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Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

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Title: Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

Author: Mrs. Henry Wood


        
Release date: October 5, 2012 [eBook #40940]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNNY LUDLOW, FOURTH SERIES ***

  JOHNNY LUDLOW




  [Illustration]




  JOHNNY LUDLOW

  By
  MRS. HENRY WOOD

  AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE," "THE CHANNINGS," ETC.

  _FOURTH SERIES_

  TWENTIETH THOUSAND

  +London+
  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1901




    "God sent his Singers upon earth
    With songs of sadness and of mirth,
    That they might touch the hearts of men,
    And bring them back to heaven again."
                                  LONGFELLOW.




CONTENTS.


                              PAGE
  A MYSTERY                      1

  SANDSTONE TORR                61

  CHANDLER AND CHANDLER        145

  VERENA FONTAINE'S REBELLION  190

  A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE         293

  ROGER BEVERE                 313

  KETIRA THE GIPSY             368

  THE CURATE OF ST. MATTHEW'S  408

  MRS. CRAMP'S TENANT          449




JOHNNY LUDLOW.




A MYSTERY.


I.

"Look here, Johnny Ludlow," said Darbyshire to me--Darbyshire being, as
you may chance to remember, our doctor at Timberdale--"you seem good
at telling of unaccountable disappearances: why don't you tell of that
disappearance which took place here?"

I had chanced to look in upon him one evening when he was taking rest in
his chimney-corner, in the old red-cushioned chair, after his day's work
was over, smoking his churchwarden pipe in his slippers and reading the
story of "Dorothy Grape."

"We should like to see that disappearance on paper," went on Darbyshire.
"It is the most curious thing that has happened in my experience."

True enough it was. Too curious for any sort of daylight to be seen
through it; as you will acknowledge when you hear its details; and far
more complicated than the other story.

The lawyer at Timberdale, John Delorane, was a warm-hearted and
warm-tempered man of Irish extraction. He had an extensive practice, and
lived in an old-fashioned, handsome red-brick house in the heart of
Timberdale, with his only daughter and his sister, Hester.

You may have seen prettier girls than Ellin Delorane, but never one
that the heart so quickly went out to. She was too much like her dead
mother; had the same look of fragile delicacy, the same sweet face with
its pensive sadness, the soft brown eyes and the lovely complexion. Mrs.
Delorane had died of decline: people would say to one another, in
confidence, they hoped Ellin might escape it.

The largest and best farm in the neighbourhood of Timberdale, larger
than even that of the Ashtons, was called the Dower Farm. It belonged
to Sir Robert Tenby, and had been occupied for many years by one Roger
Brook, a genial, pleasant gentleman of large private means apart from
his success in farming. Rich though he was, he did not disdain to see
practically after his work himself; was up with the lark and out with
his men, as a good farmer ought to be. Out-of-doors he was the keen,
active, thorough farmer; indoors he lived as a gentleman. He had four
children: three boys and one girl, who were all well and comprehensively
educated.

But he intended his sons to work as he had worked: no idleness for him;
no leading of indolent and self-indulgent lives. "Choose what calling
you please," he said to them; "but stick to it when chosen, and do your
very best in it." The eldest son, Charles, had no fancy for farming,
no particular head for any of the learned professions; he preferred
commerce. An uncle, Matthew Brook, was the head of a mercantile house in
New York; he offered a post in it to Charles, who went out to him. The
second son, Reginald, chose the medical profession; after qualifying
for it, he became assistant to a doctor in London to gain experience.
William, the third son, went to Oxford. He thought of the Church, but
being conscientious, would not decide upon it hastily.

"So that not one of you will be with me," remarked Mr. Brook. "Well, be
it so. I only want you to lead good and useful lives, striving to do
your duty to God and to man."

But one of those overwhelming misfortunes, that I'm sure may be compared
with the falling of an avalanche, fell on Mr. Brook. In an evil hour
he had become a shareholder in a stupendous undertaking which had
banking for its staple basis; and the thing failed. People talked of
"swindling." Its managers ran away; its books and money were nowhere;
its shareholders were ruined. Some of the shareholders ran away too;
Roger Brook, upright and honourable, remained to face the ruin. And
utter ruin it was, for the company was one of unlimited liability.

The shock was too much for him: he died under it. Every shilling he
possessed was gone; harpies (it is what Timberdale called them) came
down upon his furniture and effects, and swept them away. In less time
almost than it takes to tell of, not a vestige remained of what had
been, save in memory: Sir Robert Tenby had another tenant at the Dower
Farm, and Mrs. Brook had moved into a little cottage-villa not a stone's
throw from Darbyshire's. She had about two hundred a-year of her own,
which no adverse law could touch. Her daughter, Minnie, remained with
her. You will hardly believe it, but they had named her by the romantic
name of Araminta.

William Brook had come down from Oxford just before, his mind made up
_not_ to be a clergyman, but to remain on the farm with his father. When
the misfortunes fell, he was, of course, thrown out; and what to turn
his hand to he did not at once know. Brought up to neither profession
nor trade, no, nor to farming, it was just a dilemma. At present, he
stayed with his mother.

One day he presented himself to Mr. Delorane. "Can you give me some
copying to do, sir?" he asked: "either at your office here, or at home.
I write a good clear hand."

"What do you mean to do, Master William?" returned the lawyer, passing
over the question. The two families had always been intimate and much
together.

"I don't know what; I am waiting to see," said William. He was a slender
young fellow of middle height, with gentle manners, a very nice, refined
face, and a pair of honest, cheery, dark-blue eyes.

"Waiting for something to turn up, like our old friend Micawber!" said
the lawyer.

"If I could earn only a pound a-week while I am looking out, I should
not feel myself so much of a burden on my mother--though she will not
hear me say a word about that," the young man went on. "You would not
take me on as clerk and give me that sum, would you, Mr. Delorane?"

Well, they talked further; and the upshot was, that Mr. Delorane did
take him on. William Brook went into the office as a clerk, and was paid
a pound a-week.

The parish wondered a little, making sundry comments over this at its
tea-tables: for the good old custom of going out to real tea was not out
of fashion yet in Timberdale. Every one agreed that William Brook was to
be commended for putting his shoulder to the wheel, but that it was a
grave descent for one brought up to his expectations. Mr. St. George
objected to it on another score.

Years before, there had arrived in England from the West Indies a little
gentleman, named Alfred St. George. His father, a planter, had recently
died, and the boy's relatives had sent him home to be educated, together
with plenty of money for that purpose. Later, when of an age to leave
school, he was articled to Mr. Delorane, and proved an apt, keen pupil.
Next he went into the office of a renowned legal firm in London, became
a qualified lawyer and conveyancer, and finally accepted an offer made
him by Mr. Delorane, to return to Timberdale, as his chief and managing
clerk. Mr. Delorane paid him a handsome salary, and held out to him, as
report ran, hopes of a future partnership.

Alfred St. George had grown up a fine man; tall, strong, lithe and
active. People thought his face handsome, but it had unmistakably a
touch of the tar-brush. The features were large and well formed, the
lips full, and the purple-black hair might have been woolly but for
being drilled into order with oils. His complexion was a pale olive, his
black eyes were round, showing a great deal of the whites, and at times
they wore a very peculiar expression. Take him for all in all, he was a
handsome man, with a fluent tongue and persuasive eloquence.

It was Mr. St. George who spoke against William Brook's being taken on
as clerk. Not that his objection applied to the young man himself, but
to his probable capacity for work. "He will be of no use to us, sir,"
was the substance of his remonstrance to Mr. Delorane. "He has had no
experience: and one can hardly snub Brook as one would a common clerk."

"Don't suppose he will be of much use," carelessly acquiesced Mr.
Delorane, who was neither a stingy nor a covetous man. "What could I do
but take him on when he asked me to? I like the young fellow; always
did; and his poor father was my very good friend. You must make the best
of him, St. George: dare say he won't stay long with us." At which St.
George laughed good-naturedly and shrugged his shoulders.

But William Brook did prove to be of use. He got on so well, was so
punctual, so attentive, so intelligent, that fault could not be found
with him; and at the end of the first year Mr. Delorane voluntarily
doubled his pay--raising it to two pounds per week.

Timberdale wondered again: and began to ask how it was that young Brook,
highly educated, and reared to expect some position in the world, could
content himself with stopping on, a lawyer's clerk? Did he mean to
continue in the office for ever? Had he ceased to look out for that
desirable something that was to turn up? Was he parting with all
laudable ambition?

William Brook could have told them, had he dared, that it was not lack
of ambition chaining him to his post, but stress of love. He and Ellin
Delorane had entered a long while past into the mazes of that charming
dream, than which, as Tom Moore tells us, there's nothing half so sweet
in life, and the world was to them as the Garden of Eden.

It was close upon the end of the second year before Mr. Delorane found
it out. He went into a storm of rage and reproaches--chiefly showered
upon William Brook, partly upon Ellin, a little upon himself.

"I have been an old fool," he spluttered to his confidential clerk.
"Because the young people had been intimate in the days when the Brooks
were prosperous, I must needs let it go on still, and never suspect
danger! Why, the fellow has had his tea here twice a-week upon an
average!--and brought Ellin home at night when she has been at his
mother's!--and I--I--thought no more than if it had been her brother!
I could thrash myself! And where have her aunt Hester's eyes been, I
should like to know!"

"Very dishonourable of Brook," assented St. George, knitting his brow.
"Perhaps less harm is done than you fear, sir. They are both young, can
hardly know their own minds; they will grow out of it. Shall you part
them?"

"Do you suppose I shouldn't?" retorted the lawyer.

William Brook was discharged from the office: Ellin received orders to
give up his acquaintanceship; she was not to think of him in private or
speak to him in public. Thus a little time went on. Ellin's bright face
began to fade; Aunt Hester looked sick and sorry; the lawyer had never
felt so uncomfortable in his life.

Do what he would, he could not get out of his liking for William Brook,
and Ellin was dear to him as the apple of his eye. He had been in love
himself once, and knew what it meant; little as you would believe it of
a stout old red-faced lawyer; knew that both must be miserable. So much
the better for Brook--but what of Ellin?

"One would think it was you who had had your lover sent to the
right-about!" he wrathfully began to Aunt Hester, one morning when he
came upon her in tears as she sat at her sewing. "I'd hide my face if I
were you, unless I could show a better."

"It is that I am so sorry for Ellin, John," replied Aunt Hester, meekly
wiping her tears. "I--I am afraid that some people bear sorrow worse
than others."

"Now what do you mean by that?"

"Oh, not much," sighed Aunt Hester, not daring to allude to the dread
lying latent in her own mind--that Ellin might fade away like her
mother. "I can see what a sharp blow it has been to the child, John, and
so--and so I can but feel it myself."

"Sharp blow! Deuce take it all! What business had young Brook to get
talking to her about such rubbish as love?"

"Yes indeed, it is very unfortunate," said Aunt Hester. "But I do not
think he has talked to her, John; I imagine he is too honourable to have
said a single word. They have just gone on loving one another in secret
and in silence, content to live in the unspoken happiness that has
flooded their two hearts."

"Unspoken fiddlestick? What a simpleton you are, Hester!"

Mr. Delorane turned off in a temper. He knew it must have been a
"sharp blow" to Ellin, but he did not like to hear it so stated to his
face. Banging the door behind him, he was crossing the hall to the
office--which made a sort of wing to the house--when he met William
Brook.

"Will you allow me to speak to you, sir?" asked the young man in a tone
of deprecation. And, though the lawyer had the greatest mind in the
world to tell him NO and send him head-foremost out again, he thought of
Ellin, he thought of his dead friend, Roger Brook; so he gave a growl,
and led the way into the dining-room.

In his modest winning way, William Brook spoke a little of the trouble
that had come upon their family--how deeply sorry he was that Ellin and
he should have learnt to care for one another for all time, as it was
displeasing to Mr. Delorane----

"Hang it, man," interrupted the lawyer irascibly, too impatient to
listen further--"what on earth do you propose to yourself? Suppose I did
not look upon it with displeasure?--are you in a position to marry her?"

"You would not have objected to me had we been as we once
were--prosperous, and----"

"What the dickens has that to do with it!" roared the lawyer. "Our
business lies with the present, not the past."

"I came here to tell you, sir, that I am to leave for New York to-night.
My brother Charles has been writing to me about it for some time past.
He says I cannot fail to get on well in my uncle's house, and attain
to a good position. Uncle Matthew has no sons: he will do his best to
advance his nephews. What I wish to ask you, sir, is this--if, when my
means shall be good and my position assured, you will allow me to think
of Ellin?"

"The man's mad?" broke forth Mr. Delorane, more put about than he had
been at all. "Do you suppose I should let my only child go to live in a
country over the seas?"

"No, sir, I have thought of that. Charles thinks, if I show an aptitude
for business, they may make me their agent over here. Oh, Mr. Delorane,
be kind, be merciful: for Ellin's sake and for mine! Do not send me away
without hope!"

"Don't you think you possess a ready-made stock of impudence, William
Brook?"

The young man threw his earnest, dark-blue eyes into the lawyer's. "I
feared you would deem so, sir. But I am pleading for what is dearer to
me and to her than life: our lives will be of little value to us if we
must spend them apart. Only just one ray of possible hope, Mr. Delorane!
It is all I ask."

"Look here; we'll drop this," cried the lawyer, his hands in his
pockets, rattling away violently at the silver in them, his habit when
put out, but nevertheless calming down in temper, for in spite of
prejudice he did like the young man greatly, and he was not easy as to
Ellin. "The best thing you can do is to go where you are going--over the
Atlantic: and we'll leave the future to take care of itself. The money
you think to make may turn out all moonshine, you know. There; that's
every word I'll say and every hope I'll give, though you stop all day
bothering me, William Brook."

And perhaps it was as much as William Brook had expected: any way, it
did not absolutely forbid him to hope. He held out his hand timidly.

"Will you not shake hands with me, sir--I start to-night--and wish me
God speed."

"I'll wish you better sense; and--and I hope you'll get over safely,"
retorted Mr. Delorane: but he did not withhold his hand. "No
correspondence with Ellin, you understand, young man; no underhand
love-making."

"Yes, sir, I understand; and you may rely upon me."

He quitted the room as he spoke, to make his way out as he came--through
the office. The lawyer stood in the passage and looked after him: and a
thought, that had forced itself into his mind several times since this
trouble set in, crossed it again. Should he make the best of a bad
bargain: give Brook a chief place in his own office and let them set up
in some pleasant little home near at hand? Ellin had her mother's money:
and she would have a great deal more at his own death; quite enough to
allow her husband to live the idle life of a gentleman--and William was
a gentleman, and the nicest young fellow he knew. Should he? For a full
minute Mr. Delorane stood deliberating--yes, or no; then he took a hasty
step forward to call the young man back. Then, wavering and uncertain,
he stepped back again, and let the idea pass.

"Well, how have you sped?" asked Mr. St. George, as William Brook
reappeared in the office. "Any hope?"

"Yes, I think so," answered William. "At least, it is not absolutely
forbidden. There's a line in a poem my mother would repeat to us when we
were boys--'God and an honest heart will bear us through the roughest
day.' I trust He, and it, will so bear me and Ellin."

"Wish I had your chance, old fellow!"

"My chance!" repeated William.

"To go out to see the world; to go out to the countries where gold and
diamonds are picked up for the stooping--instead of being chained, as I
am, between four confined walls, condemned to spend my life over musty
parchments."

William smiled. "I don't know where you can pick up gold and diamonds
for the stooping. Not where I am going."

"No, not in New York. You should make your way to the Australian
gold-fields, Brook, or to the rich Californian mines, or to the diamond
mountains in Africa, and come back--as you would in no time--with a sack
of money on your shoulders, large enough to satisfy even Delorane."

"Or lose my health, if not my life, in digging, and come home without
a shirt to my back; a more common result than the other, I fancy,"
remarked William. "Well, good-bye, old friend."

St. George, towering aloft in his height and strength, put his
arm around William's shoulder and walked thus with him to the
street-entrance. There they shook hands, and parted. Ellin Delorane,
her face shaded behind the drawing-room curtain from the October sun,
watched the parting.

There was to be no set farewell allowed to her. She understood that.
But she gathered from Aunt Hester, during the day, that her father had
not been altogether obdurate, and that if William could get on in the
future, perhaps things might be suffered to come right. It brought to
her a strange comfort. So very slight a ray, no bigger than one of the
specks that fall from the sky, as children say, will serve to impart a
most unreasonable amount of hope to the troubled heart.

Towards the close of the afternoon, Ellin went in her restlessness to
pay a visit to her friend Grace at the Rectory, who had recently become
Herbert Tanerton's wife, and sat talking with her till it was pretty
late. The moon, rising over the tops of the trees, caused her to start
up with an exclamation.

"What will Aunt Hester say?"

"If you don't mind going through the churchyard, Ellin," said Grace,
"you would cut off that corner, and save a little time." So Ellin took
that route.

"Ellin!"

"William!"

They had met face to face under the church walls. He explained that he
was sparing a few minutes to say farewell to his friends at the Rectory.
The moon, coming out from behind a swiftly passing cloud, for it was
rather a rough night, shone down upon them and upon the graves around
them. Wildly enough beat the heart of each.

"You saw papa to-day," she whispered unevenly, as though her breath were
short.

"Yes, I saw him. I cannot say that he gave me hope, Ellin, but he
certainly did not wholly deny it. I think--I believe--that--if I can
succeed in getting on, all may be well with us yet."

William Brook spoke with hesitation. He felt trammelled; he could not
in honour say what he would have wished to say. This meeting might be
unorthodox, but it was purely accidental; neither he nor Ellin had
sought it.

"Good-bye, my darling," he said with emotion, clasping her hands in his.
"As we have met, there cannot be much wrong in our saying it. I may
not write to you, Ellin; I may not even ask you to think of me; I may
not, I suppose, tell you in so many words that I shall think of you;
but, believe this: I go out with one sole aim and end in view--that of
striving to make a position sufficiently fair to satisfy your father."

The tears were coursing down her cheeks; she could hardly speak for
agitation. Their hearts were aching to pain.

"I will be true to you always, William," she whispered. "I will wait for
you, though it be to the end of life."

To be in love with a charming young lady, and to have her all to
yourself in a solitary graveyard under the light of the moon, presents
an irresistible temptation for taking a kiss, especially if the kiss
is to be a farewell kiss for days and for years. William Brook did not
resist it; very likely did not try to. In spite of Mr. Delorane and
every one else, he took his farewell kiss from Ellin's lips.

Then they parted, he going one way, she the other. Only those of
us--there are not many--who have gone through this parting agony can
know how it wrings the heart.

But sundry superstitious gossips, hearing of this afterwards, assured
Ellin that it must be unlucky to say farewell amidst graves.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The time went on. William Brook wrote regularly to his people, and Minty
whispered the news to Ellin Delorane. He would send kind remembrances to
friends, love to those who cared for it. He did not dislike the work of
a mercantile life, and thought he should do well--in time.

In time. There was the rub, you see. We say "in time" when we mean next
Christmas, and we also say it when we mean next century. By the end of
the first year William Brook was commanding a handsome salary; but the
riches that might enable him to aspire to the hand of Miss Delorane
loomed obscurely in the distance yet. Ellin seemed strong and well, gay
and cheerful, went about Timberdale, and laughed and talked with the
world, just as though she had never had a lover, or was not waiting for
somebody over the water. Mr. Delorane thought she must have forgotten
that scapegrace, and he hoped it was so.

It was about this time, the end of the first year, that a piece of good
luck fell to Mr. St. George. He came into a fortune. Some relative in
the West Indies died and left it to him. Timberdale put it down at a
thousand pounds a-year, so I suppose it might be about five hundred. It
was thought he might be for giving up his post at Mr. Delorane's to
be a gentleman at large. But he did nothing of the kind. He quitted
his lodgings over Salmon's shop, and went into a pretty house near
Timberdale Court, with a groom and old Betty Huntsman as housekeeper,
and set up a handsome gig and a grey horse. And that was all the change.

As the second year went on, Ellin Delorane began to droop a little. Aunt
Hester did not like it. One of the kindest friends Ellin had was Alfred
St. George. After the departure of young Brook, he had been so tender
with Ellin, so considerate, so indulgent to her sorrow, and so regretful
(like herself) of William's absence, that he had won her regard. "It
will be all right when he comes back, Ellin," he would whisper: "only be
patient."

But in this, the second year, Mr. St. George's tone changed. It may be
that he saw no hope of any happy return, and deemed that, for her own
sake, he ought to repress any hope left in her.

"There's no more chance of his returning with a fortune than there is of
my going up to the moon," he said to Tod confidentially one day when we
met him striding along near the Ravine.

"Don't suppose there is--in this short time," responded Tod.

"I'm afraid Ellin sees it, too: she seems to be losing her spirits.
Ah, Brook should have done as I advised him--gone a little farther and
dug in the gold-fields. He might have come back a Croesus then. As it
is--whew! I wouldn't give a copper sixpence for his chance."

"Do you know what I heard say, St. George?--that you'd like to go in for
the little lady yourself."

The white eye-balls surrounding St. George's dark orbs took a tinge of
yellow as they rolled on Tod. "Who said it?" he asked quietly.

"Darbyshire. He says you are in love with her as much as ever Brook
was."

St. George laughed. "Old Darbyshire? Well, perhaps he is not far wrong.
Any way, love's free, I believe. Were I her father, Brook should prove
his eligibility to propose for her, or else give her up. Good-day,
Todhetley; good-day, Johnny."

St. George went off at a quick pace. Tod, looking after him, made his
comments. "Should not wonder but he wins her. He is the better man of
the two----"

"The better man!" I interrupted.

"As to means, at any rate: and see what a fine upright free-limbed
fellow he is! And where will you find one more agreeable?"

"In tongue, nowhere; I admit that. But I wouldn't give up William Brook
for him, were I Ellin Delorane."

That St. George was in love with her grew as easy to be seen as is the
round moon in harvest. Small blame to him. Who could be in the daily
companionship of a sweet girl like Ellin Delorane, and not learn to love
her, I should like to know? Tod told St. George he wished he had his
chance.

At last St. George spoke to her. It was in April, eighteen months after
Brook's departure. Ellin was in the garden at sunset, busy with the
budding flowers, when St. George came to join her, as he sometimes did,
on leaving the office for the day. Aunt Hester sat sewing at the open
glass-doors of the window.

"I have been gardening till I am tired," was Ellin's greeting to him, as
she sat down on a bench near the sweetbriar bush.

"You look pale," said Mr. St. George. "You often do look pale now,
Ellin: do you think you can be quite well?"

"Pray don't let Aunt Hester overhear you," returned Ellin in covert,
jesting tones. "She begins to have fancies, she says, that I am not as
well as I ought to be, and threatens to call in Mr. Darbyshire."

"You need some one to take care of you; some one near and dear to you,
who would study your every look and action, who would not suffer the
winds of heaven to blow upon your face too roughly," went on St. George,
plunging into Shakespeare. "Oh, Ellin, if you would suffer me to be that
one----"

Her face turned crimson; her lips parted with emotion; she rose up to
interrupt him in a sort of terror.

"Pray do not continue, Mr. St. George. If--if I understand you rightly,
that you--that you----"

"That I would be your loving husband, Ellin; that I would shelter you
from all ill until death us do part. Yes, it is nothing less than that."

"Then you must please never to speak of such a thing again; never to
think of it. Oh, do not let me find that I have been mistaking you all
this time," she added in uncontrollable agitation: "that while I have
ever welcomed you as my friend--and his--you have been swayed by another
motive!"

He did not like the agitation; he did not like the words; and he bit his
lips, striving for calmness.

"This is very hard, Ellin."

"Let us understand each other once for all," she said--"and oh, I
am so sorry that there's need to say it. What you have hinted at is
impossible. Impossible: please not to mistake me. You have been my very
kind friend, and I value you; and, if you will, we can go on still on
the same pleasant terms, caring for one another in friendship. There
can be nothing more."

"Tell me one thing," he said: "we had better, as you intimate,
understand each other fully. Can it be that your hopes are still fixed
upon William Brook?"

"Yes," she answered in a low tone, as she turned her face away. "I hope
he will come home yet, and that--that matters may be smoothed for us
with papa. Whilst that hope remains it is simply treason to talk to me
as you would have done," she concluded with a spurt of anger.

"Ellin," called out Aunt Hester, putting her head out beyond the
glass-doors, "the sun has set; you had better come in."

"One moment, Ellin," cried Mr. St. George, preventing her: "will you
forgive me?"

"Forgive and forget, too," smiled Ellin, her brow smoothing itself.
"But you must never recur to the subject again."

So Mr. St. George went home, his accounts settled--as Tod would have
said: and the days glided on.

                 *       *       *       *       *

"What is it that ails Ellin?"

It was a piping-hot morning in July, in one of the good old hot
summers that we seem never to get now; and Aunt Hester sat in her
parlour, its glass-doors open, adding up the last week's bills of the
butcher and the baker, when she was interrupted by this question from
her brother. He had come stalking upon her, rattling as usual, though
quite unconsciously, the silver in his trousers pockets. The trousers
were of nankeen: elderly gentlemen wore them in those days for
coolness.

"What ails her!" repeated Aunt Hester, dropping the bills in alarm.
"Why do you ask me, John?"

"Now, don't you think you should have been a Quaker?" retorted Mr.
Delorane. "I put a simple question to you, and you reply to it by asking
me another. Please to answer mine first. What is it that is the matter
with Ellin?"

Aunt Hester sighed. Of too timid a nature to put forth her own opinion
upon any subject gratuitously in her brother's house, she hardly liked
to give it even when asked for. For the past few weeks Ellin had been
almost palpably fading; was silent and dispirited, losing her bright
colour, growing thinner; might be heard catching her breath in one
of those sobbing sighs that betoken all too surely some secret,
ever-present sorrow. Aunt Hester had observed this; she now supposed
it had at length penetrated to the observation of her brother.

"Can't you speak?" he demanded.

"I don't know what to say, John. Ellin does not seem well, and looks
languid: of course this broiling weather is against us all. But----"

"But what?" cried the lawyer, as she paused. "As to broiling weather,
that's nothing new in July."

"Well, John--only you take me up so--and I'm sure I shouldn't like to
anger you. I was about to add that I think it is not so much illness
of body with Ellin as illness of mind. If one's mind is ransacked with
perpetual worry----"

"Racked with perpetual worry," interrupted Mr. Delorane, unconsciously
correcting her mistake. "What has she to worry her?"

"Dear me! I suppose it is about William Brook. He has been gone nearly
two years, John, and seems to be no nearer coming home with a fortune
than he was when he left. I take it that this troubles the child: she
is losing hope."

Mr. Delorane, standing before the open window, his back to his sister,
turned the silver coins about in his pockets more vehemently than
before. "You say she is not ailing in body?"

"Not yet. She is never very strong, you know."

"Then there's no need to be uneasy."

"Well, John--not yet, perhaps. But should this state of despair, if I
don't use too strong a word, continue, it will tell in tune upon her
health, and might bring on--bring on----"

"Bring on what?" sharply asked the lawyer.

"I was thinking of her mother," said poor Aunt Hester, with as much
deprecation as though he had been the Great Mogul: "but I trust, John,
you won't be too angry with me for saying it."

Mr. Delorane did not say whether he was angry or not. He stood there,
fingering his sixpences and shillings, gazing apparently at the
grass-plat, in reality seeing nothing. He was recalling a past vision:
that of his delicate wife, dying of consumption before her time; he
seemed to see a future vision: that of his daughter, dying as she had
died.

"When it comes to dreams," timidly went on Aunt Hester, "I can't say I
like it. Not that I am one to put faith in the foolish signs old wives
talk of--that if you dream of seeing a snake, you've got an enemy; or,
if you seem to be in the midst of a lot of beautiful white flowers,
it's a token of somebody's death. I am not so silly as that, John. But
for some time past Ellin has dreamt perpetually of one theme--that of
being in trouble about William Brook. Night after night she seems to be
searching for him: he is lost, and she cannot tell how or where."

Had Aunt Hester suddenly begun to hold forth in the unknown tongue, it
could not have brought greater surprise to Mr. Delorane. He turned short
round to stare at her.

"Seeing what a wan and weary face the child has come down with of late,
I taxed her with not sleeping well," continued Aunt Hester, "and she
confessed to me that she was feeling a good bit troubled by her dreams.
She generally has them towards morning, and the theme is always the
same. The dreams vary, but the subject is alike in all--William Brook
is lost, and she is searching for him."

"Nonsense! Rubbish!" put in Mr. Delorane.

"Well, John, I dare say it is nonsense," conceded Aunt Hester meekly:
"but I confess I don't like dreams that come to you persistently night
after night and always upon one and the same subject. Why should they
come?--that's what I ask myself. Be sure, though, I make light of the
matter to Ellin, and tell her her digestion is out of order. Over and
over again, she says, they seem to have the clue to his hiding place,
but they never succeed in finding him. And--and I am afraid, John, that
the child, through this, has taken up the notion that she shall never
see him again."

Mr. Delorane, making some impatient remark about the absurdity of women
in general, turned round and stood looking into the garden as before.
Ellin's mind was getting unhinged with the long separation, she had
begun to regard it as hopeless, and hence these dreams that Brook was
"lost," he told himself, and with reason: and what was he to do?

How long he stood thus in perfect silence, no sound to be heard but
the everlasting jingling of the loose silver, Aunt Hester did not know;
pretty near an hour she thought. She wished he would go; she felt very
uncomfortable, as she always did feel when she vexed him--and here were
the bills waiting to be added up. At length he turned sharply, with the
air of one who has come to some decision, and returned to the office.

"I suppose I shall have to do it myself," he remarked to Mr. St. George.

"Do what, sir?"

"Send for that young fellow back, and let them set up in some little
homestead near me. I mean Brook."

"Brook!" stammered St. George.

"Here's Ellin beginning to fade and wither. It's all very well for her
aunt to talk about the heat! _I_ know. She is pining after him, and I
can't see her do it; so he must come home."

Of all the queer shades that can be displayed by the human countenance,
about the queerest appeared in that of Mr. St. George. It was not
purple, it was not green, it was not yellow; it was a mixture of all
three. He gazed at his chief and master as one gazes at a madman.

"Brook can come into the office again," continued Mr. Delorane. "I don't
like young men to be idle; leads 'em into temptation. We'll make him
head clerk here, next to you, and give him a couple of hundred a-year.
If--what's the matter?"

For the strange look on his manager's face had caught the eye of Mr.
Delorane. St. George drew three or four deep breaths.

"Have you thought of Miss Delorane, sir--of her interests--in planning
this?" he presently asked.

"Why, that's what I do think of; nothing else. You may be sure I
shouldn't think of it for the interest of Brook. All the same, I like
the young man, and always shall. The child is moping herself into a bad
way. Where shall I be if she should go into a decline like her mother?
No, no; she shall marry and have proper interests around her."

"She could do that without being sacrificed to Brook," returned St.
George in a low tone. "There are others, sir, of good and suitable
position, who would be thankful to take her--whose pride it would be
to cherish her and render every moment of her life happy."

"Oh, I know that; you are one of 'em," returned Mr. Delorane carelessly.
"It's what all you young sparks are ready to say of a pretty girl,
especially if she be rich as well. But don't you see, St. George, that
Ellin does not care for any of you. Her heart is fixed upon Brook, and
Brook it must be."

Of course this news came out to Timberdale. Some people blamed Mr.
Delorane, others praised him. Delorane must be turning childish in his
old age, said one; Delorane is doing a good and a wise thing, cried
another. Opinions vary in this world, you know, and ever will, as proved
to us in the fable of the old man and his ass.

But now--and it was a strange thing to happen the very next day Mr.
Delorane received a letter from William Brook, eight closely written
pages. Briefly, this was its substance. The uncle, Matthew Brook of New
York, was about to establish a house in London, in correspondence with
his own; he had offered the managership of it to William, with a small
share of profits, guaranteeing that the latter should not be less than
seven hundred a-year.

"And if you can only be induced to think this enough for us to begin
upon, sir, and will give me Ellin," wrote the young man, "I can but say
that I will strive to prove my gratitude in loving care for her; and I
trust you will not object to her living in London. I leave New York next
month, to be in England in September, landing at Liverpool, and I shall
make my way at once to Timberdale, hoping you will allow me to plead my
cause in person."

"No no, Master William, you won't carry my daughter off to London,"
commented Mr. Delorane aloud, when he had read the letter--not but that
it gratified him. "You must give up your post, young man, and settle
down by me here, if you are to have Ellin. I don't see, St. George, why
Brook should not make himself into a lawyer, legal and proper," added he
thoughtfully. "He is young enough--and he does not dislike the work. You
and he might be associated together after I am dead: 'Brook and St.
George.'"

Mr. St. George's face turned crusty: he did not like to hear his name
put next to Brook's. "I never feel too sure of my own future," he said
in reply. "Now that I am at my ease in the world, tempting visions come
often enough across me of travelling out to see it."

Mr. Delorane wrote a short, pithy note in answer to the appeal of
William Brook, telling him he might come and talk to him as soon as he
returned. "The young fellow may have left New York before it can reach
him," remarked the lawyer, as he put the letter in the post; "but if so,
it does not much matter."

So there was Timberdale, all cock-a-hoop at the prospect of seeing
William Brook again, and the wedding that was to follow. Sam Mullet,
the clerk, was for setting the bells to ring beforehand.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Some people think September the pleasantest month in the year, when the
heats of summer have passed and the frosts of winter have not come.
Never a finer September than we had that autumn at Timberdale; the skies
looked bright, the leaves of the trees were putting on their tints of
many colours, and the land was not yet quite shorn of its golden grain.

All the world was looking out for William Brook. He did not come.
Disappointment is the lot of man. Of woman also. When the third week
was dragging itself along in expectancy, a letter came to Mrs. Brook
from William. It was to say that his return home was somewhat delayed,
as he should have to take Jamaica en route, to transact some business
at Kingston for his uncle. He should then proceed direct from Kingston
by steamer to Liverpool, which place he hoped to reach before the
middle of October. "Tell all my friends this, that they may not wonder
at my delay," the letter concluded; but it contained no intimation
that he had received the answer written by Mr. Delorane.

A short postscript was yet added, in these words: "Alfred St. George
has, I know, some relatives living in, or near Kingston--planters, I
believe. Tell him I shall call upon them, if I can make time, to see
whether they have any commands for him."

Long before the middle of October, Ellin Delorane became obviously
restless. A sort of uneasy impatience seemed to have taken possession
of her: and without cause. One day, when we called at Mr. Delorane's
to take a message from home, Ellin was in the garden with her outdoor
things on, waiting to go out with her aunt.

"What a ridiculous goose you are!" began Tod. "I hear you have taken up
the notion that Sweet William has gone down in the Caribbean Sea."

"I'm sure I have not," said Ellin. "Aunt Hester must have told you that
fable when she was at Crabb Cot yesterday."

"Just so. She and the mater laid their gossiping caps together for the
best part of an hour--and all about the foolishness of Miss Ellin
Delorane."

"Why, you know, Ellin," I put in, "it is hardly the middle of October
yet."

"I tell myself that it is not," she answered gravely. "But, somehow,
Johnny, I don't--don't--expect--him."

"Now, what on earth do you mean?"

"I wish I knew what. All I can tell you is, that when his mother
received that letter from William last month, saying his return was
delayed, a sort of foreboding seized hold of me, an apprehension that
he would never come. I try to shake it off, but I cannot. Each day, as
the days come round, only serves to make it stronger."

"Don't you think a short visit to Droitwich would do you good, Ellin?"
cried Tod, which was our Worcestershire fashion of recommending people
to the lunatic asylum.

"Just listen to him, Johnny!" she exclaimed, with a laugh.

"Yes, 'just listen to him'--and just listen to yourself, Miss Ellin, and
see which talks the most sense," he retorted. "Have you got over those
dreams yet?"

Ellin turned her face to him quickly. "Who told you anything about that,
Aunt Hester?"

Tod nodded. "It's true, you know."

"Yes, it is true," she slowly said. "I have had those strange dreams for
some weeks now; I have them still."

"That William Brook is lost?"

"That he is lost, and that we are persistently searching for him.
Sometimes we are seeking for him in Timberdale, sometimes at
Worcester--in America, in France, in places that I have no knowledge
of. There always seems to be a sadness connected with it--a sort of
latent conviction that he will never be found."

"The dreams beget the dreams," said Tod, "and I should have thought you
had better sense. They will soon vanish, once Sweet William makes his
appearance: and mind, Miss Ellin, that you invite me to the wedding."

Ellin sighed--and smiled. And just then Aunt Hester appeared attired in
her crimson silk shawl with the fancy border, and the primrose feather
in her Leghorn bonnet.

A day or two went on, bringing no news of the traveller. On the
nineteenth of October--I shall never forget the date--Mr. and Mrs.
Todhetley and ourselves set off in the large open phaeton for a place
called Pigeon Green, to spend the day with some friends living there.
On this same morning, as it chanced, a very wintry one, Mr. St. George
started for Worcester in his gig, accompanied by Ellin Delorane. But
of this we knew nothing. He had business in the town; she was going to
spend a few days with Mary West, formerly Mary Coney.

Ellin was well wrapped up, and Mr. St. George, ever solicitous for her
comfort, kept the warm fur rug well about her during the journey: the
skies looked grey and threatening, the wind was high and bitterly cold.
Worcester reached, he drove straight through the town, left Ellin at
Mrs. West's door, in the Foregate Street, and then drove back to the
Hare and Hounds Inn to put up his horse and gig.


II.

I shall always say, always think, it was a curious thing we chanced to
go that day, of all days, to Pigeon Green. It is not chance that brings
about these strange coincidences.

    "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
    Rough-hew them how we will."

Pigeon Green, a small colony of a dozen houses, formed a triangle, as
may be said, with Timberdale and Evesham, being a few miles distant from
each. Old Mr. and Mrs. Beele, life-long friends of the Squire, lived
here. Their nephew had brought his newly-married wife from London to
show her to them, and we were all invited to dinner. As the Squire did
not care to be out in the dark, his sight not being what it used to be,
the dinner-hour was fixed for two o'clock. We started in the large open
phaeton, the Squire driving his favourite horses, Bob and Blister. It
was the nineteenth of October. Mrs. Todhetley complained of the cold
as we went along. The lovely weather of September had left us; early
winter seemed to be setting in with a vengeance. The easterly wind was
unusually high, and the skies were leaden.

On this same wintry morning Mr. St. George left Timberdale in his gig
for Worcester, accompanied by Ellin Delorane. St. George had business to
transact with Philip West, a lawyer, who was Mr. Delorane's agent in
Worcester. Philip West lived in the Foregate Street, his offices being
in the same house. Ellin was very intimate with his wife, formerly Mary
Coney, and was invited to spend a few days with her. It was Aunt Hester
who had urged the acceptance of this invitation: seeing that Ellin was
nervous at the non-arrival of her lover, William Brook, was peeping into
the newspapers for accounts of shipwrecks and other calamities at sea.
So they set off after breakfast, Ellin well wrapped up, in this stylish
gig of Mr. St. George's. There are gigs and gigs, you know, and I assure
you some gigs were yet fashionable vehicles in those days.

It was bitterly cold. St. George, remarking that they should have snow
as soon as the high wind would let it come down, urged his handsome
grey horse to a fleet pace, and they soon reached Worcester. He drove
straight to Foregate Street, which lay at the other end of the town, set
down Ellin, and then went back again to leave his horse and gig at the
Hare and Hounds in College Street, the inn at which he generally put up,
retracing his steps on foot to Mr. West's.

And now I must return to ourselves.

After a jolly dinner at two o'clock with the Beeles, and a jolly dessert
after it, including plenty of fresh filberts and walnuts, and upon
that a good cup of tea and some buttered toast, we began to think about
getting home. When the phaeton came round, the Squire remarked that
it was half-an-hour later than he had meant to start; upon which, old
Beele laid the fault of its looking late to the ungenial weather of the
evening.

We drove off. Dusk was approaching; the leaden skies looked dark and
sullen, the wind, unpleasantly high all day, had increased to nearly a
hurricane. It roared round our heads, it whistled wildly through the
trees and hedges, it shook the very ears of Bob and Blister; the few
flakes of snow or sleet beginning then to fall were whirled about in
the air like demons. It was an awful evening, no mistake about that;
and a very unusual one for the middle of October.

The Squire faced the storm as well as he could, his coat-collar turned
up, his cloth cap, kept for emergencies in a pocket of the carriage,
tied down well on his ears. Mrs. Todhetley tied a knitted grey shawl
right over her bonnet. We, in the back seat, had much ado to keep our
hats on: I sat right behind the Squire, Tod behind Mrs. Todhetley. It
was about the worst drive I remember. The wild wind, keen as a knife,
stung our faces, and seemed at times as if it would whirl us, carriage
and horses and all, in the air, as it was whirling the sleet and snow.

Tod stood up to speak to his father. "Shall I drive, sir?" he asked.
"Perhaps you would be more sheltered if you sat here behind."

Tod's driving in those days was regarded by the Squire with remarkable
disparagement, and Tod received only a sharp answer--which could not be
heard for the wind.

We got along somehow in the teeth of the storm. The route lay chiefly
through by-ways, solitary and unfrequented, not in the good, open
turnpike-roads. For about a mile, midway between Pigeon Green and
Timberdale, was an ultra dreary spot; dreary in itself and dreary in its
associations. It was called Dip Lane, possibly because the ground dipped
there so much that it lay in a hollow; overgrown dark elm-trees grew
thickly on each side of it, their branches nearly meeting overhead. In
the brightest summer's day the place was gloomy, so you may guess how it
looked now.

But the downward dip and the dark elm-trees did not constitute all the
dreariness of Dip Lane. Many years before, a murder had been committed
there. The Squire used to tell us of the commotion it caused, all the
gentlemen for miles and miles round bestirring themselves to search out
the murderers. He himself was a little fellow of five or six years old,
and could just remember what a talk it made. A wealthy farmer, belated,
riding through the lane from market one dark night, was attacked and
pulled from his horse. The assailants beat him to death, rifled his
pockets of a large sum, for he had been selling stock, and dragged him
_through the hedge_, making a large gap in it. Across the field, near
its opposite side, was the round, deep stagnant piece of water known as
Dip Pond (popularly supposed to be too deep to have any bottom to it);
and it was conjectured that the object of the murderers, in dragging him
through the hedge, was to conceal the body beneath the dark and slimy
water, and that they must have been disturbed by some one passing in the
lane. Any way, the body was found in the morning lying in the field
a few yards from the gap in the hedge, pockets turned inside out, and
watch and seals gone. The poor frightened horse had made its way home,
and stayed whinnying by the stable-door all night.

The men were never found. A labourer, hastening through the lane earlier
in the evening, with some medicine from the doctor's for his sick wife,
had noticed two foot-pads, as he described them, standing under a tree.
That these were the murderers, then waiting for prey, possibly for this
very gentleman they attacked, no one had any doubt; but they were never
traced. Whoever they were, they got clear off with their booty, and--the
Squire would always add when telling the story to a stranger--with
their wicked consciences, which he sincerely hoped tormented them ever
afterwards.

But the most singular fact in the affair remains to be told. From
that night nothing would grow on the spot in the hedge over which
the murdered man was dragged, and on which his blood had fallen. The
blood-stains were easily got rid of, but the hedge, though replanted
more than once, never grew again; and the gap remained in it still.
Report went that the farmer's ghost haunted it--that, I am sure, you
will not be surprised to hear, ghosts being so popular--and might be
seen hovering around it on a moonlit night.

And amidst the many small coincidences attending the story (my story)
which I am trying to place clearly before you, was this one: that the
history of the murder was gone over that day at Mr. Beele's. Some remark
led to the subject as we sat round the dessert-table, and Mrs. Frank
Beele, who had never heard of it, inquired what it was. Upon that, the
Squire and old Beele recounted it to her, each ransacking his memory to
help the other with fullest particulars.

To go on with our homeward journey. Battling along, we at length
plunged into Dip Lane--which, to its other recommendations, added that
of being inconveniently narrow--and Tod, peering outwards in the gloomy
dusk, fancied he saw some vehicle before us. Bringing his keen sight to
bear upon it, he stood up to reconnoitre, and made it out to be a gig,
going the same way that we were. The wind was not quite so bad in this
low spot, and the snow and sleet had ceased for a bit.

"Take care, father," said Tod: "there's a gig on ahead."

"A gig, Joe?"

"Yes, it's a gig: and going at a strapping pace."

But the Squire was going at a strapping pace also, and driving two fresh
horses, whereas the gig had but one horse. We caught it up in no time.
It slackened speed slightly as it drew close to the hedge on that side,
to give us room to pass. In a moment we saw it was St. George's gig, St.
George driving.

"Halloa!" called Tod, as we shot by, and his shout was loud enough
to frighten the ghost at the gap, which lively spot we were fast
approaching, "there's William Brook! Father, pull up: there's William
Brook!"

Brook was sitting with St. George. His coat was well buttoned up,
a white woollen comforter folded round his neck and chin, and a
low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his brows. I confess
that but for Tom's shout I should not have recognized him--muffled up
in that way.

Anxious to get home, out of the storm, the Squire paid no heed to Tod's
injunction of pulling up. He just turned his head for a moment towards
the gig, but drove on at the same speed as before. All we could do was
to call out every welcome we could think of to William Brook as we
looked back, and to pull off our hats and wave them frantically.

William Brook pulled off his, and waved it to us in return. _I saw him
do it._ He called out something also, no doubt a greeting. At least, I
thought he did; but the wind swept by with a gust at the moment, and it
might have been St. George's voice and not his.

"Johnny, lad, it's better than nuts," cried Tod to me, all excitement
for once, as he fixed his hat on his head again. "How glad I am!--for
Nelly's sake. But what on earth brings the pair of them--he and St.
George--in Dip Lane?"

Another minute or so, and we reached the gap in the hedge. I turned
my eyes to it and to the pond beyond it in a sort of fascination; I
was sure to do so whenever I went by, but that was seldom; and the
conversation at the dessert-table had opened the wretched details
afresh. Almost immediately afterwards, the gig wheels behind us, which I
could hear above the noise of the wind, seemed to me to come to a sudden
standstill. "St. George has stopped," I exclaimed to Tod. "Not a bit of
it," answered he; "we can no longer hear him." Almost close upon that,
we passed the turning which led out of the lane towards Evesham. Not
heeding anything of all this, as indeed why should he, the Squire dashed
straight onwards, and in time we gained our homestead, Crabb Cot.

The first thing the Squire did, when we were all gathered round the
welcome fire, blazing and crackling with wood and coal, and the stormy
blasts beat on the window-panes, but no longer upon us, was to attack us
for making that noise in Dip Lane, and for shouting out that it was
Brook.

"It was Brook, father," said Tod. "St. George was driving him."

"Nonsense, Joe," reprimanded the Squire. "William Brook has not landed
from the high seas yet. And, if he had landed, what should bring him in
Dip Lane--or St. George either?"

"It was St. George," persisted Tod.

"Well, that might have been. It looked like his grey horse. Where was he
coming from, I wonder?"

"Mr. St. George went to Worcester this morning, sir," interposed Thomas,
who had come in with some glasses, the Squire having asked for some hot
brandy-and-water. "Giles saw his man Japhet this afternoon, and he said
his master had gone off in his gig to Worcester for the day."

"Then he must have picked up Brook at Worcester," said Tod, in his
decisive way.

"May be so," conceded the Squire, coming round to reason. "But I don't
see what they could be doing in Dip Lane."

                 *       *       *       *       *

The storm had disappeared the following morning, but the ground was
white with a thin coating of snow; and in the afternoon, when we started
for Timberdale to call on William Brook, the sky was blue and the sun
shining. Climbing up from the Ravine and crossing the field beyond it to
the high-road, we met Darbyshire, the surgeon, striding along as fast as
his legs would carry him.

"You seem to be in a hurry," remarked the Squire.

"Just sent for to a sick patient over yonder," replied Darbyshire,
nodding to some cottages in the distance. "Dying, the report is;
supposed to have swallowed poison. Dare say it will turn out to be a
case of cucumber."

He was speeding on when Tod asked whether he had seen William Brook
yet. Darbyshire turned to face him, looking surprised.

"Seen Brook yet! No; how should I see him? Brook's not come, is he?"

"He got home last night. St. George drove him from Worcester in his
gig," said Tod, and went on to explain that we had passed them in Dip
Lane. Darbyshire was uncommonly pleased. Brook was a favourite of his.

"I am surprised that I have not seen him," he cried; "I have been about
all the morning. St. George was in Worcester yesterday, I know. Wonder,
though, what induced them to make a pilgrimage through Dip Lane!"

Just, you see, as the rest of us had wondered.

We went on towards Mrs. Brook's. But in passing Mr. Delorane's, Aunt
Hester's head appeared above the Venetian blind of the dining-room. She
began nodding cordially.

"How lively she looks," exclaimed the Squire. "Pleased that he is back,
I take it. Suppose we go in?"

The front-door was standing open, and we went in unannounced. Aunt
Hester, sitting then at the little work-table, making herself a cap with
lace and pink ribbons, got up and tried to shake hands with all three of
us at once.

"We are on our way to call on William Brook," cried the Squire, as we
sat down, and Aunt Hester was taking up her work again.

"On William Brook!--why, what do you mean?" she exclaimed. "Has he
come?"

"You don't mean to say you did not know it--that he has not been to see
you?" cried the Squire.

"I don't know a thing about it; I did not know he had come; no one has
told me," rejoined Aunt Hester. "As to his coming to see me--well, I
suppose he would not feel himself at liberty to do that until Mr.
Delorane gave permission. When did he arrive? I am so glad."

"And he is not much behind his time, either," observed Tod.

"Not at all behind it, to speak of, only we were impatient. The truth
is, I caught somewhat of Ellin's fears," added Aunt Hester, looking at
us over her spectacles, which she rarely wore higher than the end of her
nose. "Ellin has had gloomy ideas about his never coming back at all;
and one can't see a person perpetually sighing away in silence, without
sighing a bit also for company. Did he get here this morning? What a
pity Ellin is in Worcester!"

We told Aunt Hester all about it, just as we had told Darbyshire, but
not quite so curtly, for she was not in a hurry to be off to a poisoned
patient. She dropped her work to listen, and took off her spectacles,
looking, however, uncommonly puzzled.

"What a singular thing--that you should chance to have been in Dip Lane
just at the time they were!--and why should they have chosen that dreary
route! But--but----"

"But what, ma'am?" cried the Squire.

"Well, I am thinking what could have been St. George's motive for
concealing the news from me when he came round here last night to tell
me he had left Ellin safely at Philip West's," replied she.

"Did he say nothing to you about William Brook?"

"Not a word. He said what a nasty drive home it had been in the teeth
of the storm and wind, but he did not mention William Brook. He seemed
tired, and did not stay above a minute or two. John was out. Oh, here is
John."

Mr. Delorane, hearing our voices, I suppose, came in from the office.
Aunt Hester told him the news at once--that William Brook was come home.

"I am downright glad," interrupted the lawyer emphatically. "What with
one delay and another, one might have begun to think him lost: it was
September, you know, that he originally announced himself for. What
do you say?"--his own words having partly drowned Aunt Hester's--"St.
George drove him home last night from Worcester? Drove Brook? Nonsense!
Had St. George brought Brook he would have told me of it."

"But he did bring him, sir," affirmed Tod: and he went over the history
once more. Mr. Delorane did not take it in.

"Are these lads playing a joke upon me, Squire?" asked he.

"Look here, Delorane. That we passed St. George in Dip Lane is a fact;
I knew the cut of his gig and horse. Some one was with him; I saw that
much. The boys called out that it was William Brook, and began shouting
to him. Whether it was he, or not, I can't say; I had enough to do
with my horses, I can tell you; they did not like the wind, Blister
especially."

"It was William Brook, safe enough, sir," interposed Tod. "Do you think
I don't know him? We spoke to him, and he spoke to us. Why should you
doubt it?"

"Well, I suppose I can't doubt it, as you speak so positively," said Mr.
Delorane. "The news took me by surprise, you see. Why on earth did St.
George not tell me of it? I shall take him to task when he comes in. Any
way, I am glad Brook's come. We will drink his health."

He opened what was in those days called the cellaret--and a very
convenient article it was for those who drank wine as a rule--and put on
the table some of the glasses that were standing on the sideboard. Then
we drank health and happiness to William Brook.

"And to some one else also," cried bold Tod, winking at Aunt Hester.

"You two boys can go on to Mrs. Brook's," cried the Squire; "I shall
stop here a bit. Tell William I am glad he has surmounted the perils of
the treacherous seas."

"And tell him he may come to see me if he likes," added the lawyer. "I
expect he did not get a note I wrote to him a few months back, or he'd
have been here this morning."

Away we went to Mrs. Brook's. And the first thing that flabbergasted us
(the expression was Tod's, not mine) was to be met by a denial of the
servant's. Upon Tod asking to see Mr. William, she stared at us and said
he was not back from his travels.

"Come in," called out Minty from the parlour; "I know your voices." She
sat at the table, her paint-box before her. Minty painted very nice
pieces in water-colours: the one in process was a lovely bit of scenery
taken from Little Malvern. Mrs. Brook was out.

"What did I hear you saying to Ann about William--that he had come
home?" she began to us, without getting up from her work--for we were
too intimate to be upon any ceremony with one another. "He is not come
yet. I only wish he was."

"But he is come," said Tod. "He came last night. We saw him and spoke to
him."

Minty put down her camel-hair pencil then, and turned round. "What do
you mean?" she asked.

"Mr. St. George drove William home from Worcester. We passed them in the
gig in Dip Lane."

Minty retorted by asking whether we were not dreaming; and for a minute
or two we kept at cross-purposes. She held to it that they had seen
nothing of her brother; that he was not at Timberdale.

"Mamma never had a wink of sleep last night, for thinking of the
dreadful gale William must be in at sea. Your fancy misled you," went on
Minty, calmly touching-up the cottage in her painting--and Tod looked as
if he would like to beat her.

But it did really seem that William had not come, and we took our
departure. I don't think I had ever seen Tod look so puzzled.

"I wish I may be shot if I can understand this!" said he.

"Could we have been mistaken in thinking it was Brook?" I was beginning;
and Tod turned upon me savagely.

"I swear it was Brook. There! And you know it as well as I, Mr. Johnny.
Where can he be hiding himself? What is the meaning of it?"

It is my habit always to try to account for things that seem
unaccountable; to search out reasons and fathom them; and you would be
surprised at the light that will sometimes crop up. An idea flashed
across me now.

"Can Brook be ill, Tod, think you?--done up with his voyage, or
something--and St. George is nursing him at his house for a day or two
before he shows himself to Timberdale?" And Tod thought it might be so.

Getting back to Mr. Delorane's, we found him and the Squire sitting at
the table still. St. George, just come in, was standing by, hat in hand,
and they were both tackling him at once.

"_What_ do you say?" asked St. George of his master, when he found room
for a word. "That I brought William Brook home here last night from
Worcester! Why, what can have put such a thing into your head, sir?"

"_Didn't_ you bring him?" cried the Squire. "Didn't you drive him home
in your gig?"

"That I did not. I have not seen William Brook."

He spoke in a ready, though surprised tone, not at all like one who is
shuffling with the truth, or telling a fable, and looked from one to
another of his two questioners, as if not yet understanding them. The
Squire pushed his spectacles to the top of his brow and stared at St.
George. He did not understand, either.

"Look here, St. George: do you deny that it was you we passed in Dip
Lane last night--and your grey horse--and your gig?"

"Why should I deny it?" quietly returned St. George. "I drew as close
as I could to the hedge as a matter of precaution to let you go by,
Squire, you were driving so quickly. And a fine shouting you greeted me
with," he added, turning to Tod, with a slight laugh.

"The greeting was not intended for you; it was for William Brook,"
answered Tod, his voice bearing a spice of antagonism; for he thought he
was being played with.

St. George was evidently at a loss yet, and stood in silence. All in a
moment, his face lighted up.

"Surely," he cried impulsively, "you did not take that man in the gig
for William Brook!"

"It was William Brook. Who else was it?"

"A stranger. A stranger to me and to the neighbourhood. A man to whom
I gave a lift."

Tod's face presented a picture. Believing, as he did still, that it
was Brook in the gig, the idea suggested by me--that St. George was
concealing Brook at his house out of good-fellowship--grew stronger and
stronger. But he considered that, as it had come to this, St. George
ought to say so.

"Where's the use of your continuing to deny it, St. George?" he asked.
"You had Brook there, and you know you had."

"But I tell you that it was not Brook," returned St. George. "Should I
deny it, if it had been he? You talk like a child."

"Has Brook been away so long that we shouldn't know him, do you
suppose?" retorted quick-tempered Tod. "Why! as a proof that it was
Brook, he shouted back his greeting to us, taking off his hat to wave
it in answer to ours. Would a strange man have done that?"

"The man did nothing of the kind," said St. George.

"Yes, he did," I said, thinking it was time I spoke. "He called back a
greeting to us, and he waved his hat round and round. I should not have
felt so sure it was Brook but for seeing him without his hat."

"Well, I did not see him do it," conceded St. George. "When you began
to shout in passing the man seemed surprised. 'What do those people
want?' he said to me; and I told him you were acquaintances of mine. It
never occurred to my mind, or to his either, I should imagine, but that
the shouts were meant for me. If he did take off his hat in response,
as you say, he must have done it, I reckon, because I did not take off
mine."

"Couldn't you hear our welcome to him? Couldn't you hear us call him
'Brook'?" persisted Tod.

"I did not distinguish a single word. The wind was too high for that."

"Then we are to understand that Brook has not come back: that you did
not bring him?" interposed the Squire. "Be quiet, Joe; can't you see you
were mistaken? I told you you were, you know, at the time. You and
Johnny are for ever taking up odd notions, Johnny especially."

"The man was a stranger to me," spoke St. George. "I overtook him
trudging along the road, soon after leaving Worcester; it was between
Red Hill and the turning to Whittington. He accosted me, asking which of
the two roads before us would take him to Evesham. I told him which, and
was about to drive on when it occurred to me that I might as well offer
to give the man a lift: it was an awful evening, and that's the truth:
one that nobody would, as the saying runs, turn a dog out in. He thanked
me, and got up; and I drove him as far as----"

"Then that's what took you round by Dip Lane, St. George?" interrupted
Mr. Delorane.

"That's what took me round by Dip Lane," acquiesced St. George, slightly
smiling; "and which seems to have led to this misapprehension. But don't
give my humanity more credit than it deserves. Previously to this I had
been debating in my own mind whether to take the round, seeing what a
journey was before me. It was about the wildest night I ever was out
in, the horse could hardly make head against the wind, and I thought we
might feel it less in the small and more sheltered by-ways than in the
open road. Taking up the traveller decided me."

"You put him down in Dip Lane, at the turning that leads to Evesham,"
remarked the Squire.

"Yes, I put him down there. It was just after you passed us. He thanked
me heartily, and walked on; and I drove quickly home, glad enough to
reach it. Who he was, or what he was, I do not know, and did not ask."

Tod was still in a quandary; his countenance betrayed it. "Did you
notice that he resembled William Brook, St. George?"

"No. It did not strike me that he resembled any one. His face was well
wrapped up from the cold, and I did not get a clear view of it: I am not
sure that I should know it again. I should know his voice, though," he
added quickly.

Poor Aunt Hester, listening to all this in dismay, felt the
disappointment keenly: the tears were stealing down her face. "And we
have been drinking his health, and--and feeling so thankful that he was
safely back again!" she murmured gently.

"Hang it, yes," added Mr. Delorane. "Well, well; I dare say a day or two
more will bring him. I must say I thought it odd that you should not
have mentioned it to me, St. George, if he had come."

"I should have thought it very odd, sir," spoke St. George.

"Will you take a glass of wine?"

"No, thank you; I have not time for it. Those deeds have to be gone
over, you know, sir, before post-time," replied St. George; and he left
the room.

"And if ever you two boys serve me such a trick again--bringing me over
with a cock-and-bull story that people have come back from sea who
haven't--I'll punish you," stuttered the Squire, too angry to speak
clearly.

We went away in humility; heads down, metaphorically speaking, tails
between legs. The Squire kept up the ball, firing away sarcastic
reproaches hotly.

Tod never answered. The truth was, he felt angry himself. Not with the
Squire, but with the affair altogether. Tod hated mystification, and
the matter was mystifying him utterly. With all his heart, with all the
sight of his eyes, he had believed it to be William Brook: and he could
not drive the conviction away, that it was Brook, and that St. George
was giving him house room.

"I don't like complications," spoke he resentfully.

"Complications!" retorted the Squire. "What complications are there
in this? None. You two lads must have been thinking of William Brook,
perhaps speaking of him, and so you thought you saw him. That's all
about it, Joe."

The complications were not at an end. A curious addition to them was at
hand. The Squire came to a halt at the turning to the Ravine, undecided
whether to betake himself home at once, or to make a call first at
Timberdale Court, to see Robert Ashton.

"I think we'll go there, lads," said he: "there's plenty of time. I
want to ask him how that squabble about the hunting arrangements has
been settled."

So we continued our way along the road, presently crossing it to take
the one in which the Court was situated: a large handsome house, lying
back on the right hand. Before gaining it, however, we had to pass the
pretty villa rented by Mr. St. George, its stable and coach-house and
dog-kennel beside it. The railway was on ahead; a train was shrieking
itself at that moment into the station.

St. George's groom and man-of-all-work, Japhet, was sweeping up the
leaves on the little lawn. Tod, who was in advance of us, put his arms
on the gate. "Are you going to make a bonfire with them?" asked he.

"There's enough for't, sir," answered Japhet. "I never see such a wind
as yesterday's," he ran on, dropping his besom to face Tod, for the man
was a lazy fellow, always ready for a gossip. "I'm sure I thought it 'ud
ha' blowed the trees down as well as the leaves."

"It was pretty strong," assented Tod, as I halted beside him, and the
Squire walked on towards the Court. "We were out in it--coming home from
Pigeon Green. There was one gust that I thought would have blown the
horses right over."

"The master, he were out in it, too, a coming home from Worcester,"
cried Japhet, taking off his old hat to push his red hair back. "When he
got in here, he said as he'd had enough on't for one journey. I should
think the poor horse had too; his coat were all wet."

Tod lifted up his head, speaking impulsively. "Was your master alone,
Japhet, when he got home? Had he any one with him?"

"Yes, he were all alone, sir," replied the man. "Miss Delorane were with
him when he drove off in the morning, but she stayed at Worcester."

Had Tod taken a moment for thought he might not have asked the question.
He had nothing of the sneak in him, and would have scorned to pump a
servant about his master's movements. The answer tended to destroy his
theory of Brook's being concealed here, and to uphold the account given
by Mr. St. George.

Quitting the railings, we ran to catch up the Squire. And at that
moment two or three railway passengers loomed into view, coming from the
train. One of them was Ellin Delorane.

She came along briskly, with a buoyant step and a smiling face. The
Squire dropped us a word of caution.

"Now don't go telling her of your stupid fancy about Brook, you two: it
would only cause her disappointment." And with the last word we met her.

"Ah ha, Miss Ellin!" he exclaimed, taking her hands. "And so the
truant's back again!"

"Yes, he is back again," she softly whispered, with a blush that was
deep in colour.

The Squire did not quite catch the words. She and he were at
cross-purposes. "We have but now left your house, my dear," he
continued. "Your aunt does not expect you back to-day; she thought you
would stay at Worcester till Saturday."

Ellin smiled shyly. "Have you seen him?" she asked in the same soft
whisper.

"Seen whom, my dear?"

"Mr. Brook."

"Mr. Brook! Do you mean _William_ Brook? He is not back, is he?"

"Yes, he is back," she answered. "I thought you might have seen him: you
spoke of the return of the truant."

"Why, child, I meant you," explained the Squire. "Nobody else. Who says
William Brook is back?"

"Oh, I say it," returned Ellin, her cheeks all rosy dimples. "He reached
Worcester yesterday."

"And where is he now?" cried the Squire, feeling a little at sea.

"He is here, at Timberdale," answered Ellin. "Mr. St. George drove him
home last night."

"There!" cried Tod with startling emphasis. "There, father, please not
to disparage my sight any more."

Well, what do you think of this for another complication? It took me
aback. The Squire rubbed his face, and stared.

"My dear, just let us understand how the land lies," said he, putting
his hand on Ellin's shoulder. "Do you say that William Brook reached
Worcester yesterday on his return, and that St. George drove him home
here at night?"

"Yes," replied Ellin. "Why should you doubt it? It is true."

"Well, we thought St. George did drive him home," was the Squire's
answer, staring into her face; "we passed his gig in Dip Lane and
thought that it was Brook that he had with him. But St. George denies
this. He says it was not Brook; that he has not seen Brook, does not
know he has come home; he says the man he had with him was a stranger,
to whom he was giving a lift."

Ellin looked grave for a moment; then the smiles broke out again.

"St. George must have been joking," she cried; "he cannot mean it. He
happened to be at Worcester Station yesterday when Mr. Brook arrived by
the Birmingham train: we suppose he then offered to drive him home. Any
way, he did do it."

"But St. George denied that he did, Ellin," I said.

"He will not deny it to me, Johnny. Gregory West, returning from a visit
to some client at Spetchley, met them in the gig together."

The Squire listened as a man dazed. "I can't make head or tail of it,"
cried he. "What does St. George mean by denying that he brought Brook?
And where _is_ Brook?"

"Has no one seen him?" questioned Ellin.

"Not a soul, apparently. Ellin, my girl," added the Squire, "we will
walk back with you to your father's, and get this cleared up. Come
along, boys."

So back we went to turn the tables upon St. George, Tod in a rapture of
gratification. You might have thought he was treading upon eggs.

We had it out this time in Mr. Delorane's private office; the Squire
walked straight into it. Not but that "having it out" must be regarded
as a figure of speech, for elucidation seemed farther off than before,
and the complications greater.

Mr. Delorane and his head-clerk were both bending over the same
parchment when we entered. Ellin kissed her father, and turned to St.
George.

"Why have you been saying that you did not drive home William Brook?"
she asked as they shook hands.

"A moment, my dear; let me speak," interrupted the Squire, who never
believed any one's explanation could be so lucid as his own. "Delorane,
I left you just now with an apology for having brought to you a
cock-and-bull story through the misleading fancies of these boys; but
we have come back again to tell you the story's true. Your daughter
here says that it was William Brook that St. George had in his gig.
And perhaps Mr. St. George"--giving that gentleman a sharp nod--"will
explain what he meant by denying it?"

"I denied it because it was not he," said Mr. St. George, not appearing
to be in the least put out. "How can I tell you it was Brook when it was
not Brook? If it had been----"

"You met William Brook at the Worcester railway-station yesterday
afternoon," interrupted Ellin. "Mrs. James Ashton saw you there; saw
the meeting. You _were_ at the station, were you not?"

"I was at the station," readily replied St. George, "and Mrs. James
Ashton may have seen me there, for all I know--I did not see her. But
she certainly did not see William Brook. Or, if she did, I didn't."

"Gregory West saw you and him in your gig together later, when you were
leaving Worcester," continued Ellin. "It was at the top of Red Hill."

St. George shook his head. "The person I had in my gig was a stranger.
Had Gregory West come up one minute earlier he would have seen me take
the man into it."

"William _has_ come," persisted Ellin.

"I don't say he has not," returned St. George. "All I can say is that I
did not know he had come and that I have not seen him."

Who was right, and who was wrong? Any faces more hopelessly puzzled than
the two old gentlemen's were, as they listened to these contradictory
assertions, I'd not wish to see. Nothing came of the interview; nothing
but fresh mystification. Ellin declared William Brook had arrived, had
been driven out of Worcester for Timberdale in St. George's gig. We felt
equally certain we had passed them in Dip Lane, sitting together in the
gig; but St. George denied it in toto, affirming that the person with
him was a stranger.

And perhaps it may be as well if I here say a word about the routes.
Evesham lay fifteen miles from Worcester; Timberdale not much more
than half that distance, in a somewhat different direction, and on a
different road. In going to Timberdale, if when about half-way there you
quitted the high-road for by-ways you would come to Dip Lane. Traversing
nearly the length of the lane, you would then come to a by-way leading
from it on the other side, which would bring you on the direct road to
Evesham, still far off. Failing to take this by-way leading to Evesham,
you would presently quit the lane, and by dint of more by-ways would
gain again the high-road and soon come to Timberdale. This is the route
that Mr. St. George took that night.

We went home from Mr. Delorane's, hopelessly mystified, the Squire
rubbing up his hair the wrong way; now blowing us both up for what he
called our "fancies" in supposing we saw William Brook, and now veering
round to the opposite opinion that we and Ellin must be alike correct in
saying Brook had come.

Ellin's account was this: she passed a pleasant morning with Mary West,
who was nearly always more or less of an invalid. At half-past one
o'clock dinner was served; Philip West, his younger brother Gregory, who
had recently joined him, and Mr. St. George coming in from the office
to partake of it. Dinner over, they left the room, having no time to
linger. In fact, Gregory rose from table before he had well finished.
Mary West inquired what his haste was, and he replied that he was off to
Spetchley; some one had been taken ill there and wanted a will made. It
was Philip who ought to have gone, who had been sent for; but Philip had
an hour or two's business yet to do with Mr. St. George. Mrs. West told
St. George that she would have tea ready at five o'clock, that he might
drink a cup before starting for home.

Later on in the afternoon, when Ellin and Mrs. West were sitting over
the fire, talking of things past and present, and listening to the
howling of the wind, growing more furious every hour, James Ashton's
wife came in, all excitement. Her husband, in medical practice at
Worcester, was the brother of Robert Ashton of Timberdale. A very nice
young woman was Marianne Ashton, but given to an excited manner. Taking
no notice of Mrs. West, she flew to Ellin and began dancing round her
like a demented Red Indian squaw.

"What will you give me for my news, Ellin?"

"Now, Marianne!" remonstrated Mrs. West. "Do be sensible, if you can."

"Be quiet, Mary: I am sensible. Your runaway lover is come, Ellin; quite
safely."

They saw by her manner, heard by her earnest tone, that it was true.
William Brook had indeed come, was then in the town. Throwing off her
bonnet, and remarking that she meant to remain for tea, Mrs. James
Ashton sat down to tell her story soberly.

"You must know that I had to go up to the Shrub Hill Station this
afternoon," began she, "to meet the Birmingham train. We expected Patty
Silvester in by it; and James has been since a most unearthly hour this
morning with some cross-grained patient, who must needs go and be ill at
the wrong time. I went up in the brougham, and had hardly reached the
platform when the train came in. There was a good deal of confusion;
there always is, you know; passengers getting out and getting in. I ran
about looking for Patty, and found she had not come: taken fright at the
weather, I suppose. As the train cleared off, I saw a figure that seemed
familiar to me; it was William Brook; and I gave a glad cry that you
might have heard on the top of St. Andrew's spire. He was crossing the
line with others who had alighted, a small black-leather travelling-bag
in his hand. I was about to run over after him, when a porter stopped
me, saying a stray engine was on the point of coming up, to take on the
Malvern train. So, all I could do was to stand there, hoping he would
turn his head and see me. Well: just as he reached the opposite
platform, Mr. St. George stepped out of the station-master's office, and
I can tell you there was some shaking of hands between the two. There's
my story."

"And where is he now?"

"Oh, they are somewhere together, I suppose; on their way here perhaps,"
rejoined Mrs. James Ashton carelessly. "I lost sight of them: that
ridiculous stray engine the man spoke of puffed up at the minute, and
stopped right in front of me. When it puffed on again, leaving the way
clear, both he and St. George had vanished. So I got into the brougham
to bring you the news in advance, lest the sudden sight of William the
deserter should cause a fainting-fit."

Ellin, unable to control herself, burst into glad tears of relief. "You
don't know what a strain it has been," she said. And she sat listening
for his step on the stairs. But William Brook did not come.

At five o'clock punctually the tea was brought in, and waited for some
little time on the table. Presently Mr. West appeared. When they told
him he was late, he replied that he had lingered in the office expecting
Mr. St. George. St. George had left him some time before to go to the
Shrub Hill Station, having business to see to there, and had promised to
be back by tea-time. However, he was not back yet. Mr. West was very
glad to hear of the arrival of William Brook, and supposed St. George
was then with him.

Before the tea was quite over, Gregory West got back from Spetchley. He
told them that he had met St. George just outside the town, and that he
had a gentleman in his gig. He, Gregory West, who was in his brother's
gig, pulled up to ask St. George whether he was not going home earlier
than he had said. Yes, somewhat, St. George called back, without
stopping: when he had seen what sort of a night it was going to be, he
thought it best to be off as soon as he could.

"Of course it was William Brook that he had with him, Gregory!"
exclaimed Mary West, forgetting that her brother-in-law had never seen
William Brook.

"I cannot tell," was the only answer the young lawyer could give. "It
was a stranger to me: he wore a lightish-coloured over-coat and a white
comforter."

"That's he," said Mrs. James Ashton. "And he had on new tan-coloured kid
gloves: I noticed them. I think St. George might have brought him here,
in spite of the roughness of the night. He is jealous, Ellin."

They all laughed. But never a shadow of doubt rested on any one of their
minds that St. George was driving William Brook home to Timberdale. And
we, as you have heard, saw him, or thought we saw him, in Dip Lane.


III.

I scarcely know how to go on with this story so as to put its
complications and discrepancies of evidence clearly before you. William
Brook had been daily expected to land at Liverpool from the West Indies,
and to make his way at once to Timberdale by rail, _viâ_ Birmingham and
Worcester.

In the afternoon of the 19th of October, Mrs. James Ashton chanced to be
at the Worcester Station when the Birmingham train came in. Amidst the
passengers who alighted from it she saw William Brook, whom she had
known all her life. She was not near enough to speak to him, but she
watched him cross the line to the opposite platform, shake hands there
with Mr. St. George, and remain talking. Subsequently, Gregory West
had met St. George leaving Worcester in his gig, a gentleman sitting
with him; it was therefore assumed without doubt that he was driving
William Brook to Timberdale, to save him the railway journey and for
companionship.

That same evening, at dusk, as we (not knowing that Brook had landed)
were returning home from Pigeon Green in the large phaeton, amid a great
storm of wind, and slight sleet and snow, Mrs. Todhetley sitting with
the Squire in front, Tod and I behind, we passed St. George's gig in
Dip Lane; and saw William Brook with him--as we believed, Tod most
positively. We called out to Brook, waving our hats; Brook called back
to us and waved his.

But now, Mr. St. George denied that it was Brook. He said the gentleman
with him was a stranger to whom he had given a lift of three or four
miles on the road, and who bore no resemblance to Brook, so far as he
saw. Was it Brook, or was it not? asked every one. If it was Brook, what
had become of him? The only one point that seemed to be sure in the
matter was this--William Brook had not reached Timberdale.

The following, elaborated, was Mr. St. George's statement.

He, as confidential clerk, soon to be partner, of Mr. Delorane, had a
good deal of business to go through that day with Philip West at
Worcester, and the afternoon was well on before it was concluded. He
then went up to the station at Shrub Hill to inquire after a missing
packet of deeds, which had been despatched by rail from Birmingham to
Mr. Delorane and as yet could not be heard of. His inquiries over, St.
George was traversing the platform on his way to quit the station, when
one of the passengers, who had then crossed the line from the Birmingham
train, stopped him to ask if he could inform him when the next train
would leave for Evesham. "Very shortly," St. George replied, speaking
from memory: but even as he spoke a doubt arose in his mind. "Wait a
moment," he said to the stranger; "I am not sure that I am correct"--and
he drew from his pocket a time-table and consulted it. There would not
be a train for Evesham for more than two hours, he found, one having
just gone. The stranger remarked that it was very unfortunate; he had
not wanted to wait all that time at Worcester, but to get on at once.
The stranger then detained him to ask, apologizing for the trouble, and
adding that it was the first time he had been in the locality, whether
he could get on from Evesham to Cheltenham. St. George told him that
he could, but that he could also get on to Cheltenham from Worcester
direct. "Ah," remarked the stranger, "but I have to take Evesham on
my way." No more passed, and St. George left him on the platform. He
appeared to be a gentleman, spoke as a cultured man speaks, St. George
added when questioned on these points: and his appearance and attire
tallied with that given by Mrs. Ashton. St. George had not observed Mrs.
James Ashton on the opposite platform; did not know she was there.

Perceiving, as he left the station, how bad the weather was getting, and
what a wild night might be expected, St. George rapidly made up his mind
to start for home at once, without waiting for tea at Philip West's or
going back at all to the house. He made his way to the Hare-and-Hounds
through the back streets, as being the nearest, ordered his gig, and set
off--alone--as soon as it was ready. It was then growing dusk; snow was
falling in scanty flakes mixed with sleet, and the wind was roaring and
rushing like mad.

Gaining the top of Red Hill, St. George was bowling along the level road
beyond it, when some wayfarer turned round just before him, put up his
hand, and spoke. By the peculiar-coloured coat--a sort of slate--and
white comforter, he recognized the stranger of the railway-station;
he also remembered the voice. "I beg your pardon a thousand times for
stopping you," he said, "but I think I perceive that the road branches
off two ways yonder: will you kindly tell me which of them will take me
to Evesham? there seems to be no one about on foot that I can inquire
of." "That will be your way," St. George answered, pointing with his
whip. "But you are not thinking of walking to Evesham to-night, are
you?" he added. "It is fifteen miles off."

The stranger replied that he had made up his mind to walk, rather than
wait two hours at Worcester station: and St. George was touching his
horse to move on, when a thought struck him.

"I am not going the direct Evesham road, but I can give you a lift part
of the way," he said. "It will not cut off any of the distance for you,
but it will save your legs three or four miles." The stranger thanked
him and got up at once, St. George undoing the apron to admit him. He
had the same black bag with him that St. George had noticed at the
station.

St. George had thus to make a detour to accommodate the stranger. He
was by no means unwilling to do it; for, apart from the wish to help a
fellow-creature, he believed it would be less rough in the low-lying
lands. Driving along in the teeth of the furious wind, he turned off the
highway and got into Dip Lane. We saw him in it, the stranger sitting
with him. He drove on after we had passed, pulled up at the proper place
for the man to descend, and pointed out the route. "You have a mile or
two of these by-ways," he said to him, "but keep straight on and they
will bring you out into the open road. Turn to your left then, and you
will gain Evesham in time--and I wish you well through your walk."

Those were St. George's exact words--as he repeated them to us later.
The stranger thanked him heartily, shook hands and went on his way,
carrying his black bag. St. George said that before parting with the
traveller, he suggested that he should go on with him to Timberdale,
seeing the night was so cold and wild, put up at the Plough-and-Harrow,
where he could get a comfortable bed, and go on to Evesham in the
morning. But the stranger declined, and seemed impatient to get on.

He did not tell St. George who he was, or what he was; he did not tell
his name, or what his business was in Worcestershire, or whether he was
purposing to make a stay at Evesham, or whither he might be going when
he left it: unless the question he had put to St. George, as to being
able to get on to Cheltenham, might be taken for an indication of his
route. In fact, he stated nothing whatever about himself; but, as
St. George said, the state of the weather was against talking. It was
difficult to hear each other speak; the blasts howled about their ears
perpetually, and the sharp sleet stung their faces. As to his bearing
the resemblance to Brook that was being talked of, St. George could only
repeat that he did not perceive it; he might have been about Brook's
height and size, but that was all. The voice was certainly not Brook's,
not in the least like Brook's, neither was the face, so far as St.
George saw of it: no idea of the kind struck him.

                 *       *       *       *       *

These were the different statements: and, reading them, you have the
matter in a nutshell. Mrs. James Ashton continued to affirm that it was
William Brook she saw at the station, and could not be shaken out of
her belief. She and William had played together as children, they had
flirted together, she was pleased to declare, as youth and maiden, and
_did_ anybody suppose she could mistake an unknown young man for him in
broad daylight? An immense favourite with all the world, Marianne Ashton
was fond of holding decisively to her own opinions; all her words might
have begun with capital letters.

I also maintained that the young man we saw in St. George's gig in
Dip Lane, and who wore a warm great-coat of rather an unusual colour,
something of a grey--or a slate--or a mouse, with the white woollen
comforter on his neck and the soft low-crowned hat drawn well on his
brows, was William Brook. When he took off his hat to wave it to us in
response, I saw (as I fully believed) that it was Brook; and I noticed
his gloves. Mrs. Todhetley, who had turned her head at our words, also
saw him and felt not the slightest doubt that it was he. Tod was ready
to swear to it.

To combat this, we had Mr. St. George's cool, calm, decisive assertion
that the man was a stranger. Of course it outweighed ours. All the
probabilities lay with it; he had been in companionship with the
stranger, had talked with him face to face: we had not. Besides, if it
had been Brook, where was he that he had not made his way to Timberdale?
So we took up the common-sense view of the matter and dismissed our own
impressions as fancies that would not hold water, and looked out daily
for the landing of the exile. Aunt Hester hoped he was not "lost at
sea:" but she did not say it in the hearing of Ellin Delorane.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The days went on. November came in. William Brook did not appear; no
tidings reached us of him. His continued non-appearance so effectually
confirmed St. George's statement, that the other idea was exploded and
forgotten by all reasonable minds. Possibly in one or two unreasonable
ones, such as mine, say, a sort of hazy doubt might still hover. But,
doubt of what? Ay, that was the question. Even Tod veered round to the
enemy, said his sight must have misled him, and laid the blame on the
wind. Both common sense and uncommon said Brook had but been detained in
Jamaica, and might be expected in any day.

The first check to this security of expectation was wrought by a letter.
A letter from New York, addressed to William Brook by his brother there,
Charles. Mrs. Brook opened it. She was growing vaguely uneasy, and had
already begun to ask herself why, were William detained in the West
Indies, he did not write to tell her so.

And this, as it proved, was the chief question the letter was written to
ask. "If," wrote Charles Brook to his brother, "if you have arrived at
home--as we conclude you must have done, having seen in the papers the
safe arrival of the _Dart_ at Liverpool--how is it you have not written
to say so, and to inform us how things are progressing? The uncle does
not like it. 'Is William growing negligent?' he said to me yesterday."

The phrase "how things are progressing," Mrs. Brook understood to apply
to the new mercantile house about to be established in London. She sent
the letter by Araminta to Mr. Delorane.

"Can William have been drowned at sea?" breathed Minty.

"No, no; I don't fear that; I'm not like that silly woman, Aunt Hester,
with her dreams and her fancies," said Mr. Delorane. "It seems odd,
though, where he can be."

Inquiries were made at Liverpool for the list of passengers by the
_Dart_. William Brook's name was not amongst them. Timberdale waited on.
There was nothing else for it to do. Waited until a second letter came
from Charles Brook. It was written to his mother this time. He asked for
news of William; whether he had, or had not, arrived at home.

The next West Indian mail-packet, steaming from Southampton, carried
out a letter from Mr. St. George, written to his cousin in Kingston,
Jamaica, at the desire of Mr. Delorane: at the desire, it may with truth
be said, of Timberdale in general. The same mail also took out a letter
from Reginald Brook in London, who had been made acquainted with the
trouble. Both letters were to the same purport--an inquiry as to William
Brook and his movements, more particularly as to the time he had
departed for home, and the vessel he had sailed in.

In six or eight weeks, which seemed to some of us like so many months,
Mr. St. George received an answer. His relative, Leonard St. George,
sent rather a curious story. He did not know anything of William
Brook's movements himself, he wrote, and could not gain much reliable
information about them. It appeared that he was to have sailed for
England in the _Dart_, a steamer bound for Liverpool, not one of their
regular passenger-packets. He was unable, however, to find any record
that Brook had gone in her, and believed he had not: neither could he
learn that Brook had departed by any other vessel. A friend of his told
him that he feared Brook was dead. The day before the _Dart_ went out of
port, a young man, who bore out in every respect the description of
Brook, was drowned in the harbour.

Comforting news! Delightfully comforting for Ellin Delorane, not to
speak of Brook's people. Aunt Hester came over to Crabb Cot, and burst
into tears as she told it.

But the next morning brought a turn in the tide; one less sombre, though
uncertain still. Mrs. Brook, who had bedewed her pillow with salt tears,
for her youngest son was very dear to her heart, received a letter from
her son Reginald in London, enclosing one he had just received from
the West Indies. She brought them to Mr. Delorane's office during the
morning, and the Squire and I happened to be there.

"How should Reginald know anything about it?" demanded St. George, in
the haughty manner he could put on when not pleased; and his countenance
looked dark as he gazed across his desk at Mrs. Brook, for which I
saw no occasion. Evidently he did not like having his brother's news
disputed.

"Reginald wrote to Kingston by the same mail that you wrote," she said.
"He received an introduction to some mercantile firm out there, and this
is their answer to him."

They stated, these merchants, that they had made due inquiries according
to request, and found that William Brook had secured a passage on board
the _Dart_; but that, finding himself unable to go in her, his business
in Kingston not being finished, he had, at the last moment, made over
his berth and ticket to another gentleman, who found himself called upon
to sail unexpectedly: and that he, Brook, had departed by the _Idalia_,
which left two days later than the _Dart_ and was also bound for
Liverpool.

"I have ascertained here, dear mother," wrote Reginald from London,
"that the _Idalia_ made a good passage and reached Liverpool on the
18th of October. If the statement which I enclose you be correct, that
William left Jamaica in her, he must have arrived in her at Liverpool,
unless he died on the way. It is very strange where he can be, and
what can have become of him. Of course, inquiries must now be made in
Liverpool. I only wish I could go down myself, but our patients are all
on my hands just now, for Dr. Croft is ill."

The first thought, flashing into the mind of Mr. Delorane, was, that the
18th of October was the eve of the day on which William Brook was said
to have been seen by Mrs. James Ashton. He paused to consider, a sort of
puzzled doubt on his face.

"Why, look you here," cried he quickly, "it seems as though that _was_
Brook at Worcester Station. If he reached Liverpool on the 18th, the
probabilities are that he would be at Worcester on the 19th. What do you
make of it?"

We could not make anything. Mrs. Brook looked pale and distressed.
The Squire, in his impulsive good-nature, offered to be the one to go,
off-hand, to make the inquiries at Liverpool. St. George opposed this:
_he_ was the proper person to go, he said; but Mrs. Delorane reminded
him that he could be ill spared just then, when the assizes were at
hand. For the time had gone on to spring.

"I will start to-night," said the Squire, "and take Johnny with me. My
time is my own. We will turn Liverpool upside down but what we find
Brook--if he is to be found on earth."

                 *       *       *       *       *

That the Squire might have turned Liverpool "upside down" with the
confusion of his inquiries was likely enough, only that Jack Tanerton
was there, having brought his own good ship, the _Rose of Delhi_,
into port but a few days before. Jack and William Brook had been boys
together, and Jack took up the cause in warm-hearted zeal. His knowledge
of the town and its shipping made our way plain before us. That is, as
plain as a way can be made which seems to have neither inlet nor outlet.

The _Idalia_ was then lying in the Liverpool docks, not long in again
from the West Indies. We ascertained that William Brook had come in her
the previous autumn, making the port of Liverpool on the 18th of
October.

"Then nothing happened to him half-way?" cried the Squire to the second
mate, a decent sort of fellow who did all he could for us. "He was not
lost, or--or--anything of that sort?"

"Why no," said the mate, looking surprised. "He was all right the whole
of the voyage and in first-rate spirits--a very nice young fellow
altogether. The _Idalia_ brought him home, all taut and safe, take our
word for that, sir; and he went ashore with the rest, and his luggage
also: of which he had but little; just a big case and the small one that
was in his cabin."

All this was certain. But from the hour Brook stepped ashore, we were
unable to trace anything certain about him. The hotels could not single
him out in memory from other temporary sojourners. I think it was by no
means a usual occurrence in those days for passing guests to give in
their names. Any way, we found no record of Brook's. The railway porters
remembered no more of him than the hotels--and it was hardly likely they
would.

Captain Tanerton--to give Jack his title--was indefatigable; winding
himself in and out of all kinds of places like a detective eel. In
some marvellous way he got to learn that a gentleman whose appearance
tallied with Brook's had bought some tan-coloured kid gloves and also
a white comforter in a shop in Bold Street on the morning of the 19th
of October. Jack took us there that we might question the people,
especially the young woman who served him. She said that, while choosing
the gloves, he observed that he had just come off a sea-voyage and found
the weather here very chilly. He wore a lightish great-coat, a sort of
slate or grey. She was setting out the window when he came in, and had
to leave it to serve him; it was barely eight o'clock, and she remarked
that he was shopping betimes; he replied yes, for he was going off
directly by train. He bought two pair of the gloves, putting one pair of
them on in the shop; he next bought a warm knitted woollen scarf, white,
and put that on. She was quite certain it was the 19th of October, and
told us why she could not be mistaken. And that was the last trace we
could get of Brook in Liverpool.

Well, well; it is of no use to linger. We went away from Liverpool,
the Squire and I, no better off than we were when we entered it. That
William Brook had arrived safely by the _Idalia_, and that he had landed
safely, appeared to be a fact indisputable: but after that time he
seemed to have vanished into air. Unless, mark you, it was he who had
come on to Worcester.

The most concerned of all at our ill-luck was Mr. St. George. He had
treated the matter lightly when thinking Brook was only lingering over
the seas; now that it was proved he returned by the _Idalia_, the case
was different.

"I don't like it at all," he said to the Squire frankly. "People may
begin to think it was really Brook I had with me that night, and ask me
what I did with him."

"What could you have done with him?" dissented the Squire.

"Not much--that I see. I couldn't pack him up in a parcel to be sent
back over seas, and I couldn't bury him here. I wish with all my heart
it had been Brook! I won't leave a stone unturned now but what I find
him," added St. George, his eyes flashing, his face flushing hotly. "Any
way, I'll find the man who was with me."

St. George set to work. Making inquiries here, there, and everywhere for
William Brook, personally and by advertising. But little came of it.
A porter at the Worcester railway-station, who had seen the traveller
talking with St. George on the platform, came forward to state that
they (the gentleman and Mr. St. George) had left the station together,
walking away from it side by side, down the road. St. George utterly
denied this. He admitted that the other might have followed him so
closely as to impart a possible appearance of their being together, but
if so, he was not conscious of it. Just as he had denied shaking hands
with the stranger, which Mrs. James Ashton insisted upon.

Next a lady came forward. She had travelled from Birmingham that
afternoon, the 19th of October, with her little nephew and niece. In the
same compartment, a first-class one, was another passenger, bearing,
both in attire and person, the description told of--a very pleasant,
gentlemanly young man, nice-looking, eyes dark blue. It was bitterly
cold: he seemed to feel it greatly, and said he had recently come from a
warmer climate. He also said that he ought to have got into Worcester by
an earlier train, but had been detained in Birmingham, through missing
his luggage, which he supposed must have been put out by mistake at some
intermediate station. He had with him a small black hand-bag; nothing
else that she saw. His great-coat was of a peculiar shade of grey; it
did not look like an English-made coat: his well-fitting kid gloves were
of fawn (or tan) colour, and appeared to be new. Once, when the high
wind seemed to shake the carriage, he remarked with a smile that one
might almost as well be at sea; upon which her little nephew said: "Have
you ever been to sea, sir?" "Yes, my little lad," he answered; "I landed
from it only yesterday."

The only other person to come forward was a farmer named Lockett, well
known to us all. He lived on the Evesham Road, close upon the turning,
or by-way, which led up from Dip Lane. On the night of the storm, the
19th of October, he went out about ten o'clock to visit a neighbour,
who had met with a bad accident. In passing by this turning, a man came
out of it, walking pretty sharply. He looked like a gentleman, seemed to
be muffled up round the neck, and carried something in his hand; whether
a black bag, or not, Mr. Lockett did not observe. "A wild night," said
the farmer to him in salutation. "It is that," answered the other. He
took the road to Evesham, and Mr. Lockett saw him no more.

St. George was delighted at this evidence. He could have hugged old
Lockett. "I knew that the truth would be corroborated sooner or later,"
he said, his eyes sparkling. "That was the man I put out of my gig in
Dip Lane."

"Stop a bit," cried Mr. Delorane, a doubt striking him. "If it was the
same man, what had he been doing to take two or three hours to get into
the Evesham Road? Did he bear any resemblance to William Brook,
Lockett?--you would have known Brook."

"None at all that I saw. As to knowing Brook, or any one else, I can't
answer for it on such a night as that," added the farmer after a pause.
"Brook would have known me, though, I take it, daylight or dark, seeing
me close to my own place, and all."

"It was the other man," affirmed St. George exultantly, "and now we will
find him."

An advertisement was next inserted in the local newspapers by Mr. St.
George, and also in the _Times_.

"Gentleman Wanted. The traveller who got out of the Birmingham train
at Worcester railway-station on the 19th of last October, towards the
close of the afternoon, and who spoke to a gentleman on the platform
respecting the trains to Evesham and to Cheltenham, and who was
subsequently overtaken a little way out of Worcester by the same
gentleman and given a few miles' lift in his gig, and was put down in
a cross-country lane to continue his walk to Evesham: this traveller
is earnestly requested to give an address where he may be communicated
with, to Alfred St. George, Esquire, Timberdale, Worcester. By doing
so, he will be conferring a great favour."

For two long weeks the advertisements brought forth no reply. At the
end of that time there came to Mr. St. George a post-letter, short and
sweet.

"Tell me what I am wanted for.--R. W."

It was dated Post Office, Cheltenham. To the Post Office, Cheltenham,
St. George, consulting with Mr. Delorane, wrote a brief explanation.
That he (R. W.) had been mistaken by some people who saw him that night
in the gig, for a gentleman named Brook, a native of Timberdale, who
had been missing since about that time. This, as R. W. might perceive,
was not pleasant for himself, St. George; and he begged R. W. to come
forward and set the erroneous idea at rest, or to state where he could
be seen. Expenses, if any, would be cheerfully paid.

This letter brought forth the following answer:--

  "DEAR SIR,

  "I regret that your courtesy to me that stormy night should have
  led to misapprehension. I the more regret it that I am not able
  to comply with your request to come forward. At present that is
  impossible. The truth is, I am, and have been for some months now,
  lying under a cloud, partly through my own credulous fault, chiefly
  through the designing faults of another man, and I dare not show
  myself. It may be many more months yet before I am cleared: that I
  shall be, in time, there exists no doubt, and I shall then gladly
  bear personal testimony to the fact that it was I myself who was
  with you. Meanwhile, perhaps the following statement will suffice:
  which I declare upon my honour to be true.

  "I was hiding at Crewe, when I received a letter from a friend at
  Evesham, bidding me go to him without delay. I had no scruple in
  complying, not being known at all in Worcestershire, and I started
  by one of the Liverpool trains. I had a portmanteau with me
  containing papers principally, and this I missed on arriving at
  Birmingham. The looking for it caused me to lose the Worcester
  train, but I went on by the next. Upon getting out there, I
  addressed the first person I saw after crossing the line--yourself.
  I inquired of you when the next train would start for Evesham. Not
  for two hours, you told me: so I set off to walk, after getting
  some light refreshment. Barely had I left Worcester when, through
  the dusk of evening, I thought I saw that the road before me
  branched off two ways. I did not know which to take, and ventured
  to stop a gig, then bowling up behind me, to ask. As you answered
  me I recognized you for the gentleman to whom I had spoken at the
  station. You offered to take me a few miles on my road, and I got
  into the gig. I found that you would have to go out of your way to
  do this, and I expressed concern; you laughed my apologies off,
  saying you should probably have chosen the way in any case, as it
  was more sheltered. You drove me as far as your road lay, told me
  that after I got out of the cross-lanes my way would be a straight
  one, and I left you with hearty thanks--which I repeat now. I may
  as well tell you that I reached Evesham without mishap--in process
  of time. The storm was so bad, the wind so fierce, that I was fain
  to turn out of the lane close upon leaving you, and shelter myself
  for an hour or two under a hay-rick, hoping it would abate. How it
  was possible for mortal man to see enough of me that night in your
  gig to mistake me for some one else, I am at a loss to understand.
  I remember that carriage passing us in the narrow line, the people
  in it shouted out to you: it must have been they, I conclude, who
  mistook me, for I do not think we saw another soul. You are at full
  liberty to show them this letter: but I must ask you not to make it
  absolutely public. I have purposely elaborated its details. I
  repeat my sacred declaration that every word of it is true--and I
  heartily regret that I cannot yet testify to it personally.

  "R. W."

This letter set the matter at rest. We never doubted that it was
genuine, or anything but a plain narrative of absolute facts. But the
one great question remained--where was William Brook?

It was not answered. The disappearance, which had been a mystery at the
beginning, seemed likely to remain a mystery to the end.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Another autumn had come round. Ellin Delorane, feeble now, sat in the
church-porch, the graveyard lying around her under the hot September
sun, soon herself to be laid there. Chancing to take that way round from
buying some figs at Salmon's for Hugh and Lena, I saw her, and dashed up
the churchyard path.

"You seem to have set up a love for this lively spot, Ellin! You were
sitting here the last time I passed by."

"The sun is hot yet, and I get tired, so I come across here for a rest
when out this way," she answered, a sweet smile on her wan face and a
hectic on her thin cheeks. "Won't you stay with me for a little while,
Johnny?"

"Are you better, Ellin?" I asked, taking my place on the opposite bench,
which brought my knees near to hers, for the porch was not much more
than big enough for a coffin to pass through.

She gently shook her head as she glanced across at me, a steadfast look
in her sad brown eyes. "Don't you see how it is, Johnny? That I shall
never be better in this world?"

"Your weakness may take a turn, Ellin; it may indeed. And--_he_ may come
back yet."

"He will never come back: rely upon that," she quietly said. "He is
waiting for me on the Eternal shores."

Her gaze went out afar, over the gravestones and the green meadows
beyond, almost (one might fancy) into the blue skies, as if she could
see those shores in the distant horizon.

"Is it well to lose hope, Eileen mavourneen?"

"The hope of his returning died out long ago," she answered. "Those
dreams that visited me so strangely last year, night after night, night
after night, seemed to take _that_ from me. Perhaps they came to do it.
You remember them, Johnny?"

"I cannot think, Ellin, how you could put faith in a parcel of dreams!"

"It was not in the dreams I put faith--exactly. It was in the mysterious
influence--I hope I don't speak profanely--which caused me to have the
dreams. A silent, undetected influence that I understood not and never
grasped--but it was there. Curious dreams they were," she added, after
a pause; "curious that they should have come to me. William was always
lost, and I, with others, was always searching for him--and never, never
found him. They lasted, Johnny, for weeks and months; and almost from
the time of their first setting-in, the impression, that I should never
see him again, lay latent in my heart."

"Do they visit you still?"

"No. At least, they have changed in character. Ever since the night that
he seems to have been really lost, the 19th of October. How you look at
me, Johnny!"

"You speak so strangely."

"The subject is strange. I was at Worcester, you know, at Mary West's,
and we thought he had come. That night I had the pleasantest dream. We
were no longer seeking for him; all the anxiety, the distress of that
was gone. We saw him; he seemed to be with us--though yet at a distance.
When I awoke, I said in my happiness, 'Ah, those sad dreams will visit
me no more, now he is found.' I thought he was, you see. Since then,
though the dreams continue, he is never lost in them. I see him always;
we are often talking, though we are never very close together. I will be
indoors, perhaps, and he outside in the garden; or maybe I am toiling up
a steep hill and he stands higher up. I seem to be _always going towards
him_ and he to be waiting for me. And though I never quite reach him,
they are happy dreams. It will not be very long first now."

I knew what she meant--and had nothing to say to it.

"Perhaps it may be as well, Johnny," she went on in speculative thought.
"God does all things for the best."

"Perhaps what may be as well?"

"That he should never have come back to marry me. I do not suppose I
should have lived long in any case; I am too much like mamma. And to
have been left a widower--perhaps--no, it is best as it is."

"You don't give yourself a chance of getting better, Ellin--cherishing
these gloomy views."

"Gloomy! They are not gloomy. I am as happy as I can be. I often picture
to myself the glories of the world I am hastening to; the lovely
flowers, the trees that overshadow the banks of the pure crystal river,
whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the beautiful
golden light shed around us by God and the Lamb. Oh, Johnny, what a rest
it will be after the weary sorrow here--and the weakness--and the pain!"

"But you should not wish to leave us before your time."

"I do not wish it; it is God who is taking me. I think if I had a wish
it would be to stay here as long as papa stays. For I know what my death
will be to him. And what it will be to you all," she generously added,
holding out her hands to me, as the tears filled her eyes.

I held them for a minute in mine. Ellin took up her parasol, preparatory
to moving away; but laid it down again.

"Johnny, tell me--I have often thought I should like to ask you--what do
_you_ think could have become of William? Have you ever picked up an
idea, however faint, of anything that could tend to solve the mystery?"

It was a hard question to answer, and she saw my hesitation.

"I cannot admit that I have, Ellin. When looking at the affair in one
light, I whisper to myself, 'It might have been this way;' when looking
at it in another, I say, 'It might have been that.' Difficulties and
contradictions encompass it on all sides. One impediment to elucidation
was the length of time that elapsed before we began the search in
earnest. Had we known from the first that he was really lost, and gone
to work then, we might have had a better chance."

Ellin nodded assent. "Marianne Ashton still maintains that it was
William she saw that day at the railway-station."

"I know she does. She always will maintain it."

"Has it ever struck you, Johnny, in how rather remarkable a way any
proof that it was he, or not he, seems to have been withheld?"

"Well, we could not get at any positive proof, one way or the other."

"But I mean that proof seems to _have been withheld_," repeated Ellin.
"Take, to begin with, the traveller's luggage: but for its being lost
(and we do not know that it was ever found), the name, sure to have been
on it, would have told whether its owner was William Brook, or not. Then
take Marianne Ashton: had she gained the platform but a few seconds
earlier, she would have met the traveller face to face, avoiding all
possibility of mistake either way. Next take the meeting of the two gigs
that evening when Gregory West was returning from Spetchley. Gregory, a
stranger to Worcester until recently, did not know William Brook; but
had Philip West himself gone to Spetchley--as he ought to have done--he
would have known him. Again, had Philip's groom, Brian, been there, he
would have known him: he comes from this neighbourhood, you know. Brian
was going with the gig that afternoon, but just as it was starting
Philip got a message from a client living at Lower Wick, and he had to
send Brian with the answer, so Gregory went alone. You must see how very
near proof was in all these moments, yet it was withheld."

Of course I saw it. And there was yet another instance: Had the Squire
only pulled up when we passed the gig in Dip Lane, instead of driving on
like the wind, we should have had proof that it was, or was not, Brook.

"If it was he," breathed Ellin, "it must have been that night he died.
He would not, else, keep away from Timberdale."

My voice dropped to a lower key than hers. "Ellin! Do you really think
it was he with St. George?"

"Oh, I cannot say that. If any such thought intrudes itself, I drive it
away. I do not like St. George, but I would not be unjust to him."

"I thought St. George was one of your prime favourites."

"He was never that. He used to be very kind to me, especially after
William went away, and I liked him for it. But latterly I have taken a
most unreasonable dislike to him--and really without any justifiable
cause. He worries me--but it is not that."

"Worries you!"

"In pressing me to be his wife," she sighed. "Of course I ought to be
grateful: he tells me, he tells papa, that with a new life and new
scenes, which he would carry me to, my health might be re-established.
Poor papa! Only the other day he said to me, 'My dear, don't you think
you might bring yourself to try it,' and I was so silly as to burst into
tears. The tears came into papa's eyes too, and he promised never to
suggest it to me again."

The tears were trickling down her cheeks, now as she spoke. "What a
world of crosses and contradiction it is!" she cried, smiling through
them as she rose. "And, Johnny, all this is between ourselves,
remember."

Yes, it was between ourselves. We strolled across the churchyard to a
tomb that stood in a corner facing the western sun. It was of white
marble, aromatic shrubs encircling it within ornamental railings, and
an inscription on it to her who lay beneath--"Maria, the beloved wife
of John Delorane."

Ellin lingered on through the frosts of winter. Except that she grew
thinner and weaker and her cheeks brighter, there really did not seem
to be much the matter. Darbyshire saw her every day, other medical men
occasionally, but they could not save her. When the snowdrops were
peeping from the ground, and the violets nestled in their mossy
shelters, and the trees and hedges began to show signs of budding,
tokens of the renewal of life after the death of winter, Ellin passed
away to that other life, where there is no death and the flowers bloom
for ever. And another inscription was added to the white tombstone in
the churchyard--"Ellin Maria, the only child of John and Maria
Delorane."

"You should have seen St. George at the funeral," said Tom Coney to us,
as we turned aside after church one hot summer's day to look at the new
name on grave, for we were away from Crabb Cot when she died. "His face
was green; yes, green--hold your tongue, Johnny!--green, not yellow; and
his eyes had the queerest look. You were right, Todhetley; you used to
say, you know, that St. George was wild after poor Ellin."

"Positive of it," affirmed Tod.

"And he can't bear the place now she's gone out of it," continued
Tom Coney. "Report says that he means to throw up his post and his
prospects, and run away for good."

"Not likely," dissented Tod, tossing his head. "A strong man like St.
George does not die of love nowadays, or put himself out of good things,
either. You have been reading romances, Coney."

But Tom Coney was right. When the summer was on the wane St. George bade
a final adieu to Timberdale. And if it was his love for Ellin, or her
death, that drove him away, he made no mention of it. He told Timberdale
that he was growing tired of work and meant to travel. As he had a good
income, Timberdale agreed that it was only natural he should grow tired
of work and want to travel. So he said adieu, and departed: and Mr.
Delorane speedily engaged another head-clerk in his place, who was to
become his partner later.

St. George wrote to Sir. Delorane from Jamaica, to which place he
steamed first, to take a look at his cousins. The letter contained a few
words about William Brook. St. George had been instituting inquiries,
and he said that, by what he could learn, it was certainly William Brook
who was drowned in Kingston harbour the day before he ought to have
sailed for England in the _Dart_. He, St. George, felt perfectly assured
of this fact, and also that if any man had sailed in the _Idalia_
under Brook's name, it must have been an impostor who had nefariously
substituted himself. St. George added that he was going "farther
afield," possibly to California: he would write again from thence if
he arrived without mishap.

No other letter ever came from him. So whether the sea swallowed him up,
as, according to his report, it had swallowed his rival, none could
tell. But it would take better evidence than that, to convince us
William Brook had not come home in the _Idalia_.

                 *       *       *       *       *

And that is all I have to tell. I know you will deem it most
unsatisfactory. Was it William Brook in the gig, or was it not? We found
no trace of him after that stormy night: we have found none to this day.
And, whether that was he, or was not he, what became of him? Questions
never, as I believe, to be solved in this life.

There was a peculiar absence of proof every way, as Ellin remarked;
nothing but doubt on all sides. Going over the matter with Darbyshire
the other evening, when, as I have already told you, he suggested that
I should relate it, we could not, either of us, see daylight through
it, any more than we saw it at the time of its occurrence.

There was the certainty (yes, I say so) that Brook landed at Liverpool
the evening of the 18th of October; he would no doubt start for home the
morning of the 19th, by rail, which would take him through Birmingham to
Worcester; there was also what the shopwoman in Bold Street said, though
hers might be called negative testimony, as well as the lady's in the
train. There was Mrs. James Ashton's positive belief that she saw him
arrive that afternoon at Worcester by the Birmingham train, _shake
hands_ with St. George and talk with him: and there was our recognition
of him an hour or two later in St. George's gig in Dip Lane----

"Hold there, Johnny," cried Darbyshire, taking his long clay pipe from
his mouth to interrupt me as I went over the items. "You should say
_supposed_ recognition."

"Yes, of course. Well, all that points to its having been Brook: you
must see that, Mr. Darbyshire. But, if it was in truth he, there's a
great deal that seems inexplicable. Why did he set off to _walk_ from
Worcester to Timberdale--and on such a night!--why not have gone on by
rail? It is incredible."

"Nay, lad, we are told he--that is, the traveller--set off to walk to
Evesham. St. George says he put him down in Dip Lane; and Lockett, you
know, saw somebody, that seems to answer the description, turn from the
lanes into the Evesham road."

I was silent, thinking out my thoughts. Or, rather, not daring to think
them out. Darbyshire put his pipe in the fender and went on.

"If it was Brook and no stranger that St. George met at Worcester
Station, the only possible theory I can form on that point is this,
Johnny: that St. George then proposed to drive him home. He may have
said to him, 'You walk on, and I will get my gig and overtake you
directly:' it is a lame theory, you may say, lad, but it is the only one
I can discern, and I have thought of the matter more than you suppose.
St. George started for home earlier than he had meant to start, and this
may have been the reason: though _he_ says it was because he saw it was
going to be so wild a night. Why they should not have gone in company to
the Hare-and-Hounds, and started thence, in the gig together, is another
question."

"Unless Brook, being done up, wished not to show himself at Worcester
that day--to get on at once to Timberdale."

Darbyshire nodded: the thought, I am sure, was not strange to him. "The
most weighty question of all remains yet, lad: If St. George took up
Brook in his gig, what did he do with him? _He_ would not want to be put
down in Dip Lane to walk to Evesham."

He caught up his churchwarden pipe, relighted it at the fire, and puffed
away in silence. Presently I spoke again.

"Mr. Darbyshire, I do not like St. George. I never did. You may not
believe me, perhaps, but the first time I ever saw his face--I was
a little fellow--I drew back startled. There was something in its
expression which frightened me."

"One of your unreasonable dislikes, Johnny?"

"Are they unreasonable? But I have not taken many such dislikes in my
life as that one was. Perhaps I might say _any_ such."

"St. George was liked by most people."

"I know he was. Any way, my dislike remained with me. I never spoke of
it; no, not even to Tod."

"Liking him or disliking him has nothing to do with the main
question--what became of Brook. There were the letters too, sent by the
traveller in answer to St. George's advertisements."

"Yes, there were the letters. But--did it ever occur to you to notice
that not one word was said in those letters, or one new fact given, that
we had not heard before? They bore out St. George's statement, but they
afforded no proof that his statement was true."

"That is, Mr. Johnny, you would insinuate, putting it genteelly, that
St. George fabricated the answers himself."

"No, not that he did, only that there was nothing in the letters to
render it impossible that he did."

"After having fabricated the pretty little tale that it was a stranger
he picked up, and what the stranger said to him, and all the rest of it,
eh, Johnny?"

"Well"--I hesitated--"as to the letters, it seemed to me to be an
unaccountable thing that the traveller could not let even one person see
him in private, to hear his personal testimony: say Mr. Delorane, or a
member of the Brook family. The Squire went hot over it: he asked St.
George whether the fellow thought men of honour carried handcuffs in
their pockets. Again, the stranger said he should be at liberty to come
forward later, but he never has come."

Darbyshire smoked on. "I'd give this full of gold," he broke the silence
with, touching the big bowl of the clay pipe, "to know where Brook
vanished to."

My restless fingers had strayed to his old leaden tobacco jar, on the
table by me, pressing down its heavy lid and lifting it again. When I
next spoke he might have thought the words came out of the tobacco, they
were so low.

"Do you think St. George had a grudge against Brook, Mr.
Darbyshire?--that he wished him out of the way?"

Darbyshire gave me a look through the wreathing smoke.

"Speak out, lad. What have you on your mind?"

"St. George said, you know, that he stopped the gig in Dip Lane at the
turning which would lead to Evesham, for Brook--I mean the traveller--to
get out. But I thought I heard it stop before that. I was almost sure of
it."

"Stop where?"

"Just about opposite the gap in the hedge; hardly even quite as far as
that. We had not reached the turning to Evesham ourselves when I heard
this. The gig seemed to come to a sudden standstill. I said so to Tod at
the time."

"Well?"

"Why should he have stopped just at the gap?"

"How can I tell, lad?"

"I suppose he could not have damaged Brook? Struck him a blow to stun
him--or--or anything of that?"

"And if he had? If he (let us put it so) _killed_ him, Johnny, what did
he do with--what was left of him? What could he do with it?"

Darbyshire paused in his smoking. I played unconsciously with the jar.
He was looking at me, waiting to be answered.

"I suppose--if that pond had been dragged--Dip Pond--if it were to be
dragged now--that--that--nothing would be found----"

"Hush, lad," struck in Darbyshire, all hastily. "Walls have ears, people
tell us: and we must not even whisper grave charges without sufficient
grounds; grounds that we could substantiate."

True: and of course he did right to stop me.

                 *       *       *       *       *

But we cannot stay rebellious thought: and no end of gruesome ideas
connected with that night in Dip Lane steal creepingly at times into my
mind. If I am not mistaken they steal also into Darbyshire's.

All the same they may be but phantoms of the imagination, and St.
George may have been a truthful, an innocent man. You must decide for
yourselves, if you can, on which side the weight of evidence seems to
lie. I have told you the story as it happened, and I cannot clear up
for you what has never yet been cleared for Timberdale. It remains an
unsolved mystery.




SANDSTONE TORR.


I.

What I am going to tell of took place before my time. But we shall get
down to that by-and-by, for I had a good deal to do with the upshot when
it came.

About a mile from the Manor, on the way to the Court (which at that time
belonged to my father) stood a very old house built of grey stone, and
called Sandstone Torr: "Torr," as every one knew, being a corruption of
Tower. It was in a rather wild and solitary spot, much shut in by trees.
A narrow lane led to it from the highway, the only road by which a
carriage could get up to it: but in taking the field way between the
Court and Dyke Manor, over stiles and across a running rivulet or two,
you had to pass it close. Sandstone Torr was a rambling, high, and ugly
old building, once belonging to the Druids, or some ancient race of that
kind, and said to have been mighty and important in its day. The points
chiefly remarkable about it now were its age, its lonesome grey walls,
covered with lichen, and an amazingly lofty tower, that rose up from the
middle of the house and went tapering off at the top like an aspiring
sugar loaf.

Sandstone Torr belonged to the Radcliffes. Its occupier was Paul
Radcliffe, who had inherited it from his father. He was a rather
unsociable man, and seemed to find his sole occupation in farming what
little land lay around the Torr and belonged to it. He might have
mixed with the gentry of the county, as far as descent went, for the
Radcliffes could trace themselves back for ages--up to the Druids, I
think, the same as the house: but he did not appear to care about it.
Who his wife had been no one knew. He brought her home one day from
London, and she kept herself as close as he did, or closer. She was dead
now, and old Radcliffe lived in the Torr with his only son, and a man
and maid servant.

Well, in those days there came to stay at Dyke Manor a clergyman, named
Elliot, with his daughter Selina. Squire Todhetley was a youngish man
then, and he and his mother lived at the Manor together. Mr. Elliot was
out of health. He had been overworked for the past twenty years in the
poor London parish of which he was curate; and old Mrs. Todhetley asked
them to come down for a bit of a change. Change indeed it brought to Mr.
Elliot. He died there. His illness, whatever it was, took a sudden and
rapid stride onwards, and before he had been at Dyke Manor three weeks
he was dead.

Selina Elliot--we have heard the Squire say it many a time--was the
sweetest-looking girl that ever the sun shone on. She was homeless now.
The best prospect before her was that of going out as governess. The
Elliots were of good descent, and Selina had been thoroughly well
educated; but of money she had just none. Old Mrs. Todhetley bid her not
be in any hurry; she was welcome to stay as long as she liked at Dyke
Manor. So Selina stayed. It was summer weather then, and she was out and
about in the open air all day long: a slight girl, in deep mourning,
with a shrinking air that was natural to her.

One afternoon she came in, her bright face all aglow, and her shy eyes
eager. Soft brown eyes they were, that had always a sadness in them.
I--a little shaver--can remember that, when I knew her in later years.
As she sat down on the stool at Mrs. Todhetley's feet, she took off her
black straw hat, and began to play nervously with its crape ends.

"My dear, you seem to be in a heat," said Mrs. Todhetley; a stout old
lady, who sat all day long in her easy-chair.

"Yes, I ran home fast," said Selina.

"Home from whence? Where have you been?"

"I was--near the Torr," replied Selina, with hesitation.

"Near the Torr, child! That's a long way for you to go strolling alone."

"The wild roses in the hedges there are so lovely," pleaded Selina.
"That's why I took to go there at first."

"Took to go there!" repeated the old lady, thinking it an odd phrase.
"Do you see anything of the Torr people? I hope you've not been making
intimate with young Stephen Radcliffe," she added, a thought darting
into her mind.

"Stephen? that's the son. No, I never saw him. I think he is away from
home."

"That's well. He is by all accounts but a churlish lout of a fellow."

Selina Elliot bent her timid face over the hat, smoothing its ribbons
with her restless fingers. She was evidently ill at ease. Glancing up
presently, she saw the old lady was shutting her eyes for a doze: and
that hastened her communication.

"I--I want to tell you something, please, ma'am. But--I don't like to
begin." And, with that, Selina burst into unexpected tears, and the
alarmed old lady looked up.

"Why, what ails you, child? Are you hurt? Has a wasp been at you?"

"Oh no," said Selina, brushing the tears away with fingers that trembled
all over. "I--if you please--I think I am going to live at the Torr."

The old lady wondered whether Selina was dreaming. "At the Torr!" said
she. "There are no children at the Torr. They don't want a governess at
the Torr."

"I am going there to be with Mr. Radcliffe," spoke Selina, in her
throat, as if she meant to choke.

"To be with old Radcliffe! Why, the child's gone cranky! Paul Radcliffe
don't need a governess."

"He wants to marry me."

"Mercy upon us!" cried the old lady, lifting both hands in her
amazement. And Selina burst into tears again.

Yes, it was true. Paul Radcliffe, who was fifty years of age, if a day,
and had a son over twenty, had been proposing marriage to that bright
young girl! They had met in the fields often, it turned out, and Mr.
Radcliffe had been making his hay while the sun shone. Every one went on
at her.

"It would be better to go into a prison than into that gloomy Sandstone
Torr--a young girl like you, Selina," said Mrs. Todhetley. "It would be
sheer madness."

"Why, you'd never go and sacrifice yourself to that old man!" cried the
Squire, who was just as outspoken and impulsive and good-hearted then as
in these latter years. "He ought to be ashamed of himself. It would be
like June and December."

But all they said was of no use in the end. It was not that Selina, poor
girl, was in love with Mr. Radcliffe--one could as well have fancied
her in love with the grizzly old bear, just then exhibiting himself at
Church Dykely in a travelling caravan. But it was her position. Without
money, without a home, without a resource of any kind for the future,
save that of teaching for her bread, the prospect of becoming mistress
of Sandstone Torr was something fascinating.

"I do so dislike the thought of spending my whole life in teaching!"
she pleaded in apology, the bitter tears streaming down her face. "You
cannot tell what it is to feel dependent."

"I'd rather sweep chimneys than marry Paul Radcliffe if I were a pretty
young girl like you," stormed the old lady.

"Since papa died you don't know what the feeling has been," sobbed
Selina. "Many a night have I lain awake with the misery of knowing that
I had no claim to a place in the wide world."

"I am sure you are welcome to stay here," said the Squire.

"Yes; as long as I am here myself," added his mother. "After that--well,
I suppose it wouldn't be proper for you to stay."

"You are all kindness; I shall never meet with such friends again; and I
know that I am welcome to stay as long as I like," she answered in the
saddest of tones. "But the time of my departure must come sometime; and
though the world lies before me, there is no refuge for me in it. It is
very good of Mr. Radcliffe to offer to make me his wife and to give me
a home at the Torr."

"Oh, is it, though!" retorted the Squire. "Trust him for knowing on
which side his bread's buttered."

"He is of good descent; he has a large income----"

"Six hundred a-year," interrupted the Squire, slightingly.

"Yes, I am aware that it cannot appear much to you," she meekly said;
"but to me it seems unbounded. And that is apart from the house and
land."

"The house and land must both go to Stephen."

"Mr. Radcliffe told me that."

"As to the land, it's only a few acres; nothing to speak of," went on
the Squire. "I'd as soon boast of my gooseberry bushes. And he can leave
all his money to Stephen if he likes. In my opinion, the chances are
that he will."

"He says he shall always behave fairly by me," spoke poor Selina.

"Why, you'd have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!" put in the old
lady. "And I don't like him--that Stephen Radcliffe. He's no better than
he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf almost to death."

Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than
is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but
tractable as you please. Only--she had no homestead on the face of the
earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth,
it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable
descent--and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and,
above all, he had a fairly good income.

It was rather curious that the dread of this girl's life, the one dread
above all other dreads, was that of _poverty_. In the earlier days of
her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and
the parson's pay was just seventy pounds a-year, they had had such a
terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the
child's mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and
weaker, and perished slowly away for the want of those comforts that
money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot's stipend was increased later:
but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she
was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her; and her choice
was made.

Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands
of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, so to say,
in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than
old enough to be Selina's father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up
son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs.
Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her standing in the county.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Sandstone Torr, dull and gloomy, and buried amidst its trees, was enough
to put a lively man in mind of a prison. You entered it by a sort of
closed-in porch, the outer door of which was always chained back in the
daytime. The inner door opened into a long, narrow passage, and that
again to a circular stone hall with a heavy ceiling, just like a large
dark watch-box. Four or five doors led off from it to different passages
and rooms. This same kind of round place was on all the landings,
shut in just as the hall was, and with no light, except what might be
afforded from the doors of the passages or rooms leading to it. It was
the foundation of the tower, and the house was built round it. All the
walls were of immense thickness: the rooms were low, and had beams
running across most of them. But the rooms were many in number, and
the place altogether had a massive, grand air, telling of its past
importance. It had one senseless point in it--there was no entrance to
the tower. The tower had neither staircase nor door of access. People
said what a grand view might be obtained if you could only get to the
top of it, or even get up to look through the small slits of windows in
its walls. But the builder had forgotten the staircase, and there it
ended.

Mr. Radcliffe took his wife straight home from the church-door. Selina
had never before been inside the Torr, and the gloominess of its aspect
struck upon her unpleasantly. Leading her down the long passage into the
circular hall, he opened one of its doors, and she found herself in a
sitting-room. The furniture was good but heavy; the Turkey carpet was
nearly colourless with age, but soft to the feet; the window looked out
only upon trees. A man-servant, who had admitted them, followed them in,
asking his master if he had any orders.

"Send Holt here," said Mr. Radcliffe. "This is the parlour, Selina."

A thin, respectable woman of middle age made her appearance. She looked
with curiosity at the young lady her master had brought in: at her
wedding-dress of grey silk, at the pretty face blushing under the white
straw bonnet.

"Mrs. Radcliffe, Holt. Show your mistress her rooms."

The woman curtsied, and led the way through another passage to the
stairs; and into a bedroom and sitting-room above, that opened into one
another.

"I've aired 'em well, ma'am," were the first words she said. "They've
never been used since the late mistress's time, for master has slept in
a little chamber near Master Stephen's. But he's coming back here now."

"Is this the drawing-room?" asked Selina, observing that the furniture,
though faded, was prettier and lighter than that in the room downstairs.

"Dear no, ma'am! The drawing-room is below and on t'other side of the
house entirely. It's never gone into from one month's end to another.
Master and Mr. Stephen uses nothing but the parlour. We call this the
Pine Room."

"The Pine Room!" echoed Selina. "Why?"

"Because it looks out on them pines, I suppose," replied Holt.

Selina looked from the window, and saw a row of dark pines waving
before the higher trees behind them. The view beyond was completely shut
in by these trees; they were very close to the house: it almost seemed
as though a long arm might have touched them from where she stood.
Anything more dull than this aspect could not well be found. Selina
leaned from the window to look below: and saw a gravel-path with some
grass on either side it, but no flowers.

It was a week later. Mr. Radcliffe sat in the parlour, busily examining
some samples of new wheat, when there came a loud ring at the outer
bell, and presently Stephen Radcliffe walked in. The father and son
resembled each other. Both were tall and strongly built, and had the
same rugged cast of features: men of few words and ungenial manners. But
while Mr. Radcliffe's face was not an unpleasing one, Stephen's had a
most sullen--some might have said evil--expression. In his eyes there
was a slight cast, and his dull brown hair was never tidy. Some time
before this, when the father and son had a quarrel, Stephen had gone off
into Cornwall to stay with his mother's relations. This was his first
appearance back again.

"Is it you, Stephen!" cried Mr. Radcliffe, without offering to shake
hands: for the house was never given to ceremony.

"Yes, it's me," replied Stephen, who generally talked more like a boor
than a gentleman, particularly in his angry moods. "It's about time I
came home, I think, when such a notice as this appears in the public
papers."

He took a newspaper from his pocket, and laid it before his father,
pointing with his fore-finger to an announcement. It was that of Mr.
Radcliffe's marriage.

"Well?" said Mr. Radcliffe.

"Is that true or a hoax?"

"True."

Stephen caught the paper up again, tore it in two, and flung it across
the room.

"What the devil made you go and do such a thing as that?"

"Softly, Ste. Keep a civil tongue in your head. I am my own master."

"At your age!" growled Stephen. "There's no fool like an old fool."

"If you don't like it, you can go back to where you came from," said Mr.
Radcliffe quietly, turning the wheat from one of the sample-bags out on
the table.

Stephen went to the window, and stood there looking at that agreeable
prospect beyond--the trees--his hands in his pockets, his back to his
father, and swearing to himself awfully. It would not do to quarrel
implacably with the old man, for his money was at his own disposal: and,
if incensed too greatly, he might possibly take the extreme step of
leaving it away from him. But Stephen Radcliffe's heart was good to turn
his father out of doors there and then, and appropriate the money to
himself at once, if he only had the power. "No fool like an old fool!"
he again muttered. "Where _is_ the cat?"

"Where's who?" cried Mr. Radcliffe, looking up from his wheat.

"The woman you've gone and made yourself a world's spectacle with."

"Ste, my lad, this won't do. Keep a fair tongue in your head, as I
bid you; or go where you may make it a foul one. For by Heaven!"--and
Mr. Radcliffe's passion broke out and he rose from his seat
menacingly--"I'll not tolerate this."

Stephen hardly ever remembered his father to have shown passion before.
He did not like it. They had gone on so very quietly together, until
that quarrel just spoken of, and Stephen had had his own way, and ruled,
so to say, in all things, for his father was easy, that this outbreak
was something new. It might not do to give further provocation then.

He was standing as before in sullen silence, his hands in his trousers'
pockets and the skirts of his short brown velveteen coat thrown back,
and Mr. Radcliffe had sat down to the bags again, when the door opened,
and some one came in. Stephen turned. He saw a pretty young girl in
black, with some books in her delicate hands. Just for an instant he
wondered who the young girl could be: and then the thought flashed
over him that "the woman" his father had married might have a grown-up
daughter. Selina had been unpacking her trunks upstairs, and arranging
her things in the drawers and closets. She hesitated on her way to the
book-case when she saw the stranger.

"My son Stephen, Selina. Ste, Mrs. Radcliffe."

Stephen Radcliffe for a moment forgot his sullenness and his temper.
He did nothing but stare. Was his father playing a joke on him? He had
pictured the new wife (though he knew not why) as a woman of mature
age: this was a child. As she timidly held out the only hand she could
extricate from the load of books, he saw the wedding-ring on her
finger. Meeting her hand ungraciously and speaking never a word, he
turned to the window again. Selina put the books down, to be disposed
in their shelves later, and quitted the room.

"This is even worse folly than I dreamed of," began Stephen, facing his
father. "She's nothing but a child."

"She is close upon twenty."

"Why, there may be children!" broadly roared out Stephen. "You must have
been mad when you did such a deed as this."

"Mad or sane, it's done, Stephen. And I should do it again to-morrow
without asking your leave. Understand that."

Yes, it was done. Rattling the silver in his pockets, Stephen Radcliffe
felt that, and that there was no undoing it. Here was this young
step-mother planted down at the Torr; and if he and she could not hit
it off together, it was he who would have to walk out of the house.
For full five minutes Stephen mentally rehearsed all the oaths he
remembered. Presently he spoke.

"It was a fair trick, wasn't it, that you should forbid my marrying,
and go and do the same thing yourself!"

"I did not object to your marrying, Ste: I objected to the girl.
Gibbon's daughter is not one to match with you. You are a Radcliffe."

Stephen scoffed. Nobody had ever been able to beat into him any sense
of self-importance. Pride of birth, pride in his family were elements
unknown to Stephen's nature. He had a great love of money to make up
for it.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," he retorted,
plunging into a communication he had resolved to make. "You have been
taking a wife on your score, and I have taken one on mine."

Mr. Radcliffe looked keenly at Stephen. "You have married Gibbon's
girl?"

"I have."

"When? Where?"

"In Cornwall. She followed me there."

The elder man felt himself in a dilemma. He did care for his son, and
he resented this alliance bitterly for Stephen's sake. Gibbon was
gamekeeper to Sir Peter Chanasse, and had formerly been outdoor servant
at the Torr; and this daughter of his, Rebecca--or Becca, as she was
commonly called--was a girl quite beneath Stephen. Neither was she a
lovable young woman in herself; but hard, and sly, and bony. How it was
that Stephen had fancied her, Mr. Radcliffe could not understand. But
having stolen a march on Stephen himself, in regard to his own marriage,
he did not feel much at liberty to resent Stephen's. It was done,
too--as he had just observed of his own--and it could not be undone.

"Well, Stephen, I am more vexed for your sake than I care to say. It
strikes me you will live to repent it."

"That's my look out," replied Stephen. "I am going to bring her home."

"Home! Where?"

"Here."

Mr. Radcliffe was silent; perhaps the assertion startled him.

"I don't want Gibbon's daughter here, Stephen. There's no room for her."

"Plenty of room, and to spare."

So there was; for the old house was large. But Mr. Radcliffe had not
been thinking of space.

"I can't have her. There! You may make your home where you like."

"This is my home," said Stephen.

"And it may be still, if you like. But it's not hers. Two women in a
house, each wanting to be mistress, wouldn't do. Now no noise, Ste,
_I won't have Gibbon's girl here_. I've not been used to consort with
people who have been my servants."

                 *       *       *       *       *

It is one thing to make a resolution, and another to keep it. Before
twelve months had gone by, Mr. Radcliffe's firmly spoken words had
come to naught; and Stephen had brought his wife into the Torr and two
babies--for Mrs. Stephen had presented him with two at once. Selina was
upstairs then with an infant of her own, and very ill. The world thought
she was going to die.

The opportunity was a grand one for Madam Becca, and she seized upon it.
When Selina came about again, after months spent in confinement, she
found, so to say, no place for her. Becca was in her place; mistress,
and ruler, and all. Stephen behaved to her like the lout he was; Becca,
a formidable woman of towering height, alternately snapped at, and
ignored her. Old Radcliffe did not interfere: he seemed not to see that
anything was amiss. Poor Selina could only sit up in that apartment
that Holt had called the Pine Room, and let her tears fall on her
baby-boy, and whisper all her griefs into his unconscious ear. She was
refined and timid and shrinking: but once she spoke to her husband.

"Treat you with contempt?--don't let you have any will of your
own?--thwart you in all ways?" he repeated. "Who says it, Selina?"

"Oh, it is so; you may see that it is, if you only will notice," she
said, looking up at him imploringly through her tears.

"I'll speak to Stephen. I knew there'd be a fuss if that Becca came
here. But you are not as strong to bustle about as she is, Selina: let
her take the brunt of the management off you. What does it matter?"

What did it matter?--that was Mr. Radcliffe's chief opinion on the
point: and had it been only a question of management it would not have
mattered. He spoke to Stephen, telling him that he and his wife must
make things pleasanter for Mrs. Radcliffe, than, as it seemed, they were
doing. The consequence was, that Stephen and Becca took a convenient
occasion of attacking Selina; calling her a sneak, a tell-tale, and a
wolf in sheep's clothing, and pretty nearly frightening her into another
spell of illness.

From that time Selina had no spirit to retaliate. She took all that
was put upon her--and it was a great deal--and bore it in silence and
patience. She saw that her marriage, taking one thing with another, had
turned out to be the mistake her friends had foretold that it would be.
Mr. Radcliffe, growing by degrees into a state of apathy as he got
older, was completely under the dominion of Stephen. He did not mean to
be unkind to his wife: he just perceived nothing; he was indifferent to
all that passed around him: had they set fire to Selina's petticoats
before his eyes, he'd hardly have seen the blaze. Now and again Selina
would try to make friends with Holt: but Holt, though never uncivil,
had a way of throwing her off. And so, she lived on, a cowed,
broken-spirited woman, eating away her heart in silence. Selina
Radcliffe had found out that there were worse evils in the world than
poverty.

She might have died then but for her boy. You never saw a nicer little
fellow than he--that Francis Radcliffe. A bright, tractable, loving boy;
with laughing blue eyes, and fair curls falling back from his pretty
face. Mr. and Mrs. Stephen hated him. Their children, Tom and Lizzy,
pinched and throttled him: but the lad took it all in good part, and
had the sweetest temper imaginable. He loved his mother beyond telling,
and she made him as gentle and nearly as patient as she was. Virtually
driven from the parlour, except at meal-times, their refuge was the Pine
Room. There they were unmolested. There Selina educated and trained him,
doing her best to show him the way to the next world, as well as to fit
him for this.

One day when he was about nine years old, Selina was up aloft, in the
little room where he slept; which had a better view than some of the
rooms had, and looked out into the open country. It was snowy weather,
and she caught sight of the two boys in the yard below, snowballing each
other. Opening the window to call Francis in--for he always got into the
wars when with Tom, and she had learnt to dread his being with him--she
saw Stephen Radcliffe crossing from the barn. Suddenly a snowball
took Stephen in the face. It came from Tom; she saw that; Francis was
stooping down at the time, collecting material for a fresh missive.

"Who flung that at me?" roared out Stephen, in a rage.

Tom disclaimed all knowledge of it; and Stephen Radcliffe seized upon
Francis, beating him shamefully.

"It was not Francis," called out Selina from the window, shivering at
the sight; for Stephen in his violence might some time, as she knew,
lame the lad. "Its touching you was an accident; I could see that; but
it was not Francis who threw it."

The cold, rarefied air carried her words distinctly to the ear of
Stephen. Holding Francis by one hand to prevent his escape, he told Mrs.
Radcliffe that she was a liar, adding other polite epithets and a few
oaths. And then he began pummelling the lad again.

"Come in, Francis! Let him come in!" implored the mother, clasping her
hands in her bitter agony. "Oh, is there no refuge for him and for me?"

She ran down to their sanctum, the Pine Room. Francis came up, sore all
over, and his face bleeding. He was a brave little lad, and he strove
to make light of it, and keep his tears down. She held him to her, and
burst into sobs while trying to comfort him. That upset him at once.

"Oh, my darling, try and bear! My poor boy, there's nothing left for
us both but to bear. The world is full of wrongs and tribulation:
but, Francis, it will all be made right when we get to heaven."

"Don't cry, mamma. It didn't hurt me much. But, indeed, the snowball
was not mine."

At ten years old the boys were sent to school. Young Tom, allowed to
have his own way, grew beyond every one's control, even his father's;
and Stephen packed him off to school. Selina besought her husband to
send Francis also. Why not, replied Mr. Radcliffe; the boy must be
educated. And, in spite of Stephen's opposition, Francis was despatched.
It was frightfully lonely and unpleasant for Selina after that, and she
grew to have a pitiful look on her face.

The school was a sharp one, and Francis got on well; he seemed to
possess his grandfather Elliot's aptitude for learning. Tom hated it.
After each of the half-yearly holidays, it took Stephen himself to get
him to school again: and before he was fourteen he capped it all by
appearing at home uncalled for, a red-hot fugitive, and announcing an
intention of going to sea.

Tom carried his point. After some feats of skirmishing between him
and his father, he was shipped off as "midshipman" on board a fine
merchantman bound for Hong Kong. Stephen Radcliffe might never have
given a consent, but for the certainty that if he did not give it, Tom
would decamp from the Torr, as he did from school, and go off as a
common seaman before the mast. It was strange, with his crabbed nature,
how much he cared for those two children!

"You'll have that other one home now," said sullen Stephen to his
father. "No good to be paying for him there."

And most likely it would have been so; but fate, or fortune, intervened.
Francis had a wind-fall. A clergyman, who had known Mr. Elliot, died,
and left Francis a thousand pounds. Selina decided that it should be
spent, or at least a portion of it, in completing his education in a
more advanced manner--though, no doubt, Stephen would have liked to get
hold of the money. Francis was sent up to King's College in London,
and to board at the house of one of the masters. In this way a few more
years passed on. Francis chose the Bar as a profession, and began to
study law.

"The Bar!" sneered Stephen. "A penniless beggar like Francis Radcliffe!
Put a pig to learn to spell!"

A bleak day in winter. The wind was howling and crying round Sandstone
Torr, tearing through the branches of the almost leafless trees,
whirling the weather-cock atop of the lofty tower, playing madly on the
window-panes. If there was one spot in the county that the wind seemed
to favour above all other spots, it was the Torr. It would go shrieking
in the air round about there like so many unquiet spirits.

In the dusk of evening, on a sofa beside the fire in the Pine Room lay
Mrs. Radcliffe, with a white, worn face and hollow eyes. She was slowly
dying. Until to-day she had not thought there was any immediate danger:
but she knew it all now, and that the end was at hand.

So it was not that knowledge which had caused her, a day or two ago, to
write to London for Francis. Some news brought in by Stephen Radcliffe
had unhinged and shocked her beyond expression. Francis was leading a
loose, bad life, drinking and gambling, and going to the deuce headlong,
ran the tales, and Stephen repeated them indoors.

That same night she wrote for Francis. She could not rest day or night
until she could see him face to face, and say--Is this true, or untrue?
He might have reached the Torr the previous day; but he did not. She was
lying listening for him now in the twilight gloom amidst the blasts of
that shrieking wind.

"If God had but taken my child in infancy!" came the chief thought of
her troubled heart. "If I could only know that I should meet him on the
everlasting shores!"

"Mother!"

She started up with a yearning cry. It was Francis. He had arrived, and
come upstairs, and his opening of the door had been drowned by the wind.
A tall, slender, bright-faced young fellow of twenty, with the same
sunny hair as in his childhood, and a genial heart.

Francis halted, and stood in startled consternation. The firelight
played on her wasted face, and he saw--what was there. In manners he was
still almost a boy; his disposition open, his nature transparent.

She made room for him on the sofa; sitting beside him, and laying her
weary head for a moment on his shoulder. Francis took a few deep breaths
while getting over the shock.

"How long have you been like this, mother? What has brought it about?"

"Nothing in particular; nothing fresh," she answered. "I have been
getting nearer and nearer to it for years and years."

"Is there no hope?"

"None. And oh, my darling, but for you I should be so glad to die.
Sitting here in my loneliness for ever, with only heaven to look forward
to, it seems that I have learnt to see a little already of what its rest
will be."

Francis pushed his hair from his brow, and left his hand there. He had
loved his mother intensely, and the blow was cruel.

Quietly, holding his other hand in hers, she spoke of what Stephen
Radcliffe had heard. Francis's face turned to scarlet as he listened.
But in that solemn hour he could not and would not tell a lie.

Yes, it was true; partly true, he said. He was not always so steady as
he ought to be. Some of his acquaintances, young men studying law like
himself, or medicine, or what not, were rather wild, and he had been the
same. Drink?--well, yes; at times they did take more than might be quite
needful. But they were not given to gambling: that was false.

"Francis," she said, her heart beating wildly with its pain, "the worst
of all is the drink. If once you suffer yourself to acquire a love for
it, you may never leave it off. It is so insidious----"

"But I don't love it, mother; I don't care for it--and I am sure you
must know that I would tell you nothing but truth now," he interrupted.
"I have only done as the others do. I'll leave it off."

"Will you promise me that?"

"Yes, I will. I do promise it."

She carried his hand to her lips and kissed it. Francis had always kept
his promises.

"It is so difficult for young fellows without a home to keep straight in
London," he acknowledged. "There's no good influence over us; there's no
pleasant family circle where we can spend our evenings: and we go out,
and get drawn into this and that. It all comes of thoughtlessness,
mother."

"You have promised me, Francis."

"Oh yes. And I will perform."

"How long will it be before you are called to the Bar?" she asked, after
a pause.

"Two years."

"So much as that?"

"I think so. How the wind howls!"

Mrs. Radcliffe sighed; Francis's future seemed not to be very clear.
Unless he could get on pretty quickly, and make a living for himself--

"When I am gone, Francis," she said aloud, interrupting her own
thoughts, "this will not be any home for you."

"It has not been one for me for some years now, mother."

"But if you do not get into work soon, and your own funds come to an
end, you will have no home but this to turn to."

"If I attempted to turn to it, Stephen would soon make it too hot for
me, I expect."

"That might not be all; not the worst," she quickly answered, dropping
her voice to a tone of fear, and glancing around as one in a fever.

Francis looked round too. He supposed she was seeking something.

"It is always scaring me, Francis," she whispered. "There are times when
I fancy I am going to see it enacted before my eyes. It puts me into a
state of nervous dread not to be described."

"See what enacted?" he asked.

"I was sitting here about ten days ago, Francis, thinking of
you, thinking of the future, when all at once a most startling
prevision--yes, I call it so--a prevision came upon me of some dreadful
ill in store for you; ill wrought by Stephen. I--I am not sure but
it was--that--that he took your life," she added, scarcely above her
breath, and in tones that made Francis shiver.

"Why, what do you mean, mother?"

"Every day, every day since, every night and nearly all night, that
strange conviction has lain upon me. I know it will be fulfilled: when
the hand of death is closing on us, these previsions are an instinct. As
surely as that I am now disclosing this to you, Francis, so surely will
you fall in some way under the iron hand of Stephen."

"Perhaps you were dreaming, mother dear," suggested Francis: for he had
his share of common sense.

"It will be in this house; the Torr," she went on, paying no attention
to him; "for it is always these rooms and the dreary trees outside
that seem to lie before me. For that reason, I would not have you live
here----"

"But don't you think you may have been dreaming?" repeated Francis,
interrupting the rest.

"I was as wide awake as I am now, Francis, but I was deep in thought.
It stole upon me, this impression, without any sort of warning, or any
train of ideas that could have led to it; and it lies within me, a sure
and settled conviction. _Beware of Stephen._ But oh, Francis! even
while I give you this caution I know that you will not escape the
evil--whatever it may turn out to be."

"I hope I shall," he said, rather lightly. "I'll try, at any rate."

"Well, I have warned you, Francis. Be always upon your guard. And keep
away from the Torr, if you can."

Holt, quite an aged woman now, came in with some tea for her mistress.
Francis took the opportunity to go down and see his father. Mr.
Radcliffe, in a shabby old coat, was sitting in his arm-chair at the
parlour fire. He looked pleased to see Francis, and kept his hand for
a minute after he had shaken it.

"My mother is very ill, sir," said Francis.

"Ay," replied the old man, dreamily. "Been so for some time now."

"Can nothing be done to--to--keep her with us a little longer, father?"

"I suppose not. Ask Duffham."

"What the devil!--is it you! What brings _you_ here?"

The coarse salutation came from Stephen. Francis turned to see him enter
and bang the door after him. His shoes were dirty, his beaver gaiters
splashed, and his hair was like a tangled mop.

"I came down to see my father and mother," answered Francis, as he held
out his hand. But Stephen did not choose to see it.

Mrs. Stephen, in a straight-down blue cloth gown and black cap garnished
with red flowers, looking more angular and hard than of yore, came in
with the tea-tray. She did as much work in the house as a servant. Lizzy
had been married the year before, and lived in Birmingham with her
husband, who was curate at one of the churches there.

"You'll have to sleep on the sofa to-night, young man," was Mrs.
Stephen's snappish salutation to Francis. "There's not a bed in the
house that's aired."

"The sofa will do," he answered.

"Let his bed be aired to-morrow, Becca," interposed the old man. And
they stared in astonishment to hear him say it.

Francis sat down to the tea-table with Stephen and his wife; but neither
of them spoke a word to him. Mr. Radcliffe had his tea in his arm-chair
at the fire, as usual. Afterwards, Francis took his hat and went out. He
was going to question the doctor; and the wind came rushing and howling
about him as he bore onwards down the lane towards Church Dykely.

In about an hour's time he came back again with red eyes. He said it was
the wind, but his subdued voice sounded as though he had been crying.
His father, with bent head, was smoking a long pipe; Stephen sat at the
table, reading the sensational police reports in a low weekly newspaper.

"Been out for a stroll, lad?" asked old Radcliffe--and it was the first
voluntary question he had put for months. Stephen, listening, could not
think what was coming to him.

"I have been to Duffham's," answered Francis. "He--he--" with a stopping
of the breath, "says that nothing can be done for my mother; that a few
days now will see the end of it."

"Ay," quietly responded the old man. "Our turns must all come."

"_Her_ turn ought not to have come yet," said Francis, nearly breaking
down.

"No?"

"I have been looking forward at odd moments to a time when I should be
in work, and able to give her a happy home with me, father. It is very
hard to come here and find _this_."

Old Radcliffe took a long whiff; and, opening his mouth, let the smoke
curl upwards. "Have a pipe, Francis?"

"No, thank you, sir. I am going up to my mother."

As he left the room, Stephen, having finished the police reports, was
turning the paper to see what it said about the markets, when his father
put down his pipe and began to speak.

"Only a few days, he says, Ste!"

"What?" demanded Stephen in his surly and ungracious tones.

"She's been ailing always; and has sat up there away from us, Ste. But
we shall miss her."

"Miss her!" retorted Ste, leaving the paper, and walking to the fire.
"Why, what good has she been? _Miss_ her? The house'll have a good
riddance of her," he added, under his breath.

"It'll be my turn next, Ste. And not long first, either."

Stephen took a keen look at his father from beneath his overhanging,
bushy eyebrows, that were beginning to turn grey. All this sounded very
odd.

"When you and me and Becca's left alone here by ourselves, we shall be
as easy as can be," he said.

"What month is it, Ste?"

"November."

"Ay. You'll have seen the last o' me before Christmas."

"Think so?" was Stephen's equable remark. The old man nodded; and there
came a pause.

"And you and Becca'll be glad to get us out, Ste."

Stephen did not take the trouble to gainsay it. He was turning about in
his thoughts something that he had a mind to speak of.

"They've been nothing but interlopers from the first--she and him. I
expect you to do what's right by me, father."

"Ay, I shall do what's right," answered the old man.

"About the money, I mean. It must _all_ come to me, father. I was heir
to it before you ever set eyes on her; and her brat must not be let
stand in my way. Do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear. It'll be all right, Ste."

"Take only a fraction from the income, and how would the Torr be kept
up?" pursued Stephen, plucking up his spirits at the last answer. "He
has got his fine profession, and he can make a living for himself out of
it: some o' them counsellors make their thousands a-year. But he must
not be let rob _me_."

"He shan't rob you, Ste. It will be all right."

And covetous Stephen, thus reassured and put at ease, strolled into
the kitchen, and ordered Becca to provide his favourite dish, toasted
cheese, for supper.

The "few days" spoken of by Mr. Duffham, were slowly passing. There was
not much difference to be observed in Selina; except that her voice grew
weaker. She could only use it at intervals. But her face had a beautiful
look of peace upon it, just as though she were three parts in heaven. I
have heard Duffham say so many a time since; I, Johnny Ludlow.

On the fifth day she was so much better that it seemed little short of
a miracle. They found her in the Pine Room early, up and dressed: when
Holt went in to light the fire, she was looking over the two books
that lay on the round table. One of them was the Bible; the other was
a translation of the German tale "Sintram," which Francis had brought
her when he came down the last summer. The story had taken hold of her
imagination, and she knew it nearly by heart.

Down went Holt, and told them that the mistress (for, contradictory
though it may seem, Selina had been always accorded that title) had
taken a "new lease of life," and was getting well. Becca, astonished,
went stalking up: perhaps she was afraid it might be true. Selina had
"Sintram" in her hand as she sat: her eyes looked bright, her cheeks
pink, her voice was improved.

"Oh," said Becca. "What have you left your bed for at this early hour?"

"I feel so well," Selina answered with a smile, letting the book lie
open on the table. "Won't you shake hands with me?--and--and kiss me?"

Now Becca had never kissed her in all the years they had lived together,
and she did not seem to care about beginning now. "I'll go down and beat
you up an egg and a spoonful of wine," said she, just touching the tips
of Selina's fingers, in response to the held-out hand: and, with that,
went away.

Stephen was the only one who did not pay the Pine Room a visit that day.
He heard of the surprising change while he was feeding the pigs: for
Becca went out and told him. Stephen splashed some wash over the side
of the trough, and gave a little pig a smack with the bucket, and that
was all his answer. Old Radcliffe sat an hour in the room; but he never
spoke all the time: so his company could not be considered as much.

Selina crept as far as the window, and looked out on the bare pines and
the other dreary trees. Most trees are dreary in November. Francis saw a
shiver take her as she stood, leaning on the window-frame; and he went
to give her his arm and bring her back again. They were by themselves
then.

"A week, or so, of this improvement, mother, and you will be as you used
to be," said he cheerfully, seating her on the sofa and stirring up the
fire. "We shall have our home together yet."

She turned her face full on his, as he sat down by her; a
half-questioning, half-wondering look in her eyes.

"Not in this world, Francis. Surely _you_ are not deceived!" and his
over-sanguine heart went down like lead.

"It is but the flickering of the spirit before it finally quits the
weary frame; just as you may have seen the flame shoot up from an
expiring candle," she continued. "The end is very near now."

A spasm of pain rose in his throat. She took his hands between her own
feeble ones.

"Don't grieve, Francis; don't grieve for me! Remember what my life has
been."

He did remember it. He remembered also the answer Duffham gave when
he had inquired what malady it was his mother was dying of. "A broken
heart."

"Don't forget, Francis--never forget--that it is a journey we must enter
on, sooner or later."

"An uncertain and unknown journey at the best!" he said. "You have no
fear of it?"

"Fear! No, but I had once."

She spoke the words in a low, sweet tone, and pointed with a smile to
the book that still lay open on the table. Francis's eyes fell on the
page.

    "When death is drawing near,
    And thy heart shrinks with fear,
          And thy limbs fail,
    Then raise thy hands and pray
    To Him who cheers the way
          Through the dark vale.

    "Seest thou the eastern dawn?
    Hears't thou, in the red morn,
          The angel's song?
    Oh! lift thy drooping head,
    Thou who in gloom and dread
          Hast lain so long.

    "Death comes to set thee free;
    Oh! meet him cheerily,
          As thy true friend;
    And all thy fears shall cease,
    And in eternal peace
          Thy penance end."

Francis sat very still, struggling a little with that lump in his
throat. She leaned forward, and let her head rest upon him, just as she
had done the other day when he first came in. His emotion broke loose
then.

"Oh, mother, what shall I do without you?"

"You will have God," she whispered.

Still all the morning she kept up well; talking of this and that, saying
how much of late the verses, just quoted, had floated in her mind and
become a reality to her; showing Holt a slit that had appeared in the
table-cover and needed darning: telling Francis his pocket-handkerchiefs
looked yellow and should be bleached. It might have been thought she was
only going out to tea at Church Dykely, instead of entering on the other
journey she had told of.

"Have you been giving her anything?" demanded Stephen, casting his surly
eyes on Francis as they sat opposite to each other at dinner in the
parlour. "Dying people can't spurt up in this manner without drugs to
make 'em."

Francis did not deign to answer. Stephen projected his fork, and took a
potato out of the dish. Frank went upstairs when the meal was over. He
had left his mother sitting on the sofa, comparatively well. He found
her lying on the bed in the next room, grappling with death. She lifted
her feeble arms to welcome him, and a ray of joyous light shone on her
face. Francis made hardly one step of it to the bed.

"Oh, my darling, it will be all right!" she breathed. "I have prayed for
you, and I know--I know I have been heard. You will be helped to put
away that evil habit; temptation may assail, but it will not finally
overcome you. And, Francis, when----" Her voice failed.

"I no longer hear what you say, mother," cried Francis in an agony.

"Yes, yes," she repeated, as if in answer to something he had said.
"Beware of Stephen."

The hands and face alike fell. Francis rang the bell violently, and Holt
came up. All was over.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Stephen attended the funeral with the others. Grumbling wofully at
having to do it, because it involved a new suit of black clothes.
"They'll be ready for the old man, though," was his consoling
reflection: "he won't be long."

He was even quicker than Stephen thought. On the very day week that they
had come in from leaving Selina in the grave, Mr. Radcliffe was lying
as lifeless as she was. A seizure carried him off. Francis was summoned
again from London before he had well got back to it. Stephen could not,
at such a season, completely ignore him.

He did not foresee the blow that was to come thundering down. When Mr.
Radcliffe's will came to be opened, it was found that his property was
equally divided between the two sons, half and half: Stephen of course
inheriting the Torr; and Squire Todhetley being appointed trustee for
Francis. "And I earnestly beg of him to accept the trust," ran the
words, "for the sake of Selina's son."

Francis caught the glare of Stephen as they were read out. It was of
course Stephen himself, but it looked more like a savage wild-cat. That
warning of his mother's came into Francis's mind with a rush.


II.

It stood on the left of the road as you went towards Alcester: a
good-looking, red-brick house, not large, but very substantial.
Everything about it was in trim order; from the emerald-green outer
venetian window-blinds to the handsome iron entrance-gates between the
enclosing palisades; and the garden and grounds had not as much as
a stray worm upon them. Mr. Brandon was nice and particular in all
matters, as old bachelors generally are; and he was especially so in
regard to his home.

Careering up to this said house on the morning of a fine spring day,
when the green hedges were budding and the birds sang in the trees,
went a pony-gig, driven by a gentleman. A tall, slender young fellow of
seven-and-twenty, with golden hair that shone in the sun and eyes as
blue and bright as the sky. Leaving the pony to be taken care of by a
labouring boy who chanced to be loitering about, he rang the bell at the
iron gates, and inquired of the answering servant whether Mr. Brandon
was at home.

"Yes, sir," was the answer of the man, as he led the way in. "But I am
not sure that he can see you. What name?" And the applicant carelessly
took a card from his waistcoat-pocket, and was left in the drawing-room.
Which card the servant glanced at as he carried it away.

"Mr. Francis Radcliffe."

People say there's sure to be a change every seven years. Seven years
had gone by since the death of old Mr. Radcliffe and the inheritance by
Francis of the portion that fell to him; three hundred a-year. There
were odd moments when Frank, in spite of himself, would look back at
those seven years; and he did not at all like the retrospect. For he
remembered the solemn promise he had made to his mother when she was
dying, to put away those evil habits which had begun to creep upon him,
more especially that worst of all bad habits that man, whether young
or old, can take to--_drinking_--and he had not kept the promise.
He had been called to the Bar in due course, but he made nothing by
his profession. Briefs did not come to him. He just wasted his time
and lived a fast life on the small means that were his. He pulled up
sometimes, turned his back on folly, and read like a house on fire:
but his wild companions soon got hold of him again, and put his good
resolutions to flight. Frank put it all down to idleness. "If I had work
to do, I should do it," he said, "and that would keep me straight." But
at the close of this last winter he had fallen into a most dangerous
illness, resulting from the draughts of ale, and what not, that he had
made too free with, and he got up from it with a resolution never to
drink again. Knowing that the resolution would be more easy to keep if
he turned his back on London and the companions who beset him, down he
came to his native place, determined to take a farm and give up the law.
For the second time in his life some money had come to him unexpectedly;
which would help him on. And so, after a seven years' fling, Frank
Radcliffe was going in for a change.

He had never stayed at Sandstone Torr since his father's death. His
brother Stephen's surly temper, and perhaps that curious warning of
his mother's, kept him out of it. He and Stephen maintained a show of
civility to one another; and when Frank was in the neighbourhood (but
that had only happened twice in the seven years), he would call at the
Torr and see them. The last time he came down, Frank was staying at a
place popularly called Pitchley's Farm. Old Pitchley--who had lived
on it, boy and man, for seventy years--liked him well. Frank made
acquaintance that time with Annet Skate; fell in love with her, in fact,
and meant to marry her. She was a pretty girl, and a good girl, and had
been brought up to be thoroughly useful as a farmer's daughter: but
neither by birth nor position was she the equal of Frank Radcliffe. All
her experience of life lay in her own secluded, plain home: in regard
to the world outside she was as ignorant as a young calf, and just as
mild and soft as butter.

So Frank, after his spell of sickness and reflection, had thrown up
London, and come down to settle in a farm with Annet, if he could get
one. But there was not a farm to be let for miles round. And it was
perhaps a curious thing that while Frank was thinking he should have to
travel elsewhere in search of one, Pitchley's should turn up. For old
Pitchley suddenly died. Pitchley's Farm belonged to Mr. Brandon. It was
a small compact farm; just the size Frank wanted. A large one would have
been beyond his means.

Mr. Brandon sat writing letters at the table in his library, in his
geranium-coloured Turkish cap, with its purple tassel, when his servant
went in with the card.

"Mr. Francis Radcliffe!" read he aloud, in his squeaky voice. "What, is
he down here again? You can bring him in, Abel--though I'm sure I don't
know what he wants with me." And Abel went and brought him.

"We heard you were ill, young man," said Mr. Brandon, peering up into
Frank's handsome face as he shook hands, and detecting all sorts of
sickly signs in it.

"So I have been, Mr. Brandon; very ill. But I have left London and its
dissipations for good, and have come here to settle. It's about time I
did," he added, with the candour natural to him.

"I should say it was," coughed old Brandon. "You've been on the wrong
tack long enough."

"And I have come to you--I hope I am first in the field--to ask you to
let me have the lease of Pitchley's Farm."

Mr. Brandon could not have felt more surprised had Frank asked for a
lease of the moon, but he did not show it. His head went up a little,
and the purple tassel took a sway backwards.

"Oh," said he. "_You_ take Pitchley's Farm! How do you think to stock
it?"

"I shall take to the stock at present on it, as far as my means will
allow, and give a bond for the rest. Pitchley's executors will make it
easy for me."

"What are your means?" curtly questioned old Brandon.

"In all, they will be two thousand pounds. Taking mine and Miss Skate's
together."

"That's a settled thing, is it, Master Francis?"--alluding to the
marriage.

"Yes, it is," said Frank. "Her portion is just a thousand pounds,
and her friends are willing to put it on the farm. Mine is another
thousand."

"Where does yours come from?"

"Do you recollect, Mr. Brandon, that when I was a little fellow at
school I had a thousand pounds left me by a clergyman--a former friend
of my grandfather Elliot?"

Mr. Brandon nodded. "It was Parson Godfrey. He came down once or twice
to the Torr to see your mother and you."

"Just so. Well, his widow has now recently died; she was considerably
younger than he; and she has left me another thousand. If I can have
Pitchley's Farm, I shall be sure to get on at it," he added in his
sanguine way. For, if ever there was a sanguine, sunny-natured fellow
in this world, it was Frank Radcliffe.

Old Brandon pushed his geranium cap all aside and gave a flick to the
tassel. "My opinion lies the contrary way, young man: that you will be
sure not to get on at it."

"I understand all about farming," said Frank eagerly. "And I mean to be
as steady as steady can be."

"To begin with a debt on the farm will cripple the best man going, sir."

"Oh, Mr. Brandon, don't turn against me!" implored Frank, who was
feeling terribly in earnest. "Give me a chance! Unless I can get some
constant work, some _interest_ to occupy my hands and my mind, I might
be relapsing back to the old ways again from sheer ennui. There's no
resource but a farm."

Mr. Brandon did not seem to be in a hurry to answer. He was looking
straight at Frank, and nodding little nods to himself, following out
some mental argument. Frank leaned forward in his chair, his voice low,
his face solemn.

"When my poor mother was dying, I promised her to give up bad habits,
Mr. Brandon. I hope--I think--I fully intend to do so now. Won't you
help me?"

"What do you wish me to understand by 'bad' habits, young man?" queried
Mr. Brandon in his hardest tones. "What have been yours?"

"Drink," said Frank shortly. "And I am ashamed enough to have to say
it. It is not that I have been a constant drinker, or that I have
taken _much_, in comparison with what very many men drink; but I have,
sometimes for weeks together, taken it very recklessly. _That_ is what
I meant by speaking of my bad habits, Mr. Brandon."

"Couldn't speak of a worse habit, Frank Radcliffe."

"True. I should have pulled up long ago but for those fast companions
I lived amongst. They kept me down. Once amidst such, a fellow has no
chance. Often and often that neglected promise to my mother has lain
upon me, a nightmare of remorse. I have fancied she might be looking
down upon earth, upon _me_, and seeing how I was fulfilling it."

"If your mother was not looking down upon you, sir, your Creator was."

"Ay. I know. Mr. Brandon"--his voice sinking deeper in its solemnity,
and his eyes glistening--"in the very last minute of my mother's
life--when her soul was actually on the wing--she told me that she
_knew_ I should be helped to throw off what was wrong. She had prayed
for it, and seen it. A conviction is within me that I shall be--has been
within me ever since. I think this--now--may be the turning-point in my
life. Don't deny me the farm, sir."

"Frank Radcliffe, I'd let you have the farm, and another to it, if I
thought you were sincere."

"Why--you _can't_ think me not sincere, after what I have said!" cried
Frank.

"Oh, you are sincere enough at the present moment. I don't doubt that.
The question is, will you be sincere in keeping your good resolutions in
the future?"

"I hope I shall. I believe I shall. I will try with all my best
energies."

"Very well. You may have the farm."

Frank Radcliffe started up in his joy and gratitude, and shook Mr.
Brandon's hands till the purple tassel quivered. He had a squeaky voice
and a cold manner, and went in for coughs and chest-aches, and all kinds
of fanciful disorders; but there was no more generous heart going than
old Brandon's.

Business settled, the luncheon was ordered in. But Frank was a good deal
too impatient to stay for it; and drove away in the pony-gig to impart
the news to all whom it might concern. Taking a round to the Torr first,
he drove into the back-yard. Stephen came out.

Stephen looked quite old now. He must have been fifty years of age. Hard
and surly as ever was he, and his stock of hair was as grizzled as his
father's used to be before Frank was born.

"Oh, it's you!" said Stephen, as civilly as he could bring his tongue to
speak. "Whose chay and pony is that?"

"It belongs to Pitchley's bailiff. He lent it me this morning."

"Will you come in?"

"I have not time now," answered Frank. "But I thought I'd just drive
round and tell you the news, Stephen. I'm going to have Pitchley's
Farm."

"Who says so?"

"I have now been settling it with Mr. Brandon. At first, he seemed
unwilling to let me have it--was afraid, I suppose, that I and the farm
might come to grief together--but he consented at last. So I shall get
in as soon as I can, and take Annet with me. You'll come to our wedding,
Stephen?"

"A fine match _she_ is!" cried cranky Stephen.

"What's the matter with her?"

"I don't say as anything's the matter with her. But you have always
stuck up for the pride and pomp of the Radcliffes: made out that nobody
was good enough for 'em. A nice comedown for Frank Radcliffe that'll
be--old Farmer Skate's girl."

"We won't quarrel about it, Stephen," said Frank, with his good-humoured
smile. "Here's your wife. How do you do, Mrs. Radcliffe?"

Becca had come out with a wet mop in her hands, which she proceeded to
wring. Some of the splashes went on Frank's pony-gig. She wore morning
costume: a dark-blue cotton gown hanging straight down on her thin,
lanky figure; and an old black cap adorning her hard face. It was a
great contrast: handsome, gentlemanly, well-dressed, sunny Frank
Radcliffe, barrister-at-law; and that surly boor Stephen, in his rough
clothes, and his shabby, hard-working wife.

"When be you going back to London?" was Becca's reply to his salutation,
as she began to rinse out the mop at the pump.

"Not at all. I have been telling Stephen. I am going into Pitchley's
Farm."

"Along of Annet Skate," put in Stephen; whose queer phraseology had been
indulged in so long that it had become habitual. "Much good they'll do
in a farm! He'd like us to go to the wedding! No, thank ye."

"Well, good-morning," said Frank, starting the pony. They did not give
him much encouragement to stay.

"Be it true, Radcliffe?" asked Becca, letting the mop alone for a
minute. "Be he a-going to marry Skate's girl, and get Pitchley's Farm?"

"I wish the devil had him!" was Stephen's surly comment, as he stalked
off in the wake of the receding pony-gig, giving his wife no other
answer.

No doubt Stephen was sincere in his wish, though it was hardly polite to
avow it. For the whole of Frank's life, he had been a thorn in the flesh
of Stephen: in the first years, for fear their father should bequeath to
Frank a share of the inheritance; in the later years, because Frank had
had the share! That sum of three hundred a-year, enjoyed by Frank, was
coveted by Stephen as money was never yet coveted by man. Looking at
matters with a distorted mind, he considered it a foul wrong done him;
as no better than a robbery upon him; that the whole of the money was
his own by all the laws of right and wrong, and that not a stiver of
it ought to have gone to Frank. Unable, however, to alter the state of
existing things, he had sincerely hoped that some lucky chance--say the
little accident of Frank's drinking himself to death--would put him in
possession of it; and all the rumours that came down from London about
Frank's wild life rejoiced him greatly. For if Frank died without
children, the money went to Stephen. And it may as well be mentioned
here, that old Mr. Radcliffe had so vested the three hundred a-year that
Frank had no power over the capital and was unable to squander it. It
would go to his children when he died; or, if he left no children, to
Stephen.

Never a night when he went to bed, never a morning when he got up, but
Stephen Radcliffe's hungry heart gave a dismal groan to that three
hundred a-year he had been deprived of. In truth, his own poor three
hundred was not enough for him. And then, he had expected that the six
would all be his! He had, he said, to work like a slave to keep up the
Torr, and make both ends meet. His two children were for ever tugging at
his purse-strings. Tom, quitting the sea, had settled in a farm in
Canada; but he was always writing home for help. Lizzy would make her
appearance at home at all kinds of unseasonable times; and tell pitiful
stories of the wants of her scanty ménage at Birmingham, and of her
little children, and of the poor health and short pay of her husband
the curate. Doubtless Stephen had rather a hard life of it and could
very well have done with a doubled income. To hear that Frank was going
to settle down to a sober existence and to marry a wife, was the worst
news of all to Stephen, for it lessened his good chances finely.

But he had only the will to hinder it, not the power. And matters and
the year went swimmingly on. Francis entered into possession of the
farm; and just a week before Midsummer Day, he married Annet Skate and
took her home.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The red June sunset fell full on Pitchley's Farm, staining the windows a
glowing crimson. Pitchley's Farm lay in a dell, about a mile from Dyke
Manor, on the opposite side to Sandstone Torr. It was a pretty little
homestead, with jessamine on the porch, and roses creeping up the frames
of the parlour-windows. Just a year had gone by since the wedding, and
to-morrow would be the anniversary of the wedding-day. Mr. and Mrs.
Francis Radcliffe were intending to keep it, and had bidden their
friends to an entertainment. He had carried out his resolution to be
steady, and they had prospered fairly well. David Skate, one of Annet's
brothers, a thorough, practical farmer, was ever ready to come over, if
wanted, and help Francis wi

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