CHAPTER II

HIS STORY

I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance in town was limited, and partly because I cared little for it. But these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. All three had a holiday flavour about them wholesome to recall in Scotland Yard; and as I had expected that, playtime over, I should see no more of them, I was pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me, and pleased also--foreseeing that we should kill our fish over again--to regard his invitation to dine at a quarter to eight as a royal command.

But if I took it so, I was wanting in the regal courtesy to match. What with one delay owing to work which would admit of none, and another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was fifteen minutes after the hour named when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately man, so like the Queen's Counsel, that it was plain upon whom the latter modelled himself, ushered me into the dining-room, where Guest greeted me kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part--for preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I unfolded my napkin, to say, "Clear, if you please," and then I was free to turn and apologise to her--feeling a little shy, and being, as I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.

I think that I never saw so remarkable a likeness--to her younger sister--in my life. She might have been little Bab herself, but for her dress and, of course, some differences. Miss Guest could not be more than nineteen, in form almost as fairy-like as the little one, and with the same child-like innocent look in her face. She had the big, grey eyes, too, that were so charming in Bab; but hers were more tender and thoughtful, and a thousand times more charming. Her hair too was brown and wavy; only, instead of hanging loose or in a pig-tail anywhere and anyhow in a fashion I well remembered, it was coiled in a coronal on the shapely little head, that looked Greek, and in its gracious, stately, old-fashioned pose was quite unlike Bab's. Her dress, of some creamy, gauzy stuff, revealed the prettiest white throat in the world, and arms decked in pearls, and these, of course, no more recalled my little fishing mate than the sedate self-possession and dignity of the girl, as she talked to her other neighbour, suggested Bab making pancakes and chattering with the landlady's children in her wonderfully acquired Norse. It was not Bab in fact: and yet it might have been: an etherealised, queenly womanly Bab, who presently turned to me--

"Have you quite settled down after your holiday?" she asked, staying the apologies I was for pouring into her ear.

"I had until this evening, but the sight of your father is like a breath of fiord air. I hope your sisters are well."

"My sisters?" she murmured wonderingly, her fork half-way to her pretty mouth and her attitude one of questioning.

"Yes," I said, rather puzzled. "You know they were with your father when I had the good fortune to meet him. Miss Clare and Bab."

She dropped her fork on the plate with a great clatter.

"Perhaps I should say Miss Clare and Miss Bab."

I really began to feel uncomfortable. Her colour rose, and she looked me in the face in an odd way as if she resented the inquiry. It was a relief to me, when, with some show of confusion, she faltered, "Oh, yes, I beg your pardon, of course they were! How very foolish of me. They are quite well, thank you," and so was silent again. But I understood now. Mr. Guest had omitted to mention my name, and she had taken me for some one else of whose holiday she knew. I gathered from the aspect of the table and the room that the Guests saw much company, and it was a very natural mistake, though by the grave look she bent upon her plate it was clear that the young hostess was taking herself to task for it: not without, if I might judge from the lurking smile at the corners of her mouth, a humorous sense of the slip, and perhaps of the difference between myself and the gentleman whose part I had been unwittingly supporting. Meanwhile I had a chance of looking at her unchecked; and thought of Dresden china, she was so dainty.

"You were nearly drowned, or something of the kind, were you not?" she asked, after an interval during which we had both talked to others.

"Well, not precisely. Your sister fancied I was in danger, and behaved in the pluckiest manner--so bravely that I can almost feel sorry that the danger was not real to dignify her heroism."

"That was like her," she answered in a tone just a little scornful. "You must have thought her a terrible tom-boy."

While she was speaking there came one of those dreadful lulls in the talk, and Mr. Guest, overhearing, cried, "Who is that you are abusing, my dear? Let us all share in the sport. If it's Clare, I think I can name one who is a far worse hoyden upon occasion."

"It is no one of whom you have ever heard, father," she answered, archly. "It is a person in whom Mr.--Mr. Herapath--" I had murmured my name as she stumbled--"and I are interested. Now tell me, did you not think so?" she murmured, leaning the slightest bit towards me, and opening her eyes as they looked into mine in a way that to a man who had spent the day in a dusty room in Great Scotland Yard was sufficiently intoxicating.

"No," I said, lowering my voice in imitation of hers. "No, Miss Guest, I did not think so at all. I thought your sister a brave little thing, rather careless as children are, but likely to grow into a charming girl."

I wondered, marking how she bit her lip and refrained from assent, whether there might not be something of the shrew about my beautiful neighbour. Her tone when she spoke of her sister seemed to import no great goodwill.

"You think so?" she said, after a pause. "Do you know," with a laughing glance, "that some people think I am like her?"

"Yes," I answered, gravely. "Well, I should be able to judge, who have seen you both and am not an old friend. And I think you are both like and unlike. Your sister has beautiful eyes"--she lowered hers swiftly--"and hair like yours, but her manner and style are different. I can no more fancy Bab in your place than I can picture you, Miss Guest, as I saw her for the first time--and on many after occasions," I added, laughing as much to cover my own hardihood as at the queer little figure I conjured up.

"Thank you," she replied--and for some reason she blushed to her ears. "That, I think, must be enough of compliments for to-night--as you are not an old friend." And she turned away, leaving me to curse my folly in saying so much, when our acquaintance was in the bud, and as susceptible to over-warmth as to a temperature below zero.

A moment later the ladies left us. The flush I had brought to her cheek lingered, as she swept past me with a wondrous show of dignity in one so young. Mr. Guest came down and took her place, and we talked of the "land of berries," and our adventures there, while the rest--older friends--listened indulgently or struck in from time to time with their own biggest fish and deadliest flies.

I used to wonder why women like to visit dusty chambers; why, they get more joy--I am fain to think they do--out of a scrambling tea up three pairs of stairs in Pump Court, than from the same materials--and comfort withal--in their own house. I imagine it is for the same reason that the bachelor finds a charm in a lady's drawing-room, and there, if anywhere, sees her with a reverent mind. A charm and a subservience which I felt to the full in the Guests' drawing-room--a room rich in subdued colours and a cunning blending of luxury and comfort. Yet it depressed me. I felt myself alone. Mr. Guest had passed on to others and I stood aside, the sense that I was not of these people troubling me in a manner as new as it was absurd: for I had been in the habit of rather despising "society." Miss Guest was at the piano, the centre of a circle of soft light, which showed up a keen-faced, close-shaven man leaning over her with the air of one used to the position. Every one else was so fully engaged that I may have looked, as well as felt, forlorn; at any rate, meeting her eyes I could have fancied she was regarding me with amusement--almost with triumph. It must have been mere fancy, bred of self-consciousness, for the next moment she beckoned me to her, and said to her cavalier--

"There, Jack, Mr. Herapath is going to talk to me about Norway now, so that I don't want you any longer. Perhaps you won't mind stepping up to the schoolroom--Fräulein and Clare are there--and telling Clare, that--that--oh, anything."

There is no piece of ill-breeding so bad to my mind as for a man who is at home in a house to flaunt his favour in the face of other guests. That young man's manner as he left her, and the smile of intelligence which passed between them, were such a breach of good manners as would have ruffled any one. They ruffled me--yes, me, although it was no concern of mine what she called him, or how he conducted himself--so that I could do nothing but stand by the piano and sulk. One bear makes another, you know.

She did not speak; and I, content to watch the slender hands stealing over the keys, would not, until my eyes fell upon her right wrist. She had put off her bracelets and so disclosed a scar upon it, something about which--not its newness--so startled me that I said abruptly, "That is very strange! Pray tell me how you did it?"

She looked up, saw what I meant, and stopping hastily, put on her bracelets; to all appearances so vexed by my thoughtless question, and anxious to hide the mark, that I was quick to add humbly, "I asked because your sister hurt her wrist in nearly the same place on the day when she thought I was in trouble. And the coincidence struck me."

"Yes, I remember," she answered, looking at me I thought with a certain suspicion, as though she were not sure that I was giving the right motive. "I did this in the same way. By falling, I mean. Isn't it a hateful disfigurement?"

It was no disfigurement. Even to her, with a woman's love of conquest it must have seemed anything but a disfigurement--had she known what the quiet, awkward man at her side was thinking, who stood looking shyly at it and found no words to contradict her, though she asked him twice, and thought him stupid enough. A great longing for that soft, scarred wrist was on me--and Miss Guest had added another to the number of her slaves. I don't know now why the blemish should have so touched me any more than I could then guess why, being a commonplace person, I should fall in love at first sight and feel no surprise at my condition, but only a half-consciousness that in some former state of being I had met my love, and read her thoughts, and learned her moods; and come to know the womanly spirit that looked from her eyes as well as if she were an old friend. But so vivid was this sensation, that once or twice, then and afterwards, when I would meet her glance, another name than hers trembled on my tongue and passed away before I could shape it into sound.

After an interval, "Are you going to the Goldmace's dance?" she asked.

"No," I answered her, humbly. "I go out so little."

"Indeed?" with an odd smile not too kindly. "I wish--no I don't--that we could say the same. We are engaged, I think"--she paused, her attention divided between myself and Boccherini's minuet, the low strains of which she was sending through the room--"for every afternoon--this week--except Saturday. By the way, Mr. Herapath--do you remember what was the name--Bab told me you called her?"

"Bonnie Bab," I answered absently. My thoughts had gone forward to Saturday. We are always dropping to-day's substance for the shadow of tomorrow; like the dog--a dog was it not?--in the fable.

"Oh, yes, Bonnie Bab," she murmured softly. "Poor Bab!" and suddenly she cut short Boccherini's music and our chat by striking a terrific discord and laughing at my start of discomfiture. Every one took it as a signal to leave. They all seemed to be going to meet her next day, or the day after that. They engaged her for dances, and made up a party for the play, and tossed to and fro a score of laughing catch-words, that were beyond my comprehension. They all did this, except myself.

And yet I went away with something before me--the call upon Saturday afternoon. Quite unreasonably I fancied that I should see her alone. And so when the day came and I stood outside the opening door of the drawing-room, and heard voices and laughter behind it, I was hurt and aggrieved beyond measure. There was a party, and a merry one, assembled; who were playing at some game as it seemed to me, for I caught sight of Clare whipping off an impromptu bandage from her eyes, and striving by her stiffest air to give the lie to a pair of flushed cheeks. The close-shaven man was there, and two men of his kind, and a German governess, and a very old lady in a wheel-chair, who was called "grandmamma," and Miss Guest herself looking, in the prettiest dress of silvery plush, as bright and fair and graceful as I had been picturing her each hour since we parted.

She dropped me a stately courtesy. "Will you be blindfold, or will you play the part of Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, Mr. Herapath, while I say 'Fudge!' or will you burn nuts and play games with this gentleman--he is neighbour Flamborough? You will join us, won't you? Clare does not so misbehave every day, only it is a wet afternoon and so cold and wretched, and we did not think there would be any more callers--and tea will be up in five minutes."

She did not think there would be any more callers! Something in her smile belied the words and taught me that she had thought--she had known--that there would be one more caller--one who would burn nuts and play games with her, though Rome itself were afire, and Tooley Street and the Mile End Road to boot.

It was a simple game, and not likely, one would say, to afford much risk of that burning of the fingers, which gave a zest to the Vicar of Wakefield's nuts. One sat in the middle blindfolded, while the rest disguised their own or assumed each other's voices, and spoke one by one some gibe or quip at his expense. When he succeeded in naming the speaker, the detected satirist put on the poke, and in his turn heard things good--if he had a conceit of himself--for his soul's health. The _rôle_ presently fell to me, and proved a heavy one, because I was not so familiar with the others' voices as were the rest; and Miss Guest--whose faintest tones I thought I should know--had a wondrous knack of cheating me, now taking off Clare's voice, and now--after the door had been opened to admit the tea--her father's. So I failed again and again to earn my relief. But when a voice behind me cried with well-feigned eagerness--

"How nice! Do tell me all about a fire!"--then, though no fresh creaking of the door had reached me, nor warning been given of an addition to the players, I had no doubt who spoke, but exclaimed at once, "That is Bab! Now I cry you mercy. I am right this time. That was Bab!"

I looked for a burst of applause such as had before attended a good thrust home, but none came. On the contrary, with my words so odd a silence fell upon the room that it was clear that something was wrong. And I pulled off my handkerchief in haste, repeating, "That was Bab, I am sure."

But if it was, I could not see her. And what had come over them all? Jack's face wore a provoking smile, and his friends were bent upon sniggering. Clare looked startled, and grandmamma gently titillated, while Miss Guest, who had risen and turned away towards the windows, seemed to be annoyed with some one. What was the matter?

"I beg every one's pardon by anticipation," I said, looking round in a bewildered way; "but have I said anything wrong?"

"Oh, dear no," cried the fellow they called Jack, with a familiarity that was in the worst taste--as if I had meant to apologise to him! "Most natural thing in the world!"

"Jack, how dare you?" Miss Guest exclaimed, stamping her foot.

"Well, it seemed all right. It sounded natural, I am sure. Well done, I thought."

"Oh, you are unbearable! Why don't you say something, Clare? Mr. Herapath, I am sure that you did not know that my name was Barbara."

"Certainly not," I cried. "What a strange thing!"

"But it is, and that is why grandmamma is looking shocked, and Mr. Buchanan is wearing threadbare the friend's privilege of being rude. I forgive you if you will make allowance for him. And you shall come off the stool of repentance and have your tea first, since you are the greatest stranger. It is a stupid game after all!"

She would hear no apologies from me. And when I would have asked why her sister bore the same name, and so excused myself, she was intent upon tea-making, and the few moments I could with decency add to my call gave me no opportunity. I blush to think how I eked them out; by what subservience to Clare, by what a slavish anxiety to help Jack to muffins--each piece I hoped might choke him! How slow I was to find hat and gloves, calling to mind with terrible vividness, as I turned my back upon the circle, that again and again in my experience an acquaintance begun by a dinner had ended with the consequent call. And so I should have gone--it might have been so here--but the door-handle was stiff, and Miss Guest came to my aid, as I fumbled with it. "We are always at home on Saturdays, if you like to call, Mr. Herapath," she murmured carelessly--and I found myself in the street.

So carelessly she had said it that, with a sudden change of feeling, I vowed I would not call. Why should I? Why should I worry myself with the sight of other fellows parading their favour? With the babble of that society chit-chat, which I had often scorned, and--still scorned, and had no part or concern in. They were not people to suit me, or do me good. I would not go, I said, and I repeated it firmly on Monday and Tuesday; on Wednesday I so far modified it that I thought at some distant time I would leave a card--to avoid discourtesy. On Friday I preferred an earlier date as wiser and more polite, and on Saturday I walked shame-faced down the street and knocked and rang, and went upstairs--to taste a pleasant misery. Yes, and on the next Saturday too, and the next, and the next; and that one when we all went to the theatre, and that other one when Mr. Guest kept me to dinner. Ay, and on other days that were not Saturdays, among which two stand high out of the waters of forgetfulness--high days indeed--days like twin pillars of Hercules, through which I thought to reach, as did the seamen of old, I knew not what treasures of unknown lands stretching away under the setting sun. First that Wednesday on which I found Barbara Guest alone and blurted out that I had the audacity to wish to make her my wife; and then heard, before I had well--or badly--told my tale, the wheels of grandmamma's chair outside.

"Hush!" the girl said, her face turned from me. "Hush, Mr. Herapath. You don't know me, indeed. You have seen so little of me. Please say nothing more about it. You are under a delusion."

"It is no delusion that I love you, Barbara!" I cried.

"It is!" she repeated, freeing her hand. "There, if you will not take an answer--come--come at three to-morrow. But mind, I promise you nothing--I promise nothing," she added feverishly. And she fled from the room, leaving me to talk to grandmamma as best, and escape as quickly, as I might.

I longed for a great fire that evening, and failing one, I tired myself by tramping unknown streets of the East End, striving to teach myself that any trouble to-morrow might bring was but a shadow, a sentiment, a thing not to be mentioned in the same breath with the want and toil of which I caught glimpses up each street and lane that opened to right and left. In the main, I failed; but the effort did me good, sending me home tired out, to sleep as soundly as if I were going to be hanged next day, and not--which is a very different thing--to be put upon my trial.

"I will tell Miss Guest you are here, sir," the man said. I looked at all the little things in the room which I had come to know well--her work-basket, the music upon the piano, the table-easel, her photograph. And I wondered if I were to see them no more, or if they were to become a part of my everyday life. Then I heard her come in, and turned quickly, feeling that I should learn my fate from her greeting.

"Bab!" The word was wrung from me perforce. And then we stood and looked at one another, she with a strange pride and defiance in her eyes, though her cheek was dark with blushes, and I with wonder and perplexity in mine. Wonder and perplexity that grew into a conviction, a certainty that the girl standing before me in the short-skirted brown dress with tangled hair and loose neck-ribbon was the Bab I had known in Norway; and yet that the eyes--I could not mistake them now, no matter what unaccustomed look they might wear--were Barbara Guest's!

"Miss Guest--Barbara," I stammered, grappling with the truth, "why have you played this trick upon me?"

"It is Miss Guest and Barbara now," she cried, with a mocking courtesy. "Do you remember, Mr. Herapath, when it was Bab? When you treated me as a toy, and a plaything, with which you might be as intimate as you liked; and hurt my feelings--yes, it is weak to confess it, I know--day by day, and hour by hour?"

"But surely, that is forgiven now?" I said, dazed by an attack so sudden and so bitter. "It is atonement enough that I am at your feet now!"

"You are not," she retorted. "Don't say you have offered love to me, who am the same with the child you teased at Breistolen. You have fallen in love with my fine clothes, and my pearls and my maid's work! not with me. You have fancied the girl you saw other men make much of. But you have not loved the woman who might have prized that which Miss Guest has never learned to value."

"How old are you?" I said, hoarsely.

"Nineteen!" she snapped out. And then for a moment we were both silent.

"I begin to understand now," I answered as soon as I could conquer something in my throat. "Long ago when I hardly knew you, I hurt your woman's pride; and since that you have plotted----"

"No, you have tricked yourself!"

"And schemed to bring me to your feet that you might have the pleasure of trampling on me. Miss Guest, your triumph is more complete than you are able to understand. I loved you this morning above all the world--as my own life--as every hope I had. See, I tell you this that you may have a moment's keener pleasure when I am gone."

"Don't! Don't!" she cried, throwing herself into a chair and covering her face.

"You have won a man's heart and cast it aside to gratify an old pique. You may rest content now, for there is nothing wanting to your vengeance. You have given me as much pain as a woman, the vainest and the most heartless, can give a man. Good-bye."

With that I was leaving her, fighting my own pain and passion, so that the little hands she raised as though they could ward off my words were nothing to me. I felt a savage delight in seeing that I could hurt her, which deadened my own grief. The victory was not all with her lying there sobbing. Only where was my hat? Let me get my hat and go. Let me escape from this room wherein every trifle upon which my eye rested awoke some memory that was a pang. Let me get away, and have done with it all.

Where was the hat? I had brought it up. I could not go without it. It must be under her chair by all that was unlucky, for it was nowhere else. I could not stand and wait, and so I had to go up to her, with cold words of apology upon my lips, and being close to her and seeing on her wrist, half hidden by fallen hair, the scar she had brought home from Norway, I don't know how it was that I fell on my knees by her and cried--

"Oh, Bab, I love you so! Let us part friends."

For a moment, silence. Then she whispered, her hand in mine, "Why did you not say Bab to begin? I told you only that Miss Guest had not learned to value your love."

"And Bab?" I murmured, my brain in a whirl.

"She learned long ago, poor girl!"

The fair, tear-stained face of my tyrant looked into mine for a moment, and then came quite naturally to its resting-place.

"Now," she said, when I was leaving, "you may have your hat, sir."

"I believe," I replied, "that you sat upon this chair on purpose."

And Bab blushed. I believe she did.

GERALD

GERALD

I have friends who tell me that they seldom walk the streets of London without wondering what is passing behind the house-fronts; without picturing a comedy here, a love-scene there, and behind the dingy cane blinds a something ill-defined, a something odd and _bizarre_. They experience--if you believe them--a sense of loneliness out in the street, an impatience of the sameness of all these many houses, their dull bricks and discreet windows, and a longing that some one would step out and ask them to enter and see the play.

Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was passing through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street, something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such people.

I was passing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the pavement and struck across the road to the path round the oval garden; which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge Street, I had an advantage over persons on the pavement. They were under the lamps, while I, coming from the shadow under the trees, was invisible.

The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was open, and standing at it was an elderly man-servant out of livery, who looked up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as I stepped upon the pavement beside him. My surprise was great when he uttered an exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he would retreat; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood, returning his gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, he cried, "Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang in the stillness more like a wail than an ordinary cry.

My name, my surname I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger; and my heart began to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I pulled from the lower part of my face the silk muffler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had been suffering from a sore throat.

He came nearer and peered more closely at me and I dismissed my fear; for I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable, seeing that his plump features were those of a man with whom the world went well, regained some of its lost colour, and a sigh of relief passed his lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place to his previous state of expectancy of something.

"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pass on. At that moment I could have sworn--I would have given one hundred to one twice over--that he was going to say yes. To my immense astonishment, he did not. With a visible effort he said "No!"

"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.

"No, sir."

"Then what is it?" I said. "What do you want, my good fellow?"

Watching his shuffling indeterminate manner I wondered if he were sane. His next answer reassured me. There was an almost desperate deliberation in his manner. "My master wishes to see you, sir," was what he said, "if you will kindly walk in for five minutes."

I should have replied, "Who is your master?" if I had been wise; or cried, "Nonsense!" and gone my way. But often the mind when it is spurred by an emergency over-runs the more obvious course to adopt a worse. It was possible that one of my intimates had taken the house, and said in his butler's presence that he wished to see me. Thinking of that I answered, "Are you sure? Have you not made a mistake, my man?"

With a sullenness that was new in him, he said, No, he had not. Would I please to walk in? He stepped forward as he spoke, and induced me by a kind of urgency to enter the house, taking from me with the ease of a trained servant my hat, coat, and muffler. Finding himself in the course of his duties he gained composure; while I, being thus treated, lost my sense of the strangeness of the proceeding, and only awoke to a full consciousness of my position when he had shut the door behind us and was putting up the chain.

Then I confess I looked round, alarmed at my easiness. But I found the hall spacious, lofty, and dark-panelled, the ordinary hall of an old London house. The big fireplace was filled with plants in flower. There were rugs on the floor and a number of chairs with painted crests on the backs, and in a corner was an old sedan chair, its poles upright against the wall.

No other servants were visible. But apart from this all was in order, all was quiet, and the notion of violence was manifestly absurd.

At the same time the affair seemed of the strangest. Why should the butler in charge of a well-arranged and handsome house--the house of an ordinary wealthy gentleman--why should he hang about the open doorway as if anxious to feel the presence of his kind? Why should he show the excitement, even the terror, which I had witnessed? Why should he introduce a stranger?

I had reached this point when he led the way upstairs. The staircase was wide, the steps were low and broad. On either side at the head of the flight stood a Venus of white Parian marble. They were not common reproductions, and I paused. I could see beyond them a Hercules and a Meleager, and delicately tinted draperies and ottomans that under the light of a silver hanging-lamp--a gem from Malta--changed a mere lobby to a fairies' nook. The sight filled me with a certain suspicion; which was dispelled, however, when my hand rested for an instant upon the pedestal that supported one of the statues. The cold touch of the marble was enough. The pillars were not of composite; as they certainly would have been in a gaming-house, or worse.

Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him again. His impatience was so ill-concealed that I was not surprised, though I was taken aback, when he dropped the mask. As I passed him--it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room were occupied--he laid a trembling hand on my arm and thrust his face close to mine. "Ask how he is!" he whispered, trembling. "Say anything, no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five minutes!"

He gave me a gentle push as he spoke--pleasant all this!--and announced in a loud quavering voice, "Mr. George!"--which was true enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long dimly-lighted room, fell with a brisk rattling sound. This was followed by the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet.

Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore grey moustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still seated. He regarded me with a perfectly unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and he was as good-looking in a different way. But his face was white and, unless I was mistaken, was distorted by the same terror--ay, and a darker terror than that which I had surprised in the servant's features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider--and done it twice. In that quiet drawing-room by the side of his placid companion, with nothing in their surroundings to account for his emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.

They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess-table, its men in disorder. Almost touching this was another small table bearing a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was resting one hand as if but for its support he would have fallen.

To add one more fact; I had never seen either of them in my life.

Or wait; could that be true? If so, I must be dreaming. For the elder man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet ordinary tone that matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.

"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.

"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoarse as a raven. You have a bad cold. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with anxiety.

"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to this astonishing reception--this evident concern for my welfare on the part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.

"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, pleasure!

It was otherwise with his companion. He had made no advances to me, spoken no word, scarcely altered his position. His eyes he had never taken from me. Yet there was a change in him. He had discovered his mistake, as the butler had discovered his. The terror was gone from his face, and a malevolence not much more pleasant to witness had taken its place. Why this did not break out in an active form was part of the mystery given to me to solve. I could only surmise from glances which he cast from time to time towards the door, and from the occasional creaking of a board in that direction, that his self-restraint had to do with my friend the butler. The inconsequences of dreamland ran through it all. Why the elder man remained in error; why the younger with that passion on his face was tongue-tied; why the great house was so still; why the servant should have mixed me up with the business at all--these were questions as unanswerable, one as the other.

And the fog in my mind grew denser when the old gentleman turned from me as if my presence were a usual thing, and rapped the table before him. "Now, Gerald!" he cried in sharp tones, "have you put those pieces back? Good heavens! I am glad that I have not nerves like yours! Don't remember the squares, boy? Here, give them to me!" With a hasty gesture of his hand, something like a mesmeric pass over the board, he sat down the half-dozen pieces with a rapid tap! tap! tap! which made it abundantly clear that he, at any rate, had no doubt of their various positions.

"You will not mind sitting by until we have finished the game?" he continued, speaking to me, in a voice more genial than that which he had used to Gerald. "I suppose you are anxious to talk to me about your letter, George?" he went on when I did not answer. "The fact is that I have not read the enclosure. Barnes, as usual, read the outer letter, in which you said the matter was private and of grave importance; and I intended to go to Laura to-morrow, as you suggested, and get her to read the other to me. Now you have returned so soon, I am glad that I did not trouble her."

"Just so, sir," I said, listening with all my ears; and wondering.

"Well, I hope there is nothing very bad the matter, my boy?" he replied. "However--Gerald! it is your move! Ten minutes more of such play as your brother's, and I shall be at your service."

Gerald made a hurried move, the piece rattling upon the board as if he had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why should Barnes--now behind the screen listening--have read the outer letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his--Ah! That much was disclosed. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made another of those passes over the board, and I learned from it what an ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with the placid face and light blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind!

I began to see more clearly now. And from this moment I took up, in my own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled me into the middle of the scene had had good reasons for doing so, as I began to discern. But with a clue to the labyrinth in my hand I could no longer move passively. I must act for myself. For a while I sat still and made no sign. But my suspicions were presently confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for playing slowly; in one of the intervals caused by his opponent's indecision he took from an inside pocket of his waistcoat a small packet.

"You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, now you are here. Gerald will leave us presently."

He held the papers towards me. To take them was to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eyeing the packet with an intense greed, with a trembling longing--a very itching of the fingers, to fall upon the prey--that put an end to my doubts. I took the papers. With a quiet, but I think a significant, look in his direction, I placed them in the breast-pocket of my coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone.

"Very well, sir," I said. "There is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow."

"So much the better. You ought not to be out with such a cold, my boy," he continued. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon? The servants are all at the theatre--Gerald begged a holiday for them--but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."

"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted--time to think; five minutes to myself, while they played.

But I was out in my reckoning. "I will have mine also now," he said. "Will you mix it, Gerald?"

Gerald jumped up to do it with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself, when he should have attended to his father--if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that they were the object of whatever deviltry was on foot; and that possession of them gave me the whip-hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.

Perhaps I was a little too confident; a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the whip-hand. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued: it contained, I know not what note of warning. I glanced up with a conviction that I was napping, and looked instinctively towards the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of something--perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket, I was removing my eyes, when I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him.

What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless--I could fancy him breathless also--a listening expression on his face; which seemed to me to have faded to a greyish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler; the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as thought could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and turning as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess-table, and set it down unsteadily.

What had I seen! Actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly.

"Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass, "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it."

He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. The young man's colour, though he faced me hardily, shifted, and he seemed to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives-balls. But his eyes met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of triumph. I was persuaded that all was right before his father said so.

"Perhaps you have mixed for me?" I suggested pleasantly.

"No!" he answered in sullen defiance. He filled a glass with something--perhaps it was water--and drank it, his back towards me. He had not spoken so much as a single word to me before.

The blind man's ear recognized the tone. "I wish you boys would agree better," he said wearily. "Gerald, go to bed. I would as soon play chess with an idiot from Earlswood. Generally you can play the game if you are good for nothing else; but since your brother came in, you have not made a move which any one save an imbecile would make. Go to bed, boy! Go to bed!"

I had stepped to the table while he spoke. One of the glasses was full. I lifted it with seeming unconcern to my nose. There was whisky in it as well as water. Then _had_ Gerald mixed for me? At any rate, I put the tumbler aside, and helped myself afresh. When I set the glass down--and empty, my mind was made up.

"Gerald does not seem inclined to move, sir," I said quietly, "so I will. I will call in the morning and discuss that matter, if it will suit you. To-night I feel inclined to get to bed early."

"Quite right, my boy. I would ask you to take a bed here instead of turning out, but I suppose that Laura will be expecting you. Come in to-morrow morning. Shall Barnes call a cab for you?"

"I think I will walk," I answered, shaking the proffered hand. "By the way, sir," I added, "have you heard who is the new Home Secretary?"

"Yes, Henry Matthews," he replied. "Gerald told me. He had heard it at the club."

"It is to be hoped that he will have no womanish scruples about capital punishment," I said as if I were incidentally considering the appointment. And with that last shot at Mr. Gerald--he turned green, I thought, a colour which does not go well with a black moustache--I walked out of the room, which looked so peaceful, so cosy, so softly lighted, I went downstairs. I hoped that I had paralysed the young fellow, and might leave the house without molestation.

But as I gained the foot of the stairs he tapped me on the shoulder. I saw then, looking at him, that I had mistaken my man. Every trace of the defiance which had marked his manner upstairs was gone. His face was still pale, but it wore a smile as we confronted one another under the hall lamp. "I have not the pleasure of knowing you, but let me thank you for your help," he said in a low voice, yet with a kind of frank spontaneity. "Barnes' idea of bringing you in was a splendid one, and I am greatly obliged to you."

"Don't mention it," I answered, proceeding with my preparations for going out, as if he were not there. Although I must confess that this complete change in him exercised my mind no little.

"I feel so sure that we may rely upon your discretion," he went on, ignoring my tone, "that I need say nothing about that. Of course, we owe you an explanation, but as the cold is yours and not my brother's, you will not mind if I read you the riddle to-morrow instead of keeping you from your bed to-night?"

"It will do equally well--indeed better," I said, putting on my overcoat, and buttoning it across my chest, while I affected to be looking with curiosity at the sedan chair.

He pointed to the place where the packet lay. "You are forgetting the papers," he reminded me. His tone almost compelled the answer, "To be sure!"

But I had made up my mind, and I answered instead, "Not at all. They are quite safe, thank you!"

"But you don't--I beg your pardon----" He opened his eyes very wide as he spoke, as if some new light were beginning to shine upon his mind and he could scarcely believe its revelations. "You don't mean that you are going to take those papers away with you?"

"Certainly."

"My dear sir!" he remonstrated earnestly. "This is preposterous. Pray forgive me the reminder, but those papers, as my father gave you to understand, are private papers, which he supposed himself to be handing to my brother George."

"Just so!" was all I said. And I took a step towards the door.

"You mean to take them?" he asked seriously.

"I do; unless you can explain the part I have played this evening. And also make it clear to me that you have a right to the possession of the papers."

"Confound it! If I must do so to-night, I must!" he said reluctantly. "I trust to your honour, sir, to keep the explanation secret." I bowed, and he went on: "My elder brother and I are in business together. Lately we have had losses which have crippled us so severely that a day or two ago we decided to disclose them to Sir Charles and ask his help. George did so yesterday by letter, giving certain notes of our liabilities. You ask why he did not make such a statement by word of mouth? Because he had to go to Liverpool at a moment's notice to make a last effort to arrange the matter. As for me," with a curious grimace, "my father would as soon discuss business with his dog! Sooner!"

"Well?" I said. He had paused, and was nicking the blossoms off the geraniums in the fireplace with his pocket-handkerchief, looking moodily at his work the while. I cannot remember noticing the handkerchief, yet I can see it now. It had a red border, and was heavily scented with white rose. "Well?"

"Well," he continued, with a visible effort, "my father has been ailing, and this morning his doctor made him see Bristowe. He is an authority on heart-disease, as you know; and his opinion is," he added in a lower voice and with some emotion, "that even a slight shock may prove fatal."

I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet was becoming as lead in my pocket.

"Of course," he resumed more briskly, "that threw our difficulties into the shade; and my first impulse was to get these papers from him. All day I have been trying in vain to effect it. I took Barnes, who is an old servant, into my confidence, but we could think of no plan. My father, like many people who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I was at my wits' end when Barnes brought you up. Your likeness," he added, looking at me reflectively, "to George put the idea into my head, I fancy. Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you announced--for a moment I thought that you were George."

"And you called up a look of the warmest welcome," I put in.

He coloured, but answered immediately, "I was afraid that he would assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out something. Good lord! if you knew the funk in which I have been all the evening lest my father should ask me to read the letter!" He gathered up his handkerchief with a sigh, and wiped his forehead.

"I could see it very plainly," I answered, going slowly over what he had told me. To tell the truth, I was in no slight quandary what I should do, or what I should believe. Was this really the key to it all? Dared I doubt it? or that that which I had constructed was a mare's nest--the mere framework of a mare's nest? For the life of me I could not tell!

"Well, sir?" he said, looking up with an offended air. "Is there anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return my property to me now?"

"There is one thing, about which I should like to ask a question," I said.

"Ask on," he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.

"Why do you carry"--I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on the word--"that little medicament--you know what I mean--in your waistcoat pocket?"

He flinched. "I don't quite--quite understand," he began to stammer. Then he changed his tone and went on rapidly, "No! I will be frank with you, Mr. Mr.----"

"George," I said.

"Ah, indeed?" a trifle surprised, "Mr. George! Well, it is something Bristowe gave me this morning to administer to my father--without his knowledge, if possible--should he grow excited. I did not think that you had seen it."

Nor had I. I had only inferred its presence. But having inferred rightly, I was inclined to trust my inference farther. Moreover, while he gave this explanation his breath came and went so quickly that my former suspicions returned. I was ready for him when he said--

"Now I will trouble you, if you please, for those papers?"

"I cannot give them to you," I replied, point blank.

"You cannot give them to me?" he repeated.

"No. Moreover the packet is sealed. I do not see, on second thoughts, what harm I can do you--now that the packet is out of your father's hands--by keeping it until to-morrow, when I will return it to your brother, from whom it came."

"He will not be in London," he answered doggedly. He stepped between me and the door with looks which I did not like. At the same time I felt that some allowance must be made for a man treated in this way.

"I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot do what you ask. I will do this, however. If you think the delay of importance, and will give me your brother's address in Liverpool, I will undertake to post the letters to him at once."

He considered the offer, eyeing me the while with the same disfavour which he had exhibited in the drawing-room. At last he said slowly--

"If you will do that?"

"I will," I repeated. "I will do it immediately."

He gave me the direction--"George Ritherdon, at the London and North-Western Hotel, Liverpool," and in return I gave him my own name and address. Then I parted from him, with a civil good night on either side--and little liking--the clocks striking midnight, and the servants coming in as I passed into the cool darkness of the square.

Late as it was, I went straight to my club, determined that, as I had assumed the responsibility, there should be no laches on my part. There I placed the packet, together with a short note explaining how it came into my possession, in an outer envelope, and dropped the whole, duly directed and stamped, into the nearest pillar-box. I could not register it at that hour, and rather than wait until next morning, I omitted the precaution, merely requesting Mr. Ritherdon to acknowledge its receipt.

Some days passed during which it may be imagined that I thought no little about my odd experience. It was the story of the Lady and the Tiger over again. I had the choice of two alternatives--at least. I might either believe the young fellow's story, which certainly had the merit of explaining in a fairly probable manner an occurrence which did not lend itself freely to explanation. Or I might disbelieve his story, plausible in its very strangeness as it was, in favour of my own vague suspicions. Which was I to do?

I set out by preferring the former alternative. This, notwithstanding that I had to some extent committed myself by withholding the papers. But with each day that passed without bringing an answer from Liverpool, I leaned more and more to the other side. I began to pin my faith to the tiger, adding each morning a point to the odds in the animal's favour. So it went on until ten days had passed.

Then a little out of curiosity, but more, I declare, because I thought it the right thing to do, I resolved to seek out George Ritherdon. I had no difficulty in learning where he could be found. I turned up the firm of Ritherdon Brothers (George and Gerald), cotton-spinners and India merchants, in the first directory I consulted. And about noon the next day I called at their place of business, and sent in my card to the senior partner. I waited five minutes--curiously scanned by the porter, who without doubt saw a likeness between me and his employer--and then I was admitted to the latter's room.

He was a tall man with a fair beard, not a whit like Gerald, and yet tolerably good-looking; if I say more I shall seem to be describing myself. I fancied him to be balder about the temples, however, and greyer and more careworn than the man I am in the habit of seeing in my shaving-glass. His eyes, too, had a hard look, and he seemed to be in ill-health. All these things I took in later. At the time I only noticed his clothes. "So the old gentleman is dead," I thought, "and the young one's tale was true after all!" George Ritherdon was in deep mourning.

"I wrote to you," I began, taking the seat to which he pointed, "about a fortnight ago."

He looked at my card, which he held in his hand.

"I think not," he said slowly.

"Yes," I repeated. "You were then at the London and North-Western Hotel, at Liverpool."

He was stepping to his writing-table, but he stopped. "I was in Liverpool," he answered in a different tone, "but I was not at that hotel. You are thinking of my brother, are you not?"

"No," I said. "It was your brother who told me you were there."

"Perhaps you had better explain," he suggested, speaking in the weary tone of one returning to a painful matter, "what was the subject of your letter. I have been through a great trouble lately, and this may well have been overlooked."

I said I would, and as briefly as possible I told the story of my strange visit in Fitzhardinge Square. He was much moved, walking up and down the room as he listened, and giving vent to occasional exclamations, until I came to the arrangement I had made with his brother. Then he raised his hand as one might do in pain.

"Enough!" he said. "Barnes told me a rambling tale of some stranger. I understand it all now."

"So do I, I think!" I replied dryly. "Your brother went to Liverpool, and received the papers in your name?"

He murmured what I took for "Yes." But he did not utter a single word of acknowledgment to me, or of reprobation of his brother's deceit. I thought some such word should have been spoken; and I let my feelings carry me away. "Let me tell you," I said, warmly, "that your brother is a----"

"Hush!" he said, holding up his hand. "He is dead."

"Dead!" I repeated, shocked and amazed.

"Have you not seen it in the papers? It is in all the papers," he said wearily. "He committed suicide--God forgive me for it!--at Liverpool, at the hotel you have named, and the day after you saw him."

And so it was. He had committed some serious forgery--he had always been wild, though his father, slow to see it, had only lately closed his purse to him--and the forged signatures had come into his brother's power. He had cheated his brother before. There had long been bad blood between them, the one being as cold, business-like, and masterful as the other was idle and jealous.

"I told him," the elder said to me, shading his eyes with his hand, "that I should let him be prosecuted--that I would not protect or shelter him. The threat nearly drove him mad; and while it was hanging over him, I wrote to disclose the matter to Sir Charles. Gerald thought his last chance lay in recovering this letter unread. The proofs against him destroyed, he might laugh at me. His first attempt failed; then he planned with Barnes' cognisance to get possession of the packet by drugging my father. Barnes' courage deserted him at the last; he called you in, and--you know the rest."

"But," I said softly, "your brother did get the letter--at Liverpool."

George Ritherdon groaned. "Yes," he said, "he did. But the proofs were not in it. After writing the outside letter I changed my mind and withheld them, explaining my reasons within. He found his plot was in vain; and it was under the shock of this disappointment--the packet lay before him, re-sealed and directed to me--that he--that he did it. Poor Gerald!"

"Poor Gerald!" I said. What else remained to be said?

It may be a survival of superstition, yet, when I dine in Baker Street now, I take some care to go home by any other route than that which leads through Fitzhardinge Square.

JOANNA'S BRACELET

JOANNA'S BRACELET

On a morning early in the spring of last year, two men stood leaning against the mantelpiece of a room in one of the Government offices. The taller of the two--he who was at home in the room--was a slim, well-dressed man, wearing his hair parted in the middle, and a diamond pin in the sailor knot of his tie. He had his frock-coat open, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. The attitude denoted complacency, and the man was complacent.

"Well, the funny part of it is," he said lightly, his shoulders pressed against the mantelpiece, "that I am dining at the Burton Smiths' this evening!"

"Ah?" his companion answered, looking at him with eyes of envy. "And so you will see her?"

"Of course. She is to come to them to-day. But they do not know of our engagement yet, and as she does not want to blurt it out the moment she arrives--why, for this evening, it is a secret. Still I thought I would tell you."

He stepped away as he spoke, to straighten a red morocco-covered despatch-box, which stood on the table behind him. It bore, in addition to the flaunting gilt capitals "I.O.," a modest plate with the name "Ernest Wibberley"--his name.

The other waited until he resumed his place. Then, holding out his hand, "Well, I am glad you told me, old boy," he said. "I congratulate you most heartily, believe me."

"Thank you, Jack," Wibberley replied. "I knew you would. I rather feel myself that 'Fate cannot harm me. I have dined to-day.'"

"Happy dog!" said Jack; and presently he took himself off.

The Burton Smiths, of whom we've heard them speak, are tolerably well known in London. Burton Smith himself is a barrister with money and many relations--Irish landlords, Scotch members, Indian judges, and the like. His wife is young, gracious, and fond of society. Their drawing-rooms, though on the topmost flat of Onslow Mansions--rooms with sloping ceilings and a dozen quaint nooks and corners--are seldom empty during the regulation hours.

This particular dinner-party had been planned with some care. "Lady Linacre will come, no doubt," Mrs. Burton Smith had said one day at breakfast, conning a list she held in her hand; "and Mr. May."

But Burton Smith objected to May. "He will talk about nothing but India," he protested, "and the superiority of Calcutta to London. A little of these Bombay ducks goes a long way, my dear."

"Well, James," Mrs. Burton Smith replied placidly--the Hon. Vereker May is a son of Lord Hawthorn--"he will take me in, and I do not mind. Only I must have Mr. Wibberley on the other side to make conversation and keep me alive. Let me see--that will be three. And Joanna Burton--she comes that afternoon--four. Do you know, James, when we were at Rothley for Christmas I thought there was something between your cousin and Mr. Wibberley?"

"Then, for goodness' sake, do not let them sit together!" Burton Smith cried, "or they will talk to one another and to no one else."

"Very well," Mrs. Smith assented. "They shall sit facing one another, and Mr. Wibberley shall take in Mrs. Galantine. She will be sure to flirt with him, and we can watch Joanna's face. I shall soon see if there is anything between them."

Mr. Wibberley was a young man of some importance, if only in his capacity of private secretary to a Minister. He had a thousand acquaintances, and two friends--perhaps three. He might be something some day--was bound to be. He dressed well, looked well, and talked well. He was a little presumptuous, perhaps a trifle conceited; but women like these things in young men, and he had tact. At any rate, he had never yet found himself in a place too strait for him.

This evening as he dressed for dinner--as he brushed his hair, or paused to smile at some reflection--his own, but not in the glass--he was in his happiest mood. Everything seemed to be going well with him. He had no presentiment of evil. He was going to a house where he was appreciated. Mrs. Burton Smith was a great ally of his. And then there would be, as we know, some one else. Happy man!

"Lady Linacre," said his hostess, as she introduced him to a stout personage with white hair, a double chin, and diamonds. Wibberley bowed, making up his mind that the dowager was one of those ladies with strong prejudices, who drag their skirts together if you prove to be a Home Ruler, and leave the room if you mention Sir Charles Dilke. "Mr. May, you have met before," Mrs. Smith continued; "and you know Miss Burton, I think?"

He murmured assent, while she--Joanna--shook hands with him frankly and with the ghost of a smile, perhaps. He played his part well, for a moment; but halted in his sentence as it flashed across his mind that this was their first meeting since she had said "Yes." He recovered from his momentary embarrassment, however, before even Mrs. Burton Smith could note it, and promptly offered Mrs. Galantine his arm.

She was an old friend of his--as friends go in society. He had taken her in to dinner half a dozen times. "Who is that girl?" she asked, when they were seated; and she raised her glasses and stared through them at her _vis-à-vis_. "I declare she would be pretty if her nose were not so short."

He seized the excuse to put up his glass too, and take a long look. "It is rather short," he admitted, gazing with a whimsical sense of propriety at the deficient organ. "But some people like short noses, you know, Mrs. Galantine."

"Ah! And theatres in August!" she replied incredulously. "And drawing-room games! But, seriously, she would be pretty if it were not for that."

"Would she?" he questioned. "Well, I think she would, do you know?"

And certainly Joanna was pretty, though her forehead was too large, and her nose too small, and her lips too full. For her eyes were bright and her complexion perfect, and her face told of wit, and good temper, and freshness. She had beautiful arms, too, for a chit of nineteen. Mrs. Galantine said nothing about the arms--not out of modesty, but because her own did not form one of her strong points. Wibberley, however, was thinking of them, and whether a bracelet he had by him would fit them. He saw Joanna wore a bracelet--a sketchy gold thing. He considered whether he should take it for a pattern, or whether it might not be more pleasant to measure the wrist for himself.

But Mrs. Galantine returned to the charge. "She is a cousin, is she not?" she asked, speaking so loudly that Joanna looked across and smiled. "I have never met her before. Tell me all about her."

Tell her all about her! Wibberley gasped. He saw a difficulty in telling "all about her," the more as the general conversation was not brisk, and Joanna must bear a part. For an instant, indeed, his presence of mind failed him, and he cast an appalled glance round the table. Then he bent to his task. "Mrs. Galantine," he murmured sweetly, "pray--pray beware of becoming a potato!"

The lady dropped her knife and fork with a clatter. "A potato, Mr. Wibberley? What do you mean?"

"What I say," he answered simply. "You see my plate? It is a picture. You have there the manly beef, and the feminine peas, so young, so tender! And the potato! The potato is the confidante. It is insipid. Do you not agree with me?"

"Bravo, Mr. Wibberley! But am I to apply your parable?" she spoke sharply, glancing across the table, with her fork uplifted, and a pea upon it. "Am I to be the potato?"

"The choice is with you," he replied gallantly. "Shall it be the potato? or the peas?"

Mrs. Burton Smith, seeing him absorbed in his companion, was puzzled. Look as she might at Joanna, she saw no sign of jealousy or self-consciousness. Joanna seemed to be getting on perfectly with her partner; to be enjoying herself to the full, and to be as much interested as any one at table. Mrs. Burton Smith sighed. She had the instinct of matchmaking. And she saw clearly now that there was nothing between the two; that if there had been any philandering at Rothley neither of the young people had put out a hand--or a heart--beyond recovery.

But this success of Wibberley's with Mrs. Galantine had its consequences. After the ladies had withdrawn he grew a trifle presumptuous. By ill-luck, the Hon. Vereker May had reached that period of the evening when India--as seen through the glasses of his memory--was accustomed to put on its rosiest tints; and the two facing one another fell to debating on a subject of which the returned Civilian had seen much and thought little, and the private secretary had read more and thought not at all. They were therefore on a par as to information, and what the younger man lacked in obstinacy he made up in readiness. It was in vain the Nabob blustered, asserted, contradicted--finally grew sulky, silent, stertorous. Wibberley pushed his triumph, and soon paid dearly for it.

It happened that he was the last to enter the drawing-room. The evening was chilly, and the ladies had grouped themselves about the fire, protected from assault, by a couple of gipsy-tables bearing shaded lamps. The incomers, one by one, passed through these outworks--all but Wibberley. He cast a glance of comic despair at Joanna, who was by the fireplace in the heart of the citadel; then, resigning himself to separation, he took a low chair by one of the tables, and began to turn over the books which lay on the latter. There were but half a dozen. He scanned them all, and then his eyes fell on a bracelet which lay beside them; a sketchy gold bracelet, with one big boss--Joanna's.

He looked at the party--himself sitting a little aside, as we have said. They were none of them facing his way. They were discussing a photograph on the overmantel, a photograph of children. He extended his hand and covered the bracelet. He would take it for a pattern, and to-morrow Joanna should ransom it. He tried, as his fingers closed on it, to catch her eye. He would fain have seen her face change and her colour rise. It would have added to the charm which the boyish, foolish act had for him, if she had been privy to it--yet unable to prevent it.

But she would not look; and he was obliged to be content with his plunder. He slid the gold trifle deftly under the fringe of the table, and clasped it round his arm--not a lusty arm--thrusting it as high as it would go that no movement of his shirt-cuff might disclose it. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he would not for the world that any besides Joanna should see the act: that doddering old fossil May, for instance, who, however, was safe enough--standing on the rug with his back turned, and his slow mind forming an opinion on the photograph.

Then--or within a few minutes, at any rate--Wibberley began to find the party dull. He saw no chance of a private word with Joanna. Lady Linacre, his nearest neighbour, was prosing on to Mrs. Burton Smith, his next nearest. And he himself, after shining at dinner, had fallen into the background. Hang it, he would go! It was ten o'clock.

He rose, and was stooping across the table, murmuring his excuses to Mrs. Burton Smith, when Lady Linacre uttered an exclamation. He was leaning across her between her head and the lamp, and he fancied he had touched her head-dress. "Pray pardon me, Lady Linacre!" he cried gaily. "I am just going--I have to leave early. So the encroachment will be but for a moment."

"It is not that," the old lady replied. "But where is my bracelet?" She was feeling about the table as she spoke, shifting with her white, podgy hands the volumes that lay on it.

No one on the instant took in the situation. Mrs. Burton Smith had risen, and was listening to Wibberley. The others were talking. But Lady Linacre was used to attention; and when she spoke again her voice was shrill, and almost indecently loud. "Where is my bracelet?" she repeated. "The one with the Agra diamond that I was showing you, Mrs. Burton Smith. It was here a moment ago, and it is gone! It is gone!"

Wibberley was still speaking to his hostess. He heard the old lady's words, but did not at once apply them. He finished his leave-taking at his leisure, and only as he turned recollected himself, and said, with polite solicitude, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Have you dropped something? Can I find it for you?"

He stooped as he spoke; and she drew her skirt aside, and both peered at the floor, while there was a chorus from those sitting nearest of, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Dear Lady Linacre, what have you lost?"

"My Agra diamond!" she replied, her head quivering, her fingers groping about her dress.

"No?" some one said in surprise. "Why, it was here a moment ago. I saw it in your hand."

The old lady held up her wrists. "See!" she said fussily, "I have not got it!"

"But are you sure it is not in your lap?" Burton Smith suggested. Lady Linacre had rather an ample lap. By this time the attention of the whole party had been drawn to the loss, and one or two of the most prudent were looking uncomfortable.

"No," she answered; "I am quite sure that I placed it on the table by my side. I am sure I saw it there. I was going to put it on when the gentlemen came in, and I laid it down for a minute, and--it is gone!"

She was quite clear about it, and looked at Wibberley for confirmation. The table stood between them. She thought he must have seen it; Mrs. Burton Smith being the only other person close to the table.

Burton Smith saw the look. "I say, Wibberley," he said, appealing to him, half in fun, half in earnest, "you have not hidden it for a joke, have you?"

"I? Certainly not!"

To this day Ernest Wibberley wonders when he made the disagreeable discovery of what he had done--that he had taken the wrong bracelet! It was not at once. It was not until the aggrieved owner had twice proclaimed her loss that he felt himself redden, and awoke to the consciousness that the bracelet was on his arm. Even then, if he had had presence of mind, he might have extricated himself. He might have said, "By Jove! I think I slipped it on my wrist in pure absence of mind," or, he might have made some other excuse for his possession of it--an excuse which would have passed muster, though one or two might have thought him odd. But time was everything; and he hesitated. He hated to seem odd, even to one or two; he thought that presently he might find some chance of restoring the bracelet. So he hesitated, peering at the carpet, and the golden opportunity passed. Then each moment made the avowal more difficult, and less ordinary; until, when his host appealed to him--"If you have hidden it for a joke, old fellow, out with it!"--madness overcame him, and he answered as he did.

He looked up, indeed, with well acted surprise, and said his "I? Certainly not!" somewhat peremptorily.

Half a dozen of the guests were peering stupidly about as if they expected to find the lost article in a flower-vase, or within the globe of a lamp. Presently their hostess stayed these explorations. "Wait a moment!" she said abruptly, raising her head. "I have it!"

"Well?"

"John must have moved it when he brought in the tea. That must be it. Ring the bell, James, and we will ask him."

It was done. John came in, and the question was put to him.

"Yes, sir," he said readily; "I saw a bracelet. On the table by the lamp." He indicated the table near Lady Linacre.

"Did you move it?"

"Move it, sir?" the man repeated, surprised by the question, the silence, and the strained faces turned to him. "No, sir; certainly not. I saw it when I was handing the tea to--to Mr. Wibberley, I think it was."

"Ah, very well," his master answered. "That is all. You may go."

It was not possible to doubt the man's face and manner. But when he had left the room, an uncomfortable silence ensued. "It is very strange," Burton Smith said, looking from one to another, and then, for the twentieth time, he groped under the table.

"It is very strange," Wibberley murmured. He felt bound to say something. He could not free himself from an idea that the others, and particularly the Indian Civilian, were casting odd looks at him. He appeared calm enough, but he could not be sure of this. He felt as if he were each instant changing colour, and betraying himself. His very voice sounded forced to his ear as he repeated fussily, "It is very odd--very odd! Where can it be?"

"It cost," Lady Linacre quavered--irrelevantly, but by no means impertinently--"it cost fourteen thousand out there. Indeed it did. And that was before it was set."

A hush as of awe fell upon the room. "Fourteen thousand pounds!" Burton Smith said softly, his hair rising on end.

"No, no," said the old lady, who had not intended to mystify them. "Not pounds; rupees."

"I understand," he replied, rubbing, his head. "But that is a good sum."

"It is over a thousand pounds," the Indian Civilian put in stonily, "at the present rate of exchange."

"But, good gracious, James!" Mrs. Burton Smith said impatiently, "why are you valuing Lady Linacre's jewellery--instead of finding it for her? The question is, 'Where is it?' It must be here. It was on this table fifteen minutes ago. It cannot have been spirited away."

"If any one," her husband began seriously, "is doing this for a joke, I do hope----"

"For a joke!" the hostess cried sharply. "Impossible! No one would be so foolish!"

"I say, my dear," he persisted, "if any one is doing this for a joke, I hope he will own up. It seems to me that it has been carried far enough." There was a chorus of assent, half-indignant, half-exculpatory. But no one owned to the joke. No one produced the bracelet.

"Well!" Mrs. Burton Smith exclaimed. And as the company looked at one another, it seemed as if they also had never known anything quite so extraordinary as this.

"Really, Lady Linacre, I think that it must be somewhere about you," the host said at last. "Would you mind giving yourself a good shake?"

She rose, and was solemnly preparing to agitate her skirts, when a guest interfered. It was the Hon. Vereker May. "You need not trouble yourself, Lady Linacre," he said, with a curious dryness. He was still standing by the fireplace. "It is not about you."

"Then where in the world is it?" retorted Mrs. Galantine. "Do you know?"

"If you do, for goodness' sake speak out," Mrs. Burton Smith added indignantly. Every one turned and stared at the Civilian.

"You had better," he said, "ask Mr. Wibberley!"

That was all. But something in his tone produced an electrical effect. Joanna, in her corner--remote, like the Indian, from the centre of the disturbance--turned red and pale, and flashed angry glances round her. For the rest, they wished themselves away. It was impossible to overlook the insinuation. The words, simple as they were, in a moment put a graver complexion on the matter. Even Mrs. Burton Smith was silent, looking to her husband. He looked furtively at Wibberley.

And Wibberley? So far he had merely thought himself in an unpleasant fix, from which he must escape as best he could, at the expense of a little embarrassment and a slight loss of self-respect. Even the latter he might regain to-morrow, if he saw fit, by telling the truth to Mrs. Burton Smith; and in time the whole thing would become a subject for laughter, a stock dinner-party anecdote. But now, at the first sound of the Indian's voice, he recognised his danger; and saw in the hundredth part of a second that ruin, social damnation, perhaps worse, threatened him. His presence of mind seemed to fail him at sight of the pit opening at his feet. He felt himself reeling, choking, his head surcharged with blood. The room, the expectant faces all turned to him, all with that strange expression on them, swam round before him. He had to lay his hand on a chair to steady himself.

But he did steady himself; to such an extent that those who marked his agitation did not know whether it proceeded from anger or fear. He drew himself up and looked at his accuser, holding the chair suspended in his hands. "What do you mean?" he said hoarsely.

"I should not have spoken," the Civilian answered, returning his gaze, and speaking in measured accents, "if Mr. Burton Smith had not twice appealed to us to confess the joke, if a joke it was."

"Well?"

"Well, only this," the other replied. "I saw you take Lady Linacre's bracelet from that table a few moments before it was missed, Mr. Wibberley."

"You saw me?" Wibberley cried. This time there was the ring of honest defiance, of indignant innocence, in his tone. For if he felt certain of one thing it was that no one had been looking at him when the unlucky deed was done.

"I did," the Civilian replied dispassionately. "My back was towards you. But my eyes were on this mirror"--he touched an oval glass in a Venetian frame which stood on the mantelpiece--"and I saw quite clearly. I am bound to say that, judging from the expression of your face, I was assured that it was a trick you were playing."

Ernest Wibberley tried to frame the words, "And now?"--tried to force a smile. But he could not. The perspiration stood in great beads on his face. He shook all over. He felt himself--and this time it was no fancy--growing livid.

"To the best of my belief," the Civilian added quietly, "the bracelet is on your left arm now."

Wibberley tried to master, but could not, the impulse--the traitor impulse?--which urged him to glance at his wrist. The idea that the bracelet might be visible--that the damning evidence might be plain to every eye--overcame him. He looked down. Of course there was nothing to be seen; he might have known it, for he felt the hot grip of the horrible thing burning his arm inches higher. But when he looked up again--fleeting as had been his glance--he found that something had happened. He faltered, and the chair dropped from his hands. He read in every face save one suspicion or condemnation. Thief and liar! He read the words in their eyes. Yet he would, he must, brazen it out. And though he could not utter a word he looked from them to--Joanna.

The girl's face was pale. But her eyes answered his eagerly, and they were ablaze with indignation. They held doubt, no suspicion. The moment his look fell on her, she spoke. "Show them your arm!" she cried impulsively. "Show them that you have not got it, Ernest!" she repeated with such scorn, such generous passion that it did not need the tell-tale name which fell from her lips to betray the secret to every woman in the room.

"Show them your arm!" Ah, but that was just what he could not do! And as he comprehended this he gnashed his teeth. He saw himself entrapped, and his misery was so plainly written in his face that the best and most merciful of those about him turned from him in pity. Even the girl who loved him shrank back, clutching the mantelpiece in the first spasm of doubt, and fear, and anguish. Her words, her suggestion, had taken from him his last chance. He saw that it was so. He felt the Nemesis the more bitterly on that account; and with a wild gesture, and some reckless word of defiance, he turned blindly and hurried from the room, seized his hat, and went down to the street.

His feelings when he found himself outside were such as it is impossible to describe in passionless sentences. He had wrecked his honour and happiness in an hour. He had lost his place among men through a thoughtless word. We talk and read of a thunderbolt from the blue; still the thing is to us unnatural. Some law-abiding citizen whom a moment's passion has made a murderer, some strong man whom a stunning blow has left writhing on the ground, a twisted cripple--only these could fitly describe his misery and despair as he passed through the streets. It was misery he had brought on himself; and yet how far the punishment exceeded the offence! How immensely the shame exceeded the guilt! He had lied in careless will, with no evil intent; and the lie had made him a thief!

He went up to his rooms like one in a dream, and, scarcely knowing what he did, he tore the bauble from his arm and flung it on the mantel-shelf. By his last act--by bringing it away--he had made his position a hundred times more serious. But he did not at once remember this. After he had sat a while, however, with his head between his hands, wondering if this really were himself--if this really had happened to himself, this irrevocable thing!--he began to see things more clearly. But he could not at once make up his mind what to do. Beyond a hazy idea of returning the bracelet by the first post, and going on the Continent--of course, he must resign his employment--he had settled nothing, when a step mounting the staircase made him start to his feet. Some one knocked at the door of his chambers. He stood pallid and listened, struck by a sudden fear.

"The police!" he said to himself.

A moment's thought satisfied him that it was improbable, if not impossible, that they could be on his track so soon; and he went to the door listlessly and threw it open. On the mat stood Burton Smith, in a soft slouched hat, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Wibberley glanced at him, and saw that he was alone; then leaving him to shut the door, he returned to his chair, and sat down in his old attitude, with his head between his hands. He looked already a broken man.

Burton Smith followed him in, and stood a moment looking at him uncomfortably enough. It is bad to have had such a scene as has been described in your house; it is worse, if a man be a man, to face a fellow-creature in his hour of shame. At any rate, Burton Smith felt it so. "Look here, Wibberley," he said at length, as much embarrassed as if he had been the thief. "Look here, it will be better to hush this up. Give me the d----d bracelet to hand back to Lady Linacre, and the thing shall go no farther."

His tone was suggestive both of old friendship and of present pity. But when he had to repeat his question, when Wibberley gave him no answer, his voice grew more harsh. Even then the man with the hidden face did not speak, but pointed with an impatient gesture to the mantel-shelf.

Burton Smith stepped to the fire-place and looked. He was anxious to spare the culprit as far as possible. Yes, there was the bracelet. He took possession of it, anxious to escape from the place with all speed. But he laid it down the next instant as quickly as he had taken it up; and his brows came together as he turned upon his companion.

"This is not the bracelet!" he said. There was no smack of affection in his tone now; it was wholly hostile. His patience was exhausted. "Lady Linacre's was a diamond bracelet of great value, as you know," he said. "This is a plain gold thing worth two or three pounds. For Heaven's sake, man!" he added with sudden vehemence, "for your own sake, don't play the fool now! Where is the bracelet?"

Doubtless despair had benumbed Wibberley's mind, for he did not reply, and Burton Smith had to put his question more than once before he got an answer. When Wibberley at last looked up it was with a dazed face. "What is it?" he muttered, avoiding the other's eyes.

"This is not Lady Linacre's bracelet."

"That's not?"

"No; certainly not."

Still confused, still shunning the other's look, Wibberley rose, took the bracelet in his hand, and frowned at it. Burton Smith saw him start.

"It is of the same shape," the barrister repeated, ice in his voice--he thought the exchange a foolish, transparent artifice--worse than the theft. "But Lady Linacre's has a large brilliant where that has a plain boss. That is not the bracelet."

Wibberley turned away, the thing in his hand, and went to the window, and stood there a long moment looking out into the darkness. The curtains were not drawn. As he stood, otherwise motionless, his shoulders trembled so violently that a dreadful suspicion seized his late host, who desisted from watching him and looked about, but in vain, for a phial or a glass.

At the end of the minute Wibberley turned. For the first time he confronted his visitor. His eyes were bright, his face very pale; but his mouth was set and firm. "I never said it was!" he answered.

"Was what?" the other cried impatiently.

"I never said it was Lady Linacre's. It was you who said that," he continued, his head high, a change in his demeanour, an incisiveness almost harsh in his tone. "It was you--you who suspected me! I could not show you my arm because I had that bracelet on it."

"And whose bracelet is it?" Burton Smith murmured, shaken as much by the sudden change in the man's demeanour as by his denial.

"It is your cousin's--Miss Burton's. We are engaged," Wibberley continued sternly--so entirely had the two changed places. "She intended to tell you to-morrow. I saw it on the table, and secreted it when I thought that no one was looking. I needed a pattern--for a bracelet I am giving her."

"And it was Joanna's bracelet that Vereker May saw you take?"

"Precisely."

Burton Smith said a word about the Civilian which we need not repeat. Then, "But why on earth, old fellow, did you not explain?" he asked.

"First," Wibberley replied with force, "because I should have had to proclaim my engagement to all those fools; and I had not Joanna's permission to do that. Secondly--well, I did not wish to confess to being such an idiot as I was."

"Ah!" said Burton Smith, slowly, an odd light in his eyes. "I think you were a fool, but--I suppose you will shake hands?"

"Certainly, old man." And they did so, warmly.

"Now," continued the barrister, his face becoming serious again, "the question is, where is Lady Linacre's bracelet?"

"I don't care a d----n," Wibberley answered. "I am sure you will excuse me saying so. I have had trouble enough with it--I know that--and, if you do not mind, I am going to bed."

But though his friend left him, Wibberley did not go to bed at once. Burton Smith hurrying homeward--to find when he reached Onslow Mansions that Lady Linacre's bracelet had been discovered in a flounce of her dress--would have been surprised, very much surprised indeed, could he have looked into Wibberley's chambers a minute after his departure. He would have seen his friend down on his knees before a great chair, his face hidden, his form shaken by hysterical sobbing. For Wibberley was moved to the inmost depths of his nature. It is not given to many men to awake and find their doom a dream. Only in dreams, indeed, does the cripple get his strength again, and the murderer his old place among his fellow-men. Wibberley was fortunate.

And the lesson? Did he take it to heart? Well, lessons and morals are out of fashion in these days. Or stay--ask Joanna. She should know.

THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT

THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT

"Eighty-eight when he died! That is a great age," I said.

"Yes, indeed. But he was a very clever man, was Robert Evans Court, and brewed good beer," my companion answered. "His home-brewed was known, I am certain, for more than ten miles. You will have heard of his body-birds, sir?"

"His body-birds?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, to be sure. Robert Evans Court's body-birds!" With which he looked at me, quick to suspect that his English was deficient. He had learned it in part from books; hence the curious mixture I presently noted of Welsh idioms and formal English phrases. It was his light trap in which I was being helped on my journey, and his genial chat that was lightening that journey; which lay through a part of Carnarvonshire usually traversed only by wool-merchants and cattle-dealers--a country of upland farms swept by the sea-breezes, where English is not spoken at this day by one person in a hundred, and even at inns and post-offices you get only "_Dim Sassenach_" for your answer. "Do you not say," he went on, "body-birds in English? Oh, but to be sure, it is in the Bible!" with a sudden recovery of his self-esteem.

"To be sure!" I replied hurriedly. "Of course it is! But as to Mr. Robert Evans, cannot you tell me the story?"

"I'll be bound there is no man in North or South Wales, or Carnarvonshire, that could tell it better, for Gwen Madoc, of whom you shall hear presently, was aunt to me. You see Robert Evans"--and my friend settled himself in his seat and prepared to go slowly up the long steep hill of Rhiw which rose before us--"Robert Evans lived in an old house called Court, near the sea, very windy and lonesome. He was a warm man. He had Court from his father, and he had mortgages, and as many as four lawsuits. But he was unlucky in his family. He had years back three sons who helped on the farm, or at times fished; for there is a cove at Court and good boats. Of these sons only one was married--to a Scotchwoman from Bristol, I have heard, who had had a husband before, a merchant captain; and she brought with her to Court a daughter, Peggy, ready-made as we say. Well, of those three fine men there was not one left in a year. They were out fishing in a boat together, and Evan--that was the married one--was steering as they came into the cove on a spring tide running very high with a south wind. He steered a little to one side--not more than six inches, upon my honour--and pah! in an hour their bodies were thrown up on Robert Evans' land just bits of seaweed. But that was not all. Evan's wife was on the beach at the time, so near she could have thrown a stone into the boat. They do say that before that she was pining at Court--it was bleak, and lonesome, and cold in the winters, and she had been used to live in the towns. But, however, she never held up her head after Evan was drowned. She took to her bed, and died in the short month. And then, of all at Court, there were left only Robert Evans and the child, Peggy."

"How old was the child then?" I asked. He had paused, and was looking to the front, thoughtfully, striving, it would seem, to make the situation clear to himself.

"She was twelve, and the old man eighty and more. She was in no way related to him, you will remember, but he had her stop, and let her want for nothing that did not cost money. He was very careful of money, as was right; it was that made him the man he was. But there were some who would have given money to be rid of her. Year in and year out they never let the old man rest but that he should send her to service at least--though her father had been the captain of a big ship; and if Robert Evans had not been a stiff man of his years, they would have had their will."

"But who----"

By a gesture he stopped the words on my lips; and then there rose mysteriously out of the silence about us the sound of wings, a chorus of shrill cries. A hundred white forms swept overhead, and fell a white cluster about something in a distant field. They were seagulls. "Just those same!" he said proudly, jerking his whip in their direction--"body-birds. When the news that Robert Evans' sons were drowned got about, there was a pretty uprising in Carnarvonshire. There seemed to be Evanses where there had never been Evanses before. As many as twenty walked in the funeral, and you may be sure that afterwards they did not leave the old man to himself. The Llewellyn Evanses were foremost. They had had a lawsuit with Court, but made it up now, to be sure. Besides, there were Mr. and Mrs. Evan Bevan, and the three Evanses of Nant, and Owen Evans, and the Evanses of Sarn, and many more who were all forward to visit Court, and be friendly with old Gwen Madoc, Robert's housekeeper. I am told they could look black at one another, but in this they were all in one tale, that the foreign child should be sent away; and at times one and another would give her the rough word."

"She must have had a bad time," I observed.

"You may say that. But she stayed, and it was wonderful how strong and handsome she grew up, where her mother had just pined away. The sailors said it was her love of the sea; and I have heard that people who live inland about here come to think of nothing but the land--it is certain that they are good at a bargain--while the fishermen who live with a great space before them are finer men, I have heard, in their minds as well as their bodies; and Peggy _bach_ grew up like them, free and open and up-standing, though she lived on land. When she was in trouble she would run down to the sea, where the salt spray washed away her tears and the wind blew her hair, that was of the colour of seaweed, into a tangle. She was never so happy as when she was climbing the rocks among the seagulls, or else sitting with her books in the cove where the farm-people would not go for fear of hearing the church bells that bring bad luck. Books? Oh yes, indeed next to the sea she was fond of books. There were many volumes, I have been told, that were her mother's; and Robert Evans, though he was a Wesleyan, went to church because there was no Wesleyan chapel, the Calvinistic Methodists being in strength here; and the minister lent her many English books and befriended her. And I have heard that once, when the Llewellyn Evanses had been about the girl, he spoke to them so that they were afraid to drive down Rhiw hill that night, but led the horse; and I think it may be true, for they were Calvinists. Still, he was a good man, and I know that many Calvinists walked in his funeral."

"_Requiescat in pace_," said I.

"Eh! Well, I don't know how that may be," he replied, "but you must understand that all this time the Llewellyn Evanses, and the Evanses of Nant, and the others would be at Court once or twice a week, so that all the neighbourhood called them Robert Evans' body-birds; and when they were there Peggy McNeill would be having an ill time, since even the old man would be hard to her; and more so as he grew older. But, however, there was a better time coming, or so it seemed at first, the beginning of which was through Peter Rees's lobster-pots. He was a great friend of hers. She would go out with him to take up his pots--oh, it might be two or three times a week. So it happened one day, when they had pushed off from the beach, and Peggy was steering, that old Rees stopped rowing on a sudden.

"'Why don't you go on, Peter?' said Peggy.

"'Bide a bit,' said old Rees.

"'What have you forgotten?' said she, looking about in the bottom of the boat. For she knew what he used very well.

"'Nought,' said he. But all the same he began to put the boat about in a stupid fashion, afraid of offending her, and yet loth to lose a shilling. And so, when Peggy looked up, what should she see but a gentleman--whom Rees had perceived, you will understand--stepping into the boat, and Peter Rees not daring to look her in the face because he knew well that she would never go out with strangers.

"Of course the young gentleman thought no harm, but said gaily, 'Thank you! I am just in time.' And what should he do, but go aft and sit down on the seat by her, and begin to talk to Rees about the weather and the pots. And presently he said to her, 'I suppose you are used to steering, my girl?'

"'Yes,' Peggy answered, but very grave and quiet-like, so that if he had not determined that she was old Rees's daughter he would have taken notice of it. But she was wearing a short frock that she used for the fishing, and was wet with getting into the boat moreover.

"'Will you please to hold my hat a minute,' he said; and with that he put it in her lap while he looked for a piece of string with which to fasten it to his button. Well, she said nothing, but her cheeks were scarlet, and by-and-by, when he had called her 'my girl' two or three times more--not roughly, but just offhand, taking her for a fisher-girl--Peter Rees could stand it no longer, shilling or no shilling.

"'You mustn't be speaking that fashion to her,' he said gruffly.

"'What?' said the gentleman looking up. He was surprised, and no wonder, at the tone of the man.

"'You mustn't speak like that to Miss McNeill Court,' repeated old Rees more roughly than before. 'You are to understand she is not a common girl, but like yourself.'

"The young gentleman turned and looked at her just once, short and sharp, and I am told that his face was as red as hers when their eyes met. 'I beg Miss McNeill's pardon,' he said, taking off his hat grandly, yet as if he meant it too; 'I was under a great misapprehension.'

"After that you may believe they did not enjoy the row much. There was scarcely a word said by any one until they came ashore again. The visitor, to the great joy of Peter, who was looking for a sixpence, gave him half a crown; and then walked away with the young lady, side by side with her, but very stiff and silent. However, just as they were parting, Peter could see that he said something, having his hat in his hand the while, and that Miss Peggy, after standing and listening, bowed as grand as might be. Upon which they separated for that time.

"But two things came of this; first, that every one began to call her Miss McNeill Court which was not at all to the pleasure of the Llewellyn Evanses. And then, that whenever the gentleman, who was a painter lodging at Mrs. Campbell's of the shop, would meet her, he would stop and say a few words, and more as the time went on. Presently there came some wet weather; and Mrs. Campbell borrowed for his use books from her, which had her name within; and later he sent for a box of books from London, and then the lending was on the other side. So it was not long before people began to see how things were, and to smile when the gentleman treated old Robert Evans at the Newydd Inn. The fishermen, when he was out with them, would tack so that he might see the smoke of Court over the cliffs; and there was no more Peggy _bach_ to be met, either rowing with Peter Rees or running wild among the rocks, but a very sedate young lady who, to be sure, did not seem to be unhappy.

"The old man was ailing in his limbs at this time, but his mind was as clear as ever, and his grip of the land as tight. He could not bear, now that his sons were dead, that any one should come after him. I am thinking that he would be taking every one for a body-bird. Still the family were forward with presents and such-like, and helped him perhaps about the farm; so that, though there was talk in the village, no one could say what will he would make.

"However, one day towards winter Miss Peggy came in late from a walk, and found the old man very cross. 'Where have you been?' he cried angrily. Then, without any warning, 'You have been courting,' he said, 'with that fine gentleman from the shop?'

"'Well,' my lady replied, putting a brave face upon it, as was her way, 'and what then, grandfather? I am not ashamed of it.'

"'You ought to be!' he cried, banging his stick upon the floor. 'Do you think that he will marry you?'

"'Yes, I do,' she replied stoutly. 'He has told you so to-day, I know.'

"Robert Evans laughed, but his laugh was not a pleasant one. 'You are right,' he said. 'He has told me. He was very forward to tell me. He thought I was going to leave you my money. But I am not! Mind you that, my girl.'

"'Very well,' she answered, white and red by turns.

"'You will remember that you are no relation of mine!' he went on viciously, for he had grown very crabbed of late. 'No relation! And I am not going to leave you money. He is after my money. He is nothing but a fortune-catcher!'

"'He is not!' she exclaimed, as hot as fire, and began to put on her hat again.

"'Very well! We shall see!' answered Robert Evans. 'Do you tell him what I say, and see if he will marry you. Go! Go now, girl, and you need not come back! You will get nothing by staying here!' he cried, for what with his jealousy and the mention of money, he was furious--'not a penny! You had better be off at once!'

"She did not answer for a minute or so, but she seemed to change her mind about going, for she laid down her hat, and went about the house-place getting tea ready--and no doubt her fingers trembled a little--until the old man cried, 'Well, why don't you go? You will get nothing by staying.'

"'I shall stay to take care of you all the same,' she answered quietly. 'You need not leave me anything, and then--and then I shall know whether you are right.'

"'Do you mean it?' he asked sharply, after looking at her in silence for a time.

"'Yes,' said she.

"'Then it's a bargain!' cried Robert Evans--'it's a bargain!' And he said not a word more about it, but took his tea from her and talked of the Llewellyn Evanses who had been to pay him a visit that day. It seemed, however, as if the matter had upset him, for he had to be helped to bed, and complained a good deal, neither of which things were usual with him.

"Well, it is not unlikely that the young lady promised herself to tell her lover all about it next day, and looked to hear many times over from his lips that it was not her money he wanted. But this was not to be, for early the next morning Gwen Madoc was at her door.

"'You are to get up, miss,' she said. 'The master wants you to go to London by the first train.'

"'To London!' cried Peggy, very much astonished. 'Is he ill? Is anything the matter, Gwen?'

"'No,' the old woman answered very short. 'It is just that.'

"And when the girl, having dressed hastily, came down to Robert Evans' room, she found that this was pretty nearly all they would tell her. 'You will go to Mrs. Richard Evans, who lives at Islington,' he said, as if he had been thinking about it. 'She is my second cousin, and will find house-room for you, and make no charge whatever. To-morrow you will take this packet to the address upon it, and the next day a packet will be returned to you, which you will bring back to me. I am not well to-day, and I want to have the matter settled, yes, indeed.'

"'But could not some one else go, if you are not well?' she objected, 'and I will stop and take care of you.'

"He grew very angry at that. 'Do as you are bidden, girl,' he said. 'I shall see the doctor to-day, and for the rest, Gwen can do for me. I am well enough. Do you look to the papers. Richard Evans owes me money, and will make no charge for your living.'

"So Miss Peggy had her breakfast, and in a wonderfully short time, as it seemed to her, she was on the way to London, with plenty of leisure for thinking--very likely for doubting and fearing as well. She had not seen her sweetheart, that was one thing. She had been despatched in a hurry, that was another. And then, to be sure, the big town was strange to her.

"However, nothing happened there, I may tell you. But on the third morning she received a short note from Gwen Madoc, and suddenly rose from breakfast with Mrs. Richard, her face very white. There was news in the letter--news of which all the neighborhood for miles round Court was full. Robert Evans, if you will believe it, was dead. After ailing for a few hours he had died, with only Gwen Madoc to smooth his pillow.

"It was late when she reached the nearest station to Court on her way back, and found a pony trap waiting. She was stepping into it when Mr. Griffith Hughes, the lawyer, saw her, and came up to speak.

"'I am sorry to have bad news for you, Miss McNeill,' he said, and he spoke nicely, for he was a kind man, and, what with the shock and the long journey, she was looking very pale.

"Oh, yes,' she answered, with a sort of weary surprise; 'I know it already. That is why I am come home--to Court, I mean.'

"He saw that she was thinking only of Robert Evans' death, which was not what was in his mind. 'It is about the will,' he said in a whisper, though he need not have been so careful, for every one in the neighbourhood had learned about it from Gwen Madoc. 'It is a cruel will. I would not have made it for him, my dear. He has left Court to the Llewellyn Evanses, and the money between the Evanses of Nant and the Evan Bevans.'

"'It is quite right,' she answered, so calmly that he stared. 'My grandfather explained it to me. I understood that I was not to be in the will.'

"Mr. Hughes looked more and more puzzled. 'Oh, but,' he replied, 'it is not so bad as that. Your name is in the will. He has laid it upon those who get the land and money to provide for you--to settle a proper income upon you. And you may depend upon me for doing my best to have his wishes carried out.'

"The young lady turned very red, and her voice was hard.

"'Who are to provide for me?' she asked. "'The three families who divide the estate,' he said.

"'And are they obliged to do so?'

"'Well--no,' he allowed. 'I am not sure that they are exactly obliged. But no doubt----"

'"I doubt very much,' she answered, taking him up with a smile. And then she shook hands with him and drove away, leaving him wondering at her courage.

"Well, you may suppose it was a dreary house to which she came home. Mr. Griffith Hughes, who was executor, had been before the Llewellyn Evanses in taking possession, and besides a lad or two in the kitchen there were only Gwen Madoc and the servant there, and it was little they seemed to have to tell her about the death. When she had heard what they had to say, and they were all on their way to bed, 'Gwen,' she said softly, 'I think I should like to see him.'

"'So you shall, to-morrow, honey,' answered the old woman. 'But do you know, _bach_, that he has left you nothing?' and she held up her candle suddenly, so as to throw the light on the girl's tired face.

"'Oh!' she answered with a shudder, 'how can you talk about that now?' But presently she had another question ready. 'Have you seen Mr. Venmore since--since my grandfather's death, Gwen?' she asked timidly.

"'Yes, indeed, _bach_,' answered the housekeeper. 'I met him at the door of the shop this morning. I told him where you were, and that you would be back to-night. And about the will moreover.'

"The girl stopped at her own door and snuffed her candle. Gwen Madoc went slowly up the next flight, groaning over the steepness of the stairs. When she turned to say good night, the girl was at her side, her eyes shining in the light of the two candles.

"'Oh, Gwen,' she whispered, 'didn't he say anything?'

"'Not a word, _bach_,' answered the old woman, stroking her hair tenderly. 'He just went into the house in a hurry.'

"Miss Peggy, I am believing, went into her room much in the same way. No doubt she would be telling herself a great many times over before she slept that he would come and see her in the morning: and in the morning she would be saying, 'He will come in the afternoon'; and in the afternoon, 'He will come in the evening.' But evening came, and darkness, and still he did not appear. Then she could endure it no longer. She let herself out of the front door, which there was no one now to use but herself, and with a shawl over her head she ran all the way to the shop. There was no light in the window upstairs; but at the back door stood Mrs. Campbell, looking after some one who had just left her.

"The girl came, shrinking at the last moment, into the ring of light about the door. 'Why, Miss McNeill!' cried the other, starting at sight of her. 'Is it you, honey? And are you alone?'

"'Yes; and I cannot stop. But oh, Mrs. Campbell, where is Mr. Venmore?'

"'I know no more than yourself, my dear,' the good woman said reluctantly. 'He went from here yesterday on a sudden--to take the train, I am supposing.'

"'Yesterday? At what time, please?' the young lady asked. There was a fear, which she had been putting from her all day. It was getting a footing now.

"'Well, it would be about midday. I know it was just after Gwen Madoc called in about the----'

"'But the girl was gone. It was not to Mrs. Campbell she could make a moan. It was only the night-wind that caught the 'Oh, cruel!' which broke from her as she went up the hill. Whether she slept that night at all I am not able to say. Only when it was dawn she was out upon the cliffs, her face very white and sad-looking. The fishermen who were up early going out with the ebb saw her at times walking fast, and then again standing still and looking seaward. But I do not know what she was thinking, only I should fancy that the gulls had a different cry for her now, and it is certain that when she returned and came down into the parlour at Court for the funeral, there were none of the Evanses could look her in the face with comfort.

"They were all there, of course. Mr. Llewellyn Evans--he was an elderly man, with a grey beard like a bird's nest, and thick lips--was sitting with his wife on the horse-hair sofa. The Evanses of Nant, who were young men with lank faces and black hair combed upwards, were by the door. The Evan Bevans were at the table; and there were others, besides Mr. Griffith Hughes, who was undoing some papers when she entered.

"He rose and shook hands with her, marking the dark hollows under her eyes, and fixing it in his mind to get her a settlement. Then he hesitated, looking doubtfully at the others. 'We are going to read the will before the funeral instead of afterwards,' he said.

"'Oh!' she answered, taken aback--for she had forgotten all about the will. 'I did not know. I will go, and come later.'

"'No, indeed!' cried Mrs. Llewellyn Evans, 'you will be doing well, whatever, to hear the will--though no relation, to be sure.'

"But at that Gwen Madoc came in, and peered round with an air of importance. 'Maybe some one,' she said in a low voice, 'would like to take a last look at the master?'

"But no one moved. They sighed and shook their heads at one another as if they would like to do so--but no one moved. They were anxious, you see, to hear the will. Only Peggy, who had turned to go out, said, 'Yes, Gwen, I should,' and slipped out with the old woman.

"'There is nothing to keep us now?' said Mr. Hughes, briskly, when the door was closed again. And every one nodding assent the lawyer went on to read the will, which was not a long one. It was received with a murmur of satisfaction, and much use of pocket-handkerchiefs.

"'Very fair,' said Mr. Llewellyn Evans. 'He was a very clever man, our old friend.' All the legatees murmured after him 'Very fair!' and a word went round about the home-brewed, and Robert Evans' recipe for it. Then Llewellyn, who thought he ought to be taking the lead at Court now, said it was time to be going to church.

"'There is one matter,' put in Mr. Griffith Hughes, 'which I think ought to be settled while we are all together. You see that there is a--what I may call a charge on the three portions of the property in favour of Miss McNeill.'

"'Indeed, but what is that you are saying?' Llewellyn cried sharply. 'Do you mean that there is a rent charge?'

"'Not exactly a rent charge,' said the lawyer.

"'No!' cried Llewellyn with a twinkle in his eyes. 'Nor any obligation in law whatever?'

"'Well, no,' Mr. Hughes assented grudgingly.

"'Then,' said Llewellyn Evans, getting up and putting his hands in his pockets, while he winked at the others, 'we will talk of that another time.'

"But Mr. Hughes said, 'No!' He was a kind man, and anxious to do the best for the girl, but he somewhat lost his temper. 'No!' he said, growing red. 'You will observe, if you please, Mr. Evans, that the testator says, "Forthwith--forthwith," so that, as sole executor, it is my duty to ask you to state your intentions now.'

"'Well, indeed, then,' said Llewellyn, changing his face to a kind of blank, 'I have no intentions. I think that the family has done more than enough for the girl already.'

"And he would say no other. Nor was it to any purpose that the lawyer looked at Mrs. Llewellyn. She was examining the furniture, and feeling the stuffing of the sofa, and did not seem to hear. He could make nothing of the three Evanses, Nant. They all cried, 'Yes, indeed!' to what Llewellyn said. Only the Evan Bevans remained, and he turned to them.

"'I am sure,' he said, addressing himself to them, 'that you will do something to carry out the testator's wishes? Your share under the will, Mr. Bevan, will amount to three hundred a year. This young lady has nothing--no relations, no home. May I take it that you will settle--say fifty pounds a year upon her? It need only be for her life.'

"Mr. Bevan fidgeted, but his wife answered the lawyer as bold as brass. 'Certainly not, Mr. Hughes,' she said. 'If it were twenty pounds now, once for all, or even twenty-five--and Llewellyn and my nephews would say the same--I think we might manage that?'

"But Llewellyn shook his head obstinately. 'I have said I have no intentions, and I am a man of my word, whatever!' he answered. 'Let the girl go to service. It is what we have wanted her to do. Here are my nephews. They will be liking a young housekeeper.'

"Well, they all laughed at this except Mr. Hughes, who gathered up his papers, looking very black, and not thinking of future clients. Llewellyn, however, did not care a penny for that, but walked to the bell, masterful-like, and rang it. 'Tell the undertaker,' he said to the servant, 'that we are ready.'

"It was as if the words had been a signal, for they were followed by an outcry overhead and quick running upon the stairs. The legatees looked uncomfortably at the carpet; the lawyer was blacker than before. He said to himself, 'It is that poor child that has fainted!' The confusion seemed to last some minutes. Then the door was opened, not by the undertaker, but by Gwen Madoc. The mourners rose, they were thankful to see her; to their surprise she passed by Llewellyn, and with a frightened face walked across to the lawyer. She whispered something in his ear.

"'What!' he cried starting back a pace, and speaking so that the wine-glasses on the table rattled again. 'Do you know what you are saying, woman?'

"'It is true,' she answered, half-crying, 'and no fault of mine neither.' Gwen added more in short sentences, which the family, strain their ears as they might, could not overhear.

"'I will come!' cried the lawyer. He waved his hand to them to make room for her to pass out. Then he turned to them, a queer look upon his face; it was not triumph altogether, for there was some doubt and some alarm in it as well. 'You will believe me,' he said, 'that I am as much taken aback as yourselves--that till this moment I have been as much in the dark as any one. It seems--so I am told--that our old friend is not dead.'

"'What are you meaning!' cried Llewellyn in his turn. 'It is not possible!' and he raised his black-gloved hands.

"'What I say,' Mr. Hughes replied patiently. 'I hear--wonderful as it sounds--that he is not dead. Something about a trance, I believe--a mistake discovered in time. I tell you all I know; and however it comes about, it is clear we ought to be glad that Mr. Robert Evans is spared to us.'

"With that he was glad to escape from the room. When he was gone, I am told that their faces were very strange to see. There was a long silence. Llewellyn was the first to speak. He swore a big oath and banged his great hand upon the table. 'I do not believe it!' he cried. 'I do not believe it! It is a trick!'

"But as he spoke the door opened behind him, and they all turned to see what they had never thought to see, I am sure. They had come to walk in Robert Evans' funeral; and here was the gaunt form of Robert Evans himself coming in, with an arm of Gwen Madoc on one side and of Miss Peggy on the other--Robert Evans beyond doubt alive. Behind him were the lawyer and Dr. Jones, a smile on their lips, and three or four women, half frightened, half wondering.

"The old man was pale, and seemed to totter a little, but when the doctor would have placed a chair for him, he declined it, and stood gazing about him, wonderfully composed for a man just risen from his coffin. He had all his old aspect as he looked upon the family. Llewellyn's declaration was still in their ears, and they could find not a word to say either of joy or grief.

"'Well, indeed,' said Robert, with a dry chuckle, 'have none of you a word to throw at me? I am a ghost, I suppose? Ho, ho!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell on the papers which Mr. Hughes had left upon the table. 'That is why you are not overjoyed at seeing me. You have been reading my will. Well, Llewellyn! Have not you a word to say to me now you know for what I had got you down?'

"At that Llewellyn found his tongue, and the others chimed in finely. Only there was something in the old man's manner that they did not like; and presently, when they had all told him how glad they were to see him again--just for all the world as if he had been ill for a few days--Robert Evans turned again to Llewellyn.

"'You had fixed what you would do for my girl here, I'm thinking?' he said, patting her shoulder gently, at which the family winced. 'It was a hundred a year you promised to settle, you know. You will have arranged, whatever.'

"Llewellyn looked stealthily at Mr. Hughes, who was standing at Robert Evans' elbow, and muttered that they had not reached that stage.

"'What!' the old man cried sharply. 'How was that?'

"'I was intending,' Llewellyn began lamely, 'to settle----'

"'You were intending!' Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed that they all started back. 'You are a liar! You were intending to settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As for you,' he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of Nant, 'you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!'

"But they were backing from him in absolute fear of his passion, looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, 'Whatever Llewellyn meant to do, we were going to do, sir.'

"'You speak the truth there,' cried old Robert, bitterly; 'for that was nothing. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn Evans gets of my property you shall get too--and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,' and he turned himself towards the Evan Bevans who were shaking in their shoes, 'I am told, did offer to do something for my girl.'

"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, eagerly, 'we did indeed.'

"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, _bach_,' he continued, turning from the lady, who was looking very queer, and putting into the girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn Evans, no appetite!'

"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker's men. There was big talking amongst them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes as they drove away after dinner were very merry together--which may have been only the home-brewed--at any rate all that came of Llewellyn's talking and inquiries was that every one laughed very much, and Robert Evans' name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.

"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But towards five o'clock the place grew quiet. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, and her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness that made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was roused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression which disappeared as she became aware of it.

"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he said with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that your eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty.'

"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. 'Please don't speak of him,' she pleaded in a low tone. 'Let us forget him.'

"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the--well, the goodness of Providence. 'If he had come to see you only once, when you were in trouble,' he said, as if he were summing up the case in his own mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, 'we could have forgiven him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written.'

"'Oh, yes, yes!' the girl sobbed, her tears raining down her averted face. 'Don't torture me! You were right and I was wrong--all wrong!'

"'Yes, indeed! Just so. But come here, my girl,' said the old man. 'Come!' he repeated, as, surprised in the midst of her grief, she wavered and hesitated, 'sit here;' and he pointed to the settle opposite to him. 'Now, suppose I were to tell you he had written, and that the letter had been--mislaid, shall we say? and come somehow to my hands? Now don't get excited, girl!'

"'Oh!' Peggy cried, her lips parted, her eyes wide and frightened, her whole form stiff with a question.

"'Just suppose that, my dear,' continued Robert, 'and that the letter were now before us--would you stand by it? Remember, he must have much to explain. Would you be guided by me, my girl?'

"She was trembling with expectation, hope. But she tried to think of the matter, to remember her lover's flight, the lack of word or message for her, and her misery. She nodded, and held out her hand, for she could not speak.

"He drew a letter from his pocket. 'You will let me see it?' he said suspiciously.

"'Oh yes!' she cried, and fled with it to the window. He watched her while she tore it open and read first one page and then another--there were but two, it was very short. He watched her while she thrust it from her and looked at it as a whole, then drew it to her and kissed it again and again.

"'Wait a bit! wait a bit!' cried he, testily. 'Now let me see it.'

"She turned upon him, holding it away behind her, as if it were some living thing he might hurt. 'He thought he would meet me at the junction,' she stammered between laughing and crying. 'He was going to London to see his sister--that she might take me in. And he will be here to fetch me this evening. There! Take it!' and suddenly remembering herself she stretched out her hand and gave him the letter.

"'You said you would be led by me, you know,' said the old man gravely.

"'I will not!' she cried impetuously. 'Never!'

"'You promised,' he said.

"'I don't care! I don't care!' she replied, clasping her hands. 'No one shall come between us.'

"'Very well,' said Robert Evans, 'then I will not be speaking for nothing! But you had better tell Owen to take the trap to the station to meet your man.'"

THE VICAR'S SECRET

THE VICAR'S SECRET

The windows at the rear of Acton Chase, an old house in Worcestershire, look on a quaint bowling-green flanked by yew hedges, and backed by a stream of good size, on the farther side of which a sparsely timbered slope leads up to the home farm. It leads also to half a dozen smaller farms, which once formed the Chase. Zigzag up this slope runs a track--probably it has so run for centuries, for at the foot of it is a ford--which in spring is almost invisible, but in autumn is brown and rutty. The Chase has long been a Roman Catholic house, and up this track dead-and-gone squires, debarred from converse with their neighbours, have ridden a-hunting, mornings innumerable; so that to-day people sitting in the garden towards evening are apt to see them come trailing home, their horses jaded, and themselves calling for the black-jack.

Our story is not of these, but of two men who strolled down this path on an evening no farther back than last August. They seemed, outwardly at least, ill-matched. The one, a young fellow under thirty, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, prim-looking, was of middle size. He was dressed as a clergyman, but more neatly and trimly than the average country clergyman dresses. The other was one of the tallest and thinnest men ever seen outside a show--a man whose very clothes, his worn jacket and shrunken knickerbockers, had the air of sharing his attenuation. He looked like a gamekeeper, and was, in fact, the squire's son-in-law, Jim Foley.

"I really cannot make you out," he said, as the two sighted the house; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance at his companion. "What do you do, old boy? You never kill anything, unless it is a trout now and then. Now I could not live without killing. Must kill something every day!"

"And do you?"

"Seldom miss," the long man rejoined cheerfully, "except on a hunting day when we draw blank. Rats, rabbits, otters, pike, sometimes a hawk, sometimes, as to-day, a brace of wood-pigeons. And game and foxes in their season. Must kill something, my boy."

His companion glanced at him, looked away again, and sighed.

"Well, what is that for?" Foley asked, in the tone of an aggrieved man.

"I was only thinking," the other replied drily, "what a lucky fellow you were to have nothing to do but kill."

The tall man whistled. "I say," he said, "for a man who is to be married in a week or so, you are in roaring spirits, ain't you? I tell you what it is, my boy; you do not take very kindly to your bliss. I can see Patty flitting about in the garden like a big white moth, waiting, I have no doubt, for a word with her lord; and your step lags, and your face is grave, and you try to be cynical! What is up?"

The younger man laughed, but not merrily; and there was a tinge of sullenness in his tone as he answered, "Nothing! A man cannot always be grinning."

"No; but _pâti de foie gras_ is not a man's ordinary meat," Jim retorted imperturbably. "Jones!"

"Well?" the other said snappishly.

"You are in a mess, my boy--that is my opinion! Now, don't take it amiss," Jim continued drily. "I am within my rights. I am one of the family, and if the squire is blind and Patty is young, I am neither. And I am not going to let this go on until I know more, my boy. You have something on your mind of which they are ignorant."

The young clergyman turned his face to his companion, and Jim Foley, albeit of the coolest, was taken aback by the change which anger or some other emotion had wrought in it. Even the clergyman's voice was altered. "And what if I have?" he said, stopping so suddenly that the two confronted one another. "What if I have, Mr. Foley?"

Jim deliberately shut his eyes and opened them, to make sure that the tragic spirit, so suddenly infused into the pleasant landscape, with its long shadows and its distant forge-note, was no delusion. Satisfied, he rose to the occasion. "This," he said, outwardly unmoved. "You must get rid of it. That is all, Jones."

"And if I cannot?"

"Will not, you mean."

"No, cannot!" the clergyman replied with vehemence.

"Then," Jim drawled--"I am not a moral man, don't mistake me, but I belong to the family--your majesty must go elsewhere for a wife! And a little late to do so!" he continued, harshness in his tone. "What! you are not coming to the house?"

"No!" the other cried violently. And, without a word of farewell, he turned his back on his companion, and strode away through the lush grass to a point a little higher up the stream, where a plank-bridge gave access to the Chase outbuildings, and through them to the village.

Foley stood awhile, looking after him. "Well," he said, speaking gently, as if rallying himself on some weakness, "I am afraid--I really am afraid that I am a little astonished. I should know men by now, yet I did think that if any one could show a clean bill of health it was the vicar. He is smug, he is next door to a prig. The old women swear by him, the young ones dote on him. They say he is on foot from morning till night, and not one blank day in a fortnight! And now--pheugh! I wonder whether I ought to have knocked him down. Poor little Patty! There is not a better girl in the country--except the Partridge!"

He looked pathetically at the gardens below him; then, seeing that the chimneys of the house were smoking briskly, he bethought him of dinner, and strode down to the gate with his usual air of _insouciance_.

Meanwhile the young clergyman gained the side avenue, and walked rapidly towards the village, his eyes dazzled by the low beams of the sun which shone in his face, and his mind confounded by the tumult of his thoughts. A crisis which he had long foreseen, often dreaded, and as often postponed, was now imminent, the power to control it gone from his hands. He looked on the past with regret, and forward with shame. That which had once been feasible--nay, as it seemed to him now, easy--time and his cowardice had rendered impossible. He stood aghast at his own feebleness; not considering that the routine of parish work and the satisfaction derived from small duties done, had weakened his moral fibre; even as the peace of the life about him, and the transparent truthfulness of those, with whom his lot was cast, had made the task of disclosure more formidable. He had fallen--no, he had not fallen; but he had put off the act which honour demanded so long that, though the day of grace was still his, there could be no grace in the doing.

The rooks, streaming homeward in some order of their own, were cawing overhead as he opened the gate and entered the vicarage garden, where the great hollyhocks stood in rows, and the peaches, catching the last rays of the sun aslant, were glowing against the southern gable. To the stranger--to the American, in particular--who looked in as he passed, it seemed a paradise, that garden. But--for peaches are not peace, nor hollyhocks either--its owner passed through it with compressed lips and tingling cheeks. He entered the porch, where one or two packing-cases told of coming changes; then he stood irresolute in the cool hall, remembering that he had intended to dine at the Chase, and that there was nothing prepared for him here. Not that he had an appetite, but dinner was a decent observance, and it seemed to him that not to dine would be to lose his hold on life and fall into abysses before his time.

It is well, when we are unfortunate, to consider how much worse a minute, a few seconds, may see us. A faint sound at his elbow caused him to turn. The door of the dining-room was ajar, and through the opening a face peered at him. The young vicar did not start, but he drew a deep breath, and stiffened as he gazed. A minute, and his lips--while the other face, with a shifty smile, half mockery, half shame, returned his look--formed the word "Father!"

It was not audible two paces away. But as it fell the clergyman glanced round with a gesture of alarm, and at a single stride he was in the dining-room, and had shut the door behind him. The other man--a shambling creature, grey-haired and blear-eyed and unwashed, with a beard of a week's growth--fell back to the table and leaned against it. His rusty black clothes and his broken boots seemed to share, rather than to impart, the look of decay which marked his person. The vicar, with his back against the door, looked at him and shuddered, and then looked again, his face hard and his eyes gloomy. "Well," he said, in a low stern voice, "what is the meaning of this? You know our agreement. Why have you broken it, sir?"

The old man pursed up his lips, and, with his head on one side, contemplated his questioner in silence. Then he said suddenly, "Blow the agreement!"

The vicar winced as if he had been struck. But he found words again.

"If you can do without the money," he said, "so much the better. But----"

"Blow the money!" cried the old man, with the same violence. Notwithstanding his words, he stood in awe of his son, and was trying to gain courage by working himself into a passion. "What is money?" he continued. "I want no money! I am coming to live with you. You are going to be married. I heard of it, though you kept it close, my boy! I heard of it, and I said to myself, 'Good! I will go and live with my boy. And his wife shall take care of my little comforts.'"

The younger man shivered. He thought of Patty, and he looked at the old man before him, sly, vicious, gin-sodden--and his father! "You do not want to live with me," he answered coldly. "You could not bear to live with me for one week, and you know it. Will you tell me what you do want, and why you have left Glasgow?"

"To congratulate you!" his father answered, with a drunken chuckle. "Walter Jones and Patty Stanton--third time of asking! Oh, I heard of it! But not through you. Why," he continued, with a quick change to ferocity, "would you not ask your own father to your wedding, you ungrateful boy?"

"No," the vicar replied sternly, "he being such as he is, I would not."

"Oh, you are ashamed of him, are you? You have kept him dark, I fancy?" the old man replied, grinning with wicked enjoyment as he saw how his son winced at each sentence, how his colour went and came. "Well, now you will have the pleasure of introducing me to the squire, and to daughter Patty, and to all your friends. It will be a pleasant surprise for them. I'll be bound you said I was dead."

"I have not said you were dead."

"Don't you wish I was?"

"God keep me from it!" the vicar groaned.

On that, the two men stood looking at each other, the one neat, clean-shaven, conventional, the other vile with the degradation of drink. Though the windows stood open, the room was full of the smell of spirits, and seemed itself soiled and degraded. Suddenly the younger man sat down at the table, and, burying his face between his hands, fell into a storm of weeping.

His father shifted his feet, and licking his lips nervously, looked at him in maudlin shame; then from him to the sideboard, in search of his supporter under all trials. But the sideboard was bare, the doors closed, the key invisible. Mr. Jones grew indignant. "There, stop that foolery!" he said brutally. "You make me sick."

The rough adjuration restored the young man's nerve, and he looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. Tears in a man are shameful; but this tragedy was one not to be evaded by manliness, or, indeed, by any help of men. "Tell me what it is you want," he said wearily.

"More money," his father snarled. The liquor with which he had primed himself was losing its effect. "I cannot live on what you give me. Glasgow is a dear place. The money ought to be mine; all of it!"

"You have had two hundred a year--one-half of my mother's money."

"I know. I want three."

"Well, you cannot have it," the son answered languidly. "If you must know, I have agreed to settle one-half of my income on my wife now, and the other half at your death. Therefore it will not be in my power to allow you more. You have spent your own fortune, and you have no claim on my mother's money."

"Very well," Mr. Jones answered, his head trembling with rage and weakness. "Then I stay with you. I stay here. Your father-in-law that is to be will be glad to meet his old friend again--I have no doubt. We were at college together. I dare say he will acknowledge me, if my own son is too proud to do so. I shall stay here until I am tired of the country."

The young man looked at him in despair. Supplication he knew would avail him nothing, and the only threat he could use--that he would stop his father's allowance--would have no terrors, for he could not execute it. To let his father go to the workhouse would increase the scandal a hundred times. He rose at last and went out. His housekeeper had come in, and he told her, keeping his burning face averted, to prepare a bed and get supper for two. He shrank--he whose life in Acton had been so full of propriety--from saying who his guest was. Let his father proclaim himself if he would; that would be less painful. The truth must out. Once before, at his first curacy, the young man, younger then and more hopeful, had tried the work of reformation. He had made a home for his father, and done what he could. And the end had been hot, flaming shame, and an exposure which had driven him to the other end of England.

When he left the house next morning, though his mind was made up to go to the squire and tell him all, he lingered on the white dusty road. The sunlight fell about him in dazzling chequers, and, save for the humming of the bees overhead and the whirr of a reaping-machine in a neighbouring field, the stillness of the August noon hung with the haze over the landscape. His heart, despite his resolution, grew hot within him, as he looked around, and contrasted the peacefulness of nature with the tumult of shame and agitation in his own breast. There was the school which he opened with prayers four times a week. Between the trees he caught a grey glimpse of the church--his church. As he looked his secret grew more sordid, more formidable.

He turned at last with an effort to enter the gates, and saw Patty and her sister, Mrs. Foley, coming down the avenue. They were still a long way off, their light frocks and parasols flitting from sunlight to shadow, and shadow to sunlight, as they advanced. The young man halted. Had Patty been alone, he would have gone to her and told her all; and surely, surely, though he doubted it at this moment, he would have won comfort--for love laughs at vicarious shame. But the Partridge's presence frightened him. Mrs. Foley, round and small and plump, in all things the antithesis of her husband, had yet imbibed something of Jim's dryness. The vicar feared her under the present circumstances, and he turned and fled down the road. He would let them pass--probably they were going to the vicarage--and he would then step up and see the squire.

He was right in supposing that the ladies were going to the vicarage. As they went in that direction, they came upon a strange dissolute old man whom they eyed with wondering dislike, and to whom they gave a wide berth as they passed. They had not gone by long before a third person came through the lodge gates and sauntered after them. This was Jim Foley, come out, with his hands in his pockets and a one-eyed terrier at his heels, to smoke his morning pipe. He, too, espied the old toper, and at sight of him took his pipe from his mouth and stood in the middle of the road, an expression of surprise on his features; while Mr. Jones, becoming aware of him too late--for his faculties were not of the sharpest in the morning--also stood by some instinct and looked, with a growing sense of unpleasant recognition, at his lanky figure.

"Hallo!" said Jim. Mr. Jones did not answer, but stood blinking in the sunshine. He looked more blear-eyed and shabby, more hopelessly gone to seed, than he had looked in the vicarage dining-room.

"Hallo!" said Foley again. "My old friend Wilkins, I think!"

"My name is Jones," the man muttered.

"Ah, Jones is it? Jones _vice_ Wilkins resigned," Jim replied, with ironical politeness. "Come down to Acton upon a little matter of business, I suppose. Now look here, Jones _vice_ Wilkins," he continued, pointing each sentence with a wave of his pipe, "I see your game. You have come down here to screw out a ten-pound note, by threatening to tell the squire some old story of my turf days. That is it, isn't it?"

Mr. Jones opened his mouth to deny the charge but thought better of it; either because of the settled scepticism which Foley's face expressed, or because he saw a ten-pound note in the immediate future. He remained silent.

"Just so," Foley went on with a nod, replacing his pipe in his mouth and his hand in his pocket. "Well, it won't do. It won't do, do you understand? Because, do you see, you have not accounted for the last pony I sent you to put on Paradox for the Two Thousand. And I will just trouble you for it and three to the back of it. Three to one was the starting price, I think, Mr. Jones."

Mr. Jones's face fell abruptly, and he glared at Foley. "It never reached me," he muttered huskily.

"You mean that you are not going to refund it," Jim retorted. "Well, you don't look as if you had it. But I'll tell you what you'll do. You will go back whence you came within three hours--there is a train at two-forty, and you will go by it. You have caught a Tartar, do you see?" Jim continued sternly, "and though you may, if you stay, give me an unpleasant hour with the squire, I shall give you a much more unpleasant hour with the policeman."

"But the squire----" the old man began; "the squire----"

"No, the policeman!" Foley retorted sharply. "Never mind the squire. Keep your mind steadily on the policeman, and you will be the more certain to catch the train. Now mind," Jim added, pausing to say another word after he had turned away, "I am serious, my man. If I find you here after the two-forty train has left, I give you in charge, and we will both take the consequences."

Jim strolled on towards the vicarage, congratulating himself on his presence of mind and chuckling over the skill with which he had foiled this attempt on his pocket; while Mr. Jones, though his appetite for a country walk was spoiled by the meeting, tottered onwards too, in the opposite direction, rather than seem, by turning, to be dogging Foley, who had inspired him with a very genuine terror. The consequence was that the next turn in the road brought the old man face to face with his son.

"Walter, I am going back," he said, quavering piteously. The interview had shaken him. He seemed less offensive, less of a blot on the landscape; on the other hand, more broken and older. It is not without a sharp pang that the man who has once been a gentleman finds himself threatened with the handcuffs, and forced to avoid the policeman.

The vicar had been for passing him in silence, but the statement brought him to a standstill. What if his father should indeed go? To explain him in his absence seemed an easy, almost a normal, task. Yet he feared a trap, and he only answered, "I am glad to hear it."

"I am going by the two-forty train," the old man whined. "But I must have a sovereign to pay my fare, Walter."

"You shall have it," the vicar said, his heart bounding.

"Give it me now! Give it me now!" his father repeated eagerly. "I tell you I am going by the two-forty. Do you think I am a liar?"

Reluctantly--not because he grudged the money, but because he feared that, the coins once obtained, his father would prove a liar, the clergyman took out two pounds and handed them to him. The old man gripped them with avidity, and, thrusting them and his hands into his pocket, turned his back on the donor, and hobbled away, mumbling to himself.

The vicar remained where he was, standing irresolute at the turn of the road, which brought the lodge gates into view. He found it was a quarter past twelve. He wondered what Patty was thinking of him, and his strange avoidance of her. And what his housekeeper was thinking of his guest, and whether many people had observed him. He began to feel himself at a loose end in the familiar scene. He should have been moving to and fro about his business; instead, he was here, hovering stealthily upon the outskirts of the village, dreading men's eyes, and prepared to fly from the first comer. By going straight to the squire he might put an end to this intolerable position. But the temptation to postpone his explanation until his father had left overcame him, and he turned and walked from the village.

He long remembered that tramp in the heat and dust. Throughout it he was weighed down by the feeling that he was an outcast, that people who met him looked strangely at him, that while he roamed aimlessly his duty called him home. Presently a new fear rose to vex his soul--that his father would not keep his word; the consequence of which was that half an hour before the train started he was lurking about the fir-plantation at the back of the station-house, peeping at the platform, which lay grilling in the sunshine, and tormenting himself with the suspicion that his watch was wrong.

Presently the station woke up. One or two people arrived, and took seats on a barrow in a shady place. The station-master labelled a hamper and gave out a ticket. Then some one who was by no means welcome to the vicar appeared--Jim Foley. He did not enter the station, but the vicar caught sight of him standing on the bridge which carried the road over the railway. What was more, Jim Foley at the same moment discovered the vicar.

Jim looked elsewhere, but he had his suspicions. "Hallo!" he muttered. "Friend Jones grows more of a riddle than ever. I suppose he has had dealings with Master Wilkins, and has an equal interest with me in seeing him off. I hope he has got rid of him as cheaply! But it is odd! I shall tell the Partridge, and hear what she says. She likes him."

He forgot his wife a few minutes later, when the train had steamed slowly in, and stood, and steamed out again, and the two people who had come by it had passed him, and even the vicar, slowly and perforce, had crawled up to him on the bridge. Foley by that time had found something else to consider. "I say," he exclaimed on the impulse of the moment, meeting the clergyman open-mouthed, "this won't do, you know."

Jones was dazed, struck down and prostrated by his disappointment. "What," he said feebly--"what won't do?"

"He has not gone!"

"No!"

"The old buffer! I guessed what was up when I saw you hanging about. Did he get anything out of you?"

The question sounded brutal, but the clergyman answered it. "Yes," he said, his cheek dark--and he looked down at the end of his stick and wondered how the other had found it out. "Two sovereigns."

"By Jove! Well, what is to be done now--that is the question?"

"I shall go to the squire," Jones said.

"What? And tell him this?"

"Yes."

Jim shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he said, after a pause in which he tried to see if this would hurt him, "I dare say it is the best thing you can do. While you are telling other things, perhaps you may as well throw this in."

Jim strolled towards the Acton Arms, after making this handsome concession, much puzzled in his mind by the new light which events were shedding on the character of Jones. The discovery that his future brother-in-law had done a little betting did not surprise him. But, in conjunction with the entanglement to which the vicar had owned the day before, it seemed to indicate a character so different from the model of propriety he had hitherto known, that he was staggered. "And he never kills a thing," Jim thought, turning it over. "You would not think that he knew what sport meant!"

The village policeman was loitering outside the inn, and Foley, who had a word for every one, invited him to come in and have a glass of ale. The road in front of the Acton Arms is separated from the Chase only by a sunk fence; and Jim, casting a glance behind him as he entered, could see the windows of the great house flashing in the sunlight, and the vicar pounding along the avenue towards them. He went in, the constable at his heels, and turned into the cool fireless taproom, which he took to be empty. His stick had scarcely rung on the oak table, however, before a man who had been sitting on the settle, his head on his hands and his senses lost in a drunken stupor, leapt up and, supporting himself by the table, glared at the two intruders.

"Ah!" the squire's son-in-law said drily, "so you are here, Master Jones _vice_ Wilkins, are you? I might have known where to find you!"

It is probable that the wretched man, recognising him, and seeing the policeman with him, thought that they had come to arrest him. Roused thus abruptly from his slumbers, bemused and drink-sodden, he saw in a flash the hand of the law stretched out to grasp him, and an old and ungovernable terror seized upon his shattered nerves. "Keep off! keep off!" he gasped, clawing at the two with his trembling hands. "You shall not take me! I will not be taken! Don't you see I am a gentleman?"--this last in a feeble scream.

"Easy, easy, old fellow," Jim said, surprised by his violence, "or you will be doing yourself a mischief."

But the words only confirmed the poor man in his mistake. "I won't be taken!" he cried, waving them off. "My son will pay you, I tell you," he cried, his voice rising in a shriek which rang in the road outside, and startled the house-dog sleeping in the sunshine--"I tell you my son will pay you!" One of his hands as he spoke overturned the empty glass, and it rolled off the table--on such trifles life rests. For the policeman instinctively started forward to catch it, and the old man misunderstood the movement. He fell in a fit on the floor.

Of course there was a great commotion. The inn was roused from its afternoon slumber, and the policeman was sent for the doctor; with one thing and another half an hour elapsed before Foley left the house and slowly made his way to the Chase. He was thinking a great deal more seriously than was his wont. As hard as nails, some of his friends called him; but there is a soft spot in these men who are as hard as nails, if one can find it. Approaching the house, he caught sight of his sister-in-law, and shrugged his shoulders and shook himself to get rid of unpleasant thoughts. Patty was a favourite with him, and, seeing her loitering round the sweep before the house, he guessed that she was waiting to intercept her betrothed and learn the cause of his conduct. Jim said a naughty word under his breath and went to her, as if he had something to say. But, reaching her, he listened instead--as a man must when a woman has a mind to speak.

"What is it, Jim?" she broke out. Her eyes were full of trouble and her pale complexion was a shade paler than usual. "What is the matter with Walter? He did not dine here last night, though he meant to do so. And when we went to learn the reason this morning he was out. He was away at luncheon-time, and the school had never been visited. And now, when he appeared at last, he told Robert not to call me, and said he would wait in papa's study until he came in."

She stopped. "He is here now?" Jim asked.

"Yes; papa has come in, and they are in the bowling-green."

"I will go to them," he said.

"But, Jim, what is it?" she repeated, speaking with a little quaver in her voice; and laying her hand on his arm, she detained him. "Tell me, is there anything the matter?"

Jim looked down at her. She was one of those soft plump feminine women who seem made to be protected--whom to hurt seems as wicked as to harm a child. "The matter?" he said. "Nothing that I know of. What should be the matter? I will go and see them."

He escaped from her and, entering the hall, of which both the front and back doors were open, he found that she was right. The young vicar, the dust on his shoes and an unwonted shade of depression darkening his face, was walking up and down the sward with the squire--a little man as choleric as he was kind-hearted, who passed two-thirds of his waking hours in breeches and gaiters. Jim Foley strode towards them, a purpose in his mind. The vicar, just embarked on his confession, found it interrupted and made a thousand times more difficult. "Jones has come to explain matters, I hope, sir," Jim said.

The clergyman winced. "He has come to turn my brain, I think," the squire cried, angry and suspicious. "I cannot make out what he would be at."

"I was telling you, sir," the vicar answered with some impatience--"that my father----"

"You had better leave your father alone, I think!" Foley struck in with a manner like the snapping of a trap. "And explain to Mr. Stanton the matter you mentioned to me yesterday."

"I was explaining it!" the clergyman rejoined. "I was saying that my father--he was at school with you, sir, you remember?"

"To be sure," the squire said, his grey whiskers curling with impatience as he looked from one to the other. "And at college."

"He lost money after my mother's death," the young man continued, "and went to live in Glasgow." In his shrinking from the disclosure he had to make his voice took a rambling tone as he added, "I think I told you that, sir."

"To be sure! Twice!

"But I did not tell you," the clergyman replied, driving his stick into the ground and working it about while his face grew scarlet--"and I take great shame to myself that I did not, Mr. Stanton--that my father was much----"

"Good heavens, Jones!" Jim broke out, his patience exhausted. "What on earth has your father to do with it? Yesterday you gave me to understand that you had some entanglement which weighed on your mind. And I thought that you had come here to make a clean breast of it. Instead of which--for Heaven's sake man, don't make me think that you are not running straight!"

The vicar glared at him, while the squire gazed at both. "But that old man," Jones said at last, almost at choking point by this time, "whom you saw this afternoon was----"

Jim struck in again savagely. "We do not want to know anything about him either. As for him, he is----"

"My father!"

"He is dead," Jim persisted, raising his hand for silence, and determined to keep his man to the point and to have things straightened out. "We do not want to hear anything about him. He is dead. We want----"

"Who is dead?"

The question was the vicar's. He wheeled round as he put it, his face white, his voice changed. The squire, who, like most listeners, had learned more than the talkers, saw his tremendous agitation, and, grasping some idea of the truth, tried to intercept Foley's answer. But he was too late. "The old fellow we went to see off," Jim said, almost lightly. "He is dead. Died in a fit half an hour ago, I tell you."

"Dead?"

"Yes, dead. At least the doctor says so."

The vicar put his hands to his face, and turned away, his back shaking. The others looked at him. "He was--he was my father!" he murmured--almost under his breath. And even Jim, his eyes as wide as saucers, understood.

"Fetch some wine, you fool" the squire muttered, giving him a nudge. And he put his arm round the clergyman, and led him to a seat in the shade. There, I think, Walter Jones prayed that he might not be thankful. Man is weak. And conventional man very weak.

Once a gentleman always a gentleman, was the squire's motto. There was no attempt at concealment. The poor man, whose life had been so unlovely, lay at peace at last in the best room at the vicarage, and was presently, with some tears of pity shed by gentle eyes, laid in a quiet corner of the churchyard. There was talk, of course, but the talk was confined to the village, where the possession of a drunken father was not uncommon, or uncharitably considered. The worst of the dead man was known only to Jim Foley, and he kept it even from his wife; while any Spartan thoughts which the squire might otherwise have entertained, any objections he might have raised to his daughter's match, were rendered futile and quixotic by the strange mode in which the denouement had been reached in his presence. He consented, and all--after an interval--went well. But the vicar will sometimes, I think, in the days to come, when prosperity laps him round, wander to the churchyard and recall the hot noon when he walked the roads haunted by that strange sense of forlornness and ruin.

THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN

THE OTHER ENGLISHMAN

"You are English, I take it, sir?"

It was clear to me that the speaker was. I was travelling alone, and had not fallen in with three Englishmen in as many weeks. I turned to inspect the new-comer with a cordiality his smudged and smutty face could not wholly suppress. "I am," I answered, "and I am glad to meet a fellow-countryman."

"You are a stranger here?" He did not take his eyes from me, but he indicated by a gesture of his thumb the busy wharf below piled high with hundreds and thousands of crates full of oranges. From the upper deck of the _San Miguel_ we looked down upon it, and could see all that came or went in the trim basin about us. The _San Miguel_, a steamer of the Segovia Quadra and Company's line, bound for several places on the coast southward, was waiting to clear out of El Grao, the harbour of Valencia, and I was waiting impatiently to clear out with her. "You are a stranger here?" he repeated.

"Yes; I have been in the town four or five days, but otherwise I am a stranger," I answered.

"You are not in the trade?" he continued. He meant the orange trade.

"No, I am not. I am travelling for pleasure," I answered readily. "You will understand that, though it is more than a Frenchman or Spaniard can." I smiled as I spoke, but he was not very responsive.

"It is a queer place to visit for pleasure," he said, looking from me to the busy throng about the orange crates.

"Not at all," I retorted. "It is a lively town and quaint, and it is warm and sunny. I cannot say as much for Madrid, from which I came two or three weeks back."

"Come straight here?" he asked.

I was growing tired of his curiosity, but I answered, "No. I stayed a short time at Toledo and Aranjuez, and at several other places."

"You speak Spanish?"

"Not much. _Muy poco de Castellano_," I laughed, calling to mind the maddening grimace by which the Spanish peasant indicates that he does not understand, and is not going to understand you. He is a good fellow, is Sancho Panza, but having made up his mind that you do not speak Spanish, the purest Castilian is not Spanish for him.

"You are going some way with us--perhaps to Carthagena?" the inquisitor persisted.

He laid some stress on the last word, and with it shot a sly glance at me--a glance so unpleasantly suggestive that I did not answer him at once. Instead, I looked at him more closely. He was a wiry young fellow, rather below than above the middle height, to all appearance the chief engineer. Everything about him, not excluding the atmosphere, was greasy and oily, as if he had come straight from the engine-room. The whites of his eyes showed with unlovely prominence. Seeing him thus, I took a dislike for him. "To Carthagena!" I answered brusquely. "I am not going to stay at Carthagena. Why should you suppose so? Unless, indeed," I added, as another construction of his words occurred to me, "you think I want to see some fighting? No, I fancy the fun might grow too furious."

I should say that three days before there had been a mutiny among the troops at Carthagena. An outlying fort had been captured, and the governor of the city killed before the attempt was suppressed. The news was in every one's mouth, and I fancied that his question referred to it.

My manner or my words disconcerted him. Without saying more he turned away, not going below at once, but standing on the main deck near the office in the afterpart. There was a good deal of bustle in that quarter. The captain, the second officer, and clerk were there, giving and taking receipts and what not. He did not speak to them, but leaned against the rail close at hand. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was watching me; and this gave rise to a shrinking from the man, which did not affect me always, but returned from time to time.

Presently the dinner-bell rang, and simultaneously the _San Miguel_ moved out to sea. We were to spend the next day at Alicante, and the following one at Carthagena.

Dinner was not a cheerful meal. The officers of the ship did not speak English or French, and were not communicative in any language. Besides myself there were only three first-class passengers. They were ladies, relatives of the newly appointed Governor of Carthagena, and about to join him there. I have no doubt that they were charming and fashionable people, but their partiality for the knife in eating prejudiced them unfairly in English eyes. Consequently, when I came on deck again, and the engineer--he told me his name was Sleigh--sidled up to me, I received him graciously. He proffered the omnipresent cigarette, and I provided him with something to drink. He urged me to go down with him and see the engine-room, and after some hesitation I did so. It was after dinner.

"I have pretty much my own way," he boasted. "They cannot do without English engineers. They tried once, and lost three boats in six months. In harbour, my time is my own. I have seven stokers under me, all Spaniards. They tried it on with me when I first came aboard! But the first that out with his knife to me I knocked on the head with a shovel. I have had none of their sauce since!"

"Was he much hurt?" I asked, scanning my companion. He was not big, and he slouched. But there was an air of swaggering dare-devilry about him that gave colour to his story.

"I don't know," he answered. "They took him to the hospital, and he never came aboard again. That is all I know."

"I suppose your pay is good?" I suggested. To confess the truth, I felt myself at a disadvantage with him down there. The flaring lights and deep shadows, the cranks and pistons whirling at our elbows, the clank and din, and the valves that hissed at unexpected moments, were matters of every hour to him; they imbued me with a desire to propitiate. As my after-dinner easiness abated, I regretted that it had induced me to come down.

He laughed harshly. "Pretty fair," he said, "with my opportunities. Do you see that jacket?"

"Yes."

"That is my shore-going jacket," with a wink. "Here, look at it!"

I complied. It appeared at first sight to be an ordinary sailor's pea-coat; but, looking more closely, I found that inside were dozens of tiny pockets. At the mouth of each pocket a small hook was fixed to the lining.

"They are for watches," he explained, when he saw that I did not comprehend. "I get five francs over the price for every one I carry ashore to a friend of mine--duty free, you understand."

I nodded to show that I did understand. "And which is your port for that?" I asked, desiring to say something as I turned to ascend.

He touched me on the shoulder, and I found his face close to mine. His eyes glittered in the light of the lamp that hung by the steam-gauge; they had the same expression that had perplexed me before dinner. "At Carthagena!" he whispered, bringing his face still closer to mine. "At Carthagena! Wait a minute, mate, I have told you something," he went on. "I am not too particular, and, what is more, I am not afraid! Ain't you going to tell me something?"

"I have nothing to tell you!" I answered, staring at him.

"Ain't you going to tell me something, mate?" he repeated. His voice was low, but it seemed to me that there was a menace in it.

"I have not an idea what you mean, my good fellow," I said, and, turning abruptly, my eye discovered a shovel lying ready to his hand--I ran as nimbly as I could up the steep ladder, and gained the deck. Once there, I looked down. He was still standing by the lamp, staring up at me, chagrin plainly written on his face. Even as I watched him he rounded his lips to an oath; and then seemed to hold it over until he should be better assured of its necessity.

I thought no worse of him for his revelations. In a country where the head of the custom-house lives like a prince on the salary of a beggar, smuggling is no sin. But I was angry with him, and vexed with myself for the haste with which I had met his advances. I disliked and distrusted him. Whether he was mad, or took me for another smuggler--which seemed the most probable hypothesis--or had conceived some false idea of me, whatever the key to the enigma of his manner might be, I felt that I should do well to avoid him.

Like should mate with like, and I am not a violent man. I should not feel at home in a duel, though the part were played with the most domestic of fire shovels, much less with a horrible thing out of a stoke-hole.

About half-past ten the _San Miguel_ began to roll, and I took the hint and went below. The small saloon was empty, the lamp turned down. As I passed the steward's pantry I looked in and begged a couple of biscuits. I am a tolerable sailor, but when things are bad my policy is comprised in "berth and biscuits." With this provision against misfortune, I retired to my cabin, happy in the knowledge that it was a four-berth one, and that I was its sole occupant.

In truth I came near to chuckling as I looked round it. I did not need the experience I had had of a cabin three feet six inches by six feet three, shared with a drunken Spaniard, to lead me to view with contentment my present quarters. A lamp in a glass case lighted at once the cabin and the passage outside, and gave assurance that it would burn all night. On my right hand were an upper and lower berth, and on my left the same, with standing room between. A couch occupied the side facing me. The sliding door was supplemented by a curtain. What joy--to one who had known other things--to arrange this and stow that, and fearlessly to place in the rack sponge and tooth-brush! What wonder if I blessed the firm of Segovia Quadra and Company as I sank back upon my well-hung mattress.

I sleep well at sea. The motion suits me. A slight qualm of sea-sickness does but induce a pleasant drowsiness. I love a snug berth under the porthole, and to hear the swish and wash of the water racing by, and the crisp plash as the vessel dips her forefoot under, and the complaint of the stout timbers as they creak and groan in the bowels of the ship.

Cosy and warm, I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was again in the engine-room, seated opposite to the other Englishman. "Haven't you something to tell me? Haven't you something to tell me?" he droned monotonously, wagging his head from side to side, with the perplexing smile on his face which had distressed me waking. "Haven't you something to tell me?"

I strove to say that I had not, because I knew that if I did not satisfy him, he would do some dreadful thing, though I did not know what. But I could not utter the words, and while I struggled with this horrible impotency, the thing was done. I was bound hand and foot to the crank of the engine, and was going up and down with it, up and down! I wept and prayed to be released, but the villain took no heed of my prayers. He sat on, regarding my struggles with the same impassive smile. In despair I strove to think what it was he wanted--what it was--what----

How the ship was rolling! Thank Heaven I was awake! Thank Heaven I was in my berth, and not in that horrible engine-room. But how was this? The other Englishman was here too, standing by the lamp, looking at me. Or--was it the other Englishman? It was some one who had a smudged and smutty face. All the wonder in my mind had to do with that. I lay for a while, between sleeping and waking, watching him. Then I saw him reach across my feet to a little shelf above the berth. As he drew back, something that was in his hand--the hand that rested on the edge of my berth--glittered as the light fell upon it; and, wide awake, I sprang to a sitting posture in my berth, and cried out for fear.

He was gone on the instant, and in the same second of time I was out of bed and on the floor. A moment's hesitation, and I drew aside the curtain, which still shook. The passage was still and empty. But opposite my cabin and separated from it by the width of the passage was the door of another cabin, which was, or had been when I went to bed, unoccupied. Now the curtain, drawn across the doorway, was shaking, and I did not doubt that the intruder was behind it. But behind it also was darkness, and I was unarmed, whereas the thing upon which the light had fallen in the man's hand was either a knife or a pistol.

No wonder that I hesitated, or that discretion seemed the better part of valour. To be sure I might call the steward and have the cabin searched; but I feared to seem afraid. I stood on tiptoe listening. All was still; and presently I shivered. The excitement was passing away, I began to feel qualms. With a last glance at the opposite cabin--had I really seen the curtain shake? might it not have been caused by the motion of the ship?--I closed my sliding door, and climbed hastily into my bunk. Robber or no robber I must be still. In a short time, what with my qualms and my drowsiness, I fell asleep.

I slept until the morning light filled the cabin, and I was roused by the cheery voice of the steward, bidding me "Buenos dias." The ship was moving on an even keel. Overhead the deck was being swabbed. I opened my little window and looked out--and the night's doings rose in my memory. But who could think of dreams of midnight assassins with the sea air in his nostrils, and before his eyes that vignette of blue sea and grey rocks--grey, but sparkling, gemlike, ethereal under the sun of Spain? Not I. I was gay as a lark, hungry as a hunter. Sallying out before I was dressed, I satisfied myself that the opposite cabin was empty, and came back laughing at my folly.

But when I found that something else was empty, I thought it no laughing matter. I wanted a snack to stay my appetite until the steward should bring my _café complet_, and I turned to the little shelf over my berth where I had placed the biscuits. They were not there. Curious! And I had not eaten them. Then it flashed upon my mind that it was with this shelf my visitor had meddled.

After that I did not lose a moment. I examined my luggage and the pockets of my clothes; the result relieved as much as it astonished me; nothing was missing. My armed apparition had carried off two captain's biscuits, and nothing else!

I passed the morning puzzling over it. Sleigh did not come near me. Was he conscious of guilt, I wondered, or offended by the abruptness of my leave-taking the night before? Or was he engaged about his work?

About noon we came to our moorings at Alicante. The sky was unclouded. The shabby town and the barren hills that rose behind it--barren to the eye, since the vines were not in leaf--looked baking hot. I had found a cool corner of the ship, and was amusing myself with a copy of "Don Quixote" and a dictionary, when the engineer approached.

"Not going ashore?" he said.

For the twentieth time I wondered what it was in his manner that made everything he said a gibe. Whatever it was, I hated him for it; and I gave my feelings vent by answering sullenly, "No, I am not." And forthwith I turned to my books again.

"I thought you travellers for pleasure wanted to see everything," he said. "Maybe you know Alicante?"

"No," I answered snappishly. "And in this heat I don't want to know it!"

"All right, governor, all right!" he replied. "Think it might be too hot for you, perhaps?" And with a hoarse laugh that lasted him from stem to stern, and brought the blood to my cheeks, he left me. But I could see that he did not lose sight of me, and at intervals I heard him chuckling at his own wit for fully half an hour afterwards. But where the joke came in I could not determine.

Towards evening I went ashore, slipping away at a time when he had gone below for a moment. I found a public walk in an avenue of palm-trees which ran beside the sea. The palms were laden with clusters of yellow dates, that were more like dried sea-weed than fruit. As darkness fell, and with it coolness, I sat here, and watched the vessels in the port fade one by one into the gloom, and little sparks of light take their places. A number of people were still abroad, enjoying the air, but these sauntered in the indolent southern fashion, so that when I heard the step of a man approaching in haste, I looked up sharply. To my surprise, it was Sleigh, the engineer!

He passed close to me. I could not be mistaken, though he had put off his slouching, shambling air, and was keenly on the alert, glancing from this side to that, as if he were searching for some one. For whom? I was one of half a dozen on a seat in deep shadow. If I were the person he wanted, he overlooked me, and went on. I sat some time after his step had died away in the distance, my thoughts not pleasant ones. But he did not return, and I went up to the Hôtel Bossio prepared to eat an excellent dinner.

The _table d'hôte_ in the big whitewashed room was half finished. I was late; and perhaps for this reason the waiters eyed me, as I took my seat, with odd attention; or possibly it was because the English were not numerous at Alicante, or not popular; or, again, it was possible that some one--Sleigh, for example--had been there making inquiries for a foreigner--blond, middle-sized, and speaking very little Spanish. Their notice made me uncomfortable. It seemed as if I could nowhere escape from my Old Man of the Sea.

Nowhere indeed, for I was to have another rencontre that night, with which my mind mixed him up, and which must be told because of the light afterwards thrown upon it. Returning to my ship along the dark wharf, I came upon figures loafing in the shadow of bales or barrels, and, passing them, clutched my loaded stick more tightly. I got by all, however, in safety and reached the spot where the ship lay. "San Miguel! Bota!" I shouted in the approved fashion of that coast. "San Miguel! Bota!"

The words had scarcely left my lips when there was a rustling close to me. A single footstep sounded on the pebbles, and the light of a lantern was flashed in my face. I recoiled. As I did so two or three men sprang forward. Dazzled by the light, I had only an indistinct view of figures about me, and was on the point of fighting or running, or making an attempt at both, when by good luck the clink of steel fell upon my ear.

By good luck! For they were police who had stopped me; and it is ill work resisting the police in Spain. "What do you require, gentlemen?" I asked in my best Spanish. "I am English."

"Perdone usted, señor," replied the leader, who held the light. "Will you have the goodness to show me your papers?"

"Con mucho gusto!" I answered, delighted to find that things were no worse. I was for producing my passport on the spot, but the sergeant, with a polite but imperative "This way!" directed me to follow him. I did so for a short distance, a door was flung open, and I found myself in a well-lighted office, which I guessed was a custom-house. The officer took his place behind a desk, and by a gesture of his cocked hat signified his readiness to proceed.

I had had to do with the police before, but I was aware of a suppressed excitement in the group, of strange glances which they cast at me, of a general drawing round their chief as he bent over my passport, which seemed to indicate that this was no ordinary case of passport examination. Singular, too, was the disappointment they evinced when they found that my passport bore, besides the ordinary _vise_, the signatures of the Vice-Consul and Alcalde at Valencia. As their faces fell my spirits rose. Full conviction took possession of them after I had answered half a dozen questions; and the interview ended with the same "Perdone usted, señor," with which it had begun. I was bowed out; a boat was instantly procured for me, and in two minutes I was climbing the ladder which hung from the _San Miguel's_ quarter.

The first person I saw on board was Sleigh. He was lolling on a bench in the saloon--confound his impudence!--drinking aguardiente and staring moodily at the table. I tried to pass by him and reach my cabin unnoticed, but on the last step of the companion I slipped. With an oath at the interruption he looked up, and our eyes met.

Never did I see a man more astonished. He gazed at me as if he could not trust his sight. "Well, I never!" he cried, slapping his thigh with an oath, and speaking in a jubilant tone. "Well, I am blest, governor! So you did not go ashore after all! Here's a lark!"

I saw that he had been drinking. "I have been ashore," I answered, my dislike increased tenfold by his condition.

"Honour bright?" he exclaimed.

"I have told you that I have been ashore," I replied.

He whistled. "You are a cool hand," he said, looking me over with a new expression in his face. "I might have known that, precious mild as you seemed! Dined at the Hôtel Bossio, I warrant you did, and took your walk in the Alameda like any other man?"

"I did."

"So you did! O Lord! O Lord! So you did!" Again he contemplated me at arm's length. I could construe his new expression now--it was one of admiration. "So you did, governor! And came aboard in the dark, as bold as brass!"

That thawed me, for I thought that I had done rather a plucky thing in coming on board alone at that time of night. But I told him nothing of the affair with the police. I merely answered, "I do not understand why I should not, Mr. Sleigh. And as I am tired, I will bid you good night."

"Wait a bit, governor," he said, in a lower tone, arresting me by a gesture as I turned away. "Don't you think you are playing it a bit high? You are a cool one, I swear, and fly--there is nothing you are not fly to, I'll be bound! But two heads are better than one--you take me?--letting alone that it is every one for himself in this world. Do you rise to it?"

"No, I don't rise to it," I answered, drawing back from his spirituous breath and leering eyes. He was more drunk than I had fancied.

"You don't? Think again, mate," he said, almost as if he pleaded with me. "Don't play it too high."

"Don't talk such confounded nonsense!" I retorted angrily.

He looked at me a moment, a scowl darkening his face and not improving it. Then he answered, "All right, governor! All right! Pleasant dreams! and a pleasant waking at Carthagena!"

"I have no doubt I shall enjoy both," I replied, "if you will have the goodness not to disturb me as you did last night!" He should not think he had escaped detection.

"It is your turn now," he replied more soberly. "I don't know what you are up to now. I didn't disturb you last night."

"Some one did! And some one uncommonly like you."

"What did he do?" he asked, eyeing me with suspicion.

"I startled him," I answered, "or I do not know what he would have done. As it was he did not do much. He took some biscuits."

"Took some biscuits!" He pretended that he did not believe me, and he did it so well that I began to doubt. "You must have been dreaming, mate."

"I could not dream the biscuits away," I retorted.

The stroke went home. He stood thinking, drawing patterns on the table with his finger and a puddle of spilled water. Guilty or innocent, he did not seem ashamed, but puzzled and perplexed. Once or twice he glanced cunningly at me. But whether he wished to see how I took it, or suspected me of fooling him, I could not tell.

"Good night!" I cried, losing patience at last; and I went to my cabin. The last I saw of him, he was still standing at the table, drawing patterns on it with his finger.

I turned in at once, satisfied that after what had passed between us there would be no repetition of last night's disturbance. In a pleasant state between waking and sleeping I was aware of the tramp of feet overhead as the moorings were cast off. The first slow motion of the engines was followed by the familiar swish and wash of the water sliding by. The ship began to heel over a little. We had reached the open sea. After that I slept.

I awoke suddenly, but in full possession of my senses. The cabin was still lit by the lamp. I guessed that it was a little after midnight; and "_O utinam!_" I sighed, "that I had not taken that cup of coffee after dinner!" My portmanteau too had got loose. I could hear it sliding about the floor, though, as I lay in the upper berth, I could not see it. I must set that to rights.

I vaulted out after my usual fashion. But instead of alighting fairly and squarely on the floor, my bare feet struck something soft, a good distance short of it, and I came down on my hands and knees--to form part of the queerest tableau upon which a cabin-lamp ever shone. There was I, lightly clothed in pyjamas, glaring into the eyes of a dingy-faced man, who was likewise on his hands and knees on the floor, but with more than half the breath knocked out of his body by my descent upon him. I do not know which was the more astonished.

"Hallo! how do you come here?" I cried, after we had stared at one another for some seconds.

He raised his hand. "Hush!" he whispered: and obeying his gesture I crouched where I was, while he listened. Then we rose to our feet as by one motion. I had not time to feel afraid, though it was far from a pretty countenance that was close to mine. Terror was written too plainly upon it.

"You are English?" he said sullenly.

I nodded. I saw that he had a pistol half-hidden behind him, but somehow I felt master of the position. His fear of being overheard seemed so much greater than my fear of his pistol; and it is not easy to do much with a pistol without being overheard. "You are English, too," I added, below my breath. "Perhaps you will kindly tell me what you are doing in my cabin?"

"You will not betray me?" he cried.

"Betray you, my man!" I replied, with a prudent remembrance of his weapon and the late hour of the night. "If you have taken nothing of mine, you may go to the deuce for me, so long as you don't pay me another visit."

"Taken anything!" he retorted, almost forgetting his caution, "do you take me for a thief? I will be bound----" he went on with a pride that seemed to me very pitiable when I understood it--"that you are about the only man in Spain who would not know me at sight. There is a price upon my head! There are two thousand pesetas for whoever takes me--dead or alive! There are bills of me in every town in Spain! Ay, of me! in every town from Irun to Malaga!"

I knew now who he was. "You were at Carthagena," I said sternly, thinking of the old grey-headed general who had died at his post.

He nodded. The momentary excitement was gone from his face, leaving him what he was, a man, dirty, pallid, half famished. About my height, he wore clothes, shabby and soiled, but like mine in make and material. In his desperate desire for sympathy, for communion with some one, he had already laid aside his fear of me. When I asked him how he came to be in my cabin he told me freely.

"I intended to ship from Valencia to France, but they watched all the boats. I crept on board this one in the night, thinking that as she was bound for Carthagena she would not be searched. I was right; they did not think I should venture back into the lion's jaws."

"But what will you do when we reach Carthagena?" I asked.

"Stay on board and, if possible, go with this ship to Cadiz. From there I can easily get over to Tangier," he answered.

It sounded feasible. "And where have you been since we left Valencia?" I asked.

"Behind this sailcloth." He pointed to a long roll of spare canvas which was stowed away between the floor and the lower berth. I opened my eyes.

"Ay!" he added, "they are close quarters, but there is room behind there for a man lying on his face. What is more, except your two biscuits I have had nothing to eat since the day before yesterday."

"Then it was you who took the biscuits?"

He nodded; then he fell back against my berth, all his strength gone out of him. For from behind us came a more emphatic answer. "You may take your oath to that, governor!" it ran; and briskly pushing aside the door and curtain, Sleigh the engineer stood before us. "You may bet upon that, I guess!" he added, an ugly smile playing about his mouth.

The refugee's face changed to a sickly white. His hand toyed feebly with the pistol, but he did not move. I think that we both felt we were in the presence of a stronger mind.

"You had better put that plaything away," Sleigh said. He showed no fear, but I observed that he watched us narrowly. "A shot would bring the ship about your ears. There is no call for a long tale. I took the governor here for you, but when he told me that some one was stealing his biscuits, I thought I had got the right pig by the ear, and five minutes outside this door have made it a certainty. Two thousand pesetas! Why, hang me," he added brutally, "if I should have thought, to look at you, that you were worth half the money!"

The other plucked up spirit at the insult. "Who are you? What do you want?" he cried, with an attempt at bravado.

"Precisely. What do I want?" the engineer replied with a sneer. "You are right to come to business. What do I want? A hundred pounds. That is my price, mate. Fork it out and mum's the word. Turn rusty, and----" He did not finish the sentence, but grasping his neck in both hands, he pressed his thumbs upon his windpipe and dropped his jaw. It was a ghastly performance. I had seen a garotte and I shuddered.

"You would not give the man up? Your own countryman?" I cried in horror.

"Would I not?" he answered. "You will soon see, if he has not got the cash!"

"A hundred pounds!" the wretched fellow moaned. Sleigh's performance had completely unmanned him. "I have not a hundred pesetas with me."

As it happened--alas, it has often happened so with me!--I had but three hundred pesetas, some twelve pounds odd, about me, nor any hope of a remittance nearer than Malaga. Still, I did what I could. "Look here," I said to Sleigh, "I can hardly believe that you are in earnest, but I will do this. I will give you ten pounds to be silent and let the man take his chance. It is no good to haggle with me," I added, "because I have no more."

"Ten pounds!" he replied derisively, "when the police will give me eighty! I am not such a fool."

"Better ten pounds and clean hands, than eighty pounds of blood money," I retorted.

"Look here, Mister," he answered sternly; "do you mind your own business and let us settle ours. I am sorry for you, mate, that is a fact, but I cannot let the chance pass. If I do not get this money some one else will. I'll tell you what I will do." As he paused I breathed again, while the miserable man whose life was in the balance looked up with renewed hope. "I will lower my terms," he said. "I would rather get the money honestly, I am free to confess that. If you will out with two thousand pesetas, I will keep my mouth shut, and give you a helping hand besides."

"If not?" I said.

"If not," he answered, shrugging his shoulders--but I noticed that he laid his hand on his knife--"if you do not accept my terms before we are in port at Carthagena, I go to the first policeman and tell him who is aboard. Those are my terms, and you have time to think about them."

With that he left the cabin, keeping his face to us to the last. Hateful and treacherous as he was, I could not help admiring his coolness and courage, and his firm grasp of the men he had to do with.

For I felt that we were a sorry pair. I suppose that my companion, bad as his position seemed, had cherished strong hopes of escape. Now he was utterly unmanned. He sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his head on his hands, the picture of despair. The pistol had vanished into some pocket, and although capture meant death, I judged that he would let himself be taken without striking a blow.

My own reflections were far from being comfortable. The man grovelling before me might deserve death; knowing the stakes, he had gambled and lost. Moreover, he was a complete stranger to me. But he was an Englishman. He had trusted me. He had spent an hour--but it seemed many--in my company, and I shrank from the pain of seeing him dragged away to his death. My nature revolted against it; I forgot what the consequences of interference might be to myself.

"Look here," I said, after a long interval of silence, "I will do what I can. We shall not reach Carthagena until eight o'clock. Something may turn up before that. At the worst I have a scheme, though I set little store by it, and advise you to do the same. Put on these clothes in place of those you wear." I handed to him a suit taken from my portmanteau. "Wash and shave. Take my passport and papers. It is just possible that if you play your part well they may not identify you, and may arrest me--despite our friend upstairs. For myself, once on shore I shall have no difficulty in proving my innocence."

Not that I was without misgivings. The Spanish civil guards give but short shrift at times, and at the best I might be punished for connivance at an escape. But to some extent I trusted to my nationality; and for the rest, the avidity with which the hunted wretch at my side clutched at the slender hope held out to him drove hesitation from my mind.

As long as I live I shall remember the scene which ensued. The grey light was beginning to steal through the port-hole, giving a sicklier hue to my companion's features, as I helped him with trembling fingers to dress. The odour of the expiring lamp hung upon the air. The tumbled bed-clothes, the ransacked luggage, the coats swaying against the bulkheads to the music of the creaking timbers, formed surroundings deeply imprinted on the memory.

About seven o'clock I procured some coffee and biscuits and a little fruit, and fed him. Then I gave him my papers, and charged him to employ himself about the cabin. My plan was to be out of the way, ashore, or elsewhere, when Sleigh fired his mine, and to trust my companion to return my luggage and papers to my hotel at Malaga; until I reached which place I must take my chance. In reality I played no fine and magnanimous part, for, looking back, I do not think I believed for a moment that the police would be deceived.

A little after eight o'clock I went on deck, to find that the ship was steaming slowly between the fortified hills that frown upon the harbour of Carthagena; a harbour so spacious that in its amphitheatre of waters all the navies of the world might lie. For a time the engineer was not visible on deck. The steward pointed out to me some of the lions--the deeply embayed arsenal, the distant fort, high-perched on a hill, which the mutineers had seized, the governor's house over the gateway where the wounded general had died; and we were within a cable's length of the wharf, crowded with idlers and flecked with sentinels, when Sleigh came up from below.

Although the morning was fine, he was wearing the heavy pea-jacket which I had seen in the engine-room. He cast a spiteful glance at me, then, turning away, he affected to busy himself with other matters. Bad as he was, I think that he was ashamed of the work he had in hand.

"Do we stay here all day?" I asked the steward.

"No, señor, no. Only until ten o'clock," I understood him to say. It was close upon nine already. He explained that the town was still so much disturbed that business was at a standstill. The _San Miguel_ would land her passengers by boat and go at once to Almeria, where cargo awaited her. "Here is the police-boat," he added.

Then the time had come. I was quivering with excitement--and with something else--a new idea! Darting from the steward's side, I flew down the stairs, through the saloon and to my cabin, the door of which I dragged open impatiently. "Give me my papers!" I cried, breathless with haste. "The police are here!"

The man--he was pretending to pack, with his back to the door, but at my entrance he rose with an assumption of ease--drew back. "Why? will you desert me too?" he cried, his face blanched. "Will you betray me? Then, my God! I am lost!" and he flung himself upon the sofa in a paroxysm of terror.

Every moment was of priceless value. This a conspirator! I had no patience with him. "Give them to me!" I cried imperatively, desperately. "I have another plan. Do you hear?"

He heard, but he did not believe me. He was sure that my courage had failed at the last moment. But--and let this be written on his side of the account--he gave me the papers; it may be in pure generosity, it may be because he had not the spirit to resist.

Armed with them I ran on deck as quickly as I had descended. I found the position of things but slightly changed. The police-boat was now alongside. The officer in command, attended by two or three subordinates, was mounting the ladder. Close to the gangway Sleigh was standing, evidently waiting for him. But he had his eye on the saloon door also, for I had scarcely emerged before he stepped up to me.

"Have you changed your mind, governor? Are you going to buy him off?" he muttered, looking askance at me as I moved forward with him by my side.

My answer took him by surprise. "No, señor, no!" I exclaimed loudly and repeatedly--so loudly that the attention of the group at the gangway was drawn to us. When I saw this, I stepped in front of Sleigh, and before he guessed what I would be at, I was at the officer's side. "Sir," I said, raising my hat, "do you speak French?"

"Parfaitement, monsieur," he answered, politely returning my salute.

"I am an Englishman, and I wish to lay an information," I said, speaking in French, and pausing there that I might look at Sleigh. As I had expected, he did not understand French. His baffled and perplexed face assured me of that. He tried to interrupt me, but the courteous official waved him aside.

"The man who is trying to shut my mouth is a smuggler of foreign watches," I resumed. "He has them about him, and is going to take them ashore. They are in a number of pockets made for the purpose in the lining of his coat. I am connected with the watch trade, and my firm will give ten pounds reward to any one who will capture and prosecute him."

"I understand," the officer replied. And, turning to Sleigh, who, ignorant of what was going forward, was fretting and fuming in a fever of distrust, he addressed some words to him. He spoke in Spanish and quickly, and I could not understand what he said. That it was to the point, however, the engineer's face betrayed. It fell amazingly, and he cast a vengeful glance at me.

That which followed was ludicrous enough. My heart was beating fast, but I could not suppress a smile as Sleigh, clasping the threatened coat about him, backed from the police. He poured out a torrent of fluent Spanish, and emphatically denied the charge; but, alas! he cherished the coat--at which the police were making tentative dives--overmuch for an innocent man with no secret pockets about him.

His "No, señor, no!" his "Por dios!" and "Madre de Dios!" and the rest were breath wasted. At a sign from the grim-looking officer, two of the policemen seized him, and in a twinkling, notwithstanding his resistance, had the thick coat off him, and were probing its recesses. It was the turn of the by-standers to cry, "Madre de Dios!" as from pocket upon pocket came watch after watch, until five dozen lay in sparkling rows upon the deck. I could see that there were those among the ship's company besides the culprit who gazed at me with little favour; but the eyes of the police officer twinkled with gratification as each second added to the rich prize. And that was enough for me.

Still I knew that all was not done yet, and I stood on my guard. Sleigh, taken into custody, had desisted from his prayers and oaths. I saw, however, that he was telling a long story, of which I could make out little more than the word "Inglese" repeated more than once. It was his turn now. If he had not understood my French, neither could I understand his Spanish. And I noticed that the officer, as the story rolled on, looked at me doubtfully. I judged that the crisis was near, and I interfered. "May I beg to know, sir, what he says?" I asked courteously.

"He tells me a strange story, Mr. Englishman," was the answer; and the speaker eyed me with curiosity. "He says that Morrissey, the villainous Englishman--your pardon--who was at the bottom of the affair of last Sunday, has had the temerity to return to the scene of his crime, and is on this vessel."

I shrugged my shoulders. "A strange story!" I answered. "But it is for Monsieur to do his duty. I am the only Englishman on board, as the steward will inform you; and for me, permit me to hand you my papers. Your prisoner wishes, no doubt, to be even with me!"

He nodded as he took the papers. And that upon which I counted happened. The engineer in his rage and excitement had not made his story plain. No one dreamt of the charge being aimed against another Englishman. No one knew of another Englishman. The steward sullenly corroborated me when I said that I was the only one on board; and all who heard Sleigh--befogged, perhaps, by his Spanish, which, good enough for ordinary occasions, may have failed him here--did not doubt that his was a counter-accusation preferred _en revanche_.

For one thing, the improbability of Morrissey's return had weight with them; and my credentials were ample and in order. Among these, too, a note for two hundred and fifty pesetas had slipped, which had disappeared when they were returned to me. Need I say how it ended? Or that while the police officer bowed his courteous "Adios" to me, and his men gathered up the watches, and the crew scowled, the prisoner was removed to the boat, foaming at the mouth, and screaming to the last threats which my ears were long in forgetting. I walked up and down the deck, brazening it out, but very sick at heart.

However, the _San Miguel_, despite her engineer's mishap, duly left in half an hour--a nervous half-hour to me. With a thankful heart I watched the fort-crowned hills about Carthagena change from brown to blue, and blue to purple, until at length they sank below the horizon.

But officers and men looked coldly on me; and that evening, at Almeria, I took up bag and baggage and left the _San Miguel_. I had had enough of the thanks, and more than enough of the company, of my cabin-fellow, whom I left where I had found him--behind the sailcloth. I believe that he succeeded in making his escape. For fully a month later a friend of mine staying at the Hôtel de la Paz, at Madrid, was placed under arrest on suspicion of being Morrissey; so that the latter must at that time have been at liberty.

KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.

KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.

Upon arriving at the middle of the Close the Dean stopped. He had been walking briskly, his chin from custom a little tilted, but his eyes beaming with condescension and goodwill, while an indulgent smile playing about the lower part of his face relieved its massive character. His walking-stick swung to and fro in a loose grasp, his feet trod the pavement of the precincts with the step of an owner, he felt the warmth of the sun, the balminess of the spring air, and somewhere at the back of his mind he was conscious of a vacant bishopric, and that he was the husband of one wife. In fine he presented the appearance of a contented, placid, unruffled dignitary, until he reached the middle of the Close. There, alas! the ferrel of his stick came to the ground with a thud, and the sweetness and light faded from his eyes as they rested upon Mr. Swainson's plot. The condescension and goodwill became conspicuous only by their absence. The Dean was undisguisedly angry; he disliked opposition as much as lesser men, and met with it more rarely. For Bicester is old-fashioned, and loves both Church and State, but especially the former, and looks up to principalities and powers, and even now, on account of a mistake he made, execrates the memory of a recreant Bicestrian, otherwise reputable. It was at a public dinner. "I remember," said this misguided man, "going in my young days to the old and beautiful cathedral of this city. (Great applause.) I was only a child then, and my head hardly rose above the top of the seat, but I remember I thought the Dean the greatest of living men. (Whirlwinds of applause.) Well (smiling), perhaps, I do not think quite that now." (Dead silence.) And so dull at bottom may a man be whose name is known in half the capitals of Europe, that this degenerate fellow never guessed why the friends of his youth during the rest of the day turned their backs upon him.

Such is the faith of Bicester, but even in Bicester there are heretics. To say that the Dean rarely met with opposition is to say that he rarely met with Mr. Swainson, and that he seldom saw Mr. Swainson's plot. As a rule, when he crossed the Close he averted his eyes by a happy impulse of custom, for he did not like Mr. Swainson, and as for the latter's plot, it was _anathema maranatha_ to him. The Dean was tall, Mr. Swainson was taller; the Dean was stubborn, Mr. Swainson was obstinate; so that there arose between them the antagonism that is born of similarity. On the other hand the Dean was stout and Mr. Swainson a scarecrow; the Dean was comely and clerical, but not over-rich, Mr. Swainson was pallid, lantern-jawed, wealthy, and a lawyer, and hence the dislike born of difference. Moreover, years ago, when Mr. Swainson had been Mayor of Bicester, there had been a little dispute between the Chapter and the Bishop, and he had shown so much energy upon the one side as to earn the nickname of the "Mayor of the Palace." Finally Mr. Swainson delighted in opposition as a cat in milk, and cared as little to have a good reason for his antagonism as puss in the dairy about a sixty years' title to the cream-pan.

But a sixty years' title to his plot was the very thing which Mr. Swainson did claim to have. Exactly opposite his house--his father's and grandfather's house in which, said his enemies, they have lived and grown fat upon cathedral patronage--lay this debatable land. His front windows commanded it, and on such a morning as this he loved to stand upon his doorstep and gaze at it with the air of a dog watching the spot where his bone lies buried. But if Mr. Swainson was right, that was just what was not buried there; there were no bones there. True, the smoothly shorn surface of the little patch was divided from the green turf round the cathedral only by a slight iron railing, but, said Mr. Swainson, ponderously seizing upon his opponent's weapon and using it with effect, it was of another sort altogether; of a very different nature. It had never been consecrated, and close as it lay to the sacred pile, being separated from it on two sides but by a sunk fence, it did not belong to it, it was not of it; it was private property, the property of Erasmus John Swainson, and the appanage of his substantial red-brick house just across the Close.

And no one could refute him, though several tried their best, to his delight. It cannot now be computed by how many years the discovery of his rights prolonged his life--but certainly by some. His liver demanded activity, namely a quarrel, and what a coil this was! If he had been given the choice of all possible opponents, he would have selected the Dean and Chapter, they were so substantial, wealthy, and formidable. And such a thorn in the side of those comfortable personages as these rights of his were like to prove he could hardly have imagined in his most sanguine dreams, or hoped for in his happiest moments.

It was great fun stating his claim, flouting it in their faces, displaying it through the city, brandishing it in season and out of season; but when it came to making a hole in the smooth turf hitherto so sacred, and setting up an unsightly post, and affixing to it a board with "Trespassers will be prosecuted. E. J. Swainson," the fun became furious. So did the Dean, so did the Chapter, so did every sidesman and verger. Bicester was torn in pieces by the contending parties, but Mr. Swainson was firm. The only concession which could be wrung from him was the removal of the obnoxious board. Instead he set a neat iron railing round his property, enclosing just thirty feet by fifteen. Such was the _status in quo_ on this morning, and with it the Dean had for some time been forced to rest content.

Yet, sooth to say, the greatest pleasure of the very reverend gentleman's life was gone with this accession to the roundness and fulness of Mr. Swainson's. No more with the thorough satisfaction of the past could he conduct the American traveller through the ancient crypt, or dilate to the Marquis of Bicester's visitors upon the beauty of the quaint gargoyles. No; that railed-in spot became a plague-spot to him, ever itching, an eyesore even when invisible, a thing to be evaded and dodged and given the slip, as a Dean who is a Dean should scorn to evade anything. He winced at the mere thought that the inquisitive sightseer might touch upon it, and probe the matter with questions. He hurried him past it with averted finger and voluble tongue, nor recovered his air of kindly condescension, or polished ease (as the case might be), until he was safe within his own hall. Only in moments of forgetfulness could the Dean now walk in his Close of Bicester with the grace of old times.

But on this particular morning the sunshine was so pleasant, the wind so balmy, that he walked halfway across the Close as if the river of Lethe flowed fathoms deep over Mr. Swainson's plot. Then it chanced that his eyes in a heedless moment rested upon the enclosure: and he saw that a man was at work in it, and he paused. The Dean knew Mr. Swainson too well to trust him. What was this? By the man's side lay a small heap of greyish-white things, and he was holding a short-handled mallet, which he was using to drive one of the greyish-white things into the ground. From him the Dean's eyes travelled to a couple of parti-coloured sticks, one at each end of the plot. What was this? A thing so terrible that the Dean stood still, and that change came over him which we have described.

Great men rise to the occasion. It was only a moment he thus stood and looked. Then he turned and walked to a house. A tall thin man was standing upon the steps of the house, with the ghost of a smile upon his face. For a moment the Dean could only stammer. It was such a dreadful outrage.

"Is that," he said at last, "is that, sir, being done by your authority?" With a shaking finger he pointed to Mr. Swainson's plot. The tall man in a leisurely way settled a pair of eye-glasses upon his nose and looked in the direction indicated. "Ah, I see what you mean," he said at last. "Certainly, Mr. Dean, certainly!"

"Are you aware, sir, what it is?" gasped the clergyman; "it is sacrilege!"

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you, my dear sir. It's croquet!"

The tone was one of explanation, and the words were uttered with so transparent an air of frankness, that the veins in the Dean's temples swelled and his face grew, if possible, redder than before.

"I won't stay to bandy words with you!" he cried.

"Bandy!" returned the tall man, intensely amused. "Ha, ha, ha! you thought it was hockey! Bandy! Oh, no, you play it with hoops and a mallet. Drive the balls through--so!"

And to the intense delight of the Close people, many of whom were at their windows, Mr. Swainson executed an ungainly kind of gambado upon the steps. "Disgusting," the Dean called it afterwards, when talking to sympathetic ears. Now he merely put it away from him with a wave of the hand.

"I will not discuss it now, Mr. Swainson," he said. "If your feelings of decency and of what is right and proper do not forbid this--this profanity--I can call it nothing else--I have but one word to add. The Chapter shall prevent it."

"The Chapter!" replied the other, in a tone of contempt, which gave place to temper as he continued, "you are well read in history, Mr. Dean, they tell me. Doubtless you remember what happened when King Canute bade the tide come no further. I am the tide, and you and the Chapter--sit in the chair of Canute."

The Dean, it must be confessed, was no little taken aback by this defiance. He was amazed. The two glared at one another, and the clergyman was the first to give way; baffled and disconcerted, yet swelling with rage, he strode towards the Deanery. His antagonist followed him with his eyes, then looked more airily than ever at his plot and the progress made there, considered the weather with his chin at the decanal angle, finally with a flirt of his long coat-tails he went into the house, a happy man and the owner of a vastly improved appetite.

But the Dean had more to suffer yet. At the door of his garden he ran in his haste against some one coming out. Ordinarily, great man as he was, he was also a gentleman. But this was too much. That, when the father had insulted him, the son should collide with him on his own threshold, was intolerable; at any rate at a moment when he was smarting under a sense of defeat.

"Good morning, Mr. Dean," said the young fellow, raising his hat with an evident desire to please that was the antipodes of his father's manner--only the Dean was in no mood to discriminate--"I have just been having a delightful game of croquet."

It is to be regretted, but here a short hiatus in the narrative occurs. The minor canons, than whom no men are more wanting in reverence, say that the Dean's answer consisted of two words, one of them pithy and full of meaning, but in the mouth of a Dean, however choleric, impossible. Accounting this as a gloss, we are driven to conjecture that the Dean's answer expressed mild disapprobation of the game of croquet. Certain it is that young Swainson, surprised by so novel and original a sentiment, answered only--

"I beg your pardon."

"Hem!" the Dean exclaimed. "I mean to say that I do not approve of this. I will come to the point. I must ask you to discontinue your visits at my house." The young man stared as if he thought the excited divine had gone mad; the Deanery was almost a home to him. "Your father," the Dean went on more coherently, "has taken a step so unseemly, so--so indecent, has used language so insulting to me, sir, that I cannot, at any rate at present, receive you."

Young Swainson was a gentleman; moreover, for a very good reason, the Dean failed to anger him. He raised his hat as respectfully as before, bowed in token of acquiescence, and went on his way sorrowfully.

He had a singularly pleasant smile, this young man, though this was not a time to display it. Mrs. Dean had once pronounced him a pippin grafted on a crab-stock, and thereafter in certain circles he had become known as King Pepin. He was tall and straight and open-eyed, with faults enough, but of a generous youthful kind, easily overlooked and more easily forgiven. Doubtless Mr. Swainson would have had his son more practical, cool-headed, and precise, but the shoot did not grow in the same way as the parent tree. Old Swainson would not have been happy without an enemy, nor young Swainson as happy with one; and if, as the former often said, the latter's worst enemy was himself, he was likely to have a prosperous life.

In a space of time inconceivably short, the doings of the old lawyer and the Dean's remonstrance were all over Bicester. Nay, fast as the stone rolled, it gathered moss. It was asserted by people who rapid-grew to be eye-witnesses, that Mr. Swainson had danced a hornpipe in the middle of his plot, snapping his fingers at the Dean, while the latter prodded him as well as he could through the railings with his umbrella; finally that only the arrival of Mr. Swainson's son had put an end to this disgraceful exhibition.

Neither side wasted time. The Dean, the Canon in residence, and the Præcentor, an active young fellow, consulted their lawyer, and talked largely of ejectment, title, and seisin. Mr. Swainson, having nine points of the law in his favour, and as well acquainted with the tenth as his opponent's legal adviser, devoted himself to the fighter pursuit of the mallet and hoop. In a state of felicity undreamt of before, he played, or affected to play, croquet, his right hand against his left, the former giving the latter two hoops and a cage. He played with a cage and a bell; it was more cheerful.

Of course all Bicester found occasion to pass through the Close and see this great sight, while every window in the precincts was raised, that visitors might hear the tap, tap of the sacrilegious mallet. The Cathedral lawyer, urged to take some step, and well versed in the strength of the enemy's position, was fairly nonplussed. While he pondered, with a certain grim amusement, over Mr. Swainson's crotchet, which did not present itself to his legal mind in so dreadful a light as to the mind clerical, some unknown person took action, and made it war to the knife.

"Who did it?" Bicester asked when it rose one morning, to find Mr. Swainson in a state of mind which seemed to call for a padded room and a strait waistcoat. Some one during the night had thrown down the iron railing, taken up and broken the hoops, crushed the bell, and snapped the pegs; all this in the neatest possible manner, and with no damage to the turf. War to the knife indeed! Mr. Swainson, like the famous Widdrington, would have fought upon his stumps on such a provocation.

He expressed his opinion with much heat that this was the work of "that arrogant priest," and that he should smart for it. A clergyman in this kind of context becomes a priest.

The Dean said, if hints went for anything, that it was a more or less direct interposition of Providence.

Young Swainson said nothing.

The vergers followed his example, but smiled broadly.

The Dean's lawyer said it was a very foolish act, whoever did it. Mrs. Dean said that she should like to give the man who did it five shillings. Perhaps her inclination mastered her.

The Dean's daughter sighed.

And Bicester said everything except what young Swainson said.

I have not mentioned the Dean's daughter before. It is the popular belief that she was christened Sweet Clive, and if people are mistaken in this, and the name "Sweet" does not appear upon the favoured register, what of it? It is but one proof the more of the utter want of foresight of godfathers and godmothers. They send into the world the future lounger in St. James's handicapped with the name of Joseph or Zachary, and dub the country curate Tom or Jerry. No matter; Clive, whatever her name, could be nothing but sweet. She was not tall nor short; she was just as tall and just as short as she should have been, with a well-rounded figure and a grave carriage of the head. Her hair was wavy and brown, and sometimes it strayed over a white brow, on which a frown came so rarely that its right of entry was barred by the Statute of Limitations. There were a few freckles about her well-shaped nose. But these charms grew upon one gradually; at first her suitors were only conscious of her grey wide-open eyes, so kind and frank and trustful, and so wise, that they filled every young man upon whom she turned them with a certainty of her purity and goodness and lovableness, and sent him away with a frantic desire to make her his wife without loss of time. With all this, she overflowed with fun and happiness--except when she sighed--and she was just nineteen. Such was Sweet Clive. If her picture were painted to-day, there would be this difference: she is older and more beautiful.

To return to Mr. Swainson's enclosure. Bicester watched with bated breath to see what Mr. Swainson would do. No culprit was forthcoming, and it seemed as if the day were going against him. He made no sign; only the broken hoops, the cage and battered bell, so lately the instruments and insignia of triumph, were cleared away and, at the ex-mayor's strenuous request, taken in charge by the police. Even the iron railing was removed. The excitement in the Close rose high. Once more the Cathedral vicinage was undefiled by lay appropriation, but the Dean knew Mr. Swainson too well to rejoice. The ground was cleared, but only, as he foresaw, that it might be used for some mysterious operations, of which the end and aim--his own annoyance--were clear to him, but not the means. What would Mr. Swainson do?

The strange unnatural calm lasted several days. The Cathedral dignitaries moved in fear and trembling. At length the dwellers in the Close were aroused one night by a peculiar hammering. It was frequent, deep, and ominous, and it came from the direction of Mr. Swainson's plot. To the nervous it seemed as the knocking of nails into an untimely coffin; to the guilty--and this was near the Cathedral--like the noise of a rising scaffold, to the brave and those with clear consciences, such as Clive, it more nearly resembled the erection of a hoarding. Indeed, that was the thing it was, and round Mr. Swainson's plot.

But what a hoarding! When the light of day discovered it to waking eyes, the Dean's fearful anticipations seemed slight to him, as the boy's vision who dreaming he is about to be flogged, awakes to find his father standing over him with a strap. It was so unsightly, so gaunt, so unpainted, so terrible; the stones of the Cathedral seemed to blush a deeper red at discovering it, and the oldest houses to turn a darker purple. Had the Dean possessed the hundred tongues of Fame (which in Bicester possessed many more) and the five hundred fingers of Briareus, he could not hope to prevent the Marquis's visitors asking questions about _that_, nor to divert the attention of the least curious American. He recognised the truth at a glance, and formed his plan. Many generals have formed it; before; it was--retreat. He despatched his butler to borrow a continental Bradshaw from the club, and he shut himself up in his study. The truly great mind is never overwhelmed.

The vergers alone inspected the monster unmoved. They eyed it with glances not only of curiosity, but of appreciative intelligence. Not so, later in the day. Then Mr. Swainson appeared, leading by a strong chain a brindled bull-dog, of the most ferocious description and about sixty pounds dead weight. The animal contemplated the nearest verger with satisfaction, and licked his chops; it might be at some grateful memory. The verger, who was in a small way a student of natural history, pronounced it a lick of anticipation, and appeared disconcerted. Mr. Swainson entered with the dog by a small door at the corner, and came out without him. The other vergers left.

Their coming and going was nothing to Mr. Swainson. It was enough for him that he stood there the cynosure of every eye in the Close; even Mrs. Dean was watching him from a distant garret window. In slow and measured fashion he walked to the steps of his own house, and, taking thence a board he had previously placed there, he returned to the entrance of his plot, now enclosed to the height of about ten feet by his terrible hoarding. Above the door he hung the board and drew back a few feet to take in the effect. Mrs. Dean sent down for her opera-glasses, but there was no need of them. The legend in huge black letters on a white ground ran thus: "No Admittance! Beware of the Dog!!!" A smile of content crept slowly over Mr. Swainson's face, and he said aloud--

"Trump that card, Mr. Dean, if you can."

As he turned--Mrs. Dean saw it distinctly and declared herself ready to swear to it in a court of justice--he snapped his fingers at the Deanery. And the dog howled!

It was the first of many howls, for he was a dog of great width of chest; not even the surgeon of an insurance company, if he had lived twenty-four hours in Bicester Close, would have found fault with his lungs. Why he howled during the night, for it was not the time of full moon, became the burning question of each morning. That he joined in the Cathedral services with a zest which rendered the organ superfluous, and drove the organist to the verge of resignation, was only to be expected. There was nothing strange in that, nor in his rivalry of the Præcentor's best notes, whose voice was considered very fine in the Litany. The voluntary, Tiger made his own; of the sermon he expressed disapproval in so marked a manner that it was hard to say which swelled more with rage, the Dean within or the dog without. Their rage was equally impotent.

Things went so far that the Dean publicly wrung his hands at the breakfast-table. "You could not hear the benediction this morning?" he wailed, with tears in his eyes. "And I was in good voice too, my dear!"

"You should appeal to the Marquis," his wife suggested. It must be explained that the Marquis in Bicester ranks next to and little beneath Providence. But the Dean shook his head. He put no faith in the power even of the Marquis to handle Mr. Swainson. "I will lay it before the Bishop, my dear," he said humbly. And then, then indeed, Mrs. Dean knew that the iron had entered into his soul, and that the hand of the Mayor of the Palace was very heavy upon him; and her good, wifely heart grew so hot that she felt she could have no more patience with her daughter.

For Clive's sympathies were no longer to be trusted. She was not the Sweet Clive of a month ago, but a sadder and more sedate young woman, who had a way of defending the absent foe, and of sighing in dark corners, that was more than provoking. Duty demanded that she should be an ocean, into which her father and mother might pour the streams of their indignation and meet with a sympathising flood-tide. And lo! this unfeeling girl declined to make herself useful in that way, and instead sent forth a "bore" of light jesting that made little of the enemy's enormities and a trifle of his outrages. More, she showed herself for the first time disobedient; she refused to promise not to speak to King Pepin if opportunity served, and, clever girl as she was, laughed her father out of insisting upon it, and kissed her mother into a not unwilling ally. A wise woman was her mother and clear-sighted; she saw that Clive had a spirit, but no longer a heart of her own. Yet at such a time as this, when her husband was wringing his hands, Clive's insensibility to the family grievance tried Mrs. Dean sorely. It was hard that the Canon's sleepless night, the Præcentor's peevishness, the singing man's influenza, and all the countless counts of the indictment against Mr. Swainson should fail to awaken in the young lady's mind a tithe of the indignation felt by every other person at the Deanery, from the Dean himself to the scullery-maid. But then, love is blind, for which most of us may thank Heaven.

Day after day went by and the hoarding still reared its gaunt height, and the unclean beast of the Hebrews still made night hideous, and the day a time for the expression of strong feelings. At length the Dean met his lawyer in the Close, within a few feet of the obnoxious erection. He kept his back to it with ridiculous care, while they talked.

"We have come to something like a settlement at last," the lawyer said briskly. "Con-fusion take the dog! I can hardly hear myself speak. We are to meet at the Chapter House at five, Mr. Dean, if that will suit you; Mr. Swainson, the Bishop, Canon Rowcliffe, and myself. I think he is inclined to be reasonable at last."

The Dean shook his head gloomily.

"You will see it turn out better than you expect," the lawyer assured him. "Let me whisper something to you. There is an action begun against him for shutting up a road across one of his farms at Middleton and it will be stoutly fought. One suit at a time will satisfy even Mr. Swainson."

"You don't say so? This is good news!" the Dean cried, with unmistakable pleasure. "Certainly, I will be there."

"And--I am sure I need not doubt it--you will be ready to meet Mr. Swainson halfway?"

The Dean looked gloomy again. But at this moment a long howl, more frenzied, more fiendish than any which had preceded it, seemed to proclaim that the dog knew that his reign was menaced, and, like Sardanapalus, was determined to go out right royally. It was more than the Dean could stand. With an involuntary movement of his hands to his ears, he nodded and fled in haste to a place less exposed, where he could in a seemly and decanal manner relieve his feelings.

The best-laid plans even of lawyers will go astray, and when they do so, the havoc is generally of a singularly wide-spread description. The meeting in the Chapter-house proved stormy from the first. Whether it was that the writ in the right-of-way case had not yet reached Mr. Swainson, so that he clung to his only split-straw, or that the Dean was soured by want of sleep, or that the Bishop was not thorough enough--whatever was the cause, the spirit of compromise was absent; and the discussion across the Chapter-house table threatened to make matters worse and not better. Whether the Dean first called Mr. Swainson's enclosure the "toadstool of a night," or Mr. Swainson took the initiative by styling the Dean the "mushroom of a day" (the Dean was not of old family), was a question afterwards much and hotly debated in Bicester circles. Be that as it may, the high powers rose from the table in dudgeon and much confusion.

There was behind the Dean at the end of the Chapter-house a large window. It looked immediately-upon what he, in the course of the discussion, had termed "The Profanation," and since the eventful day of Mr. Swainson's match at croquet it had been, by the Dean's order, kept shuttered, that he might not, when occupied in the Chapter-house, have the Profanation directly before his eyes. At the meeting the shutter remained closed; it may be that this phenomenon had weakened Mr. Swainson's doubtful inclination towards peace.

The Dean was a choleric man. As the party rose, he stepped to this shutter and flung it back. He turned to the others and cried with indignation--

"Look, sir; look, my lord! Is that a sight becoming the threshold of a cathedral? Is that a thing to be endured on consecrated ground?"

They stepped towards the window, a wide low-browed Tudor casement, and looked out. The Dean himself stood aside, grasping the shutter with a hand which shook with passion. His eyes were on the others' faces. He expected little show of shame or contrition on that of Mr. Swainson, but he did wish to bring this hideous thing home to the Bishop, who had not been as thorough in the matter as he should have been. Yet surely, as a bishop, he could not see that thing in its horrid reality and be unmoved!

No, he certainly could not. Slowly, and as if reluctantly, his lordship's face changed; it broke into a smile that broadened and rippled wider and wider, second by second as he looked. His colour deepened, until he became almost purple! And Mr. Swainson? His face was the picture of horror; there could not be a doubt of that. Confusion and astonishment were stamped on every feature. The Dean could not believe his eyes. He turned in perplexity to the lawyer, who was peeping between the others' heads. His shoulders were shaking, and his face was puckered with laughter.

The Bishop stepped back. "Really, gentlemen, I think it is hardly fair of us to--to use this window. This is no place for us." He was a kindly man; there never was a more popular bishop in Bicester, and never will be.

At this the Canon and the lawyer lost all control over themselves, and their laughter, if not loud, was deep. The Dean was puzzled--confused, perplexed, wholly angry. He did at last what he should have done at first, instead of striking that attitude with the shutter in his hand. He looked through the window. It was dusty, and he was somewhat nearsighted, but at length he saw; and this was what he saw.

In the further comer of the enclosure, a couple of lovers billing and cooing; about and round them Mr. Swainson's big dog cutting a hundred uncouth gambols. Bad enough this; but it was not all. The ingenuous couple were Frank Swainson and--the Dean's daughter. Frank's arm was around her, and as the Dean looked, he stooped and kissed her, and Clive, raising her face, returned his gaze with eyes full of love, and scarcely blushed.

When the Dean turned he was alone.

Was it very wrong of them? There was nowhere else, since this miserable fracas had begun, where freed from others' eyes, they could steal a kiss. But into Mr. Swainson's plot no window, save a shuttered one, could look; the door, too, was close to one of the side doors of the cathedral, and they could pop in and out again unseen, and as for the big dog, Frank and Tiger were great friends. So if it was very wrong, it was very easy and very sweet and--_facilis descensus Averni_.

For one hour the Dean remained shut up in his study. At the end of that time he put on his hat and walked across the Close. He knocked at Mr. Swainson's door, and, upon its being opened, went in, and did not come out again for an hour and five minutes by Mrs. Canon Rowcliffe's watch. I have not the slightest idea of what passed between them. More than two score different and distinct accounts of the interview were current next day in Bicester, but no one, and I have examined them all with care, seems to me to account for the undoubted results. First the disappearance next day from Mr. Swainson's plot of the famous hoarding, which was not replaced even by the old iron railing. Secondly, the marriage six weeks later of King Pepin and Sweet Clive.

FAMILY PORTRAITS.

FAMILY PORTRAITS.

On a certain morning in last June I was stooping to fasten a shoe-lace, having taken advantage for that purpose of the step of a corner house in St. James's Square, when a man passing behind me stopped.

"Well!" said he, after a short pause during which I wondered--I could not see him--what he was doing, "the meanness of these rich folk is disgusting! Not a coat of paint for a twelvemonth! I should be ashamed to own a house and leave it like that!"

The man was a stranger to me, and his words seemed as uncalled for as they were ill-natured. But being thus challenged I looked at the house. It was a great stone mansion with a balustrade atop, with many windows and a long stretch of area railings. And certainly it was shabby. I turned from it to the critic. He was shabby too--a little red-nosed man wearing a bad hat. "It is just possible," I suggested, "that the owner may be a poor man and unable to keep it in order."

"Ugh! What has that to do with it?" my new friend answered contemptuously. "He ought to think of the public."

"And your hat?" I asked with winning politeness. "It strikes me, an unprejudiced observer, as a bad hat. Why do you not get a new one?"

"Cannot afford it!" he snapped out, his dull eyes sparkling with rage.

"Cannot afford it? But my good man, you ought to think of the public."

"You tom-cat! What have you to do with my hat? Smother you!" was his kindly answer; and he went on his way muttering things uncomplimentary.

I was about to go mine, but was first falling back to gain a better view of the house in question, when a chuckle close to me betrayed the presence of a listener; a thin, grey-haired man, who, hidden by a pillar of the porch, must have heard our discussion. His hands were engaged with a white tablecloth, from which he had been shaking the crumbs. He had the air of an upper servant of the best class. As our eyes met he spoke.

"Neatly put, sir, if I may take the liberty of saying so," he observed, with a quiet dignity it was a pleasure to witness, "and we are very much obliged to you. The man was a snob, sir."

"I am afraid he was," I answered; "and a fool too."

"And a fool, sir. Answer a fool after his folly. You did that, and he was nowhere; nowhere at all, except in the swearing line. Now, might I ask," he continued, "if you are an American, sir?"

"No, I am not," I answered; "but I have spent some time in the States."

I could have fancied that he sighed.

"I thought--but never mind, sir," he began. "I was wrong. It is curious how much alike gentlemen, that are real gentlemen, speak. Now I dare swear, sir, that you have a taste for pictures."

I was inclined to humour the old fellow's mood. "I like a good picture, I admit," I said.

"Then perhaps you would not be offended," he suggested timidly, "if I asked you to step inside and look at one or two. I would not take the liberty, sir, but there are some Van Dycks and a Rubens in the dining-room that cost a mint of money in their day, I have heard; and there is no one in the house but my wife and myself."

It was a strange invitation, strangely brought about. But I saw no reason why I should not accept it, and I followed him into the hall. It was spacious, but sparely furnished. The matted floor had a cold look, and so had the gaunt stand which seemed to be a fixture, and boasted but one umbrella, one sunshade, and one dog-whip. As I passed a half-open door I caught a glimpse of a small room well furnished with prints and water-colours on the walls. But these were of a common order. A dozen replicas of each and all might be seen in a walk through Bond Street. So that even this oasis of taste and comfort told the same story as had the bare hall and dreary exterior; and laid, as it were, a finger on one's heart. I trod softly as I followed my guide along the strip of matting towards the rear of the house.

He opened a door at the inner end of the hall, and led me into a large and lofty room, built out at the back, as a state dining-room or ball-room. At present it resembled the latter, for it was without furniture. "Now," said the old man, turning and respectfully touching my sleeve to gain my attention, "now you will not consider your labour lost in coming to see that, sir. It is a portrait of the second Lord Wetherby by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and is judged to be one of the finest specimens of his style in existence."

I was lost in astonishment; amazed, almost appalled! My companion stood by my side, his face wearing a placid smile of satisfaction, his hand pointing slightly upwards to the blank wall before us. The blank wall! Of any picture, there or elsewhere in the room, there was no sign. I turned to him and then from him, and I felt very sick at heart. The poor old fellow was--must be--mad. I gazed blankly at the blank wall. "By Van Dyck?" I repeated mechanically.

"Yes, sir, by Van Dyck," he replied, in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable. "So, too, is this one;" he moved as he spoke a few feet to his left. "The second peer's first wife in the costume of a lady-in-waiting. This portrait and the last are in as good a state of preservation as on the day they were painted."

Oh, certainly mad! And yet so graphic was his manner, so crisp and realistic were his words, that I rubbed my eyes; and looked and looked again, and almost fancied that Walter, Lord Wetherby, and Anne, his wife, grew into shape before me on the wall. Almost, but not quite; and it was with a heart full of wonder and pity that I accompanied the old man, in whose manner there was no trace of wildness or excitement, round the walls; visiting in turn the Cuyp which my lord bought in Holland, the Rubens, the four Lawrences, and the Philips--a very Barmecide feast of art. I could not doubt that the old man saw the pictures; but I saw only bare walls.

"Now I think you have seen them, family portraits and all," he concluded, as we came to the doorway again; stating the fact, which was no fact, with complacent pride. "They are fine pictures, sir. They, at least, are left, though the house is not what it was."

"Very fine pictures," I remarked. I was minded to learn if he were sane on other points. "Lord Wetherby," I said, "I suppose that he is not in London?"

"I do not know, sir, one way or the other," the servant answered with a new air of reserve. "This is not his lordship's house. Mrs. Wigram, my late lord's daughter-in-law, lives here."

"But this is the Wetherby's town house," I persisted. I knew so much.

"It was my late lord's house. At his son's marriage it was settled upon Mrs. Wigram; and little enough besides, God knows!" he exclaimed querulously. "It was Mr. Alfred's wish that some land should be settled upon his wife, but there was none out of the entail, and my lord, who did not like the match, though he lived to be fond enough of the mistress afterwards, said, 'Settle the house in town!' in a bitter kind of joke like. So the house was settled, and five hundred pounds a year. Mr. Alfred died abroad, as you may know, sir, and my lord was not long in following him."

He was closing the shutters of one window after another as he spoke. The room had sunk into deep gloom. I could imagine now that the pictures were really where he fancied them. "And Lord Wetherby, the late peer?" I asked after a pause, "did he leave his daughter-in-law nothing?"

"My lord died suddenly, leaving no will," he replied sadly. "That is how it is. And the present peer, who was only a second cousin--well, I say nothing about him." A reticence which was calculated to consign his lordship to the lowest deep.

"He did not help?" I asked.

"Devil a bit, begging your pardon, sir. But there, it is not my place to talk of these things. I doubt I have wearied you with talk about the family. It is not my way," he added, as if wondering at himself, "only something in what you said seemed to touch a chord like."

By this time we were outside the room, standing at the inner end of the hall, while he fumbled with the lock of the door. Short passages ending in swing doors ran out right and left from this point, and through one of these a tidy, middle-aged woman wearing an apron suddenly emerged. At sight of me she looked much astonished. "I have been showing the gentleman the pictures," said my guide, who was still occupied with the door.

A flash of pain altered and hardened the woman's face. "I have been very much interested, madam," I said softly.

Her gaze left me to dwell upon the old man with infinite affection. "John had no right to bring you in, sir," she said primly. "I have never known him do such a thing before, and--Lord a mercy! there is the mistress's knock. Go, John, and let her in; and this gentleman," with an inquisitive look at me, "will not mind stepping a bit aside, while her ladyship goes upstairs."

"Certainly not," I answered. I hastened to retire into one of the side passages, into the darkest corner of it, and there stood leaning against the cool panels, my hat in my hand.

In the short pause which ensued before John opened the door she whispered to me, "You have not told him, sir?"

"About the pictures?"

"Yes, sir. He is blind, you see."

"Blind?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir, this year and more; and when the pictures were taken away--by the present earl--that he had known all his life, and been so proud to show to people just the same as if they had been his own, why it seemed a shame to tell him. I have never had the heart to do it, and he thinks they are there to this day."

Blind! I had never thought of that; and while I was grasping the idea, and fitting it to the facts, a light footstep sounded in the hall and a woman's voice on the stairs; such a voice and such a footstep, that, it seemed to me, a man, if nothing else were left, might find home in them. "Your mistress," I said presently, when the sounds had died away upon the floor above, "has a sweet voice; but has not something annoyed her?"

"Well, I never should have thought that you would have noticed that!" exclaimed the housekeeper; who was, I daresay, many other things besides housekeeper. "You have a sharp ear, sir; that I will say. Yes, there is a something has gone wrong; but to think that an American gentleman should notice it!"

"I am not American," I said, perhaps testily.

"Oh, indeed, sir. I beg your pardon, I am sure. It was just your way of speaking made me think it," she replied. And then there came a second louder rap at the door, as John, who had gone upstairs with his mistress, came down in a leisurely fashion.

"That is Lord Wetherby, drat him!" he said, on his wife calling to him in a low voice; he was ignorant, I think, of my presence. "He is to be shown into the library, and the mistress will see him in five minutes; and you are to go to her room. Oh, rap away!" he added, turning towards the door, and shaking his fist at it. "There is many a better man than you has waited longer at that door."

"Hush, John. Do you not see the gentleman?" his wife interposed, with the simplicity of habit. "He will show you out," she added rapidly to me, "as soon as his lordship has gone in, if you do not mind waiting another minute."

"Not at all," I said, drawing back into the corner as they went on their errands. But though I said, "Not at all," mine was an odd position. The way in which I had come into the house, and my present situation in a kind of hiding, would have made most men only anxious to extricate themselves. But I, while I listened to John parleying with some one at the door, conceived a strange desire, or a desire which would have been strange in another man, to see this thing to the end--conceived it and acted upon it.

The library? That was the room on the right of the hall, opposite to Mrs. Wigrams's sitting-room. Probably, nay I was certain, it had another door opening on the passage in which I stood. It would cost me but a step to confirm my opinion. When John ushered in the visitor by one door I had already, by way of the other, ensconced myself behind a screen, which I seemed to know would mask it. I was going to listen. Perhaps I had my reasons. Perhaps--but there, what matter? As a fact, I listened.

The room was spacious but sombre, wainscoted and vaulted with oak. Its only visible occupant was a thin, dark man of middle size, with a narrow face, and a stubborn feather of black hair rising above his forehead; a man of Welsh type. He was standing with his back to the light, a roll of papers in one hand. The fingers of the other, drumming upon the table, betrayed that he was both out of temper and ill at ease. While I was still scanning him stealthily--I had never seen him before--the door opened, and Mrs. Wigram came in. I sank back behind the screen. I think some words passed, some greeting of the most formal; but, though the room was still, I failed to hear it, and when I recovered myself he was speaking.

"I am here at your wish, Mrs. Wigram, and your service, too," he said, with an effort at gallantry which sat ill upon him. "Although I think it would have been better if we had left the matter to our solicitors."

"Indeed."

"Yes. I thought you were aware of my opinion."

"I was; and I perfectly understand, Lord Wetherby," she replied, with a coldness which did not hide her dislike for him, "your preference for that course. You naturally shrink from telling me your terms face to face."

"Now, Mrs. Wigram! Now, Mrs. Wigram! Is not this a tone to be deprecated?" he answered, lifting his hands. "I come to you as a man of business upon business."

"Business!" she retorted. "Does that mean wringing advantage from my weakness?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do deprecate this tone," he repeated. "I come in plain English to make you an offer; one which you can accept or refuse as you please. I offer you five hundred a-year for this house. It is immensely too large for your needs, and too expensive for your income, and yet you have in strictness no power to let it. Very well, I, who can release you from that restriction, offer you five hundred a-year for the house. What can be more fair?"

"Fair? In plain English, Lord Wetherby, you are the only possible purchaser, and you fix the price. Is that fair? The house would let easily for fifteen hundred."

"Possibly," he retorted, "if it were in the open market. But it is not."

"No," she answered rapidly. "And you, having the forty thousand a year which, had my husband lived, would have been his and mine; you who, a poor man, have stepped into this inheritance--you offer me five hundred for the family house! For shame, my lord! for shame!"

"We are not acting a play," he answered doggedly, but I could see that her words stung him. "The law is the law. I ask for nothing but my rights, and one of those I am willing to waive in your favour. You have my offer."

"And if I refuse it? If I let the house? You will not dare to enforce the restriction."

"Try me," he rejoined, drumming with his fingers upon the table. "Try me, and you will see."

"If my husband had lived----"

"But he did not live," he broke in, losing patience, "and that makes all the difference. Now, for Heaven's sake, Mrs. Wigram, do not make a scene! Do you accept my offer?"

For a moment she seemed about to break down, but, her pride coming to the rescue, she recovered herself with wonderful quickness.

"I have no choice," she said with dignity.

"I am glad you accept," he answered, so much relieved that he gave way to an absurd burst of generosity. "Come!" he cried, "we will say guineas instead of pounds, and have done with it!"

She looked at him in wonder. "No, Lord Wetherby," she said, "I accepted your terms. I prefer to keep to them. You said that you would bring the necessary papers with you. If you have done so I will sign them now, and my servants can witness them."

"I have the draft, and the lawyer's clerk is doubtless in the house," he answered. "I left directions for him to be here at eleven."

"I do not think that he is in the house," the lady answered. "I should know if he were here."

"Not here!" he answered angrily. "Why not, I wonder! But I have the skeleton lease; it is very short, and to save delay I will fill in the particulars, names, and so forth myself, if you will permit me to do so. It will not take twenty minutes."

"As you please. You will find a pen and ink on the table. If you will ring the bell when you are ready, I will come and bring the servants."

"Thank you. You are very good," he said smoothly, adding, when she had left the room, "and the devil take your impudence, madam! As for your cursed pride--well, it has saved me twenty-five pounds a-year, and so you are welcome to it. I was a fool to make the offer." With that, now grumbling at the absence of the lawyer's clerk, and now congratulating himself on the saving of a lawyer's fee, my lord sat down to his task.

A hansom cab, on its way to the East India Club rattled through the square, and, under cover of the noise, I stole out from behind the screen, and stood in the middle of the room, looking down at the unconscious worker. If for a minute I felt the desire to raise my hand and give his lordship such a surprise as he had never in his life experienced, any other man might have felt the same; and as it was I put it away and only looked quietly about me. Some rays of sunshine, piercing the corner pane of a dulled window, fell on the Wetherby coat of arms blazoned over the wide fireplace, and so created the one bright spot in the bare, dismantled room; which had once, unless the tiers of empty shelves and the lingering odour of Russia lied, been lined from floor to ceiling with books. My lord had taken the furniture; my lord had taken the books; my lord had taken--nothing but his rights.

Retreating softly to the door by which I had entered, and rattling the handle, I advanced afresh into the room. "Will your lordship allow me?" I said, after I had in vain coughed to gain his attention.

He turned hastily and looked at me with a face full of suspicion. Some surprise on finding another person in the room was natural; but possibly also there was something in the atmosphere of that house which threw his nerves off their balance. "Who are you?" he cried in a tone which matched his face.

"You left orders, my lord," I explained, "with Messrs. Duggan and Poole that a clerk should attend here at eleven. I very much regret that some delay has been caused."

"Oh, you are the clerk!" he replied ungraciously. "You do not look much like a lawyer's clerk."

Involuntarily I glanced aside, and saw in a mirror the reflection of a tall man with a thick beard and moustaches, grey eyes, and an ugly scar seaming the face from nose to ear. "Yet I hope to give you satisfaction, my lord," I murmured, dropping my eyes. "It was understood that you needed a confidential clerk."

"Well, well, sir, to your work!" he replied irritably. "Better late than never; and after all it may be better that you should be here and see it executed. Only you will not forget," he continued, with a glance at the papers, "that I have myself copied four--well, three--three full folios, for which an allowance must be made. But there! Get on with your work. The handwriting will speak for itself."

I obeyed, and wrote on steadily, while the earl walked up and down the room, or stood at a window. Upstairs sat Mrs. Wigram, schooling herself, I dare swear, to take this one favour that was no favour from the man who had dealt out to her such hard measure. Outside a casual passer through the square glanced up at the great house, and seeing the bent head of the secretary and the figure of his companion, saw as he thought nothing unusual; nor had any presentiment--how should he?--of the strange scene which the room with the dingy windows was about to witness.

I had been writing for five minutes when Lord Wetherby stopped in his passage behind me and looked over my shoulder. With a jerk his eyeglasses fell, touching my shoulder.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "I have seen your handwriting somewhere! And lately, too. Where, I wonder?"

"Probably among the family papers, my lord," I answered. "I have several times been engaged in the family business in the time of the late Lord Wetherby."

"Indeed." There was both curiosity and suspicion in his utterance of the word. "You knew him?"

"Yes, my lord. I have written for him in this very room, and he has walked up and down, and dictated to me, as you might be doing now."

His lordship stopped his pacing to and fro, and on the instant retreated to the window. But I could see that he was interested, and I was not surprised when he continued with transparent carelessness. "A strange coincidence. And may I ask what it was upon which you were engaged?"

"At that time?" I answered, looking him full in the face. "Upon a will, my lord."

He started and frowned, and abruptly resumed his walk up and down. But I saw that he had a better conscience than I had given him credit for possessing. My shot had not struck where I had looked to place it; and, finding this was so, I turned the thing over afresh, while I pursued my copying. When I had finished, I asked him--I think he was busy at the time cursing the absence of tact in the lower orders--if he would go through the instrument. And he took my seat.

Where I stood behind him, I was not far from the fireplace. While he muttered to himself the legal jargon in which he was as well versed as a lawyer bred in an office, I moved to it; and; neither missed nor suspected, stood looking from his bent figure to the blazoned shield, which formed part of the mantelpiece. If I wavered, my hesitation lasted but a few seconds. Then, raising my voice, I called sharply, "My lord, there used to be here----"

He turned swiftly, and saw where I was. "What the deuce are you doing there, sir?" he cried in astonishment, rising to his feet and coming towards me, the pen in his hand and his face aflame with anger. "You forget----"

"A safe--a concealed safe for papers," I continued, cutting him short in my turn. "I have seen the late Lord Wetherby place papers in it more than once. The spring worked from here. You touch this knob."

"Leave it alone, sir!" he cried furiously.

He spoke too late. The shield had swung outwards on a hinge, door-fashion; and where it had been, gaped a small open safe lined with cement. The rays of sunshine, that a few minutes before had picked out the gaudy quarterings, now fell on a large envelope which lay apart on a shelf. It was as clean as if it had been put there that morning. No doubt the safe was air-tight. I laid my hand upon it. "My lord!" I cried, turning to look at him with ill-concealed exultation, "here is a paper--I think, a will!"

A moment before the veins of his forehead had been swollen, his face had been dark with the rush of blood. But his anger died down at sight of the packet. He regained his self-control, and a moment saw him pale and calm, all show of resentment confined to a wicked gleam in his eye. "A will?" he repeated, with a certain kind of dignity, though the hand he stretched out to take the envelope shook. "Indeed, then it is my place to examine it. I am the heir-at-law, and I am within my rights, sir."

I feared that he was going to put the parcel into his pocket and dismiss me, and I was considering what course I should take, when instead he carried the envelope to the table by the window, and tore off the cover without ceremony. "It is not in your handwriting?" were his first words. And he looked at me with a distrust that was almost superstitious. No doubt my sudden entrance, my ominous talk, and my discovery seemed to him to savour of the devil.

"No," I replied unmoved. "I told your lordship that I had written a will at the late Lord Wetherby's dictation. I did not say--for how could I know?--that it was this one."

"Ah!" He hastily smoothed the sheets, and ran his eyes over their contents. When he reached the last page there was a dark scowl on his face, and he stood awhile staring at the signatures; not now reading, I think, but collecting his thoughts. "You know the provisions of this?" he presently burst forth, dashing the back of his hand against the paper. "I say, sir, you know the provisions of this?"

"I do not, my lord," I answered. Nor did I.

"The unjust provisions of this will?" he repeated, passing over my negative as if it had not been uttered.

"Fifty thousand pounds to a woman who had not a penny when she married his son! And the interest on another fifty thousand for her life! Why, it is a prodigious income, an abnormal income--for a woman! And out of whose pocket? Out of mine, every stiver of it! It is monstrous! I say it is! How am I to support the title on the income left to me, I should like to know?"

I marvelled. I remembered how rich he was. I could not refrain from suggesting that he had remaining all the real property. "And," I added, "I understood, my lord, that the testator's personalty was sworn under four hundred thousand pounds."

"You talk nonsense!" he snarled. "Look at the legacies! Five thousand here, and a thousand there, and hundreds like berries on a bush! It is a fortune, a decent fortune, clean frittered away! A barren title is all that will be left to me!"

What was he going to do? His face was gloomy, his hands were twitching. "Who are the witnesses, my lord?" I asked in a low voice.

So low--for under certain conditions a tone conveys much--that he shot a stealthy glance towards the door before he answered, "John Williams."

"Blind," I replied in the same low tone.

"William Williams."

"He is dead. He was Mr. Wigram's valet. I remember reading in the newspaper that he was with his master, and was killed by the Indians at the same time."

"True. I fancy that that was the case," he answered huskily. "And the handwriting is Lord Wetherby's."

I assented.

Then for fully a minute we were silent, while he bent over the will, and I stood behind him looking down at him with thoughts in my mind which he could no more fathom than the senseless wood upon which I leaned. Yet I mistook him. I thought him, to be plain, a scoundrel; and--so he was--but a mean one. "What is to be done?" he muttered at length, speaking rather to himself than to me.

I answered softly, "I am a poor man, my lord," while inwardly I was quoting "_quem Deus vult perdere_."

My words startled him. He answered hurriedly, "Just so! just so! So shall I be when this cursed paper takes effect. A very poor man! A hundred and fifty thousand gone at a blow! But there, she shall have it! She shall have every penny of it; only," he concluded slowly, "I do not see what difference one more day will make."

I followed his downcast eyes, which moved from the will before him to the agreement for the lease of the house; and I did see what difference a day would make. I saw and understood and wondered. He had not the courage to suppress the will; but if he could gain a slight advantage by withholding it for a few hours, he had the mind to do that. Mrs. Wigram, a rich woman, would no longer let the house; she would not need to do so; and my lord would lose a cheap residence as well as his hundred and fifty thousand pounds. To the latter loss he had resigned himself; but he could not bear to forego the petty gain for which he had schemed. "I think I understand, my lord," I replied.

"Of course," he resumed nervously, "you must be rewarded for making this discovery. I will see that it is so. You may depend upon me. I will mention the case to Mrs. Wigram, and--and, in fact, my friend, you may depend upon me."

"That will not do," I said firmly. "If that be all, I had better go to Mrs. Wigram at once, and claim my reward a day earlier."

He grew very red in the face at receiving this check. "You will not in that event get my good word," he said.

"Which has no weight with the lady," I answered.

"How dare you speak so to me?" his lordship cried. "You are an impertinent fellow! But there! How much do you want?"

"A hundred pounds."

"A hundred pounds for a mere day's delay? Which will do no one any harm?"

"Except Mrs. Wigram," I retorted drily. "Come, Lord Wetherby, this lease is worth a thousand a year to you. Mrs. Wigram, as you know, will not voluntarily let the house to you. If you would have Wetherby House you must pay me. That is the long and the short of it."

"You are an impertinent fellow!" he cried.

"So you have said before, my lord."

I expected him to burst into a furious passion, but I suppose there was a hint of power in my tone, beyond the defiance which the words expressed; for, instead of doing so, he eyed me with a thoughtful gaze, and paused to consider. "You are at Poole and Duggan's," he said slowly. "How was it that they did not search this cupboard, with which you were acquainted?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I have not been in the house since Lord Wetherby died," I said. "My employers did not consult me when the papers he left were examined."

"You are not a member of the firm?"

"No, I am not," I answered. I was thinking that, if I knew those respectable gentlemen, no one of them would have helped my lord in this for ten times a hundred pounds.

He seemed satisfied, and taking out a note-case laid on the table a little pile of notes. "There is your money," he said, counting them over with reluctant fingers. "Be good enough to put the will and envelope back into the cupboard. To-morrow you will oblige me by rediscovering it--you can manage that, no doubt--and giving information at once to Messrs. Duggan and Poole, or to Mrs. Wigram, as you please. Now," he continued, when I had obeyed him, "will you be good enough to ask the servants to tell Mrs. Wigram that I am waiting?"

There was a slight noise behind us. "I am here," some one said. I am sure that we both jumped at the sound, for though I did not look that way, I knew that the voice was Mrs. Wigram's, and that she was in the room. "I have come to tell you, Lord Wetherby," she went on, "that I have an engagement at twelve. Do I understand that you are ready? If so, I will summon Mrs. Williams."

"The papers are ready for signature," the peer answered, betraying some confusion, "and I am ready to sign. I shall be glad to have the matter settled as agreed." Then he turned to me, where I had fallen back to the end of the room. "Be good enough to ring the bell if Mrs. Wigram permit it," he said.

As I moved to the fireplace to do so, I was conscious that the lady was regarding me with surprise. But when I had regained my position and looked towards her, she was standing near the window gazing steadily into the square, an expression of disdain rendered by face and figure. Shall I confess that it was a joy to me to see her head so high, and to read even in the outline of her form a contempt which I, and I only, knew to be so justly based? For myself, I leant against the edge of the screen by the door, and perhaps my hundred pounds lay heavily on my heart. As for him, he fidgeted with his papers, although they were all in order. He was visibly impatient to get his bit of knavery accomplished. Oh! he was a worthy man! And Welshman!

"Perhaps," he presently suggested, for the sake of saying something, "while your servant is coming, you will read the agreement, Mrs. Wigram. It is very short, and, as you know, your solicitors have seen it in the draft."

She bowed, and took the paper negligently. She read some way down the first sheet with a smile, half careless, half contemptuous. Then I saw her stop--she had turned her back to the window to obtain more light--and dwell on a particular sentence. I saw--God! I had forgotten the handwriting! I saw her eyes grow large, and fear leap into them, as she grasped the paper with her other hand, and stepped nearer to the peer's side. "Who?" she cried. "Who wrote this? Tell me! Do you hear? Tell me quickly! Who wrote this?"

He was nervous on his own account, wrapt in his own piece of scheming, and obtuse.

"I wrote it," he said, with maddening complacency. He put up his glasses and glanced at the top of the page she held out to him. "I wrote it myself, and I can assure you that it is quite right, and a faithful copy. You do not think----"

"Think! Think! no! no. This, I mean! Who wrote this?" she repeated, her voice hysterical with excitement. "This? This?"

He was confounded by her vehemence, as well as hampered by his evil conscience.

"The clerk, Mrs. Wigram, the clerk," he said petulantly, still in his fog of selfishness. "The clerk from Messrs. Duggan and Poole's."

"Where is he?" she cried breathlessly. I think she did not believe him.

"Where is he?" he repeated in querulous surprise. "Why, here, of course; where should he be, madam? He will witness my signature."

It was little of signatures I recked at that moment. I was praying to Heaven that my folly might be forgiven me; and that my lightly planned vengeance might not fall on my own head. "Joy does not kill," I said to myself, repeating it over and over again, and clinging to it desperately. "Joy does not kill!" But oh! was it true? in face of that white-lipped woman!

"Here!" She did not say more, but she gazed at me with dazed eyes, she raised her hand and beckoned to me. And I had no choice but to obey; to go nearer to her, out into the light.

"Mrs. Wigram," I said hoarsely, my voice sounding to me as a whisper, "I have news of your late--of your husband. It is good news."

"Good news?" Did she faintly echo my words? or, as her face from which all colour had passed peered into mine, and searched it in infinite hope and infinite fear, did our two minds speak without need of physical lips? "Good news?"

"Yes," I whispered. "He is alive. The Indians did not----"

"Alfred!" Her cry rang through the room, and with it I caught her in my arms as she fell. Beard and long hair, and scar and sunburn, and strange dress--these which had deceived others were no disguise to her--my wife. I bore her gently to the couch, and hung over her in a new paroxysm of fear. "A doctor! Quick! A doctor!" I cried to Mrs. Williams, who was already kneeling beside her. "Do not tell me," I added piteously, "that I have killed her?"

"No! no! no!" the good woman answered, the tears running down her face. "Joy does not kill!"

An hour later this fear had been lifted from me, and I was walking up and down the library alone with my thankfulness; glad to be alone, yet more glad, more thankful still, when John came in with a beaming face. "You have come to tell me----" I cried, pleased that the tidings had come by his lips--"to go to her? That she will see me?"

"Her ladyship is sitting up," he replied.

"And Lord Wetherby?" I asked, pausing at the door to put the question. "He left the house at once?'

"Yes, my lord, Mr. Wigram has been gone some time."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Laid up in Lavender, by Stanley J. Weyman