 Chapter 34 Never had that rude barn-like structure as Thorpe Church looked prettier than on the Sunday next after Easter. All those exotics which had glorified the village fain on Easter Sunday had been restored to the ladies and gentlemen who had lent them. Mrs. Aspinol's air-ums and azaleas had been carted home to her hot-houses. Dulces, gardenias, and white tulips were safe on their shelves under the head gardener's care, or were adorning the rooms their mistress lived in. But the church looked no poorer for the loss of these expensive adornments. Alter and font, pulpit and reading desk were beautified with borders of fresh moss in which were embedded clusters of prim roses, violets and wooden mnemonies. The base of the font was a mass of daffodils shining gold and bright against the dark granite pedestal purpled by time. To the villagers who had known and loved these wild woodland blossoms ever since their eyes first opened to an understanding of nature's beauty, the simple adornments of today were sweeter than the grand unknown flowers which had served for the Paschal decorations. Flowers lent for the occasion by Mrs. Aspinol and Miss Courtney. Flowers with long Latin names which nobody could remember or pronounce were not half so good as the modest little blossoms that glorified the woods near home, the woods which were or seemed to be public property. There was no sense of obligation or patronage to mar the villagers' delight in the decorations today. As they lingered after the service to admire font or alter, there was no need to say how kind of Mrs. Aspinol or how good of Miss Courtney to contribute such lovely flowers. They had only to lift up their hearts in silent thankfulness to the creator who gave his woodland blossoms for all alike and gave them with a plenteousness which no earthly gardener labour as he might in the multiplication of slips and seedlings could imitate. Lady Francis and Dulcy had worked their hardest for several hours on Saturday to achieve even so simple a result. Lord Blatchmarten's daughter had shrewdly determined that the only way to make Dulcy forget her troubles was to employ her mind and fingers about something no matter how trivial the task. When the church work was finished Lady Francis found she had a pressing necessity for shopping at Highclear and then treated Dulcy to drive her there directly after luncheon. The drive and the shopping, which was a very small business as to actual expenditure, occupied the whole afternoon, for Francis insisted upon coming round by Blatchmarten Castle on their way home and running in to see if the dear old shake was well and was resigned to his daughter prolonging her visit at Fairview for a week or two. They were home in time for the afternoon tea, which they ever heard whether well or ill always shared with them. But that friendly meal had lost something of its old pleasantness. Dulcy no longer hung over her father's chair as she ministered to him, no longer sat at his feet or rested her bright head upon his knee in childlike affection. She brought him his cup of tea and waited on him with respectful tenderness, but the old caressing ways were wanting, and so ever had felt that his daughter and he had drifted wide apart since their return to Fairview. Dulcy sat in her corner by the hearth, joined politely in any conversation that her father or Lady Francis started, but it seemed somehow as if her thoughts were far away from them. Francis noticed that this curious restraint was always upon her in her father's presence. She talked more freely and seemed happier when the two girls were alone together. Yet she used to be so utterly devoted to her father, used Francis. Morton once complained to me that he was only second in her love. But I suppose she has not forgiven so ever had for breaking her engagement. I daresay that would be a hard thing for any girl to forgive, and these gentle girls have an immense power of resistance. I only wish she would fall in love with Bevel and make a happy end of all this perplexity, but that seems quite too good to happen. There was a Twitter among the village children and a thrill of expectation even in older breasts, on the Sunday next after Easter, when the school mistress began her voluntary on the harmonium, and when every eye that could so turn was directed to the low stone doorway of the vestry, whence the new curate was presently to emerge. Hardly any one except Mr. Gommasol the church warden had seen him, or had any idea what he was like. He might be big or little, gray or dark or sandy. Those most interested in his coming, as in an event which stirred the stagnant waters of village life, had made mental pictures of him involuntarily in the vagabond fancy to which an unemployed mind is disposed. All the young women in the village regretted Mr. Mork. All the young men ridiculed and affected to despise him, yet were glad he was gone. The middle-aged, steady-going parishioners had suspected him of papistical leanings, and hoped the new man would be of broader and less modern views, that he would snuffle and draw less than the Reverend Lionel, and would be able to preach a good, plain-sailing, practical sermon in twelve or fifteen minutes. And now the arpeggios of the voluntary swelled with all the power of the loudest stops in the harmonium, and heralded the entrance of the stranger. He had to stoop a little as he came through the arched doorway, and when he lifted his head and looked around him with a swift, sweeping glance that surveyed the whole congregation in a flash, his parishioners saw that their pastor was a man worth looking at. He looked somewhat older than his three and thirty years. He was tall, broad-shouldered and erect, with a noble head, nobly set on. His eyes were dark gray, his complexion was pale, and there were shadows about his eyes that told of overwork or ill health. He looked a man born to command, and the congregation felt that he ought to have been a bishop, and was altogether too good for Osthorpe. He'll never stay in such a dead and alive place as Osthorpe, thought Mrs. Gommersall, the church warden's wife, a rosy-faced, buxom-matron, glorious in the freshness of her Easter Sunday bonnet. Mr. Haldemond walked slowly to the reading desk, looked with a pleasant smile at the prim-roses and violets in their mossy border, glanced once more round the church, and in that one glance saw the fair-haired, sad-faced girl in the fair-view pew, with downcast eyes upon her book, and the bright brunette face beside her, and wondered a little who these two girls could be so different from the rest of the congregation, not even accepting the honourable Mrs. Aspinall, who confronted the newcomer with the placid impertinence of her double eyeglass. Sir Everad had accompanied his daughter and Lady Francis to church according to his unvarying habit. He was looking ill and care-worn, a fact which Mrs. Aspinall had noted without the aid of her eyeglass, for although it was quite permissible to stare at a clerical nobody like Mr. Haldemond, it was not good form to scrutinise so important a personage as Sir Everad Courtney, with the same direct gaze. At the baronet Mrs. Aspinall stole an occasional glance full of compassion. No wonder he looked so ill when he has nothing to interest him in life except that chit of a daughter, she reflected. What a pity he doesn't marry! After Haldemond began the service in his low grave voice, which was distinctly heard in the furthest corners of the old church, he read admirably as everybody felt before the first part of the service was over. There was no attempt at intoning, no fashionable sing-song, no brisk cantering over the level ground of the liturgy, with a view to leaving more time for the decorative or musical portions thereof. All was sober, serious, reverential. His sermon was brief, for he did not wish to weary those simple early dining-folks, some of whom had driven half a dozen miles to hear him. But brief as the sermon was, it told his hearers a good deal. It told them that he had put his hand to the plough, meaning to follow it with all his heart and all his strength, that he had come among them, prepared to love them, and to work for them, as he had loved and worked for a large mass of people in one of the most notorious neighbourhoods of the biggest city in the world. It is a place that has borne an evil name, ever since it has been a place at all. It is hardly possible to imagine a wickeder place out of hell, he said. Yet I found plenty of kind hearts, plenty of willing hands, and much instinctive Christianity to help me in my work. I found plenty of parishioners worthy of a parish priest's love, of his confidence and respect, and hardly one who was not entitled to his pity. Not one so bad that there was no fair spot in the evil nature, not one so deeply fallen as to be unworthy a good man's effort to pick him up. I have left them not because I was tired of them, not because I ever for one single moment of my life among them despaired of doing good to them and finding improvement in them, but because my physical health broke down under the strain of continual and anxious work, and because the doctors warned me that if I went on, my mental health must give way too. Forgive me, my dear friends, for talking to you about myself, but I want you all to know what manner of parson I am, that I am used to hard work and love it, and that you need never be afraid to send for me, or to come to me, or to send your children to me when you think they need more instruction than the ordinary Sunday school course can give them. I love to teach the young, I love to talk with the old. I shall start instruction classes for boys and girls on four evenings of the week, two evenings for the boys, two for the girls. I will only keep them an hour at a time, for I don't want to weary them, or to make the scriptures unpalatable to them by overdosing. I want to show them what a lovely book their Bible is, and what ineffable wisdom they may find in its pages if they know how to seek. Count upon me, my dear brethren, as one of yourselves, one with you in your joys and your griefs, a friend to whom no trouble of yours can be indifferent, who can never weary in working with you to make our own little bit of this big world better and nearer heaven. The preacher's words were so plain and straightforward that the smallest child in the church understood him. His deep resonant voice, trained in speaking to large congregations, softened as he addressed this little flock, he looked round upon them with his kindly gray eyes as if he were already their friend. The grave, handsome face, with its ever-varying expression, the frank, sympathetic manner, won their hearts before his first sermon was ended. This man was a priest whom they could revere and love. Didn't I tell you he was the right sort, best? whispered Mr. Gomersall to his wife, as he ducked to grope for his hat under the bench in his comfortable family pew. Mrs. Aspenall's barouche stood before the churchyard gate, the well-fed horses tossing their heads and jingling their bits to the admiration of the villagers. But Mrs. Aspenall was in no hurry to get into her carriage and drive away. Coming out of the porch she contrived to wailay Sir Everett and the two girls. My dear Sir Everett, this is a surprise. I had no idea you had returned. How cruel of you, Dulcy, not to let me know. I should have rushed to call upon you directly if I had had the remotest notion. How do you do, Frances? Naughty girl, you haven't been to see me for an age. But dear Sir Everett, you are not looking quite so well as I had hoped to see you. Hmm, my friends are charmingly unanimous in that opinion, answered Sir Everett rather wearily. I suppose the fact is that blue skies and southern coasts are no remedy for chronic disorders of long-standing. A man may take his gout or his rheumatism to the Fijis or the Philippines, but gout his gout and rheumatism is rheumatism to the end of the chapter. Well, I am very glad you have come home, said Mrs. Aspenall, and now you are all coming to lunch with me. Oh, yes, you are! as Sir Everett began to excuse himself. I shall take no denial. Dulcy owes me some recompense for running away just before my little dance. It was a very nice little dance, wasn't it, Frances? It was awfully jolly, answered Lady Frances. I am going to ask the cure at Man to Luncheon, said Mrs. Aspenall. Do you know I never felt more interest in anybody at first sight? Quite an awakening sort of person, don't you know? I only hope he won't make us feel uncomfortable in our minds, and that he will confine himself to stirring up the poor people who drink and swear to a shocking extent, I am told, and require to have their consciences worked upon. A remarkably fine-looking man, too. A handsome, intellectual head. I hear that he is a man with history. He belonged to rich people and was brought up in the lap of luxury and began life in the very best society. And when he was three or four and twenty, his people contrived to lose all their money somehow, and he went into the church. Oh, here he comes! They had been standing on a bit of level green-sward on one side of the porch, Mrs. Aspenall murmuring her confidences to Sir Everard, dulcy by her father's side, with sad, serious face and downcast eyes, Frances Grange bright and animated as usual, returning the greetings of her humble acquaintances with smiles and nods. Mr. Haldemond came slowly along the path with Mr. Gommersall, the church warden by his side. This gave Mrs. Aspenall her opportunity. Mr. Gommersall, pray make me known to our new pastor, she said, and the good-tempered farmer stammered out an introduction, presenting the stranger in a confused form of words to Mrs. Aspenall and Sir Everard. I have set my heart upon your taking your luncheon with me, said the lady. Sir Everard and his daughter and Lady Frances Grange are coming. The barouche will hold us all. It's a regular Noah's Ark, and now please don't refuse me. You couldn't have a better opportunity for getting acquainted with ever so many of your parishioners at once. Arthur Haldemond hesitated, stole a glance at Dulcy's sad pale face, and accepted the fifth seat in the barouche. It was not Mrs. Aspenall's overpowering manner which few people could stand up against that influenced his acceptance, but that second look at Dulcy had interested him curiously in the girl's character. Here surely was the heroine of some painful story. So young, so exquisitely girlish, yet with such deep sorrow written in every line of the innocent face. Mr. Haldemond and the two girls sat with their backs to the horses. Sir Everard occupied the place of honour by Mrs. Aspenall's side. The curate glanced from Dulcy's face to her father's, and there too he saw the impress of secret care. It was not ill health alone that had drawn those deep lines about the handsome mouth, that perpendicular wrinkle in the thoughtful brow. Much brooding over painful memories, the rankling misery of one great sorrow had moulded those features into a look of intense melancholy. How charmed you must be at Morton's recovery, began Mrs. Aspenall, smiling benevolently at Dulcy, but a sharp kick from Lady Francis stopped this gush of sympathy, and turned the currant of the lady's speech. And how delightful it must have been for you to see the dear romantic moors with their mahogany complexions and their white drapery, and the blue, blue, southern sea, and the mountains and the scenery in a general way. I suppose it is absolutely delicious. It is very beautiful, answered Dulcy with a mechanical air. But you like home best, perhaps, suggested Mr. Haldemond. Yes, I used to be very fond of Osthorpe. Used to be. Has your mind outgrown this little place? Oh, no, only since the doctor says Papa must not spend another winter in England. I feel that Osthorpe is no longer our home, faltered Dulcy. We must reconcile ourselves to being wanderers. And I suppose next winter you will want to go still further afield. You'll be asking Sir Everett to take you to Egypt or India. I should be glad to go wherever is best for him. What has become of Miss Porca? asked Lady Francis. Oh, my poor dear Louisa had one of her tiresome headaches, said Mrs. Aspinall. But I dare say she will be well enough to take her lunch and with us. The fact was that poor dear Louisa had been coked to forego the morning service in order that she might make herself generally useful in preparing an elegant-looking luncheon for the baronet and his daughter, whom Mrs. Aspinall, fully aware of their return, despite her affected surprise at the fact, was determined to take home with her. The consequence of this prudent arrangement was a table elegantly decorated with hot-house flowers and a tasteful display of those French-looking hors d'oeuvres in the way of anchovies, caviar, olives, and tiny pink and white radishes and other small dainties which set forth a table at a moderate cost, and give color and variety to the homely roast mutton or the monotonous boiled chicken. To all outward seeming, the luncheon party at Aspinall Towers was a success. Arthur Haldemond was a man of wide reading and considerable experience. He had traveled a good deal, he had lived in society and out of society. He was able to talk to anybody and of almost any subject. He contrived to interest Sir Everard. He contrived to interest Dulcy. Lady Francis was charmed with him. Mrs Aspinall told herself that the curate man was an acquisition, and Miss Porca hung upon his words as if he were inspired. After luncheon there was a sauntering half hour in the Italian garden, which looked its best under a cloudless blue sky, and as Mrs Aspinall and her guests strolled in and out of the narrow Serpentine walks or up and down a broad green alley, Mr Haldemond contrived to take his place at Dulcy's side. I hear that I shall find you a most valuable co-editor, Miss Courtney, he said, when they were far enough from the rest of the party to be confidential. Mr Gommasall tells me that you have done wonders for the school, and that all the poor people adore you. They are very good to think so much of such small kindnesses, answered Dulcy with a sigh. I have been very happy among them. Have been? Why speak in a past tense? I count upon your help as a pillar of strength, and pray do not disappoint me. Oh, my life hence-forward will be very uncertain. My father's health may oblige us to leave Osthorpe at any moment. Oh, let us hope not! And even if you have to desert us sometimes, that's no reason why you should not interest yourself in your native village while you are here. Think what a glorious thing it is to be the dispenser of happiness to those whose joys are so few, to be a consolar among those whose sorrows are so many. We all have our sorrows, answered Dulcy with deepest despondency. Oh, I hope that the griefs which shadow your bright young life are but passing clouds, said Mr Haldeman, contemplating the sweet sad face with infinite compassion. Yet you speak as if all joy were gone from you for ever. It has, answered Dulcy. Oh, believe me, no! Youth lives in the present and deems every sorrow eternal. It is only when we have travelled some distance on the road of life that we know the meaning of hope. Your father's precarious health is the cause of your unhappiness, I apprehend. It is one cause. Can you not find comfort in the thought that your love has lightened his life, that the same filial love will console and cheer him to the end, and that when the hour of parting shall come, as it must come for all of us, the severance will be but for a little while. We say good-bye to each other in a world whose brightest hours and fairest scenes are shadowed by the pain and travail of all nature, to meet where there is neither grief nor care. And are we all to meet there, as Dulcy with a despairing look, will not the sinners be shut out of that happy world? Oh, the unpenitent sinner only! God's great love promises forgiveness to every sinner who honestly and really, not in a mere form of words, but with all his heart and mind and strength, and with every act of atonement in his power, repents his sins. I see. It is not enough for him to be sorry in his heart of hearts. He must atone. He must bear the brunt of his sin. He must endure the consequences of his evil doing here, if he wants to escape them hereafter. A man who is sorry in his heart of hearts would naturally do his utmost to atone for his sins. There was a striking instance of that in your own neighbourhood last year, in the case of that unhappy creature who gave himself up to justice for a murder committed twenty years ago. Ignorant, brutalised as one might suppose such a man to be, yet even to his blunted mind conscience spoke plainly, and showed him the only way to obtain pardon. He looked at Dulcy as he finished speaking, and was startled by the ghastly pallor of her face, the horror in her eyes. Oh, forgive me, he faltered. I fear I have spoken of a topic which is in some way painful. Yes, she answered hurriedly. It is a painful subject. The blakes are our friends. Oh, I understand. Pray forgive me. A man coming a stranger into a neighbourhood is sure to make mistakes of this kind. Society is so interlinked and bound together. Let us talk of more cheerful subjects. I want you to tell me all about the schools, Miss Courtney. Mr. Gommasaw has given me some information, but though he seems the best natured of men and ready to co-operate with me in every way, he has not the knack of expressing himself very clearly, and I have a great deal yet to learn. Dulcy roused herself with an effort, and endeavoured to answer all the curate's questions. The warm earnestness of his manner, his evident delight in the work before him, beguiled her into a brief forgetfulness of her own troubles, and for the next half-hour she talked brightly of her experiences in the schools and among the cottages of Osthorpe. You must make friends with the elder Miss Blake, she said, the lady whom almost everybody calls Aunt Dora. You will find her a more valuable ally than I could possibly be. I am inclined to doubt that, but if you will introduce me to the lady, I will do my best to secure her aid. Oh, I'll leave someone else to do that, Stammered Dulcy. I'm not likely to see Miss Blake for some time. Mr. Haldeman felt that he had again touched upon some painful subject. It seemed to be his evil fate to distress this sweet girl, whose sadness he would so gladly have lessened by any art in his power. Sir Everard came up to them at this moment under convoy of Mrs. Aspinall, who had been exerting all her fascinations in a prolonged saunter about the gardens, and had succeeded in making the baronet's life a burden to him. Oh, my dear Dulcy, if you and Lady Francis are ready, I shall be glad to take you home, he said, strangling an incipient yawn, and Dulcy ran off to summon Francis, who was enlivening the faithful porker with her pleasant chat, and making that genteel drudge forget her drudgery and her dependence. You don't think the walk across the park or through the fields will be too much fatigue for you? asked Dulcy when they were ready to start. Oh, pray let my carriage take you home, urged Mrs. Aspinall. It can be ready in a quarter of an hour. Ah, you're very kind, said Sir Everard, and no, I shall enjoy the walk this lovely afternoon. And so they departed, Mrs. Aspinall, Miss Porker, and Mr. Haldemond walking with them to the little iron gate which divided the gardens from the park. Mr. Haldemond would willingly have gone further with them, but he was bent upon getting a little enlightenment from Mrs. Aspinall as to the social mysteries amidst which he had found himself blindly stumbling. Having parted from the baronet, Mrs. Aspinall, who liked masculine society, was all sweetness to the curate. Oh, don't be in a hurry to leave us, she entreated. You have no afternoon service, and you have hours to spare before what Mr. Mork used to call Vespers, much of the indignation of our country bumpkins. Oh, you are very good, but I must go back to spend an hour in the Sunday school. I mean to revive the old-fashioned afternoon service, for Mr. Gommersall tells me it was the most popular service of the day, as it suited farmers and people who live a long way off. Oh, pray don't make a slave of yourself, expostulated Mrs. Aspinall in a tone of friendly interest. All thought people are horridly ungrateful, they will only revile you for your pains. When you do well and suffer for it, quoted Mr. Haldemond, I must do my utmost according to my lights and abide the issue. But I fear I have been doing very badly today. I had set my heart upon winning the friendship of that sweet-looking girl, Ms. Courtney, and on two occasions I was idiot enough to say something that caused her extreme distress. Yet I had no idea why it should be so. The first time was when I spoke of the man who was tried at Highcler for a murder, and condemned upon his own confession. The second was when I asked her to introduce me to a certain Miss Dora Blake. Oh, you poor, foolish man! You could hardly have done worse, exclaimed Mrs. Aspinall. This comes of not getting yourself coached by someone who knows the society you are coming into. Mr. Morg ought really to have given you the cart to pay. However, in Miss Courtney's case it was almost impossible to avoid coming to grief, for even I myself did not know the real state of affairs, till Lady Frances Grange enlightened me just before luncheon. Pray explain. Well, in the first place you ought not have spoken of the murder, because the man who was murdered was Walter Blake of Tangley, to whose only son Morton, Miss Courtney, was engaged. Oh, said Mr. Haldeman, she is engaged, is she? Oh, don't interrupt, troublesome man! cried Mrs. Aspinall with her kittenish air. If you were listening properly, you would have heard that I said was engaged, not is engaged. To gratify some caprice of Sir Everard the engagement has been broken off, and Dulcy is absolutely miserable, and six months ago she was the brightest happiest little creature. Oh, but surely her father must have had some substantial reason for breaking the engagement, said Mr. Haldeman. He would not sacrifice his daughter's happiness to a whim. What reason could he have? Morton is all to get the charming. He has horrid radical ideas, but still is excessively nice. He has a fine estate, is entirely his own master, intellectual, ambitious, and good-looking and high-principled. What more could the most exacting father demand in his daughter's suitor? Yet there must be a hitch somewhere, said the curethoughtfully. No father would willingly make his daughter unhappy, and I fear that Miss Courtney is really unhappy. Even in her conversation with me, a stranger, she unconsciously revealed the depth of her misery. And she is so girlish, childish almost in her freshness and simplicity. I feel intensely sorry for her. Oh, sweetest child, my heart positively bleeds for her, said Mrs. Aspenall with a sigh, which was almost extinguished in a yawn. Do come back to the house and take some tea. Oh, thanks, you are too good, but I must go to my school. And the cureth shook hands with the two ladies, and went out at the little gate and across the grass, with a steady, swinging pace of a man who has walked half over England and done no small portion of the continent at a systematic five miles an hour. Just as I am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Chapter 35 I do not understand you, Moulton. Encouraged by Sir Everard's kindness, and stimulated by hints from Lady Francis, Lord Bevel appeared at Fairview not once, but many times, before his sister's long visit came to an end. Dulcy received him graciously as her friend's brother, but the vainest of men could hardly have imagined himself peculiarly favoured or chosen out from the herd, so evident was the girl's unconsciousness of his admiration and calm indifference to himself. She only recognised his existence as Fanny's brother. She lived in a world apart from his, taking no interest in his occupations and amusements. How could two beings whose minds were so differently formed ever be brought into tender or sympathetic relations? Bevel might adore Dulcy with a reverent love, looking up to her as his bright particular star, but how was Dulcy to let herself down to the level of a young man whose billiard playing was his most intellectual accomplishment, and who from October to April spent five days out of the seven following somebody's hounds and sighed for nothing higher or more noble in life than to have a pack of his own to follow. If I could but afford to hunt the country, he said to his sister with a sigh, I know they'd all like me for their MFH. Of course they would, dear, answered Francis, and if, if you could marry a nice girl with plenty of ready money, you could take the hounds next year. I know Sir James Pryor is tired of them. There's only one girl I would give sixpence for, and she will never have me, sighed Bevel. His sister began to think he was right. Dulcy, who had so loved Morton, never could or would stoop to the lower level of an unintellectual lover. Bevel's good looks, Bevel's good heart, went for nothing, with a girl of highly cultivated mind, to whom intellectual society was a necessity. Francis stayed at Fairview nearly five weeks, Sir Everard seeming always loath to let her go, and Dulcy clinging to her with ever-increasing affection. She had done much to win the girl to temporary forgetfulness of her grief, but the grief remained all the same, an abiding fact, which no arts of Francis Grange could cure. Sorrow had set a seal upon the fair young face, and had given a new character to Dulcy's girlish beauty. To the eye of Arthur Haldemond, that pale and pensive countenance seemed the face of a martyr, he could picture just such a face, heavenly calm, amidst the carnage of a Roman amphitheatre. The day came when Francis protested that she positively must go home. The dear patient shake had been shamefully neglected, and his daughter must not stay away from him another hour. But if you suppose you're going to get rid of me altogether, Dulcy, you're vastly mistaken, protested Francis as she kissed her friend. I shall ride over to see you three or four times a week, and I insist upon your driving those underworked porpoises of yours to Blatchmarthen on the off-days. We are miserable porpoise, but I can give you a cup of tea, and if so ever, I will come with you sometimes, I shall be ever so proud. Oh, you know how little chance there is of that, Fanny! He seldom leaves his study now except for a lonely walk in the shrubberies. I know he mopes horribly, and that is the very way to make him a confirmed invalid. You ought to rouse him out of his solitary habits, Dulcy. He is so clever, so superior to any one I know. It's a shame he should lead such a hermit's life. Certainly there is hardly any one within twenty miles of Osphor fit to associate with him, unless it be this Mr. Haldimund, who seems tremendously clever. Yes, he is clever and earnest and good. I wish my dear father would make a friend of him. Well, perhaps he will in time, if he finds that you like him, and are interested in his work. And now, good-bye, darling, but remember it isn't because I'm returning to the path of filial duty that you and I are to be parted. My life henceforward will oscillate between Blatchmarthen and Fairview. The many-coloured month of May was drawing to a close by this time. Hawthorns whitened the woods and hedges, and filled the lanes with perfume. All the gardens were golden with berberis and wall-flowers, and all the woodland glades were blue with wild hyacinths. The cuckoo had become a nuisance, and the skylark were notonously melodious, while the two industrious woodpecker creaked and tapped and screwed to a maddening extent in every hollow-beach tree. The little rustic world of Osthorpe was completely beautiful in its glory of spring blossoms shining under sunny skies, and gently ruffled by softest west winds. But perhaps only the village children were any the happier for all this beauty, or enjoyed themselves at this free banquet table that nature had spread for them. For the grown-up people, there was ever some cloud of care that shadowed the vivid colour of the flowers and darkened the glory of the sun. Morton had slowly regained health and strength in body and mind. It had been a difficult and laborious recovery, attended by intense depression of spirits. He came back to life reluctantly, like a man who felt that death would have been a happy escape from a world of trouble. But youth and nature were stronger than the patient's will. The wild delusions of a fevered brain gradually departed, and left the dreamer face-to-face with stern reality. Natural sleep refreshed the worn-out frame, the prolonged idleness of convalescence tranquilised the over-ought mind, and before the rose-flushed hawthorn bloom had faded, Morton was able to pursue the usual tenor of his industrious life. During that weary period of recovery, Lizzie Hardman had shared with Aunt Dora in all the duties of nurse, attendant, and companion. Upon Lizzie indeed had fallen the greater part of the work, for Miss Blake's own health had suffered from her anxiety about her nephew, and she was herself in need of care and rest. But Lizzie was never tired. She read to Morton for hours, no matter how dry or heavy the book he wished to have read to him. She wrote at his dictation, and entered heart and soul into all his studies and plans for the advantage of his fellow men. Was able to discuss the most abstruse questions of political economy, and flunk herself, with all a woman's headlong enthusiasm, into every philanthropic scheme. Her companionship, which seemed more like the camaraderie of a young brother student than the society of a girl, did much to lighten the tedium of that slow convalescence. Then she was so staunch and faithful, and although she never of her own accord talked to Morton about Dulcy, she always, frankly, and fully answered any questions which he chose to ask her. Never since that afternoon when death seemed so near and recovery so unlikely had Morton expressed a wish to see Dulcy, but on more than one occasion he had questioned Lizzie about her. Sir Everett and his daughter are, still at Osthorpe, I suppose, he said one morning, when Lizzie had laid down her book, in order to give him the cup of strong beef tea, which was to be administered with rigid precision at eleven o'clock every morning, whether the patient liked it or not. Yes, they're still here. Do you ever see her? I saw her yesterday, coming away from the afternoon service. The new curate has instituted a daily service at Half Pass Four, you know. He was going to make it five, I believe, but people told him it would interfere with five o'clock tea, and would never be popular with the ladies who formed the chief part of a weekday congregation. I see. And now they go to prayers first, and to tea and scandal afterwards. How was Dulcy looking when you saw her? Pale and grave and quiet. Oh, not ill, I hope. Oh, no, I do not know that she was looking ill. But she looks older and graver than she used to look in happier days. Did you think she looked unhappy? Yes, Morton, I will not tell you anything less than the truth. I'm sure she is unhappy. Poor child, I am very sorry for her. We have each our burden to bear. What must be must be. Morton told his aunt one day when they were alone together that his engagement had been cancelled at Sir Everard's desire. The man must be mad, exclaimed Aura Blake impetuously. Can you, who have known him so long, who knew him in my father's lifetime, imagine no reason he might have for desiring to break the engagement, asked Morton, watchful of his aunt's countenance. She remained silent for some moments with a look of trouble in her expressive face. What reason could there be? What reason, dating from the past, which did not exist when the engagement was made? He may have yielded weakly to his daughter's wish for a time, till conscience awoke all at once and urged him to forbid our marriage. Conscience? Yes, Aunt Dora, conscience. What but a conscientious scruple of some kind, based on a guilty secret, could constrain him to break his daughter's heart and mind. But I am thankful to him for having taken the initiative. If he had not broken the engagement, I must have done it. I could not have gone on suffering as I suffered, willfully blind to a fact which forced itself upon me at every turn. Sooner or later my scruples must have grown stronger than my love, and I must, by my own act, have separated myself from Dulcy. How much harder for me to do so than for her father to part us! I ought to be grateful to him. It's the one honourable act of his life. I do not understand you, Morton, faulted Miss Blake. Oh yes, you do, Aunt. Your pale cheek, your troubled eye, tell me that you do understand my meaning. You have the light of the past to guide you. You know much that is hidden from me. You must, you do know, that Sir Everett Courtney murdered my father. Morton! How can you allege anything so horrible, when that man's confession cleared Sir Everett for ever? Cleared him? Ah, then in your mind he was the suspected murderer, until another confessed the crime. I will not say one word, Morton. Oh yes, you suspected, you knew, and yet you allowed me to engage myself to Dulcy? What power had I to prevent that engagement? You had offered yourself to her before I knew that you had given her your heart. I had cherished other ideas, other hopes. The whole business came upon me as a surprise. As to my suspicions of Sir Everett, they were vague, shapeless, a mere, undefinable terror to me, which I hardly dared own to myself. Vargas's confession and conviction set those horrible fears at rest for ever. To my mind, Vargas's confession opened a gulf, down which I hardly dared to look while Dulcy was my affianced wife. But now, oh, you will not try to bring disgrace upon the father of the girl you love, for you do love her still, do you not, Morton? With all my heart! Even if you had ceased to love her, if she were nothing to you but that which she is to all who know her, a lovely and amiable girl, it would be a horrible thing to inflict disgrace upon her by bringing a hideous accusation against her father. What evidence have you to sustain this frightful suspicion? None, or none of a tangible nature. Oh, God only knows what I shall do, said Morton. I speak to you as I would speak to no one else, Aunt Dora, for I know that you share my suspicions. Only because I knew that Everett Courtney had been deeply wronged. You forced me to speak of these things, Morton, to recall a past which were better buried and forgotten. You know how fondly I loved your father, yet I cannot deny that he dealt falsely and treacherously with Sir Everett Courtney. Be wise, then, Morton, leave this sad story of the past in the shadow where it lies, and leave the punishment of your father's murderer to the great Avenger. Morton was silent. This charge of falsehood and treachery brought against his father, by one who had so deeply loved him, was a heavy blow to the son. He knew Dora Blake's utter truthfulness, her strong sense of justice, and he knew that she would not bring such a charge as this against an idolised brother without undeniable evidence. Yet he ought perhaps to have been prepared for such a revelation. Could he at any moment have supposed that groundless, unprovoked jealousy had made Sir Everett turn assassin? Only the belief in his friend's treachery, in a deep, irreparable wrong, could have goaded a sane man to such a crime. How far Sir Everett's belief in Walter Blake's guilt might have been justified by facts, Morton had never asked himself until to-day. One image had ever been present to his mind, excluding every other consideration. The image of his murdered father cut off in the prime and heyday of his life. No more was said either by aunt or nephew, but the recollection of that conversation sank deep in the young man's mind, and gave a new colour to his thoughts. Had it not been for Lizzie Hardman, he would in all likelihood have relapsed into that state of apathy and depression which had been the beginning of his dangerous illness. The mind, brooding perpetually upon one gloomy theme, would have again given way, but Lizzie would not allow him to be idol. She stimulated him in the pursuit of studies which were congenial to his mind and heart. She so warmly adopted his favourite ideas, so interested herself in his dearest schemes, that she infused new vigour and life into the old thoughts, and made the most utopian plans appear practicable and full of hope. She urged him to publish a pamphlet upon compulsory education, a subject which he had taken deeply to heart, and upon which he had original and peculiar views. She offered to be his immanuensis, as he was not yet strong enough to bear the fatigue of much penmanship. At first he was unwilling to inflict such a task upon her, and doubted his own ability to give free expression to his thoughts in dictation. But Lizzie's interest in his work seemed so unaffected, her willingness to help was so sincere. That were it only to gratify her. He gave way, and the pamphlet was begun. First crude ideas were roughly jotted down, and then the theme rounded itself in the thinker's mind, and he began with a sentence worthy of Junius. Once begun, the work was easy. Morton lay on his sofa, looking out at the lilacs and labyrinums, the galder roses and pink may, and dictating his thoughts in measured syllables. While Lizzie, who was a neat and rapid penman, sat at her little table by one of the windows, far enough from the thinker for him to be almost unconscious of her presence. Do you know, Lizzie, you're more like a sister to me than either of my sisters, Morton said one day. Lizzie was slow to acknowledge this compliment. I'm glad to be useful to you in any way, she said at last, for I owe you and yours so much, that it is a happiness to be able to pay the various trifle on account. Oh, don't be so horribly commercial, Lizzie. You owe us nothing, and need pay us nothing. I know you are auntie's right hand, and that she could not get on anyhow without you. But it was not your usefulness I was thinking about when I said you were like a sister to me. An immanuensis or a reader can be got any day at so much an hour, so I'm not going to be intensely grateful on that score. What I feel is your companionship, your power of sharing and understanding all my ideas, your perfect sympathy. They were sitting in the twilight after dinner in the drawing room. The two sisters were on the lawn playing a tater-tate game of croquet. Aunt Dora was reading by a distant window. Lizzie bent over her work, her face quite hidden in the dim light. What busy fingers! exclaimed Morton. I don't think you know what idleness means. I hope before we're many months oldy you'll be busy at Blackford electioneering, said Lizzie with a laugh. What, you really think I ought to stand for Blackford at the first vacancy? I'm sure of it. You are the very man the Blackford people want to represent them. My cousin tells me that old Mr. Tillney, the Liberal member, talks of giving up his seat. He suffers from chronic asthma, poor man, and is ordered abroad every winter. So he might just as well resign his post to a man who can be useful to the town. Well, if Mr. Tillney vacate his seat, I will try my luck, Lizzie. I would do as much as that out of gratitude for all your goodness to me during the last six weeks. Chapter 36 The Man Called Tinker The time which Jane Barnard had appointed in her own mind for her return to America had come and gone, and she was still patiently drudging on in Mrs. Jeb's service, and was not one step nearer success. She wrote to her husband by every mail, and she wrote much more hopefully than she felt, as he should lose patience and insist upon her immediate return. Her residence under Mr. Jeb's roof had been so far barren of all result. The surgeon talked a great deal, and talked as freely before the American nurse, as if she had been deaf and dumb. But there was no more substance in his talk by the domestic hearth than there had been in the coffee-room at the peacock. He had the air of knowing a great deal, of being able to unfold a terrible tale, were he inclined to do so? But his insinuations never came to a point. All his suggestions of a secret ended in nods and shrugs and lifted eyebrows and smothered sighs, which, as Mr. Tomplin said, might mean anything or nothing. Mrs. Barnard was honestly fond of children, and she had attached herself to the youthful Jebs, although they were by no means perfect specimens of juvenile humanity, yet as the weeks and months dragged on, she began to weary of her exile, her service in a stranger's house, and began to yearn for the sight of her own children. She had made up her mind to leave England before the end of May. She would obtain leave to see the prisoner at Portland before starting, knowing but too well that this farewell interview would be verily the last, and that she would never see the poor old airing father again, and then she would go to her happy home on the other side of the wide sea, and confess that she had failed in her mission. If in the days to come the story of her father's crime and punishment should be made a reproach against her children, they must bear their burden as she had borne hers. Every life must have its shadow as well as its sunshine, and if this were a darker shadow than falls upon most lives, it must be endured with patience and resignation. Jane Barnard told herself that she could do no more. She had fixed the day of her departure, and had given due notice to Mrs. Jeb, who piteously bewailed the loss of one of the few good servants she had ever been blessed with, and now there remained but a week of her bondage in a strange land, and she was full of the thought of the husband and children at home, and the delight of seeing those dear faces after half a year's absence. Domestic life at the homestead had been unusually smooth during Jane Barnard's period of service. Polly, the cook, was a good-natured, flighty, gossiping girl, who did all her work in tremendous spurts, and idled prodigiously between wiles. With this Polly, Mrs. Jeb carried on a continual struggle, which in a woman of sterner temper would have been actual warfare, but which, with mild Mrs. Jeb, never rose above a plaintiff remonstrance and tearful complaint. But with Jane Barnard, Mrs. Jeb never complained, and Polly, the cook, declared that Jane managed her mistress. Jane was energetic and businesslike, met all the petty difficulties of a narrow domestic sphere, with calm resolution and perfect temper, and brightened the surgeon's home by her hopeful spirit and never-ceasing industry. It's very hard that when I get a servant who suits me so well she should go to America, sighed Mrs. Jeb, and now I have to look about me again, and odd-thought servants are so bad! Mrs. Jeb's looking about consisted generally in making her once known to the butcher and the baker, and then waiting till Providence should send her some kind of servant, bad, good, or indifferent, as the case might be. But if Mrs. Jeb had reason to complain of the shortcomings of female servants, Shaftow, for his part, declared that cooks and housemaids were angelic beings, as compared with that pest of society, the outdoor man. He was perpetually at war with the man of all work who looked after his horses, cleaned carriage and harness, occasionally drove a gig, and employed his leisure hours in working in the scrubby, untidy garden, given over for the most part to gooseberry bushes and cabbage stalks, which were not fair to look upon, but which were of some use in producing a nondescript leafy vegetable known as greens. This office in Mr. Jeb's household had been filled and refilled many times during the surgeon's career, and was apt to be vacated suddenly with storm and tempest, the groom turning out either a hopeless drunkard or an incorrigible thief, or Pachan's a feeble creature who had never touched a horse till he took the situation, and for whom Mr. Jeb's two well-worked screws manifested their contempt, by nearly kicking him to death on his first endeavour to valet them. Of late, however, Mr. Jeb, like his wife, had been better off in this respect. The man who had the care of his stables knew his work and did it well. True, that he was generally in a maudlin state every night, that his appearance was gaunt, and his private wardrobe better adapted for a scarecrow than a human being. He could shuffle on Mr. Jeb's livery-coat, and thrust his thin legs into a pair of ancient top-boots when required, so to disguise himself, and in this gear handed on from groom to groom, he had something of the style and bearing of a well-trained servant. "'God knows where the man came from, or what he's been doing all his life,' said Shaftow. But at some time or other he must have been in a gentleman's service. He has the stamp upon him, even in his decay.' No one knew where Tinker came from. Tinker was the name by which he insisted upon being known, yet every one had a rooted idea that it was a feigned name. Charged with want of candour on this subject, he argued the question in this wise. Nineteen years ago there were a horse called Tinker won the ledger, wasn't there? He demanded, and the person addressed, being usually more or less ignorant, was apt to reply in the affirmative. "'Very well, then,' answered the groom. If Tinker was a good enough name for him, it ought to be good enough for me, didn't it? Whereupon no one felt able to gain say him, and as Tinker he was generally accepted and received in that circle of society in which he was privileged to move. He was a sententious person and had strong opinions upon some subjects, but of his own antecedents he said never a word. He had turned up in the stable-yard of the Peacock one market-day, and had there addressed himself to Mr. Jeb, as that gentleman was watching the harnessing of his horse by somewhat unskilled hands. He had heard somehow that Mr. Jeb wanted a groom, and offered himself for the place. As to character, well, no, he couldn't give any. He knew no one in these parts. Mr. Jeb hesitated. Experience had taught him that a character with a servant is very much like a warranty with a horse, in as much as both are worthless. He told the man to call upon him that evening, and his last groom having been violently ejected the night before, leaving the stable-work on the surgeon's hands, he took the wave into his service on trial. If you don't sooch, you must go at the end of the week, he said, to which the man calling himself Tinker agreed. Tinker did soot, and Tinker stayed. He was a man of curiously exclusive habits, spending all his leisure in a wretched shed next to the stable, which Mr. Jeb called his harness-room. Here, in company with boots and blacking-brushes, a colony of empty bottles and the well-worn harness, Tinker devoted his evenings to the perusal of any old newspaper which he could get hold of. He was not fond of society. When he drank, he drank in the retirement of his own den, and needed not the charm of good company to give flavour to his liquor. The three sugar-loaves knew him not. Perhaps he shrank from exhibiting his tattered raiment in such a prosperous tavern. Perhaps he was by nature and inclination a recluse. All went smoothly in the stable. The horses were better groomed than they had been since Mr. Jeb had owned them. The harness was brighter, the general turnout more creditable, and the surgeon congratulated himself upon his own discrimination in having picked up such a servant, and upon his own courage in having taken him without a character. When within a few days of Mrs. Barnard's intended departure, Mr. Jeb made a discovery which brought an appalling alteration in his feelings towards Tinker. The wine cellar at the homestead was not a stately vault, nor was it stocked with a valuable collection of choice wines. But poor and dilapidated as the cellar was, and small, though its contents were, Mr. Jeb kept the chioate himself, and guarded its treasures with peculiar care. He had a good supply of bass, and a bin of high-clear ale, bottled and laid down by himself. He had a dozen or so of port, in case of illness, three or four dozen of sherry to give his friends. And at the end of the cellar, in a narrow, arched recess deep in the old brickwork, he had a snug little stock of spirits, including a dozen of a very particular Scotch whisky, which had been sent him as a present from a friend at Inverness. To make the security of this corner still more secure, Mr. Jeb had built up a barrier of beer in front of the shelf where the whisky reposed, so that in the event of a burglarious intruder forcing his way into the stable, the famous Scotch whisky would escape that intruder's attention. With a self-denial that approached the heroic, Mr. Jeb had resolved to let the mellowing influence of time soften and improve the spirit, before he converted it into toddy. We'll keep it a year or two, my love, he told his wife. I'm not a whisky drinker, and I can afford to wait. It is a nice thing to know one has such good stuff in one cellar. One rainy afternoon, in this last week of May, Mr. Jeb returned from his daily round amongst outlying homesteads and distant villages, soaked to the skin, and with all the symptoms of influenza. He ordered a fire in the breakfast-room, and sat in his roomy armchair shivering, though wood and coals blazed merrily in the big basket-shaped grate. I'm chilled to the bone, he explained, and I don't think anything but a jorum of hot spirits and water will warm me. Do you know, Emmy, my love, I've a juice-good mind to try that whisky. Oh, why shouldn't you, dear? asked beautiful Mrs. Jeb. I'm sure I would, if I were you. Nobody has a better right to it. I'll ring for the kettle while you go to the cellar. Mr. Jeb hesitated, and pulled his whiskers thoughtfully. I had made up my mind to keep that whisky two years, and I haven't had it more than six months. It seems weak to break into the dozen. Not when it's a question of health, Shafto. I'm sure a good tumbler of strong toddy will cure that shivering of yours. Oh, it isn't the shivering only, said Jeb. I feel such a depression. I should be grateful to anybody who would blow my brains out. Oh, pray he kept the whisky, Shafto. It's dreadful to hear the father of a family talk so wildly, cried Mrs. Jeb, alarmed. Her husband only wanted to be persuaded. He sighed, snuffled a little, fells in his pocket for his key, and went to the cellar. There were no underground cellars at the homestead. The repository in which Shafto kept his wine was on a level with the dining room, kitchens, dairy, apple room, and various offices. This part of the old farmhouse was roomy enough for a retinue of servants. The cellar was low and narrow and dark, a kind of arched passage under a back staircase. Shafto had provided himself with a lighted candle as he came along, and he now penetrated the sacred vault. There was the neat wall of beer bottles with their necks pointing outwards, a fortification in front of the whisky. It was rather troublesome to have to disturb them before the proper time, but Mr. Jeb felt that nothing less than Toddy would subjugate an incipient influenza. He moved three or four of the bottles gingerly, and peered into the dusky recess behind. A blank, my lord. Where the red seals of the whisky bottle should have gladdened his eye, he beheld only darkness. He put in his hand, and felt only emptiness. Then with hands that were tremulous with horror he rapidly cleared out the range of beer bottles, and made himself master of the ruin behind. Seven of the twelve whisky bottles were gone, and yet no burglar had invaded the house, nor had the key of the cellar been out of Mr. Jeb's possession. He stood with the candle-stick in his hand, staring into empty space, utterly at a loss to account for the disappearance of his treasure. Had Mrs. Jeb a duplicate key to the cellar, and a secret craving for ardent spirits, oh no, he could not so foully wrong the partner of his struggles as to suspect her of such infamy. Was this American nurse a traitor? Your confidential servant, a superior person, is often a smooth deceiver. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 37 I Must Bide My Time Mr. Jeb put his hand into the cavity where the seven bottles of whisky had been, and groped among the sawdust and cobwebs, not with the hope of making any discovery, but in utter helplessness and bewilderment. Suddenly, as his hand explored the brickwork, a new and awful light flashed on his mind. Four or five of the bricks had been loosened and removed and put back again in their places, they yielded to his touch. He pulled them out one by one, and beheld a gap through which the robber could easily have put his hand and pulled out the bottles. The whole thing was clear. The theft had been but too easy. The cellar wall backed upon the stable yard, and anybody in that yard could have removed the bricks. It must have been a work of time, a work to be done under cover of night and darkness, for it had to be so neatly done as to escape the master's eye. Who could have done this but the characterless groom, the waif, whose soddened appearance had impressed Mr. Jeb in the first instance, but to whose vices he had been willingly blind when he found that the man suited his purpose. Mr. Jeb had not a doubt as to Tinker's guilt. He rushed out of the cellar locking the door hurriedly. Alas! what a veiled lock or bolt when his wall had been violated! He hurried by the back door to the stable yard, heedless of the rain which fell upon his uncovered head, and unearthed Tinker in his shed among the empty bottles, harness, and boots. The man smelt of whisky. Yes, the wretch reaped with the evidence of his crime. He had taken advantage of a wet afternoon to leave his harness uncleaned. He sat nodding over a newspaper with an empty mug beside him, and mug and man alike sent forth the odor of choicest glen livert. You villain! cried Shaftow. What have you done with those seven bottles of whisky? You thief! You undermining vagabond! You, you guy forks! Get out of my place! Be gone, or I'll give you in charge for burglary. By heavens, I'd do it, if I were not ashamed of my own folly in harboring such a scoundrel. Tinker at first denied his guilt. Then grew sullen, grumbled in oath or two, collected his few rags in a bundle, and walked out of the yard, Mr. Jebe escorting him. But on the threshold he stopped, snapped his fingers in the face of his late employer, and exclaimed, Do you think I want your beggily place? I can get a better in an hour if I ask for it. Soever I'd caught, he would take me. I'll warrant. He wouldn't dare to refuse, knowing what I know. The man was tolerably far gone in whisky, drunk enough to be reckless, sober enough to know what he was saying. Upon Shaftow Jeb's ear the man's speech fell unheeded. His brain was fired by his great wrong, and he could think of nothing else. Seven bottles of that splendid whisky, the gift of a friend who was not likely to be again so generous. And to think that this wretch, by loosening a few crumbling old red bricks, had been able to get at the very spot in which Mr. Jebe had so carefully bestowed the choicest treasure of his cellar. The thing was fiendish. Get out of the place, he roared, or I'll kick you out. Not without my week's wages, said the man. You may whistle for your wages. You've had seven bottles of my choicest whisky, and heaven knows what besides. Get out, you house-breaking vampire! The man walked sulkily away, and turning to go back to his violated cellar in order to see how the brickwork could be most speedily made solid and secure, Mr. Jebe found himself face-to-face with Jane Barnard. Oh, if you please, sir, my mistress sent me out with your coat and hat, and will you go in directly, she says, for fear of adding to your cold? Hang my cold, cried Shaftow savagely. I want a bricklayer. A bricklayer, sir? Yes, woman, a bricklayer, to wall up a cellar. Run down the village and tell dubs the builder to send me his man directly, with a few new bricks and a hod of mortar. Mrs. Barnard did not wait to be bitten twice. There was a fine, drizzling rain falling, and she had no covering on her neat, sleek head, except the little muslin cap, which was her badge of servitude. But she ran out of the yard as fast as her active feet could carry her, and, once outside, stopped and looked about her. There stood the dismissed drudge, leaning against the palings of a cottage garden, a little way down the road, despondently contemplative of a litter of black pigs, which were walking up and down the prostrate form of their female parent, as coolly as if she had been a grassy hillside. Mrs. Barnard had to pass the man on her way to the builders, and even if Mr. Jerb had been watching her, which he was not, it would scarcely have seemed strange that she should linger for half a minute to speak to him. I want a few minutes' talk with you, she said. It will be for your advantage. Meet me at nine o'clock tonight in the lane behind the homestead. You don't mean no harm again, poor old tinker. What harm should I mean? Haven't I always been kind to you? You have, whimpered the maudlin wretch, exhaling whiskey. You're the right sort, and I'll trust you. Nine o'clock? I'll be there. I'll take a nap in old Hazel's haystack between wiles. Farmer Hazel's rickyard was close to the surgeon's untidy kitchen garden, the homestead having once been the dwelling-house attached to Farmer Hazel's land. Tinker seemed in earnest, and Mrs. Barnard was feigned to believe him, and to go on with her day's work, waiting anxiously for nine o'clock, by which hour the children would be in bed, and the nurse might count upon a brief interval of freedom. The rain had ceased after dark, and when Mrs. Barnard went out to keep her appointment, the sky had cleared, and a few stars were shining through the grey. She told the cook she was going up the village to get some darning cotton at the shop, knowing that as in a general way half an hour's gossip accompanied the smallest transaction at that compendious repository, she might be out for some time without exciting wonder by her absence. She went down the narrow cinder path between the gooseberry and current bushes, and rank overgrown onions, and let herself out by a little gate at the bottom of the garden, which opened into a narrow lane between the homestead and Farmer Hazel's rickyard. A little way down this lane stood the broad five-barred gate leading into the rickyard, and on the top rail sat a slouching figure, which Mrs. Barnard knew must be that of the dismissed groom. He had slept off his intoxication, and was now in a somewhat morose and depressed condition, the outlook before him being far from hopeful. Well, Mrs. Nurse, he grumbled, as Jane Barnard approached him. Here I am, a dancing attendance upon your ladyship's pleasure, and yet I don't suppose you'll give me the price of a night's lodging. Oh, there you are mistaken, said Jane cheerfully. I'm not quite so hard-hearted as you think. I'm a poor working woman, but as far as half a sovereign goes. Half a quid, cried Tinker. Oh, you're a douchess. Make it a whole one, and I'll say you're a regular trump. If you'll tell me what I want to know, speaking the truth fully and frankly, I'll give you a sovereign for your trouble, and I'd do so even if it were the last coin I had in the world. When you were leaving the yard this afternoon, you spoke of Sir Everett Courtney. You spoke as if you knew something—something of his past history which he would not like everybody to know. The man was still seated on the gate, his shrunken figure bent nearly double, a short clay pipe in the corner of his mouth, from which he slowly sent forth a puff of rank tobacco now and then. Mrs. Barnard stood close to him, holding the gate, speaking in a low, earnest voice. The wind had risen since the rain had ceased, and the tall poplars in the hedgerow were rustling and creaking with a monotonous ebb and flow of sound, which prevented Mrs. Barnard or her companion hearing another sound near at hand, the fall of a stealthy footstep on the other side of the tangled blackberry hedge which screened Mr. Jeb's kitchen garden from the vulgar gaze. The footsteps travelled slowly along the weedy path inside the hedge, and came to a dead stop, just opposite the gate on which Tinker had perched himself. I'm not going to tell you what I know about him, said Tinker in a sullen tone. A quid indeed! I should want forty quids. Do you suppose I couldn't turn my knowledge to better account with the baronite himself? I'm sure you couldn't. Huh, why? Because if you'd been able to make money out of him in all these years, you'd have done it. What do you mean by all these years, as Tinker, in tones of increasing surliness? I mean that whatever knowledge you have about Sir Everett Courtney is knowledge that came to you twenty years ago last October. The man flinched and looked at the speaker sharply from under his shaggy brows, and that if you could have traded upon it in the meanwhile, you would have traded upon it. You're not the man to neglect a chance of that kind. Tinker gave an inward chuckle. You're about right, he said. I should have screwed him uncommon tight, if it hadn't been in his power to screw me. Oh, but I'll screw him yet proud devil. I've got so low down that I'm pretty nigh as reckless as that man Vargas. And though I won't go so far as to put my neck in a noose, I might risk being a lifer if I could put a rope round that stiff neck of his. Do it! cried Jane Barnard tremulous with excitement and clutching the man's bony wrist with her nervous hand. Do it! I'll help you. Shall I tell you who I am? Yes, I will. And then perhaps you'll trust me and help me. I'm Humphrey Vargas' daughter. I want to prove that it was not he who murdered Mr. Blake. I want to clear his name of that crime if I can, for the sake of my children, or else when they grow up to be men and women and are working their way honestly in the world, to the front rank, perhaps, for they live in a free country where there's nothing to keep them back, people will be able to bring it up against them that their grandfather was a murderer. I want to find the real murderer. I know who he is, and you know, and I believe Mr. Jeb knows, but it's only I that would risk my life to prove it. Humph! uttered the vagabond looking at her curiously, as if such intensity of purpose were inexplicable to his jaded soul. You're a Roman. Supposing I could help you to bring the murder home to the right party. Supposing it should suit my temper to stand up in a witness box and tell what I know. What would you give me for the risk I ran? My husband is in a small way of business, working hard for every dollar he earns, but if your evidence can clear my father's name of the stain of murder, I will give you a hundred pounds. Oh! how can I be sure of the money? Your husband's in America. When I've done what you want, I may whistle for my reward. What security can you give me? Jane Barnard was silent. This question, which seemed a natural one for the man to ask, was a difficult one for her to answer. What security could she offer, a stranger in that land? She could think of only one person who would be likely to help her in this matter, and that was Morton Blake. But even of his help she could not be certain, for here to fore he had been deaf to her pleading. Yet could she but offer him evidence of her father's innocence, he could hardly refuse to help her. Might he not be more ready to do so now that the tie between him and Miss Courtney was broken? If Mr Blake were willing to be my security, said Jane Barnard, would you believe me then? I believe him, grumbled the man. He's good for a hundred pounds. You bring him to me at any place appointed and let him give his word to pay me a cool hundred the day I give my evidence against Sir Everett Courtney. And I don't mind risking the witness box, for it is a risk to me. Those things might be brought up again me by people with plaguey long memories. But if I once get clean out of the court and my hundred down, I'd soon be clean out of the country. And I should like to have a shy at Sir Everett before I kick the bucket. He was a trifle too high-handed with me twenty years ago, and I was a fool to take things as quietly as I did. I'll try to see Morton Blake tomorrow, said Mrs Barnard. And if your evidence is really worth having? Worth having? cried Tinker, who by recalling past injuries which had rankled in his mind for years had worked himself into a feverish condition. Why, my evidence can prove that on the night of the murder Sir Everett Courtney, a gentleman that was always regular and orderly in his habits, always one of the earliest to come home from the hunt, never being more than a half-hearted sportsman, he didn't get home till nine o'clock, and they'd killed their fox not six miles from Osthop at five, mind you, and rode into the stable yard all over mud, with his horse dead beaten dead lame, and cut about as I have never seen any horse of his cut since I'd been second groom at Fairview. Oh, said Mrs Barnard, then you were in his service at the time. Of course I was, answered Tinker. How should I have known anything about it if I wasn't? I was in the yard when he came in, waiting to take his horse, for the head groom had ridden off to Highclear to get another doctor for my lady, who was lying dangerously ill. He was as pale as a ghost, and he just got off his horse and chucked the bridle to me, and walked indoors without a word. I noticed that he'd lost one of his spurs, but I didn't think much about that. It was his looks and the horse's condition that took my attention. There's bad news for you indoors, says I to myself, and you look bad enough already, just as if you knew what was coming. It was about an hour after when the groom came back, driving the Highclear doctor in Sir Everett's dog cart. They'd passed the place where Mr Blake had been found, and had heard all about the murder. Did not the head groom, or anyone else in the house, make any remark about Sir Everett's being out so unusually late? That's Mrs Barnard. I don't know that anybody did. You see, the whole house was upset about my lady. She was lying at death's door, poor thing, and nobody could think of anything or anybody else. Before the clock struck twelve, she was dead, and Oz thought Belle, that had been tolling for Mr Blake, began to toll for her. That night was a fine harvest for the sexton. Did you see Sir Everett next day? asked Mrs Barnard. No, he was shut up in the room with his dead wife. They say he hardly left her till her coffin was carried out with the house. Early next morning, pretty nigh as soon as it was light, I was at the place where the murder was done. I knew the spot by what Jake the groom had told me, close against the Pollard Oak, and there were the footprints of the men who had carried away the body, and the grass all trampled and beaten where the corpse had been dragged out with a ditch. I don't know what made me grope about and examine the place, for there wasn't much to see. Idle curiosity, I suppose, but the more I young about the spot, the muddy ditch and the broken edge above it, and the bank with the footprints of a horse sharpened off by a light morning frost, the more I asked Sir Everett and his white face and his hunter all over muck and mire in my mind, I couldn't give over puzzling myself why he should have been out so late on that particular night, and why he should have come home in such a state. Him as was one of the neatest of riders, and used to bring his horse home as fresh as paint. I stood loitering about like, smoking my morning pipe, and looking at the place, when all at once I spied something glittering in the thick brambly edge, just below the ragged gap that showed where a horse had been over it. What could it be? Some of the plunder which the murderer had pitched there in his haste to be off? A pencil case or a silver whistle, I thought. Nothing much of the fellow would have knobbled it. Well, I sprang across the ditch and scrambled up the bank, and parted the brambles, and there I found a spur stuck fast, with one of the straps and buckles hanging to it, just as it had been torn off as the horse broke through the edge. It was a tough black-thorn branch that had done it. I knew the spur for Sir Everett's by the make of it, and I should have known it for years anywhere, even if I hadn't noticed the missing spur as he walked across the yard overnight. I put it into my pocket, and jumped back into the road, just as the police constable and his pal came up to search the place. Oh, but I didn't say a word to either of them as to what I'd found. Oh, pretty clear where you was last night, Sir Everett, and what you was doing, says I to myself. You gentle folks give way to your evil passions just as often as the poorest of us, though all the catechism books teach us different. Did you tell anyone what you'd found? Asked Jane Barnard. No. I kept turning the old business over in my mind, for I wanted to find the way as I could best make my own account of it. If I was to up-and-tell everything at the inquest, what should I be the better off for my evidence? Not a mag. I might put a rope round Sir Everett's neck, but that wouldn't put a coat on my back or give me a dinner. My lay was to keep dark and get all I could out of Sir Everett. I've got you under my thumb, I said to myself, and I'll make you pay the piper. And I'll make him pay yet, he added with a savage chuckle, though the reckoning has been put off above twenty years. How was it you failed to make him pay for your silence then? Asked Mrs Barnard. Never you mind. That's my business. Perhaps I didn't manage the affair as well as I might have done. Perhaps I carried things a trifle too high, and was too cock-sure of his knocking under and bleeding freely. Anyhow, he rounded upon me, and instead of having him in my power, I found it was me that was under his thumb. And instead of getting a handsome price for my secret, I got kicked out like a dog, and had to choose between cutting my lucky or getting into quad. There'd been a trifle of picking and stealing in the stables, you see. And I was in it as well as the rest, or perhaps I was in a little deeper than the rest, and the upshot was that I found myself without a place and without a character, and with my gentleman's odd spur for my only portable property. Well, I was a careless roving kind of dog in those days, and I didn't much mind where I went as long as I had snug quarters and good grub, so I didn't feel getting the sack, and I thought I'd bide my time. I went into Leicestershire and got a berth in a hunting stable, for when a man can handle a horse as I could in those days, and is a smartest chap to look at into the bargain, character don't go for much. I told Lord Bullfinch's stud groom as I'd had a row in my master, and I got kicked out for cheeking him, and I was took on without another question. And for the next ten years my life was pleasant enough or was falling on my feet somehow. But I never was the kind of chap to save money, and by and by things began to go dead again me, and then it was all downhill, never no change in my luck except from bad to worse, till the day your governor found me hanging about the yard of the peacock, glad to earn a few pence for a night's shelter or a mouthful of spirits to keep the rheumatics out of my wretched old bones. And in all the days of your poverty did you never appeal to Sir Everett? Oh, didn't I just? I wrote to him when I was hard up, pitching it very humble, you know, and saying that though I knew facts connected with Mr. Blake's death as might be inconvenient for him to have bandied about, I was the last of men to make use of my knowledge, but that I was in an awful fix for a ten-pound note and must get it some ways or other. Oh, at first he was civil and used to send me the money, but without a word, just as you'd throw a dog a bone. Then one day there comes a letter from his valet to say that Sir Everett, having been lately imposed upon by various begging letter writers, had made up his mind to take no further notice of any such appeals, and that if I wrote again he would place the matter in the hands of the police. Ruff upon me, won't it? Well, I didn't write again, but I contrived one day to wailay my gentleman just as he was leaving the town hall at Eye Clear after a magistrate's meeting. He looked uncommon proud and uncommon handsome as he came out of the hall, with his figure well set up and his head held Eye, swinging a heavy cane hunting crop as he walked along. He'd left his horse at the Peacock, and it was in the narrow lane that leads from the town hall to the marketplace—a shortcut, don't you know, that I accosted him. I'd followed him into the lane, and it seemed a nice retired spot for me to say what I had to say. Well, there's no need to go into our conversation. Instead of giving me a civil answer, he turned upon me like a devil, clutched me by the collar, and get me into the angle of a wall where I had no more power to fight him than if I'd been a baby. He'd belabored me with his un-ink-rop till there was hardly enough life in me to shriek murder. He threatened that if ever I dared to address him again, he'd beat me in the same way. He laughed at what he called my impudent pretense of knowing something that my injury him if it were known to all the world. Oh, of course, there was no policeman on the scene till my gentleman had gone, and there was I, with every bone aching to get my revenge as best I might. Take out a summons against him for assault and battery, says the constable. Yes, but where's the witness to prove my case, says I. What would have been the good of my taking my poor old bones before a magistrate to swear the peace against such a fine gentleman as there ever had Courtney? No, my man, says I. It's a case of grin and bear it. I must bide my time. The church-clock chimed the half-hour. I must get back to the house, said Mrs Barnard. There's the tray to be taken into the parlour for Mr Jeb's grog. It was the surgeon's custom to comfort himself before going to bed, with the light refreshment of a glass of gin and water and a biscuit or two. Jane Barnard brought out a well-worn leather purse from which she extracted some silver. Here are five shillings, she said. Get yourself a supper and a bed at the sugar loaves, and meet me at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon on Tangley Common, just in front of the Manor House gates. I shall have seen Mr Blake most likely by that time, and shall know what is the best way of going to work. The man turned the shillings over in his palm with a dissatisfied air. You said you was going to stand a quid, he muttered. Five barba ain't much after waiting your convenience all these blessed hours. It's more than enough to get you a supper, a bed and a breakfast, answered Jane firmly, if you don't waste any of it on drink. If I were to give you more, you'd go muddling your brains with spirits, and I want you to have all your wits about you tomorrow. Remember, I mean to carry this business through. So do I, answered the man, but I must be paid for my trouble. I shall expect a pound or two from you tomorrow, mind. You shall have it. Good night. Good night, growl-tinker. Mrs Barnard ran back to the house, and began bustling about the kitchen, getting her tray ready. The kettle was boiling on the hob, ready for the evening potations. Well, if you haven't stopped gossiping above a bit, exclaimed the cook, looking up from a greasy copy of last week's News of the World, where she'd been spelling out a diabolical murder in Whitechapel. You must have found Mrs Simcox uncommon pleasant. What was you talking about? Oh, old times! answered Jane briefly. She carried the tray and tea kettle to the family sitting-room, but to her surprise, Mr Jeb, whom she had last seen ensconced in his armchair, with his feet on the fender and a cashmere shawl tied round his head, was no longer there. Has Master been sent for, ma'am? She asked of the patient wife, who sat at her panellope task of darning stockings which her active children trampled into holes as fast as she mended them. No, Jane, I didn't hear of anybody calling for him. He went into the surgery a little while ago to make up some medicine, and I dare say he's there now. Mrs Barnard opened the surgery door and peeped in. The oil lamp was burning low on the counter where Mr Jeb pounded his drugs and rolled out his pills, and the room was empty. He's not there, ma'am, said Jane. Oh, then I suppose somebody sent for him. I thought I heard the door shut half an hour ago, and now he will go increasing his cold, and he's so cross when he has one of those influenza colds. Do you see if his coat and hat are gone off the peg, Jane? Yes, ma'am, they're gone. I wonder who could have wanted him. He told me this afternoon he wouldn't budge for anybody. But the loss of that whiskey made him quite wild. I never saw him so put out since I can remember, and then he stood in the rain ever so long watching the bricklay amend the wall. I'm afraid he'll be ill. Mrs Barnard was too full of her own thoughts to be properly sympathetic. She stirred the fire, swept the hearth, set the tray in its proper place, keeping silence all the while. Then just as she was going to leave the room she said, Oh, if you please, ma'am, could you let me have a couple of hours to myself to-morrow? I want to go out for a little after the early dinner. Well, yes, Jane, I suppose I must spare you. End of Chapter 37 On the next day, after Jane's long conversation with Tinker, Morton Blake received the following brief note, just as he was beginning his breakfast. Humphrey Vargas' daughter, Mrs Barnard, who called upon Mr Blake a few days after her father's trial, will take the liberty of calling again today at half past two o'clock. She earnestly begs Mr Blake to receive her, as she has a communication of the utmost importance to make to him. This was a startling letter for Morton Blake. He had supposed until this moment that Mrs Barnard had gone quietly back to America soon after her father's fate had been decided, and here she was at his door, eager to make some mysterious communication, perhaps to goad him to that course of action which was always present to his mind, but from which he shrank with ever-increasing horror. Since his conversation with his aunt, his heart had inclined more to mercy than to vengeance. She had shown him the story of the past in a new light, his father the betrayer rather than the betrayed, his father's violent death a savage act of vengeance and not a cold blooded murder. Was it indeed thus that stern justice holding her in flexible scales between the murderer and the murdered would compel him to consider that crime which had smitten Walter Blake in the flower of his age, and left the son who so fondly loved him fatherless? His blood boiled within him when he remembered that cruel death, but when he thought of her husband's wrongs, a bosom friend betrayed, he could almost have pitted the assassin, and to strike her ever-out would be to crush Dulcy, to inflict a life long grief upon that tender loving heart, to poison the current of the fair young life, to blast every joy and every hope of the innocent soul. Could he do this? He, Morton Blake, who had so dearly loved her, who believed that he must go on loving her till the end of his days? No, his hand should not strike the blow, his lips should not utter the words which were to wither the life that was so precious to him. Whatever his duty to the dead might be, his duty to the living was even more sacred. He had seen the whole thing in a new and holier light, since he and Dora Blake had spoken together plainly. That long, weary illness, and the still more weary return to health, had given him ample leisure for self-communion, for thinking out the question of the future in its every aspect. Perhaps that awful consciousness of having been so near death had also exercised a softening influence upon his mind, and helped to bring about the change of feeling which had arisen since the October night when he paced the gardens at Fairview, thirsting for the blood of his father's murderer. My poor, sweet, loving, delci, he thought, full of tenderness for his lost love. Let me think how my father, the most chivalrous of men, would have me deal with you. Could he see our position and all its difficulties? Would he bid me avenge him at the price of your broken heart? Would he, whose one sin was to have loved your mother too dearly, have her daughter's life blighted? In such a mood as this, Morton Blake, look forward with the utmost distaste to his interview with Mrs Barnard. He decided upon receiving her and hearing all she had to say, but he was predetermined as to his own course. He had come of late to face the future with a settled purpose to make the best of her life out of which, as he believed, all gladness had gone for ever. He saw no possibility of happiness, no prospect of new ties. He had loved and done with love. He had outlived all passionate hopes, all tender dreams. But happily ambition, which he called the desire to be useful to his fellow men, was not dead in him. The embers of that manly fire had burned very low, but Elizabeth Hardman had fanned them into flame. Encouraged by her, he had taken up the theme of national education, which had always been near his heart. At first he had worked with a dull, stolid determination to plow through his subject, however faint his interest, however weary his soul. But very soon that earnest love of work, which was in his very nature, had asserted itself, and toil and study had again been made sweet to him. I think now that the dearest hopes of my life have been disappointed, I am just the right kind of man for the House of Commons, he told Lizzie Hardman. A machine capable of so many hours work every day, with no foolish longings for leisure or the sweet frivolities of domestic life. A man made of cast iron, and always in working order. And now, just when he had become wholly absorbed in public work, and when the idea of the approaching contest at Blackford had put darker thoughts out of his mind, here was Jane Barnard, with all the painful associations that were inseparable from her name. She was shown into Morton's study, where he was sitting at his desk alone. He had been unable to go on with his work in nervous expectation of her coming, and had spent a comparatively idle morning, reading first newspapers and then books, in a disultory way which was the very reverse of his usual method. I did not like to refuse to see you, he said, rising to receive her and motioning her to a chair opposite his desk. Yet I would gladly have avoided an interview which can only result in pain to both of us. Please state as briefly as you can the facts which you wish me to know. I will not be longer than I can help, but I must tell you the story almost as it was told to me, and I must tell you the kind of man from whom I heard it. And then, deliberately and clearly, she described the surgeon's groom, his dismissal, and his departing boast about Sir Everard. She told Morton how her curiosity had been roused by this mention of Sir Everard's name, she already believing him to be the murderer, and how she had met the man later and got from him the whole story of his suspicions. She grew more energetic as she proceeded with her statement. Her eyes fired, her cheek glowed with suppressed passion. She expected to find a responsive warmth in Morton Blake, but to her surprise and mortification she found him cold as ice. Do you believe this story? he asked. Why should I not? It agrees with my own suspicions. I've never forgotten what I was told by a person who was present at my father's trial. He described the council's cross-examination of Sir Everard and how he looked when those questions were asked. This story of the lost spur tallied curiously with Shaft O'Jab's assertion that the man who killed Walter Blake was on horseback and had jumped the hedge after the murder, but in spite of this correspondence between the two stories, Morton affected to laugh the groom's statement to scorn. Who is to believe a drunkard and a thief against a gentleman of Sir Everard's position, if the fellow had been an honest man he would have come forward at the inquest and told his story. The man's character is bad enough, but that cannot alter the fact. I believe he has told the truth and he is prepared to make his statement before magistrate if Mrs Barnard hesitated a little, feeling that she was about to weaken her case, if he is paid for his trouble. Oh yes, of course, the fellow has trumped up this story in order to trade upon it. He knew who you were, knew that you were inclined to suspect Sir Everard, and he's invented this story to get money out of you. I wonder you could be so easily gull'd. Oh, you're mistaken, Mr Blake. He did not know who I was until he had hinted at the knowledge of Sir Everard's secret. I told him my name then, to convince him that I was in earnest. But you can help me if you like. You must help me. This time I will take no denial. It's your duty as your father's son to sift this story. I want you to see and hear this man. And judge for yourself. How and when am I to do that? asked Morton reluctantly. He was horrified at this new revelation, worthless as he effected to consider it. Now, immediately, yes, said Mrs Barnard, glancing at the clock on the chimney-piece. It is five minutes to three, and I told him to meet me on the common in front of your gates at three o'clock. Will you come with me and meet him? Morton took up his hat and went out with her through a French window opening into the garden. They went across the lawn and out at a wicket gate. There lay the common before them, a wide, breezy expanse, with nothing higher than a fursbush to obscure the view. There were some cows feeding, jingling their bells as they moved slowly over the short turf. There were some village children in the distance playing on the edge of a gravel pit. But of Tinker, the groom. There was no trace. Oh, you won't mind waiting a few minutes, will you, Mr Blake? Jane Barnard asked piteously. I don't mind waiting an hour. Having one's consented to see the fellow, I'm prepared for anything. But it looks very much as if he were not coming. Mrs Barnard made no answer. She looked across the open landscape where there was no sign of any approaching figure which even delusive hope might mistake for Tinker. Could he mean to play her false? Or surely not, when he had so much to gain by aiding her projects. Rigid punctuality was hardly to be expected from a man of his class and provided with any timekeeper in the shape of a watch. Morton walked slowly up and down the turf in front of the sunk fence which divided the manor house grounds from the common. He walked to and fro, busy with his own thoughts and taking very little notice of Jane Barnard who sat on a hillock watching the road that led from Osthorpe to the gates of Tangley Manor. In this silent way, each full of care and thought, they waited for an hour. Four o'clock, said Morton, looking at his watch. I think I've given your witness a fair chance. You have evidently been fooled by a rogue who played upon your feelings. I am sorry for you because I believe you are honest in your assertion of your father's innocence. But I can do nothing to help you, and I must beg that you will not make any further appeal to me. You would only worry me without doing yourself any good. He must have been bribed to keep away, exclaimed Mrs. Barnard, almost frantic with disappointment and mortification. He must have gone to Sir Everard after he left me last night and sold his evidence to a higher bidder. Yet after what he told me of Sir Everard's treatment of him, that seems incredible. One thing is very clear, said Morton. He has cheated you. Good morning. He turned on his heel and left her to go back to Osthorp, cruelly disappointed. She had believed herself on the threshold of success, and now she seemed as far away from her end as ever, and she began to think that she must once more resign herself to the knowledge that she had failed in her mission, and go quietly home again by the ship in which she had intended to sail, until last night's revelation had altered all her ideas.