Chapter 66

HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY--GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END

The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.

A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.

"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, delivered _ore rotundissimo_, to do full justice to so large an amount.

Micky's reply was:--"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. _The_ Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No--I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:--"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.

"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:--"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write _Dog Found_ large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."

"Wot's the dog?"

"Well now, he was here a minute back! Or he run out when you come in." Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she had not had the heart to drive away.

Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement that the owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be told to say what name was wrote on the collar.

"But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. "He hasn't _got_ no collar!"

"Werry good, then," said her nephew. "When he tells you what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't you give him up the dog."

"But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, "for to tell him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing?"

"Not you, Arnty! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just you ask him what, and cotch him out!"

The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composition. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud.

A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, in this case, and Micky could hear, without listening. He was not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the voice of his old acquaintance the convict.

"No safety like a thick fog, Juliar! I'll pay her a visit this very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly-timber. Sapps Court'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn!"

Michael heard the steak rescued--the hiss of its cookery intercepted. Then he heard Miss Julia say with alarm in her voice:--"You're never going there, Wix! Not to Sapps Court?"

"And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court? One place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will an adjective before "place," here.

Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was being specially watched by the Police. How could she account for this knowledge, without full confession? And would not absolution be impossible? She could only fence with the cause of her confusion. "I got the idea on my mind, I expect," said she uneasily. "Didn't you say she had a man hanging round?"

"Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. But _he_ won't be there. He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckon _him_ up! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years ago. One sight of him would easy your mind--an old dot-and-go-one image!"

"I got the idea the officers would look to catch you there. I _did_, Wix."

"And I got the idea no such a thing!" Omission again before this last word. "Why in thunder do you suppose?... Shut to that door!"

"There's no one there--only old Nixon."

"Who's he talking to?"

"Nobody. Empty space!"

"Tell you he is! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said--substantially--the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temptation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the conversation within.

"Who are you, in behind that handle?" asked Miss Hawkins. "Come out and show us your face.... What's this? 'Dog Found'? Yes--very happy to oblige your aunt.... Stick it up against the front-glass yourself.... 'Won't stick of itself,' won't it? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which had probably done no service since her experiment in _faussure_, till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes since.

"That's young Ikey," said the convict. "I can tell him by his lip. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael how to use them--to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry awaiting their mission in life--induced him into Mr. Wix's presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued by the recollection of the _douceurs_ he had received from him. But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. He hardly received so much himself.

The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused himself to say:--"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?--that's the point! Look you now--are you going home?"

"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor!"

Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered:--"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."

"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."

Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."

"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"

"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."

"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"

"Sharp boy! That's what _she_ is. Dead."

"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to know it's not a lie?" said he.

"_She'll_ know, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am. _She'll_ twig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself. "Look here--I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son--old mother Prichard's son--was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."

If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit, saying:--"All right, mister, I'm your man"--and departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:--"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers--halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough.

Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that indiscreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with renewed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer.

But an escaped convict with the police inquiring for him cannot put up the banns. Had Daverill seen his way to doing so he would have made light of bigamy. Besides, _was_ it likely his first wife would claim him? He preferred to suppress his real reason for refusing to "make an honest woman" of Miss Julia, and to take advantage of the fact that his "real wife" Polly was still living.

Then Miss Hawkins had made a proposal which showed a curious frame of mind about marriage law. Her idea may be not unknown in the class she belonged to, still. It certainly existed in the fifties of last century. If Aunt M'riar could be deprived of her "marriage lines" her teeth would be drawn, not merely practically by making proof of a marriage difficult, but definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence--most to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of respectability, and he and his lawful wife would come apart, like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may be in itself.

"She's got her lines to show"--So the lady had been saying, shortly before Michael came into the bar.--"But she won't have them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. _You_ can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the convict's cunning.

He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally:--"Right you are, Juliar! I see my way."

"What are you going to do?"

"That's tellings. I'll get the dockyment out of her. That's enough for you, without your coming behind to see. I'll make you a New Year's present of it, gratish. What'll you do with it?"

"Tear it up--burn it. That'll quiet _her_ off. Lawful Polly! Damn her!" Really Miss Hawkins made a better figure in a rage, than when merely vegetating. And yet her angry flush was inartistic, through so much pearl powder. It made streaks.

It had its effect on Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, making him even more cunning than before. "I'll get it out of her, Juliar," said he, "and you shall have it to tear up, to your heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of difference, that I see. But have it your own choice. A woman's a woman!" There seems no place in this for Mr. Wix's favourite adjective; but it called for omission before "farthing's worth," for all that!

"Not a penny of mine shall go your way, Wix, till I've put it on the fire, and seen it burn." Miss Hawkins dropped her voice to say:--"Only keep safe, just the little while left."

After Micky's exit one or two customers called for attention, and subsided into conversation over one or two quarts. One had a grievance that rumbled on continuously, barely pausing for intermittent sympathy from the other or others. Their quarts having been conceded and paid for, Miss Julia returned. That steak--which you may have felt anxious about--was being kept hot, and Mr. Wix was tapping the ashes out of his finished pipe. "There!" said he. "You run your eye through that, and you'll see there's no more cause to shy off Sapps than any other place." His exact words suggested recent carnage in Sapps Court, but only for rhetoric's sake.

Miss Hawkins picked up the letter he threw across the table, and recognised the one she had stealthily converted to an assurance of the disappearance of extra police from Sapps Court. She felt very uncomfortable indeed--but what could she do?

* * * * *

Ill news is said to travel fast, always. It had not done so in this case, and Sapps Court was still in ignorance of old Maisie's death when Michael passed under its archway, to experience for the first time the feelings that beset the bearer of fatal tidings to those it will wound to hear them far worse than himself. To a not inhuman creature, in such a case, a title to sorrow, that will lessen the distance between his own heart and the one he has to lacerate, is almost a relief.

He himself was not to blame for delay in delivering his message. On the contrary, his sympathetic perception of its unwelcomeness to its recipients took the strange form of a determination not to lose a second in fulfilling his instructions. So deeply bent was he on doing this that he never questioned the reasonableness of his own alacrity until he had passed the iron post Dave fell off--you remember?--and was opposite to his own family residence at the head of the Court. His intention had been to pass it, and go straight on to No. 7. Something made him change his mind; perhaps the painfulness of his task dawned on him. His mother was surprised to see him. "There now," said she. "I thought you was going to be out all day, and your father he'll want all the supper there is for hisself."

"So I _was_ a-going to be out all day. I'm out now, in a manner o' speaking. Going out again. Nobody's going to suffer from an empty stummick along o' me." He had subsided on a rocking-chair, dropping his old cloth cap between his feet.

"Whereabouts have you been to, Micky?" said his mother conciliatorily, to soothe her son's proud independent spirit.

He recited his morning's work rapidly. "Linked an old cock down to Chiswick Mawl what was frightened to ride in a hansom, till half-past eleven, 'cos he could only go slow. Got an early dinner off of his cook by reason of roomuneration. Cold beef and pickles as much as I choose. Slice o' plum pudding hotted up a purpose, only no beer for to encourage wice in youth. Bein' clost handy, dropped round on a wisit to Arnty Lisbeth. Arnty Lisbeth she's makin' inquiry concerning a young tike's owner. Wrote Arnty Lisbeth out a notice-card. Got Miss Horkings next door to allow it up in her window on the street. That's how I came by this here intelligence I got to pass on to Wardle's. Time I was going!"

Mrs. Ragstroar stopped scraping the brown outer skin off a very large potato, and looked reproachfully at Micky. "You've never said nothing of _that_," said she.

"Who ever went to say I said anything of it?" was the reply. In this family all communications took the form of contradictions or indictments, more or less defiant in character. "I never said not one word. I'd no call to say anything, and I didn't."

"Then how can you ever expect anyone to know unless you say?" She went on peeling.

"Who's ever said I expected anyone to know?" But in spite of his controversial method, he did _not_ go away to give this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at least sympathy.

His mother perceived the fact, and said magnanimously:--"You might just as well up and tell, Micky." Then she nearly undid the effect of her concession by saying:--"Because you know you want to!"

What saved the situation was that Micky _did_ want to. He blurted out the news that was oppressing him, to his own great relief. "Old Mother Prichard, Wardleses Widder upstairs, she's dead."

"Sakes alive! They was expecting her back."

"Well--she's dead, like I tell you!"

"For sure?"

"That's what her son says. If _he_ don't know, nobody don't."

"Was it him told you? I never heard tell she had a son--not Mrs. Prichard."

Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a censure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired off his speech in platoons, to say:--"Never see her son! Shouldn't know him if I _was_ to see him. Wot--I'm telling--you--that's--wot--her--son said to the party what commoonicated it to me. Miss Wardle she'll reco'nise the party, by particklars giv'." This embodied the impression received from the convict's words, which had made no claim to old Maisie as his mother.

"Whatever shall you say to Mrs. Wardle?"

Micky picked up his cap from the ground, and used it as a nose-polisher--after slapping it on his knee to sterilise it, a use which seemed to act in relief of perplexity. "If I know, I'm blest," said he. "Couldn't tell you if you was to arsk me!"

It was impossible to resist the implied appeal for help. Mrs. Ragstroar put a large fresh potato on the table to enjoy its skin yet a little longer, and wiped the memory of its predecessors off on her apron. "Come along, Micky," she said. "I got to see Aunt M'riar; you come along after me. I'll just say a word aforehand." Micky welcomed this, and saying merely:--"Ah!--like a tip!" followed his mother down the Court to No. 7.

Someone, somewhere, must have known, clocks apart, that a day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between submission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a crippled activity by candlelight, on the one hand, and ruin, on the other. Not that tallow candles were really much good--they got that yellow and streaky. Why--the very gaslamps out of doors you couldn't hardly see them, not unless you went quite up close! If it had not been that, as Micky followed his mother down the Court, a ladder-bearer had dawned suddenly, and died away after laying claim to lighting you up a bit down here, no one would never have so much as guessed illumination was afoot. But then the one gaslamp was on a bracket a great heicth up, on the wall at the end of Druitt's garden, so called. And Mrs. Ragstroar and her son had followed along the wood-palings in front of the houses, on the left.

Micky's flinching from his mission had grown on him so by the time they reached the end house, that he hung back and allowed his mother to enter first. He wanted the tip to exhaust the subject of Death, and to leave him only the task of authentication. He did not hear what his mother said in a quick undertone to Aunt M'riar, within, manifestly ironing. But he heard its effect on her hearer--a cry of pain, kept under, and an appeal to Uncle Mo, in some dark recess beyond. "Oh, Mo!--only hark at that! Our old lady--gone!" Then Uncle Mo, emerging probably from pitch darkness in the little parlour, and joining in the undertones on inquiry and information mixed--mixed soon enough with sobs. Then the struggle against them in Mo's own voice of would-be reassurance:--"Poor old M'riar! Don't ye take on so! We'll all die one day." Then more undertones. Then Aunt M'riar's broken voice:--"Yes--I _know_ she was eighty"--and her complete collapse over:--"It's the children I'm thinking of! Our children, Mo, our children!"

Old Mo saw that point. You could hear it in his voice. "Ah--the children!" But he tried for a forlorn hope. Was it possibly a false report? Make sure about that, anyhow, before giving way to grief! "Was it only that young shaver of yours brought the news, Mrs. Ragstroar? Maybe he's put the saddle on the wrong horse!"

"He's handy to tell his own tale, Mr. Wardle. Here, young Micky! Come along in and speak for yourself." Whereupon the boy came in. He had been secretly hoping he might escape being called into council altogether.

"You're sure you got the right of it, Michael," said Uncle Mo. "Tell it us all over again from the beginning."

Whereupon Micky, braced by having a member of his own noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths of speech, addressed to Mr. Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of higher understandings of the affairs of men than aunts and mothers could expect to share. "Party that's givin' trouble to the Police ... Party I mentioned seeing in Hy' Park ... Party that come down the Court inquirin' for widder lady ..." came at intervals. Micky's respectful and subdued reference to Mrs. Prichard was a tribute to Death.

"And did he say her son told him, to his own hearing?... All right, M'riar, I know what I'm talking about." This was to stop Aunt M'riar's interposing with a revelation of old Maisie's relation to the party. It would have encumbered cross-examination; which, even if it served no particular end, would seem profound and weighty.

"That's how I took it from him," said Micky.

"Didn't he say who her son was?" Aunt M'riar persisted, with unflinching simplicity.

Micky, instantly illuminated, replied:--"Not he! He never so much as said he wasn't her son, hisself." This did not mean that affirmation was usually approached by denial of every possible negation. It was only the involuntary echo of a notion Aunt M'riar's manner had clothed her words with.

"That was tellings, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. "But it don't make any odds, that I can see. Look ye here, young Micky! What was it this charackter said about coming here this afternoon?"

"Werry first words I heard him say! 'No safety like a thick fog,' he says. 'And I'll pay her a visit this very arternoon,' he says. Only he won't! You may take that off me, like Gospel."

"How do you make sure of that, young master?"

"'Cos he's got nothing to come for, now I've took his message for him. If he hadn't had reliance, he'd not have arxed me to carry it. He knows me for safe, by now, Mr. Wardle."

"Don't you see, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "He'd no call to come here, exceptin'. It was only to oblige-like, and let know. Once Micky gave his word, what call had he to come four mile through such a fog?"

"That's the whole tale, then?" said Uncle Mo, after reflection. "Onlest you can call to mind something you've forgot, Master Micky."

"Not a half a word, Mr. Moses. If there had a been, I'd have made you acquainted, and no lies. And all I said's ackerate, and to rely on." Which was perfectly true, so far as reporter's good faith went. Had Micky overheard the conversation two minutes sooner, he would have gathered that Mr. Wix had other reasons for coming to Sapps Court than to give the news of Mrs. Prichard's death. Indeed, it is not clear why, intending to go there for another purpose, Wix thought it necessary to employ Michael at all as an ambassador. But a story has to be content with facts.

Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were alone with the shadow of their trouble, and the knowledge that the children must be told.

The boy and his mother, their painful message delivered, had vanished through the fog to their own home. The voices of Dave and Dolly came from the room above through the silence that followed. Mo and M'riar were at no loss to guess what was the burden of that earnest debate that rose and fell, and paused and was renewed, but never died outright. It was the endless arrangement and rearrangement of the preparations for the great event to come, the feast that was to welcome old Mrs. Picture back to her fireside, and its chair with cushions.

"Oh, Mo--Mo! I haven't the heart--I haven't the heart to do it."

"Poor old M'riar--poor old M'riar!" The old prizefighter's voice was tender with its sorrow for his old comrade, who shrank from the task that faced them, one or both; even sorrow--though less oppressive--for the loss of the old lady who had become the children's idol.

"No, Mo, I haven't the heart. Only this very day ... if it hadn't been for the fog ... Dave would have got the last halfpenny out of his rabbit to buy a sugar-basin on the stall in the road ... and he's saving it for a surprise for Dolly ... when the fog goes...."

"Is Susan Burr upstairs with them?"

"No--she's gone out to Yardley's for some thread. She's all right. She's walking a lot better."

They sat silent for a while, the unconscious voices overhead reaching their hearts, and rousing the question they would have been so glad to ignore. How should they bring it to the children's knowledge that the chair with cushions was waiting for its occupant in vain? Which of their unwilling hands should be the first to draw aside the veil that still sheltered those two babies' lives from the sight of the face of Death.

The man was the first to speak. "Young Mick, he saw his way pretty sharp, M'riar--about who was ... her son." His voice dropped on the reference to old Maisie herself, and he avoided her name.

"Did he understand?"

"Oh yes--he twigged, fast enough.... There's a p'int to consider, M'riar. This man's her son--but it don't follow he knows whether she's dead or living, any better than you or me. Who's to say he's not lying? Besides, we should have had a letter to tell.... Who from?... H'm--well--from ..." But Mo found the completion of this sentence difficult.

No wonder! How could he reply:--"Her ladyship?" He may have been convinced that Gwen would write, but how could he say so? The sister and daughter, neither of whom were more than names to him, seemed out of the question. Sister Nora would be sure to come with the news, some time. But was she back from Scotland, where they knew she had gone to convalesce?

Aunt M'riar looked the fact in the face. "No--we shouldn't have had no letter, Mo. Not yet a while, at least. Daverill's a bad man, and lies. But not when there's no advantage in it. He'd not go about to send me word she was dead, except he knew."

"How should he know, more than we?"

"Don't you ask me about when I see him, not yet where, nor yet how, and I'll tell you, Mo." She waited, as for a safe-conduct.

"Poor old M'riar!" said Mo pitifully. "I'll not witness-box you. Catch me! No--no!--you shan't tell me nothing you don't like."

"He told me he should try to see his mother again. And I said to him if he went there he would be taken, safe and certain. And he said not he, because the Police were too sharp by half, and would take for granted he would be afraid to go anigh the place again. He said he could always see round them."

"I see what he was driving at. And you think he went."

"None so long ago, I should say. He never see her--not alive. I couldn't say why, only I feel that was the way of it."

"When did you see him last?... No--old girl! I won't do that. It's mean--after sayin' I wouldn't witness-box! Don't you tell me nothing."

"I won't grudge telling you that much, Mo. It's a tidy long time back now. I couldn't say to a day. It was afore I wrote to him to keep away from the Court for fear of the Police.... Yes--I did! Just after Mr. Rowe came round that time, asking inquiries.... I _am_ his wife, Mo--nothing can't alter it."

"I ain't blaming you, old girl."

"Well--it was then he said he'd go to Chorlton again. And he's been."

Silence again, and the sound of the children above. Then a footstep without, recognised as Susan Burr's by its limp.

"She'll have to be told, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "We've never had a thought for poor Susan."

A commonplace face came white as ashes from the fog without, and a suffocating voice, gasping against sobs. "Oh, M'riar!--Oh, Mr. Wardle!--_Is_ it true she's gone?"

Aunt M'riar could not tighten her lips against their instability and speak, at the same time, so she nodded assent. Uncle Mo said, steadily enough:--"I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Burr. We can't make it out no otherwise." Then M'riar got self-command to say:--"Yes--she's taken from us. It's the Lord's will." And then they could claim their birthright of tears, the last privilege left to hearts encompassed with the darkness of the grave.

The three were standing, some short while later, at the stairfoot, each looking at the other. Which was to go first?

Aunt M'riar made a hesitating suggestion. "Supposin' you was to step up first, and look back to say...!"

"That's one idear," said Uncle Mo. "Suppose you do!"

Susan Burr, referred to by both, accepted the commission, limping slowly up the stairs while the others waited below, listening. They heard that the door above was opened, when the children's voices came clearer, suddenly. But Susan Burr had only cautiously pushed the door ajar, making no noise, to listen herself before going in. There was a flare from a gas-birth in the fire as she got a sight of the group within, through the opening. It illuminated Dolly, Dave, and the newly christened wax doll; the Persian apparatus on the floor--a mere rehearsal, whose cake had to be pretence cake, and whose tea lacked its vegetable constituent--and the portraits of robed and sceptred Royalty on the wall. Some point in stage-management seemed to be under discussion, and to threaten a dissolution of partnership. For Dave was saying:--"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the fog's a-stopping. You look out at the winder!"

Dolly met this with a firm, though gentle, prohibition. "No, you _s'arn't_. You _is_ to be Gwanny Mawwowbone vis time, and set on the sofa. And me to be old Mrs. Spicture vis time, and set in the chair wiv scushions. And Pussy to be ve uvvers. And Gweng to paw out all veir teas. Only vey take veir sugar veirselves." Dolly may have had it in view to reduce Dave to impotence by assigning to him the position of a guest. His manhood revolted against a subordinate part. Superhuman tact is needed--an old story!--in the casting of the parts of any new play, and Dolly, although kissable to a degree, and with an iron will, was absolutely lacking in tact.

"Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the forg's a-stoarping." But this was an empty threat, as Dave knew perfectly well that Uncle Mo would not allow him to go out of doors so late, even if the fog melted, since its immediate cessation would have left London in the dark, for it was past the Official hour of sunset.

Dolly said again:--"No, you sarn't!" and went on with the arrangements. "You take _tite_ hold of Pussy, and stop her off doin' on ve scushions. Gweng to paw out the tea, only to wait faw the hot water! Ven I shall go in the chair with scushions, and be Mrs. Spicture. And ven you to leave hold of Pussy, and be Gwanny Mawwowbone on the sofa." The supernumeraries were _intransigeant_ and troublesome; that is to say, their representative the Cat was.

Dave, whose enjoyment of these games was beginning to be marred by his coming manhood--for see how old he was getting!--utilised magnanimity as an excuse for concession. He kept the supers in check while Dolly suggested an attitude to Gweng. Gweng had only to wait for hot water, so it was easy to find one. Dolly then scrambled into the chair with cushions, and the supernumeraries wedged themselves round her and purred, in the person of the Cat. But having made this much concession, Dave struck.

Instead of accepting his part, he went to the window. "Oy can see across the way," said he. "Oy don't call it a forg when you can see the gairslamp all the way across the Court. That hoyn't a forg! Oy say, Dolly, oy'm a-going for to see Uncle Mo round to The Sun parlour, and boy a hoypny sorcer coming back. Oy _am_!"

Dolly shook a mass of rough gold that cried aloud for a comb, and said with sweet gravity:--"You tarn't!"

"Why not?" Dave's indignation at this statement made him shout. "Why carn't oy, same as another boy?"

"Because you're Gwanny Mawwowbone, all ve time. You tarn't _help_ it." Dolly's solemn nods, and a pathos that seemed to grieve over the inevitable, left Dave speechless, struggling in vain against the identity he had so rashly undertaken to assume.

Susan Burr missed a great deal of this, and marked what she heard but little. She only knew that the children were happy, and that their happiness must end. Even her own grief--for think what old Maisie's death meant to her!--was hushed at the thought of how these babies could be told, could have their first great grief burst upon them. She felt sick, and only knew that she herself could not speak the word.

Aunt M'riar stole up after her stealthily--not Uncle Mo; his weight on the old stairs would have made a noise. They stood side by side on the landing, just catching sight of the little poppet in the armchair, all unkempt gold and blue eyes, quite content with her personation of the beloved old presence it would never know again. Aunt M'riar could just follow Susan Burr's stifled whisper:--"She's being old Mrs. Picture, in her chair."

It was confirmed by Dave's speech from the window, unseen. "You _ain't_ old Mrs. Picture. When Mrs. Picture comes, oy shall tell her you said you was her, and then you'll see what Mrs. Picture'll say!" He spoke with a deep earnestness--a champion of Truth against an insidious and ungrounded fiction, that pretence was reality.

Then Dolly's voice, immovable in conviction, sweet and clear in correction of mere error:--"I _is_ Mrs. Spicture, and when she comes she'll _say_ I was Mrs. Spicture. She'll set in her chair wiv scushions, and _say_ I was Mrs. Spicture."

The two listeners without did not wait to hear Dave's indignant rejoinder. They could not bear the tranquil ignorance of the children, and their unconsciousness of the black cloud closing in on them. They turned and went noiselessly down the stairs, choking back the grief they dared not grant indulgence to, by so much as a word or sound. The chronic discussion that they had left behind went on--on--always the same controversy, as it seemed; the same placid assurance of Dolly, the same indignant protest of Dave.

At the stairfoot, Uncle Mo, silent, looking inquiry, mistrusting speech. Aunt M'riar used a touch on his arm, and a nod towards the door of the little parlour, to get safe out of the children's hearing before risking speech, with that suffocation in her throat. Then when the door was closed, it came.

"We c-c-couldn't do it, Mo, we c-couldn't do it." Her sobs became a suppressed wail of despair, which seemed to give relief. Susan Burr had no other tale to tell, and was inarticulate to the same effect. They _could_ not break through the panoply of the children's ignorance of Death, there in the very home of the departed, in the face of every harbinger of her return.

"Poor old M'riar! You shan't have the telling of 'em." Uncle Mo's pitying tones were husky in the darkened room; not quite dark, as the fog was lifting, and the Court's one gas-lamp was perceptible again through its remains. "Poor old M'riar! You shan't tell 'em--nor yet Susan Burr. _I'll_ tell 'em, myself." But his heart sank at the prospect of his task, and he was fain to get a little respite--of only a few hours. "Look ye here, M'riar, I don't see no harm to come of standing of 'em over till we know. Maybe, as like as not, we'll have a letter in the morning."

But Uncle Mo was not to have the telling of the children.

Once it was clearly understood that the news was to be kept back, it became easier to exist, provisionally. Grief, demanding expression, gnaws less when silence becomes a duty. It was almost a relief to Susan Burr to have to be dry-eyed, on compulsion; far, far easier than to have to explain her tears to the young people. She went upstairs to them, mustering, as she went, a demeanour that would not be hypocritical, yet would safeguard her from suspicion of a hidden secret. She had been a long way, and was feeling her foot. That covered the position. Further, the children might stop upstairs a bit longer, if good. Dave was not to go out. Uncle Mo had said so. If Uncle Mo did go round to The Sun to-day, it would be after little boys and girls were abed and asleep. Mrs. Burr made her attitude easier to herself by affecting a Draconic demeanour. It was due to her foot, Dave and Dolly decided.

The unconscious children accepted the fog as all-sufficient to account for the household's gloom, and never knew how heavily the hours went by for its older members. Bedtime came, and the fog did not go, or, at least, went no further than to leave the gaslamp as Dave had seen it, just visible across the Court, or discernible from the archway at a favourable fluctuation. Susan Burr stepped round to Mrs. Ragstroar's, alleging anxiety to hear Michael's story again, and some hopes of further particulars. She may have felt indisposed for the loneliness of her own room, with that empty chair; and yet that a company of three would bear reduction, all that called for saying having been said twice and again.

This was soon after supper; when little boys and girls are abed and asleep. The little boy in this case was half asleep. He heard his Aunt's and Uncle's voices get fainter as his own dream-voices came to take their place, and then came suddenly awake with a start to find Uncle Mo looming large beside him in the half-dark room. "Made you jump, did I, old man?" said Uncle Mo, kissing him. "Go to sleep again." Dave did so, but not before receiving a dim impression that his uncle went into the neighbouring room to Dolly, and kissed the sleeping child, too; gently, so as not to wake her. That was the impression, gleaned somehow, under which he went to sleep. Uncle Mo often looked in at Dave and Dolly, so this visit was no surprise to Dave.

Aunt M'riar awaited him at the stairfoot, on his return. "They'll be happy for a bit yet," said she. "Now, if only Jerry would come and smoke with you, Mo, I wouldn't be sorry to get to bed myself."

"May be he'll come!" said Mo. "Anyways, M'riar, don't you stop up on account of me. I'll have my pipe and a quiet think, and turn in presently.... Or look here!--tell you what! I'll just go round easy towards Jeff's, and if I meet Jerry by the way, I meet him; and if I don't, I don't. I shan't stop there above five minutes if he's not there, and I shan't stop all night if he is. Good-bye, M'riar."

"Good-night's plenty, Mo; you're coming back."

"Ay, surely! What did I say? Good-bye? Good-night, I should have made it." But he _had_ said "Good-bye!"

Has it ever occurred to you--you who read this--to feel it cross your mind when walking that you have just passed a something of which you took no notice? If you have, you will recognise this description. Did Uncle Mo, when he wavered at the arch, fancy he had half-seen a figure in the shadow, near the dustbin, and had automatically taken no notice of it? If so, he decided that he was mistaken, for he passed on after glancing back down the Court. But very likely his pause was only due to the fact that he was pulling on his overcoat. It was one he had purchased long ago, before the filling out had set in which awaits all athletes when they relapse into a sedentary life. Mo hated the coat, and the difficulties he met with when getting it on and off.

He was as good as his word about not stopping long at The Sun. Although he found his friend awaiting him, he did not remain in his company above half an hour, including his seven-minutes' walk back to the Court, to which Jerry accompanied him, saying farewell at the archway. He didn't go on to No. 7 at once, remembering that M'riar had said she wouldn't be sorry to go to bed.

Seeing lights and hearing voices in at Ragstroar's, he turned in for a chat, more particularly for a repetition of Micky's tale of his Hammersmith visit. Finding the boy there, he accepted his mother's suggestion that he should sit down and be comfortable. He did the former, having first pulled off the obnoxious coat to favour the latter.

He may have spent twenty minutes there, chiefly cross-examining Micky on particulars, before he got up to go. He forgot the odious coat, for Susan Burr called him back, and tried to persuade him to put it on. He resisted all entreaties. Such a little distance!--was it worth the trouble? He threw it over his arm, and again departed. The two women saw him from the door, and then, as they were exchanging a final word in the passage, were startled by a loud screaming, and, running out, saw Mo fling away the coat on his arm, and make such speed as he might towards a struggling group not over visible in the shadow of the lamp immediately above their heads.

This was within an hour of Mo's good-night, or good-bye, to M'riar at his own doorway.

* * * * *

Aunt M'riar had wavered yet a little before the fire, and had then given way to the thought of Dolly asleep. Dolly would be so unconscious of all things that it would now be no pain to know that she knew nothing of Death. Dolly asleep was always a solace to Aunt M'riar, even when she kicked or made sudden incoherent dream-remarks in the dark.

So, after placing Mo's candlestick conspicuously, that Susan Burr, who was pretty sure to come first, should see that he was still out, and not put up the chain nor shoot to the bolt, M'riar made her way upstairs to bed, very quietly, so as not to wake the children.

She was less than halfway to bed when she heard, as she thought, Susan Burr's return. It could not be Mo, so soon. Besides, he would have struck a match at once. He always did.

She listened for Susan's limping footstep on the stairs. Why did it not come? Something wrong there, or at least unusual! Leaving her candle, she wrapped herself hurriedly in a flannel garment she called her dressing-gown, and went downstairs to the landing. All was dark below, and the door was shut, to the street. She called in a loud whisper:--"Is that Susan?" and no answer came:--"Who is that?" and still no answer.

She went back quickly for her candle, and descended the stairs, holding it high up to see all round. No one in the kitchen itself, certainly. The little parlour-door stood open. She thought she had shut it. Could she be sure? She looked in, and could see no one--advanced into the room, still seeing no one--and started suddenly forward as the door swung to behind her.

She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man she most dreaded--her husband. He had waited behind the door till she entered, and had then pushed it to, and was leaning against it.

"Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now? It's me." He pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the door, sat back in it slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment of her terror that was worse than any form of intimidation. "What do you want to be scared for? I'm a lamb. You might stroke me! This here's a civility call. For to thank you for your letter, Polly Daverill."

She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. She could only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing what she had said in her letter. "I wrote it for your own sake, Daverill," said she deprecatingly, timidly. "What I said about the Police was true."

"Can't foller that. Say it again!"

"They _had_ put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They may be there now. But I'd made my mind up you should not be taken along of me, so I wrote the letter."

"Then what the Hell...!" His face set angrily, as he searched a pocket. The sunken line that followed that twist in his jaw grew deeper, and the scar on his knitted forehead told out smooth and white, against its reddening furrows. He found what he sought--her letter, which she recognised--and opened it before he finished his speech. "What the Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of _this_?" He read it in a vicious undertone, biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her.

She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than ever. It cost her a gasping effort to say:--"You are reading it wrong! Do give an eye to the words, Daverill."

"Read it yourself," he retorted, and threw the letter across the table.

She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed stare, rigid with astonishment. "I never wrote it so," said she at last.

"Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is? Answer me to that, Polly Daverill."

Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress proportionate. "I never wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it true and solemn I never did. What I wrote was for you to keep away, and I made the words according. I can't say no other, if I was to die for it."

"None of your snivelling! How came it like it is?--that's the point! Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill-chosen adjective for the letter as he pointed at it, so that one might have thought he was calling attention to a stain upon it. He dropped his finger slowly, maintaining his reproachful glare. Then suddenly:--"Did you invellop the damned thing yourself?"

She answered tremulously:--"I wrote it in this room at this table, where you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, firm. And I put back the blotting-book where I took it from, not to tell-tale...."

He interrupted her roughly. "Got the cursed thing there? _Where_ did you take it from?... Oh--_that's_ your blotting-book, is it? Hand it over!" She had produced it from the table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to him without knowing why he asked for it.

There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue to a forgery with his parentage. The clue is too simple--the spelling-book lore of the spy's infancy. The convict pulled out the top sheet of blotting-paper, and reversed it against the light. The second line of the letter was clear, and ended "now not." The "not" might, however, have been erased independently--probably would have been. But how about the end of the fourth line, also clear, with the word "run" on an oasis of clean paper, and nothing after it. That "no" in the letter was not the work of its writer.

"I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside that letter from me till you...."

"How do you know that?" He paused, reflecting. "It wasn't Juliar. She'd got no ink." This man was clever enough to outwit Scotland Yard, with an offer of fifty pounds for his capture, but fell easily to the cunning of a woman, roused by jealousy. It wasn't Julia, clearly? "Who had hold of the letter, between you and her?" said he, quite off the right scent.

"Only young Micky Ragstroar...."

"There we've got it!" The man pounced. "Only that young offender and the Police. That was good for half a sov. for him.... Don't see what I mean? I'll tell you. _He_ delivered your letter all right, after they'd run their eyes over it. I'll remember _him_, one day!" A word in this is not the one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt M'riar's puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, to the effect that Micky had carried the letter to a "tec," or detective, who had "got at him," and that the letter had been tampered with at the police-station.

"I wouldn't believe it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt M'riar. "The boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." She ventured, as an indirect appeal on Micky's behalf, to add:--"I'm shielding you, Daverill, and a many wouldn't."

He affected to recognise his indebtedness, but only grudgingly. "You're what they call a good wife, Polly Daverill. Partner of a cove's joys and sorrows! Got your marriage lines to show! That's your style. You stick to that!"

Something in his tone made M'riar say:--"Why do you speak like that? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them.

"You've got 'em to show.... Ah! But I shouldn't show 'em, if I were you."

"Am I likely?"

"That's not what I was driving at."

"What do you mean?"

"Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel? Shall I tell you, respectable married woman?"

"Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you!"

"Right you are, old Polly! And told you shall be!... Sure you want to know?... There, there--easy does it! I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. "The name on your stifficate ain't the correct name. _I_ saw to that. Only you needn't fret your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, you are! Poor Polly! Feel any different?"

Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the "sacred" marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but:--"Let me out! Let me out!"

The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held the door back for her exit. "Ah," said he, "go and have a look at it!" He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not wake. If she did, what did it matter? Aunt M'riar heard a small melodious dream-voice in the pillow say tenderly:--"One cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the great Censorship had disallowed.

A lock in a drawer, refractory at first, brought to terms at last. A box found far back, amenable to its key at sight. A still clean document, found and read by the light of a hurriedly snuffed candle. Then an exclamation of relief from the reader:--"There now! As if I could have been mistook!" It was such a relief that she fairly gasped to feel it.

No doubt a prudent, judicious person, all self-control and guiding maxims, would have refolded and replaced that document, locked the drawer, hidden the key, and met the cunning expectancy of the evil face that awaited her with:--"You are entirely mistaken, and I was absolutely right."

But M'riar was another sort. Only one idea was present in the whirlwind of her release from that hideous anxiety--the idea of striking home her confutation of the lie that had caused it in the face of its originator. She did the very thing his subtlety had anticipated. As he heard her returning footsteps, and the rustle of the paper in her hand, he chuckled with delight at his easy triumph, and perhaps his joy added a nail in the coffin of his soul.

The snicker had gone from his face before she returned, marriage certificate in hand, and held it before his eyes. "There now!" said she. "What did I tell you?"

He looked at it apathetically, reading it, but not offering to take it from her. "'Taint reg'lar!" said he. "Name spelt wrong, for one thing. My name."

"Oh, Daverill, how can you say that? It's spelt right."

"Let's have a look!" He stretched out his hand for it in the same idle way. Aunt M'riar's nature might have been far less simple than it was, and yet she might have been deceived by his manner. That he was aiming at possession of the paper was the last thing it seemed to imply. But he knew his part well, and whom he had to deal with.

Absolutely unsuspicious, she let his fingers close upon it. Even then, so sure did he feel of landing his fish, that he played it on the very edge of the net. "Well," said he. "Just you look at it again," and relinquished it to her. Then, instead of putting his hand back in his pocket, he stretched it out again, saying:--"Stop a bit! Let's have another look at it."

She instantly restored it, saying:--"Only look with your eyes, and you'll see the name's all right." And then in a startled voice:--"But what?--but why?" provoked by the unaccountable decision with which he folded it, never looking at it.

He slipped it inside the breast-pocket of his coat, and buttoned it over. "That was my game, you see!" said he, equably enjoying the dumb panic of his victim.

As for her, she was literally speechless, for the moment. At last she just found voice to gasp out:--"Oh, Daverill, you can't mean it! Give it me back--oh, give it me back! Will you give it me back for money?... Oh, how can you have the heart?..."

"Let's see the money. How much have you got? Put it down on this here table." He seemed to imply that he was open to negotiation.

With a trembling hand M'riar got at her purse, and emptied it on the table. "That is every penny," she said--"every penny I have in the house. Now give it me!"

"Half a bean, six bob, and a mag." He picked up and pocketed the sixteen shillings and a halfpenny, so described.

"Now you _will_ give it back to me?" cried poor Aunt M'riar, with a wail in her voice that must have reached Dolly, for a pathetic cry answered her from the room above.

"Some o' these days," was all his answer, imperturbably. "There's your kid squealing. Time I was off.... What's that?"

Was it a new terror, or a thing to thank God for? Uncle Mo's big voice at the end of the court.

The convict made for the street-door--peeped out furtively. "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated:--"Down on your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm clear, or ... Ah!--smell that!" It was his knife-point, open, close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond the light that shone out of Ragstroar's open door.

Another moment, and M'riar knew what to do. Save Mo, or die attempting it! If the chances seemed to point to the convict passing the house unobserved she would do nothing.

That was not to be the way of it. He was still some twenty paces short of Ragstroar's when old Mo was coming out at the door with the light in it.

Aunt M'riar, quick on the heels of the convict, who was rather bent on noiselessness than speed, had flung herself upon him--so little had he foreseen such an attack--before he could turn to repel it. She clung to him from behind with all her dead-weight, encumbering that hand with the knife as best she might. She screamed loud with all the voice she had:--"Mo--Mo--he has a knife--he has a knife!" Mo flung away the coat on his arm, and ran shouting. "Leave hold of him, M'riar--keep _off_ him--leave _hold_!" His big voice echoed down the Court, resonant with sudden terror on her behalf.

But her ears were deaf to any voice but that of her heart, crying almost audibly:--"Save _him_! Never give that murderous right hand its freedom! In spite of the brutal clutch that is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp--in spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break a bone--cling hard to it! And if, power failing you against its wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by this man--this nightmare for whose obsession of her own life she had herself alone to blame?

The struggle was not a long one. Before Mo, whose weak point was his speed, had covered half the intervening distance, a kick of the convict's heavy boot-heel, steel-shod, had found its bone, and broken it, just above the ankle. The shock was irresistible, and the check on the knife-hand perforce flagged for an instant--long enough to leave it free. Another blow followed, a strange one that M'riar could not localise, and then all the Court swam about, and vanished.

What Mo saw by the light of the lamp above as he turned out of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, dressing-gowned and dishevelled, clinging madly to the man he could recognise as her convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again. At least, that was his thought. And there before him was her slayer, with his wife's blood fresh upon his hands.

All the anger man can feel against the crimes of man blazed in his heart, all the resolution he can summon to avenge them knit the muscles of his face and set closer the grip upon his lip. And yet, had he been asked what was his strongest feeling at this moment, he would have answered:--"Fear!"--fear, that is, that his man, more active than himself and younger, should give him the slip, to right or to left, and get away unharmed.

But that was not the convict's thought, with that knife open in his hand. Indeed, the small space at command might have thwarted him. If, for but two seconds, he could employ those powerful fists that were on the watch for him on either side of the formidable bulk whose slow movement was his only hope, then he might pass and be safe. It would have to be quick work, with young Ikey despatched by the screaming women at Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest pot-house, or any police-officer, whichever came first.

Quick work it was! A gasp or two, and the man's natural flinching before the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation had to yield to the counsels of despair. It had to be done, somehow. He led with his left--so an expert tells us we should phrase it--and hoped that his greater alacrity would land a face-blow, and cause an involuntary movement of the fists to lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip, and the thing would be done.

It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the gloves, for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have had their say, and the slow paralysing powers of old age asserted themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a near approach to it.

For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the left, which allowed his opponent's "lead off" to pass harmless over his right shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, more telling, than the blow with his right, which had never moved till that moment, landing full on the convict's jaw, and stretching him, insensible or dead, upon the ground. The sound of it reached the men who came running in through the arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a moment sooner, to see it.

Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to where Mo was kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon the ground beyond. Not dead, for she was moving, and speaking. And he was answering, but not in his old voice.

"I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' of.... Some of you young men run for the doctor."

One appeared, out of space. Things happen so, in events of this sort, in London. No--she is not to be lifted about, till he sees what harm's done. Keep your hands off, all!

By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the ground, motionless, may wait his turn. Two or three inspect him, and one tentatively prods at the inanimate body to make it show signs of life, but is checked by public opinion. Then comes a medical verdict, a provisional one, marred by reservations, about the work that knife has done. A nasty cut, but no danger. Probably stunned by the fall. Bring her indoors. Ragstroar's house is chosen, because of the children.

Uncle Mo never took his eyes off M'riar till after a stretcher had come suddenly from Heaven knows where, and borne his late opponent away, with a crowd following, to some appointed place. He thought he heard an inquiry answered in the words:--"Doctor says he can do nothing for _him_," and may have drawn his inferences. Probably it was the frightened voices and crying of the children that made him move away slowly towards his own house. For he had asked the boy Micky "Had anyone gone to see to them?" and been answered that Mrs. Burr was with them. It was then that Micky noticed that his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper, and that his face was grey. What Micky said was that his chops looked awful blue, and you couldn't ketch not a word he said.

But he was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well-known stair-creak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face to his own as he lay, saying:--"Here's a kiss for you, old man, and one to take to Dolly."

"Am oy to toyk it up to her now this very minute?" said Dave.

"Now this very minute!" said Uncle Mo. And Dave rushed off to fulfil his mission.

When Susan Burr, a little later, tapped at his door, doubting if all was well with him, no answer came. Looking in and seeing him motionless, she advanced to the bed, and touched his hand. It never moved, and she listened for a breath, but in vain. Heart-failure, after intense excitement, had ended this life for Uncle Mo.

THE END

A BELATED PENDRIFT

"I can tell you exactly when it was, stupid!" said a middle-aged lady at the Zoological Gardens to a contented elderly husband, some eighteen years after the foregoing story ended. "It was before we were married."

"That does not convey the precise date, my dear, but no doubt it is true," said the gentleman unpoetically. At least, we may suppose so, as the lady said:--"Don't be prosy, Percy."

A little Macacao monkey in the cage they were inspecting withdrew his left hand from a search for something on his person to accept a nut sadly from the lady, but said nothing. The gentleman seemed unoffended, and carefully stripped a brand-label from a new cigar. "I presume," said he, "that 'before we were married' means 'immediately before?'"

"What would you have it mean?" said the lady.

The gentleman let the issue go, and made no reply. After he had used a penknife on the cigar-end to his satisfaction, he said:--"Exactly when was it?"

"Suppose we go outside and find my chair, if you are going to smoke," said the lady. "You mustn't smoke in here, and quite right, because these little darlings hate it, and I want to see the Hippopotamus."

"Out we go!" said the gentleman. And out they went. It was not until they had recovered the lady's wheeled chair, and were on their way towards the Hippopotamus, that she resumed the lost thread of their conversation, as though nothing had interrupted it.

"It was just about that time we came here, and Dr. Sir Thingummybob came up when we were looking at the Kinkajou--over there!... No, I don't want to go there now. Go on through the tunnel." This was to the chairman, who had shown a tendency to go off down a side-track, like one of his class at a public meeting. "I suppose you remember that?"

"Rather!" said the gentleman, enjoying his first whiff.

"Well--it was just about then. A little after the accident--don't you remember?--the house that tumbled down?"

"I remember all about it. The old lady I carried upstairs. Well--didn't you believe _then_ it was all up with Sir Adrian's eyesight? _I_ did."

"My dear!--how you do overstate things! Shall I ever persuade you to be accurate? We were all much alarmed about him, and with reason. But I for one always did believe, and always shall believe, that there was immense exaggeration. People do get so excited over these things, and make mountains out of molehills."

The gentleman said:--"H'm!"

"Well!" said the lady convincingly. "All I say is--see how well his eyes are now!"

The gentleman seemed only half convinced, at best. "There was something _rum_ about it," said he. "You'll admit that?"

"It depends entirely on what you mean by 'rum.' Of course, there was something a little singular about so sudden a recovery, if that is what you mean."

"Suppose we make it 'a little singular!' I've no objection."

The interest of the main topic must have superseded the purely academical issue. For the lady appeared disposed towards a recapitulation in detail of the incidents referred to. "Gwen went away to Vienna with her mother in the middle of January," said she. "And ... No--I'm not mistaken. I'm sure I'm right! Because when we came back from Languedoc in June there was not a word of any such thing. And Lord Ancester never breathed as much as a hint. And he certainly _would_ have, under the circumstances. Why don't you speak and agree with me, or contradict me, instead of puffing?"

"Well, my love," said the gentleman apologetically, "you see, my interpretation of your meaning has to be--as it were--constructive. However, I believe it to be accurate this time. If I understand you rightly ..."

"And you have no excuse for not doing so. For I am sure that what I did say was as clear as daylight."

"Exactly. It is perfectly true that, when we went to Grosvenor Square in June, Tim said nothing about recovery. In fact, as I remember it--only eighteen years is a longish time, you know, to recollect things--he was regularly down in the mouth about the whole concern. I always believed, myself, that he would sooner have had Adrian for Gwen, on any terms, by that time--sooner than she should marry the Hapsburg, certainly. Not that he believed that Gwen was going to cave out!"

"You never said he said that!"

"Because he didn't. He only cautioned me particularly against believing the rubbish that got into the newspapers. I am sure that if he had said anything _then_ about recovery, I should remember it now."

"I suppose you would."

"And then six weeks after that Gwen came tearing home by herself from Vienna. Then the next thing we heard was that he had recovered his eyesight, and they were to be married in the autumn."

This was at the entrance to the tunnel, on the way to the Hippopotamus. One's voice echoes in this tunnel, and that may have been the reason the conversation paused. Or it may have been that resonance suggests publicity, and this was a private story. Or possibly, no more than mere cogitative silence of the parties. Anyhow, they had emerged into the upper world before either spoke again.

Then said the lady:--"It seems that it comes to the same thing, whichever way we put it. Something happened."

"My dear," replied the gentleman, "you ought to have been on the Bench. You have the summing-up faculty in the highest degree. Something happened that did not, as the phrase is, come out. But what was it?--that's the point! I believe we shall die without knowing."

"We certainly shall," said Mrs. Percival Pellew--for why should the story conceal her identity? "We certainly shall, if we go over and over and over it, and never get an inch nearer. You know, my dear, if we have talked it over once, we have talked it over five hundred times, and no one is a penny the wiser. You are so vague. What was it I began by saying?"

"That that sort of flash-in-the-pan he had ... when he saw the bust, you know ..."

"I know. Septimius Severus."

"... Was just about the time Sir Coupland Merridew met us at the Kinkajou, and asked for the address in Cavendish Square. That was the end of September. Gwen told you all about it that same evening, and you told me when I came next day."

"I know. The time you spilt the coffee over my poplinette."

"I don't deny it. Well--what was it you meant to say?"

"What about?... Oh, I know--the Septimius Severus business! Nothing came of it. I mean it never happened again."

"I'm--not--so--sure! I fancy Tim thought something of the sort did. But I couldn't say. It's too long ago now to remember anything fresh. That's a Koodoo. If I had horns, I should like that sort."

"Never mind the Koodoo. Go on about Gwen and the blind story. You know we both thought she _was_ going to marry the Hapsburg, and then she turned up quite suddenly and unexpectedly in Cavendish Square, and told Clo Dalrymple she had come back to order her _trousseau_. Then the Earl said that to you about the six months' trial."

"Ye-es. He said she had come home in a fine state of mind, because her mother hadn't played fair. He didn't give particulars, but I could see. Of course, that story in the papers _may_ have been her mamma's doing. Very bad policy if it was, with a daughter like that. However, he said it was very near the end of the six months, and after all the whole thing was rather a farce. Besides, Gwen _had_ played fair. So he had let her off three weeks, and she was going down to the Towers at once--which meant, of course, Pensham Steynes."

"And nothing else?"

"Only that he thought on the whole he had better go with her. Can't recall another word, 'pon my honour!"

"I recollect. But he didn't go, because Gwen waited for her mother to come with her. Undoubtedly that was the proper course." This was spoken in a Grundy tone. "But she was very indignant with Philippa about something."

"Philippa was backing the Hapsburg. All that is intelligible. What I want to understand--only we never shall--is how Adrian's eyes came right just at that very moment. Because, when we met him with his sister in London, he was as blind as a bat. And that was at Whitsuntide. You remember?--when his sister begged we wouldn't speak to him about Gwen. _We_ thought it was the Hapsburg."

"Yes--they were just going back to Pensham after a month in London. She just missed them by a few hours. There was not a word of his being any better then."

"Not a word. Quite the other way. And then in a fortnight, or less, he saw as well as he had ever seen in his life. I don't see any use in putting it down to previous exaggeration, because a man can't see less than nothing, and that's exactly what he did see. Nothing! He told me so himself. Said he couldn't see me, and rather hoped he never should. Because he had formed a satisfactory image of me in his mind, and didn't want it disturbed by reality."

"He had that curious paradoxical way of talking. I always ascribed the odd things he said to that, more than to any lack of good taste."

"To what?"

"My dear, my meaning is perfectly obvious, so you needn't pretend you don't understand it. I am referring to his very marked individuality, which shows itself in speech, and which no person with any discernment could for one moment suppose to imply defective taste or feeling. He did say odd things, and he does say odd things."

"I can't see anything particularly odd in what he said about me. If a fillah forms a good opinion of another fillah whom he's never seen, obviously the less he sees of him the better. Let well alone, don't you know!"

"That is because you are as paradoxical as he is. All men are. But you might be sensible for once, and talk reasonably."

"Well, then--suppose we do, my dear!" said the gentleman, conciliatorily. "Let me see--what was I going to say just now--at the Koodoo? Awfully sensible thing, only something put it out of my head."

"You must recollect it for yourself," said the lady, with some severity. "_I_ certainly cannot help you."

The gentleman never seemed to resent what was apparently the habitual manner of his lady wife. He walked on beside her, puffing contentedly, and apparently recollecting abortively; until, to stimulate his memory, she said rather crisply:--"Well?" He then resumed:--"Not so sensible as I thought it was, but somethin' in it for all that! Don't you know, sometimes, when you don't speak on the nail, sometimes, you lose your chance, and then you can't get on the job again, sometimes? You get struck. See what I mean?"

"Perhaps I shall, if you explain it more clearly," said his wife, with civility and forbearance, both of the controversial variety.

"I mean that if I had told Adrian then and there that he was an unreasonable chap to expect anyone to believe that his eyesight came back with a jump, of itself--because that was the tale they told, you know----"

"That was the tale."

"Then very likely he would have told me the whole story. But I was rather an ass, and let the thing slip at the time--and then I couldn't pick it up again. Never got a chance!"

"Precisely. Just like a man! Men are so absurdly secretive with one another. They won't this and they won't that, until one is surprised at nothing. I quite see that you couldn't rake it up now, seventeen years afterwards."

"Seventeen years! Come--I say!"

"Cecily is sixteen in August."

"Well--yes--well!--I suppose she is. I say, Con, that's a queer thing to think of!"

"What is?"

"That we should have a girl of sixteen!"

"What can you expect?"

"Oh--it's all right, you know, as far as that goes. But she'll be a grown-up young woman before we know it."

"Well?"

"What the dooce shall we do with her, then?"

"All parents," said the lady, somewhat didactically, "are similarly situated, and have identical responsibilities."

"Yes--but it's gettin' serious. I want her to stop a little girl."

"Fathers do. But we need not begin to fuss about her yet, thank Heaven!"

"'Spose not. I say, I wonder what's become of those two young monkeys?"

"Now, you needn't begin to fidget about _them_. They can't fall into the canal."

"They might lose sight of each other, and go huntin' about."

"Well--suppose they do! It won't hurt you. But _they_ won't lose sight of one another."

"How do you know that?"

"Dave is not a boy now. He is a responsible man of five-and-twenty. I told him not to let her go out of his sight."

"Oh well--I suppose it's all right. You're responsible, you know. _You_ manage these things."

"My dear!--how can you be so ridiculous? See how young she is. Besides, he's known her from childhood."

The story does not take upon itself to interpret any portion whatever of this conversation. It merely records it.

The last speech has to continue on reminiscent lines, apparently suggested by the reference to the childhood of the speaker's daughter; one of the young monkeys, no doubt. "It does seem so strange to think that he was that little boy with the black grubby face that Clo's carriage stopped for in the street. Just eighteen years ago, dear!"

"The best years of my life, Constantia, the best years of my life! Well--they think a good deal of that boy at the Foreign Office, and it isn't only because he's a _protege_ of Tim's. He'll make his mark in the world. You'll see if he doesn't. Do you know?--that boy ..."

"Suppose you give these crumbs to the Hippopotamus! I've been saving them for him."

The gentleman looked disparagingly in the bag the lady handed to him. "Wouldn't he prefer something more tangible?" said he. "Less subdivided, I should say."

"My dear, he's grateful for absolutely anything. Look at him standing there with his mouth wide open. He's been there for hours, and I know he expects something from me, and I've got nothing else. Throw them well into his mouth, and don't waste any getting them through the railings."

"Easier said than done! However, there's nothing like trying." The gentleman contrived a favourable arrangement of sundry scoriae of buns and biscuits in his palms, arranged cupwise, and cautiously approaching the most favourable interstice of the iron railings, took aim at the powerful yawn beyond them.

"Good shot!" said he. "Only the best bit's hit his nose and fallen in the mud!"

"There now, Percy, you've choked him, poor darling! How awkward you are!" It was, alas, true! For the indiscriminate shower of crumbs made straight, as is the instinct of crumbs, for the larynx as well as the oesophagus of the hippo, and some of them probably reached his windpipe. At any rate, he coughed violently, and when the larger mammals cough it's a serious matter. The earth shook. He turned away, hurt, and went deliberately into his puddle, reappearing a moment after as an island, but evidently disgusted with Man, and over for the day. "You may as well go on with what you were saying," said Mrs. Pellew.

"Wonder what it was! That fillah's mouth's put it all out of my head. What _was_ I saying?"

"Something about David Wardle."

"Yes. Him and that old uncle of his--the fighting man. The boy can hardly talk about him now, and he wasn't eight when the old chap died. Touchin' story! He _has_ told me all he recollects--more than once--but it only upsets the poor boy. I've never mentioned it, not for years now. The old chap must have been a fine old chap. But I've told you all the boy told me, at the time."

"Ye-es. I remember the particulars, generally. You said the row wasn't his fault."

"His fault?--no, indeed! The fellow drew a knife upon him. You know he was that awful miscreant, Daverill. There wasn't a crime he hadn't committed. But old Moses killed him--splendidly! By Jove, I _should_ like to have seen that!"

"Really, Percy, if you talk in that dreadful way, I won't listen to you."

"Can't help it, my dear, can't help it! Fancy being able to kill such a damnable beast at a single blow!" The undertone in which Mr. Pellew went on speaking to his wife may have contained some particulars of Daverill's career, for she said:--"Well--I can understand your feeling. But we won't talk about it any more, please!"

Whereto the reply was:--"All right, my dear. I'll bottle up. Suppose we turn round. It's high time to be getting home." So the chairman put energies into a return towards the tunnel. But for all that, the lady went back to the subject, or its neighbourhood. "Wasn't he somehow mixed up with that old Mrs. Alibone at Chorlton--Dave's aunt she is, I believe. At least, he always calls her so."

"Aunt Maria? Of course. She _is_ his Aunt Maria. He was--or had been--Aunt Maria's husband. But people said as little about that as they could. He had been an absentee at Norfolk Island--a convict. That old chap she married--old Alibone--- he's the great authority on horseflesh. Tim found it out when they came to Chorlton to stay at the very old lady's--what's her name?"

"Mrs. Marrable." Here Mrs. Pellew suddenly became luminous about the facts, owing to a connecting link. "Of course! Mrs. Marrable was the twin sister."

"A--oh yes!--the twin sister.... I remember ... at least, I don't. Not sure that I do, anyhow!"

"Foolish man! Can't you remember the lovely old lady at Clo Dalrymple's?..."

"She _was_ the one I carried upstairs. I should rather think I did recollect her. She weighed nothing."

"Oh yes--_you_ remember all about it. Mrs. Marrable's twin sister from Australia."

"Of course! Of course! Only I'd forgotten for the moment what it was I didn't remember. Cut along!"

"I was not saying anything."

"No--but you were just going to."

"Well--I was. It was _her_ grave in Chorlton Churchyard."

"That what?"

"That Gwen and our girl went to put the flowers on, three weeks ago."

"By-the-by, when are the honeymooners coming back?"

"The Crespignys? Very soon now, I should think. They were still at Siena when Gwen heard from Dorothy last, and it was unbearably hot, even there."

"I thought Cis wrote to Dolly in Florence."

"Not the last letter. They were at the Montequattrinis' in May. That's what you're thinking of. Cis wrote to her there, then. It was another letter."

"'Spose I'm wrong! I meant the letter where she told how the very old lady walked with them to the grave."

"Old Mrs. Marrable. Yes--and old Mrs. Alibone had to go in the carriage, because of her foot, or something. She has a bad foot. That was in the middle of June. _That_ letter _was_ to Fiesole. You do get so mixed up."

"Expect I do. Fancy that old lady, though, at ninety-eight!"

"Yes--fancy! Gwen said she was just as strong this year as last. She'll live to be a hundred, I do believe. Why--the other old woman at Chorlton is over seventy! Her daughter--or is it niece? I never know...."

"Didn't Cis say she spoke of her as 'my mother'?"

"No--that was the twin sister that died. But she always spoke _to_ her as 'mother.'"

"Oh ah--that was what Cis couldn't make head or tail of. Rather a puzzling turn out! But I say...."

"What?... Wait till we get out of the noise. What were you going to say?"

"Isn't her head rather ... I mean, doesn't she show signs of...."

"Senile decay? No. What makes you think that?"

"Of course, _I_ don't know. I only go by what our girl said. Of course, Gwen Torrens is still one of the most beautiful women in London--or anywhere, for that matter! And it may have been, nothing but that."

"Oh, I know what you mean now. 'Glorious Angel.' I don't think anything of that.... Isn't that the children there--by the Pelicans?"

It was, apparently. A very handsome young man and a very pretty girl, who must have been only sixteen--as her parents could not be mistaken--but she looked more. Both were evidently enjoying both, extremely; and nothing seemed to be further from their thoughts than losing sight of one another.

Says Mrs. Pellew from her chariot:--"My dear, what an endless time you have been away! I wish you wouldn't. It makes your father so fidgety." Whereupon each of these two young people says:--"It wasn't me." And either glances furtively at the other. No doubt it was both.

"Never mind which it was now, but tell me about old Mrs. Marrable at Chorlton. I want to know what it was she called your Aunt Gwen."

"Yes--tell about Granny Marrowbone," says the young man.

The girl testifies:--"Her Glorious Angel. When we first went into the Cottage. What she said was:--'Here comes my Glorious Angel!' Well!--why shouldn't she?"

"She _always_ calls her that," says the young man.

"You see, my dear! It has not struck anyone but yourself as anything the least out of the way." Mrs. Pellew then explains to her daughter, not without toleration for an erratic judgment--to wit, her husband's--that that gentleman has got a nonsensical idea into his head that old Mrs. Marrable is not quite.... Oh no--not that she is _failing_, you know--not at all!... Only, perhaps, not so clear as.... Of course, very old people sometimes do....

The girl looks at the young man for his opinion. He gives it with a cheerful laugh. "What!--Granny Marrowbone off her chump? As sound as you or I! She's called Lady Torrens her Glorious Angel ever since I can recollect. Oh no--_she's_ all right." Whereupon Mr. Pellew says:--"I see--sort of expression. Very applicable, as things go. Oh no--no reason for alarm! Certainly not!"

"You know," says the girl, Cis--who is new, and naturally knows things, and can tell her parents,--"you know there is never the slightest reason for apprehension as long as there is no delusion. Even then we have to discriminate carefully between fixed or permanent delusions and...."

"Shut up, mouse!" says her father. "What's that striking?"

The young man looks at his watch--is afraid it must be seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want to be late for dinner. The young lady says:--"Well--I got it all out of a book." And her mother says:--"Now, please don't dawdle any more. Go the short way, and see for the carriage." Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they are hurrying to give him a bun, and is disillusioned. Mr. Pellew accompanies his wife, but as they go quick they do not talk, and the story hears no further disconnected chat. Nor does it hear any more when the turnstiles are passed and the carriage is reached.

Soon out of sight--that carriage! And with it vanishes the last chance of knowing any more of Dave and Dolly and their country Granny. And when the present writer went to look for Sapps Court, he found--as he has told you--only a tea-shop, and the tea was bad.

But if ever you go to Chorlton-under-Bradbury, go to the churchyard and hunt up the graves of old Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrowbone.

WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S NOVELS

"WHY ALL THIS POPULARITY?" asks E. V. LUCAS, writing in the _Outlook_ of De Morgan's Novels. He answers: De Morgan is "almost the perfect example of the humorist; certainly the completest since Lamb.... Humor, however, is not all.... In the De Morgan world it is hard to find an unattractive figure.... The charm of the young women, all brave and humorous and gay, and all trailing clouds of glory from the fairyland from which they have just come."

=JOSEPH VANCE=

The story of a great sacrifice and a life-long love.

"The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth century."--LEWIS MELVILLE in _New York Times Saturday Review_.

=ALICE-FOR-SHORT=

The romance of an unsuccessful man, in which the long buried past reappears in London of to-day.

"If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan."--_Boston Transcript_.

=SOMEHOW GOOD=

How two brave women won their way to happiness.

"A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range of fiction."--_The Nation_.

=IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN=

A story of the great love of Blind Jim and his little daughter, and of the affairs of a successful novelist.

"De Morgan at his very best, and how much better his best is than the work of any novelist of the past thirty years."--_The Independent_.

=AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOR=

A very dramatic novel of Restoration days.

"A marvelous example of Mr. De Morgan's inexhaustible fecundity of invention.... Shines as a romance quite as much as 'Joseph Vance' does among realistic novels."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.

=A LIKELY STORY=

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_A Likely Story, $1.35 net; the others, $1.75 each._

=WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST=

The most "De Morganish" of all his stories. The scene is England in the fifties. _820 pages_. _$1.50 net_.

* * * A thirty-two page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, with complete reviews of his first four books, sent on request.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE

_By ROMAIN ROLLAND_

Translated from the French by GILBERT CANNAN. In three volumes, each $1.50 net

This great trilogy, the life story of a musician, at first the sensation of musical circles in Paris, has come to be one of the most discussed books among literary circles in France, England and America.

Each volume of the American edition has its own individual interest, can be understood without the other, and comes to a definite conclusion.

_The three volumes with the titles of the French volumes included are:_

=JEAN-CHRISTOPHE= DAWN--MORNING--YOUTH--REVOLT

=JEAN-CHRISTOPHE IN PARIS= THE MARKET PLACE--ANTOINETTE--THE HOUSE

=JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: JOURNEY'S END= LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP--THE BURNING BUSH--THE NEW DAWN

_Some Noteworthy Comments_

"'Hats off, gentlemen--a genius.'. One may mention 'Jean-Christophe' in the same breath with Balzac's 'Lost Illusions'; it is as big as that. * It is moderate praise to call it with Edmund Gosse 'the noblest work of fiction of the twentieth century.' * A book as big, as elemental, as original as though the art of fiction began today. * We have nothing comparable in English literature. * "--_Springfield Republican._

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"The most momentous novel that has come to us from France, or from any other European country, in a decade."--_Boston Transcript._

_A 32-page booklet about Romain Rolland and Jean-Christophe, with portraits and complete reviews, on request._

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THE GARDEN WITHOUT WALLS

The triple romance of a Pagan-Puritan of to-day, with three heroines of unusual charm. $1.35 net.

_Boston Transcript:_--"All vivid with the color of life; a novel to compel not only absorbed attention, but long remembrance."

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Marjorie Patterson's

THE DUST OF THE ROAD

A vivid story of stage life by an actress. Her characters are hard-working, but humorous and clean-living. With colored frontispiece, $1.30 net.

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THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE

_American and English (1580-1912)_

Compiled by BURTON E. STEVENSON. Collects the best short poetry of the English language--not only the poetry everybody says is good, but also the verses that everybody reads. (3742 pages; India paper, 1 vol., 8vo, complete author, title and first line indices, $7.50 net; carriage 40 cents extra.)

The most comprehensive and representative collection of American and English poetry ever published, including 3,120 unabridged poems from some 1,100 authors.

It brings together in one volume the best short poetry of the English language from the time of Spencer, with especial attention to American verse.

The copyright deadline has been passed, and some three hundred recent authors are included, very few of whom appear in any other general anthology, such as Lionel Johnson, Noyes, Housman, Mrs. Meynell, Yeats, Dobson, Lang, Watson, Wilde, Francis Thompson, Gilder, Le Gallienne, Van Dyke, Woodberry, Riley, etc., etc.

The poems as arranged by subject, and the classification is unusually close and searching. Some of the most comprehensive sections are: Children's rhymes (300 pages); love poems (800 pages); nature poetry (400 pages); humorous verse (500 pages); patriotic and historical poems (600 pages); reflective and descriptive poetry (400 pages). No other collection contains so many popular favorites and fugitive verses.

DELIGHTFUL POCKET ANTHOLOGIES

The following books are uniform, with full gilt flexible covers and pictured cover linings. 16mo. Each, cloth, $1.50; leather, $2.50.

=THE GARLAND OF CHILDHOOD=

A little book for all lovers of children. Compiled by Percy Withers.

=THE VISTA Of ENGLISH VERSE=

Compiled by Henry S. Pancoast. From Spencer to Kipling.

=LETTERS THAT LIVE=

Compiled by Laura E. Lockwood and Amy R. Kelly. Some 150 letters.

=POEMS FOR TRAVELLERS=

(About "The Continent.") Compiled by Miss Mary R. J. DuBois.

=THE OPEN ROAD=

A little book for wayfarers. Compiled by E. V. Lucas.

=THE FRIENDLY TOWN=

A little book for the urbane, compiled by E. V. Lucas.

=THE POETIC OLD-WORLD=

Compiled by Miss L. H. Humphrey. Covers Europe, including Spain, Belgium and the British Isles.

=THE POETIC NEW-WORLD=

Compiled by Miss Humphrey.

STANDARD CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

=WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE=

The story of a great sacrifice and a lifelong love. Over fourteen printings. $1.75.

* * * List of Mr. De Morgan's other novels sent on application.

=PAUL LEICESTER FORD'S THE HON. PETER STIRLING=

This famous novel of New York political life has gone through over fifty impressions. $1.50.

=ANTHONY HOPE'S PRISONER OF ZENDA=

This romance of adventure has passed through over sixty impressions. With illustrations by C. D. Gibson. $1.50.

=ANTHONY HOPE'S RUPERT OF HENTZAU=

This story has been printed over a score of times. With illustrations by C. D. Gibson. $1.50.

=ANTHONY HOPE'S DOLLY DIALOGUES=

Has passed through over eighteen printings. With illustrations by H. C. Christy. $1.50.

=CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS'S CHEERFUL AMERICANS=

By the author of "Poe's Raven in an Elevator" and "A Holiday Touch." With 24 illustrations. Tenth printing. $1.25.

=MAY SINCLAIR'S THE DIVINE FIRE=

By the author of "The Helpmate," etc. Fifteenth printing. $1.50.

=BURTON E. STEVENSON'S MARATHON MYSTERY=

This mystery story of a New York apartment house is now in its seventh printing, has been republished in England and translated into German and Italian. With illustrations in color. $1.50.

=E. L. VOYNICH'S THE GADFLY=

An intense romance of the Italian uprising against the Austrians. Twenty-third edition. $1.25.

=DAVID DWIGHT WELLS'S HER LADYSHIP'S ELEPHANT=

With cover by Wm. Nicholson. Eighteenth printing. $1.25.

=C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON'S LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR=

Over thirty printings. $1.50.

=C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON'S THE PRINCESS PASSES=

Illustrated by Edward Penfield. Eighth printing. $1.50.

BY INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE

=ANGEL ISLAND=

Illustrated by JOHN RAE. $1.35 net. Ready in January, 1914.

The story of five shipwrecked men of varied attainments and five equally individual winged women. This picturesque romance, with stirring episodes and high ideals, appears for the first time in complete form, the serial version having been much shortened.

=PHOEBE AND ERNEST=

With 30 illustrations by R. F. SCHABELITZ. $1.35 net.

Parents will recognize themselves in the story, and laugh understandingly with, and sometimes at, Mr. and Mrs. Martin and their children, Phoebe and Ernest.

"We must go back to Louisa Olcott for their equals."--_Boston Advertiser_.

"For young and old alike we know of no more refreshing story."--_New York Evening Post._

=PHOEBE, ERNEST, AND CUPID=

Illustrated by R. F. SCHABELITZ. $1.35 net.

In this sequel to the popular "Phoebe and Ernest," each of these delightful young folk goes to the altar.

"To all jaded readers of problem novels, to all weary wayfarers on the rocky literary road of social pessimism and domestic woe, we recommend 'Phoebe, Ernest, and Cupid' with all our hearts: it is not only cheerful, it's true."--_N. Y. Times Review._

"Wholesome, merry, absolutely true to life."--_The Outlook._

=JANEY=

Illustrated by ADA C. WILLIAMSON. $1.25 net.

"Being the record of a short interval in the journey thru life and the struggle with society of a little girl of nine."

"Depicts youthful human nature as one who knows and loves it. Her 'Phoebe and Ernest' studies are deservedly popular, and now, in 'Janey,' this clever writer has accomplished an equally charming portrait."--_Chicago Record-Herald._

* * * * *

List of Corrections Made by the Transcriber:

(Words to be emphasized are enclosed by pound signs [#].)

Page 6: impident (square and compact, that chunky and yet that tender, that no right-minded person could desire him to be changed to an #impudent# young scaramouch like young Michael Ragstroar four doors)

Page 55: scarcly (letter remains, and has been seen by the present writer and others. The dexterity of the thing almost passes belief, only a few #scarcely# perceptible traces of the old writing being visible, the length of)

Page 65: mankleshelf (directness. But he was destined to puzzle his audience by his keen interest in something that was on the #mantleshelf#, his description of which seemed to relate to nothing this lady's recollection of)

Page 76: see to the sacks, ("He #sees# to the sacks," said Dave.)

Page 84: starn (in your antecedents, surely it would be these two leisurely rowers and the superior person in the #stern#, with the oilskin cape?)

Page 139: bliassed (want of shrewdness when he visited Sapps Court. She had been #biased# towards this suspicion by the fact that the man, when he first referred to Sapps Court, had spoken the name as though)

Page 277: backelors (it any hinterland of discussion of the ethics of Love, provocative of practical application to the lives of old maids and old #bachelors#--if the one, then the other, in this case--strolling in a leisurely)

Page 320: [blank] (property did a man's heart good to see, nowadays. The man was Uncle Mo, who got out of the house #i#n plenty of time to stop Michael half-murdering the marauder, as soon as he considered the latter)

Page 346: infaturated (If I had ever been engaged, or on the edge of it--I never have, really and truly!--and the #infatuated# youth had ... had complicated matters to that extent, I never should have been able to)

Page 360: up up (premises it was engendered in, was necessary to hold the roof #up# tempory, for fear it should come with a run. It was really a'most nothing in the manner of speaking. You just shoved a)

Page 374: frostis (through, and setting alight to a bit of fire now and again, and the season keeping mild and favourable, with only light #frosts# in the early morning--only what could you expect just on to Christmas?--there)

Page 403: kncoked (The ex-convict watched him out of sight, and then #knocked# at the door, and waited. The woman inside had been listening to)

Page 413: financee (to his sister Irene one of the long missives he was given to sending to his #fiancee# in London. It was just such a late October day as the one indirectly referred to above; in fact, it)

Page 434: ather ("You mean, you can manage your Bull, and #father# can't. Is that it?" Assent given. "And how can you manage your)

Page 580: [blank] (who had charge of Dave--Strides Cottage, of course! I'm sure she'll #be# all right as far as that goes. But the whole thing is so odd.... Stop a minute!--perhaps the best way would be for me)

Page 615: Egnland.... (you dead. For years she believed you and her sister dead. And when she returned to #England#....")

Page 717: acompany (the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil to #accompany# it; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take both, and directed)

Page 732: Gwenn ("'Made it like then?'" #Gwen# was not sure she followed this.)

Page 740: mmama (mean--so long as they think I think it was. That's the point. Now, the question is, did or did not my superior #mamma# descend on your comme-il-faut parent to drum this idea into him, and get)

Page 756: differnece (she had loved ungrudgingly throughout. Nor was it only this. It palliated her son's crimes. But then there was a #difference# between the son and the father. The latter had apparently done nothing)

Page 799: Phooebe is so kind, to take every little word I say. ("My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. "But #Phoebe# is so kind, to take every little word I say.")

Page 845: spech. "What the Hell," he repeated, (what he sought--her letter, which she recognised--and opened it before he finished his #speech#. "What the Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of this?" He read it in a vicious undertone, biting)