that we must ever look back upon with shame.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Mrs. Knox. “The thing is done with, and it cannot be recalled. Janet Carey won’t die of it.”

Dr. Knox went about Lefford with the box in his hand, making things right. He called in at the police-station; he caused a minute account to be put in the Lefford News; he related the details to his private friends. Not once did he allude to Janet Carey, or mention her name: it was as though he would proudly ignore the stigma cast on her and assume that the world did the same. The world did: but it gave some hard words to Mrs. Knox.

Mr. Tamlyn had not much sympathy for wonders of any kind just then. Poor Bertie, lying cold and still in the chamber above, took up all his thoughts and his grief. Arnold spent a good deal of time with him, and took his round of patients.

It was the night before the funeral, and they were sitting together at twilight in the dining-room. Dr. Knox was looking through the large window at the fountain in the middle of the grass-plat: Mr. Tamlyn had his face buried; he had not looked up for the last half-hour.

“When is the very earliest time that you can come, Arnold?”he began abruptly.

“As soon as ever they will release me in London. Perhaps that will be in a month; perhaps not until the end of June, when the six months will be up.”

Mr. Tamlyn groaned. “I want you at once, Arnold. You are all I have now.”

“Shuttleworth must stay until I come.”

“Shuttleworth’s not you. You must live with me, Arnold?”

“Live with you?”

“Why, of course you must. What am I to do in this large house by myself now he is gone? Bessy will be gone too. I couldn’t stand it.”

“It would be much more convenient for me to be here, as far as the practice is concerned,” remarked Dr. Knox, after reflection.

“And more sociable. Do you never think of marriage, Arnold?”

Dr. Knox turned a little red. “It has been of no use for me to think of it hitherto, you know, sir.”

“I wish you would. Some nice, steady girl, who would make things pleasant here for us in Bessy’s place. There’s room for a wife as well as for you, Arnold. Think of these empty rooms: no one but you and me in them! And you know people like a married medical man better than a single one.”

The doctor opened his lips to speak, but his courage failed him; he would leave it to the last thing before he left on the morrow, or else write from London. Tamlyn mistook his silence.

“You’ll be well enough off to keep two wives, if the law allowed it, let alone one. From the day you join me, Arnold, half the profits shall be yours—I’ll have the deed made out—and the whole practice at my death. I’ve no one to save for, now Bertie’s gone.”

“He is better off; he is in happiness,” said Dr. Knox, his voice a little husky.

“Ay. I try to let it console me. But I’ve no one but you now, Arnold. And I don’t suppose I shall forget you in my will. To confess the truth, turning you away to make room for Shuttleworth has lain on my conscience.”

When Arnold reached home that night, Mrs. Knox and her eldest daughter were alone; she reading, Mina dressing a doll. Lefford was a place that went in for propriety, and no one gave soirées while Bertie Tamlyn lay dead. Arnold told Mrs. Knox of the new arrangement.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “Coming back to Lefford! Well, I shall be glad to have you at home again,” she added, thinking of the household bills.

“Mr. Tamlyn proposes that I shall live with him,” said Dr. Knox.

“But you will never be so stupid as to do that!”

“I have promised to do it. It will be much more convenient.”

Mrs. Knox looked sullen, and bit her lips. “How large a share are you to have?”

“I go in as full partner.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” cried out Miss Mina—for they all liked their good-natured brother. “Arnold, perhaps you’ll go and get married now!”

“Perhaps I may,” he answered.

Mrs. Knox dropped her book in the sudden fright. If Arnold married, he might want his house—and turn her out of it! He read the fear in her face.

“We may make some arrangement,” said he quietly. “You shall still occupy it and pay me a small nominal rent—five pounds a-year, say—which I shall probably return in toys for the children.”

The thought of his marriage had always lain upon her with a dread. “Who is the lady?” she asked.

“The lady? Oh, I can’t tell you, I’m sure. I have not asked any one yet.”

“Is that all!”

“Quite all—at present.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Knox slowly, as if deliberating the point with herself, and in the most affectionate of tones, “that you would be happier in a single life, Arnold. One never knows what a wife is till she’s tried.”

“Do you think so? Well, we must leave it to the future. What will be, will be.”

IV

And now I am taking up the story for myself; I, Johnny Ludlow. Had I gone straight on with it after that last night of Janet’s sleep-walking at Miss Deveen’s, you would never have understood.

It was on the Saturday night that Janet was found out—as any one must remember who took the trouble to count up the nights and days. On the Sunday morning early, Miss Deveen’s doctor was sent for. Dr. Galliard happened to be out of town, so Mr. Black attended for him. Cattledon was like vinegar. She looked upon Janet’s proceedings as a regular scandal, and begged Miss Deveen’s pardon for having brought her niece into the house. Upon which she was requested not to be silly.

Miss Deveen told the whole tale of the lost bank-note, to me and to Helen and Anna Whitney: at least, as much as she knew of it herself. Janet was innocent as a child; she felt sure of that, she said, and much to be pitied; and that Mrs. Knox, of Lefford, seemed to be a most undesirable sort of person. To us it sounded like a romance, or a story out of a newspaper police-report.

Monday came in; a warm, bright April day. I was returning to Oxford in the evening—and why I had not returned in the past week, as ought to have been the case, there’s no space to tell here. Miss Deveen said we might go for a walk if we liked. But Helen and Anna did not seem to care about it; neither did I, to say the truth. A house with a marvel in it has attractions; and we would by far rather have gone upstairs to see Janet. Janet was better, quite composed, but weak, they said: she was up and dressed, and in Miss Deveen’s own blue-room.

“Well, do you mean to go out, or not, you young people?”asked Miss Deveen. “Dear me, here are visitors!”

George came in bringing a card. “Dr. Knox.”

“Why!—it must be some one from that woman at Lefford!”exclaimed Miss Deveen, in an undertone to me. “Oh no; I remember now, Johnny; Dr. Knox was the step-son; he was away, and had nothing to do with it. Show Dr. Knox in, George.”

A tall man in black, whom one might have taken anywhere for a doctor, with a grave, nice face, came in. He said his visit was to Miss Carey, as he took the chair George placed near his mistress. Just a few words, and then we knew the whole, and saw a small sealed-up box in his hand, which contained the remains of the bank-note.

“I am more glad than if you brought Janet a purse of gold!”cried Miss Deveen, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “Notthat I think any one could have doubted her, Dr. Knox—not even your step-mother, in her heart,—but it is satisfactory to have it cleared up. It has made Miss Carey very ill; but this will set her at rest.”

“Your servant told me Miss Carey was ill,” he said. “It was for her I asked.”

With a face of concern, he listened to what Miss Deveen had to say of the illness. When she spoke of Janet’s fright at seeing the policeman at the Colosseum, his brow went red and he bit his lips. Next came the sleep-walking: she told it all.

“Her brain and nerves must have been overstrained to an alarming degree,” he observed, after a short silence. “Mr. Shuttleworth, who attended her at the time, spoke to me of the shock to the system. But I hoped she had recovered.”

“She would never have recovered, Dr. Knox, as long as the dread lay upon her that she was to be criminally prosecuted: at least, that is my opinion,” said Miss Deveen. “I believe the chief thing that ails her is fright. Not a knock at the door, not the marching past the house of a policeman, not the sudden entrance of a servant into the room, but has brought to her a shock of agonizing fear. It is a mercy that she has escaped brain-fever. After all, she must possess a good constitution. The sight of that Lefford man at the Colosseum did great mischief.”

“It was unfortunate that he should happen to be there,” said Dr. Knox: “and that the man should have dared to accost her with his insolence! But I shall inquire into it.”

“What you have in that box will be the best medicine for her,” said Miss Deveen. “It will speedily effect a cure—or call me an untrue prophet. Dear me! how strangely things come out!”

“May I be allowed to see Miss Carey?” asked Dr. Knox.“And to—to tell her the story of her clearance in my own way?”

Miss Deveen made no reply. She looked at Dr. Knox, and seemed to hesitate.

“I think it may be better for Miss Carey that I should, madam. For more reasons than one.”

“And really I don’t see why you should not,” said MissDeveen, heartily. “I hesitated because Mr. Black forbade the admission of strangers. But—perhaps you are not a stranger to her?”

“Oh dear, no: I and Miss Carey are old friends,” he answered, a curious smile lighting up his face. “And I should also wish to see her in my medical capacity.”

But the one to put in her word against this, was Cattledon. She came down looking green, and protesting in Miss Deveen’s ear that no male subject in her Majesty’s dominions, save and except Mr. Black, ought to be admitted to the blue-room. Janet had no full dress on; nothing but skirts and a shawl.

“Oh, nonsense!” cried Miss Deveen. “Why, Dr. Knox might have seen her had she been in bed: he is a physician.”And she took him up herself to the blue-room.

“Of all old maids that Cattledon’s the worst!” nodded Helen Whitney.

Miss Deveen went in alone, leaving him outside the door. Janet sat in an armchair by the fire, muffled in an old brown shawl of Cattledon’s.

“And how do you feel now, my dear?” said Miss Deveen, quietly. “Better, I see. And oh, I have such pleasant news for you: an old friend of yours has called to see you; and I think—I think—he will be able to cure you sooner than Mr. Black. It is Dr. Knox, my dear: not of Lefford now, you know: of London.”

She called the doctor in, and Janet’s pale cheeks took a tint of crimson. Janet’s face had never been big: but as he stood looking at her, her hand in his, he was shocked to see how small it had become. Miss Deveen shut the door upon them. She hoped with all her heart he was not going to spare that woman at Lefford.

“Janet, my dear,” he said in a fatherly kind of way as he drew a chair near her and kept her hand, “when that trouble happened at home, how was it you did not write to me?”

“Write to you! Oh, sir, I could not do such a thing,”answered Janet, beginning to tremble.

“But you might have known I should be your friend. You might also have known that I should have been able to clear you.”

“I did once think of writing to you, Dr. Knox: just to tellyou that I had not indeed touched the bank-note,” faltered Janet. “As the money came from you, I should have liked to write so much. But I did not dare.”

“And you preferred to suffer all these weeks of pain, and the fright brought upon you by Mrs. Knox—for which,” said he deliberately, “I shall never forgive her—rather than drop me a few lines! You must never be so foolish again, Janet. I should have gone to Lefford at once and searched out the mystery of the note—and found it.”

Janet moved her lips and shook her head, as much as to say that he could never have done that.

“But I have done it,” said he. “I have been down to Lefford and found it all out, and have brought the bank-note up with me—what remains of it. Sally was the culprit.”

“Sally!” gasped Janet, going from red to white.

“Sally—but not intentionally. She lighted the fire that afternoon with the note and some more scraps. The note fell out, only partly burnt; and I am going to take it to the bank that they may exchange it for a whole one.”

“And—will—they?” panted Janet.

“Of course they will; it is in the regular course of business that they should,” affirmed Dr. Knox, deeming it best to be positive for her sake. “Now, Janet, if you are to tremble like this, I shall go away and send up Miss Cattledon—and she does not look as if she had a very amiable temper. Why, my dear child, you ought to be glad.”

“Oh, so I am, so I am!” she said, breaking into sobs. “And—and does every one in Lefford know that I was innocent?”

“No one in Lefford believed you guilty. Of course, it is all known, and in the newspapers too—how Sally lighted the fire with a fifty-pound bank-note, and the remains were fished out of the ashes.”

“Mrs. Knox—Mrs. Knox——” She could not go on for agitation.

“As to Mrs. Knox, I am not sure but we might prosecute her. Rely upon one thing, Janet: that she will not be very well welcomed at her beloved soirées for some long time to come.”

Janet looked at the fire and thought. Dr. Knox kept silence, that she might recover herself after the news.

“I shall get well now,” she said in a half-whisper. “I shall soon”—turning to him—“be able to take another situation. Do you think Mrs. Knox will give me a recommendation?”

“Yes, that she will—when it’s wanted,” said he, with a queer smile.

She sat in silence again, a tinge of colour in her face, and seeing fortunes in the fire. “Oh, the relief, the relief!” she murmured, slightly lifting her hands. “To feel that I may be at peace and fear nothing! I am very thankful to you, Dr. Knox, for all things.”

“Do you know what I think would do you good?” said Dr. Knox suddenly. “A drive. The day is so fine, the air so balmy: I am sure it would strengthen you. Will you go?”

“If you please, sir. I do feel stronger, since you told me this.”

He went down and spoke to Miss Deveen. She heartily agreed: anything that would benefit the poor girl, she said; and the carriage was coming round to the door, for she had been thinking of going out herself. Cattledon could not oppose them, for she had stepped over to the curate’s.

“Would you very much mind—would you pardon me if I asked to be allowed to accompany her alone?” said Dr. Knox, hurriedly to Miss Deveen, as Janet was coming downstairs on Lettice’s arm, dressed for the drive.

Miss Deveen was taken by surprise. He spoke as though he were flurried, and she saw the red look on his face.

“I can take care of her as perhaps no one else could,” he added with a smile. “And I—I want to ask her a question, Miss Deveen.”

“I—think—I—understand you,” she said, smiling back at him. “Well, you shall go. Miss Cattledon will talk of propriety, though, when she comes home, and be ready to snap us all up.”

And Cattledon was so. When she found Janet had been let go for a slow and easy drive, with no escort but Dr. Knox inside and the fat coachman on the box, she conjectured that Miss Deveen must have taken leave of her senses. Cattledon took up her station at the window to wait for their return, firing out words of temper every other second.

The air must have done Janet good. She came in from the carriage on Dr. Knox’s arm, her cheeks bright, her pretty eyes cast down, and looking quite another girl.

“Have you put your question, Dr. Knox?” asked Miss Deveen, meeting him in the hall, while Janet came on.

“Yes, and had it answered,” he said brightly. “Thank you, dear Miss Deveen; I see we have your sympathies.”

She just took his hand in hers and squeezed it. It was the first day she had seen him, but she liked his face.

Cattledon began upon Janet at once. If she felt well enough to start off on promiscuous drives, she must be well enough to see about a situation.

“I have been speaking to her of one, Miss Cattledon,” said Dr. Knox, catching the words as he came in. “I think she will accept it.”

“Where is it?” asked Cattledon.

“At Lefford.”

“She shall never go back to Rose Villa with my consent, sir. And I think you ought to know better than to propose it to her.”

“To Rose Villa! Certainly not: at least at present. Rose Villa will be hers, though; the only little settlement that can be made upon her.”

The words struck Cattledon silent. But she could see through a brick wall.

“Perhaps you want her, young man?”

“Yes, I do. I should have wanted her before this, but that I had no home to offer her. I have one now; and good prospects too. Janet has had it all explained to her. Perhaps you will allow me to explain it to you, Miss Cattledon.”

“I’m sure it’s more than Janet Carey could have expected,”said Cattledon, growing pacified as she listened. “She’s a poor thing. I hope she will make a good wife.”

“I will risk it, Miss Cattledon.”

“And she shall be married from my house,” struck in Miss Deveen. “Johnny, if you young Oxford blades can get here for it, I will have you all to the wedding.”

And we did get there for it: I, and Tod, and William Whitney, and saw the end, so far, of Janet Carey.

HELEN WHITNEY’S WEDDING.

I

“What a hot day it is going to be!” cried the Squire, flinging back his thin light coat, and catching the corner of the breakfast-cloth with it, so that he upset the salt-cellar. “Yesterday was about the hottest day I ever felt, but to-day will be worse.”

“And all the jam-making about!” added Mrs. Todhetley.

“You need not go near the jam-making.”

“I must to-day. Last year Molly made a mistake in the quantity of sugar: and never could be brought to acknowledge it.”

“Molly—— There’s the letter-man,” broke off the Squire.“Run, lad.”

I went through the open glass-doors with all speed. Letters were not everyday events with us. In these fast and busy days a hundred letters are written where one used to be in those. It was one only that the man handed me now.

“That’s all this morning, Mr. Johnny.”

I put it beside the Squire’s plate, telling him it was from Sir John Whitney. There was no mistaking Sir John’s handwriting: the popular belief was that he used a skewer.

“From Whitney, is it,” cried he. “Where are my spectacles? What’s the postmark! Malvern? Oh, then, they are there still.”

“Belle Vue Hotel, Malvern.

“DEAR TODHETLEY,

“Do take compassion upon a weary man, and come over for a day or two. A whole blessed week this day have I been here with never a friend to speak to, or to make up a rubber in the evening. Featherston’s a bad player, as you know, but I wish I had him here. I and my wife might takedouble dummy, for all the players we can get. Helen is engaged to be married to Captain Foliott, Lord Riverside’s nephew; and nobody has any time to think of me and my whist-table. Bring the boys with you: Bill is as moped as I am. We are at the Belle Vue, you see. The girls wanted to stand out for the Foley Arms: it’s bigger and grander: but I like a place that I have been used to.

“From your old friend,

“John Whitney.”

The little Whitneys had caught scarlatina, all the fry of them. Recovered now, they had been sent to a cottage on the estate for change; and Sir John, his wife, William, Helen, and Anna went for a week to Malvern while the Hall was cleaned. This news, though, of Helen’s engagement, took us by surprise.

“How very sudden!” cried the mater.

Tod was leaning back in his chair, laughing. “I told her I knew there was something up between her and that Captain Foliott!”

“Has she known him before?” asked the mater.

“Known him, yes,” cried Tod. “She saw a good deal of him at Cheltenham. As if she would engage herself to any one after only a week’s acquaintanceship!”

“As if Sir John would let her!” put in the Squire. “I can’t answer for what Miss Helen would do.” And Tod laughed again.

When the children were taken ill, Helen and Anna, though they had had the malady, were packed off to Sir John’s sister, Miss Whitney, who lived at Cheltenham, and they stayed there for some weeks. After that, they came to us at Dyke Manor for three days, and then went with their father and mother to Malvern. Helen was then full of Captain Foliott, and talked of him to us in private from morning till night. She had met him at Cheltenham, and he had paid her no end of attention. Now, as it appeared, he had followed her to Malvern, and asked for her of Sir John.

“It seems to be a good match—a nephew of Lord Riverside’s,”observed the Squire. “Is he rich, I wonder?—and is the girl over head and ears in love with him?”

“Rich he may be: but in love with him she certainly is not,”cried Tod. “She was too ready to talk of him for that.”

The remark was amusing, coming from Tod. How had he learnt to be so worldly-wise?

“Shall you go to Malvern, father?”

“Shall I go!” repeated the Squire, astonished at the superfluous question. “Yes. And start as soon as ever I have finished my breakfast and changed my coat. You two may go also, as you are invited.”

We reached Malvern in the afternoon. Sir John and Lady Whitney were alone, in one of the pleasant sitting-rooms of the Belle Vue Hotel, and welcomed us with outstretched hands.

“The girls and William?” cried Sir John, in answer to inquiries. “Oh, they are out somewhere—with Foliott, I conclude; for I’m sure he sticks to Helen like her shadow. Congratulate me, you say? Well, I don’t know, Todhetley. It’s the fashion, of course, to do it; but I’m not sure but we should rather be condoled with. No sooner do our girls grow up and become companionable, and learn not to revoke at whist when they can be tempted into taking a hand, than they want to leave us! Henceforth they must belong to others, not to us; and we, perhaps, see them no oftener than we see any other stranger. It’s one of the crosses of life.”

Sir John blew his old red nose, so like the Squire’s, and my lady rubbed her eyes. Both felt keenly the prospect of parting with Helen.

“But you like him, don’t you?” asked the Squire.

“As to liking him,” cried Sir John, and I thought there was some hesitation in his tone; “I am not in love with him: I leave that to Helen. We don’t all see with our children’s eyes. He is well enough, I suppose, as Helen thinks so. But the fellow does not care for whist.”

“I think we play too slow a game for him,” put in Lady Whitney. “He chanced to say one evening that Lord Riverside is one of the first hands at whist; and I expect Captain Foliott has been in the habit of playing with him.”

“Anyway, you are satisfied with the match, as a match, I take it?” observed the Squire.

“I don’t say but that I am,” said Sir John. “It might bebetter, of course; and at present their means will not be large. Foliott offers to settle an estate of his, worth about ten thousand pounds, upon Helen; and his allowance from his uncle Foliott is twelve hundred a-year. They will have to get along on that at present.”

“And the captain proposes,” added Lady Whitney, “that the three thousand pounds, which will come to Helen when she marries, shall be invested in a house: and we think it would be wise to do it. But he feels quite certain that Mr. Foliott will increase his allowance when he marries; probably double it.”

“It’s not Lord Riverside, then, who allows him the income?”

“Bless you, Todhetley, no!” spoke Sir John in a hurry.“He says Riverside’s as poor as a church mouse, and vegetates from year’s end to year’s end at his place in Scotland. It is Foliott the mine-owner down in the North. Stay: which is it, Betsy?—mine-owner, or mill-owner?”

“Mill-owner, I think,” said Lady Whitney. “He is wonderfully rich, whichever it is; and Captain Foliott will come into at least a hundred thousand pounds at his death.”

Listening to all this as I stood on the balcony, looking at the beautiful panorama stretched out below and beyond, for they were talking at the open window, I dreamily thought what a good thing Helen was going to make of it. Later on, all this was confirmed, and we learnt a few additional particulars.

Mr. Foliott, mill-owner and millionaire, was a very great man in the North; employing thousands of hands. He was a good man, full of benevolence, always doing something or other to benefit his townspeople and his dependents. But his health had been failing of late, and he had now gone to the Cape, a sea-voyage having been advised by his doctors. He had never married, and Captain Foliott was his favourite nephew.

“It’s not so bad, after all, is it, Johnny?”

The words were whispered over my shoulder, and I started back to see Helen’s radiant face. She and Anna had come in unheard by me, and had caught the thread of conversation in the room.

“I call it very good, Helen. I hope he is good too.”

“You shall see,” she answered. “He is coming up with William.”

Her dark brown eyes were sparkling, a bright colour glowed on her cheeks. Miss Helen Whitney was satisfied with her future bridegroom, and no mistake. She had forgotten all about her incipient liking for poor Slingsby Temple.

“What regiment is Captain Foliott in, Helen?”

“Not in any. He has sold out.”

“Sold out!”

“His mother and his uncle made him do it. The detachment was ordered to India, and they would not let him go; would not part with him; begged and prayed of him to sell out. Nothing ever vexed him so much in his life, he says; but what could he do? His mother has only him: and on Mr. Foliott he is dependent for riches.”

“Entirely dependent?”

“For riches, I said, Johnny. He has himself a small competence. Ten thousand pounds nearly comprises it. And that is to be settled on me.”

A slight bustle in the room, and we both looked round. Bill Whitney was noisily greeting Tod. Some one else had followed Bill through the door.

A rather tall man, with reddish hair and drooping, reddish whiskers, bold handsome features, and a look I did not like in his red-brown eyes. Stepping over the window-sill from the balcony, they introduced me to him, Captain Richard Foliott.

“I have heard much of Johnny Ludlow,” said he, holding out his hand with a cordial smile, “and I am glad to know him. I hope we shall soon be better acquainted.”

I shook his hand and answered in kind. But I was not drawn to him; not a bit; rather repelled. The eyes were not nice: or the voice, either. It had not a true ring in it. Undeniably handsome he was, and I thought that was the best that could be said.

“Look here: we are going for a stroll,” said Sir John; “you young people can come, or not, as you please. But if you go up the hill, remember that we dine at six o’clock. Once you get scampering about up there, you forget the time.”

He went out with the Squire. Lady Whitney had a letter to write and sat down to do it; the rest of us stood, some on thebalcony, some in the room. Helen, Tod, and Captain Foliott were apparently trying which could talk the fastest.

“Why do you look at me so earnestly?” suddenly demanded the latter.

It was to me he spoke. I laughed, and apologized; saying that his face put me in mind of some other face I had seen, but I could not remember whose. This was true. It was true also that I had been looking at him more fixedly than the strict rules of etiquette might require: but I had not an idea that he was observing me.

“I thought you might be wishing to take my portrait,” said the captain, turning away to whisper to Helen.

“More likely to take your character,” jestingly struck in Bill, with more zeal than discretion. “Johnny Ludlow sees through everybody; reads faces off like a book.”

Captain Foliott wheeled sharply round at the words, and stood before me, his eyes gazing straight into mine.

“Can you read my face?” he asked. “What do you see there?”

“I see that you have been a soldier: your movements tell me that: right-about, face; quick march,” answered I, turning the matter off with a jest. Tod opportunely struck in.

“How could you leave the army?” he asked with emphasis.“I only wish I had the chance of joining it.” Though he knew that he had better not let the Squire hear him say so.

“It was a blow,” acknowledged Foliott. “One does meet with raps in this world. But, you see, it was a case of—of the indulgence of my own gratification weighed in the scale against that of my mother: and I let my side go up. My uncle also came down upon me with his arguments and his opposition, and altogether I found myself nowhere. I believe he and she are equally persuaded that nobody ever comes out of India alive.”

“Who will take my letter to the post?” called out Lady Whitney. All of us volunteered to do it, and went out together. We met Sir John and the Squire strolling about the village rubbing their red faces, and saying how intensely hot it was.

They left us to regale ourselves at the pastry-cook’s, and sauntered on towards the dark trees shading that deep descenton which the hotel windows looked out. We found them sitting on one of the benches there.

“Well, Foliott!” cried Sir John. “You’d not have found it hotter than this in India.”

“Not so hot, Sir John. But I like heat.”

“How do-you-do?” struck in a big, portly gentleman, who was sitting on the same bench as the Squire and Sir John, and whose face was even redder than theirs. “Did not expect to meet you here.”

Captain Foliott, who was the one addressed, wheeled round to the speaker in that sharp way of his, and was evidently taken by surprise. His manner was cold; never a smile sat on his face as he answered—

“Oh, is it you, Mr. Crane! Are you quite well? Staying at Malvern?”

“For an hour or two. I am passing a few days at Worcester, and my friends there would not let me go on without first bringing me to see Malvern.”

The stranger spoke like a gentleman and looked like one, looked like a man of substance also (though Foliott did draw down his lips that same evening and speak of him as “nobody”); and Sir John, in his old-fashioned cordiality, begged of Captain Foliott to introduce his friend. Captain Foliott did it with a not very ready grace. “Mr. Crane, Sir John Whitney; Mr. Todhetley.”

“A beautiful place this, sirs,” cried he.

“Yes, only it’s too hot to walk about to-day,” answered they.“Have you been up the hill?”

“No, I can’t manage that: but my friends are gone up. Have you heard lately from your uncle, Captain Foliott?”added Mr. Crane.

“Not very lately.”

“I hear the outward voyage did him a world of good.”

“I believe it did.”

As if the questions of the stranger worried him, Captain Foliott strolled away towards the abbey: the two girls, Tod, and William following him. I stayed where I was: not liking the heat much more than the Squire did.

“You know Mr. Foliott of Milltown?” observed Sir John to the stranger.

“I know him very well indeed, sir. I am a mill-owner myself in the same place: but not as large a one as he is.”

“He is uncommonly rich, we hear.”

“Ay, he is. Could buy up pretty well half the world.”

“And a good man into the bargain?”

“Downright good. Honest, upright, liberal; a true Christian. He does an immense deal for his fellow-men. Nobody ever asks him to put his hand in his pocket in vain.”

“When is he expected home?”

“I am not sure when. That will depend, I expect, upon how he feels. But we hear the outward voyage has quite set him up.”

“Captain Foliott often talks of his uncle. He seems to think there’s nobody like him.”

“He has cause to think it. Yes, I assure you, sirs, few men in the world can come up to George Foliott, the mill-owner, for probity and goodness.”

How much more he might have said in Mr. Foliott’s praise was cut short by the hasty appearance of two young men, evidently the friends of Mr. Crane. They laughed at the speed they had made down the hill, told him the carriage was ready, and that they ought to start at once to reach Worcester by dinner-time. So the portly old gentleman wished us good-day and departed. Running up the bank, I saw them drive off from the Crown in a handsome two-horse phæton.

It was on the day following this, that matters were finally settled with regard to Helen’s marriage. Captain Foliott made good his wish—which, as it appeared, he had been harping upon ever since the proposal was first made: namely, that they should be married immediately, and not wait for the return of Mr. Foliott to England. Sir John had held out against it, asking where the hurry was. To this Captain Foliott had rejoined by inquiring what they had to wait for, and where was the need of waiting, and the chances were that his uncle would stay away for a year. So at last, Sir John, who was a simple-minded man, and as easily persuaded as a duck is to water, gave in; and the wedding was fixed to take place the next month, September, at Whitney.

We made the most of this, our one entire day at Malvern, forwe should disperse the next. The Whitneys to Whitney Hall, the house now being in apple-pie order for them; ourselves back to Dyke Manor; Captain Foliott to get the marriage-settlement prepared. Helen’s three thousand pounds, all she would have at present, was not to be settled at all, but invested in some snug little house that they would fix upon together after the marriage, so that Captain Foliott’s lawyers took the preparation of the deeds of settlement on themselves, saving trouble to Sir John. Three parts of the day we spent roaming the hill: and I must say Foliott made himself as delightful as sun in harvest, and I told myself that I must have misjudged his eyes in thinking they were not nice ones.

But the next morning we received a shock. How swimmingly the world would go on without such things, I leave those who have experienced them to judge. It came when we were at the breakfast-table, in the shape of a letter to Lady Whitney. Scarlatina—which was supposed to have been cleaned and scrubbed out—had come into the Hall again, and the kitchen-maid was laid up with it.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish! Whether Sir John or my lady looked the most helplessly bewildered, might have puzzled a juror to decide. Back to the Hall they could not go; and what was to be done? The Squire, open-handed and open-hearted, pressed them to accompany us and take up their quarters at Dyke Manor; and for a minute or two I thought they would have done it; but somebody, Helen, I think, suggested a furnished house in London, and that was finally decided upon. So to London they would go, hire the first suitable house that offered, and the marriage would take place there instead of at home. Captain Foliott, coming in after breakfast from his hotel, the Foley Arms, stared at the change of programme.

“I wouldn’t go to London,” said he, emphatically. “London at this season of the year is the most wretched wilderness on the face of the whole earth. Not a soul in it.”

“The more room for us, Foliott,” cried Sir John. “What will it matter to us whether the town is empty or full?”

“I would strongly advise you, Sir John, not to go. Lady Whitney will not like it, I am certain. As Mr. Todhetley has been good enough to offer you his hospitality——”

“Put, bless my heart,” interrupted Sir John in a heat, “you don’t suppose, do you, that I could trespass upon an old friend for weeks and weeks—a regular army of us! Were it a matter of a few days, I wouldn’t say nay; but who is to foresee how long it may be before we can get into our own house? You’ve not a bit of thought, Foliott.”

“Why not go to your sister’s at Cheltenham, sir?” was all the captain said to this.

“Because I don’t choose to go to my sister’s at Cheltenham,”retorted Sir John, who could be as obstinate as the Squire when he liked. “And why should we go to Cheltenham more than to London? Come?”

“I thought it would be less trouble for you, sir. Cheltenham is close at hand.”

“And London is not far off. As to its being empty, I say that’s so much the better: we shall more readily find a furnished house in it. To London we go to-day.”

With Sir John in this resolute mood, there was no more to be said. And the notion became quite agreeable, now that they were growing reconciled to it.

“All things are directed for the best,” concluded Lady Whitney in her simple faith. “I hardly see how we should have procured Helen’s trousseau down at Whitney: there will be no difficulty in London.”

“You are right, my dear lady, and I am wrong,” conceded Captain Foliott, with a good-natured smile. “To us young men of fashion,” he added, the smile deepening to a laugh, “London between August and April is looked upon as a nightmare. But circumstances alter cases; and I see that it will be the best and most convenient place for you.”

Drawing Helen aside as he spoke, and taking a small morocco case from his pocket, he slipped upon her finger his first and parting gift: a magnificent hoop of diamonds.

“I should like you to wear it always, my love,” he whispered.“As the pledge of your engagement now; later, as the guard of your wedding-ring.”

II

“I shall go up in the smoking-carriage, Johnny.”

“Shall you! You’ll smell finely of smoke when we get there.”

“Not I. I’ll give my coat a shake at the end of the journey. By Jove! I shall be left behind, if I don’t take care.”

Tod was right. The train was already on the move. He dashed into the smoking-compartment; the porter closed the doors, and we were off.

Off to London. He and I were going up to Helen Whitney’s wedding, to which we had been invited when staying at Malvern some weeks ago. The Squire declined for himself, though Sir John had wanted him also. This was Monday; the wedding was to be on Thursday; and on the Saturday Anna and William were to go back with us to Dyke Manor.

It was September weather, and a glorious day. Now, as the train steamed away on its windings and turnings, the Malvern Hills would glide into view; and now be lost again. But the beautiful landscape was always to be seen, with its woods and dales and fertile plains; and there was not a cloud in the deep blue sky to obscure the sun.

I had the carriage to myself; and pictured Tod one of a crowd of smokers. At Oxford he came back to the carriage, and got in.

“Had enough smoke, Tod?”

“Just for now, lad,” he shortly answered; and began to whistle softly and pull at his whiskers. By which I knew he had something on his mind.

“I say, Johnny, I am in a dilemma,” he began abruptly, when we were going on again, bending towards me from the opposite seat till his face nearly touched mine.

“What about? What is it?”

“Look here. When I got into the smoking-carriage it was full, all but one seat, which I took—and that was a corner one, which they had been polite enough to leave. The carriage was dark with smoke: pipes had been going, I expect, all the way from Worcester. I lighted mine, saying nothing, and nobody said anything to me. The man opposite to me and the one next me had a hot discussion on hand, touching a racehorse; notquarrelling, but talking loudly, so that they made a tolerable noise. At the other end of the carriage sat two men facing one another, just as you and I sit now; and one of them I’ll vow was an Oxford man: I could tell him by his cut. They were talking together also, but rather in an undertone. All at once, when we were nearing Oxford, there was a lull at my end, and I heard a bit of what they were saying. The first word that particularly caught my ear was Foliott. ‘What plant is Foliott up to now, I wonder?’ cried one. ‘Don’t know,’ said the other; ‘nothing good, we may be sure of. A rumour reached me that he was going to be married.’ ‘What a chance for the girl!’ cried the first. ‘Poor thing! But it may not be true,’he went on, knocking the ashes out of his pipe: ‘who would marry such a scamp as that?’ Now, Johnny,” broke off Tod,“the question is, were they speaking of this Foliott? This man that we are now on our way to see married to Helen?”

“Was that all you heard, Tod?”

“Every word. The train began to slacken speed then for the Oxford station, and the two men stood up to reach their overcoats and hand-bags, for they got out there. I had half a mind to stop them and ask what Foliott they had been speaking of; but I did not much like to, and while I hesitated they disappeared. They might just have told me to mind my own business if I had spoken; so perhaps it comes to the same.”

“Foliott is not an absolutely uncommon name, Tod. There may be plenty of Foliotts about.”

“Just so, lad. But, on the other hand, it may be the one we know of, Richard Foliott. One point coincides—he is going to be married.”

I sat back on the seat, revolving probabilities, and thinking of many things. That instinctive dislike I had taken to Captain Foliott’s eyes, or to himself, or to both, flashed over me with vivid force. The fine scenery we were just then whirling past, and on which my eyes seemed to be fixed, might have been a sandy desert, for all I saw of it.

“The worst is, the dilemma it puts one in,” continued Tod.“To speak of this to the Whitneys, or not to speak?—that’s the question. If it should turn out to be another Foliott, they might never forgive me. He never would.”

“But then—Helen’s whole future may be at stake. It may be in peril.”

Tod pulled at his whiskers again. I read the name of the station we were flashing past.

“I hate a doubt of this sort,” cried Tod impatiently, “where one can’t see how one’s duty lies. It bothers the mind. I think I’ll let it go, Johnny.”

“But, if it should turn out, when too late, that he is a scamp: and, for the want of a word, you have let him—let him make havoc of Helen’s life!”

“What could I say?” he asked irritably. “That I overheard two fellows, in the smoking-compartment of a railway train, saying that one Foliott was a scamp. Sir John would naturally ask me what grounds I had for assuming that it was their Foliott. Well, I have no grounds. And how small I should look!”

“There are slight grounds, at any rate, Tod. The name is his, Foliott; and both are going to be married.”

“All the same, I don’t see that I can speak.”

“Put it in this light, Tod,” I said. “You don’t speak; and they get married; and then something or other bad turns up about Foliott; and Sir John finds out that it was in your power to warn him in time, and you did not. What will he say then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” grunted Tod. “I wish I could see on which side land lies.”

All the rest of the way to London we continued to discuss it by fits and starts, and at last hit upon a good thought—to tell the whole to William Whitney. It was the best thing to do, so far as we could see. It might all end in smoke, or—it might not.

The Whitneys had found a furnished house in Gloucester Place, near Portman Square. The maid who had taken the illness was soon well again, and the Hall was being regularly fumigated now, preparatory to their return. In Gloucester Place they were within a short drive of Miss Deveen’s, a fact which had guided them to the locality. Indeed, it was only a walk for the younger of us.

Not until night did we get any chance of a private talk with William. Our bedrooms opened into one another; and after we went up for good, he sat down in our room.

“You won’t be affronted, Bill, at something I am about to say?” struck in Tod, by way of prelude.

“Affronted!” cried Bill. “I! What on earth do you ask that stupid question for?”

“In coming up to-day, I heard a few words in the train,”went on Tod. “Two fellows were talking, and they brought up a man’s name in a disparaging manner. It is a friend of yours, Bill; and Johnny and I had a precious discussion, I can tell you, as to whether we should repeat it to you or not.”

“Was it my name?” asked Bill. “What could they have to say against me?”

“No, no; they’d have got an answer from me had it been yours. First of all, we thought of mentioning it to Sir John; but I did not like to, and that’s the truth. So we just concluded to put it before you, as one of ourselves, and you can tell him if you like.”

“All right,” said Bill. “Go ahead.”

Tod told him all from beginning to end. Not that it was very much to tell: but he brought in our own conversation; the delicacy we felt in speaking at all, and the arguments for and against. Bill was not in the least put out; rather wondered, I thought, that we should be.

“It can’t be Dick Foliott, you know,” said he. “There’s not anything against him; impossible that there should be.”

“I am glad you say so,” cried Tod, relieved. “It was only for Helen’s sake we gave a thought to it.”

“The name was the same, you see—Foliott,” I put in.“And that man is going to be married as well as this one.”

“True,” answered Bill, slowly. “Still I feel sure it is quite impossible that it can be Foliott. If—if you think I had better mention it, I will. I’ll mention it to himself.”

“I should,” said I eagerly, for somehow my doubts of the man were growing larger. “Better be on the safe side. You don’t know much about him, after all, Bill.”

“Not know much about him! What do you mean, Johnny? We know enough. He is Riverside’s nephew, a very respectable old Scotch peer, and he is Foliott the mill-owner’s nephew; and I’m sure he is to be respected, if it’s only for the money he has made. And Dick has a very fair income of his own, and settles ten thousand pounds upon Helen, and will come into a hundred thousand by-and-by, or more. What would you have?”

I could not say what I would have; but the uneasiness lay on my mind. Tod spoke.

“The men alluded to conduct, I expect, Bill; not to means. They spoke of that Foliott as an out-and-out scamp, and called the girl he was going to marry ‘Poor thing,’ in a piteous tone. You wouldn’t like that applied to Helen.”

“By Jove, no. Better be on the safe side, as Johnny says. We’ll say nothing to my father at present; but you and I, Tod, will quietly repeat to Foliott what you heard, and we’ll put it to him, as man to man, to tell us in all honour whether the words could have related to himself. Of course the idea is altogether absurd; we will tell him that, and beg his pardon.”

So that was resolved upon. And a great relief it was. To decide upon a course of action, in any unpleasant difficulty, takes away half its discomfort.

Captain Foliott had come to London but once since they met at Malvern. His stay was short; three days; and during those days he was so busy that Gloucester Place only saw him in the evenings. He had a great deal to do down in the North against his marriage, arranging his property preparatory to settling it on Helen, and seeing to other business matters. But the zeal he lacked in personal attention, he made up by letter. Helen had one every morning as regularly as the post came in.

He was expected in town on the morrow, Tuesday: indeed, Helen had thought he might perhaps have come to-day. Twelve o’clock on Wednesday, at Gloucester Place, was the hour fixed for signing the deeds of settlement: and by twelve o’clock on Thursday, the following day, all going well, he and Helen would be man and wife.

Amidst the letters waiting on the breakfast-table on Tuesday morning was one for Helen. Its red seal and crest told whence it came.

“Foliott always seals his letters to Helen,” announced Bill for our information. “And what ill news has that one inside it?”continued he to his sister. “You look as cross as two sticks, Nelly.”

“Just mind your own business,” said Helen.

“What time will Captain Foliott be here to-day, my dear?”questioned her mother.

“He will not be here at all to-day,” answered Helen, fractiously. “It’s too bad. He says it is impossible for him to get away by any train, in time to see us to-night; but he will be here the first thing in the morning. His mother is worse, and he is anxious about her. People always fall ill at the wrong time.”

“Is Mrs. Foliott coming up to the wedding?” I asked.

“No,” said Lady Whitney. “I of course invited her, and she accepted the invitation; but a week ago she wrote me word she was not well enough to come. And now, children, what shall we set about first? Oh dear! there is such a great deal to do and to think of to-day!”

But we had another arrival that day, if we had not Captain Foliott. That was Mary Seabright, who was to act as bridesmaid with Anna. Brides did not have a string of maids in those days, as some have in these. Leaving them to get through their multiplicity of work—which must be connected, Bill thought, with bonnets and wedding-cake—we went up with Sir John in a boat to Richmond.

That evening we all dined at Miss Deveen’s. It was to be one of the quietest of weddings; partly by Captain Foliott’s express wish, chiefly because they were not at home at the Hall. Miss Deveen and Miss Cattledon were to be the only guests besides ourselves and Mary Seabright, and a Major White who would go to the church with Foliott. Just twelve of us, all told.

“But where’s the bridegroom?” asked Miss Deveen, when we reached her house.

“He can’t get up until late to-night; perhaps not until to-morrow morning,” pouted Helen.

The dinner-table was a downright merry one, and we did not seem to miss Captain Foliott. Afterwards, when Sir John had made up his whist-table—with my lady, Miss Deveen, and the grey-haired curate, Mr. Lake, who had dropped in—we amused ourselves with music and games in the other room.

“What do you think of the bridegroom, Johnny Ludlow?”suddenly demanded Miss Cattledon, who had sat down by me.“I hear you saw him at Malvern.”

“Think of him! Oh, he—he is a very fine man; good-looking, and all that.”

“That I have seen for myself,” retorted Cattledon, pinching her hands round her thin waist. “When he was staying in London, two or three weeks ago, we spent an evening in Gloucester Place. Do you like him?”

She put the “like” so very pointedly, staring into my face at the time, that I was rather taken aback. I did not like Captain Foliott: but there was no particular necessity for telling her so.

“I like him—pretty well, Miss Cattledon.”

“Well, I do not, Johnny Ludlow. I fancy he has a temper; I’m sure he is not good-natured; and I—I don’t think he’ll make a very good husband.”

“That will be a pity. Helen is fond of him.”

Miss Cattledon coughed significantly. “Is she? Helen is fond of him in-so-far as that she is eager to be married—all girls are—and the match with Captain Foliott is an advantageous one. But if you think she cares for him in any other way, Johnny Ludlow, you are quite mistaken. Helen Whitney is no more in love with Captain Foliott than you are in love with me.”

At which I laughed.

“Very few girls marry for love,” she went on. “They fall in love, generally speaking, with the wrong person.”

“Then what do they marry for?”

“For the sake of being married. With the fear of old-maidism staring them in the face, they are ready, silly things, to snap at almost any offer they receive. Go up to Helen Whitney now, tell her she is destined to live in single blessedness, and she would be ready to fret herself into a fever. Every girl would not be, mind you: but there are girls and girls.”

Well, perhaps Miss Cattledon was not far wrong. I did not think as she did then, and laughed again in answer: but I have learned more of the world and its ways since.

In every corner of the house went Helen’s eyes when we got back to Gloucester Place, but they could not see Captain Foliott. She had been hoping against hope.

III

Wednesday. Young women, bringing in huge band-boxes, were perpetually ringing at the door, and by-and-by we were treated to a sight of the finery. Sufficient gowns and bonnets to set up a shop were spread out in Helen’s room. The wedding-dress lay on the bed: a glistening white silk, with a veil and wreath beside it. Near to it was the dress she would go away in to Dover, the first halting-place on their trip to Paris: a quiet shot-silk, Lady Whitney called it, blue one way, pink another. Shot, or not shot, it was uncommonly pretty. Straw bonnets were the mode in those days, and Helen’s, perched above her travelling-dress, had white ribbons on it and a white veil—which was the mode for brides also. I am sure Helen, in her vanity, thought more of the things than of the bridegroom.

But she thought of him also. Especially when the morning went on and did not bring him. Twelve o’clock struck, and Sir John Whitney’s solicitor, Mr. Hill, who had come up on purpose, was punctual to his appointment. Sir John had thought it right that his own solicitor should be present at the reading and signing of the settlements, to see that they were drawn up properly.

So there they sat in the back-parlour, which had been converted into a business room for the occasion, waiting for Captain Foliott and the deed with what patience they had. At one o’clock, when they came in to luncheon, Sir John was looking a little blue; and he remarked that Captain Foliott, however busy he might have been, should have stretched a point to get off in time. Appointments, especially important ones, ought to be kept.

For it was conclusively thought that the delay was caused by the captain’s having been unable to leave the previous day, and that he was travelling up now.

So Mr. Hill waited, and Sir John waited, and the rest of us waited, Helen especially; and thus the afternoon passed in waiting. Helen was more fidgety than a hen with one chick: darting to the window every instant, peeping down the staircase at the sound of every ring.

Dinner-time; and no appearance of Captain Foliott. Afterdinner; and still the same. Mary Seabright, a merry girl, told Helen that her lover was like the knight in the old ballad—he loved and he rode away. There was a good deal of laughing, and somebody called for the song, “The Mistletoe Bough.” Of course it was all in jest: as each minute passed, we expected the next would bring Captain Foliott.

Not until ten o’clock did Mr. Hill leave, with the understanding that he should return the next morning at the same hour. The servants were beginning to lay the breakfast-table in the dining-room, for a lot of sweet dishes had been brought in from the pastry-cook’s, and Lady Whitney thought they had better be put on the table at once. In the afternoon we had tied the cards together—“Mr. and Mrs. Richard Foliott”—with white satin ribbon, sealed them up in their envelopes with white wax, and directed them ready for the post on the morrow.

At twelve o’clock a move was made to go upstairs to bed; and until that hour we had still been expecting Captain Foliott.

“I feel positive some dreadful accident has happened,”whispered Helen to me as she said good-night, her usually bright colour faded to paleness. “If I thought it was carelessness that is causing the delay, as they are cruelly saying, I—I should never forgive him.”

“Wait a minute,” said Bill to me aside, touching Tod also.“Let them go on.”

“Are you not coming, William?” said Lady Whitney.

“In two minutes, mother.”

“I don’t like this,” began Bill, speaking to us both over our bed-candles, for the other lights were out. “I’ll be hanged if I think he means to turn up at all!”

“But why should he not?”

“Who is to know? Why has he not turned up already? I can tell you that it seems to me uncommonly strange. Half-a-dozen times to-night I had a great mind to call my father out and tell him about what you heard in the train, Tod. It is so extraordinary for a man, coming up to his wedding, not to appear: especially when he is bringing the settlements with him.”

Neither of us spoke. What, indeed, could we say to so unpleasant a topic? Bill went on again.

“If he were a man in business, as his uncle, old Foliott, is, Icould readily understand that interests connected with it might detain him till the last moment. But he is not; he has not an earthly thing to do.”

“Perhaps his lawyers are in fault,” cried Tod. “If they are backward with the deeds of settlement——”

“The deeds were ready a week ago. Foliott said so in writing to my father.”

A silence ensued, rendering the street noises more audible. Suddenly there came a sound of a horse and cab dashing along, and it pulled up at our door. Foliott, of course.

Down we went, helter-skelter, out on the pavement. The servants, busy in the dining-room still, came running to the steps. A gentleman, getting out of the cab with a portmanteau, stared, first at us, then at the house.

“This is not right,” said he to the driver, after looking about him. “It’s next door but one.”

“This is the number you told me, sir.”

“Ah, yes. Made a mistake.”

But so sure did it seem to us that this late and hurried traveller must be, at least, some one connected with Captain Foliott, if not himself, that it was only when he and his luggage had disappeared within the next house but one, and the door was shut, and the cab gone away, that we realized the disappointment, and the vague feeling of discomfort it left behind. The servants went in. We strolled to the opposite side of the street, unconsciously hoping that luck might bring another cab with the right man in it.

“Look there!” whispered Bill, pointing upwards.

The room over the drawing-room was Lady Whitney’s; the room above that, the girls’. Leaning out at the window, gazing now up the street, now down, was Helen, her eyes restless, her face pale and woe-begone in the bright moonlight.

It was a sad night for Helen Whitney. She did not attempt to undress, as we knew later, but kept her post at that weary window. Every cab or carriage that rattled into view was watched by her with eager, feverish anxiety. But not one halted at the house, not one contained Captain Foliott. Helen Whitney will never forget that unhappy night of tumultuous feeling and its intolerable suspense.

But here was the wedding-morning come, and no bridegroom. The confectioners were rushing in with more dishes, and the dressmakers appearing to put the finishing touches to Helen. Lady Whitney was just off her head: doubtful whether to order all the paraphernalia away, or whether Captain Foliott might not come yet. In the midst of the confusion a little gentleman arrived at the house and asked for Sir John. Sir John and he had a long conference, shut in alone: and when they at length came out Sir John’s nose was a dark purple. The visitor was George Foliott, the mill-owner: returned since some days from the Cape.

And the tale he unfolded would have struck dismay to the nose of many a wiser man than was poor Sir John. The scamp spoken of in the train was Richard Foliott; and a nice scamp he turned out to be. Upon Mr. Foliott’s return to Milltown the prospective wedding had come to his ears, with all the villainy encompassing it; he had at once taken means to prevent Mr. Richard’s carrying it out, and had now come up to enlighten Sir John Whitney.

Richard Foliott had been a scamp at heart from his boyhood; but he had contrived to keep well before the world. Over and over again had Mr. Foliott paid his debts and set him on his legs again. Captain Foliott had told the Whitneys that he quitted the army by the wish of his friends: he quitted it because he dared not stay in. Before Mr. Foliott departed for the Cape he had thrown Richard off; had been obliged to do it. His fond foolish mother had reduced herself to poverty for him. The estate, once worth ten thousand pounds, which he had made a pretence of settling upon Helen, belonged to his mother, and was mortgaged about a dozen deep. He dared not go much abroad for fear of arrest, especially in London. This, and a great deal more, was disclosed by Mr. Foliott to Sir John; who sat and gasped, and rubbed his face, and wished his old friend Todhetley was at hand, and thanked God for Helen’s escape.

“He will never be any better,” affirmed Mr. Foliott, “be very sure of that. He is innately bad, and the pain he has inflicted upon me for years has made me old before my time. But—forgive me, Sir John, for saying so—I cannot think you exercised discretion in accepting him so easily for your daughter.”

“I had no suspicion, you see,” returned poor Sir John.“How could I have any? Being your nephew, and Lord Riverside’s nephew—”

“Riverside’s nephew he called himself, did he! The old man is ninety, as I dare say you know, and never stirs from his home in the extreme north of Scotland. Some twenty years ago, he fell in with the sister of Richard’s mother (she was a governess in a family up there), and married her; but she died within the year. That’s how he comes to be Lord Riverside’s ‘nephew.’But they have never met in their lives.”

“Oh dear!” bemoaned Sir John. “What a villain! and what a blessed escape! He made a great point of Helen’s bit of money, three thousand pounds, not being tied up before the marriage. I suppose he wanted to get it into his own hands.”

“Of course he did.”

“And to pay his debts with it; as far as it would go.”

“Pay his debts with it!” exclaimed Mr. Foliott. “Why, my good sir, it would take thirty thousand to pay them. He would just have squandered it away in Paris, at his gaming-tables, and what not; and then have asked you to keep him. Miss Whitney is well quit of him: and I’m thankful I came back in time to save her.”

Great news to disclose to Helen! Deeply mortifying to have ordered a wedding-breakfast and wedding things in general when there was no wedding to be celebrated! The tears were running down Lady Whitney’s homely cheeks, as Miss Deveen drove up.

Mr. Foliott asked to see Helen. All he said to her we never knew—but there’s no doubt he was as kind as a father.

“He is a wicked, despicable man,” sobbed Helen.

“He is all that, and more,” assented Mr. Foliott. “You may be thankful your whole life long for having escaped him. And, my dear, if it will at all help you to bear the smart, I may tell you that you are not the first young lady by two or three he has served, or tried to serve, in precisely the same way. And to one of them he behaved more wickedly than I care to repeat to you.”

“But,” ruefully answered poor Helen, quietly sobbing, “I don’t suppose it came so near with any of them as the very morning.”

And that was the end of Helen Whitney’s wedding.

HELEN’S CURATE.

I

A summons from Mr. Brandon meant a summons. And I don’t think I should have dared to disobey one any more than I should those other summonses issued by the law courts. He was my guardian, and he let me know it.

But I was hardly pleased that the mandate should have come for me just this one particular day. We were at Crabb Cot: Helen, Anna, and William Whitney had come to it for a week’s visit; and I did not care to lose a day with them. It had to be lost, however. Mr. Brandon had ordered me to be with him as early as possible in the morning: so that I must be off betimes to catch the first train.

It was a cold bleak day towards the end of February: sleet falling now and then, the east wind blowing like mad, and cutting me in two as I stood at the hall-door. Nobody else was down yet, and I had swallowed my breakfast standing.

Shutting the door after me, and making a rush down the walk between the evergreens for the gate, I ran against Lee, the Timberdale postman, who was coming in, with the letters, on his shaky legs. His face, shaded by its grey locks, straggling and scanty, had a queer kind of fear upon it.

“Mr. Johnny, I’m thankful to meet you; I was thinking what luck it would be if I could,” said he, trembling. “Perhaps you will stand my friend, sir. Look here.”

Of the two letters he handed to me, one was addressed to Mrs. Todhetley; the other to Helen Whitney. And this last had its envelope pretty nearly burnt off. The letter inside could be opened by anybody, and some of the scorched writing lay exposed.

“If the young lady would only forgive me—and hush it up,Mr. Johnny!” he pleaded, his poor worn face taking a piteous hue. “The Miss Whitneys are both very nice and kind young ladies; and perhaps she will.”

“How was it done, Lee?”

“Well, sir, I was lighting my pipe. It is a smart journey here, all the way from Timberdale—and I had to take the long round to-day instead of the Ravine, because there was a newspaper for the Stone House. The east wind was blowing right through me, Mr. Johnny; and I thought if I had a bit of a smoke I might get along better. A spark must have fallen on the letter while I was lighting my pipe, and I did not see it till the letter was aflame in my hand. If—if you could but stand my friend, sir, and—and perhaps give the letter to the young lady yourself, so that the Squire does not see it—and ask her to forgive me.”

One could only pity him, poor worn man. Lee had had pecks of trouble, and it had told upon him, making him old before his time. Now and then, when it was a bad winter’s morning, and the Squire caught sight of him, he would tell him to go into the kitchen and get a cup of hot coffee. Taking the two letters from him to do what I could, I carried them indoors.

Putting Helen’s with its tindered cover into an envelope, I wrote a line in pencil, and slipped it in also.

“DEAR HELEN,

“Poor old Lee has had a mishap and burnt your letter in lighting his pipe. He wants you to forgive it and not to tell the Squire. No real damage is done, so please be kind.

“J. L.”

Directing this to her, I sent it to her room by Hannah, and made a final start for the train.

And this was what happened afterwards.

Hannah took the letter to Helen, who was in the last stage of dressing, just putting the finishing touches to her hair. Staring at the state her letter was in, she read the few words I had written, and then went into a passion at what Lee had done. Helen Whitney was as good-hearted a girl as ever lived, but hot and hasty in temper, saying anything that came uppermost whenput out. She, by the help of time, had got over the smart left by the summary collapse of her marriage, and had ceased to abuse Mr. Richard Foliott. All that was now a thing of the past. And, not having had a spark of love for him, he was the more easily forgotten.

“The wicked old sinner!” she burst out: and with emphasis so startling, that Anna, reading by the window, dropped her Prayer-book.

“Helen! What is the matter?”

“That’s the matter,” flashed Helen, showing the half-burnt envelope and scorched letter, and flinging on the table the piece of paper I had slipped inside. Anna took the letter up and read it.

“Poor old man! It was only an accident, Helen; and, I suppose, as Johnny says, no real damage is done. You must not say anything about it.”

“Must I not!” was Helen’s tart retort.

“Who is the letter from?”

“Never you mind.”

“But is it from home?”

“It is from Mr. Leafchild, if you must know.”

“Oh,” said Anna shortly. For that a flirtation, or something of the kind, had been going on between Helen and the curate, Leafchild, and that it would not be likely to find favour at Whitney Hall, she was quite aware of.

“Mr. Leafchild writes about the school,” added Helen, after reading the letter; perhaps tendering the information as an apology for its having come at all. “Those two impudent girls, Kate and Judith Dill, have been setting Miss Barn at defiance, and creating no end of insubordination.”

With the last word, she was leaving the room; the letter in her pocket, the burnt envelope in her hand. Anna stopped her.

“You are not going to show that, are you, Helen? Please don’t.”

“Mr. Todhetley ought to see it—and call Lee to account for his carelessness. Why, he might have altogether burnt the letter!”

“Yes; of course it was careless. But I dare say it will be alesson to him. He is very poor and old, Helen. Pray don’t tell the Squire; he might make so much commotion over it, and then you would be sorry. Johnny asks you not.”

Helen knitted her brow, but put the envelope into her pocket with the letter: not conceding with at all a good grace, and went down nodding her head in semi-defiance. The cream of the sting lay no doubt in the fact that the letter was Mr. Leafchild’s, and that other eyes than her own might have seen it.

She did not say anything at the breakfast-table, though Anna sat upon thorns lest she should: Helen was so apt to speak upon impulse. The Squire talked of riding out; Whitney said he would go with him: Tod seemed undecided what he should do. Mrs. Todhetley read to them the contents of her letter—which was from Mary Blair.

“I shall go for a walk,” announced Helen, when the rest had dispersed. “Come and get your things on, Anna.”

“But I don’t care to go out,” said Anna. “It is a very disagreeable day. And I meant to help Mrs. Todhetley with the frock she is making for Lena.”

“You can help her when you come back. I am not going through that Crabb Ravine by myself.”

“Through Crabb Ravine!”

“Yes. I want to go to Timberdale.”

It never occurred to Anna that the errand to Timberdale could have any connection with the morning’s mishap. She put her things on without more ado—Helen always domineered over her, just as Tod did over me—and the two girls went out together.

“Halloa!” cried Tod, who was standing by the pigeon-house.“Where are you off to?”

“Timberdale,” replied Helen. And Tod turned and walked with them.

They were well through the Ravine, and close on to the entrance of Timberdale, before Helen said a word of what she had in her mind. Pulling the burnt envelope and the letter out then, she showed them to Tod.

“What do you think of that for a piece of carelessness!” she asked: and forthwith told him the whole story. Tod, hasty and impulsive, took the matter up as warmly as she had done.

“Lee ought to be reported for this—and punished. There might have been a bank-note in the letter.”

“Of course there might,” assented Helen. “And for Johnny Ludlow to want to excuse him, and ask me to hush it up!”

“Just like Johnny! In such things he is an out-and-out muff. How would the world go on, I wonder, if Johnny ruled it? You ought to have shown it to the Squire at once, Helen.”

“So I should but for Johnny and Anna. As they had asked me not to, I did not quite like to fly in their faces. But I am going to show it to your postmaster at Timberdale.”

“Oh, Helen!” involuntarily breathed Anna. And Tod looked up.

“Don’t mind her,” said Helen. “She and Johnny are just alike—making excuses for every one. Rymer the chemist is postmaster, is he not?”

“Rymer’s dead—don’t you remember that, Helen? Before he died, he gave up the post-office business. Salmon, the grocer opposite, took to it.”

This Salmon was brother to the Salmon (grocer and draper) at South Crabb. Both were long-headed men, and flourishing tradesmen in their small way.

“Poor old Lee!” cried Tod, with a shade of pity. “He is too ailing and feeble; we have often said it. But of course he must be taught not to set fire to the letters.”

Anna’s eyelashes were wet. “Suppose, by your complaining, you should get him turned out of his post?” she suggested, with the timid deference she might have observed to a royal duke—but in the presence of those two she always lost her courage. Tod answered her gently. When he was gentle to any one, it was to her.

“No fear of that, Anna. Salmon will blow old Lee up, and there’ll be an end of it. Whose letter was it, Helen?”

“It was from Mr. Leafchild—about our schools,” answered Helen, turning her face away that he might not see its sudden rush of colour.

Well, they made their complaint to Salmon; who was properly indignant and said he would look into it, Tod putting in a word for the offender, Lee. “We don’t want him reported to headquarters,or anything of that kind, you know, Salmon. Just give him a reprimand, and warn him to be cautious in future.”

“I’ll see to him, sir,” nodded Salmon.

(The final result of the burning of this letter of Helen Whitney’s, and of another person’s letter that got burnt later, was recorded in the last Series, in a paper called “Lee the Letter-Man.”

It may be as well to remind the reader that these stories told by “Johnny Ludlow” are not always placed consecutively as regards the time of their occurrence, but go backwards or forwards indiscriminately.)

Being so near, Helen and Anna thought they would call on Herbert Tanerton and Grace at the Rectory; next, they just looked in at Timberdale Court—Robert Ashton’s. Altogether, what with one delay and another, they arrived at home when lunch was nearly over. And who should be sitting there, but Sir John Whitney! He had come over unexpectedly to pass an hour or two.

Helen Whitney was very clever in her way: but she was apt to be forgetful at times, as all the rest of us are. One thing she had totally and entirely forgotten to-day—and that was to ask Tod not to speak of the letter. So that when the Squire assailed them with reproaches for being late, Tod, unconscious that he was doing wrong, blurted out the truth. A letter from Mr. Leafchild to Helen had been partly burnt by old Lee, and they had been to Timberdale to complain to Salmon.

“A letter from Leafchild to Helen!” cried Sir John. “That must be a mistake. Leafchild would not presume to write to Helen.”

She grew white as snow. Sir John had turned from the table to face her, and she dared not run away. The Squire was staring and frowning at the news of old Lee’s sin, denouncing him hotly, and demanding to see the letter.

“Yes, where is this letter?” asked Sir John. “Let me see it, Helen.”

“It—it was about the schools, papa.”

“About the schools! Like his impudence! What have you to do with the schools? Give me the letter.”

“My gracious me, burn a letter!” cried the Squire. “Leemust be in his dotage. The letter, my dear, the letter; we must see it.”

Between them both, Helen was in a corner. She might have been capable of telling a white fib and saying she had not the letter, rather than let her father see it. Anna, who knew she had it in her pocket, went for nobody; but Tod knew it also. Tod suspecting no complications, was holding out his hand for her to produce it. With trembling lips, and fingers that shook in terror, she slowly drew it forth. Sir John took the letter from her, the Squire caught hold of the burnt envelope.

There was not a friendly hole in the floor for Helen to drop through. She escaped by the door to hide herself and her hot cheeks. For this was neither more nor less than a love-letter from the curate, and Sir John had taken it to the window to read it in the stronger light.

“Bless my heart and mind!” cried he when he had mastered its contents, just such an exclamation as the Squire would have made. “He—he—I believe the fellow means to make love to her! What a false-hearted parson he must be! Come here, Todhetley.”

To see the two old heads poring over the letter together through their spectacles was something good, Tod said, when he told me all this later. It was just a love-letter and nothing less, but without a word of love in it. But not a bad love-letter of its kind; rather a sensible one. After telling Helen about the tracasserie in the parish school (which must have afforded him just the excuse for writing that he may have wanted), the curate went on to say a little bit about their mutual “friendship,” and finished up by begging Helen to allow him to speak to Sir John and Lady Whitney, for he could not bear to think that by keeping silent they were deceiving them. “As honourable a letter in its way as you could wish to hear read,” observed Tod; for Sir John and the Squire had read it aloud between them for the benefit of the dining-room.

“This comes of having grown-up daughters,” bewailed poor Sir John. “Leafchild ought to be put in the pillory. And where’s Helen got to? Where is that audacious girl?”

Poor Helen caught it hot and strong—Sir John demanding of her, for one thing, whether she had not had enough of encouragingdisreputable young sparks with that Richard Foliott. Poor Helen sobbed and hid her head, and finally took courage to say that Mr. Leafchild was a saint on earth—not to be as much as named in the same sentence with Richard Foliott. And when I got home at night, everybody, from Helen downwards, was in the dumps, and Sir John had gone home to make mincemeat of the curate.

Buttermead was one of those straggling parishes that are often found in rural districts. Whitney Hall was situated in it, also the small village of Whitney, also that famous school of ours, Dr. Frost’s, and there was a sprinkling of other good houses. Some farm homesteads lay scattered about; and the village boasted of a street and a half.

The incumbent of Buttermead, or Whitney, was the Reverend Matthew Singleton: his present curate was Charles Leafchild. Mr. Leafchild, though eight-and-twenty years of age, was only now ordained deacon, and this year was his first in the ministry. At eighteen he had gone out to the West Indies, a post having been found for him there. He did not go by choice. Being a steady-minded young fellow, religiously inclined, he had always wished to be a parson; but his father, Dr. Leafchild, a great light among Church dignitaries, and canon residentiary of a cathedral in the North, had set his face against the wish. The eldest son was a clergyman, and of his preferment Dr. Leafchild could take tolerable care, but he did not know that he could do much in that way for his younger sons, and so Charles’s hopes had to go to the wall. Spiritual earnestness, however, at length made itself heard within him to some purpose; and he resolved, come what might, that he would quit money-making for piety. The West Indian climate did not agree with him; he had to leave it for home, and then it was that he made the change.“You would have been rich in time had you stuck to your post,”remonstrated the Reverend Doctor to him: “now you may be nothing but a curate all your life.” “True, father,” was the answer, “but I shall hope to do my duty as one.” So Charles Leafchild made himself into a parson, and here he was at Buttermead, reading through his first year, partially tabooed by his family, and especially by that flourishing divine, the head of it.

He was a good-looking young man, as men go. Rather tallthan not, with a pale, calm face, brown hair that he wore long, and mild brown eyes that had no end of earnestness in their depths. A more self-denying man could not be found; though as a rule young men are not famous for great self-denial. The small stipend given by Mr. Singleton had to suffice for all his wants. Leafchild had never said what this stipend was; except that he admitted one day it was not more than seventy pounds: how much less than that, he did not state.

Just a few roods out of the village stood a small dwelling called Marigold Cottage. A tidy woman named Bean lived in it with her two daughters, one of whom was the paid mistress of the national girls’-school. Mr. Leafchild lodged here, as the late curate had before him, occupying the spare sitting-room and bedroom. And if Mrs. Bean was to be believed—and she had been a veracious woman all her life—three days out of the seven, at least, Mr. Leafchild went without meat at his dinner, having given it away to some sick or poor creature, who wanted it, he considered, more than he did. A self-denying, earnest, gentle-minded man; that’s what he was: and perhaps it may be forgiven to Helen Whitney that she fell in love with him.

When Helen went home from London, carrying with her the mortification that came of her interrupted marriage and Captain Foliott’s delinquency, she began to do what she had never done in her life before, busy herself a little in the parish: perhaps as a safety-valve to carry off her superfluous anger. The curate was a middle-aged man with a middle-aged wife and two babies, and Helen had no scruple in going about with him, here, there, and everywhere. To the schools, to the church, to practise the boys, to visit the poor, went she. But when in a few months that curate’s heart was made glad by a living—two hundred a-year and a five-roomed Vicarage—and Mr. Leafchild came in his place, it was a little different. She did not run about with the new curate as she had with the old, but she did see a good deal of him, and he of her. The result was they fell in love with one another. For the first time in her life the uncertain god, Cupid, had pierced the somewhat invulnerable heart of Helen Whitney.

But now, could anything be so inappropriate, or look more hopeless? Charles Leafchild, B.A., curate of Buttermead,positively only yet reading for his full title, scantily paid, no prospect of anything better, lacking patronage; and Miss Helen Whitney, daughter of Sir John Whitney, baronet! Looking at it from a practical point of view, it seemed that he might just as well have expected to woo and wed one of the stars in the sky.

On the bleak February morning that followed Helen’s expedition to Timberdale, Mr. Leafchild came down from his chamber and entered his sitting-room. The fire, a small one, for Mrs. Bean had received a general caution to be sparing of his coal, burnt brightly in the grate. He stood over it for a minute or two, rubbing his slender hands at the blaze: since he left the West Indies he had felt the cold more keenly than formerly. Then he turned to the breakfast-table, and saw upon it, a small portion of cold neck of mutton, an uncut loaf, and a pat of butter. His tea stood there, already made.

“If I leave the meat, it will do for dinner,” he thought: and proceeded to make his meal of bread-and-butter. Letty Bean, who chiefly waited on him, came in.

“A letter for you, sir,” she said, handing him a note.

He took it, looked at the handwriting, which was thick and sprawly and not familiar to him, and laid it beside his plate.

“Sir John Whitney’s footman brought it, sir,” continued Letty, volunteering the information: and a hot colour flushed the curate’s face as he heard it. He opened it then. Short and peremptory, it merely requested the Reverend Charles Leafchild to call upon Sir John Whitney that morning at Whitney Hall.

“Is the man waiting for an answer, Letty?”

“No, sir. He went away as soon as he gave it me.”

Mr. Leafchild half suspected what had occurred—that Sir John must, in some way, have become acquainted with the state of affairs. He judged so by the cold, haughty tone of the note: hitherto Sir John had always shown himself friendly. Far from being put out, Mr. Leafchild hoped it was so, and went on with his breakfast.

Another interruption. Mrs. Bean this time. She wore a mob cap and had lost her teeth.

“Here’s that tipsy Jones come to the door, sir. He says you told him to come.”

“Ah yes, I did; let him come in,” said the curate. “Is he tipsy this morning?”

“No, sir, only shaky. And what shall I order you for dinner, sir, to-day? I may as well ask, as I am here.”

“That will do,” he answered, pointing to the cold meat.“And please mash the potatoes.”

Jones came in. The man was not an incorrigibly bad doer, but weak and irresolute. If he worked two days, he idled and drank three, and his wife and children suffered. Mr. Leafchild, who felt more sorrow for him than anger, invited him to a seat by the fire, and talked to him long and persuasively, almost as one brother might talk to another, and gave him a hot cup of tea. Jones went away great in promises and penitence: and about eleven o’clock the curate betook himself to the Hall.

Of all men living, the Squire perhaps excepted, Sir John was about the worst to carry out any troublesome negotiation. He was good-hearted, irresolute, and quick-tempered.

When Mr. Leafchild was shown in, Sir John utterly forgot certain speeches he had conned over in his mind, broke down, went into a passion, and told the curate he was a designing, impudent villain.

Though his love for Helen, and that was intense, caused him to feel somewhat agitated in the presence of Helen’s father, Mr. Leafchild’s manner was quiet and calm, a very contrast to that of Sir John. After a little while, when the baronet had talked himself cool, Mr. Leafchild entered into a history of the affair: telling how he and Miss Whitney had met without any intention of any kind, except of that which might be connected with the parish interests, and how with as little intention, a mutual liking—nay, a love—had sprung up.

“Yes, that’s all very fine,” said Sir John, shuffling about his steel spectacles that were perched on his old red nose. “You knew she was my daughter; you knew well what you were about.”

The young man reddened at the reproach.

“Sir, indeed you misjudge me. I never thought of such a thing as falling in love with Miss Whitney until the love had come. Had she been the most obscure of young women, it would have been all the same.”

“Then you are an idiot for your pains,” retorted Sir John.“Why, goodness gracious me! have you not one single atom of common sense? Can’t you see how unfitting it is?”

“My family is a very good one; in point of fact, as good as yours, Sir John—if you will pardon me for saying so thus pointedly,” urged the curate in his gentle voice. “And though——”

“Oh, bother!” interrupted Sir John, having no counter argument particularly at hand. “That goes for nothing. What are your prospects?”

“They are not great. Perhaps I ought to say that I have no prospects as yet. But, sir——”

“Now come! that’s honest. No prospects! And yet you must go making love to my daughter.”

“I have not done that, sir, in one sense—‘made love.’Hardly a word, I think, has passed between myself and Miss Whitney that you might not have heard. But we have, notwithstanding, been fully aware of the state of each other’s heart——”

“The state of each other’s fiddlestick,” spluttered Sir John.“A nice pair of you, I must say! And pray, what did you think it would come to?”

“What Miss Whitney may have thought I have not presumed to ask. For myself, I confess I am cherishing hopes for the future. It is some little time now since I have been wishing to speak to you, Sir John: and I intended, if you were so kind as not to entirely reject me, to write to my father, Dr. Leafchild, and lay the whole case before him. I think he can help me later if he will; and I certainly believe he will be only too glad to do it.”

“Help you to what?”

“To a living.”

“And, bless my heart and mind, how long do you suppose you might have to wait? A dozen years. Twenty years, for all you know. The curate who was here before you, poor Bell, had been waiting more than twenty years for one. It came to him last year, and he was forty-seven years old.”

Mr. Leafchild could say nothing to this.

“And a fine living it is, now he has it!” went on Sir John.“No, no, sir: Helen Whitney cannot be dragged into that kind of fate.”

“I should be the last to drag her, or wish to drag her into it. Believe that, Sir John. But, if I had a good living given to me, then I should like her to share it. And I think that my father would perhaps allow me some private means also, for Helen’s sake. He has money, and could do it.”

“But all those fancies and notions are just so many vapours, clouds up in the sky, and no better, don’t you see! You young men are sanguine and foolish; you lose sight of facts in fallacies. We must look at what is, not at what might be. Why, you are not yet even a priest!”

“No. I shall be ordained to that in a few months’ time.”

“And then, I suppose, you will either remain here, or get a curacy elsewhere. And your income will be that of a curate—a hundred pounds a-year, all told. Some curates get but fifty.”

“True. We are poorly paid.”

“And that may go on till you are forty or fifty years of age! And yet, in the face of it, you ask me to let you have my daughter. Now, Mr. Leafchild, you are either a simpleton yourself, or you must think I am one,” added Sir John, rising to end the interview, which had been to him one of thorough discomfort. “And I’m sure I hope you’ll pick up a little common sense, young man, and I shall order Miss Helen to pick some up too. There, that’s all.”

“I trust you are not angry with me, sir,” said the curate mildly, for Sir John was holding out his hand to be shaken.

“Well, yes, I am. Anything like this causes one such worry, you know. I’m sure I and my wife have had no sleep all night. You must not think any more of Helen. And now good-morning.”

As Mr. Leafchild walked back to his lodgings at Dame Bean’s, his hopes seemed to be about as dull as the wintry sky on which his nice brown eyes were fixed. His whole happiness, socially speaking, lay in Helen; hers lay with him; but only separation seemed to be looming in the air. Suddenly, when he was close to Marigold Cottage, a little rift broke in the leaden clouds, and a bit of pale blue sky shone forth.

“I will take that as an omen for good; pray God it may be so!” spoke the curate gladly and reverently, as he lifted his hat. “And—come what may, in storm and in tempest, God is over all.”

Helen went home in the dumps and to sundry edifying lectures. An embargo was laid on her parish work, and she only saw the curate at church. One month, two months passed over thus, and she grew pale and thin. Sir John was cross, Lady Whitney uncomfortable; they were both simple-minded people, caring more for their children’s happiness than for their grandeur. The former told the Squire in confidence that if the young fellow could get a decent living, he was not sure but he’d give in, and that he liked him ten thousand times better than he had ever liked that Foliott.

They met one day by accident. Helen was out moping in the long broad walk: which was beginning to be shady now, for May was all but in, and the trees were putting on their foliage. At the end of it she came to a standstill, leaning on the gate. The waters of the lake, out yonder, were blue as the unruffled sky. With a faint cry, she started aside, for Charles Leafchild stood before her.

Being a parson, and tacitly on honour to Sir John, he might have been expected to pass on his way without stopping; but Helen’s hand was already stretched out over the gate. He could but shake it.

“You are not looking well,” he said after a moment’s silence.“I am sorry to see it.”

What with his unexpected presence, and what with her mind’s general discomfort, Helen burst into tears. Mr. Leafchild kept her hand in his.

“I have a bad headache to-day,” said Helen, by way of excuse for her tears. “It has been gloomy weather lately.”

“Gloomy within and without,” he assented, giving a meaning to her words that she had not meant to imply. “But in every cloud, you know, however dark it may be, there is always a silver lining.”

“We can’t always see it,” returned Helen, drying her tears.

“No; we very often cannot. But we may trust that it is there—and be patient.”

“I think it sometimes happens that we never see it—that all is gloomy to the end, the end of life. What then?”

“Then we may be sure that it is best for us it should be so. God directs all things.”

Helen sighed: she had not learnt the love and faith and submission that made up the sum of Mr. Leafchild’s life, bringing into it so strange a peace.

“Is it true that you are going to leave?” she asked. “We heard it mentioned.”

“Yes: when I shall be fully ordained. Mr. Singleton has to take his nephew. It was an old promise—that he should come to him for his first year, just as I have. I think I shall go to Worcester.”

“To Worcester?”

“I have been offered a curacy there by one of the minor canons whose living is in the town, and I feel inclined to take it. The parish is large and has a good many of the very poor in it.”

Helen made a face. “But would you like that? You might be frightfully overworked.”

“It is what I should like. As to the work—it is done for our Master.”

He shook hands with her again, and left, the cheery smile still on his face, the thoughtful light in his steadfast eyes. And never a word of love, you see, had passed.

It was, I take it, about a fortnight after this, that there went walking one afternoon to Whitney Hall, a tall, portly, defiant-looking gentleman in gold-rimmed spectacles and a laced-up clerical hat. By the way he turned his head here and there, and threw his shoulders about as he strode along, you might have taken him for a bishop at least, instead of a canon—but canons in those days were a great deal more self-important than bishops are in these. It was the Reverend Dr. Leafchild. A real canon was he, a great man in his own cathedral, and growing rich on his share of its substantial revenues: your honorary canons with their empty title and non-stipends had not sprung into fashion then. In his pompous manner, and he had been born pompous, Dr. Leafchild asked to see Sir John Whitney.

After Mr. Leafchild’s interview with Sir John in February, hehad written to his father and told him all about it, asking him whether he thought he could not help him later to a living, so that he might have a chance of winning Helen. But for Helen’s being a baronet’s daughter and the connection one that even the canon might be proud of, he would have turned a deaf ear: as it was, he listened. But Dr. Leafchild never did things in a hurry; and after some correspondence with his son (and a great deal of grumbling, meant for his good), he had now come into Worcestershire for the purpose of talking over the affair with Sir John.

The upshot was, that Sir John gave in, and sanctioned the engagement. There was an excellent living somewhere down in the North—eight hundred pounds a-year, a handsome house, and some land—the next presentation to which the canon could command. He had intended it for his eldest son; but he, by some lucky chance, had just obtained a better preferment, and the doctor could promise it to Charles. The present incumbent was old and ailing; therefore, in all probability, it would very speedily fall in. The canon added that he might settle on the young people a small sum at their marriage, say a hundred a-year, or so; and he also hinted that Charles might stand a chance of better preferment later—say a snug canonry. So Sir John shook hands heartily upon the bargain, invited the canon to stay dinner, and sent for Charles.

For the next six weeks who so happy as the curate and Helen? They came over to us at Dyke Manor (for we had gone back there) for a day or two, and we learnt to like him with our whole hearts. What a good, earnest, warm-natured man he was; and oh, how unselfish!

I remember one evening in particular when they were out together, pacing the field-path. Helen had his arm, and he was talking to her in what seemed an uncommonly solemn manner: for his hand was lifted now and then in earnestness, and both were gazing upwards. It was a beautiful sky: the sun had set in splendour, leaving crimson and gold clouds behind it, the evening star twinkled in the deepening canopy. Mrs. Todhetley sent me to them. A poor woman had come up for broth for her sick son, one of our labourers. She was in great distress: a change had taken place in him for the worse, he was calling forthe clergyman to come to him before he died: but Mr. Holland was out that evening—gone to Evesham.

“Johnny, I—I think Mr. Leafchild would go,” said the mater. “Do you mind asking him?”

Hardly any need to ask. At the first word he was hastening to the woman and walking away with her. Helen’s eyes, gazing at the sky still, were wet with tears.

“Is it not beautiful, Johnny?”

“Very.” It was a glorious sunset.

“But I never saw it as I see it now. He is teaching me many things. I cannot hope to be ever as he is, Johnny, not half as good; but I think in time he will make me a little like him.”

“You have a happy life before you.”

“Yes—I hope so,” she said hesitatingly. “But sometimes a feeling makes itself heard within me—that one who is so entirely fitted for the next world may not long be left in this.”

II

It was autumn weather—October. A lot of us were steaming over to Worcester in the train. Miss Whitney from Cheltenham, and a friend of hers—a maiden lady as ancient as herself, one Miss Conaway, of Devonshire—were staying at the Hall. Miss Conaway did not know Worcester, and was now being taken to see it—especially the cathedral. Lady Whitney, Helen, Anna, and I made up the party, and we filled the carriage. My being with them arose from chance: I had come over accidentally that morning to Whitney Hall. Of course Helen hoped to see something besides the cathedral her curate. For in June Mr. Leafchild, then in priest’s orders, entered on his new curacy at Worcester, there to stay until the expected living should fall in.

“How is he?” I asked Helen, bending over the arm of the seat that divided us.

“Working himself to death,” she whispered back to me, her tone a cross one.

“He said he was glad there would be plenty of work, you know. And it is a large parish.”

“But he need not let it put everything else out of his head.”

“Meaning you?”

“I have not heard from him for more than a week. Papa had a letter from Dr. Leafchild this morning. He said in it that Charles, when he last wrote, complained of being poorly.”

“A great many curates do get very overtaxed.”

“Oh, and what do you think?” went on Helen. “He is actually beginning to have scruples about taking that living, on the score that there’ll be hardly any work to do.”

“But—he will take it!”

“Yes, I suppose he will, because of me; but it will go against the grain, I fancy. I do think one may have too strict a conscience.”

It was past one o’clock when we reached Worcester. Lady Whitney complained in the train of having started too late. First of all there was luncheon to be taken at the Star: that brought it to past two. Then various other things had to be done: see the cathedral, and stay the afternoon service, go over the china works at Diglis, and buy a bundle of articles at the linen-draper’s. All these duties over, they meant to invade Mr. Leafchild’s lodgings in Paradise Row.

They took the draper’s to begin with, the whole of them trooping in, one after another, like sheep into a pen: and I vow that they only came out again when the bell was going for three-o’clock service. Helen was not in a genial mood: at this rate there would not be much time left for visiting the curate.

“It was Aunt Ann’s fault,” she grumbled to me—“and mamma’s. They were a good half-hour looking at the stuff for the children’s winter frocks. Aunt Ann maintained that cashmere was best, mamma held to merino. All the shelves they had taken down! I would not be a linen-draper’s shopman for the world.”

Just in time, were we, to get into our seats before the procession of clergy and choristers came in. The chanter that afternoon was Mr. Leafchild’s rector: I knew him to speak to. But there’s no space to linger upon details.

A small knot of people, ourselves and others, had collected in the transept after service, waiting for one of the old bedesmen to do the honours of the cathedral, when the chanter came down the steps of the south aisle, after disrobing in the vestry.

“Do you know who he is?” I said to Helen, who was standing with me a little apart.

“No—how should I know? Except that he must be one of the minor canons.”

“He is Mr. Leafchild’s rector.”

“Is he?” she eagerly cried, the colour coming into her face. And just then he chanced to look our way, and nodded to me. I went up to him to speak.

“This is a terrible thing about Leafchild,” he exclaimed in a minute or two.

“What is it?” I asked, my breath stopping.

Helen, who had slowly paced after me on the white flags, stood stock still and turned as pale as you please.

“Have you not heard of his illness? Perhaps not, though: it has been so sudden. A few days ago he was apparently as well as I am now. But it was only last night that the doctors began to apprehend danger.”

“Is it fever?”

“Yes. A species of typhoid, I believe. Whether caught in his ministrations or not, I don’t know. Though I suppose it must have been. He is lying at his lodgings in Paradise Row. Leafchild has not seemed in good condition lately,” continued the clergyman. “He is most unremitting in his work, fags himself from morning till night, and lives anyhow: so perhaps he was not fortified to resist the attack of an enemy. He is very ill: and since last night he has been unconscious.”

“He is dangerously ill, did you say?” spoke poor Helen, biting her lips to hide their tremor.

“Almost more than dangerous: I fear there is little hope left,” he answered, never of course suspecting who Helen was.“Good-afternoon.”

She followed him with her eyes as he turned to the cloister-door: and then moved away towards the north entrance, looking as one dazed.

“Helen, where are you going?”

“To see him.”

“Oh, but it won’t do. It won’t, indeed, Helen.”

“I am going to see him,” she answered, in her most wilful tone. “Don’t you hear that he is dying? I know he is; I feelit instinctively as a sure and certain fact. If you have a spark of goodness you’ll come with me, Johnny Ludlow. It’s all the same—whether you do or not.”

I looked around for our party. They had disappeared up the other aisle under convoy of the bedesman, leaving Helen and myself to follow at our leisure; or perhaps not noticing our absence. Helen, marching away with quick steps, passed out at the grand entrance.

“It is not safe for you to go, Helen,” I remonstrated, as we went round the graveyard and so up High Street. “You would catch the fever from him.”

“I shall catch no fever.”

“He caught it.”

“I wish you’d be quiet. Can’t you see what I am suffering?”

The sweetest sight to me just then would have been Lady Whitney, or any one else holding authority over Helen. I seemed responsible for any ill that might ensue: and yet, what could I do?

“Helen, pray listen to a word of reason! See the position you put me in. A fever is not a light thing to risk.”

“I don’t believe that typhoid fever is catching. He did not say typhus.”

“Of course it’s catching.”

“Are you afraid of it?”

“I don’t know that I am afraid. But I should not run into it by choice. And I’m sure you ought not to.”

We were just then passing that large druggist’s shop that the Squire always called Featherstonhaugh’s—just because Mr. Featherstonhaugh once kept it. Helen darted across the street and into it.

“A pound of camphor,” said she, to the young man behind the right-hand counter.

“A pound of camphor!” he echoed. “Did you say a pound, ma’am?”

“Is it too much?” asked Helen. “I want some to put about me: I am going to see some one who is ill.”

It ended in his giving her two ounces. As we left the shop she handed part of it to me, stowing the rest about herself.And whether it was thanks to the camphor, I don’t know, but neither of us took any harm.

“There. You can’t grumble now, Johnny Ludlow.”

Paradise Row, as every one knows, is right at the other end of the town, past the Tything. We had nearly reached the house when a gentleman, who looked like a doctor, came out of it.

“I beg your pardon,” said Helen, accosting him as he met us, and coughing to hide her agitation, “but we think—seeing you come out of the house—that you may be attending Mr. Leafchild. Is he better?”

The doctor looked at us both, and shook his head as he answered—

“Better in one sense of the word, in so far as that he is now conscious; worse in another. He is sinking fast.”

A tremor shook Helen from head to foot. She turned away to hide it. I spoke.

“Do you mean—dying?”

“I fear so.”

“Are his friends with him?”

“Not any of them. His father was sent to yesterday, but he has not yet come. We did not write before, not having anticipated danger.”

“Why don’t they have Henry Carden to him?” cried Helen in passionate agitation as the doctor walked away. “He could have cured him.”

“No, no, Helen; don’t think that. Other men are just as clever as Henry Carden. They have only one treatment for fever.”

A servant-girl answered the door, and asked us into the parlour. She took us for the relations from the north. Mr. Leafchild was lying in a room near—a comfortable bed-chamber. Three doctors were attending him, she said; but just now the nurse was alone with him. Would we like to go in? she added: we had been expected all day.

“Come with me, Johnny,” whispered Helen.

He was lying in bed, white and still, his eyes wide open. The nurse, a stout old woman in light print gown and full white apron, stood at a round table in the corner, noiselessly washing a wine-glass. She turned her head, curtsied, and bustled out of the room.

But wasn’t he weak, as his poor thin hands clasped Helen’s! His voice was hollow as he tried to speak to her. The bitter tears, running down her checks, were dropping on to the bed-clothes.

“You should not have come”, he managed to say. “My love, my love!”

“Is there no hope?” she sobbed. “Oh, Charles, is there nohope?”

“May God soothe it to you! May He have you always in His good keeping!”

“And is it no trouble to you to die?” she went on, reproach in her anguished tone. “Have you no regret for the world, and—and for those you leave behind?”

“It is God’s will,” he breathed. “To myself it is no trouble, for He has mercifully taken the trouble from me. I regret you, my Helen, I regret the world. Or, rather, I should regret it, but that I know I am going to one brighter and better. You will come to me there, my dear one, and we shall live together for ever.”

Helen knelt down by the bed; he was lying close on the edge of it; and laid her wet face against his. He held her to him for a moment, kissed her fervently, and then motioned to me to take her away.

“For your own sake, my dear,” he whispered. “You are in danger here. Give my dear love to them all.”

Helen just waved her hand back at me, as much as to say, Don’t you interfere. But at that moment the fat old nurse bustled in again, with the announcement that two of the doctors and Mr. Leafchild’s rector were crossing the road. That aroused Helen.

One minute’s close embrace, her tears bedewing his dying cheeks, one lingering hand-clasp of pain, and they parted. Parted for all time. But not for eternity.

“God be with you ever!” he breathed, giving her his solemn blessing. “Farewell, dear Johnny Ludlow!”

“I am so sorry! If you could but get well!” I cried, my eyes not much dryer than Helen’s.

“I shall soon be well: soon,” he answered with a sweet faint smile, his feeble clasp releasing my hand, which he had taken.“But not here. Fare you well.”

Helen hid herself in a turn of the passage till the doctors had gone in, and then we walked down the street together, she crying softly. Just opposite Salt Lane, a fly passed at a gallop. Dr. Leafchild sat in it muffled in coats, a cloud of sorrow on his generally pompous face.

And that was the abrupt end of poor Charles Leafchild, for he died at midnight, full of peace. God’s ways are not as our ways; or we might feel tempted to ask why so good and useful a servant should have been taken.

And so, you perceive, there was another marriage of Helen Whitney frustrated. Fortune seemed to be against her.

JELLICO’S PACK.

I

The shop was not at all in a good part of Evesham. The street was narrow and dirty, the shop the same. Over the door might be seen written “Tobias Jellico, Linen-draper and Huckster.”One Monday—which is market-day at Evesham, as the world knows—in going past it with Tod and little Hugh, the child trod on his bootlace and broke it, and we turned in to get another. It was a stuffy shop, filled with bundles as well as wares, and behind the counter stood Mr. Jellico himself, a good-looking, dark man of forty, with deep-set blue eyes, that seemed to meet at the nose, so close were they together.

The lace was a penny, he said, and Tod laid down sixpence. Jellico handed the sixpence to a younger man who was serving lower down, and began showing us all kinds of articles—neckties, handkerchiefs, fishing-lines, cigar-lights, for he seemed to deal in varieties. Hugh had put in his bootlace, but we could not get away.

“I tell you we don’t want anything of this,” said Tod, in his haughty way, for the persistent fellow had tired him out. “Give me my change.”

The other man brought the change wrapped up in paper, and we went on to the inn. Tod had ordered the pony to be put in the chaise, and it stood ready in the yard. Just then a white-haired, feeble old man came into the yard, and begged. Tod opened the paper of half-pence.

“The miserable cheat,” he called out. “If you’ll believe me, Johnny, that fellow has only given me fourpence in change. If I had time I’d go back to him. Sam, do you know anything of one Jellico, who keeps a fancy shop?” asked he of the ostler.

“A fancy shop, sir?” echoed Sam, considering.

“Sells calico and lucifer-matches.”

“Oh, I know Mr. Jellico!” broke forth Sam, his recollection coming to him. “He has got a cousin with him, sir.”

“No doubt. It was the cousin that cheated me. Mistakes are mistakes, and the best of us are liable to them; but if that was a mistake, I’ll eat the lot.”

“It’s as much of a leaving-shop as a draper’s, sir. Leastways, it’s said that women can take things in and borrow money on them.”

“Oh!” said Tod. “Borrow a shilling on a Dutch oven to-day, and pay two shillings to-morrow to get it out.”

“Anyway, Mr. Jellico does a fine trade, for he gives credit,”concluded Sam.

But the wrong change might have been a mistake.

In driving home, Tod pulled up at George Reed’s cottage. Every one must remember hearing where that was, and of Reed’s being put into prison by Major Parrifer. “Get down, Johnny,”said he, “and see if Reed’s there. He must have left work.”

I went up the path where Reed’s children were playing, and opened the cottage door. Mrs. Reed and two neighbours stood holding out something that looked like a gown-piece. With a start and a grab, Mrs. Reed caught the stuff, and hid it under her apron, and the two others looked round at me with scared faces.

“Reed here? No, sir,” she answered, in a sort of flurry.“He had to go over to Alcester after work. I don’t expect him home much afore ten to-night.”

I shut the door, thinking nothing. Reed was a handy man at many things, and Tod wanted him to help with some alteration in the pheasantry at the Manor. It was Tod who had set it up—a long, narrow place enclosed with green trellised work, and some gold and silver pheasants running about in it. The Squire had been against it at first, and told Tod he wouldn’t have workmen bothering about the place. So Tod got Reed to come in of an evening after his day’s work, and in a fortnight the thing was up. Now he wanted him again to alter it: he had found out it was too narrow. That was one of Tod’s failings. If he took a thing into his head it must be done off-hand. The Squire railed at him for his hot-headed impatience: but in point of fact he was of just the same impatient turn himself. Tod had been over to Bill Whitney’s and found their pheasantry was twice as wide as his.

“Confound Alcester,” cried Tod in his vexation, as he drove on home. “If Reed could have come up now and seen what it is I want done, he might have begun upon it to-morrow evening.”

“The pater says it is quite wide enough as it is, Tod.”

“You shut up, Johnny. If I pay Reed out of my own pocket, it’s nothing to anybody.”

On Tuesday he sent me to Reed’s again. It was a nice spring afternoon, but I’m not sure that I thanked him for giving me that walk. Especially when upon lifting the latch of the cottage door, I found it fastened. Down I sat on the low bench outside the open window to wait—where Cathy had sat many a time in the days gone by, making believe to nurse the children, and that foolish young Parrifer would be leaning against the pear-tree on the other side the path. I had to leave my message with Mrs. Reed; I supposed she had only stepped into a neighbour’s, and might be back directly, for the two little girls were playing at“shop” in the garden.

Buzz, buzz: hum, hum. Why, those voices were in the kitchen! The lower part of the casement was level with the top of my head; I turned round and raised my eyes to look.

Well! surprises, it is said, are the lot of man. It was his face, unless my sight deceived itself. The same blue eyes that were in the shop at Evesham the day before, were inside Mrs. Reed’s kitchen now: Mr. Tobias Jellico’s. The place seemed to be crowded with women. He was smiling and talking to them in the most persuasive manner imaginable, his hands waving an accompaniment, on one of which glittered a ring with a yellow stone in it, a persuasive look on his rather well-featured face.

They were a great deal too agreeably engrossed to see me, and I looked on at leisure. A sort of pack, open, rested on the floor; the table was covered with all kinds of things for women’s dress; silks, cottons, ribbons, mantles; which Mrs. Reed and the others were leaning over and fingering.

“Silks ain’t for the like of us; I’d never have the cheek toput one on,” cried a voice that I knew at once for shrill Peggy Dickon’s. Next to her stood Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife; who was very pretty, and vain accordingly.

“What kind o’ stuff d’ye call this, master?” Ann Dovey asked.

“That’s called laine,” answered Jellico. “It’s all pure wool.”

“It’s a’most as shiny as silk. I say, Mrs. Reed, d’ye think this ’ud wear?”

“It would wear for ever,” put in Jellico. “Ten yards of it would make as good a gown as ever went on a lady’s back; and the cost is but two shillings a yard.”

“Two shillings! Let’s see—what ’ud that come to? Why, twenty, wouldn’t it? My patience, I shouldn’t never dare to run up that score for one gownd.”

Jellico laughed pleasantly. “You take it, Mrs. Dovey. It just suits your bright cheeks. Pay me when you can, and how you can: sixpence a-week, or a shilling a-week, or two shillings, as you can make it easy. It’s like getting a gown for nothing.”

“So it is,” cried Ann Dovey, in a glow of delight. And by the tone, Mr. Jellico no doubt knew that she had as good as yielded to the temptation. He got out his yard measure.

“Ten yards?” said he.

“I’m a’most afeard. Will you promise, sir, not to bother me for the money faster than I can pay it?”

“You needn’t fear no bothering from me; only just keep up the trifle you’ve got to pay off weekly.”

He measured off the necessary length. “You’ll want some ribbon to trim it with, won’t you?” said he.

“Ribbin—well, I dun know. Dovey might say ribbin were too smart for me.”

“Not a bit on’t, Ann Dovey,” spoke up another woman—andshe was our carter’s wife, Susan Potter. “It wouldn’t look nothing without some ribbin. That there narrer grass-green satin ’ud be nice upon’t.”

“And that grass-green ribbon’s dirt cheap,” said Jellico.“You’d get four or five yards of it for a shilling or two. Won’tyou be tempted now?” he added to Susan Potter. She laughed.

“Not with them things. I shouldn’t never hear the last on’tif Potter found out I went on tick for finery. He’s rough, sir, and might beat me. I’d like a check apron, and a yard o’calico.”

“Perhaps I might take a apron or two, sir, if you made it easy,” said Mrs. Dickon.

“Of course I’ll make it easy; and a gown too if you’ll have it. Let me cut you off the fellow to this of Mrs. Dovey’s.”

Peggy Dickon shook her head. “It ain’t o’ no good asking me, Mr. Jellico. Ann Dovey can buy gownds; she haven’t got no children; I’ve a bushel on ’em. No; I don’t dare. I wish I might! Last year, up at Cookhill Wake, I see a sweet gownd, not unlike this, what had got green ribbins upon it,” added the woman longingly.

Being (I suppose) a kind of Mephistopheles in his line, Mr. Tobias Jellico accomplished his wish and cut off a gown against her judgment. He sold other gowns, and “ribbins,” and trumpery; the yard measure had nearly as little rest as the women’s tongues. Mrs. Reed’s turn to be served seemed to come last; after the manner of her betters, she yielded precedence to her guests.

“Now for me, sir,” she said. “You’ve done a good stroke o’business here to-day, Mr. Jellico, and I hope you won’t objec’ to change that there gownd piece as I bought last Monday for some’at a trifle stronger. Me and some others have been a-looking at it, and we don’t think it’ll wear.”

“Oh, I’ll change it,” readily answered Jellico. “You should put a few more shillings on, Mrs. Reed: better have a good thing when you’re about it. It’s always cheaper in the end.”

“Well, I suppose it is,” she said. “But I’m a’most frightened at the score that’ll be running up.”

“It’s easily wiped off,” answered the man, pleasantly. “Just a shilling or two weekly.”

There was more chaffering and talking; and after that came the chink of money. The women had each a book, and Jellico had his book, and they were compared with his, and made straight. As he came out with the pack on his back, he saw me sitting on the bench, and looked hard at me: whether he knew me again, I can’t say.

Just then Frank Stirling ran by, turning down Piefinch Lane.I went after him: the women’s tongues inside were working like so many steam-engines, and it was as well to let them run down before speaking to Mrs. Reed.

Half-way down Piefinch Lane on the left, there was a turning, called Piefinch Cut. It had grown into a street. All kinds of shops had been opened, dealing in small wares: and two public-houses. A pawnbroker from Alcester had opened a branch establishment here—which had set the world gaping more than they would at a wild-beast show. It was managed by a Mr. Figg. The three gilt balls stood out in the middle of the Cut; and the blacksmith’s forge, to which Stirling was bound, was next door. He wanted something done to a piece of iron. While we were standing amidst the sparks, who should go into the house the other side the way but Jellico and his pack!

“Yes, he should come into mine, he should, that fellow,”ironically observed John Dovey: who was a good-natured, dark-eyed little man, with a tolerable share of sense. “I’d be after trundling him out again, feet foremost.”

“Is he a travelling hawker?” asked Stirling.

“He’s a sight worse, sir,” answered Dovey. “If you buy wares off a hawker you must pay for ’em at the time: no money, no goods. But this fellow seduces the women to buy his things on tick, he does: Tuesday arter Tuesday he comes prowling into this here Cut, and does a roaring trade. His pack’ll walk out o’ that house a bit lighter nor it goes in. Stubbs’s wife lives over there; Tanken’s wife, she lives there; and there be others. If I hadn’t learnt that nobody gets no good by interfering atween men and their wives, I’d ha’ telled Stubbs and Tanken long ago what was going on.”

It had been on the tip of my tongue to say where I had just seen Jellico, and the trade he was doing. Remembering in time that Mrs. Dovey had been one of the larger purchasers, I kept the news in.

“His name’s Jellico,” continued Dovey, as he hammered away at Stirling’s iron. “He have got a fine shop somewhere over at Evesham. It’s twelve or fifteen months now, Master Johnny, since he took to come here. When first I see him I wondered where the deuce the hawker’s round could be, appearing in the Cut so quick and reg’lar; but I soon found he was no reg’larhawker. Says I to my wife, ‘Don’t you go and have no dealings with that there pest, for I’ll not stand it, and I might be tempted to stop it summary.’ ‘All right, Jack,’ says she;‘when I want things I’ll deal at the old shop at Alcester.’ But there’s other wives round about us doing strokes and strokes o’trade with him; ’tain’t all of ’em, Master Ludlow, as is so sensible as our Ann.”

Considering the stroke of trade I had just seen done by Ann Dovey, it was as well not to hear this.

“If he’s not a hawker, what is he?” asked Stirling, swaying himself on a beam in the roof; and I’m sure I did not know either.

“It’s a cursed system,” hotly returned John Dovey; “and I say that afore your faces, young gents. It may do for the towns, if they chooses to have it—that’s their business; but it don’t do for us. What do our women here want o’ fine shawls and gay gownds?—decking theirselves out as if they was so many Jezebels? But ’tain’t that. Let ’em deck, if they’ve got no sense to see how ill it looks on their sun-freckled faces and hands hard wi’ work; it’s the ruin it brings. Just you move on t’other side, Master Ludlow, sir; you be right in the way o’ the sparks. There’s a iron pot over there as does for sitting on.”

“I’m all right, Dovey. Tell us about Jellico.”

Jellico’s system, to give Dovey’s explanation in brief, was this: He brought over a huge pack of goods every Tuesday afternoon in a pony-gig from his shop at Evesham. He put up the pony, and carried the pack on his round, tempting the women right and left to buy. Husbands away at work, and children at school, the field was open. He asked for no ready money down. The purchases were entered in a book, to be paid off by weekly instalments. The payments had to be kept up; Jellico saw to that. However short the household had to run of the weekly necessaries, Jellico’s money had to be ready for him. It was an awful tax, just as Dovey described it, and drifted into at first by the women without thought of ill. The debt in itself was bad enough; but the fear lest it should come to their husbands’ ears was almost worse. As Dovey described all this in his homely, but rather flowery language, it put me in mind of those pleasure-seekers that sail too far over a sunny sea inthoughtlessness, and suspect no danger till their vessel is right upon the breakers.

“There haven’t been no blow-ups yet to speak of,” said the blacksmith. “But they be coming. I could just put my finger upon half-a-dozen women at this blessed minute what’s wearing theirselves to shadders with the trouble. They come here to Figg’s in the dusk o’ evening wi’ things hid under their aprons. The longer Jellico lets it go on, the worse it gets, for they willbe tempted, the she-creatures, buying made flowers for their best bonnets to-day, and ribbuns for their Sunday caps to-morrow. If Jellico lets ’em, that is. He knows pretty sure where he may trust and where he mayn’t. ’Tain’t he as will let his pocket suffer in the long run. He knows another thing—that the further he staves off any big noise the profitabler it’ll be for him. Once let that come, and Master Jellico might get hunted out o’ the Cut, and his pack and its finery kicked to shreds.”

“But why are the women such simpletons, Dovey?” asked Frank Stirling.

“You might as well ask why folks eats and drinks, sir,”retorted Dovey, his begrimed eyes lighted with the flame. “A love o’ their faces is just born with the women, and it goes with ’em to the grave. Set a parcel o’ finery before ’em and the best’ll find their eyes a-longing, and their mouths a-watering. It’s said Eve used to do up her hair looking into a clear pool.”

“Putting it in that light, Dovey, I wonder all the women here don’t go in for Mr. Jellico’s temptations.”

“Some on ’em has better sense; and some has husbands what’s up to the thing, and keeps the reins tight in their own hands,” complacently answered the unconscious Dovey.

“Up to the thing!” repeated Stirling; “I should think all the men are up to it, if Jellico is here so constantly.”

“No, sir, they’re not. Most of ’em are at work when he comes. They may know some’at about him, but the women contrives to deceive ’em, and they suspects nothing. The fellow with the pack don’t concern them or their folk at home, as they supposes, an’ so they never bothers theirselves about him or his doings. I’d like to drop a hint to some of ’em to go homeunexpected some Tuesday afternoon; but maybe it’s best let alone.”

“I suppose your wife is one of the sensible ones, Dovey?”And I kept my countenance as I said it.

“She daredn’t be nothing else, Master Johnny. I be a trifle loud if I’m put out. Not she,” emphatically added Dovey, his strong, bared arm dealing a heavy blow on the anvil, and sending up a whole cloud of sparks. “I’d never get put in jail for her, as she knows; I’d shave her hair off first. Run up a score with that there Jellico? No, she’d not be such a idiot as that. You should hear how she goes on again her neighbours that does run it, and the names she calls ’em.”

Poor John Dovey! Where ignorance is bliss——

“Why, if I thought my wife could hoodwink me as some of’em does their men, I’d never hold up my head of one while, for shame; no, not in my own forge,” continued Dovey. “Ann’s temper’s a bit trying sometimes, and wants keeping in order; but she’d be above deceit o’ that paltry sort. She don’t need to act it, neither; I give her a whole ten shillings t’other day, and she went and laid it out at Alcester.”

No doubt. Any amount of shillings would soon be sacrificed to Ann’s vanity.

“How much longer is that thing going to take, Dovey?”interposed Stirling.

“Just about two minutes, sir. ’Twere a cranky—— There he goes.”

The break in Dovey’s answer was caused by the appearance of Jellico. He came out, shouldering his pack. The blacksmith looked after him down the Cut, and saw him turn in elsewhere.

“I thought ’twas where he was going,” said he; “’tain’t often he passes that there dwelling. Other houses seem to have their days, turn and turn about; but that ’un gets him constant.”

“It’s where Bird’s wife lives, is it not, Dovey?”

“It’s where she lives, fast enough, sir. And Bird, he be safe at his over-looking work, five miles off, without fear of his popping in home to hinder the dealing and chaffering. But she’d better mind—though Bird do get a’most three pound a-week, he have got means for every sixpence of it, with his peck o’ childern, six young ’uns of her’n, and six of his firstwife’s, and no more’n one on ’em yet able to earn a penny-piece. If Bird thought she was running up a score with Jellico, he’d give her two black eyes as soon as look at her.”

“Bird’s wife never seems to have any good clothes at all; she looks as if she hadn’t a decent gown to her back,” said Frank.

“What she buys is mostly things for the little ’uns: shimmys and pinafores, and that,” replied Dovey. “Letty Bird’s one o’them that’s more improvidenter than a body of any sense ’ud believe, Master Stirling; she never has a coin by the Wednesday night, she hasn’t. The little ’uns ’ud be a-rolling naked in the gutter, but for what she gets on tick off Jellico; and Bird, seeing’em naked, might beat her for that. That don’t mend the system; the score’s a-being run up, and it’ll bring trouble sometime as sure as a gun. Beside that, if there was no Jellico to serve her with his poison, she’d have to save enough for decent clothes. Don’t you see how the thing works, sir?”

“Oh, I see,” carelessly answered Stirling. “D’ye call the pack’s wares poison, Dovey?”

“Yes, I do,” said Dovey, stoutly, as he handed Frank his iron. “They’ll poison the peace o’ many a household in this here Cut. You two young gents just look out else, and see.”

We came away with the iron. At the end of Piefinch Lane, Frank Stirling took the road to the Court, and I turned into Reed’s. The wife was by herself then, giving the children their early tea.

“Reed shall come up to the Manor as soon as he gets home, sir,” she said, in answer to Tod’s message.

“I was here before this afternoon, Mrs. Reed, and couldn’t get in. You were too busy to hear me at the door.”

The knife halted in the bread she was cutting, and she glanced up for a moment; but seemed to think nothing, and finished the slice.

“I’ve been very busy, Master Ludlow. I’m sorry you’ve had to come twice, sir.”

“Busy enough, I should say, with Jellico’s pack emptied on the table, and you and the rest buying up at steam pace.”

The words were out of my lips before I saw her startled gesture of caution, pointing to the children: it was plain they were notto know anything about Jellico. She had an honest face, but it turned scarlet.

“Do you think it is a good plan, Mrs. Reed, to get things upon trust, and have to make up money for them weekly?” I could not help saying to her as she came to the door.

“I’m beginning to doubt whether it is, sir.”

“If Reed thought he had a debt hanging over him, that might fall at any moment——”

“For the love of mercy, sir, don’t say nothing to Reed!”came the startled interruption. “You won’t, will you, Master Johnny?”

“Not I. Don’t fear. But if I were you, Mrs. Reed, for my own sake I should cut all connection with Jellico. Better deal at a fair shop.”

She nodded her head as I went through the gate; but her face had now turned to a sickly whiteness that spoke of terror. Was the woman so deep in the dangerous books already?

Reed came up in the evening, and Tod showed him what he wanted done. As the man was measuring the trellis-work, Hannah happened to pass. She asked him how he was getting on.

“Amongst the middlings,” answered Reed, shortly. “I was a bit put out just now.”

“What by?” asked Hannah, who said anything she chose before me without the smallest ceremony: and Tod had gone away.

“As I was coming up here, Ingram stops me, and asks if I couldn’t let him have the bit of money I owed him. I stared at the man: what money was I likely to owe him——”

“Ingram the cow-keeper?” interrupted Hannah.

“Ingram the cow-keeper. So, talking a bit, I found there was a matter of six shillings due to him for the children’s milk: it was ever so long since my wife had paid. Back I went to her at once to know the reason why—and it was that made me late in coming up here, Master Johnny.”

“I suppose he had sold her skim milk for new, and she thought she’d make him wait for his money,” returned Hannah.

“All she said to me was that she didn’t think it had been running so long; Ingram had said to me that she always told him she was short of money and couldn’t pay,” answered Reed.“Anyway, I don’t think she’ll let it run on again. It put me out, though. I’d rather go off into the workhouse, or die of starvation, than I’d let it be said in the place my wife didn’t pay as she went on.”

I saw through the difficulty, and should have liked to give Reed a hint touching Jellico.

Now it was rather strange that, all in two days, Jellico and the mischief he was working should be thus brought before me in three or four ways, considering that I had never in my life before heard of the man. But it chanced to be so. I don’t want to say anything about the man personally, good or bad; the mischief lay in the system. That Jellico sold his goods at a nice rate for dearness, and used persuasion with the women to buy them, was as plain as the sun at noonday; but in these respects he was no worse than are many other people in trade. He went to the houses in turn, and the women met him; it might be several weeks before the meeting was held at Mrs. Reed’s again. Ann Dovey could not enjoy the hospitality of receiving him at hers, as her husband’s work lay at home. But she was a constant visitor to the other places.

And the time went on; and Mr. Jellico’s trade flourished. But we heard nothing more about it at Dyke Manor, and I naturally forgot it.

II

“Just six shillings on it, Mr. Figg! That’s all I want to-day, but I can’t do without that.”

That so well-conducted and tidy a woman as George Reed’s wife should be in what the Cut called familiarly the “pawnshop,”would have surprised every one not in the secret. But she it was. Mr. Figg, a little man with weak eyes and a few scattered locks of light hair, turned over the offered loan with his finger and thumb. A grey gown of some kind of woollen stuff.

“How many times have this here gownd been brought here, Mrs. Reed?” asked he.

“I haven’t counted ’em,” she sighed. “Why? What’s that got to do with it?”

“’Cause it’s a proof as it must be getting the worse for wear,”was the answer, given disparagingly.

“It’s just as good as it was the day I had it out o’ Jellico’s pack,” said Mrs. Reed, sadly subdued, as of late she had always seemed.

Mr. Figg held up the gown to the light, seeking for the parts in it most likely to be worn. “Look here,” said he. “What d’ye call that?”

There was a little fraying certainly in places. Mrs. Reed had eyes and could see it. She did not answer.

“It don’t stand to reason as a gownd will wear for ever and show no marks. You puts this here gownd in of a Wednesday morning, or so, and gets it out of a Saturday night to wear Sundays. Wear and tear is wear and tear.”

Mrs. Reed could not deny the accusation. All the available articles her home contained; that is, the few her husband was not likely to observe the absence of; together with as much of her own wardrobe as she could by any shift do without, were already on a visit to Mr. Figg; which visit, according to the present look-out, promised to be permanent. This gown was obliged to be taken out periodically. Had she not appeared decent on Sundays, her husband would have demanded the reason why.

“You’ve gave me six shillings on it before,” she argued.

“Can’t again. Don’t mind lending five; next week it’ll be but four. It wasn’t never worth more nor ten new,” added Mr. Figg loudly, to drown remonstrances.

“Why, I gave Jellico double that for it! Where’s the use of you running things down?”

As Jellico was in one sense a friend of Mr. Figg’s—for he was certainly the cause of three parts of his pledges being brought to him—the pawnbroker let the question pass. Mrs. Reed went home with her five shillings, her eyes taking quite a wild look of distress and glancing cornerwise on all sides, as if she feared an ambush.

It had not been a favourable year; weather had been bad, strikes were prevalent, money was dear, labour scarce. Men were ready to snatch the work out of each other’s hands; some were quite unemployed, others less than they used to be. Of course the homes in Piefinch Cut, and similar small homes not in the Cut, went on short-commons. And if the women had been scarcely able to get on before and stave off exposure, any one may see that that was a feat impracticable now. One of them, Hester Reed, thought the doubt and difficulty and remorse and dread would kill her.

Dread of her husband’s discovering the truth, and dread of his being called upon to answer for the debt. Unable to keep up her weekly interest and payments to Mr. Jellico for some time now, the main debt had only accumulated. She owed him two pounds nineteen shillings. And two pounds nineteen shillings to a labourer’s wife seems as a wide gulf that can never be bridged over while life shall last. Besides this, she had been obliged to go into debt at the general shop; that had added itself up now to eight-and-twenty shillings, and the shop was threatening procedure. There were other little odds and ends of liabilities less urgent, a few shillings in all. To those not acquainted with the simple living of a rural district, this may not sound so very overwhelming: those who are, know what it means, and how awful was the strait to which Mrs. Reed (with other wives) had reduced herself.

She had grown so thin as hardly to be able to keep her clothes upon her. Sleeping and waking, a dead wall crowded with figures, as a huge sum, seemed to be before her eyes. Lately she had taken to dreaming of hanging feet downwards over a precipice, held up only by the grasp of her hands on the edge. Nearly always she awoke with the horror: and it would seem to her that it was worse to wake up to life and its cares, than to fall down to death and be at rest from them. Her husband, perceiving that she appeared very ill, told her she had better speak to Dr. Duffham.

Carrying home the five shillings in her hand, Mrs. Reed sat down in her kitchen and wiped her face, damp with pallor. She had begun to ask—not so much what the ending would be, but how soon it would come. With the five shillings in her hand she must find food and necessaries until Saturday night; there was no more credit to be had. And this was only Wednesday morning. With credit stopped and supplies stopped, her husband would naturally make inquiries, and all must come out. Hester Reed wondered whether she should die of the shame—if she had to stay and face it. Three of the shillings must be paid that afternoon to Ingram the milkman; he would not be quiet any longer: and the woman cast her aching eyes round her room, and saw nothing that it was possible to take away and raise money on.

She had the potatoes on the fire when the children ran in, little toddling things, from school. Some rashers of bacon lay on the table ready to be toasted. Reed, earning pretty good wages, had been accustomed to live well: with careful management he knew they might do so still. Little did he suspect the state things had got into.

“Tatty dere, mov’er,” began the eldest, who was extremely backward in speaking.

“Tatty dere” meant “Cathy’s there;” and the mother looked up from the bacon. Cathy Parrifer (though nobody called her by her new name, but Cathy Reed still) stood at the outer gate, in tatters as usual, talking to some man who had a paper in his hand. Mrs. Reed’s heart leaped into her mouth: she lived in dread of everything. A stranger approaching the place turned her sick. And now the terror, whose shadow had been so long looming, was come in reality. Catherine came bounding up the garden to tell the tale: the man, standing at the gate, was waiting to see her father come home to dinner to serve him with a summons for the county court. Mrs. Reed knew at once what it was for: the eight-and-twenty shillings owing at the general shop. Her face grew white as she sank into a chair.

“Couldn’t you get him to leave the paper with me, Cathy?”she whispered, insane ideas of getting up the money somehow floating into her brain.

“He won’t,” answered Cathy. “He means to give that to father personally, he says, if he stays till night.”

Just as many another has felt, in some apparently insurmountable obstacle, that seemed to be turning their hair grey in the little space of time that you can peel an apple, felt Mrs. Reed. Light seemed to be closing, shame and misery and blackness to be opening. Her hands seemed powerless to put the bacon into the Dutch oven.

But there ensued a respite. A very short one, but still a respite. While the summons-server was loitering outside, Reed came in through the back-garden, having got over the stile in Piefinch Lane. It was not often he chose that way; accident caused him to do it to-day. Mrs. Reed, really not knowing what she did or said, told Cathy there’d be a morsel of dinner for her if she liked to stop and eat it. As Cathy was not in the luck of such offers every day, she remained: and in her good-nature talked and laughed to divert any suspicion.

But the man at the gate began to smell a rat; perhaps the bacon as well. Dinner-hour almost over, and no George Reed had come home! He suddenly thought of the back-entrance, and walked up the front-path to see. Paper in hand, he gave a thump at the house-door. Reed was about to leave then: and he went down the path by the man’s side, opening the paper. Mrs. Reed, more like a ghost than a woman, took a glance through the window.

“I can’t face it, Catherine. When I’m gone, you’d better come home here and do what you can for the children. Tell him all; it’s of no good trying to hide it any longer.”

She took her worn old shawl from a press and put her bonnet on; and then stooped to kiss her children, saying good-bye with a burst of grief.

“But where are you going?” cried the wondering Cathy.

“Anywhere. If I am tempted to do anything desperate, Cathy, tell father not to think too bad of me, as he might if I was living.”

She escaped by the back-door. Catherine let her go, uncertain what to be at for the best. Her father was striding back to the house up the garden-path, and the storm was coming. As a preliminary van-guard, Cathy snatched up the youngest girl and held her on her lap. The summons-server was calling after Reed, apparently giving some instructions, and that took up another minute or two; but he came in at last.

Cathy told as much of the truth as she dared; her father was too angry for her to venture on all. In his passion he said his wife might go and be hanged. Cathy answered that she had as good as said it was something of that she meant to go and do.

But talking and acting are two things; and when it came tobe put to the test, Hester Reed found herself no more capable of entering upon any desperate course than the rest of us are. And, just as I had been brought in accidentally to see the beginning, so was I accidentally brought in at the ending.

We were at home again for the holidays, and I had been over for an afternoon to the Stirlings’. Events in this world happen very strangely. Upon setting out to walk back in the cool of the late summer’s evening, I took the way by Dyke Brook instead of either of the two ordinary roads. Why I chose it I did not know then; I do not now; I never shall know. When fairly launched into the fields, I asked myself why on earth I had come that way, for it was the loneliest to be found in the two counties.

Turning sharp round the dark clump of trees by Dyke Brook (which just there is wide enough for a pond and as deep as one), I came upon somebody in a shabby grey straw bonnet, standing on its brink and looking down into the water.

“Halloa, Mrs. Reed! Is that you?”

Before I forget the woe-stricken face she turned upon me, the start she gave, I must lose memory. Down she sat on the stump of a tree, and burst into sobs.

“What is it?” I asked, standing before her.

“Master Johnny, I’ve been for hours round it, round and round, wanting the courage to throw myself in; and I haven’t done it.”

“Just tell me all about the trouble,” I said, from the opposite stump, upon which I took my seat.

And she did tell me. Alone there for so many hours, battling with herself and Death (it’s not wrong to say so), my coming seemed to unlock all the gates of reticence, and she disclosed to me what I’ve written above.

“God knows I never thought to bring it to such a pass as this,” she sobbed. “I went into it without any sense of doing harm. One day, when I happened to be at Miles Dickon’s, Jellico came in with his pack, and I was tempted to buy some ribbon. I said he might come and show me his things the next week, and he did, and I bought a gownd and a shawl. I know now how wrong and blind I was: but it seemed so easy, just to pay a shilling or two a-week; like having the things for nothing. And from that time it went on; a’most every Tuesday I took some trifle of him, maybe a bit o’ print for the little ones, or holland for pinafores; and I gave Cathy a cotton gownd, for she hadn’t one to her back. I didn’t buy as some of ’em did, for the sake of show and bedeckings, but useful things, Master Johnny,” she added, sobbing bitterly. “And this has come of it! and I wish I was at rest in that there blessed water.”

“Now, Mrs. Reed! Do you suppose you would be at rest?”

“Heaven have mercy on me! It’s the thought o’ the sin, and of what might come after, that makes me hold back from it.”

Looking at her, shading her eyes with her hand, her elbow on her lap, and her face one of the saddest for despair I ever saw, I thought of the strange contrasts there are in the world. For the want of about five pounds this woman was seeking to end her life; some have done as much for five-and-twenty thousand.

“I’ve not a friend in the whole world that could help me,”she said. “But it’s not that, Master Johnny; it’s the shame on me for having brought things to such a pass. If the Lord would but be pleased to take me, and save me from the sin of lifting a hand against my own life!”

“Look here, Mrs. Reed. As to what you call the shame, I suppose we all have to go in for some sort or another of that kind of thing as we jog along. As you are not taken, and don’t seem likely to be taken, I should look on that as an intimation that you must live and make the best of things.”

“Live! how, sir? I can’t never show myself at home. Reed, he’ll have to go to jail; the law will put him there. I’d not face the world, sir, knowing it was all for my thoughtless debts.”

Could I help her? Ought I to help her? If I went to old Brandon and begged to have five pounds, why, old Brandon in the end would give it me, after he had gone on rather hotly for an hour. If I did not help her, and any harm came to her, what should I——

“You promise me never to think about pools again, Mrs. Reed, except in the way of eels, and I’ll promise to see you through this.”

She looked up, more helpless than before. “There ain’tnothing to be done for me, Master Johnny. There’s the shame, and the talkin’ o’ the neighbours——”

“Yes, you need mind that. Why, the neighbours are all in the same boat!”

“And there’s Reed, sir; he’d never forgive me. He’d——”

Of all cries, she interrupted herself with about the worst: something she saw behind me had frightened her. In another moment she had darted to the pond, and Reed was holding her back from it.

“Be thee a born fool?” roared Reed. “Dost think thee’st not done enough harm as it is, but thee must want to cap it by putting theeself in there? That would mend it, that would!”

She released herself from him, and slipped on the grass, Reed standing between her and the pond. But he seemed to think better of it, and stepped aside.

“Jump in, an’ thee likes to,” said he, continuing to speak in the familiar home manner. “I once see a woman ducked in the Severn for pocket-picking, at Worcester races, and she came out all the cooler and better for’t.”

“I never thought to bring trouble on you or anybody, George,” she sobbed. “It seems to have come on and on, like a great monster growing bigger and bigger as you look at him, till I couldn’t get away from it.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t, which d’ye mean?” retorted Reed.“Why you women were ever created to bother us, hangs me. I hope you’ll find you can keep the children when I and a dozen more of us are in jail. ’Twon’t be my first visit there.”

“Look here, Reed; I’ve promised to set it right for her. Don’t worry over it.”

“I’ll not accept help from anybody; not even from you, Master Johnny. What she has done she must abide by.”

“The bargain’s made, Reed; you can’t break it if you would. Perhaps a great trouble may come to me some time in my life that I may be glad to be helped out of. Mrs. Reed will get the money to-morrow, only she need not tell the parish where she found it.”

“Oh, George, let it be so!” she implored through her tears.“If Master Johnny’s good enough to do this, let him. I mightsave up by little and little to repay him in time. If you went to jail through me!—I’d rather die!”

“Will you let it be a lesson to you—and keep out of Jellico’s clutches in future?” he asked, sternly.

“It’s a lesson that’ll last me to the end of my days,” she said, with a shiver. “Please God, you let Master Johnny get me out o’ this trouble, I’ll not fall into another like it.”

“Then come along home to the children,” said he, his voice softening a little. “And leave that pond and your folly behind you.”

I was, of course, obliged to tell the whole to Mr. Brandon and the Squire, and they both pitched into me as fiercely as tongues could pitch. But neither of them was really angry; I saw that. As to the five pounds, I only wish as much relief could be oftener given with as little money.

CAROMEL’S FARM.

I

You will be slow to believe what I am about to write, and say it savours of romance instead of reality. Every word of it is true. Here truth was stranger than fiction.

Lying midway between our house, Dyke Manor, and Church Dykely, was a substantial farm belonging to the Caromels. It stood well back from the road a quarter-of-a-mile or so, and was nearly hidden by the trees that surrounded it. An avenue led to the house; which was a rambling, spacious, very old-fashioned building, so full of queer angles inside, nooks and corners and passages, that you might lose your way in them and never find it again. The Caromels were gentlemen by descent; but their means had dwindled with years, so that they had little left besides this property. The last Caromel who died, generally distinguished as “Old Caromel” by all the parish, left two sons, Miles and Nash. The property was willed to the elder, Miles: but Nash continued to have his home with him. As to the house, it had no particular name, but was familiarly called“Caromel’s Farm.”

Squire Todhetley had been always intimate with them; more like a brother than anything else. Not but that he was considerably their senior. I think he liked Nash the best: Nash was so yielding and easy. Some said Nash was not very steady in private life, and that his brother, Miles, stern and moral, read him a lecture twice a-week. But whether it was so no one knew; people don’t go prying into their neighbours’ closets to look up their skeletons.

At the time I am beginning to tell of, old Caromel had been dead about ten years; Nash was now five-and-thirty, Miles forty. Miles had married a lady with a good fortune, which was settled upon herself and her children; the four of them were girls, and there was no son.

At the other end of Church Dykely, ever so far past Chavasse Grange, lived a widow lady named Tinkle. And when the world had quite done wondering whether Nash Caromel meant to marry (though, indeed, what had he to marry upon?), it was suddenly found out that he wanted Mrs. Tinkle’s daughter, Charlotte. The Tinkles were respectable people, but not equal to the Caromels. Mrs. Tinkle and her son farmed a little land, she had also a small private income. The son had married well. Just now he was away; having gone abroad with his wife, whose health was failing.

Charlotte Tinkle was getting on towards thirty. You would not have thought it, to look at her. She had a gentle face, a gentle voice, and a young, slender figure; her light brown hair was always neat; and she possessed one of those inoffensive natures that would like to be at peace with the whole world. It was natural that Mrs. Tinkle should wish her daughter to marry, if a suitable person presented himself—all mothers do, I suppose—but to find it was Nash Caromel took her aback.

“You think it will not do,” observed the Squire, when Mrs. Tinkle was enlarging on the grievance to him one day that they met in a two-acre field.

“How can it do?” returned poor Mrs. Tinkle, in a tone between wailing and crying. “Nash Caromel has nothing to keep her on, sir, and no prospects.”

“That’s true,” said the pater. “At present he has thoughts of taking a farm.”

“But he has no money to stock a farm. And look at that tale, sir, that was talked of—about that Jenny Lake. Other things have been said also.”

“Oh, one must not believe all one hears. For myself, I assure you, Mrs. Tinkle, I know no harm of Nash. As to the money to stock a farm, I expect his brother could help him to it, if he chose.”

“But, sir, you would surely not advise them to marry upon an uncertainty!”

“I don’t advise them to marry at all; understand that, mygood lady; I think it would be the height of imprudence. But I can’t prevent it.”

“Mr. Todhetley,” she answered, a tear rolling down her thin cheeks, on which there was a chronic redness, “I am unable to describe to you how much my mind is set against the match: I seem to foresee, by some subtle instinct, that no good would ever come of it; nothing but misery for Charlotte. And she has had so peaceful a home all her life.”

“Tell Charlotte she can’t have him—if you think so strongly about it.”

“She won’t listen—at least to any purpose,” groaned Mrs. Tinkle. “When I talk to her she says, ‘Yes, dear mother; no, dear mother,’ in her dutiful way: and the same evening she’ll be listening to Nash Caromel’s courting words. Her uncle, Ralph Tinkle, rode over from Inkberrow to talk to her, for I wrote to him: but it seems to have made no permanent impression on her. What I am afraid of is that Nash Caromel will marry her in spite of us.”

“I should like to see my children marry in spite of me!”cried the Squire, giving way to one of his hot fits. “I’d ‘marry’them! Nash can’t take her against her will, my dear friend: it takes two people, you know, to complete a bargain of that sort. Promise Charlotte to shake her unless she listens to reason. Why should she not listen! She is meek and tractable.”

“She always has been. But, once let a girl be enthralled by a sweetheart, there’s no answering for her. Duty to parents is often forgotten then.”

“If—— Why, mercy upon us, there is Charlotte!” broke off the Squire, happening to lift his eyes to the stile. “And Nash too.”

Yes, there they were: standing on the other side the stile in the cross-way path. “Halloa!” called out Mr. Todhetley.

“I can’t stay a moment,” answered Nash Caromel, turning his good-looking face to speak: and it cannot be denied it was a good-looking face, or that he was an attractive man.“Miles has sent me to that cattle sale up yonder, and I am full late.”

With a smile and a nod, he stepped lightly onwards, his slender supple figure, of middle height, upright as a dart; hisfair hair waving in the breeze. Charlotte Tinkle glanced shyly after him, her cheeks blushing like a peony.

“What’s this I hear, young lady?—that you and Mr. Nash yonder want to make a match of it, in spite of pastors and masters?” began the Squire. “Is it true?”

Charlotte stood like a goose, making marks on the dusty path with the end of her large grass-green parasol. Parasols were made for use then, not show.

“Nash has nothing, you know,” went on the Squire. “No money, no house, no anything. There wouldn’t be common sense in it, Charlotte.”

“I tell him so, sir,” answered Charlotte, lifting her shy brown eyes for a moment.

“To be sure; that’s right. Here’s your mother fretting herself into fiddlestrings for fear of—of—I hardly know what.”

“Lest you should be tempted to forget your duty to me, Lottie,” struck in the mother. “Ah, my dear! you young people little think what trouble and anxiety you bring upon us.”

Charlotte Tinkle suddenly burst into tears, to the surprise of her beholders. Drying them up as soon as she could, she spoke with a sigh.

“I hope I shall never bring trouble upon you, mother, never; I wouldn’t do it willingly for the world. But——”

“But what, child?” cried the mother, for Charlotte had come to a standstill.

“I—I am afraid that parents and children see with different eyes—just as though things were for each a totally opposite aspect,” she went on timidly. “The difficulty is how to reconcile that view and this.”

“And do you know what my father used to say to me in my young days?” put in the Squire. “‘Young folks think old folks fools, but old folks know the young ones to be so.’ There was never a truer saying than that, Miss Charlotte.”

Miss Charlotte only sighed in answer. The wind, high that day, was taking her muslin petticoats, and she had some trouble to keep them down. Mrs. Tinkle got over the stile, and the Squire turned back towards home.

A fortnight or so had passed by after this, when Church Dykely woke one morning to an electric shock; Nash Caromeland Charlotte had gone and got married. They did it without the consent of (as the Squire had put it) pastors and masters. Nash had none to consult, for he could not be expected to yield obedience to his brother; and Charlotte had asked Mrs. Tinkle, and Mrs. Tinkle had refused to countenance the ceremony, though she did not actually walk into the church to forbid it.

Taking a three weeks’ trip by way of honeymoon, the bride and bridegroom came back to Church Dykely. Caromel’s Farm refused to take them in; and Miles Caromel, indignant to a degree, told his brother that “as he had made his bed, so must he lie upon it,” which is a very convenient reproach, and often used.

“Nash is worse than a child,” grumbled Miles to the Squire, his tones harder than usual, and his manner colder. “He has gone and married this young woman—who is not his equal—and now he has no home to give her. Did he suppose that we should receive him back here?—and take her in as well? He has acted like an idiot.”

“Mrs. Tinkle will not have anything to do with them, I hear,” returned the Squire: “and Tinkle, of Inkberrow, is furious.”

“Tinkle of Inkberrow’s no fool. Being a man of substance, he thinks they may be falling back upon him.”

Which was the precise fear that lay upon Miles himself. Meanwhile Nash engaged sumptuous lodgings (if such a word could be justly applied to any rooms at Church Dykely), and drove his wife out daily in the pony-gig that was always looked upon as his at Caromel’s Farm.

Nash was flush of money now, for he had saved some; but he could not go on living upon it for ever. After sundry interviews with his brother, Miles agreed to hand him over a thousand pounds: not at all too large a sum, considering that Nash had given him his services, such as they were, for a number of years for just his keep as a gentleman and a bonus for pocket-money. A thousand pounds would not go far with such a farm as Nash had been used to and would like to take, and he resolved to emigrate to America.

Mrs. Tinkle (the Squire called her simple at times) was nearly wild when she heard of it. It brought her out of her temperwith a leap. Condoning the rebellious marriage, she went off to remonstrate with Nash.

“But now, why need you put yourself into this unhappy state?” asked Nash, when he had heard what she had to say.“Dear Mrs. Tinkle, do admit some common sense into your mind. I am not taking Charlotte to the ‘other end of the world,’ as you put it, but to America. It is only a few days’ passage. Outlandish foreigners! Not a bit of it. The people are, so to speak, our own countrymen. Their language is ours; their laws are, I believe, much as ours are.”

“You may as well be millions of miles away, practically speaking,” bewailed Mrs. Tinkle. “Charlotte will be as much lost to me there as she would be at the North Pole. She is my only daughter, Nash Caromel, she has never been away from me: to part with her will be like parting with life.”

“I am very sorry,” said poor Nash, who was just a woman when any appeal was made to his feelings. “Live with you? No, that would not do: but, thank you all the same for offering it. Nothing would induce me to spunge upon you in that way: and, were I capable of it, your son Henry would speedily turn us out when he returned. I must get a home of my own, for Charlotte’s sake as well as for mine: and I know I can do that in America. Land, there, may be had for an old song; fortunes are made in no time. The probability is that before half-a-dozen years have gone over our heads, I shall bring you Charlotte home a rich woman, and we shall settle down here for life.”

There isn’t space to pursue the arguments—which lasted for a week or two. But they brought forth no result. Nash might have turned a post sooner than the opinions of Mrs. Tinkle, and she might as well have tried to turn the sun as to stop his emigrating. The parish looked upon it as not at all a bad scheme. Nash might get on well over there if he would put off his besetting sin, indolence, and not allow the Yankees to take him in.

So Nash Caromel and Charlotte his wife set sail for New York; Mrs. Tinkle bitterly resenting the step, and wholly refusing to be reconciled.

II

About five years went by. Henry Tinkle’s wife had died, leaving him a little girl, and he was back with the child at his mother’s: but that has nothing to do with us. A letter came from the travellers now and then, but not often, during the first three years. Nash wrote to Caromel’s Farm; Charlotte to the parson’s wife, Mrs. Holland, with whom she had been very friendly. But none of the letters gave much information as to personal matters; they were chiefly filled with descriptions of the new country, its manners and customs, and especially its mosquitoes, which at first nearly drove Mrs. Nash Caromel mad. It was gathered that Nash did not prosper. They seemed to move about from place to place, making New York a sort of standing point to return to occasionally. For the past two years no letters at all had come, and it was questioned whether poor Nash and his wife had not dropped out of the world.

In the midst of this uncertainty, Miles Caromel, who had been seriously ailing for some months, died. And to Nash, if he were still in existence, lapsed the Caromel property.

Old Mr. Caromel’s will had been a curious one. He bequeathed Caromel Farm, with all its belongings, the live stock, the standing ricks, the crops, the furniture, and all else that might be in or upon it, to his son Miles, and to Miles’s eldest son after him. If Miles left no son, then it was to go to Nash (with all that might then be upon it, just as before), and so on to Nash’s son. But if neither of them had a son, and Nash died during Miles’s lifetime—in short, if there was no male inheritor living, then Miles could dispose of the property as he pleased. As could Nash also under similar circumstances.

The result of this odd will was, that Nash, if living, came into the farm and all that was upon it. If Nash had, or should have, a son, it must descend to said son; if he had not, the property was his absolutely. But it was not known whether Nash was living; and, in the uncertainty, Miles made a will conditionally, bequeathing it to his wife and daughters. It was said that possessing no son had long been a thorn in the shoes of Miles Caromel; that he had prayed for one, summer and winter.

But now, who was to find Nash? How could the executors let him know of his good luck? The Squire, who was one of them, talked of nothing else. A letter was despatched to Nash’s agents in New York, Abraham B. Whitter and Co., and no more could be done.

In a shorter time than you would have supposed possible, Nash arrived at Church Dykely. He chanced to be at these same agents’ house in New York, when the letter got there, and he came off at full speed. So the will made by Miles went for nothing.

Nash Caromel was a good bit altered—looked thinner and older: but he was evidently just as easy and persuadable as he used to be: people often wondered whether Nash had ever said No in his whole life. He did not tell us much about himself, only that he had roamed over the world, hither and thither, from country to country, and had been lately for some time in California. Charlotte was at San Francisco. When Nash took ship from thence for New York, she was not well enough to undertake the voyage, and had to stay behind. Mrs. Tinkle, who had had time, and to spare, to get over her anger, went into a way at this last item of news; and caught up the notion that Charlotte was dead. For which she had no grounds whatever.

Charlotte had no children; had not had any; consequently there was every probability that Caromel’s Farm would be Nash’s absolutely, to will away as he should please. He found Mrs. Caromel (his brother’s widow) and her daughters in it; they had not bestirred themselves to look out for another residence. Being very well off, Mrs. Caromel having had several substantial windfalls in the shape of legacies from rich uncles and aunts, they professed to be glad that Nash should have the property—whatever they might have privately felt. Nash, out of a good-natured wish not to disturb them too soon, bade them choose their own time for moving, and took up his abode at Nave, the lawyer’s.

There are lawyers and lawyers. I am a great deal older now than I was when these events were enacted, and have gained my share of worldly wisdom; and I, Johnny Ludlow, say that there are good and honest lawyers as well as bad and dishonest. My experience has lain more amidst the former class than the latter. Though I have, to my cost, been brought into contact with one or two bad ones in my time; fearful rogues.

One of these was Andrew Nave: who had recently, so to say, come, a stranger, to settle at Church Dykely. His name might have had a “K” prefixed, and been all the better for it. Of fair outward show, indeed rather a good-looking man, he was not fair within. He managed to hold his own in the parish estimation, as a rule: it was only when some crafty deed or other struggled to the surface that people would say, “What a sharper that man is!”

The family lawyer of the Caromels, Crow, of Evesham, chanced to be ill at this time, and gone away for change of air, and Nave rushed up to greet Nash on his return, and to offer his services. And the fellow was so warm and hearty, so fair-speaking, so much the gentleman, that easy Nash, to whom the man was an entire stranger, and who knew nothing of him, bad or good, clasped the hand held out to him, and promised Knave his patronage forthwith. If I’ve made a mistake in spelling the name, it can go.

To begin with, Nave took him home. He lived a door or two past Duffham’s: a nice house, well kept up in paint. Some five years before, the sleepy old lawyer, Wilkinson, died in that house, and Nave came down from London and took to the concern. Nave thought that he was doing a first-rate stroke of business now by securing Nash Caromel as an inmate, the solicitorship to the Caromel property being worth trying for: though he might not have been so eager to admit Nash had he foreseen all that was to come of it.

Not caring to trouble Mrs. Caromel with his company, Nash accepted Nave’s hospitality; but, liking to be independent, he insisted upon paying for it, and mentioned a handsome weekly sum. Nave made a show of resistance—which was all put on, for he was as fond of shillings as he was of pounds—and then gave in. So Nash, feeling free, stayed on at his ease.

When Nave had first come to settle at Church Dykely with his daughter Charlotte, he was taken for a widower. It turned out, however, that there was a Mrs. Nave living somewhere with the rest of the children, she and her husband having agreed to what was called an amicable separation, for their tempers did notagree. This eldest daughter, Charlotte, a gay, dashing girl of two-and-twenty then, was the only creature in the world, it was said, for whom Nave cared.

Mrs. Caromel did not appear readily to find a place to her liking. People are particular when about to purchase a residence. She made repeated apologies to Nash for keeping him out of his home, but he assured her that he was in no hurry to leave his present quarters.

And that was true. For Charlotte Nave was casting her glamour over him. She liked to cast that over men; and tales had gone about respecting her. Nothing very tangible: and perhaps they would not have held water. She was a little, fair, dashing woman, swaying about her flounces as she walked, with a great heap of beautiful hair, bright as gold. Her blue eyes had a way of looking into yours rather too freely, and her voice was soft as a summer wind. A dangerous companion was Miss Nave.

Well, they fell in love with one another, as was said; she and Nash. Nash forgot his wife, and she her old lovers. Being now on the road to her twenty-eighth year, she had had her share of them. Once she had been mysteriously absent from home for two weeks, and Church Dykely somehow took up the idea that she and one of her lovers (a young gentleman who was reading law with Nave) were taking a fraternal tour together as far as London to see the lions. But it turned out to be a mistake, and no one laughed at the notion more than Charlotte when she returned. She wished she had been on a tour—and seeing lions, she said, instead of moping away the whole two weeks at her aunt’s, who had a perpetual asthma, and lived in a damp old house at Chelsea.

But that is of the past, and Nash is back again. The weeks went on. Autumn weather came in. Mrs. Caromel found a place to suit her at Kempsey—one of the prettiest of the villages that lie under the wing of Worcester. She bought it; and removed to it with her private goods and chattels. Nash, even now, made no haste to quit the lawyer’s house for his own. Some said it was he who could not tear himself away from Charlotte; others said Miss Charlotte would not let him go; that she held him fast by a silken cord. Anyhow, they werealways together, out-of-doors and in; she seemed to like to parade their friendship before the world, as some girls like to lead about a pet monkey. Perhaps Nash first took to her from her name being the same as his wife’s.

One day in September, Nash walked over to the Manor and had a long talk in private with the Squire. He wanted to borrow twelve hundred pounds. No ready money had come to him from his brother, and it was not a favourable time for selling produce. The Squire cheerfully agreed to lend it him: there was no risk.

“But I’d counsel you to remember one thing, Nash Caromel—that you have a wife,” said he, as they came out of the room when Nash was going away. “It’s time you left off dallying with that other young woman.”

Nash laughed a laugh that had an uneasy sound in it. “It is nothing, Todhetley.”

“Glad to hear you say so,” said the pater. “She has the reputation of being a dangerous flirt. You are not the first man she has entangled, if all tales be true. Get out of Nave’s house and into your own.”

“I will,” acquiesced Nash.

Perhaps that was easier said than done. It happened that the same evening I overheard a few words between the lawyer and Nash. They were not obliged to apply to Miss Nave: but, the chances were that they did.

The Squire sent me to Nave’s when dinner was over, to take a note to Nash. Nave’s smart waiting-maid, in a muslin apron and cherry cap-strings, was standing at the door talking and laughing with some young man, under cover of the twilight. She was as fond of finery as her mistress; perhaps as fond of sweethearts.

“Mr. Caromel? Yes, sir, he is at home. Please to walk in.”

Showing me to a sitting-room on the left of the passage—the lawyer’s offices were on the right—she shut me in, and went, as I supposed, to tell Caromel. At the back of this room was the dining-room. I heard the rattle of glasses on the table through the unlatched folding-doors, and, next, the buzz of voices. The lawyer and Nash were sitting over their wine.

“You must marry her,” said Nave, concisely.

“I wish I could,” returned Nash; and his wavering, irresolute tone was just a contrast to the other’s keen one. “I want to. But how can I? I’m heartily sorry.”

“And as soon as may be. You must. Attentions paid to young ladies cannot be allowed to end in smoke. And you will find her thousand pounds useful.”

“But how can I, I say?” cried Nash ruefully. “You know how impracticable it is—the impediment that exists.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Caromel! Where there’s a will there’s a way. Impediments only exist to be got over.”

“It would take a cunning man to get over the one that lies between me and her. I assure you, and you may know I say it in all good faith, that I should ask nothing better than to be a free man to-morrow—for this one sole cause.”

“Leave things to me. For all you know, you are free now.”

The opening of their door by the maid, who had taken her own time to do it, and the announcement that I waited to see Mr. Caromel, stopped the rest. Nash came in, and I gave him the note.

“Wants to see me before twelve to-morrow, does he?—something he forgot to say,” cried he, running his eyes over it.“Tell the Squire I will be there, Johnny.”

Caromel was very busy after that, getting into his house—for he took the Squire’s advice, and did not linger much longer at Nave’s. And I think two or three weeks only had passed, after he was in it, when news reached him of his wife’s death.

It came from his agent in New York, Abraham B. Whitter, who had received the information from San Francisco. Mr. Whitter enclosed the San Francisco letters. They were written by a Mr. Munn: one letter to himself, the other (which was not as yet unsealed) to Nash Caromel.

We read them both: Nash brought them to the Squire before sending them to Mrs. Tinkle—considerate as ever, he would not let her see them until she had been prepared. The letters did not say much. Mrs. Nash Caromel had grown weaker and weaker after Nash departed from San Francisco for New York, and she finally sank under low fever. A diary, which she had kept the last few weeks of her life, meant only for her husband’s own eye, together with a few letters and sundry other personal trifles, would be forwarded the first opportunity to Abraham B. Whitter and Co., who would hold the box at Mr. Caromel’s disposal.

“Who is he, this Francis Munn, who writes to you?” asked the Squire. “A friend of your wife’s?—she appears to have died at his house.”

“A true friend of hers and of mine,” answered Nash. “It was with Mr. and Mrs. Munn that I left Charlotte, when I was obliged to go to New York. She was not well enough to travel with me.”

“Well—look here, Caromel—don’t go and marry that other Charlotte,” advised the Squire. “She is as different from your wife as chalk is from cheese. Poor thing! it was a hard fate—dying over there away from everybody!”

But now—would any one believe it?—instead of taking the Squire’s advice and not marrying her at all, instead even of allowing a decent time to elapse, in less than a week Nash went to church with Charlotte the Second. Shame, said Parson Holland under his breath; shame, said the parish aloud; but Nash Caromel heeded them not.

We only knew it on the day before the wedding was to be. On Wednesday morning, a fine, crisp, October day, a shooting party was to meet at old Appleton’s, who lived over beyond Church Dykely. The Squire and Tod started for it after an early breakfast, and they let me go part of the way with them. Just after passing Caromel’s Farm, we met Pettipher the postman.

“Anything for the Manor?” asked the pater.

“Yes, sir,” answered the man; and, diving into his bundle, he handed a letter.

“This is not mine,” said the Squire, looking at the address;“this is for Mr. Caromel.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon, sir; I took out the wrong letter. This is yours.”

“What a thin letter!—come from foreign parts,” remarked the pater, reading the address, “Nash Caromel, Esq.” “I seem to know the handwriting: fancy I’ve seen it before. Here, take it, Pettipher.”

In passing the letter to Pettipher, which was a ship’s letter, I looked at the said writing. Very small poor writing indeed, with long angular tails to the letters up and down, especially the capitals. The Squire handed me his gun and was turning to walk on, opening his letter as he did so; when Pettipher spoke and arrested him.

“Have you heard what’s coming off yonder, to-morrow, sir?”asked he, pointing with his thumb to Caromel’s Farm.

“Why no,” said the Squire, wondering what Pettipher meant to be at. “What should be coming off!”

“Mr. Caromel’s going to bring a wife home. Leastways, going to get married.”

“I don’t believe it,” burst forth the pater, after staring angrily at the man. “You’d better take care what you say, Pettipher.”

“But it’s true, sir,” reasoned Pettipher, “though it’s not generally known. My niece is apprentice to Mrs. King the dressmaker, as perhaps you know, sir, and they are making Miss Nave’s wedding-dress and bonnet. They are to be married quite early, sir, nine o’clock, before folks are about. Well yes, sir, it is not seemly, seeing he has but now heard of his wife’s death, poor Miss Charlotte Tinkle, that grew up among us—but you’ll find it’s true.”

Whether the Squire gave more hot words to Nash Caromel, or to Charlotte the Second, or to Pettipher for telling it, I can’t say now. Pettipher touched his hat, said good-morning, and turned up the avenue to Caromel’s Farm to leave the letter for Nash.

And, married they were on the following morning, amidst a score or two of spectators. What was agate had slipped out to others as well as ourselves. Old Clerk Bumford looked more fierce than a raven when he saw us flocking into the church, after Nash had fee’d him to keep it quiet.

As the clock struck nine, the party came up. The bride and one of her sisters, both in white silk; Nave and some strange gentleman, who might be a friend of his; and Caromel, pale as a ghost. Charlotte the Second was pale too, but uncommonly pretty, her mass of beautiful hair shining like threads of gold.

The ceremony over, they filed out into the porch; Nash leadinghis bride, and Nave bringing up the rear alone; when an anxious-looking little woman with a chronic redness of face was seen coming across the churchyard. It was Mrs. Tinkle, wearing the deep mourning she had put on for Charlotte. Some one had carried her the tidings, and she had come running forth to see whether they could be true.

And, to watch her, poor thing, with her scared face raised to Nash, and her poor hands clasped in pain, as he and his bride passed her on the pathway, was something sad. Nash Caromel’s face had grown white again; but he never looked at her; never turned his eyes, fixed straight out before him, a hair’s point to the right or left.

“May Heaven have mercy upon them—for surely they’ll need it!” cried the poor woman. “No luck can come of such a wedding as this.”

III

The months went on. Mrs. Nash was ruling the roast at Caromel’s Farm, being unquestionably both mistress and master. Nash Caromel’s old easy indolence had grown now to apathy. It almost seemed as though the farm might go as it liked for him; but his wife was energetic, and she kept servants of all kinds to their work.

Nash excused himself for his hasty wedding when people reproached him—and a few had done that on his return from the honeymoon. His first wife had been dead for some months, he said, and the farm wanted a mistress. She had only been dead to him a week, was the answer he received to this: and, as to the farm, he was quite as competent to manage that himself without a mistress as with one. After all, where was the use of bothering about it when the thing was done?—and the offence concerned himself, not his neighbours. So the matter was condoned at length; Nash was taken into favour again, and the past was dropped.

But Nash, as I have told you, grew apathetic. His spirits were low; the Squire remarked one day that he was like a man who had some inward care upon him. Mrs. Nash, on the contrary, was cheerful as a summer’s day; she filled the farm with visitors, and made the money fly.

All too soon, a baby arrived. It was in May, and he must have travelled at railroad speed. Nurse Picker, called in hastily on the occasion, could not find anything the matter with him. A beautiful boy, she said, as like his father, Master Nash (she had known Nash as a boy), as one pea was like another. Mrs. Nash told a tale of having been run after by a cow; Duffham, when attacked by the parish on the point, shut his lips, and would say never a word, good or bad. Anyway, here he was; a fine little boy and the son and heir: and if he had mistaken the proper time to appear, why, clearly it must be his own fault or the cow’s: other people were not to be blamed for it. Mrs. Nash Caromel, frantic with delight at its being a boy, sent an order to old Bumford to set the bells a-ringing.

But now, it was a singular thing that the Squire should chance to be present at the delivery of another of those letters that bore the handwriting with the angular tails. Not but that very singular coincidences do take place in this life, and I often think it would not hurt us if we paid more heed to them. Caromel’s Farm was getting rather behind-hand with its payments. Whether through its master’s apathy or its mistress’s extravagance, ready money grew inconveniently short, and the Squire could not get his interest paid on the twelve hundred pounds.

“I’ll go over and jog his memory,” said he one morning, as we got up from breakfast. “Put on your cap, Johnny.”

There was a pathway to Caromel’s across the fields, and that was the way we took. It was a hot, lovely day, early in July. Some wheat on the Caromel land was already down.

“Splendid weather it has been for the corn,” cried the Squire, turning himself about, “and we shall have a splendid harvest. Somehow I always fancy the crops ripen on this land sooner than on any other about here, Johnny.”

“So they do, sir.”

“Fine rich land it is; shouldn’t grumble if it were mine. We’ll go in at this gate, lad.”

“This gate” was the side-gate. It opened on a path that led direct to the sitting-room with glass-doors. Nash was standing just inside the room, and of all the uncomfortable expressions that can sit on a man’s face, the worst sat on his. The Squire noticed it, and spoke in a whisper.

“Johnny, lad, he looks just as though he had seen a ghost.”

It’s just what he did look like—a ghost that frightened him. We were close up before he noticed us. Giving a great start, he smoothed his face, smiled, and held out his hand.

“You don’t look well,” said the Squire, as he sat down.“What’s amiss?”

“Nothing at all,” answered Nash. “The heat pothers me, as usual: can’t sleep at night for it. Why, here’s the postman! What makes him so late, I wonder?”

Pettipher was coming straight down to the window, letters in hand. Something in his free, onward step seemed to say that he must be in the habit of delivering the letters to Nash at that same window.

“Two, sir, this morning,” said Pettipher, handing them in.

As Nash was taking the letters, one of them fell, either by his own awkwardness or by Pettipher’s. I picked it up and gave it to him, address upwards. The Squire saw it.

“Why, that’s the same handwriting that puzzled me,” cried he, speaking on the impulse of the moment. “It seemed familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had seen it. It’s a ship letter, as was the other.”

Nash laughed—a lame kind of laugh—and put both letters into his pocket. “It comes from a chum of mine that I picked up over yonder,” said he to the Squire, nodding his head towards where the sea might be supposed to lie. “I don’t think you could ever have been familiar with it.”

They went away to talk of business, leaving me alone. Mrs. Nash Caromel came in with her baby. She wore a white dress and light green ribbons, a lace cap half shading her bright hair. Uncommonly pretty she looked—but I did not like her.

“Is it you, Johnny Ludlow?” said she, pausing a moment at the door, and then holding out her hand. “I thought my husband was here alone.”

“He is gone into the library with the Squire.”

“Sit down. Have you seen my baby before? Is he not a beauty?”

It was a nice little fellow, with fat arms and blue knittedshoes, a good deal like Nash. They had named him Duncan, after some relative of hers, and the result was that he was never called anything but “Dun.” Mrs. Caromel was telling me that she had “short-coated” him early, as it was hot weather, when the others appeared, and the Squire marched me off.

“Johnny,” said he, thoughtfully, as we went along, “how curiously Nash Caromel is altered!”

“He seems rather—down, sir,” I answered, hesitating for a word.

“Down!” echoed the Squire, slightingly; “it’s more than that. He seems lost.”

“Lost, sir?”

“His mind does. When I told him what I had come about: that it was time, and long ago, too, that my interest was paid, he stared at me more like a lunatic than a farmer—as if he had forgotten all about it, interest, and money, and all. When his wits came to him, he said it ought to have been paid, and he’d see Nave about it. Nave’s his father-in-law, Johnny, and I suppose will take care of his interests; but I know I’d as soon entrust my affairs to Old Scratch as to him.”

The Squire had his interest paid. The next news we heard was that Caromel’s Farm was about to give an entertainment on a grand scale; an afternoon fête out-of-doors, with a sumptuous cold collation that you might call by what name you liked—dinner, tea, or supper—in the evening. An invitation printed on a square card came to us, which we all crowded round Mrs. Todhetley to look at. Cards had not come much into fashion then, except for public ceremonies, such as the Mayor’s Feast at Worcester. In our part of the world we were still content to write our invitations on note-paper.

The mother would not go. She did not care for fêtes, she said to us. In point of fact she did not like Mrs. Nash Caromel any better than she had liked Charlotte Nave, and she had never believed in the cow. So she sent a civil note of excuse for herself. The Squire accepted, after some hesitation. He and the Caromels had been friends for so many years that he did not care to put the slight of a refusal upon Nash; besides, he liked parties, if they were jolly.

But now, would any rational being believe that Mrs. Nash hadthe cheek to send an invitation to Mrs. Tinkle and her son Henry? It was what Harry Tinkle called it—cheek. When poor Mrs. Tinkle broke the red seal of the huge envelope, and read the card of invitation, from Mr. and Mrs. Caromel, her eyes were dim.

“I think they must have sent it as a cruel joke,” remarked Mrs. Tinkle, meeting the Squire a day or two before the fête.“She has never spoken to me in her life. When we pass each other she picks up her skirts as if they were too good to touch mine. Once she laughed at me, rudely.”

“Don’t believe she knows any better,” cried the Squire in his hot partisanship. “Her skirts were not fit to touch your own Charlotte’s.”

“Oh, Charlotte! poor Charlotte!” cried Mrs. Tinkle, losing her equanimity. “I wish I could hear the particulars of her last moments,” she went on, brushing away the tears. “If Mr. Caromel has had details—and that letter, telling of her death, promised them, you know—he does not disclose them to me.”

“Why don’t you write a note and ask him, Mrs. Tinkle?”

“I hardly know why,” she answered. “I think he cannot have heard, or he would surely tell me; he is not bad-hearted.”

“No, only too easy; swayed by anybody that may be at his elbow for the time being,” concluded the Squire. “Nash Caromel is one of those people who need to be kept in leading-strings all their lives. Good-morning.”

It was a fête worth going to. The afternoon as sunny a one as ever August turned out, and the company gay, if not numerous. Only a sprinkling of ladies could be seen; but amongst them was Miles Caromel’s widow, with her four daughters. Being women of consideration, deserving the respect of the world, their presence went for much, and Mrs. Nash had reason to thank them. They scorned and despised her in their hearts, but they countenanced her for the sake of the honour of the Caromels.

Archery, dancing, promenading, and talking took up the afternoon, and then came the banquet. Altogether it must have cost Caromel’s Farm a tidy sum.

“It is well for you to be able to afford this,” cried the Squire confidentially to Nash, as they stood together in one of the shadypaths beyond the light of the coloured lanterns, when the evening was drawing to an end. “Miles would never have done it.”

“Oh, I don’t know—it’s no harm once in a way,” answered Nash, who had exerted himself wonderfully, and finished up by drinking his share of wine. “Miles had his ways, and I have mine.”

“All right: it is your own affair. But I wouldn’t have done one thing, my good friend—sent an invitation to your mother-in-law.”

“What mother-in-law?” asked Nash, staring.

“Your ex-mother-in-law, I ought to have said—Mrs. Tinkle. I wouldn’t have done it, Caromel, under the circumstances. It pained her.”

“But who did send her an invitation? Is it likely? I don’t know what you are talking about, Squire.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” returned the Squire, perceiving that the act was madam’s and not his. “Have you ever had those particulars of Charlotte’s death?”

Nash Caromel’s face changed from red to a deadly pallor: the question unnerved him—took his wits out of him.

“The particulars of Charlotte’s death,” he stammered, looking all abroad. “What particulars?”

“Why, those promised you by the man who wrote from San Francisco—Munn, was his name? Charlotte’s diary, and letters, and things, that he was sending off to New York.”

“Oh—ay—I remember,” answered Nash, pulling his senses together. “No, they have not come.”

“Been lost on the way, do you suppose? What a pity!”

“They may have been. I have not had them.”

Nash Caromel walked straight away with the last words. Either to get rid of the subject, or to join some people who had just then crossed the top of the path.

“Caromel does not like talking of her: I can see that, Johnny,” remarked the Squire to me later. “I don’t believe he’d have done as he did, but for this second Charlotte throwing her wiles across his path. He fell into the snare and his conscience pricks him.”

“I dare say, sir, it will come right with time. She is very pretty.”

“Yes, most crooked things come straight with time,” assented the Squire. “Perhaps this one will.”

Would it, though!

The weeks and the months went on. Caromel’s Farm seemed to prosper, its mistress being a most active manager, ruling with an apparently soft will, but one firm as iron; and little Dun grew to be about fifteen months old. The cow might have behaved ungenteelly to him, as Miss Bailey’s ghost says to Captain Smith, but it had not hurt the little fellow, or his stout legs either, which began now to be running him into all kinds of mischief. And so the time came round again to August—just a year after the fête, and nearly twenty-two months after Nash’s second marriage.

One evening, Tod being out and Mrs. Todhetley in the nursery, I was alone with the Squire in the twilight. The great harvest moon was rising behind the trees; and the Squire, talking of some parish grievance that he had heard of from old Jones the constable, let it rise: while I was wishing he would call for lights that I might get on with “The Old English Baron,” which I was reading for about the seventeenth time.

“And you see, Johnny, if Jones had been firm, as I told him this afternoon, and taken the fellow up, instead of letting him slope off and be lost, the poachers—— Who’s this coming in, lad?”

The Squire had caught sight of some one turning to the door from the covered path. I saw the fag-end of a petticoat.

“I think it must be Mrs. Scott, sir. The mother said she had promised to come over one of these first evenings.”

“Ay,” said the Squire. “Open the door for her, Johnny.”

I had the front-door open in a twinkling, and saw a lady with a travelling-cloak on her arm. But she bore no resemblance to Mrs. Scott.

“Is Mr. Todhetley at home?”

The soft voice gave me a thrill and a shock, though years had elapsed since I heard it. A confused doubt came rushing over me; a perplexing question well-nigh passed my lips: “Is it a living woman or a dead one?” For there, before me, stood Nash Caromel’s dead wife, Charlotte the First.

CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE.

I

People are apt to say, when telling of a surprise, that a feather would have knocked them down. I nearly fell without the feather and without the touch. To see a dead woman standing straight up before me, and to hear her say “How are you, and is the Squire at home?” might have upset the balance of a giant.

But I could not be mistaken. There, waiting at the front-door to come in, her face within an inch of mine, was Nash Caromel’s first wife, Charlotte Tinkle; who for some two years now had been looked upon as dead and buried over in California.

“Is Mr. Todhetley at home!” she repeated. “And can I see him?”

“Yes,” I answered, coming partially out of my bewilderment.“Do you mind staying here just a minute, while I tell him?”

For, to hand in a dead woman, might take him aback, as it had taken me. The pater stood bolt upright, waiting for Mrs. Scott (as he had supposed it to be) to enter.

“It is not Mrs. Scott,” I whispered, shutting the door and going close up to him. “It—it is some one else. I hardly like to tell you, sir; she may give you a fright.”

“Why, what does the lad mean?—what are you making a mystery of now, Johnny?” cried he, staring at me. “Give me a fright! I should like to see any woman give me that. Is it Mrs. Scott, or is it not?”

“It is some one we thought dead, sir.”

“Now, Johnny, don’t be a muff. Somebody you thought dead! What on earth’s come to you, lad? Speak out!”

“It is Nash Caromel’s first wife, sir: Charlotte Tinkle.”

The pater gazed at me as a man bereft of reason. I don’tbelieve he knew whether he stood on his head or his heels.“Charlotte Tinkle!” he exclaimed, backing against the curtain.“What, come to life, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir, and she wants to see you. Perhaps she has never been dead.”

“Bless my heart and mind! Bring her in.”

The first thing Charlotte the First did when she came in and the Squire clasped her by her two hands, was to burst into a fit of sobbing. Some wine stood on the sideboard; the Squire poured her out a glass, and she untied the strings of her bonnet as she sat down.

“If I might take it off for a minute?” she said. “I have had it on all the way from Liverpool.”

“Do so, my dear. Goodness me! I think I must be in a dream. And so you are not dead!”

“Yes, I knew it was what you must have all been thinking,”she answered, stifling her sobs. “Poor Nash!—what a dreadful thing it is! I cannot imagine how the misconception can have arisen.”

“What misconception?” asked the pater, whose wits, once gone a wool-gathering, rarely came back in a hurry.

“That I had died.”

“Why, that friend of yours with whom you were staying—Bunn—Munn—which was it, Johnny?—wrote to tell your husband so.”

Mrs. Nash Caromel, sitting there in the twilight, her brown hair as smooth as ever and her eyes as meek, looked at the Squire in surprise.

“Oh no, that could not have been; Mr. Munn would not be likely to write anything of the sort. Impossible.”

“But, my dear lady, I read the letter. Your husband brought it to me as soon as it reached him. You remained at San Francisco, very ill after Nash’s departure, and you got no better, and died at last of low fever.”

She shook her head. “I was very poorly indeed when Nash left, but I grew better shortly. I had no low fever, and I certainly did not die.”

“Then why did Munn write it?”

“He did not write it. He could not have written it. I amquite certain of that. He and his wife are my very good and dear friends, and most estimable people.”

“The letter certainly came to your husband,” persisted the Squire. “I read it with my own eyes. It was dated San Francisco, and signed Francis Munn.”

“Then it was a forgery. But why any one should have written it, or troubled themselves about me and my husband at all, I cannot imagine.”

“And then, Nash—Nash—— Good gracious, what a complication!”cried the Squire, breaking off what he meant to say, as the thought of Charlotte Nave crossed his mind.

“I know,” she quietly put in: “Nash has married again.”

It was a complication, and no mistake, all things considered. The Squire rubbed up his hair and deliberated, and then bethought himself that it might be as well to keep the servants out of the room. So I went to tell old Thomas that the master was particularly engaged with a friend, and no one was to come in unless rung for. Then I ran upstairs to whisper the news to the mother—and it pretty nearly sent her into a fit of hysterics.

Charlotte Caromel was entering on her history to the Squire when I got back. “Yes,” she said, “I and my husband went to California, having found little luck in America. Nash made one or two ventures there also, but nothing seemed to succeed; not as well even as it did in America, and he resolved to go back there, and try at something or other again. He sailed for New York, leaving me in San Francisco with Francis Munn and his wife; for I had been ill, and was not strong enough for the tedious voyage. The Munns kept a dry-goods store at San Francisco, and——”

“A dry-goods store!” interrupted the Squire.

“Yes. You cannot afford to be fastidious over there; and to be in trade is looked upon as an honour, rather than the contrary. Francis Munn was the youngest son of a country gentleman in England; he went to California to make his fortune at anything that might turn up; and it ended in his marrying and keeping a store. They made plenty of money, and were very kind to me and Nash. Well, Nash started for New York, leaving me with them, and he wrote to me soon after his arrival there. Things were looking gloomy in the States, he said, and he felt inclined to take a run over to England, and ask his brother Miles to help him with some money. I wrote back a letter in duplicate, addressing one to the agents’ in New York, the other to Caromel’s Farm—not knowing, you perceive, in which place he might be. No answer reached me—but people think little of the safety of letters out there, so many seem to miscarry. We fancied Nash might be coming back to San Francisco and did not trouble himself to write: like me, he is not much of a scribe. But the months went on, and he did not come; he neither came nor wrote.”

“What did you think hindered him?”

“We did not know what to think—except, as I say, that the letters had miscarried. One day Mr. Munn brought in a file of English newspapers for me and his wife to read: and in one of them I saw an announcement that puzzled me greatly—the marriage of one Nash Caromel, of Caromel’s Farm, to Charlotte Nave. Just at first it startled me; I own that; but I felt so sure it could not be my Nash, my husband, that I remained only puzzled to know what Nash Caromel it could be.”

“There is only one Nash Caromel,” growled the Squire, half inclined to tell her she was a simpleton—taking things in this equable way.

“I only knew of him; but I thought he must have some relative, a cousin perhaps, of the same name, of whom I had not heard. However,” continued Charlotte, “I wrote then to Caromel’s Farm, telling Nash what we had read, and asking him what it meant, and where he was. But that letter shared the fate of the former one, and obtained no reply. In the course of time we saw another announcement—The wife of Nash Caromel of a son. Still I did not believe it could be my Nash, but I could see that Mr. Munn did believe it was. At least he thought there was something strange about it all, especially our not hearing from Nash: and at length I determined to come home and see about it.”

“You must have been a long time coming,” remarked the Squire. “The child is fifteen months old.”

“But you must remember that often we did not get news until six months after its date. And I chose a most unfortunate route—overland from California to New York.”

“What on earth—— Why, people are sometimes a twelvemonth or so doing that!” cried the Squire. “There are rocky mountains to scale, as I’ve heard and read, and Red Indians to encounter, and all sorts of horrors. Those who undertake it travel in bands, do they not? and are called pilgrims, and some of them don’t get to the end of the journey alive.”

“True,” she sighed. “I would never have attempted it had I known what it would be: but I did so dread the sea. Several of us were laid up midway, and had to be left behind at a small settlement: one or two died. It was a long, long time, and only after surmounting great discomforts and difficulties, we reached New York.”

“Well?” said the Squire. It must be remembered that they were speaking of days now gone by, when the journey was just what she described it.

“I could hear nothing of my husband in New York,” she resumed, “except that Abraham Whitter believed him to be at home here. I took the steamer for Liverpool, landed at dawn this morning, and came on by rail. And I find it is my husband who is married. And what am I to do?”

She melted away into tears again. The Squire told her that she must present herself at the farm; she was its legal mistress, and Nash Caromel’s true wife. But she shook her head at this: she wouldn’t bring any such trouble upon Nash for the world, as to show him suddenly that she was living. What he had done he must have done unwittingly, she said, believing her to be dead, and he ought not to suffer for it more than could be helped. Which was a lenient way of reasoning that put the Squire’s temper up.

“He deserves no quarter, ma’am, and I will not give it him if you do. Within a week of the time he heard of your death he went and took that Charlotte Nave. Though I expect it was she who took him—brazen hussy! And I am glad you have come to put her out!”

But, nothing would induce Charlotte the First to assume this view, or to admit that blame could attach to Nash. Once he had lost her by death, he had a right to marry again, she contended. As to the haste—well, she had been dead (as he supposed) a great many months when he heard of it, and thatshould be considered. The Squire exploded, and walked about the room, and rubbed his hair the wrong way, and thought her no better than an imbecile.

Mrs. Todhetley came in, and there was a little scene. Charlotte declined our offer of a bed and refreshment, saying she would like to go to her mother’s for the night: she felt that she should be received gladly, though they had parted in anger and had held no communication with one another since.

Gladly? ay, joyfully. Little doubt of that. So the Squire put on his hat, and she her bonnet, and away they started, and I with them.

We took the lonely path across the fields: her appearance might have raised a stir in the highway. Charlotte was but little altered, and would have been recognized at once. And I have no space to tell of the scene at Mrs. Tinkle’s, which was as good as a play, or of the way they rushed into one another’s arms.

“Johnny, there’s something on my mind,” said the Squire in a low tone as we were going back towards home: and he was looking grave and silent as a judge. “Do you remember those two foreign letters we chanced to see of Nash Caromel’s, with the odd handwriting, all quavers and tails?”

“Yes, I do, sir. They were ship letters.”

“Well, lad, a very ugly suspicion has come into my head, and I can’t drive it away. I believe those two letters were from Charlotte—the two she speaks of—I believe the handwriting which puzzled me was hers. Now, if so, Nash went to the altar with that other Charlotte, knowing this one was alive: for the first letter came the day before the marriage.”

I did not answer. But I remembered what I had overheard Nave the lawyer say to Nash Caromel: “You must marry her: where there’s a will there’s a way”—or words to that effect. Had Nave concocted the letters which pretended to tell of Mrs. Nash Caromel’s death, and got them posted to Nash from New York?

With the morning, the Squire was at Caromel’s Farm. The old-fashioned low house, the sun shining on its quaint windows, looked still and quiet as he walked up to the front-door across the grass-plat, in the middle of which grew a fine mulberry-tree. The news of Charlotte’s return, as he was soon to find, had travelled to it already; had spread to the village. For she had been recognized the night before on her arrival; and her boxes, left in charge of a porter, bore her full name, Mrs. Nash Caromel.

Nash stood in that little library of his in a state of agitation not to be described; he as good as confessed, when the Squire tackled him, that he had known his wife might have been alive, and that it was all Nave’s doings. At least he suspected that the letter, telling of her death, might be a forgery.

“Anyway, you had a letter from her the day before you married, so you must have known it by that,” cried the Squire; who had so much to do always with the Caromel family that he deemed it his duty to interfere. “What on earth could have possessed you?”

“I—was driven into a corner,” gasped Nash.

“I’d be driven into fifty corners before I’d marry two wives,” retorted the Squire. “And now, sir, what do you mean to do?”

“I can’t tell,” answered Nash.

“A pretty kettle of fish this is! What do you suppose your father would have said to it?”

“I’m sure I can’t tell,” repeated Nash helplessly, biting his lips to get some life into them.

“And what’s the matter with your hands that they are so hot and white?”

Nash glanced at his hands, and hid them away in his pockets. He looked like a man consumed by inward fever.

“I have not been over well for some time past,” said he.

“No wonder—with the consciousness of this discovery hanging over your head! It might have sent some men into their graves.”

Nash drummed upon the window pane. What in the world to do, what to say, evidently he knew not.

“You must put away this Jez—this lady,” went on the Squire. “It was she who bewitched you; ay, and set herself out to do it, as all the parish saw. Let her go back to her father: you might make some provision for her: and instal your wife here in her proper place. Poor thing! she is so meek and patient! She won’t hear a word said against you; thinks you are a saint. I think you a scoundrel, Nash: and I tell you so to your face.”

The door had slowly opened; somebody, who had been outside, listening, put in her head. A very pretty head, and that’s the truth, surmounting a fashionable morning costume of rose-coloured muslin, all flounces and furbelows. It was Charlotte the Second. The Squire had called her a brazen hussy behind her back; he had much ado this morning not to call her so to her face.

“What’s that I hear you saying to my husband, Mr. Todhetley—that he should discard me and admit that creature here! How dare you bring your pernicious counsels into this house?”

“Why, bless my heart, he is her husband, madam; he is not yours. You’d not stay here yourself, surely!”

“This is my home, and he is my husband, and my child is his heir; and that woman may go back over the seas whence she came. Is it not so, Nash? Tell him.”

She put her hand on Nash’s shoulder, and he tried to get out something or other in obedience to her. He was as much under her finger and thumb as Punch in the street is under the showman’s. The Squire went into a purple heat.

“You married him by craft, madam—as I believe from my very soul: you married him, knowing, you and your father also, that his wife was alive. He knew it, too. The motive must have been one of urgency, I should say, but I’ve nothing to do with that——”

“Nor with any other business of ours,” she answered with a brazen face.

“This business is mine, and all Church Dykely’s,” flashed the Squire. “It is public property. And now, I ask you both, what you mean to do in this dilemma you have brought upon yourselves? His wife is waiting to come in, and you cannot keep her out.”

“She shall never come in; I tell you that,” flashed Charlotte the Second. “She sent word to him that she was dead, and she must abide by it; from that time she was dead to him, dead for ever. Mr. Caromel married me equally in the eyes of the world: and here I shall stay with him, his true and lawful wife.”

The Squire rubbed his face; the torrent of words and the heat made it glisten.

“Stay here, would you, madam! What luck do you suppose would come of that?”

“Luck! I have quite as much luck as I require. Nash, why do you not request this—this gentleman to leave us?”

“Why, he dare not keep you here,” cried the Squire, passing over the last compliment. “He would be prosecuted for—you know what.”

“Let him be prosecuted! Let the wicked woman do her worst. Let her bring an action, and we’ll defend it. I have more right to him than she has. Mr. Caromel, do you wish to keep up this interview until night?”

“Perhaps you had better go now, Squire,” put in the man pleadingly. “I—I will consult Nave, and see what’s to be done. She may like to go back to California, to the Munns; the climate suited her: and—and an income might be arranged.”

This put the finishing stroke to the Squire’s temper. He flung out of the room with a few unorthodox words, and came home in a tantrum.

We had had times of commotion at Church Dykely before, but this affair capped all. The one Mrs. Nash Caromel waiting to go into her house, and the other Mrs. Nash Caromel refusing to go out of it to make room for her. The Squire was right when saying it was public property: the public made it theirs. Tongues pitched into Nash Caromel in the fields and in the road: but some few of us pitied him, thinking what on earth we could do ourselves in a like position. While old Jones the constable stalked briskly about, expecting to get a warrant for taking up the master of Caromel’s Farm.

But the great drawback to instituting legal proceedings lay with Mrs. Nash Caromel the First. She declined to prosecute. Her husband might refuse to receive her; might hold himself aloof from her; might keep his second wife by his side; but she would never hurt a hair of his head. Heaven might bring things round in its own good time, she said; meanwhile she would submit—and bear.

And she held to this, driving indignant men distracted. They argued, they persuaded, they remonstrated; it was said that oneor two strong-minded ones swore. All the same. She stayed on at her mother’s, and would neither injure her husband herself, nor let her family injure him. Henry Tinkle, her brother, chanced to be from home (as he was when she had run away to be married), or he might have acted in spite of her. And, when this state of things had continued for two or three weeks, the world began to call it a “crying scandal.” As to Nash Caromel, he did not show his face abroad.

“Not a day longer shall the fellow retain my money,” said the pater, speaking of the twelve hundred pounds he had lent to Nash: and in fact the term it had been lent for was already up. But it is easier to make such a threat than to enforce it; and it is not everybody who can extract twelve hundred pounds at will from uncertain coffers. Any way the Squire found he could not. He wrote to Nash, demanding its return; and he wrote to Nave.

Nash did not answer him at all. Nave’s clerk sent a semi-insolent letter, saying Mr. Caromel should be communicated with when occasion offered. The Squire wrote in a rage to his lawyer at Worcester, bidding him enforce the repayment.

“You two lads can take the letter to the post,” said he.

But we had not got many yards from home when we heard the Squire coming after us. We all walked into Church Dykely together; and close to the post-office, which was at Dame Chad’s shop, we met Duffham. Of course the Squire, who could not keep anything in had he been bribed to do it, told Duffham what steps he was about to take.

“Going to enforce payment,” nodded Duffham. “The man deserves no quarter. But he is ill.”

“Serve him right. What’s the matter with him?”

“Nervous fever. Has fretted or frightened himself into it. Report says that he is very ill indeed.”

“Don’t you attend him?”

“Not I. I did not please madam at the time the boy was born—would not give in to some of her whims and fancies. They have called in that new doctor who has settled in the next parish, young Bluck.”

“Why, he is no better than an apothecary’s boy, that young Bluck! Caromel can’t be very ill, if they have him.”

“So ill, that, as I have just heard, he is in great danger—likely to die,” replied Duffham, tapping his cane against the ledge of Dame Chad’s window. “Bluck’s young, but he is clever.”

“Bless my heart! Likely to die! What, Nash Caromel! Here, you lads, if that’s it, I won’t annoy him just now about the money, so don’t post the letter.”

“It is posted,” said Tod. “I have just put it in.”

“Go in and explain to Dame Chad, and get it out again. Or, stay; the letter can go, and I’ll write and say it’s not to be acted on until he is well again. Nervous fever! I’m afraid his conscience has been pricking him.”

“I hope it has,” said Duffham.

II

A few days went on. Nash Caromel lay in the greatest danger. Nave was at the farm day and night. A physician was called in from a distance to aid young Bluck; but it was understood that there remained very little hope of recovery. We began to feel sorry for Nash and to excuse his offences, the Squire especially. It was all that strong-minded young woman’s doings, said he; she had drawn him into her toils, and he had not had the pluck, first or last, to escape from them.

But a change for the better took place; Nash passed the crisis, and would probably, with care, recover. I think every one felt glad; one does not wish a fellow quite to die, though he has misinterpreted the laws on the ticklish subject of matrimony. And the Squire felt vexed later when he learned that his lawyer had disregarded his countermanding letter and sent a peremptory threat to Nash of enforcing instant proceedings, unless the money was repaid forthwith. That was not the only threat conveyed to Caromel’s Farm. Harry Tinkle returned; and, despite his sister’s protestations, took the matter into his own hands, and applied for the warrant that had been so much talked about. As soon as Nash Caromel could leave his bed, he would be taken before the magistrates.

Soon a morning came that we did not forget in a hurry.While dressing with the window open to the white flowers of the trailing jessamine and the sweet perfume of the roses, blooming in the warm September air, Tod came in, fastening his braces.

“I say, Johnny, here’s the jolliest lark! The pater——”

And what the lark was, I don’t know to this day. At that moment the passing-bell tolled out—three times three; its succession of quick strokes following it. The wind blew in our direction from the church, and it sounded almost as though it were in the room.

“Who can be dead?” cried Tod, stretching his neck out at the window to listen. “Was any one ill, Jenkins?” he called to the head-gardener, then coming up the path with a barrow;“do you know who that bell’s tolling for?”

“It’s for Mr. Caromel,” answered Jenkins.

“What?” shouted Tod.

“It’s tolling for Mr. Caromel, sir. He died in the night.”

It was a shock to us all. The Squire, pocketing his indignation against madam and the Nave family in general, went over to the farm after breakfast, and saw Miss Gwendolen Nave, who was staying with her sister. They called her Gwinny.

“We heard that he was better—going on so well,” gasped the Squire.

“So he was until a day or two ago,” said Miss Gwinny, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. “Very well indeed until then—when it turned to typhus.”

“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, an unpleasant feeling running through him. “Typhus!”

“Yes, I am sorry to say.”

“Is it safe to be here? Safe for you all?”

“Of course it is a risk. We try not to be afraid, and have sent as many out of the house as we could. I and the old servant Grizzel alone remain with Mrs. Caromel. The baby has gone to papa’s.”

“Dear me, dear me! I was intending to ask to look at poor Nash; we have known each other always, you see. But, perhaps it would not be prudent.”

“It would be very imprudent, Mr. Todhetley. The sickness was of the worst type; it might involve not only your own death,but that of others to whom you might in turn carry it. You have a wife and children, sir.”

“Yes, yes, quite right,” rejoined the Squire. “Poor Nash! How is—your sister?” He would not, even at that trying moment for them, call her Mrs. Caromel.

“Oh, she is very ill; shocked and grieved almost to death. For all we know, she has taken the fever and may follow her husband; she attended upon him to the last. I hope that woman, who came here to disturb the peace of a happy family, that Charlotte Tinkle, will reap the fruit of what she has sown, for it is all owing to her.”

“People do mostly reap the fruit of their own actions, whether they are good or bad,” observed the Squire to this, as he got up to leave. But he would not add what he thought—that it was another Charlotte who ought to reap what she had sown. And who appeared to be doing it.

“Did the poor fellow suffer much?”

“Not at the last,” said Miss Gwinny. “His strength was gone, and he lay for many hours insensible. Up to yesterday evening we thought he might recover. Oh, it is a dreadful calamity!”

Indeed it was. The Squire came away echoing the words in his heart.

Three days later the funeral took place: it would not do to delay it longer. The Squire went to it: when a man was dead, he thought animosity should cease. Harry Tinkle would not go. Caromel, he said, had escaped him and the law, to which he had rendered himself amenable, and nobody might grumble at it, for it was the good pleasure of Heaven, but he would not show Caromel respect, dead or living.

All the parish seemed to have been bidden to the funeral. Some went, some did not go. It looked a regular crowd, winding down the lawn and down the avenue. Few ventured indoors; they preferred to assemble outside: for an exaggerated fear of Caromel’s Farm and what might be caught in it, ran through the community. So, when the men came out of the house, staggering under the black velvet pall with its deep white border, followed by Lawyer Nave, the company fell up into line behind.

Little Dun would have been the legal heir to the property had there been no Charlotte the First. That complication stood in his way, and he could no more inherit it than I could. Under the peculiar circumstances there was no male heir living, and Nash Caromel, the last of his name, had the power to make a will. Whether he had done so, or not, was not known; but the question was set at rest after the return from the funeral. Nave had gone strutting next the coffin as chief mourner, and he now produced the will. Half-a-dozen gentlemen had entered, the Squire one of them.

It was executed, the will, all in due form, having been drawn up by a lawyer from a distance; not by Nave, who may have thought it as well to keep his fingers out of the pie. A few days after the return of Charlotte the First, when Nash first became ill, the strange lawyer was called in, and the will was made.

Caromel’s Farm and every stick and stone upon it, and all other properties possessed by Nash, were bequeathed to the little boy, Duncan Nave (as it was worded), otherwise Duncan Nave Caromel. Not to him unconditionally, but to be placed in the hands of trustees for his ultimate benefit. The child’s mother (called in the will Charlotte Nave, otherwise Charlotte Caromel) was to remain at the farm if she pleased, and to receive the yearly income derived from it for the mutual maintenance of herself and child. When the child should be twenty-one, he was to assume full possession, but his mother was at liberty to continue to have her home with him. In short, they took all; Charlotte Tinkle, nothing.

“It is a wicked will,” cried one of the hearers when they came out from listening to it.

“And it won’t prosper them; you see if it does,” added the Squire. “She stands in the place of Charlotte Tinkle. The least Caromel could have done, was to divide the property between them.”

So that was the apparent ending of the Caromel business, which had caused the scandal in our quiet place, and a very unjust ending it was. Charlotte Tinkle, who had not a sixpence of her own in the world, remained on with her mother. She would come to church in her widow’s mourning, a grievous look of sorrow upon her meek face; people said she would never getover the cruelty of not having been sent for to say farewell to her husband when he was dying.

As for Charlotte Nave, she stayed on at the farm without let or hindrance, calling herself, as before, Mrs. Nash Caromel. She appeared at church once in a way; not often. Her widow’s veil was deeper than the other widow’s, and her goffered cap larger. Nobody took the fever: and Nave the lawyer sent back the Squire’s twelve hundred pounds within a month of Nash’s death. And that, I say, was the ending, as we all supposed, of the affair at Caromel’s Farm.

But curious complications were destined to crop up yet.

III

Nash Caromel died in September. And in how short, or long, a time it was afterwards that a very startling report grew to be whispered, I cannot remember; but I think it must have been at the turn of winter. The two widows were deep in weeds as ever, but over Charlotte Nave a change had come. And I really think I had better call them in future Charlotte Tinkle and Charlotte Nave, or we may get in a fog between the two.

Charlotte Nave grew pale and thin. She ruled the farm, as before, with the deft hand of a capable woman, but her nature appeared to be changing, her high spirits to have flown for ever. Instead of filling the house with company, she secluded herself in it like a hermit, being scarcely ever seen abroad. Ill-natured people, quoting Shakespeare, said the thorns, which in her bosom lay, did prick and sting her.

It was reported that the fear of the fever had taken a haunting hold upon her. She could not get rid of it. Which was on-reasonable, as Nurse Picker phrased it; for if she’d ha’ been to catch it, she’d ha’ caught it at the time. It was not for herself alone she feared it, but for others, though she did fear it for herself still, very much indeed. An impression lay on her mind that the fever was not yet out of the house, and never would be out of it, and that any fresh person, coming in to reside, would be liable to take it. More than once she was heard to say she would give a great deal not to be tied to the place—but the farm could not get on without a head. Before Nash died, when it was known the disorder had turned to typhus, she had sent all the servants (except Grizzel) and little Dun out of the house. She would not let them come back to it. Dun stayed at the lawyer’s; the servants in time got other situations. The gardener’s wife went in by day to help old Grizzel with the work, and some of the out-door men lived in the bailiff’s house. Nave let out one day that he had remonstrated with his daughter in vain. Some women are cowards in these matters; they can’t help being so; and the inward fear, perpetually tormenting them, makes a havoc of their daily lives. But in this case the fear had grown to an exaggerated height. In short, not to mince the matter, it was suspected her brain, on that one point, was unhinged.

Miss Gwinny could not leave her. Another sister, Harriet Nave, had come to her father’s house, to keep it and take care of little Dun. Dun was allowed to go into the grounds of the farm and to play under the mulberry-tree on the lawn; and once or twice on a wet day, it was said, his mother had taken him into the parlour that opened with glass-doors, but she never let him run the risk of going in farther. At last old Nave, as was reported, consulted a mad doctor about her, going all the way to Droitwich to do it.

But all this had nothing to do with the startling rumour I spoke of. Things were in this condition when it first arose. It was said that Nash Caromel “came again.”

At first the whisper was not listened to, was ridiculed, laughed at: but when one or two credible witnesses protested they had seen him, people began to talk, and then to say there must be something in it.

A little matter that had occurred soon after the funeral, was remembered then. Nash Caromel had used to wear on his watch-chain a small gold locket with his own and his wife’s hair in it. I mean his real wife. Mrs. Tinkle wrote a civil note to the mistress of Caromel’s Farm asking that the locket might be restored to her daughter—whose property it in fact was. She did not receive any answer, and wrote again. The second letter was returned to Mrs. Tinkle in a blank envelope with a wide black border.

Upon this, Harry Tinkle took up the matter. Stretching a point for his sister, who was pining for the locket and Nash’s bit of hair in it, for she possessed no memento at all of her husband, he called at the farm and saw the lady. Some hard words passed between them: she was contemptuously haughty; and he was full of inward indignation, not only at the general treatment accorded to his sister, but also at the unjust will. At last, stung by some sneering contumely she openly cast upon his sister, he retorted in her own coin—answering certain words of hers—

“I hope his ghost will haunt you, you false woman!” Meaning, you know, the ghost of the dead man.

People recalled these words of Harry Tinkle’s now, and began to look upon them (spoken by one of the injured Tinkles) in the light of prophecy. What with this, and what with their private belief that Nash Caromel’s conscience would hardly allow him to rest quietly in his grave, they thought it very likely that his ghost was haunting her, and only hoped it would not haunt the parish.

Was this the cause of the change apparent in her? Could it be that Nash Caromel’s spirit returned to the house in which he died, and that she could not rest for it? Was this the true reason, and not the fever, why she kept the child and the servants out of the house?—lest they should be scared by the sight? Gossips shivered as they whispered to one another of these unearthly doubts, which soon grew into a belief. But you must understand that never a syllable had been heard from herself, or a hint given, that Caromel’s Farm was troubled by anything of the kind; neither did she know, or was likely to hear, that it was talked of abroad. Meanwhile, as the time slipped on, every now and then something would occur to renew the report—that Nash Caromel had been seen.

One afternoon, during a ride, the Squire’s horse fell lame. On his return he sent for Dobbs, the blacksmith and farrier. Dobbs promised to be over about six o’clock; he was obliged to go elsewhere first. When six o’clock struck, the Squire, naturally impatient, began to look out for Dobbs. And if he sent Thomas out of the room once during dinner, to see whether the man had arrived, he sent him half-a-dozen times.

Seven o’clock, and no Dobbs. The pater was in a fume; hedid nothing but walk to and fro between the house and the stables, and call Dobbs names as he looked out for him. At last, there came a rush across the fold-yard, and Dobbs appeared, his face looking very peculiar, and his hair standing up in affright, like a porcupine’s quills.

“Why, what on earth has taken you?” began the Squire, surprised out of the reproach that had been upon his tongue.

“I don’t know what has taken me,” gasped Dobbs. “Except that I’ve seen Mr. Nash Caromel.”

“What?” roared the Squire, his surprise changing to anger.

“As true as I’m a living man, I’ve seen him, sir,” persisted Dobbs, wiping his face with a blue cotton handkerchief. “I’ve seen his shadow.”

“Seen the Dickens!” retorted the Squire, slightingly. “One would think he was after you, by the way you flew up here. I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself, Dobbs.”

“Being later than I thought to be, sir, I took the field way; it’s a bit shorter,” went on Dobbs, attempting to explain. “In passing through that little copse at the back of Caromel’s Farm, I met a curious-looking shadow of a figure that somehow startled me. May I never stir from this spot, sir, if it was not Caromel himself.”

“You have been drinking, Dobbs.”

“A strapping pace I was going at, knowing I was being waited for here,” continued Dobbs, too much absorbed in his story to heed the sarcasm. “I never saw Mr. Nash Caromel plainer in his lifetime than I saw him then, sir. Drinking? No, that I had not been, Squire; the place where I went to is teetotal. It was up at the Glebe, and they don’t have nothing stronger in their house than tea. They gave me two good cups of that.”

“Tea plays some people worse tricks than drink, especially if it is green,” observed the Squire: and I am bound to confess that Dobbs, apart from his state of fright, seemed as sober as we were. “I wouldn’t confess myself a fool, Dobbs, if I were you.”

Dobbs put out his brawny right arm. “Master,” said he, with quite a solemn emphasis, “as true as that there moon’s a-shining down upon us, I this night saw Nash Caromel. Ishould know him among a thousand. And I thought my heart would just ha’ leaped out of me.”

To hear this strong, matter-of-fact man assert this, with his sturdy frame and his practical common sense, sounded remarkable. Any one accustomed to seeing him in his forge, working away at his anvil, would never have believed it of him. Tod laughed. The Squire marched off to the stables with an impatient word. I followed with Dobbs.

“The idea of your believing in ghosts and shadows, Dobbs!”

“Me believe in ’em, Master Johnny! No more I did; I’d have scorned it. Why, do you remember that there stir, sir, about the ghost that was said to haunt Oxlip Dell? Lots of people went into fits over that, a’most lost their heads; but I laughed at it. Now, I never put credit in nothing of the kind; but I have seen Mr. Caromel’s ghost to-night.”

“Was it in white?”

“Bless your heart, sir, no. He was in a sort o’ long-skirted dark cloak that seemed to wrap him well round; and his head was in something black. It might ha’ been a cap; I don’t know. And here we are at the stable, so I’ll say no more: but I can’t ever speak anything truer in my life than I’ve spoke this, sir.”

All this passed. In spite of the blacksmith’s superstitious assertion, made in the impulse of terror, there lay on his mind a feeling of shame that he should have betrayed fear to us (or what bordered upon it) in an unguarded moment; and this caused him to be silent to others. So the matter passed off without spreading further.

Several weeks later, it cropped up again. Francis Radcliffe (if the reader has not forgotten him, and who had not long before been delivered out of his brother’s hands at Sandstone Torr) was passing along at the back of Caromel’s Farm, when he saw a figure that bore an extraordinary resemblance to Nash Caromel. The Squire laughed well when told of it, and Radcliffe laughed too. “But,” said he, “had Nash Caromel not been dead, I could have sworn it was he, or his shadow, before any justice of the peace.”

His shadow! The same word that Dobbs had used. Francis Radcliffe told this story everywhere, and it caused no little excitement.

“What does this silly rumour mean—about Nash Caromel being seen?” demanded the Squire one day when he met Nave, and condescended to stop to speak to him.

And Nave, hearing the question, turned quite blue: the pater told us so when he came home. Just as though Nave saw the apparition before him then, and was frightened at it.

“The rumour is infamous,” he answered, biting his cold lips to keep down his passion. “Infamous and ridiculous both. Emanating from idle fools. I think, sir, as a magistrate, you might order these people before you and punish them.”

“Punish people for thinking they see Caromel’s ghost!”retorted the Squire. “Bless my heart! What an ignorant man (for a lawyer) you must be! No act has been passed against seeing ghosts. But I’d like to know what gives rise to the fancy about Caromel.”

The rumour did not die away. How could it, when from time to time the thing continued to be seen? It frightened Mary Standish into a fit. Going to Caromel’s Farm one night to beg grace for something or other that her ill-doing husband, Jim, then working on the farm, had done or left undone, she came upon a wonderfully thin man standing in the nook by the dairy window, and took him to be the bailiff, who was himself no better than a walking lamp-post. “If you please, sir,” she was beginning, thinking to have it out with him instead of Mrs. Caromel, “if you please, sir——”

When, upon looking into his pale, stony face, she saw the late master. He vanished into air or into the wall, and down fell Mary Standish in a fainting-fit. The parish grew uneasy at all this—and wondered what had been done to Nash, or what he had done, that he could not rest.

One night I was coming, with Tod, across from Mrs. Scott’s, who lived beyond Hyde Stockhausem’s. We took the field way from Church Dykely, as being the shortest route, and that led us through the copse at the back of Caromel’s Farm. It was a very light night, though not moonlight; and we walked on at a good rate, talking of a frightful scrape Sam Scott had got into, and which he was afraid to tell his mother of. All in a moment, just in the middle of the copse, we came upon a man standing amongst the trees, his face towards us. Tod turned and I turned; and we both saw Nash Caromel. Now, of course, you will laugh. As the Squire did when we got home (in a white heat) and told him: and he called us a couple of poltroons. But, if ever I saw the face of Nash Caromel, I saw it then; and if ever I saw a figure that might be called a shadow, it was his.

“Fine gentlemen, both of you!” scoffed the Squire. “Clear and sensible! Seen a ghost, have you, and confess to it! Ho, ho! Running through the back copse, you come upon somebody that you must take for an apparition! Ha, ha! Nice young cowards! I’d write an account of it to the Worcester papers if I were you. A ghost, with glaring eyes and a white face! Death’s head upon a mopstick, lads! I shouldn’t have wondered at Johnny; but I do wonder at you, Joe,” concluded the Squire, smoothing down.

“I am no more afraid of ghosts than you are, father,” quietly answered Joe. “I was not afraid when we saw—what we did see; I can’t answer for Johnny. But I do declare, with all my senses (which you are pleased to disparage) about me, that it was the form and face of Nash Caromel, and that ‘it’ (whatever it might be) seemed to vanish from our sight as we looked.”

“Johnny calls it a shadow,” mocked the Squire, amiably.

“It looked shadowy,” said Tod.

“A tree-trunk, I dare be bound, lads, nothing else,” nodded the Squire. And you might as well have tried to make an impression on a post.

IV

September came in: which made it a year since Nash died. And on one of its bright days, when the sun was high, and the blue sky cloudless, Church Dykely had a stir given it in the sight of the mistress of Caromel’s Farm. She and her father were in a gig together, driving off on the Worcester road: and it was so very rare a thing to see her abroad now, that folks ran to their windows and doors to stare. Her golden hair, what could be seen of it for her smart blue parasol, shone in the sunlight; but her face looked white and thin through the black crape veil.

“Just like a woman who gets disturbed o’ nights,” pronounced Sam Rimmer, thinking of the ghostly presence that was believed to haunt the house.

Before that day’s beautiful sun had gone down to light the inhabitants of the other hemisphere, ill-omened news reached Church Dykely. An accident had happened to the horse and gig. It was said that both Nave and his daughter were dreadfully injured; one of them nearly killed. Miss Gwinny, left at home to take care of Caromel’s Farm, posted off to the scene of damage.

Holding Caromel’s Farm in small respect now, the Squire yet chose to show himself neighbourly; and he rose up from his dinner to go there and inquire particulars. “You may come with me, lads, if you like,” said he. Tod laughed.

“He’s afraid of seeing Caromel,” whispered he in my ear, as we took down our hats.

And, whether the Squire was afraid of it or not, he did see him. It was a lovely moonlight night, bright and clear as the day had been. Old Grizzel could not tell us much more of the accident than we had heard before; except that it was quite true there had been one, and that Miss Gwinny had gone. And, by the way Grizzel inwardly shook and shivered while she spoke, and turned her eyes to all corners in some desperate fear, one might have thought she had been pitched out of a gig herself.

We had left the door—it was the side-entrance—when the Squire turned back to put some last query to her. Tod and I went on. The path was narrow, the overhanging trees on either side obscured the moonlight, making it dark. Chancing to glance round, I noticed the Squire, at the other end of the path, come soberly after us. Suddenly he seemed to halt, to look sideways at the trees, and then he came on with a bound.

“Boys! Boys!” cried he, in a half-whisper, “come on. There’s Caromel yonder.”

And to see the pater’s face in its steaming consternation, and to watch him rush on to the gate, was better than a play. Seen Caromel! It was not so long since he had mocked at us for saying it.

Through the gate went he, bolt into the arms of some unexpected figure, standing there. We peered at it in the uncertainlights cast by the trees, and made it out to be Dobbs, the blacksmith.

Dobbs, with a big coat on, hiding his shirt-sleeves and his leather apron: Dobbs standing as silent as the grave: arms folded, head bent: Dobbs in stockinged feet, without his shoes.

“Dobbs, my good fellow, what on earth do you put yourself in people’s way for, standing stock-still like a Chinese image?”gasped the Squire. “Dobbs—why, you have no boots on.”

“Hush!” breathed Dobbs, hardly above his breath. “I ask your pardon, Squire. Hush, please! There’s something uncanny in this place; some ugly mystery. I mean to find it out if I can, sirs, and this is the third night I’ve come here on the watch. Hark!”

Sounds, as of a woman’s voice weeping and wailing, reached us faintly from somewhere—down beyond the garden trees. The pater looked regularly flustered.

“Listen!” repeated Dobbs, raising his big hand to entreat for silence. “Yes, Squire; I don’t know what the mystery is; but there is something wrong about the place, and I can’t sleep o’ nights for it. Please hearken, sirs.”

The blacksmith was right. Wrong and mystery, such as the world does not often hear of, lay within Caromel’s Farm. Curious mystery; wicked wrong. Leaning our arms on the gate, watching the moonlight flickering on the trees, we listened to Dobbs’s whispered revelation. It made the Squire’s hair stand on end.

THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS.

I

When a house is popularly allowed to be haunted, and its inmates grow thin and white and restless, it is not the best place in the world for children: and this was supposed by Church Dykely to be the reason why Mrs. Nash Caromel the Second had never allowed her child to come home since the death of its father. At first it was said that she would not risk having him lest he should catch the fever Nash had died of: but, when the weeks went on, and the months went on, and years (so far as could be seen) were likely to go on, and still the child was kept away, people put it down to the other disagreeable fact.

Any way, Mrs. Nash Caromel—or Charlotte Nave, as you please—did not have the boy home. Little Dun was kept at his grandfather’s, Lawyer Nave; and Miss Harriet Nave took care of him: the other sister, Gwinny, remaining at Caromel’s Farm. Towards the close of spring, the spring which followed the death of Nash, when Dun was about two years old, he caught whooping-cough and had it badly. In August he was sent for change of air to a farm called the Rill, on the other side of Pershore, Miss Harriet Nave taking the opportunity to go jaunting off elsewhere. The change of air did the child good, and he was growing strong quickly, when one night early in September croup attacked him, and he lay in great danger. News of it was sent to his mother in the morning. It drove her nearly wild with fear, and she set off for the Rill in a gig, her father driving it: as already spoken of. So rare was the sight of her now, for she kept indoors at Caromel’s Farm as a snail keeps to its shell, that no wonder Church Dykely thought it an event, and talked of it all the day.

Mr. Nave and his daughter reached the Rill—which lay acrosscountry, somewhere between Pershore and Wyre—in the course of the morning, and found little Dun gasping with croup, and inhaling steam from a kettle. Moore told us there was nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream; but to Charlotte Nave, otherwise Caromel, there was nothing sweet at all except this little Dun. He was the light of her existence; the apple of her eye, to put it poetically. She sat down by the bed-side, her pale face (so pale and thin to what it used to be) bent lovingly upon him, and wiping away the tears by stealth that came into her eyes. In the afternoon Dun was better; but the doctor would not say he was out of danger.

“If I could but stay here for the night! I can’t bear to leave him,” Charlotte snatched an opportunity to say to her father, when their friends, the farmer and his wife, were momentarily occupied.

“But you can’t, you know,” returned Lawyer Nave. “You must be home by sunset.”

“By sunset? Nay, an hour after that would do.”

“No, it will not do. Better be on the safe side.”

“It seems cruel that I should have to leave him,” she exclaimed, with a sob.

“Nonsense, Charlotte! The child will do as well without you as with you. You may see for yourself how much better he is. The farm cannot be left to itself at night: remember that. We must start in half-an-hour.”

No more was said. Nave went to see about getting ready the gig; Charlotte, all down in the dumps, stayed with the little lad, and let him pull about as he would her golden hair, and drank her tea by his side. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (good hospitable people, who had stood by Charlotte Nave through good report and ill report, believing no ill of her) pressed her to stay all night, promising, however, that every care should be taken of Duncan, if she did not.

“My little darling must be a good child and keep warm in bed, and when mamma comes in the morning he will be nearly well,” breathed Charlotte, showering tears and kisses upon him when the last moment had come. And, with that, she tore herself away.

“Such a pity that you should have to go!” said Mrs. Smith,stepping to the door with her. “I think Gwendolen and old Grizzel might have been left for one night: they’d not have run away, nor the house neither. Come over as soon as you can in the morning, my dear; and see if you can’t make arrangements to stay a day or two.”

They were starting from the back-door, as being the nearest and handiest; Nave, already in the gig, seemed in a rare hurry to be off. Mr. Smith helped Charlotte up: and away the lawyer drove, across the fold-yard, one of the farm-boys holding the outer gate open for them. The sun, getting down in the west, shone right in their eyes.

“Oh dear, I have left my parasol!” cried Charlotte, just as they reached the gate. “I must have it: my blue parasol!”And Nave, giving an angry growl to parasols in general, pulled the horse up.

“You need not get out, hindering time!” growled he. “Call out for it. Here, Smith! Mrs. Caromel has forgotten her blue parasol.” But the farmer, then nearing the house, did not hear.

“I’ll run for it, ma’am,” said the lad. And he set off to do so, leaving the gate to itself. Charlotte, who had been rising to get out, looked back to watch him; the lawyer looked back to shout again, in his impatience, to Mr. Smith. Their faces were both turned from the side where the gate was, and they did not see what was about to happen.

The gate, swinging slowly and noiselessly forward, touched the horse, which had been standing sideways, his head turned to see what the stoppage might be about.

Touched him, and startled him. Bounding upwards, he tore forward down the narrow lane on which the gate opened; tried to scale a bank, and pitched the lawyer and Charlotte out of the gig.

The farmer, and as many of his people as could be gathered at the moment, came running down, some of them armed with pitchforks. Nave was groaning as he lay; Charlotte was insensible. Just at first they thought her dead. Both were carried back to the Rill on hurdles, and the doctor was sent for. After which, Mr. Smith started off a man on horseback to tell the ill-news of the accident at Caromel Farm.

Ill-news. No doubt a bad and distressing accident. Butnow, see how curiously the “power that shapes our ends” brings things about. But for that accident, the mystery and the wrong being played out at Caromel’s Farm might never have had daylight thrown upon it. The accident, like a great many other accidents, must have been sent to this wise and good end. At least, so far as we, poor blind mortals that we all are, down here, might presume to judge.

The horseman, clattering in at a hard pace to Caromel’s Farm, delivered to Miss Gwendolen Nave, and to Grizzel, the old family servant, the tidings he was charged with—improving upon them as a thing of course.

Lawyer Nave, he were groaning awful, all a-bleeding, and unable to move a limb. The young lady, she were dead; leastways, looked like it.

With a scream and a cry, Gwendolen gave orders for her own departure. Seeking the bailiff, she bade him drive her over in the tax-cart, there being no second gig.

“Now mind, Grizzel,” she said, laying hold of the old woman’s arm after flinging on her bonnet and shawl anyhow,“you will lock all the doors as soon as I am gone, and take out the keys. Do you hear?”

“I hear, Miss Gwinny. My will’s good to do it: you know that.”

“Take care that you do do it.”

Fine tidings to go flying about Church Dykely in the twilight! Lawyer Nave half killed, his daughter quite. The news reached us at Dyke Manor; and Squire Todhetley, though holding Caromel’s Farm in little estimation, thought it only neighbourly to walk over there and inquire how much was true, how much not. You remember what happened. That in leaving the farm after interviewing Grizzel, we found ourselves in contact with Dobbs the blacksmith. Dobbs standing stock-still, like a marble pillar, outside the gate under the dark, overhanging trees; Dobbs standing on the watch, in a stealthy, mysterious manner, without his boots.

“But what on earth are you here for, Dobbs?” reiterated the Squire. “Where are your boots?”

And all Dobbs did for answer, was to lay his hand respectfully on the Squire’s coat-sleeve to begin with, so as to prevent hisrunning away. Then he entered upon his whispered tale. Leaning our arms upon the low gate, we listened to it, and to the curious sound of weeping and wailing that stole faintly on our ears from amongst the garden trees. The scene altogether looked weird enough in the moonlight, flickering through the rustling leaves.

Dobbs, naturally an unbeliever in ghosts, had grown to think that this ghost, so long talked of, was no ghost at all, but some one got up to resemble one by Caromel’s Farm, for some mysterious purpose of its own. Remembering his attack of fright, and resenting it excessively, Dobbs determined if possible to unearth the secret: and this was the third night he had come upon the watch.

“But why stand without your boots?” whispered the Squire, who could not get over the shoeless feet.

“That I may make no noise in running to pounce upon him, sir,” Dobbs whispered back. “I take ’em off and hide ’em in the copse behind here. They be just at your back, Master Johnny.”

“Pounce upon whom?” demanded the Squire. “Can’t you speak plainly?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” breathed Dobbs. “I feel nearly sure, Squire, that the—the thing looking like Nash Caromel is not Nash Caromel. Nor his ghost, either.”

“I never saw two faces more alike, and I have just seen it now,” put in the Squire. “At least, as much as a shadow can look like a face.”

“Ay,” assented Dobbs. “I’m as sure, sir, as I am of my own forge, that it is a likeness got up by Nave to scare us. And I’lleat the forge,” added Dobbs with emphasis, “if there’s not something worse than ghosts at Caromel’s Farm—though I can’t guess what it is.”

“What a villain he must be: and Nave, too!” cried the Squire, rubbing his red nose, while Tod simply stared at the man. “But, look here, Dobbs—how could any man put on the face of Nash Caromel?”

“I don’t know how he does it, Squire, or what he does, but I’m good to find out,” returned the blacksmith. “And if—just hark there again, sirs!”

The same faint sounds of wailing, of entreaty in a woman’s voice, rose again upon the air. Dobbs, with a gesture to ask for silence, went noiselessly down the dark path in his brown woollen stockings, that looked thick enough for boots. Tod, eager for any adventure, stole after him, and I brought up the rear. The Squire remained where he was, and held the gate open, expecting perhaps that we might want to make a rush through it as he had just done.

Two minutes more, and the mystery was solved. Near the house, under the shade of the closely intersecting trees, stood old Grizzel and the figure people had taken to be the ghost of Nash Caromel. It was Grizzel’s voice we heard, full of piteous entreaty to him not to do something.

“Just for this night, master, for the love of Heaven! Don’t do it, just this night that I’m left in charge! They’ve trusted me, you see!”

The words seemed to make no impression. Pushing her hands back, the figure was turning impatiently away, when Dobbs seized upon it.

But, in sheer astonishment, or perhaps in terror, Dobbs let go again to step backwards; and the prize might have escaped but for the strong arms of Tod. It was indeed Nash Caromel. Not his ghost, but himself.

Nash Caromel worn to the veriest shadow mortal eyes ever gazed upon. The Squire came up; we all went into the house together, and explanation ensued.

Nash had not died. When the fever, of which it was feared he would die, reached its crisis, he awoke to life, not to death. But, terrified at his position—the warrant, applied for by Henry Tinkle, being out against him—overwhelmed with a sense of shame, he had feigned death as the only chance of escaping disgrace and punishment. The first thought perhaps was Nave’s; indeed there was no doubt of it—or his and his daughter’s combined. They wanted to keep the income, you see. Any way, they carried the thought out, and had successfully contrived to deceive doctors, undertakers, and the world. Nash, weak as a rat, had got out of bed to watch his own funeral procession wind down the avenue.

And there, in the upper rooms of the house, he had since liveduntil now, old Grizzel sharing the secret. But a grievous complaint, partly brought on by uneasiness of mind, partly inherited from his father, who had died of it, had speedily attacked Nash, one for which there was no cure. It had worn him to a shadow.

He had walked in the garden sometimes. He had come out in the twilight of the evening or at night; he had now and then passed through the gate and crossed over to the copse; simply because to live entirely without fresh air, to remain inactive indoors, was intolerable to him. His wife and her sister did their best to prevent it. Nave came in the daytime and would blow him up by the hour together; but they could not always keep him in. At last they grew alarmed. For, when they attempted to use force, by locking the doors, he told them that unless he was allowed his way in this, he would declare himself to the world. Life could not have been a bed of roses for any of them.

To look at him, as he sat there to-night by the kitchen fire, his cheeks white and hollow, his sunken eyes encased in dark rims, and his thin lips on the shiver, you’d hardly have given him a week of life. A great pity sat in the blacksmith’s face.

“Don’t reproach yourself, Dobbs: it’s the best thing that could have happened to me,” spoke Nash Caromel, kindly. “I am not sure but I should have gone out this very night and declared myself. Grizzel thought it, and put herself into a paroxysm of fear. Nobody but myself knows the yearning to do it that has been upon me. You won’t go and tell it out in the market-place, will you, Dobbs?”

“I’ll not tell on’t to a single soul, sir,” said Dobbs, earnestly, standing straight in his brown stockings. “Nobody shall know on’t from me. And I’m as glad as glad can be that you be alive and did not die in that fever.”

“We are all safe and sure, Caromel; not a hint shall escape us,” spoke the Squire from the midst of his astonishment.

“The first thing must be to get Duffham here.”

“Duffham can’t do any good; things have gone too far with me,” said poor Nash. “Once this disorder lays regular hold of a man, there’s no hope for him: you know that, Todhetley.”

“Stuff!” said the pater. “I don’t believe it has gone toofar, only you’ve got moped here and think so. We’ll have Duffham here at once. You boys can go for him.”

“No,” dissented Caromel. “Duffham may tell the tale abroad. I’d rather die in peace, if I can.”

“Not he. Duffham! Why, you ought to know him better. Duffham will be as secret as ourselves. Do you suppose that he, a family doctor, has not many a weighty secret to keep? Come, be off, lads: and, mind, we trust you.”

Nash Caromel sighed, and said no more. He had been wanting badly enough to see a friend or two, but not to be shown up to the parish. We went out with Dobbs, who rushed into the copse to find his shoes.

This discovery might never have ensued, I take it, had Charlotte Nave and the lawyer not been upset in the gig. They would have stood persistently in his light—perhaps have succeeded in locking him in by force! As it was, we had it all our own way.

“How could you lend yourself to so infamous a deception?”cried the Squire to old Grizzel, following her into the pantry to ask it, when she returned from bolting the door after us. “I’m not at all sure that you could not be punished for it. It’s—it’s a conspiracy. And you, of all people, old Grizzel, to forget the honour of the Caromels! Why, you lived with his father!—and with his brother. All these years!”

“And how could I tell again him when I was asked not to?”contended Grizzel, the tears dropping on to a tin saucepan she was rubbing out. “Master Nash was as dear to me as the others were. Could it be me to speak up and say he was not in the coffin, but only old things to make up weight! Could it be me to tell he was alive and hiding up aloft here, and so get him put in prison? No, sir; the good name of the Caromels was much to me, but Master Nash was more.”

“Now, come, old woman, where’s the use of crying like that? Well, yes; you have been faithful, and it’s a great virtue. And—and there’s a shilling or two for you.”

“Have you been blowing her up?” asked Nash, as the Squire went back to him, and sat down on the other side the wide kitchen hearth, the fire throwing its glow upon the bricks, square and red and shining, and upon Nash Caromel’s wan face, in which it was not very difficult to read death. He had put his out-of-door coat off, a long brown garment, and sat in a grey suit. Tho Squire’s belief was that he wouldn’t have minded getting into the fire itself; he sat there shivering and shaking, and seeming to have no warmth left in him. The room was well guarded from outer observation. The shutters were up, and there was not a chink in them.

“I have,” said the Squire, in answer. “Told her she did not show much regard for the honour of the family—lending herself to such a deception!”

“Poor old Grizzel!” sighed Nash, with a half-smile. “She has lived upon thorns, fearing I should be discovered. As to the family honour, Todhetley, the less said about that the better.”

“How could you do it, Caromel?”

“I don’t know,” answered Nash, with apathy, bringing his face closer to the blaze. “I let it be done, more than did it. All I did, or could do, was just to lie still in my bed. The fever had left me weaker than a child——”

“Did it really turn to typhus?” interrupted the Squire.

“No, it didn’t. They said so to scare people away. I was weaker than a child,” continued Nash, “both in mind and body. And when I grew stronger—what was done could not be undone. Not that I seek to defend or excuse myself. Don’t think that.”

“And, in the name of all that’s marvellous, what could have put so monstrous an idea into their heads?” demanded the Squire, getting up to face the kitchen.

“Well, I have always fancied that business at Sandstone Torr did,” replied Nash, who had no idea of reticence now, but spoke out as freely as you please. “It had come to light, you know, not long before. Stephen Radcliffe had hidden his brother in the old tower, passing him off to the world as dead; and so, I suppose, it was thought that I could be hidden and passed off as dead.”

“But Stephen Radcliffe never got up a mock funeral. His tale was that Frank had died in London. You were bold people. What will Parson Holland say, when he comes to learn that he read the burial-service over a box of rubbish?”

“I don’t know,” was the helpless reiteration of poor Nash.“The trouble and worry of it altogether, the discomforts of myposition, the constant, never-ceasing dread of discovery have—have been to me what you cannot realize. But for going out of the house at night and striding about in the fresh, free air, I should have become mad. It was a taste of freedom. Neither could I always confine myself to the walks in the garden; whether I would nor not, my feet would carry me beyond it and into the shaded copse.”

“Frightening people who met you!”

“When I heard footsteps approach I hid myself—though not always quite in time. I was more put out at meeting people than they were at meeting me.”

“I wonder your keepers here ever let you get out!” cried the Squire, musingly.

“They tried hard to keep me in: and generally succeeded. It was only by fits and starts I gained my way. They were afraid, you see, that I should carry out my threat of disclosing myself but for being yielded to now and then.”

But the Squire did not get over the discovery. He strode about the large kitchen, rubbing his face, giving out sundry Bless my hearts! at intervals. The return to life of Charlotte Tinkle had been marvellous enough, but it was nothing to this.

Meanwhile we were on our road to Duffham’s. Leaving Dobbs at his own forge, we rushed on, and found the doctor in his little parlour at supper; pickled eels and bread-and-cheese: the eels in the wide stone jar they were baked in—which was Nomy’s way of serving pickled fish.

“Will you sit down and take some?” asked Duffham, pointing to the jar: out of which he took the pieces with a fork as he wanted them.

“I should like to, but there’s no time for it,” answered Tod, eyeing the jar wistfully.

Pickled eels are a favourite dish in our parts: and you don’t often eat anything as good.

“Look here, Duffham,” he went on: “we want you to go with us and see—see somebody: and to undertake not to tell tales out of school. The Squire has answered for it that you will not.”

“See who?” asked Duffham, going on with his supper.

“A ghost,” said Tod, grimly. “A dead man.”

“What good can I do them?”

“Well, the man has come to life again. Not for long, though, I should say, judging by his looks. You are not to go and tell about it, mind.”

“Tell what?”

“That he is alive, instead of being, as is supposed, under a gravestone in yonder churchyard. I am not sure but that you went to his funeral.”

Tod’s significant tone, half serious, half mocking, attracted Duffham’s curiosity more even than the words. But he still went on with his eels.

“Who is it?”

“Nash Caromel. There. Don’t fall off in a faint. Caromel has come to life.”

Down went Duffham’s fork. “Why—what on earth do you mean?”

“It is not a joke,” said Tod. “Nash Caromel has been alive all this time, concealed in his house—just as Francis Radcliffe was concealed in the tower. The Squire is with him now—and he is very ill.”

Duffham appealed to me. “Is this true, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Yes, sir, it is. We found him out to-night. He looks as if he were dying. Dobbs is sure he is. You never saw anything so like a ghost.”

Leaving his eels now, calling out to old Nomy that she might take away the supper, Duffham came off with us at once. Dobbs ran up as we passed his forge, and went with us to the turning, talking eagerly.

“If you can cure him, Mr. Duffham, sir, I should take it as a great favour, like, showed to myself,” spoke the blacksmith.“I’d not have pounced upon him for all the world, to give him pain, in the state he’s in. He looks as if he were dying.”

They were in the kitchen still, when Grizzel opened the door to us, the fire bigger and hotter than ever. The first thing Duffham did was to order Caromel to bed, and to have a good fire lighted in his room.

But there was no hope for Nash Caromel. The Squire told us so going home that night. Duffham thought about ten days more would see the end of him.

II

“And how have things gone during my short absence, Grizzel?”demanded Miss Gwinny Nave, alighting from the tax-cart the following morning, upon her return to Caromel’s Farm.

“Oh, pretty well,” answered Grizzel, who in her heart detested Miss Gwinny and all the Naves. “The master seems weaker. He have took to his bed, and got a fire in his room.”

“When did he do that?”

“He came down last night after you went, Miss Gwinny, and sat over this here kitchen fire for ever so long. Then he went up to bed, and I lighted him a fire and took him up some hot arrowroot with a wine glass o’ brandy in it. Shivering with cold, he was.”

“And he has not got up this morning?”

“No; and he says he does not mean to get up. ‘I’ve taken to my bed for good, Grizzel,’ he says to me this morning when I went in to light the fire again and see what he’d eat for breakfast. And I think he has, Miss Gwinny.”

Which information considerably lightened the doubt which was tormenting Miss Nave’s mind. She wanted, oh how badly, and was wanted, to remain at the Rill, being sorely needed there; but she had not seen her way clear to do it. If Nash was indeed confined to his bed, she might perhaps venture to leave him for a day or two to Grizzel.

But, please don’t think old Grizzel mean for keeping in what had taken place: she was only obeying orders. Duffham and the Squire had laid their heads together and then talked to Caromel; and it was agreed that for the present nothing should be disclosed. They gave their orders to Grizzel, and her master confirmed them.

“And what news have you brought from the Rill, ma’am?”questioned Grizzel, who was making a custard pudding at the kitchen table. “I hope you found things better than you feared.”

“They could not well be worse,” sighed Miss Gwinny, untying her bonnet. She had not the beauty of Charlotte. Her light complexion was like brick-dust, and her hair was straw-coloured. Not but that she was proud of her hair, wearing it in twists,with one ringlet trailing over the left shoulder. “Your mistress lies unconscious still; it is feared the brain is injured; and papa’s leg is broken in two places.”

“Alack a-day?” cried Grizzel, lifting her hands in consternation.“Oh, but I am sorry to hear it, Miss Gwendolen! And the pretty little boy?”

Miss Gwendolen shook her head. “The croup came on again last night worse than ever,” she said, with a rising sob. “They don’t know whether they will save him.”

Grizzel brushed away some tears as she began to beat up her eggs. She was a tender-hearted old thing, and loved little Dun. Miss Nave put aside her bonnet and shawl, and turned to the staircase to pay a visit to Nash. But she looked back to ask a question.

“Then, I am to understand that you had no trouble with the master last night, Grizzel? He did not want to force himself out?”

“The time for that has gone by, ma’am, I think,” answered Grizzel, evasively; not daring and not wishing to confess that he had forced himself out, and what the consequences were.“He seems a deal weaker to-day, Miss Gwinny, than I’ve ever seen him.”

And when Miss Gwinny got into Nash’s room she found the words true. Weak, inert, fading, there lay poor Nash. With the discovery, all struggle had ceased; and it is well known that to resign one’s self to weakness quietly, makes weakness ten times more apparent. One thing struck her greatly: the hollow sound in the voice. Had it come on suddenly? If not, how was it she had never noticed it before? It struck her with a sort of unpleasant chill: for she believed that peculiar hollowness is generally the precursor of death.

“You are feeling worse, Nash, Grizzel says,” she observed; and she thought she had never seen him looking half so ill.

“Oh, I am all right, Gwendolen,” answered he. “What of Charlotte and the child?”

Sitting down on the edge of the large bed, Gwendolen told him all there was to tell. Her papa would get well in time, though he could not be moved yet awhile; but Charlotte and the child were lying in extreme danger.

“Dear me! dear me!” he said, and began to cry, as Grizzel had begun. When a man is reduced, as Nash was, faint in mind and in body, the tears are apt to lie near the eyes.

“And there’s nobody to attend upon them but Mrs. Smith and her maids—two of the stupidest country wenches you ever saw,” said Gwendolen. “I did not know how to come away this morning. The child is more than one person’s work.”

“Why did you come?”

“Because I could not trust you; you know that, Nash. You want to be up to your tricks too often.”

“My tricks!”

“Yes. Going out of doors at night. I’m sure it is a dreadful responsibility that’s thrown upon me. And all for your own sake!”

“You need no longer fear that—if you call my going out the responsibility. I shall never get out of this bed again, Gwinny.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Look at me,” answered Nash. “See if you think it likely. I do not.”

She shook her head doubtingly. He certainly did look too ill to stir—but she remembered the trouble there had been with him; the fierce, wild yearning for exit, that could not be controlled.

“Are you not satisfied? Listen, then: I give you my solemn word of honour not to go out of doors; not to attempt to do so. You must go back to Charlotte and the boy.”

“I’ll see later,” decided Gwinny. “I shall stay here till the afternoon, at any rate.”

And when the afternoon came she took her departure for the Rill. Convinced by Nash’s state that he could not quit his bed, and satisfied at length by his own solemn and repeated assurances that he would not, Gwinny Nave consigned him to the care of Grizzel, and quitted Caromel’s Farm.

Which left the field open again, you perceive. And the Squire and Duffham were there that evening as they had been the previous one.

It was a curious time—the few days that ensued. Gwendolen Nave came over for an hour or two every other day, but otherwise Caromel’s Farm was a free house. Her doubts and fearswere gone, for Nash grew worse very rapidly; and, though he sat up in his room sometimes, he could hardly have got downstairs though the house were burning—as Grizzel put it. And he seemed so calm, so tranquil, so entirely passive under his affliction, so resigned to his enfeebled state, so averse to making exertion of any kind, that Miss Gwinny could not have felt much easier had he been in the burial-ground where Church Dykely supposed him to be.

What with his past incarceration, which had endured twelve months, and what with the approach of death, which he had seen looming for pretty nearly half that time, Nash Caromel’s conscience had come back to him. It was pricking him in more corners than one. As his love for Charlotte Nave weakened—and it had been going down a long time, for he saw what the Naves were now, and what they had done for him—his love for Charlotte Tinkle came back, and he began to wish he could set wrongs to rights. That never could be done; he had put it out of his power; but he meant to make some little reparation, opportunity being allowed him.

“I want to make a will, Todhetley,” he said one evening to the Squire, as he sat by the fire, dressed, a huge carriage-rug thrown on his knees for warmth. “I wonder if my lawyer could be induced to come to me?”

“Do you mean Nave?” retorted the Squire, who could not for the life of him help having a fling at Caromel once in a way.“He has been your lawyer of late years.”

“You know I don’t mean Nave; and if I did mean him he could not come,” said poor Nash. “I mean our family lawyer, Crow. Since I discarded him for Nave he has turned the cold shoulder upon me. When I’ve met him in the street at Evesham, he has either passed me with a curt nod or looked another way. I would rather have Crow than anybody, for he’d be true, I know, if he could be induced to come.”

“I’ll see about it,” said the Squire.

“And you’ll be executor, won’t you, Todhetley? you and Duffham.”

“No,” said the Squire. “And what sort of a will are you going to make?”

“I should like to be just,” sighed Nash. “As just as I knowhow. As just as I can be under the unfortunate circumstances I am placed in.”

“That you have placed yourself in, Caromel.”

“True. I think of it night and day. But she ought to be provided for. And there’s the boy!”

“Who ought to be?”

“My second wife.”

“I don’t say to the contrary. But there is somebody else, who has a greater and prior claim upon you.”

“I know. My heart would be good to leave her all. But that would hardly be just. Poor Charlotte, how patient she has been!”

“Ah, you threw off a good woman when you threw her off. And when you made that other infamous will, leaving her name out of it——”

“It was Nave made it,” interrupted Nash, as hotly as his wasted condition allowed him to speak. “He got another lawyer to draw it up, for look’s sake—but he virtually made it. And, Todhetley, I must—I must get another one made,” he added, getting more and more excited; “and there’s no time to be lost. If I die to-night that will would have to stand.”

With the morning light the Squire went off to Evesham, driving Bob and Blister, and saw the lawyer, Crow—an old gentleman with a bald head. The two shut themselves up in a private room, and it seemed as if they never meant to come out again.

First of all, old Crow had to recover his astonishment at hearing Nash Caromel was living, and that took him some time; next, he had to get over his disinclination and refusal—to act again for Nash, and that took him longer.

“Mind,” said he at last, “if I do consent to act—to see the man and make his will—it will be done out of the respect I bore his father and his brother, and because I don’t like to stand in the way of an act of justice. Mrs. Nash Caromel was here yesterday——”

“Mrs. Nash Caromel!” interrupted the Squire, in a puzzle, for his thoughts had run over to Charlotte Nave. Which must have been very foolish, seeing she was in bed with a damaged head.

“I speak of his wife,” said the old gentleman, loftily. “I have never called any other woman Mrs. Nash Caromel. Her uncle, Tinkle, of Inkberrow, called about the transfer of some of his funded property, and she was with him. I respect that young woman, Squire Todhetley.”

“Ay, to be sure. So do I. Well, now, you will let me drive you back this afternoon, and you’ll take dinner with me, and we’ll go to Caromel’s Farm afterwards. We never venture there before night; that Miss Gwinny Nave makes her appearance sometimes in the daytime.”

“It must be late in the afternoon then,” said the lawyer, rather crossly—for he did not enter into the business with a good grace yet.

“All the same to me,” acquiesced the pater, pleased at having got his consent on any terms.

And when the Squire drove in that evening just at the dinner-hour and brought Lawyer Crow with him, we wondered what was agate. Old Jacobson, who had called in, and been invited to stay by the mater, was as curious as anything over it, and asked the Squire aside, what he was up to, that he must employ Crow instead of his own man.

The will Nash Caromel wished to make was accomplished, signed and sealed, himself and this said Evesham lawyer being alone privy to its contents. Dobbs the blacksmith was fetched in, and he and Grizzel witnessed it.

And, as if Nash Caromel had only lived to make the will, he went galloping on to death at railroad speed directly it was done. A change took place in him the same night. His bell rang for Grizzel, and the old woman thought him dying.

But he rallied a bit the next day: and when the Squire got there in the evening, he was sitting up by the fire dressed. And terribly uneasy.

“I want to see her,” he began, before the Squire had time to say, How are you, or How are you not. “I can’t die in peace unless I see her. And it will not be long first now. I am a bit better, but I thought I was dying in the night: has Grizzel told you?”

The Squire nodded in silence. He was struck with the change in Nash.

“Who is it you want to see? Charlotte Tinkle?”

“Ay, you’ve guessed it. ’Twasn’t hard to guess, was it? I want to see her, Todhetley. I know she’d come.”

Little doubt of that. Had Nash wanted her to visit him in the midst of a fiery furnace, she’d have rushed into it headlong.

But there were difficulties in the way. Charlotte Tinkle was not one of your strong-minded women who are born without nerves; and to tell her that Nash Caromel was living, and not dead, might send her into hysterics for a week. Besides that, Harry Tinkle was Nash Caromel’s bitter enemy: if he learnt the truth he might be for handing him over, dying or living, to old Jones the constable.

“I don’t see how she is to be got here, and that’s the truth, Caromel,” spoke the Squire, awaking from his reverie. “It’s not a thing I should like to undertake. Here comes Duffham.”

“I know what you are thinking of—Harry Tinkle,” returned Nash, as Duffham felt his pulse. “When I was supposed to have died, balking him of his revenge, he grew mad with rage. For a month afterwards he abused me to everybody in the most atrocious terms: in public rooms, in——”

“Who told you that?” interrupted the Squire. “Nave?”

“Nave. I saw no one else to tell me.” Duffham laughed.

“Then it was just as false as Nave is. You might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

Nash looked up. “False!—was it?”

“Why, of course it was,” repeated the Squire. “I say you might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

Nash sighed. “Well, I suppose you think he might give me trouble now. But he would hardly care to apprehend a dying man.”

“We’ll see about it,” they said. Duffham undertook this expedition—if you can call it one. He found it easier than he anticipated. That same evening, upon quitting Caromel’s Farm, Duffham went mooning along, deep in thought, as to how he should make the disclosure to Charlotte, when he overtook her near his home. Her crape veil was thrown back; her face looked pale and quiet in the starlight.

“You are abroad late,” said Duffham.

“I went to see old Miss Pinner this afternoon, and stayed teawith her,” answered Charlotte. “And now I am going to run home.”

“Would you mind coming in for a few minutes, Mrs. Caromel?” he asked, as they reached his door. “I have something to say to you.”

“Can you say it another time? It is nine o’clock, and my mother will be wondering.”

“No; another time may not do,” said Duffham. “Come in. I won’t detain you long.”

And being just one of those yielding people that never assert a will of their own, in she went.

Shut up in Duffham’s surgery, which was more remote from Nomy’s ears than the parlour, Duffham disclosed to her by degrees the truth. Whether he had to get out his sal-volatile over it, or to recover her from fits, we did not hear. One thing was certain: that when Mrs. Nash Caromel recommenced her walk homewards, she was too bewildered to know whether she went on her feet or her head. By that time on the following evening she would have seen her husband.

At least, such was the programme Duffham carved out. But to that bargain, as he found the next day, there might be two words.

Eleven was striking in the morning by the kitchen clock at Caromel’s Farm, when Grizzel saw Miss Gwinny driving in. The damaged gig had been mended, and she now drove backwards and forwards herself.

“How’s the master?” asked she, when she entered the kitchen.

“Very ill,” answered Grizzel. “He won’t be with us long, now, ma’am.”

And when Miss Gwinny saw Nash, and saw how greatly he was altered in the last two days, she thought as Grizzel did—that death was close at hand. Under these circumstances, she sat down to reflect on what she ought to do: whether to remain herself in the house, or whether to go back to the Rill and report to her father and sister. For the latter had come out of her insensibility; the doctors said there was no permanent injury, and she could soon be removed home if she wished to be.

“What do you think, Grizzel?” she inquired, condescendingto ask counsel. “It does not seem right to leave him—and you won’t like to be left alone, either, at the last. And I don’t see that any end will be gained by my hastening back to tell them. They’ll know it soon enough: and they cannot come to him.”

“As you please, Miss Gwinny,” replied Grizzel, trembling lest she should remain and complicate matters, but not daring to urge her departure; Gwinny Nave being given, as a great many more ladies are, to act by the rules of contrary in the matter of advice. “It seems hardly right, though, not to let the mistress know he is dying. And I am glad the child’s well: dear little thing!”

Gwinny Nave sat pulling at her one straw ringlet, her brow knitted in abstraction. Various reflections, suggesting certain unpleasant facts, passed rapidly through her mind. That Nash would not be here many days longer, perhaps not many hours, was a grave fact: and then, what of the after-necessities that would arise? A sham funeral had gone out of that house not very long ago: but how was the real funeral to go out, and who was to make the arrangements for it? The truth of Nash Caromel’s being alive, and of the trick which had been played, would have to be disclosed then. And Mr. Nave was incapacitated; he could do nothing, and her sister could do as little; and it seemed to be all falling upon herself, Gwinny; and who was to know but she might be punished for letting Nash lie and die without calling in a doctor to him?

With every fresh moment of thought, some darker complication presented itself. Miss Gwinny began to see that she had better get away, and leave old Grizzel to it. The case must be laid before her father. He might invent some scheme to avoid exposure: for though Lawyer Nave was deprived for the present of action, his mind was not less keen and fertile than usual.

“I think, Grizzel, that the mistress ought to be told how ill he is,” said she, at length. “I shall go back to the Rill. Do all you can for the master: I dare say he will rally.”

“That he never will,” spoke Grizzel, on impulse.

“Now don’t you be obstinate,” returned Miss Gwinny.

Gwendolen Nave drove back to the Rill. Leaving, as she thought, all responsibility upon old Grizzel. And, that evening,the coast being clear again, Charlotte Tinkle, piloted by Duffham, came to Caromel’s Farm and had an interview with her once recreant husband. It lasted longer than Duffham had bargained for; every five minutes he felt inclined to go and knock at the door. Her sobs and his dying voice, which seemed to be sobbing too, might be heard by all who chose to listen. At last Duffham went in and said that it must end: the emotion was bad for Nash. She was kneeling before the sofa on which he lay, her tears dropping.

“Good-bye, good-bye, Charlotte,” he whispered. “I have never cared for any one as I cared for you. Believe that. God bless you, my dear—and forgive me!”

And the next to go in was Harry Tinkle—to clasp Caromel’s hand, and to say how little he had needed to fear him. And the next was the Reverend Mr. Holland; Nash had asked for the parson to be sent for.

Grizzel had a surprise the next day. She had just taken some beef-tea up to the master, which Duffham had called out for—for the end was now so near that the doctor had not chosen to defer his visit till dark—when a closed fly drove up, out of which stepped Miss Gwinny and her sister. Old Grizzel dropped the waiter, thinking it must be her mistress’s ghost.

But it was Charlotte herself. Upon hearing Gwinny’s report she had insisted upon coming home—and Nave supported her views. That stupid old Grizzel, left to her own devices, might be for getting frightened and call in half the parish. The doctor in attendance at the Rill had said Mrs. Caromel might go home if she had any urgent reason for wishing it—and here she was. And really she seemed tolerably well again; quite herself.

Passing Grizzel with a nod, she went straight upstairs, opened Nash’s door, and then—drew back with a scream. For there she saw two strangers. Mr. Duffham was leaning over the bed, trying to feed Nash with spoonfuls of beef-tea; Parson Holland (who had stayed with Nash all night) sat by the fire. Poor Nash himself lay without motion: the hours were very limited now.

Well, there ensued a commotion. Charlotte Nave went down to blow up Grizzel; and she did it well, in spite of her recent illness. Grizzel answered that she was not to blame; it was not she who had betrayed him: Dobbs the blacksmith and Squire Todhetley had found him out, and the Squire had called in Duffham. Charlotte the Second had to make the best of a bad case; but she did not suspect half the treachery that had been at work.

There is no space to enlarge upon the day. Nash died that night; without having been able to speak a word to Charlotte the Second; he was past that when she came; though he shook hands with her.

And the other funeral, which Miss Nave had foreseen a difficulty over, took place without any difficulty. Unless it might be said that the crowd made one. Nash Caromel dead a second time! Church Dykely had never been astounded like this.

But the one dire act of treachery had to come out yet. Nash Caromel had made a fresh will. Crow the lawyer brought it in his pocket when he came from Evesham to attend the funeral, and he read it aloud afterwards. Mrs. Nash the Second sat biting her lips as she listened.

Caromel’s Farm and everything upon it, every stick and stone possessed by Nash, was directed to be sold without delay. Of the money this should realize, the one half was devised to “my dear wife Charlotte, formerly Charlotte Tinkle;” the other half was to be invested by trustees and settled upon “my child, Duncan Nave.” His mother, Charlotte Nave, was to receive a stated portion of the interest for life, or until she should marry again; and that was all the will said about Charlotte the Second.

There’s not much more to tell. As soon as might be, the changes were carried out. Before Lawyer Nave’s leg was fit to go again, Caromel’s Farm had been purchased by the Squire, and Harry Tinkle had taken it from him on a long lease. Just after Harry got into it with his little girl, Mrs. Tinkle died; and Charlotte, well off now, came to live in it with him. The other Charlotte proclaimed herself to be in bad health, and went off to stay at the sea-side. And Nave, when he came out again to rejoice the eyes of Church Dykely (walking lame), was fit to swallow us up with rage. He considered ladies’ parasols an infamous institution, and wished they were all sunk in the sea;especially that particular blue one of Charlotte’s which had led to the accident that unlucky afternoon.

It seemed strange that, after all the chances and changes, it should be a Mrs. Nash Caromel (she was always given her true name now) to inhabit Caromel’s Farm. She, forgiving and loving, made friends with little Dun for poor Nash’s sake, inviting him often to spend the day with her, and picking him choice fruit off the trees.

A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD.

That day, and its events, can never go out of my memory. There are epochs in life that lie upon the heart for ever, marking the past like stones placed for retrospect. They may be of pleasure, or they may be of pain; but there they are, in that great store-field locked up within us, to be recalled at will as long as life shall last.

It was in August, and one of the hottest days of that hot month. A brilliant day: the sun shining with never a cloud to soften it, the sky intensely blue. Just the day for a picnic, provided you had shade.

Shade we had. Briar Wood abounds in it. For the towering trees are dark, and their foliage thick. Here and there the wood opens, and you come upon the sweetest little bits of meadow-land scenery that a painter’s eye could desire. Patches of green glade, smooth enough for fairy revels; undulating banks, draped with ferns and fragrant with sweet wild-flowers; dells dark, and dim, to roam in and fancy yourself out of the world.

Briar Wood belonged to Sir John Whitney. It was of a good length but narrow, terminating at one end in the tangled coppice which we had dashed through that long-past day when we played at hare and hounds, and poor Charles Van Rheyn had died, in that same coppice, of the running. The other and best end, up where these lonely glades lie sheltered, extends itself nearly to the lands belonging to Vale Farm—if you have not forgotten that place. The wood was a rare resort for poachers and gipsies, as well as picnic parties, and every now and again Sir John would declare that it should be rooted up.

We were staying at Whitney Hall. Miss Deveen was there on a visit (Cattledon included, of course), and Sir John wroteover to invite us for a few days to meet her: the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, I and Tod. And, there we were, enjoying ourselves like anything.

It was Sir John himself who proposed the picnic. He called it a gipsy-party: indeed, the word “picnic” had hardly come in then, for this happened many a year ago. The weather was so hot indoors that Sir John thought it might be an agreeable change to live a day in the open air; and lie in the shade and look up at the blue sky through the flickering trees. So the cook was told to provide fowls and ham and pigeon pies, with apple puffs, salads, and creams.

“The large carriage and the four-wheeled chaise shall take the ladies,” observed Sir John, “and I dare say they can make room for me and the Squire amongst them; it’s a short distance, and we shan’t mind a little crowding. You young men can walk.”

So it was ordained. The carriages started, and we after them, William and Henry Whitney disputing as to which was the best route to take: Bill holding out for that by Goose Brook, Harry for that by the river. It ended in our dividing: I went with Bill his way; the rest of the young Whitneys and Tod the other, with Featherston’s nephew; an overgrown young giant of seventeen, about six feet high, who had been told he might come.

Barring the heat, it was a glorious walk: just as it was a glorious day. Passing Goose Brook (a little stream meandering through the trees, with a rustic bridge across it: though why it should bear that name I never knew), we soon came to the coppice end of the wood.

“Now,” said Bill to me, “shall we plunge into the wood at once, and so onwards right through it; or skirt round by the Granary?”

“The wood will be the shadiest,” I answered.

“And pleasantest. I’m not at all sure, though, Johnny, that I shan’t lose my way in it. It has all kinds of bewildering tricks and turnings.”

“Never mind if you do. We can find it again.”

“We should have been safe to meet some of those Leonards had we gone by the Granary,” observed Bill, as we turned into the wood, where just at present the trees were thin, “and theymight have been wanting to join us, pushing fellows that they are! I don’t like them.”

“Who are those Leonards, I wonder? Who were they before they came here?”

“Old Leonard made a mint of money in India, and his sons are spending it for him as fast as they can. One day when he was talking to my father, he hinted that he had taken this remote place, the Granary, and brought them down here, to get them out of the fast lives they were leading in London. He got afraid, he said.”

“Haven’t the sons any professions, Bill?”

“Don’t seem to have. Or anything else that’s good—money excepted?”

“What do they do with their time?”

“Anything. Idle it away. Keep dogs; and shoot, and fish, and lounge, and smoke, and—— Halloa! look yonder, Johnny!”

Briar Wood had no straight and direct road through it; but plenty of small paths and byways and turnings and windings, that might bring you, by good luck, to landing at last; or might take you unconsciously back whence you came. Emerging from a part, where the trees grew dark and dense and thick, upon one of those delightful glades I spoke of before, we saw what I took to be a small gipsy encampment. A fire of sticks, with a kettle upon it, smoked upon the ground; beside it sat a young woman and child; a few tin wares, tied together, lay in a corner, and some rabbits’ skins were stretched out to dry on the branches of trees.

Up started the woman, and came swiftly towards us. A regular gipsy, with the purple-black hair, the yellow skin, and the large soft gleaming eyes. It was a beautiful young face, but worn and thin and anxious.

“Do you want your fortunes told, my good young gentlemen? I can——”

“Not a bit of it,” interrupted Bill. “Go back to your fire. We are only passing through.”

“I can read the lines of your hands unerringly, my pretty sirs. I can forewarn you of evil, and prepare you for good.”

“Now, look you here,” cried Bill, turning upon her good-humouredly,as she followed up with a lot of the like stuff, “I can forewarn you of it, unless you are content to leave us alone. This wood belongs to Sir John Whitney, as I dare say all your fraternity know, and his keepers wage war against you when they find you are encamped here, and that I am sure you know. Mind your own affairs, and you may stay here in peace, for me: keep on bothering us, and I go straight to Rednal and give him a hint. I am Sir John’s son.”

He threw her a sixpence, and the woman’s face changed as she caught it. The persuasive smile vanished as if by magic, giving place to a look of anxious pain.

“What’s the matter?” said he.

“Do you know my husband, sir?” she asked. “It’s more than likely that you do.”

“And what if I do?” cried Whitney.

The woman took the words as an affirmative answer. She drew near, and laid her small brown finger on his coat-sleeve.

“Then, if you chance to meet him, sir, persuade him to come back to me, for the love of Heaven. I can read the future: and for some days past, since we first halted here, I have foreseen that evil is in store for him. He won’t believe me; he is not one of us; but I scent it in the air, and it comes nearer and nearer; it is drawing very close now. He may listen to you, sir, for we respect Sir John, who is never hard on us as some great owners of the land are; and oh, send him back here to me and the child! Better that it should fall on him when by our side than when away from us.”

“Why—what do you mean?” cried Whitney, surprised out of the question, and hardly understanding her words or their purport. And he might have laughed outright, as he told me later, but for the dreadful trouble that shone forth from her sad, wild eyes.

“I don’t know what I mean: it’s hidden from me,” she answered, taking the words in a somewhat different light from what he meant to imply. “I think it may be sudden sickness; or it may be trouble: whatever it is, it will end badly.”

Whitney nodded to her, and we pursued our way. I had been looking at the little girl, who had drawn shyly up to gaze at us. She was fair as a lily, with a sweet face and eyes blue as the sky.

“What humbugs they are!” exclaimed Whitney, alluding to gipsies and tramps in general. “As to this young woman, I should say she’s going off her head!”

“Do you know her husband?”

“Don’t know him from Adam. Johnny, I hope that’s not a stolen child! Fair as she is, she can’t be the woman’s: there’s nothing of the gipsy in her composition.”

“How well the gipsy appears to speak! With quite a refined accent.”

“Gipsies often do, I’ve heard. Let us get on.”

What with this adventure, and dawdling, and taking a wrong turn or two, it was past one o’clock when we got in, and they were laying the cloth for dinner. The green, mossy glade, with the sheltering trees around, the banks and the dells, the ferns and wild-flowers, made a picture of a retreat on a broiling day. The table (some boards, brought from the Hall, and laid on trestles) stood in the middle of the grass; and Helen and Anna Whitney, in their green-and-white muslins, were just as busy as bees placing the dishes upon it. Lady Whitney (with a face redder than beetroot) helped them: she liked to be always doing something. Miss Cattledon and the mater were pacing the dell below, and Miss Deveen sat talking with the Squire and Sir John.

“Have they not got here?” exclaimed William.

“Have who not got here?” retorted Helen.

“Todhetley and the boys.”

“Ages ago. They surmised that you two must be lost, stolen, or strayed.”

“Then where are they?”

“Making themselves useful. Johnny Ludlow, I wish you’d go after them, and tell them of all things to bring a corkscrew. No one can find ours, and we think it is left behind.”

“Why, here’s the corkscrew, in my pocket,” called out Sir John. “Whatever brings it there? And—— What’s that great thing, moving down to us?”

It was Tod with a wooden stool upon his head, legs upwards. Rednal the gamekeeper lived close by, and it was arranged that we should borrow chairs, and things, from his cottage.

We sat down to dinner at last—and a downright jolly dinnerit was. Plenty of good things to eat; cider, lemonade, and champagne to drink: and every one talking together, and bursts of laughter.

“Look at Cattledon!” cried Bill in my ear. “She is as merry as the rest of us.”

So she was. A whole sea of smiles on her thin face. She wore a grey gown as genteel as herself, bands of black velvet round her pinched-in waist and long throat. Cattledon looked like vinegar in general, it’s true; but I don’t say she was bad at heart. Even she could be genial to-day, and the rest of us were off our head with jollity, the Squire’s face and Sir John’s beaming back at one another.

If we had only foreseen how pitifully the day was to end! It makes me think of some verses I once learnt out of a journal—Chambers’s, I believe. They were written by Mrs. Plarr.

“There are twin Genii, who, strong and mighty,

Under their guidance mankind retain;

And the name of the lovely one is Pleasure,

And the name of the loathly one is Pain.

Never divided, where one can enter

Ever the other comes close behind;

And he who in Pleasure his thoughts would centre

Surely Pain in the search shall find!

“Alike they are, though in much they differ—

Strong resemblance is ’twixt the twain;

So that sometimes you may question whether

It can be Pleasure you feel, or Pain.

Thus ’tis, that whatever of deep emotion

Stirreth the heart—be it grave or gay

Tears are the Symbol—from feeling’s ocean

These are the fountains that rise to-day.

“Should not this teach us calmly to welcome

Pleasure when smiling our hearths beside?

If she be the substance, how dark the shadow;

Close doth it follow, the near allied.

Or if Pain long o’er our threshold hover,

Let us not question but Pleasure nigh

Bideth her time her face to discover,

Rainbow of Hope in a clouded sky.”

Yes, it was a good time. To look at us round that dinner-table, you’d have said there was nothing but pleasure in theworld. Not but that ever and anon the poor young gipsy woman’s troubled face and her sad wild eyes, and the warning some subtle instinct seemed to be whispering to her about her husband, would rise between me and the light.

The afternoon was wearing on when I got back to the glade with William Whitney (for we had all gone strolling about after dinner) and found some of the ladies there. Mrs. Todhetley had gone into Rednal’s cottage to talk to his wife, Jessy; Anna was below in the dell; all the rest were in the glade. A clean-looking, stout old lady, in a light cotton gown and white apron, a mob cap with a big border and bow of ribbon in front of it, turned round from talking to them, smiled, and made me a curtsy.

The face seemed familiar to me: but where had I seen it before? Helen Whitney, seeing my puzzled look, spoke up in her free manner.

“Have you no memory, Johnny Ludlow? Don’t you remember Mrs. Ness!—and the fortune she told us on the cards?”

It came upon me with a rush. That drizzling Good Friday afternoon at Miss Deveen’s, long ago, and Helen smuggling up the old lady from downstairs to tell her fortune. But what brought her here? There seemed to be no connection between Miss Deveen’s house in town and Briar Wood in Worcestershire. I could not have been more at sea had I seen a Chinese lady from Pekin. Miss Deveen laughed.

“And yet it is so easy of explanation, Johnny, so simple and straightforward,” she said. “Mrs. Ness chances to be aunt to Rednal’s wife, and she is staying down here with them.”

Simple it was—as are most other puzzles when you have the clue. The old woman was a great protégée of Miss Deveen’s, who had known her through her life of misfortune: but Miss Deveen did not before know of her relationship to Rednal’s wife or that she was staying at their cottage. They had been talking of that past afternoon and the fortune-telling in it, when I and Bill came up.

“And what I told you, miss, came true—now didn’t it?”cried Mrs. Ness to Helen.

“True! Why, you told me nothing!” retorted Helen.“There was nothing in the fortune. You said there was nothing in the cards.”

“I remember it,” said Mother Ness; “remember it well. The cards showed no husband for you then, young lady; they might tell different now. But they showed some trouble about it, I recollect.”

Helen’s face fell. There had indeed been trouble. Trouble again and again. Richard Foliott, the false, had brought trouble to her; and so had Charles Leafchild, now lying in his grave at Worcester: not to speak of poor Slingsby Temple. Helen had got over all those crosses now, and was looking up again. She was of a nature to look up again from any evil that might befall her, short of losing her head off her shoulders. All dinner-time she had been flirting with Featherston’s nephew.

This suggestion of Mrs. Ness, “the cards might tell different now,” caught hold of her mind. Her colour slightly deepened, her eyes sparkled.

“Have you the cards with you now, Mrs. Ness?”

“Ay, to be sure, young lady. I never come away from home without my cards. They be in the cottage yonder.”

“Then I should like my fortune told again.”

“Oh, Helen, how can you be so silly!” cried Lady Whitney.

“Silly! Why, mamma, it is good fun. You go and fetch the cards, Mrs. Ness.”

“I and Johnny nearly had our fortune told to-day,” put in Bill, while Mrs. Ness stood where she was, hardly knowing what to be at. “We came upon a young gipsy woman in the wood, and she wanted to promise us a wife apiece. A little girl was with her that may have been stolen: she was too fair to be that brown woman’s child.”

“It must have been the Norths,” exclaimed Mrs. Ness.“Was there some tinware by ’em, sir; and some rabbit skins?”

“Yes. Both. The rabbit skins were hanging out to dry.”

“Ay, it’s the Norths,” repeated Mrs. Ness. “Rednal said he saw North yesterday; he guessed they’d lighted their campfire not far off.”

“Who are the Norths? Gipsies?”

“The wife is a gipsy, sir; born and bred. He is a native of these parts, and superior; but he took to an idle, wandering life, and married the gipsy girl for her beauty. She was Bertha Lee then.”

“Why, it is quite a romance,” said Miss Deveen, amused.

“And so it is, ma’am. Rednal told me all on’t. They tramp the country, selling their tins, and collecting rabbit skins.”

“And is the child theirs?” asked Bill.

“Ay, sir, it be. But she don’t take after her mother; she’s like him, her skin fair as alabaster. You’d not think, Rednal says, that she’d a drop o’ gipsy blood in her veins. North might ha’ done well had he only turned out steady; been just the odds o’ what he is—a poor tramp.”

“Oh, come, never mind the gipsies,” cried Helen, impatiently.“You go and bring the cards, Mrs. Ness.”

One can’t go in for stilts at a picnic, or for wisdom either; and when Mrs. Ness brought her cards (which might have been cleaner) none of them made any objection. Even Cattledon looked on, grimly tolerant.

“But you can’t think there’s anything in it—that the cards tell true,” cried Lady Whitney to the old woman.

“Ma’am, be sure they do. I believe in ’em from my very heart. And so, I make bold to say, would everybody here believe, if they had read the things upon ’em that I’ve read, and seen how surely they’ve come to pass.”

They would not contradict her openly; only smiled a little among themselves. Mother Ness was busy with the cards, laying them out for Helen’s fortune. I drew near to listen.

“You look just as though you put faith in it,” whispered Bill to me.

“I don’t put faith in it. I should not like to be so foolish. But, William, what she told Helen before did come true.”

Well, Helen’s “fortune” was told again. It sounded just as uneventful as the one told that rainy afternoon long ago—for we were now some years older than we were then. Helen Whitney’s future, according to the cards, or to Dame Ness’s reading of them, would be all plain sailing; smooth and easy, and unmarked alike by events and by care. A most desirable career, some people would think, but Helen looked the picture of desolation.

“And you say I am not to be married!” she exclaimed.

Dame Ness had her head bent over the cards. She shook it without looking up.

“I don’t see a ring nowhere, young lady, and that’s the blessed truth. There ain’t one, that’s more. There ain’t a sign o’ one. Neither was there the other time, I remember: that time in London. And so—I take it that there won’t never be.”

“Then I think you are a very disagreeable story-telling old woman!” flashed Helen, all candour in her mortification. “Not be married, indeed!”

“Why, my dear, I’d be only too glad to promise you a husband if the cards foretelled it,” said Dame Ness, pityingly.“Yours is the best fortune of all, though, if you could but bring your mind to see it. Husbands is more plague nor profit. I’m sure I had cause to say so by the one that fell to my share, as that there dear good lady knows,” pointing to Miss Deveen.

In high dudgeon, Helen pushed the cards together. Mrs. Ness, getting some kind words from the rest of us, curtsied as she went off to the cottage to see about the kettles for our tea.

“You are a nice young lady!” exclaimed Bill. “Showing your temper because the cards don’t give you a sweetheart!”

Helen threw her fan at him. “Mind your own business,”returned she. And he went away laughing.

“And, my dear, I say the same as William,” added Lady Whitney. “One really might think that you were—wereanxious to be married.”

“All cock-a-hoop for it,” struck in Cattledon: “as the housemaids are.”

“And no such great crime, either,” returned Helen, defiantly.“Fancy that absurd old thing telling me I never shall be!”

“Helen, my dear, I think the chances are that you will not be married,” quietly spoke Miss Deveen.

“Oh, do you!”

“Don’t be cross, Helen,” said her mother. “Our destinies are not in our own hands.”

Helen bit her lip, laughed, and recovered her temper. She was like her father; apt to flash out a hot word, but never angry long.

“Now—please, Miss Deveen, why do you think I shall not be?” she asked playfully.

“Because, my dear, you have had three chances, so to say, ofmarriage, and each time it has been frustrated. In two of the instances by—if we may dare to say it—the interposition of Heaven. The young men died beforehand in an unexpected and unforeseen manner: Charles Leafchild and Mr. Temple——”

“I was never engaged to Mr. Temple,” interrupted Helen.

“No; but, by all I hear, you shortly would have been.”

Helen gave no answer. She knew perfectly well that she had expected an offer from Slingsby Temple; that his death, as she believed, alone prevented its being made. She would have said Yes to it, too. Miss Deveen went on.

“We will not give more than an allusion to Captain Foliott; he does not deserve it; but your marriage with him came nearest of all. It may be said, Helen, without exaggeration, that you have been on the point of marriage twice, and very nearly so a third time. Now, what does this prove?”

“That luck was against me,” said Helen, lightly.

“Ay, child: luck, as we call it in this world. I would rather say, Destiny. God knows best. Do you wonder that I have never married?” continued Miss Deveen in a less serious tone.

“I never thought about it,” answered Helen.

“I know that some people have wondered at it; for I was a girl likely to marry—or it may be better to say, likely to be sought in marriage. I had good looks, good temper, good birth, and a good fortune: and I dare say I was just as willing to be chosen as all young girls are. Yes, I say that all girls possess an innate wish to marry; it is implanted in their nature, comes with their mother’s milk. Let their station be high or low, a royal princess, if you will, or the housemaid Jemima Cattledon suggested just now, the same natural instinct lies within each—a wish to be a wife. And no reason, either, why they should not wish it; it’s nothing to be ashamed of; and Helen, my dear, I would rather hear a girl avow it openly, as you do, than pretend to be shocked at its very mention.”

Some gleams of sunlight flickered on Miss Deveen’s white hair and fine features as she sat under the trees, her bronze-coloured silk gown falling around her in rich folds, and a big amethyst brooch fastening her collar. I began to think how good-looking she must have been when young, and where the eyes of the young men of those days could have been. Lady Whitney,looking like a bundle in her light dress that ill became her, sat near, fanning herself.

“Yes, I do wonder, now I think of it, that you never married,”said Helen.

“To tell you the truth, I wonder myself sometimes,” replied Miss Deveen, smiling. “I think—I believe—that, putting other advantages aside, I was well calculated to be a wife, and should have made a good one. Not that that has anything to do with it; for you see the most incapable women marry, and remain incapable to their dying day. I could mention wives at this moment, within the circle of my acquaintance, who are no more fitted to be wives than is that three-legged stool Johnny is balancing himself upon; and who in consequence unwittingly keep their husbands and their homes in a state of perpetual turmoil. I was not one of these, I am sure; but here I am, unmarried still.”

“Would you marry now?” asked Helen briskly: and we all burst into a laugh at the question, Miss Deveen’s the merriest.

“Marry at sixty! Not if I know it. I have at least twenty years too many for that; some might say thirty. But I don’t believe many women give up the idea of marriage before they are forty; and I do not see why they should. No, nor then, either.”

“But—why did you not marry, Miss Deveen?”

“Ah, my dear, if you wish for an answer to that question, you must ask it of Heaven. I cannot give one. All I can tell you is, that I did hope to be married, and expected to be married, waited to be married; but here you see me in my old age—Miss Deveen.”

“Did you—never have a chance of it—an opportunity?”questioned Helen with hesitation.

“I had more than one chance: I had two or three chances, just as you have had. During the time that each ‘chance’ was passing, if we may give it the term, I thought assuredly I should soon be a wife. But each chance melted away from this cause or that cause, ending in nothing. And the conclusion I have come to, Helen, for many a year past, is, that God, for some wise purpose of His own, decreed that I should not marry. What we know not here, we shall know hereafter.”

Her tone had changed to one of deep reverence. She did not say more for a little time.

“When I look around the world,” she at length went on,“and note how many admirable women see their chances of marriage dwindle down one after another, from unexpected and apparently trifling causes, it is impossible not to feel that the finger of God is at work. That——”

“But now, Miss Deveen, we could marry if we would—all of us,” interrupted Helen. “If we did not have to regard suitability and propriety, and all that, there’s not a girl but could go off to church and marry somebody.”

“If it’s only a broomstick,” acquiesced Miss Deveen, “or a man no better than one. Yes, Helen, you are right: and it has occasionally been done. But when we fly wilfully in the teeth of circumstances, bent on following our own resolute path, we take ourselves out of God’s hands—and must reap the consequences.”

“I—do not—quite understand,” slowly spoke Helen.

“Suppose I give you an instance of what I mean, my dear. Some years ago I knew a young lady——”

“Is it true? What was her name?”

“Certainly it is true, every detail of it. As to her name—well, I do not see any reason why I should not tell it: her name was Eliza Lake. I knew her family very well indeed, was intimate with her mother. Eliza was the third daughter, and desperately eager to be married. Her chances came. The first offer was eligible; but the two families could not agree about money matters, and it dropped through. The next offer Eliza would not accept—it was from a widower with children, and she sent him to the right-about. The third went on smoothly nearly to the wedding-day, and a good and suitable match it would have been, but something occurred then very unpleasant though I never knew the precise particulars. The bridegroom-elect fell into some trouble or difficulty, he had to quit his country hastily, and the marriage was broken off—was at an end. That was the last offer she had, so far as I knew; and the years went on, Eliza gadding out to parties, and flirting and coquetting, all in the hope to get a husband. When she was in her thirtieth year, her mother came to me one day in much distressand perplexity. Eliza, she said, was taking the reins into her own hands, purposing to be married in spite of her father, mother, and friends. Mrs. Lake wanted me to talk to Eliza; she thought I might influence her, though they could not; and I took an opportunity of doing so—freely. It is of no use to mince matters when you want to save a girl from ruin. I recalled the past to her memory, saying that I believed, judging by that past, that Heaven did not intend her to marry. I told her all the ill I had heard of the man she was now choosing; also that she had absolutely thrown herself at him, and he had responded for the sake of the little money she possessed; and that if she persisted in marrying him she would assuredly rue it. In language as earnest as I knew how to choose, I laid all this before her.”

“And what was her answer to you?” Helen spoke as if her breath was short.

“Just like the reckless answer that a blinded, foolish girl would make. ’Though Heaven and earth were against me, I should marry him, Miss Deveen. I am beyond the control of parents, brothers, sisters, friends; and I will not die an old maid to please any of you.’ Those were the wilful words she used; I have never forgotten them; and the next week she betook herself to church.”

“Did the marriage turn out badly?”

“Ay, it did. Could you expect anything else? Poor Eliza supped the cup of sorrow to its dregs: and she brought bitter sorrow and trouble also on her family. That, Helen, is what I call taking one’s self out of God’s hands, and flying determinedly in the face of what is right and seemly, and evidently appointed.”

“You say yourself it is hard not to be married,” quoth Helen.

“No, I do not,” laughed Miss Deveen. “I say that it appears hard to us when our days of youth are passing, and when we see our companions chosen and ourselves left: but, rely upon it, Helen, as we advance in years, we acquiesce in the decree; many of us learning to be thankful for it.”

“And you young people little think what great cause you have to be thankful for it,” cried Lady Whitney, all in a heat.“Marriage brings a bushel of cares: and no one knows what anxiety boys and girls entail until they come.”

Miss Deveen nodded emphatically. “It is very true. I would not exchange my present lot with that of the best wife in England; believe that, or not, as you will, Helen. Of all the different states this busy earth can produce, a lot such as mine is assuredly the most exempt from trouble. And, my dear, if you are destined never to marry, you have a great deal more cause to be thankful than rebellious.”

“The other day, when you were preaching to us, you told us that trouble came for our benefit,” grumbled Helen, passing into rebellion forthwith.

“I remember it,” assented Miss Deveen, “and very true it is. My heart has sickened before now at witnessing the troubles, apparently unmerited, that some people, whether married or single, have to undergo; and I might have been almost tempted to question the loving-kindness of Heaven, but for remembering that we must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom.”

Anna interrupted the silence that ensued. She came running up with a handful of wild roses and sweetbriar, gathered in the hedge below. Miss Deveen took them when offered to her, saying she thought of all flowers the wild rose was the sweetest.

“How solemn you all look!” cried Anna.

“Don’t we!” said Helen. “I have been having a lecture read to me.”

“By whom?”

“Every one here—except Johnny Ludlow. And I am sure I hope he was edified. I wonder when tea is going to be ready!”

“Directly, I should say,” said Anna: “for here comes Mrs. Ness with the cups and saucers.”

I ran forward to help her bring the things. Rednal’s trim wife, a neat, active woman with green eyes and a baby in her arms, was following with plates of bread-and-butter and cake, and the news that the kettle was “on the boil.” Presently the table was spread; and William, who had come back to us, took up the baby’s whistle and blew a blast, prolonged and shrill.

The stragglers heard it, understood it was the signal for their return, and came flocking in. The Squire and Sir John said they had been sitting under the trees and talking: our impression was, they had been sleeping. The young Whitneys appeared in various stages of heat; Tod and Featherston’snephew smelt of smoke. The first cups of tea had gone round, and Tod was making for Rednal’s cottage with a notice that the bread-and-butter had come to an end, when I saw a delicate little fair-haired face peering at us from amid the trees.

“Halloa!” cried the Squire, catching sight of the face at the same moment. “Who on earth’s that?”

“It’s the child we saw this morning—the gipsy’s child,”exclaimed William Whitney. “Here, you little one! Stop! Come here.”

He only meant to give her a piece of cake: but the child ran off with a scared look and fleet step, and was lost in the trees.

“Senseless little thing!” cried Bill: and sat down to his tea again.

“But what a pretty child it was!” observed the mater. “She put me in mind of Lena.”

“Why, Lena’s oceans of years older,” said Helen, free with her remarks as usual. “That child, from the glimpse I caught of her, can’t be more than five or six.”

“She is about seven, miss,” struck in Rednal’s wife, who had just come up with a fresh supply of tea. “It is nigh upon eight years since young Walter North went off and got married.”

“Walter North!” repeated Sir John. “Who’s Walter North? Let me see? The name seems familiar to me.”

“Old Walter North was the parish schoolmaster over at Easton, sir. The son turned out wild and unsteady; and at the time his father died he went off and joined the gipsies. They had used to encamp about here more than they do now, as Rednal could tell you, Sir John; and it was said young North was in love with a girl belonging to the tribe—Bertha Lee. Any way, they got married. Right-down beautiful she was—for a gipsy; and so young.”

“Then I suppose North and his wife are here now—if that’s their child?” remarked Sir John.

“They are here sure enough, sir; somewhere in the wood. Rednal has seen him about this day or two past. Two or three times they’ll be here, pestering, during the summer, and stop ten or twelve days. Maybe young North has a hankering after the old spots he was brought up in, and comes to see ’em,”suggestively added Rednal’s wife; whose tongue ran faster than any other two women’s put together. And that’s saying something.

“And how does this young North get a living?” asked Sir John. “By poaching?—and rifling the poultry-yards?”

“Like enough he do, Sir John. Them tramps have mostly light fingers.”

“They sell tins—and collect rabbit skins,” struck in William.“Johnny Ludlow and I charged the encampment this morning, and nearly got our fortunes told.”

Jessy Rednal’s chin went up. “They’d better let Rednal catch ’em at their fortune-telling!—it was the wife, I know, sir, did that. When she was but a slip of a girl she’d go up as bold as brass to any gentleman or lady passing, and ask them to cross her hand with silver.”

With this parting fling at the gipsies, Rednal’s wife ran off to the cottage for another basin of sugar. The heat made us thirsty, and we wanted about a dozen cups of tea apiece.

But now, I don’t know why it was, I had rather taken a fancy to this young woman, Bertha North, and did not believe the words “as bold as brass” could be properly applied to her. Gipsy though she was, her face, for good feeling and refinement, was worth ten of Jessy Rednal’s. It’s true she had followed us, wanting to tell our fortunes, but she might have been hard up for money.

When we had swallowed as much tea as the kettles would produce, and cleared the plates of the eatables, Sir John suggested that it would soon be time to move homewards, as the evening would be coming on. This had the effect of scattering some of us at once. If they did not get us, they could not take us. “Home, indeed! as early as this!” cried Helen, wrathfully—and rushed off with her brother Harry and Featherston’s nephew.

I was ever so far down one of the wood paths, looking about, for somehow I had missed them all, when sounds of wailing and crying from a young voice struck my ear. In a minute, that same fair little child came running into view, as if she were flying for her life from some pursuing foe, her sobs wild with terror, her face white as death.

What she said I could not make out, though she made straight up to me and caught my arm; the language seemed strange, the breath gone. But there was no mistaking the motions: she pulled me along with her across the wood, her little arms and eyes frantically imploring.

Something must be amiss, I thought. What was it?“Is there a mad bull in the way, little one? And are you making off with me to do battle with him?”

No elucidation from the child: only the sobs, and the words I did not catch. But we were close to the outskirts of the wood now (it was but narrow), and there, beyond the hedge that bordered it, crouched down against the bank, was a man. A fair-faced, good-looking young man, small and slight, and groaning with pain.

No need to wonder who he was: the likeness between him and the child betrayed it. How like they were! even to the expression in the large blue eyes, and the colour of the soft fair hair. The child’s face was his own in miniature.

“You are Walter North,” I said. “And what’s to do?”

His imploring eyes in their pitiful pain looked up to mine, as if he would question how I needed to ask it. Then he pulled his fustian coat aside and pointed to his side. It made me start a step back. The side was steeped in blood.

“Oh dear, what is it?—what has caused it? An accident?”

“I have been shot,” he answered—and I thought his voice sounded ominously weak. “Shot from over yonder.”

Looking across the field in front of us, towards which he pointed, I could see nothing. I mean, nothing likely to have shot him. No men, no guns. Off to the left, partly buried amidst its grounds, lay the old house called the Granary; to the right in the distance, Vale Farm. The little child was stretched on the ground, quiet now, her head resting on his right shoulder; it was the left side that was injured. Suddenly he whispered a few words to her; she sprang up with a sob and darted into the wood. The child, as we heard later, had been sent out by her mother to look for her father: it was in seeking for him that she had come upon our tea-party and peeped at us. Later, she found him, fallen where he was now, just after the shot which struck him was fired. In her terror she was flying off forassistance, and met me. The man’s hat lay near him, also an old drab-coloured bag, some tin basins, and a Dutch-oven.

“Can I move you, to put you easier?” I asked between his groans. “Can I do anything in the world to help you?”

“No, no, don’t touch me,” he said, in a hopeless tone. “I am bleeding to death.”

And I thought he was. His cheeks and lips were growing paler with every minute. The man’s diction was as good as mine; and, tramp though he was, many a gentleman has not half as nice a face as his.

“If you don’t mind being left, I will run for a doctor—old Featherston.”

Before he could answer yes or no, Harry Vale, who must have espied us from their land, came running up.

“Why—what in the world——” he began. “Is it you, North? What? Shot, you say?”

“From over yonder, sir; and I’ve got my death-blow: I think I have. Perhaps if Featherston——”

“I’ll fetch him,” cried Harry Vale. “You stay here with him, Johnny.” And he darted away like a lamplighter, his long legs skimming the grass.

I am nothing but a muff; you know that of old. And never did I feel my own deficiencies come home to me as they did then. Any one else might have known how to stop the bleeding—for of course it ought to be stopped—if only by stuffing a handkerchief into the wound. I did not dare attempt it; I was worse at any kind of surgery than a born imbecile. All in a moment, as I stood there, the young gipsy-woman’s words of the morning flashed into my mind. She had foreseen some ill for him, she said; had scented it in the air. How strange it seemed!

The next to come upon the scene was the Squire, crushing through the brambles when he heard our voices. He and Sir John, in dire wrath at our flight, had come out to look for us and to marshal us back for the start home. I gave him a few whispered words of explanation.

“What!” cried he. “Dying?” and his face went as pale as the man’s. “Oh, my poor fellow, I am sorry for this!”

Stooping over him, the Squire pulled the coat aside. Thestains were larger now, the flow was greater. North bent his head forward to look, and somehow got his hand wet in the process. Wet and red. He snatched it away with a kind of horror. The sight seemed to bring upon him the conviction that his minutes were numbered. His minutes. Which is the last and greatest terror that can seize upon man.

“I’m going before God now, and I’m not fit for it,” he cried, a shrieking note, born of emotion, in his weakening voice.“Can there be any mercy for me?”

The Squire seemed to feel it—he has said so since—as one of the most solemn moments of his life. He took off his spectacles—a habit of his when much excited—dropped them into his pocket, and clasped his hands together.

“There’s mercy with God through the Lord Jesus always,”he said, bending over the troubled face. “He pardoned the thief on the Cross. He pardoned all who came to Him. If you are Walter North, as they tell me, you must know all this as well as I do. Lord God have mercy upon this poor dying man, for Christ’s sake!”

And perhaps the good lessons that North had learnt in childhood from his mother, for she was a good woman, came back to him then to comfort him. He lifted his own hands towards the skies, and half the terror went out of his face.

Some one once said, I believe, that by standing stock still in the Strand, and staring at any given point, he could collect a crowd about him in no time. In the thronged thoroughfares of London that’s not to be surprised at; but what I should like to know is this—how is it that people collect in deserts? They do, and you must have seen it often. Before many minutes were over we had quite a levee: Sir John Whitney, William, and Featherston’s nephew; three or four labourers from Vale Farm; Harry Vale, who had met Featherston, and outrun him; and one of the tall sons of Colonel Leonard. The latter, a young fellow with lazy limbs, a lazy voice, and supercilious manner, strolled up, smacking a dog-whip.

“What’s the row here?” cried he: and William Whitney told him. The man had been shot: by whom or by what means, whether wilfully or accidentally, remained to be discovered.

“Did you do it—or your brothers?” asked Harry Vale of him in a low tone. And Herbert Leonard whirled round to face Vale with a haughty stare.

“What the devil do you mean? What should we want to shoot a tramp for?”

“Any way, you were practising with pistols at your target over yonder this afternoon.”

Leonard did not condescend to reply. The words had angered him. By no possibility could a shot, aimed at their target, come in this direction. The dog-whip shook, as if he felt inclined to use it on Harry Vale for his insolent suggestion.

“Such a fuss over a tramp!” cried Leonard to Sir John, not caring who heard him. “I dare say the fellow was caught thieving, and got served out for his pains.”

But he did not well know Sir John—who turned upon him like lightning.

“How dare you say that, young man! Are you not ashamed to give utterance to such sentiments?”

“Look here!” coolly retorted Leonard.

Catching hold of the bag to shake it, out tumbled a dead hen with ruffled feathers. Sir John looked grave. Leonard held it up.

“I thought so. It is still warm. He has stolen it from some poultry-yard.”

I chanced to be standing close to North as Leonard said it, and felt a feeble twitch at my trousers. Poor North was trying to attract my attention; gazing up at me with the most anxious face.

“No,” said he, but he was almost too faint to speak now.“No. Tell them, sir, No.”

But Harry Vale was already taking up the defence. “You are wrong, Mr. Herbert Leonard. I gave that hen myself to North half-an-hour ago. Some little lads, my cousins, are at the farm to-day, and one of them accidentally killed the hen. Knowing our people would not care to use it, I called to North, who chanced to be passing at the time, and told him he might take it if he liked.”

A gleam of a smile, checked by a sob, passed over the poor man’s face. Things wear a different aspect to us in the hour ofdeath from what they do in lusty life. It may be that North saw then that theft, even of a fowl, was theft, and felt glad to be released from the suspicion. Sir John looked as pleased as Punch: one does not like to hear wrong brought home to a dying man.

Herbert Leonard turned off indifferently, strolling back across the field and cracking his whip; and Featherston came pelting up.

The first thing the doctor did, when he had seen North’s face, was to take a phial and small glass out of his pocket, and give him something to drink. Next, he made a clear sweep of us all round, and knelt down to examine the wound, just as the poor gipsy wife, fetched by the child, appeared in sight.

“Is there any hope?” whispered the Squire.

“Hope!” whispered back Featherston. “In half-an-hour it will be over.”

“God help him!” prayed the Squire. “God pardon and take him!”

Well, well—that is about all there is to tell. Poor North died, there as he lay, in the twilight; his wife’s arm round his neck, and his little girl feebly clasped to him.

What an end to the bright and pleasant day! Sir John thanked Heaven openly that it was not we who had caused the calamity.

“For somebody must have shot him, lads,” he observed,“though I dare say it was accidental. And it might have chanced to be one of you—there’s no telling: you are not too cautious with your guns.”

The “somebody” turned out to be George Leonard. Harry Vale (who had strong suspicions) was right. When they dispersed after their target practising, one of them, George, went towards Briar Wood, his pistol loaded. The thick trees afforded a promising mark, he thought, and he carelessly let off the pistol at them. Whether he saw that he had shot a man was never known; he denied it out and out: didn’t know one was there, he protested. A waggoner, passing homewards with his team, had seen him fire the pistol, and came forward to say so; or it might have been a mystery to the end. “Accidental Death,”decided the jury at the inquest; but they recommended thesupercilious young man (just as indifferent as his brothers) to take care what he fired at for the future. Mr. George did not take the rebuke kindly.

For these sons had hard, bad natures; and were doing their best to bring down their father’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

But how strange it seemed altogether! The poor young gipsy-wife’s subtle instinct that evil was near!—and that the shot should just have struck him instead of spending itself harmlessly upon one of the hundreds of trees! Verily there are things in this world not to be grasped by our limited understandings.

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.

DISAPPEARANCE.

I

According to Mrs. Todhetley’s belief, some people are born to be unlucky. Not only individuals, but whole families. “I have noticed it times and again, Johnny, in going through life,” she has said to me: “ill-luck in some way lies upon them, and upon all they do; they cannot prosper, from their cradle to their grave.” That there will be some compensating happiness for these people hereafter—for they do exist—is a belief we all like to cherish.

I am now going to tell of people in rather humble life whom this ill-luck seemed to attend. That might never have brought the family into notice, ups and downs being so common in the world: but two mysterious disappearances occurred in it, which caused them to be talked about; and those occurrences I must relate before coming to Dorothy’s proper history. They took place before my time; in fact when Squire Todhetley was a young man, and it is from him that I repeat it.

At this end of the village of Islip, going into it from Crabb, there stood on the right-hand side of the road a superior cottage residence, with lovely yellow roses intertwining themselves about its porch. Robert Grape and his wife lived in it, and were well enough to do. He was in the “post-horse duty,” the Squire said—whatever that might mean; and she had money on her own account. The cottage was hers absolutely, and nearly one hundred pounds a-year income. The latter, however, was only an annuity, and would die with her.

There were two children living: Dorothy, softened by her friends into Dolly; and Thomas. Two others, who came between them, went off in what Mrs. Grape used to call a“galloping consumption.” Dolly’s cheeks were bright and her eyes were blue, and her soft brown hair fell back in curls from her dimpled face. All the young men about, including the Squire, admired the little girl; more than their mothers did, who said she was growing up vain and light-headed. Perhaps she might be; but she was a modest, well-behaved little maiden. She went to school by day, as did her brother.

Mr. Grape’s occupation, connected with the “post-horse duty,” appeared to consist in driving about the country in a gig. The length of these journeys varied, but he would generally be absent about three weeks. Then he would come home for a short interval, and go off again. He was a well-conducted man and was respected.

One Monday morning in summer, when the sun was shining on the yellow roses and the dew glittered on the grass, Robert Grape was about to start on one of these journeys. Passing out to his gig, which waited at the gate, after kissing his wife and daughter, he stopped to pluck a rose. Dolly followed him out. She was sixteen now and had left school.

“Take care your old horse does not fall this time, father,”said she, gaily and lightly.

“I’ll take care, lass, if I can,” he answered.

“The truth is, Robert, you want a new horse,” said Mrs. Grape, speaking from the open door.

“I know I do, Mary Ann. Old Jack’s no longer to be trusted.”

“Shall you be at Bridgenorth to-morrow?”

“No; on Wednesday evening. Good-bye once more. You may expect me home at the time I’ve said.” And, with those last words he mounted his gig and drove away.

From that day, from that hour, Robert Grape was never more seen by his family. Neither did they hear from him: but he did not, as a rule, write to them when on his journeys. They said to one another what delightful weather he was having this time, and the days passed pleasantly until the Saturday of his expected return.

But he did not come. Mrs. Grape had prepared a favourite dinner of his for the Sunday, lamb and peas, and a lemon cheese-cake. They had to take it without him. Three or fourmore days passed, and still they saw nothing of him. Mrs. Grape was not at all uneasy.

“I think, children, he must have been mistaken in a week,”she said to Dolly and Tom. “It must be next Saturday that he meant. I shall expect him then.”

He did not come. The Saturday came, but he did not. And the following week Mrs. Grape wrote a letter to the inn at Bridgenorth, where he was in the habit of putting-up, asking when he had left it, and for what town.

Startling tidings came back in answer. Mr. Grape had quitted the place nearly four weeks ago, leaving his horse and gig at the inn. He had not yet returned for them. Mrs. Grape could not make it out; she went off to Worcester to take the stage-coach for Bridgenorth, and there made inquiries. The following was the substance of what she learned:—

On Wednesday evening, the next day but one after leaving his home, Mr. Grape approached Bridgenorth. Upon entering the town, the horse started and fell: his master was thrown out of the gig, but not hurt; the shafts were broken and the horse lamed. “A pretty kettle of fish, this is,” cried Mr. Grape in his good-humoured way to the ostler, when the damaged cavalcade reached the inn: “I shall have to take a week’s holiday now, I suppose.” The man’s answer was to the effect that the old horse was no longer of much good; Mr. Grape nodded assent, and remarked that he must be upon the look-out for another.

In the morning, he quitted the inn on foot, leaving the horse to the care of the veterinary surgeon, who said it would be four or five days before he would be fit to travel, and the gig to have its shafts repaired. Mr. Grape observed to the landlord that he should use the opportunity to go on a little expedition which otherwise he could not have found time for, and should be back before the horse was well. But he never had come back. This was recounted to Mrs. Grape.

“He did not give any clue as to where he was going,” added the landlord; “he started away with nothing but his umbrella and what he might have put in his pockets, saying he should walk the first stage of his journey. His portmanteau is up in his bedroom now.”

All this sounded very curious to Mrs. Grape. It was unlikeher open, out-speaking husband. She inquired whether it was likely that he had been injured in the fall from the gig and could be lying ill somewhere.

The landlord shook his head in dissent. “He said he was not hurt a bit,” replied he, “and he did not seem to be. He ate a good supper that night and made a famous breakfast in the morning.”

An idea flashed across Mrs. Grape’s mind as she listened. “I think he must have gone off for a ramble about the Welsh mountains,” spoke she. “He was there once when a boy, and often said how much he should like to go there again. In fact he said he should go when he could spare the time.”

“May be so,” assented the landlord. “Them Welsh mountains be pleasant to look upon; but if a mist comes on, or one meets with an awkward pass, or anything of that sort—well, ma’am, let’s hope we shall see him back yet.”

After bringing all the inquiries to an end that she was able to make, Mrs. Grape went home in miserable uncertainty. She did not give up hope; she thought he must be lying ill amongst the Welsh hills, perhaps had caught a fever and lost his senses. As the days and the weeks passed on, a sort of nervous expectancy set in. Tidings of him might come to her any day, living or dead. A sudden knock at the door made her jump; if the postman by some rare chance paid them a visit—for letters were not written in those days by the bushel—it set her trembling. More than once she had hastily risen in the middle of the night, believing she heard a voice calling to her outside the cottage. But tidings of Robert Grape never came.

That was disappearance the first.

In the spring of the following year Mrs. Grape sold her pretty homestead and removed to Worcester. Circumstances had changed with her. Beyond what little means had been, or could be, saved, the children would have nothing to help them on in the world. Tom, thirteen years old now, must have a twelvemonth’s good schooling before being placed at some business. Dolly must learn a trade by which to get her living. In past times, young people who were not specially educated for it, or were of humble birth, did not dream of making themselves into governesses.

“You had better go to the mantua-making, Dolly,” said Mrs. Grape. “It’s nice genteel work.”

Dolly drew a wry face. “I should not make much hand at that, mother.”

“But what else is there? You wouldn’t like the stay-making——”

“Oh dear, no.”

“Or to serve in a pastry-cook’s shop, or anything of that sort. I should not like to see you in a shop, myself; you are too—too giddy,” added Mrs. Grape, pulling herself up from saying too pretty. “I think it must be the mantua-making, Dolly: you’ll make a good enough hand at it, once you’ve learnt it. Why not?”

II

The house rented by Mrs. Grape at Worcester was near the London Road. It was semi-detached, and built, like its fellow in rather a peculiar way, as though the architect had found himself cramped for space in width but had plenty of it in depth. It was close to the road, about a yard only of garden ground lying between. The front-door opened into the sitting-room; not a very uncommon case then with houses of its class. It was a fair-sized room, light and pretty, the window being beside the door. Another door, opposite the window, led to the rest of the house: a small back-parlour, a kitchen, three rooms above, with a yard and a strip of garden at the back. It was a comfortable house, at a small rent; and, once Mrs. Grape had disposed her tasty furniture about it to advantage, she tried to feel at home and to put aside her longing to be back under the old roof at Islip.

In the adjoining house dwelt two Quaker ladies named Deavor, an aunt and niece, the latter a year or two older than Dolly. They showed themselves very friendly to the new-comers, as did their respectable old servant-maid, and the two families became intimate neighbours.

Dolly, seventeen now, was placed with Miss Pedley, one of the first dressmakers in the city, as out-door apprentice. Shewas bound to her for three years, and went to and fro daily. Tom was day-scholar at a gentleman’s school in the neighbourhood.

One Saturday evening in summer, when they had been about three months in their new abode, Mrs. Grape was sitting at the table in the front-room, making up a smart cap for herself. She had never put on mourning for her husband, always cherishing the delusive hope that he would some day return. Tom sat by her, doing his lessons; Dolly was near the open window, nursing a grey kitten. Tom looked as hot as the evening, as he turned over the books before him with a puzzled face. He was a good-looking boy, with soft brown eyes, and a complexion as brilliant as his sister’s.

“I say, mother,” cried he, “I don’t think this Latin will be of much good to me. I shan’t make any hand at it.”

“You will be like me then, Tom, for I’m sure I shall never make much of a hand at dressmaking,” spoke up Dolly. “Miss Pedley sees it too.”

“Be quiet, Dolly; don’t talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Grape.“Let Tom finish his tasks.”

Thus reprimanded, silence ensued again. It grew dusk; candles were lighted and the window was shut down, as the breeze blew them about; but the bright moonlight still streamed in. Presently Dolly left the room to give the kitten its supper. Suddenly, Tom shut up his books with a bang.

“Finished, Tom?”

“Yes, mother.”

He was putting them away when a knock came to the front-door. Tom opened it.

“Halloa, Bill!” said he.

“Halloa, Tom!” responded a boy’s voice. “I’ve come up to ask if you’ll go fishing with me to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” echoed Tom in surprise. “Why, to-morrow’s Sunday!”

“Bother! I mean Monday. I’m going up to the Weir at Powick: there’s first-rate fishing there. Will you come, Tom?”

Mrs. Grape wondered who the boy was; she knew the voices of some of Tom’s schoolfellows, but did not recognize this one.Tom, standing on the low step outside, had partly closed the door behind him, and she could not see out; but she heard every word as plainly as though the speakers had been in the room.

“I should like to go, but I’m sure I could never get leave from school,” said Tom. “Why, the Midsummer examination comes on the end of next week; our masters just do keep us to it!”

“Stingy old misers! You might take French leave, Tom.”

“Mother would never let me do that,” returned Tom; and he probably made a sign to indicate that his mother was within hearing, as both voices dropped to a lower key; but Mrs. Grape still heard distinctly. “Are you going to take French leave yourself, Bill?” added young Grape. “How else shall you manage to get off?”

“Oh, Monday will be holiday with us; it’s a Saint’s Day. Look here, Tom; you may as well come. Fishing, up at Powick, is rare fun; and I’ve some prime bait.”

“I can’t,” pleaded Tom: “no good thinking about it. You must get one of your own fellows instead.”

“Suppose I must. Well, good-night.”

“Good-night, Bill.”

“I touched you last,” added the strange voice. There was a shout of laughter, the door flew back, Tom’s hand came in to snatch up his cap, which lay on a table near, and he went flying after the other boy.

They had entered upon the fascinating game of “Titch-touch-last.”Mrs. Grape got up, laid her finished cap upon the table, shook the odds and ends of threads from her black gown, and began to put her needles and cotton in the little work-box. While she was doing this, Dolly came in from the kitchen. She looked round the room.

“Why, where’s Tom, mother?”

“Some boy called to speak to him, and they are running about the road at Titch-touch-last. The cap looks nice, does it not, Dolly?”

“Oh, very,” assented Dolly. It was one she had netted for her mother; and the border was spread out in the shape of a fan—the fashion then—and trimmed with yellow gauze ribbon.

The voices of the boys were still heard, but at a distance. Dolly went to the door, and looked out.

“Yes, there the two are,” she cried. “What boy is it, mother?”

“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Grape. “I did not see him, or recognize his voice. Tom called him ‘Bill.’”

She went also to the door as she spoke, and stood by her daughter on the low broad step. The voices were fainter now, for the lads, in their play, were drawing further off and nearer to the town. Mrs. Grape could see them dodging around each other, now on this side the road, now on that. It was a remarkably light night, the moon, in the cloudless sky, almost dazzlingly bright.

“They’ll make themselves very hot,” she remarked, as she and Dolly withdrew indoors. “What silly things boys are!”

Carrying her cap upstairs, Mrs. Grape then attended to two or three household matters. Half-an-hour had elapsed when she returned to the parlour. Tom had not come in. “How very thoughtless of him!” she cried; “he must know it is his bed-time.”

But neither she nor Dolly felt any uneasiness until the clock struck ten. A shade of it crept over Mrs. Grape then. What could have become of the boy?

Standing once more upon the door-step, they gazed up and down the road. A few stragglers were passing up from the town: more people would be out on a Saturday night than on any other.

“How dost thee this evening, friend Grape?” called out Rachel Deavor, now sitting with her niece at their open parlour window in the moonlight. Mrs. Grape turned to them, and told of Tom’s delinquency. Elizabeth Deavor, a merry girl, came out laughing, and linked her arm within Dolly’s.

“He has run away from thee to take a moonlight ramble,”she said jestingly. “Thee had been treating him to a scolding, maybe.”

“No, I had not,” replied Dolly. “I have such a pretty grey kitten, Elizabeth. One of the girls at Miss Pedley’s gave it to me.”

They stood on, talking in the warm summer night, Mrs.Grape at the window with the elder Quakeress, Dolly at the gate, with the younger, and the time went on. The retiring hour of the two ladies had long passed, but they did not like to leave Mrs. Grape to her uncertainty: she was growing more anxious with every minute. At length the clocks struck half-past eleven, and Mrs. Grape, to the general surprise, burst into tears.

“Nay, nay, now, do not give way,” said Rachel Deavor kindly. “Doubtless he has but gone to the other lad’s home, and is letting the time pass unthinkingly. Boys will be boys.”

“That unaccountable disappearance of my husband makes me more nervous than I should otherwise be,” spoke Mrs. Grape in apology. “It is just a year ago. Am I going to have a second edition of that, in the person of my son?”

“Hush thee now, thee art fanciful; thee should not anticipate evil. It is a pity but thee had recognized the boy who came for thy son; some of us might go to the lad’s house.”

“I wish I had,” sighed Mrs. Grape. “I meant to ask Tom who it was when he came in. Tom called him ‘Bill;’ that is all I know.”

“Here he comes!” exclaimed Dolly, who was now standing outside the gate with Elizabeth Deavor. “He is rushing round the corner, at full speed, mother.”

“Won’t I punish him!” cried Mrs. Grape, in her relieved feelings: and she too went to the gate.

Dolly’s hopeful eagerness had misled her. It was not Tom. But it was one of Tom’s schoolfellows, young Thorn, whom they all knew. He halted to explain that he had been to a boys’party in the Bath Road, and expected to “catch it” at home for staying so late. Dolly interrupted him to speak of Tom.

“What an odd thing!” cried the lad. “Oh, he’ll come home presently, safe enough. Which of our fellows are named Bill, you ask, Miss Grape? Let’s see. There’s Bill Stroud; and Bill Hardwick—that is, William——”

“It was neither Stroud nor Hardwick; I should have known the voices of both,” interrupted Mrs. Grape. “This lad cannot, I think, be in your school at all, Thorn: he said his school was to have holiday on Monday because it would be a Saint’s Day.”

“Holiday, because it was a Saint’s Day!” echoed Thorn.“Oh then, he must have been one of the college boys. No other school goes in for holidays on the Saints’ Days but that. The boys have to attend service at college, morning and afternoon, so it’s not a complete holiday: they can get it easily, though, by asking leave.”

“I don’t think Tom knows any of the college boys,” debated Dolly.

“Yes, he does; our school knows some of them,” replied Thorn. “Good-night: I can’t stay. He is sure to turn up presently.”

But Tom Grape did not turn up. At midnight his mother put on her bonnet and shawl and started out to look for him in the now deserted streets of the town. Now and again she would inquire of some late wayfarer whether he had met a boy that night, or perhaps two boys, and described Tom’s appearance; but she could learn nothing. The most feasible idea she could call up, and the most hopeful, was that Tom had really gone home with the other lad and that something must have happened to keep him there; perhaps an accident. Dolly felt sure it must be so. Elizabeth Deavor, running in at breakfast-time next morning to ask for news, laughingly said Tom deserved to be shaken.

But when the morning hours passed and did not bring the truant or any tidings of him, this hope died away. The first thing to be done was to find out who the other boy was, and to question him. Perhaps he had also disappeared!

Getting from young Thorn the address of those of the college boys—three—who, as he chanced to know, bore the Christian name of William, Mrs. Grape went to make inquiries at their houses. She could learn nothing. Each of the three boys disclaimed all knowledge of the affair; their friends corroborating their assertion that they had not been out on the Saturday night. Four more of the King’s scholars were named William, they told her; two of them boarding in the house of the head-master, the Reverend Allen Wheeler.

To this gentleman’s residence, in the College Green, Mrs. Grape next proceeded. It was then evening. The head-master listened courteously to her tale, and became, in his awakened interest, as anxious as she was to find the right boy. Mrs.Grape said she should not know him, but should know his voice. Not one of the three boys, already seen, possessed the voice she had heard.

The two boarders were called into the room, as a mere matter of form; for the master was able to state positively that they were in bed at the hour in question. Neither of them had the voice of the boy who had called for Tom. It was a very clear voice, Mrs. Grape said; she should recognize it instantly.

“Let me see,” said the master, going over mentally the list of the forty King’s scholars: “how many more of you boys are named William, beyond those this lady has seen?”

The boys considered, and said there were two others; William Smith and William Singleton; both called familiarly “Bill” in the school. Each of these boys had a clear, pleasant voice, the master observed; but neither of them had applied for leave for Monday, nor had he heard of any projected fishing expedition to Powick.

To the house of the Singletons next went Mrs. Grape: but the boy’s voice there did not answer to the one she had heard. The Smith family she could not see; they had gone out for the evening: and she dragged herself home, utterly beaten down both in body and spirit.

Another night of anxiety was passed, and then Mrs. Grape returned to Mr. Smith’s and saw “Bill.” But Bill was hoarse as a raven; it was not at all the clear voice she had heard; though he looked desperately frightened at being questioned.

So there it was. Tom Grape was lost. Lost! and no clue remained as to the why and wherefore. He must have gone after his father, said the sympathizing townspeople, full of wonder; and a superstitious feeling crept over Mrs. Grape.

But ere the week was quite over, news came to the desolate home: not of Tom himself; not of the manner of his disappearance; only of the night it happened. On the Friday evening Mrs. Grape and Dolly were sitting together, when a big boy of sixteen appeared at their door, Master Fred Smith, lugging in his brother Bill.

“He is come to confess, ma’am,” said the elder. “He blurted it all out to me just now, too miserable to keep it in any longer, and I’ve brought him off to you.”

“Oh, tell me, tell me where he is!” implored Mrs. Grape from her fevered lips; as she rose and clasped the boy, Bill, by the arm.

“I don’t know where he is,” answered the boy in trembling earnestness. “I can’t think where; I wish I could. I know no more than the dead.”

“For what have you come here then?”

“To confess that it was I who was with him. You didn’t know my voice on the Monday because I had such a cold,” continued he, laying hold of a chair-back to steady his shaking hands. “I must have caught it playing with Tom that night; we got so hot, both of us. When I heard he had never been home since, couldn’t be found anywhere, I felt frightened to death and didn’t like to say it was me who had been with him.”

“Where did you leave him? Where did you miss him?”questioned the mother, her heart sinking with despair.

“We kept on playing at titch-touch-last; neither of us would give in, each wanted to have the last touch; and we got down past the Bath Road, and on up Sidbury near to the canal bridge. Tom gave me a touch; it was the last; and he rushed through the Commandery gates. I was getting tired then, and a thought came to me that instead of going after him I’d play him a trick and make off home; and I did so, tearing over the bridge as hard as I could tear. And that’s all the truth,” concluded the boy, bursting into tears, “and I never saw Tom again, and have no more to tell though the head-master hoists me for it to-morrow.”

“It is just what he said to me, Mrs. Grape,” put in the brother quietly, “and I am sure it is the truth.”

“Through the Commandery gates,” repeated Mrs. Grape, pressing her aching brow. “And you did not see him come out again?”

“No, ma’am, I made off as hard as I could go. While he was rushing down there—I heard his boots clattering on the flags—I rushed over the bridge homewards.”

The boy had told all he knew. Now that the confession was made, he would be too glad to add more had he been able. It left the mystery just as it was before; no better and no worse. There was no outlet to the Commandery, except these iron gates, and nothing within it that could have swallowed up Tom.It was a cul-de-sac, and he must have come out again by these self-same gates. Whither had he then gone?

It was proved that he did come out. When Mr. Bill Smith’s confession was made public, an assistant to a doctor in the town remembered to have seen Tom Grape, whom he knew by sight, as he was passing the Commandery about that same time to visit a patient in Wyld’s Lane. Tom came flying out of the gates, laughing, and looking up and down the street. “Where are you, Bill?” he called out. The young doctor, whose name was Seton, looked back at Tom, as he went on his way.

But the young man added something more, which nobody else had thought to speak of, and which afforded a small loop-hole of conjecture as to what poor Tom’s fate might have been. Just about that hour a small barge on the canal, after passing under Sidbury bridge, came in contact with another barge. Very little damage was done, but there was a great deal of shouting and confusion. As Mr. Seton walked over the bridge, not a second before he saw Tom, he heard the noise and saw people making for the spot. Had Tom Grape made for it? He could easily have reached it. And if so, had he, amidst the general pushing and confusion on the canal bank, fallen into the canal? It was hardly to be imagined that any accident of this kind could happen to him unseen; though it might be just possible, for the scene for some minutes was one of tumult; but nothing transpired to confirm it. The missing lad did not reappear, either dead or alive.

And so poor Tom Grape had passed out of life mysteriously as his father had done. Many months elapsed before his mother gave up her search for him; she was always thinking he would come home again, always hoping it. The loss affected her more than her husband’s had, for Tom vanished under her very eye, so to say; all the terror of it was palpably enacted before her, all the suspense had to be borne and lived through; whereas the other loss took place at a distance and she only grew to realize it by degrees; which of course softened the blow. And the time went on by years, but nothing was seen of Tom Grape.

That was disappearance the second.

Dolly left her place of business at the end of the three years for which she had been apprenticed, and set up for herself; abrass plate on her mothers door—“Miss Grape, Mantua-maker”—proclaiming the fact to the world. She was only twenty then, with as sweet a face, the Squire says, as Worcester, renowned though it is for its pretty faces, ever saw. She had never in her heart taken kindly to her business, so would not be likely to set the world on fire with her skill; but she had tried to do her best and would continue to do it. A little work began to come in now and then; a gown to be turned or a spencer to be made, though not so many of them as Dolly hoped for: but, as her mother said, Rome was not built in a day.

III

“Mother, I think I shall go to college this morning.”

So spoke Dolly at the breakfast-table one Sunday in July. The sun was shining in at the open window, the birds were singing.

“It’s my belief, Dolly, you would go off to college every Sunday of your life, if you had your way,” said Mrs. Grape.

Dolly laughed. “And so I would, mother.”

For the beautiful cathedral service had charms for Dolly. Islip Church was a very primitive church, the good old clergyman was toothless, the singing of the two psalms was led off by the clerk in a cracked bass voice; there was no organ. Accustomed to nothing better than this, the first time Dolly found herself at the cathedral, after their removal to Worcester, and the magnificent services burst upon her astonished senses, she thought she must have ascended to some celestial sphere. The fine edifice, the musical chanting of the prayers by the minor canons, the singing of the numerous choir, men and boys in their white surplices, the deep tones of the swelling organ, the array of white-robed prebendaries, the dignified and venerable bishop—Cornwall—in his wig and lawn sleeves, the state, the ceremony of the whole, and the glittering colours of the famed east window in the distance; all this laid hold of Dolly’s senses for ever. She and her mother attended St. Martin’s Church generally, but Dolly would now and then lure her mother to the cathedral. Latterly Mrs. Grape had been ailing and did not go anywhere.

“If you could but go to college to-day, mother!” went on Dolly.

“Why!”

“Mr. Benson preaches. I met Miss Stafford yesterday afternoon, and she told me Mr. Benson had come into residence. TheHerald said so too.”

“Then you must go betimes if you would secure a seat,”remarked Mrs. Grape. “And mind you don’t get your new muslin skirt torn.”

So Dolly put on her new muslin, and her bonnet, and started.

When the Reverend Christopher Benson, Master of the Temple, became one of the prebendaries of Worcester, his fame as a preacher flew to all parts of the town. You should hear the Squire’s account of the crush in getting into the cathedral on the Sundays that he was in residence: four Sundays in the year; or five, as the case might be; all told. Members of other churches, Dissenters of different sects, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and people who never went anywhere at other times, scrupled not to run to hear Mr. Benson. For reading like unto his, or preaching like unto his, had rarely been heard in that cathedral or in any other. Though it might be only the Gospel that fell to his share in the communion service, the crowd listened, enraptured, to his sweet, melodious tones. The college doors were besieged before the hour for opening them; it was like going into a theatre.

Dolly, on this day, made one in the crowd at the cloister entrance; she was pushed here and there; and although she hurried well with the rest as soon as the doors were unlocked, every seat was taken when she reached the chancel. She found standing room opposite the pulpit, near King John’s tomb, and felt very hot in the crush.

“Is it always like this, here?”

The whispered words came from a voice at her side. Dolly turned, and saw a tall, fine-looking, well-dressed man about thirty, with a green silk umbrella in his hand.

“No,” she whispered back again. “Only for four or five Sundays, at this time of the year, when Mr. Benson preaches.”

“Indeed,” said the stranger. “His preaching ought to be something extraordinary to attract such a crowd as this.”

“And so it is,” breathed Dolly. “And his reading—oh, you never heard any reading like it.”

“Very eloquent, I suppose?”

“I don’t know whether it may be called eloquence,” debated Dolly, remembering that a chance preacher she once heard, who thumped the cushions with his hands and shook the air with his voice, was said to be eloquent. “Mr. Benson is the quietest preacher and reader I ever listened to.”

The stranger seemed to be a kind sort of man. During the stir made by the clergy, preceded by the six black-robed, bowing bedesmen, going up to the communion-table, he found an inch of room on a bench, and secured it for Dolly. She thanked him gratefully.

Mr. Benson’s sermon came to an end, the bishop gave the blessing from his throne, and the crowd poured out. Dolly, by way of a change, made her exit from the great north entrance. The brightness of the day had changed; a sharp shower was falling.

“Oh dear! My new muslin will be wet through!” thought Dolly. “This parasol’s of no use.”

“Will you allow me to offer you my umbrella—or permit me to hold it over you?” spoke the stranger, who must have followed her out. And Dolly hesitated and flushed, and did not know whether she ought to say yes or no.

He held the umbrella over Dolly, letting his own coat get wet. The shower ceased presently; but he walked on by her side to her mother’s door, and then departed with a bow fit for an emperor.

“What a polite man!” thought Dolly. “Quite a gentleman.”And she mentioned the occurrence to her mother; who seemed to-day more poorly than usual.

They sat at the open window in the afternoon, and Dolly read aloud the evening psalms. It was the fifth day of the month. As Dolly finished the last verse and closed the book, Mrs. Grape, after a moment’s silence, repeated the words:—

“The Lord shall give strength unto His people: the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace.”

“What a beautiful promise that is, Dolly!” she said in hushed tones. “Peace! Ah, my dear, no one can know what thatword means until they have been sorely tried. Peace everlasting!”

Mrs. Grape leaned back in her chair, gazing upwards. The sky was of a deep blue; a brilliant gold cloud, of peculiar shape, was moving slowly across it just overhead.

“One could almost fancy it to be God’s golden throne in the brighter land,” she murmured. “My child, do you know, the thought comes across me at times that it may not be long before I am there. And I am getting to long for it.”

“Don’t say that, mother,” cried the startled girl.

“Well, well, dear, I don’t want to frighten you. It is all as God pleases.”

“I shall send to ask Mr. Nash to come to see you to-morrow, mother. Do you feel worse?”

Mrs. Grape slightly shook her head. Presently she spoke.

“Is it not almost teatime, Dolly?—whoever is that?”

A gentleman, passing, with a red rose in his button-hole and silk umbrella in his hand, was taking off his hat to Dolly. Dolly’s face turned red as the rose as she returned the bow, and whispered to her mother that it was the polite stranger. He halted to express a hope that the young lady had not taken cold from the morning shower.

He turned out to be a Mr. Mapping, a traveller in the wine trade for some London house. But, when he was stating this to Mrs. Grape during the first visit paid her (for he contrived to make good his entrance to the house), he added in a careless, off-hand manner, that he was thankful to say he had good private means and was not dependent upon his occupation. He lingered on in Worcester, and became intimate with the Grapes.

Events thickened. Before the next month, August, came in, Mrs. Grape died. Dolly was stunned; but she would have felt the blow even more keenly than she did feel it had she not fallen over head and ears in love with Alick Mapping. About three hundred pounds, all her mother’s savings, came to Dolly; excepting that, and the furniture, she was unprovided for.

“You cannot live upon that: what’s a poor three hundred pounds?” spoke Mr. Mapping a day or two after the funeral, his tone full of tender compassion.

“How rich he must be himself!” thought poor Dolly.

“You will have to let me take care of you, child.”

“Oh dear!” murmured Dolly.

“We had better be married without delay. Once you are my wife——”

“Please don’t go on!” interposed Dolly in a burst of sobs.“My dear mother is hardly buried.”

“But what are you to do?” he gently asked. “You will not like to live here alone—and you have no income to live here upon. Your business is worth nothing as yet; it would not keep you in gloves. If I speak of these things prematurely, Dolly, it is for your sake.”

Dolly sobbed. The future looked rather desolate.

“You have promised to be my wife, Dolly: remember that.”

“Oh, please don’t talk of it yet awhile!” sobbed Dolly.

“Leave you here alone I will not; you are not old enough to take care of yourself; you must have a protector. I will take you with me to London, where you will have a good home and be happy as a cricket: but you must know, Dolly, that I cannot do that until we are married. All sensible people must say that you will be quite justified under the circumstances.”

Mr. Alick Mapping had a wily tongue, and Dolly was persuaded to listen. The marriage was fixed for the first week in September, and the banns were put up at St. Martin’s Church; which, as every one knows, stands in the corn-market. Until then, Mr. Mapping returned to London; to make, as he told Dolly, preparations for his bride. An acquaintance of Mrs. Grape’s, who had been staying with Dolly since the death, would remain with her to the last. As soon as Dolly was gone, the furniture would be sold by Mr. Stretch, the auctioneer, and the proceeds transmitted to Dolly in London. Mrs. Grape had given all she possessed to Dolly, in the fixed and firm belief that her son was really no more.

But all this was not to be put in practice without a warning from their neighbour, the Quaker lady; she sent for Dolly, being confined to her own chamber by illness.

“Thee should not be in this haste, Dorothy,” she began.“It is not altogether seemly, child, and it may not be well for thee hereafter. Thee art too young to marry; thee should wait a year or two——”

“But I am not able to wait,” pleaded poor Dolly, with tears in her eyes. “How could I continue to live alone in the house—all by myself?”

“Nay, but thee need not have done that. Some one of discreet age would have been glad to come and share expenses with thee. I might have helped thee to a suitable person myself: a cousin of mine, an agreeable and kindly woman, would like to live up this way. But the chief objection that I see to this hasty union, Dorothy,” continued Miss Deavor, “is that thee knows next to nothing about the young man.”

Dolly opened her eyes in surprise. “Why, I know him quite well, dear Miss Rachel. He has told me all about himself.”

“That I grant thee. Elizabeth informs me that thee has had a good account from himself as to his means and respectability. But thee has not verified it.”

“Verified it!” repeated Dolly.

“Thee has not taken steps to ascertain that the account he gives is true. How does thee know it to be so?”

Dolly’s face flushed. “As if he would deceive me! You do not know him, Miss Deavor.”

“Nay, child, I wish not to cast undeserved aspersion on him. But thee should ask for proof that what he tells thee is correct. Before thee ties thyself to him for life, Dorothy, thee will do well to get some friend to make inquiries in London. It is my best advice to thee, child; and it is what Mary Ann Grape, thy mother, would have done before giving thee to him.”

Dolly thanked Miss Deavor and went away. The advice was well meant, of course; she felt that; but quite needless. Suspect Alick Mapping of deceit! Dolly would rather have suspected herself. And she did nothing.

The morning of the wedding-day arrived in due course. Dolly was attiring herself for the ceremony in a pretty new grey gown, her straw bonnet trimmed with white satin lying on the bed (to resume her black on the morrow), when Elizabeth Deavor came in.

“I have something to say to thee, Dolly,” she began, in a grave tone. “I hardly knew whether to speak to thee or not, feeling not altogether sure of the thing myself, so I asked Aunt Rachel, and she thinks thee ought to be told.”

“What is it?” cried Dolly.

“I think I saw thy brother Tom last night.”

The words gave Dolly a curious shock. She fell back in a chair.

“I will relate it to thee,” said Elizabeth. “Last evening I was at Aunt Rachel’s window above-stairs, when I saw a boy in dark clothes standing on the pavement outside, just opposite thy gate. It was a bright night, as thee knows. He had his arms folded and stood quite still, gazing at this house. The moonlight shone on his face and I thought how much it was like poor lost Tom’s. He still stood on; so I went downstairs and stepped to our gate, to ask whether he was in want of any one: and then, Dolly, I felt queerer than I ever felt in my life, for I saw that it was Tom. At least, I thought so.”

“Did he speak?” gasped Dolly.

“He neither spoke nor answered me: he turned off, and went quickly down the road. I think it was Tom; I do indeed.”

“What am I to do?” cried Dolly. “Oh, if I could but find him!”

“There’s nothing to do, that we can see,” answered the young Quakeress. “I have talked it over with Aunt Rachel. It would appear as though he did not care to show himself: else, if it were truly thy brother, why did he not come in? I will look out for him every night and speak to him if he appears again. I promise thee that, Dolly.”

“Why do you say ‘appears,’ Elizabeth?” cried the girl.“You think it was himself, do you not; not his—his spirit?”

“Truly, I can but conclude it was himself.”

Dolly, in a state of bewilderment, what with one thing and another, was married to Alick Mapping in St. Martin’s Church, by its white-haired Rector, Digby Smith. A yellow post-chaise waited at the church-gates and carried them to Tewkesbury. The following day they went on by coach to Gloucester, where Mr. Mapping intended to stay a few days before proceeding to London.

They took up their quarters at a comfortable country inn on the outskirts of the town. On the second day after their arrival, Dolly, about to take a country walk with her husband, ran downstairs from putting her bonnet on, and could not see him. The barmaid told her he had gone into the town to post a letter, and asked Dolly to step into the bar-parlour to wait.

It was a room chiefly used by commercial travellers. Dolly’s attention was caught by something over the mantelpiece. In a small glass-case, locked, there was the portrait of a man cleverly done in pencil; by its side hung a plain silver watch with a seal and key attached to a short black ribbon: and over all was a visiting-card, inscribed in ink, “Mr. Gardner.” Dolly looked at this and turned sick and faint: it was her father’s likeness, her father’s watch, seal, and ribbon. Of an excitable nature, she burst into tears, and the barmaid ran in. There and then, the mystery so long hanging about Robert Grape’s fate was cleared up, so far as it ever would be in this world.

He had left Bridgenorth, as may be remembered, on the Thursday morning. Towards the evening of the following day, Friday, as Dolly now heard, he appeared at this very inn. This same barmaid, an obliging, neat, and modest young woman, presenting a rare contrast to the barmaids of the present day, saw him come in. His face had a peculiar, grey shade upon it, which attracted her notice, and she asked him if he felt ill. He answered that he felt pretty well then, but supposed he must have had a fainting-fit when walking into the town, for to his surprise he found himself on the grass by the roadside, waking up from a sort of stupor. He engaged a bedroom for the night, and she thought he said—but she had never been quite sure—that he had come to look out for a horse at the fair to be held in Gloucester the next day. He took no supper,“not feeling up to it,” he said, but drank a glass of weak brandy-and-water, and ate a biscuit with it, before going up to bed. The next morning he was found dead; had apparently died quietly in his sleep. An inquest was held, and the medical men testified that he had died of heart disease. Poor Dolly, listening to this, wondered whether the pitch out of the gig at Bridgenorth had fatally injured him.

“We supposed him to be a Mr. Gardner,” continued the barmaid,“as that card”—pointing to it—“was found in his pocket-book. But we had no clue as to who he was or whence he came. His stockings were marked with a ‘G’ in red cotton; and there was a little loose money in his pocket and a bank-notein his pocket-book, just enough to pay the expenses of the funeral.”

“But that likeness,” said Dolly. “How did you come by it? Who took it?”

“Ah, ma’am, it was a curious thing, that—but such things do not happen by chance. An idle young man of the town used to frequent our inn; he was clever at drawing, and would take off a likeness of any one near him with a few strokes of a pen or pencil in a minute or two, quite surreptitious like and for his own amusement. Wonderful likenesses they were. He was in the bar-parlour, this very room, ma’am, while the stranger was drinking his brandy-and-water, and he dashed off this likeness.”

“It is exactly like,” said poor Dolly. “But his name was Grape, not Gardner. It must have been the card of some acquaintance.”

“When nobody came forward to identify the stranger, the landlord got the sketch given up to him,” continued the young woman. “He put it in this case with the watch and seal and card, and hung it where you see, hoping that sometime or other it might be recognized.”

“But did you not let it be known abroad that he had died?”sighed Dolly.

“Why, of course we did; and put an advertisement in the Gloucester papers to ask if any Mr. Gardner was missing from his friends. Perhaps the name, not being his, served to mislead people. That’s how it was, ma’am.”

So that the one disappearance, that of Robert Grape, was now set at rest.

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.

IN AFTER YEARS.

I

We found her out through Mr. Brandon’s nephew, Roger Bevere, a medical student, who gave his people trouble, and one day got his arm and head broken. Mr. Brandon and the Squire were staying in London at the Tavistock Hotel. I, Johnny Ludlow, was also in London, visiting Miss Deveen. News of the accident was brought to Mr. Brandon; the young man had been carried into No. 60, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington, and a doctor named Pitt was attending him.

We went to see him at once. A narrow, quiet street, as I recollected well, this Gibraltar Terrace, the dwellings it contained facing each other, thirty in a row. No. 60 proved to be the same house to which we had gone once before, when inquiring about the illness of Francis Radcliffe, and Pitt was the same doctor. It was the same landlady also; I knew her as soon as she opened the door; a slender, faded woman, long past middle life, with a pink flush on her thin cheeks, and something of the lady about her.

“What an odd thing, Johnny!” whispered the Squire, recognizing the landlady as well as the house. “Mapping, I remember her name was.”

Mr. Brandon went upstairs to his nephew. We were shown by her into the small parlour, which looked as faded as it had looked on our last visit, years before: as faded as she was. While relating to us how young Bevere’s accident occurred, she had to run away at a call from upstairs.

“Looks uncommonly careworn, doesn’t she, Johnny!” remarked the Squire. “Seems a nice sort of person, though.”

“Yes, sir. I like her. Does it strike you that her voice has a home-ring in it? I think she must be from Worcestershire.”

“A home-ring—Worcestershire!” retorted he. “It wouldn’t be you, Johnny, if you did not get up some fancy or other. Here she comes! You are not from Worcestershire, are you, ma’am?” cried the Squire, going to the root of the question at once, in his haste to convict my fancy of its sins.

“Yes, I am, sir,” she replied; and I saw the pink flush on her cheeks deepen to crimson. “I knew you, sir, when I was a young girl, many years ago. Though I should not have recognized you when you were last here, but that you left your card. We lived at Islip, sir; at that pretty cottage with the yellow roses round the porch. You must remember Dolly Grape.”

“But you are not Dolly Grape!” returned the Squire, pushing up his spectacles.

“Yes, sir, I was Dolly Grape. Your mother knew us well; so did you.”

“Goodness bless my heart!” softly cried the Squire, gazing at her as if the news were too much for him. And then, starting up impulsively, he grasped her hand and gave it a hearty shake. A sob seemed to take her throat. The Squire sat back again, and went on staring at her.

“My father disappeared mysteriously on one of his journeys; you may remember us by that, sir.”

“To be sure I remember it—Robert Grape!” assented the Squire. “Had to do with the post-horse duty. Got as far as Bridgenorth, and was never heard of again. And it is really you—Dolly Grape! And you are living here—letting lodgings! I’m afraid the world has not been overkind to you.”

She shook her head; tears were running down her faded cheeks.

“No, it has not, sir,” she answered, as she wiped them away with her handkerchief. “I have had nothing but ups and downs in life since leaving Worcester: sad misfortunes: sometimes, I think, more than my share. Perhaps you heard that I married, sir—one Mr. Mapping?”

The Squire nodded slightly. He was too busy gazing at her to pay attention to much else.

“I am looking at you to see if I can trace the old features of the old days,” he said, “and I do now; they grow upon my memory; though you were but a slip of a girl when I used to see you. I wonder I did not recognize you at first.”

“And I wonder that you can even recognize me now, sir,” she returned: “trouble and grief have so much altered me. I am getting old, too.”

“Have you lived in this house long?”

“Nearly ten years, sir. I live by letting my rooms.”

The Squire’s voice took a tone of compassion.

“It can’t be much of a living, once the rent and taxes are paid.”

Mrs. Mapping’s mild blue eyes, that seemed to the Squire to be of a lighter tinge than of yore, wore a passing sadness. Any one able to read it correctly might have seen she had her struggles.

“Are you a widow?”

“I—call myself one, sir,” she replied, with hesitation.

“Call yourself one!” retorted the Squire, for he liked people to be straightforward in their speech. “My good woman, you are a widow, or you are not one.”

“I pass for one, sir.”

“Now, what on earth do you mean?” demanded he. “Is your husband—Mapping—not dead?”

“He was not dead when I last heard of him, sir; that’s a long while ago. But he is not my husband.”

“Not your husband!” echoed the Squire, pushing up his spectacles again. “Have you and he quarrelled and parted?”

Any countenance more pitifully sad than Mrs. Mapping’s was at that moment, I never wish to see. She stood smoothing down her black silk apron (which had a slit in it) with trembling fingers.

“My history is a very painful one,” she said at last in a low voice. “I will tell it if you wish; but not this morning. I should like to tell it you, sir. It is some time since I saw a home-face, and I have often pictured to myself some kind friendly face of those old happy days looking at me while I told it. Different days from these.”

“These cannot be much to boast of,” repeated the Squire.“It must be a precarious sort of living.”

“Of course it fluctuates,” she said. “Sometimes my rooms are full, at other times empty. One has to put the one against the other and strive to tide over the hard days. Mr. Pitt is very good to me in recommending the rooms to medical students; he is a good-natured man.”

“Oh, indeed! Listen to that, Johnny! Pitt good-natured! Rather a loose man, though, I fancy, ma’am.”

“What, Mr. Pitt? Sir, I don’t think so. He has a surgery close by, and gets a good bit of practice——”

The rest was interrupted by Mr. Pitt himself; he came to say we might go up to Mr. Brandon in the sick-room. We had reason to think ill enough of Pitt in regard to the Radcliffe business; but the Squire could not tackle him about the past offhand, this not being just the time or place for it. Later, when he did so, it was found that we had been misjudging the man. Pitt had not joined Stephen Radcliffe in any conspiracy; and the false letter, telling of Frank’s death at Dr. Dale’s, had not been written by him. So we saw that it must have been concocted by Stephen himself.

“Any way, if I did write such a letter, I retained no consciousness of it afterwards,” added Pitt, with candour. “I am sorry to say, Mr. Todhetley, that I gave way to drink at that time, and I know I was often not myself. But I do not think it likely that I wrote it; and as to joining Mr. Radcliffe in any conspiracy against his brother, why, I would not do such a thing, drunk or sober, and I never knew it had been done.”

“You have had the sense to pull up,” cried the Squire, in reference to what Pitt had admitted.

“Yes,” answered Pitt, in a voice hardly above a whisper.“And I never think of what I might have become by this time, but for pulling up, but I thank God.”

These allusions, however, may perhaps only puzzle the reader. And it is not with Mr. Pitt, his virtues or his failings, that this paper concerns itself, but with the history of Dorothy Grape.

We must take it up from the time Dorothy arrived in London with her husband, Alick Mapping, after their marriage at Worcester, as already narrated. The sum of three hundred pounds, owned by Dolly, passed into Mr. Mapping’s possession on the wedding-day, for she never suggested such a thing asthat it should be settled on herself. The proceeds, arising from the sale of the furniture, were also transmitted to him later by the auctioneer. Thus he had become the proprietor of Dolly, and of all her worldly goods. After that, he and she faded out of Worcestershire memory, and from the sight of Worcestershire people—except for one brief meeting, to be mentioned presently.

The home in London, to which her husband conveyed her, and of which he had boasted, Dolly found to be lodgings. Lodgings recently engaged by him, a sitting-room and bedroom, in the Blackfriars Road. They were over a shop, kept by one Mrs. Turk, who was their landlady. “I would not fix upon a house, dear, without you,” he said; and Dolly thanked him gratefully. All he did was right to her.

She was, as he had told her she would be, happy as a cricket, though bewildered with the noisy bustle of the great town, and hardly daring to venture alone into its busy streets, more crowded than was Worcester Cathedral on the Sundays Mr. Benson preached. The curious elucidation at Gloucester of what her father’s fate had been was a relief to her mind, rather than the contrary, once she had got over its sadness; though the still more curious doubt about her brother Tom, whispered to her by Elizabeth Deavor on her wedding morning, was rarely absent from her thoughts. But Dolly was young, Dolly was in love, and Dolly was intensely happy. Her husband took her to the theatres, to Vauxhall, and to other places of amusement; and Dolly began to think life was going to be a happy valley into which care would never penetrate.

This happy state of things changed. Mr. Mapping took to be a great deal away from home, sometimes for weeks together. He laid the fault upon his business; travellers in the wine trade had to go all over England, he said. Dolly was not unreasonable and accepted the explanation cheerfully.

But something else happened now and then that was less satisfactory. Mr. Mapping would appear at home in a condition that frightened Dolly: as if he had made the mistake of tasting the wine samples himself, instead of carrying them to his customers. Never having been brought into contact with anything of the kind in her own home, she regarded it with terror and dismay.

Then another phase of discomfort set in: money seemed to grow short. Dolly could not get from her husband what was needed for their moderate expenses; which were next to nothing when he was away from home. She cried a little one day when she wanted some badly and he told her he had none to give her. Upon which Mr. Mapping turned cross. There was no need of tears, he said: it would all come right if she did not bother. Dolly, in her secret heart, hoped he would not have to break in upon what he called their “nest-egg,” that three hundred pounds in the bank. A nest-egg which, as he had more than once assured her, it was his intention to keep intact.

Only in one thing had Mr. Mapping been arbitrary: he would not allow her to hold any communication with Worcester. When they first came to London, he forbade Dolly to write to any of her former friends, or to give them her address. “You have no relatives there,” he said, “only a few acquaintances, and I would prefer, Dolly, that you dropped them altogether.” Of course she obeyed him: though it prevented her writing to ask Elizabeth Deavor whether she had again seen Tom.

Things, despite Mr. Mapping’s assurances, did not come right. As the spring advanced, his absences became more marked and the money less plentiful. Dolly shed many tears. She knew not what to do; for, as the old song says, not e’en love can live on flowers. It was a very favourite song of Dolly’s, and her tuneful voice might often be heard trilling it through from beginning to end as she sat at work.

“Young Love lived once in a humble shed,

Where roses breathing

And woodbines wreathing

Around the lattice their tendrils spread,

As wild and as sweet as the life he led.

“The garden flourished, for young Hope nourished,

And Joy stood by to count the hours:

But lips, though blooming, must still be fed,

And not e’en Love can live on flowers.

“Alas, that Poverty’s evil eye

Should e’er come hither

Such sweets to wither;

The flowers laid down their heads to die,

And Love looked pale as the witch drew nigh.

“She came one morning, and Love had warning,

For he stood at the window, peeping for day:

‘Oh, oh,’ said he, ‘is it you,—good-bye’—

And he opened the window and flew away.”

Dolly’s love did not fly away, though the ugly witch, Poverty, was certainly showing herself. Mrs. Turk grew uneasy. Dolly assured her there was no occasion for that; that if the worst came to the worst, they must break into the “nest-egg” which they had lying by in the Bank of England—the three hundred pounds left her by her mother.

One bright day in May, Dolly, pining for the outdoor sunshine, betook herself to Hyde Park, a penny roll in her pocket for her dinner. The sun glittered in the blue sky, the air was warm, the birds chirped in the trees and hopped on the green grass. Dolly sat on a bench enjoying the sweetness and tranquillity, thinking how very delightful life might be when no evil stepped in to mar it.

Two Quakeress ladies approached arm-in-arm, talking busily. Dolly started up with a cry: for the younger one was Elizabeth Deavor. She had come to London with a friend for the May meetings. The two girls were delighted to see each other, but Elizabeth was pressed for time.

“Why did thee never write to me, Dorothy? I had but one letter from thee, written at Gloucester, telling me, thee knows, all about thy poor father.” And, to this question, Dolly murmured some lame excuse.

“I wanted to write to thee, but I had not thy address. I promised thee I would look out for Tom—”

“And have you seen him again?” interrupted Dolly in excitement.“Oh, Elizabeth?”

“I have seen the boy again, but it was not Tom: and I am very sorry that my fancy misled me and caused me to excite thy hopes. It was only recently, in Fourth month. I saw the same boy standing in the same place before thy old gate, his arms folded, and looking at the house as before, in the moonlight. I ran out, and caught his arm, and held it while he told me who he was and why he came there. It was not thy brother, Dorothy, but the likeness to him is marvellous.”

“No!—not he?” gasped Dolly, woefully disappointed.

“It is one Richard East,” said Elizabeth; “a young sailor. He lived with his mother in that house before she died, when he was a little boy; and when he comes home from a voyage now, and is staying with his friends in Melcheapen Street, he likes to go up there and have a good look at it. This is all. As I say, I am sorry to have misled thee. We think there cannot be a doubt that poor Tom really lost his life that night in the canal. And art thee nicely, Dorothy?—and is thy husband well? Thee art looking thin. Fare thee well.”

Summer passed, Dolly hardly knew how. She was often reduced to straits, often and often went dinnerless. Mrs. Turk only had a portion of what was due to her by fits and starts. Mr. Mapping himself made light of troubles; they did not seem to touch him much; he was always in spirits and always well dressed.

“Alick, you should draw a little of that money in the bank,”his wife ventured to suggest one day when Mrs. Turk had been rather troublesome. “We cannot go on like this.”

“Break in upon our ‘nest-egg!’” he answered. “Not if I know it, Dolly. Mrs. Turk must wait.”

A little circumstance was to happen that gave some puzzle to Dolly. She had been married about fourteen months, and her husband was, as she believed, on his travels in Yorkshire, when Lord-Mayor’s day occurred. Mrs. Gurk, a good woman in the main, and compassionating the loneliness of the young wife, offered to take her to see the show, having been invited to an upper window of a house in Cheapside. Of all the sights in the world that Dolly had heard of, she quite believed that must be the greatest, and felt delighted. They went, took up their station at the window, and the show passed. If it had not quite come up to Dolly’s expectation, she did not say so.

“A grand procession, is it not, Mrs. Mapping?” cried her companion, gazing after it with admiring eyes.

“Very,” said Dolly. “I wonder—Good gracious!” she broke off, with startling emphasis, “there’s my husband!”

“Where?” asked Mrs. Turk, her eyes bent on the surging crowd below.

“There,” said Dolly, pointing with her finger; “there! He is arm-in-arm with two others; in the middle of them. How very strange! It was only yesterday I had a letter from him from Bradford, saying he should be detained there for some time to come. How I wish he had looked up at this window!”

Mrs. Turk’s sight had failed to single him out amongst the moving crowd. And as Mr. Mapping did not make his appearance at home that evening, or for many evenings to come, she concluded that the young wife must have been mistaken.

When Mr. Mapping did appear, he said the same, telling Dolly she must have “seen double,” for that he had not been in London. Dolly did not insist, but she felt staggered and uncomfortable; she felt certain it was her husband she saw.

How long the climax would have been postponed, or in what way it might have disclosed itself, but for something that occurred, cannot be conjectured. This wretched kind of life went on until the next spring. Dolly was reduced to perplexity. She had parted with all the pretty trinkets her mother left her; she would live for days together upon bread-and-butter and tears: and a most unhappy suspicion had instilled itself into her mind—that the nest-egg no longer existed. But even yet she found excuses for her husband; she thought that all doubt might still be explained away. Mrs. Turk was very good, and did not worry; Dolly did some plain sewing for her, and made her a gown or two.

On one of these spring days, when the sun was shining brightly on the pavement outside, Dolly went out on an errand. She had not gone many steps from the door when a lady, very plainly dressed, came up and accosted her quietly.

“Young woman, I wish to ask why you have stolen away my husband?”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the startled Dolly. “What do you mean?”

“You call yourself Mrs. Mapping.”

“I am Mrs. Mapping.”

The stranger shook her head. “We cannot converse here,”she said. “Allow me to go up to your room”—pointing to it.“I know you lodge there.”

“But what is it that you want with me?” objected Dolly, who did not like all this.

“You think yourself the wife of Alick Mapping. You think you were married to him.”

Dolly wondered whether the speaker had escaped from that neighbouring stronghold, Bedlam. “I don’t know what it is you wish to insinuate,” she said. “I was married to Mr. Mapping at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, more than eighteen months ago.”

“Ay! But I, his wife, was married to him in London seven years ago. Yours was no marriage; he deceived you.”

Dolly’s face was turning all manner of colours. She felt frightened almost to death.

“Take me to your room and I will tell you all that you need to know. Do not fear I shall reproach you; I am only sorry for you; it has been no fault of yours. He is a finished deceiver, as I have learnt to my cost.”

Dolly led the way. Seated together, face to face, her eyes strained on the stranger’s, she listened to the woeful tale, which was gently told. That it was true she could not doubt. Alick Mapping had married her at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, but he had married this young woman some years before it.

“You are thinking that I look older than my husband,” said she, misinterpreting Dolly’s gaze. “That is true. I am five years older, and am now approaching my fortieth year. He pretended to fall in love with me; I thought he did; but what he really fell in love with was my money.”

“How did you come to know about me?—how did you find it out?” gasped Dolly.

“It was through Mrs. Turk, your landlady,” answered the true wife. “She has been suspecting that something or other was wrong, and she talked of it to a friend of hers who chances to know my family. This friend was struck with the similarity of name—the Alick Mapping whose wife was here in the Blackfriars Road, and the Alick Mapping whose wife lived at Hackney.”

“How long is it since he left you?” asked poor Dolly.

“He has not left me. He has absented himself inexplicably at times for a year or two past, but he is still with me. He is at home now, at this present moment. I have a good home, you must understand, and a good income, which he cannottouch; he would think twice before giving up that. Had you money?” continued the lady abruptly.

“I had three hundred pounds. He told me he had placed it in the Bank of England; I think he did do that; and that he should never draw upon it, but leave it there for a nest-egg.”

Mrs. Mapping smiled in pity. “You may rely upon it that there’s not a shilling left of it. Money in his hands, when he can get hold of any, runs out of them like water.”

“Is it true that he travels for a wine house?”

“Yes—and no. It is his occupation, but he is continually throwing up his situations: pleasure has more attraction for him than work; and he will be a gentleman at large for months together. Yet not a more clever man of business exists than he is known to be, and he can get a place at any time.”

“Have you any children?” whispered Dolly.

“No. Shall you prosecute him?” continued the first wife, after a pause.

“Shall I—what?” cried Dolly, aghast.

“Prosecute him for the fraud he has committed on you?”

“Oh dear! the exposure would kill me,” shivered the unhappy girl. “I shall only hope to run away and hide myself forever.”

“Every syllable I have told you is truth,” said the stranger, producing a slip of paper as she rose to depart. “Here are two or three references by which you can verify it, if you doubt me. Mrs. Turk will do it for you if you do not care to stir in it yourself. Will you shake hands with me?”

Dolly assented, and burst into a whirlwind of tears.

Nothing seemed to be left for her, as she said, but to run away and hide herself. All the money was gone, and she was left penniless and helpless. By the aid of Mrs. Turk, who proved a good friend to her, she obtained a situation in a small preparatory school near Croydon, as needle-woman and companion to the mistress. She called herself Mrs. Mapping still, and continued to wear her wedding-ring; she did not know what else to do. She had been married; truly, as she had believed; and what had come of it was surely no fault of hers.

A little good fortune fell to her in time; a little bit. For years and years she remained in that school at Croydon, until, as it seemed to herself, she was middle-aged, and then themistress of it died. Having no relatives, she left her savings and her furniture to Dolly. With the money Dolly set up the house in Gibraltar Terrace, put the furniture into it, and began to let lodgings. A young woman, who had been teacher in the school, and whom Dolly regarded as her sister, and often called her so, removed to it with her and stayed with her until she married.

Those particulars—which we listened to one evening from her own lips—were gloomy enough. The Squire went into an explosion over Alick Mapping.

“The despicable villain! What has become of him?”

“I never saw him after his wife came to me,” she answered,“but Mrs. Turk would get news of him now and then. Since Mrs. Turk’s death, I have heard nothing. Sometimes I think he may be dead.”

“I hope he was hung!” flashed the Squire.

Well—to hasten on. That was Dorothy Grape’s history since she left Worcester; and a cruel one it was!

We saw her once or twice again before quitting London. And the Squire left a substantial present with her, for old remembrance sake.

“She looks as though she needed it, Johnny,” said he.“Poor thing! poor thing! And such a pretty, happy little maiden as she used to be, standing in her pinafore amongst the yellow roses in the porch at Islip! Johnny, lad, I hope that vagabond came to be hanged!”

II

It was ever so long afterwards, and the time had gone on by years, when we again fell into the thread of Dorothy Grape’s life. The Squire was in London for a few days upon some law business, and had brought me with him.

“I should like to see how that poor woman’s getting on, Johnny,” he said to me one morning. “Suppose we go down to Gibraltar Terrace?”

It was a dull, damp, misty day at the close of autumn; and when the Squire turned in at No. 60, after dismissing the cab,he stood still and stared, instead of knocking. A plate was on the door, “James Noak, carpenter and joiner.”

“Has she left, do you think, Johnny?”

“Well, sir, we can ask. Perhaps the carpenter is only lodging here?”

A tidy young woman, with a baby in her arms, answered the knock. “Does Mrs. Mapping live here still?” asked the Squire.

“No, sir,” she answered. “I don’t know the name.”

“Not know the name!” retorted he, turning crusty; for he disliked, of all things, to be puzzled or thwarted. “Mrs. Mapping lived here for ten or a dozen years, anyhow.”

“Oh, stay, sir,” she said, “I remember the name now. Mapping; yes, that was it. She lived here before we came in.”

“Is she dead?”

“No, sir. She was sold up.”

“Sold up?”

“Yes, sir. Her lodging-letting fell off—this neighbourhood’s not what it was: people like to get further up, Islington way—and she was badly off for a long while, could not pay her rent, or anything; so at last the landlord was obliged to sell her up. At least, that’s what we heard after we came here, but the house lay empty for some months between. I did not hear what became of her.”

The people at the next house could not tell anything; they were fresh-comers also; and the Squire stood in a quandary. I thought of Pitt the surgeon; he was sure to know; and ran off to his surgery in the next street.

Changes seemed to be everywhere. Pitt’s small surgery had given place to a chemist’s shop. The chemist stood behind his counter in a white apron. Pitt? Oh, Pitt had taken to a practice further off, and drove his brougham. “Mrs. Mapping?”added the chemist, in further answer to me. “Oh yes, she lives still in the same terrace. She came to grief at No. 60, poor woman, and lodges now at No. 32. Same side of the way; this end.”

No. 32 had a plate on the door: “Miss Kester, dressmaker,”and Miss Kester herself—a neat little woman, with a reserved, not to say sour, face and manner, and a cloud of pins sticking out of her brown waistband—answered the knock. She sent us up to a small back-room at the top of the house.

Mrs. Mapping sat sewing near a fireless grate, her bed in one corner; she looked very ill. I had thought her thin enough before; she was a shadow now. The blue eyes had a piteous look in them, the cheeks a hectic.

“Yes,” she said, in answer to the Squire, her voice faint and her cough catching her every other minute, “it was a sad misfortune for me to be turned out of my house; it nearly broke my heart. The world is full of trouble, sir.”

“How long is it since?”

“Nearly eighteen months, sir. Miss Kester had this room to let, and I came into it. It is quiet and cheap: only half-a-crown a-week.”

“And how do you get the half-crown?” questioned the Squire.“And your dinner and breakfast—how do you get that?”

Mrs. Mapping passed her trembling fingers across her brow before she answered—

“I’m sorry to have to tell of these things, sir. I’m sorry you have found me out in my poverty. When I think of the old days at home, the happy and plentiful days when poor mother was living, and what a different life mine might have been but for the dreadful marriage I made, I—I can hardly bear up against it. I’m sure I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for giving way.”

For the tears were streaming down her thin cheeks. The Squire set up a cough on his own account; I went to the window and looked down at some grimy back-gardens.

“When I am a little stronger, and able to do a full day’s work again, I shall get on, sir, but I’ve been ill lately through going out in the wet and catching cold,” she said, mastering the tears. “Miss Kester is very good in supplying me with as much as I can do.”

“A grand ‘getting on,’” cried the Squire. “You’d be all the better for some fire in that grate.”

“I might be worse off than I am,” she answered meekly.“If it is but little that I have, I am thankful for it.”

The Squire talked a while longer; then he put a sovereign into her hand, and came away with a gloomy look.

“She wants a bit of regular help,” said he. “A few shillings paid to her weekly while she gets up her strength might set hergoing again. I wonder if we could find any one to undertake it?”

“You would not leave it with herself in a lump, sir?”

“Why, no, I think not; she may have back debts, you see, Johnny, and be tempted to pay them with it; if so, practically it would be no good to her. Wish Pitt lived here still! Wonder if that Miss Kester might be trusted to—— There’s a cab, lad! Hail it.”

The next morning, when we were at breakfast at the hotel—which was not the Tavistock this time—the Squire burst into a state of excitement over his newspaper.

“Goodness me, Johnny! here’s the very thing.”

I wondered what had taken him, and what he meant; and for some time did not clearly understand. The Squire’s eyes had fallen upon an advertisement, and also a leading article, treating of some great philanthropic movement that had recently set itself up in London. Reading the articles, I gathered that it had for its object the distribution of alms on an extensive scale and the comprehensive relieving of the distressed. Some benevolent gentlemen (so far as we could understand the newspaper) had formed themselves into a band for taking the general welfare of the needy into their hands, and devoted their lives to looking after their poverty-stricken brothers and sisters. A sort of universal, benevolent, set-the-world-to-rights invention.

The Squire was in raptures. “If we had but a few more such good men in the world, Johnny! I’ll go down at once and shake their hands. If I lived in London, I’d join them.”

I could only laugh. Fancy the Squire going about from house to house with a bag of silver to relieve the needy!

Taking note of the office occupied by these good men, we made our way to it. Only two of them were present that morning: a man who looked like a clerk, for he had books and papers before him; and a thin gentleman in spectacles.

The Squire shook him by the hand at once, breaking into an ovation at the good deeds of the benevolent brotherhood, that should have made the spectacles before us, as belonging to a member of it, blush.

“Yes,” he said, his cool, calm tones contrasting with the Squire’s hot ones, “we intend to effect a work that has neveryet been attempted. Why, sir, by our exertions three parts of the complaints of hunger, and what not, will be done away with.”

The Squire folded his hands in an ecstasy of reverence.“That is, you will relieve it,” he remarked. “Bountiful Samaritans!”

“Relieve it, certainly—where the recipients are found to be deserving,” returned the other. “But non-deserving cases—impostors, ill-doers, and the like—will get punishment instead of relief, if we can procure it for them.”

“Quite right, too,” warmly assented the Squire. “Allow me to shake your hand again, sir. And you gentlemen are out every day upon this good work! Visiting from house to house!”

“Some of us are out every day; we devote our time to it.”

“And your money, too, of course!” exclaimed the Squire.“Listen, Johnny Ludlow,” he cried, turning to me, his red face glowing more and more with every word, “I hope you’ll take a lesson from this, my lad! Their time, and their money too!”

The thin gentleman cleared his throat. “Of course we cannot do all in the way of money ourselves,” he said; “some of us, indeed, cannot do anything in that way. Our operations are very large: a great deal is needed, and we have to depend upon a generous public for help.”

“By their making subscriptions to it?” cried the Squire.

“Undoubtedly.”

The Squire tugged at an inner pocket. “Here, Johnny, help me to get out my cheque-book.” And when it was out, he drew a cheque for ten pounds there and then, and laid it on the table.

“Accept this, sir,” he said, “and my praises with it. And now I should like to recommend to your notice a case myself—a most deserving one. Will you take it in hand?”

“Certainly.”

The Squire gave Mrs. Mapping’s address, telling briefly of her present distress and weakly state, and intimated that the best mode of relief would be to allow her a few shillings weekly.“You will be sure to see to her?” was his parting injunction.“She may starve if you do not.”

“Have no fear: it is our business to do so,” repeated the thin gentleman. “Good-day.”

“Johnny,” said the Squire, going up the street sideways in his excitement, “it is refreshing to hear of these self-denying deeds. These good men must be going on straight for heaven!”

“Take care, sir! Look where you are going.”

The Squire had not been going on straight himself just then, and had bumped up against a foot-passenger who was hurrying along. It was Pitt, the surgeon. After a few words of greeting, the Squire excused his flurry by telling him where he had come from.

“Been there!” exclaimed Pitt, bursting into a laugh. “Wish you joy, sir! We call it Benevolence Hall.”

“And a very good name, too,” said the Squire. “Such men ought to be canonized, Pitt.”

“Hope they will be?” answered Pitt in a curious kind of tone. “I can’t stop now, Mr. Todhetley; am on my way to a consultation.”

“He slips from one like an eel,” cried the Squire, looking after the doctor as he hurried onwards: “I might have spoken to him about Mrs. Mapping. But my mind is at ease with regard to her, Johnny, now that these charitable men have the case in hand: and we shall be up again in a few weeks.”

III

It was nearly two months before we were again in London, and winter weather: the same business, connected with a lawsuit, calling the Squire up.

“And now for Mrs. Mapping,” he said to me during the afternoon of the second day. So we went to Gibraltar Terrace.

“Yes, she is in her room,” said Miss Kester in a resentful tone, when she admitted us. “It is a good thing somebody’s come at last to see after her! I don’t care to have her alone here on my hands to die.”

“To die!” cried the Squire sharply, supposing the dressmaker spoke only in temper. “What is she dying of?”

“Starvation,” answered Miss Kester.

“Why, what on earth do you mean, ma’am?” demanded he.“Starvation!”

“I’ve done what I could for her, so far as a cup of tea might go, and a bit of bread-and-butter once a day, or perhaps a drop of broth,” ran on Miss Kester in the same aggrieved tone.“But it has been hard times with myself lately, and I have my old mother to keep and a bedridden sister. What she has wanted is a supply of nourishing food; and she has had as good as none of any sort since you were here, sir, being too weak to work: and so, rapid consumption set in.”

She whisked upstairs with the candle, for the short winter day was already closing, and we followed her. Mrs. Mapping sat in an old easy-chair, over a handful of fire, her thin cotton shawl folded round her: white, panting, attenuated, starved; and—there could not be much mistake about it—dying.

“Starved? dying? dear, dear!” ejaculated the Squire, backing to the other chair and sitting down in a sort of terror.“What has become of the good people at Benevolence Hall?”

“They!” cried Miss Kester contemptuously. “You don’t suppose those people would spend money to keep a poor woman from dying, do you, sir?”

“Why, it is their business to do it,” said the Squire. “I put Mrs. Mapping’s case into their hands, and they undertook to see to it.”

“To see to it, perhaps, sir, but not to relieve it; I should be surprised if they did that. One of them called here ever so many weeks ago and frightened Mrs. Mapping with his harsh questions; but he gave her nothing.”

“I don’t understand all this,” cried the Squire, rumpling his hair. “Was it a gentleman?”—turning to Mrs. Mapping.

“He was dressed as one,” she said, “but he was loud and dictatorial, almost as though he thought me a criminal instead of a poor sick woman. He asked me all kinds of questions about my past life, where I had lived and what I had done, and wrote down the answers.”

“Go on,” said the Squire, as she paused for breath.

“As they sent me no relief and did not come again, Miss Kester, after two or three weeks had gone by, was good enough to send a messenger to the place: her nephew. He saw thegentlemen there and told them I was getting weaker daily and was in dreadful need, if they would please to give me a trifle; he said he should never have thought of applying to them but for their having come to see after me. The gentlemen answered unfavourably; inquiries had been made, they sternly told him, and the case was found to be one not suitable for relief, that I did not deserve it. I—I—have never done anything wrong willingly,” sobbed the poor woman, breaking down.

“I don’t think she has, sir; she don’t seem like it; and I’m sure she struggled hard enough to get a living at No. 60,” said Miss Kester. “Any way, they did nothing for her—they’ve just left her to starve and die.”

I had seen the Squire in many a temper, but never in a worse than now. He flung out of the room, calling upon me to follow him, and climbed into the hansom that waited for us outside.

“To Benevolence Hall,” roared he, “and drive like the deuce.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man. “Where is Benevolence Hall?”

I gave him the address, and the man whirled us to Benevolence Hall in a very short time. The Squire leaped out and indoors, primed. In the office stood a young man, going over some accounts by gaslight. His flaxen hair was parted down the middle, and he looked uncommonly simple. The rest of the benevolent gentlemen had left for the day.

What the Squire said at first, I hardly know: I don’t think he knew himself. His words came tumbling out in a way that astonished the clerk.

“Mrs. Mapping,” cried the young man, when he could understand a little what the anger was about. “Your ten pounds?—meant for her, you say——”

“Yes, my ten pounds,” wrathfully broke in the Squire; “my ten-pound cheque that I paid down here on this very table. What have you done with it?”

“Oh, that ten pounds has been spent, partly so, at least, in making inquiries about the woman, looking-up her back history and all that. Looking-up the back lives of people takes a lot of money, you see.”

“But why did you not relieve her with it, or a portion of it?That is the question I’ve come to ask, young man, and I intend to have it answered.”

The young man looked all surprise. “Why, what an idea!”lisped he. “Our association does not profess to help sinners. That would be a go!”

“Sinners!”

“We can’t be expected to take up a sinner, you know—and she’s a topping one,” continued he, keeping just as cool as the Squire was hot. “We found out all sorts of dreadful things against the woman. The name, Mapping, is not hers, to begin with. She went to church with a man who had a living wife——”

“She didn’t,” burst in the Squire. “It was the man who went to church with her. And I hope with all my heart he came to be hanged!”

The clerk considered. “It comes to the same, doesn’t it?”said he, vaguely. “She did go to church with him; and it was ever so long before his proper wife found it out; and she has gone on calling herself Mapping ever since! And she managed so badly in a lodging-house she set up, that she was sold out of it for rent. Consider that! Oh, indeed, then, it is not on such people as these that our good gentlemen would waste their money.”

“What do they waste it on?” demanded the Squire.

“Oh, come now! They don’t waste it. They spend it.”

“What on? The sick and needy?”

“Well, you see, the object of this benevolent association is to discover who is deserving and who is not. When an applicant comes or sends for relief, representing that he is sick and starving, and all the rest of it, we begin by searching out his back sins and misfortunes. The chances are that a whole lot of ill turns up. If the case be really deserving, and—and white, you know, instead of black—we relieve it.”

“That is, you relieve about one case in a hundred, I expect?”stormed the Squire.

“Oh, now you can’t want me to go into figures,” said the clerk, in his simple way. “Anybody might know, if they’ve some knowledge of the world, that an out-and-out deserving case does not turn up often. Besides, our business is notrelief but inquiry. We do relieve sometimes, but we chiefly inquire.”

“Now look you here,” retorted the Squire. “Your object, inquiring into cases, may be a good one in the main and do some excellent service; I say nothing against it; but the public hold the impression that it is relief your association intends, not inquiry. Why is this erroneous impression not set to rights?”

“Oh, but our system is, I assure you, a grand one,” cried the young fellow. “It accomplishes an immense good.”

“And how much harm does it accomplish? Hold your tongue, young man! Put it that an applicant is sick, starving, dying, for want of a bit of aid in the shape of food, does your system give that bit of aid, just to keep body and soul together while it makes its inquiries—say only to the value of a few pence?”

The young fellow stared. “What a notion!” cried he. “Give help before finding out whether it ought to be given or not? That would be quite a Utopian way of fixing up the poor, that would.”

“And do you suppose I should have given my ten pounds, but for being misled, for being allowed to infer that it would be expended on the distressed?” stamped the Squire. “Not a shilling of it. No money of mine shall aid in turning poor helpless creatures inside out to expose their sins, as you call it. That’s not charity. What the sick and the famished want is a little kindly help—and the Bible enjoins us to give it.”

“But most of them are such a bad lot, you know,” remonstrated the young man.

“All the more need they should be helped,” returned the Squire; “they have bodies and souls to be saved, I suppose. Hold your silly tongue, I tell you. I should have seen to this poor sick woman myself, who is just as worthy as you are and your masters, but for their taking the case in hand. As it is she has been left to starve and die. Come along, Johnny! Benevolence Hall, indeed!”

Back to Gibraltar Terrace now, the Squire fretting and fuming. He was hot and hasty, as the world knows, given to saying anything that came uppermost, justifiable or the contrary: but in this affair it did seem that something or somebody must be wrong.

“Johnny,” said the Squire, as the cab bowled along, waking up out of a brown study, “it seems to me that this is a serious matter of conscience. It was last Sunday evening, wasn’t it, that you read the chapter in St. Matthew which tells of the last judgment?”

“Tod read it, sir. I read the one that followed it.”

“Any way, it was one of you. In that chapter Christ charges us to relieve the poor if we would be saved—the hungry and thirsty, the sick, the naked. Now, see here, lad: if I give my alms to this new society that has sprung up, and never a stiver of it to relieve the distress that lies around me, would the blame, rest on me, I wonder? Should I have to answer for it?”

It was too complicated a question for me. But just then we drew up at Miss Kester’s door.

Mrs. Mapping had changed in that short time. I thought she was dying, thought so as I looked at her. There was a death-shade on the wan face, never seen but when the world is passing away. The Squire saw it also.

“Yes,” said Miss Kester, gravely, in answer to his whisper.“I fear it is the end.”

“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire. And he was for ordering in pretty nearly every known restorative the shops keep, from turtle-soup to calves’-foot jelly. Miss Kester shook her head.

“Too late, sir; too late. A month ago it would have saved her. Now, unless I am very much mistaken, the end is at hand.”

Well, he was in a way. If gold and silver could revive the dying, she’d have had it. He sent me out to buy a bottle of port wine, and got Miss Kester’s little apprentice to run for the nearest doctor.

“Not rally again at all, you say! all stuff and nonsense,” he was retorting on Miss Kester when I returned. “Here’s the wine, at last! Now for a glass, Johnny.”

She sipped about a teaspoonful by degrees. The shade on her face was getting darker. Her poor thin fingers kept plucking at the cotton shawl.

“I have never done any harm that I knew of: at least, not wilfully,” she slowly panted, looking piteously at the Squire,evidently dwelling upon the accusation made by Benevolence Hall: and it had, Miss Kester said, troubled her frightfully.“I was only silly—and inexperienced—and—and believed in everybody. Oh, sir, it was hard!”

“I’d prosecute them if I could,” cried the Squire, fiercely.“There, there; don’t think about it any more; it’s all over.”

“Yes, it is over,” she sighed, giving the words a different meaning from his. “Over; over: the struggles and the disappointments, the privations and the pain. Only God sees what mine have been, and how I’ve tried to bear up in patience. Well, well; He knows best: and I think—I do think, sir—He will make it up to us in heaven. My poor mother thought the same when she was dying.”

“To be sure,” answered the Squire, soothingly. “One must be a heathen not to know that. Hang that set-the-world-to-rights company!” he muttered in a whisper.

“The bitterness of it all has left me,” she whispered, with pauses between the words for want of breath; “this world is fading from my sight, the world to come opening. Only this morning, falling asleep in the chair here, after the fatigue of getting up—and putting on my things—and coughing—I dreamt I saw the Saviour holding out His hand to welcome me, and I knew He was waiting to take me up to God. The clouds round about Him were rose colour; a light, as of gold, lay in the distance. Oh, how lovely it was! nothing but peace. Yes, yes, God will forgive all our trials and our shortcomings, and make it up to us there.”

The room had a curious hush upon it. It hardly seemed to be a living person speaking. Any way, she would not be living long.

“Another teaspoonful of wine, Johnny,” whispered the Squire.“Dear, dear! Where on earth can that doctor be?”

I don’t believe a drop of it went down her throat. Miss Kester wiped away the damp from her brow. A cough took her; and afterwards she lay back again in the chair.

“Do you remember the yellow roses in the porch,” she murmured, speaking, as must be supposed, to the Squire, but her eyes were closed: “how the dew on them used to glisten again in the sun on a summer’s morning? I was picking such ahandful of them last night—beautiful roses, they were; sweet and beautiful as the flowers we shall pick in heaven.”

The doctor came upstairs, his shoes creaking. It was Pitt. Pitt! The girl had met him by chance, and told him what was amiss.

“Ah,” said he, bending over the chair, “you have called me too late. I should have been here a month or two ago.”

“She is dying of starvation,” whispered the Squire. “All that money—ten pounds—which I handed over to that blessed fraternity, and they never gave her a sixpence of it—after assuring me they’d see to her!”

“Ah,” said Pitt, his mouth taking a comical twist. “They meant they’d see after her antecedents, I take it, not her needs. Quite a blessed fraternity, I’m sure, as you say, Squire.”

He turned away to Mrs. Mapping. But nothing could be done for her; even the Squire, with all his impetuosity, saw that. Never another word did she speak, never another recognizing gaze did she give. She just passed quietly away with a sigh as we stood looking at her; passed to that blissful realm we are all travelling to, and which had been the last word upon her lips—Heaven.

And that is the true story of Dorothy Grape.

LADY JENKINS.

MINA.

I

“Had I better go? I should like to.”

“Go! why of course you had better go,” answered the Squire, putting down the letter.

“It will be the very thing for you, Johnny,” added Mrs. Todhetley.“We were saying yesterday that you ought to have a change.”

I had not been well for some time; not strong. My old headaches stuck to me worse than usual; Duffham complained that the pulse was feeble. Therefore a letter from Dr. Knox of Lefford, pressing me to go and stay with them, seemed to have come on purpose. Janet had added a postscript: “You mustcome, Johnny Ludlow, if it is only to see my two babies, and you must not think of staying less than a month.” Tod was from home, visiting in Leicestershire.

Three days, and I was off, bag and baggage. To Worcester first, and then onwards again, direct for Lefford. The very journey seemed to do me good. It was a lovely spring day: the hedges were bursting into bud; primroses and violets nestled in the mossy banks.

You have not forgotten, I dare say, how poor Janet Carey’s hard life, her troubles, and the sickness those troubles brought, culminated in a brave ending when Arnold Knox, of Lefford, made her his wife. Some five years had elapsed since then, and we were all of us that much older. They had asked me to visit them over and over again, but until now I had not done it. Mr. Tamlyn, Arnold’s former master and present partner, with whomthey lived, was growing old; he only attended to a few of the old patients now.

It was a cross-grained kind of route, and much longer than it need have been could we have gone straight as a bird flies. The train made all sorts of detours, and I had to change no less than three times. For the last few miles I had had the carriage to myself, but at Toome Junction, the last station before Lefford, a gentleman got in: a rather elderly man with grey hair. Not a syllable did we say, one to another—Englishmen like—and at length Lefford was gained.

“In to time exactly,” cried this gentleman then, peering out at the gas-lighted station. “The clock’s on the stroke of eight.”

Getting my portmanteau, I looked about for Dr. Knox’s brougham, which would be waiting for me, and soon pitched upon one, standing near the flys. But my late fellow-passenger strode on before me.

“I thought I spied you out, Wall,” he said to the coachman.“Quite a chance your being here, I suppose?”

“I’m waiting for a gentleman from Worcester, sir,” answered the man, looking uncommonly pleased, as he touched his hat.“Dr. Knox couldn’t come himself.”

“Well, I suppose you can take me as well as the gentleman from Worcester,” answered the other, as he turned from patting the old horse, and saw me standing there. And we got into the carriage.

It proved to be Mr. Shuttleworth, he who had been old Tamlyn’s partner for a short time, and had married his sister. Tamlyn’s people did not know he was coming to-night, he told me. He was on his way to a distant place, to see a relative who was ill; by making a round of it, he could take Lefford, and drop in at Mr. Tamlyn’s for the night—and was doing so.

Janet came running to the door, Mr. Tamlyn walking slowly behind her. He had a sad countenance, and scanty grey hair, and looked ever so much older than his actual years. Since his son died, poor Bertie, life’s sunshine had gone out for him. Very much surprised were they to see Mr. Shuttleworth as well as me.

Janet gave us a sumptuous high-tea, pouring out unlimitedcups of tea and pressing us to eat of all the good things. Except that she had filled out a little from the skeleton she was, and looked as joyous now as she had once looked sad, I saw little difference in her. Her boy, Arnold, was aged three and a half: the little girl, named Margaret, after Miss Deveen, could just walk.

“Never were such children in all the world before, if you listen to Janet,” cried old Tamlyn, looking at her fondly—for he had learnt to love Janet as he would a daughter—and she laughed shyly and blushed.

“You don’t ask after mine,” put in Mr. Shuttleworth, quaintly; “my one girl. She is four years old now. Such a wonder! such a paragon! other babies are nothing to it; so Bessy says. Bessy is silly over that child, Tamlyn.”

Old Tamlyn just shook his head. They suddenly remembered the one only child he had lost, and changed the subject.

“And what about everything!” asked Mr. Shuttleworth, lighting a cigar, as we sat round the fire after our repast, Janet having gone out to see to a room for Shuttleworth, or perhaps to contemplate her sleeping babies. “I am glad you have at last given up the parish work.”

“There’s enough to do without it; the practice increases daily,” cried Tamlyn. “Arnold is much liked.”

“How are all the old patients?”

“That is a comprehensive question,” smiled Tamlyn. “Some are flourishing, and some few are, of course, dead.”

“Is Dockett with you still?”

“No. Dockett is in London at St. Thomas’s. Sam Jenkins is with us in his place. A clever young fellow; worth two of Dockett.”

“Who is Sam Jenkins?”

“A nephew of Lady Jenkins—you remember her? At least, of her late husband’s.”

“I should think I do remember Lady Jenkins,” laughed Shuttleworth. “How is she? Flourishing about the streets as usual in that red-wheeled carriage of hers, dazzling as the rising sun?”

“Lady Jenkins is not well,” replied Tamlyn, gravely. “She gives me some concern.”

“In what way does she give you concern?”

“Chiefly because I can’t find out what it is that’s amiss with her?”

“Has she been ill long?”

“For some months now. She is not very ill: goes out in her carriage to dazzle the town, as you observe, and has her regular soirées at home. But I don’t like her symptoms: I don’t understand them, and they grow worse. She has never been well, really well, since that French journey.”

“What French journey?”

“At the end of last summer, my Lady Jenkins must needs get it into her head that she should like to see Paris. Stupid old thing, to go all the way to France for the first time in her life! She did go, taking Mina Knox with her—who is growing up as pretty a girl as you’d wish to see. And, by the way, Shuttleworth, Mina is in luck. She has had a fortune left her. An old gentleman, not related to them at all, except that he was Mina’s godfather, left her seven thousand pounds last year in his will. Arnold is trustee.”

“I am glad of it. Little Mina and I used to be great friends. Her mother is as disagreeable as ever, I suppose?”

“As if she’d ever change from being that!” returned Tamlyn.“I have no patience with her. She fritters away her own income, and then comes here and worries Arnold’s life out with her embarrassments. He does for her more than I should do. Educates young Dicky, for one thing.”

“No doubt. Knox always had a soft place in his heart. But about Lady Jenkins?”

“Lady Jenkins went over to Paris with her maid, taking Mina as her companion. It was in August. They stayed three weeks there, racketing about to all kinds of show-places, and overdoing it, of course. When they arrived at Boulogne on their way back, expecting to cross over at once, they found they had to wait. A gale was raging, and the boats could not get out. So they put up at an hotel there; and, that night, Lady Jenkins was taken alarmingly ill—the journey and the racketing and the French living had been too much for her. Young people can stand these things, Johnny Ludlow; old ones can’t,”added Tamlyn, looking at me across the hearth.

“Very true, sir. How old is Lady Jenkins?”

“Just seventy. But you wouldn’t have thought her so much before that French journey. Until then she was a lively, active, bustling woman, with a good-natured, pleasant word for every one. Now she is weary, dull, inanimate; seems to be, half her time, in a sort of lethargy.”

“What was the nature of the illness?” asked Shuttleworth.“A seizure?”

“No, nothing of that sort. I’m sure I don’t know what it was,” added old Tamlyn, rubbing back his scanty grey hair in perplexity. “Any way, they feared she was going to die. The French doctor said her getting well was a miracle. She lay ill ten days, keeping her bed, and was still ill and very weak when she reached home. Mina believes that a lady who was detained at the same hotel by the weather, and who came forward and offered her services as nurse, saved Lady Jenkins’s life. She was so kind and attentive; never going to her bed afterwards until Lady Jenkins was up from hers. She came home with them.”

“Who did? This lady?”

“Yes; and has since remained with Lady Jenkins as companion. She is a Madame St. Vincent; a young widow——”

“A Frenchwoman!” exclaimed Mr. Shuttleworth.

“Yes; but you wouldn’t think it. She speaks English just as we do, and looks English. A very nice, pleasant young woman; as kind and loving to Lady Jenkins as though she were her daughter. I am glad they fell in with her. She—— Oh, is it you, Sam?”

A tall smiling young fellow of eighteen, or so, had come in. It was Sam Jenkins: and, somehow, I took to him at once. Mr. Shuttleworth shook hands and said he was glad to hear he promised to be a second Abernethy. Upon which Sam’s wide mouth opened in laughter, showing a set of nice teeth.

“I thought Dr. Knox was here, sir,” he said to Mr. Tamlyn, as if he would apologize for entering.

“Dr. Knox is gone over to the Brook, but I should think he’d be back soon now. Why? Is he wanted?”

“Only a message, sir, from old Willoughby’s. They’d like him to call there as soon as convenient in the morning.”

“Now, Sam, don’t be irreverent,” reproved his master. “Old Willoughby! I should say Mr. Willoughby if I were you. He is no older than I am. You young men of the present day are becoming very disrespectful; it was different in my time.”

Sam laughed pleasantly. Close upon that, Dr. Knox came in. He was more altered than Janet, looking graver and older, his light hair as wild as ever. He was just thirty now.

Mr. Shuttleworth left in the morning, and afterwards Dr. Knox took me to see his step-mother. Her house (but it was his house, not hers), Rose Villa, was in a suburb of the town, called the London Road. Mrs. Knox was a dark, unpleasing-looking woman; her voice harsh, her crinkled black hair untidy—it was never anything else in a morning. The two eldest girls were in the room. Mina was seventeen, Charlotte twelve months younger. Mina was the prettiest; a fair girl with a mild face and pleasant blue eyes, her manner and voice as quiet as her face. Charlotte seemed rather strong-minded.

“Are you going to the soirée next door to-night, Arnold?”cried Mrs. Knox, as we were leaving.

“I think not,” he answered. “Janet wrote to decline.”

“You wished her to decline, I dare say!” retorted Mrs. Knox.“You always did despise the soirées, Arnold.”

Dr. Knox laughed pleasantly. “I have never had much time for soirées,” he said; “and Janet does not care for them. Besides, we think it unkind to leave Mr. Tamlyn alone.” At which latter remark Mrs. Knox tossed her head.

“I must call on Lady Jenkins, as I am up here,” observed Dr. Knox to me, when we were leaving. “You don’t mind, do you, Johnny?”

“I shall like it. They were talking about her last night.”

It was only a few yards higher up. A handsome dwelling, double the size of Rose Villa, with two large iron gates flanked by imposing pillars, on which was written in gold letters, as large as life, “Jenkins House.”

Dr. Knox laughed. “Sir Daniel Jenkins re-christened it that,” he said, dropping his voice, lest any ears should be behind the open windows: “it used to be called ‘Rose Bank.’ They moved up here four years ago; he was taken ill soon afterwards and died, leaving nearly all his money to his wife unconditionally:it is over four thousand a-year. He was in business as a drysalter, and was knighted during the time he was mayor.”

“Who will come in for the money?”

“That is as Lady Jenkins pleases. There are lots of relations, Jenkinses. Sir Daniel partly brought up two orphan nephews—at least, he paid for their schooling and left each a little money to place them out in life. You have seen the younger of them, Sam, who is with us; the other, Dan, is articled to a solicitor in the town, old Belford. Two other cousins are in the drysalting business; and the ironmonger, Sir Daniel’s youngest brother, left several sons and daughters. The old drysalter had no end of nephews and nieces, and might have provided for them all. Perhaps his widow will do so.”

Not possessing the faintest idea of what “drysalting” might be, unless it had to do with curing hams, I was about to inquire, when the house-door was thrown open by a pompous-looking gentleman in black—the butler—who showed us into the dining-room, where Lady Jenkins was sitting. I liked her at first sight. She was short and stout, and had pink cheeks and a pink turned-up nose, and wore a “front” of flaxen curls, surmounted by a big smart cap with red roses and blue ribbons in it; but there was not an atom of pretence about her, and her blue eyes were kindly. She took the hands of Dr. Knox in hers, and she shook mine warmly, saying she had heard of Johnny Ludlow.

Turning from her, I caught the eyes of a younger lady fixed upon me. She looked about seven-and-twenty, and wore a fashionable black-and-white muslin gown. Her hair was dark, her eyes were a reddish brown, her cheeks had a fixed bloom upon them. The face was plain, and it struck me that I had seen it somewhere before. Dr. Knox greeted her as Madame St. Vincent.

When we first went in, Lady Jenkins seemed to wake up from a doze. In two minutes she had fallen into a doze again, or as good as one. Her eyelids drooped, she sat perfectly quiet, never speaking unless spoken to, and her face wore a sort of dazed, or stupid look. Madame St. Vincent talked enough for both of them; she appealed frequently to Lady Jenkins—“Was it not so, dear Lady Jenkins?”—or “Don’t you remember that,dear Lady Jenkins?” and Lady Jenkins docilely answered “Yes, dear,” or “Yes, Patty.”

That Madame St. Vincent was a pleasant woman, as Mr. Tamlyn had said, and that she spoke English as we did, as he had also said, there could not be a doubt. Her tongue could not be taken for any but a native tongue; moreover, unless my ears deceived me, it was native Worcestershire. Ever and anon, too, a homely word would be dropped by her in the heat of conversation that belonged to Worcestershire proper, and to no other county.

“You will come to my soirée this evening, Mr. Ludlow,” Lady Jenkins woke up to say to me as we were leaving.

“Johnny can come; I dare say he would like to,” put in Dr. Knox; “although I and Janet cannot——”

“Which is very churlish of you,” interposed Madame St. Vincent.

“Well, you know what impediments lie in our way,” he said, smiling. “Sam can come up with Johnny, if you like, Lady Jenkins.”

“To be sure; let Sam come,” she answered, readily. “How is Sam? and how does he get on?”

“He is very well, and gets on well.”

Dr. Knox walked down the road in silence, looking grave.“Every time I see her she seems to me more altered,” he observed presently, and I found he was speaking of Lady Jenkins. “Something is amiss with her, and I cannot tell what. I wish Tamlyn would let me take the case in hand!”

Two peculiarities obtained at Lefford. The one was that the universal dinner hour, no-matter how much you might go in for fashion, was in the middle of the day; the other was that every evening gathering, no matter how unpretentious, was invariably called a “soirée.” They were the customs of the town.

The soirée was in full swing when I reached Jenkins House that night—at six o’clock. Madame St. Vincent and Charlotte Knox sat behind the tea-table in a cloud of steam, filling the cups as fast as the company emptied them; a footman, displaying large white calves, carried round a tray of bread-and-butter and cake. Lady Jenkins sat near the fire in an easy-chair, wearing a red velvet gown and lofty turban. She nodded to the people as they came in, and smiled at them with quite a silly expression. Mina and Charlotte Knox were in white muslin and pink roses. Mina looked very pretty indeed, and as mild as milk; Charlotte was downright and strong-minded. Every five minutes or so, Madame St. Vincent—the white streamers on her rich black silk dress floating behind her—would leave the tea-table to run up to Lady Jenkins and ask if she wanted anything. Sam had not come with me: he had to go out unexpectedly with Dr. Knox.

“Mr. Jenkins,” announced the pompous butler, showing in a tall young fellow of twenty. He had just the same sort of honest, good-natured face that had taken my fancy in Sam, and I guessed that this was his brother, the solicitor. He came up to Lady Jenkins.

“How do you do, aunt?” he said, bending to kiss her. “Hearing of your soirée to-night, I thought I might come.”

“Why, my dear, you know you may come; you are always welcome. Which is it?” she added, looking up at him stupidly,“Dan, or Sam?”

“It is Dan,” he answered; and if ever I heard pain in a tone, I heard it in his.

“You are Johnny Ludlow, I know!” he said, holding out his hand to me in the warmest manner, as he turned from his aunt.“Sam told me about you this morning.” And we were friends from that moment.

Dan brought himself to an anchor by Mina Knox. He was no beauty certainly, but he had a good face. Leaning over Mina’s chair, he began whispering to her—and she whispered back again. Was there anything between them? It looked like it—at any rate, on his side—judging by his earnest expression and the loving looks that shot from his honest grey eyes.

“Are you really French?” I asked of Madame St. Vincent, while standing by her side to drink some tea.

“Really,” she answered, smiling. “Why?”

“Because you speak English exactly like ourselves.”

“I speak it better than I do French,” she candidly said.“My mother was English, and her old maid-servant was English, and they educated me between them. It was my father who was French—and he died early.”

“Was your mother a native of Worcestershire?”

“Oh dear, no: she came from Wales. What made you think of such a thing?”

“Your accent is just like our Worcestershire accent. I am Worcestershire myself: and I could have thought you were.”

She shook her head. “Never was there in my life, Mr. Ludlow. Is that why you looked at me so much when you were here with Dr. Knox this morning?”

“No: I looked at you because your face struck me as being familiar,” I frankly said: “I thought I must have seen you somewhere before. Have I, I wonder?”

“Very likely—if you have been much in the South of France,”she answered: “at a place called Brétage.”

“But I have never been at Brétage.”

“Then I don’t see how we can have met. I have lived there all my life. My father and mother died there: my poor husband died there. I only came away from it last year.”

“It must be my fancy, I suppose. One does see likenesses——”

“Captain Collinson,” shouted the butler again.

A military-looking man, got up in the pink of fashion, loomed in with a lordly air; you’d have said the room belonged to him. At first he seemed all hair: bushy curls, bushy whiskers, a moustache, and a fine flowing beard, all purple black. Quite a flutter stirred the room: Captain Collinson was evidently somebody.

After making his bow to Lady Jenkins, he distributed his favours generally, shaking hands with this person, talking with that. At last he turned our way.

“Ah, how do you do, madame?” he said to Madame St. Vincent, his tone ceremonious. “I fear I am late.”

It was not a minute that he stood before her, only while he said this: but, strange to say, something in his face or voice struck upon my memory. The face, as much as could be seen of it for hair, seemed familiar to me—just as madame’s had seemed.

“Who is he?” I whispered to her, following him with my eyes.

“Captain Collinson.”

“Yes, I heard the name. But—do you know anything of him?—who he is?”

She shook her head. “Not much; nothing of my own knowledge. He is in an Indian regiment, and is home on sick leave.”

“I wonder which regiment it is? One of our fellows at Dr. Frost’s got appointed to one in Madras, I remember.”

“The 30th Bengal Cavalry, is Captain Collinson’s. By his conversation, he appears to have spent nearly the whole of his life in India. It is said he is of good family, and has a snug private fortune. I don’t know any more about him than that,”concluded Madame St. Vincent, as she once more rose to go to Lady Jenkins.

“He may have a snug private fortune, and he may have family, but I do not like him,” put in Charlotte Knox, in her decisive manner.

“Neither do I, Lotty,” added Dan—who was then at the tea-table: and his tone was just as emphatic as Charlotte’s.

He had come up for a cup of tea for Mina. Before he could carry it to her, Captain Collinson had taken up the place he had occupied at Mina’s elbow, and was whispering to her in a most impressive manner. Mina seemed all in a flutter—and there was certainly no further room for Dan.

“Don’t you want it now, Mina?” asked Dan, holding the cup towards her, and holding it in vain, for she was too much occupied to see it.

“Oh, thank you—no—I don’t think I do want it now. Sorry you should have had the trouble.”

Her words were just as fluttered as her manner. Dan brought the tea back and put it on the tray.

“Of course, she can’t spare time to drink tea while he is there,” cried Charlotte, resentfully, who had watched what passed. “That man has bewitched her, Dan.”

“Not quite yet, I think,” said Dan, quietly. “He is trying to do it. There is no love lost between you and him, I see, Lotty.”

“Not a ghost of it,” nodded Lotty. “The town may be going wild in its admiration of him, but I am not; and the sooner he betakes himself back to India to his regiment, the better.”

“I hope he will not take Mina with him,” said Dan, gravely.

“I hope not, either. But she is silly enough for anything.”

“Who is that, that’s silly enough for anything?” cried Madame St. Vincent, whisking back to her place.

“Mina,” promptly replied Charlotte. “She asked for a cup of tea, and then said she did not want it.”

Some of the people sat down to cards; some to music; some talked. It was the usual routine at these soirées, Mrs. Knox condescended to inform me—and, what more, she added, could be wished for? Conversation, music, and cards—they were the three best diversions of life, she said, not that she herself much cared for music.

Poor Lady Jenkins did not join actively in any one of the three: she for the most part dozed in her chair. When any one spoke to her, she would wake up and say Yes or No; but that was all. Captain Collinson stood in a corner, talking to Mina behind a sheet of music. He appeared to be going over the bars with her, and to be as long doing it as if a whole opera were scored there.

At nine o’clock the supper-room was thrown open, and Captain Collinson handed in Lady Jenkins. Heavy suppers were not the mode at Lefford; neither, as a rule, did the guests sit down, except a few of the elder ones; but the table was covered with dainties. Sandwiches, meats in jelly, rissoles, lobster salad, and similar things that could be eaten with a fork, were supplied in abundance, with sweets and jellies.

“I hope you’ll be able to make a supper, my dear,” said Lady Jenkins to me in her comfortable way—for supper seemed to wake her up. “You see, if one person began to give a grand sitting-down supper, others would think themselves obliged to do it, and every one can’t afford that. So we all confine ourselves to this.”

“And I like this best,” I said.

“Do you, my dear? I’m glad of that. Dan, is that you? Mind you make a good supper too.”

We both made a famous one. At least, I can answer for myself. And, at half-past ten, Dan and I departed together.

“How very good-natured Lady Jenkins seems to be!” I remarked.

“She is good-nature itself, and always was,” Dan warmlyanswered. “She has never been a bit different from what you see her to-night—kind to us all. You should have known her though in her best days, before she grew ill. I never saw any one so altered.”

“What is it that’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know,” answered Dan. “I wish I did know. Sam tells me Tamlyn does not know. I’m afraid he thinks it is the break-up of old age. I should be glad, though, if she did not patronize that fellow Collinson so much.”

“Every one seems to patronize him.”

“Or to let him patronize them,” corrected Dan. “I can’t like the fellow. He takes too much upon himself.”

“He seems popular. Quite the fashion.”

“Yes, he is that. Since he came here, three or four months ago, the women have been running after him. Do you like him, Johnny Ludlow?” abruptly added Dan.

“I hardly know whether I do or not: I’ve not seen much of him,” was my answer. “As a rule, I don’t care for those people who take much upon themselves. The truth is, Dan,” I laughed jokingly, “you think Collinson shows too much attention to Mina Knox.”

Dan walked on for a few moments in silence. “I am not much afraid of that,” he presently said. “It is the fellow himself I don’t like.”

“And you do like Mina?”

“Well—yes; I do. If Mina and I were older and my means justified it, I would make her my wife to-morrow—I don’t mind telling you so much. And if the man is after her, it is for the sake of her money, mind, not for herself. I’m sure of it. I can see.”

“I thought Collinson had plenty of money of his own.”

“So he has, I believe. But money never comes amiss to an extravagant and idle man; and I think that Mina’s money makes her attraction in Collinson’s eyes. I wish with all my heart she had never had it left her!” continued Dan, energetically.“What did Mina want with seven thousand pounds?”

“I dare say you would not object to it, with herself.”

“I’d as soon not have it. I hope I shall make my way in my profession, and make it well, and I would as soon take Minawithout money as with it. I’m sure her mother might have it and welcome, for me! She is always hankering after it.”

“How do you know she is?”

“We do her business at old Belford’s, and she gets talking about the money to him, making no scruple of openly wishing it was hers. She bothers Dr. Knox, who is Mina’s trustee, to lend her some of it. As if Knox would!—she might just as well go and bother the moon. No! But for that confounded seven thousand pounds Collinson would let Mina alone.”

I shook my head. He could not know it. Mina was very pretty. Dan saw my incredulity.

“I will tell you why I judge so,” he resumed, dropping his voice to a lower key. “Unless I am very much mistaken, Collinson likes some one else—and that’s Madame St. Vincent. Sam thinks so too.”

It was more than I thought. They were cool to one another.

“But we have seen them when no one else was by,” contended Dan: “when he and she were talking together alone. And I can tell you that there was an expression on his face, an anxiousness, an eagerness—I hardly know how to word it—that it never wore for Mina. Collinson’s love is given to madame. Rely upon that.”

“Then why should he not declare it?”

“Ah, I don’t know. There may be various reasons. Her poverty perhaps—for she has nothing but the salary Lady Jenkins pays her. Or, he may not care to marry one who is only a companion: they say he is of good family himself. Another reason, and possibly the most weighty one, may be, that madame does not like him.”

“I don’t think she does like him.”

“I am sure she does not. She gives him angry looks, and she turns away from him with ill-disguised coldness. And so, that’s about how the state of affairs lies up there,” concluded Dan, shaking hands with me as we reached the door of his lodgings. “Captain Collinson’s love is given to Madame St. Vincent, on the one hand, and to Mina’s money on the other; and I think he is in a pretty puzzle which of the two to choose. Good-night, Johnny Ludlow. Be sure to remember this is only between ourselves.”

II

A week or so passed on. Janet was up to her eyes in preparations, expecting a visitor. And the visitor was no other than Miss Cattledon—if you have not forgotten her. Being fearfully particular in all ways, and given to fault-finding, as poor Janet only too well remembered, of course it was necessary to have things in apple-pie order.

“I should never hear the last of it as long as Aunt Jemima stayed, if so much as a speck of dust was in any of the rooms, or a chair out of place,” said Janet to me laughingly, as she and the maids dusted and scrubbed away.

“What’s she coming for, Janet?”

“She invited herself,” replied Janet: “and indeed we shall be glad to see her. Miss Deveen is going to visit some friends in Devonshire, and Aunt Jemima takes the opportunity of coming here the while. I am sorry Arnold is so busy just now. He will not have much time to give to her—and she likes attention.”

The cause of Dr. Knox’s increased occupation, was Mr. Tamlyn’s illness. For the past few days he had had feverish symptoms, and did not go out. Few medical men would have found the indisposition sufficiently grave to remain at home; but Mr. Tamlyn was an exception. He gave in at the least thing now: and it was nothing at all unusual for Arnold Knox to find all the patients thrown on his own hands.

Amongst the patients so thrown this time was Lady Jenkins. She had caught cold at that soirée I have just told of. Going to the door in her old-fashioned, hospitable way, to speed the departure of the last guests, she had stayed there in the draught, talking, and began at once to sneeze and cough.

“There!” cried Madame St. Vincent, when my lady got back again, “you have gone and caught a chill.”

“I think I have,” admitted Lady Jenkins. “I’ll send for Tamlyn in the morning.”

“Oh, my dear Lady Jenkins, we shall not want Tamlyn,”dissented madame. “I’ll take care of you myself, and have you well in no time.”

But Lady Jenkins, though very much swayed by her kind companion, who was ever anxious for her, chose to have up Mr. Tamlyn, and sent him a private message herself.

He went up at once—evidently taking madame by surprise—and saw his patient. The cold, being promptly treated, turned out to be a mere nothing, though Madame St. Vincent insisted on keeping the sufferer some days in bed. By the time Mr. Tamlyn was ill, she was well again, and there was not much necessity for Dr. Knox to take her: at least, on the score of her cold. But he did it.

One afternoon, when he was going up there late, he asked me if I would like the drive. And, while he paid his visit to Lady Jenkins, I went in to Rose Villa. It was a fine, warm afternoon, almost like summer, and Mrs. Knox and the girls were sitting in the garden. Dicky was there also. Dicky was generally at school from eight o’clock till six, but this was a half-holiday. Dicky, eleven years old now, but very little for his age, was more troublesome than ever. Just now he was at open war with his two younger sisters and Miss Mack, the governess, who had gone indoors to escape him.

Leaning against the trunk of a tree, as he talked to Mrs. Knox, Mina, and Charlotte, stood Captain Collinson, the rays of the sun, now drawing westward, shining full upon him, bringing out the purple gloss of his hair, whiskers, beard, and moustache deeper than usual. Captain Collinson incautiously made much of Dicky, had told him attractive stories of the glories of war, and promised him a commission when he should be old enough. The result was, that Dicky had been living in the seventh heaven, had bought himself a tin sword, and wore it strapped to his waist, dangling beneath his jacket. Dicky, wild to be a soldier, worshipped Captain Collinson as the prince of heroes, and followed him about like a shadow. An inkling of this ambition of Dicky’s, and of Captain Collinson’s promise, had only reached Mrs. Knox’s ears this very afternoon. It was a ridiculous promise of course, worth nothing, but Mrs. Knox took it up seriously.

“A commission for Dicky!—get Dicky a commission!” she exclaimed in a flutter that set her bracelets jangling, just as I arrived on the scene. “Why, what can you mean, CaptainCollinson? Do you think I would have Dicky made into a soldier—to be shot at? Never. He is my only son. How can you put such ideas into his head?”

“Don’t mind her,” cried Dicky, shaking the captain’s coat-tails.“I say, captain, don’t you mind her.”

Captain Collinson turned to young Dicky, and gave him a reassuring wink. Upon which, Dicky went strutting over the grass-plat, brandishing his sword. I shook hands with Mrs. Knox and the girls, and, turning to salute the captain, found him gone.

“You have frightened him away, Johnny Ludlow,” cried Charlotte: but she spoke in jest.

“He was already going,” said Mina. “He told me he had an engagement.”

“And a good thing too,” spoke Mrs. Knox, crossly. “Fancy his giving dangerous notions to Dicky!”

Dicky had just discovered our loss. He came shrieking back to know where the captain was. Gone away for good, his mother told him. Upon which young Dicky plunged into a fit of passion and kicking.

“Do you know how Lady Jenkins is to-day?” I asked of Charlotte, when Dicky’s noise had been appeased by a promise of cold apple-pudding for tea.

“Not so well.”

“Not so well! I had thought of her as being much better.”

“I don’t think her so,” continued Charlotte. “Madame St. Vincent told Mina this morning that she was all right; but when I went in just now she was in bed and could hardly answer me.”

“Is her cold worse?”

“No; I think that is gone, or nearly so. She seemed dazed—stupid, more so than usual.”

“I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months,” spoke Mrs. Knox.“She is not like the same woman.”

“I’m sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!”said Mina. “She has never been well since. Oh, here’s Arnold!”

Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from JenkinsHouse. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour—which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids—the doctor ordered him to keep at arm’s-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky.

“You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold,” said his step-mother.“How is she?”

“Nothing much to boast of,” lightly answered Dr. Knox.“Johnny, are you ready?”

“I am going to be a soldier, Arnold,” put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. “Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself.”

“All right,” said Arnold. “You must grow a little bigger first.”

“And, Arnold, the captain says—— Oh, my!” broke off Dicky, “what’s this? What have I found?”

The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson’s, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky.

“I’ll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins’s,” said Dicky.

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir,” corrected his mother, taking the key from him: she had been thoroughly put out by the suggestion of the “commission.”

“Should you chance to see the captain when you go out,” she added to me, “tell him his watch-key is here.”

The phaeton waited outside. It was the oldest thing I ever saw in regard to fashion, and might have been in the firm hundreds of years. Its hood could be screwed up and down at will; just as the perch behind, where Thomas, the groom, generally sat, could be closed or opened. I asked Dr. Knox whether it had been built later than the year One.

“Just a little, I suppose,” he answered, smiling. “This vehicle was Dockett’s special aversion. He christened it the‘conveyance,’ and we have mostly called it so since.”

We were about to step into it, when Madame St. Vincent came tripping out of the gate up above. Dr. Knox met her.

“I was sorry not to have been in the way when you left,doctor,” she said to him in a tone of apology: “I had gone to get the jelly for Lady Jenkins. Do tell me what you think of her?”

“She does not appear very lively,” he answered; “but I can’t find out that she is in any pain.”

“I wish she would get better!—she does give me so much concern,” warmly spoke madame. “Not that I think her seriously ill, myself. I’m sure I do everything for her that I possibly can.”

“Yes, yes, my dear lady, you cannot do more than you do,”replied Arnold. “I will be up in better time to-morrow.”

“Is Captain Collinson here?” I stayed behind Dr. Knox to ask.

“Captain Collinson here!” returned Madame St. Vincent, tartly, as if the question offended her. “No, he is not. What should bring Captain Collinson here?”

“I thought he might have called in upon leaving Mrs. Knox’s. I only wished to tell him that he dropped his watch-key next door. It was found on the grass.”

“I don’t know anything of his movements,” coldly remarked madame. And as I ran back to Dr. Knox, I remembered what Dan Jenkins had said—that she did not like the captain. And I felt Dan was right.

Dr. Knox drove home in silence, I sitting beside him, and Thomas in the perch. He looked very grave, like a man preoccupied. In passing the railway-station, I made some remark about Miss Cattledon, who was coming by the train then on its way; but he did not appear to hear me.

Sam Jenkins ran out as we drew up at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate. An urgent message had come for Dr. Knox: some one taken ill at Cooper’s—at the other end of the town.

“Mr. Tamlyn thinks you had better go straight on there at once, sir,” said Sam.

“I suppose I must,” replied the doctor. “It is awkward, though”—pulling out his watch. “Miss Cattledon will be due presently and Janet wanted me to meet her,” he added to me.“Would you do it, Johnny?”

“What—meet Miss Cattledon? Oh yes, certainly.”

The conveyance drove on, with the doctor and Thomas. Iwent indoors with Sam. Janet said I could meet her aunt just as well as Arnold, as I knew her. The brougham was brought round to the gate by the coachman, Wall, and I went away in it.

Smoothly and quietly glided in the train, and out of a first-class carriage stepped Miss Cattledon, thin and prim and upright as ever.

“Dear me! is that you, Johnny Ludlow?” was her greeting to me when I stepped up and spoke to her; and her tone was all vinegar. “What do you do here?”

“I came to meet you. Did you not know I was staying at Lefford?”

“I knew that. But why should they send you to meet me?”

“Dr. Knox was coming himself, but he has just been called out to a patient. How much luggage have you, Miss Cattledon?”

“Never you mind how much, Johnny Ludlow: my luggage does not concern you.”

“But cannot I save you the trouble of looking after it? If you will get into the brougham, I will see to the luggage and bring it on in a fly, if it’s too much to go on the box with Wall.”

“You mean well, Johnny Ludlow, I dare say; but I always see to my luggage myself. I should have lost it times and again, if I did not.”

She went pushing about amongst the porters and the trucks, and secured the luggage. One not very large black box went up by Wall; a smaller inside with us. So we drove out of the station in state, luggage and all, Cattledon holding her head bolt upright.

“How is Janet, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“And those two children of hers—are they very troublesome?”

“Indeed, no; they are the best little things you ever saw. I wanted to bring the boy with me to meet you, but Janet would not let me.”

“Um!” grunted Cattledon: “showed a little sense for once. What is that building?”

“That’s the Town Hall. I thought you knew Lefford, Miss Cattledon?”

“One cannot be expected to retain the buildings of a town inone’s head as if they were photographed there,” returned she in a sharp tone of reproof. Which shut me up.

“And, pray, how does that young woman continue to conduct herself?” she asked presently.

“What young woman?” I said, believing she must be irreverently alluding to Janet.

“Lettice Lane.”

Had she mentioned the name of some great Indian Begum I could not have been more surprised. That name brought back to memory all the old trouble connected with Miss Deveen’s emeralds, their loss and their finding: which, take it for all in all, was nothing short of a romance. But why did she question me about Lettice Lane. I asked her why.

“I asked it to be answered, young man,” was Cattledon’s grim retort.

“Yes, of course,” I said, with deprecation. “But how should I know anything about Lettice Lane?”

“If there’s one thing I hate more than another, Johnny Ludlow, it is shuffling. I ask you how that young woman is going on; and I request you to answer me.”

“Indeed, I would if I could. I don’t understand why you should ask me. Is Lettice Lane not living still with you—with Miss Deveen?”

Cattledon evidently thought I was shuffling, for she looked daggers at me. “Lettice Lane,” she said, “is with Janet Knox.”

“With Janet Knox! Oh dear, no, she is not.”

“Don’t you get into a habit of contradicting your elders, Johnny Ludlow. It is very unbecoming in a young man.”

“But—see here, Miss Cattledon. If Lettice were living with Janet, I must have seen her. I see the servants every day. I assure you Lettice is not one of them.”

She began to see that I was in earnest, and condescended to explain in her stiff way. “Janet came to town last May to spend a week with us,” she said. “Before that, Lettice Lane had been complaining of not feeling strong: I thought it was nothing but her restlessness; Miss Deveen and the doctor thought she wanted country air—that London did not agree with her. Janet was parting with her nurse at the time; sheengaged Lettice to replace her, and brought her down to Lefford. Is the matter clear to you now, young man?”

“Quite so. But indeed, Miss Cattledon, Lettice is not with Janet now. The nurse is named Harriet, and she is not in the least like Lettice Lane.”

“Then Lettice Lane must have gone roving again—unless you are mistaken,” said Cattledon, severely. “Wanting country air, forsooth! Change was what she wanted.”

Handing over Miss Cattledon, when we arrived, to the care of Janet, who took her upstairs, and told me tea would be ready soon, I went into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room. He was in the easy-chair before the fire, dozing, but opened his eyes at my entrance.

“Visitor come all right, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir; she is gone to take her cloaks off. Janet says tea is nearly ready.”

“I am quite ready for it,” he remarked, and shut his eyes again.

I took up a book I was reading, “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and sat down on the broad window-seat, legs up, to catch the now fading light. The folds of the crimson curtain lay between me and Mr. Tamlyn—and I only hoped Mrs. Gamp would not send me into convulsions and disturb him.

Presently Dr. Knox came in. He went up to the fire, and stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, his elbow on it, his back to me; and old Tamlyn woke up.

“Well,” began he, “what was the matter at Cooper’s, Arnold?”

“Eldest boy fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It is only a simple fracture.”

“Been very busy to-day, Arnold?”

“Pretty well.”

“Hope I shall be out again in a day or two. How did you find Lady Jenkins?”

“Not at all to my satisfaction. She was in bed, and—and in fact seemed hardly to know me.”

Tamlyn said nothing to this, and a silence ensued. Dr. Knox broke it. He turned his eyes from the fire on which they had been fixed, and looked full at his partner.

“Has it ever struck you that there’s not quite fair play going on up there?” he asked in a low tone.

“Up where?”

“With Lady Jenkins.”

“How do you mean, Arnold?”

“That something is being given to her?”

Tamlyn sat upright in his chair, pushed back his scanty hair, and stared at Dr. Knox.

“What do you mean, Knox? What do you suspect?”

“That she is being habitually drugged; gradually, slowly——”

“Merciful goodness!” interrupted Tamlyn, rising to his feet in excitement. “Do you mean slowly poisoned?”

“Hush!—I hear Janet,” cried Dr. Knox.

LADY JENKINS.

DOUBT.

I

You might have heard a pin drop in the room. They were listening to the footsteps outside the door, but the footsteps did not make the hush and the nameless horror that pervaded it: the words spoken by Dr. Knox had done that. Old Tamlyn stood, a picture of dismay. For myself, sitting in the window-seat, my feet comfortably stretched out before me, and partially sheltered by the red curtains, I could only gaze at them both.

Janet’s footsteps died away. She appeared to have been crossing the hall to the tea-room. And they began to talk again.

“I do not say that Lady Jenkins is being poisoned; absolutely, deliberately poisoned,” said Dr. Knox, in the hushed tones to which his voice had dropped; “I do not yet go quite so far as that. But I do think that she is in some way being tampered with.”

“In what way?” gasped Tamlyn.

“Drugged.”

The doctor’s countenance wore a puzzled expression as he spoke; his eyes a far-away look, just as though he did not see his own theory clearly. Mr. Tamlyn’s face changed: the astonishment, the alarm, the dismay depicted on it gave place suddenly to relief.

“It cannot be, Arnold. Rely upon it you are mistaken. Who would harm her?”

“No one that I know of; no suspicious person is about her to do it,” replied Dr. Knox. “And there lies the puzzle. I suppose she does not take anything herself? Opium, say?”

“Good Heavens, no,” warmly spoke old Tamlyn. “No woman living is less likely to do that than Lady Jenkins.”

“Less likely than she was. But you know yourself how unaccountably she has changed.”

“She does not take opium or any other drug. I could stake my word upon it, Arnold.”

“Then it is being given to her—at least, I think so. If not, her state is to me inexplicable. Mind you, Mr. Tamlyn, not a breath of this must transpire beyond our two selves,” urged Dr. Knox, his tone and his gaze at his senior partner alike impressively earnest. “If anything is wrong, it is being wilfully and covertly enacted; and our only chance of tracing it home is to conceal our suspicion of it.”

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox,” I interrupted at this juncture, the notion, suddenly flashing into my mind, that he was unaware of my presence, sending me hot all over; “did you know I was here?”

They both turned to me, and Dr. Knox’s confused start was a sufficient answer.

“You heard all I said, Johnny Ludlow?” spoke Dr. Knox.

“All. I am very sorry.”

“Well, it cannot be helped now. You will not let it transpire?”

“That I certainly will not.”

“We shall have to take you into our confidence—to include you in the plot,” said Arnold Knox, with a smile. “I believe we might have a less trustworthy adherent.”

“You could not have one more true.”

“Right, Johnny,” added Mr. Tamlyn. “But I do hope Dr. Knox is mistaken. I think you must be, Arnold. What are your grounds for this new theory?”

“I don’t tell you that it is quite new,” replied Dr. Knox.“A faint idea of it has been floating in my mind for some little time. As to grounds, I have no more to go upon than you have had. Lady Jenkins is in a state that we do not understand; neither you nor I can fathom what is amiss with her; and I need not point out that such a condition of things is unsatisfactory to a medical man, and sets him thinking.”

“I am sure I have not been able to tell what it is that ailsher,” concurred old Tamlyn, in a helpless kind of tone. “She seems always to be in a lethargy, more or less; to possess no proper self-will; to have parted, so to say, with all her interest in life.”

“Just so. And I cannot discover, and do not believe, that she is in any condition of health to cause this. I believe that the evil is being daily induced,” emphatically continued Dr. Knox.“And if she does not herself induce it, by taking improper things, they are being administered to her by others. You will not admit the first theory, Mr. Tamlyn?”

“No, that I will not. Lady Jenkins no more takes baneful drugs of her own accord than I take them.”

“Then the other theory must come up. It draws the point to a narrow compass, but to a more startling one.”

“Look here, Arnold. If I did admit the first theory you would be no nearer the light. Lady Jenkins could not obtain drugs, and be everlastingly swallowing them, without detection. Madame St. Vincent would have found her out in a day.”

“Yes.”

“And would have stopped it at once herself, or handed it over to me to be dealt with. She is truly anxious for Lady Jenkins, and spares no pains, no time, no trouble for her.”

“I believe that,” said Dr. Knox. “Whatsoever is being done, Madame St. Vincent is kept in the dark—just as much as we are. Who else is about her?”

“No one much but her maid, that I know of,” replied old Tamlyn, after a pause of consideration. “And I should think she was as free from suspicion as madame herself. It seems a strange thing.”

“It is. But I fear I am right. The question now will be, how are we to set about solving the mystery?”

“She is not quite always in a lethargic state,” observed Tamlyn, his thoughts going off at a tangent.

“She is so more or less,” dissented Dr. Knox. “Yesterday morning I was there at eight o’clock; I went early purposely, and she was in a more stupidly lethargic state than I had before seen her. Which of course proves one thing.”

“What thing? I fail to catch your meaning, Arnold.”

“That she is being drugged in the night as well as the day.”

“If she is drugged at all,” corrected Mr. Tamlyn, shaking his head. “But I do not give in to your fancy yet, Arnold. All this must edify you, Johnny!”

Tamlyn spoke the words in a jesting sense, meaning of course that it had done nothing of the kind. He was wrong, if to edify means to interest. Hardly ever during my life had I been more excited.

“It is a frightful shame if any one is playing with Lady Jenkins,” I said to them. “She is as good-hearted an old lady as ever lived. And why should they do it? Where’s the motive?”

“There lies one of the difficulties—the motive,” observed Dr. Knox. “I cannot see any; any end to be obtained by it. No living being that I know of can have an interest in wishing for Lady Jenkins’s death or illness.”

“How is her money left?”

“A pertinent question, Johnny. I do not expect any one could answer it, excepting herself and Belford, the lawyer. Isuppose her relatives, all the nephews and nieces, will inherit it: and they are not about her, you see, and cannot be dosing her. No; the motive is to me a complete mystery. Meanwhile, Johnny, keep your ears and eyes open when you are up there; there’s no telling what chance word or look may be dropped that might serve to give you a clue: and keep your mouth shut.”

I laughed.

“If I could put aside my patients for a week, and invent some excuse for taking up my abode at Jenkins House, I know I should soon find out all the mystery,” went on Dr. Knox.

“Arnold, why not take Madame St. Vincent into your confidence?”

Dr. Knox turned quickly round at the words to face his senior partner. He held up his finger warningly.

“Things are not ripe for it,” he said. “Let me get, or try to get, a little more inkling into matters than I have at present, as touching the domestic economy at Jenkins House. I may have to do as you say, later: but women are only chattering magpies; marplots, often with the best intentions; and Madame St. Vincent may be no exception.”

“Will you please come to tea?” interrupted Janet, opening the door.

Miss Cattledon, in a sea-green silk gown that I’m sure I had seen many times before, and the velvet on her thin throat, and a bow of lace on her head, shook hands with Mr. Tamlyn and Dr. Knox, and we sat down to tea. Little Arnold, standing by his mother in his plaid frock and white drawers (for the time to dress little children as men had not come in then by many a year), had a piece of bread-and-butter given to him. While he was eating it, the nurse appeared.

“Are you ready, Master Arnold? It is quite bedtime.”

“Yes, he is ready, Harriet; and he has been very good,” spoke Janet. And the little fellow went contentedly off without a word.

Miss Cattledon, stirring her tea at the moment, put the spoon down to look at the nurse, staring at her as if she had never seen a nurse before.

“That’s not Lettice Lane,” she observed sententiously, as the door closed on Harriet. “Where is Lettice Lane?”

“She has left, Aunt Jemima.”

If a look could have withered Janet, Cattledon’s was severe enough to do it. But the displeasure was meant for Lettice, not for Janet.

“What business had she to leave? Did she misbehave herself?”

“She stayed with me only two months,” said Janet. “And she left because she still continued poorly, and the two children were rather too much for her. The baby was cutting her teeth, which disturbed Lettice at night; and I and Arnold both thought we ought to have some one stronger.”

“Did you give her warning?” asked Cattledon, who was looking her very grimmest at thought of the absent Lettice; “or did she give it you?”

Janet laughed presently. “I think it was a sort of mutual warning, Aunt Jemima. Lettice acknowledged to me that she was hardly equal to the care of the children; and I told her I thought she was not. We found her another place.”

“A rolling-stone gathers no moss,” commented Cattledon.“Lettice Lane changes her places too often.”

“She stayed some time with Miss Deveen, Aunt Jemima.And she likes her present place. She gets very good wages, better than she had with me, and helps to keep her mother.”

“What may her duties be? Is she housemaid again?”

“She is lady’s-maid to Lady Jenkins, an old lady who lives up the London Road. Lettice has grown much stronger since she went there. Why, what do you think, Aunt Jemima?”added Janet, laughing, “Lettice has actually been to Paris. Lady Jenkins went there just after engaging Lettice, and took her.”

Miss Cattledon tossed her head. “Much good that would do Lettice Lane! Only fill her up with worse conceits than ever. I wonder she is not yet off to Australia! She used always to be talking of it.”

“You don’t appear to like Lettice Lane, ma’am,” smiled old Tamlyn.

“No, I do not, sir. Lettice Lane first became known to me under unfavourable circumstances, and I have not liked her since.”

“Indeed! What were they?”

“Some of Miss Deveen’s jewels disappeared—were stolen; and Lettice Lane was suspected. It turned out later that she was not guilty; but I could not get over my dislike to her. We cannot help our likes and dislikes, which often come to us without rhyme or reason,” acknowledged Miss Cattledon, “and I admit that I am perhaps too persistent in mine.”

Not a soul present, myself excepted, had ever heard about the loss of the emeralds: and somehow I felt sorry that Cattledon had spoken of it. Not that she did it in ill-nature—I give her that due. Questions were immediately poured out, and she had to give the full history.

The story interested them all, Dr. Knox especially.

“And who did take the jewels?” he asked.

But Cattledon could not enlighten him, for Miss Deveen had not betrayed Sophie Chalk, even to her.

“I don’t know who it was,” tartly confessed Cattledon, the point being a sore one with her. “Miss Deveen promised, I believe, to screen the thief; and did so.”

“Perhaps it was really Lettice Lane?”

“I believe not. I am sure not. It was a lady, Miss Deveentold me that much. No; of that disgraceful act Lettice Lane was innocent: but I should never be surprised to hear of her falling into trouble. She is capable of it.”

“Of poisoning somebody, perhaps?” spoke Dr. Knox.

“Yes,” acquiesced Cattledon, grimly.

How prejudiced she was against Lettice Lane! But she had given this last answer only in the same jesting spirit in which it appeared to have been put, not really meaning it.

“To be wrongly suspected, as poor Lettice Lane was, ought to make people all the more considerate to her,” remarked Janet, her thoughts no doubt reverting to the time when she herself was falsely suspected—and accused.

“True, my dear,” answered old Tamlyn. “Poor Lettice must have had her troubles.”

“And she has had her faults,” retorted Cattledon.

But this story had made an impression on Dr. Knox that Cattledon never suspected, never intended. He took up the idea that Lettice Lane was guilty. Going into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room for “Martin Chuzzlewit,” when tea was over, I found his hand on my shoulder. He had silently followed me.

“Johnny Ludlow,” he said, looking down into my eyes in the dim room, which was only lighted by the dim fire, “I don’t like this that I have heard of Lettice Lane.”

And the next to come in was Tamlyn. Closing the door, he walked up to the hearthrug where we stood, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

“I am telling Johnny Ludlow that this story of Miss Deveen’s emeralds has made an unfavourable impression on me,” quoth Dr. Knox to him. “It does not appear to me to be at all clear that Lettice Lane did not take them; and that Miss Deveen, in her benevolence, screened her from the consequences.”

“But, indeed——” I was beginning, when Dr. Knox stopped me.

“A moment, Johnny. I was about to add that a woman who is capable of one crime can sometimes be capable of another; and I should not be surprised if it is Lettice Lane who is tampering with Lady Jenkins.”

“But,” I repeated, “Lettice Lane did not take the jewels. She knew nothing about it. She was perfectly innocent.”

“You cannot answer for it, Johnny.”

“Yes, I can; and do. I know who did take them.”

“You know, Johnny Ludlow?” cried old Tamlyn, while Dr. Knox looked at me in silence.

“I helped Miss Deveen to find it out. At least, she had me with her during the progress of the discovery. It was a lady who took the jewels—as Miss Cattledon told you. She fainted away when it was brought home to her, and fell on my shoulder.”

I believe they hardly knew whether to give me credit or not. Of course it did sound strange that I, young Johnny Ludlow, should have been entrusted by Miss Deveen with a secret she would not disclose even to her many years’ companion and friend, Jemima Cattledon.

“Who was it, then, Johnny?” began Mr. Tamlyn.

“I should not like to tell, sir. I do not think it would be right to tell. For the young lady’s own sake, Miss Deveen hushed the matter up, hoping it would be a warning to her in future. And I dare say it has been.”

“Young, was she?”

“Yes. She has married since then. I could not, in honour, tell you her name.”

“Well, I suppose we must believe you, Johnny,” said Dr. Knox, making the admission unwillingly. “Lettice Lane did get fingering the jewels, it appears; you admit that.”

“But she did not take them. It was—another.” And, cautiously choosing my words, so as not to say anything that could direct suspicion to Sophie Chalk—whose name most likely they had never heard in their lives—I gave them an outline of the way in which Miss Deveen had traced the matter out. The blaze lighted up Mr. Tamlyn’s grey face as I told it.

“You perceive that it could not have been Lettice Lane, Dr. Knox,” I said, in conclusion. “I am sorry Miss Cattledon should have spoken against her.”

“Yes, I perceive Lettice could not have been guilty of stealing the jewels,” answered Dr. Knox. “Nevertheless, a somewhat unfavourable impression of the girl has been made upon me, and I shall look a little after her. Why does she want to emigrate to Australia?”

“Only because two of her brothers are there. I dare say it is all idle talk—that she will never go.”

They said no more to me. I took up my book and quitted the room, leaving them to talk it out between themselves.

II

Mr. Tamlyn might be clever in medicine; he certainly was not in diplomacy. Dr. Knox had particularly impressed upon him the desirability of keeping their suspicion a secret for the present, even from Madame St. Vincent; yet the first use old Tamlyn made of his liberty was to disclose it to her.

Tossed about in the conflict of doubts and suspicions that kept arising in his mind, Mr. Tamlyn, from the night I have just told you of, was more uneasy than a fish out of water, his opinion constantly vacillating. “You must be mistaken, Arnold; I feel sure there’s nothing wrong going on,” he would say to his junior partner one minute; and, the next minute, decide that it was going on, and that its perpetrator must be Lettice Lane.

The uneasiness took him abroad earlier than he would otherwise have gone. A slight access of fever attacked him the day after the subject had been broached—which fever he had no doubt worried himself into. In the ordinary course of things he would have stayed at home for a week after that: but he now went out on the third day.

“I will walk,” he decided, looking up at the sunshine. “It will do me good. What lovely weather we are having.”

Betaking himself through the streets to the London Road, he reached Jenkins House. The door stood open; and the doctor, almost as much at home in the house as Lady Jenkins herself, walked in without knocking.

The dining-room, where they mostly sat in the morning, was empty; the drawing-room was empty; and Mr. Tamlyn went on to a third room, that opened to the garden at the back with glass-doors.

“Any one here? or is the house gone a-maying?” cried the surgeon as he entered and came suddenly upon a group of threepeople, all upon their knees before a pile of old music—Madame St. Vincent, Mina Knox, and Captain Collinson. Two of them got up, laughing. Mina remained where she was.

“We are searching for a manuscript song that is missing,”explained madame, as she gave her hand to the doctor. “Mina feels sure she left it here; but I do not remember to have seen it.”

“It was not mine,” added Mina, looking round at the doctor in her pretty, gentle way. “Caroline Parker lent it to me, and she has sent for it twice.”

“I hope you’ll find it, my dear.”

“I must have left it here,” continued Mina, as she rapidly turned over the sheets. “I was singing it yesterday afternoon, you remember,” she added, glancing up at the captain. “It was while you were upstairs with Lady Jenkins, Madame St. Vincent.”

She came to the end of the pile of music, but could not find the song. Putting it all on a side-table, Mina said a general good-bye, escaped by the glass-doors, and ran home by the little gate that divided the two gardens.

Captain Collinson left next. Perhaps he and Mina had both a sense of being de trop when the doctor was there. Waiting to exchange a few words with Mr. Tamlyn, and bidding Madame St. Vincent an adieu that had more of formality in it than friendship, the captain bowed himself out, taking his tasselled cane with him, madame ringing for one of the men-servants to attend him to the hall-door. Tasselled canes were the fashion then.

“They do not make a practice of meeting here, do they?”began old Tamlyn, when the captain was beyond hearing.

“Who? What?” asked Madame St. Vincent.

“The captain and little Mina Knox.”

For a minute or two it appeared that madame could not catch his meaning. She looked at him in perplexity.

“I fail to understand you, dear Mr. Tamlyn.”

“The captain is a very attractive man, no doubt; a good match, I dare say, and all that: but still we should not like poor little Mina to be whirled off to India by him. I asked if they often met here.”

“Whirled off to India?” repeated madame, in astonishment.“Little Mina? By him? In what capacity?”

“As his wife.”

“But—dear me!—what can have put such an idea into your head, my good sir? Mina is a mere child.”

“Old enough to take up foolish notions,” quoth the doctor, quaintly; “especially if they are put into it by a be-whiskered grenadier, such as he. I hope he is not doing it! I hope you do not give them opportunities of meeting here!”

Madame seemed quite taken aback at the implication. Her voice had a sound of tears in it.

“Do you suppose I could be capable of such a thing, sir? I did think you had a better opinion of me. Such a child as Mina! We were both on our knees, looking for the song, when Captain Collinson came in; and he must needs go down on his great stupid knees too. He but called to inquire after Lady Jenkins.”

“Very thoughtful of him, of course. He is often up here, I fancy; at the next house, if not at this.”

“Certainly not often at this. He calls on Lady Jenkins occasionally, and she likes it. I don’t encourage him. He may be a brave soldier, and a man of wealth and family, and everything else that’s desirable; but he is no especial favourite of mine.”

“Well, Sam Jenkins has an idea that he would like to get making love to Mina. Sam was laughing about it in the surgery last night with Johnny Ludlow, and I happened to overhear him. Sam thinks they meet here, as well as next door: and you heard Mina say just now that she was singing to him here yesterday afternoon. Stay, my dear lady, don’t be put out. I am sure you have thought it no harm, have been innocent of all suspicion of it. Mistaken, you tell me? Well, it may be I am. Mina is but a child, as you observe, and—and perhaps Sam was only jesting. How is our patient to-day?”

“Pretty well. Just a little drowsy.”

“In bed, or up?”

“Oh, up.”

“Will you tell her I am here?”

Madame St. Vincent, her plumage somewhat ruffled, betookherself to the floor above, Mr. Tamlyn following. Lady Jenkins, in a loose gown of blue quilted silk and a cap with yellow roses in it, sat at the window, nodding.

“Well,” said he, sitting down by her and taking her hand,“and how do you feel to-day?”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Better, she thought: oh yes, certainly better.

“You are sleepy.”

“Rather so. Getting up tired me.”

“Are you not going for a drive to-day? It would do you good.”

“I don’t know. Ask Patty. Patty, are we going out to-day?”

The utter helplessness of mind and body which appeared to be upon her as she thus appealed to another, Mr. Tamlyn had rarely seen equalled. Even while listening to Madame St. Vincent’s answer—that they would go if she felt strong enough—her heavy eyelids closed again. In a minute or two she was in a sound sleep. Tamlyn threw caution and Dr. Knox’s injunction to the winds, and spoke on the moment’s impulse to Madame St. Vincent.

“You see,” he observed, pointing to the sleeping face.

“She is only dozing off again.”

“Only! My dear, good lady, this perpetual, stupid, lethargic sleepiness is not natural. You are young, perhaps inexperienced, or you would know it to be not so.”

“I scarcely think it altogether unnatural,” softly dissented madame, with deprecation. “She has really been very poorly.”

“But not sufficiently so to induce this helplessness. It has been upon her for months, and is gaining ground.”

“She is seventy years of age, remember.”

“I know that. But people far older than that are not as she is without some cause: either of natural illness, or—or—something else. Step here a minute, my dear.”

Old Tamlyn walked rapidly to the other window, and stood there talking in low tones, his eyes fixed on Madame St. Vincent, his hand, in his eagerness, touching her shoulder.

“Knox thinks, and has imparted his opinion to me—ay, and his doubts also—that something is being given to her.”

“That something is being given to her!” echoed Madame St. Vincent, her face flushing with surprise. “Given to her in what way?”

“Or else that she is herself taking it. But I, who have known her longer than Knox has, feel certain that she is not one to do anything of the sort. Besides, you would have found it out long ago.”

“I protest I do not understand you,” spoke madame, earnestly. “What is it that she could take? She has taken the medicine that comes from your surgery. She has taken nothing else.”

“Knox thinks she is being drugged.”

“Drugged! Lady Jenkins drugged? How, drugged? What with? What for? Who would drug her?”

“There it is; who would do it?” said the old doctor, interrupting the torrent of words poured forth in surprise. “I confess I think the symptoms point to it. But I don’t see how it could be accomplished and you not detect it, considering that you are so much with her.”

“Why, I hardly ever leave her, day or night,” cried madame.“My bedroom, as you know, is next to hers, and I sleep with the intervening door open. There is no more chance, sir, that she could be drugged than that I could be.”

“When Knox first spoke of it to me I was pretty nearly startled out of my senses,” went on Tamlyn. “For I caught up a worse notion than he meant to convey—that she was being systematically poisoned.”

A dark, vivid, resentful crimson dyed madame’s face. The suggestion seemed to be a reproof on her vigilance.

“Poisoned!” she repeated in angry indignation. “How dare Dr. Knox suggest such a thing?”

“My dear, he did not suggest it against you. He and I both look upon you as her best safeguard. It is your being with her, that gives us some sort of security: and it is your watchfulness we shall have to look to for detection.”

“Poisoned!” reiterated madame, unable to get over the ugly word. “I think Dr. Knox ought to be made to answer for so wicked a suspicion.”

“Knox did not mean to go so far as that: it was my misapprehension.But he feels perfectly convinced that she is being tampered with. In short, drugged.”

“It is not possible,” reasoned madame. “It could not be done without my knowledge. Indeed, sir, you may dismiss all idea of the kind from your mind; you and Dr. Knox also. I assure you that such a thing would be simply impracticable.”

Mr. Tamlyn shook his head. “Any one who sets to work to commit a crime by degrees, usually possesses a large share of innate cunning—more than enough to deceive lookers-on,” he remarked. “I can understand how thoroughly repulsive this idea is to you, my good lady; that your mind shrinks from admitting it; but I wish you would, just for argument’s sake, allow its possibility.”

But madame was harder than adamant. Old Tamlyn saw what it was—that she took this accusation, and would take it, as a reflection on her care.

“Who is there, amidst us all, that would attempt to injure Lady Jenkins?” she asked. “The household consists only of myself and the servants. They would not seek to harm their mistress.”

“Not so sure; not so sure. It is amidst those servants that we must look for the culprit. Dr. Knox thinks so, and so do I.”

Madame’s face of astonishment was too genuine to be doubted. She feebly lifted her hands in disbelief. To suspect the servants seemed, to her, as ridiculous as the suspicion itself.

“Her maid, Lettice, and the housemaid, Sarah, are the only two servants who approach her when she is ill, sir: Sarah but very little. Both of them are kind-hearted young women.”

Mr. Tamlyn coughed. Whether he would have gone on to impart his doubt of Lettice cannot be known. During the slight silence Lettice herself entered the room with her mistress’s medicine. A quick, dark-eyed young woman, in a light print gown.

The stir aroused Lady Jenkins. Madame St. Vincent measured out the physic, and was handing it to the patient, when Mr. Tamlyn seized the wine-glass.

“It’s all right,” he observed, after smelling and tasting, speaking apparently to himself: and Lady Jenkins took it.

“That is the young woman you must especially watch,”whispered Mr. Tamlyn, as Lettice retired with her waiter.

“What! Lettice?” exclaimed madame, opening her eyes.

“Yes; I should advise you to do so. She is the only one who is much about her mistress,” he added, as if he would account for the advice. “Watch her.”

Leaving madame at the window to digest the mandate and to get over her astonishment, he sat down by Lady Jenkins again, and began talking of this and that: the fineness of the weather, the gossip passing in the town.

“What do you take?” he asked abruptly.

“Take?” she repeated. “What is it that I take, Patty?”appealing to her companion.

“Nay, but I want you to tell me yourself,” hastily interposed the doctor. “Don’t trouble madame.”

“But I don’t know that I can recollect.”

“Oh yes, you can. The effort to do so will do you good—wake you out of this stupid sleepiness. Take yesterday: what did you have for breakfast?”

“Yesterday? Well, I think they brought me a poached egg.”

“And a very good thing, too. What did you drink with it?”

“Tea. I always take tea.”

“Who makes it?”

“I do,” said madame, turning her head to Mr. Tamlyn with a meaning smile. “I take my own tea from the same tea-pot.”

“Good. What did you take after that, Lady Jenkins?”

“I dare say I had some beef-tea at eleven. Did I, Patty? I generally do have it.”

“Yes, dear Lady Jenkins; and delicious beef-tea it is, and it does you good. I should like Mr. Tamlyn to take a cup of it.”

“I don’t mind if I do.”

Perhaps the answer was unexpected: but Madame St. Vincent rang the bell and ordered up a cup of the beef-tea. The beef-tea proved to be “all right,” as he had observed of the medicine. Meanwhile he had continued his questions to his patient.

She had eaten some chicken for dinner, and a little sweetbread for supper. There had been interludes of refreshment: an egg beaten up with milk, a cup of tea and bread-and-butter, and so on.

“You don’t starve her,” laughed Mr. Tamlyn.

“No, indeed,” warmly replied madame. “I do what I can to nourish her.”

“What do you take to drink?” continued the doctor.

“Nothing to speak of,” interposed madame. “A drop of cold brandy-and-water with her dinner.”

“Patty thinks it is better for me than wine,” put in Lady Jenkins.

“I don’t know but it is. You don’t take too much of it?”

Lady Jenkins paused. “Patty knows. Do I take too much, Patty?”

Patty was smiling, amused at the very idea. “I measure one table-spoonful of brandy into a tumbler and put three or four table-spoonfuls of water to it. If you think that is too much brandy, Mr. Tamlyn, I will put less.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said old Tamlyn. “It’s hardly enough.”

“She has the same with her supper,” concluded madame.

Well, old Tamlyn could make nothing of his suspicions. And he came home from Jenkins House and told Knox he thought they must be both mistaken.

“Why did you speak of it to madame?” asked Dr. Knox.“We agreed to be silent for a short time.”

“I don’t see why she should not be told, Arnold. She is straightforward as the day—and Lettice Lane seems so, too. I tasted the beef-tea they gave her—took a cup of it, in fact—and I tasted the physic. Madame says it is impossible that anything in the shape of drugs is being given to her; and upon my word I think so too.”

“All the same, I wish you had not spoken.”

And a little time went on.

III

The soirée to-night was at Rose Villa; and Mrs. Knox, attired in a striped gauze dress and the jangling ornaments she favoured, stood to receive her guests. Beads on her thin brown neck, beads on her sharp brown wrists, beads in her ears, and beads dropping from her waist. She looked all beads. They weredrab beads to-night, each resting in a little cup of gold. Janet and Miss Cattledon went up in the brougham, the latter more stiffly ungracious than usual, for she still resented Mrs. Knox’s former behaviour to Janet. I walked.

“Where can the people from next door be?” wondered Mrs. Knox, as the time went on and Lady Jenkins did not appear.

For Lady Jenkins went abroad again. In a day or two after Mr. Tamlyn’s interview with her, Lefford had the pleasure of seeing her red-wheeled carriage whirling about the streets, herself and her companion within it. Old Tamlyn said she was getting strong. Dr. Knox said nothing; but he kept his eyes open.

“I hope she is not taken ill again? I hope she is not too drowsy to come!” reiterated Mrs. Knox. “Sometimes madame can’t rouse her up from these sleepy fits, do what she will.”

Lady Jenkins was the great card of the soirée, and Mrs. Knox grew cross. Captain Collinson had not come either. She drew me aside.

“Johnny Ludlow, I wish you would step into the next door and see whether anything has happened. Do you mind it? So strange that Madame St. Vincent does not send or come.”

I did not mind it at all. I rather liked the expedition, and passed out of the noisy and crowded room to the lovely, warm night-air. The sky was clear; the moon radiant.

I was no longer on ceremony at Jenkins House, having been up to it pretty often with Dan or Sam, and on my own score. Lady Jenkins had been pleased to take a fancy to me, had graciously invited me to some drives in her red-wheeled carriage, she dozing at my side pretty nearly all the time. I could not help being struck with the utter abnegation of will she displayed. It was next door to imbecility.

“Patty, Johnny Ludlow would like to go that way, I think, to-day may we?” she would say. “Must we turn back already, Patty?—it has been such a short drive.” Thus she deferred to Madame St. Vincent in all things, small and great: if she had a will or choice of her own, it seemed that she never thought of exercising it. Day after day she would say the drives were short: and very short indeed they were made, upon some plea or other, when I made a third in the carriage. “I am so afraidof fatigue for her,” madame whispered to me one day, when she seemed especially anxious.

“But you take a much longer drive, when she and you are alone,” I answered, that fact having struck me. “What difference does my being in the carriage make?—are you afraid of fatigue for the horses as well?” At which suggestion madame burst out laughing.

“When I am alone with her I take care not to talk,” she explained; “but when three of us are here there’s sure to be talking going on, and it cannot fail to weary her.”

Of course that was madame’s opinion: but my impression was that, let us talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding woman neither heard nor heeded it.

“Don’t you think you are fidgety about it, madame?”

“Well, perhaps I am,” she answered. “I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an anxious charge to me.”

Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the evening and the soirée I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to do Mrs. Knox’s behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox’s soirée, were Captain Collinson and Madame St. Vincent.

“Mr. Ludlow!” she exclaimed. “How you startled me!”

“I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way. She has been expecting you for some time.”

“Nothing is the matter,” shortly replied madame, who seemed more put out than the occasion called for: she thought me rude, I suppose. “Lady Jenkins is not ready; that is all. She may be half-an-hour yet.”

“Half-an-hour! I won’t wait longer, then,” said Captain Collinson, catching up his crush hat. “I do trust she has not taken another chill. Au revoir, madame.”

With a nod to me, he made his exit by the way I had entered. The same peculiarity struck me now that I had observed before:whenever I went into a place, be it Jenkins House or Rose Villa, the gallant captain immediately quitted it.

“Do I frighten Captain Collinson away?” I said to madame on the spur of the moment.

“You frighten him! Why should you?”

“I don’t know why. If he happens to be here when I come in, he gets up and goes away. Did you never notice it? It is the same at Mrs. Knox’s. It was the same once at Mrs. Hampshire’s.”

Madame laughed. “Perhaps he is shy,” said she, jestingly.

“A man who has travelled to India and back must have rubbed his shyness off, one would think. I wish I knew where I had met him before!—if I have met him. Every now and again his face seems to strike on a chord of my memory.”

“It is a handsome face,” remarked madame.

“Pretty well. As much as can be seen of it. He has hair enough for a Russian bear or a wild Indian.”

“Have wild Indians a superabundance of hair?” asked she gravely.

I laughed. “Seriously speaking, though, Madame St. Vincent, I think I must have met him somewhere.”

“Seriously speaking, I don’t think that can be,” she answered; and her jesting tone had become serious. “I believe he has passed nearly all his life in India.”

“Just as you have passed yours in the South of France. And yet there is something in your face also familiar to me.”

“I should say you must be just a little fanciful on the subject of likenesses. Some people are.”

“I do not think so. If I am I did not know it. I——”

The inner door opened and Lady Jenkins appeared, becloaked and beshawled, with a great green hood over her head, and leaning on Lettice Lane. Madame got up and threw a mantle on her own shoulders.

“Dear Lady Jenkins, I was just coming to see for you. Captain Collinson called in to give you his arm, but he did not wait. And here’s Mr. Johnny Ludlow, sent in by Mrs. Knox to ask whether we are all dead.”

“Ay,” said Lady Jenkins, nodding to me as she sat down on the sofa: “but I should like a cup of tea before we start.”

“A cup of tea?”

“Ay; I’m thirsty. Let me have it, Patty.”

She spoke the last words in an imploring tone, as if Patty were her mistress. Madame threw off her mantle again, untied the green hood of her lady, and sent Lettice to make some tea.

“You had better go back and tell Mrs. Knox we are coming, though I’m sure I don’t know when it will be,” she said aside to me.

I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden-gate, when my eye fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him.

“Hush—sh—sh!” breathed he, silencing the question on my lips.

“What’s the sport, Dicky?”

“She’s with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round,” he whispered. “Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at ’em. He has his arm round her waist.”

Sure enough, at that moment they came into view—Mina and Captain Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very great astonishment, trod upon somebody else’s feet, who made, so to say, one of the laurels.

“It’s only I,” breathed Sam Jenkins. “I’m on the watch as well as Dicky. It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?”

The “loviers” were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making believe he had only then arrived.

“Oh my, my!” repeated the enraptured Dicky, “won’t I have the pull of her now! She’d better tell tales of me again!”

“Is it a case, think you?” asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the wake of Mina.

“It looks like it,” I answered.

Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in atthe glass-doors: “Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:” just as she used to sing it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her flushed face.

“Where did you and Dicky go just now, Sam?”

Sam turned short round at the query. Charlotte Knox, as she put it, carried suspicion in her low tone.

“Where did I and Dicky go?” repeated Sam, rather taken aback. “I—I only stepped out for a stroll in the moonlight. I don’t know anything about Dicky.”

“I saw Dicky run out to the garden first, and you went next,”persisted Charlotte, who was just as keen as steel. “Dick, what was there to see? I will give you two helpings of trifle at supper if you tell me.”

For two helpings of trifle Dick would have sold his birthright.“Such fun!” he cried, beginning to jump. “She was out there with the captain, Lotty: he came to the window here and beckoned to her: I saw him. I dodged them round and round the laurels, and I am pretty nearly sure he kissed her.”

“Who was?—who did?” But the indignant glow on Lotty’s face proved that she scarcely needed to put the question.

“That nasty Mina. She took and told that it was me who eat up the big bowl of raspberry cream in the larder to-day; and mother went and believed her!”

Charlotte Knox, her brow knit, her head held erect, walked away after giving us all a searching look apiece. “I, like Dicky, saw Collinson call her out, and I thought I might as well see what he wanted to be after,” Sam whispered to me. “I did not see Dicky at all, though, until he came into the laurels with you.”

“He is talking to her now,” I said, directing Sam’s attention to the captain.

“I wonder whether I ought to tell Dr. Knox?” resumed Sam.“What do you think, Johnny Ludlow? She is so young, and somehow I don’t trust him. Dan doesn’t, either.”

“Dan told me he did not.”

“Dan fancies he is after her money. It would be a temptation to some people,—seven thousand pounds. Yet he seems to have plenty of his own.”

“If he did marry her he could not touch the money for three or four years to come.”

“Oh, couldn’t he, though,” answered Sam, taking me up.“He could touch it next day.”

“I thought she did not come into it till she was of age, and that Dr. Knox was trustee.”

“That’s only in case she does not marry. If she marries it goes to her at once. Here comes Aunt Jenkins!”

The old lady, as spruce as you please, in a satin gown, was shaking hands with Mrs. Knox. But she looked half silly: and, may I never be believed again, if she did not begin to nod directly she sat down.

“Do you hail from India? as the Americans phrase it,” I suddenly ask of Captain Collinson, when chance pinned us together in a corner of the supper-room, and he could not extricate himself.

“Hail from India!” he repeated. “Was I born there, I conclude you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Not exactly. I went there, a child, with my father and mother. And, except for a few years during my teens, when I was home for education, I have been in India ever since. Why do you ask?”

“For no particular reason. I was telling Madame St. Vincent this evening that it seemed to me I had seen you before; but I suppose it could not be. Shall you be going back soon?”

“I am not sure. Possibly in the autumn, when my leave will expire: not till next year if I can get my leave extended. I shall soon be quitting Lefford.”

“Shall you?”

“Must do it. I have to make my bow at a levée; and I must be in town for other things as well. I should like to enjoy a little of the season there: it may be years before the opportunity falls to my lot again. Then I have some money to invest: I think of buying an estate. Oh, I have all sorts of business to attend to, once I am in London.”

“Where’s the use of buying an estate if you are to live in India?”

“I don’t intend to live in India always,” he answered, with alaugh. “I shall quit the service as soon as ever I can, and settle down comfortably in the old country. A home of my own will be of use to me then.”

Now it was that very laugh of Captain Collinson’s that seemed more familiar to me than all the rest of him. That I had heard it before, ay, and heard it often, I felt sure. At least, I should have felt sure but for its seeming impossibility.

“You are from Gloucestershire, I think I have heard,” he observed to me.

“No; from Worcestershire.”

“Worcestershire? That’s a nice county, I believe. Are not the Malvern Hills situated in it?”

“Yes. They are eight miles from Worcester.”

“I should like to see them. I must see them before I go back. And Worcester is famous for—what is it?—china?—yes, china. And for its cathedral, I believe. I shall get a day or two there if I can. I can do Malvern at the same time.”

“Captain Collinson, would you mind giving Lady Jenkins your arm?” cried Mrs. Knox at this juncture. “She is going home.”

“There is no necessity for Captain Collinson to disturb himself: I can take good care of Lady Jenkins,” hastily spoke Madame St. Vincent, in a tart tone, which the room could not mistake. Evidently she did not favour Captain Collinson.

But the captain had already pushed himself through the throng of people and taken the old lady in tow. The next minute I found myself close to Charlotte Knox, who was standing at the supper-table, with a plate of cold salmon before her.

“Are you a wild bear, Johnny Ludlow?” she asked me privately, under cover of the surrounding clatter.

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Madame St. Vincent takes you for one.”

I laughed. “Has she told you so?”

“She has not told me: I guess it is some secret,” returned Charlotte, beginning upon the sandwiches. “I learnt it in a curious way.”

A vein of seriousness ran through her half-mocking tone; seriousness lay in her keen and candid eyes, lifted to mine.

“Yes, it was rather curious, the way it came to me: and perhapson my part not altogether honourable. Early this morning, Johnny, before ten o’clock had struck, mamma made me go in and ask how Lady Jenkins was, and whether she would be able to come to-night. I ran in the nearest way, by the glass-doors, boisterously of course—mamma is always going on at me for that—and the breeze the doors made as I threw them open blew a piece of paper off the table. I stooped to pick it up, and saw it was a letter just begun in madame’s handwriting.”

“Well?”

“Well, my eyes fell on the few words written; but I declare that I read them heedlessly, not with any dishonourable intention; such a thought never entered my mind. ‘Dear Sissy,’ the letter began, ‘You must not come yet, for Johnny Ludlow is here, of all people in the world; it would not do for you and him to meet.’ That was all.”

“I suppose madame had been called away,” continued Charlotte, after a pause. “I put the paper on the table, and was going on into the passage, when I found the room-door locked: so I just came out again, ran round to the front-door and went in that way. Now if you are not a bear, Johnny, why should you frighten people?”

I did not answer. She had set me thinking.

“Madame St. Vincent had invited a sister from France to come and stay with her: she does just as she likes here, you know. It must be she who is not allowed to meet you. What is the mystery?”

“Who is talking about mystery?” exclaimed Caroline Parker; who, standing near, must have caught the word. “What is the mystery, Lotty?”

And Lotty, giving her some evasive reply, put down her fork and turned away.

LADY JENKINS.

MADAME.

I

“If Aunt Jenkins were the shrewd woman she used to be, I’d lay the whole case before her, and have it out; but she is not,”contended Dan Jenkins, tilting the tongs in his hand, as we sat round the dying embers of the surgery fire.

His brother Sam and I had walked home together from Mrs. Knox’s soirée, and we overtook Dan in the town. Another soirée had been held in Lefford that night, which Dan had promised himself to before knowing Mrs. Knox would have one. We all three turned into the surgery. Dr. Knox was out with a patient, and Sam had to wait up for him. Sam had been telling his brother what we witnessed up at Rose Villa—the promenade round the laurels that Captain Collinson and Mina had stolen in the moonlight. As for me, though I heard what Sam said, and put in a confirming word here and there, I was thinking my own thoughts. In a small way, nothing had ever puzzled me much more than the letter Charlotte Knox had seen. Who was Madame St. Vincent? and who was her sister, that I, Johnny Ludlow, might not meet her?

“You see,” continued Dan, “one reason why I can’t help suspecting the fellow, is this—he does not address Mina openly. If he were honest and above board, he would go in for her before all the world. He wouldn’t do it in secret.”

“What do you suspect him of?” cried Sam.

“I don’t know. I do suspect him—that he is somehow not on the square. It’s not altogether about Mina; but I have no confidence in the man.”

Sam laughed. “Of course you have not, Dan. You want to keep Mina for yourself.”

Dan pitched his soft hat at Sam’s head, and let fall the tongs with a clatter.

“Collinson seems to be all right,” I put in. “He is going up to London to a levée, and he is going to buy an estate. At least, he told me so to-night in the supper-room.”

“Oh, in one sense of the word the fellow is all right,” acknowledged Dan. “He is what he pretends to be; he is in the army list; and, for all I know to the contrary, he may have enough gold to float an argosy of ships. What I ask is, why he should go sneaking after Mina when he does not care for her.”

“That may be just a fallacy of ours, Dan,” said his brother.

“No, it’s not. Collinson is in love with Madame St. Vincent; not with Mina.”

“Then why does he spoon after Mina?”

“That’s just it—why?”

“Any way, I don’t think madame is in love with him, Dan. It was proposed that he should take aunt home to-night, and madame was as tart as you please over it, letting all the room know that she did not want him.”

“Put it down so,” agreed Dan, stooping to pick up the tongs.“Say that he is not fond of madame, but of Mina, and would like to make her his wife: why does he not go about it in a proper manner; court her openly, speak to her mother; instead of pursuing her covertly like a sneak?”

“It may be his way of courting.”

“May it! It is anything but a right way. He is for ever seeking to meet her on the sly. I know it. He got her out in the garden to-night to a meeting, you say: you and Johnny Ludlow saw it.”

“Dicky saw it too, and Charlotte got the truth out of him. There may be something in what you say, Dan.”

“There’s a great deal in what I say,” contended Dan, his honest face full of earnestness. “Look here. Here’s an officer and a gentleman; a rich man, as we are given to believe, and we’ve no reason to doubt it. He seems to spend enough—Carter saw him lose five pounds last night, betting at billiards. If heis in love with a young lady, there’s nothing to hinder a man like that from going in for her openly——”

“Except her age,” struck in Sam. “He may think they’ll refuse Mina to him on that score.”

“Stuff! I wish you wouldn’t interrupt me, Sam. Every day will help to remedy that—and he might undertake to wait a year or two. But I feel sure and certain he does not really care for Mina; I feel sure that, if he is seeking in this underhand way to get her to promise to marry him, he has some ulterior motive in view. My own belief is he would like to kidnap her.”

Sam laughed. “You mean, kidnap her money?”

“Well, I don’t see what else it can be. The fellow may have outrun the constable, and need some ready money to put him straight. Rely upon this much, Sam—that his habits are as fast as they can well be. I have been learning a little about him lately.”

Sam made no answer. He began to look grave.

“Not at all the sort of man who ought to marry Mina, or any other tender young girl. He’d break her heart in a twelvemonth.”

Sam spoke up. “I said to Johnny Ludlow, just now, that it might be better to tell Dr. Knox. Perhaps——”

“What about?” interrupted the doctor himself, pouncing in upon us, and catching the words as he opened the door.“What have you to tell Dr. Knox about, Sam? And why are all you young men sitting up here? You’d be better in bed.”

The last straw, you know, breaks the camel’s back. Whether Sam would really have disclosed the matter to Dr. Knox, I can’t say; the doctor’s presence and the doctor’s question decided it.

Sam spoke in a low tone, standing behind the drug-counter with the doctor, who had gone round to look at some entry in what they called the day-book, and had lighted a gas-burner to do it by. Dr. Knox made no remark of any kind while he listened, his eyes fixed on the book: one might have thought he did not hear, but his lips were compressed.

“If she were not so young, sir—a child, as may be said—I should not have presumed to speak,” concluded Sam. “I don’t know whether I have done wrong or right.”

“Right,” emphatically pronounced the doctor.

But the word had hardly left his lips when there occurred a startling interruption. The outer door of the surgery, the one he had come in by, was violently drummed at, and then thrown open. Charlotte Knox, Miss Mack the governess, and Sally the maid—the same Sally who had been at Rose Villa when the trouble occurred about Janet Carey, and the same Miss Mack who had replaced Janet—came flocking in.

“Dicky’s lost, Arnold,” exclaimed Charlotte.

“Dicky lost!” repeated Dr. Knox. “How can he be lost at this time of night?”

“He is lost. And we had nearly gone to bed without finding it out. The people had all left, and the doors were locked, when some one—Gerty, I think—began to complain of Dicky——”

“It was I who spoke,” interposed the governess; and though she was fat enough for two people she had the meekest little voice in the world, and allowed herself to be made a perfect tool of at Rose Villa. “Dicky did behave very ill at supper, eating rudely of everything, and——”

“Yes, yes,” broke in Charlotte, “I remember now, Macky. You said Dicky ought to be restrained, and you wondered he was not ill; and then mamma called out, ‘But where is Dicky?’ ‘Gone to bed to sleep off his supper,’ we all told her: and she sent Sally up to see that he had put his candle out.”

“And of course,” interrupted Sally, thinking it was her turn to begin, “when I found the room empty, and saw by the moonlight that Master Dicky had not come to bed at all, I ran down to say so. And his mamma got angry, accusing us servants of having carelessly locked him out-of-doors. And he can’t be found, sir—as Miss Lotty says.”

“No, he cannot be found anywhere,” added Lotty. “We have searched the house and the gardens, and been in to inquire at Lady Jenkins’s; and he is gone. And mamma is frantic, and said we were to come to you, Arnold.”

“Master Dicky’s playing truant: he has gone off with some of the guests,” observed Dr. Knox.

“Well, mamma is putting herself into a frightful fever over him, Arnold. That old well in the field at the back was opened the day before yesterday; she says Dicky may have strayed there and fallen in.”

“Dicky’s after more mischief than that,” said the doctor, sagely. “A well in a solitary field would have no charms for Dicky. I tell you, Lotty, he must have marched home with some one or other. Had you any lads up there to-night?”

“No, not any. You know mamma never will have them. Lads, and Dicky, would be too much.”

“If Master Dicky have really gone off, as the doctor thinks, I’d lay my next quarter’s wages that it’s with Captain Collinson,” cried Sally. “He is always wanting to be after the captain.”

Lotty lifted her face, a gleam of intelligence flashing across it.“Perhaps that’s it,” she said; “I should not wonder if it is. He has strayed off after, or with, Captain Collinson. What is to be done, Arnold?”

“Not strayed with him, I should think,” observed the doctor.“Captain Collinson, if he possesses any sense or consideration, would order Dicky back at once.”

“Won’t you come with us to the captain’s lodgings, Arnold, and see?” cried Charlotte. “It would not do, would it, for us to go there alone at this time of night? The captain may be in bed.”

Arnold Knox looked at his sister; looked at the three of them, as if he thought they were enough without him. He was nearly done up with his long day’s work.

“I suppose I had better go with you, Lotty,” he said.“Though I don’t think Captain Collinson would kidnap any one of you if you went alone.”

“Oh dear, no; it is Mina he wants to kidnap, not us,” answered Lotty, freely. And Arnold glanced at her keenly as he heard the words.

Did you ever know a fellow in the hey-dey of his health and restlessness who was not ready for any night expedition—especially if it were to search after something lost? Dr. Knox took up his hat to accompany the visitors, and we three took up ours.

We proceeded in a body through the moonlit streets to Collinson’s lodgings; the few stragglers we met no doubt taking us all for benighted wayfarers, trudging home from some one or other of the noted Lefford soirées. Collinson had the rooms atthe hairdresser’s—good rooms, famed as the best lodgings in the town. The gas was alight in his sitting-room over the shop; a pretty fair proof that the captain was yet up.

“Stay, Lotty,” said Dr. Knox, arresting her impatient hand, that was lifted to pull the bell. “No need to arouse the house: I dare say Pink and his family are in bed. I will go up to Collinson.”

It was easy to say so, but difficult to do it. Dr. Knox turned the handle of the door to enter, and found it fastened. He had to ring, after all.

Nobody answered it. Another ring and another shared the same fate. Dr. Knox then searched for some small loose stones, and flung them up at the window. It brought forth no more than the bell had.

“Dicky can’t be there, or that gravel would have brought him to the window,” decided Lotty. “I should say Captain Collinson is not there, either.”

“He may be in his room at the back,” observed Dr. Knox. And he rang again.

Presently, after a spell of at least ten minutes’ waiting, and no end of ringing, an upper window was opened and a head appeared—that of the hairdresser.

“Whatever’s the matter?” called out he, seeing us all below.“It’s not fire, is it?”

“I am sorry to disturb you, Pink,” called back Dr. Knox.“It is Captain Collinson I want. Is he in, do you know?”

“Yes, sir; he came in about twenty minutes ago, and somebody with him, for I heard him talking,” answered Pink. “He must be in his sitting-room, if he is not gone to bed.”

“There is a light in the room, but I don’t think he can be in. I have thrown up some gravel, and he does not answer.”

“I’ll come down and see, sir.”

Pink, the most obliging little man in the world, descended to the captain’s room and thence to us at the door. Captain Collinson was not in. He had gone out again, and left his gas alight.

“You say some one came in with him, Pink. Was it a young lad?”

“I can’t tell, sir. I heard the captain’s latch-key, and Iheard him come on upstairs, talking to somebody; but I was just dropping off to sleep, so did not take much notice.”

That the somebody was young Dick, and that Captain Collinson had gone out to march Dick home again, seemed only probable. There was nothing for it but to go on to Rose Villa and ascertain; and we started for it, after a short consultation.

“I shall not have the remotest idea where to look for Dick if he is not there,” remarked Dr. Knox.

“And in that case, I do believe mamma will have a fit,”added Charlotte. “A real fit, I mean, Arnold. I wish something could be done with Dicky! The house is always in a commotion.”

Captain Collinson was at Rose Villa, whether Dicky was or not. At the garden-gate, talking to Mina in the moonlight, stood he, apparently saying good-night to her.

“Dicky? oh dear, yes; I have just brought Dicky back,”laughed the captain, before Dr. Knox had well spoken his young half-brother’s name, while Mina ran indoors like a frightened hare. “Upon getting home to my rooms just now I found some small mortal stealing in after me, and it proved to be Dicky. He followed me home to get a top I had promised him, and which I forgot to bring up here when I came to-night.”

“I hope you did not give it him,” said Dr. Knox.

“Yes, I did. I should never have got him back without,”added the captain. “Good-night.”

He laughed again as he went away. Dicky’s vagaries seemed to be rare fun for him.

Dicky was spinning the top on the kitchen table when we went in—for that’s where they had all gathered: Mrs. Knox, Gerty, Kate, and the cook. A big humming-top, nearly as large and as noisy as Dick. Dr. Knox caught up the top and caught Dicky by the hand, and took both into the parlour.

“Now then, sir!” he sternly asked. “What did you mean by this night’s escapade?”

“Oh, Arnold, don’t scold him,” implored Mrs. Knox, following them in with her hands held up. “It was naughty of him, of course, and it gave me a dreadful fright; but it was perhaps excusable, and he is safe at home again. The captain was tobring the top, and did not, and poor Dicky ran after him to get it.”

“You be quiet, Arnold; I am not to be scolded,” put in cunning Dicky. “You just give me my top.”

“As to scolding you, I don’t know that it would be of any further use: the time seems to have gone by for it, and I must take other measures,” spoke Dr. Knox. “Come up to bed now, sir. I shall see you in it before I leave.”

“But I want my top.”

“Which you will not have,” said the doctor: and he marched off Dicky.

“How cross you are with him, Arnold!” spoke his step-mother when the doctor came down again, leaving Dicky howling on his pillow for the top.

“It needs some one to be cross with him,” observed Dr. Knox.

“He is only a little boy, remember.”

“He is big enough and old enough to be checked and corrected—if it ever is to be done at all. I will see you to-morrow: I wish to have some conversation with you.”

“About Dicky?” she hastily asked.

“About him and other things. Mina,” he added in a low tone, as he passed her on his way out, but I, being next to him, caught the words, “I did not like to see you at the gate with Captain Collinson at this hour. Do not let it occur again. Young maidens cannot be too modest.”

And, at the reproof, Miss Mina coloured to the very roots of her hair.

II

They sat in the small garden-room, its glass-doors open to the warm spring air. Mrs. Knox wore an untidy cotton gown, of a flaming crimson-and-white pattern, and her dark face looked hot and angry. Dr. Knox, sitting behind the table, was being annoyed as much as he could be annoyed—and no one ever annoyed him but his step-mother—as the lines in his patient brow betrayed.

“It is for his own good that I suggest this; his welfare,”urged Dr. Knox. “Left to his own will much longer, he must not be. Therefore I say that he must be placed at school.”

“You only propose it to thwart me,” cried Mrs. Knox. “A fine expense it will be!”

“It will not be your expense. I pay his schooling now, and I shall pay it then. My father left me, young though I was, Dicky’s guardian, and I must do this. I wonder you do not see that it will be the very best thing for Dicky. Every one but yourself sees that, as things are, the boy is being ruined.”

Mrs. Knox looked sullenly through the open doors near which she sat; she tapped her foot impatiently upon the worn mat, lying on the threshold.

“I know you won’t rest until you have carried your point and separated us, Arnold; it has been in your mind to do it this long while. And my boy is the only thing I care for in life.”

“It is for Dicky’s own best interest,” reiterated Dr. Knox.“Of course he is dear to you; it would be unnatural if he were not; but you surely must wish to see him grow up a good and self-reliant man: not an idle and self-indulgent one.”

“Why don’t you say outright that your resolve is taken and nothing can alter it; that you are going to banish him to school to-morrow?”

“Not to-morrow, but he shall go at the half-quarter. The child will be ten times happier for it; believe that.”

“Do you really mean it?” she questioned, her black eyes flashing fury at Arnold. “Will nothing deter you?”

“Nothing,” he replied, in a low, firm tone. “I—bear with me a moment, mother—I cannot let Dicky run riot any longer. He is growing up the very incarnation of selfishness; he thinks the world was made for him alone; you and his sisters are only regarded by him as so many ministers to his pleasure. See how he treats you all. See how he treats the servants. Were I to allow this state of things to continue, how should I be fulfilling my obligation to my dead father?—my father and Dicky’s.”

“I will hear no more,” spoke Mrs. Knox, possibly thinking the argument was getting too strong for her. “I have wanted to speak to you, Arnold, and I may as well do it now. Things must be put on a different footing up here.”

“What things?”

“Money matters. I cannot continue to do upon my small income.”

Arnold Knox passed his hand across his troubled brow, almost in despair. Oh, what a weary subject this was! Not for long together did she ever give him rest from it.

“Your income is sufficient, mother; I am tired of saying it. It is between three and four hundred a-year; and you are free from house-rent.”

“Why don’t you remind me that the house is yours, and have done with it!” she cried, her voice harsh and croaking as a raven’s.

“Well, it is mine,” he said good-humouredly.

“Yes; and instead of settling it upon me when you married, you must needs settle it on your wife! Don’t you talk of selfishness, Arnold.”

“My wife does not derive any benefit from it. It has made no difference to you.”

“She would derive it, though, if you died. Where should I be then?”

“I am not going to die, I hope. Oh, mother, if you only knew how these discussions vex me!”

“Then you should show yourself generous.”

“Generous!” he exclaimed, in a pained tone. And, goaded to it by his remembrance of what he had done for her in the present and in the past, he went on to speak more plainly than he had ever spoken yet. “Do you forget that a great portion of what you enjoy should, by right, be mine? Ismine!”

“Yours!” she scornfully said.

“Yes: mine. Not by legal right, but by moral. When my father died he left the whole of his property to you. Considerably more than the half of that property had been brought to him by my mother: some people might have thought that much should have descended to her son.”

“He did not leave me the whole. You had a share of it.”

“Not of the income. I had a sum of five hundred pounds left me, for a specific purpose—to complete my medical education. Mother, I have never grumbled at this; never. It wasmy father’s will and pleasure that the whole should be yours, and that it should go to your children after you; and I am content to think that he did for the best; the house was obliged to come to me; it had been so settled at my mother’s marriage; but you have continued to live in it, and I have not said you nay.”

“It is like you to remind me of all this!”

“I could remind you of more,” he rejoined, chafing at her unjust words, her resentful manner. “That for years I impoverished myself to help you to augment this income. Three parts of what I earned, before my partnership with Mr. Tamlyn, I gave to you.”

“Well, I needed it. Do, for goodness’ sake, let the past alone, if you can: where’s the use of recalling it? Would you have us starve? Would you see me taken off to prison? And that’s what it will come to, unless I can get some money to pay up with. That table-drawer that you’ve got your elbow on, is full of bills. I’ve not paid one for these six months.”

“I cannot think what it is you do with your money!”

“Do with my money! Why, it goes in a hundred ways. How very ignorant you are, Arnold. Look at what dress costs, for myself and four girls! Look at what the soirées cost! We have to give all sorts of dishes now; lobster salads and raspberry creams, and all kinds of expensive things. Madame St. Vincent introduced that.”

“You must put down the soirées and the dress—if you cannot keep them within the bounds of your income.”

“Thank you. Just as I had to put down the pony-carriage and James. How cruel you are, Arnold!”

“I hope I am not. I do not wish to be so.”

“It will take two hundred pounds to set me straight; and I must have it from you, or from somebody else,” avowed Mrs. Knox.

“You certainly cannot have it, or any portion of it, from me. My expenses are heavy now, and I have my own children coming on.”

His tone was unmistakably decisive, and Mrs. Knox saw that it was so. For many years she had been in the habit of regarding Arnold as something like a bucket in a well, which brings up water every time it is let down. Just so had he brought up money for her from his pocket every time she worried for it. But that was over now: and he had to bear these reproaches periodically.

“You know that you can let me have it, Arnold. You can lend it me from Mina’s money.”

His face flushed slightly, he pushed his fair hair back with a gesture of annoyance.

“The last time you spoke of that I begged you never to mention it again,” he said in a low tone. “Why, what do you take me for, mother?”

“Take you for?”

“You must know that I could not touch Mina’s money without becoming a false trustee. Men have been brought to the criminal bar to answer for a less crime than that would be.”

“If Mina married, you would have to hand over the whole of it.”

“Of course I should. First of all taking care that it was settled upon her.”

“I don’t see the necessity of that. Mina could let me have what she pleased of it.”

“Talking of Mina,” resumed Dr. Knox, passing by her remark, “I think you must look a little closely after her. She is more intimate, I fancy, with Captain Collinson than is desirable, and——”

“Suppose Captain Collinson wants to marry her?” interrupted Mrs. Knox.

“Has he told you that he wants to do so?”

“No; not in so many words. But he evidently likes her. What a good match it would be!”

“Mina is too young to be married yet. And Captain Collinson cannot, I should suppose, have any intention of the sort. If he had, he would speak out: when it would be time enough to consider and discuss his proposal. Unless he does speak, I must beg of you not to allow Mina to be alone with him.”

“She never is alone with him.”

“I think she is, at odd moments. Only last night I saw her with him at the gate. Before that, while your soirée was going on, Dicky—I believe he could tell you so, if you asked him—saw them walking together in the garden, the captain’s arm round her waist.”

“Girls are so fond of flirting! And young men think no harm of a little passing familiarity.”

“Just so. But for remembering this, I should speak to Captain Collinson. The thought that there may be nothing serious in it prevents me. At any rate, I beg of you to take care of Mina.”

“And the money I want?” she asked, as he took up his hat to go.

But Dr. Knox, shortly repeating that he had no money to give her, made his escape. He had been ruffled enough already. One thing was certain: that if some beneficent sprite from fairyland increased Mrs. Knox’s annual income cent. per cent. she would still, and ever, be in embarrassment. Arnold knew this.

Mrs. Knox sat on, revolving difficulties. How many similar interviews she had held with her step-son, and how often he had been brought round to pay her bills, she could but remember. Would he do it now? A most unpleasant doubt, that he would not, lay upon her.

Presently the entrance was darkened by some tall form interposing itself between herself and the sunlight. She glanced up and saw Captain Collinson. He stood there smiling, his tasselled cane jauntily swayed in his left hand.

“My dear madam, you looked troubled. Is anything wrong?”

“Troubled! the world’s full of trouble, I think,” spoke Mrs. Knox, in a pettish kind of way. “Dr. Knox has been here to vex me.”

Captain Collinson stepped airily in, and sat down near Mrs. Knox, his eyes expressing proper concern: indignation blended with sympathy.

“Very inconsiderate of Dr. Knox: very wrong! Can I help you in any way, my dear lady?”

“Arnold is always inconsiderate. First, he begins upon me about Dicky, threatening to put him altogether away at school, poor ill-used child! Next, he——”

“Sweet little angel?” interlarded the captain.

“Next, he refuses to lend me a trifling sum of money—and he knows how badly I want it!”

“Paltry!” ejaculated the captain. “When he must be making so much of it!”

“Rolling in it, so to say,” confirmed Mrs. Knox. “Look at the practice he has! But if he did not give me any of his, he might advance me a trifle of Mina’s.”

“Of course he might,” warmly acquiesced Captain Collinson.

What with the warmth and the sympathy, Mrs. Knox rather lost her head. Many of us are betrayed on occasion into doing the same. That is, she said more than she should have said.

“You see, if Mina married, as I pointed out to Arnold, the money would no longer be under his control at all. It would be hers to do as she pleased with. She is a dear, good, generous girl, and would not scruple to let me have one or two hundred pounds. What would such a trifle be out of the whole seven thousand?”

“Very true; nothing at all,” cried the captain, toying with his handsome beard.

“But no; Arnold will not hear of it: he answered me in a way that I should not like to repeat. He also said he should take care, if Mina did marry before she was of age, that her money was settled upon her; said it on purpose to thwart me.”

“Cruel!” aspirated the captain.

“Some girls might be tempted to marry off-hand, and say nothing to him, if only to get her fortune out of his control. I don’t say Mina would.”

“Miser! My dear madam, rely upon it that whenever Miss Mina does marry, her husband will join with her in letting you have as much money as you wish. I am sure it would be his pride and pleasure to do so.”

Was it an implied promise? meant to be so understood? Mrs. Knox took it for one. She came out of her dumps, and felt exalted to the seventh heaven.

Meanwhile, Arnold Knox was with Lady Jenkins, to whom he had gone on quitting his step-mother. The old lady, up and dressed, sat in her dining-room. There appeared to be no change in her condition: drowsy, lethargic, gentle, yielding; imbecile, or not many shades removed from it. And yet, neither Dr. Knox nor his fellow-practitioner could see any causeto account for this. Of bodily illness she had none: except that she seemed feeble.

“I wish you would tell me what it is you are taking,” said Dr. Knox, bending over her and speaking in low, persuasive tones. “I fear that you are taking something that does you harm.”

Lady Jenkins looked up at him, apparently trying to consider.“I’ve not had anything since I took the physic,” she said.

“What physic?”

“The bottles that Mr. Tamlyn sent me.”

“But that was when you were ill. Are you sure you have not taken anything else?—that you are not taking anything? Any”—he dropped his voice to a still lower key—“opiates? Laudanum, for instance?”

Lady Jenkins shook her head. “I never took any sort of opiate in my life.”

“Then it is being given to her without her knowledge,”mentally decided the doctor. “I hear you were at the next door last night, as gay as the best of them,” he resumed aloud, changing his tone to a light one.

“Ay. I put on my new bronze satin gown: Patty said I was to. Janet sang her pretty songs.”

“Did she? When are you coming to spend an evening with us? She will sing them again for you.”

“I should like to come—if I may.”

“If you may! There’s nothing to prevent it. You are quite well enough.”

“There’s Patty. We shall have to ask her whether I may.”

Anything Arnold Knox might have rejoined to this was stopped by the entrance of Patty herself, a light blue shawl on her shoulders. A momentary surprise crossed her face at sight of the doctor.

“Oh, Dr. Knox! I did not know you were here,” she said, as she threw off the shawl. “I was running about the garden for a few minutes. What a lovely day it is!—the sun so warm.”

“It is that. Lady Jenkins ought to be out in it. Should you not like to take a run in the garden?” he laughingly added to her.

“Should I, Patty?”

The utter abnegation of will, both of tone and look, as she cast an appealing glance at her companion, struck Dr. Knox forcibly. He looked at both of them from under his rather overhanging eyebrows. Did Madame St. Vincent extort this obedience?—or was it simply the old lady’s imbecility? Surely it must be the latter.

“I think,” said madame, “a walk in the garden will be very pleasant for you, dear Lady Jenkins. Lettice shall bring down your things. The may-tree is budding beautifully.”

“Already!” said the doctor: “I should like to see it. Will you go with me, madame? I have two minutes to spare.”

Madame St. Vincent, showing no surprise, though she may have felt it, put the blue shawl on her shoulders again and followed Dr. Knox. The may-tree was nearly at the end of the garden, down by the shrubbery.

“Mr. Tamlyn mentioned to you, I believe, that we suspected something improper, in the shape of opiates, was being given to Lady Jenkins,” began Dr. Knox, never as much as lifting his eyes to the budding may-tree.

“Yes; I remember that he did,” replied Madame St. Vincent.“I hardly gave it a second thought.”

“Tamlyn said you had a difficulty in believing it. Nevertheless, I feel assured that it is so.”

“Impossible, Dr. Knox.”

“It seems impossible to you, I dare say. But that it is being done, I would stake my head upon. Lady Jenkins is being stupefied in some way: and I have brought you out here to tell you so, and to ask your co-operation in tracing the culprit.”

“But—I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox—who would give her anything of the kind? You don’t suspect me, I hope?”

“If I suspected you, my dear lady, I should not be talking to you as I am. The person we must suspect is Lettice Lane.”

“Lettice Lane!”

“I have reason to think it. Lettice Lane’s antecedents are not, I fear, quite so clear as they might be: though it is only recently I have known this. At any rate, she is the personal attendant of Lady Jenkins; the only one of them who has the opportunity of being alone with her. I must beg of you to watch Lettice Lane.”

Madame St. Vincent looked a little bewildered; perhaps felt so. Stretching up her hand, she plucked one of the budding may-blossoms.

“Mr. Tamlyn hinted at Lettice also. I have always felt confidence in Lettice. As to drugs—Dr. Knox, I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Lady Jenkins is being drugged,” emphatically pronounced Dr. Knox. “And you must watch Lettice Lane. If Lettice is innocent, we must look elsewhere.”

“Shall I tax Lettice with it?”

“Certainly not. You would make a good detective,” he added, with a laugh; “showing your hand to the enemy. Surely, Madame St. Vincent, you must yourself see that Lady Jenkins is being tampered with. Look at her state this morning: though she is not quite as bad as she is sometimes.”

“I have known some old people sleep almost constantly.”

“So have I. But theirs is simply natural sleep, induced by exhausted nature: hers is not natural. She is stupefied.”

“Stupefied with the natural decay of her powers,” dissented madame. “But—to drug her! No, I cannot believe it. And where would be the motive?”

“That I know not. But I am sure I am not mistaken,” he added decisively. “You will watch Lettice Lane?”

“I will,” she answered, after a pause. “Of course it may be as you say; I now see it. I will watch her to the very utmost of my ability from this hour.”

III

“DEAR JOHNNY,

“I expect your stay at Lefford is drawing towards a close; mine is, here. It might be pleasant if we travelled home together. I could take Lefford on my way—starting by an early train—and pick you up. You need some one to take care of you, you know. Let me hear when you intend to be ready. I will arrange my departure accordingly.

“Hope you have enjoyed yourself, old fellow.”

“Ever yours,

“J. T.”

The above letter from Tod, who was still in Leicestershire, reached me one morning at breakfast-time. Dr. Knox and Janet, old Tamlyn—all the lot of them—called out that they could not spare me yet. Even Cattledon graciously intimated that she should miss me. Janet wrote to Tod, telling him he was to take Lefford on his way, as he proposed, and to stay a week when he did come.

It was, I think, that same day that some news reached us touching Captain Collinson—that he was going to be married. At least that he had made an offer, and was accepted. Not to Mina Knox; but to an old girl (the epithet was Sam’s) named Belmont. Miss Belmont lived with her father at a nice place on the London Road, half-a-mile beyond Jenkins House; he had a great deal of money, and she was his only child. She was very plain, very dowdy, and quite forty years of age; but very good, going about amongst the poor with tracts and soup. If the tidings were true, and Captain Collinson had made Miss Belmont an offer, it appeared pretty evident that his object was her money: he could not well have fallen in love with her, or court a wife so much older than himself.

When taxed with the fact—and it was old Tamlyn who did it, meeting him opposite the market-house—Collinson simpered, and stroked his dark beard, and said Lefford was fond of marvels. But he did not deny it. Half-an-hour later he and Miss Belmont were seen together in the High Street. She had her old cloth mantle on and her brown bonnet, as close as a Quaker’s, and carried her flat district basket in her hand. The captain presented a contrast, with his superb dandy-cut clothes and flourishing his ebony cane.

“I think it must be quite true,” Janet observed, as we watched them pass the house. “And I shall be glad if it is: Arnold has been tormenting himself with the fancy that the gallant captain was thinking of little Mina.”

A day or two after this, it chanced that Dr. Knox had to visit Sir Henry Westmorland, who had managed to give a twist to his ankle. Sir Henry was one of those sociable, good-hearted men that no one can help liking; a rather elderly bachelor. He and Tamlyn were old friends, and we had all dined at Foxgrove about a week before.

“Would you like to go over with me, Johnny?” asked Dr. Knox, when he was starting.

I said I should like it very much, and got into the “conveyance,”the doctor letting me drive. Thomas was not with us. We soon reached Foxgrove: a low, straggling, red-brick mansion, standing in a small park, about two miles and a half from Lefford.

Dr. Knox went in; leaving me and the conveyance on the smooth wide gravel-drive before the house. Presently a groom came up to take charge of it, saying Sir Henry was asking for me. He had seen me from the window.

Sir Henry was lying on a sofa near the window, and Knox was already beginning upon the ankle. A gentlemanly little man, nearly bald, sat on the ottoman in the middle of the room. I found it was one Major Leckie.

Some trifle—are these trifles chance?—turned the conversation upon India. I think Knox spoke of some snake-bite in a man’s ankle that had laid him by for a month or two: it was no other than the late whilom mayor, Sir Daniel Jenkins. Upon which, Major Leckie began relating his experience of some reptile bites in India. The major had been home nearly two years upon sick leave, he said, and was now going back again.

“The 30th Bengal Cavalry!” repeated Dr. Knox, as Major Leckie happened to mention that regiment—which was his, and the doctor remembered that it was Captain Collinson’s. “One of the officers of that regiment is staying here now.”

“Is he!” cried the major, briskly. “Which of them?”

“Captain Collinson.”

“Collinson!” echoed the major, his whole face alight with pleasure. “Where is he? How long has he been here? I did not know he had left India.”

“He came home last autumn, I fancy; was not well, and got twelve months’ leave. He has been staying at Lefford for some time.”

“I should like to see him! Good old Collinson! He and I were close friends. He is a nice fellow.”

“Old, you style him!” cried Dr. Knox. “I should rather call him young—of the two.”

Major Leckie laughed. “It is a word we are all given tousing, doctor. Of course Collinson’s not old in years. Why is he staying at Lefford?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Unless it is that he has fallen in love. I heard him remark one day that the air of the place suited him.”

“Ah ah, Master Collinson!” laughed the major. “In love, are you, sir! Caught at last, are you! Who is the lady?”

“Nay, I spoke only in jest,” returned Dr. Knox. “He seems to be a general admirer; but I don’t know that it is any one in particular. Report has mentioned one or two ladies, but report is often a false town-crier.”

“Well, she will be in luck—whoever gets him. He is one of the nicest, truest fellows I know; and will make a rare good husband.”

“It is said he has private means. Do you know whether that’s true?”

“He has very good private means. His father left him a fortune. Sometimes we fancy he will not stay with us long. I should not be surprised if he sells out while he is at home, and settles down.”

“Johnny Ludlow heard him say something the other night to that effect,” observed the doctor, looking at me.

“Yes,” I said, confirming the words. “He is about buying an estate now, I believe. But he talked of going back to India for a few years.”

“I hope he will. There’s not a man amongst us, that I would not rather spare than Collinson. I should like to see him. I might walk into Lefford now—if you will give me his address, doctor. Will you spare me for an hour or two, Sir Henry?”

“Well, I must, I suppose,” grumbled Sir Henry. “It’s rather bad of you, though, Leckie; and after putting me off with so miserably short a stay. You get here at ten o’clock last night, and you go off at ten o’clock to-night! Fine behaviour that!”

“I am obliged to go to-night, Westmorland; you know I am, and I could not get to you earlier, although I tried. I won’t be away a minute longer than I can help. I can walk into Lefford in half-an-hour—my pace is a quick one. No; and I won’t stay an unconscionable time with Collinson,” he added, in answer toa growl of the baronet’s. “Trust me. I’ll be back under two hours.”

“Bring him back with you for the rest of the day,” said Sir Henry.

“Oh, thank you. And I am sure you will say he is the best fellow going. I wonder you and he have not found out one another before.”

“If you don’t mind taking a seat in yonder nondescript vehicle—that Mr. Johnny Ludlow here has the audacity to say must have been built in the year One,” laughed Dr. Knox, pointing outside, “I can drive you to Captain Collinson’s lodgings.”

“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” cried the major, laughing also. “What style of vehicle do you call it?”

“We call it the conveyance. As to its style—well I never had the opportunity of asking that of the builder. I believe my father bought it second-hand when he first went into practice many a year ago.”

The doctor drove this time; Major Leckie sitting beside him, I in the perch behind. Leaving the major at the hairdresser’s, upon reaching Lefford, Dr. Knox and I went home. And this is what occurred—as we heard later.

Ringing at the private door, which was Captain Collinson’s proper entrance, a young servant-girl appeared, and—after the manner of many young country servants—sent Major Leckie alone up to Captain Collinson’s rooms, saying she supposed the captain was at home. It turned out that he was not at home. Seated before the fire was a gentleman in a crimson dressing-gown and slippers, smoking a huge pipe.

“Come in,” cried out he, in answer to the major’s knock.

“I beg your pardon,” said the major, entering. “I understood that Captain Collinson lodged here.”

“He does lodge here,” replied he of the dressing-gown, putting his pipe into the fender, as he rose. “What is it that you want with him?”

“I only called to see him. I am one of his brother-officers—home on sick leave; as I understand he is.”

“Collinson is out,” said the gentleman. “I am sorry it should happen so. Can you leave any message?”

“Will he be long? I should much like to see him.”

“He will be back to dinner to-night; not much before that, I think. He is gone by train to—to—some place a few miles off. Boom—or Room—or Doom—or some such name. I am a stranger here.”

“Toome, I suppose,” remarked the major. “It’s the last station before you get to Lefford—I noticed the name last night. I am very sorry. I should liked to have seen Collinson. Tell him so, will you. I am Major Leckie.”

“You will be calling again, perhaps?”

“I can’t do that. I must spend the rest of this day with my friend, Sir Henry Westmorland, and I leave to-night. Tell Collinson that I embark in a few days. Stay: this is my address in London, if he will write to me. I wonder he did not attempt to find me out—I came home before he did: and he knew that he could always get my address at my bankers’.”

“I will tell Collinson all you say, Major Leckie,” said the stranger, glancing at the card. “It is a pity he is out.”

“Should he come back in time—though I fear, by what you say, there’s little chance of it—be so good as to say that Sir Henry Westmorland will be happy to see him to dinner this evening at Foxgrove, at six o’clock—and to come over as much earlier as he can.”

With the last words, Major Leckie left, Collinson’s friend politely attending him down to the front-door. I was standing at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate as he passed it on his way back to Foxgrove. Dr. Knox, then going off on foot to see a patient, came across the yard from the surgery at the same moment.

“Such a mischance!” the major stopped in his rapid walk to say to us. “Collinson has gone to Toome to-day. I saw a friend of his, who is staying with him, and he thinks he won’t be back before night.”

“I did not know Collinson had any one staying with him,”remarked the doctor. “Some one called in upon him, probably.”

“This man is evidently staying with him; making himself at home too,” said the major. “He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, and had his feet on the fender, smoking a pipe. A tall, dark fellow, face all hair.”

“Why, that is Collinson himself,” cried I.

“Not a bit of it,” said the major. “This man is no more like Collinson—except that Collinson is dark and has a beard—than he is like me. He said he was a stranger in the place.”

A rapid conclusion crossed me that it must be a brother of Collinson’s—for a resemblance to himself, according to the major’s description, there no doubt was. Major Leckie wished me good-day, and continued his way up the street, Dr. Knox with him.

“What are you gazing at, Johnny Ludlow?”

I turned at the question, and saw Charlotte Knox. She was coming to call on Janet. We stood there talking of one thing and another. I told Charlotte that Collinson’s brother, as I took it to be, was staying with him; and Charlotte told me of a quarrel she had just had with Mina on the score of the captain.

“Mina won’t believe a word against him, Johnny. When I say he is nothing but a flirt, that he is only playing with her, she bids me hold my tongue. She quite scorns the notion that he would like to marry Miss Belmont.”

“Have you seen any more letters, that concern me, in at Madame St. Vincent’s?” I asked.

“Do you think I should be likely to?—or that such letters are as plentiful as blackberries?” retorted Charlotte. “And you?—have you discovered the key to that letter?”

“I have not discovered it, Charlotte. I have taxed my memory in vain. Never a girl, no matter whose sister she may be, can I recall to mind as being likely to owe me a grudge.”

“It was not that the girl owed you a grudge,” quickly spoke Charlotte. “It was that she must not meet you.”

“Does not the one thing imply the other? I can’t think of any one. There was a young lady, indeed, in the years gone by, when I was not much more than a lad, who—may—have—taken up a prejudice against me,” I added slowly and thoughtfully, for I was hardly sure of what I said. “But she cannot have anything to do with the present matter, and I am quite sure she was not a sister of Madame St. Vincent.”

“What was her name?” asked Charlotte.

“Sophie Chalk.”

LADY JENKINS.

LIGHT.

I

Tod arrived at Lefford. I met him at the train, just as I had met Miss Cattledon, who was with us still. As we walked out of the station together, many a man cast a glance after the tall, fine young fellow—who looked strong enough to move the world, if, like Archimedes, the geometrician of Syracuse, he had only possessed the necessary lever.

“Shall you be able to stay a week, Tod?”

“Two weeks if they’d like it, Johnny. How you have picked up, lad!”

“Picked up?”

“In looks. They are all your own again. Glad to see it, old fellow.”

Some few days had elapsed since the latest event recorded in this veritable little history—the call that Major Leckie made on Captain Collinson, and found his brother there, instead of himself—but no change worth noting to the reader had occurred in the town politics. Lady Jenkins was ailing as much as ever, and Madame St. Vincent was keeping a sharp watch on the maid, Lettice Lane, without, as yet, detecting her in any evil practices: the soirées were numerous, one being held at some house or other every night in the work-a-day week: and the engagement of Captain Collinson to Miss Belmont was now talked of as an assured fact. Collinson himself had been away from Lefford during these intervening days. Pink, the hairdresser, thought he had taken a run up to London, on some little matter of business. As to the brother, we had heard no more of him.

But, if Captain Collinson had taken a run up to London, he had unquestionably run down again, though not to Lefford. On the day but one before the coming of Tod, Janet and Miss Cattledon went over by train to do some shopping at the county town, which stood fifteen miles from Lefford, I being with them. Turning into a pastry-cook’s in the middle of the day to get something to eat, we turned in upon Captain Collinson. He sat at a white marble-topped table in the corner of the shop, eating an oyster patty.

“We heard you were in London,” said Janet, shaking hands with him, as he rose to offer her his seat.

“Got back this morning. Shall be at Lefford to-morrow: perhaps to-night,” he answered.

He stood gobbling up his patty quickly. I said something to him, just because the recollection came into my mind, about the visit of his brother.

“My brother!” he exclaimed in answer, staring at me with all his eyes. “What brother? How do you know anything about my brother?”

“Major Leckie saw him when he called at your lodgings. Saw him instead of you. You had gone to Toome. We took it to be your brother, from the description; he was so like yourself.”

The captain smiled. “I forgot that,” he said. “We aremuch alike. Ned told me of Leckie’s call. A pity I could not see him! Things always happen cross and contrary. Has Leckie left Foxgrove yet?”

“Oh, he left it that same night. I should think he is on his way back to India by this time.”

“His visit to Lefford seems to have been as flying a one as my brother’s was, and his did not last a day. How much?” to the girl behind the counter. “Sixpence? There it is.” And, with a general adieu nodded to the rest of us, the captain left the shop.

“I don’t like that dandy,” spoke Cattledon, in her severest tone. “I have said so before. I’m sure he is a man who cannot be trusted.”

I answered nothing: but I had for a little time now thought the same. There was that about him that gave you the idea he was in some way or other not true. And it may as well be mentioned here that Captain Collinson got back to Lefford that same evening, in time to make his appearance at Mrs. Parker’s soirée, at which both Miss Belmont and Mina Knox were present.

So now we come to Tod again, and to the day of his arrival. Talking of one thing and another, telling him of this and that, of the native politics, as we all like to do when a stranger comes to set himself down, however temporarily, amidst us, I mentioned the familiarity that in two of the people struck upon my memory. Never did I see this same Captain Collinson, never did I see Madame St. Vincent, or hear them speak, or listen to their laugh, but the feeling that I had met them before—had been, so to say, intimate with both one and the other—came forcibly upon me.

“And yet it would seem, upon the face of things, that I never have been,” I continued to Tod, when telling of this. “Madame St. Vincent says she never left the South of France until last year; and the captain has been nearly all his life in India.”

“You know you do take fancies, Johnny.”

“True. But, are not those fancies generally borne out by the result? Any way, they puzzle me, both of them: and there’s a ring in their voices that——”

“A ring in their voices!” put in Tod, laughing.

“Say an accent, then; especially in madame’s; and it sounds, to my ears, unmistakably Worcestershire.”

“Johnny, you are fanciful!”

I never got anything better from Tod. “You will have the honour of meeting them both here to-night,” I said to him, “for it is Janet’s turn to give the soirée, and I know they are expected.”

Evening came. At six o’clock the first instalment of guests knocked at the door; by half-past six the soirée was in full glory: a regular crowd. Every one seemed to have come, with the exception of the ladies from Jenkins House. Sam Jenkins brought in their excuses.

Sam had run up to Jenkins House with some physic for the butler, who said he had a surfeit (from drinking too much old ale, Tamlyn thought), and Sam had made use of the opportunity to see his aunt. Madame St. Vincent objected. It would trythe dear old lady too much, madame said. She was lying in a sweet sleep on the sofa in her own room; had been quite blithe and lively all day, but was drowsy now; and she had better not be disturbed until bedtime. Perhaps Mr. Sam would kindly make their excuses to Mrs. Arnold Knox.

“Can’t you come yourself, madame?” asked Sam, politely.“If Aunt Jenkins is asleep, and means to keep asleep till bed-time, she can’t want you.”

“I could not think of leaving her,” objected madame. “She looks for me the moment she wakes.”

So Sam, I say, brought back the message. Putting himself into his evening-coat, he came into the room while tea was going on, and delivered madame’s excuses to Janet as distinctly as the rattle of cups and saucers allowed. You should have seen Cattledon that evening:—in a grey silk gown that stood on end, a gold necklace, and dancing shoes.

“This is the second soirée this week that Lady Jenkins has failed to appear at,” spoke Mrs. Knox—not Janet—in a resentful tone. “My firm opinion is that Madame St. Vincent keeps her away.”

“Keeps her away,” cried Arnold. “Why should she do that?”

“Well, yes; gives way to her fads and fancies about being ill, instead of rousing her out of them. As to why she does it,”continued Mrs. Knox, “I suppose she is beginning to grow nervous about her. As if an innocent, quiet soirée could hurt Lady Jenkins!”

“Johnny,” whispered Sam, subsiding into the background after delivering his message, “may I never stir again if I didn’t see Collinson hiding in aunt’s garden!”

“Hiding in your aunt’s garden!” I exclaimed. “What was he doing that for?”

“Goodness knows. Did you ever notice a big bay-tree that you pass on the left, between the door and the gate? Well, he was standing behind it. I came out of the house at a double quick pace, knowing I should be late for the soirée, cleared the steps at a leap, and the path to the gate at another. Too quick, I suppose, for Collinson. He was bending forward to look at the parlour windows, and drew back as I passed.”

“Did you speak, Sam?”

“No, I came flying on, taking no notice. I dare say he thinks I did not see him. One does not like, you know, to speak to a man who evidently wants to avoid you. But now—I wonder what he was doing there?” continued Sam, reflectively. “Watching Madame St. Vincent, I should say, through the lace curtains.”

“But for what purpose?”

“I can’t even imagine. There he was.”

To my mind this sounded curious. But that Mina Knox was before my eyes—just at the moment listening to the whispers of Dan Jenkins—I should have thought the captain was looking after her. Or, rather, not listening to Dan. Mina had a pained, restless look on her face, not in the least natural to it, and kept her head turned away. And the more Dan whispered, the more she turned it from him.

“Here he is, Sam.”

Sam looked round at my words, and saw Captain Collinson, then coming in. He was got up to perfection as usual, and wore a white rose in his button-hole. His purple-black hair, beard, whiskers and moustache were grand; his voice had its ordinary fashionable drawl. I saw Tod—at the opposite side of the room—cease talking with old Tamlyn, to fix his keen eyes on the captain.

“Very sorry to be so late,” apologized the captain, bowing over Janet’s hand. “Been detained at home writing letters for India. Overland mail goes out to-morrow night.”

Sam gave me a knock with his elbow. “What a confounded story!” he whispered. “Wonder what the gallant captain means, Johnny! Wonder what game he is up to?”

It was, I dare say, nearly an hour after this that I came across Tod. He was standing against the wall, laughing slightly to himself, evidently in some glee. Captain Collinson was at the piano opposite, his back to us, turning over the leaves for Caroline Parker, who was singing.

“What are you amused at, Tod?”

“At you, lad. Thinking what a muff you are.”

“I always am a muff, I know. But why am I one just now in particular?”

“For not knowing that man,” nodding towards Collinson. “Ithought I recognized him as he came in; felt sure of him when I heard him speak. Men may disguise their faces almost at will; but not their voices, Johnny.”

“Why, who is he?” I asked in surprise.

“I’ll tell you when we are alone. I should have known him had we met amid the Hottentots. I thought he was over in Australia; knew he went there.”

“But—is he not Captain Collinson?”

Tod laughed. “Just as much as I am, Johnny. Of course he may have assumed the name of Collinson in place of his own: if so, nobody has a right, I take it, to say him nay. But, as to his being a captain in the Bengal Cavalry—well, I don’t think he is.”

“And you say I know him!”

“I say you ought to—but for being a muff. I suppose it is the hair he is adorned with that has thrown you off the scent.”

“But, where have I seen him, Tod? Who——”

“Hush, lad. We may be overheard.”

As a general rule, all the guests at these soirées left together. They did so to-night. The last to file out at the door were the Hampshires, with Mrs. Knox, her daughter, and Miss Mack—for Janet had made a point of inviting poor hard-worked, put-upon Macky. Both families lived in the London Road, and would go home in company. Dan had meant to escort Mina, but she pointedly told him he was not wanted, and took the offered arm of Captain Collinson. Upon which, Dan turned back in a huff. Sam laughed at that, and ran after them himself.

How long a time had elapsed afterwards, I hardly know. Perhaps half-an-hour; perhaps not so much. We had not parted for the night: in fact, Mr. Tamlyn and Tod were still over the game at chess they had begun since supper; which game seemed in no mood to be finished. I watched it: Dr. Knox and Miss Cattledon stood talking over the fire; while Janet, ever an active housekeeper, was in the supper-room, helping the maids to clear the table. In the midst of this, Charlotte Knox came back, rushing into the room in a state of intense excitement, with the news that Mina and Captain Collinson were eloping together.

The account she gave was this—though just at first nothingclear could be made out of her. Upon starting, the Hampshires, Mrs. Knox, and Miss Mack went on in front; Captain Collinson and Mina walked next, and Charlotte fell behind with Sam. Fell very much behind, as it appeared; for when people are talking of what interests them, their steps are apt to linger; and Sam was telling her of having seen Captain Collinson behind the bay-tree. It was a beautiful night, warm and pleasant.

Charlotte and Sam let the captain and Mina get pretty nearly the length of a street before them; and they, in their turn, were as much behind the party in advance. Suddenly Sam exclaimed that the captain was taking the wrong way. His good eyes had discerned that, instead of keeping straight on, which was the proper (and only) route to the London Road, he and Mina had turned down the lane leading to the railway-station. “Halloa!”he exclaimed to Charlotte, “what’s that for?” “They must be dreaming,” was Charlotte’s laughing reply: “or, perhaps the captain wants to take an excursion by a night-train!” Whether anything in the last remark, spoken in jest, struck particularly on the mind of Sam, Charlotte did not know: away he started as if he had been shot, Charlotte running after him in curiosity. Arrived at the lane, Sam saw the other two flying along, just as if they wanted to catch a train and had not a minute to do it in. Onward went Sam’s long legs in pursuit; but the captain’s legs were long also, and he was pulling Mina with him: altogether Sam did not gain much upon them. The half-past eleven o’clock train was then gliding into the station, where it was timed to halt two minutes. The captain and Mina dashed on to the platform, and, when Sam got up, he was putting her into the nearest carriage. Such was Charlotte’s statement: and her eyes looked wild, and her breath was laboured as she made it.

“Have they gone?—gone on by the train?” questioned Dr. Knox, who seemed unnaturally calm.

“Goodness, no!” panted the excited Charlotte. “Sam managed to get his arm round Mina’s waist, and the captain could not pull her away from him. It was a regular struggle on the platform, Arnold. I appealed to the station-master, who stood by. I told him it was my sister, and that she was being kidnapped against her will; Sam also appealed to him. So he gave the signal when the time was up, and let the train go on.”

“Not against her will, I fear,” spoke Arnold Knox from between his condemning lips. “Where are they now, Lotty?”

“On the platform, quarrelling; and still struggling which shall keep possession of Mina. I came running here to fetch you, Arnold, and I believe I shall never get my breath again.”

With one accord we all, Cattledon excepted, set off to the station; even old Tamlyn proved he had some go in his legs yet. Tod reached it first: few young men could come up to him at running.

Sam Jenkins had exchanged his hold of Mina for a hold on Captain Collinson. The two were struggling together; but Sam’s grasp was firm, and he held him as in a vice. “No, no,” he was saying, “you don’t escape me, captain, until some one comes here to take charge of Mina.” As to Mina, little simpleton, she cowered in the shade of the corner, shivering and crying. The station-master and the two night-porters stood about, gaping and staring.

Tod put his hand on the captain’s shoulder; his other hand momentarily holding back Dr. Knox. “Since when have you been Captain Collinson,” he quietly asked.

The captain turned his angry eyes upon him. “What is that to you?” he retorted. “I am Captain Collinson; that is enough for you.”

“Enough for me, and welcome. Not enough, as I judge, for this gentleman here,” indicating the doctor. “When I knew you your name was not Collinson.”

“How dare you insult me?” hissed the captain. “My name not Collinson!”

“Not at all!” was Tod’s equable answer. “It used to beFabian Pell.”

II

The history of the Clement-Pells and their downfall was given in the First Series of these stories, and the reader can have no difficulty in recalling Fabian to his memory. There are times, even to this day, when it seems to me that I must have been amuff, as Tod said, not to know him. But, some years had elapsed since I saw him; and those years, with their ill-fortune and exposure, and the hard life he had led in Australia, had served to change him greatly; above all, there was now the mass of hair disguising the greater part of his face. Bit by bit my recollection came to me, and I knew that he was, beyond all shadow of doubt, Fabian Pell.

How long we sat up that night at Mr. Tamlyn’s, talking over its events, I cannot precisely tell. For quite the half of what was left of it. Mina, brought to his own home by Arnold for safety, was consigned to Cattledon’s charge and bed, and retired to the latter in a state of humiliation and collapse.

The scene on the platform had soon come to a conclusion. With the security of Mina assured by the presence of her brother and the rest of us, Sam let go his hold of the captain. It had been a nice little plot this, that the captain had set on foot in secret, and persuaded that silly girl, not much better than a child, to accede to. They were to have run away to London that night, and been married there the next day; the captain, as was found out later, having already managed to procure a licence. You see, if Mina became his wife without any settlement, her money at once lapsed to him and he could do what he would with it. How, as Captain Collinson, he would have braved the matter out to Dr. Knox that night, and excused himself for his treachery, he best knew. Tod checkmated him by proclaiming him as Fabian Pell. A lame attempt at denial, which Tod, secure in his assertion, laughed at; a little bravado, and Captain Collinson collapsed. Against the truth—that he was Fabian Pell—brought home to him so suddenly and clearly, he could not hold out; the man’s hardihood deserted him; and he turned tail and went off the platform, calling back that Mr. Todhetley should hear from him in the morning.

We came away then, bringing Mina. Sam went to escort Charlotte home, where they would have the pleasure of imparting the news to Mrs. Knox, who probably by that time was thinking that Lotty had eloped as well as Mina. And now we were sitting round the fire in old Tamlyn’s room, discussing what had happened. Sam came back in the midst of it. Arnoldwas down in the mouth, and no mistake.

“Did you see Mrs. Knox?” he asked of Sam.

“Not to speak to, sir. I saw her through the kitchen window. She was spreading bread-and-jam for Dicky, who had come down in his night-gown and would not be coaxed back to bed.”

“What an injudicious woman she is!” put in old Tamlyn.“Enough to ruin the boy.”

Perhaps Dr. Knox was thinking, as he sat there, his hand pressed upon his brow, that if she had been a less injudicious woman, a different mother altogether, Mina might not have been in danger of falling into the present escapade: but he said nothing.

“I remember hearing of the notorious break-up of the Clement-Pells at the time it took place,” observed old Tamlyn to Tod. “And to think that this man should be one of them!”

“He must carry his impudence about with him,” was Tod’s remark.

“They ruined hundreds of poor men and women, if not thousands,” continued old Tamlyn. “I conclude your people knew all about it?”

“Indeed, yes. We were in the midst of it. My father lost—how much was it, Johnny?”

“Two hundred pounds,” I answered; the question bringing vividly back to me our adventures in Boulogne, when the pater and Mr. Brandon went over there to try to get the money back.

“I suppose,” resumed the surgeon, “your father had that much balance lying in their hands, and lost it all?”

“No,” said Tod, “he did not bank with them. A day or two before Clement-Pell burst up, he drove to our house as bold as brass, asking my father in the most off-hand manner to let him have a cheque for two hundred pounds until the next day. The Squire did let him have it, without scruple, and of course lost it. He would have let him have two thousand had Pell asked for it.”

“But that was a fraud. Pell might have been punished for it.”

“I don’t know that it was so much a fraud as many other things Pell did, and might have been punished for,” observed Tod. “At any rate, not as great a one. He escaped out of the way, as I dare say you know, sir, and his family escaped with him. It was hard on them. They had been brought up in thegreatest possible extravagance, in all kinds of luxury. This one, Fabian, was in the army. He, of course, had to retire. His own debts would have forced that step upon him, apart from the family disgrace.”

“Did he re-enter it, I wonder.”

Tod laughed. “I should say not. He went to Australia. Not above a year ago I heard that he was still there. He must have come back here fortune-hunting; bread-hunting; and passed himself off as Captain Collinson the better to do it. Miss Mina Knox’s seven thousand pounds was a prize to fight for.”

“That’s it!” cried Sam. “Dan has said all along it was the money he was after, dishonourable wretch, not Mina herself. He cares too much for Madame St. Vincent to care for Mina: at least we think so. How did he get the funds, I wonder, that he has been flourishing about upon?”

“Won them at billiards,” suggested Tod.

“No,” said Sam, “I don’t think that. By all accounts he lost more than he won in the billiard-rooms.”

Dr. Knox looked up from a reverie. “Was it himself that Major Leckie saw?—and did he pass himself off as another man to escape detection? Did he go off for the remainder of the week lest the major should look him up again?”

And we knew it must have been so.

Little sleep did I get that night, or, rather, morning, for the small hours had struck when we went to bed. The association of ideas is a great thing in this world; a help in many an emergency. This association led me from Fabian Pell to his sisters: and the mysterious memory of Madame St. Vincent that had so puzzled my mind cleared itself up. As though a veil had been withdrawn from my eyes, leaving the recollection unclouded and distinct, I saw she was one of those sisters: the eldest of them, Martha Jane. And, let not the reader call me a muff, as Tod again did later, for not having found her out before. When I knew her she was an angular, raw-boned girl, with rather a haggard and very pale face, and nothing to say for herself. Now she was a filled-out woman, her face round, her colour healthy, and one of the most self-possessed talkers I ever listened to. In the old days her hair was reddish and fell in curls: now it was dark, and worn in braids and plaits fashionablyincomprehensible. Whether the intervening years had darkened the hair, or whether madame cunningly dyed it, must remain a question.

Dan Jenkins and his brother were right. They no doubt had seen looks of anxious interest given to Madame St. Vincent by Captain Collinson. Not as a lover, however; they were mistaken there; but as a brother who was living in a state of peril, and whom she was doubtless protecting and trying to aid. But how far had her aid gone? That she kept up the ball, as to his being Captain Collinson, the rich, honourable, and well-connected Indian officer, went without saying, as the French have it; and no one could expect her to proclaim him as Fabian Pell, the swindler; but had she been helping him in his schemes upon Mina? As to her display of formal coolness to him, it must have been put on to mislead the public.

And what was I to do? Must I quietly bury my discovery within me and say nothing? or must I tell Dr. Knox that Madame St. Vincent was no other than Martha Jane Pell? What ought I to do? It was that question that kept me awake. Never liking to do harm where I could not do good, I asked myself whether I had any right to ruin her. It might be that she was not able to help herself; that she had done no worse than keep Fabian’s secret: it might be that she had wanted him gone just as much as Dan Jenkins had wanted it.

“I’ll tell Tod in the morning,” was my final conclusion, “and hear what he thinks.”

When I got downstairs they were beginning breakfast, and Miss Cattledon was turning from the table to carry up Mina’s tea. Mina remained in the depths of tears and contrition, and Cattledon had graciously told her she might lie in bed. Breakfast was taken very late that morning, the result of the previous night’s disturbance, and the clock was striking ten when we rose from it.

“Tod, I want to speak to you,” I said in his ear. “I want to tell you something.”

“All right, lad. Tell away.”

“Not here. Won’t you come out with me somewhere? We must be alone.”

“Then it must wait, Johnny. I am going round to thestables with Tamlyn. He wishes me to see the horse they have got on trial. By the description, I don’t think much of him: should give him a pretty long trial before I bought him.”

They went out. Not long after that, I was strolling across the court-yard with Sam Jenkins, who had been despatched on some professional errand, when we saw Sir Henry Westmorland ride up and rein in his horse. He asked for Dr. Knox. Sam went back to the house to say so, while Sir Henry talked to me.

“Look here,” said Sir Henry to the doctor, after they had shaken hands, “I have had a curious letter from Major Leckie this morning. At least”—taking the letter from his pocket and opening it—“it contains an odd bit of news. He says—where is it?—stand still, sir,”—to the horse. “Here it is; just listen, doctor. ‘Dr. Knox must have made a mistake in saying Collinson was at Lefford. Collinson is in India; has not been home at all. I have had a letter from him by the overland mail just in, asking me to do a commission for him. Tell Dr. Knox this. If the man he spoke of is passing himself off for Collinson of ours, he must be an impostor.’ What do you think of that, doctor?” concluded Sir Henry, folding the letter again.

“He is an impostor,” replied Dr. Knox. “We found him out last night.”

“What a rogue! Has he been taking people in—fleecing them?”

“He has taken us all in, Sir Henry, in one sense of the word; he was on the point of doing it more effectually, when he was stopped. As to fleecing people, I don’t know about that. He seems to have had plenty of money at his command—whence obtained is another question.”

“Cheated some one out of it; rely upon that,” remarked the baronet, as he nodded a good-day to us, and rode off.

Mina was downstairs when we returned indoors. Anything more pitiful than her state of contrition and distress I should not care to see. No doubt the discovery, just made, tended to strengthen her repentance. In a silly girl’s mind some romance might attach to the notion of an elopement with a gallant captain of consideration, brave in Her Majesty’s service; but to elope with Mr. Fabian Pell, the chevalier d’industrie, was quite another affair. Mina was mild in temperament, gentle inmanners, yet she might have flown at the ex-captain’s face with sharp nails, had he come in her way.

“I did not really like him,” she sobbed forth: and there was no doubt that she spoke truth. “But they were always on at me, persuading me; they never let me alone.”

“Who persuaded you, my dear?” asked Janet.

“He did. He was for ever meeting me in private, and urging me. I could not go out for a walk, or just cross the garden, or run into the next door, but he would be there. Madame St. Vincent persuaded me. She did not say to me, in words, ‘you had better do as he asks you and run away,’ but all her counsels tended towards it. She would say to me how happy his wife would be; what a fine position it was for any young lady lucky enough to be chosen by him; and that all the world thought me old enough to marry, though Arnold did not, and for that reason Arnold would do his best to prevent it. And so—and so——”

“And so they persuaded you against your better judgment,”added Janet pityingly, as Mina broke down in a burst of tears.

“There, child, take this, and don’t cry your eyes out,” interposed Cattledon, bringing in a beaten-up egg.

Cattledon was coming out uncommonly strong in the way of compassion, all her tartness gone. She certainly did not look with an eye of favour on elopements; but she was ready to take up Mina’s cause against the man who had deceived her. Cattledon hated the Pells: for Cattledon had been done out of fifty pounds at the time of old Pell’s failure, money she had rashly entrusted to him. She could not very well afford to lose it, and she had been bitter on the Pells, one and all, ever since.

That morning was destined to be one of elucidation. Mr. Tamlyn was in the surgery, saying a last word to Dr. Knox before the latter went out to visit his patients, when Lettice Lane marched in. She looked so fresh and innocent that three parts of Tamlyn’s suspicions of her melted away.

“Anything amiss at home?” asked he.

“No, sir,” replied Lettice, “I have only brought this note”—handing one in. “Madame St. Vincent told the butler to bring it; but his pains are worse this morning; and, as I chanced to be coming out at the moment, he asked me to leave it here for him.”

“Wait an instant,” said Mr. Tamlyn, as he opened the note.

It contained nothing of consequence. Madame St. Vincent had written to say that Lady Jenkins was pretty well, but had finished her medicine: perhaps Mr. Tamlyn would send her some more. Old Tamlyn’s injunction to wait an instant had been given in consequence of a sudden resolution he had then come to (as he phrased it in his mind), to “tackle” Lettice.

“Lettice Lane,” he began, winking at Dr. Knox, “your mistress’s state is giving us concern. She seems to be always sleeping.”

“She is nearly always dozing off, sir,” replied Lettice, her tone and looks open and honest as the day.

“Ay. I can’t quite come to the bottom of it,” returned old Tamlyn, making believe to be confidential. “To me, it looks just as though she took—took opiates.”

“Opiates, sir?” repeated Lettice, as if she hardly understood the word: while Dr. Knox, behind the desk, was glancing keenly at her from underneath his compressed eyebrows.

“Opium. Laudanum.”

Lettice shook her head. “No, sir, my mistress does not take anything of that sort, I am sure; we have nothing of the kind in the house. But Madame St. Vincent is for ever dosing her with brandy-and-water.”

“What?” shouted old Tamlyn.

“I have said a long while, sir, that I thought you ought to know it; I’ve said so to the housemaid. I don’t believe an hour hardly passes, day or night, but madame administers to her a drop of brandy-and-water. Half a wine-glass, maybe, or a full wine-glass, as the case may happen; and sometimes I know it’s pretty strong.”

“That’s it,” said Dr. Knox quietly: and a curious smile crossed his face.

Mr. Tamlyn sat down on the stool in consternation. “Brandy-and-water!”he repeated, more than once, “Perpetually dosed with brandy-and-water! And now, Lettice Lane, how is it you have not come here before to tell me of this?”

“I did not come to tell you now, sir,” returned Lettice.“Madame St. Vincent says that Lady Jenkins needs it: she seems to give it her for her good. It is only lately that I havedoubted whether it can be right. I have not liked to say anything: servants don’t care to interfere. Ten times a-day she will give her these drops of cold brandy-and-water: and I know she gets up for the same purpose once or twice in the night.”

“Does Lady Jenkins take it without remonstrance?” asked Dr. Knox, speaking for the first time.

“She does, sir, now. At first she did not. Many a time I have heard my lady say, ‘Do you think so much brandy can be good for me, Patty? I feel so dull after it,’ and Madame St. Vincent has replied, that it is the only thing that can get her strength back and bring her round.”

“The jade!” spoke Dr. Knox, between his teeth. “And to assure us both that all the old lady took was a drop of it weak twice a-day at her meals! Lettice Lane,” he added aloud, and there was a great sternness in his tone, “you are to blame for not having spoken of this. A little longer silence, and it might have cost your mistress her life.” And Lettice went out in contrition.

“What can the woman’s motive be, for thus dosing her into stupidity?” spoke the one doctor to the other when they were shut in together.

“That: the dosing her into it,” said Dr. Knox.

“But the motive, Arnold?—the reason? She must have had a motive.”

“That remains to be found out.”

It turned out to be too true. The culprit was Madame St. Vincent. She had been administering these constant doses of brandy-and-water for months. Not giving enough at a time to put Lady Jenkins into a state of intoxication; only to reduce her to a chronic state of semi-stupidity.

Tod called me, as I tell you, a muff: first for not knowing Madame St. Vincent; and next for thinking to screen her. Of course this revelation of Lettice Lane’s had put a new complexion upon things. I left the matter with Tod, and he told the doctors at once: Madame St. Vincent was, or used to be, Martha Jane Pell, own sister to Captain Collinson the false.

III

Quietly knocking at the door of Jenkins House this same sunny morning went three gentlemen: old Tamlyn, Mr. Lawrence, and Joseph Todhetley. Mr. Lawrence was a magistrate and ex-mayor; he had preceded the late Sir Daniel Jenkins in the civic chair, and was intimate with him as a brother. Just as old Tamlyn tackled Lettice, so they were now about to tackle Madame St. Vincent on the score of the brandy-and-water; and they had deemed it advisable to take Tod with them.

Lady Jenkins was better than usual; rather less stupid. She was seated with madame in the cheerful garden-room, its glass-doors standing open to the sunshine and the flowers. The visitors were cordially received; it was supposed they had only come to pay a morning visit. Madame St. Vincent sat behind a table in the corner, writing notes of invitation for a soirée, to be held that day week. Tod, who had his wits about him, went straight up to her. It must be remembered that they had not yet met.

“Ah! how are you?” cried he, holding out his hand. “Surprised to see you here.” And she turned white, and stared, uncertain how to take his words, or whether he had really recognized her, and bowed stiffly as to a stranger, and never put out her own hand in answer.

I cannot tell you much about the interview: Tod’s account to me was not very clear. Lady Jenkins began talking about Captain Collinson—that he had turned out to be some unworthy man of the name of Pell, and had endeavoured to kidnap poor little Mina. Charlotte Knox imparted the news to her that morning, in defiance of Madame St. Vincent, who had tried to prevent her. Madame had said it must be altogether some mistake, and that no doubt Captain Collinson would be able to explain: but she, Lady Jenkins, did not know. After that there was a pause; Lady Jenkins shut her eyes, and madame went on writing her notes.

It was old Tamlyn who opened the ball. He drew his chair nearer the old lady, and spoke out without circumlocution.

“What is this that we hear about your taking so much brandy-and-water?”

“Eh?” cried the old lady, opening her eyes. Madame paused in her writing, and looked up. Tamlyn waited for an answer.

“Lady Jenkins does not take much brandy-and-water,” cried madame.

“I am speaking to Lady Jenkins, madame,” returned old Tamlyn, severely: “be so kind as not to interfere. My dear lady, listen to me”—taking her hand; “I am come here with your life-long old friend, William Lawrence, to talk to you. We have reason to believe that you continually take, and have taken for some time past, small doses of brandy-and-water. Is it so?”

“Patty gives it me,” cried Lady Jenkins, looking first at them and then at Patty, in a helpless sort of manner.

“Just so: we know she does. But, are you aware that brandy-and-water, taken in this way, is so much poison?”

“Tell them, Patty, that you give it me for my good,” said the poor lady, in affectionate appeal.

“Yes, it is for your good, dear Lady Jenkins,” resentfully affirmed Madame St. Vincent, regarding the company with flashing eyes. “Does any one dare to suppose that I should give Lady Jenkins sufficient to hurt her? I may be allowed, I presume, as her ladyship’s close companion, constantly watching her, to be the best judge of what is proper for her to take.”

Well, a shindy ensued—as Tod called it—all of them talking altogether, except himself and poor Lady Jenkins: and madame defying every one and everything. They told her that she could no longer be trusted with Lady Jenkins; that she must leave the house that day; and when madame defied this with a double defiance, the magistrate intimated that he had come up to enforce the measure, if necessary, and he meant to stay there until she was gone.

She saw it was serious then, and the defiant tone changed.“What I have given Lady Jenkins has been for her good,” she said; “to do her good. But for being supported by a little brandy-and-water, the system could never have held out after that serious attack she had in Boulogne. I have prolonged her life.”

“No, madame, you have been doing your best to shorten her life,” corrected old Tamlyn. “A little brandy-and-water, asyou term it, might have been good for her while she was recovering her strength, but you have gone beyond the little; you have made her life a constant lethargy; you would shortly have killed her. What your motive was, Heaven knows.”

“My motive was a kind one,” flashed madame. “Out of this house I will not go.”

So, upon that, they played their trump card, and informed Lady Jenkins, who was crying softly, that this lady was the sister of the impostor, Collinson. The very helplessness, the utter docility to which the treatment had reduced her, prevented her expressing (and most probably feeling) any dissent. She yielded passively to all, like a child, and told Patty that she must go, as her old friends said so.

A bitter pill for madame to take. But she could not help herself.

“You will be as well as ever in a little time,” Tamlyn said to Lady Jenkins. “You would have died, had this gone on: it must have induced some malady or other from which you could not have rallied.”

Madame St. Vincent went out of the house that afternoon, and Cattledon entered it. She had offered herself to Lady Jenkins for a few days in the emergency.

It was, perhaps, curious that I should meet Madame St. Vincent before she left the town. Janet was in trouble over a basket of butter and fowls that had been sent her by one of the country patients, and of which the railway people denied the arrival. I went again to the station in the afternoon to see whether they had news of it: and there, seated on the platform bench, her boxes around her, and waiting for the London train, was madame.

I showed myself as respectful to her as ever, for you can’t humiliate fallen people to their faces, telling her, in the pleasantest way I could, that I was sorry things had turned out so. The tone seemed to tell upon her, and she burst into tears. I never saw a woman so subdued in the space of a few hours.

“I have been treated shamefully, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, gulping down her sobs. “Day and night for the past nine months have I been about Lady Jenkins, wearing myself out inattendance on her. The poor old lady had learnt to love me and to depend upon me. I was like a daughter to her.”

“I dare say,” I answered, conveniently ignoring the dosing.

“And what I gave her, I gave her for the best,” went on madame. “It was for the best. People seventy years old need it. Their nerves and system require soothing: to induce sleep now and then is a boon to them. It was a boon to her, poor old thing. And this is my recompense!—turned from the house like a dog!”

“It does seem hard.”

“Seem! It is hard. I have had nothing but hardships all my life,” she continued, lifting her veil to wipe away the tears.“Where I am to go now, or how make a living, I know not. They told me I need not apply to Lady Jenkins for references: and ladies won’t engage a companion who has none.”

“Is your husband really dead?” I ventured to ask.

“My poor husband is really dead, Johnny Ludlow—I don’t know why you should imply a doubt of it. He left me nothing: he had nothing to leave. He was only a master in the college at Brétage—a place in the South of France—and he died, I verily believe, of poor living. We had not been married twelve months. I had a little baby, and that died. Oh, I assure you I have had my troubles.”

“How are—Mr. and Mrs. Clement-Pell?” I next asked, with hesitation. “And Conny?—and the rest of them?”

“Oh, they were well when I last heard,” she answered, slightingly. “I don’t hear often. Foreign postage is expensive. Conny was to have come here shortly on a visit.”

“Where is Gusty? Is——”

“I know nothing at all about my brothers,” she interrupted sharply. “And this, I suppose, is my train. Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow; you and I at least can part friends. You are always kind. I wish the world was like you.”

I saw her into the carriage—first-class—and her boxes into the van. And thus she disappeared from Lefford. And her brother, “Captain Collinson,” as we found later, had taken his departure for London by an early morning train, telling little Pink, his landlord, as he paid his week’s rent, that he was going up to attend a levee.

It was found that the rumour of his engagement to Miss Belmont was altogether untrue. Miss Belmont was rather indignant about it, freely saying that she was ten years his senior. He had never hinted at such a thing to her, and she should have stopped him if he had. We concluded that the report had been set afloat by himself, to take attention from his pursuit of Mina Knox.

Madame St. Vincent had feathered her nest. As the days went on, and Lady Jenkins grew clearer, better able to see a little into matters, she could not at all account for the money that had been drawn from the bank. Cheque after cheque had been presented and cashed; and not one-tenth of the money could have been spent upon home expenses. Lady Jenkins had been always signing cheques; she remembered that much; never so much as asking, in her loss of will, what they were needed for. “I want a cheque to-day, dear Lady Jenkins,” her companion would say, producing the cheque-book from her desk; and Lady Jenkins would docilely sign it. That a great portion of the proceeds had found their way to Mr. Fabian Pell was looked upon as a certainty.

And to obtaining this money might be traced the motive for dosing Lady Jenkins. Once let her intellect become clear, her will reassert itself, and the game would be stopped. Madame St. Vincent had also another scheme in her head—for the past month or two she had been trying to persuade Lady Jenkins to make a codicil to her will, leaving her a few thousand pounds. Lady Jenkins might have fallen blindly into that; but they had not as yet been able to agree upon the details: Madame St. Vincent urging that a lawyer should be called in from a distance; Lady Jenkins clinging to old Belford. That this codicil would have been made in time, and by the remote lawyer, there existed no doubt whatever.

Ah, well: it was a deep-laid plot altogether. And my visit to Lefford, with Tod’s later one, had served, under Heaven, to frustrate it.

Lady Jenkins grew rapidly better, now that she was no longer drugged. In a few days she was herself again. Cattledon came out amazingly strong in the way of care and kindness, and was gracious to every one, even to Lettice.

“She always forbade me to say that I took the brandy-and-water,”Lady Jenkins said to me one day when I was sitting with her under the laburnum tree on her lawn, talking of the past, her bright green silk dress and pink cap ribbons glistening in the sun. “She made my will hers. In other respects she was as kind as she could be to me.”

“That must have been part of her plan,” I answered. “It was the great kindness that won you to her. After that, she took care that you should have no will of your own.”

“And the poor thing might have been so happy with me had she only chosen to be straightforward, and not try to play tricks! I gave her a handsome salary, and new gowns besides; and I don’t suppose I should have forgotten her at my death.”

“Well, it is all over, dear Lady Jenkins, and you will be just as well and brisk as you used to be.”

“Not quite that, Johnny,” she said, shaking her head; “I cannot expect that. At seventy, grim old age is laying its hand upon us. What we need then, my dear,” she added, turning her kindly blue eyes upon me, in which the tears were gathering,“is to go to the mill to be ground young again. And that is a mill that does not exist in this world.”

“Ah no!”

“I thank God for the mercy He has shown me,” she continued, the tears overflowing. “I might have gone to the grave in the half-witted state to which I was reduced. And, Johnny, I often wonder, as I lie awake at night thinking, whether I should have been held responsible for it.”

The first use Lady Jenkins made of her liberty was to invite all her relations, the young nephews and nieces, up to dinner, as she used to do. Madame St. Vincent had set her face against these family entertainments, and they had fallen through. The ex-mayor, William Lawrence, and his good old wife, made part of the company, as did Dr. Knox and Janet. Lady Jenkins beamed on them once more from her place at the head of the table, and Tamlyn sat at the foot and served the big plum-pudding.

“Never more, I trust, shall I be estranged from you, my dears, until it pleases Heaven to bring about the final estrangement,”she said to the young people when they were leaving. And she gave them all a sovereign a-piece.

Cattledon could not remain on for ever. Miss Deveen wanted her: so Mina Knox went to stay at Jenkins House, until a suitable lady should be found to replace Madame St. Vincent. Upon that, Dan Jenkins was taken with an anxious solicitude for his aunt’s health, and was for ever finding his way up to inquire after it.

“You will never care to notice me again, Dan,” Mina said to him, with a swelling heart and throat, one day when he was tilting himself by her on the arm of the sofa.

“Shan’t I!” returned Dan.

“Oh, I am so ashamed of my folly; I feel more ashamed of it, day by day,” cried Mina, bursting into tears. “I shall never, never get over the mortification.”

“Won’t you!” added Dan.

“And I never liked him much: I think I dis-liked him. At first I did dislike him; only he kept saying how fond he was of me; and Madame St. Vincent was always praising him up. And you know he was all the fashion.”

“Quite so,” assented Dan.

“Don’t you think it would be almost as well if I were dead, Dan—for all the use I am likely to be to any one?”

“Almost, perhaps; not quite,” laughed Dan; and he suddenly stooped and kissed her.

That’s all. And now, at the time I write this, Dan Jenkins is a flourishing lawyer at Lefford, and Mina is his wife. Little feet patter up and down the staircase and along the passages that good old Lady Jenkins used to tread. She treads them no more. There was no mill to grind her young again here; but she is gone to that better land where such mills are not needed.

Her will was a just one. She left her property to her nephews and nieces; a substantial sum to each. Dan had Jenkins House in addition. But it is no longer Jenkins House; for he had that name taken off the entrance pillars forthwith, replacing it by the one that had been there before—Rose Bank.

THE ANGELS’ MUSIC.

I

How the Squire came to give in to it, was beyond the ken of mortal man. Tod turned crusty; called the young ones all the hard names in the dictionary, and said he should go out for the night. But he did not.

“Just like her!” cried he, with a fling at Mrs. Todhetley.“Always devising some rubbish or other to gratify the little reptiles!”

The “little reptiles” applied to the school children at North Crabb. They generally had a treat at Christmas; and this year Mrs. Todhetley said she would like it to be given by us, at Crabb Cot, if the Squire did not object to stand the evening’s uproar. After vowing for a day that he wouldn’t hear of it, the Squire (to our astonishment) gave in, and said they might come. It was only the girls: the boys had their treat later on, when they could go in for out-of-door sports. After the pater’s concession, she and the school-mistress, Miss Timmens, were as busy planning-out the arrangements as two bees in a honeysuckle field.

The evening fixed upon was the last in the old year—a Thursday. And the preparations seemed to me to be in full flow from the previous Monday. Molly made her plum-cakes and loaves on the Wednesday; on the Thursday after breakfast, her mistress went to the kitchen to help her with the pork-pies and the tartlets. To judge by the quantity provided, the school would require nothing more for a week to come.

The Squire went over to Islip on some matter of business, taking Tod with him. Our children, Hugh and Lena, were spending the day with the little Letsoms, who would come back with them for the treat; so we had the house to ourselves. Thewhite deal ironing-board under the kitchen window was raised on its iron legs; before it stood Mrs. Todhetley and Molly, busy with the mysteries of pastry-making and patty-pan filling. I sat on the edge of the board, looking on. The small savoury pies were done, and in the act of baking, a tray-load at a time; every now and then Molly darted into the back kitchen, where the oven was, to look after them. For two days the snow had come down thickly; it was falling still in great flakes; far and near, the landscape showed white and bright.

“Johnny, if you will persist in eating the jam, I shall have to send you away.”

“Put the jar on the other side then, good mother.”

“Ugh! Much jam Master Johnny would leave for the tarts, let him have his way,” struck in Molly, more crusty than her own pastry, when I declare I had only dipped the wrong end of the fork in three or four times. The jam was not hers.

“Mind you don’t give the young ones bread-and-scrape, Molly,” I retorted, catching sight of no end of butter-pats through the open door. At which advice she only threw up her head.

“Who is this, coming up through the snow?” cried the mater.

I turned to the window and made it out to be Mrs. Trewin: a meek little woman who had seen better days, and tried to get her living as a dressmaker since the death of her husband. She had not been good for very much since: never seemed quite to get over the shock. Going out one morning, as usual, to his duties as an office clerk, he was brought home dead. Killed by an accident. It was eighteen months ago now, but Mrs. Trewin wore deep mourning still.

Not standing upon ceremony down in our country, Mrs. Todhetley had her brought into the kitchen, going on with the tartlets all the same, while she talked. Mrs. Trewin was making a frock for Lena, and had come up to say that the trimming ran short. The mater told her she was too busy to see to it then, and was very sorry she had come through the snow for such a trifle.

“’Twas not much further, ma’am,” was her answer: “I had to go out to the school to fetch home Nettie. The path is soslippery, through the boys making slides, that I don’t altogether like to trust the child to go to and fro to school by herself.”

“As if Nettie would come to any harm, Mrs. Trewin!” I put in. “If she went down, it would only be a Christmas gambol.”

“Accidents happen so unexpectedly, sir,” she answered, a shadow crossing her sad face. And I was sorry to have said it: it had put her in mind of her husband.

“You are coming up this evening, you know, Mrs. Trewin,”said mother. “Don’t be late.”

“It is very good of you to have asked me, ma’am,” she answered gratefully. “I said so to Miss Timmens. I’m sure it will be something new to have such a treat. Nettie, poor child, will enjoy it too.”

Molly came banging in with a tray of pork-pies, just out of the oven. The mater told Mrs. Trewin to take one, and offered her a glass of beer.

But, instead of eating the pie, she wrapped it in paper to take with her home, and declined the beer, lest it should give her a headache for the evening.

So Mrs. Trewin took her departure; and, under cover of it, I helped myself to another of the pork-pies. Weren’t they good! After that the morning went on again, and the tart-making with it.

The last of the paste was being used up, the last of the jam jars stood open, and the clock told us that it was getting on for one, when we had another visitor: Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress. She came in, stamping the snow from her shoes on the mat, her thin figure clad in an old long cloth cloak, and the chronic redness in her face turned purple.

“My word! It is a day, ma’am, this is!” she exclaimed.

“And what have you come through it for?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.“About the forms? Why, I sent word to you by Luke Mackintosh that they would be fetched at two o’clock.”

“He never came, then,” said Miss Timmens, irate at Luke’s negligence. “That Mackintosh is not worth his salt. What delicious-looking tartlets!” exclaimed she, as she sat down.“And what a lot of them!”

“Try one,” said the mother. “Johnny, hand them to Miss Timmens, and a plate.”

“That silly Sarah Trewin has gone and tumbled down,” cried Miss Timmens, as she thanked me and took the plate and one of the tartlets. “Went and slipped upon a slide near the school-house. What a delicious tart!”

“Sarah Trewin!” cried the mater, turning round from the board. “Why, she was here an hour ago. Has she hurt herself?”

“Just bruised all the one side of her black and blue, from her shoulder to her ankle,” answered Miss Timmens. “Those unruly boys have made slides all over the place, ma’am; and Sarah Trewin must needs go down upon one, not looking, I suppose, to her feet. She had only just turned out of the schoolroom with Nettie.”

“Dear, dear! And she is so unable to bear a fall!”

“Of course it might have been worse, for there are no bones broken,” remarked Miss Timmens. “As to Nettie, the child was nearly frightened out of her senses; she’s sobbing and crying still. Never was such a timid child as that.”

“Will Sarah Trewin be able to come this evening?”

“Not she, ma’am. She’ll be as stiff as buckram for days to come. I’d like to pay out those boys—making their slides on the pathway and endangering people’s lives! Nicol’s not half strict enough with them; and I’m tired of telling him so. Tiresome, rude monkeys! Not that my girls are a degree better: they’d go down all the slides in the parish, let ’em have their way. What with them, and what with these fantastical notions of the new parson, I’m sure my life’s a martyrdom.”

The mother smiled over her pastry. Miss Timmens and the parson, civilly polite to one another, were mentally at daggers drawn.

The time I am writing of was before the movement, set in of later years, for giving the masses the same kind of education as their betters; but our new parson at Crabb was before his age in these ideas. To experienced Miss Timmens, and to a great many more clear-sighted people, the best word that could be given to the movement was “fantastical.”

“He came in yesterday afternoon at dusk,” she resumed,“when I was holding my Bible Class. ‘And what has been the course of instruction to-day, Miss Timmens?’ asked he, as mildas new milk, all the girls gaping and staring around him. ‘It has been reading, and writing, and summing, and spelling, and sewing,’ said I, giving him the catalogue in full: ‘and now I’m trying to teach them their duty to Heaven and to one another. And according to my old-fashioned notion, sir,’ I summed up,‘if a poor girl acquires these matters thoroughly, she is a deal more fitted to go through life in the station to which God has called her (as the catechism says), than she would be if you gave her a course of fine mincing uppishness, with your poetry and your drawing and your embroidery.’ Oh, he gets his answer from me, ma’am.”

“Mr. Bruce may be kind and enlightened, and all that,”spoke Mrs. Todhetley, “but he certainly seems inclined to carry his ideas beyond reasonable bounds, so far as regards these poor peasant children.”

“Reasonable!” repeated Miss Timmens, catching up the word, and rubbing her sharp nose with excitement: “why, the worst is, that there’s no reason in it. Not a jot. The parson’s mind has gone a little bit off its balance, ma’am; that’s my firm conviction. This exalted education applied to young ladies would be all right and proper: but where can be the use of it to these poor girls? What good will his accomplishments, his branches of grand learning do them? His conchology and meteorology, and all the rest of his ologies? Of what service will it be to them in future?”

“I’d have got my living nicely, I guess, if I’d been taught them things,” satirically struck in Molly, unable to keep her tongue still any longer. “A fine cook I should ha’ made!—kept all my places a beautiful length of time; I wouldn’t come with such flighty talk to the Squire, Miss Timmens, if ’twas me.”

“The talk’s other people’s; it isn’t mine,” fired Miss Timmens, turning her wrath on Molly. “That is, the notions are. You had better attend to your baking, Molly.”

“So I had,” said Molly. “Baking’s more in my line than them other foreign jerks. But well I should have knowed how to do it if my mind had been cocketed up with the learning that’s only fit for lords and ladies.”

“Is not that my argument?” retorted Miss Timmens, flinging the last word after her as she went out to her oven. “Poorgirls were sent into the world to work, ma’am, not to play at being fine scholars,” she added to Mrs. Todhetley, as she got up to leave. “And, as sure as we are born, this new dodge of education, if it ever gets a footing, will turn the country upside down.”

“I’m sure I hope not,” replied the mother in her mild way.“Take another tart, Miss Timmens. These are currant and raspberry.”

II

The company began to arrive at four o’clock. The snow had ceased to fall; it was a fine, cold, clear evening, the moon very bright. A large store-room at the back of the house had been cleared out, and a huge fire made in it. The walls were decorated with evergreens, and tin sconces holding candles; benches from the school-house were ranged underneath them. This was to be the principal play-room, but the other rooms were open. Mrs. Hill (formerly Mrs. Garth, who had not so very long before lost poor David) and Maria Lease came up by invitation to help Miss Timmens with the children; and Mrs. Trewin would have come but for her fall on the slide. Miss Timmens appeared in full feather: a purple gown of shot silk, with a red waist-band, and red holly berries in her lace cap. The children, timid at first, sat round on the forms in prim stillness, just like so many mice.

By far the most timid of all was a gentle little thing of seven years old, got up like a lady; white frock, black sash and sleeve ribbons. She was delicate-featured, blue-eyed, had curling flaxen hair. It was Nettie Trewin. Far superior she looked to all of them; out of place, in fact, amongst so many coarser natures. Her little arm and hand trembled as she clung to Miss Timmens’ gown.

“Senseless little thing,” cried Miss Timmens, “to be afraid in a beautiful room like this, and with all these kind friends around her! Would you believe it, Mr. Johnny, that I could hardly get her here? Afraid, she said, to come without mother!”

“Oh, Nettie! Why, you are going to have lots of fun! Is mother better this evening?”

“Yes,” whispered Nettie, venturing to take a peep at me through her wet eyelashes.

The order of the day was this. Tea at once, consisting of as much bread-and-butter and plum-cake as they could eat; games afterwards. The savoury pies and tartlets later on; more cake to wind up with, which, if they had no room for, they might carry home.

After all signs of tea had disappeared, and our neighbours, the Coneys, had come in, and several round rings were seated on the floor at “Hunt-the-Slipper,” I, chancing to draw within earshot, found Miss Timmens had opened out her grievance to the Squire—the parson’s interference with the school.

“It would be reversing the proper and natural order of things, as I look upon it,” she was saying, “to give an exalted education to those who must get their living by the sweat of their brow; as servants, and what not. Do you think so, sir?”

“Think so! of course I think so,” spluttered the Squire, taking up the subject hotly as usual. “It’s good for them to read and write well, to add up figures, and know how to sew and clean, and wash and iron. That’s the learning they want, whether they are to pass their lives serving in families, or as the wives of working men.”

“Yes, sir,” acquiesced Miss Timmens, in a glow of satisfaction;“but you may as well try to beat common sense into a broomstick as into Mr. Bruce. The other day—what, is it you again, Nettie!” she broke off, as the little white-robed child sidled up and hid her head in what appeared to be her haven of refuge—the folds of the purple gown. “Never was such a child as this, for shyness. When put to play with the rest, she’ll not stay with them. What do you think you are good for?”—rather wrathfully. “Do you suppose the gentlefolk are going to eat you, Nettie?”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, little lassie. What child is it?” added the Squire, struck with her appearance.

“Tell your name to the Squire,” said Miss Timmens, with authority. And the little one lifted her pretty blue eyes appealingly to his face, as if beseeching him not to bite her.

“It’s Nettie Trewin, sir,” she said in a whisper.

“Dear me! Is that poor Trewin’s child! She has a look of her father too. A delicate little maid.”

“And silly also,” added Miss Timmens. “You came here to play, you know, Nettie; not hide your face. What are they all stirring at, now? Oh, going to have ‘Puss-in-the-corner.’ You can play at that, Nettie. Here, Jane Bright! Take Nettie with you and attend to her. Find her a corner: she has not had any play at all.”

A tall, awkward girl stepped up: slouching shoulders, narrow forehead, stolid features, coarse hair all ruffled; thick legs, thick boots—Miss Jane Bright. She seized Nettie’s hand.

“Yes, sir, you are right: the child is a delicate, dainty little thing, quite a contrast to most of these other girls,” resumed Miss Timmens, in answer to the Squire. “Look at that one who has just fetched Nettie away: she is only a type of the rest. They come, most of them, of coarse, stupid parents, and will be no better to the end of the chapter, whatever education you may try to hammer into them. As I said to Mr. Bruce the other day when—— Well, I never! There he is!”

The young parson caught her eye, as he was looming in. Long coat, clerical waistcoat, no white tie to speak of round his bare neck; quite à la mode. The new fashions and the new notions that Mr. Bruce went in for, were not at all understood at North Crabb.

The Squire had gone on at first against the party; but no face was more sunshiny than his, now that he was in the thick of it. A select few of the children, with ours and the little Lawsons, had appropriated the dining-room for “Hunt-the-Whistle.”The pater chanced to look in just before it began, and we got him to be the hunter. I shall never forget it as long as I live. I don’t believe I had ever laughed as much before. He did not know the play, or the trick of it: and to see him whirling himself about in search of the whistle as it was blown behind his back, now seizing on this bold whistler, believing he or she must be in possession of the whistle, and now on that one, all unconscious that the whistle was fastened to the back button of his own coat; and to look at the puzzled wonder of his face as to where the whistle could possibly be, and how it contrived to elude his grasp, was something to be remembered. The shrieks of laughter might have been heard down at the Ravine. Tod had to sit on the floor and hold his sides; Tom Coney was in convulsions.

“Ah—I—ah—what do you think, Mr. Todhetley?” began Bruce, with his courteous drawl, catching the Squire, as he emerged later, red and steaming, from the whistle-hunt. “Suppose I collect these young ones around me and give them a quarter-of-an-hour’s lecture on pneumatics? I’ve been getting up the subject a little.”

“Pneumatics be hanged!” burst forth the pater, more emphatically than politely, when he had taken a puzzled stare at the parson. “The young ones have come here to play, not to have their brains addled. Be shot if I quite know myself what ‘pneumatics’ means. I beg your pardon, Bruce. You mean well, I know.”

“Pneumatics!” repeated old Coney, taking time to digest the word. “Don’t you think, parson, that’s more in the department of the Astronomer Royal?”

One required a respite after the whistle-hunt. I put my back against the wall in the large room, and watched the different sets of long tails, then pulling fiercely at “Oranges and Lemons.”Mrs. Hill and Maria Lease sat side by side on one of the benches, both looking as sad as might be, their memories, no doubt, buried in the past. Maria Lease had never, so to say, worn a smiling countenance since the dreadful end of Daniel Ferrar.

A commotion! Half-a-dozen of the “lemons,” pulling too fiercely, had come to grief on the ground. Maria went to the rescue.

“I was just thinking of poor David, sir,” Mrs. Hill said to me, with a sigh. “How he would have enjoyed this scene: so merry and bright!”

“But he is in a brighter scene than this, you know.”

“Yes, Master Johnny, I do know it,” she said, tears trickling slowly down her cheeks. “Where he is, all things are beautiful.”

In her palmy days Mrs. Todhetley used to sing a song, of which this was the first verse:—

“All that’s bright must fade,

The brightest still the fleetest;

All that’s sweet was made

But to be lost when sweetest.”

Mrs. Hill’s words brought this song to my memory, and with it the damping reminder that nothing lasts in this world, whether of pleasure or brightness. All things must fade, or die: but in that better life to come they will last for ever. And David had entered upon it.

“Now, where’s that senseless little Nettie?”

The words, spoken sharply, came from Miss Timmens. But if she did possess a sharp-toned tongue, she was good and kind at heart. The young crew were sitting down at the long table to the savoury pies and tartlets; Miss Timmens, taking stock of them, missed Nettie.

“Jane Bright, go and find Nettie Trewin.”

Not daring to disobey the curt command, but looking as though she feared her portion of the good things would be eaten up during her absence, Jane Bright disappeared. Back she came in a brace of shakes, saying Nettie “was not there.”

“Maria Lease, where’s Nettie Trewin?” asked Miss Timmens.

Maria turned from the table. “Nettie Trewin?” she repeated, looking about her. “I don’t know. She must be somewhere or other.”

“I wish to goodness you’d find her then.”

Maria Lease could not see anything of the child. “Nettie Trewin” was called out high and low; but it brought forth no response. The servants were sent to look over the house, with no better result.

“She is hiding somewhere in her shyness,” said Miss Timmens.“I have a great mind to punish her for this.”

“She can’t have got into the rain-water butt?” suggested the Squire. “Molly, go and look.”

It was not very likely: as the barrel was quite six feet high. But, as the Squire once got into the water-butt to hid himself when he was a climbing youngster, and had reasons for anticipating a whipping, his thoughts naturally flew to it.

“Well, she must be somewhere,” cried he when we laughed at him. “She could not sink through the floor.”

“Who saw her last?” repeated Miss Timmens. “Do you hear, children? Just stop eating for a minute, and answer.”

Much discussion—doubt—cross-questioning. The whole lot seemed to be nearly as stupid as owls. At last, so far as could be gathered, none of them had noticed Nettie since they began“Puss-in-the-corner.”

“Jane Bright, I told you to take Nettie to play with the rest, and to find her a corner. What did you do with her?”

Jane Bright commenced her answer by essaying to take a sly bite at her pie. Miss Timmens stopped her midway, and turned her from the table to face the company.

“Do you hear me? Now don’t stand staring like a gaby! Just answer.”

Like a “gaby” did Jane Bright stand: mouth wide open, eyes round, countenance bewildered.

“Please, governess, I didn’t do nothing with her.”

“You must have done something with her: you held her hand.”

“I didn’t do nothing,” repeated the girl, shaking her head stolidly.

“Now, that won’t do, Jane Bright. Where did you leave her?”

“’Twas in the corner,” answered Jane Bright, apparently making desperate efforts of memory. “When I was Puss, and runned across and came back again, I didn’t see her there.”

“Surely, the child has not stolen out by herself and run off home!” cried Mrs. Coney: and the schoolmistress took up the suggestion.

“It is the very thought that has been in my mind the last minute or two,” avowed she. “Yes, Mrs. Coney, that’s it, depend upon it. She has decamped through the snow and gone back to her mother’s.”

“Then she has gone without her things,” interposed Maria Lease, who was entering the room with a little black cloak and bonnet in her hand. “Are not these Nettie’s things, children?”And a dozen voices all speaking together, hastened to say Yes, they were Nettie’s.

“Then she must be in the house,” decided Miss Timmens.“She wouldn’t be silly enough to go out this cold night with herneck and arms bare. The child has her share of sense. She has run away to hide herself, and may have dropped asleep.”

“It must be in the chimbleys, then,” cried free Molly from the back of the room. “We’ve looked everywhere else.”

“You had better look again,” said the Squire. “Take plenty of light—two or three candles.”

It seemed rather a queer thing. And, while this talking had been going on, there flashed into my mind the old Modena story, related by the poet Rogers, of the lovely young heiress of the Donatis: and which has been embodied in our song “The Mistletoe Bough.” Could this timid child have imprisoned herself in any place that she was unable to get out of? Going to the kitchen for a candle, I went upstairs, taking the garret first, with its boxes and lumber, and then the rooms. And nowhere could I find the least trace or sign of Nettie.

Stepping into the kitchen to leave the candle, there stood Luke Mackintosh, whiter than death; his back propped against Molly’s press, his hands trembling, his hair on end. Tod stood in front of him suppressing his laughter. Mackintosh had just burst in at the back-door in a desperate state of fright, declaring he had seen a ghost.

It’s not the first time I have mentioned the man’s cowardice. Believing in ghosts and goblins, wraiths and witches, he could hardly be persuaded to cross Crabb Ravine at night, on account of the light sometimes seen there. Sensible people told him that this light (which, it was true, no one had ever traced to its source) was nothing but a will-o’-the-wisp, an ignis-fatuus arising from the vapour; but Luke could not be brought to reason. On this evening it chanced that the Squire had occasion to send Mackintosh to the Timberdale post-office, and the man had now just come in from the errand.

“I see the light, too, sir,” he was saying to Tod in a scared voice, as he ran his shaking hand through his hair. “It be dodging about on the banks of the Ravine for all the world like a corpse-candle. Well, sir, I didn’t like that, and I got up out of the Ravine as fast as my legs would bring me, and were making straight for home here, with my head down’ards, not wanting to see nothing more, when something dreadful met me. All in white, it was.”

“A man in his shroud, who had left his grave to take a moonlight walk,” said Tod, gravely, biting his lips.

“’Twere in grave-clothes, for sure; a long, white garment, whiter than the snow. I’d not say but it was Daniel Ferrar,”added Luke, in the low dread tones that befitted the dismal subject. “His ghost do walk, you know, sir.”

“And where did his ghost go to?”

“Blest if I saw, sir,” replied Mackintosh, shaking his head.“I’d not have looked after it for all the world. ’Twarn’t a slow pace I come at, over the field, after that, and right inside this here house.”

“Rushing like the wind, I suppose.”

“My heart was all a-throbbing and a-skeering. Mr. Joseph, I hope the Squire won’t send me through the Ravine after dark again! I couldn’t stand it, sir; I’d a’most rather give up my place.”

“You’ll not be fit for this place, or any other, I should say, Mackintosh, if you let this sort of fear run away with your senses,” I put in. “You saw nothing; it was all fancy.”

“Saw nothing!” repeated Mackintosh in the excess of desperation.“Why, Mr. Johnny, I never saw a sight plainer in all my born days. A great, white, awesome apparition it were, that went rushing past me with a wailing sound. I hope you won’t ever have the ill-luck to see such a thing yourself, sir.”

“I’m sure I shan’t.”

“What’s to do here?” asked Tom Coney, putting in his head.

“Mackintosh has seen a ghost.”

“Seen a ghost!” cried Tom, beginning to grin.

Mackintosh, trembling yet, entered afresh on the recital, rather improving it by borrowing Tod’s mocking suggestion.“A dead man in his shroud come out walking from his grave in the churchyard—which he feared might be Ferrar, lying on the edge on’t, just beyond consecrated ground. I never could abear to go by the spot where he was put in, and never a prayer said over him, Mr. Tom!”

But, in spite of the solemnity of the subject, touching Ferrar, Tom Coney could only have his laugh out. The servants came in from their fruitless search of the dairy and cellars, and started to see the state of Mackintosh.

“Give him a cup of warm ale, Molly,” was Tod’s command. And we left them gathered round the man, listening to his tale with open mouths.

From the fact that Nettie Trewin was certainly not in the house, one only deduction could be drawn—that the timid child had run home to her mother. Bare-headed, bare-necked, bare-armed, she had gone through the snow; and, as Miss Timmens expressed it, might just have caught her death.

“Senseless little idiot!” exclaimed Miss Timmens in a passion.“Sarah Trewin is sure to blame me; she’ll say I might have taken better care of her.”

But one of the elder girls, named Emma Stone, whose recollection only appeared to come to her when digesting her supper, spoke up at this juncture, and declared that long after “Puss-in-the-corner”was over, and also “Oranges and Lemons,” which had succeeded it, she had seen and spoken to Nettie Trewin. Her account was, that in crossing the passage leading from the store-room, she saw Nettie “scrouged against the wall, half-way down the passage, like anybody afeared of being seen.”

“Did you speak to her, Emma Stone?” asked Miss Timmens, after listening to these concluding words.

“Yes, governess. I asked her why she was not at play, and why she was hiding there.”

“Well, what did she say?”

“Not anything,” replied Emma Stone. “She turned her head away as if she didn’t want to be talked to.”

Miss Timmens took a long, keen look at Emma Stone. This young lady, it appeared, was rather in the habit of romancing; and the governess thought she might be doing it then.

“I vow to goodness I saw her,” interrupted the girl, before Miss Timmens had got out more than half a doubt: and her tone was truthful enough. “I’m not telling no story, ’m. I thought Nettie was crying.”

“Well, it is a strange thing you should have forgotten it until this moment, Emma Stone.”

“Please, ’m, it were through the pies,” pleaded Emma.

It was time to depart. Bonnets and shawls were put on, and the whole of them filed out, accompanied by Miss Timmens, Mrs. Hill, and Maria Lease: good old motherly Dame Coneysaying she hoped they would find the child safe in bed between the blankets, and that her mother would have given her some hot drink.

Our turn for supper came now. We took it partly standing, just the fare that the others had had, with bread-and-cheese added for the Squire and old Coney. After that, we all gathered round the fire in the dining-room, those two lighting their pipes.

And I think you might almost have knocked some of us down with a feather in our surprise, when, in the midst of one of old Coney’s stories, we turned round at the sudden opening of the door, and saw Miss Timmens amongst us. A prevision of evil seemed to seize Mrs. Todhetley, and she rose up.

“The child! Is she not at home?”

“No, ma’am; neither has she been there,” answered Miss Timmens, ignoring ceremony (as people are apt to do at seasons of anxiety or commotion) and sitting down uninvited. “I came back to tell you so, and to ask what you thought had better be done.”

“The child must have started for home and lost her way in the snow,” cried the Squire, putting down his pipe in consternation.“What does the mother think?”

“I did not tell her of it,” said Miss Timmens. “I went on by myself to her house; and the first thing I saw there, on opening the door, was a little pair of slippers warming on the fender. ‘Oh, have you brought Nettie?’ began the mother, before I could speak: ‘I’ve got her shoes warm for her. Is she very, very cold?—and has she enjoyed herself and been good?’Well, sir, seeing how it was—that the child had not got home—I answered lightly: ‘Oh, the children are not here yet; my sister and Maria Lease are with them. I’ve just stepped on to see how your bruises are getting on.’ For that poor Sarah Trewin is good for so little that one does not care to alarm her,”concluded Miss Timmens, as if she would apologize for her deceit.

The Squire nodded approval, and told me to give Miss Timmens something hot to drink. Mrs. Todhetley, looking three parts frightened out of her wits, asked what was to be done.

Yes; what was to be done? What could be done? A sort of council was held amongst them, some saying one thing, some another. It seemed impossible to suggest anything.

“Had harm come to her in running home, had she fallen intothe snow, for instance, or anything of that sort, we should have seen or heard her,” observed Miss Timmens. “She would be sure to take the direct path—the way we came here and returned.”

“It might be easy enough for the child to lose her way—the roads and fields are like a wide white plain,” observed Mrs. Coney. “She might have strayed aside amongst the trees in the triangle.”

Miss Timmens shook her head in dissent.

“She’d not do that, ma’am. Since Daniel Ferrar was found there, the children don’t like the three-cornered grove.”

“Look here,” said old Coney, suddenly speaking up. “Let us search all these places, and any others that she could have strayed to, right or left, on her road home.”

He rose up, and we rose with him. It was the best thing that could be done: and no end of a relief, besides, to pitch upon something to do. The Squire ordered Mackintosh (who had not recovered himself yet) to bring a lantern, and we all put on our great-coats and went forth, leaving the mater and Mrs. Coney to keep the fire warm. A black party we looked, in the white snow, Miss Timmens making one of us.

“I can’t rest,” she whispered to me. “If the child has been lying on the snow all this while, we shall find her dead.”

It was a still, cold, lovely night; the moon high in the sky, the snow lying white and pure beneath her beams. Tom Coney and Tod, all their better feelings and their fears aroused, plunged on fiercely, now amidst the deep snow by the hedges, now on the more level path. The grove, which had been so fatal to poor Daniel Ferrar, was examined first. And now we saw the use of the lantern ordered by the Squire, at which order we had secretly laughed: for it served to light up the darker parts where the trunks of the trees grew thick. Mackintosh, who hated that grove, did not particularly relish his task of searching it, though he was in good company. But it did not appear to contain Nettie.

“She would not turn in here,” repeated Miss Timmens, from the depth of her strong conviction; “I’m sure she wouldn’t. She would rather bear onwards towards her mother’s.”

Bounding here, trudging there, calling her name softly, shoutingloudly, we continued our search after Nettie Trewin. It was past twelve when we got back home and met Mrs. Todhetley and Mrs. Coney at the door, both standing there in their uneasiness, enveloped in woollen shawls.

“No. No success. Can’t find her anywhere.”

Down sank the Squire on one of the hall-chairs as he spoke, as though he could not hold himself up a minute longer, but was dead beat with tramping and disappointment. Perhaps he was. What was to be done next? What could be done? We stood round the dining-room fire, looking at one another like so many helpless mummies.

“Well,” said the pater, “the first thing is to have a drop of something hot. I am half-frozen. What time’s that?”—as the clock over the mantelpiece chimed one stroke. “Half-past twelve.”

“And she’s dead by this time,” gasped Miss Timmens, in a faint voice, its sharpness gone clean out of it. “I’m thinking of the poor widowed mother.”

Mrs. Coney (often an invalid) said she could do no good by staying longer, and wanted to be in bed. Old Coney said hewas not going in yet; so Tom took her over. It might have been ten minutes after this—but I was not taking any particular account of the time—that I saw Tom Coney put his head in at the parlour-door, and beckon Tod out. I went also.

“Look here,” said Coney to us. “After I left mother indoors, I thought I’d search a bit about the back-ground here: and I fancy I can see the marks of a child’s footsteps in the snow.”

“No!” cried Tod, rushing out at the back-door and crossing the premises to the field.

Yes, it was so. Just for a little way along the path leading to Crabb Ravine the snow was much trodden and scattered by the footsteps of a man, both to and fro. Presently some little footsteps, evidently of a child, seemed to diverge from this path and go onwards in rather a slanting direction through the deeper snow, as if their owner had lost the direct way. When we had tracked these steps half-way across the field. Tod brought himself to a halt.

“I’m sure they are Nettie’s,” he said. “They look like hers. Whose else should they be? She may have fallen down theRavine. One of you had better go back and bring a blanket—and tell them to get hot water ready.”

Eager to be of use, Tom Coney and I ran back together. Tod continued his tracking. Presently the little steps diverged towards the path, as if they had suddenly discovered their wanderings from it; and then they seemed to be lost in those other and larger footsteps which had kept steadily to the path.

“I wonder,” thought Tod, halting as he lost the clue,“whether Mackintosh’s big ghost could have been this poor little white-robed child? What an idiotic coward the fellow is! These are his footmarks. A slashing pace he must have travelled at, to fling the snow up in this manner!”

At that moment, as Tod stood facing the Ravine, a light, looking like the flame of a candle, small and clear and bright as that of a glow-worm, appeared on the opposite bank, and seemed to dodge about the snow-clad brushwood around the trunks of the wintry trees. What was this light?—whence did it proceed?—what caused it? It seemed we were never tired of putting these useless questions to ourselves. Tod did not know; never had known. He thought of Mack’s fright and of the ghost, as he stood watching it, now disappearing in some particular spot, now coming again at ever so many yards’ distance. But ghosts had no charms for Tod: by which I mean no alarms: and he went forward again, trying to find another trace of the little footsteps.

“I don’t see what should bring Nettie out here, though,” ran his thoughts. “Hope she has not pitched head foremost down the Ravine! Confound the poltroon!—kicking up the snow like this!”

But now, in another minute, there were traces again. The little feet seemed to have turned aside at a tangent, and once more sought the deep snow. From that point he did not again lose them; they carried him to the low and narrow dell (not much better than a ditch) which just there skirted the hedge bordering the Ravine.

At first Tod could see nothing. Nothing but the drifted snow. But—looking closely—what was that, almost at his feet? Was it only a dent in the snow?—or was anything lying on it? Tod knelt down on the deep soft white carpet (sinking nearly up to his waist) and peered and felt.

There she was: Nettie Trewin! With her flaxen curls fallen about her head and mingling with the snow, and her little arms and neck exposed, and her pretty white frock all wet, she lay there in the deep hole. Tod, his breast heaving with all manner of emotion, gathered her into his arms, as gently as an infant is hushed to rest by its mother. The white face had no life in it; the heart seemed to have stopped beating.

“Wake up, you poor little mite!” he cried, pressing her against his warm side. “Wake up, little one! Wake up, little frozen snow-bird!”

But there came no response. The child lay still and white in his arms.

“Hope she’s not frozen to death!” he murmured, a queer sensation taking him. “Nettie, don’t you hear me? My goodness, what’s to be done?”

He set off across the field with the child, meeting me almost directly. I ran straight up to him.

“Get out, Johnny Ludlow!” he cried roughly, in his haste and fear. “Don’t stop me! Oh, a blanket, is it? That’s good. Fold it round her, lad.”

“Is she dead?”

“I’ll be shot if I know.”

He went along swiftly, holding her to him in the blanket. And a fine commotion they all made when he got her indoors.

The silly little thing, unable to get over her shyness, had taken the opportunity, when the back-door was open, to steal out of it, with the view of running home to her mother. Confused, perhaps, by the bare white plain; or it may be by her own timidity; or probably confounding the back-door and its approaches with the front, by which she had entered, she went straight across the field, unconscious that this was taking her in just the opposite direction to her home. It was she whom Luke Mackintosh had met—the great idiot!—and he frightened her with his rough appearance and the bellow of fear he gave, just as much as she had frightened him. Onwards she went, blindly terrified, was stopped by the hedge, fell into the ditch, and lay buried in the snow. Whether she could be brought back to life, or whether death had really taken her, was a momentous question.

I went off for Cole, flying all the way. He sent me backagain, saying he’d be there as soon as I—and that Nettie Trewin must be a born simpleton.

“Master Johnny!—Mr. Ludlow!—Is it you?”

The words greeted me in a weak panting voice, just as I reached the corner by the store barn, and I recognized Mrs. Trewin. Alarmed at Nettie’s prolonged stay, she had come out, all bruised as she was, and extorted the fact—that the child was missing—from Maria Lease. I told her that the child was found—and where.

“Dead or alive, sir?”

I stammered in my answer. Cole would be up directly, I said, and we must hope for the best. But she drew a worse conclusion.

“It was all I had,” she murmured. “My one little ewe lamb.”

“Don’t cry, Mrs. Trewin. It may turn out to be all right, you know.”

“If I could only have laid her poor little face on my bosom to die, and said good-bye to her!” she wailed, the tears falling.“I have had so much trouble in the world, Master Johnny!—and she was all of comfort left to me in it.”

We went in. Cole came rushing like a whirlwind. By-and-by they got some warmth into the child, lying so still on the bed; and she was saved.

“Were you cold, dear, in the snow?—were you frightened?”gently asked the mother, when Nettie could answer questions.

“I was very cold and frightened till I heard the angels’ music, mother.”

“The angels’ music?”

“Yes. I knew they played it for me. After that, I felt happy and went to sleep. Oh, mother, there’s nothing so sweet as angels’ music.”

The “music” had been that of the church bells, wafted over the Ravine by the rarefied air; the sweet bells of Timberdale, ringing in the New Year.

THE END—Third Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

Fourth Series

A MYSTERY.

SANDSTONE TORR.

CHANDLER AND CHANDLER.

VERENA FONTAINE’S REBELLION.

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE.

ROGER BEVERE.

KETIRA THE GIPSY.

THE CURATE OF ST. MATTHEW’S.

MRS. CRAMP’S TENANT

“God sent his Singers upon earth

With songs of sadness and of mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men,

And bring them back to heaven again.”

Longfellow.

A MYSTERY.

I

“Look here, Johnny Ludlow,” said Darbyshire to me—Darbyshire being, as you may chance to remember, our doctor at Timberdale—“you seem good at telling of unaccountable disappearances: why don’t you tell of that disappearance which took place here?”

I had chanced to look in upon him one evening when he was taking rest in his chimney-corner, in the old red-cushioned chair, after his day’s work was over, smoking his churchwarden pipe in his slippers and reading the story of “Dorothy Grape.”

“We should like to see that disappearance on paper,” went on Darbyshire. “It is the most curious thing that has happened in my experience.”

True enough it was. Too curious for any sort of daylight to be seen through it; as you will acknowledge when you hear its details; and far more complicated than the other story.

The lawyer at Timberdale, John Delorane, was a warm-hearted and warm-tempered man of Irish extraction. He had an extensive practice, and lived in an old-fashioned, handsome red-brick house in the heart of Timberdale, with his only daughter and his sister, Hester.

You may have seen prettier girls than Ellin Delorane, but never one that the heart so quickly went out to. She was too much like her dead mother; had the same look of fragile delicacy, the same sweet face with its pensive sadness, the soft brown eyes and the lovely complexion. Mrs. Delorane had diedof decline: people would say to one another, in confidence, they hoped Ellin might escape it.

The largest and best farm in the neighbourhood of Timberdale, larger than even that of the Ashtons, was called the Dower Farm. It belonged to Sir Robert Tenby, and had been occupied for many years by one Roger Brook, a genial, pleasant gentleman of large private means apart from his success in farming. Rich though he was, he did not disdain to see practically after his work himself; was up with the lark and out with his men, as a good farmer ought to be. Out-of-doors he was the keen, active, thorough farmer; indoors he lived as a gentleman. He had four children: three boys and one girl, who were all well and comprehensively educated.

But he intended his sons to work as he had worked: no idleness for him; no leading of indolent and self-indulgent lives.“Choose what calling you please,” he said to them; “but stick to it when chosen, and do your very best in it.” The eldest son, Charles, had no fancy for farming, no particular head for any of the learned professions; he preferred commerce. An uncle, Matthew Brook, was the head of a mercantile house in New York; he offered a post in it to Charles, who went out to him. The second son, Reginald, chose the medical profession; after qualifying for it, he became assistant to a doctor in London to gain experience. William, the third son, went to Oxford. He thought of the Church, but being conscientious, would not decide upon it hastily.

“So that not one of you will be with me,” remarked Mr. Brook. “Well, be it so. I only want you to lead good and useful lives, striving to do your duty to God and to man.”

But one of those overwhelming misfortunes, that I’m sure may be compared with the falling of an avalanche, fell on Mr. Brook. In an evil hour he had become a shareholder in a stupendous undertaking which had banking for its staple basis; and the thing failed. People talked of “swindling.” Its managers ran away; its books and money were nowhere; its shareholders were ruined. Some of the shareholders ran away too; Roger Brook, upright and honourable, remained to face the ruin. And utter ruin it was, for the company was one of unlimited liability.

The shock was too much for him: he died under it. Every shilling he possessed was gone; harpies (it is what Timberdalecalled them) came down upon his furniture and effects, and swept them away. In less time almost than it takes to tell of, not a vestige remained of what had been, save in memory: Sir Robert Tenby had another tenant at the Dower Farm, and Mrs. Brook had moved into a little cottage-villa not a stone’s throw from Darbyshire’s. She had about two hundred a-year of her own, which no adverse law could touch. Her daughter, Minnie, remained with her. You will hardly believe it, but they had named her by the romantic name of Araminta.

William Brook had come down from Oxford just before, his mind made up not to be a clergyman, but to remain on the farm with his father. When the misfortunes fell, he was, of course, thrown out; and what to turn his hand to he did not at once know. Brought up to neither profession nor trade, no, nor to farming, it was just a dilemma. At present, he stayed with his mother.

One day he presented himself to Mr. Delorane. “Can you give me some copying to do, sir?” he asked: “either at your office here, or at home. I write a good clear hand.”

“What do you mean to do, Master William?” returned the lawyer, passing over the question. The two families had always been intimate and much together.

“I don’t know what; I am waiting to see,” said William. He was a slender young fellow of middle height, with gentle manners, a very nice, refined face, and a pair of honest, cheery, dark-blue eyes.

“Waiting for something to turn up, like our old friend Micawber!” said the lawyer.

“If I could earn only a pound a-week while I am looking out, I should not feel myself so much of a burden on my mother—though she will not hear me say a word about that,” the young man went on. “You would not take me on as clerk and give me that sum, would you, Mr. Delorane?”

Well, they talked further; and the upshot was, that Mr. Delorane did take him on. William Brook went into the office as a clerk, and was paid a pound a-week.

The parish wondered a little, making sundry comments over this at its tea-tables: for the good old custom of going out to real tea was not out of fashion yet in Timberdale. Every one agreed that William Brook was to be commended for putting his shoulder to the wheel, but that it was a grave descent for onebrought up to his expectations. Mr. St. George objected to it on another score.

Years before, there had arrived in England from the West Indies a little gentleman, named Alfred St. George. His father, a planter, had recently died, and the boy’s relatives had sent him home to be educated, together with plenty of money for that purpose. Later, when of an age to leave school, he was articled to Mr. Delorane, and proved an apt, keen pupil. Next he went into the office of a renowned legal firm in London, became a qualified lawyer and conveyancer, and finally accepted an offer made him by Mr. Delorane, to return to Timberdale, as his chief and managing clerk. Mr. Delorane paid him a handsome salary, and held out to him, as report ran, hopes of a future partnership.

Alfred St. George had grown up a fine man; tall, strong, lithe and active. People thought his face handsome, but it had unmistakably a touch of the tar-brush. The features were large and well formed, the lips full, and the purple-black hair might have been woolly but for being drilled into order with oils. His complexion was a pale olive, his black eyes were round, showing a great deal of the whites, and at times they wore a very peculiar expression. Take him for all in all, he was a handsome man, with a fluent tongue and persuasive eloquence.

It was Mr. St. George who spoke against William Brook’s being taken on as clerk. Not that his objection applied to the young man himself, but to his probable capacity for work. “He will be of no use to us, sir,” was the substance of his remonstrance to Mr. Delorane. “He has had no experience: and one can hardly snub Brook as one would a common clerk.”

“Don’t suppose he will be of much use,” carelessly acquiesced Mr. Delorane, who was neither a stingy nor a covetous man.“What could I do but take him on when he asked me to? I like the young fellow; always did; and his poor father was my very good friend. You must make the best of him, St. George: dare say he won’t stay long with us.” At which St. George laughed good-naturedly and shrugged his shoulders.

But William Brook did prove to be of use. He got on so well, was so punctual, so attentive, so intelligent, that fault could not be found with him; and at the end of the first year Mr. Delorane voluntarily doubled his pay—raising it to two pounds per week.

Timberdale wondered again: and began to ask how it was that young Brook, highly educated, and reared to expect some position in the world, could content himself with stopping on, a lawyer’s clerk? Did he mean to continue in the office for ever? Had he ceased to look out for that desirable something that was to turn up? Was he parting with all laudable ambition?

William Brook could have told them, had he dared, that it was not lack of ambition chaining him to his post, but stress of love. He and Ellin Delorane had entered a long while past into the mazes of that charming dream, than which, as Tom Moore tells us, there’s nothing half so sweet in life, and the world was to them as the Garden of Eden.

It was close upon the end of the second year before Mr. Delorane found it out. He went into a storm of rage and reproaches—chiefly showered upon William Brook, partly upon Ellin, a little upon himself.

“I have been an old fool,” he spluttered to his confidential clerk. “Because the young people had been intimate in the days when the Brooks were prosperous, I must needs let it go on still, and never suspect danger! Why, the fellow has had his tea here twice a-week upon an average!—and brought Ellin home at night when she has been at his mother’s!—and I—I—thought no more than if it had been her brother! I could thrash myself! And where have her aunt Hester’s eyes been, I should like to know!”

“Very dishonourable of Brook,” assented St. George, knitting his brow. “Perhaps less harm is done than you fear, sir. They are both young, can hardly know their own minds; they will grow out of it. Shall you part them?”

“Do you suppose I shouldn’t?” retorted the lawyer.

William Brook was discharged from the office: Ellin received orders to give up his acquaintanceship; she was not to think of him in private or speak to him in public. Thus a little time went on. Ellin’s bright face began to fade; Aunt Hester looked sick and sorry; the lawyer had never felt so uncomfortable in his life.

Do what he would, he could not get out of his liking for William Brook, and Ellin was dear to him as the apple of his eye. He had been in love himself once, and knew what it meant; little as you would believe it of a stout old red-faced lawyer; knew that both must be miserable. So much the better for Brook—but what of Ellin?

“One would think it was you who had had your lover sent to the right-about!” he wrathfully began to Aunt Hester, one morning when he came upon her in tears as she sat at her sewing. “I’d hide my face if I were you, unless I could show a better.”

“It is that I am so sorry for Ellin, John,” replied Aunt Hester, meekly wiping her tears. “I—I am afraid that some people bear sorrow worse than others.”

“Now what do you mean by that?”

“Oh, not much,” sighed Aunt Hester, not daring to allude to the dread lying latent in her own mind—that Ellin might fade away like her mother. “I can see what a sharp blow it has been to the child, John, and so—and so I can but feel it myself.”

“Sharp blow! Deuce take it all! What business had young Brook to get talking to her about such rubbish as love?”

“Yes indeed, it is very unfortunate,” said Aunt Hester.“But I do not think he has talked to her, John; I imagine he is too honourable to have said a single word. They have just gone on loving one another in secret and in silence, content to live in the unspoken happiness that has flooded their two hearts.”

“Unspoken fiddlestick? What a simpleton you are, Hester!”

Mr. Delorane turned off in a temper. He knew it must have been a “sharp blow” to Ellin, but he did not like to hear it so stated to his face. Banging the door behind him, he was crossing the hall to the office—which made a sort of wing to the house—when he met William Brook.

“Will you allow me to speak to you, sir?” asked the young man in a tone of deprecation. And, though the lawyer had the greatest mind in the world to tell him NO and send him head-foremost out again, he thought of Ellin, he thought of his dead friend, Roger Brook; so he gave a growl, and led the way into the dining-room.

In his modest winning way, William Brook spoke a little of the trouble that had come upon their family—how deeply sorry he was that Ellin and he should have learnt to care for one another for all time, as it was displeasing to Mr. Delorane——

“Hang it, man,” interrupted the lawyer irascibly, too impatient to listen further—“what on earth do you propose to yourself? Suppose I did not look upon it with displeasure?—are you in a position to marry her?”

“You would not have objected to me had we been as we once were—prosperous, and——”

“What the dickens has that to do with it!” roared the lawyer. “Our business lies with the present, not the past.”

“I came here to tell you, sir, that I am to leave for New York to-night. My brother Charles has been writing to me about it for some time past. He says I cannot fail to get on well in my uncle’s house, and attain to a good position. Uncle Matthew has no sons: he will do his best to advance his nephews. What I wish to ask you, sir, is this—if, when my means shall be good and my position assured, you will allow me to think of Ellin?”

“The man’s mad?” broke forth Mr. Delorane, more put about than he had been at all. “Do you suppose I should let my only child go to live in a country over the seas?”

“No, sir, I have thought of that. Charles thinks, if I show an aptitude for business, they may make me their agent over here. Oh, Mr. Delorane, be kind, be merciful: for Ellin’s sake and for mine! Do not send me away without hope!”

“Don’t you think you possess a ready-made stock of impudence, William Brook?”

The young man threw his earnest, dark-blue eyes into the lawyer’s. “I feared you would deem so, sir. But I am pleading for what is dearer to me and to her than life: our lives will be of little value to us if we must spend them apart. Only just one ray of possible hope, Mr. Delorane! It is all I ask.”

“Look here; we’ll drop this,” cried the lawyer, his hands in his pockets, rattling away violently at the silver in them, his habit when put out, but nevertheless calming down in temper, for in spite of prejudice he did like the young man greatly, and he was not easy as to Ellin. “The best thing you can do is to go where you are going—over the Atlantic: and we’ll leave the future to take care of itself. The money you think to make may turn out all moonshine, you know. There; that’s every word I’ll say and every hope I’ll give, though you stop all day bothering me, William Brook.”

And perhaps it was as much as William Brook had expected: any way, it did not absolutely forbid him to hope. He held out his hand timidly.

“Will you not shake hands with me, sir—I start to-night—and wish me God speed.”

“I’ll wish you better sense; and—and I hope you’ll get over safely,” retorted Mr. Delorane: but he did not withhold his hand. “No correspondence with Ellin, you understand, young man; no underhand love-making.”

“Yes, sir, I understand; and you may rely upon me.”

He quitted the room as he spoke, to make his way out as he came—through the office. The lawyer stood in the passage and looked after him: and a thought, that had forced itself into his mind several times since this trouble set in, crossed it again. Should he make the best of a bad bargain: give Brook a chief place in his own office and let them set up in some pleasant little home near at hand? Ellin had her mother’s money: and she would have a great deal more at his own death; quite enough to allow her husband to live the idle life of a gentleman—and William was a gentleman, and the nicest young fellow he knew. Should he? For a full minute Mr. Delorane stood deliberating—yes, or no; then he took a hasty step forward to call the young man back. Then, wavering and uncertain, he stepped back again, and let the idea pass.

“Well, how have you sped?” asked Mr. St. George, as William Brook reappeared in the office. “Any hope?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered William. “At least, it is not absolutely forbidden. There’s a line in a poem my mother would repeat to us when we were boys—‘God and an honest heart will bear us through the roughest day.’ I trust He, and it, will so bear me and Ellin.”

“Wish I had your chance, old fellow!”

“My chance!” repeated William.

“To go out to see the world; to go out to the countries where gold and diamonds are picked up for the stooping—instead of being chained, as I am, between four confined walls, condemned to spend my life over musty parchments.”

William smiled. “I don’t know where you can pick up gold and diamonds for the stooping. Not where I am going.”

“No, not in New York. You should make your way to the Australian gold-fields, Brook, or to the rich Californian mines, or to the diamond mountains in Africa, and come back—as you would in no time—with a sack of money on your shoulders, large enough to satisfy even Delorane.”

“Or lose my health, if not my life, in digging, and come home without a shirt to my back; a more common result than the other, I fancy,” remarked William. “Well, good-bye, old friend.”

St. George, towering aloft in his height and strength, put his arm around William’s shoulder and walked thus with him to the street-entrance. There they shook hands, and parted. Ellin Delorane, her face shaded behind the drawing-room curtain from the October sun, watched the parting.

There was to be no set farewell allowed to her. She understood that. But she gathered from Aunt Hester, during the day, that her father had not been altogether obdurate, and that if William could get on in the future, perhaps things might be suffered to come right. It brought to her a strange comfort. So very slight a ray, no bigger than one of the specks that fall from the sky, as children say, will serve to impart a most unreasonable amount of hope to the troubled heart.

Towards the close of the afternoon, Ellin went in her restlessness to pay a visit to her friend Grace at the Rectory, who had recently become Herbert Tanerton’s wife, and sat talking with her till it was pretty late. The moon, rising over the tops of the trees, caused her to start up with an exclamation.

“What will Aunt Hester say?”

“If you don’t mind going through the churchyard, Ellin,”said Grace, “you would cut off that corner, and save a little time.” So Ellin took that route.

“Ellin!”

“William!”

They had met face to face under the church walls. He explained that he was sparing a few minutes to say farewell to his friends at the Rectory. The moon, coming out from behind a swiftly passing cloud, for it was rather a rough night, shone down upon them and upon the graves around them. Wildly enough beat the heart of each.

“You saw papa to-day,” she whispered unevenly, as though her breath were short.

“Yes, I saw him. I cannot say that he gave me hope, Ellin, but he certainly did not wholly deny it. I think—I believe—that—if I can succeed in getting on, all may be well with us yet.”

William Brook spoke with hesitation. He felt trammelled; he could not in honour say what he would have wished to say. This meeting might be unorthodox, but it was purely accidental; neither he nor Ellin had sought it.

“Good-bye, my darling,” he said with emotion, clasping her hands in his. “As we have met, there cannot be much wrong in our saying it. I may not write to you, Ellin; I may not even ask you to think of me; I may not, I suppose, tell you in so many words that I shall think of you; but, believe this: I go out with one sole aim and end in view—that of striving to make a position sufficiently fair to satisfy your father.”

The tears were coursing down her cheeks; she could hardly speak for agitation. Their hearts were aching to pain.

“I will be true to you always, William,” she whispered. “I will wait for you, though it be to the end of life.”

To be in love with a charming young lady, and to have her all to yourself in a solitary graveyard under the light of the moon, presents an irresistible temptation for taking a kiss, especially if the kiss is to be a farewell kiss for days and for years. William Brook did not resist it; very likely did not try to. In spite of Mr. Delorane and every one else, he took his farewell kiss from Ellin’s lips.

Then they parted, he going one way, she the other. Only those of us—there are not many—who have gone through this parting agony can know how it wrings the heart.

But sundry superstitious gossips, hearing of this afterwards, assured Ellin that it must be unlucky to say farewell amidst graves.

The time went on. William Brook wrote regularly to his people, and Minty whispered the news to Ellin Delorane. He would send kind remembrances to friends, love to those who cared for it. He did not dislike the work of a mercantile life, and thought he should do well—in time.

In time. There was the rub, you see. We say “in time”when we mean next Christmas, and we also say it when we mean next century. By the end of the first year William Brook was commanding a handsome salary; but the riches that might enable him to aspire to the hand of Miss Delorane loomed obscurely in the distance yet. Ellin seemed strong and well, gay and cheerful, went about Timberdale, and laughed and talked with the world, just as though she had never had a lover, or was not waiting for somebody over the water. Mr. Delorane thought she must have forgotten that scapegrace, and he hoped it was so.

It was about this time, the end of the first year, that a piece of good luck fell to Mr. St. George. He came into a fortune. Some relative in the West Indies died and left it to him. Timberdale put it down at a thousand pounds a-year, so I suppose it might be about five hundred. It was thought he might be for giving up his post at Mr. Delorane’s to be a gentleman at large. But he did nothing of the kind. He quitted his lodgings over Salmon’s shop, and went into a pretty house near Timberdale Court, with a groom and old Betty Huntsman as housekeeper, and set up a handsome gig and a grey horse. And that was all the change.

As the second year went on, Ellin Delorane began to droop a little. Aunt Hester did not like it. One of the kindest friends Ellin had was Alfred St. George. After the departure of young Brook, he had been so tender with Ellin, so considerate, so indulgent to her sorrow, and so regretful (like herself) of William’s absence, that he had won her regard. “It will be all right when he comes back, Ellin,” he would whisper: “only be patient.”

But in this, the second year, Mr. St. George’s tone changed. It may be that he saw no hope of any happy return, and deemed that, for her own sake, he ought to repress any hope left in her.

“There’s no more chance of his returning with a fortune than there is of my going up to the moon,” he said to Tod confidentially one day when we met him striding along near the Ravine.

“Don’t suppose there is—in this short time,” responded Tod.

“I’m afraid Ellin sees it, too: she seems to be losing her spirits. Ah, Brook should have done as I advised him—gone a little farther and dug in the gold-fields. He might have come back a Crœsus then. As it is—whew! I wouldn’t give a copper sixpence for his chance.”

“Do you know what I heard say, St. George?—that you’d like to go in for the little lady yourself.”

The white eye-balls surrounding St. George’s dark orbs took a tinge of yellow as they rolled on Tod. “Who said it?” he asked quietly.

“Darbyshire. He says you are in love with her as much as ever Brook was.”

St. George laughed. “Old Darbyshire? Well, perhaps he is not far wrong. Any way, love’s free, I believe. Were I herfather, Brook should prove his eligibility to propose for her, or else give her up. Good-day, Todhetley; good-day, Johnny.”

St. George went off at a quick pace. Tod, looking after him, made his comments. “Should not wonder but he wins her. He is the better man of the two——”

“The better man!” I interrupted.

“As to means, at any rate: and see what a fine upright free-limbed fellow he is! And where will you find one more agreeable?”

“In tongue, nowhere; I admit that. But I wouldn’t give up William Brook for him, were I Ellin Delorane.”

That St. George was in love with her grew as easy to be seen as is the round moon in harvest. Small blame to him. Who could be in the daily companionship of a sweet girl like Ellin Delorane, and not learn to love her, I should like to know? Tod told St. George he wished he had his chance.

At last St. George spoke to her. It was in April, eighteen months after Brook’s departure. Ellin was in the garden at sunset, busy with the budding flowers, when St. George came to join her, as he sometimes did, on leaving the office for the day. Aunt Hester sat sewing at the open glass-doors of the window.

“I have been gardening till I am tired,” was Ellin’s greeting to him, as she sat down on a bench near the sweetbriar bush.

“You look pale,” said Mr. St. George. “You often do look pale now, Ellin: do you think you can be quite well?”

“Pray don’t let Aunt Hester overhear you,” returned Ellin in covert, jesting tones. “She begins to have fancies, she says, that I am not as well as I ought to be, and threatens to call in Mr. Darbyshire.”

“You need some one to take care of you; some one near and dear to you, who would study your every look and action, who would not suffer the winds of heaven to blow upon your face too roughly,” went on St. George, plunging into Shakespeare. “Oh, Ellin, if you would suffer me to be that one——”

Her face turned crimson; her lips parted with emotion; she rose up to interrupt him in a sort of terror.

“Pray do not continue, Mr. St. George. If—if I understand you rightly, that you—that you——”

“That I would be your loving husband, Ellin; that I wouldshelter you from all ill until death us do part. Yes, it is nothing less than that.”

“Then you must please never to speak of such a thing again; never to think of it. Oh, do not let me find that I have been mistaking you all this time,” she added in uncontrollable agitation:“that while I have ever welcomed you as my friend—and his—you have been swayed by another motive!”

He did not like the agitation; he did not like the words; and he bit his lips, striving for calmness.

“This is very hard, Ellin.”

“Let us understand each other once for all,” she said—“and oh, I am so sorry that there’s need to say it. What you have hinted at is impossible. Impossible: please not to mistake me. You have been my very kind friend, and I value you; and, if you will, we can go on still on the same pleasant terms, caring for one another in friendship. There can be nothing more.”

“Tell me one thing,” he said: “we had better, as you intimate, understand each other fully. Can it be that your hopes are still fixed upon William Brook?”

“Yes,” she answered in a low tone, as she turned her face away. “I hope he will come home yet, and that—that matters may be smoothed for us with papa. Whilst that hope remains it is simply treason to talk to me as you would have done,” she concluded with a spurt of anger.

“Ellin,” called out Aunt Hester, putting her head out beyond the glass-doors, “the sun has set; you had better come in.”

“One moment, Ellin,” cried Mr. St. George, preventing her:“will you forgive me?”

“Forgive and forget, too,” smiled Ellin, her brow smoothing itself. “But you must never recur to the subject again.”

So Mr. St. George went home, his accounts settled—as Tod would have said: and the days glided on.

“What is it that ails Ellin?”

It was a piping-hot morning in July, in one of the good old hot summers that we seem never to get now; and Aunt Hester sat in her parlour, its glass-doors open, adding up the last week’s bills of the butcher and the baker, when she was interrupted by this question from her brother. He had come stalking upon her, rattling as usual, though quite unconsciously, the silver inhis trousers pockets. The trousers were of nankeen: elderly gentlemen wore them in those days for coolness.

“What ails her!” repeated Aunt Hester, dropping the bills in alarm. “Why do you ask me, John?”

“Now, don’t you think you should have been a Quaker?”retorted Mr. Delorane. “I put a simple question to you, and you reply to it by asking me another. Please to answer mine first. What is it that is the matter with Ellin?”

Aunt Hester sighed. Of too timid a nature to put forth her own opinion upon any subject gratuitously in her brother’s house, she hardly liked to give it even when asked for. For the past few weeks Ellin had been almost palpably fading; was silent and dispirited, losing her bright colour, growing thinner; might be heard catching her breath in one of those sobbing sighs that betoken all too surely some secret, ever-present sorrow. Aunt Hester had observed this; she now supposed it had at length penetrated to the observation of her brother.

“Can’t you speak?” he demanded.

“I don’t know what to say, John. Ellin does not seem well, and looks languid: of course this broiling weather is against us all. But——”

“But what?” cried the lawyer, as she paused. “As to broiling weather, that’s nothing new in July.”

“Well, John—only you take me up so—and I’m sure I shouldn’t like to anger you. I was about to add that I think it is not so much illness of body with Ellin as illness of mind. If one’s mind is ransacked with perpetual worry——”

“Racked with perpetual worry,” interrupted Mr. Delorane, unconsciously correcting her mistake. “What has she to worry her?”

“Dear me! I suppose it is about William Brook. He has been gone nearly two years, John, and seems to be no nearer coming home with a fortune than he was when he left. I take it that this troubles the child: she is losing hope.”

Mr. Delorane, standing before the open window, his back to his sister, turned the silver coins about in his pockets more vehemently than before. “You say she is not ailing in body?”

“Not yet. She is never very strong, you know.”

“Then there’s no need to be uneasy.”

“Well, John—not yet, perhaps. But should this state of despair, if I don’t use too strong a word, continue, it will tell in tune upon her health, and might bring on—bring on——”

“Bring on what?” sharply asked the lawyer.

“I was thinking of her mother,” said poor Aunt Hester, with as much deprecation as though he had been the Great Mogul:“but I trust, John, you won’t be too angry with me for saying it.”

Mr. Delorane did not say whether he was angry or not. He stood there, fingering his sixpences and shillings, gazing apparently at the grass-plat, in reality seeing nothing. He was recalling a past vision: that of his delicate wife, dying of consumption before her time; he seemed to see a future vision: that of his daughter, dying as she had died.

“When it comes to dreams,” timidly went on Aunt Hester,“I can’t say I like it. Not that I am one to put faith in the foolish signs old wives talk of—that if you dream of seeing a snake, you’ve got an enemy; or, if you seem to be in the midst of a lot of beautiful white flowers, it’s a token of somebody’s death. I am not so silly as that, John. But for some time past Ellin has dreamt perpetually of one theme—that of being in trouble about William Brook. Night after night she seems to be searching for him: he is lost, and she cannot tell how or where.”

Had Aunt Hester suddenly begun to hold forth in the unknown tongue, it could not have brought greater surprise to Mr. Delorane. He turned short round to stare at her.

“Seeing what a wan and weary face the child has come down with of late, I taxed her with not sleeping well,” continued Aunt Hester, “and she confessed to me that she was feeling a good bit troubled by her dreams. She generally has them towards morning, and the theme is always the same. The dreams vary, but the subject is alike in all—William Brook is lost, and she is searching for him.”

“Nonsense! Rubbish!” put in Mr. Delorane.

“Well, John, I dare say it is nonsense,” conceded Aunt Hester meekly: “but I confess I don’t like dreams that come to you persistently night after night and always upon one and the same subject. Why should they come?—that’s what I ask myself. Be sure, though, I make light of the matter to Ellin, and tell her her digestion is out of order. Over and over again, she says, they seem to have the clue to his hiding place, but they never succeed in finding him. And—and I am afraid, John, that the child, through this, has taken up the notion that she shall never see him again.”

Mr. Delorane, making some impatient remark about the absurdity of women in general, turned round and stood looking into the garden as before. Ellin’s mind was getting unhinged with the long separation, she had begun to regard it as hopeless, and hence these dreams that Brook was “lost,” he told himself, and with reason: and what was he to do?

How long he stood thus in perfect silence, no sound to be heard but the everlasting jingling of the loose silver, Aunt Hester did not know; pretty near an hour she thought. She wished he would go; she felt very uncomfortable, as she always did feel when she vexed him—and here were the bills waiting to be added up. At length he turned sharply, with the air of one who has come to some decision, and returned to the office.

“I suppose I shall have to do it myself,” he remarked to Mr. St. George.

“Do what, sir?”

“Send for that young fellow back, and let them set up in some little homestead near me. I mean Brook.”

“Brook!” stammered St. George.

“Here’s Ellin beginning to fade and wither. It’s all very well for her aunt to talk about the heat! I know. She is pining after him, and I can’t see her do it; so he must come home.”

Of all the queer shades that can be displayed by the human countenance, about the queerest appeared in that of Mr. St. George. It was not purple, it was not green, it was not yellow; it was a mixture of all three. He gazed at his chief and master as one gazes at a madman.

“Brook can come into the office again,” continued Mr. Delorane. “I don’t like young men to be idle; leads ’em into temptation. We’ll make him head clerk here, next to you, and give him a couple of hundred a-year. If—what’s the matter?”

For the strange look on his manager’s face had caught the eye of Mr. Delorane. St. George drew three or four deep breaths.

“Have you thought of Miss Delorane, sir—of her interests—in planning this?” he presently asked.

“Why, that’s what I do think of; nothing else. You may be sure I shouldn’t think of it for the interest of Brook. All the same, I like the young man, and always shall. The child is moping herself into a bad way. Where shall I be if she should go into a decline like her mother? No, no; she shall marry and have proper interests around her.”

“She could do that without being sacrificed to Brook,” returned St. George in a low tone. “There are others, sir, of good and suitable position, who would be thankful to take her—whose pride it would be to cherish her and render every moment of her life happy.”

“Oh, I know that; you are one of ’em,” returned Mr. Delorane carelessly. “It’s what all you young sparks are ready to say of a pretty girl, especially if she be rich as well. But don’t you see, St. George, that Ellin does not care for any of you. Her heart is fixed upon Brook, and Brook it must be.”

Of course this news came out to Timberdale. Some people blamed Mr. Delorane, others praised him. Delorane must be turning childish in his old age, said one; Delorane is doing a good and a wise thing, cried another. Opinions vary in this world, you know, and ever will, as proved to us in the fable of the old man and his ass.

But now—and it was a strange thing to happen the very next day Mr. Delorane received a letter from William Brook, eight closely written pages. Briefly, this was its substance. The uncle, Matthew Brook of New York, was about to establish a house in London, in correspondence with his own; he had offered the managership of it to William, with a small share of profits, guaranteeing that the latter should not be less than seven hundred a-year.

“And if you can only be induced to think this enough for us to begin upon, sir, and will give me Ellin,” wrote the young man, “I can but say that I will strive to prove my gratitude in loving care for her; and I trust you will not object to her living in London. I leave New York next month, to be in England in September, landing at Liverpool, and I shall make my way at once to Timberdale, hoping you will allow me to plead my cause in person.”

“No no, Master William, you won’t carry my daughter off to London,” commented Mr. Delorane aloud, when he had read the letter—not but that it gratified him. “You must give up your post, young man, and settle down by me here, if you are to have Ellin. I don’t see, St. George, why Brook should not make himself into a lawyer, legal and proper,” added he thoughtfully. “He is young enough—and he does not dislike the work. You and he might be associated together after I am dead: ‘Brook and St. George.’”

Mr. St. George’s face turned crusty: he did not like to hear his name put next to Brook’s. “I never feel too sure of my own future,” he said in reply. “Now that I am at my ease in the world, tempting visions come often enough across me of travelling out to see it.”

Mr. Delorane wrote a short, pithy note in answer to the appeal of William Brook, telling him he might come and talk to him as soon as he returned. “The young fellow may have left New York before it can reach him,” remarked the lawyer, as he put the letter in the post; “but if so, it does not much matter.”

So there was Timberdale, all cock-a-hoop at the prospect of seeing William Brook again, and the wedding that was to follow. Sam Mullet, the clerk, was for setting the bells to ring beforehand.

Some people think September the pleasantest month in the year, when the heats of summer have passed and the frosts of winter have not come. Never a finer September than we had that autumn at Timberdale; the skies looked bright, the leaves of the trees were putting on their tints of many colours, and the land was not yet quite shorn of its golden grain.

All the world was looking out for William Brook. He did not come. Disappointment is the lot of man. Of woman also. When the third week was dragging itself along in expectancy, a letter came to Mrs. Brook from William. It was to say that his return home was somewhat delayed, as he should have to take Jamaica en route, to transact some business at Kingston for his uncle. He should then proceed direct from Kingston by steamer to Liverpool, which place he hoped to reach before the middle of October. “Tell all my friends this, that they may not wonder at my delay,” the letter concluded; but it contained no intimation that he had received the answer written by Mr. Delorane.

A short postscript was yet added, in these words: “Alfred St. George has, I know, some relatives living in, or near Kingston—planters, I believe. Tell him I shall call upon them, if I can make time, to see whether they have any commands for him.”

Long before the middle of October, Ellin Delorane became obviously restless. A sort of uneasy impatience seemed to have taken possession of her: and without cause. One day, when we called at Mr. Delorane’s to take a message from home, Ellinwas in the garden with her outdoor things on, waiting to go out with her aunt.

“What a ridiculous goose you are!” began Tod. “I hear you have taken up the notion that Sweet William has gone down in the Caribbean Sea.”

“I’m sure I have not,” said Ellin. “Aunt Hester must have told you that fable when she was at Crabb Cot yesterday.”

“Just so. She and the mater laid their gossiping caps together for the best part of an hour—and all about the foolishness of Miss Ellin Delorane.”

“Why, you know, Ellin,” I put in, “it is hardly the middle of October yet.”

“I tell myself that it is not,” she answered gravely. “But, somehow, Johnny, I don’t—don’t—expect—him.”

“Now, what on earth do you mean?”

“I wish I knew what. All I can tell you is, that when his mother received that letter from William last month, saying his return was delayed, a sort of foreboding seized hold of me, an apprehension that he would never come. I try to shake it off, but I cannot. Each day, as the days come round, only serves to make it stronger.”

“Don’t you think a short visit to Droitwich would do you good, Ellin?” cried Tod, which was our Worcestershire fashion of recommending people to the lunatic asylum.

“Just listen to him, Johnny!” she exclaimed, with a laugh.

“Yes, ‘just listen to him’—and just listen to yourself, Miss Ellin, and see which talks the most sense,” he retorted. “Have you got over those dreams yet?”

Ellin turned her face to him quickly. “Who told you anything about that, Aunt Hester?”

Tod nodded. “It’s true, you know.”

“Yes, it is true,” she slowly said. “I have had those strange dreams for some weeks now; I have them still.”

“That William Brook is lost?”

“That he is lost, and that we are persistently searching for him. Sometimes we are seeking for him in Timberdale, sometimes at Worcester—in America, in France, in places that I have no knowledge of. There always seems to be a sadness connected with it—a sort of latent conviction that he will never be found.”

“The dreams beget the dreams,” said Tod, “and I should have thought you had better sense. They will soon vanish, onceSweet William makes his appearance: and mind, Miss Ellin, that you invite me to the wedding.”

Ellin sighed—and smiled. And just then Aunt Hester appeared attired in her crimson silk shawl with the fancy border, and the primrose feather in her Leghorn bonnet.

A day or two went on, bringing no news of the traveller. On the nineteenth of October—I shall never forget the date—Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley and ourselves set off in the large open phaeton for a place called Pigeon Green, to spend the day with some friends living there. On this same morning, as it chanced, a very wintry one, Mr. St. George started for Worcester in his gig, accompanied by Ellin Delorane. But of this we knew nothing. He had business in the town; she was going to spend a few days with Mary West, formerly Mary Coney.

Ellin was well wrapped up, and Mr. St. George, ever solicitous for her comfort, kept the warm fur rug well about her during the journey: the skies looked grey and threatening, the wind was high and bitterly cold. Worcester reached, he drove straight through the town, left Ellin at Mrs. West’s door, in the Foregate Street, and then drove back to the Hare and Hounds Inn to put up his horse and gig.

II

I shall always say, always think, it was a curious thing we chanced to go that day, of all days, to Pigeon Green. It is not chance that brings about these strange coincidences.

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.”

Pigeon Green, a small colonyPigeon Green, a small colony of a dozen houses, formed a triangle, as may be said, with Timberdale and Evesham, being a few miles distant from each. Old Mr. and Mrs. Beele, life-long friends of the Squire, lived here. Their nephew had brought his newly-married wife from London to show her to them, and we were all invited to dinner. As the Squire did not care to be out in the dark, his sight not being what it used to be, the dinner-hour was fixed for two o’clock. We started in the large open phaeton, the Squire driving his favourite horses, Bob and Blister. It was the nineteenth of October. Mrs. Todhetley complained of the cold as we went along. The lovely weatherof September had left us; early winter seemed to be setting in with a vengeance. The easterly wind was unusually high, and the skies were leaden.

On this same wintry morning Mr. St. George left Timberdale in his gig for Worcester, accompanied by Ellin Delorane. St. George had business to transact with Philip West, a lawyer, who was Mr. Delorane’s agent in Worcester. Philip West lived in the Foregate Street, his offices being in the same house. Ellin was very intimate with his wife, formerly Mary Coney, and was invited to spend a few days with her. It was Aunt Hester who had urged the acceptance of this invitation: seeing that Ellin was nervous at the non-arrival of her lover, William Brook, was peeping into the newspapers for accounts of shipwrecks and other calamities at sea. So they set off after breakfast, Ellin well wrapped up, in this stylish gig of Mr. St. George’s. There are gigs and gigs, you know, and I assure you some gigs were yet fashionable vehicles in those days.

It was bitterly cold. St. George, remarking that they should have snow as soon as the high wind would let it come down, urged his handsome grey horse to a fleet pace, and they soon reached Worcester. He drove straight to Foregate Street, which lay at the other end of the town, set down Ellin, and then went back again to leave his horse and gig at the Hare and Hounds in College Street, the inn at which he generally put up, retracing his steps on foot to Mr. West’s.

And now I must return to ourselves.

After a jolly dinner at two o’clock with the Beeles, and a jolly dessert after it, including plenty of fresh filberts and walnuts, and upon that a good cup of tea and some buttered toast, we began to think about getting home. When the phaeton came round, the Squire remarked that it was half-an-hour later than he had meant to start; upon which, old Beele laid the fault of its looking late to the ungenial weather of the evening.

We drove off. Dusk was approaching; the leaden skies looked dark and sullen, the wind, unpleasantly high all day, had increased to nearly a hurricane. It roared round our heads, it whistled wildly through the trees and hedges, it shook the very ears of Bob and Blister; the few flakes of snow or sleet beginning then to fall were whirled about in the air like demons. It was an awful evening, no mistake about that; and a very unusual one for the middle of October.

The Squire faced the storm as well as he could, his coat-collar turned up, his cloth cap, kept for emergencies in a pocket of the carriage, tied down well on his ears. Mrs. Todhetley tied a knitted grey shawl right over her bonnet. We, in the back seat, had much ado to keep our hats on: I sat right behind the Squire, Tod behind Mrs. Todhetley. It was about the worst drive I remember. The wild wind, keen as a knife, stung our faces, and seemed at times as if it would whirl us, carriage and horses and all, in the air, as it was whirling the sleet and snow.

Tod stood up to speak to his father. “Shall I drive, sir?”he asked. “Perhaps you would be more sheltered if you sat here behind.”

Tod’s driving in those days was regarded by the Squire with remarkable disparagement, and Tod received only a sharp answer—which could not be heard for the wind.

We got along somehow in the teeth of the storm. The route lay chiefly through by-ways, solitary and unfrequented, not in the good, open turnpike-roads. For about a mile, midway between Pigeon Green and Timberdale, was an ultra dreary spot; dreary in itself and dreary in its associations. It was called Dip Lane, possibly because the ground dipped there so much that it lay in a hollow; overgrown dark elm-trees grew thickly on each side of it, their branches nearly meeting overhead. In the brightest summer’s day the place was gloomy, so you may guess how it looked now.

But the downward dip and the dark elm-trees did not constitute all the dreariness of Dip Lane. Many years before, a murder had been committed there. The Squire used to tell us of the commotion it caused, all the gentlemen for miles and miles round bestirring themselves to search out the murderers. He himself was a little fellow of five or six years old, and could just remember what a talk it made. A wealthy farmer, belated, riding through the lane from market one dark night, was attacked and pulled from his horse. The assailants beat him to death, rifled his pockets of a large sum, for he had been selling stock, and dragged him through the hedge, making a large gap in it. Across the field, near its opposite side, was the round, deep stagnant piece of water known as Dip Pond (popularly supposed to be too deep to have any bottom to it); and it was conjectured that the object of the murderers, in dragging him through the hedge, was to conceal the body beneath the dark and slimywater, and that they must have been disturbed by some one passing in the lane. Any way, the body was found in the morning lying in the field a few yards from the gap in the hedge, pockets turned inside out, and watch and seals gone. The poor frightened horse had made its way home, and stayed whinnying by the stable-door all night.

The men were never found. A labourer, hastening through the lane earlier in the evening, with some medicine from the doctor’s for his sick wife, had noticed two foot-pads, as he described them, standing under a tree. That these were the murderers, then waiting for prey, possibly for this very gentleman they attacked, no one had any doubt; but they were never traced. Whoever they were, they got clear off with their booty, and—the Squire would always add when telling the story to a stranger—with their wicked consciences, which he sincerely hoped tormented them ever afterwards.

But the most singular fact in the affair remains to be told. From that night nothing would grow on the spot in the hedge over which the murdered man was dragged, and on which his blood had fallen. The blood-stains were easily got rid of, but the hedge, though replanted more than once, never grew again; and the gap remained in it still. Report went that the farmer’s ghost haunted it—that, I am sure, you will not be surprised to hear, ghosts being so popular—and might be seen hovering around it on a moonlit night.

And amidst the many small coincidences attending the story (my story) which I am trying to place clearly before you, was this one: that the history of the murder was gone over that day at Mr. Beele’s. Some remark led to the subject as we sat round the dessert-table, and Mrs. Frank Beele, who had never heard of it, inquired what it was. Upon that, the Squire and old Beele recounted it to her, each ransacking his memory to help the other with fullest particulars.

To go on with our homeward journey. Battling along, we at length plunged into Dip Lane—which, to its other recommendations, added that of being inconveniently narrow—and Tod, peering outwards in the gloomy dusk, fancied he saw some vehicle before us. Bringing his keen sight to bear upon it, he stood up to reconnoitre, and made it out to be a gig, going the same way that we were. The wind was not quite so bad in this low spot, and the snow and sleet had ceased for a bit.

“Take care, father,” said Tod: “there’s a gig on ahead.”

“A gig, Joe?”

“Yes, it’s a gig: and going at a strapping pace.”

But the Squire was going at a strapping pace also, and driving two fresh horses, whereas the gig had but one horse. We caught it up in no time. It slackened speed slightly as it drew close to the hedge on that side, to give us room to pass. In a moment we saw it was St. George’s gig, St. George driving.

“Halloa!” called Tod, as we shot by, and his shout was loud enough to frighten the ghost at the gap, which lively spot we were fast approaching, “there’s William Brook! Father, pull up: there’s William Brook!”

Brook was sitting with St. George. His coat was well buttoned up, a white woollen comforter folded round his neck and chin, and a low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his brows. I confess that but for Tom’s shout I should not have recognized him—muffled up in that way.

Anxious to get home, out of the storm, the Squire paid no heed to Tod’s injunction of pulling up. He just turned his head for a moment towards the gig, but drove on at the same speed as before. All we could do was to call out every welcome we could think of to William Brook as we looked back, and to pull off our hats and wave them frantically.

William Brook pulled off his, and waved it to us in return.I saw him do it. He called out something also, no doubt a greeting. At least, I thought he did; but the wind swept by with a gust at the moment, and it might have been St. George’s voice and not his.

“Johnny, lad, it’s better than nuts,” cried Tod to me, all excitement for once, as he fixed his hat on his head again.“How glad I am!—for Nelly’s sake. But what on earth brings the pair of them—he and St. George—in Dip Lane?”

Another minute or so, and we reached the gap in the hedge. I turned my eyes to it and to the pond beyond it in a sort of fascination; I was sure to do so whenever I went by, but that was seldom; and the conversation at the dessert-table had opened the wretched details afresh. Almost immediately afterwards, the gig wheels behind us, which I could hear above the noise of the wind, seemed to me to come to a sudden standstill. “St. George has stopped,” I exclaimed to Tod. “Not a bit of it,”answered he; “we can no longer hear him.” Almost close uponthat, we passed the turning which led out of the lane towards Evesham. Not heeding anything of all this, as indeed why should he, the Squire dashed straight onwards, and in time we gained our homestead, Crabb Cot.

The first thing the Squire did, when we were all gathered round the welcome fire, blazing and crackling with wood and coal, and the stormy blasts beat on the window-panes, but no longer upon us, was to attack us for making that noise in Dip Lane, and for shouting out that it was Brook.

“It was Brook, father,” said Tod. “St. George was driving him.”

“Nonsense, Joe,” reprimanded the Squire. “William Brook has not landed from the high seas yet. And, if he had landed, what should bring him in Dip Lane—or St. George either?”

“It was St. George,” persisted Tod.

“Well, that might have been. It looked like his grey horse. Where was he coming from, I wonder?”

“Mr. St. George went to Worcester this morning, sir,” interposed Thomas, who had come in with some glasses, the Squire having asked for some hot brandy-and-water. “Giles saw his man Japhet this afternoon, and he said his master had gone off in his gig to Worcester for the day.”

“Then he must have picked up Brook at Worcester,” said Tod, in his decisive way.

“May be so,” conceded the Squire, coming round to reason.“But I don’t see what they could be doing in Dip Lane.”

The storm had disappeared the following morning, but the ground was white with a thin coating of snow; and in the afternoon, when we started for Timberdale to call on William Brook, the sky was blue and the sun shining. Climbing up from the Ravine and crossing the field beyond it to the high-road, we met Darbyshire, the surgeon, striding along as fast as his legs would carry him.

“You seem to be in a hurry,” remarked the Squire.

“Just sent for to a sick patient over yonder,” replied Darbyshire, nodding to some cottages in the distance. “Dying, the report is; supposed to have swallowed poison. Dare say it will turn out to be a case of cucumber.”

He was speeding on when Tod asked whether he had seenWilliam Brook yet. Darbyshire turned to face him, looking surprised.

“Seen Brook yet! No; how should I see him? Brook’s not come, is he?”

“He got home last night. St. George drove him from Worcester in his gig,” said Tod, and went on to explain that we had passed them in Dip Lane. Darbyshire was uncommonly pleased. Brook was a favourite of his.

“I am surprised that I have not seen him,” he cried; “I have been about all the morning. St. George was in Worcester yesterday, I know. Wonder, though, what induced them to make a pilgrimage through Dip Lane!”

Just, you see, as the rest of us had wondered.

We went on towards Mrs. Brook’s. But in passing Mr. Delorane’s, Aunt Hester’s head appeared above the Venetian blind of the dining-room. She began nodding cordially.

“How lively she looks,” exclaimed the Squire. “Pleased that he is back, I take it. Suppose we go in?”

The front-door was standing open, and we went in unannounced. Aunt Hester, sitting then at the little work-table, making herself a cap with lace and pink ribbons, got up and tried to shake hands with all three of us at once.

“We are on our way to call on William Brook,” cried the Squire, as we sat down, and Aunt Hester was taking up her work again.

“On William Brook!—why, what do you mean?” she exclaimed.“Has he come?”

“You don’t mean to say you did not know it—that he has not been to see you?” cried the Squire.

“I don’t know a thing about it; I did not know he had come; no one has told me,” rejoined Aunt Hester. “As to his coming to see me—well, I suppose he would not feel himself at liberty to do that until Mr. Delorane gave permission. When did he arrive? I am so glad.”

“And he is not much behind his time, either,” observed Tod.

“Not at all behind it, to speak of, only we were impatient. The truth is, I caught somewhat of Ellin’s fears,” added Aunt Hester, looking at us over her spectacles, which she rarely wore higher than the end of her nose. “Ellin has had gloomy ideas about his never coming back at all; and one can’t see a person perpetually sighing away in silence, without sighing a bit alsofor company. Did he get here this morning? What a pity Ellin is in Worcester!”

We told Aunt Hester all about it, just as we had told Darbyshire, but not quite so curtly, for she was not in a hurry to be off to a poisoned patient. She dropped her work to listen, and took off her spectacles, looking, however, uncommonly puzzled.

“What a singular thing—that you should chance to have been in Dip Lane just at the time they were!—and why should they have chosen that dreary route! But—but——”

“But what, ma’am?” cried the Squire.

“Well, I am thinking what could have been St. George’s motive for concealing the news from me when he came round here last night to tell me he had left Ellin safely at Philip West’s,” replied she.

“Did he say nothing to you about William Brook?”

“Not a word. He said what a nasty drive home it had been in the teeth of the storm and wind, but he did not mention William Brook. He seemed tired, and did not stay above a minute or two. John was out. Oh, here is John.”

Mr. Delorane, hearing our voices, I suppose, came in from the office. Aunt Hester told him the news at once—that William Brook was come home.

“I am downright glad,” interrupted the lawyer emphatically.“What with one delay and another, one might have begun to think him lost: it was September, you know, that he originally announced himself for. What do you say?”—his own words having partly drowned Aunt Hester’s—“St. George drove him home last night from Worcester? Drove Brook? Nonsense! Had St. George brought Brook he would have told me of it.”

“But he did bring him, sir,” affirmed Tod: and he went over the history once more. Mr. Delorane did not take it in.

“Are these lads playing a joke upon me, Squire?” asked he.

“Look here, Delorane. That we passed St. George in Dip Lane is a fact; I knew the cut of his gig and horse. Some one was with him; I saw that much. The boys called out that it was William Brook, and began shouting to him. Whether it was he, or not, I can’t say; I had enough to do with my horses, I can tell you; they did not like the wind, Blister especially.”

“It was William Brook, safe enough, sir,” interposed Tod.“Do you think I don’t know him? We spoke to him, and he spoke to us. Why should you doubt it?”

“Well, I suppose I can’t doubt it, as you speak so positively,”said Mr. Delorane. “The news took me by surprise, you see. Why on earth did St. George not tell me of it? I shall take him to task when he comes in. Any way, I am glad Brook’s come. We will drink his health.”

He opened what was in those days called the cellaret—and a very convenient article it was for those who drank wine as a rule—and put on the table some of the glasses that were standing on the sideboard. Then we drank health and happiness to William Brook.

“And to some one else also,” cried bold Tod, winking at Aunt Hester.

“You two boys can go on to Mrs. Brook’s,” cried the Squire;“I shall stop here a bit. Tell William I am glad he has surmounted the perils of the treacherous seas.”

“And tell him he may come to see me if he likes,” added the lawyer. “I expect he did not get a note I wrote to him a few months back, or he’d have been here this morning.”

Away we went to Mrs. Brook’s. And the first thing that flabbergasted us (the expression was Tod’s, not mine) was to be met by a denial of the servant’s. Upon Tod asking to see Mr. William, she stared at us and said he was not back from his travels.

“Come in,” called out Minty from the parlour; “I know your voices.” She sat at the table, her paint-box before her. Minty painted very nice pieces in water-colours: the one in process was a lovely bit of scenery taken from Little Malvern. Mrs. Brook was out.

“What did I hear you saying to Ann about William—that he had come home?” she began to us, without getting up from her work—for we were too intimate to be upon any ceremony with one another. “He is not come yet. I only wish he was.”

“But he is come,” said Tod. “He came last night. We saw him and spoke to him.”

Minty put down her camel-hair pencil then, and turned round.“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Mr. St. George drove William home from Worcester. We passed them in the gig in Dip Lane.”

Minty retorted by asking whether we were not dreaming; and for a minute or two we kept at cross-purposes. She held to it that they had seen nothing of her brother; that he was not at Timberdale.

“Mamma never had a wink of sleep last night, for thinking of the dreadful gale William must be in at sea. Your fancy misled you,” went on Minty, calmly touching-up the cottage in her painting—and Tod looked as if he would like to beat her.

But it did really seem that William had not come, and we took our departure. I don’t think I had ever seen Tod look so puzzled.

“I wish I may be shot if I can understand this!” said he.

“Could we have been mistaken in thinking it was Brook?” I was beginning; and Tod turned upon me savagely.

“I swear it was Brook. There! And you know it as well as I, Mr. Johnny. Where can he be hiding himself? What is the meaning of it?”

It is my habit always to try to account for things that seem unaccountable; to search out reasons and fathom them; and you would be surprised at the light that will sometimes crop up. An idea flashed across me now.

“Can Brook be ill, Tod, think you?—done up with his voyage, or something—and St. George is nursing him at his house for a day or two before he shows himself to Timberdale?”And Tod thought it might be so.

Getting back to Mr. Delorane’s, we found him and the Squire sitting at the table still. St. George, just come in, was standing by, hat in hand, and they were both tackling him at once.

“What do you say?” asked St. George of his master, when he found room for a word. “That I brought William Brook home here last night from Worcester! Why, what can have put such a thing into your head, sir?”

“Didn’t you bring him?” cried the Squire. “Didn’t you drive him home in your gig?”

“That I did not. I have not seen William Brook.”

He spoke in a ready, though surprised tone, not at all like one who is shuffling with the truth, or telling a fable, and looked from one to another of his two questioners, as if not yet understanding them. The Squire pushed his spectacles to the top of his brow and stared at St. George. He did not understand, either.

“Look here, St. George: do you deny that it was you we passed in Dip Lane last night—and your grey horse—and your gig?”

“Why should I deny it?” quietly returned St. George. “Idrew as close as I could to the hedge as a matter of precaution to let you go by, Squire, you were driving so quickly. And a fine shouting you greeted me with,” he added, turning to Tod, with a slight laugh.

“The greeting was not intended for you; it was for William Brook,” answered Tod, his voice bearing a spice of antagonism; for he thought he was being played with.

St. George was evidently at a loss yet, and stood in silence. All in a moment, his face lighted up.

“Surely,” he cried impulsively, “you did not take that man in the gig for William Brook!”

“It was William Brook. Who else was it?”

“A stranger. A stranger to me and to the neighbourhood. A man to whom I gave a lift.”

Tod’s face presented a picture. Believing, as he did still, that it was Brook in the gig, the idea suggested by me—that St. George was concealing Brook at his house out of good-fellowship—grew stronger and stronger. But he considered that, as it had come to this, St. George ought to say so.

“Where’s the use of your continuing to deny it, St. George?”he asked. “You had Brook there, and you know you had.”

“But I tell you that it was not Brook,” returned St. George.“Should I deny it, if it had been he? You talk like a child.”

“Has Brook been away so long that we shouldn’t know him, do you suppose?” retorted quick-tempered Tod. “Why! as a proof that it was Brook, he shouted back his greeting to us, taking off his hat to wave it in answer to ours. Would a strange man have done that?”

“The man did nothing of the kind,” said St. George.

“Yes, he did,” I said, thinking it was time I spoke. “He called back a greeting to us, and he waved his hat round and round. I should not have felt so sure it was Brook but for seeing him without his hat.”

“Well, I did not see him do it,” conceded St. George.“When you began to shout in passing the man seemed surprised.‘What do those people want?’ he said to me; and I told him you were acquaintances of mine. It never occurred to my mind, or to his either, I should imagine, but that the shouts were meant for me. If he did take off his hat in response, as you say, he must have done it, I reckon, because I did not take off mine.”

“Couldn’t you hear our welcome to him? Couldn’t you hear us call him ‘Brook’?” persisted Tod.

“I did not distinguish a single word. The wind was too high for that.”

“Then we are to understand that Brook has not come back: that you did not bring him?” interposed the Squire. “Be quiet, Joe; can’t you see you were mistaken? I told you you were, you know, at the time. You and Johnny are for ever taking up odd notions, Johnny especially.”

“The man was a stranger to me,” spoke St. George. “I overtook him trudging along the road, soon after leaving Worcester; it was between Red Hill and the turning to Whittington. He accosted me, asking which of the two roads before us would take him to Evesham. I told him which, and was about to drive on when it occurred to me that I might as well offer to give the man a lift: it was an awful evening, and that’s the truth: one that nobody would, as the saying runs, turn a dog out in. He thanked me, and got up; and I drove him as far as——”

“Then that’s what took you round by Dip Lane, St. George?”interrupted Mr. Delorane.

“That’s what took me round by Dip Lane,” acquiesced St. George, slightly smiling; “and which seems to have led to this misapprehension. But don’t give my humanity more credit than it deserves. Previously to this I had been debating in my own mind whether to take the round, seeing what a journey was before me. It was about the wildest night I ever was out in, the horse could hardly make head against the wind, and I thought we might feel it less in the small and more sheltered by-ways than in the open road. Taking up the traveller decided me.”

“You put him down in Dip Lane, at the turning that leads to Evesham,” remarked the Squire.

“Yes, I put him down there. It was just after you passed us. He thanked me heartily, and walked on; and I drove quickly home, glad enough to reach it. Who he was, or what he was, I do not know, and did not ask.”

Tod was still in a quandary; his countenance betrayed it.“Did you notice that he resembled William Brook, St. George?”

“No. It did not strike me that he resembled any one. Hisface was well wrapped up from the cold, and I did not get a clear view of it: I am not sure that I should know it again. I should know his voice, though,” he added quickly.

Poor Aunt Hester, listening to all this in dismay, felt the disappointment keenly: the tears were stealing down her face.“And we have been drinking his health, and—and feeling so thankful that he was safely back again!” she murmured gently.

“Hang it, yes,” added Mr. Delorane. “Well, well; I dare say a day or two more will bring him. I must say I thought it odd that you should not have mentioned it to me, St. George, if he had come.”

“I should have thought it very odd, sir,” spoke St. George.

“Will you take a glass of wine?”

“No, thank you; I have not time for it. Those deeds have to be gone over, you know, sir, before post-time,” replied St. George; and he left the room.

“And if ever you two boys serve me such a trick again—bringing me over with a cock-and-bull story that people have come back from sea who haven’t—I’ll punish you,” stuttered the Squire, too angry to speak clearly.

We went away in humility; heads down, metaphorically speaking, tails between legs. The Squire kept up the ball, firing away sarcastic reproaches hotly.

Tod never answered. The truth was, he felt angry himself. Not with the Squire, but with the affair altogether. Tod hated mystification, and the matter was mystifying him utterly. With all his heart, with all the sight of his eyes, he had believed it to be William Brook: and he could not drive the conviction away, that it was Brook, and that St. George was giving him house room.

“I don’t like complications,” spoke he resentfully.

“Complications!” retorted the Squire. “What complications are there in this? None. You two lads must have been thinking of William Brook, perhaps speaking of him, and so you thought you saw him. That’s all about it, Joe.”

The complications were not at an end. A curious addition to them was at hand. The Squire came to a halt at the turning to the Ravine, undecided whether to betake himself home at once, or to make a call first at Timberdale Court, to see Robert Ashton.

“I think we’ll go there, lads,” said he: “there’s plenty oftime. I want to ask him how that squabble about the hunting arrangements has been settled.”

So we continued our way along the road, presently crossing it to take the one in which the Court was situated: a large handsome house, lying back on the right hand. Before gaining it, however, we had to pass the pretty villa rented by Mr. St. George, its stable and coach-house and dog-kennel beside it. The railway was on ahead; a train was shrieking itself at that moment into the station.

St. George’s groom and man-of-all-work, Japhet, was sweeping up the leaves on the little lawn. Tod, who was in advance of us, put his arms on the gate. “Are you going to make a bonfire with them?” asked he.

“There’s enough for’t, sir,” answered Japhet. “I never see such a wind as yesterday’s,” he ran on, dropping his besom to face Tod, for the man was a lazy fellow, always ready for a gossip. “I’m sure I thought it ’ud ha’ blowed the trees down as well as the leaves.”

“It was pretty strong,” assented Tod, as I halted beside him, and the Squire walked on towards the Court. “We were out in it—coming home from Pigeon Green. There was one gust that I thought would have blown the horses right over.”

“The master, he were out in it, too, a coming home from Worcester,” cried Japhet, taking off his old hat to push his red hair back. “When he got in here, he said as he’d had enough on’t for one journey. I should think the poor horse had too; his coat were all wet.”

Tod lifted up his head, speaking impulsively. “Was your master alone, Japhet, when he got home? Had he any one with him?”

“Yes, he were all alone, sir,” replied the man. “Miss Delorane were with him when he drove off in the morning, but she stayed at Worcester.”

Had Tod taken a moment for thought he might not have asked the question. He had nothing of the sneak in him, and would have scorned to pump a servant about his master’s movements. The answer tended to destroy his theory of Brook’s being concealed here, and to uphold the account given by Mr. St. George.

Quitting the railings, we ran to catch up the Squire. And at that moment two or three railway passengers loomed into view, coming from the train. One of them was Ellin Delorane.

She came along briskly, with a buoyant step and a smiling face. The Squire dropped us a word of caution.

“Now don’t go telling her of your stupid fancy about Brook, you two: it would only cause her disappointment.” And with the last word we met her.

“Ah ha, Miss Ellin!” he exclaimed, taking her hands.“And so the truant’s back again!”

“Yes, he is back again,” she softly whispered, with a blush that was deep in colour.

The Squire did not quite catch the words. She and he were at cross-purposes. “We have but now left your house, my dear,” he continued. “Your aunt does not expect you back to-day; she thought you would stay at Worcester till Saturday.”

Ellin smiled shyly. “Have you seen him?” she asked in the same soft whisper.

“Seen whom, my dear?”

“Mr. Brook.”

“Mr. Brook! Do you mean William Brook? He is not back, is he?”

“Yes, he is back,” she answered. “I thought you might have seen him: you spoke of the return of the truant.”

“Why, child, I meant you,” explained the Squire. “Nobody else. Who says William Brook is back?”

“Oh, I say it,” returned Ellin, her cheeks all rosy dimples.“He reached Worcester yesterday.”

“And where is he now?” cried the Squire, feeling a little at sea.

“He is here, at Timberdale,” answered Ellin. “Mr. St. George drove him home last night.”

“There!” cried Tod with startling emphasis. “There, father, please not to disparage my sight any more.”

Well, what do you think of this for another complication? It took me aback. The Squire rubbed his face, and stared.

“My dear, just let us understand how the land lies,” said he, putting his hand on Ellin’s shoulder. “Do you say that William Brook reached Worcester yesterday on his return, and that St. George drove him home here at night?”

“Yes,” replied Ellin. “Why should you doubt it? It is true.”

“Well, we thought St. George did drive him home,” was the Squire’s answer, staring into her face; “we passed his gig inDip Lane and thought that it was Brook that he had with him. But St. George denies this. He says it was not Brook; that he has not seen Brook, does not know he has come home; he says the man he had with him was a stranger, to whom he was giving a lift.”

Ellin looked grave for a moment; then the smiles broke out again.

“St. George must have been joking,” she cried; “he cannot mean it. He happened to be at Worcester Station yesterday when Mr. Brook arrived by the Birmingham train: we suppose he then offered to drive him home. Any way, he did do it.”

“But St. George denied that he did, Ellin,” I said.

“He will not deny it to me, Johnny. Gregory West, returning from a visit to some client at Spetchley, met them in the gig together.”

The Squire listened as a man dazed. “I can’t make head or tail of it,” cried he. “What does St. George mean by denying that he brought Brook? And where is Brook?”

“Has no one seen him?” questioned Ellin.

“Not a soul, apparently. Ellin, my girl,” added the Squire,“we will walk back with you to your father’s, and get this cleared up. Come along, boys.”

So back we went to turn the tables upon St. George, Tod in a rapture of gratification. You might have thought he was treading upon eggs.

We had it out this time in Mr. Delorane’s private office; the Squire walked straight into it. Not but that “having it out”must be regarded as a figure of speech, for elucidation seemed farther off than before, and the complications greater.

Mr. Delorane and his head-clerk were both bending over the same parchment when we entered. Ellin kissed her father, and turned to St. George.

“Why have you been saying that you did not drive home William Brook?” she asked as they shook hands.

“A moment, my dear; let me speak,” interrupted the Squire, who never believed any one’s explanation could be so lucid as his own. “Delorane, I left you just now with an apology for having brought to you a cock-and-bull story through the misleading fancies of these boys; but we have come back again to tell you the story’s true. Your daughter here says that it was William Brook that St. George had in his gig. And perhapsMr. St. George”—giving that gentleman a sharp nod—“will explain what he meant by denying it?”

“I denied it because it was not he,” said Mr. St. George, not appearing to be in the least put out. “How can I tell you it was Brook when it was not Brook? If it had been——”

“You met William Brook at the Worcester railway-station yesterday afternoon,” interrupted Ellin. “Mrs. James Ashton saw you there; saw the meeting. You were at the station, were you not?”

“I was at the station,” readily replied St. George, “and Mrs. James Ashton may have seen me there, for all I know—I did not see her. But she certainly did not see William Brook. Or, if she did, I didn’t.”

“Gregory West saw you and him in your gig together later, when you were leaving Worcester,” continued Ellin. “It was at the top of Red Hill.”

St. George shook his head. “The person I had in my gig was a stranger. Had Gregory West come up one minute earlier he would have seen me take the man into it.”

“William has come,” persisted Ellin.

“I don’t say he has not,” returned St. George. “All I can say is that I did not know he had come and that I have not seen him.”

Who was right, and who was wrong? Any faces more hopelessly puzzled than the two old gentlemen’s were, as they listened to these contradictory assertions, I’d not wish to see. Nothing came of the interview; nothing but fresh mystification. Ellin declared William Brook had arrived, had been driven out of Worcester for Timberdale in St. George’s gig. We felt equally certain we had passed them in Dip Lane, sitting together in the gig; but St. George denied it in toto, affirming that the person with him was a stranger.

And perhaps it may be as well if I here say a word about the routes. Evesham lay fifteen miles from Worcester; Timberdale not much more than half that distance, in a somewhat different direction, and on a different road. In going to Timberdale, if when about half-way there you quitted the high-road for by-ways you would come to Dip Lane. Traversing nearly the length of the lane, you would then come to a by-way leading from it on the other side, which would bring you on the direct road to Evesham, still far off. Failing to take this by-way leading to Evesham, you would presently quit the lane, and by dint of more by-ways would gain again the high-road and soon come to Timberdale. This is the route that Mr. St. George took that night.

We went home from Mr. Delorane’s, hopelessly mystified, the Squire rubbing up his hair the wrong way; now blowing us both up for what he called our “fancies” in supposing we saw William Brook, and now veering round to the opposite opinion that we and Ellin must be alike correct in saying Brook had come.

Ellin’s account was this: she passed a pleasant morning with Mary West, who was nearly always more or less of an invalid. At half-past one o’clock dinner was served; Philip West, his younger brother Gregory, who had recently joined him, and Mr. St. George coming in from the office to partake of it. Dinner over, they left the room, having no time to linger. In fact, Gregory rose from table before he had well finished. Mary West inquired what his haste was, and he replied that he was off to Spetchley; some one had been taken ill there and wanted a will made. It was Philip who ought to have gone, who had been sent for; but Philip had an hour or two’s business yet to do with Mr. St. George. Mrs. West told St. George that she would have tea ready at five o’clock, that he might drink a cup before starting for home.

Later on in the afternoon, when Ellin and Mrs. West were sitting over the fire, talking of things past and present, and listening to the howling of the wind, growing more furious every hour, James Ashton’s wife came in, all excitement. Her husband, in medical practice at Worcester, was the brother of Robert Ashton of Timberdale. A very nice young woman was Marianne Ashton, but given to an excited manner. Taking no notice of Mrs. West, she flew to Ellin and began dancing round her like a demented Red Indian squaw.

“What will you give me for my news, Ellin?”

“Now, Marianne!” remonstrated Mrs. West. “Do be sensible, if you can.”

“Be quiet, Mary: I am sensible. Your runaway lover is come, Ellin; quite safely.”

They saw by her manner, heard by her earnest tone, that it was true. William Brook had indeed come, was then in the town. Throwing off her bonnet, and remarking that she meantto remain for tea, Mrs. James Ashton sat down to tell her story soberly.

“You must know that I had to go up to the Shrub Hill Station this afternoon,” began she, “to meet the Birmingham train. We expected Patty Silvester in by it; and James has been since a most unearthly hour this morning with some cross-grained patient, who must needs go and be ill at the wrong time. I went up in the brougham, and had hardly reached the platform when the train came in. There was a good deal of confusion; there always is, you know; passengers getting out and getting in. I ran about looking for Patty, and found she had not come: taken fright at the weather, I suppose. As the train cleared off, I saw a figure that seemed familiar to me; it was William Brook; and I gave a glad cry that you might have heard on the top of St. Andrew’s spire. He was crossing the line with others who had alighted, a small black-leather travelling-bag in his hand. I was about to run over after him, when a porter stopped me, saying a stray engine was on the point of coming up, to take on the Malvern train. So, all I could do was to stand there, hoping he would turn his head and see me. Well: just as he reached the opposite platform, Mr. St. George stepped out of the station-master’s office, and I can tell you there was some shaking of hands between the two. There’s my story.”

“And where is he now?”

“Oh, they are somewhere together, I suppose; on their way here perhaps,” rejoined Mrs. James Ashton carelessly. “I lost sight of them: that ridiculous stray engine the man spoke of puffed up at the minute, and stopped right in front of me. When it puffed on again, leaving the way clear, both he and St. George had vanished. So I got into the brougham to bring you the news in advance, lest the sudden sight of William the deserter should cause a fainting-fit.”

Ellin, unable to control herself, burst into glad tears of relief.“You don’t know what a strain it has been,” she said. And she sat listening for his step on the stairs. But William Brook did not come.

At five o’clock punctually the tea was brought in, and waited for some little time on the table. Presently Mr. West appeared. When they told him he was late, he replied that he had lingered in the office expecting Mr. St. George. St. George had left him some time before to go to the Shrub Hill Station, having businessto see to there, and had promised to be back by tea-time. However, he was not back yet. Mr. West was very glad to hear of the arrival of William Brook, and supposed St. George was then with him.

Before the tea was quite over, Gregory West got back from Spetchley. He told them that he had met St. George just outside the town, and that he had a gentleman in his gig. He, Gregory West, who was in his brother’s gig, pulled up to ask St. George whether he was not going home earlier than he had said. Yes, somewhat, St. George called back, without stopping: when he had seen what sort of a night it was going to be, he thought it best to be off as soon as he could.

“Of course it was William Brook that he had with him, Gregory!” exclaimed Mary West, forgetting that her brother-in-law had never seen William Brook.

“I cannot tell,” was the only answer the young lawyer could give. “It was a stranger to me: he wore a lightish-coloured over-coat and a white comforter.”

“That’s he,” said Mrs. James Ashton. “And he had on new tan-coloured kid gloves: I noticed them. I think St. George might have brought him here, in spite of the roughness of the night. He is jealous, Ellin.”

They all laughed. But never a shadow of doubt rested on any one of their minds that St. George was driving William Brook home to Timberdale. And we, as you have heard, saw him, or thought we saw him, in Dip Lane.

III

I scarcely know how to go on with this story so as to put its complications and discrepancies of evidence clearly before you. William Brook had been daily expected to land at Liverpool from the West Indies, and to make his way at once to Timberdale by rail, viâ Birmingham and Worcester.

In the afternoon of the 19th of October, Mrs. James Ashton chanced to be at the Worcester Station when the Birmingham train came in. Amidst the passengers who alighted from it she saw William Brook, whom she had known all her life. She was not near enough to speak to him, but she watched him cross the line to the opposite platform, shake hands there with Mr. St. George, and remain talking. Subsequently, Gregory West had met St. George leaving Worcester in his gig, a gentleman sitting with him; it was therefore assumed without doubt that he was driving William Brook to Timberdale, to save him the railway journey and for companionship.

That same evening, at dusk, as we (not knowing that Brook had landed) were returning home from Pigeon Green in the large phaeton, amid a great storm of wind, and slight sleet and snow, Mrs. Todhetley sitting with the Squire in front, Tod and I behind, we passed St. George’s gig in Dip Lane; and saw William Brook with him—as we believed, Tod most positively. We called out to Brook, waving our hats; Brook called back to us and waved his.

But now, Mr. St. George denied that it was Brook. He said the gentleman with him was a stranger to whom he had given a lift of three or four miles on the road, and who bore no resemblance to Brook, so far as he saw. Was it Brook, or was it not? asked every one. If it was Brook, what had become of him? The only one point that seemed to be sure in the matter was this—William Brook had not reached Timberdale.

The following, elaborated, was Mr. St. George’s statement.

He, as confidential clerk, soon to be partner, of Mr. Delorane, had a good deal of business to go through that day with Philip West at Worcester, and the afternoon was well on before it was concluded. He then went up to the station at Shrub Hill to inquire after a missing packet of deeds, which had been despatched by rail from Birmingham to Mr. Delorane and as yet could not be heard of. His inquiries over, St. George was traversing the platform on his way to quit the station, when one of the passengers, who had then crossed the line from the Birmingham train, stopped him to ask if he could inform him when the next train would leave for Evesham. “Very shortly,” St. George replied, speaking from memory: but even as he spoke a doubt arose in his mind. “Wait a moment,” he said to the stranger; “I am not sure that I am correct”—and he drew from his pocket a time-table and consulted it. There would not be a train for Evesham for more than two hours, he found, one having just gone. The stranger remarked that it was very unfortunate; he had not wanted to wait all that time at Worcester, but to get on at once. The stranger then detained him to ask, apologizing for the trouble, and adding that it was the first time he had been in the locality, whether he could get on from Evesham toCheltenham. St. George told him that he could, but that he could also get on to Cheltenham from Worcester direct. “Ah,”remarked the stranger, “but I have to take Evesham on my way.” No more passed, and St. George left him on the platform. He appeared to be a gentleman, spoke as a cultured man speaks, St. George added when questioned on these points: and his appearance and attire tallied with that given by Mrs. Ashton. St. George had not observed Mrs. James Ashton on the opposite platform; did not know she was there.

Perceiving, as he left the station, how bad the weather was getting, and what a wild night might be expected, St. George rapidly made up his mind to start for home at once, without waiting for tea at Philip West’s or going back at all to the house. He made his way to the Hare-and-Hounds through the back streets, as being the nearest, ordered his gig, and set off—alone—as soon as it was ready. It was then growing dusk; snow was falling in scanty flakes mixed with sleet, and the wind was roaring and rushing like mad.

Gaining the top of Red Hill, St. George was bowling along the level road beyond it, when some wayfarer turned round just before him, put up his hand, and spoke. By the peculiar-coloured coat—a sort of slate—and white comforter, he recognized the stranger of the railway-station; he also remembered the voice. “I beg your pardon a thousand times for stopping you,” he said, “but I think I perceive that the road branches off two ways yonder: will you kindly tell me which of them will take me to Evesham? there seems to be no one about on foot that I can inquire of.” “That will be your way,” St. George answered, pointing with his whip. “But you are not thinking of walking to Evesham to-night, are you?” he added. “It is fifteen miles off.”

The stranger replied that he had made up his mind to walk, rather than wait two hours at Worcester station: and St. George was touching his horse to move on, when a thought struck him.

“I am not going the direct Evesham road, but I can give you a lift part of the way,” he said. “It will not cut off any of the distance for you, but it will save your legs three or four miles.”The stranger thanked him and got up at once, St. George undoing the apron to admit him. He had the same black bag with him that St. George had noticed at the station.

St. George had thus to make a detour to accommodate thestranger. He was by no means unwilling to do it; for, apart from the wish to help a fellow-creature, he believed it would be less rough in the low-lying lands. Driving along in the teeth of the furious wind, he turned off the highway and got into Dip Lane. We saw him in it, the stranger sitting with him. He drove on after we had passed, pulled up at the proper place for the man to descend, and pointed out the route. “You have a mile or two of these by-ways,” he said to him, “but keep straight on and they will bring you out into the open road. Turn to your left then, and you will gain Evesham in time—and I wish you well through your walk.”

Those were St. George’s exact words—as he repeated them to us later. The stranger thanked him heartily, shook hands and went on his way, carrying his black bag. St. George said that before parting with the traveller, he suggested that he should go on with him to Timberdale, seeing the night was so cold and wild, put up at the Plough-and-Harrow, where he could get a comfortable bed, and go on to Evesham in the morning. But the stranger declined, and seemed impatient to get on.

He did not tell St. George who he was, or what he was; he did not tell his name, or what his business was in Worcestershire, or whether he was purposing to make a stay at Evesham, or whither he might be going when he left it: unless the question he had put to St. George, as to being able to get on to Cheltenham, might be taken for an indication of his route. In fact, he stated nothing whatever about himself; but, as St. George said, the state of the weather was against talking. It was difficult to hear each other speak; the blasts howled about their ears perpetually, and the sharp sleet stung their faces. As to his bearing the resemblance to Brook that was being talked of, St. George could only repeat that he did not perceive it; he might have been about Brook’s height and size, but that was all. The voice was certainly not Brook’s, not in the least like Brook’s, neither was the face, so far as St. George saw of it: no idea of the kind struck him.

These were the different statements: and, reading them, you have the matter in a nutshell. Mrs. James Ashton continued to affirm that it was William Brook she saw at the station, and could not be shaken out of her belief. She and William had played together as children, they had flirted together, she waspleased to declare, as youth and maiden, and did anybody suppose she could mistake an unknown young man for him in broad daylight? An immense favourite with all the world, Marianne Ashton was fond of holding decisively to her own opinions; all her words might have begun with capital letters.

I also maintained that the young man we saw in St. George’s gig in Dip Lane, and who wore a warm great-coat of rather an unusual colour, something of a grey—or a slate—or a mouse, with the white woollen comforter on his neck and the soft low-crowned hat drawn well on his brows, was William Brook. When he took off his hat to wave it to us in response, I saw (as I fully believed) that it was Brook; and I noticed his gloves. Mrs. Todhetley, who had turned her head at our words, also saw him and felt not the slightest doubt that it was he. Tod was ready to swear to it.

To combat this, we had Mr. St. George’s cool, calm, decisive assertion that the man was a stranger. Of course it outweighed ours. All the probabilities lay with it; he had been in companionship with the stranger, had talked with him face to face: we had not. Besides, if it had been Brook, where was he that he had not made his way to Timberdale? So we took up the common-sense view of the matter and dismissed our own impressions as fancies that would not hold water, and looked out daily for the landing of the exile. Aunt Hester hoped he was not “lost at sea:” but she did not say it in the hearing of Ellin Delorane.

The days went on. November came in. William Brook did not appear; no tidings reached us of him. His continued non-appearance so effectually confirmed St. George’s statement, that the other idea was exploded and forgotten by all reasonable minds. Possibly in one or two unreasonable ones, such as mine, say, a sort of hazy doubt might still hover. But, doubt of what? Ay, that was the question. Even Tod veered round to the enemy, said his sight must have misled him, and laid the blame on the wind. Both common sense and uncommon said Brook had but been detained in Jamaica, and might be expected in any day.

The first check to this security of expectation was wrought by a letter. A letter from New York, addressed to William Brook by his brother there, Charles. Mrs. Brook opened it. She was growing vaguely uneasy, and had already begun to ask herself why, were William detained in the West Indies, he did not write to tell her so.

And this, as it proved, was the chief question the letter was written to ask. “If,” wrote Charles Brook to his brother, “if you have arrived at home—as we conclude you must have done, having seen in the papers the safe arrival of the Dart at Liverpool—how is it you have not written to say so, and to inform us how things are progressing? The uncle does not like it. ‘Is William growing negligent?’ he said to me yesterday.”

The phrase “how things are progressing,” Mrs. Brook understood to apply to the new mercantile house about to be established in London. She sent the letter by Araminta to Mr. Delorane.

“Can William have been drowned at sea?” breathed Minty.

“No, no; I don’t fear that; I’m not like that silly woman, Aunt Hester, with her dreams and her fancies,” said Mr. Delorane.“It seems odd, though, where he can be.”

Inquiries were made at Liverpool for the list of passengers by the Dart. William Brook’s name was not amongst them. Timberdale waited on. There was nothing else for it to do. Waited until a second letter came from Charles Brook. It was written to his mother this time. He asked for news of William; whether he had, or had not, arrived at home.

The next West Indian mail-packet, steaming from Southampton, carried out a letter from Mr. St. George, written to his cousin in Kingston, Jamaica, at the desire of Mr. Delorane: at the desire, it may with truth be said, of Timberdale in general. The same mail also took out a letter from Reginald Brook in London, who had been made acquainted with the trouble. Both letters were to the same purport—an inquiry as to William Brook and his movements, more particularly as to the time he had departed for home, and the vessel he had sailed in.

In six or eight weeks, which seemed to some of us like so many months, Mr. St. George received an answer. His relative, Leonard St. George, sent rather a curious story. He did not know anything of William Brook’s movements himself, he wrote, and could not gain much reliable information about them. It appeared that he was to have sailed for England in the Dart, a steamer bound for Liverpool, not one of their regular passenger-packets. He was unable, however, to find any record that Brook had gone in her, and believed he had not: neithercould he learn that Brook had departed by any other vessel. A friend of his told him that he feared Brook was dead. The day before the Dart went out of port, a young man, who bore out in every respect the description of Brook, was drowned in the harbour.

Comforting news! Delightfully comforting for Ellin Delorane, not to speak of Brook’s people. Aunt Hester came over to Crabb Cot, and burst into tears as she told it.

But the next morning brought a turn in the tide; one less sombre, though uncertain still. Mrs. Brook, who had bedewed her pillow with salt tears, for her youngest son was very dear to her heart, received a letter from her son Reginald in London, enclosing one he had just received from the West Indies. She brought them to Mr. Delorane’s office during the morning, and the Squire and I happened to be there.

“How should Reginald know anything about it?” demanded St. George, in the haughty manner he could put on when not pleased; and his countenance looked dark as he gazed across his desk at Mrs. Brook, for which I saw no occasion. Evidently he did not like having his brother’s news disputed.

“Reginald wrote to Kingston by the same mail that you wrote,” she said. “He received an introduction to some mercantile firm out there, and this is their answer to him.”

They stated, these merchants, that they had made due inquiries according to request, and found that William Brook had secured a passage on board the Dart; but that, finding himself unable to go in her, his business in Kingston not being finished, he had, at the last moment, made over his berth and ticket to another gentleman, who found himself called upon to sail unexpectedly: and that he, Brook, had departed by the Idalia, which left two days later than the Dart and was also bound for Liverpool.

“I have ascertained here, dear mother,” wrote Reginald from London, “that the Idalia made a good passage and reached Liverpool on the 18th of October. If the statement which I enclose you be correct, that William left Jamaica in her, he must have arrived in her at Liverpool, unless he died on the way. It is very strange where he can be, and what can have become of him. Of course, inquiries must now be made in Liverpool. I only wish I could go down myself, but our patients are all on my hands just now, for Dr. Croft is ill.”

The first thought, flashing into the mind of Mr. Delorane, was, that the 18th of October was the eve of the day on which William Brook was said to have been seen by Mrs. James Ashton. He paused to consider, a sort of puzzled doubt on his face.

“Why, look you here,” cried he quickly, “it seems as though that was Brook at Worcester Station. If he reached Liverpool on the 18th, the probabilities are that he would be at Worcester on the 19th. What do you make of it?”

We could not make anything. Mrs. Brook looked pale and distressed. The Squire, in his impulsive good-nature, offered to be the one to go, off-hand, to make the inquiries at Liverpool. St. George opposed this: he was the proper person to go, he said; but Mrs. Delorane reminded him that he could be ill spared just then, when the assizes were at hand. For the time had gone on to spring.

“I will start to-night,” said the Squire, “and take Johnny with me. My time is my own. We will turn Liverpool upside down but what we find Brook—if he is to be found on earth.”

That the Squire might have turned Liverpool “upside down”with the confusion of his inquiries was likely enough, only that Jack Tanerton was there, having brought his own good ship, theRose of Delhi, into port but a few days before. Jack and William Brook had been boys together, and Jack took up the cause in warm-hearted zeal. His knowledge of the town and its shipping made our way plain before us. That is, as plain as a way can be made which seems to have neither inlet nor outlet.

The Idalia was then lying in the Liverpool docks, not long in again from the West Indies. We ascertained that William Brook had come in her the previous autumn, making the port of Liverpool on the 18th of October.

“Then nothing happened to him half-way?” cried the Squire to the second mate, a decent sort of fellow who did all he could for us. “He was not lost, or—or—anything of that sort?”

“Why no,” said the mate, looking surprised. “He was all right the whole of the voyage and in first-rate spirits—a very nice young fellow altogether. The Idalia brought him home, all taut and safe, take our word for that, sir; and he went ashore with the rest, and his luggage also: of which he had but little; just a big case and the small one that was in his cabin.”

All this was certain. But from the hour Brook steppedashore, we were unable to trace anything certain about him. The hotels could not single him out in memory from other temporary sojourners. I think it was by no means a usual occurrence in those days for passing guests to give in their names. Any way, we found no record of Brook’s. The railway porters remembered no more of him than the hotels—and it was hardly likely they would.

Captain Tanerton—to give Jack his title—was indefatigable; winding himself in and out of all kinds of places like a detective eel. In some marvellous way he got to learn that a gentleman whose appearance tallied with Brook’s had bought some tan-coloured kid gloves and also a white comforter in a shop in Bold Street on the morning of the 19th of October. Jack took us there that we might question the people, especially the young woman who served him. She said that, while choosing the gloves, he observed that he had just come off a sea-voyage and found the weather here very chilly. He wore a lightish great-coat, a sort of slate or grey. She was setting out the window when he came in, and had to leave it to serve him; it was barely eight o’clock, and she remarked that he was shopping betimes; he replied yes, for he was going off directly by train. He bought two pair of the gloves, putting one pair of them on in the shop; he next bought a warm knitted woollen scarf, white, and put that on. She was quite certain it was the 19th of October, and told us why she could not be mistaken. And that was the last trace we could get of Brook in Liverpool.

Well, well; it is of no use to linger. We went away from Liverpool, the Squire and I, no better off than we were when we entered it. That William Brook had arrived safely by theIdalia, and that he had landed safely, appeared to be a fact indisputable: but after that time he seemed to have vanished into air. Unless, mark you, it was he who had come on to Worcester.

The most concerned of all at our ill-luck was Mr. St. George. He had treated the matter lightly when thinking Brook was only lingering over the seas; now that it was proved he returned by the Idalia, the case was different.

“I don’t like it at all,” he said to the Squire frankly.“People may begin to think it was really Brook I had with me that night, and ask me what I did with him.”

“What could you have done with him?” dissented the Squire.

“Not much—that I see. I couldn’t pack him up in a parcel to be sent back over seas, and I couldn’t bury him here. I wish with all my heart it had been Brook! I won’t leave a stone unturned now but what I find him,” added St. George, his eyes flashing, his face flushing hotly. “Any way, I’ll find the man who was with me.”

St. George set to work. Making inquiries here, there, and everywhere for William Brook, personally and by advertising. But little came of it. A porter at the Worcester railway-station, who had seen the traveller talking with St. George on the platform, came forward to state that they (the gentleman and Mr. St. George) had left the station together, walking away from it side by side, down the road. St. George utterly denied this. He admitted that the other might have followed him so closely as to impart a possible appearance of their being together, but if so, he was not conscious of it. Just as he had denied shaking hands with the stranger, which Mrs. James Ashton insisted upon.

Next a lady came forward. She had travelled from Birmingham that afternoon, the 19th of October, with her little nephew and niece. In the same compartment, a first-class one, was another passenger, bearing, both in attire and person, the description told of—a very pleasant, gentlemanly young man, nice-looking, eyes dark blue. It was bitterly cold: he seemed to feel it greatly, and said he had recently come from a warmer climate. He also said that he ought to have got into Worcester by an earlier train, but had been detained in Birmingham, through missing his luggage, which he supposed must have been put out by mistake at some intermediate station. He had with him a small black hand-bag; nothing else that she saw. His great-coat was of a peculiar shade of grey; it did not look like an English-made coat: his well-fitting kid gloves were of fawn (or tan) colour, and appeared to be new. Once, when the high wind seemed to shake the carriage, he remarked with a smile that one might almost as well be at sea; upon which her little nephew said: “Have you ever been to sea, sir?” “Yes, my little lad,” he answered; “I landed from it only yesterday.”

The only other person to come forward was a farmer named Lockett, well known to us all. He lived on the Evesham Road, close upon the turning, or by-way, which led up from Dip Lane. On the night of the storm, the 19th of October, he went out about ten o’clock to visit a neighbour, who had met with a bad accident. In passing by this turning, a man came out of it, walking pretty sharply. He looked like a gentleman, seemed to be muffled up round the neck, and carried something in his hand; whether a black bag, or not, Mr. Lockett did not observe. “A wild night,” said the farmer to him in salutation. “It is that,”answered the other. He took the road to Evesham, and Mr. Lockett saw him no more.

St. George was delighted at this evidence. He could have hugged old Lockett. “I knew that the truth would be corroborated sooner or later,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “That was the man I put out of my gig in Dip Lane.”

“Stop a bit,” cried Mr. Delorane, a doubt striking him. “If it was the same man, what had he been doing to take two or three hours to get into the Evesham Road? Did he bear any resemblance to William Brook, Lockett?—you would have known Brook.”

“None at all that I saw. As to knowing Brook, or any one else, I can’t answer for it on such a night as that,” added the farmer after a pause. “Brook would have known me, though, I take it, daylight or dark, seeing me close to my own place, and all.”

“It was the other man,” affirmed St. George exultantly, “and now we will find him.”

An advertisement was next inserted in the local newspapers by Mr. St. George, and also in the Times.

“Gentleman Wanted. The traveller who got out of the Birmingham train at Worcester railway-station on the 19th of last October, towards the close of the afternoon, and who spoke to a gentleman on the platform respecting the trains to Evesham and to Cheltenham, and who was subsequently overtaken a little way out of Worcester by the same gentleman and given a few miles’ lift in his gig, and was put down in a cross-country lane to continue his walk to Evesham: this traveller is earnestly requested to give an address where he may be communicated with, to Alfred St. George, Esquire, Timberdale, Worcester. By doing so, he will be conferring a great favour.”

For two long weeks the advertisements brought forth no reply. At the end of that time there came to Mr. St. George a post-letter, short and sweet.

“Tell me what I am wanted for.—R. W.”

It was dated Post Office, Cheltenham. To the Post Office, Cheltenham, St. George, consulting with Mr. Delorane, wrote a brief explanation. That he (R. W.) had been mistaken by some people who saw him that night in the gig, for a gentleman named Brook, a native of Timberdale, who had been missing since about that time. This, as R. W. might perceive, was not pleasant for himself, St. George; and he begged R. W. to come forward and set the erroneous idea at rest, or to state where he could be seen. Expenses, if any, would be cheerfully paid.

This letter brought forth the following answer:—

“DEAR SIR,

“I regret that your courtesy to me that stormy night should have led to misapprehension. I the more regret it that I am not able to comply with your request to come forward. At present that is impossible. The truth is, I am, and have been for some months now, lying under a cloud, partly through my own credulous fault, chiefly through the designing faults of another man, and I dare not show myself. It may be many more months yet before I am cleared: that I shall be, in time, there exists no doubt, and I shall then gladly bear personal testimony to the fact that it was I myself who was with you. Meanwhile, perhaps the following statement will suffice: which I declare upon my honour to be true.

“I was hiding at Crewe, when I received a letter from a friend at Evesham, bidding me go to him without delay. I had no scruple in complying, not being known at all in Worcestershire, and I started by one of the Liverpool trains. I had a portmanteau with me containing papers principally, and this I missed on arriving at Birmingham. The looking for it caused me to lose the Worcester train, but I went on by the next. Upon getting out there, I addressed the first person I saw after crossing the line—yourself. I inquired of you when the next train would start for Evesham. Not for two hours, you told me: so I set off to walk, after getting some light refreshment. Barely had I left Worcester when, through the dusk of evening, I thought I saw that the road before me branched off two ways. I did not know which to take, and ventured to stop a gig, then bowling up behind me, to ask. As you answered me I recognized you for the gentleman to whom I had spoken at the station. You offered to take me a few miles on my road, and I got into the gig. I found that you would have to go out of your way to do this, and I expressed concern; you laughed my apologies off, saying you should probably have chosen the way in any case, as it was more sheltered. You drove me as far as your road lay, told me that after I got out of the cross-lanes my way would be a straight one, and I left you with hearty thanks—which I repeat now. I may as well tell you that I reached Evesham without mishap—in process of time. The storm was so bad, the wind so fierce, that I was fain to turn out of the lane close upon leaving you, and shelter myself for an hour or two under a hay-rick, hoping it would abate. How it was possible for mortal man to see enough of me that night in your gig to mistake me for some one else, I am at a loss to understand. I remember that carriage passing us in the narrow line, the people in it shouted out to you: it must have been they, I conclude, who mistook me, for I do not think we saw another soul. You are at full liberty to show them this letter: but I must ask you not to make it absolutely public. I have purposely elaborated its details. I repeat my sacred declaration that every word of it is true—and I heartily regret that I cannot yet testify to it personally.

“R. W.”

This letter set the matter at rest. We never doubted that it was genuine, or anything but a plain narrative of absolute facts. But the one great question remained—where was William Brook?

It was not answered. The disappearance, which had been a mystery at the beginning, seemed likely to remain a mystery to the end.

Another autumn had come round. Ellin Delorane, feeble now, sat in the church-porch, the graveyard lying around her under the hot September sun, soon herself to be laid there. Chancing to take that way round from buying some figs at Salmon’s for Hugh and Lena, I saw her, and dashed up the churchyard path.

“You seem to have set up a love for this lively spot, Ellin! You were sitting here the last time I passed by.”

“The sun is hot yet, and I get tired, so I come across here for a rest when out this way,” she answered, a sweet smile on her wan face and a hectic on her thin cheeks. “Won’t you stay with me for a little while, Johnny?”

“Are you better, Ellin?” I asked, taking my place on the opposite bench, which brought my knees near to hers, for the porch was not much more than big enough for a coffin to pass through.

She gently shook her head as she glanced across at me, a steadfast look in her sad brown eyes. “Don’t you see how it is, Johnny? That I shall never be better in this world?”

“Your weakness may take a turn, Ellin; it may indeed. And—he may come back yet.”

“He will never come back: rely upon that,” she quietly said.“He is waiting for me on the Eternal shores.”

Her gaze went out afar, over the gravestones and the green meadows beyond, almost (one might fancy) into the blue skies, as if she could see those shores in the distant horizon.

“Is it well to lose hope, Eileen mavourneen?”

“The hope of his returning died out long ago,” she answered.“Those dreams that visited me so strangely last year, night after night, night after night, seemed to take that from me. Perhaps they came to do it. You remember them, Johnny?”

“I cannot think, Ellin, how you could put faith in a parcel of dreams!”

“It was not in the dreams I put faith—exactly. It was in the mysterious influence—I hope I don’t speak profanely—which caused me to have the dreams. A silent, undetected influence that I understood not and never grasped—but it was there. Curious dreams they were,” she added, after a pause; “curious that they should have come to me. William was always lost, and I, with others, was always searching for him—and never, never found him. They lasted, Johnny, for weeks and months; and almost from the time of their first setting-in, the impression, that I should never see him again, lay latent in my heart.”

“Do they visit you still?”

“No. At least, they have changed in character. Ever since the night that he seems to have been really lost, the 19th of October. How you look at me, Johnny!”

“You speak so strangely.”

“The subject is strange. I was at Worcester, you know, at Mary West’s, and we thought he had come. That night I had the pleasantest dream. We were no longer seeking for him; all the anxiety, the distress of that was gone. We saw him; he seemed to be with us—though yet at a distance. When I awoke,I said in my happiness, ‘Ah, those sad dreams will visit me no more, now he is found.’ I thought he was, you see. Since then, though the dreams continue, he is never lost in them. I see him always; we are often talking, though we are never very close together. I will be indoors, perhaps, and he outside in the garden; or maybe I am toiling up a steep hill and he stands higher up. I seem to be always going towards him and he to be waiting for me. And though I never quite reach him, they are happy dreams. It will not be very long first now.”

I knew what she meant—and had nothing to say to it.

“Perhaps it may be as well, Johnny,” she went on in speculative thought. “God does all things for the best.”

“Perhaps what may be as well?”

“That he should never have come back to marry me. I do not suppose I should have lived long in any case; I am too much like mamma. And to have been left a widower—perhaps—no, it is best as it is.”

“You don’t give yourself a chance of getting better, Ellin—cherishing these gloomy views.”

“Gloomy! They are not gloomy. I am as happy as I can be. I often picture to myself the glories of the world I am hastening to; the lovely flowers, the trees that overshadow the banks of the pure crystal river, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the beautiful golden light shed around us by God and the Lamb. Oh, Johnny, what a rest it will be after the weary sorrow here—and the weakness—and the pain!”

“But you should not wish to leave us before your time.”

“I do not wish it; it is God who is taking me. I think if I had a wish it would be to stay here as long as papa stays. For I know what my death will be to him. And what it will be to you all,” she generously added, holding out her hands to me, as the tears filled her eyes.

I held them for a minute in mine. Ellin took up her parasol, preparatory to moving away; but laid it down again.

“Johnny, tell me—I have often thought I should like to ask you—what do you think could have become of William? Have you ever picked up an idea, however faint, of anything that could tend to solve the mystery?”

It was a hard question to answer, and she saw my hesitation.

“I cannot admit that I have, Ellin. When looking at the affair in one light, I whisper to myself, ‘It might have been thisway;’ when looking at it in another, I say, ‘It might have been that.’ Difficulties and contradictions encompass it on all sides. One impediment to elucidation was the length of time that elapsed before we began the search in earnest. Had we known from the first that he was really lost, and gone to work then, we might have had a better chance.”

Ellin nodded assent. “Marianne Ashton still maintains that it was William she saw that day at the railway-station.”

“I know she does. She always will maintain it.”

“Has it ever struck you, Johnny, in how rather remarkable a way any proof that it was he, or not he, seems to have been withheld?”

“Well, we could not get at any positive proof, one way or the other.”

“But I mean that proof seems to have been withheld,” repeated Ellin. “Take, to begin with, the traveller’s luggage: but for its being lost (and we do not know that it was ever found), the name, sure to have been on it, would have told whether its owner was William Brook, or not. Then take Marianne Ashton: had she gained the platform but a few seconds earlier, she would have met the traveller face to face, avoiding all possibility of mistake either way. Next take the meeting of the two gigs that evening when Gregory West was returning from Spetchley. Gregory, a stranger to Worcester until recently, did not know William Brook; but had Philip West himself gone to Spetchley—as he ought to have done—he would have known him. Again, had Philip’s groom, Brian, been there, he would have known him: he comes from this neighbourhood, you know. Brian was going with the gig that afternoon, but just as it was starting Philip got a message from a client living at Lower Wick, and he had to send Brian with the answer, so Gregory went alone. You must see how very near proof was in all these moments, yet it was withheld.”

Of course I saw it. And there was yet another instance: Had the Squire only pulled up when we passed the gig in Dip Lane, instead of driving on like the wind, we should have had proof that it was, or was not, Brook.

“If it was he,” breathed Ellin, “it must have been that night he died. He would not, else, keep away from Timberdale.”

My voice dropped to a lower key than hers. “Ellin! Do you really think it was he with St. George?”

“Oh, I cannot say that. If any such thought intrudes itself, I drive it away. I do not like St. George, but I would not be unjust to him.”

“I thought St. George was one of your prime favourites.”

“He was never that. He used to be very kind to me, especially after William went away, and I liked him for it. But latterly I have taken a most unreasonable dislike to him—and really without any justifiable cause. He worries me—but it is not that.”

“Worries you!”

“In pressing me to be his wife,” she sighed. “Of course I ought to be grateful: he tells me, he tells papa, that with a new life and new scenes, which he would carry me to, my health might be re-established. Poor papa! Only the other day he said to me, ‘My dear, don’t you think you might bring yourself to try it,’ and I was so silly as to burst into tears. The tears came into papa’s eyes too, and he promised never to suggest it to me again.”

The tears were trickling down her cheeks, now as she spoke.“What a world of crosses and contradiction it is!” she cried, smiling through them as she rose. “And, Johnny, all this is between ourselves, remember.”

Yes, it was between ourselves. We strolled across the churchyard to a tomb that stood in a corner facing the western sun. It was of white marble, aromatic shrubs encircling it within ornamental railings, and an inscription on it to her who lay beneath—“Maria, the beloved wife of John Delorane.”

Ellin lingered on through the frosts of winter. Except that she grew thinner and weaker and her cheeks brighter, there really did not seem to be much the matter. Darbyshire saw her every day, other medical men occasionally, but they could not save her. When the snowdrops were peeping from the ground, and the violets nestled in their mossy shelters, and the trees and hedges began to show signs of budding, tokens of the renewal of life after the death of winter, Ellin passed away to that other life, where there is no death and the flowers bloom for ever. And another inscription was added to the white tombstone in the churchyard—“Ellin Maria, the only child of John and Maria Delorane.”

“You should have seen St. George at the funeral,” said Tom Coney to us, as we turned aside after church one hot summer’sday to look at the new name on grave, for we were away from Crabb Cot when she died. “His face was green; yes, green—hold your tongue, Johnny!—green, not yellow; and his eyes had the queerest look. You were right, Todhetley; you used to say, you know, that St. George was wild after poor Ellin.”

“Positive of it,” affirmed Tod.

“And he can’t bear the place now she’s gone out of it,” continued Tom Coney. “Report says that he means to throw up his post and his prospects, and run away for good.”

“Not likely,” dissented Tod, tossing his head. “A strong man like St. George does not die of love nowadays, or put himself out of good things, either. You have been reading romances, Coney.”

But Tom Coney was right. When the summer was on the wane St. George bade a final adieu to Timberdale. And if it was his love for Ellin, or her death, that drove him away, he made no mention of it. He told Timberdale that he was growing tired of work and meant to travel. As he had a good income, Timberdale agreed that it was only natural he should grow tired of work and want to travel. So he said adieu, and departed: and Mr. Delorane speedily engaged another head-clerk in his place, who was to become his partner later.

St. George wrote to Sir. Delorane from Jamaica, to which place he steamed first, to take a look at his cousins. The letter contained a few words about William Brook. St. George had been instituting inquiries, and he said that, by what he could learn, it was certainly William Brook who was drowned in Kingston harbour the day before he ought to have sailed for England in the Dart. He, St. George, felt perfectly assured of this fact, and also that if any man had sailed in the Idalia under Brook’s name, it must have been an impostor who had nefariously substituted himself. St. George added that he was going“farther afield,” possibly to California: he would write again from thence if he arrived without mishap.

No other letter ever came from him. So whether the sea swallowed him up, as, according to his report, it had swallowed his rival, none could tell. But it would take better evidence than that, to convince us William Brook had not come home in the Idalia.

And that is all I have to tell. I know you will deem it mostunsatisfactory. Was it William Brook in the gig, or was it not? We found no trace of him after that stormy night: we have found none to this day. And, whether that was he, or was not he, what became of him? Questions never, as I believe, to be solved in this life.

There was a peculiar absence of proof every way, as Ellin remarked; nothing but doubt on all sides. Going over the matter with Darbyshire the other evening, when, as I have already told you, he suggested that I should relate it, we could not, either of us, see daylight through it, any more than we saw it at the time of its occurrence.

There was the certainty (yes, I say so) that Brook landed at Liverpool the evening of the 18th of October; he would no doubt start for home the morning of the 19th, by rail, which would take him through Birmingham to Worcester; there was also what the shopwoman in Bold Street said, though hers might be called negative testimony, as well as the lady’s in the train. There was Mrs. James Ashton’s positive belief that she saw him arrive that afternoon at Worcester by the Birmingham train,shake hands with St. George and talk with him: and there was our recognition of him an hour or two later in St. George’s gig in Dip Lane——

“Hold there, Johnny,” cried Darbyshire, taking his long clay pipe from his mouth to interrupt me as I went over the items. “You should say supposed recognition.”

“Yes, of course. Well, all that points to its having been Brook: you must see that, Mr. Darbyshire. But, if it was in truth he, there’s a great deal that seems inexplicable. Why did he set off to walk from Worcester to Timberdale—and on such a night!—why not have gone on by rail? It is incredible.”

“Nay, lad, we are told he—that is, the traveller—set off to walk to Evesham. St. George says he put him down in Dip Lane; and Lockett, you know, saw somebody, that seems to answer the description, turn from the lanes into the Evesham road.”

I was silent, thinking out my thoughts. Or, rather, not daring to think them out. Darbyshire put his pipe in the fender and went on.

“If it was Brook and no stranger that St. George met at Worcester Station, the only possible theory I can form on that point is this, Johnny: that St. George then proposed to drive him home. He may have said to him, ‘You walk on, and I will get my gig and overtake you directly:’ it is a lame theory, you may say, lad, but it is the only one I can discern, and I have thought of the matter more than you suppose. St. George started for home earlier than he had meant to start, and this may have been the reason: though he says it was because he saw it was going to be so wild a night. Why they should not have gone in company to the Hare-and-Hounds, and started thence, in the gig together, is another question.”

“Unless Brook, being done up, wished not to show himself at Worcester that day—to get on at once to Timberdale.”

Darbyshire nodded: the thought, I am sure, was not strange to him. “The most weighty question of all remains yet, lad: If St. George took up Brook in his gig, what did he do with him? He would not want to be put down in Dip Lane to walk to Evesham.”

He caught up his churchwarden pipe, relighted it at the fire, and puffed away in silence. Presently I spoke again.

“Mr. Darbyshire, I do not like St. George. I never did. You may not believe me, perhaps, but the first time I ever saw his face—I was a little fellow—I drew back startled. There was something in its expression which frightened me.”

“One of your unreasonable dislikes, Johnny?”

“Are they unreasonable? But I have not taken many such dislikes in my life as that one was. Perhaps I might say anysuch.”

“St. George was liked by most people.”

“I know he was. Any way, my dislike remained with me. I never spoke of it; no, not even to Tod.”

“Liking him or disliking him has nothing to do with the main question—what became of Brook. There were the letters too, sent by the traveller in answer to St. George’s advertisements.”

“Yes, there were the letters. But—did it ever occur to you to notice that not one word was said in those letters, or one new fact given, that we had not heard before? They bore out St. George’s statement, but they afforded no proof that his statement was true.”

“That is, Mr. Johnny, you would insinuate, putting it genteelly, that St. George fabricated the answers himself.”

“No, not that he did, only that there was nothing in the letters to render it impossible that he did.”

“After having fabricated the pretty little tale that it was a stranger he picked up, and what the stranger said to him, and all the rest of it, eh, Johnny?”

“Well”—I hesitated—“as to the letters, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable thing that the traveller could not let even one person see him in private, to hear his personal testimony: say Mr. Delorane, or a member of the Brook family. The Squire went hot over it: he asked St. George whether the fellow thought men of honour carried handcuffs in their pockets. Again, the stranger said he should be at liberty to come forward later, but he never has come.”

Darbyshire smoked on. “I’d give this full of gold,” he broke the silence with, touching the big bowl of the clay pipe, “to know where Brook vanished to.”

My restless fingers had strayed to his old leaden tobacco jar, on the table by me, pressing down its heavy lid and lifting it again. When I next spoke he might have thought the words came out of the tobacco, they were so low.

“Do you think St. George had a grudge against Brook, Mr. Darbyshire?—that he wished him out of the way?”

Darbyshire gave me a look through the wreathing smoke.

“Speak out, lad. What have you on your mind?”

“St. George said, you know, that he stopped the gig in Dip Lane at the turning which would lead to Evesham, for Brook—I mean the traveller—to get out. But I thought I heard it stop before that. I was almost sure of it.”

“Stop where?”

“Just about opposite the gap in the hedge; hardly even quite as far as that. We had not reached the turning to Evesham ourselves when I heard this. The gig seemed to come to a sudden standstill. I said so to Tod at the time.”

“Well?”

“Why should he have stopped just at the gap?”

“How can I tell, lad?”

“I suppose he could not have damaged Brook? Struck him a blow to stun him—or—or anything of that?”

“And if he had? If he (let us put it so) killed him, Johnny, what did he do with—what was left of him? What could he do with it?”

Darbyshire paused in his smoking. I played unconsciously with the jar. He was looking at me, waiting to be answered.

“I suppose—if that pond had been dragged—Dip Pond—if it were to be dragged now—that—that—nothing would be found——”

“Hush, lad,” struck in Darbyshire, all hastily. “Walls have ears, people tell us: and we must not even whisper grave charges without sufficient grounds; grounds that we could substantiate.”

True: and of course he did right to stop me.

But we cannot stay rebellious thought: and no end of gruesome ideas connected with that night in Dip Lane steal creepingly at times into my mind. If I am not mistaken they steal also into Darbyshire’s.

All the same they may be but phantoms of the imagination, and St. George may have been a truthful, an innocent man. You must decide for yourselves, if you can, on which side the weight of evidence seems to lie. I have told you the story as it happened, and I cannot clear up for you what has never yet been cleared for Timberdale. It remains an unsolved mystery.

SANDSTONE TORR.

I

What I am going to tell of took place before my time. But we shall get down to that by-and-by, for I had a good deal to do with the upshot when it came.

About a mile from the Manor, on the way to the Court (which at that time belonged to my father) stood a very old house built of grey stone, and called Sandstone Torr: “Torr,” as every one knew, being a corruption of Tower. It was in a rather wild and solitary spot, much shut in by trees. A narrow lane led to it from the highway, the only road by which a carriage could get up to it: but in taking the field way between the Court and Dyke Manor, over stiles and across a running rivulet or two, you had to pass it close. Sandstone Torr was a rambling, high, and ugly old building, once belonging to the Druids, or some ancient race of that kind, and said to have been mighty and important in its day. The points chiefly remarkable about it now were its age, its lonesome grey walls, covered with lichen, and an amazingly lofty tower, that rose up from the middle of the house and went tapering off at the top like an aspiring sugar loaf.

Sandstone Torr belonged to the Radcliffes. Its occupier was Paul Radcliffe, who had inherited it from his father. He was a rather unsociable man, and seemed to find his sole occupation in farming what little land lay around the Torr and belonged to it. He might have mixed with the gentry of the county, as far as descent went, for the Radcliffes could trace themselves back for ages—up to the Druids, I think, the same as the house: but he did not appear to care about it. Who his wife had been no one knew. He brought her home one day from London, and she kept herself as close as he did, or closer. She was dead now, and old Radcliffe lived in the Torr with his only son, and a man and maid servant.

Well, in those days there came to stay at Dyke Manor a clergyman, named Elliot, with his daughter Selina. Squire Todhetley was a youngish man then, and he and his mother lived at the Manor together. Mr. Elliot was out of health. He had been overworked for the past twenty years in the poor London parish of which he was curate; and old Mrs. Todhetley asked them to come down for a bit of a change. Change indeed it brought to Mr. Elliot. He died there. His illness, whatever it was, took a sudden and rapid stride onwards, and before he had been at Dyke Manor three weeks he was dead.

Selina Elliot—we have heard the Squire say it many a time—was the sweetest-looking girl that ever the sun shone on. She was homeless now. The best prospect before her was that of going out as governess. The Elliots were of good descent, and Selina had been thoroughly well educated; but of money she had just none. Old Mrs. Todhetley bid her not be in any hurry; she was welcome to stay as long as she liked at Dyke Manor. So Selina stayed. It was summer weather then, and she was out and about in the open air all day long: a slight girl, in deep mourning, with a shrinking air that was natural to her.

One afternoon she came in, her bright face all aglow, and her shy eyes eager. Soft brown eyes they were, that had always a sadness in them. I—a little shaver—can remember that, when I knew her in later years. As she sat down on the stool at Mrs. Todhetley’s feet, she took off her black straw hat, and began to play nervously with its crape ends.

“My dear, you seem to be in a heat,” said Mrs. Todhetley; a stout old lady, who sat all day long in her easy-chair.

“Yes, I ran home fast,” said Selina.

“Home from whence? Where have you been?”

“I was—near the Torr,” replied Selina, with hesitation.

“Near the Torr, child! That’s a long way for you to go strolling alone.”

“The wild roses in the hedges there are so lovely,” pleaded Selina. “That’s why I took to go there at first.”

“Took to go there!” repeated the old lady, thinking it an odd phrase. “Do you see anything of the Torr people? I hope you’ve not been making intimate with young Stephen Radcliffe,”she added, a thought darting into her mind.

“Stephen? that’s the son. No, I never saw him. I think he is away from home.”

“That’s well. He is by all accounts but a churlish lout of a fellow.”

Selina Elliot bent her timid face over the hat, smoothing its ribbons with her restless fingers. She was evidently ill at ease. Glancing up presently, she saw the old lady was shutting her eyes for a doze: and that hastened her communication.

“I—I want to tell you something, please, ma’am. But—I don’t like to begin.” And, with that, Selina burst into unexpected tears, and the alarmed old lady looked up.

“Why, what ails you, child? Are you hurt? Has a wasp been at you?”

“Oh no,” said Selina, brushing the tears away with fingers that trembled all over. “I—if you please—I think I am going to live at the Torr.”

The old lady wondered whether Selina was dreaming. “At the Torr!” said she. “There are no children at the Torr. They don’t want a governess at the Torr.”

“I am going there to be with Mr. Radcliffe,” spoke Selina, in her throat, as if she meant to choke.

“To be with old Radcliffe! Why, the child’s gone cranky! Paul Radcliffe don’t need a governess.”

“He wants to marry me.”

“Mercy upon us!” cried the old lady, lifting both hands in her amazement. And Selina burst into tears again.

Yes, it was true. Paul Radcliffe, who was fifty years of age, if a day, and had a son over twenty, had been proposing marriage to that bright young girl! They had met in the fields often, it turned out, and Mr. Radcliffe had been making his hay while the sun shone. Every one went on at her.

“It would be better to go into a prison than into that gloomy Sandstone Torr—a young girl like you, Selina,” said Mrs. Todhetley.“It would be sheer madness.”

“Why, you’d never go and sacrifice yourself to that old man!” cried the Squire, who was just as outspoken and impulsive and good-hearted then as in these latter years. “He ought to be ashamed of himself. It would be like June and December.”

But all they said was of no use in the end. It was not that Selina, poor girl, was in love with Mr. Radcliffe—one could as well have fancied her in love with the grizzly old bear, just then exhibiting himself at Church Dykely in a travelling caravan. But it was her position. Without money, without a home, withouta resource of any kind for the future, save that of teaching for her bread, the prospect of becoming mistress of Sandstone Torr was something fascinating.

“I do so dislike the thought of spending my whole life in teaching!” she pleaded in apology, the bitter tears streaming down her face. “You cannot tell what it is to feel dependent.”

“I’d rather sweep chimneys than marry Paul Radcliffe if I were a pretty young girl like you,” stormed the old lady.

“Since papa died you don’t know what the feeling has been,”sobbed Selina. “Many a night have I lain awake with the misery of knowing that I had no claim to a place in the wide world.”

“I am sure you are welcome to stay here,” said the Squire.

“Yes; as long as I am here myself,” added his mother.“After that—well, I suppose it wouldn’t be proper for you to stay.”

“You are all kindness; I shall never meet with such friends again; and I know that I am welcome to stay as long as I like,”she answered in the saddest of tones. “But the time of my departure must come sometime; and though the world lies before me, there is no refuge for me in it. It is very good of Mr. Radcliffe to offer to make me his wife and to give me a home at the Torr.”

“Oh, is it, though!” retorted the Squire. “Trust him for knowing on which side his bread’s buttered.”

“He is of good descent; he has a large income——”

“Six hundred a-year,” interrupted the Squire, slightingly.

“Yes, I am aware that it cannot appear much to you,” she meekly said; “but to me it seems unbounded. And that is apart from the house and land.”

“The house and land must both go to Stephen.”

“Mr. Radcliffe told me that.”

“As to the land, it’s only a few acres; nothing to speak of,”went on the Squire. “I’d as soon boast of my gooseberry bushes. And he can leave all his money to Stephen if he likes. In my opinion, the chances are that he will.”

“He says he shall always behave fairly by me,” spoke poor Selina.

“Why, you’d have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!”put in the old lady. “And I don’t like him—that Stephen Radcliffe. He’s no better than he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf almost to death.”

Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but tractable as you please. Only—she had no homestead on the face of the earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth, it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable descent—and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and, above all, he had a fairly good income.

It was rather curious that the dread of this girl’s life, the one dread above all other dreads, was that of poverty. In the earlier days of her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the parson’s pay was just seventy pounds a-year, they had had such a terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the child’s mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and weaker, and perished slowly away for the want of those comforts that money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot’s stipend was increased later: but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her; and her choice was made.

Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, so to say, in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than old enough to be Selina’s father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs. Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her standing in the county.

Sandstone Torr, dull and gloomy, and buried amidst its trees, was enough to put a lively man in mind of a prison. You entered it by a sort of closed-in porch, the outer door of which was always chained back in the daytime. The inner door opened into a long, narrow passage, and that again to a circular stone hall with a heavy ceiling, just like a large dark watch-box. Four or five doors led off from it to different passages and rooms. This same kind of round place was on all the landings, shut in just as the hall was, and with no light, except what might be afforded from the doors of the passages or rooms leading to it. It was the foundation of the tower, and the house was built round it. All the walls were of immense thickness: the rooms were low, and had beams running across most of them. But the rooms were many in number, and the place altogether had a massive, grand air, telling of its past importance. It had one senseless point in it—there was no entrance to the tower. The tower had neither staircase nor door of access. People said what a grand view might be obtained if you could only get to the top of it, or even get up to look through the small slits of windows in its walls. But the builder had forgotten the staircase, and there it ended.

Mr. Radcliffe took his wife straight home from the church-door. Selina had never before been inside the Torr, and the gloominess of its aspect struck upon her unpleasantly. Leading her down the long passage into the circular hall, he opened one of its doors, and she found herself in a sitting-room. The furniture was good but heavy; the Turkey carpet was nearly colourless with age, but soft to the feet; the window looked out only upon trees. A man-servant, who had admitted them, followed them in, asking his master if he had any orders.

“Send Holt here,” said Mr. Radcliffe. “This is the parlour, Selina.”

A thin, respectable woman of middle age made her appearance. She looked with curiosity at the young lady her master had brought in: at her wedding-dress of grey silk, at the pretty face blushing under the white straw bonnet.

“Mrs. Radcliffe, Holt. Show your mistress her rooms.”

The woman curtsied, and led the way through another passage to the stairs; and into a bedroom and sitting-room above, that opened into one another.

“I’ve aired ’em well, ma’am,” were the first words she said.“They’ve never been used since the late mistress’s time, for master has slept in a little chamber near Master Stephen’s. But he’s coming back here now.”

“Is this the drawing-room?” asked Selina, observing that the furniture, though faded, was prettier and lighter than that in the room downstairs.

“Dear no, ma’am! The drawing-room is below and on t’other side of the house entirely. It’s never gone into from one month’s end to another. Master and Mr. Stephen uses nothing but the parlour. We call this the Pine Room.”

“The Pine Room!” echoed Selina. “Why?”

“Because it looks out on them pines, I suppose,” replied Holt.

Selina looked from the window, and saw a row of dark pineswaving before the higher trees behind them. The view beyond was completely shut in by these trees; they were very close to the house: it almost seemed as though a long arm might have touched them from where she stood. Anything more dull than this aspect could not well be found. Selina leaned from the window to look below: and saw a gravel-path with some grass on either side it, but no flowers.

It was a week later. Mr. Radcliffe sat in the parlour, busily examining some samples of new wheat, when there came a loud ring at the outer bell, and presently Stephen Radcliffe walked in. The father and son resembled each other. Both were tall and strongly built, and had the same rugged cast of features: men of few words and ungenial manners. But while Mr. Radcliffe’s face was not an unpleasing one, Stephen’s had a most sullen—some might have said evil—expression. In his eyes there was a slight cast, and his dull brown hair was never tidy. Some time before this, when the father and son had a quarrel, Stephen had gone off into Cornwall to stay with his mother’s relations. This was his first appearance back again.

“Is it you, Stephen!” cried Mr. Radcliffe, without offering to shake hands: for the house was never given to ceremony.

“Yes, it’s me,” replied Stephen, who generally talked more like a boor than a gentleman, particularly in his angry moods.“It’s about time I came home, I think, when such a notice as this appears in the public papers.”

He took a newspaper from his pocket, and laid it before his father, pointing with his fore-finger to an announcement. It was that of Mr. Radcliffe’s marriage.

“Well?” said Mr. Radcliffe.

“Is that true or a hoax?”

“True.”

Stephen caught the paper up again, tore it in two, and flung it across the room.

“What the devil made you go and do such a thing as that?”

“Softly, Ste. Keep a civil tongue in your head. I am my own master.”

“At your age!” growled Stephen. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

“If you don’t like it, you can go back to where you came from,” said Mr. Radcliffe quietly, turning the wheat from one of the sample-bags out on the table.

Stephen went to the window, and stood there looking at that agreeable prospect beyond—the trees—his hands in his pockets, his back to his father, and swearing to himself awfully. It would not do to quarrel implacably with the old man, for his money was at his own disposal: and, if incensed too greatly, he might possibly take the extreme step of leaving it away from him. But Stephen Radcliffe’s heart was good to turn his father out of doors there and then, and appropriate the money to himself at once, if he only had the power. “No fool like an old fool!” he again muttered. “Where is the cat?”

“Where’s who?” cried Mr. Radcliffe, looking up from his wheat.

“The woman you’ve gone and made yourself a world’s spectacle with.”

“Ste, my lad, this won’t do. Keep a fair tongue in your head, as I bid you; or go where you may make it a foul one. For by Heaven!”—and Mr. Radcliffe’s passion broke out and he rose from his seat menacingly—“I’ll not tolerate this.”

Stephen hardly ever remembered his father to have shown passion before. He did not like it. They had gone on so very quietly together, until that quarrel just spoken of, and Stephen had had his own way, and ruled, so to say, in all things, for his father was easy, that this outbreak was something new. It might not do to give further provocation then.

He was standing as before in sullen silence, his hands in his trousers’ pockets and the skirts of his short brown velveteen coat thrown back, and Mr. Radcliffe had sat down to the bags again, when the door opened, and some one came in. Stephen turned. He saw a pretty young girl in black, with some books in her delicate hands. Just for an instant he wondered who the young girl could be: and then the thought flashed over him that “the woman” his father had married might have a grown-up daughter. Selina had been unpacking her trunks upstairs, and arranging her things in the drawers and closets. She hesitated on her way to the book-case when she saw the stranger.

“My son Stephen, Selina. Ste, Mrs. Radcliffe.”

Stephen Radcliffe for a moment forgot his sullenness and his temper. He did nothing but stare. Was his father playing a joke on him? He had pictured the new wife (though he knew not why) as a woman of mature age: this was a child. As she timidly held out the only hand she could extricate from the loadof books, he saw the wedding-ring on her finger. Meeting her hand ungraciously and speaking never a word, he turned to the window again. Selina put the books down, to be disposed in their shelves later, and quitted the room.

“This is even worse folly than I dreamed of,” began Stephen, facing his father. “She’s nothing but a child.”

“She is close upon twenty.”

“Why, there may be children!” broadly roared out Stephen.“You must have been mad when you did such a deed as this.”

“Mad or sane, it’s done, Stephen. And I should do it again to-morrow without asking your leave. Understand that.”

Yes, it was done. Rattling the silver in his pockets, Stephen Radcliffe felt that, and that there was no undoing it. Here was this young step-mother planted down at the Torr; and if he and she could not hit it off together, it was he who would have to walk out of the house. For full five minutes Stephen mentally rehearsed all the oaths he remembered. Presently he spoke.

“It was a fair trick, wasn’t it, that you should forbid my marrying, and go and do the same thing yourself!”

“I did not object to your marrying, Ste: I objected to the girl. Gibbon’s daughter is not one to match with you. You are a Radcliffe.”

Stephen scoffed. Nobody had ever been able to beat into him any sense of self-importance. Pride of birth, pride in his family were elements unknown to Stephen’s nature. He had a great love of money to make up for it.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” he retorted, plunging into a communication he had resolved to make. “You have been taking a wife on your score, and I have taken one on mine.”

Mr. Radcliffe looked keenly at Stephen. “You have married Gibbon’s girl?”

“I have.”

“When? Where?”

“In Cornwall. She followed me there.”

The elder man felt himself in a dilemma. He did care for his son, and he resented this alliance bitterly for Stephen’s sake. Gibbon was gamekeeper to Sir Peter Chanasse, and had formerly been outdoor servant at the Torr; and this daughter of his, Rebecca—or Becca, as she was commonly called—was a girl quite beneath Stephen. Neither was she a lovable young womanin herself; but hard, and sly, and bony. How it was that Stephen had fancied her, Mr. Radcliffe could not understand. But having stolen a march on Stephen himself, in regard to his own marriage, he did not feel much at liberty to resent Stephen’s. It was done, too—as he had just observed of his own—and it could not be undone.

“Well, Stephen, I am more vexed for your sake than I care to say. It strikes me you will live to repent it.”

“That’s my look out,” replied Stephen. “I am going to bring her home.”

“Home! Where?”

“Here.”

Mr. Radcliffe was silent; perhaps the assertion startled him.

“I don’t want Gibbon’s daughter here, Stephen. There’s no room for her.”

“Plenty of room, and to spare.”

So there was; for the old house was large. But Mr. Radcliffe had not been thinking of space.

“I can’t have her. There! You may make your home where you like.”

“This is my home,” said Stephen.

“And it may be still, if you like. But it’s not hers. Two women in a house, each wanting to be mistress, wouldn’t do. Now no noise, Ste, I won’t have Gibbon’s girl here. I’ve not been used to consort with people who have been my servants.”

It is one thing to make a resolution, and another to keep it. Before twelve months had gone by, Mr. Radcliffe’s firmly spoken words had come to naught; and Stephen had brought his wife into the Torr and two babies—for Mrs. Stephen had presented him with two at once. Selina was upstairs then with an infant of her own, and very ill. The world thought she was going to die.

The opportunity was a grand one for Madam Becca, and she seized upon it. When Selina came about again, after months spent in confinement, she found, so to say, no place for her. Becca was in her place; mistress, and ruler, and all. Stephen behaved to her like the lout he was; Becca, a formidable woman of towering height, alternately snapped at, and ignored her. Old Radcliffe did not interfere: he seemed not to see that anything was amiss. Poor Selina could only sit up in that apartmentthat Holt had called the Pine Room, and let her tears fall on her baby-boy, and whisper all her griefs into his unconscious ear. She was refined and timid and shrinking: but once she spoke to her husband.

“Treat you with contempt?—don’t let you have any will of your own?—thwart you in all ways?” he repeated. “Who says it, Selina?”

“Oh, it is so; you may see that it is, if you only will notice,”she said, looking up at him imploringly through her tears.

“I’ll speak to Stephen. I knew there’d be a fuss if that Becca came here. But you are not as strong to bustle about as she is, Selina: let her take the brunt of the management off you. What does it matter?”

What did it matter?—that was Mr. Radcliffe’s chief opinion on the point: and had it been only a question of management it would not have mattered. He spoke to Stephen, telling him that he and his wife must make things pleasanter for Mrs. Radcliffe, than, as it seemed, they were doing. The consequence was, that Stephen and Becca took a convenient occasion of attacking Selina; calling her a sneak, a tell-tale, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and pretty nearly frightening her into another spell of illness.

From that time Selina had no spirit to retaliate. She took all that was put upon her—and it was a great deal—and bore it in silence and patience. She saw that her marriage, taking one thing with another, had turned out to be the mistake her friends had foretold that it would be. Mr. Radcliffe, growing by degrees into a state of apathy as he got older, was completely under the dominion of Stephen. He did not mean to be unkind to his wife: he just perceived nothing; he was indifferent to all that passed around him: had they set fire to Selina’s petticoats before his eyes, he’d hardly have seen the blaze. Now and again Selina would try to make friends with Holt: but Holt, though never uncivil, had a way of throwing her off. And so, she lived on, a cowed, broken-spirited woman, eating away her heart in silence. Selina Radcliffe had found out that there were worse evils in the world than poverty.

She might have died then but for her boy. You never saw a nicer little fellow than he—that Francis Radcliffe. A bright, tractable, loving boy; with laughing blue eyes, and fair curls falling back from his pretty face. Mr. and Mrs. Stephen hatedhim. Their children, Tom and Lizzy, pinched and throttled him: but the lad took it all in good part, and had the sweetest temper imaginable. He loved his mother beyond telling, and she made him as gentle and nearly as patient as she was. Virtually driven from the parlour, except at meal-times, their refuge was the Pine Room. There they were unmolested. There Selina educated and trained him, doing her best to show him the way to the next world, as well as to fit him for this.

One day when he was about nine years old, Selina was up aloft, in the little room where he slept; which had a better view than some of the rooms had, and looked out into the open country. It was snowy weather, and she caught sight of the two boys in the yard below, snowballing each other. Opening the window to call Francis in—for he always got into the wars when with Tom, and she had learnt to dread his being with him—she saw Stephen Radcliffe crossing from the barn. Suddenly a snowball took Stephen in the face. It came from Tom; she saw that; Francis was stooping down at the time, collecting material for a fresh missive.

“Who flung that at me?” roared out Stephen, in a rage.

Tom disclaimed all knowledge of it; and Stephen Radcliffe seized upon Francis, beating him shamefully.

“It was not Francis,” called out Selina from the window, shivering at the sight; for Stephen in his violence might some time, as she knew, lame the lad. “Its touching you was an accident; I could see that; but it was not Francis who threw it.”

The cold, rarefied air carried her words distinctly to the ear of Stephen. Holding Francis by one hand to prevent his escape, he told Mrs. Radcliffe that she was a liar, adding other polite epithets and a few oaths. And then he began pummelling the lad again.

“Come in, Francis! Let him come in!” implored the mother, clasping her hands in her bitter agony. “Oh, is there no refuge for him and for me?”

She ran down to their sanctum, the Pine Room. Francis came up, sore all over, and his face bleeding. He was a brave little lad, and he strove to make light of it, and keep his tears down. She held him to her, and burst into sobs while trying to comfort him. That upset him at once.

“Oh, my darling, try and bear! My poor boy, there’s nothing left for us both but to bear. The world is full of wrongsand tribulation: but, Francis, it will all be made right when we get to heaven.”

“Don’t cry, mamma. It didn’t hurt me much. But, indeed, the snowball was not mine.”

At ten years old the boys were sent to school. Young Tom, allowed to have his own way, grew beyond every one’s control, even his father’s; and Stephen packed him off to school. Selina besought her husband to send Francis also. Why not, replied Mr. Radcliffe; the boy must be educated. And, in spite of Stephen’s opposition, Francis was despatched. It was frightfully lonely and unpleasant for Selina after that, and she grew to have a pitiful look on her face.

The school was a sharp one, and Francis got on well; he seemed to possess his grandfather Elliot’s aptitude for learning. Tom hated it. After each of the half-yearly holidays, it took Stephen himself to get him to school again: and before he was fourteen he capped it all by appearing at home uncalled for, a red-hot fugitive, and announcing an intention of going to sea.

Tom carried his point. After some feats of skirmishing between him and his father, he was shipped off as “midshipman”on board a fine merchantman bound for Hong Kong. Stephen Radcliffe might never have given a consent, but for the certainty that if he did not give it, Tom would decamp from the Torr, as he did from school, and go off as a common seaman before the mast. It was strange, with his crabbed nature, how much he cared for those two children!

“You’ll have that other one home now,” said sullen Stephen to his father. “No good to be paying for him there.”

And most likely it would have been so; but fate, or fortune, intervened. Francis had a wind-fall. A clergyman, who had known Mr. Elliot, died, and left Francis a thousand pounds. Selina decided that it should be spent, or at least a portion of it, in completing his education in a more advanced manner—though, no doubt, Stephen would have liked to get hold of the money. Francis was sent up to King’s College in London, and to board at the house of one of the masters. In this way a few more years passed on. Francis chose the Bar as a profession, and began to study law.

“The Bar!” sneered Stephen. “A penniless beggar like Francis Radcliffe! Put a pig to learn to spell!”

A bleak day in winter. The wind was howling and crying round Sandstone Torr, tearing through the branches of the almost leafless trees, whirling the weather-cock atop of the lofty tower, playing madly on the window-panes. If there was one spot in the county that the wind seemed to favour above all other spots, it was the Torr. It would go shrieking in the air round about there like so many unquiet spirits.

In the dusk of evening, on a sofa beside the fire in the Pine Room lay Mrs. Radcliffe, with a white, worn face and hollow eyes. She was slowly dying. Until to-day she had not thought there was any immediate danger: but she knew it all now, and that the end was at hand.

So it was not that knowledge which had caused her, a day or two ago, to write to London for Francis. Some news brought in by Stephen Radcliffe had unhinged and shocked her beyond expression. Francis was leading a loose, bad life, drinking and gambling, and going to the deuce headlong, ran the tales, and Stephen repeated them indoors.

That same night she wrote for Francis. She could not rest day or night until she could see him face to face, and say—Is this true, or untrue? He might have reached the Torr the previous day; but he did not. She was lying listening for him now in the twilight gloom amidst the blasts of that shrieking wind.

“If God had but taken my child in infancy!” came the chief thought of her troubled heart. “If I could only know that I should meet him on the everlasting shores!”

“Mother!”

She started up with a yearning cry. It was Francis. He had arrived, and come upstairs, and his opening of the door had been drowned by the wind. A tall, slender, bright-faced young fellow of twenty, with the same sunny hair as in his childhood, and a genial heart.

Francis halted, and stood in startled consternation. The firelight played on her wasted face, and he saw—what was there. In manners he was still almost a boy; his disposition open, his nature transparent.

She made room for him on the sofa; sitting beside him, and laying her weary head for a moment on his shoulder. Francis took a few deep breaths while getting over the shock.

“How long have you been like this, mother? What has brought it about?”

“Nothing in particular; nothing fresh,” she answered. “I have been getting nearer and nearer to it for years and years.”

“Is there no hope?”

“None. And oh, my darling, but for you I should be so glad to die. Sitting here in my loneliness for ever, with only heaven to look forward to, it seems that I have learnt to see a little already of what its rest will be.”

Francis pushed his hair from his brow, and left his hand there. He had loved his mother intensely, and the blow was cruel.

Quietly, holding his other hand in hers, she spoke of what Stephen Radcliffe had heard. Francis’s face turned to scarlet as he listened. But in that solemn hour he could not and would not tell a lie.

Yes, it was true; partly true, he said. He was not always so steady as he ought to be. Some of his acquaintances, young men studying law like himself, or medicine, or what not, were rather wild, and he had been the same. Drink?—well, yes; at times they did take more than might be quite needful. But they were not given to gambling: that was false.

“Francis,” she said, her heart beating wildly with its pain,“the worst of all is the drink. If once you suffer yourself to acquire a love for it, you may never leave it off. It is so insidious——”

“But I don’t love it, mother; I don’t care for it—and I am sure you must know that I would tell you nothing but truth now,” he interrupted. “I have only done as the others do. I’ll leave it off.”

“Will you promise me that?”

“Yes, I will. I do promise it.”

She carried his hand to her lips and kissed it. Francis had always kept his promises.

“It is so difficult for young fellows without a home to keep straight in London,” he acknowledged. “There’s no good influence over us; there’s no pleasant family circle where we can spend our evenings: and we go out, and get drawn into this and that. It all comes of thoughtlessness, mother.”

“You have promised me, Francis.”

“Oh yes. And I will perform.”

“How long will it be before you are called to the Bar?” she asked, after a pause.

“Two years.”

“So much as that?”

“I think so. How the wind howls!”

Mrs. Radcliffe sighed; Francis’s future seemed not to be very clear. Unless he could get on pretty quickly, and make a living for himself—

“When I am gone, Francis,” she said aloud, interrupting her own thoughts, “this will not be any home for you.”

“It has not been one for me for some years now, mother.”

“But if you do not get into work soon, and your own funds come to an end, you will have no home but this to turn to.”

“If I attempted to turn to it, Stephen would soon make it too hot for me, I expect.”

“That might not be all; not the worst,” she quickly answered, dropping her voice to a tone of fear, and glancing around as one in a fever.

Francis looked round too. He supposed she was seeking something.

“It is always scaring me, Francis,” she whispered. “There are times when I fancy I am going to see it enacted before my eyes. It puts me into a state of nervous dread not to be described.”

“See what enacted?” he asked.

“I was sitting here about ten days ago, Francis, thinking of you, thinking of the future, when all at once a most startling prevision—yes, I call it so—a prevision came upon me of some dreadful ill in store for you; ill wrought by Stephen. I—I am not sure but it was—that—that he took your life,” she added, scarcely above her breath, and in tones that made Francis shiver.

“Why, what do you mean, mother?”

“Every day, every day since, every night and nearly all night, that strange conviction has lain upon me. I know it will be fulfilled: when the hand of death is closing on us, these previsions are an instinct. As surely as that I am now disclosing this to you, Francis, so surely will you fall in some way under the iron hand of Stephen.”

“Perhaps you were dreaming, mother dear,” suggested Francis: for he had his share of common sense.

“It will be in this house; the Torr,” she went on, paying no attention to him; “for it is always these rooms and the dreary trees outside that seem to lie before me. For that reason, I would not have you live here——”

“But don’t you think you may have been dreaming?” repeated Francis, interrupting the rest.

“I was as wide awake as I am now, Francis, but I was deep in thought. It stole upon me, this impression, without any sort of warning, or any train of ideas that could have led to it; and it lies within me, a sure and settled conviction. Beware of Stephen. But oh, Francis! even while I give you this caution I know that you will not escape the evil—whatever it may turn out to be.”

“I hope I shall,” he said, rather lightly. “I’ll try, at any rate.”

“Well, I have warned you, Francis. Be always upon your guard. And keep away from the Torr, if you can.”

Holt, quite an aged woman now, came in with some tea for her mistress. Francis took the opportunity to go down and see his father. Mr. Radcliffe, in a shabby old coat, was sitting in his arm-chair at the parlour fire. He looked pleased to see Francis, and kept his hand for a minute after he had shaken it.

“My mother is very ill, sir,” said Francis.

“Ay,” replied the old man, dreamily. “Been so for some time now.”

“Can nothing be done to—to—keep her with us a little longer, father?”

“I suppose not. Ask Duffham.”

“What the devil!—is it you! What brings you here?”

The coarse salutation came from Stephen. Francis turned to see him enter and bang the door after him. His shoes were dirty, his beaver gaiters splashed, and his hair was like a tangled mop.

“I came down to see my father and mother,” answered Francis, as he held out his hand. But Stephen did not choose to see it.

Mrs. Stephen, in a straight-down blue cloth gown and black cap garnished with red flowers, looking more angular and hard than of yore, came in with the tea-tray. She did as much work in the house as a servant. Lizzy had been married the year before, and lived in Birmingham with her husband, who was curate at one of the churches there.

“You’ll have to sleep on the sofa to-night, young man,” was Mrs. Stephen’s snappish salutation to Francis. “There’s not a bed in the house that’s aired.”

“The sofa will do,” he answered.

“Let his bed be aired to-morrow, Becca,” interposed the old man. And they stared in astonishment to hear him say it.

Francis sat down to the tea-table with Stephen and his wife; but neither of them spoke a word to him. Mr. Radcliffe had his tea in his arm-chair at the fire, as usual. Afterwards, Francis took his hat and went out. He was going to question the doctor; and the wind came rushing and howling about him as he bore onwards down the lane towards Church Dykely.

In about an hour’s time he came back again with red eyes. He said it was the wind, but his subdued voice sounded as though he had been crying. His father, with bent head, was smoking a long pipe; Stephen sat at the table, reading the sensational police reports in a low weekly newspaper.

“Been out for a stroll, lad?” asked old Radcliffe—and it was the first voluntary question he had put for months. Stephen, listening, could not think what was coming to him.

“I have been to Duffham’s,” answered Francis. “He—he—” with a stopping of the breath, “says that nothing can be done for my mother; that a few days now will see the end of it.”

“Ay,” quietly responded the old man. “Our turns must all come.”

“Her turn ought not to have come yet,” said Francis, nearly breaking down.

“No?”

“I have been looking forward at odd moments to a time when I should be in work, and able to give her a happy home with me, father. It is very hard to come here and find this.”

Old Radcliffe took a long whiff; and, opening his mouth, let the smoke curl upwards. “Have a pipe, Francis?”

“No, thank you, sir. I am going up to my mother.”

As he left the room, Stephen, having finished the police reports, was turning the paper to see what it said about the markets, when his father put down his pipe and began to speak.

“Only a few days, he says, Ste!”

“What?” demanded Stephen in his surly and ungracious tones.

“She’s been ailing always; and has sat up there away from us, Ste. But we shall miss her.”

“Miss her!” retorted Ste, leaving the paper, and walking to the fire. “Why, what good has she been? Miss her? Thehouse’ll have a good riddance of her,” he added, under his breath.

“It’ll be my turn next, Ste. And not long first, either.”

Stephen took a keen look at his father from beneath his overhanging, bushy eyebrows, that were beginning to turn grey. All this sounded very odd.

“When you and me and Becca’s left alone here by ourselves, we shall be as easy as can be,” he said.

“What month is it, Ste?”

“November.”

“Ay. You’ll have seen the last o’ me before Christmas.”

“Think so?” was Stephen’s equable remark. The old man nodded; and there came a pause.

“And you and Becca’ll be glad to get us out, Ste.”

Stephen did not take the trouble to gainsay it. He was turning about in his thoughts something that he had a mind to speak of.

“They’ve been nothing but interlopers from the first—she and him. I expect you to do what’s right by me, father.”

“Ay, I shall do what’s right,” answered the old man.

“About the money, I mean. It must all come to me, father. I was heir to it before you ever set eyes on her; and her brat must not be let stand in my way. Do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear. It’ll be all right, Ste.”

“Take only a fraction from the income, and how would the Torr be kept up?” pursued Stephen, plucking up his spirits at the last answer. “He has got his fine profession, and he can make a living for himself out of it: some o’ them counsellors make their thousands a-year. But he must not be let rob me.”

“He shan’t rob you, Ste. It will be all right.”

And covetous Stephen, thus reassured and put at ease, strolled into the kitchen, and ordered Becca to provide his favourite dish, toasted cheese, for supper.

The “few days” spoken of by Mr. Duffham, were slowly passing. There was not much difference to be observed in Selina; except that her voice grew weaker. She could only use it at intervals. But her face had a beautiful look of peace upon it, just as though she were three parts in heaven. I have heard Duffham say so many a time since; I, Johnny Ludlow.

On the fifth day she was so much better that it seemed little short of a miracle. They found her in the Pine Room early, upand dressed: when Holt went in to light the fire, she was looking over the two books that lay on the round table. One of them was the Bible; the other was a translation of the German tale “Sintram,” which Francis had brought her when he came down the last summer. The story had taken hold of her imagination, and she knew it nearly by heart.

Down went Holt, and told them that the mistress (for, contradictory though it may seem, Selina had been always accorded that title) had taken a “new lease of life,” and was getting well. Becca, astonished, went stalking up: perhaps she was afraid it might be true. Selina had “Sintram” in her hand as she sat: her eyes looked bright, her cheeks pink, her voice was improved.

“Oh,” said Becca. “What have you left your bed for at this early hour?”

“I feel so well,” Selina answered with a smile, letting the book lie open on the table. “Won’t you shake hands with me?—and—and kiss me?”

Now Becca had never kissed her in all the years they had lived together, and she did not seem to care about beginning now. “I’ll go down and beat you up an egg and a spoonful of wine,” said she, just touching the tips of Selina’s fingers, in response to the held-out hand: and, with that, went away.

Stephen was the only one who did not pay the Pine Room a visit that day. He heard of the surprising change while he was feeding the pigs: for Becca went out and told him. Stephen splashed some wash over the side of the trough, and gave a little pig a smack with the bucket, and that was all his answer. Old Radcliffe sat an hour in the room; but he never spoke all the time: so his company could not be considered as much.

Selina crept as far as the window, and looked out on the bare pines and the other dreary trees. Most trees are dreary in November. Francis saw a shiver take her as she stood, leaning on the window-frame; and he went to give her his arm and bring her back again. They were by themselves then.

“A week, or so, of this improvement, mother, and you will be as you used to be,” said he cheerfully, seating her on the sofa and stirring up the fire. “We shall have our home together yet.”

She turned her face full on his, as he sat down by her; a half-questioning, half-wondering look in her eyes.

“Not in this world, Francis. Surely you are not deceived!”and his over-sanguine heart went down like lead.

“It is but the flickering of the spirit before it finally quits the weary frame; just as you may have seen the flame shoot up from an expiring candle,” she continued. “The end is very near now.”

A spasm of pain rose in his throat. She took his hands between her own feeble ones.

“Don’t grieve, Francis; don’t grieve for me! Remember what my life has been.”

He did remember it. He remembered also the answer Duffham gave when he had inquired what malady it was his mother was dying of. “A broken heart.”

“Don’t forget, Francis—never forget—that it is a journey we must enter on, sooner or later.”

“An uncertain and unknown journey at the best!” he said.“You have no fear of it?”

“Fear! No, but I had once.”

She spoke the words in a low, sweet tone, and pointed with a smile to the book that still lay open on the table. Francis’s eyes fell on the page.

“When death is drawing near,

And thy heart shrinks with fear,

And thy limbs fail,

Then raise thy hands and pray

To Him who cheers the way

Through the dark vale.

“Seest thou the eastern dawn?

Hears’t thou, in the red morn,

The angel’s song?

Oh! lift thy drooping head,

Thou who in gloom and dread

Hast lain so long.

“Death comes to set thee free;

Oh! meet him cheerily,

As thy true friend;

And all thy fears shall cease,

And in eternal peace

Thy penance end.”

Francis sat very still, struggling a little with that lump in his throat. She leaned forward, and let her head rest upon him,just as she had done the other day when he first came in. His emotion broke loose then.

“Oh, mother, what shall I do without you?”

“You will have God,” she whispered.

Still all the morning she kept up well; talking of this and that, saying how much of late the verses, just quoted, had floated in her mind and become a reality to her; showing Holt a slit that had appeared in the table-cover and needed darning: telling Francis his pocket-handkerchiefs looked yellow and should be bleached. It might have been thought she was only going out to tea at Church Dykely, instead of entering on the other journey she had told of.

“Have you been giving her anything?” demanded Stephen, casting his surly eyes on Francis as they sat opposite to each other at dinner in the parlour. “Dying people can’t spurt up in this manner without drugs to make ’em.”

Francis did not deign to answer. Stephen projected his fork, and took a potato out of the dish. Frank went upstairs when the meal was over. He had left his mother sitting on the sofa, comparatively well. He found her lying on the bed in the next room, grappling with death. She lifted her feeble arms to welcome him, and a ray of joyous light shone on her face. Francis made hardly one step of it to the bed.

“Oh, my darling, it will be all right!” she breathed. “I have prayed for you, and I know—I know I have been heard. You will be helped to put away that evil habit; temptation may assail, but it will not finally overcome you. And, Francis, when——” Her voice failed.

“I no longer hear what you say, mother,” cried Francis in an agony.

“Yes, yes,” she repeated, as if in answer to something he had said. “Beware of Stephen.”

The hands and face alike fell. Francis rang the bell violently, and Holt came up. All was over.

Stephen attended the funeral with the others. Grumbling wofully at having to do it, because it involved a new suit of black clothes. “They’ll be ready for the old man, though,” was his consoling reflection: “he won’t be long.”

He was even quicker than Stephen thought. On the very day week that they had come in from leaving Selina in the grave, Mr. Radcliffe was lying as lifeless as she was. A seizure carried him off. Francis was summoned again from London before he had well got back to it. Stephen could not, at such a season, completely ignore him.

He did not foresee the blow that was to come thundering down. When Mr. Radcliffe’s will came to be opened, it was found that his property was equally divided between the two sons, half and half: Stephen of course inheriting the Torr; and Squire Todhetley being appointed trustee for Francis. “And I earnestly beg of him to accept the trust,” ran the words, “for the sake of Selina’s son.”

Francis caught the glare of Stephen as they were read out. It was of course Stephen himself, but it looked more like a savage wild-cat. That warning of his mother’s came into Francis’s mind with a rush.

II

It stood on the left of the road as you went towards Alcester: a good-looking, red-brick house, not large, but very substantial. Everything about it was in trim order; from the emerald-green outer venetian window-blinds to the handsome iron entrance-gates between the enclosing palisades; and the garden and grounds had not as much as a stray worm upon them. Mr. Brandon was nice and particular in all matters, as old bachelors generally are; and he was especially so in regard to his home.

Careering up to this said house on the morning of a fine spring day, when the green hedges were budding and the birds sang in the trees, went a pony-gig, driven by a gentleman. A tall, slender young fellow of seven-and-twenty, with golden hair that shone in the sun and eyes as blue and bright as the sky. Leaving the pony to be taken care of by a labouring boy who chanced to be loitering about, he rang the bell at the iron gates, and inquired of the answering servant whether Mr. Brandon was at home.

“Yes, sir,” was the answer of the man, as he led the way in.“But I am not sure that he can see you. What name?” And the applicant carelessly took a card from his waistcoat-pocket, and was left in the drawing-room. Which card the servant glanced at as he carried it away.

“Mr. Francis Radcliffe.”

People say there’s sure to be a change every seven years.Seven years had gone by since the death of old Mr. Radcliffe and the inheritance by Francis of the portion that fell to him; three hundred a-year. There were odd moments when Frank, in spite of himself, would look back at those seven years; and he did not at all like the retrospect. For he remembered the solemn promise he had made to his mother when she was dying, to put away those evil habits which had begun to creep upon him, more especially that worst of all bad habits that man, whether young or old, can take to—drinking—and he had not kept the promise. He had been called to the Bar in due course, but he made nothing by his profession. Briefs did not come to him. He just wasted his time and lived a fast life on the small means that were his. He pulled up sometimes, turned his back on folly, and read like a house on fire: but his wild companions soon got hold of him again, and put his good resolutions to flight. Frank put it all down to idleness. “If I had work to do, I should do it,” he said, “and that would keep me straight.”But at the close of this last winter he had fallen into a most dangerous illness, resulting from the draughts of ale, and what not, that he had made too free with, and he got up from it with a resolution never to drink again. Knowing that the resolution would be more easy to keep if he turned his back on London and the companions who beset him, down he came to his native place, determined to take a farm and give up the law. For the second time in his life some money had come to him unexpectedly; which would help him on. And so, after a seven years’ fling, Frank Radcliffe was going in for a change.

He had never stayed at Sandstone Torr since his father’s death. His brother Stephen’s surly temper, and perhaps that curious warning of his mother’s, kept him out of it. He and Stephen maintained a show of civility to one another; and when Frank was in the neighbourhood (but that had only happened twice in the seven years), he would call at the Torr and see them. The last time he came down, Frank was staying at a place popularly called Pitchley’s Farm. Old Pitchley—who had lived on it, boy and man, for seventy years—liked him well. Frank made acquaintance that time with Annet Skate; fell in love with her, in fact, and meant to marry her. She was a pretty girl, and a good girl, and had been brought up to be thoroughly useful as a farmer’s daughter: but neither by birth nor position was she the equal of Frank Radcliffe. All her experienceof life lay in her own secluded, plain home: in regard to the world outside she was as ignorant as a young calf, and just as mild and soft as butter.

So Frank, after his spell of sickness and reflection, had thrown up London, and come down to settle in a farm with Annet, if he could get one. But there was not a farm to be let for miles round. And it was perhaps a curious thing that while Frank was thinking he should have to travel elsewhere in search of one, Pitchley’s should turn up. For old Pitchley suddenly died. Pitchley’s Farm belonged to Mr. Brandon. It was a small compact farm; just the size Frank wanted. A large one would have been beyond his means.

Mr. Brandon sat writing letters at the table in his library, in his geranium-coloured Turkish cap, with its purple tassel, when his servant went in with the card.

“Mr. Francis Radcliffe!” read he aloud, in his squeaky voice.“What, is he down here again? You can bring him in, Abel—though I’m sure I don’t know what he wants with me.” And Abel went and brought him.

“We heard you were ill, young man,” said Mr. Brandon, peering up into Frank’s handsome face as he shook hands, and detecting all sorts of sickly signs in it.

“So I have been, Mr. Brandon; very ill. But I have left London and its dissipations for good, and have come here to settle. It’s about time I did,” he added, with the candour natural to him.

“I should say it was,” coughed old Brandon. “You’ve been on the wrong tack long enough.”

“And I have come to you—I hope I am first in the field—to ask you to let me have the lease of Pitchley’s Farm.”

Mr. Brandon could not have felt more surprised had Frank asked for a lease of the moon, but he did not show it. His head went up a little, and the purple tassel took a sway backwards.

“Oh,” said he. “You take Pitchley’s Farm! How do you think to stock it?”

“I shall take to the stock at present on it, as far as my means will allow, and give a bond for the rest. Pitchley’s executors will make it easy for me.”

“What are your means?” curtly questioned old Brandon.

“In all, they will be two thousand pounds. Taking mine and Miss Skate’s together.”

“That’s a settled thing, is it, Master Francis?”—alluding to the marriage.

“Yes, it is,” said Frank. “Her portion is just a thousand pounds, and her friends are willing to put it on the farm. Mine is another thousand.”

“Where does yours come from?”

“Do you recollect, Mr. Brandon, that when I was a little fellow at school I had a thousand pounds left me by a clergyman—a former friend of my grandfather Elliot?”

Mr. Brandon nodded. “It was Parson Godfrey. He came down once or twice to the Torr to see your mother and you.”

“Just so. Well, his widow has now recently died; she was considerably younger than he; and she has left me another thousand. If I can have Pitchley’s Farm, I shall be sure to get on at it,” he added in his sanguine way. For, if ever there was a sanguine, sunny-natured fellow in this world, it was Frank Radcliffe.

Old Brandon pushed his geranium cap all aside and gave a flick to the tassel. “My opinion lies the contrary way, young man: that you will be sure not to get on at it.”

“I understand all about farming,” said Frank eagerly. “And I mean to be as steady as steady can be.”

“To begin with a debt on the farm will cripple the best man going, sir.”

“Oh, Mr. Brandon, don’t turn against me!” implored Frank, who was feeling terribly in earnest. “Give me a chance! Unless I can get some constant work, some interest to occupy my hands and my mind, I might be relapsing back to the old ways again from sheer ennui. There’s no resource but a farm.”

Mr. Brandon did not seem to be in a hurry to answer. He was looking straight at Frank, and nodding little nods to himself, following out some mental argument. Frank leaned forward in his chair, his voice low, his face solemn.

“When my poor mother was dying, I promised her to give up bad habits, Mr. Brandon. I hope—I think—I fully intend to do so now. Won’t you help me?”

“What do you wish me to understand by ‘bad’ habits, young man?” queried Mr. Brandon in his hardest tones. “What have been yours?”

“Drink,” said Frank shortly. “And I am ashamed enough to have to say it. It is not that I have been a constant drinker,or that I have taken much, in comparison with what very many men drink; but I have, sometimes for weeks together, taken it very recklessly. That is what I meant by speaking of my bad habits, Mr. Brandon.”

“Couldn’t speak of a worse habit, Frank Radcliffe.”

“True. I should have pulled up long ago but for those fast companions I lived amongst. They kept me down. Once amidst such, a fellow has no chance. Often and often that neglected promise to my mother has lain upon me, a nightmare of remorse. I have fancied she might be looking down upon earth, upon me, and seeing how I was fulfilling it.”

“If your mother was not looking down upon you, sir, your Creator was.”

“Ay. I know. Mr. Brandon”—his voice sinking deeper in its solemnity, and his eyes glistening—“in the very last minute of my mother’s life—when her soul was actually on the wing—she told me that she knew I should be helped to throw off what was wrong. She had prayed for it, and seen it. A conviction is within me that I shall be—has been within me ever since. I think this—now—may be the turning-point in my life. Don’t deny me the farm, sir.”

“Frank Radcliffe, I’d let you have the farm, and another to it, if I thought you were sincere.”

“Why—you can’t think me not sincere, after what I have said!” cried Frank.

“Oh, you are sincere enough at the present moment. I don’t doubt that. The question is, will you be sincere in keeping your good resolutions in the future?”

“I hope I shall. I believe I shall. I will try with all my best energies.”

“Very well. You may have the farm.”

Frank Radcliffe started up in his joy and gratitude, and shook Mr. Brandon’s hands till the purple tassel quivered. He had a squeaky voice and a cold manner, and went in for coughs and chest-aches, and all kinds of fanciful disorders; but there was no more generous heart going than old Brandon’s.

Business settled, the luncheon was ordered in. But Frank was a good deal too impatient to stay for it; and drove away in the pony-gig to impart the news to all whom it might concern. Taking a round to the Torr first, he drove into the back-yard. Stephen came out.

Stephen looked quite old now. He must have been fifty years of age. Hard and surly as ever was he, and his stock of hair was as grizzled as his father’s used to be before Frank was born.

“Oh, it’s you!” said Stephen, as civilly as he could bring his tongue to speak. “Whose chay and pony is that?”

“It belongs to Pitchley’s bailiff. He lent it me this morning.”

“Will you come in?”

“I have not time now,” answered Frank. “But I thought I’d just drive round and tell you the news, Stephen. I’m going to have Pitchley’s Farm.”

“Who says so?”

“I have now been settling it with Mr. Brandon. At first, he seemed unwilling to let me have it—was afraid, I suppose, that I and the farm might come to grief together—but he consented at last. So I shall get in as soon as I can, and take Annet with me. You’ll come to our wedding, Stephen?”

“A fine match she is!” cried cranky Stephen.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t say as anything’s the matter with her. But you have always stuck up for the pride and pomp of the Radcliffes: made out that nobody was good enough for ’em. A nice comedown for Frank Radcliffe that’ll be—old Farmer Skate’s girl.”

“We won’t quarrel about it, Stephen,” said Frank, with his good-humoured smile. “Here’s your wife. How do you do, Mrs. Radcliffe?”

Becca had come out with a wet mop in her hands, which she proceeded to wring. Some of the splashes went on Frank’s pony-gig. She wore morning costume: a dark-blue cotton gown hanging straight down on her thin, lanky figure; and an old black cap adorning her hard face. It was a great contrast: handsome, gentlemanly, well-dressed, sunny Frank Radcliffe, barrister-at-law; and that surly boor Stephen, in his rough clothes, and his shabby, hard-working wife.

“When be you going back to London?” was Becca’s reply to his salutation, as she began to rinse out the mop at the pump.

“Not at all. I have been telling Stephen. I am going into Pitchley’s Farm.”

“Along of Annet Skate,” put in Stephen; whose queer phraseology had been indulged in so long that it had become habitual. “Much good they’ll do in a farm! He’d like us to go to the wedding! No, thank ye.”

“Well, good-morning,” said Frank, starting the pony. They did not give him much encouragement to stay.

“Be it true, Radcliffe?” asked Becca, letting the mop alone for a minute. “Be he a-going to marry Skate’s girl, and get Pitchley’s Farm?”

“I wish the devil had him!” was Stephen’s surly comment, as he stalked off in the wake of the receding pony-gig, giving his wife no other answer.

No doubt Stephen was sincere in his wish, though it was hardly polite to avow it. For the whole of Frank’s life, he had been a thorn in the flesh of Stephen: in the first years, for fear their father should bequeath to Frank a share of the inheritance; in the later years, because Frank had had the share! That sum of three hundred a-year, enjoyed by Frank, was coveted by Stephen as money was never yet coveted by man. Looking at matters with a distorted mind, he considered it a foul wrong done him; as no better than a robbery upon him; that the whole of the money was his own by all the laws of right and wrong, and that not a stiver of it ought to have gone to Frank. Unable, however, to alter the state of existing things, he had sincerely hoped that some lucky chance—say the little accident of Frank’s drinking himself to death—would put him in possession of it; and all the rumours that came down from London about Frank’s wild life rejoiced him greatly. For if Frank died without children, the money went to Stephen. And it may as well be mentioned here, that old Mr. Radcliffe had so vested the three hundred a-year that Frank had no power over the capital and was unable to squander it. It would go to his children when he died; or, if he left no children, to Stephen.

Never a night when he went to bed, never a morning when he got up, but Stephen Radcliffe’s hungry heart gave a dismal groan to that three hundred a-year he had been deprived of. In truth, his own poor three hundred was not enough for him. And then, he had expected that the six would all be his! He had, he said, to work like a slave to keep up the Torr, and make both ends meet. His two children were for ever tugging at his purse-strings. Tom, quitting the sea, had settled in a farm in Canada; but he was always writing home for help. Lizzy would make her appearance at home at all kinds of unseasonable times; and tell pitiful stories of the wants of her scanty ménage at Birmingham, and of her little children, and of the poor healthand short pay of her husband the curate. Doubtless Stephen had rather a hard life of it and could very well have done with a doubled income. To hear that Frank was going to settle down to a sober existence and to marry a wife, was the worst news of all to Stephen, for it lessened his good chances finely.

But he had only the will to hinder it, not the power. And matters and the year went swimmingly on. Francis entered into possession of the farm; and just a week before Midsummer Day, he married Annet Skate and took her home.

The red June sunset fell full on Pitchley’s Farm, staining the windows a glowing crimson. Pitchley’s Farm lay in a dell, about a mile from Dyke Manor, on the opposite side to Sandstone Torr. It was a pretty little homestead, with jessamine on the porch, and roses creeping up the frames of the parlour-windows. Just a year had gone by since the wedding, and to-morrow would be the anniversary of the wedding-day. Mr. and Mrs. Francis Radcliffe were intending to keep it, and had bidden their friends to an entertainment. He had carried out his resolution to be steady, and they had prospered fairly well. David Skate, one of Annet’s brothers, a thorough, practical farmer, was ever ready to come over, if wanted, and help Francis with work and counsel.

Completely tired with her day’s exertions, was Annet, for she had been making good things for the morrow, and now sat down for the first time that day in the parlour—a low room, with its windows open to the clustering roses, and the furniture bright and tasty. Annet was of middle height, light and active, with a delicate colour on her cheeks, soft brown eyes, and small features. She had just changed her cotton gown for one of pink summer muslin, and looked as fresh as a daisy.

“How tired I am!” she exclaimed to herself, with a smile.“Frank would scold me if he knew it.”

“Be you ready for supper, ma’am?” asked a servant, putting in her head at the door. The only maid kept: for both Frank and his wife knew that their best help to getting on was economy.

“Not yet, Sally. I shall wait for your master.”

“Well, I’ve put it on the table, ma’am; and I’m just going to step across now to Hester Bitton’s, and tell her she’ll be wanted here to-morrow.”

Annet went into the porch, and stood there looking out for her husband, shading her eyes with her hand from the red glare.Some business connected with stock took him to Worcester that day, and he had started in the early morning; but Annet had expected him home earlier than this.

There he was, riding down the road at a sharpish trot; Annet heard the horse’s hoofs before she saw him. He waved his hand to her in the distance, and she fluttered her white handkerchief back again. Thorpe, the indoor man, appeared to take the horse.

Francis Radcliffe had been changing for the better during the past twelvemonth. Regular habits and regular hours, and a mind healthily occupied, had done great things for him. His face was bright, his blue eyes were clear, and his smile and his voice were alike cheering as he got off the horse and greeted his wife.

“You are late, Frank! It is ever so much past eight.”

“Our clocks are fast: I’ve found that out to-day, Annet, But I could not get back before.”

He had gone into the parlour, had kissed her, and was disincumbering his pockets of various parcels: she helping him. Both were laughing, for there seemed to be no end to them. They contained articles wanted for the morrow: macaroons, and potted lampreys, and lots of good things.

“Don’t say again that I forget your commissions, Annet.”

“Never again, Frank. How good you are! But what is in this one? it feels soft.”

“That’s for yourself,” said Frank. “Open it.”

Cutting the string, the paper flew apart, disclosing a baby’s cloak of white braided cashmere. Annet laughed and blushed.

“Oh, Frank! How could you?”

“Why, I heard you say you must get one.”

“Yes—but—not just yet. It may not be wanted, you know.”

“Stuff! The thing was in Mrs. What’s-her-name’s window in High Street, staring passers-by in the face; so I went in, and bought it.”

“It’s too beautiful,” murmured Annet, putting it reverently into the paper, as if she mistook it for a baby. “And how has the day gone, Frank? Could you buy the sheep?”

“Yes; all right. The sheep—Annet, who do you think is coming here to-morrow? Going to honour us as one of the guests?”

At the break in the sentence, Frank had flung himself into a chair, and thrown his head back, laughing. Annet wondered.

“Stephen! It’s true. He had gone to Worcester after some sheep himself. I asked whether we should have the pleasure of seeing them here, and he curtly said that he was coming, but couldn’t answer for Mrs. Radcliffe. Had the Pope of Rome told me he was coming, I should not have been more surprised.”

“Stephen’s wife took no notice of the invitation.”

“Writing is not in her line: or in his either. Something must be in the wind, Annet: neither he nor his wife has been inside our doors yet.”

They sat down to supper, full of chat: as genial married folks always are, after a day’s separation. And it was only when the house was at rest, and Annet was lighting the bed-candle, that she remembered a letter lying on the mantel-piece.

“Oh, Frank, I ought to have given it to you at once; I quite forgot it. This letter came for you by this morning’s post.”

Frank sat down again, drew the candle to him, and read it. It was from one of his former friends, a Mr. Briarly; offering on his own part and on that of another former friend, one Pratt, a visit to Pitchley’s Farm.

Instincts arise to all of us: instincts that it might be well to trust to oftener than we do. A powerful instinct, against the offered visit, rushed into the mind of Francis Radcliffe. But the chances are, that, in the obligations of hospitality, it would not have prevailed, even had the chance been afforded him.

“Cool, I must say!” said Frank, with a laugh. “Look here, Annet; these two fellows are going to take us by storm to-morrow. If I don’t want them, says Briarly, I must just shut the door in their faces.”

“But you’ll be glad to see them, won’t you, Frank?” she remarked in her innocence.

“Yes. I shall like well enough to see them again. It’s our busy time, though: they might have put it off till after harvest.”

As many friends went to this entertainment at Pitchley’s Farm as liked to go. Mr. Brandon was one of them: he walked over with us—with me, and Tod, and the Squire, and the mater. Stephen Radcliffe and his wife were there, Becca in a black silk with straps of rusty velvet across it. Stephen mostly sat still and said nothing, but Becca’s sly eyes were everywhere. Frank and his wife, well dressed and hospitable, welcomed us all; and the board was well spread with cold meats and dainties.

Old Brandon had a quiet talk with Annet in a corner of theporch. He told her he was glad to find Frank seemed likely to do well at the farm.

“He tries his very best, sir,” she said.

“Ay. Somehow I thought he would. People said ‘Frank Radcliffe has his three hundred a-year to fall back upon when he gets out of Pitchley’s’: but I fancied he might stay at Pitchley’s instead of getting out of it.”

“We are getting on as well as we can be, sir, in a moderate way.”

“A moderate way is the only safe way to get on,” said Mr. Brandon, putting his white silk handkerchief corner-wise on his head against the sun. “That’s a true saying, He who would be rich in twelve months is generally a beggar in six. You are helping Frank well, my dear. I have heard of it: how industrious you are, and keep things together. It’s not often a good old head like yours is set upon young shoulders.”

Annet laughed. “My shoulders are not so very young, sir. I was twenty-four last birthday.”

“That’s young to manage a farm, child. But you’ve had good training; you had an industrious mother”—indicating an old lady on the lawn in a big lace cap and green gown. “I can tell you what—when I let Frank Radcliffe have the lease, I took into consideration that you were coming here as well as he. Why!—who are these?”

Two stylish-looking fellows were dashing up in a dog-cart; pipes in their mouths, and portmanteaus behind them. Shouting and calling indiscriminately about for Frank Radcliffe; for a man to take the horse and vehicle, that they had contrived to charter at the railway terminus; for a glass of bitter beer apiece, for they were confoundedly dry—there was no end of a commotion.

They were the two visitors from London, Briarly and Pratt. Their tones moderated somewhat when they saw the company. Frank came out; and received a noisy greeting that might have been heard at York. One of them trod on Mr. Brandon’s corns as he went in through the porch. Annet looked half frightened.

“Come to stay here!—gentlemen from London!—Frank’s former friends!” repeated old Brandon, listening to her explanation.“Fine friends, I should say! Frank Radcliffe,”—laying hold of him as he was coming back from giving directions to his servant—“how came you to bring those men down into your home?”

“They came of their own accord, Mr. Brandon.”

“Friends of yours, I hear?”

“Yes, I knew them in the old days.”

“Oh. Well—I should not like to go shouting and thundering up to a decent house with more aboard me than I could carry. Those men have both been drinking.”

Frank was looking frightfully mortified. “I am afraid they have,” he said. “The heat of the day and the dust on the journey must have caused them to take more than they were aware of. I’m very sorry. I assure you, Mr. Brandon, they are really quiet, good fellows.”

“May be. But the sooner you see their backs turned, the better, young man.”

From that day, the trouble set in. Will it be believed that Frank Radcliffe, after keeping himself straight for ever so much more than a year, fell away again? Those two visitors must have found their quarters at Pitchley’s Farm agreeable, for they stayed on and on, and made no sign of going away. They were drinkers, hard and fast. They drank, themselves, and they seduced Frank to drink—though perhaps he did not require much seduction. Frank’s ale was poured out like water. Dozens of port, ordered and paid for by Briarly, arrived from the wine-merchant’s; Pratt procured cases of brandy. From morning till night liquor was under poor Frank’s nose, tempting him to sin. Their heads might be strong enough to stand the potions; Frank’s was not. It was June when the new life set in; and on the first of September, when all three staggered in from a day’s shooting, Frank was in a fever and curiously trembling from head to foot.

By the end of the week he was strapped down in his bed, a raving madman; Duffham attending him, and two men keeping guard.

Duffham made short work with Briarly and Pratt. He packed them and their cases of wine and their portmanteaus off together; telling them they had done enough mischief for one year, and he must have the house quiet for both its master and mistress. Frank’s malady was turning to typhus fever, and a second doctor was called in from Evesham.

The next news was, that Pitchley’s Farm had a son and heir.They called it Francis. It did not live many days, however: how was a son and heir likely to live, coming to that house of fright and turmoil? Frank’s ravings might be heard all over it; and his poor wife was nearly terrified out of her bed.

The state of things went on. October came in, and there was no change. It was not known whether Annet would live or die. Frank was better in health, but his mind was gone.

“There’s one chance for him,” said Duffham, coming across to Dyke Manor to the Squire: “and that is, a lunatic asylum. At home he cannot be kept; he is raving mad. No time must be lost in removing him.”

“You think he may get better in an asylum?” cried the Squire, gloomily.

“Yes. I say it is his best chance. His wife, poor thing, is horrified at the thought: but there’s nothing else to be done. The calmness of an asylum, the sanatory rules and regulations observed there, will restore him, if anything will.”

“How is she?” asked the Squire.

“About as ill as she can be. She won’t leave her bed on this side Christmas. And the next question is, Squire—where shall he be placed? Of course we cannot act at all without your authority.”

The Squire, you see, was Frank Radcliffe’s trustee. At the present moment Frank was dead in the eye of the law, and everything lay with the Squire. Not a sixpence of the income could any one touch now, but as he pleased to decree.

After much discussion, in which Stephen Radcliffe had to take his share, according to law and order, Frank was conveyed to a small private asylum near London. It belonged to a Dr. Dale: and the Evesham doctor strongly recommended it. The terms seemed high to us: two hundred pounds a-year: and Stephen grumbled at them. But Annet begged and prayed that money might not be spared; and the Squire decided to pay it. So poor Frank was taken to town; and Stephen, as his nearest male relative—in fact, his only one—officially consigned him to the care of Dr. Dale.

And that’s the jolly condition things were in, that Christmas, at Pitchley’s Farm. Its master in a London madhouse, its mistress in her sick-bed, and the little heir in Church Dykely churchyard. David Skate, like the good brother he was, took up his quarters at the farm, and looked after things.

It was in January that Annet found herself well enough to getupon her legs. The first use she made of them was to go up to London to see her husband. But the sight of her so much excited Frank that Dr. Dale begged her not to come again. It was, he said, taking from Frank one chance of his recovery. So Annet gave her promise not to do so, and came back to Pitchley’s sobbing and sighing.

Things went on without much change till May. News came of Frank periodically, chiefly to Stephen Radcliffe, who was the recognized authority in Dr. Dale’s eyes. On the whole it was good. The improvement in him, though slow, was gradual: and Dr. Dale felt quite certain now of his restoration. In May, the cheering tidings arrived that Frank was all but well; and Stephen Radcliffe, who went to London for a fortnight about that time and saw Frank twice, confirmed it.

Stephen’s visit up arose in this way. One Esau D. Stettin (that’s how he wrote his name), who owned land in Canada, came to this country on business, and brought news to the Torr of Tom Radcliffe. Tom had every chance of doing well, he said, and was quite steady—and this was true. Mr. and Mrs. Stephen were almost as glad to hear it as if a fortune had been left them. But, to ensure his doing well and to make his farm prosperous, Tom wanted no end of articles sent out to him: the latest improvements in agricultural implements; patent wheelbarrows, and all the rest of it. For Stephen to take the money out of his pocket to purchase the wheelbarrows was like taking the teeth from his head; but as Esau D. Stettin—who was above suspicion—confirmed Tom’s need of the things, Stephen decided to do it. He went up to London, to buy the articles and superintend their embarkation, and it was during that time that he saw Frank. Upon returning to the Torr, he fully bore out Dr. Dale’s opinion that Frank was recovering his mind, was, in fact, almost well; but he privately told the Squire some other news that qualified it.

Frank’s health was failing. While his mind was resuming its tone, his body was wasting. He was, Ste said, a mere shadow; and Dr. Dale feared that he would not last very long after complete sanity set in.

How sorry we all were, I need not say. With all his failings and his instability, every one liked Frank Radcliffe. They kept it from Annet. She was but a shadow herself: had fretted her flesh to fiddlestrings; and Duffham’s opinion was that she stooda good chance of dwindling away till nothing was left of her but a shroud and a coffin.

“Would it be of any use my going up to see him, poor fellow?” asked the Squire, sadly down in the mouth.

“Not a bit,” returned Stephen. “Dale would be sure not to admit you: so much depends on Frank’s being kept free from excitement. Why, he wanted to deny me, that Dale; but I insisted on my right to go in. I mean to see him again, too, before many days are over.”

“Are you going to London again?” asked the Squire, rather surprised. It was something new for Stephen Radcliffe to be a gad-about.

“I shall have to go, I reckon,” said Stephen, ungraciously.“I’ve to see Stettin before he sails.”

Stephen Radcliffe did go up again, apparently much against his will, to judge by the ill words he gave to it. And the report he brought back of Frank that time was rather more cheering.

The Squire was standing one hot morning in the yard in his light buff coat, blowing up Dwarf Giles for something that had gone wrong in the stables, when a man was seen making his way from the oak-walk towards the yard. The June hay-making was about, and the smell of the hay was wafted across to us on the wings of the summer breeze.

“Who’s that, Johnny?” asked the pater: for the sun was shining right in his eyes.

“It—it looks like Stephen Radcliffe, sir.”

“You may tell him by his rusty suit of velveteen,” put in Tod; who stood watching a young brood of ducklings in the duck-pond, and the agonies of the hen that had hatched them.

Stephen Radcliffe it was. He had a stout stick in his hand, and his face was of a curious leaden colour. Which, with him, took the place of paleness.

“I’ve had bad news, Mr. Todhetley,” he began, in low tones, without any preliminary greeting. “Frank’s dead.”

The Squire’s straw hat, which he chanced to have taken off, dropped on the stones. “Dead! Frank!” he exclaimed in an awestruck tone. “It can’t be true.”

“Just the first thought that struck me when I opened the letter,” said Stephen, drawing one from his pocket. “Here it is, though, in black and white.”

His hands shook like anything as he held out the letter. It was from one of the assistants at Dale’s—a Mr. Pitt: the head doctor, under Dale, Stephen explained. Frank had died suddenly, it stated, without warning of any kind, so that there was no possibility of apprising his friends; and it requested Mr. Radcliffe to go up without delay.

“It is a dreadful thing!” cried the Squire.

“So it is, poor fellow,” agreed Stephen. “I never thought it was going to end this way; not yet awhile, at any rate. For him, it’s a happy release, I suppose. He’d never ha’ been good for anything.”

“What has he died of?” questioned Tod.

The voice, or the question, seemed to startle Stephen. He looked sharply round, as if he hadn’t known Tod was there, an ugly scowl on his face.

“I expect we shall hear it was heart disease,” he said, facing the Squire and turning his back upon Tod.

“Why do you say that, Mr. Radcliffe? Was anything the matter with his heart?”

“Dale had some doubts of it, Squire. He thought that was the cause of his wasting away.”

“You never told us that.”

“Because I never believed it. A Radcliffe never had a weak heart yet. And it’s only a thought o’ mine: he might have died from something else. Laid hands on himself, maybe.”

“For goodness’ sake don’t bring up such an ill thought as that,” cried the pater explosively. “Wait till you know.”

“Yes, I must wait till I know,” said Stephen, sullenly.“And a precious inconvenience it is to me to go up at this moment when my hay’s just cut! Frank’s been a bother to me all his life, and he must even be a bother now he’s dead.”

“Shall I go up for you?” asked the Squire: who in his distress at the sudden news would have thought nothing of offering to start for Kamschatka.

“No good if you did,” growled Stephen, folding up the letter that the pater handed back to him. “They’d not as much as release him to be buried without me, I expect. I shall bring him down here,” added Stephen, jerking his head in the direction of the churchyard.

“Yes, yes, poor fellow—let him lie by his mother,” said the Squire.

Stephen said a good-morrow, meant for the whole of us; and had rounded the duck-pond on his exit, when he stopped, and turned back again to the pater.

“There’ll be extra expenses, I suppose, up at Dale’s. Have I your authority to discharge them?”

“Of course you have, Mr. Radcliffe. Or let Dale send in the account to me, if you prefer it.”

He went off without another word, his head down; his thick stick held over his shoulder. Tho Squire rubbed his face, and wondered what on earth was the next thing to do in this unhappy crisis.

Annet was in Wales with her mother at some seaside place. It would be a dreadful shock to her. Getting the address from David Skate, the Squire wrote to break it to them in the best manner he could. But now, a mischance happened to that letter. Welsh names are difficult to spell; the pater’s pen put L for Y, or X for Z, something of that sort; and the letter went to a wrong town altogether, and finally came back to him unopened. Stephen Radcliffe had returned then.

Stephen did not keep his word, instead of bringing Frank down, he left him in London in Finchley Cemetery. “The heat of the weather,” he pleaded by way of excuse when the Squire blew him up. “There was some delay; an inquest, and all that; and unless we’d gone to the expense of lead, it couldn’t be done; Dale said so. What does it signify? He’ll lie as quiet there as he would here.”

“And was it the heart that was wrong?” asked the pater.

“No. It was what they called ‘effusion on the brain,’”replied Stephen. “Dale says it’s rather a common case with lunatics, but he never feared it for Frank.”

“It is distressing to think his poor wife did not see him. Quite a misfortune.”

“Well, we can’t help it: it was no fault of ours,” retorted Stephen: who had actually had the decency to put himself into a semblance of mourning. “The world ’ud go on differently for many of us, Squire, if we could foresee things.”

And that was the end of Francis Radcliffe!

“Finchley Cemetery!” exclaimed Mr. Brandon, when he heard it. “That Stephen Radcliffe has been at his stingy tricks again. You can bury people for next to nothing there.”

Poor Annet came home in her widow’s weeds, In health shewas better; and might grow strong in time. There was no longer any suspense: she knew the worst; that was in itself a rest. The great doubt to be encountered now was, whether she could keep on Pitchley’s Farm. Mr. Brandon was willing to risk it: and David Skate took up his abode at the farm for good, and would do his best in all ways. But the three hundred a-year income, that had been the chief help and stay of herself and Frank, was gone.

It had lapsed to Stephen. Nothing could be said against that in law, for old Mr. Radcliffe’s will had so decreed it; but it seemed a very cruel thing for every shilling to leave her, an injustice, a wrong. The tears ran down her pale face as she spoke of it one day at Pitchley’s to the Squire: and he, going in wholesale for sympathy, determined to have a tussel with Stephen.

“You can’t for shame take it all from her, Stephen Radcliffe,”said the Squire, after walking over to Sandstone Torr the next morning. “You must not leave her quite penniless.”

“I don’t take it from her,” replied Stephen, rumpling up his grizzled hair. “It comes to me of right. It is my own.”

“Now don’t quibble, Stephen Radcliffe,” said the Squire, rubbing his face, for he went into a fever as usual over his argument, and the day was hot. “The poor thing was your brother’s wife, and you ought to consider that.”

“Francis was a fool to marry her. An unsteady man like him always is a fool to marry.”

“Well, he did marry her: and I don’t see that he was a fool at all for it. I wish I’d got the whip-hand of those two wicked blades who came down here and turned him from his good ways. I wonder how they’ll answer for it in heaven.”

“Would you like to take a drop of cider?” asked Stephen.

“I don’t care if I do.”

The cider was brought in by Eunice Gibbon: a second edition, so far as looks went, of Mrs. Stephen Radcliffe, whose younger sister she was. She lived there as servant, the only one kept. Holt had left when old Mr. Radcliffe died.

“Come, Stephen Radcliffe, you must make Annet some allowance,” said the Squire, after taking a long draught and finding the cider uncommonly sour. “The neighbours will cry out upon you if you don’t.”

“The neighbours can do as they choose.”

“Just take this much into consideration. If that little child of theirs had lived, the money would have been his.”

“But he didn’t live,” argued Stephen.

“I know he didn’t—more’s the pity. He’d have been a consolation to her, poor thing. Come! you can’t, I say, take all from her and leave her with nothing.”

“Nothing! Hasn’t she got the farm-stock and the furniture? She’s all that to the good. ’Twas bought with Frank’s money.”

“No, it was not. Half the money was hers. Look here. Unless she gets help somewhere, I don’t see how she is to stay on at Pitchley’s.”

“And ’twould be a sight better for her not to stay on at Pitchley’s,” retorted Stephen. “Let her go back to her mother’s again, over in the other parish. Or let her emigrate. Lots of folks is emigrating now.”

“This won’t do, Stephen Radcliffe,” said the Squire, beginning to lose his temper. “You can’t for shame bring every one down upon your head. Allow her a trifle, man, out of the income that has lapsed to you: let the world have to say that you are generous for once.”

Well, not to pursue the contest—which lasted, hot and sharp, for a couple of hours, for the Squire, though he kept getting out of one passion into another, would not give in—I may as well say at once that Stephen at last yielded, and agreed to allow her fifty pounds a-year. “Just for a year or so,” as he ungraciously put it, “while she turned herself round.”

And it was so tremendous a concession for Stephen Radcliffe that no one believed it at first, the Squire included. It must be intended as a thanksgiving for his brother’s death, said the world.

“Only, Ste Radcliffe is not the one to offer thanksgivings,”observed old Brandon. “Take care that he pays it, Squire.”

And thus things fell into the old grooves again, and the settling down of Frank Radcliffe amongst us seemed but as a very short episode in Church Dykely life. Stephen Radcliffe, in funds now, bought an adjoining field that was to be sold, and added it to his land: but he and his wife and the Torr kept themselves more secluded than ever. Frank’s widow took up her old strength by degrees, and worked and managed incessantly: she in the house, and David Skate out of it; to keep Pitchley’s Farm together. And the autumn drew on.

The light of the moon streamed in slantwise upon us as we sat round the bay-window. Tod and I had just got home for the Michaelmas holidays: and we sat talking after dinner in the growing dusk. There was always plenty to relate, on getting home from school. A dreadful thing had happened this last quarter: one of the younger ones had died at a game of Hare and Hounds. I’ll tell you of it some time. The tears glistened in Mrs. Todhetley’s eyes, and we all seemed to be talking at once.

“Mrs. Francis Radcliffe, ma’am.”

Old Thomas had opened the door and interrupted us. Annet came in quietly, and sat down after shaking hands all round. Her face looked pale and troubled. We asked her to stay tea; but she would not.

“It is late to come in,” she said, some apology in her tone.“I meant to have been here earlier; but it has been a busy day, and I have had interruptions besides.”

This seemed to imply that she had come over for some special purpose. Not another word, however, did she say. She just sat in silence, or next door to it: answering Yes and No in an abstracted sort of way when spoken to, and staring out into the moonlight like any one dreaming. And presently she got up to leave.

We went out with her and walked across the field; the pater, I, and Tod. Nearly every blade of the short grass could be seen as distinctly as in the day. At the first stile she halted, saying she expected to meet David there, who had gone on to Dobbs the blacksmith on some errand connected with the horses.

Tod saw a young hare scutter across the grass, and rushed after it, full chase. The moon, low in the heavens, as autumn moons mostly are, lighted up the perplexity on Annet’s face. Itwas perplexed. Suddenly she turned it on the Squire.

“Mr. Todhetley, I am sure you must wonder what I came for.”

“Well, I thought you wanted something,” said the Squire candidly. “We are always pleased to have you; you ought to have stayed tea.”

“I did want something. But I really could not muster courage to begin upon it. The longer I sat there—like a statue, as I felt—the more my tongue failed me. Perhaps I can say it here.”

It was a curious thing she had to tell, and must have soundedto the Squire’s ears like an incident out of a ghost story. The gist of it was this: an impression had taken hold of her mind that her husband had not been fairly dealt with. In plain words, had not come fairly by his end. The pater listened, and could make no sense of it.

“I can’t tell how or when the idea arose,” she said; “it seems to have floated in my mind so long that I do not trace the beginning. At first it was but the merest shadow of a doubt; hardly that; but it has grown deeper and darker, and I cannot rest for it.”

“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire. “Johnny, hold my hat a minute.”

“Just as surely as that I see that moon in the sky, sir,” she went on, “do I seem to see in my mind that some ill was wrought to Frank by his brother. Mrs. Radcliffe said it would be.”

“Dear me! What Mrs. Radcliffe?”

“Frank’s mother. She had the impression of it when she was dying, and she warned Frank that it would be so.”

“Poor Selina! But—my dear lady, how do you know that?”

“My husband told me. He told me one night when we were sitting alone in the parlour. Not that he put faith in it. He had escaped Stephen’s toils until then, he said in a joking tone, and thought he could take care of himself and escape them still. But I fear he did not.”

“Now what is it you do fear?” asked the Squire. “Come.”

She glanced round in dread, and then spoke with considerable hesitation and in a low whisper.

“I fear—that Stephen—may have—murdered him.”

“Mercy upon us!” uttered the Squire, recoiling a step or two.

She put her elbow on the stile and raised her hand to her face, showing out so pale and distressed under its white net border.

“It lies upon me, sir—a great agony. I don’t know what to do.”

“But it could not be,” cried the Squire, collecting his scared senses. “Your imagination must run away with you, child. Frank died up at Dr. Dale’s; Stephen Radcliffe was down here at the time.”

“Yes—I am aware of all that, sir. But—I believe it was as I fear. I don’t pretend to account for it; to say what Stephendid or how he did it—but my fears are dreadful. I have no peace night or day.”

The Squire stared at her and shook his head. I am sure he thought her brain was touched.

“My dear Mrs. Frank, this must be pure fancy. Stephen Radcliffe is a hard and griping man, not sticking at a trick or two where his pocket is concerned, but he wouldn’t do such a thing as this. No, no; surly as he may be, he could not be guilty of murder.”

She took her arm off the stile, with a short shiver. David Skate came into sight; Tod’s footsteps were heard brushing the grass.

“Good-night, sir,” she hurriedly said; and was over the stile before we could help her.

III

When the rumours first began, I can’t tell you. They must have had a beginning: but no one recollected when the beginning was. It was said that curious noises were heard in the neighbourhood of Sandstone Torr. One spoke of it, and another spoke of it, at intervals of perhaps a month apart, until people grew accustomed to hearing of the strange sounds that went shrieking round the Torr on a windy night. Dovey, the blacksmith, going up to the Torr on some errand, declared he had heard them at mid-day: but he was not generally believed.

The Torr was so remote from the ordinary routes of traffic, that the noises were not likely to be heard often, even allowing that there were noises to hear. Shut in by trees, and in a lonely spot, people had no occasion to pass it. The narrow lane, by which it was approached from Church Dykely, led to nowhere else; on other sides it was surrounded by fields. Stephen Radcliffe was asked about these noises; but he positively denied having heard any, except those caused by the wind. Thatshrieked around the house as if so many witches were at work, he said, and it always had as long as he could remember. Which was true.

Stephen’s inheritance of all the money on the death of his young half-brother Francis—young, compared with him—seemed to have been only the signal for him and his wife to become more unsociable, and they were bad enough before. They shut themselves up in the Torr, with that sister of hers, Eunice Gibbon, who acted as their servant, and saw no one. Neither visitors nor tradespeople were encouraged there; they preferred to live without help from any one: butcher or baker or candlestick maker. The produce of the farm supplied ordinary daily needs, and anything else that might be wanted was fetched from the village by Eunice Gibbon—as tall and strapping a woman as Mrs. Stephen, and just as grim and silent. Even the postman had orders to leave any letters that might arrive, addressed to the Torr, at Church Dykely post-office to be called for. Possibly it was a sense of their own unfitness for society that caused them to keep aloof from it. Stephen Radcliffe had always been a sullen, boorish man, in spite of his descent from the ancient Druids—or whatever the high-caste tribes might be, that he traced back from; and as to his wife, she was just as much like a lady as a pig’s like a windmill.

The story of the queer noises gained ground, and in the course of time it coursed about pretty freely. One evening in the late spring—but the report had been abroad then for months and months—a circumstance caused it to be discussed at Dyke Manor. Giles, our groom, strolling out one night to give himself an airing, chanced to get near the Torr, and came home full of it. “Twere exactly,” he declared, “like a lot o’ witches howling in the air.” Just as Stephen Radcliffe had said of the wind. The Squire told Giles it must be the owls; the servants thought Mr. Radcliffe might be giving his wife a beating; Mrs. Todhetley imagined it might be only the bleating of the young lambs. Giles protested it could come from neither owls nor lambs: and as to Radcliffe’s beating ’Becca, he’d be hardly likely to try it on, for she’d beat back again. Tod and I were at school, and heard nothing of it till we got home in summer.

“Johnny! There’s the noise!”

We two had been over to the Court to see the Sterlings; it was only the second day of our holidays; and were taking the cross-cut home through the fields, which led us past Sandstone Torr. It was the twilight of a summer’s evening. The stars were beginning to show themselves; in the north-west the colours were the most beautiful opal conceivable; the round silver moon sailed in the clear blue sky. Crossing the stile by the grove of trees that on three sides surrounded the Torr, we had reached the middle of the next field, when a sort of faint wailing cry, indescribably painful, brought us both to a standstill.

“It must be the noise they talk of,” repeated Tod.

Where did it come from? What was it? Standing on the path in the centre of the open field, we turned about and gazed around; but could see nothing to produce or cause it. It seemed to be overhead, ever so far up in the air: an unearthly, imploring cry, or rather a succession of cries; faint enough, as if the sound spent itself before it reached us, but still distinct; and just as much like what witches might be supposed to make, witches in pain, as any cries could be. I’d have given a month’s pocket-money not to have heard it.

“Is it in the Torr?” exclaimed Tod, breaking the silence.“I don’t see how that could be, though.”

“It is up in the air, Tod.”

We stood utterly puzzled; and gazing at the Torr. At as much of it, at least, as could be seen—the tops of the chimneys, and the sugar-loaf of a tower shooting up to its great height amidst them. The windows of the house and its old stone walls, on which the lichen vegetated, were hidden by the clustering old trees, in full foliage then.

“Hark! There it is again!”

The same horrible, low, distressing sound, something between a howl and a wail; enough to make a stout man shiver in his shoes.

“Is it a woman’s cry, Tod?”

“I don’t know, lad. It’s like a person being murdered and crying out for help.”

“Radcliffe can’t be tanning his wife.”

“Not he, Johnny. She’d take care of that. Besides, they’ve never been cat-and-dog. Birds of a feather: that’s what they are. Oh, by Jove! there it comes again! Just listen to it! I don’t like this at all, Johnny. It must be witches, and nothing else.”

Decidedly it must be. It came from the air. The open fields lay around, white and still under the moonlight, and nothing was on their surface of any kind, human or animal. Now again! that awful cry, rising on the bit of breeze there was, and dying away in pain to a faint echo.

“Let us go to the Torr, Johnny, and ask Radcliffe if he hears it!”

We bounded forward under the cry, which rose again andagain incessantly; but in nearing the house it seemed to get further off and to be higher than ever in the air. Leaping the gate into the lane, we reached the front-door, and seized the bell-handle. It brought Mrs. Radcliffe; a blue cap and red roses adoring her straggling hair. Holding the candle above her head, she peered at us with her small, sly eyes.

“Oh, is it you, young gentlemen? Do you want anything? Will you walk in?”

I was about to say No, when Tod pushed me aside and strode up the damp stone passage. They did not make fires enough in the house to keep out the damp. As he told me afterwards, he wanted to get in to listen. But there was no sound at all to be heard; the house seemed as still as death. Wherever the cries might come from, it was certainly not from inside the Torr.

“Radcliffe went over to Wire-Piddle this afternoon, and he’s not back yet,” she said; opening the parlour-door when we got to the hall. “Did you want him? You must ha’ been in a hurry by the way you pulled the bell.”

She put the candle down on the table. Her work lay there—a brown woollen stocking about half-way knitted.

“There is the most extraordinary noise outside that you ever heard, Mrs. Radcliffe,” began Todd, seating himself without ceremony on the old-fashioned mahogany sofa. “It startled us. Did you hear it in here?”

“I have heard no noise at all,” she answered quietly, taking up the stocking and beginning to knit standing. “What was it like?”

“An awful shrieking and crying. Not loud; nearly faint enough for dying cries. As it is not in your house—and we did not think it was, or could be—it must be, I should say, in the air.”

“Ay,” she said, “just so. I can tell you what it is, Mr. Joseph: the night-birds.”

Tod looked at her, plying the knitting-needles so quickly, and looked at me, and there was a silence. I wondered what was keeping him from speaking. He suddenly bent his head forward.

“Have you heard any talk of these noises, Mrs. Radcliffe? People say they are to be heard almost any night.”

“I’ve not heard no talk, but I have heard the noise,” she answered, whisking out a needle and beginning another of thethree-cornered rows. “One evening about a month ago I was a-coming home up the lane, and I hears a curious kind o’ prolonged cry. It startled me at the moment, for, thinks I, it must be in this house; and I hastens in. No. Eunice said she had heard no cries: as how should she, when there was nobody but herself indoors? So I goes out again, and listens,” added Mrs. Radcliffe, lifting her eyes from the stocking and fixing them on Tod, “and then I finds out what it really was—the night-birds.”

“The night-birds?” he echoed.

“’Twas the night-birds, Mr. Joseph,” she repeated, with an emphatic nod. “They had congregated in these thick trees, and was crying like so many human beings. I have heard the same thing many a time in Wiltshire when I was a girl. I used to go there to stay with aunt and uncle.”

“Well, I never heard anything like it before,” returned Tod.“It’s just as though some unquiet spirit was in the air.”

“Mayhap it sounds so afore you know what it is. Let me give you young gentlemen a drop o’ my home-made cowslip wine.”

She had taken the decanter of wine and some glasses off the sideboard with her long arms, before we could say Yes or No. We are famous for cowslip wine down there, but this was extra good. Tod took another glass of it, and got up to go.

“Don’t be frighted if you hear the noise again, now that you know what it is,” she said, quite in a motherly way. “For my part I wish some o’ the birds was shot. They don’t do no good to nobody.”

“As there is not any house about here, except this, the thought naturally arises that the noise may be inside it—until you know to the contrary,” remarked Tod.

“I wish it was inside it—we’d soon stop it by wringing all their necks,” cried she. “You can listen,” she added, suddenly going into the hall and flinging wide every door that opened from it and led to the different passages and rooms. “Go to any part of the house you like, and hearken for yourselves, young gentlemen.”

Tod laughed at the suggestion. The passages were all still and cold, and there was nothing to hear. Taking up the candle, she lighted us to the front-door. Outside stood the woman-servant Eunice, a basket on her arm, and just about to ring, Mrs. Radcliffe inquired if she had heard any noise.

“Only the shrieking birds up there,” she answered readily.“They be in full cry to-night.”

“They’ve been startling these gentlemen finely.”

“There bain’t nothing to be startled at,” said the woman, roughly, turning a look of contempt upon us. “If I was the master I’d shoot as many as I could get at; and if that didn’t get rid of ’em, I’d cut the trees down.”

“They make a queerer noise than any birds I ever heard before,” said Tod, standing his ground to say it.

“They does,” assented the woman. “That queer, that some folks believes it’s the shrieks o’ the skeleton on the gibbet.”

Pleasant! When I and Tod had to pass within a few yards of its corner. The posts of the old gibbet were there still, but the skeleton had mouldered away long ago. A bit of chain, some few inches long, adhered to its fastening in the post still, and rattled away on windy nights.

“What donkeys we were, Johnny, not to know birds’ cries when we heard them!” exclaimed Tod, as we tumbled over the gate and went flying across the field. “Hark! Listen! There it is again!”

There it was. The same despairing sort of wail, faintly rising and dying on the air. Tod stood in hushed silence.

“Johnny, I believe that’s a human cry!—I could almost fancy,” he went on, “that it is speaking words. No bird, that ever I met with, native or foreign, could make the like.”

It died away. But still occurred the obvious question, What was it, and where did it come from? With nothing but the empty air above and around us, that was difficult to answer.

“It’s not in the trees—I vow it,” said Tod; “it’s not inside the Torr; it can’t rise up from under the ground. I say, Johnny, is it a case of ghost?”

The wailing arose again as he spoke, as if to reprove him for his levity. I’d rather have met a ghost; ay, and a real ghost; than have carried away that sound to haunt me.

We tore home as fast as our heels could take us, and told of the night’s adventure. After the pater had blown us up for being late, he treated us to a dose of ridicule. Human cries, indeed? Ghosts and witches? I might be excused, he said, being a muff; but Joe must be just going back to his childhood. That settled Tod. Of all disagreeable things he most hated to be ridiculed.

“It must have been the old birds in those trees, after all,Johnny,” said he, as we went up to bed. “I think the moon makes people fanciful.”

And after a sound night’s rest we woke up to the bright sunshine, and thought no more of the cries.

That morning, being close to Pitchley’s Farm, we called in to see Mrs. Frank Radcliffe. But she was not to be seen. Her brother, David Skate, just come in to his mid-day dinner, came forward to meet us in his fustian suit. Annet had been hardly able to keep about for some time, he said, but this was the first day she had regularly broken down so as to be in bed.

“It has brought on a touch of fever,” said he, pressing the bread-and-cheese and cider upon us, which he had ordered in.

“What has?” asked Tod.

“This perpetual torment that she keeps her mind in. But she can’t help it, poor thing, so it’s not fair to blame her,” added David Skate. “It grows worse instead of better, and I don’t see what the end of it is to be. I’ve thought for some time she might go and break up to-day.”

“Why to-day?”

“Because it is the anniversary of her husband’s death, Master Johnny. He died twelve months ago to-day.”

Back went my memory to the morning we heard of it. When the pater was scolding Dwarf Giles in the yard, and Tod stood laughing at the young ducks taking to the water, and Stephen Radcliffe loomed into sight, grim and surly, to disclose to us the tidings that the post had brought in—his brother Frank’s death.

“Has she still that curious fancy in her, David?—that he did not come by his death fairly.”

“She has it in her, and she can’t get it out of her,” returned David. “Why, Master Johnny, it’s nothing but that that’s killing her. Ay, and that’s not too strong a word, sir, for I do believe she’ll die of it, unless something can be done to satisfy her mind, and give her rest,” he added earnestly. “She thinks there was foul play used in some way, and that Stephen Radcliffe was at the bottom of it.”

We had never heard a word about the fancy since that night when Annet first spoke of it at the stile, and supposed she had forgotten it long ago. The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley had often noticed how ill she looked, but they put it down to grief for Francis and to her anxiety about the farm.

“No, she has said no more since then,” observed David.“She took up an idea that the Squire ascribed it to a wandering brain; and so has held her peace since.”

“Is her brain wandering, do you think?” asked Tod.

“Well, I don’t know,” returned David, absently making little cuts at the edge of the cheese with the knife. “In all other respects she is as sane as sane can be; there’s not a woman of sounder sense, as to daily matters, anywhere. But this odd fancy has got hold of her mind; and it’s just driving her crazy. She says that her husband appears to her in her dreams, and calls upon her to help and release him.”

“Release him from what? From his grave in Finchley Cemetery?”

“From what indeed!” echoed David Skate. “That’s what I ask her. But she persists that, sleeping or waking, his spirit is always hovering near her, crying out to her to avenge him. She declares that it is no fancy. Of course it is, though.”

“I never met with such a case,” said Tod, forgetting the good cider in his astonishment. “Frank Radcliffe died up at Dr. Dale’s in London. Stephen could not have had anything to do with his death: he was down here at the time.”

“Well, Annet has the notion firmly fixed in her mind that he had, and there’s no turning her,” said David. “There will be no turning her this side the grave, unless we can free her from it. Any way, the fancy has come to such a pitch now, and is telling upon her so seriously, that something must be done. If it were not that just the busiest time has set in; the hay cut, and the wheat a’most ready to cut, I’d take her to London to Dr. Dale’s. Perhaps if she heard the account of Frank’s death from his own lips, and that it was a natural death, it might help her a bit.”

We went home full of this. The Squire was in a fine way when he heard it, and brimming over with pity for Annet. He had grown to like her; and he had always looked on Francis as in some degree belonging to him.

“Look here,” said he, in his impulsive good nature, “it will never do to let this go on: we shall have her in a mad-house too. That’s not a bad notion of David Skate’s; and if he can’t leave to take her up to London just now, I’ll take her.”

“She could not go,” said Tod. “She is in bed with low fever.”

“Then I’ll go up by myself,” stamped the Squire in his zeal.“And get Dr. Dale to write out all the particulars, and hurry down again with them to her as fast as the train will bring me. Poor thing! her disease must be a sort of mania.”

“Now, Johnny, mind you don’t make a mistake in the omnibus. Use your eyes; they are younger than mine.”

We were standing at Charing Cross in the hot afternoon sun, looking out for an omnibus that would take us westward. The Squire had lost no time in starting for London, and we had reached it an hour before. He let me come up with him, as Tod had gone to Whitney Hall.

“Here it is, sir. ‘Kensington,—Hammersmith,—Richmond.’This is the right one.”

The omnibus stopped, and in we got; for the Squire said the sun was too fierce for the outside; and by-and-by, when the houses became fewer, and the trees and fields more frequent, we were set down near Dr. Dale’s. A large house, standing amidst a huge grass-plat, shut in by iron gates.

“I want to see Dr. Dale,” said the pater, bustling in as soon as the door was opened, without waiting to be asked.

The servant looked at him and then at me; as if he thought the one or the other of us was a lunatic about to be left there.“This way, sir,” said he to the Squire and put us into a small square room that had a blue and drab carpet, and a stand of plants before the window. A little man, with deep-set dark eyes, and the hair all gone from the top of his head, soon made his appearance—Dr. Dale.

The Squire plunged into explanations in his usual confusing fashion, mixing up many things together. Dr. Dale knitted his brow, trying to make sense of it.

“I’m sure I should be happy to oblige you in any way,” said he—and he seemed to be a very pleasant man. “But I do not quite understand what it is you ask of me.”

“Such a dreadful thing, you know, if she has to be put in a mad-house too!” went on the pater. “A pretty, anxious, hard-working little woman she is, as ever you saw, Dr. Dale! We think the account in your handwriting might ease her. I hope you won’t mind the trouble.”

“The account of what?” asked the doctor.

“Only this,” explained the Squire, laying hold, in his zeal, of the doctor’s button-hole. “Just dot down the particulars ofFrancis Radcliffe’s death. His death here, you know. I suppose you were an eye-witness to it.”

“But, my good sir, I—pardon me—I must repeat that I do not understand. Francis Radcliffe did not die here. He went away a twelvemonth ago, cured.”

“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, staggering back to a chair when he had fully taken in the sense of the words, and staring about him like a real maniac. “It cannot be. I must have come to the wrong place.”

“This is Dale House, and I am Dr. Dale. Mr. Francis Radcliffe was under my charge for some months: I can’t tell exactly how many without referring to my books; seven or eight, I think; and he then left, cured, or nearly so.”

“Johnny, hand me my handkerchief; it’s in my hat. I can’t make top or tail of this.”

“I did not advise his removal,” continued Dr. Dale, who, I do believe, thought the Squire was bad enough for a patient.“He was very nearly, if not quite well, but another month here would have established his recovery on a sure basis. However, his brother insisted on removing him, and I had no power to prevent it.”

“What brother?” cried the Squire, rubbing his head helplessly.

“Mr. Radcliffe, of Sandstone Torr.”

“Johnny, I think we must all be dreaming. Radcliffe of the Torr got a letter from you one morning, doctor—in June, I think; yes, I remember the hay-making was about—saying Francis had died; here in this house, with you: and bidding him come up to see you about it.”

“I never wrote any such letter. Francis Radcliffe did not die here.”

“Well, it was written for you by one of your people. Not die! Why, you held a coroner’s inquest on him! You buried him in Finchley Cemetery.”

“Nothing of the sort, Mr. Todhetley. Francis Radcliffe was taken from this house, by his brother, last June, alive and well.”

“Well I never!—this beats everything. Was he not worn away to a skeleton before he went?—had he not heart disease?—did he not die of effusion on the brain?” ran on the Squire, in a maze of bewilderment.

“He was thin certainly: patients in asylums generally are;but he could not be called a skeleton; I never knew that he had heart disease. As to dying, he most assuredly did not die here.”

“I do think I must be lost,” cried the Squire. “I can’t find any way out of this. Can you let me see Mr. Pitt, your head assistant, doctor? Perhaps he can throw some light on it. It was Pitt who wrote the letter to Mr. Radcliffe.”

“You should see him with pleasure if he were still with me,”replied the doctor. “But he has left.”

“And Frank did not die here!” commented the Squire.“What can be the meaning of it?”

The meaning was evidently not to be found there. Dr. Dale said he could tell us no more than he had told, if he talked till night—that Francis Radcliffe was taken out by his brother. Stephen paid all charges at the time, and they went away together.

“And of course, Johnny, he is to be believed,” quoth the pater, turning himself round and round on the grass-plot, as we were going away, like a teetotum. “Dale would not deceive us: he could have no object in doing that. What in the world does it all mean?—and where is Francis? Ste Radcliffe can’t have shipped him off to Canada with the wheelbarrows!”

How the Squire whirled straight off to the train, finding one on the point of starting, and got down home again, there’s no space to tell of. It was between eight and nine, as the station clock told him, but he was in too much excitement to let the matter rest.

“Come along, Johnny. I’ll have it out with Stephen before I sleep.”

And they had it out in that same gloomy parlour at the Torr, where Tod and I had been a night or two before; frightfully gloomy to-night, for the dusk was drawing on, and hardly a bit of light came in. The Squire and Stephen, sitting opposite each other, could not see the outline of one another’s faces. Ste brazened it out.

“You’re making a hullabaloo for nothing,” said he, doggedly.“No, it’s true he didn’t die at the mad-house; he died within a week of coming out of it. Why didn’t I tell the truth about it? Why, because I knew I should get a heap o’ blame thrown back at me for taking him out—and I wished I hadn’t took him out; but ’twas no good wishing then. How was I to know that the very self-same hour he’d got his liberty, he would begin drinkingagain?—and drink himself into a furious fever, and die of it? Could I bring him to life again, do you suppose?”

“What was the meaning of that letter you brought to me, purporting to come from Dr. Dale? Answer that, Stephen Radcliffe.”

“I didn’t bring you a letter from Dr. Dale. ’Twas from Pitt; Dr. Dale’s head man. You read it yourself. When I found that Frank was getting unmanageable at the lodgings, I sent to Pitt, asking if he’d be good enough to come and see to him—I knew no other doctor up there; and Pitt was the best I could have, as he understood his case. Pitt came and took the charge; and I left Frank under him. I couldn’t afford to stay up there, with my grass waiting to be cut, and all the fine weather wasting itself away. Pitt stayed with him; and he died in Pitt’s arms; and it was Pitt that wrote the letter to tell me of it. You should ha’ gone up with me, Squire,” added Stephen, with a kind of sneer, “and then you’d have seen where he was for yourself, and known as much as I did.”

“It was an infamous deceit to put upon me, Stephen Radcliffe.”

“It did no harm. The deceit only lay in letting you think he died in the mad-house instead of out of it. If I’d not thought he was well enough to come out, I shouldn’t have moved him.’Twas his fault,” sullenly added Stephen. “He prayed me to take him away from the place; not to go away without him.”

“And where was it that he did die?”

“At my lodgings.”

“What lodgings?”

“The lodgings I stayed at while I was shipping off the things to Tom. I took Frank there, intending to bring him down home with me when I came, and surprise you all. Before I could come he was drinking, and as mad again as a March hare. Pitt had to strap him down to his bed.”

“Are you sure you did not ship him off to Tom also, while you were shipping the things?” demanded the Squire. “I believe you are crafty enough for it, Stephen Radcliffe—and unbrotherly enough.”

“If I’d shipped him off, he could have shipped himself back again, I take it,” returned Stephen, coolly.

“Where are these lodgings that he died at?”

“In London.”

“Whereabouts in London? I didn’t suppose they were in New York.”

“’Twas near Cow Cross.”

“Cow Cross! Where in the name of wonder is Cow Cross?”

“Up towards Smithfield. Islington way.”

“You give me the address, Stephen Radcliffe. I insist upon knowing it. Johnny, you can see—take it down. If I don’t verify this matter to my satisfaction, Mr. Radcliffe, I’ll have you up publicly to answer for it.”

Stephen took an old pocket-book out of his coat, went to the window to catch what little light came in, and ran his finger down the leaves.

“Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district,” read he. “That was all the address I ever knew it by.”

“Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district,” repeated the pater.“Take it down, Johnny—here’s the back of an old letter. And now, Mr. Radcliffe, will you go with me to London?”

“No. I’ll be hanged if I do.”

“I mean to come to the bottom of this, I can tell you. You shan’t play these tricks on honest people with impunity.”

“Why, what do you suspect?” roared Stephen. “Do you think I murdered him?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you did,” retorted the pater.“Find out a man in one lie, and you may suspect him of others. What was the name of the people, at these lodgings?”

Stephen Radcliffe, sitting down again, put his hands on his knees, apparently considering; but I saw him take an outward glance at the Squire from under his grey eyebrows—very grey and bushy they were now. He could see that for once in his life the pater was resolute.

“Her name was Mapping,” he said. “A widow. Mrs. Mapping.”

“Put that down, Johnny. ‘Mrs. Mapping, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district.’ And now, Mr. Radcliffe, where is Pitt to be found? He has left Dale House.”

“In the moon, for aught I can tell,” was the insolent answer.“I paid him for his attendance when we came back from the funeral—and precious high his charges were!—and I know nothing of him since.”

We said good-night to Stephen Radcliffe with as much civility as could be called up under the circumstances, and went homein the fly. The next day we steamed up to London again to make inquiries at Gibraltar Terrace. It was not that the Squire exactly doubted Stephen’s word, or for a moment thought that he had dealt unfairly by Frank: nothing of that sort: but he was in a state of explosion at the deceit Stephen Radcliffe had practised on him; and needed to throw the anger off. Don’t we all know how unbearable inaction is in such a frame of mind?

Well. Up one street, down another, went we, in what Stephen had called the Islington district, but no Gibraltar Terrace could we see or hear of. The terrace might have been in Gibraltar itself, for all the sign there was of it.

“I’ll go down to-morrow, and issue a warrant against Ste Radcliffe,” cried the Squire, when we got in, tired and heated, to the Castle and Falcon—at which inn, being convenient to the search, he had put up. “I will, Johnny, as I’m a living man. It is infamous to send us up here on a wild-goose chase, to a place that has no name, and no existence. I don’t like the aspect of things at all; and he shall be made to explain them.”

“But I suppose we have not looked in all parts of Islington,”I said. “It seems a large place. And—don’t you think, sir—that it might be as well to ascertain where Pitt is? I dare say Dr. Dale knows.”

“Perhaps it, would, Johnny.”

“Pitt would be able to testify to the truth of what Stephen Radcliffe says. We might hear it all from him.”

“And need not bother further about this confounded Gibraltar Terrace. The thought did not strike me before, Johnny. We’ll go up to Dale’s the first thing after breakfast.”

The Squire chartered a cab: he was in too much of a fever to look out for an omnibus: and by ten o’clock Dr. Dale’s was reached. The doctor was not at home, but we saw some one that the servant called Mr. Lichfield.

“Pitt?” said Mr. Lichfield—who was a tall, strong young man in a tweed suit of clothes, and had black hair parted down the middle—“Oh, he was my predecessor here. He has left.”

“Where’s he gone?” asked the Squire.

“I don’t know, I’m sure. Dr. Dale does not know; for I have once or twice heard him wonder what had become of Pitt. Pitt grew rather irregular in his habits, I fancy, and the doctor discharged him.”

“How long ago?”

“About a year, I think. I have not the least idea where Pitt is now: would be happy to tell you if I knew.”

So, there we were again—baffled. The Squire went back in the cab to the Castle and Falcon, rubbing his face furiously, and giving things in general a few hard words.

Up to Islington again, and searching up and down the streets and roads. A bright thought took the pater. He got a policeman to show him to the district sorting-house, went in, and inquired whether such a place as Gibraltar Terrace existed, or whether it did not.

Yes. There was one. But it was not in Islington; only on the borders of it.

Away we went, after getting the right direction, and found it. A terrace of poor houses, in a quiet side-street. In nearly every other window hung a card with “Lodgings” on it, or “Apartments.”Children played in the road: two men with a truck were crying mackerel.

“I say, Johnny, these houses all look alike. What is the number we want?”

“Stephen Radcliffe did not give any number.”

“Bless my heart! We shall have to knock at every one of them.”

And so he did. Every individual door he knocked at, one after the other, asking if Mrs. Mapping lived there. At the very last house of all we found her. A girl, whose clothes were dilapidated enough to have come down from Noah’s Ark, got up from her knees, on which she was cleaning the door-flag, and told us to go into the parlour while she called Mrs. Mapping. It was a tidy threadbare room, not much bigger than a closet, with “Lodgings” wafered to the middle pane of the window.

Mrs. Mapping came in: a middle-aged, washed-out lady, with pink cheeks, who looked as if she didn’t have enough to eat. She thought we had come after the lodgings, and stood curtsying, and rubbing her hands down her black-silk apron—which was in slits. Apparently a “genteel” person who had seen better days. The Squire opened the ball, and her face took a puzzled look as she listened.

“Radcliffe?—Radcliffe?” No, she did not recollect any lodger of the name. But then, nine times out of ten, she did not know the names of her lodgers. She didn’t want to know them. Why should she? If the gentlemen’s names came outincidental, well and good; if not, she never presumed to inquire after them. She had not been obliged to let lodgings always.

“But this gentleman died here—died, ma’am,” interrupted the Squire, pretty nearly beside himself with impatience. “It’s about twelve months ago.”

“Oh, that gentleman,” she said. “Yes, he did die here, poor young man. The doctor—yes, his name was Pitt, sir—he couldn’t save him. Drink, that was the cause, I’m afeard.”

The Squire groaned—wishing all drink was at the bottom of the Thames. “And he was buried in Finchley Cemetery, ma’am, we hear?”

“Finchley? Well, now yes, I believe it was Finchley, sir,”replied Mrs. Mapping, considering—and I could see the woman was speaking the truth according to her recollection. “The burial fees are low at Finchley, sir.”

“Then he did die here, ma’am—Mr. Francis Radcliffe?”

“Sure enough he did, sir. And a sad thing it was, one young like him. But whether his name was Radcliffe, or not, I couldn’t take upon myself to say. I don’t remember to have heard his name.”

“Couldn’t you have read it on the coffin-plate?” asked the Squire, explosively. “One might have thought if you heard it in no other way, you’d see it there.”

“Well, sir, I was ill myself at the time, and in a good deal of trouble beside, and didn’t get upstairs much out of my kitchen below. Like enough it was Radcliffe: I can’t remember.”

“His brother brought him—and lodged here with him—did he not?”

“Like enough, sir,” she repeated. “There was two or three of ’em out and in often, I remember. Mr. Pitt, and others. I was that ill, myself, that some days I never got out of bed at all. I know it was a fine shock to me when my sister came down and said the young man was dead. She was seeing to things a bit for me during my illness. His rantings had been pitiful.”

“Could I see your sister, ma’am?” asked the Squire.

“She’s gone to Manchester, sir. Her husband has a place there now.”

“Don’t you recollect the elder Mr. Radcliffe?” pursued the Squire. “The young man’s brother? He was staying up in London two or three times about some shipping.”

“I should if I saw him, sir, no doubt. Last year I had rare good luck with my rooms, never hardly had ’em empty. The young man who died had the first-floor apartments. Well, yes, I do remember now that some gentleman was here two or three times from the country. A farmer, I think he was. A middle-aged man, sir, so to say; fifty, or thereabouts; with grey hair.”

“That’s him,” interrupted the Squire, forgetting his grammar in his haste. “Should know the description of him anywhere, shouldn’t we, Johnny? Was he here at the time of the young man’s death, ma’am?”

“No, sir. I remember as much as that. He had gone back to the country.”

Mrs. Mapping stood, smoothing down the apron, waiting to hear what we wanted next, and perhaps not comprehending the drift of the visit yet.

“Where’s that Mr. Pitt to be found?”

“Law, sir! as if I knew!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never set eyes on him since that time. He didn’t live here, sir; only used to come in and out to see to the sick young man. I never heard where he did live.”

There was nothing more to wait for. The Squire slipped half-a-crown into the woman’s hand as we went out, and she curtsied again and thanked him—in spite of the better days. Another question occurred to him.

“I suppose the young man had everything done for him that could be? Care?—and nourishment?—and necessary attendance?”

“Surely, sir. Why not? Mr. Pitt took care of that, I suppose.”

“Ay. Well, it was a grievous end. Good-morning, ma’am.”

“Good-day to you, gentlemen.”

The Squire went looming up the street in the dumps; his hands in his pockets, his steps slow.

“I suppose, Johnny, if one tried to get at Pitt in this vast London city, it would be like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.”

“We have no clue to him, sir.”

“No. And I don’t know that it would answer any purpose if we did get at him. He could only confirm what we’ve heard. Well, this is fine news to take back to poor Annet Radcliffe!”

“I should think she had better not be told, sir.”

“She must know it some time.”

The Squire sent for David Skate when we got home, and told him what we knew; and the two marched to the Torr in the blazing June sun, and held an interview with Stephen Radcliffe. Ste was sullen and reserved, and (for him) haughty. It was a mistake, of course, as things turned out, his having taken Frank from the asylum, he admitted that, admitted he was sorry for it, but he had done it for the best. Frank got drinking again, and it was too much for him; he died after a few days of delirium, and Pitt couldn’t save him. That was the long and the short of the history; and the Squire and Skate might make the best and the worst of it.

The Squire and Skate were two of the simplest of men; honest-minded themselves, and unsuspicious of other people. They quitted the Torr for the blazing meadows, on their road home again.

“I shall not say anything about this to Annet,” observed David Skate. “In her present frame of mind it would not do. The fever seems better, and she is up, and about her work again. Later perhaps we may tell her of it.”

“I wish we could have found Pitt,” said the Squire.

“Yes, it would be satisfactory to hear what he has to say,”replied David. “Some of these days, when work is slack, I’ll take a run up to London and try and search him out. Though I suppose he could not tell us much more than the landlady has told.”

“There it is,” cried the Squire. “Even Johnny Ludlow, with his crotchets about people and his likes and dislikes, says he’s sure Mrs. Mapping might be trusted; that she was relating facts.”

So matters subsided, and the weeks and our holidays went on together. Stephen Radcliffe, by this act of deceit, added another crooked feather to his cap of ills in the estimation of the neighbourhood; though that would not be likely to trouble him. Meeting Mr. Brandon one day in the road, just out of Church Dykely, Stephen chanced to say that he wished to goodness it was in his power to sell the Torr, so that he might be off to Canada to his son: that was the land to make money at, by all accounts.

“You and your son might cut off the entail, now poor Francis is gone,” said old Brandon, thinking what a good riddance it would be if Stephen went.

“I don’t know who’d buy it—at my price,” growled Stephen.“I mean to get shut o’ them birds, though,” he added, as an afterthought. “They’re not entailed. They’ve never cried and shrieked as they do this summer. I’d as soon have an army of squalling cats around the place.”

“The noise is becoming a subject of common talk,” said old Brandon.

Ste Radcliffe bit his lips and turned his face another way, and emitted sundry daggers from his looks. “Let folks concern themselves with their own business,” said he. “The birds is nothing to them.”

Four weeks had gone by, and the moon was nearly at the full again. Its light streamed on the hedges, and flickered amidst the waving trees, and lay on the fields like pale silver. It was Sunday evening, and we had run out for a stroll before supper, Tod and I.

On coming out of church, Duffham had chanced to get talking of the cries. He had heard them the previous night. They gave him the shivers, he said, they were so like human cries. This put it into our heads to go again ourselves, which we had not done since that first time. How curiously events are brought about!

Leaping the last stile, the Torr was right before us at the opposite side of the large field, the tops of its chimneys and its towering sugar-loaf tower showing out white in the moonlight. The wind was high, blowing in gusts from the south-west.

“I say, Johnny, it’s just the night for witches. Whirr! how it sweeps along! They’ll ride swimmingly on their broomsticks.”

“The wind must have got up suddenly,” I answered. “There was none to-day. It was too hot for it. Talking of witches and broomsticks, Tod, have you read——”

He put his arm out to stop my words and steps, halting himself. We had been rushing on like six, had traversed half the field.

“What’s that, Johnny?” he asked in a whisper. “There”—pointing onwards at right angles. “Something’s lying there.”

Something undoubtedly was—lying on the grass. Was it an animal?—or a man? It did not look much like either. We stood motionless, trying to make the shape out.

“Tod! It is a woman.”

“Gently, lad! Don’t be in a hurry. We’ll soon see.”

The figure raised itself as we approached, and stood confronting us. The last pull of wind that went brushing by might have brushed me down, in my surprise. It was Mrs. Francis Radcliffe.

She drew her grey cloak closer round her and put her hand upon Tod’s arm. He went back half a step: I’m not sure but he thought it might be her ghost.

“Do not think me quite out of my mind,” she said—and her voice and manner were both collected. “I have come here every evening for nearly a week past to listen to the cries. They have never been so plain as they are to-night. I suppose the wind helps them.”

“But—you—were lying on the grass, Mrs. Francis,” said Tod; not knowing yet what to make of it all.

“I had put my ear on the ground, wondering whether I might not hear it plainer,” she replied. “Listen!”

The cry again! The same painful wailing sound that we heard that other night, making one think of I know not what woe and despair. When it had died away, she spoke further, her voice very low.

“People are talking so much about the cries that I strolled on here some evenings ago to hear them for myself. In my mind’s tumult I can hardly rest quiet, once my day’s work is done: what does it matter which way I stroll?—all ways are the same to me. Some people said the sounds came from the birds, some said from witches, some from the ghost of the man on the gibbet: but the very first night I came here I found out what they were really like—my husband’s cries.”

“What!” cried Tod.

“And I believe from my very soul that it is his spirit that cries!” she went on, her voice taking as much excitement as any voice, only half raised, can take. “His spirit is unable to rest. It is here, hovering about the Torr. Hush! there it comes again.”

It was anything but agreeable, I can assure you, to stand in that big white moonlit plain, listening to those mysterious cries and to these ghostly suggestions. Tod was listening with all his ears.

“They are the very cries he used to make in his illness at the farm,” said Mrs. Radcliffe. “I can’t forget them. I should know them anywhere. The same sound of voice, the same wail of anguish: I could almost fancy that I hear the words. Listen.”

It did seem like it. One might have fancied that his name was repeated with a cry for help. “Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!” But at such a moment as this, when the nerves are strung up to concert pitch, imagination plays us all sorts of impossible tricks.

“I’ll be shot if it’s not like Frank Radcliffe’s voice!” exclaimed Tod, breaking the silence. “And calling out, too.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Francis. “I shall not be able to bear this long: I shall have to speak of it to the world. When I say that you have recognized his voice also, they will be less likely to mock at me as a lunatic. David did, when I told him. At least, I could make no impression on him.”

Tod was lying down with his ear to the ground. But he soon got up, saying he could not hear so well.

“Did Stephen kill him, do you think?” she asked, in a dread whisper, drawing closer to us. “Why, else, should his poor unquiet spirit haunt the region of the Torr?”

“It is the first time I ever heard of spirits calling out in a human voice,” said Tod. “The popular belief is, that they mostly appear in dumb show.”

He quitted us, as he spoke, and went about the field with slow steps, halting often to look and listen. The trees around the Torr in particular seemed to attract his attention, by the length of time he stared up at them. Or, perhaps, it might be at the tops of the chimneys: or perhaps at the tapering tower. We waited in nearly the same spot, shivering and listening. But the sounds never came so distinctly again: I think the wind had spent itself.

“It is a dreadful weight to have to carry about with me,” said poor Annet Radcliffe as we walked homewards. “And oh! what will be the ending? Will it be heard always?”

I had never seen Tod so thoughtful as he was that night. At supper he put down his knife and fork perpetually to fall into a brown study; and I am sure he never knew a word of the reading afterwards.

It was some time in the night, and I was fast asleep and dreaming of daws and magpies, when something shook my shoulder and awoke me. There stood Tod, his nightshirt white as snow in the moonlight.

“Johnny,” said he, “I have been trying to get daylight out of that mystery, and I think I’ve done it.”

“What mystery? What’s the matter?”

“The mystery of the cries. They don’t come from Francis Radcliffe’s ghost, but from Francis himself. His ghost! When that poor soft creature was talking of the ghost, I should have split with laughter but for her distress.”

“From Francis himself! What on earth do you mean?”

“Stephen has got him shut up in that tower.”

“Alive?”

“Alive! Go along, Johnny! You don’t suppose he’d keep him there if he were dead. Those cries we heard to-night were human cries; words; and that was a human voice uttering them, as my ears and senses told me; and my brain has been in a muddle ever since, all sleep gone clean out of it. Just now, turning and twisting possibilities about, the solution of the mystery came over me like a flash of lightning. Ste has got Frank shut up in the Torr.”

He, standing there upright by the bed, and I, digging my elbow into the counterpane and resting my cheek on my hand, gazed at one another, the perplexity of our faces showing out strongly in the moonlight.

IV

Mr. Duffham the surgeon stood making up pills and powders in his surgery at Church Dykely, the mahogany counter before him, the shelves filled with glass bottles of coloured liquids behind him. Weighing out grains of this and that in the small scales that rested beside the large ones, both sets at the end of the counter, was he, and measuring out drops with a critical eye. The day promised to be piping-hot, and his summer house-coat, of slate-coloured twill, was thrown back on his shoulders. Spare and wiry little man though he was, he felt the heat. He was rather wondering that no patients had come in yet, for people knew that this was the time to catch him, before he started on his rounds, and he generally had an influx on Monday morning.

Visitor the first. The surgery-door, standing close to the open front one, was tapped at, and a tall, bony woman entered, dressed in a big straw bonnet with primrose ribbons, a blue cotton gown and cotton shawl. Eunice Gibbon, Mrs. Stephen Radcliffe’s sister.

“Good-morning, Mr. Duffham,” she said, lodging her basketon the counter. “I’m frightfully out o’ sorts, sir, and think I shan’t be right till I’ve took a bottle or two o’ physic.”

“Sit down,” said the doctor, coming in front of the counter, preparatory to inquiring into the symptoms.

She sat down in one of the two chairs: and Duffham, after sundry questions, told her that her liver was out of order. She answered that she could have told him that, for nothing but“liver” was ever the matter with her. He went behind the counter again to make up a bottle of some delectable stuff good for the complaint, and Eunice sat waiting for it, when the surgery-door was pushed open with a whirl and a bang, and Tod and I burst in. To see Eunice Gibbon there, took us aback. It seemed a very curious coincidence, considering what we had come about.

“Well, young gentlemen,” quoth Duffham, looking rather surprised, and detecting our slight discomfiture, “does either of you want my services?”

“Yes,” said Tod, boldly; “Johnny does: he has a headache. We’ll wait, Mr. Duffham.”

Leaning on the counter, we watched the progress of the making-up in silence, Duffham exchanging a few words with Eunice Gibbon at intervals. Suddenly he opened upon a subject that caused Tod to give me a private dig with his elbow.

“And how were the cries last night?” asked Duffham. “Did you hear much of them?”

“There was no cries last night,” answered Eunice—which brought me another dig from Tod. “But wasn’t the wind high! It went shrieking round the Torr like so many mad cats. Two spoonfuls twice a-day, did you say, sir?”

“Three times a-day. I am putting the directions on the bottle. You will soon feel better.”

“I’ve been subject to these bilious turns all my life,” she said, speaking to me and Tod. “But I don’t know when I’ve had as bad a one as this. Thank ye, sir.”

Taking the bottle of physic, she put it into her basket, said good-morning, and went away. Duffham came to the front, and Tod jumped on the counter and sat there facing us, his long legs dangling. I had taken one of the chairs.

“Mr. Duffham, what do you think we have come about?”began Tod, dropping his voice to a mysterious key. “Don’t you go and faint away when you hear it.”

“Faint away!” retorted old Duffham.

“I’ll be shot if it would not send some people into a faint! That Gibbon woman has just said that no cries were to be heard last night.”

“Well?”

“Well, there were cries; plenty of them. And awful cries they were. I, and Johnny, and Mrs. Frank Radcliffe—yes, she was with us—stood in that precious field listening to them till our blood ran cold. You heard them, you know, on Saturday night.”

“Well?” repeated Duffham, staring at Tod.

“Look here. We have found it out—and have come over to tell you—and to ask you what can be done,” went on Tod earnestly, jumping off the counter and putting his back against the door to make sure of no interruption. “The cries come from Frank Radcliffe. He is not dead.”

“What?” shouted Duffham, who had turned to face Tod and stood in the middle of the oil-cloth, wondering whether Tod was demented.

“Frank is no more dead than I am. I’d lay my life upon it. Stephen Radcliffe has got him shut up in the tower; and the piteous cries are his—crying for release.”

“Bless my heart and mind!” exclaimed Duffham, backing right against the big scales. “Frank Radcliffe alive and shut up in the tower! But there’s no way to the tower. He could not be got into it.”

“I don’t care. I know he is there. That huzzy, now gone out, does well to say no cries were abroad last night; her business is to throw people off the scent. But I tell you, Duffham, the cries never were so loud or so piteous, and I heard what they said as distinctly as you can hear me speak now.‘Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!’ they said. And I swear the voice was Frank’s own.”

“If ever I heard the like of this!” ejaculated Duffham. “It is really not—not to be credited.”

“The sound of the cries comes out on the air through the openings in the tower,” ran on Tod, in excitement. “Oh, he is there, poor fellow, safe enough. And to think what long months he has been kept there, Stephen’s prisoner! Twelve. Twelve, as I’m alive. Now, look you here, Duffham! you are staring like an unbeliever.”

“It’s not altogether that—that I don’t believe,” said Duffham, whose wide-open eyes were staring considerably. “I am thinking what is to be done about it—how to set the question at rest.”

Tod left the door unguarded and flung himself into the other chair. He went over the whole narrative quietly: how Mrs. Frank Radcliffe—who had been listening to the cries for a week past—had first put him into a puzzle, how he had then heard the words and the voice, and how the true explanation came flashing into his mind later. With every sentence, Duffham grew more convinced, and at last he believed it as much as we did.

“And now how is he to be got out?” concluded Tod.

Holding a council together, we decided that the first step must be to get a magistrate’s order to search the Torr. That involved the disclosure of the facts to the magistrate—whosoever he might be. Mr. Brandon was pitched upon: Duffham proposed the Squire at first; but, as Tod pointed out, the Squire would be sure to go to work in some hot and headlong manner, and perhaps ruin all. Let Stephen Radcliffe get only half an inkling of what was up, and he might contrive to convey Frank to the ends of the earth.

All three of us started at once, Duffham leaving his patients for that one morning to doctor themselves, and found Mr. Brandon at breakfast. He had been distracted with face-ache all night, he said, which caused him to rise late. The snow-white table-cloth was set off with flowers and plate, but the fare was not luxurious. The silver jug held plenty of new milk, the silver tea-pot a modicum of the weakest of tea, the silver rack the driest of dry toast. A boiled egg and the butter-dish remained untouched. One of the windows was thrown up wide to the summer air, and to the scent from the clustering flower-beds and the hum of the bees dipping over them to sip their sweets.

Breaking off little bits of toast, and eating them slowly, Mr. Brandon listened to the tale. He did not take it in. That was check the first. And he would not grant a warrant to search the Torr. That was check the second.

“Stephen Radcliffe is bad enough in the way of being sullen and miserly,” said he. “But as to daring such a thing as this, I don’t think he would. Pass his brother off to the world for dead, and put him into his house and keep him there in concealment! No. No one of common sense would believe it.”

Tod set on again, giving our experience of the past night,earnestly protesting that he had recognized Frank’s voice, and heard the words it said—“Help! Frank Radcliffe!” He added that Annet Radcliffe, Frank’s widow—or wife, whichever it might turn out to be—had been listening to the cries for days past and knew them for her husband’s: only she, poor daft woman, took them to come from his ghost. Mr. Brandon sipped his tea and listened. Duffham followed on: saying that when he heard the cries on Saturday night, in passing the Torr on his way from the Court, he could then almost have staked his existence upon their being human cries, proceeding from some human being in distress, but for the apparent impossibility of such a thing. And I could see that an impression was at length made on Mr. Brandon.

“If Stephen Radcliffe has done so infamous an act, he must be more cruel, more daring than man ever was yet,” remarked he, in answer. “But I must be more satisfied of it before I sign the warrant you ask for.”

Well, there we sat, hammering at him. That is, they did. Being my guardian, I did not presume to put in a word edgeways, so far as pressing him to act went. In all that he thought right, and in spite of his quiet manner and his squeaky voice, old Brandon was a firm man, not to be turned by argument.

“But won’t you grant this warrant, sir?” appealed Tod for the tenth time.

“I have told you, no,” he replied. “I will not at the present stage of the affair. In any case, I should not grant it without consulting your father——”

“He is so hot-headed,” burst in Tod. “He’d be as likely as not to go off knocking at the Torr door without his hat, demanding Frank Radcliffe.”

“Mr. Todhetley was Frank Radcliffe’s trustee, and he is your father, young man; I do not stir a step in this matter without consulting him,” returned old Brandon, coolly persistent.

Well, there was nothing for it now but to go back home and consult the pater. It seemed like a regular damper—and we were hot and tired besides. Tod in his enthusiasm had pictured us storming the Torr at mid-day, armed with the necessary authority, and getting out Frank at once.

Mr. Brandon ordered his waggonette—a conveyance he did not like, and scarcely ever used himself, leaving it to the servants for their errands—and we all drove back to Dyke Manor, himself included. To describe the astonishment of the pater when the disclosure was made to him would take a strong pen. He rubbed his face, and blustered, and stared around, and then told Tod he was a fool.

“I know I am in some things,” said Tod, as equably as old Brandon could have put it; “but I’m not in this. If Frank Radcliffe is not alive in that tower of Stephen’s, and calling out nightly for his release, you may set me down as a fool to the end of my days, Father.”

“Goodness bless us all!” cried the poor bewildered Squire.“Do you believe this, Brandon?”

Mr. Brandon did not say whether he believed it or not. Both of them shook their heads about granting a warrant: upon which, Tod passionately asked whether Francis Radcliffe was to be left in the tower to die. It was finally decided that we should go in a body that night to the field again, so as to give the two doubters the benefit of hearing anything there might be to hear. And Mr. Brandon stayed with us for the day, telling his coachman to come back at night with the small pony-gig to take him home.

The moon was just as bright as on the previous night, and we started on our expedition stealthily. Tod and I went first; Duffham came strolling next; and the Squire and Mr. Brandon afterwards. Should Stephen Radcliffe or any of his people catch sight of the whole of us moving together, he might suspect there was something in the wind.

Annet did not make her appearance, which was a great relief. For we could talk without restraint; and it would never have done to let her know what we suspected: and so raise wild hopes within her that might not be fulfilled. We knew later that her mother was at Pitchley’s Farm that evening, and it kept Annet at home.

Was Heaven interfering in Frank’s behalf? It does interfere for the oppressed, you know; ay, more often than we heedless and ungrateful mortals think for. Never had the cries been so plain as they were this night, though there was no wind to waft them downwards, for the air was perfectly still: and the words were distinctly heard. “Help! Help! Frank Radcliffe.”

“Mercy upon us!” exclaimed the Squire, under his breath.“The voice does sound like Frank’s.”

Mr. Brandon was standing with his hand to his ear. Duffham leaned on his gold-headed cane, his face lifted upwards.

Tod stood by in dudgeon; he was angry with them for not having believed him at first.

“I think we may grant a search-warrant, Squire,” said Mr. Brandon.

“And send old Jones the constable, to execute it,” assented the Squire.

Tod flung back his head. “Old Jones! Much use he’d be! Why, father, Eunice Gibbon alone could settle old Jones with his shaky legs. She’d pitch him out at the first window.”

“Jones can take help, Joe.”

******

It was the breakfast hour at the Torr, eight o’clock. The meal was being taken in the kitchen. Less semblance of gentility than even in the former days was kept up; all usages of comfort and refinement had departed with old Mr. Radcliffe and Selina. Stephen was swallowing his eggs and rashers of bacon quickly. Tuesday is Alcester market-day, and he was going in to attend it, expecting to sell some of his newly-gathered crop of hay. Mrs. Stephen sat opposite him, eating bacon also; and Eunice Gibbon stood at the dresser, mixing some meal for the fattening of fowls. Miserly though Stephen was by nature, he liked a good table, and took care to have it.

“Could you bring some starch home, master?” asked Eunice, turning her head round to speak.

“Why can’t you get your starch here?” retorted Stephen.

“Well, it’s a farthing less a pound at Alcester than it is at Church Dykely,” said Eunice. “They’ve rose it here.”

Farthings were farthings in Stephen’s eyes, and he supposed he might as well bring the starch. “How much is wanted of it?” he growled.

“We’d better have a pound,” interposed Becca. “Half pounds don’t get the benefit of the farthing: you can’t split a farthing in two. Shall you be home early?” she continued to her husband.

“Don’t know. Not afore afternoon.”

“Because we shall want some of the starch to-day. There’s none to go on with, is there, Eunice?”

“Yes, there’s a bit. I can make it do.”

“You’ll have to wait till you get it,” remarked Stephen as he pushed his plate away and rose from table. “And mind you don’t forget to give the pigs their dinner.”

“What’ll be wanted up there to-day?” inquired Becca, pointing towards some invisible place over-head, possibly intending to indicate the tower.

“Nothing but dinner,” said Stephen. “What should there be? I shall be back afore tea-time.”

He went out at the back-door as he spoke, gave a keen look or two around his yard and premises generally, to see that all was right, and presently trotted away on horseback. A few minutes later, Jim, the only regular man kept, was seen to cross the yard towards the lane with the horse and cart.

“Where be you off to, Jim?” demanded Becca, stalking to the door and speaking at the top of her voice.

“Master ordered me to go after that load o’ manure,” called back Jim, standing upright in the cart and arresting the horse for a moment.

“What, this morning?”

“It’s what he telled me.”

“Well, don’t go and make a day’s work of it,” commanded Mrs. Stephen. “There’s a sight o’ things a-waiting to be done.”

“I can’t be back afore two, hasten as I ’ool,” returned Jim, giving the horse his head and clattering off.

“I wonder what the master sent him to-day for, when he’s away himself?” cried Becca to her sister, returning to the table in the kitchen.

“Well, he got a message last night to say that if he didn’t send for it away to-day it wouldn’t be kept for him,” said Eunice. “It’s a precious long way to have to go for a load o’manure!”

“But then we get it for the fetching; there’s naught to pay,”returned Becca.

She had begun to wash up the breakfast-things, and when that was done she put the kitchen to rights. Eunice seemed to be at all sorts of jobs, indoors and out, and went stalking about in pattens. The furnace had been lighted in the brewhouse, for Eunice had a day’s washing before her. Becca went up to make the beds, and brought down sundry armfuls of clothes for the wash. About ten o’clock she appeared in the brewhouse with her bonnet and shawl on. Eunice was standing at the tub in her pattens, rubbing away at the steaming soap-suds.

“Why, where be you going?” she exclaimed in evident surprise.

“I’m a-going over to Dick’s to fetch Beccy,” replied Mrs. Stephen. “It’s a long while since she was here. Ste don’t care to see children about the place. The child shall stop to dinner with us and can go home by herself in the afternoon. What’s the matter now, Eunice Gibbon? Don’t it please ye?”

“Oh, it pleases me well enough,” returned Eunice, who was looking anything but pleased, and splashing both hands desperately about in the water, over one of Stephen’s coloured cotton handkerchiefs. “The child can come, and welcome, for me. ’Tain’t that.”

“It’s some’at else then,” remarked Becca.

“Well, I’d wanted to get a bit o’ talk with ye,” said Eunice.“That’s what it is. The master’s safe off, and it was a good opportunity for it.”

“What about?”

Eunice Gibbon took her hands out of the soap-suds and rested them on the sides of the tub, while she answered—coming to the point at once.

“I’ve been a-thinking that I can’t stop on here, Becca. I bain’t at ease. Many a night lately I have laid awake over it. If anything comes out about—you know what—we might all of us get into trouble.”

“No fear,” said Becca.

“Well, I says there is fear. Folks have talked long enough; but it strikes me they won’t be satisfied with talking much longer: they’ll be searching out. Only yesterday morning when I was waiting at Duffham’s while he mixed up the stuff, he must begin upon it. ‘Did ye hear the cries last night?’ says he—or something o’ that. ‘No,’ says I in answer; ‘there was none to hear, only the wind.’ Them two young gents from the Manor was there, cocking up their ears at the words. I see ’em.”

Rebecca Radcliffe remained silent. Truth to tell, she and Stephen were getting afraid of the cries themselves. That is, of what the cries might result in.

“He ought to be got away,” resumed Eunice.

“But there’s no means o’ getting him away.”

“Well, I can’t feel comfortable, Becca; not safe, you know. So don’t you and the master be put out if I walks myself off one o’ these here first fine days. When I come here, I didn’t bargain for nothing o’ this sort.”

“There’s no danger of ill turning up,” flashed Becca, bravingout the matter with scorn. “The cries is took to come from the birds: who is to pick up any other notion, d’ye suppose? I’ll tell ye what it is, Eunice: that jaundiced liver of yours is tormenting you. You’ll be afeared next of your own shadda.”

“Perhaps it is,” acknowledged Eunice, dropping the argument and resuming her rubbing. “I know that precious physic of old Duffham’s is upsetting me. It’s the nausiousest stuff I ever took.”

Mrs. Stephen stalked out of the kitchen and betook herself across the fields, towards her brother’s. Richard Gibbon had succeeded to his late father’s post of gamekeeper to the Chavasses. The gamekeeper’s lodge was more than a mile away; and Mrs. Stephen strode off, out of sight, unconscious of what was in store for the Torr.

Eunice went on with her washing, deep in thought. She had fully made up her mind to quit the Torr; but she meant to break the fact by degrees to its master and mistress. Drying her hands for the temporary purpose of stirring-up and putting more slack on the furnace fire, she was interrupted by a gentle ring at the front-door bell.

“Why, who on earth’s that?” she exclaimed aloud. “Oh, it must be Lizzy,” with a flash of recollection: “she sent word she should be over to-day or to-morrow. How early she have got here!”

Free of all suspicion, glancing at no ill, Eunice went through the passages and opened the front-door. Quite a small crowd of people stood there, and one or two of them pushed in immediately. Mr. Duffham, Tod, I, the Squire, old Jones, and old Jones’s man, who was young, and active on his legs. The Squire would come, and we were unable to hinder him.

“In the Queen’s name!” cried old Jones—who always used that formula on state occasions. And Eunice Gibbon screamed long and loud.

To oppose our entrance was not to be thought of. We had entered and could not be thrust back again. Eunice took to her heels up the passage, and confronted us at the parlour-door with a pair of tongs. Duffham and Tod disarmed her. She then flew to the kitchen, sat down, and went into hysterics. Old Jones read out the authority for the search, but she only screamed the louder.

They left her to get out of the screaming at her leisure, andwent up, seeking the entrance to the tower. It was found without much difficulty: Tod was the one to see it first. A small door (only discovered by Stephen Radcliffe since his father’s death, as we heard later) led from a dark and unused lumber-room to the narrow stairs of the tower. In its uppermost compartment, a little, round den, sat Frank Radcliffe, chained to the wall.

Not at once could we take in the features of the scene; for, all the light came in through the one long narrow opening, a framed loophole without glass, that was set in the deep round wall of the tower. A mattress was spread on the floor, with a pillow and blankets; one chair stood close to a box that served for a table, on which he no doubt eat his meals, for there were plates and food on it; another box, its lid open, was in a corner, and on the other chair sat Frank. That was every earthly article the place contained. It was through that opening—you could not call it a window—that Frank’s cries for help had gone forth to the air. There he sat, the chain round his waist, turning his amazed eyes upon us.

And raving mad, you ask? No. He was all skin and bone, and his fair hair hung down like that of a wild man of the woods, but he was as sane as you or I. He rose up, the chain clanking, and then we saw that it was long enough to admit of his moving about to any part of the den.

“Oh, God bless you, Frank!—we have come to release you,”burst forth the Squire, impetuously seizing both his hands.“God help you, my poor lad!” And Frank, what with surprise and the not being over stout, burst into joyous tears.

The ingenious scheme of taking possession of Frank, and representing him as dead, that he might enjoy all the money, had occurred to Stephen Radcliffe when he found Frank was recovering under Dr. Dale’s treatment. During the visits Stephen paid to London at that time, he and Pitt, Dr. Dale’s head man, became very intimate: and when Pitt was discharged from Dr. Dale’s they grew more so. Stephen Radcliffe would not perhaps have done any harm to Frank in the shape of poison or a dagger, being no more of a killer and slayer of men than were his neighbours; but to keep him concealed in the Torr, so as to reap the benefit himself of all the money, he looked upon as a very venial crime indeed—quite justifiable, so to say.Especially, if he could escape being found out. And this fine scheme he perfected and put in practice, and successfully carried through.

How much of it he confided to Pitt, or how much he did not, will never be known. Certain it was, that Pitt wrote the letter announcing Frank’s death; though we could not find out that he had helped it in any other way. But a very curious coincidence attended the affair; one that aided Stephen’s plans materially; and but for its happening I do not see that they could have succeeded when inquiries were made. In the London house where Stephen lodged (Gibraltar Terrace, that I and the Squire had a two days’ hunt to find) there came to live a young man, who was taken ill close upon his entrance with a malady arising from his habits of drinking. Pitt, coming often to Gibraltar Terrace then with Stephen Radcliffe, took to attend on the young man out of good nature, doing for him all that could be done. It was this young man who died, and was buried in Finchley Cemetery; and of whose death the landlady with the faded face and black silk apron spoke to the Squire, thereby establishing in our minds the misapprehension that it was Francis Radcliffe. Stephen did not take Frank to the lodgings at all; he brought him straight down to the Torr when he was released from Dr. Dale’s, taking care to get out at a remote country station in the dusk of evening, where his own gig, conveyed thither by Becca, was in waiting. He laid his plans well, that crafty Stephen! And, once he had got Frank securely into that upper den, he might just have kept him there for life, but for that blessed outlet in the wall, and no one been any the wiser.

Stephen Radcliffe did not bargain for that. It nearly always happens that in doing an ill deed we overreach ourselves in some fatal way. Knowing that no sound, though it were loud enough to awaken the seven sleepers, could penetrate from that upper room through the massive walls of the house, and be heard below, Stephen thought his secret was safe, and that Frank might call out, if he would, until Doomsday. It never occurred to him that the cries could get out through that unglazed window in the tower wall, and set the neighbourhood agog with curiosity. They did, however: and Stephen, whatever amount of dread it might have brought his heart, was unable to stop them. Not until Frank had been for some months chained in his den, did itoccur to himself to make those cries, so hopeless was he of their being heard below to any good purpose. But one winter night when the wind was howling outside, and the sound of it came booming into his ears through the window, it struck him that he might be heard through that very opening; and from that time his voice was raised in supplication evening after evening. Stephen could do nothing. He dared not brick the opening up lest some suspicion or other should be excited outside; he could not remove Frank, for there was no other secret room to remove him to, or where his cries would not have been heard below. He ordered Frank to be still: he threatened him; he once took a horsewhip to him and laid it about his shoulders. All in vain. When Frank was alone, his cries for release never ceased. Stephen and his household put it upon the birds and the wind, and what not; but they grew to dread it: and Stephen, even at this time, of discovery, was perpetually ransacking his brains for some safe means of departing for Canada and carrying Frank with him. The difficulty lay in conveying Frank out of the Torr and away. They might drug him for the bare exit, but they could not keep him perpetually drugged; they could not hinder him coming in contact with his fellow-men on the journey and transit, and Frank had a tongue in his head. No: Stephen saw no hope, no safety, but in keeping him where he was.

“But how could you allow yourself to be brought up here?—and fastened to a stake in this shameful fashion?” was nearly the first question of the Squire when he could collect his senses: and he asked it with just a touch of temper, for he was beginning to think that Frank, in permitting it, must have been as simple as the fool in a travelling circus.

“He got me up by stratagem,” answered Frank, tossing his long hair back from his face. “While we were sitting at supper the night we arrived here, he began talking about the wonderful discovery he had made of the staircase and opening to the tower. Naturally I was interested; and when Stephen proposed to show it me at once, I assented gladly. Becca came with us, saying she’d carry the candle. We got up here, and were all three standing in the middle of the floor, just where we are standing now, when I suddenly had a chain—this chain—slipped round my waist, and found myself fastened to the wall, a prisoner.”

“But why did you come to the Torr at all?” stamped the Squire, while old Jones stretched out his hands, as if puttingimaginary handcuffs on Stephen’s. “Why did you not go at once to your own home—or come to us? When you knew you were going to leave Dale’s, why didn’t you write to say so?”

“When events are past and gone we perceive the mistakes we have made, though we do not see them at the time,” answered Frank, turning his blue eyes from one to the other of us. “Dr. Dale did not wish me to quit his house quite so soon; though I was perfectly well, he said another month there would be best for me. I, however, was anxious to get away, more eager for it than I can tell you—which was only natural. Stephen whispered to me that he would accomplish it, but that I must put myself entirely in his hands, and not write to any one down here about it. He got me out, sooner than I had thought for: sooner, as he declared, than he had thought for himself; and he said we must break the news to Annet very cautiously, for she was anything but strong. He proposed to take me to the Torr for the first night of my return, and give me a bed there; and the following day the communication could be made to Annet at Pitchley’s Farm, and then I might follow it as soon as I pleased. It all seemed to me feasible; quite the right way of going to work; in fact, the only way: I thanked Stephen, and came down here with him in all confidence.”

“Good patience!” cried the Squire. “And you had no suspicions, Frank Radcliffe!—knowing what Stephen was!”

“I never knew he would do such a dastardly deed as this. How could I know it?”

“Oh, come along!” returned the Squire, beginning to stumble down the narrow, dark stairs. “We’ll have the law of him.”

The key of the chain had been found hanging on a nail outside the door, out of poor Frank’s reach. He was soon free; but staggered a little when he began to descend the stairs. Duffham laid hold of him behind, and Tod went before.

“Thank God! thank God!” he broke out with reverent emotion, when the bright sun burst upon him through the windows, after passing the dark lumber-room. “I feared I might never see full daylight again.”

“Have you any clothes?” asked Duffham. “This coat’s in rags.”

“I’m sure I don’t know whether I have or not,” replied Frank. “The coat is all I have had upon me since coming here.”

“Becca’s a beast,” put in Tod. “And I hope Stephen will have his neck stretched.”

Eunice Gibbon was nowhere to be seen below. The premises were deserted. She had made a rush to her brother’s, the gamekeeper’s lodge, to warn Becca of what was taking place. We started for Dyke Manor, Frank in our midst, leaving the Torr, and its household gods, including the cackling fowls and the dinnerless pigs, to their fate. Mr. Brandon met us at the second field, and he took Frank’s hand in silence.

“God bless you, lad! So you have been shut up there!”

“And chained to a stake in the wall,” cried the Squire.

“Well, it seems perfectly incredible that such a thing should take place in these later days. It reads like an episode of the dark ages.”

“Won’t we pay out Master Radcliffe for ’t!” put in old Jones, at work with his imaginary handcuffs again. “I should say, for my part, it ’ud be a’most a case o’ transportation to Botany Bay.”

Frank Radcliffe was ensconced within Dyke Manor (sending Mrs. Todhetley into hysterics, for she had known nothing), and Duffham undertook the task of breaking it to Frank’s wife. Frank, when his hair should have been trimmed up a little, was to put himself into a borrowed coat and to follow on presently.

Pitchley’s Farm and Pitchley’s roses lay hot and bright under the summer sunshine. Mr. Duffham went straight in, and looked about for its mistress. In the sitting-rooms, in the kitchen, in the dairy: he and his cane, and could not see her.

“Missis have stepped out, sir,” said Sally, who was scrubbing the kitchen table. “A fearful headache she have got to-day.”

“A headache, has she!” responded Duffham.

“I don’t think she’s never without one,” remarked Sally, dipping her brush into the saucer of white sand.

“Where’s Mr. Skate?”

“Him? Oh, he be gone over to Alcester market, sir.”

“You go and find your mistress, Sally, and say I particularly wish to speak with her. Tell her that I have some very good news for her.”

Sally left her brush and her sand, and went out with the message. The doctor strolled into the best parlour, and cribbed one of the many roses intruding their blooming beauty into the open window. Mr. Duffham had to exercise his patience. It seemed to him that he waited half-an-hour.

Annet came in at last, saying how sorry she was to have kept him: she had stepped over to see their carter’s wife, who was ill, and Sally had only just found her. She wore her morning gown of black and white print, with the small net widow’s cap on her bright hair. But for the worn look in her face, the sad eyes, she was just as pretty as ever; and Duffham thought so.

“Sally says you have some good news for me,” she observed with a poor, faint smile. “It must be a joke of yours, Mr. Duffham. There’s no news that could be good for me.”

“Wait till you hear it,” said he. “You have had a fortune left you! It is so good, Mrs. Frank Radcliffe, that I’m afraid to tell you. You may go into a fit; or do some other foolish thing.”

“Indeed no. Nothing can ever have much effect on me again.”

“Don’t you make too sure of that,” said Duffham. “You’ve never felt quite sure about that death of your husband, up at Dales, have you? Thought there was something queer about it—eh?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have thought it.”

“Well, some of us have been looking into it a little. And we find—in short, we are not at all sure that—that Frank did die.”

“Oh!”—her hands lifting themselves in agitation—“what is it, sir? You have come to disclose to me that my husband was murdered.”

“The contrariness of woman!” exclaimed Duffham, giving the floor a thump with his cane. “Why, Mrs. Frank Radcliffe, I told you as plainly as I could speak, that it was good news I brought. So good, that I hardly thought you could bear it with equanimity. Your husband was not murdered.”

Poor Annet never answered a word to this. She only gazed at him.

“And our opinion is that Frank did not die at all; at Dale’s, or elsewhere. Some of us think he is alive still, and—now don’t you drop down in a heap.”

“Please go on,” she breathed, turning whiter than her own cap. “I—shall not drop down.”

“We have reason to think it, Mrs. Frank. To think that he is alive, and well, and as sane in mind as you’d wish him to be. We believe it, ma’am; we all but know it.”

She let her head fall back in the chair. “You, I feel sure, would not tell me this unless you had good grounds for it, Mr.Duffham. Oh, if it may but be so! But—then—what of those cries that we heard?” she added, recollecting them. “I am sure they were his.”

“Very likely. Stephen may have had him shut up in the tower, and Frank cried out to let the world know he was there. Oh, I dare say that was it. I should not wonder, Mrs. Frank, but your husband may be here to-day.”

She rose from her seat, face lightening, hands trembling. She had caught sight through the window of a small knot of people approaching the house-door, and she recognized the cut of Frank’s fair Saxon face amongst them, and the gleam of his golden hair. Duffham knew no more till she was in Frank’s arms, sobbing and crying.

Ring! knock! shake! Shake! knock! ring! It was at the front-door of the Torr, and old Jones was doing it. He had gone there to apprehend Stephen Radcliffe, a whole posse of us at his tail—where we had no business to be—and the handcuffs in his side-pocket.

By the afternoon of the day just told of, the parish was up in arms. Had Frank Radcliffe really risen from the dead, it could scarcely have caused more commotion. David Skate, for one, was frightened nearly out of his senses. Getting in from Alcester market, Sally accosted him, as he was crossing the yard, turning round from the pump to do it, where she was washing the summer cabbage for dinner.

“The master be in there, sir.”

“What master?” asked David, halting on the way.

“Why, the master hisself, Mr. Frank. He be come back again.”

To hear that a dead man has “come back” again and is then in the house you are about to enter, would astonish most of us. David Skate stared at Sally, as if he thought she had been making free with the cider barrel. At that moment, Frank appeared at the door, greeting David with a smile of welcome. The sun shone on his face, making it look pale, and David verily and truly believed he saw Frank’s ghost. With a shout and a cry, and cheeks all turned to a sickly tremor, he backed behind the pump and behind Sally. Sally, all on the broad grin, enjoyed it.

“Why, sir, it be the master hisself. There ain’t nothing to be skeered at.”

“David, don’t you know me?” called out Frank heartily; and came forth with outstretched hands.

But David did not get his cheeks right again for a good quarter-of-an-hour. And he was in a maze of wonder all day.

A warrant had been issued for the apprehension of Stephen Radcliffe of the Torr, and old Jones started off to the Torr to execute it. As if Stephen was likely to be found there! Ringing the bell, knocking at the door, shaking the handle, stood old Jones; the whole string of us behind burning to help him. It was not answered, and old Jones went at it again. You might have heard the noise over at Church Dykely.

Presently the door was drawn slowly back by Stephen Radcliffe’s daughter—the curate’s wife. She was trembling all over and looking fit to drop. Lizzy had come over from Birmingham and learned what had taken place. Naturally it scared her. She had always been the best of the bunch; and she had, of course, not known the true secret of the cries.

“I want to see Mr. Radcliffe, if you please, ma’am,” began old Jones, putting his foot inside, so that the door should not be closed again.

“My father is not here,” she answered, shaking and shivering.

“Not here!” repeated old Jones, surreptitiously stealing one hand round to feel the handcuffs.

“There’s no one in the house but myself,” she said. “When I got here, an hour or two ago, I found the place deserted.”

“I should like to see that for myself, ma’am,” returned incredulous old Jones.

“You can,” she answered, drawing back a little. For she saw how futile it would be to attempt to keep him out.

Old Jones and some more went in to the search. Not a living creature was there but herself and the dog. Stephen Radcliffe had never been back since he started for Alcester in the morning.

In fact, Stephen was not to be found anywhere, near or distant. Mrs. Stephen was not to be found. Eunice Gibbon was not to be found. They had all made themselves scarce. The women had no doubt contrived to convey the news to Stephen while he was at Alcester, and he must have lost no time in turning his back on Warwickshire.

In a day or two, a rumour arose that Stephen Radcliffe and his wife had sailed for Canada. It proved to be true. “So much the better,” said old Jones, regaling himself, just then, with cold beef in the Squire’s kitchen. “Let him go! Good shut of bad rubbish!”

Just the sentiments that prevailed generally! Canada was the best place for Stephen the crafty. It spared us further sight of his surly face and saved the bother of a prosecution. He took only his own three hundred a-year with him; the Squire, for Frank, had resumed the receipt of the other three. And Lizzy, the daughter, with a heap of little ones at her skirts, remained in possession of the Torr until it should be taken. She had charge to let it as soon as might be.

Pitchley’s Farm resumed its bustle and its sounds of everyday, happy life. The crowds that flocked to it to shake hands with Frank and welcome his wonderful resuscitation were beyond telling. Frank had sworn a solemn oath never to drink again: he never would, God helping him. He knew that he never should, he whispered one day to Mr. Brandon, a joyous light in his face as he spoke. His mother praying for him in dying, had told him that he would overcome; she had seen that he would in that last solemn hour, for the prayer had been heard, bringing her peace. He had overcome now, he said, and he would and should overcome to the end.

And Mr. Brandon, reading the faith and the earnestness, felt as sure of it as Frank did.

Frank kept his word. And, two years later, there he was, back at the Torr again. For Stephen had died of a severely cold winter in Canada, and his son Tom had died, but not of cold, and the Torr was Frank’s.

Mrs. Stephen came back again, and took up her abode at her brother’s. She would enjoy the three hundred a-year for life, by Stephen’s will; it would then go to her daughter Lizzy—who would want it badly enough with her flock of youngsters. Becca and Eunice turned their attention to poultry, and sent rare fowls to shows, and gained prizes for them. Eunice returned long before Mrs. Stephen. She had never been out of England at all; and, finding it safe for her, put in an appearance, one winter day, at the gamekeeper’s lodge.

Frank began to make alterations at the Torr as soon as he entered it, cutting down trees, and trying to render it a little less gloomy. Annet, with a calm face of sweet content, was much occupied at that time with a young man who was just getting on his legs, propelling him before her by the help of some safety reins that she called “backstrings,” a fair child, who had the frank face and the golden curls of his father. And in all the country round about, there was not a gentleman more liked and respected than Francis Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr.

CHANDLER AND CHANDLER.

I

Standing at right angles between North Crabb and South Crabb, and from two to three miles distant, was a place called Islip. A large village or small town, as you might please to regard it; and which has not a railroad as yet.

Years and years before my days, one Thomas Chandler, who had served his articles to a lawyer in Worcester, set up in practice for himself at Islip. At the same time another lawyer, one John Paul, also set up at Islip. The two had no wish to rival one another; but each had made his arrangements, and neither of them would give way. Islip felt itself suddenly elevated to pride, now that it could boast of two established lawyers, when until then it had not possessed one, but concluded that both of them would come to grief in less than a twelve-month. At the twelve-month’s end, however, each was bearing steadily onwards, and had procured one or two valuable land agencies; in addition to the legal practice, which, as yet, was not much. So they kept themselves afloat: and if they had sometimes to eat bread-and-cheese for dinner, it was nothing to Islip.

In the second or third year, Mr. Chandler took his brother Jacob, who had qualified for a solicitor, into the office; and subsequently made him a partner, giving him a full half share. Islip thought it was an extravagantly generous thing of Mr. Chandler to do, and told him he had better be careful. And, after that, the years went on, and the Chandlers flourished. The business, what with the land agencies and other things, increased so much that it required better offices: and so Mr. Chandler, who had always lived on the premises, moved into a larger and a handsomer house some doors further up the street. Jacob Chandler had a pretty little place called North Villa, just outside Crabb, and walked to and fro night and morning. Both were married and had children. Their only sister, Mary Ann Chandler, had married a farmer in Gloucestershire, Stephen Cramp. Upon his death, a year or two afterwards, she came back and settled herself in a small farm near Islip, where she hoped to get along, having been left but poorly off. And that is enough by way of explanation.

I was only a little shaver, but I remember the commotion well. We were staying for the autumn at Crabb Cot; and, one afternoon, I, with Tod and the Squire, found myself on the Islip Road. I suppose we were going for a walk; perhaps to Islip; but I know nothing about that. All in a moment we saw a gig coming along at a frightful pace. The horse had run away.

“Here, you boys, get out of harm’s way!” cried the Squire, and bundled us over the fence into the field. “Bless my heart and mind, it is Chandler!” he added, as the gig drew nearer.“Chandler and his brother!”

Mr. Chandler was driving: we could see that as the gig flew past. He was a tall, strong man; and, perched up on the driving-cushion, looked like a giant compared with Jacob, who seemed no bigger than a shrimp beside him. Mr. Chandler’s face wore its usual healthy colour, and he appeared to retain all his presence of mind. Jacob sat holding on to the driving-cushion with his right hand and to the gig-wing with the left, and was just as white as a sheet.

“Dear me, dear me, I hope and trust there will be no accident!”groaned the Squire. “I hope Chandler will be able to hold in the horse!”

He set off back to North Crabb at nearly as fleet a pace as the horse, Tod after him, and I as fast as my small legs would take me. At the first turning we saw what had happened, for there was a group lying in the road, and people from the village were running up to it.

The horse had dashed at the bank, and turned them over. He was not hurt, the wretched animal. Jacob stood shivering in the highway, quitte pour la peur, as the French say; Mr. Chandler lay in a heap.

Jacob’s house was within a stone’s-throw, and they carried Mr. Chandler to it on a hurdle, and sent for Cole. The Squire went in with the rest; Tod and I sat on the opposite stile and waited. And if I am able to tell you what passed within the doors, it is owing to the Squire’s having been there and stayingto the end. No need was there for Cole to tell Thomas Chandler that the end was at hand: he knew it himself. There remained no hope for him: no hope. Some complicated injury had been done him inwardly, through that fiend of a horse trampling on him; and neither Cole nor all the doctors in the world could save him.

He was carried into one of the parlours and laid upon a mattress, hastily placed upon the carpet. Somebody got another gig and drove fiercely off to fetch his wife and son from Islip. He had two sons only, Thomas and George. Thomas, sixteen years old now, was in the office, articled to his father; George was at school, too far off to be sent for. Mrs. Chandler was soon with him. She had been a farmer’s daughter, and was a meek, patient kind of a woman, who gave you the idea of never having a will of her own. The office clerks went posting about Islip to find Tom; he having been out when the gig and messenger arrived.

It chanced that Jacob Chandler’s wife had gone abroad that day, taking her daughters; so the house was empty, save for the two maid-servants. The afternoon wore on. Cole had done what he could (which was nothing), and was now waiting in the other parlour with the clergyman; who had also done all that was left to do. The Squire stayed in the room; Chandler seemed to wish it; they had always liked one another. Mrs. Chandler knelt by the mattress, holding the dying hand: Jacob stood leaning against the book-case with folded arms and looking the very picture of misery: the Squire sat on the other side, nursing his knees.

“There’s no time to alter my will, Betsy,” panted poor Chandler, who could only speak by snatches: “and I don’t know that I should alter it if I had the time. It was made when the two lads were little ones. Everything is left to you without reserve. I know I can trust you to do a mother’s part by them.”

“Always,” responded Mrs. Chandler meekly, the silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You will have enough for comfort. Thoughts have crossed me at times of making a fortune for you and the lads: I was working on and laying by for it. How little we can foresee the future! God alone knows what that will be, and shapes it out. Not a day, not a day can we call our own: I see it now. With your own little income, and the interest of what I have beenable to put by, you can live. There will also be money paid to you yearly from the practice——”

He was stopped by want of breath. Could not go on.

“Do not trouble yourself to think of these things,” she said, catching up a sob, for she did not want to give way before him.“We shall have quite plenty. As much as I wish for.”

“And when Tom is out of his articles he will take my place, you know, and will be well provided for and help you,” said Mr. Chandler, taking up the word again. “And George you must both of you see to. If he has set his heart upon being a farmer instead of a clergyman, as I wished, why, let him be one. ‘If you are a clergyman, Georgy, you will always be regarded as a gentleman,’ I said to him the other day when he was at home, telling me he wanted to be a farmer. But now that I am going, Betsy, I see how valueless these distinctions are. Provided a man does his duty in the world and fears God, it hardly matters what his occupation in it is. It is for so short a time. Why, it seems only the other day that I was a boy, and now my few poor years are over, and I am going into the never-ending ages of immortality!”

“It shall all be as you wish, Thomas,” she whispered.

“Ay,” he answered. “Jacob, come here.”

Jacob let his arms drop, and left the book-case to stand close over his brother. Mr. Chandler lifted his right hand, and Jacob stooped and took it.

“When we drew up our articles of partnership, Jacob, a clause was inserted, that upon the death of either of us, the survivor should pay a hundred and fifty pounds a-year out of the practice to those the other should leave behind him, provided the business could afford it. You remember that?”

“Yes,” said Jacob. “I wish it had been me to go instead of you, Thomas.”

“The business will afford it well, as you know, and more than afford it: you might well double it, Jacob. But I suppose you will have to take an additional clerk in my place, some efficient man, and he must be paid. So we will let it be at the hundred and fifty, Jacob. Pay that sum to my wife regularly.”

“To be sure I will,” said Jacob.

“And when Tom shall be of age he must take my place, you know, and draw his full half share. That was always an understood thing between you and me, Jacob, if I were taken. Your own son will, I suppose, be coming in shortly: so that in later years, when you shall have followed me to a better world, the old firm will be perpetuated in them—Chandler and Chandler. Tom and Valentine will divide the profits equally, as we have divided them.”

“To be sure,” said Jacob.

“Yes, yes; my mind is at rest on the score of worldly things. I would that all dying men could be as much at ease. God bless and prosper you, Jacob! You’ll give a fatherly eye over Tom and George in my place, and lead them in straightforward paths.”

“That I will,” said Jacob. “I wish with all my heart this dreadful day’s work had never happened!”

“And so will I too,” put in the Squire. “I’ll look a bit after your two boys myself, Chandler.”

Mr. Chandler, drawing his hand from his brother, held it towards the Squire. At that moment, a suppressed stir was heard outside, and an eager voice. Tom had arrived: having run all the way from Islip.

“Where’s papa?—where’s he lying? Is he hurt very much?”

Cole appeared, marshalling him in. A well-grown young fellow for sixteen, with dark eyes, a fresh colour, and a good-natured face; altogether, the image of his father. Cole took a look down at the mattress, and saw how very much nearer something was at hand than it had been only a few minutes before.

“Hush, Tom,” he said, hastily pouring some drops into half a wine-glass of water. “Gently, lad. Let me give him this.”

Poor Tom Chandler, aghast at what he beheld, was too frightened to speak. A sudden stillness fell upon him, and he knelt down by the side of his mother. Cole’s drops did no good. There could be only a few last words.

“I never thought it would end thus—that I should not have time granted me for even a last farewell,” spoke the dying man in a faint voice and with a gasp between every word, as he took Tom’s hand. “Tom, my boy, I cannot say to you what I would.”

Tom gave a great burst as though he were choking, and was still the next minute.

“Do your duty, my boy, before God and man with all the best strength that Heaven gives you. You must some time lie as I am lying, Tom; it may be with as little warning of it as I have had: at the best, this life will last such a little while ascompared with life eternal. Fear God; find your Saviour; love and serve your fellow-creatures. Make up your accounts with your conscience morning and evening. And—Tom——”

“Yes, father; yes, father?” spoke poor Tom, entreatingly, as the voice died away, and he was afraid that the last words were dying away too and would never be spoken.

“Take care of your mother and be dutiful to her. And do you and George be loving brothers to each other always: tell him I enjoined it with my closing breath. Poor George! if I could but see him! And—and—and——”

“Yes, oh yes, I will; I will indeed! What else, father?”

But there was nothing else. Just two or three faint words as death came in, and a final gasp to close them.

“God be with you ever, Tom!”

That was all. And the only other thing I recollect was seeing the sister, Mrs. Cramp, come up in a yellow chaise from the Bell at Islip, and pass into the house, as we sat on the gate. But she was just too late.

You may be sure that the affair caused a commotion. So grave a calamity had never happened at North Crabb. Mr. Chandler and his brother had started from Islip in their gig to look at some land that was going to be valued, which lay a mile or two on the other side Crabb on the Worcester Road. They had driven the horse a twelvemonth and never had any trouble with him. It was supposed that something must have been wrong with the harness. Any way, he had started, kicked, backed, and finally run away.

I saw the funeral: standing with Tod in the churchyard amidst many other spectators, and reading the inscriptions on the grave-stones while we waited. Mr. Chandler had been taken back to his house at Islip, and was brought from thence to Crabb to be buried. Tom and George Chandler came in the first mourning-coach with their Uncle Jacob and his son Valentine. In the next sat two other relatives, with the Squire and Mr. Cole.

Changes followed. Mrs. Chandler left the house at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and his family moved into it. She took a pretty cottage at North Crabb, and Tom walked to the office of a morning and home again at night. Valentine, Jacob’s only son, was removed from school at once to be articled to his father. He was fifteen, just a year younger than Tom.

Years passed on. Tom grew to be four-and-twenty, Valentine three-and-twenty. Both of them were good-looking young men, tall and straight; but Tom had the pleasanter face, address, and manners. Every one liked him. Crabb had thought when Tom attained his majority, and got his certificate as a solicitor, that his uncle would have taken him into partnership. The Squire had said it publicly. Instead of that, old Jacob gave him a hundred a-year salary to start with, and said to him, “Now we shall go on comfortably, Tom.” Tom, who was anything but exacting, supposed his uncle wished him to add a year or two to his age and some more experience, before taking him in. So he thanked old Jacob for the hundred a-year, and was contented.

George Chandler had emigrated to Canada. Which rather gave his mother a turn. Some people they knew had gone out there, purchased land, and were doing well on it; and George resolved to follow them. George had been placed with a good farmer in Gloucestershire and learnt farming thoroughly. That accomplished, he began to talk to his mother about his prospects. What he would have liked was, to take a farm on his own account. But he had no money to stock it, and his mother had none to give him. Her income, including the hundred and fifty paid to her from the business, was about four hundred pounds, all told: home living and her sons’ expenses had taken it all, leaving no surplus. “There’s nothing for me but going to Canada, mother,” said George: “I don’t see any opening for me in England. I shall be sure to get on, over there. I am healthy and steady and industrious; and those are the qualities that make way in a new country. If the worst comes to the worst, and I do not succeed, I can but come back again.” His arguments prevailed at length, and he sailed for Canada, their friends over there promising to receive and help him.

All this while Jacob Chandler had flourished. His practice had gradually increased, and he had become a great man. Great in show and expense. It was not his fault; it was that of his family: of his own will, he would never have put a foot forward out of his plain old groove. Mrs. Jacob Chandler, empty-headed, vain, and pretty, had but two thoughts in the world: the one to make her way amidst fashionable people, the other to marry her daughters well. Originally a small tradesman’s daughter in Birmingham, she was now ridiculously upstart, and put on more airs and graces in an hour than a lady born and bred would in alifetime. Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s people had sold brushes and brooms, soaps and pickles: she had occasionally stood behind the counter and served out the soap with her own hands; and Mrs. Jacob now looked down upon Birmingham itself and every one in it.

North Villa had not been given up, though they did move to Islip. Jacob Chandler held a long lease of it, and he sub-let it for three or four years. At the end of that period it occurred to Mrs. Jacob that she should like to keep it for herself, as a sort of country house to retire to at will. As she was the grey mare, this was done; though Jacob grumbled. So North Villa was furbished up, and some new furniture put into it; and the garden, a very nice one, improved: and Mrs. Jacob, with one or other or all three of her daughters, might be frequently seen driving her pony-carriage with its handsome ponies between North Villa and Islip, streamers flying, ribbons fluttering: you would have taken it for a rainbow coming along. The girls were not bad-looking, played and sang with open windows loud enough to frighten the passers-by, and were given to speak to one another in French at table. “Voulez-vouz donner-moi la sel, Clementina?” “Voulez-vous passer-moi le moutarde, Georgiana?” “Voulez-vous envoyer-moi les poivre, Julietta?” For, as Mrs. Jacob would have told you, they had learnt French at school; and to converse in it was of course only natural to themselves, and most instructive to any visitor who might chance to be present. Added to these advantages Mrs. and the Miss Chandlers adored dress, their out-of-door toilettes being grander than a queen’s.

All this: the two houses and the company received in them; the ponies and the groom; the milliners’ bills and the dress-makers’,made a hole in Jacob Chandler’s purse. Not too much of a hole in one sense of the word; Jacob took care of that: but it prevented him from putting by all the money he wished. He made plenty of it: more than the world supposed.

In this manner matters had gone on since the departure of George Chandler for Canada. Mrs. Chandler living quietly in her home making it a happy one for her son Tom, and treasuring George’s letters from over the sea: Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters keeping the place alive; Valentine getting to be a very fine gentleman indeed; old Jacob sticking to business and pocketing his gains. The first interruption came in the shape of a misfortune for Mrs. Chandler. She lost a good portion of her money through a calamity that you have heard of before—the bursting-up of Clement Pell. It left her with very little, save the hundred and fifty pounds a-year paid to her regularly by Jacob. Added to this was the hundred a-year Tom earned, and which his uncle had not increased. And this brings us down to the present time, when Tom was four-and-twenty.

Jacob Chandler sat one morning in his own room at his office, when a clerk came in and said Mrs. Chandler from Crabb was asking to see him. Cordiality had always subsisted between the two families, though they were not much together; Mrs. Chandler disliking their show; Mrs. Jacob and her daughters intensely despising one who wore black silk for best, and generally made her puddings with her own fingers. “So low-lived, you know, my dears,” Mrs. Jacob would say, with a toss of her bedecked head.

Jacob heard his clerk’s announcement with annoyance; the lines on his brow grew deeper. He had always been a shrimp of a man, but he looked like a shrivelled one now. His black clothes sat loosely upon him; his white neckcloth, for he dressed like a parson, seemed too large for his thin neck.

“Mrs. Chandler can come in,” said he, after a few moments’hesitation. “But say I am busy.”

She came in, putting back her veil: she had worn a plain-shaped bonnet with a white border ever since her husband died. It suited her meek, kind, and somewhat homely face, on which the brown hair, streaked with grey, was banded.

“Jacob, I am sorry to disturb you, especially as you are busy; but I have wanted to speak to you for some time now and have not liked to come,” she began, taking the chair that stood near the table at which he sat. “It is about Tom.”

“What about him?” asked Jacob. “Has he been up to any mischief?”

“Mischief! Tom! Why, Jacob, I hardly think there can be such another young man as he, for steadiness and good conduct; and, I may say, for kindness. I have never heard anything against him. What I want to ask you is, when you think of making a change?”

“A change?” echoed Jacob, as if the words puzzled him, biting away at the feather of his pen. “A change?”

“Is it not time that he should be taken into the business? I—Ithought—and Tom I know also thought, Jacob—that you would have done it when he was twenty-one.”

“Oh, did you?” returned Jacob, civilly.

“He is twenty-four, you know, now, Jacob, and naturally wishes to get forward in life. I am anxious that he should; and I think it is time—forgive me for saying it, Jacob—that something was settled.”

“I was thinking of raising Tom’s salary,” coolly observed Jacob; “of giving him, say, fifty pounds a-year more. Valentine has been bothering me to do the same by him; so I suppose I must.”

The fixed colour on Mrs. Chandler’s thin cheeks grew a shade deeper. “But, Jacob, it was his father’s wish, you know, that he should be taken into partnership, should succeed to his own share of the business; and I thought you would have arranged it ere this. An increase of salary is not the thing at all: it is not that that is in question.”

“Nothing can be so bad for a young man as to make him his own master too early,” cried Jacob. “I’ve known it ruin many a one.”

“You promised my husband when he was dying that it should be so,” she gently urged. “Besides, it is Tom’s right. I understood that when he was of a proper age, he was to come in, in accordance with a previous arrangement made between you and poor Thomas.”

Jacob bit the end of the pen right off and nearly swallowed it.“Thomas left all things in my hands,” said he, coughing and choking. “Tom must acquire some further experience yet.”

“When do you propose settling it, then? How long will it be first?”

“Well, that depends, you know. I shall see.”

“Will it be in another year? Tom will be five-and-twenty then.”

“Ay, he will: and Val four-and-twenty. How time flies! It seems but the other day that they were in jackets and trousers.”

“But will it be then—in another year? You have not answered me, Jacob.”

“And I can’t answer you,” returned Jacob. “How can I? Don’t you understand me when I say I must wait and see?”

“You surely will do what is right, Jacob?”

“Well now, can you doubt it, Betsy? Of course I shall. When did you hear from George?”

Mrs. Chandler rose, obliged to be satisfied. To urgently press any interest of her own was not in her nature. As she shook hands with Jacob she was struck with the sickly appearance of his face.

“Are you feeling quite well, Jacob? You look but poorly.”

“I have felt anything but well for a long time,” he replied, in a fretful tone. “I don’t know what ails me: too much work, perhaps, but I seem to have strength for nothing.”

“You should give yourself a rest, Jacob, and take some bark.”

“Ay. Good-day.”

Now it came to pass that in turning out of the house, after nodding to Tom and Valentine, who sat at a desk side by side in the room to the left, the door of which stood open, Mrs. Chandler saw the Squire on the opposite side of the street, and crossed over to him. He asked her in a joking way whether she had been in to get six and eightpenceworth of law. She told him what she had been in for, seeing no reason for concealing it.

“Bless me, yes!” cried he, in his impulsive way. “I’m sure it’s quite time Tom was in the firm. I’ll go and talk to Jacob.”

And when he got in—making straight across the street with the words, and through the passage, and so to the room without halt or ceremony—he saw Jacob leaning back in his chair, his hands thrust into his black side-pockets, and his head bent on his chest in deep thought. The Squire noticed how deep the lines in his brow had grown, just as Mrs. Chandler had.

“But you know, Jacob Chandler, that it was an agreement with the dead,” urged the Squire, in his eagerness, after listening to some plausible (and shuffling) remarks from Jacob.

“An agreement with the dead!” repeated Jacob, looking up at the Squire for explanation. They were both standing on the matting near the fender: which was filled with an untidy mass of torn and twisted scraps of paper. “What do you mean, Squire? I never knew before that the dead could make an agreement.”

“You know what I mean,” cried the Squire, hotly. “Poor Thomas was close upon death at the time you and he had the conversation: he wanted but two or three minutes of it.”

“Oh, ah, yes; that’s true enough, so far as it goes, Squire,”replied Jacob, pulling up his white cravat as if his throat felt cold.

“Well,” argued the Squire. “Did not you and he agree that Tom was to come in when he was twenty-one? Both of you seemed to imply that there existed a previous understanding to that effect.”

“There never was a word said about his coming in when he was twenty-one,” contended Jacob.

“Why, bless my heart and mind, do you suppose my ears were shut, Jacob Chandler?” retorted the Squire, beginning to rub his head with his red silk handkerchief. “I heard the words.”

“No, Squire. Think a bit.”

Jacob spoke so calmly that the Squire began to rub up his memory as well as his head. He had no cause to suppose Jacob Chandler to be other than an honourable man.

“‘When Tom shall be of age, he must take my place:’ those were I think the very words,” repeated the Squire. “I can see your poor brother’s face now as he lay down on the floor and spoke them. It had death in it.”

“Yes, it had death in it,” acquiesced Jacob, in a tone of discomfort.“What he said was this, Squire: ‘When Tom shall be of an age.’ Meaning of course a suitable age to justify the step.”

“I don’t think so: I did not hear it so,” persisted the Squire.“There was no ’an’ in it. ‘When Tom shall be of age:’ that was it. Meaning when he should be twenty-one.”

“Oh dear, no; quite a mistake. You can’t think my ears would deceive me at such a time as that, Mr. Todhetley. And about our own business too.”

“Well, you ought to know best, of course, though my impression is that you are wrong,” conceded the Squire. “Put it that it was as you say: don’t you think Tom Chandler is now quite old enough for it to be acted upon?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Jacob. “As I have just told his mother, nothing can be more pernicious for a young man than to be made his own master too early. Nine young fellows out of every ten would get ruined by it.”

“Do you think so?” asked the Squire, dubiously.

“I am sure so, Squire. Tom Chandler is steady now, for aught I know to the contrary; but just let him get the reins intohis hands, and you’d see what it would be. That is, what it might be. And I am not going to risk it.”

“He is as steady-going a young man as any one could wish for; diligent, straightforward. Not at all given to spending money improperly.”

“Because he has not had it to spend. I have known many a young blade to be quiet and cautious while his pockets were empty; and as soon as they were filled, perhaps all at once, he has gone headlong to rack and ruin. How do we know that it would not be the case with Tom?”

“Well, I—I don’t think it would be,” said the Squire, with hesitation, for he was coming round to Jacob’s line of argument.

“But I can’t act upon ‘thinking,’ Squire; I must be sure. Tom will just stay on with me at present as he is; so there’s an end of it. His salary is going to be raised: and I—I consider that he is very well off.”

“Well, perhaps he’ll be none the worse for a little longer spell of clerkship,” repeated the Squire, coming wholly round.“And now good-morning. I’m rather in a hurry to-day, but I thought it right to put in a word for Tom’s sake, as I was present when poor Thomas died.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Todhetley,” answered Jacob, as he sat down to his desk again.

But he did not get to work. He bent his head on his neckcloth as before, and set on to think. What had just passed did not please him at all: for Jacob Chandler was not devoid of conscience; though it was an elastic one, and he was in the habit of deadening it at will. It was not his intention to take his nephew into partnership at all; then or later. Almost ever since the day of his brother’s funeral he had looked at matters after his own fashion, and soon grew to think that Tom had no manner of right to a share in the business; that as Thomas was dead and gone, it was all his, and ought to be all his. He and Thomas had shared it between them: therefore it was only just and proper that he, the survivor, should take it. That’s how Jacob Chandler, who was the essence of covetousness, had been reasoning, and his mind was made up.

It was therefore very unpleasant to be pounced upon in this way by two people in one morning. Their application as regarded Tom himself would not have troubled him: he knew how to put disputants off civilly, saying neither yes nor no, and promising nothing: but what annoyed him was the reminiscence they had called up of his dying brother. Jacob intended to get safely into the world above, some day, by hook or by crook; he went to church regularly, and considered himself a model of good behaviour. But these troublesome visitors had somehow contrived to put before his conscience the fact that he might be committing a lifelong act of injustice on Tom; and that, to do so, was not the readiest way of getting to heaven. Was that twelve o’clock? How the morning had passed!

“Uncle Jacob, I am going over to Brooklands about that lease. Have you any particular instructions to give me?”

It was Tom himself who had entered. A tall, good-looking, fresh-coloured young man, who had honesty and kindliness written on every line of his open face.

Jacob lifted his bent head, and drew his chair nearer his table as if he meant to set to work in earnest. But his mouth took a cross look.

“Who told you to go? I said Valentine was to go.”

“Valentine has stepped out. He asked me to go for him.”

“Where has he stepped to?”

“He did not say,” replied Tom, evasively. For he knew quite well where Valentine was gone: to the Bell inn over the way. Valentine went to the Bell a little too much, and was a little too fond of the Bell’s good liquor.

“I suppose you can go, then. No, I have no instructions: you know what to say as well as I do. We don’t give way a jot, mind. Oh, and—Tom!” added Jacob, calling him back as he went out.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am intending to raise your salary. From the beginning of next month, you will have a hundred and fifty a-year.”

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob.”

Tom spoke as he in his ready good-nature felt—brightly and gratefully. Nevertheless, a shade of disappointment did cross his mind, for he thought his position in the house ought to be a different one.

“And I am sure it is quite as much as I ought to do for him,”argued Jacob with his conscience. And he put away unpleasant prickings and set to work like a house on fire.

It was one o’clock when Valentine came in. He had an excuse ready for his father: the latter, turning out of the clerks’room, chanced to see him enter. “He had been down to Tyler’s to see if he could get that money from them.” It was an untruth, for he had stayed all the while at the Bell; and his father noticed that his face was uncommonly flushed. Old Jacob had had his suspicions before; yes, and spoken of them to Valentine: he now motioned him to go before him into the private room.

“You have been drinking, sir!”

“I!—good gracious, no,” returned Valentine, boldly, his blue eyes fearlessly meeting his father’s. “What fancies you do pick up!”

“Valentine, when I was your age I never drank a drop of anything till night, and then it was only a glass of beer with my supper. It seems to me that young men of the present day think they can drink at all hours with impunity.”

“I don’t drink, father.”

“Very well. Take care you do not. It is a habit more easily acquired than left off. Look here: I am going to give you fifty pounds a-year more. Mind you make it do: and do not spend it in waste.”

It was not very long after this that Jacob Chandler had a shock: a few months, or so. During that time he had been growing thinner and weaker, and looked so shrivelled up that there seemed to be nothing left of him. Islip, small place though it was, had a market-day—Friday;—when farmers would drive or walk in and congregate at the Bell. One afternoon, just as the ordinary was over, Jacob went to the inn, as was his general custom: he had always some business or other to transact with the farmers; or, if not, something to say. His visit to them over, he said good-day and left: but the next minute he turned back, having forgotten something. Some words fell on his ear as he opened the door.

“Ay. He is not long for this world.”

They were spoken by old Farmer Blake—a big, burly, kind-hearted man. And Jacob Chandler felt as certain that they were meant to apply to himself as though his name had been mentioned. He went into a cold shiver, and shut the door again without entering.

Was it true, he asked himself, as he walked across the street to his office: was it indeed a fact that he was slowly dying? A great fear fell upon him: a dread of death. What, leave all this beautiful sunshine, this bright world in which he was so busy,and pass into the cold dark grave! Jacob turned sick at the thought.

It was true that he had long been ailing; but not with any specific ailment. He could not deny that he was now more like a shadow than a man, or that every day seemed to bring him less of strength. Passing into his dining-parlour instead of into his private business room, he drank two glasses of wine off at once, and it seemed to revive him. He was a very abstemious man in general.

Well, if Farmer Blake did say it—stupid old idiot!—it was not obliged to be true, reflected Jacob then. People judged by his spareness: he wished he could get a little fatter. And so he reasoned and persuaded himself out of his fears, and grew sufficiently reassured to transact his business, always pressing on a Friday.

But that same evening, Jacob Chandler drove to North Villa in his gig, telling his wife he should sleep there for a week or two, for the sake of the fresh air. And the next morning, before he went to Islip, he sent for the doctor—Cole.

“People are saying you won’t live!” repeated Cole, having listened to Jacob’s confidential communication. “I don’t see why you should not live. Let’s examine you a bit. You should not take up fancies.”

Cole could find nothing particular the matter with him. He recommended him rest from business, change of air, and a generous diet. “Try it for a month,” said he.

“I can’t try it—except the diet,” returned Jacob. “It’s all very well for you to talk about rest from business, Cole, but how am I to take rest? My business could not get on without me. Business is a pleasure to me; it’s not a pain.”

“You want rest from it all the same,” said Cole. “You have stuck closely to it this many a year.”

“My mother died without apparent cause,” said Jacob, dreamily. “She seemed just to drift out of life. About my age, too.”

“That’s no reason why you should,” argued Cole.

Well, they went on, talking at one another; but nothing came of it. And Cole left, saying he would send him in some tonics to take.

By the evening it was known all over the place that Jacob Chandler was ill and had sent for Cole. People talked of it thenext morning as they went to church. Jacob appeared, looking much as usual, and sat down in his pew. The next to come in was Mrs. Cramp; who walked over to our church sometimes. She stayed to dine with the Lexoms, and went to call at North Villa after dinner; finding Mrs. Jacob and the rest of them at dessert with a guest or two. Jacob was somewhere in the garden.

Mrs. Cramp found him in the latticed arbour, and sat down opposite to him, taking up her brown shot-silk gown, lest the seat should be dusty. When she told him it was the hearing of his illness which had brought her over to Crabb, he turned cross. He was not ill, he said; only a trifle out of sorts, as every one else must be at times and seasons. By dint of questioning, Mrs. Cramp, who was a stout, comely woman, fond of having her own way, got out of him all Cole had said.

“And Cole is right, Jacob: it is rest and change you want,”she remarked. “You are sure you do not need it? don’t tell me. A stitch in times saves nine, remember.”

“You know nothing about it, Mary Ann.”

“I know that you look thinner and thinner every time I see you. Be wise in time, brother.”

“Cole told me to go away to the seaside for a month. Why, what should I do, mooning for a whole month in a strange place by myself? I should be like a fish out of water.”

“Take your wife and the girls.”

“I dare say! They would only worry me with their fine doings. And look at the expense.”

“I will go with you if you like, Jacob, rather than you should go alone, though it would be an inconvenience to me. And pay my own expenses.”

“Mary Ann, I am not going at all; or thinking of it. It would be impossible for me to leave my business.”

Mrs. Cramp, turning over matters in her mind, determined to put the case plainly before him, and did so; telling him that it would be better to leave his business for a temporary period now, than to find shortly that he must leave it for ever. Jacob sat gazing out straight before him at the Malvern Hills, the chain of which lay against the sky in the distance.

“If you took my advice, brother, you would retire from business altogether. You have made enough to live without it, I suppose——”

“But I have not made enough,” he interrupted.

“Then you ought to have made it, Jacob.”

“Oughts don’t go for much.”

“What I mean is, that you ought to have made it, judging by the style in which you live. Two houses, a carriage and ponies (besides your gig), expensive dress, parties: all that should never be gone into, brother, unless the realized income justifies it.”

“It is the style we live in that has not let me put by, Mary Ann. I don’t tell you I have put nothing by: I have put a little by year by year; but it is not enough to live upon.”

“Then make arrangements for half the proceeds of the business to be given over to you. Let the two boys take to it, and——”

“Who?” cried Jacob.

“The two boys, Tom and Valentine. It will be theirs some time, you know, Jacob: let them have it at once. Tom’s name must be first, as it ought to be. Valentine——”

“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” interposed Jacob, sharply. “I shall keep the business in my own hands as long as I live. Perhaps I may take Valentine into it: not Tom.”

Mrs. Cramp sat for a full minute staring at Jacob, her stout hands, from which the gloves had been taken, and her white lace ruffles lying composedly on her brown gown.

“Not take Tom into the business!” she repeated, in a slow, astonished tone. “Why, Jacob, what do you mean?”

“That,” said Jacob. “Tom will stay on at a good salary: I shall increase it, I dare say, every two years, or so; but he will not come into the firm.”

“You can’t mean what you say.”

“I have meant it this many a year past, Mary Ann. I have never intended to take him in.”

“Jacob, beware! No luck ever comes of fraud.”

“Of what? Fraud?”

“Yes; I say fraud. If you deprive Tom of the place that is justly his, it will be a cheat and a fraud, and nothing short of it.”

“You have a queer way of looking at things, Mrs. Cramp. Who has kept the practice together all these years, but me? and added to it little by little, and made it worth double what it was; ay, and more than double? It is right—right, mind you, Mary Ann—that my own son should succeed to it.”

“Who made the practice in the first place, and took you into it out of brotherly affection, and made you a full partner without your paying a farthing, and for seventeen or eighteen years was the chief prop and stay of it?” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Why, poor Thomas; your elder brother. Who made him a promise when he was lying dying in that very parlour where your wife and children are now sitting, that Tom should take his proper place in the firm when he was of age, and his half-share with it, according to agreement? Why you. You did, Jacob Chandler.”

“That was all a mistake,” said Jacob, shuffling his thin legs and wrists.

“I will leave you,” said Mrs. Cramp. “I don’t care to discuss questions while you are in this frame of mind. Is this all the benefit you got from the parson’s sermon this morning, and the text he gave out before it? That text: think of it a bit, brother Jacob, and perhaps you’ll see your way to acting differently. Remember,” she added, turning back to him for the last word, which she always had, somehow, “that cheating never prospers in the long run. It never does, Jacob; never: for where it is crafty cheating, hidden away from the sight of man, it is seen and noted by God.”

Her brown skirts (all the shades of a copper tea-kettle) disappeared round the corner by the mulberry-tree, leaving Jacob very angry and uncomfortable. Angry with her, uncomfortable in himself. Do what he would, he could not get that text out of his mind—and what right had she to bring it cropping up to him in that inconvenient way, he wondered, or to speak to him about such matters at all. The verse was a beautiful verse in itself; he had always thought so: but it was not pleasant to be tormented by it—and all through Mary Ann! There it was haunting his memory again!

“Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last.”

Jacob Chandler grew to look a little fresher, though not stouter, as the weeks went on: the drive, night and morning, seemed to do him good. Meeting Cole one day, he told him he felt stronger, and did not see why he should not live to be ninety. With all his heart, Cole answered, but most people found seventy long enough.

All at once, without warning, a notice appeared in the localpapers, stating that Jacob Chandler had taken his son Valentine into partnership. Mrs. Chandler read it as she sat at breakfast.

“What does it mean, Tom?” she asked.

“I don’t know what it means, mother. We have heard nothing about it at the office.”

“Tom, you may depend your uncle Jacob has done it, and that he does not intend to take you in at all,” spoke Mrs. Chandler, in her strong conviction. “I shall go to him.”

She finished her breakfast and went off there and then, catching Jacob just as he was turning out of the white gate at North Villa to mount his gig: for he still came over to Crabb to sleep. The newspaper was in her hand, and she pointed to the advertisement.

“What does it mean, Jacob?” she asked, just as she had a few minutes before asked of Tom.

“Mean!” said Jacob. “It can’t have more than one meaning, can it? I’ve thought it best to let Val’s name appear in the practice, and made over to him a small share of the profits. Very small, Betsy. He won’t draw much more than he has been drawing as salary.”

“But what of Tom?” questioned poor Mrs. Chandler.

“Of Tom? Well, what of him?”

“When is he to be taken in?”

“Oh, there’s time enough for that. I can’t make two moves at once; it could not be expected of me, Betsy. My son is my son, and he had to come in first.”

“But—Jacob—don’t you think you ought to carry out the agreement made with Tom’s father—that you are bound in honour?”debated Mrs. Chandler, in her meek and non-insisting way.

“Time enough, Betsy. We shall see. And look there, my horse won’t stand: he’s always fresh in the morning.”

Shaking her hand hastily, he stepped up, took the reins from the man, and was off in a trice, bowling along at a quicker pace than usual. The poor woman, left standing there and feeling half-bewildered, saw Mrs. Jacob at one of the open windows, and crossed the lawn to speak.

“I came up about this announcement,” she said. “It is so strange a thing; we can’t understand it at all. Jacob should take Tom into partnership. Especially now that he has taken Valentine.”

“Do you think so?” drawled Mrs. Jacob; who wore a pinktop-knot and dirty morning wrapper, and minced her words more than usual, for she thought the more she minced them the finer she was. “Dear me! I’m sure I don’t know anything about it. All well at home, I hope? I won’t ask you in, for I’m going to be busy. My daughters are invited to a garden-party this afternoon, and I must give directions about the trimming of their dresses. Good-morning.”

Back went Mrs. Chandler, and found her son watching for her at the door, waiting to hear what news she brought, before setting out on his usual walk.

“Your uncle slips through it like an eel, Tom,” she began.“I can make nothing of him one way or another. He does not say he will not take you in, but he does not say he will. What is to be done?”

“Nothing can be done that I know of, mother,” replied Tom;“nothing at all. Uncle Jacob holds the power in his own hands, you see. If it does not please him to give me my lawful share, we cannot oblige him to do it.”

“But how unjust it will be if he does not!”

“Yes. I think so. But, it seems to me there’s little else but injustice in the world,” added Tom, with a light smile. “You would say so if you were in a lawyer’s office and had to dive into the cases brought there. Good-bye, mother mine.”

Pretty nearly a year went on after this, bringing no change.“Jacob Chandler and Son, Solicitors, Conveyancers, and Land Agents,” flourished in gilt letters on the front-door at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and Son flourished inside, in the matter of business. But never a move was made to take in Tom. And when Jacob was asked about it, as he was once or twice, he civilly shuffled the topic off.

But, before the year had well elapsed, Jacob was stricken down. To look at him you would have said he had been growing thinner all that while, only that it seemed impossible. This time it was for death. He had not much grace given him, either: just a couple of days and a night.

He went to bed one night as well as usual, but the next morning did not get up, saying he felt “queer,” and sent for Cole. Jacob Chandler was a rare coward in illness. That fining-down process he had been going through so long had not troubled him: he thought it was only his natural constitution: and when real illness set in his fears sprang up.

“You had better stay in bed to-day,” said Cole. “I will send you a draught to take.”

“But what is it that’s the matter with me?” asked Jacob.

“I don’t know,” said Cole.

“Is it ague? Or intermittent fever coming on? See how I am shaking.”

“N—o,” hesitated Cole, either in doubt, or else because he would not say too much. “I’ll look in again by-and-by.”

Towards midday Jacob thought he’d get up, and see what that would do for him. It seemed to do nothing, except make him worse; and he went to bed again. Cole looked in three times during the day, but did not say what he thought.

In the middle of the night a paroxysm of illness came on again, and a servant ran to knock up the doctor. Jacob was shaking the very bed, and seemed in awful fear.

And in the morning he appeared to know that he had not many hours to live. Knew it by intuition, for Cole had not told him. An express went flying to Worcester for Dr. Malden: but Cole knew—and told it later—that all the physicians in the county could not save him.

And the state of mind that Jacob Chandler went into with the knowledge, might have read many a careless man a lesson. It seemed to him that he had a whole peck of suddenly-recollected sins on his head, and misdeeds to be accounted for. He remembered Tom Chandler then.

“I have not done by him as I ought; it lies upon me with an awful weight,” he groaned. “Valentine, you must remedy the wrong. Take him in, and give him his proper share. I should like to see Tom. Some one fetch him.”

Tom had to be fetched from Islip. He came at once, his long legs skimming over the ground quickly; and he entered the sick-chamber with the cordial smile on his open face, and took his uncle’s hand.

“It shall all be remedied, Tom; all the injustice; and you shall have your due rights. I see now how unjust it was: I don’t know what God’s thinking of me for it. I wanted to make a good provision for my old age, you see; to be able to live at ease; and now there is no old age for me: God is taking me before it has come on.”

“Don’t distress yourself, Uncle Jacob; it will be all right. And I’m sure I have not thought much about it.”

“But others have,” groaned Jacob. “Your mother; and Mary Ann; and—and Squire Todhetley. They have all been on at me at times. But I shut my ears. Oh dear! I wish God would let me live a few years over again! I’d try and be different. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”

And that was how he kept on the best part of the day. Then he called out that he wanted his will altered. Valentine brought in pen and ink, but his father motioned him away and said it must be done by Paul. So Paul the lawyer was got over from Islip, and was shut up alone with the sick man for a quarter-of-an-hour. Next the parson came, and read some prayers. But Jacob still cried out his piteous laments, at having no time to redeem the past, until his voice was too weak to speak. At nine o’clock in the evening all was over.

The disease that killed him must have been making silent progress for a good while, Cole said, when the truth was ascertained: but he had never seen it develop itself with so little warning, or prove fatal so quickly as in the case of Jacob Chandler.

II

Jacob Chandler, solicitor, conveyancer, and land-agent, had died: and his son Valentine (possibly taking a leaf out of the history of Jonas Chuzzlewit) determined that he should at least be borne to the grave with honours, if he had never had an opportunity to specially bear them in life. Crabb churchyard was a show of mutes and plumes, and Crabb highway was blocked up with black coaches. As it is considered a compliment down with us to get an invitation to a funeral, and a great slight on the dead to refuse it, all classes, from Sir John Whitney, down to Massock, the brickmaker, and little Farmer Bean, responded to Valentine Chandler’s notes. Some people said that it was Valentine’s mother, the new widow, who wished for so much display; and probably they were right.

It took place on a Saturday. I can see the blue sky overhead now, and the bright sun that shone upon the scene and lighted up the feathers. It was thought he must have died rich, and that the three daughters he left would have good portions. His son Valentine had the practice: so, at any rate, he was provided for. Tom Chandler, the nephew, made one of the mourners: and the spectators talked freely enough in an undertone, as hepassed them in his place when the procession walked up the churchyard path. It seemed but the other day, they said, that his poor father was buried, killed by that lamentable accident. Time flew. Years passed imperceptibly. But Jacob—lying so still under that black and white pall, now slowly disappearing within the church—had not done the right thing by his dead brother’s son. The practice had been made by Thomas, the elder brother. Thomas took Jacob into full partnership without fee or recompense; and there was an understanding entered into between them later (but no legal agreement) that if the life of either failed his son should succeed to his post. If Thomas, the elder, died, his son Tom was to take his father’s place as senior partner in due time. Thomas did die; died suddenly; but from that hour to this, Jacob had never attempted to carry out the agreement: he had taken his own son, Valentine, into partnership, but not Tom. And Crabb knew, both North and South, for such things get about curiously, that the injustice had troubled Jacob when he was dying, and that he had charged Valentine to remedy it.

Sunday morning was not so fine: leaden clouds, threatening rain, had overshadowed the summer sky. But all the family mourners came to church, Valentine wearing his long crape hatband and shoulder scarf (for that was our custom); the widow in her costly mourning, and the three girls in theirs. The mourning was furnished, Miss Timmens took the opportunity of whispering to Mrs. Todhetley, from a fashionable black shop at Worcester: and, to judge by the frillings and furbelows, very fashionable indeed the shop must have been. Mrs. Chandler and her son Tom sat together in their own pew, Mrs. Cramp, Jacob’s sister, with them. It chanced that we were staying at Crabb Cot at the time of Jacob’s death, just as we had been at Thomas’s, and so saw the doings and heard the sayings, and the Squire was at hand for both funerals.

The next morning, Monday, Valentine Chandler took his place in the office as master for the first time, and seated himself in his late father’s chair in the private room. He and his mother had already held some conversation as to arrangements for the future. Valentine said he should live at the office at Islip: now that there was only himself he should have more to do, and did not want the bother of walking or driving to and fro morning and evening. She would live entirely at North Villa.

Valentine took his place in his father’s room; and the clerks, who had been hail-fellow-well-met with him hitherto, put on respect of manner, and called him Mr. Chandler. Tom had an errand to do every Monday morning connected with the business, and did not enter until nearly eleven o’clock. Before settling to his desk, he went in to Valentine.

They shook hands. In times of bereavement we are apt to observe more ceremony than at others. Tom sat down: which caused the new master to look towards him inquiringly.

“Valentine, I want to have a bit of talk with you. Upon what footing am I to be on here?”

“How do you mean?” asked Valentine: who was leaning back in the green leather chair with the air of his new importance full upon him, his elbows on the low arms, and an ivory paper-knife held between his fingers.

“My uncle Jacob told me that from henceforth I was to assume my right place here, Valentine. I suppose it will be so.”

“What do you call your right place?” cried Valentine.

“Well, my right place would be head of the office,” replied Tom, speaking, as he always did, cordially and pleasantly.“But I don’t wish to be exacting. Make me your partner, Valentine, and give me the second place in the firm.”

“Can’t do it, old fellow,” said Valentine, in tones which seemed to say he would like to joke the matter off. “The practice was my father’s, and it is now mine.”

“But you know that part of it ought to have been mine from the first, Valentine. That is, from the time I have been of an age to succeed to it.”

“I don’t know it, I’m sure, Tom. If it ‘ought’ to have been yours, I suppose my father would have given it to you. He was able to judge.”

Tom dropped his voice. “He sent for me that last day of his life, you know, Valentine. It was to tell me he had not done the right thing by me, but that it should be done now: that he had charged you to do it.”

“Ah,” said Valentine, carelessly, “worn-out old men take up odd fancies—fit for a lunatic asylum. My poor father must have been spent with disease, though not with age: but we did not know it.”

“Will you make me your partner?”

“No, Tom, I can’t. The practice was all my father’s, andthe practice must be mine. Look here: on that same day you speak of he sent for John Paul to add a codicil to his will. Now it stands to reason that if he had wished me to take you into the firm, he would have mentioned it in that codicil and bound me down to do it.”

“And he did not?”

“Not a word of it. You are quite welcome to read the will. It is a very short and simple one: leaving what property he had to my mother, and the business and office furniture to me. The codicil Paul wrote was to decree that I should pay my mother a certain sum out of the profits. Your name is not mentioned in the will at all, from beginning to end.”

Tom made no reply. Valentine continued.

“The object of his tying me down to pay over to my mother a portion of the profits is, because she has not enough to live on without it. There need be no secret about it. I am to give her a third of the income I make, whatsoever it may be.”

“One final word, Valentine: will you be just and take me in?”

“No, Tom, I cannot. And there’s another thing. I don’t wish to be mean, I’m sure; it’s not in my nature: but with all my own expenses upon me and this third that I must hand over to my people, I fear I shall not be able to continue to give your mother the hundred and fifty a-year that my father has allowed her so long.”

“You cannot help yourself, Valentine. That much is provided for in the original partnership deed, and you are bound by it.”

“No,” dissented Valentine, flicking a speck off the front of his black coat. “My father might have been bound by it, but I am not. Now that the two original partners are dead, the deed is cancelled, don’t you see. It is not binding upon me.”

“I think you are mistaken: but I will leave that question for this morning. Is your decision, not to give me a share, final?”

“It is.”

“Let me make one remark. You say the codicil stipulates that you shall pay a third of the profits to your mother—and it is a very just and right thing to do. Valentine, rely upon it, that your father’s last intentions were that, of the other two-thirds left, one of them should be mine.”

Valentine flushed red. He had a florid complexion at alltimes, something like salmon-colour. Very different from Tom’s, which was clear and healthy.

“We won’t talk any more about it, Tom. How you can get such crotchets into your head, I can’t imagine. If you sit there till midday, I can say no more than I have said: I cannot take you into partnership.”

“Then I shall leave you,” said Tom, rising. He was a fine-looking young fellow, standing there with his arm on the back of the client’s chair, in which he had sat; tall and straight. His good, honest face had a shade of pain in it, as it gazed straight out to Valentine’s. He looked his full six-and-twenty years.

“Well, I wish you would leave me, Tom,” replied Valentine, carelessly. “I have heaps to do this morning.”

“Leave the office, I mean. Leave you for good.”

“Nonsense!”

“Though your father did not give me the rights that were my just due, I remained on, expecting and hoping that he would give them some time. It was my duty to remain with him; at least, my mother told me so; and perhaps my interest. But the case is changed now. I will not stay with you, Valentine, unless you do me justice; I shall leave you now. Now, this hour.”

“But you can’t, Tom. You would put me to frightful inconvenience.”

“And what inconvenience—inconvenience for life—are you putting me to, Valentine? You take my prospects from me. The position that ought to be mine, here at Islip, you refuse to let me hold. This was my father’s practice; a portion of it, at least, ought to be mine. I will not continue to be a servant where I ought to be a master.”

“Then you must go,” said Valentine.

Tom held out his hand. “Good-bye. I do not part in enmity.”

“Good-bye, Tom. I’m sorry: but it’s your fault.”

Tom Chandler went into the office where he had used to sit, opened his desk, and began putting up what things belonged to him. They made a tolerable-sized parcel. Valentine, left in his chair of state, sat on in a brown study. All the inconvenience that Tom’s leaving him would be productive of was flashing into his mind. Tom had been, under old Jacob, the prop and stay of the business; knew about everything, and had a clear head for details. He himself was different—and Valentine was never more sure of the fact than at this moment. There are lawyers and lawyers. Tom was one, Valentine was another. He, Valentine, had never much cared for business; he liked pleasure a great deal better. Indulged always by both father and mother, he had grown up self-indulgent. It was all very fine to perch himself in that chair and play the master; but he knew that, without Tom to direct things, for some time to come he should be three-parts lost. But, as to making him a partner and giving him a share? “No,” concluded Valentine emphatically,“I won’t do it.”

Tom, carrying his paper parcel, left the house and crossed the road to the post-office, which was higher up the street, to post a letter he had hastily written. It was addressed to a lawyer at Worcester. A week or two before, Tom, being at Worcester, was asked by this gentleman if he would take the place of head clerk and manager in his office. The question was put jokingly, for the lawyer supposed Tom to be a fixture at Islip: but Tom saw that he would have been glad for him to take the berth. He hoped it might still be vacant. What with one thing and another, beginning with the injustice done him at the old place and his anxiety to get into another without delay, Tom felt more bothered than he had ever felt in his life. The tempting notion of setting-up somewhere for himself came into his mind. But it went out of it again: he could not afford to risk any waste of time, with his mother’s home to keep up, and especially with this threat of Valentine’s to stop her hundred and fifty pounds a-year income.

“How do you do, Mr. Chandler?”

At the sound of the pretty voice, Tom turned short round from the post-office window, which was a stationer’s, to see a charming girl all ribbons and muslins, with sky-blue eyes and bright hair. Tom took the hand only half held out to him.

“I beg your pardon, Emma: I was reading this concert bill. The idea of Islip’s getting up a concert!”

She was the only child of John Paul the lawyer, and had as fair a face as you’d wish to see, and a habit of blushing at nothing. To watch her as she stood there, the roses coming and going, the dimples deepening, and the small white teeth peeping, did Tom good. He was reddening himself, for that matter.

“Yes, it is to be given in the large club-room at the Bell to-night,”she answered. “Shall you come over for it?”

“Are you going to it, Emma?”

“Oh yes. Papa has taken twelve tickets. A great many people are coming in to go with us.”

“I shall go also,” said Tom decidedly. And at that the roses came again.

“What a large parcel you are carrying!”

Tom held the brown-paper parcel further out at the remark.

“They are my goods and chattels,” said he. “Things that I had at the office. I have left it, Emma.”

“Left the office!” she repeated, looking as though she did not understand. “You don’t mean really left it?—left it for good?”

“I have left it for good, Emma. Valentine——”

“Here’s papa,” interrupted Emma, as a stout, elderly gentleman with iron-grey hair turned out of the stationer’s; neither of them having the least idea he was there.

“Is it you, Tom Chandler?” cried Mr. Paul.

“Yes, it is, sir.”

“And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day.”

“Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do,” returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer’s face. “And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation.”

Mr. Paul stared at him. “Why, it is your own office. What’s that for?”

“It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father’s before me. But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partnership; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps. Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away.”

Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. “How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he’d lift off my shoulders!” Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul’s mind.

But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.

“When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were,he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together.”

“Yes, he said the same thing to me,” replied Tom. “But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away.”

“And what are you going to do, young man?”

Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was.“I should like to set up in practice for myself,” he answered;“but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?” he asked.

“I don’t mind—if you are going to it,” said the old lawyer:“but I can’t see what young men want at concerts?”

Tom caught Miss Emma’s eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.

But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.”

Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma’s charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.

“My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that.”

“I am so sorry,” whispered Emma. “But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!”

“I don’t care for the concert,” avowed Tom. “I—I should like to have gone to it, though.”

“At least you—you will stay and take some tea,” suggested Emma.

“If I may.”

“Would you please loose my hand?” went on Emma. “The lace has caught in your sleeve-button.”

“I’ll undo it,” said Tom. “What pretty lace it is! Is it Valenciennes? My mother thinks there’s no lace like Valenciennes.”

“It is only pillow,” replied Emma, bending her face over the lace and the buttons. “After you left this morning, papa said he wished he had remembered to ask you where he could get a prospectus of those water-works. He——”

“Mrs. and Miss Maceveril,” interrupted a servant, opening the door to show in some ladies.

So the interview was over; and Tom took the opportunity to go to the lawyer’s dining-room, and tell him about the water-works.

“You have come over from Crabb to go to this fine concert!”cried Mr. Paul, sipping his port wine; which he always took out of a claret-glass. Though never more than one glass, he would be half-an-hour over it.

“I have come to say I can’t go to it,” replied Tom. “My mother thinks it would not be seemly so soon after Uncle Jacob’s death.”

“Quite right of her, too. Why don’t you sit down? No wine? Well, sit down all the same. I want to talk to you. Will you come into my office?”

The proposal was so sudden, so unexpected, that Tom scarcely knew what to make of it. He did not know that Mr. Paul’s office wanted him.

“I have been thinking upon matters since I saw you this morning, Tom Chandler. I am growing elderly; some people would say old; and the thought has often crossed me that it might be as well if I had some one about me different from an ordinary clerk. Were I laid aside by illness to-morrow the conduct of the business would still lie upon me; and lie it must, unless I get a confidential manager, who is a qualified lawyer: one who can act in my place without reference to me. I offer you the post; and I will give you, to begin with, two hundred a-year.”

“I should like it of all things,” cried Tom in delight, eyes and face sparkling. “I am used to Islip and don’t care to leave it. Yes, sir, I will come with the greatest pleasure.”

“Then that’s settled,” said old Paul.

Just about two years had gone on, and it was hot summer again. In the same room at North Villa where poor Thomas Chandler had died, sat Valentine Chandler and his mother. It was evening, and the window was open to the garden. In another room, its window also open, sat the three girls, Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta; all of them singing and playing and squalling.

“Not talk about business on a Sunday night! You must have grown wonderfully serious all on a sudden!” exclaimed Mrs. Chandler, tartly. “I never get to see you except on a Sunday: you know that, Valentine.”

“It is not often I can get time to come over on a week-day,”responded Valentine, helping himself to some spirits and water, which had been placed on the table after supper. “Business won’t let me.”

“If all I hear be true, it is not business that hinders you,”said Mrs. Chandler. “Be quiet, Valentine: I must speak. I have put it off and off, disliking to do it; but I must speak at last. Your business, as I am told, is falling off alarmingly; that a great deal of it has gone over to John Paul.”

“Who told you?”

“That is beyond the question, Valentine, and I am not going to make mischief. Is it true, or is it not true?”

“A little of the practice went over to Paul when Tom left me. It was not much. Some of the clients, you see, had been accustomed to Tom at our place, and they followed him. That was a crafty move of John Paul’s—getting hold of Tom.”

“I am not alluding to the odds and ends of practice that left you then, Valentine. I speak chiefly of this last year. Hardly a week has passed in it but some client or other has left you for Paul.”

“If they have, I can’t help it,” was the careless reply. “How those girls squall!”

“I suppose there is no underhand influence at work, Valentine?”she said dubiously. “Tom Chandler does not hold out baits for your clients, and so fish them away from you?”

“Well, no, I suppose not,” repeated the young lawyer, draining his glass. “I accused Tom of it one day, and for once in his life he flew into a passion, asking me what I had ever seen in him to suspect he could be guilty of such a thing.”

“No. I fear it is as I have been given to understand,Valentine: that the cause lies with you. You spend your time in pleasure instead of being at business. When clients go to the office, three times out of every five they do not find you. You are not there. You are over at the Bell, playing at billiards, or drinking in the bar.”

“What an unfounded calumny!” exclaimed Valentine.

“I have been told,” continued Mrs. Chandler, sinking her voice, “that you are getting to drink frightfully. It is nothing for clients now to find you in a state incapable of attending to them.”

“Now, mother, I insist upon knowing who told you these lies,” spluttered Valentine, getting up and striding to the window. “Let anybody come forward and prove that he has found me incapable—if he can.”

“I heard that Sir John Whitney went in the other day and could make neither top nor tail of what you said,” continued his mother, disregarding his denial. “You are agent for the little bit of property he owns here: he chanced to come over from Whitney Hall, and found you like that.”

“I’ll write to Sir John Whitney and ask what he means by saying it.”

“He did not say it—that I know of. Others were witnesses of your state as well as he.”

“If my clerks tell tales out of my office, I’ll discharge them from it,” burst forth Valentine, too angry to notice the tacit admission his words gave. “Not the clerks, you say? Then why don’t you——”

“Do be still, Valentine. Putting yourself out like this will do no good. I hope it is not true: if you assure me it is not, I am ready to believe you. All I spoke for was, to caution you, and to tell you what is being said, that you may be on your guard. Leave off going to the Bell; stick to business instead: people will soon cease talking then.”

“I dare say they will!” growled Valentine.

“If you are always at your post, ready to confer with clients, they would have no plea for leaving you and going to Paul. For all our sakes, Valentine, you must do this.”

“And so I do. If——”

“Hush! The girls are coming in. I hear them shutting the piano.”

Valentine dashed out a second supply, and drank it, notcaring whether it contained most brandy or water. We are never so angry as when conscience accuses us: and it was accusing him.

In came the young ladies, laughing, romping, and pushing one another; Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow. The chief difference Sunday made to them was, that their smartest clothes came out.

Mrs. Chandler’s accusations were right, and Valentine’s denials wrong. During the past two years he had been drifting downwards. The Bell was getting to possess so great a fascination for him that he could not keep away from it more than a couple of hours together. It was nothing for him to be seen playing billiards in the morning, or lounging in the parlour or the bar-room, drinking. One of his clerks would come interrupting him with news that some client was waiting at the office, and Valentine would put down his cue or his glass, and go flying over. But clients, as a rule, don’t like this kind of reception: they expect to find their legal advisers cool and ready on the spot.

The worst of all was the drink. Valentine had made a friend of it so long now, that he did not attempt to do without it. Thought he could not. Where he at first drank one glass he went on to drink two glasses, and the two gave place to three, or to more. Of course it told upon him. It told now and then upon his manner in the daytime: which was unfortunate. He could leave his billiards behind him and his glass, but he could not leave the effects of what the glass had contained; and it was no uncommon thing now for his clients, when he did go rushing in to them, to find his speech uncertain and his brains in a muddle. As a natural result, the practice was passing over to John Paul as fast as it could: and Tom, who was chief manager at Paul’s now, had been obliged to take on an extra clerk. Every day of his life old Paul told himself how lucky his move of engaging Tom had turned out. And this, not for the extra business he had gained: a great deal of that might have come to him whether Tom was with him or not: but because Tom had eased his shoulders of their hard work and care, and because he, the old man, had grown to like him so much.

But never a word had Mr. Paul said about raising Tom’s salary. Tom supposed he did not intend to raise it. And, much as he liked his post, and, for many reasons, his stay at Islip, he entertained notions of quitting both. Valentine had stoppedthe income his father had paid to Mrs. Chandler; and Tom’s two hundred a-year, combined with the trifle remaining to her out of her private income, only just sufficed to keep the home going.

It chanced that on the very same Sunday evening, when they were talking at North Villa of Valentine’s doings, Tom broached the subject to his mother. They were sitting out of doors in the warm summer twilight, sniffing the haycocks in the neighbouring field. Tom spoke abruptly.

“Should you mind my going to London, mother?”

“To London!” cried Mrs. Chandler. “What for?”

“To live.”

“You—you are not leaving Mr. Paul, are you?”

“I am thinking of it. You see, mother mine, there is no prospect of advancement where I am. It seems to me that I may jog on for ever at two hundred a-year——”

“It is enough for us, Tom.”

“As things are, yes: but nothing more. If—for instance—if I wanted to set up a home of my own, I have no means of doing it. Never shall have, at the present rate.”

Mrs. Chandler turned and looked at Tom’s face. “Are you thinking of marrying, Tom?”

“No. It is of no use to think of it. If I thought of it ever so, I could not do it. Putting that idea aside, it occurs to me sometimes to remember that I am eight-and-twenty, and ought to be doing better for myself.”

“Do you fancy you could do better in London?”

“I am sure I could. Very much better.”

Opening the Bible on her lap, Mrs. Chandler took out the spectacles that lay between the leaves, and put them into their case with trembling fingers.

“Do whatever you think best, Tom,” she said at length, having waited to steady her voice. “Children leave their parents’ home for one of their own; this Book tells us that they should do so. Had Jacob Chandler done the right thing by you, you would never have needed to leave Islip: had his son done the right thing by me, I should not be the burden to you that I am. But now that George has taken to sending me money over from Canada——”

“Burden!” interrupted Tom, laughingly. “Don’t you talk treason, Mrs. Chandler. If I do go to London, you will have to come with me, and see the lions.”

That night, lying awake, Tom made his mind up. He had been offered a good appointment in London to manage a branch office for a large legal firm—four hundred a-year salary. And he would never for a moment have hesitated to take it, but for not liking to leave old Paul and (especially) old Paul’s daughter.

Walking to Islip the next morning, he thought a bit about the best way of breaking it to Mr. Paul—who would be sure to come down upon him with a storm. By midday he had found no opportunity of speaking: people were perpetually coming in: and in the afternoon Tom had to go a mile or two into the country. In returning he overtook Emma. She was walking along the field-path under the hedge, her hat hanging on her arm by its strings.

“It is so warm,” said she, in apology, as Tom shook hands.“And the trees make it shady here. I went over to ask Mary Maceveril to come back with me and dine: but they have gone to Worcester for the day.”

“So much the better for me,” said Tom. “I want to tell you, Emma, that I am going to leave.”

“To leave!”

“I have had a very good place offered me in London. Mr. Paul knows nothing about it yet, for I did not make up my mind till last night, and I could not get a minute alone with him this morning.”

She had turned her face suddenly to the hedge, seemingly to pick a wild rose. Tom saw that the pink roses on her cheek had turned to white ones.

“I shall be very sorry to leave Islip, Emma. But what else can I do? Situated as I am now, I cannot even glance at any plans for the future. By making this change, I may be able to do so. My salary will be a good one and enable me to put by: and the firm I am going to dropped me a hint of a possible partnership.”

“I wish these dog-roses had no thorns! And I wish they would grow double, as the garden roses do!”

“So that I—having considered the matter thoroughly—believe I shall do well to make the change. Perhaps then I may begin to indulge dreams of a future.”

“There! all the petals are off!”

“Let me gather them for you. What is the matter, Emma?”

“Matter? Nothing, sir. What should there be?”

“Here is a beauty. Will you take it?”

“Thank you. I never thought you would leave papa, Mr. Chandler.”

“But—don’t you perceive my reasons, Emma? What prospect is there for me as long as I remain here? What hope can I indulge, or even glance at, of—of settling in life?”

“I dare say you don’t want to settle.”

“I do not put the question to myself, because it is so useless.”

“I shall be late for dinner. Good-bye.”

She took a sudden flight to the little white side-gate of her house, which opened to the field, ran across the garden, and disappeared within doors. Tom, catching a glimpse of her face, saw that it was wet with tears.

“Yes, it’s very hard upon her and upon me,” he said to himself. “And all the more so that I cannot in honour speak, even just to let her know that I care for her.”

Continuing his way towards the office, he met Mr. Paul, who was just leaving it. Tom turned with him, having to report to him of the business he had been to execute.

“I expected you home before this, Chandler.”

“Willis was out when I arrived there, and I had to wait for him. His wife gave me some syllabub.”

“Now for goodness’ sake don’t mix up syllabubs with law!”cried the old gentleman, testily. “That’s just you, Tom Chandler. Will Willis do as I advise him, or will he not?”

“Yes, he is willing; but upon conditions. I will explain to-morrow morning,” added Tom, as Mr. Paul laid his hand upon the handle of his front-gate, to enter.

“You can come in and explain now: and take some dinner with me.”

Emma did not know he was there until she came into the dining-room. It gave her a sort of pleasant shock. They were deep in conversation about Willis, and she sat down quietly.

“I am glad he has asked me,” thought Tom. “It will give me an opportunity of telling him about myself after dinner.”

Accordingly, when the port wine was on the table and Emma had gone, for she never stayed after the cloth was removed, Tom spoke. Old Paul was pouring out his one large glass. The communication was over in a few words, for Tom did not feel it a comfortable one to make.

“Oh!” said old Paul, after listening. “Want to betteryourself, do you? Going to London to get four hundred a-year, with a faint prospect of partnership? Have had it in your mind some time to make a change? No prospects here at Islip? Can only just keep your mother? Perhaps you want to keep a wife as well, Tom Chandler?”

Tom flushed like a school-girl. As the old gentleman saw, peering at him from under his bushy grey eyebrows.

“I should very much like to be able to do it, sir,” boldly replied Tom, playing with his wine-glass. “But I can’t. I can’t as much as think of it under present circumstances.”

“Who is the young lady? Your cousin Julietta?”

Tom burst into laughter. “No, that it is not, sir.”

“Perhaps it is Miss Maceveril? Well, the Maceverils are exclusive people. But faint heart, you know, never won fair lady.”

Tom shook his head. “I should not be afraid of winning her.”But it was not Miss Maceveril he was thinking of.

“What should you be afraid of?”

“Her friends. They would not listen to me.”

“Thinking you are not rich, I suppose?”

“Knowing I am not, sir.”

“The young lady may have money.”

“There’s the evil of it,” said Tom, impulsively. “If she had none, it would be all straight and smooth for us. I would very soon make a little home for her in London.”

“It is the first time I ever heard of money being an impediment to matrimony,” observed old Paul, taking the first sip at his wine.

“Not when the money is on the wrong side, sir.”

“Has she much?”

“I don’t know in the least. She will be sure to have some: she is an only child.”

“Then it is Mary Maceveril!” nodded the old man. “You look after her, Tom, my boy. She will have ten thousand pounds.”

“Miss Maceveril would not look at me, if I wanted her ever so. She is as proud as a peacock.”

“Tut, tut! Try. Try, boy. Why, what could she want? As my partner, you might be a match for even Miss Maceveril.”

“Your what, sir?” cried Tom, in surprise, lifting his eyes from the blue-and-red checked table-cover.

“I said my partner, Tom. Yes, that is what I intend to make you: have intended it for some time. We will have nofly-away London jaunts and junkets. Once my partner, of course the world will understand that you will be also my successor: and I think I shall soon retire.”

Tom had risen from his seat: for once in his life he was agitated. Mr. Paul rose and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“With this position, and a suitable income to back it, Tom, you are a match for Mary Maceveril, or for any other good girl. Go and try her, boy; try your luck.”

“But—it is of no use,” spoke Tom. “You don’t understand, sir.”

“No use! Go and try,”—pushing him towards the door.“My wife was one of the proud Wintertons, you know: how should I have gained her but for trying? I did not depreciate myself, and say I’m not good enough for her: I went and asked her to have me.”

“But suppose it is not Mary Maceveril, sir?—as indeed it is not. Suppose it is somebody nearer—nearer home?”

“No matter. Go and try, I say.”

“I—do—think—you—understand—me, sir,” cried Tom, slowly and dubiously. “I—hope there is no mistake!”

“Rubbish about mistake!” cried old Paul, pushing him towards the door. “Go and do as I bid you. Try.”

He went to look for Emma, and saw her sitting under the acacia tree on the bench, which faced the other way. Stepping noiselessly over the grass, he put his arms on her shoulders, and she turned round with a cry. But Tom would not let her go.

“I am told to come out and try, Emma. I want a wife, and your father thinks I may gain one. He is going to make me his partner; and he says he thinks I am a match for any good girl. And I am not going to London.”

She turned pale and red, red and pale, and then burst into a fit of tears and trembling.

“Oh, Tom, can it be true! Oh, Tom, Tom!”

And Tom kissed her for the first time in his life. But not for the last.

The news came out to us in a lump. Tom Chandler was taken into partnership and was to marry Emma. We wished them good luck. She was not to leave her home, for her father would not spare her: she and Tom were to live with him.

“I had to do it, you know, Squire,” said old Paul, meeting the Squire one day. “Only children are apt to be wilful. Notthat I ever found Emma so. Had I not allowed it, I expect she’d have dutifully saddled herself, an old maid, upon me for life.”

“She could not have chosen better,” cried the Squire, warmly.“If there’s one young fellow I respect above another, it’s Tom Chandler. He is good to the back-bone.”

“He wouldn’t have got her if he were not; you may rely upon that,” concluded old Paul, emphatically.

So the wedding took place at Islip in the autumn, and old Paul gave Tom a month’s holiday, and told him he had better take Emma to Paris; as they both seemed, by what he could gather, red-hot to see it.

Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, came down the rain, dropping with monotonous patter on the decaying leaves that strewed the garden. Not the trim well-kept garden it used to be, but showing signs of neglect. What with the long grass, and the leaves, and the sloppy roads, and the November skies, nothing could well look more dreary than the world looked to-day, as seen from the windows of North Villa.

Time had gone on, another year, bringing its events and its changes; as time always does bring. The chief change, as connected with this little record, lay in Valentine Chandler. He had gone to the dogs. That was Islip’s expression for it, not mine. A baby had come to Tom and Emma.

Little by little, step by step, Valentine had gone down lower and lower. Some people, who are given to bad habits, make spasmodic efforts to reform; but, so far as Islip could see, Valentine never made any. He passed more time at the Bell, or at less respectable public-houses, and drank deeper: and at last neglected his business almost entirely. Enervated and good for nothing, he would lie in bed till twelve o’clock in the day. To keep on the office seemed only a farce. Its profits were not enough to pay for its one solitary clerk. Valentine was then pulled up by an illness, which confined him to his bed, and left him in a shaky state. The practice had quite gone then, and the clerk had gone; and Valentine knew that, even though he had had sufficient energy left to try to bring them back, no clients would have returned to him.

He was going to emigrate to Canada. His friends hoped he would be steady there, and redeem the past: he gave fairpromises of it. George Chandler (Tom’s brother, who was doing very well there now, with a large farm about him, and a wife and children) had undertaken to receive Valentine and help him to employment. So he would have to begin life over again.

It was all so much gall and bitterness to his mother and sisters, and had been for a long while. The tears were dropping through the fingers of Mrs. Chandler now, as she leaned on her hand and watched the dreary rain on the window-panes. With all his faults, she had so loved Valentine. She loved him still, above all the trouble he had brought; and it seemed, this afternoon, just as though her heart would break.

When the business fell off, of course her income fell off also. Valentine was to have paid her a third of the profits, but if he did not make any profits, he could not pay her any. She had the private income, two hundred a-year, which Jacob had secured to her: but what was that for a family accustomed to live in the fashion? There is an old saying that necessity has no law: and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters had proved its truth. One of the girls had gone out as a governess; one was on a prolonged visit to her aunt Cramp; and Julietta and her mother were to move into a smaller house at Christmas. The practice and the other business, once Valentine’s, and his father’s before him, had all gone over to the other firm, Paul and Chandler.

“I’m sure I don’t know what Georgiana means by writing home for money amidst all our troubles!” cried Mrs. Chandler, fretfully. “She has fifteen pounds a-year salary, and she must make that do.”

“She says her last quarter’s money is all spent, and she can’t possibly manage without a new mantle for Sunday,” returned Julietta.

“I can’t supply it; you know I can’t. I am not able to pay my own way now. Let her write to Mrs. Cramp.”

“It would be of no use, mamma. Aunt Mary Ann will never help us to clothes. She says we have had too many of them.”

“Well, I don’t want to be worried with these matters: it’s enough for me to think of poor Valentine’s things. Only two days now before he starts. And what wretched weather it is!”

“Valentine says he shall not take much luggage with him. He saw me counting his shirts, and he said they were too many by half.”

“And who will supply him with shirts out there, do you suppose?” demanded Mrs. Chandler. “You talk nothing but nonsense, Julietta. Where is Valentine? He ought to be here, with all this packing to do. He must have been gone out these two hours.”

“He said he had business at Islip.”

Mrs. Chandler looked gloomy at the answer. She hated the very name of Islip: partly because they held no longer any part in the place, partly because the Bell was in it.

But Valentine had not gone to the Bell this time. His visit was to his cousin Tom; and his errand was to beg of Tom to give or lend him a fifty-pound note before sailing.

“I shall have next to nothing in my pocket, Tom, when I land,” he urged, as the two sat together in Tom’s private room.“If I get on over there, I will pay you back. If I don’t—well, perhaps you won’t grudge having helped me for the last time.”

For a moment Tom did not answer. He sat before his desk-table, Valentine near him: just as Valentine had one day sat at his desk in his private room, and Tom had been the petitioner, not so many years gone by. Valentine looked upon the silence as an ill-omen.

“You have all the business that once was mine in your fingers now, Tom. It has left me for you.”

“But not by any wish or seeking of mine, Valentine; you know that,” spoke Tom readily, turning his honest eyes and kindly face on the fallen man. “I wish you were in your office still. There’s plenty of work for both of us.”

“Well, I am not in it; and you have got it all. You might lend me such a poor little sum as fifty pounds.”

“Of course I mean to lend it: but I was thinking. Look here, Valentine. I will not give it you now; you cannot want it before sailing: and you might lose it on board,” he added laughing. “You shall carry with you an order upon my brother George for one hundred pounds.”

“Will George pay it?”

“I will take care of that. He shall receive a letter from me by the same mail that takes you out. Stay, Valentine. I will give you the order now.”

He wrote what was necessary, sealed it up, and handed it over. Valentine thanked him.

“How is Emma?” he asked as he rose. “And the boy?”

“Quite well, thank you: both. Will you not go in and see them?”

“I think not. You can say good-bye for me. I don’t much care to trouble people.”

“God bless you, Valentine,” said Tom, clasping his hand.“You will begin life anew over there, and may have a happy one yet. One of these days you will be coming back to us, a prosperous man.”

Valentine went trudging home through the rain, miserable and dispirited, and found a visitor had arrived—Mrs. Cramp. His mother and sister were upstairs then, busy over his trunks; so Mrs. Cramp had him all to herself. She had liked Valentine very much. When he went wrong, it put her out frightfully, and since then she had not spared him: which of course put out Valentine.

“Yes, it will be a change,” he acknowledged, in reply to a remark of hers. “A flourishing solicitor here, and a servant there. For that’s what I shall be over yonder, I conclude; I can’t expect to be my own master. You don’t know how good the business was, Aunt Mary Ann, at the time my father died. If I could only have kept it!”

“You could not expect to keep it,” said Mrs. Cramp, who sat facing him, her bonnet tilted back from her red and comely face, her purple stuff gown pulled up above her boots.

“I should have kept it, but for now and then taking a little drop too much,” confessed poor Valentine: who was deeper in the dumps that day than he had ever been before.

“I don’t know that,” said Mrs. Cramp. “The business was a usurped one.”

“A what?” said Valentine.

“There is an overruling Power above us, you know,” she went on. “I am quite sure, Valentine—I have learnt it by experience—that injustice never answers in the long run. It may seem to succeed for a time; but it does not last: it cannot and it does not. If a man rears himself on another’s downfall, causing himself that downfall that he may rise, his prosperity rests on no sure foundation. In some way or other the past comes home to him; and he suffers for it, if not in his own person, in that of his children. Ill-gotten riches bring a curse, never a blessing.”

“What a growler you are, Aunt Mary Ann!”

“I don’t mean it for growling, Valentine. It is true.”

“It’s not true.”

“Not true! The longer I live the more examples I see of it. A man treads another down that he may rise himself: and there he stands high and flourishing. But wait a few years, and look then. He is gone. Gone, and no trace of his prosperity left. And when I mark that, I recall that verse in the Psalms of David: ‘I went by, and lo, he was gone: I sought him, but his place was nowhere to be found.’ That verse is a true type of real life, Valentine.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried Valentine. “And where’s the good of having the Psalms at your finger-ends?”

“You do believe it. Why, Valentine, take your own case. Was there ever a closer exemplification? Tom was injured; put down; I may say, crushed by you and your father. Yes, crushed: crushed out of his rights. His father made the business; and the half of it, at any rate, ought to have been Tom’s. Instead of that, your father deposed him and usurped it. He repented when he was dying, and charged you to remedy the wrong. But you did not; you usurped it. And what has it ended in?”

“Ended in?” cried Valentine vacantly.

“You are—as you are; ruined in character, in purse, in reputation; and Tom is respected and flourishing. The business has left you and gone to him; not through any seeking of his, but through your own doings entirely; the very self-same business that his father made has in the natural course of time and events gone back to him—and he is not thirty yet. It is retribution, nephew. Justice has been righting herself; and man could neither stay nor hinder it.”

“What nonsense!” debated Valentine testily. “Suppose I had been steady: would the business have left me for Tom then?”

“Yes. In some inscrutable way, that we see not, it would. I am sure of it. You would no more have been allowed to triumph to the end on your ill-gotten gains, than I could stand if I went out and perched myself on yonder weathercock,” affirmed Mrs. Cramp, growing warm. “Your father kept his place, it is true; but what a miserable man he always was, and without any ostensible cause.”

“I wonder you don’t set up for a parson, Aunt Mary Ann! This is as good as a sermon.”

“Then carry the sermon in your memory through life, Valentine. Our doings, whether they be good or ill, bring back their fruits. In some wonderful manner that we cannot understand, events are always shaping onwards their own true ends, their appointed destiny, and working out the will of Heaven.”

That’s all. And the Squire seemed to take a leaf out of Mrs. Cramp’s book. For ever so long afterwards, he would tell us to read a lesson from the history of the Chandlers, and to remember that none can deal unjustly in the sight of God without having to account for it sooner or later.

VERENA FONTAINE’S REBELLION.

I

You have been at Timberdale Rectory two or three times before; an old-fashioned, red-brick, irregularly-built house, the ivy clustering on its front walls. It had not much beauty to boast of, but was as comfortable a dwelling-place as any in Worcestershire. The well-stocked kitchen-garden, filled with plain fruit-trees and beds of vegetables, stretched out beyond the little lawn behind it; the small garden in front, with its sweet and homely flowers, opened to the pasture-field that lay between the house and the church.

Timberdale Rectory basked to-day in the morning sun. It shone upon Grace, the Rector’s wife, as she sat in the bow-window of their usual sitting-room, making a child’s frock. Having no little ones of her own to work for—and sometimes Timberdale thought it was that fact that made the Rector show himself so crusty to the world in general—she had time, and to spare, to sew for the poor young starvelings in her husband’s parish.

“Here he comes at last!” exclaimed Grace.

Herbert Tanerton looked round from the fire over which he was shivering, though it was a warm and lovely April day. A glass of lemonade, or some such cooling drink, stood on the table at his elbow. He was always catching a sore throat—or fancied it.

“If I find the delay has arisen through any neglect of Lee’s, I shall report him for it,” spoke the Rector severely. For, though he had condoned that one great mishap of Lee’s, the burning of the letter, he considered it his duty to look sharply after him.

“Oh but, Herbert, it cannot be; he is always punctual,” cried Grace. “I’ll go and ask.”

Mrs. Tanerton left the room, and ran down the short path tothe little white gate; poor old Lee, the letterman, was approaching it from the field. Grace glanced at the church clock—three-quarters past ten.

“A break-down on the line, we hear, ma’am,” said he, without waiting to be questioned, as he put one letter into her hand.“Salmon has been in a fine way all the morning, wondering what was up.”

“Thank you,” said Grace, glancing at the letter; “we wondered too. What a beautiful day it is! Your wife will lose her rheumatism now. Tell her I say so.”

Back ran Grace. Herbert Tanerton was standing up, impatient for the letter he had been specially expecting, his hand stretched out for it.

“Your letter has not come, Herbert. Only one for me. It is from Alice.”

“Oh!” returned Herbert, crustily, as he sat down again to his fire and his lemonade.

Grace ran her eyes quickly over the letter—rather a long one, but very legibly written. Her husband’s brother, Jack Tanerton—if you have not forgotten him—had just brought home in safety from another voyage the good ship Rose of Delhi, of which he was commander. Alice, his wife, who generally voyaged with him, had gone immediately on landing to her mother at New Brighton, near Liverpool; Jack remaining with his ship. This time the ship had been chartered for London, and Jack was there with it.

Grace folded the letter slowly, an expression of pain seated in her eyes. “Would you like to read it, Herbert?” she asked.

“Not now,” groaned Herbert, shifting the band of flannel on his throat. “What does she say?”

“She says”—Grace hesitated a moment before proceeding—“she says she wishes Jack could leave the sea.”

“I dare say!” exclaimed Herbert. “Now, Grace, I’ll not have that absurd notion encouraged. It was Alice’s cry last time they were at home; and I told you then I would not.”

“I have not encouraged it, Herbert. Of course what Alice says has reason in it: one cannot help seeing that.”

“Jack chose the sea as his profession, and Jack must abide by it. A turncoat is never worth a rush. Jack likes the sea; and Jack has been successful at it.”

“Oh yes: he’s a first-rate sailor,” conceded Grace. “It isAlice’s wish, no doubt, rather than his. She says here”—opening the letter—“Oh, if Jack could but leave the sea! All my little ones coming on!—I shall not be able to go with him this next voyage. And I come home to find my little Mary and my mother both ill! If we could but leave the sea!”

“I may just as well say ‘If I could but leave the Church!’—I’m sure I’m never well in it,” retorted Herbert. “Jack had better not talk to me of this: I should put him down at once.”

Grace sighed as she took up the little frock again. She remembered, though it might suit her husband to forget it, that Jack had not, in one sense of the word, chosen the sea; he had been deluded into it by Aunt Dean, his wife’s mother. She had plotted and planned, that woman, for her daughter’s advancement, and found out too late that she had plotted wrongly; for Alice chose Jack, and Jack, through her machinations, had been deprived of the greater portion of his birthright. He made a smart sailor; he was steady, and stuck to his duty manfully; never a better merchant commander sailed out of port than John Tanerton. But, as his wife said, her little ones were beginning to grow about her; she had two already; and she could not be with them at New Brighton, and be skimming over the seas to Calcutta, or where not, in the Rose of Delhi. Interests clashed; and with her whole heart Alice wished Jack could quit the sea. Grace sighed as she thought of this; she saw how natural was the wish, though Herbert did not see it: neither could she forget that the chief portion of the fortune which ought to have been Jack’s was enjoyed by herself and her husband. She had always thought it unjust; it did not seem to bring them luck; it lay upon her heart like a weight of care. Their income from the living and the fortune, comprised together, was over a thousand pounds a-year. They lived very quietly, not spending, she was sure, anything like half of it; Herbert put by the rest. What good did all the money bring them? But little. Herbert was always ailing, fretful, and grumbling: the propensity to set the world to rights grew upon him: he had ever taken pleasure in that, from the time when a little lad he would muffle himself in his step-father’s surplice, and preach to Jack and Alice. Poor Jack had to work hard for what he earned at sea; he had only a hundred and fifty pounds a-year, besides, of the money that had been his mother’s; Herbert had the othersix hundred and fifty of it. But Jack, sunny-natured, ever-ready Jack, was just as happy as the day was long.

Lost in these thoughts, her eyes bent on her work, Alice did not see a gentleman who was coming across the field towards the house. The click of the little gate, as it swung to after him, caused her to look up, but hardly in time. Herbert turned at the sound.

“Who’s come bothering now, I wonder?”

“I think it is Colonel Letsom,” answered Grace.

“Then he must come in here,” rejoined Herbert. “I am not going into that cold drawing-room.”

Colonel Letsom it was; a pleasant little man with a bald head, who had walked over from his house at Crabb. Grace opened the parlour-door, and the colonel came in and shook hands.

“I want you both to come and dine with me to-night in a friendly way,” spoke he; “no ceremony. My brother, the major, is with us for a day or two, and we’d like to get a few friends together to meet him at dinner.”

Herbert Tanerton hesitated. He did not say No, for he liked dinners; he liked the importance of sitting at the right or left hand of his hostess and saying grace. He did not say Yes, for he thought of his throat.

“I hardly know, colonel. I got up with a sore throat this morning. Very relaxed indeed it is. Who is to be there?”

“Yourselves and the Fontaines and the Todhetleys: nobody else,” answered the colonel. “As to your throat—I dare say it will be better by-and-by. A cheerful dinner will do you good. Six o’clock sharp, mind.”

Herbert Tanerton accepted the offer, conditionally. If his throat got worse, of course he should have to send word, and decline. The colonel nodded. He felt sure in his own mind the throat would get better: he knew how fanciful the parson was, and how easily he could be roused out of his ailments.

“How do you like the Fontaines?” questioned he of the colonel. “Have you seen much of them yet?”

“Oh, we like them very well,” answered the colonel, who, in his easy nature, generally avowed a liking for everybody. “They are connections of my wife’s.”

“Connections of your wife’s!” repeated Herbert quickly. “I did not know that.”

“I’m not sure that I knew it myself, until we came to comparenotes,” avowed the colonel. “Any way, I did not remember it. Sir Dace Fontaine’s sister married——. Stop; let me consider—how was it?”

Grace laughed. The colonel laughed also.

“I know it now. My wife’s sister married a Captain Pym: it is many years ago. Captain Pym was a widower, and his first wife was a sister of Dace Fontaine’s. Yes, that’s it. Poor Pym and his wife died soon; both of them in India: and so, you see, we lost sight of the connection altogether; it slipped out of memory.”

“Were there any children?”

“The first wife had one son, who was, I believe, taken to by his father’s relatives. That was all. Well, you’ll come this evening,” added the colonel, turning to depart. “I must make haste back home, for they don’t know yet who’s coming and who’s not.”

A few days previously to this, we had taken up our abode at Crabb Cot, and found that some people named Fontaine had come to the neighbourhood, and were living at Maythorn Bank. Naturally the Squire wanted to know who they were and what they were. And as they were fated to play a conspicuous part in the drama I am about to relate, I must give to them a word of introduction. Important people need it, you know.

Dace Fontaine belonged to the West Indies and was attached to the civil service there. He became judge, or sheriff, or something of the kind; had been instrumental in quelling a riot of the blacks, and was knighted for it. He married rather late in life, in his forty-first year, a young American lady. This young lady’s mother—it is curious how things come about!—was first cousin to John Paul, the Islip lawyer. Lady Fontaine soon persuaded her husband to quit the West Indies for America. Being well off, for he had amassed money, he could do as he pleased; and to America they went with their two daughters. From that time they lived sometimes in America, sometimes in the West Indies: Sir Dace would not quite abandon his old home there. Changes came as the years went on: Lady Fontaine died; Sir Dace lost a good portion of his fortune through some adverse speculation. A disappointed man, he resolved to come to England and settle down on some property that had fallen to him in right of his wife; a small estate called Oxlip Grange, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Any way,old Paul got a letter, saying they were on the road. However, when they arrived, they found that the tenants at Oxlip Grange could not be got to go out of it without proper notice—which anybody but Sir Dace Fontaine would have known to be reasonable. After some cavilling, the tenants agreed to leave at the end of six months; and the Fontaines went into that pretty little place, Maythorn Bank, then to be let furnished, until the time should expire. So there they were, located close to us at Crabb Cot, Sir Dace Fontaine and his two daughters.

Colonel Letsom had included me in the dinner invitation, for which I felt obliged to him: I was curious to see what the Fontaines were like. Tom Coney said one of the girls was beautiful, lovely—like an angel: the other was a little quick, dark young woman, who seemed to have a will of her own.

We reached Colonel Letsom’s betimes—neighbourly fashion. In the country you don’t rush in when the dinner’s being put on the table; you like to get a chat beforehand. The sunbeams were slanting into the drawing-room as we entered it. Four of the Letsoms were present, besides the major, and Herbert Tanerton and his wife, for the throat was better. All of us were talking together when the strangers were announced: Sir Dace Fontaine, Miss Fontaine, and Miss Verena Fontaine.

Sir Dace was a tall, heavy man, with a dark, sallow, and arbitrary face; Miss Fontaine was little and pale; she had smooth black hair, and dark eyes that looked straight out at you. Her small teeth were brilliantly white, her chin was pointed. A particularly calm face altogether, and one that could boast of little beauty—but I rather took to it.

Did you ever see a fairy? Verena Fontaine looked like nothing else. A small, fair, graceful girl, with charming manners and pretty words. She had the true golden hair, that is so beautiful but so rare, delicate features, and laughing eyes blue as the summer sky. I think her beauty and her attractions altogether took some of us by surprise; me for one. Bob Letsom looked fit to eat her. The sisters were dressed alike, in white muslin and pink ribbons.

How we went in to dinner I don’t remember, except that Bob and I brought up the rear together. Sir Dace took Mrs. Letsom, I think, and the colonel Mrs. Todhetley; and that beautiful girl, Verena, fell to Tod. Tod! The two girls were about the most self-possessed girls I ever saw; their manners quiteAmerican. Not their accent: that was good. Major Letsom and Sir Dace fraternized wonderfully: they discovered that they had once met in the West Indies.

After dinner we had music. The sisters sang a duet, and Mary Ann Letsom a song; and Herbert Tanerton sang, forgetting his throat, Grace playing for him; and they made me sing.

The evening soon passed, and we all left together. It was a warmish night, with a kind of damp smell exhaling from the shrubs and hedges. The young ladies muffled some soft white woollen shawls round their faces, and called our climate a treacherous one. The parson and Grace said good-night, and struck off on the near way to Timberdale; the rest of us kept straight on.

“Why don’t your people always live here?” asked Verena of me, as we walked side by side behind the rest. “By something that was said at dinner I gather that you are not here much.”

“Mr. Todhetley’s principal residence lies at a distance. We only come here occasionally.”

“Well, I wish you stayed here always. It would be something to have neighbours close to us. Of course you know the dreadful little cottage we are in—Maythorn Bank?”

“Quite well. It is very pretty, though it is small.”

“Small! Accustomed to our large rooms in the western world, it seems to us that we can hardly turn in these. I wish papa had managed better! This country is altogether frightfully dull. My sister tells us that unless things improve she shall take flight back to the States. She could do it,” added Verena;“she is twenty-one now, and her own mistress.”

I laughed. “Is she obliged to be her own mistress because she is twenty-one?”

“She is her own,” said Verena. “She has come into her share of the money mamma left us and can do as she pleases.”

“Oh, you were speaking in that sense.”

“Partly. Having money, she is not tied. She could go back to-morrow if she liked. We are not bound by your English notions.”

“It would not suit our notions at all. English girls cannot travel about alone.”

“That comes of their imperfect education. What harm doyou suppose could anywhere befall well brought-up girls? We have been self-dependent from childhood; taught to be so. Coral could take care of herself the whole world over, and meet with consideration, wheresoever she might be.”

“What do you call her—Coral? It is a very pretty name.”

“And coral is her favourite ornament: it suits her pale skin. Her name is really Coralie, but I call her Coral—just as she calls me Vera. Do you like my name—Verena?”

“Very much indeed. Have you read ‘Sintram’?”

“‘Sintram’!—no,” she answered. “Is it a book?”

“A very nice book, indeed, translated from the German. I will lend it you, if you like, Miss Verena.”

“Oh, thank you. I am fond of nice books. Coralie does not care for books as I do. But—I want you to tell me,” she broke off, turning her fair face to me, the white cloud drawn round it, and her sweet blue eyes laughing and dancing—“I can’t quite make out who you are. They are not your father and mother, are they?”—nodding to the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, who were on ever so far in front with Sir Dace.

“Oh no. I only live with them. I am Johnny Ludlow.”

Maythorn Bank had not an extensive correspondence as a rule, but three letters were delivered there the following morning. One of the letters was for Verena: which she crushed into her hand in the passage and ran away with to her room. The others, addressed to Sir Dace, were laid by his own man, Ozias, on the breakfast-table to await him.

“The West Indian mail is in, papa,” observed Coralie, beginning to pour out the coffee as her father entered. “It has brought you two letters. I think one of them is from George Bazalgette.”

Sir Dace wore a rich red silk dressing-gown, well wadded. A large fire burnt in the grate of the small room. He felt the cold here much. Putting his gold eye-glasses across his nose, as he slowly sat down—all his movements were deliberate—he opened the letter his daughter had specially alluded to, and read the few lines it contained.

“What a short epistle!” exclaimed Coralie.

“George Bazalgette is coming over; he merely writes to tell me so,” replied Sir Dace. “Verena,” he added, for just then Verena entered and wished him good-morning, with a beaming face, “I have a letter here from George Bazalgette. He is coming to Europe; coming for you.”

A defiant look rose to Verena’s bright blue eyes. She opened her mouth to answer; paused; and closed it again without speaking. Perhaps she recalled the saying, “Discretion is the better part of valour.” It certainly is, when applied to speech.

Breakfast was barely over when Ozias came in again. He had a copper-coloured face, as queer as his name, but he was a faithful, honest servant, and had lived in the family twenty years. The gardener was waiting for instructions about the new flower-beds, he told his master; and Sir Dace went out. It left his daughters at liberty to talk secrets. How pretty the two graceful little figures looked in their simple morning dresses of delicate print, tied with bows of pale green ribbon.

“I told you I knew George Bazalgette would be coming over, Vera,” began Coralie. “His letter by the last mail quite plainly intimated that.”

Verena tossed her pretty head. “Let him come! He will get his voyage out and home for nothing. I hope he’ll be fearfully sea-sick!”

Not to make a mystery of the matter, which we heard all about later, and which, perhaps, led to that most dreadful crime—but I must not talk of that yet. George Bazalgette was a wealthy West Indian planter, and wanted to marry Miss Verena Fontaine. She did not want to marry him, and for the very good reason that she intended to marry somebody else. There had been a little trouble about it with Sir Dace; and alas! there was destined to be a great deal more.

“Shall I tell you what I hope, Vera?” answered Coralie, in her matter-of-fact, unemotional way. “I hope that Edward Pym will never come here, or to Europe at all, to worry you. Better that the sea should swallow him up en voyage.”

Verena’s beaming face broke into smiles. Her sister’s pleasant suggestion went for nothing, for a great joy lay within her.

“Edward Pym has come, Coral. The ship has arrived in port, and he has written to me. See!”

She took the morning’s letter from the bosom of her dress, and held it open for Coralie to see the date, “London,” and the signature “Edward.” Had the writer signed his name in full, it would have been Edward Dace Pym.

“How did he know we were here?” questioned Coralie, in surprise.

“I wrote to tell him.”

“Did you know where to write to him?”

“I knew he had sailed from Calcutta in the Rose of Delhi; we all knew that; and I wrote to him to the address of the ship’s brokers at Liverpool. The ship has come on to London, it seems, instead of Liverpool, and they must have sent my letter up there.”

“If you don’t take care, Vera, some trouble will come of this. Papa will never hear of Edward Pym. That’s my opinion.”

She was as cool as were the cucumbers growing outside in the garden, under the glass shade. Verena was the opposite—all excitement; though she did her best to hide it. Her fingers were restless; her blushes came and went; the sweet words of the short love-letter were dancing in her heart.

“My darling Vera,

“The ship is in; I am in London with her, and I have your dear letter. How I wish I could run down into Worcestershire! That cannot be just yet: our skipper will take care to be absent himself, I expect, and I must stay: he is a regular Martinet as to duty. You will see me the very hour I can get my liberty. How strange it is you should be at that place—Crabb! I believe a sort of aunt of mine lives there; but I have never seen her.

“Ever your true lover,

“EDWARD.”

“Who is it—the sort of aunt?” cried Coralie, when Verena had read out the letter; “and what does he mean?”

“Mrs. Letsom, of course. Did you not hear her talking to papa, last night, about her dead sister, who had married Captain Pym?”

“And Edward was the son of Captain Pym’s first wife, papa’s sister. Then, in point of fact, he is not related to Mrs. Letsom at all. Well, it all happened ages ago,” added Coralie, with supreme indifference, “long before our time.”

Just so. Edward Pym, grown to manhood now, and chief-mate of the Rose of Delhi, was the son of that Captain Pym and his first wife. When Captain Pym died, a relative of his, whohad no children of his own, took to the child, then only five years old, and brought him up. The boy turned out anything but good, and when he was fourteen he ran away to sea. He found he had to stick to the sea, for his offended relative would do no more for him: except that, some years later, when he died, Edward found that he was down for five hundred pounds in his will. Edward stayed on shore to spend it, and then went to sea again, this time as first officer in an American brig. Chance, or something else, took the vessel to the West India Islands, and at one of them he fell in with Sir Dace Fontaine, who was, in fact, his uncle, but who had never taken the smallest thought for him—hardly remembered he had such a nephew—and made acquaintance with his two cousins. He and Verena fell in love with one another; and, on her side, at any rate, it was not the passing fancy sometimes called by the name, but one likely to last for all time. They often met, the young officer having the run of his uncle’s house whenever he could get ashore; and Edward, who could be as full of tricks and turns as a fox when it suited his convenience to be so, contrived to put himself into hospital when the brig was about to sail, saying he was sick; so he was left behind. The brig fairly off, Mr. Edward Pym grew well again, and looked to have a good time of idleness and love-making. But he reckoned without his host. A chance word, dropped inadvertently, opened the eyes of Sir Dace to the treason around. The first thing he did was to forbid Mr. Edward Pym his house; the second thing was to take passage with his family for America. Never would he allow his youngest and prettiest and best-loved daughter to become the wife of an ill-conducted, penniless ship’s mate; and that man a cousin! The very thought was preposterous! So Edward Pym, thrown upon his beam-ends, joined a vessel bound for Calcutta. Arrived there, he took the post of chief mate on the good ship Rose of Delhi, Captain Tanerton, bound for England.

“What is this nonsense I hear, about your wanting to leave the sea, John?”

The question, put in the Rector of Timberdale’s repellent, chilly tone, more intensified when anything displeased him, brought only a smile to the pleasant face of his brother. Ever hopeful, sunny-tempered Jack, had reached the Rectory the previous night to make a short visit. They sat in the cheerful,bow-windowed room, the sun shining on Jack, as some days before it had shone on Grace; the Rector in his easy-chair at the fire.

“Well, I suppose it is only what you say, Herbert—nonsense,”answered Jack, who was playing with the little dog, Dash. “I should like to leave the sea well enough, but I don’t see my way clear to do it at present.”

“Why should you like to leave it?”

“Alice is anxious that I should. She cannot always sail with me now; and there are the little ones to be seen to, you know, Herbert. Her mother is of course—well, very kind, and all that,” went on Jack, after an imperceptible pause, “but Alice would prefer to train her children herself; and, to do that, she must remain permanently on shore. It would not be a pleasant life for us, Herbert, she on shore and I at sea.”

“Do you ever think of duty, John?”

“Of duty? In what way?”

“When a man has deliberately chosen his calling in life, and spent his first years in it, it is his duty to continue in that calling, and to make the best of it.”

“I suppose it is, in a general way,” said Jack, all smiles and good-humour. “But—if I could get a living on shore, Herbert, I don’t see but what my duty would lie in doing it as much as it now lies at sea.”

“You may not see it, John. Chopping and changing often brings a man to poverty.”

“Oh, I’d take care, I hope, not to come to poverty. Down, Dash! Had I a farm of two or three hundred acres, I could make it answer well, if any man could. You know what a good farmer I was as a boy, Herbert—in practical knowledge, I mean—and how I loved it. I like the sea very well, but I love farming. It was my born vocation.”

“I wish you’d not talk at random!” cried Herbert, fretfully.“Born vocation! You might just as well say you were born to be a mountebank! And where would you get the money to stock a farm of two or three hundred acres? You have put none by, I expect. You never could keep your pence in your pocket when a lad: they were thrown away right and left.”

“That’s true,” laughed Jack. “Other lads used to borrow them. True also that I have not put money by, Herbert. I have not been able to.”

“Of course you have not! It wouldn’t be you if you had.”

“No, Dash, there’s not a bit more; you’ve had it all,” cried Jack to the dog. But he, ever generous-natured, did not tell his brother why he had not been able to put by: that the calls made upon him by his wife’s mother—Aunt Dean, as they still styled her—were so heavy and so perpetual. She wanted a great deal for herself, and she presented vast claims for the expenses of Jack’s two little children, and for the maintenance of her daughter when Alice stayed on shore. Alice whispered to Jack she believed her mother was making a private purse for herself. Good-natured Jack thought it very likely, but he did not stop the supplies. Just as Aunt Dean had been a perpetual drain upon her brother, Jacob Lewis, during his lifetime, so she now drained Jack.

“Then, with no means at command, what utter folly it is for you to think of leaving the sea?” resumed the parson.

“So it is, Herbert,” acquiesced Jack. “I assure you I don’t think of it.”

“Alice does.”

“Ay, poor girl, because she wishes it.”

“Do you see any chance of leaving it?”

“Not a bit,” readily acknowledged Jack.

“Then where’s the use of talking about it—of harping upon it?”

“None in the world,” said Jack.

“Then we’ll drop the subject, if you please,” pursued Herbert, forgetting, perhaps, that it was he who introduced it.

“Jump then, Dash! Jump, good little Dash!”

“What a worry you make with that dog, John! Attend to me. I want to know why you came to London instead of to Liverpool.”

“She was laid on for London this time,” answered Jack.

“Laid on!” ejaculated Herbert, who knew as much about sailor’s phrases as he did of Hebrew.

Jack laughed. “The agents in Calcutta chartered the ship for London, freights for that port being higher than for Liverpool. The Rose of Delhi is a free ship.”

“Oh,” responded Herbert. “I thought perhaps she had changed owners.”

“No. But our broker in London is brother to the owners in Liverpool. There are three of them in all. James Freeman isthe broker; Charles and Richard are the owners. Rich men they must be!”

“When do you think you shall sail again?”

“It depends upon when they can begin to reload and get the fresh cargo in.”

“That does not take long, I suppose,” remarked Herbert, slightingly.

“She may be loaded in three days if the cargo is ready and waiting. It may be three weeks if the cargo’s not—or more than that.”

“And Alice does not go with you?”

Jack shook his head: something like a cloud passed over his fresh, frank face. “No, not this time.”

We were all glad to see Jack Tanerton again. He had paid Timberdale but one visit, and that a flying one, since he took command of the Rose of Delhi. It was the old Jack Tanerton, frank of face, hearty of manner, flying to all the nooks and corners of the parish with outstretched hands to rich and poor, with kind words and generous help for the sick and sorrowful: just the same, only with a few more years gone over his head. I don’t say but Herbert was also glad to see him; only Herbert never displayed much gladness at anything.

One morning Jack and I chanced to be out together; when, in passing through the green and shady lane, that would be fragrant in summer with wild roses and woodbine, and that skirted Maythorn Bank, we saw some one stooping to peer through the sweetbriar hedge, as if he wanted to see what the house was like, and did not care to look at it openly. He sprang up at sound of our footsteps. It was a slight, handsome young man of five or six-and-twenty, rather under the middle height, with a warm colour, bright dark eyes, and dark whiskers. The gold band on his cap showed that he was a sailor, and he seemed to recognize Jack with a start.

“Good-morning, sir,” he cried, hurriedly.

“Is it you, Mr. Pym?—good-morning,” returned Jack, in a cool tone. “What are you doing down here?”

“The ship’s finished unloading, and is gone into dry dock to be re-coppered, so I’ve got a holiday,” replied the young man: and he walked away with a brisk step, as if not caring to be questioned further.

“Who is he?” I asked, as we went on in the opposite direction.

“My late chief mate: a man named Pym.”

“You spoke as if you did not like him, Jack.”

“Don’t like him at all,” said Jack. “My own chief mate left me in Calcutta, to better himself, as the saying runs; he got command of one of our ships whose master had died out there; Pym presented himself to me, and I engaged him. He gave me some trouble on the homeward voyage; drank, was insolent, and would shirk his duty when he could. Once I had to threaten to put him in irons. I shall never allow him to sail with me again—and he knows it.”

“What is he here for?”

“Don’t know at all,” returned Jack. “He can’t have come after me, I suppose.”

“Has he left the ship?”

“I can’t tell. I told the brokers in London I should wish to have another first officer appointed in Pym’s place. When they asked why, I only said he and I did not hit it off together very well. I don’t care to report ill of the young man; it might damage his prospects; and he may do better with another master than he did with me.”

At that moment Pym overtook us, and accosted Jack: saying something about some bales of “jute,” which, as I gathered, had constituted part of the cargo.

“Have you got your discharge from the ship, Mr. Pym?”asked Jack, after answering his question about the bales of jute.

“No, sir.”

“No!”

“Not yet. I have not applied for it. There’s some talk, I fancy, of making Ferrar chief,” added Pym. “Until then I keep my post.”

The words were not insolent, but the tone had a ring in it that betokened no civility. I thought Pym would have liked to defy Jack had he dared. Jack’s voice, as he answered, was a little haughty—and I had never heard that from Jack in all my life.

“I shall not take Ferrar as chief. What are you talking of, Mr. Pym? Ferrar is not qualified.”

“Ferrar is qualifying himself now; he is about to pass,”retorted Pym. “Good-afternoon, sir.”

Had Pym looked back as he turned off, he would have seen Sir Dace Fontaine, who came, in his slow, lumbering manner, round the corner. Jack, who had been introduced to him,stopped to speak. But not a word could Sir Dace answer, for staring at the retreating figure of Pym.

“Does my sight deceive me?” he exclaimed. “Who is that man?”

“His name is Pym,” said Jack. “He has been my first mate on board the Rose of Delhi.”

Sir Dace Fontaine looked blacker than thunder. “What is he doing down here?”

“I was wondering what,” said Jack. “At first I thought he might have come down after me on some errand or other.”

Sir Dace said no more. Remarking that we should meet again in the evening, he went his way, and we went ours.

For that evening the Squire gave a dinner, to which the Fontaines were coming, and old Paul the lawyer, and the Letsoms, and the Ashtons from Timberdale Court. Charles Ashton, the parson, was staying with them: he would come in handy for the grace in place of Herbert Tanerton, who had a real sore throat this time, and must stay at home.

But now it should be explained that, up to this time, none of us had the smallest notion that there was anything between Pym and Verena Fontaine, or that Pym was related to Sir Dace. Had Jack known either the one fact or the other, he might not have said what he did at the Squire’s dinner-table. Not that he said much.

It occurred during a lull. Sir Dace craned his long and ponderous neck over the table towards Jack.

“Captain Tanerton, were you satisfied with that chief mate of yours, Edward Pym? Did he do his duty as a chief mate ought?”

“Not always, Sir Dace,” was Jack’s ready answer. “I was not particularly well satisfied with him.”

“Will he sail with you again when you go out?”

“No. Not if the decision lies with me.”

Sir Dace frowned and drew his neck in again. I fancied he would have been glad to hear that Pym was going out again with Jack—perhaps to be rid of him.

Colonel Letsom spoke up then. “Why do you not like him, Jack?”

“Well, for one thing, I found him deceitful,” spoke out Jack, after hesitating a little, and still without any idea that Pym was known to anybody present.

Verena bent forward to speak then from the end of the table, her face all blushes, her tone resentful.

“Perhaps Mr. Pym might say the same thing of you, Captain Tanerton—that you are deceitful?”

“I!” returned Jack, with his frank smile. “No, I don’t think he could say that. Whatever other faults I may have, I am straightforward and open: too much so, perhaps, on occasion.”

When the ladies left the table, the Squire despatched me with a message to old Thomas about the claret. In the hall, after delivering it, I came upon Verena Fontaine.

“I am going to run home for my music,” she said to me, as she put her white shawl on her shoulders. “I forgot to bring it.”

“Let me go for you,” I said, taking down my hat.

“No, thank you; I must go myself.”

“With you, then.”

“I wish to go alone,” she returned, in a playful tone, but one that had a decisive ring in it. “Stay where you are, if you please, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”

She meant it; I saw that; and I put my hat down and went into the drawing-room. Presently somebody missed her; I said she had gone home to fetch her music.

Upon which they all attacked me for letting her go—for not offering to fetch it for her. Tod and Bob Letsom, who had just come into the room, told me I was not more gallant than a rising bear. I laughed, and did not say what had passed. Mary Ann Letsom plunged into one of her interminable sonatas, and the time slipped on.

“Johnny,” whispered the mater to me, “you must go after Verena Fontaine to see what has become of her. You ought not to have allowed her to go out alone.”

Truth to say, I was myself beginning to wonder whether she meant to come back at all. Catching up my hat again, I ran off to Maythorn Bank.

Oh! Pacing slowly the shadiest part of the garden there, was Miss Verena, the white shawl muffled round her. Mr. Pym was pacing with her, his face bent down to a level with hers, his arm passed gingerly round her waist.

“I thought they might be sending after me,” she cried out, quitting Pym as I went in at the gate. “I will go back with you, Mr. Johnny. Edward, I can’t stay another moment,” shecalled back to him; “you see how it is. Yes, I’ll be walking in the Ravine to-morrow.”

Away she went, with so fleet a step that I had much ado to keep up with her. That was my first enlightenment of the secret treason which was destined to bring forth so terrible an ending.

“You won’t tell tales of me, Johnny Ludlow?” she stopped to say, in a beseeching tone, as we reached the gate of Crabb Cot. “See, I have my music now.”

“All right, Miss Verena. You may trust me.”

“I am sure of that. I read it in your face.”

Which might be all very well; but I thought it would be more to the purpose could she have read it in Pym’s. Pym’s was a handsome face, but not one to be trusted.

She glided into the room behind Thomas and his big tea-tray, seized upon a cup at once, and stood with it as coolly as though she had never been away. Sir Dace, talking near the window with old Paul, looked across at her, but said nothing. I wondered how long they had been in the drawing-room, and whether he had noticed her absence.

It was, I think, the next afternoon but one that I went to Maythorn Bank, and found Jack Tanerton there. The Squire had offered to drive Sir Dace to Worcester, leaving him to fix the day. Sir Dace wrote a note to fix the following day, if that would suit; and the Squire sent me to say it would.

Coralie was in the little drawing-room with Sir Dace, but not Verena. Jack seemed to be quite at home with them; they were talking with animation about some of the ports over the seas, which all three of them knew so well. When I left, Jack came with me, and Sir Dace walked with us to the gate. And there we came upon Mr. Pym and Miss Verena promenading together in the lane as comfortably as you please. You should have seen Sir Dace Fontaine’s face. A dark face at all times; frightfully dark then.

Taking Verena by the shoulder, never speaking a word, he marched her in at the gate, and pushed her up the path towards the house. Then he turned round to Pym.

“Mr. Edward Pym,” said he, “as I once had occasion to warn you off my premises in the Colonies, I now warn you off these. This is my house, and I forbid you to approach it. I forbid you to attempt to hold intercourse of any kind with my daughters. Do you understand me, sir?”

“Quite so, Uncle Dace,” replied the young man: and there was the same covert defiance in his tone that he had used the other day to his captain.

“I should like to know what brings you in this neighbourhood?”continued Sir Dace. “You cannot have any legitimate business here. I recommend you to leave it.”

“I will think of it,” said Pym, as he lifted his cap to us generally, and went his way.

“What does it mean, Johnny?” spoke Tanerton, breathlessly, when we were alone. “Is Pym making-up to that sweet girl?”

“I fancy so. Wanting to make up, at least.”

“Heaven help her, then! It’s like his impudence.”

“They are first cousins, you see.”

“So much the worse. I expect, though, Pym will find his match in Sir Dace. I don’t like him, by the way, Johnny.”

“Whom? Pym?”

“Sir Dace. I don’t like his countenance: there’s too much secretiveness in it for me. And in himself too, unless I am mistaken.”

“I am sure there is in Pym.”

“I hate Pym!” flashed Jack. And at the moment he looked as if he did.

But would he have acknowledged as much, even to me, had he foreseen the cruel fate that was, all too soon, to place Edward Pym beyond the pale of this world’s hate?—and the dark trouble it would bring home to himself, John Tanerton?

II

Striding along through South Crabb, and so on down by old Massock’s brick-fields, went Sir Dace Fontaine, dark and gloomy. His heavy stick and his heavy tread kept pace together; both might have been the better for a little lightness.

Matters were not going on too smoothly at Maythorn Bank. Seemingly obedient to her father, Verena Fontaine contrived to meet her lover, and did not take extraordinary pains to keep it secret. Sir Dace, watching stealthily, found it out, and felt just about at his wits’ end.

He had no power to banish Edward Pym from the place: he had none, one must conclude, to exact submission from Verena. She had observed to me, the first night we met, that American girls grow up to be independent of control in many ways. That is true: and, as it seems to me, they think great guns of themselves for being so.

Sir Dace was beginning to turn his anger on Colonel Letsom. As chance had it, while he strode along this morning, full of wrath, the colonel came in view, turning the corner of the strongest and most savoury brick-yard.

“Why do you harbour that fellow?” broke out Sir Dace, fiercely, without circumlocution of greeting.

“What, young Pym?” cried the little colonel in his mild way, jumping to the other’s meaning. “I don’t suppose he will stay with us long. He is expecting a summons to join his ship.”

“But why do you have him at your house at all?” reiterated Sir Dace, with a thump of his stick. “Why did you take him in?”

“Well, you see, he came down, a stranger, and presented himself to us, calling my wife aunt, though she is not really so, and said he would like to stay a few days with us. We could not turn him away, Sir Dace. In fact we had no objection to his staying; he behaves himself very well. He’ll not be here long.”

“He has been here a great deal too long,” growled Sir Dace; and went on his way muttering.

Nothing came of this complaint of Sir Dace Fontaine’s. Edward Pym continued to stay at Crabb, Colonel Letsom not seeing his way clear to send him adrift; perhaps not wanting to. The love-making went on. In the green meadows, where the grass and the sweet wild flowers were springing up, in the Ravine, between its sheltering banks, redolent of romance; or in the triangle, treading underfoot the late primroses and violets—in one or other of these retreats might Mr. Pym and his ladye-love be seen together, listening to the tender vows whispered between them, and to the birds’ songs.

Sir Dace, conscious of all this, grew furious, and matters came to a climax. Verena was bold enough to steal out one night to meet Pym for a promenade with him in the moonlight, and Sir Dace came upon them sitting on the stile at the end of the cross lane. He gave it to Pym hot and strong, marched Verena home, and the next day carried both his daughters away from Crabb.

But I ought to mention that I had gone away from Crabb myself before this, and was in London in with Miss Deveen. So that what had been happening lately I only knew by hearsay.

To what part of the world Sir Dace went, was not known. Naturally Crabb was curious upon the point. Just as naturally it was supposed that Pym, having nothing to stay for, would now take his departure. Pym, however, stayed on.

One morning Mr. Pym called at Maythorn Bank. An elderly woman, one Betty Huntsman, who had been employed by the Fontaines as cook, opened the door to him. The coloured man, Ozias, and a maid, Esther, had gone away with the family. It was the second time Mr. Pym had presented himself upon the same errand: to get the address of Sir Dace Fontaine. Betty, obeying her master’s orders, had refused it; this time he had come to bribe her. Old Betty, however, an honest, kindly old woman, refused to be bribed.

“I can’t do it, sir,” she said to Pym. “When the master wrote to give me the address, on account of sending him his foreign letters, he forbade me to disclose it to anybody down here. It is only myself that knows it, sir.”

“It is in London; I know that much,” affirmed Pym, making a shot at the place, and so far taking in old Betty.

“That much may possibly be known, sir. I cannot tell more.”

Back went Pym to Colonel Letsom’s. He sat down and wrote a letter in a young lady’s hand—for he had all kinds of writing at his fingers’ ends—and addressed it to Mrs. Betty Huntsman at Maythorn Bank, Worcestershire. This he enclosed in a bigger envelope, with a few lines from himself, and posted it to London, to one Alfred Saxby, a sailor friend of his. He next, in a careless, off-hand manner, asked Colonel Letsom if he’d mind calling at Maythorn Bank, and asking the old cook there if she could give him her master’s address. Oh, Pym was as cunning as a fox, and could lay out his plans artfully. And Colonel Letsom, unsuspicious as the day, and willing to oblige everybody, did call that afternoon to put the question to Betty; but she told him she was not at liberty to give the address.

The following morning, Pym got the summons he had been expecting, to join his ship. The Rose of Delhi was now ready to take in cargo. After swearing a little, down sat Mr. Pym to his desk, and in a shaky hand, to imitate a sick man’s, wrote back word that he was ill in bed, but would endeavour to be up in London on the morrow.

And, the morning following this, Mrs. Betty Huntsman got a letter from London.

“London, Thursday.

“DEAR OLD BETTY,

“I am writing to you for papa, who is very poorly indeed. Should Colonel Letsom apply to you for our address here, you are to give it him: papa wishes him to have it. We hope your wrist is better.

“CORALIE FONTAINE.”

Betty Huntsman, honest herself, never supposed but the letter was written by Miss Fontaine. By-and-by, there came a ring at the bell.

“My uncle, Colonel Letsom, requested me to call here this morning, as I was passing on my way to Timberdale Rectory,”began Mr. Pym; for it was he who rang, and by his authoritative voice and lordly manner, one might have thought he was on board a royal frigate, commanding a cargo of refractory soldiers.

“Yes, sir!” answered Betty, dropping a curtsy.

“Colonel Letsom wants your master’s address in London—if you can give it him. He has to write to Sir Dace to-day.”

Betty produced a card from her innermost pocket, and showed it to Mr. Pym: who carefully copied down the address.

That he was on his way to Timberdale Rectory, was not a ruse. He went on there through the Ravine at the top of his speed, and asked for Captain Tanerton.

“Have got orders to join ship, sir, and am going up this morning. Any commands?”

“To join what ship?” questioned Jack.

“The Rose of Delhi. She is beginning to load.”

Jack paused. “Of course you must go up, as you are sent for. But I don’t think you will go out in the Rose of Delhi, Mr. Pym. I should recommend you to look out for another ship.”

“Time enough for that, Captain Tanerton, when I get my discharge from the Rose of Delhi: I have not got it yet,” returned Pym, who seemed to take a private delight in thwarting his captain.

“Well, I shall be in London myself shortly, and will see about things,” spoke Jack.

“Any commands, sir?”

“Not at present.”

Taking his leave of Colonel and Mrs. Letsom, and thanking them for their hospitality, Edward Pym departed for London byan afternoon train. He left his promises and vows to the young Letsoms, boys and girls, to come down again at the close of the next voyage, little dreaming, poor ill-fated young man, that he would never go upon another. Captain Tanerton wrote at once to head-quarters in Liverpool, saying he did not wish to retain Pym as chief mate, and would like another one to be appointed. Strolling back to Timberdale Rectory from posting the letter at Salmon’s, John Tanerton fell into a brown study.

A curious feeling, against taking Pym out again, lay within him; like an instinct, it seemed; a prevision of warning. Jack was fully conscious of it, though he knew not why it should be there. It was a great deal stronger than could have been prompted by his disapprobation of the man’s carelessness in his duties on board.

“I’ll go up to London to-morrow,” he decided. “Best to do so. Pym means to sail in the Rose of Delhi if he can; just, I expect, because he sees I don’t wish him to: the man’s nature is as contrary as two sticks. I’ll not have him again at any price. Yes, I must go up to-morrow.”

“L’homme propose”—we know the proverb. Very much to Jack’s surprise, his wife arrived that evening at the Rectory from Liverpool, with her eldest child, Polly. Therefore, Jack did not start for London on the morrow; it would not have been at all polite.

He went up the following week. His first visit was to Eastcheap, in which bustling quarter stood the office of Mr. James Freeman, the ship’s broker. After talking a bit about the ship and her cargo, Jack spoke of Pym.

“Has a first officer been appointed in Pym’s place?”

“No,” said Mr. Freeman. “Pym goes out with you again.”

“I told you I did not wish to take Pym again,” cried Jack.

“You said something about it, I know, and we thought of putting in the mate from the Star of Lahore; but he wants to keep to his own vessel.”

“I won’t take Pym.”

“But why, Captain Tanerton?”

“We don’t get on together. I never had an officer who gave me so much provocation—the Americans would say, who riledme so. I believe the man dislikes me, and for that reason was insubordinate. He may do better in another ship. I am a strict disciplinarian on board.”

“Well,” carelessly observed the broker, “you will have to make the best of him this voyage, Captain Tanerton. It is decided that he sails with you again.”

“Then, don’t be surprised if there’s murder committed,” was Jack’s impetuous answer.

And Mr. Freeman stared: and noted the words.

The mid-day sun was shining hotly upon the London pavement, and especially upon the glittering gold band adorning the cap of a lithe, handsome young sailor, who had just got out of a cab, and was striding along as though he wanted to run a race with the clocks. It was Edward Pym: and the reader will please take notice that we have gone back a few days, for this was the day following Pym’s arrival in London.

“Halt a step,” cried he to himself, his eye catching the name written up at a street corner. “I must be out of my bearings.”

Taking from his pocket a piece of paper, he read some words written there. It was no other than the address he had got from Bessy Huntsman the previous day.

“Woburn Place, Russell Square,” repeated he. “This is not it. I’ll be shot if I know where I am! Can you tell me my way to Woburn Place?” asked he, of a gentleman who was passing.

“Turn to the left; you will soon come to it.”

“Thank you,” said Pym.

The right house sighted at last, Mr. Pym took his standing in a friendly door-way on the other side of the road, and put himself on the watch. Very much after the fashion of a bailiff’s man, who wants to serve a writ.

He glanced up at the windows; he looked down at the doors; he listened to the sound of a church clock striking; he scraped his feet in impatience, now one foot, now the other. Nothing came of it. The rooms behind the curtained windows might be untenanted for all the sign given out to the eager eyes of Mr. Pym.

“Hang it all!” he cried, in an explosion of impatience: and he could have sent the silent dwelling to Jericho.

No man of business likes his time to be wasted: and Mr. Pym could very especially not afford to waste his to-day. For he was supposed to be at St. Katherine’s Docks, checking cargo on board the Rose of Delhi. When twelve o’clock struck, the dinner hour, he had made a rush from the ship, telling the foreman of the shed not to ship any more cargo till he came back in half-an-hour, and had come dashing up here in a fleet cab. The half-hour had expired, and another half-hour to it, and it was a great deal more than time to dash back again. If anybody from the office chanced to go down to the ship, what a row there’d be!—and he would probably get his discharge.

He had not been lucky in his journey from Worcestershire the previous day. The train was detained so on the line, through some heavy waggons having come to grief, that he did not reach London till late at night; too late to go down to his lodgings near the docks; so he slept at an hotel. This morning he had reported himself at the broker’s office; and Mr. Freeman, after blowing him up for his delay, ordered him on board at once: since they began to load, two days ago now, a clerk from the office had been down on the ship, making up the cargo-books in Pym’s place.

“I’ll be hanged if I don’t believe they must all be dead!”cried Pym, gazing at the house. “Why does not somebody show himself? I can’t post the letter—for I know my letters to her are being suppressed. And I dare not leave it at the door myself, lest that cantankerous Ozias should answer me, and hand it to old Dace, instead of to Vera.”

Luck at last! The door opened, and a maid-servant came out with a jug, her bonnet thrown on perpendicularly. Mr. Pym kept her in view, and caught her up as she was nearing a public-house.

“You come from Mrs. Ball’s, Woburn Place?” said he.

“Yes, sir,” answered the girl, doubtfully, rather taken aback at the summary address, but capitulating to the gold-lace band.

“I want you to give this letter privately to Miss Verena Fontaine. When she is quite alone, you understand. And here’s half-a-crown, my pretty lass, for your trouble.”

The girl touched neither letter nor money. She surreptitiously put her bonnet straight, in her gratified vanity.

“But I can’t give it, sir,” she said. “Though I’m sure I’d be happy to oblige you if I could. The Miss Fontaines and their papa is not with us now; they’ve gone away.”

“What?” cried Pym, setting his teeth angrily, an expression crossing his face that marred all its good looks. “When did they leave? Where are they gone to?”

“They left yesterday, sir, and they didn’t say where. That black servant of theirs and our cook couldn’t agree; there was squabbles perpetual. None of us liked him; it don’t seem Christian-like to have a black man sitting down to table with you. Mrs. Ball, our missis, she took our part; and the young ladies and their papa they naturally took his part: and so, they left.”

“Can I see Mrs. Ball?” asked Pym, after mentally anathematizing servants in general, black and white. “Is she at home?”

“Yes, sir, and she’ll see you, I’m sure. She is vexed at their having left.”

He dropped the half-crown into the girl’s hand, returned the note to his pocket, and went to the house. Mrs. Ball, a talkative, good-humoured woman in a rusty black silk gown, with red cheeks and quick brown eyes, opened the door to him herself.

She invited him in. She would have given him Sir Dace Fontaine’s address with all the pleasure in life, if she had it, she said. Sir Dace did not leave it with her. He simply bade her take in any letters that might come, and he would send for them.

“Have you not any notion where they went?—to what part of the town?” asked the discomfited Pym. That little trick he had played Betty Huntsman was of no use to him now.

“Not any. Truth to say, I was too vexed to ask,” confessed Mrs. Ball. “I knew nothing about their intention to leave until they were packing up. Sir Dace paid me a week’s rent in lieu of warning, and away they went in two cabs. You are related to them, sir? There’s a look in your face that Sir Dace has got.”

Mr. Pym knitted his brow; he did not take it as a compliment. Many people had seen the same likeness; though he was a handsome young man and Sir Dace an ugly old one.

“If you can get their address, I shall be much obliged to you to keep it for me; I will call again to-morrow evening,” were his parting words to the landlady. And he went rattling back to the docks as fast as wheels could take him.

Mr. Pym went up to Woburn Place the following evening accordingly, but the landlady had no news to give him. He went the next evening after, and the next, and the next. All the same. He went so long and to so little purpose that he at last concluded the Fontaines were not in London. Sir Daceneither sent a messenger nor wrote for any letters there might be. Two were waiting for him; no more. Edward Pym and Mrs. Ball became, so to say, quite intimate. She had much sympathy with the poor young man, who wanted to find his relatives before he sailed—and could not.

It may as well be told, not to make an unnecessary mystery of it, that the Fontaines had gone straight to Brighton. At length, however, Mrs. Ball was one day surprised by a visit from Ozias. She never bore malice long, and received him civilly. Her rooms were let again, so she had got over the smart.

“At Brighton!” she exclaimed, when she heard where they had been—for the man had no orders to conceal it. “I thought it strange that your master did not send for his letters. And how are the young ladies? And where are you staying now?”

“The young ladies, they well,” answered Ozias. “We stay now at one big house in Marylebone Road. We come up yesterday to this London town: Sir Dace, he find the sea no longer do for him; make him have much bile.”

Edward Pym had been in a rage at not finding Verena. Verena, on her part, though rather wondering that she did not hear from him, looked upon his silence as only a matter of precaution. When they were settled at Woburn Place, after leaving Crabb, she had written to Pym, enjoining him not to reply. It might not be safe, she said, for Coralie had gone over to “the enemy,” meaning Sir Dace: Edward must contrive to see her when he came to London to join his ship. And when the days went on, and Verena saw nothing of her lover, she supposed he was not yet in London. She went to Brighton supposing the same. But, now that they were back from Brighton, and still neither saw Pym nor heard from him, Verena grew uneasy, fearing that the Rose of Delhi had sailed.

“What a strange thing it is about Edward!” she exclaimed one evening to her sister. “I think he must have sailed. He would be sure to come to us if he were in London.”

“How should he know where we are?” dissented Coralie.“For all he can tell, Vera, we may be in the moon.”

A look of triumph crossed Vera’s face. “He knows the address in Woburn Place, Coral, for I wrote and gave it him: and Mrs. Ball would direct him here. Papa sent Ozias there to-day for his letters; and I know Edward would never cease going there, day by day, to ask for news, until he heard of me.”

Coralie laughed softly. Unlocking her writing-case, she displayed a letter that lay snugly between its leaves. It was the one that Vera had written at Woburn Place. Verena turned very angry, but Coralie made light of it.

“As I dare say he has already sailed, I confess my treachery, Vera. It was all done for your good. Better think no more of Edward Pym.”

“You wicked thing! You are more cruel than Bluebeard. I shall take means to ascertain whether the Rose of Delhi is gone. Captain Tanerton made a boast that he’d not take Edward out again, but he may not have been able to help himself,” pursued Vera, her tone significant. “Edward intended to go in her, and he has a friend at court.”

“A friend at court!” repeated Coralie. “What do you mean? Who is it?”

“It is the Freemans out-door manager at Liverpool, and the ship’s husband—a Mr. Gould. He came up here when the ship got in, and he and Edward made friends together. The more readily because Gould and Captain Tanerton are not friends. The captain complained to the owners last time of something or other connected with the ship—some bad provisions, I think, that had been put on board, and insisted on its being rectified. As Mr. Gould was responsible, he naturally resented this, and ever since he has been fit to hang Captain Tanerton.”

“How do you know all this, Verena?”

“From Edward. He told me at Crabb. Mr. Gould has a great deal more to do with choosing the officers than the Freemans themselves have, and he promised Edward he should remain in the Rose of Delhi.”

“It is strange Edward should care to remain in the ship when her commander does not like him,” remarked Coralie.

“He stays in because of that—to thwart Tanerton,” laughed Verena lightly. “Partly, at least. But he thinks, you see, and I think, that his remaining for two voyages in a ship that has so good a name may tell well for him with papa. Now you know, Coral.”

The lovers met. Pym found her out through Mrs. Ball. And Verena, thoroughly independent in her notions, put on her bonnet, and walked with him up and down the Marylebone Road.

“We sail this day week, Vera,” he said. “My life has been a torment to me, fearing I should not see you before the ship went out of dock. And, in that case, I don’t think I should have gone in her.”

“Is it the Rose of Delhi?” asked Vera.

“Of course. I told you Gould would manage it. She is first-rate in every way, and the most comfortable ship I ever was in—barring the skipper.”

“You don’t like him, I know. And he does not like you.”

“I hate and detest him,” said Pym warmly—therefore, as the reader must perceive, no love was lost between him and Jack.“He is an awful screw for keeping one to one’s duty, and I expect we shall have no end of squalls. Ah, Verena,” continued the young man, in a changed tone, “had you only listened to my prayers at Crabb, I need not have sailed again at all.”

Mr. Edward Pym was a bold wooer. He had urged Verena to cut the matter short by marrying him at once. She stopped his words.

“I will marry you in twelve months from this, if all goes well, but not before. It is waste of time to speak of it, Edward—as I have told you. Were I to marry without papa’s consent—and you know he will not give it—he can take most of the money that came to me from mamma. Only a small income would remain to me. I shall not risk that.”

“As if Sir Dace would exact it! He might go into one of his passions at first, but he’d soon come round; he’d not touch your money, Vera.” And Edward Pym, in saying this, fully believed it.

“You don’t know papa. I have been used to luxuries, Edward, and I could not do without them. What would two hundred pounds a-year be for me—living as I have lived? And for you, also, for you would be my husband? Next May I shall be of age, and my fortune will be safe—all my own.”

“A thousand things may happen in a year,” grumbled Pym, who was wild to lead an idle life, and hated the discipline on board ship. “The Rose of Delhi may go down, and I with it.”

“She has not gone down yet. Why should she go down now?”

“What right had Coralie to intercept your letter?” asked Pym, passing to another phase of his grievances.

“She had no right; but she did it. I asked Esther, our ownmaid, to run and put it in the post for me. Coralie, coming in from walking, met Esther at the door, saw the letter in her hand, and took it from her, saying she would go back and post it herself. Perhaps Esther suspected something: she did not tell me this. Coralie had the face to tell it me herself yesterday.”

“Well, Vera, you should have managed better,” returned Pym, feeling frightfully cross.

“Oh, Edward, don’t you see how it is?” wailed the girl, in a piteous tone of appeal—“that they are all against me. Or, rather, against you. Papa, Coralie, and Ozias: and I fancy now that Coralie has spoken to Esther. Papa makes them think as he thinks.”

“It is a fearful shame. Is this to be our only interview?”

“No,” said Vera. “I will see you every day until you sail.”

“You may not be able to. We shall be watched, now Coralie has turned against us.”

“I will see you every day until you sail,” repeated the girl, with impassioned fervour. “Come what may, I will contrive to see you.”

In making this promise, Miss Verena Fontaine probably did not understand the demands on a chief mate’s time when a ship is getting ready for sea. To rush up from the docks at the mid-day hour, and rush back again in time for work, was not practicable. Pym had done it once; he could not do it twice. Therefore, the only time to be seized upon was after six o’clock, when the Rose of Delhi was left to herself and her watchman for the night, and the dock-gates were shut. This brought it, you see, to about seven o’clock, before Pym could be hovering, like a wandering ghost, up and down the Marylebone Road; for he had to go to his lodgings in Ship Street first and put himself to rights after his day’s work, to say nothing of drinking his tea. And seven o’clock was Miss Verena Fontaine’s dinner hour. Sir Dace Fontaine’s mode of dining was elaborate; and, what with the side-dishes, the puddings and the dessert, it was never over much before nine o’clock.

For two days Verena made her dinner at luncheon. Late dining did not agree with her, she told Coralie, and she should prefer some tea in her room. Coralie watched, and saw her come stealing in each night soon after nine. Until that hour, she had promenaded with Edward Pym in the bustling lighted streets, or in the quieter walks of the Regent’s Park. On thethird day, Sir Dace told her that she must be in her place at the dinner-table. Verena wondered whether the order emanated from his arbitrary temper, or whether he had any suspicion. So, that evening she dined as usual; and when she and Coralie went into the drawing-room at eight o’clock, she said her head ached, and she should go to bed.

That night there was an explosion. Docked of an hour at the beginning of their interview, the two lovers made up for it by lingering together an hour longer at the end of it. It was striking ten when Verena came in, and found herself confronted by her father. Verena gave Coralie the credit of betraying her, but in that she was wrong. Sir Dace—he might have had his suspicions—suddenly called for a particular duet that was a favourite with his daughters, bade Coralie look it out, and sent up for Verena to come down and sing it. Miss Verena was not to be found, so could not obey.

Sir Dace, I say, met her on the stairs as she came in. He put his hand on her shoulder to turn her footsteps to the drawing-room, and shut the door. Then came the explosion. Verena did not deny that she had been out with Pym. And Sir Dace, in very undrawing-room-like language, swore that she should see Pym no more.

“We have done no harm, papa. We have been to Madame Tussaud’s.”

“Listen to me, Verena. Attempt to go outside this house again while that villain is in London, and I will carry you off, as I carried you from Crabb. You cannot beard me.”

It was not pleasant to look at the face of Sir Dace as he said it. At these moments of excitement, it would take a dark tinge underneath the skin, as if the man, to use Jack Tanerton’s expression, had a touch of the tar-brush; and the dark sullen eyes would gleam with a peculiar light, that did not remind one of an angel.

“We saw Henry the Eighth and his six wives,” went on Vera. “Jane Seymour looked the nicest.”

“How dare you talk gibberish, at a moment like this?” raved Sir Dace. “As to that man, I have cursed him. And you will learn to thank me for it.”

Verena turned whiter than a sheet. Her answering words seemed brave enough, but her voice shook as she spoke them.

“Papa, you have no right to interfere with my destiny inlife; no, though you are the author of my being. I have promised to be the wife of my cousin Edward, and no earthly authority shall stay me. You may be able to control my movements now by dint of force, for you are stronger than I am; but my turn will come.”

“Edward Pym—hang him!—is bad to the backbone.”

“I will have him whether he is bad or good,” was Verena’s mental answer: but she did not say it aloud.

“And I will lock you in your room from this hour, if you dare defy me,” hissed Sir Dace.

“I do not defy you, papa. It is your turn, I say; and you have strength and power on your side.”

“Take care you do not. It would be the worse for you.”

“Very well, papa,” sighed Verena. “I cannot help myself now; but in a twelvemonth’s time I shall be my own mistress. We shall see then.”

Sir Dace looked upon the words as a sort of present concession. He concluded Miss Verena had capitulated and would not again go a-roving. So he did not go the length of locking her in her room.

Verena was mild as milk the next day, and good as gold. She never stirred from the side of Coralie, but sat practising a new netting-stitch, her temper sweet, her face placid. The thought of stealing out again to meet Mr. Pym was apparently further off than Asia.

I have said that I was in London at this time, staying with Miss Deveen. It was curious that I should be so during those dreadful events that were so soon to follow. Connected with the business that kept me and Mr. Brandon in town, was a short visit made us by the Squire. Not that the Squire need have come; writing would have done; but he was nothing loth to do so: and it was lovely weather. He stayed with Mr. Brandon at his hotel in Covent Garden; and we thought he meant to make a week of it. The Squire was as fond of the sights and the shops as any child.

I went down one morning to breakfast with them at the Tavistock, and there met Jack Tanerton. Later, we started to take a look at a famous cricket-match that was being played at Lord’s. In crossing the Marylebone Road, we met Sir Dace Fontaine.

His lodgings were close by, he said, and he would have usgo in. It was the day I have just told you of; when Verena sat, good as gold, by her sister’s side, trying the new netting-stitch.

The girls were in a sort of boudoir, half-way up the stairs. The French would, I suppose, call it the entresol: a warm-looking room, with stained glass in the windows, and a rich coloured carpet. Coralie and Vera were, as usual, dressed alike, in delicate summer-muslins. Vera—how pretty she looked!—had blue ribbon in her hair: her blue eyes laughed at seeing us, a pink flush set off her dimples.

“When do you sail, Captain Tanerton?” abruptly asked Sir Dace, suddenly interrupting the conversation.

“On Thursday, all being well,” answered Jack.

“Do you take out the same mate?—that Pym?”

“I believe so; yes, Sir Dace.”

We had to go away, or should not find standing-room on the cricket-ground. Sir Dace said he would accompany us, and called out to Ozias to bring his hat. Before the hat came, he thought better of it, and said he would not go; those sights fatigued him. I did not know what had taken place until later, or I might have thought he stayed at home to guard Verena. He gave us a cordial invitation to dinner in the evening, we must all go, he said; and Mr. Brandon was the only one of us who declined.

“I am very busy,” said Jack, “but I will contrive to get free by seven this evening.”

“Very busy indeed, when you can spend the day at Lord’s!”laughed Verena.

“I am not going to Lord’s,” said Jack. Which was true. “I have come up this way to see an invalid passenger who is going out in my ship.”

“Oh,” quoth Vera, “I thought what a nice idle time you were having of it. Mind, Johnny Ludlow, that you take me in to dinner to-night. I have something to tell you.”

Close upon the dinner-hour named, seven, the Squire and I were again at Sir Dace Fontaine’s. Tanerton’s cab came dashing up at the same moment. Coralie was in the drawing-room alone, her white dress and herself resplendent in coral ornaments. Sir Dace came in, and the Squire began telling him about the cricket-match, saying he ought to have been there. Presently Sir Dace rang the bell.

“How is it that dinner’s late?” he asked sternly of Ozias—for Sir Dace liked to be served to the moment.

“The dinner only wait for Miss Verena, sir,” returned Ozias,“She no down yet.”

Sir Dace turned round sharply to look at the sofa behind him, where I sat with Coralie, talking in an undertone. He had not noticed, I suppose, but that both sisters were there.

“Let Miss Verena be told that we wait for her,” he said, waving his hand to Ozias.

Back came Ozias in a minute or two. “Miss Verena, she no upstairs, sir. She no anywhere.”

Of all the frowns that ever made a face ugly, the worst sat on Sir Dace Fontaine’s, as he turned to Coralie.

“Have you let her go out?” he asked.

“Why of course she is not out, papa,” answered Coralie, calm and smiling as usual.

“Let Esther go into Miss Verena’s room, Ozias, and ask her to come down at once.”

“Esther go this last time, Miss Coralie. She come down and say, Ozias, Miss Verena no upstairs at all; she go out.”

“How dare——” began Sir Dace; but Coralie interrupted him.

“Papa, I will go and see. I am sure Verena cannot be out; I am sure she is not. She went into her room to dress when I went into mine. She came to me while she was dressing asking me to lend her my pearl comb; she had just broken one of the teeth of her own. She meant to come down to dinner then and was dressing for it: she had no thought of going out.”

Coralie halted at the door to say all this, and then ran up the stairs. She came down crest-fallen. Verena had stolen a march on them. In Sir Dace Fontaine’s passionate anger, he explained the whole to us, taking but a few short sentences to do it. Verena had been beguiled into a marriage engagement with Edward Pym: he, Sir Dace, had forbidden her to go out of the house to meet him; and, as it appeared, she had set his authority at defiance. They were no doubt tramping off now to some place of amusement; a theatre, perhaps: the past evening they had gone to Madame Tussaud’s. “Will you take in Miss Fontaine, Squire?” concluded Sir Dace, with never a break between that and the explanation.

How dark and sullen he looked, I can recall even now.Deprived of my promised partner, Verena, I went down alone. Sir Dace following with Jack, into whose arm he put his own.

“I wish you joy of your chief officer, Captain Tanerton!”cried he, a sardonic smile on his lips.

It must have been, I suppose, about nine o’clock. We were all back in the drawing-room, and Coralie had been singing. But somehow the song fell flat; the contretemps about Verena, or perhaps the sullenness it had left on Sir Dace, produced a sense of general discomfort; and nobody asked for another. Coralie took her dainty work-box off a side-table, and sat down by me on the sofa.

“I may as well take up my netting, as not,” she said to me in an undertone. “Verena began a new collar to-day—which she will be six months finishing, if she ever finishes it at all. She dislikes the work; I love it.” Netting was the work most in vogue at that time. Mrs. Todhetley had just netted herself a cap.

“Do you think we shall see your sister to-night?” I asked of Coralie in a whisper.

“Of course you will, if you don’t run away too soon. She’ll not come in later than ten o’clock.”

“Don’t you fancy that it has put out Sir Dace very much?”

Coralie nodded. “It is something new for papa to attempt to control us; and he does not like to find he can’t. In this affair I take his part; not Verena’s. Edward Pym is not a suitable match for her in any way. For myself, I dislike him.”

“I don’t much like him, either; and I am sure Captain Tanerton does not. Your sister is in love with him, and can see no fault. Cupid’s eyes are blind, you know.”

“I don’t know it at all,” she laughed. “My turn with Cupid has not yet come, Johnny Ludlow. I do not much think Cupid could blind me, though he may be blind himself. If—why, what’s this?”

Slowly lifting the lid of the box, which had been resting on her lap unopened, she saw a sealed note there, lying uppermost, above the netting paraphernalia. It was addressed to herself, in Verena’s handwriting. Coralie opened it with her usual deliberation.

“DEAR CORALIE,

“As I find you and papa intend to keep me a prisoner, and as I do not choose to be kept a prisoner, and do not thinkyou have any right to exercise this harsh control over me, I am leaving home for a few days. Tell papa that I shall be perfectly safe and well taken care of, even if I could not take care of myself—which I can, as you must know.

“Ever yours,

“VERA.”

Coralie laughed just a little. It seemed as if nothing ever put her out: she did know that Verena could, as the note phrased it, take care of herself. She went up to her father, who was standing by the fire talking with the Squire and Tanerton. Sir Dace, fresh from a hot country, was always chilly, as I have said before, and kept up a big fire whether it was warm or cold.

“Papa, here is a note from Verena. I have just found it in my work-box. Would you like to see what she says?”

Sir Dace put his coffee-cup on the mantelpiece, and took the note from Coralie. I never saw any expression like that of his face as he read. I never saw any face go so darkly white. Evidently he did not take the news in the same light way that Coralie did.

A cry broke from him. Staggering back against the shelf, he upset a vase that stood at the corner. A beautiful vase of Worcester china, with a ground of delicate gilt tracery, and a deliciously-painted landscape standing out from it. It was not at the vase, lying in pieces on the fender, we looked, but at Sir Dace. His face was contorted; his eyes were rolling. Tanerton, ever ready, caught his arm.

“Help me to find her, my friends!” he gasped, when the threatened fit had passed. “Help me this night to find my daughter! As sure as we are living, that base man will marry her to-morrow, if we do not, and then it will be too late.”

“Goodness bless me, yes!” cried the Squire, brushing his hair the wrong way, his good old red face all excitement, “Let us start at once! Johnny, you come with me. Where can we go first?”

That was the question for them all—where to go? London was a large place; and to set out to look for a young lady in it, not knowing where to look, was as bad as looking for the needle in the bottle of hay.

“She may be at that villain’s place,” panted Sir Dace, whose breath seemed to be all wrong. “Where does he live? You know, I suppose,” appealing to Jack.

“No, I don’t,” said Jack. “But I can find out. I dare say it is in Ship Street. Most of——”

“Where is Ship Street?” interrupted the Squire, looking more helpless than a lunatic.

“Ship Street, Tower Hill,” explained Jack; and I dare say the Squire was as wise as before. “Quite a colony of officers live there, while their vessels are lying in St. Katherine’s Docks. Ship Street lies handy, you see; they have to be on board by six in the morning.”

“I knew a young fellow who lodged all the way down at Poplar, because it was near to his ship,” contended the Squire.

“No doubt. His ship must have been berthed in the East India Docks; they are much further off. I will go away at once, then. But,” added Jack, arresting his steps, and turning to Sir Dace, “don’t you think it may be as well to question the household? Your daughter may have left some indication of her movements.”

Jack’s thought was not a bad one. Coralie rang the bell for their own maid, Esther, a dull, silent kind of young woman. But Esther knew nothing. She had not helped Miss Verena to dress that evening, only Miss Coralie. Miss Verena said she did not want her. She believed Maria saw her go out.

Maria, the housemaid, was called: a smart young woman, with curled hair and a pink bow in her cap. Her tale was this. While the young ladies were dressing for dinner, she entered the drawing-room to attend to the fire, and found it very low. She went on her knees to coax it up, when Miss Verena came in in her white petticoat, a little shawl on her neck. She walked straight up to Miss Fontaine’s work-box, opened it and shut it, and then went out of the room again.

“Did she speak to you?” asked John Tanerton.

“Yes, sir. Leastways she made just a remark—‘What, that fire out again?’ she said. That was all, sir.”

“Go on,” sharply cried Sir Dace.

“About ten minutes later, I was at the front-door, letting out the water-rate—who is sure to call, as my missis told him, at the most ill-convenient time—when Miss Verena came softly down the stairs with her bonnet and mantle on. I felt surprised.‘Don’t shut me in, Maria, when I want to go out,’ she said to me in a laughing sort of way, and I pulled the door back and begged her pardon. That was all, sir.”

“How was she dressed?” asked Coralie.

“I couldn’t say,” answered the girl; “except that her clothes were dark. Her black veil was down over her face; I noticed that; and she had a little carpet-bag in her hand.”

So there we were, no wiser than before. Verena had taken flight, and it was impossible to say whither.

They were for running all over the world. The Squire would have started forthwith, and taken the top of the Monument to begin with. John Tanerton, departing on his search to find Pym’s lodgings, found we all meant to attend him, including Ozias.

“Better let me go alone,” said Jack. “I am Pym’s master at sea, and can perhaps exercise some little authority on shore. Johnny Ludlow can go with me.”

“And you, papa, and Mr. Todhetley might pay a visit to Madame Tussaud’s,” put in Coralie, who had not lost her equanimity the least in the world, seeming to look upon the escapade as more of a joke than otherwise. “They will very probably be found at Madame Tussaud’s: it is a safe place of resort when people want to talk secrets and be under shelter.”

There might be reason in what Coralie said. Certainly there was no need for a procession of live people and two cabs to invade the regions of Tower Hill. So Jack, buttoning his light over-coat over his dinner toggery, got into a hansom with me, and the two old gentlemen went off to see the kings and queens.

“Drive like the wind,” said Jack to the cabman. “No. 23, Ship Street, Tower Hill.”

“I thought you did not know his number,” I said, as we went skimming over the stones.

“I do not know Pym’s: am not sure that he puts up in Ship Street. My second mate, Mark Ferrar, lives at No. 23, and I dare say he can direct me to Pym’s.”

Mark Ferrar! The name struck on my memory. “Does Ferrar come from Worcester, do you know, Jack? Is he related to the Battleys of Crabb?”

“It is the same,” said Jack. “I have heard his history. One of his especial favourites is Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”

“How strange!—strange that he should be in your ship! Does he do well? Is he a good sailor?”

“First-rate. Ferrar is really a superior young man, steady and painstaking, and has got on wonderfully. As soon as hequalifies for master, which will be in another year or two, he will be placed in command, unless I am mistaken. Our owners see what he is, and push him forward. They drafted him into my ship two years ago.”

How curious it was! Mark Ferrar, the humble charity-boy, the frog, who had won the heart of poor King Sanker, rising thus quickly towards the top of the tree! I had always liked Mark; had seen how trustworthy he was.

Our cab might fly like the wind; but Tower Hill seemed a long way off in spite of it. Dashing into Ship Street at last, I looked about me, and saw a narrow street with narrow houses on either side, narrow doors that somehow did not look upright, and shutters closed before the downstairs windows.

No. 23. Jack got out, and knocked at the door. A young boy opened it, saying he believed Mr. Ferrar was in his parlour.

You had to dive down a step to get into the passage. I followed Jack in. The parlour-door was on the right, and the boy pushed it open. A smart, well-dressed sailor sat at the table, his head bent over books and papers, apparently doing exercises by candle-light.

It was Mark Ferrar. His honest, homely face, with the wide mouth and plain features, looked much the same; but the face was softened into—I had almost said—that of a gentleman. Mark finished the sentence he was writing, looked up, and saw his captain.

“Oh, sir, is it you?” he said, rising. “I beg your pardon.”

“Busy at your books, I see, Mr. Ferrar?”

Mark smiled—the great, broad, genuine smile I so well remembered.“I had to put them by for other books, while I was studying to pass for chief, sir. That done, I can get to them again with an easy conscience.”

“To be sure. Can you tell me where Mr. Pym lodges?”

“Close by: a few doors lower down. But I can show you the house, sir.”

“Have you forgotten me, Mark?” I asked, as he took up his cap to come with us.

An instant’s uncertain gaze; the candle was behind him, and my face in the shade. His own face lighted up with a glad light.

“No, sir, that indeed I have not, I can never forget Mr. Johnny Ludlow. But you are about the last person, sir, I should have expected to see here.”

In the moment’s impulse, he had put out his hand to me; then, remembering, I suppose, what his position was in the old days, drew it back quickly. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, with the same honest flush that used to be for ever making a scarlet poppy of his face. But I was glad to shake hands with Mark Ferrar.

“How are all your people at Worcester, Mark?” I asked, as we went down the street.

“Quite well, thank you, sir. My old father is hearty yet, and my brother and sister are both married. I went down to see them last week, and stayed a day or two.”

The greatest change in Ferrar lay in his diction. He spoke as we spoke. Associating now with men of education, he had taken care to catch up their tone and accent; and he was ever, afloat or ashore, striving to improve himself.

Ferrar opened Pym’s door without knocking, dived down the step, for the houses were precisely similar, and entered the parlour. He and Pym occupied the same apartments in each house: the parlour and the little bed-room behind it.

The parlour was in darkness, save for what light came into it from the street gas-lamp, for these shutters were not closed. Ferrar went into the passage and shouted out for the landlady, Mrs. Richenough. I thought it an odd name.

She came in from the kitchen at the end of the passage, carrying a candle. A neat little woman with grey hair and a puckered face; the sleeves of her brown gown were rolled up to the elbows, and she wore a check apron.

“Mr. Pym, sir?” she said, in answer to Ferrar. “He dressed hisself and went out when he’d swallowed down his tea. He always do go out, sir, the minute he’s swallowed it.”

“Do you expect him back to-night?” questioned Jack.

“Why yes, sir, I suppose so,” she answered, “he mostly comes in about eleven.”

“Has any young lady been here this evening, ma’am?”blandly continued Jack. “With Mr. Pym?—or to inquire for him?”

Mrs. Richenough resented the question. “A young lady!”she repeated, raising her voice. “Well, I’m sure! what next?”

“Take care: it is our captain who speaks to you,” whispered Ferrar in her ear; and the old woman dropped a curtsy to Jack. Captains are captains with the old landladies in Ship Street.

“Mr. Pym’s sister—or cousin,” amended Jack.

“And it’s humbly asking pardon of you, sir. I’m sure I took it to mean one of them fly-away girls that would like to be running after our young officers continual. No, sir; no young lady has been here for Mr. Pym, or with him.”

“We can wait a little while to see whether he comes in, I presume, ma’am,” said Jack.

Intimating that Mr. Pym’s captain was welcome to wait the whole night if he pleased, Mrs. Richenough lighted the lamp that stood on the table, shut the shutters, and made Jack another curtsy as she withdrew.

“Do you wish me to remain, sir?” asked Mark.

“Not at all,” was the captain’s answer. “There will be a good deal to do to-morrow, Mr. Ferrar: mind you are not late in getting on board.”

“No fear, sir,” replied Ferrar.

And he left us waiting.

III

The dwellings in Ship Street, Tower Hill, may be regarded as desirable residences by the young merchant-seamen whose vessels are lying in the neighbouring clocks, but they certainly do not possess much attraction for the general eye.

Seated in Edward Pym’s parlour, the features of the room gradually impressed themselves upon my mind, and they remain there still. They would have remained, I think, without the dreadful tragedy that was so soon to take place in it. It was weary work waiting. Captain Tanerton, tired with his long and busy day, was nodding asleep in the opposite chair, and I had nothing to do but look about me.

It was a small room, rather shabby, the paper of a greenish cast, the faded carpet originally red: and the bedroom behind, as much as could be seen of it through the half-open door, looked smaller and poorer. The chairs were horsehair, the small table in the middle had a purple cloth on it, on which stood the lamp, that the landlady had just lighted. A carved ivory ornament, representing a procession of priests and singers, probably a present to Mrs. Richenough from some merchant-captain, stood under a glass shade on a bracket against the wall; the mantelpiece was garnished with a looking-glass and some china shepherds and shepherdesses. A monkey-jacket of Pym’s lay across the back of a chair; some books and his small desk were on the chiffonier. In the rooms above, as we learnt later, lodged a friend of Pym’s, one Alfred Saxby, who was looking out for a third mate’s berth.

At last Pym came in. Uncommonly surprised he seemed to see us sitting there, but not at all put out: he thought the captain had come down on some business connected with the ship. Jack quietly opened the ball; saying what he had to say.

“Yes, sir. I do know where Miss Verena Fontaine is, but I decline to say,” was Pym’s answer when he had listened.

“No, sir, nothing will induce me to say,” he added to further remonstrance, “and you cannot compel me. I am under your authority at sea, Captain Tanerton, but I am not on shore—and not at all in regard to my private affairs. Miss Verena Fontaine is under the protection of friends, and that is quite enough.”

Enough or not enough, this was the utmost we could get from him. His captain talked, and he talked, each of them in a civilly-cold way; but nothing more satisfactory came of it. Pym wound up by saying the young lady was his cousin, and he could take care of her without being interfered with.

“Do you trust him, Johnny Ludlow?” asked Jack, as we came away.

“I don’t trust him on the whole; not a bit of it. But he seems to speak truth in saying she is with friends.”

And, as the days went on, bringing no tidings of Verena, Sir Dace Fontaine grew angry as a raging tiger.

When a ship is going out of dock, she is more coquettish than a beauty in her teens. Not in herself, but in her movements. Advertised to sail to-day, you will be told she’ll not start until to-morrow; and when to-morrow comes the departure will be put off until the next day, perhaps to the next week.

Thus it was with the Rose of Delhi. From some uncompromising exigencies, whether connected with the cargo, the crew, the brokers, or any other of the unknown mysteries pertaining to ships, the day that was to have witnessed her departure—Thursday—did not witness it. The brokers, Freeman and Co., let it transpire on board that she would go out of dock the next morning. About mid-day Captain Tanerton presented himself at their office in Eastcheap.

“I shall not sail to-morrow—with your permission,” said he to Mr. James Freeman.

“Yes, you will—if she’s ready,” returned the broker. “Gould says she will be.”

“Gould may think so; I do not. But, whether she be ready or not, Mr. Freeman, I don’t intend to take her out to-morrow.”

The words might be decisive words, but the captain’s tone was genial as he spoke them, and his frank, pleasant smile sat on his face. Mr. Freeman looked at him. They valued Captain Tanerton as they perhaps valued no other master in their employ, these brothers Freeman; but James had a temper that was especially happy in contradiction.

“I suppose you’d like to say that you won’t go out on a Friday!”

“That’s just it,” said Jack.

“You are superstitious, Captain Tanerton,” mocked the broker.

“I am not,” answered Jack. “But I sail with those who are. Sailors are more foolish on this point than you can imagine: and I believe—I believe in my conscience—that ships, sailing on a Friday, have come to grief through their crew losing heart. No matter what impediment is met with—bad weather, accidents, what not—the men say at once it’s of no use, we sailed on a Friday. They lose their spirit, and their energy with it; and I say, Mr. Freeman, that vessels have been lost through this, which might have otherwise been saved. I will not go out of dock to-morrow; and I refuse to do it in your interest as much as in my own.”

“Oh, bother,” was all James Freeman rejoined. “You’ll have to go if she’s ready.”

But the words made an impression. James Freeman knew what sailors were nearly as well as Jack knew: and he could not help recalling to memory that beautiful ship of Freeman Brothers, the Lily of Japan. The Lily had been lost only six months ago; and those of her crew, who were saved, religiously stuck to it that the calamity was brought about through having sailed on a Friday.

The present question did not come to an issue. For, on the Friday morning, the Rose of Delhi was not ready for sea; would not be ready that day. On the Saturday morning she was not ready either; and it was finally decided that Monday should be the day of departure. On the Saturday afternoon Captain Tanerton ran down to Timberdale for four-and-twenty hours; Squire Todhetley, his visit to London over, travelling down by the same train.

Verena Fontaine had not yet turned up, and Sir Dace was nearly crazy. Not only was he angry at being thwarted, but one absorbing, special fear lay upon him—that she would come back a married woman. Pym was capable of any sin, he told the Squire and Coralie, even of buying the wedding-ring; and Verena was capable of letting it be put on her finger. “No, papa,” dissented Coralie in her equable manner, “Vera is too fond of money and of the good things money buys, to risk the loss of the best part of her fortune. She will not marry Pym until she is of age; be sure of that. When he has sailed she will come home safe and sound, and tell us where she has been.”

Captain Tanerton went down, I say, to Timberdale. He stayed at the Rectory with his wife and brother until the Sunday afternoon, and then returned to London. The Rose of Delhi was positively going out on Monday, so he had to be back—and, I may as well say here, that Jack, good-natured Jack, had invited me to go in her as far as Gravesend.

During that brief stay at Timberdale, Jack was not in his usual spirits. His wife, Alice, noticed it, and asked him whether anything was the matter. Not anything whatever, Jack readily answered. In truth there was not. At least, anything he could talk of. A weight lay on his spirits, and he could not account for it. The strong instinct, which had seemed to warn him against sailing with Pym again, had gradually left him since he knew that Pym was to sail, whether or not. In striving to make the best of it, he had thrown off the feeling: and the unaccountable depression that weighed him down could not arise from that cause. It was a strange thing altogether, this; one that never, in all his life, had he had any experience of; but it was not less strange than true.

Monday.—The Rose of Delhi lay in her place in the freshness of the sunny morning, making ready to go out of dock with the incoming tide. I went on board betimes: and I thought I had never been in such a bustling scene before. The sailors knew what they were about. I conclude, but to me it seemed all confusion. The captain I could not see anywhere; but his chiefofficer, Pym, seemed to be more busy than a certain common enemy of ours is said to be in a gale of wind.

“Is the captain not on board?” I asked of Mark Ferrar, as he was whisking past me on deck.

“Oh no, sir; not yet. The captain will not come on board till the last moment—if he does then.”

The words took me by surprise. “What do you mean, by saying ‘If he does then’?”

“He has so much to do, sir; he is at the office now, signing the bills of lading. If he can’t get done in time he will join at Gravesend when we take on some passengers. The captain is not wanted on board when we are going out of dock, Mr. Johnny,” added Ferrar, seeing my perplexed look. “The river-pilot takes the ship out.”

He pointed to the latter personage, just then making his appearance on deck. I wondered whether all river-pilots were like him. He was broad enough to make two ordinarily stout people; and his voice, from long continuous shouting, had become nothing less than a raven’s croak.

At the last moment, when the ship was getting away, and I had given the captain up, he came on board. How glad I was to see his handsome, kindly face!

“I’ve had a squeak for it, Johnny,” he laughed, as he shook my hand: “but I meant to go down with you if I could.”

Then came all the noise and stir of getting away: the croaking of the pilot alone distinguishable to my uninitiated ears. “Slack away the stern-line”—he called it starn. “Haul in head-rope.” “Here, carpenter, bear a hand, get the cork-fender over the quarter-gallery.” “What are you doing aft there?—why don’t you slack away that stern-line?” Every other moment it seemed to me that we were going to pitch into the craft in the pool, or they into us. However, we got on without mishap.

Captain Tanerton was crossing the ship, after holding a confab with the pilot, when a young man, whom he did not recognize, stepped aside out of his way, and touched his cap. The captain looked surprised, for the badge on the cap was the one worn by his own officers.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Mr. Saxby, if you please, sir.”

“Mr. Saxby! What do you do here?”

“Third mate, if you please, sir,” repeated the young man.“Your third mate, Mr. Jones, met with an accident yesterday; he broke his leg; and my friend, Pym, spoke of me to Mr. Gould.”

Captain Tanerton was not only surprised, but vexed. First, for the accident to Jones, who was a very decent young fellow; next, at his being superseded by a stranger, and a friend of Pym’s. He put a few questions, found the new man’s papers were in order, and so made the best of it.

“You will find me a good and considerate master, Mr. Saxby, if you do your duty with a will,” he said in a kind tone.

“I hope I shall, sir; I’ll try to,” answered the young man.

On we went swimmingly, in the wake of the tug-boat; but this desirable tranquillity was ere long destined to be marred.

On coming up from the state-room, as they called it, after regaling ourselves on a cold collation, the captain was pointing out to me something on shore, when one of the crew approached hastily, and touched his cap. I found it was the carpenter: a steady-looking man, who was fresh to the ship, having joined her half-an-hour before starting.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he began. “Might I ask you when this ship was pumped out last?”

“Why, she is never pumped out,” replied the captain.

“Well, sir,” returned the man, “it came into my head just now to sound her, and I find there’s two feet of water in the hold.”

“Nonsense,” said Jack: “you must be mistaken. Why, she has never made a cupful of water since she was built. We have to put water in her to keep her sweet.”

“Any way, sir, there’s two feet o’ water in her now.”

The captain looked at the man steadily for a moment, and then thought it might be as well to verify the assertion—or the contrary—himself, being a practical man. Taking the sounding-rod from the carpenter’s hand, he wiped it dry with an old bag lying near, and then proceeded to sound the well. Quite true: there were two feet of water. No time lost he. Ordering the carpenter to rig the pumps, he called all hands to man them.

For a quarter-of-an-hour, or twenty minutes, the pumps were worked without intermission; then the captain sounded, as before, doing it himself. There was no diminution of water—it stood at the same level as before pumping. Upon that, he and the carpenter went down into the hold, to listen along the ship’ssides, and discover, if they could, where the water was coming in. Five minutes later, Jack was on deck again, his face grave.

“It is coming in abreast of the main hatchway on the starboard side; we can hear it distinctly,” he said to the pilot. “I must order the ship back again: I think it right to do so.” And the broad pilot, who seemed a very taciturn pilot, made no demur to this, except a grunt. So the tug-boat was ordered to turn round and tow us back again.

“Where’s Mr. Pym?” cried the captain. “Mr. Pym!”

“Mr. Pym’s in the cabin, sir,” said the steward, who chanced to be passing.

“In the cabin!” echoed Jack, in an accent that seemed to imply the cabin was not Mr. Pym’s proper place just then.“Send him to me, if you please, steward.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the steward. But he did not obey with the readiness exacted on board ship. He hesitated, as if wanting to say something before turning away.

No Pym came. Jack grew impatient, and called out an order or two. Young Saxby came up, touching his cap, according to rule.

“Do you want me, sir?”

“I want Mr. Pym. He is below. Ask him to come to me instantly.”

It brought forth Pym. Jack’s head was turned away for a moment, and I saw what he did not. That Pym had a fiery face, and walked as if his limbs were slipping from under him.

“Oh, you are here at last, Mr. Pym—did you not receive my first message?” cried Jack, turning round. “The cargo must be broken out to find the place of leakage. See about it smartly: there’s no time to waste.”

Pym had caught hold of something at hand to enable him to stand steady. He had lost his wits, that was certain; for he stuttered out an answer to the effect that the cargo might be—hanged.

The captain saw his state then. Feeling a need of renovation possibly, after his morning’s exertions, Mr. Pym had been making free, a great deal too much so, with the bottled ale below, and had finished up with brandy-and-water.

The cargo might be hanged!

Captain Tanerton, his brow darkening, spoke a sharp, short, stern reprimand, and ordered Mr. Pym to his cabin.

What could have possessed Pym unless it might be the spirit that was in the brandy, nobody knew. He refused to obey, broke into open defiance, and gave Captain Tanerton sauce to his face.

“Take him below,” said the captain quietly, to those who were standing round. “Mr. Ferrar, you will lock Mr. Pym’s cabin-door, if you please, and bring me the key.”

This was done, and Mr. Pym encaged. He kicked at his cabin-door, and shook it; but he could not escape: he was a prisoner. He swore for a little while at the top of his voice; then he commenced some uproarious singing, and finally fell on his bed and went to sleep.

Hands were set to work to break out the cargo, which they piled on deck; and the source of the leakage was discovered. It seemed a slight thing, after all, to have caused so much commotion—nothing but an old treenail that had not been properly plugged-up. I said so to Ferrar.

“Ah, Mr. Johnny,” was Ferrar’s answering remark, his face and tone strangely serious, “slight as it may seem to you, it might have sunk us all this night, had we chanced to anchor off Gravesend.”

What with the pumps, that were kept at work, and the shifting of the cargo, and the hammering they made in stopping up the leak, we had enough to do this time. And about half-past three o’clock in the afternoon the brave ship, which had gone out so proudly with the tide, got back ignominiously with the end of it, and came to an anchor outside the graving-dock, there not being sufficient water to allow of her entering it. The damage was already three-parts repaired, and the ship would make her final start on the morrow.

“’Twas nothing but a good Providence could have put it into my head to sound the ship, sir,” remarked the carpenter, wiping his hot face, as he came on deck for something or other he needed. “But for that, we might none of us have seen the morning’s sun.”

Jack nodded. These special interpositions of God’s good care are not rare, though we do not always recognize them. And yet, but for that return back, the miserable calamity so soon to fall, would not have had the chance to take place.

Captain Tanerton caused himself to be rowed ashore, first ofall ordering the door of his prisoner to be unfastened. I got into the waterman’s wherry with him, for I had nothing to stay on board for. And a fine ending it was to my day’s pleasuring!

“Never mind, Johnny,” he said, as we parted. “You can come with us again to-morrow, and I hope we shall have a more lucky start.”

Captain Tanerton went straight to the brokers’, saw Mr. James Freeman, and told him he would not take out Edward Pym. If he did, the man’s fate would probably be that of irons from Gravesend to Calcutta.

And James Freeman, a thorough foe to brandy-and-water when taken at wrong times, listened to reason, and gave not a word of dissent. He there and then made Ferrar chief mate, and put another one second in Ferrar’s place; a likely young man in their employ who was waiting for a berth. This perfectly satisfied Captain Tanerton, under the circumstances.

The captain was then rowed back to his ship. By that time it was five o’clock. He told Ferrar of the change; who thanked him heartily, a glow of satisfaction rising to his honest face.

“Where’s Pym?” asked the captain. “He must take his things out of the ship.”

“Pym is not on board, sir. Soon after you left, he came up and went ashore: he seemed to have pretty nearly slept off the drink. Sir Dace Fontaine is below,” added Ferrar, dropping his voice.

“Sir Dace Fontaine! Does he want me?”

“He wanted Mr. Pym, sir. He has been looking into every part of the ship: he is looking still. He fancies his daughter is concealed on board.”

“Oh, nonsense!” cried the captain; “he can’t fancy that. As if Miss Fontaine would come down here—and board ships!”

“She was on board yesterday, sir.”

“What!” cried the captain.

“Mr. Pym brought her on board yesterday afternoon, sir,”continued Ferrar, his voice as low as it could well go. “He was showing her about the ship.”

“How do you know this, Mr. Ferrar?”

“I was here, sir. Expecting to sail last week, I sent my traps on board. Yesterday, wanting a memorandum-book out of my desk, I came down for it. That’s how I saw them.”

Captain Tanerton, walking forward to meet Sir Dace, knittedhis brow. Was Mr. Pym drawing the careless, light-headed girl into mischief? Sir Dace evidently thought so.

“I tell you, Captain Tanerton, she is quite likely to be on board, concealed as a stow-away,” persisted Sir Dace, in answer to the captain’s assurance that Verena was not, and could not be in the ship. “When you are safe away from land, she will come out of hiding and they will declare their marriage. That they are married, is only too likely. He brought her on board yesterday afternoon when the ship was lying in St. Katharine’s Dock.”

“Do you know that he did?” cried Jack, wondering whence Sir Dace got his information.

“I am told so. As I got up your ladder just now I inquired of the first man I saw, whether a young lady was on board. He said no, but that a young lady had come on board with Mr. Pym yesterday afternoon to see the ship. The man was your ship-keeper in dock.”

“How did you hear we had got back to-day, Sir Dace?”

“I came down this afternoon to search the ship before she sailed—I was under a misapprehension as to the time of her going out. The first thing I heard was, that the Rose of Delhihad gone and had come back again. Pym is capable, I say, of taking Verena out.”

“You may be easy on this point, Sir Dace,” returned Jack.“Pym does not go out in the ship: he is superseded.” And he gave the heads of what had occurred.

It did not tend to please Sir Dace. Edward Pym on the high seas would be a less formidable adversary than Edward Pym on land: and perhaps in his heart of hearts Sir Dace did not really believe his daughter would become a stow-away.

“Won’t you help me to find her? to save her?” gasped Sir Dace, in pitiful entreaty. “With this change—Pym not going out—I know not what trouble he may not draw her into. Coralie says Verena is not married; but I—Heaven help me! I know not what to think. I must find Pym this night and watch his movements, and find her if I can. You must help me.”

“I will help you,” said warm-hearted Jack—and he clasped hands upon it. “I will undertake to find Pym. And, that your daughter is not on board, Sir Dace, I pass you my word.”

Sir Dace stepped into the wherry again, to be rowed ashore and get home to his dinner—ordered that evening for six o’clock.In a short while Jack also quitted the ship, and went to Pym’s lodgings in Ship Street. Pym was not there.

Mr. Pym had come in that afternoon, said his landlady, Mrs. Richenough, and startled her out of her seven senses; for, knowing the ship had left with the day’s tide, she had supposed Mr. Pym to be then off Gravesend, or thereabouts. He told her the ship had sprung a leak and put back again. Mr. Pym had gone out, she added, after drinking a potful of strong tea.

“To sober him,” thought the captain. “Do you expect him back to sleep, Mrs. Richenough?”

“Yes, I do, sir. I took the sheets off his bed this morning, and I’ve just been and put ’em on again. Mr. Saxby’s must be put on too, for he looked in to say he should sleep here.”

Where to search for Pym, Jack did not know. Possibly he might have gone back to the ship to offer an apology, now that he was sobered. Jack was bending his steps towards it when he met Ferrar: who told him Pym had not gone back.

Jack put on his considering-cap. He hardly knew what to do, or how to find the fugitives: with Sir Dace, he deemed it highly necessary that Verena should be found.

“Have you anything particular to do to-night, Mr. Ferrar?”he suddenly asked. And Ferrar said he had not.

“Then,” continued the captain, “I wish you would search for Pym.” And, knowing Ferrar was thoroughly trustworthy, he whispered a few confidential words of Sir Dace Fontaine’s fear and trouble. “I am going to look for him myself,” added Jack,“though I’m sure I don’t know in what quarter. If you do come across him, keep him within view. You can tell him also that his place on the Rose of Delhi is filled up, and he must take his things out of her.”

Altogether that had been a somewhat momentous day for Mr. Alfred Saxby—and its events for him were not over yet. He had been appointed to a good ship, and the ship had made a false start, and was back again. An uncle and aunt of his lived at Clapham, and he thought he could not do better than go down there and regale them with the news: we all naturally burn to impart marvels to the world, you know. However, when he reached his relatives’ residence, he found they were out; and not long after nine o’clock he was back at Mrs. Richenough’s.

“Is Mr. Pym in?” he asked of the landlady; who came forwardrubbing her eyes as though she were sleepy, and gave him his candle.

“Oh, he have been in some little time, sir. And a fine row he’s been having with his skipper,” added Mrs. Richenough, who sometimes came off the high ropes of politeness when she had disposed of her supper beer.

“A row, has he!” returned Saxby. “Does not like to have been superseded,” he added to himself. “I must say Pym was a fool to-day—to go and drink, as he did, and to sauce the master.”

“Screeching out at one another like mad, they’ve been,”pursued Mrs. Richenough. “He do talk stern, that skipper, for a young man and a good-looking one.”

“Is the captain in there now?”

“For all I know. I did think I heard the door shut, but it might have been my fancy. Good-night, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

Leaving the candle in Saxby’s hands, she returned to her kitchen, which was built out at the back. He halted at the parlour-door to listen. No voices were to be heard then; no sounds.

“Pym may have gone to bed—I dare say his head aches,”thought Saxby: and he opened the door to see whether the parlour was empty.

Why! what was it?—what was the matter? The young man took one startled look around and then put down the candle, his heart leaping into his mouth.

The lamp on the table threw its bright light on the little room. Some scuffle appeared to have taken place in it. A chair was overturned; the ivory ornament with its glass shade had been swept from its stand to the floor: and by its side lay Edward Pym—dead.

Mr. Alfred Saxby, third mate of that good ship, the Rose of Delhi, might be a sufficiently self-possessed individual when encountering sudden surprises at sea; but he certainly did not show himself to be so on shore. When the state of affairs had sufficiently impressed itself on his startled senses, he burst out of the room in mortal terror, shouting out “murder.”

There was nobody in the house to hear him but Mrs. Richenough. She came forward, slightly overcome by drowsiness; but the sight she saw woke her up effectually.

“Good mercy!” cried she, running to the prostrate man.“Is he dead?”

“He looks dead,” shivered Mr. Saxby, hardly knowing whether he was not dead himself.

They raised Pym’s head, and put a pillow under it. The landlady wrung her hands.

“We must have a doctor,” she cried: “but I can see he is dead. This comes of that quarrel with his captain: I heard them raving frightfully at one another. There has been a scuffle here—see that chair. Oh! and look at my beautiful ivory knocked down!—and the shade all broke to atoms!”

“I’ll fetch Mr. Ferrar,” cried Saxby, feeling himself rather powerless to act; and with nobody to aid him but the gabbling woman.

Like mad, Saxby tore up the street, burst in at Mark Ferrar’s open door and went full butt against Mark himself; who was at the moment turning quickly out of it.

“Take care, Saxby. What are you about?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake do come, Mr. Ferrar! Pym is dead. He is lying dead on the floor.”

The first thing Ferrar did was to scan his junior officer narrowly, wondering whether he could be quite sober. Yes, he seemed to be that; but agitated to trembling, and his face as pale as death. The next minute Ferrar was bending over Pym. Alas, he saw too truly that life was extinct.

“It’s his skipper that has done it, sir,” repeated the landlady.

“Hush, Mrs. Richenough!” rebuked Ferrar. “Captain Tanerton has not done this.”

“But I heard ’em screeching and howling at one another, sir,”persisted Mrs. Richenough. “Their quarrel must have come to blows.”

“I do not believe it,” dissented Ferrar. “Captain Tanerton would not be capable of anything of the kind. Fight with a man who has served under him!—you don’t understand things, Mrs. Richenough.”

Saxby had run for the nearest medical man. Ferrar ran to find his captain. He knew that Captain Tanerton intended to put up at a small hotel in the Minories for the night.

To this hotel went Ferrar, and found Captain Tanerton. Tired with his evening’s search after Pym, the captain was taking some refreshment, before going up to Sir Dace Fontaine’s—whichhe had promised, in Sir Dace’s anxiety, to do. He received Ferrar’s report—that Pym was dead—with incredulity: did not appear to believe it: but he betrayed no embarrassment, or any other guilty sign.

“Why, I came straight here from Pym,” he observed. “It’s hardly twenty minutes since I left him. He was all right then—except that he had been having more drink.”

“Old Mother Richenough says, sir, that Pym and you had a loud quarrel.”

“Say that, does she,” returned the captain carelessly. “Her ears must have deceived her, Mr. Ferrar.”

“A quarrel and fight she says, sir. I told her I knew better.”

Captain Tanerton took his cap and started with Ferrar for Ship Street, plunging into a reverie. Presently he began to speak—as if he wished to account for his own movements.

“When you left me, Mr. Ferrar—you know”—and here he exchanged a significant glance with his new first mate—“I went on to Ship Street, and took a look at Pym’s room. A lamp was shining on the table, and his landlady had the window open, closing the shutters. This gave me an opportunity of seeing inside. Pym I saw; but not—not anyone else.”

Again Captain Tanerton’s tone was significant. Ferrar appeared to understand it perfectly. It looked as though they had some secret understanding between them which they did not care to talk of openly. The captain resumed.

“After fastening the shutters, Mrs. Richenough came to the door—for a breath of air, she remarked, as she saw me: and she positively denied, in answer to my questions, that any young lady was there. Mr. Pym had never had a young lady come after him at all, she protested, whether sister or cousin, or what not.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ferrar: for the captain had paused.

“I went in, and spoke to Pym. But, I saw in a moment that he had been drinking again. He was not in a state to be reasoned with, or talked to. I asked him but one question, and asked it civilly: would he tell me where Verena Fontaine was. Pym replied in an unwilling tone; he was evidently sulky. Verena Fontaine was at home again with her people; and he had not been able, for that reason, to see her. Thinking the ship had gone away, and he with it, Verena had returned home early in the afternoon. That was the substance of his answer.”

“But I—I don’t know whether that account can be true, sir,”hesitated Ferrar. “I was not sure, you know, sir, that it was the young lady; I said so——”

“Yes, yes, I understood that,” interrupted the captain quickly.“Well, it was what Pym said to me,” he added, after a pause:“one hardly knows what to believe. However, she was not there, so far as I could ascertain and judge; and I left Pym and came up here to my hotel. I was not two minutes with him.”

“Then—did no quarrel take place, sir?” cried Ferrar, thinking of the landlady’s story.

“Not an angry word.”

At this moment, as they were turning into Ship Street, Saxby, who seemed completely off his head, ran full tilt against Ferrar. It was all over, he cried out in excitement, as he turned back with them: the doctor pronounced Pym to be really dead.

“It is a dreadful thing,” said the captain. “And, seemingly, a mysterious one.”

“Oh, it is dreadful,” asserted young Saxby. “What will poor Miss Verena do? I saw her just now,” he added, dropping his voice.

“Saw her where?” asked the captain, taking a step backwards.

“In the place where I’ve just met you, sir,” replied Saxby.“I was running past round the corner into the street, on my way home from Clapham, when a young lady met and passed me, going pretty nearly as quick as I was. She had her face muffled in a black veil, but I am nearly sure it was Miss Verena Fontaine. I thought she must be coming from Pym’s lodgings here.”

Captain Tanerton and his chief mate exchanged glances of intelligence under the light of the street gas-lamp. The former then turned to Saxby.

“Mr. Saxby,” said he, “I would advise you not to mention this little incident. It would not, I am sure, be pleasant to Miss Verena Fontaine’s friends to hear of it. And, after all, you are not sure that it was she.”

“Very true, sir,” replied Saxby. “I’ll not speak of it again.”

“You hear, sir,” answered Ferrar softly, as Saxby stepped on to open the house-door. “This seems to bear out what I said. And, by the way, sir, I also saw——”

“Hush!” cautiously interrupted the captain—for they had reached the door, and Mrs. Richenough stood at it.

And what Mr. Ferrar further saw, whatever it might be, was not heard by Captain Tanerton. There was no present opportunity for private conversation: and Ferrar was away in the morning with the Rose of Delhi.

After parting with Captain Tanerton on leaving the ship, I made my way to the Mansion House, took an omnibus to Covent Garden, and called at the Tavistock to tell Mr. Brandon of the return of the ship. Mr. Brandon kept me to dinner. About eight o’clock I left him, and went to the Marylebone Road to see the Fontaines. Coralie was in the drawing-room alone.

“Is it you, Johnny Ludlow!” she gaily cried, when old Ozias showed me in. “You are as welcome as flowers in May. Here I am, without a soul to speak to. You must have a game at chess with me.”

“Your sister is not come home, then?”

“Not she. I thought it likely she would come, as soon as the ship’s head was turned seaward—I told you so. But she has not. And now the ship’s back again, I hear. A fine time you must have had of it!”

“We just had. But how did you know?”

“From papa. Papa betook himself to the docks this afternoon, to assure himself, I presume, that the Rose of Delhi was gone. And my belief is, Johnny, that he will work himself into a nervous fever,” Coralie broke off to say, in her equable way, as she helped me to place the pieces. “When he got there, he found the ship was back again. This put him out a little, as you may judge; and something else put him out more. He heard that Vera went on board with Pym yesterday afternoon when the ship was lying in St. Katherine’s Docks. Upon that, what notion do you suppose he took up? I have first move, don’t I?”

“Certainly. What notion did he take up?” The reader must remember that I knew nothing of Sir Dace’s visit to the ship.

“Why, that Vera might be resolving to convert herself into a stowaway, and go out with Pym and the ship. Poor papa! He went searching all over the vessel. He must be off his head.”

“Verena would not do that.”

“Do it?” retorted Coralie. “She’d be no more likely to do it than to go up a chimney, as the sweeps do. I told papa so.He brought me this news when he came home to dinner. And he might just as well have stayed away, for all he ate.”

Coralie paused to look at her game. I said nothing.

“He could only drink. It was as if he had a fierce thirst upon him. When the sweets came on, he left the table and shut himself in his little library. I sent Ozias to ask if he would have a cup of tea or coffee made; papa swore at poor Ozias, and locked the door upon him. When Verena does appear I’d not say but he’ll beat her.”

“No, no: not that.”

“But, I tell you he is off his head. He is still shut up: and nobody dare go near him when he gets into a fit of temper. It is so silly of papa! Verena is all right. But this disobedience, you see, is something new to him.”

“You can’t move that bishop. It leaves your king in check.”

“So it does. The worst item of news remains behind,” added Coralie. “And that is that Pym does not sail with the ship.”

“I should not think he would now. Captain Tanerton would not take him.”

“Papa told me Captain Tanerton had caused him to be superseded. Was Pym very much the worse for what he took, Johnny? Was he very insolent? You must have seen it all?”

“He had taken quite enough. And he was about as insolent as a man can be.”

“Ferrar is appointed to his place, papa says; and a new man to Ferrar’s.”

“Ferrar is! I am glad of that: very. He deserves to get on.”

“But Ferrar is not a gentleman, is he?” objected Coralie.

“Not in one sense. There are gentlemen and gentlemen. Mark Ferrar is very humble as regards birth and bringing-up. His father is a journeyman china-painter at one of the Worcester china-factories; and Mark got his learning at St. Peter’s charity-school. But every instinct Mark possesses is that of a refined, kindly, modest gentleman; and he has contrived to improve himself so greatly by dint of study and observation, that he might now pass for a gentleman in any society. Some men, whatever may be their later advantages, can never throw off the common tone and manner of early habits and associations. Ferrar has succeeded in doing it.”

“If Pym stays on shore it may bring us further complication,”mused Coralie. “I should search for Verena myself then—andsearch in earnest. Papa and old Ozias have gone about it in anything but a likely manner.”

“Have you any notion where she can be?”

“Just the least bit of notion in the world,” laughed Coralie.“It flashed across me the other night where she might have hidden herself. I don’t know it. I have no particular ground to go upon.”

“You did not tell Sir Dace?”

“Not I,” lightly answered Coralie. “We two sisters don’t interfere with one another’s private affairs. I did keep back a letter of Vera’s; one she wrote to Pym when we first left home; but I have done so no more. Here comes some tea at last!”

“I should have told,” I continued in a low tone. “Or taken means myself to see whether my notion was right or wrong.”

“What did it signify?—when Pym was going away in a day or two. Check to you, Johnny Ludlow.”

That first game, what with talking and tea-drinking, was a long one. I won it. When Ozias came in for the tea-cups Coralie asked him whether Sir Dace had rung for anything. No, the man answered; most likely his master would remain locked in till bed-time; it was his way when any great thing put him out.

“I don’t think I can stay for another game,” I said to Coralie, as she began to place the men again.

“Are you in such a hurry?” cried Coralie, glancing round at the clock: which said twenty minutes to ten.

I was not in any hurry at all that night, as regarded myself: I had thought she might not care for me to stay longer. Miss Deveen and Cattledon had gone out to dinner some ten miles away, and were not expected home before midnight. So we began a fresh game.

“Why! that clock must have stopped!”

Chancing to look at it by-and-by, I saw that it stood at the same time—twenty minutes to ten. I took out my watch. It said just ten minutes past ten.

“What does it signify?” said Coralie. “You can stay here till twenty minutes to twelve if you like—and be whirled home in a cab by midnight then.”

That was true. If——

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Coralie.

She was looking at the door with surprised eyes. There stood Verena, her bonnet on; evidently just come in.

Verena tripped forward, bent down, and kissed her sister.“Have you been desperately angry, Coral?” she lightly asked, giving me her hand to shake. “I know papa has.”

“I have not been angry,” was Coralie’s equable answer:“but you have acted childishly, Verena. And now, where have you been?”

“Only in Woburn Place, at Mrs. Ball’s,” said Verena, throwing off her bonnet, and bringing her lovely flushed face close to the light as she sat down. “When I left here that evening—and really, Johnny, I was sorry not to stay and go in to dinner withyou,” she broke off, with a smile—“I went straight to our old lodgings, to good old Mother Ball. ‘They are frightful tyrants at home,’ I said to her, ‘I’m not sure but they’ll serve me as Bluebeard did his wives; and I want to stay with you for a day or two.’ There’s where I have been all the time, Coral; and I wondered you and papa did not come to look for me.”

“It is where I fancied you might be,” returned Coral. “But I only thought of it on Saturday night. Does that mean check, Johnny?”

“Check and mate, mademoiselle.”

“Oh, how wicked you are!”

“Mrs. Ball has been more careful of me than she’d be of gold,” went on Vera, her blue eyes dancing. “The eldest daughter, Louise, is at home now: she teaches music in a school: and, if you’ll believe me, Coral, the old mother would never let me stir out without Louise. When Edward Pym came up in the evening to take me for a walk, Louise must go with us. ‘I feel responsible to your papa and sister, my dear,’ the old woman would say to me. Oh, she was a veritable dragon.”

“Was Louise with you when you went on board the Rose of Delhi yesterday afternoon?” cried Coralie, while I began to put away the chessmen.

Verena opened her eyes. “How did you hear of that? No, we tricked Louise for once. Edward had fifty things to say to me, and he wanted me alone. After dinner he proposed that we should go to afternoon service. I made haste, and went out with him, calling to Louise that she’d catch us up before we reached the church, and we ran off in just the contrary direction.“I should like to show you my ship,” Edward said; and we wentdown in an omnibus. Mrs. Ball shook her head when we got back, and said I must never do it again. As if I should have the chance, now Edward’s gone!”

Coralie glanced at her. “He is gone, I suppose?”

“Yes,” sighed Vera. “The ship left the docks this morning. He took leave of me last night.”

Coralie looked doubtful. She glanced again at her sister under her eyelids.

“Then—if Edward Pym is no longer here to take walks with you, Vera, how is it you came home so late to-night?”

“Because I have been to a concert,” cried Vera, her tone as gay as a lark’s. “Louise and I started to walk here this afternoon. I wanted you to see her; she is really very nice. Coming through Fitzroy Square, she called upon some friends of hers who live there, the Barretts—he is a professor of music. Mrs. Barrett was going to a concert to-night and she said if we would stay she’d take us. So we had tea with her and went to it, and they sent me home in a cab.”

“You seem to be taking your pleasure!” remarked Coralie.

“I had such an adventure downstairs,” cried Verena, dropping her voice after a pause of thought. “Nearly fell into the arms of papa.”

“What—now?”

“Now; two minutes ago. While hesitating whether to softly tinkle the kitchen-bell and smuggle myself in and up to my room, or to storm the house with a bold summons, Ozias drew open the front-door. He looked so glad to see me, poor stupid old fellow. I was talking to him in the passage when I heard papa’s cough. ‘Oh, hide yourself, Missee Vera,’ cried Ozias,‘the master, he so angry;’ and away I rushed into papa’s little library, seeing the door of it open——”

“He has come out of it, then!” interjected Coralie.

“I thought papa would go upstairs,” said Vera. “Instead of that, he came on into the room. I crept behind the old red window-curtains, and——”

“And what?” asked Coralie, for Verena made a sudden pause.

“Groaned out with fright, and nearly betrayed myself,” continued Verena. “Papa stared at the curtains as if he thought they were alive, and then and there backed out of the room. Perhaps he feared a ghost was there. He was looking so strange, Coralie.”

“All your fault, child. Since the night you went away he has looked more like a maniac than a rational man, and acted like one. I have just said so to Johnny Ludlow.”

“Poor papa! I will be good and tractable as an angel now, and make it up to him. And—why, Coralie, here are visitors.”

We gazed in surprise. It is not usual to receive calls at bedtime. Ozias stood at the door showing in Captain Tanerton. Behind him was Alfred Saxby.

The captain’s manner was curious. No sooner did he set eyes on us than he started back, as if he thought we might bite him.

“Not here. Not the ladies. I told you it was Sir Dace I wanted,” he said in quick sentences to Ozias. “Sir Dace alone.”

Ozias went back down the stairs, and they after him, and were shown into the library. It was a little room nearly opposite the front-entrance, and underneath the room called the boudoir. You went down a few stairs to it.

Verena turned white. A prevision of evil seized her.

“Something must be the matter,” she shivered, laying her hand upon my arm. “Did you notice Captain Tanerton’s face? I never saw him look like that. And what does he do here? Where is the ship? And oh, Johnny”—and her voice rose to a shriek—“where’s Edward Pym?”

Alas! we soon knew what the matter was—and where Edward Pym was. Dead. Murdered. That’s what young Saxby called it. Sir Dace, looking frightfully scared, started with them down to Ship Street. I went also; I could not keep away. George was to sit up for me at home if I were late.

“For,” as Miss Deveen had said to me in the morning, laughingly,“there’s no telling, Johnny, at what unearthly hour you may get back from Gravesend.”

IV

It was a dreadful thing to have happened. Edward Pym found dead; and no one could tell for a certainty who had been the author of the calamity.

He had died of a blow dealt to him, the doctors said: it had struck him behind the left ear. Could it be possible that he had fallen of himself, and struck his head against something in falling, was a question put to the doctors—and it was CaptainTanerton who put it. It perhaps might be possible, the medical men answered, but not at all probable. Mr. Pym could not have inflicted the blow upon himself, and there was no piece of furniture in the room, so far as they saw, that could have caused the injury, even though he had fallen upon it.

The good luck of the Rose of Delhi seemed not to be in the ascendant. Her commander could not sail with her now. Neither could her newly-appointed third mate, Alfred Saxby. So far as might be ascertained at present, Captain Tanerton was the last man who had seen Pym alive; Alfred Saxby had found him dead; therefore their evidence would be required at the official investigation.

Ships, however, cannot be lightly detained in port when their time for sailing comes: and on the day following the events already told of, the Rose of Delhi finally left the docks, all taut and sound, the only one of her old officers, sailing in her, being Mark Ferrar. The brokers were put out frightfully at the detention of Tanerton. A third mate was soon found to replace Saxby: a master not so easily. They put in an elderly man, just come home in command of one of their ships. Put him in for the nonce, hoping Captain Tanerton would be at liberty to join her at Dartmouth, or some other place down channel.

On this same day, Tuesday, the investigation into the events of that fatal Monday, as regarded Edward Pym, was begun. Not the coroner’s inquest: that was called for the morrow: but an informal inquiry instituted by the brokers and Sir Dace Fontaine. In a back-room of the office in Eastcheap, the people met; and—I am glad to say—I was one of them, or I could not have told you what passed. Sir Dace sat in the corner, his elbow resting on the desk and his hand partly covering his face. He did not pretend to feel the death as an affectionate uncle would have felt it; still Pym was his nephew, and there could be no mistake that the affair was troubling him.

Mrs. Richenough, clean as a new pin, in her Sunday gown and close bonnet, a puzzled look upon her wrinkled face, told what she knew—and was longer over it than she need have been. Mr. Pym, who lodged in her parlour floor, had left her for good, as she supposed, on the Monday morning, his ship, the Rose of Delhi, being about to go out of dock. Mr. Saxby, who had lodged in the rooms above Mr. Pym, got appointed to the same ship, and he also left. In the afternoon she heard that the ship had got off all right: a workman at the docks told her so. Later, who should come to the door but Mr. Pym—which naturally gave her great surprise. He told her the ship had sprung a leak and had put back; but they should be off again with the next day’s tide, and he should have to be abroad precious early in the morning to get the cargo stowed away again——

“What time was this?” interrupted Mr. Freeman.

“About half-past four, I fancy, sir. Mr. Pym spoke rather thick—I saw he had been taking a glass. He bade me make him a big potful of strong tea—which I did at once, having the kettle on the fire. He drank it, and went out.”

“Go on, Mrs. Richenough.”

“An hour afterwards, or so, his captain called, wanting to know where he was. Of course, sirs, I could not say; except that he had had a big jorum of tea, and was gone out.”

Captain Tanerton spoke up to confirm this. “I wanted Pym,”he said. “This must have been between half-past five and six o’clock.”

“About nine o’clock; or a bit earlier, it might be—I know it was dark and I had finished my supper—Mr. Pym came back,”resumed the landlady. “He seemed in an ill-humour, and he had been having more to drink. ‘Light my lamp, Mother Richenough,’ says he roughly, ‘and shut the shutters: I’ve got a letter to write.’ I lighted the lamp, and he got out some paper of his that was left in the table-drawer, and the ink, and sat down. After closing the shutters I went to the front-door, and there I saw Captain Tanerton. He asked me——”

“What did he ask you?” cried Mr. Freeman’s lawyer, for she had come to a dead standstill.

“Well, the captain asked me whether any young lady had been there. He had asked the same question afore, sir: Mr. Pym’s cousin, or sister, I b’lieve he meant. I told him No, and he went into the parlour to Mr. Pym.”

“What then?”

“Well, gentlemen, I went back to my kitchen, and shut myself in by my bit o’ fire; and, being all lonely like, I a’most dozed off. Not quite; they made so much noise in the parlour, quarrelling.”

“Quarrelling?” cried the lawyer.

“Yes, sir; and were roaring out at one another like wolves. Mr. ——”

“Stay a moment, ma’am. How long was it after you admitted Captain Tanerton that you heard this quarrelling?”

“Not above three or four minutes, sir. I’m sure of that.‘Mr. Pym’s catching it from his captain, and he is just in the right mood to take it unkindly,’ I thought to myself. However, it was no business of mine. The sounds soon ceased, and I was just dozing off again, when Mr. Saxby came home. He went into the parlour to see Mr. Pym, and found him lying dead on the floor.”

A silent pause.

“You are sure, ma’am, it was Captain Tanerton who was quarrelling with him?” cried the lawyer, who asked more questions than all the rest put together.

“Of course I am sure,” returned Mrs. Richenough. “Why, sir, how could it be anybody else? Hadn’t I just let in Captain Tanerton to him? Nobody was there but their two selves.”

Naturally the room turned to Jack. He answered the mute appeal very quietly.

“It was not myself that quarrelled with Pym. No angry word of any kind passed between us. Pym had been drinking; Mrs. Richenough is right in that. He was not in a state to be reproved or reasoned with, and I came away at once. I did not stay to sit down.”

“You hear this, Mrs. Richenough?”

“Yes, sir, I do; and I am sure the gentleman don’t speak or look like one who could do such a deed. But, then, I heard the quarrelling.”

An argument indisputable to her own mind. Sir Dace looked up and put a question for the first time. He had listened in silence. His dark face had a wearied look on it, and he spoke hardly above a whisper.

“Did you know the voice to be that of Captain Tanerton, Mistress Landlady? Did you recognize it for his!”

“I knew the voice couldn’t be anybody else’s, sir. Nobody but the captain was with Mr. Pym.”

“I asked you whether you recognized it?” returned Sir Dace, knitting his brow. “Did you know by its tone that it was Captain Tanerton’s?”

“Well, no, sir, I did not, if you put it in that way. Captain Tanerton was nearly a stranger to me, and the two shut doors and the passage was between me and him. I had only heardhim speak once or twice before, and then in a pleasant, ordinary voice. In this quarrel his voice was raised to a high, rough pitch; and in course I could not know it for his.”

“In point of fact, then, it comes to this: You did not recognize the voice for Captain Tanerton’s.”

“No, sir; not, I say, if you put it in that light.”

“Let me put it in this light,” was Sir Dace Fontaine’s testy rejoinder: “Had three or four people been with Mr. Pym in his parlour, you could not have told whose voice it was quarrelling with him? You would not have known?”

“That is so, sir. But, you see, I knew it was his captain that was with him.”

Sir Dace folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, his cross-questioning over. Mrs. Richenough was done with for the present, and Captain Tanerton entered upon his version of the night’s events.

“I wished particularly to see Mr. Pym, and went to Ship Street in search of him, as I have already said. He was not there. Later, I went down again——”

“I beg your pardon, Captain Tanerton,” interrupted the lawyer; “what time do you make it—that second visit?”

“It must have been nearly nine o’clock. Mr. Pym was at home, and I went into his parlour. He sat at the table writing, or preparing to write. I asked him the question I had come to ask, and he answered me. Scarcely anything more passed between us. He was three-parts tipsy. I had intended to tell him that he was no longer chief mate of my ship—had been superseded; but, seeing his condition, I did not. I can say positively that I was not more than two minutes in the room.”

“And you and he did not quarrel?”

“We did not. Neither were our voices raised. It is very probable, in his then condition, that he would have attempted to quarrel had he known he was discharged; but he did not know it. We were perfectly civil to each other; and when I wished him good-night, he came into the passage and shut the front-door after me.”

“You left no one with him?”

“No one; so far as I saw. I can answer for it that no one was in the parlour with us: whether any one was in the back room I cannot say. I do not think so.”

“After that, Captain Tanerton?”

“After that I went straight to my hotel in the Minories, and ordered tea. While taking it, Mr. Ferrar came in and told me Edward Pym was dead. I could not at first believe it. I went back to Ship Street and found it too true. In as short a time as I could manage it, I went to carry the news to Sir Dace Fontaine, taking young Saxby with me.”

Jack had spoken throughout in the ready, unembarrassed manner of one who tells a true tale. But never in all my life had I seen him so quiet and subdued. He was like one who has some great care upon him. The other hearers, not knowing Jack as I knew him, would not notice this; though I cannot answer for it that one of them did not James Freeman. He never took his eyes off Jack all the while; peered at him as if he were a curiosity. It was not an open stare; more of a surreptitious one, taken stealthily from under his eyebrows.

Some testimony as to Pym’s movements that afternoon was obtained from Mrs. Ball, the lawyer having already been to Woburn Place to get it. She said that young Pym came to her house between five and six o’clock nearer six than five, she thought, and seemed very much put out and disappointed to find Miss Verena Fontaine had left for her own home. He spoke of the ship’s having sprung a leak and put back again, but he believed she would get out again on the morrow. Mrs. Ball did not notice that he had been drinking; but one of her servants met him in the street after he left the house, heard him swearing to himself, and saw him turn into a public-house. If he remained in it until the time he next appeared in Ship Street, his state then was not to be wondered at.

This was about all that had been gathered at present. A great deal of talking took place, but no opinion was expressed by anybody. Time enough for that when the jury met on the morrow. As we were turning out of the back-room, the meeting over, Mr. Freeman put his hand upon Jack, to detain him. Jack, in his turn, detained me.

“Captain Tanerton,” he said, in a grave whisper, “do you remember making a remark to me not long ago, in this, my private room—that if we persisted in sending Pym out with you in the ship, there would be murder committed?”

“I believe I do,” said Jack, quietly. “They were foolish words, and meant nothing.”

“I do not like to remember them,” pursued Mr. Freeman.“As things have turned out, it would have been better that you had not used them.”

“Perhaps so,” answered Jack. “They have done no harm, that I know of.”

“They have been singularly verified. The man has been murdered.”

“Not on board the Rose of Delhi.”

“No. Off it.”

“I should rather call it death by misadventure,” said Jack, looking calmly at the broker. “At the worst, done in a scuffle; possibly in a fall.”

“Most people, as I think you will find, will call it murder, Captain Tanerton.”

“I fear they will.”

Mr. Freeman stood before Jack, waiting—at least it struck me so—to hear him add, “But I did not commit it”—or words to that effect. I waited too. Jack never spoke them: he remained silent and still. Since the past day his manner had changed. All the light-hearted ease had gone out of it; the sunny temperament seemed exchanged for one of thought and gloom.

Fine tidings to travel down to Timberdale!

On Wednesday, the day following this, the Squire stood at the gate of Crabb Cot after breakfast, looking this way and that. Dark clouds were chasing each other over the face of the sky, now obscuring the sun, now leaving it to shine out with intense fierceness.

“It won’t do to-day,” cried the Squire. “It’s too windy, Joe. The fish would not bite.”

“They’d bite fast enough,” said Tod, who had set his mind upon a day’s fishing, and wanted the Squire to go with him.

“Feel that gust, Joe! Why, if—halloa, here comes Letsom!”

Colonel Letsom was approaching at the pace of a steam-engine, his mild face longer than usual. Tod laughed.

The colonel, never remembering to say How d’ye do, or to shake hands, dragged two letters out of his pocket, all in a flurry.

“Such fearful news, Todhetley!” he exclaimed. “Pym—you remember that poor Pym?”

“What should hinder me?” cried the Squire. “A fine dancewe had, looking for him and Verena Fontaine the other night in London! What of Pym!”

“He is dead!” gasped the colonel. “Murdered.”

The pater took off his spectacles, thinking they must affect his hearing, and stared.

“And it is thought,” added the colonel, “that—that Captain Tanerton did it.”

“Good mercy, Letsom! You can’t mean it.”

Colonel Letsom’s answer was to read out portions of the two letters. One of them was written to his daughter Mary Ann by Coralie Fontaine; three sheets full. She gave much the same history of the calamity that has been given above. It could not have been done by any hand but Captain Tanerton’s, she said; though of course not intentionally; nobody thought that: her father, Sir Dace, scorned any worse idea. Altogether, it was a dreadful thing; it had struck Verena into a kind of wild despair, and bewildered them all. And in a postscript she added what she had apparently forgotten to say before—that Captain Tanerton denied it.

Tod looked up, a flush on his face. “One thing may be relied upon, colonel—that if Tanerton did do it, he will avow it. He would never deny it.”

“This other letter is from Sir Dace,” said the colonel, after putting Coralie’s aside. And he turned round that we might look over his shoulder while he read it.

It gave a much shorter account than Coralie’s; a lighteraccount, as if he took a less grave view of the affair; and it concluded with these words: “Suspicion lies upon Tanerton. I think unjustly. Allowing that he did do it, it could only have been done by a smartly-provoked blow, devoid of ill-intention. No one knows better than myself how quarrelsome and overbearing that unfortunate young man was. But I, for one, believe what Tanerton says—that he was not even present when it happened. I am inclined to think that Pym, in his unsteady state, must in some way have fallen when alone, and struck his head fatally.”

“Sir Dace is right; I’ll lay my fortune upon it,” cried Tod warmly.

“Don’t talk quite so fast about your fortune, Joe; wait till you’ve got one,” rebuked the pater. “I must say it is grievous news, Letsom. It has upset me.”

“I am off now to show the letters to Paul,” said the colonel.“It will be but neighbourly, as he is a connection of the Fontaines.”

Shaking hands, he turned away on the road to Islip. The Squire, leaning on the gate, appeared to be looking after him: in reality he was deep in a brown study.

“Joe,” said he, in a tone that had a sound of awe in it, “this is curious, taken in conjunction with what Alice Tanerton told us yesterday morning.”

“Well, it does seem rather queer,” conceded Tod. “Something like the dream turning up trumps.”

“Trumps?” retorted the pater.

“Truth, then. Poor Alice!”

A singular thing had happened. Especially singular, taken in conjunction (as the Squire put it) with this unfortunate news. And when the reader hears the whole, though it won’t be just yet, he will be ready to call out, It is not true. But it is true. And this one only fact, with its truth and its singularity, induced me to recount the history.

On Tuesday morning, the day after the calamity in Ship Street—you perceive that we go back a day—the Squire and Tod turned out for a walk. They had no wish to go anywhere in particular, and their steps might just as well have been turned Crabb way as Timberdale way—or, for that matter, any other way. The morning was warm and bright: they strolled towards the Ravine, went through it, and so on to Timberdale.

“We may as well call and see how Herbert Tanerton is, as we are here,” remarked the Squire. For Herbert had a touch of hay-fever. He was always getting something or other.

The Rector was better. They found him pottering about his garden; that prolific back-garden from which we once saw—if you don’t forget it—poor, honest, simple-minded Jack bringing strawberries on a cabbage-leaf for crafty Aunt Dean. The suspected hay-fever turned out to be a bit of a cold in the head: but the Rector could not have looked more miserable had it been in the heart.

“What’s the matter with you now?” cried the Squire, who never gave in to Herbert’s fancies.

“Matter enough,” he growled in answer: “to have a crew of ridiculous women around you, no better than babies! Here’sAlice in a world of a way about Jack, proclaiming that some harm has happened to him.”

“What harm? Does she know of any?”

“No, she does not know of any,” croaked Herbert, flicking a growing gooseberry off a bush with the rake. “She says a dream disclosed it to her.”

The pater stared. Tod threw up his head with a laugh.

“You might have thought she’d got her death-warrant read out to her, so white and trembling did she come down,” continued Herbert in an injured tone. “She had dreamt a dream, foreshadowing evil to Jack, she began to tell us—and not a morsel of breakfast could she touch.”

“But that’s not like Alice,” continued the Squire. “She is too sensible: too practical for such folly.”

“It’s not like any rational woman. And Grace would have condoled with her! Women infect each other.”

“What was the dream?”

“Some nonsense or other, you may be sure. I would not let her relate it, to me, or to Grace. Alice burst into tears and called me hard-hearted. I came out here to get away from her.”

“For goodness’ sake don’t let her upset herself over a rubbishing dream, Tanerton,” cried the Squire, all sympathy. “She’s not strong, you know, just now. I dreamt one night the public hangman was appointed to take my head off; but it is on my shoulders yet. You tell her that.”

“Yesterday was the day Jack was to sail,” interrupted Tod.

“Of course it was,” acquiesced the Rector: “he must be half-way down the channel by this time. If—— Here comes Alice!” he broke off. “I shall go. I don’t want to hear more of such stuff.”

He went on down the garden in a huff, disappearing behind the kidney-beans. Alice, wearing a light print gown and black silk apron, her smooth brown hair glossy as ever, and her open face as pretty, shook hands with them both.

“And what’s this we hear about your tormenting yourself over a dream?” blundered the Squire. Though whether it was a blunder to say it, I know not; or whether, but for that, she would have spoken: once the ice is broken, you may plunge in easily. “My dear, I’d not have thought it of you.”

Alice’s face took a deeper gravity, her eyes a far-off look.“It is quite true, Mr. Todhetley,” she sighed. “I have been very much troubled by a dream.”

“Tell it us, Alice,” said Tod, his whole face in a laugh.“What was it about?”

“That you may ridicule it?” she sighed.

“Yes,” he answered. “Ridicule it out of you.”

“You cannot do that,” was her quiet answer: and Tod told me in later days that it rather took him aback to see her solemn sadness. “I should like to relate it to you, Mr. Todhetley. Herbert would not hear it, or let Grace.”

“Herbert’s a parson, you know, my dear, and parsons think they ought to be above such things,” was the Squire’s soothing answer. “If it will ease your mind to tell it me—— Here, let us sit down under the pear-tree.”

So they sat down on the bench under the blossoms of the pear-tree, the pater admonishing Tod to behave himself; and poor Alice told her dream.

“I thought it was the present time,” she began. “This very present day, say, or yesterday; and that Jack was going to sea in command——”

“But, my dear, he always goes in command.”

“Of course. But in the dream the point was especially presented to my mind—that he was going out in command. He came to me the morning of the day he was to sail, looking very patient, pale, and sorrowful. It seemed that he and I had had some dispute, causing estrangement, the previous night: it was over then, and I, for one, repented of the coldness.”

“Well, Alice?” broke in Tod: for she had stopped, and was gazing out straight before her.

“I wish I could show to you how real all this was,” she resumed. “It was more as though I were wide awake, and enacting it. I never had so vivid a dream before; never in all my life.”

“But why don’t you go on?”

“Somebody had been murdered: some man. I don’t know who it was—or where, or how. Jack was suspected. Jack! But it seemed that it could not be brought home to him. We were in a strange town; at least, it was strange to me, though it seemed that I had stayed in it once before, many years ago. Jack was standing before me all this while, you understand, in his sadness and sorrow. It was not he who had told me whathad happened. I seemed to have known it already. Everybody knew it, everybody spoke of it, and we were in cruel distress. Suddenly I remembered that when I was in the town the previous time, the man who was murdered had had a bitter quarrel with another man, a gentleman: and a sort of revelation came over me that this gentleman had been the murderer. I went privately to some one who had authority in the ship, and said so; I think her owner. He laughed at me—did I know how high this gentleman was, he asked; the first magnate in the town. That he had done it I felt sure; surer than if I had seen it done; but no one would listen to me—and in the trouble I awoke.”

“That’s not much to be troubled at,” cried the Squire.

“The trouble was terrible; you could not feel such in real life. But I have not told all. Presently I got to sleep again, and found myself in the same dream. I was going through the streets of the town in an open carriage, the ship’s owner with me——”

“Was the ship the Rose of Delhi?”

“I don’t know. The owner, sitting with me in the carriage, was not either of the owners of the Rose of Delhi, whom I know well; this was a stranger. We were going over a bridge. Walking towards us on the pavement, I saw two gentlemen arm-in-arm: one an officer in a dusky old red uniform and cocked-hat; the other an evil-looking man who wore a long brown coat. He walked along with his eyes on the ground. I knew him by intuition—that it was the man who had had the quarrel years before, and who had done the murder now. ‘There’s the gentleman you would have accused,’ said my companion before I could speak, pointing to this man: ‘he stands higher in position than anybody else in the town.’ They walked on in their security, and we drove on in our pain. I ought to say in my pain, for I alone felt it. Oh, I cannot tell you what it was—this terrible pain; not felt so much, it seemed, because my husband could not be cleared, as for his sadness and sorrow. Nothing like it, I say, can ever be felt on earth.”

“And what else, Alice?”

“That is all,” she sighed. “I awoke for good then. But the pain and the fear remain with me.”

“Perhaps, child, you are not very well?—been eating green gooseberries, or some such trash. Nothing’s more likely to give one bad dreams than unripe fruit.”

“Why should the dream have left this impression of evil upon me—this weight of fear?” cried Alice, never so much as hearing the pater’s irreverent suggestion. “If it meant nothing, if it were not come as a warning, it would pass from my mind as other dreams pass.”

Not knowing what to say to this, the Squire said nothing. He and Tod both saw how useless it would be; no argument could shake her faith in the dream, and the impression it had left.

The Squire, more easily swayed than a child, yet suspecting nothing of the news that was on its way to Timberdale, quitted the Rectory and went home shaking his head. Alice’s solemn manner had told upon him. “I can’t make much out of the dream, Joe,” he remarked, as they walked back through the Ravine; “but I don’t say dreams are always to be ridiculed, since we read of dreams sent as warnings in the Bible. Anyhow, I hope Jack will make a good voyage. He has got home safe and sound from other voyages: why should he not from this one?”

Before that day was over, they saw Alice again. She walked over to Crabb Cot in the evening with her little girl—a sprightly child with Jack’s own honest and kindly eyes. Alice put a sealed paper into the Squire’s hand.

“I know you will think me silly,” she said to him, in a low tone: “perhaps gone a little out of my senses; but, as I told you this morning, nothing has ever impressed me so greatly and so unpleasantly as this dream. I cannot get it out of my mind for a moment; every hour, as it goes by, only serves to render it clearer. I have written it down here, every particular, more minutely than I related it to you this morning, and I have sealed it up, you see; and I am come to ask you to keep it. Should my husband ever be accused, it may serve to——”

“Now, child, don’t you talk nonsense,” interrupted the pater.“Accused of what?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Todhetley,” she went on, in deprecation; “but indeed there lies upon me a dread—an apprehension that startles me. I dare say I express myself badly; but it is there. And, do you know, Jack has lately experienced the same sensation; he told me so on Sunday. He said it was like an instinct of coming evil.”

“Then that accounts for it,” cried the Squire, considerably relieved, and wondering how Jack could be so silly, if she was.“If your husband told you that, Alice, of course the first thing you’d do would be to go and dream of it.”

“Perhaps so. What he said made no impression on me; he laughed as he said it: I don’t suppose it made much on him. Please keep the paper.”

The Squire carried the paper upstairs and locked it up in the little old walnut bureau in his bedroom. He told Alice where he had put it. And she, declining any refreshment, left again with little Polly for Timberdale Rectory.

“Has Herbert come to?” asked Tod laughingly, as he went to open the gate for her.

“Oh dear, no,” answered Alice. “He never will, if you mean as to hearing me tell the dream.”

They had a hot argument after she left: Mrs. Todhetley maintaining that some dreams were to be regarded as sacred things; while Tod ridiculed them with all his might, asserting that there never had been, and never could be anything in them to affect sensible people. The Squire, now taking one side, now veering to the other, remained in a state of vacillation, something like Mahomet’s coffin hovering between earth and heaven.

And, you will now readily understand that when the following morning, Wednesday, Colonel Letsom brought the Squire the news of Pym’s death, calling it murder, and that Jack was suspected, and the ship had gone out without him, this dream of Alice Tanerton’s took a new and not at all an agreeable prominence. Even Tod, sceptical Tod, allowed that it was “queer.”

On this same morning, Wednesday, Alice received a letter from her husband. He spoke of the mishap to the ship, said that she had put back, and had again gone out; he himself being detained in London on business, but he expected to be off in a day or two and join her at some place down channel. But not a word did he say of the cause of his detention, or of the death of Edward Pym. She heard it from others.

With this confirmation, as it seemed, of her dream, Alice took it up more warmly. She went over to the old lawyer at Islip, John Paul, recounted the dream to him, and asked what she was to do. Naturally, old Paul told her “nothing:” and he must have laughed in his sleeve as he said it.

The good ship, Rose of Delhi, finally went away with all her sails set for the East; but John Tanerton went not with her.

The inquest on the unfortunate young man, Pym, was put off from time to time, and prolonged and procrastinated. Captain Tanerton had to wait its pleasure; the ship could not.

The case presented difficulties, and the jury could not see their way to come to a verdict. Matters looked rather black against Captain Tanerton; that was not denied; but not sufficiently black, it would seem, for the law to lay hold of him. At any rate, the law did not. Perhaps the persistent advocacy of Sir Dace Fontaine went some way with the jury. Sir Dace gave it as his strong opinion that his misguided nephew, being the worse for drink, had fallen of himself, probably with his head on the iron fender, and that Captain Tanerton’s denial was a strictly true one. The end finally arrived at was—that there was not sufficient evidence to show how the death was caused.

At the close of the investigation Jack went down to Timberdale. Not the open-hearted, ready-handed Jack of the old days, but a subdued, saddened man who seemed to have a care upon him. The foolish speech he had thoughtlessly made to Mr. Freeman preceded him: and Herbert Tanerton—always looking on the darkest side of everything and everybody, considered it a proof that Jack had done the deed.

Timberdale (including Crabb) held opposite opinions; half of it taking Captain Tanerton’s side, half the contrary one. As to the Squire, he was more helpless than an old sheep. He had always liked Jack, had believed in him as in one of us: but, you see, when one gets into trouble, faith is apt to waver. A blow, argued the pater in private, is so easily given in the heat of passion.

“A pretty kettle of fish this is,” croaked Herbert to Jack, on his brother’s arrival.

“Yes, it is,” sighed Jack.

“The ship’s gone without you, I hear.”

“She had to go. Ships cannot be delayed to await the convenience of one man: you must know that, Herbert.”

“How came you to do it, John?”

“To do what?” asked Jack. “To stay? It was no fault of mine. I was one of the chief witnesses, and the coroner would not release me.”

“You know what I mean. Not that. How came you to do it, I ask?”

“To do what?” repeated Jack.

“Kill Pym.”

Jack’s face took a terrible shade of pain as he looked at his brother. “I should have thought, Herbert, that you, of all people, might have judged me better than that.”

“I don’t mean to say you did it deliberately; that you meant to do it,” returned the Rector in his coldest manner. “But that was a very awkward threat of yours—that if the brokers persisted in sending Pym out with you, there’d be murder committed. Very incautious!”

“You can’t mean what you say; you cannot surely reflect on what you would imply—that I spoke those words with intention!”flashed Jack.

“You did speak them—and they were verified,” contended Herbert. Just the same thing, you see, that Mr. Freeman had said to Jack in London. Poor Jack!

“How did you hear that I had said anything of the kind?”

“Somebody wrote it to Timberdale,” answered the parson, crustily. There could be no question that the affair had crossed him more than anything that had ever happened in this world.“I think it was Coralie Fontaine.”

“I am deeply sorry I ever spoke them, Herbert—as things have turned out.”

“No doubt you are. The tongue’s an evil and dangerous member. Let us drop the subject: the less it is recurred to now, the better.”

Captain Tanerton saw how it was—that all the world suspected him, beginning with his brother.

And he certainly did not do as much to combat the feeling as he might have done. This was noticed. He did not assert his innocence strenuously and earnestly. He said he was not guilty, it’s true, but he said it too quietly. A man accused of so terrible a crime would move heaven and earth to prove the charge false—if false it were. Jack denied his guilt, but denied it in a very tame fashion. And this had its effect upon his upholders.

There could be no mistaking that some inward trouble tormented him. His warm, genial manners had given place to thoughtfulness and care. Was Jack guilty?—his best friends acknowledged the doubt now, in the depths of their heart. Herbert Tanerton was worrying himself into a chronic fever: chiefly because disgrace was reflected on his immaculate self, Jack being his brother. Squire Todhetley, meeting Jack oneday in Robert Ashton’s cornfield, took Jack’s hands in his, and whispered that if Jack did strike the blow unwittingly, he knew it was all the fault of that unhappy, cross-grained Pym. In short, the only person who retained full belief in Jack was his wife. Jack had surely done it, said Timberdale under the rose, but done it unintentionally.

Alice related her dream to Jack. Not being given to belief in dreams, Jack thought little of it. Nothing, in fact. It was no big, evil-faced man who harmed Pym, he answered, shaking his head; and he seemed to speak as one who knew.

Timberdale was no longer a pleasant resting-place for John Tanerton, and he quitted it for Liverpool, with Alice and their little girl. Aunt Dean received him coolly and distantly. The misfortune had put her out frightfully: with Jack’s income threatened, there would be less for herself to prey upon. She told him to his face that if he wanted to correct Pym, he might have waited till they got out to sea: blows were not thought much of on board ship.

The next day Jack paid a visit to the owners, and resigned his command. For, he was still attached ostensibly to the Rose of Delhi, though another master had temporarily superseded him.

“Why do you do this?” asked Mr. Charles Freeman. “We can put you into another ship, one going on a shorter voyage, and when your own comes home you can take her again.”

“No,” said Jack. “Many thanks, though, for your confidence in me. All the world seems to believe me guilty. If I were guilty I am not fit to command a ship’s crew.”

“But you were not guilty?”

More emphatically than Jack had yet spoken upon the affair, he spoke now: and his truthful, candid eyes went straight into those of his questioner.

“I was not. Before Heaven, I say it.”

Charles Freeman heaved a sigh of relief. He liked Jack, and the matter had somewhat troubled him.

“Then, Captain Tanerton—I fully believe you—why not reconsider your determination, and remain on active service? The Shamrock is going to Madras; sails in a day or two; and you shall have her. She’ll be home again before the Rose of Delhi. For your own sake I think you should do this—to still rancorous tongues.”

Jack sighed. “I can’t feel free to go,” he said. “This suspicionhas troubled me more than you can imagine. I must get some employment on shore.”

“You should stand up before the world and assert your innocence in this same emphatic manner,” returned the owner.“Why have you not done it?”

Jack’s voice took a tone of evasion at once. “I have not cared to do it.”

Charles Freeman looked at him. A sudden thought flashed into his mind.

“Are you screening some one, Captain Tanerton?”

“How can you ask such a question?” rejoined Jack. But the deep and sudden flush that rose with the words, gave fresh food for speculation to Mr. Freeman. He dropped his voice.

“Surely it was not Sir Dace Fontaine who—who killed him? The uncle and nephew were not on good terms.”

Jack’s face and voice brightened again—he could answer this with his whole heart. “No, no,” he impressively said, “it was not Sir Dace Fontaine. You may at least rely upon that.”

When I at length got back to Crabb, the Fontaines were there. After the inquest, they had gone again to Brighton. Poor Verena looked like a ghost, I thought, when I saw her on the Sunday in their pew at church.

“It has been a dreadful thing,” I said to her, as we walked on together after service; “but I am sorry to see you look so ill.”

“A dreadful thing!—ay, it has, Johnny Ludlow,” was her answer, spoken in a wail. “I expect it will kill some of us.”

Sir Dace looked ill too. His furtive eyes had glanced hither and thither during the service, like a man who has a scare upon him; but they seemed ever to come back to Verena.

Not another word was said by either of us until we were near the barn. Then Verena spoke.

“Where is John Tanerton?”

“In Liverpool, I hear.”

“Poor fellow!”

Her tone was as piteous as her words, as her looks. All the bloom had gone from her pretty face; its lips were white, dry, and trembling. In Coralie there was no change; her smiles were pleasant as ever, her manners as easy. The calamity had evidently passed lightly over her; as I expect most things in life did pass.

Saying good-morning at the turning, Sir Dace and Verena branched off to Maythorn Bank. Coralie lingered yet, talking with Mr. Todhetley.

“My dear, how ill your father is looking!” exclaimed the Squire.

“He does look ill,” answered Coralie. “He has never been quite the same since that night in London. He said one day that he could not get the sight of Pym out of his mind—as he saw him lying on the floor in Ship Street.”

“It must have been a sad sight.”

“Papa is also, I think, anxious about Verena,” added Coralie.“She has taken the matter to heart in quite an unnecessary manner; just, I’m sure, as if she intended to die over it. That must vex papa: I see him glancing at her every minute in the day. Oh, I assure you I am the only cheerful one of the family now,” concluded Coralie, lightly, as she ran away to catch the others.

That was the last we saw of them that year. On the morrow we left for Dyke Manor.

In the course of the autumn John Tanerton ran up to Timberdale from Liverpool. It had come to his knowledge that the Ash Farm, belonging to Robert Ashton, was to let—Grace had chanced to mention it incidentally when writing to Alice—and poor Jack thought if he could only take it his fortune was made. He was an excellent, practical farmer, and knew he could make it answer. But it would take two or three thousand pounds to stock the Ash Farm, and Jack had not as many available shillings. He asked his brother to lend him the money.

“I always knew you were deficient in common sense,” was the Rector’s sarcastic rejoiner to the request. “Three thousand pounds! What next?”

“It would be quite safe, Herbert: you know how energetic I am. And I will pay you good interest.”

“No doubt you will—when I lend it you. You have a cheek!”

“But——”

“That will do; don’t waste breath,” interrupted Herbert, cutting him short. And he positively refused the request—refused to listen to another word.

Strolling past Maythorn Bank that same afternoon, very muchdown in looks and spirits, Jack saw Sir Dace Fontaine. He was leaning over his little gate, looking just as miserable as Jack. For Sir Dace to look out of sorts was nothing unusual; for Jack it was. Sir Dace asked what was amiss: and Jack—candid, free-spoken, open-natured Jack—told of his disappointment in regard to the Ash Farm: his brother not feeling inclined to advance him the necessary money to take it—three thousand pounds.

“I wonder you do not return to the sea, Captain Tanerton,”cried Sir Dace.

“I do not care to return to it,” was Jack’s answer.

“Why?”

“I shall never go to sea again, Sir Dace,” he said in his candour.

“Never go to sea again!”

“No. At any rate, not until I am cleared. While this dark cloud of suspicion lies upon me I am not fit to take the command of others. Some windy night insubordinate men might throw the charge in my teeth.”

“You are wrong,” said Sir Dace, his countenance taking an angry turn. “You know, I presume, your own innocence—and you should act as if you knew it.”

He turned back up the path without another word, entered his house, and shut the door. Jack walked slowly on. Presently he heard footsteps behind him, looked round, and saw Verena Fontaine. They had not met since the time of Pym’s death, and Jack thought he had never seen such a change in any one. Her bright colour was gone, her cheeks were wasted—a kind of dumb despair sat in her once laughing blue eyes. All Jack’s pity—and he had his share of it—went out to her.

“I heard a little of what you said to papa at the garden-gate, Captain Tanerton—not much of it. I was in the arbour. Why is it that you will not yet go to sea again? What is it you wait for?”

“I am waiting until I can stand clear in the eyes of men,”answered Jack, candid as usual, but somewhat agitated, as if the topic were a sore one. “No man with a suspicion attaching to him should presume to hold authority over other men.”

“I understand you,” murmured Verena. “If you stood as free from suspicion with all the world as you are in my heart, and—and”—she paused from emotion—“and I think in my father’s also, you would have no cause to hesitate.”

Jack took a questioning glance at her; at the sad, eager eyes that were lifted beseechingly to his. “It is kind of you to say so much,” he answered. “It struck me at the time of the occurrence that you could not, did not, believe me guilty.”

Verena shivered. As if his steady gaze were too much for her, she turned her own aside towards the blue sky.

“Good-bye,” she said faintly, putting out her hand. “I only wanted to say this—to let you know that I believe in your innocence.”

“Thank you,” said Jack, meeting her hand. “It is gratifying to hear that you do me justice.”

He walked quietly away. She stood still to watch him. And of all the distressed, sad, aching countenances ever seen in this world, few could have matched that of Miss Verena Fontaine.

V

Spring sunshine, bright and warm to-day, lay on Timberdale. Herbert Tanerton, looking sick and ill, sat on a bench on the front lawn, holding an argument with his wife, shielded from outside gazers by the clump of laurel-trees. We used to say the Rector’s illnesses were all fancy and temper; but it seemed to be rather more than that now. Worse tempered he was than ever; Jack’s misfortunes and Jack’s conduct annoyed him. During the past winter Jack had taken some employment at the Liverpool Docks, in connection with the Messrs. Freeman’s ships. Goodness knew of what description it was, Herbert would say, turning up his nose.

A day or two ago Jack made his appearance again at the Rectory; had swooped down upon it without warning or ceremony, just as he had in the autumn. Herbert did not approve of that. He approved still less of the object which had brought Jack at all. Jack was tired of the Liverpool Docks; the work he had to do was not congenial to him; and he had now come to Timberdale to ask Robert Ashton to make him his bailiff. Not being able to take a farm on his own account, Jack thought the next best thing would be to take the management of one. Robert Ashton would be parting with his bailiff at Midsummer, and Jack would like to drop into the post. Anything much less congenial to the Rector’s notions, Jack could hardly have pitched upon.

“I can see what it is—Jack is going to be a thorn in my side for ever,” the Rector was remarking to his wife, who sat near him, doing some useful work. “He never had any idea of the fitness of things. A bailiff, now!—a servant!”

“I wish you would let him take a farm, Herbert—lend him the money to stock one.”

“I know you do; you have said so before.”

Grace sighed. But when she had it on her conscience to say a thing she said it.

“Herbert, you know—you know I have never thought it fair that we should enjoy all the income we do; and——”

“What do you mean by ‘fair’?” interrupted Herbert. “I only enjoy my own.”

“Legally it is yours. Rightly, a large portion of it ought to be Jack’s. It does not do us any good, Herbert, this superfluous income; you only put it by. It does not in the slightest degree add to our enjoyment of life.”

“Do be quiet, Grace—unless you can talk sense. Jack will get no money from me. He ought to be at sea. What right had he to give it up? The Rose of Delhi is expected back now: let him take her again.”

“You know why he will not, Herbert. And he must do something for a living. I wish you would not object to his engaging himself to Robert Ashton. If——”

“Why don’t you wish anything else that’s lowering and degrading? You are as devoid of common sense as he!”retorted the parson, walking away in a fume.

Matters were in this state when we got back to Crabb Cot; to stop at it for a longer or a shorter period as fate and the painters at Dyke Manor would allow. Jack urging Robert Ashton to promise him the bailiffs post—vacant the next Midsummer; Herbert strenuously objecting to it; and Robert Ashton in a state of dilemma between the two. He would have liked well enough to engage John Tanerton: but he did not like to defy the Rector. When the Squire heard this later, his opinion vacillated, according to custom: now leaning to Herbert’s side, now to Jack’s. And the Fontaines, we found, were in all the bustle of house-moving. Their own house, Oxlip Grange, being at length ready for them, they were quitting Maythorn Bank.

“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, coming in at duskfrom a stroll he had taken the evening of our arrival. “I never got such a turn in my life.”

“What has given it you, sir?”

“What has given it me, Johnny? why, Sir Dace Fontaine. I never saw any man so changed,” he went on, rubbing up his hair. “He looks like a ghost, more than a man.”

“Is he ill?”

“He must be ill. Sauntering down that narrow lane by Maythorn Bank, I came upon a tall something mooning along like a walking shadow. I might have taken it for a shadow, but that it lifted its bent head, and threw its staring eyes straight into mine—and I protest that a shadowy sensation crept over myself when I recognized it for Fontaine. You never saw a face so gloomy and wan. How long is it since we saw him, Johnny?”

“About nine months, I think, sir.”

“The man must be suffering from a wasting complaint, or else he has some secret care that’s fretting him to fiddle-strings. Mark my words, all of you, it is one or the other.”

“Dear me!” put in Mrs. Todhetley, full of pity. “I always thought him a gloomy man. Did you ask him whether he was ill?”

“Not I,” said the pater: “he gave me no opportunity. Had I been a sheriffs-officer with a writ in my hand he could hardly have turned off shorter. They had moved into the other house that day, he muttered, and he must lock up Maythorn Bank and be after them.”

This account of Sir Dace was in a measure cleared up the next morning. Who should come in after breakfast but the surgeon, Cole. Talking of this and that, Sir Dace Fontaine’s name came up.

“I am on my way now to Sir Dace; to the new place,” cried Cole. “They went into it yesterday. Might have gone in a month ago, but Sir Dace made no move to do it. He seems to have no heart left to do anything; neither heart nor energy.”

“I knew he was ill,” cried the Squire. “No mistaking that. And now, Cole, what is it that’s the matter with him?”

“He shows symptoms of a very serious inward complaint,”gravely answered Cole. “A complaint that, if it really does set in, must prove fatal. We have some hopes yet that we shall ward it off. Sir Dace does not think we shall, and is in a rare fright about himself.”

“A fright, is he! That’s it, then.”

“Never saw any man in such a fright before,” went on Cole.“Says he’s going to die—and he does not want to die.”

“I said last night the man was like a walking shadow. And there’s a kind of scare in his face.”

Cole nodded. “Two or three weeks ago I got a note from him, asking me to call. I found him something like a shadow, as you observe, Squire. The cold weather had kept him indoors, and I had not chanced to see him for some weeks. When Sir Dace told me his symptoms, I suppose I looked grave. Combined with his wasted appearance, they unpleasantly impressed me, and he took alarm. ‘The truth,’ he said, in his arbitrary way:‘tell me the truth; only that. Conceal nothing.’ Well, when a patient adjures me in a solemn manner to tell the truth, I deem it my duty to do so,” added Cole, looking up.

“Go on, Cole,” cried the Squire, nodding approval.

“I told him the truth, softening it in a degree—that I did not altogether like some of the symptoms, but that I hoped, with skill and care, to get him round again. The same day he sent for Darbyshire of Timberdale, saying we must attend him conjointly, for two heads were better than one. Two days later he sent for somebody else—no other than Mr. Ben Rymer.”

We all screamed out in surprise. “Ben Rymer!”

“Ay,” said Cole, “Ben Rymer. Ben has got through and is a surgeon now, like the rest of us. And, upon my word, I believe the fellow has his profession thoroughly in hand. He will make a name in the world, the chances for it being afforded him, unless I am mistaken.”

Something like moisture stood in the Squire’s good old eyes.“If his father, poor Rymer, had but lived to see it!” he softly said. “Anxiety, touching Ben, killed him.”

“So we three doctors make a pilgrimage to Sir Dace regularly everyday; sometimes together, sometimes apart,” added Cole.“And, of the three of us, I believe the patient likes young Rymer best—has most confidence in him.”

“Shall you cure him?”

“Well, we do not yet give up hope. If the disease does set in, it will——”

“What?”

“Run its course quickly.”

“An instant yet, Cole,” cried the Squire, stopping the surgeonas he was turning away. “You have told us nothing. How does the parish get on?—and the people? How is Letsom?—and Crabb generally? Tanerton—how is he?—and Timberdale? Coming here fresh, we are thirsting for news.”

Cole laughed. He knew the pater liked gossip as much as any old woman: and the reader must understand that, as yet, we had not heard any, having reached Crabb Cot late the previous afternoon.

“There is no particular news, Squire,” said he. “Letsom is well; so is Crabb. Herbert Tanerton’s not well. He is in a crusty way over Jack.”

“He is always in a way over something. Where is Jack?”

“Jack’s here, at the Rectory; just come to it. Robert Ashton’s bailiff is about to take a farm on his own account, and Jack came rushing over from Liverpool to apply for the post.”

Tod, who had been too much occupied with his fishing-flies to take much heed before, set up a shrill whistle at this. “How will the parson like that?” he asked.

“The parson does not like it at all. Whether he will succeed in preventing it, is another matter,” concluded Cole. And, with that, he made his escape.

Close upon the surgeon’s departure, Colonel Letsom came in; he had heard of our arrival. It was a pity, he said, the two brothers should be at variance. Jack wanted the post—he must make a living somehow; and the Rector was in a way over it; not quite mad, but next door to it; Ashton of course not knowing what to do between them. From that subject, he began to speak of the Fontaines.

A West Indian planter, one George Bazalgette, had been over on a visit, he said, and had spent Christmas at Maythorn Bank; his object being to induce Verena to accept him as her husband. Verena would not listen to him, and he wasted his eloquence in vain. She made no hesitation in vowing to him that her affections were buried in the grave of Edward Pym.

“Fontaine told me confidentially in London that he intended she should have Bazalgette,” remarked the Squire. “It was the evening we went looking for her at that wax-work place.”

“Ay; but Fontaine is changed,” returned the colonel: “all his old domineering ways are gone out of him. When Bazalgette was over here, he did not attempt even to persuade her: shemust take her own course, he said. So poor Bazalgette went back as he came—wifeless. It was a pity.”

“Why?”

“Because this George Bazalgette was a nice fellow,” replied Colonel Letsom. “An open-hearted, fine-looking, generous man, and desperately in love with her. Miss Verena will not readily find his compeer in a summer day’s march.”

“As old as Adam, I suppose, colonel,” interjected Tod.

“Yes—if you choose to put Adam’s age down at three or four and thirty,” laughed the colonel, as he took his leave.

To wait many hours, once she was at Crabb, without laying in a stock of those delectable “family pills,” invented by the late Thomas Rymer, would have been quite beyond the philosophy of Mrs. Todhetley. That first morning, not ten minutes after Colonel Letsom left us, taking the Squire with him, she despatched me to Timberdale for a big box of them. Tod would not come: said he had his flies to see to.

Dashing through the Ravine and out on the field beyond it, I came upon Jack Tanerton. Good old Jack! The Squire had said Sir Dace was changed: I saw that Jack was. He looked taller and thinner, and the once beaming face had care upon it.

“Where are you bound for, Jack?”

“Not for any place in particular. Just sauntering about.”

“Walk my way, then. I am going to Rymer’s.”

“It is such nonsense,” cried Jack, speaking of his brother, after we had plunged a bit into affairs. “Calling it derogatory, and all the rest of it! I could be just as much of a gentleman as Ashton’s bailiff as I am now. Everybody knows me. He gives a good salary, and there’s a pretty house; and I have also my own small income. Alice and I and the little ones should be as happy as the day’s long. If I give in to Herbert and don’t take it, I don’t see what I am to turn to.”

“But, Jack, why do you give up the sea?” I asked. And Jack told me what he had told others: he should never take command again until he was a free man.

“Don’t you think you are letting that past matter hold too great an influence over you?” I presently said. “You must be conscious of your own innocence—and yet you seem as sad and subdued as though you were guilty!”

“I am subdued because other people think me guilty!” heanswered. “Changed? I am. It is that which has changed me; not the calamity itself.”

“Jack, were I you, I should stand up in the face and eyes of all the world, and say to them, ‘Before God, I did not kill Pym.’People would believe you then. But you don’t do it.”

“I have my reasons for not doing it, Johnny Ludlow. God knows what they are; He knows all things. I dare say I may be set right with the world in time: though I don’t see how it is to be done.”

A smart young man, a new assistant, was behind the counter at Ben Rymer’s, and served me with the pills. Coming out, box in hand, we met Ben himself. I hardly knew him, he was so spruce. His very hair and whiskers were trimmed down to neatness and looked of a more reasonable colour; his red-brown beard was certainly handsome, and his clothes were well cut.

“Why, he has grown into a dandy, Jack,” I said, after we had stood a minute or two, talking with the surgeon.

“Yes,” said Jack, “he is going in for the proprieties of life now. Ben may make a gentleman yet—and a good man to boot.”

That same afternoon, it chanced that the Squire met Ben Rymer. Striding along in his powerful fashion, Ben came full tilt round the sharp corner that makes the turning to the Islip Road, and nearly ran over the pater. Ben had been to Oxlip Grange.

“So, sir,” cried the pater, stopping him, “I hear you are in practice now, and intend to become a respectable man. It’s time you did.”

“Ay, at last,” replied Ben good-humouredly. “It is a long lane, Squire, that has no turning.”

“Don’t you lapse back again, Mr. Ben.”

“Not if I know it, sir. I hope I shall not.”

“It was anxiety on your score, you know, that troubled your good father’s mind in dying.”

“If it did not bring his death on,” readily conceded Ben, his light tone changing. “I know it all, Squire—and have felt it.”

“Look here,” cried the Squire, catching at Ben’s button-hole, which had a lovely lily-of-the-valley in it, “there was nothing on earth your poor patient father prayed for so earnestly as for your welfare; that you might be saved for time and eternity. Now I don’t believe such prayers are ever lost. So you will be helped on your way if you bear steadfastly onwards.”

Giving the young man’s hand a wring, the Squire turned off on his way. In half-a-minute he was back again.

“Hey, Mr. Benjamin?—here. How is Sir Dace Fontaine? I suppose you have just left him?”

So Ben had to come back at the call. To the pater’s surprise he saw his eyes were moist.

“He is worse, sir, to-day; palpably worse.”

“Will he get over it?”

Ben gave his head an emphatic shake, which somehow belied his words: “Cole and Darbyshire think there is hope yet, Squire.”

“And you do not; that’s evident. Well, good-day.”

The next move in this veritable drama was the appearance of Alice Tanerton and her six-months-old baby at Timberdale. Looking upon the Rectory as almost her home—it had been Jack’s for many years of his life—Alice came to it without the ceremony of invitation: the object of her coming now being to strive to induce Herbert to let her husband engage himself to Robert Ashton. And this visit of Alice’s was destined to bring about a most extraordinary event.

One Wednesday evening when Jack and his wife were dining with us—and that troublesome baby, which Alice could not, as it seemed, stir abroad without, was in the nursery squealing—Alice chanced to say that she had to go to Islip the following day, her mother having charged her to see John Paul the lawyer, concerning a little property that she, Aunt Dean, held in Crabb. It would be a tremendously long walk for Alice from Timberdale, especially as she was not looking strong, and Mrs. Todhetley proposed that I should drive her over in the pony-carriage: which Alice jumped at.

Accordingly, the next morning, which was warm and bright, I took the pony-carriage to the Rectory, picked up Alice, and then drove back towards Islip. As we passed Oxlip Grange, which lay in our way, Sir Dace Fontaine was outside in the road, slowly pacing the side-path. I thought I had never seen a man look so ill: so down and gloomy. He raised his eyes, as we came up, to give me a nod. I was nodding back again, when Alice screamed out and startled me. She started the pony too, which sprang on at a tangent.

“Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!” she gasped, her face whiterthan death and her lips trembling like an aspen leaf, “did you see that man? Did you see him?”

“Yes. I was nodding to him. What is the matter?”

“It was the man I saw in my dream: the man who had committed the murder in it.”

I stared at her, wondering whether she had lost her wits.

“Do you remember the description I gave of that man?” she continued, in excitement. “I do. I wrote it down at the time, and Mr. Todhetley holds it, sealed up. Every word, every particular is in my memory now, as I saw him in my dream. ‘A tall, evil-looking, dark man in a long brown coat, who walked with his eyes fixed on the ground.’ I tell you, Johnny Ludlow,that is the man.”

Her vehemence infected me. I looked round after Sir Dace. He was turning this way now. Certainly the description seemed like enough. His countenance just now did look an evil one; and he was tall and he was dark, and he wore a long brown coat this morning, nearly reaching to his heels, and his eyes were fixed on the ground as he walked.

“But what if his looks do tally with the man you saw in your dream, Alice? What of it?”

“What of it!” she echoed, vehemently. “What of it! Why, don’t you see, Johnny Ludlow? This man must have killed Edward Pym.”

“Hush, Alice! It is impossible. This is Sir Dace Fontaine.”

“I do not care who he is,” was her impulsive retort. “As surely as that Heaven is above us, Edward Pym got his death at the hand of this man. My dream revealed it to me.”

I might as well have tried to stem a torrent as to argue with her; so I drove on and held my tongue. Arrived at the office of Paul and Chandler, I following her in, leaving a boy with the pony outside. Alice pounced upon old Paul with the assertion: Sir Dace Fontaine was the evil and guilty man she had seen in her dream. Considering that Paul was a sort of cousin to Sir Dace’s late wife, this was pretty well. Old Paul stared at her as I had done. Her cheeks were hectic, her eyes wildly earnest. She recalled to the lawyer’s memory the dream she had related to him; she asserted in the most unqualified manner that Dace Fontaine was guilty. Tom Chandler, who was old Paul’s partner and had married his daughter Emma, came into the room in the middle of it, and took his share of staring.

“It must be investigated,” said Alice to them. “Will you undertake it?”

“My dear young lady, one cannot act upon a fancy—a dream,”cried old Paul: and there was a curious sound of compassionate pity in his voice, which betrayed to Alice the gratifying fact that he was regarding her as a monomaniac.

“If you will not act, others will,” she concluded at last, after exhausting her arguments in vain. And she came away with me in resentment, having totally forgotten all about her mother’s business.

To Crabb Cot then—she would go—to take counsel with the Squire. He told her to her face she was worse than a lunatic to suspect Sir Dace; and he would hardly get out the sealed packet at all. It was opened at last, and the dream, as written down in it by herself at the time, read.

“John Tanerton, my husband, was going to sea in command,”it began. “He came to me the morning of the day they were to sail, looking very patient, pale and sorrowful: more so than any one, I think, could look in life. He and I seemed to have had some estrangement the previous night that was not remembered by either of us now, and I, for one, repented of it. Somebody was murdered (though I could not tell how this had been revealed to me), some man; Jack was suspected by all people, but they could not bring it home to him. We were in some strange town; strangers in it; though I, as it seemed to me, had been in it once, many years before. All this while, Jack was standing before me in his sadness and sorrow, mutely appealing to me, as it seemed, to clear him. Everybody was talking of it and glancing at us askance, everybody shunned us, and we were in cruel distress. Suddenly I remembered that when I was in the town before, the man now murdered had had a bitter quarrel with another man, a gentleman of note in the town; and a conviction came over me, powerful as a revelation, that it was he who had now committed the murder. I left Jack, and told this to some one connected with the ship, its owner, I think. He laughed at the words, saying that the gentleman I would accuse was of high authority in the town, one of its first magnates. That he had done it, however high he might be, I felt perfectly certain; but nobody would listen to me; nobody would heed so improbable a tale: and, in the trouble this brought me, I awoke.Such trouble! Nothing like it could be felt in real life.

“That was dream the first.

“I lay awake for some little time thinking of it, and then went to sleep again: and this was dream the second.

“The dream seemed to recommence from where it had left off. It was afternoon. I was in a large open carriage, going through the streets of the town, the ship’s owner (as I say I think he was) sitting beside me. In passing over a bridge we saw two gentlemen walking towards us arm-in-arm on the footpath, one of them an officer in a dusky old red uniform and cocked hat, the other a tall, evil-looking dark man, who wore a long brown coat and kept his eyes on the ground. Though I had never seen him in my life before, I knew it was the guilty man; he had killed the other, committed the crime in secret: but ere I could speak, he who was sitting with me said, ‘There’s the gentleman you would have accused this morning. He stands before everybody else in the town. Fancy your accusing him of such a thing!’ It seemed to me that I did not answer, could not answer for the pain. That he was guilty I knew, and not Jack, but I had no means of bringing it home to him. He and the man in uniform walked on in their secure immunity, and I went on in the carriage in my pain. The pain awoke me.

“And now it only remains for me to declare that I have set down this singular dream truthfully, word for word; and I shall seal it up and keep it. It may be of use if any trouble falls upon Jack, as the dream seems to foretell—and of some trouble in store for him he has already felt the shadow. So strangely vivid a dream, and the intense pain it brought and leaves with me, can hardly have visited me for nothing.—ALICE TANERTON.”

That was all the paper said. The Squire, poring through his good old spectacles over it, shook his head as Alice pointed out the description of the guilty man, how exactly it tallied with the appearance of Sir Dace Fontaine; but he only repeated Paul the lawyer’s words, “One cannot act upon a dream.”

“It was Sir Dace; it was Sir Dace,” reiterated Alice, clasping her hands piteously. “I am as sure of it as that I hope to go to heaven.” And I drove her home in the belief.

There ensued a commotion. Not a commotion to be told to the parish, but a private one amidst ourselves. I never saw a woman in such a fever of excitement as Alice Tanerton was in from that day, or any one take up a matter so warmly.

Captain Tanerton did not adopt her views. He shook hishead, and said Sir Dace it could not have been. Sir Dace was at his house in the Marylebone Road at the very hour the calamity happened off Tower Hill. I followed suit, hearing out Jack’s word. Was I not at the Marylebone Road that evening myself, playing chess with Coralie?—and was not Sir Dace shut up in his library all the time, and never came out of it?

Alice listened, and looked puzzled to death. But she held to her own opinion. And when a fit of desperate obstinacy takes possession of a woman without rhyme or reason, you cannot shake it. As good try to argue with the whistling wind. She did not pretend to see how it could have been, she said, but Sir Dace was guilty. And she haunted Paul and Chandler’s office at Islip, praying them to take the matter up.

At length, to soothe her, and perhaps to prevent her carrying it elsewhere, they promised they would. And of course they had to make some show of doing it.

One evening Tom Chandler came to Crabb Cot and asked to see me alone. “I want you to tell me all the particulars you remember of that fatal night,” he began, when I went to him in the Squire’s little room. “I have taken down Captain Tanerton’s testimony, and I must have yours, Johnny.”

“But, are you going to stir in it?”

“We must do something, I suppose. Paul thinks so. I am going to London to-morrow on other matters, and shall use the opportunity to make an inquiry or two. It is rather a strange piece of business altogether,” added Mr. Chandler, as he took his place at the table and drew the inkstand towards him.“John Tanerton is innocent. I feel sure of that.”

“How strongly Mrs. Tanerton has taken it up!”

“Pretty well for that,” answered Tom Chandler, a smile on his good-natured face. “She told us yesterday in the office that it must be the consciousness of guilt which has worried Sir Dace to a skeleton. Now then, we’ll begin.”

He dotted down my answers to his questions, also what I voluntarily added. Then he took a sheet of paper from his pocket, closely written upon, and compared its statements—they were Tanerton’s—with mine. Putting his finger on the paper to mark a place, he looked at me.

“Did Sir Dace speak of Pym or of Captain Tanerton that night, when you were playing chess with Miss Fontaine?”

“Sir Dace did not come into the drawing-room. He had leftthe dinner-table in a huff to shut himself up in his library, Miss Fontaine said; and he stayed in it.”

“Then you did not see Sir Dace at all that night?”

“Oh yes, later—when Captain Tanerton and young Saxby came up to tell him of the death. We then all went down to Ship Street together. You have taken that down.”

“True,” said Chandler. “Well, I cannot make much out of it as it stands,” he concluded, folding the papers and putting them in his pocket-book. “What do you say is the number of the house in the Marylebone Road?”

I told him, and he went away, wishing he could accept my offer of staying to drink tea with us.

“Look here, Chandler,” I said to him at the front-door:“why don’t you take down Sir Dace Fontaine’s evidence, as well as mine and Tanerton’s?”

“I have done it,” he answered. “I was with Sir Dace to-day. Mrs. Tanerton’s suspicions are of course—absurd,” he added, making a pause, as if at a loss for a suitable word, “but for her peace of mind, poor lady, we would like to pitch upon the right individual if we can. And as yet he seems to be a myth.”

The good ship, Rose of Delhi, came gaily into port, and took up her berth in St. Katharine’s Docks as before; for she had been chartered for London. Her owners, the Freemans, wrote at once from Liverpool to Captain Tanerton, begging him to resume command. Jack wrote back, and declined.

How is it that whispers get about! Do the birds in the air carry them?—or the winds of heaven? In some cases it seems impossible that anything else can have done it. Paul and Chandler, John Tanerton and his wife, the Squire and myself: we were the only people cognizant of the new suspicion that Alice was striving to cast on Sir Dace, one and all of us had kept silent lips: and yet, the rumour got abroad. Sir Dace Fontaine was accused of knowing more about Pym’s death than he ought to know, and Tom Chandler was in London for the purpose of investigating it. This might not have mattered very much for ordinary ears, but it reached those of Sir Dace.

Coralie Fontaine heard it from Mary Ann Letsom. In Mary Ann’s indignation at the report, she spoke it out to Coralie; and Coralie, laughing at the absurdity of the thing, repeated it to Sir Dace. How he received it, or what he said about it, did not transpire.

A stagnant kind of atmosphere seemed to hang over us just then, like the heavy, unnatural calm that precedes the storm. Sir Dace got weaker day by day, more of a shadow; Herbert Tanerton and his brother were still at variance, so far as Jack’s future was concerned; and Mr. Chandler seemed to have taken up his abode in London for good.

“Does he never mean to come back?” demanded Alice one day of the Squire: and her lips and cheeks were red with fever as she asked it. The truth was, that some cause of Paul and Chandler’s then on at Westminster was prolonging itself out—even when it did begin—unconscionably.

One morning I met Ben Rymer as he was leaving Oxlip Grange. Coralie Fontaine had walked with him to the gate, talking earnestly, their two heads together. Ben shook hands with her and came out, looking as grave as a judge.

“How is Sir Dace?” I asked him. “Getting on?”

“Getting off,” responded Ben. “For that’s what it will be now; and not long first, unless he mends.”

“Is he worse?”

“He is nearly as bad as he can be, to be alive. And yesterday, he must needs go careering off to Islip by himself to transact some business with Paul the lawyer! He was no more fit for it than—than this is,” concluded Ben, giving a flick to his silk umbrella as he marched off. Ben went in for silk umbrellas now: in the old days a cotton one would have been too good for him.

“I am so sorry to hear Sir Dace is no better,” I said to Coralie Fontaine, who had waited at the gate to speak to me.

Coralie shook her head. Some deep feeling sat in her generally passive face: the tears stood in her eyes.

“Thank you, Johnny Ludlow. It is very sad. I feel sure Mr. Rymer has given up all hope, though he does not say so to me. Verena looks nearly as ill as papa. I wish we had never come to Europe!”

“Sir Dace exerts himself too greatly, Mr. Rymer says.”

“Yes; and worries himself also. As if his affairs needed as much as a thought!—I am sure they must be just as straight and smooth as yonder green plain. He had to see Mr. Paul yesterday about some alteration in his will, and went to Islip,instead of sending for Paul here. I thought he would have died when he got home. Papa has a strange restlessness upon him. Good-bye, Johnny. I’d ask you to come in but that things are all so miserable.”

It was late in the evening, getting towards bedtime. Mrs. Todhetley had gone upstairs with the face-ache, Tod was over at old Coney’s, and I and the Squire were sitting alone, when Thomas surprised us by showing in Tom Chandler. We did not know he was back from London.

“Yes, I got back this evening,” said he, as he sat down near the lamp, and spread some papers out on the table. “I am in a bit of a dilemma, Mr. Todhetley; and I am come here at this late hour to put it before you.”

Chandler’s voice had dropped to a mysterious whisper; his eyes were glancing at the door to make sure it was shut. The Squire pushed up his spectacles and drew his chair nearer. I sat on the opposite side, wondering what was coming.

“That suspicion of Alice Tanerton’s—that Sir Dace killed Pym,” went on Chandler, his left hand resting on the papers, his eyes on the Squire’s. “I think it was a true one.”

“A what?” cried the pater.

“A true one. That Sir Dace did kill him.”

“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire, his good old face taking a lighter tint. “What on earth do you mean, man?”

“Well, I mean just that,” answered Chandler. “And I feel myself to be, in consequence, in an uncommonly awkward position. One can’t well accuse Sir Dace, a man close upon the grave; and Paul’s relative in addition. And yet, Captain Tanerton must be cleared.”

“I can’t make top or tail of what you mean, Tom Chandler!”cried the Squire, blinking like a bewildered owl. “Don’t you think you are dreaming?”

“Wish I was,” said Tom, “so far as this business goes. Look here. I’ll begin at the beginning and go through the story. You’ll understand it then.”

“It’s more than I do now. Or Johnny, either. Look at him!”

“When Mrs. John Tanerton brought to us that accusation of Sir Dace, on the strength of her dream,” began Chandler, after glancing at me, “I thought she must have turned a little crazy. It was a singular dream; there’s no denying that; and the exact resemblance to Sir Dace Fontaine of the man she saw in it, was still more singular: so much so, that I could not help being impressed by it. Another thing that strongly impressed me, was Captain Tanerton’s testimony: from the moment I heard it and weighed his manner in giving it, I felt sure of his innocence. Revolving these matters in my own mind, I resolved to go to Sir Dace and get him to give me his version of the affair; not in the least endorsing in my own mind her suspicion of him, or hinting at it to him, you understand; simply to get more evidence. I went to Sir Dace, heard what he had to say, and brought away with me a most unpleasant doubt.”

“That he was guilty?”

“That he might be. His manner was so confused, himself so agitated when I first spoke. His hands trembled, his lips grew white, He strove to turn it off, saying I had startled him, but I felt a very queer doubt arising in my mind. His narrative had to be drawn from him; it was anything but clear, and full of contradictions. ‘Why do you come to me about this?’ he asked: ‘have you heard anything?’ ‘I only come to ask you for information,’ was my answer: ‘Mrs. John Tanerton wants the matter looked into. If her husband is not guilty, he ought to be cleared in the face of the world.’ ‘Nobody thinks he was guilty,’ retorted Sir Dace in a shrill tone of annoyance.‘Nobody was guilty: Pym must have fallen and injured himself.’I came away from the interview, as I tell you, with my doubts very unpleasantly stirred,” resumed Chandler; “and it caused me to be more earnest in looking after odds and ends of evidence in London than I otherwise might have been.”

“Did you pick up any?”

“Ay, I did. I turned the people at the Marylebone lodgings inside out, so to say; I found out a Mrs. Ball, where Verena Fontaine had hidden herself; and I quite haunted Dame Richenough’s in Ship Street, Tower Hill. There I met with Mark Ferrar. A piece of good fortune, for he told me something that——”

“What was it?” gasped the Squire, eagerly.

“Why this—and a most important piece of evidence it is. That night, not many minutes before the fatal accident must have occurred, Ferrar saw Sir Dace Fontaine in Ship Street, watching Pym’s room. He was standing in an entry on the opposite side of the street, gazing across at Pym’s. This, you perceive, disproves one fact testified to—that Sir Dace spent that evening shut up in his library at home. Instead of that he was absolutely down on the spot.”

The Squire rubbed his face like a helpless man. “Why could not Ferrar have said so at the time?” he asked.

“Ferrar attached no importance to it; he thought Sir Dace was but looking over to see whether his daughter was at Pym’s. But Ferrar had no opportunity of giving testimony: he sailed away the next morning in the ship. Nothing could exceed his astonishment when I told him in London that Captain Tanerton lay under the suspicion. He has taken Crabb on his way to Worcester to support this testimony if needful, and to impart it privately to Tanerton.”

“Well, it all seems a hopeless puzzle to me,” returned the pater. “Why on earth did not Jack speak out more freely, and say he was not guilty?”

“I don’t know. The fact, that Sir Dace did go out that night,” continued Chandler, “was confirmed by one of the maids in the Marylebone Road—Maria; a smart girl with curled hair. She says Sir Dace had not been many minutes in the library that night, to which he went straight from the dinner-table in a passion, when she saw him leave it again, catch up his hat with a jerk as he passed through the hall, and go out at the front-door. It was just after Ozias had been to ask him whether he would take some coffee, and got sent away with a flea in his ear. Whether or not Sir Dace came in during the evening, Maria does not know; he may, or may not, have done so, but she did see him come home in a cab at ten o’clock, or soon after it. She was gossipping with the maids at a house some few doors off, when a cab stopped near to them, Sir Dace got out of it, paid the man, and walked on to his own door. Maria supposed the driver had made a mistake in the number. So you see there can be no doubt that Sir Dace was out that night.”

“He was certainly in soon after ten,” I remarked. “Verena came home about that time, and she saw him downstairs.”

“Don’t you bring her name up, Johnny,” corrected the Squire.“That young woman led to all the mischief. Running away, as she did—and sending us off to that wax-work show in search of her! Fine figures they cut, some of those dumb things!”

“I found also,” resumed Chandler, turning over his papers,on which he had looked from time to time, “that Sir Dace met with one or two slight personal mishaps that night. He sprained his wrist, accounting for it the next morning by saying he had slipped in getting into bed; and he lost a little piece out of his shirt-front.”

“Out of his shirt front!”

“Just here,” and Chandler touched the middle button of his shirt. “The button-hole and a portion of the linen round it had been torn away. Nothing would have been known of that but for the laundress. She brought the shirt back before putting it into water, lest it should be said she had done it in the washing. Maria remembered this, and told me. A remarkably intelligent girl, that.”

“Did Maria—I remember the girl—suspect anything?” asked the Squire.

“Nothing whatever. She does not now; I accounted otherwise for my inquiries. Altogether, what with these facts I have told you, and a few minor items, and Ferrar’s evidence, I can draw but one conclusion—that Sir Dace Fontaine killed Pym.”

“I never heard such a strange thing!” cried the pater.“And what’s to be done?”

“That’s the question,” said Chandler. “What is to be done?” And he left us with the doubt.

Well, it turned out to be quite true; but I have not space here to go more into detail. Sir Dace Fontaine was guilty, and the dream was a true dream.

“Did you suspect him?” the Squire asked privately of Jack, who was taken into counsel the next day.

“No, I never suspected Sir Dace,” Jack answered. “I suspected some one else—Verena.”

“No!”

“I did. About half-past eight o’clock that night, Ferrar had seen a young lady—or somebody dressed as one—watching Pym’s house from the opposite entry: just where, it now appears, he later saw Sir Dace. Ferrar thought it was Verena Fontaine. A little later, in fact just after the calamity must have occurred, Alfred Saxby also saw a young lady running from the direction of the house, whom he also took to be Verena. Ferrar and I came to the same conclusion—I don’t know about Saxby—that Verena must have been present when it happened. I thought that, angry at the state Pym was in, she might have given him a push in her vexation, perhaps inadvertently, and that he fell. Who knew?”

“But Verena was elsewhere that evening, you know; at a concert.”

“I knew she said so; but I did not believe it. Of course I know now that both Ferrar and Saxby were mistaken; that it was somebody else they saw, who bore, one must imagine, some general resemblance to her.”

“Well, I think you might have known better,” cried the Squire.

“Yes, I suppose I ought to. But, before the inquest had terminated, I chanced to be alone with Verena; and her manner—nay, her words, two or three she said—seemed to imply her guilt, and also a consciousness that I must be aware of it. I had no doubt at all from that hour.”

“And is it for that reason, consideration for her, that you have partially allowed suspicion to rest upon yourself?” pursued the Squire, hotly.

“Of course. How could I be the means of throwing it upon a defenceless girl?”

“Well, John Tanerton, you are a chivalrous goose!”

“Verena must have known the truth all along.”

“That’s not probable,” contended the Squire. “And Chandler wants to know what is to be done.”

“Nothing all all, that I can see,” answered Jack. “Sir Dace is not in a condition to have trouble thrown upon him.”

Good Jack! generous Jack! There are not many such self-denying spirits in the world.

And what would have been done is beyond guessing, had Sir Dace not solved the difficulty himself. Solved it by dying.

But I must first tell of a little matter that happened. Although we had heard what we had, one could not treat the man cavalierly, and the Squire—just as good at heart as Jack—went up to make inquiries at Oxlip Grange, as usual. One day he and Colonel Letsom strolled up together, and were asked to walk in. Sir Dace wished to see them.

“If ever you saw a living skeleton, it’s what he is,” cried the Squire to us when he came home. “It is in the nature of the disease, I believe, that he should be. Dress him up in his shroud, and you’d take him for nothing but bones.”

Sir Dace was in the easy-chair by his bedroom fire, Coraliesitting with him. By his side stood a round table with papers and letters upon it.

“I am glad you have chanced to call,” he said to them, as he sent Coralie away. “I wanted my signature witnessed by some one in influential authority. You are both county magistrates.”

“The signature to your will,” cried the Squire, falling to that conclusion.

“Not my will,” answered Sir Dace. “That is settled.”

He turned to the table, his long, emaciated, trembling fingers singling out a document that lay upon it. “This is a declaration,”he said, “which I have written out myself, being of sound mind, you perceive, and which I wish to sign in your presence. I testify that every word written in it is truth; I, a dying man, swear that it is so, before God.”

His shaky hands scrawled his signature, Dace Fontaine; and the Squire and Colonel Letsom added theirs to it. Sir Dace then sealed up the paper, and made them each affix his seal also. He then tottered to a cabinet standing by the bed’s head, and locked it up in it.

“You will know where to find it when I am gone,” he said.“I wish some one of you to read it aloud, after the funeral, to those assembled here. When my will shall have been read, then read this.”

On the third day after this, at evening, Sir Dace Fontaine died. We heard no more about anything until the day of the funeral, which took place on the following Monday. Sir Dace left a list of those he wished invited to it, and they went. Sir Robert Tenby, Mr. Brandon, Colonel Letsom and his eldest son; the parsons of Timberdale, Crabb, and Islip; the three doctors who had attended him; old Paul and Tom Chandler; Captain Tanerton, and ourselves.

He was buried at Islip, by his own directions. And when we got back to the Grange, after leaving him in the cold churchyard, Mr. Paul read out the will. Coralie and Verena sat in the room in their deep mourning. Coralie’s eyes were dry, but Verena sobbed incessantly.

Apart from a few legacies, one of which was to his servant Ozias, his property was left to his two daughters, in equal shares. The chief legacy, a large one, was left to John Tanerton—three thousand pounds. You should have seen Jack’s face of astonishment as he heard it. Herbert looked as if he could not believe his ears. And Verena glanced across at Jack with a happy flush.

“Papa charged me, just before he died, to say that a sealed paper of his would be found in his private cabinet, which was to be read out now,” spoke Coralie, in the pause which ensued, as old Paul’s voice ceased. “He said Colonel Letsom and Mr. Todhetley would know where to find it,” she added; breaking down with a sob.

The paper was fetched, and old Paul was requested to read it. So he broke the seals.

You may have guessed what it was: a declaration of his guilt—if guilt it could be called. In a straightforward manner he stated the particulars of that past night: and the following is a summary of them.

Sir Dace went out again that night after dinner, not in secret, or with any idea of secrecy; it simply chanced, he supposed, that no one saw him go. He was too uneasy about Verena to rest; he fully believed her to be with Pym; and he went down to Ship Street. Before entering the street he dismissed the cab, and proceeded cautiously to reconnoitre, believing that if he were seen, Pym would be capable of concealing Verena. After looking about till he was tired, he took up his station opposite Pym’s lodgings—which seemed to be empty—and stayed, watching, until close upon nine o’clock, when he saw Pym enter them. Before he had time to go across, the landlady began to close the shutters; while she was doing it, Captain Tanerton came up, and went in. Captain Tanerton came out in a minute or two, and walked quickly back up the street: he, Sir Dace, would have gone after him to ask him whether Verena was indoors with Pym, or not, but the captain’s steps were too fleet for him. Sir Dace then crossed over, opened the street-door, and entered Pym’s parlour. A short, sharp quarrel ensued. Pym was in liquor, and—consequently—insolent. In the heat of passion Sir Dace—he was a strong man then—seized Pym’s arm, and shook him. Pym flew at him in return like a tiger, twisted his wrist round, and tore his shirt. Sir Dace was furious then; he struck him a powerful blow on the head—behind the ear no doubt, as the surgeons testified afterwards—and Pym fell. Leaving him there, Sir Dace quitted the house quietly, never glancing at the thought that the blow could be fatal. But, when seated in a cab on the way home, the idea suddenly occurred to him—what if he had killed Pym? The conviction, though he knew not why, or wherefore, that he had killed him, took hold of him, and he went into his house, a terrified man. The rest was known, the manuscript went on to say. He allowed people to remain in the belief that he had not been out-of-doors that night: though how bitterly he repented not having declared the truth at the time, none could know, save God. He now, a dying man, about to appear before that God, who had been full of mercy to him, declared that this was the whole truth, and he further declared that he had no intention whatever of injuring Pym; all he thought was, to knock him down for his insolence. He hoped the world would forgive him, though he had never forgiven himself; and he prayed his daughters to forgive him, especially Verena. He would counsel her to return to the West Indies, and marry George Bazalgette.

That ended the declaration: and an astounding surprise it must have been to most of the eager listeners. But not one ventured to make any comment on it, good or bad. The legacy to John Tanerton was understood now. Verena crossed the room as we were filing out, and put her two hands into his.

“I have had a dreadful fear upon me that it was papa,” she whispered to him, the tears running down her cheeks. “Nay, worse than a fear: a conviction. I think you have had the same, Captain Tanerton, and that you have generously done your best to screen him; and I thank you with my whole heart.”

“But, indeed,” began Jack—and pulled himself up, short.

“Let me tell you all,” said Verena. “I saw papa come in that night: I mean to our lodgings in the Marylebone Road, so I knew he had been out. It was just past ten o’clock: Ozias saw him too—but he is silent and faithful. I did not want papa to see me; fate, I suppose, made me back into that little room, papa’s library, until he should have gone upstairs. He did not go up; he came into the room: and I hid myself behind the window curtain. I cannot describe to you how strange papa looked;dreadful; and he groaned and flung up his arms as one does in despair. It frightened me so much that I said nothing to anybody. Still I had not the key to it: I thought it must be about me: and the torn shirt—for I saw that, and saw him button his coat over it—I supposed he had, himself, done accidentally. I drew one of the glass doors softly open, got out that way, and up to the drawing-room. Then you came in with the news ofEdward’s death. At first, for a day or so, I thought as others did—that suspicion lay on you. But, gradually, all these facts impressed themselves on my mind in their startling reality; and I felt, I saw, it could have been no other than he—my poor father. Oh, Captain Tanerton, forgive him! Forgive me!”

“There’s nothing to forgive; I am sorry it has come out now,”whispered Jack, deeming it wise to leave it at that, and he stooped and gave her the kiss of peace.

So this was the end of it. Of the affair which had so unpleasantly puzzled the world, and tried Jack.

Jack, loyal, honest-hearted Jack, shook hands with everybody, giving a double shake to Herbert’s, and went forthwith down to Liverpool.

“I will take the Rose of Delhi again, now,” he said to the Freemans. “For this next voyage, at any rate.”

“And for many a one after it, we hope, Captain Tanerton,”was their warm answer. And Jack and his bright face went direct from the office to New Brighton, to tell Aunt Dean.

And what became of the Miss Fontaines, you would like to ask? Well, I have not time at present to tell you about Coralie; I don’t know when I shall have. But, if you’ll believe me, Verena took her father’s advice, sailed back over the seas, and married George Bazalgette.

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE.

What I am about to tell of took place during the last year of John Whitney’s life, now many years ago. We could never account for it, or understand it: but it occurred (at least, so far as our experience of it went) just as I relate it.

It was not the custom for schools to give a long holiday at Easter then: one week at most. Dr. Frost allowed us from the Thursday in Passion week, to the following Thursday; and many of the boys spent it at school.

Easter was late that year, and the weather lovely. On the Wednesday in Easter week, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley drove over to spend the day at Whitney Hall, Tod and I being with them. Sir John and Lady Whitney were beginning to be anxious about John’s health—their eldest son. He had been ailing since the previous Christmas, and he seemed to grow thinner and weaker. It was so perceptible when he got home from school this Easter, that Sir John put himself into a flurry (he was just like the Squire in that and in many another way), and sent an express to Worcester for Henry Carden, asking him to bring Dr. Hastings with him. They came. John wanted care, they said, and they could not discover any specific disease at present. As to his returning to school, they both thought that question might be left with the boy himself. John told them he should prefer to go back, and laughed a little at this fuss being made over him: he should soon be all right, he said; people were apt to lose strength more or less in the spring. He was sixteen then, a slender, upright boy, with a delicate, thoughtful face, dreamy, grey-blue eyes and brown hair, and he was ever gentle, sweet-tempered, and considerate. Sir John related to the Squire what the doctors had said, avowing that he could not“make much out of it.”

In the afternoon, when we were out-of-doors on the lawn in the hot sunshine, listening to the birds singing and the cuckoocalling, Featherston came in, the local doctor, who saw John nearly every day. He was a tall, grey, hard-worked man, with a face of care. After talking a few moments with John and his mother, he turned to the rest of us on the grass. The Squire and Sir John were sitting on a garden bench, some wine and lemonade on a little table between them. Featherston shook hands.

“Will you take some?” asked Sir John.

“I don’t mind a glass of lemonade with a dash of sherry in it,” answered Featherston, lifting his hat to rub his brow. “I have been walking beyond Goose Brook and back, and upon my word it is as hot as midsummer.”

“Ay, it is,” assented Sir John. “Help yourself, doctor.”

He filled a tumbler with what he wanted, brought it over to the opposite bench, and sat down by Mrs. Todhetley. John and his mother were at the other end of it; I sat on the arm. The rest of them, with Helen and Anna, had gone strolling away; to the North Pole, for all we knew.

“John still says he shall go back to school,” began Lady Whitney, to Featherston.

“Ay; to-morrow’s the day, isn’t it, John? Black Thursday, some of you boys call it.”

“I like school,” said John.

“Almost a pity, though,” continued Featherston, looking up and about him. “To be out at will all day in this soft air, under the blue skies and the sunbeams, might be of more benefit to you, Master John, than being cooped up in a close school-room.”

“You hear, John!” cried Lady Whitney. “I wish you would persuade him to take a longer rest at home, Mr. Featherston!”

Mr. Featherston stooped for his tumbler, which he had lodged on the smooth grass, and took another drink before replying.“If you and John would follow my advice, Lady Whitney, I’d give it.”

“Yes?” cried she, all eagerness.

“Take John somewhere for a fortnight, and let him go back to school at the end,” said the surgeon. “That would do him good.”

“Why, of course it would,” called out Sir John, who had been listening. “And I say it shall be done. John, my boy, you and your mother shall go to the seaside—to Aberystwith.”

“Well, I don’t think I should quite say that, Sir John,” said Featherston again. “The seaside would be all very well in this warm weather; but it may not last, it may change to cold and frost. I should suggest one of the inland watering-places, as they are called: where there’s a Spa, and a Pump Room, and a Parade, and lots of gay company. It would be lively for him, and a thorough change.”

“What a nice idea!” cried Lady Whitney, who was the most unsophisticated woman in the world. “Such as Pumpwater.”

“Such as Pumpwater: the very place,” agreed Featherston.“Well, were I you, my lady, I would try it for a couple of weeks. Let John take a companion with him; one of his schoolfellows. Here’s Johnny Ludlow: he might do.”

“I’d rather have Johnny Ludlow than any one,” said John.

Remarking that his time was up, for a patient waited for him, and that he must leave us to settle the question, Featherston took his departure. But it appeared to be settled already.

“Johnny can go,” spoke up the Squire. “The loss of a fortnight’s lessons is not much, compared with doing a little service to a friend. Charming spots are those inland watering-places, and Pumpwater is about the best of them all.”

“We must take lodgings,” said Lady Whitney presently, when they had done expatiating upon the gauds and glories of Pumpwater. “To stay at an hotel would be so noisy; and expensive besides.”

“I know of some,” cried Mrs. Todhetley, in sudden thought.“If you could get into Miss Gay’s rooms, you would be well off. Do you remember them?”—turning to the Squire. “We stayed at her house on our way from——”

“Why, bless me, to be sure I do,” he interrupted. “Somebody had given us Miss Gay’s address, and we drove straight to it to see if she had rooms at liberty; she had, and took us in at once. We were so comfortable there that we stayed at Pumpwater three days instead of two.”

It was hastily decided that Mrs. Todhetley should write to Miss Gay, and she went indoors to do so. All being well, Lady Whitney meant to start on Saturday.

Miss Gay’s answer came punctually, reaching Whitney Hall on Friday morning. It was addressed to Mrs. Todhetley, but Lady Whitney, as had been arranged, opened it. Miss Gay wrote that she should be much pleased to receive Lady Whitney. Her house, as it chanced, was then quite empty; a family, who had been with her six weeks, had just left: so Lady Whitney might take her choice of the rooms, which she would keep vacant until Saturday. In conclusion, she begged Mrs. Todhetley to notice that her address was changed. The old house was too small to accommodate the many kind friends who patronized her, and she had moved into a larger house, superior to the other and in the best position.

Thus all things seemed to move smoothly for our expedition; and we departed by train on the Saturday morning for Pumpwater.

It was a handsome house, standing in the high-road, between the parade and the principal street, and rather different from the houses on each side of it, inasmuch as that it was detached and had a narrow slip of gravelled ground in front. In fact, it looked too large and handsome for a lodging-house; and Lady Whitney, regarding it from the fly which had brought us from the station, wondered whether the driver had made a mistake. It was built of red-brick, with white stone facings; the door, set in a pillared portico, stood in the middle, and three rooms, each with a bay-window, lay one above another on both sides.

But in a moment we saw it was all right. A slight, fair woman, in a slate silk gown, came out and announced herself as Miss Gay. She had a mild, pleasant voice, and a mild, pleasant face, with light falling curls, the fashion then for every one, and she wore a lace cap, trimmed with pink. I took to her and to her face at once.

“I am glad to be here,” said Lady Whitney, cordially, in answer to Miss Gay’s welcome. “Is there any one who can help with the luggage? We have not brought either man or maid-servant.”

“Oh dear, yes, my lady. Please let me show you indoors, and then leave all to me. Susannah! Oh, here you are, Susannah! Where’s Charity?—my cousin and chief help-mate, my lady.”

A tall, dark person, about Miss Gay’s own age, which might be forty, wearing brown ribbon in her hair and a purple bow at her throat, dropped a curtsy to Lady Whitney. This was Susannah. She looked strong-minded and capable. Charity, who came running up the kitchen-stairs, was a smiling youngwoman-servant, with a coarse apron tied round her, and red arms bared to the elbow.

There were four sitting-rooms on the ground-floor: two in front, with their large bay-windows; two at the back, looking out upon some bright, semi-public gardens.

“A delightful house!” exclaimed Lady Whitney to Miss Gay, after she had looked about a little. “I will take one of these front-rooms for our sitting-room,” she added, entering, haphazard, the one on the right of the entrance-hall, and putting down her bag and parasol. “This one, I think, Miss Gay.”

“Very good, my lady. And will you now be pleased to walk upstairs and fix upon the bedrooms.”

Lady Whitney seemed to fancy the front of the house. “This room shall be my son’s; and I should like to have the opposite one for myself,” she said, rather hesitatingly, knowing they must be the two best chambers of all. “Can I?”

Miss Gay seemed quite willing. We were in the room over our sitting-room on the right of the house looking to the front. The objection, if it could be called one, came from Susannah.

“You can have the other room, certainly, my lady; but I think the young gentleman would find this one noisy, with all the carriages and carts that pass by, night and morning. The back-rooms are much more quiet.”

“But I like noise,” put in John; “it seems like company to me. If I could do as I would, I’d never sleep in the country.”

“One of the back-rooms is very lively, sir; it has a view of the turning to the Pump Room,” persisted Susannah, a sort of suppressed eagerness in her tone; and it struck me that she did not want John to have this front-chamber. “I think you would like it best.”

“No,” said John, turning round from the window, out of which he had been looking, “I will have this. I shall like to watch the shops down that turning opposite, and the people who go into them.”

No more was said. John took this chamber, which was over our sitting-room, Lady Whitney had the other front-chamber, and I had a very good one at the back of John’s. And thus we settled down.

Pumpwater is a nice place, as you would know if I gave its proper name, bright and gay, and our house was in the best ofsituations. The principal street, with its handsome shops, lay to our right; the Parade, leading to the Spa and Pump Room, to our left, and company and carriages were continually passing by. We visited some of the shops and took a look at the Pump Room.

In the evening, when tea was over, Miss Gay came in to speak of the breakfast. Lady Whitney asked her to sit down for a little chat. She wanted to ask about the churches.

“What a very nice house this is!” again observed Lady Whitney presently: for the more she saw of it, the better she found it. “You must pay a high rent for it, Miss Gay.”

“Not so high as your ladyship might think,” was the answer;“not high at all for what it is. I paid sixty pounds for the little house I used to be in, and I pay only seventy for this.”

“Only seventy!” echoed Lady Whitney, in surprise. “How is it you get it so cheaply?”

A waggonette, full of people, was passing just then; Miss Gay seemed to want to watch it by before she answered. We were sitting in the dusk with the blinds up.

“For one thing, it had been standing empty for some time, and I suppose Mr. Bone, the agent, was glad to have my offer,”replied Miss Gay, who seemed to be as fond of talking as any one else is, once set on. “It had belonged to a good old family, my lady, but they got embarrassed and put it up for sale some six or seven years ago. A Mr. Calson bought it. He had come to Pumpwater about that time from foreign lands; and he and his wife settled down in the house. A puny, weakly little woman she was, who seemed to get weaklier instead of stronger, and in a year or two she died. After her death her husband grew ill; he went away for change of air, and died in London; and the house was left to a little nephew living over in Australia.”

“And has the house been vacant ever since?” asked John.

“No, sir. At first it was let furnished, then unfurnished. But it had been vacant some little time when I applied to Mr. Bone. I concluded he thought it better to let it at a low rent than for it to stand empty.”

“It must cost you incessant care and trouble, Miss Gay, to conduct a house like this—when you are full,” remarked Lady Whitney.

“It does,” she answered. “One’s work seems never done—andI cannot, at that, give satisfaction to all. Ah, my lady, what a difference there is in people!—you would never think it. Some are so kind and considerate to me, so anxious not to give trouble unduly, and so satisfied with all I do that it is a pleasure to serve them: while others make gratuitous work and trouble from morning till night, and treat me as if I were just a dog under their feet. Of course when we are full I have another servant in, two sometimes.”

“Even that must leave a great deal for yourself to do and see to.”

“The back is always fitted to the burden,” sighed Miss Gay.“My father was a farmer in this county, as his ancestors had been before him, farming his three hundred acres of land, and looked upon as a man of substance. My mother made the butter, saw to the poultry, and superintended her household generally: and we children helped her. Farmers’ daughters then did not spend their days in playing the piano and doing fancy work, or expect to be waited upon like ladies born.”

“They do now, though,” said Lady Whitney.

“So I was ready to turn my hand to anything when hard times came—not that I had thought I should have to do it,”continued Miss Gay. “But my father’s means dwindled down. Prosperity gave way to adversity. Crops failed; the stock died off; two of my brothers fell into trouble and it cost a mint of money to extricate them. Altogether, when father died, but little of his savings remained to us. Mother took a house in the town here, to let lodgings, and I came with her. She is dead, my lady, and I am left.”

The silent tears were running down poor Miss Gay’s cheeks.

“It is a life of struggle, I am sure,” spoke Lady Whitney, gently. “And not deserved, Miss Gay.”

“But there’s another life to come,” spoke John, in a half-whisper, turning to Miss Gay from the large bay-window.“None of us will be overworked there.”

Miss Gay stealthily wiped her cheeks. “I do not repine,”she said, humbly. “I have been enabled to rub on and keep my head above water, and to provide little comforts for mother in her need; and I gratefully thank God for it.”

The bells of the churches, ringing out at eight o’clock, called us up in the morning. Lady Whitney was downstairs, first. Inext. Susannah, who waited upon us, had brought up the breakfast. John followed me in.

“I hope you have slept well, my boy,” said Lady Whitney, kissing him. “I have.”

“So have I,” I put in.

“Then you and the mother make up for me, Johnny,” he said; “for I have not slept at all.”

“Oh, John!” exclaimed his mother.

“Not a wink all night long,” added John. “I can’t think what was the matter with me.”

Susannah, then stooping to take the sugar-basin out of the side-board, rose, turned sharply round and fixed her eyes on John. So curious an expression was on her face that I could but notice it.

“Do you not think it was the noise, sir?” she said to him.“I knew that room would be too noisy for you.”

“Why, the room was as quiet as possible,” he answered. “A few carriages rolled by last night—and I liked to hear them; but that was all over before midnight; and I have heard none this morning.”

“Well, sir, I’m sure you would be more comfortable in a backroom,”contended Susannah.

“It was a strange bed,” said John. “I shall sleep all the sounder to-night.”

Breakfast was half over when John found he had left his watch upstairs, on the drawers. I went to fetch it.

The door was open, and I stepped to the drawers, which stood just inside. Miss Gay and Susannah were making the bed and talking, too busy to see or hear me. A lot of things lay on the white cloth, and at first I could not see the watch.

“He declares he has not slept at all; not at all,” Susannah was saying with emphasis. “If you had only seconded me yesterday, Harriet, they need not have had this room. But you never made a word of objection; you gave in at once.”

“Well, I saw no reason to make it,” said Miss Gay, mildly.“If I were to give in to your fancies, Susannah, I might as well shut up the room. Visitors must get used to it.”

The watch had been partly hidden under one of John’s neckties. I caught it up and decamped.

We went to church after breakfast. The first hymn sung was that one beginning, “Brief life.”

“Brief life is here our portion;

Brief sorrow, short-lived care.

The life that knows no ending,

The tearless life, is there.”

As the verses went on, John touched my elbow: “Miss Gay,”he whispered; his eyelashes moist with the melody of the music. I have often thought since that we might have seen by these very moods of John—his thoughts bent upon heaven more than upon earth—that his life was swiftly passing.

There’s not much to tell of that Sunday. We dined in the middle of the day; John fell asleep after dinner; and in the evening we attended church again. And I think every one was ready for bed when bedtime came. I know I was.

Therefore it was all the more surprising when, the next morning, John said he had again not slept.

“What, not at all!” exclaimed his mother.

“No, not at all. As I went to bed, so I got up—sleepless.”

“I never heard of such a thing!” cried Lady Whitney.“Perhaps, John, you were too tired to sleep?”

“Something of that sort,” he answered. “I felt both tired and sleepy when I got into bed; particularly so. But I had no sleep: not a wink. I could not lie still, either; I was frightfully restless all night; just as I was the night before. I suppose it can’t be the bed?”

“Is the bed not comfortable?” asked his mother.

“It seems as comfortable a bed as can be when I first lie down in it. And then I grow restless and uneasy.”

“It must be the restlessness of extreme fatigue,” said Lady Whitney. “I fear the journey was rather too much for you my dear.”

“Oh, I shall be all right as soon as I can sleep, mamma.”

We had a surprise that morning. John and I were standing before a tart-shop, our eyes glued to the window, when a voice behind us called out, “Don’t they look nice, boys!” Turning round, there stood Henry Carden of Worcester, arm-in-arm with a little white-haired gentleman. Lady Whitney, in at the fishmonger’s next door, came out while he was shaking hands with us.

“Dear me!—is it you?” she cried to Mr. Carden.

“Ay,” said he in his pleasant manner, “here am I at Pumpwater! Come all this way to spend a couple of days with myold friend: Dr. Tambourine,” added the surgeon, introducing him to Lady Whitney. Any way, that was the name she understood him to say. John thought he said Tamarind, and I Carrafin. The street was noisy.

The doctor seemed to be chatty and courteous, a gentleman of the old school. He said his wife should do herself the honour of calling upon Lady Whitney if agreeable; Lady Whitney replied that it would be. He and Mr. Carden, who would be starting for Worcester by train that afternoon, walked with us up the Parade to the Pump Room. How a chance meeting like this in a strange place makes one feel at home in it!

The name turned out to be Parafin. Mrs. Parafin called early in the afternoon, on her way to some entertainment at the Pump Room: a chatty, pleasant woman, younger than her husband. He had retired from practice, and they lived in a white villa outside the town.

And what with looking at the shops, and parading up and down the public walks, and the entertainment at the Pump Room, to which we went with Mrs. Parafin, and all the rest of it, we felt uncommonly sleepy when night came, and were beginning to regard Pumpwater as a sort of Eden.

“Johnny, have you slept?”

I was brushing my hair at the glass, under the morning sun, when John Whitney, half-dressed, and pale and languid, opened my door and thus accosted me.

“Yes; like a top. Why? Is anything the matter, John?”

“See here,” said he, sinking into the easy-chair by the fireplace,“it is an odd thing, but I have again not slept. I can’tsleep.”

I put my back against the dressing-table and stood looking down at him, brush in hand. Not slept again! It was an odd thing.

“But what can be the reason, John?”

“I am beginning to think it must be the room.”

“How can it be the room?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing the matter with the room that I can see; it seems well-ventilated; the chimney’s not stopped up. Yet this is the third night that I cannot get to sleep in it.”

“But why can you not get to sleep?” I persisted.

“I say I don’t know why. Each night I have been as sleepy as possible; last night I could hardly undress I was so sleepy; but no sooner am I in bed than sleep goes right away from me. Not only that: I grow terribly restless.”

Weighing the problem this way and that, an idea struck me.

“John, do you think it is nervousness?”

“How can it be? I never was nervous in my life.”

“I mean this: not sleeping the first night, you may have got nervous about it the second and third.”

He shook his head. “I have been nothing of the kind, Johnny. But look here: I hardly see what I am to do. I cannot go on like this without sleep; yet, if I tell the mother again, she’ll say the air of the place does not suit me and run away from it——”

“Suppose we change rooms to-night, John?” I interrupted.“I can’t think but you would sleep here. If you do not, why, it must be the air of Pumpwater, and the sooner you are out of it the better.”

“You wouldn’t mind changing rooms for one night?” he said, wistfully.

“Mind! Why, I shall be the gainer. Yours is the better room of the two.”

At that it was settled; nothing to be said to any one about the bargain. We did not want to be kidnapped out of Pumpwater—and Lady Whitney had promised us a night at the theatre.

Two or three more acquaintances were made, or found out, that day. Old Lady Scott heard of us, and came to call on Lady Whitney; they used to be intimate. She introduced some people at the Pump Room. Altogether, it seemed that we should not lack society.

Night came; and John and I went upstairs together. He undressed in his own room, and I in mine; and then we made the exchange. I saw him into my bed and wished him a good-night.

“Good-night, Johnny,” he answered. “I hope you will sleep.”

“Little doubt of that, John. I always sleep when I have nothing to trouble me. A very good-night to you.”

I had nothing to trouble me, and I was as sleepy as could be; and yet, I did not and could not sleep. I lay quiet as usualafter getting into bed, yielding to the expected sleep, and I shut my eyes and never thought but it was coming.

Instead of that, came restlessness. A strange restlessness quite foreign to me, persistent and unaccountable. I tossed and turned from side to side, and I had not had a wink of sleep at day dawn, nor any symptom of it. Was I growing nervous? Had I let the feeling creep over me that I had suggested to John? No; not that I was aware of. What could it be?

Unrefreshed and weary, I got up at the usual hour, and stole silently into the other room. John was in a deep sleep, his calm face lying still upon the pillow. Though I made no noise, my presence awoke him.

“Oh, Johnny!” he exclaimed, “I have had such a night.”

“Bad?”

“No; good. I went to sleep at once and never woke till now. It has done me a world of good. And you?”

“I? Oh well, I don’t think I slept quite as well as I did here; it was a strange bed,” I answered, carelessly.

The next night the same plan was carried out, he taking my bed; I his. And again John slept through it, while I did not sleep at all. I said nothing about it: John Whitney’s comfort was of more importance than mine.

The third night came. This night we had been to the theatre, and had laughed ourselves hoarse, and been altogether delighted. No sooner was I in bed, and feeling dead asleep, than the door slowly opened and in came Lady Whitney, a candle in one hand, a wineglass in the other.

“John, my dear,” she began, “your tonic was forgotten this evening. I think you had better take it now. Featherston said, you know—— Good gracious!” she broke off. “Why, it is Johnny!”

I could hardly speak for laughing, her face presented such a picture of astonishment. Sitting up in bed, I told her all; there was no help for it: that we had exchanged beds, John not having been able to sleep in this one.

“And do you sleep well in it?” she asked.

“No, not yet. But I feel very sleepy to-night, dear Lady Whitney.”

“Well, you are a good lad, Johnny, to do this for him; and to say nothing about it,” she concluded, as she went away with the candle and the tonic.

Dead sleepy though I was, I could not get to sleep. It would be simply useless to try to describe my sensations. Each succeeding night they had been more marked. A strange, discomforting restlessness pervaded me; a feeling of uneasiness, I could not tell why or wherefore. I saw nothing uncanny, I heard nothing; nevertheless, I felt just as though some uncanny presence was in the room, imparting a sense of semi-terror. Once or twice, when I nearly dozed off from sheer weariness, I started up in real terror, wide awake again, my hair and face damp with a nameless fear.

I told this at breakfast, in answer to Lady Whitney’s questions: John confessed that precisely the same sensations had attacked him the three nights he lay in the bed. Lady Whitney declared she never heard the like; and she kept looking at us alternately, as if doubting what could be the matter with us, or whether we had taken scarlet-fever.

On this morning, Friday, a letter came from Sir John, saying that Featherston was coming to Pumpwater. Anxious on the score of his son, he was sending Featherston to see him, and take back a report. “I think he would stay a couple of days if you made it convenient to entertain him, and it would be a little holiday for the poor hard-worked man,” wrote Sir John, who was just as kind-hearted as his wife.

“To be sure I will,” said Lady Whitney. “He shall have that room; I dare say he won’t say he cannot sleep in it: it will be more comfortable for him than getting a bed at an hotel. Susannah shall put a small bed into the back-room for Johnny. And when Featherston is gone, I will take the room myself. I am not like you two silly boys—afraid of lying awake.”

Mr. Featherston arrived late that evening, with his grey face of care and his thin frame. He said he could hardly recall the time when he had had as much as two days’ holiday, and thanked Lady Whitney for receiving him. That night John and I occupied the back-room, having conducted Featherston in state to the front, with two candles; and both of us slept excellently well.

At breakfast Featherston began talking about the air. He had always believed Pumpwater to have a rather soporific air, but supposed he must be mistaken. Any way, it had kept him awake; and it was not a little that did that for him.

“Did you not sleep well?” asked Lady Whitney.

“I did not sleep at all; did not get a wink of it all night long. Never mind,” he added with a good-natured laugh, “I shall sleep all the sounder to-night.”

But he did not. The next morning (Sunday) he looked grave and tired, and ate his breakfast almost in silence. When we had finished, he said he should like, with Lady Whitney’s permission, to speak to the landlady. Miss Gay came in at once: in a light fresh print gown and black silk apron.

“Ma’am,” began Featherston, politely, “something is wrong with that bedroom overhead. What is it?”

“Something wrong, sir?” repeated Miss Gay, her meek face flushing. “Wrong in what way, sir?”

“I don’t know,” answered Featherston; “I thought perhaps you could tell me: any way, it ought to be seen to. It is something that scares away sleep. I give you my word, ma’am, I never had two such restless nights in succession in all my life. Two such strange nights. It was not only that sleep would not come near me; that’s nothing uncommon you may say; but I lay in a state of uneasy, indescribable restlessness. I have examined the room again this morning, and I can see nothing to induce it, yet a cause there must undoubtedly be. The paper is not made of arsenic, I suppose?”

“The paper is pale pink, sir,” observed Miss Gay. “I fancy it is the green papers that have arsenic in them.”

“Ay; well. I think there must be poison behind the paper; in the paste, say,” went on Featherston. “Or perhaps another paper underneath has arsenic in it?”

Miss Gay shook her head, as she stood with her hand on the back of a chair. Lady Whitney had asked her to sit down, but she declined. “When I came into the house six months ago, that room was re-papered, and I saw that the walls were thoroughly scraped. If you think there’s anything—anything in the room that prevents people sleeping, and—and could point out what it is, I’m sure, sir, I should be glad to remedy it,” said Miss Gay, with uncomfortable hesitation.

But this was just what Featherston, for all he was a doctor, could not point out. That something was amiss with the room, he felt convinced, but he had not discovered what it was, or how it could be remedied.

“After lying in torment half the night, I got up and lighted my candle,” said he. “I examined the room and opened thewindow to let the cool breeze blow in. I could find nothing likely to keep me awake, no stuffed-up chimney, no accumulation of dust, and I shut the window and got into bed again. I was pretty cool by that time and reckoned I should sleep. Not a bit of it, ma’am. I lay more restless than ever, with the same unaccountable feeling of discomfort and depression upon me. Just as I had felt the night before.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” sighed Miss Gay, taking her hand from the chair to depart. “If the room is close, or anything of that——”

“But it is not close, ma’am. I don’t know what it is. And I’m sure I hope you will be able to find it out, and get it remedied,” concluded Featherston as she withdrew.

We then told him of our experience, John’s and mine. It amazed him. “What an extraordinary thing!” he exclaimed.“One would think the room was haunted.”

“Do you believe in haunted rooms, sir?” asked John.

“Well, I suppose such things are,” he answered. “Folks say so. If haunted houses exist, why not haunted rooms?”

“It must lie in the Pumpwater air,” said Lady Whitney, who was too practical to give in to haunted regions, “and I am very sorry you should have had your two nights’ rest spoilt by it, Mr. Featherston. I will take the room myself: nothing keeps me awake.”

“Did you ever see a ghost, sir?” asked John.

“No, never. But I know those who have seen them; and I cannot disbelieve what they say. One such story in particular is often in my mind; it was a very strange one.”

“Won’t you tell it us, Mr. Featherston?”

The doctor only laughed in answer. But after we came out of church, when he was sitting with me and John on the Parade, he told it. And I only wish I had space to relate it here.

He left Pumpwater in the afternoon, and Lady Whitney had the room prepared for her use at once, John moving into hers. So that I had mine to myself again, and the little bed was taken out of it.

The next day was Monday. When Lady Whitney came down in the morning the first thing she told us was, that she had not slept. All the curious symptoms of restless disturbance, of inward agitation, which we had experienced, had visited her.

“I will not give in, my dears,” she said, bravely. “It may be, you know, that what I had heard against the room took all sleep out of me, though I was not conscious of it; so I shall keep to it. I must say it is a most comfortable bed.”

She “kept” to the room until the Wednesday; three nights in all; getting no sleep. Then she gave in. Occasionally during the third night, when she was dropping asleep from exhaustion, she was startled up from it in sudden terror: terror of she knew not what. Just as it had been with me and with John. On the Wednesday morning she told Susannah that they must give her the back-room opposite mine, and we would abandon that front-room altogether.

“It is just as though there were a ghost in the room,” she said to Susannah.

“Perhaps there is, my lady,” was Susannah’s cool reply.

On the Friday evening Dr. and Mrs. Parafin came in to tea. Our visit would end on the morrow. The old doctor held John before him in the lamplight, and decided that he looked better—that the stay had done him good.

“I am sure it has,” assented Lady Whitney. “Just at first I feared he was going backward: but that must have been owing to the sleepless nights.”

“Sleepless nights!” echoed the doctor, in a curious tone.

“For the first three nights of our stay here, he never slept;never slept at all. After that——”

“Which room did he occupy?” interrupted the doctor, breathlessly.“Not the one over this?”

“Yes, it was. Why? Do you know anything against it?”questioned Lady Whitney, for she saw Dr. and Mrs. Parafin exchange glances.

“Only this: that I have heard of other people who were unable to sleep in that room,” he answered.

“But what can be amiss with the room, Dr. Parafin?”

“Ah,” said he, “there you go beyond me. It is, I believe, a fact, a singular fact, that there is something or other in the room which prevents people from sleeping. Friends of ours who lived in the house before Miss Gay took it, ended by shutting the room up.”

“Is it haunted, sir?” I asked. “Mr. Featherston thought it might be.”

He looked at me and smiled, shaking his head. Mrs. Parafin nodded hers, as much as to say It is.

“No one has been able to get any sleep in that room since the Calsons lived here,” said Mrs. Parafin, dropping her voice.

“How very strange!” cried Lady Whitney. “One might think murder had been done in it.”

Mrs. Parafin coughed significantly. “The wife died in it,”she said. “Some people thought her husband had—had—had at least hastened her death——”

“Hush, Matty!” interposed the doctor, warningly. “It was all rumour, all talk. Nothing was proved—or attempted to be.”

“Perhaps there existed no proof,” returned Mrs. Parafin.“And if there had—who was there to take it up? She was in her grave, poor woman, and he was left flourishing, master of himself and every one about him. Any way, Thomas, be that as it may, you cannot deny that the room has been like a haunted room since.”

Dr. Parafin laughed lightly, objecting to be serious; men are more cautious than women. “I cannot deny that people find themselves unable to sleep in the room; I never heard that it was ‘haunted’ in any other way,” he added, to Lady Whitney.“But there—let us change the subject; we can neither alter the fact nor understand it.”

After they left us, Lady Whitney said she should like to ask Miss Gay what her experience of the room had been. But Miss Gay had stepped out to a neighbour’s, and Susannah stayed to talk in her place. She could tell us more about it, she said, than Miss Gay.

“I warned my cousin she would do well not to take this house,” began Susannah, accepting the chair to which Lady Whitney pointed. “But it is a beautiful house for letting, as you see, my lady, and that and the low rent tempted her. Besides, she did not believe the rumour about the room; she does not believe it fully yet, though it is beginning to worry her: she thinks the inability to sleep must lie in the people themselves.”

“It has been an uncanny room since old Calson’s wife died in it, has it not, Susannah?” said John, as if in jest. “I suppose he did not murder her?”

“I think he did,” whispered Susannah.

The answer sounded so ghostly that it struck us all into silence.

Susannah resumed. “Nobody knew: but one or two suspected. The wife was a poor, timid, gentle creature, worshipping the very ground her husband trod on, yet always in awe of him. She lay in the room, sick, for many many months before she died. Old Sarah——”

“What was her illness?” interrupted Lady Whitney.

“My lady, that is more than I can tell you, more, I fancy, than any one could have told. Old Sarah would often say to me that she did not believe there was any great sickness, only he made it out there was, and persuaded his wife so. He could just wind her round his little finger. The person who attended on her was one Astrea, quite a heathenish name I used to think, and a heathenish woman too; she was copper-coloured, and came with them from abroad. Sarah was in the kitchen, and there was only a man besides. I lived housekeeper at that time with an old lady on the Parade, and I looked in here from time to time to ask after the mistress. Once I was invited by Mr. Calson upstairs to see her, she lay in the room over this; the one that nobody can now sleep in. She looked so pitiful!—her poor, pale, patient face down deep in the pillow. Was she better, I asked; and what was it that ailed her. She thought it was not much beside weakness, she answered, and that she felt a constant nausea; and she was waiting for the warm weather: her dear husband assured her she would be better when that came.”

“Was he kind to her, Susannah?”

“He seemed to be, Master Johnny; very kind and attentive indeed. He would sit by the hour together in her room, and give her her medicine, and feed her when she grew too weak to feed herself, and sit up at night with her. A doctor came to see her occasionally; it was said he could not find much the matter with her but debility, and that she seemed to be wasting away. Well, she died, my lady; died quietly in that room; and Calson ordered a grand funeral.”

“So did Jonas Chuzzlewit,” breathed John.

“Whispers got afloat when she was under ground—not before—that there had been something wrong about her death, that she had not come by it fairly, or by the illness either,” continued Susannah. “But they were not spoken openly; under therose, as may be said; and they died away. Mr. Calson continued to live in the house as before; but he became soon ill. Real sickness, his was, my lady, whatever his wife’s might have been. His illness was chiefly on the nerves; he grew frightfully thin; and the setting-in of some grave inward complaint was suspected: so if he did act in any ill manner to his wife it seemed he would not reap long benefit from it. All the medical men in Pumpwater were called to him in succession; but they could not cure him. He kept growing thinner and thinner till he was like a walking shadow. At last he shut up his house and went to London for advice; and there he died, fourteen months after the death of his wife.”

“How long was the house kept shut up?” asked Lady Whitney, as Susannah paused.

“About two years, my lady. All his property was willed away to the little son of his brother, who lived over in Australia. Tardy instructions came from thence to Mr. Jermy the lawyer to let the house furnished, and Mr. Jermy put it into the hands of Bone the house-agent. A family took it, but they did not stay: then another family took it, and they did not stay. Each party went to Bone and told him that something was the matter with one of the rooms and nobody could sleep in it. After that, the furniture was sold off, and some people took the house by the year. They did not remain in it six months. Some other people took it then, and they stayed the year, but it was known that they shut up that room. Then the house stayed empty. My cousin, wanting a better house than the one she was in, cast many a longing eye towards it; finding it did not let, she went to Bone and asked him what the rent would be. Seventy pounds to her, he said; and she took it. Of course she had heard about the room, but she did not believe it; she thought, as Mr. Featherston said the other morning, that something must be wrong with the paper, and she had the walls scraped and cleaned and a fresh paper put on.”

“And since then—have your lodgers found anything amiss with the room?” questioned Lady Whitney.

“I am bound to say they have, my lady. It has been the same story with them all—not able to get to sleep in it. One gentleman, an old post-captain, after trying it a few nights, went right away from Pumpwater, swearing at the air. But the most singular experience we have had was that of two little girls.They were kept in that room for two nights, and each night they cried and screamed all night long, calling out that they were frightened. Their mother could not account for it; they were not at all timid children, she said, and such a thing had never happened with them before. Altogether, taking one thing with another, I fear, my lady, that something is wrong with the room. Miss Gay sees it now: but she is not superstitious, and she askswhat it can be.”

Well, that was Susannah’s tale: and we carried it away with us on the morrow.

Sir John Whitney found his son looking all the better for his visit to Pumpwater. Temporarily he was so. Temporarily only; not materially: for John died before the year was out.

Have I heard anything of the room since, you would like to ask. Yes, a little. Some eighteen months later, I was halting at Pumpwater for a few hours with the Squire, and ran to the house to see Miss Gay. But the house was empty. A black board stood in front with big white letters on it TO BE LET. Miss Gay had moved into another house facing the Parade.

“It was of no use my trying to stay in it,” she said to me, shaking her head. “I moved into the room myself, Master Johnny, after you and my Lady Whitney left, and I am free to confess that I could not sleep. I had Susannah in, and she could not sleep; and, in short, we had to go out of it again. So I shut the room up, sir, until the year had expired, and then I gave up the house. It has not been let since, and people say it is falling into decay.”

“Was anything ever seen in the room, Miss Gay?”

“Nothing,” she answered, “or heard either; nothing whatever. The room is as nice a room as could be wished for in all respects, light, large, cheerful, and airy; and yet nobody can get to sleep in it. I shall never understand it, sir.”

I’m sure I never shall. It remains one of those curious experiences that cannot be solved in this world. But it is none the less true.

ROGER BEVERE.

I

“There’s trouble everywhere. It attaches itself more or less to all people as they journey through life. Yes, I quite agree with what you say, Squire: that I, a man at my ease in the world and possessing no close ties of my own, ought to be tolerably exempt from care. But I am not so. You have heard of the skeleton in the closet, Johnny Ludlow. Few families are without one. I have mine.”

Mr. Brandon nodded to me, as he spoke, over the silver coffee-pot. I had gone to the Tavistock Hotel from Miss Deveen’s to breakfast with him and the Squire—who had come up for a week. You have heard of this visit of ours to London before, and there’s no need to say more about it here.

The present skeleton in Mr. Brandon’s family closet was his nephew, Roger Bevere. The young fellow, now aged twenty-three, had been for some years in London pursuing his medical studies, and giving perpetual trouble to his people in the country. During this present visit Mr. Brandon had been unable to hear of him. Searching here, inquiring there, nothing came of it: Roger seemed to have vanished into air. This morning the post had brought Mr. Brandon a brief note:

“SIR,

“Roger Bevery is lying at No. 60, Gibraltar Terrace (Islington District), with a broken arm.

“Faithfully yours,

“T. PITT.”

The name was spelt Bevery in the note, you observe. Strangers, deceived by the pronunciation, were apt to write it so.

“Well, this is nice news!” had been Mr. Brandon’s comment upon the short note.

“Any way, you will be more at your ease now you have found him,” remarked the Squire.

“I don’t know that, Todhetley. I have found, it seems, the address of the place where he is lying, but I have not found him. Roger has been going to the bad this many a day; I expect by this time he must be nearing the journey’s end.”

“It is only a broken arm that he has, sir,” I put in, thinking what a gloomy view he was taking of it all. “That is soon cured.”

“Don’t you speak so confidently, Johnny Ludlow,” reproved Mr. Brandon. “We shall find more the matter with Roger than a broken arm; take my word for that. He has been on the wrong tack this long while. A broken arm would not cause him to hide himself—and that’s what he must have been doing.”

“Some of those hospital students are a wild lot—as I have heard,” said the Squire.

Mr. Brandon nodded in answer. “When Roger came from Hampshire to enter on his studies at St. Bartholomew’s, he was as pure-hearted, well-intentioned a young fellow as had ever been trained by an anxious mother”—and Mr. Brandon poured a drop more weak tea out of his own tea-pot to cover his emotion.“Fit for heaven, one might have thought: any way, had been put in the road that leads to it. Loose, reckless companions got hold of him, and dragged him down to their evil ways.”

Breakfast over, little time was lost in starting to find out Gibraltar Terrace. The cab soon took us to it. Roger had been lying there more than a week. Hastening up that way one evening, on leaving the hospital, to call upon a fellow-student, he was knocked down by a fleet hansom rounding the corner of Gibraltar Terrace. Pitt the doctor happened to be passing at the time, and had him carried into the nearest house: one he had attended patients in before. The landlady, Mrs. Mapping, showed us upstairs.

(And she, poor faded woman, turned out to have been known to the Squire in the days long gone by, when she was pretty little Dorothy Grape. But I have told her story already, and there’s no need to allude to it again.)

Roger lay in bed, in a small back-room on the first-floor; a mild, fair, pleasant-looking young man with a white bandage round his head. Mr. Pitt explained that the arm was not absolutely broken, but so much contused and inflamed as to bea worse hurt. This would not have kept him in bed, however, but the head had also been damaged, and fever set in.

“So this is where he has lain, hiding, while I have been ransacking London for him!” remarked Mr. Brandon, who was greatly put out by the whole affair; and perhaps the word“hiding” might have more truth in it than even he suspected.

“When young Scott called last night—a fellow-student of your nephew’s who comes to see him and bring him changes of clothes from his lodgings—he said you were making inquiries at the hospital and had left your address,” explained Pitt. “So I thought I ought to write to you, sir.”

“And I am much obliged to you for doing it, and for your care of him also,” said Mr. Brandon.

And presently, when Pitt was leaving, he followed him downstairs to Mrs. Mapping’s parlour, to ask whether Roger was in danger.

“I do not apprehend any, now that the fever is subsiding,”answered Pitt. “I can say almost surely that none will arise if we can only keep him quiet. That has been the difficulty throughout—his restlessness. It is just as though he had something on his mind.”

“What should he have on his mind?” retorted Mr. Brandon, in contention. “Except his sins. And I expect they don’t trouble him much.”

Pitt laughed a little. “Well, sir, he is not in any danger at present. But if the fever were to come back again—and increase—why, I can’t foresee what the result might be.”

“Then I shall send for Lady Bevere.”

Pitt opened his eyes. “Lady Bevere!” he repeated. “Who is she?”

“Lady Bevere, sir, is Roger’s mother and my sister. I shall write to-day.”

Mr. Brandon had an appointment with his lawyers that morning and went out with the Squire to keep it, leaving me with the patient. “And take care you don’t let him talk, Johnny,”was his parting injunction to me. “Keep him perfectly quiet.”

That was all very well, and I did my best to obey orders; but Roger would not be kept quiet. He was for ever sighing and starting, now turning to this side, now to that, and throwing his undamaged arm up like a ball at play.

“Is it pain that makes you so restless?” I asked.

“Pain, no,” he groaned. “It’s the bother. The pain is nothing now to what it was.”

“Bother of what?”

“Oh—altogether. I say, what on earth brought Uncle John to London just now?”

“A matter connected with my property. He is my guardian and trustee, you know.” To which answer Bevere only groaned again.

After taking a great jorum of beef-tea, which Mrs. Mapping brought up at mid-day, he was lying still and tranquil, when there came a loud knock at the street-door. Steps clattered up the stairs, and a tall, dark-haired young man put his head into the room.

“Bevere, old fellow, how are you? We’ve been so sorry to hear of your mishap!”

There was nothing alarming in the words and they were spoken gently; or in the visitor either, for he was good-looking; but in a moment Bevere was sitting bolt upright in bed, gazing out in fright as though he saw an apparition.

“What the deuce has brought you here, Lightfoot?” he cried, angrily.

“Came to see how you were getting on, friend,” was the light and soothing answer, as the stranger drew near the bed.“Head and arm damaged, I hear.”

“Who told you where to find me?”

“Scott. At least, he——”

“Scott’s a false knave then! He promised me faithfully not to tell a soul.” And Bevere’s inflamed face and passionate voice presented a contrast to his usual mild countenance and gentle tones.

“There’s no need to excite yourself,” said the tall young man, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking the patient’s hand. “Dick Scott let fall a word unawares—that Pitt was attending you. So I came up to Pitt’s just now and got the address out of his surgery-boy.”

“Who else heard the chance word?”

“No one else. And I’m sure you know that you may trust me. I wanted to ask if I could do anything for you. How frightened you look, old fellow!”

Bevere lay down again, painfully uneasy yet, as was plain to be seen.

“I didn’t want any one to find me out here,” he said. “If some—some people came, there might be the dickens to pay. And Uncle John is up now, worse luck! He does not understand London ways, and he is the strictest old guy that ever wore silver shoe-buckles—you should see him on state occasions. Ask Johnny Ludlow there whether he is strait-laced or not; he knows. Johnny, this is Charley Lightfoot: one of us at Bart’s.”

Charley turned to shake hands, saying he had heard of me. He then set himself to soothe Bevere, assuring him he would not tell any one where he was lying, or that he had been to see him.

“Don’t mind my temper, old friend,” whispered Bevere, repentantly, his blue eyes going out to the other’s in sad yearning.“I am a bit tried—as you’d admit, if all were known.”

Lightfoot departed. By-and-by the Squire and Mr. Brandon returned, and Mrs. Mapping gave us some lunch in her parlour. When the Squire was ready to leave, I ran up to say good-bye to Roger. He gazed at me questioningly, eyes and cheeks glistening with fever. “Is it true?” he whispered.

“Is what true?”

“That Uncle John has written for my mother?”

“Oh yes, that’s true.”

“Good Heavens!” murmured Bevere.

“Would you not like to see her?”

“It’s not that. She’s the best mother living. It is—for fear—I didn’t want to be found out lying here,” he broke off, “and it seems that all the world is coming. If it gets to certain ears, I’m done for.”

Scarlet and more scarlet grew his cheeks. His pulse must have been running up to about a hundred-and-fifty.

“As sure as you are alive, Roger, you’ll bring the fever on again!”

“So much the better. I do—save for what I might say in my ravings,” he retorted. “So much the better if it carries me off! There’d be an end to it all, then.”

“One might think you had a desperate secret on your conscience,”I said to him in my surprise. “Had set a house on fire, or something as good.”

“And I have a secret; and it’s something far more dreadful than setting a house on fire,” he avowed, recklessly, in his distress. “And if it should get to the knowledge of UncleJohn and the mother—well, I tell you, Johnny Ludlow, I’d rather die than face the shame.”

Was he raving now?—as he had been on the verge of it, in the fever, a day or two ago. No, not by the wildest stretch of the fancy could I think so. That he had fallen into some desperate trouble which must be kept secret, if it could be, was all too evident. I thought of fifty things as I went home and could not fix on one of them as likely. Had he robbed the hospital till?—or forged a cheque upon its house-surgeon? The Squire wanted to know why I was so silent.

When I next went to Gibraltar Terrace Lady Bevere was there. Such a nice little woman! Her face was mild, like Roger’s, her eyes were blue and kind as his, her tones as genial. As Mary Brandon she had been very pretty, and she was pleasing still.

She had married a lieutenant in the navy, Edmund Bevere. Her people did not like it: navy lieutenants were so poor, they said. He got on better, however, than the Brandons had thought for; got up to be rear-admiral and to be knighted. Then he died; and Lady Bevere was left with a lot of children and not much to bring them up on. I expect it was her brother, Mr. Brandon, who helped to start them all in life. She lived in Hampshire, somewhere near Southsea.

In a day or two, when Roger was better and sat up in blankets in an easy-chair, Mr. Brandon and the Squire began about his shortcomings—deeming him well enough now to be tackled. Mr. Brandon demanded where his lodgings were, for their locality seemed to be a mystery; evidently with a view of calling and putting a few personal questions to the landlady; and Roger had to confess that he had had no particular lodgings lately; he had shared Dick Scott’s. This took Mr. Brandon aback. No lodgings of his own!—sharing young Scott’s! What was the meaning of it? What did he do with all the money allowed him, if he could not pay for rooms of his own? And to the stern questioning Roger only answered that he and Scott liked to be together. Pitt laughed a little to me when he heard of this, saying Bevere was too clever for the old mentors.

“Why! don’t you believe he does live with Scott?” I asked.

“Oh, he may do that; it’s likely enough,” said Pitt. “But medical students, running their fast career in London, are queersubjects, let me tell you, Johnny Ludlow; they don’t care to have their private affairs supervised.”

“All of them are not queer—as you call it, Pitt.”

“No, indeed,” he answered, warmly: “or I don’t know what would become of the profession. Many of them are worthy, earnest fellows always, steady as old time. Others pull up when they have had their fling, and make good men: and a few go to the bad altogether.”

“In which class do you put Roger Bevere?”

Pitt took a minute to answer. “In the second, I hope,” he said. “To speak the truth, Bevere somewhat puzzles me. He seems well-intentioned, anxious, and can’t have gone so far but he might pull-up if he could. But——”

“If he could! How do you mean?”

“He has got, I take it, into the toils of a fast, bad set; and he finds their habits too strong to break through. Any way without great difficulty.”

“Do you think he—drinks?” I questioned, reluctantly.

“No mistake about that,” said Pitt. “Not so sharply as some of them do, but more than is good for him.”

I’m sure if Roger’s pulling-up depended upon his mother, it would have been done. She was so gentle and loving with him; never finding fault, or speaking a harsh word. Night and morning she sat by the bed, holding his hands in hers, and reading the Psalms to him—or a prayer—or a chapter in the Bible. I can see her now, in her soft black gown and simple little white lace cap, under which her hair was smoothly braided.

Whatever doubts some of us might be entertaining of Roger, nothing unpleasant in regard to him transpired. Dreaded enemies did not find him out, or come to besiege the house; though he never quite lost his undercurrent of uneasiness. He soon began to mend rapidly. Scott visited him every second or third day; he seemed to be fully in his confidence, and they had whisperings together. He was a good-natured, off-hand kind of young man, short and thick-set. I can’t say I much cared for him.

The Squire had left London. I remained on with Miss Deveen, and went down to Gibraltar Terrace most days. Lady Bevere was now going home and Mr. Brandon with her. Some trouble had arisen about the lease of her house in Hampshire,which threatened to end in a lawsuit, and she wanted him to see into it. They fixed upon some eligible lodgings for Roger near Russell Square, into which he would move when they left. He was sufficiently well now to go about; and would keep well, Pitt said, if he took care of himself. Lady Bevere held a confidential interview with the landlady, about taking care of her son Roger.

And she gave a last charge to Bevere himself, when taking leave of him the morning of her departure. The cab was at the door to convey her and Mr. Brandon to Waterloo Station, and I was there also, having gone betimes to Gibraltar Terrace to see the last of them.

“For my sake, my dear,” pleaded Lady Bevere, holding Roger to her, as the tears ran down her cheeks: “you will do your best to keep straight for my sake!”

“I will, I will, mother,” he whispered back in agitation, his own eyes wet; “I will keep as straight as I can.” But in his voice there lay, to my ear, a ring of hopeless despair. I don’t know whether she detected it.

She turned and took my hands. She and Mr. Brandon had already exacted a promise from me that once a-week at least, so long as I remained in London, I would write to each of them to give news of Roger’s welfare.

“You will be sure not to forget it, Johnny? I am very anxious about him—his health—and—and all,” she added in a lowered voice. “I am always fearing lest I did not do my duty by my boys. Not but that I ever tried to do it; but somehow I feel that perhaps I might have done it better. Altogether I am full of anxiety for Roger.”

“I will be sure to write to you regularly as long as I am near him, dear Lady Bevere.”

It was on a Tuesday morning that Lady Bevere and Mr. Brandon left London. In the afternoon Roger was installed in his new lodgings by Mr. Pitt, who had undertaken to see him into them. He had the parlour and the bed-chamber behind it. Very nice rooms they were, the locality and street open and airy; and the landlady, Mrs. Long, was a comfortable, motherly woman. Where his old lodgings had been situated, he had never said even to me: the Squire’s opinion was (communicated in confidence to Mr. Brandon), that he had played up “Old Gooseberry”in them, and was afraid to say.

I had meant to go to him on the Wednesday, to see that the bustle of removal had done him no harm; but Miss Deveen wanted me, so I could not. On the Thursday I got a letter from the Squire, telling me to do some business for him at Westminster. It took me the whole of the day: that is, the actual business took about a quarter-of-an-hour, and waiting to see the people (lawyers) took the rest. This brought it, you perceive, to Friday.

On that morning I mounted to the roof of a city omnibus, which set me down not far off the house. Passing the parlour-windows to knock at the door, I saw in one of them a card:“Apartments to let.” It was odd, I thought, they should put it in a room that was occupied.

“Can I see Mr. Bevere?” I asked of the servant.

“Mr. Bevere’s gone, sir.”

“Gone where? Not to the hospital?” For he was not to attempt to go there until the following week.

“He is gone for good, sir,” she answered. “He went away in a cab yesterday evening.”

Not knowing what to make of this strange news, hardly believing it, I went into the parlour and asked to see the landlady—who came at once. It was quite true: Bevere had left. Mrs. Long, who, though elderly, was plump and kindly, sat down to relate the particulars.

“Mr. Bevere went out yesterday morning, sir, after ordering his dinner—a roast fowl—for the same hour as the day before; two o’clock. It was past three, though, before he came in: and when the girl brought the dinner-tray down, she said Mr. Bevere wanted to speak to me. I came up, and then he told me he was unexpectedly obliged to leave—that he might have to go into the country that night; he didn’t yet know. Well, sir, I was a little put out: but what could I say? He paid me what was due and the rent up to the week’s end, and began to collect his things together: Sarah saw him cramming them into his new portmanteau when she brought his tea up. And at the close of the evening, between the lights, he had a cab called and went away in it.”

“Alone?”

“Quite alone, sir. On the Wednesday afternoon Dr. Pitt came to see him, and that same evening a young man called, who stayed some time; Scott, I think the name was; but nobody at all came yesterday.”

“And you do not know where Mr. Bevere is?—where he went to?”

“Why no, sir; he didn’t say. The cab might have taken him to one of the railway-stations, for all I can tell. I did not ask questions. Of course it is not pleasant for a lodger to leave you in that sudden manner, before he has well been three days in the house,” added Mrs. Long, feelingly, “especially with the neighbours staring out on all sides, and I might have asked him for another week’s rent in lieu of proper notice; but I couldn’t be hard with a well-mannered, pleasant young gentleman like Mr. Bevere—and with his connections, too. I’m sure when her ladyship came here to fix on the rooms, she was that kind and affable with me I shall never forget it—and talked to me so lovingly about him—and put half-a-crown into Sarah’s hand when she left! No, sir, I couldn’t be hard upon young Mr. Bevere.”

Mrs. Long had told all she knew, and I wished her good-day. Where to now? I deliberated, as I stood on the doorstep. This sudden flight looked as though Roger wanted to avoid people. If any one was in the secret of it, it would be Richard Scott, I thought; and I turned my steps to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

I suppose I interrupted Scott at some critical performance, for he came to me with his coat-cuffs turned up and no wristbands on.

“Glad to see you, I’m sure,” cried he; “thought it might be an out-patient. Bevere?—oh, do you want him?” he ran on, not giving himself time to understand me perfectly, or pretending at it. “Bevere is at his new lodgings near Russell Square. He will not be back here until next week.”

“But he is not at his new lodgings,” I said. “He has left them.”

“Left!” cried Scott, staring.

“Left for good, bag and baggage. Gone altogether.”

“Gone where?” asked Scott.

“That’s what I have come to ask you. I expect you know.”

Scott’s face presented a puzzle. I wondered whether he was as innocent as he looked.

“Let us understand one another,” said he. “Do you tell me that Bevere has left his new lodgings?”

“He has. He left them last night. Ran away from them, as one may say.”

“Why, he had only just got into them! Were the people sharks? I was with him on Wednesday night: he did not complain of anything then.”

“He must have left, I fancy, for some private reason of his own. Don’t you know where he is gone, Scott? You are generally in his confidence.”

“Don’t know any more than the dead.”

To dispute the declaration was not in my power. Scott seemed utterly surprised, and said he should go to Mrs. Long’s the first leisure moment he had, to see if any note or message had been left for him. But I had already put that question to the landlady, and she answered that neither note nor message of any kind had been left for anybody. So there we were, nonplussed, Scott standing with his hands in his pockets. Make the best of it we would, it resolved itself into nothing more than this: Bevere had vanished, leaving no clue.

From thence I made my way to Mr. Pitt’s little surgery near Gibraltar Terrace. The doctor was alone in it, and stood compounding pills behind the counter.

“Bevere run away!” he exclaimed at my first words. “Why, what’s the meaning of that? I don’t know anything about it. I was going to see him this afternoon.”

With my arms on the counter, my head bending towards him, I recounted to Pitt the particulars Mrs. Long had given me, and Scott’s denial of having any finger in the pie. The doctor gave his head a twist.

“Says he knows no more than the dead, does he! That may be the case; or it may not. Master Richard Scott’s assertions go for what they are worth with me where Bevere’s concerned: the two are as thick as thieves. I’ll find him, if I can. What do you say?—that Bevere would not conceal himself from me? Look here, Johnny Ludlow,” continued Pitt rapidly, bringing forward his face till it nearly touched mine, and dropping his voice to a low tone, “that young man must have got into some dangerous trouble, and has to hide himself from the light of day.”

Leaving Pitt to make his patients’ physic, I went out into the world, not knowing whether to seek for Bevere in this quarter or in that. But, unless I found him, how could I carry out my promise of writing to Lady Bevere?

I told Miss Deveen of my dilemma. She could not help me. No one could help, that I was able to see. There was nothingfor it but to wait until the next week, when Bevere might perhaps make his appearance at the hospital. I dropped a note to Scott, asking him to let me know of it if he did.

But of course the chances were that Bevere would not appear at the hospital: with need to keep his head en cachette, he would be no more safe there than in Mrs. Long’s rooms: and I might have been hunting for him yet, for aught I can tell, but for coming across Charley Lightfoot.

It was on the following Monday. He was turning out of the railway-station near Miss Deveen’s, his uncle, Dr. Lightfoot, being in practice close by. Telling him of Roger Bevere’s flight, which he appeared not to have heard of, I asked if he could form any idea where he was likely to have got to.

“Oh, back to the old neighbourhood that he lived in before his accident, most likely,” carelessly surmised Lightfoot, who did not seem to think much of the matter.

“And where is that?”

“A goodish distance from here. It is near the Bell-and-Clapper Station on the underground line.”

“The Bell-and-Clapper Station!”

Lightfoot laughed. “Ironically called so,” he said, “from a bell at the new church close by, that claps away pretty well all day and all night in the public ears.”

“Not one of our churches?”

“Calls itself so, I believe. I wouldn’t answer for it that its clergy have been licensed by a bishop. Bevere lived somewhere about there; I never was at his place; but you’ll easily find it out.”

“How? By knocking at people’s doors and inquiring for him?”

Lightfoot put on his considering-cap. “If you go to the refreshment-room of the Bell-and-Clapper Station and ask his address of the girls there,” said he, “I dare say they can give it you. Bevere used to be uncommonly fond of frequenting their company, I believe.”

Running down to the train at once I took a ticket for the Bell-and-Clapper Station, and soon reached it. It was well named: the bell was clanging away with a loud and furious tongue, enough to drive a sick man mad. What a dreadful infliction for the houses near it!

Behind the counter in the refreshment-room stood two damsels,exchanging amenities with a young man who sat smoking a cigar, his legs stretched out at ease. Before I had time to speak, the sound of an up-train was heard; he drank up the contents of a glass that stood at his elbow, and went swiftly out.

It was a pretty looking place: with coloured decanters on its shelves and an array of sparkling glass. The young women wore neat black gowns, and might have looked neat enough altogether but for their monstrous heads of hair. That of one in particular was a sight to be seen, and must have been copied from some extravagant fashion plate. She was dark and handsome, with a high colour and a loud voice, evidently a strong-minded young woman, perfectly able to take care of herself. The other girl was fair, smaller and slighter, with a somewhat delicate face, and a quiet manner.

“Can you give me the address of Mr. Roger Bevere?” I asked of this younger one.

The girl flushed scarlet, and looked at her companion, who looked back again. It was a curious sort of look, as much—I thought—as to say, what are we to do? Then they both looked at me. But neither spoke.

“I am told that Mr. Bevere often comes here, and that you can give me his address.”

“Well, sir—I don’t think we can,” said the younger one, and her speech was quite proper and modest. “We don’t know it, do we, Miss Panken?”

“Perhaps you’ll first of all tell me who it was that said we could give it you,” cried Miss Panken, in tones as strong-minded as herself, and as though she were by a very long way my superior in the world.

“It was one of his fellow-students at the hospital.”

“Oh—well—I suppose we can give it you,” she concluded.“Here, I’ll write it down. Lend me your pencil, Mabel: mine has disappeared. There,” handing me the paper, “if he is not there, we can’t tell you where he is.”

“Roger Bevary, 22, New Crescent,” was what she wrote. I thanked her and went out, encountering two or three young men who rushed in from another train and called individually for refreshment.

New Crescent was soon found, but not Bevere. The elderly woman-servant who answered me said Mr. Bevere formerly lived with them, but left about eighteen months back. He had notleft the neighbourhood, she thought, as she sometimes met him in it. She saw him only the past Saturday night when she was out on an errand.

“What, this past Saturday!” I exclaimed. “Are you certain?”

“To be sure I am, sir. He was smoking a pipe and looking in at the shop windows. He saw me and said, Good-night, Ann: he was always very pleasant. I thought he looked ill.”

Back I went to the refreshment-room. Those girls knew his address well enough, but for some reason would not give it—perhaps by Bevere’s orders. Two young men were there now, sipping their beer, or whatever it was, and exchanging compliments with Miss Panken. I spoke to her civilly.

“Mr. Bevere does not live at New Crescent: he left it eighteen months ago. Did you not know that? I think you can give me his address if you will.”

She did not answer me at all. It may be bar-room politeness. Regarding me for a full minute superciliously from my head to my boots, she slowly turned her shoulders the other way, and resumed her talk with the customers.

I spoke then to the other, who was wiping glasses. “It is in Mr. Bevere’s own interest that I wish to find him; I wish it very particularly indeed. He lives in this neighbourhood; I have heard that: if you can tell me where, I shall be very much obliged to you.”

The girl’s face looked confused, timid, full of indecision, as if she knew the address but did not know whether to answer or not. By this time I had attracted attention, and silence fell on the room. Strong-minded Miss Panken came to the relief of her companion.

“Did you call for a glass of ale?” she asked me, in a tone of incipient mockery.

“Nor for soda?—nor bitters?—not even cherry-brandy?” she ran on. “No? Then as you don’t seem to want anything we supply here, perhaps you’ll take yourself off, young man, and leave space for them that do. Fancy this room being open to promiscuous inquirers, and us young ladies being obliged to answer ’em!” added Miss Panken affably to her two friends.“I’d like to see it!”

Having thus put me down and turned her back upon me, I had nothing to wait for, and walked out of the lady’s presence.The younger one’s eyes followed me with a wistful look. I’m sure she would have given the address had she dared.

After that day, I took to haunt the precincts of the Bell-and-Clapper, believing it to be my only chance of finding Bevere. Scott had a brief note from him, no address to it, stating that he was not yet well enough to resume his duties; and this note Scott forwarded to me. A letter also came to me; from Lady Bevere asking what the matter was that I did not write, and whether Roger was worse. How could I write, unless I found him?

So, all the leisure time that I could improvise I spent round about the Bell-and-Clapper. Not inside the room, amid its manifold attractions: Circe was a wily woman, remember, and pretty bottles are insidious. That particular Circe, also, Miss Panken, might have objected to my company and ordered me out of it.

Up one road, down another, before this row of houses and that, I hovered for ever like a walking ghost. But I saw nothing of Bevere.

Luck favoured me at last. One afternoon towards the end of the week, I was standing opposite the church, watching the half-dozen worshippers straggling into it, for one of its many services, listening to the irritating ding-dong of its bell, and wondering the noise was put up with, when suddenly Richard Scott came running up from the city train. Looking neither to the right nor the left, or he must inevitably have seen me, he made straight for a cross-road, then another, and presently entered one of a row of small houses whose lower rooms were on a level with the ground and the yard or two of square garden that fronted them. “Paradise Place.” I followed Scott at a cautious distance.

“Bevere lives there!” quoth I, mentally.

Should I go in at once boldly, and beard him? While deliberating—for somehow it goes against my nature to beard anybody—Scott came striding out and turned off the other way: which led to the shops. I crossed over and went in quietly at the open door.

The parlour, small and shabby as was Mrs. Mapping’s in Gibraltar Terrace, was on the left, its door likewise open. Seated at a table, taking his tea, was Roger Bevere; opposite to him, presiding over the ceremonies, sat a lady who must unquestionablyhave been first-cousin to those damsels at the Bell-and-Clapper, if one might judge by the hair.

“Roger!” I exclaimed. “What a dance you have led us!”

He started up with a scarlet face, his manner strangely confused, his tongue for the moment lost. And then I saw that he was without his coat, and his arm was bandaged.

“I was going to write to you,” he said—an excuse invented on the spur of the moment, “I thought to be about before now, but my arm got bad again.”

“How was that?”

“Well, I hurt it, and did not pay attention to it. It is properly inflamed now.”

I took a seat on the red stuff sofa without being invited, and Bevere dropped into his chair. The lady at the tea-tray had been regarding me with a free, friendly, unabashed gaze. She was a well-grown, attractive young woman, with a saucy face and bright complexion, fine dark eyes, and full red lips. Her abundant hair was of the peculiar and rare colour that some people call red and others gold. As to her manners, they were as assured as Miss Panken’s, but a great deal pleasanter. I wondered who she was and what she did there.

“So this is Johnny Ludlow that I’ve heard tell of!” she exclaimed, catching up my name from Bevere, and sending me a gracious nod. “Shall I give you a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you,” was my answer, though all the while as thirsty as a fish, for the afternoon was hot.

“Oh, you had better: don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, laughing. “There’s nothing like a good cup of tea when the throat’s dry and the weather’s baking. Come! make yourself at home.”

“Be quiet, Lizzie,” struck in Bevere, his tone ringing with annoyance and pain. “Let Mr. Ludlow do as he pleases.”And it struck me that he did not want me to take the tea.

Scott came in then, and looked surprised to see me: he had been out to get something for Bevere’s arm. I felt by intuition that he had known where Bevere was all along, that his assumption of ignorance was a pretence. He and the young lady seemed to be upon excellent terms, as though they had been acquainted for ages.

The arm looked very bad: worse than it had at GibraltarTerrace. I stood by when Scott took off the bandages. He touched it here and there.

“I tell you what, Bevere,” he said: “you had better let Pitt see to this again. He got it right before; and—I don’t much like the look of it.”

“Nonsense!” returned Bevere. “I don’t want Pitt here.”

“I say nonsense to that,” rejoined Scott. “Who’s Pitt?—he won’t hurt you. No good to think you can shut yourself up in a nutshell—with such an arm as this, and—and—” he glanced at me, as if he would say, “and now Ludlow has found you out.”

“You can do as much for the arm as Pitt can,” said Bevere, fractiously.

“Perhaps I could: but I don’t mean to try. I tell you, Bevere, I do not like the look of it,” repeated Scott. “What’s more, I, not being a qualified practitioner yet, would not take the responsibility.”

“Well, I will go to Pitt to-morrow if I’m no better and can get my coat on,” conceded Bevere. “Lizzie, where’s the other bandage?”

“Oh, I left it in my room,” said Lizzie; and she ran up the stairs in search of it.

So she lived there! Was it her home, I wondered; or Bevere’s; or their home conjointly? The two might have vowed eternal friendship and set up housekeeping together on a platonic footing. Curious problems do come into fashion in the great cities of this go-ahead age; perhaps that one had.

Scott finished dressing the arm, giving the patient sundry cautions meanwhile; and I got up to leave. Lizzie had stepped outside and was leaning over the little wooden entrance-gate, chanting a song to herself and gazing up and down the quiet road.

“What am I to say to your mother?” I said to Bevere in a low tone. “You knew I had to write to her.”

“Oh, say I am all right,” he answered. “I have written to her myself now, and had two letters from her.”

“How do the letters come to you? Here?”

“Scott gets them from Mrs. Long’s. Johnny”—with a sharp pressure of the hand, and a beseeching look from his troubled blue eyes—“be a good fellow and don’t talk. Anywhere.”

Giving his hand a reassuring shake, and lifting my hat to the lady at the gate as I passed her, I went away, thinking of this complication and of that. In a minute, Scott overtook me.

“I think you knew where he was, all along,” I said to him;“that your ignorance was put on.”

“Of course it was,” answered Scott, as coolly as you please.“What would you? When a fellow-chum entrusts confidential matters to you and puts you upon your honour, you can’t betray him.”

“Oh, well, I suppose not. That damsel over there, Scott—is she his sister, or his cousin, or his aunt?”

“You can call her which you like,” replied Scott, affably.“Are you very busy this afternoon, Ludlow?”

“I am not busy at all.”

“Then I wish you would go to Pitt. I can’t spare the time. I’ve a heap of work on my shoulders to-day: it was only the pressing note I got from Bevere about his arm that brought me out of it. He is getting a bit doubtful himself, you see; and Pitt had better come to it without loss of time.”

“Bevere won’t thank me for sending Pitt to him. You heard what he said.”

“Nonsense as to Bevere’s thanks. The arm is worse than he thinks for. In my opinion, he stands a good chance of losing it.”

“No!” I exclaimed in dismay. “Lose his arm!”

“Stands a chance of it,” repeated Scott. “It will be his own fault. A week yesterday he damaged it again, the evening he came back here, and he has neglected it ever since. You tell Pitt what I say.”

“Very well, I will. I suppose the account Bevere gave to his mother and Mr. Brandon—that he had been living lately with you—was all a fable?”

Scott nodded complaisantly, striding along at the pace of a steam-engine. “Just so. He couldn’t bring them down upon him here, you know.”

I did not exactly know. And thoughts, as the saying runs, are free.

“So he hit upon the fable, as you call it, of saying he had shared my lodgings,” continued Scott. “Necessity is a rare incentive to invention.”

We had gained the Bell-and-Clapper Station as he spoke: two minutes yet before the train for the city would be in. Scott utilized the minutes by dashing to the bar for a glass of ale, chattering to Miss Panken and the other one while he drank it.Then we both took the train; Scott going back to the hospital—where he fulfilled some official duty beyond that of ordinary student—and I to see after Pitt.

II

Roger Bevere’s arm proved obstinate. Swollen and inflamed as I had never seen any arm yet, it induced fever, and he had to take to his bed. Scott, who had his wits about him in most ways, had not spoken a minute too soon, or been mistaken as to the probable danger; while Mr. Pitt told Roger every time he came to dress it, beginning with the first evening, that he deserved all he got for being so foolhardy as to neglect it: as a medical man in embryo, he ought to have foreseen the hazard.

It seemed to me that Roger was just as ill as he was at Gibraltar Terrace, when they sent for his mother: if not worse. Most days I got down to Paradise Place to snatch a look at him. It was not far, taking the underground-railway from Miss Deveen’s.

I made the best report I could to Lady Bevere, telling nothing—excepting that the arm was giving a little trouble. If she got to learn the truth about certain things, she would think the letters deceitful. But what else could I do?—I wished with all my heart some one else had to write them. As Scott had said to me about the flitting from Mrs. Long’s (the reason for which or necessity, I was not enlightened upon yet), I could not betray Bevere. Pitt assured me that if any unmanageable complications arose with the arm, both Lady Bevere and Mr. Brandon should be at once telegraphed for. A fine complication it would be, of another sort, if they did come! How about Miss Lizzie?

Of all the free-and-easy young women I had ever met with, that same Lizzie was the freest and easiest. Many a time have I wondered Bevere did not order her out of the room when she said audacious things to him or to me—not to say out of the house. He did nothing of the kind; he lay passive as a bird that has had its wings clipped, all spirit gone out of him, and groaning with bodily pain. Why on earth did he allow her to make his house her abode, disturbing it with her noise and her clatter? Why on earth—to go on further—did he rent a house at all, small or large? No one else lived in it, that I saw, excepta little maid, in her early teens, to do the work. Later I found I was mistaken: they were only lodgers: an old landlady, lame and quiet, was in the kitchen.

“Looks fearfully bad, don’t he?” whispered Lizzie to me on one occasion when he lay asleep, and she came bursting into the room for her bonnet and shawl.

“Yes. Don’t you think you could be rather more quiet?”

“As quiet as a lamb, if you like,” laughed Lizzie, and crept out on tiptoe. She was always good-humoured.

One afternoon when I went in, Lizzie had a visitor in the parlour. Miss Panken! The two, evidently on terms of close friendship, were laughing and joking frantically; Lizzie’s head, with its clouds of red-gold hair, was drawn close to the other head and the mass of black braids adorning it. Miss Panken sat sipping a cup of tea; Lizzie a tumbler of hot water that gave forth a suspicious odour.

“I’ve got a headache, Mr. Johnny,” said she: and I marvelled that she did not, in her impudence, leave the “Mr.” out.“Hot gin-and-water is the very best remedy you can take for it.”

Shrieks of laughter from both the girls followed me upstairs to Roger’s bedside: Miss Panken was relating some joke about her companion, Mabel. Roger said his arm was a trifle better. It always felt so when Pitt had been to it.

“Who is it that’s downstairs now?” he asked, fretfully, as the bursts of merriment sounded through the floor. “Sit down, Johnny.”

“It’s a girl from the Bell-and-Clapper refreshment-room. Miss Panken they call her.”

Roger frowned. “I have told Lizzie over and over again that I wouldn’t have those girls encouraged here. What can possess her to do it?” And, after saying that, he passed into one of those fits of restlessness that used to attack him at Gibraltar Terrace.

“Look here, Roger,” I said, presently, “couldn’t you—pull up a bit? Couldn’t you put all this nonsense away?”

“Which nonsense?” he retorted.

“What would Mr. Brandon say if he knew it? I’ll not speak of your mother. It is not nice, you know; it is not, indeed.”

“Can’t you speak out?” he returned, with intense irritation.“Put what away?”

“Lizzie.”

I spoke the name under my breath, not liking to say it, though I had wanted to for some time. All the anger seemed to go out of Roger. He lay still as death.

“Can’t you, Roger?”

“Too late, Johnny,” came back the answer in a whisper of pain.

“Why?”

“She is my wife.”

I leaped from my chair in a sort of terror. “No, no, Roger, don’t say that! It cannot be.”

“But it is,” he groaned. “These eighteen months past.”

I stood dazed; all my senses in a whirl. Roger kept silence, his face turned to the pillow. And the laughter from below came surging up.

I had no heart affection that I was aware of, but I had to press my hand to still its thumping as I leaned over Roger.

“Really married? Surely married?”

“As fast and sure as the registrar could marry us,” came the smothered answer. “We did not go to church.”

“Oh, Roger! How came you to do it?”

“Because I was a fool.”

I sat down again, right back in the chair. Things that had puzzled me before were clearing themselves now. This was the torment that had worried his mind and prolonged, if not induced, the fever, when he first lay ill of the accident; this was the miserable secret that had gone well-nigh to disturb the brain: partly for the incubus the marriage entailed upon him, partly lest it should be found out. It had caused him to invent fables in more ways than one. Not only had he to conceal his proper address from us all when at Gibraltar Terrace, especially from his mother and Mr. Brandon; but he had had to scheme with Scott to keep his wife in ignorance altogether—of his accident and of where he was lying, lest Lizzie should present herself at his bedside. To account for his absence from home, Scott had improvised a story to her of Roger’s having been despatched by the hospital authorities to watch a case of illness at a little distance; and Lizzie unsuspiciously supplied Scott with changes of raiment and other things Roger needed from his chest of drawers.

This did for a time. But about the period of Roger’squitting Gibraltar Terrace, Lizzie unfortunately caught up an inkling that she was being deceived. Miss Panken’s general acquaintance was numerous, and one day one of them chanced to go into the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper, and to mention, incidentally, that Roger Bevere had been run over by a hansom cab, and was lying disabled in some remote doctor’s quarters—for that’s what Scott told his fellow-students. Madam Lizzie rose in rebellion, accused Scott of being no gentleman, and insisted upon her right to be enlightened. So, to stop her from making her appearance at St. Bartholomew’s with inconvenient inquiries, and possibly still more inconvenient revelations, Roger had promptly to quit the new lodgings at Mrs. Long’s, and return to the old home near the Bell-and-Clapper. But I did not learn these particulars at first.

“Who knows it, Roger?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Not one of them but Scott,” he answered, supposing I alluded to the hospital. “I see Pitt has his doubts.”

“But they know—some of them—that Lizzie is here!”

“Well? So did you, but you did not suspect further. They think of course that—well, there’s no help for what they think. When a fellow is in such a position as mine, he has to put up with things as they come. I can’t quite ruin myself, Johnny; or let the authorities know what an idiot I’ve been. Lizzie’s aunt knows it; and that’s enough at present; and so do those girls at the Bell-and-Clapper—worse luck!”

It was impossible to talk much of it then, at that first disclosure; I wished Roger good-afternoon, and went away in a fever-dream.

My wildest surmises had not pictured this dismal climax. No, never; for all that Mistress Lizzie’s left hand displayed a plain gold ring of remarkable thickness. “She would have it thick,” Roger said to me later. Poor Roger! poor Roger!

I felt it like a blow—like a blow. No good would ever come of it—to either of them. Worse than no good to him. It was not so much the unsuitableness of the girl’s condition to his; it was the girl herself. She would bring him no credit, no comfort as long as she lived: what happiness could he ever find with her? I had grown to like Roger, with all his faults and failings, and it almost seemed to me, in my sorrow for him, as if my own life were blighted.

It might not have been quite so bad—not quite—had Lizziebeen a different girl. Modest, yielding, gentle, like that little Mabel I had seen, for instance, learning to adapt her manners to the pattern of her husband’s; had she been that, why, in time, perhaps, things might have smoothed down for him. But Lizzie! with her free and loud manners, her off-hand ways, her random speech, her vulgar laughs! Well, well!

How was it possible she had been able to bring her fascinations to bear upon him—he with his refinement? One can but sit down in amazement and ask how, in the name of common-sense, such incongruities happen in the world. She must have tamed down what was objectionable in her to sugar and sweetness while setting her cap at Bevere; while he—he must have been blind, physically and mentally. But no sooner was the marriage over than he awoke to see what he had done for himself. Since then his time had been principally spent in setting up contrivances to keep the truth from becoming known. Mr. Brandon had talked of his skeleton in the closet: he had not dreamt of such a skeleton as this.

“Must have gone in largely for strong waters in those days, and been in a chronic state of imbecility, I should say,” observed Pitt, making his comments to me confidentially.

For I had spoken to him of the marriage, finding he knew as much as I did. “I shall never be able to understand it,” I said.

“That’s easy enough. When Circe and a goose sit down to play chess, no need to speculate which will win the game.”

“You speak lightly of it, Mr. Pitt.”

“Not particularly. Where’s the use of speaking gravely now the deed’s done? It is a pity for Bevere; but he is only one young man amidst many such who in one way or another spoil their lives at its threshold. Johnny Ludlow, when I look about me and see the snares spread abroad in this great metropolis by night and by day, and at the crowds of inexperienced lads—they are not much better—who have to run to and fro continually, I marvel that the number of those who lose themselves is not increased tenfold.”

He had changed his tone to one solemn enough for a judge.

“I cannot think how he came to do it,” I argued. “Or how such a one as Bevere, well-intentioned, well brought up, could have allowed himself to fall into what Mr. Brandon calls loose habits. How came he to take to drinking ways, even in a small degree?”

“The railway refreshment-bars did that for him, I take it,”answered Pitt. “He lived up here from the first, by the Bell-and-Clapper, and I suppose found the underground train more convenient than the omnibus. Up he’d rush in a morning to catch—say—the half-past eight train, and would often miss it by half-a-minute. A miss is as good as a mile. Instead of cooling his heels on the draughty and deserted platform, he would turn into the refreshment-room, and find there warmth and sociable company in the shape of pretty girls to chat with: and, if he so minded, a glass of something or other to keep out the cold on a wintry morning.”

“As if Bevere would!—at that early hour!”

“Some of them do,” affirmed Pitt. “Anyway, that’s how Bevere fell into the habit of frequenting the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper. It lay so handy, you see; right in his path. He would run into it again of an evening when he returned: he had no home, no friends waiting for him, only lodgings. There——”

“I thought Bevere used to board with a family,” I interrupted.

“So he did at first; and very nice people they were: Mr. Brandon took care he should be well placed. That’s why Bevere came up this way at all: it was rather far from the hospital, but Mr. Brandon knew the people. In a short time, however, the lady died, the home was broken up, and Bevere then took lodgings on his own account; and so—there was no one to help him keep out of mischief. To go on with what I was saying. He learnt to frequent the bar-room at the Bell-and-Clapper: not only to run into it in a morning, but also on his return in the evening. He had no sociable tea or dinner-table waiting for him, you see, with pleasant faces round it. All the pleasant faces he met were those behind the counter; and there he would stay, talking, laughing, chaffing with the girls, one of whom was Miss Lizzie, goodness knows how long—the places are kept open till midnight.”

“It had its attractions for him, I suppose—what with the girls and the bottles.”

Pitt nodded. “It has for many a one besides him, Johnny. Roger had to call for drink; possibly without the slightest natural inclination for anything, he had perforce to call for it; he could hardly linger there unless he did. By-and-by, I reckon, he got to like the drink; he acquired the taste for it, you see,and habit soon becomes second nature; one glass became two glasses, two glasses three. This went on for a time. The next act in the young man’s drama was, that he allowed himself to glide into an entanglement of some sort with one of the said girls, Miss Lizzie Field, and was drawn in to marry her.”

“How have you learnt these particulars?”

“Partly from Scott. They are true. Scott has a married brother living up this way, and is often running up here; indeed at one time he lived with him, and he and Bevere used to go to and fro to St. Bartholomew’s in company. Yes,” slowly added the doctor, “that refreshment-room has been the bane of Roger Bevere.”

“And not of Scott?”

“It did Scott no good; you may take a vow of that. But Scott has some plain, rough common-sense of his own, which kept him from going too far. He may make a good man yet; and a name also, for he possesses all the elements of a skilful surgeon. Bevere succumbed to the seductions of the bar-room, as other foolish young fellows, well-intentioned at heart, but weak in moral strength, have done, and will do again. Irresistible temptations they present, these places, to the young men who have to come in contact with them. If the lads had to go out of their way to seek the temptation, they might never do it; but it lies right in their path, you perceive, and they can’t pass it by. Of course I am not speaking of all young men; only of those who are deficient in moral self-control. To some, the Bell-and-Clapper bar-room presents no more attraction than the Bell-and-Clapper Church by its side; or any other of such rooms, either.”

“Is there not any remedy for this state of things?”

Pitt shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose not,” he said.“Since I pulled up from drinking, I have been unable to see what these underground railway-rooms are needed for: why a man or woman, travelling for half-an-hour, more or less, must needs be provided with places to drink in at both ends of the journey and all the middles. Biscuits and buns are there as well, you may say—serving an excuse perhaps. But for one biscuit called for, there are fifty glasses of ale, or what not. Given the necessity for the rooms,” added Pitt, with a laugh,“I should do away with the lady-servers and substitute men; which would put an end to three parts of the attraction. No chance of that reformation.”

“Because it would do away with three parts of the custom,”I said, echoing his laugh.

“Be you very sure of that, Johnny Ludlow. However, it is no business of mine to find fault with existing customs, seeing that I cannot alter them,” concluded the doctor.

What he said set me thinking. Every time I passed by one of these stations, so crowded with the traffic of young city men, and saw the bottles arrayed to charm the sight, their bright colours gleaming and glistening, and looked at the serving-damsels, with their bedecked heads, arrayed to charm also, I knew Pitt must be right. These rooms might bring in grist to their owners’ mill; but it struck me that I should not like, when I grew old, to remember that I had owned one.

Roger Bevere’s arm began to yield to treatment, but he continued very ill in himself; too ill to get up. Torment of mind and torment of body are a bad complication.

One afternoon when I was sitting with him, sundry quick knocks downstairs threatened to disturb the doze he was falling into—and Pitt had said that sleep to him just now was like gold. I crept away to stop it. In the middle of the parlour, thumping on the floor with her cotton umbrella—a huge green thing that must have been the fellow, when made, to Sairey Gamp’s—stood Mrs. Dyke, a stout, good-natured, sensible woman, whom I often saw there. Her husband was a well-to-do coachman, whose first wife had been sister to Lizzie’s mother, and this wife was their cousin.

“Where’s Lizzie, sir?” she asked. “Out, I suppose?”

“Yes, I think so. I saw her with her bonnet on.”

“The girl’s out, too, I take it, or she’d have heard me,”remarked Mrs. Dyke, as she took her seat on the shabby red sofa, and pushed her bonnet back from her hot and comely face.“And how are we going on up there, sir?”—pointing to the ceiling.

“Very slowly. He cannot get rid of the fever.”

She lodged the elegant umbrella against the sofa’s arm and turned sideways to face me. I had sat down by the window, not caring to go back and run the risk of disturbing Roger.

“Now come, sir,” she said, “let us talk comfortable: you won’t mind giving me your opinion, I dare say. I have looked out for an opportunity to ask it: you being what you are, sir,and his good friend. Them two—they don’t hit it off well together, do they?”

Knowing she must allude to Bevere and his wife, I had no ready answer at hand. Mrs. Dyke took silence for assent.

“Ah, I see how it is. I thought I must be right; I’ve thought it for some time. But Lizzie only laughs in my face, when I ask her. There’s no happiness between ’em; just the other thing; I told Lizzie so only yesterday. But they can’t undo what they have done, and there’s nothing left for them, sir, but to make the best of it.”

“That’s true, Mrs. Dyke. And I think Lizzie might do more towards it than she does. If she would only——”

“Only try to get a bit into his ways and manners and not offend him with hers,” put in discerning Mrs. Dyke, when I hesitated, “He is as nice a young gentleman as ever lived, and I believe has the making in him of a good husband. But Lizzie is vulgar and her ways are vulgar; and instead of checking herself and remembering that he is just the opposite, and that naturally it must offend him, she lets herself grow more so day by day. I know what’s what, sir, having been used to the ways of gentry when I was a young woman, for I lived cook for some years in a good family.”

“Lizzie’s ways are so noisy.”

“Her ways are noisy and rampagious,” assented Mrs. Dyke,“more particularly when she has been at her drops; and noise puts out a sick man.”

“Her drops!” I repeated, involuntarily, the word calling up a latent doubt that lay in my mind.

“When girls that have been in busy employment all day and every day, suddenly settle down to idleness, they sometimes slip into this habit or that habit, not altogether good for themselves, which they might never else have had time to think of,” remarked Mrs. Dyke. “I’ve come in here more than once lately and seen Lizzie drinking hot spirits-and-water in the daytime: I know you must have seen the same, sir, or I’d not mention it—and beer she’ll take unlimited.”

Of course I had seen it.

“I think she must have learnt it at the counter; drinking never was in our family, and I never knew that it was in her father’s,” continued Mrs. Dyke. “But some of the young women, serving at these bars, get to like the drinkthrough having the sight and smell of it about ’em all day long.”

That was more than likely, but I did not say so, not caring to continue that branch of the subject.

“The marriage was a misfortune, Mrs. Dyke.”

“For him I suppose you gentlemen consider it was,” she answered. “It will be one for her if he should die: she’d have to go back to work again and she has got out o’ the trick of it. Ah! she thought grand things of it at first, naturally, marrying a gentleman! But unequal marriages rarely turn out well in the long run. I knew nothing of it till it was done and over, or I should have advised her against it; my husband’s place lay in a different part of London then—Eaton Square way. Better, perhaps, for Lizzie had she gone out to service in the country, like her sister.”

“Did she always live in London?”

“Dear, no, sir, nor near it; she lived down in Essex with her father and mother. But she came up to London on a visit, and fell in love with the public life, through getting to know a young woman who was in it. Nothing could turn her, once her mind was set upon it; and being sharp and clever, quick at figures, she got taken on at some wine-vaults in the city. After staying there awhile and giving satisfaction, she changed to the refreshment-room at the Bell-and-Clapper. Miss Panken went there soon after, and they grew very intimate. The young girl left, who had been there before her; very pretty she was: I don’t know what became of her. At some of the counters they have but one girl; at others, two.”

“It is a pity girls should be at them at all—drawing on the young men! I am speaking generally, Mrs. Dyke.”

“It is a pity the young men should be so soft as to be drawn on by them—if you’ll excuse my saying it, sir,” she returned, quickly. “But there—what would you? Human nature’s the same all the world over: Jack and Jill. The young men like to talk to the girls, and the girls like very much to talk to the young men. Of course these barmaids lay themselves out to the best advantage, in the doing of their hair and their white frills, and what not, which is human nature again, sir. Look at a young lady in a drawing-room: don’t she set herself off when she is expecting the beaux to call?”

Mrs. Dyke paused for want of breath. Her tongue ran on fast, but it told of good sense.

“The barmaids are but like the young ladies, sir; and the young fellows that congregate there get to admire them, while sipping their drops at the counter; if, as I say, they are soft enough. When the girls get hold of one softer than the rest, why, perhaps one of them gets over him so far as to entrap him to give her his name—just as safe as you hook and land a fish.”

“And I suppose it has a different termination sometimes?”

Honest Mrs. Dyke shook her head. “We won’t talk about that, sir: I can’t deny that it may happen once in a way. Not often, let’s hope. The young women, as a rule, are well-conducted and respectable: they mostly know how to take care of themselves.”

“I should say Miss Panken does.”

Mrs. Dyke’s broad face shone with merriment. “Ain’t she impudent? Oh yes, sir, Polly Panken can take care of herself, never fear. But it’s not a good atmosphere for young girls to be in, you see, sir, these public bars; whether it may be only at a railway counter, or at one of them busy taverns in the town, or at the gay places of amusement, the manners and morals of the girls get to be a bit loose, as it were, and they can’t help it.”

“Or anybody else, I suppose.”

“No, sir, not as things are; and it’s just a wrong upon them that they should be exposed to it. They’d be safer and quieter in a respectable service, which is the state of life many of ’em were born to—though a few may be superior—and better behaved, too: manners is sure to get a bit corrupted in the public line. But the girls like their liberty; they like the free-and-easy public life and its idleness; they like the flirting and the chaffing and the nonsense that goes on; they like to be dressed up of a day as if they were so many young ladies, their hair done off in bows and curls and frizzes, and their hands in cuffs and lace-edgings; now and then you may see ’em with a ring on. That’s a better life, they think, than they’d lead as servants or shop-women, or any of the other callings open to this class of young women: and perhaps it is. It’s easier, at any rate. I’ve heard that some quite superior young people are in it, who might be, or were, governesses, and couldn’t find employment, poor young ladies, through the market being so overstocked. Ah, it is a hard thing, sir, for a well-brought-up young woman to find lady-like employment nowadays. One thing is certain,”concluded Mrs. Dyke, “that we shall never have a lack of barmaidsin this country until a law is passed by the legislature—which, happen, never will be passed—to forbid girls serving in these places. There’d be less foolishness going on then, and a deal less drinking.”

These were Pitt’s ideas over again.

A loud laugh outside, and Lizzie came running in. “Why, Aunt Dyke, are you there!—entertaining Mr. Johnny Ludlow!”she exclaimed, as she threw herself into a chair. “Well, I never. And what do you two think I am going to do to-morrow?”

“Now just you mind your manners, young woman,” advised the aunt.

“I am minding them—don’t you begin blowing-up,” retorted Lizzie, her face brimming over with good-humour.

“You might have your things stole; you and the girl out together,” said Mrs. Dyke.

“There’s nothing to steal but chairs and tables. I’m sure I’m much obliged to you both for sitting here to take care of them. You’ll never guess what I am going to do,” broke off Lizzie, with shrieks of laughter. “I am going to take my old place again at the Bell-and-Clapper, and serve behind the counter for the day: Mabel Falkner wants a holiday. Won’t it be fun!”

“Your husband will not let you; he would not like it,” I said in my haste, while Mrs. Dyke sat in open-mouthed amazement.

“And I shall put on my old black dress; I’ve got it yet; and be a regular barmaid again. A lovely costume, that black is!”ironically ran on Lizzie. “Neat and not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea-green. You need not look as though you thought I had made acquaintance with him and heard him say it, Mr. Johnny; I only borrowed it from one of Bulwer’s novels that I read the other day.”

If I did not think that, I thought Madam Lizzie had been making acquaintance this afternoon with something else.“Drops!” as Mrs. Dyke called it.

“There I shall be to-morrow, at the old work, and you can both come and see me at it,” said Lizzie. “I’ll treat you more civilly, Mr. Johnny, than Polly Panken did.”

“But I say that your husband will not allow you to go,” I repeated to her.

“Ah, he’s in bed,” she laughed; “he can’t get out of it to stop me.”

“You are all on the wrong tack, Lizzie girl,” spoke up the aunt, severely. “If you don’t mind, it will land you in shoals and quicksands. How dare you think of running counter to what you know your husband’s wishes would be?”

She received this with a louder laugh than ever. “He will not know anything about it, Aunt Dyke. Unless Mr. Johnny Ludlow here should tell him. It would not make any difference to me if he did,” she concluded, with candour.

And as I felt sure it would not, I held my tongue.

By degrees, as the days went on, Roger got about again, and when I left London he was back at St. Bartholomew’s. Other uncanny things had happened to me during this visit of mine, but not one of them brought with it so heavy a weight as the thought of poor Roger Bevere and his blighted life.

“His health may get all right if he will give up drinking,”were the last words Pitt said to me. “He has promised to do so.”

The weather was cold and wintry as we began our railway journey. From two to three years have gone on, you must please note, since the time told of above. Mr. Brandon was about to spend the Christmas with his sister, Lady Bevere—who had quitted Hampshire and settled not far from Brighton—and she had sent me an invitation to accompany him.

We took the train at Evesham. It was Friday, and the shortest day in the year; St. Thomas, the twenty-first of December. Some people do not care to begin a journey on a Friday, thinking it bodes ill-luck: I might have thought the same had I foreseen what was to happen before we got home again.

London reached, we met Roger Bevere at the Brighton Station, as agreed upon. He was to travel down with us. I had not seen him since the time of his illness in London, except for an hour once when I was in town upon some business for the Squire. Nothing had transpired to his friends, so far as I knew, of the fatal step he had taken; that was a secret still.

I cannot say I much liked Roger’s appearance now, as he sat opposite me in the railway-carriage, leaning against the arm of the comfortably-cushioned seat. His fair, pleasant face was gentle as ever, but the once clear blue eyes no longer looked very clear and did not meet ours freely; his hands shook, hisfingers were restless. Mr. Brandon did not much like the signs either, to judge by the way he stared at him.

“Have you been well lately, Roger?”

“Oh yes, thank you, Uncle John.”

“Well, your looks don’t say much for you.”

“I am rather hard-worked,” said Roger. “London is not a place to grow rosy in.”

“Do you like your new work?” continued Mr. Brandon. For Roger had done with St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and was outdoor assistant to a surgeon in private practice, a Mr. Anderson.

“I like it better than the hospital work, Uncle John.”

“Ah! A fine idea that was of yours—wanting to set up in practice for yourself the minute you had passed. Your mother did well to send the letter to me and ask my advice. Some of you boys—boys, and no better—fresh from your hospital studies, screw a brass-plate on your door, announcing yourselves to the world as qualified surgeons. A few of you go a step further and add M.D.”

“Many of us take our degree as physician at once, Uncle John,” said Roger. “It is becoming quite the custom.”

“Just so: the custom!” retorted Mr. Brandon, cynically.“Why didn’t you do it, and modestly call yourself Dr. Bevere? In my former days, young man, when some ultra-grave ailment necessitated application to a physician, we went to him in all confidence, knowing that he was a man of steady years, of long-tried experience, whose advice was to be relied upon. Now, if you are dying and call in some Dr. So-and-so, you may find him a young fellow of three or four and twenty. As likely as not only an M.B. in reality, who has arrogated to himself the title of Doctor. For I hear some of them do it.”

“But they think they have a right to be called so, Uncle John. The question——”

“What right?” sharply demanded Mr. Brandon. “What gives it them?”

“Well—courtesy, I suppose,” hesitated Roger.

“Oh,” said Mr. Brandon.

I laughed. His tone was so quaint.

“Yes, you may laugh, Johnny Ludlow—showing your thoughtlessness! There’ll soon be no modesty left in the world,” he continued; “there’ll soon be no hard, plodding work. Formerly, men were content to labour on patiently for years, to attain success, whether in fame, fortune, or for a moderate competency. Now they must take a leap into it. Tradespeople retire before middle-age, merchants make colossal fortunes in a decade, and (to leave other anomalies alone) you random young hospital students spring into practice full-fledged M.D.’s.”

“The world is changing, Uncle John.”

“It is,” assented Mr. Brandon. “I’m not sure that we shall know it by-and-by.”

From Brighton terminus we had a drive of two or three miles across country to get to Prior’s Glebe—as Lady Bevere’s house was named. It was old-fashioned and commodious, and stood in a large square garden that was encircled by a thick belt of towering shrubs. Nothing was to be seen around it but a huge stretch of waste land; half a-mile-off, rose a little church and a few scattered cottages. “The girls must find this lively!”exclaimed Roger, taking a comprehensive look about him as we drove up in the twilight.

Lady Bevere, kind, gentle, simple-mannered as ever, received us lovingly. Mr. Brandon kissed her, and she kissed me and Roger. It was the first Christmas Roger had spent at home since rushing into that mad act of his; he had always invented some excuse for declining. The eldest son, Edmund, was in the navy; the second, George, was in the Church; Roger was the third; and the youngest, John, had a post in a merchant’s house in Calcutta. Of the four girls, only the eldest, Mary, and the youngest were at home. The little one was named Susan, but they called her Tottams. The other two were on a visit to their aunt, the late Sir Edmund Bevere’s sister.

Dinner was waiting when we got in, and I could not snatch half a word with Roger while making ready for it. He and I had two little rooms opening to each other. But when we went upstairs for the night we could talk at will; and I put my candle down on his chest of drawers.

“How are things going with you, Roger?”

“Don’t talk of it,” he cried, with quite a burst of emotion.“Things cannot be worse than they are.”

“I fancy you have not pulled up much, as Pitt used to call it, have you, old friend? Your hands and your face tell tales.”

“How can I pull up?” he retorted.

“You promised that you would.”

“Ay. Promised! When all the world’s against a fellow,he may not be able to keep his promises. Perhaps may not care to.”

“How is Lizzie?” I said then, dropping my voice.

“Don’t talk of her,” repeated Bevere, in a tone of despair; despair if I ever heard it. It shut me up.

“Johnny, I’m nearly done over; sick of it all,” he went on.“You don’t know what I have to bear.”

“Still—as regards yourself, you might pull up,” I persisted, for to give in to him, and his mood and his ways, would never do. “You might if you chose, Bevere.”

“I suppose I might, if I had any hope. But there’s none; none. People tell us that as we make our bed so we must lie upon it. I made mine in an awful fashion years ago, and I must pay the penalty.”

“I gather from this—forgive me, Bevere—that you and your wife don’t get along together.”

“Get along! Things with her are worse than you may think for. She—she—well, she has not done her best to turn out well. Heaven knows I’d have tried my best; the thing was done, and nothing else was left for us: but she has not let me. We are something like cat-and-dog now, and I am not living with her.”

“No!”

“That is, I inhabit other lodgings. She is at the old place. I am with a medical man in Bloomsbury, you know. It was necessary for me to be near him, and six months ago I went. Lizzie acquiesced in that; the matter was obvious. I sometimes go to see her; staying, perhaps, from Saturday to Monday, and come away cursing myself.”

“Don’t. Don’t, Bevere.”

“She has taken to drink,” he whispered, biting his agitated lips. “For pretty near two years now she has not been a day sober. As Heaven hears me, I believe not one day. You may judge what I’ve had to bear.”

“Could nothing be done?”

“I tried to do it, Johnny. I coaxed, persuaded, threatened her by turns, but she would not leave it off. For four months in the autumn of last year, I did not let a drop of anything come into the house; drinking water myself all the while—for her sake. It was of no use: she’d go out and get it: every public-house in the place knows her. I’d come home from the hospital in the evening and find her raving and rushing about the roomslike a mad woman, or else lying incapable on the bed. Believe me, I tried all I could to keep her straight; and Mrs. Dyke, a good, motherly woman, you remember, did her best to help me; but she was too much for both of us, the demon of drink had laid too fast hold of her.”

“Does she come bothering you at your new lodgings?”

“She doesn’t know where to come,” replied Bevere; “I should not dare to tell her. She thinks I am in the doctor’s house, and she does not know where that is. I have told her, and her Aunt Dyke has told her, that if ever she attempts to come after me there, I shall stop her allowance. Scott—you remember Richard Scott!”

“Of course.”

“Well, Scott lives now near the Bell-and-Clapper: he is with a surgeon there. Scott goes to see her for me once a-week, or so, and brings me news of her. I declare to you, Johnny Ludlow, that when I first catch sight of his face I turn to a cold shiver, dreading what he may have to say. And you talk about pulling up! With such a wife as that, one is thankful to drown care once in a way.”

“I—I suppose, Roger, nothing about her has ever come outhere?”

He started up, his face on fire. “Johnny, lad, if it came out here—to my mother—to all of them—I should die. Say no more. The case is hopeless, and I am hopeless with it.”

Any way, it seemed hopeless to talk further then, and I took up my candle. “Just one more word, Roger: Does Lizzie know you have come down here? She might follow you.”

His face took a look of terror. The bare idea scared him.“I say, don’t you invent impossible horrors,” gasped he. “Shecouldn’t come; she has never heard of the place in connection with me. She has never heard anything about my people, or where they live, or don’t live, or whether I have any. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Roger.”

III

People say you can never sleep well in a strange bed. I know I did not sleep well, but very badly, that first night at Lady Bevere’s. It was not the fault of the bed, or of its strangeness; it was Roger’s trouble haunting me.

He did not seem to have slept well either, to judge by his looks when I went into his room in the morning. His fair, pleasant face was pale; his lips trembled, the blue eyes had torment in their depths.

“I have had a bad dream,” he said, in answer to a remark I made. “An awful dream. It came to me in my last sleep this morning; and morning dreams, they say, come true. I’m afraid I have you to thank for it, Johnny.”

“Me!”

“You suggested last night, startling me well-nigh out of my senses by it, that Lizzie might follow me down here. Well, I dreamt she did so. I saw her in the dining-room, haranguing my mother, her red-gold hair streaming over her shoulders and her arms stretched wildly out. Uncle John stood in a corner of the room, looking on.”

I felt sorry, and told him so: of course my speaking had prompted the dream. He need not fear. If Lizzie did not know he had come down here, or that his family lived here, or anything about them, she could not follow him.

“You see shadows where no shadows are, Roger.”

“When a man spoils his life on its threshold, it is all shadow; past, present, and future.”

“Things may mend, you know.”

“Mend!” he returned: “how can they mend? They may grow worse; never mend. My existence is one long torment. Day by day I live in dread of what may come: of her bringing down upon herself some public disgrace and my name with it. No living being, man or woman, can imagine what it is to me; the remorse for my folly, the mortification, the shame. I believe honestly that but for a few things instilled into me at my mother’s knee in childhood, I should have put an end to myself.”

“It is a long lane that has no turning.”

“Lanes have different outlets: bad as well as good.”

“I think breakfast must be ready, Roger.”

“And I started with prospects so fair!” he went on. “Never a thought or wish in my heart but to fulfil honestly the duties that lay in my way to the best of my power, to God and to man. And I should have done it, but for —— Johnny Ludlow,” he broke off, with a deep breath of emotion, “when I see other young fellows travelling along the same wrong road, once earnest, well-meaning lads as I was, not turning aside of their own wilful,deliberate folly, but ensnared to it by the evil works and ways they encounter in that teeming city, my soul is wrung with pity for them. I sometimes wonder whether God will punish them for what they can hardly avoid; or whether He will not rather let His anger fall on those who throw temptations in their way.”

Poor Roger, poor Roger! Mr. Brandon used to talk of the skeleton in his closet: he little suspected how terrible was the skeleton in Roger’s.

Lady Bevere kept four servants: for she was no better off, except for a little income that belonged to herself, than is many another admiral’s widow. An upper maid, Harriet, who helped to wait, and did sewing: a housemaid and a cook; and an elderly man, Jacob, who had lived with them in the time of Sir Edmund.

During the afternoon of this day, Saturday, Roger and I set off to walk to Brighton with the two girls. Not by the high-road, but by a near way (supposed to cut off half the distance) across a huge, dreary, flat marsh, of which you could see neither the beginning nor the end. In starting, we had reached the gate at the foot of the garden, when Harriet came running down the path. She was a tall, thin, civil young woman, with something in her voice or in her manner of speaking that seemed to my ear familiar, though I knew not how or why.

“Miss Mary,” she said, “my lady asks have you taken umbrellas, if you please. She thinks it will snow when the sun goes down.”

“Yes, yes; tell mamma we have them,” replied Mary: and Harriet ran back.

“How was it the mother came to so lonely a spot as this?”questioned Roger, as we went along, the little one, Tottams, jumping around me. “You girls must find it lively?”

Mary laughed as she answered. “We do find it lively, Roger, and we often ask her why she came. But when mamma and George looked at the place, it was a bright, hot summer’s day. They liked it then: it has plenty of rooms in it, you see, though they are old-fashioned; and the rent was so very reasonable. Be quiet, Tottams.”

“So reasonable that I should have concluded the place had a ghost in it,” said Roger.

“George’s curacy was at Brighton in those days, you know, Roger: that is why we came to the neighbourhood.”

“And George had left for a better curacy before you had well settled down here! Miss Tottams, if you pull at Johnny Ludlow like that, I shall send you back by yourself.”

“True. But we like the place very well now we are used to it, and we know a few nice people. One family—the Archers—we like very much. Six daughters, Roger; one of them, Bessy, would make you a charming wife. You will have to marry, you know, when you set up in practice. They are coming to us next Wednesday evening.”

My eye caught Roger’s. I did not intend it. Caught the bitter expression in it as he turned away.

Brighton reached, we went on the pier. Then, while they did some commissions for Lady Bevere at various shops, I went to the post-office, to register two letters for Mr. Brandon. Tottams wanted to keep with me, but they took her, saying she’d be too troublesome. The letters registered, I came out of the office, and was turning away, when some one touched me on the arm.

“Mr. Ludlow, I think! How are you?”

To my surprise it was Richard Scott. He seemed equally surprised to see me. I told him I had come down with Roger Bevere to spend Christmas week at Prior’s Glebe.

“Lucky fellow!” exclaimed Scott, “I have to go back to London and drudgery this evening: came down with my governor last night for an operation to-day. Glad to say it’s all well over.”

But a thought had flashed into my mind: I ought not to have said so much. Drawing Scott out of the passing crowd, I spoke.

“Look here, Scott: you must be cautious not to say that Bevere’s down here. You must not speak of it.”

“Speak where?” asked Scott, turning his head towards me. He had put his arm within mine as we walked along. “Where?”

“Oh—well—up with you, you know—in Bevere’s old quarters. Or—or in the railway-room at the Bell-and-Clapper.”

Scott laughed. “I understand. Madam Lizzie might be coming after him to his mother’s. But—why, what an odd thing!”

Some thought seemed to have struck him suddenly. He paused in his walk as well as in his speech.

“I dare say it was nothing,” he added, going on again. “Be at ease as to Bevere, Ludlow. I should as soon think of applying to him a lighted firebrand.”

“But what is it you call odd?” I asked, feeling sure that, whatever it might be, it was connected with Bevere.

“Why, this,” said Scott. “Last night, when we got here, I left my umbrella in the carriage, having a lot of other things to see to of my own and the governor’s. I went back as soon as I found it out, but could hear nothing of it. Just now I went up again and got it”—slightly showing the green silk one he held in his hand. “A train from London came in while I stood there, bringing a heap of passengers. One of them looked like Lizzie.”

I could not speak from consternation.

“Having nothing to do while waiting for my umbrella to be brought, I was watching the crowd flock out of the station,”continued Scott. “Amidst it I saw a head of red-gold hair, just like Lizzie’s. I could not see more of her than that; some other young woman’s head was close to hers.”

“But do you think it was Lizzie?”

“No, I do not. So little did I think it that it went clean out of my mind until you spoke. It must have been some accidental resemblance; nothing more; red-gold hair is not so very uncommon. There’s nothing to bring her down to Brighton.”

“Unless she knows that he is here.”

“That’s impossible.”

“What a wretched business it is altogether!”

“You might well say that if you knew all,” returned Scott.“She drinks like a fish. Like a fish, I assure you. Twice over she has had a shaking-fit of three days’ duration—I suppose you take me, Ludlow—had to be watched in her bed; the last time was not more than a week ago. She’ll do for herself, if she goes on. It’s an awful clog on Bevere. The marriage in itself was a piece of miserable folly, but if she had been a different sort of woman and kept herself steady and cared for him——”

“The problem to me is, how Bevere could have been led away by such a woman.”

“Ah, but you must not judge of that by what she is now. She was a very attractive girl, and kept her manners within bounds. Just the kind of girl that many a silly young ape would lose his head for; and Bevere, I take it, lost his heart as well as his head.”

“Did you know of the marriage at the time?”

“Not until after it had taken place.”

“They could never have pulled well together as man and wife; two people so opposite as they are.”

“No, I fancy not,” answered Richard Scott, looking straight out before him, but as though he saw nothing. “She has not tried at it. Once his wife, safe and sure, she thought she had it all her own way—as of course in one sense she had, and could give the reins to her inclination. Nothing that Bevere wanted her to do, would she do. He wished her to give up all acquaintance with the two girls at the Bell-and-Clapper; but not she. He——”

“Is Miss Panken flourishing?”

“Quite,” laughed Scott, “The other one came to grief—Mabel Falkner.”

“Did she! I thought she seemed rather nice.”

“She was a very nice little girl indeed, as modest as Polly Panken is impudent. The one could take care of herself; the other couldn’t—or didn’t. Well, Mabel fell into trouble, and of course lost her post. Madam Lizzie immediately gave her house-room, setting Bevere, who forbade it, at defiance. What with grief and other disasters, the girl fell sick there; had an illness, and had to be kept I don’t know how long. It put Bevere out uncommonly.”

“Is this lately?”

“Oh no; last year. Lizzie—— By the way,” broke off Scott, stopping again and searching his pocket, “I’ve got a note from her for Bevere. You can give it him.”

The words nearly seared away my senses. A note from Lizzie to Bevere! “Why, then, she must know he is here!” I cried.

“You don’t understand,” quietly said Scott, giving me a note from his pocket-book. “A day or two ago, I met Lizzie near the Bell-and-Clapper. She——”

“She is well enough to be out, then!”

“Yes. At times she is as well as you are. Well, I met her, and she began to give me a message for her husband, which I could not then wait to hear. So she sent this note to me later, to be delivered to him when we next met. I had not time to go to him yesterday, and here the note is still.”

It was addressed “Mr. Bevary.” I pointed out the name to Scott.

“Does she not know better, think you?”

“Very likely not,” he answered. “A wrong letter, more or less, in a name, signifies but little to one of Lizzie’s standard of education. It is not often, I expect, she sees the name on paper, or has to write it. Fare you well, Ludlow. Remember me to Bevere.”

Scott had hardly disappeared when they met me. I said nothing of having seen him. After treating Tottams to some tarts and a box of bonbons, we set off home again; the winter afternoon was closing, and it was nearly dark when we arrived. Getting Roger into his room, I handed him the note, and told him how I came by it. He showed me the contents.

“DEAR ROGER,

“When you where last at home, you said you should not be able to spend Christmas with me, so I am thinking of trying a little jaunt for myself. I am well now and mean to keep so, and a few days in the country air may help me and set me up prime. I inscribe this to let you know, and also to tell you that I shall pay my journey with the quarter’s rent you left, so you must send or bring the sum again. Aunt Dyke has got the rumaticks fine, she can’t come bothering me with her lectures quite as persistent as usual. Wishing you the compliments of the season, I remain,

“Your affectionate wife,

“LIZZIE.”

“Gone into Essex, I suppose; she has talked sometimes of her cousin there,” was all the remark made by Bevere. And he set the note alight, and sent it blazing up the chimney. Of course I did not mention Scott’s fancy about the red-gold hair.

Sunday. We crossed the waste land in the morning to the little church I have spoken of. A few cottages stood about it, and a public-house with a big sign, on which was painted a yellow bunch of wheat, and the words The Sheaf o’ Corn. It was bitterly cold weather, the wind keen and cutting, the ground a sort of grey-white from a sprinkling of snow that had fallen in the night. I suppose they don’t, as a rule, warm these rural churches, from want of means or energy, but I think I never felt a church so cold before. Mr. Brandon said it had given him a chill.

In the evening, after tea, we went to church by moonlight. Not all of us this time. Mr. Brandon stayed away to nurse his chill, and Roger on the plea of headache. The snow was beginning to come down smartly. The little church was lighted with candles stuck in tin sconces nailed to the wall, and was dim enough. Lady Bevere whispered to me that the clergyman had a service elsewhere in the afternoon, so could only hold his own in the evening.

It was snowing with a vengeance when we came out—large flakes half as big as a shilling, and in places already a foot deep. We made the best of our way home, and were white objects when we got there.

“Ah!” remarked Mr. Brandon, “I thought we should have it. Hope the wind will go down a little now.”

The girls and their mother went upstairs to take off their cloaks. I asked Mr. Brandon where Roger was. He turned round from his warm seat by the fire to answer me.

“Roger is outside, enjoying the benefit of the snow-storm. That young man has some extraordinary care upon his conscience, Johnny, unless I am mistaken,” he added, his thin voice emphatic, his eyes throwing an inquiry into mine.

“Do you fancy he has, sir?” I stammered. At which Mr. Brandon threw a searching look at me, as if he had a mind to tax me with knowing what it was.

“Well, you had better tell him to come in, Johnny.”

Roger’s great-coat, hanging in the hall, seemed to afford an index that he had not strayed beyond the garden. The snow, coming down so thick and fast but a minute or two ago, had temporarily ceased, following its own capricious fashion, and the moon was bright again. Calling aloud to Roger as I stood on the door-step, and getting no answer, I went out to look for him.

On the side of the garden facing the church, was a little entrance-gate, amid the clusters of laurels and other shrubs. Hearing footsteps approach this, and knowing all were in from church, for the servants got back before we did, I went down the narrow cross-path leading to it, and looked out. It was not Roger, but a woman. A lady, rather, by what the moonbeams displayed of her dress, which looked very smart. As she seemed to be making for the gate, I stepped aside into the shrubs, and peered out over the moor for Roger. The lady gave a sharpring at the bell, and old Jacob came from the side-door of the house to answer it.

“Is this Prior’s Glebe?” she asked—and her voice gave an odd thrill to my pulses, for I thought I recognized it.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jacob.

“Lady Beveer’s, I think.”

“That’s near enough,” returned Jacob, familiar with the eccentricities of pronunciation accorded to the name. “What did you please to want?”

“I want Miss Field.”

“Miss Field!” echoed the old man.

“Harriet Field. She lives here, don’t she? I’d like to see her.”

“Oh—Harriet! I’ll send her out,” said he, turning away.

The more I heard of the voice, the greater grew my dismay. Surely it was that of Roger’s wife! Was it really she that Scott had seen at the station? Had she come after Roger? Did she know he was here? I stood back amid the sheltering laurels, hardly daring to breathe. Waiting there, she began a little dance, or shuffle of the feet, perhaps to warm herself, and broke into a verse of a gay song. “As I live, she’s not sober!” was the fear that flashed across me. Harriet, her things still on, just as she came in from church, came swiftly to the gate.

“Well, Harriet, how are you?”

“Why, Lizzie!—it’s never you!” exclaimed Harriet, after an amazed stare at the visitor.

“Yes, it’s me. I thought I’d come over and see you. That old man was polite though, to leave me standing here.”

“But where have you come from? And why are you so late?”

“Oh, I’m staying at Brighton; came down on the spree yesterday. I’m late because I lost my way on this precious moor—or whatever it calls itself—and got a mile, or so, too far. When the snow came on—and ain’t it getting deep!—I turned into a house to shelter a bit, and here I am. A man that was coming out of church yonder directed me to the place here.”

She must have been at The Sheaf o’ Corn. What if she had chanced to ask the route of me!

“You got my letter, then, telling you I had left my old place at Worthing, and taken service here,” said Harriet.

“I got it safe enough; it was directed to the Bell-and-Clapper room,” returned Lizzie. “What a stick of a hand you do write!I couldn’t decipher whether your new mistress was Lady Beveen or Lady Beveer. I had thought you never meant to write to me again.”

“Well, you know, Lizzie, that quarrel between us years back, after father and mother died, was a bitter one; but I’m sure I don’t want to be anything but friendly for the future. You haven’t written, either. I never had but that one letter from you, telling me you had got married, and that he was a gentleman.”

“And you wrote back asking whether it was true, or whether I had jumped over the broomstick,” retorted Lizzie, with a laugh. “You always liked to be polite to me, Harriet.”

“Do you ever see Uncle Dyke up in London, Lizzie?”

“And Aunt Dyke too—she’s his second, you know. They are both flourishing just now with rheumatism. He has got it in his chest, and she in her knees—tra, la, la, la! I say, are you not going to invite me in?”

Lizzie’s conversation had been interspersed with laughs and antics. I saw Harriet look at her keenly. “Was it a public-house you took shelter in, Lizzie?” she asked.

“As if it could have been a private one! That’s good.”

“Is your husband with you at Brighton? I suppose you aremarried, Lizzie?”

“As safe as that you are an old maid—or going on for one. My husband’s a doctor and can’t leave his patients. I came down with a friend of mine, Miss Panken; she has to go back to-night, but I mean to stay over Christmas-Day. I’ll tell you all about my husband if you’ll be civil enough to take me indoors.”

“I can’t take you in to-night, Lizzie. It’s too late, for one thing, and we must not have visitors on a Sunday. But you can come over to tea to-morrow evening; I’m sure my lady won’t object. Come early in the afternoon. And look here,” added Harriet, dropping her voice, “don’t drink anything beforehand; come quiet and decent.”

“Who has been telling you that I do drink?” demanded Lizzie, in a sharp tone.

“Well, nobody has told me. But I can see it. I hope it’s not a practice with you; that’s all.”

“A practice! There you go! It wouldn’t be you, Harriet, if you didn’t say something unpleasant. One must take a sup of hot liquor when benighted in such freezing snow as this.And I did not put on my warm cloak; it was fine and bright when I started.”

“Shall I lend you one? I’ll get it in a minute. Or a waterproof?”

“Thanks all the same, no; I shall walk fast, I don’t feel cold—and I should only have the trouble of bringing it back to-morrow afternoon. I’ll be here by three o’clock. Good-night, Harriet.”

“Good-night, Lizzie. Go round to that path that branches off from our front-gate; keep straight on, and you can’t miss the way.”

I had heard it all; every syllable; unable to help it. The least rustle of the laurels might have betrayed me. Betrayed me to Lizzie.

What a calamity! She did not appear to have come down after Roger, did not appear to know that he was connected with Lady Bevere—or that the names were the same. But at the tea-table the following evening she would inevitably learn all. Servants talk of their masters and their doings. And to hear Roger’s name would be ruin.

I found Roger in his chamber. “Uncle Brandon was putting inconvenient questions to me,” he said, “so I got away under pretence of looking at the weather. How cold you look, Johnny!”

“I am cold. I went into the garden, looking for you, and I had a fright there.”

“Seen a ghost?” returned he, lightly.

“Something worse than a ghost. Roger, I have some disagreeable news for you.”

“Eh?—what?” he cried, his fears leaping up: indeed they were very seldom down. “They don’t suspect anything, do they? What is it? Why do you beat about the bush?”

“I should like to prepare you. If——”

“Prepare me!” sharply interrupted Roger, his nerves all awry. “Do you think I am a girl? Don’t I live always in too much mental excruciation to need preparation for any mortal ill?”

“Well, Lizzie’s down here.”

In spite of his boast, he turned as white as the counterpane on his bed. I sat down and told him all. His hair grew damp as he listened, his face took the hue of despair.

“Heaven help me!” he gasped.

“I suppose you did not know Harriet was her sister?”

“How was I to know it? Be you very sure Lizzie would not voluntarily proclaim to me that she had a sister in service. What wretched luck! Oh, Johnny, what is to be done?”

“Nothing—that I see. It will be sure to come out over their tea to-morrow. Harriet will say ‘Mr. Roger’s down here on a visit, and has brought Mr. Johnny Ludlow with him’—just as a little item of gossip. And then—why, then, Lizzie will make but one step of it into the family circle, and say ‘Roger is my husband.’ It is of no use to mince the matter, Bevere,” I added, in answer to a groan of pain; “better look the worst in the face.”

The worst was a very hopeless worst. Even if we could find out where she was staying in Brighton, and he or I went to her to try to stop her coming, it would not avail; she would come all the more.

“You don’t know her depth,” groaned Roger. “She’d put two and two together, and jump to the right conclusion—that it is my home. No, there’s nothing that can be done, nothing; events must take their course. Johnny,” he passionately added,“I’d rather die than face the shame.”

Lady Bevere’s voice on the stairs interrupted him. “Roger! Johnny! Why don’t you come down? Supper’s waiting.”

“I can’t go down,” he whispered.

“You must, Roger. If not, they’ll ask the reason why.”

A fine state of mental turbulence we were in all day on Monday. Roger dared not stir abroad lest he should meet her and have to bring her home clinging to his coat-tails. Not that much going abroad was practicable, save in the beaten paths. Snow had fallen heavily all night long. But the sky to-day was blue and bright.

With the afternoon began the watching and listening. I wonder whether the reader can picture our mental state? Roger had made a resolve that as soon as Lizzie’s foot crossed the threshold, he would disclose all to his mother, forestalling her tale. Indeed, he could do nothing less. Says Lord Byron, “Whatever sky’s above me, here’s a heart for every fate.” I fear we could not then have said the same.

Three o’clock struck. Roger grew pale to the lips as heheard it. I am not sure but I did. Four o’clock struck; and yet she did not come. The suspense, the agony of those few afternoon hours brought enough pain for a lifetime.

At dusk, when she could not have known me at a distance, I went out to reconnoitre, glad to go somewhere or do something, and prowled about under shelter of the dark shrubs, watching the road. She was not in sight anywhere; coming from any part; though I stayed there till I was blue with cold.

“Not in a state to come, I expect,” gasped Roger, when I got in, and reported that I could see nothing of her, and found him still sitting over the dining-room fire.

He gave a start as the door was flung open. It was only Harriet, with the tea-tray and candles. We had dined early. George, the clergyman, was expected in the evening, and Lady Bevere thought it would be more sociable if we all took supper with him. Tottams followed the tea-tray, skipping and singing.

“I wish it was Christmas-Eve every day!” cried the child.“Cook’s making such a lot of mince pies and cakes in the kitchen.”

“Why, dear me, somebody has been drawing the curtains without having shut the shutters first!” exclaimed Harriet, hastening to remedy the mistake.

I could have told her it was Roger. As the daylight faded and the fire brightened, he had shut out the window, lest dreaded eyes should peer through it and see him.

“Your sister’s not come yet, Harriet!” said Tottams. For the advent of Harriet’s expected visitor was known in the household.

“No, Miss Tottams, she is not,” replied Harriet, “I can’t think why, unless she was afraid of the snow underfoot.”

“There’s no snow to hurt along the paths,” contended Tottams.

“Perhaps she’d not know that,” said Harriet. “But she may come yet; it is only five o’clock—and it’s a beautiful moon.”

Roger got up to leave the room and met Lady Bevere face to face. She caught sight of the despair on his, for he was off his guard. But off it, or on it, no one could fail to see that he was ill at ease. Some young men might have kept a smooth countenance through it all, for their friends and the world; Roger was sensitive to a degree, refined, thoughtful, and could not hide the signs of conflict.

“What is it that is amiss with him, Johnny?” Lady Bevere said, coming to me as I stood on the hearthrug before the fire, Tottams having disappeared with Harriet. “He looks wretchedly ill; ill with care, as it seems to me; and he cannot eat.”

What could I answer? How was it possible, with those kind, candid blue eyes, so like Roger’s, looking confidingly into mine, to tell her that nothing was amiss?

“Dear Lady Bevere, do not be troubled,” I said at length.“A little matter has been lately annoying Roger in London, and—and—I suppose he cannot forget it down here.”

“Is it money trouble?” she asked.

“Not exactly. No; it’s not money. Perhaps Roger will tell you himself. But please do not say anything to him unless he does.”

“Why cannot you tell me, Johnny?”

Had Madam Lizzie been in the house, rendering discovery inevitable, I would have told her then, and so far spared Roger the pain. But she was not; she might not come; in which case perhaps the disclosure need not be made—or, at any rate, might be staved off to a future time. Lady Bevere held my hands in hers.

“You know what this trouble is, Johnny; all about it?”

“Yes, that’s true. But I cannot tell it you. I have no right to.”

“I suppose you are right,” she sighed. “But oh, my dear, you young people cannot know what such griefs are to a mother’s heart; the dread they inflict, the cruel suspense they involve.”

And the evening passed on to its close, and Lizzie had not come.

A little circumstance occurred that night, not much to relate, but not pleasant in itself. George, a good-looking young clergyman, got in very late and half-frozen—close upon eleven o’clock. He would not have supper brought back, but said he should be glad of some hot brandy-and-water. The water was brought in and put with the brandy on a side-table. George mixed a glass for himself, and Roger went and mixed one. By-and-bye, when Roger had disposed of that, he went back to mix a second. Mr. Brandon glided up behind him.

“No, Roger, not in your mother’s house,” he whispered,interposing a hand of authority between Roger and the brandy.“Though you may drink to an unseemly extent in town, you shall not here.”

“Roger got some brandy-and-water from mamma this afternoon,”volunteered Miss Tottams, dancing up to them. She had been allowed to sit up to help dress the rooms; and, of all little pitchers, she had the sharpest ears. “He said he felt sick, Uncle John.”

They came back to the fire and sat down again, Roger looking in truth sick; sick almost unto death.

Mr. Brandon went up to bed; Lady Bevere soon followed, and we began the rooms, Harriet and Jacob coming in to help. Roger exclaimed at the splendid heaps of holly. Of late years he had seen only the poor scraps they get in London.

“A merry Christmas to you, Roger!”

“Don’t, Johnny! Better that you should wish me dead.”

The bright sun was shining into his room as I entered it on this Christmas morning: Roger stood brushing his hair at the glass. He looked very ill.

“How can I look otherwise?” retorted poor Roger. “Two nights and not a wink of sleep!—nothing but fever and apprehension and intolerable restlessness. And you come wishing me a merry Christmas!”

Well, of course it did sound like a mockery. “I will wish you a happier one for next year, then, Roger. Things may be brighter then.”

“How can they be?—with that dreadful weight that I must carry about with me for life? Do you see this?”—sweeping his hand round towards the window.

I saw nothing but the blessed sunlight—and said so.

“That’s it,” he answered: “that blessed sunlight will bring her here betimes. With a good blinding snowfall, or a pelting downpour of cats and dogs, I might have hoped for a respite. What a Christmas offering for my mother! I say!—don’t go away for a minute—did you hear Uncle John last night about the brandy?”

I nodded.

“It is not that I like drink, or care for it for drinking’s sake; I declare it to you, Johnny Ludlow; but I take it, and must take it, to drown care. With that extra glass last night, I mighthave got to sleep—I don’t know. Were my mind at ease, I should be as sober as you are.”

“But don’t you see, Roger, that unless you pull up now, while you can, you may not be able to do it later.”

“Oh yes, I see it all,” he carelessly said. “Well, it no longer matters much what becomes of me. There’s the breakfast-bell. You can go on, Johnny.”

The rooms looked like green bowers, for we had not spared either our pains or the holly-branches, and it would have been as happy a Christmas-Day as it was a bright one, but for the sword that was hanging over Roger Bevere’s head. Neither he nor I could enjoy it. He declined to go to church with us, saying he felt ill: the truth being that he feared to meet Lizzie. Not to attend divine service on Christmas-Day was regarded by Mr. Brandon as one of the cardinal sins. To my surprise he did not remonstrate with Roger in words: but he looked the more.

Lady Bevere’s dinner hour on Christmas-Day was four o’clock, which gave a good long evening. Roger ate some turkey and some plum-pudding, mechanically; his ears were listening for the dreaded sound of the door-bell. We were about half-way through dinner, when there came a peal that shook the house. Lady Bevere started in her chair. I fancy Roger went nearly out of his.

“Why, who can be coming here now—with such a ring as that?” she exclaimed.

“Perhaps it is Harriet’s sister!” cried the little girl, in her sharp, quick way. “Do you think it is, Harriet?”

“She’s free enough for it,” returned Harriet, in a vexed tone.“I told her she might come yesterday, Miss Tottams, my lady permitting it, but I did not tell her she might come to-day.”

I glanced at Roger. His knife and fork shook in his hands; his face wore the hue of the grave. I was little less agitated than he.

Another respite. It was only a parcel from the railway-station, which had been delayed in the delivery. And the dinner went on.

And the evening went on too, as the past one went on—undisturbed. Later, when some of us were playing at snap-dragon in the little breakfast-room, Harriet came in to march Miss Tottams off to bed.

“Your sister did not come after all, did she, Harriet?” said Mary.

“No, Miss Mary. She’s gone back to London,” continued Harriet, after a pause. “Not enough life for her, I dare say, down here.”

Roger glanced round. He did not dare ask whether Harriet knew she was gone back, or only supposed it.

Mary laughed. “Fond of life, is she?”

“She always was, Miss Mary. She is married to a gentleman. At least, that is her account of him: he is a medical man, she says. But it may be he is only a medical man’s assistant.”

“Did she go back yesterday, or to-day?” I inquired, carelessly.“She would have a cold journey.”

“Yesterday, if she’s gone at all, sir,” replied Harriet: “she’d hardly travel on Christmas-Day. If not, she’ll be here to-morrow.”

Roger groaned—and turned it off with a desperate cough, as though the raisins burnt his throat.

The next day came, Wednesday, again clear, cold, and bright. At breakfast George and Mary agreed to walk to Brighton.“You will come too,” said George, looking at us.

I said nothing. Roger shook his head. Of all places in the known world he’d not have ventured into Brighton, and run the risk of meeting her, perambulating its streets.

“No!—why, it will be a glorious walk,” remonstrated George.

“Don’t care for it this morning,” shortly answered Roger.“I’m sure Johnny doesn’t.”

Mr. Brandon came, if I may so put it, to the rescue. “I shall take a walk myself, and you two may go with me,” said he to us. “I should like to see what the country looks like yonder”—pointing to the unknown regions beyond the little church. And as this was just in the opposite direction to Brighton, Roger made no objection, and we set off soon after breakfast. The sky overhead was blue and clear, the snow on the ground dazzlingly white.

The regions beyond the church were the same as these: a long-stretched-out moor of flat dreariness. Mr. Brandon walked on. “We shall come to something or other in time,” said he. Walking with him meant walking when he was in the mood for it.

A mile or two onwards, more or less, a small settlement loomed into view, with a pound and a set of rusty stocks, and an old-fashioned inn, its swinging sign, The Rising Sun, as splendid as that other sign nearer Prior’s Glebe: and it really appeared to us as if all the inhabitants had turned out to congregate round the inn-door.

“What’s to do, I wonder?” cried Mr. Brandon: “seems to be some excitement going on.” When near enough he inquired whether anything was amiss, and the whole throng answered together.

A woman had been found that morning frozen to death in the snow, and had been carried into The Rising Sun. A young woman wearing smart clothes, added a labourer, as the rest of the voices died away: got benighted, perhaps, poor thing, and lost her way, and so lay down to die; seemed to have been dead quite a day or two, if not more. The missis at The Sheaf o’Corn yonder had been over, and recognized her as having called in there on Sunday night and had some drink.

Why, as the man spoke, should the dread thought have flashed into my mind—was it Lizzie? Why should it have flashed simultaneously into Roger’s? Had Lizzie lost her way that past Sunday night—and sunk down into some sheltered nook to rest awhile, and so sleep and then death overtook her? Roger glanced at me with frightened eyes, a dawn of horror rising to his countenance.

“I will just step in and take a look at her,” I said, and bore on steadily for the door of the inn, deaf for once to Mr. Brandon’s authoritative call. What did I want looking at dead women, he asked: was the sight so pleasant? No, it was not pleasant, I could have answered him, and I’d rather have gone a mile away from it; but I went in for Roger’s sake.

The innkeeper—an elderly man, with a bald head and red nose—came forward, grumbling that for the past hour or two it had been sharp work to keep out the crowd, all agape to see the woman. I asked him to let me see her, assuring him it was not out of idle curiosity that I wished it. Believing me, he acquiesced at once; civilly remarking, as he led the way through the house, that he had sent for the police, and expected them every minute.

On the long table of a bleak-looking outer kitchen, probably used only in summer, lay the dead. I took my look at her.

Yes, it was Lizzie. Looking as peaceful as though she had only just gone to sleep. Poor thing!

“Do you recognize her, sir? Did you think you might?”

I shook my head in answer. It would not have done to acknowledge it. Thanking him, I went out to Roger. Mr. Brandon fired off a tirade of reproaches at me, and said he was glad to see I had turned white.

“Yes,” I emphatically whispered to Roger in the midst of it.“Go you in, and satisfy yourself.”

Roger disappeared inside the inn. Mr. Brandon was so indignant at the pair of us, that he set off at a sharp pace for home again, I with him, Roger presently catching us up. Twice during the walk, Roger was taken with a shivering-fit, as though sickening for the ague. Mr. Brandon held his tongue then, and recommended him, when we got in, to put himself between some hot blankets.

In the dead woman’s pocket was found Harriet Field’s address; and a policeman presented himself at Prior’s Glebe with the news of the calamity and to ask what Harriet knew of her. Away went Harriet to The Rising Sun, and recognized the dead. It was her sister, she said; she had called to see her on Sunday night, having walked over from Brighton, and must have lost her way on the waste land in returning. What name, was the next question put; and, after a moment’s hesitation, Harriet answered “Elizabeth Field.” Not feeling altogether sure of the marriage, she said nothing about it.

Will you accuse Roger Bevere of cowardice for holding aloof; for keeping silence? Then you must accuse me for sanctioning it. He could not bring himself to avow all the past shame to his mother. And what end would it answer now if he did?—what good effect to his poor, wretched, foolish wife? None.

“Johnny,” he said to me, with a grasp of his fevered hand,“is it wrong to feel as if a great mercy had been vouchsafed me?—is it wicked? Heaven knows, I pity her fate; I would have saved her from it if I could. Just as I’d have kept her from her evil ways, and tried to be a good husband to her—but she would not let me.”

They held an inquest upon her next day: or, as the local phraseology of the place put it, “Sat upon the body of Elizabeth Field.” The landlady of The Sheaf o’ Corn was an important witness.

She testified that the young woman came knocking at the closed door of the inn on the Sunday evening during church time, saying she had lost her way. Nobody was at home but herself and the servant-girl, her husband having gone to church. They let her in. She called for a good drop of drink—brandy-and-water—while sitting there, and was allowed to have it, though it was out of serving hours, as she declared she was perishing with cold. Before eight o’clock, she left, and was away about half-an-hour. Then she came back again, had more to drink, and bought a pint bottle of brandy, to carry, as she told them, home to her lodgings, and she got the girl to draw the cork, saying her rooms did not possess a corkscrew. She took the bottle away with her. Was she tipsy? interposed the coroner at this juncture. Not very, the witness replied, not so tipsy but that she could walk and talk, but she had had quite enough. She went away, and they saw her no more.

Harriet’s evidence, next given, did not amount to much. The deceased, her younger sister, had lived for some years in London, but she did not know at what address latterly; she used to serve at a refreshment-bar, but had left it. Until the past Sunday night, when Lizzie called unexpectedly at Prior’s Glebe, they had not met for five or six years: it was then arranged that Lizzie should come to drink tea with her the next afternoon: but she never came. Felt convinced that the death was pure accident, through her having lost her way in the snow.

With this opinion the room agreed. Instead of taking the direct path to Brighton, as Harriet had enjoined, she must have turned back to The Sheaf o’ Corn for more drink. And that she had wandered in a wrong direction, upon quitting it, across the waste land, there could not be any doubt; or that she had sat down, or fallen down, possibly from fatigue, in the drift where she was found. The brandy bottle lay near her, empty. Whether she died of the brandy, or of the exposure to the cold night, might be a question. The jury decided that it was the latter.

And nothing whatever had come out touching Roger.

Harriet had already given orders for a decent funeral, in the neighbouring graveyard. It took place on the afternoon of the following day, Friday. By a curious little coincidence, George Bevere was asked to take the service, the incumbent being ill with a cold. It afforded a pretext for Roger’s attending. Heand I walked quietly up in the wake of George, and stood at the grave together. Harriet thanked us for it afterwards: she looked upon it as a compliment paid to herself.

“Scott shall forward to her every expense she has been put to as soon as I am back in London,” said Roger to me. “He will know how to manage it.”

“Shall you tell Mrs. Dyke?”

“To be sure I shall. She is a trustworthy, good woman.”

Our time at Prior’s Glebe was up, and we took our departure from it on the Saturday morning; another day of intense cold, of dark blue skies, and of bright sunshine. George left with us.

“My dear, you will try—you will try to keep straight, won’t you; to be what you ought to be,” whispered Lady Bevere in the bustle of starting, as she clasped Roger’s hands in the hall, tears falling from her eyes: all just as it was that other time in Gibraltar Terrace. “For my sake, dear; for my sake.”

“I shall do now, mother,” he whispered back, meeting her gaze through his wet eyelashes, his manner strangely solemn.“God has been very good to me, and I—I will try from henceforth to do my best in all ways.”

And Roger kept his word.

KETIRA THE GIPSY.

I

“I tell you what it is, Abel. You think of everybody else before yourself. The Squire says there’s no sense in it.”

“No sense in what, Master Johnny?”

“Why, in supplying those ill-doing Standishes with your substance. Herbs, and honey, and medicine—they are always getting something or other out of you.”

“But they generally need it, sir.”

“Well, they don’t deserve it, you know. The Squire went into a temper to-day, saying the vagabonds ought to be left to starve if they did not choose to work, instead of being helped by the public.”

Our hen-roosts had been robbed, and it was pretty certain that one or other of the Standish brothers was the thief. Perhaps all three had a hand in it. Chancing to pass Abel Carew’s garden, where he was at work, I turned in to tell him of the raid; and stayed, talking. It was pleasant to sit on the bench outside the cottage-window, and watch him tend his roots and flowers. The air was redolent of perfume; the bees were humming as they sailed in the summer sunshine from herb to herb, flower to flower; the dark blue sky was unclouded.

“Just look at those queer-looking people, Abel! They must be gipsies.”

Abel let his hands rest on his rake, and lifted his eyes to the common. Crossing it, came two women, one elderly, one very young—a girl, in fact. Their red cloaks shone in the sun; very coarse and sunburnt straw hats were tied down with red kerchiefs. That they belonged to the gipsy fraternity was apparent at the first glance. Pale olive complexions, the elder one’s almost yellow, were lighted up with black eyes of wonderful brilliancy. The young girl was strikingly beautiful; her features clearly cutand delicate, as though carved from marble, her smooth and abundant hair of a purple black. The other’s hair was purple black also, and had not a grey thread in it.

“They must be coming to tell our fortunes, Abel,” I said jestingly. For the two women seemed to be making direct for the gate.

No answer from Abel, and I turned to look at him. He was gazing at the coming figures with the most intense gaze, a curious expression of inquiring doubt on his face. The rake fell from his hand.

“My search is ended,” spoke the woman, halting at the gate, her glittering black eyes scanning him intently. “You are Abel Carew.”

“Is it Ketira?” he asked, the words dropping from him in slow hesitation, as he took a step forward.

“Am I so much changed that you need doubt it for a moment?” she returned: and her tone and accent fell soft and liquid; her diction was of the purest, with just the slightest foreign ring in it. “Forty years have rolled on since you and I met, Abel Carew; but I come of a race whose faces do not change. As we are in youth, so we are in age—save for the inevitable traces left by time.”

“And this?” questioned Abel, as he looked at the girl and drew back his gate.

“She is Ketira also; my youngest and dearest. The youngest of sixteen children, Abel Carew; and every one of them, save herself, lying under the sod.”

“What—dead?” he exclaimed. “Sixteen!”

“Fifteen are dead, and are resting in peace in different lands: ten of them died in infancy ere I had well taken my first look at their little faces. She is the sixteenth. See you the likeness?”added the gipsy, pointing to the girl’s face; as she stood, modest and silent, a conscious colour tingeing her olive cheeks, and glancing up now and again through her long black eyelashes at Abel Carew.

“Likeness to you, Ketira?”

“Not to me: though there exists enough of it between us to betray that we are mother and daughter. To him—her father.”

And, while Abel was looking at the girl, I looked. And in that moment it struck me that her face bore a remarkable likeness to his own. The features were of the same high-bred cast, pure and refined; you might have said they were made in the same mould.

“I see; yes,” said Abel.

“He has been gone, too, this many a year; as you, perhaps, may know, Abel; and is with the rest, waiting for us in the spirit-land. Kettie does not remember him, it is so long ago. There are only she and I left to go now. Kettie——”

She suddenly changed her language to one I did not understand. Neither, as was easy to be seen, did Abel Carew. Whether it was Hebrew, or Egyptian, or any other rare tongue, I knew not; but I had never in my life heard its sounds before.

“I am telling Kettie that in you she may see what her father was—for the likeness in your face and his, allowing for the difference of age, is great.”

“Does Kettie not speak English?” inquired Abel.

“Oh yes, I speak it,” answered the girl, slightly smiling, and her tones were soft and perfect as those of her mother.

“And where have you been since his death, Ketira? Stationary in Ai——”

He dropped his voice to a whisper at the last word, and I did not catch it. I suppose he did not intend me to.

“Not stationary for long anywhere,” she answered, passing into the cottage with a majestic step. I lifted my hat to the women—who, for all their gipsy dress and origin, seemed to command consideration—and made off.

The arrival of these curious people caused some commotion at Church Dykely. It was so rare we had any event to enliven us. They took up their abode in a lonely cottage no better than a hut (one room up and one down) that stood within that lively place, the wilderness on the outskirts of Chanasse Grange; and there they stayed. How they got a living nobody knew: some thought the gipsy must have an income, others that Abel helped them.

“She was very handsome in her youth,” he said to me one day, as if he wished to give some explanation of the arrival I had chanced to witness. “Handsomer and finer by far than her daughter is; and one who was very near of kin to me married her—would marry her. She was a born gipsy, of what is called a high-caste tribe.”

That was all he said. For Abel’s sake, who was so respected,Church Dykely felt inclined to give respect to the women. But, when it was discovered that Ketira would tell the fortune of any one who cared to go surreptitiously to her lonely hut, the respect cooled down. “Ketira the gipsy,” she was universally called: nobody knew her by any other name. The fortune-telling came to the ears of Abel, arousing his indignation. He went to Ketira in distress, begging of her to cease such practices—but she waved him majestically out of the hut, and bade him mind his own business. Occasionally the mother and daughter shut up their dwelling and disappeared for weeks together. It was assumed they went to attend fairs and races, camping out with the gipsy fraternity. Kettie at all times and seasons was modest and good; never was an unmaidenly look seen from her, or a bold word heard. In appearance and manner and diction she might have been a born lady, and a high-bred one. Graceful and innocent was Kettie; but heedless and giddy, as girls are apt to be.

“Look there, Johnny!”

We were at Worcester races, walking about on the course. I turned at Tod’s words, and saw Ketira the gipsy, her red cloak gleaming in the sun, just as it had gleamed that day, a year before, on Dykely Common. For the past month she had been away, and her cottage shut up.

She stood at the open door of a carriage, reading the hand of the lady inside it. A notable object was Ketira on the course, with her quaint attire, her majestic figure, her fine olive-dark features, and the fire of her brilliant eyes. What good or ill luck she was promising, I know not; but I saw the lady turn pale and snatch her hand away. “You cannot know what you tell me,” she cried in a haughty tone, sharp enough and loud enough to be heard.

“Wait and see,” rejoined Ketira, turning away.

“So you have come here to see the fun, Ketira,” I said to her, as she was brushing by me. During the past year I had seen more of her than many people had, and we had grown familiar; for she, as she once expressed it, “took” to me.

“The fun and the business; the pleasure and the wickedness,”she answered, with a sweep of the hand round the course.“There’s plenty of it abroad.”

“Is Kettie not here?” I asked: and the question made hereyes glare. Though, why, I was at a loss to know, seeing that a race-ground is the legitimate resort of gipsies.

“Kettie! Do you suppose I bring Kettie to these scenes—to be gazed at by this ribald mass?”

“Well, it is a rabble, and a good one,” I answered, looking at the crowd.

“Nay, boy,” said she, following my glance, “it’s not the rabble Kettie need fear, as you count rabble; it’s their betters”—swaying her arms towards the carriages, and the dandies, their owners or guests; some of whom were balancing themselves on the steps to talk to the pretty girls within, and some were strolling about the enclosed paddock, forbidden ground but to the “upper few.” “Ketira is too fair to be shown to them.”

“They would not eat her, Ketira.”

“No, they would not eat her,” she replied in a dreamy tone, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

“And I don’t see any other harm they could do her, guarded by you.”

“Boy,” she said, dropping her voice to an impressive whisper, and lightly touching my arm with her yellow hand, “I have read Kettie’s fate in the stars, and I see that there is some great and grievous peril approaching her. It may be averted; there’s just a chance that it may: meanwhile I am encompassing her about with care, guarding her as the apple of my eye.”

“And if it should not be averted?” I asked in the moment’s impulse, carried away by the woman’s impressive earnestness.

“Then woe be to those who bring the evil upon her!”

“And of what nature is the evil?”

“I know not,” she replied, her eyes taking again their dreamy, far-off look. “Woe is me!—for I know it not.”

“How do you do, Ludlow? Not here alone, are you?”

A good-looking young fellow, Hyde Stockhausen, had reined in his horse to ask the question: giving at the same time a keen glance to the gipsy woman and then a half-smile at me, as if he suspected I was having my fortune told.

“The rest are on the course somewhere. The Squire is driving old Jacobson about.”

As Hyde nodded and rode on, I chanced to see Ketira’s face. It was stretched out after him with the most eager gaze on it, a defiant look in her black eyes. I thought Stockhausen must have offended her.

“Do you know him?” I asked involuntarily.

“I never saw him before; but I don’t like him,” she answered, showing her white and gleaming teeth. “Who is he?”

“His name is Stockhausen.”

“I don’t like him,” she repeated in a muttering tone. “He is an enemy. I don’t like his look.”

Considering that he was a well-looking man, with a pleasant face and gay blue eyes, a face that no reasonable spirit could take umbrage at, I wondered to hear her say this.

“You must have a peculiar taste in looks, Ketira, to dislike his.”

“You don’t understand,” she said abruptly: and, turning away, disappeared in the throng.

Only once more did I catch sight of Ketira that day. It was at the lower end of Pitchcroft, near the show. She was standing in front of a booth, staring at a group of horsemen who seemed to have met and halted there, one of whom was young Stockhausen. Again the notion crossed me that he must in some way have affronted her. It was on him her eyes were fixed: and in them lay the same curious, defiant expression of antagonism, mingled with fear.

Hyde Stockhausen was the step-son of old Massock of South Crabb. The Stockhausens had a name in Worcestershire for dying off, as I have told the reader before. Hyde’s father had proved no exception. After his death the widow married Massock the brickmaker, putting up with the man’s vulgarity for the sake of his riches. It took people by surprise: for she had been a lady always, as Miss Hyde and as Mrs. Stockhausen; one might have thought she would rather have put up with a clown from Pershore fair than with Massock the illiterate. Hyde Stockhausen was well educated: his uncle, Tom Hyde the parson, had taken care of that. At twenty-one he came into some money, and at once began to do his best to spend it. He was to have been a parson, but could not get through at Oxford, and gave up trying for it. His uncle quarrelled with him then: he knew Hyde had not tried to pass, and that he openly said nobody should make a parson of him. After the quarrel, Hyde went off to see what the Continent was like. He stayed so long that the world at home thought he was lost. For the past ten or eleven months he had been back at his mother’s at South Crabb, knocking about, as Massock phrased it to the Squire oneday. Hyde said he was “looking-out” for something to do: but he was quite easy as to the future, feeling sure his old uncle would leave him well off. Parson Hyde had never married; and had plenty of money to bequeath to somebody. As to Hyde’s own money, that had nearly come to an end.

Naturally old Massock (an ill-conditioned kind of man) grew impatient over this state of things, reproaching Hyde with his idle habits, which were a bad example for his own sons. And only just before this very day that we were on Worcester racecourse, rumours reached Church Dykely that Stockhausen was coming over to settle there and superintend certain fields of brick-making, which Massock had recently purchased and commenced working. As if Massock could not have kept himself and his bricks at South Crabb! But it was hardly likely that Hyde, really a gentleman, would take to brick-making.

We did not know much of him. His connection with Massock had kept people aloof. Many who would have been glad enough to make friends with Hyde would not do it as long as he had his home at Massock’s. His mother’s strange and fatal marriage with the man (fatal as regarded her place in society) told upon Hyde, and there’s no doubt he must have felt the smart.

The rumour proved to be correct. Hyde Stockhausen took up his abode at Church Dykely, as overseer, or clerk, or manager—whatever might be the right term for it—of the men employed in his step-father’s brick operations. The pretty little house, called Virginia Cottage, owned by Henry Rimmer, which had the Virginia creeper trailing up its red walls, and flowers clustering in its productive garden, was furnished for him; and Hyde installed himself in it as thoroughly and completely as though he had entered on brick-making for life. Some people laughed.“But it’s only while I am turning myself round,” he said, one day, to the Squire.

Hyde soon got acquainted with Church Dykely, and would drop into people’s houses of an evening, laughing over his occupation, and saying he should be able to make bricks himself in time. His chief work seemed to be in standing about the brick-yard watching the men, and in writing and book-keeping at home. Old Massock made his appearance once a month, when accounts and such-like items were gone over between them.

When it was that Hyde first got on speaking terms withKettie, or where, or how, I cannot tell. So far as I know, nobody could tell. It was late in the autumn when Ketira and her daughter came back to their hut; and by the following early spring some of us had grown accustomed to seeing Hyde and Kettie together in an evening, snatching a short whisper or a five-minutes’ walk. In March, I think it was, she and Ketira went away again, and returned in May.

The twenty-ninth of May was at that time kept as a holiday in Worcestershire, though it has dropped out of use as such in late years. In Worcester itself there was a grand procession, which country people went in to see, and a special service in the cathedral. We had service also at Church Dykely, and the villagers adorned their front-doors with immense oak boughs, sprays of which we young ones wore in our jackets, the oak-balls and leaves gilded. I remember one year that the big bough (almost a tree) which Henry Rimmer had hoisted over his sign, the “Silver Bear,” came to grief. Whether Rimmer had not secured it as firmly as usual, or that the cords were rotten, down came the huge bough with a crash on old Mr. Stirling’s head, who chanced to be coming out of the inn. He went on at Rimmer finely, vowing his neck was broken, and that Rimmer ought to be hung up there himself.

On this twenty-ninth of May I met Kettie. It was on the common, near Abel Carew’s. Kettie had caught up the fashion of the place, and wore a little spray of oak peeping out from between the folds of her red cloak. And I may as well say that neither she nor her mother ever went out without the cloak. In cold and heat, in rain and sunshine, the red cloak was worn out-of-doors.

“Are you making holiday to-day, Kettie?”

“Not more than usual; all days are the same to us,” she answered, in her sweet, soft voice, and with the slightly foreign accent that attended the speech of both. But Kettie had it more strongly than her mother.

“You have not gilded your oak-ball.”

Kettie glanced down at the one ball, nestling amid its green leaves. “I had no gilding to put on it, Mr. Johnny.”

“No! I have some in my pocket. Let me gild it for you.”

Her teeth shone like pearls as she smiled and held out the spray. How beautiful she was! with those delicate features and the large dark eyes!—eyes that were softer than Ketira’s. Taking the little paper book from my pocket, and some of the gilt leaf from between its tissue leaves, I wetted the oak-ball and gilded it. Kettie watched intently.

“Where did you get it all from?” she asked, meaning the gilt leaf.

“I bought it at Hewitt’s. Don’t you know the shop? A stationer’s; next door to Pettipher the druggist’s. Hewitt does no end of a trade in these leaves on the twenty-ninth of May.”

“Did you buy it to gild oak-balls for yourself, sir?”

“For the young ones at home: Hugh and Lena. There it is, Kettie.”

Had it been a ball of solid gold that I put into her hand, instead of a gilded oak-ball, Kettie could not have shown more intense delight. Her cheeks flushed; the wonderful brilliancy that joy brought to her eyes caused my own eyes to turn away. For her eighteen years she was childish in some things; very much so, considering the experience that her wandering life must (as one would suppose) have brought her. In replacing the spray within her cloak, Kettie dropped something out of her hand—apparently a small box folded in paper. I picked it up.

“Is it a fairing, Kettie? But this is not fair time.”

“It is—I forget the name,” she replied, looking at me and hesitating. “My mother is ill; the pains are in her shoulder again; and my uncle Abel has given me this to rub upon it, the same that did her good before. I cannot just call the name to mind in the English tongue.”

“Say it in your own.”

She spoke a very outlandish word, laughed, and turned red again. Certainly there never lived a more modest girl than Kettie.

“Is it liniment?—ointment?”

“Yes, it is that, the last,” she said: “Abel calls it so. I thank you for what you have done for me, sir. Good-day.”

To show so much gratitude for that foolish bit of gilt leaf on her oak-ball! It illumined every line of her face. I liked Kettie: liked her for her innocent simplicity. Had she not been a gipsy, many a gentleman might have been proud to make her his wife.

Close upon that, it was known that Ketira was laid up with rheumatism. The weather came in hot, and the days went on: and Kettie and Hyde were now and then seen together.

One evening, on leaving Mrs. Scott’s, where we had been to arrange with Sam to go fishing with us on the morrow, Tod said he would invite Hyde Stockhausen to be of the party; so we took Virginia Cottage on our road home, and asked for Hyde.

“Not at home!” retorted Tod, resenting the old woman’s answer, as though it had been a personal affront. “Where is he?”

“Master Hyde has only just stepped out, sir; twenty minutes ago, or so,” said she, pleadingly excusing the fact. Which was but natural: she had been Hyde’s nurse when he was a child; and had now come here to do for him. “I dare say, sir, he be only walking about a bit, to get the fresh air.”

Tod whistled some bars of a tune thoughtfully. He did not like to be crossed.

“Well, look here, Mrs. Preen,” said he. “Some of us are going to fish in the long pond on Mr. Jacobson’s grounds to-morrow: tell Mr. Hyde that if he would like to join us, I shall be happy to see him. Breakfast, half-past eight o’clock; sharp.”

In turning out beyond the garden, I could not help noticing how pretty and romantic was the scene. A good many trees grew about that part, thick enough almost for a wood in places; and the light and shade, cast by the moon on the grass amidst them, had quite a weird appearance. It was a bright night; the moon high in the sky.

“Is that Hyde?” cried Tod.

Halting for a moment in doubt, he peered out over the field to the distance. Some one was leisurely pacing under the opposite trees. Two people, I thought: but they were completely in the shade.

“I think it is Hyde, Tod. Somebody is with him.”

“Just wait another instant, lad, and they’ll be in that patch of moonlight by the turning.”

But they did not go into that patch of moonlight. Just before they reached it (and the two figures were plain enough now) they turned back again and took the narrow inlet that led to Oxlip Dell. Whoever it was with Hyde had a hooded cloak on. Was it a red one? Tod laughed.

“Oh, by George, here’s fun! He has got Kettie out for a moonlight stroll. Let’s go and ask them how they enjoy it.”

“Hyde might not like us to.”

“There you are again, Johnny, with your queer scruples!Stuff and nonsense! Stockhausen can’t have anything to say to Kettie that all the world may not hear. I want to tell him about to-morrow.”

Tod made off across the grass for the inlet, I after him. Yes, there they were, promenading Oxlip Dell in the flickering light, now in the shade, now in the brightest of the moonbeams; Hyde’s arm hugging her red cloak.

Tod gave a grunt of displeasure. “Stockhausen must be doing it for pastime,” he said; “but he ought not to be so thoughtless. Ketira the gipsy would give the girl a shaking if she knew: she——”

The words came to an abrupt ending. There stood Ketira herself.

She was at the extreme end of the inlet amid the trees, holding on by the trunk of one, round which her head was cautiously pushed to view the promenaders. Comparatively speaking, it was dark just here; but I could see the strangely-wild look in the gipsy’s eyes: the woe-begone expression of her remarkable face.

“It is coming,” she said, apparently in answer to Tod’s remarks, which she could not have failed to hear. “It is coming quickly.”

“What is coming?” I asked.

“The fate in store for her. And it’s worse than death.”

“If you don’t like her to walk out by moonlight, why not keep her in?—not that there can be any harm in it,” interposed Tod. “If you don’t approve of her being friendly with Hyde Stockhausen,” he went on after a pause, for Ketira made no answer, “why don’t you put a stop to it?”

“Because she has her mother’s spirit and her mother’s will”cried Ketira. “And she likes to have her own way: and I fear, woe’s me! that if I forced her to mine, things might become worse than they are even now: that she might take some fatal step.”

“I am going home,” said Tod at this juncture, perhaps fancying the matter was getting complicated: and, of all things, he hated complications. “Good-night, old lady. We heard you were in bed with rheumatism.”

He set off back, up the narrow inlet. I said I’d catch him up: and stayed behind for a last word with Ketira.

“What did you mean by a fatal step?”

“That she might leave me and seek the protection of the Tribe. We have had words about this. Kettie says little, but I see the signs of determination in her silent face. ‘I will not have you meet or speak to that man,’ I said to her this morning—for she was out with him last evening also. She made me no reply: but—you see—how she has obeyed! Her heart’s life has been awakened, and by him. There’s only one object to whom she clings now in all the whole earth; and that is to him. I am nothing.”

“He will not bring any great harm upon her: you need not fear that of Hyde Stockhausen.”

“Did I say he would?” she answered fiercely, her black eyes glaring and gleaming. “But he will bring sorrow on her and rend her heart-strings. A man’s fancies are light as the summer wind, fickle as the ocean waves: but when a woman loves it is for life; sometimes for death.”

Hyde and Kettie had disappeared at the upper end of the dell, taking the way that in a minute or two would bring them out in the open fields. Ketira turned back along the narrow path, and I with her.

“I knew he would bring some ill upon me, that first moment when I saw him on Worcester race-ground,” resumed Ketira in a low tone of pain. “Instinct warned me that he was an enemy. And what ill can be like that of stealing my young child’s heart! Once a girl’s heart is taken—and taken but to be toyed with, to be flung back at will—her day-dreams in this life are over.”

Emerging into the open ground, the first thing we saw was the pair of lovers about to part. They were standing face to face: Hyde held both her hands while speaking his last words, and then bent suddenly down, as if to whisper them. Ketira gave a sharp cry at that, perhaps she fancied he was stealing a kiss, and lifted her right hand menacingly. The girl ran swiftly in the direction of her home—which was not far off—and Hyde strode, not much less quickly, towards his. Ketira stood as still as a stone image, watching him till he disappeared within his gate.

“There’s no harm in it,” I persuasively said, sorry to see her so full of trouble. But she was as one who heard not.

“No harm at all, Ketira. I dare answer for it that a score of lads and lasses are out. Why should we not walk in the moonlightas well as the sunlight? For my part, I should call it a shame to stay indoors on this glorious night.”

“An enemy, an enemy! A grand gentleman, who will leave her to pine her heart away! What kind of man is he, that Hyde Stockhausen?” she continued, turning to me fiercely.

“Kind of man? A pleasant one. I have not heard any ill of him.”

“Rich?”

“No. Perhaps he will be rich some time. He makes bricks, you know, now. That is, he superintends the men.”

“Yes, I know,” she answered: and I don’t suppose there was much connected with Hyde she did not know. Looking this way, looking that, she at length began to walk, slowly and painfully, towards Hyde’s gate. The thought had crossed me—why did she not take Kettie away on one of their long expeditions, if she dreaded him so much. But the rheumatism lay upon her still too heavily.

Flinging open the gate, she went across the garden, not making for the proper entrance, but for a lighted room, whose French-window stood open to the ground. Hyde was there, just sitting down to supper.

“Come in with me,” she said, turning her head round to beckon me on.

But I did not choose to go in. It was no affair of mine that I should beard Hyde in his den. Very astonished indeed must he have been, when she glided in at the window, and stood before him. I saw him rise from his chair; I saw the astounded look of old Deborah Preen when she came in with his supper ale in a jug.

What they said to one another, I know not. I did not wish to listen: though it was only natural I should stay to see the play out. Just as natural as it was for Preen to come stealing round through the kidney beans to the front-garden, an anxious look on her face.

“What does that old gipsy woman want with the young master, Mr. Ludlow? Is he having his fortune told?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Wish some good genius would tell mine!”

The interview seemed to have been short and sharp. Ketira was coming out again. Hyde followed her to the window. Both were talking at once, and the tail of the dispute reached our ears.

“I repeat to you that you are totally mistaken,” Hyde was saying. “I have no ‘designs,’ as you put it, on your daughter, good or bad; no design whatever. She is perfectly free to go her own way, for me. My good woman, you have no cause to adjure me in that solemn manner. Sacred? ‘Under Heaven’s protection?’ Well, so she may be. I hope she is. Why should I wish to hinder it? I don’t wish to, I don’t intend to. You need not glare so.”

Ketira, outside the window now, turned and faced him, her great eyes fixed on him, her hand raised in menace.

“Do not forget that. I have warned you, Hyde Stockhausen. By the Great Power that regulates all things, human and divine, I affirm that I speak the truth. If harm in any shape or of any kind comes to my child, my dear one, my only one, through you, it will cost you more than you would now care to have foretold.”

“Bless my heart!” faintly ejaculated old Preen. And she drew away, and backed for shelter into the bean rows.

Ketira brushed against me as she passed, taking no notice whatever; left the garden, and limped away. Hyde saw me swinging through the gate.

“Are you there, Johnny?” he said, coming forward. “Did you hear that old gipsy woman?” And in a few words I told him all about it.

“Such a fuss for nothing!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure I wish no ill to the girl. Kettie’s very nice; bright as the day: and I thought no more harm of strolling a bit with her in the moonlight than I should think it if she were my sister.”

“But she is not your sister, you see, Hyde. And old Ketira does not like it.”

“I’ll take precious good care to keep Kettie at arm’s-length for the future; make you very sure of that,” he said, in a short, fractious tone. “I don’t care to be blamed for nothing. Tell Todhetley I can’t spare the time to go fishing to-morrow—wish I could. Good-night.”

A fine commotion. Church Dykely up in arms. Kettie had disappeared.

About a fortnight had gone on since the above night, during which period Ketira’s rheumatism took so obstinate a turn that she had the felicity of keeping her bed. And one morning, uponDuffham’s chancing to pay his visit to her before breakfast, for he was passing the hut on his way home from an early patient, he found the gipsy up and dressed, and just as wild as a lioness rampant. Kettie had gone away in the night.

“Where’s she gone to?” naturally asked Duffham, leaning on his cane, and watching the poor woman; who was whirling about like one demented, her rheumatism forgotten.

“Ah, where’s she gone to?—where?” raved old Ketira.“When I lay down last night, leaving her to put the plates away and to follow me up when she had done it, I dropped asleep at once. All night long I never woke; the pain was easier, all but gone, and I had been well-nigh worn out with it. ‘Why, what’s the time, Kettie?’ I said to her in our own tongue, when I opened my eyes and saw the sun was high. She did not answer, and I supposed she had gone down to get the breakfast. I called, and called; in vain. I began to put my clothes on; and then I found that she had not lain down that night; and—woe’s me! she’s gone.”

Duffham could not make anything of it; it was less in his line than rheumatism and broken legs. Being sharp-set for his breakfast, he came away, telling Ketira he would see her again by-and-by.

And, shortly afterwards, he chanced to meet her. Coming out on his round of visits, he encountered Ketira near Virginia Cottage. She had been making a call on Hyde Stockhausen.

“He baffles me,” she said to the doctor: and Duffham thought if ever a woman’s face had the expression “baffled” plainly written on it, Ketira’s had then. “I don’t know what to make of him. His speech is fair: but—there’s the instinct lying in my heart.”

“Why, you don’t suppose, do you, that Mr. Stockhausen has stolen the child?” questioned Duffham, after a good pause of thought.

“And by whom do you suppose the child has been stolen, if not by him?” retorted the gipsy.

“Nay,” said Duffham, “I should say she has not been stolen at all. It is difficult to steal girls of her age, remember. Last night was fine; the stars were bright as silver: perhaps, tempted by it, she went out a-roaming, and you will see her back in the course of the day.”

“I suspect him,” repeated Ketira, her great black eyes flashingtheir anger on Hyde’s cottage. “He acts cleverly; but, I suspect him.”

Drawing her scarlet cloak higher on her shoulders, she bent her steps towards Oxlip Dell. Duffham was turning on his way, when old Abel Crew came up. We called him “Crew,” you know, at Church Dykely.

“Are you looking for Kettie?” questioned Duffham.

“I don’t know where to look for her,” was Abel’s answer.“This morning I was out before sunrise searching for rare herbs: the round I took was an unusually large one, but I did not see anything of the child. Ketira suspects that Mr. Stockhausen must know where she is.”

“And do you suspect he does?”

“It is a question that I cannot answer, even to my own mind,” replied Abel. “That they were sometimes seen talking and walking together, is certain; and, so far, he may be open to suspicion. But, sir, I know nothing else against him, and I cannot think he would wish to hurt her. I am on my way to ask him.”

Interested by this time in the drama, Duffham followed Abel to Virginia Cottage. Hyde Stockhausen was in the little den that he made his counting-house, adding up columns of figures in a ledger, and stared considerably upon being thus pounced upon.

“I wonder what next!” he burst forth, turning crusty before Abel had got out half a sentence. “That confounded old gipsy has just been here with her abuse; and now you have come! She has accused me of I know not what all.”

“Of spiriting away her daughter,” put in Duffham; who was standing back against the shelves.

“But I have not done it,” spluttered Hyde, talking too fast for convenience in his passion. “If I had spirited her away, as you call it, here she would be. Where could I spirit her to?—up into the air, or below the ground?”

“That’s just the question—where is she?” rejoined Duffham, gently swaying his big cane.

“How should I know where she is?” retorted Hyde. “If I had ‘spirited’ her away—I must say I like that word!—here she’d be. Do you suppose I have got her in my house?—or down at the brick-kilns?”

Abel, since his first checked sentence, had been standingquietly and thoughtfully, giving his whole attention to Hyde, as if wanting to see what he was made of. For the second time he essayed to speak.

“You see, sir, we do not know that she is not here. We have your word for it; but——”

“Then you had better look,” interrupted Hyde, adding something about “insolence” under his breath. “Search the house. You are welcome to. Mr. Duffham can show you about it; he knows all its turnings and windings.”

What could have been in old Abel’s thoughts did not appear on the surface; but he left the room with just a word of respectful apology for accepting the offer. Hyde, who had made it at random in his passion, never supposing it would be caught at, threw back his head disdainfully, and sent a contemptuous word after him. But when Duffham moved off in the same direction, he was utterly surprised.

“Are you going to search?”

“I thought you meant me to be his pilot,” said Duffham, as cool as you please. “There’s not much to be seen. I expect, but the chairs and tables.”

Any way, Kettie was not to be seen. The house was but a small one, with no surreptitious closets or cupboards, or other hiding-places. All the rooms and passages stood open to the morning sun, and never a suspicious thing was in them.

Hyde had settled to his accounts again when they got back. He did not condescend to turn his head or notice the offenders any way. Abel waited a moment, and then spoke.

“It may seem to you that I have done a discourteous thing in availing myself of your offer, Mr. Stockhausen; if so, I crave your pardon for it. Sir, you cannot imagine how seriously this disappearance of the child is affecting her mother. Let it plead my excuse.”

“It cannot excuse your suspicion of me,” returned Hyde, pausing for a moment in his adding up.

“In all the ends of this wide earth there lies not elsewhere a shadow of clue to any motive for her departure. At least, none that we can gather. The only ground for thinking of you, sir, is that you and she have been friendly. For all our sakes, Mr. Stockhausen, I trust that she will be found, and the mystery cleared up.”

“Don’t you think you had better have the brick-kilns visited—aswell as my house?” sarcastically asked Hyde. But Abel, making no rejoinder, save a civil good-morning, departed.

“And now I’ll go,” said Duffham.

“The sooner the better,” retorted Hyde, taking a penful of ink and splashing some of it on the floor.

“There’s no cause for you to put yourself out, young man.”

“I think there is cause,” flashed Hyde. “When you can come to my house with such an accusation as this!—and insolently search it!”

“The searching was the result of your own proposal. As to an accusation, none has been made in my hearing. Kettie has mysteriously disappeared, and it is only natural her people should wish to know where she is, and to look for her. You take up the matter in a wrong light, Mr. Hyde.”

“I don’t know anything of Kettie”—in an injured tone; “I don’t want to. It’s rather hard to have her vagaries put upon my back.”

“Well, you have only to tell them you don’t in an honest manner; I dare say they’ll believe you. Abel Carew is one of the most reasonable men I ever knew; sensible, too. Try and find the child yourself; help them to do it, if you can see a clue; make common cause with them.”

“You would not like to be told that you had ‘spirited’ somebody away, more than I like it,” grumbled Hyde; who, thoroughly put out, was hard to bring round. “I’m sure you are as likely to turn kidnapper as I am. It must be a good two weeks since anybody saw me speak to the girl.”

“I shall have my patients thinking I am kidnapped if I don’t get off to them,” cried Duffham. “Mrs. Godfrey’s ill, and she is the very essence of impatience. Good-day.”

Thoroughly at home in the house, Duffham made no ceremony of departing by the back-door, it being more convenient for the road he was going. Deborah Preen was washing endive at the pump in the yard. She turned round to address Duffham as he was passing.

“Has the master spoke to you about his throat, sir?”

“No,” said Duffham, halting. “What is amiss with his throat?”

“He has been given to sore throats all his life, Dr. Duffham. Many’s the time I have had him laid up with them when he wasa child. Yesterday he was quite bad with one, sir; and so he is this morning.”

“Perhaps that’s why he’s cross,” remarked Duffham.

“Cross! and enough to make him cross!” returned she, taking up the implication warmly. “I ask your pard’n, sir, for speaking so to you; but I’d like to know what gentleman could help being cross when that yellow gipsy comes to attack him with her slanderous tongue, and say to him, Have you come across to my hut in the night and stole my daughter out of it?”

“You think your master did not go across and commit the theft?”

“I know he did not,” was Preen’s indignant answer. “He never stirred out of his own home, sir, all last night; he was nursing his throat indoors. At ten o’clock he went to bed, and I took him up a posset after he was in it. Well, sir, I was uneasy, for I don’t like these sore throats, and between two and three o’clock I crept into his room and found him sleeping quietly; and I was in again this morning and woke him up with a cup o’ tea.”

“A pretty good proof that he did not go out,” said Duffham.

“He never was as much as out of his bed, sir. The man that sleeps indoors locked up the house last night, and opened it again this morning. Ketira the gipsy would be in gaol if she got her deservings!”

“I wonder where the rest of us would be if we got ours!”quoth Duffham. “I suppose I had better go back and take a look at this throat!”

To see the miserable distress of Ketira that day, and the despair upon her face as she dodged about between Virginia Cottage and the brickfields, was like a gloomy picture.

“Do you remember telling me once that you feared Kettie might run away to the tribe?” I asked, meeting her on one of these wanderings in the afternoon. “Perhaps that is where she is gone?”

The suggestion seemed to offend her mortally. “Boy, I know better,” she said, facing round upon me fiercely. “With the tribe she would be safe, and I at rest. The stars never deceive me.”

And, when the sun went down that night and the stars came out, the environs of Virginia Cottage were still haunted by Ketira the gipsy.

II

You would not have known the place again. Virginia Cottage, the unpretending little homestead, had been converted into a mansion. Hyde Stockhausen had built a new wing at one end, and a conservatory at the other; and had put pillars before the rustic porch, over which the Virginia creeper climbed.

We heard last month about Ketira the gipsy: and of the unaccountable disappearance of her daughter, Kettie; and of the indignant anger displayed by Hyde Stockhausen when it was suggested that he might have kidnapped her. Curiously enough, within a few days of that time, Hyde himself disappeared from Church Dykely: not in the mysterious manner that Kettie had, but openly and with intention.

The inducing cause of Hyde’s leaving, as was stated and believed, was a quarrel with his step-father, Massock. It chanced that the monthly settling-day, connected with the brickfields, fell just after Kettie vanished. Massock came over for it as usual, and was overbearing as usual; and perhaps Hyde, already in a state of inward irritation, was less forbearing than usual. Any way, ill-words arose between them. Massock accused Hyde of neglecting his interests, and of being too much of a gentleman to look after the work and the men. Hyde retorted: one word led to another, and there ensued a serious quarrel. The upshot was, that Hyde threw up his post. Vowing he would never again have anything to do with old Massock or his precious bricks as long as he lived, he packed up a small portmanteau and quitted Church Dykely there and then, to the intense tribulation of his ancient nurse and servant, Deborah Preen.

“Leave him alone,” said Massock roughly. “He’ll be back safe enough in a day or two.”

“Where is he gone?” asked Ketira the gipsy: who, hovering still around Virginia Cottage, had seen Hyde’s exit with his portmanteau.

Massock stared at her, and at her red cloak: she had penetrated to his presence to ask the question. He had never before seen Ketira; never heard of her.

“What is it to you?” he demanded, in his coarse manner.“Who are you? Do you come here to tell his fortune? Be off, old witch!”

“His fortune may be told sooner than you care to hear it—ifyou are anything to him,” was the gipsy’s answer. And that same night she quitted Church Dykely herself, wandering away to be lost in the “wide wide world.”

Massock’s opinion, that Hyde would return in a day or two, proved to be a mistaken one. Rimmer, at the Silver Bear, got a letter from a lawyer in Worcester, asking him to release Mr. Stockhausen from Virginia Cottage—which Hyde had taken for three years. But, this, Rimmer refused to do. So Hyde had to make the best of his bargain: and every quarter, as the quarters went on, the rent was punctually remitted to Henry Rimmer by the lawyer: who gave, however, no clue to his client’s place of abode. It was said that Hyde had been reconciled to his uncle, Parson Hyde (now getting into his dotage), and was by him supplied with funds.

One fine evening, however, in the late spring, when not very far short of a twelvemonth had elapsed, Hyde astonished Deborah Preen by his return. After a fit of crying, to show her joy, Deborah brought him in some supper and stood by while he ate it, telling him the news of what had transpired in the village since he left.

“Are those beautiful brickfields being worked still?” he asked.

“‘Deed but they are then, Master Hyde. A sight o’ bricks seems to be made at ’em. Pitt the foreman, he have took your place as manager, sir, and keeps the accounts.”

“Good luck to him!” said Hyde, drinking a glass of ale.“That queer old lady in the red cloak: what has become of her?”

“What, that gipsy hag?” cried Preen. “She’s dead, sir.”

“Dead!”

“Yes, sir, dead: and a good riddance, too. She went away the very night you went, Mr. Hyde, and never came back again. A week or two ago Abel Carew got news that she was dead.”

(Shortly before this, some wandering gipsies had set up their camp within a mile or two of Church Dykely. Abel Carew, never having had news of Ketira since her departure, went to them to make inquiries. At first the gipsies seemed not to understand of whom he was speaking; but upon his making Ketira clear to them, they told him she had been dead about a month; of her daughter, Kettie, they knew nothing.)

“She’s not much loss,” observed Hyde in answer to Deborah: and his face took a brighter look, as though the news were arelief—Preen noticed it. “The old gipsy was as mad as a March hare.”

“And ten times more troublesome than one,” put in Preen.“Be you come home to stay, master?”

“I dare say I shall,” replied Hyde. “As good settle down here as elsewhere: and there’d be no fun in paying two rents.”

So we had Hyde Stockhausen amidst us once more. He did not intend to take up with brickmaking again, but to live as a gentleman. His uncle made him an allowance, and he was going to be married. Abel Carew questioned him about Kettie one day when they met on the common, asking whether he had seen her. Never, was the reply of Hyde. So that what with the girl’s prolonged disappearance and her mother’s death, it was assumed that we had done with the two gipsies for ever.

Hyde was engaged to a Miss Peyton. A young lady just left an orphan, whom he had met only six weeks ago at some seaside place. He had fallen in love with her at first sight, and she with him. She had two or three hundred a-year: and Hyde, there was little doubt, would come into all his uncle’s money; so he saw no reason why he should not make Virginia Cottage comfortable for her, and went off to the Silver Bear, to talk to Henry Rimmer about it.

The result was, that improvements were put in hand without delay. A wing (consisting of a handsome drawing-room downstairs, and a bed and dressing-room above) was added to the cottage on one side; on the other side, Hyde built a conservatory. The house was also generally embellished and set in order, and some new furniture brought in. And I think if ever workmen worked quickly, these did; for the alterations seemed no sooner to be begun than they were done.

“So you have sown your wild oats, Master Hyde,” remarked the Squire one day in passing, as he stood to watch the finishing touches, then being put to the outside of the house.

“Don’t know that I ever had many to sow, sir,” said Hyde, nodding to me.

“And what sort of a young lady is this wife that you are about to bring home?” went on the pater.

Hyde’s face took a warm flush and his lips parted with a half-smile; which proved what she was to him. “You will see, sir,”he said in answer.

“When is the wedding to be?”

“This day week.”

“This day week!” echoed the Squire, surprised: and Hyde, who seemed to have spoken incautiously, looked vexed.

“I did not intend to say as much; my thoughts were elsewhere,”he observed. “Don’t mention it again, Mr. Todhetley. Even old Deborah has not been told.”

“I’ll take care, lad. But it is known all over the place that the wedding is close at hand.”

“Yes: but not the day.”

“When do you go away for it?”

“On Saturday.”

“Well, good luck to you, lad! By the way, Hyde,” continued the Squire, “what did they do about that drain in the yard? Put a new pipe?”

“Yes,” said Hyde, “and they have made a very good job of it. Will you come and see it?”

Pipes and drains held no attraction for me. While the pater went through the house to the yard, I strolled outside the front-gate and across to the little coppice to wait for him. It was shady there: the hot midsummer sun was ablaze to-day.

And I declare that a feather might almost have knocked me down. There, amidst the trees of the coppice, like a picture framed round by green leaves, stood Ketira the gipsy. Or Ketira’s ghost.

Believing that she was dead and buried, I might have believed it to be the latter, but for the red cloth cloak: that was real. She was staring at Hyde’s house with all the fire of her glittering eyes, looking as though she were consumed by some inward fever.

“Who lives there now?” she abruptly asked me without any other greeting, pointing her yellow forefinger at the house.

“The cottage was empty ever so long,” I carelessly said, some instinct prompting me not to tell too much. “Lately the workmen have been making alterations in it. How is Kettie? Have you found her?”

She lifted her two hands aloft with a gesture of despair: but left me unanswered. “These alterations: by whom are they made?”

But the sight of the Squire, coming forth alone, served as an excuse for my making off. I gave her a parting nod, saying I was glad to see her again in the land of the living.

“Ketira the gipsy is here, sir.”

“No!” cried the pater in amazement. “Why do you say that, Johnny?”

“She is here in the coppice.”

“Nonsense, lad! Ketira’s dead, you know.”

“But I have just seen her, and spoken to her.”

“Then what did those gipsy-tramps mean by telling Abel Carew that she had died?” cried the Squire explosively, as he marched across the few yards of greensward towards the coppice.

“Abel did not feel quite sure at the time that he and they were not talking of two persons. That must have been the case, sir.”

We were too late. Ketira was already half-way along the path that led to the common: no doubt on her road to pay a visit to Abel Carew. And I can only relate what passed there at second hand. Between ourselves, Ketira was no favourite of his.

He was at his early dinner of bread-and-butter and salad when she walked in and astonished him. Abel, getting over his surprise, invited her to partake of the meal; but she just waved her hand in refusal, as much as to say that she was superior to dinner and dinner-eating.

“Have you found Kettie?” was his next question.

“It is the first time a search of mine ever failed,” she replied, beginning to pace the little room in agitation, just as a tiger paces its confined cage. “I have given myself neither rest nor peace since I set out upon it; but it has not brought me tidings of my child.”

“It must have been a weary task for you, Ketira. I wish you would break bread with me.”

“I was helped.”

“Helped!” repeated Abel. “Helped by what?”

“I know not yet, whether angel or devil. It has been one or the other:—according as he has, or has not, played me false.”

“As who has played you false?”

“Of whom do you suppose I speak but him?” she retorted, standing to confront Abel with her deep eyes. “Hyde Stockhausen has in some subtle manner evaded me: but I shall find him yet.”

“Hyde Stockhausen is back here,” quietly observed Abel.

“Back here! Then it is no false instinct that has led mehere,” she added in a low tone, apparently communing with herself. “Is Ketira with him?”

“No, no,” said Abel, vexed at the question. “Kettie has never come back to the place since she left it.”

“When did he come?”

“It must be about two months ago.”

“He is in the same dwelling-house as before! For what is he making it so grand?”

“It is said to be against his marriage.”

“His marriage with Ketira?”

“With a Miss Peyton; some young lady he has met. Why do you bring up Ketira’s name in conjunction with this matter—or with him?”

She turned to the open casement, and stood there, as if to inhale the sweet scent of Abel’s flowers, and listen to the hum of his bees. Her face was working, her strange eyes were gleaming, her hands were clasped to pain.

“I know what I know, Abel Carew. Let him look to it if he brings home any other wife than my Ketira.”

“Nay,” remonstrated peaceful old Abel. “Because a young man has whispered pretty words in a maiden’s ear, and given her, it may be, a moonlight kiss, that does not bind him to marry her.”

“And would I have wished to bind him had it ended there?”flashed the gipsy. “No; I should have been thankful that ithad so ended. I hated him from the first.”

“You have no proof that it did not so end, Ketira.”

“No proof; none,” she assented. “No tangible proof that I could give to you, her father’s brother, or to others. But the proof lies in the fatal signs that show themselves to me continually, and in the unerring instinct of my own heart. If the man puts another into the place that ought to be hers, let him look to it.”

“You may be mistaken, Ketira. I know not what the signs you speak of can be: they may show themselves to you but to mislead; and nothing is more deceptive than the fancies of one’s imagination. Be it as it may, vengeance does not belong to us. Do not you put yourself forward to work young Stockhausen ill.”

“I work him ill!” retorted the gipsy. “You are mistaking me altogether. It is not I who shall work it. I only see it—and foretell it.”

“Nay, why speak so strangely, Ketira? It cannot be that you——”

“Abel Carew, talk not to me of matters that you do not understand,” she interrupted. “I know what I know. Things that I am able to see are hidden from you.”

He shook his head. “It is wrong to speak so of Hyde Stockhausen—or of any one. He may be as innocent in the matter as you or I.”

“But I tell you that he is not. And the conviction of it lies here”—striking herself fiercely on the breast.

Abel sighed, and began to put his dinner-plates together. He could not make any impression upon her, or on the notion she had taken up.

“Do you know what it is to have a breaking heart, Abel Carew?” she asked, her voice taking a softer tone that seemed to change it into a piteous wailing. “A broken heart one can bear; for all struggle is over, and one has but to put one’s head down on the green earth and die. But a breaking heart means continuous suffering; a perpetual torture that slowly saps away the life; a never-ending ache of soul and of spirit, than which nothing in this world can be so hard to battle with. And for twelve months now this anguish has been mine!”

Poor Ketira! Mistaken or not mistaken, there could be no question that her trouble was grievous to bear; the suspense, in which her days were passed, well-nigh unendurable.

This, that I have told, occurred on Thursday morning. Ketira quitted Abel Carew only to bend her steps back towards Virginia Cottage, and stayed hovering around the house that day and the next. One or another, passing, saw her watching it perpetually, herself partly hidden. Now peeping out from the little coppice; now tramping quickly past the gate, as though she were starting off on a three-mile walk; now stealing to the back of the house, to gaze at the windows. There she might be seen, in one place or another, like a haunting red dragon: her object, as was supposed, being to get speech of Hyde Stockhausen. She did not succeed. Twice she went boldly to the door, knocked, and asked for him. Deborah Preen slammed it in her face. It was thought that Hyde, who then knew of her return and that the report of her death was false, must be on the watch also, to avoid her. If he wanted to go abroad and she was posted atthe back, he slipped out in front: when he wished to get in again and caught sight of her red cloak illumining the coppice, he made a dash in at the back-gate, and was lost amid the kidney beans.

By this time the state of affairs was known to Church Dykely: a rare dish of nuts for the quiet place to crack. Those of us who possessed liberty made pleas for passing by Virginia Cottage to see the fun. Not that there was much to see, except a glimpse of the red cloak in this odd spot or in that.

“Stockhausen must be silly!” cried the Squire. “Why does he not openly see the poor woman and inquire what it is she wants with him? The idea of his shunning her in this absurd way! What does he mean by it, I wonder?”

Now, before telling more, I wish to halt and say a word. That much ridicule will be cast on this story by the intelligent reader, is as sure as that apples grow in summer. Nevertheless, I am but relating what took place. Certain things in it were curiously strange; not at all explainable hitherto: possibly never to be explained. I chanced to be personally mixed up with it, so to say, in a degree; from its beginning, when Ketira and her daughter first appeared at Abel Carew’s, to its ending, which has yet to be told. For that much I can vouch—I mean what I was present at. But you need not accord belief to the whole, unless you like.

Chance, and nothing else, caused me to be sent over this same evening to Mr. Duffham’s. It was Friday, you understand; and the eve of the day Hyde Stockhausen would depart preparatory to his marriage. One of our maids had been ailing for some days with what was thought to be a bad cold: as she did not get better, but grew more feverish, Mrs. Todhetley decided to send for the doctor, if only as a measure of precaution.

“You can go over to Mr. Duffham’s for me, Johnny,” she said, as we got up from tea—which meal was generally taken at the manor close upon dinner, somewhat after the fashion that the French take their tasse de café. “Ask him if he will be so kind as to call in to see Ann when he is out to-morrow morning.”

Nothing loth was I. The evening was glorious, tempting the world out-of-doors, calm and beautiful, but very hot yet. The direct way to Duffham’s from our house was not by Virginia Cottage: but, as a matter of course, I took it. Going along attip-top speed until I came within sight of it, I then slackened to a snail’s pace, the better to take observations.

There’s an old saying, that virtue is its own reward. If any virtue existed in my choosing this circuitous and agreeable route, I can only say that for once the promise was at fault, for I wasnot rewarded. Were Hyde Stockhausen’s house a prison, it could not have been much more closely shut up. The windows were closed on that lovely midsummer night; the doors looked tight as wax. Not a glimpse could I catch of as much as the bow of Deborah Preen’s mob-cap atop of the short bedroom blinds; and Hyde might have been over in Africa for all that could be seen of him.

Neither (for a wonder) was there any trace of Ketira the gipsy. Her red cloak was nowhere. Had she obtained speech of Hyde, and so terminated her watch, or had she given it up in despair? Any way, there was nothing to reward me for having come that much out of my road, and I went on, whistling dolorously.

But, hardly had I got past the premises and was well on the field-path beyond, when I met Duffham. Giving him the message from home, which he said he would attend to, I enlarged on the disappointment just experienced in seeing nothing of anybody.

“Shut up like a jail, is it?” quoth Duffham. “I have just had a note from Stockhausen, asking me to call there. His throat’s troubling him again, he says: wants me to give him something that will cure him by to-morrow.”

I had turned with the doctor, and went walking with him up the garden, listening to what he said. But I meant to leave him when we reached the door. He began trying it. It was fastened inside.

“I dare say you can come in and see Hyde, Johnny. What do you want with him?”

“Not much; only to wish him good luck.”

“Is your master afraid of thieves that he bolts his doors?”cried Duffham to old Preen when she let us in.

“’Twas me fastened it, sir; not master,” was her reply.“That gipsy wretch have been about yesterday and to-day, wanting to get in. I’ve got my silver about, and don’t want it stolen. Mr. Hyde’s mother and Massock have been here to dinner; they’ve not long gone.”

Decanters and fruit stood on the table before Hyde. Hestarted up to shake hands, appearing very much elated. Duffham, more experienced than I, saw that he had been taking quite enough wine.

“So you have had your stepfather here!” was one of the doctor’s first remarks. “Been making up the quarrel, I suppose.”

“He came of his own accord; I didn’t invite him,” said Hyde, laughing. “My mother wrote me word that they were coming—to give me their good wishes for the future.”

“Just what Johnny Ludlow here says he wants to give,” said Duffham: though I didn’t see that he need have brought my words up, and made a fellow feel shy.

“Then, by Jove, you shall drink them in champagne!” exclaimed Hyde. He caught up a bottle of champagne that stood under the sideboard, from which the wire had been removed, and would have cut the string but for the restraining hand of Duffham.

“No, Hyde; you have had rather too much as it is.”

“I swear to you that I have not had a spoonful. It has not been opened, you see. My mother refused it, and Massock does not care for champagne: he likes something heavier.”

“If you have not taken champagne, you have taken other wine.”

“Sherry at dinner, and port since,” laughed Hyde.

“And more of it than is good for you.”

“When Massock sits down to port wine he drinks like a fish,”returned Hyde, still laughing. “Of course I had to make a show of drinking with him. I wished the port at Hanover.”

By a dexterous movement, he caught up a knife and cut the string. Out shot the cork with a bang, and he filled three of the tumblers that stood on the sideboard with wine and froth—one for each of us. “Your health, doctor,” nodded he, and tossed off his own.

“It will not do your throat good,” said Duffham, angrily.“Let me look at the throat.”

“Not until you and Johnny have wished me luck.”

We did it, and drank the wine. Duffham examined the throat; and told Hyde, for his consolation, that it was not in a state to be trifled with.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Hyde carelessly. “But I don’t want it to be bad to-morrow when I travel, and I thought perhapsyou might be able to give me something or other to set it to rights to-night. I start at ten to-morrow morning.”

“Sore throats are not cured so easily,” retorted Duffham.“You must have taken cold.”

Telling him he would send in a gargle and a cooling draught, and that he was to go to bed soon, Duffham rose to leave. Hyde opened the glass-doors of the room that we might pass out that way, and stepped over the threshold with us. Talking with Duffham, he strolled onwards towards the gate.

“About three weeks, I suppose,” he said, in answer to the query of how long he meant to be away. “If Mabel——”

Gliding out of the bushy laurels on one side the path, and planting herself right in front of us, came Ketira the gipsy. Her face looked yellower than ever in the twilight of the summer’s evening; her piercing black eyes fiercer. Hyde was taken aback by the unexpected encounter. He started a step back.

“Where’s my daughter, Hyde Stockhausen?”

“Go away,” he said, in the contemptuous tone one might use to a dog. “I don’t know anything of your daughter.”

“Only tell me where she is, that I may find her. I ask no more.”

“I tell you that I do not know anything of her. You must be mad to think it. Get along with you!”

“Hyde Stockhausen, you lie. You do know where she is; you know that it is with you she has been. Heaven hears me say it: deny it if you dare.”

His face looked whiter than death. Just for an instant he seemed unable to speak. Ketira changed her tone to one of plaintive wailing.

“She was my one little ewe lamb. What had she or I done to you that you should come as a spoiler to the fold? I prayedyou not. Make her your wife, and I will yet bless you. It is not too late. Do not break her heart and mine.”

Hyde had had time to rally his courage. A man full of wine can generally call some up, even in the most embarrassing of situations. He scornfully asked the gipsy whether she had come out of Bedlam. Ketira saw how hard he was—that there was no hope.

“It is said that you depart to-morrow to bring home a bride, Hyde Stockhausen. I counsel you not to do it. For your own sake, and for the young woman’s sake, I bid you beware. The marriage will not bring good to you or to her.”

That put Hyde in a towering passion. His words came out with a splutter as he spurned her from him.

“Cease your folly, you senseless old beldame! Do you dare to threaten me? Take yourself out of my sight instantly, before I fetch my horsewhip. And, if ever you attempt to molest me again, I will have you sent to the treadmill.”

Ketira stood looking at him while he spoke, never moving an inch. As his voice died away she lifted her forefinger in warning. And anything more impressive than her voice, than her whole manner—anything more startlingly defiant than her countenance, I never wish to see.

“It is well; I go. But listen to me, Hyde Stockhausen; mark what I say. Only three times shall you see me again in life. But each one of those times you shall have cause to remember; and after the last of them you will not need to see me more.”

It was a strange threat. That she made it, Duffham could, to this day, corroborate. Pulling her red cloak about her shoulders, she went swiftly through the gate, and disappeared within the opposite coppice.

Hyde smiled; his good humour was returning to him. One can be brave enough when an enemy turns tail.

“Idiotic old Egyptian!” he exclaimed lightly. “What on earth ever made her take the fancy into her head, that I knew what became of Kettie, I can’t imagine. I wonder, Duffham, some of you people in authority here don’t get her confined as a lunatic!”

“We must first of all find that she is a lunatic,” was Duffham’s dry rejoinder.

“Why, what else is she?”

“Not that.”

“She is; and a dangerous one,” retorted Hyde.

“Nonsense, man! Gipsies have queer ways and notions; and—and—are not to be judged altogether as other people,”added the doctor, finishing off (as it struck me) with different words from those he had been about to say. “Good-night; and don’t take any more of that champagne.”

Hyde returned indoors, and we walked away, not seeing a sign of the red cloak anywhere.

“I must say I should not like to be attacked in this manner, were I Hyde,” I remarked to Duffham. “How obstinate the old gipsy is!”

“Ah,” replied Duffham. “I’d sooner believe her than him.”

The words surprised me, and I turned to him quickly. “Why do you say that, sir?”

“Because I do say it, Johnny,” was the unsatisfactory answer.“And now good-evening to you, lad, for I must send the physic in.”

“Just a word, please, Mr. Duffham. Do you know where that poor Kettie is?—and did you know that Hyde Stockhausen stole her?”

“No, to both your questions, Johnny Ludlow.”

Everybody liked Hyde’s wife. A fragile girl with a weak voice, who looked as if a strong wind would blow her away. Duffham feared she was not strong enough to make old days.

Virginia Cottage flourished. Parson Hyde had died and left all his fortune to Hyde: who had now nothing to do but take care of his wife and his money, and enjoy life. Before the next summer came round, Hyde had a son and heir. A fine little shaver, with blue eyes like Hyde’s, and good lungs. His mother was a long while getting about again: and then she looked like a shadow, and had a short, hacking kind of cough. Hyde wore a grave face at times, and would say he wished Mabel could get strong.

But Hyde was regarded with less favour than formerly. People did not scruple to call him “villain.” And one Sunday, when Mr. Holland told us in his sermon that man’s heart was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, the congregation wondered whether he meant it especially for Stockhausen. For the truth had come out.

When Hyde departed to keep his marriage engagement, Ketira the gipsy had again disappeared from Church Dykely. In less than a month afterwards, Abel Carew received a letter from her. She had found Kettie: and she had found that her own instincts against Hyde Stockhausen were not mistaken ones. For all his seeming fair face and his indignant denials, it was he who had been the thief.

“Of all brazen-faced knaves, that Stockhausen must be the worst!—an adept in cunning, a lying hypocrite!” exploded the Squire.

“I suspected him at the time,” said Duffham.

“You did! What were your grounds for it?”

“I had no particular grounds. His manner did not appear to me to be satisfactory; that was all. Of course I was not sure.”

“He is a base man,” concluded the Squire. And from that time he turned the cold shoulder on Hyde.

But time is a sure healer of wounds; a softener of resentment. As it passed on, we began to forget Hyde’s dark points, and to remember his good qualities. Any way, Ketira the gipsy and Ketira’s daughter passed out of memory, just as they had passed out of sight.

Suddenly we heard that Abel Carew was preparing to go on a journey. I went off to ask him where he was bound for.

“I am going to see them, Master Johnny,” he replied. “I don’t know how they are off, sir, and it is my duty to see. The child is ill: and I fear they may be wanting assistance, which Ketira is too proud to write and ask for.”

“Kettie ill! What is the matter with her?”

Abel shook his head. “I shall know more when I get there, sir.”

Abel Carew locked up his cottage and began his pilgrimage into Hertfordshire with a staff and a wallet, intending to walk all the way. In a fortnight he was back again, bringing with him a long face.

“It is sad to see the child,” he said to me, as I sat in his room listening to the news. “She is no more like the bonnie Kettie that we knew here, than a dead girl’s like a living one. Worn out, bent and silent, she sits, day after day and week after week, and her mother cannot rouse her. She has sat so all along.”

“But what is the matter with her?”

“She is slowly dying, sir.”

“What of?”

“A broken heart.”

“Oh dear!” said I; believing I knew who had broken it.

“Yes,” said Abel, “he. He won her heart’s best love, Master Johnny, and she pines for him yet. Ketira says it was his marriage that struck her the death-blow. A few weeks she may still linger, but they won’t be many.”

Very sorry did I feel to hear it: for Ketira’s sake as well as Kettie’s. The remembrance of the day I had gilded the oak-ball, and her wonderful gratitude for it, came flashing back to me.

And there’s nothing more to add to this digression. Except that Kettie died.

The tidings did not appear to affect Hyde Stockhausen. All his thoughts were given to his wife and child. Old Abel had never reproached him by as much as a word: if by chance they met, Abel avoided looking at him, or turned off another way.

When the baby was six months old and began to cut his teeth, he did not appear inclined to do it kindly. He grew thin and cross; and the parents, who seemed to think no baby ever born could come up to this one, began to be anxious. Hyde worshipped the child ridiculously.

“The boy will do well enough if he does not get convulsions,”Duffham said in semi-confidence to some people over his surgery counter. “If they come on—why, I can’t answer for what the result might be. Fat? Yes, he is a great deal too fat: they feed him up so.”

The surgeon was sitting by his parlour-fire one snowy evening shortly after this, when Stockhausen burst upon him in a fine state of agitation; arms working, breath gone. The baby was in a fit.

“Come, come; don’t you give way,” cried the doctor, believing Hyde was going into a fit on his own account. “We’ll see.”

Out of one convulsion into another went the child that night: but in a few days it was better; thought to be getting well. Mr. and Mrs. Stockhausen in consequence felt themselves in the seventh heaven.

“The danger is quite past,” observed Hyde, walking down the snowy path with Duffham, one morning when the doctor had been paying a visit; and Hyde rubbed his hands in gleeful relief, for he had been like a crazed lunatic while the child lay ill. “Duffham, if that child had died, I think I should have died.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Duffham. “You are made of tougher stuff.”

He was about to open the garden-gate as he spoke. But, suddenly appearing there to confront them stood Ketira the gipsy. A moment’s startled pause ensued. Duffham spoke kindly to her. Hyde recoiled a step or two; as if the sight had frightened him.

“You may well start back,” she said to the latter, taking no notice of Duffham’s civility. “I told you, you should not seeme many times in life, Hyde Stockhausen, but that when you did, I should be the harbinger of evil. Go home, and meet it.”

Turning off under the garden-hedge, without another word, she disappeared from their view as suddenly as she had come into it. Hyde Stockhausen made a feint of laughing.

“The woman is more mad than ever,” he said. “Decidedly, Duffham, she ought to be in confinement.”

Never an assenting syllable gave Duffham. He was looking as stern as a judge. “What’s that?” he suddenly exclaimed, turning sharply to the house.

A maid-servant was flying down the path. Deborah Preen stood at the door, crying and calling as if in some dire calamity. Hyde rushed towards her, asking what was amiss. Duffham followed more slowly. The baby had got another attack of convulsions.

And this time it was for death.

When these events were happening, Great Malvern was not the overgrown, fashionable place it is now; but a quiet little spot with only a few houses in it, chiefly clustering under the highest of the hills. Amid these houses, one bright May day, Hyde Stockhausen went, seeking lodgings.

Hyde had not died of the loss of the baby. For here he was, alive and well, nearly eighteen months afterwards. That it had been a sharp trial for him nobody doubted; and for his wife also. And when a second baby came to replace the first, it brought them no good, for it did not live a week.

That was in March: two months ago: and ever since Mrs. Stockhausen had been hovering between this world and the next. A fever and other ailments had taken what little strength she had out of her. This, to Hyde Stockhausen, was a worse affliction than even the loss of the children, for she was to him as the very apple of his eye. When somewhat improving, the doctors recommended Malvern. So Hyde had brought her to it with a nurse and old Deborah; and had left them at the Crown Hotel while he looked for lodgings.

He found them in one of the houses down by the abbey. Some nice rooms, quite suitable. And to them his wife was taken. For a very few days afterwards she seemed to be getting better: and then all the bad symptoms returned. A doctor was called in. He feared she might not rally again; that the extremedebility might prevent it: and he said as much to Hyde in private.

Anything more unreasonable than the spirit in which Hyde met this, the Malvern doctor had never seen.

“You are a fool,” said Hyde. “Begging your pardon, sir, I should think you don’t know your profession. My wife is fifty pounds better than she was at Church Dykely. How can you take upon yourself to say she will not rally?”

“I said she might not,” replied the surgeon, who happened to possess a temper mild as milk. “I hope she will with all my heart. I shall do my best to bring it about.”

It was an anxious time. Mrs. Stockhausen fluctuated greatly: to-day able to sit up in an easy-chair; to-morrow too exhausted to be lifted out of bed. But, one morning she did seem to be ever so much better. Her cheeks were pink, her lips had a smile.

“Ah,” said the doctor cheerfully when he went in, “we shall do now, I hope. You are up early to-day.”

“I felt so much better that I wanted to get up and surprise you,” she answered in quite a strong voice—for her. “And it was so warm, and the world looked so beautiful. I should like to be able to mount one of those donkeys and go up the hill. Hyde says that the view, even from St. Ann’s well, is charming.”

“So it is,” assented the surgeon. “Have you never seen it?”

“No, I have not been to Malvern before.”

This was the first day of June. Hyde would not forget the date to the last hour of his life. It was hot summer weather: the sun came in at the open window, touching her hair and her pale forehead as she lay back in the easy-chair after the doctor left; a canary at a neighbouring house was singing sweetly; the majestic hills, with their light and shade, looked closer even than they were in reality. Hyde began to lower the blind.

“Don’t, please, Hyde.”

“But, my darling, the sun will soon be in your eyes.”

“I shall like it. Is it not a lovely day! I think it is that which has put new life into me.”

“And we shall soon have you up the hill, where we can sit and look all over everywhere. On one or two occasions, when the atmosphere was rarefied to an unusual degree, I have caught the silver line of the Bristol Channel.”

“How pleasant it will be, Hyde! To sit there with you, and to know that I am getting well!”

Early in the afternoon, when Mabel lay down to rest, Hyde went strolling up the hill, for the first time since his present stay at Malvern. He got as far as St. Ann’s; drank a tumbler of the water, and then paced about, hither and thither, to the right and left, not intending to ascend higher that day. If he went to the summit, Mabel might be awake before he got home again; and he would not have lost five minutes of her waking moments for a mine of gold. Looking at his watch, he sat down on a bench that was backed by some dark trees.

“Yes,” he mused, “it will be delightful to sit about here with Mabel, and show her the different points of interest in the landscape. Worcester Cathedral, and St. Andrew’s Spire; and the Bristol——”

Some stir behind caused him to turn his head. The words froze on his tongue. There stood Ketira the gipsy. She had been sitting or lying amidst the trees, wrapped in her red cloak. Hyde’s look of startled dread was manifest. She saw it; and accosted him.

“We meet again, Hyde Stockhausen. Ah, you have cause to fear!—your face may well whiten to the shivering hue of snow at sight of me! You are alone in the world now—as you left my daughter to be. Once more we shall see one another. Till then farewell.”

Recovering his equanimity when left alone, Hyde betook himself down the zig-zag path towards the village, calling the gipsy all the wicked names in the dictionary, and feeling tempted to give her into custody.

At his home, he was met by a commotion. The nurse wore a scared face; Deborah Preen, wringing her hands, burst out sobbing.

Mabel was dead. Had died in a fainting-fit.

Leaving his wife in her grave at Malvern, Hyde Stockhausen returned to Church Dykely. We hardly knew him.

A more changed man than Hyde was from that time the world has never seen. He walked about like a melancholy maniac, hands in his coat-pockets, eyes on the ground, steps dragging; looking just like one who has some great remorse lying upon his conscience and is being consumed by the past. The mostwonderful thing in the eyes of Church Dykely was, that he grew religious: came to church twice on Sunday, stayed for the Sacrament, was good to the poor, gentle and kindly to all. Mr. Holland observed to the Squire that Stockhausen had become a true Christian. He made his will, and altogether seemed to be tired of life.

“Go you, Johnny, and ask him to come over to us sometimes in an evening; tell him it will be a break to his loneliness,” said the Squire to me one day. “Now that the poor fellow is ill and repentant, we must let bygones be bygones. I hear that Abel Carew spent half-an-hour sociably with him yesterday.”

I went off as directed. Summer had come round again, for more than a year had now passed since Mabel’s death, and the Virginia creeper on the cottage walls was all alight with red flowers. Hyde was pacing his garden in front of it, his head bent.

“Is it you, Johnny?” he said, in the patient, gentle tone he now always used, as he held his hand out. He was more like a shadow than a man; his face drawn and long, his blue eyes large and dark and sad.

“We should be so glad if you would come,” I added, after giving the message. “Mrs. Todhetley says you make yourself too much of a stranger. Will you come this evening?”

He shook his head slightly, clasping my hand the while, his own feeling like a burning coal, and smiling the sweetest and saddest smile.

“You are all too good for me; too considerate; better far than I deserve. No, I cannot come to you this evening, Johnny: I have not the spirits for it; hardly the strength. But I will come one evening if I can. Thank them all, Johnny, for me.”

And he did come. But he could not speak much above a whisper, so weak and hollow had his voice grown. And of all the humble-minded, kindly-spirited individuals that ever sat at our tea-table, the chiefest was Hyde Stockhausen.

“I fear he is going the way of all the Stockhausens,” said Mrs. Todhetley afterwards. “But what a beautiful frame of mind he is in!”

“Beautiful, you call it!” cried the pater. “The man seems to me to be eating his heart out in some impossible atonement. Had I set fire to the church and burnt up all the congregation, I don’t think it could have subdued me to that extent.”

Of all places, where should I next meet Hyde but at Worcester races! We knew that he had been worse lately, that his mother had come to Virginia Cottage to be with him at the last, and that there was no further hope. Therefore, to see Hyde this afternoon, perched on a tall horse on Pitchcroft, looked more like magic than reality.

“You at the races, Hyde!”

“Yes; but not for pleasure,” he answered, smiling faintly; and looking so shadowy and weak that it was a marvel how he could stick on the horse. “I am in search of one who is growing too fond of these scenes. I want to find him—and to say a few last words to him.”

“If you mean Jim Massock”—for I thought it could be nobody but young Jim—“I saw him yonder, down by the shows. He was drinking porter outside a booth. How are you, Hyde?”

“Oh, getting on slowly,” he said, with a peculiar smile.

“Getting on! It looks to me to be the other way.”

Turning his horse quickly round, after nodding to me, in the direction of the shows and drinking booths, he nearly turned it upon a tall, gaunt skeleton in a red cloak—Ketira the gipsy. She must have sprung out of the crowd.

But oh, how ill she looked! Hyde was strangely altered; but not as she was. The yellow face was shrivelled and shrunken, the fire had left her eyes. Hyde checked his horse; but the animal turned restive. He controlled it with his hand, and sat still before Ketira.

“Yes, look at me,” she burst forth. “For the last time. The end is close at hand both for you and for me. We shall meet Kettie where we are going.”

He leaned from his horse to speak to her: his voice a low sad wail, his words apparently those of deprecating prayer. Ketira heard him quietly to the end, gazing into his face, and then slowly turned away.

“Fare you well, Hyde Stockhausen. Farewell for ever.”

Before leaving the course Hyde had an accident. While talking to Jim Massock, some drums and trumpets struck up their noise at a neighbouring show; the horse started violently, and Hyde was thrown. He thought he was not much hurt and mounted again.

“What else could you expect?” demanded Duffham, whenHyde got back to Virginia Cottage. “You have not strength to sit a donkey, and you must go careering off to Worcester races on a fiery horse!”

But the fall had done Hyde some inward damage, and it hastened the end. He died that day week.

“Some men’s sins go before them to Judgment, and some follow after,” solemnly said Mr. Holland the next Sunday from the pulpit. “He who is gone from among us had taken his to his Saviour—and he is now at rest.”

“All chance and coincidence,” pronounced Duffham, talking over the strange threat of Ketira the gipsy and its stranger working out. “Yes; chance, I say, each of the three times. The woman, happening to be at hand, must have known by common report that the child was in peril; she may have learnt at Malvern that the wife was dying; and any goose with eyes in its head might have read coming death on his face that afternoon on Pitchcroft. That’s all about it, Johnny.”

Very probably. The reader can exercise his own judgment. I only know it all happened.

THE CURATE OF ST. MATTHEW’S.

I

“No, Johnny Ludlow, I shall not stay at home, and have the deeds sent up and down by post. I know what lawyers are; so will you, some time: this letter to be read and answered to-day; that paper to be digested and despatched back to-morrow—anything to enchance their bill of costs. I intend to be in London, on the spot; and so will you be, Mr. Johnny.”

So said Mr. Brandon to me, as we sat in the bay-window at Crabb Cot, at which place we were staying. I was willing enough to go to London; liked the prospect beyond everything; but he was not well, and I thought of the trouble to him.

“Of course, sir, if you consider it necessary we should be there. But——”

“Now, Johnny Ludlow, I have told you my decision,” he interrupted, cutting me short in all the determination of his squeaky little voice. “You go with me to London, sir, and we start on Monday morning next; and I dare say we shall be kept there a week. I know what lawyers are.”

This happened when I came of age, twenty-one; but I should not be of age as to my property for four more years: until then, Mr. Brandon remained my arbitrary guardian and trustee, just as strictly as he had been. Arbitrary so far as doing the right thing as trustee went, not suffering me, or any one else, to squander a shilling. One small bit of property fell to me now; a farm; and old Brandon was making as much legal commotion over the transfer of it from his custody to mine, as though it had been veined with gold. For this purpose, to execute the deeds of transfer, he meant to take up his quarters in London, to be on the spot with the lawyers who had it in hand, and to carry me up with him.

And what great events trivial chances bring about! Chances, as they are called. These “chances” are all in the hands of oneDivine Ruler, who is ever shaping them to further His own wise ends. But for my going to London that time and staying there—however, I’ll not let the cat out of the bag.

He stayed with us at Crabb Cot until the Monday, when we started for London; the Squire and Tod coming to the station to see us off. Mr. Brandon wore a nankeen suit, and had a green veil in readiness. A green veil, if you’ll believe me! The sun was under a cloud just then; had been for the best part of the morning; but if it came out fiercely—Tod threw up his arms behind old Brandon’s back, and gave me a grin and a whisper.

“I wouldn’t be you for something, Johnny; he’ll be taken for a lunatic.”

“And mind you take care of yourself, sir,” put in the Squire, to me. “London is a dreadful place; full of temptations; and you are but an inexperienced boy, Johnny. Be cautious and watchful, lad; don’t pick up any strange acquaintances in the streets; sharpers are on the watch to get you into conversation, and then swindle you out of all the money in your pockets. Be sure don’t forget the little hamper for Miss Deveen; and——”

The puffing of the engine, as we started, drowned the rest. We reached Paddington, smoothly and safely—and old Brandon did not once put on the veil. He took a cab to the Tavistock Hotel, and I another cab to Miss Deveen’s.

For she had asked me to stay with her. Hearing of my probable visit to town through a letter of Helen Whitney’s, she, ever kind, wrote at once, saying, if I did go, I must make her house my home for the time, and that it would be a most delightful relief to the stagnation she and Miss Cattledon had been lately enjoying. Of course that was just her pleasant way of putting it.

The house looked just as it used to look; the clustering trees of the north-western suburb were as green and grateful to the tired eye as of yore; and Miss Deveen, in grey satin, received me with the same glad smile. I knew I was a favourite of hers; she once said there were few people in the world she liked as well as she liked me—which made me feel proud and grateful.“I should leave you a fortune, Johnny,” she said to me that same day, “but that I know you have plenty of your own.”And I begged her not to do anything of the kind; not to thinkof it: she must know a great many people to whom her money would be a Godsend. She laughed at my earnestness, and told me I should be unselfish to the end.

We spent a quiet evening. The grey-haired curate, Mr. Lake, who had come in the first evening I ever spent at Miss Deveen’s, years ago, came in again by invitation. “He is so modest,” she had said to me, in those long-past years, “he never comes without being invited:” and he was modest still. His hair had been chestnut-coloured once; it was half grey and half chestnut now; and his face and voice were gentle, and his manners kindly. Cattledon was displaying her most gracious behaviour, and thinnest waist; one of the roses I had brought up with the strawberries was sticking out of the body of her green silk gown. For at least half-a-dozen years she had been setting her cap at the curate—and I think she must have been endowed with supreme patience.

“If you do not particularly want me this morning, Miss Deveen, I think I will go over to service.”

It was the next morning, and after breakfast. Cattledon had been downstairs, giving the orders for dinner—and said this on her return. Every morning she went through the ceremony of asking whether she was wanted, before attiring herself for church.

“Not I,” cried Miss Deveen, with a half-smile. “Go, and welcome, Jemima!”

I stood at the window listening to the ting-tang: the bell of St. Matthew’s Church could be called nothing else: and watched her pick her way across the road, just deluged by the water-cart. She wore a striped fawn-coloured gown, cut straight up and down, which made her look all the thinner, and a straw bonnet and white veil. The church was on the other side of the wide road, lower down, but within view. Some stragglers went into it with Cattledon; not many.

“Does it pay to hold the daily morning service?”

“Pay?” repeated Miss Deveen, looking at me with an arch smile. And I felt ashamed of my inadvertent, hasty word.

“I mean, is the congregation sufficient to repay the trouble?”

“The congregation, Johnny, usually consists of some twenty people, a few more, or a few less, as may chance; and they are all young ladies,” she added, the smile deepening to a laugh.“At least, unmarried ones; some are as old as Miss Cattledon.Two of them are widows of thirty-five: they are especially constant in attendance.”

“They go after the curate,” I said, laughing with Miss Deveen.“One year when Mr. Holland was ill, down with us, he had to take on a curate, and the young ladies ran after him.”

“Yes, Johnny, the young ladies go after the curates; we have two of them. Mr. Lake is the permanent curate; he has been here, oh, twelve or thirteen years. He does the chief work, in the church and out of it; we have a great many poor, as I think you know. The other curate is changed at least every year, and is generally a young deacon, fresh from college. Our Rector is fond of giving young men their title to orders. The young fellow we have now is a nobleman’s grandson, with more money in his pocket to waste on light gloves and hair-wash than poor Mr. Lake dare spend on all his living.”

“Mr. Lake seems to be a very good man.”

“A better man never lived,” returned Miss Deveen warmly, as she got up from the note she was writing, and came to my side. “Self-denying, anxious, painstaking; a true follower of his Master, a Christian to the very depths of his heart. He is one of those unobtrusive men whose merits are kept hidden from the world in general, who are content to work on patiently and silently in their path of duty, looking for no promotion, no reward here, because it seems to lie so very far away from their track.”

“Is Mr. Lake poor?”

“Mr. Lake has just one hundred pounds a-year, Johnny. It was what Mr. Selwyn offered him when he first came, and it has never been increased. William Lake told me one day,” added Miss Deveen, “that he thought the hundred a-year riches then. He was not a very young man; turned thirty; but his stipend in the country had been only fifty pounds a-year. To have it doubled all at once, no doubt did seem like riches.”

“Why does not the Rector raise it?”

“The Rector says he can’t afford to do it. I believe Mr. Lake once plucked up courage to ask him for a small increase: but it was of no use. The living is worth six hundred a-year, out of which the senior curate’s stipend has to be paid; and Mr. Selwyn’s family is expensive. His two sons are just leaving college. So, poor Mr. Lake has just plodded on with his hundred a-year, and made it do. The Rector wishes he could raise it;he knows his worth. During this prolonged illness of Mr. Selwyn’s he has been most indefatigable.”

“Is Mr. Selwyn ill?”

“Not very ill, but ailing. He has been so for two years. He generally preaches on a Sunday morning, but that is about all the duty he has been able to take. Mr. Lake is virtually the incumbent; he does everything, in the church and out of it.”

“Without the pay,” I remarked.

“Without the pay, Johnny. His hundred a-year, however, seems to suffice him. He never grumbles at it, never complains, is always contented and cheerful: and no doubt will be contented with it to the end.”

“But—if he has no more than that, and no expectation of more, how is it that the ladies run after him? They can’t expect him to marry upon a hundred a-year.”

“My dear Johnny, let a clergyman possess nothing but the white surplice on his back, the ladies would trot at his heels all the same. It comes naturally to them. They trust to future luck, you see; promotion is always possible, and they reckon upon it. I’m sure the way Mr. Lake gets run after is as good as a play. This young lady sends him a pair of slippers, her own work; that one embroiders a cushion for him: Cattledon painted a velvet fire-screen for him last year—‘Oriental tinting.’You never saw a screen so gorgeous.”

“Do you think he has—has—any idea of Miss Cattledon?”

“Just as much as he has of me,” cried Miss Deveen. “He is kind and polite to her; as he is, naturally, to every one; but you may rely upon it he never gave her a word or a look that would be construed into anything warmer.”

“How silly she must be!”

“Not more silly than the rest are. It is a mania, Johnny, and they all go in for it. Jemima Cattledon—stupid old thing!—cherishes hopes of Mr. Lake: a dozen others cherish the same. Most of them are worse than she is, for they course about the parish after him all day long. Cattledon never does that: with all her zeal, she does not forget that she is a gentlewoman; she meets him here, at my house, and she goes to church to see and hear him, but she does not race after him.”

“Do you think he is aware of all this pursuit?”

“Well, he must be, in a degree; William Lake is not a simpleton. But the very hopelessness of his being able to marry must in his mind act as a counterbalance, and cause him to look upon it as a harmless pastime. How could he think any one of them in earnest, remembering his poor hundred pounds a-year?”

Thus talking, the time slipped on, until we saw the congregation coming out of church. The service had taken just three-quarters-of-an-hour.

“Young Chisholm has been reading the prayers to-day; I am sure of that,” remarked Miss Deveen. “He gabbles them over as fast as a parrot.”

The ladies congregated within the porch, and without: ostensibly to exchange compliments with one another; in reality to wait for the curates. The two appeared together: Mr. Lake quiet and thoughtful; Mr. Chisholm, a very tall, slim, empty-headed young fellow, smiling here, and shaking hands there, and ready to chatter with the lot.

For full five minutes they remained stationary. Some important subject of conversation had evidently been started, for they stood around Mr. Lake, listening to something he was saying. The pew-opener, a woman in a muslin cap, and the bell-ringer, an old man in a battered hat, halted on the outskirts of the throng.

“One or other of those damsels is sure to invent some grave question to discuss with him,” laughed Miss Deveen. “Perhaps Betty Smith has been breaking out again. She gives more trouble, with her alternate repentings and her lapsings to the tap-room, than all the rest of the old women put together.”

Presently the group dispersed; some going one way, some another. Young Chisholm walked off at a smart pace, as if he meant to make a round of morning calls; the elder curate and Miss Cattledon crossed the road together.

“His way home lies past our house,” remarked Miss Deveen,“so that he often does cross the road with her. He lives at Mrs. Topcroft’s.”

“Mrs. Topcroft’s! What a curious name.”

“So it is, Johnny. But she is a curiously good woman—in my opinion; worth her weight in gold. Those young ladies yonder turn up their noses at her, calling her a ‘lodging-letter.’They are jealous; that’s the truth; jealous of her daughter, Emma Topcroft. Cattledon, I know, thinks the young girl the one chief rival to be feared.”

Mr. Lake passed the garden with a bow, raising his hat to Miss Deveen; and Cattledon came in.

I went off, as quick as an omnibus could take me, to the Tavistock, being rather behind time, and preparing for a blowing-up from Mr. Brandon in consequence.

“Are you Mr. Ludlow, sir?” asked the waiter.

“Yes.”

“Then Mr. Brandon left word that he was going down to Lincoln’s Inn, sir; and if he is not back here at one o’clock precisely, I was to say that you needn’t come down again till to-morrow morning at ten.”

I went into the Strand, and amused myself with looking at the shops, getting back to the hotel a few minutes after one. No; Mr. Brandon had not come in. All I could do was to leave Miss Deveen’s note of invitation to dine with her—that day, or any other day that might be more convenient, or every day—and tell the man to be sure to give it him.

Then I went into the National Gallery, after getting some Bath buns at a pastrycook’s. It was between five and six when I returned to Miss Deveen’s. Her carriage had just driven up; she and Cattledon were alighting from it.

“I have a little commission to do yet at one of the shops in the neighbourhood, and I may as well go about it now,” remarked Miss Deveen. “Will you go with me, Johnny?”

Of course I said I would go; and Miss Cattledon was sent indoors to fetch a small paper parcel that lay on the table in the blue room.

“It contains the patterns of some sewing silks that I want to get,” she added to me, as we stood waiting on the door-steps.“If——”

At that moment, out burst the ting-tang. Miss Deveen suddenly broke off what she was saying, and turned to look at the church.

“Do they have service at this hour?” I asked.

“Hush, Johnny! That bell is not going for service. Some one must be dead.”

In truth, I heard that, even as she spoke. Three times three it struck out, followed by the sharp, quick strokes.

“That’s the passing-bell!” exclaimed Cattledon, coming quickly from the hall with the little packet in her hand. “Whocan be dead? It hardly rings out once in a year.”

For, it appeared, the bell at St. Matthew’s did not in general toll for the dead: was not expected to do so. Our bell at Church Dykely rang for any one who could pay for it.

Waiting there on the steps, we saw Mr. Lake coming from the direction of the church. Miss Deveen walked down the broad path of her small front-garden, and stood at the gate to wait for him.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Oh, it is a grievous thing!” he cried, in answer, his gentle face pale, his blue eyes suppressing their tears. “It is no other than my dear Rector; my many years’ friend!”

“The Rector!” gasped Miss Deveen.

“Indeed it is. The complaint he suffered from has increased its symptoms lately, but no one thought of attaching to them the slightest danger. At two o’clock to-day he sent for me, saying he felt very ill. I found him so when I got there; ill, and troubled. He had taken a turn for the worse; and death—death,”added Mr. Lake, pausing to command his voice, “was coming on rapidly.”

Miss Deveen had turned as white as her point-lace collar.

“He was troubled, you say?” she asked.

“In such a case as this—meeting death face to face unexpectedly—it is hardly possible not to be troubled, however truly we may have lived in preparation for it,” answered the sad, soft voice of the curate. “Mr. Selwyn’s chief perplexity lay in the fact that he had not settled his worldly affairs.”

“Do you mean, not made his will?”

“Just so,” nodded Mr. Lake; “he had meant to do so, he said to me, but had put it off from time to time. We got a lawyer in, and it was soon done; and—and—I stayed on with him afterwards to the end.”

“Oh dear, it is a piteous tale,” sighed Miss Deveen. “And his wife and daughters are away!”

“They went to Oxford last Saturday for a week; and the two sons are there, as you know. No one thought seriously of his illness. Even this morning, when I called upon him after breakfast, though he said he was not feeling well, and did not look well, such a thing as danger never occurred to me. And now he is dead!”

Never did a parson’s death cause such a stir in a parish aspoor Mr. Selwyn’s did in this. A lively commotion set in. People flew about to one another’s houses like chips in a gale of wind. Not only was the sorrow to himself to be discussed, but the uncertainty as to what would happen now. Some six months previously a church not far off, St. Peter’s, which had rejoiced in three energetic curates, and as many daily services, suddenly changed its incumbent; the new one proved to be an elderly man with wife and children, who did all the duty himself, and cut off the curates and the week-day prayers. What if the like calamity should happen to St. Matthew’s!

I was away most of the following day with Mr. Brandon, so was not in the thick of it, but the loss was made up for in the evening.

“Of course it is impossible to say who will get the living,”cried Mrs. Jonas, one of the two widows already mentioned, who had been dining with Miss Deveen. “I know who ought to—and that is our dear Mr. Lake.”

“‘Oughts’ don’t go for much in this world,” growled Dr. Galliard, a sterling man, in spite of his gruffness. He had recently brought Cattledon out of a bilious attack, and ran in this evening to see whether the cure lasted. “They go for nothing in the matter of Church patronage,” continued he. “If Lake had his deserts, he’d be made incumbent of this living to-morrow: but he is as likely to get it as I am to get the Lord Chancellor’s seals.”

“Who would have done as Mr. Lake has done—given himself up solely and wholly to the duties of the church and the poor, for more years than I can count?” contended Mrs. Jonas, who was rich and positive, and wore this evening a black gauze dress, set off with purple grapes, and a spray of purple grapes in her black hair. “I say the living is due to him, and the Lord Chancellor ought to present him with it.”

Dr. Galliard gave a short laugh. He was a widower, and immensely popular, nearly as much so as Mr. Lake. “Did you ever know a curate succeed to a living under the circumstances?”he demanded. “The Lord Chancellor has enough friends of his own, waiting to snap up anything that falls; be sure of that, Mrs. Jonas.”

“Some dean will get it, I shouldn’t wonder,” cried Cattledon. For at this time we were in the prime old days when a Church dignitary might hold half-a-dozen snug things, if he could drop into them.

“Just so; a dean or some other luminary,” nodded the doctor. “It is the province of great divines to shine like lights in the world, and of curates to toil on in obscurity. Well—God sees all things: and what is wrong in this world may be set right in the next.”

“You speak of the Lord Chancellor,” quietly put in Miss Deveen: “the living is not in his gift.”

“Never said it was—was speaking generally,” returned the doctor. “The patron of the living is some other great man, nobleman, or what not, living down in the country.”

“In Staffordshire, I think,” said Miss Deveen, with hesitation, not being sure of her memory. “He is a baronet, I believe; but I forget his name.”

“All the same, ma’am: there’s no more chance for poor Lake with him than with the Lord Chancellor,” returned Dr. Galliard.“Private patrons are worse beset, when a piece of preferment falls in, than even public ones.”

“Suppose the parish were to get up a petition, setting forth Mr. Lake’s merits and claims, and present it to the patron?”suggested Mrs. Jonas. “Not, I dare say, that it would be of much use.”

“Not the slightest use; you may rely upon that,” spoke the doctor, in his decisive way. “Lake’s best chance is to get taken on by the new man, and stand out for a higher salary.”

Certainly it seemed to be his best and only chance of getting any good out of the matter. But it was just as likely he would be turned adrift.

The next day we met Mrs. Jonas in the King’s Road. She had rather a down look as she accosted Miss Deveen.

“No one seems willing to bestir themselves about a petition; they say it is so very hopeless. And there’s a rumour abroad that the living is already given away.”

“To whom is it given?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Well, not to a Very Reverend Dean, as Miss Cattledon suggested last night, but to some one as bad—or good: one of the Canons of St. Paul’s. I dare say it’s true. How hard it is on Mr. Lake! How hard it must seem to him!”

“He may stay here as curate, then.”

“Never you expect that,” contended Mrs. Jonas, her face reddening with her zeal. “These cathedral luminaries have invariably lots of their own circle to provide for.”

“Do you not think it will seem hard on Mr. Lake?” I said to Miss Deveen, as we left the little widow, and walked on.

“I do, Johnny Ludlow. I do think he ought to have it; that in right and justice no one has so great a claim to it as he,” she impressively answered. “But, as Dr. Galliard says, ‘oughts’go for nothing in Church patronage. William Lake is a good, earnest, intellectual man; he has grown grey in the service of the parish, and yet, now that the living is vacant, he has no more chance of it than that silly young Chisholm has—not half as much, I dare say, if the young fellow were only in priest’s orders. It is but a common case: scores of curates who have to work on, neglected, to their lives’ end could testify to it. Here we are, Johnny. This is Mrs. Topcroft’s.”

Knocking at the house-door—a small house standing ever so far back from the road—we were shown by a young servant into a pleasant parlour. Emma Topcroft, a merry, bright, laughing girl, of eighteen or nineteen, sat there at work with silks and black velvet. If I had the choice given me between her and Miss Cattledon, thought I, as Mr. Lake seems to have, I know which of the two I should choose.

“Mamma is making a rice-pudding in the kitchen,” she said, spreading her work out on the table for Miss Deveen to see.

“You are doing it very nicely, Emma. And I have brought you the fresh silks. I could not get them before: they had to send the patterns into town. Is the other screen begun?”

“Oh yes; and half done,” answered Emma, briskly, as she opened the drawer of a-work-table, and began unfolding another square of velvet from its tissue paper. “I do the sober colours in both screens first, and leave the bright ones till last. Here’s the mother.”

Mrs. Topcroft came in, turning down her sleeves at the wrist; a little woman, quite elderly. I liked her the moment I saw her. She was homely and motherly, with the voice and manners of a lady.

“I came to bring Emma the silks, and to see how the work was getting on,” said Miss Deveen as she shook hands. “And what a grievous thing this is about Mr. Selwyn!”

Mrs. Topcroft lifted her hands pityingly. “It has made Mr. Lake quite ill,” she answered; “I can see it. And”—dropping her voice—“they say there will be little, or nothing, for Mrs. Selwyn and the children.”

“Yes, there will; though perhaps not much,” corrected Miss Deveen. “Mrs. Selwyn has two hundred a-year of her own. I happen to know it.”

“I am very thankful to hear that: we were fearing the worst. I wonder,” added Mrs. Topcroft, “if this will take Mr. Lake from us?”

“Probably. We cannot tell yet. People are saying he ought to have the living if it went by merit: but there’s not any hope of that.”

“Not any,” acquiesced Mrs. Topcroft, shaking her head. “It does seem unjust: that a clergyman should wear out all his best days toiling for a church, and be passed over at last as not worth a consideration.”

“It is the way of the world.”

“No one knows his worth,” went on Mrs. Topcroft, “So patient, so good, so self-denying; and so anxious for the poor and sick, and for all the ill-doers who seem to be going wrong. I don’t believe there are many men in this world so good as he. All he can scrape and save out of his narrow income he gives away, denying himself necessaries to be able to do it: Mr. Selwyn, you know, has given nothing. It has been said he grudged even the communion money.”

That was Mrs. Topcroft’s report of Mr. Lake; and she ought to know. He had boarded with her long enough. He had the bedroom over the best parlour; and the little den of a back-parlour was given over to his own use, in which he saw his parishioners and wrote his sermons.

“They come from the same village in the West of England,”said Miss Deveen to me as we walked homewards. “Mr. Lake’s father was curate of the place, and Mrs. Topcroft’s people are the doctors: her brothers are in practice there now. When she was left a widow upon a very slender income, and settled down in this little house, Mr. Lake came to board with her. He pays a guinea a-week only; but Mrs. Topcroft has told me that it pays her amply, and she could not have got along without it. The housekeeping is, of necessity, economical: and that suits the pocket on both sides.”

“I like Mrs. Topcroft. And she seems quite a lady, though she is poor.”

“She is quite a lady, Johnny. Her husband was a civil engineer, very clever: but for his early death he might havebecome as renowned as his master, Sir John Rennie. The son; he is several years older than Emma; is in the same profession, steady and diligent, and he gains a fair salary now, which of course helps his mother. He is at home night and morning.”

“Do you suppose that Mr. Lake thinks of Emma?”

Miss Deveen laughed—as if the matter were a standing joke in her mind. “I do not suppose it, Johnny. I never saw the smallest cause to lead me to suppose it: she is too much of a child. Such a thing never would have been thought of but for the jealous suspicions of the parish—I mean of course our young ladies in it. Because Emma Topcroft is a nice-looking and attractive girl, and because Mr. Lake lives in her companionship, these young women must needs get up the notion. And they despise the Topcrofts accordingly, and turn the cold shoulder on them.”

It had struck me that Emma Topcroft must be doing those screens for Miss Deveen. I asked her.

“She is doing them for me in one sense, Johnny,” was the answer. “Being an individual of note, you see”—and Miss Deveen laughed again—“that is, my income being known to be a good one, and being magnified by the public into something fabulous, I have to pay the penalty of greatness. Hardly a week passes but I am solicited to become the patroness of some bazaar, not to speak of other charities, or at least to contribute articles for sale. So I buy materials and get Emma Topcroft to convert them into nicknacks. Working flowers upon velvet for banner-screens, as she is doing now; or painting flowers upon cardboard for baskets or boxes, which she does nicely, and various other things. Two ends are thus served: Emma makes a pretty little income, nearly enough for her clothes, and the bazaars get the work when it is finished, and sell it for their own benefit.”

“It is very good of you, Miss Deveen.”

“Good! Nay, don’t say that, Johnny,” she continued, in a reproving tone. “Those whom Heaven has blessed with ample means must remember that they will have to render an account of their stewardship. Trifles, such as these, are but odds and ends, not to be thought of, beside what I ought to do—and try to do.”

That same evening Mr. Lake came in, unexpectedly. He called to say that the funeral was fixed for Saturday, and that aportion of the burial-service would be read in the church here, before starting for the cemetery: Mrs. Selwyn wished it so.

“I hear that the parish began to indulge a hope that you would be allowed to succeed Mr. Selwyn,” Miss Deveen observed to him as he was leaving; “but——”

“I!” he exclaimed, interrupting her in genuine surprise, a transient flush rising to his face. “What, succeed to the living! How could any one think of such a thing for a moment? Why, Miss Deveen, I do not possess any interest: not the slightest in the world. I do not even know Sir Robert Tenby. It is not likely that he has ever heard my name.”

“Sir Robert Tenby!” I cried, pricking up my ears. “Is Sir Robert Tenby the patron?”

“Yes. His seat is in Worcestershire?”

“Do you know him, Johnny?” asked Miss Deveen.

“A little; not much. Bellwood is near Crabb Cot. I used often to see his wife when she was Anne Lewis: we were great friends. She was a very nice girl.”

“A girl, Johnny! Is she younger than he is?”

“Young enough to be his daughter.”

“But I was about to say,” added Miss Deveen to the curate,“that I fear there can be no chance for you, if this report, that the living is already given away, be correct. I wish it had been otherwise.”

“There could be no chance for me in any case, dear Miss Deveen; there’s no chance for any one so unknown and obscure as I am,” he returned, suppressing a sigh as he shook her hand.“Thank you all the same for your kind wishes.”

How long I lay awake that night I don’t care to recall. An extraordinary idea had taken possession of me. If some one would only tell Sir Robert Tenby of the merits of this good man, he might be so impressed as to give him the living. We were not sure about the Canon of St. Paul’s: he might be a myth, as far as our church went.

Yes, these ideas were all very well; but who would presume to do it? The mice, you know, wanted to bell the cat, but none of them could be got to undertake the task.

Down I went in the morning to Mr. Brandon as soon as breakfast was over. I found him in his sitting-room at his breakfast: dry toast, and tea without milk; a yellow silk handkerchief thrown cornerwise over his head, and his face looking green.He had a bilious attack coming on, he said, and thought he had taken a slight cold.

Now I don’t want to disparage Mr. Brandon’s merits. In some things he was as good as gold. But when he fell into these fanciful attacks he was not practically worth a rush. It was hardly a propitious moment for the scheme I had in my head; but, unfortunately, there was no time to lose: I must speak then, or not at all. Down I sat, and told my tale. Old Brandon, sipping his tea by spoonfuls, listened, and stared at me with his little eyes.

“And you have been getting up in your brain the Utopian scheme that Sir Robert Tenby would put this curate into the living! and want me to propose it to him! Is that what you mean, young man?”

“Yes, sir. Sir Robert would listen to you. You are friendly with him, and he is in town. Won’t you, please, do it?”

“Not if I know it, Johnny Ludlow. Solicit Robert Tenby to give the living to a man I never heard of: a man I know nothing about! What notions you pick up!”

“Mr. Lake is so good and so painstaking,” I urged. “He has been working all these years——”

“You have said all that before,” interrupted old Brandon, shifting the silk handkerchief on his head more to one side.“I can’t answer for it, you know. And, if I could, I should not consider myself justified in troubling Sir Robert.”

“What I thought was this, sir: that, if he got to know all Mr. Lake is, he might be glad to give him the living: glad of an opportunity to do a good and kind act. I did not think of your asking him to give the living; only to tell him of Mr. Lake, and what he has done, and been. He lives only in Upper Brook Street. It would not be far for you to go, sir.”

“I should not go if he lived here at the next door, Johnny Ludlow: should not be justified in going on such an errand. Go yourself.”

“I don’t like to, sir.”

“He wouldn’t eat you; he’d only laugh at you. Robert Tenby would excuse in a silly lad what he might deem impertinence from me. There, Johnny; let it end.”

And there it had to end. When old Brandon took up an idea he was hard as adamant.

I stood at the hotel door, wishing I could screw up courage tocall at Sir Robert’s, but shrinking from it terribly. Then I thought of poor Mr. Lake, and that there was no one else to tell about him; and at last I started, for Upper Brook Street.

“Is Lady Tenby at home?” I asked, when I got to the door.

“Yes, sir.” And the man showed me into a room where Lady Tenby sat, teaching her little boy to walk.

She was just the same kind and simple-mannered woman that she had been as Anne Lewis. Putting both her hands into mine, she said how glad she was to see me in London, and held out the child to be kissed. I explained my errand, and my unwillingness to come; saying I could venture to tell her all about it better than I could tell Sir Robert.

She laughed merrily. “He is not any more formidable than I am, Johnny; he is not the least bit so in the world. You shall see whether he is”—opening the door of the next room.“Robert,” she called out in glee, “Johnny Ludlow is here, and is saying you are an ogre. He wants to tell you something, and can’t pluck up courage to do it.”

Sir Robert Tenby came in, the Times in his hand, and a smile on his face: the same kind, rugged, homely face that I knew well. He shook hands with me, asking if I wanted his interest to be made prime-minister.

And somehow, what with their kindness and their thorough, cordial homeliness, I lost my fears. In two minutes I had plunged into the tale, Sir Robert sitting near me with his elbow on the table, and Anne beside him, her quiet baby on her knee.

“I thought it so great a pity, sir, that you should not hear about Mr. Lake: how hard he has worked for years, and what a good and self-denying man he is,” I concluded at last, after telling what Miss Deveen thought of him, and what Mrs. Topcroft said. “Not, of course, that I could presume to suggest such a thing, sir, as that you should bestow upon him the living—only to let you know there was a man so deserving, if—if it was not given already. It is said in the parish that the living is given.”

“Is this Mr. Lake a good preacher?” asked Sir Robert, when I paused.

“They say he is one of the best and most earnest of preachers, sir. I have not heard him; Mr. Selwyn generally preached.”

“Does he know of your application to me?”

“Why, no, Sir Robert, of course not! I could not have had the face to tell any one I as much as wished to make it. Except Mr. Brandon. I spoke to him because I wanted him to come instead of me.”

Sir Robert smiled. “And he would not come, I suppose?”

“Oh dear, no: he asked me whether I thought we lived in Utopia. He said I might come if I chose—that what would be only laughed at in a silly boy like me, might be deemed impertinence in him.”

The interview came to an end. Anne said she hoped I should dine with them while I was in town—and Mr. Brandon also, Sir Robert added; and with that I came out. Came out just as wise as I had gone in; for never a word of hope did Sir Robert give. For all he intimated to the contrary, the living might be already in the hands of the Canon of St. Paul’s.

Two events happened the next day, Saturday. The funeral of the Rector, and the departure of Miss Cattledon for Chelmsford, in Essex. An aunt of hers who lived there was taken dangerously ill, and sent for her by telegram. Mr. Brandon came up to dine with us in the evening—— But that’s neither here nor there.

I sat in Miss Deveen’s pew at church with herself on the Sunday morning; she wore black silk out of respect to the late Rector. Mr. Lake and the young deacon, who had a luxuriant crop of yellow hair, had put on black gloves. The church was full; all the world and his wife seemed to have come to it; and the parsons’ surplices stood on end with starch.

Mr. Lake was in the reading-desk; it caused, I think, some surprise—could that yellow-haired nonentity of a young dandy be going to preach? He stood at the communion-table, looking interesting, and evidently suffering from a frightful cold: which cold, as we found later, was the reason that Mr. Lake took nearly all the service himself.

What a contrast they were! The simpering, empty-faced young deacon, who was tall and slender as a lamp-post, and had really not much more brains than one; and the thoughtful, earnest, middle-aged priest, with the sad look on his gentle face. Nothing could be more impressive than his reading of the prayers; they were prayed, not read: and his voice was one of those persuasive, musical voices you don’t often hear. If Sir Robert Tenby could but hear this reading! I sighed, as Mr. Lake went through the Litany.

Hardly had the thought crossed my mind, when some commotion in the church caused most of us to turn round: a lady was fainting. But for that, I might never have seen what I did see. In the next pew, right behind ours, sat Sir Robert and Lady Tenby. So surprised was I that I could not for the moment believe my eyes, and simply stared at them. Anne caught the look, and smiled at me.

Was it a good omen? I took it to be one. If Sir Robert had no thought of Mr. Lake, or if the living was already given to that canon, why should he have come all this way to hear him? I recalled the Sunday, years ago now, when Sir Robert had sat in his own pew at Timberdale, listening attentively to Herbert Tanerton’s reading and preaching, deliberating within his mind—I know I thought so then—whether he should bestow upon him the living of Timberdale, or not; whether Herbert was worthy of it. Sir Robert did give it to him: and I somehow took it for an earnest that he might give this one to Mr. Lake.

Meanwhile Mr. Lake ascended the pulpit-stairs in his black gown, and began his sermon: supremely unconscious that the patron of the church was just in front of him, looking and listening. No one present knew Sir Robert and Lady Tenby.

You should have heard that sermon: all its earnest eloquence, its sound piety, its practical application, and its quiet, impressive delivery. It was not exactly a funeral sermon; but when he spoke of the late Rector, who had been so unexpectedly taken away, and whose place in this world could know him no more, hardly a dry eye was in the church: and if he himself had not once or twice paused to call up his equanimity, his own eyes would not have been dry, either. I was glad Sir Robert heard it. It was a sermon to be remembered for all time.

Miss Deveen waited in her pew until the people had mostly gone; she did not like being in a crowd. The Tenbys waited also. In the porch Anne put her hand upon my arm, speaking in a whisper.

“That is Miss Deveen, I suppose, Johnny? What a nice face she has! What a fine, handsome woman she is! How good she looks!”

“She is good; very. I wish I might introduce her to you.”

“That’s just what I was going to ask you to do, Johnny. My husband would like to speak with her.”

I did it outside in the churchyard. After speaking together for a minute or two, Miss Deveen invited them to step into her house, pointing to it that they might see it was close by. Sir Robert walked on by her side, I behind with Anne. An open carriage was pacing in the road, the servants wearing the Tenby livery: people turned to look at it, wondering whose grand carriage it was. As we went slowly onwards Mr. Lake overtook us. He did not stop, only lifted his hat to Miss Deveen in passing: but she arrested him to ask after Mrs. Selwyn.

“Oh, she is very ill, very sad,” he answered, in a tone as if the sorrow were his own. “And at present I fear there’s nothing for her but to bear; to bear as she best may: not yet can she open her heart to consolation.”

Miss Deveen said no more, and he walked on. It struck me she had only stopped him that Sir Robert might see him face to face. Being a shrewd woman, it could not be but that she argued good from this unexpected visit. And she knew I had been to them.

They would not stay to take lunch; which was on the table when we went in. Anne said she must get home to her baby: not the young shaver I saw; a little girl a month or two old. Sir Robert spared a few minutes to shut himself up in the drawing-room with Miss Deveen; and then the carriage whirled them off.

“I hope he was asking you about Mr. Lake?” I said impulsively.

“That is just what he was asking, Johnny,” replied Miss Deveen. “He came here this morning, intending to question me. He is very favourably impressed with William Lake; I can see that: and he said he had never heard a better sermon, rarely one as good.”

“I dare say that canon of St. Paul’s is all an invention! Perhaps Mrs. Jonas went to sleep and dreamt it.”

“It is certainly not fact,” laughed Miss Deveen. “Sir Robert tells me he does not as much as know any one of the canons by sight.”

“He did not tell you he should give it to Mr. Lake?”

“No, Johnny: neither did he give me any grounds for supposing that he would. He is a very cautious man; I can see that; conscientiously wishing to do right, and act for the best. We must say nothing of this abroad, remember.”

The Reverend William Lake sat down to his breakfast on Monday morning, as the clock was striking half-past nine. He had been called out to baptize a sick baby and pray by its dying mother. Pouring himself out a cup of tea, buttering his first slice of dry toast, and cracking his egg, for that’s what his breakfast consisted of, he took up a letter lying on the table, which had come by the morning post. Opening it presently, he found it to contain a request from Sir Robert Tenby that he would call upon him that morning at eleven o’clock, in Upper Brook Street.

“Sir Robert Tenby cannot know of our daily service,” thought the clergyman, after reading the note twice over, and wondering what he was wanted for; he having no knowledge of the tide of affairs: no more notion that Sir Robert had been at the church the previous day than that the man in the moon was there. “I must ask Chisholm to take the service this morning.”

Accordingly, his breakfast over, and a sprucer coat put on, he went to the deacon’s lodgings—handsome rooms in a good house. That young divine was just beginning breakfast, the table being laid with toasted ham and poached eggs, and potted meats, and hot, buttered muffins, and all kinds of nice things, presenting a contrast to the frugal one Mr. Lake had just got up from.

“Took an extra snooze in bed to nurse myself,” cried the young man, in half-apology for the lateness of the meal, as he poured out a frothing cup of chocolate. “My cold?—oh, it’s better.”

“I am glad of that,” said Sir. Lake. “I want you to take the service this morning.”

“What, do it all!”

“If you will be so good. I have a note here from Sir Robert Tenby, asking me to call upon him at eleven o’clock. I can’t think what he wants.”

“Sir Robert Tenby? That’s the patron! Oh, I dare say it’s only to talk about the Selwyns; or to tell you to take the duty until some one’s appointed to the living.”

“Ay,” replied Mr. Lake. And he had no other thought, no idea of self-benefit, when he started off to walk to Upper Brook Street.

An hour later, seated in Sir Robert’s library, enlightenment came to him. After talking with him for some time, questioninghim of his Church views and principles, hearing somewhat of his past career and of what he had formerly done at Cambridge, to all of which he gave answers that were especially pleasing to the patron’s ear, Sir Robert imparted to him the astounding fact that he—he!—was to be the new Rector.

William Lake sat, the picture of astonishment, wondering whether his ears were playing him false.

“I!” he exclaimed, scarcely above his breath. “I never thought of myself. I can hardly believe—believe—pardon me, Sir Robert—is there no mistake?”

“No mistake so far as I am concerned,” replied Sir Robert, suppressing a smile. “I have heard of your many years’ services at St. Matthew’s, and of your worth. I do not think I could bestow it upon one who deserves it better than you—if as well. The living is yours, if you will accept it.”

“You are very kind, sir,” gasped the curate, not in the least recovering his senses. “May I presume to ask who it is that has been so kind as to speak of me?”

“The person from whom I first heard of you was young Johnny Ludlow,” smiled Sir Robert. “Mr. Johnny presented himself to me here last Friday, in a state of mental commotion, not having been able to get any one else to come, evidently thinking, though not saying, that I should commit an act of singular injustice if the living did not find its way to one who, by dint of his hard and earnest work, so richly deserved it.”

The tears stood in William Lake’s eyes. “I can only thank you, sir, truly and fervently. I have no other means of testifying my gratitude—save by striving ever to do my duty untiringly, under my Lord and Master.”

“I am sure you will do it,” spoke Sir Robert, impulsively—and he was not a man of impulse in general. “You are not a married man, I believe?”

A faint red light came into the curate’s cheeks. “I have not had the means to marry, Sir Robert. It has seemed to me, until this morning, that I never should have them.”

“Well, you can marry now,” was the laughing rejoinder; “I dare say you will.” And the faint light deepened to scarlet, as the curate heard it.

“Shall you give him the living, Robert?” asked Anne, when Mr. Lake had departed.

“Yes, love.”

II

When lawyers get a case into their hands, no living conjurer can divine when their clients will get it out again. The hardest problem in Euclid was never more difficult to solve than that. Mr. Brandon came up to town on the Monday morning, bringing me with him; he thought we might be detained a few days, a week at the utmost; yet the second week was now passing, and nothing had been done; our business seemed to be no forwarder than it was at the beginning. The men of law in Lincoln’s Inn laid the blame on the conveyancers; the conveyancers laid it on the lawyers. Any way, the upshot was the same—we were kept in London. The fact to myself was uncommonly pleasant, though it might be less so to Mr. Brandon.

The astounding news—that the Reverend William Lake was to have St. Matthew’s—and the return of Miss Cattledon from her visit to the sick lady at Chelmsford, rejoiced the ears and eyes of the parish on one and the same day. It was a Wednesday. Miss Cattledon got home in time for dinner, bringing word that her relative was better.

“Has anything been heard about the living?” she inquired, sitting, bonnet in hand, before going up to dress.

Miss Deveen shook her head. In point of fact, we had heard nothing at all of Sir Robert Tenby or his intentions since Mr. Lake’s interview with him, and she was not going to tell Cattledon of that, or of Sir Robert’s visit on the Sunday.

But, as it appeared, the decision had been made public that afternoon, putting the whole parish into a ferment. Dinner was barely over when Dr. Galliard rushed in with the news.

“Only think of it!” he cried. “Such a piece of justice was never heard of before. Poor Lake has not the smallest interest in the world; and how Sir Robert Tenby came to pick him out is just a marvel. Such a stir it is causing! It’s said—I don’t know with what truth—that he came up here on Sunday morning to hear Lake preach. Mrs. Herriker saw a fine barouche draw up, high-stepping horses and powdered servants; a lady and gentleman got out of it and entered the church. It is thought now they might have been Sir Robert and Lady Tenby.”

“I shouldn’t wonder but they were,” remarked Miss Deveen.

“Has Mr. Lake really had the living given to him?” questioned Cattledon, her eyes open with surprise, her thin throatand waist all in a tremor, and unable to touch another strawberry.

“Really and truly,” replied the doctor. “Chisholm tells me he has just seen the letter appointing him to it.”

“Dear me!” cried Cattledon, quite faintly. “Dear me! How very thankful we all ought to be—for Mr. Lake’s sake.”

“I dare say he is thankful,” returned the doctor, swallowing down the rest of his glass of wine, and preparing to leave.“Thank you, no, Miss Deveen; I can’t stay longer: I have one or two sick patients on my hands to-night, and must go to them—and I promised Mrs. Selwyn to look in upon her. Poor thing! this terrible loss has made her really ill. By-the-by,” he added, turning round on his way from the room, “have you heard that she has decided upon her plans, and thinks of leaving shortly?”

“No—has she?” returned Miss Deveen.

“Best thing for her, too—to be up and doing. She has the chance of taking to a little boys’ preparatory school at Brighton; small and select, as the advertisements have it. Some relative of hers has kept it hitherto, has made money by it, and is retiring——”

“Will Mrs. Selwyn like that—to be a schoolmistress?” interrupted Cattledon, craning her neck.

“Rather than vegetate upon her small pittance,” returned the doctor briskly. “She is an active, capable woman; has all her senses about her. Better teach little boys, and live and dress well, than enjoy a solitary joint of meat once a-week and a turned gown once a-year—eh, Johnny Ludlow?”

He caught up his hat, and went out in a bustle. I laughed. Miss Deveen nodded approvingly; not at my laugh, but at Mrs. Selwyn’s resolution.

The stir abroad might have been pretty brisk that evening; we had Dr. Galliard’s word for it: it could have been nothing to what set in the next day. The poor, meek curate—who, however good he might have been to run after, could hardly have been looked upon as an eligible, bonâ-fide prospect—suddenly converted into a rich Rector: six hundred a-year and a parsonage to flourish in! All the ladies, elder and younger, went into a delightful waking-sleep and dreamed dreams.

“Such a mercy!” was the cry; “such a mercy! We might have had some dreadful old drony man here, who does notbelieve in daily services, and wears a wig on his bald head. Now Mr. Lake, though his hair is getting a little grey, has a most luxuriant and curly crop of it. Beautiful whiskers too.”

It was little Daisy Dutton said that, meeting us in the Park road; she was too young and frivolous to know better. Miss Deveen shook her head at her, and Daisy ran on with a laugh. We were on our way to Mrs. Topcroft’s, some hitch having arisen about the frames for Emma’s screens.

Emma was out, however; and Mrs. Topcroft came forward with tears in her eyes.

“I can hardly help crying since I heard it,” she said, taking her handkerchief out of the pocket of her black silk apron. “It must be such a reward to him after his years of work—and to have come so unsought—so unexpectedly! I am sure Sir Robert Tenby must be a good man.”

“I think he is one,” said Miss Deveen.

“Mr. Lake deserves his recompense,” went on Mrs. Topcroft.“No one can know it as I do. Poor Mr. Selwyn knew—but he is gone. I think God’s hand must have been in this,” she reverently added. “These good and earnest ministers deserve to be placed in power for the sake of those over whom they have charge. I have nothing to say against Mr. Selwyn, but I am sure the parish will find a blessing in Mr. Lake.”

“You will lose him,” remarked Miss Deveen.

“Yes, and I am sorry for it; but I should be selfish indeed to think of that. About the screens,” continued Mrs. Topcroft;“perhaps you would like to see them—I am sorry Emma is out. One, I know, is finished.”

Not being especially interested in the screens, I stepped into the garden, and so strolled round to the back of the house. In the little den of a room, close to the open window, sat Mr. Lake writing. He stood up when he saw me and held out his hand.

“It is, I believe, to you that I am indebted for the gift bestowed upon me,” he said in a low tone of emotion, as he clasped my hand, and a wave of feeling swept over his face.“How came you to think of me—to be so kind? I cannot thank you as I ought.”

“Oh, it’s nothing; indeed, I did nothing—so to say,” I stammered, quite taken aback. “I heard people say what a pity it was you stood no chance of the living, after working so hard in it all these years; so, as I knew Sir Robert, and knewvery well Lady Tenby, I thought it would do no harm if I just told them of it.”

“And it has borne fruit. And very grateful I am: to you, and to Sir Robert—and to One who holds all things, great and small, in His hands. Do you know,” he added, smiling at me and changing his tone to a lighter one, “it seems to me nothing less than a romance.”

This was Thursday. The next day Mr. Lake paid a visit to the bishop—perhaps to go through some formality connected with his appointment, but I don’t know—and on the following Sunday morning he “read himself in.” No mistake about his being the Rector, after that. It was a lovely day, and Mr. Brandon came up in time for service. After he knew all about it—that I had actually gone to Sir Robert, and that Mr. Lake had the living—he asked me five or six hundred questions, as though he were interested, and now he had come up to hear him preach.

You should have seen how crowded the church was. The ladies were in full force and flutter. Cattledon got herself up in a new bonnet; some of them had new rigging altogether. Each individual damsel looked upon the Rector as her especial prize, sure to be her own. Mr. Lake did every scrap of the duty himself, including the reading of the articles; that delightful young deacon’s cold had taken a turn for the worse, through going to a water-party, and he simply couldn’t hear himself speak. Poor Mrs. Selwyn and her daughter sat in their pew to-day, sad as the crape robes they wore.

Did you ever feel nervous when some one belonging to you is going to preach—lest he should not come up to expectation, or break down, or anything of that sort? Mr. Lake did not belong to me, but a nervous feeling came over me as he went into the pulpit. For Mr. Brandon was there with his critical ears. I had boasted to him of Mr. Lake’s preaching; and felt sensitively anxious that it should not fall short.

I need not have feared. It was a very short sermon, the services had been so long, but wonderfully beautiful. You might have heard a pin drop in the church, and old Brandon himself never stirred hand or foot. At the end of the pew sat he, I next to him; his eyes fixed on the preacher, his attitude that of one who is absorbed in what he hears. Just a few words Mr. Lake spoke of himself, of the new relation between himself and his hearers; very quiet, modest words hearing the ring of truth and good-fellowship.

“That man would do his duty in whatever position of life he might be placed,” pronounced old Brandon, as we got out.“Robert Tenby’s choice has been a good and wise one.”

“Thanks to Johnny Ludlow, here,” said Miss Deveen, laughing.

“I don’t say but what Johnny Ludlow has his head on his shoulders the right way. He means to do well always, I believe; and does do it sometimes.”

Which I am sure was wonderful praise, conceded by old Brandon, calling to my face no end of a colour. And, if you’ll believe me, he put his arm within mine; a thing he had never done before; and walked so across the churchyard.

The next week was a busy one. What with Mrs. Selwyn’s preparations for going away, and what with the commotion caused by the new state of things, the parish had plenty on its hands. Mr. Lake had begged Mrs. Selwyn not to quit the Rectory until it should be quite and entirely convenient to her; if he got into it six or twelve months hence, he kindly urged, it would be time enough for him. But Mrs. Selwyn, while thanking him for his consideration, knowing how earnestly he meant it, showed him that she was obliged to go. She had taken to the school at Brighton, and had to enter upon it as speedily as might be. A few days afterwards she had vacated the Rectory, and her furniture was packed into vans to be carried away. Some women went into the empty house to clean it down; that it might be made ready for its new tenant. Poor Mr. Selwyn had repaired and decorated the house only the previous year, little thinking his tenure of it would be so short.

Then began the fun. The polite attentions to Mr. Lake, as curate, had been remarkable; to Mr. Lake, as Rector, they were unique. Mrs. Topcroft’s door was besieged with notes and parcels. The notes contained invitations to teas and dinners, the parcels small offerings to himself. A person about to set up housekeeping naturally wants all kinds of articles; and the ladies of St. Matthew’s were eager to supply contributions. Slippers fell to a discount, purses and silk watch-guards ditto. More useful things replaced them. Ornamental baskets for the mantelpiece, little match-boxes done in various devices, card-racks hastily painted, serviette rings composed of coloured beads, pincushions and scent-mats for the dressing-table, with lots morethings that I can’t remember. These were all got up on the spur of the moment; more elaborate presents, that might take weeks to complete, were put in hand. In vain Mr. Lake entreated them not to do these things; not to send anything; not to trouble themselves about him, assuring them it made him most uncomfortable; that he preferred not to receive presents of any kind: and he said it so emphatically, they might see he was in earnest. All the same. He might as well have talked to the moon. The ladies laughed, and worked on.

“Mrs. Topcroft, I think you had better refuse to take the parcels in,” he said to her one day, when a huge packet had arrived, which proved to be a market-basket, sent conjointly by three old maiden sisters. “I don’t wish to be rude, or do anything that would hurt kind people’s feelings: but, upon my word, I should like to send all the things back again with thanks.”

“They would put them into the empty Rectory if I did not take them in,” returned Mrs. Topcroft. “The only way to stop it is to talk to the ladies yourself. Senseless girls!”

Mr. Lake did talk—as well, and as impressively as he knew how. It made not the slightest impression; and the small presents flocked in as before. Mrs. Jonas did not brew a“blessed great jug of camomile-tea,” as did one of the admirers of Mr. Weller, the elder; but she did brew some “ginger-cordial,”from a valued receipt of her late husband, the colonel, and sent it, corked up in two ornamental bottles, with her best regards. The other widow, Mrs. Herriker, was embroidering a magnificent table-cover, working against time.

We had the felicity of tasting the ginger-cordial. Mrs. Jonas gave a small “at home,” and brought out a bottle of it as we were leaving. Cattledon sniffed at her liqueur-glass surreptitiously before drinking it.

“The chief ingredient in that stuff is rum,” she avowed to me as we walked home, stretching up her neck in displeasure.“Pine-apple rum! My nose could not be mistaken.”

“The cordial was very good,” I answered. “Rum’s not a bad thing, Miss Cattledon.”

“Not at all bad, Johnny,” laughed Miss Deveen. “An old sailor-uncle of mine, who had been round the world and back again more times than he could count, looked upon it as the panacea for all earthly ills.”

“Any way, before I would lay myself out to catch Mr. Lake, as that widow woman does, and as some others are doing, I would hide my head for ever,” retorted Cattledon. And, to give her her due, though she did look upon the parson as safe to fall to her own lot, she did not fish for him. No presents, large or small, went out from her hands.

That week we dined in Upper Brook Street. Miss Deveen, Mr. Brandon, the new Rector, and I; and two strange ladies whom we did not previously know. Mr. Brandon took Anne in to dinner; she put me on her left hand at table, and told me she and Sir Robert hoped I should often go to see them at Bellwood.

“My husband has taken such a fancy to you, Johnny,” she whispered. “He does rather take likes and dislikes to people—just as I know you do. He says he took a great liking to me the first time he ever spoke to me. Do you remember it, Johnny?—you were present. We were kneeling in the parlour at Maythorn Bank. You were deep in that child’s book of mine,‘Les contes de ma bonne,’ and I had those cuttings of plants, which I had brought from France, spread out on newspapers on the carpet, when Sir Robert came in at the glass-doors. That was the first time he spoke to me; but he had seen me at Timberdale Church the previous day. Papa and I and you walked over there: and a very hot day it was, I remember.”

“That Sir Robert should take a liking to you, Anne, was only a matter of course; other people have done the same,” I said, calling her “Anne” unconsciously, my thoughts back in the past. “But I don’t understand why he should take a liking to me.”

“Don’t you?” she returned. “I can tell you that he has taken it—a wonderful liking. Why, Johnny, if my little baby-girl were twenty years older, you would only need to ask and have her. I’m not sure but he’d offer her to you without asking.”

We both laughed so, she and I, that Sir Robert looked down the table, inquiring what our mirth was. Anne answered that she would not forget to tell him later.

“So mind, Johnny, that you come to Bellwood as often as you please whenever you are staying at Crabb Cot. Robert and I would both like it.”

And perhaps I may as well mention here that, although thebusiness which had brought Mr. Brandon to London was concluded, he did not go home. When that event would take place, or how long it would be, appeared to be hidden in the archives of the future. For a certain matter had arisen to detain him.

Mr. Brandon had a nephew in town, a young medical student, of whom you once heard him say that he was “going to the bad.” By what we learnt now, the young fellow appeared to have gone to it; and Mr. Brandon’s prolonged stay was connected with this.

“I shall see you into a train at Paddington, Johnny,” he said to me, “and you must make your way home alone. For all I know, I may be kept here for weeks.”

But Miss Deveen would not hear of this. “Mr. Brandon remains on for his own business, Johnny, and you shall remain for my pleasure,” she said to me in her warm manner. “I had meant to ask Mr. Brandon to leave you behind him.”

And that is how I was enabled to see the play played out between the ladies and the new Rector. I did wonder which of them would win the prize; I would not have betted upon Cattledon. It also caused me to see something of another play that was being played in London just then; not a comedy but a tragedy. A fatal tragedy, which I may tell of sometime.

All unexpectedly a most distressing rumour set in; and though none knew whence it arose, a conviction of its truth took the parish by storm. Mr. Lake was about to be married! Distressing it was, and no mistake: for each individual lady had good cause to know that she was not the chosen bride, being unpleasantly conscious that Mr. Lake had not asked her to be.

Green-eyed jealousy seized upon the community. They were ready to rend one another’s veils. The young ladies vowed it must be one or other of those two designing widows; Mrs. Jonas and Mrs. Herriker, on their parts, decided it was one of those minxes of girls. What with lady-like innuendos pitched at each other personally, and sharp hints levelled apparently at the air, all of which provoked retort, the true state of the case disclosed itself pretty clearly to the public—that neither widows nor maidens were being thought of by Mr. Lake.

And yet—that the parson had marriage in view seemed to be certain; the way in which he was furnishing his house proved it. No end of things were going into it—at least, if vigilant eyes might be believed—that could be of no use to a bachelor-parson. There must be a lady in the case—and Mr. Lake had not a sister.

With this apparent proof of what was in the wind, and with the conviction that not one of themselves had been solicited to share his hearth and home—as the widow Herriker poetically put it—the world was at a nonplus; though polite hostilities were not much less freely exchanged. Suddenly the general ill-feeling ceased. One and all metaphorically shook hands and made common cause together. A frightful conviction had set in—it must be Emma Topcroft.

Miss Cattledon was the first to scent the fox. Cattledon herself. She—but I had better tell it in order.

It was Monday morning, and we were at breakfast: Cattledon pouring out the coffee, and taking anxious glances upwards through the open window between whiles. What could be seen of the sky was blue enough, but clouds, some dark, some light, were passing rapidly over it.

“Are you fearing it will rain, Miss Cattledon?”

“I am, Johnny Ludlow. I thought,” she added, turning to Miss Deveen, “of going after that chair this morning, if you have no objection, and do not want me.”

“Go by all means,” returned Miss Deveen. “It is time the chair went, Jemima, if it is to go at all. Take Johnny with you: he would like the expedition. As for myself, I have letters to write that will occupy me the whole morning.”

Miss Cattledon wished to buy an easy-chair that would be comfortable for an aged invalid: her sick aunt at Chelmsford. But, as Miss Cattledon’s purse was not as large as her merits, she meant to get a second-hand chair: which are often just as good as new. Dr. Galliard, who knew all about invalid-chairs and everything else, advised her to go to a certain shop in Oxford Street, where they sold most kinds of furniture, old and new. So we agreed to go this same morning. Cattledon, however, would not miss the morning service; trust her for that.

“It might do you no harm to attend for once, Johnny Ludlow.”

Thus admonished, I went over with her, and reaped the benefit of the young deacon’s ministry. Mr. Lake did not make his appearance at all: quite an unusual omission. I don’t think it pleased Cattledon.

“We had better start at once, Johnny Ludlow,” she said to me as we came out; and her tone might have turned the verysweetest of cream to curds and whey. “Look at those clouds! I believe it is going to rain.”

So we made our way to an omnibus, then on the point of starting, got in, and were set down at the shop in Oxford Street. Cattledon described what she wanted; and the young man invited us to walk upstairs.

Dodging our way dexterously through the things that crowded the shop, and up the narrow staircase, we reached a room that seemed, at first sight, big enough to hold half the furniture in London.

“This way, ma’am,” said the young man who had marshalled us up. “Invalid-chairs,” he called out, turning us over to another young man, who came forward—and shot downstairs again himself.

Cattledon picked her way in and out amidst the things, I following. Half-way down the room she stopped to admire a tall, inlaid cabinet, that looked very beautiful.

“I never come to these places without longing to be rich,”she whispered to me with a sigh, as she walked on. “One of the pleasantest interludes in life, Johnny Ludlow, must be to have a good house to furnish and plenty of money to—— Dear me!”

The extreme surprise of the exclamation following the break off, caused me to look round. We were passing a side opening, or wing of the room; a wing that seemed to be filled with bedsteads and bedding. Critically examining one of the largest of these identical bedsteads stood the Reverend William Lake and Emma Topcroft.

So entranced was Cattledon that she never moved hand or foot, simply stood still and gazed. They, absorbed in their business, did not see us. The parson seemed to be trying the strength of the iron, shaking it with his hand; Emma was poking and patting at the mattress.

“Good Heavens!” faintly ejaculated Cattledon; and she looked as if about to faint.

“The washhand-stands are round this way, and the chests of drawers also,” was called out at this juncture from some unknown region, and I knew the voice to be Mrs. Topcroft’s. “You had better come if you have fixed upon the beds. The double stands look extremely convenient.”

Cattledon turned back the way she had come, and stalkedalong, her head in the air. Straight down the stairs went she, without vouchsafing a word to the wondering attendant.

“But, madam, is there not anything I can show you?” he inquired, arresting her.

“No, young man, not anything. I made a mistake in coming here.”

The young man looked at the other young man down in the shop, and tapped his finger on his forehead suggestively. They thought her crazy.

“Barefaced effrontery!” I heard her ejaculate to herself: and I knew she did not allude to the young men. But never a word to me spoke she.

Peering about, on this side the street and on that, she espied another furniture shop, and went into it. Here she found the chair she wanted; paid for it, and gave directions for it to be sent to Chelmsford.

That what we had witnessed could have but one meaning—the speedy marriage of Mr. Lake with Emma Topcroft—Cattledon looked upon as a dead certainty. Had an astrologer who foretells the future come forth to read the story differently, Cattledon would have turned a deaf ear. Mrs. Jonas happened to be sitting with Miss Deveen when we arrived home; and Cattledon, in the fulness of her outraged heart, let out what she had seen. She had felt so sure of Mr. Lake!

Naturally, as Mrs. Jonas agreed, it could have but one meaning. She took it up accordingly, and hastened forth to tell it. Ere the sun went down, it was known from one end of the parish to the other that Emma Topcroft was to be Mrs. Lake.

“A crafty, wicked hussy!” cried a chorus of tongues. “She, with that other woman, her mother, to teach her, has cast her spells over the poor weak man, and he has been unable to escape!”

Of course it did seem like it. It continued to seem like it as the week went on. Never a day dawned but the parson and Emma went to town by an omnibus, looking at things in this mart, buying in that. It became known that they had chosen the carpets: Brussels for the sitting-rooms, colour green; drugget for the bed-chambers, Turkey pattern: Mrs. Jonas fished it out. How that impudent girl could have the face to go with him upon such errands, the parish could not understand. It’s true Mrs. Topcroft always made one of the party, but what of that?

Could anything be done? Any means devised to arrest the heresy and save him from his dreadful fate? Sitting nose and knees together at one another’s houses, their cherished work all thrown aside, the ladies congregated daily to debate the question. They did not quite see their way clear to warning the parson that Emma was neither more nor less than a Mephistopheles in petticoats. They would have assured herself of the fact with the greatest pleasure had that been of any use. How sly he was, too—quite unworthy of his cloth! While making believe to be a poor man, he must have been putting by a nice nest-egg; else how could he buy all that furniture?

Soon another phase of the affair set in: one that puzzled them exceedingly. It came about through an ebullition of temper.

Mrs. Jonas had occasion to call upon the Rector one afternoon, concerning some trouble that turned up in the parish: she being a district visitor and presiding at the mothers’ meetings. Mr. Lake was not at home. Emma sat in the parlour alone stitching away at new table-cloths and sheets.

“He and mamma went out together after dinner,” said Emma, leaving her work to hand a chair to Mrs. Jonas. “I should not wonder if they are gone to the house. The carpets were to be laid down to-day.”

She looked full at Mrs. Jonas as she said it, never blushing, never faltering. What with the bold avowal, what with the sight of the sheets and the table-linen, and what with the wretched condition of affairs, the disappointment at heart, the discomfort altogether, Mrs. Jonas lost her temper.

“How dare you stand there with a bold face and acknowledge such a thing to me, you unmaidenly girl?” cried the widow, her anger bubbling over as she dashed away the offered chair. “The mischief you are doing poor Mr. Lake is enough, without boasting of it.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Emma, opening her eyes wide, and feeling more inclined to laugh than to cry, for her mood was ever sunny, “what am I doing to him?”

How Mrs. Jonas spoke out all that was in her mind, she could never afterwards recall. Emma Topcroft, gazing and listening, could not remain ignorant of her supposed fault now; and she burst into a fit of laughter. Mrs. Jonas longed to box her ears. She regarded it as the very incarnation of impudence.

“Marry me! Me! Mr. Lake! My goodness!—what canhave put such a thing into all your heads?” cried Emma, in a rapture of mirth. “Why, he is forty-five if he’s a day! He wouldn’t think of me: he couldn’t. He came here when I was a little child: he does not look upon me as much else yet. Well, I never!”

And the words came out in so impromptu a fashion, the surprise was so honestly genuine, that Mrs. Jonas saw there must be a mistake somewhere. She took the rejected chair then, her fears relieved, her tones softened, and began casting matters about in her mind; still not seeing any way out of them.

“Is it your mother he is going to marry?” cried she, the lame solution presenting itself to her thoughts, and speaking it out on the spur of the moment. It was Emma’s turn to be vexed now.

“Oh, Mrs. Jonas, how can you!” she cried with spirit. “My poor old mother!” And somehow Mrs. Jonas felt humiliated, and bit her lips in vexation at having spoken at all.

“He evidently is going to be married,” she urged presently, returning to the charge.

“He is not going to marry me,” said Emma, threading her needle. “Or to marry my mother either. I can say no more than that.”

“You have been going to London with him to choose some furniture: bedsteads, and carpets and things,” contended Mrs. Jonas.

“Mamma has gone with him to choose it all: Mr. Lake would have been finely taken in, with his inexperience. As to me, I wanted to go too, and they let me. They said it would be as well that young eyes should see as well as theirs, especially the colours of the carpets and the patterns of the crockery-ware.”

“What a misapprehension it has been!” gasped Mrs. Jonas.

“Quite so—if you mean about me,” agreed Emma. “I like Mr. Lake very much; I respect him above every one in the world; but for anything else—such a notion never entered my head: and I am sure it would not enter his.”

Mrs. Jonas, bewildered, but intensely relieved, wished Emma good-afternoon civilly, and went away to enlighten the world. A reaction set in: hopes rose again to fever heat. If it was neither Emma Topcroft nor her mother, why, it must be somebody else, argued the ladies, old and young, and perhaps she was not chosen yet: and the next day they were running about the parish more than ever.

Seated in her drawing-room, in her own particular elbow-chair, in the twilight of the summer’s evening, was Miss Deveen. Near to her, telling a history, his voice low, his conscious face slightly flushed, sat the Rector of St. Matthew’s. The scent from the garden flowers came pleasantly in at the open window; the moon, high in the heavens, was tinting the trees with her silvery light. One might have taken them for two lovers, sitting there to exchange vows, and going in for romance.

Miss Deveen was at home alone. I was escorting that other estimable lady to a “penny-reading” in the adjoining district, St. Jude’s, at which the clergy of the neighbourhood were expected to gather in full force, including the Rector of St. Matthew’s. It was a special reading, sixpence admission, got up for the benefit of St. Jude’s vestry fire-stove, which wanted replacing with a new one. Our parish, including Cattledon, took up the cause with zeal, and would not have missed the reading for the world. We flocked to it in numbers.

Disappointment was in store for some of us, however, for the Rector of St. Matthew’s did not appear. He called, instead, on Miss Deveen, confessing that he had hoped to find her alone, and to get half-an-hour’s conversation with her: he had been wishing for it for some time, as he had a tale to tell.

It was a tale of love. Miss Deveen, listening to it in the soft twilight, could but admire the man’s constancy of heart and his marvellous patience.

In the West of England, where he had been curate before coming to London, he had been very intimate with the Gibson family—the medical people of the place. The two brothers were in partnership, James and Edward Gibson. Their father had retired upon a bare competence, for village doctors don’t often make fortunes, leaving the practice to these two sons. The rest of his sons and daughters were out in the world—Mrs. Topcroft was one of them. William Lake’s father had been the incumbent of this parish, and the Lakes and the Gibsons were ever close friends. The incumbent died; another parson was appointed to the living; and subsequently William Lake became the new parson’s curate, upon the enjoyable stipend of fifty pounds a-year. How ridiculously improvident it was of the curate and Emily Gibson to fall in love with one another, wisdom could testify. They did; and there was an end of it, and went in for all kinds of rose-coloured visions after the fashion of such-likepoor mortals in this lower world. And when he was appointed to the curacy of St. Matthew’s in London, upon a whole one hundred pounds a-year, these two people thought Dame Fortune was opening her favours upon them. They plighted their troth solemnly, and exchanged broken sixpences.

Mr. Lake was thirty-one years of age then, and Emily was nineteen. He counted forty-five now, and she thirty-three. Thirty-three! Daisy Dutton would have tossed her little impertinent head, and classed Miss Gibson with the old ladies at the Alms Houses, who were verging on ninety.

Fourteen summers had drifted by since that troth-plighting; and the lovers had been living—well, not exactly upon hope, for hope seemed to have died out completely; and certainly not upon love, for they did not meet: better say, upon disappointment. Emily, the eldest daughter of the younger of the two brothers, was but one of several children, and her father had no fortune to give her. She kept the house, her mother being dead, and saw to the younger children, patiently training and teaching them. And any chance of brighter prospects appeared to be so very hopeless, that she had long ago ceased to look for it.

As to William Lake, coming up to London full of hope with his rise in life, he soon found realization not answer to expectation. He found that a hundred a-year in the metropolis, did not go so very much further than his fifty pounds went in the cheap and remote village. Whether he and Emily had indulged a hope of setting up housekeeping on the hundred a-year, they best knew; it might be good in theory, it was not to be accomplished in practice. It’s true that money went further in those days than it goes in these; still, without taking into calculation future incidental expenses that marriage might bring in its train, they were not silly enough to risk it.

When William Lake had been five years at St. Matthew’s, and found he remained just as he was, making both ends meet upon the pay, and saw no prospect of being anywhere else to the end, or of gaining more, he wrote to release Emily from her engagement. The heartache at this was great on both sides, not to be got over lightly. Emily did not rebel; did not remonstrate. A sensible, good, self-enduring girl, she would not for the world have crossed him, or added to his care; if he thought it right that they should no longer be bound to one another, it was not for her to think differently. So the plighted troth was recalled and the broken sixpences were despatched back again. Speaking in theory, that is, you understand: practically, I don’t in the least know whether the sixpences were returned or kept. It must have been a farce altogether, taken at the best: for they had just gone on silently caring for each other; patiently bearing—perhaps in a corner of their hearts even slightly hoping—all through these later years.

Miss Deveen drew a deep breath as the Rector’s voice died away in the stillness of the room. What a number of these long-enduring, silently-borne cases the world could tell of, and how deeply she pitied them, was very present to her then.

“You are not affronted at my disclosing all this so fully, Miss Deveen?” he asked, misled by her silence. “I wished to——”

“Affronted!” she interposed. “Nay, how could I be? I am lost in the deep sympathy I feel—with you and with Emily Gibson. What a trial it has been!—how hopeless it must have appeared. You will marry now.”

“Yes. I could not bring myself to disclose this abroad prematurely,”he added; “though perhaps I ought to have done it before beginning to furnish the house. I find that some of my friends, suspecting something from that fact, have been wondering whether I was thinking of Emma Topcroft. Though indeed I feel quite ashamed to repeat to you any idea that is so obviously absurd, poor child!”

Miss Deveen laughed. “How did you hear that?” she asked.

“From Emma herself. She heard of it from—from—Mrs. Jonas, I think—and repeated it to me, and to her mother, in the highest state of glee. To Emma, it seemed only fun: she is young and thoughtless.”

“I conclude Emma has known of your engagement?”

“Only lately. Mrs. Topcroft knew of it from the beginning: Emily is her niece. She knew also that I released Emily from the engagement years ago, and she thought I did rightly, my future being so hopeless. But how very silly people must be to suppose I could think of that child Emma! I must set them right.”

“Never mind the people,” cried Miss Deveen. “Don’t set them right until you feel quite inclined to do so. As to that, I believe Emma has done it already. How long is it that you and Emily have waited for one another?”

“Fourteen years.”

“Fourteen years! It seems half a lifetime. Do not let another day go on, Mr. Lake; marry at once.”

“That was one of the points on which I wished to ask your opinion,” he rejoined, his tones hesitating, his face shrinking from the moonlight. “Do you think it would be wrong of me to marry—almost directly? Would it be at all unseemly?”

“Wrong? Unseemly?” cried Miss Deveen. “In what way?”

“I hardly know. It may appear to the parish so very hurried. And it is so short a time since my kind Rector died.”

“Never mind the parish,” reiterated Miss Deveen. “The parish would fight at your marriage, though it were put off for a twelvemonth; be sure of that. As to Mr. Selwyn, he was no relative of yours. Surely you have waited long enough! Were I your promised wife, sir, I wouldn’t have you at all unless you married me to-morrow morning.”

They both laughed a little. “Why should the parish fight at my marriage, Miss Deveen?” he suddenly asked.

“Why?” she repeated; thinking how utterly void of conceit he was, how unconscious he had been all along in his modesty.“Oh, people always grumble at everything, you know. If you were to remain single, they would say you ought to marry; and if you marry, they will think you might as well have remained single. Don’t trouble your head about the parish, and don’t tell any one a syllable beforehand if you’d rather not. Ishouldn’t.”

“You have been so very kind to me always, Miss Deveen, and I have felt more grateful than I can say. I hope—I hope you will like my wife. I hope you will allow me to bring her here, and introduce her to you.”

“I like her already,” said Miss Deveen. “As to your bringing her here, if she lived near enough you should both come here to your wedding-breakfast. What a probation it has been!”

The tears stood in his grey eyes. “Yes, it has been that; a trial hardly to be imagined. I don’t think we quite lost heart, either she or I. Not that we have ever looked to so bright an ending as this; but we knew that God saw all things, and we were content to leave ourselves in His hands.”

“I am sure that she is good and estimable! One to be loved.”

“Indeed she is. Few are like her.”

“Have you never met—all these fourteen years?”

“Yes; three or four times. When I have been able to take a holiday I have gone down there to my old Rector; he was always glad to see me. It has not been often, as you know,” he added. “Mr. Selwyn could not spare me.”

“I know,” said Miss Deveen. “He took all the holidays, and you all the work.”

“He and his family seemed to need them,” spoke the clergyman from his unselfish heart. “Latterly, when Emily and I have met, we have only allowed it to be as strangers.”

“Not quite as strangers, surely!”

“No, no; I used the word thoughtlessly. I ought to have said as friends.”

“Will you pardon me for the question I am about to ask you, and not attribute it to impertinent curiosity?” resumed Miss Deveen. “How have you found the money to furnish your house? Or are you doing it on credit?”

His whole face lighted up with smiles. “The money is Emily’s, dear Miss Deveen. Her father, Edward Gibson, sent me his cheque for three hundred pounds, saying it was all he should be able to do for her, but he hoped it might be enough for the furniture.”

Miss Deveen took his hands in hers as he rose to leave. “I wish you both all the happiness that the world can give,” she said, in her earnest tones. “And I think—I feel sure—Heaven’s blessing will rest upon you.”

We turned out from the penny-reading like bees from a hive, openly wondering what could have become of Mr. Lake. Mrs. Jonas hoped his head was not splitting—she had seen him talking to Miss Cattledon long enough in the afternoon in that hot King’s Road to bring on a sunstroke. Upon which Cattledon retorted that the ginger-cordial might have disagreed with him. With the clearing up as to Emma Topcroft, these slight amenities had recommenced.

Miss Deveen sat reading by lamp-light when we arrived home. Taking off her spectacles, she began asking us about the penny-reading; but never a hint gave she that she had had a visitor.

Close upon this Mr. Lake took a week’s holiday, leaving that interesting young deacon as his substitute, and a brother Rectorto preach on the Sunday morning. No one could divine what on earth he had gone out for, as Mrs. Herriker put it, or what part of the world he had betaken himself to. Miss Deveen kept counsel; Mrs. Topcroft and Emma never opened their lips.

The frightful truth came out one morning, striking the parish all of a heap. They read it in the Times, amongst the marriages.“The Reverend William Lake, Rector of St. Matthew’s, to Emily Mary, eldest daughter of Edward Gibson, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons.” Indignation set in.

“I have heard of gay deceivers,” gasped Miss Barlow, who was at the least as old as Cattledon, and sat in the churchwarden’s pew at church, “but I never did hear of deceit such as this. And for a clergyman to be guilty of it!”

“I’m glad I sent him a doll,” giggled Daisy Dutton. “I dare say it is a doll he has gone and married.”

This was said in the porch, after morning prayers. Whilst they were all at it, talking as fast as they could talk, Emma Topcroft chanced to pass. They pounced upon her forthwith.

“Married! Oh yes, of course he is married; and they are coming home on Saturday,” said Emma, in response.

“Is she a doll?” cried Daisy.

“She is the nicest girl you ever saw,” returned Emma;“though of course not much of a girl now; and they have waited for one another fourteen years.”

Fourteen years! Thoughts went back, in mortification, to slippers and cushions. Mrs. Jonas cast regrets to her ginger-cordial.

“Of course he has a right to be engaged—and to have slyly kept it to himself, making believe he was a free man: but to go off surreptitiously to his wedding without a word to any one!—I don’t know what he may call it,” panted Mrs. Herriker, in virtuous indignation, “I call it conduct unbefitting a gentleman. He could have done no less had he been going to his hanging.”

“He would have liked to speak, I think, but could not get up courage for it; he is the shyest man possible,” cried Emma.“But he did not go off surreptitiously: some people knew of it. Miss Deveen knew—and Dr. Galliard knew—and we knew—and I feel nearly sure Mr. Chisholm knew, he simpered so the other day when he called for the books. I dare say Johnny Ludlow knew.”

All which was so much martyrdom to Jemima Cattledon,listening with a face of vinegar. Miss Deveen!—and Johnny Ludlow!—and those Topcrofts!—while she had been kept in the dark! She jerked up her skirts to cross the wet road, inwardly vowing never to put faith in surpliced man again.

We went to church on Sunday morning to the sound of the ting-tang. Mr. Lake, looking calm and cool as usual, was stepping into the reading-desk: in the Rector’s pew sat a quiet-looking and quietly dressed young lady with what Miss Deveen called, then and afterwards, a sweet face. Daisy Dutton took a violent fancy to her at first-sight: truth to say, so did I.

Our parish—the small knot of week-day church-goers in it—could not get over it at all. Moreover, just at this time they lost Mr. Chisholm, whose year was up. Some of them “went over” to St. Jude’s in a body; that church having recently set up daily services, and a most desirable new curate who could “intone.” “As if we would attend that slow old St. Matthew’s now, to hear that slow old parson Lake!” cried Mrs. Herriker, craning her neck disparagingly.

The disparagement did not affect William Lake. He proved as indefatigable as Rector as he had been as curate, earning the golden opinions he deserved. And he and his wife were happy.

But he would persist in declaring that all the good which had come to him was owing to me; that but for my visit to London at that critical time, Sir Robert Tenby would never have heard there was such a man as himself in the world.

“It is true, Johnny,” said Miss Deveen. “But you were only the humble instrument in the hand of God.”

MRS. CRAMP’S TENANT

I

It was autumn weather, and we had just arrived at Crabb Cot. When you have been away from a familiar place, whether it may be only for days, or whether it may be for weeks or months or years, you are eager on returning to it to learn what has transpired during your absence, concerning friends or enemies, the parish or the public.

Bob Letsom ran in that first evening, and we had him to ourselves; the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley were still in the dining-room. I asked after Coralie Fontaine.

“Oh, Coralie’s all right,” said he.

“Do the old ladies go on at her still?” cried Tod.

Bob laughed. “I think they’ve stopped that, finding it hopeless.”

When Sir Dace Fontaine died, now eighteen months ago, the two girls, Coralie and Verena, were left alone. Verena shortly went back to the West Indies to marry George Bazalgette, Coralie remained at Oxlip Grange. Upon that, all the old ladies in the place, as Tod had ungallantly put it, beginning with Bob’s mother, set on to lecture her: telling her she must not continue to live alone, she must take a companion of mature age. Why must she not live alone, Coralie returned: she had old Ozias to protect her from robbers, and her maid-servants to see to her clothes and her comforts. Because it was not proper, said the old ladies. Coralie laughed at that, and told them not to be afraid; she could take care of herself. And apparently she did. She had learnt to be independent in America; could not be brought to understand English stiffness and English pride: and she would go off to London and elsewhere for a week or two at a time, just as though she had been sixty years of age.

“I have an idea she will not be Coralie Fontaine much longer,” continued Letsom.

“Who will she be, then?”

“Coralie Rymer.”

“You can’t mean that she is going to take up with Ben!”

“Well, I fancy so. Some of us thought they were making up to one another before Sir Dace died—when Ben was attending him. Don’t you recollect how much old Fontaine liked Ben?—he’d have had him by his side always. Ben’s getting on like a house on fire; has unusual skill in surgery and is wonderful at operations: he performed a very critical one upon old Massock this summer, and the man is about again as sturdy and impudent as ever.”

“Does Ben live down here entirely?”

“He goes up to London between whiles—in pursuit of his studies and the degrees he means to take. He is there now. Oh, he’ll get on. You’ll see.”

“Well, what else, Letsom?” cried Tod. “You have told us no news about anybody yet.”

“Because there’s none to tell.”

“How do those two old dames get on—the Dennets?”

“Oh, they are gone off to some baths in Germany for a twelvemonth, with suppressed gout, and their house is let to a mysterious tenant.”

“Mysterious in what way?”

“Well, nobody sees her, and she keeps the doors bolted and barred. The Dennets left it all in Mrs. Cramp’s hands, being intimate with her, for they started in a hurry, and she put it into a new agent’s hands at Worcester, and he put an advertisement in the papers. Some lady answered it, a stranger; she agreed to all conditions by letter, took possession of the house, and has shut herself up as if something uncanny were inside it. Mrs. Cramp does not like it at all; and queer rumours are beginning to go about.”

“What’s her name?”

“Nobody knows.”

The house spoken of was North Villa, where Jacob Chandler used to live. When the Chandlers went down in the world it was taken on lease by the Miss Dennets, two steady middle-aged sisters.

The first visit we paid the following morning was to Oxlip Grange, to see Coralie. Meeting the Squire on the way he said he would go with us. North Villa lies not far from us, soonafter you turn into the Islip Road, and the Grange is about a quarter-of-a-mile farther on. I took a good stare at the villa in passing. Two of the upstairs windows were open, but the mysterious tenant was not to be seen.

Old Ozias was in the Grange garden, helping the gardener; it was how he professed to fill up his time; and the door was opened by a tall, smart maid, with curled hair and pink bows in her cap. Where had I seen her? Why, at the lodgings in the Marylebone Road in London! She was Maria, who had been housemaid there during the enacting of that tragedy.

Coralie Fontaine sat in her pretty parlour, one opening from the large drawing-room, flirting a paper hand-screen between her face and the fire, which she would have, as Sir Dace used to, whether it might be cold weather or hot. Small and pale, her black hair smooth and silky, her dark eyes meeting ours honestly, her chin pointed, her pretty teeth white, she was not a whit changed. Her morning dress was white, with scarlet ribbons, and she was downright glad to see us. The Squire inquired after Verena.

“She is quite well,” replied Coralie. “At least, she would be but for grumbling.”

“What has she to grumble about, my dear?”

“Nothing,” said Coralie.

“Then why does she do it? Dear me! Is her husband not kind to her?”

Coralie laughed at the notion. “He is too kind, Mr. Todhetley. Kindness to people is George Bazalgette’s weakness, especially to Verena. Her grievance lies in George’s sister, Magnolia Bazalgette.”

“What a splendacious name!” interrupted Tod. “Magnolia!”

“She was named after the estate, Magnolia Range, a very beautiful place and one of the finest properties on the island,”said Coralie. “Magnolia lives with George, it was always her home, you see; and Verena does not take kindly to her. She complains that Magnolia domineers over the household and over herself. It is just one of Verena’s silly fancies; she always wants to be first and foremost; and I have written her one or two sharp letters.”

“Coralie,” I said here, “is not the girl, who showed us in, Maria?—she who used to live in those lodgings in London?”

Coralie nodded. “The last time I was staying in London,Maria came to me, saying she had left her place and was in want of one. I engaged her at once. I like the girl.”

“She is an uncommonly smart girl in the way of curls and caps,” remarked Tod.

“I like smart people about me,” laughed Coralie.

Who should come in then but Mrs. Cramp. She was smart. A flounced gown of shiny material, green in one light, red in another, and a purple bonnet with white strings. She was Stephen Cramp’s widow, formerly Mary Ann Chandler; her speech was honest and homely, and her comely face wore a look of perplexity.

“I don’t much like the look of things down yonder,” she began, nodding her head in the direction of North Villa and as she sat down her flounces went up, displaying her white cotton stockings and low, tied shoes. “I have been calling there again, and I can’t get in.”

“Nobody can get in,” said Coralie.

“They have put a chain on the door, and they answer people through it. No chain was ever there before, as long as I have known the house. I paid no attention to the things people were saying,” continued Mrs. Cramp; “but I did not much like something I heard last night. I’ll see the lady, I said to myself this morning, and down to the house I went, walked up the garden, and——”

“But what is it that people have been saying, Mrs. Cramp?”struck in the Squire. “These boys have heard something or other.”

“What’s said is, that there’s something queer about the lady,”replied Mrs. Cramp. “I can’t make it out myself, Squire. Some people say she’s pig-faced.”

“Pig-faced!”

“Well, they do. Last night I heard she was black. And, putting two and two together, as one can’t help doing in such a case, I don’t like that report at all.”

The Squire stared—and began thinking. He believed he knew what Mrs. Cramp meant.

“Well, I went there, and rang,” she resumed. “And they opened the door a couple of inches and talked to me over the chain: some sour-faced woman-servant of middle age. I told her I had come to see my tenant—her mistress; she answered that her mistress could not be seen, and shut the door in my face.”

Mrs. Cramp untied her white satin bonnet-strings, tilted back her bonnet, caught up the painted fan, fellow to the one Coralie was handling, and fanned herself while she talked.

“As long as it was said the lady was pig-faced and hid herself from people’s eyes accordingly, I thought little of it, you understand, Squire; but if she is black, that’s a different matter. It sets one fearing that some scandal may come of it. The Miss Dennets would drop down in a fit on the spot if they heard thatperson had got into their house.”

Coralie laughed.

“Ah, my dear, you careless young people make jokes of things that would fret us old ones to fiddle-strings,” reproved Mrs. Cramp. “The four Indians may be with her, you know, and most likely are, concealed in cupboards. You don’t know what such desperate characters might do—break into your house here some dark night and kill you in your bed. It is not a pleasant thing, is it, Squire?”

“That it’s not, if it be as you put it,” assented he, growing hot.

“Look here, Mrs. Cramp,” interposed Tod. “If the lady has never been seen, how can it be known she is black, or pig-faced?”

“I’ve never treated the pig-faced report as anything but rubbish,” answered Mrs. Cramp; “but I’ll tell you, Mr. Joseph, how it has come out that she’s black. I heard from Susan Dennet yesterday morning, and she asked whether any letters were lying at home for her or Mary. So I sent my servant Peggy last evening to inquire—a stupid thing of a girl she is, comes from over beyond Bromyard. Peggy went to the kitchen-door—and they have a chain there as well as to the other—and was told that no letters had come for the Miss Dennets. It was growing dark, and Peggy, who had never been on the premises before, mistook the path, and turned into one that took her to the latticed arbour. Many a time have I sat there in poor Jacob’s days, with the Malvern Hills in the distance.”

“So have I, Mary Ann,” added the Squire, calling her unconsciously by her Christian name, his thoughts back in the time when they were boy and girl together.

“Peggy found her mistake then, and was turning back, when there stood in her path a black woman, who must have followed her down: black face, black hands, all black. What’s more, she was wrapped round in yellow; a shroud, Peggy declares, but the girl was quite beyond herself with fright, and could not be expected to know shrouds from cloaks in the twilight. The woman stood stock still, never speaking, only staring; and Peggy tore back in her terror, and fell into the arms of a railway-porter, just then bringing a parcel from the station. ‘Goodness help us!’she shrieked out, ‘there’s a blackamore in the path yonder:’and the girl came home more dead than alive. That is how I’ve learnt the mysterious lady is black,” summed up Mrs. Cramp;“and knowing what we do know, I don’t like it.”

Neither did the Squire. And Mrs. Cramp departed in a flutter. We all liked her, in spite of her white stockings and shoes.

Some few months before this, a party of strangers appeared one morning at Worcester, and took handsome lodgings there. Four fashionable-looking gentlemen, with dark skins and darker hair; natives, apparently, of some remote quarter of the globe, say Asia or Africa, whose inhabitants are of a fine copper colour; and one lady, understood to be their sister, who was darker than they were—almost quite black. Two rather elderly and very respectable English servants, man and wife, were in their train. They lived well, these people, regardless of cost: had sumptuous dishes on their table, choice fruits, hot-house flowers. They made no acquaintance whatever in the town, rarely went abroad on foot, but took an airing most days in a large old rumbling open barouche, supplied by the livery stables. Worcester, not less alive to curiosity than is any other city, grew to be all excitement over these people, watched their movements with admiration, and called them “The Indians.” The lady was seen in the barouche but once, enveloped in a voluminous yellow mantle, the hood of which was drawn over her face. It transpired that she was not in good health, and one evening, when she had a fainting-fit, a doctor was called in to her. His report to the town the next day was that she was really a coloured woman, very much darker than her brothers, with the manners and culture of a lady, but strikingly reserved. After a sojourn of about two months, the party, servants and all, quitted their lodgings, giving the landlady only an hour’s notice, to spend, as they gave out, a week at Malvern. They paid their bill in full, asked permission to leave two or three of their heaviest trunks with her, and departed.

But they did not go to Malvern. It was not discovered where they did go. Nothing more was seen of them; nothing certain heard. The trunks they had left proved to be empty; some accounts owing in the town came in to be paid. All this looked curious. By-and-by a frightful rumour arose—that these people had been mixed up in some dreadful crime: one report said forgery, another murder. It was affirmed that Scotland Yard had been looking for them for months, and that they had disguised themselves as Indians (to quote the word Worcester used) to avert detection. But some observant individuals maintained that they were Indians (to use the word again), that no disguise or making-up could have converted their faces to what they were. Nothing more had as yet been heard of them, saving that a sum of money, enough to cover the small amount of debts left behind, was transmitted to the landlady anonymously. Excitement had not yet absolutely died away in the town. It was popularly supposed that the Indians were lying concealed in some safe hiding-place, perhaps not far distant.

And now, having disclosed this strange episode, the fame of which had gone about the county, you will be able to understand Mrs. Cramp’s consternation. It appeared to be only too probable that the hiding-place was North Villa: of the lady in the yellow mantle, at any rate, whether her four brothers were with her or not.

II

I sat, perched on the fence of the opposite field, as though waiting for some one, whistling softly, and taking crafty looks at North Villa, for our curiosity as to its doings grew with the days, when a fine, broad-shouldered, well-dressed gentleman came striding along the road, flicking his cane.

“Well, Johnny!”

At the first moment I did not know him, I really did not; he looked too grand a gentleman for Benjamin Rymer, too handsome. It was Ben, however. The improvement in him had been going on gradually for some years now; and Ben, in looks, in manner, ay, and in conduct, could hold his own with the best in the land.

“I did not know you were down here,” I said, meeting his offered hand. Time was when he would not have presumed tohold out his hand to me unsolicited, boy though I was in those old days: he might have thought nothing of offering it to a nabob now.

“I got down yesterday,” said Ben. “Glad enough to have taken my M.D., and to have done with London.”

“I thought you did not mean to take a physician’s degree.”

“I did not, as I chiefly go in for surgery. But when I considered that my life will probably be spent in this country place, almost as a general practitioner, I thought it best to take it. It gives one a standing, you see, Ludlow. And so,” he added laughing, “I am Dr. Rymer. What are you sitting here for, Johnny? Watching that house?”

“Have you heard about it?” I asked.

“Coralie—Miss Fontaine—told me of it when I was with her last evening. Is there anything to be seen?”

“Nothing at all. I have been here for twenty minutes and have not caught a glimpse of any one, black or white. Yesterday, when Salmon’s boy took some grocery there, he saw the black lady peeping at him behind the blind.”

“It seems a strange affair altogether,” remarked Ben. “The sudden appearance of the people at Worcester, that was strange, as was their sudden disappearance. If it be in truth they who are hiding themselves here, I can’t say much for their wisdom: they are too near to the old scene.”

“I wonder you don’t set up in London,” I said to Ben as we walked onwards.

“It is what I should like to do of all things,” he replied in a tone of eagerness, “and confine my practice wholly to surgery. But my home must be here. Circumstances are stronger than we are.”

“Will it be at Oxlip Grange?” I quietly asked.

Ben turned his head to study my face, and what he read there told tales. “I see,” he said, “you know. Yes, it will be at Oxlip Grange. That has been settled a long while past.”

“I wish you every happiness; all good luck.”

“Thank you, Johnny.”

We were nearing the place in question when Mrs. Cramp turned out of its small iron gate, that stood beside the ornamental large ones, in her bewitching costume of green and purple.“And how are you, Mr. Benjamin?” she asked. “Come down for good?”

“Yes.”

“And he is Dr. Rymer now, Mrs. Cramp,” I added.

“I am glad to hear it,” said she warmly, “and I’ll shake your hand on the strength of it,” and she gave his hand a hearty shake. “At one time you said you never would take a doctor’s degree.”

“So I did,” said Ben. “But somebody wished me to take it.”

“Your mother, I guess,”—though, for my part, I did not suppose it was his mother. “Any way, you’ll do well now.”

“I hope so,” answered Ben. “You look fluttered, Mrs. Cramp.”

“I’m more fluttered than I care to be; I am living in a chronic state of flutter,” avowed Mrs. Cramp. “It’s over that tenant of mine; that woman down yonder,” pointing towards North Villa.

“Why should you flutter yourself over her?” he remonstrated.“She is not your tenant.”

“Indeed but she is my tenant. To all intents and purposes she is my tenant. The Miss Dennets left the house in my hands.”

“How was it you did not have references with her, Mrs. Cramp?”

“That donkey of an agent never asked for any,” retorted she.“He was thrown off his guard, he says, by her sending him the first month’s rent in advance, and telling him she had only one or two old servants, and no children, and the furniture would be as much cared for as if it were made of gold. Last night she sends to me the advance rent for next month, though it’s not due for two days yet, and that has fluttered me, I can tell you, Mr. Benjamin, for I was hoping she wouldn’t pay, and that I might be able to get her out. I am now going there with the receipt, and to try again to get to see her: the woman who left the money never waited for one. Afraid of being catechised, I take it.”

Picking up her green skirts she sailed down the road. Coralie Fontaine was leaning over the little gate, and opened it as we approached. A beautiful cashmere shawl, all scarlet and gold, contrasted with her white dress, and her drooping gold ear-drops glittered in the autumn sun. She made a dainty picture, and I saw Dr. Benjamin’s enraptured eyes meet hers. If they werenot over head and ears in love with one another, never you trust me again.

“Mrs. Cramp is in a way,” cried Coralie, as we strolled with her up the garden, amidst its old-fashioned flowers, all bloom and sweetness. “I’m sure that black lady is as good as a play to us.”

“News came to me this morning from my sister,” said Benjamin.“She and the Archdeacon are coming home; he has not been well, and has six months’ leave of absence.”

“Do they bring the children?” asked Coralie.

“As if they’d leave them! Why, Coralie, those two small damsels are the very light of Margaret’s eyes—to judge by her letters; and of Sale’s too, I shouldn’t wonder. Margaret asks me to take lodgings for them. I think Mrs. Boughton’s might be large enough—where Sale lodged in the old days.”

“Lodgings!” indignantly exclaimed Coralie. “I do think you Europeans, you English, are the most inhospitable race on the face of the earth! Your only sister, whom you have not seen for years, of whom you are very fond, is coming back to her native place with her husband and children for a temporary stay, and you can talk of putting them into lodgings? For shame, Benjamin!”

“But what else am I to do?” questioned he, good-humouredly laughing at her. “I have only one bedroom and one sitting-room of my own, the two about as large as a good-sized clothes-closet; I cannot invite a man and his wife and two children to share them, and he an archdeacon! There wouldn’t be space to turn round in.”

“Let them come here,” said Coralie.

“Thank you,” he said, after a few moments’ hesitation: and it struck me he might be foreseeing difficulties. “But—they will not be here just yet.”

He had some patients at Islip, and went on there; I said adieu to Coralie and walked homewards, thinking of the ups and downs of life. Presently Mrs. Cramp’s green gown loomed into view; her face red, her bonnet awry. I saw she had not met with any luck.

“No, I have not,” she said. “I walked up into their porch as bold as you please, Johnny Ludlow, and I knocked and I rang, letting ’em think it was the Queen come, if they would. And when the woman with the sour face opened the door an inch,she just took the receipt from me; but as to seeing her mistress, I might as well have asked to see the moon. And I heard a scuffle, as if people were listening. Oh, it’s those Indians: trust me for that.”

Away she went, without further ceremony, and I went back to the ups and downs of earthly life.

It was not so very long ago that Thomas Rymer had lain on his death-bed, brought to it by the troubles of the world, and by the anxiety for his children, for whom no career seemed to present itself, saving that of hard, mean, hopeless drudgery: if not something worse for Benjamin. But how things had changed! Benjamin, pulling himself up from his ill-doings, was—what he was. A man respected; clever, distinguished, with probably a great career of usefulness before him, and about to be married to a charming girl of large fortune. While Margaret, whom her father had so loved, so pitied, was the wife of a man high in the Church, and happy as a queen. For, as you have gathered, the Reverend Isaac Sale, who had given up Herbert Tanerton’s humble curacy to go out as chaplain to the Bahama Islands, had been made an archdeacon. Ups and downs, ups and downs! they make the sum and substance of existence. Glancing at the blue sky, over which fleecy white clouds were softly drifting, I lost myself in wondering whether Thomas Rymer could look down and still see his children here.

The chemist’s shop at Timberdale had been sold by Benjamin Rymer to the smart young man who had carried it on during his absences, one James Boom, said to be Scotch. Benjamin had his rooms there at present; good-sized closets, he has just called them; and took his meals with Mr. Boom. Mrs. Rymer, the mother (having appropriated all the purchase-money), had set up her home in Birmingham amidst her old friends and relatives, and Benjamin had covenanted to allow her money yearly from his practice.

Public commotion increased. It spread to Oxlip Grange. One night, Ozias was sitting back amidst the laurels at the side of the house to smoke his pipe, when Maria came out to ask him what he had done with the best tea-tray, which they couldn’t find. As she stood a moment while he reflected, there came two figures softly creeping round from the front—women. One wore a close bonnet and full dark cloak, the other was altogether envelopedin some shapeless garment that might be yellow by daylight, out of which a jet-black face and jet-black hands shone conspicuously in the rays of the stars. Maria, very much frightened, grasped hold of the old man’s shoulder.

The pipe trembled in his hand: he had a mortal dread of assassins and housebreakers. “No speaky, no speaky,” whispered he. “We watch, you and me. They come hurt Missee.”

The figures made for the lighted window of the large drawing-room, which was at the end of this side of the house. Coralie was sitting alone within it, expecting visitors to tea. The blind was not drawn quite down, and they stooped to peer in, and remained there as if glued to the window. Maria could stand it no longer, but in creeping away, she rustled the laurels frightfully: we are sure to make the most noise, you know, when we want to be silent. The women looked round, and there came from them a rattling hiss, like that of a snake. With a scream, Maria made for the refuge of the kitchen-door; Ozias flew after her, dropping his pipe.

It must have disturbed the women. For just about then, when the Squire, holding my arm, arrived at Miss Fontaine’s gate, they were coming out: two disguised figures, who went swiftly down the road.

“Mercy be good to us!” cried the Squire, aghast. He had drawn back in politeness to let them pass through the gate, and had found the black face come nearly into contact with his own.“Johnny, lad, that must be Mrs. Cramp’s tenant and her servant!”

They brushed past Mrs. Todhetley coming along with Tod. Maria and Ozias were in the drawing-room when we got in, talking like wild things. The other guests soon arrived, Dr. Rymer, Mrs. Cramp, and Tom Chandler and his wife from Islip. Ozias gave an opinion that Missee (meaning Coralie) was about to be assassinated in her bed.

At this Coralie laughed. She had no fear, but she did not like it. “I cannot see what they could possibly want, looking in at me!” she cried. “It was very rude.”

“They want Missee’s diamonds,” spoke Ozias. “Missee got great lot beauty diamonds, lot other beauty jewels; black woman come in this night—next night—after night—who know which—and smother Missee and take dem all.”

Poor Mrs. Cramp, sitting in the biggest arm-chair, her sandalledshoes stretched on a footstool, was quite taken out of herself with dismay. The Squire rubbed his face incessantly, asking what was to be done. Dr. Rymer said nothing in regard to what was to be done; but he gave his head an emphatic nod, as if he knew.

The next morning he presented himself at North Villa, and asked to see its tenant. The woman-servant denied him—over the chain. Ben insisted upon his card and his request being taken in. After a battle of words, she took them in, shutting the door in his face the while; and the doctor cooled his heels in the porch for five minutes. As she drew the door open again, he caught sight of a black face twisted round the sitting-room door-post to peep at him, a black hand, with rings on it, grasping it. She saw him looking at her, and disappeared like a shot. The message brought out by the servant was that her mistress was an invalid, unable to see visitors: if Dr. Rymer had any business with her, he must be good enough to convey it by letter.

“Very well,” said the doctor, in his decisive way: “I warn you and your mistress not again to intrude on Miss Fontaine’s premises, as you did last night. If you do, you must take the consequences.”

At this, the woman stared as if it were so much Greek to her. She answered that she had not been on Miss Fontaine’s premises, then or ever; had not been out-of-doors at all the previous night. And Ben thought by her tone she was speaking truth.

“It was one of those Indian brothers disguised in a cloak and bonnet,” said we all when we heard this. And Coralie’s servants took to watching through the livelong night at the upper windows, turn and turn about, growing thin from dread of the assassins.

Altogether, what with one small item and another, Mrs. Cramp’s tenant kept us alive. A belief had prevailed that the woman-servant was the same who had attended the Indians; but this was dispelled. A housemaid of ours, Nancy, a flighty sort of girl, often in hot water with her elders thereby, whose last service had been with old Lawyer Cockermouth, at Worcester, was out on an errand when she met this woman and recognized her for an old acquaintance. During Nancy’s service with the lawyer she had been there as the cook-housekeeper.

“It is Sarah Stone, ma’am, and nobody else!” cried Nancy, running in to tell the news to Mrs. Todhetley. “She left forher temper, soon after I left; I heard say that old Miss Cockermouth wouldn’t put up with it any longer.”

“Are you sure it is the same, Nancy?” asked Mrs Todhetley.

“Why, ma’am, I know Sarah Stone as well as I know my own mother. ‘What, is it you that’s living here with that there black lady?’ I says to her. ‘What is it to you whether I’m living with a black lady or a white ’un,’ she answers me, crustily:‘just mind your own affairs, Nancy Dell.’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘there’s a pretty talk about her; it’s not me that would like to serve a wild Indian’—and that set Sarah Stone off at a strapping pace, ma’am.”

Thus things went on. North Villa seeming to grow more isolated day by day, and its inmates more mysterious. When the rent for the next month was nearly due, Mrs. Cramp found it left at her house as before: and poor Mrs. Cramp felt fit to have a fever.

One evening, early in November, Mr. Cole, the surgeon of Crabb, was seen to go into North Villa. He was seen to go again the following morning, and again in the afternoon, and again in the evening. It transpired that the black lady was alarmingly ill.

Naturally, it put the parish up in arms. We made a rush for Cole, wanting to ask him five hundred things. Cole, skimming along the ground like a lamplighter, avoided us all; and the first to succeed in pouncing upon him was Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress. Very downright and honest, she was in the habit of calling a spade a spade, and poured out her questions one upon another. They had met by the yellow barn.

“Well, no,” answers Cole, when he could get a word in, “I don’t think that any murderer is at North Villa; do not see one about, but there’s a baby.” “A baby!” shrieks Miss Timmens, as she pushed back the bunches of black curls from her thin cheeks with their chronic redness, “a baby!” “Yes, a baby,”says Cole, “a new baby.” “Good mercy!” cries she, “a baby! a black baby! Is it a boy or a girl, Mr. Cole?” “It’s a boy,”says Cole. “Good mercy! a black boy!—what an extraordinary sight it must be!” Cole says nothing to this; only looks at her as meek as a lamb. “And now, between ourselves, doctor,”goes on Miss Timmens, confidentially, “did you see the Indians there?—those men?” “Did not see any man at all,” answers Cole, “saw no sign of a man being there.” “Ah, of coursethey’d take their precautions to keep out of sight,” nodded Miss Timmens, thinking old Cole uncommonly stupid to-day. “And how do you relish attending on a black patient, doctor? And what’s she like?” “Why,” answers Cole, “black patients are much the same as white ones; have the same number of arms and legs and fingers.” “Oh, indeed,” says Miss Timmens, quite sharply; and she wishes Cole good-day. And that was the best that could be got out of Cole.

The doctor’s visits were watched with the most intense interest; three times a-day at first, then twice a-day, then once; and then they ceased altogether.

“Black lady on her legs again?” says Ben Rymer, meeting Cole about this time. “Quite so,” answers Cole. “Mind that you get paid, sir,” says Ben, with a laugh. “No need to mind that,” returns Cole, “five sovereigns were put into my hand when the child was born.” “By the black lady?” asks Ben, opening his eyes: for two guineas was the crack fee in our parts. “Yes, it was the black lady who gave it me,” says Cole with emphasis: “and that, she took care to say, was not to include subsequent attendance. Wish you the same luck in your next case, Rymer.”

Rymer thanked him and went off laughing. He was getting on in his practice like a house on fire, his fame rising daily.

“How do you like it—his setting up here?” confidentially questioned the Squire of Darbyshire, the doctor at Timberdale.

“Plenty of room for both of us,” replied Darbyshire, “and I am not as young as I was. It rather strikes me, though, Squire, it is not exactly at Timberdale that Rymer will pitch his tent.”

The next exciting event had nothing to do with North Villa. It was the arrival of Archdeacon Sale with his wife and children. They did not go to Coralie’s. Herbert Tanerton opened his heart, and carried them off to the Rectory from the railway-station. That was so like Herbert! Had Sale remained a poor curate he might have gone to the workhouse and taken Margaret with him; being an archdeacon Herbert chose to make much of him. Margaret was not altered, she was loving and gentle as ever; with the same nice face, and poor Thomas Rymer’s sad, sweet eyes shining from it.

Of course the first thing confided to the Bahama travellers was the mystery at North Villa. The Archdeacon took a sensibleview of it. “As long as the black lady does not molest you,”he said, “why trouble yourselves about her?”

After that we had a bit of a lull. Nothing exciting occurred. Saving a report that two of the Indians were seen taking the air in the garden of North Villa, each with a formidable stick in his hand. But it turned out that they were two tramps who had gone in to beg.

III

I thought it would have come to a quarrel. The Squire maintained his view and Coralie maintained hers. They talked at each other daily, neither giving way.

Christmas-Day was approaching, and it had pleased Miss Fontaine to project a sumptuous dinner for it, to be given at Oxlip Grange to all her special friends. The Squire protested he never heard of anything so unreasonable. He did not dine out of his own house on Christmas-Day, and she must come to Crabb Cot.

The third week in December had set in, when one evening, as we rose from table, the Squire impulsively declared he would go and finally have it out with her.

Meaning Coralie. Settling himself into his great-coat, he called to me to go after him. In the Islip Road we overtook Cole, walking fast also. He had been sent for to the baby at North Villa, he said; and we left him at the gate.

Coralie was in her favourite little parlour, reading by lamplight. The Squire sat down by the fire in a flutter, and began remonstrating about the Christmas dinner. Coralie only laughed.

“It is unreasonable, dear Mr. Todhetley, even to propose our going to you. Think of the number! I wish to have everybody. The Archdeacon and his wife, and Dr. Rymer, and Mrs. Cramp, and the Letsoms, and Tom Chandler and Emma, and of course, her father, old Mr. Paul, as he is some relation of mine, and—— Why, that’s a carriage driving up! I wonder who has come to-night?”

Another minute, and old Ozias rushed in with a beaming face, hardly able to get his words out for excitement.

“Oh, Missee, Missee, it Massa George; come all over wide seas from home,”—and there entered a fine man with a frank and handsome face—George Bazalgette.

“Where’s Verena?” he exclaimed, after kissing Coralie and shaking hands genially with the Squire, though they had never met before.

Coralie looked surprised. “Verena?” she repeated. “Is she not with you?”

“She is not with me; I wish she was. Where is she, Coralie?”

“But how should I know where she is?” retorted Coralie, looking up at Mr. Bazalgette.

“Is she not staying with you? Did she not come over to you?”

“Certainly not,” said Coralie. “I have not seen Verena since she went out, sixteen months ago. Neither have I heard from her lately. What is it that you mean, George?”

George Bazalgette stood back against the book-case, and told us what he meant. Some weeks ago—nay, months—upon returning to Magnolia Range after a week’s absence at his other estate across the country, he found Verena flown. She left a note for him, saying she did not get on well with Magnolia, and was going to stay a little while with Mrs. Dickson. He felt hurt that Verena had not spoken openly to him about Magnolia, but glad that she should have the change, as she had not been well of late. Mrs. Dickson was his aunt and lived in a particularly healthy part of one of the adjoining islands. Time passed on; he wrote to Verena, but received no answer to his letters, and he concluded she was so put out with Magnolia that she would not write. By-and-by he thought it was time to see after her, and journeyed to Mrs. Dickson’s. Mrs. Dickson was absent, gone to stay with some friends at St. Thomas, and the servants did not know when she would return. He supposed, as a matter of course, that she had taken Verena with her, and went back home. Still the time passed; no news of Verena, no letters, and he proceeded again to Mrs. Dickson’s. Then, to his unbounded astonishment, he found that Verena had only stayed with her one week, and had taken the mail-packet for Southampton on her way to stay with her sister at Oxlip Grange. Giving a blessing to Mrs. Dickson for not having written to inform him of all this, and for having kept his letters to Verena by that young lady’s arbitrary command, he came off at once to England.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Coralie. “She did not come here.”

The fine colour on George Bazalgette’s face, which retained its freshness though he did live in a hot climate, lost its brightness.

“She would be the least likely to come here, of all places,”pursued Coralie. “In the last answer I ever sent her, after a letter of complaints to me, hinting that she thought of coming here for a time, I scolded her sharply and assured her I should despatch her back to you the next day.”

“What am I to do?” he exclaimed. “Where look for her?”

Not caring to intrude longer, we took our departure, the Squire shaking his head dubiously over Mrs. George Bazalgette’s vagaries. “It was the same thing,” he said, “when she was Verena Fontaine, as you remember, Johnny, and what a good fellow her husband seems to be.—Halloa! Why, that’s Cole again!”

He was coming out of North Villa. “You are back soon!”he cried. And we told him of the arrival of George Bazalgette.

Cole seemed to stare with all his eyes as he listened. I could see them in the starlight. “What will he do if he can’t find her here?” he asked of me. “Do you know, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Go back by the first and fleetest ship to turn Mrs. Dickson inside-out. He thinks she and Verena have played him a trick in letting him come over. How did you find the black baby?”

“Found nothing the matter with it,” growled Cole. “These young mothers are so fanciful!”

We left him standing against the gate, supposing that he had to go higher up. And what happened then, I can only tell you by hearsay.

Cole, propping his back against the spikes, turned his face up to the stars, as if he were taking counsel of them. Counsel he needed from somebody or something, for he was in a dilemma.

“Well, I’ll chance it,” he thought, when he had got pretty cold. “It seems the right thing to do.”

Walking briskly to Oxlip Grange, he asked to see Mr. Bazalgette; and after whispering a few words into that gentleman’s ear, brought him out to North Villa. “You stand behind me, so as not to be seen,” he directed, ringing the bell.

“I’m coming in again,” said he to Sarah Stone, when she pulled the door back about an inch. So she undid the chain; the doctor was privileged, and he slipped in, Mr. Bazalgette behind him. Sarah, the faithful, was for showing fight.

“It is all right,” said Cole. “Not yet, sir”—putting out hisarm to bar Mr. Bazalgette’s passage. “You go in first, to your mistress, Sarah, and say that a gentleman is waiting to see her: just landed from the West Indies.”

But the commotion had attracted attention, and a young lady, not black, but charmingly white, appeared at the parlour-door, a black head behind her.

“George!” she shrieked. And the next moment flew into his arms, sobbing and crying, and kissing him. Cole decamped.

That past evening in November, when Cole received a message that his services were needed at North Villa, he went expecting to be introduced to a black lady. A black lady in truth showed him in; or, to be correct, a lady’s black attendant, and he saw—Verena Fontaine.

That is, Verena Bazalgette. She put Cole upon his honour, not to disclose her secret, and told him a long string of her sister-in-law’s iniquities, as touching lecturing and domineering, and that she had left home intending to come over for a time to Coralie. Whilst staying with Mrs. Dickson before sailing, a letter was forwarded to her from Magnolia Grange. It was from Coralie; and it convinced Verena that Coralie’s would be no safe refuge, that she would be sent out of it at once back to her husband. She sailed, as projected, allowing Mrs. Dickson to think she was still coming to her sister. Upon landing at Southampton she went on to a small respectable inn at Worcester, avoiding the larger hotels lest she should meet people who knew her. Seeing the advertisement of North Villa to let, she wrote to the agent, and secured it. To be near Coralie seemed like a protection, though she might not go to her. Next she answered an advertisement from a cook (inserted by Sarah Stone), and engaged her, binding her to secrecy. The woman, though of crusty temper, was honest and trustworthy, and espoused the cause of her young mistress, and was zealously true to her. She carried in to her the various reports that were abroad, of the Indians and the black lady, and all the rest of it; causing Verena bursts of laughter, the only divertisement she had in her imprisoned life: she did not dare to go out lest she should be recognized and the news carried to Coralie. Dalla, a faithful native servant who had been left in the West Indies and returned to Verena when she married George Bazalgette, attended her on her solitary voyage. She it was who was black, not Verena. And the night they stole into the premises of Oxlip Grange it was done with the hope of getting a sly peep at Coralie’s face; both of them were longing for it. Hearing the stir in the shrubs, Dalla had hissed; her thoughts were back in her own land, and it was her mode of startling away four-footed night animals there.

George Bazalgette was very angry with his wife, more especially so at her having absented herself at that uncertain time, and he declared to her that he would put her away from him for good if ever she attempted such a thing again. With tears enough to float a ship, Verena gave him her solemn promise that she never would leave him again. Never again: she had been too miserable this time, and the baby had nearly frightened her to death, for she had not expected him so soon and had meant to go back for it.

The Squire could not hold out now, and the Christmas dinner was at Coralie’s. We went over to Timberdale Church in the morning, a lot of us, to hear the Archdeacon preach. Herbert gave up the pulpit to him, taking the prayers himself. He was a plain little man, as you knew before, and he gave us a plain sermon, but it was one of those that are worth their weight in gold. Lady Tenby whispered that to me as we came out. “And oh, Johnny,” she said, “we are so glad he has got on! We always liked Isaac Sale.”

It was a grand dinner-party, though not as many were present as Coralie wanted. The Letsoms did not care to leave their own fireside, or old Paul, or the Chandlers. Verena was the life of it, laughing and joking and parading about with her baby, who had been christened “George” the day before, Mrs. Cramp having been asked to be its godmother.

“Which I think was very pretty of them, Mr. Johnny,” she said to me after dinner; “and I’m proud of standing to it.”

“It was in recompense for the worry I’ve given you, you dear old thing!” whispered Verena, as she pulled Mrs. Cramp’s chair backwards and kissed her motherly forehead. “You’ll never have such a tenant again—for worry.”

“Never, I hope, please Heaven!” assented Mrs. Cramp.“And I’m sure I shall never see a black woman without shivering. Now, my dear, you just put my chair down; you’ll have me backwards. Hold it, will you, Mr. Johnny!”

“What dishes of talk you’ll get up about me with SusanDennet!” went on Verena, the chair still tilted. “We are going back home the beginning of the year, do you know. George got his letters to-day.”

“And what about that young lady over there—that Miss Magnolia?” asked Mrs. Cramp.

Verena let the chair fall in ecstasy, and her tone was brimful of delight. “Oh, that’s the best news of all! Magnolia is going to be married: she only waits for George to get back to give her away. I must say this is a delightful Christmas-Day!”

On the thirty-first of December, the last day in the year, Coralie was married to Dr. Rymer. Archdeacon Sale, being Benjamin’s brother-in-law, came over to Islip Church to tie the knot. Her brother-in-law, George Bazalgette, gave her away. The breakfast was held at Coralie’s, Verena presiding in sky-blue satin.

And amidst the company was a lady some of us had not expected to see—Mrs. Rymer. She had scarlet ringlets (white feathers setting them off to-day) and might be vulgar to her fingers’-ends, but she was Benjamin’s mother, and Coralie had privately sent for her.

“You have my best wishes, Mr. Benjamin,” said the Squire, drawing Ben aside while Coralie was putting on her travelling attire; “and I’d be glad with all my heart had your father lived to see it.”

“So should I be, Squire.”

“Look here,” whispered the Squire, holding him by the button-hole, “did you ever tell her of that—that—you know—that past trouble?”

“Of the bank-note, you mean,” said Ben. “I told her of that long ago, and everything else that could tell against me. Believe me, Mr. Todhetley, though my faults were many in the days gone by, I could not act dishonourably by my dear wife; no, nor by any one else now.”

The Squire nodded with a beaming face, and pressed Ben’s hand.

“And let me thank you now, sir, for your long-continued kindness, your expressions of esteem for my poor father and of goodwill to me,” said Ben, with emotion. “I have not talked of it, but I have felt it.”

They started away in their new close carriage, amidst a shower of rice and old shoes; and we finished up the revels in theevening with a dance and a fiddle, the Squire leading out Mrs. Cramp. Then came a cold supper.

The noise had reached its height, and the champagne was going about, when the Squire interrupted with a “Hush, hush!” and the babel ceased. The clock on the mantelpiece was striking twelve. As the last stroke vibrated on the air, its echo alone breaking the silence, the Squire rose and lifted his hands—

“A Happy New Year to us all, my friends! May God send His best blessings with it!”

It may as well be added, in the interests of peace and quietness, that those Indians had not committed any crime at all; it had been invented by rumour, as Worcester discovered later. They were only inoffensive strangers, travelling about to see the land.

THE END—Fourth Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

Fifth Series

FEATHERSTON’S STORY.

WATCHING ON ST. MARK’S EVE.

SANKER’S VISIT.

ROGER MONK.

THE EBONY BOX.

OUR FIRST TERM AT OXFORD.

“God sent his Singers upon earth

With songs of sadness and of mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men,

And bring them back to heaven again.”

Longfellow.

FEATHERSTON’S STORY.

I.

I have called this Featherston’s story, because it was through him that I heard about it—and, indeed, saw a little of it towards the end.

Buttermead, the wide straggling district to which Featherston enjoyed the honour of being doctor-in-ordinary, was as rural as any that can be found in Worcestershire. Featherston’s house stood at the end of the village. Whitney Hall lay close by; as did our school, Dr. Frost’s. In the neighbourhood were scattered a few other substantial residences, some farmers’ homesteads and labourers’ cottages. Featherston was a slim man, with long thin legs and a face grey and careworn. His patients (like the soldier’s steam arm) gave him no rest day or night.

There is no need to go into details here about Featherston’s people. His sister, Mary Ann, lived in his house at one time, and for everyday ailments was almost as good a doctor as he. She was not at alllike him: a merry, talkative, sociable little woman, with black hair and quick, kindly dark eyes.

Our resident French master in those days at Dr. Frost’s was one Monsieur Jules Carimon: a small man with honest blue eyes in his clean-shaven face, and light brown hair cropped close to his head. He was an awful martinet at study, but a genial little gentleman out of it. To the surprise of Buttermead, he and Mary Featherston set up a courtship. It was carried on in sober fashion, as befitted a sober couple who had both left thirty years, and the rest, behind them; and after a summer or two of it they laid plans for their marriage and for living in France.

“I’m sure I don’t know what on earth I shall do amongst the French, Johnny Ludlow,” Mary said to me in her laughing way, when I and Bill Whitney were having tea at Featherston’s one half-holiday, the week before the wedding. “Jules protests they are easier to get on with than the English; not so stiff and formal; but I don’t pay attention to all he says, you know.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon was going to settle down at his native place, Sainteville—a town on the opposite coast, which had a service of English steamers running to it two or three times a-week. He had obtained the post of first classical master at the college there, and meant to eke out his salary (never large in French colleges) by teaching French and mathematics to as many English pupils as he could obtain out of hours. Like other northern French seaport towns, Sainteville had its small colony of British residents.

“We shall get on; I am not afraid,” answered Mary Featherston to a doubting remark made to her by oldMrs. Selby of the Court. “Neither I nor Jules have been accustomed to luxury, and we don’t care for it. We would as soon make our dinner of bread-and-butter and radishes, as of chicken and apple-tart.”

So the wedding took place, and they departed the same day for Sainteville. And of the first two or three years after that there’s nothing good or bad to record.

Selby Court lay just outside Buttermead. Its mistress, an ancient lady now, was related to the Preen family, of whom I spoke in that story which told of the tragical death of Oliver. Lavinia Preen, sister to Oliver’s father, Gervase Preen, but younger, lived with Mrs. Selby as a sort of adopted daughter; and when the death of the father, old Mr. Preen, left nearly all his large family with scarcely any cheese to their bread, Mrs. Selby told Ann Preen, the youngest of them all, that she might come to her also. So Lavinia and Ann Preen lived at the Court, and had no other home.

These two ladies were intimate with Mary Featherston, all three being much attached to one another. When Mary married and left her country for France, the Miss Preens openly resented it, saying she ought to have had more consideration. Did some premonitory instinct prompt that unreasonable resentment? I cannot say. No one can say. But it is certain that had Mary Featherston not gone to live abroad, the ominous chain of events fated to engulf the sisters could not have touched them, and this account, which is a perfectly true one, would never have been written.

For a short time after the marriage they and Mary Carimon exchanged a letter now and then; not often, for foreign postage was expensive; and then it dropped altogether.

Mrs. Selby became an invalid, and died. She left each of the two sisters seventy pounds a-year for life; if the one died, the other was to enjoy the whole; when both were dead, it would lapse back to the Selby estate.

“Seventy pounds a-year!” remarked Ann Preen to her sister. “It does not seem very much, does it, Lavinia? Shall we be able to live upon it?”

They were seated in the wainscoted parlour at Selby Court, talking of the future. The funeral was over, and they must soon leave; for the house was waiting to be done up for the reception of its new master, Mr. Paul Selby, an old bachelor full of nervous fancies.

“We must live upon it, Nancy,” said Lavinia in answer to her.

She was the stronger-minded of the two, and she looked it. A keen, practical woman, of rather more than middle height, with smooth brown hair, pleasant, dark hazel eyes, and a bright glow in her cheeks. Ann (or Nancy, as she was more often called) was smaller and lighter, with a pretty face, a shower of fair ringlets, and mild, light-blue eyes; altogether not unlike a pink-and-white wax doll.

“We should have been worse off, Nancy, had she not left us anything; and sometimes I have feared she might not,” remarked Lavinia cheerfully. “It will be a hundred and forty pounds between us, dear; we can live upon that.”

“Of course we can, if you think so, Lavinia,” said the other, who deemed her elder sister wiser than any one in the world, and revered her accordingly.

“But we should live cheaper abroad than here, I expect,” continued Lavinia. “It’s said money goes twice as far in France as in England. Suppose we were to go over, Nancy, and try? We could come back if we did not like it.”

Nancy’s eyes sparkled. “I think it would be delightful,” she said. “Money go further in France—why, to be sure it does! Aunt Emily is able to live like a princess at Tours, by all accounts. Yes, yes, Lavinia, let us try France!”

One fine spring morning the Miss Preens packed up their bag and baggage and started for the Continent. They went direct to Tours, intending to make that place their pied-à-terre, as the French phrase it; at any rate, for a time. It was not, perhaps, the wisest thing they could have done.

For Mrs. Magnus, formerly Emily Preen, and their late father’s sister, did not welcome them warmly. She lived in style herself, one of the leading stars in the society of Tours; and she did not at all like that two middle-aged nieces, of straitened means, should take up their abode in the next street. So Mrs. Magnus met her nieces with the assurance that Tours would not do for them; it was too expensive a place; they would be swamped in it. Mrs. Magnus was drawing near to the close of her life then; had she known it, she might have been kinder, and let them remain; but she was not able to foresee the hour of that great event which must happen to us all anymore than other people are. Oliver Preen was with her then, revelling in the sunny days which were flitting away on gossamer wings.

“Lavinia, do you think we can stay at Tours?”

The Miss Preens had descended at a fourth-rate hotel, picked out of the guide-book. When Ann asked this question, they were sitting after dinner in the table d’hôte room, their feet on the sanded floor. Sanded floors were quite usual at that time in many parts of France.

“Stay here to put up with Aunt Emily’s pride and insolence!” quickly answered Miss Preen. “No. I will tell you what I have done, Ann. I wrote yesterday to Mary Carimon, asking her about Sainteville; whether she thinks it will suit us, and so on. As soon as her answer comes—she’s certain to say yes—we will go, dear, and leave Mrs. Magnus to her grandeur. And, once we are safe away, I shall write her a letter,” added Lavinia, in decisive tones; “a letter which she won’t like.”

Madame Carimon’s answer came by return of post. It was as cordial as herself. Sainteville would be the very place for them, she said, and she should count the hours until they were there.

The Miss Preens turned their backs upon Tours, shaking its dust off their shoes. Lavinia had a little nest of accumulated money, so was at ease in that respect. And when the evening of the following day the railway terminus at Sainteville was reached, the pleasant, smiling face of Mary Carimon was the first they saw outside the barrière. She must have been nearly forty now, but she did not look a day older than when she had left Buttermead. Miss Laviniawas a year or two older than Mary; Miss Ann a year or two younger.

“You must put up at the Hôtel des Princes,” remarked Madame Carimon. “It is the only really good one in the town. They won’t charge you too much; my husband has spoken to the landlady. And you must spend to-morrow with me.”

The hotel omnibus was waiting for them and other passengers, the luggage was piled on the roof, and Madame Carimon accompanied them to the hotel. A handsome hotel, the sisters thought; quite another thing from the one at Tours. Mary Carimon introduced them to the landlady, Madame Podevin, saw them seated down to tea and a cold fowl, and then left for the night.

With Sainteville the Miss Preens were simply charmed. It was a fresh, clean town, with wide streets, and good houses and old families, and some bright shops. The harbour was large, and the pier extended out to the open sea.

“I should like to live here!” exclaimed Miss Lavinia, sitting down at Madame Carimon’s, in a state of rapture. “I never saw such a nice town, or such a lovely market.”

They had been about all the morning with Madame Carimon. It was market-day, Wednesday. The market was held on the Grande Place; and the delicious butter, the eggs, the fresh vegetables, the flowers and the poultry, took Miss Lavinia’s heart by storm. Nancy was more taken with the picturesque market-women, in their white caps and long gold ear-rings. Other ladies were doing their marketing as well as Madame Carimon. She spoke to most ofthem, in French or in English, as the case might be. Under the able tuition of her husband, she talked French fluently now.

Madame Carimon’s habitation—very nice, small and compact—was in the Rue Pomme Cuite. The streets have queer names in some of these old French towns. It was near the college, which was convenient for Monsieur Carimon. Here they lived, with their elderly servant, Pauline. The same routine went on daily in the steady little domicile from year’s end to year’s end.

“Jules goes to the college at eight o’clock every week-day, after a cup of coffee and a petit pain,” said madame to her guests, “and he returns at five to dinner. He takes his déjeûner in the college at twelve, and I take mine alone at home. On Sundays he has no duty: we attend the French Protestant Church in a morning, dine at one o’clock, and go for a walk in the afternoon.”

“You have no children, Mary?”

Mary Carimon’s lively face turned sad as she answered: “There was one little one; she stayed with us six months, and then God took her. I wrote to you of it, you know, Lavinia. No, we have not any children. Best not, Jules says; and I agree with him. They might only leave us when we have learnt to love them; and that’s a trial hard to bear. Best as it is.”

“I’m sure I should never learn to speak French, though we lived here for a century,” exclaimed Miss Lavinia. “Only to hear you jabbering to your servant, Mary, quite distracts one’s ears.”

“Yes, you would. You would soon pick up enough to be understood in the shops and at market.”

At five o’clock, home came Monsieur Carimon. He welcomed the Miss Preens with honest, genuine pleasure, interspersed with a little French ceremony; making them about a dozen bows apiece before he met the hands held out to him.

They had quite a gala dinner. Soup to begin with—broth, the English ladies inwardly pronounced it—and then fish. A small cod, bought by Madame Carimon at the fish-market in the morning, with oyster sauce. Ten sous she had given for the cod, for she knew how to bargain now, and six sous for a dozen oysters, as large as a five-franc piece. This was followed by a delicious little fricandeau of veal, and that by a tarte à la crême from the pastrycook’s. She told her guests unreservedly what all the dishes cost, to show them how reasonably people might live at Sainteville.

Over the coffee, after dinner, the question of their settling in the place was fully gone into, for the benefit of Monsieur Carimon’s opinions, who gave them in good English.

“Depend upon it, Lavinia, you could not do better,”remarked Mary Carimon. “If you cannot make your income do here, you cannot anywhere.”

“We want to make it do well; not to betray our poverty, but to be able to maintain a fairly good appearance,” said Lavinia. “You understand me, I am sure, monsieur.”

“But certainly, mademoiselle,” he answered; “it is what we all like to do at Sainteville, I reckon.”

“And can do, if we are provident,” added madame.“French ways are not English ways. Our own income is small, Lavinia, yet we put by out of it.”

“A fact that goes without saying,” confirmed the pleasant little man. “If we did not put by, where would my wife be when I am no longer able to work?”

“Provisions being so cheap—— What did you say, Nancy?” asked Madame Carimon, interrupting herself.

“I was going to say that I could live upon oysters, and should like to,” replied Nancy, shaking back her flaxen curls with a laugh. “Half-a-dozen of those great big oysters would make me a lovely dinner any day—and the cost would be only three halfpence.”

“And only fivepence the cost of that beautiful fish,”put in her sister. “In Sainteville our income would amply suffice.”

“It seems to me that it would, mesdemoiselles,”observed Monsieur Carimon. “Three thousand five hundred francs yearly! We French should think it a sufficient sum. Doubtless much would depend upon the way in which you laid it out.”

“What should we have to pay for lodgings, Mary?”inquired Lavinia. “Just a nice sitting-room and two small bedrooms; or a large room with two beds in it; and to be waited on?”

“Oh, you won’t find that at Sainteville,” was the unexpected answer. “Nobody lets lodgings English fashion: it’s not the custom over here. You can find a furnished apartment, but the people will not wait upon you. There is always a little kitchen let with the rooms, and you must have your own servant.”

It was the first check the ladies had received. They sat thinking. “Dear me!” exclaimed Nancy. “No lodgings!”

“Would the apartments you speak of be very dear?” asked Lavinia.

“That depends upon the number of rooms and the situation,” replied Madame Carimon. “I cannot call to mind just now any small apartment that is vacant. If you like, we will go to-morrow and look about.”

It was so arranged. And little Monsieur Carimon attended the ladies back to the Hôtel des Princes at the sober hour of nine, and bowed them into the porte cochère with two sweeps of his hat, wishing them the good-evening and the very good-night.

II.

Thursday morning. Nancy Preen awoke with a sick headache, and could not get up. But in the afternoon, when she was better, they went to Mary Carimon’s, and all three set out to look for an apartment—not meeting with great success.

All they saw were too large, and priced accordingly. There was one, indeed, in the Rue Lamartine, which suited as to size, but the rooms were inconvenient and stuffy; and there was another small one on the Grande Place, dainty and desirable, but the rent was very high. Madame Carimon at once offered the landlord half-price, French custom: she dealt at his shop for her groceries. No, no, he answered; his apartment was the nicest in the town for its size, as mesdames saw, and it was in the best situation—and not a single sou would the worthy grocer abate.

They were growing tired, then; and five o’clock, the universal hour at Sainteville for dinner, was approaching.

“Come round to me after dinner, and we will talk it over,” said Mary Carimon, when they parted. “I will give you a cup of tea.”

They dined at the table d’hôte, which both of them thought charming, and then proceeded to the Rue Pomme Cuite. Monsieur Carimon was on the point of going out, to spend an hour at the Café Pillaud, but he put down his hat to wait awhile, out of respect to the ladies. They told him about not having found an apartment to suit them.

“Of course we have not searched all parts of the town, only the most likely ones,” said Madame Carimon. “There are large apartments to be had, but no small ones. We can search again to-morrow.”

“I suppose there’s not a little house to be had cheap, if we cannot find an apartment?” cried Miss Nancy, who was in love with Sainteville, and had set her heart upon remaining there.

“Tiens,” quickly spoke Monsieur Carimon in French to his wife, “there’s the Petite Maison Rouge belonging to Madame Veuve Sauvage, in the Place Ronde. It is still to let: I saw the affiche in the shop window to-day. What do you think of it, Marie?”

Madame Carimon did not seem to know quite what to think. She looked at her husband, then at the eager faces of her two friends; but she did not speak.

About half-way down the Rue Tessin, a busy street leading to the port, was a wide opening, giving on to the Place Ronde. The Place Ronde agreed with its name, for it was somewhat in form of a horseshoe.Some fifteen or sixteen substantial houses were built round it, each having a shop for its basement; and trees, green and feathery, were scattered about, affording a slight though pleasant shelter from the hot sun in summer weather.

The middle house at the bottom of the Place Ronde, exactly facing the opening from the Rue Tessin, was a very conspicuous house indeed, inasmuch as it was painted red, whilst the other houses were white. All of them had green persienne shutters to the upper windows. The shop, a large one, belonging to this red house was that of the late Monsieur Jean Sauvage,“Marchand de Vin en gros et en détail,” as the announcement over his door used to run in the later years of his life. But when Jean Sauvage commenced business, in that same shop, it was only as a retail vendor. Casting about in his mind one day for some means by which his shop might be distinguished from other wine-shops and attract customers, he hit upon the plan of painting the house red. No sooner thought of than done. A painter was called, who converted the white walls into a fiery vermilion, and stretched a board across the upper part, between the windows of the first and second floors, on which appeared in large letters “A la Maison Rouge.”

Whether this sort of advertisement drew the public, or whether it might have been the sterling respectability and devotion to business of Monsieur Sauvage, he got on most successfully. The Marchand en détail became also Marchand en gros, and in course of time he added liqueurs to his wines. No citizen of Sainteville was more highly esteemed than he, both as a man and a tradesman. Since his death the business had been carried on by his widow, aided by the two sons, Gustave and Emile. Latterly Madame Veuve Sauvage had given up all work to them; she was now in years, and had well earned her rest. They lived in the rooms over the shop, which were large and handsome. In former days, when the energies of herself and her husband were chiefly devoted to acquiring and saving money, they had let these upper rooms for a good sum yearly. Old Madame Sauvage might be seen any day now sitting at a front-window, looking out upon the world between her embroidered white curtains.

The door of this prosperous shop was between the two windows. The one window displayed a few bottles of wine, most of them in straw cases; in the other window were clear flacons of liqueurs: chartreuse, green and yellow; curaçoa, warm and ruby; eau de vie de Danzick, with its fluttering gold leaf; and many other sorts.

However, it is not with the goods of Madame Veuve Sauvage that we have to do, but with her premises. Standing in front of the shop, as if coveting a bottle of that choice wine for to-day’s dinner, or an immediate glass of delicious liqueur, you may see on your right hand, but to the left of the shop, the private door of the house. On the other side the shop is also a door which opens to a narrow entry. The entry looks dark, even in the mid-day sun, for it is pretty long, extending down a portion of the side of the Maison Rouge, which is a deep house, and terminating in a paved yard surrounded by high buildings. At the end of the yard is a small dwelling, with two modern windows, one above the other. Near theunder window is the entrance-door, painted oak colour, with a brass knob, a bell-wire with a curious handle, and a knocker. This little house the late Monsieur Sauvage had also caused to be converted into a red one, the same as the larger.

In earlier days, when Jean Sauvage and his wife were putting their shoulders to the wheel, they had lived in the little house with their children; the two sons and the daughter, Jeanne. Jeanne Sauvage married early and very well, an avocat. But since they had left it, the house in the yard seemed to have been, as the Widow Sauvage herself expressed it, unlucky. The first of the tenants had died there; the second had disappeared—decamped in fact, to avoid paying rent and other debts; the third had moved into a better house; and the fourth, an old widow lady, had also died, owing a year’s rent to Madame Sauvage, and leaving no money to pay it.

It was of this small dwelling, lying under the shadow of the Maison Rouge, that Monsieur Carimon had thought. Turning to the Miss Preens, he gave them briefly a few particulars, and said he believed the house was to be had on very reasonable terms.

“What do you call it?” exclaimed Lavinia. “The little red house?”

“Yes, we call it so,” said Monsieur Carimon.“Emile Sauvage was talking of it to me the other evening at the café, saying they would be glad to have it tenanted.”

“I fear our good friends here would find it dull,”remarked Madame Carimon to him. “It is in so gloomy a situation, you know, Jules.”

“Mon amie, I do not myself see how that signifies,”said he in reply. “If your house is comfortable inside, does it matter what it looks out upon?”

“Very true,” assented Miss Lavinia, whose hopes had gone up again. “But this house may not be furnished, Mary.”

“It is partly furnished,” said Madame Carimon.“When the old lady who was last in it died, they had to take her furniture for the rent. It was not much, I have heard.”

“We should not want much, only two of us,” cried Miss Ann eagerly. “Do let us go to look at it to-morrow!”

On the following day, Friday, the Miss Preens went to the Place Ronde, piloted by Mary Carimon. They were struck with admiration at the Maison Rouge, all a fiery glow in the morning sun, and a novelty to English eyes. Whilst Madame Carimon went into the shop to explain and ask for the key, the sisters gazed in at the windows. Lying on the wine-bottles was a small black board on which was written in white letters, “Petite Maison à louer.”

Monsieur Gustave Sauvage, key in hand, saluted the ladies in English, which he spoke fairly well, and accompanied them to view the house. The sun was very bright that day, and the confined yard did not look so dull as at a less favourable time; and perhaps the brilliant red of the little house, at which Nancy laughed, imparted a cheerfulness to it. Monsieur Gustave opened the door with a latch-key, drew back, and waited for them to enter.

The first to do so, or to attempt to do so, was Miss Preen. But no sooner had she put one foot over thethreshold than she drew back with a start, somewhat discomposing the others by the movement.

“What is it, Lavinia?” inquired Ann.

“Something seemed to startle me, and throw me backward!” exclaimed Lavinia Preen, regaining her breath. “Perhaps it was the gloom of the passage: it is very dark.”

“Pardon, mesdames,” spoke Monsieur Gustave politely. “If the ladies will forgive my entering before them, I will open the salon door.”

The passage was narrow. The broad shoulders of Monsieur Gustave almost touched the wall on either side as he walked along. Almost at the other end of it, on his left hand, was the salon door; he threw it open, and a little light shone forth. The passage terminated in a small square recess. At the back of this was fixed a shallow marble slab for holding things, above which was a cupboard let into the wall. On the right of the recess was the staircase; and opposite the staircase the kitchen-door, the kitchen being behind the salon.

The salon was nice when they were in it; the paint was fresh, the paper light and handsome. It was of good size, and its large window looked to the front. The kitchen opened upon a small back-yard, furnished with a pump and a shed for wood or coal. On the floor above were two very good chambers, one behind the other. Opposite these, on the other side of the passage, was another room, not so large, but of fair size. It was apparently built out over some part of the next-door premises, and was lighted by a skylight. All the rooms were fresh and good, and the passage had a window at the end.

Altogether it was not an inconvenient abode for people who did not go in for show. The furniture was plain, clean and useful, but it would have to be added to. There were no grates, not even a cooking-stove in the kitchen. It was very much the Sainteville custom at that period for tenants to provide grates for themselves, plenty of which could be bought or hired for a small sum. An easy-chair or two would be needed; tea-cups and saucers and wine-glasses; and though, there were washing-stands, these contained no jugs or basins; and there were no sheets or tablecloths or towels, no knives or forks, no brooms or brushes, and so on.

“There is only this one sitting-room, you perceive,”remarked Madame Carimon, as they turned about, looking at the salon again, after coming downstairs.

“Yes, that’s a pity, on account of dining,” replied Miss Nancy.

“One of our tenants made a pretty salon of the room above this, and this the salle à manger,” replied Monsieur Gustave. “Mesdames might like to do the same, possibly?”

He had pointedly addressed Miss Lavinia, near whom he stood. She did not answer. In fact—it was a very curious thing, but a fact—Miss Lavinia had not spoken a word since she entered. She had gone through the house taking in its features in complete silence, just as if that shock at the door had scared away her speech.

The rent asked by Monsieur Gustave, acting for his mother, was very moderate indeed—twenty pounds a-year, including the use of the furniture. There would be no taxes to pay, he said; absolutely none;the taxes of this little house, being upon their premises, were included in their own. But to ensure this low rental, the house must be taken for five years.

“Of course we will take it—won’t we, Lavinia?”cried Miss Ann in a loud whisper. “Only twenty pounds a-year! Just think of it!”

“Sir,” Miss Lavinia said to Monsieur Gustave, speaking at last, “the house would suit us in some respects, especially as regards rent. But we might find it too lonely: and I should hardly like to be bound for five years.”

All that was of course for mesdames’ consideration, he frankly responded. But he thought that if the ladies were established in it with their ménage about them, they would not find it lonely.

“We will give you an answer to-morrow or Monday,”decided Miss Lavinia.

They went about the town all that day with Madame Carimon; but nothing in the shape of an apartment could be found to suit them. Madame invited them again to tea in the evening. And by that time they had decided to take the house. Nancy was wild about it. What with the change from the monotony of their country house to the bright and busy streets, the gay outdoor life, the delights of the table d’hôte, Ann Preen looked upon Sainteville as an earthly paradise.

“The house is certainly more suited to you than anything else we have seen,” observed Madame Carimon.“I have nothing to say against the Petite Maison Rouge, except its dull situation.”

“Did it strike you, Mary, apart from its situation, as being gloomy?” asked Lavinia.

“No. Once you are in the rooms they are cheerful enough.”

“It did me. Gloomy, with a peculiar gloom, you understand. I’m sure the passage was dark as night. It must have been its darkness that startled me as we were going in.”

“By the way, Lavinia, what was the matter with you then?” interrupted her sister.

“I don’t know, Nancy; I said at the time I did not know. With my first step into the passage, some horror seemed to meet me and drive me backward.”

“Some horror!” repeated Nancy.

“I seemed to feel it so. I had still the glare of the streets and the fiery red walls in my eyes, which must have caused the house passage to look darker than it ought. That was all, I suppose—but it turned me sick with a sort of fear; sick and shivery.”

“That salon may be made as pretty a room as any in Sainteville,” remarked Madame Carimon. “Many of the English residents here have only one salon in their apartments. You see, we don’t go in for ceremony; France is not like England.”

On the morrow the little house under the wing of the Maison Rouge was secured by the Miss Preens. They took it in their joint names for five years. To complete the transaction they were ushered upstairs to the salon and presence of Madame Veuve Sauvage—a rather stately looking old lady, attired in a voluminous black silk robe and a mourning cap of fine muslin. Madame, who could not speak a syllable of English, conversed graciously with her future tenants through the interpretation of Mary Carimon, offeringto be useful to them in any way she could. Lavinia and Ann Preen both signed the bail, or agreement, and Madame Veuve Sauvage likewise signed it; by virtue of which she became their landlady, and they her tenants of the little house for five years. Madame Carimon, and a shopman who came upstairs for the purpose, signed as witnesses.

Wine and the little cakes called pistolets were then introduced; and so the bargain was complete.

Oh if some kindly spirit from the all-seeing world above could only have whispered a hint to those ill-fated sisters of what they were doing!—had only whispered a warning in time to prevent it! Might not that horror, which fell upon Lavinia as she was about to pass over the door-sill, have served her as such? But who regards these warnings when they come to us? Who personally applies them? None.

Having purchased or hired the additional things required, the Miss Preens took possession of their house. Nancy had the front bed-chamber, which Lavinia thought rather the best, and so gave it up to her; Lavinia took the back one. The one opposite, with the skylight, remained unoccupied, as their servant did not sleep in the house. Not at all an uncommon custom at Sainteville.

An excellent servant had been found for them in the person of Flore Pamart, a widow, who was honest, cooked well, and could talk away in English; all recommendations that the ladies liked. Flore let herself in with a latch-key before breakfast, and left as soon after five o’clock in the evening as she could get the dinner things removed. Madame Flore Pamart had one little boy named Dion, who went toschool by day, but was at home night and morning; for which reason his mother could only take a daily service.

Thus the Miss Preens became part of the small colony of English at Sainteville. They took sittings in the English Protestant Church, which was not much more than a room; and they subscribed to the casino on the port when it opened for the summer season, spending many an evening there, listening to the music, watching the dancing when there was any, and chattering with the acquaintances they met. They were well regarded, these new-comers, and they began to speak French after a fashion. Now and then they went out to a soirée; once in a way gave one in return. Very sober soirées indeed were those of Sainteville; consisting (as Sam Weller might inform us) of tea at seven o’clock with, hot galette, conversation, cake at ten (gâteau Suisse or gâteau au rhum), and a glass of Picardin wine.

They were pleased with the house, once they had settled down in it, and never a shadow of regret crossed either of them for having taken the Petite Maison Rouge.

In this way about a twelvemonth wore on.

III.

It was a fine morning at the beginning of April; the sun being particularly welcome, as Sainteville had latterly been favoured with a spell of ill-natured, bitter east winds. About eleven o’clock, Miss Preen and hersister turned out of their house to take a walk on the pier—which they liked to do most days, wind and weather permitting. In going down the Rue des Arbres, they were met by a fresh-looking little elderly gentleman, with rather long white hair, and wearing a white necktie. He stopped to salute the ladies, bowing ceremoniously low to each of them. It was Monsieur le Docteur Dupuis, a kindly man of skilful reputation, who had now mostly, though not altogether, given up practice to his son, Monsieur Henri Dupuis. Miss Lavinia had a little acquaintance with the doctor, and took occasion to ask him news of the public welfare; for there was raging in the town the malady called “la grippe,” which, being interpreted, means influenza.

It was not much better at present, Monsieur Dupuis answered; but this genial sunshine he hoped would begin to drive it away; and, with another bow, he passed onward.

The pier was soon reached, and they enjoyed their walk upon it. The sunlight glinted on the rather turbulent waves of the sea in the distance, but there was not much breeze to be felt on land. When nearing the end of the pier their attention was attracted to a fishing-boat, which was tumbling about rather unaccountably in its efforts to make the harbour.

“It almost looks from here as though it had lost its rudder, Nancy,” remarked Miss Lavinia.

They halted, and stood looking over the side at the object of interest; not particularly noticing that a gentleman stood near them, also looking at the same through an opera-glass. He was spare, of middle height and middle age; his hair was grey, his facepale and impassive; the light over-coat he wore was of fashionable English cut.

“Oh, Lavinia, look, look! It is coming right on to the end of the pier,” cried Ann Preen.

“Hush, Nancy, don’t excite yourself,” said Miss Lavinia, in lowered tones. “It will take care not to do that.”

The gentleman gave a wary glance at them. He saw two ladies dressed alike, in handsome black velvet mantles, and bonnets with violet feathers; by which he judged them to be sisters, though there was no resemblance in face. The elder had clear-cut features, a healthy colour, dark brown hair, worn plain, and a keen, sensible expression. The other was fair, with blue eyes and light ringlets.

“Pardon me,” he said, turning to them, and his accent was that of a gentleman. “May I offer you the use of my glasses?”

“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Nancy, in a light tone bordering on a giggle; and she accepted the glasses. She was evidently pleased with the offer and with the stranger.

Lavinia, on the contrary, was not. The moment she saw his full face she shrank from it—shrank from him. The feeling might have been as unaccountable as that which came over her when she had been first entering the Petite Maison Rouge; but it was there. However, she put it from her, and thanked him.

“I don’t think I see so well with the glasses as without them; it seems all a mist,” remarked Nancy, who was standing next the stranger.

“They are not properly focused for you. Allow me,” said he, as he took the glasses from her to alterthem. “Young eyes need a less powerful focus than elderly ones like mine.”

He spoke in a laughing tone; Nancy, fond of compliments, giggled outright this time. She was approaching forty; he might have been ten years older. They continued standing there, watching the fishing-boat, and exchanging remarks at intervals. When it had made the harbour without accident, the Miss Preens wished him good-morning, and went back down the pier; he took off his hat to them, and walked the other way.

“What a charming man!” exclaimed Nancy, when they were at a safe distance.

“I don’t like him,” dissented Lavinia.

“Not like him!” echoed the other in surprise.“Why, Lavinia, his manners are delightful. I wonder who he is?”

When nearly home, in turning into the Place Ronde, they met an English lady of their acquaintance, the wife of Major Smith. She had been ordering a dozen of vin Picardin from the Maison Rouge. As they stood talking together, the gentleman of the pier passed up the Rue de Tessin. He lifted his hat, and they all, including Mrs. Smith, bowed.

“Do you know him?” quickly asked Nancy, in a whisper.

“Hardly that,” answered Mrs. Smith. “When we were passing the Hôtel des Princes this morning, a gentleman turned out of the courtyard, and he and my husband spoke to one another. The major said to me afterwards that he had formerly been in the—I forget which—regiment. He called him Mr. Fennel.”

Now, as ill-fortune had it, Miss Preen found herself very poorly after she got home. She began to sneeze and cough, and thought she must have taken cold through standing on the pier to watch the vagaries of the fishing-smack.

“I hope you are not going to have the influenza!”cried Nancy, her blue eyes wide with concern.

But the influenza it proved to be. Miss Preen seemed about to have it badly, and lay in bed the next day. Nancy proposed to send Flore for Monsieur Dupuis, but Lavinia said she knew how to treat herself as well as he could treat her.

The next day she was no better. Poor Nancy had to go out alone, or to stay indoors. She did not like doing the latter at all; it was too dull; her own inclination would have led her abroad all day long and every day.

“I saw Captain Fennel on the pier again,” said she to her sister that afternoon, when she was making the tea at Lavinia’s bedside, Flore having carried up the tray.

“I hope you did not talk to him, Ann,” spoke the invalid, as well as she could articulate.

“I talked a little,” said Nancy, turning hot, conscious that she had gossiped with him for three-quarters-of-an-hour.“He stopped to speak to me; I could not walk on rudely.”

“Any way, don’t talk to him again, my dear. I do not like that man.”

“What is there to dislike in him, Lavinia?”

“That I can’t say. His countenance is not a good one; it is shifty and deceitful. He is a man you could never trust.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard you say the same of other people.”

“Because I can read faces,” returned Lavinia.

“Oh—well—I consider Captain Fennel’s is a handsome face,” debated Nancy.

“Why do you call him ‘Captain’?”

“He calls himself so,” answered Nancy. “I suppose it was his rank in the army when he retired. They retain it afterwards by courtesy, don’t they, Lavinia?”

“I am not sure. It depends upon whether they retire in rotation or sell out, I fancy. Mrs. Smith said the major called him Mr. Fennel, and he ought to know. There, I can’t talk any more, Nancy, and the man is nothing to us, that we need discuss him.”

La grippe had taken rather sharp hold of Lavinia Preen, and she was upstairs for ten days. On the first afternoon she went down to the salon, Captain Fennel called, very much to her surprise; and, also to her surprise, he and Nancy appeared to be pretty intimate.

In point of fact, they had met every day, generally upon the pier. Nancy had said nothing about it at home. She was neither sly nor deceitful in disposition; rather notably simple and unsophisticated; but, after Lavinia’s reproof the first time she told about meeting him, she would not tell again.

Miss Preen behaved coolly to him; which he would not appear to see. She sat over the fire, wrapped in a shawl, for it was a cold afternoon. He stayed only a little time, and put his card down on the slab near the stairs when he left. Lavinia had it brought to her.

“Mr. Edwin Fennel.”

“Then he is not Captain Fennel,” she observed.“But, Nancy, what in the world could have induced the man to call here? And how is it you seem to be familiar with him?”

“I have met him out-of-doors, sometimes, while you were ill,” said Nancy. “As to his calling here—he came, I suppose, out of politeness. There’s no harm in it, Lavinia.”

Miss Lavinia did not say there was. But she disliked the man too much to favour his acquaintanceship. Instinct warned her against him.

How little was she prepared for what was to follow! Before she was well out-of-doors again, before she had been anywhere except to church, Nancy gave her a shock. With no end of simperings and blushings, she confessed that she had been asked to marry Captain Fennel.

Had Miss Lavinia Preen been herself politely asked to marry a certain gentleman popularly supposed to reside underground, she would not have been much more indignantly startled. Perhaps “frightened”would be the better word for it.

“But—you would not, Nancy!” she gasped, when she found her voice.

“I don’t know,” simpered foolish Nancy. “I—I—think him very nice and gentlemanly, Lavinia.”

Lavinia came out of her fright sufficiently to reason. She strove to show Nancy how utterly unwise such a step would be. They knew nothing of Captain Fennel or his antecedents; to become his wife might just be courting misery and destruction. Nancy ceased to argue; and Lavinia hoped she had yielded.

Both sisters kept a diary. But for that fact, andalso that the diaries were preserved, Featherston could not have arrived at the details of the story so perfectly. About this time, a trifle earlier or later, Ann Preen wrote as follows in hers:

“April 16th.—I met Captain Fennel on the pier again this morning. I do think he goes there because he knows he may meet me. Lavinia is not out yet; she has not quite got rid of that Grip, as they stupidly call it here. I’m sure it has gripped her. We walked quite to the end of the pier, and then I sat down on the edge for a little while, and he stood talking to me. I do wish I could tell Lavinia of these meetings; but she was so cross the first day I met him, and told her of it, that I don’t like to. Captain Fennel lent me his glasses as usual, and I looked at the London steamer, which was coming in. Somehow we fell to talking of the Smiths; he said they were poor, had not much more than the major’s half-pay. ‘Not like you rich people, Miss Nancy,’ he said—he thinks that’s my right name. ‘Your income is different from theirs.’ ‘Oh,’ I screamed out, ‘why, it’s only a hundred and forty pounds a-year!’ ‘Well,’ he answered, smiling,‘that’s a comfortable sum for a place like this; five francs will buy as much at Sainteville as half-a-sovereign will in England.’ Which is pretty nearly true.”

Skipping a few entries of little importance, we come to another:

“May 1st, and such a lovely day!—It reminds me of one May-day at home, when the Jacks-in-the-green were dancing on the grass-plot before the Court windows at Buttermead, and Mrs. Selby sat watching them, as pleased as they were, saying she should liketo dance, too, if she could only go first to the mill to be ground young again. Jane and Edith Peckham were spending the day with us. It was just such a day as this, warm and bright; light, fleecy clouds flitting across the blue sky. I wish Lavinia were out to enjoy it! but she is hardly strong enough for long walks yet, and only potters about, when she does get out, in the Rue des Arbres or the Grande Place, or perhaps over to see Mary Carimon.

“I don’t know what to do. I lay awake all last night, and sat moping yesterday, thinking what Icould do. Edwin wants me to marry him; I told Lavinia, and she absolutely forbids it, saying I should rush upon misery. He says I should be happy as the day’s long. I feel like a distracted lunatic, not knowing which of them is right, or which opinion I ought to yield to. I have obeyed Lavinia all my life; we have never had a difference before; her wishes have been mine, and mine have been hers. But I can’t see why she need have taken up this prejudice against him, for I’m sure he’s more like an angel than a man; and, as he whispers to me, Nancy Fennel would be a prettier name than Nancy Preen. I said to him to-day,‘My name is Ann, not really Nancy.’ ‘My dear,’he answered, ‘I shall always call you Nancy; I love the simple name.’

“I no longer talk about him to Lavinia, or let her suspect that we still meet on the pier. It would make her angry, and I can’t bear that. I dare not hint to her what Edwin said to-day—that he should take matters into his own hands. He means to go over to Dover, viâ Calais; stay at Dover a fortnight, as the marriage law requires, and then come back to fetchme; and after the marriage has taken place we shall return here to live.

“Oh dear, what am I to do? It will be a dreadfulthing to deceive Lavinia; and it will be equally dreadful to lose him. He declares that if I do not agree to this he shall set sail for India (where he used to be with his regiment), and never, never see me again. Good gracious! never to see me again!

“The worst is, he wants to go off to Dover at once, giving one no time for consideration! Must I say Yes, or No? The uncertainty shakes me to pieces. He laughed to-day when I said something of this, assuring me Lavinia’s anger would pass away like a summer cloud when I was his wife; that sisters had no authority over one another, and that Lavinia’s opposition arose from selfishness only, because she did not want to lose me. ‘Risk it, Nancy,’ said he; ‘she will receive you with open arms when I bring you back from Dover.’ If I could only think so! Now and then I feel inclined to confide my dilemma to Mary Carimon, and ask her opinion, only that I fear she might tell Lavinia.”

Mr. Edwin Fennel quitted Sainteville. When he was missed people thought he might have gone for good. But one Saturday morning some time onwards, when the month of May was drawing towards its close, Miss Lavinia, out with Nancy at market, came full upon Captain Fennel in the crowd on the Grande Place. He held out his hand.

“I thought you had left Sainteville, Mr. Fennel,”she remarked, meeting his hand and the sinister look in his face unwillingly.

“Got back this morning,” he said; “travelled by night. Shall be leaving again to-day or to-morrow. How are you, Miss Nancy?”

Lavinia pushed her way to the nearest poultry stall.“Will you come here, Ann?” she said. “I want to choose a fowl.”

She began to bargain, half in French, half in English, with the poultry man, all to get rid of that other man, and she looked round, expecting Nancy had followed her. Nancy had not stirred from the spot near the butter-baskets: she and Captain Fennel had their heads together, he talking hard and fast.

They saw Lavinia looking at them; looking angry, too. “Remember,” impressively whispered Captain Fennel to Nancy: and, lifting his hat to Lavinia, over the white caps of the market-women, he disappeared across the Place.

“I wonder what that man has come back for?”cried Miss Preen, as Nancy reached her—not that she had any suspicion. “And I wonder you should stay talking with him, Nancy!”

Nancy did not answer.

Sending Flore—who had attended them with her market-basket—home with the fowl and eggs and vegetables, they called at the butcher’s and the grocer’s, and then went home themselves. Miss Preen then remembered that she had forgotten one or two things, and must go out again. Nancy remained at home. When Lavinia returned, which was not for an hour, for she had met various friends and stayed to gossip, her sister was in her room. Flore thought Mademoiselle Nancy was setting her drawers to rights: she had heard her opening and shutting them.

Time went on until the afternoon. Just before five o’clock, when Flore came into lay the cloth for dinner, Lavinia, sitting at the window, saw her sister leave the house and cross the yard, a good-sized paper parcel in her hand.

“Why, that is Miss Nancy,” she exclaimed, in much surprise. “Where can she be going to now?”

“Miss Nancy came down the stairs as I was coming in here,” replied Flore. “She said to me that she had just time to run to Madame Carimon’s before dinner.”

“Hardly,” dissented Miss Lavinia. “What can she be going for?”

As five o’clock struck, Flore (always punctual, from self-interest) came in to ask if she should serve the fish; but was told to wait until Miss Nancy returned. When half-past five was at hand, and Nancy had not appeared, Miss Preen ordered the fish in, remarking that Madame Carimon must be keeping her sister to dinner.

Afterwards Miss Preen set out for the casino, expecting she should meet them both there; for Lavinia and Nancy had intended to go. Madame Carimon was not a subscriber, but she sometimes paid her ten sous and went in. It would be quite a pretty sight to-night—a children’s dance. Lavinia soon joined some friends there, but the others did not come.

At eight o’clock she was in the Rue Pomme Cuite, approaching Madame Carimon’s. Pauline, in her short woollen petticoats, and shoeless feet thrust into wooden sabots, was splashing buckets of water before the door to scrub the pavement, and keeping up a screaming chatter with the other servants in the street, who were doing the same, Saturday-night fashion.

Madame Carimon was in the salon, sitting idle in the fading light; her sewing lay on the table. Lavinia’s eyes went round the room, but she saw no one else in it.

“Mary, where is Nancy?” she asked, as Madame Carimon rose to greet her with outstretched hands.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Madame Carimon lightly. “She has not been here. Did you think she had?”

“She dined here—did she not?”

“What, Nancy? Oh no! I and Jules dined alone. He is out now, giving a French lesson. I have not seen Nancy since—let me see—since Thursday, I think; the day before yesterday.”

Lavinia Preen sat down, half-bewildered. She related the history of the evening.

“It is elsewhere that Nancy is gone,” remarked Madame Carimon. “Flore must have misunderstood her.”

Concluding that to be the case, and that Nancy might already be at home, Lavinia returned at once to the Petite Maison Rouge, Mary Carimon bearing her company in the sweet summer twilight. Lavinia opened the door with her latch-key. Flore had departed long before. There were three latch-keys to the house, Nancy possessing one of them.

They looked into every room, and called out“Nancy! Nancy!” But she was not there.

Nancy Preen had gone off with Captain Fennel by the six-o’clock train, en route for Dover, there to be converted into Mrs. Fennel.

And had Nancy foreseen the terrible events and final crime which this most disastrous step would bring about, she might have chosen, rather than take it, to run away to the Protestant cemetery outside the gates of Sainteville, there to lay herself down to die.

IV.

“Where can Nancy be?”

Miss Preen spoke these words to Mary Carimon in a sort of flurry. After letting themselves into the house, the Petite Maison Rouge, and calling up and down it in vain for Nancy, the question as to where she could be naturally arose.

“She must be spending the evening with the friends she stayed to dine with,” said Madame Carimon.

“I don’t know where she would be likely to stay. Unless—yes—perhaps at Mrs. Hardy’s.”

“That must be it, Lavinia,” pronounced Madame Carimon.

It was then getting towards nine o’clock. They set out again for Mrs. Hardy’s to escort Nancy home. She lived in the Rue Lothaire; a long street, leading to the railway-station.

Mrs. Hardy was an elderly lady. When near her door they saw her grand-nephew, Charles Palliser, turn out of it. Charley was a good-hearted young fellow, the son of a rich merchant in London. He was staying at Sainteville for the purpose of acquiring the art of speaking French as a native.

“Looking for Miss Ann Preen!” cried he, as theyexplained in a word or two. “No, she is not at our house; has not been there. I saw her going off this evening by the six-o’clock train.”

“Going off by the six-o’clock train!” echoed Miss Lavinia, staring at him. “Why, what do you mean, Mr. Charles? My sister has not gone off by any train.”

“It was in this way,” answered the young man, too polite to flatly contradict a lady. “Mrs. Hardy’s cousin, Louise Soubitez, came to town this morning; she spent the day with us, and after dinner I went to see her off by the train. And there, at the station, was Miss Ann Preen.”

“But not going away by train,” returned Miss Lavinia.

“Why, yes, she was. I watched the train out of the station. She and Louise Soubitez sat in the same compartment.”

A smile stole to Charles Palliser’s face. In truth, he was amused at Miss Lavinia’s consternation. It suddenly struck her that the young man was joking.

“Did you speak to Ann, Mr. Charles?”

“Oh yes; just a few words. There was not time for much conversation; Louise was late.”

Miss Preen felt a little shaken.

“Was Ann alone?”

“No; she was with Captain Fennel.”

And, with that, a suspicion of the truth, and the full horror of it, dawned upon Lavinia Preen. She grasped Madame Carimon’s arm and turned white as death.

“It never can be,” she whispered, her lips trembling:“it never can be! She cannot have—have—run away—with that man!”

Unconsciously perhaps to herself, her eyes were fixed on Charles. He thought the question was put to him, and answered it.

“Well—I—I’m afraid it looks like it, as she seems to have said nothing to you,” he slowly said. “But I give you my word, Miss Preen, that until this moment that aspect of the matter never suggested itself to me. I supposed they were just going up the line together for some purpose or other; though, in fact, I hardly thought about it at all.”

“And perhaps that is all the mystery!” interposed Madame Carimon briskly. “He may have taken Ann to Drecques for a little jaunt, and they will be back again by the last train. It must be almost due, Lavinia.”

With one impulse they turned to the station, which was near at hand. Drecques, a village, was the first place the trains stopped at on the up-line. The passengers were already issuing from the gate. Standing aside until all had passed, and not seeing Nancy anywhere, Charley Palliser looked into the omnibuses. But she was not there.

“They may have intended to come back and missed the train, Miss Preen; it’s very easy to miss a train,”said he in his good nature.

“I think it must be so, Lavinia,” spoke up Madame Carimon. “Any way, we will assume it until we hear to the contrary. And, Charley, we had better not talk of this to-night.”

“I won’t,” answered Charley earnestly. “You may be sure of me.”

Unless Captain Fennel and Miss Ann Preen chartered a balloon, there was little probability oftheir reaching Sainteville that evening, for this had been the last train. Lavinia Preen passed a night of discomfort, striving to hope against hope, as the saying runs. Not a very wise saying; it might run better, striving to hope against despair.

When Sunday did not bring back the truants, or any news of them, the three in the secret—Mary Carimon, Lavinia, and Charley Palliser—had little doubt that the disappearance meant an elopement. Monsieur Jules Carimon, not easily understanding such an escapade, so little in accordance with the customs and manners of his own country, said in his wife’s ear he hoped it would turn out that there was a marriage in the case.

Miss Preen received a letter from Dover pretty early in the week, written by Ann. She had been married that day to Captain Fennel.

Altogether, the matter was the most bitter blow ever yet dealt to Lavinia Preen. No living being knew, or ever would know, how cruelly her heart was wrung by it. But, being a kindly woman of good sound sense, she saw that the best must be made of it, not the worst; and this she set herself out to do. She began by hoping that her own instinct, warning her against Captain Fennel, might be a mistaken one, and that he had a good home to offer his wife and would make her happy in it.

She knew no more about him—his family, his fortune, his former life, his antecedents—than she knew of the man in the moon. Major Smith perhaps did; he had been acquainted with him in the past. Nancy’s letter, though written the previous day, had been delivered by the afternoon post. As soon as shecould get dinner over, Lavinia went to Major Smith’s. He lived at the top of the Rue Lambeau, a street turning out of the Grande Place. He and his wife, their own dinner just removed, were sitting together, the major indulging in a steaming glass of schiedam and water, flavoured with a slice of lemon. He was a very jolly little man, with rosy cheeks and a bald head. They welcomed Miss Lavinia warmly. She, not quite as composed as usual, opened her business without preamble; her sister Ann had married Captain Fennel, and she had come to ask Major Smith what he knew of him.

“Not very much,” answered the major.

There was something behind his tone, and Lavinia burst into tears. Compassionating her distress, the major offered her a comforting glass, similar to his own. Lavinia declined it.

“You will tell me what you know,” she said; and he proceeded to do so.

Edwin Fennel, the son of Colonel Fennel, was stationed in India with his regiment for several years. He got on well enough, but was not much liked by his brother officers: they thought him unscrupulous and deceitful. All at once, something very disagreeable occurred, which obliged Captain Fennel to quit her Majesty’s service. The affair was hushed up, out of consideration to his family and his father’s long term of service. “In fact, I believe he was allowed to retire, instead of being cashiered,” added the major,“but I am not quite sure which it was.”

“What was it that occurred—that Captain Fennel did, to necessitate his dismissal?” questioned Lavinia.

“I don’t much like to mention it,” said the major,shaking his head. “It might get about, you see, Miss Preen, which would make it awkward for him. I have no wish, or right either, to do the man a gratuitous injury.”

“I promise you it shall not get about through me,”returned Lavinia; “my sister’s being his wife will be the best guarantee for that. You must please tell me, Major Smith.”

“Well, Fennel was suspected—detected, in short—of cheating at cards.”

Lavinia drew a deep breath. “Do you know,” she said presently, in an undertone, “that when I first met the man I shrank from his face.”

“Oh my! And it has such nice features!” put in Mrs. Smith, who was but a silly little woman.

“There was something in its shifty look which spoke to me as a warning,” continued Lavinia. “It did, indeed. All my life I have been able to read faces, and my first instinct has rarely, if ever, deceived me. Each time I have seen this man since, that instinct against him has become stronger.”

Major Smith took a sip at his schiedam. “I believe—between ourselves—he is just a mauvais sujet,” said he. “He has a brother who is one, out and out; as I chance to know.”

“What is Edwin Fennel’s income, major?”

“I can’t tell at all. I should not be surprised to hear that he has none.”

“How does he live then?” asked Lavinia, her heart going at a gallop.

“Don’t know that either,” said the major. “His father is dead now and can’t help him. A very respectable man, the old colonel, but always poor.”

“He cannot live upon air; he must have some means,” debated Lavinia.

“Lives upon his wits, perhaps; some men do. He wanted to borrow ten pounds from me a short time ago,” added the major, taking another sip at his tumbler; “but I told him I had no money to lend—which was a fact. I have an idea that he got it out of Charley Palliser.”

The more Lavinia Preen heard of this unhappy case, the worse it seemed to be. Declining to stay for tea, as Mrs. Smith wished, she betook her miserable steps home again, rather wishing that the sea would swallow up Captain Fennel.

The next day she saw Charles Palliser. Pouncing upon him as he was airing his long legs in the Grande Place, she put the question to him in so determined a way that Charley had no chance against her. He turned red.

“I don’t know who can have set that about,” said he. “But it’s true, Miss Preen. Fennel pressed me to lend him ten pounds for a month; and I—well, I did it. I happened to have it in my pocket, you see, having just cashed a remittance from my father.”

“Has he repaid you, Mr. Charles?”

“Oh, the month’s not quite up yet,” cried Charley.“Please don’t talk of it, Miss Preen; he wouldn’t like it, you know. How on earth it has slipped out I can’t imagine.”

“No, I shall not talk of it,” said Lavinia, as she wished him good-day and walked onwards, wondering what sort of a home Captain Fennel meant to provide for Ann.

Lavinia Preen’s cup of sorrow was not yet full. Amorning or two after this she was seated at breakfast with the window open, when she saw the postman come striding across the yard with a letter. It was from the bride; a very short letter, and one that Miss Lavinia did not at once understand. She read it again.

“MY DEAR LAVINIA,

“All being well, we shall be home to-morrow; that is, on the day you receive this letter; reaching Sainteville by the last train in the evening. Please get something nice and substantial for tea, Edwin says, and please see that Flore has the bedroom in good order.

“Your affectionate sister,

“ANN FENNEL.”

The thing that Miss Lavinia did, when comprehension came to her, was to fly into a passion.

“Come home here—he!—is that what she means?”cried she. “Never. Have that man in my house? Never, never.”

“But what has mademoiselle received?” exclaimed Flore, appearing just then with a boiled egg. “Is it bad news?”

“It is news that I will not put up with—will not tolerate,” cried Miss Lavinia. And, in the moment’s dismay, she told the woman what it was.

“Tiens!” commented Flore, taking a common-sense view of matters: “they must be coming just to show themselves to mademoiselle on their marriage. Likely enough they will not stay more than a night or two, while looking out for an apartment.”

Lavinia did not believe it; but the very suggestion somewhat soothed her. To receive that man even for a night or two, as Flore put it, would be to her most repugnant, cruel pain, and she resolved not to do it. Breakfast over, she carried the letter and her trouble to the Rue Pomme Cuite.

“But I am afraid, Lavinia, you cannot refuse to receive them,” spoke Madame Carimon, after considering the problem.

“Not refuse to receive them!” echoed Lavinia.“Why do you say that?”

“Well,” replied Mary Carimon uneasily, for she disliked to add to trouble, “you see the house is as much Ann’s as yours. It was taken in your joint names. Ann has the right to return to it; and also, I suppose”—more dubiously—“to introduce her husband into it.”

“Is that French law?”

“I think so. I’ll ask Jules when he comes home to dinner. Would it not be English law also, Lavinia?”

Lavinia was feeling wretchedly uncomfortable. With all her plain common-sense, this phase of the matter had not struck her.

“Mary,” said she—and there stopped, for she was seized with a violent shivering, which seemed difficult to be accounted for. “Mary, if that man has to take up his abode in the house, I can never remain in it. I would rather die.”

“Look here, dear friend,” whispered Mary: “life is full of trouble—as Job tells us in the Holy Scriptures—none of us are exempt from it. It attacks us all in turn. The only one thing we can do is to strive to make the best of it, under God; to ask Him to helpus. I am afraid there is a severe cross before you, Lavinia; better bear it than fight against it.”

“I will never bear that,” retorted Lavinia, turning a deaf ear in her anger. “You ought not to wish me to do so.”

“And I would not if I saw anything better for you.”

Madame Veuve Sauvage, sitting as usual at her front-window that same morning, was surprised at receiving an early call from her tenant, Miss Preen. Madame handed her into her best crimson velvet fauteuil, and they began talking.

Not to much purpose, however; for neither very well understood what the other said. Lavinia tried to explain the object of her visit, but found her French was not equal to it. Madame called her maid, Mariette, and sent her into the shop below to ask Monsieur Gustave to be good enough to step up.

Lavinia had gone to beg of them to cancel the agreement for the little house, so far as her sister was concerned, and to place it in her name only.

Monsieur Gustave, when he had mastered the request, politely answered that such a thing was not practicable; Miss Ann’s name could not be struck out of the lease without her consent, or, as he expressed it, breaking the bail. His mother and himself had every disposition to oblige Miss Preen in any way, as indeed she must know, but they had no power to act against the law.

So poor Miss Lavinia went into her home wringing her hands in despair. She was perfectly helpless.

V.

The summer days went on. Mr. Edwin Fennel, with all the impudence in the world, had taken up his abode in the Petite Maison Rouge, without saying with your leave or by your leave.

“How could you think of bringing him here, Ann?”Lavinia demanded of her sister in the first days.

“I did not think of it; it was he thought of it,”returned Mrs. Fennel in her simple way. “I feared you would not like it, Lavinia; but what could I do? He seemed to look upon it as a matter of course that he should come.”

Yes, there he was; “a matter of course;” making one in the home. Lavinia could not show fight; he was Ann’s husband, and the place was as much Ann’s as hers. The more Lavinia saw of him the more she disliked him; which was perhaps unreasonable, since he made himself agreeable to her in social intercourse, though he took care to have things his own way. If Lavinia’s will went one way in the house and his the other, she found herself smilingly set at naught. Ann was his willing slave; and when opinions differed she sided with her husband.

It was no light charge, having a third person in the house to live upon their small income, especially one who studied his appetite. For a very short time Lavinia, in her indignation at affairs generally, turned the housekeeping over to Mrs. Fennel. But she had to take to it again. Ann was naturally an incautious manager; she ordered in delicacies to please her husband’s palate without regard to cost, and nothing could have come of that but debt and disaster.

That the gallant ex-Captain Fennel had married Ann Preen just to have a roof over his head, Lavinia felt as sure of as that the moon occasionally shone in the heavens. She did not suppose he had any other refuge in the wide world. And through something told her by Ann she judged that he had believed he was doing better for himself in marrying than he had done.

The day after the marriage Mr. and Mrs. Fennel were sitting on a bench at Dover, romantically gazing at the sea, honeymoon fashion, and talking of course of hearts and darts. Suddenly the bridegroom turned his thoughts to more practical things.

“Nancy, how do you receive your money—half-yearly or quarterly?” asked he.

“Oh, quarterly,” said Nancy. “It is paid punctually to us by the acting-trustee, Colonel Selby.”

“Ah, yes. Then you have thirty-five pounds every quarter?”

“Between us, we do,” assented Nancy. “Lavinia has seventeen pounds ten, and I have the same; and the colonel makes us each give a receipt for our own share.”

Captain Fennel turned his head and gazed at her with a hard stare.

“You told me your income was a hundred and forty pounds a-year.”

“Yes, it is that exactly,” said she quietly; “mine and Lavinia’s together. We do not each have that, Edwin; I never meant to imply——”

Mrs. Fennel broke off, frightened. On the captain’s face, cruel enough just then, there sat an expression which she might have thought diabolical had it been any one else’s face. Any way, it scared her.

“What is it?” she gasped.

Rising rapidly, Captain Fennel walked forward, caught up some pebbles, flung them from him and waited, apparently watching to see where they fell. Then he strolled back again.

“Were you angry with me?” faltered Nancy.“Had I done anything?”

“My dear, what should you have done? Angry?”repeated he, in a light tone, as if intensely amused.“You must not take up fancies, Mrs. Fennel.”

“I suppose Mrs. Selby thought it would be sufficient income for us, both living together,” remarked Nancy.“If either of us should die it all lapses to the other. We found it quite enough last year, I assure you, Edwin; Sainteville is so cheap a place.”

“Oh, delightfully cheap!” agreed the captain.

It was this conversation that Nancy repeated to Lavinia; but she did not speak of the queer look which had frightened her. Lavinia saw that Mr. Edwin Fennel had taken up a wrong idea of their income. Of course the disappointment angered him.

An aspect of semi-courtesy was outwardly maintained in the intercourse of home life. Lavinia was a gentlewoman; she had not spoken unpleasant things to the captain’s face, or hinted that he was a weight upon the housekeeping pocket; whilst he, as yet, was quite officiously civil to her. But there was no love lost between them; and Lavinia could not divest her mind of an undercurrent of conviction that he was, in some way or other, a man to be dreaded.

Thus Captain Fennel (as he was mostly called), being domiciled with the estimable ladies in the Petite Maison Rouge, grew to be considered one of the English colony of Sainteville, and was received as such. As nobody knew aught against him, nobody thought anything. Major Smith had not spoken of antecedents, neither had Miss Preen; the Carimons, who were in the secret, never spoke ill of any one: and as the captain could assume pleasing manners at will, he became fairly well liked by his country-people in a passing sort of way.

Lavinia Preen sat one day upon the low edge of the pier, her back to the sun and the sea. She had called in at the little shoe-shop on the port, just as you turn out of the Rue Tessin, and had left her parasol there. The sun was not then out in the grey sky, and she did not miss it. Now that the sun was shining, and the grey canopy above had become blue, she said to herself that she had been stupid. It was September weather, so the sun was not unbearable.

Lavinia Preen was thinner; the thraldom of the past three months had made her so. Now and then it would cross her mind to leave the Petite Maison Rouge to its married inmates; but for Nancy’s sake she hesitated. Nancy had made the one love of her life, and Nancy had loved her in return. Now, the love was chiefly given to the new tie she had formed; Lavinia was second in every respect.

“They go their way now, and I have to go mine,”sighed Lavinia, as she sat this morning on the pier.“Even my walks have to be solitary.”

A cloud came sailing up and the sun went in again. Lavinia rose; she walked onwards till she came to the end of the pier, where she again sat down. The next moment, chancing to look the way she had come, she saw a lady and gentleman advancing arm-in-arm.

“Oh, they are on the pier, are they!” mentally spoke Lavinia. For it was Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Fennel.

Nancy sat down beside her. “It is a long walk!”cried she, drawing a quick breath or two. “Lavinia, what do you think we have just heard?”

“How can I tell?” returned the elder sister.

“You know those queer people, an old English aunt and three nieces, who took Madame Gibon’s rooms in the Rue Ménar? They have all disappeared and have paid nobody,” continued Nancy. “Charley Palliser told us just how; he was laughing like anything over it.”

“I never thought they looked like people to be trusted,” remarked Lavinia. “Dear me! here’s the sun coming out again.”

“Where is your parasol?”

Lavinia recounted her negligence in having left it at the shoe-mart. Captain Fennel had brought out a small silk umbrella; he turned from the end of the pier, where he stood looking out to sea, opened the umbrella, and offered it.

“It is not much larger than a good-sized parasol,”remarked he. “Pray take it, Miss Lavinia.”

Lavinia did so after a moment’s imperceptible hesitation, and thanked him. She hated to be under the slightest obligation to him, but the sun was now full in her eyes, and might make her head ache.

The pleasant smell of a cigar caused them to look up. A youngish man, rather remarkably tall, with a shepherd’s plaid across his broad shoulders, was striding up the pier. He sat down near Miss Preen, and she glanced round at him. Appearing to think that shelooked at his cigar, he immediately threw it into the sea behind him.

“Oh, I am sorry you did that,” said Lavinia, speaking impulsively. “I like the smell of a cigar.”

“Oh, thank you; thank you very much,” he answered. “I had nearly smoked it out.”

Voice and manner were alike pleasant and easy, and Lavinia spoke again—some trivial remark about the fine expanse of sea; upon which they drifted into conversation. We are reserved enough with strangers at home, we Islanders, as the world knows, but most of us are less ungracious abroad.

“Sainteville seems a clean, healthy place,” remarked the new-comer.

“Very,” said Miss Lavinia. “Do you know it well?”

“I never saw it before to-day,” he replied. “I have come here from Douai to meet a friend, having two or three days to spare.”

“Douai is a fine town,” remarked Captain Fennel, turning to speak, for he was still looking out over the sea, and had his opera-glasses in his hand. “I spent a week there not long ago.”

“Douai!” exclaimed Nancy. “That’s the place where the great Law Courts are, is it not? Don’t you remember the man last year, Lavinia, who committed some dreadful crime, and was taken up to Douai to be tried at the Assizes there?”

“We have a great case coming on there as soon as the Courts meet,” said the stranger, who seemed a talkative man; “and that’s what I am at Douai for. A case of extensive swindling.”

“You are a lawyer, I presume?” said Miss Preen.

The stranger nodded. “Being the only one of our London firm who can speak French readily, and we are four of us in it, I had to come over and watch this affair and wait for the trial. For the young fellow is an Englishman, I am sorry to say, and his people, worthy and well-to-do merchants, are nearly mad over it.”

“But did he commit it in England?” cried Miss Preen.

“Oh no; in France, within the arrondissement of the Douai Courts. He is in prison there. I dare say you get some swindling in a petty way even at Sainteville,” added the speaker.

“That we do,” put in Nancy. “An English family of ladies ran away only yesterday, owing twenty pounds at least, it is said.”

“Ah,” said the stranger, with a smile. “I think the ladies are sometimes more clever at that game than the men. By the way,” he went on briskly, “do you know a Mr. Dangerfield at Sainteville?”

“No,” replied Lavinia.

“He is staying here, I believe, or has been.”

“Not that I know of,” said Lavinia. “I never heard his name.”

“Changed it again, probably,” carelessly observed the young man.

“Is Dangerfield not his true name, then?”

“Just as much as it is mine, madam. His real name is Fennel; but he has found it convenient to drop that on occasion.”

Now it was a curious fact that Nancy did not hear the name which the stranger had given as the true one. Her attention was diverted by some men whowere working at the mud in the harbour, for it was low water, and who were loudly disputing together. Nancy had moved to the side of the pier to look down at them.

“Is he a swindler, that Mr. Dangerfield?” asked she, half-turning her head to speak. But the stranger did not answer.

As to Lavinia, the avowal had struck her speechless. She glanced at Captain Fennel. He had his back to them, and stood immovable, apparently unconcerned, possibly not having heard. A thought struck her—and frightened her.

“Do you know that Mr. Dangerfield yourself?” she asked the stranger, in a tone of indifference.

“No, I do not,” he said; “but there’s a man coming over in yonder boat who does.”

He pointed over his shoulder at the sea as he spoke. Lavinia glanced quickly in the same direction.

“In yonder boat?” she repeated vaguely.

“I mean the London boat, which is on its way here, and will get in this evening,” he explained.

“Oh, of course,” said Lavinia, as if her wits had been wool-gathering.

The young man took out his watch and looked at it. Then he rose, lifted his hat, and, with a general good-morning, walked quickly down the pier.

Nancy was still at the side of the pier, looking down at the men. Captain Fennel put up his glasses and sat down beside Lavinia, his impassive face still as usual.

“I wonder who that man is?” he cried, watching the footsteps of the retreating stranger.

“Did you hear what he said?” asked Lavinia, dropping her voice.

“Yes. Had Nancy not been here, I should have given him a taste of my mind; but she hates even the semblance of a quarrel. He had no right to say what he did.”

“What could it have meant?” murmured Lavinia.

“It meant my brother, I expect,” said Captain Fennel savagely, and, as Lavinia thought, with every appearance of truth. “But he has never been at Sainteville, so far as I know; the fellow is mistaken in that.”

“Does he pass under the name of Dangerfield?”

“Possibly. This is the first I’ve heard of it. He is an extravagant man, often in embarrassment from debt. There’s nothing worse against him.”

He did not say more; neither did Lavinia. They sat on in silence. The tall figure in the Scotch plaid disappeared from sight; the men in the harbour kept on disputing.

“How long are you going to stay here?” asked Nancy, turning towards her husband.

“I’m ready to go now,” he answered. And giving his arm to Nancy, they walked down the pier together.

Never a word to Lavinia; never a question put by him or by Nancy, if only to say, “Are you not coming with us?” It was ever so now. Nancy, absorbed in her husband, neglected her sister.

Lavinia sighed. She sat on a little while longer, and then took her departure.

The shoe-shop on the port was opposite the place in the harbour where the London steamers were generally moored. The one now there was taking in cargo. As Lavinia was turning into the shop for her parasol, she heard a stentorian English voice call out to a man who was superintending the work in his shirt-sleeves:“At what hour does this boat leave to-night?”

“At eight o’clock, sir,” was the answer. “Eight sharp; we want to get away with the first o’ the tide.”

From Miss Lavinia Preen’s Diary.

September 22nd.—The town clocks have just struck eight, and I could almost fancy that I hear the faint sound of the boat steaming down the harbour in the dark night, carrying Nancy away with it, and carryinghim. However, that is fancy and nothing else, for the sound could not penetrate to me here.

Perhaps it surprised me, perhaps it did not, when Nancy came to me this afternoon as I was sitting in my bedroom reading Scott’s “Legend of Montrose,” which Mary Carimon had lent me from her little stock of English books, and said she and Captain Fennel were going to London that night by the boat. He had received a letter, he told her, calling him thither. He might tell Nancy that if he liked, but it would not do for me. He is going, I can only believe, in consequence of what that gentleman in the shepherd’s plaid said on the pier to-day. Can it be that the“Mr. Dangerfield” spoken of applies to Edwin Fennel himself and not to his brother? Is he finding himself in some dangerous strait, and is running away from the individual coming over in the approaching boat, who personally knows Mr. Dangerfield? “Can you lend me a five-pound note, Lavinia?” Nancy went on, when she had told me the news; “lend it to myself, I mean. I will repay you when I receive my next quarter’s income, which is due, you know, in afew days.” I chanced to have a five-pound note by me in my own private store, and I gave it her, reminding her that unless she did let me have it again, it would be so much less in hand to meet expenses with, and that I had found difficulty enough in the past quarter. “On the other hand,” said Nancy,“if I and Edwin stay away a week or two, you will be spared our housekeeping; and when our money comes, Lavinia, you can open my letter and repay yourself if I am not here. I don’t at all know where we are going to stay,” she said, in answer to my question. “I was beginning to ask Edwin just now in the other room, but he was busy packing his portmanteau, and told me not to bother him.”

And so, there it is: they are gone, and I am left here all alone.

I wonder whether any Mr. Dangerfield has been at Sainteville? I think we should have heard the name. Why, that is the door-bell! I must go and answer it.

It was Charley Palliser. He had come with a message from Major and Mrs. Smith. They are going to Drecques to-morrow morning by the eleven-o’clock train with a few friends and a basket of provisions, and had sent Charley to say they would be glad of my company. “Do come, Miss Preen,” urged Charley as I hesitated; “you are all alone now, and I’m sure it must be dreadfully dull.”

“How do you know I am alone?” I asked.

“Because,” said Charley, “I have been watching the London boat out, and I saw Captain Fennel and your sister go by it. Major and Mrs. Smith were with me. It is a lovely night.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, as Charley was about todepart when I had accepted the invitation. “Do you know whether an Englishman named Dangerfield is living here?”

“Don’t think there is; I have not met with him,”said Charley. “Why, Miss Preen?”

“Oh, only that I was asked to-day whether I knew any one of that name,” I returned carelessly. “Good-night, Mr. Charles. Thank you for coming.”

They have invited me, finding I was left alone, and I think it very kind of them. But the Smiths are both kind-hearted people.

September 23rd.—Half-past nine o’clock, p.m. Have just returned from Drecques by the last train after spending a pleasant day. Quiet, of course, for there is not much to do at Drecques except stroll over the ruins of the old castle, or saunter about the quaint little ancient town, and go into the grand old church. It was so fine and warm that we had dinner on the grass, the people at the cottage bringing our plates and knives and forks. Later in the day we took tea indoors. In the afternoon, when all the rest were scattered about and the major sat smoking his cigar on the bench under the trees, I sat down by him to tell him what happened yesterday, and I begged him to give me his opinion. It was no betrayal of confidence, for Major Smith is better acquainted with the shady side of the Fennels than I am.

“I heard there was an English lawyer staying at the Hôtel des Princes, and that he had come here from Douai,” observed the major. “His name’s Lockett. It must have been he who spoke to you on the pier.”

“Yes, of course. Do you know, major, whetherany one has stayed at Sainteville passing as Mr. Dangerfield?”

“I don’t think so,” replied the major. “Unless he has kept himself remarkably quiet.”

“Could it apply to Captain Fennel?”

“I never knew that he had gone under an assumed name. The accusation is one more likely to apply to his brother than to himself. James Fennel is unscrupulous, very incautious: notwithstanding that, I like him better than I like the other. There’s something about Edwin Fennel that repels you; at least, it does me; but one can hardly help liking James, mauvais sujet though he is,” added the speaker, pausing to flirt off the ashes of his cigar.

“The doubt pointing to Edwin Fennel in the affair is his suddenly decamping,” continued Major Smith.“It was quite impromptu, you say, Miss Preen?”

“Quite so. I feel sure he had no thought of going away in the morning; and he did not receive any letter from England later, which was the excuse he gave Nancy for departing. Rely upon it that what he heard about the Mr. Dangerfield on the pier drove him away.”

“Well, that looks suspicious, you see.”

“Oh yes, I do see it,” I answered, unable to conceal the pain I felt. “It was a bitter calamity, Major Smith, when Nancy married him.”

“I’ll make a few cautious inquiries in the town, and try to find out if there’s anything against him in secret, or if any man named Dangerfield has been in the place and got into a mess. But, indeed, I don’t altogether see that it could apply to him,” concluded the major after a pause. “One can’t well go undertwo names in the same town; and every one knows him as Edwin Fennel.—Here they are, some of them, coming back!” And when the wanderers were close up, they found Major Smith arguing with me about the architecture of the castle.

Ten o’clock. Time for bed. I am in no haste to go, for I don’t sleep as well as I used to.

A thought has lately sometimes crossed me that this miserable trouble worries me more than it ought to do.“Accept it as your cross, and yield to it, Lavinia,”says Mary Carimon to me. But I cannot yield to it; that is, I cannot in the least diminish the anxiety which always clings to me, or forget the distress and dread that lie upon me like a shadow. I know that my life has been on the whole an easy life—that during all the years I spent at Selby Court I never had any trouble; I know that crosses do come to us all, earlier or later, and that I ought not to be surprised that “no new thing has happened to me,”the world being full of such experiences. I suppose it is because I have been so exempt from care, that I feel this the more.

Half-past ten! just half-an-hour writing these last few lines and thinking! Time I put up. I wonder when I shall hear from Nancy?

VI.

A curious phase, taken in conjunction with what was to follow, now occurred in the history. Miss Preen began to experience a nervous dread at going into the Petite Maison Rouge at night.

She could go into the house ten times a-day when it was empty; she could stay in the house alone in the evening after Flore took her departure; she could be its only inmate all night long; and never at these times have the slightest sense of fear. But if she went out to spend the evening, she felt an unaccountable dread, amounting to horror, at entering it when she arrived home.

It came on suddenly. One evening when Lavinia had been at Mrs. Hardy’s, Charley Palliser having run over to London, she returned home a little before ten o’clock. Opening the door with her latch-key, she was stepping into the passage when a sharp horror of entering it seized her. A dread, as it seemed to her, of going into the empty house, up the long, dark, narrow passage. It was the same sort of sensation that had struck her the first time she attempted to enter it under the escort of Monsieur Gustave Sauvage, and it came on now with as little reason as it had come on then. For Lavinia this night had not a thought in her mind of fear or loneliness, or anything else unpleasant. Mrs. Hardy had been relating a laughable adventure that Charley Palliser met with on board the boat when going over, the account of which he had written to her, and Lavinia was thinking brightly of it all the way home. She was smiling to herself as she unlatched the door and opened it. And then, without warning, arose the horrible fear.

How she conquered it sufficiently to enter the passage and reach the slab, where her candle and matches were always placed, she did not know. It had to be done, for Lavinia Preen could not remainin the dark yard all night, or patrol the streets; but her face had turned moist, and her hands trembled.

That was the beginning of it. Never since had she come home in the same way at night but the same terror assailed her; and I must beg the reader to understand that this is no invention. Devoid of reason and unaccountable though the terror was, Lavinia Preen experienced it.

She went out often—two or three times a-week, perhaps—either to dine or to spend the evening. Captain Fennel and Nancy were still away, and friends, remembering Miss Preen’s solitary position, invited her.

October had passed, November was passing, and as yet no news came to Lavinia of the return of the travellers. At first they did not write to her at all, leaving her to infer that as the boat reached London safely they had done the same. After the lapse of a fortnight she received a short letter from Nancy telling her really nothing, and not giving any address. The next letter came towards the end of November, and was as follows:

“MY DEAR LAVINIA,

“I have not written to you, for, truly, there is nothing to write about, and almost every day I expect Edwin to tell me we are going home. Will you kindly lend me a ten-pound note? Please send it in a letter. We are staying at Camberwell, and I enclose you the address in strict confidence. Do not repeat it to any one—not even to Mary Carimon. It is a relation of Edwin’s we are staying with, but he isnot well off. I like his wife. Edwin desires his best regards.

“Your loving sister,

“NANCY.”

Miss Preen did not send the ten-pound note. She wrote to tell Nancy that she could not do it, and was uncomfortably pressed for money herself in consequence of Nancy’s own action.

The five-pound note borrowed from Lavinia by Nancy on her departure had not been repaid; neither had Nancy’s share of the previous quarter’s money been remitted. On the usual day of payment at the end of September, Lavinia’s quarterly income came to her at Sainteville, as was customary; not Nancy’s. For Nancy there came neither money nor letter. The fact was, Nancy, escorted by her husband, had presented herself at Colonel Selby’s bank—he was junior partner and manager of a small private bank in the City—the day before the dividends were due, and personally claimed the quarterly payment, which was paid to her.

But now, the summary docking of just half their income was a matter of embarrassment to Miss Preen, as may readily be imagined. The house expenses had to go on, with only half the money to meet them. Lavinia had a little nest-egg of her own, it has been said before, saved in earlier years; and this she drew upon, and so kept debt down. But it was very inconvenient, as well as vexatious. Lavinia told the whole truth now to Mary Carimon and her husband, with Nancy’s recent application for a ten-pound note, and her refusal. Little Monsieur Carimon muttered aword between his closed lips which sounded like “Rat,” and was no doubt applied to Edwin Fennel.

Pretty close upon this, Lavinia received a blowing-up letter from Colonel Selby. Having known Lavinia when she was in pinafores, the colonel, a peppery man, considered he had a right to take her to task at will. He was brother to Paul Selby, of Selby Court, and heir presumptive to it. The colonel had a wife and children, and much ado at times to keep them, for his income was not large at present, and growing-up sons are expensive.

“DEAR LAVINIA,

“What in the name of common sense could have induced you to imagine that I should pay the two quarterly incomes some weeks before they were due, and to send Ann and that man Fennel here with your orders that I should do so? Pretty ideas of trusteeship you must have! If you are over head and ears in debt, as they tell me, and for that reason wish to forestall the time for payment, I can’t help it. It is no reason with me. Your money will be forwarded to Sainteville, at the proper period, to yourself. Do not ask me again to pay it into Ann’s hands, and to accept her receipt for it. I can do nothing of the kind. Ann’s share will be sent at the same time. She tells me she is returning to you. She must give me her own receipt for it, and you must give me yours.

“Your affectionate kinsman,

“WILLIAM SELBY.”

Just for a few minutes Lavinia Preen did notunderstand this letter. What could it mean? Why had Colonel Selby written it to her? Then the truth flashed into her mind.

Nancy (induced, of course, by Edwin Fennel) had gone with him to Colonel Selby, purporting to have been sent by Lavinia, to ask him to pay them the quarter’s money not due until the end of December, and not only Nancy’s share but Lavinia’s as well.

“Why, it would have been nothing short of swindling!”cried Lavinia, as she gazed in dismay at the colonel’s letter.

In the indignation of the moment, she took pen and ink and wrote an answer to William Selby. Partly enlightening him—not quite—but telling him that her money must never be paid to any one but herself, and that the present matter had better be hushed up for Ann’s sake, who was as a reed in the hands of the man she had married.

Colonel Selby exploded a little when he received this answer. Down he sat in his turn, and wrote a short, sharp note to Edwin Fennel, giving that estimable man a little of his mind, and warning him that he must not be surprised if the police were advised to look after him.

When Edward Fennel received this decisive note through an address he had given to Colonel Selby, but not the one at Camberwell, he called Miss Lavinia Preen all the laudatory names in the thieves’dictionary.

And on the feast of St. Andrew, which as every one knows is the last day of November, the letters came to an end with the following one from Nancy:

“All being well, my dear Lavinia, we propose to return home by next Sunday’s boat, which ought to get in before three o’clock in the afternoon. On Wednesday, Edwin met Charley Palliser in the Strand, and had a chat with him, and heard all the Sainteville news; not that there seemed much to hear. Charley says he runs over to London pretty often now, his mother being ill. Of course you will not mind waiting dinner for us on Sunday.

“Ever your loving sister,

“ANN.”

! Either that threat of being looked after by the police had been too much for Captain Fennel, or the failure to obtain funds was cutting short his stay in London. Any way, they were coming. Lavinia laid the letter beside her breakfast-plate and fell into thought. She resolved to welcome them graciously, and to say nothing about bygones.

Flore was told the news, and warned that instead of dining at half-past one on the morrow, the usual Sunday hour, it would be delayed until three. Flore did not much like the prospect of her afternoon’s holiday being shortened, but there was no help for it. Lavinia provided a couple of ducks for dinner, going into the market after breakfast to buy them; the dish was an especial favourite of the captain’s. She invited Mary Carimon to partake of it, for Monsieur Carimon was going to spend Sunday at Lille with an old friend of his, who was now master of the college there.

On this evening, Saturday, Lavinia dined outherself. Some ladies named Bosanquet, three sisters, with whom she had become pretty intimate, called at the Petite Maison Rouge, and carried her off to their home in the Rue Lamartine, where they had lived for years. After a very pleasant evening with them, Lavinia left at ten o’clock.

And when she reached her own door, and was putting the latch-key into the lock, the old fear came over her. Dropping her hands, she stood there trembling. She looked round at the silent, deserted yard, she looked up at the high encircling walls; she glanced at the frosty sky and the bright stars; and she stood there shivering.

But she must go in. Throwing the door back with an effort of will, she turned sick and faint: to enter that dark, lonely, empty house seemed beyond her strength and courage. What could this strange feeling portend?—why should it thus attack her? It was just as if some fatality were in the house waiting to destroy her, and a subtle power would keep her from entering it.

Her heart beating wildly, her breath laboured, Lavinia went in; she shut the door behind her and sped up the passage. Feeling for the match-box on the slab, put ready to her hand, she struck a match and lighted the candle. At that moment, when turning round, she saw, or thought she saw, Captain Fennel. He was standing just within the front-door, which she had now come in at, staring at her with a fixed gaze, and with the most malignant expression on his usually impassive face. Lavinia’s terror partly gave place to astonishment. Was it he himself? How had he come in?

Turning to take the candle from the slab in her bewilderment, when she looked again he was gone. What had become of him? Lavinia called to him by name, but he did not answer. She took the candle into the salon, though feeling sure he could not have come up the passage; but he was not there. Had he slipped out again? Had she left the door open when thinking she closed it, and had he followed her in, and was now gone again? Lavinia carried her lighted candle to the door, and found it was fastened. She had not left it open.

Then, as she undressed in her room, trying all the while to solve the problem, an idea crept into her mind that the appearance might have been supernatural. Yet—supernatural visitants of the living do not appear to us, but of the dead. Was Edwin Fennel dead?

So disturbed was the brain of Lavinia Preen that she could not get to sleep; but tossed and turned about the bed almost until daybreak. At six o’clock she fell into an uneasy slumber, and into a most distressing dream.

It was a confused dream; nothing in it was clear. All she knew when she awoke, was that she had appeared to be in a state of inexplicable terror, of most intense apprehension throughout it, arising from some evil threatened her by Captain Fennel.

VII.

It was a fine, frosty day, and the first of December. The sun shone on the fair streets of Sainteville and on the small congregation turning out of the English Protestant Church after morning service.

Lavinia Preen went straight home. There she found that Madame Carimon, who was to spend the rest of the day with her—monsieur having gone to Lille—had not yet arrived, though the French Church Evangélique was always over before the English. After glancing at Flore in the kitchen, busy over the fine ducks, Lavinia set off for the Rue Pomme Cuite.

She met Mary Carimon turning out of it. “Let us go and sit under the wall in the sun,” said Mary. “It is too early yet for the boat.”

This was a high wall belonging to the strong north gates of the town, near Madame Carimon’s. The sun shone full upon the benches beneath it, which it sheltered from the bleak winds; in front was a patch of green grass, on which the children ran about amidst the straight poplar trees. It was very pleasant sitting there, even on this December day—bright and cheerful; the wall behind them was quite warm, the sunshine rested upon all.

Sitting there, Lavinia Preen told Madame Carimon of the curious dread of entering her house at night, which had pursued her for the past two months that she had been alone in it, and which she had never spoken of to any one before. She went on to speak of the belief that she had seen Captain Fennel theprevious night in the passage, and of the dream which had visited her when at length she fell asleep.

Madame Carimon turned her kindly, sensible face and her quiet, dark, surprised eyes upon Lavinia. “I cannot understand you,” she said.

“You mean, I suppose, that you cannot understand the facts, Mary. Neither can I. Why this fear of going into the house should lie upon me is most strange. I never was nervous before.”

“I don’t know that that is so very strange,” dissented Mary Carimon, after a pause. “It must seem lonely to let one’s self into a dark, empty house in the middle of the night; and your house is in what may be called an isolated situation; I should not much like it myself. That’s nothing. What I cannot understand, Lavinia, is the fancy that you saw Captain Fennel.”

“He appeared to be standing there, and was quite visible to me. The expression on his face, which seemed to be looking straight into mine, was most malicious. I never saw such an expression upon it in reality.”

Mary Carimon laughed a little, saying she had never been troubled with nervous fears herself; she was too practical for anything of the sort.

“And I have been practical hitherto,” returned Lavinia. “When the first surprise of seeing him there, or fancying I saw him there, was over, I began to think, Mary, that he might be dead; that it was his apparition which had stood there looking at me.”

Mary Carimon shook her head. “Had anything of that sort happened, Nancy would have telegraphed toyou. Rely upon it, Lavinia, it was pure fancy. You have been disagreeably exercised in mind lately, you know, about that man; hearing he was coming home, your brain was somewhat thrown off its balance.”

“It may be so. The dream followed on it; and I did not like the dream.”

“We all have bad dreams now and then. You say you do not remember much of this one.”

“I think I did not know much of it when dreaming it,” quaintly spoke Lavinia. “I was in a sea of trouble, throughout which I seemed to be striving to escape some evil menaced me by Captain Fennel, and could not do so. Whichever way I turned, there he was at a distance, scowling at me with a threatening, evil countenance. Mary,” she added in impassioned tones, “I am sure some ill awaits me from that man.”

“I am sure, were I you, I would put these foolish notions from me,” calmly spoke Madame Carimon.“If Nancy set up a vocation for seeing ghosts and dreaming dreams, one would not so much wonder at it. You have always been reasonable, Lavinia; be so now.”

Miss Preen took out her watch and looked at it.“We may as well be walking towards the port, Mary,”she remarked. “It is past two. The boat ought to be in sight.”

Not only in sight was the steamer, but rapidly nearing the port. She had made a calm and quick passage. When at length she was in and about to swing round, and the two ladies were looking down at it, with a small crowd of other assembled spectators, the first passengers they saw on board were Nancyand Captain Fennel, who began to wave their hands in greeting and to nod their heads.

“Any way, Lavinia, it could not have been his ghost last night,” whispered Mary Carimon.

Far from presenting an evil countenance to Lavinia, as the days passed on, Captain Fennel appeared to wish to please her, and was all suavity. So at present nothing disturbed the peace of the Petite Maison Rouge.

“What people were they that you stayed with in London, Nancy?” Lavinia inquired of her sister on the first favourable opportunity.

Nancy glanced round the salon before answering, as if to make sure they were alone; but Captain Fennel had gone out for a stroll.

“We were at James Fennel’s, Lavinia.”

“What—the brother’s! And has he a wife?”

“Yes; a wife, but no children. Mrs. James Fennel has money of her own, which she receives weekly.”

“Receives weekly!” echoed Lavinia.

“She owns some little houses which are let out in weekly tenements; an agent collects the rents, and brings her the money every Tuesday morning. She dresses in the shabbiest things sometimes, and does her own housework, and altogether is not what I should call quite a lady, but she is very good-hearted. She did her best to make us comfortable, and never grumbled at our staying so long. I expect Edwin paid her something. James only came home by fits and starts. I think he was in some embarrassment—debt, you know. He used to dash into the house like a whirlwind when he did come, and steal out of it when he left, peering about on all sides.”

“Have they a nice house?” asked Lavinia.

“Oh, good gracious, no! It’s not a house at all, only small lodgings. And Mrs. James changed them twice over whilst we were there. When we first went they were at a place called Ball’s Pond.”

“Why did you remain all that time?”

Mrs. Edwin Fennel shook her head helplessly; she could not answer the question. “I should have liked to come back before,” she said; “it was very wearisome, knowing nobody and having nothing to do. Did you find it dull here, Lavinia, all by yourself?”

“‘Dull’ is not the right word for it,” answered Lavinia, catching her breath with a sigh. “I felt more lonely, Ann, than I shall ever care to feel again. Especially when I had to come home at night from some soirée, or from spending the evening quietly with Mary Carimon or any other friend.” And she went on to tell of the feeling of terror which had so tried her.

“I never heard of such a thing!” exclaimed Ann.“How silly you must be, Lavinia! What could there have been in the house to frighten you?”

“I don’t know; I wish I did know,” sighed Lavinia, just as she had said more than once before.

Nancy, who was attired in a bright ruby cashmere robe, with a gold chain and locket, some blue ribbons adorning her light ringlets, for she had made a point of dressing more youthfully than ever since her marriage, leaned back in her chair, as she sat staring at her sister and thinking.

“Lavinia,” she said huskily, “you remember the feeling you had the day we were about to look at the house with Mary Carimon, and which you thoughtwas through the darkness of the passage striking you unpleasantly? Well, my opinion is that it must have given you a scare.”

“Why, of course it did.”

“Ah, but I mean a scare which lasts,” said Ann;“one of those scares which affect the mind and take very long to get rid of. You recollect poor Mrs. Hunt, at Buttermead? She was frightened at a violent thunderstorm, though she never had been before; and for years afterwards, whenever it thundered, she became so alarmingly ill and agitated that Mr. Featherston had to be run for. He called it a scare. I think the fear you felt that past day must have left that sort of scare upon you. How else can you account for what you tell me?”

Truth to say, the same idea had more than once struck Lavinia. She knew how devoid of reason some of these “scares” are, and yet how terribly they disturb the mind on which they fasten.

“But I had quite forgotten that fear, Ann,” she urged in reply. “We had lived in the house eighteen months when you went away, and I had never recalled it.”

“All the same, I think you received the scare; it had only lain dormant,” persisted Ann.

“Well, well; you are back again now, and it is over,” said Lavinia. “Let us forget it. Do not speak of it again at all to any one, Nancy love.”

VIII.

Winter that year had quite set in when Sainteville found itself honoured with rather a remarkable visitor; one Signor Talcke, who descended, one morning at the beginning of December, at the Hôtel des Princes. Though he called himself “Signor,” it seemed uncertain to what country he owed his birth. He spoke five or six languages as a native, including Hindustani. Signor Talcke was a professor of occult sciences; he was a great astronomer; astrology he had at his fingers’ends. He was a powerful mesmerist; he would foretell the events of your life by your hands, or your fortune by the cards.

For a fee of twenty-five francs, he would attend an evening party, and exhibit some of his powers. Amidst others who engaged him were the Miss Bosanquets, in the Rue Lamartine. A relative of theirs, Sir George Bosanquet, K.C.B., had come over with his wife to spend Christmas with them. Sir George laughed at what he heard of Signor Talcke’s powers of reading the future, and said he should much like to witness a specimen of it. So Miss Bosanquet and her sisters hastily arranged an evening entertainment, engaged the mystical man, and invited their friends and acquaintances, those of the Petite Maison Rouge included.

It took place on the Friday after Christmas-Day. Something that occurred during the evening was rather remarkable. Miss Preen’s diary gives a full account of it, and that shall be transcribed here. And I, Johnny Ludlow, take this opportunity of assuringthe reader that what she wrote was in faithful accordance with the facts of the case.

From Miss Preen’s Diary.

Saturday morning.—I feel very tired; fit for nothing. Nancy has undertaken to do the marketing, and is gone out for that purpose with her husband. It is to be hoped she will be moderate, and not attempt to buy up half the market.

I lay awake all night, after the evening at Miss Bosanquet’s, thinking how foolish Ann was to have had her “future cast,” as that Italian (if he is Italian) called it, and how worse than foolish I was to let what he said worry me. “As if there could be anything in it!” laughed Ann, as we were coming home; fortunately she is not as I am in temperament—nervously anxious. “It is only nonsense,” said Miss Anna Bosanquet to me when the signor’s predictions were at an end; “he will tell some one else just the same next time.” But I did not think so. Of course, one is at a loss how to trust this kind of man. Take him for all in all, I rather like him; and he appears to believe implicitly in what he says: or, rather, in what he tell us the cards say.

They are charming women, these three sisters—Grace, Rose, and Anna Bosanquet; good, considerate, high-bred ladies. I wonder how it is they have lived to middle life without any one of them marrying? And I often wonder how they came to take up their residence at Sainteville, for they are very well off, and have great connections. I remember, though, Anna once said to me that the dry, pure air of the place suitedher sister Rose, who has bad health, better than any other they had tried.

When seven o’clock struck, the hour named, Nancy and I appeared together in the sitting-room, ready to start, for we observe punctuality at Sainteville. I wore my black satin, handsome yet, trimmed with the rich white lace that Mrs. Selby gave me. Nancy looked very nice and young in her lilac silk. She wore a white rose in her hair, and her gold chain and locket round her neck. Captain Fennel surprised us by saying he was not going—his neuralgia had come on. I fancied it was an excuse—that he did not wish to meet Sir George Bosanquet. He had complained of the same thing on Christmas-Day, so it might be true. Ann and I set off together, leaving him nursing his cheek at the table.

It was a large gathering for Sainteville—forty guests, I should think; but the rooms are large. Professor Talcke exhibited some wonderful feats in—what shall I call it?—necromancy?—as good a word, perhaps, as any other. He mesmerized some people, and put one of them into a state of clairvoyance, and her revelations took my breath away. Signor Talcke assured us that what she said would be found minutely true. I think he has the strangest eyes I ever saw: grey eyes, with a sort of light in their depths. His features are fair and delicate, his voice is gentle as a woman’s, his manner retiring; Sir George seemed much taken with him.

Later, when the evening was passing, he asked if any one present would like to have their future cast, for he had cards which would do it. Three of his listeners pressed forward at once; two of them withgay laughter, the other pale and awestruck. The signor went into the recess in the small room, and sat down behind the little table there, and as many as could crowd round to look on, did so. I don’t know what passed; there was no room for me; or whether the “Futures” he disclosed were good or bad. I had sat on the sofa at a distance, talking with Anna Bosanquet and Madame Carimon.

Suddenly, as we were for a moment silent, Ann’s voice was heard, eager and laughing:

“Will you tell my fortune, Signor Talcke? I should like to have mine revealed.”

“With pleasure, madame,” he answered.

We got up and drew near. I felt vexed that Ann should put herself forward in any such matter, and whispered to her; but she only shook her curls, laughed at me, and persisted. Signor Talcke put the cards in her hands, telling her to shuffle them.

“It is all fun, Lavinia,” she whispered to me. “Did you hear him tell Miss Peet she was going to have money left her?”

After Ann had shuffled the cards, he made her cut them into three divisions, and he then turned them up on the table himself, faces upwards, and laid them out in three rows. They were not like the cards we play with; quite different from those; nearly all were picture-cards, and the plain ones bore cabalistic characters. We stood looking on with two or three other people; the rest had dispersed, and had gone into the next room to listen to the singing.

At first Signor Talcke never spoke a word. He looked at the cards, and looked at Nancy; looked, and looked again. “They are not propitious,” he said inlow tones, and picked them up, and asked Nancy to shuffle and cut them again. Then he laid them as before, and we stood waiting in silence.

Chancing at that moment to look at Signor Talcke, his face startled me. He was frowning at the cards in so painful a manner as to quite alter its expression. But he did not speak. He still only gazed at the cards with bent eyes, and glanced up at Ann occasionally. Then, with an impatient sweep of the hand, he pushed the cards together.

“I must trouble you to shuffle and cut them once more, madame,” he said. “Shuffle them well.”

“Are they still unpropitious?” asked a jesting voice at my elbow. Turning, I saw Charley Palliser’s smiling face. He must have been standing there, and heard Signor Talcke’s previous remark.

“Yes, sir, they are,” replied the signor, with marked emphasis. “I never saw the cards so unpropitious in my life.”

Nancy took up the cards, shuffled them well, and cut them three times. Signor Talcke laid them out as before, bent his head, and looked attentively at them. He did not speak, but there was no mistaking the vexed, pained, and puzzled look on his face.

I do not think he knew Nancy, even by name. I do not think he knew me, or had the least notion that we were related. Neither of us had ever met him before. He put his hand to his brow, still gazing at the cards.

“But when are you going to begin my fortune, sir?” broke in Nancy.

“I would rather not tell it at all, madame,” he answered.

“Cannot you tell it?—have your powers of forecasting inconveniently run away?” said she incautiously, her tone mocking in her disappointment.

“I could tell it, all too surely; but you might not like to hear it,” returned he.

“Our magician has lost his divining-rod just when he needed it,” observed a gentleman with a grey beard, a stranger to me, who was standing opposite, speaking in a tone of ill-natured satire; and a laugh went round.

“It is not that,” said the signor, keeping his temper perfectly. “I could tell what the cards say, all too certainly; but it would not give satisfaction.”

“Oh yes, it would,” returned Nancy. “I should like to hear it, every bit of it. Please do begin.”

“The cards are dark, very dark indeed,” he said;“I don’t remember ever to have seen them like it. Each time they have been turned the darkness has increased. Nothing can show worse than they do now.”

“Never mind that,” gaily returned Ann. “You undertook to tell my fortune, sir; and you ought not to make excuses in the middle of it. Let the cards be as dark as night, we must hear what they say.”

He drew in his thin lips for a moment, and then spoke, his tone quiet, calm, unemotional.

“Some great evil threatens you,” he began; “you seem to be living in the midst of it. It is not only you that it threatens; there is another also——”

“Oh, my goodness!” interrupted Nancy, in her childish way. “I hope it does not threaten Edwin. What is the evil?—sickness?”

“Worse than that. It—is——” Signor Talcke’sattention was so absorbed by the aspect of the cards that, as it struck me, he appeared hardly to heed what he was saying. He had a long, thin black pencil in his long, thin fingers, and kept pointing to different cards as if in accordance with his thoughts, but not touching them. “There is some peculiar form of terror here,” he went on. “I cannot make it out; it is very unusual. It does not come close to you; not yet, at any rate; and it seems to surround you. It seems to be in the house. May I ask”—quickly lifting his eyes to Ann—“whether you are given to superstitious fears?”

“Do you mean ghosts?” cried Ann, and Charley Palliser burst out laughing. “Not at all, sir; I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m sure there are none in our house.”

Remembering my own terror in regard to the house, and the nervous fancy of having seen Captain Fennel in it when he was miles away, a curious impression came over me that he must surely be reading my fortune as well as Nancy’s. But I was not prepared for her next words. Truly she has no more reticence than a child.

“My sister has a feeling that the house is lonely. She shivers when she has to go into it after night-fall.”

Signor Talcke let his hands fall on the table, and lifted his face. Apparently, he was digesting this revelation. I do not think he knew the “sister” was present. For my part, disliking publicity, I slipped behind Anna Bosanquet, and stood by Charley Palliser.

“Shivers?” repeated the Italian.

“Shivers and trembles, and turns sick at having togo in,” affirmed Nancy. “So she told me when I arrived home from England.”

“If a feeling of that sort assailed me, I should never go into the house again,” said the signor.

“But how could you help it, if it were your home?” she argued.

“All the same. I should regard that feeling as a warning against the house, and never enter it. Then you are not yourself troubled with superstitious fears?” he broke off, returning to the business in hand, and looking at the cards. “Well—at present—it does not seem to touch you, this curious terror which is assuredly in the house——”

“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Ann. “Why do you say ‘at present’? Is it to touch me later?”

“I cannot say. Each time that the cards have been spread it has shown itself nearer to you. It is not yet very near. Apart from that terror—or perhaps remotely connected with it—I see evil threatening you—great evil.”

“Is it in the house?”

“Yes; hovering about it. It is not only yourself it seems to threaten. There is some one else. And it is nearer to that person than it is to you.”

“But who is that person?—man or woman?”

“It is a woman. See this ugly card,” continued he, pointing with his pencil; “it will not be got rid of, shuffle as you will; it has come nearer to that woman each time.”

The card he pointed to was more curious-looking than any other in the pack. It was not unlike the nine of spades, but crowded with devices. The gentleman opposite, whom I did not know, leaned forward and touched the card with the tip of his forefinger.

“Le cercueil, n’est-ce-pas?” said he.

“My!” whispered an English lad’s voice behind me.“Cercueil? that means coffin.”

“How did you know?” asked Signor Talcke of the grey-bearded man.

“I was at the Sous-Préfect’s soirée on Sunday evening when you were exhibiting. I heard you tell him in French that that was the ugliest card in the pack: indicating death.”

“Well, it is not this lady the card is pursuing,” said the signor, smiling at Ann to reassure her. “Not yet awhile, at least. And we must all be pursued by it in our turn, whenever that shall come,” he added, bending over the cards again. “Pardon me, madame—may I ask whether there has not been some unpleasantness in the house concerning money?”

Nancy’s face turned red. “Not—exactly,” she answered with hesitation. “We are like a great many more people—not as rich as we should wish to be.”

“It does not appear to lie precisely in the want of money: but certainly money is in some way connected with the evil,” he was beginning to say, his eyes fixed dreamily on the cards, when Ann interrupted him.

“That is too strong a word—evil. Why do you use it?”

“I use it because the evil is there. No lighter word would be appropriate. There is some evil element pervading your house, very grave and formidable; it is most threatening; likely to go on to—to—darkness. I mean that it looks as if there would besome great break-up,” he corrected swiftly, as if to soften the other word.

“That the house would be broken up?” questioned Ann.

He stole a glance at her. “Something of that sort,”he said carelessly.

“Do you mean that the evil comes from an enemy?” she went on.

“Assuredly.”

“But we have no enemy. I’m sure we have not one in all the world.”

He slightly shook his head. “You may not suspect it yet, though I should have said”—waving the pencil thoughtfully over some of the cards—“that he was already suspected—doubted.”

Nancy took up the personal pronoun briskly.“He!—then the evil enemy must be a man? I assure you we do not know any man likely to be our enemy or to wish us harm. No, nor woman either. Perhaps your cards don’t tell true to-night, Signor Talcke?”

“Perhaps not, madame; we will let it be so if you will,” he quietly said, and shuffled all the cards together.

That ended the séance. As if determined not to tell any more fortunes, the signor hurriedly put up the cards and disappeared from the recess. Nancy did not appear to be in the least impressed.

“What a curious ‘future’ it was!” she exclaimed lightly to Mary Carimon. “I might as well not have had it cast. He told me nothing.”

They walked away together. I went back to the sofa and Anna Bosanquet followed me.

“Mrs. Fennel calls it ‘curious,’” I said to her. “I call it more than that—strange; ominous. I wish I had not heard it.”

“Dear Miss Preen, it is only nonsense,” she answered.“He will tell some one else the same next time.” But she only so spoke to console me.

A wild wish flashed into my mind—that I should ask the man to tell my future. But had I not heard enough? Mine was blended with this of Ann’s. Iwas the other woman whom the dark fate was more relentlessly pursuing. There could be no doubt of that. There could be as little doubt that it was I who already suspected the author of the “evil.”What can the “dark fate” be that we are threatened with? Debt? Will his debts spring upon us and break up our home, and turn us out of it? Or will it be something worse? That card which followed me meant a coffin, they said. Ah me! Perhaps I am foolish to dwell upon such ideas. Certainly they are more fitting for the world’s dark ages than for this enlightened nineteenth century of it.

Charley Palliser gallantly offered to see us home. I said no; as if we were not old enough to go by ourselves; but he would come with us. As we went along Ann began talking of the party, criticizing the dresses, and so on. Charley seemed to be unusually silent.

“Was not mine a grand fortune?” she presently said with a laugh, as we crossed the Place Ronde.

“Stunning,” said he.

“As if there could be anything in it, you know! Does the man think we believe him, I wonder?”

“Oh, these conjurers like to fancy they impose onus,” remarked Charley, shaking hands as we halted before the house of Madame Sauvage.

And I have had a wretched night, for somehow the thing has frightened me. I never was superstitious; never; and I’m sure I never believed in conjurers, as Charles had it. If I should come across Signor Talcke again while he stays here, I would ask him—— Here comes Nancy! and Flore behind her with the marketings. I’ll put up my diary.

“I’ve bought such a lovely capon,” began Nancy, as Lavinia went into the kitchen. “Show it to madame, Flore.”

It was one that even Lavinia could praise; they both understood poultry. “It really is a beauty,”said Lavinia. “And did you remember the salsifis? And, Ann, where have you left your husband?”

“Oh, we met old Mr. Griffin, and Edwin has gone up to Drecques with him. My opinion is, Lavinia, that that poor old Griffin dare not go about far by himself since his attack. He had to see his landlord at Drecques to-day, and he asked Edwin to accompany him. They went by the eleven-o’clock train.”

Lavinia felt it a relief. Even that little absence, part of a day, she felt thankful for, so much had she grown to dislike the presence in the house of Edwin Fennel.

“Did you tell your husband about your ‘fortune’Nancy?”

“No; I was too sleepy last night to talk, and I was late in getting up this morning. I’m not sure that I shall tell him,” added Mrs. Fennel thoughtfully;“he might be angry with me for having had it done.”

“That is more than likely,” replied Lavinia.

Late in the afternoon, as they were sitting together in the salon, they saw the postman come marching up the yard. He brought two letters—one for Miss Preen, the other for her sister.

“It is the remittance from William Selby,” said Lavinia as she opened hers. “He has sent it a day or two earlier than usual; it is not really due until Monday or Tuesday.”

Seventeen pounds ten shillings each. Nancy, in a hasty sort of manner, put her cheque into the hands of Lavinia, almost as if she feared it would burn her own fingers. “You had better take it from me whilst you can,” she said in low tones.

“Yes; for I must have it, Ann,” was the answer.“We are in debt—as you may readily conceive—with only half the usual amount to spend last quarter.”

“It was not my fault; I was very sorry,” said Ann humbly; and she rose hastily to go to the kitchen, saying she was thirsty, and wanted a glass of water. But Lavinia thought she went to avoid being questioned.

Lavinia carried the two cheques to her room and locked them up. After their five-o’clock dinner, each sister wrote a note to Colonel Selby, enclosing her receipt. Flore took them out to post when she left. The evening passed on. Lavinia worked; Nancy nodded over the fire: she was very sleepy, and went to bed early.

It was past eleven o’clock when Captain Fennel came in, a little the worse for something or other. After returning from Drecques by the last train, he had gone home with Mr. Griffin to supper. He toldLavinia, in words running into one another, that the jolting train had made him giddy. Of course she believed as much of that as she liked, but did not contradict it. He went to the cupboard in the recess, unlocked it to get out the cognac, and then sat down with his pipe by the embers of the dying fire. Lavinia, unasked, brought in a decanter of water, put it on the table with a glass, and wished him good-night.

All next day Captain Fennel lay in bed with a racking headache. His wife carried up a choice bit of the capon when they were dining after morning service, but he could not so much as look at it. Being a fairly cautious man as a rule, he had to pay for—for the jolting of the train.

He was better on Monday morning, but not well, still shaky, and did not come down to breakfast. It was bitterly cold—a sort of black frost; but Lavinia, wrapping herself up warmly, went out as soon as breakfast was over.

Her first errand was to the bank, where she paid in the cheques and received French money for them. Then she visited sundry shops; the butcher’s, the grocer’s, and others, settling the accounts due. Last of all, she made a call upon Madame Veuve Sauvage, and paid the rent for the past quarter. All this left her with exactly nineteen pounds, which was all the money she had to go on with for every purpose until the end of March—three whole months.

Lunch was ready when she returned. Taking off her things upstairs and locking up her cash, she went down to it. Flore had made some delicious soupe maigre. Only those who have tried it know how good it is on a sharp winter’s day. Captain Fennelseemed to relish it much, though his appetite had not quite come back to him, and he turned from the dish of scrambled eggs which supplemented the soup. In the evening they went, by appointment, to dine at Madame Carimon’s, the other guests being Monsieur Henri Dupuis with his recently married wife, and Charles Palliser.

After dinner, over the coffee, Monsieur Henri Dupuis suddenly spoke of the soirée at Miss Bosanquet’s the previous Friday, regretting that he and his wife had been unable to attend it. He was engaged the whole evening with a patient dangerously ill, and his wife did not like to appear at it without him. Nancy—Nancy!—then began to tell about the“fortune” which had been forecast for her by Signor Talcke, thinking possibly that her husband could not reproach her for it before company. She was very gay over it; a proof that it had left no bad impression on her mind.

“What’s that, Nancy?” cried Captain Fennel, who had listened as if he disbelieved his ears. “The fellow told you we had something evil in our house?”

“Yes, he did,” assented Nancy. “An evil influence, he said, which was destined to bring forth something dark and dreadful.”

“I am sorry you did not tell this before,” returned the captain stiffly. “I should have requested you not again to allude to such folly. It was downright insolence.”

“I—you—you were out on Saturday, you know, Edwin, and in bed with your headache all Sunday; and to-day I forgot it,” said Nancy in less brave tones.

“Suppose we have a game at wholesome card-playing,”interposed Mary Carimon, bringing forth a new pack. “Open them, will you, Jules? Do you remember, mon ami, having your fortune told once by a gipsy woman when we were in Sir John Whitney’s coppice with the two Peckham girls? She told you you would fall into a rich inheritance and marry a Frenchwoman.”

“Neither of which agreeable promises is yet fulfilled,”said little Monsieur Carimon with his happy smile. Monsieur Carimon had heard the account of Nancy’s “forecast” from his wife; he was not himself present, but taking a hand at whist in the card-room.

They sat down to a round game—spin. Monsieur Henri Dupuis and his pretty young wife had never played it before, but they soon learned it and liked it much. Both of them spoke English well; she with the prettiest accent imaginable. Thus the evening passed, and no more allusion was made to the fortune-telling at Miss Bosanquet’s.

That was Monday. On Tuesday, Miss Preen was dispensing the coffee at breakfast in the Petite Maison Rouge to her sister and Mr. Fennel, when Flore came bustling in with a letter in her hand.

“Tenez, madame,” she said, putting it beside Mrs. Fennel. “I laid it down in the kitchen when the facteur brought it, whilst I was preparing the déjeûner, and forgot it afterwards.”

Before Nancy could touch the letter, her husband caught it up. He gazed at the address, at the postmark, and turned it about to look at the seal. The letters of gentlefolk were generally fastened with aseal in those days: this had one in transparent bronze wax.

Mr. Fennel put the letter down with a remark peevishly uttered. “It is not from London; it is from Buttermead.”

“And from your old friend, Jane Peckham, Nancy,”struck in Lavinia. “I recognize her handwriting.”

“I am glad,” exclaimed Nancy. “I have not heard from them for ages. Why now—is it not odd?—that Madame Carimon should mention the Peckhams last night, and I receive a letter from them this morning?”

“I supposed it might be from London, with your remittance,” said Mr. Fennel to his wife. “It is due, is it not?”

“Oh, that came on Saturday, Edwin,” she said, as she opened her letter.

“Came on Saturday!” echoed Captain Fennel ungraciously, as if disputing the assertion.

“By the afternoon post; you were at Drecques, you know.”

“The money came? Your money?”

“Yes,” said Nancy, who had stepped to the window to read her letter, for it was a dark day, and stood there with her back to the room.

“And where is it?” demanded he.

“I gave it to Lavinia. I always give it to her.”

Captain Fennel glared at his wife for a moment, then smoothed his face to its ordinary placidity, and turned to Lavinia.

“Will you be good enough to hand over to me my wife’s money, Miss Preen?”

“No,” she answered quietly.

“I must trouble you to do so, when breakfast shall be finished.”

“I cannot,” pursued Lavinia. “I have paid it away.”

“That I do not believe. I claim it from you in right of my wife; and I shall enforce the claim.”

“The money is Nancy’s, not yours,” said Lavinia.“In consequence of your having stopped her share last quarter in London, I was plunged here into debt and great inconvenience. Yesterday morning I went out to settle the debts—and it has taken the whole of her money to do it. That is the state of things, Captain Fennel.”

“I am in debt here myself,” retorted he, but not angrily. “I owe money to my tailor and bootmaker; I owe an account at the chemist’s; I want money in my pockets—and I must indeed have it.”

“Not from me,” returned Lavinia.

Edwin Fennel broke into a little access of temper. He dashed his serviette on the table, strode to the window, and roughly caught his wife by the arm. She cried out.

“How dared you hand your money to any one but me?” he asked in a low voice of passion.

“But how are we to live if I don’t give it to Lavinia for the housekeeping?” returned Nancy, bursting into tears. “It takes all we have; her share and mine; every farthing of it.”

“Let my sister alone, Mr. Fennel,” spoke up Lavinia with authority. “She is responsible for the debts we contract in this house, just as much as I am, and she must contribute her part to pay them. You ought to be aware that the expenses are now increased by nearly a third; I assure you I hardly like to face the difficulties I see before me.”

“Do you suppose I can stop in the place without some loose cash to keep me going?” he asked calmly.“Is that reasonable, Miss Lavinia?”

“And do you suppose I can keep you and Ann here without her money to help me to do it?” she rejoined.“Perhaps the better plan will be for me to take up my abode elsewhere, and leave the house to you and Ann to do as you please in it.”

Captain Fennel dropped his argument, returned to the table, and went on with his breakfast. The last words had startled him. Without Lavinia, which meant without her money, they could not live in the house at all.

Matters were partly patched up in the course of the day. Nancy came upstairs to Lavinia, begging and praying, as if she were praying for her life, for a little ready money for her husband—just a hundred francs. Trembling and sobbing, she confessed that she dared not return to him without it; she should be too frightened at his anger.

And Lavinia gave it to her.

IX.

Matters went on to the spring. There were no outward differences in the Petite Maison Rouge, but it was full of an undercurrent of discomfort. At least for Lavinia. Captain Fennel was simply to her an incubus; and now and again petty accounts of hiswould be brought to the door by tradespeople who wanted them settled. As to keeping up the legitimate payments, she could not do it.

March was drawing to an end, when a surprise came to them. Lavinia received a letter from Paris, written by Colonel Selby. He had been there for two days on business, he said, and purposed returning viâ Sainteville, to take a passing glimpse at herself and her sister. He hoped to be down that afternoon by the three-o’clock train, and he asked them to meet him at the Hôtel des Princes afterwards, and to stay and dine with him. He proposed crossing to London by the night boat.

Lavinia read the letter aloud. Nancy went into ecstasies, for a wonder; she had been curiously subdued in manner lately. Edwin Fennel made no remark, but his pale face wore a look of thought.

During the morning he betook himself to the Rue Lothaire to call upon Mr. Griffin; and he persuaded that easy-natured old gentleman to take advantage of the sunny day and make an excursion en voiture to the nearest town, a place called Pontipette. Of course the captain went also, as his companion.

Colonel Selby arrived at three. Lavinia and Nancy met him at the station, and went with him in the omnibus to the hotel. They then showed him about Sainteville, to which he was a stranger, took him to see their domicile, the little red house (which he did not seem to admire), and thence to Madame Carimon’s. In the Buttermead days, the colonel and Mary Featherston had been great friends. He invited her and her husband to join them at the table d’hôte dinner at five o’clock.

Lavinia and Nancy went home again to change their dresses for it. Nancy put on a pretty light green silk, which had been recently modernized. Mrs. Selby had kept up an extensive wardrobe, and had left it between the two sisters.

“You should wear your gold chain and locket,”remarked Lavinia, who always took pride in her sister’s appearance. “It will look very nice upon that dress.”

She alluded to a short, thick chain of gold, the gold locket attached to it being set round with pearls, Nancy’s best ornament; nay, the only one she had of any value; it was the one she had worn at Miss Bosanquet’s celebrated party. Nancy made no answer. She was turning red and white.

“What’s the matter?” cried Lavinia.

The matter was, that Mr. Edwin Fennel had obtained possession of the chain and locket more than a month ago. Silly Nancy confessed with trembling lips that she feared he had pledged it.

Or sold it, thought Lavinia. She felt terribly vexed and indignant. “I suppose, Ann, it will end in his grasping everything,” she said, “and starving us out of house and home: myself, at any rate.”

“He expects money from his brother James, and then he will get it back for me,” twittered Nancy.

Monsieur Jules Carimon was not able to come to the table d’hôte; his duties that night would detain him at the college until seven o’clock. It happened so on occasion. Colonel Selby sat at one end of their party, Lavinia at the other; Mary Carimon and Nancy between them. A gentleman was on the other side of Lavinia whom she did not particularly notice; and,upon his asking the waiter for something, his voice seemed to strike upon her memory. Turning, she saw that it was the tall Englishman they had seen on the pier some months before in the shepherd’s plaid, the lawyer named Lockett. He recognized her face at the same moment, and they entered into conversation.

“Are you making any stay at Sainteville?” she inquired.

“For a few days. I must be back in London on Monday morning.”

Colonel Selby’s attention was attracted to the speakers. “What, is it you, Lockett?” he exclaimed.

Mr. Lockett bent forward to look beyond Lavinia and Madame Carimon. “Why, colonel, are you here?”he cried. So it was evident that they knew one another.

But you can’t talk very much across people at a table d’hôte; and Lavinia and Mr. Lockett were, so to say, left together again. She put a question to him, dropping her voice to a whisper.

“Did you ever find that person you were looking for?”

“The person I was looking for?” repeated the lawyer, not remembering. “What person was that?”

“The one you spoke of on the pier that day—a Mr. Dangerfield.”

“Oh, ay; but I was not looking for him myself. No; I believe he is not dropped upon yet. He is keeping quiet, I expect.”

“Is he still being looked for?”

“Little doubt of that. My friend here, on my left, could tell you more about him than I can, if you want to know.”

“No, thank you,” said Lavinia hastily, in a sort of fear. And she then observed that next to Mr. Lockett another Englishman was sitting, who looked very much like a lawyer also.

After dinner Colonel Selby took his guests, the three ladies, into the little salon, which opened to Madame Podevin’s bureau; for it was she who, French fashion, kept the bureau and all its accounts, not her husband. Whilst the coffee which the colonel ordered was preparing, he took from his pocket-book two cheques, and gave one each to Lavinia and Mrs. Fennel. It was their quarterly income, due about a week hence.

“I thought I might as well give it you now, as I am here, and save the trouble of sending,” he remarked.“You can write me a receipt for it; here’s pen, ink and paper.”

Each wrote her receipt, and gave it him. Nancy held the cheque in her hand, looking at her sister in a vacillating manner. “I suppose I ought to give it you, Lavinia,” she said. “Must I do so?”

“What do you think about it yourself?” coldly rejoined Lavinia.

“He was so very angry with me the last time,”sighed Nancy, still withholding the cheque. “He said I ought to keep possession of my own, and he ordered me to do so in future.”

“That he may have the pleasure of spending it,”said Mary Carimon in a sharp tone, though she laughed at the same time. “Lavinia has to pay for the bread-and-cheese that you and he eat, Nancy; how can she do that unless she receives your money?”

“Yes, I know; it is very difficult,” said poor Nancy.“Take the cheque, Lavinia; I shall tell him that you and Mary Carimon both said I must give it up.”

“Oh, tell him I said so, and welcome,” spoke Madame Carimon. “I will tell him so myself, if you like.”

As Colonel Selby returned to the room—he had been seeing to his luggage—the coffee was brought in, and close upon it came Monsieur Carimon.

The boat for London was leaving early that night—eight o’clock; they all went down to it to see William Selby off. It was a calm night, warm for the time of year, the moon beautifully bright. After the boat’s departure, Lavinia and Ann went home, and found Captain Fennel there. He had just got in, he said, and wanted some supper.

Whilst he was taking it, his wife told him of Mr. Lockett’s having sat by them at the table d’hôte, and that he and Colonel Selby were acquainted with one another. Captain Fennel drew a grim face at the information, and asked whether the lawyer had also“cleared out” for London.

“I don’t think so; I did not see him go on board,”said Nancy. “Lavinia knows; she was talking with Mr. Lockett all dinner-time.”

Captain Fennel turned his impassive face to Lavinia, as if demanding an answer to his question.

“Mr. Lockett intends to remain here until Sunday, I fancy; he said he had to be in London on Monday morning. He has some friend with him here. I inquired whether they had found the Mr. Dangerfield he spoke of last autumn,” added Lavinia slowly and distinctly. “‘Not yet,’ he answered, ‘but he is still being looked for.’”

Whether Lavinia said this with a little spice of malice, or whether she really meant to warn him, she best knew. Captain Fennel finished his supper in silence.

“I presume the colonel did not hand you over your quarter’s money?” he next said to his wife in a mocking sort of way. “It is not due for a week yet; he is not one to pay beforehand.”

Upon which Nancy began to tremble and looked imploringly at her sister, who was putting the plates together upon the tray. After Flore went home they had to wait upon themselves.

“Colonel Selby did hand us the money,” said Lavinia. “I hold both cheques for it.”

Well, there ensued a mild disturbance; what schoolboys might call a genteel row. Mr. Edwin Fennel insisted upon his wife’s cheque being given to him. Lavinia decisively refused. She went into a bit of a temper, and told him some home truths. He said he had a right to hold his wife’s money, and should appeal to the law on the morrow to enforce it. He might do that, Lavinia retorted; no French law would make her give it up. Nancy began to cry.

Probably he knew his threats were futile. Instead of appealing to the law on the morrow, he went off by an early train, carrying Nancy with him. Lavinia’s private opinion was that he thought it safer to take her, though it did increase the expense, than to leave her; she might get talking with Mr. Lockett. Ann’s eyes were red, as if she had spent the night in crying.

“Has he beaten you?” Lavinia inquired, snatching the opportunity of a private moment.

“Oh, Lavinia, don’t, don’t! I shall never dare to let you have the cheque again,” she wailed.

“Where is it that you are going?”

“He has not told me,” Nancy whispered back again.“To Calais, I think, or else up to Lille. We are to be away all the week.”

“Until Mr. Lockett and his friend are gone,”thought Lavinia. “Nancy, how can he find money for it?”

“He has some napoleons in his pocket—borrowed yesterday, I think, from old Griffin.”

Lavinia understood. Old Griffin, as Nancy styled him, had been careless of his money since his very slight attack of paralysis; he would freely lend to any one who asked him. She had not the slightest doubt that Captain Fennel had borrowed of him—and not for the first time.

It was on Wednesday morning that they went away, and for the rest of the week Lavinia was at peace. She changed the cheques at the bank as before, and paid the outstanding debts. But it left her so little to go on with, that she really knew not how she should get through the months until midsummer.

On Friday two of the Miss Bosanquets called. Hearing she was alone, they came to ask her to dine with them in the evening. Lavinia did so. But upon returning home at night, the old horror of going into the house came on again. Lavinia was in despair; she had hoped it had passed away for good.

On Saturday morning at market she met Madame Carimon, who invited her for the following day, Sunday. Lavinia hesitated. Glad enough indeed shewas at the prospect of being taken out of her solitary home for a happy day at Mary Carimon’s; but she shrank from again risking the dreadful feeling which would be sure to attack her when going into the house at night.

“You must come, Lavinia,” cheerily urged Madame Carimon. “I have invited the English teacher at Madame Deauville’s school; she has no friends here, poor thing.”

“Well, I will come, Mary; thank you,” said Lavinia slowly.

“To be sure you will. Why do you hesitate at all?”

Lavinia could not say why in the midst of the jostling market-place; perhaps would not had they been alone. “For one thing, they may be coming home before to-morrow,” observed Lavinia, alluding to Mr. and Mrs. Fennel.

“Let them come. You are not obliged to stay at home with them,” laughed Mary.

From the Diary of Miss Preen.

Monday morning.—Well, it is over. The horror of last night is over, and I have not died of it. That will be considered a strong expression, should any eye save my own see this diary: but I truly believe the horror would kill me if I were subjected many more times to it.

I went to Mary Carimon’s after our service was over in the morning, and we had a pleasant day there. The more I see of Monsieur Jules the more I esteem and respect him. He is so genuine, so good at heart, so simple in manner. Miss Perry is very agreeable;not so young as I had thought—thirty last birthday, she says. Her English is good and refined, and that is not always the case with the English teachers who come over to France—the French ladies who engage them cannot judge of our accent.

Miss Perry and I left together a little before ten. She wished me good-night in the Rue Tessin, Madame Deauville’s house lying one way, mine another. The horror began to come over me as I crossed the Place Ronde, which had never happened before. Stay; not the horror itself, but the dread of it. An impulse actually crossed me to ring at Madame Sauvage’s, and ask Mariette to accompany me up the entry, and stand at my open door whilst I went in to light the candle. But I could see no light in the house, not even in madame’s salon, and supposed she and Mariette might be gone to bed. They are early people on Sundays, and the two young men have their latch-keys.

I will try to overcome it this time, I bravely said to myself, and not allow the fear to keep me halting outside the door as it has done before. So I took out my latch-key, put it straight into the door, opened it, went in, and closed it again. Before I had well reached the top of the passage and felt for the match-box on the slab, I was in a paroxysm of horror. Something, like an icy wind coming up the passage, seemed to flutter the candle as I lighted it. Can I have left the door open? I thought, and turned to look. There stood Edwin Fennel. He stood just inside the door, which appeared to be shut, and he was looking straight at me with a threatening, malignant expression on his pale face.

“Oh! have you come home to-night?” I exclaimed aloud. For I really thought it was so.

The candle continued to flicker quickly as if it meant to go out, causing me to glance at it. When I looked up again Mr. Fennel was gone. It was not himself who had been there; it was only an illusion.

Exactly as he had seemed to appear to me the night before he and Nancy returned from London in December, so he had appeared again, his back to the door, and the evil menace on his countenance. Did the appearance come to me as a warning? or was the thing nothing but a delusion of my own optic nerves?

I dragged my shaking limbs upstairs, on the verge of screaming at each step with the fear of what might be behind me, and undressed and went to bed. For nearly the whole night I could not sleep, and when I did get to sleep in the morning I was tormented by a distressing dream. All, all as it had been that other night from three to four months ago.

A confused dream, no method in it. Several people were about—Nancy for one; I saw her fair curls. We all seemed to be in grievous discomfort and distress; whilst I, in worse fear than this world can know, was ever striving to hide myself from Edwin Fennel, to escape some dreadful fate which he held in store for me. And I knew I should not escape it.

X.

Like many another active housewife, Madame Carimon was always busy on Monday mornings. On the one about to be referred to, she had finished her household duties by eleven o’clock, and then sat down in her little salle-à-manger, which she also made her workroom, to mend some of Monsieur Carimon’s cotton socks. By her side, on the small work-table, lay a silver brooch which Miss Perry had inadvertently left behind her the previous evening. Mary Carimon was considering at what hour she could most conveniently go out to leave it at Madame Deauville’s when she heard Pauline answer a ring at the door-bell, and Miss Preen came in.

“Oh, Lavinia, I am glad to see you. You are an early visitor. Are you not well?” continued Madame Carimon, noticing the pale, sad face. “Is anything the matter?”

“I am in great trouble, Mary; I cannot rest; and I have come to talk to you about it,” said Lavinia, taking the sable boa from her neck and untying her bonnet-strings. “If things were to continue as they are now, I should die of it.”

Drawing a chair near to Mary Carimon, Lavinia entered upon her narrative. She spoke first of general matters. The home discomfort, the trouble with Captain Fennel regarding Nancy’s money, and the difficulty she had to keep up the indispensable payments to the tradespeople, expressing her firm belief that in future he would inevitably seize upon Nancy’s portion when it came and confiscate it. Next, shewent on to tell the story of the past night—Sunday: how the old terrible horror had come upon her of entering the house, of a fancied appearance of Edwin Fennel in the passage, and of the dream that followed. All this latter part was but a repetition of what she had told Madame Carimon three or four months ago. Hearing it for the second time, it impressed Mary Carimon’s imagination. But she did not speak at once.

“I never in my life saw anything plainer or that looked more life-like than Captain Fennel, as he stood and gazed at me from the end of the passage with the evil look on his countenance,” resumed Lavinia.“And I hardly know why I tell you about it again, Mary, except that I have no one else to speak to. You rather laughed at me the first time, if you remember; perhaps you will laugh again now.”

“No, no,” dissented Mary Carimon. “I did not put faith in it before, believing you were deceived by the uncertain light in the passage, and were, perhaps, thinking of him, and that the dream afterwards was merely the result of your fright; nothing else. But now that you have had a second experience of it, I don’t doubt that you do see this spectre, and that the dream follows as a sequence to it. And I think,” she added, slowly and emphatically, “that it has come to warn you of some threatened harm.”

“I seem to see that it has,” murmured Lavinia.“Why else should it come at all? I wish I could picture it to you half vividly enough: the reality of it and the horror. Mary, I am growing seriously afraid.”

“Were I you, I should get away from the house,”said Madame Carimon. “Leave them to themselves.”

“It is what I mean to do, Mary. I cannot remain in it, apart from this undefined fear—which of coursemay be only superstitious fancy,” hastily acknowledged Lavinia. “If things continue in the present state—and there is no prospect of their changing——”

“I should leave at once—as soon as they arrive home,” rather sharply interrupted Mary Carimon, who seemed to like the aspect of what she had heard less and less.

“As soon as I can make arrangements. They come home to-night; I received a letter from Nancy this morning. They have been only at Pontipette all the time.”

“Only at Pontipette!”

“Nancy says so. It did as well as any other place. Captain Fennel’s motive was to hide away from the lawyers we met at the table d’hôte.”

“Have they left Sainteville, I wonder, those lawyers?”

“Yes,” said Lavinia. “On Friday I met Mr. Lockett when I was going to the Rue Lamartine, and he told me he was leaving for Calais with his friend on Saturday morning. It is rather remarkable,” she added, after a pause, “that the first time I saw that appearance in the passage and dreamed the dream, should have been the eve of Mr. Fennel’s return here, and that it is the same again now.”

“You must leave the house, Lavinia,” reiterated Madame Carimon.

“Let me see,” considered Lavinia. “April comes in this week. Next week will be Passion Week, preceding Easter. I will stay with them over Easter, and then leave.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon’s sock, in process of renovation, had been allowed to fall upon the mender’s lap. She slowly took it up again, speaking thoughtfully.

“I should leave at once; before Easter. But you will see how he behaves, Lavinia. If not well; if he gives you any cause of annoyance, come away there and then. We will take you in, mind, if you have not found a place to go to.”

Lavinia thanked her, and rearranged her bonnet preparatory to returning home. She went out with a heavy heart. Only one poor twelvemonth to have brought about all this change!

At the door of the Petite Maison Rouge, when she reached it, stood Flore, parleying with a slim youth, who held an open paper in his outstretched hand. Flore was refusing to touch the paper, which was both printed and written on, and looked official.

“I tell him that Monsieur le Capitaine is not at home; he can bring it when he is,” explained Flore to her mistress in English.

Lavinia turned to the young man. “Captain Fennel has been away from Sainteville for a few days; he probably will be here to-morrow,” she said. “Do you wish to leave this paper for him?”

“Yes,” said the messenger, evidently understanding English but speaking in French, as he contrived to slip the paper into Miss Preen’s unconscious hand. “You will have the politeness to give it to him, madame.”

And, with that, he went off down the entry, whistling.

“Do you know what the paper is, Flore?” asked Lavinia.

“I think so,” said Flore. “I’ve seen these papers before to-day. It’s just a sort of order from the law court on Captain Fennel, to pay up some debt that he owes; and, if he does not pay, the court will issue a procès against him. That’s what it is, madame.”

Lavinia carried the paper into the salon, and sat studying it. As far as she could make it out, Mr. Edwin Fennel was called upon to pay to some creditor the sum of one hundred and eighty-three francs, without delay.

“Over seven pounds! And if he does not pay, the law expenses, to enforce it, will increase the debt perhaps by one-half,” sighed Lavinia. “There may be, and no doubt are, other things at the back of this. Will he turn us out of house and home?”

Propping the paper against the wall over the mantelpiece, she left it there, that it might meet the captain’s eye on his return.

Not until quite late that evening did Madame Carimon get her husband to herself, for he brought in one of the young under-masters at the college to dine with them. But as soon as they were sitting cosily alone, he smoking his pipe before bed-time, she told him all she had heard from Lavinia Preen.

“I don’t like it, Jules; I don’t indeed,” she said.“It has made a strangely disagreeable impression on me. What is your opinion?”

Placid Monsieur Jules did not seem to have much opinion one way or the other. Upon the superstitious portion of the tale he, being a practical Frenchman, totally declined to have any at all. He was very sorry for the uncomfortable position Miss Preen found herself in, and he certainly was not surprised sheshould wish to quit the Petite Maison Rouge if affairs could not be made more agreeable there. As to the Capitaine Fennel, he felt free to confess there was something about him which he did not like: and he was sure no man of honour ought to have run away clandestinely, as he did, with Miss Nancy.

“You see, Jules, what the man aims at is to get hold of Nancy’s income and apply it to his own uses—and for Lavinia to keep them upon hers.”

“I see,” said Jules.

“And Lavinia cannot do it; she has not half enough. It troubles me very much,” flashed Madame Carimon. “She says she shall stay with them until Easter is over. I should not; I should leave them to it to-morrow.”

“Yes, my dear, that’s all very well,” nodded Monsieur Jules; “but we cannot always do precisely what we would. Miss Preen is responsible for the rent of that house, and if Fennel and his wife do not pay it, she would have to. She must have a thorough understanding upon that point before she leaves it.”

By the nine-o’clock train that night they came home, Lavinia, pleading a bad headache and feeling altogether out of sorts, got Flore to remain for once, and went herself to bed. She dreaded the very sight of Captain Fennel.

In the morning she saw that the paper had disappeared from the mantelpiece. He was quite jaunty at breakfast, talking to her and Nancy about Pontipette; and things passed pleasantly. About eleven o’clock he began brushing his hat to go out.

“I’m going to have a look at Griffin, and see how he’s getting on,” he remarked. “Perhaps the old man would enjoy a drive this fine day; if so, you may not see me back till dinner-time.”

But just as Captain Fennel turned out of the Place Ronde to the Rue Tessin, he came upon Charles Palliser, strolling along.

“Fine day, Mr. Charles,” he remarked graciously.

“Capital,” assented Charles, “and I’m glad of it; the old gentleman will have a good passage. I’ve just seen him off by the eleven train.”

“Seems to me you spend your time in seeing people off by trains. Which old gentleman is it now?—him from below?”

Charley laughed. “It’s Griffin this time,” said he.“Being feeble, I thought I might be of use in starting him, and went up.”

“Griffin!” exclaimed Captain Fennel. “Why, where’s he gone to?”

“To Calais. En route for Dover and——”

“What’s he gone for? When’s he coming back?”interrupted the captain, speaking like a man in great amazement.

“He is not coming back at all; he has gone for good,” said Charley. “His daughter came to fetch him.”

“Why on earth should she do that?”

“It seems that her husband, a clergyman at Kensington, fell across Major Smith last week in London, and put some pretty close questions to him about the old man, for they had been made uneasy by his letters of late. The major——”

“What business had the major in London?” questioned Captain Fennel impatiently.

“You can ask him,” said Charles equably, “Ididn’t. He is back again. Well, Major Smith, being questioned, made no bones about it at all; said Griffin and Griffin’s money both wanted looking after. Upon that, the daughter came straight off, arriving here on Sunday morning; she settled things yesterday, and has carried her father away to-day. He was as pleased as Punch, poor childish old fellow, at the prospect of a voyage in the boat.”

Whether this information put a check upon any little plan Captain Fennel may have been entertaining, Charles Palliser could not positively know; but he thought he had never seen so evil an eye as the one glaring upon him. Only for a moment; just a flash; and then the face was smoothed again. Charley had his ideas—and all his wits about him; and old Griffin had babbled publicly.

Captain Fennel strolled by his side towards the port, talking of Pontipette and other matters of indifference. When in sight of the harbour, he halted.

“I must wish you good-day now, Palliser; I have letters to write,” said he; and walked briskly back again.

Lavinia and Nancy were sitting together in the salon when he reached home. Nancy was looking scared.

“Edwin,” she said, leaving her chair to meet him—“Edwin, what do you think Lavinia has been saying? That she is going to leave us.”

“Oh, indeed,” he carelessly answered.

“But it is true, Edwin; she means it.”

“Yes, I mean it,” interposed Lavinia very quietly.“You and Nancy will be better without me; perhaps happier.”

He looked at her for a full minute in silence, then laughed a little. “Like Darby and Joan,” he remarked, as he put his writing-case on the table and sat down to it.

Mrs. Fennel returned to her chair by Lavinia, who was sitting close to the window mending a lace collar which had been torn in the ironing. As usual Nancy was doing nothing.

“You couldn’t leave me, Lavinia, you know,” she said in coaxing tones.

“I know that I never thought to do so, Ann, but circumstances alter cases,” answered the elder sister. Both of them had dropped their voices to a low key, not to disturb the letter-writer. But he could hear if he chose to listen. “I began putting my things together yesterday, and shall finish doing it at leisure. I will stay over Easter with you; but go then I shall.”

“You must be cruel to think of such a thing, Lavinia.”

“Not cruel,” corrected Lavinia. “I am sorry, Ann, but the step is forced upon me. The anxieties in regard to money matters are wearing me out; they would wear me out altogether if I did not end them. And there are other things which urge upon me the expediency of departure from this house.”

“What things?”

“I cannot speak of them. Never mind what they are, Ann. They concern myself; not you.”

Ann Fennel sat twirling one of her fair silken ringlets between her thumb and finger; a habit of hers when thinking.

“Where shall you live, Lavinia, if you do leave? Take another apartment at Sainteville?”

“I think not. It is a puzzling question. Possibly I may go back to Buttermead, and get some family to take me in as a boarder,” dreamily answered Lavinia. “Seventy pounds a-year will not keep me luxuriously.”

Captain Fennel lifted his face. “If it will not keep one, how is it to keep two?” he demanded, in rather defiant tones.

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Lavinia civilly. “I have not two to keep; only one.”

Nancy chanced to catch a glimpse of his face just then, and its look frightened her. Lavinia had her back to him, and did not see it. Nancy began to cry quietly.

“Oh, Lavinia, you will think better of this; you will not leave us!” she implored. “We could not do at all without you and your half of the money.”

Lavinia had finished her collar, and rose to take it upstairs. “Don’t be distressed, Nancy,” she paused to say; “it is a thing that must be. I am very sorry; but it is not my fault. As you——”

“You can stay in the house if you choose!” flashed Nancy, growing feebly angry.

“No, I cannot. I cannot,” repeated Lavinia. “I begin to foresee that I might—might die of it.”

XI.

Sainteville felt surprised and sorry to hear that Miss Preen was going to leave it to its own devices, for the town had grown to like her. Lavinia did not herself talk about going, but the news somehow got wind.People wondered why she went. Matters, as connected with the financial department of the Petite Maison Rouge, were known but imperfectly—to most people not known at all; so that reason was not thought of. It was quite understood that Ann Preen’s stolen marriage, capped by the bringing home of her husband to the Petite Maison Rouge, had been a sharp blow to Miss Preen: perhaps, said Sainteville now, she had tried living with them and found it did not answer. Or perhaps she was only going away for a change, and would return after a while.

Passion week passed, and Easter week came in, and Lavinia made her arrangements for the succeeding one. On the Tuesday in that next week, all being well, she would quit Sainteville. Her preparations were made; her larger box was already packed and corded. Nancy, of shallow temperament and elastic spirits, seemed quite to have recovered from the sting of the proposed parting; she helped Lavinia to put up her laces and other little fine things, prattling all the time. Captain Fennel maintained his suavity. Beyond the words he had spoken—as to how she expected the income to keep two if it would not keep one—he had said nothing. It might be that he hardly yet believed Lavinia would positively go.

But she was going. At first only to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Monsieur Jules Carimon had a cousin, Madame Degravier, who kept a superior boarding-house there, much patronized by the English; he had written to her to introduce Miss Preen, and to intimate that it would oblige him if the terms were made très facile. Madame had written back to Lavinia most satisfactorily, and, so far, that was arranged.

Once at Boulogne in peace and quietness, Lavinia would have leisure to decide upon her future plans. She hoped to pay a visit to Buttermead in the summer-time, for she had begun to yearn for a sight of the old place and its people. After that—well, she should see. If things went on pleasantly at Sainteville—that is, if Captain Fennel and Nancy were still in the Petite Maison Rouge, and he was enabled to find means to continue in it—then, perhaps, she might return to the town. Not to make one of the household—never again that; but she might find a little pied-à-terre in some other home.

Meanwhile, Lavinia heard no more of the procès, and she wondered how the captain was meeting it. During the Easter week she made her farewell calls. That week she was not very much at home; one or other of her old acquaintances wanted her. Major and Mrs. Smith had her to spend a day with them; the Miss Bosanquets invited her also; and so on.

One call, involving also private business, she made upon old Madame Sauvage, Mary Carimon accompanying her. Monsieur Gustave was called up to the salon to assist at the conference. Lavinia partly explained her position to them in strict confidence, and the motive, as touching pecuniary affairs, which was taking her away: she said nothing of that other and greater motive, her superstitious fear.

“I have come to speak of the rent,” she said to Monsieur Gustave, and Mary Carimon repeated the words in French to old Madame Sauvage. “You must in future look to Captain Fennel for it; you must make him pay it if possible. At the same time, I admit my own responsibility,” added Lavinia, “andif it be found totally impracticable to get it from Captain Fennel or my sister, I shall pay it to you. This must, of course, be kept strictly between ourselves, Monsieur Gustave; you and madame understand that. If Captain Fennel gained any intimation of it, he would take care not to pay it.”

Monsieur Gustave and madame his mother assured her that they fully understood, and that she might rely upon their honour. They were grieved to lose so excellent a tenant and neighbour as Miss Preen, and wished circumstances had been more kindly. One thing she might rest assured of—that they should feel at least as mortified at having to apply to her for the rent as she herself would be, and they would not leave a stone unturned to extract it from the hands of Captain Fennel.

“It has altogether been a most bitter trial to me,”sighed Lavinia, as she stood up to say farewell to madame.

The old lady understood, and the tears came into her compassionate eyes as she held Lavinia’s hands between her own. “Ay, for certain,” she replied in French. “She and her sons had said so privately to one another ever since the abrupt coming home of the strange captain to the petite maison à côté.”

On Sunday, Lavinia, accompanied by Nancy and Captain Fennel, attended morning service for the last time. She spoke to several acquaintances coming out, wishing them good-bye, and was hastening to overtake her sister, when she heard rapid steps behind her, and a voice speaking. Turning, she saw Charley Palliser.

“Miss Preen,” cried he, “my aunt wants you tocome home and dine with us. See, she is waiting for you. You could not come any one day last week, you know.”

“I was not able to come to you last week, Mr. Charles; I had so much to do, and so many engagements,”said Lavinia, as she walked back to Mrs. Hardy, who stood smiling.

“But you will come to-day, dear Miss Preen,” said old Mrs. Hardy, who had caught the words. “We have a lovely fricandeau of veal, and——”

“Why, that is just our own dinner,” interrupted Lavinia gaily. “I should like to come to you, Mrs. Hardy, but I cannot. It is my last Sunday at home, and I could not well go out and leave them.”

They saw the force of the objection. Mrs. Hardy asked whether she should be at church in the evening. Lavinia replied that she intended to be, and they agreed to bid each other farewell then.

“You don’t know what you’ve lost, Miss Preen,”said Charley comically. “There’s a huge cream tart—lovely.”

Captain Fennel was quite lively at the dinner-table. He related a rather laughable story which had been told him by Major Smith, with whom he had walked for ten minutes after church, and was otherwise gracious.

After dinner, while Flore was taking away the things, he left the room, and came back with three glasses of liqueur, on a small waiter, handing one to Lavinia, another to his wife, and keeping the third himself. It was the yellow chartreuse; Captain Fennel kept a bottle of it and of one or two other choice liqueurs in the little cupboard at the end of the passage, and treated them to a glass sometimes.

“How delightful!” cried Nancy, who liked chartreuse and anything else that was good.

They sat and sipped it, talking pleasantly together. The captain soon finished his, and said he should take a stroll on the pier. It was a bright day with a brisk wind, which seemed to be getting higher.

“The London boat ought to be in about four o’clock,” he remarked. “It’s catching it sweetly, I know; passengers will look like ghosts. Au revoir; don’t get quarrelling.” And thus, nodding to the two ladies, he went out gaily.

Not much danger of their quarrelling. They turned their chairs to the fire, and plunged into conversation, which chanced to turn upon Buttermead. In calling up one reminiscence of the old place after another, now Lavinia, now Nancy, the time passed on. Lavinia wore her silver-grey silk dress that day, with some yellowish-looking lace falling at the throat and wrists.

Flore came in to bring the tea-tray; she always put it on the table in readiness on a Sunday afternoon. The water, she said, would be on the boil in the kitchen by the time they wanted it. And then she went away as usual for the rest of the day.

Not long afterwards, Lavinia, who was speaking, suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence. She started up in her chair, fell back again, and clasped her hands below her chest with a great cry.

“Oh, Nancy!—Nancy!”

Nancy dashed across the hearthrug. “What is it?” she exclaimed. “What is it, Lavinia?”

Lavinia apparently could not say what it was. She seemed to be in the greatest agony; her face had turned livid. Nancy was next door to an imbecile in any emergency, and fairly wrung her hands in her distress.

“Oh, what can be the matter with me?” gasped Lavinia. “Nancy, I think I am dying.”

The next moment she had glided from the chair to the floor, and lay there shrieking and writhing. Bursting away, Nancy ran round to the next house, all closed to-day, rang wildly at the private door, and when it was opened by Mariette, rushed upstairs to madame’s salon.

Madame Veuve Sauvage, comprehending that something was amiss, without understanding Nancy’s frantic words, put a shawl on her shoulders to hasten to the other house, ordering Mariette to follow her. Her sons were out.

There lay Lavinia, in the greatest agony. Madame Sauvage sent Mariette off for Monsieur Dupuis, and told her to fly. “Better bring Monsieur Henri Dupuis, Mariette,” she called after her: “he will get quicker over the ground than his old father.”

But Monsieur Henri Dupuis, as it turned out, was absent. He had left that morning for Calais with his wife, to spend two days with her friends who lived there, purposing to be back early on Tuesday morning. Old Monsieur Dupuis came very quickly. He thought Mademoiselle Preen must have inward inflammation, he said to Madame Sauvage, and inquired what she had eaten for dinner. Nancy told him as well as she could between her sobs and her broken speech.

A fricandeau of veal, potatoes, a cauliflower au gratin, and a frangipane tart from the pastrycook’s. No fruit or any other dessert. They took a little Bordeaux wine with dinner, and a liqueur glass of chartreuse afterwards.

All very wholesome, pronounced Monsieur Dupuis, with satisfaction; not at all likely to disagree with mademoiselle. Possibly she had caught a chill.

Mariette had run for Flore, who came in great consternation. Between them all they got Lavinia upstairs, undressed her and laid her in bed, applying hot flannels to the pain—and Monsieur Dupuis administered in a wine-glass of water every quarter-of-an-hour some drops from a glass phial which he had brought in his pocket.

It was close upon half-past five when Captain Fennel came in. He expressed much surprise and concern, saying, like the doctor, that she must have eaten something which had disagreed with her. The doctor avowed that he could not otherwise account for the seizure; he did not altogether think it was produced by a chill; and he spoke again of the dinner. Captain Fennel observed that as to the dinner they had all three partaken of it, one the same as another; he did not see why it should affect his sister-in-law and not himself or his wife. This reasoning was evident, admitted Monsieur Dupuis; but Miss Preen had touched nothing since her breakfast, except at dinner. In point of fact, he felt very much at a loss, he did not scruple to add; but the more acute symptoms were showing a slight improvement, he was thankful to perceive, and he trusted to bring her round.

As he did. In a few hours the pain had so far abated, or yielded to remedies, that poor Lavinia, worn out, dropped into a comfortable sleep. MonsieurDupuis was round again early in the morning, and found her recovered, though still feeling tired and very weak. He advised her to lie in bed until the afternoon; not to get up then unless she felt inclined; and he charged her to take chiefly milk food all the day—no solids whatever.

Lavinia slept again all the morning, and awoke very much refreshed. In the afternoon she felt quite equal to getting up, and did so, dressing herself in the grey silk she had worn the previous day, because it was nearest at hand. She then penned a line to Madame Degravier, saying she was unable to travel to Boulogne on the morrow, as had been fixed, but hoped to be there on Wednesday, or, at the latest, Thursday.

Captain Fennel, who generally took possession of the easiest chair in the salon, and the warmest place, resigned it to Lavinia the instant she appeared downstairs. He shook her by the hand, said how glad he was that she had recovered from her indisposition, and installed her in the chair with a cushion at her back and a rug over her knees. All she had to dread now, he thought, was cold; she must guard against that. Lavinia replied that she could not in the least imagine what had been the matter with her; she had never had a similar attack before, and had never been in such dreadful pain.

Presently Mary Carimon came in, having heard of the affair from Mariette, whom she had met in the fish-market during the morning. All danger was over, Mariette said, and mademoiselle was then sleeping quietly: so Madame Carimon, not to disturb her, put off calling until the afternoon. Captain Fennelsat talking with her a few minutes, and then went out. For some cause or other he never seemed to be quite at ease in the presence of Madame Carimon.

“I know what it must have been,” cried Mary Carimon, coming to one of her rapid conclusions after listening to the description of the illness. “Misled by the sunny spring days last week, you went and left off some of your warm underclothing, Lavinia, and so caught cold.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Nancy, who had curled herself up on the sofa like a ball, not having yet recovered from her fatigue and fright. “Leave off one’s warm things the beginning of April! I never heard of such imprudence! How came you to do it, Lavinia?”

“I did not do it,” said Lavinia quietly. “I have not left off anything. Should I be so silly as to do that with a journey before me?”

“Then what caused the attack?” debated Madame Carimon. “Something you had eaten?”

Lavinia shook her head helplessly. “It could hardly have been that, Mary. I took nothing whatever that Nancy and Captain Fennel did not take. I wish I did know—that I might guard, if possible, against a similar attack in future. The pain seized me all in a moment. I thought I was dying.”

“It sounds odd,” said Madame Carimon. “Monsieur Dupuis does not know either, it seems. That’s why I thought you might have been leaving off your things, and did not like to tell him.”

“I conclude that it must have been one of those mysterious attacks of sudden illness to which we are all liable, but for which no one can account,” sighed Lavinia. “I hope I shall never have it again. This experience has been enough for a lifetime.”

Mary Carimon warmly echoed the hope as she rose to take her departure. She advised Lavinia to go to bed early, and promised to come again in the morning.

While Captain Fennel and Nancy dined, Flore made her mistress some tea, and brought in with it some thin bread-and-butter. Lavinia felt all the better for the refreshment, laughingly remarking that by the morning she was sure she should be as hungry as a hunter. She sat chatting, and sometimes dozing between whiles, until about a quarter to nine o’clock, when she said she would go to bed.

Nancy went to the kitchen to make her a cup of arrowroot. Lavinia then wished Captain Fennel good-night, and went upstairs. Flore had left as usual, after washing up the dinner-things.

“Lavinia, shall I—— Oh, she has gone on,” broke off Nancy, who had come in with the breakfast-cup of arrowroot in her hand. “Edwin, do you think I may venture to put a little brandy into this?”

Captain Fennel sat reading with his face to the fire and the lamp at his elbow. He turned round.

“Brandy?” said he. “I’m sure I don’t know. If that pain meant inflammation, brandy might do harm. Ask Lavinia; she had better decide for herself. No, no; leave the arrowroot on the table here,” he hastily cried, as Nancy was going out of the room with the cup. “Tell Lavinia to come down, and we’ll discuss the matter with her. Of course a little brandy would do her an immense deal of good, if she might take it with safety.”

Nancy did as she was told. Leaving the cup andsaucer on the table, she went up to her sister. In a minute or two she was back again.

“Lavinia won’t come down again, Edwin; she is already half-undressed. She thinks she had better be on the safe side, and not have the brandy.”

“All right,” replied the captain, who was sitting as before, intent on his book. Nancy took the cup upstairs.

She helped her sister into bed, and then gave her the arrowroot, inquiring whether she had made it well.

“Quite well, only it was rather sweet,” answered Lavinia.

“Sweet!” echoed Nancy, in reply. “Why, I hardly put any sugar at all into it; I remembered that you don’t like it.”

Lavinia finished the cupful. Nancy tucked her up, and gave her a good-night kiss. “Pleasant dreams, Lavinia dear,” she called back, as she was shutting the door.

“Thank you, Nancy; but I hope I shall sleep to-night without dreaming,” answered Lavinia.

As Nancy went downstairs she turned into the kitchen for her own arrowroot, which she had left all that time in the saucepan. Being fond of it, she had made enough for herself as well as for Lavinia.

XII.

It was between half-past ten and eleven, and Captain and Mrs. Fennel were in their bedroom preparing to retire to rest. She stood before the glass doing her hair, having thrown a thin print cotton cape upon her shoulders as usual, to protect her dress; he had taken off his coat.

“What was that?” cried she, in startled tones.

Some sound had penetrated to their room. The captain put his coat on a chair and bent his ear. “I did not hear anything, Nancy,” he answered.

“There it is again!” exclaimed Nancy. “Oh, it is Lavinia! I do believe it is Lavinia!”

Flinging the comb from her hand, Nancy dashed out at the room-door, which was near the head of the stairs; Lavinia’s door being nearly at the end of the passage. Unmistakable sounds, now a shriek, now a wail, came from Lavinia’s chamber. Nancy flew into it, her fair hair falling on her shoulders.

“What is it, Lavinia? Oh, Edwin, Edwin, come here!” called Mrs. Fennel, beside herself with terror. Lavinia was rolling about the bed, as she had the previous day rolled on the salon floor; her face was distorted with pain, her moans and cries were agonizing.

Captain Fennel stayed to put on his coat, came to Lavinia’s door, and put his head inside it. “Is it the pain again?” he asked.

“Yes, it is the pain again,” gasped Lavinia, in answer. “I am dying, I am surely dying!”

That put the finishing-touch to timorous Nancy.“Edwin, run, run for Monsieur Dupuis!” she implored.“Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do?”

Captain Fennel descended the stairs. When Nancy thought he must have been gone out at least a minute or two, he appeared again with a wine-glass of hot brandy-and-water, which he had stayed to mix.

“Try and get her to take this,” he said. “It can’t do harm; it may do good. And if you could put hot flannels to her, Nancy, it might be well; they eased the pain yesterday. I’ll bring Dupuis here as soon as I can.”

Lavinia could not take the brandy-and-water, and it was left upon the grey marble top of the chest of drawers. Her paroxysms increased; Nancy had never seen or imagined such pain, for this attack was worse than the other, and she almost lost her wits with terror. Could she see Lavinia die before her eyes?—no helping hand near to strive to save her? Just as Nancy had done before, she did again now.

Flying down the stairs and out of the house, across the yard and through the dark entry, she seized the bell-handle of Madame Veuve Sauvage’s door and pulled it frantically. The household had all retired for the night.

Presently a window above opened, and Monsieur Gustave—Nancy knew his voice—looked out.

“Who’s there?” he asked in French. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Monsieur Gustave, come in for the love of Heaven!” responded poor Nancy, looking up. “She has another attack, worse than the first; she’s dying, and there’s no one in the house but me.”

“Directly, madame; I am with you on the instant,”he kindly answered. “I but wait to put on my effects.”

He was at the Petite Maison Rouge almost as soon as she; his brother Emile followed him in, and Mariette, whom they had called, came shortly. Miss Preen lay in dreadful paroxysms; it did appear to them that she must die. Nancy and Mariette busied themselves in the kitchen, heating flannels.

The doctor did not seem to come very quickly. Captain Fennel at length made his appearance and said Monsieur Dupuis would be there in a minute or two.

“I am content to hear that,” remarked Monsieur Gustave in reply. “I was just about to despatch my brother for the first doctor he could find.”

“Never had such trouble in ringing up a doctor before,” returned Captain Fennel. “I suppose the old man sleeps too soundly to be easily aroused; many elderly people do.”

“I fear she is dying,” whispered Monsieur Gustave.

“No, no, surely not!” cried Captain Fennel, recoiling a step at the words. “What can it possibly be? What causes the attacks?”

Whilst Monsieur Gustave was shaking his head at this difficult question, Monsieur Dupuis arrived. Monsieur Emile, anxious to make himself useful, was requested by Mariette to go to Flore’s domicile and ring her up. Flore seemed to have been sleeping with her clothes on, for they came back together.

Monsieur Dupuis could do nothing for his patient. He strove to administer drops of medicinal remedies; he caused her to be nearly smothered in scalding-hot flannels—all in vain. He despatched Monsieur EmileSauvage to bring in another doctor, Monsieur Podevin, who lived near. All in vain. Lavinia died. Just at one o’clock in the morning, before the cocks had begun to crow, Lavinia Preen died.

The shock to those in the house was great. It seemed to stun them, one and all. The brothers Sauvage, leaving a few words of heartfelt sympathy with Captain Fennel, withdrew silently to their own home. Mariette stayed. The two doctors, shut up in the salon, talked with one another, endeavouring to account for the death.

“Inflammation, no doubt,” observed Monsieur Dupuis; “but even so, the death has been too speedy.”

“More like poison,” rejoined the younger man, Monsieur Podevin. He was brother to the proprietor of the Hôtel des Princes, and was much respected by his fellow-citizens as a safe and skilful practitioner.

“The thought of poison naturally occurred to me on Sunday, when I was first called to her,” returned Monsieur Dupuis, “but it could not be borne out. You see, she had partaken of nothing, either in food or drink, but what the other inmates had taken; absolutely nothing. This was assured me by them all, herself included.”

“She seems to have taken nothing to-day, either, that could in any way harm her,” said Monsieur Podevin.

“Nothing. She took a cup of tea at five o’clock, which the servant, Flore, prepared and also partook of herself—a cup out of the same teapot. Later, when the poor lady went to bed, her sister made her a basin of arrowroot, and made herself one at the same time.”

“Well, it appears strange.”

“It could not have been a chill. The symptoms——”

“A chill?—bah!” interrupted Monsieur Podevin.“We shall know more after the post-mortem,” he added, taking up his hat. “Of course there must be one.”

Wishing his brother practitioner good-night, he left. Monsieur Dupuis went looking about for Captain Fennel, and found him in the kitchen, standing by the hot stove, and drinking a glass of hot brandy-and-water. The rest were upstairs.

“This event has shaken my nerves, doctor,”apologized the captain, in reference to the glass. “I never was so upset. Shall I mix you one?”

Monsieur Dupuis shook his head. He never took anything so strong. The most calming thing, in his opinion, was a glass of eau sucrée, with a teaspoonful of orange-flower water in it.

“Sir,” he went on, “I have been conversing with my esteemed confrère. We cannot, either of us, decide what mademoiselle has died of, being unable to see any adequate cause for it; and we wish to hold a post-mortem examination. I presume you will not object to it?”

“Certainly not; I think there should be one,”briskly spoke Captain Fennel after a moment’s pause.“For our satisfaction, if for nothing else, doctor.”

“Very well. Will nine o’clock in the morning suit you, as to time? It should be made early.”

“I—expect it will,” answered the captain, reflecting.“Do you hold it here?”

“Undoubtedly. In her own room.”

“Then wait just one minute, will you, doctor, whilst I speak to my wife. Nine o’clock seems a little early, but I dare say it will suit.”

Monsieur Dupuis went back into the salon. He had waited there a short interval, when Mrs. Fennel burst in, wild with excitement. Her hair still hung down her back, her eyes were swollen with weeping, her face was one of piteous distress. She advanced to Monsieur Dupuis, and held up her trembling hands.

The old doctor understood English fairly well when it was quietly spoken; but he did not in the least understand it in a storm. Sobbing, trembling, Mrs. Fennel was beseeching him not to hold a post-mortem on her poor dead sister, for the love of mercy.

Surprised and distressed, he placed her on the sofa, soothed her into calmness, and then bade her tell him quietly what her petition was. She repeated it—begging, praying, imploring him not to disturb her sister now she was at rest; but to let her be put into her grave in peace. Well, well, said the compassionate old man; if it would pain the relatives so greatly to have it done, he and Monsieur Podevin would, of course, abandon the idea. It would be a satisfaction to them both to be able to decide upon the cause of death, but they did not wish to proceed in it against the feelings of the family.

Sainteville woke up in the morning to a shock. Half the townspeople still believed that Miss Preen was leaving that day, Tuesday, for Boulogne; and to hear that she would not go on that journey, that she would never go on any earthly journey again, that she was dead, shook them to the centre.

What had been the matter with her?—what hadkilled her so quickly in the midst of life and health? Groups asked this; one group meeting another.“Inflammation,” was the answer—for that report had somehow started itself. She caught a chill on the Sunday, probably when leaving the church after morning service; it induced speedy and instant inflammation, and she had died of it.

With softened steps and mournful faces, hosts of people made their way to the Place Ronde. Only to take a glimpse at the outside of the Maison Rouge brought satisfaction to excited feelings. Monsieur Gustave Sauvage had caused his white shop window-blinds to be drawn half-way down, out of respect to the dead; all the windows above had the green persiennes closed before them. The calamity had so greatly affected old Madame Sauvage that she lay in bed.

When her sons returned indoors after the death had taken place, their mother called them to her room. Nancy’s violent ringing had disturbed her, and she had lain since then in anxiety, waiting for news.

“Better not tell the mother to-night,” whispered Emile to his brother outside her door.

But the mother’s ears were quick; she was sitting up in bed, and the door was ajar. “Yes, you will tell me, my sons,” she said. “I am fearing the worst.”

“Well, mother, it is all over,” avowed Gustave.“The attack was more violent than the one last night, and the poor lady is gone.”

“May the good God have taken her to His rest!”fervently aspirated madame. But she lay down in the bed in her distress and covered her face with thewhite-frilled pillow and sobbed a little. Gustave and Emile related a few particulars.

“And what was really the malady? What is it that she has died of?” questioned the mother, wiping her eyes.

“That is not settled; nobody seems to know,”replied Gustave.

Madame Veuve Sauvage lay still, thinking. “I—hope—that—man—has—not—done—her—any—injury!”she slowly said.

“I hope not either; there is no appearance of it,”said Monsieur Gustave. “Any way, mother, she had two skilful doctors with her, honest men and upright. Better not admit such thoughts.”

“True, true,” murmured madame, appeased. “I fear the poor dear lady must have taken a chill, which struck inwardly. That handsome demoiselle, the cousin of Monsieur le Procureur, died of the same thing, you may remember. Good-night, my sons; you leave me very unhappy.”

About eight o’clock in the morning, Monsieur Jules Carimon heard of it. In going through the large iron entrance-gates of the college to his day’s work, he found himself accosted by one of two or three young gamins of pupils, who were also entering. It was Dion Pamart. The well-informed reader is of course aware that the French educational colleges are attended by all classes, high and low, indiscriminately.

“Monsieur, have you heard?” said the lad, with timid deprecation. “Mademoiselle is dead.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon turned his eyes on the speaker. At first he did not recognize him: his own work lay with the advanced desks.

“Ah, c’est Pamart, n’est-ce-pas?” said he. “What did you say, my boy? Some one is dead?”

Dion Pamart repeated his information. The master, inwardly shocked, took refuge in disbelief.

“I think you must be mistaken, Pamart,” said he.

“Oh no, I’m not, sir. Mademoiselle was taken frightfully ill again last night, and they fetched my mother. They had two doctors to her and all; but they couldn’t do anything for her, and she died. Grandmother gave me my breakfast just now; she said my mother was crying too much to come home. The other lady, the captain’s wife, has been in hysterics all night.”

“Go on to your desks,” commanded Monsieur Carimon to the small fry now gathered round him.

He turned back home himself. When he entered the salle-à-manger, Pauline was carrying away the last of the breakfast-things. Her mistress stood putting a little water on a musk plant in the window.

“Is it you, Jules?” she exclaimed. “Have you forgotten something?”

Monsieur Jules shut the door. “I have not forgotten anything,” he answered. “But I have heard of a sad calamity, and I have come back to prepare you, Marie, before you hear it from others.”

He spoke solemnly; he was looking solemn. His wife put down the jug of water on the table. “A calamity?” she repeated.

“Yes. You will grieve to hear it. Your friend, Miss Preen, was—was taken ill last night with the same sort of attack, but more violent; and she——”

“Oh, Jules, don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” cried Mary Carimon, lifting her hands to ward off the words with a too sure prevision of what they were going to be.

“But, my dear, you must be told sooner or later,”remonstrated he; “you cannot go through even this morning without hearing it from one person or another. Flore’s boy was my informant. In spite of all that could be done by those about her, poor lady—in spite of the two doctors who were called to her aid—she died.”

Madame Carimon was a great deal too much stunned for tears. She sank back in a chair with a face of stone, feeling that the room was turning upside down about her.

An hour later, when she had somewhat gathered her scattered senses together, she set off for the Petite Maison Rouge. Her way lay past the house of Monsieur Podevin; old Monsieur Dupuis was turning out of it as she went by. Madame Carimon stopped.

“Yes,” the doctor said, when a few words had passed, “it is a most desolating affair. But, as madame knows, when Death has laid his grasp upon a patient, medical craft loses its power to resist him.”

“Too true,” murmured Mary Carimon. “And what is it that she has died of?”

Monsieur Dupuis shook his head to indicate that he did not know.

“I could have wished for an examination, to ascertain the true cause of the seizure,” continued the doctor, “and I come now from expressing my regrets to my confrère, Monsieur Podevin. He agrees with me in deciding that we cannot press it in opposition to the family. Captain Fennel was quite willing itshould take place, but his wife, poor distressed woman, altogether objects to it.”

Mary Carimon went on to the house of death. She saw Lavinia, looking so peaceful in her stillness. A happy smile sat on her countenance. On her white attire lay some sweet fresh primroses, which Flore had placed there. Lavinia loved primroses. She used to say that when she looked at them they brought to her mind the woods and dales of Buttermead, always carpeted with the pale, fair blossoms in the spring of the year. Mrs. Fennel lay in a heavy sleep, exhausted by her night of distress, Flore informed Madame Carimon; and the captain, anxious about her, was sitting in her room, to guard against her being disturbed.

On the next day, Wednesday, in obedience to the laws of France relating to the dead, Lavinia Preen was buried. All the English gentlemen in the town, and some Frenchmen, including Monsieur Carimon and the sons of Madame Veuve Sauvage, assembled in the Place Ronde, and fell in behind the coffin when it was brought forth. They walked after it to the portion of the cemetery consecrated to Protestants, and there witnessed the interment. The tears trickled down Charley Palliser’s face as he took his last look into the grave, and he was honest enough not to mind who saw them.

XIII.

In their new mourning, at the English Church, the Sunday after the interment of Lavinia Preen, appeared Captain and Mrs. Fennel. The congregation looked at them more than at the parson. Poor Nancy’s eyes were so blinded with tears that she could not see the letters in her Prayer-book. Only one little week ago when she had sat there, Lavinia was on the bench at her side, alive and well; and now—— It was with difficulty Nancy kept herself from breaking down.

Two or three acquaintances caught her hand on leaving the church, whispering a few words of sympathy in her ear. Not one but felt truly sorry for her. The captain’s hat, which had a wide band round it, was perpetually raised in acknowledgment of silent greetings, as he piloted his wife back to their house, the Petite Maison Rouge.

A very different dinner-table, this which the two sat down to, from last Sunday’s, in the matter of cheerfulness. Nancy was about half-way through the wing of the fowl her husband had helped her to, when a choking sob caught her throat. She dropped her knife and fork.

“Oh, Edwin, I cannot! I cannot eat for my unhappy thoughts! This time last Sunday Lavinia was seated at the table with us. Now——” Nancy’s speech collapsed altogether.

“Come, come,” said Captain Fennel. “I hope you are not going to be hysterical again, Nancy. It is frightfully sad; I know that; but this prolonged griefwill do no good. Go on with your dinner; it is a very nice chicken.”

Nancy gave a great sob, and spoke impulsively, “I don’t believe you regret her one bit, Edwin!”

Edwin Fennel in turn laid down his knife and fork and stared at his wife. A curious expression sat on his face.

“Not regret her,” he repeated with emphasis.“Why, Nancy, I regret her every hour of the day. But I do not make a parade of my regrets. Why should I?—to what end? Come, come, my dear; you will be all the better for eating your dinner.”

He went on with his own as he spoke. Nancy took up her knife and fork with a hopeless sigh.

Dinner over, Captain Fennel went to his cupboard and brought in some of the chartreuse. Two glasses, this time, instead of three. He might regret Lavinia, as he said, every hour of the day; possibly he did so; but it did not seem to affect his appetite, or his relish for good things.

Most events have their dark and their light sides. It could hardly escape the mind of Edwin Fennel that by the death of Lavinia the whole income became Nancy’s. To him that must have been a satisfactory consolation.

In the afternoon he went with Nancy for a walk on the pier. She did not want to go; said she had no spirits for it; it was miserable at home; miserable out; miserable everywhere. Captain Fennel took her off, as he might have taken a child, telling her she should come and see the fishing-boats. After tea they went to church—an unusual thing for Captain Fennel. Lavinia and Nancy formerly went to evening service; he, never.

That night something curious occurred. Nancy went up to bed leaving the captain to follow, after finishing his glass of grog. He generally took one the last thing. Nancy had taken off her gown, and was standing before the glass about to undo her hair, when she heard him leave the parlour. Her bedroom-door, almost close to the head of the stairs, was not closed, and her ears were on the alert. Since Lavinia died, Nancy had felt timid in the house when alone, and she was listening for her husband to come up. She heard him lock up the spirit bottle in the little cupboard below, and begin to ascend the stairs, and she opened her door wider, that the light might guide him, for the staircase was in darkness.

Captain Fennel had nearly gained the top, when something—he never knew what—induced him to look round sharply, as though he fancied some one was close behind him. In fact, he did fancy it. In a moment, he gave a shout, dashed onwards into the bedroom, shut the door with a bang, and bolted it. Nancy, in great astonishment, turned to look at him. He seemed to have shrunk within himself in a fit of trembling, his face was ghastly, and the perspiration stood upon his brow.

“Edwin!” she exclaimed in a scared whisper, “what is the matter?”

Captain Fennel did not answer at first. He was getting up his breath.

“Has Flore not gone?” he then said.

“Flore!” exclaimed Nancy in surprise. “Why, Edwin, you know Flore goes away on Sundays in the middle of the afternoon! She left before we went on the pier. Why do you ask?”

“I—I thought—some person—followed me upstairs,”he replied, in uneasy pauses.

“Oh, my goodness!” cried timid Nancy. “Perhaps a thief has got into the house!”

She went to the door, and was about to draw it an inch open, intending to peep out gingerly and listen, when her husband pulled her back with a motion of terror, and put his back against it. This meant, she thought, that he knew a thief was there. Perhaps two of them!

“Is there more than one?” she whispered. “Lavinia’s silver—my silver, now—is in the basket on the console in the salon.”

He did not answer. He appeared to be listening. Nancy listened also. The house seemed still as death.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” said Captain Fennel, beginning to recover himself after a bit. “I dare say I was.”

“Well, I think you must have been, Edwin; I can’t hear anything. We had better open the door.”

She undid the bolt as she spoke, and he moved away from it. Nancy cautiously took a step outside, and kept still. Not a sound met her ear. Then she brought forth the candle and looked down the staircase. Not a sign of anything or any one met her eye.

“Edwin, there’s nothing, there’s nobody; come and see. You must have fancied it.”

“No doubt,” answered Captain Fennel. But he did not go to see, for all that.

Nancy went back to the room. “Won’t you just look downstairs?” she said. “I—I don’t much mind going with you.”

“Not any necessity,” replied he, and began to undress—and slipped the bolt again.

“Why do you bolt the door to-night?” asked Nancy.

“To keep the thief out,” said he, in grim tones, which Nancy took for jesting. But she could not at all understand him.

His restlessness kept her awake. “It must have been all fancy,” she more than once heard him mutter to himself.

When he rose in the morning, his restlessness seemed still to hang upon him. Remarking to Nancy, who was only half-awake, that his nerves were out of order, and he should be all the better for a sea-bath, he dressed and left the room. Nancy got down at the usual hour, half-past eight; and was told by Flore that monsieur had left word madame was not to wait breakfast for him: he was gone to have a dip in the sea, and should probably take a long country walk after it.

Flore was making the coffee at the kitchen stove; her mistress stood by, as if wanting to watch the process. These last few days, since Lavinia had been carried from the house, Nancy had felt easier in Flore’s company than when alone with her own.

“That’s to steady his nerves; they are out of order,”replied Nancy, who had as much idea of reticence as a child. “Monsieur had a great fright last night, Flore.”

“Truly!” said Flore, much occupied just then with her coffee-pot.

“He was coming up to bed between ten and eleven; I had gone on. When nearly at the top of the stairshe thought he heard some one behind him. It startled him frightfully. Not being prepared for it, supposing that the house was empty, you see, Flore, of course it would startle him.”

“Naturally, madame.”

“He cried out, and dashed into the bedroom and bolted the door. I never saw any one in such a state of terror, Flore; he was trembling all over; his face was whiter than your apron.”

“Vraiment!” returned Flore, turning to look at her mistress in a little surprise. “But, madame, what had terrified him? What was it that he had seen?”

“Why, he could have seen nothing,” corrected Mrs. Fennel. “There was nothing to see.”

“Madame has reason; there could have been nothing, the house being empty. But then, what could have frightened him?” repeated Flore.

“Why, he must have fancied it, I suppose. Any way, he fancied some one was there. The first question he asked me was, whether you were in the house.”

“Moi! Monsieur might have known I should not be in the house at that hour, madame. And why should he show terror if he thought it was me?”

Mrs. Fennel shrugged her shoulders. “It was a moment’s scare; just that, I conclude; and it upset his nerves. A sea-bath will put him all right again.”

Flore carried the coffee into the salon, and her mistress sat down to breakfast.

Now it chanced that this same week a guest came to stay with Madame Carimon. Stella Featherston,from Buttermead, was about to make a sojourn in Paris, and she took Sainteville on her route that she might stay a few days with her cousin, Mary Carimon, whom she had not seen for several years.

Lavinia and Ann Preen had once been very intimate with Miss Featherston, who reached Madame Carimon’s on the Thursday. On the Friday morning Mrs. Fennel called to see her—and, in Nancy’s impromptu way, she invited her and Mary Carimon to take tea at seven o’clock that same evening at the Petite Maison Rouge.

Nancy went home delighted. It was a little divertissement to her present saddened life. Captain Fennel knitted his brow when he heard of the arrangement, but made no objection in words. His wife shrank at the frown.

“Don’t you like my having invited Miss Featherston to tea, Edwin?”

“Oh! I’ve no objection to it,” he carelessly replied.“I am not in love with either Carimon or his wife, and don’t care how little I see of them.”

“He cannot come, having a private class on to-night. And I could not invite Miss Featherston without Mary Carimon,” pleaded Nancy.

“Just so. I am not objecting.”

With this somewhat ungracious assent, Nancy had to content herself. She ordered a gâteau Suisse, the nicest sort of gâteau to be had at Sainteville; and told Flore that she must for once remain for the evening.

The guests appeared punctually at seven o’clock. Such a thing as being invited for one hour, and strolling in an hour or two after it, was a mark ofEnglish breeding never yet heard of in the simple-mannered French town. Miss Featherston, a smart, lively young woman, wore a cherry-coloured silk; Mary Carimon was in black; she had gone into slight mourning for Lavinia. Good little Monsieur Jules had put a small band on his hat.

Captain Fennel was not at home to tea, and the ladies had it all their own way in the matter of talking. What with items of news from the old home, Buttermead, and Stella’s telling about her own plans, the conversation never flagged a moment.

“Yes, that’s what I am going to Paris for,” said Stella, explaining her plans. “I don’t seem likely to marry, for nobody comes to ask me, and I mean to go out in the world and make a little money. It is a sin and a shame that a healthy girl, the eldest of three sisters, should be living upon her poor mother in idleness. Not much of a girl, you may say, for I was three-and-thirty last week! but we all like to pay ourselves compliments when age is in question.”

Nancy laughed. Almost the first time she had laughed since Lavinia’s death.

“So you are going to Paris to learn French, Stella!”

“I am going to Paris to learn French, Nancy,”assented Miss Featherston. “I know it pretty well, but when I come to speak it I am all at sea; and you can’t get out as a governess now unless you speak it fluently. At each of the two situations I applied for in Worcestershire, it was the one fatal objection: ‘We should have liked you, Miss Featherston, but we can only engage a lady who will speak French with the children.’ So I made my mind up to speak French; and I wrote to good Monsieur Jules Carimon, and hehas found me a place to go to in Paris, where not a soul in the household speaks English. He says, and I say, that in six months I shall chatter away like a native,” she concluded, laughing.

XIV.

About nine o’clock Captain Fennel came home. He was gracious to the visitors. Stella Featherston thought his manners were pleasing. Shortly afterwards Charley Palliser called. He apologized for the lateness of the hour, but his errand was a good-natured one. His aunt, Mrs. Hardy, had received a box of delicious candied fruits from Marseilles; she had sent him with a few to Mrs. Fennel, if that lady would kindly accept them. The truth was, every one in Sainteville felt sorry just now for poor Nancy Fennel.

Nancy looked as delighted as a child. She called to Flore to bring plates, turned out the fruits and handed them round. Flore also brought in the gâteau Suisse and glasses, and a bottle of Picardin wine, that the company might regale themselves. Charley Palliser suddenly spoke; he had just thought of something.

“Would it be too much trouble to give me back that book which I lent you a week or two ago—about the plans of the fortifications?” he asked, turning to Captain Fennel. “I want it sometimes for reference in my studies.”

“Not at all; I ought to have returned it to you before this—but the trouble here has driven otherthings out of my head,” replied Captain Fennel. “Let me see—where did I put it? Nancy, do you remember where that book is?—the heavy one, you know, with red edges and a mottled cover.”

“That book? Why, it is on the drawers in our bedroom,” replied Nancy.

“To be sure; I’ll get it,” said Captain Fennel.

His wife called after him to bring down the dominoes also; some one might like a game. The captain did not intend to take the trouble of going himself; he meant to send Flore. But Flore was not in the kitchen, and he took it for granted she was upstairs. In fact, Flore was in the yard at the pump; but he never thought of the yard or the pump. Lighting a candle, he strode upstairs.

He was coming down again, the open box of dominoes and Charley Palliser’s book in one hand, the candlestick in the other, when the same sort of thing seemed to occur which had occurred on Sunday night. Hearing, as he thought, some one close behind him, almost treading, as it were, upon his heels, and thinking it was Flore, he turned his head round, intending to tell her to keep her distance.

Then, with a frightful yell, down dashed Captain Fennel the few remaining stairs, the book, the candlestick, and the box of dominoes all falling in the passage from his nerveless hands. The dominoes were hard and strong, and made a great crash. But it was the yell which had frightened the company in the salon.

They flocked out in doubt and wonder. The candle had gone out; and Charley Palliser was bringing forth the lamp to light up the darkness, when he was nearly knocked down by Captain Fennel. Flore,returning from the pump with her own candle, much damaged by the air of the yard, held it up to survey the scene.

Captain Fennel swept past Charley into the salon, and threw himself into a chair behind the door, after trying to dash it to; but they were trooping in behind him. His breath was short, his terrified face looked livid as one meet for the grave.

“Why, what has happened to you, sir?” asked Charles, intensely surprised.

“Oh! he must have seen the thief again!” shrieked Nancy.

“Shut the door; bolt it!” called out the stricken man.

They did as they were bid. This order, as it struck them all, could only have reference to keeping out some nefarious intruder, such as a thief. Flore had followed them in, after picking up the débris. She put the book and the dominoes on the table, and stood staring over her mistress’s shoulder.

“Has the thief got in again, Edwin?” repeated Mrs. Fennel, who was beginning to tremble. “Did you see him?—or hear him?”

“My foot slipped; it sent me headforemost down the stairs,” spoke the captain at last, conscious, perhaps, that something must be said to satisfy the inquisitive faces around him. “I heard Flore behind me, and——”

“Not me, sir,” put in Flore in her best English. “I was not upstairs at all; I was out at the pump. There is nobody upstairs, sir; there can’t be.” But Captain Fennel only glared at her in answer.

“What did you cry out at?” asked Charles Palliser,speaking soothingly, for he saw that the man was pitiably unstrung. “Have you had a thief in the house? Did you think you saw one?”

“I saw no thief; there has been no thief in the house that I know of; I tell you I slipped—and it startled me,” retorted the captain, his tones becoming savage.

“Then—why did you have the door bolted, captain?”struck in Miss Stella Featherston, who was extremely practical and matter-of-fact, and who could not understand the scene at all.

This time the captain glared at her. Only for a moment; a sickly smile then stole over his countenance.

“Somebody here talked about a thief: I said bolt him out,” answered he.

With this general explanation they had to be contented; but to none of them did it sound natural or straightforward.

Order was restored. The ladies took a glass of wine each and some of the gâteau, which Flore handed round. Charles Palliser said good-night and departed with his book. Captain Fennel went out at the same time. He turned into the café on the Place Ronde, and drank three small glasses of cognac in succession.

“Nancy, what did you mean by talking about a thief?” began Madame Carimon, the whole thing much exercising her mind.

Upon which, Mrs. Fennel treated them all, including Flore, to an elaborate account of her husband’s fright on the Sunday night.

“It was on the stairs; just as it was again now,”she said. “He thought he heard some one followingbehind him as he came up to bed. He fancied it was Flore; but Flore had left hours before. I never saw any one show such terror in all my life. He said it was Flore behind him to-night, and you saw how terrified he was.”

“But if he took it to be Flore, why should he be frightened?” returned Mary Carimon.

“Pardon, mesdames, but it is the same argument I made bold to use to madame,” interposed Flore from the background, where she stood. “There is not anything in me to give people fright.”

“I—think—it must have been,” said Mrs. Fennel, speaking slowly, “that he grew alarmed when he found it was not Flore he saw. Both times.”

“Then who was it that he did see—to startle him like that?” asked Mary Carimon.

“Why, he must have thought it was a thief,” replied Nancy. “There’s nothing else for it.”

At this juncture the argument was brought to a close by the entrance of Monsieur Jules Carimon, who had come to escort his wife and Stella Featherston home.

These curious attacks of terror were repeated; not often, but at a few days’ interval; so that at length Captain Fennel took care not to go about the house alone in the dark. He went up to bed when his wife did; he would not go to the door, if a ring came after Flore’s departure, without a light in his hand. By-and-by he improvised a lamp, which he kept on the slab.

What was it that he was scared at? An impression arose in the minds of the two or three people who were privy to this, that he saw, or fancied he saw, inthe house the spectre of one who had just been carried out of it, Lavinia Preen. Nancy had no such suspicion as yet; she only thought her husband could not be well. She was much occupied about that time, having at length nerved herself to the task of looking over her poor sister’s effects.

One afternoon, when sitting in Lavinia’s room (Flore—who stayed with her for company—had run down to the kitchen to see that the dinner did not burn), Nancy came upon a small, thin green case. Between its leaves she found three one-hundred-franc notes—twelve pounds in English value. She rightly judged that it was all that remained of her sister’s nest-egg, and that she had intended to take it with her to Boulogne.

“Poor Lavinia!” she aspirated, the tears dropping from her eyes. “Every farthing remaining of the quarter’s money she left with me for housekeeping.”

But now a thought came to Nancy. Placing the case on the floor near her, intending to show it to her husband—she was sitting on a stool before one of Lavinia’s boxes—it suddenly occurred to her that it might be as well to say nothing to him about it. He would be sure to appropriate the money to his own private uses: and Nancy knew that she should need some for hers. There would be her mourning to pay for; and——

The room-door was wide open, and at this point in her reflections Nancy heard the captain enter the house with his latch-key, and march straight upstairs. In hasty confusion, she thrust the little case into the nearest hiding-place, which happened to be the front of her black dress bodice.

“Nancy, I have to go to England,” cried the captain.“How hot you look! Can’t you manage to do that without stooping?”

“To go to England!” repeated Nancy, lifting her flushed face.

“Here’s a letter from my brother; the postman gave it me as I was crossing the Place Ronde. It’s only a line or two,” he added, tossing it to her. “I must take this evening’s boat.”

Nancy read the letter. Only a line or two, as he said, just telling the captain to go over with all speed upon a pressing matter of business, and that he could return before the week was ended.

“Oh, but, Edwin, you can’t go,” began Nancy, in alarm. “I cannot stay here by myself.”

“Not go! Why, I must go,” he said very decisively.“How do I know what it is that I am wanted for? Perhaps that property which we are always expecting to fall in.”

“But I should be so lonely. I could not stay here alone.”

“Nonsense!” he sharply answered. “I shall not be away above one clear day; two days at the furthest. This is Thursday, and I shall return by Sunday’s boat. You will only be alone to-morrow and Saturday.”

He turned away, thus putting an end to the discussion, and entered their own room. As Nancy looked after him in despair, it suddenly struck her how very thin and ill he had become; his face worn and grey.

“He wants a change,” she said to herself; “our trouble here has upset him as much as it did me. I’llsay no more; I must not be selfish. Poor Lavinia used to warn me against selfishness.”

So Captain Fennel went off without further opposition, his wife enjoining him to be sure to return on Sunday. The steamer was starting that night at eight o’clock; it was a fine evening, and Nancy walked down to the port with her husband and saw him on board. Nancy met an acquaintance down there; no other than Charley Palliser. They strolled a little in the wake of the departing steamer; Charley then saw her as far as the Place Ronde, and there wished her good-night.

And now an extraordinary thing happened. As Mrs. Fennel opened the door with her latch-key, Flore having left, and was about to enter the dark passage, the same curious and unaccountable terror seized her which had been wont to attack Lavinia. Leaving the door wide open, she dashed up the passage, felt for the match-box, and struck a light. Then, candle in hand, she returned to shut the door; but her whole frame trembled with fear.

“Why, it’s just what poor Lavinia felt!” she gasped. “What on earth can it be? Why should it come to me? I will take care not to go out to-morrow night or Saturday.”

And she held to her decision. Mrs. Hardy sent Charley Palliser to invite her for either day, or both days; Mary Carimon sent Pauline with a note to the same effect; but Nancy returned a refusal in both cases, with her best thanks.

The boat came in on Sunday night, but it did not bring Captain Fennel. On the Sunday morning the post had brought Nancy a few lines from him, sayinghe found the business on which he had been called to London was of great importance, and he was obliged to remain another day or two.

Nancy was frightfully put out: not only vexed, but angry. Edwin had no business to leave her alone like that so soon after Lavinia’s death. She bemoaned her hard fate to several friends on coming out of church, and Mrs. Smith carried her off to dinner. The major was not out that morning—a twinge of gout in the right foot had kept him indoors.

This involved Nancy’s going home alone in the evening, for the major could not walk with her. She did not like it. The same horror came over her before opening the door. She entered somehow, and dashed into the kitchen, hoping the stove was alight: a very silly hope, for Flore had been gone since the afternoon.

Nancy lighted the candle in the kitchen, and then fancied she saw some one looking at her from the open kitchen-door. It looked like Lavinia. It certainly was Lavinia. Nancy stood spell-bound; then she gave a cry of desperate horror and dropped the candlestick.

How she picked it up she never knew; the light had not gone out. Nothing was to be seen then. The apparition, if it had been one, had vanished. She got up to bed somehow, and lay shivering under the bedclothes until morning.

Quite early, when Nancy was at breakfast, Madame Carimon came in. She had already been to the fish-market, and came on to invite Nancy to her house for the day, having heard that Mr. Fennel was still absent. With a scared face and trembling lips, Nancy told her about the previous night—the strange horror of entering which had begun to attack her, the figure of Lavinia at the kitchen-door.

Madame Carimon, listening gravely, took, or appeared to take, a sensible view of it. “You have caught up this fear of entering the house, Nancy, through remembering that it attacked poor Lavinia,”she said. “Impressionable minds—and yours is one of them—take fright just as children catch measles. As to thinking you saw Lavinia——”

“She had on the gown she wore the Sunday she was taken ill: her silver-grey silk, you know,” interrupted Nancy. “She looked at me with a mournful, appealing gaze, just as if she wanted something.”

“Ay, you were just in the mood to fancy something of the kind,” lightly spoke Madame Carimon. “The fright of coming in had done that for you. I dare say you had been talking of Lavinia at Major Smith’s.”

“Well, so we had,” confessed Nancy.

“Just so; she was already on your mind, and therefore that and the fright you were in caused you to fancy you saw her. Nancy, my dear, you cannot imagine the foolish illusions our fancies play us.”

Easily persuaded, Mrs. Fennel agreed that it might have been so. She strove to forget the matter, and went out there and then with Mary Carimon.

But this state of things was to continue. Captain Fennel did not return, and Nancy grew frightened to death at being alone in the house after dark. Flore was unable to stay longer than the time originally agreed for, her old mother being dangerously ill. As dusk approached, Nancy began to hate her destiny. Apart from nervousness, she was sociably inclined, and yearned for company. Now and again the inclination to accept an invitation was too strong to be resisted, or she went out after dinner, uninvited, to this friend or that. But the pleasure was counterbalanced by having to go in again at night; the horror clung to her.

If a servant attended her home, or any gentleman from the house where she had been, she made them go indoors with her whilst she lighted her candle; once she got Monsieur Gustave’s errand-boy to do so. But it was almost as bad with the lighted candle—the first feeling of being in the lonely house after they had gone. She wrote letter after letter, imploring her husband to return. Captain Fennel’s replies were rich in promises: he would be back the very instant business permitted; probably “to-morrow, or the next day.” But he did not come.

One Sunday, when he had been gone about three weeks, and Nancy had been spending the day in the Rue Pomme Cuite, Mary Carimon walked home with her in the evening. Monsieur Jules had gone to see his cousin off by the nine-o’clock train—Mademoiselle Priscille Carimon, who had come in to spend the day with them. She lived at Drecques.

“You will come in with me, Mary?” said Ann Fennel, as they gained the door.

“To be sure I will,” replied Madame Carimon, laughing lightly, for none knew about the fears better than she.

Nancy took her hand as they went up the passage. She lighted the candle at the slab, and they went into the salon. Madame Carimon sat down for a few minutes, by way of reassuring her. Nancy took off her bonnet and mantle. On the table was a smalltray with the tea-things upon it. Flore had left it there in readiness, not quite certain whether her mistress would come in to tea or not.

“I had such a curious dream last night,” began Nancy; “those tea-things put me in mind of it. Lavinia——”

“For goodness’ sake don’t begin upon dreams to-night!”interposed Madame Carimon. “You know they always frighten you.”

“Oh, but this was a pleasant dream, Mary. I thought that I and Lavinia were seated at a little table, with two teacups between us full of tea. The cups were very pretty; pale amber with gilt scrolls, and the china so thin as to be transparent. I can see them now. And Lavinia said something which made me smile; but I don’t remember what it was. Ah, Mary! if she were only back again with us!”

“She is better off, you know,” said Mary Carimon in tender tones.

“All the same, it was a cruel fate that took her; I shall never think otherwise. I wish I knew what it was she died of! Flore told me one day that Monsieur Podevin quite laughed at the idea of its being a chill.”

“Well, Nancy, it was you who stopped it, you know.”

“Stopped what?” asked Nancy.

“The investigation the doctors would have made after death. Both of them were much put out at your forbidding it: for their own satisfaction they wished to ascertain particulars. I may tell you now that I thought you were wrong to interfere.”

“It was Captain Fennel,” said Nancy calmly.

“Captain Fennel!” echoed Mary Carimon. “Monsieur Dupuis told me that Captain Fennel wished for it as much as he and Monsieur Podevin.”

Captain Fennel’s wife shook her head. “They asked him about it before they left, after she died. He came to me, and I said, Oh, let them do what they would; it could not hurt her now she was dead. I was in such terrible distress, Mary, that I hardly knew or cared what I said. Then Edwin drew so dreadful a picture of what post-mortems are, and how barbarously her poor neck and arms would be cut and slashed, that I grew sick and frightened.”

“And so you stopped it—by reason of the picture he drew?”

“Yes. I came running down here to Monsieur Dupuis—Monsieur Podevin had gone—for Edwin said it must be my decision, not his, and his name had better not be mentioned; and I begged and prayed Monsieur Dupuis not to hold it. I think I startled him, good old man. I was almost out of my mind; quite wild with agitation; and he promised me it should be as I wished. That’s how it all was, Mary.”

Mary Carimon’s face wore a curious look. Then she rallied, speaking even lightly.

“Well, well; it could not have brought her back to life; and I repeat that we must remember she is better off. And now, Nancy, I want you to show me the pretty purse that Miss Perry has knitted for you, if you have it at hand.”

Nancy rose, opened her workbox, which stood on the side-table, and brought forth the purse. Of course Madame Carimon’s motive had been to changeher thoughts. After admiring the purse, and talking of other pleasant matters, Mary took her departure.

And the moment the outer door had closed upon her that feeling of terror seized upon Nancy. Catching up her mantle with one hand and the candle with the other, she made for the staircase, leaving her bonnet and gloves in the salon. The staircase struck cold to her, and she could hear the wind whistling, for it was a windy night. As to the candle, it seemed to burn with a pale flame and not to give half its usual light.

In her nervous agitation, just as she gained the uppermost stair, she dropped her mantle. Raising her head from stooping to pick it up, she suddenly saw some figure before her at the end of the passage. It stood beyond the door of her own room, close to that which had been her sister’s.

It was Lavinia. She appeared to be habited in the silver-grey silk already spoken of. Her gaze was fixed upon Nancy, with the same imploring aspect of appeal, as if she wanted something; her pale face was inexpressibly mournful. With a terrible cry, Nancy tore into her own room, the mantle trailing after her. She shut the door and bolted it, and buried her face in the counterpane in wild agony.

And in that moment a revelation came to Ann Fennel. It was this apparition which had been wont to haunt her husband in the house and terrify him beyond control. Not a thief; not Flore—but Lavinia!

XV.

On the Monday morning Flore found her mistress in so sick and suffering and strange a state, that she sent for Madame Carimon. In vain Mary Carimon, after hearing Nancy’s tale, strove to convince her that what she saw was fancy, the effect of diseased nerves. Nancy was more obstinate than a mule.

“What I saw was Lavinia,” she shivered. “Lavinia’s apparition. No good to tell me it was not; I have seen it now twice. It was as clear and evident to me, both times, as ever she herself was in life. That’s what Edwin used to see; I know it now; and he became unable to bear the house. I seem to read it all as in a book, Mary. He got his brother to send for him, and he is staying away because he dreads to come back again. But you know I cannot stay here alone now.”

Madame Carimon wrote off at once to Captain Fennel, Nancy supplying the address. She told him that his wife was ill; in a nervous state; fancying she saw Lavinia in the house. Such a report, she added, should if possible be kept from spreading to the town, and therefore she must advise him to return without delay.

The letter brought back Captain Fennel, Flore having meanwhile remained entirely at the Petite Maison Rouge. Perhaps the captain did not in secret like that little remark of its being well to keep it from the public; he may have considered it suggestive, coming from Mary Carimon. He believed she read him pretty correctly, and he hated her accordingly.Any way, he deemed it well to be on the spot. Left to herself, there was no telling what ridiculous things Nancy might be saying or fancying.

Edwin Fennel did not return alone. His brother’s wife was with him. Mrs. James, they called her, James being the brother’s Christian name. Mrs. James was not a lady in herself or in manner; but she was lively and very good-natured, and these qualities were what the Petite Maison Rouge wanted in it just now; and perhaps that was Captain Fennel’s motive in bringing her. Nancy was delighted. She almost forgot her fears and fancies. Flore was agreeable also, for she was now at liberty to return to ordinary arrangements. Thus there was a lull in the storm. They walked out with Mrs. James on the pier, and took her to see the different points of interest in the town; they even gave a little soirée for her, and in return were invited to other houses.

One day, when the two ladies were gossiping together, Nancy, in the openness of her heart, related to Mrs. James the particulars of Lavinia’s unexpected and rather mysterious death, and of her appearing in the house again after it. Captain Fennel disturbed them in the midst of the story. His wife was taking his name in vain at the moment of his entrance, saying how scared he had been at the apparition.

“Hold your peace, you foolish woman!” he thundered, looking as if he meant to strike her.“Don’t trouble Mrs. James’s head with such miserable rubbish as that.”

Mrs. James did not appear to mind it. She burst into a hearty laugh. She never had seen a ghost, she said, and was sure she never should; there were nosuch things. But she should like to hear all about poor Miss Preen’s death.

“There was nothing else to hear,” the captain growled. “She caught a chill on the Sunday, coming out of the hot church after morning service. It struck inwardly, bringing on inflammation, which the medical men could not subdue.”

“But you know, Edwin, the church never is hot, and you know the doctors decided it was not a chill. Monsieur Podevin especially denied it,” dissented Nancy, who possessed about as much insight as a goose, and a little less tact.

“Then what did she die of?” questioned Mrs. James.“Was she poisoned?”

“Oh, how can you suggest so dreadful a thing!”shrieked Nancy. “Poisoned! Who would be so wicked as to poison Lavinia? Every one loved her.”

Which again amused the listening lady. “You have a quick imagination, Mrs. Edwin,” she laughed.“I was thinking of mushrooms.”

“And I of tinned meats and copper saucepans,”supplemented Captain Fennel. “However, there could be no suspicion even of that sort in Lavinia’s case, since she had touched nothing but what we all partook of. She died of inflammation, Mrs. James.”

“Little doubt of it,” acquiesced Mrs. James. “A friend of mine went, not twelve months ago, to a funeral at Brompton Cemetery; the ground was damp, and she caught a chill. In four days she was dead.”

“Women have no business at funerals,” growled Edwin Fennel. “Why should they parade their grief abroad? You see nothing of the kind in France.”

“In truth I think you are not far wrong,” said Mrs.James. “It is a fashion which has sprung up of late. A few years ago it was as much unknown with us as it is with the French.”

“They will be catching it up next, I suppose,”retorted the captain, as if the thing were a personal grievance to him.

“Little doubt of it,” laughed Mrs. James.

After staying at Sainteville for a month, Mrs. James Fennel took her departure for London. Captain Fennel proposed to escort her over; but his wife went into so wild a state at the mere mention of it, that he had to give it up.

“I dare not stay in the house by myself, Edwin,”she shuddered. “I should go to the Vice-Consul and to other influential people here, and tell them of my misery—that I am afraid of seeing Lavinia.”

And Captain Fennel believed she would be capable of doing it. So he remained with her.

That the spectre of the dead-and-gone Lavinia did at times appear to them, or else their fancies conjured up the vision, was all too certain. Three times during the visit of Mrs. James the captain had been betrayed into one of his fits of terror: no need to ask what had caused it. After her departure the same thing took place. Nancy had not again seen anything, but she knew he had.

“We shall not be able to stay in the house, Edwin,”his wife said to him one evening when they were sitting in the salon at dusk after Flore’s departure; nothing having led up to the remark.

“I fancy we should be as well out of it,” replied he.

“Oh, Edwin, let us go! If we can! There will be all the rent to pay up first.”

“All the what?” said he.

“The rent,” repeated Nancy; “up to the end of the term we took it for. About three years longer, I think, Edwin. That would be sixty pounds.”

“And where do you suppose the sixty pounds would come from?”

“I don’t know. There’s the impediment, you see,”remarked Nancy blankly. “We cannot leave without paying up.”

“Unless we made a moonlight flitting of it, my dear.”

“That I never will,” she rejoined, with a firmness he could not mistake. “You are only jesting, Edwin.”

“It would be no jesting matter to pay up that claim, and others; for there are others. Our better plan, Nancy, will be to go off by the London boat some night, and not let any one know where we are until I can come back to pay. You may see it is the only thing to be done, and you must bring your mind to it.”

“Never by me,” said Nancy, strong in her innate rectitude. “As to hiding ourselves anywhere, that can never be; I should not conceal my address from Mary Carimon—I could not conceal it from Colonel Selby.”

Captain Fennel ground his teeth. “Suppose I say that this shall be, that we will go, and order you to obey me? What then?”

“No, Edwin, I could not. I should go in to Monsieur Gustave Sauvage, and say to him, ‘We were thinking of running away, but I cannot do it; please put me in prison until I can pay the debt.’ And then——”

“Are you an idiot?” asked Captain Fennel, staring at her.

“And then, when I was in prison,” went on Nancy,“I should write to tell William Selby; and perhaps he would come over and release me. Please don’t talk in this kind of way again, Edwin. I should keep my word.”

Mr. Edwin Fennel could not have felt more astounded had his wife then and there turned into a dromedary before his eyes. She had hitherto been tractable as a child. But he had never tried her in a thing that touched her honour, and he saw that the card which he had intended to play was lost.

Captain Fennel played another. He went away himself.

Making the best he could of the house and its haunted state (though day by day saw him looking more and more like a walking skeleton) throughout the greater part of June, for the summer had come in, he despatched his wife to Pontipette one market day—Saturday—to remain there until the following Wednesday. Old Mrs. Hardy had gone to the homely but comfortable hotel at Pontipette for a change, and she wrote to invite Nancy to stay a short time with her. Charles Palliser was in England. Captain Fennel proceeded to London by that same Saturday night’s boat, armed with a letter from his wife to Colonel Selby, requesting the colonel to pay over to her husband her quarterly instalment instead of sending it to herself. Captain Fennel had bidden her do this; and Nancy, of strict probity in regard to other people’s money, could not resist signing over her own.

“But you will be sure to bring it all back, won’tyou, Edwin? and to be here by Wednesday, the day I return?” she said to him.

“Why, of course I shall, my dear.”

“It will be a double portion now—thirty-five pounds.”

“And a good thing, too; we shall want it,” he returned.

“Indeed, yes; there’s such a heap of things owing for,” concluded Nancy.

Thus the captain went over to England in great glee, carrying with him the order for the money. But he was reckoning without his host.

Upon presenting himself at the bank in the City on Monday morning, he found Colonel Selby absent; not expected to return before the end of that week, or the beginning of the next. This was a check for Captain Fennel. He quite glared at the gentleman who thus informed him—Mr. West, who sat in the colonel’s room, and was his locum tenens for the time being.

“Business is transacted all the same, I conclude?”said he snappishly.

“Why, certainly,” replied Mr. West, marvelling at the absurdity of the question. “What can I do for you?”

Captain Fennel produced his wife’s letter, requesting that her quarter’s money should be paid over to him, and handed in her receipt for the same. Mr. West read them both, the letter twice, and then looked direct through his silver-rimmed spectacles at the applicant.

“I cannot do this,” said he; “it is a private matter of Colonel Selby’s.”

“It is not more private than any other payment you may have to make,” retorted Captain Fennel.

“Pardon me, it is. This really does not concern the bank at all. I cannot pay it without Colonel Selby’s authority: he has neither given it nor mentioned it to me. Another thing: the payment, as I gather from the wording of Mrs. Ann Fennel’s letter, is not yet due. Upon that score, apart from any other, I should decline to pay it.”

“It will be due in two or three days. Colonel Selby would not object to forestall the time by that short period.”

“That would, of course, be for the colonel’s own consideration.”

“I particularly wish to receive the money this morning.”

Mr. West shook his head in answer. “If you will leave Mrs. Fennel’s letter and receipt in my charge, sir, I will place them before the colonel as soon as he returns. That is all I can do. Or perhaps you would prefer to retain the latter,” he added, handing back the receipt over the desk.

“Business men are the very devil to stick at straws,” muttered Captain Fennel under his breath. He saw it was no use trying to move the one before him, and went out, saying he would call in a day or two.

Now it happened that Colonel Selby, who was only staying at Brighton for a rest (for he had been very unwell of late), took a run up to town that same Monday morning to see his medical attendant. His visit paid, he went on to the bank, surprising Mr. West there about one o’clock. After some conferenceupon business matters, Mr. West spoke of Captain Fennel’s visit, and handed over the letter he had left.

Colonel Selby drew in his lips as he read it. He did not like Mr. Edwin Fennel; and he would most assuredly not pay Ann Fennel’s money to him. He returned the letter to Mr. West.

“Should the man come here again, West, tell him, as you did this morning, that he can see me on my return—which will probably be on this day week,”said the colonel. “No need to say I have been up here to-day.”

And on the following day, Tuesday, Colonel Selby, being then at Brighton, drew out a cheque for the quarter almost due and sent it by post to Nancy at Sainteville.

Thus checkmated in regard to the money, Captain Fennel did not return home at the time he promised, even if he had had any intention of doing so. When Nancy returned to Sainteville on the Wednesday from Pontipette, he was not there. The first thing she saw waiting for her on the table was Colonel Selby’s letter containing the cheque for five-and-thirty pounds.

“How glad I am it has come to me so soon!” cried Nancy; “I can pay the bills now. I suppose William Selby thinks it would not be legal to pay it to Edwin.”

The week went on. Each time a boat came in, Nancy was promenading the port, expecting to see her husband land from it. On the Sunday morning Nancy received a letter from him, in which he told her he was waiting to see Colonel Selby, to get the money paid to him. Nancy wrote back hastily, saying it had been received by herself, and that she had paid it nearly all away in settling the bills. Shebegged him to come back by the next boat. Flore was staying in the house altogether, but at an inconvenience.

On the Monday evening Mrs. Fennel had another desperate fright. She went to take tea with an elderly lady and her daughter, Mrs. and Miss Lambert, bidding Flore to come for her at half-past nine o’clock. Half-past nine came, but no Flore; ten o’clock came, and then Mrs. Fennel set off alone, supposing Flore had misunderstood her and would be found waiting for her at home. The moonlit streets were crowded with promenaders returning from their summer evening walk upon the pier.

Nancy rang the bell; but it was not answered. She had her latch-key in her pocket, but preferred to be admitted, and she rang again. No one came.“Flore must have dropped asleep in the kitchen,” she petulantly thought, and drew out her key.

“Flore!” she called out, pushing the door back.“Flore, where are you?”

Flore apparently was nowhere, very much to the dismay of Mrs. Fennel. She would have to go in alone, all down the dark passage, and wake her up. Leaving the door wide open, she advanced in the dark with cautious steps, the old terror full upon her.

The kitchen was dark also, so far as fire or candlelight went, but a glimmer of moonlight shone in at the window. “Are you not here, Flore?” shivered Nancy. But there was no response.

Groping for the match-box on the mantel-shelf over the stove, and not at once finding it, Nancy suddenly took up an impression that some one wasstanding in the misty rays of the moon. Gazing attentively, it seemed to assume the shadowy form of Lavinia. And with a shuddering cry Nancy Fennel fell down upon the brick floor of the kitchen.

XVI.

It was a lovely summer’s day, and Madame Carimon’s neat little slip of a kitchen was bright and hot with the morning sun. Madame, herself, stood before the paste-board, making a green-apricot tart. Of pies and tarts à la mode Anglaise, Monsieur Jules was more fond than a schoolboy; and of all tarts known to the civilized world, none can equal that of a green apricot.

Madame had put down the rolling-pin, and stood for the moment idle, looking at Flore Pamart, and listening to something that Flore was saying. Flore, whisking out of the Petite Maison Rouge a few minutes before, ostensibly to do her morning’s marketings, had whisked straight off to the Rue Pomme Cuite, and was now seated at the corner of the pastry-table, telling a story to Madame Carimon.

“It was madame’s own fault,” she broke off in her tale to remark. “Madame will give me her orders in French, and half the time I can’t understand them. She had an engagement to take tea at Madame Smith’s in the Rue Lambeau, was what I thought she said to me, and that I must present myself there at half-past nine to walk home with her. Well, madame, I went accordingly, and found nobody at home there but the bonne, Thomasine. Her master was dining out at the Sous-préfet’s, and her mistress had gone out with some more ladies to walk on the pier, as it was so fine an evening. Naturally I thought my mistress was one of the ladies, and sat there waiting for her and chatting with Thomasine. Madame Smith came in at ten o’clock, and then she said that my lady had not been there and that she had not expected her.”

“She must have gone to tea elsewhere,” observed Madame Carimon.

“Clearly, madame; as I afterwards found. It was to Madame Lambert’s, in the Rue Lothaire, that I ought to have gone. I could only go home, as madame sees; and when I arrived there I found the house-door wide open. Just as I entered, a frightful cry came from the kitchen, and there I found her dropped down on the floor, half senseless with terror. Madame, she avowed to me that she had seen Mademoiselle Lavinia standing near her in the moonlight.”

Madame Carimon took up her rolling-pin slowly before she spoke. “I know she has a fancy that she appears in the house.”

“Madame Carimon, I think she is in the house,”said Flore solemnly. And for a minute or two Madame Carimon rolled her paste in silence.

“Monsieur Fennel used to see her—I am sure he did—and now his wife sees her,” went on the woman.“I think that is the secret of his running away so much: he can’t bear the house and what is haunting it.”

“It is altogether a dreadful thing; I lie awake thinking of it,” bewailed Mary Carimon.

“But it cannot be let go on like this,” said Flore;“and that’s what has brought me running here this morning—to ask you, madame, whether anything can be done. If she is left alone to see these sights, she’ll die of it. When she got up this morning she was shivering like a leaf in the wind. Has madame noticed that she is wasting away? For the matter of that, so was Monsieur Fennel.”

Madame Carimon, beginning to line her shallow dish with paste, nodded in assent. “He ought to be here with her,” she remarked.

“Catch him,” returned Flore, in a heat. “Pardon, madame, but I must avow I trust not that gentleman. He is no good. He will never come back to stay at the house so long as there is in it—what is there. He dare not; and I would like to ask him why not. A man with the conscience at ease could not be that sort of coward. Honest men do not fly away, all scared, when they fancy they see a revenant.”

Deeming it might be unwise to pursue the topic from this point, Madame Carimon said she would go and see Mrs. Fennel in the course of the day, and Flore clattered off, her wooden shoes echoing on the narrow pavement of the Rue Pomme Cuite.

But, as Madame Carimon was crossing the Place Ronde in the afternoon to pay her visit, she met Mrs. Fennel. Of course, Flore’s communication was not to be mentioned.

“Ah,” said Madame Carimon readily, “is it you? I was coming to ask if you would like to take a walk on the pier with me. It is a lovely afternoon, and not too hot.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” said Nancy. “I came out because it is so miserable at home. When Flore went off to thefish-market after breakfast, I felt more lonely than you would believe. Mary,” dropping her voice, “I saw Lavinia last night.”

“Now I won’t listen to that,” retorted Mary Carimon, as if she were reprimanding a child. “Once give in to our nerves and fancies, there’s no end to the tricks they play us. I wish, Ann, your house were in a more lively situation, where you might sit at the window and watch the passers-by.”

“But it isn’t,” said Nancy sensibly. “It looks upon nothing but the walls.”

Walking on, they sat down upon a bench that stood back from the port, facing the harbour. Nearly opposite lay the English boat, busily loading for London. The sight made Nancy sigh.

“I wish it would bring Edwin the next time it comes in,” she said in low tones.

“When do you expect him?”

“I don’t know when,” said poor Nancy with emphasis. “Mary, I am beginning to think he stays away because he is afraid of seeing Lavinia.”

“Men are not afraid of those foolish things, Ann.”

“He is. Recollect those fits of terror he had. He used to hear her following him up and downstairs; used to see her on the landings.”

Madame Carimon found no ready answer. She had witnessed one of those fits of terror herself.

“Last night,” went on Mrs. Fennel, after a pause,“when Flore had left me and I could only shiver in my bed, and not expect to sleep, I became calm enough to ask myself why Lavinia should come back again, and what it is she wants. Can you think why, Mary?”

“Not I,” said Madame Carimon lightly. “I shall only believe she does come when she shows herself to me.”

“And I happened on the thought that, possibly, she may be wanting us to inquire into the true cause of her death. It might have been ascertained at the time, but for my stopping the action of the doctors, you know.”

“Ann, my dear, you should exercise a little common sense. I would ask you what end ascertaining it now would answer, to her, dead, or to you, living?”

“It might be seen that she could have been cured, had we only known what the malady was.”

“But you did not know; the doctors did not know. It could only have been discovered, even at your showing, after her death, not in time to save her.”

“I wish Monsieur Dupuis had come more quickly on the Monday night!” sighed Nancy. “I am always wishing it. You can picture what it was, Mary—Lavinia lying in that dreadful agony and no doctor coming near her. Edwin was gone so long—so long! He could not wake up Monsieur Dupuis. I think now that the bell was out of order.”

“Why do you think that now? Captain Fennel must have known whether the bell answered to his summons, or not.”

“Well,” returned Nancy, “this morning when Flore returned with the fish, she said I looked very ill. She had just seen Monsieur Dupuis in the Place Ronde, and she ran out again and brought him in——”

“Did you mention to him this fancy of seeing Lavinia?” hastily interrupted Madame Carimon.

“No, no; I don’t talk of that to people. Only toyou and Flore; and—yes—I did tell Mrs. Smith. I let Monsieur Dupuis think I was ill with grieving after Lavinia, and we talked a little about her. I said how I wished he could have been here sooner on the Monday night, and that my husband had rung several times before he could arouse him. Monsieur Dupuis said that was a mistake; he had got up and come as soon as he was called; he was not asleep at the time, and the bell had rung only once.”

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Mary Carimon. “I know your husband said he rang many times.”

“That’s why I now think the bell must have been out of order; but I did not say so to Monsieur Dupuis,” returned Nancy. “He is a kind old man, and it would grieve him: for of course we know doctors ought to keep their door-bells in order.”

Madame Carimon rose in silence, but full of thought, and they continued their walk. It was low water in the harbour, but the sun was sparkling and playing on the waves out at sea. On the pier they found Rose and Anna Bosanquet; and in chatting with them Nancy’s mood became more cheerful.

That same evening, on that same pier, Mary Carimon spoke a few confidential words to her husband. They sat at the end of it, and the beauty of the night, so warm and still, induced them to linger. The bright moon sailed grandly in the heavens and glittered upon the water that now filled the harbour, for the tide was in. Most of the promenaders had turned down the pier again, after watching out the steamer. What a fine passage she would make, and was making, cutting there so smoothly through the crystal sea!

Mary Carimon began in a low voice, though no one was near to listen and the waves could not hear her. She spoke pretty fully of a haunting doubt that lay upon her mind, as to whether Lavinia had died a natural death.

“If we make the best of it,” she concluded, “her dying in that strangely sudden way was unusual; you know that, Jules; quite unaccountable. It never hasbeen accounted for.”

Monsieur Jules, gazing on the gentle waves as they rose and fell in the moonlight at the mouth of the harbour, answered nothing.

“He had so much to wish her away for, that man: all the money would become Nancy’s. And I’m sure there was secret enmity between them—on both sides. Don’t you see, Jules, how suspicious it all looks?”

The moonbeams, illumining Monsieur Jules Carimon’s face, showed it to be very impassive, betraying no indication that he as much as heard what his wife was talking about.

“I have not forgotten, I can never forget, Jules, the very singular Fate-reading, or whatever you may please to call it, spoken by the Astrologer Talcke last winter at Miss Bosanquet’s soirée. You were not in the room, you know, but I related it to you when we arrived home. He certainly foretold Lavinia’s death, as I, recalling the words, look upon it now. He said there was some element of evil in their house, threatening and terrible; he repeated it more than once. In their house, Jules, and that it would end in darkness; which, as every one understood, meant death: not for Mrs. Fennel; he took care to tell her that; but for another. He said the cards were more fateful thanhe had ever seen them. That evil in the house was Fennel.”

Still Monsieur Jules offered no comment.

“And what could be the meaning of those dreams Lavinia had about him, in which he always seemed to be preparing to inflict upon her some fearful ill, and she knew she never could and never would escape from it?” ran on Mary Carimon, her eager, suppressed tones bearing a gruesome sound in the stillness of the night. “And what is the explanation of the fits of terror which have shaken Fennel since the death, fancying he sees Lavinia? Flore said to me this morning that she is sure Lavinia is in the house.”

Glancing at her husband to see that he was at least listening, but receiving no confirmation of it by word or motion, Mary Carimon continued:

“Those dreams came to warn her, Jules. To warn her to get out of the house while she could. And she made arrangements to go, and in another day or two would have been away in safety. But he was too quick for her.”

Monsieur Jules Carimon turned now to face his wife. “Mon amie, tais toi,” said he with authority.“Such a topic is not convenable,” he added, still in French, though she had spoken in English. “It is dangerous.”

“But, Jules, I believe it to have been so.”

“All the same, and whether or no, it is not your affair, Marie. Neither must you make it so. Believe me, my wife, the only way to live peaceably ourselves in the world is to let our neighbours’ sins alone.”

XVII.

Captain Edwin Fennel was certainly in no hurry to return to Sainteville, for he did not come. Nancy, ailing, weak, wretchedly uncomfortable, wrote letter after letter to him, generally sending them over by some friend or other who might be crossing, to be put in a London letter-box, and so evade the foreign postage. Once or twice she had written to Mrs. James, telling of her lonely life and that she wanted Edwin either to take her out of the dark and desolate house, or else to come back to it himself. Captain Fennel would answer now and again, promising to come—she would be quite sure to see him on one of the first boats if she looked out for their arrival. Nancy did look, but she had not yet seen him. She was growing visibly thinner and weaker. Sainteville said how ill Mrs. Fennel was looking.

One evening at the end of July, when the London steamer was due about ten o’clock, Nancy went to watch it in, as usual, Flore attending her. The port was gay, crowded with promenaders. There had been a concert at the Rooms, and the company was coming home from it. Mrs. Fennel had not made one: latterly she had felt no spirit for amusement. Several friends met her; she did not tell them she had come down to meet her husband, if haply he should be on the expected boat; she had grown tired and half ashamed of saying that; she let them think she was only out for a walk that fine evening. There was a yellow glow still in the sky where the sun had set; the north-west was clear and bright with its opal light.

The time went on; the port became deserted, excepting a few passing stragglers. Ten o’clock had struck, eleven would soon strike. Flore and her mistress, tired of pacing about, sat down on one of the benches facing the harbour. One of two young men, passing swiftly homewards from the pier, found himself called to.

“Charley! Charley Palliser!”

Charles turned, and recognized Mrs. Fennel. Stepping across to her, he shook hands.

“What do you think can have become of the boat?” she asked. “It ought to have been in nearly an hour ago.”

“Oh, it will be here shortly,” he replied. “The boat often makes a slow passage when there’s no wind. What little wind we have had to-day has been dead against it.”

“As I’ve just said to madame,” put in Flore, always ready to take up the conversation. “Mr. Charles knows there’s no fear it has gone down, though it may be a bit late.”

“Why, certainly not,” laughed Charley. “Are you waiting here for it, Mrs. Fennel?”

“Ye—s,” she answered, but with hesitation.

“And as it’s not even in sight yet, madame had much better go home and not wait, for the air is getting chilly,” again spoke Flore.

“We can’t see whether it’s in sight or not,” said her mistress. “It is dark out at sea.”

“Shall I wait here with you, Mrs. Fennel?” asked Charley in his good nature.

“Oh no, no; no, thank you,” she answered quickly.“If it does not come in soon, we shall go home.”

He wished them good-night, and went onwards.

“She is hoping the boat may bring that mysterious brute, Fennel,” remarked Charles to his companion.

“Brute, you call him?”

“He is no better than one, to leave his sick wife alone so long,” responded Charles in hearty tones.“She has picked up an idea, I hear, that the house is haunted, and shakes in her shoes in it from morning till night.”

The two watchers sat on, Flore grumbling. Not for herself, but for her mistress. A sea-fog was rising, and Flore thought madame might take cold. Mrs. Fennel wrapped her light fleecy shawl closer about her chest, and protested she was quite hot. The shawl was well enough for a warm summer’s night, but not for a cold sea-fog. About half-past eleven there suddenly loomed into view through the mist the lights of the steamer, about to enter the harbour.

“There she is!” exultingly cried Nancy, who had been shivering inwardly for some time past, and doing her best not to shiver outwardly for fear of Flore. “And now, Flore, you go home as quickly as you can and make a fire in the salon to warm us. I’m sure he will need one—at sea in this cold fog.”

“If he is come,” mentally returned Flore in her derisive heart. She had no faith in the return of Monsieur Fennel by any boat, a day or a night one. But she needed no second prompting to hasten away; was too glad to do it.

Poor Nancy waited on. The steamer came very slowly up the port, or she fancied so; one must be cautious in a fog; and it seemed to her a long timeswinging round and settling itself into its place. Then the passengers came on shore one by one, Nancy standing close to look at them. There were only about twenty in all, and Captain Fennel was not one of them. With misty eyes and a rising in her throat and spiritless footsteps, Nancy arrived at her home, the Petite Maison Rouge. Flore had the fire burning in the salon; but Nancy was too thoroughly chilled for any salon fire to warm her.

The cold she caught that night stuck to her chest. For some days afterwards she was very ill indeed. Monsieur Dupuis attended her, and brought his son once or twice, Monsieur Henri. Nancy got up again, and was, so to say, herself once more; but she did not get up her strength.

She would lie on the sofa in the salon those August days, which were very hot ones, too languid to get off it. Friends would call in to see her; Major and Mrs. Smith, the Miss Bosanquets, the Lamberts, and so on. Madame Carimon was often there. They would ask her why she did not “make an effort” and sit up and occupy herself with a book or a bit of work, or go out a little; and Nancy’s answer was nearly always the same—she would do all that when the weather was somewhat cooler. Charley Palliser was quite a constant visitor. An English damsel, who was casting a covetous eye to Charles, though she might have spared herself the pains, took a fit of jealousy and said one might think sick Nancy Fennel was his sweetheart, going there so often. Charley rarely went empty-handed either. Now it would be half-a-dozen nectarines in their red-ripe loveliness, now some choice peaches, then a bunch of hot-house grapes,“purple and gushing,” and again an amusing novel just out in England.

“Mary, she is surely dying!”

The sad exclamation came from Stella Featherston. She and Madame Carimon, going in to take tea at the Petite Maison Rouge, had been sent by its mistress to her chamber above to take off their bonnets. The words had broken from Stella the moment they were alone.

“Sometimes I fear it myself,” replied Madame Carimon. “She certainly grows weaker instead of stronger.”

“Does any doctor attend her?”

“Monsieur Dupuis; a man of long experience, kind and clever. I was talking to him the other day, and he as good as said his skill and care seemed to avail nothing: were wasted on her.”

“Is it consumption?”

“I think not. She caught a dreadful cold about a month ago through being out in a night fog, thinly clad; and there’s no doubt it left mischief behind; but it seems to me that she is wasting away with inward fever.”

“I should get George to run over to see her, if I were you, Mary,” remarked Stella. “French doctors are very clever, I believe, especially as surgeons; but for an uncertain case like this they don’t come up to the English. And George knows her constitution.”

They went down to the salon, Mary Carimon laughing a little at the remark. Stella Featherston had not been long enough in France to part with hernative prejudices. The family with whom she lived in Paris had journeyed to Sainteville for a month for what they called “les eaux,” and Stella accompanied them. They were in lodgings on the port.

Mrs. Fennel seemed more like her old self that evening than she had been for some time past. The unexpected presence of her companion of early days changed the tone of her mind and raised her spirits. Stella exerted all her mirth, talked of their doings in the past, told of Buttermead’s doings in the present. Nancy was quite gay.

“Do you ever sing now, Stella?” she suddenly asked.

“Why, no,” laughed Stella, “unless I am quite alone. Who would care to hear old ditties sung without music?”

“I should. Oh, Stella, sing me a few!” urged the invalid, her tone quite imploring. “It would bring the dear old days back to me.”

Stella Featherston had a most melodious voice, but she did not play. It was not unusual in those days for girls to sing without any accompaniment, as Stella had for the most part done.

“Have you forgotten your Scotch songs, Stella?”asked Mary Carimon.

“Not I; I like them best of all,” replied Miss Featherston. And without more ado she broke into“Ye banks and braes.”

It was followed by “The Banks of Allan Water,”and others. Flore stole to the parlour-door, and thought she had never heard so sweet a singer. Last of all, Stella began a quaint song that was more of a chant than anything else, low and subdued:

“Woe’s me, for my heart is breakin’,

I think on my brither sma’,

And on my sister greetin’,

When I cam’ from home awa’.

And O, how my mither sobbit,

As she took from me her hand,

When I left the door of our old house

To come to this stranger land.

“There’s nae place like our ain home,

O, I would that I were there!

There’s nae home like our ain home

To be met wi’ onywhere.

And O, that I were back again

To our farm and fields sae green,

And heard the tongues of our ain folk,

And was what I hae been!”

A feeling of despair ran through the whole words; and the tears were running down Ann Fennel’s hectic cheeks as the melody died away in a plaintive silence.

“It is what I shall never see again, Stella,” she murmured—“the green fields of our home; or hear the tongues of all the dear ones there. In my dreams, sometimes, I am at Selby Court, light-hearted and happy, as I was before I left it for this ‘stranger land.’ Woe’s me, also, Stella!”

And now I come into the story—I, Johnny Ludlow. For what I have told of it hitherto has not been from any personal knowledge of mine, but from diaries, and from what Mary Carimon related to me, and from Featherston. It may be regarded as singular that I should have been, so to say, present at its ending, but that I was there is as true as anything I ever wrote. The story itself is true in all its chief facts; I have already said that; and it is true that I saw the close of it.

XVIII.

To say that George Featherston, Doctor-in-ordinary at Buttermead, felt as if he were standing on his head instead of his heels, would not in the least express his mental condition as he stood in his surgery that September afternoon and read a letter, just delivered, from his sister, Madame Carimon.

“Wants me to go to Sainteville to see Ann Preen; thinks she will die if I refuse, for the French doctors can do nothing for her!” commented Featherston, staring at the letter in intense perplexity, and then looking off it to stare at me.

I wonder whether anything in this world happens by chance? In the days and years that have gone by since, I sometimes ask myself whether that did: that I should be at that particular moment in Featherston’s surgery. Squire Todhetley was staying with Sir John Whitney for partridge shooting. He had taken me with him, Tod being in Gloucestershire; and on this Friday afternoon I had run in to say “How-d’ye-do”to Featherston.

“Sainteville!” repeated he, quite unable to collect his senses. “Why, I must cross the water to getthere!”

I laughed. “Did you think Sainteville would cross to you, sir?”

“Bless me! just listen to this,” he went on, reading parts of the letter aloud for my benefit. “‘It is a dreadful story, George; I dare not enter into details here. But I may tell you this much: that she is dying of fright as much as of fever—or whatever itmay be that ails her physically. I am sure it is not consumption, though some of the people here think it is. It is fright and superstition. She lives in the belief that the house is haunted: that Lavinia’s ghost walks in it.’”

“Now what on earth can Mary mean by that?”demanded the doctor, looking off to ask me. “Ann Preen’s wits must have left her. And Mary’s too, to repeat so nonsensical a thing.”

Turning to the next page of the letter, Featherston read on.

“‘To see her dying by inches before my eyes, and not make any attempt to, save her is what I cannot reconcile myself to, George. I should have it on my conscience afterwards. I think there is this one chance for her: that you, who have attended her before and must know her constitution, would see her now. You might be able to suggest some remedy or mode of treatment which would restore her. It might even be that the sight of a home face, of her old home doctor, would do for her what the strange doctors here cannot do. No one knows better than you how marvellously in illness the mind influences the body.’

“True enough,” broke off Featherston. “But it seems to me there must be something mysterious about the sickness.” He read on again.

“‘Stella, who is here, was the first to suggest your seeing her, but it was already exercising my thoughts. Do come, George! the sooner the better. I and Jules will be delighted to have you with us.’”

Featherston slowly folded up the letter. “What do you think of all this, Johnny Ludlow? Curious, is it not?”

“Very. Especially that hint about the house being haunted by the dead-and-gone Miss Preen.”

“I have never heard clearly what it was Lavinia Preen died of,” observed Featherston, leaving, doctor-like, the supernatural for the practical. “Except that she was seized with some sort of illness one day and died the next.”

“But that’s no reason why her ghost should walk. Is it?”

“Nancy’s imagination,” spoke Featherston slightingly.“She was always foolish and fanciful.”

“Shall you go to Sainteville, Mr. Featherston?”

He gave his head a slow, dubious shake, but did not speak.

“Don’t I wish such a chance were offered to me!”

Featherston sat down on a high stool, which stood before the physic shelves, to revolve the momentous question. And by the time he took over it, he seemed to find it a difficult task.

“One hardly likes to refuse the request, put as Mary writes it,” remarked he presently. “Yet I don’t see how I can go all the way over there; or how I could leave my patients here. What a temper some of them would be in!”

“They wouldn’t die of it. It would be a rare holiday for you. Set you up in health for a year to come.”

“I’ve not had a holiday since that time at Pumpwater,”he rejoined dreamily; “when I went over for a day or two to see poor John Whitney. You remember it, Johnny; you were there.”

“Ay, I remember it.”

“Not that this is a question of a holiday for me orno holiday, and I wonder you should put it so, Johnny Ludlow; it turns upon Ann Preen. Ann Fennel, that’s to say. If I thought I could do her any good, and those French doctors can’t, why, I suppose I ought to make an effort to go.”

“To be sure. Make one also to take me with you!”

“I dare say!” laughed Featherston. “What would the Squire say to that?”

“Bluster a bit, and then see it was the very thing for me, and ask what the cost would be. Mr. Featherston, I shall be ready to start when you are. Please let me go!”

Of course I said this half in jest. But it turned out to be earnest. Whether Featherston feared he might get lost if he crossed the sea alone, I can’t say; but he said I might put the question to the Squire if I liked, and he would see him later and second it.

Featherston did another thing. He carried Mary Carimon’s letter that evening to Selby Court. Colonel Selby was staying with his brother for a week’s shooting. Mr. Selby, a nervous valetudinarian, would not have gone out with a gun if bribed to it, but he invited his friends to do so. They had just finished dinner when Featherston arrived; the two brothers, and a short, dark, younger man with a rather keen but good-natured face and kindly dark eyes. He was introduced as Mr. David Preen, and turned out to be a cousin, more or less removed, of all the Preens and all the Selbys you have ever heard of, dead or living.

Featherston imparted his news to them, and showed his sister’s letter. It was pronounced to be a very curious letter, and was read over more than once.Colonel Selby next told them what he knew and what he thought of Edwin Fennel: how he had persistently schemed to get the quarterly money of the two ladies into his own covetous hands, and what a shady sort of individual he was believed to be. Mr. Selby, nervous at the best of times, let alone the worst, became painfully impressed: he seemed to fear poor Nancy was altogether in a hornet’s nest, and gave an impulsive opinion that some one of the family ought to go over with Featherston to look into things.

“Lavinia can’t have been murdered, can she?” cried he, his thoughts altogether confused; “murdered by that man for her share of the money? Why else should her ghost come back?”

“Don’t make us laugh, Paul,” said the colonel to his brother. “Ghosts are all moonshine. There are no such things.”

“I can tell you that there are, William,” returned the elder. “Though mercifully the power to see them is accorded to very few mortals on earth. Can you go with Mr. Featherston to look into this strange business, William?”

“No,” replied the colonel, “I could not possibly spare the time. Neither should I care to do it. Any inquiry of that kind would be quite out of my line.”

“I will go,” quietly spoke David Preen.

“Do so, David,” said Mr. Selby eagerly. “It shall cost you nothing, you know.” By which little speech, Featherston gathered that Mr. David Preen was not more overdone with riches than were many of the other Preens.

“Look into it well, David. See the doctor who attended Lavinia; see all and every one able to throwany light upon her death,” urged Mr. Selby. “As to Ann, she was lamentably, foolishly blamable to marry as she did, but she must not be left at the villain’s mercy now things have come to this pass.”

To which Mr. David Preen nodded an emphatic assent.

The Squire gave in at last. Not to my pleading—he accused me of having lost my head only to think of it—but to Featherston. And when the following week was wearing away, the exigencies of Featherston’s patients not releasing him sooner, we started for Sainteville; he, I, and David Preen. Getting in at ten at night after a boisterous passage, Featherston took up his quarters at Monsieur Carimon’s, we ours at the Hôtel des Princes.

She looked very ill. Ill and changed. I had seen Ann Preen at Buttermead when she lived there, but the Ann Preen (or Fennel) I saw now was not much like her. The once bright face was drawn and fallen in, and very nearly as long and grey as Featherston’s. Apart from that, a timid, shrinking look sat upon it, as though she feared some terror lay very near to her.

The sick have to be studied, especially when suffering from whims and fancies. So they invented a little fable to Mrs. Fennel—that Featherston and David Preen were taking an excursion together for their recreation, and the doctor had extended it as far as Sainteville to see his sister Mary; never allowing her to think that it was to see her. I was with them, but I went for nobody—and in truth that’s all I was in the matter.

It was the forenoon of the day after we arrived. David Preen had gone in first, her kinsman anddistant cousin, to the Petite Maison Rouge, paving the way, as it were, for Featherston. We went in presently. Mrs. Fennel sat in a large armchair by the salon fire, wrapped in a grey shawl; she was always cold now, she told us; David Preen sat on the sofa opposite, talking pleasantly of home news. Featherston joined him on the sofa, and I sat down near the table.

Oh, she was glad to see us! Glad to see us all. Ours were home faces, you see. She held my hands in hers, and the tears ran down her face, betraying her state of weakness.

“You have not been very well of late, Mary tells me,” Featherston said to her in a break of the conversation.“What has been the matter?”

“I—it came on from a bad cold I caught,” she answered with some hesitation. “And there was all the trouble about Lavinia’s death. I could not get over the grief.”

“Well, I must say you don’t look very robust,”returned Featherston, in a half-joking tone. “I think I had better take you in hand whilst I am here, and set you up.”

“I do not think you can set me up; I do not suppose any one can,” she replied, shaking back her curls, which fell on each side of her face in ringlets, as of old.

Featherston smiled cheerily. “I’ll try,” said he.“Some of my patients say the same when I am first called in to them; but they change their tone after I have brought back their roses. So will you; never fear. I’ll come in this afternoon and have a professional chat with you.”

That settled, they went on with Buttermead again; David Preen giving scraps and revelations of the Preen and Selby families; Featherston telling choice items of the rural public in general. Mrs. Fennel’s spirits went up to animation.

“Shall you be able to do anything for her, sir?”I asked the doctor as we came away and went through the entry to the Place Ronde.

“I cannot tell,” he answered gravely. “She has a look on her face that I do not like to see there.”

Betrayed into confidence, I suppose, by the presence of the old friend of her girlhood, Ann Fennel related everything to Mr. Featherston that afternoon, as they sat on the sofa side by side, her hand occasionally held soothingly in his own. He assured her plainly that what she was chiefly suffering from was a disorder of the nerves, and that she must state to him explicitly the circumstances which brought it on before he could decide how to treat her for it.

Nancy obeyed him. She yearned to get well, though a latent impression lay within her that she should not do so. She told him the particulars of Lavinia’s unexpected death just when on the point of leaving Sainteville; and she went on to declare, glancing over her shoulders with frightened eyes, that she (Lavinia) had several times since then appeared in the house.

“What did Lavinia die of?” inquired the doctor at this juncture.

“We could not tell,” answered Mrs. Fennel. “It puzzled us. At first Monsieur Dupuis thought it must be inflammation brought on by a chill; but Monsieur Podevin quite put that opinion aside, saying it wasnothing of the sort. He is a younger and more energetic practitioner than Monsieur Dupuis.”

“Was it never suggested that she might, in one way or another, have taken something which poisoned her?”

“Why, yes, it was; I believe Monsieur Dupuis did think so—I am sure Monsieur Podevin did. But it was impossible it could have been the case, you see, because Lavinia touched nothing either of the days that we did not also partake of.”

“There ought to have been an examination after death. You objected to that, I fancy,” continued Featherston, who had talked a little with Madame Carimon.

“True—I did; and I have been sorry for it since,”sighed Ann Fennel. “It was through what my husband said to me that I objected. Edwin thought it would be distasteful to me. He did not like the idea of it either. Being dead, he held that she should be left in reverence.”

Featherston coughed. She was evidently innocent as any lamb of suspicion against him.

“And now,” went on Mr. Featherston, “just tell me what you mean by saying you see your sister about the house.”

“We do see her,” said Nancy.

“Nonsense! You don’t. It is all fancy. When the nerves are unstrung, as yours are, they play us all sorts of tricks. Why, I knew a man once who took up a notion that he walked upon his head, and he came to me to be cured!”

“But it is seeing Lavinia’s apparition, and the constant fear of seeing it which lies upon me, that has brought on this nervousness,” pleaded Nancy. “It is to my husband, when he is here, that she chiefly appears; nothing but that is keeping him away. I have seen her only three or four times.”

She spoke quietly and simply, evidently grounded in the belief. Mr. Featherston wondered how he was to deal with this: and perhaps he was not himself so much of a sceptic in the supernatural as he thought fit to pretend. Nancy continued:

“It was to my husband she appeared first. Exactly a week after her death. No; a week after the evening she was first taken ill. He was coming upstairs to bed—I had gone on—when he suddenly fancied that some one was following him, though only he and I were in the house. Turning quickly round, he saw Lavinia. That was the first time; and I assure you I thought he would have died of it. Never before had I witnessed such mortal terror in man.”

“Did he tell you he had seen her?”

“No; never. I could not imagine what brought on these curious attacks of fright, for he had others. He put it upon his health. It was only when I saw Lavinia myself after he went to England that I knew. I knew then what it must have been.”

Mr. Featherston was silent.

“She always appears in the same dress,” continued Nancy; “a silver-grey silk that she wore at church that Sunday. It was the last gown she ever put on: we took it off her when she was first seized with the pain. And in her face there is always a sad, beseeching aspect, as if she wanted something and were imploring us to get it for her. Indeed we see her, Mr. Featherston.”

“Ah, well,” he said, perceiving it was not from this quarter that light could be thrown on the suspicious darkness of the past, “let us talk of yourself. You are to obey my orders in all respects, Mistress Nancy. We will soon have you flourishing again.”

Brave words. Perhaps the doctor half believed in them himself. But he and they received a check all too soon.

That same evening, after David Preen had left—for he went in to spend an hour at the little red house to gossip about the folks at home—Nancy was taken with a fit of shivering. Flore hastily mixed her a glass of hot wine-and-water, and then went upstairs to light a fire in the bedroom, thinking her mistress would be the better for it. Nancy, who could hear Flore moving about overhead, suddenly remembered something that she wanted brought down. Rising from her chair, she went to the door of the salon, intending to call out. A sort of side light, dim and indistinct, fell upon her as she stood in the recess at the foot of the stairs from the lamp in the salon and from the stove in the kitchen, for both doors were open.

“Flore,” she was beginning, “will you bring down my——”

And there Ann Fennel’s words ended. With a wild cry, which reached the ears of Flore and nearly startled her into fits, Mrs. Fennel collapsed. The servant came dashing downstairs, expecting to hear that the ghost had appeared again.

It was not that. Her mistress was looking wild and puzzled; and when she recovered herself sufficiently to speak, declared that she had been startled by some animal. Either a cat or a rabbit, she could not tell which, the glimpse she caught of it was so brief and slight; it had run against her legs as she was calling out.

Flore did not know what to make of this. She looked about, but neither cat nor rabbit was to be seen; and she told her mistress it could have been nothing but fancy. Mrs. Fennel thought she knew better.

“Why, I felt it and saw it,” she said. “It came right against me and ran over my feet. It seemed to be making for the passage, as if it wanted to get out by the front-door.”

We were gathered together in the salon of the Petite Maison Rouge the following morning, partly by accident. Ann Fennel, exceedingly weak and nervous, lay in bed. Featherston and Monsieur Dupuis were both upstairs. She put down her illness to the fright, which she talked of to them freely. They did not assure her it was only “nerves”—to what purpose? I waited in the salon with David Preen, and just as the doctors came down Madame Carimon came in.

David Preen seized upon the opportunity. Fearing that one so favourable might not again occur, unless formally planned, he opened the ball. Drawing his chair to the table, next to that of Madame Carimon, the two doctors sitting opposite, David Preen avowed, with straightforward candour, that he, with some other relatives, held a sort of doubt as to whether it might not have been something Miss Lavinia Preen took which caused her death; and he begged Monsieur Dupuis to say if any such doubt had crossed his own mind at the time.

The fair-faced little médecin shook his head at this appeal, as much as to say he thought that the subject was a puzzling one. Naturally the doubt had crossed him, and very strongly, he answered; but the difficulty in assuming that view of the matter lay in her having partaken solely of the food which the rest of the household had partaken of; that and nothing else. His confrère, Monsieur Podevin, held a very conclusive opinion—that she had died of poison.

David Preen drew towards him a writing-case which lay on the table, took a sheet of paper from it, and a pencil from his pocket. “Let us go over the facts quietly,” said he; “it may be we shall arrive at some decision.”

So they went over the facts, the chief speakers being Madame Carimon and Flore, who was called in. David Preen dotted down from time to time something which I suppose particularly impressed him.

Miss Preen was in perfectly good health up to that Sunday—the first after Easter. On the following Tuesday she was about to quit Sainteville for Boulogne, her home at the Petite Maison Rouge having become intolerable to her through the residence in it of Captain Fennel.

“Pardon me if I state here something which is not positively in the line of facts; rather, perhaps, in that of imagination,” said Madame Carimon, looking up.“Lavinia had gradually acquired a most painful dread of Captain Fennel. She had dreams which she could only believe came to warn her against him, in which he appeared to be threatening her with some evil that she could not escape from. Once or twice—and this I cannot in any way account for—she saw him in thehouse when he was not in it, not even at Sainteville——”

“What! saw his apparition?” cried Featherston.“When the man was living! Come, come, Mary, that is going too far!”

“Quelle drôle d’idée!” exclaimed the little doctor.

“He appeared to her twice, she told me,” continued Mary Carimon. “She had been spending the evening out each time; had come into the house, this house, closing the street-door behind her. When she lighted a candle at the slab, she saw him standing just inside the door, gazing at her with the same dreadful aspect that she saw afterwards in her dreams. You may laugh, George; Monsieur Dupuis, I think you are already laughing; but I fully believe that she saw what she said she did, and dreamt what she did dream.”

“But it could not have been the man’s apparition when he was not dead; and it could not have been the man himself when he was not at Sainteville,” contended Featherston.

“And I believe that it all meant one of those mysterious warnings which are vouchsafed us from our spiritual guardians in the unseen world,” added Madame Carimon, independently pursuing her argument.“And that it came to Lavinia to warn her to escape from this evil house.”

“And she did not do it,” remarked David Preen.“She was not quick enough. Well, let us go on.”

“As Lavinia came out of church, Charles Palliser ran after her to ask her to go home to dine with him and his aunt,” resumed Madame Carimon. “If she had only accepted it! The dinner here was a verysimple one, and they all partook of it, including Flore——”

“And it was Flore who cooked and served it?”interrupted David Preen, looking at her.

“Mais oui, monsieur. The tart excepted; that was frangipane, and did come from the pastrycook,” added Flore, plunging into English. “Then I had my own dinner, and I had of every dish; and I drank of the wine. Miss Lavinia would give me a glass of wine on the Sunday, and she poured it out for me herself that day from the bottle of Bordeaux on their own table. Nothing was the matter with any of all that. The one thing I did not have of was the liqueur.”

“What liqueur was that?”

“It was chartreuse, I believe,” said Flore. “While I was busy removing the dinner articles from the salon, monsieur was busy at his cupboard outside there, where he kept his bottles. He came into the kitchen just as I had sat down to eat, and asked me for three liqueur glasses, which I gave to him on a plate. I heard him pour the liqueur into them, and he carried them to the ladies.”

Mr. David Preen wrote something down here.

“After that the captain went out to walk, saying he would see the English boat enter; and when I had finished washing up I carried the tea-tray to the salon-table and went home. Miss Lavinia was quite well then; she sat in her belle robe of grey silk talking with her sister. Then, when I was giving my boy Dion his collation, a tartine and a cooked apple, I was fetched back here, and found the poor lady fighting with pain for her life.”

“Did you wash those liqueur glasses?” asked Mr. Featherston.

“But yes, sir. I had taken them away when I carried in the tea-things, and washed them at once, and put them on the shelf in their places.”

“You see,” observed Monsieur Dupuis, “the ill-fated lady appears to have taken nothing that the others did not take also. I applied my remedies when I was called to her, and the following day she had, as I believed, recovered from the attack; nothing but the exhaustion left by the agony was remaining. But that night she was again seized, and I was again fetched to her. The attack was even more violent than the first one. I made a request for another doctor, and Monsieur Podevin was brought. He at once set aside my suggestion of inflammation from a chill, and said it looked to him more like a case of poison.”

“She had had nothing but slops all day, messieurs, which I made and carried to her,” put in Flore;“and when I left, at night, she was, as Monsieur le Médecin put it, ‘all well to look at.’”

“Flore did not make the arrowroot which she took later,” said Mary Carimon, taking up the narrative.“When Lavinia went up to bed, towards nine o’clock, Mrs. Fennel made her a cup of arrowroot in the kitchen——”

“And a cup for herself at the same time, as I was informed, madame,” spoke the little doctor.

“Oh yes, I know that, Monsieur Dupuis. Mrs. Fennel brought her sister’s arrowroot, when it was ready, into this room, asking her husband whether she might venture to put a little brandy into it. Hesent her to ask the question of Lavinia, bidding her leave the arrowroot on the table here. She came down for it, saying Lavinia declined the brandy, carried it up to her and saw her take it. Mrs. Fennel wished her good-night and came down for her own portion, which she had left in the kitchen. Before eleven o’clock, when they were going to bed, cries were heard in Lavinia’s room; she was seized with the second attack, and—and died in it.”

“This second attack was so violent, so unmanageable,”said Monsieur Dupuis, as Mary Carimon’s voice faltered into silence, “that I feel convinced I could not have saved her had I been present when it came on. I hear that Captain Fennel says he rang several times at my door before he could arouse me. Such was not the case. I am a very light sleeper, waking, from habit, at the slightest sound. But in this case I had not had time to fall asleep when I fancied I heard the bell sound very faintly. I thought I must be mistaken, as the bell is a loud bell, and rings easily; and people who ring me up at night generally ring pretty sharply. I lay listening, and some time afterwards, not immediately, it did ring. I opened my window, saw Captain Fennel outside, and was dressed and with him in two minutes.”

“That sounds as if he did not want you to go to her too quickly, monsieur,” observed Mr. Featherston, which went, as the French have it, without saying.“And I have heard of another suspicious fact: that he put his wife up to stop the medical examination after death.”

“It amounts to this,” spoke David Preen, “according to our judgment, if anything wrong was administered to her, it was given in the glass of liqueur on the Sunday afternoon, and in the cup of arrowroot on the Monday evening. They were the only things affording an opportunity of being tampered with; and in each case the pain came on about two hours afterwards.”

Grave suspicion, as I am sure they all felt it to be. But not enough, as Featherston remarked, to accuse a man of murder. There was no proof to be brought forward, especially now that months had elapsed.

“What became of the cup which had contained the arrowroot?” inquired David Preen, looking at Flore.“Was it left in the bedroom?”

“That cup, sir, I found in a bowl of water in the kitchen, and also the other one which had been used. The two were together in the wooden bowl. I supposed Madame Fennel had put them there; but she said she had not.”

“Ah!” exclaimed David Preen, drawing a deep breath.

He had come over to look into this suspicious matter; but, as it seemed, nothing could be done. To stir in it, and fail, would be worse than letting it alone.

“Look you,” said David Preen, as he put up his note-book. “If it be true that Lavinia cannot rest now she’s dead, but shows herself here in the house, I regard it as a pretty sure proof that she was sent out of the world unjustly. But——”

“Then you hold the belief that spirits revisit the earth, monsieur,” interrupted Monsieur Dupuis, “and that revenants are to be seen?”

“I do, sir,” replied David. “We Preens see them.But I cannot stir in this matter, I was about to say, and the man must be left to his conscience.”

And so the conference broke up.

The thing which lay chiefly on hand now was to try to bring health back to Ann Fennel. It was thought well to take her out of the house for a short time, as she had such fancies about it; so Featherston gave up his room at Madame Carimon’s, and Ann was invited to move into it, whilst he joined us at the hotel. I thought her very ill, as we all did. But after her removal there, she recovered her spirits wonderfully, and went out for short walks and laughed and chatted: and when Featherston and David Preen took the boat back to return home, she went to the port to see them steam off.

“Will it be all right with her?” was the last question Mary Carimon whispered to her brother.

“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “A little time will show one way or the other. Depends somewhat, perhaps, upon how that husband of hers allows things to go on. I have done what I can, Mary; I could not do more.”

Does the reader notice that I did not include myself in those who steamed off? For I did not go. Good, genial little Jules Carimon, who was pleased to say he had always liked me much at school, invited me to make a stay at his house, if I did not mind putting up with a small bedroom in the mansarde. I did not mind it at all; it was large enough for me. Nancy was delighted. We had quite a gay time of it; and I made the acquaintance of Major and Mrs. Smith, the Misses Bosanquet and Charley Palliser, who was shortly to quit Sainteville. Charley’s impression ofMrs. Fennel was that she would quit it before he did, but in a different manner.

One fine afternoon, when we were coming off the pier, Nancy was walking between me and Mary Carimon, for she needed the support of two arms if she went far—yes, she was as weak as that—some one called out that the London boat was coming in. Turning round, we saw her gliding smoothly up the harbour. No one in these Anglo-French towns willingly misses that sight, and we drew up on the quay to watch the passengers land. There were only eight or ten of them.

Suddenly Nancy gave a great cry, which bore a sound both of fear and of gladness—“Oh, there’s Edwin!”—and the next moment began to shake her pocket-handkerchief frantically.

A thin, grey, weasel of a man, whose face I did not like, came stalking up the ladder. Yes, it was the ex-captain, Edwin Fennel.

“He has not come for her sake; he has come to grab the quarter’s money,” spoke Mary, quite savagely, in my ear. No doubt. It would be due the end of September, which was at hand.

The captain was elaborately polite; quite effusive in his greeting to us. Nancy left us and took his arm. At the turning where we had to branch off to the Rue Pomme Cuite, she halted to say good-bye.

“But you are coming back to us, are you not?”cried Madame Carimon to her.

“Oh, I could not let Edwin go home alone,” said she. “Nobody’s there but Flore, you know.”

So she went back there and then to the Petite Maison Rouge, and never came out of it again. Ithink he was kind to her, that man. He had sometimes a scared look upon his face, and I guessed he had been seeing sights. The man would have given his head to be off again; to remain in that haunted house must have been to him a most intolerable penance; but he had some regard (policy dictating it) for public opinion, and could not well run away from his wife in her failing health.

It was curious how quickly Nancy declined. From the very afternoon she entered the house it seemed to begin. He had grabbed the money, as Mary Carimon called it, and brought her nice and nourishing things; but nothing availed. And a fine way he must have been in, to see that; for with his wife’s death the money would go away from him for evermore.

Monsieur Dupuis, sometimes Monsieur Henry Dupuis, saw her daily; and Captain Fennel hastily called in another doctor who had the reputation of being the best in the town, next to Monsieur Podevin; one Monsieur Lamirand. Mary Carimon spent half her time there; I went in most days. It could not be said that she had any special complaint, but she was too weak to live.

In less than three weeks it was all over. The end, when it came, was quite sudden. For a day or two she had seemed so much better that we told her she had taken a turn at last. On the Thursday evening, quite late—it was between eight and nine o’clock—Madame Carimon asked me to run there with some jelly which she had made, and which was only then ready. When I arrived, Flore said she was sure her mistress would like me to go up to her room; she was alone, monsieur having stepped out.

Nancy, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, sat by the fire in an easy-chair and a great shawl. Her fair curls were all put back under a small lace cap, which was tied at the chin with grey ribbon; her pretty blue eyes were bright. I told her what I had come for, and took the chair in front of her.

“You look so well this evening, Nancy,” I said heartily—for I had learnt to call her so at Madame Carimon’s, as they did. “We shall have you getting well now all one way.”

“It is the spurt of the candle before going out,” she quietly answered. “I have not the least pain left anywhere—but it is only that.”

“You should not say or think so.”

“But I know it; I cannot mistake my own feelings. Fancy any one, reduced as I am, getting well again!”

I am a bad one to keep up “make-believes.” Truth to say, I felt as sure of it as she did.

“And it will not be very long first. Johnny,” she went on, in a half-whisper, “I saw Lavinia to-day.”

I looked at her, but made no reply.

“I have never seen her since I came back here. Edwin has, though; I am sure of it. This afternoon at dusk I woke up out of a doze, for getting up to sit here quite exhausts me, and I was moving forward to touch the hand-bell on the table there, to let Flore know I was ready for my tea, when I saw Lavinia. She was standing over there, just in the firelight. I thought she seemed to be holding out her hand to me, as if inviting me to go to her, and on her face there was the sweetest smile of welcome; sweeter than could be seen on any face in life. All the sad, mournful, beseeching look had left it. She stood there for about a minute, and then vanished.”

“Were you very much frightened?”

“I had not a thought of fear, Johnny. It was the contrary. She looked radiantly happy; and it somehow imparted happiness to me. I think—I think,”added Nancy impressively, though with some hesitation,“that she came to let me know I am going to her. I believe I have seen her for the last time. The house has, also, I fancy; she and I will shortly go out of it together.”

What could I answer to that?

“And so it is over at last,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “Very nearly over. The distress and the doubt, the terror and the pain. I brought it all on; you know that, Johnny Ludlow. I feel sure now that she has pardoned me. I humbly hope that God has.”

She caught up her breath with a long-drawn sigh.

“And you will give my dear love to all the old friends in England, Johnny, beginning with Mr. Featherston; he has been very kind to me; you will see them again, but I shall not. Not in this life. But we shall be together in the Life which has no ending.”

At twelve o’clock that night Nancy Fennel died. At least, it was as near twelve as could be told. Just after that hour Flore went into the room, preparatory to sitting up with her, and found her dead—just expired, apparently—with a sweet smile on her face, and one hand stretched out as if in greeting. Perhaps Lavinia had come to greet her.

We followed her to the grave on Saturday. CaptainFennel walked next the coffin—and I wondered how he liked it. I was close behind him with Monsieur Carimon. Charley Palliser came next with little Monsieur le Docteur Dupuis and Monsieur Gustave Sauvage. And we left Nancy in the cemetery, side by side with her sister.

Captain Edwin Fennel disappeared. On the Sunday, when we English were looking for him in church, he did not come—his grief not allowing him, said some of the ladies. But an English clerk in the broker’s office, hearing this, told another tale. Fennel had gone off by the boat which left the port for London the previous night at midnight.

And he did not come back again. He had left sundry debts behind him, including that owing to Madame Veuve Sauvage. Monsieur Carimon, later, undertook the payment of these at the request of Colonel Selby. It was understood that Captain Edwin Fennel had emigrated to South America. If he had any conscience at all, it was to be hoped he carried it with him. He did not carry the money. The poor little income which he had schemed for, and perhaps worse, went back to the Selbys.

And that is the story. It is a curious history, and painful in more ways than one. But I repeat that it is true.

WATCHING ON ST. MARK’S EVE.

Easter-Day that year was nearly as late as it could be—the twenty-third of April. That brought St. Mark’s Day (the twenty-fifth) on the Tuesday; and Easter Monday was St. Mark’s Eve.

There is a superstitious belief in our county, and in some others—more thought of in our old grannies’days than in these—that if you go to the churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve and watch the gate, the shadows, or phantoms, of those fated to die that year, and destined there to be buried, will be seen to enter it.

Easter Monday is a great holiday with us; the greatest in all the year. Christmas-Day and Good Friday are looked upon more in a religious light; but on Easter Monday servants and labourers think themselves at liberty to take their swing. The first day of the wake is nothing to it.

Now Squire Todhetley gave in to these holidays: they did not come often, he said. Our servants in the country are not a bit like yours in town; yours want a day’s holiday once a month, oftener sometimes, and strike if they don’t get it; ours have one or two in a year. On Easter Monday the work was got over by mid-day; there was no cooking, and the household could roam abroad at will. No ill had ever come of it; none would have come of it this time, but for St. Mark’s Eve falling on the day.

Tod and I got home from school on the Thursday. It was a despicable old school, taking no heed of Passion Week. Other fellows from other schools could have a fortnight at Easter; we but a week. Tod entered on a remonstrance with the pater this time; he had been planning it as we drove home, and thought he’d put it in a strongish point of view.

“It is sinful, you know, sir; awfully so. Passion Week is Passion Week. We have no right to pass it at school at our desks.”

“Well, Joe, I don’t quite see that,” returned the pater, twisting his lip. “Discipline and lessons are more in accordance with the season of Passion Week than kicking up your heels at large in all sorts of mischief; and that’s what you’d be at, you know, if you were at home. What’s the matter with Johnny.”

“He has been ill for three days, with a cold or something,” said Tod. “Tell it for yourself, Johnny.”

I had no more to tell than that. For three or four days I had felt ill, feverish; yesterday (Wednesday) had done no lessons. Mrs. Todhetley thought it was an attack of influenza. She sent me to bed, and called in the doctor, Mr. Duffham.

I was better the next day—Good Friday. Old Duff—as Tod and I called him for short—came in while they were at church, and said I might get up. It was slow work, I told him, lying in bed for one’s holidays. He was a wiry little man, with black hair; good in the main, but pompous, and always carried a gold-headed cane.

“Not to go out, you know,” he said. “You must promise that, Johnny.”

I promised readily. I only wanted to be downstairswith the rest. They returned home from church, saying they had promised to go over and take tea with the Sterlings; Mrs. Todhetley looked grave at seeing me, and thought the doctor was wrong. At which I put on a gay air, like a fellow suddenly cured.

But I could not eat any dinner. They had salt fish and cold boiled beef at two o’clock—our usual way of fasting on Good Friday. Not a morsel could I swallow, and Hannah brought me some mutton-broth.

“Do you mind our leaving you, Johnny?” Mrs. Todhetley said to me in her kind way—which Tod never believed in. “If you do—if you think you shall feel lonely, I’ll stay at home.”

I answered that I should feel very jolly, not lonely at all; and so they started, going over in the large carriage, drawn by Bob and Blister. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, with Lena, in front, Tod and Hugh behind. Standing at the window to watch the start, I saw Roger Monk looking on from the side of the house.

He was a small, white-faced chap of twenty or so, with a queer look in his eyes, and black sprouting whiskers. Looking full at the eyes, when you could get the chance, which was not very often, for they rarely looked at you, there was nothing wrong to be seen with them, and yet they gave a sinister cast to the face. Perhaps it was that they were too near together. Roger Monk was not one of our regular men; for the matter of that, he was above the condition; but was temporarily filling the head-gardener’s place, who was ill with rheumatism. Seeing me, he walked up to the window, and I opened it to speak to him. “Are you here still, Monk?”

“And likely to be, Mr. Ludlow, if it depends upon Jenkins’s coming on again,” was the answer. “Fine cattle, those that the governor has just driven off.”

He meant Bob and Blister, and they were fine; but I did not like the tone, or the word “governor,” as applied to Mr. Todhetley. “I can’t keep the window up,” I said; “I’m not well.”

“All right, sir; shut it. As for me, I must be about my work. There’s enough to do with the gardens, one way or another; and the responsibility lies on my shoulders.”

“You must not work to-day, Monk. Squire Todhetley never allows it on Good Friday.”

He laughed pleasantly; as much as to say, what Squire Todhetley allowed, or did not allow, was no concern of his; and went briskly away across the lawn. And not once, during the short interview, had his eyes met mine.

Wasn’t it dull that afternoon! I took old Duffham’s physic, and drank the tea Hannah brought me, and was hot, and restless, and sick. Never a soul to talk to; never a book to read—my eyes and head ached too much for that; never a voice to be heard. Most of the servants were out; all of them, for what I knew, except Hannah; and I was fit to die of weariness. At dusk I went up to the nursery. Hannah was not there. The fire was raked—if you understand what that means, though it is generally applied only to kitchen fires in our county—which proved that she was off somewhere on a prolonged expedition. Even old Hannah’s absence was a disappointment. I threw myself down on the faded sofa at the far end of the room, and, I suppose, went to sleep.

For when I became alive again to outward things, Hannah was seated in one chair at the fire, cracking up the coal; Molly, the cook with the sharp tongue and red-brown eyes, in another. It was dark and late; my head ached awfully, and I wished them and their clatter somewhere. They were talking of St. Mark’s Eve, and its popular superstition. Molly was telling a tale of the past, the beginning of which I had not heard.

“I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Hannah; “I can’t believe that the shadows come.”

“Did ye ever watch for ’em, woman?” asked Molly, who had been born in the North.

“No,” acknowledged Hannah.

“Then how can ye speak of what ye don’t know? It is as true as that you and me be a-sitting here. Two foolish, sickly girls they was, both of ’em sweet upon the same young man. Leastways, he was sweet upon both of them, the deceiver, which comes to the same thing. My sister Becky was five-and-twenty that same year; she had a constant pain and a cough, which some said was windpipe and some said was liver. The other was Mary Clarkson, who was subject to swimmings in the head and frightful dartings. Any way, they’d got no health to brag on, either of ’em, and they were just eat up with jealousy, the one of the other. Tom Town, he knew this; and he played ’em off again’ each other nicely, little thinking what his own punishment was to be.”

Hannah gently put the poker inside the bars to raise the coal, and some more light came out. Molly went on.

“Now, Hannah, you mustn’t think bad of them twoyoung women. They did not wish one another dead—far from it; but each thought the other couldn’t live. In natural course, if the one went off, poor thing, Tom Town, he would be left undivided for the other.”

“Was Tom Town handsome?” interrupted Hannah.

“Well, middling for that. He was under-sized, not up to their shoulders, with big bushy red whiskers; but he had a taking way with him. He was in a shop for himself, and doing well, so that more young women nor the two I am telling of would have said Yes to his asking. Becky, she thought Mary Clarkson couldn’t live the year out; Mary, she told a friend that she was sure Becky wouldn’t. And what should they do but go to watch the graveyard on St. Mark’s Eve, to see the other’s shadow pass!”

“Together?”

“No; but they met there. Awk’ard, wasn’t it? Calling up their wits, each of ’em, they pretended to have come out promiskous, just on the spree, not expecting to see nobody’s shadow in particular. As they had come, they stopped; standing back again’the hedge near the graveyard, holding on to each other’s arms for company, and making belief not to be scared. Hannah, woman, I don’t care to tell this. I’ve never told it many times.”

Molly’s face had a hard, solemn look, in the fire’s blaze, and Hannah suddenly drew her chair close to her. I could have laughed out loud.

“Just as the clock struck—ten, I think it was,”went on Molly, in a half-whisper, “there was a faint rustle heard, like a flutter in the air, and somebody came along the road. At first the women’s eyes were dazed, and they didn’t see distinct, but as the gate opened to let him in, he turned his face, and they saw it was Tom Town. Both the girls thought it washimself, Hannah; and they held their breath and kept quite still, hoping he’d not notice them, for they’d have felt ashamed to be caught watching there.”

“And it was not himself?” asked Hannah, catching up her breath.

Molly gave her head a shake. “No more than it was you or me: it was his shadow. He walked on up the path, looking neither to the right nor left, and they lost sight of him. I was with mother when they came home. Mary Clarkson, she came in with Beck, and they said they had seen Tom Town, and supposed he had gone out watching, too. Mother advised them to hold their tongues: it didn’t look well, she said, for them two, only sickly young girls, to have run out to the graveyard alone. A short while after, Tom Town, in talking of that night, mother having artfully led to it, said he had gone up to bed at nine with a splitting headache, and forgot all about its being St. Mark’s Eve. When mother heard that, she turned the colour o’ chalk, and looked round at me.”

“And Tom Town died?”

“He died that blessed year; the very day that folks was eating their Michaelmas gooses. A rapid decline took him off.”

“It’s very strange,” said Hannah, musingly. “People believe here that the shadows appear, and folks used to go watching, as it’s said. I don’t think many go now. Did the two young women die?”

“Not they. Becky’s married, and got half-a-dozen children; and Mary Clarkson, she went off to America. Shouldn’t you like to watch?”

“Well, I should,” acknowledged Hannah; “I would, too, if I thought I should see anything. I’ve said more than once in my life that I should just like to go out on St. Mark’s Eve, and see whether there is anything in it or not. My mother went, I know.”

“If you’ll go, I’ll go.”

Hannah made no answer to this at first. She sat looking at the fire with a cross face. It had always a cross look when she was deep in thought. “The mistress would think me such a fool, Molly, if she came to know of it.”

“If! How could she come to know of it? Next Monday will be the Easter holidays, and we mayn’t never have the opportunity again. I shouldn’t wonder but the lane’s full o’ watchers. St. Mark’s Eve don’t often come on a Easter Monday.”

There’s no time to go on with what they said. A good half-hour the two sat there, laying their plans: when once Hannah had decided to go in for the expedition, she made no more bones over it. The nursery-windows faced the front, and when the carriage was heard driving in, they both decamped downstairs—Hannah to the children, Molly to her kitchen. I found Tod, and told him the news: Hannah and Molly were going to watch in the churchyard for the shadows on St. Mark’s Eve.

“We’ll have some fun over this, Johnny,” said he, when he had done laughing. “You and I will be on to them.”

Monday came; and, upon my word, it seemed as if things turned out on purpose. Mr. Todhetley went off to Worcester with Dwarf Giles, on some business connected with the Quarter Sessions, and was not expectedhome until midnight, as he stayed to dine at Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley had one of her excruciating face-aches, and she went to bed when the children did—seven o’clock. Hannah had said in the morning that she and Molly were going to spend an hour or two with Goody Picker after the children were in bed; upon which Mrs. Todhetley told her to get them to bed early. It was something rare for Hannah to take any holiday; she generally said she did not want it. Goody Picker’s husband used to be a gamekeeper—not ours. Since his death she lived how she could, on her vegetables, or by letting her odd room; Roger Monk had it now. Sometimes she had her grandchild with her; and the parents, well-to-do shopkeepers at Alcester, paid her well. Goody Picker was thought well of at our house, and came up occasionally to have tea in the nursery with Hannah.

I was well by Monday; nothing but a bit of a cough left; and Tod and I looked forward to the night’s fun. Not a word had we heard since; but we had seen the two women-servants whispering together whenever they got the chance; and so we knew they were going. What Tod meant to do, he wouldn’t tell me; I think he hardly knew himself. The big turnips were all gone, or he might have scooped one out for a death’s head, and stuck it on the gate-post, with a candle in it.

The night came. A clear night, with a miserable moon. Miserable for our sport, because it was so bright.

“A pitch-dark night would have had some sense in it, you know, Johnny,” Tod remarked to me, as we stood at the door, looking out. “The moon should hide her face on St. Mark’s Eve.”

Just as he spoke, the clock struck nine. Time to be going. There was nobody to let or hinder us. Mrs. Todhetley was in bed groaning with toothache; old Thomas and Phœbe, neither of whom had cared to take holiday, were at supper in the kitchen. She was a young girl lately had in to help the housemaid.

“You go on, Johnny; I’ll follow presently. Take your time; they won’t go on the watch for this half-hour yet.”

“But, Tod, what is it that you are going to do?”

“Never you mind. If you hear a great noise, and see a light blaze up, don’t you be scared.”

“I scared, Tod! That’s good.”

“All right, Johnny. Take care not to be seen. It might spoil sport.”

The church was about half-a-mile from our house, whether you crossed the fields to it or took the highway. It stood back from the road, in its big churchyard. A narrow lane, between two dwarf hedges, led up from the road to the gate; it was hardly wide enough for carriages; they wound round the open road further on. A cross-path, shut in by two stiles, led right across the lane near to the churchyard gate. Stories went that a poor fellow who had hung himself about twenty years ago was buried by torchlight under that very crossing, with never a parson to say a prayer over him.

We guessed where the women would stand—at one of these crossing stiles, with the gate and the churchyard in full view. As Tod said, it stood to reason that shadows and the watchers for them would not choose the broader road, where all was open, and not so much as a tree grew for shelter.

I stole along cautiously, taking the roadway and keeping under shade of the hedge, and got there all right. Not a creature was about. The old grey church, built of stone, the many-shaped graves in the churchyard, stood white and cold in the moonlight. I went behind the cross-stile at the side furthest from our house, and leaned over it, looking up and down the lane. That the women would be on the opposite side was certain, because the churchyard gate could not be seen so well from this.

The old clock did not tell the quarters, only struck the hour; time went on, and I began to wonder how long I was to wait. It must be turned half-past nine; getting nearer to a quarter to ten; and still nobody came. Where were the watchers? And where was Tod? The shadows of the trees, of the hedges, of the graves, fell in distinct lines on the grass; and I don’t mind confessing that it felt uncommonly lonely.

“Hou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou!” burst forth over my head with a sudden and unearthly sound. I started back in a fright for one moment, and called myself an idiot the next, for it was only an owl. It had come flying forth from the old belfry, and went rushing on with its great wings, crying still, but changing its note. “Tu-whit; tu-whoo.”

And while I watched the owl, other sounds, as of whispering, made themselves manifest, heralding the approach of the women from the opposite field, making for the stile in front of me, through the little copse. Drawing behind the low hedge, to sit down on the stump of a tree, I pushed my head forward, and took a look at them through the lower bars of the stile. They were standing at the other, in their light shawls and new Easter straw-bonnets; Molly’s trimmed with green, Hannah’s with primrose. The moonlight fell full on their faces—mine was in the shade. But they might see me, and I drew back again.

Presently they began to gabble; in low tones at first, which increased, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, to higher ones. They said how lonely it was, especially with “them grave-marks” in view close by; and they speculated upon whether any shadows would appear to them. My sense of loneliness had vanished. To have two practical women, each of them a good five-and-thirty, for neighbours, took it off. But I wondered what had become of Tod.

Another owl! or perhaps the last one coming back again. It was not so startling a noise as before, and created no alarm. I thought it a good opportunity to steal another look, and propelled my head forward an inch at a time. Their two faces were turned upwards, watching the owl’s flight towards the belfry.

But to my intense astonishment there was a thirdface. A face behind them peeping out from the close folds of a mantle, and almost resting on their shoulders. At the first moment I thought of Tod; but soon the features became familiar to me in the bright light, and I knew them for Phœbe’s. Phœbe, whom I had left in the kitchen, supping quietly! That she had stolen up unseen and unheard while they talked, was apparent.

A wild screech! Two wild screeches. Phœbe had put her hands on the startled women, and given vent to a dismal groan. She laughed: but the others went into a desperate passion. First at having been frightened, next at having been followed. Whenmatters came to be investigated later, it turned out that Phœbe had overheard a conversation between Molly and Hannah, which betrayed what they were about to do, and had come on purpose to startle them.

A row ensued. Bitter words on both sides; mutual abusings. The elder servants ordered Phœbe home; she refused to go, and gave them some sauce. She intended to stay and see what there was to be seen, she said; for all she could tell, their shadows might pass, and a good thing if they did; let alone that she’d not dare to go back by herself at that hour and meet the ghosts. Hannah and Molly cut the matter short by leaving the stile to her; they went round, and took up their places by the churchyard gate.

It seems very stupid to be writing of this, I dare say; it must read like an old ghost-story out of a fable-book; but every word is true, as the people that lived round us then could tell you.

There we waited; Hannah and Molly gathered close against the hedge by the churchyard gate; Phœbe, wrapped in her shawl, leaning on the top of the stile; I on the old tree stump, feeling inclined to go to sleep. It seemed a long time, and the night grew cold. Evidently there were no watchers for St. Mark’s shadows abroad that night, except ourselves. Without warning, the old clock boomed out the strokes of the hour. Ten.

Did you ever have the opportunity of noticing how long it takes for a sound like this to die quite away on the calm night-air? I seemed to hear it still, floating off in the distance, when I became aware that some figure was advancing up the lane towards us with a rather swift step. It’s Tod this time, Ithought, and naturally looked out; and I don’t mind telling that I caught hold of the bars of the stile for companionship, in my shock of terror.

I had never seen the dead walking; but I do believe I thought I saw it then. It looked like a corpse in its winding-sheet; whether man or woman, none could tell. An ashey-white, still, ghastly face, enveloped around with bands of white linen, was turned full to the moonlight, that played upon the rigid features. The whole person, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, was enshrouded in a white garment. All thoughts of Tod went out of me; and I’m not sure but my hair rose up on end as the thing came on. You may laugh at me, all of you, but just you go and try it.

My fear went for nothing, however; it didn’t damage me. Of all the awful cries ever heard, shrill at first, changing to something like the barking of a dog afterwards, those were the worst that arose opposite. They came from Phœbe. The girl had stood petrified, with straining eyes and laboured breath, like one who has not the power to fly, while the thing advanced. Only when it stopped close and looked at her did the pent-up cries come forth. Then she turned to fly, and the white figure leaped the stile, and went after her into the copse. What immediately followed I cannot remember—never could remember it; but it seemed that not more than a minute had elapsed when I and Molly and Hannah were standing over Phœbe, lying in convulsions on the ground, and the creature nowhere to be seen. The cries had been heard in the road, and some people passing came running up. They lifted the girl in their arms, and bore her homewards.

My senses were coming to me, showing plainly enough that it was no “shadow,” but some ill-starred individual dressed up to personate one. Poor Phœbe! I could hear her cries still, though the group was already out of the copse and crossing the open field beyond. Somebody touched me on the shoulder.

“Tod! Did you do it?”

“Do what?” asked Tod, who was out of breath with running. “What was all that row?”

I told him. Somebody had made himself into a ghost, with a tied-up whitened face, just as the dead have, and came up the Green Lane in a sheet; and Phœbe was being carried home in convulsions.

“You are a fool, Johnny,” was his wrathful answer.“I am not one to risk a thing of that sort, not even for those two old women we came out to frighten. Look here.”

He went to the edge of the copse near the road, and showed me some things—the old pistol from the stable, and gunpowder lights that went off with a crash yards high. It’s not of much use going into it now. Tod had meant, standing at a safe distance, to set a light to the explosive articles, and fire off his pistol at the same time.

“It would have been so good to see the women scutter off in their fright, Johnny; and it couldn’t have hurt them. They might have looked upon it as the blue-light from below.”

“What made you so late?”

“Late!” returned Tod, savagely; “I am late, and the fun’s spoilt. That confounded old Duff and his cane came in to see you, Johnny, just as I was starting; there was nobody else, and I couldn’t leave him. Isaid you were in bed and asleep, but it didn’t send him away. Down he sat, telling a tale of how hard-worked he’d been all day, and asking for brandy-and-water. The dickens take him!”

“And, Tod, it was really not you?”

“If you repeat that again, Johnny, I’ll strike you. I swear it was not me. There! I never told you a lie yet.”

He never had; and from that moment of strong denial I know that Tod had no more to do with the matter than I had.

“I wonder who it could have been?”

“I’ll find that out, as sure as my name’s Todhetley,”he said, catching up his pistols and lights.

We ran all the way home, looking out in vain for the ghost on our way, and got in almost as soon as the rest. What a hullabaloo it was! They put a mattress on the kitchen floor, and laid Phœbe on it. Mr. Duffham was upon the scene in no time; the Squire had returned earlier than was thought for, and Mrs. Todhetley came down with her face smothered in a woollen handkerchief.

As to any concealment now, it was useless to think of it. None was attempted, and Molly and Hannah had to confess that they went out to watch for the shadows. The Squire blustered at them a little, but Mrs. Todhetley said the keenest thing, in her mild way:

“At your age, Hannah!”

“I have known a person rendered an idiot for life with a less fright than this,” said old Duff, turning round to speak. “It was the following her that did the mischief.”

Nothing could be done that night as to investigation; but with the morning the Squire entered upon it in hot anger. “Couldn’t the fool have been contented with what he’d already done, without going over the stile after her? If I spend a fifty-pound note, I’ll unearth him. It looks to me uncommonly like a trick you two boys would play,” he added, turning sharply upon me and Tod.

And the suspicion made us all the more eager to find out the real fox. But not a clue could we discover. Nobody had known of the proposed expedition except Goody Picker; and she, as everybody testified, was true to the backbone. As the day went on, and nothing came of it, Tod had one of his stamping fits.

“If one could find out whether it was man or woman! If one could divine how they got at the knowledge!” stamped Tod. “The pater does not look sure about us yet.”

“I wonder if it could have been Roger Monk?” I said, speaking out a thought that had been dimly creeping up in my mind by starts all day.

“Roger Monk!” repeated Tod, “why pitch upon him?”

“Only that it’s just possible he might have got it out of Goody Picker.”

Away went Tod, in his straightforward fashion, to look for Roger Monk. He was in the hot-house, doing something to his plants.

“Monk, did you play that trick last night?”

“What trick, sir?” asked Monk, twitching a good-for-nothing leaf off a budding geranium.

“What trick! As if there were more tricks thanone played! I mean dressing yourself up like a dead man, and frightening Phœbe.”

“I have too much to do with my work, Mr. Todhetley, to find time to play tricks. I took no holiday at all yesterday, day or night, but was about my business till I went to bed. They were saying out here this morning that the Squire thought you had done it.”

“Don’t you be insolent, Monk. That won’t answer with me.”

“Well, sir, it is not pleasant to be accused point-blank of a crime, as you’ve just accused me. I know nothing at all about the matter. ’Twasn’t me. I had no grudge against Phœbe, that I should harm her.”

Tod was satisfied; I was not. He never once looked in either of our faces as he was speaking. We leaped the wire-fence and went across to Goody Picker’s, bursting into her kitchen without ceremony.

“I say, Mrs. Picker, we can’t find out anything about that business last night,” began Tod.

“And you never will, gentlemen, as is my opinion,”returned Mrs. Picker, getting up in a bustle and dusting two wooden chairs. “Whoever did that, have took himself off for a bit; never doubt it. ’Twas some one o’ them village lads.”

“We have been wondering whether it was Roger Monk.”

“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried she, dropping a basin on the brick floor. And if ever I saw a woman change colour, she did.

“What’s the matter now?”

“Why, you sent me into a tremble, gentlemen, saying that,” she answered, stooping to pick up thebroken crockery. “A young man lodging in my place, do such a villain’s trick! I’d not like to think it; I shouldn’t rest in my bed. The two servants having started right out from here for the churchyard have cowed-down my heart bad enough, without more ill news.”

“What time did Monk come in last night?” questioned Tod. “Do you remember?”

“He come in after Mrs. Hannah and the other had gone,” she replied, taking a moment’s pause. “Close upon it; I’d hardly shut my door on them when I had to open it to him.”

“Did he go out again?”

“Not he, sir. He eat his supper, telling me in a grumbling tone about the extra work he’d had to do in the greenhouses and places, because the other man had took holiday best part o’ the day. And then he went up to bed. Right tired he seemed.”

We left her fitting the pieces of the basin together, and went home. “It wasn’t Monk,” said Tod. “But now—where to look for the right man, Johnny?”

Look as we might, we did not find him. Phœbe was better in a day or two, but the convulsive fits stuck to her, coming on at all sorts of unexpected times. Old Duff thought it might end in insanity.

And that’s what came of Watching for the Shadows on St. Mark’s Eve!

SANKER’S VISIT.

His name was Sanker, and he was related to Mrs. Todhetley. Not expecting to go home for the holidays—for his people lived in some far-off district of Wales, and did not afford him the journey—Tod invited him to spend them with us at Dyke Manor: which was uncommonly generous, for he disliked Sanker beyond everything. Having plenty of money himself, Tod could not bear that a connection of his should be known as nearly the poorest and meanest in the school, and resented it awfully. But he could not be ill-natured, for all his prejudices, and he asked Sanker to go home with us.

“It’s slow there,” he said; “not much going on in summer besides haymaking; but it may be an improvement on this. So, if you’d like to come, I’ll write and tell them.”

“Thank you,” said Sanker; “I should like it very much.”

Things had been queer at school as the term drew to its close. Petty pilferings were taking place; articles and money alike disappeared. Tod lost half-a-sovereign; one of the masters some silver; Bill Whitney put sevenpence halfpenny and a set of enamelled studs into his desk one day, never to see either again; and Snepp, who had been home to his sister’s marriage, lost a piece of wedding-cake out of his box the night he came back. There was a thief in the school, and no clue to him. One might mentally accuse this fellow, another that; but not a shadow of proof was there against any. Altogether we were not sorry to get away.

But the curious thing was, that soon after we got home pilferings began there. Ned Banker was well received; and Tod, regarding himself in the capacity of host, grew more cordial with him than he had been at school. It was a sort of noblesse oblige feeling. Sanker was sixteen; stout and round; not tall; with pale eyes and a dull face. He was to be a clergyman; funds at his home permitting. His father lived at some mines in Wales. Tod wondered in what capacity.

“Mr. Sanker was a gentleman born and bred,”explained Mrs. Todhetley. “He never had much money; but what little it was he lost, speculating in this very mine. After that, when he had nothing in the world left to live upon, and a wife and several young children to keep, he was thankful to take a situation as over-looker at a small yearly salary.”

We had been home about a week when the first thing was missed. At one side of the house, in a sort of nook, was a square room, its glass-doors opening on the gravel-path that skirted the hedge of the vegetable garden. Squire Todhetley kept his farming accounts there and wrote his letters. A barometer and two county maps, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, on its walls, a square of matting on its floor, an upright bureau, a table, some chairs; and there you have the picture of the room.

One afternoon—mind! we did not know this for a week after, but it is as well to tell of it as it occurred—he was sitting at the table in this room, his account-books, kept in the bureau, open before him; his inkstand and cash-box at hand. Lying near the cash-box was a five-pound note, open; the Squire had put it out for Dwarf Giles to get changed at Alcester. He was writing an order for some things that Giles would have to bring back, when Rimmell, who acted as working bailiff on the estate, came to the glass-doors, open to the warm June air, saying he had received an offer for the wheat that had spurted. The Squire stepped outside on the gravel-path while he talked with Rimmell, and then strolled round with him to the fold-yard. He was away—that is, out of sight of the room—about three minutes, and when he got back the note was gone.

He could not believe his own eyes. It was a calm day; no wind stirring. He lifted the things on the table; he lifted the matting on the floor; he shook his loose coat; all in vain. Standing at the door, he shouted aloud; he walked along the path to the front of the house, and shouted there; but was not answered. So far as could be seen, no person whatever was about who could have come round to the room during his short absence.

Striding back to the room, he went through it, and up the passage to the hall, his boots creaking. Molly was in the kitchen, singing over her work; Phœbe and Hannah were heard talking upstairs; and Mrs. Todhetley stood in the store-room, doing something to the last year’s pots of jam. She said, on being questioned, that no one had passed to the passage leading to the Squire’s room.

It happened at that moment, that I, coming homefrom the Dyke, ran into the hall, full butt against the Squire.

“Johnny,” said he, “where are you all? What are you up to?”

I had been at the Dyke all the afternoon with Tod and Hugh; they were there still. Not Sanker: he was outside, on the lawn, reading. This I told the pater, and he said no more. Later, when we came to know what had happened, he mentioned to us that, at this time, no idea of robbery had entered his head; he thought one of us might have hidden the money in sport.

So much an impossibility did it appear of the note’s having been lifted by human hands, that the Squire went back to his room in a maze. He could only think that it must have attached itself to his clothes, and dropped off them in the fold-yard. What had become of it, goodness knew; whether it had fluttered into the pond, or the hens had scratched it to pieces, or the turkeys gobbled it up; he searched fruitlessly.

That was on a Thursday. On the following Thursday, when Tod was lying on the lawn bench on his back, playing with his tame magpie, and teasing Hugh and Lena, the pater’s voice was heard calling to him in a sharp, quick tone, as if something was the matter. Tod got up and went round by the gravel-path to whence the sound came, and I followed. The Squire was standing at the window of the room, half in, half out.

“I don’t want you, Johnny. Stay, though,” he added, after a moment, “you may as well be told—why not?”

He sat down in his place at the table. Tod stoodjust inside the door, paying more attention to the magpie, which he had brought on his arm, than to his father: I leaned against the bureau. There was a minute’s silence, waiting for the Squire to speak.

“Put that wretched bird down,” he said; and we knew something had put him out, for he rarely spoke with sharpness to Tod.

Tod sent the magpie off, and came in. The first day we got home from school, Tod had rescued the magpie from Goody Picker’s grandson; he caught him pulling the feathers out of its tail; gave him sixpence for it, and brought it home. A poor, miserable, half-starved thing, that somebody had taught to say continually,“Now then, Peter.” Tod meant to feed it into condition; but the pater had not taken kindly to the bird; he said it would be better dead than alive.

“What was that I heard you boys talking of the other day, about some petty pilferings in your school?”he asked, abruptly. And we gave him the history.

“Well, as it seems to me, the same thing is going on here,” he continued, looking at us both. “Johnny, sit down; I can’t talk while you sway about like that.”

“The same thing going on here, sir?”

“I say that it seems so,” said the pater, thrusting both his hands deep into his trousers’ pockets, and rattling the silver in them. “Last Thursday, this day week, a bank-note lay on my table here. I just went round to the yard with Rimmell, and when I got back the note was gone.”

“Where did it go to?” asked Tod, practically.

“That is just the question—where? I concluded that it must have stuck to my coat in some unaccountableway, and got lost out-of-doors. I don’t conclude so now.”

Tod seemed to take the news in his usual careless fashion, and kept privately telegraphing signs to the magpie, sitting now on the old tree-stump opposite.

“Yes, sir. Well?”

“I think now, Joe, that somebody came in at these open doors, and took the note,” said the pater, impressively.“And I want to find out who it was.”

“Now then, Peter!” cried the bird, hopping down on the gravel; at which Tod laughed. The Squire got up in a rage, and shut the doors with a bang.

“If you can’t be serious for a few moments, you had better say so. I can tell you this is likely to turn out no laughing business.”

Tod turned his back to the glass-doors, and left the magpie to its devices.

“Whoever it was, contrived to slip round here from the front, during my temporary absence; possibly without ill intention: the sight of the note lying open might have proved too strong a temptation for him.”

“Him!” put in Tod, critically. “It might have been a woman.”

“You might be a jackass: and often are one,” said the pater. And it struck us both, from the affable retort, that his suspicions were pointing to some particular person of the male gender.

“This morning, after breakfast, I was here, writing a letter,” he went on. “While sealing it, Thomas called me away in a hurry, and I was absent the best part of an hour. When I got back, my ring had disappeared.”

“Your ring, sir!” cried Tod.

“Yes, my ring, sir,” mocked the pater; for he thought we were taking up the matter lightly, and it nettled him. “I left it on the seal, expecting to find it there when I returned. Not so. The ring had gone, and the letter lay on the ground. We have got a thief about the house, boys—a thief—within or without. Just the same sort of thief, as it seems to me, that you had at school.”

Tod suddenly leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his whole interest aroused. Some unpleasant doubt had struck him, as was evident by the flush upon his face.

“Of course, anybody that might be about, back or front, could find their way down here if they pleased,”he slowly said. “Tramps get in sometimes.”

“Rarely, without being noticed. Who did you boys see about the place that afternoon—tramp or gentleman? Come! You were at the house, Johnny: you bolted into it, head foremost, saying you had come from the Dyke.”

“I never saw a soul but Sanker: he was on the bench on the lawn, reading. I said so at the time, sir.”

“Ah! yes; Sanker was there reading,” quietly assented the Squire. “What were you hastening home for, Johnny?”

As if that mattered, or could have had anything to do with it! He had a knack of asking unpleasant questions; and I looked at Tod.

“Hugh got his blouse torn, and Johnny came in to get another,” acknowledged Tod, readily. The fact was, Hugh’s clothes that afternoon had come to uncommon grief. Hannah had made one of her usualrows over it, and afterwards shown the things to Mrs. Todhetley.

“Well, and now for to-day,” resumed the pater.“Where have you all been?”

Where had we not? In the three-cornered paddock; with Monk in the pine-house; away in the rick-yard; once to the hay-field; at the rabbit-hutches; round at the stables; oh, everywhere.

“You two, and Sanker?”

“Not Sanker,” I said. Sanker stayed on the lawn with his book. We had all been on the lawn for the last half-hour: he, us, Hugh, Lena, and the magpie. But not a suspicious character of any sort had we seen about the place.

“Sanker’s fond of reading on the lawn,” remarked Mr. Todhetley, in a careless tone. But he got no answer: we had been struck into silence.

He took one hand out of his pocket, and drummed on the table, not looking at either of us. Tod had laid hold of a piece of blotting-paper and was pulling it to pieces. I wondered what they were thinking of: I know what I was.

“At any rate, the first thing is to find the ring;that only went this morning,” said the Squire, as he left us. Tod sat on where he was, dropping the bits of paper.

“I say, Tod, do you think it could be——?”

“Hold your tongue, Johnny!” he shouted. “No, I don’t think it. The bank-note—light, flimsy thing—must have been lost in the yard, and the ring will turn up. It’s somewhere on the floor here.”

In five minutes the news had spread. Mr. Todhetley had told his wife, and summoned the servants to the search. Both losses were made known; consternation fell on the household; the women-servants searched the room; old Thomas bent his back double over the frame outside the glass-doors. But there was no ring.

“This is just like the mysterious losses we had at school,” exclaimed Sanker, as a lot of us were standing in the hall.

“Yes, it is,” said the Squire.

“Perhaps, sir, your ring is in a corner of some odd pocket?” went on Sanker.

“Perhaps it may be,” answered the Squire, rather emphatically; “but not in mine.”

Happening to look at Mrs. Todhetley, I saw her face had turned to a white fright. Whether the remark of Sanker or the peculiarity of the Squire’s manner brought to her mind the strange coincidence of the losses, here and at school, certain it was the doubt had dawned upon her. Later, when I and Tod were hunting in the room on our own account, she came to us with her terror-stricken face.

“Joseph, I see what you are thinking,” she said;“but it can’t be; it can’t be. If the Sankers are poor, they are honest. I wish you knew his father and mother.”

“I have not accused any one, Mrs. Todhetley.”

“No; neither has your father; but you suspect.”

“Perhaps we had better not talk of it,” said Tod.

“Joseph, I think we must talk of it, and see what can be done. If—if he should have done such a thing, of course he cannot stay here.”

“But we don’t know that he has, therefore he ought not to be accused of it.”

“Oh! Joseph, don’t you see the pain? None of you can feel this as I do. He is my relative.”

I felt so sorry for her. With the trouble in her pale, mild eyes, and the quivering of her thin, meek lips. It was quite evident that she feared the worst: and Tod threw away concealment with his step-mother.

“We must not accuse him; we must not let it be known that we suspect him,” he said; “the matter here can be hushed up—got over—but were suspicion once directed to him on the score of the school losses, the disgrace would never be lived down, now or later. It would cling to him through life.”

Mrs. Todhetley clasped her slender and rather bony fingers, from which the wedding-ring looked always ready to drop off. “Joseph,” she said, “you assume confidently that he has done it; I see that. Perhaps you know he has? Perhaps you have some proof that you are concealing?”

“No, on my honour. But for my father’s laying stress on the curious coincidence of the disappearances at school I should not have thought of Sanker. ‘Losses there; losses here,’ he said——”

“Now then, Peter!” mocked the bird, from his perch on the old tree.

“Be quiet!” shouted Tod. “And then the Squire went on adroitly to the fact, without putting it into words, that nobody else seems to have been within hail of this room either time.”

“He has had so few advantages; he is kept so short of money,” murmured poor Mrs. Todhetley, seeking to find an excuse for him. “I would almost rather have found my boy Hugh—when he shall be old enough—guilty of such a thing, than Edward Sanker.”

“I’d a great deal rather it had been me,” I exclaimed.“I shouldn’t have felt half so uncomfortable. And we are not sure. Can’t we keep him here, after all? It will be an awful thing to turn him out—a thief.”

“He is not going to be turned out, a thief. Don’t put in your oar, Johnny. The pater intends to hush it up. Why! had he suspected any other living mortal about the place, except Sanker, he’d have accused them outright, and sent for old Jones in hot haste.”

Mrs. Todhetley, holding her hand to her troubled face, looked at Tod as he spoke. “I am not sure, Joseph—I don’t quite know whether to hush it up entirely will be for the best. If he—— Oh!”

The exclamation came out with a shriek. We turned at it, having been standing together at the table, our backs to the window. There stood Sanker. How long he had been there was uncertain; quite long enough to hear and comprehend. His face was livid with passion, his voice hoarse with it.

“Is it possible that I am accused of taking the bank-note and the ring?—of having been the thief at school? I thank you, Joseph Todhetley.”

Mrs. Todhetley, always for peace, ran before him, and took his hands. Her gentle words were drowned—Tod’s were overpowered. When quiet fellows like Sanker do get into a rage, it’s something bad to witness.

“Look here, old fellow,” said Tod, in a breath of silence; “we don’t accuse you, and don’t wish to accuse you. The things going here, as they did at school, is an unfortunate coincidence; you can’t shut your eyes to it; but as to——”

“Why are you not accused?—why’s Ludlow not accused?—you were both at school, as well as I; and you are both here,” raved Sanker, panting like a wild animal. “You have money, both of you; you don’t want helping on in life; I have only my good name. And that you would take from me!”

“Edward, Edward! we did not wish to accuse you; we said we would not accuse you,” cried poor Mrs. Todhetley in her simplicity. But his voice broke in.

“No; you only suspected me. You assumed my guilt, and would not be honest enough to accuse me, lest I refuted it. Not another hour will I stay in this house. Come with me.”

“Don’t be foolish, Sanker! If we are wrong——”

“Be silent!” he cried, turning savagely on Tod.“I’m not strong; no match for you, or I would pound you to atoms! Let me go my own way now. You go yours.”

Half dragging, half leading Mrs. Todhetley with him, the angry light in his eyes frightening her, he went to his bedroom. Taking off his jacket; turning his pockets inside out; emptying the contents of his trunk on the floor, he scattered the articles, one by one, with the view of showing that he had nothing concealed belonging to other people. Mrs. Todhetley, great in quiet emergencies, had her senses hopelessly scared away in this; she could only cry, and implore of him to be reasonable. He flung back his things, and in five minutes was gone. Dragging his box down the stairs by its stout cord, he managed to hoist it on his shoulders, and they saw him go fiercely off across the lawn.

I met him in the plantation, beyond the Dyke. Mrs. Todhetley, awfully distressed, sent me flying away to find the pater; she mistakenly thought he might be at Rimmell’s, who lived in a cottage beyond it. Running home through the trees, I came upon Sanker. He was sitting on his box, crying; great big sobs bursting from him. Of course he could not carrythat far. Down I sat by him, and put my hand on his.

“Don’t, Sanker! don’t, old fellow! Come back and have it cleared up. I dare say they are all wrong together.”

His angry mood had changed. Those fierce whirlwinds of passion are generally followed by depression. He did not seem to care an atom for his sobs, or for my seeing them.

“It’s the cruelest wrong I ever had dealt to me, Johnny. Why should they pitch upon me? What have they seen in me that they should set me down as a thief?—and such a thief! Why, the very thought of it, if they send her word, will kill my mother.”

“You didn’t do it, Sanker. I——”

He got up, and raised his hand solemnly to the blue sky, just as a man might have done.

“I swear I did not. I swear I never laid finger on a thing in your house, or at school, that was not mine. God hears me say it.”

“And now you’ll come back with me, Ned. The box will take no harm here till we send for it.”

“Go back with you! that I never will. Fare you well, Johnny: I’ll wish it to you.”

“But where are you going?”

“That’s my business. Look here; I was more generous than some of you have been. All along, I felt as sure who it was, cribbing those things at school, as though I had seen it done; but I never told. I just whispered to the fellow, when we were parting:‘Don’t you go in for the same game next half, or I shall have you dropped upon;’ and I don’t think he will.”

“Who—which was it?” I cried, eagerly.

“No: give him a chance. It was neither you nor me, and that’s enough to know.”

Hoisting the box up on to the projecting edge of a tree, he got it on his shoulders again. Certain of his innocence then, I was in an agony to get him back.

“It’s of no use, Johnny. Good-bye.”

“Sanker! Ned! The Squire will be fit to smother us all, when he finds you are off; Mrs. Todhetley is in dreadful grief. Such an unpleasant thing has never before happened with us.”

“Good-bye,” was all he repeated, marching resolutely off, with the black box held safe by the cord.

Fit to smother us? I thought the pater would have done it, when he came home late in the afternoon; laying the blame of Sanker’s going, first on Mrs. Todhetley, then on Tod, then on me.

“What is to be done?” he asked, looking at us all helplessly. “I wouldn’t have had it come out for the world. Think of his parents—of his own prospects.”

“He never did it, sir,” I said, speaking up; “he swore it to me.”

The pater gave a sniff. “Swearing does not go for much in such cases, I’m afraid, Johnny.”

It was so hopeless, the making them understand Sanker’s solemn truth as he did swear it, that I held my tongue. I told Tod; also, what he had said about the fellow he suspected at school; but Tod only curled his lip, and quietly reminded me that I should never be anything but a muff.

Three or four days passed on. We could not learn where Sanker went to, or what had become of him; nothing about him except the fact that he had left his box at Goody Picker’s cottage, asking her to take charge of it until it was sent for. Mrs. Todhetley would not write to Wales, or to the school, for fear of making mischief. I know this: it was altogether a disagreeable remembrance, whichever way we looked at it, but I was the only one who believed in his innocence.

On the Monday another loss occurred; not one of value in itself, but uncommonly significant. Since the explosion, Mrs. Todhetley had moved about the house restlessly, more like a fish out of water than a reasonable woman, following the Squire to his room, and staying there to talk with him, as she never had before. It was always in her head to do something to mend matters; but, what, she could not tell; hence her talkings with the pater. As each day passed, bringing no news of Sanker, she grew more anxious and fidgety. While he was in his room on the Monday morning, she came in with her work. It was the unpicking some blue ribbons from a white body of Lena’s. There had been a child’s party at the Stirlings’(they were always giving them), and Lena had a new frock for it. The dressmaker had put a glistening glass thing, as big as a pea, in the bows that tied up the sleeves. They looked like diamonds. The pater made a fuss after we got home, saying it was inconsistent at the best; she was too young for real diamonds, and he would not have her wear mock rubbish. Well, Mrs. Todhetley had the frock in her hand, taking these bows off, when she came to the Squire on the Monday morning, chattering and lamenting. I saw and heard her. On going away she accidentally left one of them on the table. The Squire went about as usual, dodging in and out of the room at intervals like a dog in a fair. I sat on the low seat, on the other side of the hedge, in the vegetable garden, making a fishing-line and flinging stones at the magpie whenever he came up to his perch on the old tree’s stump. All was still; nothing to be heard but his occasional croak, “Now then, Peter!” Presently I caught a soft low whistle behind me. Looking through the hedge, I saw Roger Monk coming out of the room with stealthy steps, and going off towards his greenhouses. I thought nothing of it; it was his ordinary way of walking; but he must have come up to the room very quietly.

“Johnny,” came the Squire’s voice by-and-by, and I ran round: he had seen me sitting there.

“Johnny, have you a mind for a walk to——”

He had got thus far when Mrs. Todhetley came in by the inner door, and began looking on the table. Nothing in the world was on it except the inkstand, the Worcester Herald, and the papers before the Squire.

“I must have left one of the blue knots here,” she said.

“You did; I saw it,” said the Squire; and he took up his papers one by one, and shook the newspaper.

Well, the blue shoulder-knot was gone. Just as we had searched for the ring, we searched for that: under the matting, and above the matting, and everywhere; I and those two. A grim look came over the Squire’s face.

“The thief is amongst us still. He has taken that glittering paste thing for a diamond. This clears Sanker.”

Mrs. Todhetley burst into glad sobs. I had never seen her so excited; you might have thought her an hysterical girl. She would do all sorts of things at once; the least of which was, starting in a post-chaise-and-four for Wales.

“Do nothing,” said the Squire, with authority. “I had news of Sanker this morning, and he’s back at school. He wrote me a letter.”

“Oh, why did you not show it me?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, through her tears.

“Because it’s a trifle abusive; actionable, a lawyer might say,” he answered, stopping a laugh. “Ah! ha! a big diamond! I’m as glad of this as if anybody had left me a thousand pounds,” continued the good old pater. “I’ve not had that boy out of my head since, night or day. We’ll have him back to finish his holidays—eh, Johnny?”

Whether I went along on my head or my tail, doing the Squire’s errand, I didn’t exactly know. To my mind the thief stood disclosed—Roger Monk. But I did not much like to betray him to the Squire. As a compromise between duty and disinclination, I told Tod. He went straight off to the Squire, and Roger Monk was ordered to the room.

He did not take the accusation as Sanker took it—noisily.About as cool and hardy as any fellow could be, stood he; white, angry retaliation shining from his sullen face. And, for once, he looked full at the Squire as he spoke.

“This is the second time I have been accused wrongfully by you or yours, sir. You must prove your words. A bank-note, a ring, a false diamond (taken to be a true one), in a blue ribbon; and I have stolen them. If you don’t either prove your charge to be true, or withdraw the imputation, the law shall make you, Mr. Todhetley. I am down in the world, obliged to take a common situation for a while; but that’s no reason why I should be browbeat and put upon.”

Somehow, the words, or the manner, told upon the Squire. He was not feeling sure of his grounds. Until then he had never cast a thought of ill on Roger Monk.

“What were you doing here, Monk? What made you come up stealthily, and creep stealthily away again?” demanded Tod, who had assumed the guilt out and out.

“As to what I was doing here, I came to ask a question about my work,” coolly returned Monk. “I walked slowly, not stealthily; the day’s hot.”

“You had better turn out your pockets, Monk,” said the Squire.

He did so at once, just as Sanker had done unbidden, biting his lips to get some colour into them. Lots of odds and ends of things were there; string, nails, a tobacco-pipe, halfpence, and such like; but no blue bow. I don’t think the Squire knew whether to let him off as innocent, or to give him into custodyas guilty. At any rate, he seemed to be in hesitation, when who should appear on the scene but Goody Picker. The turned-out pockets, Monk’s aspect, and the few words she caught, told the tale.

“If you please, Squire—if you please, young masters,” she began, dropping a curtsy to us in succession; “the mistress told me to come round here. Stepping up this morning about a job o’ work I’m doing—for Mrs. Hannah, I heard of the losses that have took place, apperiently thefts. So I up and spoke; and Hannah took me to the mistress; and the mistress, who had got her gownd off a-changing of it, listened to what I had to say, and telled me to come round at once to Mr. Todhetley. (Don’t you be frighted, Monk.) Sir, young gentlemen, I think it might have been the magpie.”

“Think who might have been the magpie?” asked the Squire, puzzled.

“What stole the things. Sir, that there pie, bought only t’other day from my gran’son by young Mr. Todhetley, was turned out o’ my son Peter’s home at Alcester for thieving. He took this, and he took that; he have been at it for weeks, ever since they’d had him. They thought it was the servant, and sent her away. (A dirty young drab she was, so ’twere no loss.) Not her, though; it were that beast of a magpie. A whole nest of goods he had got hid away in the brewhouse: but for having a brewing on, he might never ha’ been found out. The woman was drawing off her second mash when she see him hop in with a new shirt wristban’ and drop it into the old iron pot.”

Tod, who believed the story to be utterly unreasonable—gotup, perhaps, by Mother Picker to screen the real thief—resented the imputation on his magpie. The bird came hopping up to us, “Now, then, Peter.”

“That’s rather too good, Mrs. Picker, that is. I have heard of lodging-house cats effecting wonders in the way of domestic disappearances, but not of magpies. Look at him, poor old fellow! He can’t speak to defend himself.”

“Yes, look at him, sir,” repeated Mother Picker;“and a fine objec’ of a half-fed animal he is, to look at! My opinion is, he have got something wrong o’ the inside of him, or else it’s his sins that troubles his skin, for the more he’s give to eat the thinner he gets. No feathers, no flesh; nothing but a big beak, and them bright eyes, and the deuce’s own tongue for impedence. Which is begging pard’n for speaking up free,” concluded Mother Picker, as Mrs. Todhetley came in, fastening her waistband.

A little searching, not a tithe of what had been before again and again, and the creature’s nest was discovered. In a cavity of the old tree-stump, so conveniently opposite, lay the articles: the bank-note, the ring, the blue bow, and some other things, most of which had not been missed. One was a bank receipt, that the house had been hunted for high and low.

“Now, then, Peter!” cried the magpie, hopping about on the gravel as he watched the raid on his treasures.

“He must be killed to-day, Joe,” said Mr. Todhetley;“he has made mischief enough. I never took kindly to him. Monk, I am sorry for the mistakeI was led into; but we suspected others before you—ay, and accused them.”

“Don’t mention it, sir,” replied Monk, his eye catching mine. And if ever I saw revenge written in a face, it was in his as he turned away.

ROGER MONK.

I’d never seen such a scene before; I have not seen one since. Perhaps, in fact, the same thing had never happened.

What had done it nobody could imagine. It was as if the place had been smoked out with some deleterious stuff; some destructive or poisoning gases, fatal to vegetable life.

On the previous day but one, Tuesday, there had been a party at the Manor. Squire and Mrs. Todhetley did not go in for much of that kind of thing, but some girls from London were staying with the Jacobsons, and we all went over to a dance there on the Friday. After supper some of them got talking to Mrs. Todhetley, asking in a laughing sort of way why she did not give them one? she shook her head, and answered that we were quiet people. Upon that Tod spoke up, and said he had no doubt the Squire would give one if asked; would like to do it. Had Mrs. Todhetley gone heartily into the proposal at once, Tod would have thrown cold water on it. That was his obstinacy. The girls attacked the Squire, and the thing was settled; the dance being fixed for the following Tuesday.

I know Mrs. Todhetley thought it an awful trouble; the Squire openly said it was when we got home; and he grumbled all day on Saturday. You see, ourservants were not used to fashionable parties; neither in truth were their masters. However, if it had to be done at all, it was to be done well. The laundry was cleared out for dancing; the old square ironing-stove taken away, and a few pictures were done round with wreaths of green and hung on the yellow-washed walls. The supper-table was laid in the dining-room; leaving the drawing-room free for reception.

It was the Squire thought of having the plants brought into the hall. He never could say afterwards it was anybody but him. His grumbling was got over by the Tuesday morning, and he was as eager as any of us. He went about in his open nankeen coat and straw hat, puffing and blowing, and saying he hoped we should relish it—he wouldn’t dance in the dog-days.

“I should like to see you dance in any days now, sir,” cried Tod.

“You impudent rascals! You must laugh, too, must you, Johnny! I can tell you young fellows what—you’ll neither of you dance a country dance as we’d used to do it. You should have seen us at the wake. Once when we militia chaps were at the Ram, at Gloucester, for a week’s training, we gave a ball there, and footed it till daylight. ‘We bucks at the Ram;’ that’s what we called ourselves: but most of us are dead and gone now. Look here, boys,” continued the pater after a pause, “I’ll have the choice plants brought into the hall. If we knock up a few sconces for candles on the walls, their colours will show out well.”

He went out to talk to Roger Monk about it. Mrs. Todhetley was in the kitchen over the creams and jellies and things, fit to faint with heat. Jenkins, the head-gardener was back then, but he was stiff yet, not likely to be of permanent good; so Roger Monk was kept on as chief. Under the pater’s direction the sets of green steps were brought in and put on either side of the hall, as many sets as there was space for; and the plants were arranged upon them.

I’d tell you the different sorts but that you might think it tedious. They were choice and beautiful. Mr. Todhetley took pride in his flowers, and spared no expense. Geraniums of all colours, tulips, brilliant roses, the white lily and the purple iris; and the rarer flowers, with hard names that nobody can spell. It was like a lovely garden, rising tier upon tier; a grove of perfume that the guests would pass through. They managed the wax-lights well; and the colours, pink, white, violet, green, orange, purple, scarlet, blue, shone out as the old east window in Worcester Cathedral used to do when it sparkled in the morning sun.

It went off first-rate. Some of the supper sweet dishes fell out of shape with the heat; but they were just as good to eat. In London, the thing you call “society” is made up of form and coldness, and artificialism; with us county people it is honest openness. There, any failure on the table is looked away from, not supposed to be seen; at the supper at Squire Todhetley’s the tumble-down dishes were introduced as a topic of regret. “And to think it should be so, after all the pains I bestowed on them!” added Mrs. Todhetley, not hesitating to say that she had been the confectioner and pastry-cook.

But it is not of the party I have to tell you. It was jolly; and everyone said what a prime ball-room the laundry made. I dare say if we had been London fashionables we should have called it the “library,”and made believe we’d had the books taken out.

Getting ready for company is delightful; but putting things to rights the next day is rather another thing. The plants were carried back to their places again in the greenhouse—a large, long, commodious greenhouse—and appeared none the worse for their show. The old folks, whose dancing-days were over, had spent half the night in the cool hall, admiring these beautiful plants; and the pater told this to Roger Monk as he stood with him in the greenhouse after they were put back. I was there, too.

“I’m glad they were admired, sir,” said Monk in answer. “I’ve taken pains with them, and I think they do the Manor credit.”

“Well, truth to say, Monk, it’s a better and brighter collection than Jenkins ever got. But you must not tell him I say so. I do take a pride in my greenhouse; my father did before me. I remember your mother spending a day here once, Johnny, before you were born, and she said of all the collections in the two counties of Warwick and Worcester, ours was the finest. It came up to Lord Coventry’s; not as large, of course, but the plants in the same prime condition.”

“Yes, sir: I’ve seen the conservatories at Croome,”returned Monk, who generally went in for large names.

“The late Lord Coventry—Yes! Here! Who’s calling?”

Tod’s voice outside, shouting for the Squire, caused the break. He had got Mr. Duffham with him; whowanted to ask about some parish business; and they came to the greenhouse.

So that made another admirer. Old Duff turned himself and his cane about, saying the colours looked brighter by daylight than waxlight; and he had not thought it possible the night before that they could do it. He stole a piece of geranium to put in his button-hole.

“By the way, Monk, when are you going over to Evesham about those seeds and things?” asked the Squire, as he was departing with old Duff.

“I can go when you like, sir.”

“Go to-morrow, then. Start with the cool of the morning. Jenkins can do what has to be done, for once. You had better take the light cart.”

“Very well, sir,” answered Monk. But he had never once looked in the Squire’s face as he answered.

The next morning was Thursday. Tod and I were up betimes to go fishing. There was a capital stream—but I’ve not time for that now. It was striking six as we went out of the house, and the first thing I saw was Jenkins coming along, his face as white as a sheet. He was a big man once, of middle height, but thin and stooping since his last bout of rheumatism; grey whiskers, blue eyes, and close upon fifty.

“I say, Tod, look at old Jenkins! He must be ill again.”

Not ill but frightened. His lips were of a bluey grey, like one whom some great terror has scared. Tod stared as he came nearer, for they were trembling as well as blue.

“What’s up, Jenkins?”

“I don’t know what, Mr. Joe. The devil has been at work.”

“Whereabouts?” asked Tod.

“Come and see, sir.”

He turned back towards the greenhouse, but not another word would he say, only pointed to it. Leaving the fishing-rods on the path, we set off to run.

Never had I seen such a scene before; as I told you at the beginning. The windows were shut, every crevice where a breath of air might enter seemed to be hermetically closed; a smell as of some sulphurous acid pervaded the air; and the whole show of plants had turned to ruin.

A wreck complete. Colour was gone; leaves and stems were gone; the sweet perfume was gone; nothing remained, so to say, but the pots. It was as if some burning blast had passed through the greenhouse, withering to death every plant that stood in it, and the ripening grapes above.

“What on earth can have done this?” cried Tod to Jenkins, when he was able to speak.

“Well, Mr. Joseph, I say nothing could have done it but the——”

“Don’t talk rubbish about the devil, Jenkins. He does not work in quite so practical a way. Open the windows.”

“I was on by half-past five, sir, not coming here at first, but——”

“Where’s Monk this morning?” again interrupted Tod, who had turned imperative.

“The Squire sent him over to Evesham for the seeds. I heard him go by in the light cart.”

“Sent him when?”

“Yesterday, I suppose; that is, told him to go. Monk came to me last evening and said I must be on early. He started betimes; it was long afore five when I heard the cart go by. I should know the rattle of that there light cart anywhere, Mr. Joe.”

“Never mind the cart. What has done this?”

That was the question. What had done it? Some blasting poison must have been set to burn in the greenhouse. Such substances might be common enough, but we knew nothing of them. We examined the place pretty carefully, but not a trace of any proof was discovered.

“What’s this?” cried out Jenkins, presently.

Some earthenware pot-stands were stacked on the ground at the far end of the greenhouse—Mrs. Todhetley always called them saucers—Jenkins had been taking two or three of the top ones off, and came upon one that contained a small portion of some soft, white, damp substance, smelling just like the smell that pervaded the greenhouse—a suffocating smell that choked you. Some sulphuric acid was in the tool-house; Tod fetched the bottle, poured a little on the stuff, and set it alight.

Instantly a white smoke arose, and a smell that sent us off. Jenkins, looking at it as if it were alive and going to bite him, carried it at arm’s length out to the nearest bed, and heaped mould upon it.

“That has done it, Mr. Joseph. But I should like to know what the white stuff is. It’s some subtle poison.”

We took the stack of pot-stands off one by one. Six or eight of them were perfectly clean, as if just wiped out. Jenkins gave his opinion again.

“Them clean saucers have all had the stuff burning in ’em this night, and they’ve done their work well. Somebody, which it must be the villain himself, has been in and cleaned ’em out, overlooking one of ’em. I can be upon my word the stands were all dusty enough last Tuesday, when the greenhouse was emptied for the ball, for I stacked ’em myself one upon another.”

Tod took up his perch on the edge of the shut-in brick stove, and surveyed the wreck. There was not a bit of green life remaining, not a semblance of it. When he had done looking he stared at me, then at Jenkins; it was his way when puzzled or perplexed.

“Have you seen anybody about here this morning, Jenkins?”

“Not a soul,” responded Jenkins, ruefully. “I was about the beds and places at first, and when I came up here and opened the door, the smoke and smell knocked me back’ards. When I see the plants—leastways what was the plants—with their leaves and blossoms and stems all black and blasted, I says to myself, ‘The devil must have been in here;’ and I was on my way to tell the master so when you two young gents met me.”

“But it’s time some of them were about,” cried Tod.“Where’s Drew? Is he not come?”

“Drew be hanged for a lazy vagabond!” retorted old Jenkins. “He never comes on much afore seven, he doesn’t. Monk threatened last week to get his wages stopped for him. I did stop ’em once, afore I was ill.”

Drew was the under-gardener, an active young fellow of nineteen. There was a boy as well, but ithappened that he was away just now. Almost as Jenkins spoke, Drew came in view, leaping along furiously towards the vegetable garden, as though he knew he was late.

“Halloa, Drew!”

He recognized Tod’s voice, turned, and came into the greenhouse. His look of amazement would have made a picture.

“Sakes alive! Jenkins, what have done this?”

“Do you know anything about it, Drew?” asked Tod.

“Me, sir?” answered Drew, turning his wide-open eyes on Tod, in surprise at the question. “I don’t as much as know what it is.”

“Mr. Joe, I think the master ought to be told of this,” said Jenkins. “As well get it over.”

He meant the explosion of wrath that was sure to come when the Squire saw the ravages. Tod never stirred. Who was to tell him? It was like the mice proposing to bell the cat: nobody offered to do it.

“You go, Johnny,” said Tod, by-and-by. “Perhaps he’s getting up now.”

I went. I always did what he ordered me, and heard Mrs. Todhetley in her dressing-room. She had her white petticoats on, doing her hair. When I told her, she just backed into a chair and turned as white as Jenkins.

“What’s that, Johnny?” roared out the Squire from his bed. I hadn’t noticed that the door between the rooms was open.

“Something is wrong in the greenhouse, sir.”

“Something wrong in the greenhouse! What d’ye mean, lad?”

“He says the plants are spoiled, and the grapes,”interrupted Mrs. Todhetley, to help me.

“Plants and grapes spoiled! You must be out of your senses, Johnny, to say such a thing. What has spoiled them?”

“It looks like some—blight,” I answered, pitching upon the word. “Everything’s dead and blackened.”

Downstairs I rushed for fear he should ask more. And down came the pater after me, hardly anything on, so to say; not shaved, and his nankeen coat flying behind him.

I let him go on to get the burst over. When I reached them, they were talking about the key. It was customary for the head-gardener to lock the greenhouse at night. For the past month or so there had been, as may be said, two head-gardeners, and the key had been left on the ledge at the back of the greenhouse, that whichever of them came on first in the morning might get in.

The Squire stormed at this—with that scene before his eyes he was ready to storm at everything. Pretty gardeners, they were! leaving the key where any tramp, hiding about the premises for a night’s lodging, might get into the greenhouse and steal what he chose! As good leave the key in the door, as hang it up outside it! The world had nothing but fools in it, as he believed.

Jenkins answered with deprecation. The key was not likely to be found by anybody but those that knew where to look for it. It always had a flower-pot turned down upon it; and so he had found it that morning.

“If all the tramps within ten miles got into the greenhouse, sir, they’d not do this,” affirmed Tod.

“Hold your tongue,” said the Squire; “what do you know about tramps? I’ve known them to do the wickedest things conceivable. My beautiful plants! And look at the grapes! I’ve never had a finer crop of grapes than this was, Jenkins,” concluded the pater, in a culminating access of rage. “If I find this has arisen through any neglect of yours and Monk’s, I’ll—I’ll hang you both.”

The morning went on; breakfast was over, and the news of the strange calamity spread. Old Jones, the constable, had been sent for by the Squire. He stared, and exclaimed, and made his comments; but he was not any the nearer hitting upon the guilty man.

About ten, Roger Monk got home from Evesham. We heard the spring-cart go round to the stables, and presently he appeared in the gardens, looking at objects on either side of the path, as was his usual wont. Then he caught sight of us, standing in and about the greenhouse, and came on faster. Jenkins was telling the story of his discovery to Mr. Duffham. He had told it a good fifty times since early morning to as many different listeners.

They made way for Monk to come in, nobody saying a word. The pater stood inside, and Monk, touching his hat, was about to report to him of his journey, when the strange aspect of affairs seemed to strike him dumb. He looked round with a sort of startled gaze at the walls, at the glass and grapes above, at the destroyed plants, and then turned savagely on Jenkins, speaking hoarsely.

“What have you been up to here?”

“Me been up to! That’s good, that is! What hadyou, been up to afore you went off? You had the first chance. Come, Mr. Monk.”

The semi-accusation was spoken by Jenkins on the spur of the moment, in his anger at the other’s words. Monk was in a degree Jenkins’s protégé, and it had not previously occurred to him that he could be in any way to blame.

“What do you know of this wicked business, Monk?” asked the Squire.

“What should I know of it, sir? I have only just come in from Evesham. The things were all right last night.”

“How did you leave the greenhouse last night?”

“Exactly as I always leave it, sir. There was nothing the matter with it then. Drew—I saw him outside, didn’t I? Step here, Drew. You were with me when I locked up the greenhouse last night. Did you see anything wrong with it?”

“It were right enough then,” answered Drew.

Monk turned himself about, lifting his hands in dismay, as one blackened object after another came under view. “I never saw such a thing!” he cried piteously. “There has been something wrong at work here; or else——”

Monk came to a sudden pause. “Or else what?”asked the Squire.

“Or else, moving the plants into the hall on Tuesday has killed them.”

“Moving the plants wouldn’t kill them. What are you thinking of, Monk?”

“Moving them would not kill them, sir, or hurt them either,” returned Monk, with a stress on the first word;“but it might have been the remote cause of it.”

“I don’t understand you!”

“I saw some result of the sort once, sir. It was at a gentleman’s place at Chiswick. All the choice plants were taken indoors to improvise a kind of conservatory for a night fête. They were carried back the next day, seemingly none the worse, and on the morrow were found withered.”

“Like these?”

“No, sir, not so bad as these. They didn’t die; they revived after a time. A great fuss was made over it; the gentleman thought it must be wilful damage, and offered twenty pounds reward for the discovery of the offenders. At last it was found they had been poisoned by the candles.”

“Poisoned by the candles!”

“A new sort of candle, very beautiful to look at, but with a great quantity of arsenic in it,” continued Monk.“A scientific man gave it as his opinion that the poison thrown out from the candles had been fatal to the plants. Perhaps something of the same kind has done the mischief here, sir. Plants are such delicate things!”

“And what has been fatal to the grapes? Theywere not taken into the house.”

The question came from the surgeon, Mr. Duffham. He had stood all the while against the end of the far steps, looking fixedly at Monk over the top of his cane. Monk put his eyes on the grapes above, and kept them there while he answered.

“True, sir; the grapes, as you say, didn’t go in. Perhaps the poison brought back by the plants may have acted on them.”

“Now, I tell you what, Monk, I think that’s all nonsense,” cried the Squire, testily.

“Well, sir, I don’t see any other way of accounting for this state of things.”

“The greenhouse was filled with some suffocating, smelling, blasting stuff that knocked me back’ards,”put in Jenkins. “Every crack and crevice was stopped where a breath of air could have got in. I wish it had been you to find it; you’d not have liked to be smothered alive, I know.”

“I wish it had been,” said Monk. “If there was any such thing here, and not your fancy, I’ll be bound I’d have traced it out.”

“Oh, would you! Did you do anything to them there pot-stands?” continued Jenkins, pointing to them.

“No.”

“Oh! Didn’t clean ’em out?”

“I wiped a few out on Wednesday morning before we brought back the plants. Somebody—Drew, I suppose—had stacked them in the wrong place. In putting them right, I began to wipe them. I didn’t do them all; I was called away.”

“’Twas me stacked ’em,” said Jenkins. “Well—them stands are what had held the poison; I found a’most one-half of ’em filled with it.”

Monk cast a rapid glance around. “What was the poison?” he asked.

Jenkins grunted, but gave no other reply. The fact was, he had been so abused by the Squire for having put away the trace of the “stuff,” that it was a sore subject.

“Did you come on here, Monk, before you started for Evesham this morning?” questioned the Squire.

“I didn’t come near the gardens, sir. I had toldJenkins last night to be on early,” replied Monk, bending over a blackened row of plants while he spoke. “I went the back way to the stables through the lane, had harnessed the horse to the cart, and was away before five.”

We quitted the greenhouse. The pater went out with Mr. Duffham, Tod and I followed. I, looking quietly on, had been struck with the contrast of manner between old Duff and Monk—he peering at Monk with his searching gaze, never once taking it off him; and Monk meeting nobody’s eyes, but shifting his own anywhere rather than meet them.

“About this queer arsenic tale Monk tells?” began the Squire. “Is there anything in it? Will it hold water?”

“Moonshine!” said old Duff, with emphasis.

The tone was curious, and we all looked at him. He had got his lips drawn in, and the top of his cane pressing them.

“Where did you take Monk from, Squire? Get a good character with him?”

“Jenkins brought him here. As to character, he had never been in any situation before. Why? Do you suspect him?”

“Um-m-m!” said the doctor, prolonging the sound as though in doubt. “If I do suspect him, he has caused me to. I never saw such a shifty manner in all my life. Why, he never once looked at any of us! His eyes are false, and his tones are false!”

“His tones? Do you mean his words?”

“I mean the tone his words are spoken in. To an apt ear, the sound of a man’s voice, or woman’s either, can be read off like a book; a man’s voice is honest or dishonest according to his nature; and you can’t make a mistake about it. Monk’s has a false ring in it, if ever I heard one. Now, master Johnny, what are you looking so eager about?”

“I think Monk’s voice false, too, Mr. Duffham; I have thought himself false all along. Tod knows I have.”

“I know that you are just a muff, Johnny, going in for prejudices against people unreasonably,” said Tod, putting me down as usual.

Old Duff pushed my straw hat up, and passed his fingers over the top of my forehead. “Johnny, my boy,” he said, “you have a strong and good indication here for reading the world. Trust to it.”

“I couldn’t trust Monk. I never have trusted him. That was one reason why I suspected him of stealing the things the magpie took.”

“Well, you were wrong there,” said Tod.

“Yes. But I’m nearly sure I was right in the thing before.”

“What thing?” demanded old Duff, sharply.

“Well, I thought it was Monk that frightened Phœbe.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Duffham. “Dressed himself up in a sheet, and whitened his face, and went up the lane when the women were watching for the shadows on St. Mark’s Eve! What else do you suspect, Johnny?”

“Nothing else, sir; except that I fancied Mother Picker knew of it. When Tod and I went to ask her whether Monk was out that night, she looked frightened to death, and broke a basin.”

“Did she say he was out?”

“She said he was not out; but I thought she said it more eagerly than truthfully.”

“Squire, when you are in doubt as to people’s morals, let this boy read them for you,” said old Duff, in his quaint way. The Squire, thinking of his plants, looked as perplexed as could be.

“It is such a thing, you know, Duffham, to have one’s whole hothouse destroyed in a night. It’s no better than arson.”

“And the incendiary who did it would have no scruple in attacking the barns next; therefore, he must be bowled out.”

The pater looked rueful. He could bluster and threaten, but he could not do much; he never knew how to set about it. In all emergencies he would send for Jones—the greatest old woman going.

“You don’t seriously think it could have been Monk, Duffham?”

“I think there’s strong suspicion that it was. Look here:” and the doctor began to tell off points with his cane and fingers. “Somebody goes into the greenhouse to set the stuff alight in the pot-stands—for that’s how it was done. Monk and Jenkins alone knew where the key was; Jenkins, a trusty man, years in the employ, comes on at six and finds the state of things. Where’s Monk? Gone off by previous order to Evesham at five. Why should it happen the very morning he was away? What was to prevent his stealing into the greenhouse after dark last night putting his deleterious stuff to work, leaving it to burn, and stealing in again at four this morning to put all traces away? He thought he cleaned out all the tale-telling earthen saucers, but he overlooks one,as is usually the case. When he comes back, finding the wreck and the commotion consequent upon it, he relates a glib tale of other plants destroyed by arsenic from candles, and he never looks honestly into a single face as he tells it!”

The Squire drew a deep breath. “And you say Monk did all this?”

“Nonsense, Squire. I say he might have done it. I say, moreover, that it looks very like it. Putting Monk aside, your scent would be wholly at fault.”

“What is to be done?”

“I’ll go and see Mother Picker; she can tell what time he went in last night, and what time he came out this morning,” cried Tod, who was just as hasty as the pater. But old Duff caught him as he was vaulting off.

“I had better see Mother Picker. Will you let me act in this matter, Squire, and see what can be made of it?”

“Do, Duffham. Take Jones to help you?”

“Jones be shot,” returned Duff in a passion. “If I wanted any one—which I don’t—I’d take Johnny. He is worth fifty Joneses. Say nothing—nothing at all. Do you understand?”

He went off down a side path, and crossed Jenkins, who was at work now. Monk stayed in the greenhouse.

“This is a sad calamity, Jenkins.”

“It’s the worst I ever met with, sir,” cried Jenkins, touching his hat. “And what have done it is the odd thing. Monk, he talks of the candles poisoning of’em; but I don’t know.”

“Well, there’s not a much surer poison than arsenic,Jenkins,” said the doctor, candidly. “I hope it will be cleared up. Monk, too, has taken so much pains with the plants. He is a clever young man in his vocation. Where did you hear of him?”

Jenkins’s answer was a long one. Curtailed, it stated that he had heard of Monk “promiskeous.”He had thought him a gentleman till he asked if he, Jenkins, could help him to a place as ornamental gardener. He had rather took to the young man, and recommended the Squire to employ him “temporay,”for he, Jenkins, was just then falling sick with rheumatism.

Mr. Duffham nodded approvingly. “Didn’t think it necessary to ask for references?”

“Monk said he could give me a cart-load a’most of them, sir, if I’d wanted to see ’em.”

“Just so! Good-day, Jenkins, I can’t stay gossiping my morning away.”

He went straight to Mrs. Picker’s, and caught her taking her luncheon off the kitchen-table—bread-and-cheese, and perry.

“It’s a little cask o’ last year’s my son have made me a present of, sir; if you’d be pleased to drink a cup, Dr. Duff’m,” said she, hospitably.

She drew a half-pint cup full; bright, sparkling, full-bodied perry, never better made in Gloucestershire. Mr. Duffham smacked his lips, and wished some of the champagne at gentlemen’s tables was half as good. He talked, and she talked; and, it may be, he took her a little off her guard. Evidently, she was not cognizant of the mishap to the greenhouse.

A nice young man that lodger of hers? Well, yes, he was; steady and well-conducted. Talked quite like a gentleman, but wasn’t uppish ’cause o’ that, and seemed satisfied with all she did for him. He was gone off to Evesham after seeds and other things. Squire Todhetley put great confidence in him.

“Ay,” said Mr. Duffham, “to be sure. One does put confidence in steady young men, you know, Goody. He was off by four o’clock, wasn’t he?”

Earlier nor that, Goody Picker thought. Monk were one o’ them who liked to take time by the forelock, and get his extra work forrard when he were put on to any.

“Nothing like putting the shoulder to the wheel. This is perry! The next time I call to see your son Peter, at Alcester, I shall ask him if he can’t get some for me. As to Monk—you might have had young fellows here who’d have idled their days away, and paid no rent, Goody. Monk was at his work late last night, too, I fancy?”

Goody fancied he had been; leastways he went out after supper, and were gone an hour or so. What with the fires, and what with the opening and shutting o’the winders to keep the hot-houses at proper temperture, an head-gardener didn’t sit on a bed o’ idle roses, as Dr. Duff’m knew.

Mr. Duffham was beginning to make pretty sure of winning his game. His manner suddenly changed. Pushing the empty cup from him, he leaned forward, and laid hold of Mrs. Picker by the two wrists. Between the perry and the doctor’s sociability and Monk’s merits, her eyes had begun to sparkle.

“Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Picker. I have come here to ask you a question, and you must answer me. But you have nothing to fear on your own score, provided you tell me the truth honestly. Young men will do foolish things, however industrious they may be. Why did Monk play that prank on Easter Monday?”

The sparkle in the eyes faded with fright. She would have got away, but could not, and so put on an air of wonder.

“On Easter Monday! What were it he did on Easter Monday?”

“When he put himself and his face into white, and went to the churchyard by moonlight to represent the dead, you know, Mrs. Picker.”

She gave a shrill scream, got one of her hands loose and flung it up to her face.

“Come, Goody, you had better answer me quietly than be taken to confess before Squire Todhetley. I dare say you were not to blame.”

Afore Squire Todhetley! O-o-o-o-o-h! Did they know it at the Manor?

“Well,” said Mr. Duffham, “you see I know it, and I have come straight from there. Now then, my good woman, I have not much time.”

Goody Picker’s will was good to hold out longer, but she surrendered à coup de main, as so many of us have to do when superior power is brought to bear. Monk overheered it, was the substance of her answer. On coming in from work that there same blessed evening—and look at him now! at his work on a Easter Monday till past dark!—he overheered the two servants, Molly and Hannah, talking of what they was going out to watch for—the shadows in the churchyard. He let ’em go, never showing hisself till they’d left the house. Then he got the sheets from his bed, and put the flour on his face, and went on there tofrighten ’em; all in fun. He never thought of hurting the women; he never knowed as the young girl, Phœbe, was to be there. Nobody could be more sorry for it nor he was; but he’d never meant to do harm more nor a babby unborn.

Mr. Duffham released the hands. Looking back in reflection, he had little doubt it was as she said—that Monk had done it out of pure sport, not intending ill.

“He might have confessed: it would have been more honest. And you! why did you deny that it was Monk?”

Mrs. Picker at first could only stare in reply. Confess to it? Him? What, and run the risk o’ being put into ancuffs by that there Jones with his fat legs? And she! a poor old widder? If Monk went and said he didn’t do it, she couldn’t go and say he did. Doctor Duff’m might see as there were no choice left for her. Never should she forget the fright when the two young gents come in with their querries the next day; her fingers was took with the palsy and dropped the pudd’n basin, as she’d had fifteen year. Monk, poor fellow, couldn’t sleep for a peck o’ nights after, thinking o’ Phœbe.

“There; that’s enough,” said Mr. Duffham. “Who is Monk? Where does he come from?”

From the moon, for all Mrs. Picker knew. A civiler young man she’d not wish to have lodging with her; paid reg’lar as the Saturdays come round; but he never told her nothing about hisself.

“Which is his room? The one at the back, I suppose.”

Without saying with your leave, or by your leave, as Mrs. Picker phrased it in telling the story a long while afterwards, Mr. Duffham penetrated at once into the lodger’s room. There he took the liberty of making a slight examination, good Mrs. Picker standing by with round eyes and open mouth. And what he discovered caused him to stride off at once to the pater.

Roger Monk was not Monk at all, but somebody else. He had been implicated in some crime (whether guilty or not remained yet a question), and to avoid exposure had come away into this quiet locality under a false name. In short, during the time he had been working as gardener at Dyke Manor and living at Mother Picker’s, he was in hiding. As the son of a well-known and most respectable landscape and ornamental nursery-man, he had become thoroughly conversant with the requisite duties.

“They are fools, at the best, these fellows,” remarked Duffham, as he finished his narrative. “A letter written to him by some friend betrayed to me all this. Now why should not Monk have destroyed that letter, instead of keeping it in his room, Squire?”

The Squire did not answer. All he could do just now was to wipe his hot face and try to get over his amazement. Monk not a gardener or servant at all, but an educated man! Only living there to hide from the police; and calling himself by any name that came uppermost—which happened to be Monk!

“I must say there’s a certain credit due to him for his patient industry, and the perfection to which he has brought your grounds,” said Mr. Duffham.

“And for blighting all my hot-house plants at a blow—is there credit due to him for that?” roaredout the Squire. “I’ll have him tried for it, as sure as my name’s Todhetley.”

It was easier said than done. For when Mr. Jones, receiving his private orders from the pater, went, staff in hand, to arrest Monk, that gentleman had already departed.

“He come into the house just as Dr. Duff’m left it,” explained Mrs. Picker. “Saying he had got to take a short journey, he put his things into his port-manty, and went off carrying of it, leaving me a week’s rent on the table.”

“Go and catch him, Jones,” sternly commanded the Squire, when the constable came back with the above news.

“Yes, your worship,” replied Jones. But how he was to do it, taking the gouty legs into consideration, was quite a different thing.

The men were sent off various ways. And came back again, not having come up with Monk. Squire Todhetley went into a rage, abused old Jones, and told him he was no longer worth his salt. But the strangest thing occurred in the evening.

The pater walked over to the Court after tea, carrying the grievance of his destroyed plants to the Sterlings. In coming up Dyke Lane as he returned at night, where it was always darker than in other places because the trees hid the moonlight, somebody seemed to walk right out of the hedge upon him.

It was Roger Monk. He raised his hat to the Squire as a gentleman does—did not touch it as a gardener—and began pleading for clemency.

“Clemency, after destroying a whole hot-houseful of rare plants!” cried the Squire.

“I never did it, sir,” returned Monk, passionately.“On my word as a man—I will not to you say as a gentleman—if the plants were not injured by the candles, as I fully believe, I know not how they could have been injured.”

The pater was staggered. At heart he was the best man living. Suppose Monk was innocent?

“Look here, Monk. You know your name is——”

“Hush, sir!” interposed Monk, hastily, as if to prevent the hedges hearing the true name. “It is of that I have waited to speak to you; to beseech your clemency. I have no need to crave it in the matter of plants which I never harmed. I want to ask you to be silent, sir; not to proclaim to the world that I am other than what I appeared to be. A short while longer and I should have been able to prove my innocence; things are working round. But if you set the hue-and-cry upon me——”

“Were you innocent?” interposed the Squire.

“I was; I swear it to you. Oh, Mr. Todhetley, think for a moment! I am not so very much older than your son; he is not more innocent than I was; but it might happen that he—I crave your pardon, sir, but it might—that he should become the companion of dissipated young men, and get mixed up unwittingly in a disgraceful affair, whose circumstances were so complicated that he could only fly for a time and hide himself. What would you say if the people with whom he took refuge, whether as servant or else, were to deliver him up to justice, and he stood before the world an accused felon? Sir, it is my case. Keep my secret; keep my secret, Mr. Todhetley.”

“And couldn’t you prove your innocence?” criedthe Squire, as he followed out the train of ideas suggested.

“Not at present—that I see. And when once a man has stood at a criminal bar, it is a ban on him for life, although it may be afterwards shown he stood there wrongly.”

“True,” said the Squire, softening.

Well—for there’s no space to go on at length—the upshot was that Monk went away with a promise; and the Squire came home to the Manor and told Duffham, who was waiting there, that they must both be silent. Only those two knew of the discovery; they had kept the particulars and Monk’s real name to themselves. Duff gave his head a toss, and told the pater he was softer than old Jones.

“How came you to suspect him, Johnny?” he continued, turning on me in his sharp way.

“I think just for the same things that you did, Mr. Duffham—because neither his face nor his voice istrue.”

And—remembering his look of revenge when accused in mistake for the magpie—I suspected him still.

THE EBONY BOX.

I.

In one or two of the papers already written for you, I have spoken of “Lawyer Cockermuth,” as he was usually styled by his fellow-townspeople at Worcester. I am now going to tell of something that happened in his family; that actually did happen, and is no invention of mine.

Lawyer Cockermuth’s house stood in the Foregate Street. He had practised in it for a good many years; he had never married, and his sister lived with him. She had been christened Betty; it was a more common name in those days than it is in these. There was a younger brother named Charles. They were tall, wiry men with long arms and legs. John, the lawyer, had a smiling, homely face; Charles was handsome, but given to be choleric.

Charles had served in the militia once, and had been ever since called Captain Cockermuth. When only twenty-one he married a young lady with a good bit of money; he had also a small income of his own; so he abandoned the law, to which he had been bred, and lived as a gentleman in a pretty little house on the outskirts of Worcester. His wife died in the course of a few years, leaving him with one child, a son, named Philip. The interest of Mrs. CharlesCockermuth’s money would be enjoyed by her husband until his death, and then would go to Philip.

When Philip left school he was articled to his uncle, Lawyer Cockermuth, and took up his abode with him. Captain Cockermuth (who was of a restless disposition, and fond of roving), gave up his house then and went travelling about. Philip Cockermuth was a very nice steady young fellow, and his father was liberal to him in the way of pocket-money, allowing him a guinea a-week. Every Monday morning Lawyer Cockermuth handed (for his brother) to Philip a guinea in gold; the coin being in use then. Philip spent most of this in books, but he saved some of it; and by the time he was of age he had sixty golden guineas put aside in a small round black box of carved ebony. “What are you going to do with it, Philip?” asked Miss Cockermuth, as he brought it down from his room to show her. “I don’t know what yet, Aunt Betty,”said Philip, laughing. “I call it my nest-egg.”

He carried the little black box (the sixty guineas quite filled it), back to his chamber and put it back into one of the pigeon-holes of the old-fashioned bureau which stood in the room, where he always kept it, and left it there, the bureau locked as usual. After that time, Philip put his spare money, now increased by a salary, into the Old Bank; and it chanced that he did not again look at the ebony box of gold, never supposing but that it was safe in its hiding-place. On the occasion of his marriage some years later, he laughingly remarked to Aunt Betty that he must now take his box of guineas into use; and he went up to fetch it. The box was not there.

Consternation ensued. The family flocked upstairs;the lawyer, Miss Betty, and the captain—who had come to Worcester for the wedding, and was staying in the house—one and all put their hands into the deep, dark pigeon-holes, but failed to find the box. The captain, a hot-tempered man, flew into a passion and swore over it; Miss Betty shed tears; Lawyer Cockermuth, always cool and genial, shrugged his shoulders and absolutely joked. None of them could form the slightest notion as to how the box had gone or who was likely to have taken it, and it had to be given up as a bad job.

Philip was married the next day, and left his uncle’s house for good, having taken one out Barbourne way. Captain Cockermuth felt very sore about the loss of the box, he strode about Worcester talking of it, and swearing that he would send the thief to Botany Bay if he could find him.

A few years more yet, and poor Philip became ill. Ill of the disorder which had carried off his mother—decline. When Captain Cockermuth heard that his son was lying sick, he being (as usual) on his travels, he hastened to Worcester and took up his abode at his brother’s—always his home on these visits. The disease was making very quick progress indeed; it was what is called “rapid decline.” The captain called in all the famed doctors of the town—if they had not been called before: but there was no hope.

The day before Philip died, his father spoke to him about the box of guineas. It had always seemed to the captain that Philip must have, or ought to have, some notion of how it went. And he put the question to him again, solemnly, for the last time.

“Father,” said the dying man—who retained all hisfaculties and his speech to the very end—“I declare to you that I have none. I have never been able to set up any idea at all upon the loss, or attach suspicion to a soul, living or dead. The two maids were honest; they would not have touched it; the clerks had no opportunity of going upstairs. I had always kept the key safely, and you know that we found the lock of the bureau had not been tampered with.”

Poor Philip died. His widow and four children went to live at a pretty cottage on Malvern Link—upon a hundred pounds a-year, supplied to her by her father-in-law. Mr. Cockermuth added the best part of another hundred. These matters settled, Captain Cockermuth set off on his rovings again, considering himself hardly used by Fate at having his limited income docked of nearly half its value. And yet some more years passed on.

This much has been by way of introduction to what has to come. It was best to give it.

Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson, our neighbours at Dyke Manor, had a whole colony of nephews, what with brothers’ sons and sisters’ sons; of nieces also; batches of them would come over in relays to stay at Elm Farm, which had no children of its own. Samson Dene was the favourite nephew of all; his mother was sister to Mr. Jacobson, his father was dead. Samson Reginald Dene he was christened, but most people called him “Sam.” He had been articled to the gentleman who took to his father’s practice; a lawyer in a village in Oxfordshire. Later, he had gone to a firm in London for a year, had passed, and then came down to his uncle at Elm Farm, asking what he was to do next. For, upon his brother-in-law’sdeath, Mr. Jacobson had taken upon himself the expenses of Sam, the eldest son.

“Want to know what you are to do now, eh?” cried old Jacobson, who was smoking his evening pipe by the wide fire of the dark-wainscoted, handsome dining-parlour, one evening in February. He was a tall, portly man with a fresh-coloured, healthy face; and not, I dare say, far off sixty years old. “What would you like to do?—what is your own opinion upon it, Sam?”

“I should like to set up in practice for myself, uncle.”

“Oh, indeed! In what quarter of the globe, pray?”

“In Worcester. I have always wished to practise at Worcester. It is the assize town: I don’t care for pettifogging places: one can’t get on in them.”

“You’d like to emerge all at once into a full-blown lawyer there? That’s your notion, is it, Sam?”

Sam made no answer. He knew by the tone his notion was being laughed at.

“No, my lad. When you have been in some good office for another year or two maybe, then you might think about setting-up. The office can be in Worcester if you like.”

“I am hard upon twenty-three, Uncle Jacobson. I have as much knowledge of law as I need.”

“And as much steadiness also, perhaps?” said old Jacobson.

Sam turned as red as the table-cover. He was a frank-looking, slender young fellow of middle height, with fine wavy hair almost a gold colour and worn of a decent length. The present fashion—to be cropped as if you were a prison-bird and to pretendto like it so—was not favoured by gentlemen in those days.

“You may have been acquiring a knowledge of law in London, Sam; I hope you have; but you’ve been kicking up your heels over it. What about those sums of money you’ve more than once got out of your mother?”

Sam’s face was a deeper red than the cloth now.“Did she tell you of it, uncle?” he gasped.

“No, she didn’t; she cares too much for her graceless son to betray him. I chanced to hear of it, though.”

“One has to spend so much in London,” murmured Sam, in lame apology.

“I dare say! In my past days, sir, a young man had to cut his coat according to his cloth. We didn’t rush into all kinds of random games and then go to our fathers or mothers to help us out of them. Which is what you’ve been doing, my gentleman.”

“Does aunt know?” burst out Sam in a fright, as a step was heard on the stairs.

“I’ve not told her,” said Mr. Jacobson, listening—“she is gone on into the kitchen. How much is it that you’ve left owing in London, Sam?”

Sam nearly choked. He did not perceive this was just a random shot: he was wondering whether magic had been at work.

“Left owing in London?” stammered he.

“That’s what I asked. How much? And I mean to know. ’Twon’t be of any use your fencing about the bush. Come! tell it in a lump.”

“Fifty pounds would cover it all, sir,” said Sam, driven by desperation into the avowal.

“I want the truth, Sam.”

“That is the truth, uncle, I put it all down in a list before leaving London; it comes to just under fifty pounds.”

“How could you be so wicked as to contract it?”

“There has not been much wickedness about it,”said Sam, miserably, “indeed there hasn’t. One gets drawn into expenses unconsciously in the most extraordinary manner up in London. Uncle Jacobson, you may believe me or not, when I say that until I added it up, I did not think it amounted to twenty pounds in all.”

“And then you found it to be fifty! How do you propose to pay this?”

“I intend to send it up by instalments, as I can.”

“Instead of doing which, you’ll get into deeper debt at Worcester. If it’s Worcester you go to.”

“I hope not, uncle. I shall do my best to keep out of debt. I mean to be steady.”

Mr. Jacobson filled a fresh pipe, and lighted it with a spill from the mantelpiece. He did not doubt the young fellow’s intentions; he only doubted his resolution.

“You shall go into some lawyer’s office in Worcester for two years, Sam, when we shall see how things turn out,” said he presently. “And, look here, I’ll pay these debts of yours myself, provided you promise me not to get into trouble again. There, no more”—interrupting Sam’s grateful looks—“your aunt’s coming in.”

Sam opened the door for Mrs. Jacobson. A little pleasant-faced woman in a white net cap, with small flat silver curls under it. She carried a small basket lined with blue silk, in which lay her knitting.

“I’ve been looking to your room, my dear, to see that all’s comfortable for you,” she said to Sam, as she sat down by the table and the candles. “That new housemaid of ours is not altogether to be trusted. I suppose you’ve been telling your uncle all about the wonders of London?”

“And something else, too,” put in old Jacobson gruffly. “He wanted to set up in practice for himself at Worcester: off-hand, red-hot!”

“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Jacobson.

“That’s what the boy wanted, nothing less. No. Another year or two’s work in some good house, to acquire stability and experience, and then he may talk about setting up. It will be all for the best, Sam; trust me.”

“Well, uncle, perhaps it will.” It was of no use for him to say perhaps it won’t: he could not help himself. But it was a disappointment.

Mr. Jacobson walked over to Dyke Manor the next day, to consult the Squire as to the best lawyer to place Sam with, himself suggesting their old friend Cockermuth. He described all Sam’s wild ways (it was how he put it) in that dreadful place, London, and the money he had got out of amidst its snares. The Squire took up the matter with his usual hearty sympathy, and quite agreed that no practitioner in the law could be so good for Sam as John Cockermuth.

John Cockermuth proved to be agreeable. He was getting to be an elderly man then, but was active as ever, saving when a fit of the gout took him. He received young Dene in his usual cheery manner, upon the day appointed for his entrance, and assigned him his place in the office next to Mr. Parslet. Parslet hadbeen there more than twenty years; he was, so to say, at the top and tail of all the work that went on in it, but he was not a qualified solicitor. Samson Dene was qualified, and could therefore represent Mr. Cockermuth before the magistrates and what not: of which the old lawyer expected to find the benefit.

“Where are you going to live?” he questioned of Sam that first morning.

“I don’t know yet, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson are about the town now, I believe, looking for lodgings for me. Of course they couldn’t let me look; they’d think I should be taken in,” added Sam.

“Taken in and done for,” laughed the lawyer. “I should not wonder but Mr. Parslet could accommodate you. Can you, Parslet?”

Mr. Parslet looked up from his desk, his thin cheeks flushing. He was small and slight, with weak brown hair, and had a patient, sad sort of look in his face and in his meek, dark eyes.

James Parslet was one of those men who are said to spoil their own lives. Left alone early, he was looked after by a bachelor uncle, a minor canon of the cathedral, who perhaps tried to do his duty by him in a mild sort of manner. But young Parslet liked to go his own ways, and they were not very good ways. He did not stay at any calling he was put to, trying first one and then another; either the people got tired of him, or he of them. Money (when he got any) burnt a hole in his pocket, and his coats grew shabby and his boots dirty. “Poor Jamie Parslet! how he has spoilt his life” cried the town, shaking its pitying head at him: and thus things went on till he grew to be nearly thirty years of age. Then, to the publicastonishment, Jamie pulled up. He got taken on by Lawyer Cockermuth as copying clerk at twenty shillings a-week, married, and became as steady as Old Time. He had been nothing but steady from that day to this, had forty shillings a-week now, instead of twenty, and was ever a meek, subdued man, as if he carried about with him a perpetual repentance for the past, regret for the life that might have been. He lived in Edgar Street, which is close to the cathedral, as every one knows, Edgar Tower being at the top of it. An old gentleman attached to the cathedral had now lodged in his house for ten years, occupying the drawing-room floor; he had recently died, and hence Lawyer Cockermuth’s suggestion.

Mr. Parslet looked up. “I should be happy to, sir,”he said; “if our rooms suited Mr. Dene. Perhaps he would like to look at them?”

“I will,” said Sam. “If my uncle and aunt do not fix on any for me.”

Is there any subtle mesmeric power, I wonder, that influences things unconsciously? Curious to say, at this very moment Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson were looking at these identical rooms. They had driven into Worcester with Sam very early indeed, so as to have a long day before them, and when breakfast was over at the inn, took the opportunity, which they very rarely got, of slipping into the cathedral to hear the beautiful ten-o’clock service. Coming out the cloister way when it was over, and so down Edgar Street, Mrs. Jacobson espied a card in a window with“Lodgings” on it. “I wonder if they would suit Sam?”she cried to her husband. “Edgar Street is a nice, wide, open street, and quiet. Suppose we look at them?”

A young servant-maid, called by her mistress“Sally,” answered the knock. Mrs. Parslet, a capable, bustling woman of ready speech and good manners, came out of the parlour, and took the visitors to the floor above. They liked the rooms and they liked Mrs. Parslet; they also liked the moderate rent asked, for respectable country people in those days did not live by shaving one another; and when it came out that the house’s master had been clerk to Lawyer Cockermuth for twenty years, they settled the matter off-hand, without the ceremony of consulting Sam. Mrs. Jacobson looked upon Sam as a boy still. Mr. Jacobson might have done the same but for the debts made in London.

And all this, you will say, has been yet more explanation; but I could not help it. The real thing begins now, with Sam Dene’s sojourn in Mr. Cockermuth’s office, and his residence in Edgar Street.

The first Sunday of his stay there, Sam went out to attend the morning service in the cathedral, congratulating himself that that grand edifice stood so conveniently near, and looking, it must be confessed, a bit of a dandy, for he had put a little bunch of spring violets into his coat, and “button-holes” were quite out of the common way then. The service began with the Litany, the earlier service of prayers being held at eight o’clock. Sam Dene has not yet forgotten that day, for it is no imaginary person I am telling you of, and never will forget it. The Reverend Allen Wheeler chanted, and the prebendary in residence (Somers Cocks) preached. While wondering when the sermon (a very good one) would be over, and thinking it rather prosy, after the custom of youngmen, Sam’s roving gaze was drawn to a young lady sitting in the long seat opposite to him on the other side of the choir, whose whole attention appeared to be given to the preacher, to whom her head was turned. It is a nice face, thought Sam; such a sweet expression in it. It really was a nice face, rather pretty, gentle and thoughtful, a patient look in the dark brown eyes. She had on a well-worn dark silk, and a straw bonnet; all very quiet and plain; but she looked very much of a lady. Wonder if she sits there always? thought Sam.

Service over, he went home, and was about to turn the handle of the door to enter (looking another way) when he found it turned for him by some one who was behind and had stretched out a hand to do it. Turning quickly, he saw the same young lady.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Sam, all at sea; “did you wish to come in here?”

“If you please,” she answered—and her voice was sweet and her manner modest.

“Oh,” repeated Sam, rather taken aback at the answer. “You did not want me, did you?”

“Thank you, it is my home,” she said.

“Your home?” stammered Sam, for he had not seen the ghost of any one in the house yet, saving his landlord and landlady and Sally. “Here?”

“Yes. I am Maria Parslet.”

He stood back to let her enter; a slender, gentle girl of middle height; she looked about eighteen, Sam thought (she was that and two years on to it), and he wondered where she had been hidden. He had to go out again, for he was invited to dine at Lawyer Cockermuth’s, so he saw no more of the young ladythat day; but she kept dancing about in his memory. And somehow she so fixed herself in it, and as the time went on so grew in it, and at last so filled it, that Sam may well hold that day as a marked day—the one that introduced him to Maria Parslet. But that is anticipating.

On the Monday morning all his ears and eyes were alert, listening and looking for Maria. He did not see her; he did not hear a sound of her. By degrees he got to learn that the young lady was resident teacher in a lady’s school hard by; and that she was often allowed to spend the whole day at home on Sundays. One Sunday evening he ingeniously got himself invited to take tea in Mrs. Parslet’s parlour, and thus became acquainted with Maria; but his opportunities for meeting her were rare.

There’s not much to tell of the first twelvemonth. It passed in due course. Sam Dene was fairly steady. He made a few debts, as some young men, left to themselves, can’t help making—at least, they’d tell you they can’t. Sundry friends of Sam’s in Worcester knew of this, and somehow it reached Mr. Cockermuth’s ears, who gave Sam a word of advice privately.

This was just as the first year expired. According to agreement, Sam had another year to stay. He entered upon it with inward gloom. On adding up his scores, which he deemed it as well to do after his master’s lecture, he again found that they amounted to far more than he had thought for, and how he should contrive to pay them out of his own resources he knew no more than the man in the moon. In short, he could not do it; he was in a fix; and livedin perpetual dread of its coming to the ears of his uncle Jacobson.

The spring assize, taking place early in March, was just over; the judges had left the town for Stafford, and Worcester was settling down again to quietness. Miss Cockermuth gave herself and her two handmaidens a week’s rest—assize time being always a busy and bustling period at the lawyer’s, no end of chance company looking in—and then the house began its spring cleaning, a grand institution with our good grandmothers, often lasting a couple of weeks. This time, at the lawyer’s house, it was to be a double bustle; for visitors were being prepared for.

It had pleased Captain Cockermuth to write word that he should be at home for Easter; upon which, the lawyer and his sister decided to invite Philip’s widow and her children also to spend it with them; they knew Charles would be pleased. Easter-Day was very early indeed that year, falling at the end of March.

To make clearer what’s coming, the house had better have a word or two of description. You entered from the street into a wide passage; no steps. On the left was the parlour and general sitting-room, in which all meals were usually taken. It was a long, low room, its two rather narrow windows looking upon the street, the back of the room being a little dark. Opposite the door was the fireplace. On the other side the passage, facing the parlour-door, was the door that opened to the two rooms (one front, one back) used as the lawyer’s offices. The kitchens and staircase were at the back of the passage, a garden lying beyond; and there was a handsome drawing-room on the first floor, not much used.

The house, I say, was in a commotion with the spring cleaning, and the other preparations. To accommodate so many visitors required contrivance: a bedroom for the captain, a bedroom for his daughter-in-law, two bedrooms for the children. Mistress and maids held momentous consultations together.

“We have decided to put the three little girls in Philip’s old room, John,” said Miss Betty to her brother, as they sat in the parlour after dinner on the Monday evening of the week preceding Passion Week;“and little Philip can have the small room off mine. We shall have to get in a child’s bed, though; I can’t put the three little girls in one bed; they might get fighting. John, I do wish you’d sell that old bureau for what it will fetch.”

“Sell the old bureau!” exclaimed Mr. Cockermuth.

“I’m sure I should. What good does it do? Unless that bureau goes out of the room, we can’t put the extra bed in. I’ve been in there half the day with Susan and Ann, planning and contriving, and we find it can’t be done any way. Do let Ward take it away, John; there’s no place for it in the other chambers. He’d give you a fair price for it, I dare say.”

Miss Betty had never cared for this piece of furniture, thinking it more awkward than useful: she looked eagerly at her brother, awaiting his decision. She was the elder of the two; tall, like him; but whilst he maintained his thin, wiry form, just the shape of an upright gas-post with arms, she had grown stout with no shape at all. Miss Betty had dark, thick eyebrows and an amiable red face. Shewore a “front” of brown curls with a high and dressy cap perched above it. This evening her gown was of soft twilled shot-green silk, a white net kerchief was crossed under its body, and she had on a white muslin apron.

“I don’t mind,” assented the lawyer, as easy in disposition as Miss Betty was; “it’s of no use keeping it that I know of. Send for Ward and ask him, if you like, Betty.”

Ward, a carpenter and cabinet-maker, who had a shop in the town and sometimes bought second-hand things, was sent for by Miss Betty on the following morning; and he agreed, after some chaffering, to buy the old bureau. It was the bureau from which Philip’s box of gold had disappeared—but I dare say you have understood that. In the midst of all this stir and clatter, just as Ward betook himself away after concluding the negotiation, and the maids were hard at work above stairs with mops and pails and scrubbing-brushes, the first advance-guard of the visitors unexpectedly walked in: Captain Cockermuth.

Miss Betty sat down in an access of consternation. She could do nothing but stare. He had not been expected for a week yet; there was nothing ready and nowhere to put him.

“I wish you’d take to behaving like a rational being, Charles!” she exclaimed. “We are all in a mess; the rooms upside down, and the bedside carpets hanging out at the windows.”

Captain Cockermuth said he did not care for bedside carpets, he could sleep anywhere—on the brewhouse-bench, if she liked. He quite approved of selling the old bureau, when told it was going to be done.

Ward had appointed five o’clock that evening to fetch it away. They were about to sit down to dinner when he came, five o’clock being the hour for late dinners then in ordinary life. Ward had brought a man with him and they went upstairs.

Miss Betty, as carver, sat at the top of the dining-table, her back to the windows, the lawyer in his place at the foot, Charles between them, facing the fire. Miss Betty was cutting off the first joint of a loin of veal when the bureau was heard coming down the staircase, with much bumping and noise.

Mr. Cockermuth stepped out of the dining-room to look on. The captain followed: being a sociable man with his fellow-townspeople, he went to ask Ward how he did.

The bureau came down safely, and was lodged at the foot of the stairs; the man wiped his hot face, while Ward spoke with Captain Cockermuth. It seemed quite a commotion in the usual quiet dwelling. Susan, a jug of ale in her hand, which she had been to the cellar to draw, stood looking on from the passage; Mr. Dene and a younger clerk, coming out of the office just then to leave for the evening, turned to look on also.

“I suppose there’s nothing in here, sir?” cried Ward, returning to business and the bureau.

“Nothing, I believe,” replied Mr. Cockermuth.

“Nothing at all,” called out Miss Betty through the open parlour-door. “I emptied the drawers this morning.”

Ward, a cautious man and honest, drew back the lid and put his hand in succession into the pigeon-holes; which had not been used since Philip’s time. There were twelve of them; three above, and three below on each side, and a little drawer that locked in the middle. “Halloa!” cried Ward, when his hand was in the depth of one of them: “here’s something.”

And he drew forth the lost box. The little ebony box with all the gold in it.

Well now, that was a strange thing. Worcester thinks so, those people who are still living to remember it, to this day. How it was that the box had appeared to be lost and was searched for in vain over and over again, by poor Philip and others; and how it was that it was now recovered in this easy and natural manner, was never explained or accounted for. Ward’s opinion was that the box must have been put in, side upwards, that it had in some way stuck to the back of the deep, narrow pigeon-hole, which just about held the box in width, that those who had searched took the box for the back of the hole when their fingers touched it and that the bumping of the bureau now in coming downstairs had dislodged the box and brought it forward. As a maker of bureaus, Ward’s opinion was listened to with deference. Any way, it was a sort of theory, serving passably well in the absence of any other. But who knew? All that was certain about it was the fact; the loss and the recovery after many years. It happened just as here described, as I have already said.

Sam Dene had never heard of the loss. Captain Cockermuth, perfectly beside himself with glee, explained it to him. Sam laughed as he touched with his forefinger the closely packed golden guineas, lying there so snug and safe, offered his congratulations, and walked home to tea.

It chanced that on that especial Tuesday evening, matters were at sixes and sevens in the Parslets’ house. Sally had misbehaved herself and was discharged in consequence; and the servant engaged in her place, who was to have entered that afternoon, had not made her appearance. When Sam entered, Maria came out of the parlour, a pretty blush upon her face. And to Sam the unexpected sight of her, it was not often he got a chance of it, and the blush and the sweet eyes came like a gleam of Eden, for he had grown to love her dearly. Not that he had owned it to himself yet.

Maria explained. Her school had broken up for the Easter holidays earlier than it ought, one of the girls showing symptoms of measles; and her mother had gone out to see what had become of the new servant, leaving a request that Mr. Dene would take his tea with them in the parlour that evening, as there was no one to wait on him.

Nothing loth, you may be sure, Mr. Dene accepted the invitation, running up to wash his hands, and give a look at his hair, and running down in a trice. The tea-tray stood in readiness on the parlour table, Maria sitting behind it. Perhaps she had given a look ather hair, for it was quite more lovely, Sam thought, more soft and silken than any hair he had ever seen. The little copper kettle sang away on the hob by the fire.

“Will papa be long, do you know?” began Maria demurely, feeling shy and conscious at being thus thrown alone into Sam’s company. “I had better not make the tea until he comes in.”

“I don’t know at all,” answered Sam. “He went out on some business for Mr. Cockermuth at half-pastfour, and was not back when I left. Such a curious thing has just happened up there, Miss Parslet!”

“Indeed! What is it?”

Sam entered on the narrative. Maria, who knew all about the strange loss of the box, grew quite excited as she listened. “Found!” she exclaimed. “Found in the same bureau! And all the golden guineas in it!”

“Every one,” said Sam: “as I take it. They were packed right up to the top!”

“Oh, what a happy thing!” repeated Maria, in a fervent tone that rather struck Sam, and she clasped her fingers into one another, as one sometimes does in pleasure or in pain.

“Why do you say that, Miss Parslet?”

“Because papa—but I do not think I ought to tell you,” added Maria, breaking off abruptly.

“Oh yes, you may. I am quite safe, even if it’s a secret. Please do.”

“Well,” cried the easily persuaded girl, “papa has always had an uncomfortable feeling upon him ever since the loss. He feared that some people, knowing he was not well off, might think perhaps it was he who had stolen upstairs and taken it.”

Sam laughed at that.

“He has never said so, but somehow we have seen it, my mother and I. It was altogether so mysterious a loss, you see, affording no clue as to when it occurred, that people were ready to suspect anything, however improbable. Oh, I am thankful it is found!”

The kettle went on singing, the minutes went on flitting, and still nobody came. Six o’clock struck out from the cathedral as Mr. Parslet entered. Had thetwo been asked the time, they might have said it was about a quarter-past five. Golden hours fly quickly; fly on angels’ wings.

Now it chanced that whilst they were at tea, a creditor of Sam’s came to the door, one Jonas Badger. Sam went to him: and the colloquy that ensued might be heard in the parlour. Mr. Badger said (in quite a fatherly way) that he really could not be put off any longer with promises; if his money was not repaid to him before Easter he should be obliged to take steps about it, should write to Mr. Jacobson, of Elm Farm, to begin with. Sam returned to the tea-table with a wry face.

Soon after that, Mrs. Parslet came in, the delinquent servant in her rear. Next, a friend of Sam’s called, Austin Chance, whose father was a solicitor in good practice in the town. The two young men, who were very intimate and often together, went up to Sam’s room above.

“I say, my good young friend,” began Chance, in a tone that might be taken for jest or earnest,“don’t you go and get into any entanglement in that quarter.”

“What d’you mean now?” demanded Sam, turning the colour of the rising sun.

“I mean Maria Parslet,” said Austin Chance, laughing.“She’s a deuced nice girl; I know that; just the one a fellow might fall in love with unawares. But it wouldn’t do, Dene.”

“Why wouldn’t it do?”

“Oh, come now, Sam, you know it wouldn’t. Parslet is only a working clerk at Cockermuth’s.”

“I should like to know what has put the thought inyour head?” contended Sam. “You had better put it out again. I’ve never told you I was falling in love with her; or told herself, either. Mrs. Parslet would be about me, I expect, if I did. She looks after her as one looks after gold.”

“Well, I found you in their room, having tea with them, and——”

“It was quite an accident; an exceptional thing,”interrupted Sam.

“Well,” repeated Austin, “you need not put your back up, old fellow; a friendly warning does no harm. Talking of gold, Dene, I’ve done my best to get up the twenty pounds you wanted to borrow of me, and I can’t do it. I’d let you have it with all my heart if I could; but I find I am harder up than I thought for.”

Which was all true. Chance was as good-natured a young man as ever lived, but at this early stage of his life he made more debts than he could pay.

“Badger has just been here, whining and covertly threatening,” said Sam. “I am to pay up in a week, or he’ll make me pay—and tell my uncle, he says, to begin with.”

“Hypocritical old skinflint!” ejaculated Chance, himself sometimes in the hands of Mr. Badger—a worthy gentleman who did a little benevolent usury in a small and quiet way, and took his delight in accommodating safe young men. A story was whispered that young M., desperately hard-up, borrowed two pounds from him one Saturday night, undertaking to repay it, with two pounds added on for interest, that day month; and when the day came and M. had not got the money, or was at all likely to get it, he carriedoff a lot of his mother’s plate under his coat to the pawnbroker’s.

“And there’s more besides Badger’s that is pressing,”went on Dene. “I must get money from somewhere, or it will play the very deuce with me. I wonder whether Charley Hill could lend me any?”

“Don’t much think so. You might ask him. Money seems scarce with Hill always. Has a good many ways for it, I fancy.”

“Talking of money, Chance, a lot has been found at Cockermuth’s to-day. A boxful of guineas that has been lost for years.”

Austin Chance stared. “You don’t mean that box of guineas that mysteriously disappeared in Philip’s time?”

“Well, they say so. It is a small, round box of carved ebony, and it is stuffed to the brim with old guineas. Sixty of them, I hear.”

“I can’t believe it’s true; that that’s found.”

“Not believe it’s true, Chance! Why, I saw it. Saw the box found, and touched the guineas with my fingers. It has been hidden in an old bureau all the time,” added Sam, and he related the particulars of the discovery.

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed young Chance: “the queerest start I ever heard of.” And he fell to musing.

But the “queer start,” as Mr. Austin Chance was pleased to designate the resuscitation of the box, did not prove to be a lucky one.

II.

The sun shone brightly on Foregate Street, but did not yet touch the front-windows on Lawyer Cockermuth’s side of it. Miss Betty Cockermuth sat near one of them in the parlour, spectacles on nose, and hard at work unpicking the braid off some very old woollen curtains, green once, but now faded to a sort of dingy brown. It was Wednesday morning, the day following the wonderful event of finding the box, lost so long, full of its golden guineas. In truth nobody thought of it as anything less than marvellous.

The house-cleaning, in preparation for Easter and Easter’s visitors, was in full flow to-day, and would be for more than a week to come; the two maids were hard at it above. Ward, who did not disdain to labour with his own hands, was at the house, busy at some mysterious business in the brewhouse, coat off, shirt-sleeves stripped up to elbow, plunging at that moment something or other into the boiling water of the furnace.

“How I could have let them remain up so long in this state, I can’t think,” said Miss Betty to herself, arresting her employment, scissors in hand, to regard the dreary curtains. She had drawn the table towards her from the middle of the room, and the heavy work was upon it. Susan came in to impart some domestic news.

“Ward says there’s a rare talk in the town about the finding of that box, missis,” cried she, when she had concluded it. “My! how bad them curtains look, now they’re down!”

Servants were on more familiar terms with their mistresses in those days without meaning, or showing, any disrespect; identifying themselves, as it were, with the family and its interests. Susan, a plump, red-cheeked young woman turned thirty, had been housemaid in her present place for seven years. She had promised a baker’s head man to marry him, but never could be got to fix the day. In winter she’d say to him, “Wait till summer;” and when summer came, she’d say, “Wait till winter.” Miss Betty commended her prudence.

“Yes,” said she now, in answer to the girl, “I’ve been wondering how we could have kept them up so long; they are not fit for much, I’m afraid, save the ragbag. Chintz will make the room look much nicer.”

As Susan left the parlour, Captain Cockermuth entered it, a farmer with him who had come in from Hallow to the Wednesday’s market. The captain’s delighted excitement at the finding of the box had not at all subsided; he had dreamt of it, he talked of it, he pinned every acquaintance he could pick up this morning and brought him in to see the box of gold. Independently of its being a very great satisfaction to have had the old mysterious loss cleared up, the sixty guineas would be a huge boon to the captain’s pocket.

“But how was it that none of you ever found it, if it remained all this while in the pigeon-hole?” cried the wondering farmer, bending over the little round box of guineas, which the captain placed upon the table open, the lid by its side.

“Well, we didn’t find it, that’s all I know; or poor Philip, either,” said Captain Cockermuth.

The farmer took his departure. As the captain wasshowing him to the front-door, another gentleman came hustling in. It was Thomas Chance the lawyer, father of the young man who had been the previous night with Samson Dene. He and Lawyer Cockermuth were engaged together just then in some complicated, private, and very disagreeable business, each acting for a separate client, who were the defendants against a great wrong—or what they thought was one.

“Come in, Chance, and take a look at my box of guineas, resuscitated from the grave,” cried the captain, joyously. “You can go into the office to John afterwards.”

“Well, I’ve hardly time this morning,” answered Mr. Chance, turning, though, into the parlour and shaking hands with Miss Betty. “Austin told me it was found.”

Now it happened that Lawyer Cockermuth came then into the parlour himself, to get something from his private desk-table which stood there. When the box had been discussed, Mr. Chance took a letter from his pocket and placed it in his brother practitioner’s hands.

“What do you think of that?” he asked. “I got it by post this morning.”

“Think! why, that it is of vital importance,” said Mr. Cockermuth when he had read it.

“Yes; no doubt of that. But what is to be our next move in answer to it?” asked the other.

Seeing they were plunging into business, the captain strolled away to the front-door, which stood open all day, for the convenience of those coming to the office, and remained there whistling, his hands in his pockets, on the look out for somebody else to bring in. He had put the lid on the box of guineas, and left the box on the table.

“I should like to take a copy of this letter,” said Mr. Cockermuth to the other lawyer.

“Well, you can take it,” answered Chance. “Mind who does it, though—Parslet, or somebody else that’s confidential. Don’t let it go into the office.”

“You are wanted, sir,” said Mr. Dene, from the door.

“Who is it?” asked his master.

“Mr. Chamberlain. He says he is in a hurry.”

“I’m coming. Here, Dene!” he called out as the latter was turning away: and young Dene came back again.

“Sit down here, now, and take a copy of this letter,”cried the lawyer, rapidly drawing out and opening the little writing-desk table that stood against the wall at the back of the room. “Here’s pen, ink and paper, all ready: the letter is confidential, you perceive.”

He went out of the room as he spoke, Mr. Chance with him; and Sam Dene sat down to commence his task, after exchanging a few words with Miss Betty, with whom he was on good terms.

“Charles makes as much fuss over this little box as if it were filled with diamonds from Golconda, instead of guineas,” remarked she, pointing with her scissors to the box, which stood near her on the table, to direct the young man’s attention to it. “I don’t know how many folks he has not brought in already to have a look at it.”

“Well, it was a capital find, Miss Betty; one to be proud of,” answered Sam, settling to his work.

For some little time nothing was heard but thescratching of Mr. Dene’s pen and the clicking of Miss Betty’s scissors. Her task was nearing completion. A few minutes more, and the last click was given, the last bit of the braid was off. “And I’m glad of it,”cried she aloud, flinging the end of the curtain on the top of the rest.

“This braid will do again for something or other,”considered Miss Betty, as she began to wind it upon an old book. “It was put on fresh only three or four years ago. Well brushed, it will look almost like new.”

Again Susan opened the door. “Miss Betty, here’s the man come with the chintz: five or six rolls of it for you to choose from,” cried she. “Shall he come in here?”

Miss Betty was about to say Yes, but stopped and said No, instead. The commotion of holding up the chintzes to the light, to judge of their different merits, might disturb Mr. Dene; and she knew better than to interrupt business.

“Let him take them to the room where they are to hang, Susan; we can judge best there.”

Tossing the braid to Susan, who stood waiting at the door, Miss Betty hastily took up her curtains, and Susan held the door open for her mistress to pass through.

Choosing chintz for window-curtains takes some time; as everybody knows whose fancy is erratic. And how long Miss Betty and Susan and the young man from the chintz-mart had been doubting and deciding and doubting again, did not quite appear, when Captain Cockermuth’s voice was heard ascending from below.

“Betty! Are you upstairs, Betty?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she called back, crossing to the door to speak. “Do you want me, Charles?”

“Where have you put the box?”

“What box?”

“The box of guineas.”

“It is on the table.”

“It is not on the table. I can’t see it anywhere.”

“It was on the table when I left the parlour. I did not touch it. Ask Mr. Dene where it is: I left him there.”

“Mr. Dene’s not here. I wish you’d come down.”

“Very well; I’ll come in a minute or two,” concluded Miss Betty, going back to the chintzes.

“Why, I saw that box on the table as I shut the door after you had come out, ma’am,” observed Susan, who had listened to the colloquy.

“So did I,” said Miss Betty; “it was the very last thing my eyes fell on. If young Mr. Dene finished what he was about and left the parlour, I dare say he put the box up somewhere for safety. I think, Susan, we must fix upon this light pea-green with the rosebuds running up it. It matches the paper: and the light coming through it takes quite a nice shade.”

A little more indecision yet; and yet a little more, as to whether the curtains should be lined, or not, and then Miss Cockermuth went downstairs. The captain was pacing the passage to and fro impatiently.

“Now then, Betty, where’s my box?”

“But how am I to know where the box is, Charles, if it’s not on the table?” she remonstrated, turning into the parlour, where two friends of the captain’s waited to be regaled with the sight of the recoveredtreasure. “I had to go upstairs with the young man who brought the chintzes; and I left the box here”—indicating the exact spot on the table. “It was where you left it yourself. I did not touch it at all.”

She shook hands with the visitors. Captain Cockermuth looked gloomy—as if he were at sea and had lost his reckoning.

“If you had to leave the room, why didn’t you put the box up?” asked he. “A boxful of guineas shouldn’t be left alone in an empty room.”

“But Mr. Dene was in the room; he sat at the desk there, copying a letter for John. As to why didn’t I put the box up, it was not my place to do so that I know of. You were about yourself, Charles—only at the front-door, I suppose.”

Captain Cockermuth was aware that he had not been entirely at the front-door. Two or three times he had crossed over to hold a chat with acquaintances on the other side the way; had strolled with one of them nearly up to Salt Lane and back. Upon catching hold of these two gentlemen, now brought in, he had found the parlour empty of occupants and the box not to be seen.

“Well, this is a nice thing—that a man can’t put his hand upon his own property when he wants to, or hear where it is!” grumbled he. “And what business on earth had Dene to meddle with the box?”

“To put it in safety—if he did meddle with it, and a sensible thing to do,” retorted Miss Betty, who did not like to be scolded unjustly. “Just like you, Charles, making a fuss over nothing! Why don’t you go and ask young Dene where it is?”

“Young Dene is not in. And John’s not in.Nobody is in but Parslet; and he does not know anything about it. I must say, Betty, you manage the house nicely!” concluded the captain ironically, giving way to his temper.

This was, perhaps the reader may think, commotion enough “over nothing,” as Miss Betty put it. But it was not much as compared with the commotion which set in later. When Mr. Cockermuth came in, he denied all knowledge of it, and Sam Dene was impatiently waited for.

It was past two o’clock when he returned, for he had been home to dinner. The good-looking young fellow turned in at the front-door with a fleet step, and encountered Captain Cockermuth, who attacked him hotly, demanding what he had done with the box.

“Ah,” said Sam, lightly and coolly, “Parslet said you were looking for it.” Mr. Parslet had in fact mentioned it at home over his dinner.

“Well, where is it?” said the captain. “Where did you put it?”

“I?” cried young Dene. “Not anywhere. Should I be likely to touch the box, sir? I saw the box on that table while I was copying a letter for Mr. Cockermuth; that’s all I know of it.”

The captain turned red, and pale, and red again.“Do you mean to tell me to my face, Mr. Dene, that the box is gone?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Sam in the easiest of all easy tones. “It seems to be gone.”

The box was gone. Gone once more with all its golden guineas. It could not be found anywhere; in the house or out of the house, upstairs or down. Thecaptain searched frantically, the others helped him, but no trace of it could be found.

At first it was impossible to believe it. That this self-same box should mysteriously have vanished a second time, seemed to be too marvellous for fact. But it was true.

Nobody would admit a share in the responsibility. The captain left the box safe amidst (as he put it) a roomful of people: Miss Betty considered that she left it equally safe, with Mr. Dene seated at the writing-table, and the captain dodging (as she put it) in and out. Mr. Cockermuth had not entered the parlour since he left it, when called to Mr. Chamberlain, with whom he had gone out. Sam Dene reiterated that he had not meddled with the box; no, nor thought about it.

Sam’s account, briefly given, was this. After finishing copying the letter, he closed the little table-desk and pushed it back to its place against the wall, and had carried the letter and the copy into the office. Finding Mr. Cockermuth was not there, he locked them up in his own desk, having to go to the Guildhall upon some business. The business there took up some time, in fact until past one o’clock, and he then went home to dinner.

“And did you consider it right, Sam Dene, to leave a valuable box like that on the table, unguarded?”demanded Captain Cockermuth, as they all stood together in the parlour, after questioning Sam; and the captain had been looking so fierce and speaking so sharply that it might be thought he was taking Sam for the thief, off-hand.

“To tell the truth, captain, I never thought of thebox,” answered Sam. “I might not have noticed that the box was in the room at all but for Miss Betty’s drawing my attention to it. After that, I grew so much interested in the letter I was copying (for I know all about the cause, as Mr. Cockermuth is aware, and it was curious news) that I forgot everything else.”

Lawyer Cockermuth nodded to confirm this. The captain went on.

“Betty drew your attention to it, did she? Why did she draw it? In what way?”

“Well, she remarked that you made as much fuss over that box as if it were filled with diamonds,”replied the young man, glad to pay out the captain for his angry and dictatorial tone. But the captain was in truth beginning to entertain a very ominous suspicion.

“Do you wish to deny, Samson Dene, that my sister Betty left that box on the table when she quitted the room?”

“Why, who does?” cried Sam. “When Miss Betty says she left the box on the table, of course she did leave it. She must know. Susan, it seems, also saw that it was left there.”

“And you could see that box of guineas standing stark staring on the table, and come out of the room and leave it to its fate!” foamed the captain. “Instead of giving me a call to say nobody was on guard here!”

“I didn’t see it,” returned Sam. “There’s no doubt it was there, but I did not see it. I never looked towards the table as I came out, that I know of. The table, as I dare say you remember, was not in itsusual place; it was up there by the window. The box had gone clean out of my thoughts.”

“Well, Mr. Dene, my impression is that you have got the box,” cried the angry captain.

“Oh, is it!” returned Sam, with supreme good humour, and just the least suspicion of a laugh. “A box like that would be uncommonly useful to me.”

“I expect, young man, the guineas would!”

“Right you are, captain.”

But Captain Cockermuth regarded this mocking pleasantry as particularly ill-timed. He believed the young man was putting it on to divert suspicion from himself.

“Who did take the box?” questioned he. “Tell me that.”

“I wish I could, sir.”

“How could the box vanish off the table unless it was taken, I ask you?”

“That’s a puzzling question,” coolly rejoined Sam.“It was too heavy for the rats, I expect.”

“Oh dear, but we have no rats in the house,” cried Miss Betty. “I wish we had, I’m sure—and could find the box in their holes.” She was feeling tolerably uncomfortable. Placid and easy in a general way, serious worry always upset her considerably.

Captain Cockermuth’s suspicions were becoming certainties. The previous night, when his brother had been telling him various items of news of the old town, as they sat confidentially over the fire after Miss Betty had gone up to bed, Mr. Cockermuth chanced to mention the fact that young Dene had been making a few debts. Not speaking in any ill-natured spirit, quite the contrary, for he liked the young manamazingly. Only a few, he continued; thoughtless young men would do so; and he had given him a lecture. And then he laughingly added the information that Mr. Jacobson had imparted to him twelve months ago, in their mutual friendship—of the debts Sam had made in London.

No sensible person can be surprised that Charles Cockermuth recalled this now. It rankled in his mind. Had Sam Dene taken the box of guineas to satisfy these debts contracted during the past year at Worcester? It looked like it. And the longer the captain dwelt on it, the more and more likely it grew to look.

All the afternoon the search was kept up by the captain. Not an individual article in the parlour but was turned inside out; he wanted to have the carpet up. His brother and Sam Dene had returned to their work in the office as usual. The captain was getting to feel like a raging bear; three times Miss Betty had to stop him in a dreadful fit of swearing; and when dinner-time came he could not eat. It was a beautiful slice of Severn salmon, which had its price, I can tell you, in Worcester then, and minced veal, and a jam tart, all of which dishes Charles Cockermuth especially favoured. But the loss of the sixty guineas did away with his appetite. Mr. Cockermuth, who took the loss very coolly, laughed at him.

The laughing did not mend the captain’s temper: neither did the hearing that Sam Dene had departed for home as usual at five o’clock. Had Sam been innocent, he would at least have come to the parlour and inquired whether the box was found, instead of sneaking off home to tea.

Fretting and fuming, raging and stamping, disturbing the parlour’s peace and his own, strode Charles Cockermuth. His good-humoured brother John bore it for an hour or two, and then told him he might as well go outside and stamp on the pavement for a bit.

“I will,” said Charles. Catching up his hat, saying nothing to anybody, he strode off to see the sergeant of police—Dutton—and laid the case concisely before him: The box of guineas was on the table where his sister sat at work; her work being at one end, the box at the other. Sam Dene was also in the room, copying a letter at the writing-table. Miss Betty was called upstairs; she went, leaving the box on the table. It was the last thing she saw as she left the room; the servant, who had come to call her, also saw it standing there. Presently young Dene also left the room and the house; and from that moment the box was never seen.

“What do you make of that, Mr. Dutton?” summed up Captain Cockermuth.

“Am I to understand that no other person entered the room after Mr. Dene quitted it?” inquired the sergeant.

“Not a soul. I can testify to that myself.”

“Then it looks as though Mr. Dene must have taken the box.”

“Just so,” assented the complainant, triumphantly.“And I shall give him into custody for stealing it.”

Mr. Dutton considered. His judgment was cool; the captain’s hot. He thought there might be ins and outs in this affair that had not yet come to the surface. Besides that, he knew young Dene, and did not muchfancy him the sort of individual likely to do a thing of this kind.

“Captain Cockermuth,” said he, “I think it might be best for me to come up to the house and see a bit into the matter personally, before proceeding to extreme measures. We experienced officers have a way of turning up scraps of evidence that other people would never look at. Perhaps, after all, the box is only mislaid.”

“But I tell you it’s lost,” said the captain. “Clean gone. Can’t be found high or low.”

“Well, if that same black box is lost again, I can only say it is the oddest case I ever heard of. One would think the box had a demon inside it.”

“No, sergeant, you are wrong there. The demon’s inside him that took it. Listen while I whisper something in your ear—that young Dene is over head and ears in debt: he has debts here, debts there, debts everywhere. For some little time now, as I chance to know, he has been at his very wits’ end to think where or how he could pick up some money to satisfy the most pressing; fit to die of fear, lest they should travel to the knowledge of his uncle at Elm Farm.”

“Is it so?” exclaimed Mr. Dutton, severely. And his face changed, and his opinion also. “Are you sure of this, sir?”

“Well, my informant was my brother; so you may judge whether it is likely to be correct or not,” said the captain. “But, if you think it best to make some inquiries at the house, come with me now and do so.”

They walked to Foregate together. The sergeant looked a little at the features of the parlour, where the loss had taken place, and heard what Miss Betty had to say, and questioned Susan. This did not help the suspicion thrown on Sam Dene, saving in one point—their joint testimony that he and the box were left alone in the room together.

Mr. Cockermuth had gone out, so the sergeant did not see him: but, as he was not within doors when the loss occurred, he could not have aided the investigation in any way.

“Well, Dutton, what do you think now?” asked Captain Cockermuth, strolling down the street with the sergeant when he departed.

“I confess my visit has not helped me much,” said Dutton, a slow-speaking man, given to be cautious.“If nobody entered the room between the time when Miss Cockermuth left it and you entered it, why then, sir, there’s only young Dene to fall back upon.”

“I tell you nobody did enter it,” cried the choleric captain; “or could, without my seeing them. I stood at the front-door. Ward was busy at the house that morning, dodging perpetually across the top of the passage, between the kitchen and brewhouse: he, too, is sure no stranger could have come in without being seen by him.”

“Did you see young Dene leave the room, sir?”

“I did. Hearing somebody come out of the parlour, I looked round and saw it was young Dene with some papers in his hand. He went into the office for a minute or two, and then passed me, remarking, with all the impudence in life, that he was going to the town hall. He must have had my box in his pocket then.”

“A pity but you had gone into the parlour at once,captain,” remarked the sergeant. “If only to put the box in safety—provided it was there.”

“But I thought it was safe. I thought my sister was there. I did go in almost directly.”

“And you never stirred from the door—from first to last?”

“I don’t say that. When I first stood there I strolled about a little, talking with one person and another. But I did not stir from the door after I saw Sam Dene leave the parlour. And I do not think five minutes elapsed before I went in. Not more than five, I am quite certain. What are you thinking about, Dutton?—you don’t seem to take me.”

“I take you well enough, sir, and all you say. But what is puzzling me in the matter is this; strikes me as strange, in fact: that Mr. Dene should do the thing (allowing that he has done it) in so open and barefaced a manner, laying himself open to immediate suspicion. Left alone in the room with the box by Miss Betty, he must know that if, when he left it, the box vanished with him, only one inference would be drawn. Most thieves exercise some caution.”

“Not when they are as hard up as Dene is. Impudence with them is the order of the day, and often carries luck with it. Nothing risk, nothing win, they cry, and they do risk—and win. Dene has got my box, sergeant.”

“Well, sir, it looks dark against him; almost toodark; and if you decide to give him into custody, of course we have only to—— Good-evening, Badger!”

They had strolled as far as the Cross, and were standing on the wide pavement in front of St. Nicholas’Church, about to part, when that respectable gentleman,Jonas Badger, passed by. A thought struck the captain. He knew the man was a money-lender in a private way.

“Here, Badger, stop a minute,” he hastily cried. “I want to ask you a question about young Dene—my brother’s clerk, you know. Does he owe you money?—Much?”

Mr. Badger, wary by nature and by habit, glanced first at the questioner and then at the police-sergeant, and did not answer. Whereupon Captain Cockermuth, as an excuse for his curiosity, plunged into the history of what had occurred: the finding of the box of guineas yesterday and the losing it again to-day, and the doubt of Sam.

Mr. Badger listened with interest; for the news of that marvellous find had not yet reached his ears. He had been shut up in his office all the morning, very busy over his account-books; and in the afternoon had walked over to Kempsey, where he had a client or two, getting back only in time for tea.

“That long-lost box of guineas come to light at last!” he exclaimed. “What an extraordinary thing! And Mr. Dene is suspected of—— Why, good gracious!” he broke off in fresh astonishment, “I have just seen him with a guinea in his pocket!”

“Seen a guinea in Sam Dene’s pocket!” cried Captain Cockermuth, turning yellow as the gas-flame under which they were standing.

“Why yes, I have. It was——”

But there Mr. Badger came to a full stop. It had suddenly struck him that he might be doing harm to Sam Dene; and the rule of his life was not to harm any one, or to make an enemy, if his own interest allowed him to avoid it.

“I won’t say any more, Captain Cockermuth. It is no business of mine.”

But here Mr. Sergeant Dutton came to the fore.“You must, Badger. You must say all you know that bears upon the affair; the law demands it of you. What about the guinea?”

“Well, if you force me to do so—putting it in that way,” returned the man, driven into a corner.

Mr. Badger had just been down to Edgar Street to pay another visit to Sam. Not to torment him; he did not do that more than he could help; but simply to say he would accept smaller instalments for the liquidation of his debt—which of course meant giving to Sam a longer time to pay the whole in. This evening he was admitted to Sam’s sitting-room. During their short conversation, Sam, searching impatiently for a pencil in his waistcoat-pocket, drew out with it a few coins in silver money, and one coin in gold. Mr. Badger’s hungry eyes saw that it was an old guinea. These particulars he now imparted.

“What did he say about the guinea?” cried Captain Cockermuth, his own eyes glaring.

“Not a word,” said Badger; “neither did I. He slipped it back into his pocket.”

“I hope you think there’s some proof to go uponnow,” were Charles Cockermuth’s last words to the police-officer as he wished him good-night.

On the following morning, Sam Dene was apprehended, and taken before the magistrates. Beyond being formally charged, very little was done; Miss Betty was in bed with a sick headache, brought on by the worry, and could not appear to give evidence; so he was remanded on bail until Saturday.

III.

I’m sure you might have thought all his rick-yards were on fire by the way old Jacobson came bursting in. It was Saturday morning, and we were at breakfast at Dyke Manor. He had run every step of the way from Elm Farm, two miles nearly, not having patience to wait for his gig, and came in all excitement, the Worcester Herald in his hand. The Squire started from his chair; Mrs. Todhetley, then in the act of pouring out a cup of coffee, let it flow over on to the tablecloth.

“What on earth’s amiss, Jacobson?” cried the Squire.

“Ay, what’s amiss,” stuttered Jacobson in answer;“this is amiss,” holding out the newspaper. “I’ll prosecute the editor as sure as I’m a living man. It is a conspiracy got up to sell it; a concocted lie. It can’t be anything else, you know, Todhetley. And I want you to go off with me to Worcester. The gig’s following me.”

When we had somewhat collected our senses, and could look at the newspaper, there was the account as large as life. Samson Reginald Dene had been had up before the magistrates on Thursday morning on a charge of stealing a small box of carved ebony, containing sixty guineas in gold, from the dwelling house of Lawyer Cockermuth; and he was to be brought up again that day, Saturday, for examination.

“A pretty thing this is to see, when a man opens his weekly newspaper at his breakfast-table!” gasped Jacobson, flicking the report with his angry finger. “I’ll have the law of them—accusing my nephew of such a thing as that! You’ll go with me, Squire!”

“Go! of course I’ll go!” returned the Squire, in his hot partisanship. “We were going to Worcester, any way; I’ve things to do there. Poor Sam! Hanging would be too good for the printers of that newspaper, Jacobson.”

Mr. Jacobson’s gig was heard driving up to the gate at railroad speed; and soon our own carriage was ready. Old Jacobson sat with the Squire, I behind with Giles; the other groom, Blossom, drove Tod in the gig; and away we went in the blustering March wind. Many people, farmers and others, were on the road, riding or driving to Worcester market.

Well, we found it was true. And not the mistake of the newspapers: they had but reported what passed before the magistrates at the town hall.

The first person we saw was Miss Cockermuth. She was in a fine way, not knowing what to think or believe, and sat in the parlour in that soft green gown of twilled silk (that might have been a relic of the silk made in the time of the Queen of Sheba), her cap and front all awry. Rumour said old Jacobson had been a sweetheart of hers in their young days; but I’m sure I don’t know. Any way they were very friendly with one another, and she sometimes called him “Frederick.” He sat down by her on the horse-hair sofa, and we took chairs.

She recounted the circumstances (ramblingly) from beginning to end. Not that the end had come yet by a long way. And—there it was, she wound up, when the narrative was over: the box had disappeared, justfor all the world as mysteriously as it disappeared in the days gone by.

Mr. Jacobson had listened patiently. He was a fine, upright man, with a healthy colour and bright dark eyes. He wore a blue frock-coat to-day with metal buttons, and top-boots. As yet he did not see how they had got up grounds for accusing Sam, and he said so.

“To be sure,” cried the Squire. “How’s that, Miss Betty?”

“Why, it’s this way,” said Miss Betty—“that nobody was here in the parlour but Sam when the box vanished. It is my brother Charles who has done it all; he is so passionate, you know. John has properly quarrelled with him for it.”

“It is not possible, you know, Miss Betty, that Sam Dene could have done it,” struck in Tod, who was boiling over with rage at the whole thing. “Some thief must have stolen in at the street-door when Sam had left the room.”

“Well, no, that could hardly have been, seeing that Charles never left the street-door after that,” returned Miss Betty, mildly. “It appears to be a certain fact that not a soul entered the room after the young man left it. And there lies the puzzle of it.”

Putting it to be as Miss Betty put it—and I may as well say here that nothing turned up, then or later, to change the opinion—it looked rather suspicious for Sam Dene. I think the Squire saw it.

“I suppose you are sure the box was on the table when you left the room, Miss Betty?” said he.

“Why, of course I am sure, Squire,” she answered.“It was the last thing my eyes fell on; for, as I went through the door, I glanced back to see that I had left the table tidy. Susan can bear witness to that. Dutton, the police-sergeant, thinks some demon of mischief must be in that box—meaning the deuce, you know. Upon my word it looks like it.”

Susan came in with some glasses and ale as Miss Betty spoke, and confirmed the testimony—which did not need confirmation. As she closed the parlour-door, she said, after her mistress had passed out, she noticed the box standing on the table.

“Is Sam here to-day—in the office?” asked Mr. Jacobson.

“Oh, my goodness, no,” cried Miss Betty in a fluster.“Why, Frederick, he has not been here since Thursday, when they had him up at the Guildhall. He couldn’t well come while the charge is hanging over him.”

“Then I think we had better go out to find Sam, and hear what he has to say,” observed Mr. Jacobson, drinking up his glass of ale.

“Yes, do,” said Miss Betty. “Tell poor Sam I’m as sorry as I can be—pestered almost out of my mind over it. And as to their having found one of the guineas in his pocket, please just mention to him that I say it might have slipped in accidentally.”

“One of the guineas found in Sam’s pocket!” exclaimed Mr. Jacobson, taken aback.

“Well, I hear so,” responded Miss Betty. “The police searched him, you see.”

As the Squire and Mr. Jacobson went out, Mr. Cockermuth was coming in. They all turned into the office together, while we made a rush to Sam Dene’s lodgings in Edgar Street: as much of a rush, at least, as the Saturday’s streets would let us make. Sam was out, the young servant said when we got there, and while parleying with her Mrs. Parslet opened her sitting-room door.

“I do not suppose Mr. Dene will be long,” she said.“He has to appear at the town hall this morning, and I think it likely he will come home first. Will you walk in and wait?”

She handed us into her parlour, where she had been busy, marking sheets and pillow-cases and towels with “prepared” ink; the table was covered with them. Tod began telling her that Mr. Jacobson was at Worcester, and went on to say what a shame it was that Sam Dene should be accused of this thing.

“We consider it so,” said Mrs. Parslet; who was a capable, pleasant-speaking woman, tall and slender.“My husband says it has upset Mr. Cockermuth more than anything that has occurred for years past. He tells his brother that he should have had it investigated privately, not have given Mr. Dene into custody.”

“Then why did he let him do it, Mrs. Parslet?”

She looked at Tod, as if surprised at the question.“Mr. Cockermuth knew nothing of it; you may be sure of that. Captain Cockermuth had the young man at the Guildhall and was preferring the charge, before Mr. Cockermuth heard a word of what was agate. Certainly that is a most mysterious box! It seems fated to give trouble.”

At this moment the door opened, and a young lady came into the parlour. It was Maria. What a nice face she had!—what sweet thoughtful eyes!—what gentle manners! Sam’s friends in the town wereaccusing him of being in love with her—and small blame to him.

But Sam did not appear to be coming home, and time was getting on. Tod decided not to wait longer, and said good-morning.

Flying back along High Street, we caught sight of the tray of Dublin buns, just put fresh on the counter in Rousse’s shop, and made as good a feast as time allowed. Some people called them Doubling buns (from their shape, I take it), and I don’t know to this day which was right.

Away with fleet foot again, past the bustle round the town hall, and market house, till we came to the next confectioner’s and saw the apple-tarts. Perhaps somebody remembers yet how delicious those apple-tarts were. Bounding in, we began upon them.

While the feast was in progress, Sam Dene went by, walking very fast. We dashed out to catch him. Good Mrs. Mountford chanced to be in the shop and knew us, or they might have thought we were decamping without payment.

Sam Dene, in answer to Tod’s hasty questions, went into a passion; swearing at the world in general, and Captain Cockermuth in particular, as freely as though the justices, then taking their places in the Guildhall, were not as good as within earshot.

“It is a fearful shame, Todhetley!—to bring such a charge against me, and to lug me up to the criminal bar like a felon. Worse than all, to let it go forth to the town and county in to-day’s glaring newspapers that I, Sam Dene, am a common thief!”

“Of course it is a fearful shame, Sam—it’s infamous, and all your friends know it is,” cried Tod, with eager sympathy. “My father wishes he could hang the printers. I say, what do you think has become of the box?”

“Become of it!—why, that blundering Charles Cockermuth has got it. He was off his head with excitement at its being found. He must have come into the room and put it somewhere and forgotten it: or else he put it into his pocket and got robbed of it in the street. That’s what I think. Quite off his head, I give you my word.”

“And what fable is it the wretches have got up about finding one of the guineas in your pocket, Sam?”

“Oh, bother that! It was my own guinea. I swear it—there! I can’t stay now,” went on Sam, striding off down High Street. “I am due at the town hall this minute; only out on bail. You’ll come with me.”

“You go in and pay for the tarts, Johnny,” called back Tod, as he put his arm within Sam Dene’s. I looked in, pitched a shilling on the counter, said I didn’t know how many we had eaten; perhaps ten; and that I couldn’t wait for change.

Crushing my way amidst the market women and their baskets in the Guildhall yard, I came upon Austin Chance. His father held some post connected with the law, as administered there, and Austin said he would get me in.

“Can it be true that the police found one of the guineas about him?” I asked.

Chance pulled a long face. “It’s true they found one when they searched him——”

“What right had they to search him?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Austin, laughing a little;“they did it. To see perhaps whether all the guineas were about him. And I am afraid, Johnny Ludlow, that the finding of that guinea will make it rather hard for Sam. It is said that Maria Parslet can prove the guinea was Sam’s own, and that my father has had a summons served on her to appear here to-day. He has taken Sam’s case in hand; but he is closer than wax, and tells me nothing.”

“You don’t think he can have stolen the box, Chance?”

“I don’t. I shouldn’t think him capable of anything so mean; let alone the danger of it. Not but that there are circumstances in the case that tell uncommonly strong against him. And where the deuce the box can have got to, otherwise, is more than mortal man can guess at. Come along.”

IV.

Not for a long while had Worcester been stirred as it was over this affair of Samson Dene’s. What with the curious discovery of the box of guineas after its mysterious disappearance of years, and then its second no less mysterious loss, with the suspicion that Sam Dene stole it, the Faithful City was so excited as hardly to know whether it stood on its head or its heels.

When the police searched the prisoner on Thursday morning, after taking him into custody, and found the guinea upon him (having been told that he had one about him), his guilt was thought to be as good as proved. Sam said the guinea was his own,an heirloom, and stood to this so indignantly resolute that the police let him have it back. But now, what did Sam go and do? When released upon bail by the magistrates—to come up again on the Saturday—he went straight off to a silversmith’s, had a hole stamped in the guinea and hung it to his watch-chain across his waistcoat, that the public might feast their eyes upon it. It was in this spirit of defiance—or, as the town called it, bravado—that he met the charge. His lodgings had been searched for the rest of the guineas, but they were not found.

The hour for the Saturday’s examination—twelve o’clock—was striking, as I struggled my way with Austin Chance through the crush round the Guildhall. But that Austin’s father was a man of consequence with the door-keepers, we should not have got in at all.

The accused, arraigned by his full name, Samson Reginald Dene, stood in the place allotted to prisoners, cold defiance on his handsome face. As near to him as might be permitted, stood Tod, just as defiant as he. Captain Charles Cockermuth, a third in defiance, stood opposite to prosecute; while Lawyer Cockermuth, who came in with Sam’s uncle, Mr. Jacobson, openly wished his brother at Hanover. Squire Todhetley, being a county magistrate, sat on the bench with the City magnates, but not to interfere.

The proceedings began. Captain Cockermuth related how the little box, his property, containing sixty golden guineas, was left on the table in a sitting-room in his brother’s house, the accused being the only person in the room at the time, and that the box disappeared. He, himself (standing at the front-door),saw the accused quit the room; he went into it almost immediately, but the box was gone. He swore that no person entered the room after the prisoner left it.

Miss Betty Cockermuth, flustered and red, appeared next. She testified that she was in the room nearly all the morning, the little box being upon the table; when she left the room, Mr. Dene remained in it alone, copying a letter for her brother; the box was still on the table. Susan Edwards, housemaid at Lawyer Cockermuth’s, spoke to the same fact. It was she who had fetched her mistress out, and she saw the box standing upon the table.

The accused was asked by one of the magistrates what he had to say to this. He answered, speaking freely, that he had nothing to say in contradiction, except that he did not know what became of the box.

“Did you see the box on the table?” asked the lawyer on the opposite side, Mr. Standup.

“I saw it there when I first went into the room. Miss Betty made a remark about the box, which drew my attention to it. I was sitting at the far end of the room, at Mr. Cockermuth’s little desk-table. I did not notice the box afterwards.”

“Did you not see it there after Miss Cockermuth left the room?”

“No, I did not; not that I remember,” answered Sam. “Truth to say, I never thought about it. My attention was confined to the letter I was copying, to the exclusion of everything else.”

“Did any one come into the room after Miss Cockermuth left it?”

“No one came into it. Somebody opened the door and looked in.”

This was fresh news. The town hall pricked up its ears.

“I do not know who it was,” added Sam. “My head was bent over my writing, when the door opened quickly, and as quickly shut again. I supposed somebody had looked in to see if Mr. or Miss Cockermuth was there, and had retreated on finding they were not.”

“Could that person, whomsoever it might be, have advanced to the table and taken the box?” asked the chief of the magistrates.

“No, sir. For certain, no!”—and Sam’s tone here, he best knew why, was aggravatingly defiant. “The person might have put his head in—and no doubt did—but he did not set a foot inside the room.”

Captain Cockermuth was asked about this: whether he observed any one go to the parlour and look in. He protested till he was nearly blue with rage (for he regarded it as Sam’s invention), that such a thing never took place, that no one whatever went near the parlour-door.

Next came up the question of the guinea, which was hanging from his watch-guard, shining and bold as if it had been brass. Sam had been questioned about this by the justices on Thursday, and his statement in answer to them was just as bold as the coin.

The guinea had been given him by his late father’s uncle, old Thomas Dene, who had jokingly enjoined him never to change it, always to keep it by him, and then he would never be without money. Sam had kept it; kept it from that time to this. He kept it in the pocket of an old-fashioned leather case, which contained some letters from his father, and two or three other things he valued. No, he was not in the habit of getting the guinea out to look at, he had retorted to a little badgering; had not looked at it (or at the case either, which lay in the bottom of his trunk) for months and months—yes, it might be years, for all he recollected. But on the Tuesday evening, when talking with Miss Parslet about guineas, he fetched it to show to her; and slipped it into his pocket afterwards, where, the police found it on the Thursday. This was the substance of his first answer, and he repeated it now.

“Do you know who is said to be the father of lies, young man?” asked Justice Whitewicker in a solemn tone, suspecting that the prisoner was telling an out-and-out fable.

“I have heard,” answered Sam. “Have never seen him myself. Perhaps you have, sir.” At which a titter went round the court, and it put his worship’s back up. Sam went on to say that he had often thought of taking his guinea into wear, and had now done it. And he gave the guinea a flick in the face of us all.

Evidently little good could come of a hardened criminal like this; and Justice Whitewicker, who thought nothing on earth so grand as the sound of his own voice from the bench, gave Sam a piece of his mind. In the midst of this a stir arose at the appearance of Maria Parslet. Mr. Chance led her in; her father, sad and shrinking as usual, walked behind them. Lawyer Cockermuth—and I liked him for it—made a place for his clerk next to himself. Maria looked modest, gentle and pretty. She wore black silk, being in slight mourning, and a dainty white bonnet.

Mr. Dene was asked to take tea with them in the parlour on the Tuesday evening, as a matter of convenience, Maria’s evidence ran, in answer to questions, and she briefly alluded to the reason why. Whilst waiting together, he and she, for her father to come in, Mr. Dene told her of the finding of the ebony box of guineas at Mr. Cockermuth’s. She laughingly remarked that a guinea was an out-of-date coin now, and she was not sure that she had ever seen one. In reply to that, Mr. Dene said he had one by him, given him by an old uncle some years before; and he went upstairs and brought it down to show to her. There could be no mistake, Maria added to Mr. Whitewicker, who wanted to insinuate a word of doubt, and her sweet brown eyes were honest and true as she said it; she had touched the guinea and held it in her hand for some moments.

“Held it and touched it, did you, Miss Parslet?”retorted Lawyer Standup. “Pray what appearance had it?”

“It was a thin, worn coin, sir,” replied Maria;“thinner, I think, than a sovereign, but somewhat larger; it seemed to be worn thin at the edge.”

“Whose image was on it?—what king’s?”

“George the Third’s. I noticed that.”

“Now don’t you think, young lady, that the accused took this marvellous coin from his pocket, instead of from some receptacle above stairs?” went on Mr. Standup.

“I am quite sure he did not take it from his pocket when before me,” answered Maria. “He ran upstairs quickly, saying he would fetch the guinea: he had nothing in his hands then.”

Upon this Lawyer Chance inquired of his learned brother why he need waste time in useless questions; begging to remind him that it was not until Wednesday morning the box disappeared, so the prisoner could not well have had any of its contents about him on Tuesday.

“Just let my questions alone, will you,” retorted Mr. Standup, with a nod. “I know what I am about. Now, Miss Parslet, please attend to me. Was the guinea you profess to have seen a perfect coin, or was there a hole in it?”

“It was a perfect coin, sir.”

“And what became of it?”

“I think Mr. Dene put it in his waistcoat-pocket: I did not particularly notice. Quite close upon that, my father came home, and we sat down to tea. No, sir, nothing was said to my father about the guinea; if it was, I did not hear it. But he and Mr. Dene talked of the box of guineas that had been found.”

“Who was it that called while you were at tea?”

“Young Mr. Chance called. We had finished tea then, and Mr. Dene took him upstairs to his own sitting-room.”

“I am not asking you about young Mr. Chance; we shall come to him presently,” was the rough-toned, but not ill-natured retort. “Somebody else called: who was it?”

Maria, blushing and paling ever since she stood up to the ordeal, grew white now. Mr. Badger had called at the door, she answered, and Mr. Dene went out to speak to him. Worried by Lawyer Standup as to whether he did not come to ask for money, she said she believed so, but she did not hear all they said.

Quiet Mr. Parslet was the next witness. He had to acknowledge that he did hear it. Mr. Badger appeared to be pressing for some money owing to him; could not tell the amount, knew nothing about that. When questioned whether the accused owed him money, Parslet said not a shilling; Mr. Dene had never sought to borrow of him, and had paid his monthly accounts regularly.

Upon that, Mr. Badger was produced; a thin man with a neck as stiff as a poker; who gave his reluctant testimony in a sweet tone of benevolence. Mr. Dene had been borrowing money from him for some time; somewhere about twenty pounds, he thought, was owing now, including interest. He had repeatedly asked for its repayment, but only got put off with (as he believed) lame excuses. Had certainly gone to ask for it on the Tuesday evening; was neither loud nor angry, oh dear, no; but did tell the accused he thought he could give him some if he would, and did say that he must have a portion of it within a week, or he should apply to Mr. Jacobson, of Elm Farm. Did not really mean to apply to Mr. Jacobson, had no wish to do any one an injury, but felt vexed at the young man’s off-handedness, which looked like indifference. Knew besides that Mr. Dene had other debts.

Now I’ll leave you to judge how this evidence struck on the ears of old Jacobson. He leaped to the conclusion that Sam had been going all sorts of ways, as he supposed he went when in London, and might be owing, the mischief only knew how much money; and he shook his fist at Sam across the justice-room.

Mr. Standup next called young Chance, quite to young Chance’s surprise; perhaps also to his father’s. He was questioned upon no end of things—whether he did not know that the accused was owing a great deal of money, and whether the accused had shown any guinea to him when he was in Edgar Street on the Tuesday night. Austin answered that he believed Mr. Dene owed a little money, not a great deal, so far as he knew; and that he had not seen the guinea or heard of it. And in saying all this, Austin’s tone was just as resentfully insolent to Mr. Standup as he dared to make it.

Well, it is of no use to go on categorically with the day’s proceedings. When they came to an end, the magistrates conferred pretty hotly in a low tone amongst themselves, some apparently taking up one opinion, as to Sam’s guilt, or innocence, and some the other. At length they announced their decision, and it was as follows.

“Although the case undoubtedly presents grave grounds of suspicion against the accused, Samson Reginald Dene—‘Very grave indeed,’ interjected Mr. Whitewicker, solemnly—we do not consider them to be sufficient to commit him for trial upon; therefore, we give him the benefit of the doubt, and discharge him. Should any further evidence transpire, he can be brought up again.”

“It was Maria Parslet’s testimony about the guinea that cleared him,” whispered the crowd, as they filed out.

And I think it must have been. It was just impossible to doubt her truth, or the earnestness with which she gave it.

Mr. Jacobson “interviewed” Sam, as the Americans say, and the interview was not a loving one. Being in the mood, he said anything that came uppermost. He forbade Sam to appear at Elm Farm ever again, as“long as oak and ash grew;” and he added that as Sam was bent on going to the deuce head foremost, he might do it upon his own means, but that he’d never get any more help from him.

The way the Squire lashed up Bob and Blister when driving home—for, liking Sam hitherto, he was just as much put out as old Jacobson—and the duet they kept together in abuse of his misdeeds, was edifying to hear. Tod laughed; I did not. The gig was given over this return journey to the two grooms.

“I do not believe Sam took the box, sir,” I said to old Jacobson, interrupting a fiery oration.

He turned round to stare at me. “What do you say, Johnny Ludlow? You do not believe he took the box?”

“Well, to me it seems quite plain that he did not take it. I’ve hardly ever felt more sure of anything.”

“Plain!” struck in the Squire. “How is it plain, Johnny? What grounds do you go upon?”

“I judge by his looks and his tones, sir, when denying it. They are to be trusted.”

They did not know whether to laugh or scoff at me. It was Johnny’s way, said the Squire; always fancying he could read the riddles in a man’s face and voice. But they’d have thrown up their two best market-going hats with glee to be able to think it true.

V.

Samson Reginald Dene was relieved of the charge, as it was declared “not proven;” all the same, Samson Reginald Dene was ruined. Worcester said so. During the following week, which was Passion Week, its citizens talked more of him than of their prayers.

Granted that Maria Parslet’s testimony had been honestly genuine, a theory cropped up to counteract it. Lawyer Standup had been bold enough to start it at the Saturday’s examination: a hundred tongues were repeating it now. Sam Dene, as may be remembered, was present at the finding of the box on Tuesday; he had come up the passage and touched the golden guineas in it with the tips of his fingers; those fingers might have deftly extracted one of the coins. No wonder he could show it to Maria when he went home to tea! Captain Cockermuth admitted that in counting the guineas subsequently he had thought he counted sixty; but, as he knew there were (or ought to be) that number in the box, probably the assumption misled him, causing him to reckon them as sixty when in fact there were only fifty-nine. Which was a bit of logic.

Still, popular opinion was divided. If part of the town judged Sam to be guilty, part believed him to be innocent. A good deal might be said on both sides. To a young man who does not know how to pay his debts from lack of means, and debts that he is afraid of, too, sixty golden guineas may be a great temptation; and people did not shut their eyes to that. It transpired also that Mr. Jacobson, his own uncle, his best friend,had altogether cast Sam off and told him he might now go to the dogs his own way.

Sam resented it all bitterly, and defied the world. Far from giving in or showing any sense of shame, he walked about with an air, his head up, and that brazen guinea dangling in front of him. He actually had the face to appear at college on Good Friday (the congregation looking askance at him), and sat out the cold service of the day: no singing, no organ, and the little chorister-boys in black surplices instead of white ones.

But the crowning act of boldness was to come. Before Easter week had lapsed into the past, Sam Dene had taken two rooms in a conspicuous part of the town and set-up in practice. A big brass plate on the outer door displayed his name: “Mr. Dene, Attorney-at-law.”Sam’s friends extolled his courage; Sam’s enemies were amazed at his impudence. Captain Cockermuth prophesied that the ceiling of that office would come tumbling down on its crafty occupant’s head: it was his gold that was paying for it.

The Cockermuths, like the town, were divided in opinion. Mr. Cockermuth could not believe Sam guilty, although the mystery as to where the box could be puzzled him as few things had ever puzzled him in this life. He would fain have taken Sam back again, had it been a right thing to do. What the captain thought need not be enlarged upon. While Miss Betty felt uncertain; veering now to this belief, now to that, and much distressed either way.

There is one friend in this world that hardly ever deserts us—and that is a mother. Mrs. Dene, a pretty little woman yet, had come flying to Worcester, ready to fight everybody in it on her son’s behalf. Sam ofcourse made his own tale good to her; whether it was a true one or not he alone knew, but not an angel from heaven could have stirred her faith in it. She declared that, to her positive knowledge, the old uncle had given Sam the guinea.

It was understood to be Mrs. Dene who advanced the money to Sam to set up with; it was certainly Mrs. Dene who bought a shutting-up bed (at old Ward’s), and a gridiron, and a tea-pot, and a three-legged table, and a chair or two, all for the back-room of the little office, that Sam might go into housekeeping on his own account, and live upon sixpence a-day, so to say, until business came in. To look at Sam’s hopeful face, he meant to do it, and to live down the scandal.

Looking at the thing impartially, one might perhaps see that Sam was not swayed by impudence in setting-up, so much as by obligation. For what else lay open to him?—no firm would engage him as clerk with that doubt sticking to his coat-tails. He paid some of his debts, and undertook to pay the rest before the year was out. A whisper arose that it was Mrs. Dene who managed this. Sam’s adversaries knew better; the funds came out of the ebony box: that, as Charles Cockermuth demonstrated, was as sure as heaven.

But now there occurred one thing that I, Johnny Ludlow, could not understand, and never shall: why Worcester should have turned its back, like an angry drake, upon Maria Parslet. The school, where she was resident teacher, wrote her a cool, polite note, to say she need not trouble herself to return after the Easter recess. That example was followed. Pious individualslooked upon her as a possible story-teller, in danger of going to the bad in Sam’s defence, nearly as much as Sam had gone.

It was just a craze. Even Charles Cockermuth said there was no sense in blaming Maria: of course Sam had deceived her (when pretending to show the guinea as his own), just as he deceived other people. Next the town called her “bold” for standing up in the face and eyes of the Guildhall to give her evidence. But how could Maria help that? It was not her own choice: she’d rather have locked herself up in the cellar. Lawyer Chance had burst in upon her that Saturday morning (not ten minutes after we left the house), giving nobody warning, and carried her off imperatively, never saying “Will you, or Won’t you.”It was not his way.

Placid Miss Betty was indignant when the injustice came to her ears. What did people mean by it? she wanted to know. She sent for Maria to spend the next Sunday in Foregate Street, and marched with her arm-in-arm to church (St. Nicholas’), morning and evening.

As the days and the weeks passed, commotion gave place to a calm; Sam and his delinquencies were let alone. One cannot be on the grumble for ever. Sam’s lines were pretty hard; practice held itself aloof from him; and if he did not live upon the sixpence a-day, he looked at every halfpenny that he had to spend beyond it. His face grew thin, his blue eyes wistful, but he smiled hopefully.

“You keep up young Dene’s acquaintance, I perceive,”remarked Lawyer Chance to his son one eveningas they were finishing dinner, for he had met the two young men together that day.

“Yes: why shouldn’t I?” returned Austin.

“Think that charge was a mistaken one, I suppose?”

“Well I do, father. He has affirmed it to me in terms so unmistakable that I can but believe him. Besides, I don’t think Dene, as I have always said, is the sort of fellow to turn rogue: I don’t, indeed.”

“Does he get any practice?”

“Very little, I’m afraid.”

Mr. Chance was a man with a conscience. On the whole, he felt inclined to think Sam had not helped himself to the guineas, but he was by no means sure of it: like Miss Betty Cockermuth, his opinion veered, now on this side, now on that, like a haunted weathercock. If Sam was not guilty, why, then, Fate had dealt hardly with the young fellow—and what would the end be? These thoughts were running through the lawyer’s mind as he talked to his son and sat playing with his bunch of seals, which hung down by a short, thick gold chain, in the old-fashioned manner.

“I should like to say a word to him if he’d come to me,” he suddenly cried. “You might go and bring him, Austin.”

“What—this evening?” exclaimed Austin.

“Ay; why not? One time’s as good as another.”

Austin Chance started off promptly for the new office, and found his friend presiding over his own tea-tray in the little back-room; the loaf and butter on the table, and a red herring on the gridiron.

“Hadn’t time to get any dinner to-day; too busy,”was Sam’s apology, given briefly with a flush of the face. “Mr. Chance wants me? Well, I’ll come. What is it for?”

“Don’t know,” replied Austin. And away they went.

The lawyer was standing at the window, his hands in the pockets of his pepper-and-salt trousers, tinkling the shillings and sixpences there. Austin supposed he was not wanted, and shut them in.

“I have been thinking of your case a good bit lately, Sam Dene,” began Mr. Chance, giving Sam a seat and sitting down himself; “and I should like to feel, if I can, more at a certainty about it, one way or the other.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Sam. And you must please to note that manners in those days had not degenerated to what they are in these. Young men, whether gentle or simple, addressed their elders with respect; young women also. “Yes, sir,” replied Sam. “But what do you mean about wishing to feel more at a certainty?”

“When I defended you before the magistrates, I did my best to convince them that you were not guilty: you had assured me you were not: and they discharged you. I believe my arguments and my pleadings went some way with them.”

“I have no doubt of it, sir, and I thanked you at the time with all my heart,” said Sam warmly. “Some of my enemies were bitter enough against me.”

“But you should not speak in that way—calling people your enemies!” reproved the lawyer. “People were only at enmity with you on the score of the offence. Look here, Sam Dene—did you commit it, or did you not?”

Sam stared. Mr. Chance had dropped his voice to a solemn key, his head was pushed forward, gravity sat on his face.

“No, sir. No.”

The short answer did not satisfy the lawyer. “Did you filch that box of guineas out of Cockermuth’s room; or were you, and are you, as you assert, wholly innocent?” he resumed. “Tell me the truth as before Heaven. Whatever it be, I will shield you still.”

Sam rose. “On my sacred word, sir, and before Heaven, I have told nothing but the truth. I did not take or touch the box of guineas. I do not know what became of it.”

Mr. Chance regarded Sam in silence. He had known young men, when under a cloud, prevaricate in a most extraordinary and unblushing manner: to look at them and listen to them, one might have said they were fit to be canonized. But he thought truth lay with Sam now.

“Sit down, sit down, Dene,” he said. “I am glad to believe you. Where the deuce could the box have got to? It could not take flight through the ceiling up to the clouds, or down to the earth through the floor. Whose hands took it?”

“The box went in one of two ways,” returned Sam.“If the captain did not fetch it out unconsciously, and lose it in the street, why, somebody must have entered the parlour after I left it and carried off the box. Perhaps the individual who looked into the room when I was sitting there.”

“A pity but you had noticed who that was.”

“Yes, it is. Look here, Mr. Chance; a thought has more than once struck me—if that person did notcome back and take the box, why has he not come forward openly and honestly to avow it was himself who looked in?”

The lawyer gave his head a dissenting shake. “It is a ticklish thing to be mixed up in, he may think, one that he had best keep out of—though he may be innocent as the day. How are you getting on?” he asked, passing abruptly from the subject.

“Oh, middling,” replied Sam. “As well, perhaps, as I could expect to get on at first, with all the prejudice abroad against me.”

“Earning bread-and-cheese?”

“Not quite—yet.”

“Well, see here, Dene—and this is what I chiefly sent for you to say, if you could assure me on your conscience you deserved it—I may be able to put some little business in your hands. Petty matters are brought to us that we hardly care to waste time upon: I’ll send them to you in future. I dare say you’ll be able to rub on by dint of patience. Rome was not built in a day, you know.”

“Thank you, sir; I thank you very truly,” breathed Sam. “Mr. Cockermuth sent me a small matter the other day. If I can make a bare living of it at present, that’s all I ask. Fame and fortune are not rained down upon black sheep.”

Which was so true a remark as to need no contradiction.

May was nearing its close then, and the summer evenings were long and lovely. As Sam went forth from the interview, he thought he would take a walk by the river, instead of turning in to his solitary rooms. Since entering upon them he had been assteady as old Time: the accusation and its attendant shame seemed to have converted him from a heedless, youthful man into a wise old sage of age and care. Passing down Broad Street towards the bridge, he turned to the left and sauntered along beside the Severn. The water glittered in the light of the setting sun; barges, some of them bearing men and women and children, passed smoothly up and down on it; the opposite fields, towards St. John’s, were green as an emerald: all things seemed to wear an aspect of brightness.

All on a sudden things grew brighter—and Sam’s pulses gave a leap. He had passed the grand old red-stoned wall that enclosed the Bishop’s palace, and was close upon the gates leading up to the Green, when a young lady turned out of them and came towards him with a light, quick step. It was Maria Parslet, in a pretty summer muslin, a straw hat shading her blushing face. For it did blush furiously at sight of Sam.

“Mr. Dene!”

“Maria!”

She began to say, hurriedly, that her mother had sent her with a message to the dressmaker on the Parade, and she had taken that way, as being the shortest—as if in apology for having met Sam.

He turned with her, and they paced slowly along side by side, the colour on Maria’s cheeks coming and going with every word he spoke and every look he gave her—which seemed altogether senseless and unreasonable. Sam told her of his conversation with Austin Chance’s father, and his promise to put a few things in his way.

“Once let me be making two hundred a-year, Maria, and then——”

“Then what?” questioned Maria innocently.

“Then I should ask you to come to me, and we’d risk it together.”

“Risk what?” stammered Maria, turning her head right round to watch a barge that was being towed by.

“Risk our luck. Two hundred a-year is not so bad to begin upon. I should take the floor above as well as the ground-floor I rent now, and we should get along. Any way, I hope to try it.”

“Oh, Mr. Dene!”

“Now don’t ‘Mr. Dene’ me, young lady, if you please. Why, Maria, what else can we do? A mean, malicious set of dogs and cats have turned their backs upon us both; the least we should do is to see if we can’t do without them. I know you’d rather come to me than stay in Edgar Street.”

Maria held her tongue, as to whether she would or not. “Mamma is negotiating to get me a situation at Cheltenham,” she said.

“You will not go to Cheltenham, or anywhere else, if I get any luck,” he replied dictatorially. “Life would look very blue to me now without you, Maria. And many a man and wife, rolling in riches at the end, have rubbed on with less than two hundred a-year at the beginning. I wouldn’t say, mind, but we might risk it on a hundred and fifty. My rent is low, you see.”

“Ye—es,” stammered Maria “But—I wish that mystery of the guineas could be cleared up!”

Sam stood still, turned, and faced her. “Why doyou say that? You are not suspecting that I took them?”

“Oh dear, NO,” returned Maria, losing her breath.“I know you did not take them: could not. I was only thinking of your practice: so much more would come in.”

“Cockermuth has sent me a small matter or two. I think I shall get on,” repeated Sam.

They were at their journey’s end by that time, at the dressmaker’s door. “Good-evening,” said Maria, timidly holding out her hand.

Sam Dene took it and clasped it. “Good-bye, my darling. I am going home to my bread-and-cheese supper, and I wish you were there to eat it with me!”

Maria sighed. She wondered whether that wonderful state of things would ever come to pass. Perhaps no; perhaps yes. Meanwhile no living soul knew aught of these treasonable aspirations; they were a secret between her and Sam. Mr. and Mrs. Parslet suspected nothing.

Time went on. Lawyer Chance was as good as his word, and put a few small matters of business into the hands of Sam Dene. Mr. Cockermuth did the same. The town came down upon him for it; though it let Chance alone, who was not the sort of man to be dictated to. “Well,” said Cockermuth in answer, “I don’t believe the lad is guilty; never have believed it. Had he been of a dishonest turn, he could have helped himself before, for a good deal of my cash passed at times through his hands. And, given that he was innocent, he has been hardly dealt by.”

Sam Dene was grateful for these stray windfalls, and returned his best thanks to the lawyers for them.But they did not amount to much in the aggregate; and a gloomy vision began to present itself to his apprehension of being forced to give up the struggle, and wandering out in the world to seek a better fortune. The summer assizes drew near. Sam had no grand cause to come on at them, or small one either; but it was impossible not to give a thought now and again to what his fate might have been, had he stood committed to take his trial at them. The popular voice said that was only what he merited.

VI.

The assizes were held, and passed. One hot day, when July was nearing its meridian, word was brought to Miss Cockermuth—who was charitable—that a poor sick woman whom she befriended, was worse than usual, so she put on her bonnet and cloak to pay her a visit. The bonnet was a huge Leghorn, which shaded her face well from the sun, its trimming of straw colour; and the cloak was of thin black “taffeta,”edged with narrow lace. It was a long walk on a hot afternoon, for the sick woman lived but just on this side Henwick. Miss Betty had got as far as the bridge, and was about to cross it when Sam Dene, coming over it at a strapping pace, ran against her.

“Miss Betty!” he cried. “I beg your pardon.”

Miss Betty brought her bonnet from under the shade of her large grass-green parasol. “Dear me, is it you, Sam Dene?” she said. “Were you walking for a wager?”

Sam laughed a little. “I was hastening back to my office, Miss Betty. I have no clerk, you know, and a client might come in.”

Miss Betty gave her head a twist, something between a nod and a shake; she noticed the doubtful tone in the “might.” “Very hot, isn’t it?” said she. “I’m going up to see that poor Hester Knowles; she’s uncommon bad, I hear.”

“You’ll have a warm walk.”

“Ay. Are you pretty well, Sam? You look thin.”

“Do I? Oh, that’s nothing but the heat of the weather. I am quite well, thank you. Good-afternoon, Miss Betty.”

She shook his hand heartily. One of Sam’s worst enemies, who might have run in a curricle with Charles Cockermuth, as to an out-and-out belief in his guilt, was passing at the moment, and saw it.

Miss Betty crossed the bridge, turned off into Turkey, for it was through those classical regions that her nearest and coolest way lay, and so onwards to the sick woman’s room. There she found the blazing July sun streaming in at the wide window, which had no blind, no shelter whatever from it. Miss Betty had had enough of the sun out-of-doors, without having it in. Done up with the walk and the heat, she sat down on the first chair, and felt ready to swoon right off.

“Dear me, Hester, this is bad for you!” she gasped.

“Did you mean the sun, ma’am?” asked the sick woman, who was sitting full in it, wrapped in a blanket or two. “It is a little hot just now, but I don’t grumble at it; I’m so cold mostly. As soon as the sun goes off the window, I shall begin to shiver.”

“Well-a-day!” responded Miss Betty, wishing she could be cool enough to shiver. “But if you feel it cold now, Hester, what will you do when the autumn winds come on?”

“Ah, ma’am, please do not talk of it! I just can’t tell what I shall do. That window don’t fit tight, and the way the wind pours in through it upon me as I sit here at evening, or lie in my little bed there, passes belief. I’m coughing always then.”

“You should have some good thick curtains put up,” said Miss Betty, gazing at the bare window, which had a pot of musk on its sill. “Woollen ones.”

The sick woman smiled sadly. She was very poor now, though it had not always been so; she might as well have hoped to buy the sun itself as woollen curtains—or cotton curtains either. Miss Betty knew that.

“I’ll think about it, Hester, and see if I’ve any old ones that I could let you have. I’m not sure; but I’ll look,” repeated she—and began to empty her capacious dimity pockets of a few items of good things she had brought.

By-and-by, when she was a little cooler, and had talked with Hester, Miss Betty set off home again, her mind running upon the half-promised curtains.“They are properly shabby,” thought she, as she went along, “but they’ll serve to keep the sun and the wind off her.”

She was thinking of those warm green curtains that she had picked the braid from that past disastrous morning—as the reader heard of, and all the town as well. Nothing had been done with them since.

Getting home, Miss Betty turned into the parlour.Susan—who had not yet found leisure to fix any time for her wedding—found her mistress fanning her hot face, her bonnet untied and tilted back.

“I’ve been to see that poor Hester Knowles, Susan,”began Miss Betty.

“Law, ma’am!” interposed Susan. “What a walk for you this scorching afternoon! All up that wide New Road!”

“You may well say that, girl: but I went Turkey away. She’s very ill, poor thing; and that’s a frightfully staring window of hers, the sun on it like a blazing fire, and not as much as a rag for a blind; and the window don’t fit, she says, and in cold weather the biting wind comes in and shivers her up. I think I might give her those shabby old curtains, Susan—that were up in Mr. Philip’s room, you know, before we got the new chintz ones in.”

“So you might, ma’am,” said Susan, who was not a bad-hearted girl, excepting to the baker’s man. “They can’t go up at any of our windows as they be; and if you had ’em dyed, I don’t know as they’d answer much, being so shabby.”

“I put them—let me see—into the spare ottoman, didn’t I? Yes, that was it. And there I suppose they must be lying still.”

“Sure enough, Miss Betty,” said Susan. “I’ve not touched ’em.”

“Nor I,” said Miss Betty. “With all the trouble that got into our house at that time, I couldn’t give my mind to seeing after the old things, and I’ve not thought about them since. Come upstairs with me now, Susan; we’ll see what sort of a state they are in.”

They went up; and Miss Betty took off her bonnet and cloak and put her cap on. The spare ottoman, soft, and red, and ancient, used as a receptacle for odds and ends that were not wanted, stood in a spacious linen-closet on the first-floor landing. It was built out over the back-door, and had a skylight above. Susan threw back the lid of the ottoman, and Miss Betty stood by. The faded old brown curtains, green once, lay in a heap at one end, just as Miss Betty had hastily flung them in that past day in March, when on her way to look at the chintzes.

“They’re in a fine rabble, seemingly,” observed Susan, pausing to regard the curtains.

“Dear me!” cried Miss Betty, conscience-stricken, for she was a careful housewife, “I let them drop in any way, I remember. I did mean to have them well shaken out-of-doors and properly folded, but that bother drove it all out of my head. Take them out, girl.”

Susan put her strong arms underneath the heap and lifted it out with a fling. Something heavy flew out of the curtains, and dropped on the boarded floor with a crash. Letting fall the curtains, Susan gave a wild shriek of terror and Miss Betty gave a wilder, for the floor was suddenly covered with shining gold coins. Mr. Cockermuth, passing across the passage below at the moment, heard the cries, wondered whether the house was on fire, and came hastening up.

“Oh,” said he coolly, taking in the aspect of affairs.“So the thief was you, Betty, after all!”

He picked up the ebony box, and bent his head to look at the guineas. Miss Betty sank down on athree-legged stool—brought in for Philip’s children—and grew as white as death.

Yes, it was the missing box of guineas, come to light in the same extraordinary and unexpected manner that it had come before, without having been (as may be said) truly lost. When Miss Betty gathered her curtains off the dining-room table that March morning, a cumbersome and weighty heap, she had unwittingly gathered up the box with them. No wonder Sam Dene had not seen the box on the table after Miss Betty’s departure! It was a grievous misfortune, though, that he failed to take notice it was not there.

She had no idea she was not speaking truth in saying she saw the box on the table as she left the room. Having seen the box there all the morning she thought it was there still, and that she saw it, being quite unconscious that it was in her arms. Susan, too, had noticed the box on the table when she opened the door to call her mistress, and believed she was correct in saying she saw it there to the last: the real fact being that she had not observed it was gone. So there the box with its golden freight had lain undisturbed, hidden in the folds of the curtains. But for Hester Knowles’s defective window, it might have stayed there still, who can say how long?

Susan, no less scared than her mistress, stood back against the closet wall for safety, out of reach of those diabolical coins; Miss Betty, groaning and half-fainting on the three-legged stool, sat pushing back her cap and her front. The lawyer picked up the guineas and counted them as he laid them flat in the box. Sixty of them: not one missing. So Sam’s guinea was hisown! He had not, as Worcester whispered, trumped up the story with Maria Parslet.

“John,” gasped poor Miss Betty, beside herself with remorse and terror, “John, what will become of me now? Will anything be done?”

“How ‘done’?” asked he.

“Will they bring me to trial—or anything of that—in poor Sam’s place?”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered her brother grimly;“perhaps not this time. But I’d have you take more care in future, Betty, than to hide away gold in old curtains.”

Locking the box securely within his iron safe, Mr. Cockermuth put on his hat and went down to the town hall, where the magistrates, after dispensing their wisdom, were about to disperse for the day. He told them of the wonderful recovery of the box of guineas, of how it had been lost, and that Sam Dene was wholly innocent. Their worships were of course charmed to hear it, Mr. Whitewicker observing that they had only judged Sam by appearances, and that appearances had been sufficient (in theory) to hang him.

From the town hall, Mr. Cockermuth turned off to Sam’s office. Sam was making a great show of business, surrounded by a tableful of imposing parchments, but with never a client to the fore. His old master grasped his hand.

“Well, Sam, my boy,” he said, “the tables have turned for you. That box of guineas is found.”

Sam never spoke an answering word. His lips parted with expectation: his breath seemed to be a little short.

“Betty had got it all the time. She managed somehow to pick it up off the table with those wretched old curtains she had there, all unconsciously, of course, and it has lain hidden with the curtains upstairs in a lumber-box ever since. Betty will never forgive herself. She’ll have a fit of the jaundice over this.”

Sam drew a long breath. “You will let the public know, sir?”

“Ay, Sam, without loss of an hour. I’ve begun with the magistrates—and a fine sensation the news made amidst ’em, I can tell you; and now I’m going round to the newspapers; and I shall go over to Elm Farm the first thing to-morrow. The town took up the cause against you, Sam: take care it does not eat you now in its repentance. Look here, you’ll have to come round to Betty, or she’ll moan her heart out: you won’t bear malice, Sam?”

“No, that I won’t,” said Sam warmly. “Miss Betty did not bear it to me. She has been as kind as can be all along.”

The town did want to eat Sam. It is the custom of the true Briton to go to extremes. Being unable to shake Sam’s hands quite off, the city would fain have chaired him round the streets with honours, as it used to chair its newly returned members.

Captain Cockermuth, sent for post haste, came to Worcester all contrition, beseeching Sam to forgive him fifty times a-day, and wanting to press the box of guineas upon him as a peace-offering. Sam would not take it: he laughingly told the captain that the box did not seem to carry luck with it.

And then Sam’s troubles were over. And no objection was made by his people (as it otherwise mighthave been) to his marrying Maria Parslet, by way of recompense. “God never fails to bring good out of evil, my dear,” said old Mrs. Jacobson to Maria, the first time they had her on a visit at Elm Farm. As to Sam, he had short time for Elm Farm, or anything else in the shape of recreation. Practice was flowing in quickly: litigants arguing, one with another, that a young man, lying for months under an imputation of theft, and then coming out of it with flying colours, must needs be a clever lawyer.

“But, Johnny,” Sam said to me, when talking of the past, “there’s one thing I would alter if I made the laws. No person, so long as he is only suspected of crime, should have his name proclaimed publicly. I am not speaking of murder, you understand, or charges of that grave nature; but of such a case as mine. My name appeared in full, in all the local newspapers, Samson Reginald Dene, coupled with theft, and of course it got a mark upon it. It is an awful blight upon a man when he is innocent, one that he may never quite live down. Suspicions must arise, I know that, of the innocent as well as the guilty, and they must undergo preliminary examinations in public and submit to legal inquiries: but time enough to proclaim who the man is when evidence strengthens against him, and he is committed for trial; until then let his name be suppressed. At least that is my opinion.”

And it is mine as well as Sam’s.

OUR FIRST TERM AT OXFORD.

I.

It was Friday night at the Oxford terminus, and all the world scrambling for cabs. Sir John and the Squire, nearly lifted off their legs, and too much taken aback to fight for themselves, stood against the wall, thinking the community had gone suddenly mad. Bill Whitney and Tod, tall, strong young fellows, able to hold their own anywhere, secured a cab at length, and we and our luggage got in and on it.

“To the Mitre.”

“If this is a specimen of Oxford manners, the sooner the lads are at home the better,” growled the Squire. Sir John Whitney was settling his spectacles on his nose—nearly lost off it in the scuffle.

“Snepp told me it was a regular shindy at the terminus the first day of term, with all the students coming back,” said Bill Whitney.

There had been no end of discussion as to our college career. Sir John Whitney said William must go to Oxford, as he had been at Oxford himself; whereas Brandon stood out against Oxford for me; would not hear of it. He preferred Cambridge he said: and to Cambridge Johnny Ludlow should go: and he, as my guardian, had full power over me.The Squire cared not which university was chosen; but Tod went in for Oxford with all his strong will: he said the boating was best there. The result was that Mr. Brandon gave way, and we were entered at Christchurch.

Mr. Brandon had me at his house for two days beforehand, giving me counsel. He had one of his bad colds just then and kept his room, and his voice was never more squeaky. The last evening, I sat up there with him while he sipped his broth. The fire was large enough to roast us, and he had three flannel night-caps on. It was that night that he talked to me most. He believed with all his heart, he said, that the temptations to young men were greater at Oxford than at Cambridge; that, of the two, the more reckless set of men were there: and that was one of the reasons why he had objected to Oxford for me. And then he proceeded to put the temptations pretty strongly before me, and did not mince things, warning me that it would require all the mental and moral strength I possessed to resist them, and steer clear of a course of sin and shame. He then suddenly opened the Bible, which was on the table at his elbow, and read out a line or two from the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy.

“‘See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’”

“That’s what I have been striving to set before you, Johnny Ludlow. Read that chapter, the whole of it, often; treasure its precepts in your heart; and may God give you grace to keep them!”

He shook hands with me in silence. I took up mycandle and waited a moment, for I thought he was going to speak again.

“Will you try to keep them, lad?”

“I will try, sir.”

We were fortunate in getting good rooms at Christchurch. Tod’s and mine were close together; Bill Whitney’s on the floor above. Our sitting-room was pleasant; it had an old cracked piano in it, which turned out to be passably fair when it had been tinkered and tuned. The windows looked out on the trees of the Broad Walk and to the meadows beyond; but trees are bare in winter, and the month was January. I had never stayed at Oxford before: and I saw that I should like it, with its fine, grand old colleges. The day after we got there, Saturday, we wrote our names in the dean’s book, and saw our tutor. The rest of the day was spent in seeing about battels and getting into the new ways. Very new to us. A civil young fellow, who waited on us as scout, was useful; they called him “Charley” in the college. Tod pulled a long face at some of the rules, and did not like the prospect of unlimited work.

“I’ll go in for the boating and fishing and driving, Johnny; and you can go in for the books.”

“All right, Tod.” I knew what he meant. It was not that he did not intend to take a fair amount of work: but to exist without a good share of out-of-door life also, would have been hard lines for Tod.

The Sunday services were beautiful. The first Sunday of term was a high day, and the cathedral was filled. Orders of admission to the public were not necessary that day, and a general congregation mixed with the students. Sir John and the Squirewere staying at the Mitre until Monday. After service we went to promenade in the Broad Walk—and it seemed that everybody else went.

“Look there!” cried the Squire, “at this tall clergyman coming along. I am sure he is one of the canons of Worcester.”

It was Mr. Fortescue—Honourable and Reverend. He halted for a minute to exchange greetings with Sir John Whitney, whom he knew, and then passed on his way.

“There’s some pretty girls about, too,” resumed the Squire, gazing around. “Not that I’d advise you boys to look much at them. Wonder if they often walk here?”

Before a week had gone by, we were quite at home; had shaken down into our new life as passengers shake down in their places in an omnibus; and made lots of friends. Some I liked; some I did not like. There was one fellow always coming in—a tall dark man with crisp hair; his name Richardson. He had plenty of money and kept dogs and horses, and seemed to go in for every kind of fast life the place afforded. Of work he did none; and report ran that he was being watched by the proctor, with whom he was generally in hot water. Altogether he was not in good odour: and he had a way of mocking at religion as though he were an atheist.

“I heard a bit about Richardson just now,” cried Whitney, one morning that he had brought his commons in to breakfast with us—and the fields outside were white with snow. “Mayhew says he’s a scamp.”

“Don’t think he’s much else, myself,” said Tod.“I say, just taste this butter! It’s shockingly strong. Wonder what it is made of?”

“Mayhew says he’s a liar as well as a villain. There’s no speaking after him. Last term a miserable affair occurred in the town; the authorities could not trace it home to Richardson though they suspected he was the black sheep. Lots of fellows knew he was: but he denied it out-and-out. I think we had better not have much to do with him.”

“He entertains jolly well,” said Tod. “Johnny, you’ve boiled these eggs too hard. And his funds seem to spring from some perpetual gold mine——”

The door opened, and two bull-dogs burst in, leaping and howling. Richardson—they were his—followed, with little Ford; the latter a quiet, inoffensive man, who stuck to his work.

“Be quiet, you two devils!” cried Richardson, kicking his dogs. “Lie down, will you? I say, I’ve a wine-coach on to-night in my rooms, after Hall. Shall be glad to see you all at it.”

Considering the conversation he had broken in upon, none of us had a very ready answer at hand.

“I have heaps of letters to answer to-night, and must do it,” said Whitney. “Thank you all the same.”

Richardson might have read coolness in the tone; I don’t know; but he turned the back of his chair on Bill to face Tod.

“You have not letters to write, I suppose, Todhetley?”

“Not I. I leave letters to Ludlow.”

“You’ll come, then?”

“Can’t,” said Tod candidly. “Don’t mean to go in for wine-parties.”

“Oh,” said Richardson. “You’ll tell another tale when you’ve been here a bit longer. Will you be still, you brutes?”

“Hope I shan’t,” said Tod. “Wine plays the very mischief with work. Should never get any done if I went in for it.”

“Do you intend to go up for honours?” went on Richardson.

“’Twould be a signal failure if I did. I leave all that to Ludlow—as I said by the letters. See to the dogs, Richardson.”

The animals had struck up a fight. Richardson secured the one and sent the other out with a kick. Our scout was coming in, and the dog flew at him. No damage; but a great row.

“Charley,” cried Tod, “this butter’s not fit to eat.”

“Is it not, sir? What’s the matter with it?”

“The matter with it?—everything’s the matter with it.”

“Is that your scout?” asked Richardson, when the man had gone again, holding his dog between his knees as he sat.

“Yes,” said Tod. “And your dogs all but made mincemeat of him. You should teach them better manners.”

“Serve him right if they had. His name’s Tasson.”

“Tasson, is it? We call him Charley here.”

“I know. He’s a queer one.”

“How is he queer?”

“He’s pious.”

“He’s what?”

“Pious,” repeated Richardson, twisting his mouth.“A saint; a cant; a sneak.”

“Good gracious!” cried Bill Whitney.

“You think I’m jesting! Ask Ford here. Tell it, Ford.”

“Oh, it’s true,” said Ford: “true that he goes in for piety. Last term there was a freshman here named Carstairs. He was young; rather soft; no experience, you know, and he began to go the pace. One night this Charley, his scout, fell on his knees, and besought him with tears not to go to the bad; to pull up in time and remember what the end must be; and—and so on.”

“What did Carstairs do?”

“Do! why turned him out,” put in Richardson.“Carstairs, by the way, has taken his name off the books, or had to take it off.”

“Charley is civil and obliging to us,” said Whitney.“Never presumes.”

How much of the tale was gospel we knew not; but for my own part, I liked Charley. There was something about him quite different from scouts and servants in general—and by the way, I don’t think Charley was a scout, only a scout’s help—but in appearance and diction and manner he was really superior. A slim, slight young fellow of twenty, with straight fine light hair and blue eyes, and a round spot of scarlet on his thin cheeks.

“I say, Charley, they say you are pious,” began Bill Whitney that same day after lecture, when the man was bringing in the bread-and-cheese from the buttery.

He coloured to the roots of his light hair, and did not answer. Bill never minded what he said to any one.

“You were scout to Mr. Carstairs. Did you take his morals under your special protection?”

“Be quiet, Whitney,” said Tod in an undertone.

“And constitute yourself his guardian-angel-in-ordinary? Didn’t you go down on your knees to him with tears and sobs, and beseech him not to go to the bad?” went on Bill.

“There’s not a word of truth in it, sir. One evening when Mr. Carstairs was lying on his sofa, tired and ill—for he was beginning to lead a life that had no rest in it, hardly, day or night, a folded slip of paper was brought in from Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Carstairs bade me read it to him. It was to remind him of some appointment for the night. Mr. Carstairs was silent for a minute, and then burst out with a kind of sharp cry, painful to hear. ‘By Heaven, if this goes on, they’ll ruin me, body and soul! I’ve a great mind not to go.’ I did speak then, sir; I told him he was ill, and had better stay at home; and I said that it was easy enough for him to pull up then, but that when one got too far on the down-hill path it was more difficult.”

“Was that all?” cried Whitney.

“Every word, sir. I should not have spoken at all but that I had known Mr. Carstairs before we came here. Mr. Richardson made a great deal of it, and gave it quite a different colouring.”

“Did Mr. Carstairs turn you away for that?” I asked of Charley; when he came back for the things, and the other two had gone out.

“Three or four days after it happened, sir, Mr. Carstairs stopped my waiting on him again. I think it was through Mr. Richardson. Mr. Carstairshad refused to go out with him the evening it occurred.”

“You knew Mr. Carstairs before he came to Oxford. Where was it?”

“It was——” he hesitated, and then went on. “It was at the school he was at in London, sir. I was a junior master there.”

Letting a plate fall—for I was helping to pack them, wanting the table—I stared at the fellow. “A master there and——” and a servant here, I all but said, but I stopped the words.

“Only one of the outer masters, attending daily,”he went on quietly. “I taught writing and arithmetic, and English to the juniors.”

“But how comes it that you are here in this post, Charley?”

“I had reasons for wishing to come to live at Oxford, sir.”

“But why not have sought out something better than this?”

“I did seek, sir. But nothing of the kind was to be had, and this place offered. There’s many a one, sir, falls into the wrong post in life, and can never afterwards get into the right one.”

“But—do you—like this?”

“Like it, sir; no! But I make a living at it. One thing I shall be always grateful to Mr. Carstairs for: that he did not mention where he had known me. I should not like it to be talked of in the college, especially by Mr. Richardson.”

He disappeared with his tray as he spoke. It sounded quite mysterious. But I took the hint, and said nothing.

The matter passed. Charley did not put on any mentorship to us, and the more we saw of him the more we liked him. But an impression gradually dawned upon us that he was not strong enough for his place. Carrying a heavy tray upstairs would set him panting like an old man, and he could not run far or fast.

One day I was hard at work, Tod and Whitney being off somewhere, driving tandem, when a queer, ugly-sounding cough kept annoying me from outside: but whether it came from dog or man I could not tell. Opening the door at last, there sat Charley on the stairs, his head resting against the wall, and his cheeks brighter than a red leaf in autumn.

“What, is it you, Charley? Where did you pick up that cough?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, starting up. “I thought your rooms were empty.”

“Come in till the fit’s over. You are in a regular draught there. Come along,” for he hesitated—“I want to shut the door.”

He came in, coughing finely, and I gave him the chair by the fire. It was nothing, he said, and would soon be gone. He had caught it a day or two back in the bleak east wind: the college was draughty, and he had to be on the run out-of-doors in all sorts of weather.

“Well, you know, Charley, putting east winds and draughts aside, you don’t seem to be quite up to your work here in point of strength.”

“I was up to it, sir, when I took it. It’s a failing in some of our family, sir, to have weak lungs. I shall be all right again, soon.”

The coughing was over, and he got up to go away, evidently not liking to intrude. There was a degree of sensitiveness about him that, of itself, might have shown he was superior to his position.

“Take a good jorum of treacle-posset, Charley, at bed-time.”

******

Spring weather came in with February. The biting cold and snow of January disappeared, and genial sunshine warmed the earth again. The first Sunday in this same February month, from my place at morning service, looking out on the townsfolk who had come in with orders, I saw a lady, very little and pretty, staring fixedly at me from afar. The face—where had I seen her face? It seemed familiar, but I could not tell how or where I had known it. A small slight face of almost an ivory white, and wide-open light blue eyes that had plenty of confidence in them.

Sophie Chalk! I should have recognized her at the first moment but for the different mode in which her hair was dressed. Wonderful hair! A vast amount of it, and made the most of. She wore it its natural colour to-day, brown, and the red tinge on it shone like burnished gold. She knew me; that was certain; and I could not help watching her. Her eyes went roving away presently, possibly in search of Tod. I stole a glance at him; but he did not appear to see her. What brought her to Oxford?

We got out of church. I took care to hold my tongue. Tod had cared for Sophie Chalk—there could be little doubt of it—as one never cares for anybody again in life: and it might be just as well—in spite of the exposé of mademoiselle’s false ways and misdoings—that they did not meet. Syrens are syrens all the world over.

The day went on to a bright moonlight night. Tod and I, out for a stroll, were standing within the shade of the fine old Magdalen Tower, talking to a fellow of Trinity, when there came up a lady of delicate presence, the flowers in her bonnet exhaling a faint odour of perfume.

“I think I am not mistaken—I am sure—yes, I amsure it is Mr. Ludlow. And—surely that cannot be Mr. Todhetley?”

Tod wheeled round at the soft, false voice. The daintily gloved hand was held out to him; the fair, false face was bent close: and his own face turned red and white with emotion. I saw it even in the shade of the moonlight. Had she been strolling about to look for us? Most likely. A few moments more, and we were all three walking onwards together.

“Only fancy my position!” she gaily said. “Here am I, all forlorn, set down alone in this great town, and must take care of myself as I best can. The formidable gowns and caps frighten me.”

“The gowns and caps will do you no harm—Miss Chalk,” cried Tod—and he only just saved himself from saying “Sophie.”

“Do you think not,” she returned, touching the sleeve of her velvet jacket, as if to brush off a fly.“But I beg you will accord me my due style and title, Mr. Todhetley, and honour me accordingly. I am no longer Miss Chalk. I am Mrs. Everty.”

So she had married Mr. Everty after all! She minced along between us in her silk gown, her hands in her ermine muff that looked made for a doll. Atthe private door of a shop in High Street she halted, rang the bell, and threw the door open.

“You will walk up and take a cup of tea with me. Nay, but you must—or I shall think you want to hold yourselves above poor little me, now you are grand Oxford men.”

She went along the passage and up the stairs: there seemed no resource but to follow. In the sitting-room, which was very well furnished and looked out upon the street, a fire burned brightly; and a lamp and tea-things stood on the table.

“Where have you been?—keeping me waiting for my tea in this way! You never think of any one but yourself: never.”

The querulous complaint, and thin, shrill voice came from a small dark girl who sat at the window, peering out into the lighted street. I had not forgotten the sharp-featured sallow face and the deep-set eyes. It was Mabel Smith, the poor little lame and deformed girl I had seen in Torriana Square. She really did not look much older or bigger, and she spoke as abruptly as ever.

“I remember you, Johnny Ludlow.”

Mrs. Everty made the tea. Her dress, white one way, green the other, gleamed like silver in the lamplight. It had a quantity of white lace upon it: light green ribbons were twisted in her hair. “I should think it would be better to have those curtains drawn, Mabel. Your tea’s ready: if you will come to it.”

“But I choose to have the curtains open and I’ll take my tea here,” answered Mabel. “You may be going out again for hours, and what company should I have but the street? I don’t like to be shut upin a strange room: I might see ghosts. Johnny Ludlow, that’s a little coffee-table by the wall: if you’ll put it here it will hold my cup and saucer.”

I put it near her with her tea and plate of bread-and-butter.

“Won’t you sit by me? I am very lonely. Those other two can talk to one another.”

So I carried my cup and sat down by Mabel. The“other two,” as Mabel put it, were talking and laughing. Tod was taking a lesson in tea-making from her, and she called him awkward.

“Are you living here?” I asked of Mabel under cover of the noise.

“Living here! no,” she replied in her old abrupt fashion. “Do you think papa would let me be living over a shop in Oxford? My grandmamma lives near the town, and she invited me down on a visit to her. There was no one to bring me, and she said she would”—indicating Sophie—“and we came yesterday. Well, would you believe it? Grandmamma had meant nextSaturday, and she could not take us in, having visitors already. I wanted to go back home; but she said she liked the look of Oxford, and she took these rooms for a week. Two guineas without fires and other extras: I call it dear. How came she to find you out, Johnny?”

“We met just now. She tells us she is Mrs. Everty now.”

“Oh yes, they are married. And a nice bargain Mr. Everty has in her! Her dresses must cost twenty pounds apiece. Some of them thirty pounds! Look at the lace on that one. Mrs. Smith, papa’s wife, gives her a good talking-to sometimes, telling her Mr.Everty’s income won’t stand it. I should think it would not!—though I fancy he has a small share in papa’s business now.”

“Do they live in London?”

“Oh yes, they live in London. Close to us, too! In one of the small houses in Torriana Street. Shewanted to take a large house in the square like ours, but Mr. Everty was too wise.”

Talking to this girl, my thoughts back in the past, I wondered whether Sophie’s people had heard of the abstraction of Miss Deveen’s emeralds. But it was not likely. To look at her now: watching her fascinating ease, listening to her innocent reminiscences of the time we had all spent together at Lady Whitney’s, I might have supposed she had taken a dose of the waters of Lethe, and that Sophie Chalk had always been guileless as a child; an angel without wings.

“She has lost none of her impudence, Tod,” I said as we went home. “In the old days, you know, we used to say she’d fascinate the hair off our heads, give her the chance. She’d wile off both ears as well now. A good thing she’s married!”

Tod broke into a whistle, and went striding on.

Before the week was out, Sophie Chalk—we generally called her by the old name—had become intimate with some of the men of different colleges. Mabel Smith went to her grandmother’s, and Sophie had nothing to do but exhibit her charms in the Oxford streets and entertain her friends. The time went on. Hardly an evening passed but Tod was there; Bill Whitney went sometimes; I rarely. Sophie did not fascinate me, whatever she might do by others. Sophie treated her guests to wine and spirits, and to unlimited packs of cards. Bill Whitney said one night in a joking way that he was not sure but she might be indicted for keeping a private gaming-house. Richardson was one of her frequent evening visitors, and she would let him take his bull-dogs to make a morning call. There would be betting over the cards in the evenings, and she did not attempt to object. Sophie would not play herself; she dispersed her fascinations amidst the company while they played, and sang songs at the piano—one of the best pianos to be found in Oxford. There set in a kind of furore for pretty Mrs. Everty; the men who had the entrée there went wild over her charms, and vied with each other in making her costly presents. Sophie broke into raptures of delight over each with the seeming simplicity of a child, and swept all into her capacious net.

I think it was receiving those presents that was keeping her in Oxford; or helping to keep her. Some of them were valuable. Very valuable indeed was a set of diamonds, brooch and ear-rings, that soft young calf, Gaiton, brought her; but what few brains the viscount had were clean dazzled away by Sophie’s attractions: and Richardson gave her a bejewelled fan that must have cost a small fortune. If Sophie Chalk did spend her husband’s money, she was augmenting her stock of precious stones—and she had not lost her passion for them.

One morning my breakfast was brought in by a strange fellow, gloomy and grim. Tod had gone to breakfast with Mayhew.

“Where’s Charley?” I asked.

“Sick,” was the short answer.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Down with a cold, or something.”

And we had this surly servant for ever so long to come: and I’m sorry to say got so accustomed to seeing his face as to forget sick Charley.

II.

“Will you go up the river for a row, Johnny?”

“I don’t mind if I do.”

The questioner was Bill Whitney; who had come in to look for Tod. I had nothing particular on hand that afternoon, and the skies were blue and the sun golden. So we went down to the river together.

“Where has Tod got to?” he asked.

“Goodness knows. I’ve not seen him since lecture this morning.”

We rowed up to Godstowe. Bill disappeared with some friend of his from Merton’s, who had watched us put in. I strolled about. Every one knows the dark pool of water there. On the bench under the foliage, so thick in summer, but bare yet in this early season, warm and sunny though it was, sat a man wrapped in a great-coat, whom I took at first to be a skeleton with painted cheeks. But one does not care to stare at skeletons, knowing they’d help their looks if they could; and I was passing him with my face turned the other way.

“Good-afternoon, sir.”

I turned at the hollow words—hollow in sound as though they came out of a drum. It was Charley: the red paint on his thin cheeks was nothing butnatural hectic, and the blue of his eyes shone painfully bright.

“Why, what’s the matter, Charley?”

“A fly-man, who had to drive here and back, brought me with him for a mouthful of fresh air, it being so warm and bright. It is the first time I have been able to get out, sir.”

“You are poorly, Charley.” I had all but said“dying.” But one can only be complimentary to a poor fellow in that condition.

“Very ill I have been, sir; but I’m better. At one time I never thought I should get up again. It’s this beautiful warm weather coming in so early that has restored me.”

“I don’t know about restored? You don’t look great things yet.”

“You should have seen me a short while ago, sir! I’m getting on.”

Lying by his side, on a piece of paper, was a thick slice, doubled, of bread-and-butter, that he must have brought with him. He broke a piece off, and ate it.

“You look hungry, Charley.”

“That’s the worst of it, sir; I’m always hungry,” he answered, and his tone from its eagerness was quite painful to hear, and his eyes grew moist, and the hectic spread on his cheeks. “It is the nature of the complaint, I’m told: and poor mother was the same. I could be eating and drinking every hour, sir, and hardly be satisfied.”

“Come along to the inn, and have some tea.”

“No, sir; no, thank you,” he said, shrinking back.“I answered your remark thoughtlessly, sir, for it’s the truth; not with any notion that it would makeyou ask me to take anything. And I’ve got some bread-and-butter here.”

Going indoors, I told them to serve him a good tea, with a big dish of bacon and eggs, or some relishing thing of that sort. Whitney came in and heard me.

“You be hanged, Johnny! We are not going in for all that, here!”

“It’s not for us, Bill; it’s for that poor old scout, Charley. He’s as surely dying as that you and I are talking. Come and look at him: you never saw such an object. I don’t believe he gets enough to eat.”

Whitney came, and did nothing but stare. Charley went indoors with a good deal of pressing, and we saw him sit down to the feast. Whitney stayed; I went out-of-doors again.

I remembered a similar case. It was that of a young woman who used to make Lena’s frocks. She fell into a decline. Her appetite was wonderful. Anything good and substantial to eat and drink, she was always craving for: and it all seemed to do her no good. Charley Tasson’s sickness must be of the same nature. She died: and he——

I was struck dumb! Seated on the bench under the trees, my thoughts back in that past time, there came two figures over the rustic bridge. A lady and gentleman, arm-in-arm: she in a hat and blue feather and dainty lace parasol; and he with bent head and words softened to a whisper. Tod!—and Sophie Chalk!

“Good gracious! There’s Johnny Ludlow!”

She loosed his arm as she spoke, and came sailing up to me, her gold bracelets jingling as she gave her hand. I don’t believe there are ten women in England who could get themselves up as effectively as did Sophie Chalk. Tod looked black as thunder.

“What the devil brings you here, Johnny?”

“I rowed up with Whitney.”

A pause. “Who else is here?”

“Forbes of Merton: Whitney has been about with him. And I suppose a few others. We noticed a skiff or two waiting. Perhaps one was yours.”

I spoke indifferently, determined he should not know I was put out. Seeing him there—I was going to say on the sly—with that beguiling syren, who was to foretell what pitfalls she might charm him into? He took Madame Sophie on his arm again to continue their promenade, and I lost sight of them.

I did not like it. It was not satisfactory. He had rowed her up—or perhaps driven her up—and was marching about with her tête-à-tête under the sweet spring sunshine. No great harm in itself this pastime: but he might grow too fond of it. That she had reacquired all her strong influence over Tod’s heart was clear as the stars on a frosty night. Whitney called out to me that it was time to think of going back. I got into the boat with him, saying nothing.

Charley told me where he lived—“Up Stagg’s Entry”—for I said I would call to see him. Just for a day or two there seemed to be no time; but I got there one evening when Tod had gone to the syren’s. It was a dark, dusky place, this Stagg’s Entry, and, I think, is done away with now, with several houses crowded into it. Asking for Charles Tasson, of a tidy, motherly woman on the stairs, she went before me, and threw open a door.

“Here’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Charley.”

He was lying in a bed at the end of the room near the fire, under the lean-to roof. If I had been shocked at seeing him in the open air, in the glad sunshine, I was doubly so now in the dim light of the tallow candle. He rose in bed.

“It’s very kind of you to come here, sir! I’m sure I didn’t expect you to remember it.”

“Are you worse, Charley?”

“I caught a fresh cold, sir, that day at Godstowe. And I’m as weak as a rat too—hardly able to creep out of bed. Nanny, bring a chair for this gentleman.”

One of the handiest little girls I ever saw, with the same shining blue eyes that he had, and plump, pretty cheeks, laid hold of a chair. I took it from her and sat down.

“Is this your sister, Charley?”

“Yes, sir. There’s only us two left together. We were eight of us once. Three went abroad, and one is in London, and two dead.”

“What doctor sees you?”

“One comes in now and then, sir. My illness is not much in a doctor’s way. There’s nothing he could do: nothing for me but to wait patiently for summer weather.”

“What have you had to eat to-day?”

“He had two eggs for his dinner: I boiled them,”said little Nanny. “And Mrs. Cann brought us in six herrings, and I cooked one for tea; and he’ll have some ale and bread-and-butter for supper.”

She spoke like a little important housekeeper. But I wondered whether Charley was badly off.

Mrs. Cann, the same woman who had spoken to me, came out of her room opposite as I was going away.She followed me downstairs, and began to talk in an undertone. “A sad thing, ain’t it, sir, to see him a-lying there so helpless; and to know that it has laid hold of him for good and all. He caught it from his mother.”

“How do you mean?”

“She died here in that room, just as the winter come in, with the same complaint—decline they call it; and he waited on her and nursed her, and must have caught it of her. A good son he was. They were well off once, sir, but the father just brought ’em to beggary; and Charley—he had a good education of his own—came down from London when his mother got ill, and looked out for something to do here that he might stay with her. At first he couldn’t find anything; and when he was at a sore pinch, he took a place at Christchurch College as scout’s helper. He had to pocket his pride: but there was Nanny as well as his mother.”

“I see.”

“He’d been teacher in a school up in London, sir, by day, and in the evenings he used to help some young clergyman as scripture-reader to the poor in one of them crowded parishes we hear tell of: he was always one for trying to do what good he could. Naturally he’d be disheartened at falling to be a bed-maker in a college, and I’m afraid the work was too hard for him: but, as I say, he was a good son. The mother settled in Oxford after her misfortunes.”

“How is he supported now? And the little girl?”

“It’s not over much of a support,” said Mrs. Cann with disparagement. “Not for him, that’s a-craving for meat and drink every hour. The eldest brother isin business in London, sir, and he sends them what they have. Perhaps he’s not able to do more.”

It was not late. I thought I would, for once, pay Mrs. Everty a visit. A run of three minutes, and I was at her door.

They were there—the usual set. Tod, and Richardson, and Lord Gaiton, and the two men from Magdalen, and—well, it’s no use enumerating—seven or eight in all. Richardson and another were quarrelling at écarté, four were at whist; Tod was sitting apart with Sophie Chalk.

She was got up like a fairy at the play, in a cloud of thin white muslin; her hair hanging around and sparkling with gold dust, and little gleams of gold ornaments shining about her. If ever Joseph Todhetley had need to pray against falling into temptation, it was during the weeks of that unlucky term.

“This is quite an honour, Johnny Ludlow,” said Madame Sophie, rising to meet me, her eyes sparkling with what might have been taken for the most hearty welcome. “It is not often you honour my poor little room, sir.”

“It is not often I can find the time for it, Mrs. Everty. Tod, I came in to see whether you were ready to go in.”

He looked at his watch hastily, fearing it might be later than it was; and answered curtly and coolly.

“Ready?—no. I have not had my revenge yet at écarté.”

Approaching the écarté table, he sat down. Mrs. Everty drew a chair behind Lord Gaiton, and looked over his hand.

The days passed. I had two cares on my mind, and they bothered me. The one was Tod and his dangerous infatuation; the other, poor dying Charley Tasson. Tod was losing frightfully at those card-tables. Night after night it went on. Tod’s steps were drawn thither by a fascination irresistible: and whether the cards or their mistress were the more subtle potion for him, or what was to be the ending of it all, no living being could tell.

As to Stagg’s Entry, my visits to it had grown nearly as much into a habit as Tod’s had to High Street. When I stayed away for a night, little Nanny would whisper to me the next that Charley had not taken his eyes off the door. Sick people always like to see visitors.

“Don’t let him want for anything, Johnny,” said Tod. “The pater would blow us up.”

The time ran on, and the sands of Charley’s life ran with it. One Wednesday evening upon going in late, and not having many minutes to stay, I found him on the bed in a dead faint, and the candle guttering in the socket. Nanny was nowhere. I went across the passage to Mrs. Cann’s, and she was nowhere. It was an awkward situation; for I declare that for the moment I thought he was gone.

Knowing most of Nanny’s household secrets, I looked in the candle-box for a fresh candle. Charley was stirring then, and I gave him some wine. He had had a similar fainting-fit at mid-day, he said, which had frightened them, and Nanny had fetched the doctor. She was gone now, he supposed, to fetch some medicine.

“Is this the end, sir?”

He asked it quite calmly. I could not tell: but to judge by his wan face I thought it might be. And my time was up and more than up: and neither Nanny nor Mrs. Cann came. The wine revived him and he seemed better; quite well again: well, for him. But I did not like to leave him alone.

“Would you mind reading to me, sir?” he asked.

“What shall I read, Charley?”

“It may be for the last time, sir. I’d like to hear the service for the burial of the dead.”

So I read it every word, the long lesson, and all. Nanny came in before it was finished, medicine in hand, and sat down in silence with her bonnet on. She had been kept at the doctor’s. Mrs. Cann was the next to make her appearance, having been abroad on some business of her own: and I got away when it was close upon midnight.

“Your name and college, sir.”

“Ludlow. Christchurch.”

It was the proctor. He had pounced full upon me as I was racing home. And the clocks were striking twelve!

“Ludlow—Christchurch,” he repeated, nodding his head.

“I am sorry to be out so late, sir, against rules, but I could not help it. I have been sitting with a sick man.”

“Very good,” said he blandly; “you can tell that to-morrow to the dean. Home to your quarters now, if you please, Mr. Ludlow.”

And I knew he believed me just as much as he would had I told him I’d been up in a balloon.

“You are a nice lot, Master Johnny!”

The salutation was Tod’s. He and Bill Whitney were sitting over the fire in our room.

“I couldn’t help being late.”

“Of course not! As to late—it’s only midnight. Next time you’ll come in with the milk.”

“Don’t jest. I’ve been with that poor Charley, and I think he’s dying. The worst of it is, the proctor has just dropped upon me.”

“No!” It sobered them both, and they put aside their mockery. Bill, who had the tongs in his hand, let them go down with a crash.

“It’s a thousand pities, Johnny. Not one of us has been before the dean yet.”

“I can only tell the dean the truth.”

“As if he’d believe you! By Jupiter! Once get one of our names up, and those proctors will track every step of the ground we tread on. They watch a marked man as a starving cat watches a mouse.”

With the morning came in the requisition for me to attend before the dean. When I got there, who should be stealing out of the room quite sheepishly, his face down and his ears red, but Gaiton.

“Is it your turn, Ludlow!” he cried, closing the room-door as softly as though the dean had been asleep inside.

“What have you been had up for, Gaiton?”

“Oh, nothing. I got knocking about a bit last night, for Mrs. Everty did not receive, and came across that confounded proctor.”

“Is the dean in a hard humour?”

“Hard enough, and be hanged to him! It’s not the dean: he’s ill, or something; perhaps been making a night of it himself: and Applerigg’s on duty for him. Dry old scarecrow! For two pins, Ludlow, I’d take my name off the books, and be free of the lot.”

Dr. Applerigg had the reputation of being one of the strictest of college dons. He was like a maypole, just as tall and thin, with a long, sallow face, and enough learning to set up the reputations of three archbishops for life. The doctor was marching up and down the room in his college-cap, and turned his spectacles on me.

“Shut the door, sir.”

While I did as I was bid, he sat down at an open desk near the fire and looked at a paper that had some writing on it.

“What age may you be, Mr. Ludlow?” he sternly asked, when a question or two had passed. And I told him my age.

“Oh! And don’t you think it a very disreputable thing, a great discredit, sir, for a young fellow of your years to be found abroad by your proctor at midnight?”

“But I could not help being late, sir, last night; and I was not abroad for any purpose of pleasure. I had been staying with a poor fellow who is sick; dying, in fact: and—and it was not my fault, sir.”

“Take care, young man,” said he, glaring through his spectacles. “There’s one thing I can never forgive if deliberately told me, and that’s a lie.”

“I should be sorry to tell a lie, sir,” I answered: and by the annoyance so visible in his looks and tones, it was impossible to help fancying he had found out, or thought he had found out, Gaiton in one. “What I have said is truth.”

“Go over again what you did say,” cried he, veryshortly, after looking at his paper again and then hard at me. And I went over it.

“What do you say the man’s name is?”

“Charles Tasson, sir. He was our scout until he fell ill.”

“Pray do you make a point, Mr. Ludlow, of visiting all the scouts and their friends who may happen to fall sick?”

“No, sir,” I said, uneasily, for there was ridicule in his tone, and I knew he did not believe a word. “I don’t suppose I should ever have thought of visiting Tasson, but for seeing him look so ill one afternoon up at Godstowe.”

“He must be very ill to be at Godstowe!” cried Dr. Applerigg. “Very!”

“He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to Godstowe for the sake of the air.”

“But what’s your motive, may I ask, for going to sit with him?” He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words.

“There’s no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying.”

The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. “What is this sick man’s address, pray?”

I told him the address in Stagg’s Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning.

That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college.

“Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod.”

“Queen Anne’s dead,” retorted he.

“Oh, you knew it!” And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow’s rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks.

“What a fool she must have been to go and throw herself away upon that low fellow Everty!” he exclaimed, putting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and stamping on the carpet with one heel.

“Throw herself away! Well, Tod, opinions vary.I think she was lucky to get him. As to his being low, we don’t know that he is. Putting aside that one mysterious episode of his being down at our place in hiding, which I suppose we shall never come to the bottom of, we know nothing of what Everty has, or has not been.”

“You shut up, Johnny. Common sense is common sense.”

“Everty’s being here—we can’t associate with him, you know, Tod—affords a good opportunity for breaking off the visits to High Street.”

“Who wants to break off the visits to High Street?”

“I do, for one. Madame Sophie’s is a dangerous atmosphere.”

“Dangerous for you, Johnny?”

“Not a bit of it. You know. Be wise in time, old fellow.”

“Of all the muffs living, Johnny, you are about the greatest. In the old days you feared I might go in for marrying Sophie Chalk. I don’t see what you can fear now. Do you suppose I should run away with another man’s wife?”

“Nonsense, Tod!”

“Well, what else is it? Come! Out with it.”

“Do you think our people or the Whitneys would like it if they knew we are intimate with her?”

“They’d not die of it, I expect.”

“I don’t like her, Tod. It is not a nice thing of her to allow the play and the betting, and to have all those fellows there when they choose to go.”

Tod took his shoulder from the mantelpiece, and sat down to his imposition: one he had to write for having missed chapel.

“You mean well, Johnny, though you are a muff.”

Later in the day I met Dr. Applerigg. He signed to me to stop. “Mr. Ludlow, I find that what you told me this morning was true. And I withdraw every word of condemnation that I spoke. I wish I had never greater cause to find fault than I have with you, in regard to this matter. Not that I can sanction your being out so late, although the plea of excuse bea dying man. You understand?”

“Yes, sir. It shall not occur again.”

Down at the house in Stagg’s Entry, that evening, Mrs. Cann met me on the stairs. “One of the great college doctors was here to-day, sir. He came up asking all manner of questions about you—whether you’d been here till a’most midnight yesterday, and what you’d stayed so late for, and—and all about it.”

Dr. Applerigg! “What did you tell him, Mrs. Cann?”

“Tell him, sir! what should I tell him but the truth? That you had stayed here late because of Charley’s being took worse and nobody with him, and had read the burial service to him for his asking; and that you came most evenings, and was just as goodto him as gold. He said he’d see Charley for himself then; and he went in and talked to him, oh so gently and nicely about his soul; and gave little Nanny half-a-crown when he went away. Sometimes it happens, sir, that those who look to have the hardest faces have the gentlest hearts. And Charley’s dying, sir. He was took worse again this evening at five o’clock, and I hardly thought he’d have lasted till now. The doctor has been, and thinks he’ll go off quietly.”

Quietly perhaps in one sense, but it was a restless death-bed. He was not still a minute; but he was quite sensible and calm. Waking up out of a doze when I went in, he held out his hand.

“It is nearly over, sir.”

I was sure of that, and sat down in silence. There could be no mistaking his looks.

“I have just had a strange dream,” he whispered, between his laboured breath; and his eyes were wet with tears, and he looked curiously agitated. “I thought I saw mother. It was in a wide place, all light and sunshine, too beautiful for anything but heaven. Mother was looking at me; I seemed to be outside in dulness and darkness, and not to know how to get in. Others that I’ve known in my lifetime, and who have gone on before, were there, as well as mother; they all looked happy, and there was a soft strain of music, like nothing I ever heard in this world. All at once, as I was wondering how I could get in, my sins seemed to rise up before me in a great cloud; I turned sick, thinking of them; for I knew no sinful person might enter there. Then I saw One standing on the brink! it could only have been Jesus; and He held out His hand to me and smiled,‘I am here to wash out your sins,’ He said, and I thought He touched me with His finger; and oh, the feeling of delight that came over me, of repose, of bliss, for I knew that all earth’s troubles were over, and I had passed into rest and peace for ever.”

Nanny came up, and gave him one or two spoonfuls of wine.

“I don’t believe it was a dream,” he said, after a pause. “I think it was sent to show me what it is I am entering on; to uphold me through the darksome valley of the shadow of death.”

“Mother said she should be watching for us, you know, Charley,” said the child.

A restless fit came over him again, and he stirred uneasily. When it had passed, he was still for awhile and then looked up at me.

“It was the new heaven and the new earth, sir, that we are told of in the Revelation. Would you mind, sir—just those few verses—reading them to me for the last time?”

Nanny brought the Bible, and put the candle on the stand, and I read what he asked for—the first few verses of the twenty-first chapter. The little girl kneeled down by the bed and joined her hands together.

“That’s enough, Nanny,” I whispered. “Put the candle back.”

“But I did not tell all my dream,” he resumed;“not quite all. As I passed over into heaven, I thought I looked down here again. I could see the places in the world; I could see this same Oxford city. I saw the men here in it, sir, at their cards and their dice and their drink; at all their thoughtlessfolly. Spending their days and nights without a care for the end, without as much as thinking whether they need a Saviour or not. And oh, their condition troubled me! I seemed to understand all things plainly then, sir. And I thought if they would but once lift up their hearts to Him, even in the midst of their sin, He would take care of them even then, and save them from it in the end—for He was tempted Himself once, and knows how sore their temptations are. In my distress, I tried to call out and tell them this, and it awoke me.”

“Do you think he ought to talk, sir?” whispered Nanny. But nothing more could harm him now.

My time was up, and I ought to be going. Poor Charley spoke so imploringly—almost as though the thought of it startled him.

“Not yet, sir; not yet! Stay a bit longer with me. It is for the last time.”

And I stayed: in spite of my word passed to Dr. Applerigg. It seems to me a solemn thing to cross the wishes of the dying.

So the clock went ticking on. Mrs. Cann stole in and out, and a lodger from below came in and looked at him. Before twelve all was over.

I went hastening home, not much caring whether the proctor met me again, or whether he didn’t, for in any case I must go to Dr. Applerigg in the morning, and tell him I had broken my promise to him, and why. Close at the gates some one overtook and passed me.

It was Tod. Tod with a white face, and his hair damp with running. He had come from Sophie Chalk’s.

“What is it, Tod?”

I laid my hand upon his arm in speaking. He threw it off with a word that was very like an imprecation.

“What is the matter?”

“The devil’s the matter. Mind your own business, Johnny.”

“Have you been quarrelling with Everty?”

“Everty be hanged! The man has betaken himself off.”

“How much have you lost to-night?”

“Cleaned-out, lad. That’s all.”

We got to our room in silence. Tod turned over some cards that lay on the table, and trimmed the candle from a thief.

“Tasson’s dead, Tod.”

“A good thing if some of us were dead,” was the answer. And he turned into his chamber and bolted the door.

III.

Lunch-time at Oxford, and a sunny day. Instead of college and our usual fare, bread-and-cheese from the buttery, we were looking on the High Street from Mrs. Everty’s rooms, and about to sit down to a snow-white damasked table with no end of good things upon it. Madam Sophie had invited four or five of us to lunch with her.

The term had gone on, and Easter was not far off. Tod had not worked much: just enough to keep himout of hot-water. His mind ran on Sophie Chalk more than it did on lectures and chapel. He and the other fellows who were caught by her fascinations mostly spent their spare time there. Sophie dispersed her smiles pretty equally, but Tod contrived to get the largest share. The difference was this: they had lost their heads to her and Tod his heart. The evening card-playing did not flag, and the stakes played for were high. Tod and Gaiton were the general losers: a run of ill-luck had set in from the first for both of them. Gaiton might afford this, but Tod could not.

Tod had his moments of reflection. He’d sit sometimes for an hour together, his head bent down, whistling softly to himself some slow dolorous strain, and pulling at his dark whiskers; no doubt pondering the question of what was to be the upshot of it all. For my part, I devoutly wished Sophie Chalk had been caught up into the moon before an ill-wind had wafted her to Oxford. It was an awful shame of her husband to let her stay on there, turning the under-graduates’ brains. Perhaps he could not help it.

We sat down to table: Sophie at its head in a fresh-looking pink gown and bracelets and nicknacks. Lord Gaiton and Tod sat on either side of her; Richardson was at the foot, and Fred Temple and I faced each other. What fit of politeness had taken Sophie to invite me, I could not imagine. Possibly she thought I should be sure to refuse; but I did not.

“So kind of you all to honour my poor little table!”said Sophie, as we sat down. “Being in lodgings, I cannot treat you as I should wish. It is all cold: chickens, meat-patties, lobster-salad, and bread-and-cheese. Lord Gaiton, this is sherry by you, I think. Mr. Richardson, you like porter, I know: there is some on the chiffonier.”

We plunged into the dishes without ceremony, each one according to his taste, and the lunch progressed. I may as well mention one thing—that there was nothing in Mrs. Everty’s manners at any time to take exception to: never a word was heard from her, never a look seen, that could offend even an old dowager. She made the most of her charms and her general fascinations, and flirted quietly; but all in a lady-like way.

“Thank you, yes; I think I will take a little more salad, Mr. Richardson,” she said to him with a beaming smile. “It is my dinner, you know. I have not a hall to dine in to-night, as you gentlemen have. I am sorry to trouble you, Mr. Johnny.”

I was holding her plate for Richardson. There happened at that moment to be a lull in the talking, and we heard a carriage of some kind stop at the door, and a loud peal at the house-bell.

“It’s that brother of mine,” said Fred Temple. “He bothered me to drive out to some confounded place with him, but I told him I wouldn’t. What’s he bumping up the stairs in that fashion for?”

The room-door was flung open, and Fred Temple put on a savage face, for his brother looked after him more than he liked; when, instead of Temple major, there appeared a shining big brown satin bonnet, and an old lady’s face under it, who stood there with a walking-stick.

“Yes, you see I was right, grandmamma; I said she was not gone,” piped a shrill voice behind; and Mabel Smith, in an old-fashioned black silk frock and tippet, came into view. They had driven up to look after Sophie.

Sophie was equal to the occasion. She rose gracefully and held out both her hands, as though they had been welcome as is the sun in harvest. The old lady leaned on her stick, and stared around: the many faces seemed to confuse her.

“Dear me! I did not know you had a luncheon-party, ma’am.”

“Just two or three friends who have dropped in, Mrs. Golding,” said Sophie, airily. “Let me take your stick.”

The old lady, who looked like a very amiable old lady, sat down in the nearest chair, but kept the stick in her hand. Mabel Smith was regarding everything with her shrewd eyes and compressing her thin lips.

“This is Johnny Ludlow, grandmamma; you have heard me speak of him: I don’t know the others.”

“How do you do, sir,” said the old lady, politely nodding her brown bonnet at me. “I hope you are in good health, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” For she put it as a question, and seemed to await an answer. Tod and the rest, who had risen, began to sit down again.

“I’m sure I am sorry to disturb you at luncheon, ma’am,” said the old lady to Mrs. Everty. “We came in to see whether you had gone home or not. I said you of course had gone; that you wouldn’t stay awayfrom your husband so long as this; and also because we had not heard of you for a month past. But Mabel thought you were here still.”

“I am intending to return shortly,” said Sophie.

“That’s well: for I want to send up Mabel. And I brought in a letter that came to my house this morning, addressed to you,” continued the old lady, lugging out of her pocket a small collection of articles before she found the letter. “Mabel says it is your husband’s handwriting, ma’am; if so, he must be thinking you are staying with me.”

“Thanks,” said Sophie, slipping the letter away unopened.

“Had you not better see what it says?” suggested Mrs. Golding to her.

“Not at all: it can wait. May I offer you some luncheon?”

“Much obleeged, ma’am, but I and Mabel took an early dinner before setting out. And on which day, Mrs. Everty, do you purpose going?”

“I’ll let you know,” said Sophie.

“What can have kept you so long here?” continued the old lady, wonderingly. “Mabel said you did not know any of the inhabitants.”

“I have found it of service to my health,” replied Sophie with charming simplicity. “Will you take a glass of sherry, Mrs. Golding?”

“I don’t mind if I do. Just half a glass. Thank you, sir; not much more than half”—to me, as I went forward with the glass and decanter. “I’m sure, sir, it is good of you to be attentive to an old lady like me. If you had a mind for a brisk walk at any time, of three miles, or so, and would come overto my house, I’d make you welcome. Mabel, write down the address.”

“And I wish you had come while I was there, Johnny Ludlow,” said the girl, giving me the paper.“I like you. You don’t say smiling words to people with your lips and mock at them in your heart, as some do.”

I remembered that she had not been asked to take any wine, and I offered it.

“No, thank you,” she said with emphasis. “None for me.” And it struck me that she refused because the wine belonged to Sophie.

The old lady, after nodding a farewell around and shaking hands with Mrs. Everty, stood leaning on her stick between the doorway and the stairs. “My servant’s not here,” she said, looking back, “and these stairs are steep: would any one be good enough to help me down?”

Tod went forward to give her his arm; and we heard the fly drive away with her and Mabel. Somehow the interlude had damped the free go of the banquet, and we soon prepared to depart also. Sophie made no attempt to hinder it, but said she should expect us in to take some tea with her in the evening: and the lot of us filed out together, some going one way, some another. I and Fred Temple kept together.

There was a good-natured fellow at Oxford that term, who had come up from Wales to take his degree, and had brought his wife with him, a nice kind of young girl who put me in mind of Anna Whitney. They had become acquainted with Sophie Chalk, and liked her; she fascinated both. She meant to do it too: for the companionship of staid irreproachablepeople like Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns, reflected credit on herself in the eyes of Oxford.

“I thought we should have met the Ap-Jenkynses, at lunch,” remarked Temple. “What a droll old party that was with the stick! She puts me in mind of—I say, here’s another old party!” he broke off. “Seems to be a friend of yours.”

It was Mrs. Cann. She had stopped, evidently wanting to speak to me.

“I have just been to put little Nanny Tasson in the train for London, sir,” she said; “I thought you might like to know it. Her eldest brother, the one that’s settled there, has taken to her. His wife wrote a nice letter and sent the fare.”

“All right, Mrs. Cann. I hope they’ll take good care of her. Good-afternoon.”

“Who the wonder is Nanny Tasson?” cried Temple as we went on.

“Only a little friendless child. Her brother was our scout when we first came, and he died.”

“Oh, by Jove, Ludlow! Look there!”

I turned at Temple’s words. A gig was dashing by as large as life; Tod in it, driving Sophie Chalk. Behind it dashed another gig, containing Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Fred Temple laughed.

“Mrs. Everty’s unmistakably charming,” said he,“and we don’t know any real harm of her, but if I were Ap-Jenkyns I should not let my wife be quite her bosom companion. As to Todhetley, I think he’s a gone calf.”

Whitney came to our room as I got in. He had been invited to the luncheon by Mrs. Everty, but excused himself, and she asked Fred Temple in his place.

“Well, Johnny, how did it go off?”

“Oh, pretty well. Lobster-salad and other good things. Why did not you go?”

“Where’s Tod?” he rejoined, not answering the question.

“Out on a driving-party. Sophie Chalk and the Ap-Jenkynses.”

Whitney whistled through the verse of an old song:“Froggy would a-wooing go.” “I say, Johnny,” he said presently, “you had better give Tod a hint to take care of himself. That thing will go too far if he does not look out.”

“As if Tod would mind me! Give him the hint yourself, Bill.”

“I said half a word to him this morning after chapel: he turned on me and accused me of being jealous.”

We both laughed.

“I had a letter from home yesterday,” Bill went on,“ordering me to keep clear of Madam Sophie.”

“No! Who from?”

“The mother. And Miss Deveen, who is staying with them, put in a postscript.”

“How did they know Sophie Chalk was here?”

“Through me. One wet afternoon I wrote a long epistle to Harry, telling him, amidst other items, that Sophie Chalk was here, turning some of our heads, especially Todhetley’s. Harry, like a flat, let Helen get hold of the letter, and she read it aloud, pro bono publico. There was nothing in it that I might not have written to Helen herself; but Mr. Harry won’t get another from me in a hurry. Sophie seems to have fallen to a discount with the mother and Miss Deveen.”

Bill Whitney did not know what I knew—the true story of the emeralds.

“And that’s why I did not go to the lunch to-day, Johnny. Who’s this?”

It was the scout. He came in to bring in a small parcel, daintily done up in white paper.

“Something for you, sir,” he said to me. “A boy has just left it.”

“It can’t be for me—that I know of. It looks like wedding-cake.”

“Open it,” said Bill. “Perhaps one of the grads has gone and got married.”

We opened it together, laughing. A tiny paste-board box loomed out with a jeweller’s name on it; inside it was a chased gold cross, attached to a slight gold chain.

“It’s a mistake, Bill. I’ll do it up again.”

Tod came back in time for dinner. Seeing the little parcel on the mantelshelf, he asked what it was. So I told him—something that the jeweller’s shop must have sent to our room by mistake. Upon that, he tore the paper open; called the shop people hard names for sending it into college, and put the box in his pocket. Which showed that it was for him.

I went to Sophie’s in the evening, having promised her, but not as soon as Tod, for I stayed to finish some Greek. Whitney went with me, in spite of his orders from home. The luncheon-party had all assembled there with the addition of Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Sophie sat behind the tea-tray, dispensing tea; Gaiton handed the plum-cake. She wore a silken robe of opal tints; white lace fell over her wrists and bracelets; in her hair, brushed offher face, fluttered a butterfly with silver wings; and on her neck was the chased gold cross that had come to our rooms a few hours before.

“Tod’s just a fool, Johnny,” said Whitney in my ear. “Upon my word, I think he is. And she’s a syren!—and it was at our house he met her first!”

After Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns left, for she was tired, they began cards. Sophie was engrossing Gaiton, and Tod sat down to écarté. He refused at first, but Richardson drew him on.

“I’ll show Tod the letter I had from home,” said Whitney to me as we went out. “What can possess him to go and buy gold crosses for her? She’s married.”

“Gaiton and Richardson buy her things also, Bill.”

“They don’t know how to spend their money fast enough. I wouldn’t: I know that.”

Tod and Gaiton came in together soon after I got in. Gaiton just looked in to say good-night, and proposed that we should breakfast with him on the morrow, saying he’d ask Whitney also: and then he went up to his own rooms.

Tod fell into one of his thinking fits. He had work to do, but he sat staring at the fire, his legs stretched out. With all his carelessness he had a conscience and some forethought. I told him Bill Whitney had had a lecture from home, touching Sophie Chalk, and I conclude he heard. But he made no sign.

“I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep up that tinkling, Johnny,” he said by-and-by, in a tone of irritation.

The “tinkling” was a bit of quiet harmony. However, I shut down the piano, and went and sat by thefire, opposite to him. His brow looked troubled; he was running his hands through his hair.

“I wonder whether I could raise some money, Johnny,” he began, after a bit.

“How much money?”

“A hundred, or so.”

“You’d have to pay a hundred and fifty for doing it.”

“Confound it, yes! And besides——”

“Besides what?”

“Nothing.”

“Look here, Tod: we should have gone on as straightly and steadily as need be but for her. As it is, you are wasting your time and getting out of the way of work. What’s going to be the end of it?”

“Don’t know myself, Johnny.”

“Do you ever ask yourself?”

“Where’s the use of asking?” he returned, after a pause. “If I ask it of myself at night, I forget it by the morning.”

“Pull up at once, Tod. You’d be in time.”

“Yes, now: don’t know that I shall be much longer,” said Tod candidly. He was in a soft mood that night; an unusual thing with him. “Some awful complication may come of it: a few writs or something.”

“Sophie Chalk can’t do you any good, Tod.”

“She has not done me any harm.”

“Yes she has. She has unsettled you from the work that you came to Oxford to do; and the play in her rooms has caused you to run into debt that you don’t know how to get out of: it’s nearly as much harm as she can do you.”

“Is it?”

“As much as she can do any honest fellow. Tod, if you were to lapse into crooked paths, you’d break the good old pater’s heart. There’s nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you.”

Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him.

“It’s the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?”

“If we don’t go to bed we shall not be up for chapel.”

“You can go to bed.”

“Why do you drive her out, Tod?”

“Why does the sun shine?” was the lucid answer.

“I saw you with her in that gig to-day.”

“We only went four miles. Four out and four in.”

“You may be driving her rather too far some day—fourteen, or so.”

“I don’t think she’d be driven. With all her simplicity, she knows how to take care of herself.”

Simplicity! I looked at him; and saw he spoke the word in good faith. He was simple.

“She has a husband, Tod.”

“Well?”

“Do you suppose he would like to see you driving her abroad?—and all you fellows in her rooms to the last minute any of you dare stop out?”

“That’s not my affair. It’s his.”

“Any way, Everty might come down upon the lot of you some of these fine days, and say things you’d not like. She’s to blame. Why, you heard what thatold lady in the brown bonnet said—that her husband must think Sophie was staying with her.”

“The fire’s low, and I’m cold,” said Tod. “Good-night, Johnny.”

He went into his room, and I to mine.

A few years ago, there appeared a short poem called “Amor Mundi.” [1] While reading it, I involuntarily recalled this past experience at Oxford, for it described a young fellow’s setting-out on the downward path, as Tod did. Two of life’s wayfarers start on their long life journey: the woman first; the man sees and joins her; then speaks to her.

“Oh, where are you going, with your love-locks flowing,

And the west wind blowing along the narrow track?”

“This downward path is easy, come with me, an it please ye;

We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back.”

So they two went together in the sunny August weather;

The honey-blooming heather lay to the left and right:

And dear she was to dote on, her small feet seemed to float on

The air, like soft twin-pigeons too sportive to alight.

And so they go forth, these two, on their journey, revelling in the summer sunshine and giving no heed to their sliding progress; until he sees something in the path that startles him. But the syren accounts for it in some plausible way; it lulls his fear, and onward they go again. In time he sees something worse, halts, and asks her again:

“Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”

“Oh, that’s a thin dead body that waits the Eternal term.”

The answer effectually arouses him, and he pulls up in terror, asking her to turn. She answers again, and he knows his fate.

“Turn again, oh my sweetest! Turn again, false and fleetest!

This way, whereof thou weetest, is surely Hell’s own track!”

“Nay, too late for cost counting, nay too steep for hill-mounting,

This downward path is easy, but there’s no turning back.”

Shakespeare tells us that there is a tide in the affairs of man, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: omitted, all the voyage of the after life is spent in shoals and miseries. That will apply to other things besides fortune. I fully believe that after a young fellow has set out on the downward path, in almost all cases there’s a chance given him of pulling up again, if he only is sufficiently wise and firm to seize upon it. The opportunity was to come for Tod. He had started; there was no doubt of that; but he had not got down very far yet and could go backward almost as easily as forward. Left alone, he would probably make a sliding run of it, and descend into the shoals. But the chance for him was at hand.

Our commons and Whitney’s went up to Gaiton’s room in the morning, and we breakfasted there. Lecture that day was at eleven, but I had work to do beforehand. So had Tod, for the matter of that; plenty of it. I went down to mine, but Tod stayed up with the two others.

Bursting into our room, as a fellow does when he is late for anything, I saw at the open window somebody that I thought must be Mr. Brandon’s ghost. It took me aback, and for a moment I stood staring.

“Have you no greeting for me, Johnny Ludlow?”

“I was lost in surprise, sir. I am very glad to see you.”

“I dare say you are!” he returned, as if he doubted my word. “It’s a good half-hour that I have waited here. You’ve been at a breakfast-party!”

He must have got that from the scout. “Not at a party, sir. Gaiton asked us to take our commons up, and breakfast with him in his room.”

“Who is Gaiton?”

“He is Lord Gaiton. One of the students at Christchurch.”

“Never mind his being a lord. Is he any good?”

I could not say Gaiton was particularly good, so passed the question over, and asked Mr. Brandon when he came to Oxford.

“I got here at mid-day yesterday. How are you getting on?”

“Oh, very well, sir.”

“Been in any rows?”

“No, sir.”

“And Todhetley? How is he getting on?”

I should have said very well to this; it would never have done to say very ill, but Tod and Bill Whitney interrupted the answer. They looked just as much surprised as I had been. After talking a bit, Mr. Brandon left, saying he should expect us all three at the Mitre in the evening when dinner in Hall was over.

“What the deuce brings him at Oxford?” cried Tod.

Whitney laughed. “I’ll lay a crown he has come to look after Johnny and his morals.”

“After the lot of us,” added Tod, pushing his books about. “Look here, you two. I’m not obliged to gobothering to that Mitre in the evening, and I shan’t. You’ll be enough without me.”

“It won’t do, Tod,” I said. “He expects you.”

“What if he does? I have an engagement elsewhere.”

“Break it.”

“I shall not do anything of the kind. There! Hold your tongue, Johnny, and push the ink this way.”

Tod held to that. So when I and Whitney reached the Mitre after dinner, we said he was unable to get off a previous engagement, putting the excuse as politely as we could.

“Oh,” said old Brandon, twitching his yellow silk handkerchief off his head, for he had been asleep before the fire. “Engaged elsewhere, is he! With the lady I saw him driving out yesterday, I suppose: a person with blue feathers on her head.”

This struck us dumb. Bill said nothing, neither did I.

“It was Miss Sophie Chalk, I presume,” went on old Brandon, ringing the bell. “Sit down, boys; we’ll have tea up.”

The tea and coffee must have been ordered beforehand, for they came in at once. Mr. Brandon drank four cups of tea, and ate a plate of bread-and-butter and some watercress.

“Tea is my best meal in the day,” he said. “You young fellows all like coffee best. Don’t spare it. What’s that by you, William Whitney?—anchovy toast? Cut that pound-cake, Johnny.”

Nobody could say, with all his strict notions, that Mr. Brandon was not hospitable. He’d have ordered up the Mitre’s whole larder had he thought we could eat it. And never another word did he say about Tod until the things had gone away.

Then he began, quietly at first: he sitting on one side the fire, I and Bill on the other. Touching gently on this, alluding to that, our eyes opened in more senses than one; for we found that he knew all about Sophie Chalk’s sojourn in the town, the attention she received from the undergraduates, and Tod’s infatuation.

“What’s Todhetley’s object in going there?” he asked.

“Amusement, I think, sir,” hazarded Bill.

“Does he gamble there for amusement too?”

Where on earth had old Brandon got hold of all this?

“How much has Todhetley lost already?” he continued.“He is in debt, I know. Not for the first time from the same cause.”

Bill stared. He knew nothing of that old episode in London with the Clement-Pells. I felt my face flush.

“Tod does not care for playing really, sir. But the cards are there, and he sees others play and gets drawn in to join.”

“Well, what amount has he lost this time, Johnny?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But you know that he is in debt?”

“I—yes, sir. Perhaps he is a little.”

“Look here, boys,” said old Brandon. “Believing that matters were not running in a satisfactory groove with some of you, I came down to Oxford yesterday to look about me a bit—for I don’t intend that Johnny Ludlow shall lapse into bad ways, if I can keep himout of them. Todhetley may have made up his mind to go to the deuce, but he shall not take Johnny with him. I hear no good report of Todhetley; he neglects his studies for the sake of a witch, and is in debt over his head and shoulders.”

“Who could have told you that, sir?”

“Never you mind, Johnny Ludlow; I dare say you know it’s pretty true. Now look here—as I said just now. I mean to see what I can do towards saving Todhetley, for the sake of my good old friend, the Squire, and for his dead mother’s sake; and I appeal to you both to aid me. You can answer my questions if you will; and you are not children, that you should make an evasive pretence of ignorance. If I find matters are too hard for me to cope with, I shall send for the Squire and Sir John Whitney; their influence may effect what mine cannot. If I can deal with the affair successfully, and save Todhetley from himself, I’ll do so, and say nothing about it anywhere. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. To begin with, what amount of debt has Todhetley got into?”

It seemed to be a choice of evils: but the least of them was to speak. Bill honestly said he would tell in a minute if he knew. I knew little more than he; only that Tod had been saying the night before he wished he could raise a hundred pounds.

“A hundred pounds!” repeated old Brandon, nodding his head like a Chinese mandarin. “Pretty well, that, for a first term at Oxford. Well, we’ll leave that for the present, and go to other questions. What snare and delusion is drawing him on to makevisits to this person, this Sophie Chalk? What does he purpose? Is it marriage?”

Marriage! Bill and I both looked up at him.

“She is married already, sir. Did you not know it?”

“Married already! Who says so?”

So I told him all about it—as much as I knew—and that her husband, Mr. Everty, had been to Oxford once or twice to see her.

“Well, that’s a relief,” cried Mr. Brandon, drawing a deep breath, as though a fear of some kind had been lifted from his mind. And then he fell into a reverie, his head nodding incessantly, and his yellow handkerchief in his hand keeping time to it.

“If it’s better in one sense, it’s worse in another,”he squeaked. “Todhetley’s in love with her, I suppose!”

“Something like it, sir,” said Bill.

“What brainless fools some of you young men can be!”

But it was then on the stroke of nine, when Old Tom would peal out. Mr. Brandon hurried us away: he seemed to understand the notions of University life as well as we did: ordering us to say nothing to Tod, as he intended to speak to him on the morrow.

And we concluded that he did. Tod came stalking in during the afternoon in a white rage with somebody, and I thought it might be with old Brandon.

The time passed. Mr Brandon stayed on at the Mitre as though he meant to make it his home for good, and was evidently watching. Tod seemed to be conscious of it, and to exist in a chronic state ofirritation. Sophie Chalk stayed on also, and Tod was there more than ever. The affair had got wind somehow—I mean Tod’s infatuation for her—and was talked of in the colleges. Richardson fell ill about that time: at least, he met with an accident which confined him to his bed: and the play at Mrs. Everty’s was not much to speak of: I did not go, Mr. Brandon had interdicted it. Thus the time went on, and Passion Week was coming in.

“Are you running for a wager, Johnny Ludlow?”

I was running down to the river and had nearly run over Mr. Brandon, who was strolling along with his hands under his coat-tails. It was Saturday afternoon, and some of us were going out rowing. Mr. Brandon came down to see us embark.

As we all stood there, who should loom into sight but Sophie Chalk. She was leading a little mouse-coloured dog by a piece of red tape, one that Fred Temple had given her; and her shining hair was a sight to be seen in the sunlight; Tod walked by her with his arms folded. They halted to talk with some of us for a minute, and then went on, Madam Sophie giving old Brandon a saucy stare from her wide-open blue eyes. He had stood as still as a post, giving never a word to either of them.

That same night, when Tod and I were in our room alone, Mr. Brandon walked in. It was pretty late, but Tod was about to depart on his visit to High Street. As if the entrance of Mr. Brandon had been the signal for him to bolt, he put on his trencher and turned to the door. Quick as thought, Mr. Brandon interposed himself.

“If you go out of this room, Joseph Todhetley, itshall be over my body,” cried he, a whole hatful of authority in his squeaky voice. “I have come in to hold a final conversation with you; and I mean to do it.”

I thought an explosion was inevitable, with Tod’s temper. He controlled it, however; and after a moment’s hesitation put off his cap. Mr. Brandon sat down in the old big chair by the fire; Tod stood on the other side, his arm on the mantelpiece.

In a minute or two, they were going at it kindly. Old Brandon put Tod’s doings before him in the plainest language he could command; Tod retorted insolently in his passion.

“I have warned you enough against your ways and against that woman,” said Mr. Brandon. “I am here to do it once again, and to bid you for the last time give up her acquaintanceship. Yes, sir, bid you: I stand in the light of your unconscious father.”

“I wouldn’t do it for my father,” cried Tod, in his fury.

“She is leading you into a gulf of—of brimstone,”fired old Brandon. “Day by day you creep down a step lower into it, sir, like a calf that is being wiled to the shambles. Once fairly in, you’ll be smothered: the whole world won’t be able to pull you out again.”

Tod answered with a torrent of words. The chief burden of them was—that if he chose to walk into the brimstone, it was not Mr. Brandon who should keep him out of it.

“Is it not?” retorted Mr. Brandon—and though he was very firm and hard, he gave no sign of losing his temper. “We’ll see that. I am in this town to strive to save you, Joseph Todhetley; and if I can’t do it by easy means, I’ll do it by hard ones. I got you out of one scrape, thanks to Johnny here, and now I’m going to get you out of another.”

Tod held his peace. That past obligation was often on his conscience.

“You ought to take shame to yourself, sir,” continued old Brandon. “You were placed at Oxford to study, to learn to be a man and a gentleman, to prepare yourself to fight well the battle of life, not to waste the talents God has given you, and fritter away your best days in sin.”

“In sin?” retorted Tod, jerking his head fiercely.

“Yes, sir, in sin. What else do you call it—this idleness that you are indulging in? The short space of time that young men spend at the University must be used, not abused. Once it has passed, it can never again be laid hold of. What sort of example are you setting my ward here, who is as your younger brother? Stay where you are, Johnny Ludlow. I choose that you shall be present at this.”

“Johnny need not fret himself that he’ll catch much harm from my iniquities,” said Tod with a sneer.

“Now listen to me, young man,” spoke Mr. Brandon.“If you persist in this insane conduct and refuse to hear reason, I’ll keep you out of danger by putting you in prison.”

Tod stared.

“You owe me a hundred pounds.”

“I am quite conscious of that, sir: and of my inability hitherto to repay it.”

“For that debt I will shut you up in prison. Headstrong young idiots like you must be saved from themselves.”

Tod laughed slightly in his insolence. A defiant, mocking laugh.

“I should like to see you try to shut me up in prison! You have no power to do it, Mr. Brandon: you have never proved the debt.”

Mr. Brandon rose, and took a step towards him.“You dare to tell me I cannot do a thing that I say I will do, Joseph Todhetley! I shall make an affidavit before a judge in chambers that you are about to leave the country, and obtain the warrant that will lock you up. And I say to you that I believe you are going to leave it, sooner or later; and that Chalk woman with you!”

“What an awful lie,” cried Tod, his face all ablaze.

“Lie or no lie, I believe it. I believe it is what she will bring you to, unless you are speedily separated from her. And if there be no other way of saving you, why, I’ll save you by force.”

Tod ran his hands through his damp hair: what with wrath and emotion he was in a fine heat. Knowing nothing of the law himself, he supposed old Brandon could do as he said, and it sobered him.

“I am your father’s friend, Joseph Todhetley, and I’ll take care of you for his sake if I can. I have stayed on here, putting myself, as it were, into his place to save him pain. As his substitute, I have a right to be heard; ay, and to act. Do you know that your dead mother was very dear to me? I will tell you what perhaps I never should have told you but for this crisis in your life, that her sister was to me the dearest friend a man can have in this life; she would have been my wife but that death claimed her. Your mother was nearly equally dear, and loved meto the last. She took my hand in dying, and spoke of you; of you, her only child. ‘Should it ever be in your power to shield him from harm or evil, do so, John,’ she said, ‘do it for my sake.’ And with Heaven’s help, I will do it now.”

Tod was moved. The mention of his mother softened him at all times. Mr. Brandon sat down again.

“Don’t let us play at this pitched battle, Joe. Hear a bit of truth from me, of common sense: can’t you see that I have your interest at heart? There are two roads that lie before a young man on his setting out in life, either of which he can take: you can take either, even yet. The one leads to honour, to prosperity, to a clear conscience, to a useful career, to a hale and happy old age—and, let us hope, to heaven. The other leads to vice, to discomfort, to miserable self-torment, to a waste of talent and energies; in short, to altogether a lost life. Lost, at any rate, for this world: and—we’ll not speculate upon what it may be in the other. Are you attending?”

Tod just lifted his eyes in answer. I sat at the table by my books, silently turning some of their leaves, ready to drop through the floor with annoyance. Mr. Brandon resumed.

“You have come to the Oxford University to perfect your education; to acquire self-reliance, experience, and a tone of good manners; to keep upright ways, to eschew bad company, and to train yourself to be a Christian gentleman. Do this, and you will go home with satisfaction and a sound conscience. In time you will marry, and rear your children to good, andbe respected of all men. This is the career expected of you; this is the road you ought to take.”

He paused slightly, and then went on.

“I will put the other road before you; the one you seem so eager to rush upon. Ah, boy! how many a one, with as hopeful a future before him as you have, has gone sliding, sliding down unconsciously, never meaning, poor fellow, to slide too far, and been lost in the vortex of sin and shame! You are starting on well for it. Wine, and cards, and betting, and debt; and a singing mermaid to lure you on! That woman, with the hard light eyes, and the seductive airs, has cast her spell upon you. You think her an angel, no doubt; I say she’s more of an angel’s opposite——”

“Mr. Brandon!”

“There are women in the world who will conjure a man’s coat off his back, and his pockets after it,” persisted Mr. Brandon, drowning the interruption. “She is one of them. They are bad to the core. They are; and they draw a man into all kinds of irretrievable entanglements. She will draw you: and the end may be that you’d find her saddled on you for good. Who will care to take your hand in friendship then? Will you dare to clasp that of honest people, or hold up your face in the light of day? No: not for very shame. That’s what gambling and evil courses will bring a man to: and, his self-respect once gone, it’s gone for ever. You will feel that you have raised a barrier between you and your kind: remembrance will be a sting, and your days will be spent in one long cry of too late repentance, ‘Oh, that I had been wise in time!’”

“You are altogether mistaken in her,” burst outTod. “There’s no harm in her. She is as particular as—as any lady need be.”

“No harm in her!” retorted Mr. Brandon. “Is there any good in her? Put it at its best: she induces you to waste your time and your substance. How much money has the card-playing and the present-giving taken out of you, pray? What amount of debt has it involved you in? More than you know how to pay.”

Tod winced.

“Be wise in time, lad, now, without further delay, and break off this dangerous connection. I know that in your better moments you must see how fatal it may become. It is a crisis in your life; it may be its turning-point; and, as you choose the evil or the good, so may you be lost or saved in this world and in eternity.”

Tod muttered something about his not deserving to be judged so harshly.

“I judge you not harshly yet: I say that evil will come unless you flee from it,” said Mr. Brandon.“Don’t you care for yourself?—for your good name? Is it nothing to you whether you turn out a scamp or a gentleman?”

To look at Tod just then, it was a great deal.

“Have you any reverence for your father?—for the memory of your mother? Then you will do a little violence to your own inclinations, even though it be hard and difficult—more difficult than to get a double first; harder than having the best tooth in your head drawn—and take your leave of that lady for ever. For your own sake, Joe; for your own sake!”

Tod was pulling gently at his whiskers.

“Send all folly to the wind, Joseph Todhetley! Say to yourself, for God and myself will I strive henceforth! It only needs a little steady resolution; and you can call it up if you choose. You shall always find a friend in me. Write down on a bit of paper the sums you owe, and I’ll give you a cheque to cover them. Come, shake hands upon it.”

“You are very kind, sir,” gasped Tod, letting his hand meet old Brandon’s.

“I hope you will let me be kind. Why, lad, you should have had more spirit than to renew an acquaintanceship with a false girl; an adventurer, who has gone about the country stealing jewels.”

“Stealing jewels!” echoed Tod.

“Stealing jewels, lad. Did you never know it? She took Miss Deveen’s emeralds at Whitney Hall.”

“Oh, that was a mistake,” said Tod, cheerfully.“She explained it to me.”

“A mistake, was it! Explained it to you, did she! When?”

“At Oxford: before she had been here above a day or two. She introduced the subject herself, sir, saying she supposed I had heard something about it, and what an absurd piece of business the suspecting her was; altogether a mistake.”

“Ah, she’s a wily one, Joe,” said Mr. Brandon.“Johnny Ludlow could have told you whether it was a mistake or not. Why, boy, she stole the stones out of Miss Deveen’s own dressing-room, and went up to London the next day, or the next but one, and pledged them the same night at a pawnbroker’s, in a false name, and gave a false account of herself. Moreover, when it was brought home to her, she confessed all upon her knees to Miss Deveen, and sued for mercy.”

Tod looked from Mr. Brandon to me. At the time of the discovery, he had had a hint given him of the fact, with a view of more effectually weaning him from Sophie Chalk, but not the particulars.

“It’s true, Todhetley,” said Mr. Brandon, nodding his head. “You may judge, therefore, whether she is a nice kind of person for you to be seen beauing about Oxford streets in the face and eyes of the dons.” And Tod winced again, and bit his lips.

Mr. Brandon rose, taking both Tod’s hands in his, and said a few solemn words in the kindest tone I had ever heard him speak; wrung his hands, nodded good-night to me, and was gone. Tod walked about the room a bit, whistling softly to make a show of indifference, and looking miserably cut up.

“Is what he said true?” he asked me presently, stopping by the mantelpiece again: “about the emeralds?”

“Every word of it.”

“Then why on earth could you not open your mouth and tell me, Johnny Ludlow?”

“I thought you knew it. I’m sure you were told of it at the time. Had I brought up the matter again later, you’d have been fit to punch me into next week, Tod.”

“Let’s hear the details—shortly.”

I went over them all; shortly, as he said; but omitting none. Tod stood in silence, never once interrupting.

“Did the Whitneys know of this?”

“Anna did.”

“Anna!”

“Yes. Anna had suspected Sophie from the first. She saw her steal out of Miss Deveen’s room, and saw her sewing something into her stays at bed-time. But Anna kept it to herself until discovery had come.”

Tod could frown pretty well on ordinary occasions, but I never saw a frown like the one on his brow as he listened. And I thought—I thought—it was meant for Sophie Chalk.

“Lady Whitney, I expect, knows it all now, Tod. Perhaps Helen also. Old Brandon went over to the Hall to spend the day, and it was in consequence of what he heard from Lady Whitney and Miss Deveen that he came down here to look us up.”

“Meaning me,” said Tod. “Not us. Use right words, Johnny.”

“They did not know, you see, that Sophie Chalk was married. And they must have noticed that you cared for her.”

Tod made no comment. He just leaned against the shelf in silence. I was stacking my books.

“Good-night, Johnny,” he quietly said, without any appearance of resentment; and went into his room.

The next day was Palm Sunday. Tod lay in bed with a splitting headache, could not lift his head from the pillow, and his skin was as sallow as an old gander’s. “Glad to hear it,” said Mr. Brandon, when I told him; “it will give him a quiet day for reflection.”

A surprise awaited me that morning, and Mr. Brandon also. Miss Deveen was at Oxford, with Helen and Anna Whitney. They had arrived the evening before, and meant to stay and go up with Bill and with us. I did not tell Tod: in fact, he seemed too ill to be spoken to, his head covered with the bedclothes.

You can’t see many a finer sight than the Broad Walk presents on the evening of Palm Sunday. Every one promenades there, from the dean downwards. Our party went together: Miss Deveen, Helen, and Anna; Bill, I, and Mr. Brandon.

We were in the middle of the walk; and it was at its fullest, when Tod came up. He was better, but looked worn and ill. A flush of surprise came into his face when he saw who we had with us, and he shook hands with the ladies nearly in silence.

“Oxford has not mended your looks, Mr. Todhetley,”said Miss Deveen.

“I have one of my bad headaches to-day,” he answered. “I get them now and then.”

The group of us were turning to walk on, when in that moment there approached Sophie Chalk. Sophie in a glistening blue silk, and flowers, and jingling ornaments, and kid gloves. She was coming up to us as bold as brass with her fascinating smile, when she saw Miss Deveen, and stopped short. Miss Deveen passed on without notice of any kind; Helen really did not see her; Anna, always gentle and kind, slightly bowed. Even then Madam Sophie’s native impudence came to her aid. She saw they meant to shun her, and she nodded and smiled at Tod, and made as though she would stop him for a chat. He took off his cap to her, and went on. Anna’s delicate face had flushed, and his own was white enough for its coffin.

Miss Deveen held Tod’s hand in parting. “I am so glad to have met you again,” she cordially said; “weare all glad. We shall see you often, I hope, until we go up together. And all you young people are coming to me for a few days in the Easter holidays. Friends cannot afford too long absences from one another in this short life. Good-bye; and mind you get rid of your headache for to-morrow. There; shake hands with Helen and Anna.”

He did as he was bid. Helen was gay as usual; Anna rather shy. Her pretty blue eyes glanced up at Tod’s, and he smiled for the first time that day. Sophie Chalk might have fascinated three parts of his heart away, but there was a corner in it remaining for Anna Whitney.

I did not do it intentionally. Going into our room the next day, a sheet of paper with some writing on it lay on the table, the ink still wet. Supposing it was some message just left for me by Tod, I went up to read it, and caught the full sense of the lines.

“DEAR MRS. EVERTY,

“I have just received your note. I am sorry that I cannot drive you out to-day—and fear that I shall not be able to do so at all. Our friends, who are staying here, have to receive the best part of my leisure time.

“Faithfully yours,

“J. TODHETLEY.”

And I knew by the contents of the note, by its very wording even, that the crisis was past, and Tod saved.

“Thank you, Johnny! Perhaps you’ll read your own letters another time. That’s mine.”

He had come out of his room with the envelopes and sealing-wax.

“I beg your pardon, Tod. I thought it was a message you had left for me, seeing it lie open.”

“You’ve read it, I suppose?”

“Yes, or just as good. My eyes seemed to take it all in at once; and I am as glad as though I had had a purse of gold given to me.”

“Well, it’s no use trying to fight against a stream,”said he, as he folded the note. “And if I had known the truth about the emeralds, why—there’d have been no bother at all.”

“Putting the emeralds out of the question, she is not a nice person to know, Tod. And there’s no telling what might have come of it.”

“I suppose not. When the two paths, down-hill and up-hill, cross each other, as Brandon put it, and the one is pleasant and the other is not, one has to do a bit of battle with one’s self in choosing the right.”

And something in his face told me that in the intervening day and nights, he had battled with himself as few can battle; fought strenuously with the evil, striven hard for the good, and come out a conqueror.

“It has cost you pain.”

“Somewhat, Johnny. There are few good things in the way of duty but what do cost man pain—as it seems to me. The world and a safe conscience will give us back our recompense.”

“And heaven too, Tod.”

“Ay, lad; and heaven.”

THE END—Fifth Series

TABLE of CONTENTS

Sixth Series

THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN.—I.—MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA.

THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN.—II.—OWEN, THE MILKMAN.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.—I.—EDGAR RESTE.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.—II.—DISAPPEARANCE.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.—III.—DON THE SECOND.

A TRAGEDY.—I.—GERVAIS PREEN.

A TRAGEDY.—II.—IN THE BUTTERY.

A TRAGEDY.—III.—MYSTERY.

A TRAGEDY.—IV.—OLIVER.

IN LATER YEARS

THE SILENT CHIMES.—I.—PUTTING THEM UP.

THE SILENT CHIMES.—II.—PLAYING AGAIN.

THE SILENT CHIMES.—III.—RINGING AT MIDDAY.

THE SILENT CHIMES.—IV.—NOT HEARD.

THE SILENT CHIMES.—V.—SILENT FOR EVER.

“God sent his Singers upon earth

With songs of sadness and of mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men,

And bring them back to heaven again.”

Longfellow.

THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN.

I.—MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA.

“Let us go and give her a turn,” cried the Squire.

Tod laughed. “What, all of us?” said he.

“To be sure. All of us. Why not? We’ll start to-morrow.”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley, dismay in her mild tones. “Children and all?”

“Children and all; and take Hannah to see to them,”said the Squire. “You don’t count, Joe: you will be off elsewhere.”

“We could never be ready,” said the Mater, looking the image of perplexity. “To-morrow’s Friday. Besides, there would be no time to write to Mary.”

“Write to her!” cried the Squire, turning sharply on his heel as he paced the room in his nankeen morning-coat.“And who do you suppose is going to write to her? Why, it would cause her to make all sorts of preparation, put her to no end of trouble. A pretty conjurer you’d make! We will take her by surprise: that’s what we will do.”

“But if, when we got there, we should find her rooms are let, sir?” said I, the possibility striking me.

“Then we’ll go into others, Johnny. A spell at the seaside will be a change for us all.”

This conversation, and the Squire’s planning-out, arose through a letter we had just received from Mary Blair—poor Blair’s widow, if you have not forgotten him, who went to his end through that Gazette of Jerry’s. After a few ups and downs, trying at this thing for a living, trying at that, Mrs. Blair had now settled in a house at the seaside, and opened a day-school. She hoped to get on in it in time, she wrote, especially if she could be so fortunate as to let her drawing-room to visitors. The Squire, always impulsive and good-hearted, at once cried out that we would go and take it.

“It will be doing her a good turn, you see,” he ran on;“and when we leave I dare say she’ll find other people ready to go in. Let’s see”—picking up the letter to refer to the address—“No. 6, Seaboard Terrace, Montpellier-by-Sea. Whereabouts is Montpellier-by-Sea?”

“Never heard of it in my life,” cried Tod. “Don’t believe there is such a place.”

“Be quiet, Joe. I fancy it lies somewhere towards Saltwater.”

Tod flung back his head. “Saltwater! A nice common place that is!”

“Hold your tongue, sir. Johnny, fetch me the railway guide.”

Upon looking at the guide, it was found there; “Montpellier-by-Sea;”the last station before getting to Saltwater. As to Saltwater, it might be common, as Tod said; for it was crowded with all sorts of people, but it was lively and healthy.

Not on the next day, Friday, for it was impossible to get ready in such a heap of a hurry, but on the following Tuesday we started. Tod had left on the Saturday for Gloucestershire. His own mother’s relatives lived there, and they were always inviting him.

“Montpellier-by-Sea?” cried the railway clerk in a doubting tone as we were getting the tickets. “Let’s see? Where is that?”

Of course that set the Squire exploding. What right had clerks to pretend to issue tickets unless they knew their business? The clerk in question coolly ran his finger down the railway list he had turned to, and then gave us the tickets.

“It is a station not much frequented, you see,” he civilly observed. “Travellers mostly go on to Saltwater.”

But for the train being due, and our having to make a rush for the platform, the Squire would have waited to give the young man a piece of his mind. “Saltwater, indeed!”said he. “I wonder the fellow does not issue his edict as to where people shall go and where they shan’t go.”

We arrived in due time at our destination. It was written up as large as life on a white board, “Montpellier-by-Sea.”A small roadside station, open to the country around; no signs of sea or of houses to be seen; a broad rural district, apparently given over entirely to agriculture. On went the whistling train, leaving the group of us standing by our luggage on the platform. The Squire was staring about him doubtfully.

“Can you tell me where Seaboard Terrace is?”

“Seaboard Terrace?” repeated the station-master. “No, sir, I don’t know it. There’s no terrace of that name hereabouts. For that matter there are no terraces at all—no houses in fact.”

The Squire’s face was a picture. He saw that (save a solitary farm homestead or two) the country was bare of dwelling-places.

“This is Montpellier-by-Sea?” he questioned at last.

“Sure enough it is, sir. Munpler, it’s called down here.”

“Then Seaboard Terrace must be somewhere in it—somewhere about. What a strange thing!”

“Perhaps the gentlefolks want to go to Saltwater?” spoke up one of the two porters employed at the little station.“There’s lots of terraces there. Here, Jim!”—calling to his fellow—“come here a minute. He’ll know, sir; he comes from Saltwater.”

Jim approached, and settled the doubt at once. He knew Seaboard Terrace very well indeed; it was at Saltwater; just out at the eastern end of it.

Yes, it was at Saltwater. And there were we, more than two miles off it, on a broiling hot day, when walking was impracticable, with all our trunks about us, and no fly to be had, or other means of getting on. The Squire went into one of his passions, and demanded why people living at Saltwater should give their address as Montpellier-by-Sea.

He had hardly patience to listen to the station-master’s explanation—who acknowledged that we were not the first travelling party that had been deluded in like manner. Munpler (as he and the rest of the natives persisted in calling it) was an extensive, straggling rural parish, filled with farm lands; an arm of it extended as far as Saltwater, and the new buildings at that end of Saltwater had rechristened themselves Montpellier-by-Sea, deeming it more aristocratic than the common old name. Had the Squire been able to transport the new buildings, builders and all, he had surely done it on the spot.

Well, we got on to Saltwater in the evening by another train, and to No. 6, Seaboard Terrace. Mary Blair was just delighted.

“If I had but known you were coming, if you had only written to me, I would have explained that it was Saltwater Station you must get out at, not Montpellier,” she cried in deprecation.

“But, my dear, why on earth do you give in to a deception?”stormed the Squire. “Why call your place Montpellier when it’s Saltwater?”

“I do what other people do,” she sighed; “I was told it was Montpellier when I came here. Generally speaking, I have explained, when writing to friends, that it is really Saltwater, in spite of its fine name. I suppose I forgot it when writing to you—I had so much to say. The people really to blame are those who named it so.”

“And that’s true, and they ought to be shown up,” said the Squire.

Seaboard Terrace consisted of seven houses, built in front of the sea a little beyond the town. The parlours had bay windows; the drawing-rooms had balconies and verandahs. The two end houses, Nos. 1 and 7, were double houses, large and handsome, each of them being inhabited by a private family; the middle houses were smaller, most of them being let out in lodgings in the season. Mary Blair began talking that first evening as we sat together about the family who lived in the house next door to her, No. 7. Their name was Peahern, she said, and they had been so very, very kind to her since she took her house in March. Mr. Peahern had interested himself for her and got her several pupils; he was much respected at Saltwater. “Ah, he is a good man,” she added; “but——”

“I’ll call and thank him,” interrupted the Squire. “I am proud to shake hands with such a man as that.”

“You cannot,” she said; “he and his wife have gone abroad. A great misfortune has lately befallen them.”

“A great misfortune! What was it?”

I noticed a sort of cloud pass over Mary Blair’s face, a hesitation in her manner before she replied. Mrs. Todhetley was sitting by her on the sofa; the Squire was in the armchair opposite them, and I at the table, as I had sat at our tea-dinner.

“Mr. Peahern was in business once—a wholesale druggist, I believe; but he made a fortune, and retired some years ago,” began Mary. “Mrs. Peahern has bad health and is a little lame. She was very kind to me also—very good and kind indeed. They had one son—no other children; I think he was studying for the Bar; I am not sure; but he lived in London, and came down here occasionally. My young maid-servant, Susan, got acquainted with their servants, and she gathered from their gossip that he, Edmund Peahern, a very handsome young man, was in some way a trouble to his parents. He was down at Easter, and stayed three weeks; and in May he came down again. What happened I don’t know; I believe there was some scene with his father the day he arrived; anyway, Mr. Peahern was heard talking angrily to him; and that night he—he died.”

She had dropped her voice to a whisper. The Squire spoke.

“Died! Was it a natural death?”

“No. A jury decided that he was insane; and he was buried here in the churchyard. Such a heap of claims and debts came to light, it was said. Mr. Peahern left his lawyer to pay them all, and went abroad with his poor wife for change of scene. It has been a great grief to me. I feel so sorry for them.”

“Then, is the house shut up?”

“No. Two servants are left in it—the two housemaids. The cook, who had lived with them five and twenty years and was dreadfully affected at the calamity, went with her mistress. Nice, good-natured young women are these two that are left, running in most days to ask if they can do anything for me.”

“It is good to have such neighbours,” said the Squire.“And I hope you’ll get on, my dear. How came you to be at this place at all?”

“It was through Mr. Lockett,” she answered—the clergyman who had been so much with her husband before he died, and who had kept up a correspondence with her. Mr. Lockett’s brother was in practice as a doctor at Saltwater, and they thought she might perhaps do well if she came to it. So Mary’s friends had screwed a point or two to put her into the house, and gave her besides a ten-pound note to start with.

“I tell you what it is, young Joe: if you run and reve yourself into that scarlet heat, you shan’t come here with me again.”

“But I like to race with the donkeys,” replied young Joe.“I can run almost as fast as they, Johnny. I like to see the donkeys.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to ride a donkey, lad?”

He shook his head. “I have never had a ride but once,”he answered: “I’ve no sixpences for it. That once Matilda treated me. She brings me on the sands.”

“Who is Matilda?”

“Matilda at No. 7—Mr. Peahern’s.”

“Well, if you are a good boy, young Joe, and stay by me, you shall have a ride as soon as the donkeys come back.”

They were fine sands. I sat down on a bench with a book; little Joe strained his eyes to look after the donkeys in the distance, cantering off with some young shavers like himself on their backs, their nursemaids walking quickly after them. Poor little Joe!—he had the gentlest, meekest face in the world, with his thoughtful look and nice eyes—waited and watched in quiet patience. The sands were crowded with people this afternoon; organs were playing, dancing dolls exhibiting; and vessels with their white sails spread glided smoothly up and down on the sparkling sea.

“And will you really pay the sixpence?” asked the little fellow presently. “They won’t let me get on for less.”

“Really and truly, Joe. I’ll take you for a row in a boat some calm day, if mamma will allow you to go.”

Joe looked grave. “I don’t much like the water, please,”said he, timidly. “Alfred Dale went on it in a boat and fell in, and was nearly drowned. He comes to mamma’s school.”

“Then we’ll let the boats alone, Joe. There’s Punch! He is going to set himself up yonder: wouldn’t you like to run and see him?”

“But I might miss the donkeys,” answered Joe.

He stood by me quietly, gazing in the direction taken by the donkeys; evidently they were his primary attraction. The other child, Mary, who was a baby when her father died (poor Baked Pie, as we boys used to call him at Frost’s), was in Wales with Mrs. Blair’s people. They had taken the child for a few months, until she saw whether she should get along at Saltwater.

But we thought she would get along. Her school was a morning school for little boys of good parentage, all of whom paid liberal terms; and she would be able to let her best rooms for at least six months in the year.

“There’s Matilda! Oh, there’s Matilda!”

It was quite a loud shout for little Joe. Looking up, I saw him rush to a rather good-looking young woman, neatly dressed in a black-and-white print gown and small shawl of the same, with black ribbons crossed on her straw bonnet. Servants did not dress fine enough to set the Thames on fire in those days. Joe dragged her triumphantly up to me. She was one of the housemaids at No. 7.

“It’s Matilda,” he said; and the young woman curtsied.“And I am going to have a donkey-ride, Matilda; Mr. Johnny Ludlow’s going to give the sixpence for me!”

“I know you by sight, sir,” observed Matilda to me. “I have seen you go in and out of No. 6.”

She had a pale olive complexion, with magnificent, melancholy dark eyes. Many persons would have called her handsome. I took a sort of liking for the girl—if only for her kindness to poor little fatherless Joe. In manner she was particularly quiet, subdued, and patient.

“You had a sad misfortune at your house not long ago,”I observed to her, at a loss for something to say.

“Oh, sir, don’t talk of it, please!” she answered, catching her breath. “I seem to have had the shivers at times ever since. It was me that found him.”

Up cantered the donkeys; and presently away went Joe on the back of one, Matilda attending him. The ride was just over, and Joe beginning to enlarge on its delights to me, when another young woman, dressed precisely similar to Matilda, even to the zigzag white running pattern on the prim gown, and the black cotton gloves, was seen making her way towards us. She was nice-looking also, in a different way—fair, with blue eyes, and a laughing, arch face.

“Why, there’s Jane Cross!” exclaimed Matilda. “What in the world have you come out for, Jane? Have you left the house safe?”

“As if I should leave it unsafe!” lightly retorted the one they had called Jane Cross. “The back door’s locked, and here’s the key of the front”—showing a huge key. “Why shouldn’t I go out if you do, Matilda? The house is none so lively a one now, to stop in all alone.”

“And that’s true enough,” was Matilda’s quiet answer.“Little master Joe’s here; he has been having a donkey-ride.”

The two servants, fellow-housemaids, strolled off towards the sea, taking Joe with them. At the edge of the beach they encountered Hannah, who had just come on with our two children, Hugh and Lena. The maids sat down for a gossip, while the children took off their shoes and stockings to dabble in the gently rising tide.

And that was my introductory acquaintanceship with the servant-maids at No. 7. Unfortunately it did not end there.

Twilight was coming on. We had been out and about all day, had dined as usual at one o’clock (not to give unnecessary trouble), and had just finished tea in Mrs. Blair’s parlour. It was where we generally took tea, and supper also. The Squire liked to sit in the open bay window and watch the passers-by as long as ever a glimmer of daylight lasted; and he could not see them so well in the drawing-room above. I was at the other corner of the bay window. The Mater and Mary Blair were on their favourite seat, the sofa, at the end of the room, both knitting. In the room at the back, Mary held her morning school.

I sat facing towards the end house, No. 7. And I must here say that during the last two or three weeks I had met the housemaids several times on the sands, and so had become quite at home with each of them. Both appeared to be thoroughly well-conducted, estimable young women; but, of the two, I liked Jane Cross best; she was always so lively and pleasant-mannered. One day she told me why No. 7 generally called her by her two names—which I had thought rather odd. It appeared that when she entered her place two years before, the other housemaid was named Jane, so they took to call her by her full name, Jane Cross. That housemaid had left in about a twelvemonth, and Matilda had entered in her place. The servants were regarded as equals in the house, not one above the other, as is the case in many places. These details will probably be thought unnecessary and uncalled for, but you will soon see why I mention them. This was Monday. On the morrow we should have been three weeks at Saltwater, and the Squire did not yet talk of leaving. He was enjoying the free-and-easy life, and was as fond as a child of picking up shells on the sands and looking at Punch and the dancing dolls.

Well, we sat this evening in the bay window as usual, I facing No. 7. Thus sitting, I saw Matilda cross the strip of garden with a jug in her hand, and come out at the gate to fetch the beer for supper.

“There goes Jane Cross,” cried the Squire, as she passed the window. “Is it not, Johnny?”

“No, sir, it’s Matilda.” But the mistake was a very natural one, for the girls were about the same height and size, and were usually dressed alike, the same mourning having been supplied to both of them.

Ten minutes or so had elapsed when Matilda came back: she liked a gossip with the landlady of the Swan. Her pint jug was brimful of beer, and she shut the iron gate of No. 7 after her. Putting my head as far out at the window as it would go, to watch her indoors, for no earthly reason but that I had nothing else to do, I saw her try the front door, and then knock at it. This knock she repeated three times over at intervals, each knock being louder than the last.

“Are you shut out, Matilda?” I called out.

“Yes, sir, it seems like it,” she called back again, without turning her head. “Jane Cross must have gone to sleep.”

Had she been a footman with a carriage full of ladies in court trains behind him, she could not have given a louder or longer knock than she gave now. There was no bell to the front door at No. 7. But the knock remained unanswered and the door unopened.

“Matilda at No. 7 is locked out,” I said, laughing, bringing in my head and speaking to the parlour generally.“She has been to fetch the beer for supper, and can’t get in again.”

“The beer for supper?” repeated Mrs. Blair. “They generally go out at the back gate to fetch that, Johnny.”

“Anyhow, she took the front way to-night. I saw her come out.”

Another tremendous knock. The Squire put his good old nose round the window-post; two boys and a lady, passing by, halted a minute to look on. It was getting exciting, and I ran out. She was still at the door, which stood in the middle of the house, between the sitting-rooms on each side.

“So you have got the key of the street, Matilda!”

“I can’t make it out,” she said; “what Jane Cross can be about, or why the door should be closed at all. I left it on the latch.”

“Somebody has slipped in to make love to her. Your friend, the milkman, perhaps.”

Evidently Matilda did not like the allusion to the milkman. Catching a glimpse of her face by the street lamp, I saw it had turned white. The milkman was supposed to be paying court at No. 7, but to which of the two maids gossip did not decide. Mrs. Blair’s Susan, who knew them well, said it was Matilda.

“Why don’t you try the back way?” I asked, after more waiting.

“Because I know the outer door is locked, sir. Jane Cross locked it just now, and that’s why I came out this front way. I can try it, however.”

She went round to the road that ran by the side of the house, and tried the door in the garden wall. It was fastened, as she had said. Seizing the bell-handle, she gave a loud peal—another, and another.

“I say, it seems odd, though,” I cried, beginning to find it so. “Do you think she can have gone out?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. But—no; it’s not likely, Master Johnny. I left her laying the cloth for our supper.”

“Was she in the house alone?”

“We are always alone, sir; we don’t have visitors. Anyway, none have been with us this evening.”

I looked at the upper windows of the house. No light was to be seen in any of them, no sign of Jane Cross. The lower windows were hidden from view by the wall, which was high.

“I think she must have dropped asleep, Matilda, as you say. Suppose you come in through Mrs. Blair’s and get over the wall?”

I ran round to tell the news to our people. Matilda followed me slowly; I thought, reluctantly. Even in the dim twilight, as she stood at our gate in hesitation, I could see how white her face was.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked her, going out again to where she stood.

“I hardly know, Master Johnny. Jane Cross used to have fits. Perhaps she has been frightened into one now.”

“What should frighten her?”

The girl looked round in a scared manner before replying. Just then I found my jacket-sleeve wet. Her trembling hands had shaken a little of the ale upon it.

“If she—should have seen Mr. Edmund?” the girl brought out in a horrified whisper.

“Seen Mr. Edmund! Mr. Edmund who?—Mr. Edmund Peahern? Why, you don’t surely mean his ghost?”

Her face was growing whiter. I stared at her in surprise.

“We have always been afraid of seeing something, she and me, since last May; we haven’t liked the house at night-time. It has often been quite a scuffle which of us should fetch the beer, so as not to be the one left alone. Many a time I have stood right out at the back door while Jane Cross has gone for it.”

I began to think her an idiot. If Jane Cross was another, why, perhaps she had frightened herself into a fit. All the more reason that somebody should see after her.

“Come along, Matilda; don’t be foolish; we’ll both get over the wall.”

It was a calm, still summer evening, almost dark now. All the lot of us went out to the back garden, I whispering to them what the girl had said to me.

“Poor thing!” said Mrs. Todhetley, who had a sort of fellow-feeling for ghosts. “It has been very lonely for the young women; and if Jane Cross is subject to fits, she may be lying in one at this moment.”

The wall between the gardens was nothing like as high as the outer one. Susan brought out a chair, and Matilda could have got over easily. But when she reached the top, she stuck there.

“I can’t go on by myself; I dare not,” she said, turning her frightened face towards us. “If Mr. Edmund is there——”

“Don’t be a goose, girl!” interrupted the Squire, in doubt whether to laugh or scold. “Here, I’ll go with you. Get on down. Hold the chair tight for me, Johnny.”

We hoisted him over without damage. I leaped after him, and Susan, grinning with delight, came after me. She supposed that Jane Cross had slipped out somewhere during Matilda’s absence.

The door faced the garden, and the Squire and Susan were the first to enter. There seemed to be no light anywhere, and the Squire went gingerly picking his way. I turned round to look for Matilda, who had hung back, and found her with her hand on the trellis-work of the porch, and the beer splashing over in her fear.

“I say, look here, Matilda; you must be a regular goose, as the Squire says, to put yourself into this fright before you know whether there’s any cause for it. Susan says she has only stepped out somewhere.”

She put up her hand and touched my arm, her lips the colour of chalk.

“Only last night that ever was, Mr. Johnny, as we were going up the staircase to bed, we heard a sound in the room as we passed it. It was just like a groan. Ask Jane Cross, else, sir.”

“What room?”

“Mr. Edmund’s; where he did it. She has heard him to-night, or seen him, or something, and has fallen into a fit.”

The kitchen was on the right of the passage. Susan, knowing the ways of the house, soon lighted a candle. On a small round table was spread a white cloth, some bread and cheese, and two tumblers. A knife or two had seemingly been flung on it at random.

“Jane Cross! Jane Cross!” shouted the Squire, going forward towards the front hall, Susan following with the candle. It was a good-sized hall; I could see that, with a handsome well-staircase at this end of it.

“Halloa! What’s this? Johnny! Susan!—all of you come here! Here’s somebody lying here. It must be the poor girl. Goodness bless my heart! Johnny, help me to raise her!”

Still and white she was lying, underneath the opening of the staircase. Upon lifting her head, it fell back in a curious manner. We both backed a little. Susan held the candle nearer. As its light fell on the upturned face, the girl shrieked.

“She is in a fit,” cried Matilda.

“God help her!” whispered the Squire. “I fear this is something worse than a fit. We must have a doctor.”

Susan thrust the candlestick into my hand, and ran out at the back door, saying she’d fetch Mr. Lockett. Back she came in a moment: the garden gate was locked, and the key not in it.

“There’s the front door, girl,” stuttered the Squire, angry with her for returning, though it was no fault of hers. He was like one off his head, and his nose and cheeks had turned blue.

But there could be no more exit by the front door than by the back. It was locked, and the key gone. Who had done these things? what strange mystery was here? Locking the poor girl in the house to kill her!

Matilda, who had lighted another candle, found the key of the back gate lying on the kitchen dresser. Susan caught it up, and flew away. It was a most uncomfortable moment. There lay Jane Cross, pale and motionless, and it seemed that we were helpless to aid her.

“Ask that stupid thing to bring a pillow or a cushion, Johnny! Ghosts, indeed! The idiots that women are!”

“What else has done it? what else was there to hurt her?” remonstrated Matilda, bringing up the second candle.“She wouldn’t fall into a fit for nothing, sir.”

And now that more light was present, we began to see other features of the scene. Nearly close to Jane Cross lay a work-basket, overturned, a flat, open basket, a foot and a half square. Reels of cotton, scissors, tapes, small bundles of work tied up, and such-like things lay scattered around.

The Squire looked at these, and then at the opening above. “Can she have fallen down the well?” he asked, in a low tone. And Matilda, catching the words, gave a cry of dismay, and burst into tears.

“A pillow, girl! A pillow, or a cushion!”

She went into one of the sitting-rooms and brought out a sofa-cushion. The Squire, going down on his knees, for he was not good at stooping, told me to slip it under while he raised the head.

A sound of feet, a sudden flash of light from a bull’s-eye, and a policeman came upon the scene. The man was quietly passing on his beat when met by Susan. In her excitement she told him what had happened, and sent him in. We knew the man, whose beat lay at this end of Saltwater; a civil man, named Knapp. He knelt down where the Squire had just been kneeling, touching Jane Cross here and there.

“She’s dead, sir,” he said. “There can be no mistake about that.”

“She must have fallen down the well of the staircase, I fear,” observed the Squire.

“Well—yes; perhaps so,” assented the man in a doubtful tone. “But what of this?”

He flung the great light in front of poor Jane Cross’s dress. A small portion of the body, where the gown fastened in front, had been torn away, as well as one of the wristbands.

“It’s no fall,” said the man. “It’s foul play—as I think.”

“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire. “Some villains must have got in. This comes of that other one’s having left the front door on the latch.” But I am not sure that any of us, including himself, believed she could be really dead.

Susan returned with speed, and was followed by Mr. Lockett. He was a young man, thirty perhaps, pale and quiet, and much like what I remembered of his brother. Poor Jane Cross was certainly dead, he said—had been dead, he thought, an hour.

But this could scarcely have been, as we knew. It was not, at the very utmost, above twenty-five minutes since Matilda went out to fetch the beer, leaving her alive and well. Mr. Lockett looked again, but thought he was not mistaken. When a young doctor takes up a crotchet, he likes to hold to it.

A nameless sensation of awe fell upon us all. Dead! In that sudden manner! The Squire rubbed up his head like a helpless lunatic; Susan’s eyes were round with horror; Matilda had thrown her apron over her face to hide its grief and tears.

Leaving her for the present where she was, we turned to go upstairs. I stooped to pick up the overturned basket, but the policeman sharply told me to let all things remain as they were until he had time to look into them.

The first thing the man did, on reaching the landing above, was to open the room doors one by one, and throw his bull’s-eye light into them. They were all right, unoccupied, straight and tidy. On the landing of the upper floor lay one or two articles, which seemed to indicate that some kind of struggle had taken place there. A thimble here, a bodkin there, also the bit that had been torn out of the girl’s gown in front, and the wristband from the sleeve. The balustrades were very handsome, but very low; on this upper landing, dangerously low. These bedrooms were all in order; the one in which the two servants slept, alone showing signs of occupation.

Downstairs went Knapp again, carrying with him the torn-out pieces, to compare them with the gown. It was the print gown I had often seen Jane Cross wear, a black gown with white zigzag lines running down it. Matilda was wearing the fellow to it now. The pieces fitted in exactly.

“The struggle must have taken place upstairs: not here,”observed the doctor.

Matilda, questioned and cross-questioned by the policeman, gave as succinct an account of the evening as her distressed state allowed. We stood round the kitchen while she told it.

Neither she nor Jane Cross had gone out at all that day. Monday was rather a busy day with them, for they generally did a bit of washing. After tea, which they took between four and five o’clock, they went up to their bedroom, it being livelier there than in the kitchen, the window looking down the side road. Matilda sat down to write a letter to her brother, who lived at a distance; Jane Cross sat at the window doing a job of sewing. They sat there all the evening, writing, working, and sometimes talking. At dusk, Jane remarked that it was getting blind man’s holiday, and that she should go on downstairs and lay the supper. Upon that, Matilda finished her letter quickly, folded and directed it, and followed her down. Jane had not yet laid the cloth, but was then taking it out of the drawer. “You go and fetch the beer, Matilda,” she said: and Matilda was glad to do so. “You can’t go that way: I have locked the gate,” Jane called out, seeing Matilda turning towards the back; accordingly she went out at the front door, leaving it on the latch. Such was her account; and I have given it almost verbatim.

“On the latch,” repeated the policeman, taking up the words. “Does that mean that you left it open?”

“I drew it quite to, so that it looked as if it were shut; it was a heavy door, and would keep so,” was Matilda’s answer.“I did it, not to give Jane the trouble to open it to me. When I got back I found it shut and could not get in.”

The policeman mused. “You say it was Jane Cross who locked the back door in the wall?”

“Yes,” said Matilda. “She had locked it before I got downstairs. We liked to lock that door early, because it could be opened from the outside—while the front door could not be.”

“And she had not put these things on the table when you went out for the beer?”—pointing to the dishes.

“No: she was only then putting the cloth. As I turned round from taking the beer-jug from its hook, the fling she gave the cloth caused the air to whiffle in my face like a wind. She had not begun to reach out the dishes.”

“How long were you away?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she answered, with a moan.“Rather longer than usual, because I took my letter to the post before going to the Swan.”

“It was about ten minutes,” I interposed. “I was at the window next door, and saw Matilda go out and come back.”

“Ten minutes!” repeated the policeman. “Quite long enough for some ruffian to come in and fling her over the stairs.”

“But who would do it?” asked Matilda, looking up at him with her poor pale face.

“Ah, that’s the question; that’s what we must find out,” said Knapp. “Was the kitchen just as it was when you left it?”

“Yes—except that she had put the bread and cheese on the table. And the glasses, and knives,” added the girl, looking round at the said table, which remained as we had found it, “but not the plates.”

“Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she would go and put the supper on?”

“No, she did not.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And I think,”added the girl, with a great sob, “I think that while laying the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced herself.”

“Fright at what?” asked Knapp.

Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern.

The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. “Did you ever see it?” he asked.

“No,” she shuddered. “But there are strange noises, and we think it is in the house.”

“Well,” said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile,“ghosts don’t tear pieces out of gowns—that ever I heard of. I should say it was something worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any sweetheart?”

“No,” said Matilda.

“Have you one?”

“No.”

“Except Owen the milkman.”

A red streak flashed into Matilda’s cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs. Blair’s milkman also.

“I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers,” went on Knapp. “I’ve seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing the afternoon’s milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in this garden, when he need not have been as many moments.”

“There has been no harm: and it’s nothing to anybody,”said Matilda.

The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key. But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda’s opinion was correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could not relinquish the notion.

“It was only a week ago that ever was—a week ago this very day—that Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold of her to save her. It’s true—if it were the last word I had to speak.”

Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in a summer day’s journey.

Nothing more could be made out of it this evening. Jane Cross had met her death, and some evil or other must have led to it. The police took possession of the house for the night: and Matilda, out of compassion, was brought to ours. To describe the Mater’s shock and Mary Blair’s, when they heard the news, would be beyond me.

All sorts of conjectures arose in the neighbourhood. The most popular belief was that some person must have perceived the front door open, and, whether with a good or a bad intention, entered the house; that he must have stolen upstairs, met Jane Cross on the top landing, and flung her down in a scuffle. That he must then have let himself out at the front door and locked it after him.

Against this theory there were obstacles. From the time of Matilda’s leaving the house till her return, certainly not more than ten minutes had elapsed, perhaps not quite as much, and this was a very short space of time for what had been done in it. Moreover the chances were that I, sitting at the next window, should have seen any one going in or out; though it was not of course certain. I had got up once to ring the bell, and stayed a minute or two away from the window, talking with Mary Blair and the Mater.

Some people thought the assassin (is it too much to call him so?) had been admitted by Jane Cross herself; or he might have been in hiding in the garden before she locked the door. In short, the various opinions would fill a volume.

But suspicion fell chiefly upon one person—and that was Thomas Owen the milkman. Though, perhaps, “suspicion”is too strong a word to give to it—I ought rather to say“doubt.” These Owens were originally from Wales, very respectable people. The milk business was their own; and, since the father’s death, which happened only a few months before, the son had carried it on in conjunction with his mother. He was a young man of three or four and twenty, with a fresh colour and open countenance, rather superior in manners and education. The carrying out the milk himself was a temporary arrangement, the boy employed for it being ill. That he had often lingered at No. 7, laughing with the two young women, was well known; he had also been seen to accost them in the street. Only the previous day, he and Matilda had stayed talking in the churchyard after morning service when everybody else had left it; and he had walked up nearly as far as Seaboard Terrace with Jane Cross in the evening. A notion existed that he had entered the house on the Monday evening, for who else was it likely to have been, cried everybody. Which was, of course, logic. At last a rumour arose—arose on the Tuesday—that Owen had been seen to leave the house at dusk on the fatal evening; that this could be proved. If so, it looked rather black. I was startled, for I had liked the man.

The next day, Wednesday, the key was found. A gardener who did up the gardens of the other end house, No. 1, every Wednesday, was raking the ground underneath some dwarf pines that grew close against the front railings, and raked out a big door-key. About a dozen people came rushing off with it to No. 7.

It was the missing key. It fitted into the door at once, locked and unlocked it. When the villain had made his way from the house after doing the mischief, he must have flung the key over amidst the pines, thinking no doubt it would lie hidden there.

The coroner and jury assembled; but they could not make more of the matter than we had made. Jane Cross had died of the fall down the well-staircase, which had broken her neck; and it was pretty evident she had been flung down. Beyond the one chief and fatal injury, she was not harmed in any way; not by so much as a scratch. Matilda, whose surname turned out to be Valentine, having got over the first shock, gave her testimony with subdued composure. She was affected at parts of it, and said she would have saved Jane Cross’s life with her own: and no one could doubt that she spoke the truth. She persisted in asserting her opinion that there had been no scuffle, in spite of appearances; but that the girl had been terrified in some way and had accidentally fallen over.

When Matilda was done with, Thomas Owen took her place. He was all in black, having dressed himself to come to the inquest and wearing mourning for his father; and I must say, looking at him now, you’d never have supposed he carried out milk-pails.

Yes, he had known the poor young woman in question, he readily said in answer to questions; had been fond of chaffing with the two girls a bit, but nothing more. Meant nothing by it, nothing serious. Respected both of them; regarded them as perfectly well-conducted young women.—Was either of them his sweetheart? Certainly not. Had not courted either of them. Never thought of either of them as his future wife: should not consider a servant eligible for that position—at least, his mother would not. Of the two, he had liked Jane Cross the best. Did not know anything whatever of the circumstances attending the death; thought it a most deplorable calamity, and was never more shocked in his life than when he heard of it.

“Is there any truth in the report that you were at the house on Monday evening?” asked the coroner.

“There is no truth in it.”

“I see him come out o’ No. 7: I see him come out o’ the side door in the garden wall,” burst forth a boy’s earnest voice from the back of the room.

“You saw me not come out of it,” quietly replied Thomas Owen, turning round to see who it was that had spoken.“Oh, it is you, is it, Bob Jackson! Yes, you came running round the corner just as I turned from the door.”

“You were there, then?” cried the coroner.

“No, sir. At the door, yes; that’s true enough; but I was not inside it. What happened was this: on Monday I had some business at a farmhouse near Munpler, and set out to walk over there early in the evening. In passing down the side road by No. 7, I saw the two maids at the top window. One of them—I think it was Jane Cross—called out to ask me in a joking kind of way whether I was about to pay them a visit; I answered, not then, but I would as I came back if they liked. Accordingly, in returning, I rang the bell. It was not answered, and I rang again with a like result. Upon that, I went straight home to my milk books, and did not stir out again, as my mother can prove. That is the truth, sir, on my oath; and the whole truth.”

“What time was this?”

“I am not quite sure. It was getting dusk.”

“Did you see anything of the young women this second time?”

“Not anything.”

“Or hear anything?—Any noise?”

“None whatever. I supposed that they would not come to the door to me because it was late: I thought nothing else. I declare, sir, that this is all I know of the matter.”

There was a pause when he concluded. Knapp, the policeman, and another one standing by his side, peered at Owen from under their eyebrows, as if they did not put implicit faith in his words: and the coroner recalled Matilda Valentine.

She readily confirmed the statement of his having passed along the side road, and Jane Cross’s joking question to him. But she denied having heard him ring on his return, and said the door-bell had not rung at all that night. Which would seem to prove that Owen must have rung during the time she had gone out for the beer.

So, you perceive, the inquest brought forth no more available light, and had to confess itself baffled.

“A fine termination this is to our pleasure,” cried the Squire, gloomily. “I don’t like mysteries, Johnny. And of all the mysteries I have come across in my life, the greatest mystery is this at No. 7.”

THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN.

II.—OWEN, THE MILKMAN.

It was a grand sea to-day: one of the grandest that we had seen at Saltwater. The waves were dancing and sparkling like silver; the blue of the sky was deeper than a painter’s ultramarine. But to us, looking on it from Mrs. Blair’s house in Seaboard Terrace, its brightness and beauty were dimmed.

“For you see, Johnny,” observed the Squire to me, his face and tone alike gloomy—outward things take their impress from the mind—“with that dreadful affair at the next door jaundicing one’s thoughts, the sea might as well be grey as blue, and the sky lowering with thunder-clouds. I repeat that I don’t like mysteries: they act on me like a fit of indigestion.”

The affair just was a mystery; to us, as to all Saltwater. More than a week had elapsed since the Monday evening when it took place, and poor Jane Cross now lay buried in the windy graveyard. On this said Monday evening, the two servant maids, Jane Cross and Matilda Valentine (left in the house, No. 7, Seaboard Terrace, during the absence of the family abroad), had been pursuing their ordinary occupations. While Jane Cross was laying the cloth for supper in the kitchen, Matilda went out to fetch the usual pint of ale. On her return she could not get in. When admittance was obtained, Jane Cross lay dead in the hall, having fallen down the well of the staircase. Evidences of a scuffle on the upper landing could be traced, making it apparent that the fall was not accidental; that she had been flung down. Some doubt attached to Owen, the milkman, partly from his previous intimacy with the girls, chiefly because he had been seen leaving the back door of the house somewhere about the time it must have occurred. What Owen said was, that he had rung twice at the door, but his ring was not answered.

Matilda was to be pitied. The two young women had cared a good deal for one another, and the shock to Matilda was serious. The girl, now staying in our house, had worn a half-dazed look ever since, and avoided No. 7 as though it had the plague. Superstition in regard to the house had already been rife in both the servants’ minds, in consequence of the unhappy death in it of their master’s son, Edmund Peahern, some weeks back: and if Matilda had been afraid of seeing one ghost before (as she had been) she would now undoubtedly expect to see two of them.

On this same morning, as I stood with the Squire looking at the sea from the drawing-room window of No. 6, Matilda came in. Her large dark eyes had lost their former sparkle, her clear olive skin its freshness. She asked leave to speak to Mrs. Todhetley: and the Mater—who sat at the table adding up some bills, for our sojourn at Saltwater was drawing towards its close—told her, in a kindly tone, to speak on.

“I am making bold to ask you, ma’am, whether you could help me to find a place in London,” began Matilda, standing between the door and the table in her black dress. “I know, ma’am, you don’t live in London, but a long way off it; Mrs. Blair has told me so, Master Johnny Ludlow also: but I thought perhaps you knew people there, and might be able to hear of something.”

The Mater looked at Matilda without answering, and then round at us. Rather strange it was, a coincidence in a small way, that we had had a letter from London from Miss Deveen that morning, which had concluded with these lines of postscript: “Do you chance to know of any nice, capable young woman in want of a situation? One of my housemaids is going to leave.”

Naturally this occurred to the Mater’s mind when Matilda spoke. “What kind of situation do you wish for?” she asked.

“As housemaid, ma’am, or parlour-maid. I can do my duty well in either.”

“But now, my girl,” spoke up the Squire, turning from the window, “why need you leave Saltwater? You’d never like London after it. This is a clear, fresh, health-giving place, with beautiful sands and music on them all day long; London is nothing but smoke and fogs.”

Matilda shook her head. “I could not stay here, sir.”

“Nonsense, girl. Of course what has happened hashappened, and it’s very distressing; and you, of all people, must feel it so: but you will forget it in time. If you don’t care to go back to No. 7 before Mr. and Mrs. Peahern come home——”

“I can never go back to No. 7, sir,” she interrupted, a vehemence that seemed born of terror in her subdued voice. “Never in this world. I would rather die.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Squire, impatiently.“There’s nothing the matter with No. 7. What has happened in it won’t happen again.”

“It is an unlucky house, sir; a haunted house,” she contended with suppressed emotion. “And it’s true that I would rather die outright than go back to live in it; for the terror of being there would slowly kill me. And so, ma’am,”she added quickly to Mrs. Todhetley, evidently wishing to escape the subject, “I should like to go away altogether from Saltwater; and if you can help me to hear of a place in London, I shall be very grateful.”

“I will consider of it, Matilda,” was the answer. And when the girl had left the room the Mater asked us what we thought about recommending her to Miss Deveen. We saw no reason against it—not but that the Squire put the girl down as an idiot on the subject of haunted houses—and Miss Deveen was written to.

The upshot was, that on the next Saturday Matilda bade farewell to Saltwater and departed for Miss Deveen’s, the Squire sarcastically assuring her that that house had no ghosts in it. We should be leaving, ourselves, the following Tuesday.

But, before that day came, it chanced that I saw Owen, the milkman. It was on the Sunday afternoon. I had taken little Joe Blair for a walk across the fields as far as Munpler (their Montpellier-by-Sea, you know), and in returning met Thomas Owen. He wore his black Sunday clothes, and looked a downright fine fellow, as usual. There was something about the man I could not help liking, in spite of the doubt attaching to him.

“So Matilda Valentine is gone, sir,” he observed, after we had exchanged a few sentences.

“Yes, she went yesterday,” I answered, putting my back against the field fence, while young Joe went careering about in chase of a yellow butterfly. “And for my part, I don’t wonder at the girl’s not liking to stay at Saltwater. At least, in Seaboard Terrace.”

“I was told this morning that Mr. and Mrs. Peahern were on their way home,” he continued.

“Most likely they are. They’d naturally want to look into the affair for themselves.”

“And I hope with all my heart they will be able to get some light out of it,” returned Owen, warmly. “I mean to do my best to bring out the mystery, sir; and I sha’n’t rest till it’s done.”

His words were fair, his tone was genuine. If it was indeed himself who had been the chief actor in the tragedy, he carried it off well. I hardly knew what to think. It is true I had taken a bit of a fancy to the man, according to my usual propensity to take a fancy, or the contrary; but I did not know much about him, and not anything of his antecedents. As he spoke to me now, his tone was marked, rather peculiar. It gave me a notion that he wanted to say more.

“Have you any idea that you will be able to trace it out?”

“For my own sake I should like to get the matter cleared up,” he added, not directly answering my question. “People are beginning to turn the cold shoulder my way: one woman asked me to my face yesterday whether I did it. No, I told her, I did not do it, but I’d try and find out who did.”

“You are sure you heard and saw nothing suspicious that night when you rang the bell and could not get in, Owen?”

“Not then, sir; no. I saw no light in the house and heard no noise.”

“You have not any clue to go by, then?”

“Not much, sir, yet. But I can’t help thinking somebody else has.”

“Who is that?”

“Matilda.”

“Matilda!” I repeated, in amazement. “Surely you can’t suspect that she—that she was a party to any deed so cruel and wicked!”

“No, no, sir, I don’t mean that; the young women were too good friends to harm one another: and whatever took place, took place while Matilda was out of the house. But I can’t help fancying that she knows, or suspects, more of the matter than she will say. In short, that she is screening some one.”

To me it seemed most unlikely. “Why do you judge so, Owen?”

“By her manner, sir. Not by much else. But I’ll tell you something that I saw. On the previous Wednesday when I left the afternoon milk at that tall house just beyond Seaboard Terrace, the family lodging there told me to call in the evening for the account, as they were leaving the next day. Accordingly I went; and was kept waiting so long before they paid me that it was all but dark when I came out. Just as I was passing the back door at No. 7, it was suddenly drawn open from the inside, and a man stood in the opening, whispering with one of the girls. She was crying, for I heard her sobs, and he kissed her and came out, and the door was hastily shut. He was an ill-looking man; so far at least as his clothes went; very shabby. His face I did not see, for he pulled his slouching round hat well over his brows as he walked away rapidly, and the black beard he wore covered his mouth and chin.”

“Which of the maids was it?”

“I don’t know, sir. The next day I chaffed them a bit about it, but they both declared that nobody had been there but the watchmaker, Mr. Renninson, who goes every Wednesday to wind up the clocks, and that it must have been him I saw, for he was late that evening. I said no more; it was no business of mine; but the man I saw go out was just about as much like Renninson as he was like me.”

“And do you fancy——”

“Please wait a minute, sir,” he interrupted, “I haven’t finished. Last Sunday evening, upon getting home after service, I found I had left my prayer-book in church. Not wishing to lose it, for it was the one my father always used, I went back for it. However, the church was shut up, so I could not get in. It was a fine evening, and I took a stroll round the churchyard. In the corner of it, near to Mr. Edmund Peahern’s tomb, they had buried poor Jane Cross but two days before—you know the spot, sir. Well, on the flat square of earth that covers her grave, stood Matilda Valentine, the greatest picture of distress you can imagine, tears streaming down her cheeks. She dried her eyes when she saw me, and we came away together. Naturally I fell to talking of Jane Cross and the death. ‘I shall do as much as lies in my power to bring it to light,’ I said to Matilda; ‘or people may go on doubting me to the end. And I think the first step must be to find out who the man was that called in upon you the previous Wednesday night.’ Well, sir, with that, instead of making any answering remark as a Christian would, or a rational being, let us say, Matilda gives a smothered shriek and darts away out of the churchyard. I couldn’t make her out; and all in a minute a conviction flashed over me, though I hardly know why, that she knew who was the author of the calamity, and was screening him; or at any rate that she had her suspicions, if she did not actually know. And I think so still, sir.”

I shook my head, not seeing grounds to agree with Owen. He resumed:

“The next morning, between nine and ten, I was in the shop, putting a pint of cream which had been ordered into a can, when to my surprise Matilda walked in, cool and calm. She said she had come to tell me that the man I had seen leave the house was her brother. He had fallen into trouble through having become security for a fellow workman, had had all his things sold up, including his tools, and had walked every step of the way—thirty miles—to ask her if she could help him. She did help him as far as she could, giving him what little money she had by her, and Jane Cross had added ten shillings to it. He had got in only at dusk, she said, had taken some supper with them, and left again afterwards, and that she was letting him out at the gate when I must have been passing it. She did not see me, for her eyes were dim with crying: her heart felt fit to break in saying farewell. That was the truth, she declared, and that her brother had had no more to do with Jane’s death than she or I had; he was away again out of Saltwater the same night he came into it.”

“Well? Did you not believe her?”

“No, sir,” answered Owen, boldly. “I did not. If this was true, why should she have gone off into that smothered shriek in the churchyard when I mentioned him, and rush away in a fright?”

I could not tell. Owen’s words set me thinking.

“I did not know which of the two girls it was who let the man out that Wednesday night, for I did not clearly see; but, sir, the impression on my mind at the moment was, that it was Jane Cross. Jane Cross, and not Matilda. If so, why does she tell me this tale about her brother, and say it was herself?”

“And if it was Jane Cross?”

Owen shook his head. “All sorts of notions occur to me, sir. Sometimes I fancy that the man might have been Jane’s sweetheart, that he might have been there again on the Monday night, and done the mischief in a quarrel; and that Matilda is holding her tongue because it is her brother. Let the truth be what it will, Matilda’s manner convinces me of one thing: that there’s something she is concealing, and that it is half frightening her wits out of her.——You are going to leave Saltwater, I hear, sir,” added the young man in a different tone, “and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying this, for I should not like you to carry away any doubt of me. I’ll bring the matter to light if I can.”

Touching his hat, he walked onwards, leaving my thoughts all in a whirligig.

Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?—or was he purposely giving a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point, sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more terror, than she need have shown before she knew that any ill had happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get the ale?—and was it her brother? Did she leave Owenin the house, and was she screening him?

“Why, Matilda! Is it you?”

It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived in London at Miss Deveen’s. My question to Matilda, who came into my dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was not made in surprise at seeing her, for I supposed she was still in service at Miss Deveen’s, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild dark eyes.

“Have you been ill, Matilda?”

“No, sir, not at all. I am quite well.”

“You have grown very thin.”

“It’s the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in it.”

Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed. Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too heavy a weight?

“Do you find Matilda a good servant?” I asked of Miss Deveen, later, she and I being alone together.

“A very good servant, Johnny. But she is going to leave me.”

“Is she? Why?”

Miss Deveen only nodded, in answer to the first query, passing over the last. I supposed she did not wish to say.

“I think her so much altered.”

“In what way, Johnny?”

“In looks: looks and manner. She is just a shadow. One might say she had passed through a six months’ fever. And what a curious light there is in her eyes!”

“She has always impressed me with the idea of having some great care upon her. None can mistake that she is a sorrowful woman. I hear that the other servants accuse her of having been ‘crossed in love,’” added Miss Deveen, with a smile.

“She is thinner even than Miss Cattledon.”

“And that, I daresay you think, need not be, Johnny! Miss Cattledon, by the way, is rather hard upon Matilda just now: calls her a ‘demon.’”

“A demon! Why does she?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Though it is only a little domestic matter, one that perhaps you will hardly care to hear. You must know (to begin with) that Matilda has never made herself sociable with the other servants here; in return they have become somewhat prejudiced against her, and have been ready to play her tricks, tease her, and what not. But you must understand, Johnny, that I knew nothing of the state of affairs below; such matters rarely reach me. My cook, Hall, was especially at war with Matilda: in fact, I believe there was no love lost between the two. The girl’s melancholy—for at times she does seem very melancholy—was openly put down by the rest to the assumption that she must have had some love affair in which the swain had played her false. They were continually worrying her on this score, and it no doubt irritated Matilda; but she rarely retorted, preferring rather to leave them and take refuge in her room.”

“Why could they not let her alone?”

“People can’t let one another alone, as I believe, Johnny. If they did, the world would be pleasanter to live in than it is.”

“And I suppose Matilda got tired at last, and gave warning?”

“No. Some two or three weeks ago it appears that, by some means or other, Hall obtained access to a small trunk; one that Matilda keeps her treasures in, and has cautiously kept locked. If I thought Hall had opened this trunk with a key of her own, as Matilda accuses her of doing, I would not keep the woman in my house another day. But she declares to me most earnestly—for I had her before me here to question her—that Matilda, called suddenly out of her chamber, left the trunk open there, and the letter, of which I am about to tell you, lying, also open, by its side. Hall says that she went into the room—it adjoins her own—for something she wanted, and that all she did—and she admits this much—was to pick up the letter, carry it downstairs, read it to the other servants, and make fun over it.”

“What letter was it?”

“Strictly speaking, it was only part of a letter: one begun but not concluded. It was in Matilda’s own hand, apparently written a long time ago, for the ink was pale and faded, and it began ‘Dearest Thomas Owen. The——’”

“Thomas Owen!” I exclaimed, starting in my chair.“Why, that is the milkman at Saltwater.”

“I’m sure I don’t know who he is, Johnny, and I don’t suppose it matters. Only a few lines followed, three or four, speaking of some private conversation that she had held with him on coming out of church the day before, and of some reproach that she had then made to him respecting Jane Cross. The words broke suddenly off there, as if the writer had been interrupted. But why Matilda did not complete the letter and send it, and why she should have kept it by her all this time, must be best known to herself.”

“Jane Cross was her fellow-servant at Mr. Peahern’s. She who was killed by falling down the staircase.”

“Yes, poor thing, I remembered the name. But, to go on. In the evening, after the finding of this letter, I and Miss Cattledon were startled by a disturbance in the kitchen. Cries and screams, and loud, passionate words. Miss Cattledon ran down; I stayed at the top of the stairs. She found Hall, Matilda, and one of the others there, Matilda in a perfect storm of fury, attacking Hall like a maniac. She tore handfuls out of her hair, she bit her thumb until her teeth met in it: Hall, though by far the bigger person of the two, and I should have thought the stronger, had no chance against her; she seemed to be as a very reed in her hands, passion enduing Matilda with a strength perfectly unnatural. George, who had been out on an errand, came in at the moment, and by his help the women were parted. Cattledon maintains that Matilda, during the scene, was nothing less than a demon; quite mad. When it was over, the girl fell on the floor utterly exhausted, and lay like a dead thing, every bit of strength, almost of life, gone out of her.”

“I never could have believed it of Matilda.”

“Nor I, Johnny. I grant that the girl had just cause to be angry. How should we like to have our private places rifled, and their contents exhibited to and mocked at by the world; contents which to us seem sacred? But to have put herself into that wild rage was both unseemly and unaccountable. Her state then, and her state immediately afterwards, made me think—I speak it with all reverence, Johnny—of the poor people in holy writ from whom the evil spirits were cast out.”

“Ay. It seems to be just such a case, Miss Deveen.”

“Hall’s thumb was so much injured that a doctor had to come daily to it for nine or ten days,” continued Miss Deveen. “Of course, after this climax, I could not retain Matilda in my service; neither would she have remained in it. She indulged a feeling of the most bitter hatred to the women servants, to Hall especially—she had not much liked them before, as you may readily guess—and she said that nothing would induce her to remain with them, even had I been willing to keep her. So she has obtained a situation with some acquaintances of mine who live in this neighbourhood, and goes to it next week. That is why Matilda leaves me, Johnny.”

In my heart I could not help being sorry for her, and said so. She looked so truly, terribly unhappy!

“I am very sorry for her,” assented Miss Deveen. “And had I known the others were making her life here uncomfortable, I should have taken means to stop their pastime. Of the actual facts, with regard to the letter, I cannot be at any certainty—I mean in my own mind. Hall is a respectable servant, and I have never had cause to think her untruthful during the three years she has lived with me: and she most positively holds to it that the little trunk was standing open on the table and the letter lying open beside it. Allowing that it was so, she had, of course, no right to touch either trunk or letter, still less to take the letter downstairs and exhibit it to the others, and I don’t defend her conduct: but yet it is different from having rifled the lock of the trunk and taken the letter out.”

“And Matilda accuses her of doing that?”

“Yes: and, on her side, holds to it just as positively. What Matilda tells me is this: On that day it chanced that Miss Cattledon had paid the women servants their quarter’s wages. Matilda carried hers to her chamber, took this said little trunk out of her large box, where she keeps it, unlocked it and put the money into it. She disturbed nothing in the trunk; she says she had wrapped the sovereigns in a bit of paper, and she just slipped them inside, touching nothing else. She was shutting down the lid when she heard herself called to by me on the landing below. She waited to lock the box but not to put it up, leaving it standing on the table. I quite well remembered calling to the girl, having heard her run upstairs. I wanted her in my room.”

Miss Deveen paused a minute, apparently thinking.

“Matilda has assured me again and again that she is quite sure she locked the little trunk, that there can be no mistake on that point. Moreover, she asserts that the letter in question was lying at the bottom of the trunk beneath other things, and that she had not taken it out or touched it for months and months.”

“And when she went upstairs again—did she find the little trunk open or shut?”

“She says she found it shut: shut and locked just as she had left it; and she replaced it in her large box, unconscious that any one had been to it.”

“Was she long in your room, Miss Deveen?”

“Yes, Johnny, the best part of an hour. I wanted a little sewing done in a hurry, and told her to sit down there and then and do it. It was during this time that the cook, going upstairs herself, saw the trunk, and took the opportunity to do what she did do.”

“I think I should feel inclined to believe Matilda. Her tale sounds the more probable.”

“I don’t know that, Johnny. I can hardly believe that a respectable woman, as Hall undoubtedly is, would deliberately unlock a fellow-servant’s box with a false key. Whence did she get the key to do it? Had she previously provided herself with one? The lock is of the most simple description, for I have seen the trunk since, and Hall might possess a key that would readily fit it: but if so, as the woman herself says, how could she know it? In short, Johnny, it is one woman’s word against another’s: and, until this happened, I had deemed each of them to be equally credible.”

To be sure there was reason in that. I sat thinking.

“Were it proved to have been as Matilda says, still I could not keep her,” resumed Miss Deveen. “Mine is a peaceable, well-ordered household, and I should not like to know that one, subject to insane fits of temper, was a member of it. Though Hall in that case would get her discharge also.”

“Do the people where Matilda is going know why she leaves?”

“Mrs. and Miss Soames. Yes. I told them all about it. But I told them at the same time, what I had then learnt—that Matilda’s temper had doubtlessly been much tried here. It would not be tried in their house, they believed, and took her readily. She is an excellent servant, Johnny, let who will get her.”

I could not resist the temptation of speaking to Matilda about this, an opportunity offering that same day. She came into the room with some letters just left by the postman.

“I thought my mistress was here, sir,” she said, hesitating with the tray in her hand.

“Miss Deveen will be here in a minute: you can leave the letters. So you are going to take flight, Matilda! I have heard all about it. What a silly thing you must be to put yourself into that wonderful tantrum!”

“She broke into my box, and turned over its contents, and stole my letter to mock me,” retorted Matilda, her fever-lighted eyes taking a momentary fierceness. “Who, put in my place, would not have gone into a tantrum, sir?”

“But she says she did not break into it.”

“As surely as that is heaven’s sun above us, she did it, Mr. Johnny. She has been full of spite towards me for a long time, and she thought she would pay me out. I did but unlock the box, and slip the little paper of money in, and I locked it again instantly and brought the key away with me: I can never say anything truer than that, sir: to make a mistake about it is not possible.”

No pen could convey the solemn earnestness with which she spoke. Somehow it impressed me. I hoped Hall would get served out.

“Yes, the wrong has triumphed for once. As far as I can see, sir, it often does triumph. Miss Deveen thinks great things of Hall, but she is deceived in her; and I daresay she will find her out sometime. It was Hall who ought to have been turned away instead of me. Not that I would stay here longer if I could.”

“But you like Miss Deveen?”

“Very much indeed, sir; she is a good lady and a kind mistress. She spoke very well indeed of me to the new family where I am going, and I daresay I shall do well enough there.—Have you been to Saltwater lately, sir?”she added, abruptly.

“Never since. Do you get news from the place?”

She shook her head. “I have never heard a word from any soul in it. I have written to nobody, and nobody has written to me.”

“And nothing more has come out about poor Jane Cross. It is still a mystery.”

“And likely to be one,” she replied, in a low tone.

“Perhaps so. Do you know what Owen the milkman thought?”

She had spoken the last sentence or two with her eyes bent, fiddling with the silver waiter. Now they were raised quickly.

“Owen thought that you could clear up the mystery if you liked, Matilda. At least, that you possessed some clue to it. He told me so.”

“Owen as good as said the same to me before I left,”she replied, after a pause. “He is wrong, sir: but he must think it if he will. Is he—is he at Saltwater still?”

“For all I know to the contrary. This letter, that the servants here got at, was one you were beginning to write to Owen. Did——”

“I would rather not talk of that letter, Mr. Johnny: my private affairs concern myself only,” she interrupted—and went out of the room like a shot.

Had anyone told me that during this short visit of mine in London I should come across the solution of the mystery of that tragedy enacted at No. 7, I might have been slow to credit it. Nevertheless, it was to be so.

Have you ever noticed, in going through life, that events seem to carry a sequence in themselves almost as though they bore in their own hands the guiding thread that connects them from beginning to end? For a time this thread will seem to be lost; to lie dormant, as though it had snapped, and the course of affairs it was holding to have disappeared for good. But lo! up peeps a little end when least expected, and we catch hold of it, and soon it grows into a handful; and what we had thought lost is again full of activity and gradually works itself out. Not a single syllable, good or bad, had we heard of that calamity at Saltwater during the fourteen months which had passed since. The thread of it lay dormant. At Miss Deveen’s it began to steal up again: Matilda, and her passion, and the letter she had commenced to Thomas Owen were to the fore: and before that visit of mine came to an end, the thread had, strange to say, unwound itself.

I was a favourite of Miss Deveen’s: you may have gathered that from past papers. One day, when she was going shopping, she asked me to accompany her and not Miss Cattledon: which made that rejected lady’s face all the more like vinegar. So we set off in the carriage.

“Are we going to Regent Street, Miss Deveen?”

“Not to-day, Johnny. I like to encourage my neighbouring tradespeople, and shall buy my new silk here. We have excellent shops not far off.”

After a few intricate turnings and windings, the carriage stopped before a large linendraper’s, which stood amidst a colony of shops nearly a mile from Miss Deveen’s. George came round to open the door.

“Now what will you do, Johnny?” said Miss Deveen.“I daresay I shall be half an hour in here, looking at silks and calico; and I won’t inflict that penalty on you. Shall the carriage take you for a short drive the while, or will you wait in it?—or walk about?”

“I will wait in the street here,” I said, “and come in to you when I am tired. I like looking at shops.” And I do like it.

The next shop to the linendraper’s was a carver and gilder’s: he had some good pictures displayed in his window; at any rate, they looked good to me: and there I took up my station to begin with.

“How do you do, sir? Have you forgotten me?”

The words came from a young man who stood at the next door, close to me, causing me to turn quickly to him from gazing at the pictures. No, I had not forgotten him. I knew him instantly. It was Owen, the milkman.

After a few words had passed, I went inside. It was a large shop, well fitted up with cans and things pertaining to a milkman’s business. The window-board was prettily set off with moss, ferns, a bowl containing gold and silver fish, a miniature fountain, and a rush basket of fresh eggs. Over the door was his own name, Thomas Owen.

“You are living here, Owen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But why have you left Saltwater?”

“Because, Mr. Johnny, the place looked askance at me. People, in their own minds, set down that miserable affair at No. 7 to my credit. Once or twice I was hooted at by the street boys, asking what I had done with Jane Cross. My mother couldn’t stand that, and I couldn’t stand it, so we just sold our business at Saltwater, and bought this one here. And a good change it has been, in a pecuniary point of view: this is an excellent connection, and grows larger every day.”

“I’m sure I am glad to hear it.”

“At first, mother couldn’t bear London: she longed for the country air and the green fields: but she is reconciled to it now. Perhaps she’ll have an opportunity soon of going back to see her own old Welsh mountains, and of staying there if it pleases her.”

“Then I should say you are going to be married, Owen.”

He laughed and nodded. “You’ll wish me good luck, won’t you, sir? She’s the only daughter at the next door, the grocer’s.”

“That I will. Have you discovered anymore of that mysterious business, Owen?”

“At Saltwater? No, sir: not anything at all that could touch the matter itself. But I have heard a good bit that bears upon it.”

“Do you still suspect that Matilda could tell if she chose?”

“I suspect more than that, sir.”

The man’s words were curiously significant. He had a bit of fern in his hand, and his fresh, open, intelligent face was bent downwards, as if he wanted to see what the leaf was made of.

“I am not sure, sir. It is but suspicion at the best: but it’s an uncommonly strong one.”

“Won’t you tell me what you mean? You may trust me.”

“Yes, I am sure I may,” he said, promptly. “And I think I will tell you—though I have never breathed it to mortal yet. I think Matilda did it herself.”

Backing away from the counter in my surprise, I upset an empty milk-can.

“Matilda!” I exclaimed, picking up the can.

“Mr. Johnny, with all my heart I believe it to have been so. I have believed it for some time now.”

“But the girls were too friendly to harm one another. I remember you said so yourself, Owen.”

“And I thought so then, sir. No suspicion of Matilda had occurred to me, but rather of the man I had seen there on the Wednesday. I think she must have done it in a sudden passion; not of deliberate purpose.”

“But now, what are your reasons?”

“I told you, sir, as I daresay you can recall to mind, that I should do what lay in my power to unravel the mystery—for it was not at all agreeable to have it laid at my door. I began, naturally, with tracing out the doings of that night as connected with No. 7. Poor Jane Cross had not been out of doors that night, and so far as I knew had spoken to no one save to me from the window; therefore of her there seemed nothing to be traced: but of Matilda there was. Inquiring here and there, I bit by bit got a few odds and ends of facts together. I traced out the exact time, almost to a minute, that I rang twice at the door-bell at No. 7, and was not answered; and the time that Matilda entered the Swan to get the supper beer. Pretty nearly half an hour had elapsed between the first time and the second.”

“Half an hour!”

“Not far short of it. Which proved that Matilda must have been indoors when I rang, though she denied it before the coroner, and it was taken for granted that I had rung during her absence to fetch the beer. And you knew, sir, that her absence did not exceed ten minutes. Now why did not Matilda answer my ring? Why did she not candidly say that she had heard the ring, but did not choose to answer it? Well, sir, that gave rise to the first faint doubt of her: and when I recalled and dwelt on her singular manner, it appeared to me that the doubt might pass into grave suspicion. Look at her superstitious horror of No. 7. She never would go into the house afterwards!”

I nodded.

“Two or three other little things struck me, all tending to strengthen my doubts, but perhaps they are hardly worth naming. Still, make the worst of it, it was only suspicion, not certainty, and I left Saltwater, holding my tongue.”

“And is this all, Owen?”

“Not quite, sir. Would you be so good as to step outside, and just look at the name over the grocer’s door?”

I did so, and read Valentine. “John Valentine.” The same name as Matilda’s.

“Yes, sir, it is,” Owen said, in answer to me. “After settling here we made acquaintance with the Valentines, and by-and-by learnt that they are cousins of Matilda’s. Fanny—my wife that is to be—has often talked to me about Matilda; they were together a good bit in early life; and by dint of mentally sifting what she said, and putting that and that together, I fancy I see daylight.”

“Yes. Well?”

“Matilda’s father married a Spanish woman. She was of a wild, ungovernable temper, subject to fits of frenzy; in one of which fits she died. Matilda has inherited this temper; she is liable to go into frenzies that can only be compared to insanity. Fanny has seen her in two only; they occur at rare intervals; and she tells me that she truly believes the girl is mad—mad, Mr. Johnny—during the few minutes that they last.”

The history I had heard of her mad rage at Miss Deveen’s flashed over me. Temporarily insane they had thought her there.

“I said to Fanny one day when we were talking of her,” resumed Owen, “that a person in that sort of uncontrollable passion, might commit any crime; a murder, or what not.‘Yes,’ Fanny replied, ‘and not unlikely to do it, either: Matilda has more than once said that she should never die in her bed.’ Meaning——”

“Meaning what?” I asked, for he came to a pause.

“Well, sir, meaning, I suppose, that she might sometime lay violent hands upon herself, or upon another. I can’t help thinking that something must have put her into one of these rages with Jane Cross, and that she pushed or flung the poor girl over the stairs.”

Looking back, rapidly recalling signs and tokens, I thought it might have been so. Owen interrupted me.

“I shall come across her sometime, Mr. Johnny. These are things that don’t hide themselves for ever: at least, not often. And I shall tax her with it to her face.”

“But—don’t you know where she is?”

“No, I don’t sir. I wish I did. It was said that she came up to take a situation in London, and perhaps she is still in it. But London’s a large place, I don’t know what part of it she was in, and one might as well look for a needle in a bundle of hay. The Valentines have never heard of her at all since she was at Saltwater.”

How strange it seemed;—that she and they were living so near one another, and yet not to be aware of it. Should I tell Owen? Only for half a moment did the question cross me. No: most certainly not. It might be as he suspected; and, with it all, I could only pity Matilda. Of all unhappy women, she seemed the unhappiest.

Miss Deveen’s carriage bowled past the door to take her up at the linendraper’s. Wishing Owen good-day, I was going out, but drew back to make room for two people who were entering: an elderly woman in a close bonnet, and a young one with a fair, pretty and laughing face.

“My mother and Fanny, sir,” he whispered.

“She is very pretty, very nice, Owen,” I said, impulsively.“You’ll be sure to be happy with her.”

“Thank you, sir; I think I shall. I wish you had spoken a word or two to her, Mr. Johnny: you’d have seen how nice she is.”

“I can’t stay now, Owen. I’ll come again.”

Not even to Miss Deveen did I speak of what I had heard. I kept thinking of it as we drove round Hyde Park, and she told me I was unusually silent.

The thread was unwinding itself more and more. Once it had begun to lengthen, I suppose it had to go on. Accident led to an encounter between Matilda and Thomas Owen. Accident? No, it was this same thread of destiny. There’s no such thing as accident in the world.

During the visit to the linendraper’s, above spoken of, Miss Deveen bought a gown for Matilda. Feeling in her own heart sorry for the girl, thinking she had been somewhat hardly done by in her house, what with Hall and the rest of them, she wished to make her a present on leaving, as a token of her good-will. But the quantity of stuff bought proved not to be sufficient: Miss Deveen had doubted the point when it was cut off, and told Matilda to go herself and get two yards more. This it was, this simple incident, that led to the meeting with Owen. And I was present at it.

The money-order office of the district was situated amidst this colony of shops. In going down there one afternoon to cash an order, I overtook Matilda. She was on her way to buy the additional yards of stuff.

“I suppose I am going right, sir?” she said to me. “I don’t know much about this neighbourhood.”

“Not know much about it! What, after having lived in it more than a year!”

“I have hardly ever gone out; except to church on a Sunday,” she answered. “And what few articles I’ve wanted in the dress line, I have mostly bought at the little draper’s shop round the corner.”

Hardly had the words left her lips, when we came face to face with Thomas Owen. Matilda gave a sort of smothered cry, and stood still, gazing at him. What they said to one another in that first moment, I did not hear. Matilda had a frightened look, and was whiter than death. Presently we were all walking together towards Thomas Owen’s, he having invited Matilda to go and see his home.

But there was another encounter first. Standing at the grocer’s door was pretty Fanny Valentine. She and Matilda recognized each other, and clasped hands. It appeared to me that Matilda did it with reluctance, as though it gave her no pleasure to meet her relatives. She must have known how near they lived to Miss Deveen’s, and yet she had never sought them out. Perhaps the very fact of not wishing to see them had kept her from the spot.

They all sat down in the parlour behind the shop—a neat room. Mrs. Owen was out; her son produced some wine. I stood up by the bookcase, telling them I must be off the next minute to the post-office. But the minutes passed, and I stayed on.

How he led up to it, I hardly know; but, before I was prepared for anything of the kind, Thomas Owen had plunged wholesale into the subject of Jane Cross, recounting the history of that night, in all its minute details, to Fanny Valentine. Matilda, sitting back on the far side of the room in an armchair, looked terror-stricken: her face seemed to be turning into stone.

“Why do you begin about that, Thomas Owen?” she demanded, when words at length came to her. “It can have nothing to do with Fanny.”

“I have been wishing to tell it her for some little time, and this seems to be a fitting opportunity,” he answered, coolly resolute. “You, being better acquainted with the matter than I, can correct me if I make any blunders. I don’t care to keep secrets from Fanny: she is going to be my wife.”

Matilda’s hands lifted themselves with a convulsive movement and fell again. Her eyes flashed fire.

“Your wife?”

“If you have no objection,” he replied. “My dear old mother goes into Wales next month, and Fanny comes here in her place.”

With a cry, faint and mournful as that of a wounded dove, Matilda put her hands before her face and leaned back in her chair. If she had in truth loved Thomas Owen, if she loved him still, the announcement must have caused her cruel pain.

He resumed his narrative; assuming as facts what he had in his own mind conceived to have been the case, and by implication, but not directly, charging Matilda with the crime. It had a dreadful effect upon her; her agitation increased with every word. Suddenly she rose up in the chair, her arms lifted, her face distorted. One of those fits of passion had come on.

We had a dreadful scene. Owen was powerful, I of not much good, but we could not hold her. Fanny ran sobbing into her own door and sent in two of the shopmen.

It was the climax in Matilda Valentine’s life. One that perhaps might have been always looked for. From that hour she was an insane woman, her ravings interspersed with lucid intervals. During one of these, she disclosed the truth.

She had loved Thomas Owen with a passionate love. Mistaking the gossip and the nonsense that the young man was fond of chattering to her and Jane Cross, she believed her love was returned. On the day preceding the tragedy, when talking with him after morning service, she had taxed him with paying more attention to Jane Cross than to herself. Not a bit of it, he had lightly answered; he would take her for a walk by the seashore that evening if she liked to go. But, whether he had meant it, or not, he never came, though Matilda dressed herself in readiness. On the contrary, he went to church, met Jane there, and walked the best part of the way home with her. Matilda jealously resented this; her mind was in a chaos; she began to suspect that it was Jane Cross he liked, not herself. She said a word or two upon the subject to Jane Cross the next day, Monday; but Jane made sport of it—laughed it off. So the time went on to evening, when they were upstairs together, Jane sewing, Matilda writing. Suddenly Jane Cross said that Thomas Owen was coming along, and Matilda ran to the window. They spoke to him as he passed, and he said he would look in as he returned from Munpler. After Matilda’s letter to her brother was finished, she began a note to Thomas Owen, intending to reproach him with not keeping his promise to her and for joining Jane Cross instead. It was the first time she had ever attempted to write to him; and she stuck her work-box with the lid open behind the sheet of paper that Jane Cross might not see what she was doing. When it grew dusk, Jane Cross remarked that it was blind man’s holiday and she would go on down and lay the supper. In crossing the room, work-basket in hand, she passed behind Matilda, glanced at her letter, and saw the first words of it, “Dearest Thomas Owen.” In sport, she snatched it up, read the rest where her own name was mentioned, and laughingly began, probably out of pure fun, to teaze Matilda. “Thomas Owen your sweetheart!” she cried, running out on to the landing. “Why, he is mine. He cares more for my little finger than for——” Poor girl! She never finished her sentence. Matilda, fallen into one of those desperate fits of passion, had caught her up and was clutching her like a tiger-cat, tearing her hair, tearing pieces out of her gown. The scuffle was brief: almost in an instant Jane Cross was falling headlong down the well of the staircase, pushed over the very low balustrades by Matilda, who threw the work-basket after her.

The catastrophe sobered her passion. For a while she lay on the landing in a sort of faint, all strength and power taken out of her as usual by the frenzy. Then she went down to look after Jane Cross.

Jane was dead. Matilda, not unacquainted with the aspect of death, saw that at once, and her senses pretty nearly deserted her again with remorse and horror. She had never thought or wished to kill Jane Cross, hardly to harm her, she liked her too well: but in those moments of frenzy she had not the slightest control over her actions. Her first act was to run and lock the side door in the garden wall, lest anyone should come in. How she lived through the next half-hour, she never knew. Her superstitious fear of seeing the dead Edmund Peahern in the house was strong—and now there was another! But, with all her anguish and her fear, the instinct of self-preservation was making itself heard. What must she do? How could she throw the suspicion off herself? She could not run out of the house and say, “Jane Cross has fallen accidentally over the stairs; come and look to her”—for no one would have believed it to be an accident. And there were the pieces, too, she had clutched out of the gown! Whilst thus deliberating the gate-bell rang, putting her into a state of the most intense terror. It rang again. Trembling, panting, Matilda stood cowering in the kitchen, but it did not ring a third time. This was, of course, Thomas Owen.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Something shemust do, and her brain hastily concocted the plan she should adopt. Putting the cloth and the bread and cheese on the table, she took the jug and went out at the front door to fetch the usual pint of ale. A moment or two she stood at the front door, peering up and down the road to make sure that no one was passing. Then she slipped out, locking the door softly; and, carrying the key concealed in the hollow of her hand, she threw it amidst the shrubs at No 1. Now she could not get into the house herself; she would not have entered it alone for the world: people must break it open. All along the way to the post-office, to which she really did go, and then to the Swan, she was mentally rehearsing her tale. And it succeeded in deceiving us all, as the reader knows. With regard to the visit of her brother on the Wednesday, she had told Thomas Owen the strict truth; though, when he first alluded to it in the churchyard, her feelings were wrought up to such a pitch that she could only cry out and escape. But how poor Matilda contrived to live on and carry out her invented story, how she bore the inward distress and repentance that lay upon her, we shall never know. A distress, remorse, repentance that never quitted her, night or day; and which no doubt contributed to gradually unhinge her mind, and throw it finally off its balance.

Such was the true history of the affair at No. 7, which had been so great a mystery to Saltwater. The truth was never made public, save to the very few who were specially interested in it. Matilda Valentine is in an asylum, and likely to remain there for life; whilst Thomas Owen and his wife flourish in sunshine, happy as a summer day is long.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.

I.—EDGAR RESTE.

I

It was early in August, and we were at Dyke Manor, for the Squire had let us go home from school for the Worcester races. We had joined him at Worcester the previous day, Tuesday, driving home with him in the evening. To-morrow, Thursday, he would drive us over to the course again; to-day, Wednesday, the horses would have rest; and on Friday we must return to school.

Breakfast was over, the Squire gone out, and the few minutes’ Bible-reading to us—which Mrs. Todhetley never forgot, though Tod did not always stay in for it, but he did this morning—came to an end. Hannah appeared at the door as she closed the Book.

“Miss Barbary’s come, ma’am,” she said.

“Run, my dear,” cried Mrs. Todhetley to Lena.

“I don’t want to,” said Lena, running to the open window instead, and nearly pitching head-foremost through it: upon which Hannah captured her and carried her off.

“Who on earth is Miss Barbary?” questioned Tod. “Any relation to the man at Caramel Cottage?”

“His daughter,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “She comes to teach Lena French.”

“Hope she’s less of a shady character than her father!”was Tod’s free comment.

A year or two before this, a stranger had made his appearance at Church Dykely, and put up at the Silver Bear. He was a gentlemanly-looking man of perhaps forty years, tall, slender, agile, with thin, distinguished features, an olive skin, black hair, and eyes of a peculiar shade of deep steel-blue. People went into raptures over his face, and called it beautiful. And so it was; but to my thinking it had a look in it that was the opposite of beautiful; any way, the opposite of good. They said it was my fancy at home: but Duffham owned to the same fancy. His name, as he wrote it down one day at the Silver Bear, was Pointz Barbary. After a week’s stay at the inn, he, finding, I suppose, that the neighbourhood suited him, looked out for a little place to settle down upon, and met with it in Caramel Cottage, a small dwelling near to us, on the property called Caramel’s Farm. The cottage was then to be let, and Mr. Barbary went into it.

Some items of his past history came out by degrees; it is hard to say how, for he told none himself. Now and then some former friend or other came to pay him a short visit; and it may be that these strangers talked about him.

Pointz Barbary, a gentleman by descent, and once of fairly good substance, had been a great traveller, had roved pretty nearly all over the world. The very few relatives he possessed lived in Canada—people of condition, it was said—and his own property (what was left of it) was also there. He had been married twice. First to a young lady in France; her friends (English) having settled there for economy’s sake. She died at the end of the year, leaving him a little girl, that the mother’s people at once took to. Next he married a Miss Reste, daughter of Colonel Reste, in her Majesty’s service. A few years later she also died—died of consumption—leaving him a widower and childless. It’s true he had his first wife’s daughter, but she lived in France with her mother’s sister, so he did not get much benefit from her.

Mr. Barbary was poor. No mistake about that. The interest of his first wife’s money brought him in fifty-two pounds yearly, and this he would enjoy till his death, when it went to his daughter. Miss Reste had brought him several thousand pounds; but he and she had lived away, and not a stiver remained of it. His own means had also been spent lavishly; and, so far as was known, he had but the two and fifty pounds a year to live upon at Caramel Cottage, with a chance remittance from Canada now and again.

He made no acquaintance at Church Dykely, and none was made with him. Civilly courteous in a rather grand and haughty way when he met people, so far as a few remarks went, touching the weather or the crops, and similar safe topics, he yet kept the world at a distance. As the time went on it was thought there might be a reason for this. Whispers began to circulate that Mr. Barbary’s doings were not orthodox. He was suspected of poaching, both in game and fish, and a strong feeling of shyness grew up against him.

Some few months prior to the present time—August—his daughter came to Caramel Cottage. Her aunt in France was dead, and she had no home henceforth but her father’s. That I and Tod had not seen or heard of her until now, was owing to the midsummer holidays having been spent at Crabb Cot. The vacation over, and Mrs. Todhetley back at Dyke Manor, she found herself called upon by Miss Barbary. Hearing that Mrs. Todhetley wished her little girl to begin French, she had come to offer herself as teacher. The upshot was that she was engaged, and came for a couple of hours every morning to drill French into Lena.

“What’s she like?” asked Tod of the mother, upon her explaining this. “Long and thin and dark, like Barbary, and disagreeable with a self-contained reticence?”

“She is not the least like him in any way,” was Mrs. Todhetley’s answer. “She is charmingly simple—good, I am sure, and one of the most open-natured girls I ever met. ‘I wish to do it for the sake of earning a little money,’ she said to me, when asking to come. ‘My dear father is not rich, and if I can help him in ever so small a way I shall be thankful.’The tears almost came into her eyes as she spoke,”added Mrs. Todhetley; “she quite won my heart.”

“She seems to think great things of that respectable parent of hers!” commented Tod.

“Oh, yes. Whatever may be the truth as to his failings,she sees none in him. And, my dears, better that it should be so. She earns a little money of me, apart from teaching Lena,” added Mrs. Todhetley.

“What at?” asked Tod. “Teaching you?”

The mother shook her head with a smile. “I found out, Joseph, that she is particularly skilful at mending old lace. I have some that needs repairing. She takes it home and does it at her leisure—and you cannot imagine how grateful she is.”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen—close upon twenty, I think she said,” replied the mother. And there the conversation ended, for Mrs. Todhetley had to go to the kitchen to give the daily orders.

The morning wore on. We went to Church Dykely and were back again by twelve o’clock. Tod had got Don on the lawn, making him jump for biscuit, when the dog rushed off, barking, and we heard a scream. A young lady in a straw hat and a half-mourning cotton dress was running away from him, she and Lena having come out of the house together.

“Come here, Don,” said Tod in his voice of authority, which the good Newfoundland dog never disobeyed. “How dare you, sir? Johnny, lad, I suppose that’s Miss Barbary.”

I had forgotten all about her. A charming girl, as the mother had said, slight and graceful, with a face like a peach blossom, dimpled cheeks, soft light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes. Not the hard, steel-blue eyes that her father had: sweet eyes, these, with a gentle, loving look in them.

“You need not be afraid of the dog,” cried Tod, advancing to where she stood, behind the mulberry tree. “Miss Barbary, I believe?”—lifting his cap.

“Yes,” she said in a frank tone, turning her frank face to him; “I am Katrine Barbary. It is a very large dog—and he barks at me.”

Large he was, bigger than many a small donkey. A brave, faithful, good-tempered dog, he, and very handsome, his curly white coat marked out with black. Gentle to friends and respectable strangers, Don was at mortal enmity with tramps and beggars: we could not cure him of this, so he was chained up by day. At night he was unchained to roam the yard at will, but the gate was kept locked. Had he got out, he might have pinned the coat of any loose man he met, but I don’t believe he would have bitten him. A good fright Don would give, but not mortal injury. At least, we had never yet known him to do that.

Lena ran up in her short pink frock, her light curls flying.“Miss Barbary is always afraid when she hears Don bark,”she said to us. “She will not go near the yard; she thinks he’ll bite her.”

“I will teach you how to make friends with him,” said Tod:“though he would never hurt you, Miss Barbary. Come here and pat his head whilst I hold him; call him by his name gently. Once he knows you, he would protect you from harm with his life.”

She complied with ready obedience, though the roses left her cheeks. “There,” said Tod, loosing the dog, and letting her pat him at leisure, “see how gentle he is; how affectionately he looks up at you!”

“Please not to think me very silly!” she pleaded earnestly, as though beseeching pardon for a sin. “I have never been used to dogs. We do not keep dogs in France. At least very few people do. Oh dear!”

Something that she carried in her left hand wrapped in paper had dropped on to the lawn. Don pounced upon it.“Oh, please take it from him! please, please!” she cried in terror. Tod laughed, and extricated the little parcel.

“It has some valuable old lace in it of Mrs. Todhetley’s,”she explained as she thanked him. “I am taking it home to mend.”

“You mend old lace famously, I hear,” said Tod, as we walked with her to the entrance gate.

“Yes, I think I do it nearly as well as the nuns who taught me.”

“Have you been in a convent?”

“Only for my education. I was an externe—a daily pupil. My aunt lived next door to it. I went every morning at eight o’clock and returned home at six in the evening to supper.”

“Did you get no dinner?” asked Tod.

She took the question literally. “I had dinner and collation at school; breakfast and supper at home. That was the way in our town with the externes at the convent. We were Protestants, you see, so my aunt liked me to be at home on Sundays. Thank you for teaching Don to know me: and now I will say good morning to you.”

I was holding the gate open for her to pass out, when Ben Gibbon went by, a gun carelessly held over his shoulder. He touched his hat to us, and we gave him a slight nod in reply. Miss Barbary said “Good day, Mr. Gibbon.”

Tod drew down his displeased lips. He had already taken a liking to the girl—so had I, for that matter—she was a true lady, and Mr. Ben Gibbon, a brother to the gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, could not boast of a particularly shining character.

“Do you know him, Miss Barbary?” asked Tod. “Be quiet, Don!” he cried to the dog, which had begun to growl when he saw Gibbon.

“He comes to our house sometimes to see papa. Please pardon me for keeping you waiting,” she added to me, as I still held back the gate. “That gun is pointed this way and it may go off.”

Tod was amused. “You seem to dread guns as much as you dread dogs, Miss Barbary. I will walk home with you,”he said, as she at last came through, the gun having got to a safe distance.

“Oh, but——” she was beginning, and then stopped in confusion, blushing hotly, and looking at both of us. “I should like it; but——would it be proper?”

“Proper!” echoed Tod, staring, and then bursting into a fit of laughter long and loud. “Oh dear! why, Miss Barbary, you must be French all over! Johnny, you can come, too. Lena, run back again; you have not any hat on.”

Crossing the road to take the near field way, we went along the path that led beside the hedge, and soon came in view of Caramel Cottage; it was only a stone’s throw, so to say, from our house. An uncommonly lonely look it had, buried there amidst many trees, with the denser trees of the Grove close beyond it. We asked her whether she did not find it dull here.

“At first I did, very; I do still a little: it is so different from the lively town I have lived in, where we knew all the people, and they knew us. But we shall soon be more lively,” she resumed, after a pause. “A cousin is coming to stay with us.”

“Indeed,” said Tod. “Is it a lady or a gentleman?”

“Oh, it is a gentleman—Edgar Reste. He is not my cousin by kin; not really related to me; but papa says he will be as my cousin, as my brother even, and that he is very nice. Papa’s last wife was Miss Reste, and he is her nephew. He is a barrister in London, and he has been much overworked, and he is coming here to-morrow for rest and country air.”

Within the low green gate of the little front garden of Caramel Cottage stood Mr. Barbary, in his brown velveteen shooting coat and breeches of the same, that became him and his straight lithe limbs so well. Every time I saw him the beauty of his face struck me afresh; but so did the shifty expression of his eyes.

“There’s papa!” exclaimed the girl, her dimples lighting up. “And—why, there’s a gentleman with him—a stranger! I wonder who it is?”

I saw him as he came from the porch down the narrow garden-path. A slight, slender young man of middle height and distinguished air, with a pale, worn, nice-looking face, and laughing, luminous dark brown eyes. Yes, I saw Edgar Reste for the first time at this his entrance at Caramel Cottage, and it was a thing to be thankful for that I could not then foresee the nameless horror his departure from it (I may as well say his disappearance) was to shadow forth.

“How do you do?” said Mr. Barbary to us, courteously civil. “Katrine, here’s a surprise for you: your cousin is come. Edgar, this is my little girl.—Mr. Reste,” he added, by way of introduction generally.

Mr. Reste lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and then turned to Katrine with outstretched hand. She met it with a hot blush, as if strange young men did not shake hands with her every day.

“We did not expect you quite so soon,” she gently said, to atone for her first surprise.

“True,” he answered. “But I felt unusually out of sorts yesterday, and thought it would make no difference to Mr. Barbary whether I came to-day or to-morrow.”

His voice had a musical ring; his manner was open and honest. He might be Pointz Barbary’s nephew by marriage, but I am sure he was not by nature.

“They’ll fall in love with one another, those two; you’ll see,” said Tod to me as we went home. “Did you mark his pleased face when he spoke to her, Johnny—and how she blushed?”

“Oh, come, Tod! they tell me I am fanciful. What are you?”

“Not fanciful with your fancies, lad. As to you, Mr. Don”—turning to the dog, which had done nothing but growl while we stood before Barbary’s gate, “unless you mend your manners, you shall not come out again. What ails you, sir, to-day?”

II

If love springs out of companionship, why then, little wonder that it found its way into Caramel Cottage. They were with each other pretty nearly all day and every day, that young man and that young woman; and so—what else was to be expected?

“We must try and get you strong again,” said Mr. Barbary to his guest, who at first, amidst other adverse symptoms, could eat nothing. No matter what dainty little dish old Joan prepared, Mr. Reste turned from it.

Mr. Barbary had taken to old Joan with the house. A little, dark, active woman, she, with bright eyes and a mob-cap of muslin. She was sixty years old; quick, capable, simple and kindly. We don’t get many such servants now-a-days. One defect Joan had—deafness. When a voice was close to her, it was all right; at a distance she could not hear it at all.

“How long is it that you have been ailing, Cousin Edgar?” asked Miss Barbary, one day when they were sitting together.

“Oh, some few weeks, Cousin Katrine,” he answered in a tone to imitate hers—and then laughed. “Look here, child, don’t call me ‘Cousin Edgar!’ For pity’s sake, don’t!”

“I know you are not my true cousin,” she said, blushing furiously.

“It’s not that. If we were the nearest cousins that can be, it would still be silly.” Objectionable, was the word he had all but used. “It is bad taste; has not a nice sound to cultivated ears—as I take it. I am Edgar, if you please; and you are Katrine.”

“In France we say ‘mon cousin,’ or ‘ma cousine,’ when speaking to one,” returned Katrine.

“But we are not French; we are English.”

“Well,” she resumed, as her face cooled down—“why did you not take rest before? and what is it that has made you ill?”

He shook his head thoughtfully. The parlour window, looking to the front, was thrown up before them. A light breeze tempered the summer heat, wafting in sweetness from the homely flowers and scented shrubs. The little garden was crowded with them, as all homely gardens were then. Roses, lilies, columbines, stocks, gillyflowers, sweet peas, sweet Williams, pinks white and red, tulips, pansies (or as they were then generally called, garden-gates), mignonette, bachelor’s buttons, and lots of others, sweet or not sweet, that I can’t stay to recall: and clusters of marjoram and lavender and “old-man” and sweet-briar, and jessamines white and yellow, and woodbine, and sweet syringa; and the tall hollyhock, and ever true but gaudy sunflower—each and all flourished there in their respective seasons. Amidst the grand “horticulture,” as it is phrased, of these modern days, it is a pleasure to lose one’s self in the memories of these dear old simple gardens. Sometimes I get wondering if we shall ever meet them again—say in Heaven.

They sat there at the open window enjoying the fragrance. Katrine had made a paper fan, and was gently fluttering it to and fro before her flushed young face.

“I have burnt the candle at both ends,” continued Mr. Reste. “That is what’s the matter with me.”

“Y—es,” hesitated she, not quite understanding.

“At law business all day, and at literary work the best part of the night, year in and year out—it has told upon me, Katrine.”

“But why should you do both?” asked Katrine.

“Why? Oh, because—because my pocket is a shallow pocket, and has, moreover, a hole in it.”

She laughed.

“Not getting briefs showered in upon me as one might hope my merits deserve—I know not any young barrister who does—I had to supplement my earnings in that line by something else, and I took to writing. That is up-hill work, too; but it brings in a few shillings now and again. One must pay one’s way, you know, Katrine, if possible; and with some of us it is apt to be a rather extravagant way.”

“Is it with you?” she asked, earnestly.

“It was. I squandered money too freely at first. My old uncle gave me a fair sum to set up with when my dinners were eaten and I was called; and I suppose I thought the sum would never come to an end. Ah! we buy our experience dearly.”

“Will not the old uncle give you more?”

“Not a stiver—this long while past. He lives in India, and writing to ask him does no good. And he is the only relative left to me in the world.”

“Except papa.”

Edgar Reste lifted his eyebrows. “Your father is not my relative, young lady. His late wife was my aunt; my father’s sister.”

“Did your father leave you no money, when he died?”

“Not any. He was a clergyman with a good benefice, but he lived up to his income and did not save anything. No, I have only myself to lean on. Don’t know whether it will turn out to be a broken reed.”

“If I could only help you!” breathed Katrine.

“You are helping me more than I can say,” he answered, impulsively. “When with you I have a feeling of rest—of peace. And that’s what I want.”

Which avowal brought a hot blush again to Miss Katrine’s cheek and a curious thrill somewhere round about her heart.

Time went on. Before much of it had elapsed, they were in love with one another for ever and for ever, with that first love that comes but once in a lifetime. That is, in secret; it was not betrayed or spoken of by either of them, or intended to be. Mr. Reste, Barrister-at-law (and briefless), could as soon have entertained thoughts of setting up a coach-and-four, as of setting up a wife. He had not a ghost of the means necessary at present, he saw not the smallest chance yet of attaining them. Years and years and years might go by before that desirable pinnacle in the social race was reached; and it might never be reached at all. It would be the height of dishonour, as he considered, to persuade Katrine Barbary into an engagement, which might never be fulfilled. How could he condemn her to wear out her heart and her life and her days in loneliness, sighing for him, never seeing him—he at one end of the world, she at the other? for that’s how, lover-like, he estimated the distance between this and the metropolis. So he never let a word of his love escape him, and he guarded his looks, and treated Katrine as his little cousin.

And she? Be you sure, she was as reticent as he. An inexperienced young maiden, scrupulously and modestly brought up, she kept her secret zealously. It is true she could not help her blushes, or the tell-tale thrilling of her soft voice; but Edgar Reste was not obliged to read them correctly.

Likely enough he could penetrate, as the weeks wore on, some of the ins and outs in the private worth of Mr. Barbary. In fact, he did do so. He found that gentleman rather addicted to going abroad at night when reasonable people were in bed and asleep. Mr. Barbary gave him his views upon the subject. Poaching, he maintained, was a perfectly legitimate and laudable occupation. “It’s one to be proud of, instead of the contrary,” he asserted, one September day, when they were in the gun-room together.“Proud of, Edgar.”

“For a gentleman?” laughed Mr. Reste, who invariably made light of the subject. And he glanced at his host curiously from between his long dark eyelashes and straight, fine eyebrows; at the dark, passive, handsome face, at the long slender fingers, busy over the lock of his favourite gun.

“For a gentleman certainly. Why should common men usurp all its benefit? The game laws are obnoxious laws, and it behoves us to set them at naught.”

Another amused laugh from Mr. Reste.

“Who hesitates to do a bit of smuggling?” argued the speaker. “Answer me that, Reste. Nobody. Nobody, from a prince to a peasant, from poor Jack Tar to his superfine commander, but deems it meritorious to cheat the Customs. When a man lands here or yonder with a few contraband things about him, and gets them through safely, do his friends and acquaintances turn the cold shoulder upon him? Not a bit of it; they regard it as a fine feather in his cap.”

“Oh, no doubt.”

“Poaching is the same thing. It is also an amusement. Oh, it is grand fun, Edgar Reste, to be out on a fine night and dodge the keepers!” continued Mr. Barbary, with enthusiasm. “The spice of daring in it, of danger, if you choose to put it that way, stimulates the nerves like wine.”

“Not quite orthodox, though, mon ami.”

“Orthodox be hanged. Stolen pleasures are sweetest, as we all know. You shall go out with me some night, Edgar, and judge for yourself.”

“Don’t say but I will—just to look on—if you’ll ensure my getting back in safety,” said the barrister, in a tone that might be taken for jest or earnest, assent or refusal.

“Back in safety!” came the mocking echo, as if to get back in safety from midnight poaching were a thing as sure as the sun. “We’ll let a week or two go on; when shooting first comes in the keepers are safe to be on the alert; and then I’ll choose a night for you.”

“All right. I suppose Katrine knows nothing of this?”

Mr. Barbary lodged his gun in the corner against the wainscot, and turned to look at the barrister. “Katrine!”he repeated, in surprised reproach. “Why, no. And take care that you don’t tell her.”

Mr. Reste nodded.

“She is the most unsuspicious, innocent child in regard to the ways of the naughty world that I’ve ever met with,”resumed Barbary. “I don’t think she as much as knows what poaching means.”

“I wonder you should have her here,” remarked the younger man, reflectively.

“How can I help it? There’s nowhere else for her to be. She is too old to be put to school; and if she were not, I have not the means to pay for her. It does not signify; she will never suspect anything,” concluded Mr. Barbary.

Please do not think Caramel Cottage grand enough to possess a regular “gun-room.” Mr. Barbary called it so, because he kept his two guns in it, also his fishing-tackle and things of that sort. Entering at the outer porch and over the level door-sill, to the narrow house-passage, the parlour lay on the left, and was of pretty good size. The gun-room lay on the right; a little square room with bare boards, unfurnished save for a deal table, a chair or two, and a strong cupboard let into the wall, which the master of the house kept locked. Behind this room was the kitchen, which opened into the back yard. This yard, on the kitchen side, was bounded by dwarf wooden palings, having a low gate in their midst. Standing at the gate and looking sideways, you could see the chimneys of Dyke Manor. On the opposite side, the yard was enclosed by various small outbuildings and adjuncts belonging to a cottage homestead. A rain-water barrel stood in the corner by the house; an open shed next, in which knives were cleaned and garden tools kept; then came the pump; and lastly, a little room called the brewhouse, used for washing and brewing, and for cooking also during the worst heat of summer. A furnace was built beside the grate, and its floor was paved with square red bricks. Beyond this yard, quite open to it, lay a long garden, well filled with vegetables and fruit trees, and enclosed by a high hedge. Upstairs were three bed chambers. Mr. Barbary occupied the largest and best, which was over the parlour; the smaller one over the gun-room had been assigned to Edgar Reste, both of them looking front; whilst Katrine’s room was above the kitchen, looking to the yard and the garden. Old Joan slept in a lean-to loft in the roof. There is a reason for explaining all this.

III

He had looked like a ghost when we went to school after the races; he looked like a hale, hearty man when we got home from the holidays at Michaelmas and to eat the goose. Of course he had had pretty near eight weeks’ spell of idleness and country air at Caramel Cottage. To say the truth, we felt surprised at his being there still.

“Well, it is longer than I meant to stay,” Mr. Reste admitted, when Tod said something of this, “The air has done wonders for me.”

“Why longer? The law courts do not open yet.”

“I had thoughts of going abroad. However, that can stay over for next year.”

“Have you had any shooting?”

“No. I don’t possess a licence.”

It was on the tip of Tod’s tongue, as I could well see, to ask why he did not take out a licence, but he checked it. This little colloquy was held at the Manor gate on Saturday, the day after our return. Miss Barbary was leaving Lena at the usual time, and he had come strolling across the field to meet her. They went away together.

“What did I tell you, Johnny?” said Tod, turning to me, as soon as they were out of hearing. “It is a regular case of over-head-and-ears: cut and dried and pickled.”

“I don’t see what you judge by, Tod.”

“Don’t you! You’ll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little place of Barbary’s unless he had some strong motive to keep him there! I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation.”

“I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did.”

“He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though, for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding, I should say, as of a blue moon.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Want of funds. I’d start for London, if I were you, Johnny, and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence.”

They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her. And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my knowledge later on.

“Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?”Katrine was asking him.

“Yes, I once thought of it,” he answered. “I have friends living at Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave Worcestershire and you, Katrine.”

“But why?”

“Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do as we like in it!”

“When shall you come again?”

“Perhaps never,” he answered, incautiously.

“Never!” she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it from him. It was a great shock.

“Katrine, my dear,” he said with some emotion, his tones low and earnest, “I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me. But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at: he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm’s length. I had a dream the other night,” he added, after a pause: “I thought I was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at Westminster—who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I burst out laughing.”

“At the contrast it presented to reality?” she breathed.

“Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest of a home, though ever so small, it would be—something: but I am not. And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends.”

“Yes, I see, Edgar,” she answered, softly sighing.

“Shall you miss me when I am gone?”

Some queer feeling took her throat; she could not speak. Mr. Reste stopped to pick a little pale blue-bell that grew under the hedge.

“I do not know how I shall bear with the loneliness then,” she said in answer, seemingly more to herself than to him, or to the blue sky right before her, on which her eyes were fixed. “And I shall be more afraid when you are no longer in the house.”

“Afraid!” he exclaimed, turning to her in blank surprise.“What are you afraid of, Katrine?”

“It—it is all so solitary for me…. Old Joan is too deaf to be talked to much; and papa is either at work in the garden or shut up in the gun-room, busy with his things. Please don’t laugh at my childishness!”

She had paused, just to get over her embarrassment, the avowal having slipped from her unwittingly. The fact was, poor Katrine Barbary had been rudely awakened from her state of innocent security. Some days back, when in the cottage hut of Mary Standish, for Katrine liked to go about and make friends with the people, that ill-doing husband of Mary’s, Jim, chanced to be at home. Jim had just been had up before the magistrates at Alcester on some suspicion connected with snares and gins, but there was no certain proof forthcoming, and he had to be discharged. Katrine remarked that if she were Jim she should leave off poaching, which must be a very dreadful thing, and frightfully hazardous. Mr. Jim replied that it was not a dreadful thing, nor hazardous either, for them that knew what they were about, and he referred her to her father for confirmation of this assertion. One word led to another. Jim Standish, his ideas loose and lawless, never thought to hurt the young lady by what he disclosed, for he was kind enough when he had no motive to be the contrary, but when Katrine left the hut, she carried with her the terrible knowledge that her father was as fond of poaching as the worst of them. Since then she had lived in a state of chronic terror.

“Yes, it must be very solitary for you,” assented Mr. Reste in a grave tone, and he had no idea that her answer was an evasive one, or its lightness put on; “but I cannot help you, Katrine. Should you ever need counsel, or—or protection in any way, apply for it to your friends at Dyke Manor. They seem kind, good people, and would be strong to aid.”

Turning in at the little side gate as he spoke, they saw Mr. Barbary at work in the garden. He was digging up a plot of ground some seven or eight feet square under the branches of the summer-apple tree, which grew at this upper end of the garden, nearly close to the yard.

“What is he going to plant there, I wonder?” listlessly spoke Mr. Reste, glancing at the freshness of the turned-up mould.

“Winter cabbages, perhaps; but I am sure I don’t know,”returned Katrine. “I do not understand the seasons for planting vegetables as papa does.”

This, as I have just said, was on Saturday. We saw Mr. Reste and Katrine at church the next day: a place Barbary did not often trouble with his presence; and walked with them, on coming out, as far as the two ways lay. Our people liked the look of Edgar Reste, but had not put themselves forward to make much acquaintance with him, on account of Barbary. One Tuesday, when the Squire was driving to Alcester, he had overtaken Mr. Reste walking thither to have a look at the market, and he invited him to a seat in the carriage. They drove in and drove back together, and had between the times a snack of bread and cheese at the Angel. The Squire took quite a fancy to the young barrister, and openly said to him he wished he was staying anywhere but at Caramel Cottage.

“You are thinking of leaving soon, I hear,” said the Squire, as we halted in a group when parting, on this same walk from church.

“In about a week,” replied Mr. Reste. “I may go on Saturday next; certainly not later than the following Monday.”

“Shall you like a drive to Evesham between this and then?” went on the Squire. “I am going over there one of these days.”

“I shall like it very much indeed.”

“Then I will let you know which day I go. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” answered Mr. Reste, lifting his hat in salute to us all, as he walked on with Katrine.

Am I lingering over these various trifling details? I suppose it will seem so. But the truth is, a dreadful part of the story is coming on (as poor Katrine said of the poaching) and my pen holds back from it.

A day or two had gone on. It was Tuesday morning, warm and bright with sunshine. Katrine sat in the parlour at Caramel Cottage, pouring out the coffee at the breakfast-table.

“Will you take some ham, Katrine?”

“No, thank you, papa; I have no appetite.”

“No appetite! nonsense!” and Mr. Barbary put a slice of ham on her plate. “Do you feel inclined for a walk as far as Church Leet this morning, Edgar?”

“I don’t mind,” said Mr. Reste. “About three miles, is it not?”

“Three miles across the fields as straight as the crow flies. I want to see a man who lives there. He—why, that’s Pettipher coming here!—the postman,” broke off Mr. Barbary. Letters were not written every day then, and very few found their way to Caramel Cottage.

Old Joan went to the door, and then came in. She was like a picture. A dark-blue linsey gown down to her ancles, neat black stockings and low, tied shoes, a check apron, and a bow of black ribbon perched in front behind the flapping border of her white muslin mob-cap.

“Pettipher says ’tis for the gentleman,” said Joan, putting the letter, a thick one, on the table by Mr. Reste.

“Why, it is from Amphlett!” he exclaimed, as he took it up, looking at the great sprawling writing. “What on earth has he got to say?”

Opening the letter, a roll of bank-notes fell out. Mr. Reste stared at them with intense curiosity.

“Is it your ship come in?” asked Katrine gaily: for he was wont to say he would do this or that when “his ship came home.”

“No, Katrine; not much chance of that. Let me see what he says.”

“‘Dear Reste,—I enclose you my debt at last. The other side have come to their senses, and given in, and paid over to me instalment the first. Thank you, old friend; you are a good fellow never to have bothered me. Let me know your movements when you write back; I ask it particularly. Ever yours, W. A.’

“Well, I never expected that,” cried Mr. Reste, as he read the words aloud.

“Money lent by you, Edgar?” asked Mr. Barbary.

“Yes; three or four years ago. I had given it up as a bad job. Never thought he would gain his cause.”

“What cause? Who is he?”

“Captain Amphlett, of the Artillery, and an old friend of mine. As to the cause, it was some injustice that his avaricious relatives involved him in, and he had no resource but to bring an action. I am glad he has gained it; he is an honest fellow, no match for them in cunning.”

Mr. Reste was counting the notes while he spoke; six of them for ten pounds each. Katrine happened to look at her father, and was startled at the expression of his face—at the grasping, covetous, evil regard he had fixed upon the notes. She felt frightened, half sick, with some vague apprehension. Mr. Reste smoothed the notes out one by one, and laid them open on the breakfast cloth in a little stack. While doing this, he caught Mr. Barbary’s covetous look.

“You’d like such a windfall yourself,” he said laughingly to his host.

“I should. For that a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother.”

Katrine instinctively shuddered, though the avowal was given in a half jesting tone. A prevision of evil seized her.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.

II.—DISAPPEARANCE.

I

October was setting in beautifully. Some people say it is the most lovely month in the year when the skies are blue and genial.

Seated at the breakfast-table at Caramel Cottage that Tuesday morning, with the window thrown open to the warm, pleasant air, the small party of three might have enjoyed that air, but for being preoccupied with their own reflections. Edgar Reste was thinking of the bank-notes which the postman had just brought him in Captain Amphlett’s letter; Katrine Barbary sat shrinking from the vague fear imparted to her by the curious avowal her father had made in language not too choice, as his covetous eyes rested on the money: “For that, a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother.” While Mr. Barbary had started instantly up and flung the window higher, as if in the silence that followed the words, they had struck back upon himself unpleasantly, and he sought to divert attention from them.

“A grand day for the outlying crops,” he remarked, his lithe, slender form, his pale, perfect features showing out well in the light of the brilliant morning. “But most of the grain is in, I think. We shall have a charming walk to Church Leet, Edgar.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Reste, as he folded the notes together and placed them in his pocket-book. There were six of them for £10 each.

Breakfast over, Katrine set off for Dyke Manor that morning as usual, to talk to Lena in French, and teach her to read it. She stayed luncheon with us. Chancing to say that her father and his guest were gone to Church Leet, Mrs. Todhetley kept her.

At four o’clock, when Katrine went home, she found they had returned, and were then shut up in the gun-room. Katrine could hear the hum of their voices, with now and again a burst of merry laughter from Edgar Reste.

“Have they had dinner?” she enquired of Joan.

“Ay, sure they have, Miss Katrine. They got back at two o’clock, and I prepared the dinner at once.”

I had lent Katrine that afternoon the “Vicar of Wakefield,”—which she said she had never read; one could hardly believe such a thing of an English girl, but I suppose it was through her having lived over in France. Taking it into the back garden, she sat down on a rustic bench, one or two of which stood about. By-and-by Edgar Reste came out and sat down beside her.

“Had you a nice walk to-day?” she asked.

“Very,” he answered. “What a quaint little village Church Leet is! Hardly to be called a village, though. Leet Hall is a fine old place.”

“Yes, I have heard so. I have not seen it.”

“Not seen it! Do you mean to say, Katrine, that you have never been to Church Leet?”

“Not yet. Nobody has ever invited me to go, and I cannot walk all that way by myself, you know.”

He was sitting sideways, his left arm leaning on the elbow of the bench, his kindly, luminous brown eyes fixed on her fair pretty face, all blushes and dimples. Ah, if fortune had but smiled upon him!—if he might but have whispered to this young girl, who had become so dear to him, of the love that filled his whole heart!

“Suppose you walk over with me one of these fine days before I leave?” he continued. “It won’t be too far for you, will it?”

“Oh no. I should like to go.”

“There is the prettiest churchyard you ever saw, to rest in. And such a quaint little church, covered with ivy. The Rectory, standing by, is quite a grand mansion in comparison with the church.”

“And the church has a history, I believe.”

“Ay, as connected with the people of the Hall and the Rectory; and with its own chimes, that never played, I hear, but disaster followed. We will go then, Katrine, some afternoon between now and Saturday.”

Her face fell; she turned it from him. “Must you leave on Saturday, Edgar?”

“My dear little cousin, yes. Cousins in name, you know we are, though not in reality.”

“You did say you might stay until Monday.”

“Ay, my will would be good to stay till Monday, and many a Monday after it: but you see, Katrine, I have neglected my work too long, and I cannot break into another week. So you must please make the most of me until Saturday,” he added playfully, “when I shall take the evening train.”

“You English do not care to travel on a Sunday, I notice.”

“We English! Allow me to remind Mademoiselle that she is just as much English as are the rest of us.”

Katrine smiled.

“My good mother instilled all kinds of old-world notions into me, Katrine. Amongst them was that of never doing week-day work on a Sunday unless compelled by necessity.”

“Do you never work on a Sunday—at your reviews and writings, and all that?”

“Never. I am sure it would not bring me luck if I did. Suppose we fix Thursday for walking to Church Leet?”

“That will do nicely. Unless—Squire Todhetley invited you to go with him to Evesham one day, you know,” broke off Katrine. “He may just fix upon Thursday.”

“In that case we will take our walk on Friday.”

A silence ensued. Their hearts were very full, and that makes speech reticent. Katrine glanced now and again at the pages of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” which lay in her lap, but she did not read it. As to the barrister, he was looking at her; at the face that had become so dear to him. They might never meet again, nothing on earth might come of the present intimacy and the sweet burning longings, but he knew that he should remember her to the end of time. A verse of one of Moore’s melodies passed through his mind: unconsciously he began to hum it:

“O, that hallowed form is ne’er forgot

Which first love traced;

Still it, lingering, haunts the greenest spot

On memory’s waste.”

“Here comes Joan to say tea is ready,” interrupted Katrine.

They strolled indoors slowly, side by side. The tea-tray waited in the parlour. Mr. Barbary came in from the gun-room, and they all sat down to the table.

After tea he went back to the gun-room, Mr. Reste with him, leaving Katrine alone. She had the candles lighted and began to mend a piece of Mrs. Todhetley’s valuable old lace. Presently Joan came in to ask a question.

“Miss Katrine, is it the brace of partridges or the pheasants that are to be cooked for supper? Do you know?”

“No, that I don’t,” said Katrine. “But I can ask.”

Putting down her work, she went to the gun-room and gently opened the door. Upon which, she heard these remarkable words from Mr. Reste:

“I wouldn’t hesitate at all if it were not for the moon.”

“The moon makes it all the safer,” contended Mr. Barbary. “Foes can’t rush upon one unawares when the moon’s shining. I tell you this will be one of the best possible nights for you.”

“Papa, papa,” hurriedly broke in Katrine, speaking through the dusk of twilight, “is Joan to cook the pheasants or the partridges?”

“The pheasants,” he answered sharply. “Shut the door.”

So the pheasants were dressed for supper, and very nice they proved with their bread-sauce and rich gravy. Mr. Barbary especially seemed to enjoy them; his daughter did not.

Poor Katrine’s senses were painfully alert that night, as she lay listening after getting to bed. The words she had overheard in the gun-room seemed to her to bear but one meaning—that not only was her father going abroad into the wilds of danger, but Edgar Reste also. They had gone to their respective rooms early, soon after she went to hers; but that might be meant as a blind and told nothing.

By-and-by, she caught a sound as of the stairs creaking. Mr. Reste and her father were both creeping down them. Katrine flew to her window and peeped behind the blind.

They went out together by the back door. The bright moonbeams lay full upon the yard. Mr. Reste seemed to be attired like her father, in high leggings and a large old shooting-coat, no doubt borrowed plumes. Each of them carried a gun, and they stole cautiously out at the little side gate.

“Oh,” moaned the unhappy Katrine, “if papa would but take better care of himself! If he would but leave off doing this most dreadful and dangerous thing!”

Whether Katrine fell asleep after that, or not, she could never decide: it appeared as though but a short time had elapsed, when she was startled by a sharp sound outside, close to the house. It might have been the report of a gun, but she was not sure. This was followed by some stir in the yard and covert talking.

“They are bringing in the game they have shot,” thought Katrine, “but oh, I am thankful they have got back safely!”And she put the pillow over her head and ears, and lay shivering.

Squire Todhetley was as good and lenient a man at heart as could be found in our two counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; fonder of forgiving sins and sinners than of bringing them to book, and you have not read of him all these years without learning it. But there was one offence that stirred his anger up to bubbling point, especially when committed against himself. And that was poaching.

So that, when we got downstairs to breakfast at Dyke Manor on the following morning, Wednesday, and were greeted with the news that some poachers had been out on our land in the night, and had shot at the keepers, it was no wonder the Squire went into a state of commotion, and that the rest of us partook of it.

“Johnny, tell Mack to fetch Jones; to bring him here instantly,” fumed he. “Those Standishes have been in this work!”

I went to carry the orders to Mack in the yard. In passing back, after giving them, I saw that the dog-kennel was empty and the chain lying loose.

“Where’s Don?” I asked. “Who has taken him out?”

“Guess he have strayed out of hisself, Master Johnny,”was Mack’s answer. “He was gone when I come on this morning, sir, and the gate were standing wide open.”

“Gone then?—and the gate open? Where’s Giles?”

But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what had been the matter with him. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good for him, but it did happen at intervals.

Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were about suited to the year One.

His tale of the night’s doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke’s Neck—why it should have been so named nobody understood—were surprised by the keepers early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury.

“You must unearth them,” he said to Jones: “don’t tell me. They can’t have buried themselves, the villains!”

“No need to look far for ’em, Squire,” protested Jones.“It’s them jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it’s not, I’ll eat my head.”

“Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?”retorted the Squire. “Of course it is the Standishes.”

“Well, your honour, because I can’t get at ’em,” said Jones helplessly. “Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin that he was never out of his bed last night; and t’other, Tom, ain’t apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary.”

It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her morning’s work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall, were chanting a duet upon the poachers’ iniquity, and she halted by me to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine looked pale as a sheet.

Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr. Reste.

“If the poachers had been taken, sir—what then?” she said tremblingly to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices.

“What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol, and the neighbourhood well rid of them,” was the impulsive answer.

“Snug and safe, miss,” put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in his thick white stockings, “a-waiting to stand their trial next spring assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for ’em, I hope—a using o’ their guns indeed!”

“Were they known at all?” gasped Katrine. “And might not the gamekeepers have shot them? Perhaps have killed them?”

“Killed ’em or wounded ’em, like enough,” assented Jones, “and it would be a good riddance of such varmint, as his worship says, miss. And a misfortin it is that they benot known. Which is an odd thing to my mind, sir, considering the lightness o’ the night: and I’d like to find out whether them there keepers did their duty, or didn’t do it.”

“I can’t see the dog anywhere, father,” interrupted Tod, dashing in at this moment in a white heat, for he had been racing about in search of Don.

“What, is the dog off?” exclaimed old Jones.

“Yes, he is,” said Tod. “And if those poachers have stolen him, I’ll try and get them hanged.”

Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.

We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.

Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious pain—though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt, and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn into it even for one night? She could not understand that.

Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely unusual thing.

“How late you are with those beans, Joan!” listlessly observed Katrine.

“The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy, and it hindered me,” explained Joan.“They were having a fine noise together when I got back,”she added, dropping her voice.

“Who were?” quickly cried Katrine.

“The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were, like two savages. I could hear ’em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was here when I went out, but he’d gone when I came in with the brandy.”

What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually silent.

Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the unpleasantness between them was at an end.

She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel’s Farm, and made up to her.

“You look hot and tired,” she said to us.

“So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in search of Don, as we have,” answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.

At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to us and went in at the gate.

“You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day, I suppose, Mr. Barbary?” questioned Tod.

“No, I have not,” he answered. “My daughter mentioned to me that he had strayed away.”

“Strayed away or been stolen,” corrected Tod. “The dog was a favourite, and it has put my father out more than you’d believe. He thinks the Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in the night.”

“Shouldn’t wonder but they have,” said Mr. Barbary.

Standing by in silence, I had been wondering what had come to Mr. Reste. He leaned against the porch, listening to this, arms folded, brow lowering, face dark, not a bit like his own pleasant self.

“I am about the neighbourhood a good deal; I’ll not fail to keep a look-out,” said Mr. Barbary, as we were turning away. “He was a fine dog, and might prove a temptation to the Standishes; but I should be inclined to think it more likely that he has strayed to a distance than that they have captured him. They might find a difficulty in concealing a large, powerful dog such as he is.”

“Not they; they are deep enough for any wicked action,”concluded Tod, as we went onwards.

It was tea-time then at Caramel Cottage, and they sat down to take it. Mr. Barbary was sociable and talked of this and that; Edgar Reste spoke hardly a word; Katrine busied herself with the teapot and cups. At dusk Ben Gibbon came in, and Katrine was sent to bear Joan company in the kitchen. Brandy and whisky were put upon the table, Joan being called to bring in hot and cold water. They sat drinking, as Katrine supposed, and talking together in covert tones for two hours, when Gibbon left; upon which Katrine was graciously told by her father she might return to the parlour. Her head ached badly, she felt ill at ease, and when supper was over went up to bed. But she could not get to sleep.

About eleven o’clock, as she judged it to be, loud and angry sounds arose. Her father and Mr. Reste had renewed their dispute—whatever its cause might be. By-and-by, when it was at its height, she heard Mr. Reste dash out at the back door; she heard her father dash after him. In the yard there seemed to be a scuffle, more hot words, and then a sudden silence. Katrine rose and stole to the window to look.

She could not see either of them. But a noise in the kitchen beneath, as if the fire-irons were thrown down, seemed to say they had come back indoors. Another minute and her father came out with a lighted lantern in his hand; she wondered why, as it was moonlight. He crossed the yard and went into the back kitchen, or brewhouse, as it was more often called, and Katrine, hoping the quarrel was over, got into bed again. Presently the back door was shut with a bang that shook the room, and footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and afterwards all was quiet until morning.

As on the past morning, so it was on this. When Katrine got downstairs she found that neither her father nor Mr. Reste was up. She breakfasted alone, and set off for the Manor afterwards.

But, as it chanced, she was to have partial holiday that day. Lena complained of a sore throat; she was subject to sore throats; so Miss Barbary was released when the lesson was half over, and returned home.

Going to her room to take her bonnet off, she found Joan busy there. From the window she saw her father at work at the far end of the garden. This was Thursday, the day of the projected walk to Church Leet, and very lovely weather. But Mr. Reste had not said anything about it since the Tuesday afternoon.

“Is Mr. Reste gone out, Joan?”

“Mr. Reste is gone, Miss Katrine.”

“Gone where?” asked she.

“Gone away; gone back to London,” said Joan. Upon which Katrine, staring at the old woman, inquired what she meant.

It appeared that Mr. Barbary had left his chamber close upon Katrine’s departure, and sat down to breakfast. When he had finished he called Joan to take the things away. She inquired whether they had not better be left for Mr. Reste. He answered that Mr. Reste was gone. “What, gone away back to London?” Joan cried, in surprise; and her master said, “Yes.” “You might just have knocked me down with a feather, Miss Katrine, I was that took to,”added Joan now, in relating this. “Never to say good-bye to me, nor anything!”

Katrine, thinking there was somebody else he had not said good-bye to, could hardly speak from amazement.“When did he go, Joan? Since breakfast? Or was he gone when I went out?”

“Well, I don’t know,” pondered Joan; “it seems all a moither in my head; as if I couldn’t put this and that together. I never saw nor heard anything of him at all this morning, and I find his bed has not been slept in, which looks as if he went last night. It’s odd, too, that he didn’t say he was going, and it’s odd he should start off to London at midnight. Your papa is in one of his short tempers, Miss Katrine, and I’ve not dared to ask him about it.”

Katrine, as she listened, felt perfectly bewildered. Why had he taken his departure in this strange manner? What for? What had caused him to do it? Joan had told all she knew, and it was of no use questioning her further.

Mr. Reste’s chamber door stood open; Katrine halted at it and looked in. Why! he seemed to have taken nothing with him! His coats were hanging up; trifles belonging to him lay about on chairs; on the side shelf stood his little portable desk—and she had heard him say that he never travelled without that desk, it went with him wherever he went. Opening a drawer or two, she saw his linen, his neckties, his handkerchiefs. What was the meaning of it all? Could he have been recalled to London in some desperate hurry? But no letter or summons of any kind had come to Caramel Cottage, so far as she knew, except the letter from Captain Amphlett on Tuesday morning, and that one had not recalled him.

“There be two pairs of his boots in the kitchen,” said Joan. “He has took none with him but them he’s got on.”

“I must ask papa about it,” cried the puzzled Katrine.

Mr. Barbary was at the bottom of the garden working away at the celery bed in his shirt sleeves; his coat lay across the cucumber-frame.

“What brings you home now?” he cried out, looking up as Katrine drew near.

“The little girl is not well. Papa,” she added, her voice taking a timid, shrinking tone, she hardly knew why, “Joan says Mr. Reste is gone.”

“Well?”

“But why has he left so suddenly, without saying anything about it?”

“He could do so if he pleased. He was at liberty to go or stay.”

Katrine could not dispute that. She hardly liked to say more, her father’s answers were so curt and cross.

“He must have gone unexpectedly, papa.”

“Unexpectedly! Not at all. He has been talking of going all the week.”

Katrine paused. “Is he coming back, papa?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But he has not taken any of his things.”

“I am going to pack his things and send them after him.”

“But——when did he go, papa?”

Mr. Barbary, who had kept on working, drew himself bolt upright. Letting his hands rest on the handle of his spade, he looked sternly into Katrine’s face.

“He went last night.”

“He——he never told me he was going. He never said anything about it.”

“And why should he tell you?” demanded Mr. Barbary.“It was enough that he told me. He thought he had been quite long enough away from his work, and that it was high time to go back to it. I thought the same. That’s all, Katrine; you need not inquire further. And now you can go indoors.”

She walked slowly up the narrow path, conscious that some mystery must lie behind this. Joan was standing in the yard, outside the back-kitchen door, trying to pull it open.

“This here back’us door’s locked!” exclaimed Joan, in her country vernacular. “I want the spare jack out; t’other’s given way at last.”

“It can’t be locked,” dissented Katrine. “It never is.”

“Well, I’ve never known the door locked afore; but ’tis now, Miss Katrine. I noticed it was shut to all day yesterday, but I didn’t try it.”

“It is only stuck,” said Katrine, laying hold of the high old-fashioned bow handle which served to lift the latch inside; and she shook it well.

“What’s that? What are you about?” called out Mr. Barbary, dashing up the path like a flash of lightning.“Let the door alone.”

“Joan says it is locked, papa,” said Katrine, frightened by his manner.

“And what if it is? I have locked up some—some wine there that came in. How dare you meddle with the places I choose to keep closed?”

“It’s the other jack I want out, sir,” said Joan, hearing imperfectly.

“You can’t have the other jack.”

“But, master, the old jack’s broke clean in two, and it’s time to put the lamb down.”

“Cut it into chops,” he cried, waving them both off, and standing, himself, before the door, as if to guard it, with a white, imperious, passionate face.

Single-minded old Joan went indoors, marvelling a little—such a bit of a trouble for him to have opened the back’us door and given her out the jack! Katrine followed, marvelling very much. She did not believe in the wine: felt sure no wine had come in; they never had any; what was it that was locked up there? All in a moment a thought flashed over her that it might be game: poached game: pheasants and partridges and hares. But, upon that thought came another: why should the spoil have been brought in on Tuesday night when it had never (as she believed) been brought before? Just a little came in for their own use, nothing more.

II

That day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way. Tobias Jellico—who had a small draper’s shop at Evesham, and went about the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut—was at Church Dykely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not like the man or his trade; but that’s neither here nor there. Hearing that the Squire’s dog was lost, he at once said he had seen Dick Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake, for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.

I don’t know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman’s own luck, and were rarely caught.

“Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and leaving the yard gate open,” decided the Squire, in his excitement. “The dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I’ll send a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. Dick, and go over myself in the morning.”

“Anyway, I’m glad the dog’s found,” said Duffham.“But what an idiot Dick Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the public streets.”

“Johnny,” said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, “you run over to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start at nine o’clock, tell him.”

About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with its softest bloom upon it.

Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a mass of perplexity, of which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this week out—why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine’s mind by night or by day.

Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had disappeared—vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected, stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?

“It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger, with not a minute to spare,” mused Katrine.

At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front door.

“Sit down, Johnny,” she said, holding out her hand, and making room for me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for—to deliver the Squire’s message to Mr. Reste.

“Mr. Reste has left us,” said Katrine. “He went away last night.”

“Went away last night!” I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly. “What took him off so suddenly?”

Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.

“It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him—don’t you see that, Johnny?” she said. “Even that little desk, full of private papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left.”

“He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps.”

“The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning,” returned Katrine. “It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds; but it did not call him away. Nothing called him away, that I can discover. You can’t think how it is worrying me; it seems just a mystery.”

“Look here, Katrine,” I said, after mentally twisting the matter this way and that, “I’ve known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he went?”

“Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste’s things: but he does not tell me.”

After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, “What do you want here?”

I turned, on my way to the side gate, to explain: that Don had been seen at Evesham in the company of Dick Standish, that the Squire would be driving thither on the morrow, and had thought Mr. Reste might like to go with him.

“Very kind of Mr. Todhetley,” drawled Barbary in his stand-off manner. “Tell him, with my compliments and thanks for his courtesy, that my nephew has left for London.”

“Left for good, I suppose?” I said.

“For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled him, and he had to attend to it without delay.”

I glanced at Katrine: there was the explanation.

“So the dog is at Evesham!” remarked Mr. Barbary. “The Standishes are great rogues, all three of them, and Dick’s the worst. But—I think—had you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. Dick may give you leg-bail in the night.”

“The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a messenger to warn them,” I replied. “I suppose you have not heard any more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?”

“I’ve heard no more than was said at first—that the keepers reported some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the rascals. Wish they had—and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went upstairs betimes.”

To hear him coolly assert this, to see his good-looking face raised unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door to a saint for truth and goodness. I put faith in it, not being then behind the scenes.

Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it. Katrine read the card. “Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station, London. To be left till called for.”

Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a strip of muslin for a frill. He was not there to talk to her in his voice of music—for that’s what she had grown to think it, like other girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again—ever, ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him, and whether he would write to her.

Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence, seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.

Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with consternation. On the lower shelf, staring her right in the face, was Mr. Reste’s Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it. He must have left it downstairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it away on the shelves amongst the other books.

“I wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again?” thought Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered.

“Papa! papa! here’s Mr. Reste’s Bible left out,” she cried, impulsively. “Can you put it into the portmanteau?”

Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was open. In his hand lay some bank-notes; he was holding them towards the candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine, thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him, and her eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cupboard in a covert manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and a sharp tongue.

“Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion? I won’t have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I won’t. Keep it till he chooses to come for it.”

She shrank away frightened, softly closing the door behind her. Those bank-notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him put into his pocket-book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with him?—what brought them in her father’s possession? The advance shadow of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary’s heart.

In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste’s keeping and stolen the notes? She strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. The distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad though that was.—And would he venture abroad to-night again?

Joan’s light foot-fall passed her door, going up to her bed in the roof. Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes; half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly time passes with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve, she thought, when curious sounds, as of digging, seemed to arise from the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time, but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep, uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen.

There, it came again! What could it be? People did not dig up gardens at midnight. Slipping out of bed, she drew the blind aside and peeped out.

The night was light as day, with a bright, clear, beautiful moon: the hunters’ moon. Underneath the summer-apple tree, close at this end of the garden, bent Mr. Barbary, digging away with all his might, his large iron spade turning up the earth swiftly and silently. Katrine’s eyes grew wide with amazement. He had dug up that same plot of ground only a few days ago, in readiness to plant winter greens: she and Edgar Reste had stood looking on for a time, talking with him as to the sort of greens he meant to put in. Why was he digging up the same ground again?—and why was he doing it at this unearthly hour?

It appeared to be a hole that was being dug now, for he threw the spadefuls of mould up on each side pretty far. The ground seemed quite soft and pliant; owing perhaps to its having been so recently turned. As the hole grew larger; wider and longer and deeper; an idea flashed over Katrine that it looked just as though it were meant for a grave. Not that she thought it.

Putting a warm shawl on her shoulders and slippers on her feet, she sat down before the window, drew the blind up an inch or two, and kept looking out, her curiosity greatly excited. The moon shone steadily, the time passed, and the hole grew yet larger. Suddenly Mr. Barbary paused in his work, and held up his head as if to listen. Did he fear, or fancy, a noise in the field pathway outside, or in the dark grove to the right near Caramel’s Farm? Apparently so: and that he must not be seen at his work. For he got out of the hole, left the spade in it, came with noiseless, swift, stealthy movement up the yard, and concealed himself in the dark tool-shed. Presently, he stole across to the little gate, looked well about him to the right and left, and then resumed his digging.

Quite six feet long it soon looked to Katrine, and three or more feet wide, and how deep she knew not. Was it for a grave? The apprehension really stole across her, and with a sick faintness. If so, if so—? A welcome ray of possibility dawned then. Had her father (warned by this stir that was going on, the search for poachers and their spoil) a lot of contraband game in his possession that must be hidden away out of sight? Perhaps so.

It seemed to be finished now. The moon had sailed ever so far across the sky by this time, but was still shining full upon it. Mr. Barbary crept again to the gate and stood listening and looking up and down in the silence of the night. Then he crossed to the brewhouse, took the key from his pocket, unlocked it, and went inside. Katrine could see the flash of the match as he struck a light.

When he emerged from the brewhouse he was dragging a weight along the ground with two strong cords. A huge, unshapely, heavy substance enveloped in what looked like matting or sacking. Dragging it straight over the yard to the grave, Mr. Barbary let it fall carefully in, cords and all, and began to shovel in the mould upon it with desperate haste.

Terror seized on Katrine. What was in that matting? All in an instant, a little corner of the veil—that had obscured from her understanding so much which had seemed mysterious and unfathomable—lifted itself, bringing to her an awful conviction. Was it Edgar Reste that was being put out of the way; buried for ever from the sight of man? Her father must have killed him; must have done it in a passion! Katrine Barbary cried out with a loud and bitter cry.

Fascinated by the sight of terror, she was unable to draw her eyes away. But the next moment they had caught sight of another object, bringing equal terror, though of a different nature: some one, who had apparently crept in at the gate unheard, was standing at the corner of the garden hedge, looking on. Was it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her father and denounce his crime? But, even as she gazed, the figure drew back to make its exit by the gate again, and to Katrine it seemed to take my form.

“It is Johnny Ludlow!” she gasped. “Oh, I pray that it may be! I think he would not betray him.”

Katrine watched on. She saw the grave filled in; she saw her father stamp it down; she saw him carry the superfluous mould to a place under the wall, near the manure bed, and she saw him stamp that down, and then cover it loosely with some of the manure, so that it might look like a part of the heap. Then he seemed to be coming in, and Katrine thought it must be nearing the dawn.

Creeping into bed, she hid her face, that never again ought to show itself amidst honest men, under the clothes. Some covert stir yet seemed to be going on in the yard, as of pumping and scrubbing. Turning from hot to cold, from cold to hot, Katrine was seized with a shivering fit.

“And who really was it watching?” she moaned. “It looked like Johnny, yet I can’t be sure; he stood in the shade.”

But it was me, as the schoolboys say. And the reason of my being there at the small, unearthly hours of the morning, together with the conclusion of this appalling story, will be found in the next chapter.

CARAMEL COTTAGE.

III.—DON THE SECOND.

I

We have a saying in England, “It never rains but it pours,”as applied, not to the rain, but to the occurrences of daily life. Dyke Manor was generally quiet enough, but on Thursday evening—the Thursday already told of—we were destined to have visitors. First of all, arrived Mr. Jacobson, our neighbour at Elm Farm, with his nephew, young Harry Dene; he had his gig put up, meaning to make an evening of it. It turned out to be a night, or nearly so, as you will soon find. Close upon that, Charles Stirling of the Court (my place) came in; and Mrs. Todhetley went to the kitchen to say that we should require supper. The stirring events of the week had brought them over—namely, the encounter on our land between the poachers and the keepers, and the flight of the valuable yard dog, Don, a Newfoundland.

That afternoon, Thursday, we had heard, as may be remembered, that Don was at Evesham, under the keeping of Mr. Dick Standish; and I had been told by Katrine Barbary that Mr. Reste had suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared from Caramel Cottage. Old Jacobson predicted that Dick Standish would come to be hanged; Charles Stirling said he ought to be transported.

“Of course you will prosecute him, Squire?” said Charles Stirling.

“Of course I shall,” replied the Squire, warmly. “The police have him already safe enough if they’ve done their duty, and I shall be over at Evesham in the morning.”

After a jolly supper they got to their pipes, and the time went by on wings. At least, that’s what the master of Elm Farm said when the clocks struck eleven, and he asked leave to order his gig.

It was brought round by Giles, the groom; and we were all assembled in the hall to speed the departure, when old Jones, the constable, burst in upon us at the full speed of his gouty legs, his face in a white heat.

Private information had reached Jones half an hour ago that the poachers intended to be out again that night, but he could not learn in which direction.

Then commotion arose. The Squire and his friend Jacobson were like two demented wild Indians, uncertain what was best to be done to entrap the villains. The gig was ordered away again.

Some time passed in discussion. In these moments of excitement one cannot always bring one’s keenest wits to the fore. Charles Stirling offered to go out and reconnoitre; we, you may be quite sure, were eager to second him. I went with Charles Stirling one way; Tod and Harry Dene went another—leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones.

How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four met at Dyke Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our ramblings. A schoolboy’s ardour is not quickly damped.

Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then separated. I went across towards the village: the other two elsewhere. It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers, and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old constable.

I turned short back at the thought, and made, as the Americans say, tracks for home. My nearest way was through the dense grove of trees at the back of Caramel Farm, and I took it, though it was not the liveliest way by any means.

But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in the stillness of the night. They seemed to come from the direction of Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on the grass as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there; but an idea flashed across me that somebody had got into Mr. Barbary’s well-stocked garden, and was robbing it.

Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace, shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him, thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the garden, and let it fall into what looked like—a freshly dug grave.

Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one does upon a coffin.

This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently. It looked like a mystery, and a dark one; any way it was being done in secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting: perhaps one, or two, or three o’clock.

Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did; and we were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it?—scampering off like that for hours?—for hours!—Three times had the gig been brought out and put up again! Harry was bundled headforemost into the gig, and Mr. Jacobson drove off.

And it turned out that my suspicion touching old Jones was right. Some young men had played the trick upon him. I need not have mentioned it at all, but for seeing what I did see in Barbary’s garden.

How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours. Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason with herself that it could not be; that so dreadful a thing was not possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it: and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father’s covetous look at them and his dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night, and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan’s memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. Not wine. And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste’s effects and addressing them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for ever—unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering witness to his secret burial.

“What’s the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?”

The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes.

“I have a headache,” answered Katrine, faintly.

“Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day.”

“Oh, I would rather go; I must go,” she said hastily. For this good girl had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he—Edgar—was her first and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him; but she was her father’s child, and held him sacred.

“Why must you go?” demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that the night’s work did not seem to have spoiled.

“The air—the walk—may do me good.”

“Well, you know best, child. I suppose Todhetley be off to Evesham after that dog of theirs,” Mr. Barbary went on to remark. “Master Dick Standish must be a bold sinner to steal the dog one day and parade the open streets with it the next! If—— What is it now, Joan?”

For old Joan had come in with a face of surprise.“Sir,” she cried, “has Tom Noah been at work here this morning?”

“Not that I know of,” replied Mr. Barbary. Tom Noah, an industrious young fellow, son to Noah, the gardener, was occasionally employed by Mr. Barbary to clean up the yard and clear the garden of its superfluous rubbish.

“Our back’us has been scrubbed out this morning, sir,”went on Joan, still in astonishment. “And it didn’t want it. Who in the world can have come in and gone and done it?”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Barbary.

“But it has, master; scrubbed clean; the flags are all wet still. And the rain-water barrel’s a’most empty, nearly every drop of water drawn out of it! I’d not say but the yard has had a bit of a scrubbing, too, near the garden, as well as the back’us.”

“Nonsense!” repeated Mr. Barbary, his light tone becoming irritable. “You see it has been raining! the rain has drifted into the brewhouse, that’s all; I left the door open last night. There! go back to your work.”

Joan was a simple-natured woman, but she was neither silly nor blind, and she knew that what she said was true. Rapidly turning the matter over in her mind, she came to the conclusion that Tom Noah had been in “unbeknown to the master,” and so left the subject.

“I suppose I may take out the spare jack now, sir?” she waited to say.

“Take out anything you like,” replied Mr. Barbary.

Afraid of her tell-tale face, Katrine had moved to the window, apparently to look at the weather. Too well she knew who had scrubbed out the place, and why.

The rain had ceased when she set off on her short walk—for it was not much more than a stone’s throw to the Manor; the sun was struggling from behind the clouds, blue sky could be seen. Alone with herself and the open country, Katrine gave vent to her pent-up spirit, which she had not dared to do indoors; sighs of anguish and of pain escaped her; she wondered whether it would be wrong if she prayed to die. But some one was advancing to meet her, and she composed her countenance.

It was Ben Gibbon. For the past week or so, since Katrine had been enlightened as to her father’s poaching propensities, she had somehow feared this man. He was son to the late James Gibbon, the former gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, and brother to the present keeper, Richard. Of course one might expect that Mr. Benjamin would protect game and gamekeepers; instead of which, he was known to do a little safe poaching on his own account, and to be an idle fellow altogether. Katrine did not like his intimacy with her father, and she could not forget that he had passed part of that fatal evening with him and Edgar Reste.

“Showery weather to-day, miss,” was Ben Gibbon’s salutation.

“Yes, it is,” answered Katrine, with intense civility—for how could she tell what the man might know?

“I suppose I shall find Mr. Barbary at home?”

“Oh, yes,” faintly spoke she, and passed on her way.

II

We started for Evesham under a sharp shower, the Squire driving Bob and Blister in the large phaeton. Tod sat with him, I and the groom behind. Not a shadow of doubt lay on any one of us that we should bring back Don in triumph—leaving Dick Standish to be dealt with according to his merits. But, as the Squire remarked later, we were not a match for Dick in cunning.

“Keep your eyes open, lads,” the Squire said to us as we approached the town. “And if you see Dick Standish, with or without the dog, jump out and pounce upon him. You hear, Giles?”

“No need to tell me to do it, sir,” answered Giles humbly, clenching his fists; he had been eating humble pie ever since Tuesday night. “I am ready.”

But Dick Standish was not seen. Leaving the carriage and Giles at the inn, we made our way to the police station. An officer named Brett attended to us. It was curious enough, but the first person we saw inside the station was Tobias Jellico, who had called in on some matter of business that concerned his shop.

“We had your message yesterday, sir,” said Brett to the Squire, “and we lost no time in seeing after Standish. But it is not your dog that he has with him.”

“Not my dog!” repeated the Squire, up in arms at once.“Don’t tell me that, Brett. Whose dog should it be but mine? Come!”

“Well, sir, I never saw your dog; but Tomkins, one of our men, who has often been on duty at Church Dykely, knows it well,” rejoined Brett. “We had Standish and the dog up here, and Tomkins at once said it was not your dog at all, so we let the man go. Mr. Jellico also says it is not yours; I was talking to him about it now.”

“What I said was this,” put in Jellico, stepping forward, and speaking with meek deprecation. “If Squire Todhetley’s dog has been described to me correctly, the dog I saw with Standish yesterday can’t be the same. It is a great big ugly dog, with tan marks about his white coat——”

“Ugly!” retorted the Squire, resenting the aspersion, for he fully believed it to be Don.

“It is not at all an ugly dog, it’s a handsome dog,” spoke up Brett. “Perhaps Mr. Jellico does not like dogs.”

“Not much,” confessed Jellico.

“How came you to say yesterday at Church Dykely that it was the same dog?” Tod asked the man.

“If you please, sir, I didn’t exactly say it was; I said I made no doubt of it,” returned Jellico, mild as new milk.“It was in this way: Perkins the butcher was standing at his shop door as I passed down the street. We began talking, and he told me about the poachers having been out on the Tuesday night, and that Squire Todhetley had lost his fine Newfoundland dog; he said it was thought the Standishes were in both games. So then I said I had met Dick Standish with just such a dog that morning as I was a-coming out of Evesham. I had never seen the Squire’s dog, you perceive, gentlemen; but neither Mr. Perkins nor me had any doubt it was his.”

“And it must be mine,” returned the Squire, hotly. “Send for the dog, Brett; I will see it. Send for Standish also.”

“I’ll send, sir,” replied Brett, rather dubiously, “and get the man here if he is to be had. The chances are that with all this bother Standish has left the town and taken the dog with him.”

Brett was a talkative man, with a mottled face and sandy hair. He despatched a messenger to see after Standish. Jellico went out at the same time, telling Brett that his business could wait till another day.

“I know it is my dog,” affirmed the Squire to Brett while he waited. Nothing on earth, except actual sight, would have convinced him that it was not his. “Those loose men play all sorts of cunning tricks. Dick Standish is full of them. I shouldn’t wonder but he has painted the dog; done his black marks over with brown paint—or green.”

“We’ve a dyer in this town, Squire,” related Brett; “he owns a little white curly dog, and he dyes him as an advertisement for his colours, and lets him run about on the pavement before the shop door. To-day the dog will be a delicate sky-blue, to-morrow a flaming scarlet; the next day he’ll be a beautiful orange, with a green tail. The neighbours’dogs collect round and stand looking at him from a respectful distance, uncertain, I suppose, whether he is of the dog species, or not.”

I laughed.

“Passing the shop the other day, I saw the dog sitting on the door-step,” ran on Brett. “He was bright purple that time. An old lady, driving by in her chariot, caught sight of the dog and called to the coachman to pull up. There she sat, that old lady, entranced with amazement, staring through her eye-glass at what she took to be a phenomenon in nature. Five minutes, full, she stared, and couldn’t tear herself away. It is true, gentlemen, I assure you.”

Mr. Dick Standish was found, and brought before us. He looked rather more disreputable than usual, his old fustian coat out at elbows, a spotted red handkerchief twisted loosely round his neck. The dog was with him, and it was not ours. A large, fine dog, as already described, though much less handsome than Don, and out of condition, his curly coat a yellowish white, the marks on it of real tan colour, not painted.

Dick’s account, after vehemently protesting he had nothing to do with the poaching affair on Tuesday night, was never for a minute out of his bed—was this: The dog belonged to one of the stable-helpers at Leet Hall; but the man had determined to have the dog shot, not being satisfied with him of late, for the animal had turned odd and uncertain in his behaviour. Dick Standish heard of this. Understanding dogs thoroughly, and believing that this dog only wanted a certain course of treatment to put him right, Standish walked to Church Leet on Wednesday morning last from Church Dykely, and asked the man, Brazer, to give him the dog—he would take him and run all risks. Brazer refused at first; but, after a bit, agreed to let Standish keep the dog for a time. If he cured the dog, Brazer was to have him back again, paying Standish for his keep and care; but if not satisfied with the dog, Standish might keep him for good. Standish brought the dog away, and took him straight to Evesham, walking the whole way and getting there about nine o’clock in the evening. He was doctoring the dog well, and hoped to cure him.

Whether this tale was true or whether it wasn’t, none of us could contradict it. But there was an appearance of fear, of shuffling in the man’s manner, which seemed to indicate that something lay behind.

“It’s every word gospel, ain’t it, Rove, and no lie nowhere,” cried Standish, bending to pat the dog, while the corner of his eye was turned to regard the aspect of the company. “You’ve blown me up for many things before now, Squire Todhetley, but there’s no call, sir, to accuse me this time.”

“When did you hear about this dog of Brazer’s, and who told you of it?” inquired Tod, in his haughty way.

“’Twas Bill Rimmer, sir; he telled me on Tuesday night,”replied Dick. “And I said to him what a shame it was to talk of destroying that there fine dog, and that Brazer was a soft for thinking on’t. And I said, young Mr. Todhetley, that I’d be over at Church Leet first thing the next morning, to see if he’d give the dog to me.”

“It is not my dog, I see that,” spoke the Squire, breaking the silence that followed Dick’s speech; “and it may be the stableman’s at Leet Hall; that’s a thing readily ascertained. Do you know where my dog is, Dick Standish?”

“No, I don’t know, sir,” replied the man in a very eager tone; “and I never knowed at all, till fetched to this police station yesterday, that your dog was a-missing. I’ll swear I didn’t.”

There was nothing more to be done, but to accept the failure, and leave the station, after privately charging the police to keep an eye on clever Mr. Dick Standish, his haunts, and his movements.

In the afternoon we drove back home, not best pleased with the day’s work. A sense of having been done, in some way or other not at present explicable, lay on most of us.

It appeared that the groom shared this feeling strongly. In passing through the yard, I came upon him in his shirt sleeves, seated outside the stable door on an inverted bucket. His elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he looked the image of despair. The picture arrested me. Mack was rubbing down the horses; a duty Giles rarely entrusted to anybody. He was fond of Don, and had been ready to hang himself ever since Tuesday night.

“Why, Giles! what’s the matter?”

“Matter enough, Master Johnny, when a false villyan like that Dick Standish can take the master, and the police their-selves, and everybody else, in!” was his answer. “I felt as cock-sure, sir, that we should bring home Don as I am that the sky above us is shining out blue after the last shower.”

“But it was not Don, you see, Giles.”

“He wasn’t; the dog Standish had to show,” returned Giles, with a peculiar emphasis. “Dick had got up his tale all smooth and sleek, sir.”

“How do you know he had?”

“Because he told it me over again—the one he said he had been telling at the police station, Master Johnny. I was standing outside the inn yard while you were all in at lunch, and Standish came by as bold as brass, Brazer’s dog, Rover, leashed to his hand.”

“I suppose it is Brazer’s dog?”

“Oh, it’s Brazer’s dog, that’un be,” said Giles, with a deep amount of scorn; “I know him well enough.”

“Then how can it be Don? And we could not bring home another man’s dog.”

Giles paused. His eyes had a far-off look in them, as if seeking for something they could not find.

“Master Johnny,” he said, “I can’t rightly grasp things. All the way home I’ve been trying to put two and two together, I am trying at it still, and I can’t do it anyhow. Don’t it seem odd to you, sir, that Standish should have got Brazer’s dog, Rover, into his hands just at the very time we are suspecting he has got Don into ’em?”

I did not know. I had not thought about it.

“He has that dog of Brazer’s as a blind. A blind, and nothing else, sir. He has captured our dog, safe and sure, and is keeping him hid up somewhere till the first storm of the search is over, when he’ll be able to dispose of him safely.”

I could not see Giles’s drift, or how the one dog could help to conceal the possession of the other.

“Well, sir, I can’t explain it better,” he answered; “I can’t fit the pieces of the puzzle into one another in my mind yet. But I am positive it is so. Dick Standish has made up the farce about Brazer’s dog and got him into his hands to throw dust in our eyes and keep us off the scent of Don.”

I began to see the groom might be right; and that the Standishes, sly and crafty, were keeping Don in hiding.

Mrs. Todhetley had met us with a face of concern. Lena’s throat was becoming very bad indeed, and Mr. Duffham did not like the look of it at all. He had already come twice that day.

“I think, Johnny,” said the mother to me, “that we had better stop Miss Barbary’s coming to-morrow; Mr. Duffham does not know but the malady may be getting infectious. Suppose you go now to the cottage and tell her.”

So I went off to do so, and found her ill. On this same Friday afternoon, having occasion to ask some question of her father, who was in the garden, she found him planting greens on the plot of ground—the grave—under the summer-apple tree. Before she could speak, a shudder of terror seized her; she trembled from head to foot, turned back to the kitchen, and sat down on the nearest chair.

Old Joan pronounced it to be an attack of ague; Miss Katrine, she said, must have taken a chill. Perhaps she had. It was just then that I arrived and found her shivering in the kitchen. Joan ran up to her room in the garret to bring down some powder she kept there, said to be a grand remedy for ague.

It was getting dusk then; the sun had set. To me, Katrine seemed to be shaking with terror, not illness. Mr. Barbary, in full view of the window, was planting the winter greens under the summer-apple tree.

“What is it that you are frightened at?” I said, propping my back against the kitchen mantelpiece.

“I must ask you a question, Johnny Ludlow,” she whispered, panting and shivering. “Was it you who came and stood inside the gate there in the middle of last night?”

“Yes it was. And I saw what Mr. Barbary was doing—there. I could not make it out.”

Katrine left her chair and placed herself before me. Clasping her piteous hands, she besought me to be silent; to keep the secret for pity sake—to be true. All kinds of odd ideas stole across me. I would not listen to them; only promised her that I would tell nothing, would be true for ever and a day.

“It must have been an accident, you know,” she pleaded;“it must have been an accident.”

Joan came back, and I took my departure. What on earth could Katrine have meant? All kinds of fancies were troubling my brain, fit only for what in these later days are called the penny dreadfuls, and I did my best to drive them out of it.

The next morning Katrine was really ill. Her throat was parched, her body ached with fever. As to Lena, she was worse; and we, who ought to have gone back to school that day, were kept at home lest we should carry with us any infection.

“All right,” said Tod. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.” He did not believe in the infection; told me in private that Duffham was an old woman.

Can any one picture, I wonder, Katrine Barbary’s distress of mind, the terrible dread that had taken possession of it? Shuddering dread, amounting to a panic: dread of the deed itself, dread for her father, dread of discovery.

On the following morning, Sunday, a letter was delivered at Caramel Cottage for Mr. Reste, the postmark being London, the writing in the same hand as the last—Captain Amphlett’s. Mr. Barbary took it away to his gun-room; Katrine saw it, later in the day, lying on the deal-table there, unopened.

The next Thursday afternoon, Lena being then almost well—for children are dying to-day and running about again to-morrow—I called at the Cottage to ask after Katrine. We heard she had an attack of fever. The weather was lovely again; the October sky blue as in summer, the sun hot and bright.

Well, she did look ill! She sat in the parlour at the open window, a huge shawl on, and her poor face about half the size it was before. What had it been, I asked, and she said ague; but she was much better now and intended to be at the Manor again on Monday.

“Sit down please, Johnny. I suppose Lena has been glad of the holiday?”

“She just has. That young lady believes French was invented for her especial torment. Have you heard from Mr. Reste, Katrine?——What does he say about his impromptu flitting?”

She turned white as a ghost, never answering, looking at me strangely. I thought a spasm might have seized her.

“Not yet,” she faintly said. “Papa thinks—thinks he may have gone abroad.”

While I was digesting the words, some vehicle was heard rattling up the side lane; it turned the corner and stopped at the gate. “Why, Katrine,” I said, “it is a railway fly from Evesham!”

A little fair man in a grey travelling-suit got out of the fly, came up the path, and knocked at the door. Old Joan answered it and showed him into the room. “Captain Amphlett,” she said. Katrine looked ready to die.

“I must apologize for intruding,” he began, with a pleasant voice and manner. “My friend Edgar Reste is staying here, I believe.”

Katrine was taken with a shivering fit. The stranger looked at her with curiosity. I said she had been ill with ague, and was about to add that Edgar Reste had left, when Mr. Barbary came in. Captain Amphlett turned to him and went on to explain: he was on his way to spend a little time in one of the Midland shires, and had halted at Evesham for the purpose of looking up Edgar Reste—from whom he had been expecting to hear more than a week past; could not understand why he did not. Mr. Barbary, with all the courtesy of the finished gentleman, told him, in reply to this, that Edgar Reste had left Caramel Cottage a week ago.

“Dear me!” cried the stranger, evidently surprised.“And without writing to tell me. Was his departure unexpected?”

Mr. Barbary laughed lightly. That man would have retained his calmest presence of mind when going down in a wreck at sea. “Some matter of business called him away, I fancy,” he replied.

“And to what part of England was he going?” asked Captain Amphlett, after a pause. “Did he say?”

Mr. Barbary appeared to have an impulsive answer on his lips, but closed them before he could speak it. He glanced at me, and then turned his head and glanced at Katrine, as if to see whether she was there, for he was sitting with his back to her. A thought struck me that we were in the way of his plain speaking.

“He went to London,” said Mr. Barbary.

“To London!” echoed the Captain. “Why, that’s strange. He has not come to London, I assure you.”

“I can assure you it is where he told me he was going,”said Mr. Barbary, smiling. “And it was to London his luggage was addressed.”

“Well, it is altogether strange,” repeated Captain Amphlett. “I went to his chambers in the Temple yesterday, and Farnham, the barrister who shares them with him, told me Reste was still in Worcestershire; he had not heard from him for some time, and supposed he might be returning any day now. Where in the world can he be hiding himself? Had he come to London, as you suppose, Mr. Barbary, he would have sought me out the first thing.”

Whiter than any ghost ever seen or heard of, had grown Katrine as she listened. I could not take my eyes from her terrified face.

“I do not comprehend it,” resumed Captain Amphlett, looking more helpless than a rudderless ship at sea. “Are you sure, sir, that there is no mistake; that he was really going to London?”

“Not at all sure; only that he said it,” returned Mr. Barbary in a half mocking tone. “One does not inquire too closely, you know, into the private affairs of young men. We have not heard from him yet.”

“I cannot understand it at all,” persisted Captain Amphlett; “or why he has not written to me; or where he can have got to. He ought to have written.”

“Ah, yes, no doubt,” suavely remarked Mr. Barbary.“He was careless about letter-writing, I fancy. Can I offer you any refreshment?”

“None at all, thank you; I have no time to spare,” said the other, rising to depart. “I suppose you do not chance to know whether Reste had a letter from me last Tuesday week?”

“Yes, he had one. It had some bank-notes in it. He opened it here at the breakfast table.”

Quite a relief passed over Captain Amphlett’s perplexed face at the answer. “I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Barbary. By his not acknowledging receipt of the money, I feared it had miscarried.”

Bidding us good afternoon, and telling Katrine (at whose sick state he had continued to glance curiously) that he wished her better, the stranger walked rapidly out to his fly, attended by Mr. Barbary.

“Katrine,” I asked, preparing to take my own departure,“what was there in Captain Amphlett to frighten you?”

“It—it was the ague,” she answered, bringing out the words with a jerk.

“Oh—ague! Well, I’d get rid of such an ague as that. Good-bye.”

But it was not ague; it was sheer fear, as common sense told me, and I did not care to speculate upon it. An uneasy atmosphere seemed to be hanging over Caramel Cottage altogether; to have set in with Edgar Reste’s departure.

A day or two later our people departed for Crabb Cot for change of air for Lena, and we returned to school, so that nothing more was seen or heard at present of the Barbarys.

III

December weather, and snow on the ground, and Caramel Cottage looking cold and cheerless. Not so cheerless, though, as poor Katrine, who had a blue, pinched face and a bad cough.

“I can’t get her to rouse herself, or to swallow hardly a morsel of food,” lamented Joan to Mr. Duffham. “She sits like a statty all day long, sir, with her hands before her.”

“Sits like a statue, does she?” returned Duffham, who could see it for himself, and for the hundredth time wondered what it was she had upon her mind. He did his best, no doubt, in the shape of tonics and lectures, but he could make nothing of his patient. Katrine vehemently denied that she was worrying herself over any sweetheart—for that’s how Duffham delicately shaped his questions—and said it was the cold weather.

“The voyage will set her up, or—break her up,” decided Duffham, who had never treated so unsatisfactory an invalid.“As to not having anything on her mind, why she may tell that to the moon.”

Katrine was just dying of the trouble. The consciousness of what the garden could disclose filled her with horror, whilst the fear of discovery haunted her steps by day and her dreams by night. She could not sleep alone, and Joan had brought her mattress down to the room and lay on the floor. When the sun shone, Mr. Barbary would compel her to sit or walk in the garden; Katrine would turn sick and faint at sight of that plot of ground under the apple tree, and the winter greens growing there. At moments she thought her father must suspect the source of her illness; but he gave no sign of it. Since Captain Amphlett’s visit, no further inquiry had been made after Edgar Reste. Katrine lived in daily dread of it. Now and then the neighbours would ask after him. Duffham had said one day in the course of conversation: “Where’s that young Reste now?” “Oh, in London, working on for his silk gown,” Mr. Barbary lightly answered. Katrine marvelled at his coolness.

Upon getting back to the Manor for Christmas we heard that Mr. Barbary was quitting Church Dykely for Canada.“And the voyage will either kill or cure the child,” said Duffham, for it was he who gave us the news; “she is in a frightfully weak state.”

“Is it ague still?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“It is more like nerves than ague,” answered Duffham.“She seems to live in a chronic state of fear, starting and shrinking at every unexpected sound. I can’t make her out, and that’s the truth; she denies having received any shock.—So you have never found Don, Squire!” he broke off, leaving the other subject.

“No,” said the Squire angrily. “Dick Standish has been too much for us this time. The fellow wants hanging. Give him rope enough, and he’ll do it.”

Brazer’s dog was returned to him, safe and sound, but our dog had never come back to us, and the Squire was looking out for another. Dick Standish protested his innocence yet; but he had gone roving the country with that other dog, and no doubt had sold Don to somebody at a safe distance. Perhaps had dyed him a fine gold first; as the dyer dyed his dog at Evesham.

“Now, Miss Katrine, there’s not a bit of sense in it!”

It was Christmas Eve. Katrine was sitting in the twilight by the parlour fire, and Joan was scolding. She had brought in a tray of tea with some bread-and-butter; Katrine was glad enough of the tea, but said she could not eat; she always said so now.

“Be whipped if I can tell what has got into the child!” stormed Joan. “Do you want to starve yourself right out?—do you want to——”

“There’s papa,” interrupted Katrine, as the house door was heard to open. “You must bring in more tea now, Joan.”

This door opened next, and some one stood looking in. Not Mr. Barbary. Katrine gazed with dilating eyes, as the firelight flickered on the intruder’s face: and then she caught hold of Joan with an awful cry. For he who had come in bore the semblance of Edgar Reste.

“Why, Katrine, my dear, have you been ill?”

Katrine burst into hysterical tears as her terror passed. She had been taking it for Mr. Reste’s apparition, you see, whereas it was Mr. Reste himself. Joan closed the shutters, stirred the fire, and went away to see what she could do for him in the shape of eatables after his journey. He sat down by Katrine, and took her poor wan face to his sheltering arms.

In the sobbing excitement of the moment, in the strangely wonderful relief his presence brought, Katrine breathed forth the truth; that she had seen him, as she believed,buried under the summer-apple tree; had believed it all this time, and that it had been slowly killing her. Mr. Reste laughed a little at the idea of his being buried, and cleared up matters in a few brief words.

“But why did you never write?” she asked.

“Being at issue with Mr. Barbary, I would not write to him: and I thought, Katrine, that the less you were reminded of me the better. I waited in London until my luggage came up, and then went straight to Dieppe, without having seen any one I knew; without having even shown myself at my Chambers——”

“But why not, Edgar?” she interrupted. Mr. Reste laughed.

“Well, I had reasons. I had left a few outstanding accounts there, and was not then prepared to pay them and I did not care to give a clue to my address to be bothered with letters.”

“You did not even write to Captain Amphlett. He came here to see after you.”

“I wrote to him from Dieppe; not quite at first, though. Buried under the apple-tree! that is a joke, Katrine!”

It was Christmas Eve, I have said. We had gone through the snow, with Mrs. Todhetley, to help the Miss Pages decorate the church, and the Squire was alone after dinner, when Mr. Reste was shown in.

“Is it you!” cried the Squire in hearty welcome. “So you have come down for Christmas!”

“Partly for that,” answered Mr. Reste. “Partly, sir, to see you.”

“To see me! You are very good. I hope you’ll dine with us to-morrow, if Barbary will spare you.”

“Ah! I don’t know about that; I’m afraid not. Anyway, I have a tale to tell you first.”

Sitting on the other side the fire, opposite the Squire, the wine and walnuts on the table between them, he told the tale of that past Tuesday night.

He had gone out with Barbary in a fit of foolishness, not intending to do any harm to the game or to join in any harm, though Barbary had insisted on his carrying a loaded gun. The moon was remarkably bright. Not long had they been out, going cautiously, when on drawing near Dyke Neck, they became aware that some poachers were already abroad, and that the keepers were tracking them; so there was nothing for it but to steal back again. They had nearly reached Caramel Cottage, and were making for the side gate, when a huge dog flew up, barking. Barbary called out that it was the Squire’s dog, and——

“Bless me!” interjected the Squire at this.

“Yes, sir, your dog, Don,” continued Mr. Reste. “Barbary very foolishly kicked the dog: he was in a panic, you see, lest the noise of its barking should bring up the keepers. That kick must have enraged Don, and he fastened savagely on Barbary’s leg. I, fearing for Barbary’s life, or some lesser injury, grew excited, and fired at the dog. It killed him.”

The Squire drew a deep breath.

“Not daring to leave the dog at the gate, for it might have betrayed us, we drew him across the yard to the brewhouse, and locked the door upon him. But while doing this, Ben Gibbon passed, and thereby learnt what had happened. The next day, Barbary and I had some bickering together. I wanted to come to you and confess the truth openly; Barbary forbade it, saying it would ruin him: we could bury the dog that night or the next, he said, and nobody would ever be the wiser. In the evening, Gibbon came in; he was all for Barbary’s opinion, and opposed mine. After he left, I and Barbary had a serious quarrel. I said I would leave there and then; he resented it, and followed me into the yard to try to keep me. But my temper was up, and I set off to walk to Evesham, telling him to send my traps after me, and to direct them to Euston Square Station. I took the first morning train that passed through Evesham for London, and made my mind up on the journey to go abroad for a week or two. Truth to confess,”added the speaker, “I felt a bit of a coward about the dog, not knowing what proceedings you might take if it came to light, and I deemed it as well to be out of the way for a time. But I don’t like being a coward, Mr. Todhetley, it is a role I have never been used to, and I came down to-day to confess all. Barbary is going away, so it will not damage him: besides, it was really I who killed the dog, not he. And now, sir, I throw myself upon your mercy. What do you say to me?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” said the Squire, who was in a rare good humour, and liked the young fellow besides.“It was a bad thing to do—poor faithful Don! But it’s Christmas-tide, so I suppose we must say no more about it. Let bygones be bygones.”

Edgar Reste grasped his hand.

“Barbary’s off to Canada, we are told,” said the Squire.“A better country for him than this. He has not been thought much of in this place, as you probably know. And it’s to be hoped that poor little maiden of his will get up her health again, which seems, by all accounts, to be much shattered.”

“I think she’ll get that up now,” said Mr. Reste, with a curious smile. “She is not going out with him, sir; she stays behind with me.”

“With you!” cried the Squire, staring.

“I have just asked her to be my wife, and she says, Yes,”said Mr. Reste. “An old uncle of mine over in India has died; he has left me a few hundreds a year, so that I can afford to marry.”

“I’m sure I am glad to hear it,” said the Squire, heartily.“Poor Don, though! And what did Barbary do with him?”

“Buried him in his back garden, under the summer-apple tree.”

Coming home from our night’s work at this juncture, we found, to our surprise, a great dog fastened to the strong iron garden bench.

“What a magnificent dog!” exclaimed Tod, while the mother sprang back in alarm. “It is something like Don.”

It was very much like Don. Quite as large, and handsomer.

“I shall take it in, Johnny; the Pater would like to see it, There, mother, you go in first.”

Tod unfastened the dog and took it into the dining-room, where sat Mr. Reste. The dog seemed a gentle creature, and went about looking at us all with his intelligent eyes. Mrs. Todhetley stroked him.

“Well, that is a nice dog!” cried the Squire. “Whose is it, lads?”

“It is yours, sir, if you will accept him from me,” said Mr. Reste. “I came across him in London the other day, and thought you might like him in place of Don. I have taught him to answer to the same name.”

“We’ll call him ‘Don the Second’—and I thank you heartily,” said the Squire, with a beaming face. “Good Don! Good old fellow! You shall be made much of.”

He married Katrine without much delay, taking her off to London to be nursed up; and Mr. Barbary set sail for Canada. The bank-notes, you ask about? Why, what Katrine saw in her father’s hands were but half the notes, for Mr. Reste divided them the day they arrived, giving thirty pounds to his host, and keeping thirty himself. And Dick Standish, for once, had not been in the fight; and the Squire, meeting him in the turnip-field on Christmas Day, gave him five shillings for a Christmas-box. Which elated Dick beyond telling; and the Squire was glad of it later, when poor Dick had gone away prematurely to the Better Land.

And all the sympathy Katrine had from her father, when he came to hear about the summer-apple tree, was a sharp wish that she could have had her ridiculous ideas shaken out of her.

A TRAGEDY.

I.—GERVAIS PREEN.

I

Crabb Cot, Squire Todhetley’s estate in Worcestershire, lay close to North Crabb, and from two to three miles off Islip, both of which places you have heard of already. Half way on the road to Islip from Crabb, a side road, called Brook Lane, branched straight off on the left towards unknown wilds, for the parts there were not at all frequented. Passing a solitary homestead here and there, Brook Lane would bring you at the end of less than two miles to a small hamlet, styled Duck Brook.

I am not responsible for the name. I don’t know who is. It was called Duck Brook long before my time, and will be, no doubt, long after I have left time behind me. The village rustics called it Duck Bruck.

Duck Brook proper contains some twenty or thirty houses, mostly humble dwellings, built in the form of a triangle, and two or three shops. A set of old stocks for the correction of the dead-and-gone evil-doers might be seen still, and a square pound in which to imprison stray cattle. And I would remark, as it may be of use further on, that the distance from Duck Brook to either Islip or Crabb was about equal—some three miles, or so; it stood at right angles between them. Passing down Brook Lane (which was in fact a fairly wide turnpike road) into the high road, turning to the right would bring you to Crabb; turning to the left, to Islip.

Just before coming to that populous part of Duck Brook, the dwelling places, there stood in a garden facing the road a low, wide, worn house, its bricks dark with age, and now partly covered with ivy, which had once been the abode of a flourishing farmer. The land on which this lay belonged to a Captain Falkner—some hundred acres of it. The Captain was in difficulties and, afraid to venture into England, resided abroad.

A Mr. Preen lived in the house now—Gervais Preen, a gentleman by descent. The Preens were Worcestershire people; and old Mr. Preen, dead now, had left a large family of sons and daughters, who had for the most part nothing to live upon. How or where Gervais Preen had lately lived, no one knew much about; some people said it was London, some thought it was Paris; but he suddenly came back to Worcestershire and took up his abode, much to the general surprise, at this old farmhouse at Duck Brook. It was soon known that he lived in it rent-free, having undertaken the post of agent to Captain Falkner.

“Agent to Captain Falkner—what a mean thing for a Preen to do!” cried Islip and Crabb all in a breath.

“Not at all mean; gentlemen must live as well as other people,” warmly disputed the Squire. “I honour Preen for it.” And he was the first to walk over to Duck Brook and shake hands with him.

Others followed the Squire’s example, but Mr. Preen did not seem inclined to be sociable. He was forty-five years old then; a little shrimp of a man with a dark face, small eyes like round black beads, and a very cross look. He met his visitors civilly, for he was a gentleman, but he let it be known that he and his wife did not intend to visit or be visited. The Squire pressed him to bring Mrs. Preen to a friendly dinner at Crabb Cot; but he refused emphatically, frankly saying that as they could not afford to entertain in return, they should not themselves go out to entertainments.

Thus Gervais Preen and his wife began their career at Duck Brook, keeping themselves to themselves, locked up in lavender, so to say, as if they did not want the world outside to remember their existence. Perhaps that was the ruling motive, for he owed a few debts of long standing. One or two creditors had found him out, and were driving, it was said, a hard bargain with him, insisting upon payment by degrees if it could not be handed over in a lump.

But there was one member of the family who declined to keep herself laid up in lavender, and that was the only daughter, Jane. She came to Crabb Cot of her own accord, and made friends with us; made friends with Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her girls, and with Emma Paul at Islip. She was a fair, lively, open-natured girl, and welcomed everywhere.

Mr. and Mrs. Preen and Jane were seated at the breakfast-table one fine morning in the earliest days of spring. A space of about two years had gone by since they first came to Duck Brook. Breakfast was laid, as usual, in a small flagged room opening from the kitchen. A piece of cold boiled bacon, three eggs, a home-made loaf and a pat of butter were on the table, nothing more luxurious. Mrs. Preen, a thin woman, under the middle height, poured out the coffee. She must once have been very pretty. Her face was fair and smooth still, with a bright rose tint on the cheeks, and a peevish look in her mild blue eyes. Jane’s face was very much like her mother’s, but her blue eyes had no peevishness in them as yet. Poor Mrs. Preen’s life was one of rubs and crosses, had been for a long while, and that generally leaves its marks upon the countenance. When Mr. Preen came in he had a letter in his hand, which he laid beside his plate, address downwards. He looked remarkably cross, and did not speak. No one else spoke. Conversation was seldom indulged in at meal times, unless the master chose to begin it. But in passing something to him, Jane’s eyes chanced to fall on the letter, and saw that it was of thin, foreign paper.

“Papa, is that from Oliver?”

“Don’t you see it is?” returned Mr. Preen.

“And—is anything different decided?” asked Mrs Preen, timidly, as if she were afraid of either the question or the answer.

“What is there different to decide?” he retorted.

“But, Gervais, I thought you wrote to say that he could not come home.”

“And he writes back to say that he must come. I suppose he must. The house over there is being given up; he can’t take up his abode in the street. There’s what he says,”continued Mr. Preen, tossing the letter to the middle of the table for the public benefit. “He will be here to-morrow.”

A glad light flashed into Jane’s countenance. She lifted her handkerchief to hide it.

Oliver Preen was her brother; she and he were the only children. He had been partly adopted by a great aunt, once Miss Emily Preen, the sister of his grandfather. She had married Major Magnus late in life, and was left a widow. Since Oliver left school, three years ago now, he had lived with Mrs. Magnus at Tours, where she had settled down. She was supposed to be well off; and the Preen family—Gervais Preen and all his hungry brothers and sisters—had cherished expectations from her. They thought she might provide slenderly for Oliver, and divide the rest of her riches among them. But a week or two ago she had died after a short illness, and then the amazing fact came out that she had nothing to leave. All Mrs. Magnus once possessed had been sunk in an annuity on her own life.

This was bad enough for the brothers and the sisters, but it was nothing compared with the shock it gave to him of Duck Brook. For you see he had to take his son back now and provide for him; and Oliver had been brought up to do nothing. A mild young man, he, we understood, not at all clever enough to set the Thames on fire.

Mr. Preen finished his breakfast and left the room, carrying the letter with him. Jane went at once into the garden, which in places was no better than a wilderness, and ran about the sheltered paths that were out of sight of the windows, and jumped up to catch the lower branches of trees, all in very happiness. She and Oliver were intensely attached to one another; she had not seen him for three years, and now they were going to meet again. To-morrow! oh, to-morrow! To-morrow, and he would be here! She should see him face to face!

“Jane!” called out a stern voice, “I want you.”

In half a moment Jane had appeared in the narrow front path that led between beds of sweet but common flowers from the entrance gate in the centre of the palings to the door of the house, and was walking up demurely. Mr. Preen was standing at an open window.

“Yes, papa,” she said. And Mr. Preen only answered by looking at her and shutting down the window.

The door opened into a passage, which led straight through to the back of the house. On the left, as you entered, was the parlour; on the right was the room which Mr. Preen used as an office, in which were kept the account books and papers relating to the estate. It was a square room, lighted by two tall narrow windows. A piece of matting covered the middle of the floor, and on it stood Mr. Preen’s large flat writing-table, inlaid with green leather. Shelves and pigeon-holes filled one side of the walls, and a few chairs stood about. Altogether the room had a cold, bare look.

It was called the “Buttery.” When Mr. and Mrs. Preen first came to the house, the old man who had had charge showed them over it. “This is the parlour,” he said, indicating the room they were then looking at; “and this,”he added, opening the door on the opposite side of the passage, “is the Buttery.” Jane laughed: but they had adopted the name.

“I want these letters copied, Jane,” said Mr. Preen, who was now sitting at his table, his back to the fire, and the windows in front of him; and he handed to her two letters which he had just written.

Jane took her seat at the table opposite to him. Whenever Mr. Preen wanted letters copied, he called upon her to do it. Jane did not much like the task; she was not fond of writing, and was afraid of making mistakes.

When she had finished the letters this morning she escaped to her mother, asking how she could help in the preparations for Oliver. They kept one maid-servant; a capless young lady of sixteen, who wore a frock and pinafore of a morning. There was Sam as well; a well-grown civil youth, whose work lay chiefly out of doors.

The day passed. The next day was passing. From an early hour Jane Preen had watched for the guest’s arrival. In the afternoon, when she was weary of looking and looking in vain, she put on a warm shawl and her pink sun-bonnet and went out of doors with a book.

A little lower down, towards the Islip Road, Brook Lane was flanked on one side by a grove of trees, too dense to admit of penetration. But there were two straight paths in them at some distance from each other, which would carry you to the back of the grove, and to the stream running parallel with the highway in front; from which stream Duck Brook derived its name. These openings in the trees were called Inlets curiously. A few worn benches stood in front of the trees, and also behind them, and had been there for ages. If you took your seat upon one of the front benches, you could watch the passing and re-passing (if there chanced to be any) on the high road; if you preferred a seat at the back, you might contemplate the pellucid stream and the meads beyond it, like any knight or fair damsel of romance.

This was a favourite resort of Jane Preen’s, a slight relief from the dullness at home. She generally sat by the stream, but to-day faced the road, for she was looking for Oliver. It was not a frequented road at all, but I think this has been said; sometimes an hour would pass away and not so much as a farmer’s horse and cart jolt by, or a beggar shambling on foot.

Jane had brought out a favourite book of the day, one of Bulwer Lytton’s, which had been lent to her by Miss Julietta Chandler. Shall we ever have such writers again? Compare a work over which a tremendous fuss is made in the present day with one of those romances or novels of the past when some of us were young—works written by Scott, and Bulwer, and others I need not mention. Why, they were as solid gold compared with silver and tinsel.

Jane tried to lose herself in the romantic love of Lucy and Paul, or in the passionate love-letters of Sir William Brandon, written when he was young; and she could not do so. Her eyes kept turning, first to that way of the road, then to this: she did not know which way Oliver would come. By rail to Crabb station she supposed, and then with a fly onwards; though being strange to the neighbourhood he might pitch upon any out-of-the-way route and so delay his arrival.

Suddenly her heart stopped beating and then coursed on to fever heat. A fly was winding along towards her in the distance, from the direction of Crabb. Jane rose and waited close to the path. It was not Oliver. Three ladies and a child sat in the fly. They all stared at her, evidently wondering who she was and what she did there. She went back to the bench, but did not open her book again.

It must be nearing four o’clock: she could tell it by the sun, for she had no watch: and she thought she would go in. Slowly taking up the book, she was turning towards home, which was close by, when upon giving a lingering farewell look down the road, a solitary foot passenger came into view: a gentlemanly young man, with an umbrella in his hand and a coat on his arm.

Was it Oliver? She was not quite sure at first. He was of middle height, slight and slender: had a mild fair face and blue eyes with a great sadness in them. Jane noticed the sadness at once, and thought she remembered it; she thought the face also like her own and her mother’s.

“Oliver?”

“Jane! Why—is it you? I did not expect to find you under that peasant bonnet, Jane.”

They clung to each other, kissing fondly, tears in the eyes of both.

“But why are you walking, Oliver? Did you come to Crabb?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought I might as well walk; I did not think it was quite so far. The porter will send on my things.”

There was just a year between them; Oliver would be twenty-one in a month, Jane was twenty-two, but did not look as much. She took his arm as they walked home.

As she halted at the little gate, Oliver paused in surprise and gazed about: at the plain wooden palings painted green, which shut in the crowded, homely garden; at the old farmhouse.

“Is this the place, Jane?”

“Yes. You have not been picturing it a palace, have you?”

Oliver laughed, and held back the low gate for her. But as he passed in after her, a perceptible shiver shook his frame. It was gone in a moment; but in that moment it had shaken him from head to foot. Jane saw it.

“Surely you have not caught a chill, Oliver?”

“Not at all; I am warm with my walk. I don’t know why I should have shivered,” he added. “It was like the feeling you have when people say somebody’s ‘walking over your grave.’”

Mr. Preen received his son coldly, but not unkindly; Mrs. Preen did the same; she was led by her husband’s example in all things. Tea, though it was so early, was prepared at once, with a substantial dish for the traveller; and they sat down to it in the parlour.

It was a long room with a beam running across the low ceiling. A homely room, with a coarse red-and-green carpet and horse-hair chairs. A few ornaments of their own (for the furniture belonged to the house), relics of better days, were disposed about; and Jane had put on the table a glass of early primroses. The two windows, tall and narrow, answered to those in the Buttery. Oliver surveyed the room in silent dismay: it wore so great a contrast to the French salons at Tours to which he was accustomed. He gave them the details of his aunt’s death and of her affairs.

When tea was over, Mr. Preen shut himself into the Buttery; Mrs. Preen retired to the kitchen to look after Nancy, who had to be watched, like most young servants, as you watch a sprightly calf. Jane and Oliver went out again, Jane taking the way to the Inlets. This time she sat down facing the brook. The dark trees were behind them, the clear stream flowed past in a gentle murmur; nothing but fields beyond. It was a solitary spot.

“What do you call this place—the Inlets?” cried Oliver.“Why is it called so?”

“I’m sure I don’t know: because of those two openings from the road, I suppose. I like to sit here; it is so quiet. Oliver, how came Aunt Emily to sink all her money in an annuity?”

“For her own benefit, of course; it nearly doubled her income. She did it years ago.”

“And you did not know that she had nothing to leave?”

“No one knew. She kept the secret well.”

“It is very unfortunate for you.”

“Yes—compared with what I had expected,” sighed Oliver. “It can’t be helped, Jane, and I try not to feel disappointed. Aunt Emily in life was very kind to me; apart from all selfish consideration I regret and mourn her.”

“You will hardly endure this dreary place after your gay and happy life at Tours, Oliver. Duck Brook is the fag-end of the world.”

“It does not appear to be very lively,” remarked Oliver, with a certain dry sarcasm. “How was it that the Pater came to it?”

“Well, you know—it was a living, and we had nothing else.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When Uncle Gilbert died, there was no other of our uncles, those who were left, who could help papa; at least they said so; and I assure you we fell into great embarrassment as the weeks went on. It was impossible to remain in Jersey; we could pay no one; and what would have been the ending but for papa’s falling in with Captain Falkner, I can’t imagine. Captain Falkner owns a good deal of land about here; but he is in difficulties himself and cannot be here to look after it; so he offered papa the agency and a house to live in. I can tell you, Oliver, it was as a godsend to us.”

“Do you mean to say that my father is an agent?” cried the young man, his face dyed with a red flush.

Jane nodded. “That, and nothing less. He looks after the estate and is paid a hundred pounds a-year salary, and we live rent free. Lately he has taken something else, something different; the agency of some new patent agricultural implements.”

Oliver Preen looked very blank. He had been living the life of a gentleman, was imbued with a gentleman’s notions, and this news brought him the most intense mortification.

“He will expect you to help him in the Buttery,” continued Jane.

“In the what?”

“The Buttery,” laughed Jane. “It is the room where papa keeps his accounts and writes his letters. Letters come in nearly every morning now, inquiring about the new agricultural implements; papa has to answer them, and wants some of his answers copied.”

“And he has only a hundred a year!” murmured Oliver, unable to get over that one item of information. “Aunt Emily had from eight to nine hundred, and lived up to her income.”

“The worst is that we cannot spend all the hundred. Papa has back debts upon him. Have you brought home any money, Oliver?”

“None to speak of,” he answered; “there was none to bring. Aunt Emily’s next quarter’s instalment would have been due this week; but she died first, you see. She lived in a furnished house; and as to the few things she had of her own, and her personal trinkets, Aunt Margaret Preen came down and swooped upon them. Jane, how have you managed to put up with the lively state of affairs here?”

“And this lively spot—the fag-end of the world. It was Emma Paul first called it so. I put up with it because I can’t help myself, Oliver.”

“Who is Emma Paul?”

“The daughter of Lawyer Paul, of Islip.”

“Oh,” said Oliver, slightingly.

“And the nicest girl in the world,” added Jane.“But I can tell you this much, Oliver,” she continued, after a pause: “when we came first to Duck Brook it seemed to me as a haven of refuge. Our life in Jersey had become intolerable, our life here was peaceful—no angry creditors, no daily applications for debts that we could not pay. Here we were free and happy, and it gave me a liking for the place. It is dull, of course; but I go pretty often to see Emma Paul, or to take tea at Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, and at Crabb Cot when the Todhetleys are staying there. Sam brings the gig for me in the evening, when I don’t walk home. You will have to bring it for me now.”

“Oh, there’s a gig, is there?”

“Papa has to keep that for his own use in going about the land: sometimes he rides.”

“Are the debts in Jersey paid, Jane?”

A shadow passed over her face, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

“No. It makes me feel very unhappy sometimes, half-frightened. Of course papa hopes he shall not be found out here. But he seems to have also two or three old debts in this neighbourhood, and those he is paying off.”

The sun, setting right before them in a sea of red clouds, fell upon their faces and lighted up the sadness of Oliver’s. Then the red ball sank, on its way to cheer and illumine another part of the world, leaving behind it the changes which set in after sunset. The bright stream became grey, the osiers bordering it grew dark. Oliver shook himself. The whole place to him wore a strange air of melancholy. It was early evening yet, for the month was only February; but the spring had come in with a kindly mood, and the weather was bright.

Rising from the bench, they slowly walked up the nearest Inlet, side by side, and gained the high road just as a pony-chaise was passing by, an elderly gentleman and a young lady in it; Mr. and Miss Paul.

“Oh, papa, please pull up!” cried the girl. “There’s Jane Preen.”

She leaped out, almost before the pony had stopped, and ran to the pathway with outstretched hands.

“How pleasant that we should meet you, Jane! Papa has been taking me for a drive this afternoon.”

Oliver stood apart, behind his sister, looking and listening. The speaker was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen, with a blushing, dimpled face, a smiling mouth displaying small white teeth, shy blue eyes, and bright hair. Her straw hat had blue ribbons and her dress was one of light silk. Never in his life, thought Oliver, had he seen so sweet a face or heard so sweet a voice.

“Have you been for a walk?” she asked of Jane.

“No,” answered Jane. “We have been down the Inlet, and sitting to watch the sun set. This is my brother, Emma, of whom you have heard. He arrived this afternoon, and has left Tours. Will you allow me to introduce him to you? Oliver, this is Miss Paul.”

Mr. Oliver Preen was about to execute a deep bow at a respectful distance, after the manner of the fashionable blades of Tours, and swung off his hat to begin with; but Emma Paul, who was not fashionable at all, but sociable, inexperienced and unpretending, held out her hand. She liked his looks; a slender young fellow, in deep mourning, with a fair, mild, pleasing face.

“Papa,” she said, turning to the gig, which had drawn up close to the foot-path, “this is Mr. Oliver Preen, from France. He has come home, Jane says.”

John Paul, a portly, elderly gentleman, with iron-grey hair and a face that looked stern to those who did not know him, bent forward and shook hands with the stranger.

Emma began plunging into all sorts of gossip, for she liked nothing better than to talk. Jane liked it too.

“I have been telling Oliver we call Duck Brook the fag end of the world, and that it was you who first said it,”cried Jane.

“Oh, how could you?” laughed Emma, turning her beaming face upon Oliver. And they might have gone on for ever, if left alone; but Mr. Paul reminded his daughter that it was growing late, and he wanted to get home to dinner. So she lightly stepped into the low chaise, Oliver Preen assisting her, and they drove off, Emma calling to Jane not to forget that they were engaged to drink tea at North Villa on the morrow.

“What’s Preen going to do with that young fellow?”wondered the lawyer, as he drove on.

“I’m sure I don’t know, papa,” said Emma. “Take him into the Buttery, perhaps.”

Old Paul laughed a little at the idea. “Not much more work there than Preen can do himself, I expect.”

“When I last saw Jane she said she thought her brother might be coming home. It may be only for a visit, you know.”

Old Paul nodded, and touched up the pony.

Oliver stood in the pathway gazing after the chaise until it was out of sight. “What a charming girl!” he cried to his sister. “I never saw one so unaffected in all my life.”

II

If the reader has chanced to read the two papers entitled“Chandler and Chandler,” he may be able to recall North Villa, and those who lived in it.

It stood in the Islip Road—hardly a stone’s throw from Crabb Cot. Jacob Chandler’s widow lived in it with her three daughters. She was empty-headed, vain, frivolous, always on the high ropes when in company, wanting to give people the impression that she had been as good as born a duchess: whereas everyone knew she had sprung from small tradespeople in Birmingham. The three daughters, Clementina, Georgiana, Julietta, took after her, and were as fine as their names.

But you have heard of them before—and of the wrong inflicted by their father, Jacob Chandler, upon his brother’s widow and son. The solicitor’s business at Islip had been made by the elder brother, Thomas Chandler; he had taken Jacob into partnership, and given him a half share without cross or coin of recompense: and when Thomas died from an accident, leaving his only son Tom in the office to succeed him when he should be of age, Jacob refused to carry out the behest. Ignoring past obligations, all sense of right or wrong, he made his own son Valentine his partner in due course of time, condemning Tom, though a qualified solicitor, to remain his clerk.

It’s true that when Jacob Chandler lay on his death-bed, the full sense of what he had done came home to him: any glaring injustice we may have been committing in our lives does, I fancy, often take hold of the conscience at that dread time: and he enjoined his son Valentine to give Tom his due—a full partnership. Valentine having his late father’s example before him (for Jacob died), did nothing of the kind. “I’ll raise your salary, Tom,” said he, “but I cannot make you my partner.” So Tom, thinking he had put up with injustice long enough, quitted Valentine there and then. John Paul, the other Islip lawyer, was only too glad to secure Tom for his own office; he made him his manager and paid him a good salary.

About two years had gone on since then. Tom Chandler, a very fine young fellow, honest and good-natured, was growing more and more indispensable to Mr. Paul; Valentine was growing (if the expression may be used) downwards. For Valentine, who had been an indulged son, and only made to work when he pleased, had picked up habits of idleness, and other habits that we are told in our copy-books idleness begets. Gay, handsome, pleasant-mannered, with money always in his pocket, one of those young men sure to be courted, Valentine had grown fonder of pleasure than of work: he liked his game at billiards; worse than that, he liked his glass. When a client came in, ten to one but a clerk had to make a rush to the Bell Inn opposite, to fetch his master; and it sometimes happened that Valentine would not return quite steady. The result was, that his practice was gradually leaving him, to be given to Mr. Paul. All this was telling upon Valentine’s mother; she had an ever-haunting dread of the poverty which might result in the future, and was only half as pretentious as she used to be.

Her daughters did not allow their minds to be disturbed by anxiety as yet; the young are less anxious than the old. When she dropped a word of apprehension in their hearing, they good-humouredly said mamma was fidgety—Valentine would be all right; if a little gay now it was only what other young men were. It was a pleasant house to visit, for the girls were gay and hospitable; though they did bedeck themselves like so many peacocks, and put on airs and graces.

Jane Preen found it pleasant; had found it so long ago; and she introduced Oliver to it, who liked it because he sometimes met Emma Paul there. It took a very short time indeed after that first meeting by the Inlets for him to be over head and ears in love with her. Thus some weeks went on.

More pure and ardent love than that young fellow’s for Emma was never felt by man or woman. It filled his every thought, seemed to sanctify his dreary days at Duck Brook, and made a heaven of his own heart. He would meet her at North Villa, would encounter her sometimes in her walks, now and then saw her at her own house at Islip. Not often—old Mr. Paul did not particularly care for the Preens, and rarely gave Emma leave to invite them.

Emma did not care for him. She had not found out that he cared for her. A remarkably open, pleasant girl in manner, to him as to all the world, she met him always with frank cordiality—and he mistook that natural cordiality for a warmer feeling. Had Emma Paul suspected his love for her she would have turned from it in dismay; she was no coquette, and all the first love of her young heart was privately given to someone else.

At this time there was a young man in Mr. Paul’s office named Richard MacEveril. He was a nephew of Captain MacEveril of Oak Mansion—a pretty place near Islip. Captain MacEveril—a retired captain in the Royal Navy—had a brother settled in Australia. When this brother died, his only son, Richard, came over to his relatives, accompanied by a small income, about enough to keep him in coats and waistcoats.

The arrival very much put out Captain MacEveril. He was a good-hearted man, but afflicted with gout in the feet, and irascible when twinges took him. Naturally the question arose to his mind—how was he to put Richard in the way of getting bread and cheese. Richard seemed to have less idea of how it was to be done than his uncle and aunt had. They told him he must go back to Australia and find a living there. Richard objected; said he had only just left it, and did not like Australia. Upon the captain’s death, whenever that should take place, Richard would come into a small estate of between two and three hundred a-year, of which nothing could deprive him; for Captain MacEveril had no son; only a daughter, who would be rich through her mother.

Richard was a gay-mannered young fellow and much liked, but he was not very particular. He played billiards at the Bell Inn with Valentine Chandler, with young Scott, and with other idlers; he hired horses, and dashed across country on their backs; he spent money in all ways. When his own ready money was gone he went into debt, and people came to the Captain to ask him to liquidate it. This startled and angered the old post-captain as no twinge of gout had ever yet done.

“Something must be done with Dick,” said Mrs. MacEveril.

“Of course it must,” her husband wrathfully retorted;“but what the deuce is it to be?”

“Can’t you get John Paul to take him into his office as a temporary thing? It would keep him out of mischief.”

Mrs. MacEveril’s suggestion bore fruit. For the present, until something eligible should “turn up,” Dick was placed in the lawyer’s office as a copying clerk. Mr. Paul made a favour of taking him in; but he and Captain MacEveril had been close friends for many a year. Dick wrote a bold, clear hand, good for copying deeds.

He and Oliver became intimate. It is said that a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind, and they could feel for one another. Both were down in life, both had poverty-stricken pockets. They were of the same age, twenty-one, and in appearance were not dissimilar—fair of face, slight in person.

So that Oliver Preen needed no plea for haunting Islip three or four times a week. “He went over to see Dick MacEveril,” would have been his answer had any inquisitive body inquired what he did there: while, in point of fact, he went hoping to see Emma Paul—if by delightful chance he might obtain that boon.

Thus matters were going on: Oliver, shut up the earlier part of the day in the Buttery with his father, answering letters, and what not; in the latter part of it he would be at Islip, or perhaps with Jane at North Villa. Sometimes they would walk home together; or, if they could have the gig, Oliver drove his sister back in it. But for the love he bore Emma, he would have found his life intolerable; nothing but depression, mortification, disappointment: but when Love takes up its abode in the heart the dreariest lot becomes one of sunshine.

III

The garden attached to North Villa was large and very old-fashioned: a place crowded with trees and shrubs, intersected with narrow paths and homely flowers. The Malvern hills could be seen in the distance, as beautiful a sight in the early morning, with the lights and shadows lying upon them, as the world can show.

It was summer now, nearly midsummer. The garish day was fading, the summer moon had risen, its round shield so delicately pale as to look like silver; and Valentine Chandler was pacing the garden with Jane Preen in the moonlight. They had been singing a duet together at the piano, “I’ve wandered in dreams,” and he had taken the accompaniment. He played well; and never living man had sweeter voice than he. They were wandering in dreams of their own, those two, had been for some time now.

Silence between them as they paced the walk; a sort of discomforting, ominous silence. Valentine broke it.

“Why don’t you reproach me, Jane?”

“Do I ever reproach you?” she answered.

“No. But you ought to do so.”

“If you would only keep your promises, Valentine!”

Young Mr. Valentine Chandler, having stayed his steps while they spoke, backed against the corner of the latticed arbour, which they were just then passing. The same arbour in which his aunt, Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, had sat in her copper-coloured silk gown to convict her brother Jacob, Valentine’s father, of his sins against Tom Chandler, one Sunday afternoon, not so very long gone by.

Val did not answer. He seemed to be staring at the moon, to investigate what it was made of. In reality he saw no moon; neither moon, nor sky above, nor any earthly thing beneath; he only saw his own reckless folly in his mind’s clouded mirror.

“You know you do make promises, Valentine!”

“And when I make them I fully mean to keep them; but a lot of idle fellows get hold of me, and—and—I can’t,”said he, in a savage tone.

“But you might,” said Jane. “If I made promises I should keep them to you—whatever the temptation.”

“I cannot think who it is that comes tattling to you about me, Jane! Is it Oliver?”

“Oliver! Never. Oliver does not know, or suspect—anything.”

“Then it must be those confounded girls indoors!”

“Nor they, either. It is not anyone in particular, Valentine; but I hear one and another talking about you.”

“I should like to know what they say. You must tell me, Jane.”

Jane caught her breath, as if she did not like to answer. But Valentine was waiting.

“They say you are not steady, Val,” she spoke in a whisper; “that you neglect your business; that unless you pull up, you will go to the bad.”

For a few moments Valentine remained quite still; you might have thought he had gone to sleep. Then he put out his hand, drew Jane gently to him, and bent down his head to her with a long-drawn sigh.

“I will pull up, Jane. It is not as bad as story-tellers make out. But I will pull up; I promise you; and I’ll begin from this day.”

Jane Preen did not like to remind him that he had said the same thing many times before; rather would she trust to his renewed word. When a girl is in love, she has faith in modern miracles.

Valentine held her to him very closely. “You believe me, don’t you, my darling?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Down came a voice to them from some remote path near the house, that was anything but a whisper. “Jane! Jane Preen! Are you in the garden? or are you upstairs with Julietta?”

Jane stole swiftly forward. “I am here, Clementina—it is cool and pleasant in the night air. Do you want me?”

“Your boy is asking how long he is to wait. The horse is fresh this evening, and won’t stand.”

“Has the gig come!” exclaimed Jane, as she met Miss Clementina. “And has Sam brought it! Why not Oliver?”

Clementina Chandler shook her head and the yellow ribbons which adorned it, intimating that she did not know anything about Oliver. It was the servant boy, Sam, who had brought the gig.

Jane hastily put on her bonnet and scarf, said good night, and was helped into the gig by Valentine—who gave her hand a tender squeeze as they drove off.

“Where is Mr. Oliver?” she inquired of Sam.

“Mr. Oliver was out, Miss Jane. As it was getting late, the missis told me to get the gig ready, and bring it.”

After that, Jane was silent, thinking about Valentine and his renewed promises. It might be that the air was favourable to love catching: anyway, both the young Preens had fallen desperately into it; Jane with Valentine Chandler and Oliver with Emma Paul.

Duck Brook was soon reached, for the horse was swift that evening. On the opposite side of the road to the Inlets, was a large field, in which the grass was down and lying in cocks, the sweet smell of the hay perfuming the air of the summer night. Leaping across this field and then over its five-barred gate into the road, came Oliver Preen. Jane, seeing him, had no need to wonder where he had been.

For across this field and onwards, as straight as the crow flies, was a near way to Islip. Active legs, such as Oliver’s, might get over the ground in twenty minutes, perhaps in less. But there was no path, or right of way; he had to push through hedges and charge private grounds, with other impediments attending. Thomas Chandler, Conveyancer and Attorney-at-law, had laughingly assured Oliver that if caught using that way, he would of a surety be had up before the justices of the peace for trespass.

“Stop here, Sam,” said Jane. “I will get out now.”

Sam stopped the gig, and Jane got down. She joined her brother, and the boy drove on to the stables.

“It was too bad, Oliver, not to come for me!” she cried.

“I meant to be home in time; I did indeed, Jane,” he answered; “but somehow the evening slipped on.”

“Were you at Mr. Paul’s?”

“No; I was with MacEveril.”

“At billiards, I suppose!—and it’s very foolish of you, Oliver, for you know you can’t afford billiards.”

“I can’t afford anything, Janey, as it seems to me,”returned Oliver, kicking up the dust in the road as they walked along. “Billiards don’t cost much; it’s only the tables: anyway, MacEveril paid for all.”

“Has MacEveril talked any more about going away?”

“He talks of nothing else; is full of it,” answered Oliver.“His uncle says he is not to go; and old Paul stopped him at the first half-word, saying he could not be spared from the office. Dick says he shall start all the same, leave or no leave.”

“Dick will be very silly to go just now, when we are about to be so gay,” remarked Jane, “There’s the picnic coming off; and the dance at Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s; and no end of tea-parties.”

For just now the neighbourhood was putting on a spurt of gaiety, induced to it perhaps by the lovely summer sunshine. Oliver’s face wore a look of gloom, and he made no answer to Jane’s remark. Several matters, cross and contrary, were trying Oliver Preen; not the least of them that he seemed to make no way whatever with Miss Emma.

When we left school for the midsummer holidays that year, Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley were staying at Crabb Cot. We got there on Friday, the eleventh of June.

On the following Monday morning the Squire went to his own small sitting-room after breakfast to busy himself with his accounts and papers. Presently I heard him call me.

“Have you a mind for a walk, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir; I should be glad of one.” Tod had gone to the Whitneys for a couple of days, and without him I felt like a fish out of water.

“Well, I want you to go as far as Massock’s. He is a regular cheat; that man, Johnny, needs looking after——What is it, Thomas?”

For old Thomas had come in, a card between his fingers.“It’s Mr. Gervais Preen, sir,” he said, in answer, putting the card on the Squire’s table. “Can you see him?”

“Oh, yes, I can see him; show him in. Wait a bit, though, Thomas,” broke off the Squire. “Johnny, I expect Preen has come about that pony. I suppose we may as well keep him?”

“Tod said on Saturday, sir, that we should not do better,”I answered. “He tried him well, and thinks he is worth the price.”

“Ay; ten pounds, wasn’t it? We’ll keep him, then. Mr. Preen can come in, Thomas.”

Some few days before this the Squire had happened to say in Preen’s hearing that he wanted a pony for the two children to ride, Hugh and Lena. Preen caught up the words, saying he had one for sale—a very nice pony, sound and quiet. So the pony had been sent to Crabb Cot upon trial, and we all liked him. His name was Taffy.

Mr. Preen came into the room, his small face cool and dark as usual; he had driven from Duck Brook. “A fine morning,” he remarked, as he sat down; but it would be fiery hot by-and-by, too hot for the middle of June, and we should probably pay for it later. The Squire asked if he would take anything, but he declined.

“What of the pony—Taffy—Squire?” went on Mr. Preen. “Do you like him?”

“Yes, we like him very well,” said the Squire, heartily,“and we mean to keep him, Preen.”

“All right,” said Mr. Preen. “You will not repent it.”

Then they fell to talking of horses in general, and of other topics. I stayed on, sitting by the window, not having received the message for Massock. Mr. Preen stayed also, making no move to go away; when it suddenly occurred to the Squire—he mentioned it later—that perhaps Preen might be waiting for the money.

“Ten pounds, I think, was the price agreed upon,”observed the Squire with ready carelessness. “Would you like to be paid now?”

“If it does not inconvenience you.”

The Squire unlocked his shabby old bureau, which stood against the wall, fingered his stock of money, and brought forth a ten-pound bank-note. This he handed to Preen, together with a sheet of paper, that he might give a receipt.

When the receipt was written, Mr. Preen took up the note, looked at it for a moment or two, and then passed it back again.

“Would you mind writing your name on this note, Squire?”

The Squire laughed gently. “Not at all,” he answered;“but why should I? Do you think it is a bad one? No fear, Preen; I had it from the Old Bank at Worcester.”

“No, I do not fear that,” said Preen, speaking quietly.“But since a disagreeable trouble which happened to me some years ago, I have always liked, when receiving a bank-note, to get, if possible, the donor’s name upon it in his own handwriting.”

“What was the trouble?”

“I was playing cards at the house of a man of fashion, who was brother to an earl, and lived in a fashionable square at the West End of London, and I had a ten-pound note paid me, for I won, by a man who, I understood, had recently retired with honours from the army, a Major D——. I will not give you his name. The next day, or next but one, I paid this note away to a tradesman, and it was found to be forged; cleverly forged,” repeated Preen, with emphasis.

“What did you do?” asked the Squire.

“I got Major D.’s address from the house where we had played, carried the note to him, and inquired what it meant and whence he got it. Will you believe, Mr. Todhetley,”added the speaker, with slight agitation, “that the man utterly repudiated the note, saying——”

“But how could he repudiate it?” interrupted the Squire, interested in the tale.

“He said it was not the note he had paid me; he stood it out in the most impudent manner. I told him, and it was the pure truth, that it was impossible there could be any mistake. I was a poor man, down on my luck just then, and it was the only note I had had about me for some time past. All in vain. He held to it that it was not the note, and there the matter ended. I could not prove that it was the note except by my bare word. It was my word against his, you see, and naturally I went to the wall.”

The Squire nodded. “Who was at the loss of the money?”

“I was. Besides that, I had the cold shoulder turned upon me. Major D. was believed; I was doubted; some people went so far as to say I must have trumped up the tale. For some time after that I would not take a bank-note from any man unless he put his signature to it, and it has grown into a habit with me. So, if you don’t mind, Squire——”

The Squire smiled goodnaturedly, drew the bank-note to him, and wrote upon the back in a corner, “J. Todhetley.”

“There, Preen,” said he, returning it, “I won’t repudiate that. Couldn’t if I would.”

Mr. Preen put the note into his pocket-book, and rose to leave. We strolled with him across the front garden to the gate, where his gig was waiting.

“I have to go as far as Norton; and possibly after that on to Stoulton,” he remarked, as he took the reins in his hand and got in.

“You will have a hot drive of it,” said the Squire.

“Yes; but if one undertakes business it must be attended to,” said Preen, as he drove off.

A TRAGEDY.

II.—IN THE BUTTERY.

I

The windows of the room, called the Buttery, which Mr. Preen used as an office in his house at Duck Brook, were thrown open to the warm, pure air. It was about the hottest part of the afternoon. Oliver Preen sat back in his chair before the large table covered with papers, waiting in idleness and inward rebellion—rebellion against the untoward fate which had latterly condemned him to this dreary and monotonous life. Taking out his pocket-handkerchief with a fling, he passed it over his fair, mild face, which was very hot just now.

To-day, of all days, Oliver had wanted to be at liberty, whereas he was being kept a prisoner longer than usual, and for nothing. When Mr. Preen rode out after breakfast in the morning he had left Oliver a couple of letters to copy as a beginning, remarking that there was a great deal to do that day, double work, and he should be back in half-an-hour. The double work arose from the fact that none had been done the day before, as Mr. Preen was out. For that day, Monday—this was Tuesday—was the day Mr. Preen had paid us a visit at Crabb Cott, to be paid for Taffy, the pony, and had then gone to Norton, and afterwards to Stoulton, and it had taken him the best part of the day. So the double work was waiting. But the half hours and the hours had passed on, and Mr. Preen had not yet returned. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had dined without him.

Oliver, who did not dare to absent himself without permission, and perhaps was too conscientious to do so, left his chair for the window. The old garden was quite a wilderness of blossom and colour, with all kinds of homely flowers crowded into it. The young man stretched forth his hand and plucked a spray or two of jessamine, which grew against the wall. Idly smelling it, he lost himself in a vision of the days gone by; his careless, happy life at Tours, in his aunt’s luxurious home, when he had no fear of a dark future, had only to dress well and ride or drive out, and idly enjoy himself.

Suddenly he was brought back to reality. The sound of hoofs clattering into the fold-yard behind the house struck upon his ear, and he knew his father had come home.

Ten minutes yet, or more, and then Mr. Preen came into the room, his little dark face looking darker and more cross than usual. He had been snatching some light refreshment, and sat down at once in his place at the table, facing the windows; Oliver sat opposite to him.

“What have you done?” asked he.

“I have only copied those two letters; there was nothing else to do,” replied Oliver.

“Could you not have looked over the pile of letters which came this morning, to see whether there were any you could answer?” growled Mr. Preen.

“Why, no, father,” replied Oliver in slight surprise; “I did not know I might look at them. And if I had looked I should not have known what to reply.”

Mr. Preen began reading the letters over at railroad speed, dictating answers for Oliver to write, writing some himself. This took time. He had been unexpectedly detained at the other end of Captain Falkner’s land by some business which had vexed him. Most of these letters were from farmers and others, about the new patent agricultural implements for which Mr. Preen had taken the agency. He wished to push the sale of them, as it gave him a good percentage.

The answers, addressed and stamped for the post, at length lay ready on the table. Mr. Preen then took out his pocket-book and extracted from it that ten-pound bank-note given him the previous morning by Mr. Todhetley for the children’s pony, the note he had got the Squire to indorse, as I have already told. Letting the bank-note lie open before him, Mr. Preen penned a few lines, as follows, Oliver looking on:—

“DEAR SIR,—I enclose you the ten pounds. Have not been able to send it before. Truly yours, G. Preen.”

Mr. Preen folded the sheet on which he had written this, put the bank-note within it, and enclosed all in a good-sized business envelope, which he fastened securely down. He then addressed it to John Paul, Esquire, Islip, and put on a postage stamp.

“I shall seal this, Oliver,” he remarked; “it’s safer. Get the candle and the wax. Here, you can seal it,” he added, taking the signet ring from his finger, on which was engraved the crest of the Preen family.

Oliver lighted a candle kept on a stand at the back for such purposes, brought it to the table, and sealed the letter with a large, imposing red seal. As he passed the ring and letter back to his father, he spoke.

“If you are particularly anxious that the letter should reach Mr. Paul safely, father, and of course you are so, as it contains money, why did you not send it by hand? I would have taken it to him.”

“There’s nothing safer than the post,” returned Mr. Preen, “and I want him to have it to-morrow morning.”

Oliver laughed. “I could have taken it this evening, father. I can do so still, if you like.”

“No, it shall go by post. You want to be off to MacEveril, I suppose.”

“No, I do not,” replied Oliver. “Had I been able to finish here this morning I might have gone over this afternoon; it is too late now.”

“You had nothing to do all day yesterday,” growled his father.

“Oh, yes, I know. I am not grumbling.”

Mr. Preen put the letter into his pocket, gathered up the pile of other letters, handed half of them to his son, for it was a pretty good heap, and they started for the post, about three minutes’ walk.

The small shop containing the post-office at Duck Brook was kept by Mrs. Sym, who sold sweetstuff, also tapes and cottons. Young Sym, her son, a growing youth, delivered the letters, which were brought in by a mail-cart. She was a clean, tidy woman of middle age, never seen out of a muslin cap with a wide border and a black bow, a handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, and a checked apron.

Oliver, of lighter step than his father, reached the post-office first and tumbled his portion of the letters into the box placed in the window to receive them. The next moment Mr. Preen put his in also, together with the letter addressed to Mr. Paul.

“We are too late,” observed Oliver. “I thought we should be.”

“Eh?” exclaimed Mr. Preen, in surprise, as he turned round. “Too late! Why how can the afternoon have gone on?” he continued, his eyes falling on the clock of the little grey church which stood beyond the triangle of houses, the hands of which were pointing to a quarter past five.

“If you knew it was so late why did you not say so?”he asked sharply of his son.

“I was not sure until I saw the clock; I only thought it must be late by the time we had been at work,” replied Oliver.

“I might have sent you over with that letter as you suggested, had I known it would not go to-night. I wonder whether Dame Sym would give it back to me.”

He dived down the two steps into the shop as he spoke, Oliver following. Dame Sym—so Duck Brook called her—stood knitting behind the little counter, an employment she took up at spare moments.

“Mrs. Sym, I’ve just put some letters into the box, not perceiving that it was past five o’clock,” began Mr. Preen, civilly. “I suppose they’ll not go to-night?”

“Can’t, sir,” replied the humble post-mistress. “The bag’s made up.”

“There’s one letter that will hardly bear delay. It is for Mr. Paul of Islip. If you can return it me out of the box I will send it over by hand at once; my son will take it.”

“But it is not possible, sir. Once a letter is put into the box I dare not give it back again,” remonstrated Mrs. Sym, gazing amiably at Mr. Preen through her spectacles, whose round glasses had a trick of glistening when at right angles with the light.

“You might stretch a point for once, to oblige me,”returned Mr. Preen, fretfully.

“And I’m sure I’d not need to be pressed to do it, sir, if I could,” she cried in her hearty way. “But I dare not break the rules, sir; I might lose my place. Our orders are not to open the receiving box until the time for making-up, or give a letter back on any pretence whatever.”

Mr. Preen saw that further argument would be useless. She was a kindly, obliging old body, but upright to the last degree in all that related to her place. Anything that she believed (right or wrong) might not be done she stuck to.

“Obstinate as the grave,” muttered he.

Dame Sym did not hear; she had turned away to serve a child who came in for some toffee. Mr. Preen waited.

“When will the letter go?” he asked, as the child went out.

“By to-morrow’s day mail, sir. It will be delivered at Islip—I think you said Islip, Mr. Preen—about half-past four, or so, in the afternoon.”

“Is the delay of much consequence, sir?” inquired Oliver, as he and his father turned out of the shop.

“No,” said Mr. Preen. “Only I hate letters to be delayed uselessly in the post.”

Tea was waiting when they got in. A mutton chop was served with it for Mr. Preen, as he had lost his dinner. Jane ran downstairs, drank a cup of tea in haste, and ran back again. She had been busy in her bedroom all day, smartening-up a dress. A picnic was to be held on Thursday, the next day but one; Jane and Oliver were invited to it, and Jane wanted to look as well as other girls.

After tea Oliver sat for ever so long at the open window, reading the Worcester Journal. He then strolled out to the Inlets, sauntered beside the brook, and presently threw himself listlessly upon one of the benches facing it. The sun shone right upon his face there, so he tilted his straw hat over his eyes. That did not do, and he moved to another bench which the trees shaded. He often felt lonely and weary now; this evening especially so; even Jane was not with him.

His thoughts turned to Emma Paul; and a glow, bright as the declining sun rays, shot up in his heart. As long asshe filled it, he could not be all gloom.

“If I had means to justify it I should speak to her,”mused he—as he had told himself forty times over, and forty more. “But when a fellow has no fortune, and no prospect of fortune; when it may be seen by no end of odd signs and tokens that he has not so much as a silver coin in his pocket, how can he ask a girl the one great question of life? Old Paul would send me to the right-about.”

He leaned his head sideways for a few minutes against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the reddening sky through the green tracery of the waving boughs; and fell to musing again.

“If she loved me as I love her, she would be glad to wait on as things are, hoping for better times. Lovers, who are truly attached to each other, do wait for years and years, and are all the happier for it. Sometimes I feel inclined to enlist in a crack regiment. The worst of it is that a fellow rarely rises from the ranks in England to position and honour, as he does in France; they manage things better over there. If old Uncle Edward would only open his purse-strings and buy me a commission, I might—— Halloa!”

A burst of girlish laughter, and a pair of girlish arms, flung round his neck from behind, disturbed Oliver’s castles-in-the-air. Jane came round and sat down beside him. “I thought I should find you here, Oliver,” she said.

“Frock finished, Janey?”

“Finished! why no,” she exclaimed. “It will hardly be finished by this time to-morrow.”

“Why, how idle you must have been!”

“Idle? You don’t understand things, or the time it takes to make an old frock into a new one. A dressmaker might have done it in a day, but I’m not a dressmaker, you know, Oliver.”

“Is it a silk gown?”

“It is a mousseline-de-laine, if you chance to be acquainted with that material,” answered Janey. “It was very pretty when it was new: pale pink and lilac blossoms upon a cream ground. But it has been washed, and that has made it shrink, and it has to be let out everywhere and lengthened, and the faded silk trimming has to be turned, and—oh, ever so much work. And now, I daresay you are as wise as you were before, Oliver.”

“I’ve heard of washed-out dresses,” remarked Oliver.“They look like rags, don’t they?”

“Some may. Mine won’t. It has washed like a pocket-handkerchief, and it looks as good as new.”

“Wish my coats would wash,” said Oliver. “They are getting shabby, and I want some new ones.”

Not having any consolation to administer in regard to the coats, Jane did not take up the subject. “What have you been doing all day, Oliver?” she asked.

“Airing my patience in that blessed Buttery,” replied he.“Never stirred out of it at all, except for dinner.”

“I thought you wanted to get over to Islip this afternoon.”

“I might want to get over to the North Pole, and be none the nearer to it. MacEveril was bound for some place a mile or two across fields this afternoon, on business for the office, and I promised to go over to walk with him. Promises, though, are like pie-crust, Janey: made to be broken.”

Jane nodded assent. “And a promise which you are obliged to break is sure to be one you particularly want to keep. I wish I had a pair of new gloves, Oliver. Pale grey.”

“I wish I had half-a-dozen new pairs, for the matter of that. Just look at those little minnows, leaping in the water. How pretty they are!”

He went to the edge of the brook and stood looking down at the small fry. Jane followed. Then they walked about in the Inlets, then sat down again and watched the sunset; and so the evening wore away until they went home.

Jane was shut up again the following day, busy with her dress; Oliver, as usual, was in the Buttery with his father. At twelve o’clock Mr. Preen prepared to go out to keep an appointment at Evesham, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do, very much to his aggravation.

“It’s a shame. It will take me all the afternoon to get through it,” ran his thoughts—and he would have liked to say so aloud.

“You don’t look pleased, young man,” remarked his father. “Recollect you will be off duty to-morrow.”

Oliver’s countenance cleared; his disposition was a pleasant one, never retaining anger long, and he set to his task with a good will. The morrow being the day of the picnic, he would have whole holiday.

At five o’clock the young servant carried the tea-tray into the parlour. Presently Mrs. Preen came in, made the tea, and sat down to wait for her son and daughter. Tired and hot, she was glad of the rest.

Jane ran downstairs, all happiness. “Mamma, it is finished,” she cried; “quite finished. It looks so well.”

“It had need look well,” fretfully retorted Mrs. Preen, who had been unable to get at Jane for any useful purpose these two days, and resented it accordingly.

“When all trades fail I can turn dressmaker,” said the girl, gaily. “Where’s Oliver?”

“In the Buttery, I expect; he said he had a great deal to do there this afternoon, and I have not seen him about,”replied Mrs. Preen, as she poured out the tea. “Not that I should have been likely to see him—shut into that hot kitchen with the ironing.”

Jane knew this was a shaft meant for herself. At ordinary times she did her share of the ironing. “I will tell Oliver that tea is ready, mamma,” she said, rising to go to the other room. “Why, there he is, sitting in the shade under the walnut tree,” she exclaimed, happening to look from the window.

“Sitting out in the cool,” remarked Mrs. Preen. “I don’t blame him, poring all day long over those accounts and things. Call him in, Jane.”

“Coming,” said Oliver, in response to Jane’s call from the open window.

He crossed the grass slowly, fanning himself with his straw hat. His fair face—an unusual thing with him—was scarlet.

“You look red-hot, Oliver,” laughed his sister.

“If it is as hot to-morrow as it is to-day we shall get a baking,” returned Oliver.

“In this intense weather nothing makes one feel the heat like work, and I suppose you’ve been hard at it this afternoon,”said his mother in a tone of compassion, for she disliked work naturally very much herself.

“Of course; I had to be,” answered Oliver.

He and Jane sat together under the shade of the walnut tree after tea. When it grew a little cooler they went to the Inlets, that favourite resort of theirs; a spot destined to bear a strange significance for one of them in the days to come; a haunting remembrance.

II

The white mist, giving promise of a hot and glorious day, had hardly cleared itself from the earth, when, at ten o’clock on the Thursday morning, Jane and Oliver Preen set off in the gig for North Villa, both of them as spruce as you please; Jane in that pretty summer dress she had spent so much work over, a straw hat with its wreath of pink may shading her fair face, Oliver with a white rose in his button-hole. The party was first to assemble at Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, and to go from thence in waggonettes. There had been some trouble about the gig, Mr. Preen wanting it himself that day, or telling Jane and Oliver that he did, and that they could walk. Jane almost cried, declaring she did not care to arrive at North Villa looking like a milkmaid, hot and red with walking; and Mr. Preen gave way. Oliver was to drive himself and Jane, Sam being sent on to Crabb to bring back the gig.

Mr. Preen did not regard the picnic with favour. Mr. Preen could not imagine what anybody could want at one, he said, when ungraciously giving consent to Oliver’s absenting himself from that delightful Buttery for a whole day.

Picnics in truth are nearly all alike, and are no doubt more agreeable to the young than to the old. This one was given conjointly by the Jacob Chandlers, the Letsoms, the Coneys, and the Ashtons of Timberdale. A few honorary guests were invited. I call them honorary because they had nothing to do with finding provisions. Tod got an invitation, myself also; and uncommonly vexed we were not to be able to arrive till late in the afternoon. The Beeles from Pigeon Green were coming to spend the day at Crabb Cot, and the Squire would not let us off earlier.

The picnic was held upon Mrs. Cramp’s farm, not far from Crabb, and a charming spot for it. Gentle hills and dales, shady groves and mossy glens surrounded the house, which was a very good one. So that it may be said we all were chiefly Mrs. Cramp’s guests. Mrs. Cramp made a beaming hostess, and was commander-in-chief at her own tea-table. Tea was taken in her large parlour, to save the bother of carrying things out. Dinner had been taken in the dell, under shade of the high and wide-spreading trees.

They were seated at tea when we got there. Such a large company at the long table; and such tempting things to eat! I found a seat by Emma Paul, the prettiest girl there; Oliver Preen was next her on the other side. Mary MacEveril made room for Tod beside her. The MacEverils were proud, exclusive people, and Miss MacEveril privately looked down on some of her fellow guests; but Tod was welcome; he was of her own order.

Two or three minutes later Tom Chandler came in; he also had not been able to get away earlier. He shook hands with his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, nodded to the rest of us, and deftly managed to wedge himself in between Emma Paul and young Preen. Preen did not seem pleased, Emma did; and made all the room she could, by crushing me.

“I wouldn’t be in your shoes to-morrow morning, young man,” began Mr. Chandler, in a serio-comic tone, as he looked at Dick MacEveril across the table. “To leave the office to its own devices the first thing this morning, in defiance of orders——”

“Hang the musty old office!” interrupted MacEveril, with a genial laugh.

Valentine Chandler had done the same by his office; pleasure first and business later always with both of them; but Valentine was his own master and MacEveril was not. In point of fact, Mr. Paul, not a man to be set at defiance by his clerks, was in a great rage with Dick MacEveril.

I supposed the attractions of the picnic had been too powerful for Dick, and that he thought the sooner he got to it the better. But this proved to be a fallacy. Mrs. Cramp was setting her nephew right.

“My dear Tom, you are mistaken. Mr. MacEveril did not come this morning; he only got here an hour ago—like two or three more of the young men.”

“Oh, did he not, Aunt Mary Ann?” replied Tom, turning his handsome, pleasant face upon her.

“Yes, and if you were not at the office I should like to know what you did with yourself all day, Dick,” severely cried Miss MacEveril, bending forward to regard her cousin.

“I went to see the pigeon-match,” said Dick, coolly.

“To see the pigeon-match!” she echoed. “How cruel of you! You had better not let papa know.”

“If anyone lets him know it will be yourself, Miss Mary. And suppose you hold your tongue now,” cried Dick, not very politely.

This little passage-at-arms over, we went on with tea. Afterwards we strolled out of doors and disposed of ourselves at will. Some of the Chandler girls took possession of me, and I went about with them.

When it was getting late, and they had talked me deaf, I began looking about for Tod, and found him on a bench within the Grove. A sheltered spot. Sitting there, you could look out, but people could not look in. Mary MacEveril and Georgiana Chandler were with him; Oliver Preen stood close by, leaning against the stump of a tree. I thought how sad his look was, and wondered what made it so.

Within view of us, but not within hearing, in a dark, narrow walk Tom Chandler and Emma Paul were pacing side by side, absorbed evidently in one another. The sun had set, the lovely colours in the sky were giving place to twilight. It was the hour when matter-of-fact prosaic influences change into romance; when, if there’s any sentiment within us it is safe to come out.

“It is the hour when from the boughs

The nightingale’s high note is heard;

It is the hour when lovers’ vows

Seem sweet in every whispered word,”

as Lord Byron says. And who could discourse on love—the true ring of it, mind you—as he did?

“Do sing,” said Tod to Miss MacEveril; and I found they had been teasing her to do so for the last five minutes. She had a pleasant voice and sang well.

“I’m sure you don’t care to hear me, Mr. Todhetley.”

“But I’m sure I do,” answered Tod, who would flirt with pretty girls when the fit took him. Flirt and flatter too.

“We should have everyone coming round us.”

“Not a soul of them. They are all away somewhere, out of hearing. Do sing me one song.”

She began at once, without more ado, choosing an old song that Mrs. Todhetley often chose; one that was a favourite of hers, as it was of mine: “Faithless Emma.”Those songs of the old days bore, all of them, a history.

“I wandered once at break of day,

While yet upon the sunless sea

In wanton sighs the breeze delayed,

And o’er the wavy surface played.

Then first the fairest face I knew,

First loved the eye of softest blue,

And ventured, fearful, first to sip

The sweets that hung upon the lip

Of faithless Emma.

So mixed the rose and lily white

That nature seemed uncertain, quite,

To deck her cheek which flower she chose,

The lily or the blushing rose.

I wish I ne’er had seen her eye,

Ne’er seen her cheeks of doubtful dye,

Nor ever, ever dared to sip

The sweets that hung upon the lip

Of faithless Emma.

Now though from early dawn of day,

I rove alone and, anxious, stray

Till night with curtain dark descends,

And day no more its glimmering lends;

Yet still, like hers no cheek I find,

No eye like hers, save in my mind,

Where still I fancy that I sip

The sweets that hung upon the lip

Of faithless Emma.”

“I think all Emmas are faithless,” exclaimed Georgiana, speaking at random, as the last sounds of the sweet song died away.

“A sweeping assertion, Miss Georgie,” laughed Tod.

“Any way, I knew two girls named Emma who were faithless to their engaged lovers, and one of them’s not married yet to any one else,” returned Georgie.

“I think I know one Emma who will be true for ever and a day,” cried Tod, as he pointed significantly to Emma Paul, still walking side by side with Tom Chandler in the distance.

“I could have told you that before now,” said Mary MacEveril. “I have seen it for a long time, though Miss Emma will never confess to it.”

“And now, I fancy it will soon be a case,” continued Tod.

“A case!” cried Georgie. “What do you mean?”

“A regular case; dead, and gone, and done for,” nodded Tod. “Church bells and wedding gloves, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Looks like it, anyhow, to-night.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Georgie, “then how sly Tom has been over it, never to tell us! Is it really true? I shall ask Valentine.”

“The last person likely to know,” said Tod. “You’ll find it’s true enough, Georgie.”

“Then——” Georgie began, and broke off. “Listen!”she cried. “They are beginning to dance on the lawn. Come, Mary.” And the two girls moved away, attracted by the scraping of the fiddle.

Oliver Preen moved a step forward from the tree, speaking in a low, calm tone; but his face was white as death.

“Were you alluding to them?” he asked, looking across to those two pacing about. “Why do you say it is a‘case’?”

“Because I am sure it is one,” answered Tod. “They have been in love with one another this many a day past, those two, months and months and years. As everyone might see who had eyes, except old Paul. That’s why, Preen.”

Oliver did not answer. He had his arm round the trunk of a tree looking across as before.

“And I wouldn’t stake a fortune that Paul has not seen it also,” went on Tod. “All the same, I had a rumour whispered to me to-day that he sees it now, and has said,‘Bless you, my children.’ Tom Chandler is to be made his partner and to marry Emma.”

“We are too many girls there, and want you for partners,” cried Eliza Letsom, dashing up. “Do come and dance with us, Johnny!”

What else could I do? Or Tod, either.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when the party separated. The waggonettes held us all, and nice scrambling and crowding we had for seats. One of the vehicles, after setting down some of its freight—ourselves and the Miss Chandlers—continued its way to Duck Brook with Jane and Oliver Preen.

It was a lovely night. The moon had risen, and was flooding the earth with its soft light. Jane sat looking at it in romantic reverie. Suddenly it struck her that her brother was unusually still; he had not spoken a single word.

“How silent you are, Oliver. You are not asleep, are you?”

Oliver slowly raised his bent head. “Silent?” he repeated. “One can’t talk much after a tiring day such as this.”

“I think it must be getting on for twelve o’clock,” said Jane. “What a delightfully happy day it has been!”

“The one bad day of all my life,” groaned Oliver, in spirit. But he broke into the two lines, in pretended gaiety, that some one had sung on the box-seat of the waggonette when leaving Mrs. Cramp’s:

“For the best of all ways to lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.”

III

“MY DEAR SIR,—Robert Derrick is getting troublesome. He has been here three times in as many days, pressing for ten pounds, the instalment of your debt now due to him. Will you be good enough to transmit it to me, that I may pay and get rid of him.

“Truly yours,

John Paul.”

This letter, written by Lawyer Paul of Islip, came to Mr. Preen by the Thursday morning post, just a week after the picnic. It put him into a temper.

“What do Paul’s people mean by their carelessness?” he exclaimed angrily, as he snatched a sheet of paper to pen the answer.

“DEAR MR. PAUL,—I don’t know what you mean. I sent the money to you ten days ago—a bank-note, enclosed in a letter to yourself.

“Truly yours,

G. PREEN.”

Calling Oliver from his breakfast, Mr. Preen despatched this answer by him at once to the post-office. There was no hurry whatever, since the day mail had gone out, and it would lie in Mrs. Sym’s drawer until towards evening, but an angry man knows nothing of patience.

The week since the picnic had not been productive of any particular event, except a little doubt and trouble regarding Dick MacEveril. Mr. Paul was so much annoyed, at Dick’s taking French leave to absent himself from the office that day, that he attacked him with hot words when he entered it on the Friday morning. Dick took it very coolly—old Paul said “insolently,” and retorted that he wanted a longer holiday than that, a whole fortnight, and that he must have it. Shortly and sharply Mr. Paul told him he could not have it, unless he chose to have it for good.

Dick took him at his word. Catching up his hat and stick, he went out of the office there and then, and had not since appeared at it. Not only that: during the Friday he disappeared also from Islip. Nobody knew for certain whither he had gone, or where he was: unless it might be London. He had made no secret of what he wanted a holiday for. Some young fellow whom he had known in Australia had recently landed at the docks and was in London, and Dick wanted to go up to see him.

Deprived of his friend, and deprived of his heart’s love, Oliver Preen was in a bad case. The news of Emma Paul’s engagement to Thomas Chandler, and the news that Chandler was to have a share in her father’s business, had been made public; the speedy marriage was already talked of. No living person saw what havoc it was making of Oliver Preen. Jane found him unnaturally quiet. He would sit by the hour together and never say a word to her or to anyone else, apparently plunged in what might be either profound scientific calculations or grim despondency. It was as if he had the care of the world upon his mind, and at times there would break from him a sudden long-drawn sigh. Poor Oliver! Earth’s sunshine had gone out for him with sweet Emma Paul.

She had not been faithless, like the Faithless Emma of the song, for she had never cared for anyone but Tom Chandler, had never given the smallest encouragement to another. Oliver had only deluded himself. To his heart, filled and blinded with its impassioned love, her open, pleasing manners had seemed to be a response, and so he had mistaken her. That was all.

But this is sentiment, which the world, having grown enlightened of late years, practically despises; and we must go on to something more sensible and serious.

The answer sent by Mr. Preen to John Paul of Islip brought forth an answer in its turn. It was to the effect that Mr. Paul had not seen anything of the letter spoken of by Mr. Preen, or of the money it was said to contain.

This reached Duck Brook on the Saturday morning. Mr. Preen, more puzzled this time than angry, could not make it out.

“Oliver,” said he, “which day was it last week that I wrote that letter to Paul of Islip, enclosing a ten-pound note?”

“I don’t remember,” carelessly replied Oliver. They had not yet settled to work, and Oliver was stretched out at the open window, talking to a little dog that was leaping up outside.

“Not remember!” indignantly echoed Mr. Preen. “My memory is distracted with a host of cares, but yours has nothing to trouble it. Bring your head in, sir, and attend to me properly.”

Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. “What was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it,” he said.

“I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul. But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it for me.”

“I remember quite well that it was Tuesday—two days before the picnic,” said Oliver.

“Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by,” returned Mr. Preen, sarcastically. “Well, Paul says he has never received either money or letter.”

“The letter was posted——” began Oliver, but his father impatiently interrupted him.

“Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it.”

“It was too late for the evening’s post; Dame Sym said it would go out the next morning,” went on Oliver. “Are Paul’s people sure they did not receive it?”

“Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but exact clerks about him. He writes positively.”

“I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?”suggested Oliver.

“What an idiot you are!” retorted his father, by way of being complimentary. “The letter must have gone out safely enough.”

Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs. Sym’s.

The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back, Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr. Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did. He acknowledged that he did owe the debt—forty pounds—but, like Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.

An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every six months he would place in Mr. Paul’s hands, to be handed to Derrick, whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now miscarried in the post was the third.

“Mrs. Sym,” began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, “do you recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you refused?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” answered Mrs. Sym. “I was sorry, but——”

“Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that letter when you made up the bag?”

“I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had passed. It was sealed with a large red seal.”

“Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him.”

“But it must have reached him,” rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her glittering spectacles upon the speaker’s face.“It had Mr. Paul’s address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the bag with the rest of the letters.”

“The letter had a ten-pound note in it.”

Mrs. Sym paused. “Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter’s safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to be registered, Mr. Preen.”

“You are sure it went away as usual from here—all safe?”

“Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn’t tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning’s delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?”

Mr. Preen did not say.

“In all the years I have kept this post-office I can’t call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit,” she ran on, warming in her own cause. “Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter’s sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can’t fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn’t got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I’d respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places.”

Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost—if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.

He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, “have it out with Paul.”

Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.

The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone’s throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks’room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul’s room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul’s room as well as one in the clerks’room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.

On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul’s room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.

“I’ve come about that letter, Mr. Chandler,” began the visitor; “my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received.”

“I assure you no such letter was received by us——”

“It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it,” irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.

“Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us,” said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other’s irritability.

“Then where is the letter? What became of it?”

“I should say perhaps it was never posted,” mildly suggested Tom.

“Not posted!” tartly echoed Mr. Preen. “Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly.”

“It never was delivered to us,” said Tom, shaking his head. “If—— oh, here is Mr. Paul.”

The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss?—or an invented one? But old Paul read people’s characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.

“Let me see,” said he. “You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night’s post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon—Wednesday, the sixteenth.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Preen. “Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. “Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I’m not an old woman. We don’t get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any,” he went on. “Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?”

“I daresay I shall be able to do so,” replied Tom.“Wednesday, the sixteenth.—Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp’s?”

“What on earth has the picnic to do with it?” sharply demanded Mr. Preen. “All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity.”

Tom Chandler laughed. “I remember the day before the picnic for a special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that afternoon.”

“Is MacEveril back yet?” asked Preen.

“No,” replied Paul. “The captain does not know where he is; no one does know, that I’m aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?”

Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the insatiable Derrick.

They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face—unusually sad it looked—had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver could not drop her out of his heart.

They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr. Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent out to Mr. Paul.

In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and was honest as the day.

“Dale,” said Lawyer Paul, “there has been a letter lost, addressed to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?” And he mentioned the details of the case.

“One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir,” observed the man. “Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it might be, but that’s nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters are sealed, sir.”

The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which opened from the clerks’ department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

“I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday week,” said he. “I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were rather unusual.”

A TRAGEDY.

III.—MYSTERY.

I

Thomas Chandler possessed a clear, retentive memory by nature, and he had done nothing to cloud it. After his master, Lawyer Paul—soon to be no longer his master, but his partner—had gone out with Mr. Preen to make inquiries at the post-office for the missing letter, he sat down to bring his memory into exercise.

Carrying his thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon, some ten days ago, when the letter ought to have been delivered at Mr. Paul’s office, and was not—at least, so far as could be traced at present—he had little difficulty in recalling its chief events, one remembered incident leading up to another.

Then he passed into the front room, and spoke for some minutes with Michael Hanborough, a steady little man of middle age, who had been with Mr. Paul over twenty years. There was one clerk under him, Tite Batley (full name Titus), and there had been young Richard MacEveril. The disappearance of the latter had caused the office to be busy just now, Michael Hanborough especially so. He was in the room alone when Mr. Chandler entered.

“You have not gone to tea yet, Mr. Hanborough!”

“No, sir. I wanted to finish this deed, first. Batley’s gone to his.”

“Look here, Hanborough, I want to ask you a question or two. That deed’s in no particular hurry, for I am sure Mr. Paul will not be ready to send it off to-day,” continued Mr. Chandler. “There’s going to be a fuss over that letter of Preen’s, which appears to have been unaccountably lost. I have been carrying my thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon when it ought to have been delivered here, and I want you to do the same. Try and recollect anything and everything you can, connected with that afternoon.”

“But, Mr. Chandler, the letter could not have been delivered here; Mr. Paul says so,” reasoned Michael Hanborough, turning from his desk while he spoke and leaning his elbow upon it.

His desk stood between the window and the door which opened from the passage; the window being at his right hand as he sat. Opposite, beside the other window, was Mr. Chandler’s desk. A larger desk, used by MacEveril and young Batley, crossed the lower end of the room, facing the window; and near it was the narrow door that opened to Mr. Paul’s room.

Thomas Chandler remained talking with Hanborough until he saw the lawyer and Mr. Preen return, when he joined them in the other room. They mentioned their failure at the post-office, and he then related to them what he had been able to recall.

Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth of June, had been distinguished in Mr. Paul’s office by a little breeze raised by Richard MacEveril. Suddenly looking up from his writing, he disturbed Mr. Chandler, who was busy at his desk, by saying he expected to have holiday on the morrow for the whole day. Hanborough was just then in Mr. Paul’s room; Batley was out. Batley had been sent to execute a commission at a distance, and would not be back till evening.

“Oh, indeed!” responded Tom Chandler, laughing at MacEveril’s modest request, so modestly put. “What else would you like, Dick?”

Dick laughed too. “That will serve me for the present moment, Mr. Chandler,” said he.

“Well, Dick, I’m sorry to deny you, but you can’t have it. You have a conscience to ask it, young man, when you know the Worcester Sessions are close at hand, and we are so busy here we don’t know which way to turn!”

“I mean to take it,” said Dick.

“But I don’t mean you to; understand that. See here, Dick: I won’t be harder than I’m obliged; I should like to go to the pic-nic myself, though there’s no chance of that for me. Come here in good time in the morning, get through as much work as you can, and I daresay we can let you off at one o’clock. There!”

This concession did not satisfy MacEveril. When Mr. Hanborough came in from the other room he found the young man exercising his saucy tongue upon Tom Chandler, calling him a “Martinet,” a “Red Indian Freebooter,”and other agreeable names, which he may have brought with him from Australia. Tom, ever sweet-tempered, took it all pleasantly, and bade him go on with his work.

That interlude passed. At half-past four o’clock MacEveril went out, as usual, to get his tea, leaving Chandler and Hanborough in the office, each writing at his own desk. Presently the former paused; looked fixedly at the mortgage-deed he was engaged upon, and then got up to carry it to the old clerk. As he was crossing the room the postman came in, put a small pile of letters into Mr. Chandler’s hand, and went out again. Tom looked down at the letters but did not disturb them; he laid them down upon Mr. Hanborough’s desk whilst he showed him the parchment.

“I don’t much like this one clause, Hanborough,” he said. “Just read it; it’s very short. Would it be binding on the other party?”

They were both reading the clause, heads together, when Mr. Paul was heard speaking in haste. “Chandler! Tom Chandler! Come here directly”—and Tom turned and went at once.

“Is Hanborough there?” cried Mr. Paul.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him to come in also; no time to lose.”

Mr. Paul wanted them to witness his signature to a deed which had to go off by the evening post. That done, he detained them for a minute upon some other matter; after which, Hanborough left the room. Chandler turned to follow him.

“Bring the letters in as soon as they come,” said Mr. Paul. “There may be one from Burnaby.”

“Oh, they have come,” replied Tom; and he went into the other room and brought the letters to the lawyer.

It was this which Tom Chandler now related to his master and to Mr. Preen. By dint of exercising his own memory and referring to his day-book, Mr. Paul was enabled to say that the letters that past afternoon were four in number, and to state from whom they came. There was no letter amongst them from Mr. Preen; none at all from Duck Brook. So there it was: the letter seemed to have mysteriously vanished; either out of the post bag despatched by Mrs. Sym, or else after its arrival at Islip. The latter was of course the more probable; since, as Dame Sym had herself remarked, once a letter was shut up in the bag, there it must remain; it could not vanish from it.

But, assuming this to be the case, how and where had it vanished? From the Islip post-office? Or from the postman’s hands when carrying it out for delivery? Or from Mr. Paul’s front room?

They were yet speaking when Dale the postman walked in. He came to say that he had been exercising his mind upon the afternoons of the past week and could now distinguish Wednesday from the others. He recalled it by remembering that it was the afternoon of the accident in the street, when a tax-cart was overturned and the driver had broken his arm; and he could positively say that he had that afternoon delivered the letters to Mr. Chandler himself.

“Yes, yes, we remember all that ourselves, Dale,” returned Mr. Paul, somewhat testily. “The thing we want you to remember is, whether you observed amidst the letters one with a large red seal.”

Dale shook his head. “No, sir, I did not. The letters lay one upon another, address upwards, and I took no particular notice of them. There were four or five of them, I should think.”

“Four,” corrected the lawyer. “Well, that’s all, Dale, for the present. The letter is lost, and we must consider what to do in the matter.”

Yes, it was all very well to say that to Dale, but whatcould they do? How set about it? To begin with, Preen did not know the number of the note, but supposed he might get it from Mr. Todhetley. He stayed so long in discussion with the lawyer, that his son, waiting in the gig outside, grew tired and the horse impatient.

Oliver was almost ready to die of weariness, when an acquaintance of his came out of the Bell. Fred Scott; a dashing young fellow, who had more money than brains.

“Get up,” said Oliver. And Scott got into the gig.

They were driving slowly about and talking fast, when two young ladies came into view at the end of the street. Oliver threw the reins to his friend, got out in a trice and met them. No need to say that one of them was Emma Paul.

“I beg your pardon,” said Oliver to her, lifting his hat from his suddenly flushed face, as he shook hands with both of them. “I left two books at your house yesterday: did you get them? The servant said you were out.”

“Oh, yes, I had them; and I thank you very much,”answered Emma, with a charming smile: whilst Mary MacEveril went away to feast her eyes at the milliner’s window. “I have begun one of them already.”

“Jane said you would like to read them; and so—I—I left them,” returned Oliver, with the hesitating shyness of true love.

“It is very kind of you, Sir. Oliver, to bring them over, and I am sorry I was not at home,” said Emma. “When are you and Jane coming to see me?”

With her dimpled face all smiles, her blue eyes beaming upon him, her ready handshake still tingling in his pulses, her cordial tones telling of pleasure, how could that fascinated young man do otherwise than believe in her? The world might talk of her love for Tom Chandler: he did not and would not believe it held a grain of truth. Oh, if he could but know that she loved him! Mary MacEveril turned.

“Emma, are you not coming? We have that silk to match, you know.”

With another handshake, another sweet smile, she went away with Mary. Oliver said adieu, his heart on his lips. All his weariness was gone, lost in a flood of sunshine.

Mr. Preen was seen, coming along. Scott got out of the gig, and Oliver got into it. Preen took his seat and the reins, and drove off.

Mr. Paul went home to dinner at the usual hour that evening, but the clerks remained beyond the time for closing. Work had been hindered, and had to be done. Batley was the first to leave; the other two lingered behind, talking of the loss.

“It is the most surprising thing that has happened for a long while,” remarked Hanborough. He had locked his desk and had his hat and gloves at his elbow. “That letter has been stolen, Mr. Chandler; it has not been accidentally lost.”

“Ay,” assented Tom. “Stolen—I fear—from here. From this very room that you and I are standing in, Hanborough.”

“My suspicions, sir, were directed to the Islip post-office.”

“I wish mine were,” said Tom. “I don’t think—think, mind, for we cannot be sure—that the post-office is the right quarter to look to. You see the letters were left here on your desk, while we were occupied with Mr. Paul in his room. About two minutes, I suppose, we stayed with him; perhaps three. Did anyone come in during that time, Hanborough, and take the letter?”

Mr. Hanborough drew off his spectacles, which he wore out of doors as well as in; he was sure to take them off when anything disturbed him.

“But who would do such a thing?” he asked.

Tom laughed a little. “You wouldn’t, old friend, and I wouldn’t; but there may be people in the neighbourhood who would.”

Doubts were presenting themselves to Michael Hanborough’s mind: he did not “see” this, as the saying runs.“Why should anyone single out that one particular letter to take, and leave the rest?” he resumed.

“That point puzzles me,” remarked Tom. “If the letter was singled out, as you put it, from the rest, I should say the thief must have known it contained money: and who could, or did, know that? I wish I had carried the letters in with me when Mr. Paul called to me!”

“If the letters had been left alone for a whole day in our office, I should never have supposed they were not safe,”said the clerk, impulsively. “But, now that my attention has been drawn to this, I must mention something, Mr. Chandler.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“When the master called me in after you, I followed you in through that door,” he began, pointing to the door of communication between the two rooms. “But I left it by the other, the passage door, chancing to be nearest to it at the moment. As I went out, I saw the green baize door swinging, and supposed that someone had come in; MacEveril, perhaps, from his tea. But he had not done so. I found neither him nor anyone else; the room here was vacant as when I left it.”

The green baize door stood in the passage, between the street door, always open in the daytime, and the door that led into the front office.

“Seeing no one here, I concluded I was mistaken; and I have never thought of it from that hour to this,” continued the clerk. “No, not even when it came out that a letter had been lost with a bank-note in it.”

Tom nodded his head several times, as much as to say that was when the thief must have come in. “And now, Hanborough, I’ll tell you something in turn,” he went on.“Dale put the letters into my hand that afternoon, as you know; and I laid them on your desk here while showing you that clause in the mortgage deed. Later, when I took up the letters to carry them to Mr. Paul, an idea struck me that the packet felt thinner. It did indeed. I of course supposed it to be only fancy, and let it slip from my mind. I have never thought of it since—as you say by the green door—until this afternoon.”

Michael Hanborough, who had put his spectacles on again, turned them upon his young master, and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Who is it that—that we may suspect, sir?”

“Say yourself, Hanborough.”

“I’m afraid to say. Is it—MacEveril?”

“It looks like it,” replied Tom, in the same low tone. “But while there are reasons for suspecting him, there are also reasons against it,” he added, after a pause. “MacEveril was in debt, petty little odds and ends of things which he owes about the place and elsewhere; that’s one reason why money would be useful to him. Then his running away looks suspicious; and another reason is that there’s positively no one else to suspect. All that seems to tell against him; but on the other hand, MacEveril, though random and heedless, is a gentleman and has a gentleman’s instincts, and I do not think he would be guilty of such a thing.”

“Well, and I can’t think it, either,” said Michael Hanborough;“despite his faults and his saucy tongue, I liked him. He did not come in again that afternoon till half-past five, I remember. I told him he was late; he answered, laughing, that he had dropped asleep over his tea—though I didn’t believe a word of it.”

“If MacEveril really took the letter, how had he ascertained that it contained money?” mused Tom Chandler.“Hanborough, at present I think this suspicion had better lie entirely between ourselves.”

“Yes, Mr. Chandler, and so do I. Perhaps a few days may bring forth something to confirm or dispel it.”

II

Preen was a great deal too anxious and restless to let the following day pass over quietly; and on that Sunday afternoon when we were all sitting in the garden at Crabb Cot, under the scent and shade of the large syringa trees, he walked in. His little dark face looked darker than ever, the scowl of pain on his brow deeper.

“No, I can’t take anything,” he said, in answer to the Squire’s hospitable offers of having wine, or ale, or lemonade brought out. “Thirsty? Yes, I am thirsty, Squire, but it is with worry, not with the walk. Wine and lemonade won’t relieve that.”

And, sitting down to face us, in a swinging American chair, which Tod had brought out for his own benefit, Gervais Preen surprised us with the history of his mysterious loss, and inquired whether the Squire could give him the number of the note.

“Yes, I can,” replied the Squire; “my name is on the note also; you made me write it, you know. How on earth has it got lost?”

“It is just one of those things there’s no accounting for,”said Preen, bending forward in his earnestness. “The letter left Duck Brook in safety; I posted it myself, and Mrs. Sym took notice of it when she shut it up in the bag. That is as far as it can be traced. The Islip post-office, though not remembering it in particular, have no doubt it reached them, as it could not have been lost from the bag, or that they sent it out for delivery to Mr. Paul by Dale, who is cautious and trustworthy. Paul declares it never reached him; and of course he is trustworthy. Dale says, and it is a fact, that he delivered the letters that afternoon into Mr. Chandler’s own hands. One cannot see where to look for a weak point, you perceive, Todhetley.”

The Squire was rubbing his face, the account having put it into a white heat. “Bless my heart!” cried he. “It reminds me of that five-pound note of mine which was changed in the post for a stolen one! You remember that, Johnny.”

“Yes, sir, that I do.”

“Wednesday, the sixteenth, was the day it ought to have reached old Paul!” exclaimed Tod, who was balancing himself on the branch of a tree. “Why, that was the day before the pic-nic!”

“And what if it was?” retorted Preen, enraged that everybody should bring up that pic-nic in conjunction with his loss. “The pic-nic had nothing to do with my bank-note and letter.”

“Clearly not,” agreed Tod, laughing at his ire.

“I should advertise, Preen,” said the Squire, “and I should call in the detectives. They——”

“I don’t like detectives,” growled Preen, interrupting him,“and I think advertising might do more harm than good. I must get my money back somehow; I can’t afford to lose it. But as to those detectives—— Mercy upon us!”

In the ardour of declamation, Mr. Preen had bent a little too forward. The chair backed from under him, and he came down upon the grass, hands and knees. Tod choked with laughter, and dashed off to get rid of it. The man gathered himself up.

“Nasty tilting things, those chairs are!” he exclaimed.“Please don’t trouble, ma’am,” for Mrs. Todhetley had sprung forward; “there’s no harm done. And if you don’t mind giving me the number of the note to-day, Squire, I shall be much obliged.”

He declined to stay for tea, saying he wanted to get back home. When he and the Squire went indoors, we talked of the loss; Mrs. Todhetley thought it strangely unaccountable.

As the days went on, and the bank-note did not turn up, Mr. Preen fell into the depths of gloom. He had lost no time in proceeding to the Old Bank, at Worcester—from whence Mr. Todhetley had drawn the note, in conjunction with other notes—recounting to its principals the history of its loss, and giving in its number, together with the information that Mr. Todhetley’s name was written on it. The bank promised to make inquiries of other banks, and to detain the note should it be paid in.

“As if that were likely!” groaned Preen. “A rogue filching a note would not go and pay it into the place it came from.”

Thomas Chandler was gazetted the partner of Mr. Paul, the firm to be known henceforth as Paul and Chandler. In the first private conference that the young man held with his partner, he imparted to him the suspicions which he and Hanborough held of Dick MacEveril. For as that erratic gentleman continued to absent himself, and the time was going on without bringing a shadow of doubt upon anyone else, the new partner felt that in duty he must speak to his chief and elder. Old Paul was overwhelmed.

“What a dreadful thing!” he exclaimed testily. “And why couldn’t you or Hanborough mention this before?”

“Well,” said Tom, “for one thing I was always expecting something might crop up to decide it one way or another; and, to tell the truth, sir, I cannot bring myself to believe that MacEveril did it.”

“He is a villainous young dog for impudence, but—to do such a thing as that? No, I can hardly think it, either,” concluded the lawyer.

That same evening, after his dinner, Mr. Paul betook himself to Oak Mansion, to an interview with his old friend, Captain MacEveril. Not to accuse that scapegrace nephew of the Captain’s to his face, but to gather a hint or two about him, if any might be gathered.

The very first mention of Dick’s name set the old sailor off. His right foot was showing symptoms of gout just then; between that and Dick he had no temper at all. Calming down presently, he called his man to produce tobacco and grog. They sat at the open window, smoking a pipe apiece, the glasses on a stand between them, and the lame foot upon a stool. For the expost-captain made a boast that he did not give in to that enemy of his any more than he had ever given in to an enemy at a sea-fight. The welcome evening breeze blew in upon them through the open bow window, with the sweet-scent of the July roses; and the sky was gorgeous with the red sunset.

“Where is Dick, you ask,” exploded the Captain. “How should I know where he is? Hang him! When he has taken his fill of London shows with that Australian companion of his, he’ll make his way back again here, I reckon. Write? Not he. He knows he’d get a letter back from me, Paul, if he did.”

Leading up to it by degrees, talking of this and that, and especially of the mysterious loss of Preen’s note, the lawyer spoke doubtingly of whether it could have been lost out of his own office, and, if so, who had taken it. “That young rascal would not do such a thing, you know, MacEveril,”he carelessly remarked.

“What, Dick? No, no, he’d not do that,” said the Captain, promptly. “Though I’ve known young fellows venture upon queer things when they were hard up for money. Dick’s honest to the backbone. Had he wanted money to travel with, he’d have wormed it out of my wife by teasing, but he wouldn’t steal it.”

“About that time, a day or so before it, he drew out the linings of his pockets as he sat at his desk, and laughingly assured Hanborough, that he had not a coin of ready money in the world,” remarked Mr. Paul.

“Like enough,” assented the Captain. “Coin never stays in his pockets.”

“I wonder where he found the money to travel with?”

“Pledged his watch and chain maybe,” returned the Captain with composure. “He would be quite equal tothat. Stockleigh, the fellow he is with in London, had brought home heaps of gold, ’twas said; he no doubt stands treat for Dick.”

John Paul did not, could not, say anything more definite. He thought of nothing else as he walked home; now saying to himself that Dick had stolen the money, now veering over to the Captain’s opinion that Dick was incapable of doing so. The uncertainty bothered him, and he hated to be bothered.

The man to whom the money was owing, Robert Derrick, was becoming very troublesome. Hardly a day passed but he marched into Mr. Paul’s office, to press for payment, threatening to take steps if he did not get it shortly. The morning following the lawyer’s visit to Captain MacEveril, he went in again, vowing it was for the last time, for that he should cite Mr. Preen before the County Court.

“And mark you this,” he added to Hanborough, with whom the colloquy was taking place, “some past matters will come out that Preen wants kept in. He’ll wish he had paid me, then.”

Now, old Paul overheard this, for the door was partly open. Rugged in look, and in manner too when he chose to be, he was not rugged at heart. He was saying to himself that if this money had really been lost out of his office, stolen possibly by one of his clerks, he might replace it from his own pocket, to ward off further damage to Preen. Preen had not at present a second ten-pound note to give, could not find one anyway; Preen wished he could. Ten pounds would not affect the lawyer’s pocket at all: and his resolution was taken. Ringing his bell, which was answered by Batley, he bade him show Derrick to his room.

The man came in with a subdued face. He supposed he had been overheard, and he did not care to offend Mr. Paul.

“I cannot have you coming here to disturb my clerks, Derrick,” said the lawyer, with authority. “If you write out a receipt, I will pay you.”

“And sure enough that’s all I want, sir,” returned Derrick, who was Irish. “But I can’t let the thing go on longer—and it’s Preen I’d like to disturb, Lawyer Paul, not you.”

“Sit down yonder and write the receipt,” said the lawyer, shortly. “You know how to word it.”

So Derrick wrote the receipt and went off with the ten pounds. And Gervais Preen said a few words of real thanks to Mr. Paul in a low tone, when he heard of it.

On Tuesday morning, the thirteenth of July, exactly four weeks to the day since the bank-note left Mr. Preen’s hands, he had news of it. The Old Bank at Worcester wrote to him to say that the missing note had been paid in the previous day, Monday, by a well-known firm of linen-drapers in High Street. Upon which the bank made inquiry of this firm as to whence they received the note, and the answer, readily given, was that they had had it from a neighbour opposite—the silversmith. The silversmith, questioned in his turn, replied with equal readiness that it had been given him in payment of a purchase by young Mr. Todhetley.

Preen, hardly believing his eyes, went off with all speed to Islip, and laid the letter before Lawyer Paul.

“What does it all mean?” he asked. “How can young Todhetley have had the note in his possession? I am going on to Crabb Cot to show the Squire the letter.”

“Stop, stop,” said the far-seeing lawyer, “it won’t do to take this letter to Todhetley. Let us consider, first of all, how we stand. There must be some mistake. The bank and the silversmith have muddled matters between them; they may have put young Todhetley’s name into it through seeing his father’s on the bank-note. I will write at once to Worcester and get it privately inquired into. You had better leave it altogether in my hands, Preen, for the present.” A proposal Preen was glad to agree to.

Lawyer Paul wrote to another lawyer in Worcester with whom he was on friendly terms, Mr. Corles; stating the particulars of the case. That gentleman lost no time in the matter; he made the inquiries himself, and speedily wrote back to Islip.

There had been no mistake, as Mr. Paul had surmised. The linen-drapers, a long-established and respectable firm, as Paul knew, had paid the note into the Old Bank, with other monies, in the ordinary course of business; and the firm repeated to Mr. Corles that they had received it from their neighbour, the silversmith.

The silversmith himself was from home at this time; he was staying at Malvern for his health, going to Worcester on the market days only, Saturdays and Wednesdays, when the shop expected to be busy. He had one shopman only, a Mr. Stephenson, who took charge in his master’s absence. Stephenson assured Mr. Corles that he had most positively taken the note from Squire Todhetley’s son. Young Mr. Todhetley had gone into the shop, purchased some trifling article, giving the note in payment, and received the change in gold. Upon referring to his day-book, Stephenson found that the purchase was made and the note paid to him during the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June.

When this communication from Mr. Corles reached Islip, it very much astonished old Paul. “Absurd!” he exclaimed, flinging it upon his table when he had read it; then he took it up and read it again.

“Here, Chandler,” said he, calling his new partner to him, “what do you make of this?”

Tom Chandler read it twice over in his turn. “If Joseph Todhetley did change the note,” he observed, “he must have done it as a practical joke, and be keeping up the joke.”

“It is hardly likely,” returned Mr. Paul. “If he has, he will have a bad quarter of an hour when the Squire hears of it.”

On this same morning, Thursday, we were preparing for Worcester; the Squire was going to drive us in—that is, myself and Tod. The phaeton was actually being brought round to the gate and we were getting our hats, when Tom Chandler walked in, saying he had come upon a little matter of business.

“No time to attend to it now, Tom,” said the Squire, all in a bustle; “just starting for Worcester. You look hot.”

“I am hot, for I came along at a trotting pace,” said Tom; “the matter I have come upon makes me hot also. Mr. Todhetley, I must explain it, short as your time may be; it is very important, and—and peculiar. Mr. Paul charged me to say that he would have come himself, but he is obliged to stay at home to keep an appointment.”

“Sit down, then,” said the Squire, “and make it as brief as you can. Johnny, lad, tell Giles to drive the horses slowly about.”

When I got back, after telling Giles, Tom Chandler had two letters in his hand; and was apologising to the Squire and to Tod for what he was obliged to enter upon. Then he added, in a few words, that the lost bank-note had come to light; it had been changed at Worcester, at the silversmith’s in High Street, by, it was asserted, young Mr. Todhetley.

“Why, what d’ye mean?” cried the Squire sharply.

To explain what he meant, Tom Chandler read aloud the two letters he held; the short one, which had been first addressed to Mr. Preen by the Old Bank, and then the longer one written by Mr. Corles.

“Edward Corles must be a fool to write that!” exclaimed the Squire in his hot fashion.

“Well, he is not that, you know,” said Tom Chandler.“The question is, Squire, what the grounds can be upon which they so positively state it. According to their assertion, young Mr. Todhetley changed the note at the silversmith’s on the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June.”

“Young Mr. Todhetley” in a general way was just as hot as his father, apt to fly out for nothing. I expected to see him do so now. Instead of which, he had a broad smile on his face, evidently regarding the accusation as a jest. He had perched himself on the arm of the sofa, and sat there grinning.

This struck Tom Chandler. “Did you do it for a joke?”he asked promptly.

“Do what?” rejoined Tod.

“Change the note.”

“Not I.”

“The only conclusion Mr. Paul and I could come to was, that—if you had done it—you did it to play a practical joke upon Preen, and were keeping it up still.”

The Squire struck his hand in anger upon the table by which he sat.

“What is the meaning of this, Joe? A practical joke? Did you do the thing, or didn’t you? Speak out seriously. Don’t sit there, grinning like a Chinese image.”

“Why of course I did not do it, father. How should Preen’s bank-note get into my hands? Perhaps Johnny there got it and did it. He is sometimes honoured by being put down as your son, you know.”

He was jesting still. The Squire was not in a mood for jesting; Tom Chandler either. A thought struck me.

“Did you say the note was changed on Thursday, the seventeenth of June?” I asked him.

“They say so,” answered Tom Chandler.

“Then that was the day of the picnic at Mrs. Cramp’s. Neither I nor Tod left the house at all until we went there.”

“Why bless me, so it was! the seventeenth,” cried the Squire. “I can prove that they were at home till four o’clock: the Beeles were spending the day here from Pigeon Green. Now, Chandler, how has this false report arisen?”

“I am as much at sea as you can be, sir,” said Tom Chandler. “Neither I nor Paul can, or do, believe it—or understand why the other people stick to it so positively. You are going into Worcester, Squire; make your own inquiries.”

“That I will,” said the Squire. “You had better drive in with us, Chandler, if you can. Giles can stay at home.”

It was thus decided, and we started for Worcester, Chandler sitting beside the Squire. And the way the Squire touched up Bob and Blister, and the pace we flew along at, was a sight for the road to see.

III

Thursday morning, the seventeenth of June—for we have to go back to that day. High Street was basking in the rays of the hot sun; foot passengers, meeting each other on the scorching pavement, lifted their hats for a moment’s air, and said what a day it was going to be. The clean, bright shops faced each other from opposite sides. None of their wares looked more attractive than those displayed in the two windows of the silversmith.

Mr. Stephenson—a trustworthy, civil little man of thirty, with a plain face and sandy hair that stood upright on his head—was keeping guard over his master’s goods, some of them being very valuable. The shop was a long one and he was far down in it, behind the left-hand counter. Before him lay a tray of small articles of jewellery, some of which he was touching up with a piece of wash-leather. He did not expect to be busy that day; the previous day, Wednesday, had been a busy one, so many country people came into town for the market.

While thus engaged a gentleman, young, good looking, and well dressed, entered the shop. Mr. Stephenson went forward.

“I have called for Mrs. Todhetley’s brooch,” said the stranger. “Is it ready?”

“What brooch, sir?” returned Stephenson.

“The one she left with you to be mended.”

The shopman felt a little puzzled. He said he did not remember that any brooch had been left by that lady to be mended.

“Mrs. Todhetley of Crabb Cot,” explained the applicant, perhaps thinking the man was at fault that way.

“Oh, yes, sir, I know who you mean; I know Mrs. Todhetley. But she has not left any brooch here.”

“Yes, she has; she left it to be mended. I was to call to-day and ask for it.”

Stephenson turned to reach the book in which articles left to be mended were entered, with their owners’ names. Perhaps his master might have taken in the brooch and omitted to tell him. But no such entry was recorded in it.

“I am afraid it is a mistake, sir,” he said. “Had Mrs. Todhetley left a brooch, or anything else, for repair, it would be entered here. She may have taken it to some other shop.”

“No, no; it is yours I was to call at. She bought it here a few months ago,” added the young man. “She came in to ask you about the polishing-up of an old silver cake-basket, and you showed her the brooches, some you had just had down from London, and she bought one of them and gave four guineas for it.”

Stephenson remembered the transaction perfectly. He had stood by while his principal showed and sold the brooch to Mrs. Todhetley. Four only of these brooches had been sent to them on approval by their London agent, they were something quite new. Mrs. Todhetley admired them greatly; said she wanted to make a wedding present to a young lady about to be married, but had not meant to give as much as four guineas. However, the beauty of the brooch tempted her; she bought it, and took it home.

Stephenson’s silence, while he was recalling this to his memory, caused the gentleman to think his word was doubted, and he entered into further particulars.

“It was last March, I think,” he said. “The brooch is a rather large one; a white cornelian stone, or something of that sort, with a raised spray of flowers upon it, pink and gold; the whole surrounded by a border of gold filagree work. I never saw a nicer brooch.”

“Yes, yes, sir, it was just as you say; I recollect it all quite well. Mrs. Todhetley bought it to give away as a wedding present.”

“And the wedding never came off,” said the young man, with ease. “Before she had time to despatch the brooch, news came to her of the rupture.—So she had to keep it herself: and the best thing too, the Squire said. Well, it is that brooch I have come for.”

“But I assure you it has not been left with us, Mr. Todhetley,” said Stephenson, presuming he was speaking to the Squire’s son.

“The little pink flower got broken off last week as Mrs. Todhetley was undoing her shawl; she brought it in at once to be mended,” persisted the young man.

“But not here indeed, sir,” reiterated Stephenson. “I’m sorry to hear it is broken.”

“She wouldn’t take it anywhere but to the place it was bought at, would she? I’m sure it was here I had to come for it.”

Stephenson felt all abroad. He did not think it likely the brooch would be taken elsewhere, and began to wonder whether his master had taken it in, and forgotten all about it. Opening a shallow drawer or two in the counter, in one of which articles for repair were put, in the other the repaired articles when finished, he searched both, but could not see the brooch. This took him some little time, as most of the things were in paper and he had to undo it.

Meanwhile the applicant amused himself by looking at the articles displayed under the glass frame on the counter. He seemed to be rather struck with some very pretty pencils.

“Are those pencils gold?” he inquired of Stephenson, when the latter came forward with the news that the brooch was certainly not in the shop.

“No, sir; they are silver gilt.”

Lifting the glass lid, Stephenson took out the tray on which the pencils and other things lay, and put it right under the young man’s nose, in the persuasive manner peculiar to shopmen. The pencils were chased richly enough for gold, and had each a handsome stone at the end, which might or might not be real.

“What is the price?”

“Twelve shillings each, sir. We bought them a bargain; from a bankrupt’s stock in fact; and can afford to sell them as such.”

“I should like to take this one, I think,” said the young man, choosing out one with a pink topaz. “Wait a bit, though: I must see if I’ve enough change to pay for it.”

“Oh, sir, don’t trouble about that; we will put it down to you.”

“No, no, that won’t do. One, two, four, six. Six shillings; all I have in the world,” he added laughing, as he counted the coin in his porte-monnaie, “and that I want. You can change me a ten-pound note, perhaps?”

“Yes, sir, if you wish it.”

The purchaser extracted the note from a secret pocket of his porte-monnaie, and handed it to the shopman.

“The Squire’s name is on it,” he remarked.

Which caused Stephenson to look at the back. Sure enough, there it was—“J. Todhetley,” in the Squire’s own handwriting.

“Give me gold, if you can.”

Stephenson handed over nine pounds in gold and eight shillings in silver. He then wrapped the pencil in soft white paper, and handed over that.

Wishing the civil shopman good morning, the young man left. He stood outside the door for a minute, looking about him, and then walked briskly up the street. While Stephenson locked up the ten-pound note in the cash-box.

There it lay, snug and safe, for two or three weeks. One day Stephenson, finding he had not enough change for a customer who came in to pay a bill, ran over to the draper’s opposite and got change for it there. These were the particulars which Stephenson had furnished, and furnished readily, upon inquiries being made of him.

Squire Todhetley drove like the wind, and we soon reached Worcester, alighting as usual at the Star-and-Garter. The Squire’s commotion had been growing all the way; that goes without telling. He wanted to take the bank first; Tom Chandler recommended that it should be the silversmith’s.

“The bank comes first in the way,” snapped the Squire.

“I know that, sir; but we can soon come back to it when we have heard what the others say.”

Yet I think he would have gone into the bank head-foremost, as we passed it, but chance had it that we met Corles, the lawyer, at the top of Broad Street. Turning quickly into High Street, on his way from his office, he came right upon us. The Squire pinned him by the button-hole.

“The very man I wanted to see,” cried he. “And now you’ll be good enough to tell me, Edward Corles, what you meant by that rigmarole you wrote to Paul yesterday about my son.”

“I cannot tell what was meant, Squire, any more than you can; I only wrote in accordance with my information,”said Mr. Corles, shaking hands with the rest of us. “You have done well to come over; and I will accompany you now, if you like, to see Stephenson.”

The Squire put his arm within the younger man’s, and marched on down High Street to the silversmith’s, never so much as looking at the bank door. Stephenson was in the shop alone: such a lot of us, it seemed, turning in!

The Squire, hot and impulsive, attacked him as he had attacked Edward Corles. What did Stephenson mean by making that infamous accusation about his son?

It took Stephenson aback, as might be seen; his eyes opened and his hair stood on end straighter than ever. Looking from one to the other of us, he last looked at Mr. Corles, as if seeking an explanation.

“The best thing you can do, to begin with, Stephenson, is to relate to Squire Todhetley and these gentlemen the particulars you gave me yesterday morning,” said Mr. Corles.“I mean when you took the bank-note, a month ago.”

Without more ado, Stephenson quietly followed the advice; he seemed of as calm a temperament as the Squire was the contrary, and recited the particulars just given. The Squire’s will was good to interrupt at every second word, but Mr. Corles begged him to listen to the end.

“Oh, that’s all very well,” cried he at last, “all true, I dare say; what I want to know is, how you came to pitch upon that customer as being my son.”

“But he was your son, sir. He was young Mr. Todhetley.”

“Nonsense!” retorted the Squire. “Was this he?”drawing Tod forward.

“No, sir; certainly not.”

“Well, this is my only son; except a little who is not yet much more than out of his petticoats. Come! what do you say now?”

Stephenson looked again at one and the other of us. His pale face took a sort of thoughtful haze as if he had passed into a fog.

“It must have been young Mr. Todhetley,” spoke he;“everything seemed to uphold the fact.”

“Now don’t you turn obstinate and uphold what is notthe fact,” reproved the Squire. “When I tell you this is my only son, except the child, how dare you dispute my word?”

It should be stated that Stephenson had been with the silversmith since the beginning of the year only, and had come from Birmingham. He knew Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley by sight, from their coming sometimes to the shop, but he had never yet seen Tod or me.

“I don’t suppose you want Squire Todhetley’s word confirmed, Stephenson, but I can do so if necessary,” said Mr. Corles. “This is his only grown-up son.”

“No, no, sir, of course I don’t,” said Stephenson. “This gentleman,” looking at Tod, “does not bear any resemblance to the one who changed the note.”

“What was he like?” said Tom Chandler, speaking for the first time; and he asked it because his thoughts were full.

“He was fair, sir,” replied Stephenson.

“What height?”

“About middle height. A young, slender man.”

“Well dressed? Spoke like a gentleman?”

“Oh, quite like a gentleman, and very well dressed indeed.”

“Just as MacEveril was that morning, on the strength of getting to the picnic,” ran through Tom Chandler’s thoughts.“Did he come off here first, I wonder?”

“He seemed to know all about you, sir, just as though he lived at your house,” said Stephenson to the Squire; “and Mrs. Todhetley sent him for her brooch that day. Perhaps you may know, sir, who it was she sent?”

“Sent! why, nobody,” spluttered the Squire. “It must have been a planned thing. The brooch is not broken.”

“He said the little pink flower had got broken off, and that Mrs. Todhetley did it with her shawl,” persisted Stephenson, unable to stare away his perplexity. And I think we were all feeling perplexed too.

“He knew what the brooch cost, and that it was bought for a wedding present, and that Mrs. Todhetley kept the brooch for herself because the wedding did not come off,”went on Stephenson. “How could I suppose, sir, it was anybody but your own son? Why once I called him‘Mr. Todhetley;’ I remember it quite well; and he did not tell me I was mistaken. Rely upon it, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, Squire Todhetley, that it is some young gentleman who is intimate at your house and familiar with all its ways.”

“Hang him for a young rogue!” retorted the Squire.

“And your own name was on the note, sir, which he bade me notice, and all! And—and I don’t see how it was possible to help falling into the mistake that he came from you,” concluded Stephenson, with a slightly injured accent.

Upon which the Squire, having had time to take in the bearings of the matter, veered round altogether to the same opinion, and said so, and shook hands with Stephenson when we departed.

Tom Chandler let us go on, remaining behind for a minute or two. He wanted to put quietly a few questions about the appearance of the young man who had changed the note. He also examined the silver-gilt pencils, finally buying one which was precisely similar, stone and all, to the one which had been sold that other morning.

Stephenson answered the questions to the best of his ability and recollection. And Tom Chandler found that while on some points the description would have served very well for that of Richard MacEveril, on other points it did not seem to fit in with it at all.

A TRAGEDY.

IV.—OLIVER.

I

Dinner was over. Emma Paul had gone out to stroll in the shady garden and wait for the evening breeze that would soon come on, and was so delightful after the heat of the day. Her father remained at the table. He was slowly sipping at his one glass of port wine, which he took in a large claret glass, when the door opened and Thomas Chandler entered.

“Oh,” said Mr. Paul. “So you are back, are you, young man!”

“I went on to Worcester, sir,” explained Tom; who though he was now made Mr. Paul’s partner, could not get rid all at once of the old mode of addressing him. Managing clerks in these days, who are qualified solicitors, do not condescend to say “Sir” to their chief, no matter though he be their elder by half a life-time; but they did in the days gone by.

“When I got to Crabb Cot this morning, sir, Mr. Todhetley was on the point of starting for Worcester in the phaeton with his son and Johnny Ludlow,” went on Tom.“After listening to the news I took him, he naturally wished me to go also, and I did so. He was in a fine way about it.”

“But you need not have stayed at Worcester all day.”

“Well, being there, I thought—after I had conferred with Corles at his office upon this other matter—I should do well to go on to Oddingley and see William Smith about that troublesome business of his; so I hired a gig and went there; and I’ve just got back by train, walking from Crabb,”answered Tom Chandler.

“Had any dinner?”

“Oh, yes, thank you; and some tea also at Shrub Hill station, while waiting for the train: this weather makes one thirsty. No, thank you, sir,” as Mr. Paul pushed the decanter towards him; “wine would only make me still more thirsty than I am.”

“I never saw you looking so hot,” remarked the old lawyer.

Tom laughed, and rubbed his face. The walk from Crabb was no light one: and, of course, with Miss Emma at the end of it, he had come at a steaming pace.

“Well, and what did you and Todhetley make of the matter?”

It was the day, as may readily be understood, when we had gone to Worcester to have it out at the silversmith’s. Tom Chandler recounted all that passed, and repeated the description given to himself by Stephenson of the fellow who had changed the bank-note. Mr. Paul received it with an impatient and not at all orthodox word, meant for Richard MacEveril.

“But I cannot feel sure, no, nor half sure, that it was MacEveril,” said Tom Chandler.

“What have your feelings got to do with it?” asked old Paul, in his crusty way. “It seems to me, the description you give would be his very picture.”

“Stephenson says he had blue eyes. Now Dick’s are brown.”

“Eyes be sugared,” retorted the lawyer. “As if any man could swear to a chance customer’s eyes after seeing them for just a minute or two! It was Dick MacEveril; he caught up the letter as it lay on Hanborough’s desk in the office and decamped with it; and went off the next day to Worcester to get the note changed, as bold as though he had been Dick Turpin!”

Still Tom was not convinced. He took out the pencil he had bought and showed it to Mr. Paul.

“Ay,” said the old gentleman, “it’s a pretty thing, and perhaps he may get traced by it. Do you forget, Mr. Thomas, that the young rascal absented himself all that day from the office on pretext of going to the picnic at Mrs. Cramp’s, and that, as you told me, he never made his appearance at the picnic until late in the afternoon?”

“I know,” assented Tom. “He said he had been to the pigeon match.”

“If he said he had been to the moon, I suppose you’d believe it. Don’t tell me! It was Dick MacEveril who stole the note; every attendant circumstance helps to prove it. There: we’ll say no more about the matter, and you can be off to the garden if you want to; I know you are on thorns for it.”

From that day the matter dropped into oblivion, and nothing was allowed to transpire connecting MacEveril with the theft. Mr. Paul enjoined silence, out of regard for his old friend the captain, on Tom Chandler and Mr. Hanborough, the only two, besides himself, who suspected Dick. Some letters arrived at Islip about this time from Paris, written by Dick: one to Captain MacEveril, another to Mr. Paul, a third to his cousin Mary. He coolly said he was gone to Paris for a few weeks with Jim Stockleigh, and they were both enjoying themselves amazingly.

So, the ball of gossip not being kept up, the mysterious loss of the letter containing the bank-note was soon forgotten. Mr. Paul was too vexed to speak of it; it seemed a slur on his office; and he shielded Dick’s good name for his uncle’s sake; whilst Preen was silent because he did not wish the debt talked about.

We left Crabb Cot for Dyke Manor, carrying our wonder with us. The next singular point to us was, how the changer of the note could have been so well acquainted with the circumstances attending the buying of the brooch. Mrs. Todhetley would talk of it by the hour together, suggesting now this person and now that; but never seeming to hit upon a likely one.

July passed away, August also, and September came in. On the Thursday in the first week of the latter month, Emma Paul was to become Emma Chandler.

All that while, through all those months and weeks, poor Oliver Preen had been having a bad time of it. No longer able to buoy himself up with the delusive belief that Emma’s engagement to Chandler was nothing but a myth, he had to accept it, and all the torment it brought him. He had grown pale and thin; nervous also; his lips would turn white if anyone spoke to him abruptly, his hot hand trembled when in another’s grasp. Jane thought he must be suffering from some inward fever; she did not know much about her brother’s love for Emma, or dream that it could be so serious.

“I’m sure I wish their wedding was over and done with; Oliver might come to his proper senses then,” Jane told herself. “He is very silly. I don’t see much in Emma Paul.”

September, I say, came in. It was somewhat singular that we should again be for just that one first week of it at Crabb Cot. Sir Robert Tenby had invited the Squire to take a few days’ shooting with him, and included Tod in the invitation—to his wild delight. So Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley went from Dyke Manor to Crabb Cot for the week, and we accompanied them.

On the Monday morning of this eventful week—and terribly eventful it was destined to be—Mr. Paul’s office had a surprise. Richard MacEveril walked into it. He was looking fresh and blooming, as if he had never heard of such a thing as running away. Mr. Hanborough gazed up at him from his desk as if he saw an apparition; Tite Batley’s red face seemed illumined by sudden sunshine.

“Well, and is nobody going to welcome me back?”cried Dick, as he put out his hand, in the silence, to Mr. Hanborough.

“The truth is, we never expected to see you back; we thought you had gone for good,” answered Hanborough.

Dick laughed. “The two masters in there?” he asked, nodding his head at the inner door.

Hearing that they were, he went in. Old Paul, in his astonishment, dropped a penful of ink upon a letter he was writing.

“Why, where do you spring from?” he cried.

“From my uncle’s now, sir; got home last night. Been having a rare time of it in Paris. I suppose I may take my place at the desk again?” added Dick.

The impudence of this supposition drove all Mr. Paul’s wisdom out of him. Motioning to Tom Chandler to close the doors, he avowed to Dick what he was suspected of, and accused him of taking the letter and the bank-note.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Dick, meeting the news with equanimity. “Go off with a letter of yours, sir, and a bank-note! Steal it, do you mean? Why, you cannot think I’d be capable of such a dirty trick, Mr. Paul. Indeed, sir, it wasn’t me.”

And there was something in the genuine astonishment of the young fellow, a certain honesty in his look and tone, that told Mr. Paul his suspicion might be a mistaken one. He recounted a brief outline of the facts, Tom Chandler helping him.

“I never saw the letter or the note, sir,” persisted Dick.“I remember the Wednesday afternoon quite well. When I went out to get my tea I met Fred Scott, and he persuaded me into the Bull for a game at billiards. It was half-past five before I got back here, and Mr. Hanborough blew me up. He had not been able to get out to his own tea. Batley was away that afternoon. No, no, sir, I wouldn’t do such a thing as that.”

“Where did you get the money to go away to London with, young man?” questioned old Paul, severely.

Dick laughed. “I won it,” he said; “upon my word of honour, sir, I did. It was the day of the picnic, and I persisted in going straight to it the first thing—which put the office here in a rage, as it was busy. Well, in turning out of here I again met Scott. He was hastening off to the pigeon-shooting match. I went with him, intending to stay only half an hour. But, once there, I couldn’t tear myself away. They were betting; I betted too, though I had only half a crown in my pocket, and I won thirty shillings; and I never got to Mrs. Cramp’s till the afternoon, when it was close upon tea-time. Tom Chandler knows I didn’t.”

Tom Chandler nodded.

“But for winning that thirty shillings I could not have got up to London, unless somebody had lent me some,”ran on Dick, who, once set going, was a rare talker. “You can ask anyone at that pigeon match, sir, whether I was not there the whole time: so it is impossible I could have been at Worcester, changing a bank-note.”

The words brought to Mr. Paul a regret that he had notthought to ask that question of some one of the sportsmen: it would have set the matter at rest, so far as MacEveril was concerned. And the suspicion had been so apparently well grounded, as to prevent suspicion in other quarters.

Tom Chandler, standing beside Dick at Mr. Paul’s table, quietly laid a pencil upon it, as if intending to write something down. Dick took it up and looked at it.

“What a pretty pencil!” he exclaimed. “Is it gold?”

It should be understood that in those past days, these ornamental pencils were rare. They may be bought by the bushel now. And Tom Chandler would have been convinced by the tone, had he still needed conviction, that Dick had not seen any pencil like it before.

“Well,” struck in old Paul, a little repentant for having so surely assumed Dick’s guilt, and thankful on the captain’s account that it was a mistake: “if you promise to be steady at your work, young man, I suppose you may take your place at the desk again. This gentleman here is going a-roving this week,” pointing the feather-end of his pen at Tom Chandler, “for no one knows how long; so you’ll have to stick to it.”

“I know; I’ve heard,” laughed Dick. “I mean to get a few minutes to dash into the church and see the wedding. Hope you’ll not dismiss me for it, sir!”

“There, there; you go to your desk now, young man, and ask Mr. Hanborough what you must do first,” concluded the lawyer.

It was not the only time on that same day that Thomas Chandler displayed his pencil. Finding his theory, that Dick MacEveril possessed the fellow one, to be mistaken, he at once began to take every opportunity of showing it to the world—which he had not done hitherto. Something might possibly come of it, he thought. And something did.

Calling in at Colonel Letsom’s in the evening, I found Jane Preen there, and one or two more girls. The Squire and Tod had not appeared at home yet, neither had Colonel Letsom, who made one at the shooting-party; we decided that Sir Robert must be keeping them to an unceremonious dinner. Presently Tom Chandler came in, to bring a note to the Colonel from Mr. Paul.

Bob Letsom proposed a round game at cards—Speculation. His sister, Fanny, objected; speculation was nothing but screaming, she said, and we couldn’t sit down to cards by daylight. She proposed music; she thought great things of her singing: Bob retorted that music might be shot, and they talked at one another a bit. Finally we settled to play at “Consequences.” This involves, as everyone knows, sitting round a table with pencils and pieces of writing-paper.

I sat next to Tom Chandler, Jane Preen next to me. Fanny was on the other side of Tom—but it is not necessary to relate how we all sat. Before we had well begun, Chandler put his pencil on the table, carelessly, and it rolled past me.

“Why, that is Oliver’s pencil!” exclaimed Jane, picking it up.

“Which is?” quietly said Tom. “That? No; it is mine.”

Jane looked at it on all sides. “It is exactly like one that Oliver has,” she said. “It fell out of a drawer in his room the other day, when I was counting up his collars and handkerchiefs. He told me he brought it from Tours.”

“No doubt,” said Tom. “I bought mine at Worcester.”

In taking the pencil from Jane, Tom’s eye caught mine. I did feel queer; he saw I did; but I think he was feeling the same. Little doubt now who had changed the note!

“You will not talk of it, will you?” I whispered to Tom, as we were dispersing about the room when the game was over.

“No,” said he, “it shall not come out through me. I’m afraid, though, there’s no mistake this time, Johnny. A half doubt of it has crossed my mind at odd moments.”

Neither would I talk of it, even to Tod. After all, it was not proof positive. I had never, never thought of Oliver.

The Letsoms had a fine old garden, as all the gardens at Crabb were, and we strolled out in the twilight. The sun had set, but the sky was bright in the west. Valentine Chandler, for he had come in, kept of course by Jane Preen’s side. Anyone might see that it was, as Tod called it, a gone case with them. It was no end of a pity, Val being just as unsteady and uncertain as the wind.

People do bolder things in the gloaming than in the garish daylight; and we fell to singing in the grotto—a semi-circular, half-open space with seats in it, surrounded at the back by the artificial rocks. Fanny began: she brought out an old guitar and twanged at it and sang for us, “The Baron of Mowbray;” where the false knight rides away laughing from the Baron’s door and the Baron’s daughter: that far-famed song of sixty years ago, which was said to have made a fortune for its composer.

The next to take up the singing was Valentine Chandler: and in listening to him you forgot all his short-comings. Never man had sweeter voice than he; and in his singing there was a singular charm impossible to be described. In his voice also—I mean when he spoke—there was always melody, and in his speech, when he chose to put it forth, a persuasive eloquence. This might have been instrumental in winning Jane Preen’s heart; we are told that a man’s heart is lost through his eye, a woman’s through her ear. Poor Valentine! he might have been so nice a fellow—and he was going to the bad as fast as he could go.

The song he chose was a ridiculous old ditty all about love; it went to the tune of “Di tanti palpiti.” Val chose it for Miss Jane and sung it to her; to her alone, mind you; the rest of us went for nothing.

“Here we meet, too soon to part,

Here to part will raise a smart,

Here I’d press thee to my heart,

Where none are set above thee.

Here I’d vow to love thee well;

Could but words unseal the spell,

Had but language power to tell,

I’d tell thee how I’ve loved thee.

Here’s the rose that decks the door,

Here’s the thorn that spreads the moor,

Here’s the willow of the bower,

And the birds that rest above thee.

Had they power of life to see,

Sense of souls, like thee—and me,

Then would each a witness be

How dotingly I love thee.

Here we meet, too soon to part,

Here to part will raise a smart,

Here I’d press thee to my heart,

None e’er were there but thee.”

Now, as you perceive, it is a most ridiculous song, foolish as love-songs in general are. But had you been sitting there with us in all the subtle romance imparted by the witching hour of twilight, the soft air floating around, the clear sky above, one large silver star trembling in its blue depths, you would have felt entranced. The wonderful melody of the singer’s voice, his distinct enunciation, the tender passion breathing through his soft utterance, and the slight yet unmistakable emphasis given to the avowal of his love, thrilled us all. It was as decided a declaration of what he felt for Jane Preen as he could well make in this world. Once he glanced at her, and only once throughout; it was where I have placed the pause, as he placed it himself,“like thee—and me.” As if his glance drew hers by some irresistible fascination, Jane, who had been sitting beneath the rock just opposite to him, her eyes cast down—as he made that pause and glanced at her, I say, she lifted them for a moment, and caught the glance. I may live to be an old man, but I shall never forget Val’s song that night, or the charm it held for us. What, then, must it have held for Jane? And it is because that song and its charm lie still fresh on my memory, though many a year has since worn itself out, that I inscribe it here.

As the singing came to an end, dying softly away, no one for a moment or two broke the hushed silence that ensued. Valentine was the first to do it. He got up from his seat; went round to a ledge of rock and stood upon it, looking out in the distance. Had the sea been near, one might have thought he saw a ship, homeward bound.

II

Had the clerk of the weather been bribed with a purse of gold, he could not have sent a finer day than Thursday turned out to be. The sun shone, the air sparkled, and the bells of Islip church rang out from the old steeple. Islip was much behind other churches in many respects; so primitive, indeed, in some of its ways, that had an edifice of advanced views come sailing through the air to pay it a visit, it would have turned tail again and sailed away; but Islip could boast of one thing few churches can boast of—a delightful peal of bells.

The wedding took place at eleven o’clock, and was a quiet one. Its attendants were chiefly confined to the parties themselves and their immediate relatives, but that did not prevent other people from flocking in to see it.

I and Dick MacEveril went in together, and got a good place close up; which was lucky, for the old church is full of pillars and angles that obstruct the view. Emma was in white silk; her bridesmaid, Mary MacEveril, the same; it was the custom in those days. Tom looked uncommonly well; but he and she were both nervous. Old Paul gave her away; and a thin aunt, with a twisted nose, who had come on a visit to superintend the wedding, in place of Emma’s dead mother, did nothing but weep. She wore an odd gown, pink one way, blue another; you might have thought she had borrowed its colours from their copper teakettle. Mrs. Chandler, Tom’s mother, in grey silk, was smarter than she had ever been in her life; and his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, was resplendent in a dress bordering upon orange.

The ceremony came to an end very quickly, I thought—you do think so at most simple weddings; and Tom and his wife went away together in the first carriage. Next came the breakfast at Mr. Paul’s; the aunt presiding in a gentle stream of tears. Early in the afternoon the bride and bridegroom left for London, on their way to the Continent.

Everyone does not care to dash to a church to see a marriage: some would as soon think of running to look on at a funeral. Mr. Preen was one of these insensible people, and he, of course, did not care to go near it. He made game of Jane for doing so; but Jane wanted to see the dresses and the ceremony. Oliver had not the opportunity of going; and would not have gone though he had had it. Just about eleven o’clock, when the gay doings were in full swing, Mr. Preen took Oliver off to Worcester in the gig.

About a fortnight before, Mr. Preen had appointed a saddler in Worcester to be his agent for the new patent agricultural implements, for which he was himself agent-in-chief. Until this under agency should be well in hand, Mr. Preen considered it necessary to see the saddler often: for which purpose he drove into Worcester at least three times a week. Once, instead of going himself, he had sent Oliver, but this day was the first time the two had gone together. It might have been—one cannot tell—but it might have been that Mr. Preen discerned what this wedding of Emma Paul’s must be to his son, and so took him out to divert his mind a bit.

Now, upon entering Worcester, to get to the saddler’s it was necessary to drive through High Street and turn into Broad Street. At least, that was the straightforward route. But Oliver had not taken it the day he drove in alone; he had preferred the more roundabout way of the back streets. After driving through Sidbury, he—instead of going forward up College Street and so into High Street—went careering along Friar Street, along the whole length of New Street, turned up St. Swithin Street, or Goose Lane, or one of those dingy thoroughfares, made a dash across the top of High Street, and so into his destination, Broad Street. In returning he took the same way. What his objection to the better streets could be, he alone knew. To-day, however, Mr. Preen held the reins.

Mr. Preen was driving quietly up College Street, when Oliver spoke.

“I wish you’d put me down here, father.”

“Put you down here!” repeated Mr. Preen, turning to look at him. “What for?”

“I want to get a little book for Jane,” answered Oliver, glancing towards Mr. Eaton’s house. “I shall be up in Broad Street nearly as soon as you are, if you want me there.”

“I don’t particularly want you,” said Mr. Preen, crustily,“but you needn’t be long before you come.” And, drawing up to the side, he let Oliver get out.

Driving on to the saddler’s, Mr. Preen transacted his business with him. When it was over, he went to the door, where his gig waited, and looked up and down the street, but saw nothing of Oliver.

“Hasn’t given himself the trouble to come up! Would rather put his lazy legs astride one of those posts opposite the college, and watch for my passing back again!”

Which was of course rather a far-fetched idea of Mr. Preen’s; but he spoke in a temper. Though, indeed, of late Oliver had appeared singularly inert; as if all spirit to move had gone out of him.

Mr. Preen got into his gig at the saddler’s door and set off again. Turning into High Street, he drove gently down it, looking out on all sides, if truth must be told, for Oliver. This caused him to see Stephenson standing at the silversmith’s door, the silversmith himself, back now for good at his business, being behind the counter. Now and then, since the bank-note was traced, Mr. Preen had made inquiries of Stephenson as to whether any news had been heard of its changer, but he had not done so lately. Not being in a hurry, he pulled up against the curb-stone. Stephenson crossed the flags to speak.

“Nothing turned up yet, I suppose?” said Mr. Preen.

“Well, I can hardly say it has,” replied Stephenson;“but I’ve seen the gentleman who paid it in to us.”

“And who is it? and where was he?” cried Preen, eagerly.

Stephenson had stepped back a pace, and appeared to be looking critically at the horse and gig.

“It was last Saturday,” he said, coming close again. “I had to take a parcel into Friar Street for one of our country customers, a farmer’s wife who was spending the day with some people living down there, and I saw a gig bowling along. The young fellow in it was the one who changed the note.”

“Are you sure of it?” returned Mr. Preen.

“Quite sure, sir. I had no opportunity of speaking to him or stopping him. He was driving at a good pace, and the moment he caught sight of me, for I saw him do that, he touched the horse and went on like a whirlwind.”

Mr. Preen’s little dark face took a darker frown. “Ishould have stopped him,” he said, sternly. “You ought to have rushed after him, Stephenson, and called upon the street to help in the pursuit. You might, at least, have traced where he went to. A gig, you say he was in?”

“Yes,” said Stephenson. “And, unless I am greatly mistaken, it was this very gig you are in now.”

“What do you mean by that?” retorted Preen, haughtily.

“I took particular notice of the horse and gig, so as to recognise them again if ever I got the chance; and I say that it was this gig and this horse, sir. There’s no mistake about it.”

They stared into one another’s eyes, one face looking up, and the other looking down. All in a moment, Stephenson saw the other face turn ghastly white. It had come into Mr. Preen’s recollection amidst his bewilderment, that Oliver had gone into Worcester last Saturday afternoon, driving the horse and gig.

“I can’t understand this! Who should be in my gig?”he cried, calling some presence of mind to his aid. “Last Saturday, you say? In the afternoon?”

“Last Saturday afternoon, close upon four o’clock. As I turned down Lich Street, I saw the lay-clerks coming out of College. Afternoon service is generally over a little before four,” added Stephenson. “He was driving straight into Friar Street from Sidbury.”

Another recollection flashed across Mr. Preen: Oliver’s asking just now to be put down in College Street. Was it to prevent his passing through High Street? Was he afraid to pass through it?

“He is a nice-looking young fellow,” said Stephenson;“has a fair, mild face; but he was the one who changed the note.”

“That may be; but as to his being in my gig, it is not—— Why, I was not in town at all on Saturday,”broke off Mr. Preen, with a show of indignant remonstrance.

“No, Mr. Preen; the young man was in it alone,” said Stephenson, who probably had his own thoughts upon the problem.

“Well, I can’t stay longer now; I’m late already,” said Mr. Preen. “Good morning, Stephenson.” And away he drove with a dash.

Oliver was waiting in College Street, standing near the Hare and Hounds Inn. Mr. Preen pulled up.

“So you did not chose to come on!” he said.

“Well, I—I thought there’d be hardly time, and I might miss you; I went to get my hair cut,” replied Oliver, as he settled himself in his place beside his father.

Mr. Preen drove on in silence until they were opposite the Commandery gates in the lower part of Sidbury. Then he spoke again.

“What made you drive through Friar Street on Saturday last, instead of going the direct way?”

“Through—Friar Street?” stammered Oliver.

“Through Friar Street, instead of High Street,” repeated Mr. Preen, in a sharp, passionate accent.

“Oh, I remember. High Street is so crowded on a market day; the back streets are quiet,” said Oliver, as if he had a lump in his throat, and could not make his voice heard.

“And in taking the back streets you avoid the silversmith’s, and the risk you run of being recognised; is that it?” savagely retorted Mr. Preen.

Not another word did he speak, only drove on home at a furious pace. Oliver knew all then: the disgrace for which he had been so long waiting had come upon him.

But when they got indoors, Mr. Preen let loose the vials of his wrath upon Oliver. Before his mother, before Jane, he published his iniquity. It was he, Oliver, who had stolen the ten-pound note; it was he who had so craftily got it changed at Worcester. Oliver spoke not a word of denial, made no attempt at excuse or defence; he stood with bent head and pale, meek face, his blue eyes filled with utter misery. The same look of misery lay in Mrs. Preen’s eyes as she faintly reproached him amid tears and sobs. Jane was simply stunned.

“You must go away now and hide yourself; I can’t keep you here to be found and pounced upon,” roared Mr. Preen.“By the end of the week you must be gone somewhere. Perhaps you can pick up a living in London.”

“Yes, I will go,” said Oliver, meekly. And at the first lull in the storm he crept up to his room.

He did not come down to dinner; did not come to tea. Jane carried up a cup of tea upon a waiter and some bread-and-butter, and put it down outside the chamber door, which he had bolted.

Later, in passing his room, she saw the door open and went in. Cup and plate were both empty, so he had taken the refreshment. He was not in the house, was not in the garden. Putting on her sun-bonnet and a light shawl, she ran to the Inlets.

Oliver was there. He sat, gazing moodily at the brook and the melancholy osier-twigs that grew beside it. Jane sat down and bent his poor distressed face upon her shoulder.

“Dear Oliver! Don’t take it so to heart. I know you must have been sorely tempted.”

Bending there upon her, her arms clasping him, yielding to the loving sympathy, so grateful after those harsh reproaches, he told her all, under cover of the gathering shades of evening. Yes, he had been tempted—and had yielded to the temptation.

He wanted money badly for necessary things, and things that he had learned to deem necessaries, and he had it not. A pair of new gloves now and again, a necktie to replace his shabby ones, a trifle of loose silver in his pocket. He owed a small sum to MacEveril, and wanted to repay him. Once or twice he had asked a little money of his father, and was refused. His mother would give him a few shillings, when pressed, but grumbled over it. So Oliver wrote to a friend at Tours, whom he had known well, asking if he would lend him some. That was the first week in June. His friend wrote back in answer that he could lend him some after quarter day, the 24th, but not before; he would send him over ten pounds then, if that would do.

Never a thought had presented itself to Oliver of touching the ten pounds in his father’s letter to Mr. Paul, which he had sealed and saw posted. But on the following afternoon, Wednesday, he saw the letter lying on Mr. Hanborough’s desk; the temptation assailed him, and he took it.

It may be remembered that Mr. Preen had gone out that hot day, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do. He got through it soon after four o’clock, and went dashing over the cross route to Islip and into Mr. Paul’s office, for he wanted to see Dick MacEveril. The office was empty; not a soul was in it; and as Oliver stood, rather wondering at that unusual fact, he saw a small pile of letters, evidently just left by the postman, lying on the desk close to him. The uppermost of the letters he recognised at once; it was the one sent by his father. “If I might borrow the ten pounds inside that now, I should be at ease; I would replace it with the ten pounds coming to me from Tours, and it might never get known,” whispered Satan in his ear, with plausible cunning.

Never a moment did he allow himself for thought, never an instant’s hesitation served to stop him. Catching up the letter, he thrust it into his breast pocket, and set off across country again at a tearing pace, not waiting to see MacEveril.

He seemed to have flown over hedges and ditches and to be home in no time. Little wonder that when he was seen sitting under the walnut tree in the garden and was called in to tea, his mother and sister exclaimed at his heated face. They never suspected he had been out.

All that night Oliver lay awake: partly wondering how he should dispose of his prize to make it available; partly telling himself, in shame-faced reproach, that he would not use it, but send it back to old Paul. It came into his mind that if he did use it he might change it at the silversmith’s as if for the Todhetleys, the Squire’s name on the back suggesting the idea to him. It would not do, he thought, to go into a shop, any shop, purchase some trifling article and tender a ten-pound note in payment. That might give rise to suspicion. Some months before, when at Crabb Cot, he had heard Mrs. Todhetley relate the history of her brooch, where she bought it, what she paid for it, and all about it, to Colonel Letsom’s wife and other people, for it happened that several callers had come in together. The brooch had been passed round the company and admired. Oliver remembered this, and resolved to make use of it to disarm suspicion at the silversmith’s. He knew the principal shops in Worcester very well indeed, and Worcester itself. He had stayed for some time, when sixteen, with an uncle who was living there; but he had not visited the city since coming to Duck Brook.

Thursday, the day following that on which he took the money, was the day of the picnic. Oliver started with Jane for it in the morning, as may be remembered, the ten-pound note hidden safely about him. Much to Oliver’s surprise his mother put seven shillings into his hand. “You’ll not want to use it, and must give it me back to-morrow,” she said, “but it does not look well to go to a thing of this sort with quite empty pockets.” Oliver thanked her, kissed her, and they drove off. Before reaching Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, after passing Islip Grange—the property of Lady Fontaine, as may be remembered, who was first cousin to John Paul—they overtook Sam, walking on to take back the gig.“We may as well get out here,” said Oliver, and he pulled up. Getting out, and helping out Jane, he sent Sam and the gig back at once. He bade his sister walk on alone to Mrs. Chandler’s, saying he wanted to do a little errand first. But he charged her not to mention that; only to say, if questioned, that he would join them by-and-by. He ran all the way to the station, regardless of the heat, and caught a train for Worcester.

The rest is known. Oliver changed the note at the silversmith’s, bought himself a pair of dandy gloves, with one or two other small matters, and made the best of his way back again. But it was past the middle of the afternoon when he got to the picnic: trains do not choose our time for running, but their own. Jane wondered where he had been. Hearing of the pigeon-match, she thought it was there. She asked him, in a whisper, where he had found those delicate gloves; Oliver laughed and said something about a last relic from Tours.

And there it was. He had taken the note; he, Oliver Preen; and got the gold for it. That day of the picnic was in truth the worst he had ever experienced, the one hard day of all his life, as he had remarked to Jane. Not only had he committed a deed in it which might never be redeemed, but he also learnt that Emma Paul’s love was given not to him, but to another. It was for her sake he had coveted new gloves and money in his pockets, that he might not look despicable in her sight.

The dearest and surest of expectations are those that fail. While Oliver, as the days went on, was feverishly looking out, morning after morning, for the remittance from Tours, he received a letter to say it was not coming. His friend, with many expressions of regret, wrote to the effect that he was unable to send it at present; later, he hoped to do so. Of course, it never came. And Oliver had not been able to replace the money, and—this was the end of it.

In a whispering, sobbing tone, he told these particulars by degrees to Jane as they sat there. She tried to comfort him; said it might never be known beyond themselves at home; rather advocated his going away for a short time, as proposed, while things righted themselves, and their father’s anger cooled down. But Oliver could not be comforted. Then, leaving the unsatisfactory theme, she tried another, and began telling him of the wedding at Islip that morning, and of how Tom and Emma looked——

“Don’t, Jane,” he interrupted; and his wailing, shrinking tone seemed to betray the keenest pain of all.

They walked home together in silence, Jane clinging to his arm. The night shades lay upon the earth, the stars were shining in the sky. Oliver laid his hand upon the garden gate and paused.

“Do you remember, Jane, when I was coming in here for the first time, how a strange shiver took me, and you thought I must have caught a chill. It was a warning, my dear; a warning of the evil that lay in store for me.”

He would not go into the parlour to supper, but went softly up to his room and shut himself in for the night. Poor Oliver! Poor, poor Oliver!

The following day, Friday, Mr. Preen, allowing himself the unwonted luxury of a holiday for a day’s shooting, was away betimes. For the afternoon and evening, Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s daughters, Clementina, Georgiana, and Julietta, had organised a party to celebrate their cousin Tom’s wedding; Miss Julietta called it a “flare-up.”

Jane Preen had promised, for herself and for Oliver, to be there by three o’clock. For Oliver! She made herself ready after dinner; and then, looking everywhere for her brother, found him standing in the road just outside the garden gate. He said he was not going. Jane reproached him, and he quite laughed at her. He go into company now! she might know better. But Jane had great influence over him, and as he walked with her along the road—for she was going to walk in and walk back again at night—she nearly persuaded him to fetch her. Only nearly; not quite. Oliver finally refused, and they had almost a quarrel.

Then the tears ran down Jane’s cheeks. Her heart was aching to pain for him; and her object in pressing him to come was to take him out of his loneliness.

“Just this one evening, Oliver!” she whispered, clinging to him and kissing him. “I don’t ask you a favour often.”

And Oliver yielded. “I’ll come for you, Janey,” he said, kissing her in return. “That is, I will come on and meet you; I cannot go to the house.”

With that, they parted. But in another minute, Jane was running back again.

“You will be sure to come, Oliver? You won’t disappoint me? You won’t go from your word?”

Oliver felt a little annoyed; the sore heart grows fretful.“I swear I’ll come, then,” he said; “I’ll meet you, alive or dead.”

I was at the party. Not Tod; he had gone shooting. We spent the afternoon in the garden. It was not a large party, after all; only the Letsoms, Jane Preen, and the Chandler girls; but others were expected later. Jane had a disconsolate look. Knowing nothing of the trouble at Duck Brook, I thought she was sad because Valentine had not come early, according to promise. We knew later that he had been kept by what he called a long-winded client.

At five o’clock we went indoors to tea. Those were the days of real, old-fashioned teas, not sham ones, as now. Hardly had we seated ourselves round the table, and Mrs. Jacob Chandler was inquiring who took sugar and who didn’t, when one of the maids came in.

“If you please, Miss Preen, the gig is come for you,” she said.

“The gig!” exclaimed Jane. “Come for me! You must be mistaken, Susan.”

“It is at the gate, Miss Jane, and Sam’s in it. He says that his master and missus have sent him to take you home immediate.”

Jane, all astonishment, followed by some of us, went out to see what Sam could mean. Sam only repeated in a stolid kind of way the message he had given to Susan. His master and mistress had despatched him for Miss Jane and she must go home at once.

“Is anything the matter?—anyone ill?” asked Jane, turning pale.

Sam, looking more stolid than before, professed not to know anything; he either did not or would not. Miss Jane had to go, and as quick as she could, was all he would say.

Jane put on her things, said good-bye in haste, and went out again to the gig. Sam drove off at a tangent before she had well seated herself.

“Now, Sam, what’s the matter?” she began.

Sam, in about three stolid words, protested, as before, he couldn’t say what was the matter; except that he had been sent off for Miss Jane.

Jane noticed, and thought it odd, that he did not look at her as he spoke, though he was frank and open by habit; he had never looked in any of their faces since coming to the door.

“Where’s Mr. Oliver?” she asked. But Sam only muttered that he “couldn’t say,” and drove swiftly.

They went on in silence after that, Jane seeing it would be useless to inquire further, and were soon at Duck Brook. She felt very uneasy. What she feared was, that her father and Oliver might have quarrelled, and that the latter was about to be turned summarily out of doors.

“Why, there’s Mr. Oliver!” she exclaimed. “Pull up, Sam.”

They were passing the first Inlet. Oliver stood at the top of it, facing the road, evidently looking out for her, as Jane thought. His gaze was fixed, his face white as death.

“I told you to pull up, Sam; how dare you disobey me and drive on in that way?” cried Jane; for Sam had whipped up the horse instead of stopping. Jane, looking at his face saw it had gone white too.

“There he is! there he is again! There’s Mr. Oliver!”

They had approached the other Inlet as Jane spoke. Oliver stood at the top of it, exactly as he had stood at the other, his gaze fixed on her, his face ghastly. Not a muscle of his face moved; a dead man could not be more still. Sam, full of terror, was driving on like lightning, as if some evil thing were pursuing him.

And now Jane turned pale. What did it mean? these two appearances? It was totally impossible for Oliver to be at the last Inlet, if it was he who stood at the other. A bird of the air might have picked him up, carried him swiftly over the trees and dropped him at the second Inlet; nothing else could have done it in the time. What did it mean?

Mr. Preen was waiting at the door to receive Jane. He came a little way with slow steps down the path to meet her as the gig stopped. She ran in at the gate.

“What has happened, papa?” she cried. “Where’s Oliver?”

Oliver was upstairs, lying upon his bed—dead. Mr. Preen disclosed it to her as gently as he knew how.

It was all too true. Oliver had died about two hours before. He had shot himself at the Inlets, close by the melancholy osiers that grew over the brook.

Oliver had accompanied Jane to the end of Brook Lane. There, at the Islip Road, they parted; she going on to Crabb, Oliver walking back again. Upon reaching the Inlets, that favourite spot of his, he sat down on the bench that faced the highway; the self-same bench Jane had sat on when she was watching for his arrival from Tours, in the early days of spring. He had not sat there above a minute when he saw his father, with one or two more gentlemen, get over the gate from the field opposite. They were returning from shooting, and had their guns in their hands. Mr. Preen walked quickly over the road to Oliver.

“Take my gun indoors,” he said; “I am not going in just yet. It is loaded.”

He walked away down the road with his friends, after speaking. Oliver took the gun, walked slowly down one of the Inlets, and placed himself on the nearest bench there, lodging the gun against the end. In a few minutes there arose a loud report.

Sam was in the upper part of the field on the other side the brook with the waggon and waggoner. He turned to look where the noise came from, and thought he saw some one lying on the ground by the bench. They both came round in haste, he and the waggoner, and found Oliver Preen lying dead with the gun beside him. Running for assistance, Sam helped to carry him home, and then went for the nearest doctor; but it was all of no avail. Oliver was dead.

Was it an accident, or was it intentional? People asked the question. At the coroner’s inquest, Mr. Preen, who was so affected he could hardly give evidence, said that, so far as he believed, Oliver was one of the last people likely to lay violent hands on himself; he was of too calm and gentle a temperament for that. The rustic jury, pitying the father and believing him, gave Oliver the benefit of the doubt. Loaded guns were dangerous, they observed, apt to go off of themselves almost; and they brought it in Accidental Death.

But Jane knew better. I thought I knew better. I’m afraid Mr. Preen knew better.

And what of that appearance of Oliver which Jane saw? It could not have been Oliver in the flesh, but I think it must have been Oliver in the spirit. Many a time and oft in the days that followed did Jane recount it over to me; it seemed a relief to her distress to talk of it. “He said he would come, alive or dead, to meet me; and he came.”

And I, Johnny Ludlow, break off here to state that the account of this apparition is strictly true. Every minute particular attending it, even to the gig coming with Sam in it to fetch Jane from the tea-table, is a faithful record of that which occurred.

I took an opportunity of questioning Sam, asking whether he had seen the appearance. It was as we were coming away from the grave after the funeral. Oliver was buried in Duck Brook churchyard, close under the clock which had told him the time when he stood with his father posting the letters that past afternoon at Dame Sym’s window. “We are too late, father,” he had said. But for being too late the tragedy might never have happened, for the letter, which caused all the trouble and commotion, would have reached Mr. Paul’s hands safely the next morning.

“No, sir,” Sam answered me, “I can’t say that I saw anything. But just as Miss Jane spoke, calling out that Mr. Oliver was there, a kind of shivering wind seemed to take me, and I turned icy cold. It was not her words that could have done it, sir, for I was getting so before she spoke. And at the last Inlet, when she called it out again, I went almost out of my mind with cold and terror. The horse was affrighted too; his coat turned wet.”

That was the tragedy: no one can say I did wrong to call it one. For years and years it has been in my mind to write it. But I had hoped to end the paper less sadly; only the story has lengthened itself out, and there’s no space left. I meant to have told of Jane’s brighter fate in the after days with Valentine, the one lover of her life. For Val pulled himself up from his reckless ways, though not at Islip; and in a distant land they are now sailing down the stream of life together, passing through, as we all have to do, its storms and its sunshine. All this must be left for another paper.

IN LATER YEARS

I

I think it must have been the illness he had in the summer that tended to finally break down Valentine Chandler. He had been whirling along all kinds of doubtful ways before, but when a sort of low fever attacked him, and he had to lie by for weeks, he was about done for.

That’s how we found it when we got to Crabb Cot in October. Valentine, what with illness, his wild ways and his ill-luck, had come to grief and was about to emigrate to Canada. His once flourishing practice had run away from him; no prospect seemed left to him in the old country.

“It is an awful pity!” I remarked to Mrs. Cramp, having overtaken her in the Islip Road, as she was walking towards home.

“Ay, it is that, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, turning her comely face to me, the strings of her black bonnet tied in a big bow under her chin. “Not much else was to be expected, taking all things into consideration. George Chandler, Tom’s brother, makes a right good thing of it in Canada, farming, and Val is going to him.”

“We hear that Val’s mother is leaving North Villa.”

“She can’t afford to stay in it now,” returned Mrs. Cramp,“so has let it to the Miss Dennets, and taken a pretty little place for herself in Crabb. Georgiana has gone out as a governess.”

“Will she like that?”

“Ah, Master Johnny! There are odd moments throughout all our lives when we have to do things we don’t like any more than we like poison—I hate to look at the place,”cried Mrs. Cramp, energetically. “When I think of Mrs. Jacob’s having to turn out of it, and all through Val’s folly, it gives me the creeps.”

This applied to North Villa, of which we then were abreast. Mrs. Cramp turned her face from it, and went on sideways, like a crab.

“Why, here’s Jane Preen!”

She was coming along quietly in the afternoon sunshine. I thought her altered. The once pretty blush-rose of her dimpled cheeks had faded; in her soft blue eyes, so like Oliver’s, lay a look of sadness. He had been dead about a year now. But the blush came back again, and the eyes lighted up with smiles as I took her hand. Mrs. Cramp went on; she was in a hurry to reach her home, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Jane rang the bell at North Villa.

“Shall I take a run over to Duck Brook to-morrow, Jane, and sit with you in the Inlets, and we’ll have a spell of gossip together?”

“I never sit in the Inlets now,” she said, in a half whisper, turning her face away.

“Forgive me, Jane,” I cried, repenting my thoughtlessness; and she disappeared up the garden path.

Susan opened the door. Her mistress was out, she said, but Miss Clementina was at home. It was Clementina that Jane wanted to see.

Valentine, still weak, was lying on the sofa in the parlour when Jane entered. He got up, all excitement at seeing her, and they sat down together.

“I brought this for Clementina,” she said, placing a paper parcel on the table. “It is a pattern which she asked me for. Are you growing stronger?”

“Clementina is about somewhere,” he observed; “the others are out. Yes, I am growing stronger; but it seems to me that I am a long while about it.”

They sat on in silence, side by side, neither speaking. Valentine took Jane’s hand and held it within his own, which rested on his knee. It seemed that they had lost their tongues—as we say to the children.

“Is it all decided?” asked Jane presently. “Quite decided?”

“Quite, Jane. Nothing else is left for me.”

She caught her breath with one of those long sighs that tell of inward tribulation.

“I should have been over to see you before this, Jane, but that my legs would not carry me to Duck Brook and back again without sitting down by the wayside. And you—you hardly ever come here now.”

A deep flush passed swiftly over Jane’s face. She had not liked to call at the troubled house. And she very rarely came so far as Crabb now: there seemed to be no plea for it.

“What will be the end, Val?” she whispered.

Valentine groaned. “I try not to think of it, my dear. When I cannot put all thought of the future from me, it gives me more torment than I know how to bear. If only——”

The door opened, and in came Clementina, arresting what he had been about to say.

“This is the pattern you asked me for, Clementina,” Jane said, rising to depart on her return home. For she would not risk passing the Inlets after sunset.

A week or two went by, and the time of Valentine Chandler’s departure arrived. He had grown well and strong apparently, and went about to say Good-bye to people in a subdued fashion. The Squire took him apart when Val came for that purpose to us, and talked to him in private. Tod called it a “Curtain Lecture.” Valentine was to leave Crabb at daybreak on the Saturday morning for London, and go at once on board the ship lying in the docks about to steam away for Quebec.

It perhaps surprised none of us who knew the Chandler girls that they should be seen tearing over the parish on the Friday afternoon to invite people to tea. “It will be miserably dull this last evening, you know, Johnny,” they said to me in their flying visit; “we couldn’t stand it alone. Be sure to come in early: and leave word that Joseph Todhetley is to join us as soon as he gets back again.” For Tod had gone out.

According to orders, I was at North Villa betimes: and, just as on that other afternoon, I met Jane Preen at the gate. She had walked in from Duck Brook.

“You are going to spend the evening here, Jane?”

“Yes, it is the last evening,” she sighed. “Valentine wished it.”

“The girls have been to invite me; wouldn’t let me say No. There’s to be quite a party.”

“A party!” exclaimed Jane, in surprise.

“If they could manage to get one up.”

“I am sure Valentine did not know that this morning.”

“I daresay not. I asked the girls if Valentine wanted a crowd there on his last evening, and they exclaimed that Valentine never knew what was good for him.”

“As you are here, Johnny,” she went on, after a silence,“I wonder if you would mind my asking you to do me a favour? It is to walk home with me after tea. I shall not be late this evening.”

“Of course I will, Jane.”

“I cannot go past the Inlets alone after dark,” she whispered. “I never do so by daylight but a dreadful shiver seizes me. I—I’m afraid of seeing something.”

“Have you ever seen it since that first evening, Jane?”

“Never since. Never once. I do not suppose that I shall ever see it again; but the fear lies upon me.”

She went on to explain that the gig could not be sent for her that evening, as Mr. Preen had gone to Alcester in it and taken Sam. Her mode and voice seemed strangely subdued, as if all spirit had left her for ever.

In spite of their efforts, the Miss Chandlers met with little luck. One of the Letsom girls and Tom Coney were all the recruits they were able to pick up. They came dashing in close upon our heels. In the hall stood Valentine’s luggage locked and corded, ready for conveyance to the station.

There’s not much to relate of that evening: I hardly know why I allude to it at all—only that these painful records sometimes bring a sad sort of soothing to the weary heart, causing it to look forward to that other life where will be no sorrow and no parting.

Tod came in after tea. He and Coney kept the girls alive, if one might judge by the laughter that echoed from the other room. Tea remained on the table for anyone else who might arrive, but Mrs. Jacob Chandler had turned from it to put her feet on the fender. She kept me by her, asking about a slight accident which had happened to one of our servants. Valentine and Jane were standing at the doors of the open window in silence, as if they wanted to take in a view of the garden. And that state of things continued, as it seemed to me, for a good half-hour.

It was a wild night, but very warm for November. White clouds scudded across the face of the sky; moonlight streamed into the room. The fire was low, and the green shade had been placed over the lamp, so that there seemed to be no light but that of the moon.

“Won’t you sing a song for the last time, Valentine?” I heard Jane ask him with half a sob.

“Not to-night; I’m not equal to it. But, yes, I will; one song,” he added, turning round. “Night and day that one song has been ever haunting me, Jane.”

He was sitting down to the piano when Mrs. Cramp came in. She said she would go up to take her bonnet off, and Mrs. Chandler went with her. This left me alone at the fire. I should have made a start for the next room where the laughing was, but that I did not like to disturb the song then begun. Jane stood listening just outside the open window, her hands covering her bent face.

Whether the circumstances and surroundings made an undue impression on me, I know not, but the song struck me as being the most plaintive one I had ever heard and singularly appropriate to that present hour. The singer was departing beyond seas, leaving one he loved hopelessly behind him.

“Remember me, though rolling ocean place its bounds ’twixt thee and me,

Remember me with fond emotion, and believe I’ll think of thee.”

So it began; and I wish I could recollect how it went on, but I can’t; only a line here and there. I think it was set to the tune of Weber’s Last Waltz, but I’m not sure. There came a line, “My lingering look from thine will sever only with an aching heart;” there came another bit towards the end: “But fail not to remember me.”

Nothing in themselves, you will say, these lines; their charm lay in the singing. To listen to their mournful pathos brought with it a strange intensity of pain. Valentine sang them as very few can sing. That his heart was aching, aching with a bitterness which can never be pictured except by those who have felt it; that Jane’s heart was aching as she listened, was all too evident. You could feel the anguish of their souls. It was in truth a ballad singularly applicable to the time and place.

The song ceased; the music died away. Jane moved from the piano with a sob that could no longer be suppressed. Valentine sat still and motionless. As to me, I made a quiet glide of it into the other room, just as Mrs. Cramp and Mrs. Jacob Chandler were coming in for some tea. Julietta seized me on one side and Fanny Letsom on the other; they were going in for forfeits.

Valentine Chandler left the piano and went out, looking for Jane. Not seeing her, he followed on down the garden path, treading on its dry, dead leaves. The wind, sighing and moaning, played amidst the branches of the trees, nearly bare now; every other minute the moon was obscured by the flying clouds. Warm though the night was, and grand in its aspect, signs might be detected of the approaching winter.

Jane Preen was standing near the old garden arbour, from which could be seen by daylight the long chain of the Malvern Hills. Valentine drew Jane within, and seated her by his side.

“Our last meeting; our last parting, Jane!” he whispered from the depth of his full heart.

“Will it be for ever?” she wailed.

He took time to answer. “I would willingly say No; I would promise it to you, Jane, but that I doubt myself. I know that it lies with me; and I know that if God will help me, I may be able to——”

He broke down. He could not go on. Jane bent her head towards him. Drawing it to his shoulder, he continued:

“I have not been able to pull up here, despite the resolutions I have made from time to time. I was one of a fast set of men at Islip, and—somehow—they were stronger than I was. In Canada it may be different. I promise you, my darling, that I will strive to make it so. Do you think this is no lesson to me?”

“If not——”

“If not, we may never see each other again in this world.”

“Oh, Valentine!”

“Only in Heaven. The mistakes we make here may be righted there.”

“And will it be nothing to you, never to see me again here?—no sorrow or pain?”

“No sorrow or pain!” Valentine echoed the words out of the very depths of woe. Even then the pain within him was almost greater than he could bear.

They sat on in silence, with their aching hearts. Words fail in an hour of anguish such as this. An hour that comes perhaps but once in a lifetime; to some of us, never. Jane’s face lay nestled against his shoulder; her hand was in his clasp. Val’s tears were falling; he was weak yet from his recent illness; Jane’s despair was beyond tears.

We were in the height and swing of forfeits when Valentine and Jane came in. They could not remain in the arbour all night, you see, romantic and lovely though it might be to sit in the moonlight. Jane said she must be going home; her mother had charged her not to be late.

When she came down with her things on, I, remembering what she had asked me, took my hat and waited for her in the hall. But Valentine came out with her.

“Thank you all the same, Johnny,” she said to me. And I went back to the forfeits.

They went off together, Jane’s arm within his—their last walk, perhaps, in this world. But it seemed that they could not talk any more than they did in the garden, and went along for the most part in silence. Just before turning into Brook Lane they met Tom Chandler—he who was doing so much for Valentine in this emigration matter. He had come from Islip to spend a last hour with his cousin.

“Go on, Tom; you’ll find them all at home,” said Valentine. “I shall not be very long after you.”

Upon coming to the Inlets, Jane clung closer to Valentine’s arm. It was here that she had seen her unfortunate brother Oliver standing, after his death. Valentine hastily passed his arm round her to impart a sense of protection.

At the gate they parted, taking their farewell hand-shake, their last kiss. “God help you, my dear!” breathed Valentine. “And if—if we never meet again, believe that no other will ever love you as I have loved.”

He turned back on the road he had come, and Jane went in to her desolate home.

II

“Aunt Mary Ann, I’ve come back, and brought a visitor with me!”

Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, superintending the preserving of a pan of morella cherries over the fire in her spacious kitchen, turned round in surprise. I was perched on the arm of the old oak chair, watching the process. I had gone to the farm with a message from Crabb Cot, and Mrs. Cramp, ignoring ceremony, called me into the kitchen.

Standing at the door, with the above announcement, was Julietta Chandler. She had been away on a fortnight’s visit.

“Now where on earth did you spring from, Juliet?”asked Mrs. Cramp. “I did not expect you to-day. A visitor? Who is it?”

“Cherry Dawson, Aunt Mary Ann; and I didn’t think it mattered about letting you know,” returned Juliet. They had given up the longer name, Julietta. “You can see her if you look through the window; she is getting out of the fly at the gate. Cherry Dawson is the nicest and jolliest girl in the world, and you’ll all be in love with her—including you, Johnny Ludlow.”

Sure enough, there she was, springing from the fly which had brought them from Crabb station. A light, airy figure in a fresh brown-holland dress and flapping Leghorn hat. The kitchen window was open, and we could hear her voice all that way off, laughing loudly at something and chattering to the driver. She was very fair, with pretty white teeth, and a pink colour on her saucy face.

Mrs. Cramp left Sally to the cherries, went to the hall door and opened it herself, calling the other maid, Joan, to come down. The visitor flew in with a run and a sparkling laugh, and at once kissed Mrs. Cramp on both cheeks, without saying with your leave or by your leave. I think she would not have minded kissing me, for she came dancing up and shook my hand.

“It’s Johnny Ludlow, Cherry,” said Juliet.

“Oh, how delightful!” cried Miss Cherry.

She was really very unsophisticated; or—very much the other way. One cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might, there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her hair.

Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of gold in which Jupiter went courting Danaë could hardly have been more seductive than this.

“I know you don’t mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!” she exclaimed joyously. “I did so want to make your acquaintance. And Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It’s not Tim’s fault if he can’t come back yet. Is it now?”

“I do not know anything about it,” answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not quite sure what to make of her.

With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.

“Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?”asked the man civilly. “I am just starting back.”

“No, thank you, Lease,” I answered. “I am going across to Duck Brook.”

“Curious young party that, ain’t it, sir?” said Lease, pointing the whip over his shoulder towards the house.“She went and asked me if Mrs. Cramp warn’t an old Image, born in the year One, and didn’t she get her gowns out of Noah’s Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you see her hair, sir?”

I nodded.

“For my part, I don’t favour that bright yaller for hair, Mr. Johnny. I never knew but one woman have such, and she was more deceitful than a she-fox.”

Lease touched his hat and drove off. He was cousin in a remote degree to poor Maria Lease, and to Lease the pointsman who had caused the accident to the train at Crabb junction and died of the trouble. At that moment, Fred Scott came up; a short, dark young fellow, with fierce black whiskers, good-natured and rather soft. He was fond of playing billiards at the Bell at Islip; had been doing it for some years now.

“I say, Ludlow, has that fly come with Juliet Chandler? Is she back again?”

“Just come. She has brought some one with her: a girl with golden hair.”

“Oh, bother her!” returned Fred. “But it has been as dull as ditchwater without Juliet.”

He dashed in at Mrs. Cramp’s gate and up the winding path. I turned into the Islip Road, and crossed it to take Brook Lane. The leaves were beginning to put on the tints of autumn; the grain was nearly all gathered.

Time the healer! As Mrs. Todhetley says, it may well be called so. Heaven in mercy sends it to the sick and heavy-laden with healing on its wings. Nearly three years had slipped by since the departure for Canada of Valentine Chandler; four years since the tragic death of Oliver Preen.

There are few changes to record. Things and people were for the most part going on as they had done. It was reported that Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the hour he landed over yonder, becoming thoroughly staid and steady. Early in the summer of this year his mother had shut up her cottage at North Crabb to go to Guernsey, on the invitation of a sister from whom she had expectations. Upon this, Julietta, who lived with her mother, went on a long visit to Mrs. Cramp.

Clementina had married. Her husband was a Mr. Timothy Dawson, junior partner in a wholesale firm of general merchants in Birmingham; they had also a house in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Dawson lived in a white villa at Edgbaston, and went in for style and fashion. At least she did, which might go without telling. The family in which her sister Georgiana was governess occupied another white villa hard by.

Close upon Juliet’s thus taking up her residence with her aunt, finding perhaps the farm rather dull, she struck up a flirtation with Fred Scott, or he with her. They were everlastingly together, mooning about Mrs. Cramp’s grounds, or sauntering up and down the Islip Road. Juliet gave out that they were engaged. No one believed it. At present Fred had nothing to marry upon: his mother, just about as soft as himself, supplied him with as much pocket-money as he asked for, and there his funds ended.

Juliet had now returned from a week or two’s visit she had been paying Clementina, bringing with her, uninvited, the young lady with the golden hair. That hair seemed to be before my eyes as a picture as I walked along. She was Timothy Dawson’s young half-sister. Both the girls had grown tired of staying with Clementina, who worried herself and everyone about her just now because her husband was detained longer than he had anticipated in New York, whither he had gone on business.

Mr. Frederick Scott had said “Bother” in contempt when he first heard of the visitor with the golden hair. He did not say it long. Miss Cherry Dawson cast a spell upon him. He had never met such a rattling, laughing girl in all his born days, which was how he phrased it; had never seen such bewildering hair. Cherry fascinated him. Forgetting his allegiance to Juliet, faithless swain that he was, he went right over to the enemy. Miss Cherry, nothing loth, accepted his homage openly, and enjoyed the raging jealousy of Juliet.

In the midst of this, Juliet received a telegram from Edgbaston. Her sister Clementina was taken suddenly ill and wanted her. She must take the first train.

“Of course you are coming with me, Cherry!” said Juliet.

“Of course I am not,” laughed Cherry. “I’m very happy here—if dear Mrs. Cramp will let me stay with her. You’ll be back again in a day or two.”

Not seeing any polite way of sending her away in the face of this, Mrs. Cramp let her stay on. Juliet was away a week—and a nice time the other one and Fred had of it, improving the shining hours with soft speeches and love-making. When Juliet got back again, she felt ready to turn herself into a female Bluebeard, and cut off Cherry’s golden head.

Close upon that Mrs. Cramp held her harvest-home.“You may as well come early, and we’ll have tea on the lawn,” she said, when inviting us.

It was a fine afternoon, warm as summer, though September was drawing to its close. Many of the old friends you have heard of were there. Mary MacEveril and her cousin Dick, who seemed to be carrying on a little with one another, as Tod called it; the Letsoms, boys and girls; Emma Chandler, who looked younger than ever, though she could boast of two babies: and others. Jane Preen was there, the weary look which her mild and pretty face had gained latterly very plainly to be seen. We roamed at will about the grounds, and had tea under the large weeping elm tree. Altogether the gathering brought forcibly to mind that other gathering; that of the picnic, four summers ago, when we had sung songs in light-hearted glee, and poor Oliver Preen must have been ready to die of mortal pain.

The element of interest to-day lay in Miss Cherry Dawson. In her undisguised assumption of ownership in Fred Scott, and in Juliet Chandler’s rampant jealousy of the pair. You should have seen the girl flitting about like a fairy, in her white muslin frock, the golden shower of curls falling around her like nothing but threads of transparent amber. Fred was evidently very far gone. Juliet wore white also.

Whether things would have come that evening to the startling pass they did but for an unfortunate remark made in thoughtless fun, not in malice, I cannot tell. It gave a sting to Juliet that she could not bear. A ridiculous pastime was going on. Some of them were holding hands in a circle and dancing round to the “House that Jack Built,” each one reciting a sentence in turn. If you forgot your sentence, you paid a forfeit. The one falling to Juliet Chandler was “This the maiden all forlorn.” “Why, that’s exactly what you are, Juliet!” cried Tom Coney, impulsively, and a laugh went round. Juliet said nothing, but I saw her face change to the hue of death. The golden hair of the other damsel was gleaming just then within view amidst the trees, accompanied by the black head and black whiskers of Mr. Fred Scott.

“That young man must have a rare time of it between the two,” whispered Tod to me. “As good as the ass between the bundles of hay.”

At dusk began the fun of the harvest-home. Mrs. Cramp’s labourers and their wives sat in the large kitchen at an abundant board. Hot beef, mutton and hams crowded it, with vegetables; and of fruit pies and tarts there was a goodly show. Some of us helped to wait on them, and that was the best fun of all.

They had all taken as much as they could possibly eat, and were in the full flow of cider and beer and delight; a young man in a clean white smock-frock was sheepishly indulging the table with a song: “Young Roger of the Valley,” and I was laughing till I had to hold my sides; when Mrs. Cramp touched me on the back. She sat with the Miss Dennets in the little parlour off the kitchen, in full view of the company. I sat on the door-sill between them.

“Johnny,” she whispered, “I don’t see Juliet and Cherry Dawson. Have they been in at all?”

I did not remember to have seen them; or Fred Scott either.

“Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It’s too late for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are to come in at once,” said Mrs. Cramp.

Not half a stone’s throw from the house I found them—quarrelling. Their noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic passion; Cherry in sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning against a tree in silent patience.

“It’s quite true,” Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. “We are engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!”

“You are not,” raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage she was in. “He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to me still.”

Cherry laughed out in mockery. “Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!”

Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge.

“I say, can’t you have done with this, you silly girls?”he cried out meekly.

“In a short time you’ll have our wedding-cards,” went on Cherry. “It’s all arranged. He’s only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green.”

Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. “If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I’ll not survive it,” she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. “Do you hear me? I’ll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after.”

“Come now, easy, Juliet,” pleaded Fred uncomfortably.“It’s all nonsense, you know.”

“I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me,”assented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. “If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I’ll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever.”

“It had better begin to-night, then, for you’ll soon find out that it’s as true as gospel,” retorted Cherry.

Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp’s message: they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks. Juliet’s straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its strings round her neck.

“Oh, they’re coming,” spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. “It’s very nice out there; the moon’s bright as day.”

And presently I heard the laugh of Cherry Dawson amidst us. Her golden hair, her scarlet cheeks and her blue eyes were all sparkling together.

III

It was the next morning. We were at breakfast, answering Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley’s questions about the harvest home, when old Thomas came in, all sad and scared, to tell some news. Juliet Chandler was dead: she had destroyed herself.

Of course the Squire at once attacked Thomas for saying it. But a sick feeling of conviction arose within me that it was true. One of the servants, out of doors on an errand, had heard it from a man in the road. The Squire sat rubbing his face, which had turned hot.

Leaving the breakfast table, I started for Mrs. Cramp’s. Miss Susan Dennet was standing at her gate, her white handkerchief thrown over her head, her pale face limp with fright.

“Johnny,” she called to me, “have you heard? Do you think it can be true?”

“Well, I hope not, Miss Susan. I am now going there to see. What I’m thinking of is this—if it is not true, how can such a report have arisen?”

Tod caught me up, and we found the farm in distress and commotion. It was all true; and poor Mrs. Cramp was almost dumb with dismay. These were the particulars: The previous evening, Juliet did not appear at the late supper, laid in the dining-room for the guests; at least, no one remembered to have seen her. Later, when the guests had left, and Mrs. Cramp was in the kitchen busy with her maids, Cherry Dawson looked in, bed-candle in hand, to say good-night. “I suppose Juliet is going up with you,”remarked Mrs. Cramp. “Oh, Juliet went up ages ago,”said Cherry, in answer.

The night passed quietly. Early in the morning one of the farm men went to the eel-pond to put in a net, and saw some clothes lying on the brink. Rushing indoors, he brought out Sally. She knew the things at once. There lay the white dress and the pink ribbons which Juliet had worn the night before; the straw hat, and a small fleecy handkerchief which she had tied round her neck at sundown. Pinned to the sash and the dress was a piece of paper on which was written in ink, in a large hand—Juliet’s hand:

“I SAID I WOULD DO IT; AND I WILL HAUNT HER FOR EVERMORE.”

Of course she had taken these things off and left them on the bank, with the memorandum pinned to them, to make known that she had flung herself into the pond.

“I can scarcely believe it; it seems so incredible,” sighed poor Mrs. Cramp, to the Squire, who had come bustling in.“Juliet, as I should have thought, was one of the very last girls to do such a thing.”

The next to appear upon the scene, puffing and panting with agitation, was Fred Scott. He asked which of the two girls it was, having heard only a garbled account; and now learned that it was Juliet. As to Cherry Dawson, she was shut up in her bedroom in shrieking hysterics. Men were preparing to drag the pond in search of——well, what was lying there.

The pond was at the end of the garden, near the fence that divided it from the three-acre field. Nothing had been disturbed. The white frock and pink ribbons were lying with the paper pinned to them; the hat was close by. A yard off was the white woollen handkerchief; and near it I saw the faded bunch of mignonette which Juliet had worn in her waistband. It looked as if she had flung the things off in desperation.

Standing later in the large parlour, listening to comments and opinions, one question troubled me—Ought I to tell what I knew of the quarrel? It might look like treachery towards Scott and the girl upstairs; but, should that poor dead Juliet——

The doubt was suddenly solved for me.

“What I want to get at is this,” urged the Squire: “did anything happen to drive her to this? One doesn’t throw oneself into an eel-pond for nothing in one’s sober senses.”

“Miss Juliet and Miss Dawson had a quarrel out o’ doors last night,” struck in Joan, for the two servants were assisting at the conference. “Sally heard ’em.”

“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Cramp. “Speak up.”

“Well, it’s true, ma’am,” said Sally, coming forward.“I went out to shake a tray-cloth, and heard voices at a distance, all in a rage like; so I just stepped on a bit to see what it meant. The two young lasses was snarling at one another like anything. Miss Juliet was——”

“What were they quarrelling about?” interrupted the Squire.

“Well, sir, it seemed to be about Mr. Scott—which of’em had him for a sweetheart, and which of ’em hadn’t. Mr. Johnny Ludlow ran up as I came in: perhaps he heard more than I did.”

After that, there was nothing for it but to let the past scene come out; and Mrs. Cramp had the pleasure of being enlightened as to the rivalry which had been going on under her roof and the ill-feeling which had arisen out of it. Fred Scott, to do him justice, spoke up like a man, not denying the flirtation he had carried on, first with Juliet, next with Cherry, but he declared most positively that it had never been serious on any side.

The Squire wheeled round. “Just say what you mean by that, Mr. Frederick. What do you call serious?”

“I never said a word to either of them which could suggest serious intentions, sir. I never hinted at such a thing as getting married.”

“Now look here, young man,” cried Mrs. Cramp, taking her handkerchief from her troubled face, “what right had you to do that? By what right did you play upon those young girls with your silly speeches and your flirting ways, if you meant nothing?—nothing to either of them?”

“I am sorry for it now, ma’am,” said Scott, eating humble pie; “I wouldn’t have done it for the world had I foreseen this. It was just a bit of flirting and nothing else. And neither of them ever thought it was anything else; they knew better; only they became snappish with one another.”

“Did not think you meant marrying?” cried the Squire sarcastically, fixing Scott with his spectacles.

“Just so, sir. Why, how could I mean it?” went on Scott in his simple way. “I’ve no money, while my mother lives, to set up a wife or a house; she wouldn’t let me. I joked and laughed with the two girls, and they joked and laughed back again. I don’t care what they may have said between themselves—they knew there was nothing in it.”

Scott was right, so far. All the world, including the Chandlers and poor Juliet, knew that Scott was no more likely to marry than the man in the moon.

“And you could stand by quietly last night when they were having, it seems, this bitter quarrel, and not stop it?”exclaimed Mrs. Cramp.

“They would not listen to me,” returned Scott. “I went between them; spoke to one, spoke to the other; told them what they were quarrelling about was utter nonsense—and the more I said, the more they wrangled. Johnny Ludlow saw how it was; he came up at the end of it.”

Cherry Dawson was sent for downstairs, and came in between Sally and Joan, limp and tearful and shaking with fright. Mrs. Cramp questioned her.

“It was all done in fun,” she said with a sob. “Juliet and I teased one another. It was as much her fault as mine. Fred Scott needn’t talk. I’m sure I don’t want him. I’ve somebody waiting for me at Edgbaston, if I choose. Scott may go to York!”

“Suppose you mind your manners, young woman: you’ve done enough mischief in my house without forgetting them,”reproved Mrs. Cramp. “I want to know when you last saw Juliet.”

“We came in together after the quarrel. She ran up to her room; I joined the rest of you. As she did not come down to supper, I thought she had gone to bed. O-o-o-o-o!”shivered Cherry; “and she says she’ll haunt me! I shall never dare to be alone in the dark again.”

Mr. Fred Scott took his departure, glad no doubt to do so, carrying with him a hint from Mrs. Cramp that for the present his visits must cease, unless he should be required to give evidence at the inquest. As he went out, Mr. Paul and Tom Chandler came in together. Tom, strong in plain common-sense, could not at all understand it.

“Passion must have overbalanced her reason and driven her mad,” he said aside to me. “The taunts of that Dawson girl did it, I reckon.”

“Blighted love,” said I.

“Moonshine,” answered Tom Chandler. “Juliet, poor girl, had gone in for too many flirtations to care much for Scott. As to that golden-haired one, her life is passed in nothing else: getting out of one love affair into another, month in, month out. Her brother Tim once told her so in my presence. No, Johnny, it is a terrible calamity, but I shall never understand how she came to do it as long as I live.”

I was not sure that I should. Juliet was very practical: not one of your moaning, sighing, die-away sort of girls who lose their brains for love, like crazy Jane. It was a dreadful thing, whatever might have been the cause, and we were all sorry for Mrs. Cramp. Nothing had stirred us like this since the death of Oliver Preen.

Georgiana Chandler came flying over from Birmingham in a state of excitement. Cherry Dawson had gone then, or Georgie might have shaken her to pieces. When put up, Georgie had a temper of her own. Cherry had disappeared into the wilds of Devonshire, where her home was, and where she most devoutly hoped Juliet’s ghost would not find its way.

“It is an awful thing to have taken place in your house, Aunt Mary Ann. And why unhappy, ill-fated Juliet should have—but I can’t talk of it,” broke off Georgie.

“I know that I am ashamed of its having happened here, Georgiana,” assented Mrs. Cramp. “I am not alluding to the sad termination, but to that parcel of nonsense, the sweethearting.”

“Clementina is more heartless than an owl over it,”continued Georgie, making her remarks. “She says it serves Juliet right for her flirting folly, and she hopes Cherry will be haunted till her yellow curls turn grey.”

The more they dragged, the less chance there seemed of finding Juliet. Nothing came up but eels. It was known that the eel-pond had a hole or two in it which no drags could penetrate. Gloom settled down upon us all. Mrs. Cramp’s healthy cheeks lost some of their redness. One day, calling at Crabb Cot, she privately told us that the trouble would lie upon her for ever. The best word Tod gave to it was—that he would go a day’s march with peas in his shoes to see a certain lady hanging by her golden hair on a sour apple tree.

It was a bleak October evening. Jane Preen, in her old shawl and garden hat, was hurrying to Dame Sym’s on an errand for her mother. The cold wind sighed and moaned in the trees, clouds flitted across the face of the crescent moon. It scarcely lighted up the little old church beyond the Triangle, and the graves in the churchyard beneath, Oliver’s amidst them. Jane shivered, and ran into Mrs. Sym’s.

Carrying back her parcel, she turned in at the garden gate and stood leaning over it for a few moments. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. Life for a long time had seemed very hard to Jane; no hope anywhere.

The sound of quick footsteps broke upon her ear, and a gentleman came into view. She rather wondered who it was; whether anyone was coming to call on her father.

“Jane! Jane!”

With a faint cry, she fell into the arms opened to receive her—those of Valentine Chandler. He went away, a ne’er-do-well, three years ago, shattered in health, shaken in spirit; he had returned a healthy, hearty man, all his parts about him.

Yes, Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the moment he touched the Canadian shores. He had put his shoulder to the wheel in earnest, had persevered and prospered. And now he had a profitable farm of his own, and a pretty house upon it, all in readiness for Jane.

“We have heard from time to time that you were doing well,” she said, with a sob of joy. “Oh, Valentine, how good it is! To have done it all yourself!”

“Not altogether myself, Jane,” he answered. “I did my best, and God sent His blessing upon it.”

Jane no longer felt the night cold, the wind bleak, or remembered that her mother was waiting for the parcel. They paced the old wilderness of a garden, arm locked within arm. There was something in the windy night to put them in mind of that other night: the night of their parting, when Valentine had sung his song of farewell, and bade her remember him though rolling ocean placed its bounds between them. They had been faithful to one another.

Seated on the bench, under the walnut tree, the very spot on which poor Oliver had sat after that rush home from his fatal visit to Mr. Paul’s office at Islip, Jane ventured to say a word about Juliet, and, to her surprise, found that Valentine knew nothing.

“I have not heard any news yet, Jane,” he said. “I came straight to you from the station. Presently I shall go back to astonish Aunt Mary Ann. Why? What about Juliet?”

Jane enlightened him by degrees, giving him one particular after another. Valentine listening in silence to the end.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t believe it!” exclaimed Jane.

“Not a syllable of it.”

“But what do you mean? What don’t you believe?”

“That Juliet threw herself into the pond. My dear, she is not the kind of girl to do it; she’d no more do such a thing than I should.”

“Oh, Val! It is true the drags brought up nothing but eels; but——”

“Of course they didn’t. There’s nothing but eels there to bring up.”

“Then where can Juliet be?—what is the mystery?”dissented Jane. “What became of her?”

“That I don’t know. Rely upon it, Janey, she is not there. She’d never jump into that cold pond. How long ago is this?”

“Nearly a month. Three weeks last Thursday.”

“Ah,” said Valentine. “Well, I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of it.”

Showing himself indoors to Mr. and Mrs. Preen for a few minutes, Valentine then made his way to Mrs. Cramp’s, where he would stay. He knew his mother was away, and her house shut up. Mrs. Cramp, recovering from her surprise, told him he was welcome as the sun in harvest. She had been more grieved when Valentine went wrong than the world suspected.

Seated over the fire, in her comfortable parlour, after supper, Valentine told her his plans. He had come over for one month; could not leave his farm longer; just to shake hands with them all, and to take Jane Preen back with him. That discussed, Mrs. Cramp entered gingerly upon the sad news about Juliet—not having thought well to deluge him with it the moment he came in. Valentine refused to believe it—as he had refused with Jane.

“Bless the boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Cramp, staring.“What on earth makes him say such a thing?”

“Because I am sure of it, Aunt Mary Ann. Fancy strong-minded Juliet throwing herself into an eel pond! She is gadding about somewhere, deep already, I daresay, in another flirtation.”

Mrs. Cramp, waiting to collect her scattered senses, shook her head plaintively. “My dear,” she said, “I don’t pretend to know the fashion of things in the outlandish world in which you live, but over here it couldn’t be. Once a girl has been drowned in a pond—whether eel, duck, or carp pond, what matters it?—she can’t come to life again and go about flirting.”

To us all Valentine was, as Mrs. Cramp had phrased it, more welcome than the sun in harvest, and was made much of. When a young fellow has been going to the bad, and has the resolution to pull up and to persevere, he should be honoured, cried the Squire—and we did our best to honour Val. For a week or two there was nothing but visiting everywhere. He was then going to Guernsey to see his mother, when she wrote to stop him, saying she was coming back to Crabb for his wedding.

And while Valentine was reading his mother’s letter at the tea-table—for the Channel Islands letters always came in by the second post—Mrs. Cramp was opening one directed to her. Suddenly Valentine heard a gurgle—and next a moan. Looking up, he saw his aunt gasping for breath, her face an indescribable mixture of emotions.

“Why, Aunt Mary Ann,” he cried; “are you ill?”

“If I’m not ill, I might be,” retorted Mrs. Cramp.“Here’s a letter from that wretched girl—that Juliet! She’s not dead after all. She has been in Guernsey all this time.”

Valentine paused a moment to take in the truth of the announcement, and then burst into laughter deep and long. Mrs. Cramp handed him the letter.

“DEAR AUNT MARY ANN,—I hope you will forgive me! Georgie writes word that you have been in a way about me. I thought you’d be sure to guess it was only a trick. I did it to give a thorough fright to that wicked cat; you can’t think how full of malice she is. I put on my old navy-blue serge and close winter bonnet, which no one would be likely to miss or remember, and carried the other things to the edge of the pond and left them there. While you were at supper I stole away, caught the last train at Crabb Junction, and surprised Clementina at Edgbaston. She promised to be secret—she hates that she-cat—and the next morning I started for Guernsey. Clementina did not tell Georgie till a week ago, after she heard that Valentine would not believe it, and then Georgie wrote to me and blew me up. I am enchanted to hear that the toad passes her nights in horrid fear of seeing my ghost, and that her yellow hair is turning blue; Georgie says it is.—Your ever affectionate and repentant niece,

“Julietta.

“P.S.—I hope you will believe I am very sorry for paining you, dear Aunt Mary Ann. And I want to tell you that I think it likely I shall soon be married. An old gentleman out here who has a beautiful house and lots of money admires me very much. Please let Fred Scott know this.”

And so, there it was—Julietta was in the land of the living and had never been out of it. And we had gone through our fright and pain unnecessarily, and the poor eels had been disturbed for nothing.

They were married at the little church at Duck Brook; no ceremony, hardly anyone invited to it. Mr. Preen gave Jane away. Tom Chandler and Emma were there, and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and Mrs. Cramp. Jane asked me to go—to see the last of her, she said. She wore a plain silk dress of a greyish colour, and a white straw bonnet with a bit of orange blossom—which she took off before they started on their journey. For they went off at once to Liverpool—and would sail the next day for their new home.

And Valentine is always steady and prospering, and Jane says Canada is better than England and she wouldn’t come back for the world.

And Juliet is married and lives in Guernsey, and drives about with her old husband in his handsome carriage and pair. But Mrs. Cramp has not forgiven her yet.

THE SILENT CHIMES.

I.—PUTTING THEM UP.

I

The events of this history did not occur within my own recollection, and I can only relate them at second-hand—from the Squire and others. They are curious enough; especially as regard the three parsons—one following upon another—in their connection with the Monk family, causing no end of talk in Church Leet parish, as well as in other parishes within earshot.

About three miles’ distance from Church Dykely, going northwards across country, was the rural parish of Church Leet. It contained a few farmhouses and some labourers’cottages. The church, built of grey stone, stood in its large graveyard; the parsonage, a commodious house, was close by; both of them were covered with time-worn ivy. Nearly half a mile off, on a gentle eminence, rose the handsome mansion called Leet Hall, the abode of the Monk family. Nearly the whole of the parish—land, houses, church and all—belonged to them. At the time I am about to tell of they were the property of one man—Godfrey Monk.

The late owner of the place (except for one short twelvemonth) was old James Monk, Godfrey’s father. Old James had three sons and one daughter—Emma—his wife dying early. The eldest son (mostly styled “young James”) was about as wild a blade as ever figured in story; the second son, Raymond, was an invalid; the third, Godfrey, a reckless lad, ran away to sea when he was fourteen.

If the Monks were celebrated for one estimable quality more than another, it was temper: a cross-grained, imperious, obstinate temper. “Run away to sea, has he?”cried old James when he heard the news; “very well, at sea he shall stop.” And at sea Godfrey did stop, not disliking the life, and perhaps not finding any other open to him. He worked his way up in the merchant service by degrees, until he became commander and was called Captain Monk.

The years went on. Young James died, and the other two sons grew to be middle-aged men. Old James, the father, found by signs and tokens that his own time was approaching; and he was the next to go. Save for a slender income bequeathed to Godfrey and to his daughter, the whole of the property was left to Raymond, and to Godfrey after him if Raymond had no son. The entail had been cut off in the past generation; for which act the reasons do not concern us.

So Raymond, ailing greatly always, entered into possession of his inheritance. He lived about a twelvemonth afterwards, and then died: died unmarried. Therefore Godfrey came into all.

People were curious, the Squire says, as to what sort of man Godfrey would turn out to be; for he had not troubled home much since he ran away. He was a widower; that much was known; his wife having been a native of Trinidad, in the West Indies.

A handsome man, with fair, curling hair (what was left of it); proud blue eyes; well-formed features with a chronic flush upon them, for he liked his glass, and took it; a commanding, imperious manner, and a temper uncompromising as the grave. Such was Captain Godfrey Monk; now in his forty-fifth year. Upon his arrival at Leet Hall after landing, with his children and one or two dusky attendants in their train, he was received by his sister Emma, Mrs. Carradyne. Major Carradyne had died fighting in India, and his wife, at the request of her brother Raymond, came then to live at Leet Hall. Not of necessity, for Mrs. Carradyne was well off and could have made her home where she pleased, but Raymond had liked to have her. Godfrey also expressed his pleasure that she should remain; she could act as mother to his children.

Godfrey’s children were three: Katherine, aged seventeen; Hubert, aged ten; and Eliza, aged eight. The girls had their father’s handsome features, but in their skin there ran a dusky tinge, hinting of other than pure Saxon blood; and they were every whit as haughtily self-willed as he was. The boy, Hubert, was extremely pretty, his face fair, his complexion delicately beautiful, his auburn hair bright, his manner winning; but he liked to exercise his own will, and appeared to have generally done it.

A day or two, and Mrs. Carradyne sat down aghast. “I never saw children so troublesome and self-willed in all my life, Godfrey,” she said to her brother. “Have they ever been controlled at all?”

“Had their own way pretty much, I expect,” answered the Captain. “I was not often at home, you know, and there’s nobody else they’d obey.”

“Well, Godfrey, if I am to remain here, you will have to help me manage them.”

“That’s as may be, Emma. When I deem it necessary to speak, I speak; otherwise I don’t interfere. And you must not get into the habit of appealing to me, recollect.”

Captain Monk’s conversation was sometimes interspersed with sundry light words, not at all orthodox, and not necessarily delivered in anger. In those past days swearing was regarded as a gentleman’s accomplishment; a sailor, it was believed, could not at all get along without it. Manners change. The present age prides itself upon its politeness: but what of its sincerity?

Mrs. Carradyne, mild and gentle, commenced her task of striving to tame her brother’s rebellious children. She might as well have let it alone. The girls laughed at her one minute and set her at defiance the next. Hubert, who had good feeling, was more obedient; he did not openly defy her. At times, when her task pressed heavily upon her spirits, Mrs. Carradyne felt tempted to run away from Leet Hall, as Godfrey had run from it in the days gone by. Her own two children were frightened at their cousins, and she speedily sent both to school, lest they should catch their bad manners. Henry was ten, the age of Hubert; Lucy was between five and six.

Just before the death of Raymond Monk, the living of Church Leet became vacant, and the last act of his life was to present it to a worthy young clergyman named George West. This caused intense dissatisfaction to Godfrey. He had heard of the late incumbent’s death, and when he arrived home and found the living filled up he proclaimed his anger loudly, lavishing abuse upon poor dead Raymond for his precipitancy. He had wanted to bestow it upon a friend of his, a Colonial chaplain, and had promised it to him. It was a checkmate there was no help for now, for Mr. West could not be turned out again; but Captain Monk was not accustomed to be checkmated, and resented it accordingly. He took up, for no other reason, a most inveterate dislike to George West, and showed it practically.

In every step the Vicar took, at every turn and thought, he found himself opposed by Captain Monk. Had he a suggestion to make for the welfare of the parish, his patron ridiculed it; did he venture to propose some wise measure at a vestry meeting, the Captain put him and his measure down. Not civilly either, but with a stinging contempt, semi-covert though it was, that made its impression on the farmers around. The Reverend George West was a man of humility, given to much self-disparagement, so he bore all in silence and hoped for better times.

The time went on; three years of it; Captain Monk had fully settled down in his ancestral home, and the neighbours had learnt what a domineering, self-willed man he was. But he had his virtues. He was kind in a general way, generous where it pleased him to be, inordinately attached to his children, and hospitable to a fault.

On the last day of every year, as the years came round, Captain Monk, following his late father’s custom, gave a grand dinner to his tenants; and a very good custom it would have been, but that he and they got rather too jolly. The parson was always invited—and went; and sometimes a few of Captain Monk’s personal friends were added.

Christmas came round this year as usual, and the invitations to the dinner went out. One came to Squire Todhetley, a youngish man then, and one to my father, William Ludlow, who was younger than the Squire. It was a green Christmas; the weather so warm and genial that the hearty farmers, flocking to Leet Hall, declared they saw signs of buds sprouting in the hedges, whilst the large fire in the Captain’s dining-room was quite oppressive.

Looking from the window of the parsonage sitting-room in the twilight, while drawing on his gloves, preparatory to setting forth, stood Mr. West. His wife was bending over an easy-chair, in which their only child, little Alice, lay back, covered up. Her breathing was quick, her skin parched with fever. The wife looked sickly herself.

“Well, I suppose it is time to go,” observed Mr. West, slowly. “I shall be late if I don’t.”

“I rather wonder you go at all, George,” returned his wife. “Year after year, when you come back from this dinner, you invariably say you will not go to another.”

“I know it, Mary. I dislike the drinking that goes on—and the free conversation—and the objectionable songs; I feel out of place in it all.”

“And the Captain’s contemptuous treatment of yourself, you might add.”

“Yes, that is another unwelcome item in the evening’s programme.”

“Then, George, why do you go?”

“Well, I think you know why. I do not like to refuse the invitation; it would only increase Captain Monk’s animosity and widen still further the breach between us. As patron he holds so much in his power. Besides that, my presence at the table does act, I believe, as a mild restraint on some of them, keeping the drinking and the language somewhat within bounds. Yes, I suppose my duty lies in going. But I shall not stay late, Mary,” added the parson, bending to look at the suffering child; “and if you see any real necessity for the doctor to be called in to-night, I will go for him.”

“Dood-bye, pa-pa,” lisped the little four-year-old maiden.

He kissed the little hot face, said adieu to his wife and went out, hoping that the child would recover without the doctor; for the living of Church Leet was but a poor one, though the parsonage house was so handsome. It was a hundred-and-sixty pounds a year, for which sum the tithes had been compounded, and Mr. West had not much money to spare for superfluities—especially as he had to substantially help his mother.

The twilight had deepened almost to night, and the lights in the mansion seemed to smile a cheerful welcome as he approached it. The pillared entrance, ascended to by broad steps, stood in the middle, and a raised terrace of stone ran along before the windows on either side. It was quite true that every year, at the conclusion of these feasts, the Vicar resolved never to attend another; but he was essentially a man of peace, striving ever to lay oil upon troubled waters, after the example left by his Master.

Dinner. The board was full. Captain Monk presided, genial to-day; genial even to the parson. Squire Todhetley faced the Captain at the foot; Mr. West sat at the Squire’s right hand, between him and Farmer Threpp, a quiet man and supposed to be a very substantial one. All went on pleasantly; but when the elaborate dinner gave place to dessert and wine-drinking, the company became rather noisy.

“I think it’s about time you left us,” cried the Squire by-and-by to young Hubert, who sat next him on the other side: and over and over again Mr. Todhetley has repeated to us in later years the very words that passed.

“By George, yes!” put in a bluff and hearty fox-hunter, the master of the hounds, bending forward to look at the lad, for he was in a line with him, and breaking short off an anecdote he was regaling the company with. “I forgot you were there, Master Hubert. Quite time you went to bed.”

“I daresay!” laughed the boy. “Please let me alone, all of you. I don’t want attention drawn to me.”

But the slight commotion had attracted Captain Monk’s notice. He saw his son.

“What’s that?—Hubert! What brings you there now, you young pirate? I ordered you to go out with the cloth.”

“I am not doing any harm, papa,” said the boy, turning his fair and beautiful face towards his father.

Captain Monk pointed his stern finger at the door; a mandate which Hubert dared not disobey, and he went out.

The company sat on, an interminable period of time it seemed to the Vicar. He glanced stealthily at his watch. Eleven o’clock.

“Thinking of going, Parson?” said Mr. Threpp. “I’ll go with you. My head’s not one of the strongest, and I’ve had about as much as I ought to carry.”

They rose quietly, not to disturb the table; intending to steal away, if possible, without being observed. Unluckily, Captain Monk chanced to be looking that way.

“Halloa! who’s turning sneak?—Not you, surely, Parson!—” in a meaningly contemptuous tone. “And you, Threpp, of all men! Sit down again, both of you, if you don’t want to quarrel with me. Odds fish! has my dining-room got sharks in it, that you’d run away? Winter, just lock the door, will you; you are close to it, and pass up the key to me.”

Mr. Winter, a jovial old man and the largest tenant on the estate, rose to do the Captain’s behest, and sent up the key.

“Nobody quits my room,” said the host, as he took it,“until we have seen the old year out and the new one in. What else do you come for—eh, gentlemen?”

The revelry went on. The decanters circulated more quickly, the glasses clinked, the songs became louder, the Captain’s sea stories broader. Mr. West perforce made the best of the situation, certain words of Holy Writ running through his memory:

“Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright!”

Well, more than well, for Captain Monk, that he had not looked upon the red wine that night!

In the midst of all this, the hall clock began to strike twelve. The Captain rose, after filling his glass to the brim.

“Bumpers round, gentlemen. On your legs. Ready? Hooray! Here’s to the shade of the year that’s gone, and may it have buried all our cares with it! And here’s good luck to the one setting in. A happy New Year to you all; and may we never know a moment in it worse than the present? Three-times-three—and drain your glasses.”

“But we have had the toast too soon!” called out one of the farmers, making the discovery close after the cheers had subsided. “It wants some minutes yet to midnight, Captain.”

Captain Monk snatched out his watch—worn in those days in what was called the fob-pocket—its chain and bunch of seals at the end hanging down.

“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed. “Hang that butler of mine! He knew the hall clock was too fast, and I told him to put it back. If his memory serves him no better than this, he may ship himself off to a fresh berth.—Hark! Listen!”

It was the church clock striking twelve. The sound reached the dining-room room very clearly, the wind setting that way. “Another bumper,” cried the Captain, and his guests drank it.

“This day twelvemonth I was at a feast in Derbyshire; the bells of a neighbouring church rang in the year with pleasant melody; chimes they were,” remarked a guest, who was a partial stranger. “Your church has no bells, I suppose?”

“It has one; an old ting-tang that calls us to service on a Sunday,” said Mr. Winter.

“I like to hear those midnight chimes, for my part. I like to hear them chime in the new year,” went on the stranger.

“Chimes!” cried out Captain Monk, who was getting very considerably elated, “why should we not have chimes? Mr. West, why don’t we have chimes?”

“Our church does not possess any, sir—as this gentleman has just remarked,” was Mr. West’s answer.

“Egad, but that parson of ours is going to set us all ablaze with his wit!” jerked out the Captain ironically. “I asked, sir, why we should not get a set of chimes; I did not say we had got them. Is there any just cause or impediment why we should not, Mr. Vicar?”

“Only the expense,” replied the Vicar, in a conciliatory tone.

“Oh, bother expense! That’s what you are always wanting to groan over. Mr. Churchwarden Threpp, we will call a vestry meeting and make a rate.”

“The parish could not bear it, Captain Monk,” remonstrated the clergyman. “You know what dissatisfaction was caused by the last extra rate put on, and how low an ebb things are at just now.”

“When I will a thing, I do it,” retorted the Captain, with a meaning word or two. “We’ll send out the rate and we’ll get the chimes.”

“It will, I fear, lie in my duty to protest against it,”spoke the uneasy parson.

“It may lie in your duty to be a wet blanket, but you won’t protest me out of my will. Gentlemen, we will all meet here again this time twelvemonth, when the chimes shall ring-in the new year for you.—— Here, Dutton, you can unlock the door now,” concluded the Captain, handing the key to the other churchwarden. “Our parson is upon thorns to be away from us.”

Not the parson only, but several others availed themselves of the opportunity to escape.

II

It perhaps did not surprise the parish to find that its owner and master, Captain Monk, intended to persist in his resolution of embellishing the church-tower with a set of chiming-bells. They knew him too well to hope anything less. Why! two years ago, at the same annual feast, some remarks or other at table put it into his head to declare he would stop up the public path by the Rill; and his obstinate will carried it out, regardless of the inconvenience it caused.

A vestry meeting was called, and the rate (to obtain funds for the bells) was at length passed. Two or three voices were feebly lifted in opposition; Mr. West alone had courage to speak out; but the Captain put him down with his strong hand. It may be asked why Captain Monk did not provide the funds himself for this whim. But he would never touch his own pocket for the benefit of the parish if he could help it: and it was thought that his antagonism to the parson was the deterring motive.

To impose the rate was one thing, to collect it quite another. Some of the poorer ratepayers protested with tears in their eyes that they could not pay. Superfluous rates (really not necessary ones) were perpetually being inflicted upon them, they urged, and were bringing them, together with a succession of recent bad seasons, to the verge of ruin. They carried their remonstrances to their Vicar, and he in turn carried them to Captain Monk.

It only widened the breach. The more persistently, though gently, Mr. West pleaded the cause of his parishioners, asking the Captain to be considerate to them for humanity’s sake, the greater grew the other’s obstinacy in holding to his own will. To be thus opposed roused all the devil within him—it was his own expression; and he grew to hate Mr. West with an exceeding bitter hatred.

The chimes were ordered—to play one tune only. Mr. West asked, when the thing was absolutely inevitable, that at least some sweet and sacred melody, acceptable to church-going ears, might be chosen; but Captain Monk fixed on a sea-song that was a favourite of his own—“The Bay of Biscay.” At the end of every hour, when the clock had struck, the Bay of Biscay was to burst forth to charm the parish.

The work was put in hand at once, Captain Monk finding the necessary funds, to be repaid by the proceeds of the rate. Other expenses were involved, such as the strengthening of the belfry. The rate was not collected quickly. It was, I say, one of those times of scarcity that people used to talk so much of years ago; and when the parish beadle, who was the parish collector, went round with the tax-paper in his hand, the poorer of the cottagers could not respond to it. Some of them had not paid the last levy, and Captain Monk threatened harsh measures. Altogether, what with one thing or another, Church Leet that year was kept in a state of ferment. But the work went on.

One windy day in September, Mr. West sat in his study writing a sermon, when a jarring crash rang out from the church close by. He leaped from his chair. The unusual noise had startled him; and it struck on every chord of vexation he possessed. He knew that workmen were busy in the tower, but this was the first essay of the chimes. The bells had clashed in some way one upon the other; not giving out The Bay of Biscay or any other melody, but a very discordant jangle indeed. It was the first and the last time that poor George West heard their sound.

He put the blotting-paper upon his sermon; he was in no mind to continue it then; took up his hat and went out. His wife spoke to him from the open window.

“Are you going out now, George? Tea is all but ready.”

Turning back on the path, he passed into the sitting-room. A cup of tea might soothe his nerves. The tea-tray stood on the table, and Mrs. West, caddy in hand, was putting the tea into the tea-pot. Little Alice sat gravely by.

“Did you hear dat noise up in the church, papa?” she asked.

“Yes, I heard it, dear,” sighed the Vicar.

“A fine clashing!” cried Mrs. West. “I have heard something else this afternoon, George, worse than that: Bean’s furniture is being taken away.”

“What?” cried the Vicar.

“It’s true. Sarah went out on an errand and passed the cottage. The chairs and tables were being put outside the door by two men, she says: brokers, I conclude.”

Mr. West made short work of his tea and started for the scene. Thomas Bean was a very small farmer indeed, renting about thirty acres. What with the heavy rates, as he said, and other outgoings and bad seasons, and ill-luck altogether, he had been behind in his payments this long while; and now the ill-luck seemed to have come to a climax. Bean and his wife were old; their children were scattered abroad.

“Oh, sir,” cried the old lady when she saw the Vicar, the tears raining from her eyes, “it cannot be right that this oppression should fall upon us! We had just managed—Heaven knows how, for I’m sure I don’t—to pay the Midsummer rent; and now they’ve come upon us for the rates, and have took away things worth ten times the sum.”

“For the rates!” mechanically spoke the Vicar.

She supposed it was a question. “Yes, sir; two of ’em we had in the house. One was for putting up the chimes; and the other—well, I can’t just remember what the other was. The beadle, old Crow, comes in, sir, this afternoon.‘Where be the master?’ says he. ‘Gone over to t’other side of Church Dykely,’ says I. ‘Well,’ says he, upon that,‘you be going to have some visitors presently, and it’s a pity he’s out.’ ‘Visitors, for what, Crow?’ says I. ‘Oh, you’ll see,’ says he; ‘and then perhaps you’ll wish you’d bestirred yourselves to pay your just dues. Captain Monk’s patience have been running on for a goodish while, and at last it have run clean out.’ Well, sir——”

She had to make a pause; unable to control her grief.

“Well, sir,” she went on presently, “Crow’s back was hardly turned, when up came two men, wheeling a truck. I saw ’em afar off, by the ricks yonder. One came in; t’other stayed outside with the truck. He asked me whether I was ready with the money for the taxes; and I told him I was not ready, and had but a couple of shillings in the house. ‘Then I must take the value of it in kind,’says he. And without another word, he beckons in the outside man to help him. Our middle table, a mahogany, they seized; and the handsome oak chest, which had been our pride; and the master’s arm-chair—— But, there! I can’t go on.”

Mr. West felt nearly as sorrowful as she, and far more angry. In his heart he believed that Captain Monk had done this oppressive thing in revenge. A great deal of ill-feeling had existed in the parish touching the rate made for the chimes; and the Captain assumed that the few who had not yet paid it would not pay—not that they could not.

Quitting the cottage in an impulse of anger, he walked swiftly to Leet Hall. It lay in his duty, as he fully deemed, to avow fearlessly to Captain Monk what he thought of this act of oppression, and to protest against it. The beams of the setting sun, sinking below the horizon in the still autumn evening, fell across the stubbled fields from which the corn had not long been reaped; all around seemed to speak of peace.

To accommodate two gentlemen who had come from Worcester that day to Leet Hall on business, and wished to quit it again before dark, the dinner had been served earlier than usual. The guests had left, but Captain Monk was seated still over his wine in the dining-room when Mr. West was shown in. In crossing the hall to it, he met Mrs. Carradyne, who shook hands with him cordially.

Captain Monk looked surprised. “Why, this is an unexpected pleasure—a visit from you, Mr. Vicar,” he cried, in mocking jest. “Hope you have come to your senses! Sit down. Will you take port or sherry?”

“Captain Monk,” returned the Vicar, gravely, as he took the chair the servant had placed, “I am obliged for your courtesy, but I did not intrude upon you this evening to drink wine. I have seen a very sad sight, and I am come hoping to induce you to repair it.”

“Seen what?” cried the Captain, who, it is well to mention, had been taking his wine very freely, even for him. “A flaming sword in the sky?”

“Your tenants, poor Thomas Bean and his wife, are being turned out of house and home, or almost equivalent to it. Some of their furniture has been seized this afternoon to satisfy the demand for these disputed taxes.”

“Who disputes the taxes?”

“The tax imposed for the chimes was always a disputed tax; and——”

“Tush!” interrupted the Captain; “Bean owes other things as well as taxes.”

“It was the last feather, sir, which broke the camel’s back.”

“The last feather will not be taken off, whether it breaks backs or leaves them whole,” retorted the Captain, draining his glass of port and filling it again. “Take you note of that, Mr. Parson.”

“Others are in the same condition as the Beans—quite unable to pay these rates. I pray you, Captain Monk—I am here to pray you—not to proceed in the same manner against them. I would also pray you, sir, to redeem this act of oppression by causing their goods to be returned to these two poor, honest, hard-working people.”

“Hold your tongue!” retorted the Captain, aroused to anger. “A pretty example you’d set, let you have your way. Every one of the lot shall be made to pay to the last farthing. Who the devil is to pay, do you suppose, if they don’t?”

“Rates are imposed upon the parish needlessly, Captain Monk; it has been so ever since my time here. Pardon me for saying that if you put up chimes to gratify yourself, you should bear the expense, and not throw it upon those who have a struggle to get bread to eat.”

Captain Monk drank off another glass. “Any more treason, Parson?”

“Yes,” said Mr. West, “if you like to call it so. My conscience tells me that the whole procedure in regard to setting up these chimes is so wrong, so manifestly unjust, that I have determined not to allow them to be heard until the rates levied for them are refunded to the poor and oppressed. I believe I have the power to close the belfry-tower, and I shall act upon it.”

“By Jove! do you think you are going to stand between me and my will?” cried the Captain passionately. “Every individual who has not yet paid the rate shall be made to pay it to-morrow.”

“There is another world, Captain Monk,” interposed the mild voice of the minister, “to which, I hope, we are all——”

“If you attempt to preach to me——”

At this moment a spoon fell to the ground by the sideboard. The Vicar turned to look; his back was towards it; the Captain peered also at the end of the rapidly-darkening room: when both became aware that one of the servants—Michael, who had shown in Mr. West—stood there; had stood there all the time.

“What are you waiting for, sirrah?” roared his master.“We don’t want you. Here! put this window open an inch or two before you go; the room’s close.”

“Shall I bring lights, sir?” asked Michael, after doing as he was directed.

“No: who wants lights? Stir the fire into a blaze.”

Michael left them. It was from him that thus much of the conversation was subsequently known.

Not five minutes had elapsed when a commotion was heard in the dining-room. Then the bell rang violently, and the Captain opened the door—overturning a chair in his passage to it—and shouted out for a light. More than one servant flew to obey the order: in his hasty moods their master brooked not delay: and three separate candles were carried in.

“Good lack, master!” exclaimed the butler, John Rimmer, who was a native of Church Dykely, “what’s amiss with the Parson?”

“Lift him up, and loosen his neck-cloth,” said Captain Monk, his tone less imperious than usual.

Mr. West lay on the hearthrug near his chair, his head resting close to the fender. Rimmer raised his head, another servant took off his black neck-tie; for it was only on high days that the poor Vicar indulged in a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly in the butler’s arms.

“Oh, sir!” burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master, “this is surely death!”

It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the height of health and strength, had breathed his last.

How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this day.

Captain Monk’s account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow—who wouldn’t return it?—and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear), it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk’s tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of Accidental Death.

“A false account,” pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation. “My husband never struck him—never; he was not one to be goaded into unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. George struck no blow whatever; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has been.”

Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.

Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would not be laid.

III

Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the Reverend Thomas Dancox, an occasional visitor at Leet Hall, who was looking out for one.

The new Vicar turned out to be a man after the Captain’s heart, a rollicking, jovial, fox-hunting young parson, as many a parson was in those days—and took small blame to himself for it. He was only a year or two past thirty, good-looking, of taking manners and hail-fellow-well-met with the parish in general, who liked him and called him to his face Tom Dancox.

All this pleased Captain Monk. But very soon something was to arrive that did not please him—a suspicion that the young parson and his daughter Katherine were on rather too good terms with one another.

One day in November he stalked into the drawing-room, where Katherine was sitting with her aunt. Hubert and Eliza were away at school, also Mrs. Carradyne’s two children.

“Was Dancox here last night?” began Captain Monk.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Carradyne.

“And the evening before—Monday?”

Mrs. Carradyne felt half afraid to answer, the Captain’s tone was becoming so threatening. “I—I think so,” she rather hesitatingly said. “Was he not, Katherine?”

Katherine Monk, a dark, haughty young woman, twenty-one now, turned round with a flush on her handsome face.“Why do you ask, papa?”

“I ask to be answered,” replied he, standing with his hands in the pockets of his velveteen shooting-coat, a purple tinge of incipient anger rising in his cheeks.

“Then Mr. Dancox did spend Monday evening here.”

“And I saw him walking with you in the meadow by the rill this morning,” continued the Captain. “Look here, Katherine, no sweethearting with Tom Dancox. He may do very well for a parson; I like him as such, as such only, you understand; but he can be no match for you.”

“You are disturbing yourself unnecessarily, sir,” said Katherine, her own tone an angry one.

“Well, I hope that is so; I should not like to think otherwise. Anyway, a word in season does no harm; and, take you notice that I have spoken it. You also, Emma.”

As he left the room, Mrs. Carradyne spoke, dropping her voice: “Katherine, you know that I had already warned you. I told you it would not do to fall into any particular friendship with Mr. Dancox; that your father would never countenance it.”

“And if I were to?—and if he did not?” scornfully returned Katherine. “What then, Aunt Emma?”

“Be silent, child; you must not talk in that strain. Your papa is perfectly right in this matter. Tom Dancox is not suitable in any way—for you.”

This took place in November. Katherine paid little heed to the advice; she was not one to put up with advice of any sort, and she and Mr. Dancox met occasionally under the rose. Early in December she went with Mr. Dancox into the Parsonage, while he searched for a book he was about to lend her. That was the plea; the truth, no doubt, being that the two wanted a bit of a chat in quiet. As ill-luck had it, when she was coming out again, the Parson in attendance on her as far as the gate, Captain Monk came by.

A scene ensued. Captain Monk, in a terrible access of passion, vowed by all the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, that never, in life or after death, should those two rebellious ones be man and wife, and he invoked unheard-of penalties on their heads should they dare to contemplate disobedience to his decree.

Thenceforth there was no more open rebellion; upon the surface all looked smooth. Captain Monk understood the folly to be at an end: that the two had come to their senses; and he took Tom Dancox back into favour. Mrs. Carradyne assumed the same. But Katherine had her father’s unyielding will, and the Parson was bold and careless, and in love.

The last day of the year came round, and the usual banquet would come with it. The weather this Christmas was not like that of last; the white snow lay on the ground, the cold biting frost hardened the glistening icicles on the trees.

And the chimes? Ready these three months past, they had not yet been heard. They would be to-night. Whether Captain Monk wished the remembrance of Mr. West’s death to die away a bit first, or that he preferred to open the treat on the banqueting night, certain it was that he had kept them silent. When the church clock should toll the midnight knell of the old year, the chimes would ring out to welcome the new one, and gladden the ears of Church Leet.

But not without a remonstrance. That morning, as the Captain sat in his study writing a letter, Mrs. Carradyne came to him.

“Godfrey,” she said in a low and pleading tone, “you will not suffer the chimes to play to-night, will you? Pray do not.”

“Not suffer the chimes to play?” cried the Captain.“But indeed I shall. Why, this is the special night they were put up for.”

“I know it, Godfrey. But—you cannot think what a strangely strong feeling I have against it: an instinct, it seems to me. The chimes have brought nothing but discomfort and disaster yet; they may bring more in the future.”

Captain Monk stared at her. “What d’ye mean, Emma?”

“I would never let them be heard,” she said impressively.“I would have them taken down again. The story went about, you know, that poor George West in dying prophesied that whenever they should be heard woe would fall upon this house. I am not superstitious, Godfrey, but——”

Sheer passion had tied, so far, Godfrey Monk’s lips.“Not superstitious!” he raved out. “You are worse than that, Emma—a fool. How dare you bring your nonsense here? There’s the door.”

The banquet hour approached. Nearly all the guests of last year were again present in the warm and holly-decorated dining-room, the one notable exception being the ill-fated Parson West. Parson Dancox came in his stead, and said grace from the post of honour at the Captain’s right hand. Captain Monk did not appear to feel any remorse or regret: he was jovial, free, and grandly hospitable; one might suppose he had promoted the dead clergyman to a canonry instead of to a place in the churchyard.

“What became of the poor man’s widow, Squire?”whispered a gentleman from the neighbourhood of Evesham to Mr. Todhetley, who sat on the left hand of his host; Sir Thomas Rivers taking the foot of the table this year.

“Mrs. West? Well, we heard she opened a girls’ school up in London,” breathed the Squire.

“And what tale was that about his leaving a curse on the chimes?—I never heard the rights of it.”

“Hush!” said the Squire cautiously. “Nobody talks of that here. Or believes it, either. Poor West was a man to leave a blessing behind him; never a curse.”

Hubert, at home for the holidays, was again at table. He was fourteen now, tall of his age and slender, his blue eyes bright, his complexion delicately beautiful. The pleated cambric frill of his shirt, which hung over the collar of his Eton jacket after the fashion of the day, was carried low in front, displaying the small white throat; his golden hair curled naturally. A boy to admire and be proud of. The manners were more decorous this year than they ever had been, and Hubert was allowed to sit on. Possibly the shadow of George West’s unhappy death lay insensibly upon the party.

It was about half-past nine o’clock when the butler came into the room, bringing a small note, twisted up, to his master from Mrs. Carradyne. Captain Monk opened it and held it towards one of the lighted branches to read the few words it contained.

“A gentleman is asking to speak a word to Mr. Dancox. He says it is important.”

Captain Monk tore the paper to bits. “Not to-night, tell your mistress, is my answer,” said he to Rimmer. “Hubert, you can go to your aunt now; it’s past your bed-time.”

There could be no appeal, as the boy knew; but he went off unwillingly and in bitter resentment against Mrs. Carradyne. He supposed she had sent for him.

“What a cross old thing you are, Aunt Emma!” he exclaimed as he entered the drawing-room on the other side the hall. “You won’t let Harry go in at all to the banquets, and you won’t let me stay at them! Papa meant—I think he meant—to let me remain there to hear the chimes. Why need you have interfered to send for me?”

“I neither interfered with you, Hubert, nor sent for you. A gentleman, who did not give his name and preferred to wait outside, wants to see Mr. Dancox; that’s all,” said Mrs. Carradyne. “You gave my note to your master, Rimmer?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the butler. “My master bade me say to you that his answer was not to-night.”

Katherine Monk, her face betraying some agitation, rose from the piano. “Was the message not given to Mr. Dancox?” she asked of Rimmer.

“Not while I was there, Miss Katherine. The master tore the note into bits, after reading it; and dropped them under the table.”

Now it chanced that Mr. Dancox, glancing covertly at the note while the Captain held it to the light, had read what was written there. For a few minutes he said nothing. The Captain was busy sending round the wine.

“Captain Monk—pardon me—I saw my name on that bit of paper; it caught my eye as you held it out,” he said in a low tone. “Am I called out? Is anyone in the parish dying?”

Thus questioned, Captain Monk told the truth. No one was dying, and he was not called out to the parish. Some gentleman was asking to speak to him; only that.

“Well, I’ll just see who it is, and what he wants,” said Mr. Dancox, rising. “Won’t be away two minutes, sir.”

“Bring him back with you; tell him he’ll find good wine here and jolly cheer,” said the Captain. And Mr. Dancox went out, swinging his napkin in his hand.

In crossing the hall he met Katherine, exchanged a hasty word with her, let fall the serviette on a chair as he caught up his hat and overcoat, and went out. Katherine ran upstairs.

Hubert lay down on one of the drawing-room sofas. In point of fact, that young gentleman could not walk straight. A little wine takes effect on youngsters, especially when they are not accustomed to it. Mrs. Carradyne told Hubert the best place for him was bed. Not a bit of it, the boy answered: he should go out on the terrace at twelve o’clock; the chimes would be fine, heard out there. He fell asleep almost as he spoke; presently he woke up, feeling headachy, cross and stupid, and of his own accord went up to bed.

Meanwhile, the dining-room was getting jollier and louder as the time passed on towards midnight. Great wonder was expressed at the non-return of the parson; somebody must be undoubtedly grievously sick or dying. Mr. Speck, the quiet little Hurst Leet doctor, dissented from this. Nobody was dying in the parish, he affirmed, or sick enough to need a priest; as a proof of it, he had not been sent for.

Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes on the quiet midnight air, as the church clock finished striking twelve. It was a sweet sound; even those prejudiced against the chimes could hear that: the windows had been opened in readiness.

The glasses were charged; the company stood on their legs, some of them not at all steady legs just then, bending their ears to listen. Captain Monk stood in his place, majestically waving his head and his left hand to keep time in harmony with The Bay of Biscay. His right hand held his goblet in readiness for the toast when the sounds should cease.

Ring, ring, ring! chimed the last strokes of the bells, dying away to faintness on the still evening air. Suddenly, amidst the hushed silence, and whilst the sweet melody fell yet unbroken on the room, there arose a noise as of something falling outside on the terrace, mingled with a wild scream and the crash of breaking glass.

One of the guests rushed to the window, and put his head out of it. So far as he could see, he said (perhaps his sight was somewhat obscured), it was a looking-glass lying further up on the terrace.

Thrown out from one of the upper windows! scornfully pronounced the Captain, full of wrath that it should have happened at that critical moment to mar the dignity of his coming toast. And he gave the toast heartily; and the new year came in for them all with good wishes and good wine.

Some little time yet ere the company finally rose. The mahogany frame of the broken looking-glass, standing on end, was conspicuous on the white ground in the clear frosty night, as they streamed out from the house. Mr. Speck, whose sight was rather remarkably good, peered at it curiously from the hall steps, and then walked quickly along the snowy terrace towards it.

Sure enough, it was a looking-glass, broken in its fall from an open window above. But, lying by it in the deep snow, in his white night-shirt, was Hubert Monk.

When the chimes began to play, Hubert was not asleep. Sitting up in bed, he disposed himself to listen. After a bit they began to grow fainter; Hubert impatiently dashed to the window and threw it up to its full height as he jumped on the dressing-table, when in some unfortunate way he overbalanced himself, and pitched out on the terrace beneath, carrying the looking-glass with him. The fall was not much, for his room was in one of the wings, the windows of which were low; but the boy had struck his head in falling, and there he had lain, insensible, on the terrace, one hand still clasping the looking-glass.

All the rosy wine-tint fading away to a sickly paleness on the Captain’s face, he looked down on his well-beloved son. The boy was carried indoors to his room, reviving with the movement.

“Young bones are elastic,” pronounced Mr. Speck, when he had examined him; “and none of these are broken. He will probably have a cold from the exposure; that’s about the worst.”

He seemed to have it already: he was shivering from head to foot now, as he related the above particulars. All the family had assembled round him, except Katherine.

“Where is Katherine?” suddenly inquired her father, noticing her absence.

“I cannot think where she is,” said Mrs. Carradyne. “I have not seen her for an hour or two. Eliza says she is not in her room; I sent her to see. She is somewhere about, of course.”

“Go and look for your sister, Eliza. Tell her to come here,” said Captain Monk. But though Eliza went at once, her quest was useless.

Miss Katherine was not in the house: Miss Katherine had made a moonlight flitting from it that evening with the Reverend Thomas Dancox.

THE SILENT CHIMES.

II.—PLAYING AGAIN.

I

It could not be said the Church Leet chimes brought good when they rang out that night at midnight, as the old year was giving place to the new. Mrs. Carradyne, in her superstition, thought they brought evil. Certainly evil set in at the same time, and Captain Monk, with all his scoffing obstinacy, could not fail to see it. That fine young lad, his son, fell through the window listening to them; and in the self-same hour the knowledge reached him that Katherine, his eldest and dearest child, had flown from his roof in defiant disobedience, to set up a home of her own.

Hubert was soon well of his bruises; but not of the cold induced by lying in the snow, clad only in his white night-shirt. In spite of all Mr. Speck’s efforts, rheumatic fever set in, and for some time Hubert hovered between life and death. He recovered; but would never again be the strong, hearty lad he had been—though indeed he had never been very physically strong. The doctor privately hoped that the heart would be found all right in future, but he would not have answered for it.

The blow that told most on Captain Monk was that inflicted by Katherine. And surely never was disobedient marriage carried out with the impudent boldness of hers. Church Leet called it “cheek.” Church Leet (disbelieving the facts when they first oozed out) could talk of nothing else for weeks. For Katherine had been married in the church hard by, that same night.

Special licenses were very uncommon things in those days; they cost too much; but the Reverend Thomas Dancox had procured one. With Katherine’s money: everybody guessed that. She had four hundred a-year of her own, inherited from her dead mother, and full control over it. So the special license was secured, and their crafty plans were laid. The stranger who had presented himself at the Hall that night (by arrangement), asking for Mr. Dancox, thus affording an excuse for his quitting the banquet-room, was a young clergyman of Worcester, come over especially to marry them. When tackled with his deed afterwards, he protested that he had not been told the marriage was to be clandestine. Tom Dancox went out to him from the banquet; Katherine, slipping on a bonnet and shawl, joined them outside; they hastened to the rectory and thence into the church. And while the unconscious master of Leet Hall was entertaining his guests with his good cheer and his stories and his hip, hip, hurrah, his Vicar and Katherine Monk were made one until death should them part. And death, as it proved, intended to do that speedily.

At first Captain Monk, in his unbounded rage, was for saying that a marriage celebrated at ten o’clock at night by the light of a solitary tallow candle, borrowed from the vestry, could not hold good. Reassured upon this point, he strove to devise other means to part them. Foiled again, he laid the case before the Bishop of Worcester, and begged his lordship to unfrock Thomas Dancox. The Bishop did not do as much as that; though he sent for Tom Dancox and severely reprimanded him. But that, as Church Leet remarked, did not break bones. Tom had striven to make the best of his own cause to the Bishop, and the worst of Captain Monk’s obdurate will; moreover, stolen marriages were not thought much of in those days.

An uncomfortable state of things was maintained all the year, Hall Leet and the Parsonage standing at daggers drawn. Never once did Captain Monk appear at church. If he by cross-luck met his daughter or her husband abroad, he struck into a good fit of swearing aloud; which perhaps relieved his mind. The chimes had never played again; they pertained to the church, and the church was in ill-favour with the Captain. As the end of the year approached, Church Leet wondered whether he would hold the annual banquet; but Captain Monk was not likely to forego that. Why should he? The invitations went out for it; and they contained an intimation that the chimes would again play.

The banquet took place, a neighbouring parson saying grace at it in the place of Tom Dancox. While the enjoyment was progressing and Captain Monk was expressing his marvel for the tenth time as to what could have become of Speck, who had not made his appearance, a note was brought in by Rimmer—just as he had brought in one last year. This also was from Mrs. Carradyne.

“Please come out to me for one moment, dear Godfrey. I must say a word to you.”

Captain Monk’s first impulse on reading this was to send Rimmer back to say she might go and be hanged. But to call him from the table was so very extreme a measure, that on second thoughts he decided to go to her. Mrs. Carradyne was standing just outside the door, looking as white as a sheet.

“Well, this is pretty bold of you, Madam Emma,” he began angrily. “Are you out of your senses?”

“Hush, Godfrey! Katherine is dying.”

“What?” cried the Captain, the words confusing him.

“Katherine is dying,” repeated his sister, her teeth chattering with emotion.

In spite of Katherine’s rebellion, Godfrey Monk loved her still as the apple of his eye; and it was only his obstinate temper which had kept him from reconciliation. His face took a hue of terror, and his voice a softer tone.

“What have you heard?”

“Her baby’s born; something has gone wrong, I suppose, and she is dying. Sally ran up with the news, sent by Mr. Speck. Katherine is crying aloud for you, saying she cannot die without your forgiveness. Oh, Godfrey, you will go, you will surely go!” pleaded Mrs. Carradyne, breaking down with a burst of tears. “Poor Katherine!”

Never another word spoke he. He went out at the hall-door there and then, putting on his hat as he leaped down the steps. It was a wretched night; not white, clear, and cold as the last New Year’s Eve had been, or mild and genial as the one before it; but damp, raw, misty.

“You think I have remained hard and defiant, father,”Katherine whispered to him, “but I have many a time asked God’s forgiveness on my bended knees; and I longed—oh, how I longed!—to ask yours. What should we all do with the weight of sin that lies on us when it comes to such an hour as this, but for Jesus Christ—for God’s wonderful mercy!”

And, with one hand in her father’s and the other in her husband’s, both their hearts aching to pain, and their eyes wet with bitter tears, poor Katherine’s soul passed away.

After quitting the parsonage, Captain Monk was softly closing the garden gate behind him—for when in sorrow we don’t do things with a rush and a bang—when a whirring sound overhead caused him to start. Strong, hardened man though he was, his nerves were unstrung to-night in company with his heartstrings. It was the church clock preparing to strike twelve. The little doctor, Speck, who had left the house but a minute before, was standing at the churchyard fence close by, his arms leaning on the rails, probably ruminating sadly on what had just occurred. Captain Monk halted beside him in silence, while the clock struck.

As the last stroke vibrated on the air, telling the knell of the old year, the dawn of the new, another sound began.

Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring!

The chimes! The sweet, soothing, melodious chimes, carolling forth The Bay of Biscay. Very pleasant were they in themselves to the ear. But—did they fall pleasantly on Captain Monk’s? It may be, not. It may be, a wish came over him that he had never thought of instituting them. But for doing that, the ills of his recent life had never had place. George West’s death would not have lain at his door, or room been made by it for Tom Dancox, and Katherine would not be lying as he had now left her—cold and lifeless.

“Could nothing have been done to save her, Speck?” he whispered to the doctor, whose arms were still on the churchyard railings, listening to the chimes in silence—though indeed he had asked the same question indoors before.

“Nothing; or you may be sure, sir, it would have been,”answered Mr. Speck. “Had all the medical men in Worcestershire been about her, they could not have saved her any more than I could. These unfortunate cases happen now and then,” sighed he, “showing us how powerless we really are.”

Well, it was grievous news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs. Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the chimes with a nervous and nameless dread.

II

It was but the first of February, yet the weather might have served for May-day: one of those superb days that come once in a while out of their season, serving to remind the world that the dark, depressing, dreary winter will not last for ever; though we may have half feared it means to, forgetting the reassuring promise of the Divine Ruler of all things, given after the Flood:

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.”

The warm and glorious sunbeams lay on Church Leet, as if to woo the bare hedges into verdant life, the cold fields to smiling plains. Even the mounds of the graveyard, interspersed amidst the old tombstones, looked green and cheerful to-day in the golden light.

Turning slowly out of the Vicarage gate came a good-looking clergyman of seven-or-eight-and-twenty. A slender man of middle height, with a sweet expression on his pale, thoughtful face, and dark earnest eyes. It was the new Vicar of Church Leet, the Reverend Robert Grame.

For a goodish many years have gone on since that tragedy of poor Katherine’s death, and this is the second appointed Vicar since that inauspicious time.

Mr. Grame walked across the churchyard, glancing at the inscriptions on the tombs. Inside the church porch stood the clerk, old John Cale, keys in hand. Mr. Grame saw him and quickened his pace.

“Have I kept you waiting, Cale?” he cried in his pleasant, considerate tones. “I am sorry for that.”

“Not at all, your reverence; I came afore the time. This here church is but a step or two off my home, yonder, and I’m as often out here as I be indoors,” continued John Cale, a fresh-coloured little man with pale grey eyes and white hair. “I’ve been clerk here, sir, for seven-and-thirty years.”

“You’ve seen more than one parson out then, I reckon.”

“More than one! Ay, sir, more than—more than six times one, I was going to say; but that’s too much, maybe. Let’s see: there was Mr. Cartright, he had held the living I hardly know how many years when I came, and he held it for many after that. Mr. West succeeded him—the Reverend George West; then came Thomas Dancox; then Mr. Atterley: four in all. And now you’ve come, sir, to make the fifth.”

“Did they all die? or take other livings?”

“Some the one thing, sir, and some the other. Mr. Cartright died, he was old; and Mr. West, he—he——” John Cale hesitated before he went on—“he died; Mr. Dancox got appointed to a chaplaincy somewhere over the seas; he was here but about eighteen months, hardly that; and Mr. Atterley, who has just left, has had a big church with a big income, they say, given to him over in Oxfordshire.”

“Which makes room for me,” smiled Robert Grame.

They were inside the church now; a small and very old-fashioned church, with high pews, dark and sombre. Over the large pew of the Monks, standing sideways to the pulpit, sundry slabs were on the wall, their inscriptions testifying to the virtues and ages of the Monk family dead and gone. Mr. Grame stood to read them. One slab of white marble, its black letters fresh and clear, caught especially his eye.

“Katherine, eldest child of Godfrey Monk, gentleman, and wife of the Reverend Thomas Dancox,” he read out aloud. “Was that he who was Vicar here?”

“Ay, ’twas. She married him again her father’s wish, and died, poor thing, just a year after it,” replied the clerk.“And only twenty-three, as you see, sir! The Captain came down and forgave her on her dying bed, and ’twas he that had the stone put up there. Her baby-girl was taken to the Hall, and is there still: ten years old she must be now; ’twas but an hour or two old when the mother died.”

“It seems a sad history,” observed Mr. Grame as he turned away to enter the vestry.

John Cale did the honours of its mysteries: showing him the chest for the surplices; the cupboard let into the wall for the register; the place where candles and such-like stores were kept. Mr. Grame opened a door at one end of the room and saw a square flagged place, containing grave-digging tools and the hanging ropes of the bell which called people to church. Shutting the door again, he crossed to a door on the opposite side. But that he could not open.

“What does this lead to?” he asked. “It is locked.”

“It’s always kept locked, that door is, sir; and it’s a’most as much as my post is worth to open it,” said the clerk, his voice sinking to a mysterious whisper. “It leads up to the chimes.”

“The chimes!” echoed the new parson in surprise. “Do you mean to say this little country church can boast of chimes?”

John Cale nodded. “Lovely, pleasant things they be to listen to, sir, but we’ve not heard ’em since the midnight when Miss Katherine died. They play a tune called ‘The Bay o’ Biscay.’”

Selecting a key from the bunch that he carried in his hand, he opened the door, displaying a narrow staircase, unprotected as a ladder and nearly perpendicular. At the top was another small door, evidently locked.

“Captain Monk had all this done when he put the chimes up,” remarked he. “I sweep the dust off these stairs once in three months or so, but otherwise the door’s not opened. And that one,” nodding to the door above, “never.”

“But why?” asked the clergyman. “If the chimes are there, and are, as you say, melodious, why do they not play?”

“Well, sir, I b’lieve there’s a bit of superstition at the bottom of it,” returned the clerk, not caring to explain too fully lest he should have to tell about Mr. West’s death, which might not be the thing to frighten a new Vicar with.“A feeling has somehow got abroad in the parish (leastways with a many of its folk) that the putting-up of its bells brought ill-luck, and that whenever the chimes ring out some dreadful evil falls on the Monk family.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” exclaimed the Vicar, hardly knowing whether to laugh or lecture. “The parish cannot be so ignorant as that! How can the putting-up of chimes bring ill-luck?”

“Well, your reverence, I don’t know; the thing’s beyond me. They were heard but three times, ringing in the new year at midnight, three years, one on top of t’other—and each time some ill fell.”

“My good man—and I am sure you are good—you should know better,” remonstrated Mr. Grame. “Captain Monk cannot surely give credence to this?”

“No, sir; but his sister up at the Hall does—Mrs. Carradyne. It’s said the Captain used to ridicule her finely for it; he’d fly into a passion whenever ’twas alluded to. Captain Monk, as a brave seaman, is too bold to tolerate anything of the sort. But he has never let the chimes play since his daughter died. He was coming out from the death-scene at midnight, when the chimes broke forth the third year, and it’s said he can’t abear the sound of ’em since.”

“That may well be,” assented Mr. Grame.

“And finding, sir, year after year, year after year, as one year gives place to another, that they are never heard, we have got to call ’em amid ourselves, the Silent Chimes,” spoke the clerk, as they turned to leave the church. “The Silent Chimes, sir.”

Clinking his keys, the clerk walked away to his home, an ivy-covered cottage not a stone’s-throw off; the clergyman lingered in the churchyard, reading the memorials on the tombstones. He was smiling at the quaintness of some of them, when the sound of hasty footsteps caused him to turn. A little girl was climbing over the churchyard-railings (as being nearer to her than the entrance-gate), and came dashing towards him across the gravestones.

“Are you grandpapa’s new parson?” asked the young lady; a pretty child of ten, with a dark skin, and dusky-violet eyes staring at him freely out of a saucy face.

“Yes, I am,” said he. “What is your name?”

“What is yours?” boldly questioned she. “They’ve talked about you at home, but I forgot it.”

“Mine is Robert Grame. Won’t you tell me yours?”

“Oh, it’s Kate.—Here’s that wicked Lucy coming! She’s going to groan at me for jumping here. She says it’s not reverent.”

A charming young lady of some twenty years was coming up the path, wearing a scarlet cloak, its hood lined with white silk; a straw hat shaded her fair face, blushing very much just now; in her dark-grey eyes might be read vexation, as she addressed Mr. Grame.

“I hope Kate has not been rude? I hope you will excuse her heedlessness in this place. She is only a little girl.”

“It’s only the new parson, Lucy,” broke in Kate without ceremony. “He says his name’s Robert Grame.”

“Oh, Kate, don’t! How shall we ever teach you manners?” reprimanded the young lady, in distress.“She has been very much indulged, sir,” turning to the clergyman.

“I can well understand that,” he said, with a bright smile. “I presume that I have the honour of speaking to the daughter of my patron—Captain Monk?”

“No; Captain Monk is my uncle: I am Lucy Carradyne.”

As the young clergyman stood, hat in hand, a feeling came over him that he had never seen so sweet a face as the one he was looking at. Miss Lucy Carradyne was saying to herself, “What a nice countenance he has! What kindly, earnest eyes!”

“This little lady tells me her name is Kate.”

“Kate Dancox,” said Lucy, as the child danced away.“Her mother was Captain Monk’s eldest daughter; she died when Kate was born. My uncle is very fond of Kate; he will hardly have her controlled at all.”

“I have been in to see my church! John Cale has been doing its honours for me,” smiled Mr. Grame. “It is a pretty little edifice.”

“Yes, and I hope you will like it; I hope you will like the parish,” frankly returned Lucy.

“I shall be sure to do that, I think. As soon, at least, as I can feel convinced that it is to be really mine,” he added, with a quaint expression. “When I heard, a week ago, that Captain Monk had presented me—an entire stranger to him—with the living of Church Leet, I could not believe it. It is not often that a nameless curate, without influence, is spontaneously remembered.”

“It is not much of a living,” said Lucy, meeting the words half jestingly. “Worth, I believe, about a hundred and sixty pounds a-year.”

“But that is a great rise for me—and I have a house to myself large and beautiful—and am a Vicar and no longer a curate,” he returned, laughingly. “I cannot imagine, though, how Captain Monk came to give it me. Have you any idea how it was, Miss Carradyne?”

Lucy’s face flushed. She could not tell this gentleman the truth: that another clergyman had been fixed upon, one who would have been especially welcome to the parishioners; that Captain Monk had all but nominated him to the living. But it chanced to reach the Captain’s ears that this clergyman had expressed his intention of holding the Communion service monthly, instead of quarterly as heretofore, so he put the question to him. Finding it to be true, he withdrew his promise; he would not have old customs broken in upon by modern innovation, he said; and forthwith he appointed the Reverend Robert Grame.

“I do not even know how Captain Monk heard of me,”continued Mr. Grame, marking Lucy’s hesitation.

“I believe you were recommended to him by one of the clergy attached to Worcester Cathedral,” said Lucy.—“And I think I must wish you good-morning now.”

But there came an interruption. A tall, stately, haughty young woman, with an angry look upon her dark and handsome face, had entered the churchyard, and was calling out as she advanced:

“That monkey broken loose again, I suppose, and at her pranks here! What are you good for, Lucy, if you cannot keep her in better order? You know I told you to go straight on to Mrs. Speck, and——”

The words died away. Mr. Grame, who had been hidden by a large upright tombstone, emerged into view. Lucy, with another blush, spoke to cover the awkwardness.

“This is Miss Monk,” she said to him. “Eliza, it is the new clergyman, Mr. Grame.”

Miss Monk recovered her equanimity. A winning smile supplanted the anger on her face; she held out her hand, grandly gracious. For she liked the stranger’s look: he was beyond doubt a gentleman—and an attractive man.

“Allow me to welcome you to Church Leet, Mr. Grame. My father chances to be absent to-day; he is gone to Evesham.”

“So the clerk told me, or I should have called this morning to pay my respects to him, and to thank him for his generous and most unexpected patronage of me. I got here last night,” concluded Mr. Grame, standing uncovered as when he had saluted Lucy. Eliza Monk liked his pleasant voice and taking manners: her fancy went out to him there and then.

“But though papa is absent, you will walk up with me now to the Hall to make acquaintance with my aunt, Mrs. Carradyne,” said Eliza, in tones that, gracious though they were, sounded in the light of a command—just as poor Katherine’s had always sounded. And Mr. Grame went with her.

But now—handsome though she was, gracious though she meant to be—there was something about Eliza Monk that seemed to repulse Robert Grame, rather than attract him. Lucy had fascinated him; she repelled. Other people had experienced the same kind of repulsion, but knew not where it lay.

Hubert, the heir, about twenty-five now, came forward to greet the stranger as they entered the Hall. No repulsion about him. Robert Grame’s hand met his with a warm clasp. A young man of gentle manners and a face of rare beauty—but oh, so suspiciously delicate! Perhaps it was the extreme slenderness of the frame, the wan look in the refined features and their bright hectic that drew forth the clergyman’s sympathy. An impression came over him that this young man was not long for earth.

“Is Mr. Monk strong?” he presently asked of Mrs. Carradyne, when Hubert had temporarily quitted the room.

“Indeed, no. He had rheumatic fever some years ago,”she added, “and has never been strong since.”

“Has he heart disease?” questioned the clergyman. He thought the young man had just that look.

“We fear his heart is weak,” replied Mrs. Carradyne.

“But that may be only your fancy, you know, Aunt Emma,” spoke Miss Monk reproachfully. She and her father were both passionately attached to Hubert; they resented any doubt cast upon his health.

“Oh, of course,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, who never resented anything.

“We shall be good friends, I trust,” said Eliza, with a beaming smile, as her hand lay in Mr. Grame’s when he was leaving.

“Indeed I hope so,” he answered. “Why not?”

III

Summer lay upon the land. The landscape stretched out before Leet Hall was fair to look upon. A fine expanse of wood and dale, of trees in their luxuriant beauty; of emerald-green plains, of meandering streams, of patches of growing corn already putting on its golden hue, and of the golden sunlight, soon to set and gladden other worlds, that shone from the deep-blue sky. Birds sang in their leafy shelters, bees were drowsily humming as they gathered the last of the day’s honey, and butterflies flitted from flower to flower with a good-night kiss.

At one of the windows stood, in her haughty beauty, Eliza Monk. Not, surely, of the lovely scene before her was she thinking, or her face might have worn a more pleasing expression. Rather did she seem to gaze, and with displeasure, at two or three people who were walking in the distance: Lucy Carradyne side by side with the clergyman, and Miss Kate Dancox pulling at his coat-tails.

“Shameful flirt!”

The acidity of the tone was so pronounced that Mrs. Carradyne, seated near and busy at her netting, lifted her head in surprise. “Why, Eliza, what’s the matter? Who is a flirt?”

“Lucy,” curtly replied Eliza, pointing with her finger.

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Carradyne, after glancing outwards.

“Why does she persistently lay herself out to attract that man?” was the passionate rejoinder.

“Be silent, Eliza. How can you conjure up so unjust a charge? Lucy is not capable of laying herself out to attract anyone. It lies but in your imagination.”

“Day after day, when she is out with Kate, you may see him join her—allured to her side.”

“The ‘allurer’ is Kate, then. I am surprised at you, Eliza: you might be talking of a servant-maid. Kate has taken a liking for Mr. Grame, and she runs after him at all times and seasons.”

“She ought to be stopped, then.”

“Stopped! Will you undertake to do it? Could her mother be stopped in anything she pleased to do? And the child has the same rebellious will.”

“I say that Robert Grame’s attraction is Lucy.”

“It may be so,” acknowledged Mrs. Carradyne. “But the attraction must lie in Lucy herself; not in anything she does. Some suspicion of the sort has, at times, crossed me.”

She looked at them again as she spoke. They were sauntering onwards slowly; Mr. Grame bending towards Lucy, and talking earnestly. Kate, dancing about, pulling at his arm or his coat, appeared to get but little attention. Mrs. Carradyne quietly went on with her work.

And that composed manner, combined with her last sentence, brought gall and wormwood to Eliza Monk.

Throwing a summer scarf upon her shoulders, Eliza passed out at the French window, crossed the terrace, and set out to confront the conspirators. But she was not in time. Seeing her coming, or not seeing her—who knew?—Mr. Grame turned off with a fleet foot towards his home. So nobody remained for Miss Monk to waste her angry breath upon but Lucy. The breath was keenly sharp, and Lucy fell to weeping.

“I am here, Grame. Don’t go in.”

The words fell on the clergyman’s ears as he closed the Vicarage gate behind him, and was passing up the path to his door. Turning his head, he saw Hubert Monk seated on the bench under the may tree, pink and lovely yet.“How long have you been here?” he asked, sitting down beside him.

“Ever so long; waiting for you,” replied Hubert.

“I was only strolling about.”

“I saw you: with Lucy and the child.”

They had become fast and firm friends, these two young men; and the minister was insensibly exercising a wonderful influence over Hubert for good. Believing—as he did believe—that Hubert’s days were numbered, that any sharp extra exertion might entail fatal consequences, he gently strove, as opportunity offered, to lead his thoughts to the Better Land.

“What an evening it is!” rapturously exclaimed Hubert.

“Ay: so calm and peaceful.”

The rays of the setting sun touched Hubert’s face, lighting up its extreme delicacy; the scent of the closing flowers filled the still air with sweetness; the birds were chanting their evening song of praise. Hubert, his elbow on the arm of the bench, his hand supporting his chin, looked out with dreamy eyes.

“What book have you there?” asked Mr. Grame, noticing one in his other hand.

“Herbert,” answered the young man, showing it. “I filched it from your table through the open window, Grame.”

The clergyman took it. It chanced to open at a passage he was very fond of. Or perhaps he knew the place, and opened it purposely.

“Do you know these verses, Hubert? They are appropriate enough just now, while those birds are carolling.”

“I can’t tell. What verses? Read them.”

“Hark, how the birds do sing,

And woods do ring!

All creatures have their joy, and man hath his,

Yet, if we rightly measure,

Man’s joy and pleasure

Rather hereafter than in present is.

Not that we may not here

Taste of the cheer;

But as birds drink and straight lift up the head,

So must he sip and think

Of better drink

He may attain to after he is dead.”

“Ay,” said Hubert, breaking the silence after a time,“it’s very true, I suppose. But this world—oh, it’s worth living for. Will anything in the next, Grame, be more beautiful than that?”

He was pointing to the sunset, marvellously and unusually beautiful. Lovely pink and crimson clouds flecked the west; in their midst shone a dazzling golden light too glorious to look upon.

“One might fancy it the portals of heaven,” said the clergyman; “the golden gate of entrance, leading to the pearly gates within, and to the glittering walls of precious stones.”

“Ay! And it seems to take the form of an entrance-gate!”exclaimed Hubert; for it really did so. “Look at it! Oh, Grame, surely the very gate of Heaven cannot be more wonderful than that!”

“And if the gate of entrance is so unspeakably beautiful, what will the City itself be?” murmured Mr. Grame.“The Heavenly City! the New Jerusalem!”

“It is beginning to fade,” said Hubert presently, as they sat watching; “the brightness is going. What a pity!”

“All that’s bright must fade in this world, you know; and fade very quickly. Hubert! it will not in the next.”

Church Leet, watching its neighbours’ doings sharply, began to whisper that the new clergyman, Mr. Grame, was likely to cause unpleasantness to the Monk family, just as some of his predecessors had caused it. For no man having eyes in his head (still less any woman) could fail to see that the Captain’s imperious daughter had fallen desperately in love with him. Would there be a second elopement, as in the days of Tom Dancox? Would Eliza Monk set her father at defiance as Katherine did?

One of the last to see signs and tokens, though they took place under her open eyes, was Mrs. Carradyne. But she saw at last. The clergyman could not walk across a new-mown field, or down a shady lane, or be hastening along the dusty turnpike road, but by some inexplicable coincidence he would be met by Miss Monk; and when he came to the Hall to pass an hour with Hubert, she generally made a third at the interview. It had pleased her latterly to take to practising on the old church organ; and if Mr. Grame was not wiled into the church with her and her attendant, the ancient clerk, who blew the bellows, she was sure to alight upon him in going or returning.

One fine evening, dinner over, when the last beams of the sun were slanting into the drawing-room, Eliza Monk was sitting back on a sofa, reading; Kate romped about the room, and Mrs. Carradyne had just rung the bell for tea. Lucy had been spending the afternoon with Mrs. Speck, and Hubert had now gone to fetch her home.

“Good gracious, Kate, can’t you be quiet!” exclaimed Miss Monk, as the child in her gambols sprang upon the sofa, upsetting the book and its reader’s temper. “Go away: you are treading on my flounces. Aunt Emma, why do you persist in having this tiresome little reptile with us after dinner?”

“Because your father will not let her be sent to the nursery,” said Mrs. Carradyne.

“Did you ever know a child like her?”

“She is only as her mother was; as you were, Eliza—always rebellious. Kate, sit down to the piano and play one of your pretty tunes.”

“I won’t,” responded Kate. “Play yourself, Aunt Emma.”

Dashing through the open glass doors, Kate began tossing a ball on the broad gravel walk below the terrace. Mrs. Carradyne cautioned her not to break the windows, and turned to the tea-table.

“Don’t make the tea yet, Aunt Emma,” interrupted Miss Monk, in tones that were quite like a command.“Mr. Grame is coming, and he won’t care for cold tea.”

Mrs. Carradyne returned to her seat. She thought the opportunity had come to say something to her niece which she had been wanting to say.

“You invited Mr. Grame, Eliza?”

“I did,” said Eliza, looking defiance.

“My dear,” resumed Mrs. Carradyne with some hesitation,“forgive me if I offer you a word of advice. You have no mother; I pray you to listen to me in her stead. You must change your line of behaviour to Mr. Grame.”

Eliza’s dark face turned red and haughty. “I do not understand you, Aunt Emma.”

“Nay, I think you do understand me, my dear. You have incautiously allowed yourself to fall into—into an undesirable liking for Mr. Grame. An unseemly liking, Eliza.”

“Unseemly!”

“Yes; because it has not been sought. Cannot you see, Eliza, how he instinctively recedes from it? how he would repel it were he less the gentleman than he is? Child, I shrink from saying these things to you, but it is needful. You have good sense, Eliza, keen discernment, and you might see for yourself that it is not to you Mr. Grame’s love is given—or ever will be.”

For once in her life Eliza Monk allowed herself to betray agitation. She opened her trembling lips to speak, but closed them again.

“A moment yet, Eliza. Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that Mr. Grame loved you; that he wished to marry you; you know, my dear, how utterly useless it would be. Your father would not suffer it.”

“Mr. Grame is of gentle descent; my father is attached to him,” disputed Eliza.

“But Mr. Grame has nothing but his living—a hundred and sixty pounds a year; you must make a match in accordance with your own position. It would be Katherine’s trouble, Katherine’s rebellion over again. But this was mentioned for argument’s sake only; Mr. Grame will never sue for anything of the kind; and I must beg of you, my dear, to put all idea of it away, and to change your manner towards him.”

“Perhaps you fancy he may wish to sue for Lucy!” cried Eliza, in fierce resentment.

“That is a great deal more likely than the other. And the difficulties in her case would not be so great.”

“And pray why, Aunt Emma?”

“Because, my dear, I should not resent it as your father would. I am not so ambitious for her as he is for you.”

“A fine settlement for her—Robert Grame and his hundred——”

“Who is taking my name in vain?” cried a pleasant voice from the open window; and Robert Grame entered.

“I was,” said Eliza readily; her tone changing like magic to sweet suavity, her face putting on its best charm.“About to remark that the Reverend Robert Grame has a hundred faults. Aunt Emma agrees with me.”

He laughed lightly, regarding it as pleasantry, and inquired for Hubert.

Eliza stepped out on the terrace when tea was over, talking to Mr. Grame; they began to pace it slowly together. Kate and her ball sported on the gravel walk beneath. It was a warm, serene evening, the silver moon shining, the evening star just appearing in the clear blue sky.

“Lucy being away, you cannot enjoy your usual flirtation with her,” remarked Miss Monk, in a light tone.

But he did not take it lightly. Rarely had his voice been more serious than when he answered: “I beg your pardon. I do not flirt—I have never flirted with Miss Carradyne.”

“No! It has looked like it.”

Mr. Grame remained silent. “I hope not,” he said at last. “I did not intend—I did not think. However, I must mend my manners,” he added more gaily. “To flirt at all would ill become my sacred calling. And Lucy Carradyne is superior to any such trifling.”

Her pulses were coursing on to fever heat. With her whole heart she loved Robert Grame: and the secret preference he had unconsciously betrayed for Lucy had served to turn her later days to bitterness.

“Possibly you mean something more serious,” said Eliza, compressing her lips.

“If I mean anything, I should certainly mean it seriously,”replied the young clergyman, his face blushing as he made the avowal. “But I may not. I have been reflecting much latterly, and I see I may not. If my income were good it might be a different matter. But it is not; and marriage for me must be out of the question.”

“With a portionless girl, yes. Robert Grame,” she went on rapidly with impassioned earnestness, “when you marry, it must be with someone who can help you; whose income will compensate for the deficiency of yours. Look around you well: there may be some young ladies rich in the world’s wealth, even in Church Leet, who will forget your want of fortune for your own sake.”

Did he misunderstand her? It was hardly possible. She had a large fortune; Lucy none. But he answered as though he comprehended not. It may be that he deemed it best to set her ill-regulated hopes at rest for ever.

“One can hardly suppose a temptation of that kind would fall in the way of an obscure individual like myself. If it did, I could only reject it. I should not marry for money. I shall never marry where I do not love.”

They had halted near one of the terrace seats. On it lay a toy of Kate’s, a little wooden “box of bells.”Mechanically, her mind far away, Eliza took it up and began, still mechanically, turning the wire which set the bells playing with a soft but not unpleasant jingle.

“You love Lucy Carradyne!” she whispered.

“I fear I do,” he answered. “Though I have struggled against the conviction.”

A sudden crash startled them; shivers of glass fell before their feet; fit accompaniment to the shattered hopes of one who stood there. Kate Dancox, aiming at Mr. Grame’s hat, had sent her ball through the window. He leaped away to catch the culprit, and Eliza Monk sat down on the bench, all gladness gone out of her. Her love-dream had turned out to be a snare and a delusion.

“Who did that?”

Captain Monk, frightened from his after-dinner nap by the crash, came forth in anger. Kate got a box on the ear, and was sent to bed howling.

“You should send her to school, papa.”

“And I will,” declared the Captain. “She startled me out of a sleep. Out of a dream, too. And it is not often I dream. I thought I was hearing the chimes again.”

“Chimes which I have not yet been fortunate enough to hear at all,” said Mr. Grame with a smile. Eliza recalled the sound of the bells she had set in motion, and thought it must have reached her father in his sleep.

“By George, no! You shall, though, Grame. They shall ring the new year in when it comes.”

“Aunt Emma won’t like that,” laughingly commented Eliza. She was trying to be gay and careless before Robert Grame.

“Aunt Emma may dislike it!” retorted the Captain.“She has picked up some ridiculously absurd notion, Grame, that the bells bring ill-luck when they are heard. Women are so foolishly superstitious.”

“That must be a very far-fetched superstition,” said the parson.

“One might as well believe in witches,” mocked the Captain. “I have given in to her fancies for some years, not to cross her, and allowed the bells to be silent: she’s a good woman on the whole; but be hanged if I will any longer. On the last day of this year, Grame, you shall hear the chimes.”

How it came about nobody exactly knew, unless it was through Hubert, but matters were smoothed for the parson and Lucy.

Mrs. Carradyne knew his worth, and she saw that they were as much in love with one another as ever could be Hodge and Joan. She liked the idea of Lucy being settled near her—and the vicarage, large and handsome, could have its unused rooms opened and furnished. Mr. Grame honestly avowed that he should have asked for Lucy before, but for his poverty; he supposed that Lucy was poor also.

“That is so; Lucy has nothing of her own,” said Mrs. Carradyne to this. “But I am not in that condition.”

“Of course not. But—pardon me—I thought your property went to your son.”

Mrs. Carradyne laughed. “A small estate of his father’s, close by here, became my son’s at his father’s death,” she said. “My own money is at my disposal; the half of it will eventually be Lucy’s. When she marries, I shall allow her two hundred a year: and upon that, and your stipend, you will have to get along together.”

“It will be like riches to me,” said the young parson all in a glow.

“Ah! Wait until you realise the outlets for money that a wife entails,” nodded Mrs. Carradyne in her superior wisdom. “Not but that I’m sure it’s good for young people, setting up together, to be straitened at the beginning. It teaches them economy and the value of money.”

Altogether it seemed a wonderful prospect to Robert Grame. Miss Lucy thought it would be Paradise. But a stern wave of opposition set in from Captain Monk.

Hubert broke the news to him as they were sitting together after dinner. To begin with, the Captain, as a matter of course, flew into a passion.

“Another of those beggarly parsons! What possessed them, that they should fix upon his family to play off their machinations upon! Lucy Carradyne was his niece: she should never be grabbed up by one of them while he was alive to stop it.”

“Wait a minute, father,” whispered Hubert. “You like Robert Grame; I know that: you would rather see him carry off Lucy than Eliza.”

“What the dickens do you mean by that?”

Hubert said a few cautious words—hinting that, but for Lucy’s being in the way, poor Katherine’s escapade might have been enacted over again. Captain Monk relieved his mind by some strong language, sailor fashion; and for once in his life saw he must give in to necessity.

So the wedding was fixed for the month of February, just one year after they had met: that sweet time of early spring, when spring comes in genially, when the birds would be singing, and the green buds peeping and the sunlight dancing.

But the present year was not over yet. Lucy was sewing at her wedding things. Eliza Monk, smarting as from an adder’s sting, ran away to visit a family who lived near Oddingly, an insignificant little place, lying, as everybody knows, on the other side of Worcester, famous only for its dullness and for the strange murders committed there in 1806—which have since passed into history. But she returned home for Christmas.

Once more it was old-fashioned Christmas weather; Jack Frost freezing the snow and sporting his icicles. The hearty tenants, wending their way to the annual feast in the winter twilight, said how unusually sharp the air was, enough to bite off their ears and noses.

The Reverend Robert Grame made one at the table for the first time, and said grace at the Captain’s elbow. He had heard about the freedom obtaining at these dinners; but he knew he was utterly powerless to suppress it, and he hoped his presence might prove some little restraint, just as poor George West had hoped in the days gone by: not that it was as bad now as it used to be. A rumour had gone abroad that the chimes were to play again, but it died away unconfirmed, for Captain Monk kept his own counsel.

The first to quit the table was Hubert. Captain Monk looked up angrily. He was proud of his son, of his tall and graceful form, of his handsome features, proud even of his bright complexion; ay, and of his estimable qualities. While inwardly fearing Hubert’s signs of fading strength, he defiantly refused to recognise it or to admit it openly.

“What now?” he said in a loud whisper. “Are youturning renegade?”

The young man bent over his father’s shoulder. “I don’t feel well; better let me go quietly, father; I have felt pain here all day”—touching his left side. And he escaped.

There was present at table an elderly gentleman named Peveril. He had recently come with his wife into the neighbourhood and taken on lease a small estate, called by the odd name of Peacock’s Range, which belonged to Hubert and lay between Church Dykely and Church Leet. Mr. Peveril put an inopportune question.

“What is the story, Captain, about some chimes which were put up in the church here and are never allowed to ring because they caused the death of the Vicar? I was told of it to-day.”

Captain Monk looked at Mr. Peveril, but did not speak.

“One George West, I think. Was he parson here?”

“Yes, he was parson here,” said Farmer Winter, finding nobody else answered Mr. Peveril, next to whom he sat. He was a very old man now, but hale and hearty still, and a steadfast ally of his landlord. “Given that parson his way and we should never have had the chimes put up at all. Sweet sounding bells they are, too.”

“But how could the chimes kill him?” went on Mr. Peveril. “Did they kill him?”

“George West was a quarrelsome, mischief-making meddler, good for nothing but to set the parish together by the ears; and I must beg of you to drop his name when at my table, Peveril. As to the chimes, you will hear them to-night.”

Captain Monk spoke in his sternest tones, and Mr. Peveril bowed. Robert Grame had listened in surprise. He wondered what it all meant—for nobody had ever told him of this phase of the past. The table clapped its unsteady hands and gave a cheer for the chimes, now to be heard again.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said the Captain, not a whit more steady than his guests. “They shall ring for us to-night, though it brought the parson out of his grave.”

A few minutes before twelve the butler, who had his orders, came into the dining-room and set the windows open. His master gave him another order and the man withdrew. Entering the drawing-room, he proceeded to open those windows also. Mr. Peveril, and one or two more guests, sat with the family; Hubert lay back in an easy-chair.

“What are you about, Rimmer?” hastily cried out Mrs. Carradyne in surprise. “Opening the windows!”

“It is by the master’s orders, ma’am,” replied the butler;“he bade me open them, that you and the ladies might get a better hearing of the chimes.”

Mrs. Carradyne, superstitious ever, grew white as death.“The chimes!” she breathed in a dread whisper. “Surely, surely, Rimmer, you must be mistaken. The chimes cannot be going to ring again!”

“They are to ring the New Year in,” said the man. “I have known it this day or two, but was not allowed to tell, as Madam may guess”—glancing at his mistress. “John Cale has got his orders, and he’ll set ’em going when the clock has struck twelve.”

“Oh, is there no one who will run to stop it?” bewailed Mrs. Carradyne, wringing her hands in all the terror of a nameless fear. “There may yet be time. Rimmer! can you go?”

Hubert came out of his chair laughing. Rimmer was round and fat now, and could not run if he tried. “I’ll go, aunt,” he said. “Why, walking slowly, I should get there before Rimmer.”

The words, “walking slowly,” may have misled Mrs. Carradyne; or, in the moment’s tribulation, perhaps she forgot that Hubert ought not to be the one to use much exertion; but she made no objection. No one else made way, and Hubert hastened out, putting on his overcoat as he went towards the church.

It was the loveliest night; the air was still and clear, the landscape white and glistening, the moon bright as gold. Hubert, striding along at a quick walk, had traversed half the short distance, when the church clock struck out the first note of midnight. And he knew he should not be in time—unless——

He set off to run: it was such a very little way! Flying along without heed to self, he reached the churchyard gate. And there he was forced—forced—to stop to gather up his laboured breath.

Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes melodiously upon Hubert’s ear. “Stop!” he shouted, panting; “stop! stop!”—just as if John Cale could hear the warning: and he began leaping over the gravestones in his path, after the irreverent fashion of Miss Kate Dancox.

“Stop!” he faintly cried in his exhaustion, dashing through the vestry, as the strains of “The Bay of Biscay”pursued their harmonious course overhead, sounding louder here than in the open air. “Sto——”

He could not end the word. Pulling the little door open, he put his foot on the first step of the narrow ladder of a staircase: and then fell prone upon it. John Cale and young Mr. Threpp, the churchwarden’s son, who had been the clerk’s companion, were descending the stairs, after the chimes had chimed themselves out, and they had locked them up again to (perhaps) another year, when they found some impediment below.

“What is it?” exclaimed young Mr. Threpp. The clerk turned on his lantern.

It was Hubert, Captain Monk’s son and heir. He lay there with a face of deadly whiteness, a blue shade encircling his lips.

THE SILENT CHIMES.

III.—RINGING AT MIDDAY.

I

It was an animated scene; and one you only find in England. The stubble of the cornfields looked pale and bleak in the departing autumn, the wind was shaking down the withered leaves from the trees, whose thinning branches told unmistakably of the rapidly-advancing winter. But the day was bright after the night’s frost, and the sun shone on the glowing scarlet coats of the hunting-men, and the hounds barked in every variety of note and leaped with delight in the morning air. It was the first run of the season, and the sportsmen were fast gathering at the appointed spot—a field flanked by a grove of trees called Poachers’ Copse.

Ten o’clock, the hour fixed for the throw-off, came and went, and still Poachers’ Copse was not relieved of its busy intruders. Many a gentleman fox-hunter glanced at his hunting-watch as the minutes passed, many a burly farmer jerked his horse impatiently; while the grey-headed huntsman cracked his long whip amongst his canine favourites and promised them they should soon be on the scent. The delay was caused by the non-arrival of the Master of the Hounds.

But now all eyes were directed to a certain quarter, and by the brightened looks and renewed stir, it might be thought that he was appearing. A stranger, sitting his horse well and quietly at the edge of Poachers’ Copse, watched the newcomers as they came into view. Foremost of them rode an elderly gentleman in scarlet, and by his side a young lady who might be a few years past twenty.

“Father and daughter, I’ll vow,” commented the stranger, noting that both had the same well-carved features, the same defiant, haughty expression, the same proud bearing.“What a grandly-handsome girl! And he, I suppose, is the man we are waiting for. Is that the Master of the Hounds?” he asked aloud of the horseman next him, who chanced to be young Mr. Threpp.

“No, sir, that is Captain Monk,” was the answer. “They are saying yonder that he has brought word the Master is taken ill and cannot hunt to-day”—which proved to be correct. The Master had been taken with giddiness when about to mount his horse.

The stranger rode up to Captain Monk; judging him to be regarded—by the way he was welcomed and the respect paid him—as the chief personage at the meet, representing in a manner the Master. Lifting his hat, he begged grace for having, being a stranger, come out, uninvited, to join the field; adding that his name was Hamlyn and he was staying with Mr. Peveril at Peacock’s Range.

Captain Monk wheeled round at the address; his head had been turned away. He saw a tall, dark man of about five-and-thirty years, so dark and sunburnt as to suggest ideas of his having recently come from a warmer climate. His hair was black, his eyes were dark brown, his features and manner prepossessing, and he spoke as a man accustomed to good society.

Captain Monk, lifting his hat in return, met him with cordiality. The field was open to all, he said, but any friend of Peveril’s would be doubly welcome. Peveril himself was a muff, in so far as that he never hunted.

“Hearing there was to be a meet to-day, I could not resist the temptation of joining it; it is many years since I had the opportunity of doing so,” remarked the stranger.

There was not time for more, the hounds were throwing off. Away dashed the Captain’s steed, away dashed the stranger’s, away dashed Miss Monk’s, the three keeping side by side.

Presently came a fence. Captain Monk leaped it and galloped onwards after the other red-coats. Miss Eliza Monk would have leaped it next, but her horse refused it; yet he was an old hunter and she a fearless rider. The stranger was waiting to follow her. A touch of the angry Monk temper assailed her and she forced her horse to the leap. He had a temper also; he did not clear it, and horse and rider came down together.

In a trice Mr. Hamlyn was off his own steed and raising her. She was not hurt, she said, when she could speak; a little shaken, a little giddy—and she leaned against the fence. The refractory horse, unnoticed for the moment, got upon his legs, took the fence of his own accord and tore away after the field. Young Mr. Threpp, who had been in some difficulty with his own steed, rode up now.

“Shall I ride back to the Hall and get the pony-carriage for you, Miss Eliza?” asked the young man.

“Oh, dear, no,” she replied, “thank you all the same. I should prefer to walk home.”

“Are you equal to walking?” interposed the stranger.

“Quite. The walk will do away with this faintness. It is not the first fall I have had.”

The stranger whispered to young Mr. Threpp—who was as good-natured a young fellow as ever lived. Would he consent to forego the sport that day and lead his horse to Mr. Peveril’s? If so, he would accompany the young lady and give her the support of his arm.

So William Threpp rode off, leading Mr. Hamlyn’s horse, and Miss Monk accepted the stranger’s arm. He told her a little about himself as they walked along. It might not have been an ominous commencement, but intimacies have grown sometimes out of a slighter introduction. Their nearest way led past the Vicarage. Mr. Grame saw them from its windows and came running out.

“Has any accident taken place?” he asked hurriedly.“I hope not.”

Eliza Monk’s face flushed. He had been Lucy’s husband several months now, but she could not yet suddenly meet him without a thrill of emotion. Lucy ran out next; the pretty young wife for whom she had been despised. Eliza answered Mr. Grame curtly, nodded to Lucy, and passed on.

“And, as I was telling you,” continued Mr. Hamlyn,“when this property was left to me in England, I made it a plea for throwing up my post in India, and came home. I landed about six weeks ago, and have been since busy in London with lawyers. Peveril, whom I knew in the days gone by, wrote to invite me to come to him here on a week’s visit, before he and his wife leave for the South of France.”

“They are going to winter there for Mrs. Peveril’s health,”observed Eliza. “Peacock’s Range, the place they live at, belongs to my cousin, Harry Carradyne. Did I understand you to say that you were not an Englishman?”

“I was born in the West Indies. My family were English and had settled there.”

“What a coincidence!” exclaimed Eliza Monk with a smile. “My mother was a West Indian, and I was born there.—There’s my home, Leet Hall!”

“A fine old place,” cried Mr. Hamlyn, regarding the mansion before him.

“You may well say ‘old,’” remarked the young lady.“It has been the abode of the Monk family from generation to generation. For my part, I sometimes half wish it would tumble down that we might move to a more lively locality. Church Leet is a dead-alive place at best.”

“We always want what we have not,” laughed Mr. Hamlyn.“I would give all I am worth to possess an ancestral home, no matter if it were grim and gloomy. We who can boast of only modern wealth look upon these family castles with an envy you have little idea of.”

“If you possess modern wealth, you possess a very good and substantial thing,” she answered, echoing his laugh.—“Here comes my aunt, full of wonder.”

Full of alarm also. Mrs. Carradyne stood on the terrace steps, asking if there had been an accident.

“Nothing serious, Aunt Emma. Saladin refused the fence at Ring Gap, and we both came down together. This gentleman was so obliging as to forego his day’s sport and escort me home. Mr.—Mr. Hamlyn, I believe?” she added. “My aunt, Mrs. Carradyne.”

The stranger confirmed it. “Philip Hamlyn,” he said to Mrs. Carradyne, lifting his hat.

Gaining the hall-door with slow and gentle steps came a young man, whose beautiful features were wasting more perceptibly day by day, and their hectic growing of a deeper crimson. “What is wrong, Eliza?” he cried. “Have you come to grief? Where’s Saladin?”

“My brother,” she said to Mr. Hamlyn.

Yes, it was indeed Hubert Monk. For he did not die of that run to the church the past New Year’s Eve. The death-like faint proved to be a faint, nothing more. Nothing more then. But something else was advancing with gradual steps: steps that seemed to be growing almost perceptible now.

Now and again Hubert fainted in the same manner; his face taking a death-like hue, the blue tinge surrounding his mouth. Captain Monk, unable longer to shut his eyes to what might be impending, called in the best medical advice that Worcestershire could afford; and the doctors told him the truth—that Hubert’s days were numbered.

To say that Captain Monk began at once to “set his house in order” would not be quite the right expression, since it was not he himself who was going to die. But he set his affairs straight as to the future, and appointed another heir in his son’s place—his nephew, Harry Carradyne.

Harry Carradyne, a brave young lieutenant, was then with his regiment in some almost inaccessible fastness of the Indian Empire. Captain Monk (not concealing his lamentation and the cruel grief it was to himself personally) wrote word to him of the fiat concerning poor Hubert, together with a peremptory order to sell out and return home as the future heir. This was being accomplished, and Harry might now be expected almost any day.

But it may as well be mentioned that Captain Monk, never given to be confidential about himself or his affairs, told no one what he had done, with one exception. Even Mrs. Carradyne was ignorant of the change in her son’s prospects and of his expected return. The one exception was Hubert. Soon to lose him, Captain Monk made more of his son than he had ever done, and seemed to like to talk with him.

“Harry will make a better master to succeed you than I should have made, father,” said Hubert, as they were slowly pacing home from the parsonage, arm-in-arm, one dull November day, some little time after the meet of the hounds, as recorded. It was surprising how often Captain Monk would now encounter his son abroad, as if by accident, and give him his arm home.

“What d’ye mean?” wrathfully responded the Captain, who never liked to hear his own children disparaged, by themselves or by anyone else.

Hubert laughed a little. “Harry will look after things better than I ever should. I was always given to laziness. Don’t you remember, father, when a little boy in the West Indies, you used to tell me I was good for nothing but to bask in the heat?”

“I remember one thing, Hubert; and, strange to say, have remembered it only lately. Things lie dormant in the memory for years, and then crop up again. Upon getting home from one of my long voyages, your mother greeted me with the news that your heart was weak; the doctor had told her so. I gave the fellow a trimming for putting so ridiculous a notion into her head—and it passed clean out of mine. I suppose he was right, though.”

“Little doubt of that, father. I wonder I have lived so long.”

“Nonsense!” exploded the Captain; “you may live on yet for years. I don’t know that I did not act foolishly in sending post-haste for Harry Carradyne.”

Hubert smiled a sad smile. “You have done quite right, father; right in all ways; be sure of that. Harry is one of the truest and best fellows that ever lived: he will be a comfort to you when I am gone, and the best of all successors later. Just—a—moment—father!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” cried Captain Monk—for his son had suddenly halted and stood with a rapidly-paling face and shortened breath, pressing his hands to his side.“Here, lean on me, lad; lean on me.”

It was a sudden faintness. Nothing very much, and it passed off in a minute or two. Hubert made a brave attempt at smiling, and resumed his way. But Captain Monk did not like it at all; he knew all these things were but the beginning of the end. And that end, though not with actual irreverence, he was resenting bitterly in his heart.

“Who’s that coming out?” he asked, crossly, alluding to some figure descending the steps of his house—for his sight was not what it used to be.

“It is Mr. Hamlyn,” said Hubert.

“Oh—Hamlyn! He seems to be always coming in. I don’t like that man somehow, Hubert. Wonder what he’s lagging in the neighbourhood for?”

Hubert Monk had an idea that he could have told. But he did not want to draw down an explosion on his own head. Mr. Hamlyn came to meet them with friendly smiles and hand-shakes. Hubert liked him; liked him very much.

Not only had Mr. Hamlyn prolonged his stay beyond the“day or two” he had originally come for, but he evinced no intention of leaving. When Mr. Peveril and his wife departed for the south, he made a proposal to remain at Peacock’s Range for a time as their tenant. And when the astonished couple asked his reasons, he answered that he should like to get a few runs with the hounds.

II

The November days glided by. The end of the month was approaching, and still Philip Hamlyn stayed on, and was a very frequent visitor at Leet Hall. Little doubt that Miss Monk was his attraction, and the parish began to say so without reticence.

The parish was right. One fine, frosty morning Mr. Hamlyn sought an interview with Captain Monk and laid before him his proposals for Eliza.

One might have thought by the tempestuous words showered down upon him in answer that he had proposed to smother her. Reproaches, hot and fast, were poured forth upon the suitor’s unlucky head.

“Why, you are a stranger!” stormed the Captain; “you have not known her a month! How dare you? It’s not commonly decent.”

Mr. Hamlyn quietly answered that he had known her long enough to love her, and went on to say that he came of a good family, had plenty of money, and could make a liberal settlement upon her.

“That you never will,” said Captain Monk. “I should not like you for my son-in-law,” he continued candidly, calming down from his burst of passion to the bounds of reason. “But there can be no question of it in any way. Eliza is to become Lady Rivers.”

Mr. Hamlyn opened his eyes in astonishment. “Lady Rivers!” he echoed. “Do you speak of Sir Thomas Rivers?—that old man!”

“No, I do not, sir. Sir Thomas Rivers has one foot in the grave. I speak of his eldest son. He wants her, and he shall have her.”

“Pardon me, Captain, I—I do not think Miss Monk can know anything of this. I am sure she did not last night. I come to you with her full consent and approbation.”

“I care nothing about that. My daughter is aware that any attempt to oppose her will to mine would be utterly futile. Young Tom Rivers has written to me to ask for her; I have accepted him, and I choose that she shall accept him. She’ll like it herself, too; it will be a good match.”

“Young Tom Rivers is next door to a simpleton: he is not half-baked,” retorted Mr. Hamlyn, his own temper getting up: “if I may judge by what I’ve seen of him in the field.”

“Tom Rivers is a favourite everywhere, let me tell you, sir. Eliza would not refuse him for you.”

“Perhaps, Captain Monk, you will converse with her upon this point?”

“I intend to give her my orders—if that’s what you mean,” returned the Captain. “And now, sir, I think our discussion may terminate.”

Mr. Hamlyn saw no use in prolonging it for the present. Captain Monk bowed him out of the house and called his daughter into the room.

“Eliza,” he began, scorning to beat about the bush, “I have received an offer of marriage for you.”

Miss Eliza blushed a little, not much: few things could make her do that now. Once our blushes have been wasted, as hers were on Robert Grame, their vivid freshness has faded for ever and aye. “The song has left the bird.”

“And I have accepted it,” continued Captain Monk.“He would like the wedding to be early in the year, so you may get your rattle-traps in order for it. Tell your aunt I will give her a blank cheque for the cost, and she may fill it in.”

“Thank you, papa.”

“There’s the letter; you can read it”—pushing one across the table to her. “It came by special messenger last night, and I have sent my answer this morning.”

Eliza Monk glanced at the contents, which were written on rose-coloured paper. For a moment she looked puzzled.

“Why, papa, this is from Tom Rivers! You cannot suppose I would marry him! A silly boy, younger than I am! Tom Rivers is the greatest goose I know.”

“How dare you say so, Eliza?”

“Well, he is. Look at his note! Pink paper and a fancy edge!”

“Stuff! Rivers is young and inexperienced, but he’ll grow older—he is a very nice young fellow, and a capital fox-hunter. You’d be master and mistress too—and that would suit your book, I take it. I want to have you settled near me, Eliza—you are all I have left, or soon will be.”

“But, papa——”

Captain Monk raised his hand for silence.

“You sent that man Hamlyn to me with a proposal for you. Eliza; you know that would not do. Hamlyn’s property lies in the West Indies, his home too, for all I know. He attempted to tell me that he would not take you out there against my consent; but I know better, and what such ante-nuptial promises are worth. It might end in your living there.”

“No, no.”

“What do you say ‘no, no’ for, like a parrot? Circumstances might compel you. I do not like the man, besides.”

“But why, papa?”

“I don’t know; I have never liked him from the first. There! that’s enough. You must be my Lady Rivers. Poor old Tom is on his last legs.”

“Papa, I never will be.”

“Listen, Eliza. I had one trouble with Katherine; I will not have another with you. She defied me; she left my home rebelliously to enter upon one of her own setting-up: what came of it? Did luck attend her? Do you be more wise.”

“Father,” she said, moving a step forward with head uplifted; and the resolute, haughty look which rendered their faces so much alike was very conspicuous on hers,“do not let us oppose each other. Perhaps we can each give way a little? I have promised to be the wife of Philip Hamlyn, and that promise I will fulfil. You wish me to live near you: well, he can take a place in this neighbourhood and settle down in it; and on my part, I will promise you not to leave this country. He may have to go from time to time to the West Indies; I will remain at home.”

Captain Monk looked steadily at her before he answered. He marked the stern, uncompromising expression, the strong will in the dark eyes and in every feature, which no power, not even his, might unbend. He thought of his elder daughter, now lying in her grave; he thought of his son, so soon to be lying beside her; he did not care to be bereft of all his children, and for once in his hard life he attempted to conciliate.

“Hark to me, Eliza. Give up Hamlyn—I have said I don’t like the man; give up Tom Rivers also, as you will. Remain at home with me until a better suitor shall present himself, and Leet Hall and its broad lands shall be yours.”

She looked up in surprise. Leet Hall had always hitherto gone in the male line; and, failing Hubert, it would be, or ought to be, Harry Carradyne’s. Though she knew not that any steps had already been taken in that direction.

“Leet Hall?” she exclaimed.

“Leet Hall and its broad lands,” repeated the Captain impatiently. “Give up Mr. Hamlyn and it shall all be yours.”

She remained for some moments in deep thought, her head bent, revolving the offer. She was fond of pomp and power, as her father had ever been, and the temptation to rule as sole domineering mistress in her girlhood’s home was great. But at that very instant the tall fine form of Philip Hamlyn passed across a pathway in the distance, and she turned from the temptation for ever. What little capability of loving had been left to her after the advent of Robert Grame was given to Mr. Hamlyn.

“I cannot give him up,” she said in low tones.

“What moonshine, Eliza! You are not a love-sick girl now.”

The colour dyed her face painfully. Did her father suspect aught of the past; of where her love had been given—and rejected? The suspicion only added fuel to the fire.

“I cannot give up Mr. Hamlyn,” she reiterated.

“Then you will never inherit Leet Hall. No, nor aught else of mine.”

“As you please, sir, about that.”

“You set me at defiance, then!”

“I don’t wish to do so, father; but I shall marry Mr. Hamlyn.”

“At defiance,” repeated the Captain, as she moved to escape from his presence; “Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only then be where we are.”

“And that we should be,” returned Eliza, doggedly.“Time will never change either of us.”

“But events may. Let it be so, child. Stay where you are for the present, in your maiden home.”

She shook her head in denial; not a line of her proud face giving way, nor a curve of her decisive lips: and Captain Monk knew that he had pleaded in vain. She would neither give up her marriage nor prolong the period for its celebration.

What could be the secret of her obstinacy? Chiefly the impossibility of tolerating opposition to her own indomitable will. It was her father’s will over again; his might be a very little softening with years and trouble; not much. Had she been in desperate love with Hamlyn one could have understood it, but she was not; at most it was but a passing fancy. What says the poet? I daresay you all know the lines, and I know I have quoted them times and again, they are so true:

“Few hearts have never loved, but fewer still

Have felt a second passion. None a third.

The first was living fire; the next a thrill;

The weary heart can never more be stirred:

Rely on it the song has left the bird.”

Very, very true. Her passion for Robert Grame had been as living fire in its wild intensity; it was but the shadow of a thrill that warmed her heart for Philip Hamlyn. Possibly she mistook it in a degree; thought more of it than it was. The feeling of gratification which arises from flattered vanity deceives a woman’s heart sometimes: and Mr. Hamlyn did not conceal his rapturous admiration of her.

She held to her defiant course, and her father held to his. He did not continue to say she should not marry; he had no power for that—and perhaps he did not want her to make a moonlight escapade of it, as Katherine had made. So the preparation for the wedding went on, Eliza herself paying for the rattletraps, as they had been called; Captain Monk avowed that he “washed his hands of it,”and then held his peace.

Whether Mr. Hamlyn and his intended bride considered it best to get the wedding over and done with, lest adverse fate, set afoot by the Captain, should after all circumvent them, it is impossible to say, but the day fixed was a speedy one. And if Captain Monk had deemed it “not decent”in Mr. Hamlyn to propose for a young lady after only a month’s knowledge, what did he think of this? They were to be married on the last day of the year.

Was it fixed upon in defiant mockery?—for, as the reader knows, it had proved an ominous day more than once in the Monk family. But no, defiance had no hand in that, simply adverse fate. The day originally fixed by the happy couple was Christmas Eve: but Mr. Hamlyn, who had to go to London about that time on business connected with his property, found it impossible to get back for the day, or for some days after it. He wrote to Eliza, asking that the day should be put off for a week, if it made no essential difference, and fixed the last day in the year. Eliza wrote word back that she would prefer that day; it gave more time for preparation.

They were to be married in her own church, and by its Vicar. Great marvel existed at the Captain’s permitting this, but he said nothing. Having washed his hands of the affair, he washed them for good: had the bride been one of the laundry-maids in his household he could not have taken less notice. A Miss Wilson was coming from a little distance to be bridesmaid; and the bride and bridegroom would go off from the church door. The question of a breakfast was never mooted: Captain Monk’s equable indifference might not have stood that.

“I shall wish them good luck with all my heart—but I don’t feel altogether sure they’ll have it!” bewailed poor Mrs. Carradyne in private. “Eliza should have agreed to the delay proposed by her father.”

III

Ring, ring, ring, broke forth the chimes on the frosty midday air. Not midnight, you perceive, but midday, for the church clock had just given forth its twelve strokes. Another round of the dial, and the old year would have departed into the womb of the past.

Bowling along the smooth turnpike road which skirted the churchyard on one side came a gig containing a gentleman, a tall, slender, frank-looking young man, with a fair face and the pleasantest blue eyes ever seen. He wore a white top-coat, the fashion then, and was driving rapidly in the direction of Leet Hall; but when the chimes burst forth he pulled up abruptly.

“Why, what in the world——” he began—and then sat still listening to the sweet strains of “The Bay of Biscay.” The day, though in mid-winter, was bright and beautiful, and the golden sunlight, shining from the dark-blue sky, played on the young man’s golden hair.

“Have they mistaken midday for midnight?” he continued, as the chimes played out their tune and died away on the air. “What’s the meaning of it?”

He, Harry Carradyne, was not the only one to ask this. No human being in and about Church Leet, save Captain Monk and they who executed his orders, knew that he had decreed that the chimes should play that day at midday. Why did he do it? What could his motive be? Surely not that they should, by playing (according to Mrs. Carradyne’s theory), inaugurate ill-luck for Eliza! At the moment they began to play she was coming out of church on Mr. Hamlyn’s arm, having left her maiden name behind her.

A few paces more, for he was driving gently on now, and Harry pulled up again, in surprise, as before, for the front of the church was now in view. Lots of spectators, gentle and simple, stood about, and a handsome chariot, with four post-horses and a great coat-of-arms emblazoned on its panels, waited at the church gate.

“It must be a wedding!” decided Harry.

The next moment the chariot was in motion; was soon about to pass him, the bride and bridegroom within it. A very dark but good-looking man, with an air of command in his face, he, but a stranger to Harry; she, Eliza. She wore a grey silk dress, a white bonnet, with orange blossoms and a veil, which was quite the fashionable wedding attire of the day. Her head was turned, nodding its farewells yet to the crowd, and she did not see her cousin as the chariot swept by.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed, mentally. “I wonder who she has married?”

Staying quietly where he was until the spectators should have dispersed, whose way led them mostly in opposite directions, Harry next saw the clerk come out of the church by the small vestry door, lock it and cross over to the stile: which brought him out close to the gig.

“Why, my heart alive!” he exclaimed. “Is it Captain Carradyne?”

“That’s near enough,” said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile to shake the old clerk’s hand. “You are hearty as ever, I see, John. And so you have had a wedding here?”

“Ay, sir, there have been one in the church. I was not in my place, though. The Captain, he ordered me to let the church go for once, and to be ready up aloft in the belfry to set the chimes going at midday. As chance had it, the party came out just at the same time; Miss Eliza was a bit late in coming, ye see; so it may be said the chimes rang ’em out. I guess the sound astonished the people above a bit, for nobody knew they were going to play.”

“But how was it all, Cale? Why should the Captain order them to chime at midday?”

John Cale shook his head. “I can’t tell ye that rightly, Mr. Harry; the Captain, as ye know, sir, never says why he does this or why he does t’other. Young William Threpp, who had to be up there with me, thought he must have ordered ’em to play in mockery—for he hates the marriage like poison.”

“Who is the bridegroom?”

“It’s a Mr. Hamlyn, sir. A gentleman who is pretty nigh as haughty as the Captain himself; but a pleasant-spoken, kindly man, as far as I’ve seen: and a rich one, too.”

“Why did Captain Monk object to him?”

“It’s thought ’twas because he was a stranger to the place and has lived over in the Indies; and he wanted Miss Eliza, so it’s said, to have young Tom Rivers. That’s about it, I b’lieve, Mr. Harry.”

Harry Carradyne drove away thoughtfully. At the foot of the slight ascent leading to Leet Hall, one of the grooms happened to be standing. Harry handed over to him the horse and gig, and went forward on foot.

“Bertie!” he called out. For he had seen Hubert before him, walking at a snail’s pace: the very slightest hill tried him now. The only one left of the wedding-party, for the bridesmaid drove off from the church door. Hubert turned at the call.

“Harry! Why, Harry!”

Hand locked in hand, they sat down on a bench beside the path; face gazing into face. There had always been a likeness between them: in the bright-coloured, waving hair, the blue eyes and the well-favoured features. But Harry’s face was redolent of youth and health; in the other’s might be read approaching death.

“You are very thin, Bertie; thinner even than I expected to see you,” broke from the traveller involuntarily.

“You are looking well, at any rate,” was Hubert’s answer.“And I am so glad you are come: I thought you might have been here a month ago.”

“The voyage was unreasonably long; we had contrary winds almost from port to port. I got on to Worcester yesterday, slept there, and hired a horse and gig to bring me over this morning. What about Eliza’s wedding, Hubert? I was just in time to see her drive away. Cale, with whom I had a word down yonder, says the master does not like it.”

“He does not like it and would not countenance it: washed his hands of it (as he told us) altogether.”

“Any good reason for that?”

“Not particularly good, that I see. Somehow he disliked Hamlyn; and Tom Rivers wanted Eliza, which would have pleased him greatly. But Eliza was not without blame. My father gave way so far as to ask her to delay things for a few months, not to marry in haste, and she would not. She might have conceded as much as that.”

“Did you ever know Eliza concede anything, Bertie?”

“Well, not often.”

“Who gave her away?”

“I did: look at my gala toggery”—opening his overcoat.“He wanted to forbid it. ‘Don’t hinder me, father,’I pleaded; ‘it is the last brotherly service I can ever render her.’ And so,” his tone changing to lightness, “I have been and gone and done it.”

Harry Carradyne understood. “Not the last, Hubert; don’t say that. I hope you will live to render her many another yet.”

Hubert smiled faintly. “Look at me,” he said in answer.

“Yes, I know; I see how you look. But you may take a turn yet.”

“Ah, miracles are no longer wrought for us. Shall I surprise you very much, cousin mine, if I say that were the offer made me of prolonged life, I am not sure that I should accept it?”

“Not unless health were renewed with it; I can understand that. You have had to endure suffering, Bertie.”

“Ay. Pain, discomfort, fears, weariness. After working out their torment upon me, they—why then they took a turn and opened out the vista of a refuge.”

“A refuge?”

“The one sure Refuge offered by God to the sick and sorrowful, the weary and heavy-laden—Himself. I found it. I found Him and all His wonderful mercy. It will not be long now, Harry, before I see Him face to face. And here comes His true minister, but for whom I might have missed the way.”

Harry turned his head, and saw, advancing up the drive, a good-looking young clergyman. “Who is it?” he involuntarily cried.

“Your brother-in-law, Robert Grame. Lucy’s husband.”

It was not the fashion in those days for a bride’s mother (or one acting as her mother) to attend the bride to church; therefore Mrs. Carradyne, following it, was spared risk of conflict with Captain Monk on that score. She was in Eliza’s room, assisting at the putting on of the bridal robes (for we have to go back an hour or so) when a servant came up to say that Mr. Hamlyn waited below. Rather wondering—for he was to have driven straight to the church—Mrs. Carradyne went downstairs.

“Pardon me, dear Mrs. Carradyne,” he said, as he shook hands, and she had never seen him look so handsome, “I could not pass the house without making one more effort to disarm Captain Monk’s prejudices, and asking for his blessing on us. Do you think he will consent to see me?”

Mrs. Carradyne felt sure he would not, and said so. But she sent Rimmer to the library to ask the question. Mr. Hamlyn pencilled down a few anxious words on paper, folded it, and put it into the man’s hand.

No; it proved useless. Captain Monk was harder than adamant; he sent Rimmer back with a flea in his ear, and the petition torn in two.

“I feared so,” sighed Mrs. Carradyne. “He will not this morning see even Eliza.”

Mr. Hamlyn did not sigh in return; he spoke a cross, impatient word: he had never been able to see reason in the Captain’s dislike to him, and, with a brief good-morning, went out to his carriage. But, remembering something when crossing the hall, he came back.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Carradyne; I quite forgot that I have a note for you. It is from Mrs. Peveril, I believe; it came to me this morning, enclosed in a letter of her husband’s.”

“You have heard at last, then!”

“At last—as you observe. Though Peveril had nothing particular to write about; I daresay he does not care for letter writing.”

Slipping the note into her pocket, to be opened at leisure, Mrs. Carradyne returned to the adorning of Eliza. Somehow, it was rather a prolonged business—which made it late when the bride with her bridesmaid and Hubert drove from the door.

Mrs. Carradyne remained in the room—to which Eliza was not to return—putting up this, and that. The time slipped on, and it was close upon twelve o’clock when she got back to the drawing-room. Captain Monk was in it then, standing at the window, which he had thrown wide open. To see more clearly the bridal party come out of church, was the thought that crossed Mrs. Carradyne’s mind in her simplicity.

“I very much feared they would be late,” she observed, sitting down near her brother: and at that moment the church clock began to strike twelve.

“A good thing if they were too late!” he answered.“Listen.”

She supposed he wanted to count the strokes—what else could he be listening to? And now, by the stir at the distant gates, she saw that the bridal party had come out.

“Good heavens, what’s that?” shrieked Mrs. Carradyne, starting from her chair.

“The chimes,” stoically replied the Captain. And he proceeded to hum through the tune of “The Bay of Biscay,”and beat a noiseless accompaniment with his foot.

“The Chimes, Emma,” he repeated, when the melody had finished itself out. “I ordered them to be played. It’s the last day of the old year, you know.”

Laughing slightly at her consternation, Captain Monk closed the window and quitted the room. As Mrs. Carradyne took her handkerchief from her pocket to pass it over her face, grown white with startled terror, the note she had put there came out also, and fell on the carpet.

Picking it up, she stood at the window, gazing forth. Her sight was not what it used to be; but she discerned the bride and bridegroom enter their carriage and drive away; next she saw the bridesmaid get into the carriage from the Hall, assisted by Hubert, and that drive off in its turn. She saw the crowd disperse, this way and that; she even saw the gig there, its occupant talking with John Cale. But she did not look at him particularly; and she had not the slightest idea but that Harry was in India.

And all that time an undercurrent of depression was running riot in her heart. None knew with what a strange terror she had grown to dread the chimes.

She sat down now and opened Mrs. Peveril’s note. It treated chiefly of the utterly astounding ways that untravelled old lady was meeting with in foreign parts. “If you will believe me,” wrote she, “the girl that waits on us wears carpet slippers down at heel, and a short cotton jacket for best, and she puts the tea-tray before me with the handle of the tea-pot turned to me and the spout standing outwards, and she comes right into the bed-room of a morning with Charles’s shaving-water without knocking.” But the one sentence that arrested Mrs. Carradyne’s attention above any other was the following: “I reckon that by this time you have grown well acquainted with our esteemed young friend. He is a good, kindly gentleman, and I’m sure never could have done anything to deserve his wife’s treatment of him.”

“Can she mean Mr. Hamlyn?” debated Mrs. Carradyne, all sorts of ideas leaping into her mind with a rush. “If not—what other ‘esteemed friend’ can she allude to?—she, old herself, would call him young. But Mr. Hamlyn has not any wife. At least, had not until to-day.”

She read the note over again. She sat with it open, buried in a reverie, thinking no end of things, good and bad: and the conclusion she at last came to was, that, with the unwonted exercise of letter-writing, poor old Mrs. Peveril’s head had grown confused.

“Well, Hubert, did it all go off well?” she questioned, as her nephew entered the room, some sort of excitement on his wasted face. “I saw them drive away.”

“Yes, it went off well; there was no hitch anywhere,”replied Hubert. “But, Aunt Emma, I have brought a friend home with me. Guess who it is.”

“Some lady or other who came to see the wedding,” she returned. “I can’t guess.”

“You never would, though I were to give you ten guesses; no, though je vous donne en mille, as the French have it. What should you say to a young man come all the way over seas from India? There, that’s as good as telling you, Aunt Emma. Guess now.”

“Oh, Hubert!” clasping her trembling hands. “It cannot be Harry! What is wrong?”

Harry brought his bright face into the room and was clasped in his mother’s arms. She could not understand it one bit, and fears assailed her. Come home in this unexpected manner! Had he left the army? What had he done? What had he done? Hubert laughed and told her then.

“He has done nothing wrong; everything that’s good. He has sold out at my father’s request and left with honours—and is come home the heir of Leet Hall. I said all along it was a shame to keep you out of the plot, Aunt Emma.”

Well, it was glorious news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous remark of old Mrs. Peveril’s.

IV

The walk on the old pier was pleasant enough in the morning sun. Though yet but the first month in the year, the days were bright, the blue skies without a cloud. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn had enjoyed the fine weather at Cheltenham for a week or two; from that pretty place they had now come to Brighton, reaching it the previous night.

“Oh, it is delightful!” exclaimed Eliza, gazing at the waves. She had not seen the sea since she crossed it, a little girl, from the West Indies. Those were not yet the days when all people, gentle and simple, told one another that an autumn tour was essential to existence. “Look at the sunbeams sparkling on the ripples and on the white sails of the little boats! Philip, I should like to spend a month here.”

“All right,” replied Mr. Hamlyn.

They were staying at the Old Ship, a fashionable hotel then for ladies as well as gentlemen, and had come out after breakfast; and they had the pier nearly to themselves at that early hour. A yellow, gouty gentleman, who looked as if he had quarrelled with his liver in some clime all fire and cayenne, stood at the end leaning on his stick, alternately looking at the sea and listlessly watching any advancing stragglers.

There came a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandified and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into a gaping fit of lassitude.

Anyone else coming? Yes; a lady and gentleman arm-in-arm: quiet, well-dressed, good-looking. As the invalid watched their approach, a puzzled look of doubt and surprise rose to his countenance. Moving forward a step or two on his gouty legs, he spoke.

“Can it be possible, Hamlyn, that we meet here?”

Even through his dark skin a red flush coursed into Mr. Hamlyn’s face. He was evidently very much surprised in his turn, if not startled.

“Captain Pratt!” he exclaimed.

“Major Pratt now,” was the answer, as they shook hands.“That wretched climate played the deuce with me, and they graciously gave me a step and allowed me to retire upon it. The very deuce, I assure you, Philip. Beg pardon, ma’am,” he added, seeing the lady look at him.

“My wife, Mrs. Hamlyn,” spoke her husband.

Major Pratt contrived to lift his hat, and bow: which feat, what with his gouty hands and his helpless legs and his great invalid stick, was a work of time. “I saw your marriage in the Times, Hamlyn, and wondered whether it could be you, or not: I didn’t know, you see, that you were over here. Wish you luck; and you also, ma’am. Hope it will turn out more fortunate for you, Philip, than——”

“Where are you staying?” broke in Mr. Hamlyn, as if something were frightening him.

“At some lodgings over yonder, where they fleece me,”replied the Major. “You should see the bill they’ve brought me in for last week. They’ve made me eat four pounds of butter and five joints of meat, besides poultry and pickles and a fruit pie! Why, I live mostly upon dry toast; hardly dare touch an ounce of meat in a day. When I had ’em up before me, the harpies, they laid it upon my servant’s appetite—old Saul, you know. He answered them.”

Mrs. Hamlyn laughed. “There are two articles that are very convenient, as I have heard, to some of the lodging-house keepers: their lodgers’ servant, and their own cat.”

“By Jove, ma’am, yes!” said the Major. “But I’ve given warning to this lot where I am.”

Saying au revoir to Major Pratt, Mr. Hamlyn walked down the pier again with his wife. “Who is he, Philip?”she asked. “You seem to know him well.”

“Very well. He is a sort of connection of mine, I believe,” laughed Mr. Hamlyn, “and I saw a good deal of him in India a few years back. He is greatly changed. I hardly think I should have known him had he not spoken. It’s his liver, I suppose.”

Leaving his wife at the hotel, Mr. Hamlyn went back again to Major Pratt, much to the lonely Major’s satisfaction, who was still leaning on his substantial stick as he gazed at the water.

“The sight of you has brought back to my mind all that unhappy business, Hamlyn,” was his salutation. “I shall have a fit of the jaundice now, I suppose! Here—let’s sit down a bit.”

“And the sight of you has brought it to mine,” said Mr. Hamlyn, as he complied. “I have been striving to drive it out of my remembrance.”

“I know little about it,” observed the Major. “She never wrote to me at all afterwards, and you wrote me but two letters: the one announcing the fact of her disgrace; the other, the calamity and the deaths.”

“That is quite enough to know; don’t ask me to go over the details to you personally,” said Mr. Hamlyn in a tone of passionate discomfort. “So utterly repugnant to me is the remembrance altogether, that I have never spoken of it—even to my present wife.”

“Do you mean you’ve not told her you were once a married man?” cried Major Pratt.

“No, I have not.”

“Then you’ve shown a lack of judgment which I wouldn’t have given you credit for, my friend,” declared the Major.“A man may whisper to his girl any untoward news he pleases of his past life, and she’ll forgive and forget; aye, and worship him all the more for it, though it were the having set fire to a church: but if he keeps it as a bonne bouchée to drop out after marriage, when she has him fast and tight, she’ll curry-comb his hair for him in style. Believe that.”

Mr. Hamlyn laughed.

“There never was a hidden skeleton between man and wife yet but it came to light sooner or later,” went on the Major. “If you are wise, you will tell her at once, before somebody else does.”

“What ‘somebody?’ Who is there here that knows it?”

“Why, as to ‘here,’ I know it, and nearly spoke of it before her, as you must have heard; and my servant knows it. That’s nothing, you’ll say; we can be quiet, now I have the cue: but you are always liable to meet with people who knew you in those days, and who knew her. Take my advice, Philip Hamlyn, and tell your wife. Go and do it now.”

“I daresay you are right,” said the younger man, awaking out of a reverie. “Of the two evils it may be the lesser.”And with lagging steps, and eyes that seemed to have weights to them, he set out to walk back to the Old Ship Hotel.

THE SILENT CHIMES.

IV.—NOT HEARD.

I

That oft-quoted French saying, a mauvais-quart-d’heure, is a pregnant one, and may apply to small as well as to great worries of life: most of us know it to our cost. But, rely upon it, one of the very worst is that when a bride or bridegroom has to make a disagreeable confession to the other, which ought to have been made before going to church.

Philip Hamlyn was finding it so. Standing over the fire, in their sitting-room at the Old Ship Hotel at Brighton, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hand shading his eyes, he looked down at his wife sitting opposite him, and disclosed his tale: that when he married her fifteen days ago he had not been a bachelor, but a widower. There was no especial reason for his not having told her, save that he hated and abhorred that earlier period of his life and instinctively shunned its remembrance.

Sent to India by his friends in the West Indies to make his way in the world, he entered one of the most important mercantile houses in Calcutta, purchasing a lucrative post in it. Mixing in the best society, for his introductions were undeniable, he in course of time met with a young lady named Pratt, who had come out from England to stay with her elderly cousins, Captain Pratt and his sister. Philip Hamlyn was caught by her pretty doll’s face, and married her. They called her Dolly: and a doll she was, by nature as well as by name.

“Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” is as true a saying as the French one. Philip Hamlyn found it so. Of all vain, frivolous, heartless women, Mrs. Dolly Hamlyn turned out to be about the worst. Just a year or two of uncomfortable bickering, of vain endeavours on his part, now coaxing, now reproaching, to make her what she was not and never would be—a reasonable woman, a sensible wife—and Dolly Hamlyn fled. She decamped with a hair-brained lieutenant, the two taking sailing-ship for England, and she carrying with her her little one-year-old boy.

I’ll leave you to guess what Philip Hamlyn’s sensations were. A calamity such as that does not often fall upon man. While he was taking steps to put his wife legally away for ever and to get back his child, and Captain Pratt was aiding and abetting (and swearing frightfully at the delinquent over the process), news reached them that Heaven’s vengeance had been more speedy than theirs. The ship, driven out of her way by contrary winds and other disasters, went down off the coast of Spain, and all the passengers on board perished. This was what Philip Hamlyn had to confess now: and it was more than silly of him not to have done it before.

He touched but lightly upon it now. His tones were low, his words when he began somewhat confused: nevertheless his wife, gazing up at him with her large dark eyes, gathered an inkling of his meaning.

“Don’t tell it me!” she passionately interrupted. “Do not tell me that I am only your second wife.”

He went over to her, praying her to be calm, speaking of the bitter feeling of shame which had ever since clung to him.

“Did you divorce her?”

“No, no; you do not understand me, Eliza. She died before anything could be done; the ship was wrecked.”

“Were there any children?” she asked in a hard whisper.

“One; a baby of a year old. He was drowned with his mother.”

Mrs. Hamlyn folded her hands one over the other, and leaned back in her chair. “Why did you deceive me?”

“My will was good to deceive you for ever,” he confessed with emotion. “I hate that past episode in my life; hate to think of it: I wish I could blot it out of remembrance. But for Pratt I should not have told you now.”

“Oh, he said you ought to tell me?”

“He did: and blamed me for not having told you already.”

“Have you any more secrets of the past that you are keeping from me?”

“None. Not one. You may take my honour upon it, Eliza. And now let us——”

She had started forward in her chair; a red flush darkening her pale cheeks. “Philip! Philip! am I legally married? Did you describe yourself as a bachelor in the license?”

“No, as a widower. I got the license in London, you know.”

“And no one read it?”

“No one save he who married us: Robert Grame, and I don’t suppose he noticed it.”

Robert Grame! The flush on Eliza’s cheeks grew deeper.

“Did you love her?”

“I suppose I thought so when I married her. It did not take long to disenchant me,” he added with a harsh laugh.

“What was her Christian name?”

“Dolly. Dora, I believe, by register. My dear wife, I have told you all. In compassion to me let us drop the subject, now and for ever.”

Was Eliza Hamlyn—sitting there with pale, compressed lips, sullen eyes, and hands interlocked in pain—already beginning to reap the fruit she had sown as Eliza Monk by her rebellious marriage? Perhaps so. But not as she would have to reap it later on.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn spent nearly all that year in travelling. In September they came to Peacock’s Range, taking it furnished for a term of old Mr. and Mrs. Peveril, who had not yet come back to it. It stood midway, as may be remembered, between Church Leet and Church Dykely, so that Eliza was close to her old home. Late in October a little boy was born: it would be hard to say which was the prouder of him, Philip Hamlyn or his wife.

“What would you like his name to be?” Philip asked her one day.

“I should like it to be Walter,” said Mrs. Hamlyn.

“Walter!”

“Yes. I like the name to begin with, but I once had a dear little brother named Walter, just a year younger than I. He died before we came home to England. Have you any objection to the name?”

“Oh, no, no objection,” he slowly said. “I was only thinking whether you would have any. It was the name given to my first child.”

“That can make no possible difference—it was not my child,” was her haughty answer. So the baby was named Walter James; the latter name also chosen by Eliza, because it had been old Mr. Monk’s.

In the following spring Mr. Hamlyn had to go to the West Indies. Eliza remained at home; and during this time she became reconciled to her father.

Hubert brought it about. For Hubert lived yet. But he was a mere shadow and had to take entirely to the house, and soon to his room. Eliza came to see him, again and again; and finally over Hubert’s sofa peace was made—for Captain Monk loved her still, just as he had loved Katherine, for all her rebellion.

Hubert lingered on to the summer. And then, on a calm evening, when one of the glorious sunsets that he had so loved to look upon was illumining the western sky, opening up to his dying view, as he had once said, the very portals of Heaven, he passed peacefully away to his rest.

II

The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox. That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume—who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again—and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency in London.

One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and then looked about her.

“There!” she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation,“I have to cross the street! and how am I to do it?”

Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to crossing them alone. She did it, however, after a few false starts, and so turned down a quiet side street and rang the bell of a house in it. A slatternly girl answered the ring.

“Governess-agent—Mrs. Moffit? Oh, yes; first-floor front,” said she crustily, and disappeared.

The young lady found her way upstairs alone. Mrs. Moffit sat in state in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily dispensed joy or despair to her applicants. Several opened letters and copies of the daily journals lay on the table.

“Well?” cried she, laying down her pen, “what for you?”

“I am here by your appointment, made with me a week ago,” said the young lady. “This is Thursday.”

“What name?” cried Mrs. Moffit sharply, turning over rapidly the leaves of a ledger.

“Miss West. If you remember, I——”

“Oh, yes, child, my memory’s good enough,” was the tart interruption. “But with so many applicants it’s impossible to be certain as to faces. Registered names we can’t mistake.”

Mrs. Moffit read her notes—taken down a week ago.“Miss West. Educated in first-class school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India.”

“But——”

“You do not wish to go into a school again?” spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was about to say.

“Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say,” replied the young lady, smiling.

“And you wish for a good salary?”

“If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing.”

“Or else I have—let me see—two—three situations on my books. Very comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year, the other twelve.”

The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement. “Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them.”

Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. “I received a letter this morning from the country—a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit—and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman——”

“Oh, yes; my father was——”

“Yes, yes, I remember—I’ve got it down; don’t worry me,” impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption.“So far you might suit: but in other respects—I hardly know what to think.”

“But why?” asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.

“Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking.”

The girl’s blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.

“Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!”

“That’s as people may think,” was the significant answer.“Some families will not take a pretty governess—afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. ‘Thoroughly competent’—reading from the letter—‘a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.’”

“And will you not recommend me?” pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. “Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best.”

“Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,” decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl’s gentle respect—with which she did not get treated by all her clients. “Suppose you come here again on Monday next?”

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned—no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. “Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West,” she wrote, “who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there.” What Miss West had said to her was this: “My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India.” Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

“The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman,” spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. “She is rather young—about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate.”

“Had good references with her, I suppose?” said the Captain.

“Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up.”

“Who was her father, do you say?—a military man?”

“Colonel William West,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. “He went to India with his regiment and died there.”

“I’ll refer to the army-list,” said the Captain; “daresay it’s all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I’ll know the reason why.”

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father’s growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

“Papa,” she said, with impassioned fervour, “he ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne.”

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

“He lies in the direct succession; he has your own blood in his veins. Papa, you ought to see it.”

Certainly the gallant sailor’s manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue—that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall—and stood in silence.

“Don’t you see it, papa?”

“Look here, Eliza: we’ll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma’s son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said. Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more.”

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.

“This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma,” exclaimed Mrs. Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.

“I hope it is,” said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. “Oh, yes, that’s an Evesham fly—and a ramshackle thing it appears.”

“I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,” remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.

Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. “Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?”

The young man laughed in good humour. “Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?—a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can’t see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves.”

“And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school.”

“But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza,” spoke Mrs. Carradyne.

“Then——”

“Miss West, ma’am,” interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.

“Dear me, how very young!” was Mrs. Carradyne’s first thought. “And what a lovely face!”

She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones. That’s what the Squire tells us.

Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.

“Are you my new governess?”

The young lady smiled and said she believed so.

“Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?”

The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.

And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar—as if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing, soft, dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.

III

Months passed away, and Miss West was domesticated in her new home. It was not all sunshine. Mrs. Carradyne, ever considerate, strove to render things agreeable; but there were sources of annoyance over which she had no control. Kate, when she chose, could be verily a little elf, a demon; as Mrs. Hamlyn often put it, “a diablesse.” And she, that lady herself, invariably treated the governess with a sort of cool, indifferent contempt; and she was more often at Leet Hall than away from it. The Captain, too, gave way to fits of temper that simply terrified Miss West. Reared in the quiet atmosphere of a well-trained school, she had never met with temper such as this.

On the other hand—yes, on the other hand, she had an easy place of it, generous living, was regarded as a lady, and—she had learnt to love Harry Carradyne for weal or for woe.

But not—please take notice—not unsolicited. Tacitly, at any rate. If Mr. Harry’s speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry’s tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers. Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind: or there would have blown up a storm.

Spring was to bring its events; but first of all it must be said that during the winter little Walter Hamlyn was taken ill at Leet Hall when staying there with his mother. The malady turned out to be gastric fever, and Mr. Speck was in constant attendance. For the few days that the child lay in danger, Eliza was almost wild. The progress to convalescence was very slow, lasting many weeks; and during that time Captain Monk, being much with the little fellow, grew to be fond of him with an unreasonable affection.

“I’m not sure but I shall leave Leet Hall to him after all,”he suddenly observed to Eliza one day, not noticing that Harry Carradyne was standing in the recess of the window.“Halloa! are you there, Harry? Well, it can’t be helped. You heard what I said?”

“I heard, Uncle Godfrey: but I did not understand.”

“Eliza thinks Leet Hall ought to go in the direct line—through her—to this child. What should you say to that?”

“What could he say to it?” imperiously demanded Eliza.“He is only your nephew.”

Harry looked from one to the other in a sort of bewildered surprise: and there came a silence.

“Uncle Godfrey,” he said at last, starting out of a reverie,“you have been good enough to make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited; but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence, to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before taking me up, if it be only to throw me aside again.”

“There, there, we’ll leave it,” retorted Captain Monk testily. “No harm’s done to you yet, Mr. Harry; I don’t know that it will be.”

But Harry Carradyne felt sure that it would be; that he should be despoiled of the inheritance. The resolute look of power on Eliza’s face, bent on him as he quitted the chamber, was an earnest of that. Captain Monk was not the determined man he had once been; that was over.

“A pretty kettle of fish, this is,” ruefully soliloquised Harry, as he marched along the corridor. “Eliza’s safe to get her will; no doubt of that. And I? what am I to do? I can’t repurchase and go back amongst them again like a returned shilling; at least, I won’t; and I can’t turn Parson, or Queen’s Counsel, or Cabinet Minister. I’m fitted for nothing now, that I see, but to be a gentleman-at-large; and what would the gentleman’s income be?”

Standing at the corridor window, softly whistling, he ran over ways and means in his mind. He had a pretty house of his own, Peacock’s Range, formerly his father’s, and about four hundred a-year. After his mother’s death it would not be less than a thousand a-year.

“That means bread and cheese at present. Later——Heyday, young lady, what’s the matter?”

The school room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate Dancox was flying down the stairs—her usual progress the minute lessons were over. Harry strolled into the room. The governess was putting the littered table straight.

“Any admission, ma’am?” cried he quaintly, making for a chair. “I should like to ask leave to sit down for a bit.”

Alice West laughed, and stirred the fire by way of welcome; he was a very rare visitor to the school-room. The blaze, mingling with the rays of the setting sun that streamed in at the window, played upon her sweet face and silky brown hair, lighted up the bright winter dress she wore, and the bow of pink ribbon that fastened the white lace round her slender, pretty throat.

“Are you so much in need of a seat?” she laughingly asked.

“Indeed I am,” was the semi-grave response. “I have had a shock.”

“A very sharp one, sir?”

“Sharp as steel. Really and truly,” he went on in a different tone, as he left the chair and stood up by the table, facing her; “I have just heard news that may affect my whole future life; may change me from a rich man to a poor one.”

“Oh, Mr. Carradyne!” Her manner had changed now.

“I was the destined inheritor, as you know—for I’m sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—of these broad lands,” with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside.“Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for me Mrs. Hamlyn’s child.”

“But would not that be very unjust?”

“Hardly fair—as it seems to me. Considering that my good uncle obliged me to give up my own prospects for it.”

She stood, her hands clasped in sympathy, her face full of earnest sadness. “How unkind! Why, it would be cruel!”

“Well, I confess I felt it to be so at the first blow. But, standing at the outside window yonder, pulling myself together, a ray or two of light crept in, showing me that it may be for the best after all. ‘Whatever is, is right,’you know.”

“Yes,” she slowly said—“if you can think so. But, Mr. Carradyne, should you not have anything at all?—anything to live upon after Captain Monk’s death?”

“Just a trifle, I calculate, as the Americans say—and it is calculating I have been—so that I need not altogether starve. Would you like to know how much it will be?”

“Oh, please don’t laugh at me!”—for it suddenly struck the girl that he was laughing, perhaps in reproof, and that she had spoken too freely. “I ought not to have asked that; I was not thinking—I was too sorry to think.”

“But I may as well tell you, if you don’t mind. I have a very pretty little place, which you have seen and heard of, called by that delectable title Peacock’s Range——”

“Is Peacock’s Range yours?” she interrupted, in surprise.“I thought it belonged to Mr. Peveril.”

“Peacock’s Range is mine and was my father’s before me, Miss Alice. It was leased to Peveril for a term of years, but I fancy he would be glad to give it up to-morrow. Well, I have Peacock’s Range and about four hundred pounds a-year.”

Her face brightened. “Then you need not talk about starving,” she said, gaily.

“And, later, I shall have altogether about a thousand a-year. Though I hope it will be very long before it falls to me. Do you think two people might venture to set up at Peacock’s Range, and keep, say, a couple of servants upon four hundred a-year? Could they exist upon it?”

“Oh, dear, yes,” she answered eagerly, quite unconscious of his drift. “Did you mean yourself and some friend?”

He nodded.

“Why, I don’t see how they could spend it all. There’d be no rent to pay. And just think of all the fruit and vegetables in the garden there!”

“Then I take you at your word, Alice,” he cried, impulsively, passing his arm round her waist. “You are the‘friend.’ My dear, I have long wanted to ask you to be my wife, and I did not dare. This place, Leet Hall, encumbered me: for I feared the opposition that I, as its heir, should inevitably meet.”

She drew away from him, with doubting, frightened eyes. Mr. Harry Carradyne brought all the persuasion of his own dancing blue ones to bear upon her. “Surely, Alice, you will not say me nay!”

“I dare not say yes,” she whispered.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of it altogether; of your friends. Captain Monk would—would—perhaps—turn me out. And there’s Mrs. Carradyne!”

Harry laughed. “Captain Monk can have no right to any voice in my affairs, once he throws me off; he cannot expect to have a finger in everyone’s pie. As to my mother—ah, Alice, unless I am much mistaken, she will welcome you with love.”

Alice burst into tears: emotion was stirring her to its depths. “Please to let it all be for a time,” she pleaded.

“If you speak it would be sure to lead to my being turned away.”

“I will let it be for a time, my darling, so far as speaking about it goes: for more reasons than one it may be better. But you are my promised wife, Alice; always recollect that.”

And Mr. Harry Carradyne, bold as a soldier should be, took a few kisses from her unresisting lips to enforce his mandate.

IV

Some time rolled on, calling for no particular record. Mr. Hamlyn’s West Indian property, which was large and lucrative, had been giving him trouble of late; at least, those who had the care of it gave it, and he was obliged to go over occasionally to see after it in person. Between times he stayed with his wife at Peacock’s Range; or else she joined him in London. Their town residence was in Bryanston Square; a pretty house, but not large.

It had been an unfavourable autumn; cold and wet. Snow had fallen in November, and the weather continued persistently dull and dreary. One gloomy afternoon towards the close of the year, Mrs. Hamlyn, shivering over her drawing-room fire, rang impatiently for more coal to be piled upon it.

“Has Master Walter come in yet?” she asked of the footman.

“No, ma’am. I saw him just now playing in front there.”

She went to the window. Yes, running about the paths of the Square garden was the child, attended by his nurse. He was a sturdy little fellow. His mother, wishing to make him hardy, sent him out in all weathers, and the boy throve upon it. He was three years old now, but looked older; and he was as clever and precocious as some children are at five or six. Her heart thrilled with a strange joy only at the sight of him: he was her chief happiness in life, her idol. Whether he would succeed to Leet Hall she knew not; since that one occasion, Captain Monk had said no more upon the subject, for or against it.

Why need she have longed for it so fervently? to the setting at naught the express wishes of her deceased uncle and to the detriment of Harry Carradyne? It was simply covetousness. As his father’s eldest son (there were no younger ones yet) the boy would inherit a fine property, a large income; but his doting mother must give him Leet Hall as well.

Her whole heart went out to the child as she watched him playing there. A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, and twilight would soon be drawing on, but she would not call him in. Standing thus at the window, it gradually grew upon her to notice that something was standing back against the opposite rails, looking fixedly at the houses. A young, fair woman apparently, with a profusion of light hair; she was draped in a close dark cloak which served to conceal her figure, just as the thick veil she wore concealed her face.

“I believe it is this house she is gazing at so attentively—and at me,” thought Mrs. Hamlyn. “What can she possibly want?”

The woman did not move away and Mrs. Hamlyn did not move; they remained staring at one another. Presently Walter burst into the room, laughing in glee at having distanced his nurse. His mother turned, caught him in her arms and kissed him passionately. Wilful though he was by disposition, and showing it at times, he was a lovable, generous child, and very pretty: great brown eyes and auburn curls. His life was all sunshine, like a butterfly’s on a summer’s day; his path as yet one of roses without their thorns.

“Mamma, I’ve got a picture-book; come and look at it,”cried the eager little voice, as he dragged his mother to the hearthrug and opened the picture-book in the light of the blaze. “Penelope bought it for me.”

She sat down on a footstool, the book on her lap and one arm round him, her treasure. Penelope waited to take off his hat and pelisse, and was told to come for him in five minutes.

“It’s not my tea-time yet,” cried he defiantly.

“Indeed, then, Master Walter, it is long past it,” said the nurse. “I couldn’t get him in before, ma’am,” she added to her mistress. “Every minute I kept expecting you’d be sending one of the servants after us.”

“In five minutes,” repeated Mrs. Hamlyn. “And what’sthis picture about, Walter? Is it a little girl with a doll?”

“Oh, dat bootiful,” said the eager little lad, who was not yet as advanced in speech as he was in ideas. “It says she——dere’s papa!”

In came Philip Hamlyn, tall, handsome, genial. Walter ran to him and was caught in his arms. He and his wife were just a pair for adoring the child.

But nurse, inexorable, appeared again at the five minutes’end, and Master Walter was carried off.

“You came home in a cab, Philip, did you not? I thought I heard one stop.”

“Yes; it is a miserable evening. Raining fast now.”

“Raining!” she repeated, rather wondering to hear it was not snowing. She went to the window to look out, and the first object her eyes caught sight of was the woman; leaning in the old place against the railings, in the growing twilight.

“I’m not sorry to see the rain; we shall have it warmer now,” remarked Mr. Hamlyn, who had drawn a chair to the fire. “In fact, it’s much warmer already than it was this morning.”

“Philip, step here a minute.”

His wife’s tone had dropped to a half-whisper, sounding rather mysterious, and he went at once.

“Just look, Philip—opposite. Do you see a woman standing there?”

“A woman—where?” cried he, looking of course in every direction but the right one.

“Just facing us. She has her back against the railings.”

“Oh, ay, I see now; a lady in a cloak. She must be waiting for some one.”

“Why do you call her a lady?”

“She looks like one—as far as I can see in the gloom. Does she not? Her hair does, any way.”

“She has been there I cannot tell you how long, Philip; half-an-hour, I’m sure; and it seems to me that she iswatching this house. A lady would hardly do that.”

“This house? Oh, then, Eliza, perhaps she’s watching for one of the servants. She might come in, poor thing, instead of standing there in the rain.”

“Poor thing, indeed!—what business has any woman to watch a house in this marked manner?” retorted Eliza.“The neighbourhood will be taking her for a female detective.”

“Nonsense!”

“She has given me a creepy feeling; I can tell you that, Philip.”

“But why?” he exclaimed.

“I can’t tell you why; I don’t know why; it is so. Do not laugh at me for confessing it.”

Philip Hamlyn did laugh; heartily. “Creepy feelings” and his imperiously strong-minded wife could have but little affinity with one another.

“We’ll have the curtains drawn, and the lights, and shut her out,” said he cheerily. “Come and sit down, Eliza; I want to show you a letter I’ve had to-day.”

But the woman waiting outside there seemed to possess for Eliza Hamlyn somewhat of the fascination of the basilisk; for she never stirred from the window until the curtains were drawn.

“It is from Peveril,” said Mr. Hamlyn, producing the letter he had spoken of from his pocket. “The lease he took of Peacock’s Range is not yet out, but he can resign it now if he pleases, and he would be glad to do so. He and his wife would rather remain abroad, it seems, than return home.”

“Yes. Well?”

“Well, he writes to me to ask whether he can resign it; or whether I must hold him to the promise he made me—that I should rent the house to the end of the term. I mean the end of the lease; the term he holds it for.”

“Why does he want to resign it? Why can’t things go on as at present?”

“I gather from an allusion he makes, though he does not explicitly state it, that Mr. Carradyne wishes to have the place in his own hands. What am I to say to Peveril, Eliza?”

“Say! Why, that you must hold him to his promise; that we cannot give up the house yet. A pretty thing if I had no place to go down to at will in my own county!”

“So far as I am concerned, Eliza, I would prefer to stay away from the county—if your father is to continue to treat me in the way he does. Remember what it was in the summer. I think we are very well here.”

“Now, Philip, I have said. I do not intend to release our hold on Peacock’s Range. My father will be reconciled to you in time as he is to me.”

“I wonder what Harry Carradyne can want it for?”mused Philip Hamlyn, bowing to the imperative decision of his better half.

“To live in it, I should say. He would like to show his resentment to papa by turning his back on Leet Hall. It can’t be for anything else.”

“What cause for resentment has he? He sent for him home and made him his heir.”

“That is the cause. Papa has come to his senses and changed his mind. It is our darling little Walter who is to be the heir of Leet Hall, Philip—and papa has so informed Harry Carradyne.”

Philip Hamlyn gazed at his wife in doubt. He had never heard a word of this; instinct had kept her silent.

“I hope not,” he emphatically said, breaking the silence.

“You hope not?”

“Walter shall never inherit Leet Hall with my consent, Eliza. Harry Carradyne is the right and proper heir, and no child of mine, as I hope, must or shall displace him.”

Mrs. Hamlyn treated her husband to one of her worst looks, telling of contempt as well as of power; but she did not speak.

“Listen, Eliza. I cannot bear injustice, and I do not believe it ever prospers in the long run. Were your father to bequeath—my dear, I beg of you to listen to me!—to bequeath his estates to little Walter, to the exclusion of the true heir, rely upon it the bequest would never bring him good. In some way or other it would not serve him. Money diverted by injustice from its natural and just channel does not carry a blessing with it. I have noted this over and over again in going through life.”

“Anything more?” she contemptuously asked.

“And Walter will not need it,” he continued persuasively, passing her question as unheard. “As my son, he will be amply provided for.”

A very commonplace interruption occurred, and the subject was dropped. Nothing more than a servant bringing in a letter for his master, just come by hand.

“Why, it is from old Richard Pratt!” exclaimed Mr. Hamlyn, as he turned to the light.

“I thought Major Pratt never wrote letters,” she remarked.“I once heard you say he must have forgotten how to write.”

He did not answer. He was reading the note, which appeared to be a short one. She watched him. After reading it through he began it again, a puzzled look upon his face. Then she saw it flush all over, and he crushed the note into his pocket.

“What is it about, Philip?”

“Pratt wants a prescription for gout that I told him of. I’m sure I don’t know whether I can find it.”

He had answered in a dreamy tone with thoughts preoccupied, and quitted the room hastily, as if in search of it.

Eliza wondered why he should flush up at being asked for a prescription, and why he should have suddenly lost himself in a reverie. But she had not much curiosity as to anything that concerned old Major Pratt—who was at present staying in lodgings in London.

Downstairs went Mr. Hamlyn to the little room he called his library, seated himself at the table under the lamp, and opened the note again. It ran as follows:—

“DEAR PHILIP HAMLYN,—The other day, when calling here, you spoke of some infallible prescription to cure gout that had been given you. I’ve symptoms of it flying about me—and be hanged to it! Bring it to me yourself to-morrow; I want to see you. I suppose there was no mistake in the report that that ship did go down?—and that none of the passengers were saved from it?

“Truly yours,

“RICHARD PRATT.”

“What can he possibly mean?” muttered Philip Hamlyn.

But there was no one to answer the question, and he sat buried in thought, trying to answer it himself. Starting up from the useless task, he looked in his desk, found the infallible prescription, and then snatched his watch from his pocket.

“Too late,” he decided impatiently; “Pratt would be gone to bed. He goes at all kinds of unearthly hours when out of sorts.” So he went upstairs to his wife again, the prescription displayed in his hand.

Morning came, bringing the daily routine of duties in its train. Mrs. Hamlyn had made an engagement to go with some friends to Blackheath, to take luncheon with a lady living there. It was damp and raw in the early portion of the day, but promised to be clear later on.

“And then my little darling can go out to play again,”she said, hugging the child to her. “In the afternoon, nurse; it will be drier then; it is really too damp this morning.”

Parting from him with fifty kisses, she went down to her comfortable and handsome carriage, her husband placing her in.

“I wish you were coming with me, Philip! But, you see, it is only ladies to-day. Six of us.”

Philip Hamlyn laughed. “I don’t wish it at all,” he answered; “they would be fighting for me. Besides, I must take old Pratt his prescription. Only picture his storm of anger if I did not.”

Mrs. Hamlyn was not back until just before dinner: her husband, she heard, had been out all day, and was not yet in. Waiting for him in the drawing-room listlessly enough, she walked to the window to look out. And there she saw with a sort of shock the same woman standing in the same place as the previous evening. Not once all day long had she thought of her.

“This is a strange thing!” she exclaimed. “I am sureit is this house that she is watching.”

On the impulse of the moment she rang the bell and called the man who answered it to the window. He was a faithful, attached servant, had lived with them ever since they were married, and previously to that in Mr. Hamlyn’s family in the West Indies.

“Japhet,” said his mistress, “do you see that woman opposite? Do you know why she stands there?”

Japhet’s answer told nothing. They had all seen her downstairs, yesterday evening as well as this, and wondered what she could be watching the house for.

“She is not waiting for any of the servants, then; not an acquaintance of theirs?”

“No, ma’am, that I’m sure she’s not. She is a stranger to us all.”

“Then, Japhet, I think you shall go over and question her,” spoke his mistress impulsively. “Ask her who she is and what she wants. And tell her that a gentleman’s house cannot be watched with impunity in this country—and she will do well to move away before the police are called to her.”

Japhet looked at his mistress and hesitated; he was an elderly man and cautious. “I beg your pardon, madam,”he began, “for venturing to say as much, but I think it might be best to let her alone. She’ll grow tired of stopping there. And if her motive is to attract pity, and get alms sent out, why the fact of speaking to her might make her bold enough to ask for them. If she comes there to-morrow again, it might be best for the master to take it up himself.”

For once in her life Mrs. Hamlyn condescended to listen to the opinion of an inferior, and Japhet was dismissed without orders. Close upon that, a cab came rattling down the square, and stopped at the door. Her husband leaped out of it, tossed the driver his fare—he always paid liberally—and let himself in with his latch-key. To Mrs. Hamlyn’s astonishment she had seen the woman dart from her standing-place to the middle of the road, evidently to look at or to accost Mr. Hamlyn. But his movements were too quick: he was within in a moment and had closed the outer door. She then walked rapidly away, and disappeared.

Eliza Hamlyn stood there lost in thought. The nurse came in to take the child; Mr. Hamlyn had gone to his room to dress for dinner.

“Have you seen the woman who has been standing out there yesterday evening and this, Penelope?” she asked of the nurse, speaking upon impulse.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. She has been there all the blessed afternoon. She came into the garden to talk to us.”

“Came into the garden to talk to you?” repeated Mrs. Hamlyn. “What did she talk about?”

“Chiefly about Master Walter, ma’am. She seemed to be much taken with him; clasped him in her arms and kissed him, and said how old was he, and was he difficult to manage, and that he had his father’s beautiful brown eyes——”

Penelope stopped abruptly. Mistaking the hard stare her mistress was unconsciously giving her for one of displeasure, she hastened to excuse herself. The fact was, Mrs. Hamlyn’s imagination was beginning to run riot.

“I couldn’t help her speaking to me, ma’am, or her kissing the child; she took me by surprise. That was all she said—except that she asked whether you were likely to be going into the country soon, away from the house here. She didn’t stay five minutes with us, but went back to stand by the railings again.”

“Did she speak as a lady or as a common person?”quite fiercely demanded Mrs. Hamlyn. “Is she young?—good-looking?”

“Oh, I think she is a lady,” replied the girl, her accent decisive. “And she’s young, as far as I could see, but she had a thick veil over her face. Her hair is lovely, just like threads of pale gold,” concluded Penelope, as Mr. Hamlyn’s step was heard.

He took his wife into the dining-room, apologising for being late. She, giving full range to the fancies she had called up, heard him in silence with a hardening haughty face.

“Philip, you know who that woman is,” she suddenly exclaimed during a temporary absence of Japhet from the dining-room. “What is it that she wants with you?”

“I!” he returned, in a surprise very well feigned if not real. “What woman? Do you mean the one who was standing out there yesterday?”

“You know I do. She has been there again—all the blessed afternoon, as Penelope expresses it. Asking questions of the girl about you—and me—and Walter; and saying the child has your beautiful brown eyes. I ask you who is she?”

Mr. Hamlyn laid down his knife and fork to gaze at his wife. He looked quite at sea.

“Eliza, I assure you I know nothing about it. Or about her.”

“Indeed! Don’t you think it may be some acquaintance, old or new? Possibly someone you knew in the days gone by—come over seas to see whether you are yet in the land of the living? She has wonderful hair, which looks like spun gold.”

All in a moment, as the half-mocking words left her lips, some idea seemed to flash across Philip Hamlyn, bringing with it distress and fear. His face turned to a burning red and then grew white as the hue of the grave.

THE SILENT CHIMES.

V.—SILENT FOR EVER.

I

Breakfast was on the table in Mr. Hamlyn’s house in Bryanston Square, and Mrs. Hamlyn waited, all impatience, for her lord and master. Not in any particular impatience for the meal itself, but that she might “have it out with him”—the phrase was hers, not mine, as you will see presently—in regard to the perplexity existing in her mind connected with the strange appearance of the damsel watching the house, in her beauty and her pale golden hair.

Why had Philip Hamlyn turned sick and faint—to judge by his changing countenance—when she had charged him at dinner, the previous evening, with knowing something of this mysterious woman? Mysterious in her actions, at all events; probably in herself. Mrs. Hamlyn wanted to know that. No further opportunity had then been given for pursuing the subject. Japhet had returned to the room, and before the dinner was at an end, some acquaintance of Mr. Hamlyn had fetched him out for the evening. And he came home with so fearful a headache that he had lain groaning and turning all through the night. Mrs. Hamlyn was not a model of patience, but in all her life she had never felt so impatient as now.

He came into the room looking pale and shivery; a sure sign that he was suffering; that it was not an invented excuse. Yes, the pain was better, he said, in answer to his wife’s question; and might be much better after a strong cup of tea; he could not imagine what had brought it on. Shecould have told him, though, had she been gifted with the magical power of reading minds, and have seen the nervous apprehension that was making havoc with his.

Mrs. Hamlyn gave him his tea in silence, and buttered a dainty bit of toast to tempt him to eat. But he shook his head.

“I cannot, Eliza. Nothing but tea this morning.”

“I am sorry you are ill,” she said, by-and-by. “I fear it hurts you to talk; but I want to have it out with you.”

“Have it out with me!” cried he, in real or feigned surprise. “Have what out with me?”

“Oh, you know, Philip. About that woman who has been watching the house these two days; evidently watching for you.”

“But I told you I knew nothing about her: who she is, or what she is, or what she wants. I really do not know.”

Well, so far that was true. But all the while a sick fear lay on his heart that he did know; or, rather, that he was destined to know very shortly.

“When I told you her hair was like threads of fine, pale gold, you seemed to start, Philip, as if you knew some girl or woman with such hair, or had known her.”

“I daresay I have known a score of women with such hair. My dear little sister who died, for instance.”

“Do not attempt to evade the subject,” was the haughty reprimand. “If——”

Mrs. Hamlyn’s sharp speech was interrupted by the entrance of Japhet, bringing in the morning letters. Only one letter, however, for they were not as numerous in those days as they are in these.

“It seems to be important, ma’am,” Japhet remarked, with the privilege of an old servant, as he handed it to his mistress. She saw it was from Leet Hall, in Mrs. Carradyne’s handwriting, and bore the words: “In haste,” above the address.

Tearing it open Eliza Hamlyn read the short, sad news it contained. Captain Monk had been taken suddenly ill with inward inflammation. Mr. Speck feared the worst, and the Captain had asked for Eliza. Would she come down at once?

“Oh, Philip, I must not lose a minute,” she exclaimed, passing the letter to him, and forgetting the pale gold hair and its owner. “Do you know anything about the Worcestershire trains?”

“No,” he answered. “The better plan will be to get to the station as soon as possible, and then you will be ready for the first train that starts.”

“Will you go down with me, Philip?”

“I cannot. I will take you to the station.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I cannot just now leave London. My dear, you may believe me, for it is the truth. I cannot do so. I wish I could.”

And she saw it was true: for his tone was so earnest as to tell of pain.

Making what haste she could, kissing her boy a hundred times, and recommending him to the special care of his nurse and of his father during her absence, she drove with her husband to the station, and was just in time for a train. Mr. Hamlyn watched it steam out of the station, and then looked up at the clock.

“I suppose it’s not too early to see him,” he muttered. “I’ll chance it, at any rate. Hope he will be less suffering than he was yesterday, and less crusty, too.”

Dismissing his carriage, for he felt more inclined to walk than to drive, he went through the park to Pimlico, and gained the house of Major Pratt.

This was Friday. On the previous Wednesday evening a note had been brought to Mr. Hamlyn by Major Pratt’s servant, a sentence in which, as the reader may remember, ran as follows:—

“I suppose there was no mistake in the report that that ship did go down?—and that none of the passengers were saved from it?”

This puzzled Philip Hamlyn: perhaps somewhat troubled him in a hazy kind of way. For he could only suppose that the ship alluded to must be the sailing-vessel in which his first wife, false and faithless, and his little son of a twelvemonth old had been lost some five or six years ago—theClipper of the Seas. And the next day (Thursday) he had gone to Major Pratt’s, as requested, to carry the prescription for gout he had asked for, and also to inquire of the Major what he meant.

But the visit was a fruitless one. Major Pratt was in bed with an attack of gout, so ill and so “crusty” that nothing could be got out of him excepting a few bad words and as many groans. Mr. Hamlyn then questioned Saul—of whom he used to see a good deal in India, for he had been the Major’s servant for years and years.

“Do you happen to know, Saul, whether the Major wanted me for anything in particular? He asked me to call here this morning.”

Saul began to consider. He was a tall, thin, cautious, slow-speaking man, honest as the day, and very much attached to his master.

“Well, sir, he got a letter yesterday morning that seemed to put him out, for I found him swearing over it. And he said he’d like you to see it.”

“Who was the letter from? What was it about?”

“It looked like Miss Caroline’s writing, sir, and the postmark was Essex. As to what it was about—well, the Major didn’t directly tell me, but I gathered that it might be about——”

“About what?” questioned Mr. Hamlyn, for the man had come to a dead standstill. “Speak out, Saul.”

“Then, sir,” said Saul, slowly rubbing the top of his head, and the few grey hairs left on it, “I thought—as you tell me to speak—it must be something concerning that ship you know of; she that went down on her voyage home, Mr. Philip.”

“The Clipper of the Seas?”

“Just so, sir; the Clipper of the Seas. I thought it by this,” added Saul: “that pretty nigh all day afterwards he talked of nothing but that ship, asking me if I should suppose it possible that the ship had not gone down and every soul on board, leastways of her passengers, with her.‘Master,’ said I, in answer, ‘had that ship not gone down and all her passengers with her, rely upon it, they’d have turned up long before this.’ ‘Ay, ay,’ stormed he, ‘and Caroline’s a fool.’—Which of course meant his sister, you know, sir.”

Philip Hamlyn could not make much of this. So many years had elapsed now since news came out to the world that the unfortunate ship, Clipper of the Seas, went down off the coast of Spain on her homeward voyage, and all her passengers with her, as to be a fact of the past. Never a doubt had been cast upon any part of the tidings, so far as he knew.

With an uneasy feeling at his heart, he went off to the city, to call upon the brokers, or agents, of the ship: remembering quite well who they were, and that they lived in Fenchurch Street. An elderly man, clerk in the house for many years, and now a partner, received him.

“The Clipper of the Seas?” repeated the old gentleman, after listening to what Mr. Hamlyn had to say. “No, sir, we don’t know that any of her passengers were saved; always supposed they were not. But lately we have had some little cause to doubt whether one or two might not have been.”

Philip Hamlyn’s heart beat faster.

“Will you tell me why you think this?”

“It isn’t that we think it; at best ’tis but a doubt,” was the reply. “One of our own ships, getting in last month from Madras, had a sailor on board who chanced to remark to me, when he was up here getting his pay, that it was not the first time he had served in our employ: he had been in that ship that was lost, the Clipper of the Seas. And he went on to say, in answer to a remark of mine about all the passengers having been lost, that that was not quite correct, for that one of them had certainly been saved—a lady or a nurse, he didn’t know which, and also a little child that she was in charge of. He was positive about it, he added, upon my expressing my doubts, for they got to shore in the same small boat that he did.”

“Is it true, think you?” gasped Mr. Hamlyn.

“Sir, we are inclined to think it is not true,” emphatically spoke the old gentleman. “Upon inquiring about this man’s character, we found that he is given to drinking, so that what he says cannot always be relied upon. Again, it seems next to an impossibility that if any passenger were saved we should not have heard of it. Altogether we feel inclined to judge that the man, though evidently believing he spoke truth, was but labouring under an hallucination.”

“Can you tell me where I can find the man?” asked Mr. Hamlyn, after a pause.

“Not anywhere at present, sir. He has sailed again.”

So that ended it for the day. Philip Hamlyn went home and sat down to dinner with his wife, as already spoken of. And when she told him that the mysterious lady waiting outside must be waiting for him—probably some acquaintance of his of the years gone by—it set his brain working and his pulses throbbing, for he suddenly connected her with what he had that day heard. No wonder his head ached!

To-day, after seeing his wife off by train, he went to find Major Pratt. The Major was better, and could talk, swearing a great deal over the gout, and the letter.

“It was from Caroline,” he said, alluding to his sister, Miss Pratt, who had been with him in India. “She lives in Essex, you know, Philip.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” answered Philip Hamlyn. “But what is it that Caroline says in her letter?”

“You shall hear,” said the Major, producing his sister’s letter and opening it. “Listen. Here it is. ‘The strangest thing has happened, brother! Susan went to London yesterday to get my fronts recurled at the hairdresser’s, and she was waiting in the shop, when a lady came out of the back room, having been in there to get a little boy’s hair cut. Susan was quite struck dumb when she saw her: she thinks it was poor erring Dolly; never saw such a likeness before, she says; could almost swear to her by the lovely pale gold hair. The lady pulled her veil over her face when she saw Susan staring at her, and went away with great speed. Susan asked the hairdresser’s people if they knew the lady’s name, or who she was, but they told her she was a stranger to them; had never been in the shop before. Dear Richard, this is troubling me; I could not sleep all last night for thinking of it. Do you suppose it is possible that Dolly and the boy were not drowned? Your affectionate sister, Caroline.’ Now, did you ever read such a letter?” stormed the Major. “If that Susan went home and said she’d seen St. Paul’s blown up, Caroline would believe it. Who’s Susan, d’ye say? Why, you’ve lost your memory, Philip. Susan was the English maid we had with us in Calcutta.”

“It cannot possibly be true,” cried Mr. Hamlyn with quivering lips.

“True, no! of course it can’t be, hang it! Or else what would you do?”

That might be logical though not satisfactory reasoning. And Mr. Hamlyn thought of the woman said to be watching for him, and her pale gold hair.

“She was a cunning jade, if ever there was one, mark you, Philip Hamlyn; that false wife of yours and kin of mine; came of a cunning family on the mother’s side. Put it that she was saved: if it suited her to let us suppose she was drowned, why, she’d do it. I know Dolly.”

And poor Philip Hamlyn, assenting to the truth of this with all his heart, went out to face the battle that might be coming upon him, lacking the courage for it.

II

The cold, clear afternoon air touching their healthy faces, and Jack Frost nipping their noses, raced Miss West and Kate Dancox up and down the hawthorn walk. It had pleased that arbitrary young damsel, who was still very childish, to enter a protest against going beyond the grounds that fine winter’s day; she would be in the hawthorn walk, or nowhere; and she would run races there. As Miss West gave in to her whims for peace’ sake in things not important, and as she was young enough herself not to dislike running, to the hawthorn walk they went.

Captain Monk was recovering rapidly. His sudden illness had been caused by drinking some cold cider when some out-door exercise had made him dangerously hot. The alarm and apprehension had now subsided; and Mrs. Hamlyn, arriving three days ago in answer to the hasty summons, was thinking of returning to London.

“You are cheating!” called out Kate, flying off at a tangent to cross her governess’s path. “You’ve no right to get before me!”

“Gently,” corrected Miss West. “My dear, we have run enough for to-day.”

“We haven’t, you ugly, cross old thing! Aunt Eliza says you are ugly. And—”

The young lady’s amenities were cut short by finding herself suddenly lifted off her feet by Mr. Harry Carradyne, who had come behind them.

“Let me alone, Harry! You are always coming where you are not wanted. Aunt Eliza says so.”

A sudden light, as of mirth, illumined Harry Carradyne’s fresh, frank countenance. “Aunt Eliza says all those things, does she? Well, Miss Kate, she also says something else—that you are now to go indoors.”

“What for? I shan’t go in.”

“Oh, very well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer.”

Kate dearly loved new silk frocks, and she raced away. The governess followed more slowly, Mr. Carradyne talking by her side.

For some months now their love-dream had been going on; aye, and the love-making too. Not altogether surreptitiously; neither of them would have liked that. Though not expedient to proclaim it yet to Captain Monk and the world, Mrs. Carradyne knew of it and tacitly sanctioned it.

Alice West turned her face, blushing uncomfortably, to him as they walked. “I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something to you,” she spoke with hesitation.“Are you not upon rather bad terms with Mrs. Hamlyn?”

“She is with me,” replied Harry.

“And—am I the cause?” continued Alice, feeling as if her fears were confirmed.

“Not at all. She has not fathomed the truth yet, with all her penetration, though she may have some suspicion of it. Eliza wants to bend me to her will in the matter of the house, and I won’t be bent. Old Peveril wishes to resign the lease of Peacock Range to me; I wish to take it from him, and Eliza objects. She says Peveril promised her the house until the seven years’ lease was out, and that she means to keep him to his bargain.”

“Do you quarrel?”

“Quarrel! no,” laughed Harry Carradyne. “I joke with her, rather than quarrel. But I don’t give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments, telling me that I am no gentleman, that I’m a bear, and so on; to which I make my bow.”

Alice West was gazing straight before her, a troubled look in her eyes. “Then you see that I am the remote cause of the quarrel, Harry. But for thinking of me, you would not care to take the house on your own hands.”

“I don’t know that. Be very sure of one thing, Alice: that I shall not stay an hour longer under the roof here if my uncle disinherits me. That he, a man of indomitable will, should be so long making up his mind is a proof that he shrinks from committing the injustice. The suspense it keeps me in is the worst of all. I told him so the other evening when we were sitting together and he was in an amiable mood. I said that any decision he might come to would be more tolerable than this prolonged suspense.”

Alice drew a long breath at his temerity.

Harry laughed. “Indeed, I quite expected to be ordered out of the room in a storm. Instead of that, he took it quietly, civilly telling me to have a little more patience; and then began to speak of the annual new year’s dinner, which is not far off now.”

“Mrs. Carradyne is thinking that he may not hold the dinner this year, as he has been so ill,” remarked the young lady.

“He will never give that up, Alice, as long as he can hold anything; and he is almost well again, you know. Oh, yes; we shall have the dinner and the chimes also.”

“I have never heard the chimes,” she said. “They have not played since I came to Church Leet.”

“They are to play this year,” said Harry Carradyne.“But I don’t think my mother knows it.”

“Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes? I seem to have gathered the idea, somehow,”added Alice. But she received no answer.

Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her home. This involved the attendance of Miss West, who now found herself summoned to the charge.

Having escorted Mrs. Ram to her lowly door, and had innumerable intricate questions answered touching trimmings and fringes, Miss Kate Dancox, disregarding her governess altogether, flew back along the road with all the speed of her active limbs, and disappeared within the churchyard. At first Alice, who was growing tired and followed slowly, could not see her; presently, a desperate shriek guided her to an unfrequented corner where the graves were crowded. Miss Kate had come to grief in jumping over a tombstone, and bruised both her knees.

“There!” exclaimed Alice, sitting down on the stump of an old tree, close to the low wall. “You’ve hurt yourself now.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” returned Kate, who did not make much of smarts. And she went limping away to Mr. Grame, then doing some light work in his garden.

Alice sat on where she was, reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible. While standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk’s wife, sitting in the church-porch and watching her attentively. The poor old woman had been ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out. Leaving the inscriptions, she went across the churchyard.

“Ay, my dear young lady, I be up again, and thankful enough to say it; and I thought as the day’s so fine, I’d step out a bit,” she said, in answer to the salutation. An intelligent woman, and quite sufficiently cultivated for her work—cleaning the church and washing the parson’s surplices.“I thought John was in the church here, and came to speak to him; but he’s not, I find; the door’s locked.”

“I saw John down by Mrs. Ram’s just now; he was talking to Nott, the carpenter,” observed Alice. “Nancy, I was trying to make out some of those old names; but it is difficult to do so,” she added, pointing to the crowded corner.

“Ay, I see, my dear,” nodded Nancy. “His be worn a’most right off. I think I’d have it done again, an I was you.”

“Have what done again?”

“The name upon your poor papa’s gravestone.”

“The what?” exclaimed Alice. And Nancy repeated her words.

Alice stared at her. Had Mrs. Cale’s wits vanished in her illness? “Do you know what you are saying, Nancy?”she cried; “I don’t. What had papa to do with this place? I think you must be wandering.”

Nancy stared in her turn. “Sure, it’s not possible,” she said slowly, beginning to put two and two together, “that you don’t know who you are, Miss West? That your papa died here? and lies buried here?”

Alice West turned white, and sat down on the opposite bench to Nancy. She did know that her father had died at some small country living he held; but she never suspected that it was at Church Leet. Her mother had gone to London after his death, and set up a school—which succeeded well. But soon she died, and the ladies who took to the school before her death took to Alice with it. The child was still too young to be told by her mother of the serious past—or Mrs. West deemed her to be so. And she had grown up in ignorance of her father’s fate and of where he died.

“When we heard, me and John, that it was a Miss West who had come to the Hall to be governess to Parson Dancox’s child, the name struck us both,” went on Nancy.“Next we looked at your face, my dear, to trace any likeness there might be, and we thought we saw it—for you’ve got your papa’s eyes for certain. Then, one day when I was dusting in here, I let fall a hymn-book from the Hall pew; in picking it up it came open, and the name writ in it stared me in the face, ‘Alice West.’ After that, we had no manner of doubt, him and me, and I’ve often wished to talk with you and tell you so. My dear, I’ve had you on my knee many a time when you were a little one.”

Alice burst into tears of agitation. “I never knew it! I never knew it. Dear Nancy, what did papa die of?”

“Ah, that was a sad piece of business—he was killed,”said Nancy. And forthwith, rightly or wrongly, she, garrulous with old age, told all the history.

It was an exciting interview, lasting until the shades of evening surprised them. Miss Kate Dancox might have gone roving to the other end of the globe, for all the attention given her just then. Poor Alice cried and sighed, and trembled inwardly and outwardly. “To think that it should just be to this place that I should come as governess, and to the house of Captain Monk!” she wailed. “Surely he did not kill papa!—intentionally!”

“No, no; nobody has ever thought that,” disclaimed Nancy. “The Captain is a passionate man, as is well-known, and they quarrelled, and a hot blow, not intentional, must have been struck between ’em. And all through them blessed chimes, Miss Alice! Not but that they be sweet to listen to—and they be going to ring again this New Year’s Eve.”

Drawing her warm cloak about her, Nancy Cale set off towards her cottage. Alice West sat on in the sheltered porch, utterly bewildered. Never in her life had she felt so agitated, so incapable of sound and sober thought. Now it was explained why the bow-windowed sitting-room at the Vicarage would always strike her as being familiar to her memory; as though she had at some time known one that resembled it, or perhaps seen one like it in a dream.

“Well, I’m sure!”

The jesting salutation came from Harry Carradyne. Despatched in search of the truants, he had found Kate at the Vicarage, making much of the last new baby there, and devouring a sumptuous tea of cakes and jam. Miss West? Oh, Miss West was sitting in the church porch, talking to old Nancy Cale, she said to Harry.

“Why! What is it?” he exclaimed in dismay, finding that the burst of emotion which he had taken to be laughter, meant tears. “What has happened, Alice?”

She could no more have kept the tears in than she could help—presently—telling him the news. He sat down by her and held her close to him, and pressed for it. She was the daughter of George West, who had died in the dispute with Captain Monk in the dining-room at the hall so many years before, and who was lying here in the corner of the churchyard; and she had never, never known it!

Mr. Carradyne was somewhat taken to; there was no denying it; chiefly by surprise.

“I thought your father was a soldier, Alice—Colonel West; and died when serving in India. I’m sure it was said so when you came.”

“Oh, no, that could not have been said,” she cried;“unless Mrs. Moffit, the agent, made a mistake. It was my uncle who died in India. No one here ever questioned me about my parents, knowing they were dead. Oh, dear,”she went on in agitation, after a silent pause, “what am I to do now? I cannot stay at the Hall. Captain Monk would not allow it either.”

“No need to tell him,” quoth Mr. Harry.

“And—of course—we must part. You and I.”

“Indeed! Who says so?”

“I am not sure that it would be right to—to—you know.”

“To what? Go on, my dear.”

Alice sighed; her eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the fast-falling twilight. “Mrs. Carradyne will not care for me when she knows who I am,” she said in low tones.

“My dear, shall I tell you how it strikes me?” returned Harry: “that my mother will be only the more anxious to have you connected with us by closer and dearer ties, so as to atone to you, in even a small degree, for the cruel wrong which fell upon your father. As to me—it shall be made my life’s best and dearest privilege.”

But when a climax such as this takes place, the right or the wrong thing to be done cannot be settled in a moment. Alice West did not see her way quite clearly, and for the present she neither said nor did anything.

This little matter occurred on the Friday in Christmas week; on the following day, Saturday, Mrs. Hamlyn was returning to London. Christmas Day this year had fallen on a Monday. Some old wives hold a superstition that when that happens, it inaugurates but small luck for the following year, either for communities or for individuals. Not that that fancy has anything to do with the present history. Captain Monk’s banquet would not be held until the Monday night: as was customary when New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday. He had urged his daughter to remain over New Year’s Day; but she declined, on the plea that as she had been away from her husband on Christmas Day, she would like to pass New Year’s Day with him. The truth being that she wanted to get to London to see after that yellow-haired lady who was supposed to be peeping after Philip Hamlyn.

On the Saturday morning Mrs. Hamlyn was driven to Evesham in the close carriage, and took the train to London. Her husband, ever kind and attentive, met her at the Paddington terminus. He was looking haggard, and seemed to be thinner than when she left him nine days ago.

“Are you well, Philip?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, quite well,” quickly answered poor Philip Hamlyn, smiling a warm smile, that he meant to look like a gay one.“Nothing ever ails me.”

No, nothing might ail him bodily; but mentally—ah, how much! That awful terror lay upon him thick and threefold; it had not yet come to any solution, one way or the other. Major Pratt had taken up the very worst view of it; and spent his days pitching hard names at misbehaving syrens, gifted with “the deuce’s own cunning” and with mermaids’ shining hair.

“And how have things been going, Penelope?” asked Mrs. Hamlyn of the nurse, as she sat in the nursery with her boy upon her knee. “All right?”

“Quite so, ma’am. Master Walter has been just as good as gold.”

“Mamma’s darling!” murmured the doting mother, burying her face in his. “I have been thinking, Penelope, that your master does not look well,” she added after a minute.

“No, ma’am? I’ve not noticed it. We have not seen much of him up here; he has been at his club a good deal—and dined three or four times with old Major Pratt.”

“As if she would notice it!—servants never notice anything!”thought Eliza Hamlyn in her imperious way of judging the world. “By the way, Penelope,” she said aloud in light and careless tones, “has that woman with the yellow hair been seen about much?—has she presumed again to accost my little son?”

“The woman with the yellow hair?” repeated Penelope, looking at her mistress, for the girl had quite forgotten the episode. “Oh, I remember—she that stood outside there and came to us in the square-garden. No, ma’am, I’ve seen nothing at all of her since that day.”

“For there are wicked people who prowl about to kidnap children,” continued Mrs. Hamlyn, as if she would condescend to explain her inquiry, “and that woman looked like one. Never suffer her to approach my darling again. Mind that, Penelope.”

The jealous heart is not easily reassured. And Mrs. Hamlyn, restless and suspicious, put the same question to her husband. It was whilst they were waiting in the drawing-room for dinner to be announced, and she had come down from changing her apparel after her journey. How handsome she looked! a right regal woman! as she stood there arrayed in dark blue velvet, the firelight playing upon her proud face, and upon the diamond earrings and brooch she wore.

“Philip, has that woman been prowling about here again?”

Just for an imperceptible second, for thought is quick, it occurred to Philip Hamlyn to temporize, to affect ignorance, and say, What woman? just as if his mind was not full of the woman, and of nothing else. But he abandoned it as useless.

“I have not seen her since; not at all,” he answered: and though his words were purposely indifferent, his wife, knowing all his tones and ways by heart, was not deceived.“He is afraid of that woman,” she whispered to herself;“or else afraid of me.” But she said no more.

“Have you come to any definite understanding with Mr. Carradyne in regard to Peacock’s Range, Eliza?”

“He will not come to any; he is civilly obstinate over it. Laughs in my face with the most perfect impudence, and tells me: ‘A man must be allowed to put in his own claim to his own house, when he wants to do so.’”

“Well, Eliza, that seems to be only right and fair. Peveril made no positive agreement with us, remember.”

“Is it right and fair? That may be your opinion, Philip, but it is not mine. We shall see, Mr. Harry Carradyne!”

“Dinner is served, ma’am,” announced the old butler.

That evening passed. Sunday passed, the last day of the dying year; and Monday morning, New Year’s Day, dawned.

New Year’s Day. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn were seated at the breakfast-table. It was a bright, cold, sunny morning, showing plenty of blue sky. Young Master Walter, in consideration of the day, was breakfasting at their table, seated in his high chair.

“Me to have dinner wid mamma to-day! Me have pudding!”

“That you shall, my sweetest; and everything that’s good,” assented his mother.

In came Japhet at this juncture. “There’s a little boy in the hall, sir, asking to see you,” said he to his master.“He——”

“Oh, we shall have plenty of boys here to-day, asking for a new year’s gift,” interposed Mrs. Hamlyn, rather impatiently. “Send him a shilling, Philip.”

“It’s not a poor boy, ma’am,” answered Japhet, “but a little gentleman: six or seven years old, he looks. He says he particularly wants to see master.”

Philip Hamlyn smiled. “Particularly wants a shilling, I expect. Send him in, Japhet.”

The lad came in. A well-dressed beautiful boy, refined in looks and demeanour, bearing in his face a strange likeness to Mr. Hamlyn. He looked about timidly.

Eliza, struck with the resemblance, gazed at him. Her husband spoke. “What do you want with me, my lad?”

“If you please, sir, are you Mr. Hamlyn?” asked the child, going forward with hesitating steps. “Are you my papa?”

Every drop of blood seemed to leave Philip Hamlyn’s face and fly to his heart. He could not speak, and looked white as a ghost.

“Who are you? What is your name?” imperiously demanded Philip’s wife.

“It is Walter Hamlyn,” replied the lad, in clear, pretty tones.

And now it was Mrs. Hamlyn’s turn to look white. Walter Hamlyn?—the name of her own dear son! when she had expected him to say Sam Smith, or John Jones! What insolence some people had!

“Where do you come from, boy? Who sent you here?”she reiterated.

“I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold, and was in bed all last week.”

Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his heart that the earth would open and engulf him. “Eliza, my love, allow me to deal with this matter,” he said, his voice taking a low, tender, considerate tone. “I will question the boy in another room. Some mistake, I reckon.”

“No, Philip, you must put your questions before me,”she said, resolute in her anger. “What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however disreputable it may be.”

“I dare not tell you,” he gasped; “it is not—I fear—the disreputable thing you may be fancying.”

“Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman‘papa’?” she passionately demanded of the child.

“Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before because of not wishing to part from me.”

Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. “Where were you born?”

“At Calcutta; that’s in India. Mamma brought me home in the Clipper of the Seas, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in it, though papa thought so.”

The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the whole truth now, staggered in terror.

“Philip! Philip! is it true? Was it this you feared?”

He made a motion of assent and covered his face.“Heaven knows I would rather have died.”

He stood back against the window-curtains, that they might shade his pain. She fell into a chair and wished hehad died, years before.

But what was to be the end of it all? Though Eliza Hamlyn went straight out and despatched that syren of the golden hair with a poison-tipped bodkin (and possibly her will might be good to do it), it could not make things any the better for herself.

III

New Year’s Night at Leet Hall, and the banquet in full swing—but not, as usual, New Year’s Eve.

Captain Monk headed his table, the parson, Robert Grame, at his right hand, Harry Carradyne on his left. Whether it might be that the world, even that out-of-the-way part of it, Church Leet, was improving in manners and morals; or whether the Captain himself was changing: certain it was that the board was not the free board it used to be. Mrs. Carradyne herself might have sat at it now, and never once blushed by as much as the pink of a seashell.

It was known that the chimes were to play this year; and, when midnight was close at hand, Captain Monk volunteered a statement which astonished his hearers. Rimmer, the butler, had come into the room to open the windows.

“I am getting tired of the chimes, and all people have not liked them,” spoke the Captain in slow, distinct tones. “I have made up my mind to do away with them, and you will hear them to-night, gentlemen, for the last time.”

“Really, Uncle Godfrey!” cried Harry Carradyne, in most intense surprise.

“I hope they’ll bring us no ill-luck to-night!” continued Captain Monk as a grim joke, disregarding Harry’s remark.“Perhaps they will, though, out of sheer spite, knowing they’ll never have another chance of it. Well, well, they’re welcome. Fill your glasses, gentlemen.”

Rimmer was throwing up the windows. In another minute the church clock boomed out the first stroke of twelve, and the room fell into a dead silence. With the last stroke the Captain rose, glass in hand.

“A happy New Year to you, gentlemen! A happy New Year to us all. May it bring to us health and prosperity!”

“And God’s blessing,” reverently added Robert Grame aloud, as if to remedy an omission.

Ring, ring, ring! Ah, there it came, the soft harmony of the chimes, stealing up through the midnight air. Not quite as loudly heard perhaps, as usual, for there was no wind to waft it, but in tones wondrously clear and sweet. Never had the strains of “The Bay of Biscay” brought to the ear more charming melody. How soothing it was to those enrapt listeners; seeming to tell of peace.

But soon another sound arose to mingle with it. A harsh, grating sound, like the noise of wheels passing over gravel. Heads were lifted; glances expressed surprise. With the last strains of the chimes dying away in the distance, a carriage of some kind galloped up to the hall door.

Eliza Hamlyn alighted from it—with her child and its nurse. As quickly as she could make opportunity after that scene enacted in her breakfast-room in London in the morning, that is, as soon as her husband’s back was turned, she had quitted the house with the maid and child, to take the train for home, bringing with her—it was what she phrased it—her shameful tale.

A tale that distressed Mrs. Carradyne to sickness. A tale that so abjectly terrified Captain Monk, when it was imparted to him on Tuesday morning, as to take every atom of fierceness out of his composition.

“Not Hamlyn’s wife!” he gasped. “Eliza!”

“No, not his wife,” she retorted, a great deal too angry herself to be anything but fierce and fiery. “That other woman, that false first wife of his, was not drowned, as was set forth, and she has come to claim him with their son.”

“His wife; their son,” muttered the Captain as if he were bewildered. “Then what are you?—what is your son? Oh, my poor Eliza.”

“Yes, what are we? Papa, I will bring him to answer for it before his country’s tribunal—if there be law in the land.”

No one spoke to this. It may have occurred to them to remember that Mr. Hamlyn could not legally be punished for what he did in innocence. Captain Monk opened the glass doors and walked on to the terrace, as if the air of the room were oppressive. Eliza went out after him.

“Papa,” she said, “there now exists all the more reason for your making my darling your heir. Let it be settled without delay. He must succeed to Leet Hall.”

Captain Monk looked at his daughter as if not understanding her. “No, no, no,” he said. “My child, you forget; trouble must be obscuring your faculties. None but a legal descendant of the Monks could be allowed to have Leet Hall. Besides, apart from this, it is already settled. I have seen for some little time now how unjust it would be to supplant Harry Carradyne.”

“Is he to be your heir? Is it so ordered?”

“Irrevocably. I have told him so this morning.”

“What am I to do?” she wailed in bitter despair.“Papa, what is to become of me—and of my unoffending child?”

“I don’t know: I wish I did know. It will be a cruel blight upon us all. You will have to live it down, Eliza. Ah, child, if you and Katherine had only listened to me, and not made those rebellious marriages!”

He turned away as he spoke in the direction of the church, to see that his orders were being executed there. Harry Carradyne ran after him. The clock was striking midday as they entered the churchyard.

Yes, the workmen were at their work—taking down the bells.

“If the time were to come over again, Harry,” began Captain Monk as they were walking homeward, he leaning upon his nephew’s arm, “I wouldn’t have them put up. They don’t seem to have brought luck somehow, as the parish has been free to say. Not but that it must be utter nonsense.”

“Well, no, they don’t, uncle,” assented Harry.

“As one grows in years, one gets to look at things differently, lad. Actions that seemed laudable enough when one’s blood was young and hot, crop up again then, wearing another aspect. But for those chimes, poor West would not have died as he did. I have had him upon my mind a good bit lately.”

Surely Captain Monk was wonderfully changing! And he was leaning heavily upon Harry’s arm.

“Are you tired, uncle? Would you like to sit down on this bench and rest?”

“No, I’m not tired. It’s West I’m thinking about. He lies on my mind sadly. And I never did anything for the wife or child to atone to them! It’s too late now—and has been this many a year.”

Harry Carradyne’s heart began to beat a little. Should he say what he had been hoping to say sometime? He might never have a better opportunity than this.

“Uncle Godfrey,” he spoke in low tones, “would you—would you like to see Mr. West’s daughter? His wife has been dead a long while; but—would you like to see her—Alice?”

“Ay,” fervently spoke the old man. “If she be in the land of the living, bring her to me. I’ll tell her how sorry I am, and how I would undo the past if I could. And I’ll ask her if she’ll be to me as a daughter.”

So then Harry Carradyne told him all. It was Alice West who was already under his roof, and who, fate and fortune permitting, Heaven permitting, would sometime be Alice Carradyne.

Down sat Captain Monk on a bench of his own accord. Tears rose to his eyes. The sudden revulsion of feeling was great: and truly he was a changed man.

“You spoke of Heaven, Harry. I shall begin to think it has forgiven me. Let us be thankful.”

But Captain Monk found he had more to thank Heaven for ere many minutes had elapsed. As Harry Carradyne sat by him in silence, marvelling at the change, yet knowing that the grievous blow which was making havoc of Eliza had effected the completeness of the subduing, he caught sight of an approaching fly. Another fly from the railway station at Evesham.

“How dare you come here, you villain!” shouted Captain Monk, rising in threatening anger, as the fly’s inmate called to the driver to stop and began to get out of it. “Are you not ashamed to show your face to me, after the evil you have inflicted upon my daughter?”

Philip Hamlyn, smiling kindly and calmly, caught Captain Monk’s lifted hands. “No evil, sir,” he said, soothingly.“It was all a mistake. Eliza is my true and lawful wife.”

“Eh? What’s that?” said the Captain quite in a whisper, his lips trembling.

Quietly Philip Hamlyn explained. He had taken the previous day to investigate the matter, and had followed his wife down by a night train. His first wife was dead. She had been drowned in the Clipper of the Seas, as was supposed. The child was saved, with his nurse: the only two passengers who were saved. The nurse made her way to a place in the south of France, where, as she knew, her late mistress’s sister lived, Mrs. O’Connett, formerly Miss Sophia Pratt. Mrs. O’Connett, a young widow, had just lost her only child, a boy about the age of the little one rescued from the cruel seas. She seized on him with feverish avidity, adopted him as her own, quitted the place for another Anglo-French town where she was not previously known, taught the child to call her “Mamma,” and had never let it transpire that the boy was not hers. But now, after the lapse of a few years, Mrs. O’Connett was on the eve of marriage with an Irish Major. To him she told the truth; and, as he did not want to marry the child as well as herself, he persuaded her to return him to his father. Mrs. O’Connett brought the child to London, ascertained Mr. Hamlyn’s address, and all about him, and watched about to speak to him, alone if possible, unknown to his wife. Remembering what had been the behaviour of the child’s mother, she was by no means sure of a good reception from Philip himself, or what adverse influence might be brought to bear by the new ties he had formed. Mrs. O’Connett had the same remarkable and lovely hair that her sister had had, whom she very much resembled; she had also a talent for underhand ways.

That was the truth—and I have had to tell it in a nutshell, space growing limited. Philip Hamlyn had ascertained it all beyond possibility of dispute, had seen Mrs. O’Connett, and had brought down the good tidings.

Of all the curious sights this record has afforded, perhaps the most surprising was to see Captain Monk pass his arm lovingly within that of Philip Hamlyn and march off with him to Leet Hall as if he were a prize to be coveted. “Here he is, Eliza,” said he; “he has come to cheer both you and me.”

For once in her life Eliza Hamlyn was subdued to meekness. She kissed her husband and shed happy tears. She was his lawful wife, and the little one was his lawful child. True, there was an elder son; but, compared with what had been feared, that was a slight evil.

“We must make them true brothers, Eliza,” whispered Philip Hamlyn. “They shall share alike all I have and all I leave behind me. And our own little one must be called James in future.”

“And you and I will be good friends from henceforth,”cried Captain Monk warmly, clasping Philip Hamlyn’s ready hand. “I have been to blame in more ways than one, giving the reins unduly to my arbitrary temper. It seems to me, however, that life holds enough of real angles for us without creating any for ourselves.”

And surely it did seem, as Mrs. Carradyne would have liked to point out aloud, that those chimes had been fraught with messages of evil. For had not all these blessings set in with their removal?—even in the very hour that their fate was sealed!

Harry Carradyne had drawn his uncle from the room; he now came in again, bringing Alice West. Her face was a picture of agitation, for she had been made known to Captain Monk. Harry led her up to Mrs. Hamlyn, with a beaming smile and a whisper.

“Eliza, as we seem to be going in generally for amenities, won’t you give just a little corner of your heart to her? We owe her some reparation for the past. It is her father who lies in that grave at the north end of the churchyard.”

Eliza started. “Her father! Poor George West her father?”

“Even so.”

Just a moment’s struggle with her rebellious spirit and Mrs. Hamlyn stooped to kiss the trembling girl. “Yes, Alice, we do owe you reparation amongst us, and we must try to make it,” she said heartily. “I see how it is: you will reign here with Harry; and I think he will be able, after all, to let us keep Peacock’s Range.”

There came a grand wedding, Captain Monk himself giving Alice away. But Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn did not retain Peacock’s Range; they and their boys, the two Walters, had to look out for another local residence; for Mrs. Carradyne retired to Peacock’s Range herself. Now that Leet Hall had a young mistress, she deemed it policy to quit it; though it should have as much of her as it pleased as a visitor. And Captain Godfrey Monk made himself happier in these peaceful days than he had ever been in his stormy ones.

And that’s the history. If I had to begin it again, I don’t think I should write it; for I have had to take its details from other people—chiefly from the Squire and old Mr. Sterling, of the Court. There’s nothing of mine in it, so to say, and it has been only a bother.

And those unfortunate chimes have nearly passed out of memory with the lapse of years. The “Silent Chimes”they are always called when, by chance, allusion is made to them, and will be so called for ever.

THE END—Sixth Series

ENDNOTES—First Series

Endnote 1: A small plain bun sold in Worcester.

Endnote 2: A superstition obtaining amongst some of the lower orders in France.

Endnote 3: Written for the January number of The Argosy, 1872.

Endnote 4: The old East window: not the new one.

ENDNOTES—Second Series

Endnote 1: But old Mrs. Layne did not burn the letter: or else it would never have found its way into Duffham’s collection. She was content to put it off from day to day just as people do put things off; and it was never done.—J.L.

Endnote 2: This paper, “Anne,” ought to have been inserted before some of the papers which have preceded it, as the events it treats of took place at an earlier date.

ENDNOTE—Fifth Series

Endnote 1: Christina G. Rossetti.