did. The surgeon's supposition, spoken carelessly though it was proved

to be correct. George North had missed his way in returning; had gone miles and miles out of the road, and then had to retrace his steps.

"I'm dead beat," he said to the landlord, with a half laugh. "Fearfully hungry, but too tired to eat. It all comes of my not knowing the country; and there was nobody up to enquire the way of. By daylight, I should not have made so stupid a mistake."

"Well, I have been worrying myself with all sorts of fancies, Sir," said John. "It seemed just as though you had gone off for good in the wake of young Mr. Anthony Castlemaine."

"I wish to goodness I had!" was the impulsive, thoughtless rejoinder, spoken with ringing earnestness.

"Sir!"

Mr. North recollected himself, and did what he could to repair the slip.

"I should at least have had the pleasure of learning where this Mr. Anthony Castlemaine had gone--and that would have been a satisfaction to you all generally," he said carelessly.

"You are making a joke of it, sir," said the landlord, in a tone of reproach. "With some of us it is a matter all too solemn: I fear it was so with him. What will you take, sir?"

"A glass of ale--and then I will go up to bed. I am, as I say, too tired to eat. And I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Bent, to have kept you up."

"That's nothing, now you've come back in safety," was the hearty reply. "Besides, I'm not sorry it has happened so, sir, for I've had an adventure. That young Walter Dance has gone and shot himself to-night; he is lying at the Grey Nunnery, and I have but now been over there with Mr. Parker.

"Why, how did he manage to do that?" cried Mr. North, who knew young Dance very well.

"I hardly know, sir. We couldn't make top or tail of what he said: and the doctor wouldn't have him bothered. It was something about shooting a night-bird with a pistol, and he shot himself instead."

"Where?"

"In the chapel ruins."

"In the chapel ruins!" echoed Mr. North--and he had it on the tip of his tongue to say that Walter Dance would not go to the chapel ruins at night for untold gold: but the landlord went on and interrupted the words.

"He seemed to say it was the chapel ruins, sir; but we might have misunderstood him. Any way, it sounds a bit mysterious. He was in a fine tremor of pain when the doctor got in, thinking he was dying."

"Poor fellow! It was only yesterday morning I went for a sail with him. Is he seriously injured?"

"No, sir; the damages turn out to be nothing much, now they are looked into."

"I am glad of that," said Mr. North; "I like young Dance. Goodnight to you, landlord. Or, rather, good-morning," he called back, as he went up the staircase.

Miss Castlemaine also went to her bed. The first thing she did on reaching her room was to look out for the two-masted vessel. Not a trace of it remained. It must have heaved its anchor and sailed away in the silence of the night.

Mr. Parker was over betimes at the Grey Nunnery in the morning. His patient was going on quite satisfactorily.

Reassured upon the point of there being no danger, and in considerably less pain than at first, Walter Dance's spirits had gone up in a proportionate ratio. He said he felt quite well enough to be removed home--which would be done after breakfast.

"Passato il pericolo, gabbato il santo," says the Italian proverb. We have ours somewhat to the same effect, beginning "When the devil was sick"--which being well known to the reader, need not be quoted. Young Mr. Walter Dance presented an apt illustration of the same. On the previous night, when he believed himself to be dying, he was ready and eager to tell every secret pressing on his soul: this morning, finding he was going to live, his mood had changed, and he could have bitten out his unfortunate tongue for its folly.

He was well disposed, as young men go, truthful, conscientious. It would have gone against the grain with him to do an injury to any living man. He lay dwelling on the injury he might now have done, by this disclosure, to many people--and they were just those people whom, of all the world, he would most care to cherish and respect. Well, there was but one thing to do now, he thought truthful though he was by nature, he must eat his words, and so try and repair the mischief.

Mary Ursula rose rather late. Walter Dance had had his breakfast when she got down, and she was told of the doctor's good report. Much commotion had been excited in the Nunnery when the Grey Ladies heard what had happened. They had their curiosity, just as other people have theirs; and Sister Ann gave them the version of the story which she had gathered. The young man had been up at the chapel ruins to shoot a night-bird, the pistol had gone off, wounding him in the arm and side, and he came crawling on all fours to the Grey Nunnery. The superior, Sister Mary Ursula, sitting up late at her letters, heard him at the door, helped him in, and called for assistance.

Well, it was a strange affair, the ladies decided; stranger than anything that had happened at the Grey Nunnery before: but they trusted he would get over it. And did not all events happen for the best! To think that it should be just that night, of all others, that Sister Mary Ursula should have remained below!

Mary Ursula went into the sick-room, and was surprised at the improved looks of the patient. His face had lost its great anxiety and was bright again. He looked up at her gratefully, and smiled.

"They are so kind to me, lady!--and I owe it all to you."

Mary Ursula sat down by the couch. Late though it was when she went to rest, she had been unable to sleep, and had got up with one of the bad headaches to which she was occasionally subject. The strange disclosure made to her by Walter Dance, added to other matters, had troubled her brain and kept her awake. While saying to herself that so disgraceful an aspersion on the Castlemaines was worse than unjustifiable, outrageously improbable, some latent fear in her heart kept suggesting the idea--what if it should be true! With the broad light of day, she had intended to throw it quite to the winds--but she found that she could not. The anxiety was tormenting her.

"Walter," she began in a low tone, after cheerily talking a little with him about his injuries, "I want to speak to you of what you disclosed to me last night. When I got up this morning I thought in truth I had dreamt it--that it could not be true."

"Dreamt what?" he asked.

"About the smuggling," she whispered. "And about what you said, reflecting on my uncle. You are more collected this morning; tell me what is truth and what is not."

"I must have talked a deal of nonsense last night, ma'am," spoke the young man after a pause, as he turned his uneasy face to the wall--for uneasy it was growing. "I'm sure I can't remember it a bit."

She told him what he did say.

"What a fool I must have been! 'Twas the pain, lady, made me fancy it. Smugglers in the Friar's Keep! Well, that is good!"

"Do you mean to say it is not true?" she cried eagerly.

"Not a word on't, ma'am. I had a fever once, when I was a little 'un--I talked a rare lot o' nonsense then. Enough to set the place afire, grandmother said."

"And there is no smuggling carried on?--and what you said to implicate Mr. Castlemaine has no foundation save in your brain?" she reiterated, half bewildered with this new aspect.

"If I said such outrageous things, my wits must have gone clean out of me," asserted Walter. "Mr. Castlemaine would be fit to hang me, ma'am, if it came to his ears."

"But--if there is nothing of the kind carried on, what of the boats last night?" asked Mary Ursula, collecting her senses a little. "What were they doing?"

"Boats, lady!" returned Walter, showing the most supreme unconsciousness. "What boats?"

"Some boats that put off from an anchored vessel, and kept passing to and fro between it and the Keep."

"If there was boats, they must have come off for some purpose of their own," asserted the young man, looking as puzzled as you please. "And what did I do, down where you found me, you ask, ma'am? Well, I did go there to shoot a bird; that little strip o' beach is the quietest place for 'em."

Was he wandering now?--or had he been wandering then? Miss Castlemaine really could not decide the question. But for having seen and heard the boats herself, she would have believed the whole to be a disordered dream, induced by the weakness arising from loss of blood.

"But how did you get there, Walter?"

"Down that there slippery zigzag from the chapel ruins. The tide was partly up, you say, ma'am? Oh, I don't mind wet legs, I don't. The door? Well, I've always known about that there door, and I pushed it open: it don't do to talk of it, and so we don't talk of it: it mightn't be liked, you see, ma'am. 'Twas hearing a stir inside it made me go in: I said to myself, had a bird got there? and when I saw your light, ma'am, I was nigh frightened to death. As to boats--I'm sure there was none."

And that was all Mary could get from Mr. Walter Dance this morning. Press him as she might now--though she did not dare to press him too much for fear of exciting fever--she could get no other answer, no confirmatory admission of any kind. And he earnestly begged her, for the love of heaven, never to repeat a word of his "tattle" to his father, or elsewhere.

In the course of the morning, Tom Dance and two or three fishermen-friends of his came to the Grey Nunnery to convey Walter home. The rumour of what had happened had caused the greatest commotion abroad, and all the village, men and women, turned out to look for the removal. Fishermen, for that tide, abandoned their boats, women their homes and their household cares. No such excitement had arisen for Greylands since the vanishing of Anthony Castlemaine as this. The crowd attended him to Tom Dance's door with much hubbub; and after his disappearance within it, stayed to make their comments: giving praises to those good Grey Ladies who had received and succoured him.

"Now then," cried the doctor to his patient, when he had placed him comfortably in bed at his father's house and seen him take some refreshment, no one being present but themselves, "what is the true history of this matter, Walter? I did not care to question you much before."

"The true history?" faltered Walter; who was not the best hand at deception that the world could produce.

"What brought you in the chapel ruins with a loaded pistol at that untoward time of night?"

"I wanted to shoot a sea-bird: them that come abroad at night," was the uneasy answer. "A gentleman at Stilborough gave me an order for one. He's a-going to get him stuffed."

Mr. Parker looked at the speaker keenly. He detected the uneasiness at being questioned.

"And you thought that hour of the morning and that particular spot the best to shoot the bird?" he asked.

"Them birds are always hovering about the ruins there," spoke Walter, shifting his eyes in all directions. "Always a'most. One can only get at 'em at pitch dark, when things are dead still."

"I thought, too, that birds were generally shot with guns, not pistols," said the surgeon; and the young man only; groaned in answer to this: in explanation of which groan he volunteered the information that his "arm gave him a twitch."

"Where did you get the pistol?"

"Father lent it to me," said Walter, apparently in much torment, "to shoot the bird."

"And how came the pistol to go off as it did?"

"I was raising it to shoot one, a big fellow he was, and my elbow knocked again that there piece of sticking-out wall in the corner. Oh, doctor! I'm feeling rare and faint again."

Mr. Parker desisted from his investigation and went away whistling, taking in just as much as he liked of the story, and no more. There was evidently some mystery in the matter that he could not fathom.