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Title: The Lake of Wine

Author: Bernard Capes

Release date: September 29, 2021 [eBook #66415]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAKE OF WINE ***

THE LAKE OF WINE

BY

BERNARD CAPES

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1898

COPYRIGHT.

COPYRIGHT, 1898,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS.

EPIGRAPH

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER XLVI

CHAPTER XLVII

CHAPTER XLVIII

CHAPTER XLIX

CHAPTER L

CHAPTER LI

CHAPTER LII

CHAPTER LIII

CHAPTER LIV

CHAPTER LV

EPIGRAPH.

“So fares the unthrifty lord of Linne

Till all his gold is gone and spent:

And he maun sell his lands so broad,

His house and landes and all his rent.

. . . . . . .

Thus he hath sold his land so broad,

Both hill and holt, and moore and fenne,

All but a poore and lonesome lodge,

That stood far off in a lonely glenne.

For soe he to his father hight:

‘My sonne, when I am gonne,’ sayd hee,

‘Then thou wilt spend thy lande so broad,

And thou wilt spend thy gold so free:

But sweare me nowe upon the roode,

That lonesome lodge thou’lt never spend;

For when all the world doth frown on thee,

Thou there shalt find a faithful friend.’

. . . . . . .

Away then hyed the heire of Linne

O’er hill and holt, and moore and fenne,

Untill he came to the lonesome lodge,

That stood so lowe in a lonely glenne.

. . . . . . .

Then round his necke the corde he drewe,

And sprang aloft with his bodie:

When lo! the ceiling burst in twaine,

And to the ground came tumbling hee.

Astonyed lay the heire of Linne,

Ne knewe if he were live or dead:

At length he looked, and sawe a bille,

And in it a key of gold so redd.

He took the bill, and lookt it on,

Strait good comfort found he there:

Itt told him of a hole in the wall,

In which there stood three chests in-fere.

Two were full of the beaten golde,

The third was full of white monèy;

And over them in broad lettèrs

These words were written so plaine to see:

‘Once more, my sonne, I sette thee clere;

Amend thy life and follies past;

For but thou amend thee of thy life,

That rope must be thy end at last.’”

THE LAKE OF WINE.

CHAPTER I.

SOME time in June of the year 1800 (as privately chronicled) there came a famous evening at Whitelaw’s Club in St. James’s Street, off Piccadilly, London. There and then—according to the unattested evidence of an eyewitness—Mr. Ladislaw lost his head, Lord Dunlone his mistress, Sir Robert Linne his fortune, and Major Dalrymple his life. Thus it appears these four were all losers, and each of a material property, save the first, who, alone of the quartette, commuted his self-possession for a very real equivalent in hard cash.

“Whitelaw’s” in those days ran, of a host of gambling clubs, the deepest. It was there all heavy potations and long stakes (at which many a self-martyr burned); but the first of these were put down and the second up with an accepted solemnity of decorum that was traditional to the place and the sign of its moral endowment. Fox, in his heavier moments, had been known to hazard in its glooms occasionally, and to lose, of course; and—equally of course—to find immediate balm for his scorched fingers in the inevitable “Herodotus.” Selwyn, also, and Topham Beauclerc, and many another Georgium sidus, had played and hiccupped within its pregnant walls; but always with gravity and a weight of personal responsibility towards the foundation. “Brookes’s” might have held in its time more showy revelry; “Almack’s” have gambled in broad-brimmed straw hats, bedecked with flowers, and masks to hide the play of emotions. “Whitelaw’s” would have none of these. It had ever stood coldly aloof from flash and notoriety, accepting Todd’s definition of a club as “An association of persons subjected to particular rules,” rather than that of Johnson (the rendering has a warm personal flavour), who calls it “An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.” From first to last it remained ponderous in self-importance and rigid in exacting the observance of its unwritten codes of conduct. If its gaming operations were large, it desired the company of no feather-brain “plungers”; but rather of players of substance, to whom cards were a market, not a raffle.

Therefore, when on this particular night no fewer than four of its members—like those in the fable—suddenly revolted against the central system, and, for a space of minutes, made havoc of its respectable traditions, it is no wonder that “Whitelaw’s” rose at the outrage like one man, and, in the upshot, pronounced sentence of club ostracism upon the delinquents. This, as it affected three, is matter of private history. The fourth escaped the distinction there and then through the interposition of “the man with the scythe.”

Faro was the game, and the stakes were swingeing The four had played from three o’clock of a Thursday afternoon to six of the Friday morning. In the white spread of day their eyes showed up blood-shot, their cheeks grimy with candle soot, their hair slack and unstrung. My lord Dunlone, who was a slipslop youth, colourless and jejune, with stains of wine on his chin and high cravat, brooded in fathomless sulkiness, the only pronounced expression he was ever real master of. His neighbour, Sir Robert Linne, had the look of a fine tormented devil, desperate and at bay.

These were the losers. Of the winners, Mr. Ladislaw was a perspiring cabbage of a man, stunted and over-headed; and he seemed drunk and amazed with his good fortune; and the major presented a lean and hungry appearance, as if his passions were devouring worms—which indeed I believe they were.

About six of the clock there came a pause in the game—the lull before the crash. Mr. Ladislaw, twinkling prosperity, bent obsequiously to the baronet, his cards clumped together in one hand.

“The stakes as before, Sir Robert?” he said in a small, confidential voice.

The other gave a hollow laugh, checking it frowningly in mid-career.

“I think so,” he said. “If there happens a margin, why—we must make it a broad one, on paper.”

“As you please, sir.”

Major Dalrymple, with his thick lips dropped apart, was gazing breathingly at his sulky neighbour. The latter, conscious of the inquiring scrutiny, pulled himself erect—a cub of ill-temper.

“Curse it!” he muttered, with a surly sidelong glance. “What am I being stared at for, curse it?”

“Your pardon, my lord,” said the major, in a high, stiff voice. “I looked only to inquire your stake.”

“I can settle it myself, sir, without your help”—and, with a very meaning action, he held his cards face-downwards upon his breast.

The major went back in his chair, his corded hands thrust out rigidly before him on the table.

“My lord Dunlone,” he said, “impugns not only my judgment, but my honour!”

“Oh, curse it!” cried the Viscount. “What have I said?”

“It was your action spoke, sir.”

Sir Robert laughed recklessly.

“You’re hard on my lord. He clasped his dear love to his bosom—no more. ’Tis an amorous way he has.”

The dyspeptic face of the soldier went dark. He recognized an allusion in the bantering words. The Viscount Dunlone, in fact (it was notorious), had outbidden him in the favour of a certain Mademoiselle Carminelle, a figurante at Vauxhall in the suit of Mr. “Tom Restless”; and, popularly, he was supposed to have aged under the disappointment.

“Come!” cried the baronet. “Give us the privilege of driving to the devil our own way. You mustn’t criticize the actions of dying men. We writhe with wounds, sir, while you are sound.”—He turned to Mr. Ladislaw, who sat staring, apprehensive. “I stake my all,” he said; and named a sum sufficiently desperate.

There were a few late habitués in the room. One of these, a dry, long man, with a face like a puckered medlar and a short-sighted contraction of the eyelids, had been . for some time a stealthily intent observer of the quartette. Now this individual, humouring a habit of his by drawing in his breath with a wincing sound, gave his chair a shift, and seemed to be awaiting results, at a distance, with some secret interest.

“Stake, and have done with it!” cried Sir Robert boisterously to the young lord.

The latter turned an insolent, languid glance on Major Dalrymple. They were a contrast. The soldier set, spare, bilious, with a great hooked nose and cracked heavy lips; the other a ruffled petit-maître of the first folly, pearl-powdered, cherry-mouthed, a model of sartorial elegance from his choking cravat—so amplified as that his face looked like a peach stuck in a napkin—to his full pantaloons of apricot-coloured velvet.

“I stake,” lisped this exquisite—“I stake your reversion, sir.”

There were influences of wine and ill-fortune fermenting in the fool’s empty head. Otherwise he would have hardly dared such perilous banter.

“I fail to gather your lordship,” said the soldier, going red.

“The adorable Carminelle,” began the Viscount drawlingly, when the other jumped up with a furious face, upsetting his chair in the act, and clapped his left hand instinctively upon his thigh.

There was a moment’s commotion. One or two in the room rose; but the dry, short-sighted stranger sat on, quietly rubbing his chin.

Nonplussed for the moment, as it seemed, by the absence of his weapon, Major Dalrymple gasped, hesitated—and sat down again. As he did so, some were aware of a blue streak across his forehead that remained there after his flush of passion had subsided.

“I stake a thousand pounds against that,” he said, with a sudden fall to intense quietness of intonation.

The incident passed, and the deal. There was a stern spirit of expectancy in the room. This was not “Whitelaw’s” way—either as regarded the outburst, or the nature of the declaration that had produced it.

Then, all in a moment, Sir Robert Linne had leaped up and flung his cards in Mr. Ladislaw’s face, and the major was on his feet again, stamping and declaiming.

The baronet’s victim, taken completely by surprise, started and fell over on his back, his chair splintering beneath him. The place was in an uproar at once—red and angry visages on all sides. Only Sir Robert stood placid with folded arms, smiling grimly down on the havoc he had wrought.

“I call all to witness,” screamed the major, panting and struggling in the arms of two who had seized him, “that I accepted my lord’s stake, but not his infernal insult. I have won the right of protection over an outraged lady, and I now call upon him to answer for his brutal abuse of her name in public”—and, despite his captors, he whipped up a glass of wine from the table, and dashed it at the stupid face of the lordling, who still sat, sullenly defiant of the spirit he had evoked. The glass cut his forehead and half-stunned him for the moment.

“Mr. Jephson,” cried the soldier, glaring round, and selecting one from the excited group about him—“you will do me the service to ac——”

The word snapped in his teeth like a pipe-stem. With a groan he sank upon the ground, and his face was purple from ear to ear.

An instant’s silence followed, then babble of voices and the pressing inward of the spectators around the fallen man. Lord Dunlone sat mopping his red forehead in foolish vacancy; and Sir Robert Linne strode over to Mr. Ladislaw, who had been helped to his feet and stood apart and alone.

“I took full licence for a ruined man,” said the baronet; “and am prepared to give the fullest satisfaction.”

The injured one almost whimpered.

“That is the devil of luck,” he said hysterically. “You force a quarrel on me, and deprive me of the fruits of it.”

“Oh, sir! Not necessarily.”

“You know I’m damned bad at shot and thrust.”

The loser smiled wickedly. The only stealthy witness of the little scene was the short-sighted man.

“You desire to compound the insult, then?” said Sir Robert.

“Oh! surely, sir, with your kind permission.”

The other laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and turned away. Mr. Ladislaw took a forward step and ventured timidly:

“You exaggerated, I trust, when you spoke of yourself as ruined?”

“Do you question my statement, sir?”

He flapped round with a mockery of fierceness. The little man fell back, scared.

“Oh, dear me, no!” he cried.

Sir Robert laughed again, shot a contemptuous look at the group by the table, and went quietly from the room.

In the Club-hall he came to a momentary pause.

“The fellow should have fought,” he muttered. “I would have made myself a broad target to him.”

Then he sighed.

“But there’s a shorter cut.”

CHAPTER II.

SIR ROBERT LINNE, as he left the club, had no thought but to sever the tangle of things by cutting his own throat. He intended to do this agreeably and decently, and to step off the world into chaos with as little inconvenience to himself and to others as was compatible with the severity of the deed.

After considerable reflection, the plan that suggested itself to him was to proceed to some riverside station, hire a wherry, work his way down stream an indefinite distance; and then, sitting on the thwarts, neatly and philosophically put a weight in his pocket and a bullet in his head, and so overboard.

Ordinarily, he permitted himself some nausea and ill-temper after a night’s debauch. This morning he would have none of them.

“It would be churlish,” he thought, “to hand in my credentials with an ill-grace. If I have represented his sable majesty faithfully, he has his own good reasons, no doubt, for recalling me.”

Therefore, to prove how the will can overcrow the nerve, he whistled on his way, and was very affable and kindly to all his fellows with whom he came in contact. They were not many at that early hour. An amazed roysterer waking on a step; a kennel-scraper driving his broom before him at a shambling trot; Giles the apprentice, yawning over the shutters, and a pretty mop-squeezer or so who affected a demure propriety as he waved a kiss to them in passing, and blushed and giggled when he had gone by.

He turned into St. James’s Park, where Moll and Meg were tethering their cows at the sweet-stuff stalls; and bought and drank a glassful of white innocence with a sort of pleasant bravado of geniality. It made him feel good for the moment—pastoral and boyish once more.

“What’s your wish in life, Molly?” he said, turning with a smile to the girl who had supplied him.

“Sure your honour’s quizzing!”

“No, I’m not. In truth now?”

“Tea at Bagnigge Wells, then, with china and a gilt spoon.”

He burst out laughing and then looked grave.

“Your ambition hath a goose-flight. What would you give for the treat?”

“Anything but my good name.”

“I stand corrected, sweetling. Here, take your golden egg, and never part with your goose.”

He took her chin in his hand.

“Bite,” he said, and clipped a guinea between her white teeth.

“That shall go to my credit,” he said to himself as he walked off; and made his way slowly to his rooms in Whitehall.

Therein he did not remain long, but came out very shortly, a pocket of his riding-coat bulged in a sinister manner.

He went down the Strand and Fleet Street, at a faster pace now, passed Temple Bar, with its three gaunt spikes yet shooting from the topmost arch, like dry stalks from which the ugly blossom had long withered and fallen, and turning into the cloisteral recesses of the Temple, fell loitering again, moved by the silence and antiquity of the place.

It was a fresh-blown morning, sweet with virginal sunshine, and the old haunted walls and windows of the courts seemed elbowing one another in eagerness to obtain largesse of light.

Glancing upward, he read on a dial set in the stained red brick wall of a house in the Inner Temple—“Begone about your business.”

“A sexton’s motto,” he murmured. “Must leisure be always a stolen happiness, and every clock a treadmill for Time to toil on? But I accept the churlish reminder,” and he made his way, with a melancholy smile, to a rearward gate in the river wall, and came out upon a flight of stone steps, that went down through ooze and slime to the water level.

The muddy stream, as far as the view could reach, was all patched with sunshine, like a beggar’s fustian with cloth of gold. Life was awake on the flood, but in such enchanted guise that for the moment his eyes filled with tears. Wherries shot the ripples, like bobbins traversing a loom of silver tissue; hay barges, soft apple-green along the thwarts and stacked high with yellow trusses, slid placidly past until the blue distance covered them with a haze like glass. From the happy shoreward mists, voices and anvils chimed in intricate harmony, but so subdued by distance as to seem the veritable bells of elf-land.

Sir Robert gazed in that entrancement of the spirit that is impersonal and momentarily divine—that comes of a complete surrender to influences outside the bourne of Nature. A voice hailing him, brought him back to the ugly prose of being.

“Boat, sir, boat!”

“Hi! my lad. Pull in here!”

The wherry came alongside the steps, and the man touched his hat.

“Waterman, what’s the value of your boat?”

“She’s not to sell, sir.”

“Perhaps she’s to buy. I’ll give you ten guineas for her.”

The craft was old and cranky. The man scratched his head, grinned and spat into the water.

“I’m at your service, sir.”

“And damn your company, say I. I don’t want it. If you’re for selling, there’s my offer. If you’re not, I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Short and sweet. What d’ye want of her?”

“That’s my business. Mind you your own, and——”

He thought he caught a glimpse of a figure moving the other side of the gateway in the wall.

“Come!” he cried hurriedly. “Take or reject. I’ve no time for barter.”

He brought a handful of gold out of his pocket as he spoke. There was the sum he had named and a little over.

The man hesitated—not from any doubt as to his own advantage in the bargain, but from a dread that he might be lending himself to some compromising transaction. The glitter of the pieces decided him. He stepped forward, hollowed his two hands together, and looked up greedily.

“Take it a bargain,” he said. “I’m for your honour.”

A moment later he was holding the wherry while the baronet climbed in, sat down and unshipped the sculls.

The stern swung out into the stream. At that instant a figure came softly and hastily through the doorway, with a finger on its lips. It slipped a crown into the waterman’s ready palm. The prow of the wherry, held by the latter, jerked and bobbed and settled steady. He in the boat was at wrestle with the sculls.

“Let her go!” he cried, without looking round.

The waterman gave the craft a vigorous shove, and stepped back.

“What’s in the wind with you, my dandy galloot?” he murmured watching, hand on hip; and—“Your honour makes better time with tongue-pad than with sculls,” he added with a grin. And, indeed, it must be confessed that Sir Robert was no accomplished oarsman.

However, he shuffled his craft out into mid-stream somehow, being indifferent to the manner; and then he poised his sculls, letting the boat drift down with the tide which was running to sea.

Even now he could hardly take himself with that seriousness that the nature of his intention would seem to demand.

“Did ever man,” he said aloud, “meet the devil half-way with such a sense of humour?”

“You have none,” said a creaking voice in the bows.

He twisted his head about—scarcely marvelling at the response.

“So you have taken me at my word?” he said.

“You think I am the devil—eh?”

“You flatter yourself. A monarch to condescend to the practical executive! I take you for one of his imps.”

“Well, sir—I don’t despair of you. I gave the waterman a douceur, and slipped in as you pushed off.”

“So, you are not the devil?”

“No; only one of his imps—an attorney.”

“Then I am lost indeed.”

“H’m!—May I have a little bout at reasoning with you—before you—eh?”

“Before I—eh?—just so, my friend. Now, balance the pros and cons, I pray. Here am I, going to damnation, and thinking myself equipped with all decent loneliness for the journey. I turn my head, and find——”

“Counsel, waiting to argue the case for you. Congratulate yourself. Heaven is——”

“No, no. State your case, without blasphemy.”

“Very well (take care of that barge).—I revert to my original postulate. You said—‘Did ever man meet the devil half-way with such a sense of humour?’—and I answered: ‘You have none.’”

“You did—and I throw the word in your teeth. No man, I make bold to say, has more than I.”

“Yet you propose killing yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My mission in life was to be foil to the virtuous. ’Tis a costly business, and not to be maintained save with luck. Luck has cold-shouldered me. I have staked and lost my last penny, and so my mission ends; and I jump off the cliff of the world with a light heart.”

“And with a poor sense of humour. I repeat it.”

“Pardon me. You said with no sense of humour.”

“Well—I qualify that.”

“That is a concession from a lawyer. Now, has it occurred to you that you have obtruded yourself upon a reckless and desperate man?—that, to a lost soul standing on the brink of Cocytus, it may seem a small matter, and the humouring of a very trifling aggravation, to push a fellow-traveller over into the gulf before he leaps himself?—At this moment it suggests itself to me that no ghostly letter of credit would serve me half so well down there as an attorney in esse. The devil needs lawyers to argue his case. Generally they evade him at the last by some technicality. Shall I take you, to prove at least that suicides come not, without exception, of the humourless class?”

“I made no such statement. But this I say—that any man who contemplates self-destruction has, for the time being, lost his sense of humour.”

“I am in no hurry. Why?”

“Because he is taking himself with that exaggerated seriousness which is the trade-mark of the bore.”

“Is a suicide a bore?”

“Certainly. He is a man with a grievance, who, professing to accept life as a game of chances, cries out if the cards are against him. His tone may be clamorous or subdued; but it always carries the same refrain. At a certain point he would almost resent good fortune, for he hath persuaded himself that he is born the butt of Providence; and his vanity is such that he would not have even a diseased judgment of his refuted. Vanity, vanity—he is the very maggot of it.”

“Continue, continue, my friend. This is not Coke or Lyttleton.”

“Sir, I will continue. You decry my profession; but what doth it teach a man, if not to look below the surface? The suicide is he who will not take his own destinies in hand; for at heart he is a sensuous fellow, who hath subordinated his instinct for combativeness to a poor sentiment of fatality. In a world of noble struggle he would lie down and ignobly sleep. Thus, like a distempered cur, he turns and gnaws his own flesh; or, weakly despairing, stings himself to death like the fire-ringed scorpion.”

The baronet sat amazed.

“This is no lawyer,” he cried; “but a Wesley come to judgment!”

The dried-stick of a man in the bows drew in his breath, and leaned forward, with moist eyes, the lids whereof were like dead sea-weed.

“Oh, sir!” he cried, in a full voice, “let me entreat you—see the game out. If I lose and am disqualified, there is no whit the less interest in the play that goes on. There are plenty to continue it—plenty to profit by the lesson of my downfall. From being pupil I have become teacher; and shall I by self-destruction diminish the number of that blest company?”

“My good sir,” said the baronet, with some emotion (and, “Pull your right scull,” said the lawyer anxiously), “you have a great advantage of me; but I respect and honour your sentiments. Why I should find you here, or why you should take an interest in my fate, passes my comprehension.”

“No doubt,” said the other.

“I know you, I think, by sight,” said Sir Robert. “You are a member of ‘Whitelaw’s,’ if I am not greatly mistaken.”

“I was elected five years ago. Recently, I have presumed to take a watchful interest in your fortunes, as they were presented to me by report and by actual observation. I have sorely marked you—I crave your indulgence—in your race to the devil.”

“I have a good mount. I shall win.”

“Sir! sir!”

“Why, what a to-do is this! Do you disparage your master? I am no attorney; yet I could prove black the very moral of innocence.”

“As how?”

“As thus. To desire—conscious of unworthiness—one’s own salvation, is to aim at self-aggrandisement. To be careless of one’s own salvation, is to be unselfish. To be opposed to one’s own salvation, is to be actually virtuous. The devil may be considered the Apostle of this creed—ergo, the devil teaches virtue.”

“Well, and well. I take you on clause two of your reasoning. If, in being careless of your own salvation, you are careless of that of others (and surely it so follows, having regard to precept and influence), you are selfish. But, if you think of others, you are not careless of your own; for no man would of his true generosity help his neighbour to that which he himself scorns. Now, the manner of your purposed exit; the unexampled sweetness, sir, with which you have met my most impertinent intrusion, convince me that you are far from feeling a careless indifference to your fellows.”

“I have a measure of good-humour. I would not kick the stool from under my neighbour because I sit upon a stone. But the first test of humour is to know itself bested; to succumb to the finer wit—and that the devil hath shown.”

“Disprove him. He hath stood so long in his own shadow that he fancies himself a giant. He tiptoes against the setting sun, and his dead image seems to embrace the world. Upset him, and he lies but a pigmy.”

“My friend, he is not to be felled but by the stone of godliness. That I never possessed, for it is not purchasable. And if it were, my pouch is empty.”

“Yet you gave, in hard cash, ten guineas for this crank vessel that is worth——”

“It was my all—I swear it. And now I have bought Charon’s ferry-boat, and future souls must swim. Not much consideration for my neighbour in that.”

“So I have said nought to move you from your purpose?”

“I greatly regret—nothing.”

The spare stranger groaned.

“It shall be a lesson to my self-sufficiency. Well, sir, I must play a better card.”

“If you please.”

“Run the boat into the hard there, and accompany me to my office. I will hand you the title-deeds of an estate that shall give you a new lease of life.”

CHAPTER III.

LIKE one who accepts an indifferent gift, rather to pleasure a friend than for his own gratification, Sir Robert Linne held his reprieve in his pocket, as it were, with a careless hand, and, accompanied by the lawyer, re-entered the humming lists of life.

Silently the two made their way westwards, the man of deeds accommodating his pace, with some secret chafing, to the leisurely progress of his companion. Now and again he would glance stealthily aside into the latter’s face, and give a half-comical shrug of chagrin over its expression of tranquil good-humour that seemed such a genial satire upon the situation.

“If he hobnobs with death so calmly, how will his philosophy accept a living estate?” thought the uneasy scrivener; and, “light come, light go,” he groaned in his heart.

Presently they were in Holborn, without the rag of a sentence to pass between them; and so came opposite the block of houses known as Middle Row.

Here suddenly Sir Robert stopped, and took his companion by the arm.

“You itch to improve on the situation,” said he, with a twinkling gravity. “Harkee! Now’s your opportunity. Here am I;—yonder stands Branscome’s lottery office. Draw your moral, my friend, and ease you of your load.”

The lawyer drew in his breath, his face crinkling.

“Well,” said he—fore-read and embarrassed but conscious of right—“the man was an earl’s fellow once.”

“It proves him the more admirable for being a rich man now!”

“Sir Robert, Sir Robert! ’tis an evil system and a mistaken. How is he rich? On the pitiful savings of shoeblacks and servant wenches. ’Tis such as he bid industry sit hands in lap and starve on illusive hopes. For a single chance in fifty thousand he buys her ruin; and what is all this but bitter gambling?”

“Ha, ha! old gentleman. We reach the point at once. But, believe me, sir, I never starved a servant wench or took anything from her but a kiss—and that I returned.”

The lawyer sighed.

“Go your ways,” he said. “You have your father’s laugh.”

“What—you knew him?”

“I had the fortune to do him a service once—’twas during the riots of ’68, when foul John Wilkes was committed to King’s Bench, on a writ of capias utlagatum, and the red-coats let fly at the mob. Your father commanded. They called it the St. George’s Fields massacre, and all concerned in it gained a mighty unpopularity.”

“Yet he was but a simple soldier and obeyed orders.”

“Well, sir, an unpopular king must needs have unpopular ministers, and so down the scale. Let a tyrant fall (I speak in illustration only—God bless his Majesty!) and his very scullions come down with him. I did Sir Robert a service, I say; and he repaid me with his confidence.”

“His son is beholden to you. You repeat yourself on behalf of a scapegrace, I fear. You were not his adviser?”

“In one matter only that you shall learn. Now, my friend?”

The last words were addressed to an odd-looking individual who had come up to them as they talked, and who now presented certain savoury goods to their inspection with a dumb gesture of invitation.

The creature was a lank, middle-sized man, with a meagre face of decorum and rather delicate features set in an expression of confident apathy. He was scrupulously attired in dress-coat, vest and knee-breeches of stainless black broadcloth; and black silk stockings, ending in shoes decorated with large steel buckles, encased his neat deliberate legs. A great shirt-frill stood out from his breast, like a table napkin from a tumbler, and his neck cherished the spotless embrace of a lawny cravat. On his head he wore no covering save its natural one; but this was so clipt and bepowdered as almost to give the appearance of a close cap of linen. A short apron of the softest texture, which concealed a third of his glories, seemed designed rather to advertise his calling than to protect his broadcloth.

Thus apparelled, he presented to the talkers a little round tray, on which was set for consideration a pudding, neatly sliced and sugared, that gave out a pleasant fragrance. To the obvious merits of this he silently drew attention with a short, bright spatula which he carried in his other hand.

“No, no,” said the lawyer. “Not to-day, my friend; not to-day.”

He smiled good-humouredly; and the oddling dropped a courtly bow—“the loss is mutual,” it expressed—and carried his comestible elsewhere.

“Sir Robert,” said the attorney, with a droll, kindly look, “the lottery office missed fire; but I have another moral for you.”

“It shall have my respectful attention, sir, in honour of my father’s friend.”

The words were spoken with gravity. The other gave a twitch of surprise. Then said he in a pretty gentle voice:

“’Tis from him with the pudding. They call him the Flying Pieman; but his proper business is to paint pictures, at which he has a fine skill, they say. Fortune missed him, however. He married ‘for love’—a course for which there is plenty of precedent, but no authority—and love begets a family, but nothing to put in its empty crops. At the last pinch he kicked over his easel and went out to sell puddings. He did nought by halves. If his pictures are half as good as his victuals he deserves the Presidency. He hath made himself a character in the neighbourhood, but a finer one in God’s eyes, I will venture. ’Tis said that, no whit faithless to his art, he trades all day that he may indulge his real bent after hours. That is to be a man and an example.”

“To me, sir, to me, you would say; and so he is. I have no family; but that is an accident—not an excuse. I take the pieman to my heart, and see no ostentatious vanity in his shirt-frill. I read another moral here too. This is ‘Heavy Hill,’ and goes to Tyburn.”

“Oh, Heaven send you to the House of Correction! Come on, I beg. My office is close by.”

“Then your prayer is answered. You shall do the overseer, and whip me with maxims.”

The lawyer smacked in his lips as if he were sampling some sharp but not disagreeable berry; regarded his incorrigible companion a moment through covert eyelids; then turned and led the way across the road and under the old gate-arch of Gray’s Inn.

Beyond this portal, a short distance, pleasant tranquillity prevailed. It is the humour of the Law to hatch in antique solitudes the plots that vex many lives with turmoil and disquiet. Around its Inn Halls the Devil’s cloisters invite to peripatetic contemplation of quibble and sophistry; and its silent gardens cherish that grimy tree of Death whose trunk is freckled like the serpent’s with discs of yellow.

Up a step or two, through a venerable doorway with fluted pilasters, the long man ushered his visitor, and so to a dusty comfortable room on the first floor, where tiers of japanned boxes, the caskets of dead passions and aspirations, were piled high against the walls like coffins in a family vault.

“Mr. Creel?” said the baronet, sitting up on a high stool and crossing his legs.

The lawyer bowed.

“So I read it on the door, sir. Believe me, I hold the name in honour for my father’s sake.”

“It is a good sign,” said the other; “and so far of happy augury. Here, I hope, is soil that may be renewed and yield yet a plentiful crop of wholesome grain.”

He sat himself down, and, toying with a pencil, fixed his eyes steadily and gravely on the young man.

“I crave your permission,” he said gently, “to speak very plainly, very freely, and—within proper limits—without reserve.”

“Surely, sir; for should I not be dead by now? ’Tis a post-mortem examination. Out with your scalpel, and cut and dissect as you list.”

“It is a family matter and very private to your ear.”

“Mr. Creel, who so taciturn as a ghost? Even a lawyer may give his confidence to a shadow.”

“You please to jest. Will you be serious for once? What I have to say affects you nearly. I represent your dead father—am his agent, not in authority, but in loving-kindness.”

“I listen, I listen. Perhaps I am a little light-headed. I have thrown out all my ballast, remember.”

“You saw but little of the late Sir Robert?”

“I was eleven years old when he died. That was in the war of ’80. He fought under Clinton and lies in Charleston where he fell. He was always a soldier in my vague memory of him—saturnine, pre-occupied, with a rare smile for odd moments.”

“He feared God and loved his king—rest his memory! He had one other love—his only child; but him he was troubled for.”

“Troubled for? But why should I ask?”

“The boy was of high spirit, reckless, generous. He wore, even at that age, his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at.”

“They have left all threadbare. Well, well!”

“Sir Robert’s was not a great fortune; but it was sufficient, with management, for his wants.”

“They were fewer than mine, good man. I feel sure, sir, this retrospect is for a worthy purpose. Otherwise—well, it is obvious I was acquainted with the extent of my own inheritance.”

“I ask no account of your stewardship. That is no part of the solemn commission I accepted from my friend. Maybe you have been more sinned against than sinning. Yet, is it not true that your father’s apprehensions were justified?”

“Why else was I in the wherry?”

“You are ruined?”

“I am ruined.”

The lawyer sighed.

“It was foreseen,” he said, “by him who was dearest to you—foreseen and provided against.”

“Provided against?”

Mr. Creel made no answer; but he quietly arose, went to one of the japanned boxes, unlocked it and took thence a bundle of papers.

“These,” he said, “are the title-deeds of an estate that is yours—on certain conditions.”

The young man had no word to say; but watched the other in amazement as he took from the little heap a certain paper that was folded and sealed with his father’s monogram.

“I follow my direction,” said the lawyer, “and break this seal. The contents of the document are for your ear, but they are addressed to me. I ask your attention while I make them known to you.”

He shifted so as to secure a full light, knitted his brow, and, without pause or comment, read out in a brassy legal voice the lines before him:—

“To my honoured friend, Mr. James Creel, of Gray’s Inn, I have committed, to hold in trust for certain purposes, the estate of ‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hampshire; whereof are dwelling-house and messuage, ninety-four acres, together with two farms held on long leases, the which it is not my desire to particularize in this the present connection. But rather to state clearly that in event of the bankruptcy at any time after my death of my only son, Robert (which calamity I, considering the bent of his nature, do sorrowfully foresee), and in no other event, the said estate is to be handed over to him, to work to a profit if he will, and so redeem the past; but on the condition that from that time being he shall forego his honourable title and know himself and be known as Robert Tuke, which name of Tuke hath his mother borne before him to her maiden honour and renown. And this I state clearly, that he may take or reject without further question, knowing the estate to be mine to give, and else seeking to know nothing. And I offer it, a last chance of redemption, that he, sloughing all that foulness of the past with his dishonoured name may turn the fruits of evil to the account of good.”

In the minute of amazed silence, during which the listener sought to ponder the import of this astonishing message, Mr. Creel refolded the paper, returned it to the packet, and, sitting down again, tapped and scraped his chin with the latter in a dry manner of expectancy.

“Well?” he said at length.

Sir Robert tilted himself to his feet, and stood rumpling his hair.

“I am at sea!” he cried, in a lost voice. “What does it all mean? I never heard of this estate; nor, I protest, did the executors. How did it come to him, and when?”

“That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79—not many months before his death.”

“And from whom?”

The lawyer shook his head grimly.

“Ah!” said the baronet. “You love a secret, of course. Am I never to know more than this?”

“Sir, you understand the conditions. You are to take or reject.”

“A messuage and the rest of it? And where is the working capital?”

“These many years I have nursed the property against this contingency. It has yielded fairly, and there will be an accumulated sum to your credit.”

“And if I reject?”

“Then the whole reverts to me.”

The young man’s eyes took a sudden softness. He was only thirty-one, and susceptible yet to impressions of unworldliness.

“I fail to see your profit in the matter,” he said.

“My profit,” answered the lawyer sternly, “was in a good man’s confidence.”

Then he went on more gently:

“I sought no profit in the transaction. I would have sacrificed more than the estate to save you and myself the necessity of this explanation. It was my affection for your father bound me to this solemn compact, as it was my regard for the latter drove me unknown to you to set an anxious eye upon your career.”

“And so pluck a fool from the burning and lose an estate.”

Sir Robert advanced impetuously and seized the other’s corded hand.

“You are a noble soul. I will learn to pray, and you shall be my saint to intercede. I take my life from you and this strange trust; doing my duty by it and asking no questions.”

The old lawyer’s eyes moistened; but he answered somewhat caustically:

“I won’t say it is your deserts. But the gift is from Heaven, where your father, his battles over, sits at peace. ’Tis he hath interceded, and the Almighty—to satisfy his importunity, maybe—gives you a new house, as erst he did to Job, but for a better reason.”

Then he added a little inconsequently:

“You’ll find it in a damned bad state of repair.”

CHAPTER IV.

IT was six o’clock of a cold September morning when Sir Robert—or Mr. Tuke, as we must now know him—woke in his room off the stable-yard of the old “George” inn at Winchester. Lying lazily snoozed amongst the pillows, he reviewed, with some amused satisfaction, the first courses of that scheme of reformation he had mapped out for himself, whereof two rather sleepless nights at Farnham and his present quarters—the result of an abstention in the matter of numerous “nightcaps,” which habit had made necessary to slumber—were the prologue. Now, the little battle fought and won, he preened his moral feathers smugly, and felt clear-eyed and very good indeed. As to the mysterious estate—the last stage on the journey to which he should cover that day—he had soon learned to accept its acquisition with that sweetness of irresponsibility that was his most engaging and aggravating characteristic. But, after all, he had an excellent digestion—in common with a great many men of the eighteenth century—and was little inclined to dyspeptic brooding over problems.

Now, as he lay, his half-dreaming glance was arrested by a coloured print after George Morland hanging on the wall over against him. The like he remembered dimly to have known in a nursery of long ago—a picture that had often set his young soul wandering by lanes of enchantment. Nothing could have served better to confirm and make abiding his present mood. He was a boy again, an apple-skinned Ulysses, with the limitless possibilities of the unknown before him. Without stain or guile he passed beyond the narrow margins of the print into a land that no mortal foot but his own had yet trodden.

Indeed, for the moment he was a child again, and there is nothing in after-life like the pure imaginings of such. To the child every incident is a picture framed and hung upon a wall. The memory of these pictures abides long, then fades a little and a little more. We are hardly conscious of them in old age, or at least feel hardly the ecstasy of their atmosphere. In acquiring our identities (Keats’s phrase), what don’t we lose? We find a fact for a dream—a wretched exchange. But the first possession doesn’t altogether go. It recurs to us at odd moments in little sweet mental vertigoes—never so much, perhaps, as during that half-waking hour of dawn when we are least conscious of our material selves.

Then to think of a dewy morning down; of a pleached alley of fruit-trees in blossom; of a windy common; of the mystery of snow and brooding distances; of a Christmas-tree, even, and the mingled ravishing smell of lighted tapers and banked fir-branches, is momentarily to recall the amazing romance and illimitableness of life; is to be quit of the dreariness of conviction, and to stand once more at the foot of the green slope, and look up and wonder whither the clouds are sailing over the far summit. A few artists, a few writers, a few musicians, have the power, or the instinct, to inspire us with these ancient imaginings; and such as can, we must dearly love, though they may never stand in the front ranks of their fellows. The child is the only real genius; and perhaps these have remained morally children. In mid-life they can arrest and record the fugitive retrospections that to the most of us are only bubbles broken away from the far-distant spring of life, to be caught at and to vanish on the prick of possession. God bless them! they are our best earnest of the spiritual.

Out of his luminous stupor on that grassy borderland of dawn, the dreamer came with a full heart, and, it must be confessed, a biting consciousness of emptiness in his stomach.

He sprang out of bed, and bathed and dressed to the hissing accompaniment of ostlers in the yard below and to the clank of horse-hoofs on the cobble-stones.

He breakfasted, as men did in those days, as if he were victualling for a siege, and had great thoughts of kissing the chambermaid when he fee’d her—but refrained.

By half-past nine he was on the road, with a heart full of gaiety, and a recurring wonder for his destination, and clattered under the old west gateway of the town with a song on his lips—

She was throated like the stare—

Well-a-day!

She was white as buds of May—

Well-a-day!

And all with their sweet scent

Her bodie was besprent,

That to kiss her was a joy beyond compare,

If her mouth the scarlet hips—

Well-a-day!

Would for redness all dismay—

Well-a-day!

Ah! it took its comely stain

From the truths that she had slain;

For falser than the serpent were her lips.

Once with passion I did rave—

Well-a-day!

Now I will not, though she say

Well-a-day!

For the cry of damnéd Love

All her beauty doth disprove,

And her heart it is a stone above his grave.

Mr. Tuke had not a good voice. The chords of vibration were beyond his control. But his breast was lined with romance, and this led him to give some melodious effect to the sentiment of words that did not seem, it must be admitted, appropriate to his rather riotous character.

He left the old city and took the Stockbridge road; and presently, entering between country hedgerows, looped his reins slackly and let his horse amble fairly as he listed.

The sunshine in his soul was constitutional, inextinguishable, and not reflected from his surroundings; for the day was bitter for the time of year, and the wind stuck as rigidly in the northeast as if the stiff-pointing weathercocks had nailed it there. The greyness, however, emphasized the sparkle of hip and holly and all red berries; for every dull mood of Nature has its compensations to shame us out of peevishness. A squirrel ran from branch to root of a beech-tree like a stain of rust; a cloud of fieldfares went down the sky and wheeled, disintegrated, as if they were so much blown powder; the ruddocks twinkled in the hedges like dead leaves flicked by the wind.

The horseman had an eye and a heart for all. He was of good, lovable material, whatever the hitherto courses of his bad days and worser nights.

By and by he came out upon country very wild and barren. The road heaved and dropped by way of grim and treeless downs, through whose cropped surface-grass the white chalk smote upwards like death in a sick man’s face. For leagues the sterile slopes seemed stretching onwards; and no sign of life was on them all, but here and there a flapping crow—no music of it, but, in some more sheltered hollow, the sweet lark’s broken ground-song.

And the further he rode, the more confirmed in desolation grew the scenery. There was a wild forlorn beauty about it all, nevertheless—a clean-blown freshness that seemed to set the hillsides pulsing with opal tints, like near-extinguished ashes breathed upon.

Something, familiar to those days, was wanting, however; and the solitary rider peered for the something, unwilling to believe that a tract so lonely could be innocent of a certain unchancy landmark. He had already loosened his pistols in the holsters, and was riding with a greater regard for surprises.

He topped a hillock, and “Ah!” quoth he; “I could not be mistaken.”

On a high swell of ground, right in his path, as it seemed, a structure like a massive clothes’-horse, open at an angle, stood up against the sky. From its crowning beams a short slack or two of chain depended; but these were quit for the time of any ugly burden—a void that by no means pleased the traveller.

“When the boggart tumbles, the crows re-gather,” he murmured sententiously; but he set to singing again, though with an eye alert for mishaps.

Nothing occurred, however; nor had he sighted a solitary soul moving in the breadth of the wide landscape, when—without a change being obvious in the character of the latter—he found himself descending a steep slope to a little long township of queer and ancient houses.

Here at a pleasant small tavern—on whose sign-board, as he approached, he read the legend “The First Inn” (the reverse slyly exhibited, to the eternal merriment of chuckleheads, the obvious antiperistasis of “The Last Out”)—he drew rein, and found he had reached the village of Stockbridge, which was in truth that halting-place on his last stage, from which he was, as he had learned, to take a by-road, some five or six miles, to his destination.

Into the tap he strode; and there were a few gaping rustics swilling their muddy quarts, and the landlord, a wizened, bent-stick of a man, behind the bar.

“Oblige me by sending some one to look after my horse,” said Mr. Tuke to this person.

The person shifted a glass or two, covertly eyeing the stranger through rheumy slits of lids; but answer made he none.

Mr. Tuke repeated his request—still without result. He turned sharply on one of the grinning hinds.

“What ails the old faggot?” he said.

“He be stone deaf, master.”

Then the fellow bawled: “Jarge! Jar-rge! the gen’leman warnts ’s oss tended.”

The old man put a wrinkled claw to his ear, and shook his head.

“Eh!” said Mr. Tuke. “You refuse?”

He flushed in surprised anger, when at the moment a girl came into the bar, and addressed him in a bright civil voice.

“Grandfather’s deaf, sir,” she said; “and I was out of the way. I’ll send your horse to the stable. And what shall I draw for your honour?”

She was fresh and desirable as a spring of sweet water to a thirsty traveller. An old yellow handkerchief, of cherished silk, was knotted about her head, yet none so jealously but that a curl or two might escape—like tendrils of Tantalus his vine—for the teasing of fervid souls; and her gown, girdled under her bosom and fastened there with a favour of Michaelmas daisy, smelt of lavender and was the colour of it. She was tall, too, for a Hebe of the downs, and her arms, bare to the elbow, were tanned of a soft ivory—as were her hands, that were fine and capable-looking.

She gazed honestly at our gentleman from eyes as full of brown harmonies as a starling’s back; and he had no thought but to return her gaze with complete admiration.

“Can you give me to eat?” he said. “Anything will do.” And “Surely, sir,” she answered, “if simple fare will serve your honour.”

She showed him into a queer little parlour, with a long latticed window that looked into a vegetable garden ruddy with apple-trees, and fetched cloth and salt from a corner cupboard, while he sat down by an old grumbling grandfather clock and watched her movements.

“Who is the landlord of this good tavern?” said he.

“George Pollack, sir; and I am his granddaughter, at your service.”

“Would you were. And what is your name, my pretty maid?”

“Elizabeth, I was christened,” said she; “and Betty am I called.”

His last words suggesting an old nursery rhyme—“And what is your fortune, my pretty maid?” he could not help murmuring.

“Self-possession,” said she with a smile, and whisked out of the room.

CHAPTER V.

MR. TUKE had ridden a mile along the last lap of his journey, when he suddenly drew himself together, gave a whistle, and set to communing audibly with his inner man.

“This will not do, Roberto,” he murmured. “Thou hast eaten of the dangerous fruit, and the sweet poison courses in thy veins.”

He shrugged out a laugh.

“Why, what has my drugged headpiece been conscious of since I left the inn?—whereat I dwelt a pernicious while, by the way. The wind whistles ‘Betty Pollack’—the lark twitters ‘Betty Pollack’—she smiles over the hedgerows; she sits on every stile; the rose of the sun looks through the grey welkin like the fire of untouched maidenhood in her delicate cheeks. And I am a squire of acres—a man of substance; and a good man prospective, I believe.”

He laughed again, flicked his horse to a canter, and broke into a fragment of the old-world song that seemed queerly inapt to his character—

Sweet sun, sweet air, and a pilgrim’s scrip;

Shoon to my feet and sword on hip;

Flout or kiss on a ready lip,

And the green by-ways of the world-a!

His voice rang down the lonely swales and made their austerity human. For a profound silence reigned on all the hills and in the valleys by way of his passing, and the wind had ceased to cry of its own desolation.

Still no change marked the aspect of the country he traversed. Downs—endless downs, with, occasionally, a wryed plume of beech-trees on the peak of a slope; occasionally, a row of white stones in the cleft of a hillside, as if Nature, like some disturbed beast, were setting her teeth for a snarl.

At the end of another mile, it came as a breathing relief to him, upon topping a long incline, to see its downward pitch break away into a spread of meadow-land, whereafter began trees, at first singly or in clumps; further, in copses and little shaws, until the distance rolled with their billowing in fair, modulated waves.

The sight brought a cluck of satisfaction from him, for he was not made for loneliness; and he paused to drink in the glad prospect. Indeed, he had come to think that his acres would prove but barren sheep-runs, and his house but a magnified shepherd’s cottage on a swept table of pasturage, till this good view opened out to reassure him.

Down below, at the foot of the hill, lay a little lusty field with a noble girth of hawthorn about it, and through the green of this a shining burn flowed—a mere crooked rindle it looked, pencilled white on the grass. It was like the image of a lightning flash—earth’s engraved memory of a sublime moment—so still seemed its course from the traveller’s coign of regard; and, for some reason unaccountable—unless it typified in its innocence the cleansing spring of repentance—it drew him to dismount that he might stoop and wash his throat with a mouthful of its kindly rippling.

He rode down, tied his horse to a stake in the hedge, and, crossing a broken stile, strolled over the long grass that gave up a spicy smell of peppermint. As he neared a fat bush of wayfaring tree that stood against the margin of the brook, he became aware of a man, whom he had not at first noticed, fishing in the shadow of the green covert. The very creases in the back of this individual, who was to all appearance absorbed in his sport, excerned a suggestion of watchfulness, that somehow convinced the intruder that his every approaching step was being marked and listened for. Careless of the fact, however, he came alongside the stranger, who moved not so much as an eyelid, but continued to observe the slow voyage of his float with inexpressible serenity.

“Any sport, friend?” quoth our hero.

The stranger, without turning his head, answered, “None”—like a dog snapping at a fly. He was not a well-favoured person, it must be said, either as to his clothes or features, any of which seemed to have assimilated a common frowsiness. His long yellow jaws were clean-shaved—if so spruce an epithet could be applied to a hand-breadth of mouldy stubble—and dry tags of neutral-tinted hair fell over his cheeks and little hard eye-places. A greasy cocked hat, whereof one flap had been roughly seized down to give shade from the sun, was battened on his head, and the length of his gaunt body was expressed only by a rusty brown riding-coat that fell almost to his heels.

There was something else—some peculiarity that marked him apart from the ordinary; and in the first moments of their meeting the new-comer vainly cudgelled his brains to find out what this was. But, presently, when at length the stranger turned to read him full-face with a single covert glance, he saw in what the abnormality consisted. The man had no ears, but only little corrugated holes where these features should have been.

Mr. Tuke gave a whistle, then a laugh.

“I disturb you, I see,” said he.

“That be damned!” said the stranger icily. “You disturb the fish, sir.”

He had a great hooked nose, the corners of which were sensitive of his every word. One would have expected them to vibrate like laminæ of talc if he should ventilate his anger.

Mr. Tuke laughed again.

“Why do you swear?” he said cheerfully. “I don’t, though I think I have lost my way.”

“Then let me put you on it again, in the devil’s name.”

“You will pardon me. I can’t undertake to travel with that passport, even if countersigned by you.”

“Sir, sir! Whither are you bound? Do you think the chub are interested in your converse?”

“I don’t know. The wise man baits his hook with inquiry.”

“And the fool his with impertinence. You fish in empty waters, sir.”

“Oh! You are churlish. But I understand an angler sports for the love of solitude.”

“You are perfectly right.”

“Well—convince me that I have not wandered abroad, and I will go.”

“You are out of your path here. That I can assert.”

“For ‘Delsrop’ House?”

The long man’s fist jerked, so that his float bobbed on the water.

“For where?” said he.

The float slid out of sight. Mechanically he reeled up, bungled, and lost his fish. Curiously, he seemed little affected by the calamity.

“What place?” he repeated, busy with his hook.

“‘Delsrop,’ ’tis called—a house somewhere in the neighbourhood.”

“Why, what d’ye seek thither?”

“Surely, sir, you are a fool by your own showing. Rest content. I only seek my own.”

“Your own—‘Delsrop?’”

Mr. Tuke sniggered with amusement.

“Preserve the man!” he cried. “But I understand, sir; and appreciate the kind of welcome like to be extended to an absentee landlord.”

For a moment the stranger seemed at a loss for speech. Then suddenly he turned upon the other, with a strained smile on his lips and his nostrils in a lively state of convulsion.

“You must pardon me,” he said. “I know the house, which hath been so long untenanted, that the fact of a claimant to its wildernesses appearing fills me with a sense of the abnormal.”

He trailed his rod, staring at the intruder.

“So you own ‘Delsrop?’” said he, with a musing hand caressing his stubble. “I suppose you know—now I suppose you know the place is reputed to be haunted?”

Mr. Tuke was growing impatient.

“Can you direct me thither?” he said curtly.

“Surely, sir,”—a lean smile creased the leathery skin of his cheeks. “You have only to follow the road you left. Over the crest of the first slope you will pass a tavern—the ‘Dog and Duck.’ The gates of ‘Delsrop’ break a plantation of firs, three miles beyond.”

The baronet expressed his thanks briefly, and stalked away. His informant looked an unsavoury piece of goods, in all truth, and he was growing conscious of a sense of weariness that inclined him to resent undue eccentricity.

He remounted his horse, and pricked him to the ascent beyond the dip. Looking back as he neared the top, he noticed that the fisherman was disjointing his rod with a snapping, impatient hurry of action that seemed to signify his sport was no longer the uppermost interest with him.

“I am destined to be stalked for some weeks as a black swan,” thought he crossly. “My advent will be better than a raree-show to these local blockheads.”

He breasted the summit, and rode on. Almost immediately, he came in sight of the ale-house alluded to, and read “Dog and Duck” on its flaked and blistered sign-board that hung posted in the roadway opposite the tavern.

The latter was a forlorn and barren-enough-looking little temple of conviviality—a mere whitened sepulchre for the entombment of dead-drunks. It stood in a sterile patch of garden that was so flogged by bitter winds that the very cabbages lost heart, and the stunted potatoes cowered in their trenches like the rawest of Nature’s recruits. There was a vagabond look about the building, too, that was rather accented by a strip of lead over its dinted doorway, that gave to the two round bosses of opaque glass let into the upper panels of the latter, the appearance of weak bibulous eyes protected by a monstrous shade. To one side of the door a wooden bow-window, with its lower panes lined with some stuff of a crimson hue, projected; and on the outer sill of this, a figure, quite in keeping with the character of his surroundings, lounged at cumbrous ease, and drew the while at a long “churchwarden.”

Mr. Tuke caught only a fleeting view of this figure as he rode past; but an impression of it was taken on the retina of his mind’s eye with curious fidelity. Yet there had been nothing so remarkable about the man, who was a thick-set burly fellow, of low statue and unobtrusive physiognomy. Only, his cropt hair and eyebrows had been very white and his face very red, and somehow the combination had had an extremely ugly look. A hundred yards further on, looking backwards, with the common self-consciousness of the wayfarer, he saw that the lounger had slouched out into the road, and was watching his recession with weighty curiosity; and—“Oh!” he groaned, “that I should come to be the eye-salve of such a parcel of oafs!”

On he rode by swale and hillock, and presently the sombreness of his journey wrought a little mood of discomfort in him. He had loitered so much by the way, that dusk was beginning to gather in the hollows, and the melancholy of his surroundings found something of a kindred feeling in his heart. The rising of the mist along water-courses, as if silent trains of powder had been fired to give warning of his passing; the monotonous progression of thorny hedgerows; the flickering of sudden bats and rustle of unseen things in the roadside tangle—all oppressed him as if with a certain alarm of ominous expectancy.

Often now he dived into swoops of lower ground that were mere pits of blackness from the density of the trees that grew about them. Then the wind, that had lain coiled awhile, reared itself anew and went moaning through the branches, and met the traveller full-face on ascents, so that he shivered and greatly desired the comfort of a cloak;—but still, nothing like a house appeared in any corner of the desolate and lonely landscape.

It was in one of these dismal plunges into gloom that, as he began to toilfully breast the incline beyond, the memory of a gate half-hidden in the bush-tangle at the bottom occurred to him as something he had passed but a minute before with an abstracted eye.

At the thought he drew rein, turned his horse, with the sound of a tired trailing of hoofs, and retraced his steps a length of fifty paces.

Sure enough, set in the height of a dense shrubbery, was a tall twofold gate of wrought iron that sloped off into the bushes on either side. But years of neglect had assimilated the paint of the metal to the colour of the leafiness about it—blue and mossy green—so that little wonder was that it should stand unobserved by the belated passer-by.

“Now, the star of my destiny guide me!” said the baronet, peering curiously through the dusk. “Is this the road to my inheritance? It seems weird and neglected enough in all conscience.”

He dismounted, found the lock of the gate to be burst and useless, and decided to at least push his inquiries into the mysterious twilight beyond.

It needed an effort to force open the structure on rusted hinges and against the mat of weediness underfoot; but he did it, led his horse through, and swung-to the gate behind him. It went into place with a scream and a clang that cut piercingly into the sombre stillness. A bird or two fled twittering from the thickets, and then all sank into silence again.

The intruder paused a moment before pushing further. Peering hither and thither through the dank obscurity of trunks, whose interlacing boughs made a high fragrant vault at a lofty distance above him, he was aware of a little ruined lodge, ancient, tenantless, and all overgrown with lichen.

An eerie inheritance, in good sooth! He shivered, and, taking his horse by the bridle, led him on. The brute’s pasterns rustled in dead leaves; his hoofs thudded softly on spongy moss. To all appearance he traversed a drive making for the house; but from its character it might have been a natural alley in some primeval wood.

He had been given to understand that the caretaker had been forwarded certain directions for his reception. Now, as the wild and unordered nature of his property was brought home to him, he thought how inadequate to his present needs any preparation possible to the estate was like to be, and was half-inclined, late as the hour was, to ride back to Stockbridge—so cosily figured in his imagination the lights and good roast of the “First Inn,” with pretty Betty Pollack to serve them.

It was the reaction of a moment, and in a moment dismissed; for, whatever the spirit of the man, the good horse’s was already sufficiently tried.

Dismally cogitating he continued his way, and suddenly a new uneasiness was added to his apprehensions. Something was moving alongside him—keeping pace with him—flitting in and out at a little distance amongst the trees. It was spectral and soft-footed—a suggestion rather than a shape; but when he paused to look more closely, it was always gone. Still, if he moved again, there it was undiscernible in the dark thickset, slipping forward on a level with him, and so noiselessly that sometimes he thought it a mere trick of his fancy.

The tension on his nerves under this shadowy ordeal grew at length so taut, that he was fain to stop and cry out, if only for the relief of hearing his own voice in that ghost-haunted solitude.

“Who are you?” he shouted. “Why are you dogging me like this?”

“Like this?” a little laughing echo threw back—and silence closed upon him again.

He felt the thrill of sweat prickle down his neck; but, stubbornly pushing forward, of a sudden he saw the drive swerve into open space—a twinkle of light gleamed upon him—and there, grown out of the dark before his eyes; was a long low house of crinkled white, with either end fashioned into a protruding gable.

Too weary and out of humour with the situation to note anything but that here presumably his quest ended, he drew up at a central porch with a peaked roof, and seeing a dark iron-studded door before him, rained a shower of blows on it with the butt of his riding-whip.

A step hurried along the passage within—there was the click of a latch, and the figure of a tall man, holding a candle over its head, appeared in the opening.

As the two stood thus a moment, a white shape came out of the darkness, passed horse and traveller, and, with a tiny laugh, fled into the house and vanished.

CHAPTER VI.

ANY man but a Bayard is apt to lose the accent of courtesy in the rebound from a sudden fright.

Mr. Tuke fell back a pace, breathing quickly. Then he advanced in quick fury, so that the man in the doorway shrunk before him.

“Are you Whimple?” he demanded in a harsh voice, with a slight tremor in it.

“At your good service, sir.”

The caretaker spoke up timidly, and made an involuntary motion of retreat.

“Who was that that went in before me—that has been stalking me all up the drive?”

“Ah, sir! You must hold her excused. I did not know she was out. It is my sister Darda.”

“The fiend take the jade! I’ll have her out bag and baggage if she trifles with me. Here, sir—do you know who I am? Take my horse and see that he has food and water.”

He stalked angrily past the shrinking figure and made his way into the passage.

“Go, now,” he said with an impatient stamp, “and join me when your service is done.”

The man went forth silently, and the new-comer turned to look about him.

It seemed that his most dour apprehensions were realized in that first view of his surroundings.

He saw a long hall, not too wide, that in its panelling of black oak looked a very catacomb of dismality in the light of a single flaring oil-lamp that stood up on a bracket, half-way down, and whose greasy radiance rather emphasized than relieved the enwrapping gloom. Somewhere in the further obscurity, the first steps of a stairway, with old carved-end posts, were evident; and here the windy darkness seemed to rise into vacancy like smoke up a chimney.

The traveller uttered a fretful expression, and pushing open a door to his left—through which a weak shaft of light issuing appeared to give promise of a certain comfort beyond—almost fell down a couple of stone steps that led straight into a large massive-beamed room, with a great hearth in it on which some smouldering faggots glowed with a dull crimson.

Here, at any rate, was a board spread with food and drink, and, amongst them, a couple of candles in brass sconces. The revivifying sight led the baronet to look about him with a wider geniality. Certainly the room was beautiful in its proportions and in its air of antique solemnity. The floor was paved with solid stone flags; the walls were oak up to the ceiling; and a long oriel window, now heavily shuttered, was set deep in the masonry of the side over against the hearth.

The tired man sat him down on a wooden stool before the embers, and fell to a fit of musing over his queer destiny. So this was to be his fate—to plunge from the fever and glare of fashionable dissipation into a lonely and half-dismantled dwelling-place situate in the heart of an isolated thicket. Well, he had accepted his life on the terms, and the powers of destiny should find that he had the will to shake the life out of a resolution into which he had fastened his teeth.

In the depths of his pondering, he heard the front door slammed to and bolted, and was aware the next moment that the caretaker was standing in the room, silently awaiting his notice.

He twisted round on his perch, and regarded the man frowningly.

The latter hung his head under the scrutiny. He was a hectic, bashful-looking fellow, tall and weedy, with pale eyes and a weak, sloping chin. His age might have been thirty-eight or so—was in fact; though there was a curious suggestion of youthfulness in his smooth, shaven cheeks and soft, uncertain voice.

Mr. Tuke waved his hand towards the table.

“These preparations are for me?”

“The best we could compass, sir.”

He spoke with hesitancy, and in a manner of deprecation.

“The notice was very short. I had no instructions to provide but what the house could supply; and no means of learning your wishes.”

“There is little in the house, I suppose?”

“Little, indeed, sir, but some linen and a trifle of silver and a good store of wine in the cellars.”

“Of whose providing?”

The man did not answer. The other repeated his question in a more peremptory tone. Already—he could not have said why—a prejudice was forming in his mind against this patient-spoken servant.

“Of whose providing? I say. Why—don’t you know?”

“It has always been here, sir. It was here before I came.”

“And when was that?”

The answer followed so soft that the baronet could scarcely distinguish it.

“Speak out, sir!” said he angrily. “When was that? I ask.”

The caretaker cleared his throat.

“It was in November of the year ’79.”

“The year before my father’s death? Why, man, do you mean to tell me you have lived here all this age—lived and vegetated in this isolation for twenty-one years?”

“It is true, indeed, sir.”

“You were a boy when you came. Your ambition is a tortoise. And who was the last tenant?”

Again the soft, distressed answer:

“I don’t know, sir. Indeed I don’t know. How can I tell?”

“How, truly—for one who can be content to rust in a solitude for a double decade? Well—you take your service from Mr. Creel, I suppose; and he knows his business. And whither do you wend now?”

The man was emboldened to step forward, his eyes shining with a pitiful anxiety.

“Oh, sir, sir! If you will only continue the service? We have no home or hope or prospect without ‘Delsrop’; and Mr. Creel—Mr. Creel, sir, he bade me throw myself upon your bounty.”

“I am beholden to him.”

He looked a little sourly on the flushed, weak face. Perhaps there had been small charge of powder behind his shot; but anyhow, in the long run, good-nature was sure to incline him to generosity.

“I will consider of it,” he said coolly. “Perhaps you can prove yourself worthy of my interest. For the present, at least, you may stop—you, and your sister, to whom I conclude you desire me to extend the permission.”

“If you will, sir. And I can only thank you from my heart.”

His broken tones found a weak spot in the other’s breast.

“Well,” he said—“well, what are you called?”

“My name is Dennis.”

“And your sister?”

“She is Darda.”

“H’m! A pet expression, I presume.”

“Indeed, no, sir. ’Tis Hebrew, and signifies ‘Pearl of Wisdom.’”

“And is she that?”

“Ah, sir! ’Twas a fanciful notion of her mother’s. God help her, poor stricken loveling! Sure the fiends of pride suggested it in a bitter irony.”

“What ails her?”

“Her mind keeps no growth with her body. In this, her twenty-fifth year, she is nought but a wayward and fantastic child.”

“My household figures out apace. And you two are alone on the premises?”

“Alone, sir, and have always been.”

“Well, Mr. Dennis Whimple—and I would say, ‘as I would be, too.’ Leave me, my good fellow, and light me presently to bed.”

The caretaker withdrew, with a humble obeisance, and Mr. Tuke sat down to his meal. This proved homely enough, but acceptable to a ravenous stomach; and no doubt the wine made rich amends for the poverty of the repast.

His supper finished, and a great wave of sleepiness threatening to overwhelm him, he called for his henchman and demanded guidance to his bedroom.

Up the broad stairway Dennis, bearing a candlestick in either hand, preceded him, and his drowsiness inclined him there and then to little observation of the passages by which he passed. But presently he was aware of standing in a great gusty room, strongly shuttered like the one below, and having for its one conspicuous piece of furniture a mighty four-poster, with curtains and tester of heavy, faded brocade.

Dismissing his guide with a curt “good-night,” he crawled shortly between sheets fragrant of lavender, and fell almost at once into a profound slumber.

He woke in the morning to the sound of a tap on his door panels.

“Come in!” he groaned—for his head was like lead with the close atmosphere of the room.

A broad spurt of light flooded him from the opened door, and Dennis entered with shaving water and a towel.

“Ah!” said Tuke, recollecting himself. “It’s you, is it? Oblige me, my friend, by flinging open those shutters. And for the future, refrain from closing them at night.”

The man did as he was ordered, and then paused.

“Sir,” said he, with the same painful hesitancy of manner—“if I may presume—pray let me entreat you to reconsider the question.”

The other raised his head in staring surprise.

“What question?” said he.

“That of opening the shutters at night.”

Mr. Tuke sprang up into a sitting posture, with an oath.

“What the devil!” he cried. “Are you to begin by disputing my orders?”

“But——”

“Leave the room, sir.”

When he was alone—“Mr. Whimple,” muttered he, “you must have that hang-dog mouth muzzled if you are to stop.”

He looked forth through the broad-latticed casement. It was a fair, still morning, and the sun made idyllic glory of what had overnight appeared so haunted and so sombre. The house lay, so far as he could make out, in a wide basin of ground cut out of the heart of a thronging woodland, and must from its position be very private and remote. Before him was stretched a noble lawn, with a couple of gnarled and buttressed oaks to break its greenness; but the grass was a foot long, and so weighted with dew that a kilderkin of sweet water might have been gathered from it.

To his right he saw the opening of the drive by which he had come to his own. This, so far as he could see down it, was less an avenue than a passage driven through a wood, and all over its mossy floor the light fell in brilliant smears and patches, as if the branches dripped green fire.

Elsewhere, on every side visible, were trees; but with, here and there, scant openings in them. They closed in the further line of the lawn; they packed the hollows and mounted the slopes; in every direction they filled the prospect with an ardent leafiness.

The gazer turned and pursued his inquiries into the room. He found little to reward his curiosity, beyond the general beauty of an ancient interior; for the chamber was panelled in oak, like the other where he had supped, and the window was a fine oriel, with heraldic devices in stained glass in its topmost squares. For furniture there were the great bed, whose posts were richly carved in antique foliage; a wardrobe no less generously designed; a washhand-stand and chairs of plain solid oak, and an oak table in the embrasure of the window, with a cracked mirror of old repoussé brass work standing on it. This, indeed, was the one exception to that tasteful substantiality of accessory with which a mysterious destiny seemed to have supplied his needs. Else there were no pictures, no carpet, no curtains, no adornments of any kind—only a severe simplicity, in which was suggested a certain methodical cleanliness which, it pleased the man of fashion to think, was far remote from the systems of society with its accumulations of glittering rubbish.

He went through his toilet singing, and, opening his door, found himself on a broad landing, wherefrom half-a-dozen other doors gave access to as many rooms. Into each of these In order he peeped. They were empty, one and all—dusty, spider-haunted; and not a room of them, it appeared, but had had, at some remote period, its oak flooring roughly jarred up, and as roughly thrown and stamped into place again. In one or two, moreover, bricks, dislodged from the chimneys, were cast pell-mell upon the hearths; or fissures gaped in the walls or in the plaster of the ceilings.

“One would think,” he murmured, “that the place had withstood a siege.”

That it was designed with an eye to such a contingency, the massive nature of its window-shutters would seem to point. These—all of which had been obviously only recently thrown open—were of a common pattern of studded oak, and their hinges were sunk deep in the masonry of the walls. Closed, their power of resistance would have been as that of the stones themselves.

Throughout the house, when its owner came to explore it, this same feature was apparent. The building, in an emergency, could have been sealed as securely as a castle.

Mr. Tuke found his breakfast laid in the room where he had supped. As he entered the figure of a girl, that had been busy at the table, came forward as if to pass him. He barred her way, and she stopped immediately.

“Are you Darda?” said he.

She gave a shrill laugh, and “Yes,” she answered.

She was an eldritch creature and undersized; but the clean symmetry of her limbs was perfect, and her manners of movement showed all the mingled grace and self-consciousness of a child of ten. In her face was a marvellous contrast of colour, that was even startling on first acquaintance—for the skin was white as bleached kid, but the eyebrows were very dark; and the piled heap of hair that curled down upon her forehead was of a bright coppery tint.

She nodded at the intruder, and showed a line of even teeth.

“You come in good time for the shadows,” she said. “In the autumn the house is dark with them.”

“What shadows, girl?”

“Ah! you will know. They moan and look from corners; or swing from the cobwebs and clutch at you as you go by. You will know. Did I frighten you last night?”

“You startled me, you jade.”

She clapped her hands merrily. Her laugh was the most weird concatenation of rippling discords the baronet had ever heard.

“Poor gentleman!” she said. “Perhaps you shall see my museum for recompense. Will you come?”

“By and by, maybe. Is my breakfast ready?”

She nodded again, with her lips set, and vanished from the room.

CHAPTER VII.

ABOUT mid-day Mr. Tuke sat himself down, like a man thoroughly wearied, in his great flagged hall—which, with a fancifulness of conceit, he had dubbed his dining-room—and summarized, with a completely depressed air, the fruits of his morning’s exploration. Briefly, these included, in the matter of “furnished apartments,” the chamber in which he rested—whereof the plainest of necessaries was comprised in a table and a few chairs; his bedroom, already described; two little closets in the north wing, appropriated to Dennis and his sister, and very modestly equipped; and a kitchen embellished with a basketful of odd pots and pans. For the rest, a score of rooms, large and small—of direct access, or approached by way of tortuous passages, whereby unexpected steps to nowhere were the least harmful of many pitfalls and obstructions—represented the present value of his inheritance, and so far as they went, a purely negative one, inasmuch as it seemed that the small fortune that would be required to put them into a moderate state of repair, would be sufficient to purchase elsewhere a messuage in sound and habitable condition.

And, without, it had been the same. The stables, substantial as the house, were in a like condition of neglect. His horse he had found ensconced in a battered stall and feeding out of a bushel basket. All the contiguous offices, of less durable material than the main building—which was of stone, coated with some form of plaster—were lamentably dilapidated and threatening to a collapse that should be general.

Clearly, unless the sum standing to his credit should prove to be a considerable one, he must give up all thought of adequately repairing the ravages of time.

As he sat in melancholy cogitation, he heard a suppressed chuckle at the door, and, slewing his head about, caught sight of Darda standing above in the hall.

“What do you want?” he said sharply.

She nodded at him with a fantastic gesture.

“My curiosities,” she said. “Do you wish to see them?”

He was about to return a peevish refusal; but bethought himself that with such an one, a promise unfulfilled was like to prove a recurring annoyance. Therefore he rose resignedly and went to the door.

“Lead on,” said he, “and I will come.”

She flitted before him, looking back from time to time with a changeling coquetry that was half-repellant, half-fascinating. Her actions, all lithe and graceful, were yet marked by an exaggeration that transcended the bounds of reasonable self-control.

She led him to a narrow back stairway mounting from a sort of stone closet set in an odd corner of the north wing, where meagre light entered by way of a square aperture cut in the masonry and barred with a sturdy grate of iron.

The spot was like a prison-cell in the black melancholy of its surroundings. Arid moss grew in the crevices of the stones, and everywhere the viscous tracks of snails laced the walls, as if in a feeble attempt to beautify what was obdurate.

Crossing the floor, the boards, at a certain place, gave up a booming sound, as if there were a vault underneath.

The girl paused, with a light foot on the stairway.

“You hear it?” she said. “That is where the shadows sleep at mid-day. But when the sun loses his hold of the white ladder he has climbed by, they come out and grow and grow in joy to see him fall. Then all night they can fill the house, for they are brave and big.”

“What is it?” said the baronet. “A vault?”

She moved back a step, and stamped with her slender foot.

“They call it ‘the Priests’ Hole,’” she said. “Perhaps they hid there and became shadows in time. You may open it if you will. It is too heavy for me.”

He saw a ring in the boards, and tugged at it. A square of flooring yielded and came slowly up, screeching like the mandrake. Beneath was revealed a stone-lined chamber, some seven feet in depth and four in width, into which a weak gush of light found passage from some distant grating.

A dismal hiding-place, in all truth, where, it seemed, a man might perish forgotten in the racket of the times that gave it existence.

“It was hard to find once,” said Darda. “Hidden and tucked away in the hollow of the wall, ’tis said. Then the shadows must have been short and the world always day.”

“A weary thing for men, my lass. Lead on.”

He let the flap fall into place with a slam of thunder, and followed the girl up the stairs. These led to the servants’ quarter, where were situated the two little sleeping-places of Dennis and his sister.

Into her own room she flitted, and bade her companion watch while she unlocked and threw open the door of a tall wooden press that stood in a recess of the chimney.

He lounged, idly looking while she revealed her treasures; and she stepped back with an expression of covert triumph on her face.

“Do you know what they are?” she said. “Name them to me, all.”

He gave an involuntary exclamation of repulsion; for verily it was a gruesome collection that met his gaze.

Many old mummified skins of bird and beast, with beak and claw still adhering to them; yellowing teeth of cattle and skulls of small-deer picked out of brake and warren; the sloughed skin of an adder; the desiccated presentment of a cat with a mouse in its jaws, found behind a stove; amongst them all, carefully arranged, a host of common pebbles, selected for some distinguishing mark, and even withered roots and potatoes, that accident had embellished with some grotesque resemblance to twisted limbs or faces—such were the principal features of Darda’s museum.

There was yet another treasure that stood prominently forward of the rest in a place of honour—a human skull—no less—with wisps of gritty hair yet clinging to the scalp, and the flesh of the face withered to a corrugated substance like bark.

The baronet gave out a note of extreme disgust. The eye-holes of the dead horror were wrinkled like a toad’s back, and one of them was bulged with a chalky lump that, gleaming through the slit, looked as if the last dying terror of the soul that once inhabited had petrified it.

Seeing his expression, the girl gave an eldritch laugh, and clipped it in the bud.

“That is Dennis,” she said, listening.

A step came up the stairway. Mr. Tuke strode into the passage without, and met the brother approaching.

“She has been showing me those abominations,” he said. “They must be cleared out, every one of them. I won’t have the ugly rubbish in my house. You hear me?”

He understood the man to give a little gasping, nervous response, and walked on fuming. At the stair-head he turned again. Whimple had not moved, and his face was drawn and white.

“Where did she pick up that filthy relic?” said he sternly.

“The head, sir?”

“The head, of course. There is no need to misapprehend me.”

The other seemed to have some difficulty in replying. More than once he cleared his husky throat; and when at length he spoke, it was in a strained, mumbling voice.

“She wanders far afield. It was at the foot of the gallows on the downs she found it fallen, and brought it home.”

“Lately?”

“Oh, sir, no. It was the first year of our coming.”

“Well, it must be got rid of. I won’t have it here.”

The words had hardly left his lips, when Darda sprang into the passage, her eyes blazing like a maniac’s.

“It shan’t go!” she shrieked—“it shan’t! it shan’t! Dennis, kill him!”

Her brother closed frantically with the mad creature, and sought to still her cries. He looked imploringly, in the midst of his struggling, at his master.

The latter took no heed of the uproar; but simply saying over his shoulder, “Remember; it is to be done as I say,”—turned coolly and descended the flight. But the noise of the girl’s screaming pursued him far into the house.

It was an hour later when Dennis begged leave to speak with him as he sat awaiting his dinner. The caretaker was palpably in a state of semi-prostration. His face was white and his hands shook. It was, perhaps, not to be expected that a man of Sir Robert’s calibre should be prepossessed by an exhibition of nervousness so pitiful.

“Well?” he said, the contempt in his heart finding some expression in his voice.

“I wanted to ask you, sir—to beg you not to hold me responsible for this—this scene. The girl has ever been a wayward unaccountable body.”

“I will not be troubled with her. If she is to stop—and God knows why she should—she must learn to keep her place and to do what service she can.”

“I know, sir. I never guessed—she must learn to appreciate your goodness. We are quite homeless but for your bounty.”

“I don’t wish to be harsh; but you must see, my good fellow, that her way of looking at things is not that of a servant towards her master. No doubt these twenty-odd years of caretaking have led her to assume a sort of semi-proprietary attitude towards the estate. I grant her that excuse; and see, of course, that you are very much bound up in her.”

“Oh! I am, sir.”

“That is commendable,” said the baronet dryly. “Only—you understand?”

“I understand fully, sir. She shall not annoy you again. I have made away with—with the things, as you ordered.”

“And the skull is gone?”

“It is—yes, it is gone.”

Was there a shifting devil in the fellow’s eyes? His master looked at him keenly. Everything about the man—his humility, his gentle voice, his poor physique, and more beggarly resignation to a life of long inaction—told against him with the robuster individuality. And, after all, were these qualities in a measure assumed? So much of doubt and mystery had entered into the baronet’s days of late, as to give birth in him to a gloom and suspicion that were hitherto foreign to his nature. He foresaw himself, with dark apprehension, the lord of a bugbear estate—beset with a thousand trials and difficulties—cut off from the world of his custom, and ever sinking into deeper sloughs of melancholy and despondence.

He roused himself with an effort. That very afternoon, he inwardly determined, he would ride into Winchester—where was to be found his agent, to whom Creel had entrusted the moneys standing to his credit—and satisfy himself as to his prospective position as a man of more or less substance. Then, if all figured out well, he could arrange for the purchase of furniture and hire of servants proportionate to his means.

At any rate he would rub shoulders with his fellow-creatures once more. That, perhaps, was not the least that induced him to the purpose. He most piously longed to shake off, if only for an hour, that sense of sombre isolation that had lain on him from his first coming, like a dark fatality.

“You can go,” he said sharply; and fell to musing again.

His meal was served by Darda. If, in her half-crazed consciousness, she resented, with a swollen, passionate heart, the cruel order that had deprived her at a blow of the chief fantastic interest of her broken life, she had disciplined herself already to give no sign of it. No doubt her brother, forced to be the instrument of a harsh despotism, had appealed to her by love of himself to control the emotion that, expressed, could only read their ruin. No doubt, also, the sense of bitter wrong driven down, would by and by stimulate certain nerves of action that had hitherto slumbered unrecognized.

She moved to and fro with set lips and white face and shot no single glance in the direction of her master. The womanly instinct for grace and neatness, that not the most debased intellect altogether foregoes, led her to give what order to the arrangement of the meal its poor accessories allowed.

When all was finished, she went softly from the room and closed the door.

Mr. Tuke did not permit a certain pity in his heart for this tender bud he had so lacerated to interfere with his appetite. But, his dinner over, he fell, as men will, to a more genial view of circumstances, and, as he sipped his wine, was inclined to regret his precipitancy of the morning.

“Yet, after all,” he thought, “the monstrosities were incompatible with any forms of feminine attractiveness, and she will soon learn to find her pleasure in more wholesome interests.”

He laughed, reviewing the items of the hideous collection.

“From the gallows!” quoth he. “And a relic of twenty years standing! And did she let the rest of the good gentleman lie—only plucking the head, like a withered medlar, from the stalk it dropped with? I am made a receiver of stolen property, by Gad—Herodias to some bloody cut-purse! What a dreary-minded wench, and what a pretty!”

The sweet old wine flushed his brain with a glamour of roses. He was inclined to take a more humorous view of his state and position.

No doubt, withheld for the time being from considerations of worldliness, he felt that relapse from reclaimed barbarism which, coming to us all in certain moods and before certain aspects of nature, restores us momentarily to the primitive joy in life untamed and unmalignant, that is our proper heritage.

After all, it is not for the trimmed parterres of existence to yield those glad surprises that are the basis of our yearning to the immortal. Who ever, wandering in an ordered garden, lost himself in a luminous mist of paganism?

Here, the infinite possibilities of Nature were before him—the search for her glimmering and elusive shrine in an endless variety of thickets. He would slough the skin of conventions, and, plunging naked into the green glooms of enchantment, pursue the way from which only is hedged off by leafiness the menacing face of Death. More than this, work—the work that should be in touch with that of the great Mother, adapting her harmonies, imitating her lines—appealed to him with sudden force, so that he was to find a purpose in living that he had never guessed at hitherto. He was fascinated—absorbed in a dream of sun and woodlands and the mossy sparkle of innocent springs.

As the spirit of the wine evaporated, however, that hideous token of a felon’s fate would slip into his thoughts with a recurring persistency. That this was so, first angered, then depressed him. He was not a particularly squeamish individual, and certainly his rough times were not favourable to sensitiveness in so common a respect. Still, he could not drive the sordid keepsake from his reflections.

“Curse the jade!” he muttered. “Wasn’t the place lonely and dismal enough without that acute accent on its ghostliness!”

He laboured out a sigh.

“Well, at any rate,” he breathed, “it’s got rid of now.”

As he spoke, his glance wandered to the long latticed window, a casement of which stood open: and there, upon the sill, a black blotch in the sunlight, lay the grinning horror itself.

CHAPTER VIII.

FOR some seconds the diner sat, too astounded for speech or action. That either of his dependents should have dared to thus defy him!

At length he rose, and took a step or two towards the window. It was no trick of his fancy. There lay the abomination, its dry dead hair stirring in the draught, its stuft lid winking a dirty white, as if it cocked an eye at him in a hideous merriment.

He strode to the door and thundered for his henchman. The latter came immediately, apprehensive already, and doubly so when he marked the other’s face.

“You see that?” said his master, in a voice whose quiet was more appalling than any outburst of fury.

Whimple’s very lips went ghastly. He tried to answer, and broke down at the first syllable.

“I don’t accuse you of putting it there. Now, tell me—why didn’t you get rid of it as you undertook to do?”

He made out the man to say that he had—that he had removed it to his own room, intending later to find some means of disposing of it.

In the midst of his stammering explanations, Darda came softly into the hall. Her brother seized her arm with a shaking hand.

“How could you?” he muttered. “How could you do a thing so stupid and wicked?—and you have ruined us.”

She followed the direction of his wild eyes, and her own opened round in wonder.

“I didn’t put it there,” she said. “Does he say I did? It is a lie.”

He whispered “Hush!” in a fearful voice; but his master broke in at once.

“No matter who did it. One of you has thought fit to make a mock of me, and you must both pay the penalty.”

The girl laughed scornfully.

“You only wanted a pretext,” she said, “to get rid of us. I thought you would, sooner or later. Perhaps you put it there yourself.”

Her voice was rising to bitterer significance, when she heard a sound at her side, and, turning, made a frantic clutch at her brother as he slid to the floor. His head came with a little thwack on the boards; and there he lay with clinched teeth and a face like a stone.

Then—“Oh! oh!” she wailed, and threw herself down beside him.

Mr. Tuke was very embarrassed and a little shocked. He took no resentment over the girl’s spirit, though he still firmly believed she lied about the skull. But after all, it was patently unjust to hold the man responsible for the cantrips of so unmanageable a charge.

He seized a jug of water.

“Here—pour some of this over him,” he said. “He’s fainted like a woman.”

She looked up at him with fierce eyes; but she took the jug nevertheless.

“He’s a better man than you!” she cried. “He can suffer and endure; and fight too, when there’s need.”

She was human enough in her fearless championship of her own flesh and blood.

The gentleman laughed uneasily, and, feeling himself under the circumstances a little de trop, left the hall, with a certain consciousness of shame tingling in his heels.

Outside, he thought, “Did she get the better of me? If this sort of thing goes on, I shall lose the sense of how to be master in my house.”

Stung by the thought, he threw open the door once more and looked in.

“He’ll come round in a minute,” he said hardly. “Listen to me. I shall sleep out to-night. You can——”

He broke off suddenly; paused a moment in indecision—then tip-toed gently away.

The girl’s face had been drowned in tears as she bent over her brother.

He passed to the neglected stables, and was fain to saddle his own horse and lead him forth and mount in the weed-choked yard.

He rode down by way of the long slumberous drive. Its whole course was matted with woodland moss, smooth as green felt; and thereon the beeches, staking their aftermath of glory, flung golden counters softly, as if on a card-table. At the half-ruined lodge he paused, and dwelt upon its desolation curiously. Ivy, like a cluster of swarming snakes, held the writhed chimneys in a death-grip, and had fractured the spine of the gabled roof. The ribs of the structure showed through gaping rents, like those in a stranded ship. Not a melancholy window-place but gaped a black mouth, full of broken splints of teeth and dead sticks of sashes. The whole building seemed sunk into the moss and leafiness that engirdled it.

He went out through the iron gate, and spurred along the road that was yet unfamiliar to him. The air was at once soft and keen as the taste of olives, and as such stimulated his new appetite for Nature.

Life seems never so desirable as in typical days of autumn, when the year rallies of its disease and makes a brave effort to renew its thoughtless morning with a few withering leaves. Of all the motley months, none is so pathetic as October in its likeness to an aging lady, striving to salve by gentleness the unhealed wounds inflicted of her earlier pugnacity.

Mr. Tuke’s spirits rose as he advanced. He seemed already in touch with the world again—a butterfly of the second brood emerged from a buried larva. He met a few clowns, and acknowledged their salutations brightly. His voice rose and cracked in snatches of romantic song, and he greeted with pleasure whatever landmarks he remembered.

Of these, the “Dog and Duck” stood as unchanged as any tree or hillock; for on the window-sill of the tap the same figure lounged and smoked. The rider got a better view of the fellow as he stood broadly in the sunlight. He was built sturdily, with something of an air of the sea about him; and his coat was bedecked with trinketry of faded gold, like an old galley-foist. But his face, red as brick and patched with eyebrows like tags of wild clematis-down, was a cut-throat one by every sinister mark.

As before—the traveller past—he swung heavily out into the road to watch his going.

“I’ve an eye for you, my friend,” murmured the baronet. “What do you do in this happy valley, where winds and waters should be the only forces to strive with?”

He was pondering a little all the way to Stockbridge; and there Betty Pollack came upon him with a blush and a smile, like a posy of sweetbriar, and drew his honour a mug of ale. She knew him now by report, of course; and was curious, with the gossips of the neighbourhood, as to the history of his mysterious coming. Near all the years of her short life, “Delsrop,” unclaimed and deserted, had been lonely, enchanted ground for the builders of local tradition to lay their airy bricks on.

“Is your honour for Winchester?” she said. “The evenings draw in, and it’s well to be over the downs by sunset. There have been bad characters about of late.”

“Betty,” said he, “will you give me a curl to put over my heart for a charm?”

She laughed and then looked grave.

“I’m not that sort,” she said. “I keep my favours for my inferiors.”

“And what am I but one?”

“Well,” said she, “I think you are, to talk so.”

It was like a glimpse of an orchard through a wall-wicket to tarry with her a moment; but he must needs be up and onward if he wished to reach the old Burgh before dark fell.

Therefore he mounted and went his way, whereby we need not pursue him; for it was devoid of incident, and of much emotion but weariness.

He slept that night at the “George,” and the next morning sought out his agent and went deep into matters of business with him.

The upshot was so satisfactory, that he felt justified, then and there, in giving considerable commissions for furniture, and in arranging for the hire of such servants as were at least indispensable.

He dined early, and had made his return journey, with a heart considerably lightened and braced to content by three o’clock.

As he came within sight of the iron gate, he noticed to his surprise a horse tethered amongst the bushes off the road; and still more did he marvel upon nearing it, to see that it was a well-groomed animal and a lady’s, by token of the side-saddle.

He dismounted, and leading his own beast over the turf, pushed open the gate, and stood still to reconnoitre. No sign of the owner of the horse was there—no sound of voice or footstep in the green glooms beyond.

Uncertain what to do he remained a moment looking this way and that, when suddenly there broke upon his ear a shrill scream of terror. It seemed to issue not twenty paces away, from the direction of the ruined lodge.

He dropped the reins and sprang forward.

“Here!” he shouted. “What is it? Where are you?”

Crying, frenzied words came back to him—a woman’s voice, but inarticulate. Guided by it, however, he ran round by way of a little tangled garden that brought him to the rear of the low building.

Nothing was to be seen; but here the voice appealed to him in agony from out the very ground. He fell upon his knees by a sunk heap of rubbish—saw in a moment, and snapped vigorously at two gloved hands, that wavered up at him from a ruin of weeds and broken earth.

As he held on, frantically hauling, with his jaw set square, the matted ground shook and crumbled under his feet. He saw what was happening, and, throwing himself back with a mighty effort of resolution, drew slowly from the bowels of the earth, as it were, the collapsed and almost senseless form of a young woman. Then, scarcely might he stagger with her to a place of security, when a rent opened in the spot whence he had struggled, and a great pad of undergrowth went down with a roar and hollow splash of water to ugly depths.

Mr. Tuke laid his dainty salvage on the débris of a bench, and looked down upon it all amazed. It presented the form of a girl, of nineteen or twenty perhaps, with a quantity of pale golden hair dragged and tumbled over her very white face, and her dress and velvet spencer—both rich and fashionable—torn and stained in twenty places. Her eyes were closed, and her gloved hands daubed with mud and roots of grass.

He was quite at a loss as to what to do; and could only stand helplessly above her, wondering who she could be, and what the chance that had brought her into so perilous a position. Vaguely he recalled certain specifics for faintness, that seemed scrawled illegibly in the commonplace-book of his mind. Wringing her ears, or her nose—he could not remember which—suggested itself as a remedy dimly familiar. Burnt feathers, also—but whether for in- or external application, he had no recollection—fluttered faintly in the background of his fancy. Now he thought he would lay her flat, and now seat her upright like a limp Eastern idol, in the hope that the position most favourable to Nature’s purpose would induce recovery.

While he was speculating in great embarrassment, the young lady solved the problem for herself by opening her eyes, and giving out a little tremulous sigh, like the flutter of a scorched moth.

“Oh!” she whimpered—a line of pain coming across her brow—“where is my saltier?”

It was her chain, ending in a little medallion called a bréviaire—at that time fashionable—that she missed. Life devoid of this trinket was a petty possession.

“It must have gone whither you nearly followed, into a disused well,” said Mr. Tuke, becomingly grave.

He added with some humour of impertinence:

“How a foot, too light to bruise a daisy, could tread so heavy a measure, passes my comprehension.”

A little flush, as when a spoonful of red wine is dropped into a glass of milk, came to her cheek and delicate ear.

“I felt it going,” she whispered; “and screamed out. Did you save me? And are you the new squire of ‘Delsrop’? Oh, sir! I am ashamed.”

She broke off abruptly, and, blushing a more vivid pink, rose to a sitting posture, and put back the hair from her face in a bewildered manner.

“I hardly know what I say or do,” she said. “I was so frightened; and I have lost my saltier. My horse is somewhere outside. Will you help me to it?”

“You are not in a state to ride. Wait and rest, and I will escort you whither you wish by and by.”

“No; I must go now. My brother will be home from cock-fight and raging for his supper. It was wrong of me to venture in, and I have lost my saltier, and nearly my life. Will you have search made for it in the well? It is gold, and the bréviaire is shaped prettily like a ridicule.”

“It shall be found, if possible. If you must go, I will ride with you.”

“No, no.”

“Yes, indeed. And whither may I squire you, madam?”

“To ‘Chatters,’ if you must. ’Tis his house—my brother’s.”

“Your brother’s?”

“He is Sir David Blythewood, sir.”

“You must pardon me. I have only made my début in the neighbourhood this day or so.”

“Yes; I know.”

She looked at him with a vague little smile. Her eyes swam as pale a blue as plumbago flowers. Her features were cut to a sharpish pattern; but their complexion was of snow berries, and the softness of youth triumphed over all angles. Suddenly she put her hands to her rumpled hair.

“My hat!” she cried.

“I fear it has followed the saltier. We must make shift without it.”

She rose at once and took the arm he offered. The shock and the fright seemed to have confused her, so that her actions and most of her speech were mechanical.

When he had helped her to mount and was riding beside her, he had full opportunity, in the intermittent silences that fell awkwardly between them, to study her very dainty personality. She managed her “grey” like one finely educated in the science of horsemanship. All graces of mien and action seemed exhibited with the cultivated art that conceals art.

Now and again he would be conscious of an inquisitive glance shot in his direction, and the little confusion that followed upon discovery was skillfully expressed.

A long two miles they rode together, by further way of the “Delsrop” road; and presently, skirting a sweep of park-land—in ordered contrast with Mr. Tukes’ domain—came in view of a lodge and gates of the most admired substantiality.

Here the gentleman would insist upon delivering up his charge, and returning the way he had come. No pretty remonstrances would avail to make him spoil the romance of the situation by so much as a yard of anti-climax.

“I am too happy in having been the means of help,” said he. “If you are beholden to me at all, a word of thanks from your brother would make me a debtor instead of a creditor.”

She smiled back delightfully.

“He shall come in person,” she said, “and bring you a receipt of my safe custody.”

She laughed and waved to him, and was gone up the drive.

He stood hat in hand until she had disappeared. Then he mounted and rode back, with a heart full of sun and merriment.

Indeed, it was like a sail to a castaway, this vision in his waste of days. To know that refined civilization was within a couple of miles or so of his gates, did more to reconcile him to his embowered lot, than any philosophy of nature. He felt friendless and isolated no longer; but rather inspired to a pursuit that should make of his thickets a garden of Hesperus.

In this mood of exaltation he reached his own door, rapped on it with the butt of his riding-whip, and, as it was swung open, encountered the figures of Whimple and his sister arrayed as if for a journey.

CHAPTER IX.

THE man’s face looked fallen and hectic; but he was recovered at least of his fit. Darda clung to his arm, a frail, defiant, wisp of a thing, her hair a quivering mist of fire in the light of the low-down sun.

“Whither away?” said the baronet in surprise. “My horse, Whimple.”

Dennis put his sister gently to one side, and took the bridle. Standing thus, he turned to his master and spoke him quietly.

“We stayed to deliver you the keys, sir. I have made all snug against our going.”

“And where do you wend now?” said Mr. Tuke mockingly.

“I don’t know, sir; indeed, I don’t. We must make shift in a barn for to-night.”

“And your belongings—your personal effects?”

The servant made a sad expressive gesture. “Only our poor clothes,” it seemed to imply.

“Now, my good fellow,” said the baronet, a little grimly, “I decline, you know, to take the responsibility of this self-martyrdom. It is a weak attempt to put me in the wrong, which is no improvement of your case. I gave an order which was not carried out.”

“She gives her word, sir, she never put the skull there.”

“Nor you?”

“Nor I, indeed, sir.”

“H’m! It must be one of those remnants of mortality that provide for themselves, it seems. Anyhow, it is gone now, I presume?”

“I will swear I took it away and locked it up.”

“Very well. Then let us say no more about it. Do you wish to stay on?”

“I wish, sir, with all respect, to do my duty by the place that has so long harboured us.”

“Which means I am not included in the contract, and that you would take service elsewhere if you could get a better.”

The man was protesting, but the other stopped him with a laugh.

“Go your ways,” said he. “I see no reason why you should love me. We will make it a question of duty, and abide by that.”

Throughout the little discussion, Darda had stood in the entrance, passive and indifferent. Now, foreseeing the upshot, she turned and walked away into the gathering dusk of the house.

Mr. Tuke followed, jovially whistling. All the evening he was in great spirits, and at supper he had up a bottle of Muscadine, jacketed with a half-century growth of cobwebs and tartar, and drank to the blue of a couple of eyes that were comically, and a little sweetly, in his thoughts.

He went to bed, slept like Innocence, and woke like Justice, and, as he lay on his morning pillow, pondered the oddities of his new life.

One small matter exercised his mind perplexingly—his antipathy to the man Whimple. Whence it was born, and on what cherished, he found it difficult to decide. The fellow was respectful, obedient, and, so far as he knew, honest. Yet, from the first, he had felt an inclination, unusual to his bent, to bully him and depreciate his efforts. Something in the man—he could not tell what—woke suspicion in him—unjustified, he verily believed. He would remedy this, if possible; would look with a broader view of toleration on the conduct of his spiritless dependent.

The resolve was frank and characteristic enough; and he was decided to give it immediate expression. But so it happened, an incident of the coming day was to reawaken and confirm his deepest distrust in the unhappy caretaker.

All the morning he spent riding about his ragged estate, exploring, investigating, calculating possibilities and planning improvements. It was past mid-day when he turned his horse’s head homewards, and then he was by a dense thicket that skirted a little long wood of lofty trees. Here he dismounted; for it struck him that this was the fringe of the very holt he had penetrated on his first coming, and he must put his conjecture to the test. He tied up his horse and plunged amongst the branches, and presently was rewarded by catching a glimpse through the thronging trunks of the mossy lap of the drive and the dank stones of the ruined lodge. Right opposite the latter, but well hidden in the brush, he sat himself down upon a tumbled log; for he was hot and weary, and the high green silence of the place smote upon his senses like a cathedral anthem. Far away the tap of a woodpecker rang like an elfin hammer; things unseen pattered from a height upon the dead leaves—mere accents on solitude; the “caw” of a sailing rook came through the leafy canopy overhead with a weight of drowsy utterance.

He closed his eyes blissfully—and opened them again with a start.

Something soft-footed had entered the drive by way of the iron gate—had paused, and was peering forward with a concentrated gaze.

He made this out—cautiously shifting his body for the better view—to be a tall, dark-featured woman—a gipsy-like creature by every token—keen-faced; very poorly dressed. Presently she moved secretly, a yard at a time, in skirmishing advances, as a mouse does.

Suddenly she gave a little run; stopped; drew her ragged shawl tightly about her bosom, and uttered a low exclamation of greeting. To whom? It was with a curious wonder that the watcher saw coming from the other direction his man Whimple. He, the latter, moved as the woman, with a like air of secrecy; and he had a scared look in his face, too, as if he were on some errand of a disturbing privacy.

The two met, with a hasty familiarity of welcome, and words passed between them. These were earnest, rapid, vehement; but Mr. Tuke could not gather their import. More than once the woman’s voice wavered up for an instant into a tone of scorn and indignation, which was as quickly subdued.

Then, in a moment, something had passed from the man to the stranger—something, wrapped in an old chequered handkerchief, that she received delicately and hid under her shawl,—and they had parted, and the woman had gone to the gate with a sound of sobbing.

“Mr. Whimple, Mr. Whimple,” thought Mr. Whimple’s master—“if there was only a little more brass in your hang-dog face, I could respect, if I didn’t encourage, your tactics.”

He saw the fellow turn and scurry away as he had come, and gave an indrawn whistle deflected at the stop, as men do who vent upon themselves an emotion of surprise.

“Now, what is the riddle?” he muttered. “Our effectless friend can find the means to a little barter on his own account, it seems. But where is in all the house to tempt his honesty? Well, forewarned is forearmed; and there is an end of the reaction in your favour, Mr. Dennis.”

He left the wood by and by, and made for the house, lost in speculation. For the present he was resolved to allude in no way to the interview he had been witness of; and to alter no whit of his manner towards his servant. So should he be clad in double proof who keeps secret his discovery of his enemy’s ambush.

Despite the decision, however, he found it no light matter to give to his consideration for his dependent that air of spontaneity he had made it his task to exhibit. He could hardly tell if it were his own reawakened suspicions they saw themselves reflected in the man’s face; but—so it seemed to him—the latter was full of a covert significance of guilt and trepidation that was expressed in a certain watchfulness most difficult to ignore.

He was sitting, having finished his dinner, deep in thought; when this very fellow entered to say that a man without craved the indulgence of a word with his honour.

“A man?—What man?” said Tuke.

“He is a stranger to me, sir.”

“Did you ask his name—his business?”

“No, sir.”

“Go and do so, blockhead!”—He lost his patience for a moment; then, recollecting himself, “Tell him to walk in here,” he added more mildly.

In response to this amiable permission, an individual, whose wooden face wore the perpetual smile of an “Aunt Sally,” and whose clothes smelt of stables and were mere patched horse-cloths in appearance, advanced to the threshold of the hall, where he stood, after touching his forelock, with an expression on his features of the most engaging vacuity.

“Now, my man!” said the baronet; “what is your business?”

“I come to enkvire, master, if ye has a gawdner?”

“A gardener? No, I have not.”

The oddity’s little eyes looked anywhere but at the speaker. He seemed to be joyously calculating the dimensions of the ceiling.

“Mebbe ye vants a gawdner?” he said roguishly.

“Maybe you want to be engaged? Where do you hail from—any place hereabouts?”

“Not I, squeer. I comes fro’ Suth’ampt’n.”

“And what are your qualifications?”

“I’m Joe Corby.”

“What are your qualifications for the post, I say?”

“All’s one for that. I’m a gawdner, squeer.”

“Do you know a cabbage from a rose?”

“Aye; and a spade from a stallion.”

Mr. Tuke scanned the fellow in silence for a moment.

“And a barrow from a rakehell, I suppose?” said he quietly. “You are too accomplished for me. Whimple, show this person off the premises.”

“Meaning I’m to go?” said the man, in a sort of genial surprise.

“Certainly. Whimple!”

“Look’ee here, master,” said the intruder, hesitating and apparently embarrassed, “I’ll ventur’ to speak Gawd’s truth, with your honour’s kind indulgence. I’m a Jack-o’-trades, I am—a handy man, ye might call me, and tough as a dawg in bout or brawl. You live lonely, says I to myself—the gent lives lonely; and there be reskel characters about in every lonely by-way. He might find me useful, the gent might; and my sarvice is for him, so be he rekvires it. Roses, says you? Well, not partiklerly; but cabbages—yes—bein’ all heart and head. That’s what I am—heart and head, and both at your honour’s sarvice. I know a thing or two. Them shutters, now—how be they fastened?”

Actually, as he spoke, he was stepping into the room, smile and all, with the apparent intention of setting his mind at rest on the subject. However, the gentleman jumped up and barred his way.

“What!” cried the latter. “Take yourself off, fellow—you aren’t wanted here!”

The man stopped; scratched his head with a laughable expression of chagrin, and retreated muttering.

“No offence, master; no offence,” said he, and either a very comical or a very wicked light glinted in his little eyes as he retired.

Dennis escorted him without, and the voices of the two in low converse came to Mr. Tuke where he stood. He rattled on the window angrily, and the man slouched off, going in the direction of the drive.

Now the oddness of this apparition and of the interview it had brought about was filling the baronet with a sense of uneasiness. There had been that in the fellow that had seemed to belie his assumption of stupidity; and, after a moment’s thought, Tuke left the hall, quitted the house by a back door, and started rapidly upon a private détour that should bring him upon the drive at a point near to the ruined lodge. He wished to satisfy himself as to two little matters—whether or no the man had confederates in waiting at the gate, and whether or no he would make his exit in proper course.

He sped so energetically, that, when at last he struck the thickets at the back of the lodge, and, moving cautiously, peered through the trees, he found that he had fairly outrun his quarry and must await its coming. For this purpose no better ambush could offer than the deserted cottage itself.

Stepping warily, he moved round by way of the garden he had entered once before, and passed with a little thrill that torn patch in the tangle that remained an intimate mark in his memory. It was with a tickle of nervousness that, as he went by, he paused an instant and, looking down, caught sight of a glint of slimy wall on which the very canker of death seemed to lie in an oily scab.

At the back of the lodge stood a crazy porch of rustic woodwork, and therefrom a door, lolling on broken hinges, gave access to the interior of the building. There was a gap here sufficient for the entrance of a man, and he went through it swiftly, and along a stone-paved passage beyond, that was dumb with dust and littered with flaked rags of plaster and crackling wall-paper. So he made his way to a front room that looked upon the drive; and here he paused with a certain measure of astonishment. For on some mouldering shelves that spanned a recess by the chimney, lay in orderly arrangement of ugliness Darda’s banished museum of curiosities.

“So-ho!” he breathed. “This is how the law is evaded.”

He nodded to himself with set lips, and moved to the window. In the moment of his doing so, a low crooning voice broke upon his ears, and the fantastic figure of the girl herself came out from amongst the trees opposite and stood in a shaft of sunlight that broke from above into that luminous well of leafiness.

She smiled and sang, making a harmony of weird discords; and throwing her head back, with her hands beneath, it received the touch of the sun upon her mouth, and seemed to return it with a fond little sound of kissing.

She was so near to him, that he could see the pulse in her throat fluttering like a bird’s as she murmured her strange music—could note every movement of the spirit that rose from her heart to her lips.

Suddenly she was silent, and gazing before her, dropped an odd little curtsey and stood still. Mr. Joseph Corby had, it appeared, come down the drive and was slouching into view. He stopped before the girl; yet not, it seemed, as one who was altogether unacquainted with her or ignorant of her reputation; for he stood at gaze with some expression of hilarity, but none of wonder upon his face.

“That’s right, missy,” he said. “Drink the sun, like the new wine it is for a merry maid. It’s yaller, for youth, as is cowslips and buttercupses and pretty gildilocks; but give me the old red of Oporto for a seasoned skin, and a ship’s bucket of it to drink against bed-time.”

Darda laughed shrilly.

“You could swallow a lake of it, I expect,” said she, “like the troll in the fairy tale.”

“That’s it,” he said, “a lake of wine.”

He came quite close to the girl, and advanced his red face so that his injected eyes looked full into hers.

“A lake of wine,” he repeated. “Have you ever heard tell of one?”

She shook her head smiling.

“Come now,” said the man—and the watcher saw his jovial face suddenly assume a very evil and menacing look. “Have you ever heard of one, I say? You’d better answer.”

Again she shook her head.

“You must know, you know,” said the fellow, his eyes staring and his mouth creasing at the corners. “You ain’t a lively sucker o’ the old stem and growed up here all these years not to have heard on it. What is it, I say? What’s become o’ the Lake of Wine?”

He gripped her wrist as he spoke. She uttered a little shriek of pain and anger—not of fear—and sprang back from him. She even made a feint of aiming a blow at him with her soft fist.

“You dare to touch me!” she cried. “My nails are like thorns.”

“Aye, and so’s your mind,” muttered the man. He looked at her in savage gloom a moment; then his broad face cleared, and he grinned in a conciliatory manner.

“Come, missy,” he said, with an upward jerk of his chin. “We’ll be good friends, I can see. I not expeerunce spurit in a gal without knowing how to admire it. Of course if you’re set on havin’ a secret from old Joe, Joe’s not the man to appint to find it out. His wit’s a rumfusticus sort o’ target to put up agen your bright arrers. I only axed out o’ curiosity—has you ever heard tell of a Lake of Wine?—and no, says you.”

The girl was silent.

“You never did, now did you?” said the man, his face all one bunch of geniality.

She nodded and laughed in an elfin manner.

“Perhaps I did,” she said. “What then?”

He breathed out a great grunt of satisfaction.

“I thought so,” said he. “Well, what’s become on it?”

She was laughing again, when Dennis’s voice came from a distance, calling her. At the sound she sprang forward immediately, evaded Mr. Corby, who had made a clutch at her, and was sped out of sight up the drive before he could collect his faculties.

“Missy!” he had called, as she ran from him. “You and me must meet agen and have a long talk. Missy! mum’s the word!” but she had given no sign of hearing him.

Left by himself, the fellow plunged into a ruminative mood; spat thoughtfully upon the ground; and then all of a sudden made rapidly for the gate and vanished up the road.

CHAPTER X.

MR. TUKE and his man were employed upon a very profitless and monotonous task. The one—the first—was engaged in drawing stagnant water from a well in a bucket; the other received and toiled away with each vessel-full in succession, and flung it broadcast about the garden.

They had cleared from the well-rim the torn earth and rubbish that encumbered it. A flap of wood had originally protected the mouth of the hole; but the slobbering tooth of Time had chewed this to the veriest pulp, upheld only by the clutch of the grass roots that had spread over and beyond it, and it had become the merest question of accident as to whose foot should first break into the pitfall.

Despite the unchancy look of the place, measurement with a plumb revealed the fact that not so much as four feet of dead water lay at the bottom of the inky funnel; and this four feet Mr. Tuke had set himself patiently to withdraw, in fulfilment of a certain promise made to a couple of rather colourless beaux yeux.

Now, for an hour had the two been regularly dipping and spilling, in the remote hope of finding a gold chain and bréviaire curled snugly in the pail after some particular haul. But it seemed a forlorn and fruitless search. If the gewgaw had in truth slipped in, it was for a certainty imbedded in the silt and slime at the bottom.

Fatigue was telling a little upon the loose physique of the servant. His cheeks were hot and his breath laboured. But the master worked on, vigorous and pre-occupied, and gave little thought to the other’s condition.

Indeed, his want of consideration could plead the excuse that he had much present matter to meditate and digest. He had inherited, it seemed, the lonely lordship of many mysteries; and to the devil’s captured attorneys, he could have thought, had been committed the task of drawing up his new lease of life, so teeming was it with uninterpretable perplexities, after the most admired human models.

Once or twice he spoke to his servant, in a stern, even voice that was really little of an invitation to confidence.

“Whimple,” he had said, “had you any previous knowledge of the fellow who called yesterday?”

“I have seen him about, sir.”

“Had he ever spoken to you before?”

“He had—he may have once or twice.”

It was always an aggravation that this man could never, it appeared, give a direct answer.

“What do you mean by ‘may have’? Has he or has he not?”

“He has, sir.”

“On what matters?”

“I don’t know, sir—of no importance—I really couldn’t tell.”

Mr. Tuke glanced up angrily.

“You part with every word as if it were a tooth. Now, mind,” he said sharply—“you’ll give him a wide berth for the future. I’ll not have anything concerning me discussed between you—concerning me, or my house, or whatsoever connected with the estate.”

Once again, as the man took the bucket from him, he had looked into his face and said:

“So your removal of the abominations belonging to your sister was an evasion, after all?”

Whimple gave a gasp and dropped his eyes.

“Sir,” he muttered piteously—“I thought you would never know, or, knowing, never mind. She—she—it would break her heart to part with them altogether. They are abominations to you and me——”

“You can leave yourself out of the question, fellow. I don’t concern myself with the quality of your emotions.”

The other twined his nervous fingers together over the bucket handle. Suddenly he spoke up, with a flushed face.

“If they are to go, sir, I would rather take the girl, with all her cranks and fancies, and do my best to seek a living elsewhere.”

The baronet looked hard at the poor baited creature.

“Am I losing touch of humanity in face of a little botheration?” he thought. Then he added aloud, with a spirit of scorn: “Words, words! But you would force me again into being the agent of your self-martyrdom. It won’t do, my friend. The lodge may serve as museum until it is pulled down. I see at least that the most disgusting item of the collection has vanished.”

“The skull, sir? Yes, it is gone.”

They laboured at their task once more; and once more Mr. Tuke fell into profound musing over the perplexities of his later lot. In this connection were two matters for worrying consideration—two flails that beat up the dust of his mind in the absence of any sound grain of evidence.

Of these, the first was a certain hyperbolic expression used and reiterated by yesterday’s rogue—a preposterous inquiry that had yet seemed instinct with a subtle undermeaning, and, so weighted, had sung and buzzed ever since in the eavesdropper’s brain.

“The Lake of Wine!” The term had been surely employed to cover or suggest a tangible fact. Its persistent repetition by Mr. Joe Corby precluded the idea that it was merely an accidental fancy played upon for the girl’s behoof.

Then, what was its interpretation?—to what did it allude? Beyond the surmise that it must refer to something concealed upon, or connected with, his bugbear property, it was obviously impracticable for him to reach.

So, rebounding from a blank wall of speculation, he would stumble against his second trouble. This, in its essence, was nothing but a fear, or the shadow of one. It amounted to sounds about the house of a night—sounds indistinctly acknowledged by a consciousness on the borderland of slumber and acute to nice impressions of the senses. He could recall them thundering on the drum of his visionary ear, and could remember starting up wildly awake to be aware of nothing in all the atmosphere of his room but a ticking silence. Still, the feeling would remain that something had been moving, creeping, breathing in his neighbourhood only a moment earlier; and more than once he had risen, with a wet forehead, to satisfy himself that he had been merely dreaming.

This recurrent uneasiness he had experienced on every night but the first of his inhabitance of the room; and it was beginning to thread his being with a little strand of nervousness. Oddly he felt himself in some telepathic way to be the centre of a nebulous mystery without having the remotest idea as to what was its nature. But his present lot was so strange, his position so isolated, that, even as a fearless man, he felt he was justified in adopting some nice precautions against the possibility of midnight surprises.

Now it occurred to him that upon that single night only of his arrival had he enjoyed immunity from this shadowy sense of unseen company in his room; and he could not fail to remember that upon that occasion alone had the shutters of the broad window been closed and fastened. Ever since, by his own order, had they remained open. Moreover, as was his custom, he slept with a lattice flung wide to the inpour of fresh cold air.

Certainly to assume that any midnight visitor could have taken advantage of this so far as to enter, by way of ladder or creeper, and prowl about his chamber without immediately awakening him, seemed a ridiculous supposition. Yet, as a wise man, it would perhaps be as well for the future to obviate, by closing the shutters, the necessity of suffering an apprehension so far-fetched.

“Whimple,” said he, as the man brought the bucket wearily back to the well-side—“why, when I first came, did you so protest against my flinging open the shutters of my bedroom?”

The servant hesitated, then stammered:

“I—I thought it wisest, sir. The—the house is lonely, and the neighbourhood harbours some rogues, I fear.”

“Such as him you are on speaking terms with? Well, I have altered my mind. For the future, close them—you understand?”

For the life of him he could not treat the man with even an assumption of confidence. He would have thought the revocation of his order received with unmistakable relief, had he not been so steeped in suspicion of all things.

He was bending to his work again, when a voice hailing him from over the garden hedge made him start and turn round.

“Hi! Are you Squire Tuke?”

“At your service,” said he, and went forward.

A little man seated on a great horse was there in the drive—a pert cocksparrow knowingly-attired and bristling with pride of raiment. He had a comical small face, very pale, and his hat was of the last-approved shade of grey, with a broad ribbon of black and a broader buckle about it.

He looked a mere handy-dandy snip; though he had in fact at that time come of age some five years; but his whimsical self-sufficiency not the fly on the bull’s horn could have outdone.

He raised his hat in a very courtly manner as the other approached.

“I have to apologize,” he said, “for this unceremonious greetin’.”

His voice was high and restive, as if it were not yet quite broken in.

“By no means,” said Mr. Tuke. “You are Sir David Blythewood, I presume?”

The manling had by this time dismounted. He reached a hand over the hedge—a little gloved paw, small as a girl’s—and offered it in grasp to the gentleman.

“I ask the honour of your acquaintance,” said he. “My sister owes her life to you, I hear. ’Twas an admirable rescue, and more than her deserts.”

He grinned all over his little face.

“She was pryin’, Mr. Tuke—she was pryin’. She didn’t let that cat out of the bag, I’ll warrant. Ever since your comin’ she’d been eatin’ her heart out to get a glimpse of the lord of Wastelands, as they call you.”

“Indeed? I am happy to interest Miss Blythewood. She suffers no hurt from her mishap, I hope?”

“Rest you, rest you. The hurt’s to her vanity, by Gad. ’Twas rich for her to make her bow wrong end up. She’s Miss Royston—my half-sister; and a devilish responsible legacy, by the token. She keeps house for me. I say, you’ll let us be acquainted. D’you breed from your own game-eggs? There’s a pit at Stockbridge kept by old Pollack of the inn. I’ve a duckwing cockerel, March sittin’ would torment ye;—hackles as gold as his mettle. Come Yule, I’ll back him, fifty pounds a side, against the bloodiest rooster you can show.”

So he ran on. His naïve self-importance, half-nullified by the frankness of his boyish confidence, was like a gush of sweet air through the enwrapping gloom of the other’s surroundings.

“We’ll see,” said Mr. Tuke, with a smile—“we’ll see. At present, as you may observe, I’ve my work cut out here for months.”

Sir David craned his neck over the hedge.

“It’s a wilderness, good truth,” said he. “Is that Whimple? He’s a spine-broke artichoke, he is, with a worm at his root. What’s he doin’ there? Sure that’s the hole that Angel near sunk into. You ain’t never—why, you ain’t never dippin’ for that chain of hers?”

“We are, though.”

The youngling turned to him with a grin and a titter.

“It’s a shame, by cock,” said he. “I ought to have sent a message, but clean forgot. You may save yourself the trouble. She had left it at home all the time.”

Mr. Tuke, all considered, received this belated information very handsomely.

“Then I have laboured like Jacob,” said he. “But my second term is yet to serve.”

Sir David chuckled.

“Rachel was a prodigious coquette,” he said. “Well, Mr. Tuke, I’m forgettin’ my manners keepin’ you talkin’ here.”

“No, no. Come to the house.”

He was reluctant to part with the bright little dandy; but the latter was already in the saddle.

“Can’t,” he chirped. “I’ve an appointment at four, and Angel ’ll be faintin’ to hear tell of every word you’ve spoke. I say—I’ll draw the bow on that Jacob. You must come over to my place, and let’s be friends.”

The lord of Wastelands walked with him to the gate, and bid him a cheery good-speed as he cantered away.

He was dipping out of sight, when a long man, with a rod over his shoulder, came past up the road, and leered sourly as he went by at the baronet.

“Come,” thought the gentleman, “I’ve seen you once before. What do you fish for in these dry beds, my friend?”

He waited until the man had vanished over the hill. The latter had looked back once on his way, and seeing himself observed, had gone forward with no further token of inquisitiveness.

Mr. Tuke returned to his house, in a pleasantly preoccupied frame of mind. He was both cheered and amused over the meeting with his lively neighbour, and promised himself a substantial dividend of fun out of that investment in the other’s friendship. He called to Whimple, as he passed, that he should need him no longer, and so went by to his front door, and, on the threshold, met Darda.

At once, some impulse of the moment drove him to look full in her face and to say: “What is the Lake of Wine?”

The girl backed from him, and stared a breathless instant with round eyes of wonder. Then she gave a small soft laugh, and, twining her fingers together, set her lips chilly like frosted rosebuds shrunk from opening to a north-easter.

“Darda,” he said, “will you not tell me? I think you don’t know what is the Lake of Wine, or where it is?”

“I know—I know!” she cried suddenly—“but what have you done that I should tell you?”—and, with a changeling screech, she sprang past him and vanished up the drive.

CHAPTER XI.

“A MAN to see you, sir.”

“His name?”

“’Tis Richard Breeds, sir, of the ‘Dog and Duck.’”

“Breeds?”

“The landlord, sir.”

“What does he want?”

For answer, Dennis wriggled his shoulders, with a scared look.

“You don’t know, of course. Tell him to wait me in the hall.”

A few minutes later Mr. Tuke descended the stairs, and, happening to be in slippered feet, walked without sound in search of his visitor, whom, curiously, he came upon comprehensively examining the fastenings of the oaken shutters, his bullet-head bent low. At a cough the man started erect, and, gasping with embarrassment, ducked an awkward bow to the master of the house.

“They are of good, tough wrought-iron,” said the latter grimly.

“So I see, sir. I was takin’ a hint for my own little place with all respect. I’m lonely situated, too.”

He lied, of course, with scarcely professional ease. He was a short, fleshy man, with an unwholesome damp skin like veal, and rum-buds over his face in patches, as if he were stricken with a plague—which, indeed, he was, of a bibulous order. His manner was very nervous and self-depreciatory, and the only accent of character that marked his tumid physiognomy was in the expression of his ratty and restless little eyes.

Mr. Tuke took his measure during a moment of silence that was obviously disconcerting to him.

“Now, sir,” said the first, at length. “What is your business?”

“I called, your honour, to axe if I could supply your honour with liquor, milk, eggs and garden produce. I keep the ‘Dog and Duck’ on the Stockbridge road, and maybe, I thought, ’twould be handier to your honour and more reasonable-like to deal at a half-way house.”

“That depends. I leave these matters to my servant, who does his catering, I believe, in the village. I know your house of call, and have marked one or two of the visitors you entertain.”

“Maybe, sir, maybe. It’s not my business, now is it, to put every gentleman as demands a measure of ale through his catechism?”

“That seems an odd answer. Did I make any reflections? Scarcely, I think. The law takes means to deal with rogues without consulting the prejudices of landlords.”

The visitor looked very ill at ease. Clearly the conversation had taken a turn entirely unexpected by him.

“Your honour’s perfectly right,” he said, pressing his damp hands together. “Yet the law gives us no licence to refuse a customer for the reason we don’t like his looks.”

Eliciting no response—“I’m a peaceable man,” he went on, with some anguish of protest. “Give me bowl and pipe and a snug ingle-corner, and Fortin may set her cap at me, and die a old maid despite. But ain’t it hard, sir—now ain’t it hard that I’m to be coloured with the reputation of them as takes shelter under my roof and find my character in question for the mere contact?”

“You enlarge greatly upon a hint,” said Mr. Tuke. “I understand, then, that you have unwelcome guests to entertain?”

Mr. Breeds winced almost imperceptibly; but his eyes took a glint of cunning.

“I don’t say that,” said he. “I speak on general premises, as they calls ’em, and on behalf o’ the fraternity. Mr. Brander—him you may a’ seen—is to my knowledge a scholard and an angler; which is not, by your honour’s favour, indictable offences—no, not either of ’em.”

“Assuredly. And that other gentleman, with the beetroot face and venerable white hair?”

The landlord sucked his lips together, in an absurd affectation of perplexity.

“Oh, him!” he cried suddenly and jovially. “That’s Mr. Fern, that is—a traveller, from abroad, come on a tower through the old country.”

Then, in the same breath, he went on deprecatingly, with a ludicrous decline of spirit:

“It’s all force the favour and take the blame with us, sir. I’m a peaceable soul that loves a pot, and circumstances conspire to upset me.”

Mr. Tuke looked at the man keenly. Somehow the latter seemed in travail with that he could not, or would not, give expression to. His hands shook, and beads of leaden perspiration stood on his forehead. By and by he glanced stealthily at the other, and went flaccid to see himself under scrutiny.

“Mr. Tuke—your honour,” said he, in a hoarse, vibrative voice, “I weren’t never fitted to be a landlord—that’s the solemn truth. A man as keeps a inn stands balanced between his custom and his conscience; and then comes an extry pot and bowls him off of his legs. Give me your word to compensate me agen the loss, and I’ll shut up the ‘Dog and Duck’ to-morrow and set the place a-fire.”

He said it in a tentative, apologetic way, and was quite ready to join in the other’s cackle of merriment over the suggestion.

“No, no, my friend,” said Mr. Tuke. “I’ve plenty on my conscience without the guardianship of a scrupulous innkeeper.”

Then he added sternly:

“You’ve said much or little, but enough. Dree your pothouse weird, my friend; and take the consequences if you knowingly harbour law-breakers. We’ve talked round the subject; and now you can hardly expect me, upon my soul, to fall in with your offer of a half-way market.”

“Very well, sir,” said the landlord, chapfallen; and, “Bear in mind, Mr. Breeds,” said the other, “that to be caught examining a householder’s shutters is scarcely a recommendation to his favour.”

He saw the fellow off the premises—marked his going till he was well out of sight; then returned to the hall and pondered the interview.

This seemed to him, as regarded the visitor’s share in it, a confirmation of his suspicions that there was a certain mystery toward which he was the indefinite subject and centre. More—it convinced him that if mischief of any sort was somewhere in process of incubation the tavern of which Mr. Breeds was landlord was the place most likely to contain the egg.

Now, as a man who had once already taken his own life in hand, he was not greatly sensitive to alarms that might have unnerved persons of a more precise conduct. Indeed, in the tasteless monotony of his present days, he would have welcomed, perhaps, the necessity of some vigorous action justly undertaken on his own behalf. But it was this blind search for a clue to the intangible—this turning round and round in a vain effort to grasp a chimera, that at first worried and depressed him.

If he could only have received certain confirmation of his surmises that some rascal intrigue was afoot; if in all his little world there had been a single soul he could trust and depend upon, his course would have been easier. As it was, how did the case stand? A very desert loneliness had begotten in him already a distrust of his neighbours, of whom, undoubtedly, were a few of shady visage and equipment. But, here, surely every ale-house had its personnel of loafers and idle rogues; and it seemed monstrous to assume that in broad day, within call, as it were, of a considerable village, a plot—of which a private gentleman, making out life meagrely in a near empty house, was the object—could be hatching at his very door.

That was so; yet his reckoning must include those two enigmatical visitors, the professed end of each of which was far from being, he felt positive, its real one; and must include Mr. Joseph Corby’s pregnant allusions—to the crazed girl—to some unknown quantity with a fanciful title.

Considering all this from each and every aspect, he did so work himself up to a state of savage irritation over the intolerable strain it entailed upon a mind prone to pre-occupation in less morbid matters, that he must have in the unfortunate Whimple and ease upon him his burden of annoyance.

“Tell me,” said he. “Do you know anything of this man Breeds by reputation?”

“I know—yes, sir; I have heard of him.”

“Oh! for heaven’s sake, man, give a straightforward answer for once. I ask you what is his reputation?”

“Indeed, sir, it is none of the best; though I have heard nought immediately to his discredit.”

“Again and again. Isn’t it a mere slander to impute evil and back from specifying it? What is he charged with?”

“Nothing, but that his house is the resort of topers and padding gentry.”

“And is it on that account you make a sealed coffin of ‘Delsrop’ o’ nights and would have me suffocate in my bedroom?”

The servant showed a distressed hesitation.

“Is it, I say?” persisted his master.

“Yes, sir—indeed—that is—oh, sir! ’tis an old habit with me. The house is isolated—dark; it lies in the shadow—my God! in what a shadow.”

Mr. Tuke stared in positive amazement. Was the fellow crazed like his sister? A pretty thing if he should discover himself the keeper of a private lunatic asylum.

“Control your emotions,” he said coolly. Whimple’s lips were trembling. The man had permitted himself an outburst of which for hours he would feel the effects.

“I would ask you,” said Mr. Tuke, with an irrepressible little sneer—“if the question is unexciting—when did the present owner of the ‘Dog and Duck’ come into possession?”

“’Twas last Martinmas, sir. The tavern then had been long to let. ’Twas last Martinmas.”

“And whence did he come? Do you know?”

“No, sir. I don’t know.”

“Now, Mr. Whimple, I want to ask you another question. Have you any reason to understand what is implied by the Lake of Wine?”

If he had accused the man of murder, the latter could not have gone a more ghastly white, or have more by his expression associated himself with that he disowned. He even staggered a little where he stood; and it was painful to witness his sick effort at self-control.

“None whatever?” echoed Mr. Tuke, closely scrutinizing the servant’s face, and interpreting the tortured answer from the motion of his lips.

“Your reply,” he went on, biting as acid, “is convincing, of course. Why should you know? I don’t myself, and I am as much interested in the matter as you, maybe. I only asked, because I seek the clue to a mystery that vents itself in strange visits, and secret interviews, and unaccountable sounds at night. Then, too, there is a footprint on the flower-bed under the hall-window this morning; but what of that when I have a caretaker so zealous and so scrupulous? Only, I take some amusement out of puzzles; but I am impatient, and very apt, at the last, to cut a knot that bothers me with a bullet. You can go.”

He had to repeat his permission before the servant seemed to understand and to gather the nerve to retreat. But, the moment he was vanished, the baronet clapped his hand on the table, with an oath.

“The fellow is in the league against me, whatever it is!” he cried in inward fierceness; and his soul rejoiced that at last it had some tangible justification for its innate antipathy to the man.

It was patent that this Lake of Wine was the clue to the riddle and the pass-word of the conspirators. But with the last how deeply was the caretaker involved; and to what extent was he to be depended on in the performance of his nightly services? Probably his officiousness in that respect was employed as a blind. Not probably was his habitual nervousness assumed. In greatest likelihood he was in weak process of corruption—one hand held to his duty, the other to his interest; and, if this were so, no doubt was as to which way his constitutional depravity would eventually decide him to incline.

Then would it be wise to here and now give him short shrift of notice, and so rid the house of an incubus and an embarrassment? Scarcely; for so should he—Robert Tuke—not only advertise himself in apprehension of his surroundings, whereby his enemies might be tempted to a bolder policy; but he should drive from his camp an informer, whose uses, so long as he assumed himself undetected, must all be for his intended victim.

No; the fellow must stay for the present, and be treated with a show of consideration, too; else would mistrust awakened in him greatly complicate the situation.

It was a maddening hotch-potch of confusion; the more so as all this fabric of suspicion, being builded on conjecture, might at any moment resolve itself into thin air.

CHAPTER XII.

MR. TUKE was arrayed resplendent, cap-à-pie. His personal baggage had reached him from London, and he felt human, in the sense of the beast of civilization, once more. If his household was as yet unenlarged and his halls filled with little but echoes, he had at least a retiring chamber worthy of the most exquisite refinements of a Georgian toilet.

It was four o’clock of a sunny afternoon as he descended the stairs, pulling on his gloves; for he was for a little party at “Chatters,” to meet a neighbour or so, and Whimple held his horse at the door.

Taking him altogether, he was a handsome and amiable-looking gentleman, and manly withal; nor did his subscription to the dandyism of the day exhibit exaggeration or tastelessness. It is true his hair, now surmounted by the high-crowned beaver hat of the period, was “craped,” as the fashion-books would say, over his forehead, and liberally anointed with some lustrous oil; but cleanliness in this respect would have then been considered the merest affectation of eccentricity. For the rest, his long riding-coat, of many capes, concealed a toilet of cloth and silk and plaited lawn that, in its mode and finish, bespoke the highest traditions of metropolitan elegance.

So, at any rate, thought Betty Pollack, who was standing in the porch waiting to have a word with his honour.

Betty had driven over with her grandfather in an old taxed-cart, which was now drawn up at the broad end of the drive.

She curtsied like a daffodil to the sun; and Mr. Tuke nodded brightly to her as he buttoned the last ray of his glories into his coat.

“On what errand, my girl?” said he.

“With a humble message from grandfather, your honour,” she answered—“that there’s a battle-royal in his cockpit Saturday forenoon, and will your honour condescend to take a seat?”

“I don’t know. What would you have me do, Betty?”

“Sure, your honour’s the best judge. Cocks will be cocks, I suppose; but ’tis a cruel business to set natural enemies to the scratch, think I; and I’d rather have them in broth, with their necks wrung, when all’s said and done.”

“Then, I won’t come.”

“Oh! but save us! that’s only a woman’s view.”

“It flies with all the force of beauty behind it, my dear.”

The girl shrunk back a little.

“Then I was to ask you,” she said, in a more strained voice, “if you would favor us with your custom in the matter of poultry and butter and garden stuff?”

The gentleman laughed.

“Why, I’ve turned away one with the same offer already,” cried he. Then, seeing her fall back timid, as if at a rebuff: “Could you undertake to supply ’em very fresh?” he said, with mock gravity.

“Oh! rest your honour!” she said eagerly. “We could drive over every day, if needs were.”

“Say, twice a week, Betty. And, if you lack garden stuff, why come none the less, and I’ll take a fruitful pleasure of your visits.”

He caught his stirrup and mounted, and was gone with a smiling nod to the girl. At the entrance to the drive, the old man saluted him respectfully. He pulled up, and was about to exchange a word with the gaffer, when he remembered his deafness, and made as if to proceed on his way. But Grandfather Pollack leaned out of his cart and beckoned him.

“That’s a full-blooded girl,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “A sweet, neat filly, I calls her.”

Mr. Tuke, feeling the uselessness of speech, nodded after a reserved manner.

“That girl,” said the old man, with a small experimental leer of confidence, “would serve a gentleman well for her beauty and her lovingness.”

He tapped the sleeve of the other’s riding-coat.

“I’m poor, sir, I’m poor and failin’. What a chance if I had a piece o’ goods that costly as to be worth a little annuity to me!”

He received a grunt and scowl of indignation for answer; but it was doubtful if he read their significance.

Mr. Tuke shook off the old clawing touch and rode on. He did not, however, put a short period to the evil by forbidding the ancient rascal then and there his presence. Which of us has the courage to strike at the snake of temptation on the first protrusion of his head from the ground? We want to circumvent him, with that truly human habit of temporizing that so often ends by our getting entangled in the toils.

Now he was righteously incensed; yet as he rode away under the yellowing trees, his thoughts ran warm on the ardent beauty of melancholy that characterized the face of all things about him; and gradually his mood fell from indignation to a tenderness that was almost a passion.

Miss Angela Royston received her preserver very prettily, and thanked him with an exaggerated effusiveness which was the more embarrassing inasmuch as the company, to whom the ultimate revelation of what he had done seemed to present itself as a rather tame anti-climax, had already treated his advent (but this was by way of provincial gaucherie) as if it were an intrusion.

The party was of the nature of a kettle-drum, it appeared, with supper to follow and genteel games. The young baronet was not yet in evidence, being ridden to some kennels across country and late in returning; but there were two or three squireens who obviously desired the moral support of his presence, and, lacking it, had so strenuously beaten about in the waste lands of their brains for ideas, as to have grown as apoplectic and nearly as expressionless as tomatoes. A notable member of the company was the Honourable Mrs. Tatty, whose turban was so immense as to give her the perpetual appearance of tilting up her nose to keep it from falling off; and whose observations invariably drew rein on the brink or pit-edge of profundity, where, when one expected much, they sat down abruptly and refused, as it were, to yield their further confidences to strangers.

This lady was accompanied by a quizzical little person, a cousin from London, who was of the order of those who curry favour with their present, by laughing at their late, company; and a saturnine gentleman, addressed as Captain Luvaine—who said little, and said that as if he grudged it—completed the party.

To all was Mr. Tuke presented—generally as a neighbour of a romantic cast; and it needed much of his acquired urbanity and deftness in society to carry off the situation without a show of self-consciousness.

“We call you the lord of Wastelands,” said Miss Royston, with a little smiling blush, as if she offered him the fruit of her invention. Certainly she looked a very dainty body, and she bore her daintiness as if it were a burden she loved. Her fair hair, combed over her forehead and falling in ringlets on her neck, was banded with a fillet of gold like a sunbeam. Her robe was of pure white satin, clasped at one shoulder with a diamond button; and in her hand she flirted a little sparkling fan no bigger than a pheasant’s wing, and much its colour.

Naturally, in the presence of this radiant bird of his feather, Mr. Tuke lost mental sight and consideration of homely Betty.

“Waste lands they may be,” said he gaily; “but consecrated to beauty since you visited them.”

“It was a laying on of lands, not hands,” she cried merrily in response. “I brought away a rare impression of their picturesqueness—but ’twas on my gown;” and then the fine creature must give the company the history of her introduction to the squire of romance, whom she looked at very tenderly as she eulogized him.

“A remarkable situation,” said Mrs. Tatty, scenting the neighbourhood of the pit with uplifted nostrils. “Mr. Richardson himself never imagined a more pronounced. Sure there is an affinity in circumstance—and therein lies the explanation.”

“It was like poor Julia’s experience,” said the little cousin from London. “Only that Julia was trop embarrassée de sa personne to extricate herself with grace.”

“Oh!” cried Angela. “I blush to hear you talk of grace.”

“’Twas after meat, my dear,” said Mrs. Tatty, with a splendid benevolence of humour; and immediately sat down, morally, on the brink.

Mr. Tuke laboriously strained at a camel of wit. “Before, before!” he cried—“for ’twas the grace that introduced food for reflection.”

“Am I that” cried Miss Royston. “Then I must be angélique glacée. But my poor bréviaire, that I cried to have lost! Had I had that charm with me, no accident would have befallen.”

“But fifty others failed to save you,” said the baronet, with a low bow, and, it must be admitted, considerable gallantry; for his back was yet stiff with dipping for the abominable trinket.

And at this point Sir David entered the room.

His sister ran at him, and scolded him with twenty little tricks of endearment.

“Sure, sir,” she cried, “this is pretty behaviour to your guests!”—and she came forward on his arm, mutely daring slander to deny perfection to so beautiful a couple.

The little gentleman was charmed to meet his new neighbour, and said so with amazing condescension. He was very daintily attired, and prodigal of self-important courtesy to all.

“I passed your fellow,” he said, “hob-nobbin’ with a gipsy hag. I know the witch by sight. He caught me up later, and we fell a-talkin’. We’ve been neighbours, you know, ever since I can remember. There’s no beast-leech like him in all the county.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Tuke dryly.

“You’d not think it, eh? It’s truth, sir. Why,” said the baronet, “I don’t s’pose the fellow’s ever fired a fowling-piece in his life; but he knows more of the habits of animals, ground and winged, than any dozen sportsmen in the parish. Ain’t that so, Charlie?”

“That’s so, by Gad, Davy,” said the squireen addressed, greatly stimulated and emboldened by the presence of his host.

“He cured my bitch Daisy of a capped hock,” said another; and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t spoken.

“They are all Jack-puddings to showman Davy,” whispered Miss Angela, looking up at her cavalier with a waggish twinkle.

“Come!” cried the master of “Chatters.” “Who’s for a game? Let’s have ‘Pinch without Laughin’.’”

The squireens boisterously assented; but Miss Royston and the cousin from London cried “No! no!” feeling their little powdered noses in jeopardy. So they played “Hot Cockles,” and “Jack’s Alive,” and “Shadow Buff,” and enjoyed themselves after the light-hearted manner of the period, the problems of which were, indeed, mostly exercised in merriment.

When they settled down at last, flushed and dishevelled, Mr. Tuke looked in the face of a certain lady, with whom he sat in a corner, and was aware of his pulses drumming a little thickly.

“I think I have lived an empty life for long,” he said; “and now I have learned to know myself.”

She twinkled up at him archly.

“Does the knowledge repay the study?” said she.

“Cruel!” he answered. “Ah! if you only guessed my tutor.”

“But I cannot.”

“Think, madam, what eloquent teachers are your eyes.”

“Indeed, they have pupils, sir. Oh, the heavenly pedagogues!”

“Their irises paint one the colour of hope. It is blue, I vow.”

“Like the rose that lives in man’s imagination. Oh, fie, Mr. Tuke! Here is an ardent philosopher of the desert! Tell me, does the house of shadows yield many mysteries? I am dying to hear all about it.”

“Then I will save you.”

“As you have once already.”

“It yields—yes; I think I can say it yields one at least.”

“Oh! oh! what is it about?”

“A Lake of Wine.”

Both talkers turned round with a start. Captain Luvaine had, it appeared, been seated solitary near them, and had dropped upon the ground a heavy book in which he had been reading.

“Really, Captain Luvaine,” said Miss Royston peevishly, “I protest you near frightened me to death.”

The melancholy soldier was apologizing with much humility and confusion, when up came Sir David, and insisted upon carrying off the gentlemen for a pipe and a glass.

CHAPTER XIII.

“When is it ye’re leavin’?

Is it the ocean’s heavin’

That sets your stummick grievin’,

To see what lies before?

What ails that nowt ’ll start ’ee?

We wait ye right and hearty,

Oh, Mounseer Buonaparte,

Upon S’thampton shore!

Chorus, gen’men, chorus!

We wait ye ri’ and hearty,

Oh, Mou’seer Buonaparte,

Upo’ S’thampton shore!”

He thumped the table, did that crapulous squireen, and all the others joined in, as by honour expected—like school-boys beating the bounds of time.

Truth to tell, the hour was late, the whisky-punch was low in the bowl, and the three little moon-calves were very drunk. One of them, moreover, was in process of insulting Captain Luvaine.

“You’re no’ good company, sir,” he had said, after staring at that baneful person for some solemn moments. “I thick you no’ goo’ company, and I—hic!—ta’ leaverer-telleso”;—and he nodded profoundly, with the air of one who has solved a long-vexing problem.

“Well, sir,” said the captain, “you’re welcome to your opinion for me.”

He had sat out the orgy; but with something a gloomy and preoccupied air, and with a frequent manner of impatience to have it ended.

“Whas you say?” said the offender, cocking his head magisterially. “Whas you say, sir?” Then he sang:

Jake gave Moll a push—

Derry-derry-down.

Moll fell into a bush—

Derry-down-derry.

“Is that to your taste, capt’n? or d’ye prefer somethig i’ the psalmody fashion?”

Sir David and Mr. Tuke interfered. They had been moderate in their cups; and the latter, at least, was seasoned.

“Oh, Charlie!” said the baronet, “get off to bed with you. You’re drunk, man.”

“He’s got a face as sour as rennet, Davy. It’s cur-curdled the milk o’ human kideness in me.”

This was good for the manling. Mr. Tuke patted him on the back.

“There,” he said, “go and sleep it off. The captain gives you good-night.”

“And a ring for the hog’s snout to-morrow!” thundered the soldier.

“Fie, sir—fie!” whispered the other. “’Tis but a tipsy boy”—and with great ado, he and the baronet made a patch of the peace, and got the squireens outside and on their horses, and saw them ride off swaying.

The wind drove with gusts of sleet at them, as they turned tail and fled into the house once more; for the night had bellied up slurred and stormy, and there was a melancholy sound in every keyhole of the hall.

They found the soldier standing up grave and lowering; but his eyes took an eager look upon their re-entrance, and he stepped up to his host with an air of impatient apology.

“I was an ass to take offence at that pigwash,” said he—“the more so as I have been poor company, I confess; and you, sir” (he turned suddenly upon Tuke), “have been the cause of it.”

“I!” exclaimed the visitor, in a voice vibrating all the harmonics of surprise.

“You, sir. Blythewood,” said the soldier, turning upon the baronet, “I make no apology for harping upon an old string in your presence. You know my monomania, and the wrack it hath made of my peace. I have waited but for those Jack-puddings to begone, to speak.”

Mr. Tuke could only stare in amazement; and “Fire away, old cock!” quoth the master of the house.

Then he added: “You’ll take beds here, the two of you, or we shall come to words.”

Both gentlemen protested; but the other would not listen, and he ended by carrying his point.

“And now,” said Blythewood, “charge your piece—whatever it is—and let fly at our friend; and so to t’other glass.”

Captain Luvaine’s eyes had a light of strange trouble in them, and he gnawed his knuckles nervously.

“I startled you just now, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “’Twas some words you let fall disturbed me, so that I dropped the book.”

“Believe me, sir, I was innocent of designs on your composure.”

“I know, I know—that is, of course—how could it be otherwise?”

“How, indeed? But I am all at sea.”

“They could not have been accidental. No, ’twas impossible. And yet—you uttered the words, sir—‘the Lake of Wine’—there was no mistake. I heard you.”

“And what then, Captain Luvaine? Do I deny it?”

“No, no. Only—oh, sir! the lady says ‘What mystery?’ and you answer ‘The Lake of Wine.’ Could that be an invention—a mere playful fancy? ’Tis out of reason.”

At the first reference to this strange title, Sir David had given a low whistle; and he now came forward and took the soldier by the sleeve.

“Harkee, Luvaine!” he said. “Here’s the yeast to work ye up like a pan of bread. Did he say that? Then it’s a strange thing, by God. But, steady, man. And, what d’ye say?—shall I, before more’s spoke, give Mr. Tuke the history of your trouble?”

The other’s mouth was twitching in an agitated manner.

“Well,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “I’m like to lose command of myself whenever that nightmare gets up. Speak, Davy, and I’ll sit mum while I can.”

The baronet turned to his astonished neighbour.

“’Tis passing strange, upon my soul, that the words should be on your lips,” said he; “for ’twas the name of a great ruby that was stole from Luvaine’s father.”

“The Lake of Wine?”

“The Lake of Wine, sir. Ronald Luvaine was a dependent of Hastings in John Company’s pay, and received the stone in reward of some particular nice service.”

“A crimson token and an apt. Was it plucked from the withered bosom of some starved Begum?”

“That’s no concern of ours,” said Sir David dryly. “The point is that the gem was stole from Ronald Luvaine, that was my father’s friend, and that he went crazy of it and died in a year or so.”

The soldier jumped to his feet with an insane look.

“And his son,” he cried, “that should have been a rich man, succeeded to an empty legacy and a search of hate that shall be unending.”

He tossed one arm aloft, with a grandiose gesture. Mr. Tuke stared at him, his brain full of bewilderment and wonder.

“Steady, Luvaine!” said Sir David once more; then proceeded to discuss the other with admirable ingenuousness.

“It hath made a wreck of his life, as he says—this sense of wrong and loss. We have been acquainted from boys—at least since I was one—and the grievance hath enlarged upon him with the years. Not to this day has he lighted upon any clue to the stone’s whereabouts, though the cursed red stain of it has bitten into his life.”

“It hath corroded me!” cried the soldier, unabashed. He seemed to think his conduct justified by the magnitude of his loss. “I have wrought for a pittance when I should have ruffled it with the highest.”

“But, how was it lost?” asked the listener, with some secret scorn for such a bitterness of avarice as he could not conceive would demoralize other than a contemptible nature.

“Proposals were made by a syndicate for its purchase,” put in Sir David hastily. “The whole thing was a monstrous swindle, planned with every elaboration. Ronald Luvaine was ill-advised enough to let the stone out of his hands, and——”

“There was the last of it,” cried the captain madly—“and the plunge for me into a hell of disappointment and misery.”

His jaw was shaking like a rabid dog’s.

“Not for a day since my dying father swore me to the curse of vengeance,” he cried, “has the stone been out of my mind. Judge then of my agitation when I hear you, a stranger, casually refer to it by name as having some bearing on a mystery connected with your house.”

“But not with me,” said Mr. Tuke coldly. There was something nameless in the man’s frenzy—an uncleanly savour of passion that was devoid of all nobility.

“I can have no objection,” he went on, “to acquaint you of the circumstances that inspired me to so unfortunate a reference.”

“If you please, sir,” said the soldier, in a tone that was almost a menace.

Sir David saw the blood leap to his new neighbour’s face.

“Humour him, humour him,” he whispered, “in the Lord’s name!”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Tuke, “if you will give me your attention, I will endeavour to recall the matter for your behoof”—and he then and there recounted those experiences of his at “Delsrop” that had awakened his suspicions, ending up with the history of the interview between Mr. Joseph Corby and the crazed girl.

To this description Sir David listened with some open-mouthed astonishment, and Captain Luvaine with a black concentration of his every faculty upon the minutest details.

As the speaker ended, he, the latter, blew out all his restraint in a labouring sigh, and stared before him with eyebrows pulled together like the strings of a purse.

“’Tis passing strange,” he muttered. “There can be but one Lake of Wine. Whence does the fellow come, and wherefore?”

“That, sir, I know no more than you.”

“Blythewood,” said the soldier, turning suddenly on the baronet, “has no tenant been in ‘Delsrop’ since the time of the gallows-bird?”

“None, Luvaine, till our friend here.”

The other addressed Mr. Tuke with icy civility.

“Perhaps I discuss what is yours with undue freedom, sir. My excuse must be that ‘Delsrop’ is a tradition for desolation; and to us of the neighbourhood it hath long been a thickset of mysteries. Here is another, it seems, that I little thought to connect with the place. Is it asking you too great a favour to acquaint me of developments, should they occur?”

“By no means. I will undertake that you are informed of the progress of any events that seem to touch upon a certain subject.”

The soldier bowed low, and walked to the door.

“Why, man—you are never going?” cried Sir David.

“You must hold me excused—yes. This strange recountal has vastly disturbed me. I would seek counsel of my pillow.”

The door closed behind him. Mr. Tuke turned mutely to his host.

“Zounds!” whispered the latter to his silent inquiry. “The beggar is half off his head with life-long brooding over his grievance. The loss occurred in ’76, when I was a child—a brat of two or so. He was a young man when his father died, and I had the story fifty times from Ned here before I was out of my teens. His long face is one of my first remembrances. The families were connected, and he played off the privileges of cousinship upon me to the hilt, by Gad!”

“He spoke of me as a neighbour.”

“And that he is, in a way. He settled, when he retired from the service, in Winchester, where his regiment used to lie. And there he eats out his heart, like Sir Thingumbob in the Tower, planning what he would have done if the old stone had rounded off his jointure. It was valued at £70,000, if you can believe him.”

“A melancholy story. How the wind rises!—And who was the gallows-bird he referred to?”

CHAPTER XIV.

SIR DAVID ladled out into fresh glasses from the dregs of the jorum.

“A toast!” said he, the leaping candle-light making a shifting grotesque of his wholesome young face. “Here’s to the memory of the last tenant o’ ‘Delsrop,’ and the health of the new one!”

“With all my heart. How was the beggar called? He hath entailed me a legacy of weeds. Was he the gallows-bird?”

The visitor spoke in jest, and was surprised to have, “Aye, that he was,” for answer.

“Great heavens!” he exclaimed.

The baronet flung himself back in his chair with a chuckle.

“You little expected that,” said he. “But there’s a reservation I’ll own to. They strung him up after he was dead.”

He went into a fit of laughter over the other’s astonished expression.

“I see you are unacquainted with the tale,” he said. “’Tis a tattered old boggart of the past that the neighbourhood has years-long ceased to throw stones at. But, you’ll pardon me, Tuke. What the devil induced you to invest in those ragged acres yonder?”

“I didn’t. I succeeded to them.”

“Direct?”

“Certainly.”

He had hesitated in answering. The little man gazed at him inquisitively.

“You are—you are not in mourning,” he said.

“For my father? Scarcely. He died in ’80. A widow even may be excused for doffing black in twenty years.”

“I see. You are an absentee landlord. Fie, sir! We hold you responsible thereby for many a pretty ghost tale.”

He answered jocosely; but he was looking at the other with a certain ruminative wonder.

“Twenty years,” he murmured. “Why, then, your father must have stepped straight into old Turk’s shoes.”

“The former tenant? Was that his name?”

“Turk—yes.”

He was still engulfed in retrospect. His eyes were fixed, unwinking, like a doll’s.

“Well,” he said at last—sucking at the stem of his “church-warden” as if he were a baby ravenous for its “comforter”—“it fair upsets me, it does.”

“What does?”

“How you can ’a let a fruitful estate like that go to wrack and ruin for twenty years.”

Mr. Tuke was silent. Had he spoken, and the truth, he could only have echoed the other’s wonder. As it was, his mouth was tied to an adequate explanation.

Blythewood blew away the problem with a cloud of smoke.

“We’ve got you at last, anyhow,” he said. “And that’s nine points of the law. I’ll wager you don’t know, sir, whence your house gets its name.”

“I can’t take you. You’re right.”

“’Tis the short for Devil’s-rope,—that’s what it is; the cursed bind-weed that will honeycomb a county from an inch of root if you give it rein. The story goes that, when they dug the foundations, it lay thick in the soil as macaroni in a dish.”

“That’s odd enough; and an ominous name for the last tenant by your showing. What was his history that you make a secret of?”

“Tut! ’tis no secret. Did you hear that?—the wind ’ll blow the casement in. ’Tis no secret; but I was only a lad of five when they found him hanging on the downs, and so can give you little but the fruits of hearsay.”

“And what are they?”

“As dry as apple-johns by this date. Fill your glass. The fellow’s name was Turk, I say; and he looked his name.—Zounds! ’tis like his ghost ravenin’ with fury to get the grip of us.—He must ’a been an ugly beggar; for I can remember him plain as plain for all I was only five years old when he was found swingin’.”

“What was he like?”

“Like? Like a gurgoyle on a church—a face to sweat o’ nights with thinking on. A murderous-looking caitiff, sir, with red stubble under his jasey and a bloody long tuck at his side. Yet I can mind me of a look in his eyes—or in one of ’em; for t’other was fixed in his head and chalky like a boiled cod’s—that wasn’t all of the rest. ’Twas fear, or sufferin’—or compound of both; and it lessened the fright I stood in of meetin’ him.”

“Was he always there—at ‘Delsrop,’ I mean, in your early memory of it?”

“Save us, no. The place belonged to the Woodruffs up to ’77, when it came into the market. The new owner wasn’t in possession—no, not a year. He turned up sudden—was there on a day, with his black-bodin’ face; and nobody knew where he’d come from or what was his business in life. They didn’t find out then or afterwards. He kept himself to himself; received no visitors and wanted none; lived his days solitary, shut up like a miser; and didn’t so much as weed the gravel of his drive.”

“And so disappeared?”

“Disappeared? Not he. He was a landmark to every traveller for months to come. I mind the mornin’ well—ah! even through this lapse of time—that young Peterson, our landreeve, rode over to ‘Chatters,’ with a face like whey, and said as how Mr. Turk had been found murdered and hangin’ in the chains on Stockbridge downs.”

“Hanging?”

“Aye! There they’d strung him up that did the deed; for he’d been stabbed first—nigh a dozen angry wounds that had sucked at the steel like mouths—and then set to dangle for a jest to the daws.”

“And when they ran the rogues to earth?”

“They never did, sir—they never did. To this day the man’s fate is locked up in the mystery of his life.”

“But at the inquest——”

“None was held. ’Twas an odd thing, you’ll say; and a cursed odd thing it was. But none was held for all that. Men’s minds were disorganized at that time, ’tis said. There was the French and Spanish coalition, and dark trouble about a possible descent on the coast—like as there is now. Who was to think of one murdered land-loper, that nobody knew or claimed, when all eyes were turned to the sea? Anyhow, there he swung and rotted, to the huge scandal of the neighbourhood, till he and his head parted company and came to the ground.”

“But there must have been legatees—executors—lawyers interested, at the very least?”

“They never put in a claim, then. The fellow was here, and gone, and narry a sign. ’Twas a queer business.”

“Well, heaven rest his bones at the last!”

“I’ll give you Amen to that. You are its deputy for one of them by all account.”

“Eh! What d’ye say?”

“’Tis a tale hereabouts that Whimple’s mad sister has the creature’s skull in keepin’—that for months she hovered like a crow under the gallows, and picked it up at last when it fell.”

“Good God! She has—or had. I’ve seen it.”

“Ah! A pretty plaything for a maid. Well, that’s Mr. Turk’s story, as I know it.”

The listener sat for some moments in a profound and bewildered silence. Vaguely, through his brain, like faint harmonics, ran the words of the lawyer Creel and his own question to which they had been an answer: “When did it come to him?” “That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79.”

So his father had himself slipped into possession of this mysterious estate at the very time that ghastly scarecrow was tossing in the wind. How then was it, that he had not caused inquiry to be made as to the fate of his predecessor—had not set bloodhounds on the track of the assassins—had not even allotted the poor remains some decent burial?

For the first time a little mist of darkness gathered in his heart—a suspicion born of the unaccountable secrecy that was the main condition of his inheritance.

Presently he looked up with a troubled face.

“Then Whimple and his sister,” he said, “were early put in charge of the deserted place?—but they were, of course. The fellow told me so himself.”

“Aye, aye,” said Sir David. “He was only a lad of eighteen when he first came—a great weedy gawk with scared eyes.”

“Twenty years haven’t improved upon that. My God! what an existence!”

“Well, sir, it may suit a being or not. We ain’t all built for coal-porters. The measure of a man’s work is his willingness to it; and Dennis is no Jackalent for all his diffidence. He knows a spavin from a thrush; and I’ll tell ye somethin’ more—he can put rhymes together equal to Milton or Mr. Pye.”

“Umph!” said the other.

CHAPTER XV.

MISS ANGELA came out on the steps to wave farewell to her brother’s guest of the night. This was in itself a particular favour; for she made it rather less than a rule to submit her charms to the broad search-light of the early morning. But—to speak figuratively—to withhold a curtesy after yielding a kiss is to value the shadow at more than the substance; for, so it was, she had already vouchsafed her gallant her company while yet the grey of dawn was melting on the blinds.

It came about in this manner—that into Mr. Tuke’s waking dreams stole a strain of music very sweet and melancholy. The rogue slept lightly and unvexedly, as sinners do; and, moved by the mystic cadence, he rose, dressed with great dispatch, and descended the stairs in obedience to the alluring summons.

Now, it was soon evident that this proceeded from a little panelled parlour or boudoir, at the open door of which he paused a-tiptoe, drinking in the vision of a pale morning Cecilia seated at a pianoforte communing with her soul in the softest of harmonies and an angelic gown.

“Thank you!” said he presently, in a pause. “I have risen with the lark.”

St. Cecilia started and turned about with a very pretty confusion.

“Mr. Tuke!” she cried; and presented him with a blush through her ringlets like a moss-rose.

“Ah! madam,” said he, “I dropped upon you like a spider in your bower. Your voice thrilled my web and I must needs fall.”

“But I thought——”

“You thought me gone. Alas! if I have imperilled my welcome by craving your brother’s hospitality till the morning. But, so it seemed to me, your beauty would owe me a recompense for a sleepless night; and I dared to stay to claim it.”

“Oh, sir! You are pleased to make a sport of me. But, indeed, you are very welcome; though, I protest, nothing would have induced me to sing, had I known you in the house.”

“And so would you have denied one soul a full measure of happiness.”

“Poor soul.”

She looked round at him with a little smile, mocking and bewitching at once. She had seated herself at the instrument again and was running her fingers lightly over the keys.

“Are they not beautiful?” she said.

He had stolen up behind her.

“They are,” he murmured. “Like white butterflies fluttering over the chiming flowers of fairyland.”

“Mr. Tuke!” she said—“what are?”

“Your fingers, of course.”

“Oh, fie, sir! I spoke of these melodious pianofortes. Is not mine a darling? ’Tis by Clementi, and a present from my brother.”

“How can I take this praise on trust?”

“You need not, if you have already been eavesdropping—dropping like a spider, I should say.”

“Sing to me.”

“Oh! I could not.”

“Sing to me, please.”

She laughed and protested. It was early—her voice was ropy as a hen’s—she only warbled for her own entertainment, and professed no knowledge of or subtilty in the art—indeed she had never submitted herself to discipline therein. And did not Mr. Tuke think that no acquired skill could compensate for the loss of native simplicity?—even should native simplicity (though she did not add this) ring a little false now and again?

Mr. Tuke thought just as she did. He would rather listen to pretty Maudlin any day, than to the artfullest Pasta that ever shrieked herself into fame.

At last Miss Royston gave way. “Dove sono I bei momenti?” she sang, in a fine, cultivated little voice, that was not unpleasant, as exemplifying the art that can surmount natural disabilities. And, when she had finished, her one listener applauded fatuously.

“I would cry Brava!” said he, “were it not for bringing the atmosphere of the footlights into these enchanted gardens.”

“That is right,” said Miss Royston; “though a little warmth would comfort them just now.”

She was resolute not to sing again, despite his protestations. She had a nice eye for proportion in all matters affecting her own appearance, moral or physical.

She led him across the room to a glazed door in a recess. The icy blast of the night had fallen dead on the grass, where it lay stiff amongst the ruin of the leaves it had scattered. He saw a wide stretch of frosty lawn, on which the fingers of the rising sun were busy assorting a millions of iridescent jewels.

“It is like the angels of the Israelites snowing manna against breakfast-time,” said Mr. Tuke. He was in a mood of most dreamy romanticism. All this cultured and human beauty of orderliness seemed to him very gracious after his experience of desolation.

The lady glanced secretly at her cavalier, with an approving tenderness. He fulfilled her expectations of him—stood appropriately in the foreground of the picture of mysterious melancholy her fancy had painted to receive him.

“I could not breakfast on manna,” she said, with a full little laugh. “What sugar-babies the Israelites must have been! But I have often gone without breakfast at all when sketching, so completely has the pleasure absorbed me.”

“You are an artist, too!”

She owned that she was; and, indeed, she had quite a skill in making pretty little copies of landscapes after Turner, Bright, Stothard, and others, which she signed with her own name. Less often she ventured upon art at first hand. She had penetration enough to mentally appraise that subtle distinction shown by friends in the degrees of admiration accorded respectively her imitative and her original work.

Now, however, in the assurance of appreciative comment, she was moved to reach for the manna she would have herself believe she despised.

“That is one of my poor originals,” she said, inviting him by a gesture to an escritoire on which lay an open sketch-book.

He took it up, as a priest lifts the Gospels; though not—in further illustration—to kiss it. Here his reverence halted on the brink of perplexity.

“Do you know what it is?” she murmured slyly, but a little anxiously “You ought to.”

“Of course,” he said—almost in a perspiration already. “It is—it is a gate, is it not?”

She was disappointed at the outset.

“How did you know?” she said, with a note of irrepressible irony in her voice. “It is clever of you to have lighted on the truth at once; and I tried so hard to conceal it. Yes, it is a gate—the gate of your own wilderness.”

He looked at her helplessly.

“Is not this sort of thing—this—this wash-painting, in its infancy, as—as it were?”

“Oh, yes! Mine, you would say, tries to run before it can walk.”

“No, no, no,” he murmured.

It was a shock to her to discover his inability to read the soul behind the—possible immature—performance.

“Turn over,” she said. “Perhaps you will like the others better.”

He obeyed, with a vague air of wonderment. The remainder pages were filled with copies, very elegant and painstaking.

“Ah!” he said, with a real relief and an air of embarrassed conciliation. “These are beautiful. You paint in two styles, it seems. How clever you are. I like this the better. I know nothing about such things, of course, and can only judge when I understand a picture and when I don’t. And they are all your own work? You are a genius, upon my soul.”

She did not gainsay him. Perhaps she would not in any case. But now she was indifferent to his praise or silence. Her hero, she thought—a little crossly, it must be confessed—was not all transcendental. What man was? The most amorous appealing eyes, in their moments of apparent inspiration, were usually, if the truth should be confessed, an index of thoughts dreamily loitering through visions of flint-locks, steeple-chases, and even vulgar tankards of small-beer. Now-a-days, whatever savour of romance clung about the creatures, was from their persistent contact, through every phase of evolution, with the finer feminine clay. Yet, could a soul completely gross and commonplace find its expression in a personality so melancholy and so noble? She glanced at her companion with a reviving tenderness. Of earth he might be; but she thrilled to remember the strength of his arms as he bore her from the sinking well-mouth. After all, Apollo was a sportsman before he was a poet; or it never would have occurred to him to skin critics who derided his lays.

“There,” she said. “You have seen them all. I keep you here, and you are famishing for food of a very different order.”

She led the way to the breakfast-room. He followed with a lamb-like submissiveness. There was a vague feeling at his heart of distress or something of the nature of it. He opined that he had been churlish; though quite in what respect he could not understand. But he was conscious of having unwittingly given offence where none should have been taken; and so, being human, he felt an atom aggrieved.

Captain Luvaine, it appeared, still kept his bed.

Sir David, however, flung abroad an atmosphere of boisterous good-humour. He rallied his guest and his sister upon their rising-sun worship.

“Gad!” he cried. “I heard you tunin’ up, my dear, before I could see to t’other end of my bed. Don’t do it, Angel; or you’ll be gettin’ chilblains on your little ten toes. ’Twas all for you, Tuke. I’ll tell you, sir, she ain’t in the habit of frosting her little nose o’ common days.”

“Why,” said the other—“you’re wrong. Miss Royston had no knowledge I slept here.”

“Eh!” said the baronet, his eyes a double note of exclamation; and “Davy, be quiet!” implored his sister.

The manling fell into a fit of laughter.

“Don’t you believe it!” he crowed hoarsely. “She understood you was goin’ to stop, an——”

Miss Royston was crushing the little villain in her arms.

“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Tuke!” she cried. “He’s a bad, bad boy!”

She made a very pretty picture, as she turned with radiant face and tumbling hair to their guest. Her girlish grace commanded the situation.

“I didn’t know—I didn’t, I didn’t!” she cried; and “Fibs, Tuke!” was the response in a smothered voice.

Now the visitor was a salted gallant; but he found something very sweet in this delicate-skinned, coquettish maid of many arts and graces. She was like an exotic whiff from the glass-house of his former life—good God! how vague and far away that seemed now. This gave him a full feeling about the heart; a feeling as though he, a years-long exile, had chanced across a compatriot in the land of his desolation; and the consequences was that he, who would not while he might, was now wavering to a parlous state in the afternoon of his fortunes.

The vision of her standing on the steps to bid him God-speed abode with him during the length of his homeward journey, and would often rise up before him at intervals during the day.

Sir David had stretched up to him, as he sat mounted for his departure, hat in hand.

“Tuke,” the little man whispered, “that is a cursed queer business you told us about, and it jumps oddly with Luvaine’s. You will hold me at your service if you need assistance. I am a Justice of the Peace, sir.”

He smacked his chest; dropped back on his heels, and cried “A votre service!” with extreme elegance.

CHAPTER XVI.

SOMETHING singular in the appearance of his house engaged Mr. Tuke’s attention the moment he drew rein before the door. Desolate and haunted it always looked; but now there was a deathly air about the place that was an additional burden on its eeriness.

The reason of this he found was not far to seek. Behind the latticed glazing of every window the strong shutters were closed and bolted, though it was now eleven o’clock of a sunny, brisk morning.

He dismounted and tried the front door. It was fastened also. On the echo of his angry summons fell the sound of a light step within.

“Who are you?” cried Darda’s voice shrilly through the keyhole.

“Open, girl! What is the meaning of this?”

She drew the bolts reluctantly—deliberately. In his impatience to enter he almost threw her down.

“What is the meaning of this?” he repeated.

She had backed into a shadowy angle of the hall, and thence looked at him with a sullen defiance. He had to again put his question, and harshly.

“Oh!” she said, nodding at him with an angry look, “what trouble hasn’t your coming brought on us!”

“Now,” he said peremptorily, “explain yourself.”

“We lived at peace with the shadows and the spirits before,” she answered. “Since you came they take to worrying us; and they have made his face like death.”

“Whose face, you jade?”

“His—my brother’s. They were about the house all last night—creeping, creeping, as soft as snow on withered leaves. He feared that they would get in, and he dared not rest or sleep till daylight came; and now he is on his bed.”

Tuke strode to the end of the hall.

“Whimple!” he thundered. “Come and take my horse!”

He felt Darda’s breath at his ear, and turned to find she had come swiftly after him with her white face.

“You devil!” she hissed. “You bring the evil, and then torture my Dennis from his sleep.”

He put her sternly aside, and, twisting about for another violent summons, subsided into an “’umph!” of petulance.

The man was standing silent before him, the same scared look in his eyes that he had learned to loathe.

“Why is the house locked and sealed like this?” he demanded.

“I dared not open it, sir, till you came.”

The servant spoke in a faint, tired voice.

“Dared not! and why?” said his master.

Whimple looked about him helplessly, as if he sought a loophole of escape from the question.

“Come,” said the other, “why did you not dare?”

“I was frightened; terrified. There were noises and footsteps.”

“The wind or any other natural cause. These bugbears don’t stalk in the daytime. A pretty caretaker, upon my word!”

He looked at the fellow gloomily; hesitated, and, bidding him roughly see to his horse, turned into the dining-hall, closed the door, unbolted and threw open the shutters, and sat himself down before a dull fire.

“What is it all? what is it all?” he thought desperately. “Am I in good truth being stalked and shadowed, and for what reason? And is that fellow in the league against me? Blythewood knows him well, and has a high opinion of him. What then? What favourable view can I possibly take of his reticence and evasiveness? For all I know, Blythewood himself may be the chief of a colony of pads and cut-throats. I am a lamb amongst wolves—knowing nought of the neighbourhood; moving in the dark. I am drowned and overwhelmed in a sea of mysteries—in a cursed Lake of Wine. And there, there, there! Luvaine’s fabulous stone!”

He sprang to his feet, and set to pacing the room.

“By God!” he cried aloud, “I will stand it no more! I will be master of my own, and subscribe no longer to the infernal bullying of circumstances!”

In the midst of his excitement the vision of Angela rose before him, sparkling, spirituelle—a true child of the thoughtless, effervescent life of his everyday custom.

“Oh, I am a fool!” he murmured. “She and her brother carry their patents of respectability on their sleeves.”

But from now he was determined to throw off all gloom and trepidation; to go his way and improve his estate without idle speculations as to antagonistic forces at work, and to strike, and strike hard, if he was interfered with.

All that day he sang and whistled over his labour of investigation. Perhaps, in the background of his fancy, rose and broadened a dawn of new hopes and possibilities. Perhaps he pictured there a “Delsrop” restored, cultivated and flourishing, and contiguous to other fruitful acres, wherein his interest was figured in a certain dainty lady, destined to be the mother of one who should recover his own waived surname and title. For so, he could not forbear reflecting, had the titular restriction been imposed upon himself alone.

He was coming across his lawn on the afternoon of the following day, when he noticed a cart issue from the drive and stop, and saw Betty Pollack jump down with a basket on her arm.

He strolled, conscious of a sudden spring of pleasure in his veins, towards the girl, who dropped a pretty curtsey to him as he neared her.

“Come round the kitchen-gardens, Betty,” said he; “and see if you can supply anything we don’t already possess.”

He glanced with a certain defiance, as he spoke, at the old gaffer seated in the gig, mumchance and blinking, like a withered owl, and led the way to a crazy door that opened into a walled garden.

Betty followed him timidly, and looked shyly about her as he introduced her to the prospect.

“There!” said he. “Is not that Eden?”

“It is very neglected and unkempt,” said the girl gravely. “There is work for two men here for many days; and then the soil would want well manuring, to make it fruitful.”

He laughed. His careless eye roved over her charms luxuriously. Suddenly, child of his new-found tenderness, a great pity awoke in his heart for this poor lamb, so treacherously shepherded.

“Betty,” he said gently, “have you no mother?”

She smiled with a little falling sadness.

“Oh, your honour, she died before I can remember.”

“Or father?”

Betty looked sheepish.

“Father was shot by the Preventive in ’91,” she murmured.

“H’m! and he there—has he brought you up and cared for you?”

“Ever since? Yes.”

“And he’s good to you?”

Her rosy face took an expression of surprise.

“Grandfather? Oh, yes! We are the only two left. I shall be—I shall be quite alone when he is gone.”

Could this—the desire to secure protection for his own, on whatever condition, be the explanation of the old man’s attitude? A wryed morality, if it were; but at least forethoughtful and unselfish. But no. The suggestion had been an evil and self-interested one.

“Do you serve the tap all day, Betty?” said he.

“Mostly, your honour. But Jim will take a turn when we go a-jaunting.”

“Who is Jim?”

“He’s the stable-boy.”

“Well, what have you got for me there?”

She groped in her basket.

“Here’s turnips and little carrots, and a right early stick of celery.”

“I’ll pay you double for each, and throw a kiss in for interest, Betty.”

She backed a step or two.

“Will you please not to talk like that?”

“I will please; I will please. Deeds are better than words.”

She made as if to run from him; but pulled herself up and stood still with eyes full of trouble.

His blood raced in his veins. She looked a very Andromeda—warm and winning and pathetic. He went a hurried pace, slid his arm about her, and kissed her lips softly. The moment he had done it, he was sorry.

She never moved, panting where she stood.

“I hope you will be ashamed,” she said, with a little breaking sob.

He answered humbly: “I am, Betty—there, I am;” and gave her a glance of remorse.

Then he added: “Go to your grandfather, my dear. Maybe, after all, the old scamp is safer than the young.”

“Yes,” she said, striving to steady her voice. “I mustn’t come hither again.”

She turned and moved away a step or two, her pretty head hanging. Suddenly she faced about, and came at our gentleman with a little spit of passion.

“I trusted you, and it was unfair. And I came to give your honour warning, and now I won’t!”

The words were hardly out of her lips when her eyes were drowned in tears.

“Yes, yes—I will, I will!” she cried, and buried her face in her hands.

Tuke smiled and put his arm again about the girl. She showed no sign of resentment—even allowed herself to be pulled a trifle closer to him.

“Betty, my little wench—what is it all? What is the to-do?”

“Oh!” she looked up at him through blinking lashes—“there are evil men about.”

“Why, so I know, my dear. And what then?”

She clasped her fingers convulsively over the basket-handle.

“I fear for your honour. There is something dark afoot; and you live lone and the times is troublous.”

“But all this is for any understanding. Have you nothing more?”

“I have my eyes and my ears. I see folks, and I hear a many words that isn’t meant for me. There’s a man, Breeds, your honour—ah! you know him; a feckless creature, but dangerous in his cups. He’s not to be trusted. He consorts wi’ rogues and hath a hanging reputation. I would your honour could lay him by the heels for harbouring cut-throats.”

“I have my eye on him, Betty.”

He could get nothing more definite from the girl. She was full of alarm and uneasiness on his account, but on what founded she had a difficulty in explaining. She knew only that of late certain strangers, of a somewhat villainous cast, were housed within the walls of the old wayside tavern; that occasionally a couple of them would drop into the tap of the “First Inn,” and secretly terrify her, secretly listening, with muttered innuendoes and hoarse whisperings on the subject of some projected scheme of roguery.

Then Stockbridge was little more than a rustic village—a boorish community of clodpolls, that nightly slept away the memory of its daily toil in a beery stupor of indifference; and what practical influence could thence be brought to bear on blackguards predetermined to some deed of darkness?

The moral was all of woman’s intuition, and therefore to be accorded respect.

Mr. Tuke acknowledged this; but he laughed away Betty’s fears; while she, good girl, forgetful of her right of offence, did entreat him, with many pretty words and troubled looks, and a clasping of her hands—olive as young ripening filberts—to be on his guard.

He saw her drive away and disappear. Then, with set lips and a dour contraction of his eyebrows, he made for the house to order his horse to be saddled.

He was a man whose constitutional good-nature underlay whole stories of determination. The topmost of these was to temporize with no discomfort, moral or physical; but to strike at the root of the trouble before analyzing it. He would never have a tooth that pained him stopt; but must suffer the moment’s wrench to save days of dull aching.

Now it was that he saw the centre of the unaccountable to be that same beetled-browed tavern. To the “Dog and Duck” he would ride forthwith, and so seek counsel of the very heart of the mystery.

CHAPTER XVII.

OPPRESSIVE dusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined. The steely thrust of wind at night—a morning cold and fair and pure, such as ever seems an earnest of weeks of serene tranquillity—and then, as noon ticked into evening, a dull fall in the barometer, and gathering battalions of clouds rolling to the front, with a noise of rumbling in them like the labouring wheels of gun-carriages—such was the record of twenty-four hours.

Glancing with frowning eyes, at the little forlorn building livid above him against a wall of menacing purple, the horseman pricked his nag to the slight ascent, and, clattering up to the inn door, flung himself out of the saddle and looped his reins to a ring set in the lintel-post.

Straightway he crossed the threshold, and turning sharply to the left, found himself in the room of the bay-window and the tap of the “Dog and Duck.”

Not a soul was in it—no sign of life, but, somewhere, a distant murmuring of voices.

It was a paltry little shop, with a pewtered counter, and under it, on the customer-side, a ditch or groove set in the floor and filled with sawdust for obvious purposes. A few beer-barrels; a squat flask or two of schiedam on a shelf; some common earthenware mugs, white with a blue band, and bearing the excise stamp on a tin bottom—these were the important features of the bar. Above the latter, from a blackened beam, hung a great ship’s lantern, eloquent of rancid oil; and to the back was a glazed door leading into a room no larger than a cabin, in which a little fire blinked a red eye like a drowsy watch-dog.

Mr. Tuke—fingering in the pocket of his riding-coat the butt of a duelling pistol, loaded and primed—rapped on the counter with his riding-whip.

Listening, he was conscious of a sudden cessation of the murmuring sounds—of an appreciable pause; and then a door opened gently, and somebody came into the bar-parlour. This new-comer, whoever he was—for he took stock in the dusk without showing himself—seemed to go out softly again after a moment’s scrutiny; and following his exit, the other was dimly aware of the sounds again, but more subdued, and broken with an intermittent cough that was like suppressed laughter.

He rapped again, and immediately the door was opened a second time, but now with an air of business; a heavy step shuffled across the cabin, and the landlord appeared at the glazed door.

Mr. Breeds was not the Mr. Breeds of a former experience. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and was here the master of everything but himself. In illustration of this, his puffed and heated face bore an expression of boldness that was entirely the painting of strong waters. Tipsy, he was a cumbrous changeling, with just a sufficiency of humour to be insolent.

He drew the red tip of his “churchwarden” so far out of the corner of his mouth as to allow passage to a question fired awry in a spit of smoke.

“What d’ye call for?”

Mr. Tuke put his clinched left hand on the counter, and stared sternly in the bloated face.

“I want nothing but a word with you. It’s this. Do you know who I am?”

“Sure,” said Mr. Breeds, with a chuckle.

“That’s well. Now listen. There’s Winton, a city fifteen miles off, and a fast gaol in it. Men lie by the heels there for lesser crimes than housebreaking, and hang, too.”

For all his liquid cargo the landlord went white.

“I dare say, sir—I dare say,” quoth he, in a jerking voice. “And how do that concern me?”

“You know best. Maybe you have taken me for one of your pugmill squireens with blinkers to his head. You’d better cleanse your brain on that point. I see and I hear, Mr. Breeds, and I’m dangerous to meddle with. You understand me—yes, you do.”

“So help me God, sir, I know nought of any attempt on your house!”

“You see? Did I say there had been one? You rogue! I’ve a mind to put a bullet in you now.”

The landlord dropped his pipe on the floor, and cried abjectly—

“Sir—Mr. Tuke! In the Lord’s name, what d’ye accuse me of?”

“Of nothing, of course. I warn you—that’s enough.”

“But, sir——”

“Mr. Breeds, Mr. Breeds!”—he shook a threatening finger at him—“let me advise you to take a fair hint and meditate on it. You consort with blackguards, sir; you harbour ruffians. Shall I connect this or not with signs and sounds and visits that have disturbed me of late?”

“I am an innkeeper, sir,” said the other sullenly. “I’m not to pick or choose where custom offers. Let the law look after its own. I stand upon my rights.”

“Aye, aye; that’s boor’s English for treading on other people’s corns.”

He turned to go, daring a retort with the tail of his eye. On the threshold he paused. A sinister little laugh had reached him from the bowels of the house. In a moment he strode back, fierce and lowering.

“You have company in the inn now. Where do they sit?”

The landlord did not answer; but, in the gathering darkness of the tap, there was a sound as if his teeth chattered.

Without another word, Tuke stepped into the passage, and stood listening. All was silent; but somewhere to the rear of the building a thread of light broke the run of the panelling almost from ceiling to floor. For this thread he made, and coming plump against a door, burst it open and half fell into a long dimly-lighted room with a trestle-table set in the middle of it.

Recovering himself, he stood at instant guard. The light of a couple of oil-lamps on the wall swam in his eyes and blinded him for a moment. Then his vision cleared, and he saw his company—two men seated at the table, and one who stood by a half-closed door to his left.

The room was full of tobacco-smoke, and a reeking smell of warm hollands hung in the air like a sickly dew.

“Charge your rummers, gentlemen!” said some one in a thin nasal voice. It was such a queerly weak and ineffective voice, that despite a certain awkwardness in his situation, the intruder could not forbear fixing his eyes on the speaker with a start of wonder.

Then he recognized him at once. It was the squab white-haired man, with a face like a hip, whom he had seen at lounge on the window-sill.

Him he had expected to find; nor much less the gentleman like a decayed schoolmaster, whom he had happened on a-fishing, and who sat next to the other.

“Mr. Joseph Corby should be the third,” thought he; and sure enough it was Joe who stood by the door.

Now, not the least embarrassing part of the business was that his entrance, with a face set to any contingency, was to all appearance accepted by the company as in the natural order of custom. No one fell awkward over it, or assumed an air as of resenting his presence.

He hesitated a moment, then sat himself down in a chair opposite the two men.

“A dull evening, gentlemen,” said he; “with promise of a dirty night.”

Mr. Fern—by token of his scarlet face—was the one to answer in a high manner of politeness.

“The more fortunate we, sir, for being under cover,” he said.

One would have taken the persistent strain of speech to account for his apoplectic hue. If he were a rogue, he had none of the melodramatic hall-marks. His face, possibly from its consuming colour, was as expressionless as a brick, and his eyes, under their ragged brows, gleamed like cold and passionless agates.

“Fortunate, as you say,” said Mr. Tuke; “the more as it is like to stay midnight skulkers from disturbing the rest of peaceable folk.”

“Quite so, quite so, though I don’t trace the connection—eh, Brander?”

The sardonic fisherman, his arms folded, had been watching the new-comer from under covert brows. He gave a little contemptuous laugh.

“Perhaps the gentleman is a sufferer from nerves,” said he.

“No,” said Tuke coolly, “I don’t think I am. I have full confidence in myself and in my defences. It is my way to strike at an annoyance before I examine it, as I would at any unaccustomed beast that ran across my path.”

“An excellent principle, sir. Impulse is a much-maligned factor in our system. Second thoughts are second-best thoughts too often. Landlord, is our supper served?”

“’Tis on the table, Mr. Fern,” came the answer, somewhere from the darkness of the bar.

Both men rose, and Mr. Tuke with them. He felt desperately the utter ineffectiveness of the situation. How could he, on a shadow of circumstantial evidence, throw their presumed roguery in the teeth of a couple of strangers merely because they had put up at a wayside tavern? A sort of dull fury worked in his heart. What had his impulsive visit gained him but present isolation in the midst of a dangerous company?

Without, the storm had broken; the slam of thunder shook the lonely house; the lightning fought for mastery in the room with the smoking oil-lamps, and prevailed, painting all faces with a violet glaze.

“That man,” said he, pointing at the genial Joseph, and wild to bring an edge to circumstance—“does he sup with you?”

“Surely, sir,” said Mr. Fern, pausing with an expression of extreme surprise.

“Ah! I recognize him as the fellow who applied to me for the post of gardener. You are well-suited for company, gentlemen.”

“He waits on us, sir—he waits on us. Joseph, is this true that I hear—that, unknown to me, you seek another service?”

“Yes,” said the man, with a grin. “If I could better myself I would.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Fern, with mild severity, “this must not occur again, Joseph. I sanction no such underhand proceedings. If you are dissatisfied with your position, tell me so plainly, and you are welcome to go seek a less indulgent master.”

“Oh, I’m all right, Mr. Fern!”

The other turned benevolently to the perplexed baronet. Throughout, the man Brander had stood silent, his hands thrust into his pockets, his hat pulled over his eyes, a slight grin creasing his parchment jaws.

“I must call your interest in me and my affairs unaccountable, sir,” said the former gravely; “but it is no doubt to be attributed to purely friendly motives.”

He bowed cumbrously, signified to Joseph to go before, and passed out with his other companion into the passage, closing the door gently to behind him.

Left to himself, Mr. Tuke stood for a moment dumfounded and quite at a loss as to what to do next. Then, with a quick, impatient exclamation, he flung himself into a chair before the hearth.

Why did he wait on at all? He told himself that it was for a lull in the storm that crashed and bellowed overhead. All the same he knew that he delayed going for the reason that makes men linger out a fruitless suit—because he impotently hoped for some anti-climax to justify his action.

Presently, rising from a fog of perplexity, he pulled with violence a bell-rope that hung near him. The landlord himself answered the summons, and immediately.

“Bring me a bottle of port,” said the visitor; and added suggestively, “uncorked.”

Mr. Breeds accepted the order, with some unintelligible response; vanished, brought back the wine and a glass, and offered the bottle to the other’s inspection.

“Good. Open it and go.”

He sat and sipped and pondered the situation.

There was no fire in the grate before him, but a bundle of the towy stuff known as “crinoline”; and this, as the wind moaned down the chimney, heaved and pulsed like a thing that breathed very silently. After a time this stealthy, life-like action wrought a certain uneasiness in him. He filled another glass, drained it, and glanced with a growing sickness of alarm at the palpitating mass. Good God! it was swelling, writhing in monstrous and unnatural motion! He tried to shriek out. His voice had left him. He could hear it very faint and agonized fifty miles away. He struggled to rise to his feet. The thing was out of the fire-place now—climbing his knees—lapping him in, overwhelming him from foot to throat.

With a liquid grunt, that rang in his own congested brain like his dying yell, he sank down in a heap and into immediate unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A DREAM, a memory of a wire factory he had once been shown over—this to re-connect him with a world he had sunk fathom-deep from; a buzzing and whistling in his brain, from which the brassy filament was being whirled to spin round a great reel at which some shadowy horror toiled; a snapping of the attenuated strand—and Mr. Tuke came to consciousness with a shock.

Even then, at first, he could not disassociate himself from the business of his quickening stupor; but saw the criss-cross of wires on all his drowsy eyes looked at. Somewhere in his forehead was the hole the screaming thread had issued from. He put up his hand vaguely to feel the acrid wound he knew must be there; for his whole skull yet throbbed and ached from the jarring process. He groped for the fancied mark, curiously, and then with a sense of grievance. If it had closed already, the torture would go on in his brain and find no outlet.

Suddenly the instinct of motion came to him, and he staggered to his feet. Yet his eyes were half-blind to the reality of his surroundings.

Bit by bit, however, these shook out into distinctness, vibrating like a spun coin before they settled down and became the commonplace objects of the room he had fallen asleep in. And then he saw that broad daylight was beating through a little high window, half-choked with creepers, that pierced the wall at the far end.

A few moments later the furious jangling of a bell seized every echo in the “Dog and Duck.” He who had awakened them, finding no response follow, flung out into the passage storming like a maniac.

An old shuffling woman was coming towards him. She was so old and so bent that, it seemed, to stoop a little lower would complete her circuit of days. A great mobcap was perched on her wrinkled poll, and under it her eyes ran moist with the humours of long-decayed passions.

“Where is the landlord of this tavern?” thundered Mr. Tuke.

The last trump would have done no more than tickle her auriculum.

“Eh!” she said, chafing her miserable old hands.

“Where is Breeds?” he roared.

“To be sure,” she whined, “he went off arly to Stockbridge.”

“And left you in charge—you unconscionable old beldame?” he added under his breath.

“Aye, aye,” she answered. “In charge to wake the gen’leman as had fell asleep over his cups.”

“And where are the others—the three who are stopping in the house?”

“I know nowt about en. There be nubbody here but you. I come fro’ Gorepit yon to do the tending when Breeds goes a-jaunting. He said nowt about anybody but you; and that your nag were in the stable.”

Fuming, driven beyond himself, his head one racked and aching bone, the baronet pushed past the withered hag and started on an exploration of the house. He flung up the stairs, and passed into more than one meagre little bed-chamber. Each was tenantless; as was every room upon the floor below.

“I have been drugged, by God!” he thought to himself; and went out to the rear where the stables were.

Here he found his horse comfortably stalled, and with all his housings yet on him.

He climbed into the saddle. He might have had a full sack upon his shoulders, from the trouble it cost him. As he rode away, he could have thought his head rocking like a toy-tumbler. He had to hold on with a frantic grip, or he would have rolled off into the road and probably snapped his spine like a stick of celery. The flinty track seemed to slide under him as if it were a long ribbon reeling off a drum. And all the time the pain in his head was horrible.

Presently he was sicklily aware of a woman’s figure crossing from a field-path in front of him. Even in his anguish, something that was familiar in its pose struck him.

“Betty!” he murmured thickly; and pulling up his horse with uncalculated abruptness, actually toppled out of the saddle, and fell in a heap to the ground.

She ran to him, uttering a faint cry. The horse had swerved on the moment, and one of its rider’s feet was wedged in a stirrup. She caught the bridle, backed the frightened animal, and so saved its master a deadly mangling.

Then, looping the reins over her arm, she bent above the prostrate man, with shining eyes full of rebuke and pity.

“Oh!” she said—“how could your honour be so foolish?”

He smiled up at her with a lost look of pain.

“How, Betty?” he whispered.

“You should ’a slept it off,” she said, “before you took the road.”

“You think me tipsy?”

She answered with a little sigh.

“Betty, my dear”—the mere effort of speech wrung a moan from him—“I’m not tipsy, upon my honour. I was fool enough to trust Mr. Breeds, that’s all; and he repaid me by drugging my wine.”

“You come fro’ the ‘Dog and Duck’?”

“I’ve spent the night there in a chair.”

“Oh, Mr. Tuke! What made you go?”

“Why, I wanted to see for myself.”

She went quite pale; and suddenly there was a bright tear running down her cheek.

“Oh, me!” she whispered. “’Twas I drove you to it. You might ha’ been murdered, and ’twas I drove you to it.”

“Nonsense, Betty. ’Twas coming to a head before you spoke. I should have had it out with Mr. Breeds in any case, sooner or later.”

“And he poisoned your wine? Oh, oh!”

“Now, my dear—that was only a move in the game. Forewarned is forearmed, you know. But my head seems like to burst. Will you put your cool hand on it, Betty?”

She acquiesced timidly, as he lay against the hedge-side. But soon, emboldened by the yearning pity that, in her sex, so passionlessly yields itself to any passionate appeal for help or comfort, she wrought with instinctive sympathy upon the throbbing temples and pressed the hard pain from them.

“It is like a little snow-wind from the mountains blowing over flowers,” murmured the patient drowsily. “What are you doing at ‘Delsrop’ again, Betty?”

“At ‘Delsrop’! Sure your honour’s dreaming,” she cooed. “You lie a’most within hailing distance of the ‘First Inn.’”

Mr. Tuke uttered an exclamation and struggled into a sitting posture.

“Eh!” he cried in a startled voice, and looked bewildered about him. True enough, the roofs of Stockbridge showed over the trees a quarter of a mile below him.

“Oh, Betty!” he groaned—“whither have my sodden wits led me?—And I made sure I was lying near the gates of the drive. I must mount and prick homewards.”

He rose to his feet with difficulty. His face was ghastly with nausea.

“You are in no state,” said the girl—“your honour is in no state to go alone. Come and rest awhile at the inn, and wend back in an hour or so.”

“I believe you are right,” he muttered stupidly. “Give me your arm, Betty, and lead me on. I’m blind and weak as a new-born kitten. But Mr. Breeds must be called to a reckoning by and by.”

“Yes, yes!” she cried—“but not now.”

She walked by his side, helping him so far as she could. It took them long, short distance as it was, to reach the inn. Once there, she led him up to a fresh-smelling guest-room, with a great four-poster in it, and wishing him sleep and a quick recovery, shut him in and went about to see to his horse.

All the morning and into the afternoon her heart sang in her breast like a robin. She was busy in the bar by herself when her gentleman walked in, refreshed, in his right mind, and very fairly recovered of his unintended debauch. He put out his hand and took one of hers into its grasp, firmly and caressingly, while she looked down and was busy over something with the point of her sandal.

“Betty,” said Mr. Tuke, “it has come to me that you pulled my heel out of the stirrup this morning. I was too befuddled at the time to realize it.”

She gazed up at him, her breath coming quickly, a scared entreating look on her flushed face.

“No,” he answered gravely to the mute appeal. “I’m not going to offer you money. I’ve been a sinner, Betty, but I’m a gentleman. Only I shall remember, my dear—I shall remember.”

He bent and kissed the warm hand courteously. It trembled against his lips before he released it. Then he turned and walked out of the bar without another word.

And as, a few moments later, the ring of his horse’s hoofs echoed away down the road, the girl ran hurriedly into the little back-parlour, threw herself into a chair, and broke into a passion of crying.

CHAPTER XIX.

MR. TUKE rode homewards in a very grave and preoccupied frame of mind. Perhaps he was conscious of a peril more nearly threatening his peace than any scheme of truculent knavery. Of the latter he could take every advantage that circumstance permitted him, without risk of self-accusation. The other was a more delicate question to face—a question of such moment that, pondering it, he must temporarily relegate to the background of his thoughts the issues involved in his adventure of the night.

Plainly, it amounted to this—was it to be control or abuse of the indefinite quantity known as a man’s honour?

He was not a coxcomb, or conceited; but he was an experienced worldling, and, as such, he could not pretend to misdeem, in any pretty maid, those premonitory symptoms of a disease of the heart that may be called aptly an “affection.”

Now—except when the stubborn devil in him was baited into cruelty—he was a good-natured and humane enough fellow, with a natural scorn of inflicting upon any other the pain he would himself shrink from enduring. Moreover he had sworn himself to a life of cleanliness and redemption of the past. Thirdly, and most important, did he or did he not seriously contemplate the possibility of a connection with a lady of gentle degree, to whom—if he offered his heart at all—he must make his presentation with washed hands and an unstained conscience?

What problems may not be involved in a demand for straight yes or no where the heart is called upon to answer! But then, what an inextricable problem is the heart itself. Its sympathies are so manifold that, would it be consistent, it must seal its every artery of distribution, and so, in serene isolation, beat self-contained and self-sufficient.

And here, where the brain, with its power of selection, picks out the indubitable course, comes in the heart to reinstate a tender little image that reason has ousted from its niche.

“Oh, Betty, Betty!” groans our gentleman. “I would I had never happened across you, you jade!”

Desperate over his inability to navigate an uncharted sea, he put his thoughts about on a course that promised plainer sailing.

The drugging of last night—what of that?

This of that—that too-eager knavery had reacted upon itself in the sense of, by some impolitic stroke, confirming the suspicions of the very antagonist it had sought secretly to circumvent.

Plainly, the rogues had drugged him to secure his non-interference during another determined attempt upon his house—with what success remained to be seen.

And now at least he was definitely acquainted with his enemies, if not with their object; though this, he could not but conclude, was to acquire possession of Luvaine’s legendary stone, which, for some unaccountable reason, they supposed was hidden away on his premises.

Here his way was clear; his justification for pronounced action obvious and inspiriting. He could feel a legitimate joy in striking at villainy that had recklessly ventured to throw off its disguise.

Thinking these thoughts, he came in sight of his gates, and was surprised to see them flung wide, and the rutted tracks of wheels going up the moss.

He rode in, his horse padding it softly on the thick carpet—rode in and drew rein abruptly with a muttered oath.

There, a little way off amongst the trees, was his henchman in earnest talk with the same gaunt hag he had seen him exchange speech with once before.

Now, he had little opportunity to note them; for, almost as he paused, the two separated, the man going off hurriedly towards the house, and the woman advancing in his own direction with a secret manner of haste.

As she plunged into the drive, she saw him and drew up with a startled jerk—then came slowly on, her eyes full of fear and defiance.

He set his horse across her path and awaited her.

“What do you here, woman?” he demanded sternly, as she stopped over against him.

She drew her thin shawl about her shoulders.

“He—the man,” she muttered, with a sort of fierceness breaking through instinctive deprecation, “does me many a little kindness. I came to see him.”

“And tempt him to dishonest traffic in his master’s goods? That is a double-dealing charity.”

She clinched her hands and her teeth. He saw “You lie” on her lips, though the words were not uttered. But he hardly resented the implication. He knew in his heart he slandered his servant—that he could never bring himself to do the man justice.

For a moment he scanned the seamed face set daringly opposite him. There were traces of a wild, lost beauty furrows of sorrow and want and despair in it to an unprejudiced mind. But that in this instance his was not.

“Harkee, mistress!” he said. “I was watching you two once before when you thought yourselves unobserved. Something then passed from him to you—here, in this drive. Do you deny it?”

“No,” she said.

“Then take warning, and carry your dealing to an open market. I want no secret pilferers about.”

He pulled his rein, nodded at her with set lips, and rode on his way.

Issuing from the drive a scene of animation, unwonted to that dead prospect, met his gaze. A couple of vans were pulled up before the porch, the horses that had drawn them standing apart and nosing in their bags. Men, a half-dozen of them, were busy going to and fro, lugging huge objects swathed in packing sheets into the house, and returning, hotly slouching and empty-handed. Further, under a tree, stood Darda holding a saddle-horse by the bridle; and on the lawn, walking hither and thither in earnest converse, strolled Whimple and the little baronet of “Chatters.”

Now, this latter sight, for all his reasoned conclusions, Mr. Tuke took in with something a scowling displeasure. No doubt the two were long acquainted, relatively as to their different conditions, and had so met and exchanged speech for years before he happened upon the district. None the less, their intimacy at the present juncture annoyed and a little distressed him. He could not be morally confirmed in his mistrust of the servant without questioning the bona fides of any one to whom the latter appeared to give his confidence.

It was a foolish—indeed, it seemed an outrageous suspicion in face of the comically ingenuous personality of the poor little Sir David. But why the devil couldn’t the man let Whimple alone?

His new friend caught sight of him as he stood drawn up at the outlet of the drive; saluted, and came towards him with an air of the utmost importance and solemnity.

“Tuke,” he said, putting up his hand on the other’s saddle-bow and looking earnestly in his face—“where the deuce have you been?”

“Yes, yes,” he went on, conscious of a certain atmosphere. “It’s all right—it’s no business of mine, of course. Only, you’ve been wanted, my friend.”

“Oh!—by whom?”

“By Whimple, there. The man’s half-wild with fright.”

The other answered with a little contemptuous laugh.

“Oh!” said Sir David, flushing slightly. “We can’t all command courage, you know. You and me may be different; but——”

“Well, well, Blythewood, what’s it all about?”

“I’ll tell you. I rode over early to ask if you’d put up for the Wilton hunt, and found your furniture here unpackin’ and Dennis lookin’ on, like a wamble-cropped sentryman. ‘Hullo, my friend!’ says I, ‘hath Boneless been a-stalkin’ in your bed-chamber that you show the colour of a new sack?’ And, by Gad, Tuke, you ain’t in rosy condition yourself!”

“Never mind me.”

“Well, he was scared; and what d’ye suppose he told me?—that he’d feared an attempt on the house last night on the part of three bodeful ruffians that visited your grounds after dark.”

“Yes—well?”

“You take it coolly, upon my soul. Well—this. He was lookin’ out of one of the upper windows and saw them slinkin’ amongst the trees—three as bloody rogues as ever——”

“Yes, yes, I know. What did they do? What did he do?”

“Umph! Why he did nothin’; but he kept watch and so did they, waitin’ no doubt for the lights to be extinguished; and presently there came a noise of wheels and up rolled your vans here from Winton. At that they retreated—cursing, for he could hear them—but not far, it seems; for all the time the first cargo was unloadin’, he could catch the white of their faces now and again amongst the shrubs. So, on some pretext or another, he stabled the horses and put up the porters against your comin’, thinkin’—as was right—that our gentlemen would shy at so brave a company. And then from room to room he walked all night; and he saw the rogues come out on the gravel and dance wi’ rage in the moonlight.”

“Why didn’t he take a posse of his bodyguard and ask the scoundrels their business?”

“Oh, come, Tuke! You ask too much of the man—upon my word you do. He ain’t exactly a free agent here, I gather. But don’t this follow queerly on what you told us the other night? And Dennis acquaints me there are signs of their having tried to force an entrance already.”

“Does he? He appears to give you confidences that he withholds from me.”

“Well,” answered Sir David, dryly and a little haughtily, “maybe I invite them more than you do.”

“That is possible, of course. Would it be an abuse of them to specify the nature of this presumed attempt?”

The little baronet took his hand from the saddle, and looked at the other with a puzzled and rather angry expression.

“’Tis round by the north wing, I understand,” said he coldly—“a grating that gives light to some secret hole below the basement,”—and with a brief “Good-day to you!” he turned and walked away.

Mr. Tuke made no attempt to follow and conciliate him. He was in fact worried out of all present geniality by the constant strain upon his faculties engendered of wearying suspicion. While he moved so blind and helpless, a friendship that was curious merely confounded him.

Therefore, instead of succumbing to a natural instinct of good-fellowship, he merely pricked his horse on, and rode round by the further wing of the house.

Hitherto he had taken no concern to examine the nature of the opening that admitted light and air to the “Priest’s Hole.” Now, he had little difficulty in identifying the actual spot, for, in addition to its being below a barred aperture in the house-side, which he felt convinced was that that belonged to the gloomy chamber within, its neighbourhood presented unmistakable signs of some recent trespass.

A massive grating of wrought-iron, sunk deep in the masonry of the wall, which it pierced at a basement depth of five or six feet, looked upon a sunless little area—a mere narrow box of cemented stones; and this, without doubt, was the object he sought. The excavation had been so matted in and overgrown with a generation of bramble and dog-wood and wayfaring tree, that no one might have guessed the pit sunk within the mass, had not a torn opening in the latter, bristling with white splints of branches, led him to investigation, as it led the horseman in the present instance.

He dismounted, and forcing his body through the aperture, came upon the dank twilight well, and looked down.

Then, as his eyes adapted their vision to the gloom, he saw that ineffectual hands had been busy at the grating—filing at it—chipping at the stones in which it was embedded—vainly, in that cabined space, endeavouring to force it from its iron grip.

“H’m!” muttered he, as he rent his way to the daylight once more. “Luck and Mr. Turk are my guardian angels hitherto. I must face this business in sober earnest.”

Walking round to the front again, he saw that Sir David had ridden away, and that Whimple was standing at the porch watching the operations of the men. Waiting until they were alone together for a moment—“Why did you never tell me of that attempt on the ‘Priest’s Hole’?” said he quietly.

Nothing of course in reply, but that same cursed look of distress and muttering of near inaudible evasions.

“Here,” he said in the same tone, “take my horse!”

He walked through the house till he came to a certain dreary stone chamber and to a ring set in the boards. Here he wrenched up the flap, and leapt into the dusky hole beneath.

There was no sign there of the least success having attended the efforts of the baffled rogues. The grating was immovable in its socket, stones and stanchions wedded endurably.

A narrow ledge for a seat projected from one side of the pit. Using this as a stepping-stone, he scrambled out and hurried off to superintend the placing of his furniture, leaving the flap open.

CHAPTER XX.

IT was on the second day after the arrival of the furniture that the surcharged storm, that had so long been lowering over the caretaker’s head, burst in an explosion of thunder that was near attended with tragic consequences.

In the interval Mr. Tuke had been too greatly occupied with other business to give consideration to, or take action in, that little matter of the worthy Mr. Breeds and his far-too-heady wine. Glancing askance, indeed, at the subject with his mind’s eye now and again, he felt a degree of perplexity as to the course it would be anything less than futile for him to pursue; inasmuch as nothing definite in the way of roguery had succeeded his drugging, and it was quite open to the landlord to affirm that a dog-tired guest had fallen sound asleep over his bottle. But for the present, adequate debate of the subject must be adjourned sine die; and, in the meantime, the gentlemen of the “Dog and Duck” were leaving him, to all appearance, peaceably alone.

Now, on that particular morning, he took stock of his newly-equipped and carpeted rooms with a feeling of satisfaction such as a rescinded sentence of exile might have afforded him. A few days more would see the advent of such servants as he had thought himself justified in engaging through his agent; and then his house would be ordered for all immediate purposes, and he himself served and tended somewhat as befitted his condition.

“Delsrop” furnished was a very different living-place to the gusty and melancholy habitation of his hitherto experience; and for the first time since his arrival he was feeling a certain sense of homeliness—shadowy, indeed, but with a faint warmth in it that was a little earnest of comfort to come. Much, of course, remained to do—so much, in fact, that, in moments of depression, he would liken his present accomplishment to putting new wine into old bottles. The grounds were still a wilderness; the out-buildings tottering to their fall; the canker of decay was eaten into the very plaster-epidermis of the house itself. Still, the husk remained splendidly durable—a stubborn fortress from which to direct operations; and in this at least was matter for most sincere self-congratulation.

In the prospect of an established household, he was considerably exercised in his mind as to what course to pursue with Whimple and his overburdening sister. Did he consult his own common-sense, he would get rid of them both without any further humouring of indecision. But to this outright action he could not bring himself, and that from an aggravating sentiment no less than a motive of policy. As to the latter, he must needs hesitate before returning to the enemy their possible confederate, whose weakness lay in his unconsciousness of surveillance. As to the former, inexplicable and irritating as it was, he could not deny even to himself that, for some unaccountable reason, he took a secret interest in the poor creature’s personality—was aware of a perverse desire in his own heart that the man would by some means succeed in disabusing him of the prejudice he had formed against him, and end by becoming his devoted and confidential servant. Against this last wish or emotion, unformulated as it was, he would bitterly rebel; but the germ of it quickened in him nevertheless.

Now, having dined and smoked a pipe of good tobacco, he wandered off into his grounds, easy and ruminative, and gave thought pleasantly to the brighter side of things. Pushing, presently, into the dense shrubbery that skirted the Stockbridge road, he came suddenly upon a little clearing amongst the bushes, in the middle of which was a bricked dome or segment of masonry, something after the shape of an Esquimaux hut, which protruded from the ground and was accessible by way of a low door or trap of rotted wood. Against this last he kicked, driving it open, and was aware of a pit within, deepish, but half-choked with weedy rubbish—a disused ice-house, by every token of shape and situation.

“Mouth of Hades on the dead plains of Enna!” he murmured, with a little self-preening smile over his remembered classics; and he fell a-dreaming, as he strolled away, in that trance of paganism that enwraps many who give licence to their imaginations in silent woods.

“But who shall be my Persephone?” he breathed, and thought of one or other of two most meet for abduction. He felt his arms about—whom? No matter. The broken cellar served his fancy for a spell, and, unguessed by him, was to serve his experience by and by with tougher matter than day-dreams.

Suddenly, issuing from a dank, dumb little track amongst the bushes, he found himself looking over the ruined garden to the rear of the lodge. He jerked to a halt. Amongst the compact weediness of depraved vegetable stuff, thridding the cumbered paths and alleys of straggled fruit trees, moved the girl Darda. She sang to herself in that odd wild voice of hers, the stinging disharmonies of which seemed to flicker up in the flame of her hair. Then, in a moment she had drifted into the gloom of the porch and vanished.

At that the watcher came out into the open, and stepping softly, followed in silent pursuit. He could not have explained what impelled him to it. Only it seemed to him a natural counter-move in that game of secrecy and suspicion he had set his wits to master.

Stealthily he stole down the littered passage—stealthily put foot in the dusk room where the museum was. He might pad it like an Ojibbeway, but she heard him. She heard him and turned, her eyes opening chatoyant.

She was standing near the loaded shelves, fingering something—a round yellow flint-stone, by the look of it—that she had lifted from its place amongst the collection.

“What have you there?” said he, curious and masterful at once.

She did not answer. But she snatched the object to her bosom and glinted at him with adumbrated pupils.

“Let me see it,” he said, advancing a step.

At that she gave out a thin little tale of screams, like the cry of a shot rat, and, retreating into a black corner, hugged her treasure with a frantic closeness.

“It’s not for you!” she cried. “It’s his—Dennis’s. It was thrown through the window to him that night you went a-wooing to ‘Chatters.’”

“Thrown! by whom, you jade?”

“How should I know? The shadows were thick about the house. They cried to get back to their dark hole under the floor against daylight. But he wouldn’t let them, and they stormed and wept. I would have opened the door and given them passage; but he is wise, my wise brother, and he forbade me. ‘They must bid higher first,’ said he.”

It was as if a dark veil fell over the listener’s face.

“Go on,” he muttered.

“They cried to him; but he withdrew, and would give no answer. And they entreated long, till my heart sobbed for them. ‘Let them in, Dennis,’ I prayed. But he said, ‘They must bid higher.’ Then they threw this thing, and it cracked through the lattice; and he crept softly and took it up and read and cast it down again. ‘Make no sound,’ he whispered to me; ‘and they will think we are gone.’ But I went secretly and picked up the stone; and all night long the shadows moaned about the house.”

She screamed again, with a note of fury startled out of terror, for her master had pounced upon her and wrung the treasure from her grasp. She fought with him, clawing and spitting like a cat; but he beat her off, as he would have any wild animal, and rushed out to the light.

Here, in a moment’s gain of time, he looked and read what was roughly scrawled in pencil upon the smooth surface of the stone.

“Half the profits,” were the words—“if you lead us to the Lake of Wine.”

He had space to no more than decipher this when the wild creature was upon him again.

“Stand off!” he cried furiously, backing from her, with a white face. “Stand off! I must have a word with your brother.”

He heard her swift step behind him as he raced up the drive. He might have been conscious of a certain lack of dignity in the situation, had his passion allowed his reason a moment to itself.

It did not. It leapt—a white consuming blaze that seemed to roar the louder with the wind of his going.

For here, at last, he held in his very hand a damning proof of the guilt he had so long suspected. In the fierce triumph of its possession, he forgot caution, policy—everything but the lust to crush under a savage heel the reptile he had warmed and cherished at his hearth. No doubt that little rebellious emotion we wot of was reacting upon itself with a double hate of its own weakness. He writhed to think that he had ever admitted it to his counsels; but his revenge should be proportionate.

An evil chance drove him upon his victim on the very threshold of the hall; and he had him by the throat before the poor wretch could so much as guess his purpose.

“Here, here!” he yelled, holding up the stone. “I have the proof at length. You dog—you currish hypocrite, to be in the league against me!”

The man’s face had gone of a mortal whiteness. He struggled feebly.

“Master!” he gasped.

The other’s fury came to a bestial head. He threw down the stone and struck the poor creature on the mouth.

“Silence!” he shrieked. “I know it all!—I’ve heard all the truth, I tell you. You shall swing for it, by God! You shall——”

Mad to give expression to his ungovernable rage, he flung himself upon the shivering form, and seized and tore it along the passage, while it pleaded to him in hoarse terror, and clutched vainly at whatever projections came in its way.

Suddenly, conscious of his purpose, it gave up a shrill scream, and writhed frantically in his hands.

“No, no!” cried the man. “Not there—not there! Give me time to speak! Oh, my God! I shall go mad of the horror of that place!”

They had struggled to within a few feet of the “Priest’s Hole.” The flap yet remained open as Mr. Tuke had left it.

“You will go in,” panted the latter, beating under his victim by mere furious force of muscle. “You will go in, and lie and rot till I can carry you to Winton Gaol. Down with you!”

In his stumbling wrestle with the half-fainting creature, he twisted about, saw something, and let go his prey for a moment. Whimple fell back as if he were dying, and on the instant the other struck up and caught Darda by the wrist. A thin flash of steel went above their heads, and there was the sound of a knife ringing on the boards. There was no blood-letting; but the moral was as if there had been. The fever of passion in the man was subdued to a worser coldness of cruelty.

“Not yet!” he said, in a low voice, his eyes holding her like evil magnets. “Not yet, you pretty animal!”

In a moment he leapt at her, lifted her light form in his arms, and, clapping his hand over her shrill voluble mouth, bore her to the front of the house, and, rolling her without, closed and bolted the door upon her.

Then he returned with smiling lips to the other.

He lay as he had left him—cowering, exhausted, half-stupid with terror already, it seemed.

Tuke leaned and took the impassive form under the arms. With his foot he shuffled the limp trailing legs over into the pit, and so lowered the body with a single heave. It went down unresistingly, save for a broken moan or two, and sank into a huddled heap at the bottom.

He raised the flap, and stood an instant looking down. There was little motion below him, or sign of life but a weak fitful whimpering.

Feeling as one who stubbornly signs his own soul to the devil, he closed the pit-mouth, secured it, and walked away with his heart thumping. And there rose up to and pursued him a long dreary whine like that of a dog baying the moon.

CHAPTER XXI.

IT would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement. A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another, later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably dictated by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country squire; and, though he subscribed with infinite complacency to the extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby hold his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding to his position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous lord of acres who should exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of neither.

But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed that Miss Angela, in her rustic retirement, made a cloisteral virtue of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-strings in the crowded orchestras of fashion. Certainly she never had a mind to fiddle second, and, possibly, shrunk on that account from the necessity of ever assuming herself out-rivalled in that claim for leadership so passionately advanced by successive strings of town élégantes.

However that may be, her capacity for situations was extreme; her sensitiveness to any least appeal of the emotions a perpetual excuse for what, in a less gifted creature, would have passed for a most engaging inconstancy. Indeed, to thwart her in some pursuit of an ideal, was to feel the full force of the passion that impelled her to the chase.

So, for some nine months of the year, she held at her brother’s house her little feudatory court, and found, in the faithful homage of her squireens, a spring of content so untinged by jealousy, or the necessity of it, as that it seemed the very rejuvenating water of life. There, did she tire of poetry, she smiled upon music in a way to make it almost in tune with itself; did she fall out of touch with Handel, she sickened, as it were, of art, and painted her name with an elegant flourish on the bright margin of the sky; did she weary of Tom, she handed him over for decent burial in a homelier heart, and coquetted with Dick during the whole of a St. Martin’s summer. And for all she did there was the appropriate background of woods and freshets and frisking lambs, that seemed to justify her most erratic courses. For the trees changed month by month, and the freshets swelled to torrents, and the lambs frisked into mutton with fat wool and were shorn.

Now, about the period of Mr. Tuke’s invasion of her fields of romance, she was in her state aurelian; and, bursting its shell, her butterfly fancy lighted on him. Never before had she happened upon so dear a flower for the engagement of her sensibilities. She tested him with her delicate antennæ, and found him full of a rough honey that charmed her palate exceedingly. He had thorns; but with her little nippers she could pinch the tips off these and make them harmless. She fell into a really parlous state, and seemed to learn her womanliness—though she was rising twenty-seven—in a single sweet hour.

His image had dwelt with her ever since. It was with her now, as she stepped over the threshold of “Chatters” in her riding-habit. For she was for a canter with her brother; and secretly she hoped to come across him in the course of it.

Sir David was already in the saddle, and a groom held her horse.

At the very moment she came forth, she heard her brother utter an exclamation, and saw a light bounding figure fling itself towards him and, catching at his saddle-bow, make some appeal to him with a frenzy of gesture. It was the girl Darda, as she saw—hoodless, flushed and dishevelled; and the lady looked on a little amazed, and with a fine attitude of scorn towards a creature who could so forego the ethics of her sex under the stimulus of excitement.

“What is it, Davy?” she said, descending the steps, and coldly ignoring the wild-eyed young woman, who as indifferently returned her contempt with utter disregard of her presence.

Sir David looked perplexed and troubled.

“Hush!” he said to the girl, who still pleaded with him in a low clamour of words.

Darda fell silent; but she looked round on Miss Royston with lowered brows and her white teeth set doggedly.

“Rabbit it!” cried the little baronet in perturbation. “I’m foundered, Angel. What shall I do?”

“We are going for a ride, are we not?”

“Yes. But lookee here. The girl says Tuke accuses her brother of some villainy, and hath shut him up in the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”

“He can do as he likes with his own, I presume.”

Darda broke into a mad outcry.

“Shame on you!” she screamed—“that can lock your woman’s breast from pity with a key of gold! He’s poor and friendless, or such as you would never dare to speak so!”

“Silence, girl!” said Sir David sternly; but his sister had flushed up a very stormy red.

“The fellow hath no more than his deserts, I’ll warrant,” she said loudly. “It must be ill managing a craven and an idiot.”

Sir David vaulted from his saddle. Miss Angel’s fingers were nervous with her little riding-whip, and her pale eyes glinted like broken flints.

“Have reason, Angel,” he said quickly. “What if I have small ground to interfere? Dennis is my old friend; and, by cock, I can’t believe him guilty of aught but weakness at the worst. There must be some mistake. At least I can do no harm by seein’ the master.”

Darda caught his hand and kissed it passionately.

“You will let him free!” she cried. “Come, come, come! Every minute maddens him that he lies among the shadows. You don’t know what that is. Put my fine lady there and cure her of the vapours.”

Her fingers crooked with desire to mangle the fair face near her.

“Come!” she shrieked again—“or that devil will have his own. I tried to stab him, but he saw and struck the knife out of my hand.”

Sir David started back.

“Oh!” he cried, with a fallen face. “What’s that? I must ride over in good truth. Follow, you, Darda; and keep those wicked fingers out of the fire.”

Miss Royston stepped forward haughtily. The groom, a passive but greatly interested spectator of this pretty scene, touched his cap and held down his hand for stirrup.

“If you really intend it,” said the lady, making, on a sudden thought, a virtue of inclination, “I will come with you. There may be bad blood fired, where one interferes unwarrantably with the actions of another.”

“I think not,” said Sir David quietly; “if Mr. Tuke is the man I take him to be. But, come, Angel. You may serve as an argument where none of mine would carry.”

She gave a light laugh as she was lifted into her saddle.

“You flatter me, brother,” she said. “I will persuade in the language of flowers, and you by club-law. We will see which hath the better wit.”

She flicked up her horse, and, whether by accident or design, drove it brushing against Darda as she stood near.

The girl sprang back, almost with an oath on her lips.

“Some day, perhaps,” she muttered in her teeth—“some day, perhaps, you shall set your wit against bright steel, mistress, and see which is the sharper.”

She caught sight of Sir David turning in his saddle and beckoning her to follow, and waved to him and cried wildly, “I am coming!”

“To ’a view hulloa!” said the attentive groom, with a grin. “Run un to earth, gal, in the ‘Priest’s Hoal.’”

“Oh, my!” he cried jeeringly, as she struck at him aimlessly in passing and sped on her way.

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. TUKE sat in his dining-hall, swollen and glowering as a ruffled tom-cat. He had not struck in haste to repent at leisure; but it is true that he was woefully exercised in his mind as to what to do next. The logical sequence of his action, he felt, should be incarceration for his prisoner in Winton Gaol on the strength of an information—his own—laid against him. Certainly. And how should the information be worded? It was at this point he always fell to gnawing his lips, and drumming on the table with his fingers, and glaring at a robin on the window-sill, as if he knew it could furnish the solution if it would only leave off hopping and twittering.

Now, he had done rightly and as he had engaged himself to act. He had bided his time, and struck on the first evidence of guilt. Still, now he came to think it over—with what impartiality he could command—he could not but acknowledge that the proofs might show extremely negative to an unbiased intelligence. For what did they amount to? Crime? No. But the invitation to it.

What would be the value of his solitary pièce de conviction in the eye of the law? A moral inference was too short a rope to hang a man with. He could say only his servant was tempted; but what was to show that it was to his undoing? Moreover, he had not even taken the precaution to retain possession of the condemning stone.

On this last thought, he sprang up and went hastily out into the hall. To and fro he searched; but without result. The flint, with its scrawled hieroglyphics, was gone. He unbolted and threw open the front door, half-expecting to find Darda huddled, accusatory, under the porch, whither he had pushed her near an hour ago. She was not there, nor anywhere about was the stone; and he returned to his lonely hall and his complex self-communings.

He was deep in them, when he heard the sound of hoofs on the gravel outside, and, a moment later, the voice of his friend of “Chatters” pronouncing his name.

“Here!” he cried; and grasped Sir David warmly by the hand as the latter pushed open the room door and entered.

He was unfeignedly glad to see him; the more so, perhaps, from a certain uneasy memory of his somewhat churlish attitude towards the little man when last they had met.

“What brings you over?” he cried gladly. “But you are welcome for any reason.”

“Darda fetched me,” said Sir David, with a little tremor in his voice.

“The devil she did!”

He was scanning the other’s face attentively and inquiringly.

“Well,” he said, “that saves me an explanation. She has told you? I am cursed in the fellow, Blythewood. I find him in league with those ruffians, and what to do with him the Lord knows.”

“Where is he?”

“I have him under bolt and board for the present.”

“In the ‘Priest’s Hole’?”

“Ah! she hath informed you? It serves as a lockhouse pro tempore, and until I can hale the rogue before the leet of Winton and procure his committal.”

“How did you force him in there—into that hole, I mean? and he smitten with terror no doubt.”

“Smitten, as you say. He was half-dead with it. He went in like a log.”

“Harkee, Tuke. You must have him out again.”

The other stared.

“I mean it,” said the baronet firmly. “Saints forbid ’tis any concern of mine to interfere, do you elect to hold him fast. But dup the poor wretch in decent quarters, Tuke, and not in a hole ’twere a shame to fling a dog into.”

“I have my own methods and places,” said the lord of “Delsrop,” mighty haughtily. “Is that what you came to say?”

A flush of resentment crimsoned Sir David’s face.

“Yes,” said he; “and some more to a harder purpose.”

On the word he reigned in his anger shortly, and a smile broke from his lips.

“There!” he cried frankly. “I come set on discretion, and this is the result. ’Tis no business of mine, I allow. But I have an old tenderness for the man, Tuke, and it wrings me to think of him maddening down there.”

“I regret the necessity.”

“Is it one? Waiving the question of the ‘Priest’s Hole’—are you so convinced of his guilt?”

“Else would my treatment of him lack a warrant, Sir David Blythewood.”

“Ah! You are offended with me. I can’t help it. I—rabbit it, Tuke! ’twill out, ’twill out. I resent your treatment of the man. You come amongst us, a stranger, and God knows I would be friendly with ye. But ye start on a cross scent here, where an older member of the pack would hunt true, and you would have us all follow your lead. D’ye think I don’t know more about Dennis in twenty year than you have found out in a month, or two or three? I stake my faith you’re misled somewhere, and that the man’s innocent of evil intent, whatever the appearances.”

Mr. Tuke smiled very politely and acidly.

“’Tis always a pleasure to hear a gentleman’s opinions,” said he; “but a fact will knock the most stubborn of them on the head.”

“You mean—the girl quoted some folly o’ writin’ on a stone.”

“Just so. It happens to be a piece of incriminating evidence.”

“May I see it?”

“Really, Sir David, you must take my word. I know of only one course if you must insist upon questioning it.”

“I understand. I shall not be lacking if need comes, believe me. I tell you to your face you are arrogatin’ the rights of the executive, and more, in casting one into that foul pit on a whisper of suspicion. There are constables, sir; and a Justice of the Peace within a couple of miles of your door, and your proper course was to lay an information with him.”

“And see my bird fly meanwhile?”

“You could detain him; but not there.”

“I see my mistake, then. ’Twas the best bedroom should have been put at his service, and the window closed from draughts.”

Sir David turned to go with considerable dignity.

“Mr. Tuke,” he said over his shoulder, “I stake my reputation on the man’s honesty, and I say you are treating him vilely and inhumanly. I shall have the honour of sendin’ a friend to you.”

The other bowed grimly, and was advancing to show his visitor out, when both gentlemen were aware of an apparition in the doorway, standing white and rebukeful, with clasped hands.

“Fie, Angel!” cried the baronet. “You’ve been listening.”

Whether to cover her confusion at the charge, or to top the situation appropriately, Miss Angela at this flung herself down into the room and on to her brother’s breast.

“Davy, Davy!” she cried in an anguished voice, “you’re not going to fight?” And he answered fretfully: “Get up! You’re squashin’ my shirt-frill.”

Mr. Tuke came forward gallantly. The girl had stepped back with an air of frightened indecision. With one hand she adjusted a tumbled curl; the other she held out as if for an examination by Love the doctor.

Her knight assumed the rôle, and, bending, kissed the little active pulse.

“You have been day-dreaming,” he said. “Your brother and I are great friends.”

She looked up at him chidingly.

“Mr. Tuke!” she implored. Then said she: “If you are great friends, take one another’s hands.”

The two glanced each at each comically; but neither moved.

“There!” she cried. “Is it for you to deceive a woman? You were going to fight; and what about?”

“Not you, my dear,” said Sir David.

“Fie!” she said, blushing. “’Tis never gentlewomen that set gallants by the ears. I would take it no honour, brother, to call yours in question.”

The two had nothing to say.

“I demand to know!” she cried imperiously, stamping her foot.

“Madam,” stuttered Mr. Tuke—“it—it merely turns on a difference of opinion.”

She courtesied to him very prettily.

“The lion and the bear,” she said, “were e’en glad to lie down and take breath; when by comes a fox and seizes the prey they were too exhausted to dispute him the possession of. Doth the difference of opinion turn on one imprisoned hard by? Here enters the fox, good gentlemen, and offers herself an arbitrator.”

She stepped up to the master of the house and held out her palm.

“It is like a little cradle for a cupid,” he said.

“Nonsense, sir. I want the key of your dungeon. Have I not earned it?”

He laughed.

“There is none,” he said; “but a bolt in the floor.”

“May I shoot it back?”

“’Twould bruise your little fingers wofully.”

“But I have a heel, sir—that can kick against the pricks, I must add; or my gentle brother will say it for me.”

Mr. Tuke spoke more seriously.

“Well,” said he, “I leave the issue in your hands. I am loth to release the fellow. He hath conspired against me, I think and believe, and hath no more than his deserts. But, after all, it is a little thing if it please you; and I will not even hold you responsible for his safe custody.”

“Hold me!” cried Sir David eagerly; and he bent and whispered in his sister’s ear: “Thanks, Angel; you were right—you have the better wit.”

The girl was turning radiantly to her cavalier, when there came the sound of quick breathing at the door; and there stood Darda, her hand to her panting side, her face set in an expression of bitter resentment.

“Her!” she gasped, pointing at Miss Royston—“her, to plead for him and take the credit, to feed her beastly vanity withal? She shan’t—I’ll tear her wi’ my nails first.”

Tuke stood at watch.

“Release the man, if you will, Miss Royston,” he said. “Your brother will conduct and assist you. I must stay and look after this pretty member of my household.”

As he spoke, the mad creature sprung forwards; but he was quick and caught her in his arms, where she writhed, screaming.

“Make haste,” he said—“and is it not an enviable rôle to be a keeper of wild beasts?”

Sir David hurried his sister from the room. She threw her knight a very grateful rose of gratitude over her shoulder as she went.

As they passed out, Tuke tightened his grip, almost cruelly, on the struggling girl. Suddenly she fell passive in his hands. He looked down, and she up at him, her face running with tears.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said, with a catching sob. “I will be quiet.”

“Will you give me your word not to stir from here till I bid you?”

“Yes,” she answered, faint and pathetic.

“And not to touch the lady when she returns?”

“Yes.”

All in a moment she sank down at his feet, crying as if her heart were broken.

“He will see an angel in her,” she moaned; “and will love her for releasing him.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

AT breakfast the next morning Darda waited upon her master, with swollen eyes and a very sullen manner of attention. He was in a strange mood himself, compound of perplexity and exaltation. In the girl’s piteous acknowledgment of his mastery over her, he had warmed to a toleration of her foibles that was almost a regard for her as something a possession of his own. He could secretly applaud that loyalty to her brother, when—after venting itself in rebellion against his own mandates—it sunk from arrogance to a heart-broken appeal to his mercy. Having subdued, he could be gentle with her. Moreover, reason resuming a certain sway over his passions, he felt he had acted hastily in that little question of the “Priest’s Hole.”

But, there was a third and very engaging side to his meditations—a thought that, by stooping his stiff neck to the thread of a little glossy sandal, he had tacitly pronounced himself in humble subjection to the owner thereof; in fact, that by submitting Miss Royston as his proxy of grace, he had indirectly suggested, in thin outline, a declaration to her.

His perplexity was for the brother, with whom matters stood as on the first entrance of Miss Angel; and with regard to whose threatened affaire d’honneur, no hint of apology had issued from either side. Assuredly he could not stand up to the manling and seek to let blood that was of a common source with that of his demi-goddess. As surely, for all his tender respect for that same heavenly ichor, he was not going to lend himself to a solitary peppering from motives of delicacy. But, who was to make the first advances?

He preferred putting this on one side, that he might obtain the better mental view of a picture that stuck very agreeably in his memory. This was of Angela, all flushed and softened, bending down to him from her horse as she sat mounted for her departure.

“He is very ill and overcome—the poor servant,” she had said. “Be gentle with him for my sake.”

And he had kissed her gloved hand, and taken rash oath that her whim should be his law. And beyond this, I will swear, he never reflected that she had made nothing of the presumed villainy of the man, as it affected his master’s safety, or that she had asked him, Robert Tuke, to take care of himself for her sake.

He came out of luminous retrospection to find his maid’s eyes fixed upon him with intently mournful regard.

“Come here, Darda,” said he.

The girl obeyed at once; and stood mutely at his side.

“Your brother remains in bed, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Is he ill, or merely shamming?”

“He is broken down—broken down and very ill.”

She spoke in a low troubled voice—so low, that her master could barely distinguish the words. He shifted his position, so as to meet her full face. Her eyes answered the inquiry of his with some sad, crippled defiance.

“Darda,” he said, “you tried to kill me, you know. That was stupid and wicked; for only great trouble could have come to you both had you succeeded. But, I forgive you; for you struck in passion and out of your love for that other. Now, tell me—you saw the stone; and was I not justified in putting him there on the strength of it?”

“It would have killed him—the shadows would have killed him in a little time.”

“Ah! we men are made of tougher clay.”

“Not he—no, not he.”

“He conspired against me.”

“It is a lie. He never did.”

“But the stone says so.”

“Then it lies. Ask him. He will tell you the truth.”

“I have it in my mind to do so. I will go now.”

He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Halfway he turned and came back to the girl again.

“I have no wish to be harsh with either of you,” he said gently. “Could I convince myself you were faithful to my interests, I could prove, I think, a generous master.”

He took her by the chin, looked in her eyes earnestly a moment, and went from the room.

She stood a full minute, upright and rigid as he had left her. Then suddenly the tears were rolling down her passive face.

She murmured some inaudible words, bent and, with a passionate forlorn gesture, kissed the back of the chair on which he had been seated; and so flung herself down against it, and, twisting her arms about her head, remained quite still.

In the meantime Mr. Tuke was ascending the stairs to a little room in the north wing. He moved pre-occupied, with a certain pulse of embarrassment fluttering in his breast; and tapped on the door he sought, when he reached it, half-apologetically.

There might have been an answer from within—the mere shadow of a broken murmur. Without more ado he turned the handle and entered.

A figure startled up on the truckle-bed and gazed at him with terrified eyes. It was ghastly with the pallor of tortured nerves; and of a sudden it turned, staring over its shoulder, and clutched frantically at the headboard.

“Oh, God!” it whispered. “Not again. I can’t bear it!”

The implied deadly reproach; the conviction driven home that he, a humane man by nature, had in one gust of passion caused this mortal wreck and disaster, pierced the intruder’s heart with a keen blade of remorse. He stood where he had stopped.

“Whimple,” he said gently, “you need fear no more violence. If I meditated you such, I could not be guilty of the inhumanity in your present state.”

Something in his tone or his expression reassured the poor terrified creature. Gradually he loosened his hold of the bedhead, and, turning, sat up on his pillow.

“What do you want?” he whispered.

“I want to know one thing. I want to have a direct answer to a simple question. Are you conspiring against me?”

“Before God, no.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then said Mr. Tuke:

“Representations have been made to me. I own I acted with unconsidered haste. If I have wronged you, I am sorry. Swear to me that your part in the business of that stone was an unwitting one—that you are blameless, and I will believe you and ask your pardon.”

Suddenly the eyes of the weak fellow on the bed filled with tears.

“Sir! sir!” he cried in a full voice. “Oh! if you will only be good to me!—you will—I can see it—I can——”

The other saw him about to fling himself out of bed, and forestalled the act by stepping hastily up to him. Whimple seized his hand in a fervid clasp and looked up in his face.

“I swear it!” he said, half-choking. “From first to last, however the villains tempted me, I gave them no answer. I never knew the girl had got the stone, or that you would think to read my baseness in it. I have desired so earnestly to serve you faithfully from your first coming—to win into your favour and your confidence. But I saw you would never let me—that the curse of my inheritance was on me for ever and ever.”

“What inheritance, my poor fellow?”

The servant had bowed his head; but he looked up eagerly upon hearing the gentle tones.

“May I tell you?—no, not that. But, if you will let me—I have much to say that I have never dared to say yet. I am a coward and I dare so little. Perhaps living in the shadow of this haunted place has wrought upon and unnerved me. But now, if you will let me—I have so longed to ask your leave—to lean humbly upon your boldness and your strength and learn, if I could, to be a man at last.”

Tuke held up a warning finger.

“Ah, no!” said the other. “I am not exciting myself into a fever. Master, if you only knew how I have sickened with the desire to unburden myself to you! But I dared not; and I saw the suspicion and distrust grow in your eyes, and then I dared less and less.”

“Tell me now what it is you have wished to say.”

“Will you let me? Will you be content to take a humble servant’s word for the truth of what he states, when at the same time he implores you not to force him answer where he fain would be silent?”

“A thundering preface. Go on, my friend. I believe that what you do elect to tell me will be God’s truth.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes! Sir, I would ask you—do you know—did you ever hear who was the last tenant of ‘Delsrop’?”

“I have heard. ’Twas one Turk; some dull saturnine fellow that met an unchancy fate.”

“God help him! By such a name was he known. He took me into his employment here scarce a month before he was murdered.”

“The deuce he did.”

“Oh, sir! ’twas the first of my misdirected attitude towards you that I dreaded you would cast me forth did you learn my last service had been with a highwayman.”

“A highwayman!”

“He was indeed, were the truth confessed; as wicked and notorious an outlaw as ever hoodwinked the justices; and his name Cutwater.”

“Cutwater? Good heavens! Surely a past generation was familiar with it?”

“Well, I fear. This was the man—come hither to live on the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, and so to his dreadful fate. Mr. Tuke, he died—God pity him!—according to his deserts; but he left a terrible heritage of evil.”

The listener sat half-bewildered by the revelation. The little cloud that had once before gathered about his father’s memory, broadened and grew darker. From a thief of the road, then, had he passed on this pregnant estate to his son. Haunted in truth—perhaps as the price of blood, and the earnest of deeds too foul for mention.

“Go on,” he muttered.

“Once,” continued the servant in a low, fearful voice, “men came to the house, while I was there. He forced me to be present; and there followed a dreadful scene. The worst of them—bloody Jack Fern—was spokesman. Him you have seen, sir.”

“Have I? Aye, aye. I note the rascal’s white hair.”

“Yes, it is he. It seemed my master, the highwayman, held a great stone of value that they all claimed a share in. ’Twas called, as you will know, the Lake of Wine.”

“The plot opens out.”

“He denied them, with oaths of fury. They had been paid their price like any other clerks of office. They swore the stone was hid somewhere in the house and they would have it out. He barred the door and they made at him. It was numbers only that emboldened them, for he was bitter feared of all and a devil in strength and resource. He caught the first of them—oh, my God! I fall sick to think of it now—he was a blythe young fellow—and broke his neck across his knee. For years the snap and the cough sounded in my dreams.”

“Well, well. It was horrible, as you say.”

“At that, they all drew back, cowed as whipped dogs. I was half-fainting, and can remember little more. I was only a lad of eighteen at the time, and nerveless even then. But I know that they went carrying away their dead; and that they buried somewhere in the grounds. I have never dared to think where. Sir, it was only a day or two after that my master disappeared, and in the meantime I thought myself like to die, and fled upon his mere approach. But, on the night of his murder, they all came back—while he was swinging on the downs—and they forced entrance to the house. By Heaven’s mercy I escaped and hid myself in the woods. There I lay in hunger and wretchedness for days; till, desperate with starvation, I stole back for food. Then I saw the place ransacked and overturned—much as ’twas when you first came—and Mr. Creel taking inventory of the ruin. So ’twas evident a mad search had been conducted; but fruitless, as afterwards appeared.”

“A moment, my friend. I must needs marvel here a little. Why did you not quit Mr. Cutwater’s service when you were informed of Mr. Turk’s real character?”

Whimple slunk back against the bed-head, and put his hands before his face.

“And why did the gentleman take you of all people into his confidence?”

There was no reply.

“Well,” said Tuke, “I perceive this is a point you are sensitive of. Leave it unanswered, then.”

The man looked up gratefully.

“If you will only rest content, sir, with this—that he desired to wean me from honest courses, which failing, he pursued me with all the hatred of his heart.”

“A piece of unconscionable villainy. And had he taken you from other honest employ for the purpose?”

“It was so, sir. I was drudge hitherto in a lads’ school in old Melcombe Regis by the sea.”

“Ah!—well, you happened on Mr. Creel, and——”

“Heaven favour the good gentleman. How he had the news I know not. But so, it seemed, he represented the succeeding owner of ‘Delsrop.’ Sir, I crept back for food. Though the place was my horror and my despair, I had no stomach, feckless creature that I was, to force a living elsewhere. I crept back, and something drove me to tell Mr. Creel my whole unhappy tale. And he believed and pitied me, and put me in charge of the house that had been my bane and my prison. And here have I dwelt ever since; at first in great terror that the men would return, but gradually learning a sad serenity as the years passed and nought occurred to discomfort me.”

“And how would you account for your immunity from further trouble?”

“Ah!—twas e’en that they durst not return to the scene of their crime while yet the hue was up. And so, maybe, with such villains, one came to be hanged and another transported, till all were gone—all but him they called bloody Jack Fern, who hath reappeared after twenty peaceful years, to renew the search.”

“But the others—his present confederates?”

“They are new to me. He must have fellow-rogues, be sure, to whom he will confide—not like that other whom they murdered, who was of those few giants of crime that can be a tower of strength to themselves.”

“Why, my good soul I could swear to a note of enthusiasm in your voice.”

“Oh, sir! ’tis nothing but the natural homage of the weak to the strong; such as I would fain pay to my new master, would he let me.”

“No flattery. And so Mr. Fern turned up again?”

“It was the very day before your arrival that I first saw him. The thatch of his white hairs might not deceive me. And I thought I should ha’ died. After all those years! And the place gone to ruin in that long space, and only I its keeper. For this the fearful man had found out; but not of your coming, that should upset his plans—else had I been likely stiff by this time and rotting underground in some secret hole.”

“And he sought to bribe you?”

“He hath wrought upon me with menaces and promise of reward either to reveal the stone’s hiding-place—which he misdoubts I wot not of—or to give him secret search-warrant during your absences.”

“Yet I must wonder how he ventured to assume your infidelity, nor dreaded you would acquaint me of all.”

“Ah, sir! had he not known me in the pay of that other, his master? the which he used to threaten me, never doubting my old complicity.”

“And all this you have resisted, good fellow, with your heart choking in your mouth?”

“I have so desired—indeed, I have so desired, sir, to be thought clean and honest; and when your dislike fell upon me, I despaired of convincing you how I was no partner to any roguery; and the hopelessness of explaining wrought upon me till I half seemed to myself the very distrustful knave of your suspicions.”

“It is changed—it is all changed. We will circumvent the rascals, and net them in the toils of their own weaving.”

The servant bent forward, his fevered eyes sparkling.

“Such dear confidence as I have sickened for!” he cried. “To look upon your face, and see the bold light break from it, and know I am trusted and believed in!”

“That shall be so, Dennis. Now, one thing, I mind me, you have made no mention of—your sister.”

“She was brought to me, sir, the first year of my care-keeping, and here, by Mr. Creel’s permission, she remained.”

“Brought to you? Whence, and by Whom?”

The answer was near inaudible:

“By a woman that juggled in a travelling show. They had thought to use the mite to a like trade, but her wits ran crooked with their wants, and they were glad to be quit of an encumbrance. She was a natural from the first—a queer, wild midget that was for ever wandering by down and fell and storing, like a magpie, her pitiful wreck of treasures. She was but a snip of five or so when she brought that home—that home—oh, sir! the horrible gallows-tree, that I never dared within eyeshot of, but would walk a mile to avoid.”

Once more a pause fell.

“And so you have told me all?” said Mr. Tuke by and by.

Whimple’s colour heightened; but he was silent.

“All that is material, I mean. ’Twill serve, ’twill serve; and the rest go hang. Now, I have wronged you, Dennis, and we shall e’en be friends according to our positions.”

The man fell into thanks, with a broken voice.

“Nay,” said the other; “for all my strength you flatter, I can ill afford to walk my difficult path without support. And, tell me—you have no least knowledge or surmise of where this mighty gem lies hid?”

“I know no more, by my honour, sir, than bloody Jack himself—or whether, indeed, the fact of its existence be not a bug of evil men’s fancy.”

“That I can answer; for I have heard from whom the jewel was stole in the first instance. And now, Mr. Dennis Whimple, I must ask if you relate all this for my private ear; for I must inform you the interests of another are gravely compromised in the matter.”

“Ah, sir! do you not offer me your noble protection? Before, I stood in bitter desperate loneliness. I place the issue joyfully in your hands, to act as you anyhow will upon my statement.”

“You shall not misprofit thereby. Take rest, good fellow, and we will come to further discussion hereafter.”

“I am well—I am restored. You have made a man of me.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

“BLYTHEWOOD,” said Mr. Tuke, “’twould be a rare thing could we light on this bogle-gem—succeed where a whole troop of cut-throats had failed—and bribe Luvaine to sanity thereby. But, I confess, it strikes me hard that I am to serve meanwhile as whipping-boy to his rueful worship; to know him warm in his blankets, while the vermin overrun my estate o’ cold nights for a treasure he hath lost.”

“’Tis the fortune of battle, Tuke, and like cryin’ ‘God bless his Majesty!’ for the favour of a bayonet-thrust under king’s button.”

“Yes, but I seek no glory.”

“But you seek a jewel that could serve you with an army of it. And, consider, the wound will go on sloughin’ while the bullet is in. We must get to work to-morrow, by your leave; portion ‘Delsrop’ into squares, like a chess-board, and hunt it over foot by foot.”

“’Tis the only way.”

The two were riding in company, whereby it will be seen that not only was the breach between them healed, but that the older man had taken the younger into his further confidence.

This was all as it should be. The quarrel had been a paltry one; and once convinced of his wrong-headedness, the lord of Wastelands, like the gracious gentleman he was, had not hesitated to offer a handsome apology that was as courteously received. A few words, a jolly laugh or so over a bottle of Oporto, and the two were faster friends than they had been as yet.

Now, as fruit of close discussion, they were on their way to an interview with Mr. Breeds; and Dennis rode in their company, at a distance behind, like a feat squire of knight-errantry.

It was comical and pathetic, this good fellow’s earnest conduct of the post he had long coveted. His eye was bright and alert for surprises; his air a perpetual rehearsal of keenness that should not be caught napping. An atmosphere of mild braggadocio went with him—an assumption of swagger that was like a “property” cuirass on the breast of an inoffensive super. And yet, having regard to his upbringing, he was fine and faithful, and even courageous in a certain degree of proportion.

The two gentlemen rode up to the “Dog and Duck,” and, dismounting, committed their horses to the servant, and walked straightway into the tap. As they entered, a scuffling sound, like the dive of a ponderous rat behind the wainscot, preceded them; and, standing still, they were aware of some apoplectic breathing stifling in the little bar-parlour.

Mr. Tuke stepped up to the counter.

“Landlord,” said he loudly, “a bottle of port, if you please.”

The breathing subsided with a rolling noise, as if a heap of nuts were settling down on the floor; and suddenly the great blotched face of Mr. Breeds appeared in the doorway.

“Port, your honour?” said he, in a tremulous voice. “I take your honour’s order.”

He disappeared and returning in a moment with a bottle hugged in his fat hands, moved officiously to the counter, where he tweaked a greasy forelock to his worshipful customers.

“Hold it up, man—hold it up! the cork to your eye, and the good black body to your own. So shall I see to tap it.”

The landlord uttered a thick scream.

“Mr. Tuke! Oh, God’s pity, sir, you ain’t a-goin’ to shoot me?”

He had lifted the bottle as bidden, and lo! there was the muzzle of a wicked horse-pistol pointed straight at his breast.

The two gentlemen laughed.

“Why,” said the elder, “I want to make sure this time the stuff isn’t tampered with. Hold steady, while I knock the neck off.”

Nerveless with terror the man let fall the bottle, simply because he couldn’t hold it; and, dropping on his pads of knees, howled for mercy.

“God save me, sir—I never did! The wine wasn’t hocussed, sir. Your honour saw the cork drawn!”

At this—“Harkee, fellow!” called Sir David, striking in, “d’ye think I, a Justice of the Peace, will endure this gallows’ game in our midst?”

Mr. Tuke laughed afresh.

“Oh, fie, Mr. Breeds!” said he. “So you must own to a bin of ready-drugged?”

The landlord ducked behind the counter, and cried abjectly from that beery covert:

“Don’t shoot, sir—don’t shoot! If the stuff was headstrong, ’twas none of my contriving. There have been lither knaves compelling me of late.”

The two men exchanged a glance.

“Well,” said Mr. Tuke, “you can show your head above, and e’en draw the cork after your own fashion.”

The cumbrous creature scrambled to his feet, puffing and sweltering; and so manipulated the bottle with shaking hands.

“And whither are your guests flown?” said one of the gentlemen.

“Meanin’ Mr. Fern and his off-scourings, sir? To Botany Bay, whence they came, is my desperate hope. As cozening scoundrels, your noble honours, as ever practised on a decent innkeeper.”

“You were no party to their roguery, then?”

“Party!” (the man was fussing and feinting with his corkscrew). “Mr. Tuke, sir, I was terrified of my life while the reskels remained. The shadow of ’em lay like as a blight on my custom.”

“And you have the assurance to tell me that they coerced you?”

“So help me, sir, they did.”

“With what object?”

The man stuttered and went clammy.

“Answer, fellow!” cried Sir David.

“I protest, gentlemen, I was unacquent of their intentions.”

“What! you were compelled, and you are ignorant whereto?”

“To shut my eyes, sir—to shut my eyes, noble gentlemen. That’s the sum of my knowledge.”

“Mr. Breeds,” said Tuke, quietly, “have you ever heard tell of the Lake of Wine?”

He watched the man narrowly. He could not have sworn to any particular intelligence in those viscous eyes.

“Not to my cost,” said the landlord, with a sickly attempt at jocosity, “or I should fill my vats at it.”

“Well,” said Sir David, impatiently, “you say your company is departed. And whither?”

“To the gallows, for all it concerns me, sir.”

“And thither, ’tis presumptive, you may follow. Now I give you a note of warning—take thought of whom you house for the future.”

He looked at the man sternly. The latter had not a word to say, but much abasement to express.

On the road home: “Do you think he is in the plot?” said Sir David.

“Yes, by heavens, I do. A very door-keeper to roguery. He hath the wit to denounce guilt, but not to look innocence.”

“Then, may I ask, why the devil you named the stone to him?”

“To take him off his guard; but the rascal was cunning. Yet the pack shall know now we are not ignorant of what they hunt. Perhaps by the time they reappear—if ever—the quarry will have been run down by us, and Luvaine the centre of attraction.”

CHAPTER XXV.

“SO,” said Sir David, “we sum up our conclusions. ’Twas the notorious Mr. Cutwater, alias Turk, that represented the syndicate that robbed Luvaine’s father of the stone.”

“One,” said Miss Angela, using her tender knuckles after the fashion of an auctioneer’s hammer.

“’Twas somewhere here—on this estate bought out of the proceeds of his robberies—that he secreted the treasure.”

“Two,” said Miss Angela.

“And here his confederates sought him out, murdered him yonder, and made fruitless search for what he had sacrificed his life to hold.”

“Three,” said Miss Angela, “and right worshipfully concluded.”

“Peace, you bantam! ’Tis but the introduction to the argument.”

“Oh! I crave your honour’s indulgence”—and she looked round merrily at Dennis, who stood respectfully to the back of her chair.

“Now we gather,” said Sir David, with importance, “that of the ancient gang, only Mr. Fern hath cheated the gallows, to return at this eleventh hour to the search; but that he hath confided his plot to two or more——”

“Lacking the greatness of the first rank of criminals,” put in Whimple impulsively—and so reddened to a fine after-glow of shame immediately he had spoken.

They all laughed; and quoth Miss Angel:

“How I love your inconsequence, Mr. Dennis. I think that sympathy with giant wickedness a very admirable foil to your humanity.”

She had taken a great interest in the servant since her mediation had procured him justice. What if he had been a figure familiar to her experience for years past? Only recent circumstance had presented him in the light that could appeal to her effectively—the melancholy twilight, in fact, of romance. Now she was bethinking herself how this mystic hermit of the thickets had lived out his twenty years or so of haunted solitude that he might at the end serve her sensibilities with a little passing thrill of excitement; and she felt grateful to him and very considerate of his hectic cheeks.

“Their roses might have withered in the frost of death but for me,” she would ponder tenderly; and then her heart would take some resentment over the confident tyranny of his lord, that he had dared to sit in judgment on his intellectual superior.

“For that the poor man is,” she thought. “And the other must learn that with us women, brute strength unadorned is not the highest appeal to our favour.”

Here she dealt a little arbitrarily with justice; for the master was perhaps less a fool than the servant was an athlete. But the sentiment served her mood, and showed her the way to many small condescensions towards the poor fellow who had suffered such misjudgment.

Mr. Tuke could not but be conscious of this saucy subordination of his claims as a man of position. It entertained or aggravated him, according to his humour, to watch this variable maid playing off his servant against himself in the innocuous subtilties of coquetry. He could not be expected to take the effrontery seriously, and he was not so deeply in love but that he could see the humour of the girl’s capricious attitude towards him. “But I am called upon to be aware of it,” he thought; “and I must effect to puzzle my brain over the question of what I can have done to imperil myself in her favour.”

So he looked distressed—when he remembered to—and all the time thought none the less of Miss Royston for so representing the charming whimsies of the fascinating of her sex.

“This rascally crew,” said Sir David, “we make it our business to anticipate, if a thorough ransackin’ of the whole house will serve our purpose.”

Miss Angela jumped to her feet.

“Oh, Davy!” she cried, “have you reached it at last? And our wits running ahead of yours from the first. What a solemn conclusion, little man! Only we came to it before you opened your mouth to speak. And here sits Mr. Tuke like a Lord Justice patiently waiting the verdict he hath directed.”

“You are a very knowin’ magpie,” said her brother, with a wag of his round head, “but you ain’t as clever as you’d take the credit for. I’ve given you the steps to a conclusion, that’s all; and now I’ll warrant you’ll go flingin’ off the last into space.”

“Brava!” cried the lady, clapping her hands. “All that is obvious goes for nothin’, as the philosopher would say: for, like all philosophers, he is a little shaky in his finalities. And now for the profound deduction.”

“You impident baggage!” exclaimed the lord of “Chatters.” He had been quite in his element, taking judicial charge of the affair, drawing inferences and suggesting methods; and this irrepressible sister of his would do her worst to make him appear ridiculous.

“Tuke,” he said, turning to that silent and amused gentleman, “when you marry, marry a fool that knows herself to be one.”

“Indeed,” said the other, “that is easy; for any one that took me must needs answer to that description. Never hold me conceited after that, Miss Royston.”

Now, Heaven knows what Angela here chose to read between the lines; but she responded most icily:

“I doubt I shall take much interest in the matter, sir; though speaking generally, there seems to me no conceit like exaggerated humility.”

She sat herself down again, her lips set forbiddingly. Sir David grinned, mentally scoring a little spiteful victory, and Mr. Tuke looked very much bewildered and abashed.

Indeed, this sprightly lady suffered from a very common infirmity of poor humanity—an incapacity for graciously accepting such knocks as she dealt to others. One might unconsciously check her flow of spirits with the veriest straw of chaff, and only discover the enormity haphazard. Sometimes her sensitive nature would build up a grievance from a single word, so carelessly spoken and soon forgotten of the offender that, when he would come to view the complicated fabric of resentment that had sprung therefrom, he could only marvel at the astounding pregnancy of his speech.

“My sister having pronounced,” said Sir David—with a point of his little rude tongue in the direction of that incensed lady—“I come to the upshot of the apostleates—or whatever they are called.”

“And that is?” murmured Mr. Tuke, quite shyly.

“Why, that it ain’t no good looking for the stone where it’s been looked for before.”

Tuke stole a glance at Miss Royston, humbly and dumbly inviting her to endorse or quash this opinion. She was rigidly silent.

“Well?” he asked, not in the least knowing what he was inquiring about.

“Why, I’ve said it,” exclaimed the other. “We needn’t grub under the floors, when, by your own account, the boards have been had up already.”

“By Whimple’s account,” said Tuke. “But, you’re right. The rogues would have searched thoroughly where they did search.”

“Then, where to look?”

“I propose we each take two or three rooms to a share; investigate as we will, and meet and compare notes at dinner-time.”

“Capital. What d’ye say, Angel?”

“Oh! you can leave me out of the question.”

“What! you ain’t goin’ to take part in the fun?”

“I have contributed my mite to it, by serving as butt to the witticisms of two ingenious gentlemen.”

“Miss Royston!” exclaimed Tuke aghast.

“Oh, sir!” responded the lady frigidly, “’twould argue a certain community of interests that hardly exists, did I permit myself the familiarity of an informal intrusion upon your privacy. But I can be quite happy here, if you will vouchsafe me the society of Mr. Whimple, who will take no advantage, I am sure, of my condescension, and who will not judge frankness to be an invitation to impertinence.”

She capped this with quite an enigmatical little smile.

“Or, if you desire his services for yourself,” she said, “I can order out my horse and return to ‘Chatters.’”

Sir David was softly chuckling, preliminary to a sad explosion of laughter. Tuke saw it, and hastily put in a word.

“I beg you will not disappoint me of your promised company to dinner. You are very welcome to what you ask; and your brother and I will hunt in company.”

He bowed, drew the little man from the room and to the far end of the passage without. There the latter suddenly detained him, his swollen face falling to an expression of great gravity.

“Lookee here,” he said, “I am in the dark—I am in the dark, Tuke. Will you take it friendly if I ask you to enlighten me. Are ye vexed wi’ the wench’s whimsies?”

“I am distressed to have offended her.”

“That won’t serve. I don’t want to force your hand, and Angel hath the wit to play her own game. But, d’you seek my countenance? There’s the rub.”

The other broke into a smile.

“Well,” said he, “I won’t pretend to misconstrue you. I’m most sincere in desiring Miss Royston’s condescension.”

“Then,” said Sir David, “here’s a lovers’ quarrel toward; and ‘A swan can’t hatch without a crack of thunder’ is an old saw.”

His countenance contracted portentous.

“Not that I may not have a word to say by and by,” quoth he; “for I am her guardian despite her independent jointure, and by the token am determined to prudence. But, at the moment, to inquire would be premature and unjustified.”

“Well, I shall hope to satisfy you,” said Mr. Tuke, with a twinkle—“and so to our goose-hunt, by grace of your permission.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

SO far as two men could explore minutely the interior of a house so eccentrically designed—on a plan that seemed indeed to affect an absence of all design—as “Delsrop,” Mr. Tuke and his guest did explore during the whole of that winter morning. They measured walls and doors; they tapped for vaults, secret panels, or intermural recesses. They went down into the “Priest’s Hole,” and convinced themselves that no hiding-place had been contrived anywhere in that well of dank and solid masonry. They looked up chimneys; stamped on flags in hope of answering reverberations; prodded at ceilings hither and thither with a view to the discovery of some cunningly concealed hollow wherein it was possible the thing they sought might lie with all its crimson lustre quenched in dusk and darkness.

And it was only a complication of the puzzle that “Delsrop’s” antecessor had left its rooms—with one exception—desolate and unfurnished; inasmuch as any chair or table or bureau would have offered itself a likelier depository for a treasure so self-contained. What could be done with bare walls and floors and ceilings but punch and measure them? This the searchers did, with all the thoroughness they could contrive, and with a proportionate absence of result. They even extended their investigations to the ruined outhouses, and to the external case of the main building itself—obviously a desperate resource. For here, long ages’ growth of matted creepers bespoke a confidence of increase that for generations had never known restraint. Dense ivy—interwoven with leafless tendons of honeysuckle—that showed lace-work of muscular adolescence through every gap in its foliage; fibrous vines, that had never been schooled to culture, and that hung out annual clusters of unfulfilled berries—a very tradition of rustic gaucherie with the gentlemen starlings; winter jasmine that, when the world is wrapped in chilling reserve, protrudes a host of little red tongues in mockery of such self-importance—these, and others, contributed to such a thickset of arborescence as it were idle to attempt to penetrate.

The room—that one furnished chamber—they left to the last. It was their moral refuge—their forlorn hope. There, at least, was visible evidence of the material side of the long-dead highwayman. Therein had he donned his guilty finery; or doffed it and confided the secrets of his cancerous conscience to the fine lawn of his pillow. And therein—unless a nice acumen should have led him to avoid that spot for his treasure’s hiding most patently inviting to common intelligences—was it presumable the stone was concealed.

At length the two bent their steps to this inner temple of their expectations. They were weary and a little depressed, and they sat themselves down in a fan of weak sunlight that spread through the broad window.

Sir David looked about him with some listless curiosity—at the great posted bed; at the massive carved wardrobe of sombre oak; at the quaint old brass-framed mirror on the dressing-table.

“Was this all as it stands when you came?” he said, his inquisitiveness getting the better of his languor.

“Precisely as it stands.”

“Then it belonged to Cutwater?”

“I presume so.”

“By cock!” said the other, dreamily introspective, “’tis cursed strange to think that here the man prinked and made his toilet and slept his sleep like any decent citizen. He was known by his blue coat and filigree lace, I’ve heard tell; and what bloody secrets may he not have locked into that wardrobe, and what dumb witnesses to his villainy? For he would take life, by all accounts, and was a terror in his day. And was there nothin’, Tuke—no trace——”

“Not a rag in all the room. If any had been, it had been cleared out before I came.”

“Well, he had his vanities; for all that his reputation, as I knew it, was rascal miserly. And he shows a pretty taste in bed and wardrobe. But there ain’t one consistent miser in all the history of niggards.”

“I seem to have heard of one or two.”

“Who, sir? tell me.”

“Well, for a few—‘Plum’ Turner, ‘Vulture’ Hopkins, Elwes, Jones, Betty Bolaine——”

“Oh! I cry you mercy, as the books say. These were the best of their kind; yet not one of ’em but would give in charity occasionally. And each would have its vanity, if you came to look. Mrs. Bolaine boasted her coach; and even Jones must have a new brim to his hat. No, sir. Two orders of misers there be—your Joneses and Dancers for one; and of the other every third man in the tale of humanity.”

“Tut-tut!”

“Oh! I mean it—the host of those who give a half-heart to gathering, but a whole one against dissipating. Now, did you ever hear of a miser who killed himself to save expense?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Nor I. Yet that should be the right moral of parsimony.”

“No, no, my friend. Possession is the disease.”

“Then how better to minister to it than by realizing one’s property, hoisting the metal into a sack, tying oneself thereto, and tilting all into the deep sea?”

“There would be the hire of the boat; but never mind. You give thought to things, I see.”

“Did you ever suppose I didn’t? I give it now to yonder wardrobe. ’Tis there, I’ll wager, the jewel is.”

“We’ll look—we’ll look; though I’ve used it for months unwitting.”

He rose, with a laugh and a stretch, as he spoke. A cloud had blurred the sun, and the room had fallen to melancholy shadow.

Perhaps it was on this account that, as he flung open one of the heavy doors of the cupboard, something within—an apparition—a momentary trick of the fancy—brought a startled oath from his lips.

A hanging wardrobe was revealed, with an empty shelf set above it; and back in the gloom of this shelf, a foul and withered face seemed to grin upon him from the darkness.

He thought it was Darda’s hideous relic, and for an instant his heart jumped before the shocking revelation. Then the illusion passed, and he saw that what had discomfited him was nothing more terrifying than a cuff or bracelet of mouldered fur.

“What’s the matter?” said Sir David, rising.

Tuke passed his hand across his forehead, and was surprised to find a little dampness thereon.

“Nothing,” he said, with a rather uncertain laugh. “What a thing, Blythewood, if the highwayman’s ghost should be whipping us on to the chase?”

“Ah! if only he’ll put us on the right scent, then.”

The little man had come up behind his friend, and was looking down, his eyes intent upon something.

“Lord!” he said suddenly, “I’ve found a hidin’-place.”

The other stared.

“The devil you have!” said he. “You’ve touched nothing. ’Tis like ‘Sit down when you see the rabbit’s tail.’”

He glanced nervously, once or twice as he spoke, into the recess above his head.

“Well, I’ll lay odds,” said Sir David, “that I’ll show you somethin’ in that cupboard you never guessed at before.”

The wardrobe—or the half of it exposed—was filled with coats, small-clothes, and other articles of a gentleman’s attire. But these hung high, and a space intervened between the skirts of them and the floor of the interior. Into this space the visitor plunged his head, and, dropping on his knees, ran his fingers in a hurried, nervous way along the ornamental jambs and the beading of the door-sill. Satisfied, apparently, he nipped this last and gave it a vigorous jerk and pull. There was a click—a snap; and the floor of the half-cupboard shot up, an inch open, like the lid of a box.

Sir David fell back on his knees, trembling all over with excitement.

“What did I tell you?” he cried. “I’d seen another like it, and guessed the secret. ’Tis your business to look within. Zounds, Tuke, make haste!”

His flurry would brook no delay, though the other was bending above him quite white with agitation; so it happened they both put down their hands together and tore open the flap.

The little man uttered almost a shriek, as he pounced upon a shagreen case lying upon the top of a folded coat that was deposited within the false-bottom revealed.

He staggered to his feet—thrust his treasure into Tuke’s hands.

“Take it!” he cried, absolutely dancing. “It’s found, by God!”

With the exclamation his face fell. The other had snapped open the box—a jeweller’s case, by every sign—and—it was empty. There was the depression in the green velvet for stone, trinket, what-not; but no stone was there, or anything but vacancy.

They turned, tapped, felt the casket all over; finally, they looked at one another dismayed.

“The stable,” groaned Tuke, “but the steed is gone.”

He dashed down the useless shell, and with one impulse they both fell on their knees before the exposed recess.

“Look!” whispered Sir David, in an awe-struck tone—“his coat—Cutwater’s—the same he robbed and murdered in!”

It would seem to be as he said. The historical garment—neatly folded and laid away—was of blue silk, cut in a bygone fashion, and its edges were richly crusted with filigree of tarnished silver lace. Tuke seized it out, and dangled it up to view.

“’Twould be a treasure in itself to some,” he said. “I wonder will the spirit of the bloody cutpurse resent having its own pockets picked?”

He was conscious of the least little thrill and tendency to an upward glance at the shelf as he plunged his hand into the bagging of the full skirts. Nothing was in them but a torn laced handkerchief—a mere little limp cobweb thing such as ladies use. The two men looked at one another with lowered, compassionate eyes.

“He was spawn of the devil,” muttered Sir David. “Throw him his master’s livery again.”

The coat was returned to the recess. The latter was empty of aught else; as was its double, which they found similarly sunk in the other half of the wardrobe.

Their jubilance was changed to depression. The search, they felt, had yielded all it was like to. That the case had once held the famous gem they felt convinced; and equally of course the cunning scoundrel would never have committed its contents to so simply contrived a hiding-place.

They were no nearer discovery than they had been any time that morning. As a matter of form they would closely examine every other article of furniture in the room; but they knew the result would be nil—as, indeed, it proved to be.

They came down to dinner, tired and famished, and a little morose. Angela received them with a charming smile.

“We meet you with empty hands,” said her host. “I hope you are not devoured with ennui?”

“Oh!” she cried sprightlily—“if I am devoured, it is not with ennui. I am meat for its master.”

“And who is that?”

“Can you ask, sir! Why, Love, to be sure. I am fallen in love with Mr. Dennis. He hath entertained me since your going; and purely, believe me. Never was a figure more melancholy and romantic.”

“I rejoice you have found amusement. Our morning has been fruitless.”

“What—the stone? That does not concern me. I have discovered a rarer gem.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

IT is a keen experience of wayfarers that a north-easterly, unlike a south-easterly wind, seldom drops at evenfall; and therefore should it be a leading principle in the ethics of all wise innkeepers to leave a blind or two up when the rasping demon is abroad at sundown. For what an acute accent on numbness is that flash from a ruddy window! What an invitation in it and a suggestion of the purple bead on a glass of mulled wine! A moment before, life had blown chill and astringent—a hateful, brassy, and unprofitable affair, whose every vile sensation seemed concentrated in the tips of the ears. Now its interests have gleefully enlarged. There grows and blooms an image of a richly-bought experience of a sanded tap-room; of schools of sleek glasses on shelves, their glossy depths, in the red stillness of the fire-glow, slumberous with ruby, as if a memory of the good warm stuff they had known yet coloured all their dreams; of sturdy kegs, each with an amber drop tremulous on the nozzle of its tap, and its sides pregnant with jollity; of bowls of sugar; of pimpled lemons; of the comfortable purr of a kettle on the hob; of the essence of all of these rising in a fragrant steam that shall moisten the very drought of the heart and send it singing on its way.

Betty Pollack, the daughter and granddaughter of innkeepers, had the right comfortable instinct in this respect; and when the cry of the wind came under the door-sill like a wolf’s howl, she knew the demon flew from the north-east, and would order her plans accordingly.

Then, at fall of dark, from the unblinded tap-window of the “First Inn,” the zealous lamp-glow would flood the road and wash the trunks of the trees on the opposite side; till any one passing into that lighthouse radiance—wherein the whipped leaves were whirled like flakes of umber foam—would be as morally certain to gravitate towards the tavern-door as if he were come within the charmed circle about a witch’s lair.

And a very alluring witch was Betty—wholesome as white bread, and tempered with fragrance like the warm stroking bouquet of delectable claret. In winter she was still like the garden scabious, which of all flowers smells most of honey, and whose blossoms are little beds of love for troubadour bees.

It was ten o’clock of a wintry night, and Betty sang in her bar. She lifted up her sweet voice because she was alone; for the icy wind wailed without, and Hodge had filled up betimes and stumped off to his trundle-bed, and custom was scant. Grandfather was snoring in his blankets this half-hour; Jim hard by nodded against his lanthorn in the kitchen, and Betty thought of shutting up and seeking slumber of her own warm pillow.

She moved to and fro, putting little sprigs of Christmas in glasses, bottles, and up in odd places of the bar. For Yule was but a week to come, and Betty was staunch to tradition.

She sang as she moved (adapting them to an air of her own contriving) some words by a Mr. Wordsworth, who was then nothing popular in men’s mouths. But a travelling tinker (perhaps Peter Bell) had left the book with her as a tribute to her prettiness, and Betty knowing nothing of schools appreciated the gift.

“Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,

Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock,”

she warbled of the wind; and a blade of it flashed in cuttingly on the note, for just then somebody pushed open the tap-door and entered.

Her song died in her throat. It went up like the requiem of the phœnix, in a flame of fire that reddened her cheeks, and then left them white as the ashes of rose leaves.

“Mr. Tuke,” she whispered.

He came in with a dark look on his face, that seemed stiff, moreover, with the onset of furious blasts; but the teeth showed in a smile as he walked up to the counter and held out his hand to the girl.

“Are you alone, Betty?”

“Yes,” she murmured, almost inaudibly.

He clasped the soft palm in his, and would not let it go.

“And you are decorating,” he said. “How snug and warm it looks, and I am chilled to the bone.”

Her face was gathering its pinks again.

“Won’t your honour come and toast at the parlour-fire?” she said timidly. “’Tis raw and cold where you stand.”

“I know it, my dear. The wind was a file in my teeth as I walked from ‘Delsrop.’”

“Walked! Your honour has walked?”

“And why not, Betty? That is a rare febrifuge—a night-tramp in a north-easter.”

She looked up at him strangely, as she undid the hasp of the half-door of the bar and held the panel open. He paused on the threshold.

“You are alone, you say?”

“All but for Jim, who nods in the kitchen. I was moving to lock up when your honour came.”

“Do so now, and send the lad to bed. I want you to myself, Betty.”

He did not wait for an answer; but walked past the girl and into the little warm room beyond her. And here he stood looking down upon the red glow of the fire.

He was conscious of a considerable pause, and then of an uncertain step moving away from the counter. A fierce and reckless devil was riding him, and all his senses were acute to answer to the bit.

Presently he heard a shutter going gently into place, and then the step again, and a soft voice—almost with an entreating anguish in it, as if it would fain have its order discarded.

“Jim, you can go to bed.”

There followed a dragging sound and a heavy shuffling tread, that receded and died out.

He waited once more—interminably it seemed.

At length he made up his mind and strode out into the tap.

The girl was leaning silently against the counter, her breath coming fast, her cheeks the colour of ladysmocks.

Without a word he led her into the little room and swung to the door. He put her before him and, taking her face between his hands, looked into her frightened eyes.

“Do I terrify you, you little brown starling? I am overcome myself, half-silly with anger and contempt, and most of all, I think, with injured vanity.”

She gazed up at him from the depths of entreating eyes, and he saw the slow tears gathering in them.

“Betty, Betty!” he murmured.

“You are a gentleman, and I am alone,” was all she answered.

He was silent a minute. He held her still, softly caressing the hair on her forehead.

“Why, I should be angered if any one called me otherwise,” he said. “And that, maybe, would end in a bullet; and so to prove my claim to the title before the court of final appeal up there. And what could I say?—that Betty trusted me, and that I abused her trust.”

“You will not—no, never.”

“But I am in a very cruel and selfish mood, sweetheart; and I know that you love me—I know it, Betty.”

She forced his hands apart, and stepped back.

“Yes,” she said bravely, “I do; I can’t help it. I would follow you across the world if you called me. But you will not.”

“Not across the world; but this room. Come!”

She went up to him at once; allowed herself to be taken into his arms—to have her lips passionately kissed. Then she drew back once more with bowed head.

“Now,” she said low, “I am yours; and I love you purely, and I am sweet and good. Yes, I am; for how else could I school the love in my heart, and it near breaking? And you love me because I am. But what should I be afterwards—oh, what, what?”

“Betty, I am unhappy.”

She threw herself into grandfather’s old elbow-chair, and buried her face in her hands.

“No, no!” she cried piteously. “You won’t be so cruel!”

He went and seated himself by her on the arm of the chair.

“Shall I tell you what hath driven me to you, Betty?”

“You have quarrelled with her,” came the answer in a muffled voice, out of woman’s intuition.

“No, my dear. I am not justified in assuming the right to quarrel. She hath given me none. But she maddens me with her whimsies till the man in me rises up and refuses to be any longer the slave of her caprices.”

“What is she doing?”

“She trifles with my suit. ’Twas an honourable one that would seek to found a union on esteem and confidence. What can she know of these when she plays off my own servant against me in the regard of both?”

“She will make none the worse wife for standing off and on a little before.”

“That is not like you, Betty.”

“Is it not? But I wear my shameful heart on my sleeve. And what of the servant?”

“A decent, low-born fellow. I hold him nothing to blame. He walks like a cat on the ice till ’tis comical to see him.”

He laughed slightly. The little warmth of merriment awoke new tenderness in him. He put his arm about the girl’s shoulders as she lay huddled close by.

“I take you into my confidence, dear; and you will not abuse me that I speak slightingly, out of my soreness, of a rival. Yet she is little that. She is a beautiful and refined lady, of whom I desired a favour that ’twere presumption for such as I to ask. So I withdraw my plan to wed delicately and live highly, and bow my admiration and retire. And then my heart gives a free leap, and I fly for love to the nest of my pretty brown bird.”

The girl sat up, and put the hair from her wet eyes.

“The bird would die on the morrow,” she said. “Oh! you must go back and try once more.”

“What! you would bid me to another’s arms?”

“I would bid you do the part of the brave and honourable gentleman my silly fancy went out to.”

“And, if I succeeded?”

“I should know what was mine. I could be happy and blithe and contented looking forward.”

“And would you die a maid for my sake?”

She clasped her hands and put them up so against his breast. The tears were running down her cheeks.

“Yes,” she murmured, half-choking, “I will promise that—my love—my love that is so far above and beyond me.”

He jumped to his feet.

“Get you gone!” he cried, almost roughly. “Go! while my heart is running over with pity. I will sit out the night by the fire here, and fight down my devil alone! Not another word, or kiss, or look! and—and, Betty, turn the key as you go and lock me in.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

REASON is fatal to romance, and Miss Royston was coming to it. She had, indeed, a very practical side to her character, which side was all of the world and eminently fancy-free. “Kiss-in-the-ring” in a fairy circle is a delightful pastime for the heyday of youth, but the time must come when the gravity of the problem as to to whom one shall throw the final handkerchief, must intrude itself through the merriest helter-skelter of the game. Then, as a matter of necessity, must follow the inevitable formulæ of the pretty cold-shoulder to ineligible partis; of little sisterly regrets on behalf of swains who take their dismissal rebelliously; of wee sops to passionate Cerberuses in the shape of Christmas cards depicting hands clasped above the motto “For auld lang syne”; of the citing of Job-comforter maxims felt by the recipient to be totally inapt to the tragedy of the situation. And so the jade plumes herself on her acquirement of the reasonable view, and makes an easy virtue of spoiling faith—which is but a synonym for romance—for the sake of five hundred a year.

No doubt this is as it should be; for that very faith, or romance, would be a sorry sole equipment for the nether side of youth. But it is also a matter for regret that reason, when come to, should so commonly refuse credit to any evidence but that of its senses, and should contemn in others that same spirit of ideality which coloured all the early processes of its own evolution.

Now Miss Angela would not condescend to this abrupt change of front; for, for one thing, she was a zealous student of moral sensation, and, for another, she was conscious of maturing past her first bloom. She desired to keep her rose-coloured spectacles, only the rims must be of gold. In short, she was feeling that, were the picturesqueness of life her object, she must seek to change her outlook while her charms remained sufficiently inviting to procure her a new prosperous coign of vantage. She had played with romance. Now, for the time being, it must be subordinated to questions of business.

Foremost in this connection presented itself the figure of her inscrutable neighbour of “Delsrop.” He, for a period, had slept without a rival in the pupils of her pale eyes. He had satisfied her most delicate sensibilities—for a period.

Gradually, however, was effected that change in her point of view. She came to question in herself, not the personality of the interesting stranger so much as his eligibility. And here she had to acknowledge herself at sea, and to own that melancholy and mystery were best applied to matrimony when justified by substantial dividends.

Moreover, there was the matter of position. The case of her almost-namesake, Mrs. Kauffmann, was not so ancient to men’s memories as that she could afford to discount its significance as legendary. Indeed, she had a mental picture of herself as a little prim-set maid of five or so, walking, her hand in her father’s, through a suite of magnificent rooms, the walls of which, all gorgeously upholstered, were hung with canvases in such quantity as to spoil, she thought, the pretty effect of the hangings; and she remembered how her father—a lord of Plympton Manor in Devonshire, where was once a school-master with a famous son—had stopped and presented his hand to a little dapper gentleman—who wore a plum-coloured coat, and who had a scar on his lip and very squeezed-up eyes—and a courteous bow to a pale and melancholy lady who stood by the little gentleman’s side. And the lady had smiled upon the baby-girl and had asked her name; and when told it the smile had vanished, and she had said in a queer un-English voice, “Gott bewahre. Rechristen the mädchen if you wish her happiness.” And at that the two men had looked flushed and awkward, as men are wont to look over some suppressed meaning that invites impossible sympathy.

Well, Miss Angela—or Angelica, as you will—was to learn afterwards that she had had the youthful honour to be present at the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Academy, whose then acquirement of its fine new rooms in Somerset House was an earnest of his Majesty the King’s paternal support and munificence. And she was to learn that the little spruce gentleman had been no other than that notable President of an august body whose chief claim to her interest lay in the fact that he was Plympton-born; but who came to be known to her later experience as an artist who was said to ask as much as forty pounds for a head, and a hundred guineas for a full-length portrait—as if the more valuable virtues of a man were exhibited in his legs. And the lady, she was informed, had been Mrs. Kauffmann, since become Signora Zucchi, whom some people thought a greater artist even than the President; for she gave no preference to either head or legs, but painted both in such a way that any one or other of them might have done duty for either sex—which was a very noble and impartial view to take of the unities of art.

Now, it was not this poor Angelica’s management of pigments that was the present subject of Miss Royston’s thoughts. It was that melancholy story of how Sir Joshua’s protégée had, at the outset of her hopeful career, been drawn into matrimony with a picturesque rogue of a valet, who had it in him to play the part of Uther to a noble lady.

Assuredly, the mistress of “Chatters” had no desire to repeat history in such a respect, for all the veneer of romance that overlay it; or to risk, without astute inquiry, a union with one whose personality was wrapt in so impenetrable a fog of mystery.

What was it not possible the man might be; or what limits were to put on the ingenuity of resourceful vagabonds? Count Horn’s fellow had hoodwinked society no less than the trustful girl it had made a pet of. And whence had Mr. Tuke issued, and what was his claim to that haunted estate that had come to be considered in the neighbourhood a sort of no-man’s-land? On these points he had never condescended to throw light. Still, if his right-ownership of “Delsrop” must be taken on trust, no such condition applied to the question of his origin. Here conjecture must needs incline to suspicion, seeing that his immediate predecessor had been, by his own showing, a common thief and coach-robber.

Therefore was she resolved to temper fascination with prudence; to whip her captive to the end of his tether, and, pending discoveries, to no more than lightly hold him in hand.

In furtherance of this policy it was that she drove her unproclaimed suitor to the nether side of reason, and, by some over-accent of coquetry, almost lost herself the indulgence of a very pretty pastime.

She was pondering, one morning, with some rueful apprehensiveness, this possibility of her having gone too far, when her heart was reassured by the sound of a footstep that was familiar to her, coming up the gravel outside.

Then she smiled to herself, with a little composed preening of neck-ribbons; for, after all, the incense of courtship was grateful to her nostrils—and her brother was not at home.

He—that same suitor—came in like a man set on a serious purpose; and secretly her heart moved with admiration of, but no submission to, his masterfulness.

He walked straight up to her, to where she had risen from her seat by the fire, and answered her graceful greeting with little more than a bow.

“Madam,” he said, “I must crave your permission to speak, though I may imperil my prospects through precipitancy.”

She smiled, her pulses drumming thickly.

“A formidable overture,” she said—and for the life of her could get no further.

“I do not wish it to be,” said the gentleman. “If any misconception of my position makes me appear to assume a manner of truculency, I do myself an injustice, believe me.”

Her lips moved, but no word came from them.

“I am aware,” he went on, “that the apparent invidiousness of my position amongst you here may stand, and rightly, as an insuperable barrier to any addresses I may presume to submit to your consideration.”

Her lips opened again; but she only inclined her head.

“It is so, then?” he answered to the gesture; “and it only remains for me to express my most earnest regret at having failed hitherto to realize the true conditions of a suit, which I now need not hesitate to affirm I once dared to hope a prosperous termination to; and to gratefully thank you for permitting me to justify my dismissal in your eyes, without putting you to the awkwardness of an explanation. Madam, I am your humble, obedient servant.”

He bowed low. Positively, the man seemed on the point of withdrawing—and with a doubtful air of relief, too. Miss Royston found her voice suddenly.

“Stay, Mr. Tuke!—Oh, sir! your hurried assumption seems to put me in the worst light of churlishness.”

“Surely, surely,” said he, reluctantly, “I never suggested such a thing?”

“Indirectly, indeed, you do. You hastily cancel an—an invitation, while I am yet making up my mind as to the form of answer.”

“Ah, madam! I see. You would claim the privilege of rejection.”

“That is unkind.”

“No, no. You are entitled to it. I was wrong to overlook the fact that the point of view of the world must be considered.”

She flushed up angrily.

“I thank you, sir. You mean, of course, that I wish to secure myself from the imputation that I angled for what was cunning to elude me? I stand high in your opinion, indeed. But you force me to the avowal that I am under no necessity to deprecate the criticisms of my neighbours.”

“You could choose of the noblest in the land, and bring to any more honour than you received. If you have elected to misconstrue me of late, and to indirectly enlighten me as to your sense of my presumption, it was quite within your province, as a lady of high position, to do so.”

“Ah! I feel the sting behind your words of honey. Mr. Tuke”—her voice fell caressing as that of a remonstrant sister—“I will not pretend to misinterpret your attitude towards me. May I be simply frank with you? There is a proverb about flogging a willing horse. I own I have done that of late—that I have certified myself a consistent member of my sex. Is not that candour itself? Well, would you know what hath inspired me? ’Twas recalling the fate of that unhappy Mrs. Kauffmann.”

He laughed slightly.

“It understand the inference. My tongue is tied; but I can assure you I have never engaged in any service but my own.”

She did not answer; but her expression had gathered some coldness of reserve. His was enigmatical, as he continued:

“Am I justified in assuming that, satisfied on this point, you would at least offer no obstacle to my most respectful suit?”

“That is taking me at a disadvantage,” she said, with a winning smile. “No woman lends herself to a bargain where she hath to give credit.”

He bowed again. He could not but be conscious that this atmosphere of rigid politeness seemed ludicrously out of place in an avowal of so particular a kind; and that his declaration and its reception sounded rather in the nature of a passage of arms. He knew he had come, of set purpose, to seek in legitimate attachment a foil to passion. He was not so sure his heart joined in the quest, or that he had not privately courted the dismissal he professed to deprecate.

Perhaps Miss Royston entertained a like doubt. Though it would not have affected her attitude, she would have preferred, and had indeed looked to, more ardent means to a similar end. For what, otherwise, had she practised those late arts of coquetry? She had pictured her suitor, according to her judgment of him, storming the bastions of her pride; warm, palpitating, entreating—a demi-god revealing himself in a cloud of passion. And here he was addressing her with no more emotion than he might have shown in asking her interest to get an old woman into a hospital.

She was disappointed in him, and immediately inclined to suspicions. Had she—perish the humiliating thought!—a rival? And then supposing, after she had successfully weaned his regard for her, he should turn out to be a lord of Burleigh?

Well, she must fight to be consistent—though her breast was hot with indignation. But she could have boxed his ears, as he said, in the tone of a man condemned by his doctor to arrowroot and barley-water—“I must live on hope.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. TUKE, as a result of his grudging sop to respectability, had brought about nothing more definite than some unprofitable temporizing. No doubt this served him well right, and was a lesson to him to be more particular for the future in his dealings with his own conscience. For that same usurer will think nothing of charging a hundred per cent. on the least little matter of “accommodation.”

To choose the lesser of two advantages is thought a virtue by some; but then to be held kicking one’s heels between them both becomes a grievous injustice. This hardship our friend thought himself to suffer, and was very morose and discontented in consequence.

Does any one think meanly of this gentleman that he could fly for comfort of a legitimate suit gone awry to a humbler breast than it was his temptation to use and bruise? I can only offer the defence that pure-hearted Betty thought none the less of him for doing so, and that to no sweeter Mentor could any foundering soul submit its ethological perplexities. For the question of “taste”—let him decide who is the best authority on the right cut of a coat. But passion, I believe, is not grounded on any conventional knowledge of what is fitting.

Now, for some weeks, the master of “Delsrop” led a very solitary and rather crabbed life. Debarred, by the simplest honour, from going whither his heart would have conducted him, he yet resented the necessity of a self-denial that would probably in the end prove itself futile. Miss Royston might, he had some ground for believing, favour his suit eventually, could he submit to her his sufficient credentials. Yet, though he had committed himself to a rather negative declaration; though he perceived his most honest and most reasonable course would be to set himself right in that lady’s eyes; though he felt no umbrage at her caution, which was certainly under the circumstances justifiable, he could not altogether whip himself away from the temptation to solve the problem of an explanation by—doing nothing at all.

He succeeded in at least scotching that snake. But he dared not let his thoughts run on Betty, or on the sweetness and innocence that, to the beast in man, are such lures to brutality. It is only when the blood runs aged that we can look on any extreme beauty of nature without wishing to obscure it, so unbearable to our diseased perceptions is the flawless.

At length he made up his mind to the right course. Christmas was over and done with—a somewhat dismal hermit-time to him—and early in the new year Blythewood and his sister were to journey to London. He would ride with them; would spend a few days in town, and while there, would endeavour to induce the lawyer Creel to some explanation of that enigma of his inheritance. Surely, with such an object in view as a union with a lady of a certain rank and position, he would not be refused those credentials he desired.

He was further urged to this decision by the fact that his house was now properly served, and that since that night of his furniture’s arrival, there had been no evidence but that Mr. Breeds’s unhonoured guests had withdrawn finally from the neighbourhood. Dennis he would leave in general charge, with strict orders as to the protection of the premises during his absence.

So matters were ordered; and about the second week in January the party set forth. The baronet and his sister posted; but their neighbour, to whom a saddle was the most sans souci of conveyances, rode his own horse.

The weather was bitterly cold, with a perpetual menacing look in all the stony vault of the sky, and the journey, till near its termination, quite uneventful.

They did not start by way of Stockbridge; but, to Mr. Tuke’s relief, took cross-tracks for a number of miles, and struck the London road at Basinstoke, where they dined. He rode at their wheel, or not, as circumstance permitted, and Angela was gracious or peevish with him according to her mood.

Perhaps his own varied. After dinner his heart would sing jocundly: “She unites sense with beauty, and hath a hundred charms of wit and winsomeness. I am a fool to doubt.”

Then he would murmur: “Am I frighted by the shadow of my own past? I will carry her in the teeth of it all. None but the brave deserve the fair.”

And so presently to the reaction—the fall of enthusiasm’s temperature in the chill of some icy response when digestion needed a stimulus.

“None but the brave deserve immunity from the fair,” thought he. “These old saws want mending.”

And maybe he was right; for even an axiom will not endure for ever, but will wear out like a book-block, and come to leave a faint impression.

They slept at the “White Hart” at Hook—whither an outrider had preceded them to bespeak beds—and were to make an end of their journey by the evening of the morrow.

On that following day all went awry. The little baronet had been free with his bottle overnight, and was, for him, in a very sour and cross-grained condition. The water they had found frozen in the ewers; the soap curdled—as it will in very cold weather—in the dishes. The chimney had, and the venison had been, smoked. The waiters received vails proportionate with the mood of the party, and showed some consequent surliness in bidding it on its way.

For half the morning Mr. Tuke jogged in the rear of the chaise, cursing the ice-bound road and the ringing cold. Angela sat amongst her furs pink-eyed, like a ferret looking out of straw; and Sir David nursed his sick head, and exclaimed spasmodically over the infernal jolting; for the sludgy track—some eighteen inches deep in mud during the most of the winter—that was the Exeter road, was now petrified into furrows like those in a bed of larva.

Often a horse would slip and fall, flinging its stiffened postillion; and then there would be bitter delay, and the unbuckling of straps with blue ineffectual hands, and much breathing of oaths and stamping of deadened feet; while low in the desolate welkin the sun looked on with dim unconcerned eye, as if it were some senile monarch, conscious only of private cosiness while gazing through a frosted window on a little township of suffering.

And so on again presently, crashing and pounding, the boys towelling their cattle for mere exercise of their own numbed fingers, the cat-ice splintering in the ruts, the chaise dancing wildly in its straps.

Fortunately there was no snow; though the sky bore evidence in its appearance of such garnered stores of it as could, at a nod, sow the world with winter.

It was an hour past noon when our party drew up, in no very sweet temper, at the door of the “Catherine Wheel” at Egham, where they were to stop for dinner.

They thawed a little during the meal, and were even amiable, one with the other, after a guarded fashion. Sir David was the victim of nothing more than some physical discomfort; but his two companions suffered yet under a species of misunderstanding that circumstance only could put an end to; and in the meanwhile it was inevitable that their mutual relations should be marked by some coldness and embarrassment.

The “Regulator” coach, from Exeter to London, clattered up in the frost and stopped to change horses while they were at table. They heard the half-dead “outsides” stumping about in the bar and calling for mulled port and Nantes brandy to warm them on to the next stage; and had a glimpse, through the lattice, of the vehicle itself—chocolate in hue and traced all over with gilt lettering like a Christmas calendar; of a happy-faced young woman who sat, hugging a little boy in her lap, on the “gammon-board” of the roof; and of a kit-kat presentment of an arrogant-visaged young gentleman, with a brown silk handkerchief tied about his head, who leaned out of the drag window, to the huge discomfort of the other “insides,” and amused himself by endeavouring to scrape with a tooth-pick the paint off the bull’s head on the panel of the door.

This latter sight sent Mr. Tuke back in his chair with an involuntary start—which Miss Royston noticed.

“Do you know the gentleman?” she said, jumping to a conclusion.

“I? Yes—I recognize him, I think.”

“Oh, indeed! And who is he, may I ask?”

“’Tis Dunlone—Lord Dunlone. I have met him. We were in the way of being friends, in fact.”

He thought to himself: “The fellow goes townwards from his Cornish place. ’Tis in sort with his cursed parsimony to stage it like a provident cit.”

“I will excuse you, if you wish to go speak with him,” said Miss Angela.

“Not in the least. I should poorly requite myself for the loss of your society.”

She laughed, with a faint insolence of inflection. Only one reason, it seemed to her, could be for his refusing to act upon the acquaintanceship he claimed—that he feared to put it to the test. Was it possible he was the nobleman’s valet? she mused, recalling that other case.

He sat on, unwitting of her meditations; but he felt a degree of relief, nevertheless, when the guard of the “Regulator”—a confident, red-faced young fellow, in a bottle-green coat and with a sprig of mistletoe in his hat—sounded his horn, disposed his reluctant passengers, swung himself up over the hind-boot, chucked the rosy young woman, to the gazer’s high approval, under the chin, and gave the signal to start; and it was without regret that he saw that straining vehicle draw away with a rumbling of wheels, and the unwelcome vision pass from his ken. For he had no mind to recall a certain phase of his life, from which he could have sworn, years of reformation bridged him.

By two o’clock they were on their way again, and, as the dusk gathered, so did their gloom and reserve seem to deepen. Indeed, the horseman felt it a positive relief when dark shut in upon them still urging onwards, for so the perils of the road were his sufficient excuse for keeping himself apart and without the influence of that depressing atmosphere.

Driving on desperately, in a struggling flurry to escape being benighted on some impassable waste, they struck the track by and by across Hounslow Heath, and put on what additional speed they durst over that open and historic ground.

A crimson spot of light that, upon their first issuing on to the flats, had seemed the low-down radiance of some far cottage-window, grew in lustre as they advanced, until it flared before them, a leaping flame. Thereupon they slackened speed somewhat, moving with caution; and the horseman dropped a hand towards his holster.

A hundred yards further, and the flame became a fire dancing redly by the roadside; and there were shadows flitting about it, and, close by, a looming mass that threw back little spars and runlets of reflection to the spouting blaze.

Clipping indecision with a jerk of his rowels, Mr. Tuke uttered a shout and rode down upon the group. There was an answering cry; and he saw a figure or two throw up its hands, dramatically entreating him to a halt. Something he noticed in time to respond, and pulled up his horse with so great a suddenness upon the icy road, that the brute sank upon its haunches and half-tumbled him out of the saddle.

He was on the ground in a moment, and, whipping the frightened animal to its feet, moved towards the fire and was made way for by those about it.

He looked down. The body of a man lay uncouthly flung beside the glow—that had been built up hastily of brushwood and dead sticks in a hopeless effort to rekindle a late-extinguished spark of life. The flame painted the waxen face and fallen jaw with a hectic mockery of vitality, and glinted on a dribbling splash in the forehead where something had crushed in through the very ring of a cherished love-lock.

A woman was down upon the grass by the figure—moaning to it, caressing it, with some piteous shame of the awful publicity of her conduct; for she would not believe in the impotence of her agony to rouse that silent shape to any responsive gesture; and, in the background of her thoughts, was some insane speculation as to how, when all was right again, she should hold her terror an apology for her emotion.

Close behind her stood a little crying boy, his fingers in his eyes; and it was moving to see how, in the youngling’s cap and in the breast of the kneeling woman, were merry knots of Christmas—earnests of a thoughtless time.

“The guard?” murmured the new-comer.

He grasped the situation with only too sure an intuition. The glooming mass in the road was nothing less than that same lusty vehicle they had seen but an hour or two before rumble away from the inn-door, its jovial horn answering to the lips of that formless thing by the fire.

“Aye,” grunted the coachman, from the covert of his preposterous neckcloth. He had come up on the moment, from the task of slowly manipulating his cut traces.

“That’s the last of Charlie,” he said, with some thickness of fury in his tone.

“No, no!” moaned up the woman. “Not the last—my God, no!”

“Don’t take on, my dear,” he said. “Charlie done his dooty like a man; and there’s not a coach vheel ’ll go over that there patch on the road but ’ll roll up a bloody account agen his murderers.”

She only sighed miserably in answer. The deep apathy of grief was in her veins like a drug.

“How many?” said Tuke.

“Six, if there was vun, sir. Six cursed ruffians to dance agen the sky and serve the crows for black pudden, so be there’s any vally in the fellowship of the road.”

He shook his pillow of an arm aloft—finely, for all the heavy oddity of his appearance.

“Aye,” he murmured, in response to a gesture—“the man’s wife and his youngster.”

At the word a woman—one from the huddled group of robbed and terrified passengers—came out into the glow, and snatching up the child, forced it whimpering into its mother’s arms. The act was well conceived. The desolate creature caught at the hope, and held it convulsively against her breast; and in a moment her burdened heart found relief.

Mr. Tuke backed silently. “No,” the coachman had growled to him—“he wanted no help. He could get on well enough now. There was nothing for it but to complete his crippled stage, and as quickly as possible set the law in motion.”

The chaise, with its occupants, was drawn up at a little distance from the tragic scene. As the horseman made for it, eager to reassure his friends that any cause for present alarm was passed, he was aware of a figure standing by the door and addressing those within in exceedingly tremulous tones.

“I’ve had enough of it, curse me!” it was saying. “’Twould be a sick thing to travel with that dead rascal banging on the roof; and the cursed coachman refuses to go without him. I’ve been robbed of fifty pound, by God! and I’ll take it exceeding civil of you to give me a lift over the last stages.”

“Indeed,” said Miss Angela’s clear voice—“we shall be very happy, Lord Dunlone.”

“Who the deuce told you my name—who, now?”

He could hardly stand still in his fear and excitement; but kept pulling at the handle of the door in a nervous effort to turn it.

“Who told you?” he said. “Curse it! Can’t some one help me?”

“Go steady at it,” came Sir David’s voice. “We’re not tryin’ to overreach you, sir. ’Twas a friend—common to both of us, I understand—Mr. Tuke, who saw you in the coach at Egham.”

“Tuke—Tuke! I don’t know any one of the name. Here—give me a hand, will you?”

He plunged into the vehicle, and the door snapped on him. The listener retreated softly into the rearward shadows. He had forgotten that this undesirable acquaintance was amongst the passengers; and it was some amelioration of the tragedy to hear that he had been stripped clean. He waited silent while the chaise kept its place—which it did only a few minutes before the nobleman’s peevish voice sounded, cursing the postillions to a move.

Then he went to the help of the coach-driver; and, later, cantered out the rest of his journey in the tail of that gingerbread conveyance, that was become a mere hearse of death and sorrow.

“Ah!” he thought—“how, in all her after-days, will she love the memory of that chin-chuck, poor soul.”

CHAPTER XXX.

“I HAVE no knowledge,” said Creel—“I have no knowledge whatever, Mr. Tuke, of this ‘Lake of Wine.’ Very probably it was as you suggest. I was acquainted with the man’s character by report, of course, and judge it infinitely likely that he would have been the principal in a fraud so masterly ingenious. But that goes for nothing.”

“Very well, sir. Then, by your permission, we will come to the matter which is of a greater private importance to me. Surely you cannot justify to yourself the fact of withholding evidence of my father’s integrity from my father’s son?”

“And surely you are hasty. Did I express such an intention. On the contrary, I am ready, at this date, to inform you of all the details I am in possession of as to Sir Robert’s bequest.”

“And why not earlier? May I not ask it?”

“Because, my ardent young sir, the time was not ripe. Because, having regard to the circumstances under which we first became intimate, I apprehended a distinct refusal on your part to accept of an advantage so strangely come by.”

“There is nothing shameful in the story?”

“Fie, sir, fie! Is this your tender concern for my old and honoured friend and patron? Be there shame, ’tis none of his.”

“Possibly of mine, you would say. Mr. Creel, I have grown very humble of late months.”

“Save us, save us!—Yet, I would not quench, but only control that fervid spirit. Go to! you shall have the history word for word as your father wrote it; and as such left it to my full discretion to acquaint you of or not. No doubt you have suffered and learnt since we last met, and are now in a state to appreciate the moral no less than the material value of your inheritance.”

He rose as he spoke, sparse and bent-backed and bowelless—like the figure 9, symbolic of the nine points of the law.

The other watched him with some amusement and a good deal of impatience, as he shuffled to a now familiar deed-box, unlocked it, and took thence a bundle of papers. These he brought to the table, sat himself down again, and selected two from the heap, as dryly deliberate as a monkey turning over a biscuit.

Presently he looked up, document in hand.

“This,” he said, “the full and true account of the late Sir Robert’s presentation to the property of ‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hants, was writ down by him in this my office, and read over to me, and by me attested for its truth, inasmuch as I was nominated to act for both parties in the disposition of the estate. Albeit, Mr. Tuke, you must understand the testator was known to me hitherto but by report, the which would hardly have induced me to do his service but for the direction of his bequest—and that, without doubt, was his object in applying to me.”

“With favour, sir,” said Mr. Creel’s client; “and with all deference to the discriminatory acumen of the profession—might not this preface serve better as an epilogue?”

The attorney winced in his breath, looked over his spectacles which he had been slowly adjusting, and broke suddenly into a leathery smile.

“Sir,” said he, “the law stands so much in dead men’s shoes that, perhaps, itself hath lost the sensation to be ‘quick.’ But here’s for you, without more ado.”

And so he began his reading:—

“Re THE ESTATE OF ‘DELSROP’ AND IN THE MATTER OF SIR ROBERT LINNE, BART.

“In the winter of ’78, when I was home in England on furlough, being sick of a disordered spleen, I was crossing Bagshot Heath one night when I was stopped by a one-eyed gentleman of the road, who was set to coerce me with the usual menaces and braggadocio. But, looking in his face without fear—for it was a brilliant moonlit night and his features clear as print—I noticed them drawn and anguished in a manner beyond words, so that he seemed rather a ghost or boggle of my distemper, which gave me some concern. But quickly recovering myself: ‘My honest gentleman,’ says I, ‘meseems you are more in need of stand for yourself than me.’ Which hearing, he gave out a great groan, and so straightway dropped the muzzle of his pistol.

“‘Can you read it so plain?’ says he. ‘Then I tell you I am in hell, and it were a merciful thing to slay me here and now’—and with that he rends his vest, and ‘shoot,’ says he, ‘and end it!’

“Now I got talking to my man, and, to make a short story of it, found him to be a noted heath-cock, one Cutwater”—(Aye, sir—there you have him!)—“as he was called, who had drawn a free living from the road, but was now smitten of a morbid disease of the kidneys and like to die. However, in a clean retirement had he lived for a year—or perhaps two or more—till his disorder came like to madden him; when, with the hope to borrow surcease of agony from the distraction of his ancient calling, he made post to Bagshot and rode out on the heath.

“Well, I took him back to my inn, and made him up a drug of my knowledge, and kept him by me for a day or two, thinking to mend the poor sinner before I set upon the Lord’s work with him. And he made a surprising recovery, and was ready to kiss my very feet out of his gratitude. But, so it happened, a summons coming to me from his Majesty’s Court at Windsor, I was to leave him perforce; and presently—my own complaint mending—forth I passed to the war again and from all thought of Master Cutwater.

“And now, as worthy Mr. Creel will attest—which has conducted the business, and is my friend and an attorney (and this our same fellow of the road had discovered, it seems)—not three weeks ago, I being again in London this summer of the year ’79, was waited upon by him, and to my astonishment handed over the title deeds of an estate which I had never so much as heard named, being ‘Delsrop’ House in the County of Hants.

“For thus it appeared my highwayman had died after all—yet not of his complaint but in some ruffian mêlée—having first, however, in gratitude at my service to him willed me this property, which I cannot but regard with perplexity as the wages of sin, inasmuch as it appeareth the reward designed, in totidem verbis, for prolonging of a rascal’s life.

“But so am I resolved that by no means and on no condition will I soil my hands with its possession; for whether come by honestly or in fraud, it is and must be a mansion of the wicked. I take no concern for it, nor have I troubled to visit it, nor yet considered by what manner of agreement I am to dispose of the incubus.

“Only this I set down here and now, in the presence of Mr. Creel, who will attest it, that, should occasion of dispute arise, it may be accepted a true and honourable statement of the matter, and that whether or no it passeth the understanding of the incredulous. And, moreover, I do solemnly asseverate that, whether the man Cutwater held the estate in fee-simple, justly and of his own right, or whether he held it the fruits of his ill-doing, or again whether, indeed, it represent the entire or but a portion of his property, I know not nor seek to know. For he was a rogue undoubted, of whose politic methods no Christian gentleman could deign to consider on equal terms.”

“Now,” said the lawyer, when he had come to an end of the narrative, “you are in possession of the facts as related and witnessed. For you must know the testator discovered your father’s friendship to me, and visited me here and begged me to act for him in the matter. And this, under the circumstances, I agreed to do, having regard to my reputation in the respect that the transaction should be——”

“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Tuke a little irritably. His face had fallen grave and full of trouble. “I understand—I understand completely. And is that all?”

“No, sir—it is not all.” (He was secretly attentive of his client.) “There is a later document, from which it appears that Sir Robert abated, for any reasons of his own, the rigour of his resolve respecting this strange inheritance. For, by deed executed” (he had taken up and was referring to, and partly reading from, another paper) “the eleventh of October, 1779, he makes over the estate of ‘Delsrop’ to one Barnabas Creel—in trust, that is, and under certain conditions—said Barnabas Creel to have and enjoy said property without dispute, and until his benefactor’s son shall attain his majority (the which event is to happen, if he live, in the year 1790), and thereafter for all time, provided Sir Robert the junior comes not to bankruptcy of his affairs and threatened indigence. But in the latter event, if it happen any time between said son’s majority and his fortieth year—by which period of his life a man should be established whether for good or evil—the estate is to devolve upon said son, that he may take his profit of a cut-purse’s legacy (which is yet good enough for a gambler or rakehell) to reform his ways and live cleanly thenceforth; but on the sole condition that he foreswear his title—the which hath ever stood foremost in honour—and take the name of Tuke. For this name was borne by an honest woman, that shall shame her son to do it no discredit under his new conditions of fortune.”

As he here ended, the lawyer precisely refolded the papers, tied all together, put the packet aside, and crossing his hands over his crossed knees, waited for the other to speak.

A silence of some minutes succeeded. Then said the distitled legatee, rousing himself with a sigh:

“I thank you, Mr. Creel, for your kindly discernment in hitherto withholding from me this intelligence. I confess it comes bitter to me. I rejoice in that re-assurance of my father’s integrity—which my heart, in truth, little misdoubted—but I confess the nature of this revelation a little overcomes me. ’Tis a bone to a dog, in all sovereign contempt.”

“Nay, Sir Robert, Sir Robert. ’Tis the anxious medicine to a soul wounded of its own rashness.”

“Well, sir, well. Pride may follow a fall, I find. Yet, if I may question the methods of a virtuous man, I could discover a flaw in my father’s particular morality. For the Crown, by all custom, is entitled to the reversion of an outlaw’s estates.”

“No doubt,” answered Creel, with a little dry snigger, “that is strictly so. The man’s possessions were forfeit of right to the Crown, it being his good fortune only that he passed unhung of the law that he had defied. But—his guilt being conjectural, and not, as it were, brought home to him—your father, in one of those Canterbury-gallops of conscience wherewith honest souls sometimes over-ride our fears for their guilelessness, would consider it no duty of his to forego the estate quixotically, and for a supposition of which the law had failed to take cognizance. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I will not throw the first stone at him whose immunity is my profit. And, as to the estate, I can apply it—saving the grace of his majesty, whose means are not restricted—to some worthy purpose which was doubtless forecast by the Providence that hath conducted the matter so far.’ And in this he was firm—not to outlaw the dead man, though he took no personal advantage of his bequest. ‘For,’ he declared, ‘he meant well by me, when all is said and done.’”

Mr. Tuke rose, and the attorney with him.

“I suppose,” said the former, rather sadly, “that no man may profit by repentance so far as to lay the ghost of his past. ’Tis the privilege of the virtuous to hunt down reformed sinners with the spectre-hounds of their own dead passions. I have sought honestly to redeem my name, and to do my best with the new life offered me. Yet, should I have accepted the trust, had I known in what spirit its reversion to me was conceived?”

“I hope so,” said the other; “for love, under all the show of rigour, prompted the bequest.”

He spoke with some deprecation. Perhaps, in his heart, was a little protesting sympathy with his young friend’s point of view.

“Well, sir,” answered the latter, “I will e’en take your word for it—for that it is the word of as generous and self-sacrificing a soul as ever stood between a saint and a scamp.”

And with that they shook hands warmly and parted, Mr. Tuke going back to his lodgings in the “Adelphi,” where he had put up to be near his friends, who lay at the “Golden Cross” hard by.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THUS, at length, was Sir Robert the younger informed of the history of his inheritance. Thus, also, was it an aggravation of that wounding recital that, to all appearance, he might have earlier induced Mr. Creel to it—at a period when he himself was less bound to the conduct of a responsibility which he now knew he had undertaken upon terms that seemed to him unnecessarily humiliating, and which he could not but think he would surely otherwise have declined. For, if any love had dictated the gift—the new chance to a repentant prodigal—it was harder than Roman in its expression.

So he thought, smarting under the lash of his father’s prejudgment; and it was only by and by, in one of those elastic rebounds that were characteristic of the man and constitutional, that he came to consider that it was a prejudgment, and that, had his father lived to see it verified, he might have modified at least the asperity of his language.

This was little comfort; but it was some.

At first he had had a wild temptation to reject, at the eleventh hour, a gift which only his ignorance had accepted. It passed, however, in the reflection that, whatever the pre-history of “Delsrop” (with which he had no concern), the property was indubitably his at the present moment to do with as he chose; that he had already incurred, in his management of it, responsibilities that he could not with honour repudiate; and that the manliness to assert himself in the world should be altogether independent of adventitious moral support.

Still, he was something depressed and unhappy; and was become, perhaps, an essentially graver man than he had been before his interview with the lawyer.

This interview had taken place on the day after his arrival in London. On his way to it, he had left a message at the “Golden Cross,” conveying his respects and his hopes that the travellers had rested well. But the travellers themselves he had no intention to intrude himself on, until convinced, if possible, that the nature of his inheritance offered no bar to his suit with Miss Royston.

Satisfied on this point, he had desired and obtained Mr. Creel’s consent to his using his new knowledge, if necessary, for the furtherance of his addresses—but to how great a degree must be left to his own discretion.

This matter he pondered on his way home; and, pondering it, he must acknowledge to himself that his position with the lady was scarcely improved on; for, whatever its extenuation, the fact of the case remained that he was a distitled beneficiary, whose tenure of his property must be held to rather justify the contempt that secured it to him.

So circumstanced, it was a relief to him, upon calling at the “Golden Cross,” in the dusk of the afternoon, to find that his fellow-travellers were gone visiting. But Sir David had left a message that they were to be at the Haymarket Theatre in the evening, to witness a performance of a new musical piece—in which the celebrated Mr. Fawcett was to appear in a popular part; together with the beautiful Miss De Camp, and Mrs. Mountain of Vauxhall Gardens fame—and that he hoped Mr. Tuke would make it his pleasure to join their party.

Mr. Tuke would make it his pleasure—or his duty. He felt that possibly the somewhat dramatic character of the explanation he was bidden to, would find its appropriate background more in “wings” and “flats” than in the walls of a drabby inn-parlour; that hautboys and fiddles—if he could seized an opportunity to speak out under cover of their harmonious gossip—might play a fitter accompaniment to the tale of his raptures than would the clank of dishes and bawling of ubiquitous waiters.

As to that risk he must run of recognition by old associates—why, he momently invited such a contretemps; and he could really not bother his head with idle speculations as to what he should do in so likely an eventuality. Truly, the main condition under which he held his estate made no provision for such accidents, and his sole concern was, not to escape identification, but to save himself the worry of being questioned as to the why and wherefore. Moreover, it must be confessed, he would claim a little malicious pleasure in denying Miss Angela that knowledge of his real position which would serve as a better argument to her favour, he shrewdly suspected, than any personal merit of his could advance; and he was resolved, if possible, to be taken—if taken he should be—for himself alone.

Therefore, with the determination to that very evening put his fortunes to the proof, he addressed himself to his careful toilet, dined daintily and deliberately, at the “Bedford” Coffee-house in Covent Garden, off “a little lobster, an apricot-puff or so, and some burnt champagne,” and in due time summoned a coach and was driven to the theatre.

In the vestibule he was treated to a brief scene of temper that was like a lever de rideau to usher in the serious business of the evening. An arrogant-looking lady of a very vain and truculent expression of countenance, accompanied by a youth some eleven or twelve years of age, had entered the theatre at the same time as himself. This boy, a plump-faced, kimbo-eyed youngster, with well-oiled chestnut curls and a pugnacious mouth, limped slightly as he walked a little in advance of his companion.

“Tread over, Geordie!” said the latter peevishly, and in a pretty loud voice.

The boy took no notice; but he flushed up, for there was other company present. Thereupon the lady called louder, as if to advertise her authority over him:

“I’ll bid ye listen, ye vicious brat! Tread ye over, as Mr. Lavender directs.”

Now the boy turned round, with a scarlet face; and cried he—and we must not hold him excused: “D—n Mr. Lavender for a hav’rel quack!”

At that the lady came after him in a fury; and immediately he flung up his hand, with a lorgnette in it, and says he: “If ye touch me, I’ll hwhang this on to the floor!”

“Fie, young gentleman!” said Mr. Tuke, who was standing near. “Is that your challenge to a lady?”

He got no profit of his question, however; for, while the boy only stared at him with an angry scowl, the dame spoke up with a fine contempt of his interference.

“We’re beholden to ye, sir,” said she. “But the Lord Byron will have his schooling in manners from better than a pouther’d fribble”—and, catching at the boy’s arm, the two passed on together, making common cause against the enemy.

That person laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and went in search of his friends.

There were many empty boxes round the middle tier, and some with liveried fellows sitting back in them to keep the seats against their masters’ coming. Once and again a man of them, his attention caught by some new arrival, would incautiously project his head, with the result that a storm of nuts and orange-peel, flying from the gallery, would send it jerking in again, to the huge merriment of the house. Amongst these “retainers” was one who wore the Dunlone livery of blue and silver. Mr. Tuke recognized it from where he stood, and a sudden thought, half-comical, twitched at his risibilities.

“What,” he mused, “if Dunlone is baiting a little trap? He will hardly want me to walk into it.”

The fiddles had squeaked and the curtain gone up while he waited; and at this moment he saw the very party he was in search of enter my lord’s box in company with that gentleman.

Miss Royston came to the front, sparkling and radiant as a post-prandial Hebe. She glanced round the house (it was a tribute to her attractiveness that the self-important boy-lord who sat opposite forgot the play a minute while he plied her with his lorgnette); caught sight of Mr. Tuke, and, treating that gentleman to a little cold bow, turned and addressed her witchery to the nobleman behind her, who was taking his seat with an insolence of clatter and chatter that greatly disturbed the audience.

Not in the least desiring, under the circumstances, to obtrude himself on her further notice—and that for many reasons—Tuke retired into the background and gave his most suave attention to the play. Of this he was afterwards conscious of having a very hazy recollection; and only its title, “What a Blunder!” seemed to stick in his memory from a certain impression it had conveyed of appropriateness with his own condition of mind. The scene had lain in Valencia—he remembered that, as also the presence thereon of a dashing English officer, whose complete mufti of white satin tights, trunk hose slashed with purple, spencer of violet velvet, diamond shoe-buckles, and a grey brigand’s hat with three enormous ostrich plumes in it, had presented such a coup de théâtre as ought to have fully compensated him for the wasteful hour, he might have been otherwise inclined to think, he had spent in the house.

Somewhat in a dream, he heard the glorious Miss De Camp expound her melodious grievances to a baneful chorus of banditti, and withdraw into a cavern, the hostage of their most basso-profundo cupidity. He was, indeed, forming his plans the while; and when the curtain fell on the first act, he made his way determinedly to a certain box—the prominent occupants of which had had, for the last half-hour, his particular attention—fully resolved to end one way or the other his period of suspense.

He tapped on the baize door, and was bidden gruffly by the nobleman to enter—which he did. My lord and Sir David were risen at the moment—the former to fetch a bag of oranges out of his laced surtout—and the baronet came at his friend with a genial greeting and his finest London manner.

“Where have you been?” quoth he. “My Lord Dunlone would insist to honour us with his invitation, or I would have acquainted you of our number, Tuke.”

“Tuke!” exclaimed the viscount. He stood staring, with his hand in the pocket.

“At your service, sir,” said the other gravely.

Miss Angela was turned, her face observant and a little flushed.

“My name,” said Mr. Tuke quickly, seeing the cub’s perplexity, “can be a matter of little importance in your lordship’s recollection. But we have been known to one another in the past, as you will doubtless remember.”

“Oh! very well, sir. ’Tis no concern of mine, as you observe,” said the lord; “and it is not every title that is worth the preserving. We came to a settlement at our last meeting, I believe, and I owe you small thanks for the terms of it; but I’m cursed if I knew the sale of your good name was included in the bargain.”

“Nor was it,” said Mr. Tuke.

He took no offence at the other’s insolence; but was quite urbane and good-humoured in the teeth of it. He even gave the nobleman an ironical bow, as, withdrawing his hand empty from the pocket, that fine creature seized Sir David’s arm, and walked the astounded little man out of the box.

No sooner were they vanished, than the intruder addressed himself to Miss Royston with the most perfect calmness and respect.

“I return,” said he, “to ‘Delsrop’ to-morrow.”

She vouchsafed him a lifted eyebrow of surprise.

“So soon?” said she. “Then your business is concluded—or postponed?”

“It is concluded.”

“To your satisfaction, I trust?”

“Assuredly. I am satisfied I came on a fool’s errand.”

“Indeed?”

She trifled with her fan. Suddenly she leaned back in the shadow of the curtains and looked up at him.

“Mr. Tuke,” she said—“were you ever my lord’s tailor?”

He could only stare his astonishment.

“Or his tool or his creature in any way?” she said, gathering vehemence with speech. “Oh, sir! why should you wonder? And whither were his innuendoes directed, and what the reason that he disavowed your claim of friendship?”

“Surely he did not!”

“Not—not? And you pass under an assumed name. Will you deny it?”

“No, madam.”

She gave a great sigh, and turned her attention to the orchestra, that was beginning to tune up for the second act.

“You will have a cold journey,” she said. “Good-bye!”

He echoed her adieu with a composed gallantry, and stepped from the box, a man of ice. Humming (horribly out of tune, it must be said) a fragment of some late-heard melody, he lounged through his tier of the auditorium, and even paused, before leaving the house, at a point whence he could obtain a comprehensive view of the assembly. Here, glancing down into the pit, his gaze was instantly riveted upon the figure of a man that sat, lolling in an ungainly manner, against the wooden partition that enclosed the orchestra.

“Now, by Heaven,” muttered the observer, “if you are not my old friend of the fishing-rod, there is no virtue in the name of Brander!”

As he thus spoke under his breath, the man below, moved by that telepathic force that is called sympathy, looked up, and catching the other’s eye, started violently, and immediately shifted his position so as to present nothing but a back of rusty broadcloth to the inquisition of the boxes.

“And so my suspicion is confirmed,” thought Tuke; and made his way to the vestibule.

Walking on the stilts, so as to speak, of a sort of incensed exaltation, he issued from the theatre to find a wet sleet falling. The loaded flakes hissed in the torches of the link boys; the whole pavement resounded with the clink of pattens.

“And here is the appropriate wet blanket,” muttered our friend, “to the bed of my own making. I will e’en back to broiled bones and a noggin of punch by the fire.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

THERE is a curious anomaly about the way in which a self-confidence, impervious to the stabs of ill-fortune, may be paralyzed in a moment by the little prick of a snub irresponsible. Now, I would not go so far as to say that the sang-froid shown by Mr. Tuke over his virtual dismissal by Miss Royston represented the real state of his feelings; or that he did not find his appetite for a certain fruit stimulated by his disappointment of it. But, without doubt, the sting that most rankled for the moment in his vanity was that tart little rebuke administered to him by the aristocratic carline in the theatre-lobby. It was absurd, it was inexplicable—but so it was. His sense of injury in the greater matter was quite overcrowded by his feeling of humiliation in the lesser. That was a little snake, but it swallowed all the rest—so elastic is a proud stomach.

Perhaps it was all very beneficial to him. No doubt it was too much his way to affect a good-humoured tolerance of destiny; to repudiate responsibility, in speech or act, on the strength of a certain genial creed of fatality that assumed itself independent of the laws of obligation. To have that much of the vagabond in one, that one moves serenely indifferent to conventional restrictions, is excellent; but to insist upon one’s vagabondage is to be a didactic vagabond; and that is intolerable. For it is to assume that orthodox folk must accept vagabondage as the superior condition, which, being orthodox, they cannot.

Therefore it was that, upon the morning following his visit to the theatre, our gentleman started—as he had obstinately resolved he would do—upon his homeward journey, quite truculent with a sense of grievance.

There was little in the prospect about him that served to otherwise than confirm his depression. Winter, it was evident, was asserting itself with a despotic and merciless rigour that was deaf to all considerations of humanity. The sleet of the previous night had frozen into and made long icy crevasses of the road-ruts; the throat of the wind was hoarse with cold; the grey of utter lifelessness stretched from earth to sky—a grey that no fury of the stiff blast could rend or discompose.

Each hour linked itself to the next with a bolt of iron as, his teeth set to the driving chill, he urged his long way forward. The road clanked under him; the scarlet nostrils of his straining horse palpitated like blown coals against a background of ashes. He did not much care to think of anything but his own miserable discomfort; and in that he took some hard satisfaction, as if by enduring it he were shaming the callous soul who had bidden him away from his cosy fireside in the “Adelphi.”

It was at this climax of his meditations that humour and hunger ventured upon a little roguish assault on his epigastrium. Had the attack failed, he had been other than the man of this history. It did not, by any means. He sighed, drew himself up, twinkled over the collapse of his pondered heroics, broke into a laugh, half-vexed, half-jocund, and fairly plunged into that illuminating thought of the æsthetic value of appetite to a free man.

“For I am free!” he cried to the winds—“and responsible in all the world to nobody but myself!”

At the very next wayside inn he dismounted and called boisterously for food. Munching this, with a confident digestion, by a jolly fire, and delighting in every purple bead of Clos Vougeot that swam to his glass rim, he would give his fancies, as the freeborn children of a Bohemian, rein to run as they listed, and would even humour them to the top bent of his inclination. Well, their order—or absence of it—might be this: Position and respectability; a park, a carriage-road, trim servants, nice-mannered children; a stake in the county and a sober reputation to prop it; an admirable cold wife, in whom an innate artificiality should be tuned to the musical pitch of sentiment; on every side a thickset hedge of formality and restriction, where-through one decent passage alone should be pierced—the stone-flagged way to the tremendously enduring family vault;—and at the last, the precise misrepresentation of a ruled epitaph. Good! And now from the olive to the wine: Life—the life that he understood and could rejoice in—away from the flint road and spurring on to the downs; the life of heath and water and wood, of the blown blue sky and the whirled pollen of flowers; of light and gloom, risk and effort and reward; of the great breath of change and freedom, and—ah! yes: of the sympathizing soft heart to be always waiting him at the blossoming corner; the spirit to often share with him the wanderings and the marvels, and to pull him down into the sweet-smelling brake at shut of eve, and so for both to make a common cause of dreams.

Which was the happier picture? And yet a very fragrant perfume would cling about the presentment of that white gentle-born Angela; and sometimes even now it would appear a profanation to him to hold her cheaply in his thoughts.

He would not. If a certain shame-faced exultation over his latest emancipation would stir oddly in him from time to time, he would not so far abuse the trust his own heart had placed in a recent sentiment as to set up a new idol in the niche of a fallen image. Angela might be deposed; but—for the present at least—no other should usurp her throne.

Momentarily firm in this respect, and secure in his own geniality from the carping criticisms of conscience, he turned from all tender retrospections, and lazily, as he sat, reviewed a little company of late incidents. From yesterday with its snubs and its petty hurts, to the melancholy and monotonous flight of this morning—even that now had its accents to be indulgently recalled. His thoughts went back along the wintry road he had traversed, and dwelt comically upon the figure of an old oddity he had seen peering down upon him from a leaf-ruined gazebo—an oddity, the personification of much inquisitiveness, that was muffled in many capes and that held a great blue umbrella between its old head and the blast. He remembered how a half-dozen snow-buntings had fled over a hedge-row as he went by; how down a certain swoop of meadow-land a flock of screaming gulls had dived; how, where in a roadside churchyard a sexton was toiling at a grave, the titlarks had bobbed and curtsied on the newly-turned mould, desperate in their freezing hunger;—and from all this he augured that such a winter was threatening as would make the country no desirable place to live in for some months to come.

Still, he was not sorry he was returning to it. In his new lust for freedom a veritable loathing for the gilded fetters of town-life was a first condition, and he would have no knowledge of passions that could only take breath in a vitiated atmosphere. If he must sin, he would sin in the woods; and of his wavering human soul “let the forest judge.”

It had been a desolate road he came by—black and gloomy with frost, and enlivened by but few passing vehicles. One of these—a post-chaise—there had been, going on monotonously before him at a distance ahead. Its steady progression (he could not tell why) annoyed and worried him. It was always there, a yellow blot in the perspective of highway; whipping down and up the hollows, swinging rhythmically in its straps, endlessly speeding on and holding him, as it were, in its wake. Once or twice he had been moved to cut past and outrun it; but the bitter push of wind in his front and an apathy bred of cold would dissuade him from the effort, and in the end he would always find himself jogging sombrely along in its rear. It was a satisfaction to him, as he came within sight of the inn at which he was to dismount, to see this persistent vehicle, its occupants and cattle refreshed, moving off on its further journey; for so, he comforted himself, he should resume his own way by and by unvexed of that aggravating accompaniment. This was all childish, of course; but so it was that it was always his habit to be impatient of anything that embarrassed his free forward outlook; and to be kept walking behind a pedestrian in the street he would regard as almost a personal affront.

However, for the rest of his day’s journey he had the road virtually to himself; and by sundown he had completed his forty-fifth mile, and was clanking into the High Street of Basingstoke.

At the “White Horse” in this town he woke on the following morning, with a sense of constriction at his heart, to find the water in his ewer a sheet of ice, and that smell of cold soot, that seems the prevailing atmosphere of hard winters, to proceed from everything about him.

His room looked upon the stable-yard, and glancing thereinto while in process of dressing, he broke into an oath at sight of a yellow chaise that stood below with horses attached, over one of which a red-nosed post-boy sprawled expectant, awaiting his fare.

“Now, by the lord!” he muttered—“if my Nemesis has not lain with me at mine own inn!”

He was scowlingly speculating as to the possibility of his having to tail a second day in the wake of this rumbling jaundice, when he uttered a startled exclamation and, drawing into the covert of the window curtains, stood peering down into the yard.

For the hirer of the chaise—to whom early rising would appear to be a right condition of posting—was at that moment issued from the inn, and was mounting, without any affectation of leisure, the step of the vehicle.

Mr. Tuke, thinking of that presentation to his view, two nights before, of a lank, long back in the pit of the theatre, came hurriedly from his hiding-place; and at that instant, the traveller turned and flashed an upward glance at the window. With the very movement, he gave a hoarse order to the post-boy, wrenched open the door of the carriage, plunged in, and, before peeping Tom could gather his perceptions, the chaise was rolling and clattering out of the yard.

So—ho! there was business afoot! Where hitherto was all avoidance and reluctance, now must be haste and scurry and pursuit. The squalid rogue Brander posting it like a lord! Surely there must be some momentous reason for the outlay.

The gentleman at this point, wild with eagerness and impatience, stood below presently on the yard-steps to bolt a mouthful of meat and bread while his horse was saddling. Ten minutes later he was off and set to the chase, pounding it along at what rate he durst on the icy roads.

“If they are pointed for Andover, well and good,” he murmured. “Do they take cross-tracks for the ‘Dog and Duck,’ I shall know what to apprehend.”

With the thought, he swerved from the main-road into the first of the homeward by-ways; cantered down a mile of close-set lanes; turned a corner leading to a stretch of open downs, and—there, going one before him, small in the distance, was the vehicle he pursued.

To overtake and constitute himself its rear-guard—such must be his object. An easily attained one, it would appear; but his horse was scarcely fresh, and a slip on those glassy ruts might ruin all.

He settled himself doggedly to the chase. Such veritably it became; for soon it was evident that the quarry knew itself to be pursued, and tactically wished to allure him on to a destructive speed. But, little by little the horseman gained on the other. He got near enough to mark Brander’s head thrust intermittently from the window—by and by to hear faintly the rascal’s voice cursing on his leaping postillion. Suddenly the leading party took an unexpected way, brought out on the high-road leading from Winchester to Stockbridge, and went careering for the latter place at a gallop.

“Ha!” cried Tuke to himself, “that double won’t draw me from the scent, my friend!”

It was all give-and-take country they raced by—desolate downland that dropped and rose like a flying sparrow. Over it the pace became terrific. The post-boy lashed his horses till they foamed; the rider galled the sides of his poor straining beast. Something, it was obvious, must happen shortly—to whom was the single question.

The pursuer was to triumph. At the crest of that very slope that led up to the high gallows-tree, the ridden post-horse shied at a dangling chain, threw his mount, brought his fellow to his knees—and in a moment carriage and cattle were a plunging tangle of confusion.

With a shout of jubilation, Tuke spurred up the hill and rode upon his enemy.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

BEFORE the other could reach him, the ready Mr. Brander had extricated himself from his perilous position and, leaving the bruised post-boy to manage his own, strode back a pace or two, his hands groping rigidly in the skirt-pockets of his mangy surtout. Mr. Tuke, apt at an emergency, came up pistol in hand, which seeing, the long rogue halted with a stony face, of which only the lurid eyes belied the expressionlessness. For some seconds the two men faced one another without a word. At length said the pursued:

“No doubt, sir, you are come to explain yourself.”

“I have nothing to explain,” said the other, stiff as the trigger of his own weapon and as deadly.

“To what, then, am I to attribute this pursuit and maltreatment of a harmless traveller using without offence the King’s highway?”

“Mr. Brander, I am not convinced my legitimate answer should not be a bullet through your brain. I may give it yet, if you do not take your fingers from that pistol butt.”

The rogue flung his hands in front of him, and clasped them there.

“This, you will admit,” he said quietly, “is a gross outrage. I have done nothing to deserve it. I take post on my own concerns, and am wantonly driven to this pass with any possibility of consequences.”

“For which you have yourself to thank. There must be two to a hunt. Had you not fled I had not driven.”

“Surely, sir, it is excusable to fly a danger, and for an innocent traveller to read evil in one who spurs after him along a lonely road?”

Mr. Tuke permitted himself a spirt of merriment.

“Ingeniously argued,” said he. “So I am the highwayman? Well, I call upon you to stand and deliver.”

“Indeed, sir, I have nothing worth your consideration.”

“Pardon me. Your sudden flight thitherwards, at the moment you imagined me established and occupied in London, is a matter very well worth my consideration.”

“You are mistaken. How could I know of your presence in London? You will observe I make no pretence of ignorance as to your identity.”

“That is modest of you.”

He gave no further answer; but he set to and whistled an air from the opera, “What a Blunder.”

“Now, Mr. Brander,” he said, “you have taken time by the forelock, but I have taken him by the nose; so you may e’en go back the way you came, and inform your graceful associates that the master of ‘Delsrop’ is returned to his own.”

He spoke with a very engaging sang-froid; but he was prepared for contingencies. To his surprise the other, after eying him for some moments in a manner of puzzled speculation, shrugged up his shoulders and broke into a gobble of laughter.

“Come,” said the thief, “I will be honest with you, for all the marchand forain I am.”

“A scholar?” said Tuke. “Then you have two weapons to my one. We must stand on even terms before I consent.”

“Bah!” exclaimed the respectable merchant; and, turning his back, he fetched a pistol out of either side-pocket and fired each in turn at the dangling chains of the gallows. Both bullets struck home with a clank; the horses, twenty yards away, started and reared, and the rogue, repouching the smoking barrels, slewed himself about once more.

“Does that satisfy you?” he said. “Now my only weapon is my tongue.”

“It shall carry further than a bullet with me, though I won’t swear it shall speed as true. You have a very pretty aim, Mr. Brander.”

“I learnt to hit a mark when I was a schoolmaster,” said the other dryly. “A settled fly is a fair test of skill. Well, sir, may I crave a confident word with you?”

“The post-boy is out of ear-shot, I think.”

“I thank you, and I premise that this little expedition is of my sole conception and at my own cost, and that the associates of whom you spoke know nothing of it.”

“I see. You would have stolen a march on them?”

“Precisely; and, if possible, secure for myself alone the booty that all desire to share.”

“You are candour itself.”

“I read in it my better policy. Believe me, necessity is my foster-mother and her vile children are my comrades. Once I was blameless, though a schoolmaster. The birch-rod was my business, the fishing-rod my recreation, a passion for Elzivirs my ruin. I stole to allay it—a crime as white as the theft of bread to a starving man. The law took cognizance, grudging me all but my dry bones of syntax. I have suffered, but I am no more vicious now than then. I desire no gauds or vanities, but means only to the satisfying of this scholarly craving for books.”

“To gorge on which you would pilfer a stone worth £70,000? You see I play out my hand squarely, making no pretence of misreading your motives.”

The tall rascal smiled.

“As to that,” he said, “I must do honour to your profound penetration. Yes, sir, the ‘Lake of Wine’ is what I am after; and, for the rest, a passion is none that halts on the hither side of satiety. You could understand spending a thousand, or fifty thousand pounds on horses; but horses die, sir, or breed-in and degenerate, whereas written words beget great thoughts that in their turn intermarry and beget greater.”

“Well, Mr. Brander—and do you propose that I give you this stone to buy books with?”

“I propose to come to terms with you on the subject.”

“Terms (you must really forgive my outspokenness) from a cut-purse and a cut-throat?—terms from one who has no shadow of a title to the gem, or, even if he had, has attempted to enforce it by means ridiculously illegal? Upon my word, sir, for a school-master——!”

Brander waved a tolerant but extremely dirty hand.

“I will question you, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “Why am I a cut-throat?”

“Ah! had I been a scholar of yours, I might answer, maybe.”

“A mere veil of satire to conceal a paucity of proof. Why, sir, why, I ask?”

“You are insistent. Shall we suggest—apart from reasonable surmise as to your general career—that you had a hand, say twenty years ago, in the murder of a colleague under these very gallows?”

“Twenty years ago I was acting usher at a school.”

“Oh! we won’t be particular to a day or two.”

Mr. Brander straddled his legs, knuckled one fist upon his hip under his coat-skirt, and with his other hand rasped his chin meditatively.

“Well,” said he, “give a dog a bad name. ’Tis all of second importance. Only, being so, ’tis scarce worth an untruth. Sir, I regard lies as strong waters—the more regularly indulged in, the weaker is their effect when needed. This is no particular occasion for one. I had no hand in the man Cutwater’s death. I had not then any shadowy knowledge, even, of the great stone or the concealment of it that brought about his fate.”

“Nor of the admirable Mr. Fern?”

“Nor of Jack Fern, who alone, I believe, of the original gang survives.”

“You interest me vastly. Then, I protest it is a fatuous policy of that gentleman to make him new confidants in the secret, when, had he worked alone, he might have aimed at securing all for himself—as you are doing. But you really flatter my credulity.”

“Let it pass, then.”

“And pray why did Mr. Fern never return to the assault?”

“I had the story in rough from him in Newgate (where we were confined together in ’86), that he was put in for an old affair before the other scandal had blown by, and that there he had remained ever since, his band dispersed or tied up;—and the year after, he went to Botany Bay along with Governor Phillip and his fleet of off-scourings, and——”

“Here he is back again—at the end of twenty years—an escaped convict, I presume, with an ex-pedagogue for lieutenant and a tradition to trade upon. Surely he is forfeit to the law at the outset; and, upon my word, Mr. Brander, your confidences are embarrassing.”

“Make him over to the hangman, sir. I give you my honour I’ll help you. Maybe I could prove his title to a fast place in Execution Dock.”

“I see. You are really a very admirable rascal. But, you’ll want your price?”

“Oh! without doubt.”

“And that is—no, no, Mr. Brander; not half the value of the stone?”

“It’s a damned risky business, Mr. Tuke. I play my life against a competence.”

“But, listen, my friend. What claim has any one of you to a share in the ruby?”

“If it comes to that, what claim have you?”

“None whatever.”

“See here, sir. The man was one of us. The stone was fair spoil for division—not the perquisite of a single master-rogue. It was no appendage, conditional on your acquisition of the property—now, was it?”

“You know all about it, I see. Well, Mr. Brander, your boy there’s getting impatient.”

The long man’s jaw hung slack while he rubbed it, and a very evil look came into his eyes.

“Is that tantamount to saying you decline to treat?” he said.

“Your boy, Mr. Brander. I yield you precedence of the road, sir.”

“I’ve given you my confidence, by God! You’ll know what that means.”

“I never asked for it, you’ll observe.”

The devil looked out of Mr. Tuke’s eyes, and he set his teeth.

“You dog!” he cried low. “What makes you dare presume thus upon my tolerance?”

His fingers were nervous with his pistol-stock. He took a quick step forward. At that Brander’s fury came with a clap.

“Presume!” he hissed, and cried it again with a scream. “A cursed broken gamester that daren’t show his face in public! A posted defaulter! A despicable and despised spendthrift, with a wilderness for his reversion! Oh! I understand you, sir—I understand you. You’re a woundy character, by God! and you’ll make disposition of the stone and think to patch your reputation with bank-notes. But, beware, sir! There’s no law of heaven or earth that gives you a title to the gem. To withhold it from the just processes of barter is to put yourself without the pale of consideration. Why, who are you—who are you, I——”

He choked with his very rage, and stood impotently quivering his clenched fists.

“Mr. Brander,” said the other, absolutely suave and unheated, “I give you two minutes to mount and be off.”

The click of his flint-lock cut in like the snap of teeth.

For a moment it looked as if a tragedy were near enacting. The gallows chains, swung by the wind, creaked with rusty laughter. High overhead a crow, lazily drifting down the valley, checked its course a speculative instant and resumed it with a peevish and contemptuous “Caw!”

Brander had turned abruptly and was stalking towards his chaise. Once only he looked back over his shoulder, and then there was no expression on his face but a smile; but that Mr. Tuke would have given a dozen rubies to obliterate with a bullet.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

FOR all the starkness of frost that now befell, it was not till the early days of February that the packed heavens began to discharge themselves of the congested stores of snow they had been long garnering. By then the ground was iron a foot deep; the last green thing was withered upon itself; dead birds hung in the hedgerows and rabbits were stuck stiff in their burrows. Familiar presentments of trees and buildings offered strange new aspects as seen from the middle of frozen ponds, and the very least sap of nature was so withdrawn as that it seemed a marvel the principle of life could endure, to hug itself with any promise of spring.

But to our gentleman waking one morning, there was earnest of the first white fall outside in the wan light struck rigidly from the ceiling. He rose and went to the window, and saw the cold sheet spread, pure and beautiful and hiding all his world; and at that he knew himself committed to such a prolonged hob-nobbing with his lares as he had never before experienced.

He was hardly discomfited. This prospective imprisonment carried with it a picture of home occupations very peaceful and unvexed. Sheltered from the wind, he would study to make of himself a shepherd beloved of his flock. A vision of a sombre library, full of serious warmth and winking book-backs, with himself a quiet dreaming student, in the dusk afternoons, set in the midst, appealed pleasantly to his mind’s eye. It should be a period of pregnant repose, while thought and virtue should grow large within him and induce him to a nobler attitude towards life.

In the modest enthusiasm engendered of this prospect, he even wished it would snow ever more and more, until he and his were shut in beyond a last chance of present rescue; and if the desire proved him less foreseeing from the domestic point of view than he would have imagined, it did, at least, most fully avouch his honesty of purpose.

Since his return he had rather courted seclusion; nor had he gone much abroad, nor—be it marked—ventured within the radiated influence of the “First Inn.” He had, in consequence, no personal knowledge of those movements of Mr. Brander that were subsequent to his interview with him; but he kept Dennis, to whom he had given his confidence in the matter, on the alert, and that good serving-man reported that no information was in the neighbourhood of any recrudescence of blackguardism on the part of the “Dog and Duck.” Therefore he was fain to hope that the baffled ex-schoolmaster had for the time being succumbed to circumstance and withdrawn himself as he came.

Now, on that afternoon of the first snow, Mr. Tuke was busying himself in the room he had made his private and personal study, and Darda was helping him to the arrangement of his none too numerous volumes, when her brother came in to crave a word with his master.

“Sir,” said he, “I believe you would like to know that Sir David and Miss Royston are returned to ‘Chatters.’”

Tuke looked up in some surprise.

“Already?” he said. “Are you sure?”

“Indeed, yes, sir. I had it from Betty Pollack.”

“Betty?”

“She drove over to-day, sir, with her father, for orders, hearing that you had come back; and she stated that young Gamble had happened upon Sir David and party posting over the high downs at six o’clock yesterday evening.”

“Oh, very well, Dennis.”

The man withdrew, and the master resumed his labours preoccupied. Presently he slapped a book down upon the table, and—“You must go on by yourself, Darda,” said he, and left the room.

For some minutes after his exit the girl remained motionless where she stood; her ear turned to the last echo of his retreating footstep, her face like a deep-cut cameo, stained with blue shadows, the glory of her hair flaming against a background of snow. From her whiteness and her quiet she might have been the very ghost of some burning thought awake for the first time to the winter of its desolation.

Presently she uttered a little heart-rending sigh, and went on forlornly with her occupation.

Her master, in the meanwhile, was gone about his business; and that was no less than a visit to the returned travellers. His resolve to undertake this was not the fruit of any desperate hope. He had no natural inclination to hold himself cheaply in questions of moral treatment, and he was sensitive, in a manly way, to the insolences of feminine rebuke. But he had schooled himself into an attitude towards Miss Royston which only some real act of violence to his feelings should convince him was entirely unjustified, and he would not consent to yield his office at that lady’s little court unless he were to suffer an outspoken decree of banishment. He had made up his mind, in fact, like a little naughty but repentant boy, to be good, and good he would be if properly encouraged. Now he was to see if Angela would resume her former self with her accustomed life, and, desiring test of this, he would plunge once more into the fire. And here, I regret to say, all his eremitic visions dissolved into thin air, and he was decided that for him the “running brooks” must suffice for library.

He walked through the deep snow to “Chatters,” and was removing his coat in the hall thereof, after being admitted, when a lofty and languid figure came upon him, and paused in some fatigued surprise on its way to a room-door.

He uttered an exclamation, and, advancing upon this person, accosted him decidedly cavalierly.

“You here, Dunlone!” he said. “This is entirely unexpected.”

The viscount in his disdain looked particularly like a camel; but he gave no answer.

“Well,” said Tuke, “being here, I should like to ask you a question. Have you acquainted our friends of my real title?”

“Oh, curse it, no!” said the lord. “What the devil’s it got to do with me?”

“That’s right. I have my reasons for the change, of course, and I’ll ask you to respect them.”

“I give myself no cursed concern about it. I don’t know that it makes much difference,” cried my lord irritably. “You seem to think I’ve no affairs but yours to consider.”

“You’ll not be offensive, I know,” said Tuke. “It’s not your way.”

The other sniffed and preceded the visitor into the drawing-room. He, the latter, pondered profoundly on his short journey thither, and steeled himself against probabilities.

But here he was agreeably and quite surprisingly flattered. Miss Royston received him with a charming naïveté of welcome, and seemed to encourage him to assume the rôle of a familiar neighbour.

“Are you not astonished to see us back so soon?” she said. “You know how eagerly I grasp at any excuse for a return to the country. Through all the clash and sparkle of town I hear the birds singing and see the lambs frisking in the meadows.”

“They’re not so much as dropped in January,” said Dunlone seriously.

Miss Angela blushed.

“Mr. Tuke will understand me,” she said, with a plaintive glance at that gentleman.

He coughed and bowed, and was altogether wholly perplexed as to the nature of her present attitude towards him.

“And what was the excuse you grasped at?” said he.

She made a little moue with her lips—she was amazingly confidential—and shrugged her pretty shoulders at the oblivious viscount.

“He was returning to Cornwall,” she whispered, “and almost drove us home that he might make a half-way house of ‘Chatters.’ I vow we were forced to come.”

She was delightfully secretive. There was no mention of my lord’s tailor. Almost Tuke misdoubted that Dunlone had kept his aristocratic faith with him.

“Well,” said he, “we’re all beholden to him anyhow, whatever was his motive.”

She lifted her shoulders again at that. Her expression said plainly, “His motive? You know as well as I do, sir, what is the lure to any male creature in this house.”

“He is not a first example of savoir vivre,” she whispered; “but, if he is a cub, he is a tiger-cub.”

“Does that recommend him in your eyes?”

“What hypocrisy to pretend it does not in any. He may feed like a wolf, but he hath the royal coat, and his stripes shall cover a multitude of sins.”

“Or rib a whole vessel of emptiness.”

“No doubt,” she said, with a light laugh.

He sat silent some moments. Was she sincere, he pondered, or could it be possible she merely sought to play him into check with this insolent pawn?

Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that his own hitherto tactics might have lacked fairness. Miss Royston was very prettily instinct with the prudence of her class, and it could be nothing less than wrong-headedness that should hold her to blame for subordinating passion to a sense of refinement. Indeed, what better security against weakness or levity could she present him than this very reluctance of hers to submit herself to the suit of an uncertified admirer? If in the unacknowledged bitterness of his own degradation he had taken some savage pleasure in presenting his least admirable side to the world, was this uninterested lady to be called upon to discriminate in the question of his grievances, or not rather to be the more commended for tentatively holding his approaches in check? With such a prize to win, it had surely been his more honourable course, not to read in her reserve a force antagonistic to his own, but to inventory his every possession, and place all, with the truth, at her feet. Why, in short, should she, whose heart he could not flatter himself he had taken at once and by storm, be content to consign her long traditions of refinement to one who could give no assurance of his right position to maintain and honour the gift?

Then he thought: “I have Creel’s consent, and it only needs another kind word from her, and the truth shall come. I will tell her what are my real name and title, and so learn for once and for all if, satisfied on these points, she will be willing to forego both for the third item on the list—the man himself.”

And, at this pass, in pops Sir David, with his round face like a full-stop, and puts the period for the time being to a very promising situation.

The baronet, it must be said, showed some embarrassment over the contretemps. “I ain’t responsible for this Dunlone business, you know,” his pained eyebrows pleaded to Tuke. “I don’t profess to understand Angel, and she’s as wilful as the deuce, she is.”

He would nevertheless have had his friend stay to dinner; but this Tuke would not consent to, pleading his riding-dress and boots for excuse, and protesting that he must go after he had drunk the dish of tea Miss Royston had promised him.

All the time he was there the lady made much of her visitor, while my lord sat by on a sofa, with his mouth like a slur-mark in music, sulkily employing himself in ripping the gold thread from a sword-knot. For this exquisite had brought his “drizzling” box with him—a beautiful tortoise-shell casket, with the Dunlone stork in silver on the lid, and within a neat array of hilt-bands, shoulder-straps, and galloons of tarnished lace—and would sit by the hour together, silent as a Trappist, while he unravelled his yarn and wound it upon wooden reels. Out of the sale of these, he would tell you, he made quite a little monthly income, for there was no outlay, the material being cajoled from easy friends or accepted from parasites; and without doubt the occupation and its moral fitted him like a glove.

He did not even look up when the other came to bid him good-evening, but Tuke thought he heard him murmur, “Oh, curse it!” under his breath, and was fain to accept this benediction as a negative testimony to the value put upon him as a rival, and to the capriciousness of the soft sex in general.

The short winter afternoon was closing in as our gentleman, profoundly cogitating on the policy it should be best to pursue with a ravissante who would thus humble or exalt him according to the whimsies of her mood, came down to his own gate in the hollow where the ruined lodge was situated. Here much had been redressed and improved, so that—though the building itself remained an enbowered wreck—the entrance and the drive presented an ordered appearance, and, indeed, to any lover of the picturesque, an aspect quite alluring in its sweet and lofty loneliness.

He had entered and clanked-to the gate behind him, when something glimmering to the back of a tree-trunk brought him to a pause, and immediately he advanced upon it, and, skirting the bole, jerked to a stop and cried, “Betty!”

She stood before him, her head hanging and her face gone a little white; and she knitted her fingers together and had not, it seemed, a word to say.

“Why, what are you doing here, in the dusk and the snow?” he said, in something of a stern voice. “I understood you had gone back with your grandfather?”

Her forehead, under its hood, took a line of pain, and her lips trembled. He thought he foresaw the coming shower, and his reluctance to encourage it made him assume a little harshness.

“Where is your grandfather?” he said coldly and brusquely.

At that she glanced up at him like a frightened child.

“Don’t—don’t be angry with me!” her looks said plainly.

“Betty?” he asked, reproachfully.

“Grandfather went on first,” she whispered, “and I was to follow.”

“Why? Why didn’t you go with him?”

At that her tears came thick and fast. She shook before him, trying to repress them.

“You can’t go that long way by yourself,” he said, more gently. “Why did you remain behind?”

He had to bend his head to catch the hurried, sobbing answer.

“I wanted to see you—only to see you and not be seen. You have been away—have kept away so long. Have I vexed you? It was what I thought was right. But I’m weak to hold by all I resolved. I only wanted to see you, and now I’ll go.”

She moved a quick step towards the gate. He let her retreat a pace or two. For the first time, I think, he realized what he had been doing. He struggled fiercely with himself; but, no, he could not part with her like this.

“Betty!” he cried again, softly. “You must come back to me.”

She hesitated, turned, and came. He put her in front of him, and took her face between his hands.

“Oh, my dear!” he said, “what have I done?”

She looked up piteously into his eyes.

“No, no,” she whispered, in a drowned voice, “you’re not to blame. You keep your word—you would have me keep mine, like the gentleman you are. It’s—it’s——”

“What, Betty?”

“Only let me see you now and then—see you, and not be spoken to or noticed.”

“How can I prevent you, if you will? But would it be wise?”

She drew herself away from him gently but forcibly.

“No, it would not,” she said, in a low voice; “but love is never that. Yes, love—why should I hide it? And I have found out what I wanted to know. I shall soon hear the bells ringing for your wedding, and—and—oh! why did you ever kiss me?”

And at that she ran from him. He called to her, hurried after her, but she was heedless. He saw her speed up the road, and he durst not follow. He knew that, country-bred girl as she was, she would make little of the miles to Stockbridge, even were her grandfather not awaiting her at a distance, which he thought improbable.

Then, retracing his steps with a groan, he went on to his house. He walked sternly. He was not only despicable in his own eyes, but cruel in a manner he had not thought was possible to his nature.

As he entered his hall, Dennis came upon him with startled eyes.

“Sir,” he said, eagerly, “may I have a word with you?”

CHAPTER XXXV.

“I HAVE found out where was hid the ‘Lake of Wine.’”

Tuke, withdrawn into his dining-hall, was sprung to his feet and faced his serving-man with wide eyes. He, the latter, was all hurried and high-strung. His lips looked as if his teeth were chattering.

“God forgive me, sir,” he said, “and grant me no break in your favour. I would, in His holy name, the bugbear had not risen again to vex us. But so it is, and I must do my duty by acquainting you of the particulars.”

“Why, man, what’s all the to-do? You are not about to convict yourself?”

“Only of carelessness or stupidity, sir, before Heaven. I might have guessed, had I the wit of a mouse. But her cranks and her whimsies, poor soul, have been little inviting to my soberer tastes, and——”

“Whose cranks?”

“My sister Darda’s.”

“Has she revealed the hiding-place?”

“She has known it all along, from near the time when she first brought the deadly thing into her collection.”

“Now, Dennis, will you craze me by assuming so much of intuition on my part? Out with it all, man! To what are you alluding?”

“To it, sir—that gallows relic.”

“The skull, do you mean?”

“Yes, yes,” was the low answer.

“And what of it?”

“It is hid therein.”

A pregnant pause fell between the two.

“Now,” said the master presently, “give me the whole history as plain as you can speak.”

The man looked up appealingly. Some strange knowledge or emotion was impeding his every effort at an explanation. But at last he forced himself to speech.

“I have noticed her very strange of late—ever since—I have noticed her very strange, sir. Her soul seemed caught in a deeper thrall than she had known before. Somehow there has appeared more of the woman in her eyes and less of madness. To-day, in the dusk afternoon, she came upon me out of your library, sir, where she was at work. ‘Dennis,’ she said, all in a moment, ‘isn’t there a love that can be bribed with gifts of jewels?’ I answered the poor wench laughing—‘Oh, yes; no doubt there was.’ ‘Tell him,’ she said—‘tell him, your master, that I know where the great ruby is hid. I said so once to him before; but then it was for hate and he should know nothing. Now he shall learn the truth if he will.’”

“I remember something of it. Go on.”

“‘Tell him I said to you,’ she went on, ‘that the chalky dead eye of the skull is the jewel itself, and that the eye-socket is its hiding-place.’”

Tuke drew himself back, uttered a great sigh, and stood staring.

“Oh, sir,” continued the man, “I was as wildly incredulous of it as you. Much more she said, and that I am fain not to injustice the poor wench by repeating. But on the main point she was firm.”

“That the very dead eye of the horror was the ‘Lake of Wine’ itself?”

“Yes. And—oh! sir, when at last I came to think of the living highwayman as I knew him; of his resourceful cunning and ingenuity; of how, in my memory of him, this fixed and protruding eye, painted into the semblance of a real one, stood out horribly, under the nerveless lid, I was forced to the conclusion that she spoke right, and had been all these years the solitary warder of the secret.”

“Why did she hold, nor ever reveal it? How could she guess it was there? And why, being there, did it not escape when the head fell?”

“Sir, sir, think! She is mad. She would penetrate and maintain such a secret with every artifice. As to the stone’s breaking away, the skin was all contracted and toughened about it like leather.”

“Dennis—this is an insane idea! And yet—why, great God! the skull’s gone!”

He stared blankly at his man.

“Oh!” he murmured in a moment, “if by any chance there is truth in this—if the wild story is no bogle of the girl’s distemper—how my own peevishness and cruelty react upon myself!”

He took the other by the shoulder.

“Dennis,” he said, “you have your revenge at last.”

“No, no, no!”

“Then, where is the skull? What have you done with it?”

The man hesitated.

“Did you burn it, destroy it?” cried Tuke. “Speak out, man! I am the only one to blame.”

“I did not destroy it, sir. I——”

“Yes, yes. Oh, out with it, in the devil’s name!”

“I gave it to the woman, and she took it away.”

“The woman? What—? Ah! you mean the gipsy I saw you in talk with.”

It all recurred to him in a moment—the stolen interview; the bundle passed from one to the other.

“Where is she?” he said faintly. “Do you know where she is?”

“I—yes, sir. I could lead you to the wild place she inhabits.”

“You must do so,” said Tuke eagerly. “I have done an unwitting wrong to a great sufferer. Dennis, you will lead me to her, won’t you? and help me to the recovery of this accursed stone?”

“Sir, it is accursed, I think; but I will lead you to her.”

“Good fellow!—But why did you make her its custodian? What did she want with it; and has she it still?”

“I will answer for her, with her life, in that.”

He looked strange, and his master as strangely on him.

“What did she want with it?” repeated the latter.

“Sir, sir—how can I say? Perhaps for memory of a great criminal, God forgive him! I implore you not to force me to an answer.”

Tuke scarcely seemed to heed him, or his obvious distress. His vision was lost in pre-occupation.

“Wait!” he said, as if talking to himself. “We must take Luvaine into our confidence before we go further. It is his right to know all; and he must judge me fairly. Be quiet and secret, my good fellow, and don’t touch upon this subject again without my invitation.”

He dismissed his servant, and sat for an hour in the red fire-light deeply pondering. The snow pricked and rustled on the casement, as he dreamed by the still glowing hearth. A stealthy noise of mice was behind the wainscot, and through all the house the stealthy tread of unseen things wandering about the ghostly rooms overhead. One of these seemed to reveal itself—here, at his feet. It crept in very quietly, its white bosom heaving, its hair like a flame of autumn mist, and put warm lips to his hand as it hung slackly, and seized and held it a moment against its soft neck—and so went silently the way it had come.

By and by he roused himself, and looked up with a smile, half-comic and half-pitiful.

“For a country squire of particular morals,” he murmured, “I am quite unduly St. Anthonied by these visions. Did ever man so pay the penalty of his weakness?”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

SIR DAVID BLYTHEWOOD had a particularly infectious laugh, and like all men who make a plaything of their own dignity, he was wont to find his risibilities tickled consumedly before the solemnity of another’s self-importance. Sooner or later the humorous side of any situation would find him, and then, perhaps, it was only those at whom his mischief of merriment was directed who failed to appreciate his sense of the comical.

Now the history of the “Lake of Wine,” as he knew it, had been almost a life-long tradition with him, and a very seriously romantic one, too; but this latest phase of it was destined to quite suddenly make its appeal to him—after some weighty and respectful consideration—from a quarter that, it appeared, his gravity had left unguarded. That it did so is mentioned in this connection for the reason that a certain explosion of mirth on his part was fruitful of consequences.

He and Tuke had ridden over to Winchester to acquaint Luvaine of the progress of events. Perhaps they had not thought to do more than discuss the matter, according to promise, with this melancholy monomaniac. He, however, had relieved them of any hospitable embarrassment they might have felt by at once without any attempt at apology, inviting himself to return with them, with the intimation that it would go nearer to satisfy him if they could thresh out the question on the spot. In order to this, therefore, Tuke—stifling a certain natural antipathy he felt to the man—had prevailed upon him to become for awhile his guest at “Delsrop”; and now the three, slowly trotting by way of a harshly white and iron-bound country, were making, chill and rather silent, for that lonely dwelling-place.

Riding down into Stockbridge with little concern for anything but the dangerous road, Tuke had the tail of his eye, nevertheless, for the “First Inn,” and for Betty standing at the door thereof, serving a mug of ale to a solitary traveller. The girl dropped a curtsey, as in duty bound, to the gentlemen, two of whom saluted her in reply—Blythewood, smilingly; Tuke, gravely; but the wench’s fair soft figure, standing there in bravery of the bitter cold, and her sad mouth and lowered eyelids, dwelt with him by many an after mile, and his heart throbbed out to the forlorn passion he was so hopeless to comfort.

By and by, Sir David turned to his friend a face that struggled with some tickling convulsion.

“What the deuce is the matter with you?” said the latter.

“Eh? Oh! nothin’—nothin’ whatever, Tuke. I say, did you note the gentleman in the jumper?”

“Gentleman? Where?”

“Him that was drinkin’ the ale?”

“No, I don’t think I did.”

“Didn’t you? Well, you mark my word, we’ve some more of these misbegotten rooks flown into the neighbourhood, and it’ll behoove us to keep the salt ready for their tails.”

“Oh! did he look that sort?”

“That he did.”

“And it made you laugh, eh?”

For answer, all the little man’s features swelled to a ripe colour, and he seemed on the verge of an explosion. Tuke shook his head with a grin, repudiating responsibility in the matter, and they rode on a mile further without a word exchanged amongst them. Then suddenly Blythewood was rolling in his saddle, shrieking with laughter, and they all drew rein beside a little copse.

“What inspires this?” said Luvaine, amazed and haughty.

His baneful expression set the young man off again.

“I can’t help it!” he gasped. “I’m sorry, Luvaine—but, but——”

“Well, sir! if you’ll condescend to speak, perhaps we shall be quick to share in your merriment.”

It was so extremely unlikely as far as he was concerned, that the mere suggestion brought a fresh paroxysm from the delinquent.

“Oh!” he cried at last—“to think of all these years of a grievance like yours—of the solemn counsels and the wise heads waggin’—and then to learn that the gashly eye of the creature that we turned from lookin’ at should ha’ been the very stone itself!”

Tuke caught himself grinning again, but Luvaine, furiously red in a moment, drew up stiff in his saddle.

“And you find this food for laughter?” he said, in a high voice. “A grievance, quotha!—only a grievance that hath wrought the ruin of two souls, and for me, in the prime of life, a childless and haunted old age!”

“Oh, Luvaine!” said Sir David, struggling for gravity, “I didn’t mean to cheapen you, man, or to withhold my sympathy from the problematic Mrs. L., who—who ‘very imprudently married the barber’”—he added, with a shout of merriment.

Tuke saw fit to put in a hasty word.

“He has earned a laugh. Let it be at you or me, Captain Luvaine; for though I take no loss of the robbery, I swear the knowledge of it has ridden me like a nightmare.”

The soldier waved his hand.

“Bah!” he said—“the crackling of thorns!”

He dismounted to tighten his saddle-girth.

“David,” he said over the straps, “has had his phases of idiotcy from my first knowledge of him.”

At this the culprit went into a fresh fit.

“No, but,” he said, when he could recover his voice—“on your honour d’you believe the girl’s statement, Tuke?”

“Why not? If I’m credulous, I’m happy; and there’s the true philosophy of life in a nutshell.”

He was struggling with his own imp of merriment. The other had set it squiggling; so that he was fain to look upon all this portentous business from a new irreverent point of view.

“And that Cutwater kept the jewel in his eye-hole,” persisted Sir David, “for all the world to see? And did he sacrifice the sound article to accommodate it?”

“That I cannot account for. He was blind on one side before ever you saw him.”

“You’ve got him to the life, I perceive. And he wore a dummy optic, no doubt, and substituted t’other, all ingeniously painted, for it when he conceived the resplendent idea?”

“I confess I never thought it out! But you’ve done it masterly.”

“Ain’t I? What a genius I am!—almost as good a one as Cutwater (eh, Luvaine?), that was strung up on the downs and a fortune in his head for any crow to peck at. You’d have given an eye for an eye to know that, wouldn’t you? But it needed a crazed girl to see into the creature’s methods, and bag the prize when it fell, while all the rest of us were hunting counter.”

“Are you taunting me, sir? Let me tell you your jesting is ill-timed. I would have known better, at least, than to have ordered away the skull without first examining it.”

“On my honour, sir,” said Tuke, much amused, “I am not a coroner nor even a J. P.”

“Oh! well,” muttered the soldier—“I am ready, gentlemen.”

As he was preparing to mount:

“Tuke,” said Sir David, “now I think on’t—wasn’t it that girl at the inn first gave you warning of Mr. Breeds and his gang?”

“Betty Pollack? Yes.”

He answered brusquely, and touched his horse with his heel.

“The women, it seems, give us the lead in this business.”

“Betty,” said Tuke, with a little fierce glow of emotion, “is gold to the inside of her heart. Now, gentlemen—and keep your eyes alert, by your favour, as we pass the ‘Dog and Duck.’”

A creaking, and pounding of the frozen snow, and the three were on their way once more. The long white stretches of road behind them returned to the sombreness of quiet that their human voices had interrupted. The very dun sky, that seemed to have withdrawn in high offence at their careless chatter, drooped down again, frowning and austere, to resume its ward of the imprisoned forces of life. No movement was in the stiff spurs of grass or in the petrified Hedgerows; no least cry of bird or insect in all the wastes of air.

Yet something there was that gave out a stealthy sound by and by—something that all the time they talked had held its panic breath in the copse, and sweated with terror lest the little snap of some twig under its feet should reveal its hiding-place—something with a puffed, leaden face and coward eyes—the unlovely Mr. Breeds, in fact.

He would not come out into the road, even after the last echo of the horsemen’s retreat had died away. But he crept to his little windy house on the hill by the way he had come—and Mr. Breeds’s way was always a backstairs one. Once only he paused, and his weak, evil features gathered all the definite expression of scoundrelism they could master.

“Betty Pollack!” he muttered. “So it was you, my girl, that set your dirty little torch to the beacon! Now ain’t it dangerous to play with fire, Betty? And what should you say if it came to burn your own fingers?”

He mused a moment; then brought his hand softly down on his thigh.

“But the skull comes first,” he murmured. “What’ll they give me for that piece of news, I wonder?”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE night fell dead and blank, and with it came the snow, crisp, large-flaked, dropping silently as autumn leaves in a windless garden. These were but the pickets of a gathering army—whose cloudy regiments moved up unwieldily from the north-west, where for weeks they had been forming and manœuvring—and the world looked indifferently on them, little thinking how presently it should be overwhelmed in the rush of forces of which they were the pioneers.

Sometimes a little galloping wind, like one of a distracted staff, would scatter a company of them right and left; and then to folks within-doors would sound a rubbing noise on window-panes, as if stealthy fingers were feeling for the hasp.

“If I had not lived all my life amongst ghosts,” said Luvaine, “I should fear this house of yours, Mr. Tuke.”

He rose as he spoke (the three gentlemen were sitting over their wine in the great dining-hall of “Delsrop”), and, walking to the casement, plucked aside a corner of the wide crimson curtain that hung thereover, and stood looking out into the night.

“The dark is full of white faces,” he muttered. “They writhe with laughter and flash down and are gone. There! did you hear that?”

Blythewood glanced, with a shrug of his shoulders, at his host.

“Oh, Luvaine!” he cried—“damn your shuddering fancies! Come to the table, man, and take your glass like an honest soldier!”

The captain dropped the curtain and walked slowly back to his place.

“That I am,” he said, “and that I have been through all the buffets of Fate. But it’s trouble, David, that teaches a man to look inward; and there, does he concentrate his gaze, he acquires the gift of second sight.”

“And what does it advantage him to ride with a spectre on his pillion? I’ve a shorter and pleasanter way to see double.”

He lifted his glass with a jolly chuckle.

“Here’s to the memory of Mr. Cutwater, the greatest broker of his age, yet who got broke himself in the end!” he cried.

Luvaine declined to drink.

“Oh!” said Tuke, laughing. “Give him the nail-toast, sir. He hath kept the gem in trust for you all these years.”

“You are pleased to be facetious, gentlemen. It is all little of a jesting matter to me. I will not drink a murdering thief.”

“Why,” said Blythewood, “he might retaliate by disputing your title, since he had the stone in his eye from the first moment of his hearing of it.”

He chuckled joyously over his own pleasantry; but the other would condescend to no answer but a wave of the hand to dismiss the subject.

“Do you drink the night out?” he said. “Mr. Tuke” (he turned sombrely to his host), “I would be loth to presume upon your hospitality; but, sir—sir, I must venture to hint I am here for a purpose that is not yet satisfied.”

Something like a muttered oath escaped from Tuke’s lips. He, however, forced his good-humour to the front.

“Why, Captain Luvaine,” he said, “I assumed that a travelled guest would prefer to postpone business to the morning.”

“I cannot look upon this as business, sir, in the ordinary sense—no more than the signing of a reprieve, every moment in the delay of which is torture to him most concerned.”

“Well, well—if you regard it in that light.”

Blythewood protested against this unseemly wet-blanketing of a convivial meeting; but he was graciously overborne by his host, who rose and rang the bell.

“Send Mr. Whimple to me,” he told the servant who answered the summons.

The man came flushed and nervous. Tuke saw that the door was carefully closed; gathered with his friends about the hearth, and bade Dennis to stand by them.

“Now,” he said, in a low voice, “this is Captain Luvaine, Whimple, from whose father was stolen the ‘Lake of Wine.’ Tell us plainly, and in a few words, the story of its discovery by your sister.”

The man bowed and moistened his lips. Once or twice he glanced in a frightened way about him, as if he sought some loophole of escape from the situation.

“Gentlemen, ’twas in the winter of ’81 that the body, his body, fell from the chains, and that the skull was brought hither by my sister—then a child of five, and a poor natural as she has ever been—to add to a strange collection of odds-and-ends it has been her delight to form. And there it had remained to a certain day after the coming of my master, who took an objection to it, and bade me rid the house of the thing.”

He paused, and passed a hand across his wet brow.

“Go on,” said Tuke. “I will take the blame of its disappearance, and I confess I acted harshly to the girl.”

Luvaine, from lowered eyelids, shot a malignant glance at the speaker.

“There was a woman,” continued Dennis faintly, “that used to come upon me from time to time for the little help I could afford her—a strange, wild wanderer, whose hand was against every man as she imagined every man’s was against her. I gave the skull to her. She asked for it. She would keep and cherish it, she said, in—in memory of a great criminal. I gave it to her, and she took it away.”

“Where——?” began Luvaine; but Tuke motioned him to silence.

“Let the man tell his story in his own way,” he said.

“It has been gone long months,” said Whimple, “when suddenly, this day or two ago, my sister (ah! gentlemen,” he interpolated with great emotion—“she hath not the wit to distinguish between right and wrong!) amazes me with the confession that, from early in her possession of the skull, she has known a great crimson stone—which later she learned to identify by its fanciful title—to be fixed and buried in one of its eyesockets, and that this stone had been at one time cemented smoothly over its outer surface and something resembling the picture of an eye enamelled thereon. Gentlemen, all confounded as I was, I rushed to my master, and told him what I had heard.”

Luvaine was jerking in his chair and gnawing his knuckles like a madman.

“Whither has it been taken?” he cried in a strangled voice. “That is the one moral of this accursed concatenation of accident and brutality. What has she done with it—where does she live, this woman? She must be come at—my God! she must be held responsible and whipped into disgorging.”

Whimple had shrunk back; but for all his instinctive action his face had taken a dark flush.

“She must be assured from violence, whatever has happened,” he said in a pretty strong voice, “or I will not move a finger to help you to her.”

Tuke put in a decided word. This first sign of courage in his man-servant surprised and pleased him.

“I guarantee her gentle treatment, Dennis,” he said.

The man turned gratefully to his master.

“I know you would, sir. It’s to you I reveal the truth, and God grant that she won’t curse me for betraying her. Were I to go alone, and endeavour to recover the relic——”

Luvaine sprang to his feet, interrupting him.

“No!” he cried savagely. “I’ll permit no such risk. I want no broker to deal for me. Lead me to the place—that’s all I ask.”

Tuke turned to his servant.

“Where is it?” he said, in a note of contempt, that he could not control, hardening his voice.

Whimple was about to answer, when a sound in the room disturbed them all. Luvaine broke out into a great oath.

“How did she come in? What does she want? Fling her out at the door!”

Sir David cried, “Damme, sir! you forget yourself!”

“Captain Luvaine,” said that gentleman’s entertainer, a very ugly expression tightening his mouth—“making every allowance for your condition of mind, I must ask you to leave the propriety of my servants’ behaviour to be judged by me.”

Even at that, the rabid creature could do little but pretend to control his passion.

“I will apologize,” he said sullenly. “Take any form of words you like from me; only do me the kindness to dismiss this person. Surely, sir, you can see how maddening is this interruption to me at the critical moment?”

“I can see, indeed, and regret it.”

He walked towards the door, and put his hand kindly on Darda’s shoulder; for Darda it was that had come, softly and unbidden, into the room, and who stood silently awaiting the upshot of the explosion her entrance had evoked.

Her slim white figure, her immobile face and glowing hair, made of her against the fire-lit wall such a presentment of the spiritual as one sees in old cathedral frescoes; but, at her master’s touch, a rose grew to her cheek, announcing her all one at heart with pitiful humanity.

“What is it, Darda?”

She looked up in his face with solemn eyes.

“The shadows!” she whispered—“they are abroad again; far off at present—but they are stretching towards the house, and by and by they will reach it.”

He scanned her face earnestly. Suddenly it recurred to him how once before this fancy of hers had been significant of a certain peril.

“Come,” he said hurriedly—“come and show me.”

He cried to his companions that he would be back in a moment, hesitated, and called to Dennis to follow him. Luvaine uttered a wild exclamation; but he took no heed of it.

Out in the hall, the girl sped swiftly to the stairway, the two men following her. A startled housemaid made room for them to pass, and afterwards announced in the kitchen that she had seen “crazy” playing follow-my-leader with master and her brother.

Up to the very top floor of the house; further, by way of a flight of steps, to a trap-door, and so to the leads, where the frost sparkled like emery paper, Darda climbed and the men pursued her. And there, in the high freezing night, she stood erect and pointed with her hand.

Tuke gave out a note of surprise. Far away, where Stockbridge townlet lay under the horizon hills, a broad blot of crimson was soaked into the sagging of the cloud-canopy above. This red stain palpitated like a very heart of fear, so that to gaze on it was to be insensibly influenced by a sympathetic emotion; and, in the beating of its pulse, rays and spars of shadows shot forth and were withdrawn and appeared again in other quarters, as if truly something were there struggling in its death throes.

“Dennis—whereabouts is it?”

“By the position, sir, well east of the village; about Mr. Pollack’s inn, I should reckon.”

His master started violently.

“Pollack’s inn?” he muttered, and cried, “Good God! it must be blazing to the roof!”

A momentary amazed expression was on his face—something, some sense of omen or catastrophe, knocked at his heart;—then he addressed his man with immediate decisiveness.

“Order my horse to be saddled, Dennis—quickly and silently. Say nothing of it to those within there; but, when I am gone, make Sir David my apologies and ask him, if he will, to await my return.”

The servant responded and disappeared. For some minutes Tuke stood, his gaze concentrated on the wavering splotch of light, his brain banded, it seemed, with a filament of steel. If any figure was imaged tenderly and pitifully in his soul, it was not that that breathed close by him in the icy shadow of the roof, that watched his every look and motion like a dog. Indeed, so little was she that had brought him there in his mind, that when in another minute he turned to descend, he almost brushed her in his passage without being recalled thereby to thought of her presence.

Going softly down, he found Dennis already mounted in the yard, with the bridle of his master’s horse held in his hand.

“Whimple!” he exclaimed.

“I go with you, sir,” said the man boldly. “Who knows what you may be riding to?”

“But, my good fellow—Sir David and the captain?”

“Sir, you come first. I have passed on your message.”

How could he gainsay him? It gave him a thrill of exquisite pleasure thus to experience a devotion that could so over-crow a constitutional timidity.

Silently together they padded it down the snowy drive, and in another minute were galloping along the road to Stockbridge.

High on the roof a figure watched their departure. The girl had scarcely moved since her master left her alone. But now her slender feet went crisp on the frost as she paced to and fro in the angle of the gables.

Once, suddenly, she paused at the limit of her path where the gutter-ledge, knee-high, formed the topmost courses of the house-front. And here she leapt upon the parapet, and stretched out her arms in a perilous manner into the dizzy whiteness of space.

“I know,” she said, nodding downwards fantastically. “But would you catch me if I jumped? It would hurt him to the heart to find me, when he comes back, lying there all crushed and broken.”

She seemed to listen, her face falling into shadow.

“To the heart,” she repeated, with a catch in her voice. “It would—it would, for all your secret laughing.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PUSHING onward at what fury of speed the dangerous state of the road permitted, Tuke, like a good captain, would not subordinate his prudence to his eagerness. True, he had nothing but a vague sense that some evil was abroad, to justify his mood of suspicion; yet, forasmuch as this mood was unaccountable, it behoved him to move circumspectly through the first stages of reconnoitre.

Therefore it was that coming to the top of the long dip, on the crest of whose further slope stood Mr. Breeds’s little ill-omened tavern, he called to Dennis and, pulling on his left rein, cantered his horse on to the easterly downs, with the idea of making a détour that should bring him into the Winchester road a half-mile above Stockbridge.

This was judicious enough; but it was some aggravation of his impatience to find now with what infinite caution it was necessary to proceed over the frozen wastes of grass and crumbling chalk patches. A rushed camp of mole-hills—a film of cat-ice, roofing some unsuspected hollow, trodden upon—and all his fine purposes of help might end in a broken neck. Fortunately there was a young wintry moon, whose radiance, struck back from the snow, made such a spectral twilight as it was possible to steer through.

He groaned to himself as yard by yard they crept upon their way and still the red glow seemed as far off as ever. Once indeed, looking as in a dream, he fancied they must have wandered widely afield, away from, instead of towards the fire; for then the latter seemed to have sunk in a little glimmer amongst distant hills, as if many miles separated it from them. But the next moment there came a great bellying upward of smoke, distinctly evident to their eyes; and immediately the pall was attacked and devoured by a dozen shooting tongues of flame, that slobbered myriads of sparks like blood as the monster of fire rent its prey.

“The roof has gone in, sir.”

“Aye, aye, Dennis. We must be near the road by now, I think.”

Not so near as he hoped and desired. It was a full hour and a half from the start when they broke at last into the Winchester highway and went down cautiously into the village. For many minutes before, there had been no doubt in Tuke’s mind but that his worst apprehensions would be realized. The “First Inn” it was that was alight—the old house endeared to him, in a sense, by more than one tender memory.

“How did it happen?” he asked of himself; and thought half-comically—“I must assure the poor girl it was like enough to have been spontaneous combustion, from the long warmth of hospitality it carried in its heart.”

Then he rebuked his levity

“Betty, Betty,” he thought, “are you safe, my dear?”—and at the fear the word evoked his breath caught in something like a sob.

The fury of the fire was over when they came upon the scene and stopped before the ravaged and gutted carcass of the once picturesque inn. But still the blackened walls blossomed with little spits and fronds of flame; and scarlet lines drawn upon the heavy curtains of smoke showed where smouldering beams clung tenacious of their hold.

The road was full of a drifting and pungent fog, and therein the whole village was alive, scurrying hither and thither in excitement like a colony of ants whose nest had been overturned.

On the outskirts of this press the two men, dismounted, were standing holding their horses, when a country youth, his red face all blubbered with tears and dust, came hurriedly up to them and seized Tuke by the sleeve.

“Master—Master Took!” he exclaimed in a broken voice.

“Jim!—Good God, man! how did this come about?”

“By foul play, your honour; and may the living hell be their portion that done it!”

“Steady, man!”

“I’ll ha’ justice o’ them—I’ll ha’ justice o’ them, by the Lord! Look at it! look here! Missy Pollack’s home—her that never done a hard thing by a soul, and treated poor Jim like a man. Drove a pauper at a blow, and her grandfather all burnt and choked and she cluckin’ to him like a hen that’s laid.”

“Where is she? Take me to her.”

The poor fellow pulled him forward immediately, shouting to those who interposed to make way for the gentleman that was come to see justice done on scoundrels and murderers. Some stared and some grinned, but one and all were too loutishly absorbed in the extempore show that yet crackled for their benefit to thrust an undesirable company upon him. So they let him pass undisturbed, and continued to ply the ashes from their useless buckets with what water they could find, while buffoonery and the animal jest at another’s misfortune kept them in a fine glow of good-humour.

To a barn in an adjacent yard Jim conducted his captive by way of a side-gate that had been closed against intruders. Within, gathered about the open door of the shed, was a little knot of men, whose dress showed them for the most part to be of the respectable class of village gentry. These Tuke saluted as he advanced.

“I trust, gentlemen,” he said, “that this I hear of the innkeeper is an exaggerated report?”

One of the company, who was muffled up in a great surtout and swung a horn lantern in his hand, detached himself from the group and came towards him.

“The man is dead, sir,” he said.

“Dead?”

“He has succumbed to shock induced by a period of inhalation of irrespirable gases, and aggravated by some superficial burns. I am Dr. Harmsworth, sir, at your service.”

Mr. Tuke bowed.

“And can you inform me, Dr. Harmsworth,” he said, “of the history of this catastrophe?”

“In faith, sir, I cannot. But it looks an ugly business. The wench, it appears, was gone to visit a neighbour, and the stableman to squire her. When they return—there is smoke leaking through the roof of the tap. They burst in, and are met by a vaporous volley of flame. The old man is down on the floor, insensible in the midst of it. They drag him out, and the young man hath the wit to observe that the fire has its three distinct sources or centres of eruption. That, to my mind, suspicions of some foulness. But him that could have best acquainted us of the truth has his mouth sealed to the Day of Judgment.”

“He is dead.”

“He is dead, sir.”

“And his granddaughter?”

“She is in there with the body. Her grief is very poignant for the moment.”

“I must see her.”

“By your leave, sir—”

“I must see her, Dr. Harmsworth. You needn’t say me nay, sir. I know, and would act the part of friend by her.”

The doctor would have further protested, but Jim put him roughly to one side and made a way for his gentleman.

“In here, sir,” he said.

It was a little sombre, pathetic scene that Tuke faced as he entered. A flaring candle, stuck in a cleft-stick, split up the windy darkness of the interior into spokes of light and shadow. From the roof, great misty mats of cobwebs drooping, swayed in the draught like grotesque banners hung appropriately to the lying-in-state of the dusty thing on the floor. Thereover a hard-grained female was stooped, engaged in covering the dead face with a napkin; and leaned upright against a partition, her head dropped listlessly upon her arm, was the poor living victim of all this tragic gallimaufry.

“Betty!”

A start and a shiver went through her, but she did not raise her face.

“I saw the glare,” he whispered behind her into her upturned ear, “and my heart misgave me and I rode over to your help. Yes, it is too late for him, Betty; but, for yourself, my dear? It is no time to speak of it all now; but if there has been villainy here, I will spend my fortune at need to procure its punishment. Betty!”

She only buried her face deeper in her arm. He put his hand on her shoulder with a caressing touch; then removed it and crossed to the kneeling woman.

“Tell me,” he said, stooping and speaking low—“has she any one relation in the village?”

“No, sir. Them two was alone in the world.”

“Friends—acquaintances? Any single soul who would show her kindness in this great affliction?”

The woman scrambled to her feet.

“Betty was none disliked,” she said. “But, Lord ha’ mercy, sir! is it righteous to talk to the poor, in sick a winter as this, o’ the grace o’ charity? Will your honour look at the gal, and tell me if them busts and shoulders was like to ha’ been nourished on pitaty parings?”

“She is ruined?”

The woman stared.

“Saving your honour, I won’t believe it. The gal is no road for the men, but as good a wench as ever served a pot.”

“Ruined, I mean, in the sense of fortune. She hath lost her all in this burning?”

“Ah! I misdoubt she’s worth no more than the clothes she stands in.”

“If I give you money, will you honestly do the last duties by the dead here?”

“Aye, that will I.”

“So that, if I procure the maid an asylum, she may feel happy that her grandfather will be laid decently to earth?”

“Aye, aye.”

She held out an eager hand; let those who have starved in a bitter winter call it a covetous one. She fingered each of the gold pieces as if it were a fairy flower of her imagination.

Tuke returned softly to the girl, who had never changed her position. He put his arm gently about her waist.

“Betty—I tell you to come with me.”

“No, no!”

Her voice shivered up, all drowned and bewildered.

“You must come, dear. This is no longer a place for you. I will arrange all matters necessary about—about him there, and I will take you into my service.”

She only lowered her head deeper, and gave out a miserable sigh.

“You are forlorn and alone in the world, Betty. You would have to exchange your independence for a wretched drudgery.”

At that she looked up at last, and put her hair from her wild eyes and wet cheeks.

“I should be honest,” she whispered. “They could not be cruel to blame me even if I starved. Why should I help you to a lie and myself to misery?”

“To a lie, Betty?”

She flashed round on him quite suddenly.

“What is the sort of service you offer me?” she cried.

He did not answer. Irresistibly impassioned, he seized her fiercely in his arms. The woman had gone out and for the moment they were alone.

“Betty, you shall come! I will try to be fair with you. If you have fought against this, so have I.”

“Hush, hush!” she cried pitifully. “Oh! think of him there!”

“He offered you to me for a price. I curse myself for telling you this now; but I must have you by fair means or foul.”

She fell against him, weeping heavily, while he held her.

“Oh, for shame!” she gasped, “that I should be put up to be bid for in my innocence! What brutes are men!”

“I won’t gainsay you. But, Betty, am I to live on in my warm house and know her cold and hungry that all my soul longs to?”

“Don’t!—oh, don’t talk to me like that!”

“Give me your lips, wench. Come! I will have them. By this and this, Betty, through every fibre of your sweetness I love and claim you.”

“Oh, what am I to do?”

“As I bid you, girl.”

He had out his handkerchief and wiped her eyes, and he smoothed her roughened hair and kissed her again into servility. Then he led her unresisting towards the door; and there was Jim mounting guard.

“Jim,” he said—“Missy Pollack is coming home with me. Go and find my man and bid him lead the horses thitherwards to some place where we can mount in quiet.”

The fellow sped away, and Tuke, leaving the girl by the barn-door, walked across to the doctor who was withdrawn with his friends to a little distance.

“Dr. Harmsworth, the pleasure of a word with you, sir.”

The other detached himself from the group and joined him.

“This unfortunate young woman is known to me. I take her into my service, with her consent and approval, and make myself responsible for her safe custody. You will greatly oblige me by undertaking the business of the proper interment of these poor remains, and you will apply to me for all professional and sundry charges. I am Mr. Tuke of ‘Delsrop,’ where I am to be seen and held to account for claims both moral and practical.”

The doctor gave a stiff bow.

“I am acquainted with you by report, sir, and will be happy to honour your instructions. As for the wench, she is of an age to negotiate her own business, and, I trust, to exhibit prudence in the conduct of it.”

He looked hard at the other, who saluted very rigidly in response.

“You can do her only justice, I am sure,” said he; and bowed once more and turned on his heel.

He found the girl prostrate on her knees beside the dead body—sobbing—appealing to it—murmuring broken words of penitence and love. She had moved the napkin from the face, and Tuke saw the cunning still engraved finely about the sightless eyes, and the little close leer of covetousness at the corners of the mouth, which showed a grotesque, clownish distortion of shape in the sooty border that suffocation had painted round it. Knowing what he did, he could not bear to see her thus wasting her heart of affection on the dead, unworthy thing. He stooped, and put his arm about her, and drew the cloth once more over the face.

“Come,” he said, and helping her to her feet, pulled off his own great-coat and wrapped it about her shoulders.

At that, “No, no!” she whispered. “You will perish of the cold.”

“I am going to take you pillion, Betty; and you must clasp your warm hands over my heart and keep it beating for you. That is your charge.”

He hurriedly withdrew her and urged her up the road. A little distance off they came upon the two men with the horses. Tuke sprang to his saddle, gave the girl a hand, and pulled her to a seat behind him.

“God bless your honour!” cried poor Jim.

“What of you, my good fellow?”

“What but the Union, master?”

“Get up behind my servant. You shall serve your mistress yet.”

Betty gasped.

“Did you kiss my shoulder, Betty?”

No answer.

With a light laugh Tuke touched up his horse, and the deadly cold of the night met them full-face as they sped homewards.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BY all the chill miles homewards, whatever and what varying emotions prevailed in the breasts of the little party found no expression in words. Indeed there could be no passion of feeling in that bitter night so hot as to resist the numbing influence of a frost that seemed to glaze the roof of one’s mouth, if opened to speak, with ice. Tuke felt little but the instinct to prick his snorting beast onwards with bloodless heels. Yet through all he was conscious of a spark that glowed and wavered in him like a pulse—a little fierce flame of triumph and of ecstasy—a suffusion of audacity, or repudiation of the formal conduct to which he had vainly struggled to subscribe. He had no deliberate plan of evil in his soul; neither had he the courage or the inclination to face the situation of his own contriving. He had snapped under a strain, so it seemed to him; and that was all. For the moment it was exquisite pleasure to feel all his moral fibres relaxed as he drove intoxicated before the force he had for a time withstood.

“Your fingers are a love-knot about my heart, Betty,” he once said over his shoulder. “It should be a toasting fire for their comfort.”

He gently unslackened the clasp of the brown hands and bent and put one to his lips.

“They are cold as snow, sweetling,” said he. “The little bones of them are stiff as flower-stalks; and they are as pretty, Betty, and by and by the buds shall break on them, if you please. Would you like these poor cold little stalks to blossom into pearls and rubies?”

She tried to pull her hand away; but he would not let her.

“No,” she said in a weeping voice. “Oh! how can you put me to the shame?”

“Is it shame? That must be a stale superstition. It were shame in my eyes to pluck my flower and leave it to wither.”

“Shame to the flower, that must be a bold, flaunting weed to invite such notice.”

“Betty, that is sorry logic. What weed ever won man’s heart?”

“I had best slip off and go back to my dead.”

“Down with you, girl! and we will lie and die in the snow together.”

“Oh, me! What can I say? Will your honour not ride on and forget I am here?”

“To be sure, Betty—as I forget myself. You had best not remind me of it by addressing me so.”

“I am your honour’s servant.”

“Lip-service, wench. No, it will not do. Before others as you like; but alone with me—there, don’t cry! the frost will catch your tears, and your lashes will be hung with diamonds no gift of mine. We must think this all out, Betty, by a glowing fire. It is too cold here. That little touch on my heart is the only feeling I am conscious of.”

“And you gave me your coat! Oh! take it—take it.”

“That I shall not.”

“I am warm—indeed I am.”

“Lie in your burrow, little rabbit, and hide your eyes from the dogs. We go up to Mr. Breeds’s tavern here, and I don’t know what may be abroad.”

He had decided to risk the main road for their return. The augmentation of his party, the necessity of direct progress in that killing cold were his sufficient reasons. They rode past the house and awakened nothing but echoes from its stony walls. On the blind of the lighted tap fell the shadows from within of a group of men. No notice, however, was taken of the little cavalcade as it went silently by outside in the snow.

“Betty, can you spell?”

“Oh! yes.”

“Spell this, then: l-o-v-e-r. What, you can’t? I must put you to school. See, l-o-v-e, and r for the little thumb that points at me. That is your lesson; and now here’s a prize for the quick scholar in the palm of her hand. Close it and keep it. You won’t? Then you shall return it to me in the dark by and by.”

He hardly knew what nonsense he talked. A core of fire flickered in the numbness of his brain. He gave a whoop! like an excited boy presently as a herd of fallow deer—some twenty or thirty of them—broke from a covert and went beating down the road in front of them.

“These must be some of friend David’s,” he cried.

The poor beasts were smitten with the frost-fright—the desolation of despair that induces the last appeal of the lower to the higher animal. “If he who by his cunning can stultify all our traditional methods of self-protection,” they must argue, “be as full of resource as of foresight, and as full of noble clemency withal, it were well to submit ourselves to his mercy.” And so in strange times, man’s littleness is forced upon himself, because all his vaunted superiority cannot make food in a wilderness or flesh on starved bones; and he cries aloud and his voice returns to him as an empty echo. Then, “I must kill,” he says, “that there may be fewer mouths to feed”; and he kills, and fancies that he has mastered the problem of life.

The deer cantered before the horsemen, grunting and shaking their heads. They had no action of escape, but seemed rather to have deliberately entrusted themselves, for safe passage to a greener land of hope, to this human convoy. They went down, a dusky bob of backs, into the hollow where was the entrance to “Delsrop”; and here, led by some attraction of the mightier race, they turned into the drive—for the gate had been left open—and trotted along it as far as the lawn, against the sheltering shrubberies of which they took refuge. And, upon the morrow, the most of them were discovered patiently waiting and snuffling about the stable-doors; and an empty coach-house was thrown open and scattered with hay for their benefit; and there, for a time at least, the trusting creatures found the help and protection they sought.

Reaching the door of his house at last, Tuke swung a leg over his beast’s withers and, leaping to the ground, pulled Betty into his arms and landed her by his side. The other two, close upon him, had dismounted at the same moment. He called Dennis to him—the formal and authoritative master.

“You will speak to your sister, and see that this young woman, whom I am taking into my service, is fitly lodged and provided for. To-morrow I shall assign her her duties. In the meantime she is to meet with every sympathy and consideration. The man, also, you must accommodate with suitable quarters. You know my interest in the girl, and the circumstances of her misfortune. I leave her proper reception to your charge.”

Not another word he said; but when they had been admitted by an amazed wench, he nodded gravely to the little group, and turned into his own dining-hall.

Here, as if his opening of the door had released a spring, Luvaine came at him like a Jack-of-the-clockhouse.

“This is well,” he cried in a high manner of sarcasm—“this is well and hospitable to quit affairs of state for the entertainment of a poor guest or so!”

The wine was still on the table, and it was evident the soldier had had free recourse to it for the smothering of his intolerable suspense. His thin hair was rumpled; his eyes bloodshot; a slumberous demon of fury seemed to struggle in him for wakefulness. Flung into an elbow-chair by the hearth, Sir David discordantly acknowledged the potency of his own cups. No doubt he had drunk himself to sleep to escape the other’s company.

“You have some title to offence, sir,” said the returned host. “You have been acquainted with the cause of my absence, I believe; but I think no words of mine will persuade you to exonerate me from blame. Still, I make you my apologies for what was virtually inevitable.”

“Well, sir, well. And you are prepared, I presume, to take up the thread where you dropped it?”

“Oh! I cry you mercy, Captain Luvaine. What would you have, sir? The night is far advanced; I have had an exhausting experience of travel. On my honour, I must recuperate for the next move.”

“Mr. Tuke, do you mean to tell me, with all deliberateness, that you purpose resting upon my sickness—upon my agony of suspense, sir, counting the question of my reason as nothing compared with your little bodily discomfort?”

“If you will put it crudely, sir; why, so must I. I refuse to act further until I have rested; and you will do well to school your reason into a little consideration for others.”

“You must take note that this is a matter affecting my very last interests.”

“As the necessity for sleep affects mine. Restored, I shall be of infinitely more service to you in that respect than I could possibly be now.”

The soldier bowed. So much of the discipline of his profession remained to him. But it seemed almost a murderous demon that dictated the courtesy. He walked towards the door, and turned glowering.

“I must not gainsay you,” he said; “but—but—may God never curse you with the torment to which you are wantonly condemning me.”

He could not altogether so control his feelings as to refrain from slamming the door to behind him as he went out. The clap shook the hall, and brought Sir David to his feet with a stare and a cry.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed, his headpiece fuddled out of all comprehension. “Where—where ha’ you been, you inhospitalable scamp?”

“Never mind. I apologize; but you wouldn’t understand.”

“Understad?—understad, you conceited peddler? Lookee ’ere. Tuke. Le’s go and hunt for that skull. Ain’t you ready—ain’t you, you——”

“Oh! go to bed, Blythewood. We’ll hunt on the morrow. I’ve arranged it all. We’ll get some sleep first, man; for I’m just dropping.”

“Droppin’? You’re drunk as David’s sow, you clever man. There go away. You’re a sight to make the angels weep. I’ll have you before me to-morrer on a warra’t, by the Lord I will.”

He stopped, and struck his brow rather aimlessly.

“Angel and Dunlone!” he cried. “I forgot all about the high-stepper. Here’s a pretty host for you. I shall have to commit myself before you. Cock! the scarecrow’ll ‘drizzle’ the jade into an asylum. Tuke, d’ye hear? if I stop and join in this chase, I must sed the girl a note.”

“Well, to-morrow will do for that.”

“Curse me! What a wiggin’ I’ll get from her. You must help me out of this scrape. Let me bid ’em both to lunch at your place, to hear the result of our expedition. That’ll be a sop to the creature.”

The other hesitated. He still laboured under the excitement of his recent undertaking—still tingled with the afterglow of the late riot in his heart. He had formulated, had conceived indeed, no line of conduct for himself or Betty that should meet the occasion. He would not have her a serving drudge in his house, and beyond that one resolve all was indefinite. But he had burnt his boats behind him, and to temporize with circumstance was no longer possible. As he had made his dash for freedom, so must he continue the race recklessly.

“By all means,” he said, with a rather wild laugh. “We will dissolve the ruby in a glass of wine, and Miss Royston shall drink to the health of the ‘drizzler’ in it.”

CHAPTER XL.

THE wind was so bitter, the roads so glassy with peril and so scourged with swept drifts of snow, that when at last on the following morning the little party of three gentlemen, with Dennis for guide, assembled in the hall of “Delsrop” preparatory to issuing on their quest, it was resolved to make no attempt to cover any part of the distance on horseback, but to trust to their legs and their endurance for the entire course. What this was, each of the three had but an indefinite idea, for the servant showed a strange reluctance to discuss the subject, even with his master; and would only place their goal approximately at some seven or eight miles. Seeing the pain it gave him to be pressed for closer particulars, Tuke good-humouredly insisted that there should be no further flogging of their willing horse; and presently there was not a man of them all but was so engrossed in his own discomfort as to be oblivious of any consideration but that his numbed extremities called for.

Blythewood, who had relieved his mind of responsibility by early dispatching his note to his sister, was then free to give the most of his concern to his little aching tipple-befumed top-knot; Tuke, whose soul was hot with vexing self-problems, worried to get this distracting and depressing business of the stone done with; Luvaine stalked a very nightmare embodiment of grievance. Altogether it was something a dismal party that followed in the wake of the dismal serving-man—its members mere moving pillars of duffel and muffler, hands in pockets, rigid as pantomime chimney-pots, with their heads bent to the blast like cowls.

The wind was dreadful. It came screaming down the road like flights of arrows; it swept the long wastes as if the very scythe of Death were threshing there for some least little blade of life; it seemed of a sharpness to blaze the tree-trunks and cut the copses into shreds. Not a living thing but themselves appeared to be on foot or wing in all the dreary landscape. Only a grey sky frothed with snowflakes, and the inexorable endless downs received and encompassed them and wrought upon their souls with horror of the soulless.

Early in the tramp Dennis had led from the Stockbridge highway eastwards over the slopes.

“What!” whined Sir David. “You give it us full in the face, Mr. Whimple? We shall be torn like bunting.”

“There is no other way, sir,” said the man.

“Can’t we get between hedges, at least?”

“No, sir. No road leads to where she inhabits.”

Luvaine turned with a stare, and Blythewood shrugged his shoulders.

“This is Captain Phipps and the North Pole,” he said. “I protest, Luvaine, ’twill be nothing to my mind to exchange your cursed stone for half-a-dozen of my toes.”

The soldier, the wind whizzing in his set teeth, muttered a word or two about the selfishness of uninterested parties; and that at last started the little baronet laughing—the first note of gaiety the expedition had produced.

“Oh!” he chirped, “what a noble sacrifice you would make of your friends”—and he kicked up his little hoofs and scampered like a colt.

Tuke, who was tailing in the rear, called to Dennis and fell somewhat behind with him.

“Is this necessary?” he said.

“Indeed, yes, sir.”

“She lives remote on these wild downs?”

“For nigh a year, sir, now.”

“With none to neighbour or assist her?”

“None. Deep in these wastes she bides, secret and alone, and not a soul within miles, did she need succour. It is her whim—her craze, sir, if you will. She hath led a strange, solitary life—for years apart from her fellows—for years hating the world so, that she would deign to draw but the meagrest sustenance from it.”

“Meagre indeed in these solitudes. She must browse like the sheep.”

“She traps the birds and little game of the open. Those are for feast days. In general she can make much of a few dried berries.”

“Together with what you give her?”

The man hung his head in silence.

“Are you the only one that knows of her eyrie?”

“The only one, master.”

“She hath suffered some great wrong?”

“A great, great wrong.”

Tuke looked keenly at his servant.

“I am neither curious nor insolent,” he said; “but if it would ever relieve your mind to acquaint me of the truth, I am your friend to counsel and help, Dennis.”

Whimple flushed round, the tears sprung to his eyes.

“Oh!” he cried, “do you think I don’t know it? Do you think I haven’t suffered to tell you all? You would have learnt long ago, but that the confidence is not mine to give while she lives.”

“Well, well,” said his master; “go to the front again, my good fellow, and lead.”

The wind whipped the slopes, planing the fallen snow from them in ringlets like wood-shavings. Now and again a lashed clump of trees would seem to swerve at them through the blinding flakes, or the thud of tumbling chalk, sprung by the frost in some neighbouring quarry, would sound startlingly in their ears. These were the only scattered phrases on an else blank page, and the desolation made them expressive as words of comfort.

By and by Tuke moved forward to his companions.

“The snow thickens,” he cried. “I shall be easier when our faces are turned westwards.”

He shouted to Dennis: “You are not wandering afield? You are sure of your way?” And: “Quite,” the man answered. “We are nigh upon the place now, sir.”

It seemed full time, if any prospect remained to them of getting back to lunch and to the invited guests. Blythewood groaned at the very thought of being late.

“I have sinned enough already,” said he. “Angel will be ready to bite me.”

They had fought and struggled by long miles of swale and hillock, and were become mere remote atoms in the midst of a blinding wilderness, when they broke upon a little gaunt oasis—a dismal copse of good intent—stretching withered arms of welcome to them from out the whirl. This forlorn touch of nature was set at the foot of a shallow mound or tumulus that now, caked with white, looked like a huge inverted pudding-basin; and amongst the spare trunks Dennis stopped and turned a grey face to his gentlemen.

“This is the place,” he said.

“The place!” echoed Blythewood, looking about him bewildered.

“Hurry, Whimple!” cried his master.

There was a great tang of blackthorn and bramble—a little lonely thicket of it—heaped against the lower slope of the mound. From this thicket, all tossed with snow, two or three crippled beech-saplings escaped, throwing wild arms aloft as if their lower limbs were pinned in the jaws of some hidden monster in the brushwood. Thither the man made his way, and the others followed.

“They are but suckers,” he said, “of an old giant trunk, the decayed butt of which lies there in the bush. It may have fallen and been removed a hundred years ago. But while it was alive its great roots were busy undermining this hillock and boring a passage into the heart of it.”

He turned to his master.

“For all I know, sir, she was the first to discover the way and the first to penetrate to the chamber within.”

“The chamber?”

“Aye, gentlemen. This is an ancient barrow of the dead, and the goal of our hopes.”

Luvaine pushed rudely past him. The inner character of the man seemed to reveal itself in the neighbourhood of success.

“Our hopes!” he drawled insolently. “Here of course is the tentative place-seeker on the very threshold of my inheritance.”

“Now,” muttered Tuke to himself, “this cur snarls over his bone before the sheep is killed.”

“The way in, man—the way in!” cried Luvaine, beating his hands together. “Why do you keep me outside? You can play cicerone to your damned barrow when the stone is in my pocket.”

Tuke caught his servant’s eye entreating, and came peremptorily to the front.

“Of course,” he said to him—“you must enter first and prepare the woman for our coming. Whatever her status, she has the right of priority here.”

“A rat in a drain!” cried the soldier jeeringly. “I don’t stand on ceremony with such.”

“Pardon me, sir. You owe this consideration to my servant, without whose self-sacrificing assistance you were like to go jewelless for all time.”

He made a sign to Dennis. The man turned and went round about to where close by a scarce noticeable passage had been forced through the bramble. The thicket received and swallowed him to the shoulders. A dozen yards in, he faced about, waved to his master, stooped, and vanished. Luvaine, stamping in a fury of restlessness, would not yet venture upon pursuit; but as he padded it to and fro he cast quick, hateful glances at the man who had baulked him.

Perhaps for a minute they awaited the desired summons, hammering their feet on the frozen turf, hugging themselves with their pocketed hands for a little warmth. It seemed impossible that that smooth white desolation could contain any sunken chamber of refuge.

Quite suddenly a cry came to their ears—an attenuated scream forced from the bowels of the earth. To men in their impatient and overstrung condition it wavered up weird and deathly. With one impulse they dashed for the path into the thicket, stumbling and pushing and striving for the lead. It fell to Tuke. Reaching the spot where he calculated his man had disappeared, he flung about like a nosing hound, saw where a loose path of undergrowth was swung before a jagged fissure in the tangle, elbowed it aside, and slipped into a narrow broken tunnel that seemed to undermine the hill.

A moment he paused. The smell of lifeless earth was about him—a dull sense of pressure seemed to set his eardrums tattooing. Then his pupils, relieved of the sheeted glare without, dilated, and he saw the profound gloom of the passage to be broken into by a little glimmer of light at its far end. Hearing his companions behind him, he crept on. So low was the boring that in some places he had to stoop almost double to pass. But he went forward steadily, and all at once regained a thought of space and stopped in amazement and concern.

He was in a little circular chamber, whose walls and floor were built of blocks of unhewn and uncemented stone. Other blocks, roughly squared and shaped, stood on the level here and there; and against one of these was piled a heterogeneous heap of human bones, mixed with fragments of stone implements and arrow-heads and some beads of dull amber. Over all a flaring dip—wedged into a cleft-stick stuck in a crevice of the wall—cast a wavering glow. It made manifest the simple austerity of this antique chamber of the dead; and it did more—it revealed Dennis on his knees beside a pallet of dried turves, whereon something long and gaunt and quiet was extended.

“Whimple!” exclaimed his master softly. He felt Luvaine’s breath at his ear, and extended his arms that the other might not pass. The servant turned his head. A lost, wild expression was in his eyes.

“Dead!” he muttered, in a dreadful voice.

Tuke went forward and looked down. She had noble sepulture, this tameless wanderer. What a fiercely handsome face it was—stone in the midst of stone. But all the age of sixty years of loneliness was gathered in it, now the informing will was withdrawn. In her long discipline of hatred she had yielded so little to her fellows, that not even the right of her burial should be theirs. In her own earth, after all the long vain baying of the human pack, she had lain herself down to die of the frost-stroke; and here she was, as much a part of the ancient cairn as the elf-arrows that were strewn about her.

“Dennis!” said his master again—and the man looked up in his face and said simply: “She was my mother.”

Tuke put his hand gently on his shoulder.

“I have thought as much. You would not have her removed?”

“No, no! Let her lie at peace.”

“I think you are right. Such a tomb as this is for the hunted.”

A discordant cry echoed through the chamber: “The skull! My God, let me pass!”—and Luvaine, dashing aside the restraining arm, bounded to the furthermost of the stone blocks and snatched something into his hands. He had no respect, no sympathy, no decency even, in the covetous lust of his soul. Perhaps if he had had, the Fates had vouchsafed a kindlier turn to his fortunes.

Tuke and Blythewood would not echo his jubilance—would hardly give him their notice, indeed. To them a solemner tragedy appealed—a mystery far profounder than that of humanity’s morbid attraction to coloured pebbles. It was only when a second horrible cry broke from him that they looked round, startled.

He was standing with the skull held out before him in one hand. His face was ghastly and contorted; his eyes, in the marionette play of light and shadow, were dancing devils of fury.

“It is gone!” he shrieked—“the stone is gone!”

Tuke’s very gorge rose. The nerves of his jaw seemed to click rigid.

“Dennis,” he said, with a sternness that was only for that other—“forbear your grief a little, my good fellow. For the sake of common decency let us resolve this matter now and at once.”

He crossed to Luvaine.

“Well, sir,” he said—“you say the stone is gone?”

For answer the other held him out the skull. He was so lost in the terror of loss that he would have scarcely resented a blow.

Tuke took the ugly relic in his hand, and offered it to his man’s inspection.

“Is this,” he said, “the same you gave to your mother? Can you identify it?”

“It is the same. There is the bulged eyelid and the chalk-marks yet about it.”

“The stone may have dropped out. We can show you no better consideration, Dennis, than to begin and end the search here and now.”

Luvaine was on his knees already, diving into and scattering the little heap of bones and implements. He found nothing there; nor could any of them, after the most exhaustive search, discover a trace of the missing gem. The candle on the wall guttered and flared down while they were at work, and Dennis replaced it with another from a little bundle he had brought with him. He had made it one of his duties, it seemed, to supply these to the lonely woman.

Suddenly Luvaine rose to his feet with an evil expression of face.

“This is trouble thrown away,” he said. “There is one and one only likely place to overhaul.”

Dennis cried “No, no!” with an agonized look.

“Whimple,” said his master gently—“these are great stakes at issue, and to curtail the search would be to place me at least in a very false position. Let it be done with all reverence, by your hands.”

The servant knelt beside the body with a stifled groan. As he did so, a common impulse led Tuke and his friend to hastily block the soldier’s path. The maniac did not interfere; but he glanced over their shoulders, gnawing his knuckles and jerking his every limb in a fury of impatience.

“There is nothing on this poor body,” said Dennis, after a pause, looking up. “Almost as little without as within, poor soul.”

“Nothing in or about the pallet?”

“I have made a complete search, sir. There is not a trace of the stone.”

Luvaine broke out with a shriek.

“He has but looked like a sluggard wench. There are fifty places yet. Let me at her!—let me at her, I say!”

“You shall not, by God!” said Tuke.

The wretched creature wrung his hands.

“You would dash the cup from my very lips!” he yelled. “You would drive me mad among ye! I will not be denied!”

He struggled to pass them. They drove him back, and took their stand by the prostrate body.

“The search here has been thorough,” said Tuke. “I watched and I marked. Anywhere else in the chamber you like, sir; but these poor remains rest sacred from further abuse.” (He felt Whimple’s lips upon his hand as he spoke.) “Hunt, sir, hunt while we wait a little longer; yet I fear the stone may have dropped anywhere on her passage hither, and may lie now sunk for ever in the grass of the downs. Hurry, man, if you would look further, and would not have us snowed up to perish beside her that lies here.”

The rabid creature, chattering and foaming, went off on twenty different scents while they waited. Every stone and crevice of the little room he examined—the broken tunnel explored, candle in hand—even re-issued into the thicket and beat wildly about with hand and foot. At length it became evident, even to him, that his search must prove vain. He desisted, with a dead-white face set to his companions, and: “Come,” he said, in a hollow voice, “and conduct me back to the hell I had a little escaped from.”

Could it be possible that a passion so uncleanly could rise to the least nobility of despair? For a moment Tuke’s heart swerved in a rush of pity for anything so forlorn.

“We may find it yet,” he said. “When it is safe to return we will look here again.”

“No,” said the other; “it is lost to me for ever. I know now and feel it.”

He went out first, with a dull and dogged step. Dennis lingered to whisper a last word of love to the stark thing on the pallet. Suddenly he stooped, lifted the skull from the stone whereon his master had replaced it, and laid it softly down at the feet of the dead woman.

“Perhaps he kneels there now, and is forgiven,” he murmured. Then he blew out the candle and followed the others into the open air.

As he came forth of the thicket, a charge of laden wind near took him off his feet. Staggering and half-blinded, it was some moments before he could collect his sight and his senses. Then he saw his companions huddled about the trunk of a little beech tree, and ran to them, foretasting the peril.

One and all they were now menaced by a loss more final than that of any stone, however costly. While they were within, the wind had called up its reserves and the undulating plain was all one sheeted spectre of driving white.

“We must make the attempt,” said Tuke. “To stay here is to perish.”

He took Blythewood’s arm, and drove into the whirl as he spoke. The other two followed apart.

The snow was up to their ankles; it hurtled into their faces and stung their blinking eyelids. Every minute they felt the labour of progress more acute.

“My God!” cried Sir David—“seven miles of this!”

“Oh, courage, man! There is no hope but to keep going!”

For long they marked their bearings pretty well. Then, looking over his shoulder, Tuke uttered an exclamation and stopped.

“Dennis!” he yelled, for the man had disappeared.

He ran back in their fast-vanishing tracks—stumbled over the fallen body.

“Up!” he shrieked—“don’t give in like this!”

The poor fellow begged to be allowed to sleep—just forty winks, he said.

“Forty winking devils!” shouted his master.

He had him up and on in a moment—placed him between himself and Sir David. Thenceforward the three held together, swaying and struggling. The wiry soldier could take and keep his own measure of endurance.

But now, confused by the temporary delay, they fell doubtful in their landmarks, wavered, and woke to the knowledge that they were lost. Dennis, who alone of them knew something of the road, was fallen into a state of semi-stupefaction and could scarce speak coherently. Indeed, it was all one for that, for the prospect was quite blotted out in the mist of twinkling flakes; and to keep the wind at their backs was become their only guide.

It was a long, agonized advance against the forces of Death. They dared not stop for an instant to breathe or think. They must plod their frantic way whose every step was a lifted labour, and hardly could they cheer on any fainting spirit amongst them who threatened to lag to his destruction. The snow deepened; and often now they floundered into drifts, and must struggle forth and on with their hearts sobbing in their breasts.

At length, when dusk was a little threatening to foreclose, they came down upon trees and a mass of choked underwood. This, like desperate men, blind and unreasoning, they fought through—crossed a downward slope of white—plunged into a second great tangle of growth, tore their way through it, and brought up sharp before a little low door that seemed to pierce the base of an inverted bowl of snow set in a small clearing. It was no time to wonder or inquire. Tuke kicked at the woodwork, and it reeled open on screaming hinges. They saw an aperture leading to some darkness of refuge—stooped, and one by one scrambled in and sank exhausted upon the rubbish that lay beneath.

CHAPTER XLI.

PERHAPS a half-hour elapsed before any one of the exhausted men was able to do more than sigh and shift his aching limbs on the bed of rubbish where he lay. They had taken the precaution to pull the door to behind them, and though they were thereby condemned to a profound darkness, the close sunken quarters, warmed with the natural heat of their bodies, wrought a life in them by degrees and a gradual curiosity as to the character of their refuge.

Luvaine was the first to drag himself upright. Standing with his shoulders on a level with the door-sill, he cautiously made a little opening and looked forth long and critically. Then he reclosed the aperture and sat himself down again.

“David,” he said (from that time he, as far as possible, ignored his host), “are you recovered?”

“Convalescent, sir”—he was heard to sit up in the darkness; “I’m at the brandy and beef-tea stage.”

“That’s a pity, for neither will you taste again this side the grave.”

“Oh, Luvaine! What do you mean, man? Where are we?”

“That I can’t tell you—unless it’s a tool-house sunk in some spinney. But, for our prospects—look for yourself, David.”

“Is it so bad as that?” said Tuke, sitting up in his turn.

“Look for yourself, David,” repeated the soldier; “and tell me if you see one hope of escape.”

Both hearers scrambled to their feet, and one of them flung open the door. The mouth of their refuge looked westwards, so that by good fortune it was little encumbered of the driving snow; but that had drifted and piled itself over the easterly slope of the mound in such a manner as to throw an irregular outwork, varying from one yard to many in depth, all about them, and upon this fresh deposits from the bewildered sky were ceaselessly accumulating. It had fallen deep dusk through all the high thicket that encompassed their clearing; but it was yet light enough to see how the white storm—disciplining its fury as the wind dropped with night—was settled to a direct purpose of crushing under the whole resistance of life. Now the flakes fell in dense, sluggish lines upon the open ground, as if the vast weight already cast down were drawing out the very entrails of the heavens.

Blythewood levered himself up and sprang outside. The fall made of him in a moment a man of snow.

“What are we to do?” he shouted. “Good Lord! think of the house and of them two fuming for us to return! Shan’t we make a dash through the wood and try at least to get our bearin’s?”

Tuke had heard a sound, and had bent over Dennis. He came to the opening.

“The poor fellow is half-delirious, I think,” said he, “and in no state to go on. Make the effort, you, and I’ll stay here with him.”

“David,” said Luvaine, “I’m for you. Give me a hand.”

“No,” said the baronet—“not for all the little devils of Angels in the world!”

He jumped down again.

“We’ll stick together,” he cried. “What ails the man?”

He was lying on his heap, flushed and with his eyes closed. Now and again his lips would mutter meaningless fragments of speech.

“This is a girl in breeches,” said Luvaine. “We should have set him on a jackass.”

“It wouldn’t have been courteous to throw all the burden on you, sir,” said Tuke politely.

Blythewood burst out laughing.

“David,” said the soldier in a high voice, “there have been those who have learnt before now the danger of riding me roughshod, and——”

A fresh explosion greeted him, and he stopped, frowning heavily.

“Captain Luvaine,” said Tuke, looking round, “I would remind you that this man, knowing himself of a poor constitution, has cheerfully submitted it to considerable hardship for your benefit——”

“Well, sir, I make no denial of his cheerfulness, or of his sense of duty to his superiors.”

“—And that for some time now a large burden of responsibility, wholly unconnected with any interest of mine, has lain upon my shoulders.”

“You refer to the stone? Surely, sir, you don’t hold me to blame for it, or, in a matter of such importance to me, grudge the sacrifice of a little personal comfort?”

“I leave you to judge of that—as of the propriety of some little courteous acknowledgment.”

“You have it in full,” said the soldier sullenly. “If I fail to express it, you must understand me to be a man of few words.”

Blythewood had his tongue in his cheek.

“We’re all babes in the wood,” he cried; “with a fair chance of sufferin’ their fate. Let’s get under the leaves and tell stories, and not risk goin’ to heaven squabblin’. Hasn’t a man of us a flask about him?”

They were not vouchsafed even that comfort. The long night drew upon them huddled down there in their burrow. The cold was at first piercing, and they soon fell silent, each as wrapped in dismal reflection as, inadequately, in his great-coat. They could not sleep, but only shiver and suffer; and the servant moaned and whispered intermittently through the endless hours. His master did what he could for him in the pitchy darkness, building him a pillow of dead leaves and drawing the skirts of his own surtout about the icy feet.

Towards dawn, however, a little comfort of warmth triumphed in the cabined hole. This was because the snow had then completely enwrapped their place of refuge. One by one, weak and exhausted, they dropped into a shallow abyss of sleep.

Tuke was the first to come to himself again. He started up with a jerk, and felt the rat of hunger gnawing at his ribs.

“Now,” he thought—when he could at last recall his senses—“whither does this tend? We have not eaten or drunk for nigh twenty-four hours, if I may judge, and a definite movement of some sort becomes necessary. Surely four strong men should be able to master any situation.”

Then he thought of Whimple, and bent his head to listen. The man was breathing regularly and profoundly.

Looking up again, with an exclamation of pleasure, he was aware of a little weak finger of light pointing into the gloom. Day had broken. He got to his cramped feet, jubilant in a moment, and, feeling for the door above, essayed to open it. Something resisted. He put all his nerve into a mighty push, felt the hinges yield—then the obstruction; and in an instant a great buttress of snow fell away from the outside and light leaped into the pit.

Light gorgeous and bountiful. The snow had ceased; a hard wintry sun revealed a little surrounding world of heaped and drifted desolation, wherein the very trees seemed but accidents of the storm, or frost-flowers enamelled upon the wide windows of the mist.

The noise of his onset and the gush of radiant air awakened two other of the sleepers.

“Out!” he cried softly, for fear of disturbing Dennis—“up and out and reconnoitre!”

He scrambled, himself, to the open, and was joined by his companions.

“Where in the name of mystery are we?” he murmured.

In the heart of a little wood, apparently—in a clearing ringed about with trees, and so choked, in the course of those fifteen or so pregnant hours, with the white fall, as to seem to offer an insurmountable barrier to their escape. Towards the middle of the circle the snow lay shallowest; but all around against the tree-trunks it sloped upwards to a considerable height, suggesting a bowl of whipped cream that had stiffened to the shape of the vessel it lay in.

“Gentlemen,” said Tuke, “it behoves us to make the struggle. The sky is resolute steel; to remain here is to perish. What do you say?”

Blythewood gave out a rather tortured little laugh. He, as they all did, wore an unshorn and haggard look; but his lips were set grimly.

“I’m with the fox that bit off his foot rather than remain in the trap,” he said.

“And I. Now, will you two try to push into and through the trees somewhere, that we may at least get our bearings? I will remain with Whimple while you are gone, and will make the attempt on my own account if you return unsuccessful. It will be as well to keep a reserve of strength.”

“Oh! certainly,” said Luvaine. “And if we are fortunate, sir, you can set your care for a fellow-creature against our trouble and endurance.”

Sir David pulled the speaker hastily away.

“Au revoir!” he cried over his shoulder. “I hope we shall bring you tidings.”

Tuke watched them wade their first, comparatively easy, paces; then he dived into the cabin once more.

“Dennis!” he cried.

The man was sitting up, an expression of the most profound astonishment on his face; but all token of fever vanished.

“My good fellow—you are in your senses again?”

“Am I, sir? Then they are queerly lodged. Wait!”

He passed his hand over his forehead in a bewildered manner.

“I remember,” he muttered. “The walk and my dead mother, and then——?”

“We fought our way back, Dennis. Lost and beaten we stumbled upon this unspeakable refuge, and here we have lain all night.”

“This?—this?” (Whimple’s eyes were wandering over roof and floor of the little chamber.) “Surely, sir, you know where we are?”

“Not I, indeed.”

“In your own grounds, sir—the old ice-house in the thicket.”

Tuke stared a moment; then, with a shout, scrambled up through the opening and gave out a yell of recall. There was no response. His two companions, to whatever fortune, were vanished and out of earshot. Convinced of this, he turned and slipped again into his burrow.

“You are sure, Dennis?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“And we have fancied ourselves buried in some isolated spinney, and looked to nothing but a lingering death where none could come nigh us through the drifts.”

“Is it so bad as that? We may find it hard to win to the house even yet, then.”

“Tush! you faint rogue. My heart sings like a cricket. Sir David and Captain Luvaine are gone to explore. We will have the laugh of them when they return.”

“Are they away, sir?”

Something of the familiar look of nervousness and hesitation came to his face.

“What is it, Whimple?”

The man burst out all at once:

“Let me take the opportunity, now and for ever, to ease my heart of the last of its burden—to tell my dear master all that I have so long withheld from him.”

“You wish to?”

“I have always wished to; but while she lived—sir, she was my mother, and it were bitter that a son should record his mother’s shame.”

He turned away his head, so that his face fell into shadow.

“The wrong she suffered was at the hands of my father that was murdered and strung up on the downs.”

“Yes, yes,” said Tuke. “That is not all unexpected.”

“It was a fearful wrong, sir, committed on a helpless girl; for she had flouted and dared him; and I it was that was born to be the shameful witness of my father’s violence, and the victim now of my mother’s hate and loathing, now of her furious caresses. She carried me with her into the hiding her profession secured her; for she was a bold horse-woman and popular in travelling shows. But when I was turned nine, she left me under care in a seaport town; and thereafter I saw her but at long intervals, and then to mark little but the hardening of her nature and the steady elimination from it of all kindly and social sentiments. Still, I was to learn from her own lips what, I think, a man can never find it in his sympathy to interpret—the inconsistency of a woman’s soul. No doubt that is like the figure called a parallax——”

“Oh! Dennis—confound your parallax. To my mind it is more like a parachute—an empty thing that any draught shall influence.”

“You don’t mean that, sir.”

“Don’t I?—Well, talk in English, you rascal. Your learning hips a simple country squire.”

“It is no learning, indeed; but a little love for books. She told me of my origin, sir. Judge of what the revelation was to me, who was ignorant as yet of any word of the wicked story. She told me all, and she told me—sir, she said to me, in a burst of wild defiance, that she was about to place herself under the protection of the very man who years before had wrought her that great evil.”

“Am I surprised, Dennis? I think not. I have gone to school in the world. Woman is the archetype of rebellion. She it was pulled down the angels. She must revolt against any restriction not imposed by herself, and she has always a fiercer joy in defying the social laws than she has pleasure in subscribing to them. She knows the world was her original birthright, I suppose, and has a secret admiration for the sort of crime that lost her her heritage. Cutwater scorned the conventions that ostracized her, and he had blackened his soul for her sake. Queer reasoning, maybe from our point of view; but—yes, I can understand her returning to him.”

“She did, sir; and for years I saw her no more. She returned to him, and, as I afterwards learned, soon wearied my father of her presence, and left him, taking with her the baby-daughter that she had borne to him. You know the rest—how, but a little before his death, my father, remembering the fact of my existence, summoned me to him and sought to practise on my simplicity. It was what I had dreaded ever since I had been acquainted of the cruel truth. It finished what my long anguish of suspense had begun. Constitutionally without fibre, I became the nerveless, haunted creature of your first knowledge.”

“And it was after his death that your mother brought the girl to burden you with its charge?”

“No burden, sir. I joyed to have the little thing. But she was uncanny. From near the first she showed herself instinctively attracted to the dreadful thing on the downs, and when the head fell and she could secure it, she came home with a posy face of delight. It was chance hearing of the story of his murder that brought my mother to me with the child; and at first she would give a little to its keep; but, as the years went on, and she herself become poorer and wilder, it was she also that must become in a measure my charge; though she would never set foot in his house, or take from me aught but the barest of necessaries.”

“Well, Dennis—and this was the story you confided to Mr. Creel?”

“The story, sir; as you know it all now—and God bless you and him!”

“And do you think the poor woman there had knowledge of the treasure she bore away in the skull?”

“I cannot think so. He was not the man to put his confidence in any of her sex; and you must remember, sir, that he had always carried a make-believe in his eye-socket, that was a mark of the familiar terror of his glance; and that ’twas his cunning only substituted the stone for the glass. That the thing dropped out anywhere on its passage to and from is the most likely solution.”

“No doubt; and we can’t hunt over seven square miles or so of grassy down, as we hunted—that reminds me; you never heard of our discovery in the wardrobe, when——”

A joyous whoop sounded in their ears, and, as Tuke got to his feet, the aperture was darkened by the figures of the returned explorers.

“Now,” said Sir David, looking down into the pit, with his arms akimbo—“ain’t we heroes? And where would you guess we’ve been to the trouble to pitch our camp?”

“Not in mine own grounds?” said Tuke. “No, no!”

“Who the deuce has been tellin’ you? P’raps you think that spells the end of our difficulties? Are you Julius Cæsar, sir—or whoever the cove was that went over Mount Blank? I tell you there’s a range of drifts between this and the house as big as Snowdon.”

“Then, now comes my turn. Stay you here and leave the rest to me.”

As he spoke, distant, but sharp through the frosty air, came the report of a gun.

CHAPTER XLII.

TUKE scrambled up and out into the open.

“Sport in this weather?” he muttered, staring at his friend.

“Sounds queer, don’t it? and yet, what else can it be?”

The other did not answer; but his eyes retained a sort of startled musing.

“Well,” he said at last, “I must try my fortunes.”

“We had best all go together.”

“No, indeed, my friend. Think of the tax it would be upon Captain Luvaine’s critical perceptives.”

“You are so very witty,” said the soldier dryly. “You put the words in my mouth.”

“I have had to swallow some of yours, sir. ’Tis just an exchange of courtesies.”

“Oh!” cried Blythewood—“the deuce of this sparring! I refuse to hold the stakes any longer.”

“Who asked you to, you rogue. You’re getting conceited.”

“Where are you going to?”

“I have a plan to push out by the tumbled lodge, if I can win there, and see if the drive is passable. It should be.”

“Well—why shouldn’t we all go?”

“If you move, so do I not. Then see if you can find the way by yourself. No, no—stay where you are. In half-an-hour I will be back as full of information as a verger.”

He waved his hand, and ran off, as he could, across the snow. He was stiff and numb with cold; his lips were cracked with it—his fingers felt and looked like ingots of blue steel. There was such a piercing rigour in the air as converted his very breath into frost upon his face.

He thought he remembered the little alley by way of which he had once emerged from the clearing; but to reach it, it was necessary to struggle through a drift nine or ten feet high. He did not hesitate, however; he went into it as if he were diving under a breaker, seeking to bore a hole by the mere force of his onset. And in this process he came near to smothering himself at a swoop; for the arch of snow formed above him broke down as he kicked his way on, and, dragging tributary avalanches with it, completely overwhelmed and half-suffocated him. Now he had to gnaw his way, as it were, through the thick base of the drift, and this he felt he should never have breath or vigour for; for the first was already coming in tight gasps, and the second was futile to express itself in anything but a series of aimless and spasmodic jerks. Suddenly it occurred to him that he would stand up. He put all the weight of his back into a mighty heave—felt the superincumbent mass break and part, and his face, like a purple bulb, sprouted from the surface and he could breathe again. Still buried to the neck in the drift, he drew in air and cogitated. The collapse of his tunnel had sunk a shallow groove of uncompact snow to his front; and presently flapping and floundering, he was able by slow degrees to force a cutting through the heap, and to come out on the other side amongst the trees, horribly draggled and exhausted, but triumphant.

Here, where he now found himself, the thick interlacing of the branches overhead had made a roof to the under-earth, so that the fall had penetrated only occasionally in any considerable quantity, and he was able to continue his way without much difficulty. But all about him a chill inhuman twilight reigned; for the roof itself was a loaded canopy, and many of its high girders were already snapped beneath the pressure.

Going cautiously, he came all at once into the little track he sought, and, speeding along it, emerged upon light and heaped snow once more, and the rear of the tangled garden. This, now, was a mere shapeless confusion of wadded white, and the ruin itself—

The onlooker started where he stood and gave a low whistle. What strange company was lodged in this deserted spot, that smoke should be rising from two of its broken chimneys? The next moment he thought—Could it be possible that Darda was trapped and imprisoned by the fall in her gruesome museum? He uttered an exclamation, waded from his covert, and with some difficulty gained the back entrance to the building. Here, through a chink—for the door stood ajar—a fine smell of stewing meat, that was mightily grateful to his nostrils, was wafted to him. He paused an instant in indecision, then conscious of a little squirm of fear, he rated himself for a coward, kicked off the snow that clogged his heels, pushed at the panels, and entering, came to a stop in the passage beyond. All was quiet as the grave—nothing but the pleasant humming sound of a fire burning in its grate hard by. Not condescending to so much as step softly, he strode down the familiar passage, and came to where the doors of the two sitting-rooms met him on either hand.

“Who’s here?” he cried, striving to read the gloom, for, from whatever cause, the place was dark as a well.

With the words on his lips, he was aware of a sound—suppressed laughter—a little scuffle. Not knowing whither to turn, he struck out blindly anywhere on the instant—recoiled, and in a moment his arms were caught in vicious hands, and there came a great noise of feet and voices all about him. Feeling the utter futility of effort for the time being, he submitted to his unseen captors.

“Light!” cried a little thin voice.

The front door was unbolted and flung open, and a weak radiance of sunshine broke into the passage. Then all around him Tuke saw a nightmare of jeering faces (one even looked through a great gap in the ceiling above his head), and a babble of hoarse laughter rattled the very ribs of the crazy tenement.

CHAPTER XLIII.

“THIS, gentlemen,” said Mr. Tuke, “is a quite overpowering welcome.”

He saw surrounding him a very choice variety of villainous faces—perhaps a dozen types in all; but, if his blood ran cold, he had a lofty fancy to attribute it to the weather.

“And why am I detained in this forcible manner,” he said, “when I come to visit my own lodge?”

A second little griding of laughter was his response.

“Here be a mouching toff,” croaked one of the rascals that held him.

“Give us the griffin, l’utenant,” quoth another hoarsely.

“Stow your cursed babble!” yawped a voice that the captive recognized; “and tie his hands behind him.”

He had not been able to suppress a start at the tones, though he cursed himself for his weakness; but now he looked forward cool and steady as the speaker faced him.

“Oh, Mr. Brander!” he said—“so you captain this amiable company? I see, I see.”

“Why, sir,” said the pedagogue sourly, “you may have stumbled through the fifth proposition and yet lack penetration. I have not the honour to lead in this business.”

“Will you answer me a question?”

“Not one. Are his hands tied, you?”

“As fast as your tongue, sir, I can assure you. Mr. Corby here, whom I recognize by his bashfulness, has spliced me as conscientiously as he would bud a rose. How is gardening doing, Joe?”

“Get along!” said that person. “You want bedding out, you do.”

“Why, Joe, I’m with you. I never felt myself in closer quarters.”

Another squiggle of laughter greeted the sally.

“You might graft a new pair of ears to this gentleman,” said Tuke. “He’s been lopped, it seems, for canker; and that’s a disease peculiar to roses and curs, Joe.”

Brander’s face went furious.

“You stinking aristocrat!” he screamed. “I’ll pipe a tune for you by and by, and you shall dance, by God!”

He stamped his foot and waved with his gaunt arms.

“Kick him into the parlour!” he shouted—“and let his wits fatten on the frog-skins. He’ll want them in good condition presently.”

The prisoner made no resistance, and was haled rather than driven through the doorway of the room to his right—thrust and locked in.

The shutters, it seemed, were closed, and the place—except for the little glow diffused by a fire smouldering on the hearth—was in darkness. Not knowing if a trap of some sort was set for him, and being indeed considerably amazed and dumbfounded for all his fine show of sang-froid, he would not venture to do more than cross cautiously to the neighbourhood of the chimney corner, where he set his back against the wall and awaited events with what philosophy he could muster.

Little sound of voice or movement came to him from without. The rogues, their ruse accomplished, assumed all the secrecy of their profession, and to the noise of boisterous mirth succeeded some fitful suggestions of stealthy toing and froing that it was far more difficult to hear with equanimity.

Fortunately his trial of suspense was a short one. He had not been in the room many minutes, when he became conscious that he was not alone. Somebody had come in, but so softly and with so sidling an action that he was hardly aware of the fact until he heard gentle fingers manipulating the bolts of the shutters. The next moment the flaps were pushed quietly open and white daylight broke into the room.

He was in Darda’s museum—that he had guessed—and advancing towards him was a figure, very placid, very venerable—Mr. Fern, whom it seemed a profanation to dub Jack.

The new-comer stooped a little courteous bow as he came forward.

“We are badly accommodated for seats,” he said in his mild, high voice; “but here is a chair—or the remains of one, and a little steadiness of posture may make it even comfortable to you. Pray avail yourself of it.”

The gentleman laughed.

“If you will untie my hands,” he said.

“I see no difficulty, Mr. Tuke. You will of course give me your parole not to attempt to escape.”

“Am I to be a prisoner in my own lodge?”

“I greatly fear so, sir. This quite unexpected development largely facilitates what might have been otherwise a prolonged and tiresome business, and we can’t afford to let you go. I will be frankness itself, Mr. Tuke; and we really can’t afford it, sir.”

“And I will imitate your candour, and ask what the devil you, a common thief, mean by asking a gentleman for his parole?”

“Rash blood, sir—hot, rash blood. I was older than you before I learnt to pick my words. But, without that little one of yours, I much fear that I shall be unable to relieve you of this temporary inconvenience.”

“Why, zounds, Mr. Fern! You are here in force, it seems—a dozen or more blazing cut-throats to keep the cage.”

“Honest fellows and well to be trusted, sir. At the same time you are noted for being a gentleman of daring and resource (I must really make you that acknowledgment), and far be it from me to risk the least of those scenes of violence that my soul abhors.”

“Botany Bay has made you squeamish, it appears. Have you buried the hatchet with which you killed Cutwater?”

Mr. Fern shrugged up his hands deprecatingly.

“It pains me,” he said gently, “to hear a repetition of that old slander at this date.”

“What! you didn’t murder the miserable rogue, and help to string him up afterwards?”

“Such an old slander, sir; and is the age of reason never to be forgiven its youthful peccadilloes?”

“Oh! I cry you mercy, Mr. Fern. If this was a peccadillo, I can understand your abhorring violence.”

“Harkee! Mr. Tuke. I don’t say I would have withheld my men from their just resentment; but that I took no active part in it is the truth.”

“What sucking infants, to be sure, are you and your schoolmaster! I shall believe just this—that Cutwater stabbed himself in twenty places and then jumped his neck into the chains. But—to be candid again, Mr. Fern—what an unperspicacious rascal you must have been to kill your goose with the golden eggs.”

“Sir, there is one crime that, to my mind, cries to heaven above all others for vengeance, and that is treachery on the part of a confederate. What was I to hesitate, if I was chosen the minister of a divine retribution? And now, by your leave, we will come to business.”

“What can there possibly be of that between us?”

“A little, sir—a little. The question of ransom, for instance.”

“Ransom—ransom? in the matter of a few hundreds of yards of drive?”

“What is that to the point? One may lie in Newgate and only three feet of wall separate him from free pavement.”

“Very pertinently put; and you have all the advantage of knowing. But, do you seriously propose, as a sane man, Mr. Fern, to place, at this end of the eighteenth century, a gentleman’s private house under siege?”

“I am bound to confess I do.”

“Well, you have your plans, I presume, that you are not likely to acquaint me of.”

“Indeed, sir, you are free to know all. It is my simple intention to force entrance, and deal summarily with any that shall oppose me in my perfectly legitimate search.”

For a placable man, Mr. Fern’s eyes assumed a rather lurid complexion.

“I may tell you,” he said, a little loudly for him, “that I have here a disciplined and rather unscrupulous force under my command, and that this show of resistance on your part is neither convincing nor judicious. Indeed, your somewhat fatuous self-confidence in thus venturing beyond your own lines, proves you quite ill-fitted to cope with so pregnant a situation.”

“At least you will acknowledge the house is well-defended?”

“Pooh! A mere question of gunpowder. You have Cutwater’s iron shutters—which you have closed, of course—and a quite inadequate company to hold them; and of this, one already, as you know, is but now placed hors de combat by a shot from an over-eager young member of my band.”

“True, true,” murmured Tuke—“the man.”

“A man, sir, undoubtedly; and a fool to thus expose himself. What could you do with such material, Mr. Tuke, even had you remained there to captain it?”

“Oh! thank you, Mr. Fern. You have comforted my heart amazingly. That Whimple is a sterling soul, and his precautions that I have laughed at justify themselves. But who thought to put them into practice?”

The other, that was so like a Quaker in his appearance, gasped and stared.

“Truly, sir,” he said. “I fail to comprehend you.”

“It is simple, my fatuous and over self-confident friend. You have greatly enlightened me. I do not come from the house. I was benighted yester-eve in the snow, and this morning, seeking to escape from my predicament, stumbled hap-hazard upon your camp.”

“You do not come from the house!”

“On the contrary. From quite another direction.”

“And you are alone?”

“Surely that is a superfluous question?”

For the moment Mr. Fern seemed to blaze up into a rather fearful travesty of himself. The contrast between his white hair and brick-red face became an exceedingly baneful one. In the flashing of the fire, however, he was his placid self again.

“This,” he said (his precise lips seemed educated, like stops, to the exact harmonies of speech), “all redounds to our advantage. Wherever you come from, you have fallen a very opportune hostage.”

“Ah! my friend. But it shows others than the master of the house to be on the alert. I am not informed of the details of your attack; but no doubt you thought to rush the place at your first assault.”

“You are absolutely right. We failed in that; but I may tell you, sir, that any prolonged resistance there, besides necessarily proving futile, will greatly incense my men.”

“But why necessarily futile?”

“Pooh! Mr. Tuke. We have gone over our ground long and carefully. (Again I will be entirely open with you. Why should I not? If ever right justified might, it does in this business.) Do you fancy I am ignorant of the nature and capacity of your household?”

“True, true. Now, I am curious to know, Mr. Fern, how long you have been gathered here in this force?”

“Shall we put it at seventeen hours? When the snow increased we saw that Providence was set to favour the cause of justice, and we moved up here by twos and threes, and were all—thirteen of us, sir—assembled in the lodge by four o’clock of yesterday afternoon.”

“So ’twas the snow decided you?”

“Sir, I will own to you that we had thought originally to make a simpler finish of the matter; but your unexpected return from London disturbed our plans. However, all has worked for the best; for here we stand in our relations of besieged and besieging, as isolated as though we were vulture and deserted camel in the midst of Sahara. You see your position, Mr. Tuke. There is no hope of succour from any quarter. We have food and ammunition in abundance, and if we choose, we can batter your house about the ears of its two or three defenders. Already my strong fellows have been at work, cutting a path up the drive and beyond it, and they have accounted for one of your trumpery force. If you are wise, you will consent to treat. If you are humane, you will forbear to sacrifice to your vanity the lives of the unthinking few who serve you. And you have women there, Mr. Tuke—women, sir, women! They have a fashion of thinking death not the worst evil they can suffer.”

The captive, his heart blazing, saw the soul of this unspeakable ruffian revealed. He would have risked all and choked him with his hands, had these been free. As it was, he sought to play a sounder part by hiding his repulsion.

“Now, sir,” said the white-haired man very softly, “I put my proposal quite definitely—quite plainly, that there may be no mistaking it and no temporizing with it. I will exchange the person of Mr. Tuke for the stone that goes by the name of the ‘Lake of Wine,’ and, upon receipt of the latter, will withdraw my men and leave this neighbourhood for ever at peace.”

The other did not answer.

“You need not say,” went on Mr. Fern in the same quiet tone, “that you have not the jewel or any knowledge of its whereabouts. That were superfluous. I possess convincing evidence of its being concealed somewhere in your house. Pray do not trouble yourself or me with a denial.”

He paused for an answer. An acute observer might have noticed that his fingers twitched a little, as though they longed to tear out by the roots the confession he so suavely invited.

“And if I refuse your terms?” said Tuke, looking steadily at his man.

“Then I much regret it will be necessary to adopt coercive measures.”

The baronet drew himself up, the fury he had so long suppressed glinting in his eyes.

“You brazen scoundrel!” he cried, “to dare to assume that any threat could bring me to condone your villainy! Do your worst, you dog, and clinch your account with the devil!”

He was starting forward, when the other went swiftly to the door, opened it, looked back with a horrible smile, and vanished.

“And here endeth the first lesson,” said Mr. Tuke.

CHAPTER XLIV.

UPON the unfortunate gentleman, now committed to an irksome and most apprehensive solitude, fell a score of little demons of melancholy and alarm. To men of his fibre there is no chastening so bitter as confinement; and though with the master-rogue he had borne himself like the spirited knight of destiny he was, no sooner was he left alone than he found his indignation subordinated to reflections that were distracting to the last degree.

What would his companions think had become of him? and, failing his return, would they follow in his tracks and fall into that selfsame snare?

Was Miss Royston, with her lordling cavalier, even now established a prisoner in his house? or had she failed to respond to her brother’s invitation?

Who was it that had shut “Delsrop” against the besieging rascals? and would his household, deprived of its legitimate head and in ignorance as to his fate, exhibit the nerve to conduct and sustain an effective resistance?

What member of his personnel had been shot that morning? A man, it appeared. Then, if not Dunlone——

He ran over in his mind the names of those in his service—two grooms, one of them a mere boy, and the imported Jim. These, with Betty, Darda, possibly Angela, and three maids, were the sum total of the defenders. Half-a-dozen girls, two men and a boy; and one of the latter already accounted for.

He groaned, and set to tramping to and fro like a wild, caged beast. His impotence, the impossibility of resolving any one of these problems that tortured him, set his brain reeling. His hands had been corded behind him so tightly that the flesh swelled and lapped over the knots. Yet it was not his personal discomfort that chiefly perturbed him, or any apprehension of the force of coercion his captors would be brutal enough to employ. That he was condemned, in the midst of a stirring episode in his career, to a pitiful inaction, was what galled him like a rowel.

Almost simultaneously with his interlocutor’s withdrawal from the room, a sentry, of a villainous cast, had made his appearance outside the window, where he took his stand, flint-lock on shoulder. Another (by token of his hard breathing and the intermittent click of a hammer against his coat-buttons as he shifted his position from time to time) was stationed outside the door.

From the room opposite came fitfully the sound of voices in low discussion. The fire upon the hearth died upon itself and consigned the stark little room to a perfect apathy of chilliness. Frost gathered on the diamonds of the casement and turned the stolid sentry into a phantom of himself. And still the dull hours sped onwards and not a soul came to lighten his depression.

He had long before drawn the marrow, in his monotonous tramp hither and thither, from every object of slightest interest that the small ruined chamber could boast. Here was the crazed girl’s museum, arranged on worm-eaten shelves—a medley of grotesque rubbish that superstition had thought fit to respect. It was a gruesome litter—skins, stones, and petrified vegetables; and he had cursed his own high precipitancy over the thought of how a little forbearance on his part might have saved to the collection its most notable item, and so rendered nugatory all the present evil that encompassed him.

Once he had stooped to examine a certain object amongst the trash—a round pebble that seemed familiar to him. It was the scrawled stone that had been slung through a window for Dennis’s behoof, and he peered at it with an emotion commingled of curiosity and remorse. So Darda it was had secured the treasure—to her, no doubt, a veritable message from the shadows. And had the rascal that threw it recognized his handiwork amongst these other fetishes and chuckled to see it reserved for such high distinction? It was probable enough, for the room bore signs of late occupation by some very rough company. Gnawed crusts, onion-skins, tobacco-ashes lay scattered about the hearth. In one corner was a litter of twigs and broken branches, hastily collected, it would appear, for fire-wood, and cast down beside them was an old canvas-bag, striped pink and drab, that had been stuffed with dead leaves for fuel. In another a greasy gridiron and a dinted tin pannikin or so were evidence of a certain commissariat foresight on the part of the besiegers; while an empty rundlet, thrown aside like a discharged cartridge-case, was earnest of that species of baggage without which no knight of fortune can be brought to take the road.

Each and all of these objects the prisoner dwelt upon, and passed by, and reviewed again and again, till his brain learnt to loathe their inevitability at the turning-points of his wearisome sentry-go. And still the icy hours closed upon themselves and no soul came near him.

By and by, as an acute accent to his long trial of cold and anxiety, extreme hunger asserted itself the overpowering sensation. He had not touched food then for more than thirty hours, and his frame had been submitted during the whole of that time to severe and exhausting experiences. When at last, from thoughts otherwise preoccupying, he woke to an amazed realization of the fact that he was being starved into submission, he strode to the door and kicked at the panels in an excess of furious indignation. To the very thundering noise of his onset a low voice across the passage returned like an echo.

“Rudland, if the prisoner shows himself outside, shoot him at once.”

“You hound!” he shouted at that—“bring me food! d’ye hear? bring me food, or I’ll burn the house down!”

A little answer of laughter was clipt in the bud. The threat was to be considered. A moment later Brander’s step crossed the passage, and the man himself entered the room. His eye sought the fire-place, found its relief in the dead coldness there, and came back with a twinkle of mockery to the prisoner.

“You are hungry?” he said.

“What would you suppose, fellow?”

“That you are, of course. ’Tis a pitiful sensation. I’ve suffered it, believe me.”

“D’you think to starve me into tameness?”

“What!—a high-spirited gentleman like you? I believe—as I have advised elsewhere—that far more caustic measures will be necessary to prevail with you. Still, hunger is a very good ground-bait to precede the angler and his hook.”

“And you think to subdue me by such means? ’Tis a protecting clause of humanity that scoundrels cut their cloth according to the measure of their own cowardice.”

“According to the features of their hostages, by your leave, sir.”

“I’m not going to ask you what you mean.”

“You shall have the explanation gratis. You’ve twitted me, vulgarly enough on the loss of these——”

He signified with a fierce gesture his flapless earholes.

“Twitted?” said Tuke. “Where is the reason to twit a docked curt?”

“You’ll find they left me my teeth, by God—my teeth and my nails.”

He almost shouted—“You shall grow a love-lock—you shall grow a love-lock, sir, to hide the place that your lady mayn’t know when she whispers there!”

“What! are you going to cut off my ears?”

“Aye, you may grin your fill. You’ll grin to suffer that on an empty belly. You shall feel the hook before we land you, and grin like a sole!”

There was something so horribly relishing in the man’s tone that the listener’s heart went sick.

“Mutilation!” said he. “Beware what you say, fellow.”

“’Tis what we’ll do, man. We’ll lop your fine heroics toe by toe, till there remain nought but stumps to foot it on. Why—d’ye suppose we’ve pushed the matter so far to shrink at a shadow? I give you warning. We’ve neither time nor mood for palaver. To-night you shall have for reflection—the devils of cold and hunger to counsel you; and so be you’re in a like frame of obstinacy after that test to-morrow you shall be pruned for token to your friends over there, and again and yet again till you or they are convinced of the wisdom of an exchange. I’ve learnt the right art of clipping in Calabria, sir, and will shave you that ’twill be a pleasure to you to feel the razor.”

He stopped, with a dark and malignant look on his face—backed a step, opened the door and disappeared.

For a minute after his exit Tuke stood too astounded for speech or action. That here, on his own land, in the heart of orderly England, he should be held by blackguard outlaws for ransom, and menaced with outrage like any victim of continental brigandage, seemed too preposterous for belief. Coming to his senses, in a paroxysm of rage he flung himself against the door and hurled curses on his invisible enemies till he was hoarse. Not a murmur in response was vouchsafed him. Spent and agitated, though still boiling with anger, he resumed his monotonous tramp to and fro, till, utterly worn out, he let himself drop upon a heap of sticks, and, leaning his shoulder against the wall-corner, fell into a sort of stupor of exhaustion.

Night closed upon him lying thus—a night of sleeplessness and torture. His furious struggles to release his hands had only riveted their bonds the closer, and his inflamed and swollen wrists gave him exquisite anguish. The position of his arms was one long cramping torment. The worm of hunger writhed in his vitals, while fever glowed in the marrow of his bones; and all the long dark through, the bitter frost smote his limbs into numbness and seemed to hammer at his heart.

Now and again to his deadened senses would come a little appeal like a memory—the smell of roasting meat, the crackle of a fire, the sound of reckless voices passing discordant toasts. He only connected these with the processes of a conscious delirium, and was concerned simply that they would not cease and leave him to his miserable loneliness.

Sometimes, in lucid intervals, as it seemed, and that before the rising tide of darkness had drowned the last glimmering streaks of light, he would find himself on his feet insanely inspired for the twentieth time to break his prison by one swift and silent effort; and there always, a blurred phantom outside the window, was the inexorable presentment of the guard.

No least balm of sleep could he woo to his aching eyelids; only presently, into his other sufferings was dropped that keystone of anguish, a raging thirst.

Racked, body and mind, burnt and frozen and twisted, he fell at last into a torpor of the senses that must do duty for rest, and so triumphed over the hours and was aware all at once of daylight in the room. The very sight was life. A haggard ghost of himself, he scrambled painfully to his feet, and, lurching to the window, stood drinking in the weak wine of sunlight.

Suddenly it came to him that the sentry was withdrawn. A wild hope tingled in his veins, only to as swiftly die away. These dogs could take the right measure of cruelty. Yesterday, bound as he was, it would have needed all his vigour and resourcefulness to escape by way of that little aperture; now, weakened and nerveless, he must find the task impossible. And, even while assuring himself on this point, he heard the room-door opened, and, turning, saw a stealthy face look in, take stock of him, and vanish.

Presently, finding a little of the spirit of strength and defiance returning to him, he set to tramping the room again, feebly at first, but by and by with an increase of vigour. For an hour he may have walked, when, without forespeech or warning, the door was flung open and there quickly entered Fern and Brander, who shut themselves in and stood by the threshold, facing the prisoner.

Both men were braced and accoutred as if for some immediate business of violence. Into belts drawn about their waists were stuck murderous-looking knives; pistol-butts stood from their skirt-pockets, and each had a flint-lock slung across his shoulders. For the rest they were the suave and the brutal, and a couple of as soulless ruffians as ever fouled the sunlight.

There was to be no more temporizing, it seemed; and the white-haired leader spoke up at once.

“We would ask your decision, Mr. Tuke,” he said.

The gentleman, his eyes blazing contempt, had paused opposite the two, as if he questioned a very daring intrusion.

“What do you want of me?” said he.

“The answer is simple. We demand our own—a ruby that goes by the name of the ‘Lake of Wine.’”

“I have no such ruby in my possession.”

“Tut, sir, tut; the prevarication is unworthy of you. Let us say, then, the skull that contains it.”

“The skull!”

“Mr. Tuke, Mr. Tuke, this will not serve your purpose. We have direct evidence of the truth, sir, and that from more than one source.”

“You have, have you?”

“—And I am free to advise you, sir, to refrain for the future from discussing with your friends such very private affairs on the public road.”

To the unfortunate prisoner all in a moment came a clap of revelation.

“We were overheard?”

“Ah-ha! You give yourself away.”

“There was more said—and ’twas that evening the ‘First Inn’ was fired.”

Some conscious sign passed between the rogues at his words. Tuke sprang at them, actually gnashing his teeth.

“I guessed it, you foul-blooded dogs! and may God burn your hearts for that wanton ruin of a poor maid!”

They had seized him and forced him back struggling and helpless. The beast was awake in Fern. His eyes opened bloodshot, his lip was lifted; he snapped out his knife and held it like a butcher.

“You Jack-a-dandy!” he screamed in a woman’s voice—“for a word I’d rip you like a pig!”

He stamped on the floor.

“Take your choice, or go piecemeal to hell. An ear and a nose and a lip for the stone, and if they don’t serve, every member of your cursed carcass for token to the fat wench I gave you for mistress.”

Tuke wrenched himself free, and, butting with his shoulder, flung himself at the scoundrel with all his force. He felt himself spun round—a fiery tooth crossed his wrist, and he stumbled and went his length on the floor. Looking up as he lay, momentarily expecting to feel the deadlier plunge of the blade that had already slashed at him, he saw to his surprise Fern raving and struggling in the grasp of his more powerful fellow-rogue.

“Let go!” he was shrieking—“you fool, d’you think to baulk me in my blood-lust!”

“Yes!” cried Brander fiercely. “You kill the goose—you kill the goose, you madman! Come out—by God, you shall! I’ve another test to propose!”

His own face was white with fury as he held back the dribbling and snarling animal, and had his better strength failed to master it, it is likely he would have driven his knife into the swollen throat under him. But he prevailed in a moment, and dragged the other in a patter of curses from the room.

As the key turned in the lock, Tuke collapsed upon himself in a half-faint.

CHAPTER XLV.

TO a sane and humane soul there is no revelation so shocking as that of the scorn in which its rectitude is held by the prevailing beasts of the world. To the most of us at some time comes this bitter realization of the force that keeps humanity low. High as our sense of justice and of decency may be—serene as may figure the outlook from our lofty chambers of self-respect, we have only to descend into the plain to find manifest the brutal ruggedness of life that our hitherto aloofness has idealized. The impotence of honesty to enforce itself in any question of might; the impotence of morality to convince self-interest of its baseness—these are the first lessons in the despair of being. And when, for climax, actual bodily violence shakes us out of all the uses of dignity, we are fain to wonder what creative incongruity seeks to leaven all these seething continents of devils with a finger-pinch of just men, and how the end has justified the means of blazing Sodom and the Deluge.

To the fainting and battered prisoner in the lodge something in the nature of such reflections was conveyed through his sufferings. He had been beaten and mastered, it seemed, by the force that was merely brutal. Such a situation for himself he had never remotely conceived. His vagabondage was to have been of the picturesque sort that aims at nothing more definite than a scorn of conventions. That which gives or receives a blow—sings with the birds or plays with the prison rats, with an equal philosophy, or an equal bluntness of perception, was outside his scope, and certainly outside his knowledge. If asked, he would have said the condition was not possible to him, inasmuch as all his experience led him to such a confidence in his innate capacity for finesse, in his own masterfulness and sense of what was due to himself, as would carry the most difficult situation. That any, no matter who, should dare to treat him with the contempt of the strong for the weak, he had not dreamed could be; and waking to the realization that it was, a bitter stubborn hatred of those who had taught him his lesson stung in his veins like poison.

It was a poison, nevertheless, that was a tonic. It brought him to himself, and to a determination to subordinate his passions to his intellect. Let him recover a little, regain a moiety of his strength, and, instead of wasting his time in fruitless ravings, he would study to set his wits against his captors’, and win or die in the attempt to vindicate their superiority.

He was lying on his back on the floor as he had fallen. For how long a time he had been stretched there he could not guess; but he was stiff and numb with cold, and all his agony of being seemed concentrated in a single flaring thread. This was underneath him, he fancied—a taut string of pain; and at first he could not account for it, or disassociate the sensation from some ridiculous travesties of delirium. He had been given a red-hot knife with which to carve his dinner—a joint all ribs and emptiness; he had thrust his hand into his pocket, which had been lined with a grid of steel blades; he had broken a great crystal goblet from which he was about to drink, and a keen fragment had sliced his arm.

By and by the unfailing localization of these grotesque injuries led his recovering perceptions to the remembrance that his hands were tied behind him and that he was lying upon them. Then in a flash he recalled the final scene—the vicious swoop of the knife and the stinging pain that followed; and he recognized all at once that he had been stabbed.

The nature of the wound—what was it? With an effort he turned upon his side. For all the cramp and torment in his arms he could move his fingers a little. The pressure on these maltreated limbs had wrought one benefit—it had stopped the flow of blood. But there was something else—something——

With the little weak cry he gave out, he rolled on to his back once more; for there had been a sound at the door, and a man came into the room.

“Joe,” he said feebly—“Joe Corby!”

The new-comer, looking down upon him, nodded.

“How’s you?” said he.

“I’m very bad, Joe. I’m hurt in body, and more in mind that you should lend yourself to this business. What makes you do it, Joe?”

Mr. Corby’s answer was enigmatical and brief.

“Bulbs,” said he.

“Joe,” said the patient, “you’re a man of such few words that I hardly like to ask you to squander any on an explanation. Still circumstances have dulled my faculties.”

“I spekilated in ’em,” said Joe, “and I were sold.”

“I see, sold up. A man of courage would have turned and taken Fortune by the neck.”

“Would he? It ain’t my way. You may thumb me in like a March onion for to come up in June, but if the ground don’t soot me I jumps out. Gardening was my ban and I tuk to the road. What’s the odds? Here be the Lake o’ Wine a-blossoming like a toolip at the end of it.”

“But is it, Joe?”

“Ain’t it, now? I speaks free, me and Rudland being left alone on guard.”

“Why, where are the others?”

The ex-gardener gave a ponderous wink.

“Two ’ll suffice,” he said, “to keep this ’ere maggot from eatin’ his way out of the apple.”

“A baby would suffice, Joe, in my present state.”

The man nodded again serenely.

“I can ventur’ to ease you a trifle,” he said.

“No, leave me alone. I’m best left quiet. It’s odd what browsing lambs you all were till misfortune came like a wolf into the fold. What do you expect for your share, Joe?”

“More or less than you are a-going to offer me to let you escape. It’s no good, cap’en. The riches of the world wouldn’t bribe me with Fern a-treadin’ on my tail.”

With the words he went to the door, looked back grinning, and vanished.

Tuke waited during an interval of suspense, until he judged himself strong enough to make a noiseless effort to rise. Then, very cautiously and by slow degrees, he got to his knees—to his feet, and stood swaying. Suddenly he wrenched his arms, and they parted and swung down idly by his sides. It was as he had felt and dared to hope—the slash of the murderous knife had severed his bonds at the wrist.

For some moments he stood wrapt in the mere ecstasy of physical relief. Then he tried to lift his arms, found himself unable to, and looked down at the poor dangling limbs. They were a pitiful sight—swollen, paralyzed, discoloured, and streaked with clotted blood. In alarm he endeavoured to woo them to a return of circulation by gently swinging and rubbing them against his coat-skirts. For a time no result was apparent; but persisting, in what panic flurry of motion he could contrive without noise, he was rewarded by and by with an awakening of such twinges as he was convinced betokened a renewal of life in the maltreated members. The twinges increased in quick recurrence and in force, until his arms seemed mere engines of boiling and bursting pains. He could hardly endure the agony and not cry out; but he set his teeth and rubbed either limb furiously with a hand, unconscious in his torment that the power of motion was thus restored to him.

At last the pain slackened, and he was able to think. He examined his wrist and found the wound to be a long and superficial one, but enough to have caused him considerable loss of blood had chance not applied an effective tourniquet. His hands were still little capable, his whole frame was suffering and enfeebled; but his triumph of release from bondage was a stimulant that wrought upon him like wine.

A weapon—that was his first necessity. Moving with extreme nicety, he examined every corner and crevice in the room. Not so much as a broken penknife rewarded his search. Across the hall-passage Mr. Corby lifted up his voice in sincere but unmelodious praise of the red, red rose. Escape appeared impossible but by some bold and unexpected coup. Was he strong enough to venture it—to issue from the room suddenly, overwhelm the unsuspecting Joe, put him hors de combat with his own hanger, and made a bolt for the wood by the garden-way? The risk was fearful; and what but a floundering death in the drift should follow, with pursuit perhaps in his tracks? On the other hand, to delay meant probable outrage and mutilation, and a certain steady decrease of physique hour by hour.

He was resolved to it; he stood with his shoulder set to the door-jamb, tense for one uttermost effort—when the sound of voices close by in the drive brought him to a pause; and the next moment he heard the front door flung open.

Silently, his heart fearfully drumming, he stepped back to the very spot from which he had risen, and, slipping down upon the boards, resumed as nearly as he could the position in which the ruffians had left him. As he did so, he heard the tramp of men in the passage, a sound of jeering voices, and the next moment the door of the room was thrown open and his visitors of the morning re-entered.

They bore the appearance of men baffled, but with some gloating evil in their hearts. Fern strode to the prisoner and picked at him roughly with his boot-toe.

“How now!” he shrilled. “D’you make your bed there?”

Tuke judged defiance the better policy.

“Curse you!” he cried in a broken voice. “Do you see this patch on the floor? ’Twould have said little for your judgment to have left me to bleed to death. A fine leader of rogues, on my faith!”

“Ha! my friend—we’ll cauterize the next wound for you with a red-hot blade. And so you’ve been seeking to bribe the sentry?”

There was hoarse laughter from the door, where a half-dozen scoundrel faces were gathered.

“I take my cue from the foremost of you,” said the prisoner, speaking up from the boards. “’Tis not so long since Mr. Brander there made me an offer of half-shares if I would give him secret possession of the gem.”

The devil stood a-tiptoe and looked out through the schoolmaster’s eyes. Mr. Fern’s face was gone a raw beetroot colour.

“How’s that, Brander?” said he.

“A ruse,” said the other coolly. “I have more tricks to my philosophy of persuasion than you have methods to your villainy.”

“My style suits my company best, I think. You acknowledge you tried to treat, then?”

“And do you look to my condescension to deny or explain?”

There had been murmurs at the door; and, upon this: “He’s lying!” cried a voice.

Mr. Brander was a man of few superfluities—a born director of others. This was because he never let an occasion over-ripen, but plucked his fruit before it fell. He had been quite prepared before the threatening utterance, and with the echo of it he wheeled about and fired his pistol with unerring aim into the thick of the group.

On the clap of the shot broke a loud hiccough—as if the bullet had pierced a wind-bag—and a fellow pitched forward on the threshold and bled silently on the floor.

“That’s my bird,” said the sportsman.

He strode to the door, the company stumbling and retreating before him.

“I’ve the other barrel,” he said. “Does any one want it?”

He stood waiting a moment in a black pause before he spoke again:

“You’re reflecting who it is plans the entrances while your cow-heads are butting at the wall. Who is it prepares the way, here and everywhere, I say, and supplies the brains without which you’d never finger a crown-piece of your own getting?”

A little patter of voices murmured up, “Ebenezer Brander!”

“Ah!” he said, “that’s proper scholars, and spoken to the word.”

He pocketed his discharged pistol.

“When you feel you can do without me—when you feel you can depend upon him there” (he turned fiercely and signified his captain, who stood with an infernal smile on his face) “for all that suits you best—then’ll be the time to question my methods and offer me my pass to hell.”

He kicked out his foot slightly in the direction of the dead rogue.

“We were a baker’s dozen. Take away Judas Iscariot and change the luck.”

Perhaps the suggestion, the appeal to superstition, operated as powerfully with the company as the man’s own sinister personality. With exclamations of approval they dragged away the fallen body. It left a torn wake of red behind it.

“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, turning once more upon his chief—“in your own interests you’ll thank me, I know, for this exhibition of authority. It only remains to give this gentleman his last warning.”

“You bitter dogs!” cried up the captive, horror-stricken and overcome at the swiftness of the tragedy. “I refuse any terms you may offer. Why, what could such brutal cowards effect against a couple of honest, determined men? Kill me, if you like, and certify yourselves for the gallows. I back my good fellows to hold you at bay till the snow melts, and there you’ll be caught in a trap and the crows shall banquet. Kill me, and effect more than you’ve done in all these two days!”

Forgetful in his emotion of every prudence, he raised himself on an arm. Brander uttered a hoarse chuckling cry.

“God of thunder!” he exclaimed. “Where’s Joe Corby?”

The man was pushed into the room.

“Joe,” said the villain—“he tempted but couldn’t prevail, eh? Isn’t that so?”

The puzzled fellow scratched his head.

“Work it out, Joe. We cut you short in cutting his bonds, didn’t we?”

He was fingering his second pistol. Tuke cried out in agony:

“The man’s innocent, you hound! ’Twas that ruffian’s knife severed the strands when he slashed at me!”

Brander hesitated; but Joe’s profound amazement was convincing.

“Providence works for us in spite of fools—eh, Jack Fern?” said the former.

He called in two of the men.

“Splice him up again,” he said, “and firmly.”

It was useless to resist. They tied the wretched gentleman’s hands behind him once more, cruelly enough, with a long cord, and the slack of this they fastened to the fire-grate.

“Now,” said Brander—(he seemed virtually the leader; through all this scene the nominal one stood blazing sullenness)—“we’ve a little surprise for you, my buck, and have effected more, perhaps, than you think. Bring in the girl there!”

Lost, broken, and dumfounded, the captive raised his miserable head at the words. What new triumph of devilry did they betoken?

Darda, before God! His swimming heart was conscious of a shock, and following it a little burst of shameful thankfulness. Bad was it, in all conscience, but——

He knew his cracked lips trying to mutter, “What has happened? How did she fall into your hands?”—but only inarticulate sounds came from them.

The girl stood there on the threshold, fierce, defiant, held by two men. The next moment, at a gesture from Brander, she was gone.

“Now, sir,” said the schoolmaster, beckoning his coconspirator, and coming close up to his victim—“we deal, as you see, in very severe realities. We have two in our power at this outset of our little campaign. A capture a day would serve, but we are impatient for a quicker settlement. To-night again for reflection. ’Tis a concession, but we grant it you. With dawn to-morrow it is for you to decide the fate of this maid and of your own very ornamental members.”

Tuke, like a dying man, saw him nod to him darkly—a grotesque phantasm as of a last delirium; saw him turn and, in company with his chief, stalk from the room; knew himself committed to such a further ordeal of torture as he feared his weakened body would be powerless to sustain; and, as the last echo of retreating footsteps came to his ears, his head dropped upon his breast and he despaired.

CHAPTER XLVI.

AN apology is submitted for here retailing some commonplaces of a very evil duet of rascals.

That began with certain dropping shots of irony, and it ended at pretty close range.

The kitchen of the tumbled lodge served for guardhouse; and the two officers were quartered in the little parlour opposite Mr. Tuke’s room of bondage. Between walked a sentry, and another (on this occasion Mr. Joseph Corby) was stationed to the front of the house in the freezing moonlight. Burnt fallow-deer meat had been plentifully bolted after the exertions of the day, and kegs of rum—supplied, it must be confessed, by Mr. Breeds, who was not otherwise represented in this climax of affairs—topped very agreeably the simplicity of the repast.

Mr. Fern and his lieutenant exchanged speech for the first time after the second glass. Then said the former suddenly:

“Brander, who’s the cock of this run?”

“Oh, don’t you know, Jack Fern,” was the answer; “the bantam, by the token, that crows himself red in the face?”

There seemed some personality here.

“Then I’ll have you know, by God, that I’m not to be supplanted by any white-shackled rooster that can out-screech me. You assume too much authority, sir, on the strength of an acquaintance with primers.”

Mr. Brander very urbanely recited the fable of the cock and the jewel.

“’Twas the Lake of Wine,” said he; “and there it was under your nose while you kicked up the dunghill. Primers have their uses.”

“Maybe; maybe not.”

“Why, man—give me Cutwater’s letter.”

“What for?”

“Give me Cutwater’s letter, I say.”

The other hesitated, then from a pocket-book that he drew from his coat, selected a yellowed fragment of paper and flung it sulkily across the table to his companion.

“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, taking up the letter deliberately and referring to it—“vouchsafe me your kind attention, if you please. This was dated, I think, some months before the lamented gentleman’s death, and was addressed to you?”

“Oh! curse you out of your pedantry, Ebenezer Brander!”

“In it occur the following words, once expressive of mere violence to you—of enigma to me. Let me re-read them. ‘I’ve got the stone, bloody Jack Fern, and the stone I mean to keep. You’ll find it, despite the devil and Mister C., will you? Find it, you——’ (Tut, tut, Mr. Cutwater! what a shocking unpoliteness!) ‘Pray to the blessed St. Anthony, you’d better; for it’s hid well, I’ll tell you. It’s in my head but you’ll make a lame matter of the search.’”

He finished, threw the paper back to the other and pulled at his pipe.

“‘In my head,’” he repeated, softly knuckling the table. “Who, when you showed him the letter, half-read the riddle in those words, and egged you on to renew the search? Whose prognostications were verified in that which was overheard by our friend the innkeeper?”

“I grant you can see further into a haystack than the most of us.”

“You do, do you? Then what’s your complaint?”

“That you undermine me in the favour of my fellows, by God!—that you assume the leadership and work first and foremost to your own advancement.”

“Have I misrepresented you in giving that gentleman-scamp his last warning?”

“No.”

“In concealing from him the truth of the girl’s throwing herself into our hands?”

“No.”

“You would have blundered in all this. You have the hoofs and horns of a bullock, and they are your one appeal and resource. Take the fighting to yourself and leave the diplomacy to your betters.”

“You don’t rest content with your share. I grant you one devil, and you spawn out a dozen. As there’s hell smouldering for us all, I believe there was truth in the fellow’s story of your double-dealing with him.”

Brander rose to his feet.

“Mr. Bloody Jack Fern,” he said, “I’ll wish you good-bye and a happy release from your difficulties. I waive all claim to a share in the profits of this undertaking as conducted by you.”

“Sit down, man, sit down—by God, sit down! I believe you’ve the right honour, and I apologize. ’Twas a test, and the devil fly away with it! I don’t understand your methods. To me we’re as little advanced as two days back, and I begin to scent failure.”

“Of course. You’ve a crimson standard of measurement in such affairs. A murder or two would set you clucking like a hen.”

“The thaw, man, the thaw. Should it come, as that fribble hinted, before——”

“And where should we be the better then, for staining our hands? I play for our necks, Jack Fern. From the first I’ve founded our claim on the unlawful detention of the stone. But you want the leadership—you want the leadership and that means the credit for all. And you shall have it, by thunder, and set that fat head of yours, with the brains drawn out o’t, against a miry problem you shall sink in for all your frog’s croaking.”

Mr. Fern came slowly to his feet.

“Not empty enough,” he said, in an indrawn voice—“not empty enough, Ebenezer Brander, to misread the little game you’re contriving. Oh, I see through it, my friend! You’ll carry your brains to the enemy’s camp, will you, and——”

He choked with his rage. In a moment he had snapped out his knife and sprung round the table. The other was prepared for him in the same instant. They set at one another bent-headed, like a couple of game-cocks seeking to strike. Here promised an end of the pretty conspiracy; but the devil cares for his own. On the tick of combat the door was thrown open and one of the gang stood gaping in the entrance.

“Curse the fool!” cried Brander. “What does he want?”

The man, half-drunk, stood confused, as if he had interrupted some sacred ceremony.

“The gal,” he mumbled, “she’s a-singin’ psalms in the attic.”

“You——!” shouted the schoolmaster; cracked in his upper register and went into a skirl of laughter. The tension of the cord was eased, and both men fell back.

“Get to your bowl, you horn-bug!” screeched Fern. “What, the fiend! Shan’t she prepare herself for the sacrifice?”

“Oh!” said the man, “I thought subbody might ’ear—thas all.”

“Hear, you rat? Who’s to hear in the middle of Sahara?”

He waved his hand peremptorily. The fellow stumbled out and drew the door to behind him with a clap. Fern slipped his knife into its sheath. He looked at the other scoundrel stealthily, and grinned.

“Cry off, Brander,” he said. “We’re hunting counter. Fill and call a toast, man. My heart warms to the ladies. ’Twere a pity to waste this heat of passion on a friend’s undoing, when an enemy, and a pretty one, offers.”

Brander strode to the table and seized the flask.

“A bottle to that,” he said grimly. “Nothing under a quart reconciles me to a petticoat.”

They sat for an hour—for two hours, swilling fire and wickedness. The night closed upon itself, and the moon was half-across the sky. The frost without crackled in the very heart of the fearful sentry, so that presently he could stand it no more, and tapped on the casement.

“It’s in my roots,” he said, when Brander came to him. “I must be let in or die.”

“I can’t have you in his room, Joe. He’s far too cunning a gentleman to trust you with him.”

“Then give me a drink. A bucket of schnapps wouldn’t drowse me here.”

They handed him out a stiff jorum in a bottle, and closing the window again, resumed their orgy. Another hour passed. Suddenly one beast looked significantly at the other, and both rose. Together they staggered to the door, opened it, and lurched out into the passage. The sentry here came to himself with a start, and stared at them like an owl. They bade him have ears for his only business, and went swaying on to where, by the kitchen, a little stairway led to the floor above. The house was dimly lighted with candles that guttered here and there on brackets. One of these Fern seized in his evil hand, and they ascended softly to a narrow landing. The congested snore of many crapulous ruffians came to them from below; a third sentry nodded at hand on the top step.

“Let him be,” whispered Brander. “He shall be breeched for neglect to-morrow.”

In a little attic, with barred windows, the girl had been confined. Gently they turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and entered.

The room was empty as a rifled grave.

Stupidly staring, they saw by the hearth a heap of rubbish, an overturned flag; and with bursting oaths they rushed for the place, and, swinging the light down, were aware of a jagged rent, torn through the rotted fabric, that looked into the room below.

“His room!” cried Fern, putting his hand to his forehead and staggering back.

The next moment they were out on the landing again. The sitting sentry grunted and cocked a bleared eye at them. With a foul curse, and no condescension of question to him, Brander drove his heavy foot at the man with all his force. The fellow started up with a shriek like a neigh, doubled upon himself, and, toppling, went down the whole flight with a noise of snapping, and collapsed in a writhing and coughing heap at the bottom.

Immediately there was a humming uproar of waking men, in the midst of which the two bounded into the passage and scrambled for the door of the second prison-chamber.

They burst it open. The window was flung wide—the room was empty—a fragment of rope trailed from the fire-place.

“Dolts! dogs! bullock-heads!” cried Brander, pelting, screaming with fury, into the passage again. “Where are they? What have you been doing, hearing, overlooking in your damned folly? Let me pass, you worse than curs and maniacs!”

He was wrenching and tugging frantically at the handle of the entrance-door. In an instant he was out, had staggered, had sprawled with his hands to save himself, and had gone with a sliding run into the snow. He was up directly, and shrieking to those within for a light. Some one brought it flurried, and he seized and held it over some shapeless thing huddled against the porch.

“Drunk?” he muttered. “No, by God!” and he stooped and gave a little pull to the inert mass. A squelch of darkness ran out into the snow, that received and held it like a blotting-paper.

Mr. Corby had been stabbed to the heart.

CHAPTER XLVII.

WHEN upon the poor gentleman, starved and re-fettered, descended once more the sick loneliness of confinement, he assured himself that only a little time now was needed to see the quenching of his last spark of reason. He was so exhausted and unstrung—so doubly weakened by this latest wanton cantrip of Fortune, as to feel that the spirit of venture, fluttering within him on a broken wing, was physically incapable at last of the least independence of action. He looked upon himself as one who, having half raised a fallen treasure from a near-inaccessible ledge, has let it slip out of pure carelessness into the abyss; and so regarding his folly, he was miserably ready, like the born gambler he was, to cry Kismet! over his punishment.

The girl it was concerned him most—prominently for her own sake, but also because he might not guess what her seizure betokened, or what weak defences had made the fact of it possible. About her condition, or her safety in the midst of these lawless ruffians, his brain was too worn to speculate; but at least he could understand that the purpose for which she was held would not be allowed to perish upon itself of inaction.

He was only numbly conscious of the passing hours; the semi-torpor induced by cold and hunger deadened the pain of his scarified wrists, and he sat or lay huddled against the hearth unmoved to the least further effort of self-release. Sometimes, as evening crept on and darkened, he was aware, in a confused manner, of jangling sounds about the house that he dimly associated with the definite business of life—the rattle of pans and of crockery; the purr of rough voices strangely attuned to the pitch eloquent of the domestic virtues; later, a harsher medley of discords—the song, the quarrel, the crash of boisterous mirth, and often enough the thud of blows or shuffle of drunken feet. Intermittently through all, the penance-walk of the sentry in the passage went monotonously on, now dragging sullenly, now moved to some spasmodic briskness as the laugh bubbled high in the kitchen, now accented with a curse like a dog’s snap at a fly. Intermittently, too, came the hum of voices from the room opposite, sinking and swooping and moaning, as if a wind of evil thoughts were there gathering for any purpose of destruction.

And the night deepened, and the cold; and deep sank the expression of both into his tormented soul.

Once he thought he heard a window opened and the sound of voices in parley; and at that the least spark of hope flickered in him that negotiations (of what nature he was too stupefied to so much as remotely conceive) were in process on his behalf. But the murmur ceased and the glass was rattled to, and a profounder misery settled upon him that the little needle of light had showed itself to vanish.

He was abandoned to his fate; and about that he felt no bitterness. Only he greatly desired that the climax of his personal affairs should suffer no long postponement.

It may have been an hour short of midnight when, with his sad eyes fixed upon the moonlit square of window, his lids closed involuntarily and he sank into a sort of unresting stupor of the faculties. How long this travesty of sleep dwelt with him he might not know; but in an instant he had leapt from it and made as if to scramble to his feet. Something, that seemed to his disordered mind horribly suggestive of evil, had come between him and the white patch of the casement.

He tried to cry out, and found no power but for a sigh; and suddenly the shape was beside him, silently, on its knees, and an arm was round his neck and a soft hand upon his mouth.

“Betty, Betty, Betty!” whispered a tiny febrile voice in his ear—and instantly he knew, and, giving a little broken whinny, dropped his tired head upon her shoulder.

She clasped him, and she made no shame to kiss him with her lips like flowers; and then very gently, very pitifully, she passed her fingers over his right ear, over his left, and gave a heaving sigh from the bosom that lifted against his cheek.

“Oh, the cowards, the cowards!” she whispered, “to fright me so, and for a lie!”

He found a little voice for her. He would have, I think, from the grave.

“Are you come to save me, Betty?”

“Yes.”

“My hands are tied behind. They are so cut and bound I have lost all feeling in them; and if I shouldn’t be able to rise, Betty?”

She held his head to her convulsively. She cried silently, as a woman can if she will.

“We must not be a moment,” she whispered. “I hear them talking. We must move like mice. There is a horror outside; but what of it, if it let me pass to you.”

She put her hand again on his mouth, tacitly bidding him to the most tense silence. With her heart torn with pity, she bent and examined the knots. They were cruelly drawn, but love and good white teeth will work sufficient miracles. She had cracked harder nuts in her time. He felt her at work like a rat, vicious and determined. Once he felt lips light like down on the bruised members, and he thought. Though they were mortified and dead they should quicken at that.

All of a sudden his hands were free. He would have endeavoured to rise, but with a quick gesture she kept him down. She came to the front, and swiftly with her strong young arms pulled the boots from his numbed feet.

“Now!” she signified.

He was up in a moment. Broken as he was, the stimulus given his spirit by the devotion of this true soul was divine. Supporting him with all her love, she helped him step by step across the floor. Then for the first time he noticed that the girl was in her stockinged feet, and that the casement stood wide to the freezing night.

Come to the opening, he stooped his face to hers with a very pathetic look.

“Not now,” she whispered. “Not an instant for delay or explanation”—but seeing what he would be at, she put an arm to his neck, and drew his lips hard against hers.

The sill was but a step to an active wench. Betty was outside, scarcely having released his hands; and then she turned and beckoned. At her nod, another appeared at the opening—Dennis, by all the alphabet of wonder! She bade him to keep perfect silence by a word. The good fellow was white as ashes, and as he came up he was fumbling a long blade into his pocket. The moonlight revealed a wide horrified look in his eyes. He was like a saint whom love has defrauded of heaven.

He took his master under the arms, and with a convulsive effort haled him out into the snow. Inevitably a little noise resulted. Betty gave an indrawn gasp; but by all good luck a burst of laughter from within covered the accident.

Tuke stood like a drunken man, swaying and staring vacantly about him. Against the porch he was aware of a misshapen bundle.

“God forgive me, sir,” said Dennis. “’Twas for you I did it.”

The woman was the Roman.

“He died at his post,” she whispered; “and I would have done it blithely myself for this. And Mr. Whimple, he has stood guard at the door and left me only the sweets of service.”

Then she said, “Are you strong now to come?” and, seeing her poor gentleman all weak and bewildered, she held him again pitifully and bade Dennis to his other side; and so they led him, with what swiftness they could compass and creeping like frantic things, out through the lodge-gate and a little way up the foundered road, until they came to that very snowy gap in the brushwood through which the party of wanderers had forced their way three days before. And presently—for the moon made all distinct—they broke and stumbled into the clearing and stood before the ice-house.

“Betty,” then murmured her master—“I must not question; but why not push up the drive, now the coast is clear?—And here we shall only die.”

“Oh! you are wise,” she cried, with a little triumphant laugh—a pretty confection of love and relief and tears. “You are wise and bold, but not a little stupid perhaps. Who shall say that another sentry is not posted between the lodge and the house? And now you are to see.”

She put her shapely foot against the door and pushed it open. She jumped into the jaws of Erebus, and held up her arms to him; and he let himself down into them, trusting, and was taken and rejoiced over.

“Now,” she said, “whatever comes we are safe to win clear, and I will cry a little. But I can cry walking.”

“And will you explain a little, Betty?”

“This is no ice-house; or at least it is only the mouth of an underground passage, that leads straight through into that you call the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”

“Betty!”

“I have heard grandfather (woe is me—the poor old man!) talk o’t many a time. For he worked here when a lad in the service of Sir Thomas Woodruff. And I doubted not your honour knew; though the end in truth was choked with rubbish. But when you returned not, and the rogues came in force and made their purpose clear, we women watched wi’ sore hearts from the shelter of the roof, and we saw Sir David Blythewood and the captain come out on to the snow by the fringe of the shaw no earlier than this morning; and I cried at once, ‘They ha’ taken refuge in the ice-house, and have lain there in ignorance to this moment!’”

“Go on, Betty. Are you sure of the way? Never mind my crowing, girl. I haven’t broken food or tasted drink for three days, and my lungs are like glass paper.”

“Oh me! but I will not cry for a minute. I took Jim, and we found our way to the hole and went down into it; and there sure enough under the ledge was a stone in the wall that turned on a great pin; and this we swung round and saw a black gully shoot before us. Well, we took a candle and entered, and not twenty feet in, the light went out and we had to walk in darkness.”

“Oh, my child, my little Betty! That said ‘Go back!’ as plain as foul gas could speak.”

“Did it? It was close and stifling, of course; but we took hands and won through this very tunnel we are creeping along now; and all of a sudden we came to rubbish and the murmur of voices. At that Jim shouted. They were close at hand and heard us plain; and in ten minutes we had made a hole through the heap big enough to pass through.”

“And foolish they must have looked to hear how they had sat down to die within reach of rescue.”

“Maybe.”

“Did they not, Betty?”

“How should I know? I had no eyes for them. You weren’t there.”

He stopped in the black darkness and put his arms about her.

“Dennis,” he murmured back. “Are you following? Don’t run us down, but listen to this. I love Betty Pollack with all my heart and soul.”

The girl burst into tears.

“Don’t!” she whispered, and clung to him convulsively.

He said softly over his shoulder:

“Take up the tale, Whimple. She saved you?”

“She saved us, sir. We had dwelt there like fools. We had waited anxiously for your return; and at last, when hope was failing us, Sir David set off in your tracks, fought his way to the lodge, and came within view of the truth. He saw the villains all about the place, and had much ado to keep himself secret. But he managed to steal back unobserved; and all that afternoon till dark one or other of us was posted in the wood watching for your return. And so the night shut upon us again, and we tried to comfort ourselves with the assurance that you had had warning, had evaded the enemy, and had made your way round to the house by a circuitous path. Sir, when this good girl saved us, and we came to know you had probably fallen into Fern’s hands, I think there was none in the world more broken-hearted than Dennis Whimple.”

“Good fellow! But who gave you confirmation of the truth?”

“Fern himself, sir—the bloody villain himself. He came before the house at noon to-day, with a flag of truce—that Sir David would respect, though the captain desired to shoot him then and there—and told us that he had you a prisoner. Now Sir David would not let him know that we three was returned, hoping thereby to tempt him and his band to venture themselves to their destruction—as they already deemed the little garrison to be innocent of fighting men—and he sent one of the grooms to parley. And Fern promised this man one of his master’s members for every refusal of the stone he should receive. This, Captain Luvaine regarded as an idle menace; but later, some one looking out of the window saw in a snow-drift against the drive-end a pole posted; and nailed to the top of this was a horrible fragment, and underneath a paper, with ‘Tuke’s right ear’ written bold thereon.”

Betty shuddered in the arms of her dear knight.

“’Twas a beastly act,” he said sternly, “for which, if I live, that bitter scoundrel shall pay in full. And you believed it?”

“Sir David was for sallying forth at once by way of this passage; but he was over-ridden, and it was judged wiser to make the attempt at rescue by night. Then comes Betty, sir, and claims the post of danger for her woman’s wit—and, and——”

“Mr. Whimple must squire me for love of his master. And we prevailed, and here is your honour, and—oh! my love—my only love!”

And Betty gave full vent to her tears at last—though she cried very silently, like a thoughtful girl.

Now, it must not be supposed that throughout this explanation Mr. Tuke’s devoted members were in full vigour of speech and hearing. He asked and listened and answered, indeed, in a manner of tender emotion; but he must lean against the tunnel wall for support of his trembling limbs the while, and his voice was so weak that sometimes it was barely audible.

Suddenly, however, he pulled himself up with a jerk as if a shot had struck him, and, “God in heaven!” he cried—“the girl—Darda!”

A surprised pause followed.

“Sir,” said Dennis, in a trembling voice—“what do you mean?”

“My God! don’t you know where she is?”

“I haven’t seen her since she greeted me on my return. She gave me food and drink and went—to the house-top, I thought. You know her ways, sir.”

“She is in Fern’s hands. They brought her to me in evidence.”

A second pause as of death befell. The girl in his arms held her breath.

“I must go back,” said Dennis, in a lost, low voice—“I must go back.”

Tuke struggled to free himself.

“Come!” he said—“we will go together.”

Betty held him like a mad thing.

“You shall not!” she cried. “Are you crazed? What could you do but weaken Mr. Whimple’s hands? And he would have two to his care instead of one. The girl is right and wily. She’ll have her plans, I warrant.”

Still he struggled feebly in the encircling arms.

“Run, Mr. Whimple!” she cried. “I will hold him that he cannot follow!”

The echo of the man’s footsteps already came from a distance.

“Betty!” panted her master reproachfully. “Oh! what do you make of me?”

“One, I hope, that’ll hold himself sound for all our sakes. For shame! Have you not duties forward?”

He must allow himself to succumb to this sweet sophist. They stumbled on together once more through the dank and inky blackness. Their unshod and frozen feet suffered cruelly on the rough floor, and many little exclamations of pain were forced from either.

“Who was it that was hit by the villains, Betty?”

“’Twas the lord creature.”

“Good God! Then he and Miss Royston are there after all?”

“Aye; they be.”

“And is he killed?”

“Not he; though were he, he couldn’t make more noise about it.”

Tuke laughed feebly—a little bleat that was music to the other.

“Have I said something foolish? But we read of chance folks whose death makes a noise, your honour.”

“My honour again? But I’ll not gainsay you, darling. My honour and yours. Will you be my wife, Betty? And stay here and rest awhile, sweetheart, and we’ll choose the colour of the wedding-gown.”

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A WHITE bed and sleep; food and drink in judicious allowance; salve for his hands and love for his heart; not least, the conviction that he might rest secure of the right conduct of his little garrison—and the returned sufferer, committing himself to the processes of a radiant constitution, found his trust justified in such a rapid convalescence as he had hardly ventured to expect.

He slept off a dozen hours of the clock like one, and woke when it was nearing noon, already more than half restored to himself.

At the first sound of his moving, Sir David came to his bedside, and looked down upon him with a comical air of chagrin.

“Good and satisfactory,” said the baronet; “and now, sir, we need your counsels to rid some innocent people of a very blackguard incubus.”

“Heaven bless them! But one word first—Darda?”

“Trust the jade! She was brought in by her brother not ten minutes after you arrived.”

“Thank God for that! How——?”

“Why, it seems she made a hole in the floor of the attic where she was held, dropped down into the very room you had quitted, and took advantage of the window you had left open. That other’s a rare wench of yours, Tuke.”

“Aye, aye.”

“You turn their heads, sir; and damme if your virtues compare with mine. Why, the mad girl, it appears, gave herself to the rogues on the chance of helping you, and was right savage when she found she had been forestalled. Burn me if I can see so much in you! She would ha’ been on your tracks sooner, but that she must stop to collect a bag-full of her mummies and things; and there she was makin’ for the tunnel as cool as a gipsy, when Whimple sighted her.”

“Well, what is toward this morning?”

“Not a sign. The rascals are well served, believe me, and cuttin’ one another’s throats by now.”

“Two are accounted for already—one by their own devilry, and one by Dennis’s knife.”

“Would you believe it, Tuke—the man’s as haunted as if stickin’ a mongrel were murder.”

“It is to him. He hath saddled himself with a life-long ghost for my sake.”

“Folly, sir, folly. He hath not the right trick of sport. Will you rise and come to counsel? If only I could make to ‘Chatters’ for reinforcements, and take the enemy in the rear?”

“Ah, if we only could! Must I dress by candle-light?”

“Why, ’twould be rash to open the shutters and invite a bullet.”

Half-an-hour later, refreshed and re-invigorated, though still conscious of a swimming weakness, the master of “Delsrop” descended to his dining-hall. On his way he passed a little group of his maids—a bevy of frighted and tear-stained faces that appealed to him humorously and pathetically. He stopped a moment.

“Take heart, my girls,” said he. “We’ll soon be quit of trouble now I’m come to my own again.”

“God bless you, sir! We never thought to see sich doings when we took service here.”

“Why, no more did I. And I swear my service is harder than yours.”

“That red-faced villain, sir. Jane have seen smoke come out of his mouth.”

“Tut! What an unconscionable scoundrel! We must put a snuffer on him.”

He smiled and nodded and went on his way. He suffered some small trepidation thereby over the thought of what he was about to face.

Miss Royston rose with a little stiff laugh as he entered the room. She was trim and dainty for all her poverty of circumstance. He went straight up to her and bowed low.

“What can I offer you,” he said, “but my deep regrets?”

“Indeed, sir,” she answered loftily, “’tis our friend’s trouble that hath worked your misfortune. You are recovered, I hope?”

“I am almost well.”

The Viscount Dunlone, who had been seated over the hearth, and who was in truth the only other present, rose here with a glowering face. His left arm was swathed in linen bandages.

“That being so,” he said, “I will ask you, is it not intolerable I should be brought by your invitation to this monstrous pass?”

“Sure, sir, I deplore the accident, but I must insist ’twas Sir David bid you here.”

“I have been wounded nigh to death, sir——”

“Oh, my lord!” put in Angela sharply, “the flesh was but cut.”

“Madam, permit me my own form of words. I have suffered a cursed mauling, sir, under your roof and in an affair that no whit concerns me.”

“And I am sorry, Lord Dunlone. What more can I say, but that the affair concerns me no more than that it affects my friend’s friend, and that I wish us all well out of it.”

“That isn’t enough for me, curse it! I’m to be flouted and shot at and treated with no more respect than a cursed commoner, and then be given an account of regrets! You’ve returned to your own, sir; and now I’ll look to you to put an end to this cursed business, and to procure me a safe pass out of your accursed wilderness.”

“Lord Dunlone, listen to me. When this business is settled you can call me to what account you please. In the meantime, as I am master here, you will dispose yourself according to my direction and as I think most profitable to our security and welfare.”

He turned from the peer and walked to the fire-place.

“You belittle my lord and his grievance,” said Miss Angela primly; “but no doubt you are within your right, Sir Robert.”

The indignant “drizzler” walked to the door, puffed with fury. On the threshold he twisted about.

“Oh! very well,” he said in a high voice. “You take your course, and I mine when this matter is ended.”

He flung himself out and banged-to the oak behind him. Mr. Tuke looked gravely at his companion.

“So, he hath told you?” he said.

“He revealed it when he was very wild with his wound. You have not treated me well, Sir Robert.”

“I have no claim to the title. My repudiation of it was a condition of this inheritance.”

“And so your chickens came home to roost. Fie, Sir Robert! With what character would you pay your court to an innocent lady?”

“How hath he maligned it? I will vindicate it against a dozen puppies of his kidney.”

“And to the glory of what Dulcinea?”

She looked at him searchingly; with what intention who shall say.

“Am I to read confirmation of the story in this hunting of a gallant by his kitchen wenches?”

“Why not? Slander is the hall-mark on virtue. ’Twas one of these ‘kitchen wenches,’ as I have the tale, was your salvation at the first.”

“Oh! I grant she knows a rogue by his scent. She served the tap to such, I believe; and ’twas right noble of you to bring her to draw the ale to your honour.”

“Madam, is it not shameful to speak thus of one who preserved you all by her wit?”

“Mercy on us! I meant no offence. I love her solicitude in sitting up for the wanderers all night, and closing the shutters on her friends the thieves when she saw them breaking out of the drive. But what was that to her taking the burden of your release on her shoulders? and I trust she hath not found herself conducting a forlorn hope.”

“Her conduct is and has been what any with nobility must applaud.”

“I thank you for including me amongst the elect.”

“My name, madam, should I choose to recover it—as I may—will rank with the oldest and stateliest. I regard it as the meanest bribe to the consideration of one that simple self-respect adorns beyond the favours of kings.”

“Ah, me! We poor worldlings! It is well, I see, to go to school to misfortune, and better to pull mugs of ale to country louts. I can congratulate Lady Linne, at least, upon a very knowing taste in liquors.”

Mr. Tuke stared in amazement. Here, he could have thought, spoke the bitterness and scorn of jealousy. What if, at his last meeting with her, she had thought fit to stultify her previous insolence by a show of condescension to him that for the moment conveyed its calculated charm? He had looked upon this, on reflection, as a mere move in her game of coquetry—a bait to the sulky lord who “drizzled.” He had hardly dreamed that anything personal to himself could weigh in her balance against broad acres and a title; and nothing she had then said had weaned him from his newly-indulged lust of liberty. Now, all at once it came to him that Mr. Tuke transmogrified might boast attractions to a semi-romantic nature that no titled idiotcy could rival; and at the thought a very rigour of fright seized all his limbs, and he spoke out in quite a tremor of hurry:

“I am my lord’s tailor, as you know, madam, and though Mrs. Pollack may not show the best of taste in condescending to me, she hath still done me that honour.”

The advantages, where vanity is to receive a blow, are all on the side of breeding. An irrepressible start and glance of astonishment—and Miss Royston found herself in a moment.

“Indeed?” she said. “And now I protest my wit is at least equal to hers in foresight. But I applaud your determination to settle down in life at whatever price.”

She rippled out a spirited little bravura as she turned to some needlework that lay on the table. The necessity of, at the present crisis, conducting all the comedies of life by candle-light threw a curiously theatrical glamour over the scene.

“I hope for Lady Linne’s sake,” said Miss Royston, as she patted her work approvingly, “that a quick end may be put to this very unpleasant predicament. You will be married, of course, the moment you are a free agent again. Perhaps they have a recreant parson amongst our friends at the lodge. They will take to thieving sometimes, I am told. Is not this a pretty stitch? Can Mrs. Pollack thread a needle? She will have had a sampler, I warrant, in the parlour, with a full pot foaming white wool for remarque. And I vow, sir, you have never yet asked how it was my lord Dunlone came by his hurt.”

“I have not,” said the bewildered baronet. “You said it was but a flesh one, and I confess I attached little importance to it.”

“It was received in your service, sir; or, at least, under your roof. You must not think a fine independence releases you from the bonds of courtesy to those who stoop to favour you. ’Twas a ruffian fired at one of your grooms as the man went to close a shutter, and the ball wounded my lord as he stood behind. Perhaps it was not much; but blue blood is a vintage we hold a little higher than small beer.”

She turned round with quite a radiant smile.

“Would you mind doing something?” she said. “We are really a trifle bored, you know, with this tame inactivity.”

CHAPTER XLIX.

NOW, before Mr. Tuke was called upon to reap the full embarrassment arising from that impulsive confession of his to Miss Royston, events came to so crowd themselves upon the little stage of his history as that he was spared what might have been otherwise a very complicated situation. For, indeed, he had not thought in what matter Betty Pollack, unchaperoned and living, so to speak, under his protection, was to find her due of respect from his servants and of consideration from his guests.

In this latter question, however, when he came to face it, he was to suffer relief of his apprehensions in a treatment that was, nevertheless, a little galling; for, whether from offended dignity, or from any policy of indifference, Miss Royston made no allusion to the subject before others, and, indeed, to all appearance, gave herself no least concern about it. Still, Betty’s honour being his, and his desire great that she should be placed by no private selfishness in a false position, he was determined at the first convenient opportunity to proclaim her his betrothed.

With regard to the present predicament, the morning of his restoration to his friends saw much barren counsel and a dearth of decision. Therefore, dispensing with informal advice, he went to examine his defences and his commissariat. Given his adequate garrison, the former were impregnable to any assault the rogues could venture; and, locked in the coach-house was such store of fallow-deer meat as would provision the company for months. The difficulty of feeding these poor brutes was a matter that bothered him. They may have been a score in number; and, should they once eat him out of hay and corn, there would be nothing for it but to make a battue of them, and salt or smoke as much of their flesh as circumstances would permit. As for the human needs, his larder was for the present well stocked.

For protective purposes he could now number in all—not counting Dunlone and the women—six men and a boy, a fighting strength sufficient to justify him in taking action on his own account, did he care to risk the lives of honest people in so indifferent a business. He did not, of course. What need was there to put a termination to conditions whose favour was all for the besieged? And he was conscious, moreover, of that weakness of his party that lay in a lack of fire-arms. Three fowling-pieces and a brace of duelling pistols—such was his artillery, and a very limited supply of ammunition to the back of it.

But they could afford to lie, and snugly, in these their winter quarters till the snow should melt. When he came to look at the great drifts piled all about the house; when he had made himself acquainted with the excellence of Master Cutwater’s defences; when he compared his position with that of the ruffians in their broken sty, and thought of the improvidence of the typical bravo, and of how there, in the lodge, food and fire would be sure to fail in the course of a day or two—he could only marvel at the audacity of villainy that could ever have dreamed of prevailing in a contest of such unequal forces—of the desperate courage, or the magnificence of a cupidity, that could still wait on in the face of so stubbornly forlorn a hope. Yet surely, were Fern once acquainted of the extent of his opponent’s resources, he would elect to withdraw his troop of cut-throats.

Still, he would not concede anything to a sense of security. He had had his sufficient lesson, and he took his little garrison in hand masterfully. The guns he committed to Sir David, to Jim, and the elder groom, while he and Luvaine took a pistol apiece. A guard was constantly posted upon the roof, and another in the hall, and every man was enjoined to be awake to surprises of whatever description.

Satisfied on all these points, he could condescend to some relapse into the social conditions; and three o’clock saw him ushering his company into the dining-hall, where a meal was served.

The master of the house was the last to enter the room, and he led in by the hand no less a person than his pretty maid of the inn. Miss Royston stared amazed at the sight; but Betty herself—a very Hebe, for all her homely gown—looked ready to burst into tears. For any shame-faced agony she might suffer, her dear lord’s word was become a thing to be answered to like a whistle to a dog; and at his nod she sank into a chair at his right hand and drooped her sweet head, while he stood erect, the light shining on his face.

“I wish to tell you all,” he said, in a clear, bold voice, “that this lady hath included herself in her gift to me of my life, and that we are plighted maid and man.”

Angela fell back in her chair, very white and smiling.

“For what we are about to receive,” she whispered to the Viscount who sat next to her. “Why does the creature take us into his confidence? We will accent the lady’s character on trust, though she dips her fingers into the dish.”

“He’s always so cursed convinced we’re thinking about him,” said the lord.

But Sir David Blythewood was risen to his feet, and faced his Bohemian friend with a wrathful face.

“The times excuse some jesting,” he began.

“I am in dead earnest, Blythewood.”

“Then, so am I, sir; and I’ll beg the favour of a word with you by and by.”

“At your pleasure. And now, having called the grace, we’ll drink the soup.”

At all this Luvaine looked plentifully surprised. He stared from one to the other of the company with his melancholy frown; and of a sudden he was on his feet.

“Since none will congratulate you, sir,” he said, “I will venture the statement that I never read man’s happiness in a purer face. I know nothing but this; and I drink the lady’s fair health with all my heart.”

Here in truth was an unexpected champion. With a radiant smile Tuke turned to one of the gaping servants.

“Fill your future mistress’s glass,” he said; “and kiss the rim, Betty, to your good friend.”

The poor girl shot a timid, grateful glance across the table. Her eyes swam with tears. For her, indeed, the ordeal was the severest. Gifted with a natural grace of refinement, she yet would hardly venture to eat or drink, lest she should offend by some little solecism against taste. She would not question her lord’s insistence that she should come and sit at his table and take her right rank that was to be the mistress of it; but, oh! how she had longed to be spared the trial until he had loved her and coaxed her and disciplined her into a grave knowledge of the proprieties.

And, for himself, he was not long in recognizing how his impulsiveness had again thrown him at the jump. For, to satisfy his own scruples of high-mindedness, he had submitted his sweet maid to insult and his guests to embarrassment; and there the situation stuck, and a very awkward and unappetizing one it was.

The meal passed to a stiff accompaniment of formalities of both speech and behaviour. Angela assumed, perhaps, a superlative manner of deportment, and she laughed extremely, on a high note, at some very stupid things Dunlone said to her. It would have been all dreadfully prosaic and worldly, had not a touch of tragedy been introduced suddenly from a quite unexpected quarter.

The wine had been placed on the table and the servants were withdrawn, when Tuke was aware that the crazed girl had come into the room and was standing motionless behind his chair. He turned sharply round. Darda, her hands clasped at her back, was gazing at him with an intense look.

“What is it?” he said. “Have you news?”

“Oh! yes,” she answered, nodding her head—“bad news—very, very bad.”

He thought he saw an expression in her eyes that was strange to him, though he fancied himself familiar with most of her moods.

“Tell it me,” he said, hastily rising—to the good fortune of one of the company.

“Don’t you know ’twas I tried to save you?” she asked him in a low voice. “But there was something false—the shadow; it was the shadows that were false. Are you going to throw me away for that? How could I help it? I did my best. You were enchanted, and I walked singing into the castle of the giants to save you; and when I came you were flown. Who tempted you away?”

“Go now, Darda,” he said gently. “I will talk to you by and by.”

“I must know first. They said; but my brain burst like glass, and then I could not remember.”

He took a step towards her; but she backed from him, and cried out in a sudden triumphant voice:

“I can tell her!—the white woman who would set her wit against steel. See now if she can!”

In a moment she had snapped her hands to the front—and a bright blade was in one of them—and she was running to where Miss Angela was seated at the table.

Tuke was upon the mad creature’s heels—his hand clutched at her shoulder. The lady, unconscious that she was the destined victim, was only turned about in her chair with a curious face. It all passed in an instant—a very dramatic episode. The vicious arm lunged out—the pursuer struck up—there flashed an arc of light as the blade somersaulted in the shine of the candles, and there broke a shrill scream and a jarring flurry of chair-legs as the company scrambled to its feet. Then were to be seen Darda standing passively in the grasp of her captor, and the victim fallen into a faint against the shoulder of her neighbour, who looked down upon her with a face all quivering with fright and fury.

And: “Curse me!” cried Lord Dunlone; “why doesn’t somebody come and take her? I never was in such a nest of cursed brigands in my life before.”

CHAPTER L.

THE hapless master of “Delsrop” paced his dining-hall in a rare conflict of emotions. The wine gleamed on the table; but none was there to call a toast in it. His hospitality was abused; his company retired; and he was audibly cursing that cantrip of Fortune that had endowed him with a wilderness and a party of lunatics and cut-throats to people it, and had made of it at the same time a perfect purgatory of misunderstanding.

“Now,” he groaned to himself, “if I am not in the mind to call in Jack Fern and his gang to resolve a problem that gets beyond me!”

All had disappeared from the room, and he was alone. He had himself, in a fury of passion, borne away Darda to the stables—whereto there was a covered passage leading from the north wing of the house—and had locked her in amongst the deer, as safe and appropriate to her animal outburst. Angela—more frightened than hurt by the little punctured wound on her fair white shoulder which the knife had made in its fall—had been supported to an upper room by her brother and Dunlone. Betty was fled, he knew not whither, and Luvaine gone to take his turn of guard in the chamber of the “Priest’s Hole,” which now, in the light of late discovery, was considered the nucleus of danger.

Dusk was creeping on when, in the midst of his irritable tramping, he turned to find that Dennis was come into the room.

“By all the devils of cross-purposes,” he said, stopping opposite the man, “I believe we are the only two in the house, Whimple, that understand one another. Tell me, then—what am I to do with the girl?”

“She must go, sir. Her malady increases, and—sir, let me speak plainly. It is aggravated by some wild passion that—that your neighbourhood provokes—some—oh! how can I face you and cry the mad presumption?”

“Yes—she must go.” (He spoke gloomily and thoughtfully.) “If only this eternal business of the stone were done with, and I could enter into peaceful possession of my own again. And sometimes I think that that will never be; that I hold a position only—a test of manliness and endurance, and that ‘Delsrop’ is no more than a redoubt in the battle of life, to fight from the shelter of, and abandon when my next advance is called.”

“In truth, sir, I believe there is a melancholy curse upon the place.”

“We will hold it, nevertheless, Dennis; but, our duty done by it, my heart, I think, wouldn’t die to see it fall. ’Twould be a sombre rookery for a young mother to rear her brood in.”

He set to pacing the room once more, while the other hung his head in some sorrowful emotion.

“Whimple,” he said, as he walked—“you have associations here—sinister enough; but they are a bond of a kind. I have none, and yet your father’s shadow creeps in mine and influences it, I am afraid, to evil.”

“Oh, sir! don’t talk like that. I have so formed my faith on all of that in you which I lack—courage and——”

“Tut, fellow! D’you think I’m to be overcrowed by a ghost? The sick dog must have his moan, Dennis, and I’m scarce recovered yet of those rascals. Look at my hands, you rabbit. Are these fingers or forked radishes to pull a trigger withal?”

“God restore you, master!”

“As He will—as He will.”

He was still tramping.

“But the stone,” he muttered—“the stone, the stone.”

Suddenly he paused before the servant, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“When you took the skull to your mother,” he said, “how did you carry it?”

“Carry it, sir?”

“Carry it, I say? Did you put the grinning atrocity under your arm—under your coat—how?”

“I put it in a bag, sir.”

“What sort of bag, man; and what became of it?”

“Oh! how can I say?—Yes; I know. ’Twas a canvas thing of my sister’s; that I stole and brought home again; and she rated me that I had appropriated it, for ’twas the one in which she conveyed her treasures to the lodge—the very bag, indeed, she found there and used to stuff her relics into before she escaped last night.”

“Where is it?”

“Indeed, I have no notion, sir.”

“What was its colour?”

“It had stripes of pale red, I only remember.”

“Find it, if you can, and bring it to me.”

“Now, sir, now. You think the stone may have escaped into it? It hath been in their hands, sir, down there. It is not possible.”

“Go, at least, and look.”

He resumed his monotonous walk. A desperate impatience to somehow end all this overbearing insolence of circumstance raged in his veins. But Fate must still be nagging at him like a hot wife. He heard the door opened and thought it was Whimple returned. It was Sir David, however, who stepped primly down and came up with a stony face to the poor man.

“Miss Royston is recovered?” said Tuke.

“The shock dwells with her. The wound is superficial. She is seated with Lord Dunlone for distraction of her thoughts.”

“Ah! women will dare bold remedies.”

“Not less than men, sir, when they suffer a midsummer madness.”

“Blythewood, let us, for Heaven’s sake, be quit of mysteries! You want to quarrel, as I understand, and I’m in no mood to baulk you. What is another sting in this general attack of hornets? Only give me the pretext, man—as to which I swear I’m in a wood of bewilderment.”

“I’ll speak plain enough for an adder to hear. Didn’t you ask my favour to your suit with my sister?”

“Certainly you put the question to me.”

“Need I say more? Was this late insult a calculated one? I know nothing of the claims of the lady, or as to how far her services may warrant your condescension; but——”

“You have gained your object. Not another word, man; unless you wish to fight over a handkerchief here and now. The matter can be arranged when our responsibilities to these innocent folks are happily decided.”

The little baronet bowed.

“I regret you have forced me into this position.”

“Oh! my friend—spare yourself! I am bullied beyond any desire of explanation. I can slash and shout in this mêlée of misunderstanding, and I only dread to die because of the good, sweet soul that has fastened her life to mine. Wait; and for the sake of all give me your present services; and I will meet you with cannon, if you like, when the pother is over.”

“Of course—our interest here is one. You have relieved my mind, by cock.”

“Have I? Then attack the bottle and be merry, and I’ll try to make you company.”

“No. I must go back to my sister. You want blood yourself, though. You’re peeked and haggard man; and no doubt late affairs have over-tried you.”

He went out. As the door closed upon him, a savage but irresistible sputter of laughter came from the lips of the other.

“Was ever solicitude more impudent?” he murmured. “To press me to fatten on my own wine for the sacrifice!”

Once more he went to and fro, while dark gathered about him. Not long elapsed before he leapt towards the door with a positive curse to hear it turn on its hinges again.

“Who’s there?” he cried angrily, and strode upon the offender.

He had no blame for it this time. He pulled her down into his arms, and pushed the door to, and fondled and caressed this poor partner of his disgrace. She was all frightened and trembling, it seemed; and she buried herself against him as a young rabbit snuggles into a corner.

“Where have you been this long hour, my Betty?” he said softly.

“I wanted to attend the lady of ‘Chatters’; but she was angry with me and has been saying cruel things.”

“Never mind them, my bird. People of her condition talk from the head; and that so often aches from confinement in close rooms that it makes them disagreeable.”

“It isn’t true what she said—that no foolish grace of yours can make an honest woman of me?”

“It isn’t true, Betty.”

“Why, I know my heart, and that the blame is mine. But you wouldn’t so punish me for a little offence. I would follow you through all the world, and take her gibes right meekly at your bidding. I am the better woman in my faith, and she’d give all her ladyship and her diamonds to know of you what I know.”

“If you are sure, Betty, I must believe—for you never speak an untruth.”

“Why should I, and shame my love? I have nothing but that to make me worthy of you.”

She clung to him and looked up in his eyes, imploring.

“When shall we be free? Oh, ’tis all the same as if you were a plough-boy.”

“Fortune favour us, my dear, and I will marry you in a month.”

She cried a little at that.

“Shall I ever do you credit and repay your goodness? I only want to belong to you and not make people stare or call me a knowing jade that has captured her gentleman. Let me live apart and not come to table again, and I’ll strive and strive to pick up the grand ways and read a book of fashion.”

“What! and cease to be yourself that I love? Girl we will eschew the conventions, and entertain no company but that of kennels and hutches and beehives. I would rather know the nightingales in my wood than fifty birds of paradise in turbans round my table.”

They started apart as a knock came to the door.

Bidden to enter, one of the grooms, pale, eager, and excited, stepped hurriedly down into the room, his gun over his arm.

“Sir,” he said, “a man is come from the snow and is knocking at the door for admittance.”

CHAPTER LI.

“A MAN? What man?” said Tuke.

“George, sir, looking from above, cries that ’tis him with the white hair.”

“Come with me and have your gun in readiness.”

Betty ran forward with clasped hands.

“Oh! don’t go, don’t go!” she whispered.

He smiled down upon her.

“I will parley voo from the passage, my dear; and Will shall point his barrel at the key-hole.”

He strode out of the room and cried in a sharp voice: “Who’s there?”

“John Fern, by your leave, sir.”

The answer sang in muffled by the thick oak.

“Are you tired of life, fellow?”

“I am a humble dependent on your bounty, Mr. Tuke. I come with a flag of truce, trusting to your honour.”

“I have none for vermin. We may shoot such sitting.”

“Be generous, sir. We are trapped. Frost and starvation have worked for you.”

“I am beholden to them. They are good agents of retribution.”

“Will you not be merciful? We surrender at discretion.”

“You are too late in coming to it.”

“For the love of God, sir, take me in and hear me!”

The gentleman hesitated and pondered. Were the man in truth alone, he could not see what ruse might be designed. His tale, too, was probable enough. Baulked in their outrageous plot at the very outset, what likelihood was there that the improvident scoundrels would have calculated against such a contingency as the present one?

“Wait!” he called suddenly, “and I will consider.”

He whispered his man to stand rigidly on guard, and, going softly, ascended the stairs to an upper room that would command view of the porch at an angle. Here cautiously he unbarred and opened the shutters and looked forth. The closing dusk played like smoke on the great snow-heaps that stretched all about the house and to the opening of the drive to his right, where a billowy rampart of whiteness marked the termination of the path cut by the besiegers. Thence, to the front-door, an irregular slur in the frozen carpet betokened the further passage to the house forced by his visitor below, whose broad squat figure he could distinguish set squarely in the shadow of the porch. Elsewhere there was no sign of life or movement. Dead winter reigned in the fields of fallen snow, in the stony sky, in the stark and sapless branches of the trees. The man was alone, as he had stated, and beyond the immediate reach of his comrades.

He descended swiftly to the hall once more. The faithful William stood at cock as he had left him.

“Are you there?” he cried.

“I am here, sir.”

“I will let you in. A twitch of treachery, and you get a bullet in your brain.”

“Mr. Tuke—you can trust me!”

He inside unhitched the fastenings—snapped key and bolts. “Cover him, Will,” he said, and swung open the door.

Mr. Fern walked in with a very humble obeisance. A white down of many days’ growth bristled villainously on his chin. He looked battered and unkempt, but not ill-nourished for a starving man.

The door re-locked and made secure: “Go before into that room,” said Tuke, “and remember that you tread on glass, sir.”

“I make no protest, Mr. Tuke. I assume your action guarantees me a safe-conduct, and that the fact that the muzzle of your servant’s piece actually touches my head argues no base intent on his part.”

“He is fairly efficient with his weapon, sir. I warn you he answers to the prick of discipline. Shoot this man at sight, William, if he attempts to move.”

He had signed to the smooth ruffian to stand with his back against the table.

“Sir,” said Fern, “will you not hear me speak?”

“Before witnesses, fellow. Believe me, I’ve had enough of your sole company to serve me a lifetime.”

He was turning to go, when he was aware of the girl standing, with frightened eyes, in the shadow of the hearth.

“Before God, sweetheart,” he cried, “I commit you to rare company! This is the hound, Betty, that wrought you a cur’s vengeance!”

The visitor pursed his lips and shut his eyes and shook his head in some patient dissent.

“You will not let me plead,” he murmured. “It is safe to slander the dumb.”

“Give me your piece, William, and go summon Sir David and Whimple hither. I will not let him out of my sight.”

The groom obeyed and hurried off. The moment he was vanished Betty came like a tassel-gentle to her master’s call.

“He is an old man,” she said. “He should have had pity for white hairs. Why were you so cruel to my grandfather, sir?”

“Young lady,” said Fern sorrowfully—“whoever it was worked you that wicked wrong—and I confess I have my suspicions—hath unwittingly, it seems, provided it a golden sequel. Like the beautiful phœnix, which you may have read of, you renew yourself in the ashes of your own destruction, and you shall wear fine feathers yet in a triumph over misfortune.”

“Don’t answer him, Betty,” said her master; “and go up-stairs, wench. I’ll not have you breathe in the same room with him.”

The girl went to the door, looked back wistfully, and obeyed, at the moment that the groom, followed by the two he had been dispatched for, entered the dining-hall.

Sir David’s face expressed sufficient astonishment.

“Who the thunder’s this?” said he, stopping blank on the threshold.

“This is the affable Mr. Fern, Blythewood, who comes to surrender himself into our hands. The frost, he says, has demoralized his gang.”

“Do you scent a trick? Have a care, Tuke.”

“Sir David,” quoth the other, mindful of his prisoner’s face, “how is our company disposed?”

“Why, man—here are we four; Captain Luvaine and Jim are on guard; Lord Dunlone is above, and the boy, a sterling lad, keeps watch at the window.”

Mr. Fern slurred an irrepressible start into a change of position.

“Did you speak?” said Mr. Tuke politely.

The man muttered something in the nature of a negative.

“Oh!” said the gentleman—“I thought perhaps you fancied you had put your head into a hornet’s nest. Is that you, Whimple? Were you successful?”

“I cannot find it, sir. The girl must have concealed it.”

The servant spoke in a strange pre-occupied voice. He stood in the shadow of the flung-back door, and from his covert he looked upon the old enemy of his peace with tranced, motionless eyes, and the expression of one who dreamed a nightmare “and woke to find it truth.” Even Mr. Fern showed some embarrassment under the pitiless scrutiny.

“May I speak at last?” he said, uneasily shifting his head, so that his glance fell upon the opening of the door. “I own us bested at every turn, Mr. Tuke—and—here’s for you, by God!”

The room was lighted only by some candles burning in a sconce within his short reach on the table; and by a sudden adroit movement he had thrown these down.

“Here!” he shrieked shrilly, and leapt forward and sideways.

A fiery tooth tore itself through Tuke’s shoulder, while an explosion shook the room. In one wild instant all was uproar and confusion, in the midst of which the groom ran to the hearth and kicked the smouldering logs into a blaze. Light leapt up, and revealed a struggling and swaying block of men down by the door, and in the aperture above a dark figure standing irresolute.

“Where are the others?” gasped Fern. “Shoot, you fool!”

The hoary scoundrel had played his jack to an ace. Seeing the long shadow of his partner creeping forward in the light of the hall, he had assumed him supported by their full force and had struck on the instant. His blow was miscalculated. Brander, it seemed, was alone. The latter stooped forward eagerly, a pistol raised in his hand. His difficulty was to hit the pigeon and not the crow. The flash of indecision cost him dear. Tuke, trailing on his knees, fired full at him, and the fellow doubled and collapsed on the step like a kinked sand-bag.

Fern was under Whimple and Sir David. He struggled like a madman. The taut strength of the old villain was amazing. The groom was hurrying to help, when the baronet, spun aside as if he were a child, crashed against him and both tumbled on the floor in a heap. In the same moment the robber tore his remaining adversary beneath him, scrambled up and squatted on the man’s legs, and, his eyes streaked with passion, clubbed his discharged pistol to brain him. With a desperate effort Dennis jerked up his knees, and shot the fellow face downwards upon himself once more. Fern gave a cry like a lashed dog, and rolled off and over on to his back. The servant had simply held his knife upwards and hurled the other to his own immolation.

The victor, quite maddened and overwrought, rose to his knees, and crying: “For my father that you murdered!” drove his blade over and over again into the quivering body. Then, suddenly, he cast the weapon from him and himself upon the boards, where he buried his face in his hands and fell crying and sobbing.

Now this was all a matter of a few seconds, but the noise had roused the household; and steps were heard hurrying down the stairs—as Sir David and the groom having come to their feet again were all re-making for the combatants—when the climax of the tragedy broke in a clap of fury to which the prelude had been a whisper. For, in some quarter of the house, a sudden shot rang out, and immediately there was a roar like a peal of subterranean thunder, and on its heels a hell of clanging and splintering sounds and the explosion of shattered glass—and the very floor of the room seemed to yawn and belch forth flame and cloud, as if a crater were formed beneath the foundations of the building.

Half-blinded and half-stunned, Tuke staggered to his feet and stood reeling. A monstrous silence succeeded the uproar, accented only—as a spout of black smoke rose to the ceiling and blossomed out there into a great fungus of death—with falling and tinkling sounds as of glass and dropping plaster. Then, close at hand, he heard voices crying to him, and he tottered towards them.

CHAPTER LII.

CAPTAIN LUVAINE—misanthrope, ascetic, wiry as a ferret and disciplined on a drum-head—had fallen asleep at his post. No doubt the exhaustion induced by cold, hunger, and the emotion to which he had lately been subjected, was responsible for this lapse into a condition quite humanly natural. It was unfortunate for all, however, and very particularly for the unfortunate gentleman himself, that it should have occurred in the place and at the moment most fatal to the cause he had to serve.

For half-an-hour—his pistol cuddled in his left arm as if it were a wakeful baby—he measured his monotonous tramp in the little circumscribed chamber where was situated the “Priest’s Hole.” Upon a bracket on the wall a single candle burned, its flames shrugging peevishly in the cold draught that came through the high grating in the masonry. The trap of the vault was thrown open, the woodwork lying flat upon the floor; but the stone below was swung to upon its pivot, and at every recurring wheel in his march, he glanced down to see that this stone held its place, and that no stealthy pressure was applying to it from the tunnel-side. For, an extreme probability that the rogues would follow in the tracks of their escaped victim (no fresh snow having fallen to obliterate them) as far as the ice-house in the clearing, and would so learn of the existence of the underground passage, had led all engaged in the defence of the house to accept this quarter of it as the one most open to attack, and therefore to be more jealously watched than any other.

Often the soldier would bend and listen acutely for any least murmur of voices or rustle of secret footstep whispering into the blank deadliness of the pit beneath him. He heard nothing; was conscious of no sound he could set apart from the distant noises of the house as suspicious and unaccountable. Yet the voices were there and the footsteps; but muffled so completely by the thick stone as to be inaudible to the solitary man above.

Presently he found something irresistibly attractive in the swaying flame of the candle on the wall. It was an aspen leaf blown by the wind. A certain fever in his blood seemed to temper the cutting draught to the caress of a summer zephyr. He was on a breezy common he had known in childhood, eagerly hunting over a familiar poplar tree for the moth (he remembered all at once, it went by the name of the “Sycamore”) that lay cunningly hid by day in the furrows of the bark, from which in colour it might scarcely be distinguished. He put out his hand with a smile, staggered on the brink of the pit, recovered himself and resumed his tramp with a curse at his own folly. But by and by the flame fixed his attention once more. Tibbie! Who was she, and why should he associate her with the jumping light? He remembered all at once. It was the queer name of a little Scotch girl he had worshipped as a boy. She had had hair golden as barley straw, and he had begged a curl and had put it in his Bible, where it was always connected in his mind with the tongues of flame. Good God! how long ago was that? And would Tibbie give him a curl now, if she knew? Quite suddenly his eyes were thick with tears. He pressed his hand to them fiercely, and went up and down again—up and down. What strange caprice of memory was renewing for him these shining ghosts of his past? The new emotion, with a touch of ancient sorrow in it, sang in his brain like restful music. Standing, he leaned against the wall, shut his eyes—and immediately, with a throb and swerve of ecstasy, he was asleep.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Mr. Fern had set his snare with fine tact. In his desperation (for he had, indeed, come to that condition) he was resolved to win or lose all by a single coup de main. His statement of his case—so far as it went—was unexaggerated. His rascal improvidence had provided against no contingencies. His gang was mutinous from cold and hunger—most of all from the failure of liquor-supply through the impossibility of communicating with Mr. Breeds of the “Dog and Duck.” Baulked by the unexpected return of the master of “Delsrop”; baulked in his design to “rush” the house at the very outset of his daring swoop upon the estate; out-manœuvred in his attempt to make capital of the hostages that a fickle rogue’s Providence had flung into his arms, he must exercise all his diplomacy of scoundrelism to quiet the rebellion that had broken out in his own ranks. The discovery of the escape of the prisoners was the critical moment of his authority; and it was only when pursuit led to the revelation of the subterranean passage, that he found a new argument to the favour of his fellows, and to the postponement of the sacrifice of his life to their fury.

Very noiselessly, he had in person explored the tunnel, and satisfied himself that a guard was stationed at its outlet. The trap also (so it happened at the time) was closed and bolted; and it was evident that this must be forced, at the crucial moment, by means instant and effectual. Now, though he was ignorant of the real numerical strength of the garrison, he could not doubt that so obviously weak a position would be strenuously cared for by the enemy. A single man, indeed, properly posted and armed, might account for his entire gang, one by one, as it issued into the pit through the narrow aperture (the secret of whose revolving stone he had, with superior craft, easily unravelled); and a mere struggle to force this point was therefore out of the question. He would conceive a subtler plan. He would himself venture into the stronghold and would engage its defenders in talk, while Brander and the rest made their silent way under the house to the vault-opening. Here a bag of powder was to be fastened under the trap and fired by a train run up a stick. The sentry would be either killed or disabled by the explosion—the way burst clear for the uprush of his fellows; and, in the terror and confusion that should ensue, he would take the enemy in the rear and complete its demoralization.

A very pretty plan, and a bold—but, alas! we know what “gang aft agley.” A very significant accident was to frustrate it—a characteristic piece of recklessness to hoist him and his with their own petard. For as to the latter, it would not satisfy the rogues but that they must bring all their store of powder in a barrel along with them, as they looked to quarter themselves snugly in fine linen for the night, and their ammunition as a precaution must not be left behind; and, as to the former, lo! when Brander cautiously shifted the stone and looked out, there was light shining into the pit and the trap flung open.

Here was a heavy to-do—nothing to blow up and the guard above probably on the alert!

The rascal motioned his crew to intense silence, and dared to creep a step forward into the vault. The two that were carrying the powder slung between them, softly lowered the barrel a little back from the entrance, and all stood waiting.

Brander cocked his flapless ears. Dead quiet reigned above and about him. He dreaded he knew not what ambush, and the suspense was intolerable. Desperately he took his courage in hand and climbed out of the pit. In the dim and gusty light he thought the place deserted; for Luvaine leaned asleep in a dark angle of the wall and was not readily distinguishable to a rapid survey.

He was on the point of summoning his men to the surface, when something in white, that flitted by the doorway and paused and looked in, caught his eye. He gasped, hesitated, and followed in pursuit. Was it a snare. There was a pregnant silence about the place that peopled every corner with watchful eyes. He felt the sweat under his clothes and a fright of superstition in his heart.

As he came softly out of the chamber the phantom-shape was speeding before him. Suddenly it turned, nodded to him, put a finger to its lips, and again sped on. His hand closed rigidly on his pistol-butt; his teeth clipped an oath of fury. He had recognized her—the mad girl that had evaded his clutches. She had escaped from the stable, it seemed, and was mounting to her eyrie. She went lightly up the stairs, and for an instant a great longing seized him to follow and kill her. Then, all in a moment the danger of his position rushed upon him. In the act of turning to retreat, however, he became conscious of the sound of voices issuing from a room down the passage at the further end of which he was standing—voices, and amongst them that of his leader. Immediately he was impelled to creep thither, inform himself of the state of affairs, and make his plans accordingly. A pistol-shot from an unexpected quarter through the brain of the master of the house, and the situation might resolve itself without any larger appeal to violence. He stole forward, and went to his fate.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Luvaine came to himself with a shock. Something had rung out, and there was a distant flurry of shouting in his ears. He started forward, amazed at his own abuse of the trust committed to him. With eyes yet clouded with the fumes of sleep, he looked down into the vault. One of the irresolute company a little bolder than his fellows to solve the reason of the inaction that had befallen, and of the noise that suddenly swooped down upon them, was crept out into the pit; but seeing the face staring down he re-dived for his burrow like a rat. It was his jump that sprung the mine. The soldier, his aim like a drunken man’s, snapped up his muzzle and fired at the retreating figure. There followed a monstrous burst of flame—a booming crash—and he was blown against the wall like a leaf, and his spine broken. Shrieking in his agony he fell, tearing with his nails at the boards of the floor; then a merciful oblivion came to him, and the convulsion of his limbs relaxed in whatever position they had assumed, and he lay sprawled and breathing out his life.

His ball had pierced the powder-barrel, and the fate of the wretches crowded in the tunnel was a thing to recognize and forget—if one could.

CHAPTER LIII.

DURING a period of supreme trial Sir David showed himself a man of courage and resource. The appalling thunder of the explosion, the vision of the fiery upheaval of the floor were still in his ears and eyes, when he leapt to the immediate necessity of action and of his taking the situation by the throat. Tuke was disabled—his servant half-insane with hysteria. Somebody must rally the household, and quickly; for, though the dense pall of smoke that choked the room, fitful fires were winking and blossoming; and it was evident that the place was alight in more than one quarter. It was no time to marvel or speculate over the nature of the wild catastrophe that had occurred. His interest at the outset was to secure the escape of every inmate of the house; and he plunged into the hall with a shrieking summons to man and maid to make for the passage. Into this, heavy clouds of gaseous vapour were rolling from its further end; their direction seeming to point to the locality of the explosion. He ran to the front-door, tore open the fastenings, and flung a way into the freezing cold of the outer night. Then he rushed back and, repeating his summons, made for the stair-foot. Here he met them coming down pell-mell—choking, sobbing, feeling their way in mad terror—men, women, and the one boy.

What was it? What had happened?

His sister flung herself into his arms, imploring to be saved; Dunlone, quaking and white as a turnip, shook out curses of impotent frenzy; the maids cried and gabbled volubly, and even the boy was moved to some shrill expression of inquiry as to the cause of so stupendous a bang.

The little baronet silenced and marshalled them all. He led them—preceded by one loving soul—shivering and shrieking down the passage—into the open air; and there against a snow-drift he left them, and fled back to his duty.

Not an individual, thank God!—save those already accounted for—was injured. He came upon the master, faint and stumbling, in the hall. On one side the faithful groom supported him; on the other a poor girl received his weight. She, this pathetic maid, looked dumbly at the rescuer, wistful as a shorn lamb.

“What can you do to this?” her eyes said. They might have yearned as those of her, the mother of the cripple that was brought to Jesus.

“Help him outside,” he said, with compassion in his voice. He did not know that here his quarrel with his friend was pitifully resolved.

Through the now ruddy fog he went down into the room of death. Brander, lying in his agony at the step-foot, cried to him to save him from a horrible fate.

“The worthy first,” he said sternly, and could have found it in his heart to pity the poor wretch for the despairing moan he vented. But it was Whimple he hunted for and shrieked to; and whose prostrate form he at length stumbled upon.

“What are you doing here?” he yelled. “Do you want to be grilled like a herring?”

“Let me burn and cleanse my hands,” the poor fool cried up. “No water will wash them.”

“You madman! You struck for your life and revenged your master!”

“My God! Is he dead?”

The man got to his feet in the terror of the thought.

“Is he dead?” he whispered awfully, his ghastly face pressed forward.

“No—but he’s hurt—he’s hurt. And there’s another to pull from the fire—Luvaine, that my mind misgives me lies at the source of this trouble. You’ll come, man, and help me with him, if he’s alive?”

“Yes, yes—life! Oh! show me where I can do something to save it!”

He stumbled blindly after the other, and he gave out a heavy groan as he passed by the inanimate bundle on the floor. Bloody Jack Fern showed his right title to the adjective; but it was obvious he was gone beyond considerations of rescue.

The draught drawn into the burning house had for the moment a little thinned the smoke in the passage. They took advantage of the respite, and plunged for the rearward chamber, where they assumed the victim must lie. The misty lightnings flashed from the blazing room were their only lamps of guidance; for the crash had extinguished or overturned every taper in the lower part of the building, and a reeling darkness added to the horror of the situation.

Fortunately Dennis was familiar with every stone of the old grange; and he led Sir David, who clung to his coat-skirt, with an unerring instinct. But at the very entrance of the vault they stumbled over some débris, and recovering themselves and moving forward again, down they clumped upon a flap of shattered wood-work, and near rolled into a black yawning mouth that breathed a sick vapour at them.

Blythewood raised himself cautiously on his hands.

“Luvaine!” he yelled. “Where are you, man? Luvaine! Luvaine!”

No sound of answer came back to them; but, listening intently, they were in a moment aware of a little breathing moan against the wall in their neighbourhood.

“He’s there, by the Lord!” said Sir David, in a suppressed voice.

When, come again with difficulty to their feet, they followed the whispered clue to the poor broken creature and tried to shift him, he pattered out such a delirium of torment that they must refrain from the effort to bear him out in their arms. But they made a sling of Whimple’s coat, and getting him into this as best they could, they took it between them, and treading with infinite care, accomplished their escape from that veritable trap of death. Returning to the passage, they found this to be filled anew with driving volumes of vapour, and a great increase of roaring and flaming sounds to proceed from the dining-hall; but they passed the danger at a scamper, looking thereinto as they fled by at a rising sea of fire that leapt up the walls in pointing waves, and fell and spread abroad and leapt again. And from the threshold step, over which in his terror he had managed to struggle his half-paralyzed arms, Brander screamed to them and prayed to their mercy with knotted hands.

And at the last they saved the scoundrel, when the heat smote upon their faces like scourges of nettle and the smoke plugged their throats; and they laid him down in the snow a little apart from the rest, and paused at length and wiped their sooty brows and breathed in the frost as if it were perfumed sunlight.

Now were all accounted for; but the bitter night must take much that the fire had spared unless they could win to some cover. They stood there, under a fat drift piled against a tree on the lawn—to the shelter of which men and women had forced and beaten a passage—they stood, a poor, homeless group, with their wounded laid on coats amongst them, and watched the processes of a new enemy they were powerless to control. And, as the fury of flame leapt from window to window, crossed by luminous shadows, as though fiends were ransacking the building for the little household treasures that are dear to sentiment, cries and exclamations of pity rose involuntarily from the lips of all, and some of the women wept and called upon the men for the love of God to return and rescue—what they did not know; but in truth it was the children of their imagination.

But suddenly a more real questioning terror was passing amongst them. The girl—Darda—where was she?

“In the stable,” murmured Tuke from the ground. His head was pillowed upon Betty’s shoulder. But for very shame the girl would have stripped off her skirt to wrap it about his frozen feet. They were risen above the petty conventions of behaviour, these two. In the shadow of pain, of death, they had failed of touch with the particular proprieties, and they clung together like sworn lovers and defied the world. And, at least for the moment, their attachment was respected of all, for the most paltry natures find life in its tragedies a little unadaptive to their rules of social conduct.

Now, at the word of horror, Dennis started forward with a cry of agony. His sister—his poor mindless charge! That he should have been so lapped in his own selfish misery as to forget her! He had thought, in his stunned mind, that she had been amongst the women. How could she be, when he had himself witnessed her removal to the stables?

He struggled off across the snow, followed by the tireless William. Angela, placed and supported between her brother and Dunlone, shrieked faintly after him. The girl must be held in durance—somewhere, in a place of safety. She should die were she brought again into her neighbourhood! Blythewood soothed her distress. She should be well protected, he swore. The lord, coming somewhat to himself, and perhaps relieved to be escaped under whatever conditions from that abode of brigands, cursed the lady under his breath for a little pretty whimpering,—and was half moved to slide his arm about her waist. He withheld that condescension, however, for the present.

The two men were seen to reach the stables—to force, after some strenuous effort, the door of the coach-house. From the gap made by them the terrified deer broke forth and scattered in all directions. Some sprang into drifts and were lost; some huddled against the wall, afraid to venture further; one or two came stumbling and leaping in the foot-tracks, and ran up, bleating very humanly for protection to those superior animals who could not find it for themselves.

And now ensued a period of intense anxiety and emotion; for minutes passed and the rescuers did not reappear. And, with incredible speed, rushing like a blood-wanton dog amongst a flock of sheep, the fire seized room after room and worried it, and raced on roaring until the whole building was involved. And young shoots of flame sprouted from the roof and grew and flourished in a moment like burning aloes, and the heat waxed intense.

From the first, indeed, no least hope of checking the conflagration had suggested itself. The old dry interior of the building caught as if all its solidity were so much illusion of lath and canvas; and the water-supply was frozen to a minimum.

Quite suddenly the little group made one mouth of a low moan of horror. Upon the north parapet of the roof a figure had come out—that of the missing girl. She stood beside a chimney-stack, whither the flames had not yet reached, and in the shaking glare she was as visible to all as though it were sunlight. She carried, it seemed, a bag of some sort in her hand, and she made no gesture of fear; but, in an instant, as a fountain of fire rose behind her, scattering sprays of sparks, she was dancing and kissing her hand to her own shadow on the chimney-stack.

Then they saw that the two men were come out of the stable and were standing beneath, calling frantically up to the mad creature; and she bent and looked down upon them, while sobs and cries broke from the watching women and the men breathed hard.

Her brother, it was evident, was beseeching her to throw herself, as her one chance, into a thick drift that lay beneath; and she could be seen to nod to him and to point exultantly to the bag on her arm. But in the act it slipped from her grasp and fell, and at once she fled after it, plunging from the parapet like a swimmer. Into the snow she went, as if it were foam, and flakes of the frozen crust of the drift span up and were flung against the wall. And the pent burden of the spectators found its shrill vent once more, and was lowered to sighs of pity as the two were seen coming across the snow with a limp shape looped between them.

She had dived, and over the brink of Cocytus. She had gone to the shades that were ever her kinsfolk. When they looked at her they saw a smile on her mouth; but her hair hung slack, as if the flame of her soul was withdrawn from it. She was reasonable at last; and to make her so just this had been needed—to snap her slender neck like a lily-stalk.

* * * * * * * * * * *

When, by midnight, the great fire was died down to a cinderous glow, gasping and winking amongst walls of slag, the sad onlookers were moved pathetically to see the purple vault above them all embroidered with stars; the clerestory of the trees hung with them; the white pavement ghostly in their radiance. The candles of the vast cathedral, whose tapering walls are the cone of the earth’s own shadow, were lit, and the voiceless anthems of peace rose in the dreaming sighs of half the world.

The flames, checked by the stone passage, and rising straight and clear in a windless night, had spared the stables; and thither at the last they all bent their footsteps, bearing the dead and the wounded with them.

My lord, my lady; Tom and Dick and Moll—there they were fain to camp amongst the muck and litter left by the fallow-deer; and the frost pinched them sadly, and hunger even, and for the sick thirst; and never did reluctant day so dawdle in the East.

CHAPTER LIV.

FROM a deadening of all his faculties, of all his perceptives, to stupor; from stupor to a delirium of weariness, in which so little as a ring on his finger was a conscious burden; from weariness to fever and a recrudescence of those mental and bodily pains he strove so frenziedly to forget; from this state at last to the yielding stage of exhaustion, and Tuke, the man not so much hurt as overwrought, fell into a profound slumber and got his restoration of it.

For long, before this came, he was aware only of a close darkness—a darkness that seemed a cabined horror of himself, were it not assured and comforted by a presence that, in supreme moments of torture, he grew to know he could depend upon for pitiful help and a silent passion of sympathy. This presence, swift and invisible, was always at hand when he most needed it—soothing, murmuring; taking upon itself the responsibility of questions he could not answer; brushing away with snowflakes the stinging wasps that settled on his shoulder. It was so prompt, so gentle, so full of resource, that he came to think that if he could only put to it the supreme problem that vexed him beyond endurance, it would resolve it at once with a quiet laugh, and so secure him everlasting peace. But, whenever he came to the point of explanation, he found that the problem itself had eluded him, and he could not remember what road it was that his tired brain had gone astray on. At length, ceasing to struggle, he floated inanimate on the tide against which he had fought to make head, and was borne by it into a haven of rest.

He woke to find himself lying on the ground in a queer little chilly chamber, into which a weak light filtered through a cobwebbed window. Looking up, in some pleasure of languor, he was interested in certain straps and buckles that hung from wooden brackets, and a couple of odd bonnet-shaped things that stuck out from the wall. Lazily he amused himself by associating these with twenty different uses, until—reason passing from the fields of romance into the high-road—he came in a moment to the knowledge that he was lying in his own harness-room, and to memory of all that had brought him there.

In the shock of revelation he struggled to a sitting posture and uttered a startled little pipe. It was no great sound, but it was enough to bring a certain bird to its wounded mate.

She came in, shut the door behind her, and, hurrying to him, knelt down and threw her arms round his neck, and cried joyful tears. Her pretty plumes were ruffled, her eyes clouded with the weariness of long watching; but she was ten times woman for her blouzed appearance, and he would not have had her one draggled wisp of hair the neater.

“Why, Betty, I am well—and what a fainting miss to succumb to a scratch!”

“Indeed it is an angry wound, and you were worn and sick.”

“We are houseless, my girl—nothing but the cold fields to nest in. You have your arms about a man of snow, and he melts in their warmth.”

“Ah, me! You plucked me from the fire but to burn yourself. You are a man of passion rather, and you overbear your foolish maid. And are you ruined, dear? I would be joyful to know it that I might work for you and die for you.”

He laughed a little.

“Why,” said he, “the house is gone, to be sure, and all my trouble with it, I hope. And I have that of the vagabond in me that I think I feel the freer for the loss of so responsible a property. But I have enough for us yet, maybe, to make out life withal; and we will e’en look about us, Betty, for Mr. Rogers’s cot by a ‘willowy brook.’”

“And will the gentleman let it to us?”

“That he will, I swear. For I have met him at ‘Whitelaw’s,’ with his dry face sunk in a green tabinet kerchief of the nicest mode, that meant more to him, I’ll warrant, than all the green pastorals he ever invented. But have I slept the night through, my wench; and is our hearth cold that was to have leapt to my wife’s home-coming? It was piled too high, Betty, and I have given you a roasting welcome. And what are we to do now, or how escape from these beggarly quarters?”

“Why, for shame, are you fit to move? But Sir David Blythewood is abroad already with the men, to see if they cannot fashion a raft, or sled is it called, of planks to draw over the freezing snow and carry us all to his own great house.”

“He is an admirable creature. There—give me your soft shoulder, girl, and I will talk with my eyes shut, for my brain spins like a top. Where are the rest? And pray God all are sound!”

“Ah! You don’t remember—the poor captain!”

“Luvaine? Is he hurt?”

“He cannot live—not many hours more. Sir David and I have watched with him all night. He has suffered, but he is at peace now, for he is dead, poor soul, below the waist. ’Twas in shooting at the wicked men that tracked us through the tunnel that he made the explosion, for Mr. Brander says they would bring powder along with them in a barrel, and——”

“Brander? Is the rogue spared, then, when an honest soldier falls?”

“He is sore wounded, but he will recover, perhaps.”

“An idle rally that shall earn him the gallows. And so they came by the hole after all, and were caught in their own springe? He hath a soldier’s death; and tell me that is all, Betty.”

“Ah! no—the girl.”

“I remember—I remember that. She sprang from the roof.”

“Yes.”

“And she is dead? A pitiful account for a dump of red crystal. How much blood yet will it absorb before its lust is quenched? My heart cries for the unhappy child. But something comes to me, Betty, that I think I have struggled for through a fever of hours. You must go——”

“No, no! Oh, don’t bid me away from you!”

“Tush, you simple! ’Tis but a yard or two, and to ask of Dennis the bag the poor natural threw down, for I heard the women cry it.”

“I will ask him. He is with the captain yonder.”

“Why, it loathes me; but I have a shadowy idea, and I must act the part of an honest man, though it were to give the stone a new lease of devilry. And Dennis is there, you say?”

“In the coach-house, where the sad captain lies, and Mr. Brander over against him by the further wall.”

“And where are the rest?”

“The maids and Miss Royston are in the loft. She sleeps on the straw, the pretty tired lady, like a flower that has fallen with the cut corn. And the lord, for he would not have nay, has a stall below to himself.”

“He is fitly housed; and have you filled him the manger with dead thistles? Go, Betty, go—for I shall never be at peace till this about the bag is resolved.”

When he was alone once more, he sank back and yielded himself to bewildering dreaming. Here, it seemed, the second phase of his life ended and the third was to begin. What should be its nature? He could not, nor would he, contemplate the possibility of a self-resurrection to conditions similar to those he had left behind. Indeed, he had no doubt whatever that his circumstances were totally inadequate to a rebuilding of his ruined property, and what would a houseless estate be worth to him or to any one else? But, apart from that question, he felt himself quit of all desire to re-accommodate his innate wildness to the humdrum existence of a country squire. Rather a hundred times would he settle with his dear mate in some remote pasture by woods and waters, and dig his own potatoes and bake his own loaves for the little mouths that should nibble at them by and by. To reverse a familiar image, he had been a butterfly, he had been a grub; and now he would fain be a caterpillar, feeding on the green leaf, and taking the sun and the rain as his animal prerogatives. Then he found himself with an ardent longing to repudiate for once and for all his father’s scornful bequest; to heal him of his wound, and shake the dust of “Delsrop” from his feet, and, holding his love’s hand, to set his face to the wind and to the hills, and walk on and away. But how, then, could he rent his cot, or how feather it for those prospective nestlings? It all worried and confused his weakened brain. He would put it to Betty—Betty, upon whose sympathy he was learning to depend as something very sweet and personal to himself.

He opened his eyes to find her standing beside him, that very pink and white bag that had caught his attention at the lodge, swung in her hand.

“He brought it in last night,” she said, “and here it is untouched. He asked me very humbly when he might see you, for he is lost and broken, though he does his duty like a man.”

“With such a constitution, to act as he hath acted is to outman us all. Good Lord! is the thing stuffed fit to burst with the poor creature’s curiosities? Whatever her mishaps, she must save those, it seems. Empty them out, Betty, on the floor—here, pellmell, beside me; and I will test the value of my surmise. Bah! frogs and sloughed skins and bones! A loathsome collection; and she was like a flaming Dryad of the woods. Here is a rat’s skull, and here——”

He paused, gave out a hard breath, and suddenly struggled to get to his feet. The girl flew to him.

“What are you at?” she cried. “Oh! you will hurt yourself.”

His face was pale and bore a startled look.

“Help me up!” he muttered. “Nay, wench, I must—I must! ’Tis here, the villainous thing, in my hand!”

He held open his palm. A chalky lump was in it—a worthless-looking fragment.

“What is that but rubbish?” she said.

“Rubbish? Why, so it is, Betty, but ’tis the rubbish fools strangle one another to possess. I must go to him, the dying man. I was right. It has lain there thrown away while we were cutting throats. He must see it and know it before he passes. Good God! Betty, Betty, I must go to him, I say!”

He was so wild and impatient in his efforts to rise that she bent all trembling to help him, as the wiser policy.

“And will you be sick again,” she said, “and break my heart?”

“I should be sick to remain. There—I am up and steady. Give me your fine, firm arm, Betty, and lead me to his bed.”

Very slowly and shakily he made his way to the coach-house; but, when he was come there, he stood erect, almost without support, and took in the melancholy scene. Dennis, white and haggard, started up from a stool on which he was seated beside a rough pallet stretched on the ground; but his master put a finger to his lips, and motioned him to silence. Then he went and sat himself down on the vacant seat and looked upon the stricken man.

“Luvaine!” he said, softly.

The dying soldier stirred and gave out a little moan. His face was so scorched and disfigured with gunpowder as to be hardly recognizable, and all the upper part of his body was swollen to grotesque proportions; but the coat that had been drawn over his paralyzed lower limbs lay as flat as though nothing but its natural folds raised it from the floor.

“Luvaine,” said Tuke again, “can you hear me?”

As he spoke the door was opened, and Sir David entered. He looked a fagged and worn little man, but a light of bantam heroism glinted in his eyes.

“Tuke!” he exclaimed in astonishment.

“I have slept, Blythewood, and have found a little of myself again. There is something more I have found—hush, man! the stone.”

“Great God!”

He closed the door and came forward, gasping.

“The stone!” he said, in a hoarse whisper.

Tuke nodded.

“Hush!” he murmured again. “He hears, I think.”

Betty knelt pitifully beside the sufferer. Her breath was like balm on his poor battered face. His eyes turned to her with a pathetic gratitude that was moving in the extreme. They heard him murmuring to her, thickly and brokenly.

“She hath been an angel to his torments,” whispered Sir David. “All the long night she hath never ceased to care for him, and he follows her with his eyes till the tears of both make a veil between. She can read his least desire, as——”

Betty turned her head and looked up.

“He is speaking. He wants you to listen.”

Both men stooped to catch the muttered words.

“It is found. I knew before you spoke. I knew its discovery at the last would find me here—here, on the ground. The curse of the predestined is unfulfilment. Let me look at the wicked talisman that is soaked in the blood of martyrs. Let me look, I say.”

Tuke leaned over and placed the infernal pebble, splotched and overlaid as he had recovered it, in the groping hand. The fingers closed convulsively on it. The eyes of the dying were fixed questioning.

“You would have me say how it came to light?”

He—all the watchers, looked round with a start. Against the further wall a deathly shape was risen upon its elbow—Brander, gasping and shaking and holding his hand to his wounded chest. He nodded frantically, as if he would say, “Go on!”

“It had fallen out, to the bottom of the bag in which the skull was placed for removal. This bag the girl Darda had used, it seems, for transporting her relics to the lodge. The rogues found it there and collected fire-wood in it. Darda, when she escaped, must have pulled out the sticks, returned her treasures to the bag, and brought all home with her. Still those possessions in her poor life that represented most to her, she must carry them with her when she leapt from the parapet; and to me this moment the bag was brought packed as she had left it. Through all this lust of violence and misery the stone hath remained unguessed at where it dropped from the socket of the skull; and, while the scoundrels yonder were gnashing and whetting their teeth, there it lay in their midst, within reach of all, and not a man might buy himself with the knowledge an hour’s surcease of the hell to which he was condemned.”

He turned—he could not help it—with an air of irrepressible triumph to the wounded wretch away from him. A fierce mockery of the creature’s impotent malice was on his lips, but nobility prevailed and he forbore to express it. For a moment Brander stared at him as if he would have bartered his last chance of life for a loaded pistol in his hand; then, with a rending groan, he went flat upon his straw pillow and turned his face to the wall.

A silence of some minutes succeeded, while the dying man twisted the shapeless lump feebly in his fingers. Then, all at once he was speaking again, and his voice gathered strength over the painful syllables.

“Kithless and alone; pre-doomed to a curse, and conquered by it at the last. What chance has ever been mine—what hope to escape the ambush laid for me? The love of woman——”

He slewed his head about, with its melancholy burning eyes, and his gaze dwelt upon the girl beside him.

“The love of woman,” he moaned faintly, “what might it have made of me? I was debarred from that and all by a foul inheritance. The sins of the fathers—the sins of the fathers!”

Again a silence fell; but, of a sudden, with a convulsive effort, he had forced himself up sitting, and, leaned upon one hand, was devouring the stone with a great hunger of vision.

“A life of torment for a minute of ecstasy!” he cried in a strong voice; “and who shall accept the heritage now to his undoing? Is there any fool in the world invites the curse?”

“Luvaine,” said Sir David, gently, “let me take the vile thing and hurl it into the sea.”

The dying man looked at him with a strange stare.

“Because it has been the sport of devils, shall we discard its infinite possibilities of good? It is the means—the means, if somewhere we can find the instrument.”

Betty, with her loving woman’s instinct to pity and relieve, had put her arm about the trembling shoulders to support them. Now Luvaine’s head fell back upon that tender pillow, and a rare smile flickered on his tortured mouth.

“To line the cot for the little piping nestling; to nurse it to rich comfort, and train it to be noble and generous and true; to convert this wickedness into a blessing—take it, my child, and with it the last gratitude of this poor foundered wreck.”

The girl looked up, frightened, at the others.

“No, no, no!” she whispered, in a tearful voice, “I cannot.”

“Child—woman, would you deny me this ray of light into the black pit of my doom? The scale is all weighted down on one side. What shall I have to set against the fearful load? They are pinioning me now—my God! I am called to the question!”

Sir David came forward swiftly, took the gem from the nerveless hand, and placed it in Betty’s. A sigh quivered up from the soldier’s lips. He gathered all he could of breath for a last effort.

“I call those present to witness,” he cried, “that I, Edward Luvaine, do here on my death-bed make free gift of the ruby, called the Lake of Wine, to Betty Pollack.”

He sank back and spoke never again. In a few minutes the death-agony was on him. It was brief, but so convulsive while it lasted that, when he was fallen stiffly to rest, they had to fasten his left arm down with a ligature to bring him to some composure of attitude.

Then the girl, seeing the others desired to talk, begged them to leave her alone with the dead while they went outside, for that her heart was full of tears, and she would pray mercy on the poor sinner.

They went sombrely, and stood without at a little distance in the snow.

“It would scarce be decent to congratulate you,” said Blythewood, gravely.

“Indeed, sir, I am not sure it would, or that it is at all a subject for congratulation. At any rate compliments on such can hardly be exchanged by us.”

“You are bitter, and you have very full cause. I spoke once before without book; and now, it seems, Angel and Dunlone have an understandin’. Give me your hand, man; and, frankly, I’m sorry. Why, I could ha’ wished it was you, by my soul, and what was my rudeness then but a left-handed compliment?”

“My lady Viscountess will grace any position she condescends to!” cried Tuke enthusiastically; and the two men shook hands then and there.

“And now,” said Blythewood, “we have been experimenting with a sledge of our own manufacture; and I make no doubt we can transport the whole party to ‘Chatters’ before the day is out.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Tuke, a weary ghost of himself, that bodily hurt and mental emotion still would not spare, was returned from inspecting Sir David’s travelling contrivance. As he pushed open the door of the stable, he saw that that drove the blood upon his heart, and paralyzed him, voice and limbs, so that he stood like a man of stone. Betty still knelt, her face buried in her hands, beside the dead soldier; but crawled silently to within touch of her—by what desperate disciplining of suffering who might tell—was the wounded brute that, but a few minutes earlier, was extended, helpless apparently and near to dying, against the further wall. Now, as Brander saw the door swung back, he raised himself on one hand, a short knife poised in the other, and in his eyes was an expression of such devilish triumph as turned the soul of the wretched onlooker sick. The blade whipped aloft—the arm of the dead man sprung up and struck the murderer a backhanded blow full in the face. His knife rattled on the boards—he gave a screech of terror, and rolled grovelling and as Tuke, the horrible spell broken, bounded to his love and caught her, fluttering, to his arms, Sir David and the others rushed into the stable with pale faces, and the how, when, and what, of startled men.

Now, when all was explained, and the half-convulsed ruffian tied up with little regard to his comfort, it was vain to try and convince Betty that the ill-secured ligature had snapped fortuitously, releasing the hard arm like a spring, and, marvellously enough, at the opportune moment, and that her safety was due to an accident. “But,” said she, “the dead struck for his own, and because he had dedicated that to good uses. And now I will take the poor man’s trust, and try to acquit me of it so that he shall have peace in his grave. For I owe him that at least for my life.”

And, with the words, she put her arms around her man’s neck before them all, and that so that she might hide the tears she could not repress, for she was much and for many reasons overcome.

“And what,” said Tuke, with a smile, “have you done with the trust, Betty?”

“Why,” said she, “I slipped it under my garter.”

CHAPTER LV.

“WELL,” cried Creel, “you have sown your wild oats and reaped a whirlwind; and now at last is the calm; and you shall sit under your fig-tree and grow fat.”

“Never, my old friend. We shall come and go like the swallows, and build under the eaves of the world.”

“Aye, aye, and rear a brood at every visit, no doubt. Well, you have realized well on the famous stone, and can indulge a whimsey or so. And you can afford to waive title to the estate, and encumber me with a property I neither covet nor care for. But you are wise no doubt; and maybe you have that of the gambler’s instinct left you to know when the luck hath turned. And, if anything will convince me it has, Sir Robert, it is in the fact that that one rogue was spared for the gallows and to give evidence against himself in a near incredible story; which he did with so fine a tact of villainy as to startle virtuous truth out of conceit with itself.”

“Mr. Creel, Brander was not the first that missed his vocation of attorney.”

“A stale witticism, Sir Robert, that has its origin in the unreasoning petulance of unsuccessful litigants. Yet what man blames his broker that he takes his percentage equally in a good or bad speculation?”

“Why, I spoke the common cant thoughtlessly, sir, and only aimed at a laugh. I would ennoble all lawyers for your sake.”

“Well, well. And so the man Whimple goes abroad with you?”

“I would not part with him for a fortune. Sir David Blythewood offered to take him into his service, but——”

“Ah! I hear that gentleman’s half-sister is pledged to a coronet?”

“She will bring it lustre.”

He rose, and the attorney with him. The old grey eyes of the latter looked kindlily over their glasses.

“And what are your plans?” said he.

“To travel for a year, maybe, while our garden is maturing.”

“The garden that is in the green hollow out of the world? God make it fruitful for you. And is Lady Linne pleased with her new-found title?”

“She is a woman of very women, sir; and all grace I offer her is but repayment of a loan of her own advancing.”

“Well, indeed; you are very much in love.”

BY WAY OF GRACE.

Miss Royston rose to meet her brother in the candle-light. A really superb collect of diamonds sparkled on her white bosom.

“Are they not ravishing?” she said; “and is not Dunlone a princely suitor?”

“Why, he cannot do credit to his own selection with niggardliness.”

“You are always grudging in your acknowledgment of his condescension, brother—yes, condescension, sir, for all your little flippant nose. And simplicity in a smock may be a very engaging thing, but I vow I prefer it in a coronet.”

“Rank, madam, is but the guinea stamp.”

“Then I would be the guinea-hen, and you may go, if you will, to the barn-door for your partner.”

“Angel, the stones are very fine. What a storm in a tea-cup! Dunlone knows where to lay out his property to the best advantage, and I swear your white skin pays a pretty interest on his investment.”

This might have been designed for a compliment. The incensed lady was not to be appeased.

“You may swear,” she said; “but not in my company. This last year is responsible for more than one change to a coarseness of sentiment in you; though, being the impressionable child you are, I do not wonder.”

She turned with an acid smile to a little table hard by.

“Here,” she said, “is the latest intelligence of a country neighbour of yours that you once studied to take your cue from.”

“You mean Tuke, of course. What about him?”

“Why, only that his hoyden hath presented him with an heir to his profligacy;”—and she read out from a current copy of the Lady’s Magazine the following announcement: “‘October 29. The lady of Sir Robt. Linne, Bart., of a son.’”

“I congratulate them with all my heart,” said Blythewood fervently.

Miss Angela looked at him with a stare of infinite scorn.

“You were present at the wedding, I think?” said she.

“You know I was.”

“And you made quite an ingenious little speech to the May-day bride and her Jack-in-the-green, or clown—which was it? and I think you got tipsy, which was the best compliment you could have paid her.”

“I dare say—I dare say; and—well, what then?”

“What then, sir? Why, only that I think Sir Robert Linne should have kept his wife’s name out of an advertisement.”

“Pooh! She takes her husband’s status; and she is a noble wench, by George, and will never bring him to shame.”

“Or he, her, of course,” said Miss Angela—“and, Davy, ’tis time you put on your pinafore and went to play in the nursery.”

And here ends the story—so far as it relates to the personages of this history—of the wonderful ruby that went by the name of the Lake of Wine. And here—or there, set in a leafy swale of the lonely Hampshire downs—stood until somewhat recently the ruins of that fallen house that superstition must still be peopling with spectres. They are gone now, the ruins. When the historian last saw them, a profound silence reigned within the broken walls; a riot of “devil’s-rope” and ground-elder filled the deep hollows of the courts; the ivy stems were grown ancient; and flitting about the green melancholy, a brimstone butterfly was blown aloft like a flake of the destroying fire that the spirit of romance had breathed into life again.

And now a model farm, rising from the wreck, has disciplined the wild fields to a very pretty behaviour, and the ghosts are fled before the terror of the Psychical Society.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The following misspellings (assumed to be dialects or drunken slurs) in dialogue have been preserved:

[Chapter XI]

“is to my knowledge a scholard and an angler”

[Chapter XIII]

“or d’ye prefer somethig i’ the psalmody fashion”

“It’s cur-curdled the milk o’ human kideness in me”

[Chapter XXXIX]

“where ha’ you been, you inhospitalable scamp”

“Understad?—understad, you conceited peddler?”

If you have access to an alternate edition of the text and can confirm any of the above are indeed spelling errors please contact Project Gutenberg support.

Alterations to the text:

Add TOC.

Punctuation corrections: missing periods, quotation mark pairing, etc.

Note: minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies (e.g. blythe/blithe, pellmell/pell-mell, fruit-trees/fruit trees, etc.) have been preserved.

[Chapter III]

Change “that gave out a pleasant fragnance” to fragrance.

[Chapter IV]

“He left the old city and took the Stackbridge road” to Stockbridge.

[Chapter VI]

“The other raisd his head in staring surprise” to raised.

[Chapter VIII]

“and her dress and velvet spenser” to spencer.

“Nature’s purpose would induce receovery” to recovery.

“She smiled back delighfully” to delightfully.

[Chapter IX]

“a sailing rook came through the leafly canopy” to leafy.

[Chapter X]

“In this conection were two matters for” to connection.

“His näive self-importance, half-nullified” to naïve.

[Chapter XXXI]

“Humming ... a fragrant of some late-heard melody” to fragment.

[Chapter XXXIV]

“I should like to ask yuo a question” to you.

[Chapter XXXVII]

“this is Catain Luvaine, Whimple, from whose” to Captain.

“for all his instinctive astion his face had taken a dark flush” to action.

[Chapter LIV]

“A life of torment for a minute of esctasy” to ecstasy.

[End of Text]

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Table of Contents

THE LAKE OF WINE

COPYRIGHT.

CONTENTS.

EPIGRAPH.

THE LAKE OF WINE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHAPTER XXX.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CHAPTER XL.

CHAPTER XLI.

CHAPTER XLII.

CHAPTER XLIII.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHAPTER XLV.

CHAPTER XLVI.

CHAPTER XLVII.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

CHAPTER XLIX.

CHAPTER L.

CHAPTER LI.

CHAPTER LII.

CHAPTER LIII.

CHAPTER LIV.

CHAPTER LV.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE