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George Manville Fenn

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Title: This Man's Wife

Author: George Manville Fenn

Release Date: September 5, 2012 [EBook #40676]

Language: English

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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

George Manville Fenn

"This Man's Wife"

Volume One—Chapter One.

The New Curate—Christie Bayle’s Mistake.

If that hat had occupied its proper place it would have been perched upon a stake to scare the sparrows away from the young peas, but the wretched weather-beaten structure was upon the old man’s head, matching well with his coat, as he busied himself that pleasant morning dibbling in broccoli-plants with the pointed handle of an old spade.

The soft genial rain had fallen heavily during the night, thoroughly soaking the ground, which sent forth a delicious steaming incense quivering like visible transparent air in the morning sun. There had been a month’s drought, and flower and fruit had languished; but on the previous evening dark clouds had gathered above the woods, swept over King’s Castor, and, as Gemp said, “For twelve mortal hours the rain had poured down.”

Old Gemp was wrong: it had not poured, but stolen softly from the kindly heavens, as if every fertilising drop had been wrapped in liquid silver velvet, and no flower was beaten flat, no thirsty vegetable soiled, but earth and plant had drunk and drunk during the long night to wake up refreshed; the soil was of a rich dark hue, in place of drab, and the birds were singing as if they meant to split their throats.

Dr Luttrell’s garden was just far enough out of the town for the birds to sing. They came so far, and no farther. Once in a way, perhaps, some reckless young blackbird went right into the elder clump behind the mill, close up to the streets, and hunted snails from out of the hollow roots, and from the ivy that hung over the stone wall by the great water-tank in Thickens’s garden; but that was an exception. Only one robin and the sparrows strayed so far in as that.

But with the doctor’s garden it was different. There was the thick hawthorn hedge that separated it from the north road, a hedge kept carefully clipped, and with one tall stem every twelve yards that was never touched, but allowed to grow as it pleased, and to blossom every May and June into almond-scented snow, as it was blooming now. Then there was the great laurel hedge, fifteen feet high, on the north; the thick shrubbery about the red-bricked gabled house, and the dense ivy that covered it from the porch upwards and over Millicent’s window, and then crawled right up the sides to the chimney stacks.

There were plenty of places for birds, and, as they were never disturbed, the doctor’s was a haven where nests were made, eggs laid, and young hatched, to the terrible detriment of the doctor’s fruit; but he only gave his handsome grey head a rub and laughed.

That delicious June morning as the line was stretched over the bed that had been so long prepared, and the plants that had been nursed in a frame were being planted, the foreshortening of the old man’s figure was rather strange, so strange that as he came along the road looking over the hedge, and taking in long breaths of delicious scents, the Reverend Christie Bayle, the newly-appointed curate of St. Anthony’s, paused to watch the planting.

He was tall, slight, and pale, looking extremely youthful in his black clerical attire; but it was the pallor of much hard study, not of ill-health, for as he had come down the road it was with a free elastic stride, and he carried his head as a man does who feels that he is young and full of hope, and thinks that this world is, after all, a very beautiful place.

But it was a delicious June morning.

True, but the Reverend Christie Bayle was just as light and elastic when he walked back to his lodgings, through the rain on the previous night, and without an umbrella. He had caught himself whistling, too, several times, and checked himself, thinking that, perhaps, he ought to cease; but somehow—it was very dark—he was thoroughly light-hearted, and he had the feeling that he had made a poor weak old woman more restful at heart during his chat with her by her bedside, and so he began whistling again.

He was not whistling now as he stopped short, looking over the hedge, watching the foreshortened figure coming down towards him, with a leg on either side of the line, the dibber in one hand, a bunch of broccoli-plants in the other. The earth was soft, and the old man’s arm strong, while long practice had made him clever. He had no rule, only his eye and the line for guidance; but, as he came slowly down the row, he left behind him, at exactly two feet apart, the bright green tightly-set plants.

Whig! went the dibber: in went a plant; there was a quick poke or two, the soft earth was round the stem, and the old man went on till he reached the path, straightened himself, and began to softly rub the small of his back with the hand that held the tool.

“Good-morning,” said the curate.

“Morning.”

“Ladies at home?”

“No, they’ve gone up to the town shopping. Won’t be long.”

“Do you think they’d mind if I were to wait?”

“Mind? No. Come and have a look round.”

“Peculiarity of the Lincolnshire folk, that they rarely say sir to their superiors,” mused the Reverend Christie Bayle, as he entered the garden. “Perhaps they think we are not their superiors, and perhaps they are right; for what am I better than that old gardener?”

“Nice rain.”

“Delicious! By Geo—I—ah, you have a beautiful garden here.”

The old man gave him a droll look, and the curate’s, face turned scarlet, for that old college expression had nearly slipped out.

“Yes, it’s a nice bit of garden, and pretty fruitful considering. You won’t mind my planting another row of these broccoli?”

“Not a bit. Pray go on, and I can talk to you. Seems too bad for me to be doing nothing, and you breaking your back.”

“Oh, it won’t break my back; I’m used to it. Well, how do you like King’s Castor?”

“Very much. The place is old and quaint, and I like the country. The people are a little distant at present. They are not all so sociable as you are.”

“Ah, they don’t know you yet. There: that’s done. Now I’m going to stick those peas.”

He thrust the dibber into the earth, kicked the soil off his heavy boots, and came out on to the path rubbing his hands and looking at them.

“Shake hands with you another time.”

“To be sure. Going to stick those peas, are you?”

“Yes. I’ve the sticks all ready.”

The old man went to the top of the path, and into a nook where, already sharpened, were about a dozen bundles of clean-looking ground-birch sticks full of twigs for the pea tendrils to hold on by as they climbed.

The old fellow smiled genially, and there was something very pleasant in his clear blue eyes, florid face, and thick grey beard, which—a peculiarity in those days—he wore cut rather short, but innocent of razor.

“Shall I carry a bundle or two down?” said the curate.

“If you like.”

The Reverend Christie Bayle did like, and he carried a couple of bundles down to where the peas were waiting their support. And then—they neither of them knew how it happened, only that a question arose as to whether it was better to put in pea-sticks perpendicular or diagonal, the old man being in favour of the upright, the curate of the slope—both began sticking a row, with the result that, before a quarter of a row was done, the curate had taken off his black coat, hung it upon the gnarled Ripston-pippin-tree, rolled up his shirt sleeves over a pair of white, muscular arms, and quite a race ensued.

Four rows had been stuck, and a barrow had been fetched and a couple of spades, for the digging and preparing of a patch for some turnips, when, spade in hand, the curate paused and wiped his forehead. “You seem to like gardening, parson.”

“I do,” was the reply. “I quite revel in the smell of the newly turned earth on a morning like this, only it makes me so terribly hungry.”

“Ah, yes, so it does me. Well, let’s dig this piece, and then you can have a mouthful of lunch with me.”

“Thank you, no; I’ll help you dig this piece, and then I must go. I’ll come in another time. I want to see more of the garden.”

There was about ten minutes’ steady digging, during which the curate showed that he was no mean hand with the spade, and then the old man paused for a moment to scrape the adherent soil from the broad blade.

“My master will be back soon,” he said; “and then there’ll be some lunch; and, oh! here they are.”

The Reverend Christie Bayle had been so intent upon lifting that great spadeful of black earth without crumbling, that he had not heard the approaching footsteps, and from behind the yew hedge that sheltered them from the flower-garden, two ladies and a tall, handsome-looking man suddenly appeared, awaking the curate to the fact that he was in his shirt sleeves, digging, with his hat on a gooseberry-bush, his coat in an apple-tree, and his well-blackened boots covered with soil.

He was already flushed with his exercise. He turned of a deeper red now, as he saw the pleasant-looking, elderly lady give her silvery-grey curls a shake, the younger lady gaze from one to the other as if astonished, and the tall, dark gentleman suppress a smile as he raised his eyebrows slightly, and seemed to be amused.

The curate thrust his spade into the ground, bowed hurriedly, took a long step and snatched his hat from the gooseberry-bush, and began to hastily roll down his sleeves.

“Oh, never mind them,” said his companion. “Adam was not ashamed of his arms. Here, my dears, this is our new curate, Mr Bayle, the first clergyman we’ve had who could use a spade. Mr Bayle—my wife, my daughter Millicent. Mr Hallam, from the bank.”

The Reverend Christie Bayle’s face was covered with dew, and he longed to beat a retreat from the presence of the pleasant-faced elderly lady; to make that retreat a rout, as he met the large, earnest grey eyes of “my daughter Millicent,” and saw as if through a mist that she was fair to see—how fair in his agitation he could not tell; and lastly, to rally and form a stubborn front, as he bowed to the handsome, supercilious man, well-dressed, perfectly at his ease, and evidently enjoying the parson’s confusion.

“We are very glad you have come to see us, Mr Bayle,” said the elderly lady, smiling, and shaking hands warmly. “Of course we knew you soon would. And so you’ve been helping Dr Luttrell.”

“The doctor!” thought the visitor with a mental groan; “and I took him for the gardener!”

Volume One—Chapter Two.

Some Introductions and a Little Music.

The reception had been so simple and homely, that, once having secured his coat and donned it, the doctor’s volunteer assistant felt more at his ease. His disposition to retreat passed off, and, in despite of all refusal, he was almost compelled to enter the house, Mrs Luttrell taking possession of him to chat rather volubly about King’s Castor and the old vicar, while from time to time a few words passed with Millicent, at whom the visitor gazed almost in wonder.

She was so different from the provincial young lady he had set up in his own mind as a type. Calm, almost grave in its aspect, her face was remarkable for its sweet, self-contained look of intelligence, and the new curate had not been many minutes in her society before he was aware that he was conversing with a woman as highly cultivated as she was beautiful.

Her sweet, rich voice absolutely thrilled, while her quiet self-possession sent a pang through him, as he felt how young, how awkward, and wanting in confidence he must seem in her eyes, which met his with a frank, friendly look that was endorsed during conversation, as she easily and pleasantly helped him out of two or three verbal bogs into which he had floundered.

After a walk through the garden, they had entered the house, where Mrs Luttrell had turned suddenly upon her visitor, to confuse him again by her sudden appeal.

“Did you ever see such a straw hat as that, Mr Bayle?”

“Oh, it’s an old favourite of papa’s, Mr Bayle,” interrupted Millicent, turning to smile at the elderly gentleman taking the dilapidated straw from his head to hang it upon one particular peg. “He would not enjoy the gardening so much without that.”

The tall handsome man left at the end of a few minutes. Business was his excuse. He had met the ladies, and just walked down with them, he told the doctor.

“But you’ll come in to-night, Mr Hallam? We shall expect you,” said Mrs Luttrell warmly.

“Oh, of course!” said Millicent, as Mr Hallam, from the bank, involuntarily turned to her; and her manner was warm but not conscious.

“I shall be here,” he said quietly; and after a quiet friendly leave-taking, Christie Bayle felt relieved, and as if he could be a little more at his ease.

It was not a success though, and when he in turn rose to go, thinking dolefully about his dirty boots as compared with the speckless Wellingtons of the other visitor, and after feeling something like a throb of pleasure at being warmly pressed to step in without ceremony that evening, he walked to his apartments in the main street, irritated and wroth with himself, and more dissatisfied than he had ever before felt in his life.

“I wish I had not come,” he said to himself. “I’m too young, and what’s worse, I feel so horribly young. That supercilious Mr Hallam was laughing at me; the old lady treated me as if I were a boy; and Miss Luttrell—”

He stopped thinking, for her tall graceful presence seemed before him, and he felt again the touch of her cool, soft, white hand.

“Yes; she talked to me as if I were a boy, whom she wanted to cure of being shy. I am a boy, and it’s my own fault for not mixing more with men.”

“Bah! What an idiot I was! I might have known it was not the gardener. He did not talk like a servant, but I blundered into the idea, and went on blindfold in my belief. What a ridiculous débût I made there, to be sure, where I wanted to make a good impression! How can I profess to teach people like that when they treat me as if I were a boy? I can never show my face there again.”

He felt in despair, and his self-abasement grew more bitter as the day went on. It would be folly, he thought, to go to the doctor’s that evening; but, as the time drew near, he altered his mind, and at last, taking a small case from where it rested upon a bookshelf, he thrust it into his pocket and started, his teeth set, his nerves strung, and his whole being bent upon the determination to show these people that he was not the mere bashful boy they thought him.

It was a deliciously soft, warm evening, and as he left the town behind with its few dim oil lamps, the lights that twinkled through the trees from the doctor’s drawing-room were like so many invitations to him to hurry his feet, and so full was his mind of one of the dwellers beneath the roof that, as he neared the gate, he was not surprised to hear Millicent’s voice, sweet, clear, and ringing. It hastened his steps. He did not know why, but it was as if attracting—positively magnetic. The next moment there was the low, deep-toned rich utterance of a man’s voice—a voice that he recognised at once as that of Mr Hallam, from the bank; and if this was magnetic, it was from the negative pole, for Christie Bayle stopped.

He went on again, angry, he knew not why, and the next minute was being introduced on the lawn to a thin, careworn, middle-aged man, and a tall, bony, aquiline lady, as Mr and Mrs Trampleasure, Mrs Luttrell’s pleasant, sociable voice being drowned almost the next moment by that of the bony dame, who in tones resembling those emitted by a brazen instrument, said very slowly:

“How do you do? I saw you last Sunday. Don’t you think it is getting too late to stop out on the grass?”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Luttrell hastily, “the grass is growing damp. Milly, dear, take Mr Hallam into the drawing-room.”

The pleasant flower-decked room, with its candles and old-fashioned oil lamp, seemed truly delightful to Christie Bayle, for the next hour. He was very young, and he was the new arrival in King’s Castor, and consequently felt flattered by the many attentions he received. The doctor was friendly, and disposed to be jocose with allusions to gardening. Mr Trampleasure, thin and languid, made his advances, but his questions were puzzling, as they related to rates of exchange and other monetary matters, regarding which the curate’s mind was a blank.

“Not a well-informed young man, my dear,” said Mr Trampleasure to his wife; whereupon that lady looked at him, and Mr Trampleasure seemed to wither away, or rather to shrink into a corner, where Millicent, who looked slightly flushed, but very quiet and self-possessed, was turning over some music, every piece of which had a strip of ribbon sewn with many stitches all up its back.

“Not a well-informed young man, this new curate, Millicent,” said Mr Trampleasure, trying to sow his discordant seed on more genial soil.

“Not well-informed, uncle?” said the daughter of the house, looking up wide-eyed and amused, “why, I thought him most interesting.”

“Oh! dear me, no, my dear. Quite ignorant of the most everyday matters. I just asked him—”

“Are you going to give us some music, Miss Luttrell?” said a deep, rich voice behind them, and Millicent turned round smiling.

“I was looking out two of your songs, Mr Hallam. You will sing something?”

“If you wish it,” he said quietly, and there was nothing impressive in his manner.

“Oh, we should all be glad. Mamma is so fond of your songs.”

“I must make the regular stipulation,” said Mr Hallam smiling. “Banking people are very exacting: they do nothing without being paid.”

“You mean that I must sing as well,” said Millicent.

“Oh, certainly. And,” she added eagerly, “Mr Bayle is musical. I will ask him to sing.”

“Yes, do,” said Hallam, with a shade of eagerness in his voice. “He cannot refuse you.”

She did not know why, but as Millicent Luttrell heard these words, something like regret at her proposal crossed her mind, and she glanced at where Bayle was seated, listening to Mrs Trampleasure, who was talking to him loudly—so loudly that her voice reached their ears.

“I should be very glad indeed, Mr Bayle, if, when you call upon us, you would look through Edgar and Edmund’s Latin exercises. I’m quite sure that the head master at the grammar school does not pay the attention to the boys that he should.”

To wait until Mrs Trampleasure came to the end of a conversational chapter, would have been to give up the singing, so Millicent sat down to the little old-fashioned square piano, running her hands skilfully over the keys, and bringing forth harmonious sounds. But they were the aigue wiry tones of the modern zither, and Christie Bayle bent forward as if attracted by the sweet face thrown up by the candles, and turned slightly towards Hallam, dark, handsome, and self-possessed, standing with one hand resting on the instrument.

“I don’t like music!” said Mrs Trampleasure, in a very slightly subdued voice.

“Indeed!” said Bayle starting, for his thoughts were wandering, and an unpleasant, indefinable feeling was stealing over him.

“I think it a great waste of time,” continued Mrs Trampleasure. “Do you like it, Mr Bayle?”

“Well, I must confess I am very fond of it,” he replied.

“But you don’t play anything,” said the lady with quite a look of horror.

“I—I play the flute—a little,” faltered the curate.

“Well,” said Mrs Trampleasure austerely, “we learn a great many habits when we are young, Mr Bayle, that we leave off when we grow older. You are youngs Mr Bayle.”

He looked up in her face as if she had wounded him, her words went so deeply home, and he replied softly:

“Yes, I’m afraid I am very young.”

Just then the doctor came and laid his hand upon Mrs Trampleasure’s lips.

“Silence! One tablespoonful to be taken directly. Hush, softly, not a word;” and he stood over his sister—with a warning index finger held up, while in a deep, thrilling baritone voice Mr Hallam from the bank sang “Treasures of the Deep.”

A dead silence was preserved, and the sweet rich notes seemed to fill the room and float out where the dewy flowers were exhaling their odours on the soft night air. The words were poetical, the pianoforte accompaniment was skilfully played, and, though perhaps but slightly cultivated, the voice of the singer was modulated by that dramatic feeling which is given but to few, so that the expression was natural, and, without troubling the composer’s marks, the song appealed to the feelings of the listeners, though in different ways.

“Bravo! bravo!” cried Mr Trampleasure, crossing to the singer.

“He has a very fine voice,” said Dr Luttrell in a quiet, subdued way; and his handsome face wrinkled a little as he glanced towards the piano.

“Yes, yes, it’s very beautiful,” said Mrs Luttrell, fingering a bracelet round and round, “but I wish he wouldn’t, dear; I declare it always makes me feel as if I wanted to cry. Ah! here’s Sir Gordon.”

Pleasant, sweet-faced Mrs Luttrell crossed the room to welcome a new arrival in the person of a remarkably well-preserved elderly gentleman, dressed with a care that told of his personal appearance being one of the important questions of his life. There was a suspicion of the curling tongs about his hair, which was of a glossy black that was not more natural in hue than that of his carefully-arranged full whiskers. There was a little black patch, too, beneath the nether lip that matched his eyebrows, which seemed more regular and dark than those of gentlemen as a rule at his time of life. The lines in his face were not deep, but they were many, and, in short, he looked, from the curl on the top of his head, down past his high black satin stock, well-padded coat, pinched waist, and carefully strapped down trousers over his painfully small patent leather boots, like one who had taken up the challenge of Time, and meant to fight him to the death.

“Good evening, Mrs Luttrell. Ah! how do, doctor? My dear Miss Luttrell, I’ve been seeing your fingers in the dark as I waited outside.”

“Seeing my fingers, Sir Gordon?”

“Yes; an idea—a fancy of mine,” said the newcomer, bending over the hand he took with courtly old-fashioned grace. “I heard the music, and the sounds brought the producers before my eyes. Hallam, my dear sir, you have a remarkably fine voice. I’ve known men, sir, at the London Concerts, draw large incomes on worse voices than that!”

“You flatter me, Sir Gordon.”

“Not at all, sir,” said the newcomer shortly. “I never stoop to flatter any one, not even a lady. Miss Luttrell, do I?”

“You never flattered me,” said Millicent, smiling.

“Never. It is a form of insincerity I detest. My dear Mrs Luttrell, you should make your unworthy husband take that to heart.”

“Why, I never flatter,” said the doctor warmly.

“How dare you say so, sir, when you are always flattering your patients, and preaching peace when there is no peace? Ah, yes, I’ve heard of him,” he said in an undertone. “Introduce me.”

The formal introduction took place, and the last comer seated himself beside the new curate.

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr Bayle. Glad to see you here, too, sir. Charming family this; doctor and his wife people to make friends. Eh! singing again? Hah! Miss Luttrell. Have you heard her sing?”

“No, she has not sung since I have been here.”

“Then prepare yourself for a treat, sir. I flatter myself I know what singing is. It is the singing of one of our prima donnas without the artificiality.”

“I think I heard Sir Gordon say he did not flatter,” said Bayle quietly.

“Thank you,” said the old beau, looking round sharply; “but I shall not take the rebuke. You have not heard her sing. Oh, I see,” he continued, raising his gold-rimmed eye-glass, “a duet.”

There was again silence, as after the prelude Millicent’s voice rose clear and thrilling in the opening of one of the simple old duets of the day; and as she sang with the effortless ease of one to whom song was a gift, Sir Gordon bent forward, swaying himself slightly to the music, but only to stop short and watch with gathering uneasiness in his expression, the rapt earnestness of Christie Bayle as he seemed to drink in like some intoxicating draught the notes that vibrated through the room. He drew a deep breath, and sat up rather stiffly as she ended, and Mr Hallam from the bank took up the second verse. If anything, his voice sounded richer and more full; and again the harmony was perfect when the two voices, soprano and baritone, blended, and rose and fell in impassioned strains, and then gradually died off in a soft, sweet, final chord, that the subdued notes of the piano, wiry though they were, failed to spoil.

“You are not fond of music?” said Sir Gordon, making Bayle, who had been still sitting back rather stiffly, and with his eyes closed, start, as he replied:

“Who? I? Oh, yes, I love it!” he replied hastily.

“Young! young!” said Sir Gordon to himself as he rose and crossed the room to congratulate Millicent on her performance—Hallam giving way as he approached—saying to himself: “I’m beginning to wish we had not engaged him, good a man as he is.”

“Yes, I’m very fond of that duet,” said Millicent. “Excuse me, Sir Gordon, here’s Miss Heathery.”

She crossed to the door to welcome a lady in a very tight evening dress of cream satin—tight, that is, in the body—and pinched in by a broad sash at the waist, but the sleeves were like two cream-coloured spheres, whose open mouths hung down as if trying to swallow the long crinkly gloves that the wearer kept drawing above her pointed elbows, and which then slipped down.

It is a disrespectful comparison, but it was impossible to look at Miss Heathery’s face without thinking of a white rabbit. One of Nature’s paradoxical mysteries, no doubt, for it was not very white, nor were her eyes pink, and the sausage-shaped, brown curls on either side of her forehead, backed by a great shovel-like, tortoise-shell comb, in no wise resembled ears; but still the fact remained, and even Christie Bayle, on being introduced to the elderly bashful lady, thought of the rabbit, and actually blushed.

“You are just in time to sing, Miss Heathery,” said Millicent.

Miss Heathery could not; but there was a good deal of pressing, during which the lady’s eyes rolled round pleadingly from speaker to speaker, as if saying, “Press me a little more, and I will.”

“You must sing, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell in a whisper. “Make haste, and then Millicent’s going to ask Mr Bayle, and you must play the accompaniment.” Miss Heathery said, “Oh, really!” and Sir Gordon completed the form by offering his arm, and leading the little lady to the piano, taking from her hands her reticule, made in pale blue satin to resemble a butterfly; after that her gloves.

Then, after a good deal of arrangement of large medical folios upon a chair to make Miss Heathery the proper height, she raised her shoulders, the left becoming a support to her head as she lifted her chin and gazed into one corner of the room.

Christie Bayle was a lover of natural history, and he said to himself, “How could I be so rude as to think she looked like a white rabbit? She is exactly like a bird.”

It was only that a change that had come over the lady, who was now wonderfully bird-like, and, what was quite to the point, like a bird about to sing.

She sang.

It was a tippity-tippity little tinkling song, quite in accordance with the wiry, zither-like piano, all about “dewy twilight lingers,” and harps “touched by fairy fingers,” and appeals to some one to “meet me there, love,” and so on.

The French say we are not a polite nation. We may not be as to some little bits of outer polish, but at heart we are, and never more so than at a social gathering, when some terrible execution has taken place under the name of music. It was so here, for, moved by the feeling that the poor little woman had done her best, and would have been deeply wounded had she not been asked to sing, all warmly thanked Miss Heathery; and directly after, Christie Bayle, with his ears still burning from the effects of the performance, found himself beside the fair singer, trying to talk of King’s Castor and its surroundings.

“I would rather not ask him, mamma dear,” said Millicent at the other side of the room.

“But you had better, my dear. I know he is musical, and he might feel slighted.”

“Oh, yes, he’s a good fellow, my dear; I like him,” said the doctor bluffly. “Ask him.”

With a curious shrinking sensation that seemed somehow vaguely connected with Mr Hallam from the bank, and his eagerness earlier in the evening, Millicent crossed to where Bayle was seated, and asked him if he would sing.

“Oh, no,” he said hastily, “I have no voice!”

“But we hear that you are musical, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent in her sweet, calm way.

“Oh, yes, I am. Yes, I am a little musical.”

“Pray sing then,” she said, now that she had taken the step, forgetting the diffident feeling; “we are very simple people here, and so glad to have a fresh recruit in our narrow ranks.”

“Yes, pray sing, Mr Bayle; we should be so charmed.”

“I—er—I really—”

“Oh, but do, Mr Bayle,” said Miss Heathery again sweetly.

“I think you will oblige us, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent smiling; and as their eyes met, if the request had been to perform the act of Marcus Curtius on foot, and with a reasonable chance of finding water at the bottom to break the fall, Christie Bayle would have taken the plunge.

“Have you anything I know?” he said despairingly.

“I know,” cried Miss Heathery, with a sort of peck made in bird-like playfulness. “Mr Bayle can sing ‘They bid me forget thee.’”

“Full many a shaft at random sent, hits,” et cetera. This was a chance shot, and it struck home.

“I think—er—perhaps, I could sing that,” stammered Bayle, and then in a fit of desperation—“I’ll try.”

“I have it among my music, Millicent dear. May I play the accompaniment?”

Miss Heathery meant to look winning, but she made Bayle shiver.

“If you will be so good, Miss Heathery;” and the piece being found and spread out, Christie Bayle, perspiring far more profusely than when he was using the doctor’s spade, stood listening to the prelude, and then began to sing, wishing that the dead silence around had been broken up by a hurricane, or the loudest thunder that ever roared.

Truth to tell, it was a depressing performance of a melancholy song. Bayle’s voice was not bad, but his extreme nervousness paralysed him, and the accompaniment would have driven the best vocalist frantic.

It was a dismal failure, and when, in the midst of a pleasant little chorus of “Thank you’s” Christie Bayle left the piano, he felt as if he had disgraced himself for ever in the eyes of King’s Castor, above all in those of this sweetly calm and beautiful woman who seemed like some Muse of classic days come back to life.

Every one smiled kindly, and Mrs Luttrell came over, called him “my dear” in her motherly way, and thanked him again.

“Only want practice and confidence, sir,” said the doctor.

“Exactly,” said Sir Gordon; “practise, sir, and you’ll soon beat Hallam there.”

Bayle felt as if he would give anything to be able to retreat; and just then he caught Mrs Trampleasure’s eyes as she signalled him to come to her side.

“She told me she did not like music,” he said to himself; and he was yielding to his fate, and going to have the cup of his misery filled to the brim when he caught Hallam’s eye.

Hallam was by the chimney-piece, talking to Mr Trampleasure about bank matters; but that look seemed so full of triumphant contempt, that Bayle drew his breath as if in pain, and turned to reach the door.

“It was very kind of you to sing when I asked you, Mr Bayle,” said that sweet low voice that thrilled him; and he turned hastily, seeing again Hallam’s sneering look, or the glance that he so read.

“I cannot sing,” he replied with boyish petulance. “It was absurd to attempt it. I have only made myself ridiculous.”

“Pray do not say that,” said Millicent kindly. “You give me pain. I feel as if it is my fault, and that I have spoiled your evening.”

“I—I have had no practice,” he faltered.

“But you love music. You have a good voice. You must come and try over a few songs and duets with me.”

He looked at her half-wonderingly, and then moved by perhaps a youthful but natural desire to redeem himself, he said hastily:

“I can—play a little—the flute.”

“But you have not brought it?”

“Yes,” he said hastily. “Will you play an accompaniment? Anything, say one of Henry Bishop’s songs or duets.”

Millicent sighed, for she felt regret, but she concealed her chagrin, and said quietly, “Certainly, Mr Bayle;” and they walked together to the piano.

“Bravo!” cried Sir Gordon. “No one need be told that Mr Bayle is an Englishman.”

There was a rather uncomfortable silence as, more and more feeling pity and sympathy for their visitor, Millicent began to turn over a volume of bound up music, while, with trembling hands, Bayle drew his quaint boxwood flute with its brass keys and ivory mounts from its case.

It was a wonderfully different instrument from one of those cocoa-wood or metal flutes of the present day, every hole of which is stopped not with the fingers but with keys. This was an old-fashioned affair, in four pieces, which had to be moistened at the joints when they were stuck together, and all this business the Reverend Christie Bayle went through mechanically, for his eyes were fixed upon the music Millicent was turning over.

“Let’s try that,” he said suddenly, in a voice tremulous with eagerness, as she turned over leaf after leaf, hesitating at two or three songs—“Robin Adair,” “Ye Banks and Braes,” and another—easy melodies, such as a flute player could be expected to get through. But though she had given him plenty of time to choose either of these, he let her turn over, and went on wetting the flute joints, and screwing them up till she arrived at “I Know a Bank.”

“But it is a duet,” she said, smiling at him as an elder sister might have smiled at a brother she wished to encourage, and who had just made another mistake.

“Yes,” he said hastily; “but I can take up first one voice and then the other, and when it comes to the duet part the piano will hide the want of the second voice.”

“Or I can play it where necessary,” said Millicent, who began to brighten up. Perhaps this was not going to be such a dismal failure after all.

“To be sure,” he said: “if you will. There, I think that will do. Pray excuse me if I seem terribly nervous,” he whispered.

“Oh! don’t apologise, Mr Bayle. We are all friends here. I do not mind. I was thinking of you.”

“Thank you,” he said hastily. “You are very kind. Shall we begin?”

“Yes, I am ready,” said Millicent, glancing involuntarily at Hallam, who was still conversing with Trampleasure, his face perfectly calm, but his eyes wearing a singular look of triumph.

“One moment. Would you mind sounding D?” Millicent obeyed, and Bayle blew a tremulous note upon the flute nearly a quarter of a tone too sharp.

This necessitated a certain amount of unscrewing and lengthening which made the drops glisten upon Bayle’s forehead.

“Poor fellow!” thought Millicent, “how nervous he is! I wish he were not going to play.”

“I think that will do,” he said at last, after blowing one or two more tremulous notes. “Shall we begin?” Millicent nodded, giving him a smile of encouragement, and after whispering, “Don’t mind me, I’ll try and keep to your time,” she ran over the prelude, and shivered as the flute took up the melody and began.

It has been said that the flute, of all instruments, most resembles the human voice, and to Millicent Luttrell it seemed to wail here piteously how it knew a bank whereon the wild thyme grew. Her hands were moist from sympathy for the flautist, and she was striving to play her best with the fullest chords so as to hide his weakness, when, as he went on, it seemed to her that Bayle was forgetting the presence of listeners and growing interested in the beautiful melody he played. The notes of the flute became, moment by moment, more rich and round; they were no longer spasmodic, beginning and ending clumsily, but were breathed forth softly, with a crescendo and diminuendo where necessary, and so full of feeling that the pianiste was encouraged. She, too, forgot the listeners, and yielding to her love of her art, played on. The slow, measured strains were succeeded by the florid runs; but she never wondered whether the flautist would succeed, for they were amongst them before she knew they were so near, with the flute seeming to trip deftly over the most difficult passages without the slightest hesitation, the audience thoroughly enjoying the novel performance, till the final chord was struck, and followed by a hearty round of applause.

“Oh! Mr Bayle,” cried Millicent, looking up in his flushed face, “I am so glad.”

Her brightened eyes told him the same tale, for he had thoroughly won her sympathy as well as the praise of all present; Mr Hallam from the bank being as ready as the rest to thank him for so “delicious a rendering of that charming duet.”

The rest of that evening was strange and dreamlike to Christie Bayle. He played some more florid pieces of music by one Henry Bishop, and he took Millicent in to supper. Then, soon after, he walked home, Sir Gordon Bourne being his companion.

After that he sat for some hours thinking and wondering how it was that while some men of his years were manly and able to maintain their own, he was so boyish and easily upset.

“I’m afraid my old tutor’s right,” he said; “I want ballast.”

Perhaps that was why, when he dropped to sleep and went sailing away into the sea of dreams, his voyage was so wild and strange. Every minute some gust of passion threatened to capsize his barque, but he sailed on with his dreams growing more wild, the sky around still more strange.

It was a restless night for Christie Bayle, B.A. But the scholar of Oriel College, Oxford, was thinking as he had never thought before.

Volume One—Chapter Three.

A Little Business of the Bank.

“Would you be kind enough to cash this little cheque for me, Mr Thickens?”

The speaker was Miss Heathery, in the morning costume of a plum-coloured silk dress, with wide-spreading bonnet of the same material, ornamented with several large bows of broad satin ribbon, and an extremely dilapidated bird of paradise plume. She placed her reticule bag, also of plum-colour, but of satin—upon the broad mahogany counter of Dixons’ Bank, Market Place, King’s Castor, and tried to draw the bag open.

This, however, was not so easy. When it was open all you had to do was to pull the thick silk cord strings, and it closed up tightly, but there was no similar plan for opening a lady’s reticule in the year 1818. It was then necessary to insert the forefingers of each hand, knuckle to knuckle, force them well down, and then draw, the result being an opening, out of which you could extract pocket-handkerchief, Preston salts, or purse. Thin fingers were very useful at such a time, and Miss Heathery’s fingers were thin; but she wore gloves, and the gloves of that period, especially those sold in provincial towns, were not of the delicate second-skin nature worn by ladies now. The consequence was that hard-featured, iron-grey haired, closely-shaven Mr James Thickens, in his buff waistcoat and stiff white cravat, had to stand for some time, with a very large quill pen behind his right ear, waiting till Miss Heathery, who was growing very hot and red, exclaimed:

“That’s it!” and drew open the bag.

But even then the cheque was not immediately forthcoming, for it had to be fished for. First there was Miss Heathery’s pocket-handkerchief, delicately scented with otto of roses; then there was the pattern she was going to match at Crumple’s, the draper’s; then her large piece of orris root got in the way, and had to be shaken on one side with the knitting, and the ball of Berlin wool, when the purse was found in the far corner.

Purses, too, in those days were not of the “open sesame” kind popular now. The porte-monnaie was not born, and ladies knitted long silken hose, with a slit in the middle, placed ornamental slide-rings and tassels thereon, and even went so far sometimes as to make these old-fashioned purses of beads.

Miss Heathery’s was of netted silk, however, orange and blue, and through the reticulations could be seen at one end the metallic twinkle of coins, at the other the subdued tint and cornerish distensions of folded paper.

“I’m afraid I’m keeping you, Mr Thickens,” said the lady in a sweet, bird-like chirp, as she drew one slide, and tried to coax the folded cheque along the hose, though it refused to be coaxed, and obstinately stuck its elbows out at every opening of the net.

Mr Thickens said, “Not at all,” and passed his tongue over his dry lips, and moved his long fingers as if he were a kind of human actinia, and these were his tentacles, involuntarily trying to get at the cheque.

“That’s it!” said Miss Heathery again with a satisfied sigh, and she handed the paper across the counter.

James Thickens drew down a pair of very strongly-framed, round-eyed, silver-mounted spectacles from where they had been resting close to his brushed up “Brutus,” and unfolded and smoothed out the slip of paper, spreading it on the counter, and bending over it so much that his glasses would have fallen off but for the fact that a piece of black silk shoe-string formed a band behind.

“Two thirteen six,” said Mr Thickens, looking up at the lady.

“Yes; two pounds thirteen shillings and sixpence,” she replied, in token of assent. And while she was speaking, Mr Thickens took the big quill pen from behind his ear, and stood with his head on one side in an attitude of attention till the word “sixpence” was uttered, when the pen was darted into a great shining leaden inkstand and out again, like a peck from a heron’s bill, and without damaging the finely-cut point. A peculiar cancelling mark was made upon the cheque, which was carried to a railed-in desk. A great book was opened with a bang, and an entry made, the cheque dropped into a drawer, and then, in sharp, business-like tones, Mr Thickens asked the question he had been asking for the last twenty years.

“How will you have it?”

Miss Heathery chirped out her wishes, and Mr Thickens counted out two sovereigns twice over, rattled them into a bright copper shovel, and cleverly threw them before the customer’s hand. A half-sovereign was treated similarly, but retained with the left hand till half-a-crown and a shilling were ready, then all these coins were thrust over together, without the copper shovel, and the transaction would have been ended, only that Miss Heathery said sweetly: “Would you mind, Mr Thickens, giving me some smaller change?”

Mr Thickens bowed, and, taking back the half-crown, changed it for two shillings and sixpence, all bearing the round, bucolic countenance of King George the Third, upon which Miss Heathery beamed as she slipped the coins in the blue and orange purse.

“I hope Mr Hallam is quite well, Mr Thickens.”

“Quite well, ma’am.”

“And the gold and silver fish?”

“Quite well, ma’am,” said Mr Thickens, a little more austerely.

“I always think it so curiously droll, Mr Thickens, your keeping gold and silver fish,” simpered Miss Heathery. “It always seems as if the pretty things had something to do with the bank, and that their scales—”

“Would some day turn into sixpences and half-sovereigns, eh, ma’am?” said the bank clerk sharply. “Yes—exactly, Mr Thickens.”

“Ah, well, ma’am, it’s a very pretty idea, but that’s all. It isn’t solid.”

“Exactly, Mr Thickens. My compliments to Mr Hallam. Good-day.”

“If that woman goes on making that joke about my fish many more times, I shall kill her!” said James Thickens, giving his head a vicious rub. “An old idiot! I wish she’d keep her money at home. I believe she passes her time in writing cheques, getting ’em changed, and paying the money in again, as an excuse for something to do, and for the sake of calling here. I’m not such an ass as to think it’s to see me; and as to Hallam—well, who knows? Perhaps she means Sir Gordon. There’s no telling where a woman may hang up her heart.”

James Thickens returned to his desk after a glance down the main street, which looked as solemn and quiet as if there were no inhabitants in the place; so still was it, that no explanation was needed for the presence of a good deal of fine grass cropping up between the paving-stones. The houses looked clean and bright in the clear sunshine, which made the wonderfully twisted and floral-looking iron support of the “George” sign sparkle where the green paint was touched up with gold. The shadows were clearly cut and dark, and the flowers in the “George” window almost glittered, so bright were their colours. An elderly lady came across the market place, in a red shawl and carrying a pair of pattens in one hand, a dead-leaf tinted gingham umbrella in the other, though it had not rained for a month and the sky was without a cloud.

That red shawl seemed, as it moved, to give light and animation for a few minutes to the place; but as it disappeared round the corner by the “George,” the place was all sunshine and shadow once more. The uninhabited look came back, and James Thickens pushed up his spectacles and began to write, his pen scratching and wheezing over the thick hand-made paper till a tremendous nose-blowing and a quick step were heard, and the clerk said “Gemp.”

The next minute there was, the sharp tap of a stick on the step, continued on the floor, and the owner of that name entered with his coat tightly buttoned across his chest.

He was a keen-looking man of sixty, with rather obstinate features, and above all, an obstinate beard, which seemed as if it refused to be shaved, remaining in stiff, grey, wiry patches in corners and on prominences, as well as down in little ravines cut deeply in his face. His eyes, which were dark and sharp, twinkled and looked inquisitive, while, in addition, there was a restless wandering irregularity in their movements as if in turn each was trying to make out what its fellow was doing on the other side of that big bony nose.

“Morning, Mr Thickens, sir, morning,” in a coffee-grinding tone of voice; “I want to see the chief.”

“Mr Hallam? Yes; I’ll see if he’s at liberty, Mr Gemp.”

“Do, Mr Thickens, sir, do; but one moment,” he continued, leaning over and taking the clerk by the coat. “Don’t you think I slight you, Mr Thickens; not a bit, sir, not a bit. But when a man has a valuable deposit to make, eh?—you see?—it isn’t a matter of trusting this man or that; he sees the chief.”

Mr Gemp drew himself up, slapped the bulgy left breast of his buttoned-up coat, nodded sagely, and blew his nose with a snort like a blast on a cow-horn, using a great blue cotton handkerchief with white spots.

Mr James Thickens passed through a glass door, covered on the inner side with dark green muslin, and returned directly to usher the visitor into the presence of Robert Hallam, the business manager of Dixons’ Bank.

The room was neatly furnished, half office half parlour, and, but for a pair of crossed cutlasses over the chimney-piece, a bell-mouthed brass blunderbuss, and a pair of rusty flint-lock pistols, the place might have been the ordinary sitting-room of a man of quiet habits. There was another object though in one corner, which took from the latter aspect, this being the door of the cupboard which, instead of being ordinary painted panel, was of strong iron, a couple of inches thick.

“Morning, Mr Hallam, sir.”

“Good-morning, Mr Gemp.”

The manager rose from his seat at the baize-covered table to shake hands and point to a chair, and then, resuming his own, he crossed his legs and smiled blandly as he waited to hear his visitor’s business.

Mr Gemp’s first act was to spread his blue handkerchief over his knees, and then begin to stare about the room, after carefully hooking himself with his thick oak stick which he passed over his neck and held with both hands as if he felt himself to be rather an errant kind of sheep who needed the restraint of the crook.

“Loaded?” he said suddenly, after letting his eyes rest upon the fire-arms.

“Oh, yes, Mr Gemp, they are all loaded,” replied the manager smiling. “But I suppose I need not get them down; you are not going to make an attack?”

“Me? attack? eh? Oh, you’re joking. That’s a good one. Ha! ha! ha!”

Mr Gemp’s laugh was not pleasant on account of dental defects. It was rather boisterous too, and his neck shook itself free of the crook; but he hooked himself again, grew composed, and nodded once more in the direction of the chimney.

“Them swords sharp?”

“As razors, Mr Gemp.”

“Are they now? Well, that’s a blessing. Fire-proof, I suppose?” he added, nodding towards the safe.

“Fire-proof, burglar-proof, bank-proof, Mr Gemp,” said the manager smiling. “Dixons’ neglect nothing for the safety of their customers.”

“No, they don’t, do they?” said Mr Gemp, holding on very tightly to the stick, keeping himself down as it were and safe as well.

“No, sir, they neglect nothing.”

“I say,” said Mr Gemp, leaning forward, after a glance over his shoulder towards the bank counter, and Mr Thickens’s back, dimly seen through the muslin, “does the new parson bank here?”

The manager smiled, and looked very hard at the bulge in his visitor’s breast pocket, a look which involuntarily made the old man change the position of his hooked stick by bringing it down across his breast as if to protect the contents.

“Now, my dear Mr Gemp, you do not expect an answer to that question. Do you suppose I have ever told anybody that you have been here three times to ask me whether Dixons’ would advance you a hundred pounds at five per cent?”

“On good security, eh?” interposed the old man sharply; “only on good security.”

“Exactly, my dear sir. Why, you don’t suppose we make advances without?”

“No, of course not, eh? Not to anybody, eh, Mr Hallam?” said the old man eagerly. “You could not oblige me now with a hundred, say at seven and a half? I’m a safe man, you know. Say at seven and a half per cent, on my note of hand. You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No, Mr Gemp, nor yet at ten per cent. Dixons’ are not usurers, sir. I can let you have a hundred, sir, any time you like, upon good security, deeds or the like, but not without.”

“Ha! you are particular. Good way of doing business, sir. Hey, but I like you to be strict.”

“It is the only safe way of conducting business, Mr Gemp.”

“I say, though—oh, you are close!—close as a cash-box, Mr Hallam, sir; but what do you think of the new parson?”

“Quiet, pleasant, gentlemanly young man, Mr Gemp.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the visitor, hurting himself by using his crook quite violently, and getting it back round his neck; “but a mere boy, sir, a mere boy. He’s driven me away. I’m not going to church to hear him while there’s a chapel. I want to know what the bishop was a thinking about.”

“Ah? but he’s a scholar and a gentleman, Mr Gemp,” said the manager, blandly.

“Tchuck! so was the young doctor who set up and only lasted a year. If you were ill, sir, you wouldn’t have gone to he; you’d have gone to Dr Luttrell. If I’ve got vallerable deeds to deposit, I don’t go to some young clever-shakes who sets up in business, and calls himself a banker: I come to Dixons’.”

“And so you have some valuable deeds you want us to take care of for you, Mr Gemp,” said the manager sharply.

“Eh! I didn’t say so, did I?”

“Yes; and you want a hundred pounds. Shall I look at the deeds?”

Mr Gemp brought his oaken crook down over his breast, and his quick, shifty eyes turned from the manager to the lethal weapons over the chimney, then to the safe, then to the bank, and Mr Thickens’s back.

“I say,” he said at last, “arn’t you scared about being robbed?”

“Robbed! oh, dear no. Come, Mr Gemp. I must bring you to the point. Let me look at the deeds you have in your pocket; perhaps there will be no need to send them to our solicitor. A hundred pounds, didn’t you say?”

The old man hesitated, and looked about suspiciously for a few moments before meeting the manager’s eyes. Then he succumbed before the firm, keen, searching look.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I said a hundred pounds, but I don’t want no hundred pounds. I want you—”

He paused for a few moments with his hands at his breast, as if to take a long breath, and then, as if by a tremendous wrench, he mastered his fear and suspicion.

“I want you to take care of these for me.”

He tore open his breast and brought out quickly a couple of dirty yellow parchments and some slips of paper, roughly bound in a little leather folio.

The manager stretched his hand across the table and took hold of the parchments; but the old man held on by one corner for a few moments till Hallam raised his eyebrows and smiled, when the visitor uttered a deep sigh, and thrust parchments and little folio hastily from him.

“Lock ’em up in yonder iron safe,” he said hoarsely, taking up his blue handkerchief to wipe his brow. “It’s open now, but you’ll keep it locked, won’t you?”

“The deeds will be safe, Mr Gemp,” said the manager coolly throwing open the parchment. “Ah! I see, the conveyances to a row of certain messuages.”

“Yes, sir; row of houses, Gemp’s Terrace, all my own, sir; not a penny on ’em.”

“And these? Ah, I see, bank-warrants. Quite right, my dear sir, they will be safe. And you do not need an advance?”

“Tchuck! what should I want with an advance? There’s a good fifteen hundred pound there—all my own. Now you give me a writing, saying you’ve got ’em to hold for me, and that will do.”

The manager smiled as he wrote out the document, while Mr Gemp, who seemed as much relieved as if he had been eased of an aching tooth, rose to make a closer inspection of the loaded pistols and the bell-mouthed brass blunderbuss, all of which he tapped gently in turn with the hook of his stick.

“There you are, Mr Gemp,” said the manager smiling. “Now you can go home and feel at rest, for your deeds and warrants will be secure.”

“Yes, sir, to be sure; that’s the way,” said the old man, hastily reading the memorandum, and then placing it in a very old leather pocket-book; “but if you wouldn’t mind, sir, Mr Hallam, sir, I should like to see you lock them all in yonder.”

“Well, then, you shall,” said the manager good-humouredly and taking up the packets he tied them together with some green ferret, swung open the heavy door, which creaked upon its pivots, stepped inside, turned a key with a rattle, and opened a large iron chest, into which he threw the deeds, shut the lid with a clang, locked it ostentatiously, took out the key, backed out, and then closed and locked the great door of the safe.

“There, Mr Gemp; I think you’ll find they are secure now.”

“Safe! safe as the bank!” said the old man with an admiring smile as, with a sigh of relief, he picked up his old rough beaver hat from the floor, stuck it on rather sidewise, and with a short “good-morning,” stamped out, tapping the floor as he went.

“Good-morning, Mr Thickens, sir,” he said, pausing at the outer door to look back over his shoulder at the clerk. “I’ve done my bit o’ business with the manager. It’s all right.”

“Good-morning, Mr Gemp,” said Thickens quietly; and then to himself, as the tap of the stick was heard going down the street, “An important old idiot!”

Several little pieces of business were transacted, and then, according to routine, the manager came behind the counter to relieve his lieutenant, who put on his hat and went to his dinner.

During his absence the manager took his place at his subordinate’s desk, and was very busy making a few calculations, after divers references to a copy of yesterday’s Times, which came regularly by coach.

These calculations made him thoughtful, and he was in the middle of one when his face changed, and turned of a strange waxen hue, but he recovered himself directly.

“Might have expected it,” he said softly; and he went on writing as some one entered the bank.

The visitor was a thin, dejected-looking youth of about two-and-twenty, shabbily dressed in clothes that did not fit him. His face was of a sickly pallor, as if he had just risen from an invalid couch, an idea strengthened by the extremely shortly-cut hair, whose deficiency was made the more manifest by his wearing a hat a full size too large. This was drawn down closely over his forehead, his pressed-out ears acting as brackets to keep it from going lower still.

He was a tamed-down, feeble-looking being, but the spirit was not all gone, for as he came down the street, with the genial friendliness of all dogs towards one who seems to be a stranger and down in the world, Miss Heathery’s fat, ill-conditioned terrier, that she pampered under the belief that it was a dog of good breed, being in an evil temper consequent upon not having been taken for a walk by its mistress, rushed out baying, barking, and snapping at the stranger’s heels.

“Get out, will you?” he shouted; but the dog barked the more, and the stranger looked as if about to run. In fact he did run a few yards, but, as the dog followed, he caught up a flower-pot from a handy window-sill—every one had flower-pots at King’s Castor—and hurled it at the dog.

There was a yell, a crash, and explosion as if of a shell; Miss Heathery’s dog fled, and, without waiting to encounter the owner of the flower-pot, the stranger hurried round the corner, and after an inquiry or two, made for the bank.

“Vicious little beast! Wish I’d killed it,” he grumbled, giving the hat a hoist behind which necessitated another in front, and then the equilibrium adjusting at the sides. “Wonder people keep dogs,” he continued. “A nuisance. Wish I was a dog—somebody’s dog, and well fed. Lead a regular dog’s life, and get none of the bones. Perhaps I shall, though, now.”

The young man looked anything but a bank customer, but he did not hesitate. Merely stopping to give his coat a drag down, and then, tilting his hat slightly, he entered with a swagger, and walked up to the broad counter. Upon this he rested a gloveless hand, an act which seemed to give a little more steadiness to his weak frame.

“Rob,” he said.

The manager raised his head with an affected start.

“Oh, you don’t know me, eh?” said the visitor. “Well, I s’pose I am a bit changed.”

“Know you? You wish to see me?” said Hallam coolly.

“Yes, Mr Robert Hallam; I’ve come down from London on purpose. I couldn’t come before,” he added meaningly, “but now I want to have a talk with you.”

“Stephen Crellock! Why, you are changed.”

“Yes, as aforesaid.”

“Well, sir. What is it you want with me?” said the manager coldly.

“What do I want with you, eh? Oh, come, that’s rich! You’re a lucky one, you are. I go to prison, and you get made manager down here. Ah! you see I know all about it.”

“I do not understand you, sir.”

“Then I’ll tell you, my fine fellow. Some men never get found out, some do; that’s the difference between us two. I’ve gone to the wall—inside it,” he added, with a sickly grin. “You’ve got to be quite the gentleman. But they’ll find you out some day.”

“Well, sir, what is this to lead up to?” said Hallam.

“Oh, I say though, Rob Hallam, this is too rich. Manager here, and going, they say, to marry the prettiest girl in the place.” Hallam started in spite of his self-command. “And I suppose I shall be asked to the wedding, shan’t I?”

“Will you be so good as to explain what is the object of this visit?” said Hallam coldly.

“Why, can’t you see? I’ve come to the bank because I want some money. There, you need not look like that, my lad. It’s my turn now, and you’ve got to put things a bit straight for me after what I suffered sooner than speak.”

“Do you mean you have come here to insult me and make me send for a constable?” cried Hallam.

“Yes, if you like,” said the young man, leaning forward, and gazing full in the manager’s face; “send for one if you like. But you don’t like, Robert Hallam. There, I’m a man of few words. I’ve suffered a deal just through being true to my mate, and now you’ve got to make it up to me.”

“You scoun—”

“Sh! That’ll do. Just please yourself, my fine fellow; only, if you don’t play fair towards the man who let things go against him without a word, I shall just go round the town and say—”

“Silence, you scoundrel!” cried Hallam fiercely; and he caught his unpleasant visitor by the arm.

Just then James Thickens entered, as quietly as a shadow, taking everything in at a glance, but without evincing any surprise.

“Think yourself lucky, sir,” continued Hallam aloud, “that I do not have you locked up. Mr Thickens, see this man off the premises.”

Then, in a whisper that his visitor alone could hear, and with a meaning look:

“Be quiet and go. Come to my rooms to-night.”

Volume One—Chapter Four.

Drawing a Dog’s Teeth.

“I think that’s all, Mr Hallam, sir,” said Mrs Pinet, looking plump, smiling, and contented, as she ran her eyes over the tea-table in the bank manager’s comfortably-furnished room—“tea-pot, cream, salt, pepper, butter, bread,”—she ran on below her breath in rapid enumeration, “why, bless my heart, I didn’t bring the sauce!”

“Yes, that’s all, Mrs Pinet,” said the manager in his gravely-polite manner.

“But, begging your pardon, it is not, sir; I forgot the sauce.”

“Oh! never mind that to-night.”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir, I would rather,” said plump, pleasant-faced Mrs Pinet, who supplemented a small income by letting apartments; and before she could be checked she hurried out, to return at the end of a few minutes, bearing a small round bottle.

“And King of Oude,” said the little woman. “Shall I take the cover, sir?”

“If you please, Mrs Pinet?”

“Which it’s a pleasure to wait upon such a thorough gentleman,” said Mrs Pinet to herself as she trotted back to her own region, leaving Hallam gazing down at the homely, pleasant meal.

He threw himself into a chair, poured out a cup of the tea, cooled it by the addition of some water from a bottle on a stand, and drank it hastily. Then, sitting back, he seemed to be thinking deeply, and finally drew up to the table, but turned from the food in disgust.

“Pah!” he ejaculated; but returned to his chair, pulled the loaf in half, and then cut off two thick slices, hacked the meat from the bones of two hot steaming chops and took a pat of the butter to lay upon one of the slices of bread. This done, his eye wandered round the room for a moment or two, and he rose and hastily caught up a newspaper, rolled the bread and meat therein, and placed the packet on a shelf before pouring out a portion of the tea through the window and then giving the slop-basin and cup the appearance of having been used. This done, he sat back in his chair to think, and remained so for quite half-an-hour, when Mrs Pinet came with an announcement for which he was quite prepared.

“A strange man, sir,” said the landlady, looking troubled and smoothing down her apron, “a strange young man, sir. I’m afraid, sir—”

“Afraid, Mrs Pinet?”

“I mean, sir, I’m afraid he’s a tramp, sir; but he said you told him to come.”

“I’m afraid, too, that he is a tramp, Mrs Pinet, poor fellow! But it’s quite right, I did tell him to come. You can show him in.”

“In—in here, sir?”

“Yes, Mrs Pinet. He has been unfortunate, poor fellow! and has come to ask for help.”

Mrs Pinet sighed, mentally declared that Mr Hallam was a true gentleman, and introduced shabby, broken-down and dejected Stephen Crellock.

Hallam did not move nor raise his eyes, while the visitor gave a quick, furtive look round at all in the room, and Mrs Pinet’s departing footsteps sounded quite loud. Then a door was heard to close, and Hallam turned fiercely upon his visitor.

“Now, you scoundrel—you miserable gaol-bird, what do you mean by coming to me?”

“Mean by coming? I mean you to do things right. If you’d had your dues you’d have been where I was; only you played monkey and made me cat.”

“What?”

“And I had my paws burned while you got the chestnuts.”

“You scoundrel!” cried Hallam, rushing to the fireplace and ringing sharply, “I’ll have the constable and put a stop to this.”

“No, no, no, don’t, don’t, Rob. I’ll do anything you like; I won’t say anything,” gasped the visitor piteously, “only: don’t send for the constable.”

“Indeed but I will,” cried Hallam fiercely, as he walked to the door: but his visitor made quite a leap, fell at his feet, and clung to his legs.

“No, no, don’t, don’t,” he cried hoarsely, and Hallam shook him off, opened the door, and called out:

“Never mind, now; I’ll ring in a few minutes.”

He closed the door and stood scowling at his visitor.

“I did not think you’d be so hard on a poor fellow when he was down, Hallam,” he whimpered, “I didn’t, ’pon my honour.”

“Your honour, you dog, you gaol-bird,” cried Hallam in a low, angry voice. “How dare you come down and insult me!”

“I—thought you’d help me, that you’d lend your old friend a hand now you’re so well off, while I am in a state like this.”

“And did you come in the right way, you dog, bullying and threatening me, thinking to frighten me, just as if you could find a soul to take any notice of a word such a blackguard as you would say? But there, I’ve no time to waste; I’ve done wrong in bringing you here. Go and tell everybody in the town what you please, how I was in the same bank with you in London and you were given into custody for embezzlement, and at your trial received for sentence two years’ imprisonment.”

“Yes, when if I had been a coward and spoken out—”

Hallam made a move towards him, when the poor, weak, broken-down wretch cowered lower.

“Don’t, Rob; don’t, old man,” he cried piteously. “I’ll never say a word. I’ll never open my lips. You know I wouldn’t be such a coward, bad as I am. But you will help a fellow, won’t you?”

“Help you? What, have you come to me for blackmail? Why should I help you?”

“Because we were old friends, Hallam. Because I always looked up to you, and did what you told me; and you don’t know what it has been, Rob, you don’t indeed! I used to be a strong fellow, but this two years have brought me down till I’m as thin and weak as you see me. I’m like a great girl; least thing makes me cry and sob, so that I feel ashamed of myself!”

“Ashamed? You?” cried Hallam scornfully.

“Yes, I do, ’pon my word, Rob. But you will help me, won’t you?”

“No. Go to the constable’s place, and they’ll give you an order for the workhouse. Be off, and if you ever dare to come asking for me again, I’ll send for the officer at once.”

“But—but you will give me a shilling or two, Hallam,” said the miserable wretch. “I’m half-starved.”

“You deserve to be quite starved! Now go.”

“But, Hallam, won’t you believe me, old fellow? I want to be honest now—to do the right thing.”

“Go and do it, then,” said Hallam contemptuously. “Be off.”

“But give me a chance, old fellow; just one.”

“I tell you I’ll do nothing for you,” cried Hallam fiercely. “On the strength of your having been once respectable, if you had come to me humbly I’d have helped you, but you came down here to try and frighten me with your noise and bullying. You thought that if you came to the bank you would be able to dictate all your own terms; but you have failed, Stephen Crellock: so now go.”

“But, Rob, old fellow, I was so—so hard up. You don’t know.”

“Are you going before I send for the constable?”

“Yes, yes, I’m going,” said the miserable wretch, gathering himself up. “I’m sorry I came to you, Hallam. I thought you would have helped a poor wretch, down as I am.”

“And you found out your mistake. A man in my position does not know a gaol-bird.”

There was a flash from the sunken eyes, and a quick gesture, but the flash died out, and the gesture seemed to be cut in half. Two years’ hard labour in one of His Majesty’s gaols had pretty well broken the weak fellow’s spirit. He stepped to the door, glanced round the comfortable room, uttered a low moan, and was half out, when Hallam uttered sharply the one word “Stop!”

His visitor paused, and looked eagerly round upon him.

“Look here, Stephen Crellock,” he said, “I don’t like to see a man like you go to the dogs without giving him a chance. There, come back and close the door!”

The poor wretch came back hurriedly, and made a snatch at Hallam’s hand, which was withdrawn.

“No, no, wait till you’ve proved yourself an honest man,” he said.

Crellock’s eyes flashed again, but, as before, the flash died out at once, and he stood humbly before his old fellow clerk.

Hallam remained silent for a few moments, and then as if he had made up his mind, he said: “I ought to hand you over to the constable, that is, if I did my duty as manager of Dixons’ Bank, and a good member of society; but I can’t forget that you were once a smart, gentlemanly-looking young fellow, who slipped and fell.”

Crellock stood bent and humbled, staring at him in silence.

“I’m going to let heart get the better of discipline,” continued Hallam, “and to-night I’m going to give you five guineas to get back to London and make a fresh start; and till that fresh start is made, and you can do without it, I’m going to give you a pound a week, if asked for by letter humbly, and in a proper spirit.”

“Rob!”

“There, there; no words. I don’t want thanks. I know I’m doing wrong, and I hope my weakness will not prove my punishment.”

“It shan’t, Rob; it shan’t,” faltered the poor shivering wretch, who had hard work to keep back his tears.

“There are four guineas, there’s a half, and there are ten shillings in silver. Now go to some decent inn—here is some food for present use—get a bed, and to-morrow morning catch the coach, and get back to London to seek work.”

Hallam handed him the parcel he had made.

“I will, Rob; I will, Mr Hallam, sir, and may—”

“There, that will do,” said Hallam, interrupting him. “Prove all your gratitude by making yourself independent as soon as you can. There, you see you have not frightened me into bribing you to be silent.”

“No, no, sir. Oh, no, I see that!” said the poor wretch dolefully. “I’m very grateful, I am, indeed, and I will try.”

“Go, then, and try,” said Hallam shortly. “Stop a moment.”

He rang his bell, and Mrs Pinet entered promptly, glancing curiously at the visitor, and then back at her lodger, who paused to give her ample time to take in the scene.

“Mrs Pinet,” he said at last, and in the coolest and most matter-of-fact way, “this poor fellow wants a lodging for the night at some respectable place, where they will not be hard upon his pocket.”

“Well, sir, then he couldn’t do better than go to Mrs Deene’s, sir. A very respectable woman, whose husband—”

“Yes, to be sure, Mrs Pinet,” said Hallam abruptly; “then you’ll show him where it is. Good-night, Stephen; don’t waste your money, and I hope you will succeed.”

“Good-night, sir, good-night,” and the dejected-looking object, thoroughly cowed by the treatment he had received, followed Hallam’s landlady to the outer door, where a short colloquy could be heard, and then there was a shuffling step passing the window, and the door closed.

“I always expected it,” said Hallam to himself, as he stood gazing straight before him; “but I’ve drawn his teeth; he won’t bite—he dare not. I think I can manage Master Stephen—I always could.” He stood thinking for a few minutes, and then said softly: “Well, what are ten or twenty pounds, or forty, if it comes to that! Yes,” he added deliberately, “I have done quite rightly, I am sure.”

Undoubtedly, as far as his worldly wisdom lay, for it did not take long for the news to run round the town that a very shabby-looking fellow had been to the bank, evidently with burglarious intentions, but that the new manager had seized and held him, while James Thickens placed the big brass blunderbuss to his head, and then turned it round and knocked him down. This was Mr Gemp’s version; but it was rather spoiled by Mrs Pinet when she was questioned, and told her story of Mr Hallam’s generous behaviour to this poor young man:

“One whom he had known in better days, my dear; and now he has quite set him up.”

Volume One—Chapter Five.

A Little Bit of News.

Time glided very rapidly by at King’s Castor, for there were few things to check his progress. People came to the market and did their business, and went away. Most of them had something to do at Dixons’ Bank, for it was the pivot upon which the affairs of King’s Castor and the neighbourhood turned. It was the centre from which radiated the commerce of the place. Pivot or axle, there it was, with a patent box full of the oil that makes matters run easily, and so trade and finance round King’s Castor seemed like some large wheel, that turned gently and easily on.

Dixons’ had a great deal to do with everybody, but Dixons’ was safe, and Dixons’ was sure. On every side you heard how that Dixons’ had taken this or that man by the hand, with the best of results. Stammers borrowed money at five per cent, when he put out that new front. Morris bought his house with Dixons’ money, and they held the deeds, so that Morris was a man of importance—one of the privileged who paid no rent. He paid interest on so many hundred pounds to Dixons’ half-yearly, but that was interest, not rent.

Old Thomas Dixon seldom came to the bank now, though he was supposed to hold the reins of government, which he declined to hand over to his junior partners, Sir Gordon Bourne and Mr Andrew Trampleasure. It was his wish that a practised manager should be engaged from London, and hence the arrival of Mr Robert Hallam, who wore a much talked-of watch, that was by accident shown to Gemp, who learned what a repeater was, and read on the inside how that it was a testimonial from Barrow, Fladgate, and Range for faithful services performed.

Barrow, Fladgate, and Range were the Lombard Street bankers, who acted as Dixons’ agents; and the news of that watch spread, and its possession was as a talisman to Robert Hallam.

Sir Gordon did not exactly take offence, for he rarely took offence at anything; but he felt slighted about the engagement of Hallam, and visited the place very little, handing over his duties to Trampleasure, who dwelt at the bank, had his private room, did all the talking to the farmers who came in, and did nothing more; but everything went smoothly and well. The new manager was the pattern of gentlemanly consideration—even to defaulters; and the main thing discussed after two years’ residence in King’s Castor was, whom would he marry?

There were plenty of wealthy farmers’ daughters in the neighbourhood; several of the tradespeople were rich in money and had marriageable girls; but to all and several Mr Hallam of the bank displayed the same politeness, and at the end of two years there was quite a feeling of satisfaction among the younger ladies of King’s Castor at the general impression, and that was, that the much-talked-of settler in their midst was not a marrying man.

The reason is simple—he could only have married one, and not all. Many were vain enough to think that the good fortune would have come to them. But now, so to speak, Mr Hallam of the bank had grown rather stale, and the interest was centred upon the new curate.

The gossips were not long in settling his fate.

“I know,” said Gemp to a great many people; “gardening, eh? He! he! he! hi! hi! hi! You wouldn’t have thought it in a parson? But, there, he’s very young!”

“Yes, he is very young, Mr Gemp,” said Mrs Pinet one morning to that worthy, who quite occupied the ground that would have been covered by a local journal. For, having retired years back from business, he had—not being a reading man—nothing whatever to do but stand at his door and see what went on. “Yes, he is very young, Mr Gemp,” said Mrs Pinet. “But poor young man, I suppose he can’t help it.”

“Help it, no! Just the age, too, when a fellow’s always thinking about love. We know better at our time of life, eh?”

Mrs Pinet, who was one of those plump and rosy ladies with nice elastic flesh, which springs up again wherever time has made a crease, so that it does not show, bridled a little, and became very much interested in her row of geraniums in the parlour window, every one of which had lately been made more ornamental by a coat of red lead over its pot. For Mrs Pinet did not yet know better. She had known better five years before, when Gemp had asked her to wed; but at the time present she was wondering whether, if Mr Thickens at the bank, where her little store of money lay, should fail, after all, to make her an offer, it was possible that Mr Robert Hallam might think it very nice to have some one to go on always taking so much care of his linen as she did, and seeing that his breakfast bacon was always nicely broiled, his coffee clear, and his dinners exactly as he liked to have them. Certainly he was a good deal younger than she was; but she did not see why the wife should not be the elder sometimes, as well as the husband.

Hence it was that Gemp’s words jarred.

“Seems rum, don’t it?” continued Gemp. “I went by the other day, and there he was with his coat off, helping Luttrell, wheeling barrows, and I’ve seen him weeding before now.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s very kind of him,” said Mrs Pinet quickly. She could not speak tartly; her physique and constitution forbade.

“Oh, yes, it’s very kind of him indeed; but he’d better be attending to his work.”

“I’m sure he works very hard in the place.”

“Oh, yes. Of course he does; but, don’t you see?”

“See? No! See what?”

“He—he—he! And you women pretend to be so sharp about these things. What does he go there gardening for?”

“Why, goodness gracious me, Mr Gemp, you don’t think—”

“Think? Why, I’m sure of it. I see a deal of what’s going on, Mrs Pinet. I never look for it, but it comes. Why, he’s always there. He helps Luttrell when he’s at home; and old mother Luttrell talks to him about her jam. That’s his artfulness; he isn’t too young for that. Gets the old girl on his side.”

“But do you really think—Why, she’s never had a sweetheart yet.”

“That we know of, Mrs P.,” said Gemp, with a meaning look.

“She never has had,” said Mrs Pinet emphatically, “or we should have known. Well, she’s very handsome, and very nice, and I hope they’ll be very happy. But do you really think it’s true?”

“True? Why, he’s always there of an evening, tootling on the flute and singing.”

“Oh, but that’s nothing; Mr Hallam goes there too, and has some music.”

“Ay, but Hallam don’t go out with her picking flowers, and botalising. I’ve often seen ’em come home together with arms full o’ rubbish; and one day, what do you think?”

“Really, Mr Gemp!”

“I dropped upon ’em down in a ditch, and when they saw me coming, they pretended that they were finding little snail-shells.”

“Snail-shells?”

“Yes, ma’am, and he pulls out a little magnifying-glass for her to look through. It may be a religious way of courting, but I say it’s disgusting.”

“Really, Mr Gemp!” said Mrs Pinet, bridling.

“Ay, it is, ma’am. I like things open and above board—a young man giving a young woman his arm, and taking her out for a walk reg’lar, and not going out in the lanes, and keeping about a yard apart.”

“But do they, Mr Gemp?”

“Yes, just to make people think there’s nothing going on. But there, ma’am, I must be off. You mustn’t keep me. I can’t stop talking here.”

“Well, really, Mr Gemp!” said his hearer, bridling again, and resenting the idea that she had detained him.

“Yes, I must go indeed. I say, though, seen any more of that chap?”

“Chap?—what chap, Mr Gemp?”

“Come now, you know what I mean. That shack: that ragged, shabby fellow—him as come to see Mr Hallam the other day?”

“Oh, the poor fellow that Mr Hallam helped?”

“To be sure—him. Been here again?” said Gemp, making a rasping noise with a rough finger on his beard.

“No, Mr Gemp.”

“No! Well, I suppose not. I haven’t seen him myself. Mornin’; can’t stop talking here.”

Mr Gemp concluded his gossips invariably in this mode, as if he resented being kept from business, which consisted in going to tell his tale again.

Mrs Pinet was left to pick a few withering leaves from her geraniums, a floricultural act which she performed rather mechanically, for her mind was a good deal occupied by Gemp’s disclosure.

“They’d make a very nice pair, that they would,” she said thoughtfully; “and how would it be managed, I wonder? He couldn’t marry himself, of course, and—oh, Mr Thickens, how you did make me jump!”

“Jump! Didn’t see you jump, Mrs Pinet,” said the clerk, smiling sadly, as if he thought Mrs Pinet’s banking account was lower than it should be.

“Well, bless the man, you know what I mean. Stealing up so quietly, like a robber or thief in the night.”

“Oh! Not come to steal, but to beg.”

“Beg, Mr Thickens? What, a subscription for something?”

“No. I was coming by. Mr Hallam wants the book on his shelf, ‘Brown’s Investor.’”

“Oh, I see. Come in, Mr Thickens!” she exclaimed warmly. “I’ll get the book.”

“Won’t come in, thank you.”

“Now do, Mr Thickens, and have a glass of wine and a bit of cake.”

The quiet, dry-looking clerk shook his head and smiled.

“Plenty of gossips in the town, Mrs Pinet, without my joining the ranks.”

“Now that’s unkind, Mr Thickens. I only wanted to ask you if you thought it true that Mr Bayle is going to marry Miss Millicent Luttrell; Mr Gemp says he is.”

“Divide what Gemp says by five, subtract half, and the remainder may be correct, ma’am.”

“Then it isn’t true?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Oh, what a tiresome, close old bank-safe of a man you are, Mr Thickens! Just like your cupboard in the bank.”

“Where I want to be, Mrs Pinet, if you will get me the book.”

“Oh, well, come inside, and I’ll get it for you directly. But it isn’t neighbourly when I wanted to ask you about fifty pounds I wish to put away.”

He followed her quickly into the parlour occupied by the manager, and then glanced sharply round.

“Have you consulted him—Mr Hallam?” he said sharply.

“No, of course not. I have always taken your advice so far, Mr Thickens. I don’t talk about my bit of money to all my friends.”

“Quite right,” he said—“quite right. Fifty pounds, did you say?”

“Yes; and I’d better bring it to Dixons’, hadn’t I?” James Thickens began to work at his smoothly-shaven face, pinching his cheeks with his long white fingers and thumb, and drawing them down to his chin, as if he wished to pare that off to a point—an unnecessary procedure, as it was already very sharp.

“I can’t do better, can I?”

The bank clerk looked sharply round the room again, his eyes lighting on the desk, books, and various ornaments, with which the manager had surrounded himself.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.

“But I don’t like keeping the money in the house, Mr Thickens. I always wake up about three, and fancy that thieves are breaking in.”

“Give it to me, then, and I’ll put it safely for you somewhere.”

“In the bank, Mr Thickens?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Give me the book. Thank you. I’ll talk to you about the money another time;” and, placing the volume under his arm, he glanced once more sharply round the room, and then went off very thoughtful and strange of aspect—veritably looking, as Mrs Pinet said, as close as the safe up at Dixons’ Bank.

Volume One—Chapter Six.

Sir Gordon is Troubled with Doubts.

First love is like furze; it is very beautiful and golden, but about and under that rich yellow there are thorns many and sharp. It catches fire, too, quickly, and burns up with a tremendous deal of crackling, and the heat is great but not always lasting.

Christie Bayle did not take this simile to heart, but a looker-on might have done so, especially such a looker-on as Robert Hallam, who visited at the doctor’s just as of old—before the arrival of the new curate, whose many calls did not seem to trouble him in the least.

All the same, though, he was man of the world enough to see the bent of Christie Bayle’s thoughts, and how quickly and strongly his love had caught and burned. For treating Gemp’s statements as James Thickens suggested, and dividing them by five, the half-quotient was quite sufficiently heavy to show that if the curate did not marry Millicent Luttrell, it would be no fault of his.

He was, as his critics said, very young. Twenty-four numbered his years, and his educational capabilities were on a par therewith; but in matters worldly and of the heart twenty would better have represented his age.

He had come down here fresh from his studious life, to find the place full of difficulties, till that evening when he found in Millicent a coadjutor, and one who seemed to take delight in helping and advising him. Then the old Midland town had suddenly become to him a paradise, and a strange eagerness seemed to pervade him.

How was he to attack such and such an evil in one of the low quarters?

He would call in at the doctor’s, and mention the matter to Miss Luttrell.

It was to find her enthusiastic, but at the same time full of shrewd common-sense, and clever suggestions which he followed out, and the way became smooth.

His means were good, for just before leaving college the death of an aunt had placed him in possession of a competency; hence he wished to be charitable, and Millicent advised him as to the best channels into which he could direct his molten gold.

Then there were the Sundays when, after getting easily and well through the service, he ascended the pulpit to commence his carefully elaborated sermon, the first sentences of which were hard, faltering, and dry, till his eyes fell upon one sweet, grave face in the middle of the aisle, watching him intently, and its effect was strange. For as their eyes met, Christie Bayle’s spirit seemed to awaken: he ceased to read the sermon. Words, sentences, and whole paragraphs were crowding in his brain eager to be spoken, and as they were spoken it was with a fire and eloquence that deeply stirred his hearers; while when, perhaps, at the very last, his eyes fell once more upon Millicent’s calm, sweet face, he would see that it was slightly flushed and her eyes were suffused.

He did not know it; but her influence stirred him in everything he did, and when he called, there was no mistaking the bright, eager look of pleasure, the friendly warmth, and the words that were almost reproachful if he had allowed three or four days to pass.

Work? No man could have worked harder or with a greater display of zeal. She would be pleased, he felt, to see how he had made changes in several matters that were foul with neglect. And it was no outer whitewashing of that which was unclean within. Christie Bayle was very young, and he had suddenly grown enthusiastic; so that when he commenced some work he never paused until it was either well in train or was done.

“You’re just the man we wanted here,” said Doctor Luttrell. “Why, Bayle, you have wakened me up. I tried all sorts of reformations years ago, but I had not your enthusiasm, and I soon wearied and jogged on in the old way. I shall have to begin now, old as I am, and see what I can do.”

“But it is shameful, papa, what opposition Mr Bayle meets with in the town,” cried Millicent warmly.

“Yes, my dear, it is. There’s a great deal of opposition to everything that is for people’s good.”

Millicent was willing enough to help, for there was something delightfully fresh and pleasant in her association with Christie Bayle.

“He’s working too hard, my dear,” the doctor said. “He wants change. He’s a good fellow. You and your mother must coax him here more, and get him out.” Bayle wanted no coaxing, for he came willingly enough to work hard with the doctor in the garden; to inspect Mrs Luttrell’s jams, and see how she soaked the paper in brandy before she tied them down; to go for walks with Millicent, or, on wet days, read German with her, or practise some instrumental or vocal duet.

How pleasantly, how happily those days glided by! Mr Hallam from the bank came just as often as of old, and once or twice seemed disposed to speak slightingly of the curate, but he saw so grave and appealing a look in Millicent’s eyes that he hastened, in his quiet, gentlemanly way, to efface the slight.

Sir Gordon Bourne, as was his custom, when not at the Hall or away with his yacht, came frequently to the doctor’s evenings, heavy with the smartest of sayings and the newest of stories from town. Gravely civil to the bank manager, a little distant to the new curate, and then, by degrees, as the months rolled by, talking to him, inviting him to dinner, placing his purse at his disposal for deserving cases of poverty, and at last becoming his fast friend.

“An uncommonly good fellow, doctor, uncommonly. Very young—yes, very young. Egad, Sir, I envy him sometimes, that I do.”

“I’m glad you like him, Sir Gordon,” cried Millicent, one day.

“Are you, my dear, are you?” he said, half sadly. “Well, why shouldn’t I? The man’s sincere. He goes about his work without fuss or pretence. He does not consider it his duty to be always preaching at you and pulling a long face; but seems to me to be doing a wonderful deal of good in a quiet way. Do you know—”

He paused, and looked from the doctor to Mrs Luttrell, and then at Millicent, half laughingly.

“Do we know what?”

“Well, I’ll confess. I’ve played chess with him, and we’ve had a rubber at whist here, and he never touched upon sacred subjects since I’ve known him, and it has had a curious effect upon me.”

“A curious effect?” said Millicent wonderingly.

“Yes, egad, it’s a fact; he makes me feel as if I ought to go and hear him preach, and if you’ll take me next Sunday, Miss Millicent, I will.”

Millicent laughingly agreed; and Sir Gordon kept his word, going to the doctor’s on Sunday morning, and walking with the ladies to church.

It is worthy of remark though, that he talked a good deal to himself as he went home, weary and uncomfortable from wearing tight boots, and bracing up.

“It won’t do,” he said. “I’m old enough to know better, and if I can see into such matters more clearly than I could twenty years ago, Bayle’s in love with her. Well, a good thing too, for I’m afraid Hallam is taken too, and—no, that would not do. I’ve nothing whatever against the fellow; a gentleman in his manners, the very perfection of a manager, but somehow I should not like to see her his wife.”

“Why?” he said after a pause.

He shook his head.

“I can’t answer that question,” he muttered; and he was as far off from the answer when six months had passed.

Volume One—Chapter Seven.

A Terrible Mistake.

“Going out for a drive?”

“Yes, Mr Bayle; and it was of no use my speaking. No end of things to see to; but the doctor would have me come with him.”

“I think the doctor was quite right, Mrs Luttrell.”

“There you are. You see, my dear? What did I tell you? Plants must have air, mustn’t they, Bayle?”

“Certainly.”

“I wish you would not talk like that, my dear. I am not a plant.”

“But you want air,” cried the doctor, giving his whip a flick, and making his sturdy cob jump.

“Oh! do be careful, my dear,” cried Mrs Luttrell nervously as she snatched at the whip.

“Oh, yes, I’ll be careful. I say, Bayle, I wish you would look in as you go by; I forgot to open the cucumber-frame, and the sun’s coming out strong. Just lift it about three inches.”

“I will,” said the curate; and the doctor drove on to see a patient half-a-dozen miles away.

“Well, you often tell me I’m a very foolish woman, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell, buttoning and unbuttoning the chaise-apron with uneasy fingers, “but I should not have done such a thing as that.”

“Thing as what?” cried the doctor.

“As to send a gentleman on to our house where Milly’s all alone. It doesn’t seem prudent.”

“What, not to ask a friend to look in and lift the cucumber-light?”

“But, with Milly all alone; and I never leave her without feeling that something is going to happen.”

“Pish! fudge! stuff!” cried the doctor. “I never did see such a woman as you are. I declare you think of nothing but courting. You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your time of life.”

“Now, you ought not to speak like that, my dear. It’s very wrong of you, for it’s not true. Of course I feel anxious about Millicent, as every prudent woman should.”

“Anxious! What is there to be anxious about? Such nonsense! Do you think Bayle is a wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

“No, of course I don’t. Mr Bayle is a most amiable, likeable young man, and I feel quite surprised how I’ve taken to him. I thought it quite shocking at first when he came, he seemed so young; but I like him now very much indeed.”

“And yet you would not trust him to go to the house when we were away. For shame, old lady! for shame!”

“I do wish you would not talk to me like that, my dear. I never know whether you are in earnest or joking.”

“Now, if it had been Hallam, you might have spoken.—Ah! Betsy, what are you shying at?—Keep that apron fastened, will you? What are you going to do?”

“I was only unfastening it ready—in case I had to jump out,” faltered Mrs Luttrell.

“Jump out! Why, mother! There, you are growing into quite a nervous old woman. You stop indoors too much.”

“But is there any danger, my dear?”

“Danger! Why, look for yourself. The mare saw a wheelbarrow, and she was frightened. Don’t be so silly.”

“Well, I’ll try not,” said Mrs Luttrell, smoothing down the cloth fold over the leather apron, but looking rather flushed and excited as the cob trotted rapidly over the road. “You were saying, dear, something about Mr Hallam.”

“Yes. What of him?”

“Of course we should not have sent him to the house when Milly was alone.”

“Humph! I suppose not. I say, old lady, you’re not planning match-making to hook that good-looking cash-box, are you?”

“What, Mr Hallam, dear? Oh, don’t talk like that.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor, making the whiplash whistle about the cob’s ears; “you are not very fond of him, then?”

“Well, no, dear, I can’t say I am. He’s very gentlemanly, and handsome, and particular, but somehow—”

“Ah!” said the doctor, with a dry chuckle, “that’s it—‘somehow.’ That’s the place where I stick. No, old lady, he won’t do. I was a bit afraid at first; but he seems to keep just the same: makes no advances. He wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, dear me, no!” cried Mrs Luttrell, with quite a shudder.

“Why not?” said the doctor sharply; “don’t you like him?”

“Perhaps it would not be just to say so,” said Mrs Luttrell nervously, “but I’m glad Milly does not seem to take to him.”

“So am I. Curate would be far better, eh?”

“And you charge me with match-making, my dear! It is too bad.”

“Ah! well, perhaps it is; but don’t you think—eh?”

“No,” said Mrs Luttrell, “I do not. Millicent is very friendly to Mr Bayle, and looks upon him as a pleasant youth who has similar tastes to her own. And certainly he is very nice and natural.”

“And yet you object to his going to see the girl when we are out! There, get along, Betsy; we shall never be there.”

The whip whistled round the cob’s head and the chaise turned down a pleasant woody lane, just as Christie Bayle lifted the latch and entered the doctor’s garden.

It was very beautiful there in the bright morning sunshine; the velvet turf so green and smooth, and the beds vying one with the other in brightness. There was no one in the garden, and all seemed strangely still at the house, with its open windows and flower-decked porch.

Bayle had been requested to look in and execute a commission for the doctor, but all the same he felt guilty: and though he directed an eager glance or two at the open windows, he turned, with his heart throbbing heavily, to the end of the closely-clipped yew hedge, and passed round into the kitchen-garden, and then up one walk and down another, to the sunny-sheltered top, where the doctor grew his cucumbers, and broke down with his melons every year.

There was a delicious scent from the cuttings of the lawn, which were piled round the frame, fermenting and giving out heat: and as the curate reached the glass lights, there was the interior hung with great dewdrops, which began to coalesce and run off as he raised the ends of the lights and looked in.

Puff! quite a wave of heated air, fragrant with the young growth of the plants, all looking richly green and healthy, and with the golden, starry blossoms peeping here and there.

Quite at home, Christie Bayle thrust in his arm and took out a little block of wood cut like an old-fashioned gun-carriage or a set of steps, and with this he propped up one light, so that the heat might escape and the temperature fall.

This done he moved to the next, and thrust down the light, for he had seen from the other side a glistening, irregular, iridescent streak, which told of the track of an enemy, and this enemy had to be found.

That light uttered a loud plaintive squeak as it was thrust down, a sound peculiar to the lights of cucumber-frames; and, leaning over the edge, Bayle began to peer about among the broad prickly leaves.

Yes, there was the enemy’s trail, and he must be found, for it would have been cruel to the doctor to have left such a devouring creature there.

In and out among the trailing stems, and over the soft black earth, through which the delicate roots were peeping, were the dry glistening marks, just as if someone had dipped a brush in a paint formed of pearl shells dissolved in oil, and tried to imitate the veins in a block of marble.

Yes; in and out—there it went, showing how busy the creature had been during the night, and the task was to find where it had gone to rest and sleep for the day, ready to come forth refreshed for another mischievous nocturnal prowl.

“Now where can that fellow have hidden himself?” said the follower of the trail, peering about and taking off his hat and standing it on the next light. “One of those great grey fellows, I’ll be bound. Ah, to be sure! Come out, sir.”

The tale-telling trail ended where a seed-pan stood containing some young Brussels sprouts which had attained a goodly size, and upon these the enemy had supped heartily, crawling down afterwards to sleep off the effects beneath the pan.

It was rather difficult to reach that pan, for the edge of the frame was waist-high; but it had to be done, and the slug raked out with a bit of stick.

That was it! No, it was not; the hunter could not quite reach, and had to wriggle himself a little more over and then try.

The search was earnest and successful, the depredator dying an ignominious death, crushed with a piece of potsherd against the seed-pan, and then being buried at once beneath the soil, but to a looker-on the effect was grotesque.

There was a looker-on here, advancing slowly along the path with a bunch of flowers in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other. In fact, that peculiar squeak given by the frame had attracted Millicent’s attention, at a time when she believed every one to be away.

As she approached, she became conscious of the hind quarters of a man clothed in that dark mixture that used to be popularly known as “pepper-and-salt,” standing up out of one of the cucumber-frames, and executing movements as if he were practising diving in a dry bath. Suddenly the legs subsided and sank down. Next they rose again, and kicked about, the rest of the man still remaining hidden in the frame, and then at last there was a rapid retrograde motion, and Christie Bayle emerged, hot, dishevelled, but triumphant for a moment, then scarlet with confusion and annoyance as he hastily caught up his hat, clapped it on, but hurriedly took it off and bowed.

“Miss Luttrell!” he exclaimed.

“Mr Bayle!” she cried, forbearing to smile as she saw his confusion. “I heard the noise and wondered what it could be.”

“I—I met your father,” he said, hastily adjusting the light; “he asked me to open the frames. A tiresome slug—”

“It was very kind of you,” she said, holding out her hand and pressing his in her frank, warm grasp, and full of eagerness to set him at his ease. “Papa will be so pleased that you have caught one of his enemies.”

“Thank you,” he said uneasily; “it is very kind of you.”—“I’m the most unlucky wretch under the sun, always making myself ridiculous before her,” he added to himself.

“Kind of me? No, of you, to come and take all that trouble.”—“Poor fellow!” she thought, “he fancies that I am going to laugh at him.”—“I’ve been so busy, Mr Bayle: I’ve copied out the whole of that duet. When are you coming in to try it over?”

“Do you wish me to try it with you?” he said rather coldly.

“Why, of course. There are no end of pretty little passages solo for the flute. We must have a good long practice together before we play in public.”

“You’re very kind and patient with me,” he said, as he gazed at the sweet calm face by his side.

“Nonsense,” she cried. “I’m cutting a few flowers for Miss Heathery; she is the most grateful recipient of a present of this kind that I know.”

They were walking back towards the house as she spoke, and from time to time Millicent stopped to snip off some flower, or to ask her companion to reach one that grew on high.

In a few minutes she had set him quite at his ease and they were talking quietly about their life, their neighbours, about his endeavours to improve the place; and yet all the time there seemed to him to be an undercurrent in his life, flowing beneath that surface talk. The garden was seen through a medium that tinted everything with joy; the air he breathed was perfumed and intoxicating; the few bird-notes that came from time to time sounded more sweetly than he had ever heard them before; and, hardly able to realise it himself, life—existence, seemed one sweetly calm, and yet paradoxically troubled delight.

His heart was beating fast, and there was a strange sense of oppression as he loosed the reins of his imagination for a moment; but the next, as he turned to gaze at the innocent, happy, unruffled face, so healthful and sweet, with the limpid grey eyes ready to meet his own so frankly, the calm came, and he felt that he could ask no greater joy than to live that peaceful life for ever at her side.

It would be hard to tell how it happened. They strolled about the garden till Millicent laughingly said that it would be like trespassing on her father’s carte blanche to cut more flowers, and then they went through the open French window into the drawing-room, where he sat near her, as if intoxicated by the sweetness of her voice, while she talked to him in unrestrained freedom of her happy, contented life, and bade him not to think he need be ceremonious there.

Yes, it would be hard to tell how it happened. There was one grand stillness without, as if the ardent sunshine had drunk up all sound but the dull, heavy throb of his heart, and the music of that sweet voice which now lulled him to a sense of delicious repose, now made every nerve and vein tingle with a joy he had never before known.

It had been a mystery to him in his student life. Books had been his world, and ambition to win a scholarly fame his care. Now it had by degrees dawned upon him that there was another, a greater love than that, transcending it so that all that had gone before seemed pitiful and small. He had met her, her voice would be part of his life from henceforth, and at last—how it came about he could not have told—he was standing at her side, holding her hands firmly in his own, and saying in low and eager tones that trembled with emotion:

“Millicent, I love you—my love—my love!”

For a few moments Millicent Luttrell stood motionless, gazing wonderingly at her companion as he bent down over her hands and pressed his lips upon them.

Then, snatching them away, her soft creamy face turned to scarlet with indignation, but only for this to fade as she met his eyes, and read there the earnest look he gave her, and his act from that moment ceased to be the insult she thought at first.

“Miss Luttrell!” he said.

“Hush! don’t speak to me,” she cried.

He took a step forward, but she waved him back, and for a few moments sobbed passionately, struggling hard the while to master her emotion.

“Have I offended you?” he panted. “Dear Millicent, listen to me. What have I done?”

“Hush!” she cried. “It is all a terrible mistake. What have I done?”

There was a pause, and the deep silence seemed to be filled now with strange noises. There was a painful throbbing of the heart, a singing in the ears, and life was all changed as Millicent at last mastered her emotion, and her voice seemed to come to the listener softened and full of pity as if spoken by one upon some far-off shore, so calm, so grave and slow, so impassionately the words fell upon his ear.

Such simple words, and yet to him like the death-knell of all his hope in life.

Volume One—Chapter Eight.

Crossed in Love.

“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”

He looked piteously in the handsome pale young face before him, his heart sinking, and a feeling of misery, such as he had never before known, chilling him so that he strove in vain to speak.

The words were not cruel, they were not marked with scorn or contempt. There was no coquetry—no hope. They were spoken in a voice full of gentle sympathy, and there was tender pity in every tone, and yet they chilled him to the heart.

“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”

It needed no look to endorse those words, and yet it was there, beaming upon him from those sweet, frank eyes that had filled again with tears which she did not passionately dash aside, but which brimmed and softly dropped upon the hands she clasped across her breast.

He saw plainly enough that it had all been a dream, his dream of love and joy; that he had been too young to read a woman’s heart aright, and that he had taken her little frank kindnesses as responses to his love; and he needed no explanations, for the tones in which she uttered those words crushed him, till as he stood before her in those painful moments, he realised that the deathblow to all his hopes had come.

He sank back in his chair as she stood before him, gazing up at her in so boyish and piteous a manner that she spoke again.

“Indeed, indeed, Mr Bayle, I thought our intimacy so pleasant, I was so happy with you.”

“Then I may hope,” he cried passionately. “Millicent, dear Millicent, all my life has been spent in study; I have read so little, I never thought of love till I saw you, but it has grown upon me till I can think only of you—your words, the tones of your voice, your face, all are with me always, with me now. Millicent, dear Millicent, it is a man’s first true love, and you could give me hope.”

“Oh, hush! hush!” she said gently, as she held out her hand to him, which he seized and covered with his kisses, till she withdrew it firmly, and shook her head. “I am more pained than I can say,” she said softly. “I tell you I never thought of such a thing as this.”

“But you will,” he said, “Millicent, my love!”

“Mr Bayle,” she said, with some attempt at firmness, “if I have ever by my thoughtlessness made you think I cared for you, otherwise than as a very great friend, forgive me.”

“A friend!” he cried bitterly.

“Yes, as a friend. Is friendship so slight a thing that you speak of it like that?”

“Yes,” he cried; “at a time like this, when I ask for bread and you give me a stone.”

“Oh, hush!” she said again softly; and there was a sad smile through her tears. “I should be cruel if I did not speak to you plainly and firmly. Mr Bayle, what you ask is impossible.”

“You despise me,” he cried passionately, “because I am so boyish—so young.”

“No,” she said gently, as she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Let me speak to you as an elder sister might.”

“A sister!” he cried angrily.

“Yes, as a sister,” replied Millicent gently. “Christie Bayle, it was those very things in you that attracted me first. I never had a brother; but you, with your frank and free-hearted youthfulness, your genuine freshness of nature, seemed so brotherly, that my life for the past few months has been brighter than ever. Our reading, our painting, our music—Oh, why did you dash all these happy times away?”

“Because I am not a boy,” he cried angrily; “because I am a man—a man who loves you. Millicent, will you not give me hope?”

There was a pause, during which she stood gazing right over his head as he still sat there with outstretched hands, which he at last dropped with a gesture of despair.

“No,” she said at last; “I cannot give you hope. It is impossible.”

“Then you love some one else,” he cried with boyish anger. “Oh, it is cruel. You led me on to love you, and now, in your coquettish triumph, you throw me aside for some other plaything of the hour.”

Millicent’s brow contracted, and a half-angry look came into her eyes.

“This talk to me of brotherly feeling and of being a sister, is it to mock me? It is as I thought,” he cried passionately, “as I have heard, with you handsome women; you who delight in giving pain, in trifling with a weak, foolish fellow’s heart, so that you may bring him to your feet.”

“Christie—”

“No,” he raged, as he started to his feet, “don’t speak to me like that. I will not be led on again. Enjoy your triumph, but let it be made bitter by the knowledge that you have wrecked my life.”

“Oh, hush! hush! hush!” she said softly. “You are not yourself, Christie Bayle, or you would not speak to me like this. You know that you are charging me with that which is not true. How can you be so cruel?”

“Cruel? It is you,” he cried passionately. “But, there, it is all over. I shall leave here at once. I wish I had never seen the town.”

“Christie,” she said gently, “listen to me. Be yourself and go home, and think over all this. I cannot give you what you ask. Come, be wise and manly over this disappointment. Go away for a week, and then come back to me, and let our pleasant old friendship be resumed. You give me pain, indeed you do, by this outburst. It is so unlike you.”

“Unlike me? Yes, you have nearly driven me mad.”

“No, no. No, no,” she said tenderly. “Be calm. Indeed and indeed, I have felt as warm and affectionate to you of late as a sister could feel for a brother. I have felt so pleased to see how you were winning your way here amongst the people; and when I have heard a light or contemptuous utterance about you, it has made me angry and ready to speak in your defence.”

“Yes, I know,” he cried; “and it is this that taught me that you must care for me—must love me.”

“Cannot a woman esteem and be attached to a youth without loving him?”

“Youth! There! You treat me as if I were a boy,” he cried angrily. “Can I help seeming so young?”

“No,” she said, taking his hand, “But you are in heart and ways very, very young, Christie Bayle. Am I to tell you again that it was this brought about our intimacy, for I found you so fresh in your young manliness, so different to the gentlemen I have been accustomed to? Come: forget all this. Let us be friends.”

“Friends? No, it is impossible,” he cried bitterly. “I know I am boyish and weak, and that is why you hold me in such contempt.”

“Contempt? Oh, no!”

“But, some day,” he pleaded, “I’ll wait—any time—”

“No, no, no,” she said flushing, “it is impossible.”

“Then,” he raged as he started up, “I am right. You love some one else. Who is it? I will know.”

“Mr Bayle!”

There was a calm queenly dignity in her look and words that checked his rage; and she saw it as he sank into the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands, and his shoulders heaving with the emotion that escaped now and then in a hoarse sob.

“Poor boy!” she said to herself as the indignation he had roused gave way to pity.

“Christie Bayle,” she said aloud, as she approached him once more, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” he cried hoarsely as he sprang up; and she started back, half frightened at his wild, haggard face. “I might have known,” he panted. “Heaven forgive you! Good-bye—good-bye for ever!” Before Millicent could speak he had reached the door, and the next minute she heard his hurried steps as he went down the street.

Volume One—Chapter Nine.

The Scales Fall from Sir Gordon’s Eyes.

Millicent stood listening till the steps had died away, and then sat down at the writing-table.

“Poor boy!” she said softly, as she passed her hand over her eyes, “I am so sorry.”

She laid down the pen, and ran over her conduct—all that she had said and done since her first meeting with the curate; but ended by shaking her head, and declaring to herself that she could find nothing in her behaviour to call for blame.

“No,” she said, rising from the table, after writing a few lines which she tore up, “I must not write to him; the wound must be left to time.”

A double knock announced a visitor, and directly after Thisbe King, the maid, ushered in Sir Gordon, who, in addition to his customary dress, wore—what was very unusual for him—a flower in his button-hole, which, with a great show of ceremony, he detached, and presented to Millicent before taking his seat.

As a rule he was full of chatty conversation, but, to Millicent’s surprise, he remained perfectly silent, gazing straight before him through the window.

“Is anything the matter, Sir Gordon?” said Millicent at last. “Papa is out, but he will not be long.” These words roused him, and he smiled at her gravely.

“No, my dear Miss Luttrell,” he said, “nothing is wrong; but at my time of life, when a man has anything particular to say, he weighs it well—he brings a good deal of thought to bear. I was trying to do this now.”

“But mamma is out too,” said Millicent.

“Yes, I know,” he replied, “and therefore I came on to speak to you.”

“Sir Gordon!”

“My dear Miss Luttrell—there, I have known you so long that I may call you my dear child—I think you believe in me?”

“Believe in you, Sir Gordon?”

“Yes, that I have the instincts, I hope, of a gentleman; that I am your father’s very good friend; and that I reverence his child.”

“Oh yes, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent, placing her hand in his, as he extended it towards her.

“That is well, then,” he said; and there was another pause, during which he gazed thoughtfully at the hand he held for a few moments, and then raised it to his lips and allowed it afterwards to glide away.

Millicent flushed slightly, for, in spite of herself, the thought of her visitor’s object began to dawn upon her, though she refused to believe it at first.

“Let me see,” he said at last, “time slides away so fast. You must be three-and-twenty now.”

“I thought a lady’s age was a secret, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent smiling.

“To weak, vain women, yes, my child; but your mind is too clear and candid for such subterfuges as that. Twenty-three! Compared with that, I am quite an old man.”

Millicent’s colour began to deepen, but she made a brave effort to be calm, mastered her emotion, and sat listening to the strange wooing that had commenced.

“I am going to speak very plainly,” her visitor said, gazing wistfully in her eyes, “and to tell you, Millicent, that for the past five years I have been your humble suitor.”

“Sir Gordon!”

“Hush! hush! On the strength of our old friendship hear me out, my child. I will not say a word that shall wilfully give you pain; I only ask for a hearing.”

Millicent sank back in her chair, clasped her hands, and let them rest in her lap, for she was too agitated to speak. The events of an hour or two before had unhinged her.

“For five years I have been nursing this idea in my breast,” he continued, “one day determining to speak, and then telling myself that I was weak and foolish, that the thing was impossible; and then, as you know, I have gone away for months together in my yacht. I will tell you what I have said to myself: ‘You are getting well on in life; she is young and beautiful. The match would not be right. Some day she will form an attachment for some man suited to her. Take your pleasure in seeing the woman you love happier than you could ever make her.’”

This was a revelation to Millicent, whose lips parted, and whose troubled eyes were fixed upon the speaker.

“The years went on, my child,” continued Sir Gordon, “and I kept fancying that the man had come, and that the test of my love for you was to be tried. I was willing to suffer—for your sake—to see you happy; and though I was ready to offer you wealth, title, and the tender affection of an elderly man, I put it aside, striving to do my duty.”

“Sir Gordon, I never knew of all this.”

“Knew!” he said, with a smile, “no: I never let you know. Well, my child, not to distress you too much, I have waited; and, as you knew, I have seen your admirers flitting about you, one by one, all these years; and I confess it, with a sense of delight I dare not dwell upon, I have found that not one of these butterflies has succeeded in winning our little flower. She has always been heart-whole and—There, I dare not say all I would. At last, with a pang that I felt that I must suffer, I saw, as I believed, that the right man had come, in the person of our friend, Christie Bayle. It has been agony to me, though I have hidden it beneath a calm face, I hope, and I have fought on as I saw your intimacy increase. For, I said to myself, it is right. He is well-to-do; he is young and handsome; he is true and manly; he is all that her lover should be; and, with a sigh, I have sat down telling myself that I was content, and, to prove myself, I have made him my friend. Millicent Luttrell, he is a true-hearted, noble fellow, and he loves you.”

Millicent half rose, but sank back in her chair, and her face grew calm once more.

“I am no spy upon your actions or upon those of Christie Bayle, my child; but I know that he has been to you this morning; that he has asked you to be his wife, and that you have refused him.”

“Has Mr Bayle been so wanting in delicacy,” said Millicent, with a flush of anger, “that he has told you this?”

“No, no. Pray do not think thus of him. He is too noble—too manly a fellow to be guilty of such a weakness. There are things, though, which a man cannot conceal from a jealous lover’s eyes, and this was one.”

“Jealous—lover!” faltered Millicent.

“Yes,” he said; “old as I am, my child, I must declare myself as your lover. This last rejection has given me hopes that may be wild—hopes which prompted me to speak as I do now.”

“Sir Gordon!” cried Millicent, rising from her seat; but he followed her example and took her hand.

“You will listen to me, my child, patiently,” he said in low earnest tones; “I must speak now. I know the difference in our ages; no one better; but if the devotion of my life, the constant effort to make you happy can bring the reward I ask, you shall not repent it. I know that some women would be tempted by the title and by my wealth, but I will not even think it of you. I know, too, that some would, in their coquetry, rejoice in bringing such a one as I to their feet, and then laugh at him for his pains. I fear nothing of the kind from you, Millicent, for I know your sweet, candid nature. But tell me first, do you love Christie Bayle?”

“As a sister might love a younger brother, who seemed to need her guiding hand,” said Millicent calmly. “Ah!”

It was a long sigh full of relief; and then taking her hand once more, Sir Gordon said softly:

“Millicent, my child, will you be my wife?”

The look of pain and sorrow in her eyes gave him his answer before her lips parted to speak, and he dropped the hand and stood there with the carefully-got-up look of youthfulness or early manhood seeming to fade from him. In a few minutes he appeared to have aged twenty years; his brow grew full of lines, his eyes seemed sunken, and there was a hollowness of cheek that had been absent before.

He stretched out his hand to the table, and slowly sat down, bending forward till his arms rested upon his knees and his hands hung down nerveless between.

“You need not speak, child,” he said sadly. “It has all been one of my mistakes. I see! I see!”

“Sir Gordon, indeed, indeed I do feel honoured!”

“No, no! hush, hush!” he said gently. “It is only natural. It was very weak and foolish of me to ask you; but when this love blinds a man, he says and does foolish things that he repents when his eyes are open. Mine are open now—yes,” he said, with a sad smile, “wide open; I can see it all. But,” he added quickly as he rose, “you are not angry with me, my dear?”

“Angry? Sir Gordon!”

“No: you are not,” he said, taking her hand and patting it softly. “Is it not strange that I could see you so clearly and well, and yet be so blind to myself? Ah, well, it is over now. I suppose no man is perfect, but in my conceit I did not think I could have been so weak. If I had not seen Bayle this morning and realised what had taken place, I should not have let my vanity get the better of me as I did.”

“All this is very, very painful to me, Sir Gordon.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said quickly. “Come, then, this is our little secret, my child. You will keep it—the secret of my mistake? I do love you very much, but you have taught me what it is. I am getting old and not so keen of wits as I was once upon a time. I thought it was man’s love for woman; but you are right, my dear, it is the love that a tender father might bear his child.”

He took her unresistingly in his arms, and kissed her forehead reverently before turning away, to walk to the window and stand gazing out blindly, till a firm step with loudly creaking boots was heard approaching, when Sir Gordon slowly drew away back into the room.

Then the gate clanged, the bell rang, and a change came over Sir Gordon as Millicent ran to the drawing-room door.

“Not at home, Thisbe, to any one,” she said hastily. “I am particularly engaged.”

She closed the door quietly, and came back into the room to stand there, now flushed, now pale.

Sir Gordon took her hand softly, and raised it to his lips.

“Thank you, my child,” he said tenderly. “It was very kind and thoughtful of you. I could not bear for any one else to see me in my weakness.”

He was smiling sadly in her face, when he noticed her agitation, and at that moment the deep rich tones of Hallam’s voice were heard speaking to Thisbe.

The words were inaudible, but there was no mistaking the tones, and at that moment it was as if the last scale of Sir Gordon’s love blindness had fallen away, and he let fall Millicent’s hand with a half-frightened look.

“Millicent, my child!” he cried in a sharp whisper. “No, no! Tell me it isn’t that!”

She raised her eyes to his, looking pale, and shrinking from him as if guilty of some sin, and he flushed with anger as he caught her by the wrist.

“I give up—I have given up—every hope,” he said, hoarsely, “but I cannot kill my love, even if it be an old man’s, and your happiness would be mine. Tell me, then—I have a right to know—tell me, Millicent, my child, it is not that?”

Millicent’s shrinking aspect passed away, and a warm flush flooded her cheeks as she drew herself up proudly and looked him bravely in the eyes.

“It is true, then?” he said huskily.

Millicent did not answer with her lips; but there was a proud assent in her clear eyes as she met her questioner’s unflinchingly, while the deep-toned murmur ceased, the firm step was heard upon the gravel, and the door closed.

“Then it is so?” he said in a voice that was almost inaudible. “Hallam! Hallam! How true that they say love is blind! Oh, my child, my child!”

His last words were spoken beneath his breath, and he stood there, old and crushed by the fair woman in the full pride of her youth and beauty, both listening to the retiring step as Hallam went down the road.

No words could have told so plainly as her eyes the secret of Millicent Luttrell’s heart.

Volume One—Chapter Ten.

Thisbe Gives Her Experience.

Thisbe King was huffy; and when Thisbe King was huffy, she was hard.

When Thisbe was huffy, and in consequence hard, it was because, as she expressed it, “Things is awkward;” and when things were like that, Thisbe went and made the beds.

Of course the beds did not always want making; but more than once after an encounter with Mrs Luttrell upon some domestic question, where it was all mild reproof on one side, acerbity on the other, Thisbe had been known to go up to the best bedroom, drag a couple of chairs forward, and relieve her mind by pulling the bed to pieces, snatching quilt and blankets and sheets off over the chairs, and engaging in a furious fight with pillows, bolster, and feather bed, hitting, punching, and turning, till she was hot; and then, having thoroughly conquered the soft, inanimate objects and her own temper at the same time, the bed was smoothly re-made, and Thisbe sighed.

“I shall have to part with Thisbe,” Mrs Luttrell often used to say to husband and daughter; but matters went no farther: perhaps she knew in her heart that Thisbe would not go.

The beds had all been made, and there had been no encounter with Mrs Luttrell about any domestic matter relating to spreading a cloth in the drawing-room before the grate was blackleaded, or using up one loaf in the kitchen before a second was cut. In fact, Thisbe had been all smiles that morning, and had uttered a few croaks in the kitchen, which she did occasionally under the impression that she was singing; but all at once she had rushed upstairs like the wind in winter when the front door was opened, and to carry out the simile, she had dashed back a bedroom door, and closed it with a bang.

This done, she had made a bed furiously—so furiously that the feathers flew from a weak corner, and had to be picked up and tucked in again. After this, red-faced and somewhat refreshed, Thisbe pulled a housewife out of a tremendous pocket like a saddle-bag, threaded a needle, and sewed up the failing spot.

“It’s dreadful, that’s what it is!” she muttered at last, “and I’m going to speak my mind.”

She did not speak her mind then, but went down to her work, and worked with her ears twitching like those of some animal on the qui vive for danger; and when Thisbe twitched her ears there was a corresponding action in the muscles about the corners of her mouth, which added to the animal look, for it suggested that she might be disposed to bite.

Some little time afterwards she walked into the drawing-room, looking at its occupant in a soured way.

“Letter for you, Miss Milly,” she said.

“A note for me, Thisbe?” And Millicent took the missive which Thisbe held with her apron to keep it clean.

“Mr Bayle give it me hissen.”

Millicent’s face grew troubled, and Thisbe frowned, and left the room shaking her head.

The note was brief, and the tears stood in Millicent’s eyes as she read it twice.

“Pity me. Forgive me. I was mad.”

“Poor boy!” she said softly as she refolded it and placed it in her desk, to stand there, thoughtful and with her brow wrinkled.

She was in the bay-window, and after standing there a few minutes, her face changed; the troubled look passed away as a steady, regular step was heard on the gravel path beyond the hedge. There was the faint creaking noise, too, at every step of the hard tight boots, and as their wearer passed, Millicent looked up and returned the salute: for a glossy hat was raised, and he who bowed passed on, leaving her with her colour slightly heightened and an eager look in her eyes.

“Any answer, miss?”

Millicent turned quickly, to see that Thisbe had returned.

“Answer?”

“Yes, miss. The note.”

“Is Mr Bayle waiting?”

“No, miss; but I thought you might want to send him one, and I’m going out and could leave it on the way.”

“No, Thisbe, there is no answer.”

“Are you sure, miss?”

“Sure, Thisbe? Of course.”

Thisbe stood pulling the hem of her apron and making it snap.

“Oh! I would send him a line, miss. I like Mr Bayle. For such a young man, the way he can preach is wonderful. But, Miss Milly,” she cried with a sudden, passionate outburst, “please, don’t—don’t do that!”

“What do you mean, Thisbe?”

“I can’t abear it, miss. It frightens and worries me.”

“Thisbe!”

“I can’t help it, miss. I’m a woman too, and seven years older than you are. Don’t, please don’t, take any notice of me. There, don’t look cross at me, miss. I must speak when I see things going wrong.”

“What do you mean?” cried Millicent, crimsoning. “I mean I used to lead you about when you was a little thing and keep you out o’ the puddles when the road was clatty, and though you never take hold o’ my hand now, I must speak when you’re going wrong.”

“Thisbe, this is a liberty!”

“I can’t help it, Miss Milly; I see him coming by in his creaking boots, and taking off his hat, and walking by here, when he has no business, and people talking about it all over the town.”

“And in this house. Thisbe, you are forgetting your place.”

“Oh, no, I’m not, miss. I’m thinking about you and Mr Hallam, miss. I know.”

“Thisbe, mamma and I have treated you more as a friend than a servant; but—”

“That’s it, miss; and I shouldn’t be a friend if I was to stand by and see you walk raight into trouble without a word.”

“Thisbe!”

“I don’t care, Miss Milly, I will speak. Don’t have nowt to do wi’ him; he’s too handsome; never you have nowt to do wi’ a handsome man.”

Millicent’s ordinarily placid face assumed a look foreign to it—a look of anger and firmness combined; but she compressed her lips, as if to keep back words she would rather not utter, and then smiled once more.

“Ah, you may laugh, Miss Milly; but it’s nothing to laugh at. And there’s Mr Bayle, too. You’re having letters from he.”

Millicent’s face changed again; but she mastered her annoyance, and, laying her hand upon Thisbe’s shoulder, said with a smile:

“I don’t want to be angry with you, Thisbe, but you have grown into a terribly prejudiced woman.”

“Enough to make me, seeing what I do, Miss Milly.”

“Come, come, you must not talk like this.”

“Ah, now you’re beginning to coax again, as you always did when you wanted your own way; but it’s of no use, my dear, I don’t like him, and I never shall. I’d rather you’d marry old Sir Gordon; he is nice, though he do dye his hair. I don’t like him and there’s an end of it.”

“Nonsense, Thisbe!”

“No, it isn’t nonsense. I don’t like him, and I never shall.”

“But why? Have you any good reason?”

“Yes,” said Thisbe with a snort.

“What is it?”

“I told you before. He’s so horrid handsome.”

“Why, you dear, prejudiced, silly old thing!” cried Millicent, whose eyes were sparkling, and cheeks flushed.

“I don’t care if I am. I don’t like handsome men: they’re good for nowt.”

“Why, Thisbe!”

“I don’t care, they arn’t; my soldier fellow was that handsome it made you feel wicked, you were so puffed out with pride.”

“And so you were in love once, Thisbe?”

“Why, of course I was. Think I’m made o’ stone, miss? Enough to make any poor girl be in love when a handsome fellow like that, with moustache-i-ohs, and shiny eyes, and larnseer uniform making him look like a blue robin redbreast, came and talked as he did to a silly young goose such as I was then. I couldn’t help it. Why, the way his clothes fitted him was enough to win any girl’s heart—him with such a beautiful figure too! He looked as if he couldn’t be got out of ’em wi’out unpicking.”

“Think of our Thisbe falling in love with a soldier!” cried Millicent, laughing, for there was a wild feeling of joy in her heart that was intoxicating, and made her eyes flash with excitement.

“Ah, it’s very funny, isn’t it?” said Thisbe, with a vicious shake of her apron. “But it’s true. Handsome as handsome he was, and talked so good that he set me thinking always about how nice I must be. Stuffed me out wi’ pride, and what did he do then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Thisbe.”

“Borrered three pun seven and sixpence of my savings, and took my watch, as I bought at Horncastle fair, to be reggilated, and next time I see my gentleman he was walking out wi’ Dixon’s cook. Handsome is as handsome does, Miss Milly, so you take warning by me.”

“There, I will not be cross with you, Thisbe,” said Millicent, smiling. “I know you mean well.”

“And you’ll send an answer to Mr Bayle, miss?”

“There is no answer required, Thisbe,” said Millicent gravely.

“And Mr Hallam, miss?”

“Thisbe,” said Millicent gravely, “I want you always to be our old faithful friend as well as servant, but—”

She held up a warning finger, and was silent. Thisbe’s lips parted to say a few angry words; but she flounced round, and made the door speak for her in a sharp bang, after which she rushed upstairs with the intent of having a furious encounter with a bed; but she changed her mind, and on reaching her own room, sat down, put her apron to her eyes, and had what she called “a good cry.”

“Poor Miss Milly!” she sobbed at last; “she’s just about as blind as I was, and she’ll only find it out when it’s too late.”

Volume One—Chapter Eleven.

Another Evening at the Doctor’s.

“But—but I don’t like it, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell, wiping her eyes, and looking up at the doctor, as he stood rubbing his hands softly, to get rid of the harshness produced by freshly-dug earth used for potting.

“Neither do I,” said the doctor calmly.

“But why should she choose him of all men?” sighed Mrs Luttrell. “I never thought Millicent the girl to be taken by a man only for his handsome face. I was not when I was young!”

“Which is saying that I was precious ugly, eh?”

“Indeed you were the handsomest man in Castor!” cried Mrs Luttrell proudly; “but you were the cleverest too, and—dear, dear!—what a little while ago it seems!”

“Gently, gently, old lady!” said the doctor, tenderly kissing the wrinkled forehead that was raised towards him. “Well, heaven’s blessing be upon her, my dear, and may her love be as evergreen as ours.”

Mrs Luttrell rose and laid her head upon his shoulder, and stood there, with a happy, peaceful look upon her pleasant face, although it was still wet with tears.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she sighed; “and it would be so sad.”

“Ah, wife!” said the doctor, walking slowly up and down the room, with his arm about Mrs Luttrell’s waist, “it’s one of Nature’s mysteries. We can’t rule these things. Look at Milly. Some girls begin love-making at seventeen, ah, and before! and here she went calmly on to four-and-twenty untouched, and finding her pleasure in her books and music, and home-life.”

“As good and affectionate a girl as ever breathed!” cried Mrs Luttrell.

“Yes, my dear; and then comes the man, and he has but to hold up his finger and say ‘Come,’ and it is done.”

“But she might have had Sir Gordon, and he is rich, and then she would have been Lady Bourne!”

“He was too old, my dear, too old. She looked upon him like a child would look up to her father.”

“Well, then, Mr Bayle, the best of men, I’m sure; and he is well off too.”

“Too young, old lady, too young. I’ve watched them together hundreds of times. Milly always petted and patronised him, and treated him as if he were a younger brother, of whom she was very fond.”

“Heigho! Oh dear me!” sighed Mrs Luttrell. “But I don’t like him—this Mr Hallam. I never thought when Millicent was a baby that she would ever enter into an engagement like this. Can’t we break it off?”

The doctor shook his head. “I don’t like it, mother. Hallam is the last man I should have chosen for her; but we must make the best of it. He has won her; and she is not a child, but a calm, thoughtful woman.”

“Yes, that’s the worst of it,” sighed Mrs Luttrell; “she is so thoughtful and calm and dignified, that I never can look upon her now as my little girl. I always seem to be talking to a superior woman, whose judgment I must respect. But this is very sad!”

“There, there! we must not treat it like that, old lady. Perhaps we have grown to be old and prejudiced. I own I have.”

“Oh, no, no, my dear!”

“Yes, but I have. As soon as this seemed to be a certainty I began to try and find a hole in the fellow’s coat.”

“In Mr Hallam’s coat, love? Oh, you wouldn’t find that.”

“No,” said the doctor dryly, as he smiled down in the gentle old face, “not one. There, there! you must let it go! Now then, old lady, you must smile and look happy, here’s Milly coming down.”

Mrs Luttrell shook her head, and her wistful look seemed to say that she would never feel happy again; but as Millicent entered, in plain white satin, cut in the high-waisted, tight fashion of the period, and with a necklet of pearls for her only ornament, a look of pride and pleasure came into the mother’s face, and she darted a glance at her husband, which he caught and interpreted, “I will think only of her.”

“Oh, Milly!” she cried, “that necklace! what lovely pearls!”

“Robert’s present, dear. I was to wear them to-night. Are they not lovely?”

“Almost as lovely as their setting,” said the doctor to himself, as he kissed his child tenderly. “Why, Milly,” he said aloud, “you look as happy as a bird!”

She laid her cheek upon his breast, and remained silent for a few moments, with half-closed eyes. Then, raising her head, she kissed him lovingly.

“I am, father dear,” she said in a low voice, full of the calm and peaceful joy that filled her breast. “I am, father, I am, mother—so happy!” She paused, and then, laughing gently, added: “So happy I feel ready to cry.”

It was to be a quiet evening, to which a few friends were invited; but it was understood as being an open acknowledgment of Millicent’s engagement to Robert Hallam, and in this spirit the visitors came.

Miss Heathery generally arrived last at the social gatherings. It gave her entry more importance, and, at her time of life, she could not afford to dispense with adventitious aids. But there was the scent of matrimony in this little party, and she was dressed an hour too soon, and arrived first in the well-lit drawing-room.

“My darling!” she whispered, as she kissed Millicent.

That was all; but her voice and look were full of pity for the victim chosen for the next sacrifice, and she turned away towards the piano to get out her handkerchief, and drop a parting tear.

It was a big tear, one of so real and emotional a character that it brimmed over, fell on her cheekbone, and hopped into her reticule just as she was drawing open the top, and was lost in the depths within.

There was as much sorrow for herself as emotion on Millicent Luttrell’s behalf. Had not Millicent robbed her of the chance of an offer? Mr Hallam might never have proposed: but still he might.

Suddenly her heart throbbed, for the next guest arrived also unusually early, and as Thisbe held open the door for him to pass, hope told again her flattering tale to the tune that Sir Gordon might have known that she, Miss Heathery, was coming early, and had followed.

The hopeful feeling did not die at once, but it received a shock as Sir Gordon entered, looking very bright and young, to shake hands warmly with the doctor and Mrs Luttrell, to bow to Miss Heathery, and then turn to Millicent, who, in spite of her natural firmness, was a good deal agitated. She had nerved herself for these meetings, and striven to keep down their importance; but now the night had arrived, she was fain to confess that hers was a difficult task, to meet two rejected lovers, and bear herself easily before them with the husband of her choice. First there was Sir Gordon, from whom she was prepared for reproachful looks, and perhaps others marked by disappointment; while from Christie Bayle—ah, how would he behave towards her? He was so young that she trembled lest he should make himself ridiculous in his loving despair.

And now here was the first shock to be sustained, so, forcing herself to be calm, she advanced with extended hand.

“Oh,” whispered Sir Gordon, in tones that only reached Millicent’s ear, “too bad—too bad. Supplanted twice. But there, I accept my fate.” As he spoke he drew Millicent towards him, and kissed her forehead with tender reverence. “An old man’s kiss, my dear, to the child of his very dear friends. God bless you! May you be very happy with the man of your choice. May I?” He dropped her hand to draw from his breast a string of large single pearls, so regular and perfect a match that they must have cost a goodly sum. For answer Millicent turned pale as she bent towards him and he clasped the string about her neck. “There,” he said smiling, “I should have made a different choice if I had known.”

Millicent would have spoken, but her voice failed, and to add to her agony at that moment, Bayle came in, looking, as she saw at a glance, pale and somehow changed.

“He will do or say something absurd,” she said to herself as she bit her lip, and strove for composure. Then the blood seemed to rush to her heart and a pang shot through her as she realised more than if he had said a thousand things, how deeply her refusal had influenced his life.

Only four months since that day, when she had told him that they could be true friends, she speaking as an elder sister to one she looked upon as a boy. And now she felt ready to ask herself, who was this calm, grave man, who took her hand without hesitation, so perfectly at ease in his gentlemanly courtesy, and who had so thoroughly fallen into the place she had bidden him take?

“I see,” he said with a smile, “I shall not be out of order, my dear Miss Luttrell. Will you accept this little offering too?”

He was holding a brilliant diamond ring in his hand.

For answer Millicent drew her long glove from her soft, white hand, and he took it gravely, and, in the presence of all, slipped on the ring, bending over it afterwards to kiss that hand, with the chivalrous delicacy of some courtier of a bygone school, then, raising his eyes to hers, he said softly, “Millicent Luttrell, our friendship must never fail.”

Before she could say a word of thanks he had turned to speak to Mrs Luttrell, giving way to Sir Gordon Bourne, who began chatting to her pleasantly, while her eyes followed Christie Bayle’s easy gestures, as she wondered the while at the change in his manner, unable to realise the agony of soul that he had suffered in this his first great battle with self before he had obtained the mastery, wounded and changed, stepping at once, as it were, from boyhood to the position of a thoughtful man.

Hallam soon arrived, smiling and agreeable, and it was piteous to see Mrs Luttrell’s efforts to be very warm and friendly to him.

Millicent noticed it, and also that her father was quiet towards his son-in-law elect. She watched, too, the meeting between Hallam and Bayle, the former being as nearly offensive as his gentlemanly manner would allow; the latter warm, grave, and friendly.

“Has Bayle been unwell?” said Hallam the first time he was alone with Millicent.

“I have not heard,” she replied, glancing at the curate, and wondering more and more, as the evening went on, at the change.

Among others, the Trampleasures arrived, and to Miss Heathery’s grief, Mrs Trampleasure pretty well monopolised Bayle’s remarks, or else made him listen to her own.

“And what do you think of this engagement, Mr Bayle?” she said, in so audible a voice that he was afraid it would be overheard.

“They make a very handsome couple,” he replied.

“Ah, yes, handsome enough, I dare say; but good looks will not fill mouths. I wonder L. has allowed it. Mr Hallam is all very well, but he is, I may say, our servant, and if we, who are above him, find so much trouble to make both ends meet, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“But Mr Hallam has a very good salary, I presume?”

“I tell T. it is too much, and old Mr Dixon and Sir Gordon might have taken a hundred off, and let us draw it. I don’t approve of the match at all.”

“Indeed, Mrs Trampleasure,” said Bayle, who felt hurt at hearing her speak like this.

“Yes; I’m Millicent’s aunt, and I think I ought to have been consulted more—but there! it is of no use to speak to my brother; and as to Millicent—she always did just as she liked with her mother! Poor Kitty is very weak!”

“I always find Mrs Luttrell very sweet and motherly.”

“Not so motherly as I am, Mr Bayle,” said the lady bluntly. “Ah, it’s a great stress on a woman—a large family—especially when the father takes things so coolly. I shouldn’t speak to every one like this, you know, but one can talk to one’s clergyman. Do you like Mr Hallam?”

“I find him very gentlemanly.”

“Ah, yes, he’s very gentlemanly. Well, I’m sure I hope they’ll be happy; but there’s always something in married life, and you do well to keep out of it; but, of course, you are so young yet.”

“Yes,” he said, with a grave, old-looking smile, “I am so young yet.”

“You don’t know what a family is, Mr Bayle. There’s always something; when it isn’t measles it’s scarlatina, and when it isn’t scarlatina it’s boots and shoes.”

“Oh, but children are a deal of comfort, Sophia,” said the doctor, coming up after whispering to Mrs Luttrell that his sister looked grumpy.

“Some children may be, Joseph—mine are not,” sighed Mrs Trampleasure, and the doctor went back to his wife. “Ah, Mr Bayle, if I were to tell you one-half of the troubles I’ve been through I should harass you.”

“Kitty,” said the doctor, “I want everything to go well to-night. Try and coax Sophia away, she’s forcing her doldrums on Mr Bayle.”

“But how am I to get her away, dear? You know what she is.”

“Try to persuade her to taste the brandy cherries, or we shall be having her in tears. I’ll come and help you.” They walked back to where Mrs Trampleasure was still talking away hard in a querulous voice.

“Ah! you’ve come back, Joseph,” she said, cutting short her remarks to the curate to return to her complaint to her brother. “I was saying that some children are a pleasure; but it did not seem as if you could listen to me.”

“My dear Sophia, I’ll listen to you all night, but Kitty wants you to give your opinion about some brandy cherries.”

“My opinion?” said the lady loudly. “I have no opinion. I never taste such luxuries.”

Millicent could not help hearing a portion of her aunt’s querulous remarks, and, out of sheer pity for one of the recipients, she turned to her Uncle Trampleasure, who always kept on the other side of the room.

“Uncle, dear,” she said, “aunt is murmuring so. Do try and stop it.”

“Stop it, my dear?” he said smiling sadly. “Ah, if you knew your aunt as well as I do you would never check her murmurs; they carry off her ill-temper. No, no, my dear, it would be dangerous to stop it. I always let it go on.”

There was no need to check Mrs Trampleasure after all. Mr Bayle threw himself into the breach, and made her forget her own troubles by consulting her about some changes that he proposed making in the parish.

That changed the course of her thoughts, and in the intervals of the music, and often during the progress of some song, she alluded to different matters that had given her annoyance ever since she had been a girl.

It was not an agreeable duty, that of keeping Mrs Trampleasure amused, but Millicent rewarded him with a grateful smile, and Bayle was content.

There was a pleasant little supper that was announced unpleasantly just as Miss Heathery had consented to sing again, and was telling the assembly in a bird-like voice how gaily the troubadour touched his guita-h-ah, as he was hastening home from the wah.

“Supper’s ready,” said a loud, harsh voice, which cut like an arrow right through Miss Heathery’s best note.

“Now you shouldn’t, Thisbe,” said Mrs Luttrell in tones of mild reproach; but the reproof was not heard, for the door was sharply closed.

“It is only our Thisbe’s way, Mr Bayle,” whispered Mrs Luttrell; “please don’t notice it. Excellent servant, but so soon put out.”

She nodded confidentially, and then stole out on tiptoe, so as not to interrupt Miss Heathery, who went on—“singing from Palestine hither I come,” to the end.

Then words of reproof and sharp retort could be heard outside; and after a while poor Mrs Luttrell came back looking very red, to lean over the curate from behind the sofa, brooding over him as if he were a favourite chicken.

“I don’t like finding fault with the servants, Mr Bayle. Did you hear me?”

“I could not help hearing,” he said smiling.

“She does provoke me so,” continued Mrs Luttrell in a soft clucking way, that quite accorded with her brooding. “I know I shall have to discharge her.”

“She does not like a little extra trouble, perhaps. Company.”

“Oh, no; it’s not that,” said Mrs Luttrell. “She’ll work night and day for one if she’s in a good temper; but, the fact is, Mr Bayle, she does not like this engagement, and quite hates Mr Hallam.”

Bayle drew his breath hard, but he turned a grave, smiling face to his hostess.

“That’s the reason, I’m sure, why she is so awkward to-night, my dear—I beg pardon, I mean Mr Bayle,” said the old lady colouring as ingenuously as a girl, “but she pretends it is about the potatoes.”

“Potatoes?” said Bayle, who was eager to divert her thoughts.

“Yes. You see the doctor is so proud of his potatoes, and I was going to please him by having some roasted for supper and brought up in a napkin, but Thisbe took offence directly, and said that cold chicken and hot potatoes would be ridiculous, and she has been in a huff ever since.”

Just then the door opened and the person in question entered, to come straight to Mrs Luttrell, who began to tremble and look at the curate for help.

“There’s something gone wrong,” she whispered.

“Can I speak to you, please, mum?” said Thisbe, glaring at her severely.

“Well, I don’t know, Thisbe, I—”

“Let me go out and speak to Thisbe, mamma dear,” said Millicent, who had crossed the room, divining what was wrong.

“Oh, if you would, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell eagerly; and Thisbe was compelled to retreat, her young mistress following her out of the room.

“That’s very good of her, Mr Bayle,” said Mrs Luttrell, with a satisfied sigh. “Millicent can always manage Thisbe. She has such a calm, dignified way with her. Do you know she is the only one who can manage her Aunt Trampleasure when she begins to murmur. Ah, I don’t know what I shall do when she has gone.”

“You will have the satisfaction of knowing that she is happy with the man she loves.”

“I don’t know, Mr Bayle, I—Oh dear me, I ought to be ashamed of myself for speaking like this. Hush! here she is.”

In effect Millicent came back into the room to where her mother was sitting.

“Only a little domestic difficulty, Mr Bayle. Mamma, dear, it is all smoothed away, and Thisbe is very penitent.”

“And she will bring up the roast potatoes in the napkin, my dear?”

“Yes,” cried Millicent, laughing merrily, “she has retracted all her opposition, and we are to have two dishes of papa’s best.”

“In napkins, my dear?” cried Mrs Luttrell eagerly; “both in napkins?”

“Yes, mamma, in the whitest napkins she can find.” She glanced at Christie Bayle’s grave countenance, and felt her heart smite her for being so happy and joyous in his presence.

“Don’t think us childish, Mr Bayle,” she said gently. “It is to please my father.”

He rose and stood by her side for a moment or two.

“Childish?” he said in a low voice, “as if I could think such a thing of you.”

Millicent smiled her thanks, and crossed the room to where Hallam was watching her. The next minute supper was again announced—simple, old-fashioned supper—and Millicent went out on Hallam’s arm.

“You are going to take me in, Mr Bayle? Well, I’m sure I’d rather,” said Mrs Luttrell, “and I can then see, my dear, that you have a good supper. There, I’m saying ‘my dear’ to you again.”

“It is because I seem so young, Mrs Luttrell,” replied Bayle gravely.

“Oh no, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell innocently; “it was because you seemed to come among us so like a son, and took to the doctor’s way with his garden, and were so nice with Millicent. I used to think that perhaps you two might—Oh, dear me,” she cried, checking herself suddenly, “what a tongue I have got! Pray don’t take any notice of what I say.”

There was no change in Christie Bayle’s countenance, for the smile hid the pang he suffered as he took in the pleasant garrulous old lady to supper; but that night he paced his room till daybreak, fighting a bitter fight, and asking for strength to bear the agony of his heart.

Volume One—Chapter Twelve.

James Thickens is Mysterious.

“I think, previous to taking this step, Sir Gordon, I may ask if you and Mr Dixon are quite satisfied? I believe the books show a state of prosperity.”

“That does us credit, Mr Hallam,” said Sir Gordon quietly. “Yes, Mr Dixon bids me say that he is perfectly satisfied—eh, Mr Trampleasure?”

“Quite, Sir Gordon—more than satisfied,” replied Mr Trampleasure, who was standing with his hands beneath his coat-tails, balancing himself on toe and heel, and bowing as he spoke with an air that he believed to be very impressive.

“Then, before we close this little meeting, I suppose it only remains for me to ask you if you have any questions to ask of the firm, any demands to make?” Hallam rose from behind the table covered with books and balance-sheets in the manager’s room of the bank, placed his hand in his breast, and in a quiet, dignified way, replied:

“Questions to ask, Sir Gordon—demands to make? No; only to repeat my former question. Are you satisfied?”

“I did reply to that,” said Sir Gordon, who looked brown and sunburned, consequent upon six weeks’ yachting in the Mediterranean; “but have you no other question or demand to make previous to your marriage?”

“Excuse me,” said Mr Trampleasure, “excuse me. I want to say one word. Hem! hem!—I er—I er—”

“What is it, Trampleasure?” said Sir Gordon.

“It is in regard to a question I believe Mr Hallam is about to put to the firm. I may say that Mrs Trampleasure drew my attention to the matter, consequent upon a rumour in the town in connection with Mr Hallam’s marriage.”

Hallam raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“Have they settled the date?” he said pleasantly.

“No, sir, not that I am aware of; but Mrs Trampleasure has been given to understand that Mr Hallam, upon his marriage, will wish, and is about to send in a request for the apartments connected with this bank that I have always occupied. It would be a great inconvenience to Mrs Trampleasure with our family—I mean to me—to have to move.”

“My dear Sir Gordon,” said Hallam, interrupting, “allow me to set Mr Trampleasure at rest. I have taken the little Manor House, and have given orders for the furniture.”

“There, Trampleasure,” said Sir Gordon. “Don’t take any notice of gossips for the future.”

“Hem! I will not; but Mr Gemp is so well-informed generally.”

“That he is naturally wrong sometimes,” said Sir Gordon. “By-the-way, are they ever going to put that man under the pump? Now, Mr Hallam, have you anything more to ask?”

“Certainly not, Sir Gordon,” replied the manager stiffly. “I understand your allusion, of course; but I have only to say that I look upon my engagement here as a commercial piece of business to be strictly adhered to, and that I know of nothing more degrading to a man than making every change in his life an excuse for asking an increase of salary.”

“And you do not wish to take a holiday trip on the occasion of your wedding?”

“No, Sir Gordon.”

“But the lady?”

“Miss Luttrell knows that she is about to marry a business man, Sir Gordon, and accepts her fate,” said Hallam with a smile.

“Of course you can take a month. I’m sure Trampleasure and Thickens would manage everything in your absence.”

“Excuse me, Sir Gordon, I have no doubt whatever that everything would run like a repeater-watch in my absence; but, with the responsibility of manager of this bank, I could not feel comfortable to run away just in our busiest time. Later on I may take a trip.”

“Just as you like, Hallam, just as you like. Then that is all we have to do?”

“Everything, Sir Gordon. Yes, Mr Thickens, I will come;” for the clerk had tapped at the door and summoned him into the bank.

“Dig for you, Trampleasure, about the salary, eh?” said Sir Gordon, as soon as they were alone.

“And in very bad taste, too,” said Trampleasure stiffly.

“Ah, well, he’s a good manager,” said Sir Gordon. “How I hate figures! They’ll be buzzing in my head for a week.”

He rose and walked to the glass to begin arranging his cravat and shirt-collar, buttoning the bottom of his coat, and pulling down his buff vest, so that it could be well seen. Then adjusting his hat at a correct gentlemanly angle, and tapping the tassels of his Hessian boots to make them swing free, he bade Trampleasure good-morning and sauntered down the street, twirling his cane with all the grace of an old beau.

“I don’t like that man,” he said to himself, “and I never did; but his management of the bank is superb. Only one shaky loan this last six months, and he thinks we shall clear ourselves, if we wait before we sell. Bah! I’m afraid I’m as great a humbug as the rest of the world. If he had not won little Millicent, I should have thought him a very fine fellow, I dare say.”

He strolled on towards the doctor’s, thinking as he went.

“No, I don’t think I should have liked him,” he mused. “He’s gentlemanly and polished; but too gentlemanly and polished. It is like a mask and suit that to my mind do not fit. Then, hang it! how did he manage to win that girl?”

“Cleverness. That calm air of superiority; that bold deference, and his good looks. I’ve seen it all; he has let her go on talking in her clever way—and she is clever; and then when he has thought she has gone on long enough, he has checked her with a touch of the tiller, and thrown all the wind out of her sails, leaving her swinging on the ocean of conjecture. Just what she would like; made to feel that, clever as she is, he could be her master when and where he pleased. Yes, that is it, and I suppose I hate him for it. No, no. It would not have been right, even if I could have won. I would not be prejudiced against him more than I can help; but I’m afraid we shall never be any closer than we are.”

That afternoon Mr Hallam of the bank was exceedingly busy; so was James Thickens, at the counter, now giving, now receiving and cancelling and booking cheques or greasy notes, some of which were almost too much worn to be deciphered.

The time went on, and it was the hour for closing the doors. Thickens had had to go in and out of the manager’s room several times, and Hallam was always busy writing letters. He looked up, and answered questions, or gave instructions, and then went on again, while each time, when James Thickens came out, he looked more uneasy. That is to say, to any one who thoroughly understood James Thickens, he would have looked uneasy. To a stranger he would only have seemed peculiar, for involuntarily at such times he had a habit of moving his scalp very slowly, drawing his hair down over his forehead, while his eyebrows rose up to meet it. Then, with mechanical regularity, they separated again; and all the while his eyes were fixed, and seemed to be gazing at something that was not there.

“You need not wait, Thickens,” said Hallam, opening his door at length. “I want to finish a few letters.”

The clerk rose and left the place after his customary walk round with keys, and the transferring of certain moneys to the safe; and, as soon as he was gone, Hallam locked his door communicating with the house, and began to busy himself in the safe, examining docketed securities, ticking them off, arranging and rearranging, hour after hour.

And during those hours James Thickens seemed to be prosecuting a love affair, for, instead of going home to his tea and gold-fish, he walked down the market place for some distance, turned sharp back, knocked at a door, and was admitted. Then old Gemp, who had been sweeping his narrow horizon, put on his hat, and walked across to Mrs Pinet, who was as usual watering her geraniums, and hunting for withered leaves that did not exist.

“Two weddings, Mrs P.!” he said with a leer.

“Lor’, Mr Gemp, what do you mean?” she exclaimed.

“Two weddings, ma’am. Your Mr Hallam first, and Thickens directly after. No more bachelors at the bank, ma’am.”

“Why, you don’t mean to say that Mr Thickens—oh, dear me!”

“But I do mean to say it, ma’am. He’s dropped in at Miss Heathery’s as coolly as can be; and has hung his hat up behind the door.”

“You don’t say so!”

“Oh yes, I do. It’s her doing. Going there four or five times a week to cash cheques, and he has grown reckless. Let’s wait till he comes out.”

“Perhaps, then,” said Mrs Pinet primly, “people may begin saying things about me.”

“There’ll be no one to say it,” said Gemp innocently. “Let’s see how long he stops. I can’t very well from my place.”

“I couldn’t think of such a thing,” said Mrs Pinet, grandly. “Mr Hallam will be in directly, too. No, Mr Gemp, I’m no watcher of my neighbours’ affairs;” and she went indoors.

“Very well, madam. Ve-ry well,” said Gemp. “We shall see;” and he walked back home to stand in his doorway for three hours before he saw Thickens come from where he had ensconced himself behind Miss Heathery’s curtain with his eyes fixed upon the bank.

At the end of those three hours Mr Hallam passed, looking very thoughtful, and five minutes later James Thickens went home to his gold-fish and tea.

“Took care Hallam didn’t see him,” chuckled Gemp, rubbing his hands. “Oh, the artfulness of these people! Thinks he has as good a right to marry as Hallam himself. Well, why not? Make him more staid and solid, better able to take care of the deeds and securities, and pounds, shillings, and pence, and—hullo!—hello!—hello! What’s the meaning of this!”

This was the appearance of a couple coming from the direction of the doctor’s house, and the couple were Miss Heathery, who had been spending a few hours with Millicent—in other words, seeing her preparations for the wedding—and Sir Gordon Bourne, who was going in her direction and walked home with her.

“Why, Thickens didn’t see her after all!”

No: James Thickens had not seen her, and Miss Heathery had not seen James Thickens.

“Who?” she cried, as soon as Sir Gordon had ceremoniously bidden her “Good-night,” raising his curly brimmed hat, and putting it back.

“Mr Thickens, ma’am,” cried the little maid eagerly; “and when I told him you was out, he said, might he wait, and I showed him in the parlour.”

“And he’s there now?” whispered Miss Heathery, who began tremblingly to take off the very old pair of gloves she kept for evening wear, the others being safe in her reticule.

“No, ma’am, please he has been gone these ten minutes.”

“But what did he say?” cried Miss Heathery querulously.

“Said he wanted to see you particular, ma’am.”

“Oh dear me; oh dear me!” sighed Miss Heathery. “Was ever anything so unfortunate? How could I tell that he would come when I was out?”

Volume One—Chapter Thirteen.

Mr Hallam has a Visitor.

Mysteries were painful to old Gemp. If any one had propounded a riddle, and gone away without supplying the answer, he would have been terribly aggrieved.

He was still frowning, and trying to get over the mystery of why James Thickens should be at Miss Heathery’s when that lady was out, and his ideas were turning in the direction of the little maid, when a wholesome stimulus was given to his thoughts by the arrival of the London coach, the alighting of whose passengers he had hardly once missed seeing for years.

Hurrying up to the front of the “George,” he was just in time to see a dashing-looking young fellow, who had just alighted from the box-seat, stretching his legs, and beating his boots with a cane. He had been giving orders for his little valise to be carried into the house, and was staring about him in the half-light, when he became aware of the fact that old Gemp was watching him curiously.

He involuntarily turned away; but seeming to master himself, he turned back, and said sharply, “Where does Mr Hallam live?”

“Mr Hallam!” cried Gemp eagerly; “bank’s closed hours ago.”

“I didn’t ask for the bank. Where is Mr Hallam’s private residence?”

“Well,” said Gemp, rubbing his hands and laughing unpleasantly, “that’s it—the ‘Little Manor’ as he calls it; but it’s a big place, isn’t it?”

“Oh, he lives there, does he?” said the visitor, glancing curiously at the ivy-covered house across the way.

“Not yet,” said Gemp. “That’s where he is going to live when—”

“He’s married. I know. Now then, old Solomon, if you can answer a plain question, where does he live now?”

“Mrs Pinet’s house, yonder on the left, where the porch stands out, and the flower-pots are in the window.”

“Humph! hasn’t moved, then. Let’s see,” muttered the visitor, “that’s where I took the flower-pot to throw at the dog. No: that’s the house.”

“Can I—?” began Gemp insidiously.

“No, thankye. Good evening,” said the visitor. “You can tell ’em I’ve come. Ta ta! Gossipping old fool!” he added to himself, as he walked quickly down the street; while, after staring after him for a few minutes, Gemp turned sharply on his heel, and made for Gorringe’s—Mr Gorringe being the principal tailor.

Mr Gorringe’s day’s work was done, consequently his legs were uncrossed, and he was seated in a Christian-like manner—that is to say, in a chair just inside his door, smoking his evening pipe, but still in his shirtsleeves, and with an inch tape gracefully hanging over his neck and shoulders.

“I say, neighbour,” cried Gemp eagerly, “you bank with Dixons’.”

Mr Gorringe’s pipe fell from his hand, and broke into a dozen pieces upon the floor.

“Is—is anything wrong?” he gasped; “and it’s past banking hours.”

“Yah! get out!” cried old Gemp, showing his yellow teeth. “You’re always thinking about your few pence in the bank. Why, I bank there, and you don’t see me going into fits. Yah! what a coward you are!”

“Then—then, there’s nothing wrong?”

“Wrong? No.”

“Hah!” ejaculated the tailor. “Mary, bring me another pipe.”

“I only come in a friendly way,” cried Gemp, “to put you on your guard.”

“Then there is something wrong,” cried the tailor, aghast.

“No, no, no. I want to give you a hint about Hallam.”

“Hallam!”

“Ay! Has he ordered his wedding-suit of you?”

“No.”

“Thought not,” said Gemp, rubbing his hands. “I should be down upon him if I were you. Threaten to withdraw my account, man. Dandy chap down from London to-night to take his orders.”

“No!”

“Yes. By the coach. Saw he was a tailor in a moment. Wouldn’t stand it if I were you.”

Mrs Pinet, who came to the door with a candle, in answer to a sharp rap with the visitor’s cane, held up her candle above her head, and stared at him for a moment. Then a smile dimpled her pleasant, plump face.

“Why, bless me, sir! how you have changed!” she said.

“You know me again, then?” he said nodding familiarly.

“That I do, sir, and I am glad. You’re the young gentleman Mr Hallam helped just about a year ago.”

“Yes, that’s me. Is he at home?”

“Yes, sir. Will you come this way?”

Mrs Pinet drew back to allow the visitor to enter, closed the door, set down her candle, and then tapped softly on the panel at her right.

“Here’s that gentleman to see you, sir,” she said, in response to the quick “Come in.”

“Gentleman to see me? Oh, it’s you,” said Hallam, rising from his seat to stand very upright and stern-looking, with one hand in his breast.

“Yes, I’ve come down again,” said the visitor slowly, so as to give Mrs Pinet time to get outside the door; and then, by mutual consent, they waited until her step had pattered over the carefully-reddened old bricks, and a door at the back closed.

Meanwhile Hallam’s eyes ran rapidly over his visitor’s garb, and he seemed satisfied, though he smiled a little at the extravagance of the attire.

“Why have you come down?” he said at last. “Because I didn’t want to write. Because I thought you’d like to know how things were going. Because I wanted to see how you were getting on. Because I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“Because you wanted more money. Because you thought you could put on the screw. Because you thought you could frighten me. Pish! I could extend your list of reasons indefinitely, Stephen Crellock, my lad,” said Hallam, in a quiet tone of voice that was the more telling from the anger it evidently concealed.

“What a one you are, Robby, old fellow! Just as you used to be when we were at—”

“Let the past rest,” said Hallam in a whisper. “It will be better for both.”

“Oh-h-h-h!” said his visitor, in a peculiar way. “Don’t talk like that, Rob, old chap. It sounds like making plans, and a tall, handsome man in disguise waylaying a well-dressed gentleman from town, shooting him with pistols, carrying the body in the dead of the night to the bank, doubling it up in an iron chest, pouring in a lot of lime, and then shutting the lid, sealing it up, and locking it in the far corner of the bank cellar, as if it was somebody’s plate. That’s the game, eh?”

“I should like to,” said Hallam coolly.

“Ha—ha—ha—ha!” laughed his visitor, sitting down; “but I’m not afraid, Rob, or I should not have put my head in the lion’s den. That’s not the sort of thing you would do, because you always were so gentlemanly, and had such a tender conscience. See how grieved you were when I got into trouble, and you escaped.”

“Will you—”

“Will I what? Speak like that before any one else? Will I threaten you with telling tales, if you don’t give me money to keep my mouth shut? Will I be a sneak?” cried Crellock, speaking quite as fiercely as Hallam, and rising to his feet, and looking, in spite of his ultra costume, a fine manly fellow.

“Well, yes, you cowardly cur; have you come down to do this now?” said Hallam menacingly.

“Pish!” said the other contemptuously as he let himself sink back slowly into his chair. “Don’t try and bully, Rob. It did when I came down, weak and half-starved and miserable, after two years’ imprisonment; but it won’t do now. I don’t look hard up, do I?”

“No; because you’ve spent my money on your wretched dress.”

“I only spent your money when I couldn’t make any for myself. I haven’t had a penny of you lately; and as to being a coward and a cur, Rob, when I stood in the dock, and you were brought as a witness against me, and I could have got off half my punishment by speaking the truth, was I a sneak then, or did I stand, firm?”

There was a pause.

“Answer me; did I stand firm then?” cried Crellock.

“You did stand firm, and I have been grateful,” said Hallam, in a milder tone. “Look here, Stephen, why should we quarrel?”

“Ah, that’s better, man,” said Crellock, laughing. “You were so terribly fierce with me last time, and I was brought down to a door-mat. Anybody might have wiped his shoes on me. I’m better now.”

“And you’ve come down to try and bully me,” said Hallam fiercely.

His visitor sat back, looking at him hard, without speaking for a few minutes, and then he said quietly:

“I give it up.”

“Give what up—the attempt?”

“I couldn’t give that up, because I was not going to attempt anything,” said Crellock, smiling; “I mean give it up about you. What is it in you, Rob Hallam, that made so many fellows like you, and give way to you in everything? I don’t know. But there, never mind that. Won’t you shake hands?”

“Tell me first why you have come down here. Do you want money?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come down?”

Crellock’s face softened a little, and it was not an ill-looking countenance as he sat there, softly tapping the arm of the chair. At last he spoke.

“I never had many friends,” he said huskily. “Father and mother went when I was a little one, and Uncle Richard gave me my education, telling me brutally that I was an encumbrance. I always had to stop at school through the holidays, and when I was old enough he put me, as you know, in the bank, and told me he had done his duty by me, and I must now look to myself.”

“Yes, I know,” said Hallam, coldly.

“Then I got to know you, Rob, and you seemed always to be everything a man ought to be—handsome, and clever at every game, the best writer, the best at figures. Then, after office hours, you could sing and play, and tell the best story. There, Rob, you know I always got to feel towards you as if I was your dog. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for you. Then came those—”

“Hush!”

“Well, I’m not going to say anything dangerous. You know how I behaved. I did think you would have made it a bit easier for me, when it was found out; but when you turned against me like the rest, I said to myself that it was all right, that it was no good for two to bear it when one could take the lot, and if you had turned against me it was only because it was what you called good policy, and it would be all right again when I came out I thought you’d stick to me, Rob.”

“How could I, a man in a good position, know a—”

“Felon—a convicted thief? There, say it, old fellow, if you like. I don’t mind; I got pretty well hardened down yonder. No: of course you couldn’t, and I know I was a fool to come down as I did before, such a shack-bag as I was. Out of temper, too, and savage to see you looking so well; but I know it was foolish. It was enough to make you turn on me. But I’m different now: I’ve got on a bit.”

“What are you doing?” said Hallam sharply.

“Oh, never mind,” said the other, laughing. “I’ve opened an office, and I’m doing pretty well, and I thought I’d come down and see you again, Rob, old fellow, and—You’ll shake hands?”

“Is this a bit of maudlin sentiment, Stephen Crellock, or are you playing some deep game?”

Hallam’s visitor rose again and stood before him with his hand outstretched.

“Deep game!” he said softly. “Rob, old fellow, do you think a man can be all a blackguard, without one good spot in him? Ah, well, just as you like,” he continued, dropping his hand heavily; “I was a fool to come; I always have been a fool. I was cat, Rob, and you were monkey, and I got my paws most preciously burned. But I didn’t come down to grumble. There; good-night!”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the ‘George’ and to-morrow I shall go up to the gold-paved streets. There, you need not be afraid, man. If I didn’t tell tales when I was in the dock, I shan’t now. I thought, after all, that you were my friend.”

“And so I am, Steve!” cried Hallam, after a few moments’ hesitation, and he held out his hand. “We’ll be as good friends again as ever, and you shall not suffer this time.”

Crellock stifled a sob as he caught the extended hand, to wring it with all his force; then, turning away, he laid his arms upon the chimney-piece, his head dropped upon them, and for a few minutes he cried like a child.

Hallam stood fuming and gazing down upon him, with an ugly look of contempt distorting his handsome features. Then taking a step forward, he laid his hand upon his visitor’s shoulder.

“Come, come!” he said softly. “Don’t go on like that.” Crellock rose quickly, and dashed the tears from his eyes, with a piteous attempt at a laugh.

“That’s me all over, Rob,” he said. “Did you ever see such a weak fool? I was bad enough before I had that two years’ low fever; I’m worse now, for it was spirit-breaking work.”

“Soft wax, to mould to any shape,” said Hallam to himself. Then aloud: “I don’t see anything to be ashamed of in a little natural emotion. There, sit down, and let’s have a chat.”

Crellock caught his hand and gripped it hard. “Thank ye, Hallam,” he said huskily, “thank ye; I shan’t forget this. I told you I’d always felt as if I was your dog. I feel so more than ever now.”

“They’re sitting a long time,” said Mrs Pinet, as she raked out the kitchen fire to the very last red-hot cinder. “Mr Hallam seemed quite pleased with him; he’s altered so for the better. He said I needn’t sit up, and so I will go to bed.”

Mrs Pinet sought her room, and about twelve heard the door close on the stranger, between whom and Hallam a good deal of eager conversation had passed in a low tone.

“You see I’m trusting you,” said Hallam as they parted.

“You know you can,” was the reply. “And now, look here, if anything goes wrong—”

“I tell you, if you do as I have arranged, nothing can go wrong. I want an agent in London, whom I can implicitly trust, and I am going to trust you. Once more, your task is to do exactly what I tell you.”

“But if anything goes wrong, I can’t write to you.”

“Nothing can go wrong, I tell you.”

“Yes,” said Crellock to himself, “you told me that once before.” Then aloud:

“Well, we will say nothing can go wrong, for I shall do exactly what you have said; but if anything should, I shall come down, and if you see me—look out.”

Volume One—Chapter Fourteen.

Like Gathering Clouds.

There is one very pleasant element in country-town life, and that is the breadth of the feeling known as neighbourly. It is often veined by scandal, disfigured by petty curiosity, but a genial feeling, like a solid stratum underlies it all, and makes it firm. Mrs White gets into difficulties, and her furniture is sold by auction; but the neighbours flock to the sale, and the love of bargains is so overridden that the old things often fetch as much as new. Mrs Black’s family are ill, and every one around takes a real and helpful interest. Mrs Scarlet’s husband dies, and a fancy fair is held on her behalf. Then how every one collects at the marriage: how all follow at the death! It must be something very bad indeed that has been committed if, after the customary unpleasant and censorious remarks about walking blindfold into such a slough, Green is not drawn out by helping hands—in fact, there is a kind of clannishness in a country-town, disfigured by the gossips, but very true and earnest all the same.

Consequently as soon as the day was fixed for Millicent Luttrell’s wedding, presents came pouring in from old patients and young friends. A meeting was held at the Corn Exchange, at which Sir Gordon Bourne was to take the chair, but at which he did not put in an appearance, and the Reverend Christie Bayle took his place, while resolutions were moved and carried that a testimonial should be presented to our eminent fellow-townsman, Robert Hallam, Esq, on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter of our esteemed and talented neighbour, Dr Luttrell.

The service of plate was presented at a dinner, where speeches were made, to which Mr Hallam, of the bank, responded fluently, gracefully, and to the point.

Here, too, Christie Bayle took the chair, and had the task of presenting the silver, after reading the inscription aloud, amidst abundant cheers; and as he passed the glittering present to the recipient, their eyes met.

As their eyes met there was a pleasant smile upon Hallam’s lip, and a thought in his heart that he alone could have interpreted, while Bayle’s could have been read by any one skilled in the human countenance, as he breathed a hope that Millicent Luttrell might be made a happy wife.

The whole town was in a ferment—not a particular state of affairs for King’s Castor—in fact, the people of that town in His Majesty’s dominions were always waiting for a chance to effervesce and alter the prevailing stagnation for a time. Hence it was that the town band practised up a new tune; the grass was mowed in the churchyard, and some of the weeds cleared out from the gravel path. Miss Heathery went to the expense of a new bonnet and silk dress, and indulged in a passionate burst of weeping in the secrecy of her own room, because she was not asked to act as bridesmaid; and though Gorringe did not obtain any order from the bridegroom, he was favoured by Mr James Thickens to make him a blue dress-coat with triple-gilt buttons—a coat so blue, and whose buttons were such dazzling disks of metal, that it was not until it had been in the tailor’s window, finished, and “on show” for three days, that James Thickens awakened to the fact that it was his, and paid a nocturnal visit to Gorringe to beg him to send it home.

“But you don’t want it till the day, Mr Thickens,” said the tailor, “and that coat’s bringing me orders.”

“But I shall never dare to wear it, Gorringe—everybody will know it.”

“Of course they will, sir!” said the tailor proudly, and glancing towards his window with that half-smile an artist wears when his successful picture is on view, “that’s a coat such as is not seen in Castor every day. Look at the collar! There’s two days’ hard stitching in that collar, sir!”

“I have looked at the collar,” said Thickens hastily, “and I must have it home.”

Gorringe gave way, and the coat went home; but he felt, as he said to his wife, as if he had been robbed, for that coat would have won the hearts of half the farmers round.

At the doctor’s cottage Mrs Luttrell was in one constant whirl of excitement, with four clever seamstresses at work, for at King’s Castor a bride’s trousseau was called by a much simpler name, and provided throughout at home, along with the house-linen, which in those days meant linen of the finest and coolest, and it was absolutely necessary that every article that could be stitched should be stitched with rows of the finest stitches, carefully put in.

“You’re about worrying yourself into a fever, my dear,” said the doctor smiling, “and I can’t afford such patients as you. Where can I have this bunch of radish-seed hung up to dry? Give it to Thisbe to hang in the kitchen.”

“Now, my dear Joseph, how can you be so unreasonable!” cried Mrs Luttrell, half whimpering. “Radish-seed at a time like this! Thisbe is re-covering the pots of jam.”

“What jam? What for?”

“For Millicent. You don’t suppose I’m going to let her begin housekeeping without a pot of jam in the storeroom!”

“Thank goodness I’ve only one child!” said the doctor with a half-amused, half-vexed countenance.

“Why, papa, you always said you wished we had had a boy.”

“Ah, I did not know that I should have to suffer all this when the wedding time came.”

“Now, if you would only go into your garden, and see to your patients, my love, everything would go right!” cried Mrs Luttrell; “but you are so impatient! Look at Millicent, how quiet and calm she is!”

The doctor had looked at Millicent as she stole out to him in the garden—often now, as if moved by a desire to be as much with him as she could before the great step of her life was taken.

There was a quiet look of satisfaction in her eyes that told of her content, and the happy peace that reigned within her breast.

The doctor understood her, as she came to him when at work, questioning him about the blossoms of this rose, and the success of that creeper, and taking endless interest in all he did; and when she was summoned away to try something on, or to select some pattern, she smiled and said that she would soon be back.

“Ah!” he said with a sigh, “she is trying to break it off gently!” and his work ceased until he heard her step, when he became very busy and cheerful again, as they both played at hiding from one another the separation that was to come.

“Poor papa!” thought Millicent, “he will miss me when I am gone!”

“If that fellow does not behave well to her,” said the doctor to himself, “and I do happen to be called in to him, I shall—well, I suppose it would not be right to do that.” As for Mrs Luttrell, she was too busy to think much till she went to bed, and then the doctor complained.

“I must have some rest, my dear!” he said plaintively, “and I don’t say that you will—but if you do have a bad face-ache from sleeping on a pillow soaked with tears, don’t come to me to prescribe.”

It was very near the time, and all was gliding on peacefully towards the wedding-day. Hallam came regularly every evening; and, after a good deal of struggling, Mrs Luttrell contrived to call him “my dear,” while, by a similar effort of mind, the doctor habituated himself, from saying, “Mr Hallam” and “Hallam,” to the familiar “Robert,” though in secret both agreed that it did not seem natural, and did not come easily, and never would be Rob or Bob.

One soft, calm evening, as the moon was rising from behind the fine old church, and Millicent and Hallam lingered still in the garden among the shrubs, where they could see the shaded lamp shining down on Mrs Luttrell’s white curls and pleasant, intent face, as she busily stitched away at a piece of linen for the new house, while the doctor was reading an account of some new plants brought home by Sir Joseph Banks, Millicent had become very silent.

Hallam was holding her tenderly to his side, and looking down at the sweet, calm face, lit by the rising moon, his own in shadow; and after watching her rapt aspect for a time, he said, in his deep, musical voice:

“How silent and absorbed! You are not regretting what is so soon to be?”

“Regretting!” she cried, starting; and, looking up in his face, she laid her hands upon his breast. “Don’t speak to me like that, Robert dear. You know me better. As if I could regret!”

“Then you are quite happy?”

“Happy? Too happy; and yet so sad!” she murmured softly. “It seems as if life were too full of joy, as if I could not bear so much happiness, when it is at the cost of others, and I am giving them pain.”

“Don’t speak like that, my own!” he said tenderly. “It is natural that a woman should leave father and mother to cling unto her husband.”

“Yes, yes: I know,” she sighed; “but the pain is given. They will miss me so much. You are smiling, dear; but this is not conceit. I am their only child, and we have been all in all to each other.”

“But you are not going far,” he said tenderly.

“No, not far; and yet it is away from them,” sighed Millicent, turning her head to gaze sadly at the pleasant picture seen through the open window. “Not far: but it is from home.”

“But to home,” he whispered—“to your home, our home, the home of the husband who loves you with all his heart. Ah, Millicent, I have been so poor a wooer, I have failed to say the winning, flattering things so pleasant to a woman’s ear. I have felt half dumb before you, as if my pleasure was too great for words; and quick and strong as I am with my fellows, I have only been an awkward lover at the best.”

She laid her soft white hand upon his lips, and gave him a half-reproachful look.

“And yet,” she said, smiling, “how much stronger your silent wooing has been than any words that could have been said! Did I ever seem like one who wanted flattering words and admiration? Robert, you do not know me yet.”

“No,” he whispered passionately, “not yet, and never shall, for I find something more in you to love each time we meet, Millicent—my own—my wife!”

She yielded to his embrace, and they remained silent for a time.

At last he spoke.

“But you seemed sad and disappointed to-night. Have I grieved you in any way—have I given you pain?”

“Oh, no,” she said, looking gravely in his face, “and you never could. Robert,” she continued dreamily as she clung to him, “I can see our life mapped out in the future till it fades away. There are pains and sorrows, the thorns that strew the wayside of all; but I have always your strong, guiding arm to help and protect—always your brave, loving words, to sustain me when my spirit will be low, and together, hand in hand, we tread that path, patient, hopeful, loving to the end.”

“My own!” he whispered.

“I have no fear,” she continued; “my love was not given hastily, like that of some quickly dazzled girl; my love was slow to awaken; but when I felt that it was being sought by one whom I could reverence as well as love, I gave it freely—all I had.”

“And you are content?”

“I should be truly happy, but for the pain I must give others.”

“Only a pang, dear love; that will pass away in the feeling that their child is truly happy in her choice. There, there, the moonlight and the solemn look of the night have made you sad. Let us talk more cheerfully. Come, you must have something to ask of me?”

“No; you have told me everything,” she said gravely. “I wish they could have been here to give their blessing on our love.”

“Their blessing?” he said half-wonderingly.

“Your mother—your father, Robert,” she whispered reverently as she bent her head.

“Hush!” he said, and for a few moments they were silent. “But come,” he cried, as if trying to give their conversation a more cheerful turn, “you must have something more to ask of me. I mean for our house.”

“No,” she said; “it is everything I could wish.”

“No,” he said proudly, “it is too humble for my queen. If I were rich, you should have the fairest jewels, costly retinues—a palace.”

“Give me your love, and I have all I need,” she cried, laughing, as she clung to him.

“Then you must be very rich,” he said. “But is there nothing? Come, you are a free agent now. In another week you will be my own—my property, my slave, bound to me by a ring. Come, use your liberty while you can.”

“Well, then, yes,” she said; “I will make a demand or two.”

“That’s right; I am the slave yet, and obey. What is the first wish?”

“I like Sir Gordon, dear; he has always been so good and kind to me. Ask him to come.”

“Too late. He left the town by coach this evening. From a hint he dropped to Thickens about his letters, I think he has gone to Hull, and is going on to Spain.”

“Oh!”

It was an ejaculation full of pain and sorrow.

“I am grieved,” she said softly, and the news brought up that day when he had made her the offer of his hand.

Hallam watched her mobile face and its changes as she gazed straight before her, towards where the moon was beginning to flood the leaden roof of the old church, the crenulated wall, and the crockets on the tall spire standing out black and clear against the sky.

His face was still in the shadow.

“There is another request,” she said at last, and her voice was very low as she spoke. “Robert, will you ask Mr Bayle to marry us? I would rather it was he.”

“Bayle!” he exclaimed, starting, and the word jerked from his lips, as if he had suddenly lost control of himself. “No, it is impossible!”

“Impossible?” she said wonderingly.

“This man has caused me more suffering than I could tell you. If you knew the jealous misery—No, no, I don’t mean that,” he said quickly as he caught her to his breast.

“Oh, Robert!” she cried.

“No, no: don’t notice me,” he said hastily. “It was long ago. He loved you, and I was not sure of you then. Yes, darling, I will ask him, if you wish it. That folly is all dead now.”

“Robert,” she said, after a thoughtful pause, “do you wish me to give up that request?”

“Give up? No, I should be ready to insist upon it if you did. There, that is all past. It was the one boyish folly of my love, one of which I am heartily ashamed.”

“I think he wants to be your friend as well as mine,” she said, “and I should have liked it; but—”

“Your will is my law, Millicent! He shall marry us.”

“But, Robert—”

“If you oppose me now in this, I shall think you have not forgiven the folly to which I have confessed. I can hardly forgive myself that meanness. You will not add to my pain.”

“Add to your pain?” she said, laying her hand once more upon his breast. “Robert, you do not know me yet.”

And so it was that Christie Bayle joined the hand of the woman he had loved to that of the man who had told her she would in future be his very own—his property, his slave.

Pretty well all Castor was present, and at the highest pitch of excitement, for a handsomer pair, they said, had never stood in the old chancel to be made one.

And they were made one. The register was signed, and then, in the midst of a murmuring buzz and rustle of garments that filled the great building like the gathering of a storm, Robert Hallam and his fair young wife moved down the aisle, towards where a man was waiting to give the signal to the ringers to begin; and the crowd had filled every corner near the door, and almost blocked the path. The sun shone out brilliantly, and the buzz and rustle grew more and more like the gathering of that storm, which burst at last as the young couple reached the porch, in a thundering cheer.

Millicent looked flushed, and there was a red spot in Hallam’s cheeks as he walked out, proud and defiant, towards where the yellow chaise from the “George,” with four post-horses, was waiting.

The coach had just come in, and the passengers were standing gazing at the novel scene.

Again the storm burst in a tremendous cheer as Hallam handed his young wife into the chaise, and then there seemed to be another nearing storm, sending its harbinger in a fashion which made firm, self-contained Robert Hallam turn pale, as a hand was laid upon his arm.

“He said that if anything did go wrong, he should come back,” flashed through his brain.

Stephen Crellock was bending forward to whisper a few words in his ear.

Volume Two—Chapter One.

The Thorny Way—Millicent Hallam’s Home.

“How dare you! Be off! Go to your mistress. Don’t pester me, woman.”

“Didn’t know it were pestering you, sir, to ask for my rights. Two years doo, and it’s time it was paid.”

“Ask your mistress, I tell you. Here, Julia.”

A dark-haired, thoughtful-looking child of about six years old loosened her grasp of Thisbe King’s dress, and crossed the room slowly towards where Robert Hallam sat, newspaper in hand, by his half-finished breakfast.

“Here, Julia!” was uttered with no unkindly intent; but the call was like a command—an imperious command, such as would be given to a dog.

The child was nearly close to him when he gave the paper a sharp rustle, and she sprang back.

“Pish!” he exclaimed, laughing unpleasantly, “what a silly little girl you are! Did you think I was going to strike you?”

“N-no, papa,” said the child nervously.

“Then why did you flinch away? Are you afraid of me?”

The child looked at him intently for a few moments, and then said softly:

“I don’t know.”

“Here, Thisbe,” said Hallam, frowning, “I’ll see to that. You can go now. Leave Miss Julia here.”

“Mayn’t I go with Thisbe, papa?” said the child eagerly.

“No; stay with me. I want to talk to you. Come here.”

The child’s countenance fell, and she sidled towards Hallam, looking wistfully the while at Thisbe, who left the room reluctantly and closed the door.

As soon as they were alone Hallam threw down the paper, and drew the child upon his knee, stroking her beautiful, long, dark hair, and held his face towards her.

“Well,” he said sharply, “haven’t you a kiss for papa?”

The child kissed him on both cheeks quickly, and then sat still and watched him.

“That’s better,” he said smiling. “Little girls always get rewards when they are good. Now I shall buy you a new doll for that.”

The child’s eyes brightened.

“Have you got plenty of money, papa?” she said quickly.

“Well, I don’t know about plenty,” he said with a curious laugh, as he glanced round the handsomely-furnished room, “but enough for that.”

“Will you give me some?”

“Money is not good for little girls,” said Hallam, smiling.

“But I’m not little now,” said the child quietly. “Mamma says I’m quite a companion to her, and she doesn’t know what she would do without me.”

“Indeed!” said Hallam sarcastically. “Well, suppose I give you some money, what shall you buy—a doll?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got five dolls now,” she said, counting on her little pink fingers, “mamma, papa, Thisbe, and me, and Mr Bayle.”

Hallam ground out an ejaculation, making the child start from him in alarm.

“Sit still, little one,” he said hastily. “Why, what’s the matter? Here, what would you do with the money?”

“Give it to mamma to pay Thisbe. Mamma was crying about wanting some money yesterday for grand-mamma.”

“Did your grandmother come and ask mamma for money yesterday?”

“Yes; she said grandpapa was so ill and worried that she did not know what to do.”

Hallam rose from his seat, setting down the child, and began walking quickly about the room, while the girl, after watching him for a few moments in silence, began to edge her way slowly towards the door, as if to escape.

She had nearly reached it when Hallam noticed her, and, catching her by the wrist, led her back to his chair, and reseated himself.

“Look here, Julia,” he said sharply, “I will not have you behave like this. Does your mother teach you to keep away from me because I seem so cross?” he added with a laugh that was not pleasant.

“No,” said the child, shaking her head; “she said I was to be very fond of you, because you were my dear papa.”

“Well, and are you?”

“Yes,” said the child, nodding, “I think so;” and she looked wistfully in his face.

“That’s right; and now be a good girl, and you shall have a pony to ride, and everything you like to ask for.”

“And money to give to poor mamma?”

“Silence!” cried Hallam harshly, and the child shrank away, and covered her face with her hands. “Don’t do that! Take down your hands. What have you to cry for now?”

The child dropped her hands in a frightened manner, and looked at him with her large dark eyes, that seemed to be watching for a blow, her face twitching slightly, but there were no tears.

“Any one would think I was a regular brute to the child,” he muttered, scowling at her involuntarily, and then sitting very thoughtful and quiet, holding her on his knee, while he thrust back the breakfast things, and tapped the table. At last, turning to her with a smile, “Have a cup of coffee, Julie?” he said.

She shook her head. “I had my breakfast with mamma ever so long since.”

He frowned again, looking uneasily at the child, and resuming the tapping upon the table with his thin, white fingers.

The window looking out on the market place was before them, quiet, sunny, and with only two people visible, Mrs Pinet, watering her row of flowers with a jug, and the half of old Gemp, as he leaned out of his doorway, and looked in turn up the street and down.

All at once a firm, quick step was heard, and the child leaped from her father’s knee.

“Here’s Mr Bayle! Here’s Mr Bayle!” she cried, clapping her hands, and, bounding to the window, she sprang upon a chair, to press her face sidewise to the pane, to watch for him who came, and then to begin tapping on the glass, and kissing her hands as Christie Bayle, a firm, broad-shouldered man, nodded and smiled, and went by.

Julia leaped from the chair to run out of the room, leaving Robert Hallam clutching the edge of the table, with his brow wrinkled, and an angry frown upon his countenance, as he ground his teeth together, and listened to the opening of the front door, and the mingling of the curate’s frank, deep voice with the silvery prattle of his child.

“Ha, little one!” And then there was the sound of kisses, as Hallam heard the rustle of what seemed, through the closed door, to be Christie Bayle taking the child by the waist and lifting her up to throw her arms about his neck.

“You’re late!” she cried; and the very tone of her voice seemed changed, as she spoke eagerly.

“No, no, five minutes early; and I must go up the town first now.”

“Oh!” cried the child.

“I shall not be long. How is mamma?”

“Mamma isn’t well,” said the child. “She has been crying so.”

“Hush! hush! my darling!” said Bayle softly. “You should not whisper secrets.”

“Is that a secret, Mr Bayle?”

“Yes; mamma’s secret, and my Julia must be mamma’s well-trusted little girl.”

“Please, Mr Bayle, I’m so sorry, and I won’t do so any more. Are you cross with me?”

“My darling!” he cried passionately, “as if any one could be cross with you! There, get your books ready, and I’ll soon be back.”

“No, no, not this morning, Mr Bayle; not books. Take me for a walk, and teach me about the flowers.”

“After lessons, then. There, run away.”

Hallam rose from his chair, with his lips drawn slightly from his teeth, as he heard Bayle’s retiring steps. Then the front door was banged loudly; he heard his child clap her hands, and then the quick fall of her feet as she skipped across the hall, and bounded up the stairs.

He took a few strides up and down the room, but stopped short as the door opened again, and, handsomer than ever, but with a graver, more womanly beauty, heightened by a pensive, troubled look in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth, Millicent Hallam glided in.

Her face lit up with a smile as she crossed to Hallam, and laid her white hand upon his arm.

“Don’t think me unkind for going away, dear,” she said softly. “Have you quite done?”

“Yes,” he said shortly. “There, don’t stop me; I’m late.”

“Are you going to the bank, dear?”

“Of course I am. Where do you suppose I’m going?”

“I only thought, dear, that—”

“Then don’t only think for the sake of saying foolish things.”

She laid her other hand upon his arm, and smiled in his face.

“Don’t let these money matters trouble you so, Robert,” she said. “What does it matter whether we are rich or poor?”

“Oh, not in the least!” he cried sarcastically. “You don’t want any money, of course?”

“I do, dear, terribly,” she said sadly. “I have been asked a great deal lately for payments of bills; and if you could let me have some this morning—”

“Then I cannot; it’s impossible. There, wait a few days and the crisis will be over, and you can clear off.”

“And you will not speculate again, dear?” she said eagerly.

“Oh, no, of course not,” he rejoined, with the touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“We should be so much happier, dear, on your salary. I would make it plenty for us; and then, Robert, you would be so much more at peace.”

“How can I be at peace?” he cried savagely, “when, just as I am harassed with monetary cares—which you cannot understand—I find my home, instead of a place of rest, a place of torment?”

“Robert!” she said, in a tone of tender reproach.

“People here I don’t want to see; servants pestering me for money, when I have given you ample for our household expenses; and my own child set against me, ready to shrink from me, and look upon me as some domestic ogre!”

“Robert, dear, pray do not talk like this.”

“I am driven to it,” he cried fiercely; “the child detests me!”

“Oh no, no, no,” she whispered, placing her arm round his neck.

“And rushes to that fellow Bayle as if she had been taught to look upon him as everybody.”

“Nay, nay,” she said softly; and there was a tender smile upon her lip, a look of loving pity in her eye. “Julie likes Mr Bayle, for he pets her, and plays with her as if he were her companion.”

“And I am shunned.”

“Oh, no, dear, you frighten poor Julie sometimes when you are in one of your stern, thoughtful moods.”

“My stern, thoughtful moods! Pshaw!”

“Yes,” she said tenderly; “your stern, thoughtful moods. The child cannot understand them as I do, dear husband. She thinks of sunshine and play. How can she read the depth of the father’s love—of the man who is so foolishly ambitious to win fortune for his child? Robert—husband—my own, would it not be better to set all these strivings for wealth aside, and go back to the simple, peaceful days again?”

“You do not understand these things,” he said harshly. “There, let me go. I ought to have been at the bank an hour ago, but I could not get a wink of sleep all the early part of the night.”

“I know, dear. It was three o’clock when you went to sleep.”

“How did you know?”

“The clock struck when you dropped off, dear. I did not speak for fear of waking you.”

She did not add that she, too, had been kept awake about money matters, and wondering whether her husband would consent to live in a more simple style in a smaller house.

“There, good-bye,” he said, kissing her. “It is all coming right. Don’t talk to your father or mother about my affairs.”

“Of course I should not, love,” she replied; “such things are sacred.”

“Yes, of course,” he said hastily. “There, don’t take any notice of what I have said. I am worried—very much worried just now, but all will come right soon.” He kissed her hastily and hurried away, leaving Millicent standing thoughtful and troubled till she heard another step on the rough stones, when a calm expression seemed to come over her troubled face, but only to be chased away by one more anxious as the step halted at the door and the bell rang.

Meanwhile Julia had run upstairs to her own room, where, facing the door, five very battered dolls sat in a row upon the drawers, at which she dashed full of childish excitement, as if to continue some interrupted game.

She stopped short, looked round, and then gave her little foot a stamp.

“How tiresome!” she cried pettishly. “It’s that nasty, tiresome, disagreeable old Thibs. I hate her, that I do, and—”

“Oh, you hate me, do you?” cried the object of her anger appearing in the doorway. “Very well, it don’t matter. I don’t mind. You don’t care for anybody now but Mr Bayle.”

The child rushed across the room to leap up and fling her arms round Thisbe’s neck, as that oddity stood there, quite unchanged: the same obstinate, hard woman who had opposed Mrs Luttrell seven years before.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t say such things, Thibs,” cried the child, all eagerness and excitement now, the very opposite of the timid, shrinking girl in the breakfast-room a short time before; and as she spoke she covered the hard face before her with kisses. “You know, you dear, darling old Thibs, I love you. Oh, I do love you so very, very much.”

“I know it’s all shim-sham and pea-shucks,” said Thisbe, grimly; but, without moving her face, rather bending down to meet the kisses.

“No, you don’t think anything of the kind, Thibs, and I won’t have you looking cross at me like papa.”

“It’s all sham, I tell you,” said Thisbe again. “You never love me only when you want anything.”

“Oh! Thibs!” cried the girl with the tears gathering in her eyes; “how can you say that?”

“Because I’m a nasty, hard, cankery, ugly, disagreeable old woman,” said Thisbe, clasping the child to her breast; “and it isn’t true, and you’re my own precious sweet, that you are.”

“And you took away my box out of the room, when I had to go down to papa.”

“But you can’t have a nasty, great, dirty candle-box in your bedroom, my dear.”

“But I want it for a doll’s house, and I’m going to line it with paper, and—do, Thibs, do, do let me have it, please?”

“Oh, very well, I shall have to be getting the moon for you next. I never see such a spoiled child.”

“Make haste then, before Mr Bayle comes, to go on with my lessons. Quick! quick! where is it?”

“In the lumber-room, of course. Where do you suppose it is?”

Thisbe led the way along a broad passage and up three or four stairs to an old oak door, which creaked mournfully on its hinges as it was thrown back, showing a long, sloped, ceiled room, half filled with packing-cases and old fixtures that had been taken down when Hallam hired the house, and had it somewhat modernised for their use.

It was a roomy place with a large fireplace that had apparently been partially built up to allow of a small grate being set, while walls and ceiling were covered with a small patterned paper, a few odd rolls and pieces of which lay in a corner.

“I see it,” cried Julia excitedly.

“No, no, no; let me get it,” cried Thisbe. “Bless the bairn! why, she’s like a young goat. There, now, just see what you’ve done!”

The child had darted at the hinged deal box, stood up on one end against the wall in the angle made by the great projecting fireplace, and in dragging it away torn down a large piece of the wall paper.

“Oh, I couldn’t help it, Thibs,” cried the child panting. “I am so sorry.”

“So sorry, indeed!” cried Thisbe; “so sorry, indeed, won’t mend walls. Why, how wet it is!” she continued, kneeling down and smoothing out the paper, and dabbing it back against the end of the great fireplace from which it had been torn. “There’s one of them old gutters got stopped up and the rain soaks in through the roof, and wets this wall; it ought to be seen to at once.”

All this while making a ball of her apron, Thisbe, who was the perfection of neatness, had been putting back the torn down corner of paper, moistening it here and there, and ending by making it stick so closely that the tear was only visible on a close inspection. This done she rose and carried the box out, and into the child’s bedroom, when before the slightest advance had been made towards turning it into a doll’s house, there was the ring at the door, and Thisbe descended to admit the curate, to whom Julia came bounding down.

Volume Two—Chapter Two.

Miss Heathery’s Offering.

Nature, or rather the adaptation from Nature which we call civilisation, deals very hardly with unmarried ladies of twenty-five for the next ten or a dozen years. Then it seems to give them up, and we have arrived at what is politely known as the uncertain age. Very uncertain it is, for, from thirty-five to forty-five some ladies seem to stand still.

Miss Heathery was one of these, and the mid-life stage seemed to have made her evergreen, for seven years’ lapse found her much the same, scarcely in any manner changed.

Poor Miss Heathery! For twenty years she had been longing with all the intensity of a true woman to become somebody’s squaw. Her heart was an urn full of sweetness. Perhaps it was of rather a sickly cloying kind that many men would have turned from with disgust, but it was sweetness all the same, and for these long, long years she had been waiting to pour this honey of her nature like a blessing upon some one’s head, while only one man had been ready to say, “Pour on,” and held his head ready.

That one would-be suitor was old Gemp, and when he said it, poor Miss Heathery recoiled, clasping her hands tightly upon the mouth of the urn and closing it. She could not pour it there, and the love of Gemp had turned into a bitter hate.

If the curate in his disappointment would only have turned to her, she sighed to herself!

“Ah!”

And she went on thinking and working. What comforting fleecy undergarments she could have woven for him! What ornamental braces he should have worn; and, in the sanguine hopes of that swelling urn of sweets, she designed—she never began them—a set of slippers, a set of seven, all beautifully worked in wool and silks, and lined with velvet. Sunday: white with a gold sun; Monday: dominating with a pale lambent golden green, for it was moon’s day; Tuesday puzzled her, for it took her into the Scandinavian mythology, and there she was lost hopelessly for a time, but she waded out with an idea that Tuisco was Mars, so the slippers should be red. The Wednesday slippers brought in Mercury, so they were silvery. Thursday was another puzzle till the happy idea came of crossing Thor’s hammer, which would give the slippers quite a college look, black hammers on a red ground. Friday—Frèga, Venus—she would work a beauteous woman with golden hair on each. She felt rather doubtful about the woman’s face; but love would find out the way. Then there was Saturday.

Just as she reached Saturday, she remembered having once heard that Sir Gordon had a set of razors for every day in the week, and the design halted.

Ah! if Sir Gordon would only have looked at her with that sad melancholy air of tenderness, how happy she could have been! How she would have prompted him to keep on that fight of his against time! But he never smiled upon her; and though she paid in all her little sums of money at the bank herself, and changed all her cheques, Mr James Thickens—as he was always called, to distinguish him from a Mr Thickens of whom some one had once heard somewhere—made no step in advance. The bank counter was always between them, and it was very broad.

“What could she do more to show her affection?” she asked herself. She had petitioned him to give her a “teeny weeny gold-fish, and a teeny weeny silver fish,” and he had responded at once; but he was close in his ways: he was not generous. He did not purchase a glass globe of iridescent tints and goodly form; he borrowed a small milk tin at the dairy and sent them in that, with his compliments.

But there were the fish, and she purchased a beautiful globe herself, placed three Venus’s ear-shells in the bottom, filled it with clear water from the river carefully strained through three thicknesses of flannel, and there the fish lived till they died.

Why they died so soon may have been from over-petting and too much food. For Miss Heathery secretly called the gold-fish James, and the silver fish Letitia, her own name, and she was never so happy as when feeding James and coaxing him to kiss the tips of her thin little fingers.

Perhaps it was from over-feeding, perhaps from too much salt, for as Miss Heathery, after long waiting, had to content herself with the chaste salutes of the gold-fish, dissolved pearls distilled from her sad eyes, and fell in the water like sporadic drops of rain.

Miss Heathery’s spirit was low, and yet it kept leaping up strangely, for she had been at the bank one morning to change a cheque, and with the full intention of asking Mr James Thickens to present her with a couple more fish from the store of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen.

That morning, as she noted how broad the pathway had grown from the forehead upwards, and had seen when he turned his back that it expanded into a circular walk round a bed of grizzle in the back of his crown, and was then continued to the nape, Mr James Thickens seemed to be extremely hard and cold. He looked certainly older too than he used; of that she was sure.

He seemed extremely abrupt and impatient with her when she wished him a sweet and pensive good-morning, which was as near a blessing upon his getting-bald head as the words would allow.

She said afterwards that it was a fine morning, a very fine morning, a fact that he did not deny, neither did he acknowledge, and so abstracted and strange did he seem that the gold-fish slipped out of her mind, and for a few moments she was agitated. She recovered though, and laying down a little bunch of violets beside her reticule, she went through her regular routine, received her change, and with a strange feeling of exultation at the artfulness of her procedure, she had reached the door after a most impressive “good-morning,” for Miss Heathery always kept up the fiction of dining late, though she partook of her main meal at half-past one.

She had reached the door, when James Thickens spoke, his voice, the voice of her forlorn hope, thrilling her to the core. It was not a thrilling word, though it had that effect upon her, for it was only a summons—an arrest, a check, to her outward progress.

“Hi!”

That was all. “Hi!” but it did thrill her, and she stopped short with bounding pulses. It was abrupt, but still what of that! Gentlemen were not ladies; and if in their masterful, commanding way, they began their courtship by showing that they were the lords of women, why should she complain? He had only to order her to be his wife, and she was ready to become more—his very submissive slave.

She stopped, and, after a moment’s hesitation, turned at that “Hi!” so full of hope to her thirsty soul. Her eyes were humid with pleasurable sensations, and but for that broad mahogany counter, she could have thrown herself at his feet. At that moment she was upon the dazzling pinnacle of joy; the next she was mentally sobbing despairingly in the vale of sorrow and despair into which she had fallen, for James Thickens said coldly:

“Here, you’ve left something behind.”

Her violets! Her sweet offering that she had laid upon the altar behind which her idol always stood. That bunch was gathered by her own fingers, tied up with her own hands, incensed with kisses, made dewy with tears. It was the result of loving and painful thought followed by an inventive flash. It meant an easy confession of her love, and after laying it upon the mahogany altar, her sanguine imagination painted James Thickens lifting it, kissing it, holding it to his breast, searching among the leaves for the note which was not there; and, lastly, wearing it home in his button-hole, placing it in water for a time, and then keeping it dried yet fragrant in a book of poetry—the present of his love.

All that and more she had thought; and now James Thickens had called out, “Hi! you’ve left something behind.”

She crept back to the counter, and said, “Thank you, Mr Thickens,” in a piteous voice, her eyes beneath her veil too much blinded by the gathering tears to see Mr Trampleasure passing through the bank, though she heard his words, “Good-day, Miss Heathery,” and bowed.

It was all over: James Thickens was not a man, he was a rhinoceros with an impenetrable hide; and, taking up her bunch of flowers, she was about to leave the bank when Thickens spoke again.

“Look here,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Can’t you ask me to tea?”

The place seemed to spin round, and the mahogany counter to heave and fall like a wave, as she tried to speak but could not for a few moments. Then she mastered her emotion, and in a hurried, trembling, half-hysterical voice, she chirped out:

“Yes; this evening, Mr Thickens, at six.”

Volume Two—Chapter Three.

James Thickens Takes Tea.

“Rum little woman,” said Thickens to himself as he hurried out of the bank. “Wonder whether she’d like another couple of fish.”

Some men would have gone home to smarten up before visiting a lady to take tea, but James Thickens was not of that sort. His idea of smartness was always to look like a clean, dry, drab leaf, and he was invariably, whenever seen, at that point of perfection.

Punctually at six o’clock he rapped boldly at Miss Heathery’s door, turning round to stare hard at Gemp, who came out eagerly to look and learn, before going in to have a fit—of temper, and then moving round to stare at Mrs Pinet’s putty nose, rather a large one when flattened against the pane, as she strained to get a glimpse of such an unusual proceeding.

Several other neighbours had a look, and then the green door was opened. The visitor passed in and was ushered into the neat little parlour where the tea was spread, and Miss Heathery welcomed him, trembling with gentle emotion, and admiring the firmness, under such circumstances, of the animal man.

It was a delicious tea. There were Sally Lunns and toast biliously brimming in butter. Six spoonfuls of the best Bohea and Young Hyson were in the china pot. There was a new cottage loaf and a large pat of butter, with a raised cow grazing on a forest of parsley. There were thin slices of ham, and there were two glass dishes of preserve equal to that of which Mrs Luttrell was so proud; and then there was a cake from Frampton’s at the corner, where they sold the Sally Lunns.

“I don’t often get a tea like this, Miss Heathery,” said Thickens, who was busy with his red and yellow bandanna handkerchief spread over his drab lap.

“I hope you are enjoying it,” she said sweetly.

“Never enjoyed one more. Another cup, if you please, and I’ll take a little more of that ham.”

It was not a little that he took, and that qualifying adjective is of no value in describing the toast and Sally Lunns that he ate solidly and seriously, as if it were his duty to do justice to the meal.

And all the while poor Miss Heathery was only playing with her tea-cup and saucer. The only food of which she could partake was mental, and as she sat there dispensing her dainties and blushing with pleasure, she kept on thinking in a flutter of delight that all the neighbours would know Mr Thickens was taking tea with her, and be talking about this wicked, daring escapade on the part of a single lady.

He had not smiled, but he had seemed to be so contented, so happy, and he had asked her whether she worked that framed sampler on the wall, and the black cat with gold-thread eyes, and the embroidered cushion.

He had asked her if she liked poetry, and how long one of those rice-paper flowers took her to paint. He had admired, too, her poonah painting, and had at last sat back in his chair with one drab leg crossed over the other, and looking delightfully at home.

Still he didn’t seem disposed to come to the point, and in the depth and subtlety of her cunning, Miss Heathery thought she would help him by leading the conversation towards matrimony.

“Dr and Mrs Luttrell seem to age very much,” she said softly.

“Ah! they do,” said Thickens tightening his lips and making a furrow across the lower part of his face. “Yes: trouble, ma’am, trouble.”

“But they are a sweet couple, Mr Thickens.”

“Models, madam, models,” said the visitor, who became very thoughtful, and made a noise that sounded like “Soop!” as there was a pause, during which Mr Thickens took some tea.

“Have you seen Sir Gordon lately?” said Miss Heathery at last.

“No, madam. Back soon, though, I hope.”

“Ah!” sighed Miss Heathery, “do you think he will ever—ahem! marry now?”

“Never, ma’am,” said Thickens emphatically. “Too old.”

“Oh, no, Mr Thickens.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Heathery.”

There was another pause.

“How beautiful Mrs Hallam grows! So pale, and sweet, and grave. She looks to me always, Mr Thickens, like some lovely lily. Dear Millicent, it seems only yesterday that she was married.”

Thickens started and moved uneasily, sending a pang that must have had a jealous birth through Miss Heathery’s breast.

“Seven years ago, Mr Thickens.”

“Six years, eleven months, two weeks, ma’am.”

“Ah, how exact you are, Mr Thickens!”

“Obliged to be, ma’am. Interest to calculate.”

“But she looks thin, and not so happy as I could wish.”

“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am,” said Thickens, paradoxically.

Again there was an uneasy change, for Mr Thickens’s brow was puckered, and a couple of ridgy wrinkles ran across the top of his head.

“And they make such a handsome pair.”

Thickens nodded and frowned, but became placid the next moment as his hostess said softly:

“That sweet child!”

“Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!”

Miss Heathery stared, for her guest fired these ejaculations and benedictions at intervals in a quick, eager way, smiling the while, and with his eyes brightening.

She stared more the next minute, and trembled as she heard her visitor’s next utterance, and thought of a visit of his seven years ago when she was out, and which he had explained by saying that he had come to ask her if she would like a pair of gold-fish, that was all.

For all at once Mr Thickens exclaimed with his eyes glittering:

“If I had married I should have liked to have had a little girl like that.”

There was a terrible pause here, terrible to only one though: and then, in a hesitating voice, Miss Heathery went on, with that word “marriage” buzzing in her ears, and making her feel giddy.

“Do you—do you think it’s true, Mr Thickens?”

“What, that I never married?” he said sharply.

“No, no; oh, dear me, no!” cried Miss Heathery; “I mean that poor Mrs Hallam is terribly troubled about money matters, and that they are very much in debt?”

“Don’t know, ma’am; can’t say, ma’am; not my business, ma’am.”

“But they say the doctor is terribly pinched for money too.”

“Very likely, ma’am. Every one is sometimes.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Miss Heathery.

“Very, ma’am. No: nothing more, thank you. Get these things taken away, I want to talk to you.”

As the repast was cleared away, Miss Heathery felt that it was coming now, and as she grew more flushed, her head with its curls and great tortoise-shell comb trembled like a flower on its stalk. She got out her work, growing more and more agitated, but noticing that Thickens grew more cold and self-possessed.

“The way of a great man,” she thought to herself as she felt that she had led up to what was coming, and that she had never before been so wicked and daring in the whole course of her life.

“It was the violets,” she said to herself; and then she started, trembled more than ever, and felt quite faint, for James Thickens drew his chair a little nearer, spread his handkerchief carefully across his drab legs, and said suddenly:

“Now then, let’s to business.”

Business? Well yes, it was the great business of life, thought Miss Heathery, as she held her hands to her heart, ready to pour out the long pent-up sweetness with which it was charged.

“Look here, Miss Heathery,” he went on, “I always liked you.”

“Oh! Mr Thickens,” she sighed, but she could not “look here” at the visitor, who was playing dumb tunes upon the red and lavender check table-cover, as if it were a harpsichord.

“I’ve always thought you were an extremely good little woman.”

“At last,” said Miss Heathery to herself.

“You’ve got a nice little bit of money in our bank, and also the deeds of this house.”

“Don’t—don’t talk about money, Mr Thickens, please.”

“Must,” he said abruptly. “I’m a money man. Now look here, you live on your little income we have in the bank.”

“Yes, Mr Thickens,” sighed the lady.

“Ah! yes, of course. Then look here. Dinham’s two houses are for sale next week.”

“Yes; I saw the bill,” she sighed.

“Let me buy them for you.”

“Buy them? They would cost too much, Mr Thickens.”

“Not they. You’ve got nearly enough, and the rest could stay on. They always let; dare say you could keep on the present tenants.”

“But—”

That “but” meant that she would not have those excuses for going to the bank.

“You’ll get good interest for your money then, ma’am, and you get little now.”

“But, Mr Thickens—”

“I wish you to do it, ma’am, and I hope that you will.”

“Oh! if you wish it, Mr Thickens, of course I will,” she said eagerly.

“That’s right; I do wish it. May I buy them for you?”

“Oh, certainly, Mr Thickens.”

“All right, ma’am, then I will. Now I must get home and feed my fishes. Good evening.”

He caught up his hat, shook hands, and was gone before his hostess had recovered from her surprise and chagrin.

“But never mind,” she said, rubbing her hands and making two rings click.

The contact of those two rings made her gaze down and then take and fondle one particular finger, while, in spite of the abruptness of her visitor, she gazed down dreamily at that finger, and sighed as she sank into a reverie full of golden dreams.

“So odd and peculiar,” she sighed; “but so different to any one else I ever knew; and, ah me! how shocking it all is: so many people must have seen him come.”

Volume Two—Chapter Four.

Dr Luttrell’s Troubles.

Dr Luttrell had taken a rake, and gone down the garden, according to his custom, and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Luttrell went to the window and watched him; after which, with a sorrowful face, she walked back into the drawing-room, to sit down and weep silently for a few minutes.

“It breaks my heart to see her poor sad face, and it’s breaking his, though he’s always laughing it off, and telling me it’s all my nonsense. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! How is it all to end?”

She sat rocking herself to and fro for a few minutes, and then jumped up hastily.

“It’s dreadful, that it is!” she sighed; “but I can’t stop here alone. Yes! I thought so!” she cried, as she went to the window, where she could catch sight of the doctor, rake in hand, but not using it, according to his wont, for he was resting upon it, and thinking deeply.

Mrs Luttrell snatched at a great grey ball of worsted and her needles, and went down the garden, making the doctor start as she reached his side.

“Eh? What is it?” he exclaimed. “Anything wrong at the Manor?”

“Wrong! what nonsense, dear!” said the old lady cheerily. “I’m sure, Joseph, you ought to take some medicine. You grow quite nervous!”

“What made you come, then?” he cried, beginning to use his rake busily.

“Why, I thought I’d come and chat while you worked, and—Joseph, my dear, don’t—don’t look like that!”

“It’s of no use, old girl,” said the doctor with a sigh; “we may just as well look it boldly in the face. I’m sick of all this make-believe.”

“And so am I, dear. Let us be open.”

“Ah, well! I will. Who is a man to be open to if not to his old wife?”

“There!” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, making a brave effort over herself, and speaking cheerfully. “I’m ready to face everything now.”

“Even poverty, my dear?”

“Even poverty! What does it matter to us? Is it so very bad, dear?”

“It could not be worse. We must give up this house, and sell everything.”

“But Hallam?”

“Is a scoundrel!—no, no! I won’t say that of my child’s husband. But I cannot get a shilling of him; and when I saw him yesterday, and threatened to go to Sir Gordon—”

“Well, dear?”

“He told me to go if I dared.”

“And did you go?”

“Did I go, mother? Did I go?—with poor Milly’s white face before my eyes, to denounce her husband as a cheat and a rogue! He has had every penny I possessed for his speculations, and they seem all to have failed.”

“But you shouldn’t have let him have it, dear!”

“Not let him have it, wife! How could I refuse my own son-in-law? Well, there, our savings are gone, and we must eat humble pie for the future. I have not much practice now, and I don’t think my few patients will leave me because I live in a cottage.”

“Do you think if I went and spoke to Robert it would do any good?”

“It would make our poor darling miserable. She would be sure to know. As it is, she believes her husband to be one of the best of men. Am I, her father, to be the one who destroys that faith? Hush, here is some one coming!”

For there was a quick, heavy step upon the gravel walk, and Christie Bayle appeared.

“I thought I should find you,” he said, shaking hands warmly. “Well, doctor, how’s the garden? Why, Mrs Luttrell, what black currants! There! you may call me exacting, but tithe, ma’am, tithe—I put in my claim at once for two pots of black currant jam. Those you gave me last year were invaluable.”

Mrs Luttrell held his hand still, and laughed gently.

“Little bits of flattery for a very foolish old woman, my dear.”

“Flattery! when I had such sore throats I could hardly speak, and yet had to preach! Not much flattery, eh, doctor?”

“Flattery! No, no,” said the doctor, dreamily.

He glanced at Mrs Luttrell, then at Bayle, who went on chatting pleasantly about the garden, and then checked him suddenly.

“No one can hear us, Bayle. We want to talk to you—my wife and I.”

“Certainly,” said Bayle; and his tone and manner changed. “Is it anything I can do for you?”

“Wait a moment—let me think,” said the doctor sadly. “Here, let’s go and sit down under the yew hedge.”

Bayle drew Mrs Luttrell’s hand through his arm, and patted it gently, as she looked up tenderly in his face, a tenderness mingled with pride, as if she had part and parcel in the sturdy, manly Englishman who led her to the pleasant old rustic seat in a nook of the great, green, closely-clipped wall, with its glorious prospect away over the fair country side.

“I do love this old spot!” said Bayle, enthusiastically, for a glance at the doctor showed that he was nervous and hesitating, and he thought it well to give him time. “Mrs Luttrell, it is one of my sins that I cannot master envy. I always long for this old place and garden.”

“Bayle!” cried the doctor, laying his hand upon the curate’s knee, and with his former hesitancy chased away by an eager look, “are you in earnest?”

“In earnest, my dear sir? What about?”

“About—about the old place—the garden.”

“Earnest!—yes. But I am going to fight it down,” cried Bayle, laughing.

“Don’t laugh, man. I am serious—things are serious with me.”

“I was afraid so; but I dared not ask you. Come, come, Mrs Luttrell,” he continued gently, “don’t take it to heart. Troubles come to us all, and when they do there is their pleasant side, for then we learn the value of our friends, and I hope I am one.”

“Friend, my dear!” said Mrs Luttrell, weeping gently, “I’m sure you have always seemed to me like a soil. Do: pray do, Joseph, tell him all.”

“Be patient, wife, and I will—all that I can.”

The doctor paused and cleared his throat, while Mrs Luttrell sat with her hand in the curate’s.

“You have set me thinking,” said the doctor at last; “and what you said is like a ray of sunshine in my trouble.”

“He’s always saying things that are like rays of sunshine to us in our trouble, Joseph,” said Mrs Luttrell, looking up through her tears at the earnest countenance at her side.

“Bayle, I shall have to lose the old place—the wife’s old home, of which she is so proud—and my old garden. It’s a bitter blow at my time of life, but it must come.”

“I was afraid there was something very wrong,” said Bayle; “but suppose we look the difficulties in the face. I’m a bit of a lawyer, you know, my dear doctor. Let’s see what can be done. I want to be delicate in my offer, but I must be blunt. I am not a poor man, my wants are very simple, and I spend so little—let me clear this difficulty away. There, we will not bother Mrs Luttrell about money matters. Consider it settled.”

“No,” said the doctor firmly, “that will not do. I appreciate it all, my dear boy, truly; but there is only one way out of this difficulty—the old place must be sold.”

“Oh, Joseph, Joseph!” sighed Mrs Luttrell, and the tears fell fast.

“It must be, wife,” said the doctor firmly. “Bayle, after what you said, will you buy the old home? I could bear it better if it fell into your hands.”

“Are you sure it must be sold?”

“There is no other way out of the difficulty, Bayle. Will you buy it?”

“If you tell me that there is certainly no other way out of the difficulty, and that it is your wish and Mrs Luttrell’s, I will buy the place.”

“Just as it stands—furniture—everything?”

“Just as it stands—furniture—everything.”

“Ah!” ejaculated the doctor with a sigh of relief. “Thank God, Bayle!” he cried, shaking the curate’s hand energetically. “I have not felt so much at rest for months. Now I want, you to tell me a little about the town—about the people. What do they say?”

“Say?”

“Yes: say about us—about Hallam—about Millicent, about our darling?”

“My dear doctor, I shall have to go and fetch old Gemp. He will point at game, and tell you more in half-an-hour than I shall be able to tell you in a year. Had we not better change the conversation?—here is Mrs Hallam with Julia.”

As he spoke the garden gate clicked, and Millicent came into sight, with her child, the one grave and sad, the other all bright-eyed eagerness and excitement.

“There they are, mamma—in the yew seat!” And the child raced across the lawn, bounded over a flowerbed, and leaped upon the doctor’s knee.

“Dear old grandpa!” she cried, throwing her arms round his neck and kissing him effusively, but only to leap down and climb on Mrs Luttrell’s lap, clasping her neck, and laying her charming little face against the old lady’s cheek. “Dear, sweet old grandma!” she cried.

Then, in all the excitement of her young life, she was down again to seize Bayle’s hand.

“Come and get some fruit and flowers. We may, mayn’t we, grandpa?”

“I’m sure we may,” said Bayle, laughing, “only I must go.”

“Oh!” cried the child pouting, “don’t go, Mr Bayle! I do like being in the garden with you so very, very much!”

Mrs Hallam turned her sweet, grave face to him.

“Can you give her a few minutes? Julie will be so disappointed.”

“There,” cried Bayle merrily, “you see, doctor, what a little tyrant she grows! She makes every one her slave!”

“I don’t!” said the child, pouting. “Mamma always says a run in the garden does me so much good, and it will do Mr Bayle good too. Thibs says he works too hard.”

“Come along, then,” he cried laughing; and the man seemed transformed, running off with the child to get a basket, while Millicent gazed after them, her countenance looking brighter, and the old people seemed to have forgotten their troubles, as they gazed smilingly after the pair.

“Bless her!” said Mrs Luttrell, swaying herself softly to and fro, and passing her hands along her knees.

“Yes, that’s the way, Milly. Give her plenty of fresh air, and laugh at me and my tribe.”

Then quite an eager conversation ensued, Mrs Hallam brightening up; and on both sides every allusion to trouble was, by a pious kind of deception, kept out of sight, Millicent Hallam being in the fond belief that her parents did not even suspect that she was not thoroughly happy, while they were right in thinking that their child was ignorant of the straits to which they had been brought.

“Why, we are quite gay this morning!” cried Mrs Luttrell; “or, no: perhaps he comes as a patient, he looks so serious. Ah, Sir Gordon, it is quite an age since you were here?”

“Yes, madam; I’m growing old and gouty, and—your servant, Mrs Hallam,” he said, raising his hat. “Doctor, I wish I had your health. Ah, how peaceful and pleasant this garden looks! They told me—old Gemp told me—that I should find Bayle here. I called at his lodgings—bless my soul! how can a man with his income live in such a simple way! The woman said he was out visiting, and that old scoundrel said he was here. Egad! I believe the fellow lies in wait to hear everything. Eh? Ah, I’m right, I see!”

Just then there was a silvery burst of childish laughter, followed by a deep voice shouting, “Stop thief! stop thief!” Then there was a scampering of feet, and Julia came racing along, with her dark curls flying, and Christie Bayle in full pursuit, right up to the group by the yew hedge.

“She ran off with the basket!” cried Bayle. “Did you ever see—Ah, Sir Gordon!” he cried, holding out a currant-stained hand.

“Humph!” cried Sir Gordon grimly, raising his glass to his eye, and looking at the big, brown, fruit-stained fingers; “mighty clerical, ’pon my honour, sir! Who do you think is coming to listen to a parson on Sundays who spends his weeks racing about gardens after little girls? No, I’m not going to spoil my gloves; they’re new.”

“I—I don’t think you ought to speak to—to Mr Bayle like that, Sir Gordon!” cried Mrs Luttrell, flushing and ruffling up like a hen. “If you only knew him as we do—”

“Oh, hush, mamma dear!” said Mrs Hallam, smiling tenderly, and laying her hand upon her mother’s arm.

“Yes, my dear; but I cannot sit still and—”

“Know him, ma’am!” said Sir Gordon sharply. “Oh, I know him by heart; read him through and through! He was never meant for a parson; he’s too rough!”

“Really, Sir Gordon, I—”

“Don’t defend me, Mrs Luttrell,” said Bayle merrily. “Sir Gordon doesn’t like me, and he makes this excuse for not coming to hear me preach.”

“Well, little dark eyes!” cried Sir Gordon, taking Julia’s hand, and leading her to the seat. “Ah, that’s better! I do get tired so soon, doctor. Well, little dark eyes!” he continued, after seating himself, and drawing the child between his knees, after which he drew a clean, highly-scented, cambric handkerchief from his breast pocket, and leaned forward. “Open your mouth, little one,” he said.

Julia obeyed, parting her scarlet lips.

“Now put out your tongue.”

“Is grandpa teaching you to be a doctor?” said the child innocently.

“No; but I wish he would, my dear,” said Sir Gordon, “so that I could doctor one patient—myself. Out with your tongue.”

The child obeyed, and the baronet gravely moistened his handkerchief thereon, and, taking the soft little chin in one gloved hand, carefully removed a tiny purple fruit-stain.

“That’s better. Now you are fit to kiss.” He bent down, and kissed the child slowly. “Don’t like me much, do you, Julia?”

“I don’t know,” said the child, looking up at him with her large serious eyes. “Sometimes I do, when you don’t talk crossly to me; but sometimes I don’t. I don’t like you half so well as I do Mr Bayle.”

“But he’s always setting you hard lessons, and puzzling your brains, isn’t he?”

“No,” said the child, shaking her head. “Oh, no! we have such fun over my lessons every morning! But I do like you too—a little.”

“Come, that’s a comfort!” said Sir Gordon, rising again. “There, I must go. I want to carry off Mr Bayle—on business.”

Mrs Hallam glanced sharply from one to the other, and then, to conceal her agitation, bent down over her child, and began to smooth her tangled curls.

Volume Two—Chapter Five.

Sir Gordon Bourne Asks Questions.

“I want a few words with you, Bayle,” said Sir Gordon, as the pair walked back towards the town.

“Shall we talk here, or will you come to my rooms?” and he indicated Mrs Pinet’s house, to which he had moved when Hallam married.

“Your rooms! No, man; I never feel as if I can breathe in your stuffy lodgings. How can you exist in them?”

“I do, and very happily,” said Bayle, laughing. “Shall we go to your private room at the bank?”

“Bless my soul! no, man!” cried Sir Gordon hastily. “The very last place. Let’s get out in the fields, and talk there. More room, and no tattling, inquisitive people about. No Gemps.”

“Very good,” said Bayle, wondering, and very anxious at heart, for he knew the baronet’s proclivities.

They turned off on to one of the footpaths, chatting upon indifferent matters, till all at once Sir Gordon exclaimed:

“’Pon my honour, I don’t think I like you, Bayle.”

“I’m very sorry, Sir Gordon, because I really do like you. I’ve always found you a true gentleman at heart, and—”

“Stuff, sir! Silence, sir! Egad, sir, will you hold your tongue? Talking such nonsense to a confirmed valetudinarian with a soured life, and—pish! I don’t want to talk about myself. I was going to say that I did not like you.”

“You did say so,” replied the curate, smiling.

“Ah! well, it’s the truth. Why do you stop here?”

“To annoy you, perhaps,” said Bayle laughing. “Well, no: I like my people, and I’m vain enough to think I am able to do a little good.”

“You do, Bayle, you do,” said Sir Gordon, taking his arm and leaning upon him in a confidential way. “You’re a good fellow, Bayle; and Castor here would miss you horribly, if you left.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“It is not nonsense, sir. Why, you do more good among the people in one year than I have done in all my life.”

“Well, I think I have amerced you pretty well lately for my poor, Sir Gordon.”

“Yes, man, but it was your doing. I shouldn’t have given a shilling. But look here, I was going to say, why is it that I come to you, and make such a confidant of you?”

“Do you wish to confide something to me now?”

“Yes, of course; one can’t go to one’s solicitor, and I’ve no friends. Plenty of club acquaintances: but no friends. There, don’t shake your head like that, man. Well, only a few. By-the-way, charming little girl that.”

“What, little Julie?” cried Bayle, with his cheeks flushing with pleasure.

“Yes; and your prime favourite, I see. I don’t like her, though. Too much of her father.”

“She has his eyes and hair,” said Bayle thoughtfully; “but there is the sweet grave look in her face that her mother used to wear when I first came to Castor.”

“Hush! Silence! Hold your tongue!” cried Sir Gordon impatiently. “Look here—her father—I want to talk about him.”

“About Mr Hallam?”

“Yes. What do you think of him now?”

Bayle laid his hand upon Sir Gordon’s.

“We are old friends, Sir Gordon; I know your little secret; you know mine. Don’t ask me that question.”

“As a very old trusty friend I do ask you. Bayle, it is a duty. Look here, man; I hold an important trust in connection with that bank. I’m afraid I have not done my duty. It is irksome to me, a wealthy man, and I am so much away yachting. Let me see; you never have had dealings with us.”

“No, Sir Gordon, never.”

“Well, as I was saying, I am so much away. You are always feeling the pulses of the people. Now, as you are a great deal at Hallam’s, tell me as a friend in a peculiar position, what do you think of Hallam?”

“Do you mean as a friend?”

“I mean as a business man, as our manager. What do the people say?”

“I cannot retail to you all their little tattle, Sir Gordon. Look here, sir, what do you mean? Speak out.”

Sir Gordon grew red and was silent for a few minutes.

“I will be plain, Bayle,” he said at last. “The fact is I am very uneasy.”

“About Hallam?”

“Yes. He occupies a position of great trust.”

“But surely Mr Trampleasure shares it.”

“Trampleasure shares nothing. He’s a mere dummy: a bank ornament. There, I don’t say I suspect Hallam, but I cannot help seeing that he is living far beyond his means.”

“But you have the books—the statements?”

“Yes; and everything is perfectly correct. I do know something about figures, and at our last audit there was not a penny wrong.”

Bayle drew a breath full of relief.

“Every security, every deed was in its place, and the bank was never in a more prosperous state.”

“Then of what do you complain?”

“That is what I do not know. All I know, Bayle, is that I am uneasy, and dissatisfied about him. Can you help me?”

“How can I help you?”

“Can you tell me something to set my mind at rest, and make me think that Hallam is a strictly honourable man, so that I can go off again yachting. I cannot exist away from the sea.”

“I am afraid I can tell you nothing, Sir Gordon.”

“Not from friend to friend?”

“I am the trusted friend of the Hallams’. I am free of their house. They have entrusted a great deal of the education of their child to me!”

“Well, tell me this. You know the people. What do they say of Hallam in the town?”

“I have never heard an unkind word respecting him unless from disappointed people, to whom, I suppose from want of confidence in their securities, he has refused loans.”

“That’s praising him,” said Sir Gordon. “Do the people seem to trust him?”

“Oh! certainly.”

“More praise. But do they approve of his way of living? Hasn’t he a lot of debts in the town?”

Bayle was silent.

“Ah! that pinches. Well, now does not that seem strange?”

“I know nothing whatever of Mr Hallam’s private affairs. He may perhaps have lost his own money, and his indebtedness be due to his endeavours to recoup himself.”

“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly. “What a lovely day!”

“It is delightful,” said the curate, with a sigh of relief, as they turned back.

“I was going to start to-morrow for a run up the Norway fiords.”

“Indeed; so soon?”

“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly; “but I am not going now.”

They parted at the entrance of the town, and directly after the curate became aware of the fact that old Gemp was looking at him very intently.

He forgot it the next moment as he entered his room, to be followed directly after by his landlady, who drew his attention to a note upon the chimney-piece in Thickens’s formal, clerkly hand.

“One of the school children brought this, sir; and, begging your pardon,” cried the woman, colouring indignantly, “if it isn’t making too bold to ask such a thing of you, sir, don’t you think you might say a few words next Sunday about Poll-prying, and asking questions?”

“Really,” said Bayle, smiling; “I’m afraid it would be very much out of place, Mrs Pinet.”

“Well, I’m sorry you say so, sir, for the way that Gemp goes on gets to be beyond bearing. He actually stopped that child, took the letter from him, read the direction, and then asked the boy who it was from, and whether he was to wait for an answer.”

“Never mind, Mrs Pinet; it is very complimentary of Mr Gemp to take so much interest in my affairs.”

“It made me feel quite popped, sir,” cried the woman; “but of course it be no business of mine.”

Bayle read the letter, and changed colour, as he connected it with Sir Gordon’s questions, for it was a request that the curate would come up and see Thickens that evening on very particular business.

Volume Two—Chapter Six.

James Thickens Makes a Communication.

“Master’s in the garden feeding his fish,” said the girl, as she admitted Bayle. “I’ll go and tell him you’re here, sir.”

“No; let me go to him,” said Bayle quietly.

The girl led the way down a red-bricked floored passage, and opened a door, through which the visitor passed, and then stood looking at the scene before him.

There was not much garden, but James Thickens was proud of it, because it was his own. It was only a strip, divided into two beds by a narrow walk of red bricks—so many laid flat with others set on edge to keep the earth from falling over, and sullying the well-scrubbed path, which was so arranged by its master that the spigot of the rain-water butt could be turned on now and then and a birch broom brought into requisition to keep all clean.

Each bed was a mass of roses—dwarf roses that crept along the ground by the path, and then others that grew taller till the red brick wall on either side was reached, and this was clambered, surmounted, and almost completely hidden by clusters of small blossoms. No other flower grew in this patch of a garden; but, save in the very inclement weather, there were always buds and blossoms to be picked, and James Thickens was content.

From where Bayle stood he could just see Thickens at the hither side of the great bricked and cemented tank that extended across the bottom of his and the two adjoining gardens, while beyond was the steam-mill, where Mawson the miller had introduced that great power to work his machinery. He it was who had contrived the tank for some scheme in connection with the mill, and had then made some other plan after leading into it through a pipe the clear water of the dam on the other side of the mill, and arranging a proper exit when it should be too full. Then he had given it up as unnecessary, merely turning into it a steam-pipe, to get rid of the waste, and finally had let it to Thickens for his whim.

There was a certain prettiness about the place seen from the bank clerk’s rose garden. Facing you was the quaintly-built mill, one mass of ivy from that point of view, while numberless strands ran riot along the stone edge of the tank, and hung down to kiss the water with their tips. To the left there was the great elder clump, that was a mass of creamy bloom in summer, and of clustering black berries in autumn, till the birds had cleared all off.

As Bayle stood looking down, he could see the bank clerk upon his knees, bending over the edge of the pool, and holding his fingers in the water.

Every now and then he took a few crumbs of broken well-boiled rice from a basin at his side, and scattered them over the pool, while, when he had done this, he held the tips of his fingers in the water.

He was so intent upon his task, that he did not hear the visitor’s approach, so that when Bayle was close up, he could see the limpid water glowing with the bright scales of the golden-orange fish that were feeding eagerly in the soft evening light. Now quite a score of the brilliant metallic creatures would be making at the crumbs of rice. Then there would be as many—quite a little shoal—that were of a soft pearly silver, while mingled with them were others that seemed laced with sable velvet or purple bands.

The secret of the hand-dipping was plain too, for, as Thickens softly placed his fingers to the surface, first one and then another would swim up and seem to kiss the ends, taking therefrom some snack of rice, to dart away directly with a flourish of the tail which set the water all a ripple, and made it flash in the evening light.

Thickens was talking to his pets, calling them by many an endearing name as they swam up, kissed his finger tips, and darted away, till, becoming conscious of the presence of some one in the garden, he started to his feet, but stooped quickly again to pick up the basin, dip a little water, rinse out the vessel, and throw its contents far and wide.

“I did not hear you come, Mr Bayle,” he said hastily.

“I ought to have spoken,” replied the curate gravely. “How tame your fishes are!”

“Yes, sir, yes. They’ve got to know people from being petted so. Dip your fingers in the water and they’ll come.”

The visitor bent down and followed the example he had seen, with the result that fish after fish swam up, touched a white finger tip with its soft wet mouth, and then darted off.

“Strange pets, Mr Thickens, are they not?”

“Yes, sir, yes. But I like them,” said Thickens with a droll sidewise look at his visitor. “You see the water’s always gently warmed from the mill there, and that makes them thrive. They put one in mind of gold and silver, sir, and the bank. And they’re nice companions: they don’t talk.”

He seemed then to have remembered something. A curious rigidity came over him, and though his visitor was disposed to linger by the pool where, in the evening light, the brightly-coloured fish glowed like dropped flakes of the sunset, Thickens drew back for him to pass, and then almost backed him into the house.

“Sit down, please, Mr Bayle,” he said, rather huskily; and he placed a chair for his visitor. “You got my note, then?”

“Yes, and I came on. You want my—”

“Help and advice, sir; that’s it. I’m in a cleft stick, sir—fast.”

“I am sorry,” said Bayle earnestly, for Thickens paused. “Is it anything serious?”

Thickens nodded, sat down astride a Windsor chair, holding tightly by the curved back, and rested his upper teeth on the top, tapping the wood gently.

Bayle waited a few moments for him to go on; but he only began rubbing at the top of the chair back, and stared at his visitor.

“You say it is serious, Mr Thickens.”

“Terribly, sir.”

“Is it—is it a monetary question?”

Thickens raised his head, nodded, and lowered it again till his teeth touched the chair back. “Some one in difficulties?”

Thickens nodded.

“Not you, Mr Thickens? You are too careful a man.”

“No: not me, sir.”

“Some friend?”

Thickens shook his head, and there was silence for a few moments, only broken by the dull sound of the clerk’s teeth upon the chair.

“Do you want me to advance some money to a person in distress?”

Thickens raised his head quickly, and looked sharply in his visitor’s eye; but only to lower his head again.

“No. No,” he said.

“Then will you explain yourself?” said the curate gravely.

“Yes. Give me time. It’s hard work. You don’t know.”

Bayle looked at him curiously, and waited for some minutes before Thickens spoke again.

“Yes,” he said suddenly and as if his words were the result of deep thought; “yes, I’ll tell you. I did think I wouldn’t speak after all; but it’s right, and I will. I can trust you, Mr Bayle?”

“I hope so, Mr Thickens.”

“Yes, I can trust you. I used to think you were too young and boyish, but you’re older much, and I didn’t understand you then as I do now.”

“I was very young when I first came, Mr Thickens,” said Bayle smiling. “It was almost presumption for me to undertake such a duty. Well, what is your trouble?”

“Give me time, man; give me time,” said Thickens fiercely. “You don’t know what it is to be in my place. I am a confidential clerk, and it is like being torn up by the roots to have to speak as I want to speak.”

“If it is a matter of confidence ought you to speak to me, Mr Thickens?” said Bayle gravely. “Do I understand you to say it is a bank matter?”

“That’s it, sir.”

“Then why not go to Mr Dixon?”

Thickens shook his head.

“Mr Trampleasure? or Sir Gordon Bourne?”

“They’ll know soon enough,” said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily.

He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best.

And yet the clerk had said so little—nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle’s imagination seized upon the few scant words—those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed.

“Tell me,” he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, “tell me all.”

There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don’t come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man—a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what’s right.”

“I know—I believe you do, Thickens,” said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give.

He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall.

Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself.

It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate’s troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade.

“That’s better,” he said with a half laugh. “I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I’ve been in trouble these five years past.”

“You?”

“Yes, sir. I say it again: I’ve been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it’s been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you’d say—no bigger than a man’s hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it’s got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts.”

“Don’t talk riddles, man; speak out.”

“Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time. You don’t know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare.”

“I’ll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on.”

“I felt it would, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me back, sir; but I’m going to speak now.”

“Go on.”

“Well, sir, a bank clerk is trained to be suspicious. Every new customer who comes to the place is an object of suspicion to a man like me. He may want to cheat us. Every cheque that’s drawn is an object of suspicion because it may be a forgery, or the drawer may not have a balance to meet it. Then money—the number of bad coins I’ve detected, sir, would fill a big chest full of sham gold and silver, so that one grows to doubt and suspect every sovereign one handles. Then, sir, there’s men in general, and even your own people. It’s a bad life, sir, a bad life, a bank clerk’s, for you grow at last so that you even begin to doubt yourself.”

“Ah! but that is a morbid feeling, Thickens.”

“No, sir, it’s a true one. I’ve had such a fight as you couldn’t believe, doubting myself and whether I was right: but I think I am.”

“Well,” said the curate, smiling a faint, dejected smile; “but you are still keeping me in the dark.”

“It will be light directly,” said Thickens fiercely, “light that is blinding. I dread almost to speak and let you hear.”

“Go on, man; go on.”

“I will, sir. Well, for years past I’ve been in doubt about our bank.”

“Dixons’, that every one trusts?”

“Yes, sir, that’s it. Dixons’ has been trusted by everybody. Dixons’, after a hundred years’ trial, has grown to be looked upon as the truth in commerce. It has been like a sort of money mill set going a hundred years ago, and once set going it has gone on of itself, always grinding coin.”

“But you don’t mean to tell me that the bank is unsafe? Man, man, it means ruin to hundreds of our friends!”

He spoke in an impassioned way, but at the same time he felt more himself; the vague horror had grown less.

“Hear me out, sir; hear me out,” said Thickens slowly. “Years ago, sir, I began to doubt, and then I doubted myself, and then I doubted again, but even then I couldn’t believe. Doubts are no use to a man like me, sir; he must have figures, and figures I couldn’t get to prove it, sir. I must be able to balance a couple of pages, and then if the balance is on the wrong side there’s something to go upon. It has taken years to get these figures, but I’ve got them now.”

“Thickens, you are torturing me with this slow preamble.”

“For a few minutes, sir,” said the clerk pathetically, “for an hour. It has tortured me for years. Listen, sir. I began to doubt—not Dixons’ stability, but something else.”

The vague horror began to increase again, and Christie Bayle’s hands grew more damp.

“I have saved a little money, and that and my writings were in the bank. I withdrew everything. Cowardly? Dishonest? Perhaps it was; but I doubted, sir, and it was my little all. Then you’ll say, if I had these doubts I ought to have spoken. If I had been sure perhaps I might; but I tell you, sir, they were doubts. I couldn’t be false to my friends though, and where here and there they’ve consulted me about their little bits of money I’ve found out investments for them, or advised them to buy house property. A clergyman for whom I changed a cheque one day, said it would be convenient for him to have a little banking account with Dixons’, and I said if I had an account with a good bank in London I wouldn’t change it. Never change your banker, I said.”

“Yes, Thickens, you did,” said the curate eagerly, “and I have followed your advice. But you are keeping me in suspense. Tell me, is there risk of Dixons’ having to close their doors?”

“No, no, sir; it’s not so bad as that. Old Mr Dixon is very rich, and he’d give his last penny to put things straight. Sir Gordon Bourne is an honourable gentleman—one who would sacrifice his fortune so that he might hold up his head. But things are bad, sir, bad; how bad I don’t know.”

“But, good heavens, man! your half-yearly balance-sheets—your books?”

“All kept right, sir, and wonderfully correct. Everything looks well in the books.”

“Then how is it?”

“The securities, sir,” said Thickens, with his lip quivering. “I’ve done a scoundrelly thing.”

“You, Thickens? You? I thought you were as honest a man as ever trod this earth!”

“Me, sir?” said the clerk grimly. “Oh, no! oh, no! I’m a gambler, I am.”

The vague horror was dissolving fast into thin mist. “You astound me!” cried Bayle, as he thought of Sir Gordon’s doubts of Hallam. “You, in your position of trust! What are you going to do?”

The grim smile on James Thickens’s lips grew more saturnine as he said:

“Make a clean breast of it, sir. That’s why I sent for you.”

“But, my good man!—oh, for heaven’s sake! go with me at once to Sir Gordon and Mr Hallam. I ought not to listen to this alone.”

“You’re going to hear it all alone,” said James Thickens, growing still more grim of aspect; “and when I’ve done you’re going to give me your advice.”

Bayle gazed at him sternly, but with the strange oppression gone, and the shadow of the vague horror fading into nothingness.

“I’m confessing to you, sir, just as if I were a Roman Catholic, and you were a priest.”

“But I decline to receive your confession on such terms, James Thickens,” cried Bayle sternly. “I warn you that, if you make me the recipient of your confidence, I must be free to lay the case before your employers.”

“Yes, of course,” said Thickens with the same grim smile. “Hear me out, Mr Bayle, sir. You’d never think it of me, who came regularly to church, and never missed—you’d never think I had false keys made to our safe; but I did. Two months ago, in London.”

Bayle involuntarily drew back his chair, and Thickens laughed—a little hard, dry laugh.

“Don’t be hard on the man, Mr Bayle, who advised you not to put your money and securities in at Dixons’.”

“Go on, sir,” said the curate sternly.

“Yes: I will go on!” cried Thickens, speaking now excitedly, in a low, harsh voice. “I can’t carry on that nonsense. Look here, sir,” he continued, shuffling his chair closer to his visitor, and getting hold of his sleeve, “you don’t know our habits at the bank. Everything is locked up in our strong-room, and Hallam keeps the key of that, and carefully too! I go in and out there often, but it’s always when he’s in the room, and when he is not there he always locks it, so that, though I tried for years to get in there, I never had a chance.”

“Wretched man!” cried Bayle, trying to shake off his grip, but Thickens’s fingers closed upon his arm like a claw.

“Yes, I was wretched, and that’s why I had the keys made, and altered again and again till I could get them to fit. Then one day I had my chance. Hallam went over to Lincoln, and I had a good examination of the different securities, shares, deeds—scrip of all kinds—that I had down on a paper, an abstract from my books.”

“Well, sir?”

“Well, sir? Half of them are not there. They’re dummies tied up and docketed.”

“But the real deeds?”

“Pledged for advances in all sorts of quarters. Money raised upon them at a dozen banks, perhaps, in town.”

“But—I don’t understand you, Thickens; you do not mean that you—”

“That I, Mr Bayle!” cried the clerk passionately. “Shame upon you!—do you think I could be such a scoundrel—such a thief?”

“But these deeds, and this scrip, what are they all?”

“Valuable securities placed in Dixons’ hands for safety.”

“And they are gone?”

“To an enormous amount.”

“But, tell me,” panted Bayle, with the horror vague no longer, but seeming to have assumed form and substance, and to be crushing him down, “who has done this thing?”

“Who had the care of them, sir?”

“Thickens,” cried Bayle, starting from his chair, and catching at the mantelpiece, for the room seemed to swim round, and he swept an ornament from the shelf, which fell with a crash, “Thickens, for heaven’s sake, don’t say that.”

“I must say it, sir. What am I to do? I’ve doubted him for years.”

“But the money—he has lived extravagantly; but, oh! it is impossible. It can’t be much.”

“Much, sir? It’s fifty thousand pounds if it’s a penny!”

“But, Thickens, it means felony, criminal prosecution, a trial.”

He spoke hoarsely, and his hands were trembling. “It means transportation for one-and-twenty years, sir—perhaps for life.”

Bayle’s face was ashy, and with lips apart he stood gazing at the grim, quiet clerk.

“Man, man!” he cried at last; “it can’t be true.”

“Do you doubt too, sir? Well, it’s natural. I used to, and I tried to doubt it; a hundred times over when I was going to be sure that he was a villain, I used to say to myself as I went and fed my fish, it’s impossible, a man with a wife and child like—”

“Hush! for God’s sake, hush!” cried Bayle passionately, and then with a burst of fury, he caught the clerk by the throat. “It is a lie; Robert Hallam could not be such a wretch as that!”

“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens calmly, and in an appealing tone; “can’t you see now, sir, why I sent to you? Do you think I don’t know how you loved that lady, and how much she and her bright little fairy of a child are to you? Why, sir, if it hadn’t been for them I should have gone straight to Sir Gordon, and before now that scoundrel would have been in Lincoln jail.”

“But you are mistaken, Thickens. Man, man, think what you are saying. Such a charge would break her heart, would brand that poor innocent child as the daughter of a felon. Oh, it cannot be!” he cried excitedly. “Heaven would not suffer such a wrong.”

“I’ve been years proving it, sir; years,” said Thickens slowly; “and until I was sure, I’ve been as silent as the dead. Fifty thousand pounds’ worth of securities at least have been taken from that safe, and dummies filled up the spaces. Why, sir, a score of times people wanted these deeds, and he has put them off for a few days till he could go up to London, raise money on others, and get those wanted from the banker’s hands.”

“But you knew something of this, then?”

“Yes, I knew it, sir—that is, I suspected it. Until I got the keys made, I was not sure.”

“Does—does any one else know of this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, with quite a moan.

“Robert Hallam, sir.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, drawing a breath full of relief. “You have not told a soul?”

“No, sir. I said to myself there’s that sweet lady and her little child; and that stopped me. I said to myself, I must go to the trustiest friend they have, sir, and that was you. Now, sir, I have told you all. The simple truth. What am I to do?”

Christie Bayle dropped into a chair, his eyes staring, his blanched face drawn, and his lips apart, as he conjured up the scene that must take place—the arrest, the wreck of Mrs Hallam’s life, the suffering that would be her lot. And at last, half maddened, he started up, and stood with clenched hands gazing fiercely at the man who had fired this train.

“Well, sir,” said Thickens coldly, “will you get them and the old people away before the exposure comes?”

“No,” cried Bayle fiercely, “this must not—shall not be. It must be some mistake. Mr Hallam could not do such a wrong. Man, man, do you not see that such a charge would break his wife’s heart?”

“It was in the hope that you would do something for them, sir, that I told you all this first.”

“But we must see Mr Dixon and Sir Gordon at once.”

“And they will—you know what.”

“Hah! the matter must be hushed up. It would kill her!” cried Bayle incoherently. “Mr Thickens, you stand there like this man’s judge; have you not made one mistake?”

Thickens shook his head and tightened his lips to a thin line.

“Do you not see what it would do? Have you no mercy?”

“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens slowly, “this has served you as it served me. It’s so stunning that it takes you off your head. Am I, the servant of my good masters, knowing what I do, to hide this from them till the crash comes first—the crash that is only a matter of time? Do you advise—do you wish me to do this?”

Christie Bayle sat with his hands clasping his forehead, for the pain he suffered seemed greater than he could bear. He had known for long enough that Hallam was a harsh husband and a bad father; but it had never even entered his dreams that he was other than an honest man. And now he was asked to decide upon this momentous matter, when his decision must bring ruin, perhaps even death, to the woman he esteemed, and misery to the sweet, helpless child he had grown to love.

It was to him as if he were being exposed to some temptation, for even though his love for Millicent had long been dead, to live again in another form for her child, Christie Bayle would have gone through any suffering for her sake. As he bent down there the struggle was almost greater than he could bear.

And there for long he sat, crushed and stunned by the terrible stroke that had fallen upon him, and was about to fall upon the helpless wife and child. His mind seemed chaotic. His reasoning powers failed, and as he kept clinging to little scraps of hope, they seemed to be snatched away.

It was with a heart full of grief mingled with rage that he started to his feet at last, and faced Thickens, for the clerk had again spoken in measured tones. “Mr Bayle, what am I to do?”

The curate gazed at him piteously, as he essayed to speak; but the words seemed smothered as they struggled in his breast.

Then, by a supreme effort, he mastered his emotion, and drew himself up.

“Once more, sir, what am I to do?”

“Your duty,” said Christie Bayle, and with throbbing brain he turned and left the house.

Volume Two—Chapter Seven.

Christie Bayle Changes his Mind.

“God help me! What shall I do?” groaned Christie Bayle, as he paced his room hour after hour into the night. A dozen times over he had been on the point of going to Thickens, awakening him and forcing him to declare that he would keep the fearful discovery a secret until something could be done.

“It is too horrible,” he said. “Poor Millicent! The disgrace! It would kill her.”

He went to the desk and began to examine his papers and his bank-book.

Then he relocked his desk and paced the room again. “Julie, my poor little child, too. The horror and disgrace to rest upon her little innocent head. Oh, it is too dreadful! Will morning never come?”

The hours glided slowly by, and that weary exclamation rose to his lips again and again:

“Will morning never come?”

It seemed as if it never would be day, but long before the first faint rays had streaked the east he had made his plans.

“It is for her sake; for her child’s sake. At whatever cost, I must try and save them.”

His first ideas were to go straight to Hallam’s house; but such a course would have excited notice. He felt that Millicent would think it strange if he went there early. Time was of the greatest importance, but he felt that he must not be too hasty, so seated himself to try and calm the throbbings of his brain, and to make himself cool and judicial for the task he had in hand.

Soon after seven he walked quietly downstairs, and took his hat. It would excite no surprise, he thought, for him to be going for a morning walk, and, drawing in a long breath of the sweet refreshing air, he began to stride up the street.

“How bright and beautiful is thy earth, O God!” he murmured, as the delicious morning sunshine bathed his face, “and how we mar and destroy its beauties with our wretched scheming and plans! Ah! I must not feel like this,” he muttered, as a restful hopefulness born of the early day seemed to be infusing itself throughout his being.

He had no occasion to check the feeling of content and rest, for he had not gone a dozen yards before the whole force of his position flashed upon him. He felt that he was a plotter against the prosperity of the town—that scores of the people whose homes he was passing were beginning the day in happy ignorance that perhaps the savings of a life were in jeopardy. Ought he not to warn them at once, and bid them save what they could out of the fire?

For his conscience smote him, asking him, how he, a clergyman, the preacher of truth and justice and innocence, could be going to temporise, almost to join in the fraud by what he was about to do?

“How can I meet my people after this?” he asked himself; and his face grew careworn and lined. The old reproach against him had passed away. No one could have called him young and boyish-looking now.

“Morning, sir,” cried a harsh voice.

Bayle started, and flushed like some guilty creature, for he had come suddenly upon old Gemp as he supposed, though the reverse was really the case.

“Going for a walk, sir?” said Gemp, pointing at him, and scanning his face searchingly.

“Yes, Mr Gemp. Fine morning, is it not?”

Gemp stood shaving himself with one finger, as the curate passed on, and made a curious rasping noise as the rough finger passed over the stubble. Then he shook his head and began to follow slowly and at a long distance.

“I felt as if that man could read my very thoughts,” said Bayle, as he went along the street, past the bank, and out into the north road that led towards the mill.

He shuddered as he passed Dixons’, and pictured to himself what would happen if the doors were closed and an excited crowd of depositors were hungering for their money.

“It must be stopped at any cost,” he muttered; and once more the sweet sad face of Millicent seemed to be looking into his for help.

“I ought to have suspected him before,” he continued; “but how could I, when even Sir Gordon could see no wrong? Ha! Yes. Perhaps Thickens is mistaken after all. It may be, as he said, only suspicion.”

His heart seemed like lead, though, the next moment, as he neared the clerk’s house. Thickens was too just, too careful a man to have been wrong.

He stopped, and rapped with his knuckles at the door directly after, to find it opened by Thickens himself, and, as the clerk drew back, he passed in, ignorant of the fact that Gemp was shaving himself with his rough forefinger a hundred yards away, and saying to himself, “Which is it? Thickens going to marry skinny Heathery on the sly; or something wrong? I shan’t be long before I know.”

The brightness of the morning seemed to be shut out as the clerk closed the door, and followed his visitor into the sitting-room.

“Well, Mr Bayle,” he said, for the curate was silent. “You’ve come to say something particular.”

“Yes,” said Bayle firmly. “Thickens, this exposure would be too horrible. It must not take place.”

“Ah,” said Thickens in his quiet, grave way, “you’re the Hallams’ friend.”

“I hope I am the friend of every one in this town.”

“And you advise me to keep this quiet and let your friends be robbed?”

“Silence, man! How dare you speak to me like that?” cried Bayle furiously, and he took a step in advance. “No, no,” he said, checking himself, and holding out his hand; “we must be calm and sensible over this, Thickens. There must be no temper. Now listen. You remember what I said you must do last night.”

“Yes; and I’m going directly after breakfast to Sir Gordon.”

“No; I retract my words. You must not go.”

“And the people who have been robbed?”

“Wait a few moments, Thickens,” cried Bayle, flushing, as he saw that his hand was not taken. “Hear me out. You—yes, surely, you have some respect for Mrs Hallam—some love for her sweet child.”

Thickens nodded.

“Think, then, man, of the horrible disgrace—the ruin that would follow your disclosures.”

“Yes; it is very horrid, sir; but I must do my duty. You owned to it last night.”

“Yes, man, yes; but surely there are times when we may try and avert some of the horrors that would fall upon the heads of the innocent and true.”

“That don’t sound like what a parson ought to say,” said Thickens dryly.

Bayle flushed angrily again, but he kept down his wrath.

“James Thickens,” he said coldly, “you mistake me.”

“No,” said Thickens, “you spoke out like a man last night. This morning, sir, you speak like Robert Hallam’s friend.”

“Yes; as his friend—as the friend of his wife; as one who loves his child. Now listen, Thickens. To what amount do you suppose Hallam is a defaulter?”

“How can I tell, sir? It is impossible to say. It can’t be hushed up.”

“It must, it shall be hushed up,” said Bayle sternly. “Now, look here; I insist upon your keeping what you know quiet for the present.”

Thickens shook his head.

“I did not tell you, but Sir Gordon suspects something to be wrong.”

“Sir Gordon does, sir?”

“Yes; he consulted me about the matter.”

“Then my course is easy,” said Thickens brightening.

“Not so easy, perhaps, as you think,” said Bayle coldly. “You must be silent till I have seen Hallam.”

“Seen him, sir? Why, it’s giving him warning to escape.”

“Seen him and Sir Gordon, James Thickens. It would be a terrible scandal for Dixons’ Bank if it were known, and utter ruin and disgrace for Hallam.”

“Yes,” said Thickens, “and he deserves it.”

“We must not talk about our deserts, Thickens,” said Bayle gravely. “Now listen to me. I find I can realise in a very few days the sum of twenty-four thousand pounds.”

Thickens’s eyes dilated.

“Whatever amount of that is needed, even to the whole, I am going to place in Robert Hallam’s hands, to clear himself and redeem these securities, and then he must leave the town quietly, and in good repute.”

“In good repute?”

“For his wife’s sake, sir. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Thickens quietly. “No man could understand such a sacrifice as that. You mean to say that you are going to give up your fortune—all you have—to save that gambling scoundrel from what he deserves?”

“Yes.”

“But, Mr Bayle—”

“Silence! I have made my plans, sir. Now, Mr Thickens, you see that I am not going to defraud the customers of the bank, but to replace their deeds.”

“God bless you, sir! I beg your pardon humbly. I’m a poor ignorant brute, with no head for anything but figures and—my fish. And just now I wouldn’t take your hand. Mr Bayle, sir, will you forgive me?”

“Forgive! I honour you, Thickens, as a sterling, honest man—shake hands. There, now you know my plans.”

“Oh yes, sir, I understand you!” cried Thickens; “but you must not do that, sir. You must not indeed!”

“I can do as I please with my own, Thickens. Save for my charities, money is of little use to me. There, now I must go. I shall see Hallam as soon as he is at the bank. I will not go to his house, for nothing must be done to excite suspicion. You will help me?”

Thickens hesitated.

“I ask it for Mrs Hallam’s sake—for the sake of Doctor and Mrs Luttrell. Come, you will help me in this. You came to me for my advice last night. I have changed it during the past few hours. There, I have you on my side?”

“Yes, sir; but you must hold me free with Sir Gordon. Bah! no; I’ll take my chance, sir. Yes: I’ll help you as you wish.”

“I trust you will, Thickens,” said Bayle quietly.

“And you are determined, sir?—your fortune—all you have?”

“I am determined. I shall see you at the bank about ten.”

Volume Two—Chapter Eight.

Brought to Book.

“He—he—he—he—he! how cunning they do think themselves! What jolly owd orstridges they are!” chuckled old Gemp, as he saw Bayle leave the clerk’s house, and return home to his breakfast. “Dear me! dear me! to think of James Thickens marrying that old maid! Ah well! Of course, he didn’t go to her house for nothing!”

He was in the street, again, about ten, when the curate came out, and, as soon as he saw him, Gemp doubled down one of the side lanes to get round to the church, and secure a good place.

“They won’t know in the town till it’s over,” he chuckled. “Sly trick! He—he—he!”

The old fellow hurried round into the churchyard, getting before Bayle, as he thought, and posting himself where he could meet the curate coming in at the gate, and give him a look which should mean, “Ah! you can’t get over me!”

An observer would have found old Gemp’s countenance a study, as he stood there, waiting for Bayle to come, and meaning afterwards to stay and see Thickens and Miss Heathery come in. But from where he stood he could see the bank, and, to his surprise, he saw James Thickens come out on the step, and directly after the curate went up to him, and they entered the place together.

Gemp’s countenance lengthened, and he began shaving himself directly, his eyes falling upon one of the mouldering old tombstones, upon which he involuntarily read:

“Lay not up for yourselves treasure—” The rest had mouldered away.

“Where thieves break through and steal,” cried Gemp, whose jaw dropped. “They’re a consulting—parson and Sir Gordon—parson and Thickens twiced—parson at the bank—Hallam up to his eyes in debt!”

He reeled, so strong was his emotion, but he recovered himself directly.

“My deeds! my money!” he gasped, “my—”

He could utter no more, for a strange giddiness assailed him, and after clutching for a moment in the air, he fell down in a fit.

“Yes, he’s in his room, sir,” said Thickens, meeting Bayle at the bank door. “I’ll tell him you are here.”

Hallam required no telling. He had seen Bayle come up, and he appeared at the door of his room so calm and cool that his visitor felt a moment’s hesitation.

“Want to see me, Bayle? Business? Come in.”

The door closed behind the curate, and James Thickens screwed his face into wrinkles, and buttoned his coat up to the last button, as he seated himself upon his stool.

“Well, what can I do for you, Bayle?” said Hallam, seating himself at his table, after placing a chair for his visitor, which was not taken.

Bayle did not answer, but stood gazing down at the smooth, handsome-looking man, with his artificial smile and easy manner; and it seemed as if the events of the past few years—since he came, so young and inexperienced, to the town—were flitting by him.

“A little money?—a little accommodation?” said Hallam, as his visitor did not speak.

Could Thickens be wrong? No: impossible. Too many little things, that had seemed unimportant before, now grew to a vast significance, and Bayle cast aside his hesitancy, and, taking a step forward, laid his hand upon the table.

“Robert Hallam!” he said, in a low, deep voice, full of emotion, “are you aware of your position—how you stand?”

The manager started slightly, but the spasm passed in a moment, and he said calmly, with a smile:

“My position? How I stand? I do not comprehend you! My dear Bayle, what do you mean?” The curate gazed in his eyes, a calm, firm, judicial look in his countenance; but Hallam did not flinch. And again the idea flashed across the visitor’s mind, “Suppose Thickens should be wrong!”

Again, though, he cast off his hesitation, and spoke out firmly.

“Let me be plain with you, Robert Hallam, and show you the precipice upon whose edge you stand.”

“Good heavens, Mr Bayle, are you ill?” said Hallam in the coolest manner.

“Yes; sick at heart, to find of what treachery to employers, to wife and child, a man like you can be guilty. Hallam, your great sin is discovered! What have you to say?”

“Say!” cried Hallam, laughing scornfully, “say, in words that you use so often, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ What do you mean?”

“I came neither as ruler nor judge, but as the friend of your wife and child. There—as your friend. Man, it is of no use to dissimulate!”

“Dissimulate, sir!”

“Am I to be plainer?” cried Bayle angrily, “and tell you that but for my interposition James Thickens would at this moment be with Sir Gordon and Mr Dixon, exposing your rascality.”

“My rascality! How dare—”

“Dare!” cried Bayle sternly. “Cast off this contemptible mask, and be frank. Do I not tell you I come as a friend?”

“Then explain yourself.”

“I will,” said Bayle; and for a few minutes there was a silence almost appalling. The clock upon the mantelpiece ticked loudly; the stool upon which James Thickens sat in the outer office gave a loud scroop; and a large bluebottle fly shut in the room beat itself heavily against the panes in its efforts to escape.

Bayle was alternately flushed and pale. Hallam, perfectly calm, paler than usual, but beyond seeming hurt and annoyed, there was nothing to indicate the truth of the terrible charge being brought against him.

“Well, sir,” he said at last, “why do you not speak?”

Bayle gazed at him wonderingly, for all thought of his innocence had passed away.

“I will speak, Hallam,” he said. “Tell me the amount for which the deeds you have abstracted from that safe are pledged.”

“The deeds I have abstracted from that safe?” said Hallam, rising slowly, and standing at his full height, with his head thrown back.

“Yes; and in whose place you have installed forgeries, dummies—imitations, if you will.”

That blow was too straight—too heavy to be resisted. Hallam dropped back in his chair; while James Thickens, at his desk behind the bank counter, heard the shock, and then fidgeted in his seat, and rubbed his right ear, as he heard Hallam speak of him in a low voice, and say hoarsely:

“Thickens, then, has told you this?”

“Yes,” said Bayle in a lower tone. “He came to me for advice, and I bade him do his duty.”

“Hah!” said Hallam, and his eyes wandered about the room.

“This morning I begged him to wait.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Hallam again, and now there was a sharp twitching about his closely-shaven lips. “And you said that you came as our friend?”

“I did.”

“What do you mean?”

Bayle waited for a few moments, and then said slowly: “If you will redeem those deeds with which you have been entrusted, and go from here, and commence a new career of honesty, I will, for your wife and child’s sake, find the necessary money.”

“You will? You will do this, Bayle?” cried Hallam, extending his hands, which were not taken.

“I have told you I will,” said Bayle coldly. “But—the amount?”

“How many thousands are they pledged for?—to some bank, of course?”

“It was to cover an unfortunate speculation. I—”

“I do not ask you for explanations,” said Bayle coldly. “What amount will clear your defalcations?”

“Twenty to twenty-one thousand,” said Hallam, watching the effect of his words.

“I will find the money within a week,” said Bayle.

“Then all will be kept quiet?”

“Sir Gordon must be told.”

“No, no; there is no need of that. The affairs will be put straight, and matters can go on as before. It was an accident; I could not help it. Stop, man, what are you going to do?”

“Call in Mr Thickens,” said Bayle.

“To expose and degrade me in his eyes!”

Bayle turned upon him a withering contemptuous look.

“I expose you? Why, man, but for me you would have been in the hands of the officers by now. Mr Thickens!”

Thickens got slowly down from his stool and entered the manager’s room, where Hallam met his eye with a look that made the clerk think of what would have been his chances of life had opportunity served for him to be silenced for ever.

“I have promised Mr Hallam to find twenty-one thousand pounds within a week—to enable him to redeem the securities he has pledged.”

“And under these circumstances, Mr Thickens, there is no need for this trouble to be exposed.”

“Not to the public perhaps,” said Thickens slowly, “but Sir Gordon and Mr Dixon ought to know.”

“No, no,” cried Hallam, “there is no need. Don’t you see, man, that the money will be made right?”

“No, sir, I only see one thing,” said Thickens sturdily, “and that is that I have my duty to do.”

“But you will ruin me, Thickens.”

“You’ve ruined yourself, Mr Hallam; I’ve waited too long.”

“Stop, Mr Thickens,” said Bayle. “I pay this heavy sum of money to save Mr Hallam from utter ruin. The bank will be the gainer by twenty thousand pounds.”

“Twenty-one thousand you offered, sir,” said Thickens.

“Exactly. More if it is needed. If you expose this terrible affair to Sir Gordon and Mr Dixon they may feel it their duty to hand Mr Hallam over to the hands of justice. He must be saved from that.”

“What can I do, sir? There, then,” said Thickens, “since you put it so I will keep to it, but only on one condition.”

“And what is that?”

“Mr Hallam must go away from the bank and leave all keys with me and Mr Trampleasure.”

“But what excuse am I to make?” said Hallam huskily.

“I don’t think you want teaching how to stop at home for a few days, Mr Hallam,” said Thickens sternly; “you can be ill for a little while. It will not be the first time.”

“I will agree to anything,” said Hallam excitedly, “only save me from that other horror. Bayle, for our old friendship’s sake, for the sake of my poor wife and child, save me from that.”

“Am I not fighting to save you for their sake?” said Bayle bitterly. “Do you suppose that I am as conscienceless as yourself, and that I do not feel how despicable, how dishonest a part I am playing in hindering James Thickens from exposing your rascality? There, enough of this: let us bring this terribly painful meeting, with its miserable subterfuges, to an end. Thickens is right; you must leave this building at once and not enter it again. He must take all in charge until your successor is found.”

“As you will,” said Hallam, humbly. “There are the keys, Thickens, and I am really ill. When Mr Bayle brings the money I will help in every way I can. There.”

Bayle hesitated a moment, and then mastered his dislike. “Come,” he said to Hallam, “there must be no whisper of this trouble in the town. I will walk down with you to your house.”

“As my gaoler?” said Hallam with a sneer.

“As another proof of what I am ready to sacrifice to save you,” said Bayle. He walked with him as far as his door.

“Stop a moment,” said Hallam in a whisper. “You will do this for me, Bayle?”

“I have told you I would,” replied the curate coldly. “And at once?”

“At once.”

“You will have to bring me the money. No, you must go up to town with me, and we can redeem the papers. It will be better so.”

“As you will,” said Bayle. “I have told you that I will help you, will put myself at your service. I will let you know when I can be ready. Rest assured I shall waste no time in removing as much of this shadow as I can from above their heads.”

He met Hallam’s eyes as he spoke, just as the latter had been furtively Measuring, as it were, his height and strength, and then they parted.

End of Volume One.

Volume Two—Chapter Nine.

A Few Words on Love.

“What has papa been doing in the lumber-room, mamma?” asked Julia that same evening.

“Examining some of the old furniture there, my dear,” said Millicent, looking up with a smile. “I think he is going to have it turned into a play-room for you.”

“Oh!” said Julia indifferently; and she turned her thoughtful little face away, while her mother rose with the careworn look that so often sat there, giving place to the happy, maternal smile that came whenever she was alone with her child.

“Why, Julie darling, you seem so quiet and dull to-night. Your little head is hot. You are not unwell, dear?”

She knelt down beside the child, and drew the soft little head to her shoulder, and laid her cheek to the burning forehead.

“That is nice,” said the child, with a sigh of content. “Oh! mamma, it does do me so much good. My head doesn’t ache now.”

“And did it ache before?”

“Yes, a little,” said the child thoughtfully, and turning up her face, she kissed the sweet countenance that was by her side again and again. “I do love you so, mamma.”

“Why of course you do, my dear.”

“I don’t think I love papa.”

“Julie!” cried Millicent, starting from her as if she had been stung. “Oh I my child, my child,” she continued, with passionate energy, “if you only knew how that hurts me. My darling, you do—you do love him more than you love me.”

Julia shook her head and gazed back full in her mother’s eyes, as Millicent held her back at arm’s length, and then caught her to her breast, sobbing wildly.

“I do try to love him, mamma,” said the child, speaking quickly, in a half-frightened tone; “but when I put my arms round his neck and kiss him he pushes me away. I don’t think he loves me; he seems so cross with me. But if it makes you cry, I’m going to try and love him ever so much. There.”

She kissed her mother with all a child’s effusion, and nestled close to her.

“He does love you, my darling,” said Millicent, holding the child tightly to her, “as dearly as he loves me, and I’m going to tell you why papa looks so serious sometimes. It is because he has so many business cares and troubles.”

“But why does papa have so many business cares and troubles?” said the child, throwing back her head, and beginning to toy with her mother’s hair.

“Because he has to think about making money, and saving, so as to render us independent, my darling. It is because he loves us both that he works so hard and is so serious.”

“I wish he would not,” said the child. “I wish he would love me ever so instead, like Mr Bayle does. Mamma, why has not Mr Bayle been here to-day?”

“I don’t know, my child; he has been away perhaps.”

“But he did walk to the door with papa, and then did not come in.”

“Maybe he is busy, my dear.”

“Oh! I do wish people would not be busy,” said the child pettishly, “it makes them so disagreeable. Thibs is always being busy, and then oh! she is so cross.”

“Why, Julie, you want people always to be laughing and playing with you.”

“No, no, mamma, I like to work sometimes—with Mr Bayle and learn, and so I do like the lessons I learn with you. You never look cross at me, and Mr Bayle never does.”

“But, my darling, the world could not go on if people were never serious. Why, the sun does not always shine: there are clouds over it sometimes.”

“But it’s always shining behind the clouds, Mr Bayle says.”

“And so is papa’s love for his darling shining behind the clouds—the serious looks that come upon his face,” cried Millicent. “There, you must remember that.”

“Yes,” said the child, nodding, and drawing two clusters of curls away from her mother’s face to look up at it laughingly and then kiss her again and again. “Oh! how pretty you are, mamma! I never saw any one with a face like yours.”

“Silence, little nonsense talker,” cried Millicent, with her face all happy smiles and the old look of her unmarried life coming back as she returned the child’s caresses.

“I never did,” continued Julia, tracing the outlines of the countenance that bent over her, with one rosy finger. “Grandma’s is very, very nice, and I like grandpa’s face, but it is very rough. Mamma!”

“Well, my darling.”

“Does papa love you very, very much?”

“Very, very much, my darling,” said her mother proudly.

“And do you love him very, very much?”

“Heaven only knows how dearly,” said Millicent in a deep, low voice that came from her heart.

“But does papa know too?”

“Why, of course, my darling.”

“I wish he would not say such cross things to you sometimes.”

“Yes, we both wish he had not so much trouble. Why, what a little babbler it is to-night! Have you any more questions to ask before we go up and fetch papa down and play to him?”

“Don’t go yet,” cried the child. “I like to talk to you this way, it’s so nice. I say, mamma, do people get married because they love one another?”

“Hush, hush! what next?” said Millicent smiling, as she laid her hand upon the child’s lips. “Of course, of course.”

Julie caught the hand in hers, kissed it, and held it fast.

“Why does not Mr Bayle love some one?”

A curious, fixed look came over Millicent’s face, and she gazed down at her babbling child in a half-frightened way.

“He will some day,” she said at last.

“No, he won’t,” said the child, shaking her head and looking very wise.

“Why, what nonsense is this, Julie?”

“I asked him one day when we were sitting out in the woods, and he looked at me almost like papa does, and then he jumped up and laughed, and called me a little chatterer, and made me run till I was out of breath. But I asked him, though.”

“You asked him?”

“Yes; I asked him if he would marry a beautiful lady some day, as beautiful as you are, and he took me in his arms and kissed me, and said that he never should, because he had got a little girl to love—he meant me. And oh! here’s papa: let’s tell him. No, I don’t think I will. I don’t think he likes Mr Bayle.”

Millicent rose from her knees as Hallam entered the room, looking haggard and frowning. He glanced from one to the other, and then caught sight of himself in the glass, and saw that there was a patch as of lime or mortar upon his coat.

He brushed it off quickly, being always scrupulously particular about his clothes, and then came towards them.

“Send that child away,” he said harshly. “I want to be quiet.”

Millicent bent down smiling over the child and kissed her.

“Go to Thisbe now, my darling,” she whispered; “but say good-night first to papa, and then you will not have to come to him again. Perhaps he may be out.”

The child’s face became grave with a gravity beyond its years. It was the mother’s young face repeated, with Hallam’s dark hair and eyes.

She advanced to him, timidly putting out her hand, and bending forward with that sweetly innocent look of a child ready so trustingly to give itself into your arms as it asks for a caress.

“Good-night, papa dear,” she cried in her little silvery voice.

“Good-night, Julie, good-night,” he said abruptly; and he just patted her head, and was turning away, when he caught sight of the disappointed, troubled look coming over her countenance, paused half wonderingly, and then bent down and extended his hands to her.

There was a quick hysteric cry, a passionate sob or two, and the child bounded into his arms, flung her arms round his neck, and kissed him, his lips, his cheeks, his eyes again and again, in a quick, excited manner.

Hallam’s countenance wore a look of half-contemptuous doubt for a moment, as he glanced at his wife, and then the good that was in him mastered the ill. His face flushed, a spasm twitched it, and clasping his child to his breast, he held her there for a few moments, then kissed her tenderly, and set her down, her hair tumbled, her eyes wet, but her sweet countenance irradiated with joy, as, clasping her hands, she cried out:

“Papa loves—he loves me, he loves me! I am so happy now.”

Then half mad with childish joy, she turned, kissed her hands to both, and bounded out of the room.

Volume Two—Chapter Ten.

Husband and Wife.

There was a momentary silence, and then as the door closed, Millicent laid her hands upon her husband’s shoulders, and gazed tenderly in his face.

“Robert, my own!” she whispered.

No more; her eyes bespoke the mother’s joy at this breaking down of the ice between father and daughter. Then a look of surprise and pain came into those loving eyes, for Hallam repulsed her rudely.

“It is your doing, yours, and that cursed parson’s work. The child has been taught to hate me. Curse him! He has been my enemy from the very first.”

“Robert—husband! Oh, take back those words!” cried Millicent, throwing herself upon his breast. “You cannot mean it. You know I love you too well for that. How could you say it!”

She clung to him for a few moments, gazing wildly in his face, and then she seemed to read it plainly.

“No, no, don’t speak,” she cried tenderly. “I can see it all. You are in some great trouble, dear, or you would not have spoken like that. Robert, husband, I am your own wife; I have never pressed you for your confidence in all these money troubles you have borne; but now that something very grave has happened, let me share the load.”

She pressed him back gently to a chair, and, overcome by her earnest love, he yielded and sank back slowly into the seat. The next instant she was at his knees, holding his hands to her throbbing breast.

“No, I don’t mean what I said,” he muttered, with some show of tenderness; and a loving smile dawned upon Millicent’s careworn face.

“Don’t speak of that,” she said. “It was only born of the trouble you are in. Let me help you, dear; let me share your sorrow with you. If only with my sympathy there may be some comfort.”

He did not answer, but sat gazing straight before him.

“Tell me, dear. Is it some money trouble? Some speculation has failed?”

He nodded.

“Then why not set all those ambitious thoughts aside, dear husband?” she said, nestling to him. “Give up everything, and let us begin again. With the love of my husband and my child, what have I to wish for? Robert, we love you so dearly. You, and not the money you can make, are all the world to us.”

He looked at her suspiciously, for there was not room in his narrow mind for full faith in so much devotion. It was more than he could understand, but his manner was softer than it had been of late, as he said:

“You do not understand such things.”

“Then teach me,” she said smiling. “I will be so apt a pupil. I shall be working to free my husband from the toils and troubles in which he is ensnared.”

He shook his head.

“What, still keeping me out of your heart, Rob!” she whispered, with her eyes beaming love and devotion. Then, half-playfully and with a tremor in her voice, “Robert, my own brave lion amongst men, refuse the aid of the weak mouse who would gnaw the net?”

“Pish, you talk like a child,” he cried contemptuously. “Net, indeed!” and in his insensate rage, he piled his hatred upon the man who had stepped in to save him. “But for that cursed fellow, Bayle, this would not have happened.”

“Robert, darling, you mistake him. You do not know his heart. How true he is! If he has gone against you in some business matter, it is because he is conscientious and believes you wrong.”

“And you side with him, and believe too?”

“I?” she cried proudly. “You are my husband, and whatever may be your trouble, I stand with you against the world.”

“Brave girl!” he cried warmly; “now you speak like a true woman. I will trust you, and you shall help me. I did not think you had it in you, Milly. That’s better.”

“Then you will trust me?”

“Yes,” he said, raising one hand to his face, and beginning nervously to bite his nails. “I will trust you; perhaps you can help me out of this cursed trap.”

“Yes, I will,” she cried. “I feel that I can. Oh, Robert, let it be always thus in the future. Treat me as your partner, your inferior in brain and power, but still your helpmate. I will toil so hard to make myself worthy of my husband. Now tell me everything. Stop! I know,” she cried; “it is something connected with the visits of that Mr Crellock, that man you helped in his difficulties years ago.”

“I helped? Who told you that?”

She smiled.

“Ah! these things are so talked of. Mrs Pinet told Miss Heathery, and she came and told me. I felt so proud of you, dear, for your unselfish behaviour towards this man. Do you suppose I forget his coming on our wedding-day, and how troubled you were till you had sent him away by the coach?”

“You said nothing?”

“Said nothing? Was I ever one to pry into my husband’s business matters? I said to myself that I would wait till he thought me old enough in years, clever enough in wisdom, to be trusted. And now, after this long probation, you will trust me, love?”

He nodded.

“And your troubles shall grow less by being shared. Now tell me I am right about it. Your worry is due to this Mr Crellock?”

“Yes,” he said in a low voice.

“I knew it,” she cried. “You have always been troubled when he came down, and when you went up to town. I knew as well as if you had told me that you had seen him when you went up. There was always the same harassed, careworn look in your eyes; and Robert, darling, if you had known how it has made me suffer, you would have come to me for consolation, if not for help.”

“Ah! yes, perhaps.”

“Now go on,” she said firmly, and rising from her place by his knees, she took a chair and drew it near him.

“There,” she said smiling; “you shall see how business-like I will be.”

He sat with his brow knit for a few minutes, and then drew a long breath.

“You are right,” he said. “Stephen Crellock is mixed up with it. You shall know all. And mind this, whatever people may say—”

“Whatever people may say!” she exclaimed contemptuously.

“I am innocent; my hands are clean.”

“As if I needed telling that,” she said with a proud smile. “Now I am waiting, tell me all.”

“Oh, there is little to tell,” he said quickly. “That fellow Crellock, by his plausible baits, has led me into all kinds of speculations.”

“I thought so,” she said to herself.

“I failed in one, and then he tempted me to try another to cover my loss; and so it went on and on, till—”

“Till what?” she said with her eyes dilating; and a chill feeling of horror which startled her began to creep to her heart.

“Till the losses were so great that large sums of money were necessary, and—”

“Robert!”

“Don’t look at me in that way, Milly,” he said, with a half-laugh, “you are not going to begin by distrusting me?”

“No, no,” she panted.

“Well, till large sums were necessary, and the scoundrel literally forced me to raise money from the bank.”

She felt the evil increasing; but she forced it away with the warm glow of her love.

“I’ve been worried to death,” he continued, “to put these things straight, and it is this that has kept me so poor.”

“Yes, I see,” she cried. “Oh, Robert, how you must have suffered!”

“Ah! Yes! I have,” he said; “but never mind that. Well, I was getting things straight as fast as I could; and all would now have been right again had not Bayle and his miserable jackal, Thickens, scented out the trouble, and they have seized me by the throat.”

“But, Robert, why not clear yourself? Why not go to Sir Gordon? He would help you.”

“Sir Gordon does not like me. But there, I have a few days to turn myself round in, and then all will come right; but if—”

He stopped, and looked rather curiously.

“Yes?” she said, laying her hand in his.

“If my enemies should triumph. If Bayle—”

“If Mr Bayle—”

“Silence!” he said. “I have told you that this man is my cruel enemy. He has never forgiven me for robbing him of you.”

“You did not rob him,” she said tenderly. “But are you not mistaken in Mr Bayle?”

“You are, in your sweet womanly innocency and trustfulness. I tell you he is my enemy, and trying to hound me down.”

“Let me speak to him.”

“I forbid it,” he cried fiercely. “Choose your part. Are you with me or the men whom I know to be my enemies? Will you stand by me whatever happens?”

“You know,” she said, with a trustful smile in her eyes.

“That’s my brave wife,” he said. “This is better. If my enemies do get the better of me—if, for Crellock’s faults, charges are brought against me—if I am by necessity forced to yield, and think it better to go right away from here for a time—suddenly—will you come?”

“And leave my mother and father?”

“Are not a husband’s claims stronger? Tell me, will you go with me?”

“To the world’s end, Robert,” she cried, rising and throwing her arms about his neck. “I am glad that this trouble has come.”

“Glad?”

“Yes, for it has taught you at last the strength of your wife’s love.”

He drew her to his heart, and kissed her, and there she clung for a time.

“Now listen,” he said, putting her from him. “We must be business-like.”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“The old people must not have the least suspicion that we have any idea of leaving.”

“Might I not bid them good-bye?”

“No. That is, if we left. We may not have to go. If we do, it must be suddenly.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You must wait.”

Just then the door opened, and Thisbe appeared.

“There’s a gentleman to see you, sir—that Mr Crellock.”

“Show him in my study, and I’ll come.”

Thisbe disappeared, and Millicent laid her hand upon her husband’s arm.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly. “I know how to deal with him now. Only trust me, and all shall be well.”

“I do trust you,” said Millicent, and she sat there with a face like marble, listening to her husband’s step across the hall, and then sat patiently for hours, during which time the bell had been rung for the spirit stand and hot water, while the fumes of tobacco stole into the room.

At last there were voices and steps in the hall; the front door was opened and closed, and as Millicent Hallam awoke to the fact that she had not been up to see her child since she went to bed, and that it was nearly midnight, Hallam entered the room, looking more cheerful, and crossing to her he took her in his arms.

“Things are looking brighter,” he said. “We have only to wait. Now, mind this—don’t ask questions—it is better that I should not go to the bank for a few days. I am unwell.”

Millicent looked at him hard. Certainly his eyes were sunken, and for answer, as she told herself that he must have suffered much, she bowed her head.

Volume Two—Chapter Eleven.

Getting Near the Edge.

“Quite out of the question,” said James Thickens.

“But what is there to fear?”

“I don’t know that there is anything to fear,” said Thickens dryly. “What I know is this, and I’ve thought it over. You are not going up to town with him, but by yourself, to get this money—if you still mean it.”

“I still mean it! There, go on.”

“Well, you will go up, and sign what you have to sign, get this money in notes, and bring it down yourself.”

“But Hallam will think it so strange—that I mistrust him.”

“Of course he will. So you do; so do I. And after thinking this matter over, I am going to have that money deposited here, and I’m going to redeem the bonds and deeds myself, getting all information from Hallam.”

“But this will be a hard and rather public proceeding.”

“I don’t know about hard, and as to public, no one will know about it but we three, for old Gemp will not smell it out. He is down with the effects of a bad seizure, and not likely to leave his bed for days.”

“But, Thickens—”

“Mr Bayle, I am more of a business man than you, so trust me. You are making sacrifice enough, and are not called upon to study the feelings of one of the greatest scoundrels—”

“Oh! hush! hush!”

“I say it again, sir—one of the greatest scoundrels that ever drew breath.”

Bayle frowned, and drew his own hard.

“I don’t know,” he said, “that I shall care to carry this money—so large a sum.”

“Nonsense, sir, a packet of notes in a pocket-book. These things are comparative. When I was a boy I can remember thinking ninepence a large amount; now I stand on a market day shovelling out gold and fingering over greasy notes and cheques, till I don’t seem to know what a large sum is. You take my advice, go and get it without saying a word to Hallam; and I tell you what it is, sir, if it wasn’t for poor Mrs Hallam and that poor child, I should be off my bargain, and go to Sir Gordon at once.”

“I will go and get the money without Hallam, Thickens; but as I undertook to go with him, I shall write and tell him I have gone.”

“Very well, sir, very well. As you please,” said Thickens; “I should not: but you are a clergyman, and more particular about such things than I am.”

Bayle smiled, and shook hands, leaving Thickens looking after him intently as he walked down the street.

“He wouldn’t dare!” said Thickens to himself thoughtfully. “He would not dare. I wish he had not been going to tell him, though. Humph! dropping in to see poor old Gemp because he has had a fit.”

He paused till he had seen Bayle enter the old man’s house, and then went on muttering to himself.

“I never could understand why Gemp was made; he never seems to have been of the least use in the world, though, for the matter of that, idlers don’t seem much good. Hah! If Gemp knew what I know, there’d be a crowd round the bank in half-an-hour, and they’d have Hallam’s house turned inside out in another quarter. I don’t like his telling Hallam about his going,” he mused. “It’s a large sum of money, though I made light of it, and the mail’s safe enough. We’ve about got by the old highwayman days, but I wish he hadn’t told him, all the same.”

Meanwhile the curate had turned in at Gemp’s to see how the old fellow was getting on.

“Nicedly, sir, very nicedly,” said the woman in charge; “he’ve had a beautiful sleep, and Doctor Luttrell says he be coming round to his senses fast.”

Poor old Gemp did not look as if he had been progressing nicely, but he seemed to recognise his visitor, and appeared to understand a few of his words.

But not many, for the old man kept putting his hand to his head and looking at the door, gazing wistfully through the window, and then heaving a heavy sigh.

“Oh, don’t you take no notice o’ that, sir,” said the woman; “that be only his way. He’s been used to trotting about so much that he feels it a deal when he is laid up, poor old gentleman; he keeps talking about his money, too, sir. Ah, sir, it be strange how old folks do talk about their bit o’ money when they’re getting anigh the time when they won’t want any of it more.”

And so on till the curate rose and left the cottage.

That night he was on his way to London, after sending a line to Hallam to say that upon second thoughts he had considered it better to go up to town alone.

Three days passed with nothing more exciting than a few inquiries after Hallam’s health, the most assiduous inquirer being Miss Heathery, who called again on the third evening.

“I know you think me a very silly little woman, Millicent, my dear, and I’m afraid that perhaps I am, but I do like you, and I should like to help you now you are in trouble.”

“I always did, and always shall, think you one of my best and kindest friends, Miss Heathery,” replied Millicent, kissing her.

“Now, that’s very kind of you, my dear. It’s touching,” said Miss Heathery, wiping her eyes. “You do think me then a very dear friend?” she said, clinging to Mrs Hallam, and gazing plaintively in her face.

“Indeed I do.”

“Then may I make a confidant like of you, dear?”

“Yes, certainly,” said Millicent.

“But first of all, can I help you nurse Mr Hallam, or take care of Julie?”

“Oh, no, thank you. Mr Hallam is much better, and Julie is happiest with Thisbe.”

“Or Mr Bayle,” said Miss Heathery; “but I have not seen her with him lately. Oh, I forgot, he has gone to London.”

“Indeed!” said Millicent, starting, for she connected his absence with her husband’s trouble.

“Yes; gone two, three days; but, Millicent dear, may I speak to you plainly?”

“Of course. Tell me,” said Millicent smiling, and feeling amused as she anticipated some confidence respecting an engagement.

“And you are sure you will not feel hurt?”

“Trust me, I shall not,” said Millicent, with her old grave smile.

“Well then, my dear,” whispered the visitor, “it is about money matters. You know I have none in the bank now, because I bought a couple of houses, but I have been asking, and I find that I can borrow some money on the security, and I thought—there! I knew you would feel hurt.”

For Millicent’s eyes had begun to dilate, and she drew back from her visitor.

“I only meant to say that I could not help knowing you—that Mr Hallam kept you—oh! I don’t know how to say it, Millicent dear, but—but if you would borrow some money of me, dear, it would make me so very happy.”

The tears sprang to Millicent’s eyes as she rose and kissed her visitor.

“Thank you, dear Miss Heathery,” she cried. “I shall never forget this unassuming kindness, but it is impossible that I can take your help.”

“Oh, dear me! I was afraid you would say so, and yet it is so sad to run short. Couldn’t you really let me help you, my dear?”

“No, it is impossible,” said Millicent, smiling gently. “Is it quite impossible?” said Miss Heathery.

“Yes, dear; but believe me, if I were really in great need I would come to you for help.”

“You promise me that, dear?” cried the little woman, rising.

“I promise you that,” said Millicent, and her visitor went away overjoyed.

Volume Two—Chapter Twelve.

Robert Hallam Wants Fresh Air.

“That woman seemed as if she would never go,” said Hallam, entering the room hastily, and glancing at the clock.

“She does like to stop and chat,” replied Millicent, wondering at his manner. “What are you going to do?”

“I am off for a short run. I cannot bear this confinement any longer. It is dark, and no one will see me if I go out for a change.”

“Shall I go with you?”

“Go with me! No, not now,” he said hastily. “I want a little fresh air. Don’t stop me. I shall be back soon.”

His manner seemed very strange, but Millicent said nothing, only followed him into the hall.

“No, no,” he said hastily; “don’t do that. It is as if you were watching me.”

She drew back in a pained way, and he followed her.

“I’m pettish and impatient, that’s all,” he said smiling; and, closing the door after her, he hurriedly put on a cloak and travelling cap, muffling his face well; and then going softly out, and turning from the main street, he was soon after in the lane that led down by Thickens’s house and the mill.

“At last!” said a voice from the hedge-side, just beyond where the last oil lamp shed a few dim rays across the road. “I thought you were never coming.”

“Don’t talk. Have you everything ready?”

“Yes, everything. It is only a cart, but it will take you easily.”

“And are you sure of the road?”

“Certain. I’ve done it twice so as to be sure.”

“Good horse?”

“Capital. We can get over the twenty miles in three hours, and catch the York coach easily by twelve. It does not pass before then.”

“Mind, Stephen, I’m trusting you in this. If you fail me—”

“If I fail you! Bah! Did I ever fail you?”

“No, never.”

“Then don’t talk like that. You’ve failed me pretty often, all the same. Going?”

“Yes; I must get back.”

“What’s that—the Castor coach?”

“Yes,” said Hallam, starting. “It’s early.”

“Don’t be longer than you can help; but, I say, have you plenty of money for the journey? I’ve only a guinea or two left.”

“I have enough,” said Hallam grimly; and bidding his companion wait three hours, and if he did not come then to go back and return the next night, Hallam turned to hurry back to the town.

It was intensely dark as he approached the mill, where the stream was gurgling and plashing over the waste-water shoot. In the distance there was the oil lamp glimmering, and a light or two shone in the scattered cottages, but there was none at Thickens’s as Hallam passed.

There was a space of about a hundred yards between Thickens’s house and the next cottage, and Hallam had about half traversed this when he heard a step that seemed familiar coming, and his doubt was put an end to by a voice exclaiming, “Mind! Take care!”

Was it fate that had put this in his way?

He asked himself this as, like lightning, the thought struck him that Bayle had just come off the coach—he the sharer in the knowledge of his iniquity.

A sharp struggle, and close at hand there was the bridge and the flowing river. It might have been an accident. But even then there was Thickens. What if he closed with him, and—disguised as he was, Bayle could never know—Bayle—the bearer of that heavy sum of money! He intended flight that night; was it fate, he asked himself again, that had thrown this in his way? And as the thoughts flashed through his brain, they encountered roughly upon the path, and Hallam’s hand touched the thick pocket-book in Bayle’s breast.

It was a matter of moments. Even to Hallam it was like an encounter in a dream. A blind desire to possess himself of the money he had touched had come over him; and reckless now, half mad, he seized the curate by the throat. There was a furious struggle, a few inarticulate cries, a heavy fall, and he was kneeling upon him, and dragging the pocket-book from his breast.

All, as it were, in a dream!

Millicent Hallam stood listening at the window to her husband’s steps, and then pressed her hands to her burning forehead to try and think more clearly about her position. It was so hard to think ill of Bayle; she could not do it; and yet her husband had said he was his enemy, and fighting against him to destroy him. Besides, Bayle had not been near them for days. It was so strange that he should go away without telling her!

And so, as she stood there, the two currents of thought met—that which ran love and trust in her husband, and that which was full of gentle sisterly feeling for Bayle; and as they met there was tumult and confusion in her brain, till the first current proved the stronger, and swept the latter aside, running strongly on towards the future.

“He is my husband, and he trusts me now as I trust him,” she said proudly. “It is impossible. He could do no wrong.”

She went up to the bed-room where Julie lay asleep, and stood watching the sweet, happy little face for some time, ending by kneeling down, taking one of the little hands in hers, and praying fervently for help, for guidance, and for protection in the troubled future, that appeared to be surrounding her with clouds.

How dense they seemed! How was it all to end? Would she be called upon by her husband to leave their home and friends, and go far away? Well, and if that were her fate, husband and child were all in all to her, and it was her duty.

“He trusts me now,” she said smiling; and feeling happier and more at rest than she had for months with their petty cares and poverty and shame, she bent over and kissed Julie, when the child’s arms were clasped about her neck and clung there for a moment, before dropping listlessly back upon the bed.

Passing her hand over the child’s forehead to be sure that she was cool and that no lurking fever was there, Millicent went down to the dining-room again, to sit and listen for the coming step.

She had heard the coach come and go, but instead of the place settling down again into its normal quiet, there seemed to be a great many people about, and hurrying footsteps were heard, such as would be at times when there was an alarm of fire in the town.

And yet it was not like that. More, perhaps, as if there were some meeting, and the steps died away.

For a moment or two Millicent had been disposed to summon Thisbe, and send her to see what was wrong; but on drawing aside the curtains and looking out, the street seemed deserted, and though there were a few figures in the market-place, they did not excite her surprise.

“I am overwrought and excited,” she said to herself. “Ah! at last.”

There was no mistaking that step, and starting up, she ran into the hall to admit Hallam, who staggered in, closed the door quickly, and catching her hand, half dragged her into the dining-room.

She clung to him in affright, for she could see that the cloak he wore was torn and muddied, that his face was ghastly pale, and that as he threw off his travelling cap, there was a terrible swelling across his forehead, as if he had received some tremendous blow.

“Robert,” she exclaimed, “what is the matter?”

“Hush,” he said quickly; “be quiet and calm. Has Thisbe gone to bed?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“Quick, then; a basin and water, sponge and towel. I must bathe this place.”

“Did you fall?” she cried, as she hastily helped him off with the cloak.

“No. But quick; the water.”

She hurried away, shivering with the dread of some new trouble to come, but soon returned with the sponge, and busied herself in bathing the hurt.

“I was attacked—by some ruffian,” said Hallam hoarsely, as the water trickled and plashed back in the basin. “He struck me with a bludgeon and left me senseless. When I came to he was gone.”

“Robert, you horrify me!” cried Millicent. “This is dreadful.”

“Might have been worse,” he said coolly. “There, now dry it, and listen to me the while.”

“Yes, Robert,” she said, forcing herself to be firm, and to listen to the words in spite of the curious doubting trouble that would oppress her.

“As soon as I go upstairs to put a few things together and get some papers, you will put on your bonnet and cloak, and dress Julie.”

“Dress Julie!”

“Yes,” he said harshly, “without you wish me to leave you behind.”

“You are going away, then?”

“Yes, I am going away,” he said bitterly, “after hesitating, with a fool’s hesitation, all these days. I ought to have gone before.”

“How strangely you speak!” she said.

“Don’t waste time. Now go.”

“One word, love,” she whispered imploringly; “do we go for long?”

“No; not for long,” he said. And then, with an impatient gesture: “Bah!” he exclaimed; “yes, for ever.”

She shrank from him in alarm.

“Well,” he said harshly, as he glanced at his injury in the mirror, “you are hesitating. I do not force you. I am your husband, and I have a right to command; but I leave you free. Do you wish to stay?”

A feeling of despair so terrible that it seemed crushing came over Millicent. To go from the home of her childhood—to flee like this with her husband, probably in disgrace, even if only through suspicion—was for the moment more than she could bear; and as he saw her momentary hesitation, an ugly sneering laugh came upon his face. It faded, though, as she calmly laid her hand upon his arm.

“Am I to take any luggage?” she said.

“Nothing but your few ornaments of value. Be quick.”

She raised her lips and kissed him, and then seemed to glide out of the room.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been a fool and an idiot not to have gone before. Curse the fellow: who could it be?” he cried, as he pressed his hand to his injured forehead.

He took out his keys and opened a drawer in a cabinet, taking from it a hammer and cold chisel, and then stood thinking for a few moments before hurrying out, and into a little lobby behind the hall, from which he brought a small carpet-bag.

“That will just hold it,” he said, “and a few of the things that she is sure to have.”

He turned into the dining-room, going softly, as if he were engaged in some nefarious act. Then he picked up the hammer and chisel, and was about to return into the hall, when he heard a low murmur, which seemed to be increasing, and with it the trampling of feet, and shouts of excited men.

“What’s that?” he cried, with his countenance growing ghastly pale; and the cold chisel fell to the floor with a clang.

Volume Two—Chapter Thirteen.

A Human Storm.

The woman who had been acting the part of nurse to old Gemp was seated by the table, busily knitting a pair of blue worsted stockings by the light of a tallow candle, and every few minutes the snuff had so increased, and began to show so fungus-like a head, that the needles had to be left, a pair of snuffers taken out of their home in a niche that ran through the stem of the tin candlestick, and used to cut off the light-destroying snuff, with the effect that the snuffers were not sufficiently pinched to, and a thread of pale blue smoke rose from the incandescence within, and certainly with no good effect as far as fragrance was concerned.

Old Gemp had become a great deal better. He had been up and dressed, and sat by the fireside for a couple of hours that afternoon, and had then expressed his determination not to go to bed.

But his opposition was very slight, and he was got to bed, where he seemed to be lying thinking, and trying to recall something which evidently puzzled him. In fact all at once he called his nurse.

“Mrs Preddle! Mrs Preddle!”

“Yes,” said that lady with a weary air.

“What was I thinking about when I was took badly?”

“I don’t know,” said the woman sourly. “About somebody else’s business, I suppose.”

Old Gemp grunted, and shook his head. Then he was silent, and lay staring about the room, passing his hand across his forehead every now and then, or shaving himself with one finger, with which all at once he would point at his nurse.

“I say!” he cried sharply.

“Bless the man! how you made me jump!” cried Mrs Preddle. “And, for goodness’ sake, don’t point at me like that! Easy to see you’re getting better, and won’t want me long.”

“No, no! don’t go away!” he exclaimed. “I can’t think about it.”

“Well, and no wonder neither! Why, bless the man! people don’t have bad fits o’ ’plexy and not feel nothing after! There, lie still, and go to sleep, there’s a good soul! It’ll do you good.”

Mrs Preddle snuffed the candle again, and made another unpleasant smell of burning, but paid no heed to it, fifty years of practice having accustomed her to that odour—an extremely common one in those days, when in every little town there was a tallow-melter, the fumes of whose works at certain times made themselves pretty well-known for some distance round.

The question was repeated by old Gemp at intervals all through the evening—“What was I thinking about when I was took badly?” and Mrs Preddle became irritated by his persistence.

But this made no difference whatever to the old man, who scraped his stubbly chin with his finger, and then pointed, to ask again. For the trouble that had been upon his mind when he was stricken hung over him like a dark cloud, and he was always fighting mentally to learn what it all meant.

“What was it?—what was it? What was I thinking about?” Over and over and over, and no answer would come. Mrs Preddle went on with her knitting, and ejaculated “Bless the man!” and dropped stitches, and picked them up again, and at last grew so angry, that, upon old Gemp asking her, for about the hundredth time that night, that same wearisome question, she cried out:

“Drat the man! how should I know? Look ye here, if you—Oh! I won’t stand no more of this nonsense?” She rose and went into the kitchen. “Doctor Luttrell said if he got more restless he was to have it,” she grumbled to herself, “and he’s quite unbearable to-night!”

She poured out a double dose from a bottle left in her charge, and chuckled as she said to herself, “That’ll quiet him for the night.”

Old Gemp was sitting up in bed when she returned to the bed-room; and once more his pointing finger rose, and he was about to speak, when Mrs Preddle interfered.

“There, that’ll do, my dear! and now you’ve got to take this here physic directly, to do you good.”

The old man looked at her in a vacant, helpless way for a few moments, and then his countenance grew angry, and he motioned the medicine aside.

“Oh, come now, it’s of no use! You’ve got to take it, so now then!”

She pressed the cup towards his lips; but the old man struck at it angrily, and it flew across the room, splashing the bed with the opium-impregnated liquid, and then shattering on the cemented floor.

“Well, of all the owd rips as ever I did see!” cried the woman. “Oh, you are better, then!”

“What was I thinking about when I was took badly?” cried Gemp, pointing as if nothing had happened.

“Oh, about your money in the bank for aught I know!” cried the woman.

“Ha!”

The old man clapped his hands to his forehead, and held them there for a few minutes, staring straight before him at the bed-room wall.

He had uttered that ejaculation so sharply that the woman started, and recoiled from him, in ignorance of the fact that she had touched the key-note that had set the fibres of his memory athrill.

“Why, what’s come to you?” she said. “Sakes, man, you’re not worse?”

Old Gemp did not reply for a few moments. Then, stretching out one hand, and pointing at his nurse:

“Go and fetch doctor. Go at once! Quick, I say, quick!”

The woman stared in alarm for a few moments, and then, catching her bonnet and shawl from a nail, she hurriedly put them on and went out.

“And I’ve been a-lying here,” panted Gemp, sliding his legs out of bed, and dressing himself quickly. “I remember now. I know. And perhaps all gone—deeds, writings—all gone. I knew there was something wrong—I knew there was something wrong!”

In five minutes he was out in the street, and had reached his friend the tailor, who stared aghast at him at first, but as soon as he heard his words blazed up as if fire had been applied to tow, and then subsided with a cunning look.

“Let’s keep it quiet, neighbour,” he said; “and go to-morrow morning, and see what we can do with Hallam. Ah!” he cried, as a thought flashed across his mind, “he has not been at the bank these three or four days. You’re right, neighbour, there is something wrong.”

Just at that moment, seeing the door open, another neighbour stepped in, heard the last words, and saw Gemp’s wild, miserly face agitated by the horror of his loss.

“What’s wrong?” he cried.

“Wrong? That scoundrel Hallam! that thief! that—”

The new-comer started.

“Don’t say there’s owt wrong wi’ Dixons’!” he panted.

“Yes, yes!” cried Gemp. “My deeds! my writings! I saw parson and Thickens busy together. They were tackling Hallam when I was took badly. Hallam’s a rogue! I warned you all—a rogue! a rogue! See how he has been going on!”

“Neighbour,” groaned the new-comer, “they’ve got all I have in the world up yonder in the bank.”

“Oh, but it can’t be true,” said the tailor, with a struggle to catch at a straw of hope.

“Ay, but it is true,” said the last comer, whose face was ghastly; “and I’m a ruined man.”

“Nay, nay, wait a bit. P’r’aps Hallam has only been ill.”

“Ill? It was he, then, I’ll swear, I saw to-night, walk by me in a cloak and cap. He were going off. Neighbours, are we to sit still and bear a thing like this?”

“I’ll hev my writings! I’ll hev my writings!” cried Gemp hoarsely, as he clawed at the air with his trembling hands.

“Is owt wrong?” said a fresh voice, and another of the Castor tradesmen sauntered in, pipe in mouth.

In another minute he knew all they had to tell and the light was indeed now applied to the tow. Reason and common-sense were thrown to the winds, and a wild, selfish madness took their place.

Dixons’, the stable, the most substantial house in the county, the stronghold where the essence of all the property for miles round was kept, was now a bank of straw; and the flame ran from house to house like the wildfire that it was. Had an enemy invaded the place, or the fire that burns, there could not have been greater consternation. The stability of the bank touched so many; while, as the news flew from mouth to mouth, hundreds who had not a shilling in the bank, never had, nor ever would have, took up the matter with the greatest indignation, and joined in the excitement, and seemed the most aggrieved.

There was nothing to go upon but the old man’s suspicion; but that spark had been enough to light the fire of popular indignation, and before long, in the midst of a score of different proposals, old Gemp started for the bank, supported by his two nearest neighbours, and across the dim market-place the increasing crowd made its way.

Mr Trampleasure was smoking his evening cigar on the step of the private door. The cigar, a present from Sir Gordon: the permission to smoke it there a present from Mrs Trampleasure.

He heard wonderingly the noise of tumult, saw the crowd approaching, and prudently went in and shut and bolted the doors, going up to a window to parley with the crowd, as the bell was rung furiously, and some one beat at the door of the bank with a stick.

“What is it?” he said.

“My deeds! my writings!” cried Gemp. “I want my deeds!”

“Who’s that? Mr Gemp? My dear sir, the bank’s closed, as you know. Come to-morrow morning.”

“No, no! Give the man his deeds. Here, break down the door!” cried a dozen voices; and the rough element that was to be found in King’s Castor, as well as elsewhere, uttered a shout, and began to kick at the panels.

“Come away, Gemp. We shall get nothing if these fellows break in.”

“Look here!” cried a shrill voice at the window; and there was a cessation of the noise, as Mrs Trampleasure leaned out. “We’ve got pistols and blunderbusses here, as you all know, and if you don’t be off, we shall fire.”

“Open the doors then,” cried a rough voice.

“We haven’t got the keys. Mr Thickens keeps them.”

There was a shout at this, for the crowd, like all crowds, was ready to snatch at a change, and away they ran towards the mill.

In five minutes though, they were tearing back, failing to find Thickens; and a cry had been raised by the man with the rough voice, and one of the poorest idlers of the town, the keenest redresser of wrong now.

“Hallam’s! To Hallam’s!” he yelled. “Hev him out, lads. We’ll hev him out. Hurray, lads, come on!”

The tradesmen and depositors at Dixons’ Bank looked aghast now at the mischief done. They saw how they had opened a crack in the dam, and that the crack had widened, the dam had given way, and the turbulent waters were about to carry all before them.

It was in vain to speak, for the indignant poor were in the front, and the tailor, Gemp, and others who had been the leaders in the movement found themselves in a pitiful minority, and were ready to retreat.

But that was impossible. They were in the crowd, and were carried with them across the market-place and down the street, to Hallam’s house, where they beat and thumped at the door.

There was no answer for a few minutes, and they beat and roared. Then some one threw a stone and smashed a pane of glass. This earned a cheer, and a shower of stones followed, the panes shivering and tinkling down inside and out of the house.

Millicent was wrong when she said that Thisbe had gone to bed, for that worthy was having what she called a quiet read in her room, and now as the windows were breaking, and Millicent was shielding Julie whom, half-awake, she had just dressed, there was an increase in the roar, for Thisbe had gone down, more indignant than alarmed, and thrown open the door.

Then there was a dead silence, the silence of surprise, as Thisbe stood in the doorway, and as a great hulking lad strove to push by her, struck him a sounding slap on the face.

There was a yell of laughter at this, and silence again, as the woman spoke.

“What do you want?” she cried boldly.

“Hallam! Hallam! In with you, lads: fetch him out.”

“No, no; stop! stop! My deeds, my writings!” shrieked Gemp; but his voice was drowned in the yelling of the mob, who now forced their way in, filling the hall, the dining and drawing-rooms, and then making for the old-fashioned staircase.

“He’s oop-stairs, lads; hev him down!” cried the leader, and the men pressed forward, with a yell, their faces looking wild and strange by the light of the lamp and the candle Thisbe had placed upon a bracket by the stairs.

But here their progress was stopped by Millicent, who, pale with dread, but with a spot as of fire in either cheek, stood at the foot of the staircase, holding the frightened child to her side, while Thisbe forced her way before her.

“What do you want?” she cried firmly.

“Thy master, missus. Stand aside, we won’t hurt thee. We want Hallam.”

“What do you want with him?” cried Millicent again.

“We want him to give oop the money he’s stole, and the keys o’ bank. Stand aside wi’ you. Hev him down.”

There was a rush, a struggle, and Millicent and her shrieking child were dragged down roughly, but good-humouredly, by the crowd that filled the hall, while others kept forcing their way in. As for Thisbe, as she fought and struck out bravely, her hands were pinioned behind her, and the group were held in a corner of the hall, while with a shout the mob rushed upstairs.

“Here, let go,” panted Thisbe to the men who held her. “I won’t do so any more. Let me take the bairn.”

The men loosed her at once, and they formed a ring about their prisoners.

“Let me have her, Miss Milly,” she whispered, and she took Julie in her arms, while Millicent, freed from this charge, made an effort to get to the stairs.

“Nay, nay, missus. Thou’rt better down here,” said one of her gaolers roughly; and the trembling woman was forced to stay, but only to keep imploring the men to let her pass.

Meanwhile the mob were running from room to room without success; and at each shout of disappointment a throb of hope and joy made Millicent’s heart leap.

She exchanged glances with Thisbe.

“He has escaped,” she whispered.

“More shame for him then,” cried Thisbe. “Why arn’t he here to protect his wife and bairn?”

At that moment a fierce yelling and cheering was heard upstairs, where the mob had reached the attic door and detected that it was locked on the inside.

The door was strong, but double the strength would not have held it against the fierce onslaught made, and in another minute, amidst fierce yelling, the tide began to set back, as the word was passed down, “They’ve got him.”

Millicent’s brain reeled, and for a few moments she seemed to lose consciousness; but as she saw Hallam, pale, bleeding, his hair torn and dishevelled, dragged down the stairs by the infuriated mob, her love gave her strength. Wresting herself from those who would have restrained her, she forced her way to her husband’s side, flung her arms about him as he was driven back against the wall, and, turning her defiant face to the mob, made of her own body a shield.

There was a moment’s pause, then a yell, and the leader’s voice cried:

“Never mind her. Hev him out, lads, and then clear the house.”

There was a fresh roar at this, and then blows were struck right and left in the dim light; the lamp was dashed over; while the curtains by the window, where it stood, blazed up, and cast a lurid light over the scene. For a moment the crowd recoiled as they saw the flushed and bleeding face of Christie Bayle, as he struck out right and left till he had fought his way to where he could plant himself before Millicent and her husband, and try to keep the assailants back.

The surprise was only of a few minutes’ duration.

“You lads, he’s only one. Come on! Hallam: Let’s judge and jury him.”

“You scoundrels!” roared Bayle, “a man must be judged by his country, and not by such ruffians as you.”

“Hev him out, lads, ’fore the place is burnt over your heads.”

“Back! stand back, cowards!” cried Bayle; “do you not see the woman and the child? Back! Out of the place, you dogs!”

“Dogs as can bite, too, parson,” cried the leader. “Come on.”

He made a dash at Hallam, getting him by the collar, but only to collapse with a groan, so fierce was the blow that struck him on the ear.

Again there was a pause—a murmur of rage, and the wooden support of the valance of the curtains began to crackle, while the hall was filling fast with stifling smoke.

One leader down, another sprang in his place, for the crowd was roused.

“Hev him out, lads! Quick, we have him now.”

There was a rush, and Hallam was torn from Millicent’s grasp—from Christie Bayle’s protecting arms, and with a yell the crowd rushed out into the street, lit now by the glow from the smashed hall windows and the fire that burned within.

“My husband! Christie—dear friend—help, oh, help!” wailed Millicent, as she tottered out to the front, in time to see Bayle literally leap to Hallam’s side and again strike the leader down.

It was the last effort of his strength; and now a score of hands were tearing and striking at the wretched victim, when there was the clattering of horses’ hoofs and a mounted man rode right into the crowd with half-a-dozen followers at his side.

“Stop!” he roared. “I am a magistrate. Constables: your duty.”

The mob fell back, and as five men, with whom was Thickens, seized upon Hallam, Millicent tottered into the circle and sank at her husband’s knees.

“Saved!” she sobbed, “saved!”

For the first time Hallam found his voice, and cried, as he tried to shake himself free:

“This—this is a mistake—constables. Loose me. These men—”

“It is no mistake, Mr Hallam, you are arrested for embezzlement,” said the mounted man sternly.

“Three cheers for Sir Gordon Bourne and Dixons’,” shouted one in the crowd.

Christie Bayle had just time to catch Millicent Hallam in his arms as her senses left her, and with a piteous moan she sank back utterly stunned.

Volume Two—Chapter Fourteen.

Writhing in her Agony.

“Mother!—father! Oh, in heaven’s name, speak to me! I cannot bear it. My heart is broken. What shall I do?”

“My poor darling!” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, holding her child to her breast and rocking to and fro, while the doctor sat with wrinkled face nursing and caressing Julia, who clung to him in a scared fashion, not having yet got over the terrors of the past night.

She had her arms about her grandfather, and nestled in his breast, but every now and then she started up to gaze piteously in his face.

“Would my dolls all be burnt, grandpa?”

“Oh, I hope not, my pet,” he said soothingly; “but never mind if they are: grandpa will buy you some better ones.”

“But I liked those, grandpa, and—and is my little bed burnt too?”

“No, my pet; I think not. I hope not. They put the fire out before it did a great deal of harm.”

The child laid her head down again for a few moments, and then looked up anxiously.

“Thibs says the bad men tore the place all to pieces last night and broke all the furniture and looking-glasses. Oh! grandpa, I—I—I—”

Suffering still from the nervous shock of the nocturnal alarm, the poor child’s breast heaved, and she burst into a pitiful fit of sobbing, which was some time before it subsided.

“Don’t think about it all, my pet,” said the doctor, tenderly stroking the soft little head. “Never mind about the old house, you shall come and live here with grandpa, and we’ll have such games in the old garden again.”

“Yes, and I may smell the flowers, and—and—but I want our own house too.”

“Ah, well, we shall see. There, you are not to think any more about that now.”

“Why doesn’t Mr Bayle come, grandpa? Did the bad people hurt him very much?”

“Oh no, my darling: he’s all right, and he punished some of them.”

“And when will papa come?”

“Hush, child,” cried Millicent in a harsh, strange voice, “I cannot hear to hear you.”

The child looked at her in a scared manner and clung to her grandfather, but struggled from his embrace directly after, and ran to her mother, throwing her arms about her, and kissing her and sobbing.

“Oh, my own dear, dear mamma!”

“My darling, my darling!” cried Millicent, passionately clasping her to her breast; and Mrs Luttrell drew away to leave them together, creeping quietly to the doctor’s side, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, looking a while in his eyes as if asking whether she were doing wisely.

The doctor nodded, and for a few minutes there was no sound heard but Millicent’s sobs.

“I wish Mr Bayle would come,” said Julia all at once in her silvery childish treble.

“Silence, child!” cried Millicent fiercely. “Father dear, speak to me; can you not help me in this trouble? You know the charge is all false?”

“My darling, I will do everything I can.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but every one seems to have turned against us—Sir Gordon, Mr Bayle, the whole town. It is some terrible mistake: all some fearful error. How dare they charge my husband with a crime?”

She gazed fiercely at her father as she spoke, and the old man stood with his arms about Mrs Luttrell and his lips compressed.

“You do not speak,” cried Millicent; “surely you are not going to turn against us, father?”

“Oh! Milly, my own child,” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, running to her to take her head to her breast, “don’t speak to us like that; as if your father would do anything but help you.”

“Of course, of course,” cried Millicent excitedly; “but there, I must put off all this pitiful wailing.”

She rose in a quiet, determined way, and wiped her eyes hastily, arranged her hair, and began to walk up and down the room. Then, stopping, she forced a smile, and bent down and kissed Julia, sending a flash of joy through her countenance.

“Go and look round the garden, darling. Pick mamma a nice bunch of flowers.”

“Will you come too, grandpa?” cried the child eagerly.

“I’ll come to you presently, darling,” said the doctor nodding; and the child bounded to the open window with a sigh of relief, but ran back to kiss each in turn.

“Now we can speak,” cried Millicent, panting, as she forced herself to be calm. “There is no time for girlish sobbing when such a call as this is made upon me. The whole town is against poor Robert; they have wrecked and burnt our house, and they have cast him into prison.”

“My darling, be calm, be calm,” said the doctor soothingly.

“Yes, I am calm,” she said, “and I am going to work—and help my husband. Now tell me, What is to be done first? He is in that dreadful place.”

“Yes, my child, but leave this now. I will do all I can, and will tell you everything. You have had no sleep all night; go and lie down now for a few hours.”

“Sleep! and at a time like this!” cried Millicent. “Now tell me. He will be brought up before the magistrates to-day?”

“Yes, my child.”

“And he must have legal advice to counteract all this cruel charge that has been brought against him. Poor fellow! so troubled as he has been of late.”

The doctor looked at her with the lines in his forehead deepening.

“If they had given him time he would have proved to them how false all these attacks are. But we are wasting time. The lawyer, father, and he will have to be paid. You will help me, dear; we must have some money.”

The doctor exchanged glances with his wife.

“You have some, of course?” he said, turning to Millicent.

“I? No. Robert has been so pressed lately. But you will lend us all we want. You have plenty, father.”

The doctor was silent, and half turned away.

“Father!” cried Millicent, catching his hand, “don’t you turn from me in my distress. I tell you Robert is innocent, and only wants time to prove it to all the world. You will let me have the money for his defence?”

The doctor remained silent.

“Father!” cried Millicent in a tone of command.

“Hush! my darling; your poor father has no money,” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, “and sometimes lately we have not known which way to turn for a few shillings.”

“Oh, father!” cried Millicent reproachfully. “But there’s the house. You must borrow money on its security, enough to pay for the best counsel in London. Robert will repay you a hundredfold.”

The doctor turned away and walked to the window.

“Father!” cried Millicent, “am I your child?”

“My child! my darling!” he groaned, coming quickly back, “how can you speak to me in such a tone?”

“How can you turn from me at such a time, when the honour of my dear husband is at stake? What are a few paltry hundred pounds to that? You cannot, you shall not refuse. There, I know enough of business for that. The lawyers will lend you money on the security of this house. Go at once, and get what is necessary. Why do you hesitate?”

“My poor darling!” cried Mrs Luttrell piteously, “don’t, pray don’t speak to your father like that.”

“I must help my husband,” said Millicent hoarsely. “Yes, yes, and you shall, my dear; but be calm, be calm. There, there, there.”

“Mother, I must hear my father speak,” said Millicent sternly. “I come to him in sore distress and poverty. My home has been wrecked by last night’s mob, my poor husband half killed, and torn from me to be cast into prison. I come to my father for help—a few pitiful pounds, and he seems to side with my husband’s enemies.”

“Milly, my darling, I’ll do everything I can,” cried the doctor; “but you ask impossibilities. The house is not mine.”

“Not yours, father?”

“Hush! hush, my dear!” sobbed Mrs Luttrell. “I can’t explain to you now, but poor papa was obliged to sell it a little while ago.”

“Where is the money?” said Millicent fiercely.

“It was all gone before—the mortgages,” said Mrs Luttrell.

“And who bought it?” cried Millicent.

“Mr Bayle.”

There was a pause of a few moments’ duration, and then the suffering woman seemed to flash out into a fit of passion.

“Mr Bayle again!” she cried.

“Yes, Mr Bayle, our friend.”

At that moment there came a burst of merry laughter from the garden, the sounds floating in through the open window with the sweet scents of the flowers, and directly after Julia, looking flushed and happy, appeared, holding Christie Bayle’s hand.

Bayle paused as he saw the group within, and then slowly entered.

“Mamma, I knew Mr Bayle would come!” cried Julia excitedly. “But, oh, look at him, he has hurt himself so! He is so—so—oh, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!”

The memories of the past night came back in a flash—the hurried awaking from sleep, the dressing, the sounds of the mob, the breaking windows, the fire, and the wild struggle; and the poor child sobbed hysterically and trembled, as Bayle sank upon his knees and took her to his breast.

There she clung, while he caressed her and whispered comforting words, Millicent the while standing back, erect and stern, and Mrs Luttrell and the doctor with troubled countenances looking on.

In a few minutes the child grew calm again, and then, without a word, Millicent crossed to the fireplace and rang the bell. It was answered directly by the doctor’s maid.

“Send Thisbe here,” said Millicent sternly.

In another minute Thisbe, who looked very white and troubled, appeared at the door, gazing sharply from one to the other.

“Julie, go to Thisbe,” said Millicent in a cold, harsh voice.

The child looked up quickly, and clung to Bayle, as she gazed at her mother with the same shrinking, half-scared look she had so often directed at her father.

“Julie!”

The child ran across to Thisbe, and Bayle bit his lip, and his brow contracted, for he caught the sound of a low wail as the door was closed.

Then, advancing to her, with his face full of the pity he felt, Bayle held out his hand to Millicent, and then let it fall, as she stood motionless, gazing fiercely in his face, till he lowered his eyes, and his head sank slowly, while he heaved a sigh.

“You have come, then,” she said, “come to look upon your work. You have come to enjoy your triumph. False friend! Coward! Treacherous villain! You have cast my husband into prison, and now you dare to meet me face to face!”

“Mrs Hallam! Millicent!” he cried, looking up, his face flushing as he met her eyes, “what are you saying?”

“The truth!” she cried fiercely. “He knew you better than I. He warned me against you. His dislike had cause. I, poor, weak, trusting woman, believed you to be our friend, and let you crawl and enlace yourself about our innocent child’s heart, while all the time you were forming your plans, and waiting for your chance to strike!”

“Mrs Hallam,” said Bayle calmly, and with a voice full of pity, “you do not know what you are saying.”

“Not know! when my poor husband told me all!—how you waited until he was in difficulties, and then plotted with that wretched menial Thickens to overthrow him! I know you now: cowardly, cruel man! Unworthy of a thought! But let me tell you that you win no triumph. You thought to separate us—to make the whole world turn from him whom you have cast into prison. You have succeeded in tightening the bonds between us. The trouble will pass as soon as my husband’s innocency is shown, while your conduct will cling to you, and show itself like some stain!”

A look as angry as her own came over his countenance, but it passed in a moment, and he said gravely: “I came to offer you my sympathy and help in this time of need.”

“Your help, your sympathy!” cried Millicent scornfully. “You, who planned, here, in my presence, with Sir Gordon, my husband’s ruin! Leave this house, sir! Stay! I forgot. By your machinations you are master here. Mother, father, let us go. The world is wide, and heaven will not let such villainy triumph in the end.”

“Oh, hush! hush!” exclaimed Bayle sternly. “Mrs Hallam, you know not what you say. Doctor, come on to me, I wish to see you. Dear Mrs Luttrell, let me assist you all I can. Good-bye! God help you in your trouble. Good-bye!”

He bent down and kissed the old lady; and as he pressed her hand she clung to his, and kissed it in return.

“Good-bye, Mrs Hallam,” he said, holding out his hand once more.

She turned from him with a look of disgust and loathing, and he went slowly out, as he had come, with his head bent, along the road, and on to the market-place.

Volume Two—Chapter Fifteen.

A Critical Time.

There was only one bit of business going on in King’s Castor that morning among the mechanics, and that was where two carpenters were busy nailing boards across the gaping windows and broken door of Hallam’s house.

The ivy about the hall window was all scorched, and the frames of that and two windows above were charred, but only the hall, staircase, and one room had been burned before the fire was extinguished. The greater part of the place, though, was a wreck, the mob having wreaked their vengeance upon the furniture when Hallam was snatched from their hands by the law; and for about an hour the self-constituted avengers of the customers at Dixons’ Bank had behaved like Goths.

It was impossible for work to go on with such a night to canvass. One group, as Bayle approached, was watching the little fire-engine, and the drying of its hose which was hauled up by one end over the branch of an oak-tree at Poppin’s Corner.

There was nothing to see but the little, contemptible, old-fashioned pump on wheels; still fifty people, who had seen it in the belfry every Sunday as they went to church, stopped to stare at it now.

But the great group was round about the manager’s house, many of them being the idlers and scamps of the place, who had been foremost in the destruction.

The public-houses had their contingents; and then there were the farmers from all round, who had driven in, red-hot with excitement; and, as soon as they had left their gigs or carts in the inn-yard, were making their way up to the bank.

Some did not stop to go to the inn, but were there in their conveyances, waiting for the bank to open, long before the time, and quite a murmur of menace arose, when, to the very moment, James Thickens, calm and cool and drab as usual, threw open the door, to be driven back by a party of those gathered together.

Fortunately the news had spread slowly, so that the crowd was not large; but it was augmented by a couple of score of the blackguards of the place, hungry-eyed, moist of lip, and ready for any excuse to leap over the bank counter and begin the work of plunder.

For the first time in his life James Thickens performed that feat—leaping over the counter to place it between himself and the clamorous mob, who saw Mr Trampleasure there and Sir Gordon Bourne in the manager’s room, with the door open, and something on the table.

“Here—Here”—“Here—Me”—“No, me.”

“I was first.”

“No, me, Thickens.”

“My money.”

“My cheque.”

“Change these notes.”

The time was many years ago, and there were no dozen or two of county constabulary to draft into the place for its protection. Hence it was that as Thickens stood, cool and silent, before the excited crowd, Sir Gordon, calm and stern, appeared in the doorway with a couple of pistols in his left hand, one held by the butt, the other by the barrel passed under his thumb.

“Silence!” he cried in a quick, commanding tone.

“I am prepared—”

“Yah! No speeches. Our money! Our—”

“Silence!” roared Sir Gordon. “We are waiting to pay all demands.”

“Hear, hear! Hooray!” shouted one of the farmers, who had come in hot haste, and his mottled face grew calm.

“But we can’t—”

“Yah—yah!” came in a menacing yell.

“Over with you, lads!” cried a great ruffian, clapping his hands on the counter and making a spring, which the pressure behind checked and hindered, so that he only got one leg on the counter.

“Back, you ruffian!” cried Sir Gordon, taking a step forward, and, quick as lightning, presenting a pistol at the fellow’s head. “You, Dick Warren, I gave you six months for stealing corn. Move an inch forward, and as I am a man I’ll fire.”

There was a fierce murmur, and then a pause.

The great ruffian half crouched upon the counter, crossing his eyes in his fear, and squinting crookedly down the pistol barrel, which was within a foot of his head.

“I say, gentlemen and customers, that Mr Thickens here is waiting to pay over all demands on Dixons’ Bank.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the farmer who had before spoken.

“But there are twenty or thirty dirty ruffians among you, and people who do not bank with us, and I must ask you to turn them out.”

There was a fierce murmur here, and Sir Gordon’s voice rose again high and clear.

“Mr Trampleasure, you will find the loaded firearms ready in the upper room. Go up, sir, and without hesitation shoot down the first scoundrel who dares to throw a stone at the bank.”

“Yes, Sir Gordon,” said Trampleasure, who dared not have fired a piece to save his life, but who gladly beat a retreat to the first-floor window, where he stood with one short blunderbuss in his hand, and Mrs Trampleasure with the other.

“Now, gentlemen,” cried Sir Gordon, “I am waiting for you to clear the bank.”

There was another fierce growl at this; but the mottled-faced farmer, who had ridden in on his stout cob, and who carried a hunting crop with an old-fashioned iron hammer head, spat in his fist, and turned the handle—

“Now, neighbours and friends as is customers!” he roared in a stentorian voice, “I’m ready when you are.” As he spoke he caught the man half on the counter by the collar, and dragged him off.

“Here, keep your hands off me!”

“Yow want to fight, yow’d—”

“Yah! hah!”

Then a scuffling and confused growl, and one or two appeals to sticks and fists; but in five minutes every man not known as a customer of the bank was outside, and the farmers gave a cheer, which was answered by a yell from the increasing mob, a couple of dozen of whom had stooped for stones and began to flourish sticks.

But the stout farmer, who was on the steps between the two pillars that flanked the entrance, put his hand to his mouth, as if about to give a view halloo!

“Look out for the bloonder-boosh, my lads.” And then, turning his head up to the window where Mr Trampleasure stood, weapon in hand, “Tak’ a good aim on the front, and gie it ’em—whang! Mr Trampleasure, sir. Thee’ll scatter the sloogs fine.”

Not a stone was thrown, and by this time James Thickens was busy at work cancelling with his quill pen, and counting and weighing out gold. He never offered one of Dixons’ notes: silver and gold, current coin of the realm, was all he passed over the counter, and though the customers pressed and hurried to get their cheques or notes changed, Thickens retained his coolness and went on.

At the end of a quarter of an hour the excitement was subsiding, but the bank was still full of farmers and tradespeople, the big burly man with the hunting crop being still by the counter unpaid.

All at once, after watching the paying over of the money for some time, he began hammering the mahogany counter heavily with the iron handle of his whip.

“Here, howd hard!” he roared.

Sir Gordon, who had put the pistols on the table, and was sitting on the manager’s chair, coolly reading his newspaper in full view, laid it down, and rose to come to the open glass door.

“Ay, that’s right, Sir Gordon. I want a word wi’ thee. I’m not a man to go on wi’ fullishness; but brass is brass, and a hard thing to get howd on. Now, look ye here. Howd hard, neighbours, I hevn’t got much to saya.”

“What is it, Mr Anderson?” said Sir Gordon calmly.

“Why, this much, Sir Gordon and neighbours. Friend o’ mine comes out o’ the town this morning and says, ‘If thou’st got any brass i’ Dixons’ Bank, run and get it, lad, for Maester Hallam’s bo’ted, and bank’s boosted oop.’ Now, Sir Gordon, it don’t look as if bank hev boosted oop.”

“Oh, no,” said Sir Gordon, smiling.

“Hev Maester Hallam bo’ted, then, or is that a lie too?”

“I am sorry to say that Mr Hallam has been arrested on a charge of fraud.”

“That be true, then?” said the farmer. “Well, now, look here, Sir Gordon; I’ve banked wi’ you over twanty year, and I can’t afford to lose my brass. Tween man and man, is my money safe?”

“Perfectly, Mr Anderson.”

“That’ll do, Sir Gordon,” said the farmer, tearing up the cheque he held in his hand, and scattering it over his head. “I’ll tak’ Sir Gordon’s word or Dixons’ if they say it’s all right. I don’t want my brass.”

“Gentlemen,” said Sir Gordon, flashing slightly, “if you will trust me and my dear old friend Mr Dixon, you shall be paid all demands to the last penny we have. I am sorry to say that I have discovered a very heavy defalcation on the part of our late manager, and the loss will be large, but that loss will fall upon us, gentlemen, not upon you.”

“But I want my deeds, my writings,” cried a voice. “I’m not a-going to be cheated out o’ my rights.”

“Who is that?” said Sir Gordon.

“Mr Gemp, Sir Gordon,” said Thickens quickly. “Deposit of deeds of row of houses in Rochester Close; and shares.”

“Mr Gemp,” said Sir Gordon, “I am afraid your deeds are amongst others that are missing.”

“Ay! Ay! Robbers! Robbers!” shouted Gemp excitedly.

“No, Mr Gemp, we are not robbers,” said Sir Gordon. “If you will employ your valuer, I will employ ours; and as soon as they have decided the amount, Mr James Thickens will pay you—to-day if you can get the business done, and the houses and shares are Dixons’.”

“Hear, hear, hear,” shouted Anderson. “There, neighbour, he can’t say fairer than that.”

“Nay, I want my writings, and I don’t want to sell. I want my writings. I’ll hev ’em too.”

“Shame on you, Gemp,” said a voice behind him. “Three days ago you were at death’s door. Your life was spared, and this is the thank-offering you make to your neighbours in their trouble.”

“Nay, don’t you talk like that, parson, thou doesn’t know what it is to lose thy all,” piped Gemp.

“Lose?” cried Bayle, who had entered the bank quietly to see Sir Gordon. “Man, I have lost heavily too.”

Thickens was making signs to him now with his quill pen.

“Ay, but I want my writings. I’ll hev my writings,” cried Gemp. “Neighbours, you have your money. Don’t you believe ’em. They’re robbers.”

“If I weer close to thee, owd Gemp, I’d tak’ thee by the scruff and the band o’ thy owd breeches and pitch thee out o’ window. Sir Gordon’s ready to do the handsome thing.”

“Touch me if you dare,” cried old Gemp. “I want my writings. It was bank getting unsafe made me badly. You neighbours have all thy money out, for they haven’t got enough to last long.”

There was a fresh murmur here, and Sir Gordon looked anxious. Mr Anderson stood fast; but it was evident that a strong party were waiting for their money, and more than one began to twitch Thickens by the sleeve, and present cheques and notes.

Thickens paid no heed, but made his way to where Christie Bayle was standing, and handed him a pocket-book.

“Here,” he said. “I couldn’t come to you. I had to watch the bank.”

“My pocket-book, Thickens?”

“Yes, sir. I was just in time to knock that scoundrel over as he was throttling you. I’d come to meet the coach.”

“Why, Thickens!” cried Bayle, flushing—“Ah, you grasping old miser! What! turn thief?”

The latter was to old Gemp, who saw the pocket-book passed, and made a hawk-like clutch at it, but his wrist was pinned by Bayle, who took the pocket-book and slipped it into his breast.

“It’s my papers—it’s writings—it’s—”

His voice was drowned in a clamour that arose, as about twenty more people came hurrying in at the bank-door, eager to make demands for their deposits.

Sir Gordon grew pale, for there was not enough cash in the house to meet the constant demand, and he had hoped that the ready payment of a great deal would quiet the run.

The clamour increased, and it soon became evident that the dam had given way, and that nothing remained but to go on paying to the last penny in the bank, while there was every possibility of wreck and destruction following.

“Howd hard, neighbours,” cried Anderson; “Sir Gordon says it’s all right. Dixons’ ’ll pay.”

“Dixons’ can’t pay,” shouted a voice. “Hallam’s got everything, and the bank’s ruined.”

There was a roar here, and the fire seemed to have been again applied to the tow. Thickens looked in despair at Bayle, and then with a quick movement locked the cash drawer, and clapped the key in his pocket. The action was seen. There was a yell of fury from the crowd in front, and a dozen hands seized the clerk.

Sir Gordon darted forward, this time without pistols, and hands and sticks were raised, when in a voice of thunder Christie Bayle roared:

“Stop!”

There was instant silence, for he had leaped upon the bank counter.

“Stand back!” he said, “and act like Christian men, and not like wild beasts. Dixons’ Bank is sound. Look here!”

“It’s failed! it’s failed!” cried a dozen voices.

“It has not failed,” shouted Bayle. “Look here: I have been to London.”

“Yes, we know.”

“To fetch twenty-one thousand pounds—my own property!”

There was dead silence here.

“Look! that is the money, all in new Bank of England notes.”

He tore them out of the large pocket-book.

“To show you my confidence in Dixons’ Bank and in Sir Gordon Bourne’s word, I deposit this sum with them, and open an account. Mr Thickens, have the goodness to enter this to my credit; I’ll take a chequebook when you are at liberty.”

He passed the sheaf of rustling, fluttering, new, crisp notes to the cashier, and then, taking Sir Gordon’s offered hand, leaped down inside the counter of the bank.

“There, Sir Gordon,” he said, with a smile, “I hope the plague is stayed.”

“Christie Bayle,” whispered Sir Gordon huskily, “Heaven bless you! I shall never forget this day!” Half-an-hour later the bank business was going on as usual, but the business of the past night and morning was more talked of than before.

Volume Two—Chapter Sixteen.

In misery’s depths.

One of many visits to the gloomy, stone-built, county gaol where Hallam was waiting his trial—for all applications for the granting of bail had been set aside—Millicent had insisted upon going alone, but without avail.

“No, Miss Milly, you may insist as long as you like; but until I’m berried, I’m going to keep by you in trouble, and I shall go with you.”

“But Thibs, my dear, dear old Thibs,” cried Millicent, flinging her arms about her neck, “don’t you see that you will be helping me by staying with Julie?”

“No, my dear, I don’t; and, God bless her! she’ll be as happy as can be with her grandpa killing slugs, as I wish all wicked people were the same, and could be killed out of the way.”

“But, Thibs, I order you to stay!”

“And you may order, my dear,” said Thisbe stubbornly. “You might order, and you might cut off my legs, and then I’d come crawling like the serpent in the Scripters—only I hope it would be to do good.”

“Oh, you make me angry with you, Thisbe. Haven’t I told you that Miss Heathery has been pressing to come this morning, and I refused her?”

“Why, of course you did, my dear,” replied Thisbe contemptuously. “Nice one she’d be to go with you, and strengthen and comfort you! Send her to your pa’s greenhouse to turn herself into a pot, and water the plants with warm water, and crying all over, and perhaps she’d do some good; but to go over to Lindum! The idea! Poor little weak thing!”

“But, Thisbe, can you not see that this is a visit that I ought to pay alone?”

“No, miss.”

“But it is: for my husband’s sake.”

“Every good husband who had left his wife in such trouble as you’re in would be much obliged to an old servant for going with you all that long journey. There, miss, once for all—you may go alone, if you like, but I shall follow you and keep close to you all the time, and sit down at the prison gate.”

“Oh, hush, Thibs!” cried Millicent, with a spasm of pain convulsing her features.

“Yes, miss, I understand. And now I’m going. I shan’t speak a word to you; I shan’t even look at you, but be just as if I was a nothing, and all the same I’m there ready for you to hear, and be a comfort in my poor way, so that you may lean on me as much as you like; and, please God, bring us all well out of our troubles. Amen.”

Poor Thisbe’s words were inconsequent, but they were sincere, and she followed her mistress to the coach, and then through the hilly streets of the old city, and finally, as she had suggested, seated herself upon a stone at the prison gates while her mistress went in.

The sound of lock and bolt chilled Millicent; the aspect of the gloomy, high-walled enclosure, with the loose bricks piled on the top to show where the wall had been tampered with, and to hinder escape, the very aspect, too, of the governor’s house, with its barred windows to keep prisoners out, as the walls were to keep them in—a cage within a cage—made her heart sink, and when after traversing stone passages, and hearing doors locked and unlocked, she found herself in the presence of her husband, her brain reeled, a mist came before her eyes, and for a while her tongue refused to utter the words she longed to speak.

“Humph!” said Hallam roughly. “You don’t seem very glad to see me.”

Her reproachful eyes gave him the lie; and, looking pale, anxious, and terribly careworn, he began to pace the floor.

The careful arrangement of the hair, the gentlemanly look, seemed to have given place to a sullen, half-shrinking mien, and it was plain to see how confinement and mental anxiety had told upon him.

In a few minutes, though, he had thrown off a great deal of this, and spoke eagerly to his wife, who, while tender and sympathetic in word and look, seemed ever ready to spur him on to some effort to free himself from the clinging stain.

This had been her task from the very first. Cast down with a feeling of degradation and sorrow, when the arrest had been made, she had, as we know, recoiled.

She had made every effort possible; had gone to her husband for advice and counsel, and had ended at his wish by taking the money Miss Heathery offered, to pay a good attorney to conduct his case; but on the first hearing, she was informed by the lawyer that a gentleman was down from town, a barrister of some eminence, who said that he had been instructed to defend Mr Hallam, and he declined to give any further information.

The despair that came over Millicent was terrible to witness; but she mastered these fits of despondency by force of will and the feverish energy with which she set to work. She visited Hallam, questioning, asking advice, instruction, and bidding him try to see his way out of the difficulty, till he grew morose and sullen, and seemed to find special pleasure in telling her that it was “all the work of that parson.”

In her feverish state, in the despair with which she had bidden herself do her duty to her wronged, her injured husband, she took all this as fact, and shutting herself up at Miss Heathery’s, refused to read the letters Bayle sent to her, or to give him an interview.

It was as if a savage spirit of hate and revenge had taken possession of her, and with blind determination she went on her way, praying for strength to make her worthy of the task of defending her injured husband, and for the overthrow of the cruel enemies who were fighting to work his ruin.

And now she was having the last interview with Hallam, for the authorities had interfered, she had had so much latitude, and he had given her certain instructions which made her start.

“Go to him?” she said, looking up wonderingly.

“Yes, of course,” he said sharply; “do you wish me to lose the slightest chance of getting off?”

“But, Robert, dear,” she said innocently, but with the energy that pervaded her speaking, “why not go bravely to your trial? The truth must prevail.”

“Oh, yes,” he said cynically; “it is a way it has in courts of law.”

“Don’t speak like that, love. I want you to hold up your head bravely in the face of your detractors, to show how you have been tricked and injured, that this man Crellock, whom you have helped, has proved a villain—deceiving, robbing, and shamefully treating you.”

“Yes,” he said; “I should like to show all that.”

“Then don’t send me to Sir Gordon. I feel that there is no mercy to be expected from either him or Mr Bayle. They both hate you.”

“Most cordially, dear. By all that’s wearisome, I wish they would let me have a cigar here.”

“No, no; think of what you are telling me to do,” she cried eagerly, as she saw him wandering from the purpose in hand. “You say I must go to Sir Gordon?”

“Yes. Don’t say it outright, but give him to understand that if he will throw up this prosecution of his, it will be better for the bank. That I can give such information as will pay them.”

“You know so much about Stephen Crellock?” she said quickly.

“Yes; I can recover a great deal, I am sure.”

“And I am to show him how cruelly he has wronged you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You desire me to do this; you will not trust to your innocence, and the efforts of the counsel?”

“Do you want to drive me mad with your questions?” he cried savagely. “If you decline to go, my lawyer shall see Sir Gordon.”

“Robert!” she said reproachfully, but with the sweet gentleness of her pitying love for the husband irritated, and beyond control of self in his trouble, apparent in her words.

“Well, why do you talk so and hesitate?” he cried petulantly.

“I will go, dear,” she said cheerfully, “and I will plead your cause to the uttermost.”

“Yes, of course. It will be better that you should go. He likes you, Millicent; he always did like you, and I dare say he will listen to you. I don’t know but what it might be wise to knock under to Bayle. But no: I hate that fellow. I always did from the first. Well, leave that now. See Sir Gordon; tell him what I say, that it will be best for the bank. You’ll win. Hang it, Millicent, I could not bear this trial: it would kill me.”

“Robert!”

“Ah, well, I’m not going to die yet, and it would be very sad for my handsome little wife to be left a widow if they hang me, or to exist with a live husband serving one-and-twenty years in the bush.”

“Robert, you will break my heart if you speak like that,” panted Millicent.

“Ah, well, we must not do that,” he cried laughingly. “Look here, though; this barrister who is to defend me, I know him—Granton, Q.C. Did your father instruct him?”

“No: he could not. Robert, we are frightfully poor.”

“Ah! it is a nuisance,” he said, “thanks to my enemies; but we’ll get through. Now then, who has instructed this man?”

“I cannot tell, dear.”

“I see it all,” he said; “it’s a plan of the enemy. They employ their own man, and he will sell me, bound hand and foot, to the Philistines.”

“Oh! Robert, surely no one would be so base.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They want to win. It’s Sir Gordon’s doing. No, it’s Christie Bayle. I’d lay a thousand pounds he has paid the fellow’s fees.”

“Then, Robert, you will not trust him; you will refuse to let him defend you. Husband, my brave, true, innocent husband,” she cried, with her pale face flushing, “defend yourself!”

“Hush! Go to Sir Gordon at once. Say everything. I must be had out of this, Milly. I cannot stand my trial.” She could only nod her acquiescence, for a gaoler had entered to announce that the visit was at an end.

Then, as if in a dream, confused, troubled in spirit, and hardly seeing her way for the mist before her eyes, Millicent Hallam followed the gaoler back along the white stone passages and through the clanging gates, to be shut out of the prison and remain in a dream of misery and troubled thought, conscious of only one thing, and that one that a gentle hand had taken her by the arm and led her back to where they waited for the conveyance to take them home.

“These handsome men; these handsome men!” sighed Thibs, as she sat by Julia’s bed that night, tired with her journey, but reluctant to go to her own resting-place—a mattress upon the floor. “Oh! how I wish sometimes we were back at the old house, and me scolding and stubborn with poor old missus, and in my tantrums from morning to night. Ah! those were happy days.”

Thisbe shook her head, and rocked herself to and fro, and sighed and sighed again.

“My old kitchen, and my old back door, and the big dust-hole! What a house it was, and how happy we used to be! Ah! if we could only change right back and be there once more, and Miss Milly not married to no handsome scamp. Ah! and he is; Miss Milly may say what she likes, and try to believe he isn’t. He is a scamp, and I wish she had never seen his handsome face, and we were all back again, and then—Oh!—Oh! Oh!—Oh!—Oh!” cried hard, stubborn Thisbe as she sank upon her knees by the child’s bedside, sobbing gently and with the tears running down her cheeks, “and then there wouldn’t be no you. Bless you! bless you! bless you!”

She kissed the child as a butterfly might settle on a flower, so tender was her love, so great her fear of disturbing the little one’s rest.

“Oh! dear me, dear me!” she said, rising and wiping the tears from her hard face and eyes, “well, there’s whites and blacks, and ups and downs, and pleasures and pains, and I don’t know what to say—except my prayers; and the Lord knows what’s best for us after all.”

Ten minutes after, poor Thisbe was sleeping peacefully, while, with burning brow, Millicent was pacing her bed-room, thinking of the morrow’s interview with Sir Gordon Bourne.

Volume Two—Chapter Seventeen.

Mr Gemp is Curious.

“I know’d—I know’d it all along,” said Old Gemp to his friends, for the excitement of his loss seemed now to have acted in an opposite direction and to be giving him strength. “I know’d he couldn’t be living at that rate unless things was going wrong. What did the magistrates say?”

“Said it was a black case, and committed him for trial,” replied Gorringe the tailor. “Ah, I don’t say that clothes is everything, Mr Gemp; but a well-made suit makes a gentleman of a man, and you never heard of Mr Thickens doing aught amiss.”

“Nor me neither, eh, Gorringe? and you’ve made my clothes ever since you’ve been in business.”

The tailor looked with disgust at his neighbour’s shabby, well-worn garments, and remained silent.

“I’d have been in the court mysen, Gorringe, on’y old Luttrell said he wouldn’t be answerable for my life if I got excited again, and I don’t want to die yet, neighbour; there’s a deal for me to see to in this world.”

“Got your money, haven’t you?”

“Ye-es, I’ve got my money, and it’s put away safe; but I wanted my deeds—my writings. I’ve lost by that scoundrel, horribly.”

“Ah, well, it might have been worse,” said Gorringe, giving a snip with his scissors that made Gemp start as if it were his own well-frayed thread of life being cut through.

“Oh, of course it might have been worse; but a lot of us have lost, eh, neighbour?”

“Dixons’ and Sir Gordon have come down very handsome over it,” said Gorringe, who was designing a garment, as he called it, with a piece of French chalk.

“And the parson,” said Gemp; “only to think of it—a parson, a curate, with one-and-twenty thousand pound in his pocket.”

“Ay, it come in handy,” said Gorringe.

“Now, where did he get that money, eh? It’s a wonderful sight for a man like him,” said Gemp, with a suspicious look.

“London. I heerd tell that he said he had been to London to get it.”

“Ay, he said so,” cried Gemp, shaking his head, “but it looks suspicious, mun. Here was he hand and glove with the Hallams, always at their house and mixed up like. I want to know where he got that money. I say, sir, that a curate with twenty thousand pound of his own is a sort o’ monster as ought to be levelled down.”

The tailor pushed up his glasses to the roots of his hair, and left off his work to hold up his shears menacingly at his crony.

“Gemp, old man,” he said, “I would not be such a cantankerous, suspicious old magpie as you for a hundred pounds; and look here, if you’re going to pull buttons off the back o’ parson’s coat, go and do it somewhere else, and not in my shop.”

“Oh! you needn’t be so up,” said Gemp. “Look here,” he cried, pointing straight at his friend, “what did Thickens say about the writings?”

“Spoke fair as a man could speak,” said Gorringe, resuming his architectural designs in chalk and cloth, “said he felt uncomfortable about the matter first when he saw Hallam give a package to a man named Crellock—chap who often come down to see him; that he was suspicious like that for two years, but never had an opportunity of doing more than be doubtful till just lately.”

“Why didn’t he speak out to a friend—say to a man like me?”

“Because, I’m telling you, it was only suspicion. Hallam managed the thing very artfully, and threw dust in Thickens’s eyes; but last of all he see his way clear, and went and told parson. And just then Sir Gordon were suspicious, too, and had got something to go upon, and they nabbed my gentleman just as he was going away.”

“And do you believe all this?” cried Gemp.

“To be sure I do. Don’t you?”

“Tchah! I’m afraid they’re all in it.”

“Ah! well, I’m not; and, as we’ve nothing to lose, I don’t care.”

“How did Hallam look?”

“Very white; and, my word! he did give parson a look when he was called up to give his evidence. He looked black at Thickens and at Sir Gordon, but he seemed regularly savage with parson.”

“Ah, to be sure!” cried Gemp. “What did I say about being thick with parson? It’s my belief that if all had their deserts parson would be standing in the dock alongside o’ Hallam.”

“And it’s my belief, Gemp, that you’re about the silliest owd maulkin that ever stepped! There, I won’t quarrel with thee. Parson? Pshaw!”

“Well, thou’lt see, mun, thou’lt see! Committed for trial, eh? And how about the other fellow!”

“What, Crellock? Oh, they’ve got him too. He came smelling after Hallam, who was like a decoy bird to him. Wanted to see him in the cage; and they let him see Hallam, and—”

“Ah, I heard that Hallam told the constable Crellock was worse than he, and they took him too. Yes, I heard that. Hallo! here comes Hallam’s maid—doctor’s owd lass, Thisbe. Let’s get a word wi’ her.”

Gemp shuffled out of the tailor’s shop, and made for Thisbe, who was coming down the street, with her head up and her nose in the air.

“Mornin’, good mornin’,” he said, with one of his most amiable grins.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” said Thisbe sharply; and she went straight on to Miss Heathery’s, knocked sharply, and waited, gazing defiantly about the place the while.

“Well, she’s a stinger, she is!” muttered Gemp, standing scraping away at his face with his forefinger. “Do her good to be married, and hev some one with the rule over her. Humph! she’s gone. Now what does she want there?”

The answer was very simple, though it was full of mystery to Gemp. Thisbe wanted her mistress and the child, who had gone to Miss Heathery’s after dark, Millicent’s soul revolting against the idea of staying at the old home now that it was in the possession of Christie Bayle, her husband’s bitterest foe.

The gossips were quite correct. Hallam had been examined thrice before the county magistrates, and enough had been traced to prove that for a long time he had been speculating largely, losing, and making up his losses by pledging, at one particular bank, the valuable securities with which Dixons’ strong-room was charged. When one of these was wanted he pledged another and redeemed it, while altogether the losses were so heavy that, had not the old bank proprietors been very wealthy men, Dixons’ must have gone.

“Now, where’s she a-going, neighbour?” said Gemp, scraping away at his stubbly face. “I don’t feel up to it like I did, but I shall have to see.”

Gorringe peered through his glasses and the window at the figure in black that had just left Miss Heathery’s, leaning on Thisbe’s arm for a few moments, and then, as if by an effort, drawing herself up and walking alone.

The day was lovely, the sky of the deepest blue; the sun seemed to be brightening every corner of the whole town, and making the flowers blink and brighten, and the sparrows that haunted the eaves to be in a state of the greatest excitement. King’s Castor had never looked more quaintly picturesque and homelike, more the beau-ideal of an old English country town, from the coaching inn with yellow post-chaise outside, and the blue-jacketed postboy with his unnecessarily knotted whip, down to the vegetable stall at the corner of the market, where old Mrs Dims sat on an ancient rush-bottomed chair, with her feet in a brown earthenware bread-pancheon to keep them dry.

Mrs Pinet’s flower-pots were so red that they seemed like the blossoms of her plants growing unnaturally beneath the leaves, and her window, and every one else’s panes, shone and glittered with the true country brilliancy in the morning sun. Even the grass looked green growing between the cobble-stones—those pebbles that gave the town the aspect that, being essentially pastoral, the inhabitants had decided, out of compliment to their farm neighbours, to pave it with sheep’s kidneys.

But there was one blot upon it—one ugly scar, where the yellow deal boards had been newly nailed up, and the walls and window-frames were blackened with smoke; and it was when passing these ruins of her home that Millicent Hallam first shuddered, and then drew herself up to walk firmly by.

“Ah!” said Gorringe, making his shears click, “you wouldn’t feel happy if you didn’t know what was going on, would you, neighbour?”

“Eh? Know? Of course not. If it hadn’t been for me looking after the bank, where would you have all been, eh?”

Gemp spoke savagely, and pointed at the tailor as if he were going to bore a hole in his chest.

“Well, p’r’aps you did some good there, Master Gemp; but if you’d take my advice, you’d go home and keep yoursen quiet. I wouldn’t get excited about nothing, if I was you.”

“Humph! No, you wouldn’t, Master Gorringe; but some folk is different to others,” said Gemp, talking away from the doorway, with his head outside, as he peered down the street.

“Hey! look at ’em now!—the curiosity of these women folk! Here’s owd Mother Pinet with her neck stretched out o’ window, and Barton at the shop, and Cross at the ‘Chequers,’ and Dawson the carrier, all got their heads out, staring after that woman. Now, where’s she going, I wonder?”

Old Gemp stumped back into the shop, shaving away at his cheek.

“She can’t be going over to Lindum to see Hallam, because she went yesterday.”

The tailor’s shears clicked as a corner was taken out of a piece of cloth.

“She ain’t going up to the doctor’s, because he drove by half-an-hour ago with the owd lady.”

Another click.

“Can’t be going for a walk. Wouldn’t go for a walk at a time like this. I’ve often wondered why folk do go for walks, Master Gorringe. I never did.”

Click!

“Nay, Master Gemp, you could always find enough to see and do in the town, eh?”

“Plenty! plenty, mun, plenty!—I’ve got it!”

“Eh?”

“She’s going—Hallam’s wife, yonder—to see owd Sir Gordon, and beg Hallam off; and, look here, I wean’t hev it!”

Gemp banged his stick down upon the counter in a way that made the cloth spread thereon rise in waves, and became very broad of speech here, though it was a matter of pride amongst the Castor people that they spoke the purest English in the county, and were not broad of utterance, like the people on the wolds, and “down in the marsh.”

Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.

A Painful Meeting.

Whether Gemp would have it or no, Millicent Hallam was on her way to Sir Gordon’s quiet, old-fashioned house on the North Road—a house that was a bit of a mystery to the Castor children, whose young brains were full of conjecture as to what could be inside a place whose windows were blanks, and with nothing but a door to the road, and a high wall right and left to complete the blankness of the frontage.

It ought to have been called the backage; for Sir Gordon Bourne’s house was very pleasant on the other side, with a compact garden and flowers blooming to brighten it—a garden in which he never walked.

Millicent Hallam pulled at the swinging handle of the bell at Sir Gordon’s door with the determination of one who has called to demand a right.

The door was opened by a quiet-looking, middle-aged man in drab livery, whose brown hair and cocoa-nut fibry whiskers, joined to a swinging, easy gait, suggested that he would not have been out of place on the deck of a vessel, an idea strengthened by an appearance, on one side of his face, as if he were putting his tongue in his cheek.

He drew back respectfully before Millicent could say, “Is Sir Gordon at home?” allowed her to pass, and then, as Thisbe followed her mistress, he gave her a very solemn wink, but without the vestige of a smile.

Thisbe gave her shawl a violent snatch, as if it were armour that she was drawing over a weak spot; but Tom Porter, Sir Gordon’s factotum, did not see it, for he was closing the door and thinking about how to hide the fact that his hands were marked with rouge with which he had been polishing the plate when the bell rang.

He led the way across the hall, which was so full of curiosities from all parts of the globe that it resembled a museum, and, opening a door at the end, ushered Millicent into Sir Gordon’s library, a neatly kept little room with a good deal of the air of a captain’s cabin in its furnishing; telescopes, compasses, and charts hung here and there, in company with books of a maritime character, while one side of the place was taken up by a large glass case containing a model of “The Sea Dream schooner yacht, the property of Gordon Bourne.” So read an inscription at the foot, engraved upon a brass plate.

Millicent remained standing with her veil down, while Tom Porter retired, closed the door, and, after giving notice of the arrival, went back into the hall, where Thisbe was standing in a very stern, uncompromising fashion.

Sir Gordon’s man wanted to arrange his white cravat, but his fingers were red, and for the same reason he was debarred from pushing the Brutus on his head a little higher, so that, unable to rearrange his plumage, he had to let it go.

He walked straight up to Thisbe, stared very hard at her, breathing to match, and then there was a low deep growl heard which bore some resemblance to “How are you?”

Thisbe was “Nicely, thank you,” but she did not say it nicely; it was snappish and short.

Mr Tom Porter did not seem to object to snappish shortness, for he growled forth:

“Come below?” and added, “my pantry?”

“No, thank you,” was Thisbe’s reply, full of asperity.

“Won’t you take anything—biscuit?”

“No, I—thank—you,” replied Thisbe, dividing her words very carefully; and Tom Porter stood with his legs wide apart and stared.

“I would ha’ been at sea, if it hadn’t ha’ been for the trouble yonder,” he said, after a pause.

“Ho!”

Tom Porter raised his hand to scratch his head, but remembered in time, and turned it under his drab coat tail.

“Very sorry,” he said at last, without moving a muscle.

“Thank you,” said Thisbe sharply and then. “You needn’t wait.”

“Needn’t wait it is,” said Tom Porter in a gruff growl, and giving one hand a sort of throw up towards his forehead, and one leg a kick out behind, he went off through a door, perfectly unconscious of the fact that Thisbe’s countenance had unconsciously softened, as she stood admiring the breadth of Tom Porter’s shoulders and the general solidity of his build.

Meanwhile Millicent stood waiting until a well-known cough announced the coming of Sir Gordon, who entered the room and with grave courtesy placed a chair for his visitor.

“I expected you, Mrs Hallam,” he said with a voice full of sympathy; and, as he spoke, he remained standing.

Millicent raised her veil, looked at him with her handsome face contracted by mental pain and with an angry, almost fierce glow in her eyes.

“You expected me?” she said, repeating his words with no particular emphasis or intonation.

“Yes; I thought you would come to an old friend for help and counsel at a time like this.”

A passionate outburst was ready to rush forth, but Millicent restrained it, and said coldly:

“My old friend—my father’s old friend.”

“Yes,” he replied; “I hope a very sincere old friend.”

“Then why is my poor injured husband in prison?” There was a fierce emphasis in the words that made Sir Gordon raise his brows. He looked at her wonderingly, as if he had not expected his visitor to take this line of argument.

Then he pointed again to a chair.

“Will you not take a seat, Mrs Hallam?” he said gently. “You have come to me then for help?”

“No,” she cried, ignoring his request. “I have come for justice to my poor husband, who for the faults of others, by the scheming of his enemies, is now lying in prison awaiting his trial.”

Sir Gordon leaned his elbow on the chimney-piece, and with his finger nails tapped the top of the black marble clock that ticked so steadily there.

“You went over to Lindum yesterday to see Hallam?”

“I did.”

“He requested you to come and see me?”

“Yes; it was his wish, or—”

“You would not have come,” he said with a sad smile upon his lips.

“No. I would have stood in the place where the injustice of men had placed me, and trusted to my own integrity and innocence for my acquittal.”

Sir Gordon drew a long breath like a sigh of relief. He had been watching Millicent closely, as if he were suspicious either that she was playing a part, or had been biassed by her husband. But the true loving trust and belief of the woman shone out in her countenance and rang in her words. True woman—true wife! Let the world say what it would, her place was by her husband, and in his defence she was ready to lay down her life.

Sir Gordon sighed then with relief, for even now his old love for Millicent burned brightly. She had been his idol of womanly perfection, and he had felt, as it were, a contraction about his heart as the suspicion crept in for a moment that she was altered for the worse—changed by becoming the wife of Robert Hallam.

“Mrs Hallam—Millicent, my child, what am I to say to you?” he cried at length. “How am I to speak without wounding you? I would not give you pain to add to that which you already suffer.”

She looked at him angrily. His words seemed to her, in her overstrained anxiety, hypocritical and evasive.

“I asked you why my husband is cast into prison for the crimes of others?”

Sir Gordon gazed at her pityingly.

“You do not answer,” she said. “Then tell me this: Are you satisfied with the degradation he has already suffered? Is he not to be set free?”

“Can you not spare me, Mrs Hallam? Will you not spare yourself?”

“No. I cannot spare you. I cannot spare myself. My husband is helpless: the fight against his enemies must be carried on by me.”

“His enemies, Mrs Hallam? Who are they? Himself and his companions.”

“You, and that despicable creature who has professed to be our friend, the companion of my child. I saw you planning it together with your wretched menial, Thickens.”

Sir Gordon shook his head sadly.

“My dear Mrs Hallam,” he said, “you do us all an injustice. Let us change this conversation. Believe me, I want to help you, your child, and your ruined parents.”

Millicent started at the last words—ruined parents. There her ideas were obscured and wanting in the clearness with which she believed she saw the truth. But even the explanation of this seemed come at last, and there was a scornful look in her eyes as she exclaimed:

“I want no help. I want justice.”

“Then what do you ask of me?” he said coldly, as he felt the impossibility of argument at such a time.

“My husband’s freedom, your apology, and declaration to the whole world that he has been falsely charged. You can do no more. It is impossible to wipe out this disgrace.”

He made a couple of steps towards her, and took her cold hands in his, raised them to his lips with tender reverence, and kissed them.

“Millicent, my child,” he said, with his voice sounding very deep and soft, “do not blame me. My position was forced upon me, and you do not know the sacrifice it has cost me as I thought of you—the sacrifice it will be to Mr Dixon and myself to repair the losses we have sustained.”

She snatched her hands from his, and her eyes flashed with anger.

Her rage was but of a few moments’ duration. Then she had flung herself upon her knees at his feet, and, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, sobbed forth:

“I am mad! I am mad! I don’t know what I say. Sir Gordon—dear Sir Gordon, help us. It is not true. He is innocent. My noble husband could not have descended to such baseness. Sir Gordon, save him! save him!—my poor child’s father—my husband, whom I love so well. You do not answer. You do not heed my words. Is man so cruel, then, to the unfortunate? Can you so treat the girl who reverenced you as a child—the woman you said you loved? Man—man!” she cried passionately, “can you not see that my heart is breaking? and yet you, who by a word could save him, now look on and coldly turn a deaf ear to my prayers. Oh, fool! fool! fool! that I was to think that help could come from man. God, help me now, or else in Thy mercy let me die!”

As she spoke these last words, she threw her head back and raised her clasped hands in passionate appeal, while Sir Gordon’s lips moved as he repeated the first portion of her prayer, and then stayed and stood gazing down upon the agonised face.

“Millicent,” he said at last, as he raised her from where she knelt, and almost placed her in an easy-chair, where she subsided, weak and helpless almost as a child, “listen to me.”

He paused to clear his voice, which sounded very husky. Then continuing:

“For your sake—for the sake of your innocent child, I promise that on the part of Mr Dixon and myself there shall be no harsh treatment, no persecution. Your husband shall have justice.”

“That is all I ask,” cried Millicent, starting forward. “Justice, only justice; for he is innocent.”

“My poor girl!” said Sir Gordon warmly; “there,” he cried, with a pitying smile, “you see I speak to you as if the past six or seven years had not glided away.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, clinging to his hand, “forget them, and speak as my dear old friend.”

“I will,” he said firmly. “And believe me, Millicent, if it were a question merely of the money—my money that I have lost—I would forgive your husband.”

“Forgive—”

“I would ignore his defalcation for your sake; but I am not a free agent in a case like this. You do not understand.”

“No, no,” she said piteously, “everything is contained in one thought to me. They have taken my poor husband and treated him as if a thief.”

“Listen, my child,” continued Sir Gordon, “I found that the valuable documents of scores of the customers of an old bank had been taken away. They were in your husband’s charge.”

“Yes, but he says it can all be explained.”

Sir Gordon paused, tightening his lips, and a few indignant words trembled on the balance, but he spared the suffering woman’s bleeding heart, and continued gravely:

“I was bound in honour to consult with my partner at once, and the result you know.”

“Yes; he was arrested. You, you, Sir Gordon, gave the order.”

“Yes,” he said gravely; “had I not, he would have been beaten and trampled to death by the maddened crowd. Millicent Hallam, be just in your anger. I saved his life.”

“Better death than dishonour,” she cried passionately.

“Amen!” he responded; and in imagination he saw before him the convict’s cell, and went on picturing a horror from which he turned shuddering away.

“Come,” he said, “be sure of justice, my child. And now what can I do to help you? Money you must want.”

“No,” she said drearily.

“Well; means to procure good counsel for your husband’s defence.”

“He said that you must have procured the counsel he already has.”

“I? No, my child; no, I did not even think of such a thing. How could I?”

“Who then has paid fees to this man who has been to my husband?”

“I do not know. I cannot say.”

Millicent rose heavily, her eyes wandering, her face deadly white.

“I can do no more here,” she said, wringing her hands and passing one over the other in a weak, helpless way; and as Sir Gordon watched her, he saw a faint smile come over her pinched features. She was gazing down at her wedding ring, which seemed during the past few weeks to have begun to hang loosely on her finger. She raised it reverently to her lips, and kissed it in a rapt, absent way, gazing round at last as if wondering why she was there.

“Justice! You have promised justice,” she cried suddenly, with a mental light irradiating her face. “I know I may trust you.”

“You may,” he said reverently, for this woman’s love seemed to inspire him with awe.

“And you will forgive me—all I have said?” she whispered.

“Forgive you?” he said, taking her hand and speaking gravely. “Millicent Hallam has no truer servant and friend than Gordon Bourne.”

“No truer servant and friend than Gordon Bourne,” he repeated, as he returned to his room, after seeing the suffering wife to the door. “Ah! how Heaven’s gifts are cast away here and there! What would my life have been if blessed by the love of this man’s wife?”

Volume Two—Chapter Nineteen.

The Verdict.

“How is she now, dear Mrs Luttrell—how is she now?” Miss Heathery looked up from out of the handkerchief in which her face was being constantly buried, and it would have been hard to say which was the redder, eyes or nose.

Poor Mrs Luttrell, who had come trembling down from the bed-room, caught at her friend’s arm, and seemed to stay herself by it, as she said piteously:

“I can’t bear it, my dear; I can’t bear it. I was obliged to come down for a few minutes.”

“My poor dear,” whispered little Miss Heathery, who, excluded from the bed-room, passed her time in hot water that she shed, and that she used to make the universal panacea for woe—a cup of tea—one she administered to all in turn.

“You seem so overcome, you poor dear,” she whispered; and, helping Mrs Luttrell to the couch, she poured out a cup of tea for her with kindliest intent, but the trembling mother waved it aside.

“She begged me so, my dear, I was obliged to come out of the room. The doctor says it would be madness; and it is all Thisbe and he can do to keep her lying down. What am I to say to you for giving you all this trouble?”

The tears were running fast down Miss Heathery’s yellow cheeks, as she took Mrs Luttrell’s grey head to her bony breast.

“Don’t! don’t! don’t!” she sobbed. “What have I ever done that you should only think me a fine-weather friend? If I could only tell you how glad I am to be able to help dear Millicent, but I can’t.”

“Heaven bless you!” whispered Mrs Luttrell, clinging to her—glad to cling to some one in her distress; “you have been a good friend indeed!”

Just then the stairs creaked slightly, and Thisbe, looking very hard and grim, came into the room.

“How is she, Thisbe?” cried Miss Heathery in a quick whisper.

Thisbe shook her head.

“Seems to be dozing a little now, miss; but she keeps asking for the news.”

“Poor dear! poor dear!” sobbed Miss Heathery, with more tears running slowly down her face, to such an extent that if there had been any one to notice, he or she would have wondered where they all came from, and have then set it down to the tea.

“Sit down, Thisbe,” sighed Mrs Luttrell, “you must be worn out.”

“Poor soul! yes,” said Miss Heathery, and pouring out a fresh cup, she took it to where Thisbe—who had not been to bed for a week, watching, as she had been, by Millicent’s couch—was sitting on the edge of a chair.

“There, drink that, Thisbe,” said Miss Heathery. “You’re a good, good soul!”

As she bent forward and kissed the hard-looking woman’s face, Thisbe stared half wonderingly at her, and took the cup. Then her hard face began to work, she tried to sip a little tea, choked, set down the cup, and hurried sobbing from the room.

For Millicent Hallam, strong in her determination to help her husband, had had to lean on Thisbe’s arm as they returned from Sir Gordon’s house that day. When she reached Miss Heathery’s house she was compelled to lie down on the couch. An hour later she began to talk wildly, and when her father was hastily summoned she was in a high state of fever.

This, with intervals of delirium and calmness, had gone on ever since, up to the day of Robert Hallam’s trial.

On the previous night, as Millicent lay holding her child to her breast—the little thing having been brought at her wish, to bound to the bedside and bury her flushed, half-frightened face in her mother’s bosom—a soft tap had come to the door below.

Millicent’s hearing, during the intervals of the fever and delirium, was preternaturally keen, and she turned to her mother.

“It is Mr Bayle!” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “I know now. I understand all. It is to-morrow. I want to know. Ask him.”

“Ask him what, my darling? But pray be calm. Remember what your father said.”

“Yes, yes, I remember; but ask him. No; of course he must be there. Tell Christie Bayle to come to me directly it is over—and bring my husband. Directly, mind. You will tell him?”

“Yes, yes, my darling,” said Mrs Luttrell, with her face working as she moved towards the door.

“Stop, mother!” cried Millicent. “Hush! lie still, Julie; mamma is not cross with you. Mother, tell Christie Bayle to bring me the news of the trial the moment it is over. I can trust him. He will,” she said to herself with a smile, as her mother left the room, and delivered the message to him who was below.

He left soon after, sick at heart, to join Sir Gordon, and together they took their places in the coach, the only words that passed being:

“How is she, Bayle?”

“In the Great Physician’s hands,” was the reply. “Man’s skill is nothing here.”

And she of whom they spoke lay listening to the cheery notes of the guard’s horn, the trampling of the horses, and the rattle of the wheels, as the coach rolled away, with James Thickens outside, thinking of the horrors of passing the night in a strange bed, in a strange town, and wishing the troubles of this case of Hallam’s at an end.

The next morning Millicent Hallam insisted upon rising and dressing, to go over to Lindum and be present at the trial.

All opposition only irritated her, and at last Thisbe was summoned to the room.

“I shall be just outside,” whispered the doctor. “It is better than fighting against her.”

In less than five minutes he was once more by his child’s side, trying to bring her back from the fainting fit in which she had fallen back upon the bed, for she had learned her weakness, and her utter impotence to take such a journey upon an errand like that.

And then the weary day had crept on, with the delirium sometimes seizing upon the tottering brain, and then a time of comparative coolness supervening.

Dr Luttrell looked serious, and told himself that he was in doubt.

“The bad news will kill her,” he said to himself, as he went outside to walk up and down Miss Heathery’s garden, which was fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, “but very secluded,” as its owner often said.

There, with bare head and wrinkled brow, the doctor walked up and down, stopping, from habit, now and then to pinch off a dead leaf, or give a twist to one of the scarlet runners that had slipped from its string.

The night at last; and the doctor was sitting by the bedside, having sent Mrs Luttrell down, and then Thisbe, both utterly worn out and unhinged.

Millicent was, as Thisbe had said, dozing; but the fever was high, and Dr Luttrell shook his grey head.

“Who’d have thought, my poor flower,” he said, “that your young life would be blighted like this!”

He could hardly bear his suffering, and, rising from his chair, he stole softly into the back room, where Julia was sleeping calmly, the terrible trouble affecting her young heart only for the minute, and then passing away.

The old man bent down and kissed the sleeping face, and, as her custom was, Julia’s little arms went softly up and clasped the neck of him who pressed her soft cheek, and fell away again, heavy with sleep.

“He will come and tell me the truth.”

The words fell clearly on the doctor’s ear as he was re-entering the sick-room, but Millicent lay apparently sound asleep in the little white dimity-hung bed of Miss Heathery’s best room, while the soft murmur of voices came from below.

Millicent’s words were those of truth, for the moment the trial was over Christie Bayle had rushed out, and sprung into the post-chaise he had had in waiting, and for which changes of horses were harnessed at the three towns they would have to pass through to reach King’s Castor, over thirty miles away, and as fast as horses urged by man could go over the rough cross-road, that post-chaise was being hurried along.

The night was settling down dark as the first pair of steaming horses were taken out, and a couple of country candles were lit in the battered lamps. Then on and on, uphill slowly, down the far slope at a good gallop, with the chaise dancing and swaying about on its C-springs, and time after time the whole affair nearly being thrown over upon its side.

“It’s too dark to go so fast, sir,” remonstrated the wheeler postboy, as Bayle leaned his head out of the window to urge him on.

“Ten shillings a-piece, man. It’s for life or death,” cried Bayle; and the whips cracked, and the horses plunged into their collars, as the hedges on either side seemed to fly by like a couple of blurred lines.

“I must get up now, father,” said Millicent suddenly.

“My child, no, it is impossible. You remember this morning?”

“My dressing-gown,” she said in a low, decided voice. “Thisbe will carry me down.”

“No, no,” said Dr Luttrell decidedly. “You must obey me, child.”

“Dear father,” she whispered, “if I lie here in the agony of suspense I shall die. I must go down.”

“But why, my child?”

“Why,” she said. “Do you think I could bear any one else to hear his news but me?”

It was in vain to object, and in the belief that he was doing more wisely by giving way, Dr Luttrell summoned Thisbe, and, with Mrs Luttrell’s help, the suffering woman was partially dressed and borne down to the sitting-room. She bore the change wonderfully, and lay there very still and patient, waiting for the next two hours. The fever had greatly abated, and she listened, her eyes half-closed, as if in the full confidence that the news for which she hungered would not be long.

Thisbe and Miss Heathery had stolen out into the kitchen to sit and talk in whispers as, one by one, the last sounds in the town died out. The shutters here and there had long been rattled up. The letter-carriers from the villages round had all come in, and only a footfall now and then broke the silence of the little town.

Ten o’clock had struck, and Doctor and Mrs Luttrell exchanged glances, the former encouraging his wife with a nod, for Millicent seemed to be asleep. A quarter-past ten was chimed by the rickety clock in the old stone tower, and the only place now where there was any sign of business was up at the “George,” where lamps burned inside and out, and the ostlers brought out two pairs of well-clothed horses ready for the coach that would soon be through. By-and-by there was the rattle of wheels and the cheery notes of a horn, but they did not wake Millicent, who still seemed to sleep, while there was a little noise of trampling hoofs, the banging of coach doors, a few shouts, a cheery “All right!” and then the horses went off at a trot, the wheels rattled, and the lamps of the mail shone through the drawn-down blind. Then the sounds died away; all was still, and the clock chimed half-past. As the last tones throbbed and hummed in the still night air, Millicent suddenly stirred, sat up quickly, and pressed back her hair from her face.

“Help me! The chair!” she said hoarsely.

“Yes,” said the doctor, in answer to Mrs Luttrell’s look; and with very little aid Millicent left the couch, gathered her dressing-gown round her, and sat back listening.

“He will soon be here,” she said softly, and she bowed her head upon her breast.

She was right, for the horses were tearing over the ground in the last mile of the last stage, with Christie Bayle almost as breathless, as he sat back pale with excitement, and trembling for the news he had to impart. At the end of the trial and in his desire to keep his word, all had seemed strange and confused. He could feel nothing but that he had to get back to King’s Castor and tell her all. It was her command. But now that he was rapidly nearing home, the horror of his position began to weigh him down, and he felt ready to shrink from his duty, but all the time there was a sensation as if something was urging him on, fast as the horses seemed to fly.

The miles had seemed leagues before. This last seemed not a quarter its length; for there was the mill, there Thickens’s cottage, there the great draper’s, the market-place, the “George,” before which the horses were checked covered with foam.

With the feeling still upon him that he could not bear this news, and that it should have been brought by Sir Gordon, who had refused to come, he ran across to Miss Heathery’s house, and when he reached the door, it was opened. He stepped in and it was closed by Mrs Luttrell, who was trembling like a leaf.

“Come here! quick!”

Bayle knew and yet did not recognise the voice, it was so changed; but, as in a dream, he went past the little candlestick on the passage bracket, and in at the open parlour-door, where the light of the shaded globe lamp fell upon Millicent’s pale face.

“Father! mother!” she said quickly. “Leave us. I must hear the news alone!”

The doctor’s eyes sought Bayle’s, but his face was contracted as he stood there, hat and cloak in hand, pale as if from a sick-bed and his eyes closed.

Then he and Millicent were alone, and, as if stung by some agonising mental pang, he said wildly:

“No, no! Your father—mother! Let me tell them.” Millicent rose slowly, and laid her hand upon his arm.

“You bear me news of my husband,” she said, in an unnaturally calm voice. “I know: it is the worst!” He made no reply, but looked at her beseechingly. “I can bear it now,” she said, shivering like one whom pain had ended by numbing against further agony. “I see it is the worst; he is condemned!” There was a faint smile upon her lips as he caught her hands in his.

“You forced me to this,” he said hoarsely, “and you will hate me more for giving you this pain.”

“No,” she said, speaking in the same unnaturally calm, strained manner. “No: for I have misjudged you, Christie Bayle. Boy and man, you were always true to me. And—and—he is condemned?”

His eyes alone spoke, and then she tottered as if she would have fallen, but he caught her, and placed her in a chair.

“Yes: I know—I knew it must be,” she said with her eyes half-closed. “Every one will know now!”

“Let me call your father in?” he whispered.

“No: not yet. I have something to say,” she murmured almost in a whisper. “If—I die—my little child—Christie Bayle? She—she loves you!”

Millicent Hallam’s eyes filled up the gaps in her feeble speech, and Christie Bayle read her wish as if it had been sounded trumpet-tongued in his ears.

“Yes; I understand. I will,” he said in a voice that was more convincing than if he had spoken on oath.

By that time the news which the postboys had caught as it ran from lip to lip, before Christie Bayle could force his way through the crowd at Lindum assize court, was flashing, as such news can flash through a little inquisitive town like Castor, and, almost at the same moment as Christie Bayle made his promise, old Gemp stumbled into Gorringe’s shop to point at him and pant out:

“Transportation for life!”

Volume Three—Chapter One.

After Twelve Years—Back from a Voyage.

“Why, my dear Sir Gordon, I am glad to see you back again. You look brown and hearty, and not a day older.”

“Don’t—don’t shake quite so hard, my dear Bayle. I like it, but it hurts. Little gouty in that hand, you see.”

“Well, I’ll be careful. I am glad you came.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Come down to my club and dine, and we’ll have a long talk; and—er—don’t take any notice of the jokes if you hear any.”

“Jokes?”

“Ye-es. The men have a way there—the old fellows—of calling me ‘Laurel,’ and ‘Yew,’ and the ‘Evergreen.’ You see, I look well and robust for my age.”

“Not a bit, Sir Gordon. You certainly seem younger, though, than ever.”

“So do you, Bayle; so do you. Why, you must be—”

“Forty-two, Sir Gordon. Getting an old man, you see.”

“Forty! Pooh! what’s that, Mr Bayle? Why, sir, I’m—Never mind. I’m not so young as I used to be. And so you think I look well, eh, Bayle?”

“Indeed you do, Sir Gordon; remarkably well.”

“Hah! That confounded Scott! Colonel Scott at the club set it about that I’d been away for two years so as to get myself cut down and have time to sprout up again, I looked so young. Bah, what does it matter? It’s the sea life, Bayle, keeps a man healthy and strong. I wish I could persuade you to come with me on one of my trips.”

“No, no! Keep away with your temptations. Too busy.”

“Nonsense, man! Fellow with your income grinding day after day as you do. But how young you do look! How is Mrs Hallam?”

“Remarkably well. I saw her yesterday.”

“And little Julie?”

“Little!” said Christie Bayle laughing frankly, and justifying Sir Gordon’s remarks about his youthful looks. “Really, I should like to be there when you call. You will be astonished.”

“What, has the child grown?”

“Child? Grown? Why, my dear sir, you will have to be presented to a beautiful young lady of eighteen, wonderfully like her mother in the old days.”

“Indeed! Hah! yes. Old days, Bayle. Yes, old days, indeed. The thought of them makes me feel how time has gone. Look young, eh? Bah! I’m an old fool, Bayle. Deal better if I had been born poor. You should see me when Tom Porter takes me to pieces, and puts me to bed of a night. Why, Bayle, I don’t mind telling you. Always were a good lad, and I liked you. I’m one of the most frightful impositions of my time. Wig, sir; confound it! sham teeth, sir, and they are horribly uncomfortable. Whiskers dyed, sir. The rest all tailor’s work. Feel ashamed of myself sometimes. At others I say to myself that it’s showing a bold front to the enemy. No, sir, not a bit of truth in me anywhere.”

“Except your heart,” said Bayle, smiling.

“Tchut! man, hold your tongue. Now about yourself. Why don’t you get a comfortable rectory somewhere, instead of plodding on in this hole?”

“Because I am more useful here.”

“Nonsense! Get a good West-end lectureship.”

“I prefer the North here.”

“My dear Christie Bayle, you are throwing yourself away. There, I can’t keep it back. Old Doctor Thomson is dead, and if you will come I have sufficient interest with the bishop, providing I bring forward a good man, to get him the living at King’s Castor.”

Christie Bayle shook his head sadly.

“No, Sir Gordon,” he said, with a curious, wistful look coming into his eyes. “That would be too painful—too full of sad memories.”

“Pooh! nonsense, man! You can’t be a curate all your life.”

“Why not? I do not want the payment of a better post in the Church.”

“Of course not; but come, say ‘Yes.’ As to memories, fudge! man, you have your memories everywhere. If you were out in Australia you’d have them, same as I dare say a friend of ours has. Let the past go.”

Bayle shook his head.

“I’m thinking of settling down yonder myself. Getting too old for sea-trips. If you’d come down, that would decide me.”

“No, no. It would never do. I could not leave town.”

“Ah, so you pretend, sir. I’ll be bound that, if you had a good motive, you’d be off anywhere, in spite of what you say.”

“Perhaps. Your motive is not strong enough.”

“What, not your own interest, man?”

“My dear Sir Gordon, no. What interest have I in myself? Why, I have been blessed by Providence with a good income and few wants, and for the past eighteen years I’ve been so busy thinking about other people, that I should feel guilty of a crime if I began to be selfish now.”

“You’re a queer fellow, Bayle, but you may alter your mind. I’ve made up mine that you shall have the old living at King’s Castor. I shan’t marry now, so I don’t want you for that; but, please God I don’t go down in some squall, I should like you to say ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ over the remains of a very selfish old man, for I sometimes think that it can’t be long first now.”

“My dear old friend,” said Bayle, shaking his hand warmly, “I pray that the day may be very far distant. When it does come, as it comes to us all, I shall be able to think that the selfishness of which you speak was mere outside show. Gordon Bourne, I seem to be a simple kind of man, but I think I have learned to read men’s hearts.”

The old man’s lip quivered a little, and he tried vainly to speak. Then, giving his stout ebony cane a stamp on the floor, he raised it, and shook it threateningly.

“Confound you, Bayle! I wish you were as poor as Job.”

“Why?”

“So that I might leave you all I’ve got. Perhaps I shall.”

“No, no, don’t do that,” said Bayle seriously, and his frank, handsome face looked troubled; “I have more than I want. But, come, tell me; you have been down to Castor, then?”

“Yes, I was there a week.”

“And how are they all?”

“Older, of course, but things seem about the same. Place like that does not change much.”

“But the people do.”

“Not they. By George! sir, one of the first men I saw as I limped down the street in a pair of confoundedly tight Hessians Hoby made for me—punish my poor corns horribly. What with them and the stiff cravats a gentleman is forced to wear, life is unendurable. Ah! you don’t study appearances at sea. Wish I could wear boots like those, Bayle.”

“You were saying that you saw somebody.”

“Ah, yes; to be sure, I trailed off about my boots. Why, I am getting into—lose leeway, sir. But I remember now. First man I saw was old Gemp, sitting like a figure-head outside his cottage. Regular old mummy; but he seemed to come to life as soon as he heard a step, and turned his eyes towards me, looking as inquisitive as a monkey. Poor old boy—almost paralysed, and has to be lifted in and out. I often wonder what was the use of such men as he.”

Christie Bayle’s broad shoulders gave a twitch, and he looked up in an amused manner.

“Ah, well, what was the use of me, if you like? Doctor looked well; so does the old lady. Said they were up here three months ago, and enjoyed their visit I say, Bayle, you’d better have the living. Mrs Hallam might be disposed to go down to the old home again, eh?”

A quiet, stern look, that made Christie Bayle appear ten years older, and changed him in aspect from one of thirty-five to nearer fifty, came over his face.

“No,” he said, “I am sure Mrs Hallam would never go back to Castor to live.”

“Humph! Well, you know best. I say, Bayle, does she want help? It is such a delicate matter to offer it to her, especially in our relative positions.”

“No, I am sure she does not,” said Bayle quickly; “you would hurt her feelings by the offer.”

Sir Gordon nodded, and sat gazing at one particular flower in the carpet of his host’s simply-furnished room, which he poked and scraped with his stick.

“How was Thickens?”

“Just the same; not altered a bit, unless it is to look more drab. Mrs Thickens—that woman’s an impostor, sir. She has grown younger since she married.”

“Yes, she astonished me,” said Bayle, smiling with satisfaction that his visitor had gone off dangerously painful ground, “plump, pleasant little body.”

“With fat filling up her creases and covering up her holes and corners!” cried Sir Gordon, interrupting. “Confound it all, sir, I could never get the fat to come and fill up my creases and furrows. I saw her standing there, feeding Thickens’s fish, smiling at them, and as happy as the day was long. Deal happier than when she was Miss Heathery. Everybody seems to be happy but me. I never am.”

“See the Trampleasures?” said Bayle.

“Oh, yes, saw them, and heard them, too. Regular ornament to the bank, Trampleasure. People believe in him, though. Talks to them, and asks the farmers in to lunch. If he were not there, they’d think Dixons’ was going. Poor old Dixon, how cut up he was over that Hallam business! It killed him, Bayle.”

“Think so?” said Bayle, with his brow wrinkling.

“Sure of it, sir. It was not the money he cared for; it was the principle of the thing. Dixons’ name had stood so high in the town and neighbourhood. There was a mystery, too, about the matter that was never cleared up.”

“Hadn’t we better change the subject, Sir Gordon?”

“No, sir,” said Bayle’s visitor curtly. “Garrulity is one of the privileges of old age. We old men don’t get many privileges; let me enjoy that. I like to gossip about old times to some one who understands them as you do. If you don’t like to hear me, say so, and I will go.”

“No, no, pray stay, and I’ll go down with you to the club.”

“Hah! That’s right. Well, as I was saying, there was a bit of mystery about that which worried poor old Dixon terribly. We never could make out what the scoundrel had done with the money. He and that other fellow, Crellock, could easily get rid of a good deal; but there was a large sum unaccounted for, I’m sure.”

There was a pause here, and Sir Gordon seemed to be hesitating about saying something that was on his mind.

“You wanted to tell me something,” said Bayle at last.

“Well, yes, I was going to say you see a deal of the widow, don’t you?”

“Widow? What widow? Oh, Mrs Richardson. Poor thing, yes; but how did you know I took an interest in her? Hah! there: you may give me ten pounds for her.”

“Mrs Richardson! Pooh! I mean Mrs Hallam.”

“Widow?”

“Well, yes; what else is she? Husband transported for life. The man is socially dead.”

“You do not know Mrs Hallam,” said Bayle gravely.

“Do you think she believes in him still?”

“With her whole heart. He is to her the injured man, a victim to a legal error, and she lives in the belief which she has taught her child, that some day her martyr’s reputation will be cleared, and that he will take his place among his fellow-men once more.”

“I wish I could think so too, for her sake,” said Sir Gordon, after a pause.

“Amen!”

“But, Bayle, you—you don’t ever think there was any mistake?”

“It is always painful to me to speak of a man whom I never could esteem.”

“But to me, man—to me.”

“For twelve years, Sir Gordon, I have had the face of that loving, trusting woman before me, steadfast in her faith in the husband she loves.”

“Loves?”

“As truly as on the day she took him first to her heart.”

“But do you think that she really still believes him innocent?”

“In her heart of hearts; and so does her child. And I say that this is the one painful part of our intimacy. It has been the cause of coldness and even distant treatment at times.”

“But she seemed to have exonerated you from all credit in his arrest.”

“Oh, yes, long ago. She attributes it to the accident of chance and the treachery of the scoundrel Crellock.”

“Who was only Hallam’s tool.”

“Exactly. But she forgives me, believing me her truest friend.”

“And rightly. The man who fought for her at the time of the—er—well, accident, Bayle, eh?”

“Shall we change the subject?” said Bayle coldly.

“No; I like to talk about poor Mrs Hallam, and I will call and see her soon.”

“But you will be careful,” said Bayle earnestly. “Of course your presence will bring back sad memories. Do not pain her by any allusion to Hallam.”

“I will take care. But look here, Bayle; you did come up here to be near them?”

“Certainly I did. Why, Sir Gordon, that child seemed to be part of my life, and when Mrs Hallam had that long illness the little thing came to me as if I were her father. She had always liked me, and that liking has grown.”

“You educated her?”

“Oh, I don’t know; I suppose so,” said Bayle, looking up with a frank, ingenuous smile. “We have always read together, and painted, and then there was the music of an evening. You must hear her sing!”

“Hah! I should like to, Bayle. Perhaps I shall. Don’t think me impertinent, but you see I am so much away in my yacht. Selfish old fellow, you know; want to live as long as I can, and I think I shall live longer if I go to sea than if I stroll idling about Castor or in London at my club. I’ve asked you a lot of questions. I suppose you have done all the teaching?”

“Oh, dear, no; her mother has had a large share in the child’s education.”

“Humph! when I called her child, I was snubbed.” Bayle laughed. “Well, I’ve grown to think of her as my child, and she looks upon me almost as she might upon her father.”

“Humph!” said Sir Gordon rather gruffly. “I half expected, every time I came back, to find you married, Bayle.”

“Find me married?” said Bayle, laughing. “My dear sir, I am less likely to marry than you. Confirmed old bachelor, and I am very happy—happier than I deserve to be.”

“Don’t cant, Bayle,” cried Sir Gordon peevishly. “I’ve always liked you because you never threw sentiments of that kind at me. Don’t begin now. Well, there, I must trot. You are going to dine with me?”

“Yes; I’ve promised.”

“Ah,” said Sir Gordon, looking at Bayle almost enviously, “you always were quite a boy. What a physique you have! Why, man, you don’t look thirty-five.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Sorry, man?”

“Well, then, I’m very glad.”

“Bah! There, put on your hat, and come down at once. I hate this part of London.”

“And I have grown to love it. ‘The mind is its own place.’ You know the rest.”

“Oh, yes, I know the rest,” said Sir Gordon gruffly. “Come along. Where can we get a coach?”

“I’ll show you,” said Bayle, taking his arm and leading him through two or three streets, to stop at last in a quiet, new-looking square close by St. John’s Street.

“Well, what’s the matter?” said Sir Gordon testily. “Nothing, I hope; only I must make a call here before I go down with you.”

“For goodness’ sake, make haste, then, man! My boots are torturing me!”

“Come in, then, and sit down,” said Bayle, smiling, as a stern-looking woman opened the door, and curtsied familiarly.

“I must either do that or sit upon the step,” said the old gentleman peevishly; and he followed Bayle into the passage, and then into the parlour, for he seemed quite at home.

Then a change came over Sir Gordon’s face, for Bayle said quietly:

“My dear Mrs Hallam, I have brought an old friend.”

Volume Three—Chapter Two.

A Peep behind the Clouds.

The meeting was painful, for Millicent Hallam and Sir Gordon had never stood face to face since that day when he had himself opened the door for her on the occasion of her appeal to him on her husband’s behalf.

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Sir Gordon. “I did not know this.”

“It is a surprise, too, for me,” said Mrs Hallam, as she coloured slightly, and then turned pale; but in a moment or two she was calm and composed—a handsome, grave-looking lady, with unlined face, but with silvery streaks running through her abundant hair.

“You—you should have told me, Bayle,” said Sir Gordon testily.

“And spoilt my surprise,” said Bayle.

“I am very, very glad to see you, Sir Gordon,” said Mrs Hallam in a grave, sweet way, once more thoroughly mistress of her emotions. “Julie, my dear, you hardly recollect our visitor?”

“Yes, oh yes!” said a tall, graceful girl, coming forward to place her hand in Sir Gordon’s. “I seem to see you back as if through a mist; but—oh, yes, I remember!” She hesitated, and blushed, and laughed. “You one day—you brought me a great doll.”

Sir Gordon had taken both her hands, letting fall hat and stick. He tried to speak, but the words would not come. His lip quivered, his face twitched, and Julia felt his hands tremble, as she looked at him with naïve wonder, unable to comprehend his emotion.

He raised her hand as if to press it to his lips, but let it fall, and, drawing her towards him, kissed her tenderly on the brow, ending by retaining her hand in both of his.

“An old man’s kiss, my child,” he said, gazing at her wistfully. “You remind me so of one I loved—twenty years ago, my dear, and before you were born.” He looked round from one to the other, as if apologising for his emotion. “My dear Bayle,” he said at last, recovering himself, and speaking with chivalrous courtesy, “I am in your debt for introducing me to our young friend. Mrs Hallam, you will let me come and see you?”

Millicent hesitated, and there was a curious, haughty, defiant look in her eyes as she gazed at her visitor, as if at bay.

“I am sure Mrs Hallam will be glad to see a very dear old friend of mine,” said Bayle quietly; and as he spoke Mrs Hallam glanced at him. Her eyes softened, and she held out her hand to her visitor.

“Always glad to see you,” she said.

Sir Gordon smiled and looked pleased, as he glanced round the pretty, simply-furnished room, with tokens of the busy hands that adorned it on every side. Here was Julia’s drawing, there her embroidery; they were her flowers in the window; the bird that twittered so sweetly from its cage hung on the shutter, and the piano, were hers too. There was only one jarring note in the whole interior, and that was the portrait in oils of the handsome man, in the most prominent place in the room—a picture that at one corner was a little blistered, as if by fire, and whose eyes seemed to be watching the visitor wherever he turned.

There were many painful memories revived during that visit, but on the whole it was pleasant, and with the agony of the past softened by time, Millicent Hallam found herself speaking half reproachfully to Sir Gordon for not visiting her during all these years.

“Don’t blame me,” he said in reply; “I have always felt that there was a wish implied on your part that our acquaintance should cease, as being too painful for both.”

“Perhaps it was,” she said, with a sigh; “and I am to blame.”

“Let us share it, if there be any blame,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “and amend our ways. You must remember, though, that I have always kept up my friendship with the doctor whenever I have been at home, and I have always heard of your well-beings or—”

“Oh, yes!” said Mrs Hallam hastily, as if to check any allusion to assistance. “When I recovered from my serious illness I was anxious to leave Castor. I thought perhaps that my child’s education—in London—and Mr Bayle was very kind in helping me.”

“He is a good friend,” said Sir Gordon gravely.

“Friend!” cried Mrs Hallam, with her face full of animation, “he has been to me a brother. When I was in utter distress at that terrible time, he extricated my poor husband’s money affairs from the miserable tangle in which they were left, and by a wise management of the little remainder so invested it that there was a sufficiency for Julia and me to live on in this simple manner.”

“He did all this for you,” said Sir Gordon dryly.

“Yes, and would have placed his purse at my disposal, but that he saw how painful such an offer would have been.”

“Of course,” said Sir Gordon, “most painful.”

“I often fear that I did wrong in allowing him to leave Castor; but he has done so much good here that I tell myself all was for the best.”

And so the conversation rippled on, Julia sometimes being drawn in, and now and then Bayle throwing in a word; but on the whole simply looking on, an interested spectator, who was appealed to now and then as if he had been the brother of one, the uncle of the other.

At last Sir Gordon rose to go, taking quite a lingering farewell of Julia, at whom he gazed again in the same wistful manner.

“Good-bye,” he said, smiling tenderly at her, while holding her little hand in his. “I shall come again—soon—yes, soon; but not to bring you a doll.”

There was a jingle of a tiny bell as they closed the door, and the hard-faced woman had to squeeze by the visitors to get to the door, the passage was so small.

Sir Gordon stared hard, and then placed his large square glass to his eye.

“To be sure—yes. It’s you,” he said. “The old maid, Thisbe—”

“Some people can’t help being old maids,” said that lady tartly, “and some wants to be, sir.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Sir Gordon with grave politeness. “You mistake me. I meant the maid who used to be with Doctor and Mrs Luttrell in the old times. To be sure, yes, and with Mrs Hallam afterwards.”

“Yes, Sir Gordon.”

“So you’ve kept to your mistress all through—I mean you have stayed.”

“Yes, sir, of course I have.”

“And been one of the truest and best of friends,” said Bayle, smiling.

Thisbe gave herself a jerk and glanced over her shoulder, as though to see if the way was clear for her escape—should she have to run and avoid this praise.

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Gordon, looking at her still very thoughtfully. “To be sure,” he continued, in quite dreamy tones, “I had almost forgotten. Tom Porter wants to marry you.”

“Then Tom Porter must—”

“Tchut! tchut! tchut! woman; don’t talk like that. Make your hay while the sun shines. Good fellow, Tom. Obstinate, but solid, and careful. Come, Bayle.”

“Ah,” he sighed, as they walked slowly down the street.

“Gather your rosebuds while you may,
Old Time is still a-flying.

“You and I have never been rosebud gatherers, Christie Bayle. It will give us the better opportunity for watching those who are. Bayle, old friend, we must look out: there must be no handsome, plausible scoundrel to come and cull that fragrant little bloom—we must not have another sweet young life wrecked—like hers.” He made a backward motion with his head towards the house they had left.

“Heaven forbid!” cried Bayle anxiously; and his countenance was full of wonder and dismay.

“You must look out, sir, look out,” said Sir Gordon, thumping his cane.

“But she is a mere girl yet.”

“Pish! man; tush! man. It is your mere girls who form these fancies. What have you been about?”

“About?” said Bayle. “About? I don’t know. I have thought of such a thing as my little pupil forming an attachment, but it seemed to be a thing of the far-distant future.”

Sir Gordon shook his head.

“There is nothing then now?”

“Oh, absurd! Why, she is only eighteen!”

“Eighteen!” said Gordon sharply; “and at eighteen girls are only cutting their teeth and wearing pinafores, eh? Go to: blind mole of a parson! Why, millions of them lose their hearts long before that. Come, come, man, wake up! A pretty watchman of that fair sweet tower you are, to have never so much as thought of the enemy, when already he may be making his approach.” Bayle turned to him, looking half-bewildered, but the look passed off.

“No,” he said firmly; “the enemy is not in sight yet, and you shall not have cause to speak to me again like, that.”

“That’s right, Bayle; that’s right. Dear, dear,” he sighed as they walked slowly towards the city, “how time does gallop on! It seems just one step from Millicent Luttrell’s girlhood to that of her child. Yes, yes, yes: these young people increase, and grow so rapidly that they fill up the world and shoulder us old folk over the edge.”

“Unless they have yachts,” said Bayle, smiling. “Plenty of room at sea.”

“Ah, to be sure; that reminds me. I have been at sea. Man, man, what an impostor you are.”

“I!” exclaimed Bayle, looking round at his companion in a startled manner.

“To be sure. Poor lady! She has been confiding to me while you were chatting with little Julia about the piano.”

Bayle gave an angry stamp.

“And your careful management of the remains of her husband’s property.”

Bayle knit his brow and increased his pace.

“No, no,” cried Sir Gordon, snatching at and taking his arm. “No running away from unpleasant truths, Christie Bayle. You paid the counsel for Hallam’s defence, did you not?”

Bayle nodded shortly, and uttered an angry ejaculation.

“And there was not a shilling left when Hallam was gone?”

No answer.

“Come, come, speak. I am going to have the truth, my friend: priesthood and deception must not go hand in hand. Now then, did Hallam have any money?”

“If he had it would have been handed over to Dixons’ Bank,” said Bayle sharply. “I should have seen it done.”

“Hah! I thought so. Then look here, sir, you have been investing your money for the benefit of that poor woman and her child.”

No answer.

“Christie Bayle: do you love that woman still?”

“Sir Gordon! No; I will not be angry. Yes; as a man might love a dear sister smitten by affliction; and her child as if she were my own.”

“Hah! and you have had invested so much money—your own, for their benefit. Why have you done this?”

“I thought it was my duty towards the widow and fatherless in their affliction,” said Bayle simply; and Sir Gordon turned and peered round in the brave, honest face at his side to find it slightly flushed, but ready to meet his gaze with fearless frankness.

“Ah,” sighed Sir Gordon at last, “it was not fair.”

“Not fair?” said Bayle wonderingly.

“No, sir. You might have let me do half.”

Volume Three—Chapter Three.

By the Fire’s Glow.

“Won’t you have the lamp lit, Miss Millicent?”

“No, Thisbe, not yet,” said Mrs Hallam, in a low, dreamy voice, and without a word the faithful follower of her mistress in trouble went softly out, closing the door, and leaving mother and daughter alone.

“She’s got one of her fits on,” mused Thisbe. “Ah, how it does come over me sometimes like a temptation—just about once a month ever since—to have one good go at her and tell her I told her so; that it was all what might be expected of wedding a handsome man. ‘Didn’t I warn you?’ I could say. ‘Didn’t I tell you how it would be?’ But no: I couldn’t say a word to the poor dear, and her going on believing in the bad scamp as she does all these years. She’s different to me. It’s just for all the world like a temptation that comes over me, driving me like to speak, but I’ve kept my mouth shut all these years and I’m going to do it still.”

Thisbe had reached her little brightly-kept kitchen, where she stood thoughtfully gazing at the fire, with one hand upon her hip, for some minutes.

Then a peculiar change came upon Thisbe’s hard face. It seemed as if it had been washed over with something sweet, which softened it; then it suggested the idea that she was about to sneeze, and ended by a violent spasmodic twitch, quite a convulsion. Thisbe’s body remained motionless, though her face was altered, and by degrees her eyes, after brightening and sparkling, grew suffused and dreamy, as she gazed straight before her and seemed to be thinking very deeply. Her countenance was free from the spasm now, and as the candle shone upon it, it brought prominently into notice the fact that in her love of cleanliness Thisbe was not so particular as she might have been in the process of rinsing; for the fact was patent that she rubbed herself profusely with soap, and left enough upon her face after her ablutions to produce the effect of an elastic varnish or glaze.

Everything was very still, the only sounds being the dull wooden tick of the Dutch clock, and the drowsy chirp of an asthmatic cricket, which seemed to have wedded itself somewhere in a crack behind the grate, and to be bemoaning its inability to get out; while the clock ticked hoarsely, as if its life were a burden, and it were heartily sick of having that existence renewed by a nightly pulling up of the two black iron sausages that hung some distance below its sallow face.

Suddenly Thisbe walked sharply to the fire, seized the poker, and cleared the bottom bar. This done she replaced the poker, and planted one foot upon the fender to warm, and one hand upon the mantel-piece with so much inadvertence that she knocked down the tinder-box, and had to pick the flint and steel from out of the ashes with the brightly polished tongs.

“I don’t know what’s come to me,” she said sharply, as soon as the tinder-box was replaced. “Think of her holding fast to him all these years, and training up my bairn to believe in him as if he was a noble martyr! My word, it’s a curious thing for a woman to be taken like that with a man, and no matter what he does, to be always believing him!”

Thisbe pursed up her lips, and twitched her toes up and down as they rested upon the fender, while she directed her conversation at the golden caverns of the fire.

“They say Gorringe the tailor used to beat his wife, but that woman always looked happy, and I’ve seen her smile on him as if there wasn’t such another man in the world.”

Just then the clock gave such a wheeze that Thisbe started and stared at it.

“Quite makes me nervous,” she said, turning back to the fire. “What with the thinking and worry, and her keeping always in the same mind—oh, my!”

She took her hand from the mantel-piece to clap it upon its fellow as a sudden thought struck her, which made her look aghast.

“If he did!” she said after a pause. “And yet she expects it some day. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! what weak, foolish, trusting things women are! They take a fancy to a man, and then because you don’t believe in him, too, it’s hoity-toity and never forgive me. Well, poor soul! perhaps it’s all for the best. It may comfort her in her troubles. I wonder what Tom Porter looks like now,” she said suddenly, and then looked sharply and guiltily round to see if her words had been heard. “I declare I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said, and rushing at some work, she plumped herself down and began to stitch with all her might.

In the little parlour all was very quiet, save the occasional footstep in the street. The blind was not drawn down, and the faint light from outside mingled with the glow from the fire, which threw up the face of Julia Hallam, where she sat dreamily gazing at the embers, against the dark transparency, giving her the look of a painting by one of the Italian masters of the past.

At the old-fashioned square piano her mother was seated with her hands resting upon the keys which were silent. Farther distant from the fire her figure, graceful still, seemed melting into a darker transparency, one which grew deeper and deeper, till in the corner of the room and right and left of the fireplace the shadows seemed to be almost solid. Then the accustomed eye detected the various objects that furnished the room, melting, as it were, away.

Only on one spot did there seem a discordant note in the general harmony of the softly glowing scene, and that was where the rays from a newly-lighted street lamp shone straight upon the wall and across the picture of Robert Hallam, cutting it strangely asunder, and giving to the upper portion of the face a weird and almost ghastly look.

Thisbe’s steps had died out and her kitchen door had closed, but the musings of the two women had been interrupted and did not go back to their former current.

All at once, soft as a memory of the bygone, the notes of the piano began to sound, and Julia changed her position, resting one arm upon the chair by her side and listening intently to a dreamy old melody that brought back to her the drawing-room in the old house at Castor—a handsomely-furnished, low-ceiled room with deep window-seat, on whose cushion she had often knelt to watch the passing vehicles while her mother played that very tune in the half light.

So dreamy, so softened, as if mingled there with a strange sadness. Now just as it was then, one of the vivid memories of childhood, Weber’s “Last Waltz,” an air so sweet, so full of melancholy, that it seems wondrous that our parents could have danced to its strains, till we recall the doleful minor music of minuet, coranto, and saraband. Dancing must have been a serious matter in those days.

Soft and sweet, chord after chord, each laden with its memory to Julia Hallam.

Her mother was playing that when her father came in hastily one night, and was so angry because there were no lights; that night when she stole away to Thisbe.

She was playing it too that afternoon when Grandmamma Luttrell came and was in such low spirits, and would not tell the reason why. Again, that night when she shrank away from her father, and he flung her hands from him, and said that angry word.

Memory after memory came back from the past as Millicent Hallam played softly on, making her child’s face lustrous, eyes grow more dreamy, the curved neck bend lower, and the tears begin to gather, till, with quite a start, the young girl raised her head and saw the rays from the gas-lamp shining across the picture beyond her mother’s dimly-seen profile.

Julia rose to cross to her mother’s side, and knelt down to pass her arms round the shapely waist and there rest.

“Go on playing,” she said softly. “Now tell me about poor papa.”

The notes of the old melody seemed to have an additional strain of melancholy as they floated softly through the room, sometimes almost dying away, while after waiting a few minutes they formed the accompaniment to the sad story of Millicent Hallam’s love and faith, told for the hundredth time to her daughter.

For Millicent talked on without a tremor in her voice, every word distinct and firm, and yet softly sweet and full of tenderness, as it seemed to her that she was telling the story of a martyr’s sufferings to his child.

“And all these years, and we have heard so little,” sighed Julia. “Poor papa! Poor father!”

The music ceased as she spoke, but went on again as she paused.

“Waiting, my child; waiting as I wait, and as my child waits, for the time when he will be declared free, and will take his place again among honourable men.”

“But, mother,” said Julia, “could not Mr Bayle or Sir Gordon have done more; petitioned the king, and pointed out this grievous wrong?”

“I could not ask Sir Gordon, my child. There were reasons why he could not act; but I did all that was possible year after year till, in my despair, I found that I must wait.”

“How glad he must be of your letters!” said Julia suddenly.

Millicent Hallam sighed.

“I suppose he cannot write to us. Perhaps he feels that it would pain us. Mother, darling, was I an ill-conditioned, perverse child?”

“My Julia,” said Mrs Hallam, turning to her and drawing her closely to her breast, “what a question! No. Why do you ask?”

“Because I seem just to recollect myself shrinking away from papa as if I were sulky or obstinate. It was as if I was afraid of him.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Mrs Hallam anxiously, “you were very young then, and your poor father was constrained, and troubled with many anxieties, which made him seem cold and distant. It was his great love for us, my child.”

“Yes, dear mother, his great love for us—his misfortune.”

“His misfortune,” sighed Mrs Hallam.

“But some day—when he returns—oh, mother! how we will love him, and make him happy! How we will force him to forget the troubles of the past!”

“My darling!” whispered Mrs Hallam, pressing her fondly to her heart.

“Do you think papa had many enemies, then?”

“I used to think so, my child, but that feeling has passed away. I seem to see more clearly now that those who caused his condemnation were but the creatures of circumstances. It was the villain who seemed to be your father’s evil genius caused all our woe. He made me shiver on the morning of our wedding, coming suddenly upon us as he did, as if he were angry with your father for being so happy.”

“But could we not do something?” said Julia earnestly. “It seems to be so sad—year after year goes by, and we sit idle.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Hallam with a sob; “but that is all we can do, my child—sit and wait, sit and wait, but keeping the home ready for our darling when he comes—the home here—and in our hearts.”

“He is always there, mother,” said Julia in a low, sweet voice, “always. How I remember him, with his soft dark hair, and his dark eyes! I think I used to be a little afraid of him.”

“Because he seemed stern, my child, that was all. You loved him very dearly.”

“He shall see how I will love him when he returns, mother,” she added after a pause. “Do you think he gives much thought to us?”

“Think, my darling? I know he prays day by day for the time when he may return. Ah!” she sighed to herself, “he reproached me once with teaching his child not to love him. He could not say so now.”

“I wonder how long it will be?” said Julia thoughtfully. “Do you think he will be much changed?”

She glanced up at the picture.

“Changed, Julia?” said her mother, taking the sweet, earnest face between her hands, to shower down kisses upon it, kisses mingled with tears, “no, not in the least. It is twelve long years since, now; heaven only knows how long to me! Years when, but for you, my darling, I should have sunk beneath my burden. I think I should have gone mad. In all those years you have been the link to bind me to life—to make me hope and strive and wait, and now I feel sometimes as if the reward were coming, as if this long penance were at an end. My love! my husband! come to me! oh, come!”

She uttered these last words with so wild and hysterical a cry that Julia was alarmed.

“Mother,” she whispered, “you are ill!”

“No, no, my child; it is only sometimes that I feel so deeply stirred. Your words about his being changed seemed to move me to the quick. He will not be changed; his hair will be grey, his face lined with the furrows of increasing age and care; but he himself—my dear husband, your loving father—will be at heart the same, and we shall welcome him back to a life of rest and peace.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Julia, catching the infection of her mother’s enthusiasm; “and it will be soon, will it not, mother—it will be soon?”

“Let us pray that it may, my child.”

“But, mother, why do we not go to him?” Mrs Hallam shivered slightly. “We should have been near him all these years, and we might have seen him. Oh, mother! if it had been only once! Why did you not go?” She rose from her knees, as if moved by her excitement. “Why, I would have gone a hundred times as far!” she said excitedly. “No distance should have kept me from the husband that I loved.”

“Julie! Julie! are you reproaching me?”

“Mother!” cried the girl, flinging herself upon her neck, “as if I could reproach you!”

“It would not be just, my child,” said Mrs Hallam, caressing the soft dark head, “for I have tried so hard.”

“Yes, yes, I know, dear; and I have known ever since I have been old enough to think.”

“In every letter I have sent I have prayed for his leave to come out and join him—that I might be near him, for I dared not take the responsibility upon myself with you.”

“Mother!”

“If I had been alone in the world, Julia, I should have gone years upon years ago; but I felt that I should be committing a breach of trust to take his young, tender child all those thousands of miles across the sea, to a land whose society is wild, and often lawless.”

“And so you asked papa to give his consent?”

“Every time I wrote to him, Julia—letters full of trust in the future, letters filled with the hope I did not feel. I begged him to give me his consent that I might come.”

“And he has not replied, mother?”

“Not yet, my child. Innocent and guilty alike have a long probation to pass through.”

“But he might have written, dear.”

“How do we know that, Julia?” said Mrs Hallam, with a shade of sternness in her voice. “I have studied the matter deeply from the reports and dispatches, and often the poor prisoners are sent far up the country as servants—almost slaves—to the settlers. In places sometimes where there are no fellow-creatures save the blacks for miles upon miles. No roads, Julia; no post; no means of communication.”

“My poor father!” sighed Julia, sinking upon the carpet, half sitting, half kneeling, with her hands clasped upon her knees, and her gaze directed up at the dimly-seen picture on the wall.

“Yes, my child, I know all,” said Mrs Hallam. “I know him and his pride. Think of a man like him, innocent, and yet condemned; dragged from his home like a common felon, and forced to herd with criminals of the lowest class. Is it not natural that his heart should rebel against society, and that he should proudly make his stand upon his innocency, and wait in silent suffering for the day when the law shall say: ‘Innocent and injured man, come back from the desert. You have been deeply wronged!’”

“Yes, dear mother. Poor father! But not one letter in all these years!”

“Julia, my child, you pain me,” cried Mrs Hallam excitedly. “When you speak like that, your words seem to imply that he has had the power to send letter or message. He is your father—my husband. Child, you must learn to think of him with the same faith as I.”

“Indeed I will, dear,” cried Julia passionately; and then she started to her feet, for there was a quick, decided knock at the front door.

Mrs Hallam hurriedly tried to compose her features; and as Thisbe’s step was heard in the passage she drew in her breath, gazed wildly at the picture, just as Julia drew down the blind and blotted it from her sight. Then the door was opened, and their visitor came in the centre of the glow shed by the passage light.

“Aha! In the dark!” cried Bayle in his cheery voice, as Thisbe opened the door. “How I wish I had been born a lady! I always envy you that pleasant hour you spend in the half light, gazing into the fire.”

Julia echoed his laugh in a pleasant silvery trill, as she hastily lit the lamp, Bayle watching her as the argand wick gradually burned round, and she put on the glass chimney, the light throwing up her handsome young face against the gloom till she lifted the great dome-shaped globe, which emitted a musical sound before being placed over the lamp, and throwing Julia’s countenance once more into the shade.

“What are you laughing at?” said Bayle.

“At the idea of our Mr Bayle being idle for an hour, sitting and thinking over the fire,” said Julia playfully, to draw his attention from her mother’s disturbed countenance.

The attempt was a failure, for Bayle saw clearly that something was wrong; that pain and suffering had been there before him; and he sighed as he asked himself what he could do more, in his unselfish way, to chase earthly cares from that quiet home.