186 files changed, 37478 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/21821-0.txt b/21821-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd3a8ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6955 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mark Of Cain
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21821]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+1886
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--A Tale of Two Clubs.
+
+     “Such arts the gods who dwell on high
+     Have given to the Greek.”--_Lays of Ancient Rome._
+
+In the Strangers’ Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with
+tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature
+was uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, and the guests, broken up into
+little groups, were chattering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of
+departing: no one had offered a welcome apology for the need of catching
+an evening train.
+
+Perhaps the civilized custom which permits women to dine in the presence
+of the greedier sex is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not
+for the excuse of “joining the ladies,” dinner-parties (Like the
+congregations in Heaven, as described in the hymn) would “ne’er break
+up,” and suppers (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) would never end.
+
+“Hang it all, will the fellows _never_ go?”
+
+So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien’s, the founder of the feast. The
+inhospitable reflections which we have recorded had all been passing
+through his brain as he rather moodily watched the twenty guests he had
+been feeding--one can hardly say entertaining. It was a “duty dinner” he
+had been giving--almost everything Maitland did was done from a sense of
+duty--yet he scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward of an approving
+conscience. His acquaintances, laughing and gossipping round the
+half-empty wine-glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and “the ashes
+of the weeds of their delight,” gave themselves no concern about the
+weary host. Even at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland felt
+like an outsider. He wakened from his reverie as a strong hand was laid
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+“Well, Maitland,” said a man sitting down beside him, “what have _you_
+been doing this long time?”
+
+“What have I been doing, Barton?” Maitland answered. “Oh, I have been
+reflecting on the choice of a life, and trying to humanize myself!
+Bielby says I have not enough human nature.”
+
+“Bielby is quite right; he is the most judicious of college dons and
+father-confessors, old man. And how long do you mean to remain his pupil
+and penitent? And how is the pothouse getting on?”
+
+Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever
+since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him.
+Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad,
+breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde,
+prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue
+eyes, and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other
+degrees at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was
+even what Captain Costigan styles “a scoientific cyarkter.” He had
+written learnedly in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had
+made a cruise in a man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his _Les
+Tatouages, Étude Médico-Lêgale_, published in Paris, had been commended
+by the highest authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had
+not a home and practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in
+Chelsea.
+
+“How is your pothouse getting on?” he asked again.
+
+“The pothouse? Oh, the _Hit or Miss_ you mean? Well, I’m afraid it’s not
+very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of doing
+some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the waterside
+won’t go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink, and
+little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and
+looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to
+civilize them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves’ Club in the
+East End. And then I fancied they might help to make _me_ a little more
+human. But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet
+blanket But the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with
+me about _that_. And she is a high authority.”
+
+“Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I’ve heard of her. She is a lively widow,
+isn’t she?”
+
+“She is a practical philanthropist,” answered Maitland, flushing a
+little.
+
+“Pretty, too, I have been told?”
+
+“Yes; she is ‘conveniently handsome,’ as Izaak Walton says.”
+
+“I say, Maitland, here’s a chance to humanize you. Why don’t you ask her
+to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich--what better would you
+ask?”
+
+“I wish everyone wouldn’t bother a man to marry,” Maitland replied
+testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
+pale and unwholesome.
+
+“What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what’s the matter with you? Here
+you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements
+say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what
+you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with
+you?”
+
+“Well, you should know best What’s the good of your being a doctor, and
+acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
+there is of it), if you can’t tell what’s the nature of my complaint?”
+
+“I don’t diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side
+of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general
+practitioners. There is plenty of human nature _there!_”
+
+“And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
+splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
+roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
+or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
+sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good
+deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say,” Barton went on, lowering his
+voice, “where on earth did you pick up----?”
+
+Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
+the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
+
+“Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the _Trumpet_ office. He was writing
+about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has been in
+the South Seas, like you.”
+
+“Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,”
+ answered the other, “and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
+dealt in them, I fancy.”
+
+“I daresay,” Maitland replied rather wearily. “He seems to have
+travelled a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever
+they may be.”
+
+“Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or
+don’t you?”
+
+“He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak,” said
+Maitland; “but what does it matter?”
+
+“Then you don’t know why he left his private tutor’s; you don’t know why
+he left the University; you don’t know why he left the Ninety-second;
+you don’t know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never
+heard of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?”
+
+“Well,” Maitland replied, “about his ancient history I own I don’t know
+anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself.
+He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was
+ridiculous.”
+
+“They didn’t take that view of it at Shephard’s Hotel”
+
+“Well, it is not my affair,” said Maitland. “One should see all sort
+of characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has
+been a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he
+is full of good stories. I rather like him, and he can’t do my moral
+character any harm. _I’m_ not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of
+life, nor quarrel with warlike aliens.”
+
+“No; but he’s not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford,”
+ Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up,
+surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
+
+The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in
+which he found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play
+Falstaff to every fresh heir’s Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man,
+too obviously accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke
+of a prolonged youth. À large cat’s-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed
+solitary in his shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of
+the contemporary reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face,
+though a good deal worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and
+of a purply bronze hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with
+the beverages of many peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous
+corners, were shaded by a small black mustache, and his twinkling
+bistre-colored eyes, beneath mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air
+of a jester and a good fellow. In manner he was familiar, with a kind of
+deference, too, and reserve, “like a dog that is always wagging his
+tail and deprecating a kick,” thought Barton grimly, as he watched the
+other’s genial advance.
+
+“He’s going to say good-night, bless him,” thought Maitland gratefully.
+“Now the others will be moving too, I hope!”
+
+So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley approached him. To stand
+up would show, he thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to detain
+the parting guest.
+
+“Good-night, Mr. Maitland,” said the senior, holding out his hand.
+
+“It is still early,” said the host, doing his best to play his part.
+“Must you really go?”
+
+“Yes; the night’s young” (it was about half-past twelve), “but I have a
+kind of engagement to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of your
+young friends here are anxious to come with me, and see how we keep it
+up round there. Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us.” Here he
+bowed slightly in the direction of Barton.
+
+“There will be a little _bac_ going on,” he continued--“_un petit bac
+de santé_; and these boys tell me they have never played anything more
+elevating than loo.”
+
+“I’m afraid I am no good at a round game,” answered Maitland, who had
+played at his Aunt’s at Christmas, and who now observed with delight
+that everyone was moving; “but here is Barton, who will be happy to
+accompany you, I daresay.”
+
+“If you’re for a frolic, boys,” said Barton, quoting Dr. Johnson, and
+looking rather at the younger men than at Cranley, “why, I will not balk
+you. Good-night, Maitland.”
+
+And he shook hands with his host.
+
+“Good-nights” were uttered in every direction; sticks, hats, and
+umbrellas were hunted up; and while Maitland, half-asleep, was being
+whirled to his rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests made the
+frozen pavement of Piccadilly ring beneath their elegant heels.
+
+“It is only round the corner,” said Cranley to the four or five men
+who accompanied him. “The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a
+fashionable slum off St. James’s. We’re just there.”
+
+There was nothing either meretricious or sinister in the aspect of that
+favored resort, the Cockpit, as the Decade Club was familiarly called
+by its friends--and enemies. Two young Merton men and the freshman from
+New, who were enjoying their Christmas vacation in town, and had been
+dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed in the appearance of
+the place. They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a
+lane, and to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket,
+into a narrow staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light,
+full of blazing wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small
+mysterious man would point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages
+leading on to the roof or into the next house, in case of a raid by the
+police. Such was the old idea of a “Hell;” but the advance of Thought
+has altered all these early notions. The Decade Club was like any other
+small club. A current of warm air, charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed
+forth into the frosty night when the swinging door was opened; a sleepy
+porter looked out of his little nest, and Cranley wrote the names of the
+companions he introduced in a book which was kept for that purpose.
+
+“Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night,” he said, genially.
+“It’s a livelier place, in the small hours, than that classical Olympic
+we’ve just left.”
+
+They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or two rooms, lit up but
+empty, except for two or three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable
+attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of the first floor, all the
+drawing-room of the house before it became a club, had been turned into
+a card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and a heavy odor of
+tobacco and alcohol poured out when the door was opened. A long green
+baize-covered table, of very light wood, ran down the centre of the
+room, while refreshments stood on smaller tables, and a servant out of
+livery sat, half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest corner.
+There were several empty chairs round the green baize-covered table, at
+which some twenty men were sitting, with money before them; while one,
+in the middle, dealt out the cards on a broad flap of smooth black
+leather let into the baize. Every now and then he threw the cards he had
+been dealing into a kind of well in the table, and after every deal he
+raked up his winnings with a rake, or distributed gold and counters
+to the winners, as mechanically as if he had been a croupier at Monte
+Carlo. The players, who were all in evening dress, had scarcely looked
+up when the strangers entered the room.
+
+“Brought some recruits, Cranley?” asked the Banker, adding, as he looked
+at his hand, “_J’en donne!_” and becoming absorbed in his game again.
+
+“The game you do not understand?” said Cranley to one of his recruits.
+
+“Not quite,” said the lad, shaking his head.
+
+“All right; I will soon show you all about it; and I wouldn’t play, if
+I were you, till you _know_ all about it. Perhaps, after you know _all_
+about it, you’ll think it wiser not to play at all At least, you might
+well think so abroad, where very fishy things are often done. Here it’s
+all right, of course.”
+
+“Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, then--I mean, when people are
+inclined to cheat?”
+
+“Cheat! Oh, rather! There are about a dozen ways of cheating at
+baccarat.”
+
+The other young men from Maitland’s party gathered round their mentor,
+who continued his instructions in a low voice, and from a distance whence
+the play could be watched, while the players were not likely to be
+disturbed by the conversation.
+
+“Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at Nice or in Paris,”
+ Cranley went on; “but to show you how it is done, in case you ever do
+play in foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see the men first
+put down their stakes within the thin white line on the edge of the
+tabla Then the Banker deals two cards to one of the men on his left, and
+all the fellows on that side stand by _his_ luck. Then he deals two to
+a chappie on his right, and all the punters on the right, back that
+sportsman. And he deals two cards to himself. The game is to get as
+near nine as possible, ten, and court cards, not counting at all. If the
+Banker has eight or nine, he does not offer cards; if he has less, he
+gives the two players, if they ask for them, one card each, and takes
+one himself if he chooses. If they hold six, seven, or eight, they
+stand; if less, they take a card. Sometimes one stands at five; it
+depends. Then the Banker wins if he is nearer nine than the players, and
+they win if _they_ are better than he; and that’s the whole affair.”
+
+“I don’t see where the cheating can come in,” said one of the young
+fellows.
+
+“Dozens of ways, as I told you. A man may have an understanding with
+the waiter, and play with arranged packs; but the waiter is always the
+dangerous element in _that_ little combination. He’s sure to peach or
+blackmail his accomplice. Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at
+Ostend, one fellow, a big German; he wore spectacles, like all Germans,
+and he seldom gave the players anything better than three court cards
+when he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to
+go for his cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat
+pocket. He laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried
+them on. As soon as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out,
+‘Here’s a swindle! _Nous sommes volés!_’ He could see, by the help of
+the spectacles, that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the
+spectacles were regular patent double million magnifiers.”
+
+“And what became of the owner of the glasses?”
+
+“Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man wearing them, and didn’t
+wait to say good-night. He just _went!_”
+
+Here Cranley chuckled.
+
+“I remember another time, at Nice: I always laugh when I think of it!
+There was a little Frenchman who played nearly every night. He would
+take the bank for three or four turns, and he almost always won. Well,
+one night he had been at the theatre, and he left before the end of
+the piece and looked in at the Cercle. He took the Bank: lost once, won
+twice; then he offered cards. The man who was playing nodded, to show he
+would take one, and the Frenchman laid down an eight of clubs, a greasy,
+dirty old rag, with _théâtre français de nice_ stamped on it in big
+letters. It was his ticket of readmission at the theatre that they
+gave him when he went out, and it had got mixed up with a nice little
+arrangement in cards he had managed to smuggle into the club pack. I’ll
+never forget his face and the other man’s when _Théâtre Français_ turned
+up. However, you understand the game now, and if you want to play, we
+had better give fine gold to the waiter in exchange for bone counters,
+and get to work.”
+
+Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to the corner where the
+white, dissipated-looking waiter of the card-room sat, and provided
+themselves with black and red _jetons_ (bone counters) of various
+values, to be redeemed at the end of the game.
+
+When they returned to the table the banker was just leaving his post.
+
+“I’m cleaned out,” said he, “_décavé_. Good-night,” and he walked away.
+
+No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The punters had been winning all
+night, and did not like to desert their luck.
+
+“Oh, this will never do,” cried Cranley. “If no one else will open a
+bank, I’ll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it
+is done!”
+
+Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver
+cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
+
+Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again
+Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered
+in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the
+direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were
+winning, thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly
+and amusing.
+
+“I must have one shy,” said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto
+stood with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth
+with a diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds
+and won; he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time,
+and then said, “May I draw a cheque?”
+
+“Of course you may,” Cranley answered. “The waiter will give you _tout
+ce qu’il faut pour écrire_, as the stage directions say; but I don’t
+advise you to plunge. You’ve lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil
+favors beginners, so you can’t come to grief.”
+
+The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks
+had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some
+paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles
+of the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he
+returned with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The
+luck turned again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice
+consecutively he lost.
+
+“Excuse me,” said Barton suddenly to Cranley, “may I help myself to one
+of your cigarettes?”
+
+He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the
+silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
+
+“Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when
+you have done with it.”
+
+He dealt again, and lost.
+
+“What a nice case!” said Barton, examining it closely. “There is an
+Arabic word engraved on it.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Cranley, rather impatiently, holding out his hand for
+the thing, and pausing before he dealt. “The case was given me by the
+late Khédive, dear old Ismail, bless him! The word is a talisman.”
+
+“I thought so. The case seemed to bring you luck,” said Barton.
+
+Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at him, as rapid and timid as
+the glance of a hare in its form.
+
+“Come, give me it back, please,” he said.
+
+“Now, just oblige me: let me try what there is in luck. Go on playing
+while I rub up my Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the
+case. Is it the word of Power of Solomon?”
+
+Cranley glanced back again. “All right,” he said, “as you are so
+curious---j’en donne!”
+
+He offered cards, and lost. Martin’s face brightened up. His paper
+currency was coming back to him.
+
+“It’s a shame,” grumbled Cranley, “to rob a fellow of his fetich.
+Waiter, a small brandy-and-soda! Confound your awkwardness! Why do you
+spill it over the cards?”
+
+By Cranley’s own awkwardness, more than the waiter’s, a little splash of
+the liquid had fallen in front of him, on the black leather part of the
+table where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck altered again.
+The rake was stretched out over both halves of the long table; the gold
+and notes and counters, with a fluttering assortment of Martin’s I O
+U’s, were all dragged in. Martin went to the den of the money-changer
+sullenly, and came back with fresh supplies.
+
+“Banco?” he cried, meaning that he challenged Cranley for all the money
+in the bank. There must have been some seven hundred pounds.
+
+“All right,” said Cranley, taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt
+two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and
+cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught him by
+the wrists.
+
+Cranley made one weak automatic movement to extricate himself; then he
+sat perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was
+white beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue.
+
+“Damn you!” he snarled. “What trick are you after now?”
+
+“Are you drunk, Barton?” cried some one.
+
+“Leave him alone!” shouted some of the players, rising from their seats;
+while others, pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder without
+seeing any excuse for his behavior.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Barton, in a steady voice, “I leave my conduct in the
+hands of the club. If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has been
+cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and at his. Let anyone who
+doubts what I say look here.”
+
+“Well, I’m looking here, and I don’t see what you are making such a fuss
+about,” said Martin, from the group behind, peering over at the table
+and the cards.
+
+“Will you kindly---- No, it is no use.” The last remark was addressed to
+the captive, who had tried to release his hands. “Will you kindly take
+up some of the cards and deal them slowly, to right and left, over that
+little puddle of spilt soda water on the leather? Get as near the table
+as you can.”
+
+There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
+
+“By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!” cried Martin.
+
+“Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you
+could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to
+take a card or stand.”
+
+“I didn’t,” said the wretched Cranley. “How on earth was I to know that
+the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you
+a chance against me?”
+
+“You spilt the liquor yourself,” Barton answered coolly, “when I took
+away your cigarette-case. I saw you passing the cards over the surface
+of it, which anyone can see for himself is a perfect mirror. I tried
+to warn you--for I did not want a row--when I said the case ‘seemed
+to bring you luck.’ But you would not be warned; and when the
+cigarette-case trick was played out, you fell back on the old dodge with
+the drop of water. Will anyone else convince himself that I am right
+before I let Mr. Cranley go?”
+
+One or two men passed the cards, as they had seen the Banker do, over
+the spilt soda water.
+
+“It’s a clear case,” they said. “Leave him alone.”
+
+Barton slackened his grip of Cranley’s hands, and for some seconds they
+lay as if paralyzed on the table before him, white and cold, with livid
+circles round the wrists. The man’s face was deadly pale, and wet
+with perspiration. He put out a trembling hand to the glass of
+brandy-and-water that stood beside him; the class rattled against his
+teeth as he drained all the contents at a gulp.
+
+“You shall hear from me,” he grumbled, and, with an inarticulate
+muttering of threats he made his way, stumbling and catching at chairs,
+to the door. When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, like
+a drunken man, and then shambled across the landing into a reading-room.
+It was empty, and Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay
+crumpled up, rather than sat, for perhaps ten minutes, holding his hand
+against his heart.
+
+“They talk about having the courage of one’s opinions. Confound it! Why
+haven’t I the nerve for my character? Hang this heart of mine! Will it
+never stop thumping?”
+
+He sat up and looked about him, then rose and walked toward the table;
+but his head began to swim, and his eyes to darken; so he fell back
+again in his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. Mechanically he began
+to move the hand that hung over the arm of his low chair, and it
+encountered a newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He lifted it
+automatically and without thought: it was the _Times_. Perhaps to try
+his eyes, and see if they served him again after his collapse, he ran
+them down the columns of the advertisements.
+
+Suddenly something caught his attention; his whole lax figure grew
+braced again as he read a passage steadily through more than twice or
+thrice. When he had quite mastered this, he threw down the paper and
+gave a low whistle.
+
+“So the old boy’s dead,” he reflected; “and that drunken tattooed ass
+and his daughter are to come in for the money and the mines! They’ll be
+clever that find him, and I shan’t give them his address! What luck some
+men have!”
+
+Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and lips working eagerly.
+
+“I’ll do it,” he said at last, cutting the advertisement out of the
+paper with a penknife. “It isn’t often a man has a chance to _star_ in
+this game of existence. I’ve lost all my own social Lives: one in
+that business at Oxford, one in the row at Ali Musjid, and the third
+went--to-night. But I’ll _star_. Every sinner should desire a new Life,”
+ he added with a sneer.*
+
+     * “Starring” is paying for a new “Life” at Pool.
+
+He rose, steady enough now, walked to the door, paused and listened,
+heard the excited voices in the card-room still discussing him, slunk
+down-stairs, took his hat and greatcoat, and swaggered past the porter.
+Mechanically he felt in his pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his
+cigarette-case; and he paused at the little fount of fire at the door.
+
+He was thinking that he would never light a cigarette there again.
+
+Presently he remembered, and swore. He had left his case on the table
+of the card-room, where Barton had laid it down, and he had not the
+impudence to send back for it.
+
+“_Vile damnum!_” he muttered (for he had enjoyed a classical education),
+and so disappeared in the frosty night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--In the Snow.
+
+The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
+after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
+falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
+earth--steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the streets,
+and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
+coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
+night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
+flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
+gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
+surface of the city. Drifts and “snow-wreathes,” as northern folk say,
+were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they
+lie when sheep are “smoored” on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in
+the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her
+cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off
+a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The
+pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and
+molten ice. Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars
+the foot-passengers slipped, “ricked” their backs, and swore as they
+stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who
+were in haste, and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in
+hansoms with two horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively
+white on the surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight
+shining black marks where wheels had cut their way.
+
+At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by
+the waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or
+coffee color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads
+straight to the stream, and here, in the afternoon--for a late start was
+made--the carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had
+choked up the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been
+unladen into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary
+modes of clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that
+recommended itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening
+the fog had lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so
+thick that the bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like
+the arches of that fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts
+of the vessels moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only
+a red lamp or two shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the
+public-house at the corner--the _Hit or Miss_--streamed a fan-shaped
+flood of light, soon choked by the fog.
+
+Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to
+the river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was
+faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came
+into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there
+upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the
+men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling
+on the side of the horses.
+
+One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
+backboard of the cart in its place.
+
+“Blarmme, Bill,” he grumbled, “if the blessed pins ain’t froze.”
+
+Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
+smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
+
+The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
+the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the
+pin.
+
+“It won’t budge,” he cried at last. “Just run into the _Hit or Miss_ at
+the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o’ hot
+beer when ye’re at it. Here’s fourpence. I was with three that found a
+quid in the _Mac_,* end of last week; here’s the last of it.”
+
+     * A quid in the _Mac_--a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
+     called _Mac_ from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
+     building eligible freehold tenements.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
+scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the “nimble fourpence”
+ have the monopoly of agility?
+
+“I’m Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don’t yer know,” said Bill, with regretful
+sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
+badge of avowed and total abstinence.
+
+“Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I’ll bring the bloomin’
+hammer myself.”
+
+Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
+protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
+warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
+public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which
+he then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his
+body under his armpit.
+
+“A little hot beer would do yer bloomin’ temper a deal more good than
+ten yards o’ blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin’s more in _my_ line,”
+ observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment.
+Aid with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their
+sockets, and let down the backboard of the cart.
+
+Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the
+cart was tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow
+shore-water, partly on to the edge of the slope.
+
+“Ullo!” cried Tommy suddenly. “E’re’s an old coat-sleeve a sticking out
+o’ the snow.”
+
+“‘Alves!” exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
+
+“‘Alves! of course, ‘alves. Ain’t we on the same lay,” replied the
+chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, “Lord preserve us, mate; _there’s a
+cove in the coat!_”
+
+He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
+stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
+at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin
+was the arm he grasped within it.
+
+“Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!”
+
+“Is he dead?” asked Bill, leaving the horses’ heads.
+
+“Dead! he’s bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
+did he get into the cart? Guess we didn’t shovel him in, eh; we’d have
+seen him?”
+
+By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow
+heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers,
+and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping
+ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in
+heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once
+been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of
+iron-gray hair, and a grizzled beard hung over the breast.
+
+The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched
+woman in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and
+shivered beside the body for a moment.
+
+“He’s a goner,” was her criticism. “I wish _I_ was.”
+
+With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking
+on her unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from
+nowhere, and were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior
+of the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark,
+or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and
+souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were
+helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned.
+
+“Run and fetch a peeler, Bill,” said Tommy at last.
+
+“Peeler be hanged! Bloomin’ likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
+yourself.”
+
+“Sulky devil you are,” answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder
+mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of
+Temperance. It is true that he had only been “Blue Ribbon” since the end
+of his Christmas bout--that is, for nearly a fortnight--and Virtue, a
+precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
+
+Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night
+The crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might
+truly be said that “the more part knew not wherefore they had come
+together.” The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure,
+otherwise the ring would have been swaying this way and that. Neither
+was it a dispute between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of
+angry repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a
+lost child. So the outer circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited,
+and patiently endured till the moment of revelation should arrive.
+Respectable people who passed only glanced at the gathering; respectable
+people may wonder, but they never do find out the mystery within a
+London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the mob were some amateurs who
+had just been drinking in the _Hit or Miss_. They were noisy, curious,
+and impatient.
+
+At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning,
+had brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead
+man was found in the cart-load of snow.
+
+Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the
+officers stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where
+the dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
+
+“Lord, it’s old Dicky Shields!” cried a voice in the crowd, as the
+peaked still features were lighted up.
+
+The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived,
+after the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed
+into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the _Hit
+or Miss_.
+
+“You know him, do you?” asked the policeman with the lantern.
+
+“Know him, rather! Didn’t I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
+this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at
+tattooing, bless you: he’d tattooed himself all over!”
+
+The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
+the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
+
+“Why, he was in the _Hit or Miss_,” the speaker went on, “no later nor
+last night.”
+
+“Wot beats me,” said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
+corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, “Wot beats me
+is how he got in this here cart of ours.”
+
+“He’s light enough surely,” added Tommy; “but I warrant _we_ didn’t
+chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square.”
+
+“Where do you put up at night?” asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
+had been ruminating on the mystery.
+
+“In the yard there, behind that there hoarding,” answered Tommy,
+pointing to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the
+public-house.
+
+At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters
+of damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste
+ground. The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled
+down, probably as condemned “slums,” in some moment of reform, when
+people had nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
+
+There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all
+the latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when
+something else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain
+sheds, with roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of
+lumber-room for the parish.
+
+At this time the scavengers’ carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
+the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
+horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
+
+“Was this cart o’ yours under the sheds all night or in the open?” asked
+the policeman, with an air of penetration.
+
+“Just outside the shed, worn’t it, Bill?” replied Tommy.
+
+Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
+
+“If the cart was outside,” said the policeman, “then the thing’s
+plain enough. You started from there, didn’t you, with the cart in the
+afternoon?”
+
+“Ay,” answered Tommy.
+
+“And there was a little sprinkle o’ snow in the cart?”
+
+“May be there wos. I don’t remember one way or the other.”
+
+“Then you _must_ be a stupid if you don’t see that this here cove,”
+ pointing to the dead man, “got drinking too much last night, lost
+hisself, and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the
+cart.”
+
+“Snow do make a fellow bloomin’ sleepy,” one of the crowd assented.
+
+“Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
+when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He’s light
+enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you
+started?”
+
+“One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,”
+ grunted Tommy.
+
+“Well, then, it’s as plain as--as the nose on your face,” said the
+policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. “That’s how it was.”
+
+“Bravo, Bobby!” cried one of the crowd. “They should make you an
+inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves.”
+
+The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
+shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
+and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
+which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead
+man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
+northward to the hospital.
+
+A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
+and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their
+eyes within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so,
+and at last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
+
+By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
+them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
+Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
+tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
+intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the
+heroes of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew
+all Tommy and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of
+emotional agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and
+making over and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these
+performances was sure to be particularly keen within the very walls
+where the dead man had probably taken his last convivial glass, and
+where some light was certain to be thrown, by the landlady or her
+customers, on the habits and history of poor Dicky Shields.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--An Academic Pothouse.
+
+The _Hit or Miss_ tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least)
+who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by
+the river’s brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the
+picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the
+architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a
+romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have
+seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The _Hit
+or Miss_ was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its fortunes.
+Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a person
+as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien’s, in the University of
+Oxford.
+
+It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this
+arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with
+“mine host” of the _Hit or Miss_, and found him to be by no means the
+rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland
+should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the _Hit or Miss_, was
+only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals,
+restorations, experiments--an age of dukes who are Socialists--an age
+which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end
+tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway--need not wonder at
+Maitland’s eccentric choice in philanthropy.
+
+Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy
+at a public school, where he was known as a “sap,” or assiduous student,
+and was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and
+rowing. At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less
+unpopular. His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien’s,
+where his services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a
+great desire to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity,
+and to improve humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life
+and duty had been urged on him by his college “coach,” philosopher, and
+friend, Mr. Joseph Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had
+made Maitland leave his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St.
+Gatien’s and betake himself to practical philanthropy.
+
+“You tell me you don’t see much in life,” Bielby had said. “Throw
+yourself into the life of others, who have not much to live on.”
+
+Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He
+once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had
+his own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the
+citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from
+the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John’s, Baliol, and Wadham
+Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of
+having three “devils,” or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters
+of the town between five and six o’clock every morning, that the
+artisans might be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
+
+As Maitland’s schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby
+urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in
+town. He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a
+Palace of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing
+this ingenious idea in the columns of the _Daily Trumpet_, Maitland
+looked out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy
+notion of taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was
+acted upon at the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own
+bar-room he could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least
+sophisticated aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and
+adulterated stuff He would raise the tone of his customers, while he
+would insensibly gain some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake
+off the prig (which he knew to be a strong element in his nature), and
+would, at the same time, encourage temperance by providing good malt
+liquor.
+
+The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire
+a tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when
+æstheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while
+philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in,
+like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the
+old leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of
+“impressions” and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling
+against this “side,” as he called it, of his “culture,” and in his hours
+of reaction he was all for steam tramways, “devils,” and Kindergartens
+standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old
+innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of
+those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease
+of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his
+opportunity. The _Hit or Miss_ was as attractive to an artistic as most
+public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the
+bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled
+old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near
+the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that
+way: the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished,
+till at last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces,
+and a dust-yard round it.
+
+The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so
+high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the
+attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls
+were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering
+projecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by huge
+wooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by a
+low-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. At
+one corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:
+
+     “Jack’s Bridge House.
+     “_Hit or Miss_--Luck’s All.”
+
+But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way,
+over which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the
+plaster) lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building.
+From this door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house
+kept for its intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled
+roofs and dormer windows than that which faced the street. The passage
+led down to a slum, and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty
+space and the dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left
+beneath the sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
+
+Within, the _Hit or Miss_ looked cosey enough to persons entering out of
+the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide
+old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle.
+On these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place
+themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within
+a room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber
+by itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained
+admittance to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear,
+now and then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere
+presence, and without in the least intending it, an Early Closing
+Movement.
+
+But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed
+landlady, or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the
+finding of poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been.
+Again and again the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more
+began to take the place of assertion.
+
+“I wonder,” asked one of the men, “how old Dicky got the money for a
+boose?”
+
+“The money, ay, and the chance,” said another. “That daughter of his--a
+nice-looking girl she is--kept poor Dicky pretty tight.”
+
+“Didn’t let him get--” the epigrammatist of the company was just
+beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter
+burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
+
+“Didn’t let him _get_ tight, you was a-goin’ to say, Tommy,” howled
+three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping
+of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like
+crackers.
+
+“Dicky ‘ad been ‘avin’ bad times for long,” the first speaker went on.
+“I guess he ‘ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for
+tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful
+forever about here.”
+
+“Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or
+else he was clean sold out, and hadn’t no capital to renew his stock of
+hairy cats and young parrots.”
+
+“The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky’s shop, had got to
+look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the
+middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that ‘ere
+shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer
+and t’other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o’
+a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does.”
+
+“Why,” said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the
+conversation, “why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A
+most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to
+meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used
+to do him a turn of his trade--tattooing him, like. ‘I’m doing him to
+pattern, mum,’ Dicky sez, sez he: ‘a _facsimile_ o’ myself, mum.’ It
+wasn’t much they drank neither--just a couple of pints; for sez the
+sailor gentleman, he sez, ‘I’m afeared, mum, our friend here can’t carry
+much even of _your_ capital stuff. We must excuse’ sez he, ‘the failings
+of an artis’; but I doesn’t want his hand to shake or slip when he’s a
+doin’ _me_,’ sez he. ‘Might > spile the pattern,’ he sez, ‘also hurt’
+And I wouldn’t have served old Dicky with more than was good for him,
+myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn’t I promised that poor daughter
+of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school--years ago now--I
+promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of--A hangel,
+if here isn’t Mr. Maitland his very self!”
+
+And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord,
+the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
+
+Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by
+one--some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced
+awkwardness--they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland’s
+appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his
+tenant.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Gullick,” said poor Maitland, ruefully, “I came here for
+a chat with our friends--a little social relaxation--on economic
+questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.”
+
+“Oh, sir, they’re a rough lot, and don’t think themselves company for
+the likes of you. But,” said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly--with the delight of
+the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale--“you ‘ve heard this hawful
+story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood--”
+
+What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about
+to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland,
+growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
+
+“What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!”
+
+“Nothing to _herself_, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir.”
+
+Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
+
+“Well, what about her father?”
+
+“Gone, sir--gone! In a cartload o’ snow, this very evening, he was
+found, just outside o* this very door.”
+
+“In a cartload of snow!” cried Maitland. “Do you mean that he went away
+in it, or that he was found in it dead?”
+
+“Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this
+very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir,
+I do assure you. He had been steady--oh, steady for weeks.”
+
+Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to
+a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some
+relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had
+known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as
+a hopeless _mauvais sujet_. But Dicky’s daughter, Margaret, had been a
+daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer
+transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was
+having her educated there, and after she was educated--why, then,
+Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the
+way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle;
+not that he objected--on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his
+views in writing. There were times--there had lately, above all, been
+times--when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in
+this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and
+pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an
+obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man’s way;
+he was nobody’s enemy now, not even his own.
+
+The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a
+sensation rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland’s
+consciousness.
+
+“Tell me everything you know of this wretched business,” he said, rising
+and closing the door which led into the outer room.
+
+“Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know
+that Dicky had found a friend lately--an old shipmate, or petty-officer,
+he called him--a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a
+merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at
+sea, and he’d bring him here ‘to yarn with him,’ he said, once or twice
+it might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old
+Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an
+honest penny by his trade--a queer trade it was. Never more than a
+pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most
+considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought
+him in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor
+comes in, rubbing his eyes, and ‘Good-night, mum,’ sez he. ‘My friend’s
+been gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I’ve been asleep by
+myself. If you please, I’ll just settle our little score. It’s the last
+for a long time, for I’m bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward.
+Oh, mum, a sailor’s life!’ So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a
+gentleman, and out he goes, and that’s the last I ever see o’ poor Dicky
+Shields till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart,
+cold and stiff, sir.”
+
+“And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get _into_
+the cart?”
+
+“Well, that’s just what they’ve been wondering at, though the cart
+was handy and uncommon convenient for a man as ‘ad too much, if ‘ad he
+‘_ad_; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would
+not intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and
+never wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what’s _that_?” screamed Mrs. Gullick,
+leaping to her feet in terror.
+
+The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst
+open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a
+cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick’s bosom.
+
+“Well, if ever I ‘_ad_ a fright!” that worthy lady exclaimed, turning
+toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little
+animal in an affectionate clasp. “Well, if _ever_ there was such a child
+as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you _now_?”
+
+“Oh, mother,” cried the bear, “I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the
+roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was ‘arf awake, I was that horful
+frightened.”
+
+“Well, you just go up-stairs again--and here’s a sweet-cake
+for you--and you take this night-light,” said Mrs. Gullick, producing
+the articles she mentioned, “and put it in the basin careful, and
+knock on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it wasn’t for that
+bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind enough to let you keep, you’d get your
+death o’ cold, you would, running about in the night. And look ‘ere,
+Lizer,” she added, patting the child affectionately on the shoulder, “do
+get that there Bird out o’ your head. It’s just nothing but indigestion
+comes o’ you and the other children--himps they may well call you,
+and himps I’m sure you are--always wasting your screws on pasty and
+lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just-nothing but indigestion.”
+
+Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace,
+about Mrs. Gullick’s neck; and then, without lavishing attention on
+Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
+
+“I’m sure, sir, I ask your pardon,” exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; “but
+Lizer’s far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or
+else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has
+been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps.”
+
+“But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?”
+
+“She’s such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man,
+and all of them at the _Hilarity_, you can’t _think_, sir,” said Mrs.
+Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland’s general capacity
+for abstract speculation. “A regular little genius that child is, though
+I says it as shouldn’t. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father,
+sir.” And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
+
+Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but,
+like too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial
+enjoyment. Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had
+appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after
+his property when he became landlord of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+“What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more
+than four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a
+little late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with
+the jug, he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing
+didn’t drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would ‘a
+died laughing, and him so thirsty, too.”
+
+“Take the knap?” said Maitland, who imagined that “the knap” must be
+some malady incident to childhood.
+
+“Oh, sir, it’s when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know,
+and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise
+of a box on the ear: that’s what we call ‘taking the knap’ in the
+profession. And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all--Lizer
+was that clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp
+at the _Hilarity_ pantermime; and they’re that good to her, they let her
+bring her bearskin home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the
+Little Bear in ‘The Three Bears,’ don’t you know, sir.”
+
+Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle
+Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned
+paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude
+of Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on
+the traditional narrative.
+
+“But what was the child saying about a big Bird?” he asked. “What was it
+that frightened her?”
+
+“Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something
+hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things
+in pantermimes might put notions in a child’s head. But when she came
+home last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and
+swore she had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim
+over the street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she
+flies, screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to
+get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre
+pantermime bearskin, that fits her like another skin--and she’ll be too
+big for it next year--just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That’s
+all about it, sir. She’ll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer.”
+
+“I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick,” said Maitland; “and, as I am
+passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl.
+Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields,
+you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about
+her father’s death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it
+happened.”
+
+“Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; “and being safe away at
+school, sir, we’ll hope she won’t be told no more than she needn’t know
+about it.”
+
+Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was
+filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
+
+He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the
+raw darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed
+at no great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen
+comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood
+reading his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and
+there to save threepence,
+
+     “From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     “The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     “Tiverton.
+     “I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do
+     not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.
+     Break news.”
+
+This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to
+construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous
+badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the
+paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there
+was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was
+buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the despatch was
+stamped and delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--Miss Marlett’s.
+
+Girls’ schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you
+chance to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold.
+Their noses (however charming these features may become in a year
+or two, or even may be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty
+temperature in the long dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of
+the fair pupils are apt to seem larger than common, inclined to blue
+in color, and, generally, are suggestive of inadequate circulation.
+À tendency to get as near the fire as possible (to come within the
+frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden), and to cower beneath shawls,
+is also characteristic of joyous girlhood--school-girlhood, that is. In
+fact, one thinks of a girls’ school as too frequently a spot where no
+one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal procession is
+not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there is apt to be
+a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient clothing, and
+general unsatisfied tedium.
+
+Miss Marlett’s Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more
+briefly known as “The Dovecot, Conisbeare,” was no exception, on a
+particularly cold February day--the day after Dicky Shields was found
+dead--to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a
+girls’ school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where “the fires
+wass coot,” as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its
+lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little
+distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch
+pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett’s were not good on this February
+morning. They never _were_ good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one
+of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for
+persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know
+what they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which,
+consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only
+revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of
+stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal
+had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads
+were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to
+be urged along the heavy ways.
+
+This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but
+it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were
+just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the
+pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
+
+“Oh dear,” said one maiden--Janey Harman by name--whose blonde
+complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien
+and unbecoming hues, “_why_ won’t that old Cat let us have fires to
+dress by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!”
+
+“Yes; and I cant get them clean,” said Margaret, holding up two very
+pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
+
+     “Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,
+     Are not my _hands_ washed white?”
+
+“No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies,” came a voice, accompanied by
+an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a
+fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
+
+“I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett,” replied the maiden thus
+rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence--
+
+     “‘Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,’”
+
+--and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether the
+best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as if
+“that Miss Shields” was laughing at her.
+
+“Old Cat!” the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. “But no wonder
+my hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it’s my week to be
+Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut
+off some of the enemy’s supplies.”
+
+So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of
+coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
+
+“Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are something _like_ a stoker,”
+ exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing: “we
+shall have a blaze to-night.”
+
+Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett’s school, by an unusual and
+inconsistent concession to comfort and sanitary principles, the elder
+girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter.
+But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked,
+inasmuch as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots,
+the girls were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it
+could be found. Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each
+other’s fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their pockets. But this
+conduct--resembling what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands,
+that they “eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other’s
+washing”--led to strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week
+(as the girl appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to
+infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This
+week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore
+herself in her high office as to extort the admiration of the very
+housemaids.
+
+     “Even the ranks of Tusculum
+     Could scarce forbear to cheer,”
+
+If we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields’
+favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was
+mercifully unaware that not to detect the “pinchbeck” in the _Lays_ is
+the sign of a grovelling nature.
+
+Before she was sent to Miss Marlett’s, four years ere this date,
+Margaret Shields’ instruction had been limited. “The best thing that
+could be said for it,” as the old sporting prophet remarked of his
+own education, “was that it had been mainly eleemosynary.” The Chelsea
+School Board fees could but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields.
+But Robert Maitland, when still young in philanthropy, had seen the
+clever, merry, brown-eyed child at some school treat, or inspection, or
+other function; had covenanted in some sort with her shiftless parent;
+had rescued the child from the streets, and sent her as a pupil to
+Miss Marlett’s. Like Mr. Day, the accomplished author of “Sandford and
+Merton,” and creator of the immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had
+conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own
+intellectual standard, and made, or “ready-made,” a helpmate meet for
+him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret
+Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know
+human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
+
+Maitland could “please himself,” as people say; that is, in his choice
+of a partner he had no relations to please--no one but the elect young
+lady, who, after all, might not be “pleased” with alacrity.
+
+Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields
+was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates
+(“chamber-dekyns” they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four
+hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and
+comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett’s
+shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle.
+This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with
+a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight
+knot, and with a smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful
+to her lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a
+heroine, “were rather too large for regular beauty.” She was perfectly
+ready to face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her
+mistress) when the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o’clock exactly,
+and the drowsy girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the
+wintry class-rooms.
+
+Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat
+which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does
+anyone remember--can anyone forget--how horribly distasteful a slate
+can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold educational
+formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy
+slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for
+some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. “Tare an’ ‘ouns, _I_ call
+it,” whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a “course”
+ of Lever’s Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory
+progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging
+herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso’s engaging work which is
+most palpitating with actuality:
+
+“If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink
+twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire
+laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles
+in length, and four feet six in height?”
+
+This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret’s mathematical
+endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest
+girls can be) she was playing at “oughts and crosses” with Janey Harman
+when the arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly,
+beside Miss Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and
+set himself vigorously to elucidate (by “the low cunning of algebra”)
+the difficult sum from Colenso.
+
+“You see, it is like _this_,” he said, mumbling rapidly, and scribbling
+a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to follow
+with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite dazed
+Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his topic
+so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make allowance
+for the benighted darkness of the learner.
+
+“Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it’s quite
+simple,” said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
+
+“Oh, thank you; I _see_,” said Margaret, with the kind readiness of
+woman, who would profess to “see” the Secret of Hegel, or the
+inmost heart of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of
+cover-point, or the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon,
+rather than be troubled with prolonged explanations, which the
+expositor, after all, might find it inconvenient to give.
+
+Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar’s _forte_; and no young
+lady in Miss Marlett’s establishment was so hungry, or so glad when
+eight o’clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret
+Shields.
+
+Breakfast at Miss Marlett’s was not a convivial meal. There was a
+long narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, or
+_dais_, being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals
+down the table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter--of extremely
+thick bread and surprisingly thin butter--each slice being divided into
+four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether
+this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at
+seven, till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps,
+the inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with
+confidence. But, if girls do not always learn as much at school as could
+be desired, intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every
+chance of acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if
+familiarity really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that
+Miss Marlett’s establishment was a _Dothegirls Hall_, nor a school much
+more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has
+still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than,
+persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places;
+but boys have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their
+breakfasts, which would be considered horribly indelicate and
+insubordinate conduct in girls.
+
+“Est ce que vous aimez les tartines à l’Anglaise,” said Janey Harman to
+Margaret.
+
+“Ce que j’aime dans la tartine, c’est la simplicité prime-sautière da sa
+nature,” answered Miss Shields.
+
+It was one of the charms of the “matinal meal” (as the author of “Guy
+Livingstone” calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled
+to talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
+
+“Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptée, sont Françaises, dans cet
+établissement peu recréatif,” went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
+
+“Je déteste le Français,” Margaret answered, “mais je le préfère
+infiniment à l’Allemand.”
+
+“Comment accentuez, vous le mot préfère, Marguerite?” asked Miss
+Marlett, who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of
+conveying instruction.
+
+“Oh, two accents--one this way, and the other that,” answered Margaret,
+caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct
+terminology.
+
+“Vous allez perdre dix marks,” remarked the schoolmistress, if
+incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy
+to say, off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for
+“marks.”
+
+“Voici les lettres qui arrivent,” whispered Janey to Margaret, as the
+post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it
+with a key and withdrew the contents.
+
+This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first
+sorted out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and
+unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other
+letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could
+trust, and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were
+regarded with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman,
+whose letters Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before
+delivering them.
+
+“Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire,” said poor Janey to her
+friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at
+stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about
+in her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the
+edges. Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the
+briefest and most decorous manner.
+
+“Qui est votre correspondent?” Margaret asked. We are not defending her
+French.
+
+“C’est le pauvre Harry Wyville,” answered Janey. “Il est sous-lieutenant
+dans les Berkshires à Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas écrire à moi, il
+est comme on diroit, mon frère.”
+
+“Est il votre parent?”
+
+“Non, pas du tout, mais je l’ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans!
+Voici, elle à deux dépêches télégraphiques,” Janey added, observing
+two orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the
+letters.
+
+As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant
+Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
+
+“Jeanne je veux vous parler à part, après, dans mon boudoir,” remarked
+Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched,
+displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
+
+Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to
+one by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who
+is just like one’s brother, is a trial to any girl.
+
+Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which,
+as Janey had noticed, included _two_ telegraphic despatches in
+orange-colored envelopes.
+
+That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the
+admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have
+done so, but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils’
+correspondence before attending to her own. “Business first, pleasure
+afterward,” was the motto of this admirable woman.
+
+Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the
+day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
+
+“Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman,” said the
+schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so
+unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious--unwonted moods
+for this careless maiden.
+
+“Janey, something must have happened,” she whispered to her friend, who
+was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
+
+“Something’s _going_ to happen, I’m sure,” said poor Janey,
+apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
+
+Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what
+Miss Marlett, when she spoke French, called her “boudoir.” The girl felt
+colder than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss
+Marietta door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the
+low white hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls
+was standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins
+and sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two
+blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of
+the ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray
+haze was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and
+the branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black
+holes in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish
+plash.
+
+Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came
+out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
+
+“What is it?” whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before
+her, and her own unformed misgivings.
+
+“She won’t give me the letter. I’m to have it when I go home for good;
+and I’m to go home for good at the holidays,” whimpered Janey.
+
+“Poor Janey!” said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
+
+“Margaret Shields, come here!” cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice,
+from the boudoir.
+
+“Come to the back music-room when she’s done with you,” the other
+girl whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss
+Marlett’s chamber.
+
+“My dear Margaret!” said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was
+standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting
+grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she
+generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
+
+“My dear Margaret!” she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the
+school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
+
+“What has happened?” she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could
+scarcely speak.
+
+“You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father----”
+
+“Was it an accident?” asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well
+what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no
+prophet to foretell. “Was it anything very dreadful?”
+
+“Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor
+Daisy!”
+
+“Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!” the girl sobbed. Somehow she
+was kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady’s lap. “I have
+been horrid to you. I am so wretched!”
+
+A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret
+Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college,
+with a sad and hungry heart, trying to “carry it off by her wild talk
+and her wit.” “It was bitterness they mistook for frolic.” She had known
+herself to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with
+the other girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret
+had not gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than
+they knew; she had been in the “best set” among the pupils, by dint of
+her cheery rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and
+knew, too, that she had been living, socially, in that little society at
+the expense of this kind queer old Miss Marlett’s feelings.
+
+“I have been horrid to you,” she repeated. “I wish I had never been
+born.”
+
+The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl’s
+beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
+
+“Don’t mind me,” at last Miss Marlett said. “I never thought hardly of
+you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you
+can have any of the girls you like to help you to pack.”
+
+Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which
+of the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that
+it was the other culprit.
+
+Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her
+arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to
+select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though
+she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart
+and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word
+_legibus_ (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third
+declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this
+grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she
+had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had
+led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was
+honored as a goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages.
+But now Miss Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes
+of the past.
+
+Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold
+water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness
+seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again
+and again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this
+chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the
+traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey
+was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
+
+“Come to my room, Janey,” she said, beckoning.
+
+Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was
+forbidden to the girls.
+
+“Why, well only get into another scrape,” said Janey, ruefully.
+
+“No, come away; I’ve got leave for you. You’re to help me to pack”
+
+“To pack!” cried Janey. “Why, _you’re_ not expelled, are you? You’ve
+done nothing. You’ve not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy
+who is just like a brother to you and whom you’ve known for years.”
+
+Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
+and intense curiosity.
+
+When they reached their room, where Margaret’s portmanteau had already
+been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for
+a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she
+sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair “had
+a good cry,” and comforted each other as well as they might.
+
+“And what are you going to do?” asked Janey, when, as Homer says, “they
+had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.”
+
+“I don’t know!”
+
+“Have you no one else in all the world?”
+
+“No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna.
+Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers,
+and we were at Marseilles, and then in London.”
+
+“But you have a guardian, haven’t you?”
+
+“Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he’s been very kind, and done
+everything for me; but he’s quite a young man, not thirty, and he’s so
+stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like
+a book. And he’s so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because
+he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides--”
+
+But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
+lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien’s.
+
+“And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?”
+ Janey asked.
+
+“There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
+been an officer in father’s ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
+sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all.”
+
+“And you don’t know any of your father’s family?”
+
+“No,” said Margaret, wearily. “Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
+prayer-book.” And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
+silver clasps. “This was a book my father gave me,” she said. “It has a
+name on it--my grandfather’s, I suppose--‘Richard Johnson, Linkheaton,
+1837.’” Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.
+
+“Your mother’s father it may have belonged to,” said Janey.
+
+“I don’t know,” Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
+
+“I hope you won’t stay away long, dear,” said Janey, affectionately.
+
+“But _you_ are going, too, you know,” Margaret answered, without much
+tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break
+down, when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the
+snow-laden drive.
+
+“Why, here’s some one coming!” cried Janey, rushing to the window. “Two
+horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for
+you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--Flown.
+
+Maitland’s reflections as, in performance of the promise he had
+telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted.
+The newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left
+unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made
+that they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering
+its effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard
+Shields affected Maitland’s purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He
+had for some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the
+girl was concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had
+been dimly aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a
+new, rather painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady.
+Maitland, in fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit
+for, and a sign of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had
+greeted, some weeks before, Barton’s casual criticism on Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his
+philanthropic entanglement--it was rather, he said to himself, an
+entanglement than an engagement--had become irksome to his fancy.
+Now that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the
+daughter would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations
+in which they stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men
+from seeing this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy
+conceit. A curious “aloofness” of nature permitted him to stand aside,
+and see himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This
+disposition is rare, and not a source of happiness.
+
+On the other hand, his future relations to Margaret formed a puzzle
+inextricable. He could not at all imagine how he was to dispose of so
+embarrassing a _protégée_. Margaret was becoming too much of a woman to
+be left much longer at school; and where was she to be disposed of?
+
+“I might send her to Girton,” he thought; and then, characteristically,
+he began to weigh in his mind the comparative educational merits of
+Girton and Somerville Hall. About one thing only was he certain: he must
+consult his college mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien’s, as soon as might
+be. Too long had this Rasselas--occupied, like the famous Prince
+of Abyssinia, with _the choice of life_--neglected to resort to his
+academic Imlac. In the meantime he could only reflect that Margaret must
+remain as a pupil at Miss Marlett’s. The moment would soon be arriving
+when some other home, and a chaperon instead of a school-mistress, must
+be found for this peculiar object of philanthropy and outdoor relief.
+
+Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the nine o’clock train. The
+early dusk began to gather, gray and damp; the train was late, having
+made tardy progress through the half-melted snow. He had set out from
+Paddington by the half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh and
+crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the most sceptical that Maitland
+could not reach Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in anything
+but a happy temper, he engaged a fly, and drove off, along heavy
+miserable roads, to the Dovecot.
+
+Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment,
+Maitland’s cabman “pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked” for a
+considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of
+Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected
+no visitors, though Maitland knew that he ought to be expected. “The
+bandogs bayed and howled,” as they did round the secret bower of the
+Lady of Brauksome; and lights flitted about the windows. When a lantern
+at last came flickering up to the gate, the bearer of it stopped to
+challenge an apparently unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger.
+
+“Who are you? What do you want?” said a female voice, in a strong
+Devonian accent.
+
+“I want Miss Marlett,” answered Maitland.
+
+There was some hesitation. Then the porter appeared to reflect that a
+burglar would not arrive in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would
+not ask for the schoolmistress.
+
+The portals were at length unbarred and lugged apart over the gravel,
+and Maitland followed the cook (for she was no one less) and the candle
+up to the front door. He gave his card, and was ushered into the chamber
+reserved for interviews with parents and guardians. The drawing-room had
+the air and faint smell of a room very seldom occupied. All the chairs
+were so elegantly and cunningly constructed that they tilted up at
+intervals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted himself to their
+hospitality. Their backs were decorated with antimacassars wrought with
+glass beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone fitfully with
+a frosty lustre. On the round table in the middle were volumes of “The
+Mothers of England,” “The Grandmothers of the Bible,” Blair “On the
+Grave,” and “The Epic of Hades,” the latter copiously and appropriately
+illustrated. In addition to these cheerful volumes there were large
+tomes of lake and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded magenta
+bindings, shrouded from the garish light of day in drab paper covers.
+
+The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung with prize sketches, in
+water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former
+works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a
+mauve hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber
+rocks, touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an
+agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders
+by Somebody’s Patent Dome-Blacklead, “increases the attractions of
+the fireside,” according to the advertisements. Maitland knew all the
+blacklead caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. They were
+old acquaintances, and as he fidgeted about the room he became very
+impatient.
+
+At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett appeared, rustling in silks,
+very stiff, and with an air of extreme astonishment.
+
+“Mr. Maitland?” she said, in an interrogative tone.
+
+“Didn’t you expect me? Didn’t you get my telegram?” asked Maitland.
+
+It occurred to him that the storm might have injured the wires, that
+his message might never have arrived, and that he might be obliged to
+explain everything, and break his bad news in person.
+
+“Yes, certainly. I got _both_ your telegrams. But why have you come
+here?”
+
+“Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and consult you about her. But
+what do you mean by _both_ my telegrams?”
+
+Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down with unexpected suddenness.
+
+“Oh, what will become of the poor girl?” she cried, “and what will
+become of _me_? It will get talked about. The parents will hear of it,
+and I am ruined.”
+
+The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief over her eyes, to the
+extreme discomfiture of Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman cry;
+and that Miss Marlett should cry--Miss Marlett, the least melting, as he
+had fancied, of her sex--was a circumstance which entirely puzzled and
+greatly disconcerted him.
+
+He remained silent, looking at a flower in the pattern of the carpet,
+for at least a minute.
+
+“I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, about what is to become
+of the poor girl; but I do not see how the parents of the other young
+ladies are concerned. Death is common to all; and Margaret’s father,
+though his life was exposed to criticism, cannot be fairly censured
+because he has left it And what do you mean, please, by receiving _both_
+my telegrams? I only #sent _one_, to the effect that I would leave town
+by the 10.30 train, and come straight to you. There must be some mistake
+somewhere. Can I see Miss Shields?”
+
+“See Miss Shields! Why, she’s _gone!_ She left this morning with your
+friend,” said Miss Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and alarmed,
+and looking straight at her visitor.
+
+“She’s _gone!_ She left this morning with my friend!” repeated Maitland.
+He felt like a man in a dream.
+
+“You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself,
+and in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her
+father’s friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so
+she went with _him_.”
+
+“My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow,” cried Maitland;
+“and I sent no second telegram.”
+
+“Then who _did_ send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both
+telegrams,” cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left
+the room.
+
+While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had
+time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had
+become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her
+from school at the very moment of her father’s accidental death? And by
+what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from
+himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one?
+The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched
+telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to
+Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been
+mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might
+have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem,
+might
+
+     “Have wrote it all by rote,
+     And never wrote it right.”
+
+But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the
+recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse)
+had gone off with “his friend, Mr. Lithgow.” Clearly, no amount of
+accident or mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and
+the disappearance of Margaret.
+
+It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly
+blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature--as he admitted,
+on the evidence of his old college tutor--that he was never able to
+see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his own
+interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command
+the whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for
+people, and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the
+right, and everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more
+full-blooded life, he would probably have lost his temper, and “spoken
+his mind,” as the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should
+never have let Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a
+telegram from the girl’s guardian.
+
+It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about
+finding the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour.
+At last she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch
+in her hand, but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated
+young lady, in whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have
+recognized Miss Janey Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely
+bowed vaguely.
+
+“This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have seen on other occasions,”
+ said Miss Marlett, trying to be calm.
+
+Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than ever. It did occur to him,
+that the fewer people knew of so delicate a business the better for
+Margaret’s sake.
+
+“I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Maitland, partly because she is
+Miss Shields’ greatest friend” (here Janey sobbed), “but chiefly because
+she can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of what I have told you.”
+
+“I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Marlett; but will you kindly let
+me compare the two telegrams? This is a most extraordinary affair,
+and we ought to lose no time in investigating it, and discovering
+its meaning. You and I are responsible, you know, to ourselves, if
+unfortunately to no one else, for Margaret’s safety.”
+
+“But I haven’t got the two telegrams!” exclaimed poor Miss Marlett, who
+could not live up to the stately tone of Maitland. “I haven’t got them,
+or rather, I only have one of them, and I have hunted everywhere, high
+and low, for the other.”
+
+Then she offered Maitland a single dispatch, and the flimsy pink paper
+fluttered in her shaking hand.
+
+Maitland took it up and read aloud:
+
+     “Sent out at 7.45.    Received 7.51.
+     “From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     “The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     “Tiverton.
+     “I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train.
+     Do not let Margaret see the newspaper.
+     Her father dead. Break news.”
+
+“Why, that is my own telegram!” cried Maitland; “but what have you done
+with the other you said you received?”
+
+“That is the very one I cannot find, though I had both on the escritoire
+in my own room this morning. I cannot believe anyone would touch it. I
+did not lock them away, not expecting to have any use for them; but I am
+quite sure, the last time I saw them, they were lying there.”
+
+“This is very extraordinary,” said Maitland. “You tell me, Miss Marlett,
+that you received two telegrams from me. On the strength of the later
+of the two you let your pupil go away with a person of whom you know
+nothing, and then you have not even the telegram to show me. How long an
+interval was there between the receipt of the two despatches?”
+
+“I got them both at once,” said poor, trembling Miss Marlett, who felt
+the weakness of her case. “They were both sent up with the letters this
+morning. Were they not, Miss Harman?”
+
+“Yes,” said Janey; “I certainly saw two telegraphic envelopes lying
+among your letters at breakfast. I mentioned it to--to poor Margaret,”
+ she added, with a break in her voice.
+
+“But why were the telegrams not delivered last night?” Maitland asked.
+
+“I have left orders,” Miss Marlett answered, “that only telegrams of
+instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings,
+and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about
+nothing in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams _were_
+very important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about
+them if they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning.
+I have had a great deal of annoyance and expense,” the schoolmistress
+added, “with telegrams that had to be paid for.”
+
+And here most people who live at a distance from telegraph offices, and
+are afflicted with careless friends whose touch on the wire is easy and
+light, will perhaps sympathize with Miss Marlett.
+
+“You might at least have telegraphed back to ask me to confirm the
+instructions, when you read the second despatch,” said Maitland.
+
+He was beginning to take an argumentative interest in the strength
+of his own case. It was certainly very strong, and the excuse for the
+schoolmistress was weak in proportion.
+
+“But that would have been of no use, as it happens,” Janey put in--an
+unexpected and welcome ally to Miss Marlett--“because you must have left
+Paddington long before the question could have reached you.”
+
+This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact; and Miss Marlett could not
+repress a grateful glance in the direction of her wayward pupil.
+
+“Well,” said Maitland, “it is all very provoking, and very serious. Can
+you remember at all how the second message ran, Miss Marlett?”
+
+“Indeed, I know it off by heart; it was directed exactly like that in
+your hand, and was dated half an hour later. It ran: ‘Plans altered.
+Margaret required in town. My friend and her father’s, Mr. Lithgow,
+will call for her soon after mid-day. I noticed there were just twenty
+words.”
+
+“And did you also notice the office from which the message was sent
+out?”
+
+“No,” said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with an effort at
+recollection. “I am afraid I did not notice.”
+
+“That is very unfortunate,” said Maitland, walking vaguely up and down
+the room. “Do you think the telegram is absolutely lost?”
+
+“I have looked everywhere, and asked all the maids.”
+
+“When did you see it last, for certain?”
+
+“I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make
+sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started.”
+
+“And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?”
+
+“He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he
+seemed very cold.”
+
+“Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which
+he probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know
+anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had--”
+ muttered Maitland to himself. “She has never been in any place, Miss
+Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man’s
+acquaintance?”
+
+“It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage
+it, Mr. Maitland,” said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
+
+“I am _sure_ Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have
+such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken
+me in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy;
+she had been crying. I said, ‘Here’s a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he
+must have come for you.’ Then she looked out and said, ‘It is not my
+guardian; it is the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.’”
+
+“What kind of a man was he to look at?”
+
+“He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black
+mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he
+was not a young man. He was a gentleman,” said Janey, who flattered
+herself that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that
+grand old name--when she saw them.
+
+“Would you know him again if you met him?”
+
+“Anywhere,” said Janey; “and I would know his voice.”
+
+“He wore mourning,” said Miss Marlett, “and he told me he had known
+Margaret’s father. I heard him say a few words to her, in a very kind
+way, about him. That seemed more comfort to Margaret than anything. ‘He
+did not suffer at all, my dear,’ he said. He spoke to her in that way,
+as an older man might.”
+
+“Why, how on earth could _he_ know?” cried Maitland. “No one was present
+when her poor father died. His body was found in a--,” and Maitland
+paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for adding to
+the public information about the circumstances of Mr. Shields’ decease.
+“He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of the great
+storm.”
+
+“I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and
+fatigue is as painless as sleep,” said Miss Marlett with some tact.
+
+“I suppose that is what the man must have meant,” Maitland answered.
+
+There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered,
+trying to think over any circumstance which might lend a clew in the
+search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
+
+At last he said “Good-night,” after making the superfluous remark that
+it would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or
+unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred,
+for excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she
+had taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it;
+and when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea),
+a kind of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the
+schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly)
+that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother
+was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts
+of contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had
+distinguished himself, and if it did end “Yours affectionately,”
+ there was nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things
+considered. So the fair owner of the letter received it into her own
+keeping, only she was “never to do it again.”
+
+Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret’s
+inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient
+sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of
+her own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable
+estimate of her pupil’s discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
+
+Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which
+was an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never
+doubted that, on the death of Miss Shields’ father, she had been removed
+by one of her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pass the
+night at Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest
+reason for anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend
+and protector, and who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy. Nothing more practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of
+St. Gatien’s occurred to his perplexed imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--At St. Gatien’s.
+
+The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such
+inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients.
+He was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based
+his conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these
+“authorities.” For example, he first went in search of the man who had
+driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the
+Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who
+plied at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he
+had driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady
+was ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took
+the up-train. That was all _he_ knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were
+asked, was “a scaly varmint.” On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide
+moral generalization was based on the limited _pour-boire_ which Mr.
+Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
+Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took
+away with him on his return to town--not in the van, in the railway
+carriage. “What could he want with all that luggage?” Maitland wondered.
+
+The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which
+conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official
+had seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went
+on to London.
+
+The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start
+for Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as
+Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in
+novels, gentlemen often assume the _rôle_ of the detective with apparent
+relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too
+scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and
+station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered
+having seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a
+young lady, of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive
+description. The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly
+constructed, in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for
+all the circumstances--a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular
+part of the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
+
+What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur
+coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone
+together, one day, in a carriage marked “Engaged.” Next day, another
+gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same
+route, asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat
+(bearskin, it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady.
+Clearly, the pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer
+represented the less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the
+Family. All the romance and all the popular interest were manifestly
+on the other side, not on Maitland’s side. Even his tips were received
+without enthusiasm.
+
+Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the
+time nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he
+met that he was really the young lady’s guardian, and that the gentleman
+in the fur coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a
+miscreant, he would not have been believed. His opinion would, not
+unjustly, have been looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer
+calls “the personal bias.” He had therefore to put up with general
+distrust and brief discourteous replies.
+
+There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There
+they gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs--Doto, Proto, Doris,
+and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be
+instructed. But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative,
+pretending that their attention was engaged in their hospitable duties.
+Soup it was their business to minister to travellers, not private
+information. They _had_ seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to
+her he seemed. Yes, they were on the best terms: “very sweet on each
+other,” one young lady averred, and then secured her retreat and
+concealed her blushes by ministering to the wants of a hungry and
+hurried public. All this was horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
+
+Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had
+telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering
+to the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had
+received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then,
+was a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects
+of his search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had
+been taken. There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not
+descended. Nobody had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be
+found at Paddington of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman
+travelling alone with a young lady.
+
+It was nearly nine o’clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and
+disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of
+interrogating the porters--all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle of
+passengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights,
+no one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland
+described. There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining
+all the cab-drivers who had taken up passengers by the late trains the
+night before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment,
+nor perhaps by an amateur.
+
+Maitland’s time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at
+Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to
+Paddington, and, with brief enough space for investigations that yielded
+nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His
+whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien’s, whom, in his
+heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these
+unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of
+Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to
+expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen
+species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence
+peaceful, if not well satisfied. “Adventures are to the adventurous.” It
+is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
+adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby’s,
+Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
+enterprise, he never would have taken the _Hit or Miss_ he never would
+have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would
+not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old
+wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
+Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
+what had befallen Margaret.
+
+His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the
+mystery of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland’s
+confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not
+been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was
+trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not
+taken Bielby’s advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
+
+So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts,
+in the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped
+into a hansom, and said, “Gatien’s.” Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the
+High Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got
+out and kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight)
+opened it with rather a scared face:
+
+“Horful row on in quad, sir,” he said. “The young gentlemen ‘as a
+bonfire on, and they’re a larking with the snow. Orful A they’re a
+making, sir.”
+
+The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
+forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
+garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a
+huge Alp of snow against the door of the Master’s lodge. Meanwhile,
+another band had carried into the quad all the light tables and
+cane chairs from a lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful
+pyramidal form, they introduced some of the fire-lighters, called
+“devils” by the College servants, and set a match to the whole.
+
+Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
+like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work
+for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass
+of St Ga-tien’s seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough
+to waken the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a
+non-resident Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was
+known at all, as a “Radical,” with any number of decorative epithets,
+according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he
+could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they
+would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to
+precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face
+the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of
+civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore,
+after a moment of irresolution, stole off under a low-browed old
+door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle;
+for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least
+mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his
+familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his
+footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door
+at which he had meant to knock.
+
+“Come in,” said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
+most conventional manner.
+
+Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr.
+Bielby, Fellow of St. Gatien’s, sitting by his fireside, attired in a
+gray shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had,
+on taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success
+at the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he
+threw up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired
+life among his “brown Greek manuscripts.” He was a man of the world,
+turned hermit, and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known.
+He had “coached” Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and
+remained his friend and counsellor.
+
+“How are you, Maitland?” said the student, without rising. “I thought,
+from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
+coming to ‘draw me,’ as I think they call it.”
+
+Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
+likely to “draw” him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
+old bear that “dwells among bones and blood.”
+
+Mr. Bielby’s own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
+mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
+in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
+beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had
+belonged to famous students of old--Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus--and
+before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new
+critical edition of “Demetrius of Scepsis.”
+
+Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had
+not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become
+involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of
+circumstances.
+
+“The men are making a terrible riot in quad,” he said, answering the
+other’s remark.
+
+“Yes, yes,” replied Bielby, genially; “boys will be boys, and so will
+young men. I believe our Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being
+celebrated.”
+
+Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken
+glass.
+
+“There go some windows into their battels,” said Mr. Bielby. “They will
+hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so
+unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is.”
+
+“Well, sir,” said Maitland, “I rather want to ask your advice on an
+important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long
+story, that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married.”
+
+This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed
+gratified.
+
+“Ah-ha,” replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. “Happy to hear it
+Indeed, I _had_ heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say,
+brought a hint of it--I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant woman
+of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your part,
+too, a little--if you will let me say so--is exactly what you need. I
+congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the young lady
+in Oxford? Where is she just now?”
+
+Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not
+the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of
+Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+“I’m sure I wish I knew,” said Maitland at last, beginning to find this
+consulting of the oracle a little difficult. “The fact is, that’s just
+what I wanted to consult you about. I--I’m afraid I’ve lost all traces
+of the young lady.”
+
+“Why, what do you mean?” asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave,
+while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. “She has not eloped?
+You don’t mean to tell me she has run away from you?”
+
+“I really don’t know what to say,” answered Maitland. “I’m afraid
+she has been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy.”
+
+“You surely can’t mean what you say” (and now the voice was gruffer than
+ever). “People don’t plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
+probably they didn’t! And who are the young lady’s people? Why don’t
+they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have
+friends.”
+
+“She is not a widow--she is an orphan,” said Maitland, blushing
+painfully. “I am her guardian in a kind of way.”
+
+“Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I’m sure I beg your
+pardon, but did you tell me her name?”
+
+“Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields”--(“Not the name I was told,”
+ muttered Bielby)--“and her father was a man who had been rather
+unsuccessful in life.”
+
+“What was his profession, what did he do?”
+
+“He had been a sailor, I think,” said the academic philanthropist; “but
+when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
+anything, a professional tattooer.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
+livelihood.”
+
+Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
+could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
+level with the situation.
+
+“Has Miss--h’m, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan
+long?” he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most
+undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
+been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter’s character.
+
+“I only heard of his death yesterday,” said Maitland.
+
+“Was it sudden?”
+
+“Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
+was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
+George’s, Hanover Square.”
+
+“St. George’s, Hanover Square, indeed!” said the don, and once more he
+relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. “Maitland,”
+ he said at last, “how did you come to be acquainted with these people?
+The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can’t,
+surely, have met them in society?”
+
+“He came a good deal to ‘my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think
+I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
+tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something
+for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you
+know.”
+
+“Good-night!” growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
+determination in his tone. “I am rather busy this evening. I think you
+had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever
+about the matter to anyone. Good-night!”.
+
+So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
+caused by Maitland’s avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
+himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
+school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
+try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
+where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots,
+with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was
+clearly quite out of the path of Bielby’s experience.
+
+“And yet,” thought Maitland, “if I had not taken his advice about trying
+to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
+would have been in this hole.”
+
+All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
+called food. “He had eaten; he had not dined,” to adopt the distinction
+of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
+hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now
+he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards,
+he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of
+potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian
+vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.
+Gatien’s. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
+
+He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on
+philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left
+the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache,
+he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and
+tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o’clock he
+fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the
+steam-whooper, or “devil,” a sweet boon with which his philanthropy
+had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of
+Oxford.
+
+“Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian,” Maitland
+seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
+Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
+lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
+thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
+iteration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--After the Inquest.
+
+To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland’s scout called
+him at half-past seven with the invariable question, “Do you breakfast
+out, sir?” If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in
+attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution
+with, “Do you breakfast out, sir?”
+
+“No,” said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; “in common room
+as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o’clock train.”
+
+Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever,
+his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just
+complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room,
+then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and
+cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets.
+Anywhere but in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the
+bell and called his servant; but in our conservative universities, and
+especially in so reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally,
+no bell to ring. Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his
+greatcoat, that he might crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his
+scout.
+
+But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a
+strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often
+had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition
+of his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so
+than that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to
+blow in quad.
+
+“Mrs. Trattles!” cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his
+ears. “Mrs. Trattles!”
+
+The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by
+sniffs, from the other side of the door:
+
+“Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?”
+
+“Call Dakyns, please,” said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. “I
+don’t feel very well.”
+
+Dakyns appeared in due course.
+
+“Sorry to hear you’re ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn’t I
+better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?”
+
+Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger
+generation, delighted to honor.
+
+“No; I don’t think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I’ll be
+able to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters.”
+
+“Very well, sir,” answered Dakyns.
+
+Then with that fearless assumption of responsibility which always does
+an Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr.
+Whalley before he brought round Maitland’s letters and his breakfast
+commons.
+
+There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret’s
+disappearance; if any such had been addressed to him, they would
+necessarily be, as Maitland remembered after his first feeling of
+disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had
+aught to communicate, nor anyone else, could be expected to know that
+Mait-land’s first act would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
+
+The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast
+commons; even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
+
+Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his
+door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for
+him; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, “there was a pain
+somewhere in the room,” and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
+
+“A very bad feverish cold,” was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call
+again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his
+room.
+
+He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the
+quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the
+scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow,
+and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien’s.
+
+So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage,
+and each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach
+of the very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland’s
+illness took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the
+lungs were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see
+him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the _Hit or Miss_, about the
+man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the
+hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of “Demetrius
+of Scepsis.” He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real
+kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with Maitland’s
+returning health.
+
+At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of
+what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there
+was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
+
+Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in
+Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after
+him.
+
+“Brown,” said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness
+began, “would you mind giving me my things? I’ll try to dress.”
+
+The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare
+slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms,
+by a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved
+into the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris
+manner.
+
+“Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent
+to the post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can’t howl yet for
+myself,” whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph
+form.
+
+“Delighted to howl for you,” said Brown, and presently the wires were
+carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at
+once, on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a
+reply: Barton would be with Maitland by dinner-time.
+
+The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and
+even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were
+drawn, and a monster of the deep--one of the famous Oxford soles, larger
+than you ever see them elsewhere--smoked between Maitland and Barton.
+Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of “strong,” a
+reminiscence of “the old coaching days,” when Maitland had read with
+Barton for Greats. The invalid’s toast and water wore an air of modest
+conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who
+relied merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight
+The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton’s
+lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he
+did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his
+thin, white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
+
+It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for
+Barton knew so much already, especially about the _Hit or Miss_; but
+when it came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind
+of prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to
+walk about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak
+places; and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down
+again, and steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien’s
+port.
+
+Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the
+finding of poor Dick Shields’ body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, “Why,
+you don’t mean to say that was the man, the girl’s father? By George,
+I can tell you something about _him_! At the inquest my partner, old
+Munby, made out--”
+
+“Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,”
+ said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret’s disappearance
+that he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough
+of late) to the death of her father.
+
+“Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since
+you were ill?”
+
+Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the _Times_ since the
+day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment
+But his reading, so far, had been limited to the “Agony Column” of the
+advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to
+all the paragraphs headed “Strange Occurrence” and “Mysterious
+Disappearance.” None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of
+Margaret.
+
+“I have not seen anything about the inquest,” he said. “What verdict did
+they bring in? The usual one, I suppose--‘Visitation,’ and all that kind
+of thing, or ‘Death from exposure while under the influence of alcoholic
+stimulants.’”
+
+“That’s exactly what they made it,” said Barton; “and I don’t blame
+them; for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other
+choice. You can see what he said for yourself in the papers.”
+
+Barton had been turning over the file of the _Times_, and showed
+Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so
+common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped,
+with blanks for names and dates.
+
+“A miserable end,” said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph.
+“And now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by
+saying you didn’t ‘blame’ the coroner’s jury?”
+
+“Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don’t know that I should
+tell you; it is too horrid!”
+
+“Don’t keep anything from me, please,” said Maitland, moving nervously.
+“I must know everything.”
+
+“Well,” answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant
+horror--“well, your poor friend was _murdered!_ That’s what I meant when
+I said I did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict
+than they did on the evidence of my partner.”
+
+Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new
+thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As
+a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of
+the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends
+on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from
+some lost star, some wandering world that is Hell.
+
+“Murdered!” cried Maitland. “Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on
+earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was
+no one’s enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had
+nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much--a
+small sum--paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he
+was--when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in
+the world!”
+
+“I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the
+same, and that by a very cunning and cautious villain--a man, I should
+say, of some education.
+
+“But how could it possibly have been done? There’s the evidence before
+you in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the
+circumstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more
+than enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere
+sleeping in the snow--it’s well known to be fatal Why,” said Maitland,
+eagerly, “in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had
+to send back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite
+asleep, in a snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened.”
+
+He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton
+had arrived at.
+
+The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
+
+“But how can you possibly know better than the jury,” urged Maitland
+peevishly, “and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district,
+who were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural--that he got
+drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure?
+Why, you did not even hear the evidence. I can’t make out,” he went on,
+with the querulousness of an invalid, “why you should have come up just
+to talk such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been
+right.”
+
+“Well, you see, it was not the coroner’s business nor the jury’s
+business, to know better than the medical officer for the district,
+on whose evidence they relied. But it is _my_ business; for the said
+officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very
+little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow
+as ever let a life slip out of his hands.”
+
+“Then, if you knew so much, why didn’t you keep him straight?”
+
+“Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a
+wedding, when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial
+examination of the deceased.”
+
+“Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an
+extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only
+this printed evidence,” said Maitland, waving a sheet of the _Times_,
+“to go by; and _this_ is dead against you. You’re too clever.”
+
+“But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return
+to town, the day after the inquest,” said Barton, “and I found evidence
+enough _for me_--never mind where--to put the matter beyond the reach
+of doubt. The man was _murdered_, and murdered, as I said, very
+deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant scoundrel.”
+
+“Still, I don’t see how you got a chance to make your examination,” said
+Maitland; “the man would be buried as usual--”
+
+“Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers--and there was no one to
+claim _his_--are reserved, if needed--”
+
+“I see--don’t go on,” said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling
+back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut “It is
+all the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine,” he said, presently.
+“In my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no
+one to claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take
+no trouble or risk in a case like that.” He was silent again for a few
+moments; then, “What do _you_ make out to have been the cause of death?”
+ he asked.
+
+“Well,” said Barton slowly, “I don’t much care to go into details which
+you may say I can hardly prove, and I don’t want to distress you in your
+present state of health.”
+
+“Why don’t you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or
+anything? He had been drinking with some one!”
+
+“No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing
+that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear
+fellow, there are venoms that leave _no_ internal trace. If I am
+right--and I think I am--he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a
+great traveller, had he not?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Maitland.
+
+“Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller
+also. He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well
+acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing.”
+
+“You won’t be more explicit?”
+
+“No,” he said; “you must take it on my word, after all.”
+
+Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of
+Barton, and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his
+theory was no morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion
+which, as he said, he could no longer, prove--which was, indeed, now
+incapable of any proof. No one had seen the commission of the crime, and
+the crime was of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could
+not possibly be otherwise brought home to the murderer.
+
+Now Maitland, knowing the _Hit or Miss_, and the private room up-stairs
+with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if done at
+all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any eye-witness
+of the crime.
+
+“What shall you do?” he asked, “or have you done anything in consequence
+of your discovery? Have you been to the police?”
+
+“No,” said Barton; “where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It
+is not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis.
+Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more
+likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret
+motive--and he must have had--he will act on that motive sooner or
+later. The quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is
+safe, the sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there
+may be a chance of detecting him; but it’s an outside chance. Do you
+know anything of the dead man’s past history?”
+
+“Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering
+life.”
+
+“Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your
+care. What do you mean to do about _her?_”
+
+The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were
+now so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
+
+“I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
+Things were bad before; now they are awful,” said Maitland. “_His
+daughter has disappeared!_ That was what I was coming to: that was the
+rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew
+what you tell me; now--great Heavens! what am I to do?”
+
+He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly
+on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
+
+“Tell me all about it, old boy?” asked Barton, at length.
+
+He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate
+friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no
+longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation
+of Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible,
+the tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure
+even to come upon her traces or those of her companion.
+
+“And you have heard nothing since your illness?”
+
+“Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?”
+
+“There is only one thing certain, to my mind,” said Barton. “The
+seafaring man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his
+life, and the gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram
+in your name and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett’s, are in the same
+employment, or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you
+any kind of suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way
+of tracking him or them?”
+
+“No,” said Maitland; “my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never
+heard of the sailor till the woman at the _Hit or Miss_ mentioned him,
+the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of Shields’,
+a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school.”
+
+“Then all we can do at present is, _not_ to set the police at work--they
+would only prevent the man from showing--but to find out whether anyone
+answering to the description is ‘wanted’ or is on their books, at
+Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social
+position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would
+certainly have his _dossier_? They order these things better in France.”
+
+“There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was
+drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost
+certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs.
+Gullick--that’s the landlady of the _Hit or Miss_--saying that Shields
+had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in that way for
+sailors.”
+
+“By Jove,” said Barton, “if any fellow understands tattooing, and the
+class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion;
+but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are
+tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in
+our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on
+but these early decorative designs.”
+
+This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a
+moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his _flair_ as a
+detective.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--The Jaffa Oranges.
+
+“Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_.”
+
+Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
+embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali,
+in the “Arabian Nights.” With his glass, it will be remembered, he could
+see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and,
+though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How
+often would one give Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse, and the
+invisible Cap which was made of “a darkness that might be _felt_” to
+possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
+
+Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
+were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would
+have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured.
+Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they
+might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would
+have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor,
+indeed, in a den at all.
+
+The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far
+off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square,
+Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the
+drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn
+down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of
+witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she
+had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would
+have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring
+had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were
+half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so
+ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question
+which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of
+respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
+
+He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
+sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door,
+in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
+remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
+upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
+Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
+members of the less educated classes), “I won’t put up with none of them
+goings on.” Such an expression this woman wears.
+
+“I hope you feel better, my dear?” the dark gentleman asks again.
+
+“She’s going on well enough,” interrupted the woman with the beautiful
+dissatisfied face. “What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
+tonics as you might bathe in--”
+
+“Heaven forbid!”
+
+“She _ought_ to get well,” the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the
+invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
+
+“I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,” said the dark
+gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, “but to the young lady whom I
+have entrusted to your charge.”
+
+“A pretty trust!” the woman replied, with a sniff
+
+“Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret,
+my dear--’--”
+
+The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a
+trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
+
+“Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?”
+
+“You are very kind,” answered the girl at last. “I am sure I am better.
+I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.”
+
+“Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
+grapes; may I send you some oranges?”
+
+“Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
+rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep,
+just now.”
+
+“Poor girl!” said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. “And what do
+you dream?”
+
+“There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,” said the
+girl, slowly, “where I am; and something I feel--something, I don’t know
+what--drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself
+on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling
+in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel
+mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and
+chasing me in the dark--some one I can’t see. Then I slide into the
+smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I _must_ get away from it.
+Oh, I don’t know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I’m
+asleep, I suppose.”
+
+“I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all _I_ can do is to
+get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me,
+Mrs. Darling” (he turned to the housekeeper), “by placing them in Miss
+Burnside’s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when
+she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.”
+
+The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
+street, where a hansom cab waited for him. “Covent Garden,” he cried to
+the cabman.
+
+We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
+believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
+very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
+
+Mr. Cranley, “with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
+him” (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
+celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this
+been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
+difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest
+means, the nature of Maitland’s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had
+been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland’s, and in which Cranley
+used Maitland’s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have
+seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following
+his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the “engaged” carriage
+at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
+previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne
+Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his
+portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed
+a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A
+gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means
+answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the
+porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland’s
+inquiries.
+
+The success of Cranley’s device was secured by its elementary
+simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his
+trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable
+garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of
+most who see him, “the man in the bearskin coat,” or “the man in
+the jack-boots,” or “the man with the white hat.” His identity is
+practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and
+when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or
+to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this
+principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure
+reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in
+London.
+
+With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
+recognized him as an acquaintance of her father’s, and he represented
+to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father
+had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his
+poverty--in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he
+declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with
+dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield’s
+chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from
+Maitland’s guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl
+away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his
+latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his
+old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the
+Fellow of St Gatien’s.
+
+Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
+Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
+man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
+position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
+manner of her father’s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
+knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
+Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
+Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident
+had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
+guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
+politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
+school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
+the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
+had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had
+lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only
+really delicate point--Cranley’s assumption of the name of “Mr.
+Lithgow”--he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of
+the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father’s
+last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been
+necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a
+gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as
+philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a
+license and discretion not customary in common society.
+
+Finally, even had the girl’s suspicions been awakened, her illness
+prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
+father’s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
+guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father’s wish, and
+hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
+livelihood; and independence was Margaret’s ideal.
+
+Her father’s friend, her own protector--in that light she regarded
+Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
+no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
+undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
+perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct
+of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for
+a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the
+rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience.
+Cran-ley’s temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first
+human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling
+in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them.
+Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied
+himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once
+tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so
+surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though
+a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
+
+Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which
+his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she
+should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley’s
+original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the
+Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some
+kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should
+never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost
+forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan.
+For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting
+fool; and then Margaret’s illness had occurred, and had caused delay,
+and given time for reflection.
+
+“After all,” he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache
+in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed
+hansoms)--“after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no
+inconvenient claims.”
+
+For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways
+of “removing” an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed
+across a not uninstructed intellect--a scheme which appeared open to the
+smallest number of objections.
+
+“She shall take a turn for the worse,” he thought; “and the doctor will
+be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
+jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.”
+
+Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden,
+dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges.
+He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an
+eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked
+for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got
+what he wanted in a small phial, marked _poison_. Mr. Cranley then
+called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker’s
+(also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the
+label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker’s he complained
+of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine
+or some such anodyne into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the
+house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered
+the dining-room, and locked the door.
+
+Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
+about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused
+and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief
+into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable
+chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom
+of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds,
+and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in
+order--the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
+
+Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the
+best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room
+cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table,
+in company with a biscuit or two.
+
+When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
+orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then
+drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and
+carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into
+the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately
+completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then
+tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit
+he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire;
+and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately
+turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened
+the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times,
+finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked
+through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this
+portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the
+glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from
+the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with
+the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper,
+within the basket, and closed the window.
+
+Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
+voice:
+
+“Now, Alice, you may come in!”
+
+The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
+
+“How is Miss Burnside?” he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
+told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
+at least.)
+
+“She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her?
+Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been
+making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?”
+
+“My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at
+once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care
+of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my
+housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style
+worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of
+positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you
+did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you
+have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any
+other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful
+curiosity?”
+
+The fair woman’s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
+like a baleful lightning.
+
+“I don’t understand your chaff,” she said, with a few ornamental
+epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to
+decorate her conversation.
+
+“I grieve to be obscure,” he answered; “_brevis esse laboro_, the old
+story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she
+wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and
+leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer
+fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish
+Square, and leave this note at the doctor’s.”
+
+“Oh, nothing’s too good for _her!_” growled the jealous woman, thinking
+of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges
+not used in his experiment.
+
+Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
+door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret’s
+door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
+
+“Now, I’ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,” said Mr. Cranley,
+and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced
+rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet “Still
+advertising for him,” he said to himself; and he then turned to the
+sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for
+the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not
+yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he
+looked hastily at his watch.
+
+“Just twenty minutes gone,” he said. “Time she wakened--and tried those
+Jaffa oranges.”
+
+Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
+Margaret’s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not
+find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he
+chose a large and heavy _fauteuil_, took it up in his arms, and began
+to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret’s chamber, he
+stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was
+dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He
+picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
+
+“That would have wakened the dead,” he whispered to himself, “and she is
+not dead--yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them,
+and then--”
+
+The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
+mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
+being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
+remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
+frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and
+less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind
+of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was
+passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of
+Death.
+
+She has wakened--she has looked round--she has seen the poisoned
+fruit--she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it--she has
+tasted the oranges--she has turned to sleep again--and the unrelenting
+venom is at its work!
+
+Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
+hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
+right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the
+star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the
+grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning
+the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an
+unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.
+The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays,
+though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all
+things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of
+our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the
+accomplishment of our desires.
+
+It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that
+the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed
+actually to be present in Margaret’s chamber, watching every movement
+and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips
+and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not
+therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
+
+It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection
+that he was musing.
+
+“Now it’s done, it can’t be undone,” he said. “But is it so very safe,
+after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it’s much
+more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any
+other way. And then there’s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there
+is not an inquest--as, of course, there won’t be--they’ll ask who the
+girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they’ll, some of
+them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound
+her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries,
+perhaps.”
+
+And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
+thumb-nail, and yawned.
+
+“By gad! I wish I had not risked it,” he said to himself; and his
+complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to
+flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk
+back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the
+finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could
+scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.
+A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of
+reflections again.
+
+“That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,” he
+said; “and--” He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the “French
+fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then
+he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still,
+it’s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better.
+By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she
+hasn’t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are
+the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she
+_has_ taken it. I _must_ go and see. I don’t like the job.”
+
+He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
+sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
+With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
+his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl’s door
+he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All
+was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump:
+he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might
+wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
+
+Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it
+with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the
+door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful
+husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman’s hard knock
+at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful
+visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound
+asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could
+make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her
+face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges!
+Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely--no! a
+sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of
+relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and,
+as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and
+cursing his own cowardice under his breath--he stole down stairs, opened
+the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
+
+“Now I’ll settle with you!” came a voice out of the dimness; and the
+start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as
+they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was
+he trapped, and by whom?
+
+In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling,
+in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than
+anger, that stood before him.
+
+Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried
+to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
+observed:
+
+“Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
+to read.”
+
+“What were you doing up-stairs just now?” she snarled. “Why did you send
+me off to the doctor’s, out of the way?”
+
+“My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that
+invaluable curiosity of yours--curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew
+Arnold so justly views with high esteem--into wider and nobler channels.
+Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life
+as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of
+Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics.”
+
+It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
+ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
+far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that
+lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being
+prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the
+success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat
+was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a
+drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:
+
+“No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
+you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
+every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
+your tongue and keep your hands off me--and off drink. Fetch the lamp!”
+
+She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
+silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
+on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
+letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
+bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
+been, with a strange device in gold and colors--a brown bun, in a glory
+of gilt rays.
+
+“Mrs. St John Deloraine,” he said, taking it up. “How in the world did
+_she_ find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer
+than a brother--a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow.”
+
+Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
+title of the family.
+
+“I don’t suppose there is another woman in London,” he thought to
+himself, “that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that
+would write to me.”
+
+Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
+read the following epistle:
+
+     “Early English Bunhouse,
+
+     “Chelsea, Friday.
+
+     “My dear Mr. Cranley,
+
+     “Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
+     hear nothing of you from anyone--nothing _good_, and you
+     know I never believe anything _else_. Do come and see me, at
+     the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about _yourself_”
+
+--(“She _has_ heard,” he muttered)
+
+     --“and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
+     know we are strictly _blue ribbon--a cordon bleu_, I call
+     her) has become engaged to a _plumber_, and she is leaving
+     us. _Can_ you recommend me another? I know how interested
+     you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
+     enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
+     housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
+     see me, whether you can advise me or not.
+
+     “Yours very truly,
+
+     “Mary St. John Deloraine”
+
+“Idiot!” murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
+then he added, “By Jove! it’s lucky, too. I’ll put these two infernal
+women off on _her_, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
+gets at the drink. She’s dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
+Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
+waters.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
+privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
+aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
+caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
+or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
+seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a
+house in Cheyne Walk.
+
+The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
+she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
+county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
+woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
+County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
+Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor
+a kind of _morgue_ so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
+the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
+Méryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
+Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take,
+they take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are
+they to drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else,
+that even the Clergy are excluded, _ex officio_, and in their degrading
+capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As
+we all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the
+very being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
+inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
+sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
+
+Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession)
+one of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain
+Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson,
+being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At
+the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat,
+girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House
+and Parsonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+To this desirable home and opulent share of earth’s good things did Mr.
+St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled
+a good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County
+matrons and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling
+on such heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this
+young man a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him
+from the society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys’
+daughters. Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping
+Carby, and there he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level
+turf, her “points” he counted, and he found that she, at least, could
+appreciate his somewhat apt quotation from _Chastelard_:
+
+     “Pray heaven, we make good Ends.”
+
+Miss Widdicombe _did_ make good “Ends.” She vanquished Mrs. Struggles,
+the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman who was
+now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost professionally,
+“rejoice in arrows,” like the Homeric Artemis--why are they nearly
+always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at least before
+her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known band of
+Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
+
+This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
+contrast between Miss Widdicombe’s vivacity and the deadly stolidity
+of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her
+vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John
+Deloraine. He saw--he loved her--he was laughed at--he proposed--he was
+accepted--and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss
+Widdicombe, the attorney’s daughter, as _châtelaine_ (delightful word,
+and dear to the author of _Guy Livingstone_) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
+alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
+good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
+London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
+name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty
+of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County
+dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when
+they come to town.
+
+This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy
+in the earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her
+benevolence had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow.
+Never, surely, was there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+She would go from a garden-party to a mothers’ meeting; she was great
+at taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping
+them amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at
+least three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
+eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner
+hours.
+
+So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine,
+that she made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal
+sympathy, wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she
+has been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like
+Greek texts which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need
+of explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the
+old sense--that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune--pursued hotly or
+artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
+suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
+her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting
+them as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of
+music are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no
+joy in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next),
+so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a
+passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the
+world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless
+levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature.
+Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good
+things so successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+At this moment the lady’s “favorite vanity,” in the matter of good
+works, was _The Bunhouse_. This really serviceable, though quaint,
+institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland’s enterprise of
+the philanthropic public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. In a slum of Chelsea
+there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
+coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
+sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was
+the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine’s friends, an artist of the
+highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch
+and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, _The Bunhouse_
+did very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
+Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery
+of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the
+metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features
+at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen
+hours a day in shops--all these young female outlaws, not professionally
+vicious, found in _The Bunhouse_ a kind of charitable shelter and home.
+
+They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
+stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers
+and fathers. “Places” were found for them, in the rare instances when
+they condescended to “places.” Sometimes they breakfasted at _The
+Bunhouse_, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a
+state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would
+arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than
+when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle
+of a door--they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the
+clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young
+patrons of _The Bunhouse_ were in a warlike humor. Then the stern
+housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds,
+_haec certamina tanta_, turning the more persistent combatants into the
+street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and
+try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls
+would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the
+Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a
+drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and
+presently disturbances would come again.
+
+For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
+housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
+told, had yielded to love, “which subdues the hearts of all female
+women, even of the prudent,” according to Homer, and was going to share
+the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible
+innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas
+Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in
+her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
+
+No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. _He_
+could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
+left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that
+young lady’s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr.
+Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s acquaintance who would have used her
+unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr.
+Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of
+his character.
+
+“Shall I go and lunch with her?” he asked himself, as he twisted her
+note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and
+gold. “I haven’t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not
+since--since I came back from Monte Carlo.”
+
+Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit
+The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in
+the calendar withdrew his large words when asked “if he had ever cheated
+at cards.”
+
+“Well,” Mr. Cranley went on, “I don’t know: I dare say it’s safe enough.
+She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
+sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the
+day--not up to luncheon anyhow. She says”--and he looked again at the
+note--“that she’ll be alone; but she won’t. Everyone she sees before
+lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to
+dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very
+long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it
+when once you begin. However, here goes,” said Mr. Cranley, sitting
+down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a
+bulwark and breastwork. “I’ll write and accept Probably she’ll have no
+one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from
+the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me.”
+
+As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the
+clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s house
+in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that
+lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of
+beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont
+terrier, and holding out both her hands.
+
+The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
+hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
+carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
+
+“Love in which thy hound has part,” quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
+rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
+smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
+
+“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley,” she said; “and, as I have
+put off luncheon till two, _do_ tell me that you know someone who will
+suit me for my dear _Bun-house_. I know how much you have always been
+interested in our little project.”
+
+Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew
+the very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
+respectable woman of great strength of character, “of body, too, I
+believe, which will not make her less fit for the position.”
+
+“No,” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; “the dear girls are sometimes
+a little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
+went to one of the exhibitions with her _fiancé_, and the girls broke
+all the windows and almost all the tea-things.”
+
+“The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not
+stand anything of that kind,” answered Mr. Cranley. “She is quiet, but
+extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate
+character. At one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a
+person of treacherous and ungovernable disposition.”
+
+This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
+fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
+father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
+bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to
+earn her own livelihood.
+
+So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to
+tell the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was
+strong enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud
+and indisposed to make confidences.
+
+“There is only one thing I must ask,” said Mr. Cranley, when he had
+quite persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to
+her young friends. “How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when
+do you need the services of the new-comers?”
+
+“Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
+like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want
+to rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank
+Holiday--in a fortnight that is--and then they will go on their
+honeymoon of three days to Yarmouth.”
+
+Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
+impetuous wooer.
+
+“No laggard in love,” he said, smiling. “Well, in a fortnight the two
+women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
+remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
+recovered from the shock of her father’s sudden death--a very sad
+affair,” added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
+
+“Poor dear girl!” cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears
+in her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep
+with those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
+
+Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to
+the latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of
+this entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
+
+“Why, he’s very late,” she said; “and yet it is not far to come from the
+_Hit or Miss_.”
+
+“From the _Hit or Miss_!” cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
+aware.
+
+“Yes; you may well wonder, if you don’t know about it, that I should
+have asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be
+quite in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome,
+nor very amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness
+now. He is very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the
+poor. He is a Fellow of his College at Oxford.”
+
+During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the
+terrier; but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
+
+“Did I tell you his name?” Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. “He is a--”
+
+Here the door was opened, and the servant announced “Mr. Maitland.”
+
+When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
+found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
+
+His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
+heart might have blanched at the encounter.
+
+When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
+philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
+fellow-revellers. What other things he had done--things in which
+Maitland was concerned--the reader knows, or at least suspects. But it
+was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
+undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
+
+There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
+
+“Let me introduce you--” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+“There is no need,” interrupted Maitland. “Mr. Cranley and I have known
+each other for some time. I don’t think we have met,” he added, looking
+at Cranley, “since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not
+likely to meet again, I’m afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell
+Mrs. Si John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance.”
+
+Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
+the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be)
+with private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the
+trouble at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended
+to what he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he
+had the best reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he
+was the secret source of the information on which Maitland proposed to
+act.
+
+At luncheon--which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
+was “luscious and abundant”--Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than
+the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little
+philanthropic misadventures of his own--cases in which he had been
+humorously misled by the _Captain Wraggs_ of this world, or beguiled by
+the authors of that polite correspondence--begging letters.
+
+When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to
+go (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s company very much), Cranley,
+who had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way
+with the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
+
+“And when are we likely to meet again?” he asked.
+
+“I really don’t know,” said Maitland. “I have business in Paris, and I
+cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent.”
+
+“No more can I,” said Mr. Cranley to himself; “but I hope you won’t
+return in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you
+have the luck to return at all.”
+
+But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a
+good voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a
+_comédienne_) at the Palais Royal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--Traps.
+
+The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the
+lady of _The Bunhouse_, Barton, when he came home from a round of
+professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted
+lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there,
+discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that
+he was indeed “moving about in worlds not realized.” Keen as was the
+interest which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend’s affairs,
+he now and again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever
+revolved round the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points.
+
+“Hullo, Maitland; glad to see you,” he observed, with some shade of
+hypocrisy. “Anything new to-day?”
+
+“Yes,” said Maitland; “I really do think I have a clew at last.”
+
+“Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles,” said Barton, groaning
+as the bell-rope came away in his hands. “Bring lights, please, and
+tea, and stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend,” he remarked, when the
+blackened but alert face of the little slavey appeared at the door.
+
+“Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir,” answered Jemima, who greatly
+admired the Doctor, and in ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost
+comfortable.
+
+“Now for your clew, old man,” exclaimed Barton, as he handed Maitland
+a cup of his peculiar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and no
+sugar. “Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clew of yours has been to the
+detective mind! To think that, without the Minotaur, the police would
+probably never have hit on that invaluable expression, ‘the police have
+a clew.’”
+
+Maitland thought this was trifling with the subject.
+
+“This advertisement,” he said, gravely, “appears to me undoubtedly to
+refer to the miscreant who carried off Margaret, poor girl.”
+
+“Does it, by Jove?” cried Barton, with some eagerness this time. “Let’s
+have a look at it!”
+
+This was what he read aloud:
+
+     “Bearskin Coat.--The gentleman travelling with a young lady,
+     who, on Feb. 19th, left a bearskin coat at the Hôtel Alsace
+     and Lorraine, Avenue de l’Opéra, Paris, is requested to
+     remove it, or it will be sold to defray expenses.
+
+     “Dupin.”
+
+“This _may_ mean business,” he said, “or it may not. In the first place,
+is there such an hotel in Paris as the ‘Alsace et Lorraine,’ and is M.
+Dupin the proprietor?”
+
+“_That’s_ all right,” said Maitland. “I went at once to the Club, and
+looked up the _Bottin_, the Paris Directory, don’t you know.”
+
+“So far, so good; and yet I don’t quite see what you can make of it. It
+does not come to much, you know, even if the owner of the coat is the
+man you want And again, is he likely to have left such a very notable
+article of dress behind him in an hotel? Anyway, can’t you send some
+detective fellow? Are you going over yourself in this awful weather?”
+
+So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be easily put off the hopeful
+scent.
+
+“Why, don’t you see,” he exclaimed, “the people at the hotel will at
+least be able to give one a fuller description of the man than anything
+we have yet. And they may have some idea of where he has gone to; and,
+at least, they will have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and that,
+of course, is what I am most anxious to learn. Again, he may have left
+other things besides the coat, or there may be documents in the pockets.
+I have read of such things happening.”
+
+“Yes, in ‘Le Crime de l’Opéra;’ and a very good story, too,” answered
+the incredulous Barton; “but I don’t fancy that the villain of real life
+is quite so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction.”
+
+“Everyone knows that murderers are generally detected through some
+incredible piece of carelessness,” said Mait-land; “and why should this
+elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the rest? If he _did_ leave
+the coat, he will scarcely care to go back for it; and I do not think
+the chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. Besides, I’m doing
+no good here, and I can do no harm there.”
+
+This was undeniably true; and though Barton muttered something about “a
+false scent,” he no longer attempted to turn Maitland from his purpose.
+He did, however, with some difficulty, prevent the Fellow of St.
+Gatien’s from purchasing a blonde beard, one of those wigs which
+simulate baldness, and a pair of blue spectacles. In these disguises,
+Maitland argued, he would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit
+any mischief planned by the enemies of Margaret.
+
+“Yes; but, on the other hand, you would look exactly like a German
+professor, and probably be taken for a spy of Bismarck’s,” said Barton.
+
+And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of disguise. He retained,
+however, certain astute notions of his own about his plan of operations,
+and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate to his friend. The
+fact is, that the long dormant romance of Maitland’s character was now
+thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, to enjoy the adventure.
+
+His enjoyment did not last very long. The usual troubles of a winter
+voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the
+guardian of Margaret But everything---even a period of waiting at
+the Paris _salle d’attente_, and a struggle with the _cochers_ at the
+station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare)--must come
+to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the
+glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l’Opéra. At the
+Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too
+precipitate eagerness. In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in
+the hotel book, choosing, by an unlucky inspiration, the pseudonym
+of Buchanan. He then ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of
+propitiation, it was a much better dinner than usual that Maitland
+ordered. Bottles of the higher Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful
+baskets, were brought at his command; for he was determined favorably to
+impress the people of the house.
+
+His conduct in this matter was partly determined by the fact that, for
+the moment, the English were not popular in Paris.
+
+In fact, as the French newspapers declared, with more truth than they
+suspected, “Paris was not the place for English people, especially for
+English women.”
+
+In these international circumstances, then, Maitland believed he showed
+the wisdom of the serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless old
+fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords of the past But he had
+reckoned without his appetite.
+
+A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon nor alarming, is the
+putting away of all desire to eat and drink. As the waiter carried
+off the untouched _hors d’oeuvres_ (whereof Maitland only nibbled the
+delicious bread and butter); as he bore away the _huîtres_, undiminished
+in number; as the _bisque_ proved too much for the guest of the evening;
+as he faltered over the soles, and failed to appreciate the cutlets; as
+he turned from the noblest _crûs_ (including the widow’s _crûs_, those
+of La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for _siphon_ and _fine champagne_, the
+waiter’s countenance assumed an air of owl-like sagacity. There was
+something wrong, the _garçon_ felt sure, about a man who could order a
+dinner like Maitland’s, and then decline to partake thereof. However,
+even in a republican country, you can hardly arrest a man merely because
+his intentions are better than his appetite. The waiter, therefore,
+contented himself with assuming an imposing attitude, and whispering
+something to the hall porter.
+
+The Fellow of St. Gatien’s, having dined with the Barmecide regardless
+of expense, went on (as he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the
+_concierge_. From that official he purchased two large cigars, which he
+did not dream of attempting to enjoy; and he then endeavored to enter
+into conversation, selecting for a topic the state of the contemporary
+drama. What would monsieur advise him to go to see? Where was Mile. Jane
+Hading playing?
+
+Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule
+of French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great
+matter--the affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel?
+Had any of his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he
+left England a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article
+of dress--a great-coat--which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab.
+Could monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news
+about the garment, a coat in _peau d’ours_?
+
+On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been
+loitering in the office of the _concierge_, moved to the neighborhood of
+the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging on
+the wall.
+
+The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well
+in coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It
+had been lost by a compatriot of monsieur’s? Would monsieur give himself
+the trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was
+kept?
+
+Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on
+the trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty,
+thought Maitland) followed _him_.
+
+The porter led them to a door marked “private,” and they all three
+entered.
+
+The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a
+chair.
+
+The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
+
+“Where,” he asked, “was the bearskin coat?”
+
+“Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his
+own, or a friend’s?”
+
+“A friend’s,” said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted
+that the garment only belonged to “a man he knew something about.”
+
+“What is his name?” asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.
+
+His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to
+grow worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.
+
+Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember
+the man’s name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the
+first time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and,
+finding that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make
+inquiries.
+
+Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English
+gentlemen usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first
+time on board the steamer as their friends?
+
+Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed
+disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see
+the play.
+
+Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his
+deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a
+stately way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the
+door.
+
+However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely
+unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar,
+_sans phrase_, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the
+porter. But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed
+a card, containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and
+calmly asked Maitland for “his papers.”
+
+Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer
+required.
+
+The detective assured him that passports “spoil nothing.” Had monsieur
+nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had
+artfully entered his name as “Buchanan” on the hotel book, produced his
+card, on the lower corner of which was printed, _St. Gatien’s College._
+This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name
+did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to
+accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice,
+Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was
+carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here
+he was received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a
+decoration, who (after some private talk with the detective) asked
+Maitland to explain his whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In
+the first place, the detective’s notes on their conversation were
+read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland had given a false name; had
+originally spoken of the object of his quest as “the coat of a friend;”
+ then as “the coat of a man whom he knew something about;” then as “the
+coat of a man whose name he did not know;” and that, finally, he had
+attempted to go away without offering any satisfactory account of
+himself.
+
+All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not
+unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.
+What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a
+matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this
+fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller
+at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a
+_souricière_, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after
+the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French
+dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police
+the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery
+of Shields’ body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret’s
+disappearance (_enlèvement_), and to a description of the costume
+(bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then
+he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of
+finding her, the clew offered by the advertisement in the _Times_, and
+his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But
+it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever
+so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the
+Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official
+against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s had neither the
+presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the
+whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment’s notice, in a
+cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a
+demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and
+that night Maitland of Gatien’s passed, for the first time during his
+blameless career, in a police-cell.
+
+It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured
+by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments
+of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental
+Justice? Are not our countrymen the common butts of German, French,
+Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an
+Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a
+venture, and inquire afterward?
+
+Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most
+of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the
+Juge d’Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably
+_louche_.
+
+In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hôtel Alsace et
+Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
+about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of “the journal
+of the City.”
+
+Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
+bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own
+hotel. A bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite,
+stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which
+is, at present and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave
+Irish. M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish
+in their noble struggle for whatever they _are_ struggling for; but he
+did not wish his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of
+Freedom, and the great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view
+to elucidating the mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the
+police on his premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its
+_affût_, when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious
+circumstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied
+him the distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.
+
+When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
+d’Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete _Civis
+Romanus sum!_ He was an English citizen. He had written to the English
+ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien’s man, an _attaché_ of the
+embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced
+to be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his
+interview with the Juge d’Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his
+back to the light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes,
+while the scribble of the pen of the _greffier_, as he took down the
+Englishman’s deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of
+the law.
+
+“Your name?” asked the Juge d’Instruction.
+
+“Maitland,” replied the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
+
+“You lie!” said the Juge d’Instruction. “You entered the name of
+Buchanan in the book of the hotel.”
+
+“My name is on my cards, and on that letter,” said Maitland, keeping his
+temper wonderfully.
+
+The documents in question lay on a table, as _pièces justificatives_.
+
+“These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate
+person, and have draped (_afflublé_) yourself in the trappings of your
+victim! Where is his body?”
+
+This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d’Instruction had formed
+within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the
+person under examination.
+
+“Where is _whose_ body?” asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.
+
+“Buchanan,” said the Juge d’Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry
+with which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.)
+“Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not
+deceived by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She
+is calm, stern, but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely” (_répandez
+franchement_), “and you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your
+interest to be frank.” (_Il est de votre intérêt d’être franc_.)
+
+“But what do you want me to say?” asked the prévenu, “What is all this
+pother about a great-coat?” (_Tant de fracas pour un paletot?_)
+
+Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.
+
+“It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,”
+ said the Juge d’Instruction. “Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me,
+Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine?”
+
+“In answer to that advertisement in the Times.”
+
+“That is false; you yourself inserted the advertisement. But, on your
+own system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?”
+
+“It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn.”
+
+“His name?”
+
+“I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might
+have found his tailor’s name on the coat, and then have discovered for
+whom the coat was made.”
+
+“You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the
+forged advertisement?”
+
+“So he says.”
+
+“You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!”
+
+Maitland apologized.
+
+“Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertisement, as you deny
+having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?”
+
+“I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertisement.”
+
+“That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?”
+
+“To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at
+this moment.”
+
+“Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!”
+
+“I have told you that my name is not Buchanan.”
+
+“Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?”
+
+“I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the moment; it was
+incorrect.”
+
+“Why did you lie?” (_Pourquoi avez vous menti?_)
+
+Maitland made an irritable movement
+
+“You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplorable. You are consigned
+_au secret_, and will have an opportunity of revising your situation,
+and replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice.”
+
+So ended Maitland’s first and, happily, sole interview with a Juge
+d’Instruction. Lord Walter Brixton, his old St Gatien’s pupil, returned
+from the country on the very day of Maitland’s examination. An interview
+(during which Lord Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach
+was not refused to the _attaché_, and, in a few hours, after some
+formalities had been complied with, Maitland was a free man. His _pièces
+justificatives_, his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing Cross,
+were returned to him intact.
+
+But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privileges of the last-named
+document.
+
+“I am going straight to Constantinople and the Greek Islands,” he
+wrote to Barton. “Do you know, I don’t like Paris. My attempt at an
+investigation has not been a success. I have endured considerable
+discomfort, and I fear my case will get into the _Figaro_, and there
+will be dozens of ‘social leaders’ and ‘descriptive headers’ about me in
+all the penny papers.”
+
+Then Maitland gave his banker’s address at Constantinople, relinquished
+the quest of Margaret, and for a while, as the Sagas say, “is out of the
+story.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--The Night of Adventures.
+
+A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of
+the _Hit or Miss_. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there
+would come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous
+woman; then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same
+woman were working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of
+rainy hail, mixed with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting
+insult, on the windows of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so _da
+capo_.
+
+“Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?”
+ said Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she
+perched on the table in the parlor of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
+Maitland’s investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
+near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still
+an unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come
+from the original centre of the troubles.
+
+“I’m in no hurry to take an engagement,” answered the resolute Eliza,
+holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
+close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
+female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she
+looked now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions.
+“There’s two or three managers in treaty with me,” said Eliza. “There’s
+the _Follies and Frivolities_ down Norwood way, and the _Varieties_ in
+the ‘Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that’s
+what I ask for, and I’ll get it too! Just now I’m taking a vacation, and
+making an honest penny with these things,” and she nodded at a little
+basket full of the wardrobe of dolls.
+
+“Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?” asked Barton.
+
+“Yes,” said Eliza; “I am doing well with them. I’m not sure I shan’t
+need to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter
+orders.”
+
+“Pm glad you are successful,” answered Barton. “I say, Eliza!”
+
+“Yes, Doctor.”
+
+“Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
+sitting the night before he was found in the snow?”
+
+It had suddenly occurred to Barton--it might have occurred to him
+before--that this room might be worth examining.
+
+“We ain’t using it now! Ill show you it,” said Eliza, leading the way
+up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
+
+Barton took hold of the handle.
+
+“Ladies first,” he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
+
+“No,” came the child’s voice, from half-way down the stairs; “I won’t
+come in! They say he walks, I’ve heard noises there at night.”
+
+A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
+struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
+been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an
+empty bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors,
+blue and red, part of Shields’ stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some
+very sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized.
+They were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the
+Southern Seas.
+
+Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
+needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined
+it closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the
+others, but of wood.
+
+Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
+carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
+substance.
+
+“I thought so,” he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
+instrument-case: “the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!”
+
+Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
+
+“Did you see him?” asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
+
+“Don’t be childish, Eliza: there’s no one to see. Why is the room left
+all untidy?”
+
+“Mother dare not go in!” whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
+voice, “Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the
+night old Shields died in the snow?”
+
+“The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
+should go on thinking about it,” said Barton, rather sternly. “You were
+tired and ill, and you fancied it.”
+
+“No, I wasn’t,” said the child, solemnly. “I never say no more about
+it to mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I
+remember it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what’s that?”
+
+She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of
+the curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the _Hit or
+Miss_.
+
+Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
+open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her
+hand to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as
+to be unrecognizable, flashed into the room. “Oh, come! oh, come!” she
+cried. “She’s killing her!” Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she
+had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a
+face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that
+moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run,
+after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the
+bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
+
+“Come, doctor, come!” she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
+crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
+Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
+her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
+then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of
+the old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following,
+found himself for the first time within the portals of _The Old English
+Bun-house_.
+
+The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
+excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were
+pressed so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could
+scarcely thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering
+another: it was a matter of life and death.
+
+“Oh, she’s been at the drink, and she’s killed her! she’s killed her!
+I heard her fall!” one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
+hysterical iteration.
+
+“Let me pass!” shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
+the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
+
+“Give me room,” he cried, and the patrons of _The Bun-house_ yielding
+place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
+weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
+crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
+stress of the girls behind him.
+
+What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
+the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
+
+By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame
+of blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane),
+Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
+
+One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
+unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
+side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood
+on the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further
+side of this girl--who was dead, or seemingly dead--sat, on a low stool,
+a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still. The
+knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
+noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
+her.
+
+For a moment even Barton’s rapidity of action and resolution were
+paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
+with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision,
+dreadful even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit
+awoke in him.
+
+“Fetch a policeman,” he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened
+troop of girls.
+
+“There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes,” said Susan, the
+young woman who had called Barton from the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the
+throng.
+
+And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken
+girl at her feet--as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a
+_tableau_.
+
+“Policeman,” said Barton, “I give that woman in charge for an attempt at
+murder. Take her to the station.”
+
+“I don’t like the looks of her,” whispered the policeman. “I’d better
+get her knife from her first, sir.”
+
+“Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can’t look
+after the wounded girl in this crowd.”
+
+Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose
+eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her
+victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
+
+They were just within arm’s reach of the murderess when she leaped with
+incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and
+lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she
+raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into
+her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had
+stricken.
+
+“By George, she’s gone!” cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him,
+and laid his hand on the woman’s heart. She stirred once, was violently
+shaken with the agony of death, and so passed away, carrying into
+silence her secret and her story.
+
+Mr. Cranley’s hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
+
+“Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!” remarked the policeman,
+sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the
+wound of the housekeeper’s victim, and applying such styptics as he had
+within reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The
+Bunhouse__ of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message
+(by the direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed
+not devoid of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was
+being expected, the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was
+employed by Barton in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in
+generally restoring order.
+
+When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine’s house with
+Barton’s brief note, and with his own curt statement that “murder was
+being done at _The Bun-house_,” he found the Lady Superior rehearsing
+for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room
+representation of “Nitouche,” and the terrible news found her in one of
+the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously
+misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+hurried off, “just as she was,” and astonished Barton (who had never
+seen her before) by arriving at _The Bunhouse_ as a rather conventional
+shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig.
+The versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all
+worlds occasionally let her into _inconsequences_ of this description.
+
+But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not
+only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard
+the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled
+herself as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl’s wound, as Barton
+was happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for
+the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part.
+But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene
+of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young
+women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened
+by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most
+responsible of _The Bun-house_ girls, announced her intention to, sit up
+all night with the patient. Barton--who was moved, perhaps, as much
+by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by
+professional duty--remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the
+Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As
+the danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of
+fever, Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the
+morning, he let himself out of _The Bunhouse_, and made sleepily for
+his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his
+share of adventures--which, like sorrows, never “come as single spies,
+but in battalions”--was by no means exhausted.
+
+The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
+extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the _Hit or
+Miss_, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
+tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
+
+“There’s the gray beginning, Zooks,” he muttered to himself, in
+half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still
+steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind
+was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the
+lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was
+just passing the locked doors of the _Hit or Miss_--for he preferred to
+go homeward by the riverside--when a singular sound, or mixture of
+sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
+attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a _nuit
+blanche_. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
+traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make
+before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a
+great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
+economy, and was laboring “without a conscience or an aim.” Whir, whir,
+flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
+the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
+scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
+whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all
+his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms
+of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
+palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
+half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the
+accents of pain.
+
+Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was
+heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though
+it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats--the time during
+which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung
+exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they
+were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught
+the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken,
+and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within
+the palisade.
+
+Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things--big, black,
+formless--were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of
+the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great
+fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed,
+flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached
+in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the
+ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the
+teeth of the flying wheel.
+
+Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, “Hold
+on!” or some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of
+the sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old
+baskets, outworn hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste
+land, the movement of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran
+slowly down, and, with a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased
+moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice
+came from the crumpled mass of humanity in the centre of the hideous
+mechanism:
+
+“Don’t come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!”
+
+The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
+
+Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days
+being over) at least to know _why_ he is to be shot at.
+
+“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “What on earth are you doing? How
+can _you_ talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?”
+
+To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
+
+By this time there was a full measure of the light “which London takes
+the day to be,” and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this
+dialogue.
+
+He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a
+victim of the rack--scattered, so to speak--in a posture inconceivably
+out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man’s head was
+lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a
+beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the
+other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a
+close-fitting suit of cloth--something between the uniform of bicycle
+clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell
+back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about
+his beard.
+
+Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
+
+“How am I to help you out of this?” said the surgeon, carefully
+examining his patient, as he might now be called. A little close
+observation showed that the man’s arms were strapped by buckles into the
+fans, while one of his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the
+mechanism.
+
+With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled
+groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
+
+Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that,
+as far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries
+done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there
+were many contusions.
+
+“Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the
+police-office and get men and a stretcher,” said Barton.
+
+The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
+
+“First hide all _this,_” he murmured, moving his head so as to indicate
+the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of spars,
+cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of mechanics.
+“Don’t let them know a word about it,” he said. “Say I had an
+accident--that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window--say anything
+you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week,” he murmured
+dreamily, “it would have been complete. It is the second time I have
+just missed success and fame.”
+
+“I have not an idea what your secret may be,” said Barton; “but here
+goes for the machine.”
+
+And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes,
+he rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among
+the heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment,
+meritorious.
+
+“Are you sure you can find them all again?” asked the victim of
+misplaced ingenuity.
+
+“Oh yes, all right,” said Barton.
+
+“Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they
+find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out.”
+
+“But how on earth am I to get you to the street?” Barton inquired, very
+naturally. “Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you
+over the boarding.”
+
+“I can bear anything--I will bear anything,” said the man. “Look in my
+breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings.”
+
+Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the
+sufferer by a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of
+skeleton-key in strong wire.
+
+“With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street,” said the
+crushed man; “but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is
+passing.”
+
+He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of
+silence broken by groans.
+
+“Wait! one thing more,” he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his
+arms. “I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson’s Kents, hard by;
+my name is Winter.” Then, after a pause, “I can pay for a private room
+at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end
+in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!”
+
+Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones
+(and broken bones) as he was.
+
+The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he
+dared not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall.
+At last--it seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to
+the sufferer--the hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly,
+Barton opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear,
+deposited his burden on the pavement, and flew to the not distant
+police-station.
+
+He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he
+found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he
+had left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or
+two puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called
+up a cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there
+were riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky
+penny-a-liner with his “tissue” and pencil.
+
+Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected,
+that his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the
+stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that
+motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of
+the case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last,
+returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
+
+“By Jove!” he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken
+at breakfast, “I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a
+Flying-Machine!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--A Patient.
+
+A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and
+laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather
+calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in
+suicide or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a
+flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused
+by engines of a more familiar nature.
+
+Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day
+after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived
+that the distress and confusion at _The Bunhouse_ were very great. The
+police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many
+disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the
+consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness
+and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist,
+and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due
+attention to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking
+her very much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of
+social enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated
+manner, though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the
+explanations offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had
+made up her mind to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece
+and companion. The girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready
+young patronesses of _The Bunhouse_.
+
+If the lady’s mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the
+hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead
+woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient--not
+that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton’s
+fancy did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those
+“amatorious” young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who
+cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was
+not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he
+went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more
+apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had
+been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered,
+and, in Barton’s private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a
+successful inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting
+enough, apart from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy
+absolutely free.
+
+It was no more than Barton’s actual duty to call at _The Old English
+Bunhouse_ in the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John
+Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night.
+She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper
+bearing a legend to the effect that _The Old English Bunhouse_ was
+closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was
+drawn up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring at _The
+Bunhouse_.
+
+Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with
+open arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise
+of _Nitouche_, and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
+
+“My dear Mr. Barton,” she exclaimed, “your patient is doing very well
+indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have
+called.”
+
+Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he
+had discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs.
+Si John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
+
+“Do you think she is able to see me?” he asked.
+
+“I’ll run to her room and inquire,” said Mrs. St John Deloraine,
+fleeting nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as
+described by Charles Lamb’s friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind
+her from the chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
+
+Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady of _The Bunhouse_
+returned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence
+of the invalid.
+
+A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even
+better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and
+melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked
+whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when
+they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called
+her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the
+girl had spoken.
+
+“Well,” replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, “it was through Mr. Cranley
+that I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can’t
+think of without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is
+too dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to
+one. Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must
+admit that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He
+gave her an excellent character, _especially_ for sobriety, and till
+yesterday I had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she
+became quite wild and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this
+is the first time she yielded to that horrid temptation. Don’t you think
+it was odd of Mr. Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to
+his rooms, but it was returned, marked, ‘Has left; address not Known.’
+I don’t know what has become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have
+told us, but the unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions.”
+
+“Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard’s, in Chelsea?”
+ asked Barton.
+
+“No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He
+was a great friend of mine.”
+
+“Mr. Thomas Cranley!” exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which
+probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational
+character.
+
+“Now, please,” cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a
+pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter
+the peccadillo of a favorite saint; “please don’t say you know anything
+against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies.”
+
+Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling
+about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so
+unknown in France; but, on the other side, _he_ could scarcely think
+it right to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a
+confirmed scoundrel.
+
+“Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really,
+if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley’s enemies are of his own
+making. I would not go to him for a girl’s character, I’m sure. But I
+thought he had disappeared from society.”
+
+“So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that
+I was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him.
+And I never would. I never turn my back on my friends.”
+
+“If there was a conspiracy,” said Barton, “I am the ringleader in it;
+for, as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr.
+Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I
+would not have mentioned it for the world,” he added, almost alarmed at
+the expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine’s face; “but
+you wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief
+that he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what
+all who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you,
+in the matter of that woman’s character, was,” cried Barton, growing
+indignant as he thought of it, “one of the very basest things I ever
+heard of. I had seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted
+with the care of girls. She was at one time very well known.”
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s face had passed through every shade of
+expression--doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air of
+hope.
+
+“Margaret has always spoken so well of him,” she said, half to herself.
+“He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter
+of a humble acquaintance.”
+
+“Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once,” said Barton; “but as to
+his general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap
+he laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him
+get the poor girl back into his hands.”
+
+“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in
+her voice; “and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants
+anything. Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne
+Walk? It is not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there.”
+
+“The best thing you can do,” said Barton; “and be sure you send for me
+if you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am
+quite ready to meet him anywhere.”
+
+“You will call to-morrow?”
+
+“Certainly, about this time,” said Barton; and he kept his promise
+assiduously, calling often.
+
+A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in
+a black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying
+indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the
+struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened,
+and the servant announced “Dr. Barton.”
+
+Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
+
+“I’m so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out,” she said. “She is at
+a soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any
+children, or had any fun.”
+
+So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she
+should not attend soap-bubble parties.
+
+“I’m selfish enough to be glad you could not go,” said Barton; “for then
+I should have missed you. But why do you sigh?”
+
+“I have had a good many things to make me unhappy,” said Margaret, “in
+addition to my--to my accident. You must not think I am always bewailing
+myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before I
+entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s service, and then my whole course of
+life was altered.”
+
+“I am very sorry for you,” said Barton, simply. He did not know what
+else to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and
+perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
+
+Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears
+came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She
+was on the point of breaking down.
+
+There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl
+crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton’s
+mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
+
+“I can’t tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you.
+Can’t I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the
+troubles of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are
+nearly over?”
+
+Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that they
+_were_ over, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
+
+“They have been going on so long,” said Margaret “I have had such a
+wandering life, and such changes.”
+
+Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but
+more was not offered.
+
+“Let us think of the future,” he said. “Have you any idea about what you
+mean to do?”
+
+“Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her
+always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don’t know what he would
+like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad.”
+
+Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley’s name.
+
+“Had you known him long?” he asked.
+
+“No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my
+father’s, and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from
+school, and he gave me a start in life.”
+
+“But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your
+education,” said Barton.
+
+“What can a girl do?” answered Margaret. “We know so little. I could
+hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully
+backward at school--at least, Miss---- I mean, the teachers thought me
+backward.”
+
+“I’m sure you know as much as anyone should,” said Barton, indignantly.
+“Were you at a nice school?” he added.
+
+He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret’s history.
+She seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and
+knowledge of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial
+position at a philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady’s
+character which made her patronage not precarious.
+
+“There were some nice girls at it,” answered Margaret, without
+committing herself.
+
+Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such
+thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an
+abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any
+place of education is “nice.”
+
+“It is really getting quite late,” Barton observed, reluctantly. He
+liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received
+just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk
+to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It
+would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and
+non-paying patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty.
+The poor are often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret
+noticed his reluctance to go contending with a sense of what he owed to
+propriety.
+
+“I am sure you must want tea; but I don’t like to ring. It is so short
+a time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at _The
+Bunhouse_, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me.
+They must dislike me; it is very natural.”
+
+“It is not natural at all,” said Barton, with conviction; “perfectly
+monstrous, on the other hand.” This little compliment eclipsed the
+effect of fire-light on the girl’s face. “Suppose I ring,” he added,
+“and then you can say, when Mary says ‘Did you ring, miss?’ ‘No, I
+didn’t ring; but as you _are_ here, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?’”
+
+“I don’t know if that would be quite honest,” said Margaret, doubtfully.
+
+“A pious fraud--a drawing-room comedy,” said Barton; “have we rehearsed
+it enough?”
+
+Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals
+was played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as
+amateurs often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
+
+“Now, this is quite perfect,” said Barton, when he had been accommodated
+with a large piece of plum-cake. “This is the very kind of cake which we
+specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too!
+There should be a new proverb, ‘Physician, diet thyself.’ You see, we
+don’t all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry
+toast.”
+
+“Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life,” said
+Margaret. “She tries a good many new things,” Barton remarked.
+
+“Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!” answered the girl. “Oh,
+if you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!” And she
+shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon.
+
+“I wonder if some day--you won’t think me very rude?” asked Barton--“you
+would mind telling me a little of your history?”
+
+“Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it,” answered Margaret;
+“and a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
+everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
+to think of things that have happened, or may happen.”
+
+“They shall never happen, if you will trust me,” cried Barton, when a
+carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
+
+“Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last,” cried Margaret, starting to
+run to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have
+fallen had Barton not caught her lightly.
+
+“Oh, how stupid you must think me!” she said, blushing. And Barton
+thought he had never seen anything so pretty.
+
+“Once for all, I don’t think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
+that you call yourself.”
+
+But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
+entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
+hospitality and content with existence into the room.
+
+“Oh, _you_ are here!” she cried, “and I have almost missed you. Now you
+_must_ stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone, Margaret
+and I.”
+
+So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
+(which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in
+vain. It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs.
+St John Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours
+passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all
+hours--good and evil--abide, remembered or forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.--Another Patient.
+
+     “Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
+     Comme dans le chant de Ruckert.”
+      --Théophile Gautier.
+
+“So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume,
+a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. ‘Such an one,’ he
+says--meaning me, and inventors like me--‘is a little crazed with the
+humors of melancholy.’”
+
+The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
+and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested
+in the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting
+in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in
+Paterson’s Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the
+conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of
+such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of
+civilization--the modern seekers for the Philosopher’s Stone. At the end
+of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and
+themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.
+
+For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with
+electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every
+house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of
+Winter’s den in Paterson’s Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was
+set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made,
+which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics,
+and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of
+the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better
+condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here--among the litter of
+tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed “Proceedings” of the Linnean and the
+Aeronautic Society of Great Britain--here were Fredericus Hermannus’ “De
+Arte Volandi,” and Cayley’s works, and Hatton Turner’s “Astra Castra,”
+ and the “Voyage to the Moon” of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins’s
+“Dædalus,” and the same sanguine prelate’s “Mercury, The Secret
+Messenger.” Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the
+classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations
+by French and other inventors--Ponton d’Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier,
+Girard, and Marey.
+
+Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient’s
+mind--(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his
+companions, and companions Winter had none)--even if the shelves had
+not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have
+proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library,
+and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and
+periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the
+ceiling.
+
+Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted
+by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things--from the
+sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
+From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
+materials; and here--a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a kind
+of drill-bow--was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley. The
+whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds’
+feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
+mind was made up as to the nature of Winter’s secret, or delusion; and
+when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
+either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
+
+“Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt,” Winter went on with his
+eager talk. “An acute man--rather _too_ acute, don’t you think, for a
+Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments
+of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
+matters.”
+
+“Such as flying?” put in Barton.
+
+“Yes; such as our great aim--the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
+What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
+flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
+artificer.) ‘Diligent,’ I may say, I have been; as to ‘ingenious,’ I
+leave the verdict to others.”
+
+“Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?” asked Barton, to humor his
+man.
+
+“Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of
+a mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women--_Goories_ he
+calls them--endowed with the power of flight. But _they_ were born so.
+We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer.”
+
+“It doesn’t seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?” remarked Barton,
+leading him on.
+
+“No, sir,” cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
+face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh
+at him. “No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man.
+But look at what he says about the _weight_ of your flying machine!
+Can anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent
+researches, and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You
+remember the iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?”
+
+“The iron fly!” murmured Barton. “I can’t say I do.”
+
+“You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
+hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
+guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose
+on the finger of its maker.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say you believe _that_?” asked Barton.
+
+“Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato’s
+acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And
+the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
+triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
+at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus,
+because the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in
+accordance with the best modern authorities, that the weight is no
+hindrance whatever, if proportional to the motive power. A flying
+machine, says Professor Bell, in the _Encyclopodia Britannica_--(you
+will not question the authority of the _Encyclopodia Britannica_?)--a
+flying machine should be ‘a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful
+structure.’ There, you see, the Bishop was right.”
+
+“Yours was deuced powerful,” remarked Barton. “I did not expect to see
+two limbs of you left together.”
+
+“It _is_ powerful, or rather it _was_,” answered Winter, with a heavy
+sigh; “but it’s all to do over again--all to do over again! Yet it was
+a noble specimen. ‘The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,’ as the
+learned author in the _Encyclopodia_ recommends.”
+
+“By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. _You_
+were the passive surface, as far as I could see.”
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, please sir, after you’ve been so kind. All the rest
+laugh at me. You can’t think what a pleasure it has been to talk to
+a scholar,” and there was a new flush on the poor fellow’s cheek, and
+something watery in his eyes.
+
+“I beg your pardon, my dear sir,” cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
+himself. “Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
+aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
+success of this kind of experiment.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton’s
+hand in his own battered claw; “thank you. But why should we run only
+to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been
+present to men’s minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization.
+Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the
+hypothesis of natural selection?”
+
+“Well, he _did_ make a shot at it,” admitted Barton, who remembered as
+much as that from “the old coaching days,” and college lectures at St.
+Gatien’s.
+
+“Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
+Greece, we find Dædalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
+pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for
+ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?”
+
+“Obvious bosh,” said Barton.
+
+“And the meteorological mycologists, sir, _they_ maintain that Dædalus
+is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!”
+
+“There’s nothing those fellows won’t say,” replied Barton.
+
+“I’m glad you are with me, sir. In Dædalus _I_ see either a record of
+a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
+expression of an aspiration as old as culture. _You_ wouldn’t make
+Dædalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting
+in Sicily, in the west?” added Winter anxiously.
+
+“I never heard of such nonsense,” said Barton.
+
+“Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
+sir, if I may judge by his picture of Dædalus.”
+
+“Every sensible man must be with you,” answered Barton.
+
+“Well, sir, I won’t detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity,
+such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus.
+Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant
+Scythians.”
+
+“It _must_ have been, indeed.”
+
+“Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he,
+I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of
+Lucian’s, who employed an eagle’s wing and a vulture’s in his flight, I
+take to be a mere figment of the satirist’s imagination. But what do
+you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine
+in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be
+gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expressly
+_currum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas_, the chariot of Simon Magus
+and his _vehicles of flame_--clearly the naphtha is alluded to--which
+vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter
+circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly
+Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But,
+though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared
+to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the
+Aventine!
+
+“‘The world knows nothing of its greatest men,’” quoted Barton.
+
+“Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
+character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
+credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally,
+the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in
+secret, through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at
+Constantinople who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I
+mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we
+tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in _Knowledge_
+and the _Cornhill_? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor
+Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of the
+_Encyclopodia Britannica_, that ‘the number of successful flying models
+is considerable. It is not too much to expect,’ he goes on, ‘that the
+problem of artificial flight will be actually solved, or at least much
+simplified.’ What less can we expect, as he observes, in the land of
+Watt and Stephenson, when the construction of flying machines has been
+‘taken up in earnest by practical men?’”
+
+“We may indeed,” said Barton, “hope for the best when persons of your
+learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause.”
+
+“As to my learning, you flatter me,” said Winter. “I am no scholar; but
+an enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that
+the great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a
+romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan
+of the Happy Valley expected to solve the problem in one year’s time.
+‘If all men were equally virtuous,’ said this artist, ‘I should with
+equal alacrity teach them all to fly.’”
+
+“And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson’s artist?”
+
+“To _you_ I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
+machine describe elliptic figures of eight.”
+
+“I’ve seen them do _that_, said Barton.
+
+“Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
+by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in
+air--which I effected by starting from a height of six feet only--by
+a combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By
+steam alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar
+across two fields. Penaud’s machine, relying only on india rubber under
+torsion, flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as
+Bishop Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and proportioned
+flying-machine, capable of carrying a man, can do also.”
+
+“But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not
+carrying you at all.”
+
+“Something had gone wrong with the mechanism,” answered Winter, sighing.
+“It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against.
+Remember Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling
+error in the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had
+to give half his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt
+would tell him that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a
+coating of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend
+on it, interfered with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my
+experiments at night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered
+and anticipated. I have been on the verge--nay, _over_ the verge--of
+success. ‘No imaginable invention,’ Bishop Wilkins says, ‘could prove
+of greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.’ A few
+weeks ago that glory was mine!”
+
+“Why a few weeks ago?” asked Barton. “Was your machine more advanced
+then than when I met you?”
+
+“I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion,” said Winter,
+wearily; “but a few weeks ago my _machine acted_, and I may say that I
+knew the sensations of a bird on the wing.”
+
+“Do you mean that you actually _flew_?”
+
+“For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!”
+
+Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought--one wild and
+credulous, the other practical and professional--surged and met in his
+brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
+
+“Good-night,” he said. “You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I
+will call again soon.”
+
+He _did_ call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be repeated
+in its proper place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.--Found.
+
+     “All precious things, discovered late,
+     To those that seek them issue forth;
+     For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,
+     And draws the veil from hidden worth.”
+      --The Sleeping Beauty.
+
+That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could
+not, of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She
+noticed that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking
+only the clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so
+light of heart as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes
+men and women poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of
+them. Margaret was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence,
+a bad listener--all of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine,
+but pardoned, in this instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt
+to blush without apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door,
+to leave the room hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back,
+when Barton called. Nor was Barton himself such good company as he had
+been. His manner was uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be
+paid at longer intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in
+fits and starts; and yet he did not know how to go away.
+
+Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have
+interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
+
+Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has
+not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love
+with her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings
+of inclination in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an
+“engagement.” All considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight
+melted away before the ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first,
+to get engaged next, and to be married as soon as possible afterward,
+without regard to consequences of any kind, were, in this lady’s mind,
+heroic actions, and almost the whole duty of men and women.
+
+In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was
+to be known about Margaret’s affections, and also about Barton’s.
+
+“He’s as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear,” she said to
+Margaret “Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him?
+Nonsense, Daisy; that is _his_ affair. I know you are as good a girl
+as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr.
+Cranley--yes, he was a wretch--had a spite against you. I don’t know
+why, and you won’t help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a
+man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I’m sure. You are afraid of
+something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I’m sure I don’t
+wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one’s nerve. I could no
+more drive now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to think
+_nothing_ of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who
+is there can frighten you? And as to being poor,” and Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine explained her generous views as to arrangements on her part,
+which would leave Margaret far from portionless.
+
+Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend’s
+shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and
+they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his
+boots, and fidget with his hat.
+
+“I’ve no patience with you, Mr. Barton,” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+at last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation
+with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. “I’ve no patience with you.
+Why, where is your courage? ‘She has a history?’ She’s been persecuted.
+Well, where’s your chivalry? Why don’t you try your fortune? There never
+was a better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she’s not--when she’s
+not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don’t
+take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
+voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I
+am going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and
+looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will
+get out and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you
+will show Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and
+when you come back you will both have made up your minds!”
+
+With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
+carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
+were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
+pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish (“coarse,” but not
+uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees--it was
+the last week of May--were in the earliest freshness of their foliage;
+the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
+
+“How quiet and pretty it is!” said Margaret “Who would think we were in
+London?”
+
+Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
+Scott, he thought the more.
+
+“Miss Burnside!” he exclaimed suddenly, “we have known each other now
+for some time.”
+
+This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
+and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
+of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
+hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
+
+“Yes,” she said at last; “we have known each other for some time, and
+yet--you know nothing about me.”
+
+With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the
+face. There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen
+before, though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a
+mark of pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
+
+Barton felt his courage come back to him.
+
+“I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love
+you!” he said. “Margaret, can’t you care for me a little? Don’t tell me
+anything you think you should not say. I’m not curious.”
+
+Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its
+inmates, grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into
+the waters, so that he could not see her face.
+
+“No,” she said at last, in a very low voice; “it would not be fair.”
+ Then, after another pause, “There is someone--” she murmured, and
+stopped.
+
+This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for
+_him_, he fancied she cared for nobody.
+
+“If you like someone better--” he was beginning.
+
+“But I don’t like him at all,” interrupted Margaret. “He was very kind,
+but--”
+
+“Then can’t you like _me_?” asked Barton; and by this time he was very
+near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was
+still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
+
+“Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know,” murmured Margaret.
+And yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and
+ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind
+but that Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had
+surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the
+honors and rewards of war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is
+no covenant until it is sealed.
+
+But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently,
+with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by
+the iron railings.
+
+“I must tell you about myself,” she said. “I have promised never to
+tell, but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many
+things have happened.” And she sighed.
+
+However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there
+should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself
+(aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to
+conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect
+her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no
+argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and,
+by way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming
+an affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still
+turning toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
+
+“The person--the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my
+father’s, who, at one time, wanted him”--here Margaret paused--“wanted
+me to--to be his wife some day.”
+
+The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do
+local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse
+of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
+
+“I didn’t like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His
+name--but perhaps I should not mention his name?”
+
+“Never mind,” said Barton. “I dare say I never heard of him.”
+
+“But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which
+you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to
+tell her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean
+to be living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so
+many terrible things back to mind.”
+
+“Dear Margaret,” Barton whispered, taking her hand.
+
+They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the
+pathway, and an observer might have thought that they were greatly
+interested in the water-fowl.
+
+“My name is not Burnside,” Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder
+across the gardens and toward the river; “my name is--”
+
+“Daisy Shields!” cried a clear voice. “Daisy, you’re found at last, and
+I’ve found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!”
+
+But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the
+impassioned embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady;
+while Mrs. St. John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in
+her eyes.
+
+“Oh, my dear!” Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in
+a pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. “Oh,
+my dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help
+her to look for them; and I’ve found _you!_ It’s like Stanley finding
+Livingstone. ‘How I Found Daisy.’ I’ll write a book about it. And where
+_have_ you been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything
+was the matter--only Miss Mariett and me! And I’ve left for good; and
+she and I are quite friends, and I’m to be presented next Drawing Room.”
+
+While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had
+acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment
+and concern.
+
+They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret’s past was about to be
+dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it already _was_ dispelled. The names
+of Shields and Miss Marlett had told _him_ all that he needed to know.
+But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady’s lips;
+and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of having
+interrupted a “proposal,” and spoiled a darling scheme.
+
+It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested
+Margaret to return to the carriage.
+
+“And as Miss Harman seems to have _a great deal_ to say to you,
+Margaret,” added the philanthropic lady, “you two had better walk on as
+fast as you can; for _you_ must be very careful not to catch cold! I see
+Miss Harman’s maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and I,
+Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I’m not a
+good walker.”
+
+“_Now_,” said Barton’s companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey,
+about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond
+earshot--“_Now_, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?”
+
+Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
+
+“I don’t know--I hope so--I’m not sure.”
+
+“Oh, you’re not satisfactory--not at all satisfactory. Are you _still_
+shilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?” cried the
+veteran of twenty-nine. “Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like
+a cow in a conservatory? She’s a regular school-girl!”
+
+“It isn’t that exactly, or at least that’s not all. I hope--I think she
+does care for me, or will care for me, a little.”
+
+“Oh, bother!” said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the
+world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she
+knew of the state of Margaret’s heart But she was highly provoked, and
+showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
+
+“The fact is,” Barton admitted, “that I’m so taken by surprise I hardly
+know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited,
+that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to
+tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at
+school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking
+anxiously at Barton, “was it anything so very dreadful?”
+
+“She called her Daisy Shields,” said Barton.
+
+“Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened at _The
+Bunhouse_, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false
+name. It was not _her_ fault. The question is, What was her reason for
+keeping her real name concealed?”
+
+“That’s what I’m coming to,” said Barton. “I have a friend, a Mr.
+Maitland.”
+
+“Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien’s?” asked the widow.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I know him.”
+
+“Yes, I have often heard him speak of you,” said Barton. “Well, he had
+a _protégée_--a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words--a girl
+whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to
+her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared
+mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many
+efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this
+girl’s name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret
+Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called
+Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if she _does_ care for
+me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom
+my friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to
+find his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and
+annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?”
+
+“Mr. Barton,” said Mrs. St John Deloraine, “perhaps you alarm yourself
+too much. I think”--here she dropped her voice a little--“I think--I
+don’t think Mr. Maitland’s _heart_ is very deeply concerned about Miss
+Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well”--she gave a little
+nervous laugh--“and I don’t think he’s in _love_ with Margaret.”
+
+By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative
+discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
+
+Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of
+welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love
+with each other!
+
+“He’s an awfully good fellow, Maitland,” he replied. “But you are
+right; I’m _sure_ you are right. You must know. He is _not_ in love with
+Margaret.”
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to
+Maitland’s unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
+
+“But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite
+safe; and I’ll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from
+him--about a charity, you know--a few days ago, and I have his address.”
+
+By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces,
+tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order
+“Home.”
+
+“We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon,” she cried to Barton; and no
+offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
+
+He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts,
+when he suddenly came to a dead halt.
+
+“By George!” he said out loud; “I’ll go back and have it out with her at
+once. I’ve had enough of this shillyshally.”
+
+He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few
+minutes he was standing at the familiar door.
+
+“Will you ask Miss--Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?” he
+said to the servant “I have forgotten something she wished me to do for
+her,” he added in a mumble.
+
+Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared,
+still in her bonnet and furs.
+
+“I couldn’t help coming back, Margaret,” he said, as soon as she entered
+the room. “I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn’t
+think--I mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing,
+_nothing_ to prevent us--I mean» Margaret, if you _really_ care for
+me--”
+
+Then he came to a dead stop.
+
+It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to
+Margaret, “My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He
+does not care a pin for you; he’ll be delighted at being released. He is
+in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine.”
+
+That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it
+could not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have
+been exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
+
+The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it,
+looking at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was
+safe, but embarrassing.
+
+He made a charge, as it were, at the position--a random, desperate
+charge.
+
+“Margaret, can you trust me?” he asked.
+
+She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
+
+“Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about
+your doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there
+is _nothing_ to prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you
+will only agree to make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too.
+Can’t you take it on trust? Can’t you believe me?”
+
+Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton’s shoulder. She
+_did_ believe him.
+
+The position was carried!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.--The Mark of Cain.
+
+Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and
+took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying
+little but, “Come home at once. Margaret is found. She is going to be my
+wife. You can’t come too quickly, if you wish to hear of something very
+much to your advantage.” A load was off his mind, and he felt as _Romeo_
+did just before the bad news about _Juliet_ reached him.
+
+In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his letters. The first was in
+a hand he knew very well--that of a man who had been his fellow-student
+in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a prosperous young physician. The
+epistle ran thus:
+
+“Dear Barton.--I’m off to the West of Ireland, for a fortnight People
+are pretty fit, as the season has not run far. Most of my patients have
+not yet systematically overeaten themselves. I want you to do something
+for me. Martin & Wright, the lawyers, have a queer little bit of medical
+jurisprudence, about which young Wright, who was at Oriel in our time,
+asked my opinion. I recommended him to see you, as it is more in your
+line; and _my_ line will presently be attached to that eminent general
+practitioner, ‘The Blue Doctor.’ May he prosper with the Galway salmon!
+
+“Thine,
+
+“Alfred Franks.”
+
+“Lucky beggar!” thought Barton to himself, but he was too happy to envy
+even a man who had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him.
+
+The next letter he opened was in a blue envelope, with the stamp
+of Messrs. Martin & Wright. The brief and and formal note which it
+contained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day if possible, at
+the chambers of the respectable firm, on “business of great importance.”
+
+“What in the world can they want?” thought Barton. “Nobody can have
+left _me_ any money. Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical
+jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I’ll go down after breakfast.”
+
+He walked along the sunny embankment, and that bright prospect of
+houses, trees, and ships have never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he
+was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and had shaken hands with young Wright,
+whom he knew; had been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately man
+of business, and had taken his seat in the chair sacred to clients.
+
+“Dr. Barton,” said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, “you are, I think, the
+author of this book?”
+
+He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, in its gray paper cover,
+“Les Tatouages Étude Médico-Légale”.
+
+“Certainly,” said Barton. “I wrote it when I was in Paris I had plenty
+of chances of studying tattooing in the military hospitals.”
+
+“I have not read it myself,” said old Mr. Wright, “because I am not
+acquainted with the French language; but my son tells me it is a work of
+great learning.”
+
+Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was glad Mr. Wright liked it.
+_Why_ he should like it, or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not
+even imagine.
+
+“We are at present engaged in a very curious case, Dr. Barton,” went on
+the lawyer, “in which we think your special studies may assist us. The
+position is this: Nearly eight months ago a client of ours died, a Mr.
+Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I
+seem to be troubling you with a long story?”
+
+Barton mentioned that he was delighted, and added, “Not at all,” in the
+vague modern dialect.
+
+“This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a somewhat singular character. He
+was what is called a ‘statesman’ in the North. He had a small property
+of about four hundred acres, on the marches, as they say, or boarders
+of the Earl of Birkenhead’s lands. Here he lived almost alone, and in
+a very quiet way. There was not even a village near him, and there were
+few persons of his own position in life, because his little place was
+almost embedded, if I may say so, in Lord Birkenhead’s country, which is
+pastoral. You are with me, so far?”
+
+“Perfectly,” said Barton.
+
+“This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, with an old housekeeper,
+dead since his decease, and with one son, called Richard, like himself.
+The young man was of an adventurous character, a ne’er-do-weel in fact;
+and about twenty years ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel
+with his father. It was understood that he had run away to sea. Two
+years later he returned; there was another quarrel, and the old man
+turned him out, vowing that he would never forgive him. But, not long
+after that, a very rich deposit of coal--a _very_ rich deposit,” said
+Mr. Wright, with the air of a man tasting most excellent claret--“was
+discovered on this very estate of Linkheaton. Old Johnson, without much
+exertion on his part, and simply through the payment of royalties by the
+company that worked the coal, became exceedingly opulent, in what you
+call most affluent circumstances.”
+
+Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether Barton was beginning to
+understand the point of the narrative, which, it is needless to remark,
+he was _not_. There is no marked connection between coal mines, however
+lucrative, and “Les Tatouages, Étude Médico-Légale.”
+
+“In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way changed his habits. He
+invested his money carefully, under our advice, and he became, as
+I said, an extremely warm man. But he continued to live in the old
+farmhouse, and did not, in any way, court society. To tell the truth,
+except Lord Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew anyone who was
+at all intimate with the old man. Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him,
+as a neighbor and a person of the old-fashioned type. Yes,” Mr. Wright
+added, seeing that his son was going to speak, “and, as you were about
+to say, Tom, they were brought together by a common misfortune. Like old
+Mr. Johnson, his lordship has a son who is very, very--unsatisfactory.
+His lordship has not seen the Honorable Mr. Thomas Cranley for many
+years; and in that lonely country the two boys had been companions in
+wild amusements, long before. He is _very_ unsatisfactory, the Honorable
+Thomas Cranley;” and Mr. Wright sighed heavily, in sympathy with a
+client so noble and so afflicted.
+
+“I know the beast,” said Barton, without reflecting.
+
+Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and horror. “The beast!” A son of
+Lord Birkenhead’s called “The beast!”
+
+“To return to our case, Dr. Barton,” he went on severely, with some
+stress laid on the _doctor_. “Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made
+on his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son Richard, or, in case
+of his decease, to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten. From that
+day to this we have hunted everywhere for the man. We have traced him
+all over the world; we have heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana,
+Smyrna, but at Smyrna we lose sight of him. This advertisement,” said
+the old gentleman, taking up the outside sheet of the _Times_, and
+folding it so as to bring the second column into view, “remained for
+more than seven months unanswered, or only answered by impostors and
+idiots.”
+
+He tapped his finger on the place as he handed the paper to Barton, who
+read aloud:
+
+“Linkheaton.--If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, Durham, last heard of
+at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln’s
+Inn Fields, he will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. His
+father died, forgiving him. A reward of £1,000 will be paid to anyone
+producing Richard Johnson, or proving his decease.”
+
+“As a mixture of business with the home affections,” said old Mr. Wright
+proudly (for the advertisement was of his own composition), “I think
+that leaves little ta be desired.”
+
+“It is admirable,” said Barton--“admirable; but may I ask----”
+
+“Where the tattooing comes in?” said Mr. Wright. “I am just approaching
+_that_. The only person from whom we received any reliable information
+about Richard Johnson was an old ship-mate of his, a wandering,
+adventurous character, now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot
+readily communicate with him. According to his account, Johnson was an
+ordinary seafaring man, tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to
+be recognized for an excellent reason. _He was tattooed almost all over
+his whole body_.”
+
+Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client’s chair, so sudden a
+light flashed on him.
+
+“What is the matter, Dr. Barton! I _thought_ I should interest you; but
+you seem quite excited.”
+
+“I really beg your pardon,” said Barton. “It was automatic, I think;
+besides, I _am_ extremely interested in tattooing.”
+
+“Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears,
+from what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable
+specimen. He had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by
+Arabs, and, in a peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the
+Dyacks of Borneo. We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of
+his principal decorations.”
+
+Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on
+which was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the
+breast, thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
+
+The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized
+the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
+
+This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any
+exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
+
+“This is highly interesting,” he said, as he examined the diagram; “and
+I am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a
+claimant with such remarkable peculiarities.”
+
+“No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores
+of sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before
+yesterday--a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point; asked
+if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they were,
+and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify the
+design, corresponded to that drawing.”
+
+“Well,” asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort,
+“what did you do with him?”
+
+“We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an
+expert before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things
+about old Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that
+anyone but the right man could have known, we put him off till we had
+seen you, and could make an appointment for you to examine the
+tattooings. _They_ must be dealt with first, before any other
+identification.”
+
+“I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say
+why he was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for
+several months.”
+
+“Yes, and that is rather in his favor,” said Mr. Wright. “If he had been
+an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago.
+But he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way
+of newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across
+it three or four days ago.”
+
+“Very well,” said Barton. “Make an appointment with the man for any time
+to-morrow, and I will be with you.”
+
+As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr.
+Wright.
+
+“Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?”
+
+“With pleasure,” answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger
+partner.
+
+He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer
+office by young Wright.
+
+“You had something to say to me?” asked the junior member of the firm.
+
+“Several things,” said Barton, smiling. “And first, would you mind
+finding out whether the coast is clear--whether any one is watching for
+me?”
+
+“Watching for you! What do you mean?”
+
+“Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious
+character is about.”
+
+Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a
+cigarette on the outer steps.
+
+“Not a soul in sight but lawyers’ clerks,” he reported.
+
+“Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are
+taking a turn with me.”
+
+Barton’s friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some
+serious conversation.
+
+“I’ll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father,” said the
+young lawyer as they separated.
+
+“Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger
+like myself,” said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent
+Garden.
+
+At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers,
+Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs.
+Aminadab, and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a
+pretty bulky parcel.
+
+                      *   *   *   *   *
+
+At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly,
+mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat
+and hat, appeared in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill
+acquainted with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before
+he reached the door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened,
+and he was admitted into the presence of the partners.
+
+“I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter,” he said with a
+Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by
+touching his forelock.
+
+His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners,
+with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman--a
+gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a
+tow-colored beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty
+complexion, and the air of one who smoked too much.
+
+“Good morning, Mr.--h’m--Mr. Johnson,” said old Mr. Wright. “As we told
+you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry, requested
+Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect--h’m--the personal marks of
+which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great authority on
+these matters--author of ‘Die Tattuirung,’ a very learned work, I am
+told.”
+
+Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
+
+“Glad to meet you, sir,” said the sailor-man gruffly, “or any gentleman
+as really knows what’s what.”
+
+“You have been a great traveller, sir?” said the learned Professor,
+whose Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. “You have in many
+lands travelled? So!”
+
+“Yes, sir; I have seen the world.”
+
+“And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by
+many races been decorated?”
+
+“Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!”
+
+“How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese--ah!
+have you any little Burmese marks?”
+
+“Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder,” replied the seafaring man.
+“Saving your presence, I’ll strip to the buff.”
+
+“The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir,” this was in reply to young
+Mr. Wright “The naked body! why, buff! ‘Buff,’ the abstract word, the
+actual stuff, the very _wesen_ of man unclothed. ‘Buffer,’ the concrete
+man, in the ‘buff,’ in the flesh; it is _sehr intéressant_.”
+
+While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological
+reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
+
+“That’s the Burmese style, sir,” he said, pointing to his shoulders and
+upper arm.
+
+These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
+series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
+to the elbow-joints.
+
+“_Sehr schôn, sehr schôn_,” exclaimed the delighted Professor. “It
+is very _hubsch_, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
+Germans. Ach, it is mournful!” and he sighed. “And now, sir, have you to
+show me any _moko_? A little _moko_ would be very instructive.”
+
+“Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
+look between my shoulders,” and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
+whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
+
+“That is right, that is right,” whispered the Professor. “_Moko,
+schlange_, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better
+_moko_, on an European man, have I never seen. You observe,” he remarked
+to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed
+lines--“you observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful.”
+
+“Extremely interesting,” said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
+seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
+
+“Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture,” he added, comparing
+the sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
+
+“Are you satisfied now, governor?” asked the sailor.
+
+“One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
+Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?”
+
+“Oh, yes; here you are!” and the voyager pointed to his breast.
+
+The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
+of irregular form.
+
+“It is, it is,” he cried, “the _wasm_, the _sharat_,* the Semitic tribal
+mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their cattle! Of old
+time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr Professor
+Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls that very
+mark, my dear sir?”
+
+     * Sharat or Short.--“The shart was in old times a tattooed
+     mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
+     of blood revenge is connected with a ‘mark’ which Jehovah
+     appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
+     _sharat_, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
+     person?”
+      --Robertson Smith, _Kinship in Ancient Arabia_, p.215.
+
+“Not I,” said the sailor; “I’m no scholar.”
+
+“He says it was--I do not say he is right,” cried the Professor, in a
+loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim’s breast--“he says it was
+_the mark of cain_!”
+
+The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped
+at a bookcase by which he stood.
+
+“What do you mean?” he cried, through his chattering teeth; “what do you
+mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark’s all
+right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain’t it on that
+chart of yours?”
+
+“Certainly, good sir; it is,” answered the Professor. “Why do you so
+agitate yourself? _The proof is complete!_” he added, still pointing at
+the sailor’s breast.
+
+“Then I’ll put on my togs, with your leave: it’s none so warm!” grumbled
+the man.
+
+He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and
+was just looking round for his coat.
+
+“Stop!” said the Professor. “Hold Mr. Johnson’s coat for a moment!”
+
+This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
+
+“You must be tired, sir,” said the Professor, in a very soft voice. “May
+I offer you a leedle cigarette?”
+
+He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly
+English accent, he went on:
+
+“I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left
+at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!”
+
+The sailor’s eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the
+ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
+
+“Hold it, hold it!” cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic
+accent--“hold it: there’s a revolver in the pocket!”
+
+But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
+
+The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not
+unconscious mass, on the floor.
+
+“Call in the police!” said Barton. “They’ll have no difficulty in taking
+him.”
+
+“This is the man against whom you have the warrant,” he went on, as
+young Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. “I charge the
+Honorable Thomas Cranley with murder!”
+
+The officers lifted the fallen man.
+
+“Let him be,” said Barton. “He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he’s
+better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart’s weak. Bring
+some brandy.”
+
+Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept
+murmuring:
+
+“The Honorable Thomas Cranley _was_ always very unsatisfactory!”
+
+It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be
+unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had _not_ been informed that
+the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
+
+Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
+examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
+floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.--The Verdict of Fate.
+
+Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton’s letter.
+He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
+he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
+
+Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
+thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
+
+Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley’s trial dragged on. Interest, as
+usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
+
+But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
+when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
+
+When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
+himself “Not Guilty,” his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
+pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
+the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
+whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
+
+The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
+prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
+condensed form:
+
+First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
+unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
+relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast
+of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
+circumstances of Johnson’s early life, with his history and his
+home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A
+celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved
+that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing
+man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the
+minute local and personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate
+Johnson, a sailor whose body was known to have been indelibly marked
+by the tattooing of various barbarous races, it was necessary that the
+prisoner should be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with
+unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his
+body the distinctive marks of Johnson, and then had destroyed him with
+fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of assuming his personality. The
+very instrument, it might be said, which stamped Cranley as Johnson,
+slew Johnson himself, and the process which hallmarked the prisoner
+as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him with the brand of Cain.
+The personal marks which seemed to establish the claimant’s case
+demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical expert brought in
+to prove his identity, and was recognized by that gentleman, Dr. Barton,
+who would be called, and who had once already exposed him in a
+grave social offence--cheating at cards. The same witness had made a
+_post-mortem_ examination of the body of Richard Johnson, and had then
+suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
+
+The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
+committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor
+(the disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of
+meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the
+_Hit or Miss_ tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met
+him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
+o’clock, telling the landlady that “his friend,” as he called Johnson,
+had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady,
+Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening
+on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson--or Shields, as she
+called him--had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which
+led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often
+took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of
+Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart
+belonging to the vestry--a cart which, during the night, had remained
+near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the _Hit or Miss_. A
+coroner’s jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had
+strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door
+in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down
+in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But
+evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish
+the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an
+eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a
+poison which it would be shown he had in his possession--a poison which
+was not swallowed by the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture
+into the system. The dead man’s body had then been removed to a place
+where his decease would be accounted for as the result of cold and
+exhaustion. A witness would be put in the box who, by an extraordinary
+circumstance, had been enabled to see the crime committed by the
+prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at the moment, he did not
+understand the meaning of what he saw. As the circumstances by which
+this witness had been enabled to behold what was done at dead of
+night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not commanded from any
+neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony
+would be brought to show that the witness really had enjoyed the
+opportunity of observation which he claimed.
+
+On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson,
+and claimed Johnson’s property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson,
+unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for
+the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical
+evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed
+to have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death,
+according to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the
+prosecution believed that the jury could find no other verdict than
+that the prisoner had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of
+February 7th.
+
+This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate
+the evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the
+statements of the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of
+Shields with Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but
+Johnson’s old crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was
+at length discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he
+collected, the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course,
+most important in another respect, as establishing Margaret’s claims on
+the Linkheaton estate.
+
+The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved
+by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
+
+The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who
+had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of
+the difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of
+beard--for Cranley was now clean shaved--Mrs. Gullick was positive as
+to his voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and
+mobile.
+
+Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest
+interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be
+arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had
+known as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length,
+and need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard
+Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the
+tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an
+ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many
+curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks
+were obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left
+blank--namely, behind and under the right shoulder--he had discovered
+certain markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an
+inexperienced hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed,
+and were slightly discolored. They could not, from their position,
+possibly have been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations
+of these marks, in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue,
+as on the rest of the body, showed that this coloring matter was of
+a character familiar to the witness as a physiologist and scientific
+traveller. It was the _Woorali_, or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians
+of Guiana.
+
+Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness
+said that its “principle” (to use the term of the old medical writers)
+had not yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded
+by Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined
+the juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with
+certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the
+whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown
+paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their
+arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal
+results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison
+would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to
+sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles,
+and the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed,
+death followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the
+victim, man or animal, and the strength of the dose.
+
+Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo
+marks on Johnson’s body.
+
+The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf
+of the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson’s tattooing
+materials, in the upper chamber of the _Hit or Miss_. This needle had
+been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by
+the Macoushi of Guiana.
+
+Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument
+of his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the
+evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small
+crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken
+by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and
+Wright. But crumbs of the poison--“Woorali,” or “Ourali”--perfectly dry,
+remained in this réceptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself a
+great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
+
+The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general
+bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe
+cross-examination, William Winter was called.
+
+There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was
+borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
+
+“Where were you,” asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the
+officer had sworn the witness, “at eleven o’clock on the night of
+February 7th?”
+
+“I was on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ tavern.”
+
+“On which part of the roof?”
+
+“On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house,
+facing the waste ground behind the plank fence.”
+
+“Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?”
+
+Winter’s face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin,
+was clear as he said:
+
+“There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I
+was lying, and I looked in.”
+
+“What did you see?”
+
+“I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles
+and glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing.”
+
+“Would you recognize either man if you saw him?”
+
+“I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at
+that time he wore a beard.”
+
+“Tell the Court what happened.”
+
+“The men were facing me. One of them--the prisoner--was naked to the
+waist. His breast was tattooed. The other--the man who stood up--was
+touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a
+saucer on the table.”
+
+“Could you hear what they said?”
+
+“I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there
+was a slight chink open.”
+
+“You listened?”
+
+“I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with
+the needle give a sigh of relief, and say, ‘There, it’s finished, and
+a pretty job too, though I say it.’ The other said, ‘You have done
+it beautifully, Dicky; it’s a most interesting art. Now, just out of
+curiosity, let _me_ tattoo _you_ a bit.’ The other man laughed, and took
+off his coat and shirt while the other dressed. ‘There’s scarce an inch
+of me plain,’ he said, ‘but you can try your hand here,’ pointing to
+the lower part of his shoulder.”
+
+“What happened then?”
+
+“They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something
+sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He
+began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the
+time. This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of
+the man who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little,
+backward and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man,
+and said, in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, ‘I’m very
+cold; I can’t shiver!’ Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one
+or two convulsive movements. That was all.”
+
+“What did the prisoner do?”
+
+“He looked like death. He seized the bottle on the table, poured out
+half a tumbler full of the stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell
+into a chair, and laid his face between his hands. He appeared ill, or
+alarmed, but the color came back into his cheek after a third or
+fourth glass. Then I saw him go to the sleeping man and bend over him,
+listening apparently to his breathing. Then he shook him several times,
+as if trying to arouse him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about
+half-an-hour after what I have described, he opened the door and went
+out. He soon returned, took up the sleeping man in his arms--his weight
+seemed lighter than you would expect--and carried him out. From the roof
+I saw him push the door in the palisade leading into the waste land,
+a door which I myself had left open an hour before. It was not light
+enough to see what he did there; but he soon returned alone and walked
+away.”
+
+Such was the sum of Winter’s evidence, which, if accepted, entirely
+corroborated Barton’s theory of the manner of the murder.
+
+In cross-examination, Winter was asked the very natural question:
+
+“How did you come to find yourself on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ late
+at night?”
+
+Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn faced flushed, his eye
+sparkling.
+
+“Sir, I flew!”
+
+There was a murmur and titter through the court, which was, of course,
+instantly suppressed.
+
+“You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?”
+
+“I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have
+labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I
+was experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land
+bordering on the _Hit or Miss_, the machine actually worked, and I was
+projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air, coming
+down with à fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof of
+the _Hit or Miss_.”
+
+Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression
+at the jury.
+
+“My lord,” said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and
+the significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of
+the twelve good men and true, “I may state that we are prepared to bring
+forward a large mass of scientific evidence--including a well-known man
+of science, the editor of _Wisdom_, a popular journal which takes all
+knowledge for its province--to prove that there is nothing physically
+impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at present
+suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very
+machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working
+model, to the Court.”
+
+“It certainly requires corroboration,” said the judge. “At present,
+so far as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can
+prove, perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have
+only to take one step further to become practical modes of locomotion.
+But _that_ is the very step _qui coûte_. Nothing but direct evidence
+that the step has been taken--that a flying machine, on this
+occasion, actually _flew_ (they appear to be styled _volantes, a non
+volando_)--would really help your case, and establish the credibility of
+this witness.”
+
+“With your lordship’s learned remarks,” replied the counsel for the
+crown, “I am not the less ready to agree, because I _have_ an actual
+eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but
+reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its
+occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common
+talk of the neighborhood.”
+
+“Ah! that is another matter,” said the judge.
+
+“Call Eliza Gullick,” said the counsel.
+
+Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but
+perfect self-possession.
+
+After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an
+oath, Eliza was asked:
+
+“You remember the night of the 7th of February?”
+
+“I remember it very well, sir.”
+
+“Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?”
+
+“Becos such a mort o’ things happened, sir, that night.”
+
+“Will you tell his lordship what happened?”
+
+“Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at
+the _Hilarity_; for he said--”
+
+“Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming
+home.”
+
+“Well, sir, it was about eleven o’clock at night, and I was turning the
+lane into the _Hit or Miss_, when I heard an awful flapping and hissing
+and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at the
+side of the lane. And, as I was listening--oh, it frightens me now to
+think of it--oh, sir--”
+
+“Well, don’t be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?”
+
+“A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my
+head, higher than the houses. And then--did you ever see them Japanese
+toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber
+as you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly--”
+
+“Well, my girl, I have seen them.”
+
+“Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the
+bird’s wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all
+lighted, quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the _Hit or Miss_.
+And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o’ the
+window, but they wouldn’t none o’ them believe me, my lord.”
+
+There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this
+extraordinary confirmation of Winter’s evidence, and wove the net
+inextricably round the prisoner.
+
+Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something
+heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
+
+All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence
+the sound had come.
+
+The prisoner’s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
+
+One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
+
+The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The
+evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had
+slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+And what became of them all?
+
+He who does not tell, on the plea that he is “competing with Life,”
+ which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts
+unfairly.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are
+visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the
+unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy
+Mrs. Maitland.
+
+Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the
+case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still
+hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine,
+which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who
+once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac’s novel, has never recovered
+the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs.
+Barton’s little boy begins to take a lively interest.
+
+Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with
+the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick
+maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
+
+“We hear,” says the _Athenæum_, “that the long promised edition of
+‘Demetrius of Scepsis,’ by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien’s, is in the hands
+of the delegates of the Clarendon Press.”
+
+But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement
+that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_
+
+EXPLICIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21821-0.txt or 21821-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/2/21821/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’ WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm’s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
+
+The Foundation’s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation’s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/21821-0.zip b/21821-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c7e049
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-0.zip
diff --git a/21821-8.txt b/21821-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79f3838
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6952 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mark Of Cain
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21821]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+1886
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--A Tale of Two Clubs.
+
+     "Such arts the gods who dwell on high
+     Have given to the Greek."--_Lays of Ancient Rome._
+
+In the Strangers' Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with
+tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature
+was uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, and the guests, broken up into
+little groups, were chattering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of
+departing: no one had offered a welcome apology for the need of catching
+an evening train.
+
+Perhaps the civilized custom which permits women to dine in the presence
+of the greedier sex is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not
+for the excuse of "joining the ladies," dinner-parties (Like the
+congregations in Heaven, as described in the hymn) would "ne'er break
+up," and suppers (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) would never end.
+
+"Hang it all, will the fellows _never_ go?"
+
+So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien's, the founder of the feast. The
+inhospitable reflections which we have recorded had all been passing
+through his brain as he rather moodily watched the twenty guests he had
+been feeding--one can hardly say entertaining. It was a "duty dinner" he
+had been giving--almost everything Maitland did was done from a sense of
+duty--yet he scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward of an approving
+conscience. His acquaintances, laughing and gossipping round the
+half-empty wine-glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and "the ashes
+of the weeds of their delight," gave themselves no concern about the
+weary host. Even at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland felt
+like an outsider. He wakened from his reverie as a strong hand was laid
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+"Well, Maitland," said a man sitting down beside him, "what have _you_
+been doing this long time?"
+
+"What have I been doing, Barton?" Maitland answered. "Oh, I have been
+reflecting on the choice of a life, and trying to humanize myself!
+Bielby says I have not enough human nature."
+
+"Bielby is quite right; he is the most judicious of college dons and
+father-confessors, old man. And how long do you mean to remain his pupil
+and penitent? And how is the pothouse getting on?"
+
+Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever
+since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him.
+Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad,
+breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde,
+prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue
+eyes, and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other
+degrees at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was
+even what Captain Costigan styles "a scoientific cyarkter." He had
+written learnedly in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had
+made a cruise in a man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his _Les
+Tatouages, �tude M�dico-L�gale_, published in Paris, had been commended
+by the highest authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had
+not a home and practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in
+Chelsea.
+
+"How is your pothouse getting on?" he asked again.
+
+"The pothouse? Oh, the _Hit or Miss_ you mean? Well, I'm afraid it's not
+very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of doing
+some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the waterside
+won't go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink, and
+little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and
+looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to
+civilize them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves' Club in the
+East End. And then I fancied they might help to make _me_ a little more
+human. But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet
+blanket But the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with
+me about _that_. And she is a high authority."
+
+"Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I've heard of her. She is a lively widow,
+isn't she?"
+
+"She is a practical philanthropist," answered Maitland, flushing a
+little.
+
+"Pretty, too, I have been told?"
+
+"Yes; she is 'conveniently handsome,' as Izaak Walton says."
+
+"I say, Maitland, here's a chance to humanize you. Why don't you ask her
+to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich--what better would you
+ask?"
+
+"I wish everyone wouldn't bother a man to marry," Maitland replied
+testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
+pale and unwholesome.
+
+"What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what's the matter with you? Here
+you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements
+say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what
+you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with
+you?"
+
+"Well, you should know best What's the good of your being a doctor, and
+acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
+there is of it), if you can't tell what's the nature of my complaint?"
+
+"I don't diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side
+of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general
+practitioners. There is plenty of human nature _there!_"
+
+"And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
+splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
+roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
+or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
+sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good
+deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say," Barton went on, lowering his
+voice, "where on earth did you pick up----?"
+
+Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
+the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
+
+"Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the _Trumpet_ office. He was writing
+about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has been in
+the South Seas, like you."
+
+"Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,"
+answered the other, "and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
+dealt in them, I fancy."
+
+"I daresay," Maitland replied rather wearily. "He seems to have
+travelled a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever
+they may be."
+
+"Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or
+don't you?"
+
+"He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak," said
+Maitland; "but what does it matter?"
+
+"Then you don't know why he left his private tutor's; you don't know why
+he left the University; you don't know why he left the Ninety-second;
+you don't know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never
+heard of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?"
+
+"Well," Maitland replied, "about his ancient history I own I don't know
+anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself.
+He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was
+ridiculous."
+
+"They didn't take that view of it at Shephard's Hotel"
+
+"Well, it is not my affair," said Maitland. "One should see all sort
+of characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has
+been a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he
+is full of good stories. I rather like him, and he can't do my moral
+character any harm. _I'm_ not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of
+life, nor quarrel with warlike aliens."
+
+"No; but he's not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford,"
+Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up,
+surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
+
+The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in
+which he found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play
+Falstaff to every fresh heir's Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man,
+too obviously accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke
+of a prolonged youth. � large cat's-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed
+solitary in his shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of
+the contemporary reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face,
+though a good deal worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and
+of a purply bronze hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with
+the beverages of many peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous
+corners, were shaded by a small black mustache, and his twinkling
+bistre-colored eyes, beneath mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air
+of a jester and a good fellow. In manner he was familiar, with a kind of
+deference, too, and reserve, "like a dog that is always wagging his
+tail and deprecating a kick," thought Barton grimly, as he watched the
+other's genial advance.
+
+"He's going to say good-night, bless him," thought Maitland gratefully.
+"Now the others will be moving too, I hope!"
+
+So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley approached him. To stand
+up would show, he thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to detain
+the parting guest.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Maitland," said the senior, holding out his hand.
+
+"It is still early," said the host, doing his best to play his part.
+"Must you really go?"
+
+"Yes; the night's young" (it was about half-past twelve), "but I have a
+kind of engagement to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of your
+young friends here are anxious to come with me, and see how we keep it
+up round there. Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us." Here he
+bowed slightly in the direction of Barton.
+
+"There will be a little _bac_ going on," he continued--"_un petit bac
+de sant�_; and these boys tell me they have never played anything more
+elevating than loo."
+
+"I'm afraid I am no good at a round game," answered Maitland, who had
+played at his Aunt's at Christmas, and who now observed with delight
+that everyone was moving; "but here is Barton, who will be happy to
+accompany you, I daresay."
+
+"If you're for a frolic, boys," said Barton, quoting Dr. Johnson, and
+looking rather at the younger men than at Cranley, "why, I will not balk
+you. Good-night, Maitland."
+
+And he shook hands with his host.
+
+"Good-nights" were uttered in every direction; sticks, hats, and
+umbrellas were hunted up; and while Maitland, half-asleep, was being
+whirled to his rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests made the
+frozen pavement of Piccadilly ring beneath their elegant heels.
+
+"It is only round the corner," said Cranley to the four or five men
+who accompanied him. "The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a
+fashionable slum off St. James's. We're just there."
+
+There was nothing either meretricious or sinister in the aspect of that
+favored resort, the Cockpit, as the Decade Club was familiarly called
+by its friends--and enemies. Two young Merton men and the freshman from
+New, who were enjoying their Christmas vacation in town, and had been
+dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed in the appearance of
+the place. They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a
+lane, and to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket,
+into a narrow staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light,
+full of blazing wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small
+mysterious man would point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages
+leading on to the roof or into the next house, in case of a raid by the
+police. Such was the old idea of a "Hell;" but the advance of Thought
+has altered all these early notions. The Decade Club was like any other
+small club. A current of warm air, charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed
+forth into the frosty night when the swinging door was opened; a sleepy
+porter looked out of his little nest, and Cranley wrote the names of the
+companions he introduced in a book which was kept for that purpose.
+
+"Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night," he said, genially.
+"It's a livelier place, in the small hours, than that classical Olympic
+we've just left."
+
+They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or two rooms, lit up but
+empty, except for two or three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable
+attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of the first floor, all the
+drawing-room of the house before it became a club, had been turned into
+a card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and a heavy odor of
+tobacco and alcohol poured out when the door was opened. A long green
+baize-covered table, of very light wood, ran down the centre of the
+room, while refreshments stood on smaller tables, and a servant out of
+livery sat, half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest corner.
+There were several empty chairs round the green baize-covered table, at
+which some twenty men were sitting, with money before them; while one,
+in the middle, dealt out the cards on a broad flap of smooth black
+leather let into the baize. Every now and then he threw the cards he had
+been dealing into a kind of well in the table, and after every deal he
+raked up his winnings with a rake, or distributed gold and counters
+to the winners, as mechanically as if he had been a croupier at Monte
+Carlo. The players, who were all in evening dress, had scarcely looked
+up when the strangers entered the room.
+
+"Brought some recruits, Cranley?" asked the Banker, adding, as he looked
+at his hand, "_J'en donne!_" and becoming absorbed in his game again.
+
+"The game you do not understand?" said Cranley to one of his recruits.
+
+"Not quite," said the lad, shaking his head.
+
+"All right; I will soon show you all about it; and I wouldn't play, if
+I were you, till you _know_ all about it. Perhaps, after you know _all_
+about it, you'll think it wiser not to play at all At least, you might
+well think so abroad, where very fishy things are often done. Here it's
+all right, of course."
+
+"Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, then--I mean, when people are
+inclined to cheat?"
+
+"Cheat! Oh, rather! There are about a dozen ways of cheating at
+baccarat."
+
+The other young men from Maitland's party gathered round their mentor,
+who continued his instructions in a low voice, and from a distance whence
+the play could be watched, while the players were not likely to be
+disturbed by the conversation.
+
+"Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at Nice or in Paris,"
+Cranley went on; "but to show you how it is done, in case you ever do
+play in foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see the men first
+put down their stakes within the thin white line on the edge of the
+tabla Then the Banker deals two cards to one of the men on his left, and
+all the fellows on that side stand by _his_ luck. Then he deals two to
+a chappie on his right, and all the punters on the right, back that
+sportsman. And he deals two cards to himself. The game is to get as
+near nine as possible, ten, and court cards, not counting at all. If the
+Banker has eight or nine, he does not offer cards; if he has less, he
+gives the two players, if they ask for them, one card each, and takes
+one himself if he chooses. If they hold six, seven, or eight, they
+stand; if less, they take a card. Sometimes one stands at five; it
+depends. Then the Banker wins if he is nearer nine than the players, and
+they win if _they_ are better than he; and that's the whole affair."
+
+"I don't see where the cheating can come in," said one of the young
+fellows.
+
+"Dozens of ways, as I told you. A man may have an understanding with
+the waiter, and play with arranged packs; but the waiter is always the
+dangerous element in _that_ little combination. He's sure to peach or
+blackmail his accomplice. Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at
+Ostend, one fellow, a big German; he wore spectacles, like all Germans,
+and he seldom gave the players anything better than three court cards
+when he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to
+go for his cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat
+pocket. He laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried
+them on. As soon as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out,
+'Here's a swindle! _Nous sommes vol�s!_' He could see, by the help of
+the spectacles, that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the
+spectacles were regular patent double million magnifiers."
+
+"And what became of the owner of the glasses?"
+
+"Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man wearing them, and didn't
+wait to say good-night. He just _went!_"
+
+Here Cranley chuckled.
+
+"I remember another time, at Nice: I always laugh when I think of it!
+There was a little Frenchman who played nearly every night. He would
+take the bank for three or four turns, and he almost always won. Well,
+one night he had been at the theatre, and he left before the end of
+the piece and looked in at the Cercle. He took the Bank: lost once, won
+twice; then he offered cards. The man who was playing nodded, to show he
+would take one, and the Frenchman laid down an eight of clubs, a greasy,
+dirty old rag, with _th��tre fran�ais de nice_ stamped on it in big
+letters. It was his ticket of readmission at the theatre that they
+gave him when he went out, and it had got mixed up with a nice little
+arrangement in cards he had managed to smuggle into the club pack. I'll
+never forget his face and the other man's when _Th��tre Fran�ais_ turned
+up. However, you understand the game now, and if you want to play, we
+had better give fine gold to the waiter in exchange for bone counters,
+and get to work."
+
+Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to the corner where the
+white, dissipated-looking waiter of the card-room sat, and provided
+themselves with black and red _jetons_ (bone counters) of various
+values, to be redeemed at the end of the game.
+
+When they returned to the table the banker was just leaving his post.
+
+"I'm cleaned out," said he, "_d�cav�_. Good-night," and he walked away.
+
+No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The punters had been winning all
+night, and did not like to desert their luck.
+
+"Oh, this will never do," cried Cranley. "If no one else will open a
+bank, I'll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it
+is done!"
+
+Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver
+cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
+
+Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again
+Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered
+in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the
+direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were
+winning, thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly
+and amusing.
+
+"I must have one shy," said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto
+stood with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth
+with a diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds
+and won; he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time,
+and then said, "May I draw a cheque?"
+
+"Of course you may," Cranley answered. "The waiter will give you _tout
+ce qu'il faut pour �crire_, as the stage directions say; but I don't
+advise you to plunge. You've lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil
+favors beginners, so you can't come to grief."
+
+The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks
+had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some
+paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles
+of the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he
+returned with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The
+luck turned again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice
+consecutively he lost.
+
+"Excuse me," said Barton suddenly to Cranley, "may I help myself to one
+of your cigarettes?"
+
+He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the
+silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
+
+"Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when
+you have done with it."
+
+He dealt again, and lost.
+
+"What a nice case!" said Barton, examining it closely. "There is an
+Arabic word engraved on it."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Cranley, rather impatiently, holding out his hand for
+the thing, and pausing before he dealt. "The case was given me by the
+late Kh�dive, dear old Ismail, bless him! The word is a talisman."
+
+"I thought so. The case seemed to bring you luck," said Barton.
+
+Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at him, as rapid and timid as
+the glance of a hare in its form.
+
+"Come, give me it back, please," he said.
+
+"Now, just oblige me: let me try what there is in luck. Go on playing
+while I rub up my Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the
+case. Is it the word of Power of Solomon?"
+
+Cranley glanced back again. "All right," he said, "as you are so
+curious---j'en donne!"
+
+He offered cards, and lost. Martin's face brightened up. His paper
+currency was coming back to him.
+
+"It's a shame," grumbled Cranley, "to rob a fellow of his fetich.
+Waiter, a small brandy-and-soda! Confound your awkwardness! Why do you
+spill it over the cards?"
+
+By Cranley's own awkwardness, more than the waiter's, a little splash of
+the liquid had fallen in front of him, on the black leather part of the
+table where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck altered again.
+The rake was stretched out over both halves of the long table; the gold
+and notes and counters, with a fluttering assortment of Martin's I O
+U's, were all dragged in. Martin went to the den of the money-changer
+sullenly, and came back with fresh supplies.
+
+"Banco?" he cried, meaning that he challenged Cranley for all the money
+in the bank. There must have been some seven hundred pounds.
+
+"All right," said Cranley, taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt
+two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and
+cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught him by
+the wrists.
+
+Cranley made one weak automatic movement to extricate himself; then he
+sat perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was
+white beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue.
+
+"Damn you!" he snarled. "What trick are you after now?"
+
+"Are you drunk, Barton?" cried some one.
+
+"Leave him alone!" shouted some of the players, rising from their seats;
+while others, pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder without
+seeing any excuse for his behavior.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Barton, in a steady voice, "I leave my conduct in the
+hands of the club. If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has been
+cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and at his. Let anyone who
+doubts what I say look here."
+
+"Well, I'm looking here, and I don't see what you are making such a fuss
+about," said Martin, from the group behind, peering over at the table
+and the cards.
+
+"Will you kindly---- No, it is no use." The last remark was addressed to
+the captive, who had tried to release his hands. "Will you kindly take
+up some of the cards and deal them slowly, to right and left, over that
+little puddle of spilt soda water on the leather? Get as near the table
+as you can."
+
+There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
+
+"By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!" cried Martin.
+
+"Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you
+could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to
+take a card or stand."
+
+"I didn't," said the wretched Cranley. "How on earth was I to know that
+the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you
+a chance against me?"
+
+"You spilt the liquor yourself," Barton answered coolly, "when I took
+away your cigarette-case. I saw you passing the cards over the surface
+of it, which anyone can see for himself is a perfect mirror. I tried
+to warn you--for I did not want a row--when I said the case 'seemed
+to bring you luck.' But you would not be warned; and when the
+cigarette-case trick was played out, you fell back on the old dodge with
+the drop of water. Will anyone else convince himself that I am right
+before I let Mr. Cranley go?"
+
+One or two men passed the cards, as they had seen the Banker do, over
+the spilt soda water.
+
+"It's a clear case," they said. "Leave him alone."
+
+Barton slackened his grip of Cranley's hands, and for some seconds they
+lay as if paralyzed on the table before him, white and cold, with livid
+circles round the wrists. The man's face was deadly pale, and wet
+with perspiration. He put out a trembling hand to the glass of
+brandy-and-water that stood beside him; the class rattled against his
+teeth as he drained all the contents at a gulp.
+
+"You shall hear from me," he grumbled, and, with an inarticulate
+muttering of threats he made his way, stumbling and catching at chairs,
+to the door. When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, like
+a drunken man, and then shambled across the landing into a reading-room.
+It was empty, and Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay
+crumpled up, rather than sat, for perhaps ten minutes, holding his hand
+against his heart.
+
+"They talk about having the courage of one's opinions. Confound it! Why
+haven't I the nerve for my character? Hang this heart of mine! Will it
+never stop thumping?"
+
+He sat up and looked about him, then rose and walked toward the table;
+but his head began to swim, and his eyes to darken; so he fell back
+again in his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. Mechanically he began
+to move the hand that hung over the arm of his low chair, and it
+encountered a newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He lifted it
+automatically and without thought: it was the _Times_. Perhaps to try
+his eyes, and see if they served him again after his collapse, he ran
+them down the columns of the advertisements.
+
+Suddenly something caught his attention; his whole lax figure grew
+braced again as he read a passage steadily through more than twice or
+thrice. When he had quite mastered this, he threw down the paper and
+gave a low whistle.
+
+"So the old boy's dead," he reflected; "and that drunken tattooed ass
+and his daughter are to come in for the money and the mines! They'll be
+clever that find him, and I shan't give them his address! What luck some
+men have!"
+
+Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and lips working eagerly.
+
+"I'll do it," he said at last, cutting the advertisement out of the
+paper with a penknife. "It isn't often a man has a chance to _star_ in
+this game of existence. I've lost all my own social Lives: one in
+that business at Oxford, one in the row at Ali Musjid, and the third
+went--to-night. But I'll _star_. Every sinner should desire a new Life,"
+he added with a sneer.*
+
+     * "Starring" is paying for a new "Life" at Pool.
+
+He rose, steady enough now, walked to the door, paused and listened,
+heard the excited voices in the card-room still discussing him, slunk
+down-stairs, took his hat and greatcoat, and swaggered past the porter.
+Mechanically he felt in his pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his
+cigarette-case; and he paused at the little fount of fire at the door.
+
+He was thinking that he would never light a cigarette there again.
+
+Presently he remembered, and swore. He had left his case on the table
+of the card-room, where Barton had laid it down, and he had not the
+impudence to send back for it.
+
+"_Vile damnum!_" he muttered (for he had enjoyed a classical education),
+and so disappeared in the frosty night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--In the Snow.
+
+The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
+after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
+falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
+earth--steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the streets,
+and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
+coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
+night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
+flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
+gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
+surface of the city. Drifts and "snow-wreathes," as northern folk say,
+were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they
+lie when sheep are "smoored" on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in
+the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her
+cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off
+a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The
+pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and
+molten ice. Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars
+the foot-passengers slipped, "ricked" their backs, and swore as they
+stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who
+were in haste, and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in
+hansoms with two horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively
+white on the surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight
+shining black marks where wheels had cut their way.
+
+At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by
+the waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or
+coffee color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads
+straight to the stream, and here, in the afternoon--for a late start was
+made--the carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had
+choked up the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been
+unladen into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary
+modes of clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that
+recommended itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening
+the fog had lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so
+thick that the bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like
+the arches of that fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts
+of the vessels moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only
+a red lamp or two shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the
+public-house at the corner--the _Hit or Miss_--streamed a fan-shaped
+flood of light, soon choked by the fog.
+
+Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to
+the river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was
+faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came
+into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there
+upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the
+men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling
+on the side of the horses.
+
+One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
+backboard of the cart in its place.
+
+"Blarmme, Bill," he grumbled, "if the blessed pins ain't froze."
+
+Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
+smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
+
+The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
+the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the
+pin.
+
+"It won't budge," he cried at last. "Just run into the _Hit or Miss_ at
+the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o' hot
+beer when ye're at it. Here's fourpence. I was with three that found a
+quid in the _Mac_,* end of last week; here's the last of it."
+
+     * A quid in the _Mac_--a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
+     called _Mac_ from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
+     building eligible freehold tenements.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
+scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the "nimble fourpence"
+have the monopoly of agility?
+
+"I'm Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don't yer know," said Bill, with regretful
+sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
+badge of avowed and total abstinence.
+
+"Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I'll bring the bloomin'
+hammer myself."
+
+Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
+protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
+warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
+public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which
+he then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his
+body under his armpit.
+
+"A little hot beer would do yer bloomin' temper a deal more good than
+ten yards o' blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin's more in _my_ line,"
+observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment.
+Aid with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their
+sockets, and let down the backboard of the cart.
+
+Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the
+cart was tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow
+shore-water, partly on to the edge of the slope.
+
+"Ullo!" cried Tommy suddenly. "E're's an old coat-sleeve a sticking out
+o' the snow."
+
+"'Alves!" exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
+
+"'Alves! of course, 'alves. Ain't we on the same lay," replied the
+chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, "Lord preserve us, mate; _there's a
+cove in the coat!_"
+
+He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
+stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
+at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin
+was the arm he grasped within it.
+
+"Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!"
+
+"Is he dead?" asked Bill, leaving the horses' heads.
+
+"Dead! he's bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
+did he get into the cart? Guess we didn't shovel him in, eh; we'd have
+seen him?"
+
+By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow
+heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers,
+and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping
+ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in
+heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once
+been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of
+iron-gray hair, and a grizzled beard hung over the breast.
+
+The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched
+woman in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and
+shivered beside the body for a moment.
+
+"He's a goner," was her criticism. "I wish _I_ was."
+
+With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking
+on her unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from
+nowhere, and were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior
+of the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark,
+or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and
+souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were
+helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned.
+
+"Run and fetch a peeler, Bill," said Tommy at last.
+
+"Peeler be hanged! Bloomin' likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
+yourself."
+
+"Sulky devil you are," answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder
+mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of
+Temperance. It is true that he had only been "Blue Ribbon" since the end
+of his Christmas bout--that is, for nearly a fortnight--and Virtue, a
+precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
+
+Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night
+The crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might
+truly be said that "the more part knew not wherefore they had come
+together." The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure,
+otherwise the ring would have been swaying this way and that. Neither
+was it a dispute between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of
+angry repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a
+lost child. So the outer circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited,
+and patiently endured till the moment of revelation should arrive.
+Respectable people who passed only glanced at the gathering; respectable
+people may wonder, but they never do find out the mystery within a
+London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the mob were some amateurs who
+had just been drinking in the _Hit or Miss_. They were noisy, curious,
+and impatient.
+
+At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning,
+had brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead
+man was found in the cart-load of snow.
+
+Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the
+officers stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where
+the dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
+
+"Lord, it's old Dicky Shields!" cried a voice in the crowd, as the
+peaked still features were lighted up.
+
+The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived,
+after the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed
+into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the _Hit
+or Miss_.
+
+"You know him, do you?" asked the policeman with the lantern.
+
+"Know him, rather! Didn't I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
+this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at
+tattooing, bless you: he'd tattooed himself all over!"
+
+The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
+the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
+
+"Why, he was in the _Hit or Miss_," the speaker went on, "no later nor
+last night."
+
+"Wot beats me," said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
+corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, "Wot beats me
+is how he got in this here cart of ours."
+
+"He's light enough surely," added Tommy; "but I warrant _we_ didn't
+chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square."
+
+"Where do you put up at night?" asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
+had been ruminating on the mystery.
+
+"In the yard there, behind that there hoarding," answered Tommy,
+pointing to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the
+public-house.
+
+At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters
+of damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste
+ground. The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled
+down, probably as condemned "slums," in some moment of reform, when
+people had nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
+
+There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all
+the latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when
+something else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain
+sheds, with roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of
+lumber-room for the parish.
+
+At this time the scavengers' carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
+the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
+horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
+
+"Was this cart o' yours under the sheds all night or in the open?" asked
+the policeman, with an air of penetration.
+
+"Just outside the shed, worn't it, Bill?" replied Tommy.
+
+Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
+
+"If the cart was outside," said the policeman, "then the thing's
+plain enough. You started from there, didn't you, with the cart in the
+afternoon?"
+
+"Ay," answered Tommy.
+
+"And there was a little sprinkle o' snow in the cart?"
+
+"May be there wos. I don't remember one way or the other."
+
+"Then you _must_ be a stupid if you don't see that this here cove,"
+pointing to the dead man, "got drinking too much last night, lost
+hisself, and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the
+cart."
+
+"Snow do make a fellow bloomin' sleepy," one of the crowd assented.
+
+"Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
+when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He's light
+enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you
+started?"
+
+"One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,"
+grunted Tommy.
+
+"Well, then, it's as plain as--as the nose on your face," said the
+policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. "That's how it was."
+
+"Bravo, Bobby!" cried one of the crowd. "They should make you an
+inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves."
+
+The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
+shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
+and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
+which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead
+man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
+northward to the hospital.
+
+A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
+and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their
+eyes within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so,
+and at last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
+
+By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
+them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
+Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
+tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
+intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the
+heroes of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew
+all Tommy and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of
+emotional agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and
+making over and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these
+performances was sure to be particularly keen within the very walls
+where the dead man had probably taken his last convivial glass, and
+where some light was certain to be thrown, by the landlady or her
+customers, on the habits and history of poor Dicky Shields.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--An Academic Pothouse.
+
+The _Hit or Miss_ tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least)
+who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by
+the river's brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the
+picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the
+architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a
+romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have
+seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The _Hit
+or Miss_ was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its fortunes.
+Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a person
+as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien's, in the University of
+Oxford.
+
+It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this
+arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with
+"mine host" of the _Hit or Miss_, and found him to be by no means the
+rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland
+should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the _Hit or Miss_, was
+only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals,
+restorations, experiments--an age of dukes who are Socialists--an age
+which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end
+tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway--need not wonder at
+Maitland's eccentric choice in philanthropy.
+
+Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy
+at a public school, where he was known as a "sap," or assiduous student,
+and was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and
+rowing. At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less
+unpopular. His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien's,
+where his services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a
+great desire to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity,
+and to improve humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life
+and duty had been urged on him by his college "coach," philosopher, and
+friend, Mr. Joseph Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had
+made Maitland leave his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St.
+Gatien's and betake himself to practical philanthropy.
+
+"You tell me you don't see much in life," Bielby had said. "Throw
+yourself into the life of others, who have not much to live on."
+
+Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He
+once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had
+his own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the
+citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from
+the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John's, Baliol, and Wadham
+Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of
+having three "devils," or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters
+of the town between five and six o'clock every morning, that the
+artisans might be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
+
+As Maitland's schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby
+urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in
+town. He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a
+Palace of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing
+this ingenious idea in the columns of the _Daily Trumpet_, Maitland
+looked out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy
+notion of taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was
+acted upon at the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own
+bar-room he could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least
+sophisticated aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and
+adulterated stuff He would raise the tone of his customers, while he
+would insensibly gain some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake
+off the prig (which he knew to be a strong element in his nature), and
+would, at the same time, encourage temperance by providing good malt
+liquor.
+
+The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire
+a tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when
+�stheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while
+philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in,
+like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the
+old leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of
+"impressions" and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling
+against this "side," as he called it, of his "culture," and in his hours
+of reaction he was all for steam tramways, "devils," and Kindergartens
+standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old
+innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of
+those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease
+of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his
+opportunity. The _Hit or Miss_ was as attractive to an artistic as most
+public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the
+bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled
+old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near
+the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that
+way: the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished,
+till at last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces,
+and a dust-yard round it.
+
+The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so
+high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the
+attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls
+were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering
+projecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by huge
+wooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by a
+low-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. At
+one corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:
+
+     "Jack's Bridge House.
+     "_Hit or Miss_--Luck's All."
+
+But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way,
+over which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the
+plaster) lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building.
+From this door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house
+kept for its intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled
+roofs and dormer windows than that which faced the street. The passage
+led down to a slum, and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty
+space and the dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left
+beneath the sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
+
+Within, the _Hit or Miss_ looked cosey enough to persons entering out of
+the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide
+old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle.
+On these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place
+themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within
+a room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber
+by itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained
+admittance to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear,
+now and then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere
+presence, and without in the least intending it, an Early Closing
+Movement.
+
+But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed
+landlady, or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the
+finding of poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been.
+Again and again the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more
+began to take the place of assertion.
+
+"I wonder," asked one of the men, "how old Dicky got the money for a
+boose?"
+
+"The money, ay, and the chance," said another. "That daughter of his--a
+nice-looking girl she is--kept poor Dicky pretty tight."
+
+"Didn't let him get--" the epigrammatist of the company was just
+beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter
+burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
+
+"Didn't let him _get_ tight, you was a-goin' to say, Tommy," howled
+three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping
+of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like
+crackers.
+
+"Dicky 'ad been 'avin' bad times for long," the first speaker went on.
+"I guess he 'ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for
+tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful
+forever about here."
+
+"Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or
+else he was clean sold out, and hadn't no capital to renew his stock of
+hairy cats and young parrots."
+
+"The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky's shop, had got to
+look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the
+middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that 'ere
+shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer
+and t'other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o'
+a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does."
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the
+conversation, "why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A
+most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to
+meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used
+to do him a turn of his trade--tattooing him, like. 'I'm doing him to
+pattern, mum,' Dicky sez, sez he: 'a _facsimile_ o' myself, mum.' It
+wasn't much they drank neither--just a couple of pints; for sez the
+sailor gentleman, he sez, 'I'm afeared, mum, our friend here can't carry
+much even of _your_ capital stuff. We must excuse' sez he, 'the failings
+of an artis'; but I doesn't want his hand to shake or slip when he's a
+doin' _me_,' sez he. 'Might > spile the pattern,' he sez, 'also hurt'
+And I wouldn't have served old Dicky with more than was good for him,
+myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn't I promised that poor daughter
+of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school--years ago now--I
+promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of--A hangel,
+if here isn't Mr. Maitland his very self!"
+
+And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord,
+the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by
+one--some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced
+awkwardness--they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland's
+appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his
+tenant.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Gullick," said poor Maitland, ruefully, "I came here for
+a chat with our friends--a little social relaxation--on economic
+questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away."
+
+"Oh, sir, they're a rough lot, and don't think themselves company for
+the likes of you. But," said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly--with the delight of
+the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale--"you 've heard this hawful
+story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood--"
+
+What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about
+to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland,
+growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
+
+"What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!"
+
+"Nothing to _herself_, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir."
+
+Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
+
+"Well, what about her father?"
+
+"Gone, sir--gone! In a cartload o' snow, this very evening, he was
+found, just outside o* this very door."
+
+"In a cartload of snow!" cried Maitland. "Do you mean that he went away
+in it, or that he was found in it dead?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this
+very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir,
+I do assure you. He had been steady--oh, steady for weeks."
+
+Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to
+a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some
+relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had
+known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as
+a hopeless _mauvais sujet_. But Dicky's daughter, Margaret, had been a
+daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer
+transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was
+having her educated there, and after she was educated--why, then,
+Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the
+way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle;
+not that he objected--on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his
+views in writing. There were times--there had lately, above all, been
+times--when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in
+this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and
+pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an
+obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man's way;
+he was nobody's enemy now, not even his own.
+
+The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a
+sensation rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland's
+consciousness.
+
+"Tell me everything you know of this wretched business," he said, rising
+and closing the door which led into the outer room.
+
+"Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know
+that Dicky had found a friend lately--an old shipmate, or petty-officer,
+he called him--a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a
+merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at
+sea, and he'd bring him here 'to yarn with him,' he said, once or twice
+it might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old
+Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an
+honest penny by his trade--a queer trade it was. Never more than a
+pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most
+considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought
+him in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor
+comes in, rubbing his eyes, and 'Good-night, mum,' sez he. 'My friend's
+been gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I've been asleep by
+myself. If you please, I'll just settle our little score. It's the last
+for a long time, for I'm bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward.
+Oh, mum, a sailor's life!' So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a
+gentleman, and out he goes, and that's the last I ever see o' poor Dicky
+Shields till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart,
+cold and stiff, sir."
+
+"And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get _into_
+the cart?"
+
+"Well, that's just what they've been wondering at, though the cart
+was handy and uncommon convenient for a man as 'ad too much, if 'ad he
+'_ad_; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would
+not intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and
+never wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what's _that_?" screamed Mrs. Gullick,
+leaping to her feet in terror.
+
+The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst
+open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a
+cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick's bosom.
+
+"Well, if ever I '_ad_ a fright!" that worthy lady exclaimed, turning
+toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little
+animal in an affectionate clasp. "Well, if _ever_ there was such a child
+as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you _now_?"
+
+"Oh, mother," cried the bear, "I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the
+roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was 'arf awake, I was that horful
+frightened."
+
+"Well, you just go up-stairs again--and here's a sweet-cake
+for you--and you take this night-light," said Mrs. Gullick, producing
+the articles she mentioned, "and put it in the basin careful, and
+knock on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it wasn't for that
+bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind enough to let you keep, you'd get your
+death o' cold, you would, running about in the night. And look 'ere,
+Lizer," she added, patting the child affectionately on the shoulder, "do
+get that there Bird out o' your head. It's just nothing but indigestion
+comes o' you and the other children--himps they may well call you,
+and himps I'm sure you are--always wasting your screws on pasty and
+lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just-nothing but indigestion."
+
+Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace,
+about Mrs. Gullick's neck; and then, without lavishing attention on
+Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
+
+"I'm sure, sir, I ask your pardon," exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; "but
+Lizer's far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or
+else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has
+been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps."
+
+"But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?"
+
+"She's such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man,
+and all of them at the _Hilarity_, you can't _think_, sir," said Mrs.
+Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland's general capacity
+for abstract speculation. "A regular little genius that child is, though
+I says it as shouldn't. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father,
+sir." And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
+
+Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but,
+like too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial
+enjoyment. Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had
+appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after
+his property when he became landlord of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+"What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more
+than four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a
+little late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with
+the jug, he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing
+didn't drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would 'a
+died laughing, and him so thirsty, too."
+
+"Take the knap?" said Maitland, who imagined that "the knap" must be
+some malady incident to childhood.
+
+"Oh, sir, it's when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know,
+and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise
+of a box on the ear: that's what we call 'taking the knap' in the
+profession. And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all--Lizer
+was that clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp
+at the _Hilarity_ pantermime; and they're that good to her, they let her
+bring her bearskin home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the
+Little Bear in 'The Three Bears,' don't you know, sir."
+
+Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle
+Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned
+paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude
+of Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on
+the traditional narrative.
+
+"But what was the child saying about a big Bird?" he asked. "What was it
+that frightened her?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something
+hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things
+in pantermimes might put notions in a child's head. But when she came
+home last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and
+swore she had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim
+over the street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she
+flies, screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to
+get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre
+pantermime bearskin, that fits her like another skin--and she'll be too
+big for it next year--just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That's
+all about it, sir. She'll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer."
+
+"I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick," said Maitland; "and, as I am
+passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl.
+Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields,
+you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about
+her father's death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it
+happened."
+
+"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; "and being safe away at
+school, sir, we'll hope she won't be told no more than she needn't know
+about it."
+
+Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was
+filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
+
+He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the
+raw darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed
+at no great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen
+comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood
+reading his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and
+there to save threepence,
+
+     "From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     "The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     "Tiverton.
+     "I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do
+     not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.
+     Break news."
+
+This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to
+construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous
+badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the
+paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there
+was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was
+buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the despatch was
+stamped and delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--Miss Marlett's.
+
+Girls' schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you
+chance to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold.
+Their noses (however charming these features may become in a year
+or two, or even may be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty
+temperature in the long dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of
+the fair pupils are apt to seem larger than common, inclined to blue
+in color, and, generally, are suggestive of inadequate circulation.
+� tendency to get as near the fire as possible (to come within the
+frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden), and to cower beneath shawls,
+is also characteristic of joyous girlhood--school-girlhood, that is. In
+fact, one thinks of a girls' school as too frequently a spot where no
+one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal procession is
+not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there is apt to be
+a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient clothing, and
+general unsatisfied tedium.
+
+Miss Marlett's Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more
+briefly known as "The Dovecot, Conisbeare," was no exception, on a
+particularly cold February day--the day after Dicky Shields was found
+dead--to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a
+girls' school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where "the fires
+wass coot," as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its
+lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little
+distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch
+pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett's were not good on this February
+morning. They never _were_ good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one
+of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for
+persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know
+what they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which,
+consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only
+revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of
+stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal
+had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads
+were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to
+be urged along the heavy ways.
+
+This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but
+it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were
+just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the
+pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
+
+"Oh dear," said one maiden--Janey Harman by name--whose blonde
+complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien
+and unbecoming hues, "_why_ won't that old Cat let us have fires to
+dress by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!"
+
+"Yes; and I cant get them clean," said Margaret, holding up two very
+pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
+
+     "Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,
+     Are not my _hands_ washed white?"
+
+"No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies," came a voice, accompanied by
+an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a
+fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
+
+"I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett," replied the maiden thus
+rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence--
+
+     "'Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,'"
+
+--and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether the
+best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as if
+"that Miss Shields" was laughing at her.
+
+"Old Cat!" the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. "But no wonder
+my hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it's my week to be
+Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut
+off some of the enemy's supplies."
+
+So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of
+coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
+
+"Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are something _like_ a stoker,"
+exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing: "we
+shall have a blaze to-night."
+
+Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett's school, by an unusual and
+inconsistent concession to comfort and saniitary principles, the elder
+girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter.
+But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked,
+inasmuch as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots,
+the girls were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it
+could be found. Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each
+other's fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their pockets. But this
+conduct--resembling what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands,
+that they "eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's
+washing"--led to strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week
+(as the girl appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to
+infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This
+week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore
+herself in her high office as to extort the admiration of the very
+housemaids.
+
+     "Even the ranks of Tusculum
+     Could scarce forbear to cheer,"
+
+if we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields'
+favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was
+mercifully unaware that not to detect the "pinchbeck" in the _Lays_ is
+the sign of a grovelling nature.
+
+Before she was sent to Miss Marlett's, four years ere this date,
+Margaret Shields' instruction had been limited. "The best thing that
+could be said for it," as the old sporting prophet remarked of his
+own education, "was that it had been mainly eleemosynary." The Chelsea
+School Board fees could but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields.
+But Robert Maitland, when still young in philanthropy, had seen the
+clever, merry, brown-eyed child at some school treat, or inspection, or
+other function; had covenanted in some sort with her shiftless parent;
+had rescued the child from the streets, and sent her as a pupil to
+Miss Marlett's. Like Mr. Day, the accomplished author of "Sandford and
+Merton," and creator of the immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had
+conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own
+intellectual standard, and made, or "ready-made," a helpmate meet for
+him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret
+Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know
+human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
+
+Maitland could "please himself," as people say; that is, in his choice
+of a partner he had no relations to please--no one but the elect young
+lady, who, after all, might not be "pleased" with alacrity.
+
+Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields
+was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates
+("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four
+hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and
+comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's
+shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle.
+This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with
+a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight
+knot, and with � smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful
+to her lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a
+heroine, "were rather too large for regular beauty." She was perfectly
+ready to face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her
+mistress) when the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o'clock exactly,
+and the drowsy girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the
+wintry class-rooms.
+
+Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat
+which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does
+anyone remember--can anyone forget--how horribly distasteful a slate
+can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold educational
+formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy
+slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for
+some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. "Tare an' 'ouns, _I_ call
+it," whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a "course"
+of Lever's Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory
+progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging
+herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso's engaging work which is
+most palpitating with actuality:
+
+"If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink
+twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire
+laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles
+in length, and four feet six in height?"
+
+This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret's mathematical
+endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest
+girls can be) she was playing at "oughts and crosses" with Janey Harman
+when the arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly,
+beside Miss Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and
+set himself vigorously to elucidate (by "the low cunning of algebra")
+the difficult sum from Colenso.
+
+"You see, it is like _this_," he said, mumbling rapidly, and scribbling
+a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to follow
+with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite dazed
+Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his topic
+so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make allowance
+for the benighted darkness of the learner.
+
+"Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it's quite
+simple," said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
+
+"Oh, thank you; I _see_," said Margaret, with the kind readiness of
+woman, who would profess to "see" the Secret of Hegel, or the
+inmost heart of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of
+cover-point, or the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon,
+rather than be troubled with prolonged explanations, which the
+expositor, after all, might find it inconvenient to give.
+
+Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar's _forte_; and no young
+lady in Miss Marlett's establishment was so hungry, or so glad when
+eight o'clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret
+Shields.
+
+Breakfast at Miss Marlett's was not a convivial meal. There was a
+long narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, or
+_dais_, being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals
+down the table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter--of extremely
+thick bread and surprisingly thin butter--each slice being divided into
+four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether
+this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at
+seven, till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps,
+the inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with
+confidence. But, if girls do not always learn as much at school as could
+be desired, intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every
+chance of acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if
+familiarity really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that
+Miss Marlett's establishment was a _Dothegirls Hall_, nor a school much
+more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has
+still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than,
+persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places;
+but boys have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their
+breakfasts, which would be considered horribly indelicate and
+insubordinate conduct in girls.
+
+"Est ce que vous aimez les tartines � l'Anglaise," said Janey Harman to
+Margaret.
+
+"Ce que j'aime dans la tartine, c'est la simplicit� prime-sauti�re da sa
+nature," answered Miss Shields.
+
+It was one of the charms of the "matinal meal" (as the author of "Guy
+Livingstone" calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled
+to talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
+
+"Toutes choses, la cuisine except�e, sont Fran�aises, dans cet
+�tablissement peu recr�atif," went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
+
+"Je d�teste le Fran�ais," Margaret answered, "mais je le pr�f�re
+infiniment � l'Allemand."
+
+"Comment accentuez, vous le mot pr�f�re, Marguerite?" asked Miss
+Marlett, who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of
+conveying instruction.
+
+"Oh, two accents--one this way, and the other that," answered Margaret,
+caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct
+terminology.
+
+"Vous allez perdre dix marks," remarked the schoolmistress, if
+incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy
+to say, off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for
+"marks."
+
+"Voici les lettres qui arrivent," whispered Janey to Margaret, as the
+post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it
+with a key and withdrew the contents.
+
+This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first
+sorted out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and
+unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other
+letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could
+trust, and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were
+regarded with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman,
+whose letters Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before
+delivering them.
+
+"Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire," said poor Janey to her
+friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at
+stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about
+in her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the
+edges. Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the
+briefest and most decorous manner.
+
+"Qui est votre correspondent?" Margaret asked. We are not defending her
+French.
+
+"C'est le pauvre Harry Wyville," answered Janey. "Il est sous-lieutenant
+dans les Berkshires � Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas �crire � moi, il
+est comme on diroit, mon fr�re."
+
+"Est il votre parent?"
+
+"Non, pas du tout, mais je l'ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans!
+Voici, elle � deux d�p�ches t�l�graphiques," Janey added, observing
+two orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the
+letters.
+
+As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant
+Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
+
+"Jeanne je veux vous parler � part, apr�s, dans mon boudoir," remarked
+Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched,
+displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
+
+Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to
+one by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who
+is just like one's brother, is a trial to any girl.
+
+Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which,
+as Janey had noticed, included _two_ telegraphic despatches in
+orange-colored envelopes.
+
+That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the
+admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have
+done so, but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils'
+correspondence before attending to her own. "Business first, pleasure
+afterward," was the motto of this admirable woman.
+
+Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the
+day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
+
+"Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman," said the
+schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so
+unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious--unwonted moods
+for this careless maiden.
+
+"Janey, something must have happened," she whispered to her friend, who
+was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
+
+"Something's _going_ to happen, I'm sure," said poor Janey,
+apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
+
+Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what
+Miss Marlett, when she spoke French, called her "boudoir." The girl felt
+colder than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss
+Marietta door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the
+low white hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls
+was standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins
+and sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two
+blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of
+the ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray
+haze was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and
+the branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black
+holes in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish
+plash.
+
+Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came
+out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
+
+"What is it?" whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before
+her, and her own unformed misgivings.
+
+"She won't give me the letter. I'm to have it when I go home for good;
+and I'm to go home for good at the holidays," whimpered Janey.
+
+"Poor Janey!" said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
+
+"Margaret Shields, come here!" cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice,
+from the boudoir.
+
+"Come to the back music-room when she's done with you," the other
+girl whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss
+Marlett's chamber.
+
+"My dear Margaret!" said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was
+standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting
+grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she
+generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
+
+"My dear Margaret!" she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the
+school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could
+scarcely speak.
+
+"You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father----"
+
+"Was it an accident?" asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well
+what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no
+prophet to foretell. "Was it anything very dreadful?"
+
+"Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor
+Daisy!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!" the girl sobbed. Somehow she
+was kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady's lap. "I have
+been horrid to you. I am so wretched!"
+
+A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret
+Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college,
+with a sad and hungry heart, trying to "carry it off by her wild talk
+and her wit." "It was bitterness they mistook for frolic." She had known
+herself to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with
+the other girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret
+had not gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than
+they knew; she had been in the "best set" among the pupils, by dint of
+her cheery rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and
+knew, too, that she had been living, socially, in that little society at
+the expense of this kind queer old Miss Marlett's feelings.
+
+"I have been horrid to you," she repeated. "I wish I had never been
+born."
+
+The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl's
+beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
+
+"Don't mind me," at last Miss Marlett said. "I never thought hardly of
+you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you
+can have any of the girls you like to help you to pack."
+
+Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which
+of the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that
+it was the other culprit.
+
+Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her
+arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to
+select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though
+she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart
+and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word
+_legibus_ (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third
+declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this
+grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she
+had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had
+led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was
+honored as a goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages.
+But now Miss Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes
+of the past.
+
+Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold
+water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness
+seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again
+and again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this
+chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the
+traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey
+was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
+
+"Come to my room, Janey," she said, beckoning.
+
+Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was
+forbidden to the girls.
+
+"Why, well only get into another scrape," said Janey, ruefully.
+
+"No, come away; I've got leave for you. You're to help me to pack"
+
+"To pack!" cried Janey. "Why, _you're_ not expelled, are you? You've
+done nothing. You've not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy
+who is just like a brother to you and whom you've known for years."
+
+Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
+and intense curiosity.
+
+When they reached their room, where Margaret's portmanteau had already
+been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for
+a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she
+sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair "had
+a good cry," and comforted each other as well as they might.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" asked Janey, when, as Homer says, "they
+had taken their fill of chilling lamentations."
+
+"I don't know!"
+
+"Have you no one else in all the world?"
+
+"No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna.
+Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers,
+and we were at Marseilles, and then in London."
+
+"But you have a guardian, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he's been very kind, and done
+everything for me; but he's quite a young man, not thirty, and he's so
+stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like
+a book. And he's so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because
+he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides--"
+
+But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
+lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien's.
+
+"And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?"
+Janey asked.
+
+"There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
+been an officer in father's ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
+sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all."
+
+"And you don't know any of your father's family?"
+
+"No," said Margaret, wearily. "Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
+prayer-book." And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
+silver clasps. "This was a book my father gave me," she said. "It has a
+name on it--my grandfather's, I suppose--'Richard Johnson, Linkheaton,
+1837.'" Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.
+
+"Your mother's father it may have belonged to," said Janey.
+
+"I don't know," Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
+
+"I hope you won't stay away long, dear," said Janey, affectionately.
+
+"But _you_ are going, too, you know," Margaret answered, without much
+tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break
+down, when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the
+snow-laden drive.
+
+"Why, here's some one coming!" cried Janey, rushing to the window. "Two
+horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for
+you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--Flown.
+
+Maitland's reflections as, in performance of the promise he had
+telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted.
+The newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left
+unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made
+that they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering
+its effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard
+Shields affected Maitland's purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He
+had for some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the
+girl was concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had
+been dimly aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a
+new, rather painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady.
+Maitland, in fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit
+for, and a sign of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had
+greeted, some weeks before, Barton's casual criticism on Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his
+philanthropic entanglement--it was rather, he said to himself, an
+entanglement than an engagement--had become irksome to his fancy.
+Now that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the
+daughter would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations
+in which they stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men
+from seeing this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy
+conceit. A curious "aloofness" of nature permitted him to stand aside,
+and see himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This
+disposition is rare, and not a source of happiness.
+
+On the other hand, his future relations to Margaret formed a puzzle
+inextricable. He could not at all imagine how he was to dispose of so
+embarrassing a _prot�g�e_. Margaret was becoming too much of a woman to
+be left much longer at school; and where was she to be disposed of?
+
+"I might send her to Girton," he thought; and then, characteristically,
+he began to weigh in his mind the comparative educational merits of
+Girton and Somerville Hall. About one thing only was he certain: he must
+consult his college mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien's, as soon as might
+be. Too long had this Rasselas--occupied, like the famous Prince
+of Abyssinia, with _the choice of life_--neglected to resort to his
+academic Imlac. In the meantime he could only reflect that Margaret must
+remain as a pupil at Miss Marlett's. The moment would soon be arriving
+when some other home, and a chaperon instead of a school-mistress, must
+be found for this peculiar object of philanthropy and outdoor relief.
+
+Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the nine o'clock train. The
+early dusk began to gather, gray and damp; the train was late, having
+made tardy progress through the half-melted snow. He had set out from
+Paddington by the half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh and
+crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the most sceptical that Maitland
+could not reach Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in anything
+but a happy temper, he engaged a fly, and drove off, along heavy
+miserable roads, to the Dovecot.
+
+Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment,
+Maitland's cabman "pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked" for a
+considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of
+Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected
+no visitors, though Maitland knew that he ought to be expected. "The
+bandogs bayed and howled," as they did round the secret bower of the
+Lady of Brauksome; and lights flitted about the windows. When a lantern
+at last came flickering up to the gate, the bearer of it stopped to
+challenge an apparently unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" said a female voice, in a strong
+Devonian accent.
+
+"I want Miss Marlett," answered Maitland.
+
+There was some hesitation. Then the porter appeared to reflect that a
+burglar would not arrive in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would
+not ask for the schoolmistress.
+
+The portals were at length unbarred and lugged apart over the gravel,
+and Maitland followed the cook (for she was no one less) and the candle
+up to the front door. He gave his card, and was ushered into the chamber
+reserved for interviews with parents and guardians. The drawing-room had
+the air and faint smell of a room very seldom occupied. All the chairs
+were so elegantly and cunningly constructed that they tilted up at
+intervals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted himself to their
+hospitality. Their backs were decorated with antimacassars wrought with
+glass beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone fitfully with
+a frosty lustre. On the round table in the middle were volumes of "The
+Mothers of England," "The Grandmothers of the Bible," Blair "On the
+Grave," and "The Epic of Hades," the latter copiously and appropriately
+illustrated. In addition to these cheerful volumes there were large
+tomes of lake and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded magenta
+bindings, shrouded from the garish light of day in drab paper covers.
+
+The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung with prize sketches, in
+water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former
+works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a
+mauve hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber
+rocks, touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an
+agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders
+by Somebody's Patent Dome-Blacklead, "increases the attractions of
+the fireside," according to the advertisements. Maitland knew all the
+blacklead caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. They were
+old acquaintances, and as he fidgeted about the room he became very
+impatient.
+
+At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett appeared, rustling in silks,
+very stiff, and with an air of extreme astonishment.
+
+"Mr. Maitland?" she said, in an interrogative tone.
+
+"Didn't you expect me? Didn't you get my telegram?" asked Maitland.
+
+It occurred to him that the storm might have injured the wires, that
+his message might never have arrived, and that he might be obliged to
+explain everything, and break his bad news in person.
+
+"Yes, certainly. I got _both_ your telegrams. But why have you come
+here?"
+
+"Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and consult you about her. But
+what do you mean by _both_ my telegrams?"
+
+Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down with unexpected suddenness.
+
+"Oh, what will become of the poor girl?" she cried, "and what will
+become of _me_? It will get talked about. The parents will hear of it,
+and I am ruined."
+
+The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief over her eyes, to the
+extreme discomfiture of Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman cry;
+and that Miss Marlett should cry--Miss Marlett, the least melting, as he
+had fancied, of her sex--was a circumstance which entirely puzzled and
+greatly disconcerted him.
+
+He remained silent, looking at a flower in the pattern of the carpet,
+for at least a minute.
+
+"I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, about what is to become
+of the poor girl; but I do not see how the parents of the other young
+ladies are concerned. Death is common to all; and Margaret's father,
+though his life was exposed to criticism, cannot be fairly censured
+because he has left it And what do you mean, please, by receiving _both_
+my telegrams? I only #sent _one_, to the effect that I would leave town
+by the 10.30 train, and come straight to you. There must be some mistake
+somewhere. Can I see Miss Shields?"
+
+"See Miss Shields! Why, she's _gone!_ She left this morning with your
+friend," said Miss Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and alarmed,
+and looking straight at her visitor.
+
+"She's _gone!_ She left this morning with my friend!" repeated Maitland.
+He felt like a man in a dream.
+
+"You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself,
+and in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her
+father's friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so
+she went with _him_."
+
+"My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow," cried Maitland;
+"and I sent no second telegram."
+
+"Then who _did_ send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both
+telegrams," cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left
+the room.
+
+While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had
+time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had
+become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her
+from school at the very moment of her father's accidental death? And by
+what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from
+himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one?
+The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched
+telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to
+Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been
+mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might
+have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem,
+might
+
+     "Have wrote it all by rote,
+     And never wrote it right."
+
+But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the
+recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse)
+had gone off with "his friend, Mr. Lithgow." Clearly, no amount of
+accident or mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and
+the disappearance of Margaret.
+
+It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly
+blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature--as he admitted,
+on the evidence of his old college tutor--that he was never able to
+see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his own
+interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command
+the whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for
+people, and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the
+right, and everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more
+full-blooded life, he would probably have lost his temper, and "spoken
+his mind," as the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should
+never have let Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a
+telegram from the girl's guardian.
+
+It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about
+finding the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour.
+At last she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch
+in her hand, but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated
+young lady, in whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have
+recognized Miss Janey Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely
+bowed vaguely.
+
+"This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have seen on other occasions,"
+said Miss Marlett, trying to be calm.
+
+Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than ever. It did occur to him,
+that the fewer people knew of so delicate a business the better for
+Margaret's sake.
+
+"I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Maitland, partly because she is
+Miss Shields' greatest friend" (here Janey sobbed), "but chiefly because
+she can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of what I have told you."
+
+"I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Marlett; but will you kindly let
+me compare the two telegrams? This is a most extraordinary affair,
+and we ought to lose no time in investigating it, and discovering
+its meaning. You and I are responsible, you know, to ourselves, if
+unfortunately to no one else, for Margaret's safety."
+
+"But I haven't got the two telegrams!" exclaimed poor Miss Marlett, who
+could not live up to the stately tone of Maitland. "I haven't got them,
+or rather, I only have one of them, and I have hunted everywhere, high
+and low, for the other."
+
+Then she offered Maitland a single dispatch, and the flimsy pink paper
+fluttered in her shaking hand.
+
+Maitland took it up and read aloud:
+
+     "Sent out at 7.45.    Received 7.51.
+     "From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     "The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     "Tiverton.
+     "I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train.
+     Do not let Margaret see the newspaper.
+     Her father dead. Break news."
+
+"Why, that is my own telegram!" cried Maitland; "but what have you done
+with the other you said you received?"
+
+"That is the very one I cannot find, though I had both on the escritoire
+in my own room this morning. I cannot believe anyone would touch it. I
+did not lock them away, not expecting to have any use for them; but I am
+quite sure, the last time I saw them, they were lying there."
+
+"This is very extraordinary," said Maitland. "You tell me, Miss Marlett,
+that you received two telegrams from me. On the strength of the later
+of the two you let your pupil go away with a person of whom you know
+nothing, and then you have not even the telegram to show me. How long an
+interval was there between the receipt of the two despatches?"
+
+"I got them both at once," said poor, trembling Miss Marlett, who felt
+the weakness of her case. "They were both sent up with the letters this
+morning. Were they not, Miss Harman?"
+
+"Yes," said Janey; "I certainly saw two telegraphic envelopes lying
+among your letters at breakfast. I mentioned it to--to poor Margaret,"
+she added, with a break in her voice.
+
+"But why were the telegrams not delivered last night?" Maitland asked.
+
+"I have left orders," Miss Marlett answered, "that only telegrams of
+instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings,
+and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about
+nothing in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams _were_
+very important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about
+them if they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning.
+I have had a great deal of annoyance and expense," the schoolmistress
+added, "with telegrams that had to be paid for."
+
+And here most people who live at a distance from telegraph offices, and
+are afflicted with careless friends whose touch on the wire is easy and
+light, will perhaps sympathize with Miss Marlett.
+
+"You might at least have telegraphed back to ask me to confirm the
+instructions, when you read the second despatch," said Maitland.
+
+He was beginning to take an argumentative interest in the strength
+of his own case. It was certainly very strong, and the excuse for the
+schoolmistress was weak in proportion.
+
+"But that would have been of no use, as it happens," Janey put in--an
+unexpected and welcome ally to Miss Marlett--"because you must have left
+Paddington long before the question could have reached you."
+
+This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact; and Miss Marlett could not
+repress a grateful glance in the direction of her wayward pupil.
+
+"Well," said Maitland, "it is all very provoking, and very serious. Can
+you remember at all how the second message ran, Miss Marlett?"
+
+"Indeed, I know it off by heart; it was directed exactly like that in
+your hand, and was dated half an hour later. It ran: 'Plans altered.
+Margaret required in town. My friend and her father's, Mr. Lithgow,
+will call for her soon after mid-day. I noticed there were just twenty
+words."
+
+"And did you also notice the office from which the message was sent
+out?"
+
+"No," said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with an effort at
+recollection. "I am afraid I did not notice."
+
+"That is very unfortunate," said Maitland, walking vaguely up and down
+the room. "Do you think the telegram is absolutely lost?"
+
+"I have looked everywhere, and asked all the maids."
+
+"When did you see it last, for certain?"
+
+"I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make
+sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started."
+
+"And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?"
+
+"He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he
+seemed very cold."
+
+"Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which
+he probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know
+anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had--"
+muttered Maitland to himself. "She has never been in any place, Miss
+Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man's
+acquaintance?"
+
+"It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage
+it, Mr. Maitland," said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
+
+"I am _sure_ Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have
+such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken
+me in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy;
+she had been crying. I said, 'Here's a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he
+must have come for you.' Then she looked out and said, 'It is not my
+guardian; it is the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.'"
+
+"What kind of a man was he to look at?"
+
+"He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black
+mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he
+was not a young man. He was a gentleman," said Janey, who flattered
+herself that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that
+grand old name--when she saw them.
+
+"Would you know him again if you met him?"
+
+"Anywhere," said Janey; "and I would know his voice."
+
+"He wore mourning," said Miss Marlett, "and he told me he had known
+Margaret's father. I heard him say a few words to her, in a very kind
+way, about him. That seemed more comfort to Margaret than anything. 'He
+did not suffer at all, my dear,' he said. He spoke to her in that way,
+as an older man might."
+
+"Why, how on earth could _he_ know?" cried Maitland. "No one was present
+when her poor father died. His body was found in a--," and Maitland
+paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for adding to
+the public information about the circumstances of Mr. Shields' decease.
+"He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of the great
+storm."
+
+"I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and
+fatigue is as painless as sleep," said Miss Marlett with some tact.
+
+"I suppose that is what the man must have meant," Maitland answered.
+
+There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered,
+trying to think over any circumstance which might lend a clew in the
+search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
+
+At last he said "Good-night," after making the superfluous remark that
+it would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or
+unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred,
+for excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she
+had taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it;
+and when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea),
+a kind of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the
+schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly)
+that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother
+was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts
+of contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had
+distinguished himself, and if it did end "Yours affectionately,"
+there was nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things
+considered. So the fair owner of the letter received it into her own
+keeping, only she was "never to do it again."
+
+Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret's
+inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient
+sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of
+her own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable
+estimate of her pupil's discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
+
+Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which
+was an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never
+doubted that, on the death of Miss Shields' father, she had been removed
+by one of her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pass the
+night at Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest
+reason for anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend
+and protector, and who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy. Nothing more practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of
+St. Gatien's occurred to his perplexed imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--At St. Gatien's.
+
+The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such
+inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients.
+He was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based
+his conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these
+"authorities." For example, he first went in search of the man who had
+driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the
+Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who
+plied at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he
+had driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady
+was ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took
+the up-train. That was all _he_ knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were
+asked, was "a scaly varmint." On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide
+moral generalization was based on the limited _pour-boire_ which Mr.
+Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
+Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took
+away with him on his return to town--not in the van, in the railway
+carriage. "What could he want with all that luggage?" Maitland wondered.
+
+The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which
+conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official
+had seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went
+on to London.
+
+The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start
+for Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as
+Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in
+novels, gentlemen often assume the _r�le_ of the detective with apparent
+relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too
+scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and
+station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered
+having seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a
+young lady, of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive
+description. The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly
+constructed, in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for
+all the circumstances--a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular
+part of the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
+
+What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur
+coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone
+together, one day, in a carriage marked "Engaged." Next day, another
+gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same
+route, asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat
+(bearskin, it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady.
+Clearly, the pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer
+represented the less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the
+Family. All the romance and all the popular interest were manifestly
+on the other side, not on Maitland's side. Even his tips were received
+without enthusiasm.
+
+Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the
+time nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he
+met that he was really the young lady's guardian, and that the gentleman
+in the fur coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a
+miscreant, he would not have been believed. His opinion would, not
+unjustly, have been looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer
+calls "the personal bias." He had therefore to put up with general
+distrust and brief discourteous replies.
+
+There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There
+they gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs--Doto, Proto, Doris,
+and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be
+instructed. But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative,
+pretending that their attention was engaged in their hospitable duties.
+Soup it was their business to minister to travellers, not private
+information. They _had_ seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to
+her he seemed. Yes, they were on the best terms: "very sweet on each
+other," one young lady averred, and then secured her retreat and
+concealed her blushes by ministering to the wants of a hungry and
+hurried public. All this was horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
+
+Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had
+telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering
+to the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had
+received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then,
+was a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects
+of his search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had
+been taken. There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not
+descended. Nobody had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be
+found at Paddington of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman
+travelling alone with a young lady.
+
+It was nearly nine o'clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and
+disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of
+interrogating the porters--all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle of
+passengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights,
+no one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland
+described. There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining
+all the cab-drivers who had taken up passengers by the late trains the
+night before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment,
+nor perhaps by an amateur.
+
+Maitland's time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at
+Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to
+Paddington, and, with brief enough space for investigations that yielded
+nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His
+whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien's, whom, in his
+heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these
+unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of
+Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to
+expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen
+species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence
+peaceful, if not well satisfied. "Adventures are to the adventurous." It
+is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
+adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby's,
+Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
+enterprise, he never would have taken the _Hit or Miss_ he never would
+have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would
+not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old
+wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
+Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
+what had befallen Margaret.
+
+His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the
+mystery of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland's
+confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not
+been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was
+trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not
+taken Bielby's advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
+
+So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts,
+in the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped
+into a hansom, and said, "Gatien's." Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the
+High Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got
+out and kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight)
+opened it with rather a scared face:
+
+"Horful row on in quad, sir," he said. "The young gentlemen 'as a
+bonfire on, and they're a larking with the snow. Orful A they're a
+making, sir."
+
+The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
+forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
+garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a
+huge Alp of snow against the door of the Master's lodge. Meanwhile,
+another band had carried into the quad all the light tables and
+cane chairs from a lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful
+pyramidal form, they introduced some of the fire-lighters, called
+"devils" by the College servants, and set a match to the whole.
+
+Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
+like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work
+for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass
+of St Ga-tien's seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough
+to waken the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a
+non-resident Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was
+known at all, as a "Radical," with any number of decorative epithets,
+according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he
+could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they
+would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to
+precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face
+the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of
+civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore,
+after a moment of irresolution, stole off under a low-browed old
+door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle;
+for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least
+mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his
+familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his
+footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door
+at which he had meant to knock.
+
+"Come in," said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
+most conventional manner.
+
+Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr.
+Bielby, Fellow of St. Gatien's, sitting by his fireside, attired in a
+gray shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had,
+on taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success
+at the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he
+threw up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired
+life among his "brown Greek manuscripts." He was a man of the world,
+turned hermit, and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known.
+He had "coached" Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and
+remained his friend and counsellor.
+
+"How are you, Maitland?" said the student, without rising. "I thought,
+from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
+coming to 'draw me,' as I think they call it."
+
+Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
+likely to "draw" him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
+old bear that "dwells among bones and blood."
+
+Mr. Bielby's own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
+mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
+in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
+beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had
+belonged to famous students of old--Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus--and
+before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new
+critical edition of "Demetrius of Scepsis."
+
+Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had
+not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become
+involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of
+circumstances.
+
+"The men are making a terrible riot in quad," he said, answering the
+other's remark.
+
+"Yes, yes," replied Bielby, genially; "boys will be boys, and so will
+young men. I believe our Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being
+celebrated."
+
+Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken
+glass.
+
+"There go some windows into their battels," said Mr. Bielby. "They will
+hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so
+unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is."
+
+"Well, sir," said Maitland, "I rather want to ask your advice on an
+important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long
+story, that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married."
+
+This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed
+gratified.
+
+"Ah-ha," replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. "Happy to hear it
+Indeed, I _had_ heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say,
+brought a hint of it--I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant woman
+of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your part,
+too, a little--if you will let me say so--is exactly what you need. I
+congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the young lady
+in Oxford? Where is she just now?"
+
+Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not
+the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of
+Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+"I'm sure I wish I knew," said Maitland at last, beginning to find this
+consulting of the oracle a little difficult. "The fact is, that's just
+what I wanted to consult you about. I--I'm afraid I've lost all traces
+of the young lady."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave,
+while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. "She has not eloped?
+You don't mean to tell me she has run away from you?"
+
+"I really don't know what to say," answered Maitland. "I'm afraid
+she has been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy."
+
+"You surely can't mean what you say" (and now the voice was gruffer than
+ever). "People don't plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
+probably they didn't! And who are the young lady's people? Why don't
+they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have
+friends."
+
+"She is not a widow--she is an orphan," said Maitland, blushing
+painfully. "I am her guardian in a kind of way."
+
+"Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I'm sure I beg your
+pardon, but did you tell me her name?"
+
+"Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields"--("Not the name I was told,"
+muttered Bielby)--"and her father was a man who had been rather
+unsuccessful in life."
+
+"What was his profession, what did he do?"
+
+"He had been a sailor, I think," said the academic philanthropist; "but
+when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
+anything, a professional tattooer."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
+livelihood."
+
+Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
+could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
+level with the situation.
+
+"Has Miss--h'm, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan
+long?" he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most
+undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
+been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter's character.
+
+"I only heard of his death yesterday," said Maitland.
+
+"Was it sudden?"
+
+"Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
+was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
+George's, Hanover Square."
+
+"St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed!" said the don, and once more he
+relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. "Maitland,"
+he said at last, "how did you come to be acquainted with these people?
+The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can't,
+surely, have met them in society?"
+
+"He came a good deal to 'my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think
+I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
+tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something
+for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you
+know."
+
+"Good-night!" growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
+determination in his tone. "I am rather busy this evening. I think you
+had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever
+about the matter to anyone. Good-night!".
+
+So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
+caused by Maitland's avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
+himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
+school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
+try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
+where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots,
+with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was
+clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's experience.
+
+"And yet," thought Maitland, "if I had not taken his advice about trying
+to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
+would have been in this hole."
+
+All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
+called food. "He had eaten; he had not dined," to adopt the distinction
+of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
+hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now
+he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards,
+he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of
+potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian
+vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.
+Gatien's. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
+
+He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on
+philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left
+the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache,
+he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and
+tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o'clock he
+fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the
+steam-whooper, or "devil," a sweet boon with which his philanthropy
+had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of
+Oxford.
+
+"Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian," Maitland
+seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
+Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
+lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
+thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
+iteration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--After the Inquest.
+
+To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland's scout called
+him at half-past seven with the invariable question, "Do you breakfast
+out, sir?" If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in
+attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution
+with, "Do you breakfast out, sir?"
+
+"No," said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; "in common room
+as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o'clock train."
+
+Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever,
+his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just
+complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room,
+then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and
+cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets.
+Anywhere but in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the
+bell and called his servant; but in our conservative universities, and
+especially in so reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally,
+no bell to ring. Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his
+greatcoat, that he might crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his
+scout.
+
+But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a
+strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often
+had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition
+of his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so
+than that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to
+blow in quad.
+
+"Mrs. Trattles!" cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his
+ears. "Mrs. Trattles!"
+
+The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by
+sniffs, from the other side of the door:
+
+"Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?"
+
+"Call Dakyns, please," said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. "I
+don't feel very well."
+
+Dakyns appeared in due course.
+
+"Sorry to hear you're ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn't I
+better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?"
+
+Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger
+generation, delighted to honor.
+
+"No; I don't think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I'll be
+able to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters."
+
+"Very well, sir," answered Dakyns.
+
+Then with that fearless assumption of responsibility which always does
+an Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr.
+Whalley before he brought round Maitland's letters and his breakfast
+commons.
+
+There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret's
+disappearance; if any such had been addressed to him, they would
+necessarily be, as Maitland remembered after his first feeling of
+disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had
+aught to communicate, nor anyone else, could be expected to know that
+Mait-land's first act would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
+
+The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast
+commons; even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
+
+Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his
+door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for
+him; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, "there was a pain
+somewhere in the room," and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
+
+"A very bad feverish cold," was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call
+again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his
+room.
+
+He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the
+quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the
+scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow,
+and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien's.
+
+So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage,
+and each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach
+of the very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland's
+illness took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the
+lungs were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see
+him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the _Hit or Miss_, about the
+man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the
+hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of "Demetrius
+of Scepsis." He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real
+kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with Maitland's
+returning health.
+
+At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of
+what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there
+was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
+
+Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in
+Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after
+him.
+
+"Brown," said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness
+began, "would you mind giving me my things? I'll try to dress."
+
+The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare
+slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms,
+by a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved
+into the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris
+manner.
+
+"Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent
+to the post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can't howl yet for
+myself," whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph
+form.
+
+"Delighted to howl for you," said Brown, and presently the wires were
+carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at
+once, on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a
+reply: Barton would be with Maitland by dinner-time.
+
+The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and
+even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were
+drawn, and a monster of the deep--one of the famous Oxford soles, larger
+than you ever see them elsewhere--smoked between Maitland and Barton.
+Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of "strong," a
+reminiscence of "the old coaching days," when Maitland had read with
+Barton for Greats. The invalid's toast and water wore an air of modest
+conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who
+relied merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight
+The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton's
+lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he
+did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his
+thin, white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
+
+It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for
+Barton knew so much already, especially about the _Hit or Miss_; but
+when it came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind
+of prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to
+walk about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak
+places; and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down
+again, and steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien's
+port.
+
+Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the
+finding of poor Dick Shields' body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, "Why,
+you don't mean to say that was the man, the girl's father? By George,
+I can tell you something about _him_! At the inquest my partner, old
+Munby, made out--"
+
+"Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,"
+said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret's disappearance
+that he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough
+of late) to the death of her father.
+
+"Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since
+you were ill?"
+
+Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the _Times_ since the
+day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment
+But his reading, so far, had been limited to the "Agony Column" of the
+advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to
+all the paragraphs headed "Strange Occurrence" and "Mysterious
+Disappearance." None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of
+Margaret.
+
+"I have not seen anything about the inquest," he said. "What verdict did
+they bring in? The usual one, I suppose--'Visitation,' and all that kind
+of thing, or 'Death from exposure while under the influence of alcoholic
+stimulants.'"
+
+"That's exactly what they made it," said Barton; "and I don't blame
+them; for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other
+choice. You can see what he said for yourself in the papers."
+
+Barton had been turning over the file of the _Times_, and showed
+Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so
+common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped,
+with blanks for names and dates.
+
+"A miserable end," said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph.
+"And now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by
+saying you didn't 'blame' the coroner's jury?"
+
+"Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don't know that I should
+tell you; it is too horrid!"
+
+"Don't keep anything from me, please," said Maitland, moving nervously.
+"I must know everything."
+
+"Well," answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant
+horror--"well, your poor friend was _murdered!_ That's what I meant when
+I said I did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict
+than they did on the evidence of my partner."
+
+Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new
+thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As
+a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of
+the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends
+on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from
+some lost star, some wandering world that is Hell.
+
+"Murdered!" cried Maitland. "Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on
+earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was
+no one's enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had
+nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much--a
+small sum--paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he
+was--when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in
+the world!"
+
+"I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the
+same, and that by a very cunning and cautious villain--a man, I should
+say, of some education.
+
+"But how could it possibly have been done? There's the evidence before
+you in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the
+circumstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more
+than enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere
+sleeping in the snow--it's well known to be fatal Why," said Maitland,
+eagerly, "in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had
+to send back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite
+asleep, in a snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened."
+
+He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton
+had arrived at.
+
+The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
+
+"But how can you possibly know better than the jury," urged Maitland
+peevishly, "and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district,
+who were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural--that he got
+drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure?
+Why, you did not even hear the evidence. I can't make out," he went on,
+with the querulousness of an invalid, "why you should have come up just
+to talk such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been
+right."
+
+"Well, you see, it was not the coroner's business nor the jury's
+business, to know better than the medical officer for the district,
+on whose evidence they relied. But it is _my_ business; for the said
+officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very
+little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow
+as ever let a life slip out of his hands."
+
+"Then, if you knew so much, why didn't you keep him straight?"
+
+"Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a
+wedding, when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial
+examination of the deceased."
+
+"Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an
+extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only
+this printed evidence," said Maitland, waving a sheet of the _Times_,
+"to go by; and _this_ is dead against you. You're too clever."
+
+"But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return
+to town, the day after the inquest," said Barton, "and I found evidence
+enough _for me_--never mind where--to put the matter beyond the reach
+of doubt. The man was _murdered_, and murdered, as I said, very
+deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant scoundrel."
+
+"Still, I don't see how you got a chance to make your examination," said
+Maitland; "the man would be buried as usual--"
+
+"Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers--and there was no one to
+claim _his_--are reserved, if needed--"
+
+"I see--don't go on," said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling
+back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut "It is
+all the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine," he said, presently.
+"In my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no
+one to claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take
+no trouble or risk in a case like that." He was silent again for a few
+moments; then, "What do _you_ make out to have been tbe cause of death?"
+he asked.
+
+"Well," said Barton slowly, "I don't much care to go into details which
+you may say I can hardly prove, and I don't want to distress you in your
+present state of health."
+
+"Why don't you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or
+anything? He had been drinking with some one!"
+
+"No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing
+that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear
+fellow, there are venoms that leave _no_ internal trace. If I am
+right--and I think I am--he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a
+great traveller, had he not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Maitland.
+
+"Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller
+also. He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well
+acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing."
+
+"You won't be more explicit?"
+
+"No," he said; "you must take it on my word, after all."
+
+Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of
+Barton, and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his
+theory was no morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion
+which, as he said, he could no longer, prove--which was, indeed, now
+incapable of any proof. No one had seen the commission of tbe crime, and
+the crime was of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could
+not possibly be otherwise brought home to the murderer.
+
+Now Maitland, knowing the _Hit or Miss_, and the private room up-stairs
+with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if done at
+all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any eye-witness
+of the crime.
+
+"What shall you do?" he asked, "or have you done anything in consequence
+of your discovery? Have you been to the police?"
+
+"No," said Barton; "where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It
+is not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis.
+Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more
+likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret
+motive--and he must have had--he will act on that motive sooner or
+later. The quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is
+safe, the sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there
+may be a chance of detecting him; but it's an outside chance. Do you
+know anything of the dead man's past history?"
+
+"Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering
+life."
+
+"Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your
+care. What do you mean to do about _her?_"
+
+The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were
+now so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
+
+"I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
+Things were bad before; now they are awful," said Maitland. "_His
+daughter has disappeared!_ That was what I was coming to: that was the
+rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew
+what you tell me; now--great Heavens! what am I to do?"
+
+He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly
+on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
+
+"Tell me all about it, old boy?" asked Barton, at length.
+
+He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate
+friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no
+longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation
+of Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible,
+the tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure
+even to come upon her traces or those of her companion.
+
+"And you have heard nothing since your illness?"
+
+"Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?"
+
+"There is only one thing certain, to my mind," said Barton. "The
+seafaring man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his
+life, and the gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram
+in your name and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett's, are in the same
+employment, or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you
+any kind of suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way
+of tracking him or them?"
+
+"No," said Maitland; "my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never
+heard of the sailor till the woman at the _Hit or Miss_ mentioned him,
+the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of Shields',
+a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school."
+
+"Then all we can do at present is, _not_ to set the police at work--they
+would only prevent the man from showing--but to find out whether anyone
+answering to the description is 'wanted' or is on their books, at
+Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social
+position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would
+certainly have his _dossier_? They order these things better in France."
+
+"There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was
+drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost
+certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs.
+Gullick--that's the landlady of the _Hit or Miss_--saying that Shields
+had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in that way for
+sailors."
+
+"By Jove," said Barton, "if any fellow understands tattooing, and the
+class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion;
+but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are
+tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in
+our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on
+but these early decorative designs."
+
+This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a
+moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his _flair_ as a
+detective.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--The Jaffa Oranges.
+
+"Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_."
+
+Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
+embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali,
+in the "Arabian Nights." With his glass, it will be remembered, he could
+see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and,
+though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How
+often would one give Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, and the
+invisible Cap which was made of "a darkness that might be _felt_" to
+possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
+
+Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
+were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would
+have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured.
+Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they
+might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would
+have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor,
+indeed, in a den at all.
+
+The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far
+off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square,
+Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the
+drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn
+down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of
+witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she
+had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would
+have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring
+had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were
+half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so
+ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question
+which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of
+respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
+
+He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
+sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door,
+in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
+remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
+upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
+Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
+members of the less educated classes), "I won't put up with none of them
+goings on." Such an expression this woman wears.
+
+"I hope you feel better, my dear?" the dark gentleman asks again.
+
+"She's going on well enough," interrupted the woman with the beautiful
+dissatisfied face. "What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
+tonics as you might bathe in--"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"She _ought_ to get well," the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the
+invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
+
+"I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling," said the dark
+gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, "but to the young lady whom I
+have entrusted to your charge."
+
+"A pretty trust!" the woman replied, with a sniff
+
+"Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret,
+my dear--'--"
+
+The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a
+trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
+
+"Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?"
+
+"You are very kind," answered the girl at last. "I am sure I am better.
+I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon."
+
+"Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
+grapes; may I send you some oranges?"
+
+"Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
+rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep,
+just now."
+
+"Poor girl!" said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. "And what do
+you dream?"
+
+"There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place," said the
+girl, slowly, "where I am; and something I feel--something, I don't know
+what--drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself
+on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling
+in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel
+mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and
+chasing me in the dark--some one I can't see. Then I slide into the
+smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I _must_ get away from it.
+Oh, I don't know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I'm
+asleep, I suppose."
+
+"I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all _I_ can do is to
+get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me,
+Mrs. Darling" (he turned to the housekeeper), "by placing them in Miss
+Burnside's room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when
+she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret."
+
+The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
+street, where a hansom cab waited for him. "Covent Garden," he cried to
+the cabman.
+
+We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
+believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
+very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
+
+Mr. Cranley, "with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
+him" (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
+celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this
+been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
+difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest
+means, the nature of Maitland's telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had
+been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland's, and in which Cranley
+used Maitland's name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have
+seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following
+his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the "engaged" carriage
+at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
+previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne
+Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his
+portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed
+a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A
+gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means
+answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the
+porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland's
+inquiries.
+
+The success of Cranley's device was secured by its elementary
+simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his
+trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable
+garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of
+most who see him, "the man in the bearskin coat," or "the man in
+the jack-boots," or "the man with the white hat." His identity is
+practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and
+when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or
+to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this
+principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure
+reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in
+London.
+
+With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
+recognized him as an acquaintance of her father's, and he represented
+to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father
+had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his
+poverty--in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he
+declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with
+dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield's
+chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from
+Maitland's guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl
+away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his
+latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his
+old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the
+Fellow of St Gatien's.
+
+Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
+Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
+man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
+position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
+manner of her father's death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
+knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
+Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
+Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident
+had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
+guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
+politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
+school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
+the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
+had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had
+lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only
+really delicate point--Cranley's assumption of the name of "Mr.
+Lithgow"--he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of
+the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father's
+last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been
+necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a
+gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as
+philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a
+license and discretion not customary in common society.
+
+Finally, even had the girl's suspicions been awakened, her illness
+prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
+father's friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
+guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father's wish, and
+hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
+livelihood; and independence was Margaret's ideal.
+
+Her father's friend, her own protector--in that light she regarded
+Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
+no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
+undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
+perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct
+of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for
+a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the
+rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience.
+Cran-ley's temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first
+human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling
+in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them.
+Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied
+himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once
+tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so
+surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though
+a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
+
+Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which
+his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she
+should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley's
+original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the
+Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some
+kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should
+never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost
+forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan.
+For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting
+fool; and then Margaret's illness had occurred, and had caused delay,
+and given time for reflection.
+
+"After all," he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache
+in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed
+hansoms)--"after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no
+inconvenient claims."
+
+For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways
+of "removing" an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed
+across a not uninstructed intellect--a scheme which appeared open to the
+smallest number of objections.
+
+"She shall take a turn for the worse," he thought; "and the doctor will
+be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
+jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it."
+
+Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden,
+dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges.
+He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an
+eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked
+for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got
+what he wanted in a small phial, marked _poison_. Mr. Cranley then
+called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker's
+(also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the
+label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker's he complained
+of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine
+or some such anodyne into his arm. � fourth cab took him back to the
+house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered
+the dining-room, and locked the door.
+
+Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
+about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused
+and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief
+into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable
+chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom
+of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds,
+and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in
+order--the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
+
+Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the
+best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room
+cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table,
+in company with a biscuit or two.
+
+When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
+orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then
+drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and
+carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into
+the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately
+completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then
+tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit
+he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire;
+and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately
+turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened
+the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times,
+finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked
+through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this
+portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the
+glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from
+the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with
+the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper,
+within the basket, and closed the window.
+
+Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
+voice:
+
+"Now, Alice, you may come in!"
+
+The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
+
+"How is Miss Burnside?" he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
+told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
+at least.)
+
+"She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her?
+Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil's brew have you been
+making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?"
+
+"My dear girl," replied Mr. Cranley, "you put too many questions at
+once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care
+of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my
+housekeeper. As to the 'devil's brew' which you indicate in a style
+worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of
+positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you
+did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you
+have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any
+other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful
+curiosity?"
+
+The fair woman's blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
+like a baleful lightning.
+
+"I don't understand your chaff," she said, with a few ornamental
+epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to
+decorate her conversation.
+
+"I grieve to be obscure," he answered; "_brevis esse laboro_, the old
+story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she
+wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and
+leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer
+fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish
+Square, and leave this note at the doctor's."
+
+"Oh, nothing's too good for _her!_" growled the jealous woman, thinking
+of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges
+not used in his experiment.
+
+Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
+door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret's
+door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
+
+"Now, I'll give her a quarter of an hour to waken," said Mr. Cranley,
+and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced
+rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet "Still
+advertising for him," he said to himself; and he then turned to the
+sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for
+the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not
+yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he
+looked hastily at his watch.
+
+"Just twenty minutes gone," he said. "Time she wakened--and tried those
+Jaffa oranges."
+
+Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
+Margaret's door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not
+find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he
+chose a large and heavy _fauteuil_, took it up in his arms, and began
+to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret's chamber, he
+stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was
+dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He
+picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
+
+"That would have wakened the dead," he whispered to himself, "and she is
+not dead--yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them,
+and then--"
+
+The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
+mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
+being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
+remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
+frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and
+less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind
+of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was
+passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of
+Death.
+
+She has wakened--she has looked round--she has seen the poisoned
+fruit--she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it--she has
+tasted the oranges--she has turned to sleep again--and the unrelenting
+venom is at its work!
+
+Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
+hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
+right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the
+star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the
+grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning
+the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an
+unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.
+The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays,
+though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all
+things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of
+our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the
+accomplishment of our desires.
+
+It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that
+the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed
+actually to be present in Margaret's chamber, watching every movement
+and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips
+and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not
+therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
+
+It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection
+that he was musing.
+
+"Now it's done, it can't be undone," he said. "But is it so very safe,
+after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it's much
+more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any
+other way. And then there's all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there
+is not an inquest--as, of course, there won't be--they'll ask who the
+girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they'll, some of
+them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound
+her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries,
+perhaps."
+
+And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
+thumb-nail, and yawned.
+
+"By gad! I wish I had not risked it," he said to himself; and his
+complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to
+flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk
+back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the
+finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could
+scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.
+A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of
+reflections again.
+
+"That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out," he
+said; "and--" He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the "French
+fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then
+he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still,
+it's not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better.
+By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she
+hasn't. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are
+the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she
+_has_ taken it. I _must_ go and see. I don't like the job."
+
+He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
+sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
+With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
+his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl's door
+he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All
+was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump:
+he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might
+wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
+
+Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it
+with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the
+door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful
+husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman's hard knock
+at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful
+visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound
+asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could
+make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her
+face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges!
+Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely--no! a
+sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of
+relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and,
+as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and
+cursing his own cowardice under his breath--he stole down stairs, opened
+the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
+
+"Now I'll settle with you!" came a voice out of the dimness; and the
+start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as
+they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was
+he trapped, and by whom?
+
+In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling,
+in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than
+anger, that stood before him.
+
+Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried
+to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
+observed:
+
+"Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
+to read."
+
+"What were you doing up-stairs just now?" she snarled. "Why did you send
+me off to the doctor's, out of the way?"
+
+"My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that
+invaluable curiosity of yours--curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew
+Arnold so justly views with high esteem--into wider and nobler channels.
+Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life
+as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of
+Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics."
+
+It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
+ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
+far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that
+lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being
+prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the
+success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat
+was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a
+drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:
+
+"No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
+you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
+every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
+your tongue and keep your hands off me--and off drink. Fetch the lamp!"
+
+She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
+silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
+on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
+letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
+bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
+been, with a strange device in gold and colors--a brown bun, in a glory
+of gilt rays.
+
+"Mrs. St John Deloraine," he said, taking it up. "How in the world did
+_she_ find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer
+than a brother--a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow."
+
+Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
+title of the family.
+
+"I don't suppose there is another woman in London," he thought to
+himself, "that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that
+would write to me."
+
+Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
+read the following epistle:
+
+     "Early English Bunhouse,
+
+     "Chelsea, Friday. "My dear Mr. Cranley,
+
+     "Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
+     hear nothing of you from anyone--nothing _good_, and you
+     know I never believe anything _else_. Do come and see me, at
+     the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about _yourself_"
+
+--("She _has_ heard," he muttered)
+
+     --"and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
+     know we are strictly _blue ribbon--a cordon bleu_, I call
+     her) has become engaged to a _plumber_, and she is leaving
+     us. _Can_ you recommend me another? I know how interested
+     you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
+     enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
+     housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
+     see me, whether you can advise me or not.
+
+     "Yours very truly,
+
+     "Mary St. John Deloraine"
+
+"Idiot!" murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
+then he added, "By Jove! it's lucky, too. I'll put these two infernal
+women off on _her_, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
+gets at the drink. She's dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
+Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
+waters."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
+privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
+aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
+caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
+or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
+seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a
+house in Cheyne Walk.
+
+The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
+she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
+county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
+woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
+County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
+Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor
+a kind of _morgue_ so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
+the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
+M�ryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
+Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take,
+they take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are
+they to drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else,
+that even the Clergy are excluded, _ex officio_, and in their degrading
+capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As
+we all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the
+very being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
+inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
+sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
+
+Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession)
+one of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain
+Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson,
+being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At
+the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat,
+girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House
+and Parsonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+To this desirable home and opulent share of earth's good things did Mr.
+St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled
+a good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County
+matrons and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling
+on such heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this
+young man a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him
+from the society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys'
+daughters. Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping
+Carby, and there he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level
+turf, her "points" he counted, and he found that she, at least, could
+appreciate his somewhat apt quotation from _Chastelard_:
+
+     "Pray heaven, we make good Ends."
+
+Miss Widdicombe _did_ make good "Ends." She vanquished Mrs. Struggles,
+the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman who was
+now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost professionally,
+"rejoice in arrows," like the Homeric Artemis--why are they nearly
+always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at least before
+her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known band of
+Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
+
+This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
+contrast between Miss Widdicombe's vivacity and the deadly stolidity
+of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her
+vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John
+Deloraine. He saw--he loved her--he was laughed at--he proposed--he was
+accepted--and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss
+Widdicombe, the attorney's daughter, as _ch�telaine_ (delightful word,
+and dear to the author of _Guy Livingstone_) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
+alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
+good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
+London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
+name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty
+of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County
+dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when
+they come to town.
+
+This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy
+in the earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her
+benevolence had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow.
+Never, surely, was there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+She would go from a garden-party to a mothers' meeting; she was great
+at taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping
+them amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at
+least three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
+eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner
+hours.
+
+So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine,
+that she made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal
+sympathy, wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she
+has been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like
+Greek texts which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need
+of explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the
+old sense--that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune--pursued hotly or
+artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
+suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
+her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting
+them as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of
+music are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no
+joy in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next),
+so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a
+passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the
+world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless
+levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature.
+Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good
+things so successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+At this moment the lady's "favorite vanity," in the matter of good
+works, was _The Bunhouse_. This really serviceable, though quaint,
+institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland's enterprise of
+the philanthropic public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. In a slum of Chelsea
+there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
+coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
+sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was
+the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine's friends, an artist of the
+highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch
+and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, _The Bunhouse_
+did very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
+Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery
+of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the
+metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features
+at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen
+hours a day in shops--all these young female outlaws, not professionally
+vicious, found in _The Bunhouse_ a kind of charitable shelter and home.
+
+They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
+stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers
+and fathers. "Places" were found for them, in the rare instances when
+they condescended to "places." Sometimes they breakfasted at _The
+Bunhouse_, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a
+state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would
+arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than
+when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle
+of a door--they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the
+clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young
+patrons of _The Bunhouse_ were in a warlike humor. Then the stern
+housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds,
+_haec certamina tanta_, turning the more persistent combatants into the
+street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and
+try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls
+would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the
+Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a
+drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and
+presently disturbances would come again.
+
+For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
+housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
+told, had yielded to love, "which subdues the hearts of all female
+women, even of the prudent," according to Homer, and was going to share
+the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible
+innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas
+Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in
+her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
+
+No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. _He_
+could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
+left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that
+young lady's earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr.
+Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine's acquaintance who would have used her
+unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr.
+Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of
+his character.
+
+"Shall I go and lunch with her?" he asked himself, as he twisted her
+note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and
+gold. "I haven't shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not
+since--since I came back from Monte Carlo."
+
+Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit
+The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in
+the calendar withdrew his large words when asked "if he had ever cheated
+at cards."
+
+"Well," Mr. Cranley went on, "I don't know: I dare say it's safe enough.
+She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
+sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the
+day--not up to luncheon anyhow. She says"--and he looked again at the
+note--"that she'll be alone; but she won't. Everyone she sees before
+lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to
+dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very
+long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it
+when once you begin. However, here goes," said Mr. Cranley, sitting
+down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a
+bulwark and breastwork. "I'll write and accept Probably she'll have no
+one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from
+the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me."
+
+As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the
+clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine's house
+in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that
+lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of
+beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont
+terrier, and holding out both her hands.
+
+The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
+hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
+carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
+
+"Love in which thy hound has part," quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
+rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
+smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
+
+"Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley," she said; "and, as I have
+put off luncheon till two, _do_ tell me that you know someone who will
+suit me for my dear _Bun-house_. I know how much you have always been
+interested in our little project."
+
+Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew
+the very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
+respectable woman of great strength of character, "of body, too, I
+believe, which will not make her less fit for the position."
+
+"No," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; "the dear girls are sometimes
+a little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
+went to one of the exhibitions with her _fianc�_, and the girls broke
+all the windows and almost all the tea-things."
+
+"The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not
+stand anything of that kind," answered Mr. Cranley. "She is quiet, but
+extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate
+character. At one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a
+person of treacherous and ungovernable disposition."
+
+This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
+fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
+father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
+bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to
+earn her own livelihood.
+
+So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to
+tell the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was
+strong enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud
+and indisposed to make confidences.
+
+"There is only one thing I must ask," said Mr. Cranley, when he had
+quite persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to
+her young friends. "How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when
+do you need the services of the new-comers?"
+
+"Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
+like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want
+to rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank
+Holiday--in a fortnight that is--and then they will go on their
+honeymoon of three days to Yarmouth."
+
+Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
+impetuous wooer.
+
+"No laggard in love," he said, smiling. "Well, in a fortnight the two
+women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
+remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
+recovered from the shock of her father's sudden death--a very sad
+affair," added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
+
+"Poor dear girl!" cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears
+in her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep
+with those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
+
+Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to
+the latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of
+this entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
+
+"Why, he's very late," she said; "and yet it is not far to come from the
+_Hit or Miss_."
+
+"From the _Hit or Miss_!" cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
+aware.
+
+"Yes; you may well wonder, if you don't know about it, that I should
+have asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be
+quite in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome,
+nor very amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness
+now. He is very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the
+poor. He is a Fellow of his College at Oxford."
+
+During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the
+terrier; but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
+
+"Did I tell you his name?" Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. "He is a--"
+
+Here the door was opened, and the servant announced "Mr. Maitland."
+
+When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
+found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
+
+His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
+heart might have blanched at the encounter.
+
+When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
+philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
+fellow-revellers. What other things he had done--things in which
+Maitland was concerned--the reader knows, or at least suspects. But it
+was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
+undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
+
+There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
+
+"Let me introduce you--" said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+"There is no need," interrupted Maitland. "Mr. Cranley and I have known
+each other for some time. I don't think we have met," he added, looking
+at Cranley, "since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not
+likely to meet again, I'm afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell
+Mrs. Si John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance."
+
+Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
+the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be)
+with private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the
+trouble at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended
+to what he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he
+had the best reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he
+was the secret source of the information on which Maitland proposed to
+act.
+
+At luncheon--which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
+was "luscious and abundant"--Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than
+the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little
+philanthropic misadventures of his own--cases in which he had been
+humorously misled by the _Captain Wraggs_ of this world, or beguiled by
+the authors of that polite correspondence--begging letters.
+
+When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to
+go (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine's company very much), Cranley,
+who had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way
+with the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+"And when are we likely to meet again?" he asked.
+
+"I really don't know," said Maitland. "I have business in Paris, and I
+cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent."
+
+"No more can I," said Mr. Cranley to himself; "but I hope you won't
+return in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you
+have the luck to return at all."
+
+But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a
+good voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a
+_com�dienne_) at the Palais Royal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--Traps.
+
+The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the
+lady of _The Bunhouse_, Barton, when he came home from a round of
+professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted
+lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there,
+discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that
+he was indeed "moving about in worlds not realized." Keen as was the
+interest which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend's affairs,
+he now and again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever
+revolved round the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points.
+
+"Hullo, Maitland; glad to see you," he observed, with some shade of
+hypocrisy. "Anything new to-day?"
+
+"Yes," said Maitland; "I really do think I have a clew at last."
+
+"Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles," said Barton, groaning
+as the bell-rope came away in his hands. "Bring lights, please, and
+tea, and stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend," he remarked, when the
+blackened but alert face of the little slavey appeared at the door.
+
+"Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir," answered Jemima, who greatly
+admired the Doctor, and in ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost
+comfortable.
+
+"Now for your clew, old man," exclaimed Barton, as he handed Maitland
+a cup of his peculiar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and no
+sugar. "Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clew of yours has been to the
+detective mind! To think that, without the Minotaur, the police would
+probably never have hit on that invaluable expression, 'the police have
+a clew.'"
+
+Maitland thought this was trifling with the subject.
+
+"This advertisement," he said, gravely, "appears to me undoubtedly to
+refer to the miscreant who carried off Margaret, poor girl."
+
+"Does it, by Jove?" cried Barton, with some eagerness this time. "Let's
+have a look at it!"
+
+This was what he read aloud:
+
+     "Bearskin Coat.--The gentleman travelling with a young lady,
+     who, on Feb. 19th, left a bearskin coat at the H�tel Alsace
+     and Lorraine, Avenue de l'Op�ra, Paris, is requested to
+     remove it, or it will be sold to defray expenses.
+
+     "Dupin."
+
+"This _may_ mean business," he said, "or it may not. In the first place,
+is there such an hotel in Paris as the 'Alsace et Lorraine,' and is M.
+Dupin the proprietor?"
+
+"_That's_ all right," said Maitland. "I went at once to the Club, and
+looked up the _Bottin_, the Paris Directory, don't you know."
+
+"So far, so good; and yet I don't quite see what you can make of it. It
+does not come to much, you know, even if the owner of the coat is the
+man you want And again, is he likely to have left such a very notable
+article of dress behind him in an hotel? Anyway, can't you send some
+detective fellow? Are you going over yourself in this awful weather?"
+
+So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be easily put off the hopeful
+scent.
+
+"Why, don't you see," he exclaimed, "the people at the hotel will at
+least be able to give one a fuller description of the man than anything
+we have yet. And they may have some idea of where he has gone to; and,
+at least, they will have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and that,
+of course, is what I am most anxious to learn. Again, he may have left
+other things besides the coat, or there may be documents in the pockets.
+I have read of such things happening."
+
+"Yes, in 'Le Crime de l'Op�ra;' and a very good story, too," answered
+the incredulous Barton; "but I don't fancy that the villain of real life
+is quite so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction."
+
+"Everyone knows that murderers are generally detected through some
+incredible piece of carelessness," said Mait-land; "and why should this
+elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the rest? If he _did_ leave
+the coat, he will scarcely care to go back for it; and I do not think
+the chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. Besides, I'm doing
+no good here, and I can do no harm there."
+
+This was undeniably true; and though Barton muttered something about "a
+false scent," he no longer attempted to turn Maitland from his purpose.
+He did, however, with some difficulty, prevent the Fellow of St.
+Gatien's from purchasing a blonde beard, one of those wigs which
+simulate baldness, and a pair of blue spectacles. In these disguises,
+Maitland argued, he would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit
+any mischief planned by the enemies of Margaret.
+
+"Yes; but, on the other hand, you would look exactly like a German
+professor, and probably be taken for a spy of Bismarck's," said Barton.
+
+And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of disguise. He retained,
+however, certain astute notions of his own about his plan of operations,
+and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate to his friend. The
+fact is, that the long dormant romance of Maitland's character was now
+thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, to enjoy the adventure.
+
+His enjoyment did not last very long. The usual troubles of a winter
+voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the
+guardian of Margaret But everything---even a period of waiting at
+the Paris _salle d'attente_, and a struggle with the _cochers_ at the
+station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare)--must come
+to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the
+glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l'Op�ra. At the
+H�tel Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too
+precipitate eagerness. In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in
+the hotel book, choosing, by an unlucky inspiration, the pseudonym
+of Buchanan. He then ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of
+propitiation, it was a much better dinner than usual that Maitland
+ordered. Bottles of the higher Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful
+baskets, were brought at his command; for he was determined favorably to
+impress the people of the house.
+
+His conduct in this matter was partly determined by the fact that, for
+the moment, the English were not popular in Paris.
+
+In fact, as the French newspapers declared, with more truth than they
+suspected, "Paris was not the place for English people, especially for
+English women."
+
+In these international circumstances, then, Maitland believed he showed
+the wisdom of the serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless old
+fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords of the past But he had
+reckoned without his appetite.
+
+A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon nor alarming, is the
+putting away of all desire to eat and drink. As the waiter carried
+off the untouched _hors d'oeuvres_ (whereof Maitland only nibbled the
+delicious bread and butter); as he bore away the _hu�tres_, undiminished
+in number; as the _bisque_ proved too much for the guest of the evening;
+as he faltered over the soles, and failed to appreciate the cutlets; as
+he turned from the noblest _cr�s_ (including the widow's _cr�s_, those
+of La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for _siphon_ and _fine champagne_, the
+waiter's countenance assumed an air of owl-like sagacity. There was
+something wrong, the _gar�on_ felt sure, about a man who could order a
+dinner like Maitland's, and then decline to partake thereof. However,
+even in a republican country, you can hardly arrest a man merely because
+his intentions are better than his appetite. The waiter, therefore,
+contented himself with assuming an imposing attitude, and whispering
+something to the hall porter.
+
+The Fellow of St. Gatien's, having dined with the Barmecide regardless
+of expense, went on (as he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the
+_concierge_. From that official he purchased two large cigars, which he
+did not dream of attempting to enjoy; and he then endeavored to enter
+into conversation, selecting for a topic the state of the contemporary
+drama. What would monsieur advise him to go to see? Where was Mile. Jane
+Hading playing?
+
+Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule
+of French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great
+matter--the affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel?
+Had any of his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he
+left England a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article
+of dress--a great-coat--which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab.
+Could monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news
+about the garment, a coat in _peau d'ours_?
+
+On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been
+loitering in the office of the _concierge_, moved to the neighborhood of
+the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging on
+the wall.
+
+The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well
+in coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It
+had been lost by a compatriot of monsieur's? Would monsieur give himself
+the trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was
+kept?
+
+Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on
+the trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty,
+thought Maitland) followed _him_.
+
+The porter led them to a door marked "private," and they all three
+entered.
+
+The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a
+chair.
+
+The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
+
+"Where," he asked, "was the bearskin coat?"
+
+"Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his
+own, or a friend's?"
+
+"A friend's," said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted
+that the garment only belonged to "a man he knew something about."
+
+"What is his name?" asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.
+
+His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to
+grow worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.
+
+Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember
+the man's name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the
+first time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and,
+finding that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make
+inquiries.
+
+Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English
+gentlemen usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first
+time on board the steamer as their friends?
+
+Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed
+disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see
+the play.
+
+Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his
+deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a
+stately way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the
+door.
+
+However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely
+unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar,
+_sans phrase_, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the
+porter. But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed
+a card, containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and
+calmly asked Maitland for "his papers."
+
+Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer
+required.
+
+The detective assured him that passports "spoil nothing." Had monsieur
+nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had
+artfully entered his name as "Buchanan" on the hotel book, produced his
+card, on the lower corner of which was printed, _St. Gatien's College._
+This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name
+did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to
+accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice,
+Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was
+carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here
+he was received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a
+decoration, who (after some private talk with the detective) asked
+Maitland to explain his whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In
+the first place, the detective's notes on their conversation were
+read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland had given a false name; had
+originally spoken of the object of his quest as "the coat of a friend;"
+then as "the coat of a man whom he knew something about;" then as "the
+coat of a man whose name he did not know;" and that, finally, he had
+attempted to go away without offering any satisfactory account of
+himself.
+
+All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not
+unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.
+What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a
+matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this
+fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller
+at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a
+_sourici�re_, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after
+the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French
+dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police
+the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery
+of Shields' body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret's
+disappearance (_enl�vement_), and to a description of the costume
+(bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then
+he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of
+finding her, the clew offered by the advertisement in the _Times_, and
+his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But
+it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever
+so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the
+Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official
+against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien's had neither the
+presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the
+whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment's notice, in a
+cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a
+demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and
+that night Maitland of Gatien's passed, for the first time during his
+blameless career, in a police-cell.
+
+It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured
+by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments
+of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental
+Justice? Are not our countrymen the common butts of German, French,
+Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an
+Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a
+venture, and inquire afterward?
+
+Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most
+of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the
+Juge d'Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably
+_louche_.
+
+In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the H�tel Alsace et
+Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
+about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of "the journal
+of the City."
+
+Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
+bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own
+hotel. A bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite,
+stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which
+is, at present and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave
+Irish. M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish
+in their noble struggle for whatever they _are_ struggling for; but he
+did not wish his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of
+Freedom, and the great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view
+to elucidating the mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the
+police on his premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its
+_aff�t_, when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious
+circumstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied
+him the distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.
+
+When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
+d'Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete _Civis
+Romanus sum!_ He was an English citizen. He had written to the English
+ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien's man, an _attach�_ of the
+embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced
+to be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his
+interview with the Juge d'Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his
+back to the light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes,
+while the scribble of the pen of the _greffier_, as he took down the
+Englishman's deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of
+the law.
+
+"Your name?" asked the Juge d'Instruction.
+
+"Maitland," replied the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+"You lie!" said the Juge d'Instruction. "You entered the name of
+Buchanan in the book of the hotel."
+
+"My name is on my cards, and on that letter," said Maitland, keeping his
+temper wonderfully.
+
+The documents in question lay on a table, as _pi�ces justificatives_.
+
+"These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate
+person, and have draped (_afflubl�_) yourself in the trappings of your
+victim! Where is his body?"
+
+This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d'Instruction had formed
+within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the
+person under examination.
+
+"Where is _whose_ body?" asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.
+
+"Buchanan," said the Juge d'Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry
+with which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.)
+"Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not
+deceived by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She
+is calm, stern, but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely" (_r�pandez
+franchement_), "and you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your
+interest to be frank." (_Il est de votre int�r�t d'�tre franc_.)
+
+"But what do you want me to say?" asked the pr�venu, "What is all this
+pother about a great-coat?" (_Tant de fracas pour un paletot?_)
+
+Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.
+
+"It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,"
+said the Juge d'Instruction. "Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me,
+Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the H�tel Alsace et Lorraine?"
+
+"In answer to that advertisement in the Times."
+
+"That is false; you yourself inserted the advertisement. But, on your
+own system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?"
+
+"It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn."
+
+"His name?"
+
+"I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might
+have found his tailor's name on the coat, and then have discovered for
+whom the coat was made."
+
+"You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the
+forged advertisement?"
+
+"So he says."
+
+"You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!"
+
+Maitland apologized.
+
+"Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertisement, as you deny
+having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?"
+
+"I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertisement."
+
+"That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?"
+
+"To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at
+this moment."
+
+"Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!"
+
+"I have told you that my name is not Buchanan."
+
+"Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?"
+
+"I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the moment; it was
+incorrect."
+
+"Why did you lie?" (_Pourquoi avez vous menti?_)
+
+Maitland made an irritable movement
+
+"You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplorable. You are consigned
+_au secret_, and will have an opportunity of revising your situation,
+and replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice."
+
+So ended Maitland's first and, happily, sole interview with a Juge
+d'Instruction. Lord Walter Brixton, his old St Gatien's pupil, returned
+from the country on the very day of Maitland's examination. An interview
+(during which Lord Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach
+was not refused to the _attach�_, and, in a few hours, after some
+formalities had been complied with, Maitland was a free man. His _pi�ces
+justificatives_, his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing Cross,
+were returned to him intact.
+
+But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privileges of the last-named
+document.
+
+"I am going straight to Constantinople and the Greek Islands," he
+wrote to Barton. "Do you know, I don't like Paris. My attempt at an
+investigation has not been a success. I have endured considerable
+discomfort, and I fear my case will get into the _Figaro_, and there
+will be dozens of 'social leaders' and 'descriptive headers' about me in
+all the penny papers."
+
+Then Maitland gave his banker's address at Constantinople, relinquished
+the quest of Margaret, and for a while, as the Sagas say, "is out of the
+story."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--The Night of Adventures.
+
+A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of
+the _Hit or Miss_. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there
+would come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous
+woman; then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same
+woman were working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of
+rainy hail, mixed with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting
+insult, on the windows of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so _da
+capo_.
+
+"Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?"
+said Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she
+perched on the table in the parlor of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
+Maitland's investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
+near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still
+an unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come
+from the original centre of the troubles.
+
+"I'm in no hurry to take an engagement," answered the resolute Eliza,
+holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
+close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
+female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she
+looked now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions.
+"There's two or three managers in treaty with me," said Eliza. "There's
+the _Follies and Frivolities_ down Norwood way, and the _Varieties_ in
+the 'Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that's
+what I ask for, and I'll get it too! Just now I'm taking a vacation, and
+making an honest penny with these things," and she nodded at a little
+basket full of the wardrobe of dolls.
+
+"Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?" asked Barton.
+
+"Yes," said Eliza; "I am doing well with them. I'm not sure I shan't
+need to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter
+orders."
+
+"Pm glad you are successful," answered Barton. "I say, Eliza!"
+
+"Yes, Doctor."
+
+"Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
+sitting the night before he was found in the snow?"
+
+It had suddenly occurred to Barton--it might have occurred to him
+before--that this room might be worth examining.
+
+"We ain't using it now! Ill show you it," said Eliza, leading the way
+up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
+
+Barton took hold of the handle.
+
+"Ladies first," he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
+
+"No," came the child's voice, from half-way down the stairs; "I won't
+come in! They say he walks, I've heard noises there at night."
+
+A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
+struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
+been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an
+empty bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors,
+blue and red, part of Shields' stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some
+very sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized.
+They were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the
+Southern Seas.
+
+Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
+needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined
+it closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the
+others, but of wood.
+
+Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
+carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
+substance.
+
+"I thought so," he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
+instrument-case: "the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!"
+
+Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
+
+"Did you see him?" asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
+
+"Don't be childish, Eliza: there's no one to see. Why is the room left
+all untidy?"
+
+"Mother dare not go in!" whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
+voice, "Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the
+night old Shields died in the snow?"
+
+"The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
+should go on thinking about it," said Barton, rather sternly. "You were
+tired and ill, and you fancied it."
+
+"No, I wasn't," said the child, solemnly. "I never say no more about
+it to mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I
+remember it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what's that?"
+
+She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of
+the curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the _Hit or
+Miss_.
+
+Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
+open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her
+hand to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as
+to be unrecognizable, flashed into the room. "Oh, come! oh, come!" she
+cried. "She's killing her!" Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she
+had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a
+face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that
+moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run,
+after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the
+bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
+
+"Come, doctor, come!" she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
+crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
+Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
+her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
+then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of
+the old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following,
+found himself for the first time within the portals of _The Old English
+Bun-house_.
+
+The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
+excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were
+pressed so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could
+scarcely thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering
+another: it was a matter of life and death.
+
+"Oh, she's been at the drink, and she's killed her! she's killed her!
+I heard her fall!" one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
+hysterical iteration.
+
+"Let me pass!" shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
+the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
+
+"Give me room," he cried, and the patrons of _The Bun-house_ yielding
+place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
+weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
+crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
+stress of the girls behind him.
+
+What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
+the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
+
+By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame
+of blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane),
+Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
+
+One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
+unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
+side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood
+on the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further
+side of this girl--who was dead, or seemingly dead--sat, on a low stool,
+a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still. The
+knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
+noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
+her.
+
+For a moment even Barton's rapidity of action and resolution were
+paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
+with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision,
+dreadful even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit
+awoke in him.
+
+"Fetch a policeman," he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened
+troop of girls.
+
+"There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes," said Susan, the
+young woman who had called Barton from the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the
+throng.
+
+And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken
+girl at her feet--as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a
+_tableau_.
+
+"Policeman," said Barton, "I give that woman in charge for an attempt at
+murder. Take her to the station."
+
+"I don't like the looks of her," whispered the policeman. "I'd better
+get her knife from her first, sir."
+
+"Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can't look
+after the wounded girl in this crowd."
+
+Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose
+eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her
+victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
+
+They were just within arm's reach of the murderess when she leaped with
+incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and
+lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she
+raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into
+her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had
+stricken.
+
+"By George, she's gone!" cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him,
+and laid his hand on the woman's heart. She stirred once, was violently
+shaken with the agony of death, and so passed away, carrying into
+silence her secret and her story.
+
+Mr. Cranley's hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
+
+"Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!" remarked the policeman,
+sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the
+wound of the housekeeper's victim, and applying such styptics as he had
+within reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The
+Bunhouse__ of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message
+(by the direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed
+not devoid of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was
+being expected, the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was
+employed by Barton in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in
+generally restoring order.
+
+When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine's house with
+Barton's brief note, and with his own curt statement that "murder was
+being done at _The Bun-house_," he found the Lady Superior rehearsing
+for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room
+representation of "Nitouche," and the terrible news found her in one of
+the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously
+misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+hurried off, "just as she was," and astonished Barton (who had never
+seen her before) by arriving at _The Bunhouse_ as a rather conventional
+shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig.
+The versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all
+worlds occasionally let her into _inconsequences_ of this description.
+
+But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not
+only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard
+the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled
+herself as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl's wound, as Barton
+was happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for
+the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part.
+But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene
+of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young
+women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened
+by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most
+responsible of _The Bun-house_ girls, announced her intention to, sit up
+all night with the patient. Barton--who was moved, perhaps, as much
+by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by
+professional duty--remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the
+Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As
+the danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of
+fever, Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the
+morning, he let himself out of _The Bunhouse_, and made sleepily for
+his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his
+share of adventures--which, like sorrows, never "come as single spies,
+but in battalions"--was by no means exhausted.
+
+The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
+extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the _Hit or
+Miss_, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
+tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
+
+"There's the gray beginning, Zooks," he muttered to himself, in
+half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still
+steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind
+was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the
+lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was
+just passing the locked doors of the _Hit or Miss_--for he preferred to
+go homeward by the riverside--when a singular sound, or mixture of
+sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
+attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a _nuit
+blanche_. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
+traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make
+before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a
+great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
+economy, and was laboring "without a conscience or an aim." Whir, whir,
+flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
+the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
+scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
+whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all
+his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms
+of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
+palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
+half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the
+accents of pain.
+
+Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was
+heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though
+it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats--the time during
+which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung
+exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they
+were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught
+the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken,
+and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within
+the palisade.
+
+Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things--big, black,
+formless--were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of
+the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great
+fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed,
+flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached
+in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the
+ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the
+teeth of the flying wheel.
+
+Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, "Hold
+on!" or some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of
+the sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old
+baskets, outworn hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste
+land, the movement of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran
+slowly down, and, with a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased
+moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice
+came from the crumpled mass of humanity in the centre of the hideous
+mechanism:
+
+"Don't come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!"
+
+The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
+
+Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days
+being over) at least to know _why_ he is to be shot at.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said. "What on earth are you doing? How
+can _you_ talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?"
+
+To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
+
+By this time there was a full measure of the light "which London takes
+the day to be," and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this
+dialogue.
+
+He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a
+victim of the rack--scattered, so to speak--in a posture inconceivably
+out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man's head was
+lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a
+beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the
+other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a
+close-fitting suit of cloth--something between the uniform of bicycle
+clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell
+back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about
+his beard.
+
+Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
+
+"How am I to help you out of this?" said the surgeon, carefully
+examining his patient, as he might now be called. A little close
+observation showed that the man's arms were strapped by buckles into the
+fans, while one of his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the
+mechanism.
+
+With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled
+groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
+
+Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that,
+as far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries
+done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there
+were many contusions.
+
+"Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the
+police-office and get men and a stretcher," said Barton.
+
+The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
+
+"First hide all _this,_" he murmured, moving his head so as to indicate
+the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of spars,
+cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of mechanics.
+"Don't let them know a word about it," he said. "Say I had an
+accident--that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window--say anything
+you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week," he murmured
+dreamily, "it would have been complete. It is the second time I have
+just missed success and fame."
+
+"I have not an idea what your secret may be," said Barton; "but here
+goes for the machine."
+
+And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes,
+he rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among
+the heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment,
+meritorious.
+
+"Are you sure you can find them all again?" asked the victim of
+misplaced ingenuity.
+
+"Oh yes, all right," said Barton.
+
+"Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they
+find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out."
+
+"But how on earth am I to get you to the street?" Barton inquired, very
+naturally. "Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you
+over the boarding."
+
+"I can bear anything--I will bear anything," said the man. "Look in my
+breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings."
+
+Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the
+sufferer by a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of
+skeleton-key in strong wire.
+
+"With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street," said the
+crushed man; "but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is
+passing."
+
+He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of
+silence broken by groans.
+
+"Wait! one thing more," he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his
+arms. "I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson's Kents, hard by;
+my name is Winter." Then, after a pause, "I can pay for a private room
+at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end
+in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!"
+
+Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones
+(and broken bones) as he was.
+
+The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he
+dared not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall.
+At last--it seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to
+the sufferer--the hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly,
+Barton opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear,
+deposited his burden on the pavement, and flew to the not distant
+police-station.
+
+He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he
+found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he
+had left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or
+two puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called
+up a cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there
+were riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky
+penny-a-liner with his "tissue" and pencil.
+
+Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected,
+that his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the
+stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that
+motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of
+the case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last,
+returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken
+at breakfast, "I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a
+Flying-Machine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--A Patient.
+
+A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and
+laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather
+calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in
+suicide or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a
+flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused
+by engines of a more familiar nature.
+
+Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day
+after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived
+that the distress and confusion at _The Bunhouse_ were very great. The
+police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many
+disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the
+consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness
+and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist,
+and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due
+attention to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking
+her very much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of
+social enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated
+manner, though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the
+explanations offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had
+made up her mind to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece
+and companion. The girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready
+young patronesses of _The Bunhouse_.
+
+If the lady's mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the
+hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead
+woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient--not
+that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton's
+fancy did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those
+"amatorious" young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who
+cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was
+not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he
+went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more
+apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had
+been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered,
+and, in Barton's private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a
+successful inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting
+enough, apart from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy
+absolutely free.
+
+It was no more than Barton's actual duty to call at _The Old English
+Bunhouse_ in the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John
+Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night.
+She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper
+bearing a legend to the effect that _The Old English Bunhouse_ was
+closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was
+drawn up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring at _The
+Bunhouse_.
+
+Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with
+open arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise
+of _Nitouche_, and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
+
+"My dear Mr. Barton," she exclaimed, "your patient is doing very well
+indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have
+called."
+
+Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he
+had discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs.
+Si John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
+
+"Do you think she is able to see me?" he asked.
+
+"I'll run to her room and inquire," said Mrs. St John Deloraine,
+fleeting nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as
+described by Charles Lamb's friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind
+her from the chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
+
+Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady of _The Bunhouse_
+returned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence
+of the invalid.
+
+A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even
+better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and
+melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked
+whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when
+they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called
+her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the
+girl had spoken.
+
+"Well," replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, "it was through Mr. Cranley
+that I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can't
+think of without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is
+too dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to
+one. Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must
+admit that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He
+gave her an excellent character, _especially_ for sobriety, and till
+yesterday I had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she
+became quite wild and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this
+is the first time she yielded to that horrid temptation. Don't you think
+it was odd of Mr. Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to
+his rooms, but it was returned, marked, 'Has left; address not Known.'
+I don't know what has become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have
+told us, but the unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions."
+
+"Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard's, in Chelsea?"
+asked Barton.
+
+"No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He
+was a great friend of mine."
+
+"Mr. Thomas Cranley!" exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which
+probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational
+character.
+
+"Now, please," cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a
+pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter
+the peccadillo of a favorite saint; "please don't say you know anything
+against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies."
+
+Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling
+about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so
+unknown in France; but, on the other side, _he_ could scarcely think
+it right to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a
+confirmed scoundrel.
+
+"Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really,
+if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley's enemies are of his own
+making. I would not go to him for a girl's character, I'm sure. But I
+thought he had disappeared from society."
+
+"So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that
+I was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him.
+And I never would. I never turn my back on my friends."
+
+"If there was a conspiracy," said Barton, "I am the ringleader in it;
+for, as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr.
+Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I
+would not have mentioned it for the world," he added, almost alarmed at
+the expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine's face; "but
+you wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief
+that he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what
+all who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you,
+in the matter of that woman's character, was," cried Barton, growing
+indignant as he thought of it, "one of the very basest things I ever
+heard of. I had seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted
+with the care of girls. She was at one time very well known."
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine's face had passed through every shade of
+expression--doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air of
+hope.
+
+"Margaret has always spoken so well of him," she said, half to herself.
+"He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter
+of a humble acquaintance."
+
+"Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once," said Barton; "but as to
+his general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap
+he laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him
+get the poor girl back into his hands."
+
+"Certainly not," said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in
+her voice; "and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants
+anything. Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne
+Walk? It is not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there."
+
+"The best thing you can do," said Barton; "and be sure you send for me
+if you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am
+quite ready to meet him anywhere."
+
+"You will call to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly, about this time," said Barton; and he kept his promise
+assiduously, calling often.
+
+A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in
+a black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying
+indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the
+struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened,
+and the servant announced "Dr. Barton."
+
+Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
+
+"I'm so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out," she said. "She is at
+a soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any
+children, or had any fun."
+
+So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she
+should not attend soap-bubble parties.
+
+"I'm selfish enough to be glad you could not go," said Barton; "for then
+I should have missed you. But why do you sigh?"
+
+"I have had a good many things to make me unhappy," said Margaret, "in
+addition to my--to my accident. You must not think I am always bewailing
+myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before I
+entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine's service, and then my whole course of
+life was altered."
+
+"I am very sorry for you," said Barton, simply. He did not know what
+else to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and
+perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
+
+Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears
+came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She
+was on the point of breaking down.
+
+There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl
+crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton's
+mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
+
+"I can't tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you.
+Can't I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the
+troubles of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are
+nearly over?"
+
+Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that they
+_were_ over, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
+
+"They have been going on so long," said Margaret "I have had such a
+wandering life, and such changes."
+
+Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but
+more was not offered.
+
+"Let us think of the future," he said. "Have you any idea about what you
+mean to do?"
+
+"Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her
+always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don't know what he would
+like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad."
+
+Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley's name.
+
+"Had you known him long?" he asked.
+
+"No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my
+father's, and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from
+school, and he gave me a start in life."
+
+"But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your
+education," said Barton.
+
+"What can a girl do?" answered Margaret. "We know so little. I could
+hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully
+backward at school--at least, Miss---- I mean, the teachers thought me
+backward."
+
+"I'm sure you know as much as anyone should," said Barton, indignantly.
+"Were you at a nice school?" he added.
+
+He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret's history.
+She seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and
+knowledge of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial
+position at a philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady's
+character which made her patronage not precarious.
+
+"There were some nice girls at it," answered Margaret, without
+committing herself.
+
+Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such
+thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an
+abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any
+place of education is "nice."
+
+"It is really getting quite late," Barton observed, reluctantly. He
+liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received
+just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk
+to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It
+would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and
+non-paying patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty.
+The poor are often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret
+noticed his reluctance to go contending with a sense of what he owed to
+propriety.
+
+"I am sure you must want tea; but I don't like to ring. It is so short
+a time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at _The
+Bunhouse_, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me.
+They must dislike me; it is very natural."
+
+"It is not natural at all," said Barton, with conviction; "perfectly
+monstrous, on the other hand." This little compliment eclipsed the
+effect of fire-light on the girl's face. "Suppose I ring," he added,
+"and then you can say, when Mary says 'Did you ring, miss?' 'No, I
+didn't ring; but as you _are_ here, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?'"
+
+"I don't know if that would be quite honest," said Margaret, doubtfully.
+
+"A pious fraud--a drawing-room comedy," said Barton; "have we rehearsed
+it enough?"
+
+Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals
+was played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as
+amateurs often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
+
+"Now, this is quite perfect," said Barton, when he had been accommodated
+with a large piece of plum-cake. "This is the very kind of cake which we
+specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too!
+There should be a new proverb, 'Physician, diet thyself.' You see, we
+don't all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry
+toast."
+
+"Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life," said
+Margaret. "She tries a good many new things," Barton remarked.
+
+"Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!" answered the girl. "Oh,
+if you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!" And she
+shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon.
+
+"I wonder if some day--you won't think me very rude?" asked Barton--"you
+would mind telling me a little of your history?"
+
+"Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it," answered Margaret;
+"and a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
+everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
+to think of things that have happened, or may happen."
+
+"They shall never happen, if you will trust me," cried Barton, when a
+carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
+
+"Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last," cried Margaret, starting to
+run to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have
+fallen had Barton not caught her lightly.
+
+"Oh, how stupid you must think me!" she said, blushing. And Barton
+thought he had never seen anything so pretty.
+
+"Once for all, I don't think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
+that you call yourself."
+
+But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
+entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
+hospitality and content with existence into the room.
+
+"Oh, _you_ are here!" she cried, "and I have almost missed you. Now you
+_must_ stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone, Margaret
+and I."
+
+So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
+(which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in
+vain. It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs.
+St John Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours
+passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all
+hours--good and evil--abide, remembered or forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.--Another Patient.
+
+     "Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
+     Comme dans le chant de Ruckert."
+     --Th�ophile Gautier.
+
+"So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume,
+a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. 'Such an one,' he
+says--meaning me, and inventors like me--'is a little crazed with the
+humors of melancholy.'"
+
+The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
+and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested
+in the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting
+in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in
+Paterson's Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the
+conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of
+such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of
+civilization--the modern seekers for the Philosopher's Stone. At the end
+of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and
+themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.
+
+For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with
+electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every
+house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of
+Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was
+set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made,
+which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics,
+and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of
+the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better
+condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here--among the litter of
+tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed "Proceedings" of the Linnean and the
+Aeronautic Society of Great Britain--here were Fredericus Hermannus' "De
+Arte Volandi," and Cayley's works, and Hatton Turner's "Astra Castra,"
+and the "Voyage to the Moon" of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins's
+"D�dalus," and the same sanguine prelate's "Mercury, The Secret
+Messenger." Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the
+classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations
+by French and other inventors--Ponton d'Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier,
+Girard, and Marey.
+
+Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient's
+mind--(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his
+companions, and companions Winter had none)--even if the shelves had
+not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have
+proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library,
+and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and
+periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the
+ceiling.
+
+Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted
+by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things--from the
+sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
+From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
+materials; and here--a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a kind
+of drill-bow--was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley. The
+whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds'
+feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
+mind was made up as to the nature of Winter's secret, or delusion; and
+when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
+either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
+
+"Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt," Winter went on with his
+eager talk. "An acute man--rather _too_ acute, don't you think, for a
+Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments
+of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
+matters."
+
+"Such as flying?" put in Barton.
+
+"Yes; such as our great aim--the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
+What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
+flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
+artificer.) 'Diligent,' I may say, I have been; as to 'ingenious,' I
+leave the verdict to others."
+
+"Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?" asked Barton, to humor his
+man.
+
+"Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of
+a mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women--_Goories_ he
+calls them--endowed with the power of flight. But _they_ were born so.
+We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer."
+
+"It doesn't seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?" remarked Barton,
+leading him on.
+
+"No, sir," cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
+face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh
+at him. "No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man.
+But look at what he says about the _weight_ of your flying machine!
+Can anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent
+researches, and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You
+remember the iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?"
+
+"The iron fly!" murmured Barton. "I can't say I do."
+
+"You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
+hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
+guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose
+on the finger of its maker."
+
+"You don't mean to say you believe _that_?" asked Barton.
+
+"Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato's
+acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And
+the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
+triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
+at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus,
+because the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in
+accordance with the best modern authorities, that the weight is no
+hindrance whatever, if proportional to the motive power. A flying
+machine, says Professor Bell, in the _Encyclopodia Britannica_--(you
+will not question the authority of the _Encyclopodia Britannica_?)--a
+flying machine should be 'a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful
+structure.' There, you see, the Bishop was right."
+
+"Yours was deuced powerful," remarked Barton. "I did not expect to see
+two limbs of you left together."
+
+"It _is_ powerful, or rather it _was_," answered Winter, with a heavy
+sigh; "but it's all to do over again--all to do over again! Yet it was
+a noble specimen. 'The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,' as the
+learned author in the _Encyclopodia_ recommends."
+
+"By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. _You_
+were the passive surface, as far as I could see."
+
+"Don't laugh at me, please sir, after you've been so kind. All the rest
+laugh at me. You can't think what a pleasure it has been to talk to
+a scholar," and there was a new flush on the poor fellow's cheek, and
+something watery in his eyes.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my dear sir," cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
+himself. "Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
+aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
+success of this kind of experiment."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton's
+hand in his own battered claw; "thank you. But why should we run only
+to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been
+present to men's minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization.
+Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the
+hypothesis of natural selection?"
+
+"Well, he _did_ make a shot at it," admitted Barton, who remembered as
+much as that from "the old coaching days," and college lectures at St.
+Gatien's.
+
+"Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
+Greece, we find D�dalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
+pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for
+ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?"
+
+"Obvious bosh," said Barton.
+
+"And the meteorological mycologists, sir, _they_ maintain that D�dalus
+is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!"
+
+"There's nothing those fellows won't say," replied Barton.
+
+"I'm glad you are with me, sir. In D�dalus _I_ see either a record of
+a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
+expression of an aspiration as old as culture. _You_ wouldn't make
+D�dalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting
+in Sicily, in the west?" added Winter anxiously.
+
+"I never heard of such nonsense," said Barton.
+
+"Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
+sir, if I may judge by his picture of D�dalus."
+
+"Every sensible man must be with you," answered Barton.
+
+"Well, sir, I won't detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity,
+such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus.
+Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant
+Scythians."
+
+"It _must_ have been, indeed."
+
+"Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he,
+I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of
+Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I
+take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do
+you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine
+in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be
+gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expressly
+_currum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas_, the chariot of Simon Magus
+and his _vehicles of flame_--clearly the naphtha is alluded to--which
+vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter
+circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly
+Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But,
+though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared
+to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the
+Aventine!
+
+"'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,'" quoted Barton.
+
+"Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
+character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
+credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally,
+the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in
+secret, through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at
+Constantinople who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I
+mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we
+tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in _Knowledge_
+and the _Cornhill_? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor
+Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of the
+_Encyclopodia Britannica_, that 'the number of successful flying models
+is considerable. It is not too much to expect,' he goes on, 'that the
+problem of artificial flight will be actually solved, or at least much
+simplified.' What less can we expect, as he observes, in the land of
+Watt and Stephenson, when the construction of flying machines has been
+'taken up in earnest by practical men?'"
+
+"We may indeed," said Barton, "hope for the best when persons of your
+learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause."
+
+"As to my learning, you flatter me," said Winter. "I am no scholar; but
+an enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that
+the great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a
+romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan
+of the Happy Valley expected to solve the problem in one year's time.
+'If all men were equally virtuous,' said this artist, 'I should with
+equal alacrity teach them all to fly.'"
+
+"And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson's artist?"
+
+"To _you_ I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
+machine describe elliptic figures of eight."
+
+"I've seen them do _that_, said Barton.
+
+"Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
+by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in
+air--which I effected by starting from a height of six feet only--by
+a combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By
+steam alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar
+across two fields. Penaud's machine, relying only on india rubber under
+torsion, flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as
+Bishop Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and proportioned
+flying-machine, capable of carrying a man, can do also."
+
+"But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not
+carrying you at all."
+
+"Something had gone wrong with the mechanism," answered Winter, sighing.
+"It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against.
+Remember Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling
+error in the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had
+to give half his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt
+would tell him that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a
+coating of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend
+on it, interfered with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my
+experiments at night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered
+and anticipated. I have been on the verge--nay, _over_ the verge--of
+success. 'No imaginable invention,' Bishop Wilkins says, 'could prove
+of greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.' A few
+weeks ago that glory was mine!"
+
+"Why a few weeks ago?" asked Barton. "Was your machine more advanced
+then than when I met you?"
+
+"I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion," said Winter,
+wearily; "but a few weeks ago my _machine acted_, and I may say that I
+knew the sensations of a bird on the wing."
+
+"Do you mean that you actually _flew_?"
+
+"For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!"
+
+Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought--one wild and
+credulous, the other practical and professional--surged and met in his
+brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
+
+"Good-night," he said. "You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I
+will call again soon."
+
+He _did_ call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be repeated
+in its proper place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.--Found.
+
+     "All precious things, discovered late,
+     To those that seek them issue forth;
+     For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,
+     And draws the veil from hidden worth."
+     --The Sleeping Beauty.
+
+That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could
+not, of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She
+noticed that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking
+only the clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so
+light of heart as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes
+men and women poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of
+them. Margaret was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence,
+a bad listener--all of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine,
+but pardoned, in this instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt
+to blush without apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door,
+to leave the room hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back,
+when Barton called. Nor was Barton himself such good company as he had
+been. His manner was uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be
+paid at longer intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in
+fits and starts; and yet he did not know how to go away.
+
+Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have
+interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
+
+Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has
+not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love
+with her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings
+of inclination in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an
+"engagement." All considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight
+melted away before the ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first,
+to get engaged next, and to be married as soon as possible afterward,
+without regard to consequences of any kind, were, in this lady's mind,
+heroic actions, and almost the whole duty of men and women.
+
+In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was
+to be known about Margaret's affections, and also about Barton's.
+
+"He's as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear," she said to
+Margaret "Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him?
+Nonsense, Daisy; that is _his_ affair. I know you are as good a girl
+as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr.
+Cranley--yes, he was a wretch--had a spite against you. I don't know
+why, and you won't help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a
+man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I'm sure. You are afraid of
+something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I'm sure I don't
+wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one's nerve. I could no
+more drive now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to think
+_nothing_ of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who
+is there can frighten you? And as to being poor," and Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine explained her generous views as to arrangements on her part,
+which would leave Margaret far from portionless.
+
+Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend's
+shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and
+they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his
+boots, and fidget with his hat.
+
+"I've no patience with you, Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+at last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation
+with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. "I've no patience with you.
+Why, where is your courage? 'She has a history?' She's been persecuted.
+Well, where's your chivalry? Why don't you try your fortune? There never
+was a better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she's not--when she's
+not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don't
+take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
+voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I
+am going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and
+looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will
+get out and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you
+will show Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and
+when you come back you will both have made up your minds!"
+
+With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
+carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
+were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
+pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish ("coarse," but not
+uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees--it was
+the last week of May--were in the earliest freshness of their foliage;
+the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
+
+"How quiet and pretty it is!" said Margaret "Who would think we were in
+London?"
+
+Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
+Scott, he thought the more.
+
+"Miss Burnside!" he exclaimed suddenly, "we have known each other now
+for some time."
+
+This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
+and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
+of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
+hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
+
+"Yes," she said at last; "we have known each other for some time, and
+yet--you know nothing about me."
+
+With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the
+face. There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen
+before, though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a
+mark of pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
+
+Barton felt his courage come back to him.
+
+"I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love
+you!" he said. "Margaret, can't you care for me a little? Don't tell me
+anything you think you should not say. I'm not curious."
+
+Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its
+inmates, grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into
+the waters, so that he could not see her face.
+
+"No," she said at last, in a very low voice; "it would not be fair."
+Then, after another pause, "There is someone--" she murmured, and
+stopped.
+
+This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for
+_him_, he fancied she cared for nobody.
+
+"If you like someone better--" he was beginning.
+
+"But I don't like him at all," interrupted Margaret. "He was very kind,
+but--"
+
+"Then can't you like _me_?" asked Barton; and by this time he was very
+near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was
+still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
+
+"Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know," murmured Margaret.
+And yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and
+ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind
+but that Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had
+surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the
+honors and rewards of war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is
+no covenant until it is sealed.
+
+But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently,
+with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by
+the iron railings.
+
+"I must tell you about myself," she said. "I have promised never to
+tell, but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many
+things have happened." And she sighed.
+
+However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there
+should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself
+(aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to
+conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect
+her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no
+argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and,
+by way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming
+an affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still
+turning toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
+
+"The person--the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my
+father's, who, at one time, wanted him"--here Margaret paused--"wanted
+me to--to be his wife some day."
+
+The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do
+local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse
+of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
+
+"I didn't like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His
+name--but perhaps I should not mention his name?"
+
+"Never mind," said Barton. "I dare say I never heard of him."
+
+"But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which
+you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to
+tell her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean
+to be living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so
+many terrible things back to mind."
+
+"Dear Margaret," Barton whispered, taking her hand.
+
+They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the
+pathway, and an observer might have thought that they were greatly
+interested in the water-fowl.
+
+"My name is not Burnside," Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder
+across the gardens and toward the river; "my name is--"
+
+"Daisy Shields!" cried a clear voice. "Daisy, you're found at last, and
+I've found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!"
+
+But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the
+impassioned embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady;
+while Mrs. St. John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in
+her eyes.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in
+a pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. "Oh,
+my dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help
+her to look for them; and I've found _you!_ It's like Stanley finding
+Livingstone. 'How I Found Daisy.' I'll write a book about it. And where
+_have_ you been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything
+was the matter--only Miss Mariett and me! And I've left for good; and
+she and I are quite friends, and I'm to be presented next Drawing Room."
+
+While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had
+acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment
+and concern.
+
+They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret's past was about to be
+dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it already _was_ dispelled. The names
+of Shields and Miss Marlett had told _him_ all that he needed to know.
+But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady's lips;
+and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of having
+interrupted a "proposal," and spoiled a darling scheme.
+
+It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested
+Margaret to return to the carriage.
+
+"And as Miss Harman seems to have _a great deal_ to say to you,
+Margaret," added the philanthropic lady, "you two had better walk on as
+fast as you can; for _you_ must be very careful not to catch cold! I see
+Miss Harman's maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and I,
+Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I'm not a
+good walker."
+
+"_Now_," said Barton's companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey,
+about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond
+earshot--"_Now_, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?"
+
+Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
+
+"I don't know--I hope so--I'm not sure."
+
+"Oh, you're not satisfactory--not at all satisfactory. Are you _still_
+shilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?" cried the
+veteran of twenty-nine. "Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like
+a cow in a conservatory? She's a regular school-girl!"
+
+"It isn't that exactly, or at least that's not all. I hope--I think she
+does care for me, or will care for me, a little."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the
+world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she
+knew of the state of Margaret's heart But she was highly provoked, and
+showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
+
+"The fact is," Barton admitted, "that I'm so taken by surprise I hardly
+know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited,
+that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to
+tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at
+school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking
+anxiously at Barton, "was it anything so very dreadful?"
+
+"She called her Daisy Shields," said Barton.
+
+"Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened at _The
+Bunhouse_, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false
+name. It was not _her_ fault. The question is, What was her reason for
+keeping her real name concealed?"
+
+"That's what I'm coming to," said Barton. "I have a friend, a Mr.
+Maitland."
+
+"Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien's?" asked the widow.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I know him."
+
+"Yes, I have often heard him speak of you," said Barton. "Well, he had
+a _prot�g�e_--a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words--a girl
+whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to
+her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared
+mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many
+efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this
+girl's name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret
+Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called
+Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if she _does_ care for
+me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom
+my friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to
+find his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and
+annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?"
+
+"Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St John Deloraine, "perhaps you alarm yourself
+too much. I think"--here she dropped her voice a little--"I think--I
+don't think Mr. Maitland's _heart_ is very deeply concerned about Miss
+Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well"--she gave a little
+nervous laugh--"and I don't think he's in _love_ with Margaret."
+
+By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative
+discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
+
+Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of
+welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love
+with each other!
+
+"He's an awfully good fellow, Maitland," he replied. "But you are
+right; I'm _sure_ you are right. You must know. He is _not_ in love with
+Margaret."
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to
+Maitland's unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
+
+"But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite
+safe; and I'll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from
+him--about a charity, you know--a few days ago, and I have his address."
+
+By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces,
+tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order
+"Home."
+
+"We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon," she cried to Barton; and no
+offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
+
+He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts,
+when he suddenly came to a dead halt.
+
+"By George!" he said out loud; "I'll go back and have it out with her at
+once. I've had enough of this shillyshally."
+
+He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few
+minutes he was standing at the familiar door.
+
+"Will you ask Miss--Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?" he
+said to the servant "I have forgotten something she wished me to do for
+her," he added in a mumble.
+
+Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared,
+still in her bonnet and furs.
+
+"I couldn't help coming back, Margaret," he said, as soon as she entered
+the room. "I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn't
+think--I mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing,
+_nothing_ to prevent us--I mean� Margaret, if you _really_ care for
+me--"
+
+Then he came to a dead stop.
+
+It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to
+Margaret, "My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He
+does not care a pin for you; he'll be delighted at being released. He is
+in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine."
+
+That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it
+could not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have
+been exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
+
+The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it,
+looking at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was
+safe, but embarrassing.
+
+He made a charge, as it were, at the position--a random, desperate
+charge.
+
+"Margaret, can you trust me?" he asked.
+
+She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
+
+"Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about
+your doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there
+is _nothing_ to prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you
+will only agree to make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too.
+Can't you take it on trust? Can't you believe me?"
+
+Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton's shoulder. She
+_did_ believe him.
+
+The position was carried!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.--The Mark of Cain.
+
+Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and
+took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying
+little but, "Come home at once. Margaret is found. She is going to be my
+wife. You can't come too quickly, if you wish to hear of something very
+much to your advantage." A load was off his mind, and he felt as _Romeo_
+did just before the bad news about _Juliet_ reached him.
+
+In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his letters. The first was in
+a hand he knew very well--that of a man who had been his fellow-student
+in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a prosperous young physician. The
+epistle ran thus:
+
+"Dear Barton.--I'm off to the West of Ireland, for a fortnight People
+are pretty fit, as the season has not run far. Most of my patients have
+not yet systematically overeaten themselves. I want you to do something
+for me. Martin & Wright, the lawyers, have a queer little bit of medical
+jurisprudence, about which young Wright, who was at Oriel in our time,
+asked my opinion. I recommended him to see you, as it is more in your
+line; and _my_ line will presently be attached to that eminent general
+practitioner, 'The Blue Doctor.' May he prosper with the Galway salmon!
+
+"Thine,
+
+"Alfred Franks."
+
+"Lucky beggar!" thought Barton to himself, but he was too happy to envy
+even a man who had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him.
+
+The next letter he opened was in a blue envelope, with the stamp
+of Messrs. Martin & Wright. The brief and and formal note which it
+contained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day if possible, at
+the chambers of the respectable firm, on "business of great importance."
+
+"What in the world can they want?" thought Barton. "Nobody can have
+left _me_ any money. Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical
+jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I'll go down after breakfast."
+
+He walked along the sunny embankment, and that bright prospect of
+houses, trees, and ships have never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he
+was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and had shaken hands with young Wright,
+whom he knew; had been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately man
+of business, and had taken his seat in the chair sacred to clients.
+
+"Dr. Barton," said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, "you are, I think, the
+author of this book?"
+
+He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, in its gray paper cover,
+"Les Tatouages �tude M�dico-L�gale".
+
+"Certainly," said Barton. "I wrote it when I was in Paris I had plenty
+of chances of studying tattooing in the military hospitals."
+
+"I have not read it myself," said old Mr. Wright, "because I am not
+acquainted with the French language; but my son tells me it is a work of
+great learning."
+
+Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was glad Mr. Wright liked it.
+_Why_ he should like it, or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not
+even imagine.
+
+"We are at present engaged in a very curious case, Dr. Barton," went on
+the lawyer, "in which we think your special studies may assist us. The
+position is this: Nearly eight months ago a client of ours died, a Mr.
+Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I
+seem to be troubling you with a long story?"
+
+Barton mentioned that he was delighted, and added, "Not at all," in the
+vague modern dialect.
+
+"This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a somewhat singular character. He
+was what is called a 'statesman' in the North. He had a small property
+of about four hundred acres, on the marches, as they say, or boarders
+of the Earl of Birkenhead's lands. Here he lived almost alone, and in
+a very quiet way. There was not even a village near him, and there were
+few persons of his own position in life, because his little place was
+almost embedded, if I may say so, in Lord Birkenhead's country, which is
+pastoral. You are with me, so far?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Barton.
+
+"This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, with an old housekeeper,
+dead since his decease, and with one son, called Richard, like himself.
+The young man was of an adventurous character, a ne'er-do-weel in fact;
+and about twenty years ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel
+with his father. It was understood that he had run away to sea. Two
+years later he returned; there was another quarrel, and the old man
+turned him out, vowing that he would never forgive him. But, not long
+after that, a very rich deposit of coal--a _very_ rich deposit," said
+Mr. Wright, with the air of a man tasting most excellent claret--"was
+discovered on this very estate of Linkheaton. Old Johnson, without much
+exertion on his part, and simply through the payment of royalties by the
+company that worked the coal, became exceedingly opulent, in what you
+call most affluent circumstances."
+
+Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether Barton was beginning to
+understand the point of the narrative, which, it is needless to remark,
+he was _not_. There is no marked connection between coal mines, however
+lucrative, and "Les Tatouages, �tude M�dico-L�gale."
+
+"In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way changed his habits. He
+invested his money carefully, under our advice, and he became, as
+I said, an extremely warm man. But he continued to live in the old
+farmhouse, and did not, in any way, court society. To tell the truth,
+except Lord Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew anyone who was
+at all intimate with the old man. Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him,
+as a neighbor and a person of the old-fashioned type. Yes," Mr. Wright
+added, seeing that his son was going to speak, "and, as you were about
+to say, Tom, they were brought together by a common misfortune. Like old
+Mr. Johnson, his lordship has a son who is very, very--unsatisfactory.
+His lordship has not seen the Honorable Mr. Thomas Cranley for many
+years; and in that lonely country the two boys had been companions in
+wild amusements, long before. He is _very_ unsatisfactory, the Honorable
+Thomas Cranley;" and Mr. Wright sighed heavily, in sympathy with a
+client so noble and so afflicted.
+
+"I know the beast," said Barton, without reflecting.
+
+Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and horror. "The beast!" A son of
+Lord Birkenhead's called "The beast!"
+
+"To return to our case, Dr. Barton," he went on severely, with some
+stress laid on the _doctor_. "Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made
+on his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son Richard, or, in case
+of his decease, to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten. From that
+day to this we have hunted everywhere for the man. We have traced him
+all over the world; we have heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana,
+Smyrna, but at Smyrna we lose sight of him. This advertisement," said
+the old gentleman, taking up the outside sheet of the _Times_, and
+folding it so as to bring the second column into view, "remained for
+more than seven months unanswered, or only answered by impostors and
+idiots."
+
+He tapped his finger on the place as he handed the paper to Barton, who
+read aloud:
+
+"Linkheaton.--If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, Durham, last heard of
+at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln's
+Inn Fields, he will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. His
+father died, forgiving him. A reward of �1,000 will be paid to anyone
+producing Richard Johnson, or proving his decease."
+
+"As a mixture of business with the home affections," said old Mr. Wright
+proudly (for the advertisement was of his own composition), "I think
+that leaves little ta be desired."
+
+"It is admirable," said Barton--"admirable; but may I ask----"
+
+"Where the tattooing comes in?" said Mr. Wright. "I am just approaching
+_that_. The only person from whom we received any reliable information
+about Richard Johnson was an old ship-mate of his, a wandering,
+adventurous character, now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot
+readily communicate with him. According to his account, Johnson was an
+ordinary seafaring man, tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to
+be recognized for an excellent reason. _He was tattooed almost all over
+his whole body_."
+
+Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client's chair, so sudden a
+light flashed on him.
+
+"What is the matter, Dr. Barton! I _thought_ I should interest you; but
+you seem quite excited."
+
+"I really beg your pardon," said Barton. "It was automatic, I think;
+besides, I _am_ extremely interested in tattooing."
+
+"Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears,
+from what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable
+specimen. He had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by
+Arabs, and, in a peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the
+Dyacks of Borneo. We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of
+his principal decorations."
+
+Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on
+which was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the
+breast, thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
+
+The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized
+the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
+
+This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any
+exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
+
+"This is highly interesting," he said, as he examined the diagram; "and
+I am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a
+claimant with such remarkable peculiarities."
+
+"No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores
+of sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before
+yesterday--a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point; asked
+if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they were,
+and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify the
+design, corresponded to that drawing."
+
+"Well," asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort,
+"what did you do with him?"
+
+"We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an
+expert before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things
+about old Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that
+anyone but the right man could have known, we put him off till we had
+seen you, and could make an appointment for you to examine the
+tattooings. _They_ must be dealt with first, before any other
+identification."
+
+"I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say
+why he was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for
+several months."
+
+"Yes, and that is rather in his favor," said Mr. Wright. "If he had been
+an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago.
+But he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way
+of newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across
+it three or four days ago."
+
+"Very well," said Barton. "Make an appointment with the man for any time
+to-morrow, and I will be with you."
+
+As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr.
+Wright.
+
+"Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?"
+
+"With pleasure," answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger
+partner.
+
+He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer
+office by young Wright.
+
+"You had something to say to me?" asked the junior member of the firm.
+
+"Several things," said Barton, smiling. "And first, would you mind
+finding out whether the coast is clear--whether any one is watching for
+me?"
+
+"Watching for you! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious
+character is about."
+
+Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a
+cigarette on the outer steps.
+
+"Not a soul in sight but lawyers' clerks," he reported.
+
+"Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are
+taking a turn with me."
+
+Barton's friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some
+serious conversation.
+
+"I'll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father," said the
+young lawyer as they separated.
+
+"Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger
+like myself," said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent
+Garden.
+
+At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers,
+Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs.
+Aminadab, and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a
+pretty bulky parcel.
+
+                      *   *   *   *   *
+
+At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly,
+mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat
+and hat, appeared in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill
+acquainted with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before
+he reached the door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened,
+and he was admitted into the presence of the partners.
+
+"I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter," he said with a
+Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by
+touching his forelock.
+
+His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners,
+with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman--a
+gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a
+tow-colored beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty
+complexion, and the air of one who smoked too much.
+
+"Good morning, Mr.--h'm--Mr. Johnson," said old Mr. Wright. "As we told
+you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry, requested
+Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect--h'm--the personal marks of
+which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great authority on
+these matters--author of 'Die Tattuirung,' a very learned work, I am
+told."
+
+Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
+
+"Glad to meet you, sir," said the sailor-man gruffly, "or any gentleman
+as really knows what's what."
+
+"You have been a great traveller, sir?" said the learned Professor,
+whose Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. "You have in many
+lands travelled? So!"
+
+"Yes, sir; I have seen the world."
+
+"And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by
+many races been decorated?"
+
+"Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!"
+
+"How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese--ah!
+have you any little Burmese marks?"
+
+"Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder," replied the seafaring man.
+"Saving your presence, I'll strip to the buff."
+
+"The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir," this was in reply to young
+Mr. Wright "The naked body! why, buff! 'Buff,' the abstract word, the
+actual stuff, the very _wesen_ of man unclothed. 'Buffer,' the concrete
+man, in the 'buff,' in the flesh; it is _sehr int�ressant_."
+
+While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological
+reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
+
+"That's the Burmese style, sir," he said, pointing to his shoulders and
+upper arm.
+
+These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
+series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
+to the elbow-joints.
+
+"_Sehr sch�n, sehr sch�n_," exclaimed the delighted Professor. "It
+is very _hubsch_, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
+Germans. Ach, it is mournful!" and he sighed. "And now, sir, have you to
+show me any _moko_? A little _moko_ would be very instructive."
+
+"Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
+look between my shoulders," and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
+whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
+
+"That is right, that is right," whispered the Professor. "_Moko,
+schlange_, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better
+_moko_, on an European man, have I never seen. You observe," he remarked
+to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed
+lines--"you observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful."
+
+"Extremely interesting," said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
+seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
+
+"Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture," he added, comparing
+the sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
+
+"Are you satisfied now, governor?" asked the sailor.
+
+"One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
+Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?"
+
+"Oh, yes; here you are!" and the voyager pointed to his breast.
+
+The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
+of irregular form.
+
+"It is, it is," he cried, "the _wasm_, the _sharat_,* the Semitic tribal
+mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their cattle! Of old
+time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr Professor
+Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls that very
+mark, my dear sir?"
+
+     * Sharat or Short.--"The shart was in old times a tattooed
+     mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
+     of blood revenge is connected with a 'mark' which Jehovah
+     appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
+     _sharat_, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
+     person?"
+     --Robertson Smith, _Kinship in Ancient Arabia_, p.215.
+
+"Not I," said the sailor; "I'm no scholar."
+
+"He says it was--I do not say he is right," cried the Professor, in a
+loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim's breast--"he says it was
+_the mark of cain_!"
+
+The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped
+at a bookcase by which he stood.
+
+"What do you mean?" he cried, through his chattering teeth; "what do you
+mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark's all
+right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain't it on that
+chart of yours?"
+
+"Certainly, good sir; it is," answered the Professor. "Why do you so
+agitate yourself? _The proof is complete!_" he added, still pointing at
+the sailor's breast.
+
+"Then I'll put on my togs, with your leave: it's none so warm!" grumbled
+the man.
+
+He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and
+was just looking round for his coat.
+
+"Stop!" said the Professor. "Hold Mr. Johnson's coat for a moment!"
+
+This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
+
+"You must be tired, sir," said the Professor, in a very soft voice. "May
+I offer you a leedle cigarette?"
+
+He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly
+English accent, he went on:
+
+"I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left
+at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!"
+
+The sailor's eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the
+ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
+
+"Hold it, hold it!" cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic
+accent--"hold it: there's a revolver in the pocket!"
+
+But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
+
+The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not
+unconscious mass, on the floor.
+
+"Call in the police!" said Barton. "They'll have no difficulty in taking
+him."
+
+"This is the man against whom you have the warrant," he went on, as
+young Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. "I charge the
+Honorable Thomas Cranley with murder!"
+
+The officers lifted the fallen man.
+
+"Let him be," said Barton. "He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he's
+better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart's weak. Bring
+some brandy."
+
+Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept
+murmuring:
+
+"The Honorable Thomas Cranley _was_ always very unsatisfactory!"
+
+It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be
+unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had _not_ been informed that
+the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
+
+Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
+examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
+floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.--The Verdict of Fate.
+
+Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton's letter.
+He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
+he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
+
+Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
+thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
+
+Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley's trial dragged on. Interest, as
+usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
+
+But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
+when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
+
+When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
+himself "Not Guilty," his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
+pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
+the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
+whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
+
+The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
+prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
+condensed form:
+
+First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
+unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
+relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast
+of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
+circumstances of Johnson's early life, with his history and his
+home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A
+celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved
+that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing
+man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the
+minute local and personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate
+Johnson, a sailor whose body was known to have been indelibly marked
+by the tattooing of various barbarous races, it was necessary that the
+prisoner should be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with
+unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his
+body the distinctive marks of Johnson, and then had destroyed him with
+fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of assuming his personality. The
+very instrument, it might be said, which stamped Cranley as Johnson,
+slew Johnson himself, and the process which hallmarked the prisoner
+as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him with the brand of Cain.
+The personal marks which seemed to establish the claimant's case
+demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical expert brought in
+to prove his identity, and was recognized by that gentleman, Dr. Barton,
+who would be called, and who had once already exposed him in a
+grave social offence--cheating at cards. The same witness had made a
+_post-mortem_ examination of the body of Richard Johnson, and had then
+suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
+
+The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
+committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor
+(tbe disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of
+meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the
+_Hit or Miss_ tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met
+him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
+o'clock, telling the landlady that "his friend," as he called Johnson,
+had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady,
+Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening
+on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson--or Shields, as she
+called him--had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which
+led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often
+took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of
+Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart
+belonging to the vestry--a cart which, during the night, had remained
+near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the _Hit or Miss_. A
+coroner's jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had
+strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door
+in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down
+in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But
+evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish
+the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an
+eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a
+poison which it would be shown he had in his possession--a poison which
+was not swallowed by the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture
+into the system. The dead man's body had then been removed to a place
+where his decease would be accounted for as the result of cold and
+exhaustion. A witness would be put in the box who, by an extraordinary
+circumstance, had been enabled to see the crime committed by the
+prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at the moment, he did not
+understand the meaning of what he saw. As the circumstances by which
+this witness had been enabled to behold what was done at dead of
+night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not commanded from any
+neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony
+would be brought to show that the witness really had enjoyed the
+opportunity of observation which he claimed.
+
+On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson,
+and claimed Johnson's property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson,
+unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for
+the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical
+evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed
+to have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death,
+according to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the
+prosecution believed that the jury could find no other verdict than
+that the prisoner had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of
+February 7th.
+
+This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate
+the evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the
+statements of the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of
+Shields with Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but
+Johnson's old crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was
+at length discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he
+collected, the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course,
+most important in another respect, as establishing Margaret's claims on
+the Linkheaton estate.
+
+The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved
+by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
+
+The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who
+had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of
+the difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of
+beard--for Cranley was now clean shaved--Mrs. Gullick was positive as
+to his voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and
+mobile.
+
+Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest
+interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be
+arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had
+known as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length,
+and need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard
+Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the
+tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an
+ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many
+curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks
+were obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left
+blank--namely, behind and under the right shoulder--he had discovered
+certain markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an
+inexperienced hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed,
+and were slightly discolored. They could not, from their position,
+possibly have been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations
+of these marks, in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue,
+as on the rest of the body, showed that this coloring matter was of
+a character familiar to the witness as a physiologist and scientific
+traveller. It was the _Woorali_, or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians
+of Guiana.
+
+Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness
+said that its "principle" (to use the term of the old medical writers)
+had not yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded
+by Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined
+the juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with
+certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the
+whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown
+paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their
+arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal
+results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison
+would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to
+sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles,
+and the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed,
+death followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the
+victim, man or animal, and the strength of the dose.
+
+Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo
+marks on Johnson's body.
+
+The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf
+of the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson's tattooing
+materials, in the upper chamber of the _Hit or Miss_. This needle had
+been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by
+the Macoushi of Guiana.
+
+Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument
+of his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the
+evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small
+crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken
+by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and
+Wright. But crumbs of the poison--"Woorali," or "Ourali"--perfectly dry,
+remained in this r�ceptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself a
+great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
+
+The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general
+bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe
+cross-examination, William Winter was called.
+
+There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was
+borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
+
+"Where were you," asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the
+officer had sworn the witness, "at eleven o'clock on the night of
+February 7th?"
+
+"I was on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ tavern."
+
+"On which part of the roof?"
+
+"On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house,
+facing the waste ground behind the plank fence."
+
+"Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?"
+
+Winter's face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin,
+was clear as he said:
+
+"There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I
+was lying, and I looked in."
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles
+and glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing."
+
+"Would you recognize either man if you saw him?"
+
+"I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at
+that time he wore a beard."
+
+"Tell the Court what happened."
+
+"The men were facing me. One of them--the prisoner--was naked to the
+waist. His breast was tattooed. The other--the man who stood up--was
+touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a
+saucer on the table."
+
+"Could you hear what they said?"
+
+"I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there
+was a slight chink open."
+
+"You listened?"
+
+"I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with
+the needle give a sigh of relief, and say, 'There, it's finished, and
+a pretty job too, though I say it.' The other said, 'You have done
+it beautifully, Dicky; it's a most interesting art. Now, just out of
+curiosity, let _me_ tattoo _you_ a bit.' The other man laughed, and took
+off his coat and shirt while the other dressed. 'There's scarce an inch
+of me plain,' he said, 'but you can try your hand here,' pointing to
+the lower part of his shoulder."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something
+sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He
+began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the
+time. This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of
+the man who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little,
+backward and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man,
+and said, in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, 'I'm very
+cold; I can't shiver!' Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one
+or two convulsive movements. That was all."
+
+"What did the prisoner do?"
+
+"He looked like death. He seized the bottle on the table, poured out
+half a tumbler full of the stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell
+into a chair, and laid his face between his hands. He appeared ill, or
+alarmed, but the color came back into his cheek after a third or
+fourth glass. Then I saw him go to the sleeping man and bend over him,
+listening apparently to his breathing. Then he shook him several times,
+as if trying to arouse him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about
+half-an-hour after what I have described, he opened the door and went
+out. He soon returned, took up the sleeping man in his arms--his weight
+seemed lighter than you would expect--and carried him out. From the roof
+I saw him push the door in the palisade leading into the waste land,
+a door which I myself had left open an hour before. It was not light
+enough to see what he did there; but he soon returned alone and walked
+away."
+
+Such was the sum of Winter's evidence, which, if accepted, entirely
+corroborated Barton's theory of the manner of the murder.
+
+In cross-examination, Winter was asked the very natural question:
+
+"How did you come to find yourself on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ late
+at night?"
+
+Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn faced flushed, his eye
+sparkling.
+
+"Sir, I flew!"
+
+There was a murmur and titter through the court, which was, of course,
+instantly suppressed.
+
+"You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?"
+
+"I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have
+labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I
+was experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land
+bordering on the _Hit or Miss_, the machine actually worked, and I was
+projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air, coming
+down with � fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof of
+the _Hit or Miss_."
+
+Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression
+at the jury.
+
+"My lord," said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and
+the significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of
+the twelve good men and true, "I may state that we are prepared to bring
+forward a large mass of scientific evidence--including a well-known man
+of science, the editor of _Wisdom_, a popular journal which takes all
+knowledge for its province--to prove that there is nothing physically
+impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at present
+suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very
+machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working
+model, to the Court."
+
+"It certainly requires corroboration," said the judge. "At present,
+so far as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can
+prove, perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have
+only to take one step further to become practical modes of locomotion.
+But _that_ is the very step _qui co�te_. Nothing but direct evidence
+that the step has been taken--that a flying machine, on this
+occasion, actually _flew_ (they appear to be styled _volantes, a non
+volando_)--would really help your case, and establish the credibility of
+this witness."
+
+"With your lordship's learned remarks," replied the counsel for the
+crown, "I am not the less ready to agree, because I _have_ an actual
+eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but
+reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its
+occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common
+talk of the neighborhood."
+
+"Ah! that is another matter," said the judge.
+
+"Call Eliza Gullick," said the counsel.
+
+Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but
+perfect self-possession.
+
+After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an
+oath, Eliza was asked:
+
+"You remember the night of the 7th of February?"
+
+"I remember it very well, sir."
+
+"Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?"
+
+"Becos such a mort o' things happened, sir, that night."
+
+"Will you tell his lordship what happened?"
+
+"Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at
+the _Hilarity_; for he said--"
+
+"Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming
+home."
+
+"Well, sir, it was about eleven o'clock at night, and I was turning the
+lane into the _Hit or Miss_, when I heard an awful flapping and hissing
+and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at the
+side of the lane. And, as I was listening--oh, it frightens me now to
+think of it--oh, sir--"
+
+"Well, don't be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?"
+
+"A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my
+head, higher than the houses. And then--did you ever see them Japanese
+toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber
+as you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly--"
+
+"Well, my girl, I have seen them."
+
+"Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the
+bird's wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all
+lighted, quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the _Hit or Miss_.
+And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o' the
+window, but they wouldn't none o' them believe me, my lord."
+
+There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this
+extraordinary confirmation of Winter's evidence, and wove the net
+inextricably round the prisoner.
+
+Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something
+heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
+
+All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence
+the sound had come.
+
+The prisoner's head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
+
+One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
+
+The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The
+evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had
+slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+And what became of them all?
+
+He who does not tell, on the plea that he is "competing with Life,"
+which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts
+unfairly.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are
+visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the
+unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy
+Mrs. Maitland.
+
+Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the
+case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still
+hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine,
+which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who
+once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac's novel, has never recovered
+the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs.
+Barton's little boy begins to take a lively interest.
+
+Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with
+the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick
+maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
+
+"We hear," says the _Athen�um_, "that the long promised edition of
+'Demetrius of Scepsis,' by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien's, is in the hands
+of the delegates of the Clarendon Press."
+
+But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement
+that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_
+
+EXPLICIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21821-8.txt or 21821-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/2/21821/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/21821-8.zip b/21821-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fcc129
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-8.zip
diff --git a/21821-h.zip b/21821-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41b3c63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-h.zip
diff --git a/21821-h/21821-h.htm b/21821-h/21821-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfbc97b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-h/21821-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8302 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Mark of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body { margin:5%; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    -->
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mark Of Cain
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21821]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="cainTP (22K)" src="images/cainTP.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE MARK OF CAIN
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Andrew Lang <br /> <br /> <br /> 1886
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>THE MARK OF CAIN.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I.&mdash;A Tale of Two Clubs. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II.&mdash;In the Snow. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III.&mdash;An Academic Pothouse. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV.&mdash;Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V.&mdash;Flown. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI.&mdash;At St. Gatien&rsquo;s. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII.&mdash;After the Inquest. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII.&mdash;The Jaffa Oranges. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX.&mdash;Mrs. St. John Deloraine </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X.&mdash;Traps. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI.&mdash;The Night of Adventures. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII.&mdash;A Patient. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII.&mdash;Another Patient. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV.&mdash;Found. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV.&mdash;The Mark of Cain. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI.&mdash;The Verdict of Fate. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_EPIL"> EPILOGUE. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE MARK OF CAIN.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.&mdash;A Tale of Two Clubs.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Such arts the gods who dwell on high
+     Have given to the Greek.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lays of Ancient Rome.</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the Strangers&rsquo; Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with
+      tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature was
+      uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, and the guests, broken up into little
+      groups, were chattering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of
+      departing: no one had offered a welcome apology for the need of catching
+      an evening train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the civilized custom which permits women to dine in the presence
+      of the greedier sex is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not for
+      the excuse of &ldquo;joining the ladies,&rdquo; dinner-parties (Like the congregations
+      in Heaven, as described in the hymn) would &ldquo;ne&rsquo;er break up,&rdquo; and suppers
+      (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) would never end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it all, will the fellows <i>never</i> go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, the founder of the feast. The
+      inhospitable reflections which we have recorded had all been passing
+      through his brain as he rather moodily watched the twenty guests he had
+      been feeding&mdash;one can hardly say entertaining. It was a &ldquo;duty dinner&rdquo;
+       he had been giving&mdash;almost everything Maitland did was done from a
+      sense of duty&mdash;yet he scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward of
+      an approving conscience. His acquaintances, laughing and gossipping round
+      the half-empty wine-glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and &ldquo;the
+      ashes of the weeds of their delight,&rdquo; gave themselves no concern about the
+      weary host. Even at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland felt
+      like an outsider. He wakened from his reverie as a strong hand was laid
+      lightly on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Maitland,&rdquo; said a man sitting down beside him, &ldquo;what have <i>you</i>
+      been doing this long time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I been doing, Barton?&rdquo; Maitland answered. &ldquo;Oh, I have been
+      reflecting on the choice of a life, and trying to humanize myself! Bielby
+      says I have not enough human nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bielby is quite right; he is the most judicious of college dons and
+      father-confessors, old man. And how long do you mean to remain his pupil
+      and penitent? And how is the pothouse getting on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever
+      since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him.
+      Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad,
+      breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde,
+      prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue eyes,
+      and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other degrees
+      at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was even what
+      Captain Costigan styles &ldquo;a scoientific cyarkter.&rdquo; He had written learnedly
+      in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had made a cruise in a
+      man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his <i>Les Tatouages, Étude
+      Médico-Lêgale</i>, published in Paris, had been commended by the highest
+      authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had not a home and
+      practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in Chelsea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is your pothouse getting on?&rdquo; he asked again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pothouse? Oh, the <i>Hit or Miss</i> you mean? Well, I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s
+      not very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of
+      doing some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the
+      waterside won&rsquo;t go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink,
+      and little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and
+      looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to civilize
+      them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves&rsquo; Club in the East End.
+      And then I fancied they might help to make <i>me</i> a little more human.
+      But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet blanket But
+      the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with me about <i>that</i>.
+      And she is a high authority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I&rsquo;ve heard of her. She is a lively widow, isn&rsquo;t
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a practical philanthropist,&rdquo; answered Maitland, flushing a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty, too, I have been told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she is &lsquo;conveniently handsome,&rsquo; as Izaak Walton says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Maitland, here&rsquo;s a chance to humanize you. Why don&rsquo;t you ask her
+      to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich&mdash;what better would
+      you ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish everyone wouldn&rsquo;t bother a man to marry,&rdquo; Maitland replied
+      testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
+      pale and unwholesome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what&rsquo;s the matter with you? Here you
+      are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements say, no
+      relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what you make by
+      writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you should know best What&rsquo;s the good of your being a doctor, and
+      acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
+      there is of it), if you can&rsquo;t tell what&rsquo;s the nature of my complaint?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side of the
+      water, among the hardy patients of Mundy &amp; Barton, general
+      practitioners. There is plenty of human nature <i>there!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
+      splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
+      roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
+      or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
+      sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good deal
+      about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say,&rdquo; Barton went on, lowering his voice,
+      &ldquo;where on earth did you pick up&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
+      the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the <i>Trumpet</i> office. He was
+      writing about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has
+      been in the South Seas, like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,&rdquo;
+       answered the other, &ldquo;and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
+      dealt in them, I fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay,&rdquo; Maitland replied rather wearily. &ldquo;He seems to have travelled
+      a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever they may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or don&rsquo;t
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak,&rdquo; said
+      Maitland; &ldquo;but what does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t know why he left his private tutor&rsquo;s; you don&rsquo;t know why
+      he left the University; you don&rsquo;t know why he left the Ninety-second; you
+      don&rsquo;t know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never heard
+      of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Maitland replied, &ldquo;about his ancient history I own I don&rsquo;t know
+      anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself.
+      He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t take that view of it at Shephard&rsquo;s Hotel&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is not my affair,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;One should see all sort of
+      characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has been
+      a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he is full of
+      good stories. I rather like him, and he can&rsquo;t do my moral character any
+      harm. <i>I&rsquo;m</i> not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of life, nor
+      quarrel with warlike aliens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but he&rsquo;s not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford,&rdquo;
+       Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up,
+      surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in which he
+      found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play Falstaff to
+      every fresh heir&rsquo;s Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man, too obviously
+      accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke of a prolonged
+      youth. À large cat&rsquo;s-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed solitary in his
+      shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of the contemporary
+      reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face, though a good deal
+      worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and of a purply bronze
+      hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with the beverages of many
+      peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous corners, were shaded by a
+      small black mustache, and his twinkling bistre-colored eyes, beneath
+      mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air of a jester and a good fellow.
+      In manner he was familiar, with a kind of deference, too, and reserve,
+      &ldquo;like a dog that is always wagging his tail and deprecating a kick,&rdquo;
+       thought Barton grimly, as he watched the other&rsquo;s genial advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to say good-night, bless him,&rdquo; thought Maitland gratefully.
+      &ldquo;Now the others will be moving too, I hope!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley approached him. To stand up
+      would show, he thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to detain the
+      parting guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Mr. Maitland,&rdquo; said the senior, holding out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is still early,&rdquo; said the host, doing his best to play his part. &ldquo;Must
+      you really go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the night&rsquo;s young&rdquo; (it was about half-past twelve), &ldquo;but I have a
+      kind of engagement to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of your
+      young friends here are anxious to come with me, and see how we keep it up
+      round there. Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us.&rdquo; Here he bowed
+      slightly in the direction of Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be a little <i>bac</i> going on,&rdquo; he continued&mdash;&ldquo;<i>un
+      petit bac de santé</i>; and these boys tell me they have never played
+      anything more elevating than loo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I am no good at a round game,&rdquo; answered Maitland, who had
+      played at his Aunt&rsquo;s at Christmas, and who now observed with delight that
+      everyone was moving; &ldquo;but here is Barton, who will be happy to accompany
+      you, I daresay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re for a frolic, boys,&rdquo; said Barton, quoting Dr. Johnson, and
+      looking rather at the younger men than at Cranley, &ldquo;why, I will not balk
+      you. Good-night, Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he shook hands with his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-nights&rdquo; were uttered in every direction; sticks, hats, and umbrellas
+      were hunted up; and while Maitland, half-asleep, was being whirled to his
+      rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests made the frozen pavement of
+      Piccadilly ring beneath their elegant heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only round the corner,&rdquo; said Cranley to the four or five men who
+      accompanied him. &ldquo;The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a fashionable
+      slum off St. James&rsquo;s. We&rsquo;re just there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing either meretricious or sinister in the aspect of that
+      favored resort, the Cockpit, as the Decade Club was familiarly called by
+      its friends&mdash;and enemies. Two young Merton men and the freshman from
+      New, who were enjoying their Christmas vacation in town, and had been
+      dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed in the appearance of the
+      place. They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a lane, and
+      to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket, into a narrow
+      staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light, full of blazing
+      wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small mysterious man would
+      point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages leading on to the roof
+      or into the next house, in case of a raid by the police. Such was the old
+      idea of a &ldquo;Hell;&rdquo; but the advance of Thought has altered all these early
+      notions. The Decade Club was like any other small club. A current of warm
+      air, charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed forth into the frosty night when
+      the swinging door was opened; a sleepy porter looked out of his little
+      nest, and Cranley wrote the names of the companions he introduced in a
+      book which was kept for that purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night,&rdquo; he said, genially. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      a livelier place, in the small hours, than that classical Olympic we&rsquo;ve
+      just left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or two rooms, lit up but
+      empty, except for two or three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable
+      attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of the first floor, all the
+      drawing-room of the house before it became a club, had been turned into a
+      card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and a heavy odor of
+      tobacco and alcohol poured out when the door was opened. A long green
+      baize-covered table, of very light wood, ran down the centre of the room,
+      while refreshments stood on smaller tables, and a servant out of livery
+      sat, half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest corner. There were
+      several empty chairs round the green baize-covered table, at which some
+      twenty men were sitting, with money before them; while one, in the middle,
+      dealt out the cards on a broad flap of smooth black leather let into the
+      baize. Every now and then he threw the cards he had been dealing into a
+      kind of well in the table, and after every deal he raked up his winnings
+      with a rake, or distributed gold and counters to the winners, as
+      mechanically as if he had been a croupier at Monte Carlo. The players, who
+      were all in evening dress, had scarcely looked up when the strangers
+      entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought some recruits, Cranley?&rdquo; asked the Banker, adding, as he looked
+      at his hand, &ldquo;<i>J&rsquo;en donne!</i>&rdquo; and becoming absorbed in his game again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The game you do not understand?&rdquo; said Cranley to one of his recruits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite,&rdquo; said the lad, shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I will soon show you all about it; and I wouldn&rsquo;t play, if I
+      were you, till you <i>know</i> all about it. Perhaps, after you know <i>all</i>
+      about it, you&rsquo;ll think it wiser not to play at all At least, you might
+      well think so abroad, where very fishy things are often done. Here it&rsquo;s
+      all right, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, then&mdash;I mean, when people
+      are inclined to cheat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheat! Oh, rather! There are about a dozen ways of cheating at baccarat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other young men from Maitland&rsquo;s party gathered round their mentor, who
+      continued his instructions in a low voice, and from a distance whence the
+      play could be watched, while the players were not likely to be disturbed
+      by the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at Nice or in Paris,&rdquo;
+       Cranley went on; &ldquo;but to show you how it is done, in case you ever do play
+      in foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see the men first put down
+      their stakes within the thin white line on the edge of the tabla Then the
+      Banker deals two cards to one of the men on his left, and all the fellows
+      on that side stand by <i>his</i> luck. Then he deals two to a chappie on
+      his right, and all the punters on the right, back that sportsman. And he
+      deals two cards to himself. The game is to get as near nine as possible,
+      ten, and court cards, not counting at all. If the Banker has eight or
+      nine, he does not offer cards; if he has less, he gives the two players,
+      if they ask for them, one card each, and takes one himself if he chooses.
+      If they hold six, seven, or eight, they stand; if less, they take a card.
+      Sometimes one stands at five; it depends. Then the Banker wins if he is
+      nearer nine than the players, and they win if <i>they</i> are better than
+      he; and that&rsquo;s the whole affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see where the cheating can come in,&rdquo; said one of the young
+      fellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dozens of ways, as I told you. A man may have an understanding with the
+      waiter, and play with arranged packs; but the waiter is always the
+      dangerous element in <i>that</i> little combination. He&rsquo;s sure to peach or
+      blackmail his accomplice. Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at
+      Ostend, one fellow, a big German; he wore spectacles, like all Germans,
+      and he seldom gave the players anything better than three court cards when
+      he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to go for his
+      cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat pocket. He
+      laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried them on. As soon
+      as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a swindle!
+      <i>Nous sommes volés!</i>&rsquo; He could see, by the help of the spectacles,
+      that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the spectacles were
+      regular patent double million magnifiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what became of the owner of the glasses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man wearing them, and didn&rsquo;t
+      wait to say good-night. He just <i>went!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Cranley chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember another time, at Nice: I always laugh when I think of it!
+      There was a little Frenchman who played nearly every night. He would take
+      the bank for three or four turns, and he almost always won. Well, one
+      night he had been at the theatre, and he left before the end of the piece
+      and looked in at the Cercle. He took the Bank: lost once, won twice; then
+      he offered cards. The man who was playing nodded, to show he would take
+      one, and the Frenchman laid down an eight of clubs, a greasy, dirty old
+      rag, with <i>théâtre français de nice</i> stamped on it in big letters. It
+      was his ticket of readmission at the theatre that they gave him when he
+      went out, and it had got mixed up with a nice little arrangement in cards
+      he had managed to smuggle into the club pack. I&rsquo;ll never forget his face
+      and the other man&rsquo;s when <i>Théâtre Français</i> turned up. However, you
+      understand the game now, and if you want to play, we had better give fine
+      gold to the waiter in exchange for bone counters, and get to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to the corner where the
+      white, dissipated-looking waiter of the card-room sat, and provided
+      themselves with black and red <i>jetons</i> (bone counters) of various
+      values, to be redeemed at the end of the game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they returned to the table the banker was just leaving his post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m cleaned out,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;<i>décavé</i>. Good-night,&rdquo; and he walked
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The punters had been winning all
+      night, and did not like to desert their luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this will never do,&rdquo; cried Cranley. &ldquo;If no one else will open a bank,
+      I&rsquo;ll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it is done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver
+      cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again
+      Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered
+      in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the
+      direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were winning,
+      thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly and amusing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have one shy,&rdquo; said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto stood
+      with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth with a
+      diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds and won;
+      he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time, and then
+      said, &ldquo;May I draw a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you may,&rdquo; Cranley answered. &ldquo;The waiter will give you <i>tout
+      ce qu&rsquo;il faut pour écrire</i>, as the stage directions say; but I don&rsquo;t
+      advise you to plunge. You&rsquo;ve lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil
+      favors beginners, so you can&rsquo;t come to grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks
+      had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some
+      paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles of
+      the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he returned
+      with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The luck turned
+      again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice consecutively
+      he lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said Barton suddenly to Cranley, &ldquo;may I help myself to one of
+      your cigarettes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the
+      silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when
+      you have done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dealt again, and lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nice case!&rdquo; said Barton, examining it closely. &ldquo;There is an Arabic
+      word engraved on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Cranley, rather impatiently, holding out his hand for the
+      thing, and pausing before he dealt. &ldquo;The case was given me by the late
+      Khédive, dear old Ismail, bless him! The word is a talisman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. The case seemed to bring you luck,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at him, as rapid and timid as
+      the glance of a hare in its form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, give me it back, please,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, just oblige me: let me try what there is in luck. Go on playing
+      while I rub up my Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the case.
+      Is it the word of Power of Solomon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley glanced back again. &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as you are so curious&mdash;-j&rsquo;en
+      donne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered cards, and lost. Martin&rsquo;s face brightened up. His paper
+      currency was coming back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a shame,&rdquo; grumbled Cranley, &ldquo;to rob a fellow of his fetich. Waiter,
+      a small brandy-and-soda! Confound your awkwardness! Why do you spill it
+      over the cards?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By Cranley&rsquo;s own awkwardness, more than the waiter&rsquo;s, a little splash of
+      the liquid had fallen in front of him, on the black leather part of the
+      table where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck altered again. The
+      rake was stretched out over both halves of the long table; the gold and
+      notes and counters, with a fluttering assortment of Martin&rsquo;s I O U&rsquo;s, were
+      all dragged in. Martin went to the den of the money-changer sullenly, and
+      came back with fresh supplies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Banco?&rdquo; he cried, meaning that he challenged Cranley for all the money in
+      the bank. There must have been some seven hundred pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cranley, taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt
+      two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and
+      cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught him by
+      the wrists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley made one weak automatic movement to extricate himself; then he sat
+      perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was white
+      beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn you!&rdquo; he snarled. &ldquo;What trick are you after now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you drunk, Barton?&rdquo; cried some one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him alone!&rdquo; shouted some of the players, rising from their seats;
+      while others, pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder without
+      seeing any excuse for his behavior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said Barton, in a steady voice, &ldquo;I leave my conduct in the
+      hands of the club. If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has been
+      cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and at his. Let anyone who doubts
+      what I say look here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m looking here, and I don&rsquo;t see what you are making such a fuss
+      about,&rdquo; said Martin, from the group behind, peering over at the table and
+      the cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly&mdash;&mdash; No, it is no use.&rdquo; The last remark was
+      addressed to the captive, who had tried to release his hands. &ldquo;Will you
+      kindly take up some of the cards and deal them slowly, to right and left,
+      over that little puddle of spilt soda water on the leather? Get as near
+      the table as you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!&rdquo; cried Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you
+      could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to
+      take a card or stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the wretched Cranley. &ldquo;How on earth was I to know that
+      the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you a
+      chance against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You spilt the liquor yourself,&rdquo; Barton answered coolly, &ldquo;when I took away
+      your cigarette-case. I saw you passing the cards over the surface of it,
+      which anyone can see for himself is a perfect mirror. I tried to warn you&mdash;for
+      I did not want a row&mdash;when I said the case &lsquo;seemed to bring you
+      luck.&rsquo; But you would not be warned; and when the cigarette-case trick was
+      played out, you fell back on the old dodge with the drop of water. Will
+      anyone else convince himself that I am right before I let Mr. Cranley go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One or two men passed the cards, as they had seen the Banker do, over the
+      spilt soda water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a clear case,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;Leave him alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton slackened his grip of Cranley&rsquo;s hands, and for some seconds they
+      lay as if paralyzed on the table before him, white and cold, with livid
+      circles round the wrists. The man&rsquo;s face was deadly pale, and wet with
+      perspiration. He put out a trembling hand to the glass of brandy-and-water
+      that stood beside him; the class rattled against his teeth as he drained
+      all the contents at a gulp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall hear from me,&rdquo; he grumbled, and, with an inarticulate muttering
+      of threats he made his way, stumbling and catching at chairs, to the door.
+      When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, like a drunken man,
+      and then shambled across the landing into a reading-room. It was empty,
+      and Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay crumpled up, rather
+      than sat, for perhaps ten minutes, holding his hand against his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They talk about having the courage of one&rsquo;s opinions. Confound it! Why
+      haven&rsquo;t I the nerve for my character? Hang this heart of mine! Will it
+      never stop thumping?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat up and looked about him, then rose and walked toward the table; but
+      his head began to swim, and his eyes to darken; so he fell back again in
+      his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. Mechanically he began to move the
+      hand that hung over the arm of his low chair, and it encountered a
+      newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He lifted it automatically and
+      without thought: it was the <i>Times</i>. Perhaps to try his eyes, and see
+      if they served him again after his collapse, he ran them down the columns
+      of the advertisements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly something caught his attention; his whole lax figure grew braced
+      again as he read a passage steadily through more than twice or thrice.
+      When he had quite mastered this, he threw down the paper and gave a low
+      whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the old boy&rsquo;s dead,&rdquo; he reflected; &ldquo;and that drunken tattooed ass and
+      his daughter are to come in for the money and the mines! They&rsquo;ll be clever
+      that find him, and I shan&rsquo;t give them his address! What luck some men
+      have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and lips working eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it,&rdquo; he said at last, cutting the advertisement out of the paper
+      with a penknife. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t often a man has a chance to <i>star</i> in this
+      game of existence. I&rsquo;ve lost all my own social Lives: one in that business
+      at Oxford, one in the row at Ali Musjid, and the third went&mdash;to-night.
+      But I&rsquo;ll <i>star</i>. Every sinner should desire a new Life,&rdquo; he added
+      with a sneer.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &ldquo;Starring&rdquo; is paying for a new &ldquo;Life&rdquo; at Pool.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He rose, steady enough now, walked to the door, paused and listened, heard
+      the excited voices in the card-room still discussing him, slunk
+      down-stairs, took his hat and greatcoat, and swaggered past the porter.
+      Mechanically he felt in his pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his
+      cigarette-case; and he paused at the little fount of fire at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was thinking that he would never light a cigarette there again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he remembered, and swore. He had left his case on the table of
+      the card-room, where Barton had laid it down, and he had not the impudence
+      to send back for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Vile damnum!</i>&rdquo; he muttered (for he had enjoyed a classical
+      education), and so disappeared in the frosty night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.&mdash;In the Snow.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
+      after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
+      falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
+      earth&mdash;steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the
+      streets, and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
+      coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
+      night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
+      flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
+      gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
+      surface of the city. Drifts and &ldquo;snow-wreathes,&rdquo; as northern folk say,
+      were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they lie
+      when sheep are &ldquo;smoored&rdquo; on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in the
+      desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her cold
+      winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off a heavy
+      white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The pavements
+      were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and molten ice.
+      Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars the
+      foot-passengers slipped, &ldquo;ricked&rdquo; their backs, and swore as they stumbled,
+      if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who were in haste,
+      and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in hansoms with two
+      horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively white on the
+      surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight shining black
+      marks where wheels had cut their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by the
+      waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or coffee
+      color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads straight
+      to the stream, and here, in the afternoon&mdash;for a late start was made&mdash;the
+      carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had choked up
+      the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been unladen
+      into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary modes of
+      clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that recommended
+      itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening the fog had
+      lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so thick that the
+      bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like the arches of that
+      fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts of the vessels
+      moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only a red lamp or two
+      shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the public-house at the
+      corner&mdash;the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;streamed a fan-shaped flood of
+      light, soon choked by the fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to the
+      river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was faintly
+      visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view.
+      This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with
+      much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and
+      with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of the
+      horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
+      backboard of the cart in its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blarmme, Bill,&rdquo; he grumbled, &ldquo;if the blessed pins ain&rsquo;t froze.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
+      smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
+      the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t budge,&rdquo; he cried at last. &ldquo;Just run into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>
+      at the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o&rsquo; hot
+      beer when ye&rsquo;re at it. Here&rsquo;s fourpence. I was with three that found a
+      quid in the <i>Mac</i>,* end of last week; here&rsquo;s the last of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A quid in the <i>Mac</i>&mdash;a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
+     called <i>Mac</i> from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
+     building eligible freehold tenements.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
+      scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the &ldquo;nimble fourpence&rdquo;
+       have the monopoly of agility?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don&rsquo;t yer know,&rdquo; said Bill, with regretful
+      sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
+      badge of avowed and total abstinence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I&rsquo;ll bring the bloomin&rsquo;
+      hammer myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
+      protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
+      warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
+      public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which he
+      then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his body
+      under his armpit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little hot beer would do yer bloomin&rsquo; temper a deal more good than ten
+      yards o&rsquo; blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin&rsquo;s more in <i>my</i> line,&rdquo;
+       observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment. Aid
+      with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their sockets, and
+      let down the backboard of the cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the cart was
+      tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow shore-water,
+      partly on to the edge of the slope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ullo!&rdquo; cried Tommy suddenly. &ldquo;E&rsquo;re&rsquo;s an old coat-sleeve a sticking out o&rsquo;
+      the snow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Alves!&rdquo; exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Alves! of course, &lsquo;alves. Ain&rsquo;t we on the same lay,&rdquo; replied the
+      chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, &ldquo;Lord preserve us, mate; <i>there&rsquo;s a
+      cove in the coat!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
+      stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
+      at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin was
+      the arm he grasped within it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; asked Bill, leaving the horses&rsquo; heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead! he&rsquo;s bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
+      did he get into the cart? Guess we didn&rsquo;t shovel him in, eh; we&rsquo;d have
+      seen him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow heap.
+      A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, and two
+      broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping ruefully, were
+      all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy swathes and
+      folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once been a tall man. The
+      peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of iron-gray hair, and a
+      grizzled beard hung over the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched woman
+      in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and shivered
+      beside the body for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a goner,&rdquo; was her criticism. &ldquo;I wish <i>I</i> was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking on her
+      unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from nowhere, and
+      were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior of the people
+      was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark, or offered any
+      suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and souls, absorbed in
+      the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were helpless, idealess,
+      interested and unconcerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run and fetch a peeler, Bill,&rdquo; said Tommy at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peeler be hanged! Bloomin&rsquo; likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sulky devil you are,&rdquo; answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder mood;
+      whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of Temperance.
+      It is true that he had only been &ldquo;Blue Ribbon&rdquo; since the end of his
+      Christmas bout&mdash;that is, for nearly a fortnight&mdash;and Virtue, a
+      precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night The
+      crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might truly
+      be said that &ldquo;the more part knew not wherefore they had come together.&rdquo;
+       The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure, otherwise the ring
+      would have been swaying this way and that. Neither was it a dispute
+      between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of angry repartees. It
+      might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a lost child. So the outer
+      circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited, and patiently endured till
+      the moment of revelation should arrive. Respectable people who passed only
+      glanced at the gathering; respectable people may wonder, but they never do
+      find out the mystery within a London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the
+      mob were some amateurs who had just been drinking in the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+      They were noisy, curious, and impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning, had
+      brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead man
+      was found in the cart-load of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the officers
+      stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where the dead
+      face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, it&rsquo;s old Dicky Shields!&rdquo; cried a voice in the crowd, as the peaked
+      still features were lighted up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived, after
+      the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed into the
+      warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know him, do you?&rdquo; asked the policeman with the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know him, rather! Didn&rsquo;t I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
+      this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at tattooing,
+      bless you: he&rsquo;d tattooed himself all over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
+      the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, he was in the <i>Hit or Miss</i>,&rdquo; the speaker went on, &ldquo;no later
+      nor last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot beats me,&rdquo; said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
+      corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, &ldquo;Wot beats me is
+      how he got in this here cart of ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s light enough surely,&rdquo; added Tommy; &ldquo;but I warrant <i>we</i> didn&rsquo;t
+      chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you put up at night?&rdquo; asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
+      had been ruminating on the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the yard there, behind that there hoarding,&rdquo; answered Tommy, pointing
+      to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the public-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters of
+      damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste ground.
+      The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled down,
+      probably as condemned &ldquo;slums,&rdquo; in some moment of reform, when people had
+      nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all the
+      latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when something
+      else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain sheds, with
+      roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of lumber-room for
+      the parish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the scavengers&rsquo; carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
+      the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
+      horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was this cart o&rsquo; yours under the sheds all night or in the open?&rdquo; asked
+      the policeman, with an air of penetration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just outside the shed, worn&rsquo;t it, Bill?&rdquo; replied Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the cart was outside,&rdquo; said the policeman, &ldquo;then the thing&rsquo;s plain
+      enough. You started from there, didn&rsquo;t you, with the cart in the
+      afternoon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; answered Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there was a little sprinkle o&rsquo; snow in the cart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May be there wos. I don&rsquo;t remember one way or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you <i>must</i> be a stupid if you don&rsquo;t see that this here cove,&rdquo;
+       pointing to the dead man, &ldquo;got drinking too much last night, lost hisself,
+      and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the cart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snow do make a fellow bloomin&rsquo; sleepy,&rdquo; one of the crowd assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
+      when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He&rsquo;s light
+      enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you started?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,&rdquo;
+       grunted Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, it&rsquo;s as plain as&mdash;as the nose on your face,&rdquo; said the
+      policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, Bobby!&rdquo; cried one of the crowd. &ldquo;They should make you an
+      inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
+      shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
+      and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
+      which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead man,
+      and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
+      northward to the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
+      and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their eyes
+      within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so, and at
+      last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
+      them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
+      Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
+      tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
+      intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the heroes
+      of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew all Tommy
+      and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of emotional
+      agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and making over
+      and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these performances was
+      sure to be particularly keen within the very walls where the dead man had
+      probably taken his last convivial glass, and where some light was certain
+      to be thrown, by the landlady or her customers, on the habits and history
+      of poor Dicky Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.&mdash;An Academic Pothouse.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Hit or Miss</i> tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least)
+      who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the
+      river&rsquo;s brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the
+      picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the
+      architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a
+      romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have
+      seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The <i>Hit
+      or Miss</i> was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its
+      fortunes. Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a
+      person as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, in the University
+      of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this
+      arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with
+      &ldquo;mine host&rdquo; of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, and found him to be by no means the
+      rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland
+      should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the <i>Hit or Miss</i>,
+      was only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals,
+      restorations, experiments&mdash;an age of dukes who are Socialists&mdash;an
+      age which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end
+      tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway&mdash;need not wonder
+      at Maitland&rsquo;s eccentric choice in philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy at a
+      public school, where he was known as a &ldquo;sap,&rdquo; or assiduous student, and
+      was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and rowing.
+      At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less unpopular.
+      His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien&rsquo;s, where his
+      services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a great desire
+      to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity, and to improve
+      humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life and duty had been
+      urged on him by his college &ldquo;coach,&rdquo; philosopher, and friend, Mr. Joseph
+      Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had made Maitland leave
+      his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St. Gatien&rsquo;s and betake
+      himself to practical philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tell me you don&rsquo;t see much in life,&rdquo; Bielby had said. &ldquo;Throw yourself
+      into the life of others, who have not much to live on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He
+      once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had his
+      own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the
+      citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from
+      the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John&rsquo;s, Baliol, and Wadham
+      Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of having
+      three &ldquo;devils,&rdquo; or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters of the
+      town between five and six o&rsquo;clock every morning, that the artisans might
+      be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Maitland&rsquo;s schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby
+      urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in town.
+      He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a Palace
+      of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing this
+      ingenious idea in the columns of the <i>Daily Trumpet</i>, Maitland looked
+      out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy notion of
+      taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was acted upon at
+      the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own bar-room he
+      could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least sophisticated
+      aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and adulterated stuff
+      He would raise the tone of his customers, while he would insensibly gain
+      some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake off the prig (which he
+      knew to be a strong element in his nature), and would, at the same time,
+      encourage temperance by providing good malt liquor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire a
+      tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when
+      æstheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while
+      philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in,
+      like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the old
+      leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of
+      &ldquo;impressions&rdquo; and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling
+      against this &ldquo;side,&rdquo; as he called it, of his &ldquo;culture,&rdquo; and in his hours
+      of reaction he was all for steam tramways, &ldquo;devils,&rdquo; and Kindergartens
+      standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old
+      innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of
+      those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease
+      of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his opportunity.
+      The <i>Hit or Miss</i> was as attractive to an artistic as most
+      public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the
+      bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled
+      old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near
+      the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that way:
+      the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished, till at
+      last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces, and a
+      dust-yard round it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so
+high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the
+attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls
+were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering
+projecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by huge
+wooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by a
+low-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. At
+one corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:
+
+     &ldquo;Jack&rsquo;s Bridge House.
+     &ldquo;<i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;Luck&rsquo;s All.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way, over
+      which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the plaster)
+      lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building. From this
+      door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house kept for its
+      intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled roofs and dormer
+      windows than that which faced the street. The passage led down to a slum,
+      and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty space and the
+      dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left beneath the
+      sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within, the <i>Hit or Miss</i> looked cosey enough to persons entering out
+      of the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide
+      old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle. On
+      these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place
+      themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within a
+      room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber by
+      itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained admittance
+      to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear, now and
+      then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere presence, and
+      without in the least intending it, an Early Closing Movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed landlady,
+      or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the finding of
+      poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been. Again and again
+      the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more began to take the
+      place of assertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; asked one of the men, &ldquo;how old Dicky got the money for a
+      boose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money, ay, and the chance,&rdquo; said another. &ldquo;That daughter of his&mdash;a
+      nice-looking girl she is&mdash;kept poor Dicky pretty tight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t let him get&mdash;&rdquo; the epigrammatist of the company was just
+      beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter
+      burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t let him <i>get</i> tight, you was a-goin&rsquo; to say, Tommy,&rdquo; howled
+      three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping of
+      thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like crackers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dicky &lsquo;ad been &lsquo;avin&rsquo; bad times for long,&rdquo; the first speaker went on. &ldquo;I
+      guess he &lsquo;ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for
+      tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful
+      forever about here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or else
+      he was clean sold out, and hadn&rsquo;t no capital to renew his stock of hairy
+      cats and young parrots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky&rsquo;s shop, had got to look
+      real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the
+      long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that &lsquo;ere shiny old
+      rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t&rsquo;other
+      deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o&rsquo; a drain, let
+      alone a booze, beats me, it does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the
+      conversation, &ldquo;why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A
+      most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to
+      meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used to do
+      him a turn of his trade&mdash;tattooing him, like. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m doing him to
+      pattern, mum,&rsquo; Dicky sez, sez he: &lsquo;a <i>facsimile</i> o&rsquo; myself, mum.&rsquo; It
+      wasn&rsquo;t much they drank neither&mdash;just a couple of pints; for sez the
+      sailor gentleman, he sez, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m afeared, mum, our friend here can&rsquo;t carry
+      much even of <i>your</i> capital stuff. We must excuse&rsquo; sez he, &lsquo;the
+      failings of an artis&rsquo;; but I doesn&rsquo;t want his hand to shake or slip when
+      he&rsquo;s a doin&rsquo; <i>me</i>,&rsquo; sez he. &lsquo;Might > spile the pattern,&rsquo; he sez,
+      &lsquo;also hurt&rsquo; And I wouldn&rsquo;t have served old Dicky with more than was good
+      for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn&rsquo;t I promised that poor
+      daughter of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school&mdash;years ago
+      now&mdash;I promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of&mdash;A
+      hangel, if here isn&rsquo;t Mr. Maitland his very self!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord,
+      the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one&mdash;some
+      with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness&mdash;they
+      shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland&rsquo;s appearance had
+      produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Gullick,&rdquo; said poor Maitland, ruefully, &ldquo;I came here for a
+      chat with our friends&mdash;a little social relaxation&mdash;on economic
+      questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, they&rsquo;re a rough lot, and don&rsquo;t think themselves company for the
+      likes of you. But,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly&mdash;with the delight of
+      the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale&mdash;&ldquo;you &lsquo;ve heard this
+      hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to
+      ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland,
+      growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to <i>herself</i>, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what about her father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone, sir&mdash;gone! In a cartload o&rsquo; snow, this very evening, he was
+      found, just outside o* this very door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a cartload of snow!&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;Do you mean that he went away in
+      it, or that he was found in it dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this very
+      house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I do
+      assure you. He had been steady&mdash;oh, steady for weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to a
+      certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some
+      relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known
+      old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopeless
+      <i>mauvais sujet</i>. But Dicky&rsquo;s daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy
+      flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer
+      transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having
+      her educated there, and after she was educated&mdash;why, then, Maitland
+      had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of
+      their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle; not that
+      he objected&mdash;on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his views in
+      writing. There were times&mdash;there had lately, above all, been times&mdash;when
+      Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in this document
+      Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and pretty a girl
+      his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an obstacle; he was
+      no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man&rsquo;s way; he was nobody&rsquo;s
+      enemy now, not even his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a sensation
+      rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland&rsquo;s consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me everything you know of this wretched business,&rdquo; he said, rising
+      and closing the door which led into the outer room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know that
+      Dicky had found a friend lately&mdash;an old shipmate, or petty-officer,
+      he called him&mdash;a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a
+      merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at sea,
+      and he&rsquo;d bring him here &lsquo;to yarn with him,&rsquo; he said, once or twice it
+      might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old
+      Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an
+      honest penny by his trade&mdash;a queer trade it was. Never more than a
+      pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most
+      considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought him
+      in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor comes
+      in, rubbing his eyes, and &lsquo;Good-night, mum,&rsquo; sez he. &lsquo;My friend&rsquo;s been
+      gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I&rsquo;ve been asleep by myself. If
+      you please, I&rsquo;ll just settle our little score. It&rsquo;s the last for a long
+      time, for I&rsquo;m bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward. Oh, mum, a
+      sailor&rsquo;s life!&rsquo; So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a gentleman,
+      and out he goes, and that&rsquo;s the last I ever see o&rsquo; poor Dicky Shields till
+      he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart, cold and stiff,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get <i>into</i>
+      the cart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s just what they&rsquo;ve been wondering at, though the cart was
+      handy and uncommon convenient for a man as &lsquo;ad too much, if &lsquo;ad he &lsquo;<i>ad</i>;
+      as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would not
+      intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and never
+      wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what&rsquo;s <i>that</i>?&rdquo; screamed Mrs. Gullick,
+      leaping to her feet in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst
+      open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a
+      cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick&rsquo;s bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if ever I &lsquo;<i>ad</i> a fright!&rdquo; that worthy lady exclaimed, turning
+      toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little
+      animal in an affectionate clasp. &ldquo;Well, if <i>ever</i> there was such a
+      child as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you <i>now</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mother,&rdquo; cried the bear, &ldquo;I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the
+      roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was &lsquo;arf awake, I was that horful
+      frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you just go up-stairs again&mdash;and here&rsquo;s a sweet-cake for you&mdash;and
+      you take this night-light,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, producing the articles she
+      mentioned, &ldquo;and put it in the basin careful, and knock on the floor with
+      the poker if you want me. If it wasn&rsquo;t for that bearskin Mr. Toopny was
+      kind enough to let you keep, you&rsquo;d get your death o&rsquo; cold, you would,
+      running about in the night. And look &lsquo;ere, Lizer,&rdquo; she added, patting the
+      child affectionately on the shoulder, &ldquo;do get that there Bird out o&rsquo; your
+      head. It&rsquo;s just nothing but indigestion comes o&rsquo; you and the other
+      children&mdash;himps they may well call you, and himps I&rsquo;m sure you are&mdash;always
+      wasting your screws on pasty and lemonade and raspberry vinegar.
+      Just-nothing but indigestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace,
+      about Mrs. Gullick&rsquo;s neck; and then, without lavishing attention on
+      Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure, sir, I ask your pardon,&rdquo; exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; &ldquo;but
+      Lizer&rsquo;s far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or
+      else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has
+      been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man, and
+      all of them at the <i>Hilarity</i>, you can&rsquo;t <i>think</i>, sir,&rdquo; said
+      Mrs. Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland&rsquo;s general
+      capacity for abstract speculation. &ldquo;A regular little genius that child is,
+      though I says it as shouldn&rsquo;t. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father,
+      sir.&rdquo; And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but, like
+      too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial enjoyment.
+      Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had appointed Mrs.
+      Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after his property when
+      he became landlord of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more than
+      four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a little
+      late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with the jug,
+      he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing didn&rsquo;t
+      drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would &lsquo;a died
+      laughing, and him so thirsty, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the knap?&rdquo; said Maitland, who imagined that &ldquo;the knap&rdquo; must be some
+      malady incident to childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, it&rsquo;s when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know,
+      and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise of a
+      box on the ear: that&rsquo;s what we call &lsquo;taking the knap&rsquo; in the profession.
+      And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all&mdash;Lizer was that
+      clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp at the <i>Hilarity</i>
+      pantermime; and they&rsquo;re that good to her, they let her bring her bearskin
+      home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the Little Bear in &lsquo;The
+      Three Bears,&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle
+      Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned
+      paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude of
+      Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on the
+      traditional narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was the child saying about a big Bird?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What was it
+      that frightened her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something
+      hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things
+      in pantermimes might put notions in a child&rsquo;s head. But when she came home
+      last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and swore she
+      had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim over the
+      street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she flies,
+      screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to get her to
+      sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre pantermime
+      bearskin, that fits her like another skin&mdash;and she&rsquo;ll be too big for
+      it next year&mdash;just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That&rsquo;s all
+      about it, sir. She&rsquo;ll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;and, as I am
+      passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl.
+      Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields,
+      you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about her
+      father&rsquo;s death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it
+      happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; &ldquo;and being safe away at
+      school, sir, we&rsquo;ll hope she won&rsquo;t be told no more than she needn&rsquo;t know
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was
+      filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the raw
+      darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed at no
+      great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen
+      comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood reading
+      his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and there to
+      save threepence,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     &ldquo;Tiverton.
+     &ldquo;I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do
+     not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.
+     Break news.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to
+      construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous badness
+      of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the paper when
+      we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need for
+      haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was buying stamps, and,
+      finishing his bargain before the despatch was stamped and delivered, went
+      out into the fog, and was no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.&mdash;Miss Marlett&rsquo;s.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Girls&rsquo; schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you chance
+      to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold. Their noses
+      (however charming these features may become in a year or two, or even may
+      be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty temperature in the long
+      dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of the fair pupils are apt to
+      seem larger than common, inclined to blue in color, and, generally, are
+      suggestive of inadequate circulation. À tendency to get as near the fire
+      as possible (to come within the frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden),
+      and to cower beneath shawls, is also characteristic of joyous girlhood&mdash;school-girlhood,
+      that is. In fact, one thinks of a girls&rsquo; school as too frequently a spot
+      where no one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal
+      procession is not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there
+      is apt to be a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient
+      clothing, and general unsatisfied tedium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett&rsquo;s Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more
+      briefly known as &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,&rdquo; was no exception, on a
+      particularly cold February day&mdash;the day after Dicky Shields was found
+      dead&mdash;to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a
+      girls&rsquo; school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where &ldquo;the fires
+      wass coot,&rdquo; as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its lawn
+      sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little
+      distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch
+      pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s were not good on this February
+      morning. They never <i>were</i> good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one
+      of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for
+      persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know what
+      they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which,
+      consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only
+      revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of
+      stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal
+      had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads
+      were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to be
+      urged along the heavy ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but
+      it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were
+      just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the
+      pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear,&rdquo; said one maiden&mdash;Janey Harman by name&mdash;whose blonde
+      complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien and
+      unbecoming hues, &ldquo;<i>why</i> won&rsquo;t that old Cat let us have fires to dress
+      by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and I cant get them clean,&rdquo; said Margaret, holding up two very
+      pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,
+     Are not my <i>hands</i> washed white?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies,&rdquo; came a voice, accompanied by
+      an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a
+      fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett,&rdquo; replied the maiden thus
+      rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;&lsquo;Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether
+      the best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as
+      if &ldquo;that Miss Shields&rdquo; was laughing at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Cat!&rdquo; the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. &ldquo;But no wonder my
+      hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it&rsquo;s my week to be
+      Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut
+      off some of the enemy&rsquo;s supplies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of
+      coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are something <i>like</i> a
+      stoker,&rdquo; exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing:
+      &ldquo;we shall have a blaze to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s school, by an unusual and
+      inconsistent concession to comfort and sanitary principles, the elder
+      girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter.
+      But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked, inasmuch
+      as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots, the girls
+      were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it could be found.
+      Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each other&rsquo;s fireplaces, and
+      concealed the coal in their pockets. But this conduct&mdash;resembling
+      what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands, that they &ldquo;eke out a
+      precarious livelihood by taking in each other&rsquo;s washing&rdquo;&mdash;led to
+      strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week (as the girl
+      appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to infringe a little
+      on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened,
+      Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore herself in her high
+      office as to extort the admiration of the very housemaids.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Even the ranks of Tusculum
+     Could scarce forbear to cheer,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      If we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields&rsquo;
+      favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was
+      mercifully unaware that not to detect the &ldquo;pinchbeck&rdquo; in the <i>Lays</i>
+      is the sign of a grovelling nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she was sent to Miss Marlett&rsquo;s, four years ere this date, Margaret
+      Shields&rsquo; instruction had been limited. &ldquo;The best thing that could be said
+      for it,&rdquo; as the old sporting prophet remarked of his own education, &ldquo;was
+      that it had been mainly eleemosynary.&rdquo; The Chelsea School Board fees could
+      but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields. But Robert Maitland, when
+      still young in philanthropy, had seen the clever, merry, brown-eyed child
+      at some school treat, or inspection, or other function; had covenanted in
+      some sort with her shiftless parent; had rescued the child from the
+      streets, and sent her as a pupil to Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. Like Mr. Day, the
+      accomplished author of &ldquo;Sandford and Merton,&rdquo; and creator of the immortal
+      Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had conceived the hope that he might have a
+      girl educated up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or
+      &ldquo;ready-made,&rdquo; a helpmate meet for him. He was, in a more or less formal
+      way, the guardian of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be expected (by
+      anyone who did not know human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland could &ldquo;please himself,&rdquo; as people say; that is, in his choice of
+      a partner he had no relations to please&mdash;no one but the elect young
+      lady, who, after all, might not be &ldquo;pleased&rdquo; with alacrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields was
+      extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates
+      (&ldquo;chamber-dekyns&rdquo; they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four
+      hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and
+      comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett&rsquo;s
+      shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This
+      young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy
+      glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight knot, and
+      with a smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful to her
+      lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a heroine,
+      &ldquo;were rather too large for regular beauty.&rdquo; She was perfectly ready to
+      face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her mistress) when
+      the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o&rsquo;clock exactly, and the drowsy
+      girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the wintry class-rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat
+      which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does
+      anyone remember&mdash;can anyone forget&mdash;how horribly distasteful a
+      slate can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold
+      educational formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy
+      slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for
+      some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. &ldquo;Tare an&rsquo; &lsquo;ouns, <i>I</i>
+      call it,&rdquo; whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a
+      &ldquo;course&rdquo; of Lever&rsquo;s Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory
+      progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging
+      herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso&rsquo;s engaging work which is
+      most palpitating with actuality:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink
+      twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire
+      laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles in
+      length, and four feet six in height?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret&rsquo;s mathematical
+      endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest girls
+      can be) she was playing at &ldquo;oughts and crosses&rdquo; with Janey Harman when the
+      arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly, beside Miss
+      Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and set himself
+      vigorously to elucidate (by &ldquo;the low cunning of algebra&rdquo;) the difficult
+      sum from Colenso.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, it is like <i>this</i>,&rdquo; he said, mumbling rapidly, and
+      scribbling a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to
+      follow with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite
+      dazed Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his
+      topic so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make
+      allowance for the benighted darkness of the learner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it&rsquo;s quite
+      simple,&rdquo; said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you; I <i>see</i>,&rdquo; said Margaret, with the kind readiness of
+      woman, who would profess to &ldquo;see&rdquo; the Secret of Hegel, or the inmost heart
+      of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of cover-point, or
+      the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon, rather than be
+      troubled with prolonged explanations, which the expositor, after all,
+      might find it inconvenient to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar&rsquo;s <i>forte</i>; and no young
+      lady in Miss Marlett&rsquo;s establishment was so hungry, or so glad when eight
+      o&rsquo;clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s was not a convivial meal. There was a long
+      narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, or <i>dais</i>,
+      being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals down the
+      table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter&mdash;of extremely thick
+      bread and surprisingly thin butter&mdash;each slice being divided into
+      four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether
+      this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at seven,
+      till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps, the
+      inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with confidence. But,
+      if girls do not always learn as much at school as could be desired,
+      intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every chance of
+      acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if familiarity
+      really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that Miss
+      Marlett&rsquo;s establishment was a <i>Dothegirls Hall</i>, nor a school much
+      more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has
+      still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than,
+      persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places; but boys
+      have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their breakfasts, which
+      would be considered horribly indelicate and insubordinate conduct in
+      girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Est ce que vous aimez les tartines à l&rsquo;Anglaise,&rdquo; said Janey Harman to
+      Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ce que j&rsquo;aime dans la tartine, c&rsquo;est la simplicité prime-sautière da sa
+      nature,&rdquo; answered Miss Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the charms of the &ldquo;matinal meal&rdquo; (as the author of &ldquo;Guy
+      Livingstone&rdquo; calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled to
+      talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptée, sont Françaises, dans cet
+      établissement peu recréatif,&rdquo; went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Je déteste le Français,&rdquo; Margaret answered, &ldquo;mais je le préfère
+      infiniment à l&rsquo;Allemand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comment accentuez, vous le mot préfère, Marguerite?&rdquo; asked Miss Marlett,
+      who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of conveying
+      instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, two accents&mdash;one this way, and the other that,&rdquo; answered
+      Margaret, caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct
+      terminology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vous allez perdre dix marks,&rdquo; remarked the schoolmistress, if
+      incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy to say,
+      off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for &ldquo;marks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voici les lettres qui arrivent,&rdquo; whispered Janey to Margaret, as the
+      post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it
+      with a key and withdrew the contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first sorted
+      out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and
+      unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other
+      letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could trust,
+      and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were regarded
+      with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman, whose letters
+      Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before delivering them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire,&rdquo; said poor Janey to her
+      friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at
+      stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about in
+      her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the edges.
+      Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the briefest
+      and most decorous manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Qui est votre correspondent?&rdquo; Margaret asked. We are not defending her
+      French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C&rsquo;est le pauvre Harry Wyville,&rdquo; answered Janey. &ldquo;Il est sous-lieutenant
+      dans les Berkshires à Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas écrire à moi, il
+      est comme on diroit, mon frère.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Est il votre parent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Non, pas du tout, mais je l&rsquo;ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans!
+      Voici, elle à deux dépêches télégraphiques,&rdquo; Janey added, observing two
+      orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant
+      Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeanne je veux vous parler à part, après, dans mon boudoir,&rdquo; remarked
+      Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched,
+      displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to one
+      by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who is
+      just like one&rsquo;s brother, is a trial to any girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which, as
+      Janey had noticed, included <i>two</i> telegraphic despatches in
+      orange-colored envelopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the
+      admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have done so,
+      but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils&rsquo; correspondence
+      before attending to her own. &ldquo;Business first, pleasure afterward,&rdquo; was the
+      motto of this admirable woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the
+      day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman,&rdquo; said the
+      schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so
+      unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious&mdash;unwonted
+      moods for this careless maiden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Janey, something must have happened,&rdquo; she whispered to her friend, who
+      was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something&rsquo;s <i>going</i> to happen, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; said poor Janey,
+      apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what Miss
+      Marlett, when she spoke French, called her &ldquo;boudoir.&rdquo; The girl felt colder
+      than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss Marietta
+      door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the low white
+      hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls was
+      standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins and
+      sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two
+      blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of the
+      ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray haze
+      was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and the
+      branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black holes
+      in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish plash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came
+      out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before
+      her, and her own unformed misgivings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t give me the letter. I&rsquo;m to have it when I go home for good; and
+      I&rsquo;m to go home for good at the holidays,&rdquo; whimpered Janey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Janey!&rdquo; said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Shields, come here!&rdquo; cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice, from
+      the boudoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to the back music-room when she&rsquo;s done with you,&rdquo; the other girl
+      whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss Marlett&rsquo;s
+      chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Margaret!&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was
+      standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting
+      grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she
+      generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Margaret!&rdquo; she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the
+      school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could
+      scarcely speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it an accident?&rdquo; asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well what
+      was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no prophet to
+      foretell. &ldquo;Was it anything very dreadful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor Daisy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!&rdquo; the girl sobbed. Somehow she was
+      kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady&rsquo;s lap. &ldquo;I have been
+      horrid to you. I am so wretched!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret
+      Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college, with
+      a sad and hungry heart, trying to &ldquo;carry it off by her wild talk and her
+      wit.&rdquo; &ldquo;It was bitterness they mistook for frolic.&rdquo; She had known herself
+      to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with the other
+      girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret had not
+      gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than they knew;
+      she had been in the &ldquo;best set&rdquo; among the pupils, by dint of her cheery
+      rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and knew, too,
+      that she had been living, socially, in that little society at the expense
+      of this kind queer old Miss Marlett&rsquo;s feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been horrid to you,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;I wish I had never been born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl&rsquo;s
+      beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind me,&rdquo; at last Miss Marlett said. &ldquo;I never thought hardly of
+      you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you can
+      have any of the girls you like to help you to pack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which of
+      the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that it
+      was the other culprit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her
+      arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to
+      select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she
+      was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and
+      affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word <i>legibus</i>
+      (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension,
+      legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical
+      subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been
+      Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the
+      end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was honored as a
+      goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages. But now Miss
+      Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold
+      water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness
+      seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again and
+      again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this
+      chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the
+      traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey
+      was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to my room, Janey,&rdquo; she said, beckoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was
+      forbidden to the girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, well only get into another scrape,&rdquo; said Janey, ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, come away; I&rsquo;ve got leave for you. You&rsquo;re to help me to pack&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pack!&rdquo; cried Janey. &ldquo;Why, <i>you&rsquo;re</i> not expelled, are you? You&rsquo;ve
+      done nothing. You&rsquo;ve not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy
+      who is just like a brother to you and whom you&rsquo;ve known for years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
+      and intense curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they reached their room, where Margaret&rsquo;s portmanteau had already
+      been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for a
+      short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she sat
+      down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair &ldquo;had a
+      good cry,&rdquo; and comforted each other as well as they might.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are you going to do?&rdquo; asked Janey, when, as Homer says, &ldquo;they
+      had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no one else in all the world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna. Since
+      then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers, and we
+      were at Marseilles, and then in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a guardian, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he&rsquo;s been very kind, and done
+      everything for me; but he&rsquo;s quite a young man, not thirty, and he&rsquo;s so
+      stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like a
+      book. And he&rsquo;s so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because he
+      likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
+      lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?&rdquo;
+       Janey asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
+      been an officer in father&rsquo;s ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
+      sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t know any of your father&rsquo;s family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Margaret, wearily. &ldquo;Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
+      prayer-book.&rdquo; And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
+      silver clasps. &ldquo;This was a book my father gave me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It has a
+      name on it&mdash;my grandfather&rsquo;s, I suppose&mdash;&lsquo;Richard Johnson,
+      Linkheaton, 1837.&rsquo;&rdquo; Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling
+      cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother&rsquo;s father it may have belonged to,&rdquo; said Janey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you won&rsquo;t stay away long, dear,&rdquo; said Janey, affectionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>you</i> are going, too, you know,&rdquo; Margaret answered, without much
+      tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break down,
+      when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the snow-laden
+      drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, here&rsquo;s some one coming!&rdquo; cried Janey, rushing to the window. &ldquo;Two
+      horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.&mdash;Flown.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maitland&rsquo;s reflections as, in performance of the promise he had
+      telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted. The
+      newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left
+      unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made that
+      they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering its
+      effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard Shields
+      affected Maitland&rsquo;s purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He had for
+      some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the girl was
+      concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had been dimly
+      aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a new, rather
+      painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady. Maitland, in
+      fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit for, and a sign
+      of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had greeted, some
+      weeks before, Barton&rsquo;s casual criticism on Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his
+      philanthropic entanglement&mdash;it was rather, he said to himself, an
+      entanglement than an engagement&mdash;had become irksome to his fancy. Now
+      that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the daughter
+      would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations in which they
+      stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men from seeing
+      this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy conceit. A
+      curious &ldquo;aloofness&rdquo; of nature permitted him to stand aside, and see
+      himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This disposition is
+      rare, and not a source of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, his future relations to Margaret formed a puzzle
+      inextricable. He could not at all imagine how he was to dispose of so
+      embarrassing a <i>protégée</i>. Margaret was becoming too much of a woman
+      to be left much longer at school; and where was she to be disposed of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might send her to Girton,&rdquo; he thought; and then, characteristically, he
+      began to weigh in his mind the comparative educational merits of Girton
+      and Somerville Hall. About one thing only was he certain: he must consult
+      his college mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, as soon as might be. Too long
+      had this Rasselas&mdash;occupied, like the famous Prince of Abyssinia,
+      with <i>the choice of life</i>&mdash;neglected to resort to his academic
+      Imlac. In the meantime he could only reflect that Margaret must remain as
+      a pupil at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. The moment would soon be arriving when some
+      other home, and a chaperon instead of a school-mistress, must be found for
+      this peculiar object of philanthropy and outdoor relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the nine o&rsquo;clock train. The
+      early dusk began to gather, gray and damp; the train was late, having made
+      tardy progress through the half-melted snow. He had set out from
+      Paddington by the half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh and
+      crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the most sceptical that Maitland
+      could not reach Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in anything but
+      a happy temper, he engaged a fly, and drove off, along heavy miserable
+      roads, to the Dovecot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment,
+      Maitland&rsquo;s cabman &ldquo;pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked&rdquo; for a
+      considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of Miss
+      Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected no visitors,
+      though Maitland knew that he ought to be expected. &ldquo;The bandogs bayed and
+      howled,&rdquo; as they did round the secret bower of the Lady of Brauksome; and
+      lights flitted about the windows. When a lantern at last came flickering
+      up to the gate, the bearer of it stopped to challenge an apparently
+      unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you? What do you want?&rdquo; said a female voice, in a strong Devonian
+      accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want Miss Marlett,&rdquo; answered Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some hesitation. Then the porter appeared to reflect that a
+      burglar would not arrive in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would
+      not ask for the schoolmistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portals were at length unbarred and lugged apart over the gravel, and
+      Maitland followed the cook (for she was no one less) and the candle up to
+      the front door. He gave his card, and was ushered into the chamber
+      reserved for interviews with parents and guardians. The drawing-room had
+      the air and faint smell of a room very seldom occupied. All the chairs
+      were so elegantly and cunningly constructed that they tilted up at
+      intervals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted himself to their
+      hospitality. Their backs were decorated with antimacassars wrought with
+      glass beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone fitfully with a
+      frosty lustre. On the round table in the middle were volumes of &ldquo;The
+      Mothers of England,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Grandmothers of the Bible,&rdquo; Blair &ldquo;On the
+      Grave,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Epic of Hades,&rdquo; the latter copiously and appropriately
+      illustrated. In addition to these cheerful volumes there were large tomes
+      of lake and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded magenta bindings,
+      shrouded from the garish light of day in drab paper covers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung with prize sketches, in
+      water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former
+      works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a mauve
+      hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber rocks,
+      touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an
+      agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders by
+      Somebody&rsquo;s Patent Dome-Blacklead, &ldquo;increases the attractions of the
+      fireside,&rdquo; according to the advertisements. Maitland knew all the
+      blacklead caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. They were old
+      acquaintances, and as he fidgeted about the room he became very impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett appeared, rustling in silks,
+      very stiff, and with an air of extreme astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland?&rdquo; she said, in an interrogative tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you expect me? Didn&rsquo;t you get my telegram?&rdquo; asked Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to him that the storm might have injured the wires, that his
+      message might never have arrived, and that he might be obliged to explain
+      everything, and break his bad news in person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly. I got <i>both</i> your telegrams. But why have you come
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and consult you about her. But
+      what do you mean by <i>both</i> my telegrams?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down with unexpected suddenness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what will become of the poor girl?&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;and what will become
+      of <i>me</i>? It will get talked about. The parents will hear of it, and I
+      am ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief over her eyes, to the extreme
+      discomfiture of Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman cry; and that
+      Miss Marlett should cry&mdash;Miss Marlett, the least melting, as he had
+      fancied, of her sex&mdash;was a circumstance which entirely puzzled and
+      greatly disconcerted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent, looking at a flower in the pattern of the carpet, for
+      at least a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, about what is to become of the
+      poor girl; but I do not see how the parents of the other young ladies are
+      concerned. Death is common to all; and Margaret&rsquo;s father, though his life
+      was exposed to criticism, cannot be fairly censured because he has left it
+      And what do you mean, please, by receiving <i>both</i> my telegrams? I
+      only #sent <i>one</i>, to the effect that I would leave town by the 10.30
+      train, and come straight to you. There must be some mistake somewhere. Can
+      I see Miss Shields?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See Miss Shields! Why, she&rsquo;s <i>gone!</i> She left this morning with your
+      friend,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and alarmed,
+      and looking straight at her visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s <i>gone!</i> She left this morning with my friend!&rdquo; repeated
+      Maitland. He felt like a man in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself, and
+      in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her
+      father&rsquo;s friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so
+      she went with <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow,&rdquo; cried Maitland;
+      &ldquo;and I sent no second telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then who <i>did</i> send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both
+      telegrams,&rdquo; cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left
+      the room.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had
+time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had
+become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her
+from school at the very moment of her father&rsquo;s accidental death? And by
+what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from
+himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one?
+The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched
+telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to
+Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been
+mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might
+have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem,
+might
+
+     &ldquo;Have wrote it all by rote,
+     And never wrote it right.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the
+      recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse) had
+      gone off with &ldquo;his friend, Mr. Lithgow.&rdquo; Clearly, no amount of accident or
+      mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and the
+      disappearance of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly
+      blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature&mdash;as he
+      admitted, on the evidence of his old college tutor&mdash;that he was never
+      able to see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his
+      own interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command the
+      whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for people,
+      and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the right, and
+      everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more full-blooded
+      life, he would probably have lost his temper, and &ldquo;spoken his mind,&rdquo; as
+      the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should never have let
+      Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a telegram from the
+      girl&rsquo;s guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about finding
+      the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour. At last
+      she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch in her hand,
+      but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated young lady, in
+      whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have recognized Miss Janey
+      Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely bowed vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have seen on other occasions,&rdquo; said
+      Miss Marlett, trying to be calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than ever. It did occur to him,
+      that the fewer people knew of so delicate a business the better for
+      Margaret&rsquo;s sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Maitland, partly because she is Miss
+      Shields&rsquo; greatest friend&rdquo; (here Janey sobbed), &ldquo;but chiefly because she
+      can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of what I have told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Marlett; but will you kindly let me
+      compare the two telegrams? This is a most extraordinary affair, and we
+      ought to lose no time in investigating it, and discovering its meaning.
+      You and I are responsible, you know, to ourselves, if unfortunately to no
+      one else, for Margaret&rsquo;s safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t got the two telegrams!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Miss Marlett, who
+      could not live up to the stately tone of Maitland. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got them, or
+      rather, I only have one of them, and I have hunted everywhere, high and
+      low, for the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she offered Maitland a single dispatch, and the flimsy pink paper
+      fluttered in her shaking hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland took it up and read aloud:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Sent out at 7.45.    Received 7.51.
+     &ldquo;From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     &ldquo;Tiverton.
+     &ldquo;I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train.
+     Do not let Margaret see the newspaper.
+     Her father dead. Break news.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that is my own telegram!&rdquo; cried Maitland; &ldquo;but what have you done
+      with the other you said you received?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the very one I cannot find, though I had both on the escritoire
+      in my own room this morning. I cannot believe anyone would touch it. I did
+      not lock them away, not expecting to have any use for them; but I am quite
+      sure, the last time I saw them, they were lying there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is very extraordinary,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;You tell me, Miss Marlett,
+      that you received two telegrams from me. On the strength of the later of
+      the two you let your pupil go away with a person of whom you know nothing,
+      and then you have not even the telegram to show me. How long an interval
+      was there between the receipt of the two despatches?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got them both at once,&rdquo; said poor, trembling Miss Marlett, who felt the
+      weakness of her case. &ldquo;They were both sent up with the letters this
+      morning. Were they not, Miss Harman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Janey; &ldquo;I certainly saw two telegraphic envelopes lying among
+      your letters at breakfast. I mentioned it to&mdash;to poor Margaret,&rdquo; she
+      added, with a break in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why were the telegrams not delivered last night?&rdquo; Maitland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have left orders,&rdquo; Miss Marlett answered, &ldquo;that only telegrams of
+      instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings,
+      and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about nothing
+      in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams <i>were</i> very
+      important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about them if
+      they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning. I have had a
+      great deal of annoyance and expense,&rdquo; the schoolmistress added, &ldquo;with
+      telegrams that had to be paid for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here most people who live at a distance from telegraph offices, and
+      are afflicted with careless friends whose touch on the wire is easy and
+      light, will perhaps sympathize with Miss Marlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might at least have telegraphed back to ask me to confirm the
+      instructions, when you read the second despatch,&rdquo; said Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was beginning to take an argumentative interest in the strength of his
+      own case. It was certainly very strong, and the excuse for the
+      schoolmistress was weak in proportion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that would have been of no use, as it happens,&rdquo; Janey put in&mdash;an
+      unexpected and welcome ally to Miss Marlett&mdash;&ldquo;because you must have
+      left Paddington long before the question could have reached you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact; and Miss Marlett could not
+      repress a grateful glance in the direction of her wayward pupil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Maitland, &ldquo;it is all very provoking, and very serious. Can
+      you remember at all how the second message ran, Miss Marlett?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I know it off by heart; it was directed exactly like that in your
+      hand, and was dated half an hour later. It ran: &lsquo;Plans altered. Margaret
+      required in town. My friend and her father&rsquo;s, Mr. Lithgow, will call for
+      her soon after mid-day. I noticed there were just twenty words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you also notice the office from which the message was sent out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with an effort at recollection.
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I did not notice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is very unfortunate,&rdquo; said Maitland, walking vaguely up and down the
+      room. &ldquo;Do you think the telegram is absolutely lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have looked everywhere, and asked all the maids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you see it last, for certain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make
+      sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he
+      seemed very cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which he
+      probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know
+      anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had&mdash;&rdquo;
+       muttered Maitland to himself. &ldquo;She has never been in any place, Miss
+      Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man&rsquo;s
+      acquaintance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage it,
+      Mr. Maitland,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am <i>sure</i> Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have
+      such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken me
+      in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy; she had
+      been crying. I said, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he must have
+      come for you.&rsquo; Then she looked out and said, &lsquo;It is not my guardian; it is
+      the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of a man was he to look at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black
+      mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he was
+      not a young man. He was a gentleman,&rdquo; said Janey, who flattered herself
+      that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that grand old
+      name&mdash;when she saw them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you know him again if you met him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere,&rdquo; said Janey; &ldquo;and I would know his voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wore mourning,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, &ldquo;and he told me he had known
+      Margaret&rsquo;s father. I heard him say a few words to her, in a very kind way,
+      about him. That seemed more comfort to Margaret than anything. &lsquo;He did not
+      suffer at all, my dear,&rsquo; he said. He spoke to her in that way, as an older
+      man might.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how on earth could <i>he</i> know?&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;No one was
+      present when her poor father died. His body was found in a&mdash;,&rdquo; and
+      Maitland paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for
+      adding to the public information about the circumstances of Mr. Shields&rsquo;
+      decease. &ldquo;He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of
+      the great storm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and
+      fatigue is as painless as sleep,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett with some tact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that is what the man must have meant,&rdquo; Maitland answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered,
+      trying to think over any circumstance which might lend a clew in the
+      search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he said &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; after making the superfluous remark that it
+      would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or
+      unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred, for
+      excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she had
+      taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it; and
+      when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea), a kind
+      of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the
+      schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly)
+      that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother
+      was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts of
+      contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had
+      distinguished himself, and if it did end &ldquo;Yours affectionately,&rdquo; there was
+      nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things considered. So
+      the fair owner of the letter received it into her own keeping, only she
+      was &ldquo;never to do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret&rsquo;s
+      inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient
+      sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of her
+      own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable
+      estimate of her pupil&rsquo;s discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which was
+      an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never doubted
+      that, on the death of Miss Shields&rsquo; father, she had been removed by one of
+      her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pass the night at
+      Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest reason for
+      anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend and protector, and
+      who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or conspiracy. Nothing more
+      practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s occurred to
+      his perplexed imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.&mdash;At St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such
+      inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients. He
+      was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based his
+      conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these
+      &ldquo;authorities.&rdquo; For example, he first went in search of the man who had
+      driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the
+      Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who plied
+      at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he had
+      driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady was
+      ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took the
+      up-train. That was all <i>he</i> knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were
+      asked, was &ldquo;a scaly varmint.&rdquo; On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide
+      moral generalization was based on the limited <i>pour-boire</i> which Mr.
+      Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
+      Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took away
+      with him on his return to town&mdash;not in the van, in the railway
+      carriage. &ldquo;What could he want with all that luggage?&rdquo; Maitland wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which
+      conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official had
+      seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went on to
+      London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start for
+      Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as
+      Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in
+      novels, gentlemen often assume the <i>rôle</i> of the detective with
+      apparent relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too
+      scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and
+      station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered having
+      seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a young lady,
+      of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive description.
+      The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly constructed,
+      in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for all the
+      circumstances&mdash;a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular part of
+      the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur
+      coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone
+      together, one day, in a carriage marked &ldquo;Engaged.&rdquo; Next day, another
+      gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same route,
+      asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat (bearskin,
+      it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady. Clearly, the
+      pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer represented the
+      less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the Family. All the
+      romance and all the popular interest were manifestly on the other side,
+      not on Maitland&rsquo;s side. Even his tips were received without enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the time
+      nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he met that
+      he was really the young lady&rsquo;s guardian, and that the gentleman in the fur
+      coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a miscreant, he
+      would not have been believed. His opinion would, not unjustly, have been
+      looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls &ldquo;the personal
+      bias.&rdquo; He had therefore to put up with general distrust and brief
+      discourteous replies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There they
+      gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs&mdash;Doto, Proto, Doris, and
+      Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be instructed.
+      But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative, pretending that their
+      attention was engaged in their hospitable duties. Soup it was their
+      business to minister to travellers, not private information. They <i>had</i>
+      seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to her he seemed. Yes, they
+      were on the best terms: &ldquo;very sweet on each other,&rdquo; one young lady
+      averred, and then secured her retreat and concealed her blushes by
+      ministering to the wants of a hungry and hurried public. All this was
+      horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had
+      telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering to
+      the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had
+      received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then, was
+      a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects of his
+      search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had been taken.
+      There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not descended.
+      Nobody had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be found at Paddington
+      of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman travelling alone with a
+      young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly nine o&rsquo;clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and
+      disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of
+      interrogating the porters&mdash;all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle
+      of passengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights, no
+      one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland described.
+      There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining all the
+      cab-drivers who had taken up passengers by the late trains the night
+      before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment, nor
+      perhaps by an amateur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland&rsquo;s time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at
+      Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to
+      Paddington, and, with brief enough space for investigations that yielded
+      nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His
+      whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, whom, in his
+      heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these
+      unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of
+      Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to
+      expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen
+      species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence
+      peaceful, if not well satisfied. &ldquo;Adventures are to the adventurous.&rdquo; It
+      is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
+      adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby&rsquo;s,
+      Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
+      enterprise, he never would have taken the <i>Hit or Miss</i> he never
+      would have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he
+      would not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated
+      old wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
+      Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
+      what had befallen Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the mystery
+      of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland&rsquo;s confidence
+      in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not been
+      responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was trying
+      to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not taken
+      Bielby&rsquo;s advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts, in
+      the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped into
+      a hansom, and said, &ldquo;Gatien&rsquo;s.&rdquo; Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the High
+      Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got out and
+      kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight) opened it
+      with rather a scared face:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horful row on in quad, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The young gentlemen &lsquo;as a bonfire
+      on, and they&rsquo;re a larking with the snow. Orful A they&rsquo;re a making, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
+      forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
+      garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a huge
+      Alp of snow against the door of the Master&rsquo;s lodge. Meanwhile, another
+      band had carried into the quad all the light tables and cane chairs from a
+      lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful pyramidal form, they
+      introduced some of the fire-lighters, called &ldquo;devils&rdquo; by the College
+      servants, and set a match to the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
+      like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work for
+      them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass of St
+      Ga-tien&rsquo;s seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough to waken the
+      dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a non-resident
+      Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was known at all, as a
+      &ldquo;Radical,&rdquo; with any number of decorative epithets, according to the taste
+      and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he could identify any of the
+      rioters, and he was not certain that they would not carry him to his room,
+      and there screw him up, according to precedent. Maitland had too much
+      sense of personal dignity to face the idea of owing his escape from his
+      chambers to the resources of civilization at the command of the college
+      blacksmith. He, therefore, after a moment of irresolution, stole off under
+      a low-browed old door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided
+      little quadrangle; for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle
+      should, in this least mathematical of universities, be quadrangular.
+      Groping and stumbling his familiar way up the darkest of spiral
+      staircases, Maitland missed his footing, and fell, with the whole weight
+      of his body, against the door at which he had meant to knock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
+      most conventional manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr. Bielby,
+      Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, sitting by his fireside, attired in a gray
+      shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had, on
+      taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success at
+      the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he threw
+      up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired life among
+      his &ldquo;brown Greek manuscripts.&rdquo; He was a man of the world, turned hermit,
+      and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known. He had &ldquo;coached&rdquo;
+       Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and remained his friend and
+      counsellor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you, Maitland?&rdquo; said the student, without rising. &ldquo;I thought,
+      from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
+      coming to &lsquo;draw me,&rsquo; as I think they call it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
+      likely to &ldquo;draw&rdquo; him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
+      old bear that &ldquo;dwells among bones and blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bielby&rsquo;s own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
+      mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
+      in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
+      beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had
+      belonged to famous students of old&mdash;Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus&mdash;and
+      before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new critical
+      edition of &ldquo;Demetrius of Scepsis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had
+      not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become
+      involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are making a terrible riot in quad,&rdquo; he said, answering the
+      other&rsquo;s remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; replied Bielby, genially; &ldquo;boys will be boys, and so will
+      young men. I believe our Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being
+      celebrated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There go some windows into their battels,&rdquo; said Mr. Bielby. &ldquo;They will
+      hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so
+      unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Maitland, &ldquo;I rather want to ask your advice on an
+      important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long story,
+      that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed
+      gratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah-ha,&rdquo; replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. &ldquo;Happy to hear it
+      Indeed, I <i>had</i> heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say,
+      brought a hint of it&mdash;I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant
+      woman of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your
+      part, too, a little&mdash;if you will let me say so&mdash;is exactly what
+      you need. I congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the
+      young lady in Oxford? Where is she just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not
+      the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of
+      Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I wish I knew,&rdquo; said Maitland at last, beginning to find this
+      consulting of the oracle a little difficult. &ldquo;The fact is, that&rsquo;s just
+      what I wanted to consult you about. I&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve lost all
+      traces of the young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you mean?&rdquo; asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave,
+      while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. &ldquo;She has not eloped?
+      You don&rsquo;t mean to tell me she has run away from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know what to say,&rdquo; answered Maitland. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid she has
+      been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or conspiracy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surely can&rsquo;t mean what you say&rdquo; (and now the voice was gruffer than
+      ever). &ldquo;People don&rsquo;t plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
+      probably they didn&rsquo;t! And who are the young lady&rsquo;s people? Why don&rsquo;t they
+      look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not a widow&mdash;she is an orphan,&rdquo; said Maitland, blushing
+      painfully. &ldquo;I am her guardian in a kind of way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I&rsquo;m sure I beg your
+      pardon, but did you tell me her name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her name is Shields&mdash;Margaret Shields&rdquo;&mdash;(&ldquo;Not the name I was
+      told,&rdquo; muttered Bielby)&mdash;&ldquo;and her father was a man who had been
+      rather unsuccessful in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was his profession, what did he do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had been a sailor, I think,&rdquo; said the academic philanthropist; &ldquo;but
+      when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
+      anything, a professional tattooer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
+      livelihood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
+      could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
+      level with the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Miss&mdash;h&rsquo;m, Spears&mdash;Shields? thank you; has she been an
+      orphan long?&rdquo; he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the
+      most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
+      been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter&rsquo;s character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only heard of his death yesterday,&rdquo; said Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it sudden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
+      was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
+      George&rsquo;s, Hanover Square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;St. George&rsquo;s, Hanover Square, indeed!&rdquo; said the don, and once more he
+      relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. &ldquo;Maitland,&rdquo; he
+      said at last, &ldquo;how did you come to be acquainted with these people? The
+      father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can&rsquo;t, surely, have
+      met them in society?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came a good deal to &lsquo;my public-house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. I think
+      I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
+      tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something for
+      the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
+      determination in his tone. &ldquo;I am rather busy this evening. I think you had
+      better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever about
+      the matter to anyone. Good-night!&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
+      caused by Maitland&rsquo;s avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
+      himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
+      school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
+      try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
+      where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots, with a
+      feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was clearly
+      quite out of the path of Bielby&rsquo;s experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; thought Maitland, &ldquo;if I had not taken his advice about trying
+      to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
+      would have been in this hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
+      called food. &ldquo;He had eaten; he had not dined,&rdquo; to adopt the distinction of
+      Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
+      hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he
+      felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards, he could
+      find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of potted
+      shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian vintage
+      sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+      Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on philanthropic
+      business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left the
+      letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache, he tumbled
+      into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing during
+      the greater part of the night. About five o&rsquo;clock he fell into a sleep
+      full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the steam-whooper, or
+      &ldquo;devil,&rdquo; a sweet boon with which his philanthropy had helped to endow the
+      reluctant and even recalcitrant University of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian,&rdquo; Maitland
+      seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
+      Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
+      lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
+      thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
+      iteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.&mdash;After the Inquest.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland&rsquo;s scout called
+      him at half-past seven with the invariable question, &ldquo;Do you breakfast
+      out, sir?&rdquo; If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in
+      attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution
+      with, &ldquo;Do you breakfast out, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; &ldquo;in common room
+      as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o&rsquo;clock train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever, his
+      legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just
+      complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room, then
+      he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, he
+      covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets. Anywhere but
+      in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the bell and called his
+      servant; but in our conservative universities, and especially in so
+      reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally, no bell to ring.
+      Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his greatcoat, that he might
+      crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his scout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a
+      strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often
+      had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition of
+      his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so than
+      that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to blow in
+      quad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Trattles!&rdquo; cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his
+      ears. &ldquo;Mrs. Trattles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by
+      sniffs, from the other side of the door:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Dakyns, please,&rdquo; said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      feel very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dakyns appeared in due course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to hear you&rsquo;re ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn&rsquo;t I
+      better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger
+      generation, delighted to honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don&rsquo;t think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I&rsquo;ll be able
+      to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sir,&rdquo; answered Dakyns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with that fearless assumption of responsibility which always does an
+      Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr. Whalley
+      before he brought round Maitland&rsquo;s letters and his breakfast commons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance;
+      if any such had been addressed to him, they would necessarily be, as
+      Maitland remembered after his first feeling of disappointment, at his
+      rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had aught to communicate,
+      nor anyone else, could be expected to know that Mait-land&rsquo;s first act
+      would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast commons;
+      even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his
+      door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for him;
+      but he felt that, as an invalid once said, &ldquo;there was a pain somewhere in
+      the room,&rdquo; and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very bad feverish cold,&rdquo; was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call
+      again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the
+      quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the
+      scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow,
+      and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage, and
+      each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach of the
+      very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland&rsquo;s illness
+      took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the lungs were
+      affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see him; but
+      Maitland talked so wildly about the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, about the man in
+      the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the hermit soon
+      withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of &ldquo;Demetrius of Scepsis.&rdquo;
+       He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real kindness; but the
+      old implicit trust never revived with Maitland&rsquo;s returning health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of
+      what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there
+      was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in
+      Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brown,&rdquo; said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness
+      began, &ldquo;would you mind giving me my things? I&rsquo;ll try to dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare
+      slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms, by
+      a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved into
+      the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent to the
+      post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can&rsquo;t howl yet for myself,&rdquo;
+       whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delighted to howl for you,&rdquo; said Brown, and presently the wires were
+      carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at once,
+      on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a reply: Barton
+      would be with Maitland by dinner-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and
+      even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were
+      drawn, and a monster of the deep&mdash;one of the famous Oxford soles,
+      larger than you ever see them elsewhere&mdash;smoked between Maitland and
+      Barton. Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of &ldquo;strong,&rdquo; a
+      reminiscence of &ldquo;the old coaching days,&rdquo; when Maitland had read with
+      Barton for Greats. The invalid&rsquo;s toast and water wore an air of modest
+      conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who relied
+      merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight The wing
+      of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton&rsquo;s lot) was
+      disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he did not
+      touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his thin,
+      white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for Barton
+      knew so much already, especially about the <i>Hit or Miss</i>; but when it
+      came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind of
+      prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to walk
+      about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak places;
+      and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down again, and
+      steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien&rsquo;s port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the
+      finding of poor Dick Shields&rsquo; body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, &ldquo;Why,
+      you don&rsquo;t mean to say that was the man, the girl&rsquo;s father? By George, I
+      can tell you something about <i>him</i>! At the inquest my partner, old
+      Munby, made out&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,&rdquo;
+       said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance that
+      he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough of
+      late) to the death of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since
+      you were ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the <i>Times</i> since
+      the day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment But
+      his reading, so far, had been limited to the &ldquo;Agony Column&rdquo; of the
+      advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to all the
+      paragraphs headed &ldquo;Strange Occurrence&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mysterious Disappearance.&rdquo;
+       None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen anything about the inquest,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What verdict did
+      they bring in? The usual one, I suppose&mdash;&lsquo;Visitation,&rsquo; and all that
+      kind of thing, or &lsquo;Death from exposure while under the influence of
+      alcoholic stimulants.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what they made it,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t blame them;
+      for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other choice.
+      You can see what he said for yourself in the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton had been turning over the file of the <i>Times</i>, and showed
+      Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so
+      common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped,
+      with blanks for names and dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A miserable end,&rdquo; said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph. &ldquo;And
+      now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by saying you
+      didn&rsquo;t &lsquo;blame&rsquo; the coroner&rsquo;s jury?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don&rsquo;t know that I should
+      tell you; it is too horrid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t keep anything from me, please,&rdquo; said Maitland, moving nervously. &ldquo;I
+      must know everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant horror&mdash;&ldquo;well,
+      your poor friend was <i>murdered!</i> That&rsquo;s what I meant when I said I
+      did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict than they
+      did on the evidence of my partner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new
+      thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a
+      meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of the
+      universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends on us,
+      when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from some lost
+      star, some wandering world that is Hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murdered!&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on
+      earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was no
+      one&rsquo;s enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had
+      nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much&mdash;a
+      small sum&mdash;paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he
+      was&mdash;when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in
+      the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the same,
+      and that by a very cunning and cautious villain&mdash;a man, I should say,
+      of some education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could it possibly have been done? There&rsquo;s the evidence before you
+      in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the
+      circumstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more than
+      enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere sleeping
+      in the snow&mdash;it&rsquo;s well known to be fatal Why,&rdquo; said Maitland,
+      eagerly, &ldquo;in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had to send
+      back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite asleep, in a
+      snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton
+      had arrived at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can you possibly know better than the jury,&rdquo; urged Maitland
+      peevishly, &ldquo;and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district, who
+      were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural&mdash;that he got
+      drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure? Why,
+      you did not even hear the evidence. I can&rsquo;t make out,&rdquo; he went on, with
+      the querulousness of an invalid, &ldquo;why you should have come up just to talk
+      such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, it was not the coroner&rsquo;s business nor the jury&rsquo;s business,
+      to know better than the medical officer for the district, on whose
+      evidence they relied. But it is <i>my</i> business; for the said officer
+      is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very little.
+      He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow as ever let
+      a life slip out of his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if you knew so much, why didn&rsquo;t you keep him straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a wedding,
+      when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial examination of
+      the deceased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an
+      extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only
+      this printed evidence,&rdquo; said Maitland, waving a sheet of the <i>Times</i>,
+      &ldquo;to go by; and <i>this</i> is dead against you. You&rsquo;re too clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return to
+      town, the day after the inquest,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;and I found evidence
+      enough <i>for me</i>&mdash;never mind where&mdash;to put the matter beyond
+      the reach of doubt. The man was <i>murdered</i>, and murdered, as I said,
+      very deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant
+      scoundrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I don&rsquo;t see how you got a chance to make your examination,&rdquo; said
+      Maitland; &ldquo;the man would be buried as usual&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers&mdash;and there was no one to
+      claim <i>his</i>&mdash;are reserved, if needed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&mdash;don&rsquo;t go on,&rdquo; said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling
+      back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut &ldquo;It is all
+      the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine,&rdquo; he said, presently. &ldquo;In
+      my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no one to
+      claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take no trouble
+      or risk in a case like that.&rdquo; He was silent again for a few moments; then,
+      &ldquo;What do <i>you</i> make out to have been the cause of death?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Barton slowly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t much care to go into details which
+      you may say I can hardly prove, and I don&rsquo;t want to distress you in your
+      present state of health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or
+      anything? He had been drinking with some one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing
+      that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear fellow,
+      there are venoms that leave <i>no</i> internal trace. If I am right&mdash;and
+      I think I am&mdash;he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a great
+      traveller, had he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller also.
+      He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well
+      acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be more explicit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you must take it on my word, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of Barton,
+      and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his theory was no
+      morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion which, as he
+      said, he could no longer, prove&mdash;which was, indeed, now incapable of
+      any proof. No one had seen the commission of the crime, and the crime was
+      of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could not possibly be
+      otherwise brought home to the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Maitland, knowing the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, and the private room
+      up-stairs with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if
+      done at all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any
+      eye-witness of the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall you do?&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;or have you done anything in consequence
+      of your discovery? Have you been to the police?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It is
+      not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis.
+      Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more
+      likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret motive&mdash;and
+      he must have had&mdash;he will act on that motive sooner or later. The
+      quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is safe, the
+      sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there may be a
+      chance of detecting him; but it&rsquo;s an outside chance. Do you know anything
+      of the dead man&rsquo;s past history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your
+      care. What do you mean to do about <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were now
+      so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
+      Things were bad before; now they are awful,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;<i>His
+      daughter has disappeared!</i> That was what I was coming to: that was the
+      rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew
+      what you tell me; now&mdash;great Heavens! what am I to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly
+      on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me all about it, old boy?&rdquo; asked Barton, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate
+      friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no
+      longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation of
+      Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible, the
+      tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure even to
+      come upon her traces or those of her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have heard nothing since your illness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing certain, to my mind,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;The seafaring
+      man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his life, and the
+      gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram in your name
+      and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett&rsquo;s, are in the same employment,
+      or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you any kind of
+      suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way of tracking
+      him or them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never
+      heard of the sailor till the woman at the <i>Hit or Miss</i> mentioned
+      him, the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of
+      Shields&rsquo;, a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then all we can do at present is, <i>not</i> to set the police at work&mdash;they
+      would only prevent the man from showing&mdash;but to find out whether
+      anyone answering to the description is &lsquo;wanted&rsquo; or is on their books, at
+      Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social
+      position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would
+      certainly have his <i>dossier</i>? They order these things better in
+      France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was
+      drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost
+      certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs.
+      Gullick&mdash;that&rsquo;s the landlady of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;saying
+      that Shields had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in
+      that way for sailors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;if any fellow understands tattooing, and the
+      class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion;
+      but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are
+      tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in
+      our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on but
+      these early decorative designs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a
+      moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his <i>flair</i> as a
+      detective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.&mdash;The Jaffa Oranges.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Letting <i>I dare not</i> wait upon <i>I would</i>.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
+      embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali, in
+      the &ldquo;Arabian Nights.&rdquo; With his glass, it will be remembered, he could see
+      whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and, though
+      absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How often would
+      one give Aladdin&rsquo;s Lamp, and Fortunatus&rsquo; Purse, and the invisible Cap
+      which was made of &ldquo;a darkness that might be <i>felt</i>&rdquo; to possess for
+      one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
+      were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would have
+      been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured. Yet there
+      was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they might have
+      expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would have shown.
+      Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor, indeed, in a den at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far off,
+      not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square, Pimlico, S.W.
+      There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the drawing-room
+      floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn down, Margaret
+      would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of witnesses, in the
+      form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she had for some time been
+      an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would have been seen to have
+      faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring had died out of her eyes.
+      The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were half-closed from sickness
+      and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so ready of speech, did not even
+      bestir herself to answer the question which a gentleman, who stood almost
+      like a doctor, in an attitude of respectful inquiry, was putting as to her
+      health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
+      sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door, in a
+      protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
+      remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
+      upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
+      Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
+      members of the less educated classes), &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t put up with none of them
+      goings on.&rdquo; Such an expression this woman wears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you feel better, my dear?&rdquo; the dark gentleman asks again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s going on well enough,&rdquo; interrupted the woman with the beautiful
+      dissatisfied face. &ldquo;What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
+      tonics as you might bathe in&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She <i>ought</i> to get well,&rdquo; the dissatisfied woman continued, as if
+      the invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,&rdquo; said the dark
+      gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, &ldquo;but to the young lady whom I
+      have entrusted to your charge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty trust!&rdquo; the woman replied, with a sniff
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret, my
+      dear&mdash;&rsquo;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a trembling
+      lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very kind,&rdquo; answered the girl at last. &ldquo;I am sure I am better. I
+      am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
+      grapes; may I send you some oranges?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
+      rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, just
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor girl!&rdquo; said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. &ldquo;And what do you
+      dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,&rdquo; said the girl,
+      slowly, &ldquo;where I am; and something I feel&mdash;something, I don&rsquo;t know
+      what&mdash;drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find
+      myself on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness
+      falling in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till
+      I feel mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me,
+      and chasing me in the dark&mdash;some one I can&rsquo;t see. Then I slide into
+      the smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I <i>must</i> get away
+      from it. Oh, I don&rsquo;t know which is worst! And they go and come all the
+      while I&rsquo;m asleep, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all <i>I</i> can do is
+      to get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige
+      me, Mrs. Darling&rdquo; (he turned to the housekeeper), &ldquo;by placing them in Miss
+      Burnside&rsquo;s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she
+      wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
+      street, where a hansom cab waited for him. &ldquo;Covent Garden,&rdquo; he cried to
+      the cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
+      believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
+      very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley, &ldquo;with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
+      him&rdquo; (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
+      celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this been,
+      to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
+      difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest means,
+      the nature of Maitland&rsquo;s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had been
+      dear. The telegram which followed Maitland&rsquo;s, and in which Cranley used
+      Maitland&rsquo;s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have seen. By
+      the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following his track
+      to London. His housekeeper had entered the &ldquo;engaged&rdquo; carriage at
+      Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
+      previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne Park
+      and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his portmanteau.
+      The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed a gentleman in a
+      bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A gentleman in a light
+      ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means answered to the
+      description Maitland gave in his examination of the porters. They,
+      moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland&rsquo;s inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The success of Cranley&rsquo;s device was secured by its elementary simplicity.
+      A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his trail, does
+      wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable garb at one
+      point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of most who see him,
+      &ldquo;the man in the bearskin coat,&rdquo; or &ldquo;the man in the jack-boots,&rdquo; or &ldquo;the
+      man with the white hat.&rdquo; His identity is practically merged in that of the
+      coat, or the boots, or the hat; and when he slips out of them, he seems to
+      leave his personality behind, or to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with
+      his rugs. By acting on this principle (which only requires to be stated to
+      win the assent of pure reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself
+      and Margaret in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
+      recognized him as an acquaintance of her father&rsquo;s, and he represented to
+      her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father had
+      served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his poverty&mdash;in
+      poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he declared, had
+      spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with dislike and
+      distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield&rsquo;s chief desire
+      in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from Maitland&rsquo;s
+      guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl away from
+      school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his latest breath,
+      so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his old officer, and
+      had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the Fellow of St
+      Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
+      Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
+      man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
+      position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
+      manner of her father&rsquo;s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
+      knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
+      Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
+      Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident had
+      arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
+      guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
+      politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
+      school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
+      the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
+      had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had lodged
+      elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only really
+      delicate point&mdash;Cranley&rsquo;s assumption of the name of &ldquo;Mr. Lithgow&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of the Dovecot. He
+      represented that, for the fulfilment of her father&rsquo;s last wish, the ruse
+      of the telegram and the assumed name had been necessary, though highly
+      repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a gentleman. Poor Margaret had
+      seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philanthropists, and (as we know)
+      philanthropists permit themselves a license and discretion not customary
+      in common society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, even had the girl&rsquo;s suspicions been awakened, her illness
+      prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
+      father&rsquo;s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
+      guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father&rsquo;s wish, and hoped
+      soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
+      livelihood; and independence was Margaret&rsquo;s ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father&rsquo;s friend, her own protector&mdash;in that light she regarded
+      Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
+      no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
+      undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
+      perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct of
+      self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for a
+      week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the rest of
+      us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience. Cran-ley&rsquo;s
+      temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first human being who
+      ever found himself and other human beings struggling in a flood for a
+      floating log that will only support one of them. Everything must give way
+      to his desire; he had literally never denied himself anything that he
+      dared taka As certainly as the stone, once tossed up, obeys the only law
+      it knows, and falls back to earth, so surely Cranley would obtain what he
+      desired (if it seemed safe), though a human life, or a human soul, stood
+      between him and his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which his
+      greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she should
+      vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley&rsquo;s original
+      idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the Continent,
+      where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some kind had been
+      found for her, he would so arrange that England should never see her more,
+      and that her place among honest women should be lost forever. But there
+      were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan. For instance, the girl
+      knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting fool; and then Margaret&rsquo;s
+      illness had occurred, and had caused delay, and given time for reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache in
+      the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed hansoms)&mdash;&ldquo;after
+      all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no inconvenient
+      claims.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways of
+      &ldquo;removing&rdquo; an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed across
+      a not uninstructed intellect&mdash;a scheme which appeared open to the
+      smallest number of objections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She shall take a turn for the worse,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and the doctor will be
+      an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
+      jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden, dismissed
+      his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges. He then hailed
+      another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an eminent firm of
+      chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked for a certain
+      substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got what he wanted in
+      a small phial, marked <i>poison</i>. Mr. Cranley then called a third cab,
+      gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker&rsquo;s (also eminent), and
+      amused his leisure during the drive in removing the label from the bottle.
+      At the surgical-instrument maker&rsquo;s he complained of neuralgia, and
+      purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine or some such anodyne
+      into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the house in Victoria Square,
+      where he let himself in with a key, entered the dining-room, and locked
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
+      about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused and
+      listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief into
+      the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable chink
+      which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom of the
+      door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds, and unpacked
+      his various purchases. He set them out on the table in order&mdash;the
+      oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the best,
+      and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard.
+      One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table, in company
+      with a biscuit or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
+      orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then drew off
+      a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and carefully
+      punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit the
+      contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately completed in the
+      case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished their
+      coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit he had eaten. That portion
+      of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire; and, observing that a strong
+      odor remained in the room, he deliberately turned on the unlighted gas for
+      a few minutes. After this he opened the window, sealed his own seal in red
+      wax on paper a great many times, finally burning the collection, and lit a
+      large cigar, which he smoked through with every appearance of enjoyment.
+      While engaged on this portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to
+      sherry from the glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured
+      the liquid from the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his
+      pocket with the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in
+      delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Alice, you may come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Miss Burnside?&rdquo; he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
+      told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
+      at least.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why
+      are you keeping her in this house? What devil&rsquo;s brew have you been making
+      that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; replied Mr. Cranley, &ldquo;you put too many questions at once.
+      As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss
+      Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper.
+      As to the &lsquo;devil&rsquo;s brew&rsquo; which you indicate in a style worthy rather of
+      the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science,
+      did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of
+      the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my
+      knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can
+      enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman&rsquo;s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
+      like a baleful lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand your chaff,&rdquo; she said, with a few ornamental epithets,
+      which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grieve to be obscure,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;<i>brevis esse laboro</i>, the old
+      story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens,
+      she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on
+      a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my
+      dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave
+      this note at the doctor&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing&rsquo;s too good for <i>her!</i>&rdquo; growled the jealous woman,
+      thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the
+      oranges not used in his experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
+      door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret&rsquo;s door,
+      come out again, and finally leave the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I&rsquo;ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, and
+      he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the <i>Times</i>. He glanced
+      rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet &ldquo;Still
+      advertising for him,&rdquo; he said to himself; and he then turned to the
+      sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the
+      reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet
+      come on. When he had read all that interested him in the <i>Times</i>, he
+      looked hastily at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just twenty minutes gone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Time she wakened&mdash;and tried
+      those Jaffa oranges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
+      Margaret&rsquo;s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find
+      any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he chose a
+      large and heavy <i>fauteuil</i>, took it up in his arms, and began to
+      carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret&rsquo;s chamber, he stumbled
+      so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed
+      against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it
+      up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would have wakened the dead,&rdquo; he whispered to himself, &ldquo;and she is
+      not dead&mdash;yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of
+      them, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
+      mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
+      being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
+      remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
+      frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and less
+      perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity
+      possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was passing in the
+      chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She has wakened&mdash;she has looked round&mdash;she has seen the poisoned
+      fruit&mdash;she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it&mdash;she
+      has tasted the oranges&mdash;she has turned to sleep again&mdash;and the
+      unrelenting venom is at its work!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
+      hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
+      right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star
+      revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains
+      of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues&mdash;each
+      seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will.
+      Innocence, youth, beauty&mdash;that will spares them not. The rock falls
+      at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be
+      blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things&mdash;<i>mens
+      agitat molem</i>; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and
+      turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment
+      of our desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the
+      intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually
+      to be present in Margaret&rsquo;s chamber, watching every movement and hearing
+      every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face,
+      from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late
+      ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that
+      he was musing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s done, it can&rsquo;t be undone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But is it so very safe,
+      after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it&rsquo;s much more
+      hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way.
+      And then there&rsquo;s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an
+      inquest&mdash;as, of course, there won&rsquo;t be&mdash;they&rsquo;ll ask who the girl
+      is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they&rsquo;ll, some of them,
+      recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It
+      may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
+      thumb-nail, and yawned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gad! I wish I had not risked it,&rdquo; he said to himself; and his
+      complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter
+      painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his
+      chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He
+      took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew
+      the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth. A long pull at the
+      liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;and&mdash;&rdquo; He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the
+      &ldquo;French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But
+      then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally.
+      Still, it&rsquo;s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was
+      better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff.
+      Perhaps she hasn&rsquo;t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides,
+      there are the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room,
+      if she <i>has</i> taken it. I <i>must</i> go and see. I don&rsquo;t like the
+      job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
+      sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
+      With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
+      his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl&rsquo;s door he
+      waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All was
+      silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump: he
+      heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might wake the
+      sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with
+      a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was
+      pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping
+      of his own heart. At this moment the postman&rsquo;s hard knock at the door
+      nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had
+      anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the
+      dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much.
+      He did not dare draw close enough to observe her face minutely, or bend
+      down and listen for her breath. And the oranges! Eagerly he looked at
+      them. There were only five of them. Surely&mdash;no! a sixth had fallen on
+      the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked up
+      all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and, as shrinkingly as he
+      had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice
+      under his breath&mdash;he stole down stairs, opened the dining-room door,
+      and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ll settle with you!&rdquo; came a voice out of the dimness; and the start
+      wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as they
+      were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was he
+      trapped, and by whom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling, in
+      bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than anger,
+      that stood before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried to
+      dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
+      observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
+      to read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you doing up-stairs just now?&rdquo; she snarled. &ldquo;Why did you send
+      me off to the doctor&rsquo;s, out of the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that invaluable
+      curiosity of yours&mdash;curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold so
+      justly views with high esteem&mdash;into wider and nobler channels.
+      Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life as you
+      find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of Sociology
+      (pardon the term) or Metaphysics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
+      ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
+      far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that lay on
+      the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being prepared, he
+      was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the success of his plan
+      of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat was a breastwork
+      between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a drawer; produced a
+      revolver, and remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
+      you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
+      every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
+      your tongue and keep your hands off me&mdash;and off drink. Fetch the
+      lamp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
+      silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
+      on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
+      letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
+      bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
+      been, with a strange device in gold and colors&mdash;a brown bun, in a
+      glory of gilt rays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St John Deloraine,&rdquo; he said, taking it up. &ldquo;How in the world did <i>she</i>
+      find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer than a
+      brother&mdash;a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
+      title of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose there is another woman in London,&rdquo; he thought to himself,
+      &ldquo;that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that would write
+      to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
+      read the following epistle:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Early English Bunhouse,
+
+     &ldquo;Chelsea, Friday.
+
+     &ldquo;My dear Mr. Cranley,
+
+     &ldquo;Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
+     hear nothing of you from anyone&mdash;nothing <i>good</i>, and you
+     know I never believe anything <i>else</i>. Do come and see me, at
+     the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about <i>yourself</i>&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;(&ldquo;She <i>has</i> heard,&rdquo; he muttered)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;&ldquo;and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
+     know we are strictly <i>blue ribbon&mdash;a cordon bleu</i>, I call
+     her) has become engaged to a <i>plumber</i>, and she is leaving
+     us. <i>Can</i> you recommend me another? I know how interested
+     you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
+     enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
+     housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
+     see me, whether you can advise me or not.
+
+     &ldquo;Yours very truly,
+
+     &ldquo;Mary St. John Deloraine&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Idiot!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
+      then he added, &ldquo;By Jove! it&rsquo;s lucky, too. I&rsquo;ll put these two infernal
+      women off on <i>her</i>, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
+      gets at the drink. She&rsquo;s dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
+      Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
+      waters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.&mdash;Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
+      privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
+      aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
+      caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
+      or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
+      seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a house
+      in Cheyne Walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
+      she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
+      county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
+      woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
+      County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
+      Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor a
+      kind of <i>morgue</i> so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
+      the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
+      Méryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
+      Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take, they
+      take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are they to
+      drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else, that even
+      the Clergy are excluded, <i>ex officio</i>, and in their degrading
+      capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As we
+      all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the very
+      being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
+      inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
+      sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession) one
+      of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain Mr. St.
+      John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson, being at
+      once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At the head of the
+      quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat, girdled by beautiful
+      gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House and Parsonage (for it is
+      both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this desirable home and opulent share of earth&rsquo;s good things did Mr.
+      St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled a
+      good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County matrons
+      and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling on such
+      heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this young man
+      a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him from the
+      society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys&rsquo; daughters.
+      Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping Carby, and there
+      he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level turf, her &ldquo;points&rdquo;
+       he counted, and he found that she, at least, could appreciate his somewhat
+      apt quotation from <i>Chastelard</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Pray heaven, we make good Ends.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Miss Widdicombe <i>did</i> make good &ldquo;Ends.&rdquo; She vanquished Mrs.
+      Struggles, the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman
+      who was now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost
+      professionally, &ldquo;rejoice in arrows,&rdquo; like the Homeric Artemis&mdash;why
+      are they nearly always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at
+      least before her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known
+      band of Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
+      contrast between Miss Widdicombe&rsquo;s vivacity and the deadly stolidity of
+      the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her vanquished
+      competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John Deloraine. He saw&mdash;he
+      loved her&mdash;he was laughed at&mdash;he proposed&mdash;he was accepted&mdash;and,
+      oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss Widdicombe, the
+      attorney&rsquo;s daughter, as <i>châtelaine</i> (delightful word, and dear to
+      the author of <i>Guy Livingstone</i>) of Wentley Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
+      alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
+      good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
+      London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
+      name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty of
+      money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County dinners
+      which the County people of her district give to each other when they come
+      to town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy in the
+      earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her benevolence
+      had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow. Never, surely, was
+      there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would go from a garden-party to a mothers&rsquo; meeting; she was great at
+      taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping them
+      amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at least
+      three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
+      eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine, that she
+      made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal sympathy,
+      wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she has been seen
+      enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like Greek texts
+      which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need of
+      explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the old
+      sense&mdash;that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune&mdash;pursued hotly
+      or artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
+      suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
+      her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting them
+      as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of music
+      are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no joy in
+      popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next), so Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a passion for
+      virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the world, but she
+      insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless levity, as a
+      mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature. Thus, no one ever
+      combined a delight in good works with a taste for good things so
+      successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the lady&rsquo;s &ldquo;favorite vanity,&rdquo; in the matter of good works,
+      was <i>The Bunhouse</i>. This really serviceable, though quaint,
+      institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland&rsquo;s enterprise of the
+      philanthropic public-house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. In a slum of Chelsea
+      there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
+      coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
+      sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was the
+      work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine&rsquo;s friends, an artist of the highest
+      promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch and Irish
+      whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, <i>The Bunhouse</i> did
+      very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
+      Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery of
+      common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the metropolis.
+      Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features at sewing
+      machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen hours a day
+      in shops&mdash;all these young female outlaws, not professionally vicious,
+      found in <i>The Bunhouse</i> a kind of charitable shelter and home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
+      stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers and
+      fathers. &ldquo;Places&rdquo; were found for them, in the rare instances when they
+      condescended to &ldquo;places.&rdquo; Sometimes they breakfasted at <i>The Bunhouse</i>,
+      sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a state of
+      artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would arise such
+      a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than when boys,
+      having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle of a door&mdash;they
+      then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the clamor goes up to
+      heaven: so did the street resound when the young patrons of <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i> were in a warlike humor. Then the stern housekeeper would
+      intervene, and check these motions of their minds, <i>haec certamina tanta</i>,
+      turning the more persistent combatants into the street. Next day Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and try to be very severe, and
+      then would weep a little, and all the girls would shed tears, all would
+      have a good cry together, and finally the Lady Mother (Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine) would take a few of them for a drive in the Park. After that
+      there would be peace for a while, and presently disturbances would come
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
+      housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
+      told, had yielded to love, &ldquo;which subdues the hearts of all female women,
+      even of the prudent,&rdquo; according to Homer, and was going to share the home
+      and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible innocence,
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a
+      kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in her need of a
+      housekeeper and assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. <i>He</i>
+      could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
+      left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that young
+      lady&rsquo;s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr. Cranley.
+      Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds of Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine&rsquo;s acquaintance who would have used her unsuspicious
+      kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr. Cranley had (when
+      there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I go and lunch with her?&rdquo; he asked himself, as he twisted her note,
+      with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and gold. &ldquo;I
+      haven&rsquo;t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not since&mdash;since
+      I came back from Monte Carlo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit The
+      man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in the
+      calendar withdrew his large words when asked &ldquo;if he had ever cheated at
+      cards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Mr. Cranley went on, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know: I dare say it&rsquo;s safe enough.
+      She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
+      sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the day&mdash;not
+      up to luncheon anyhow. She says&rdquo;&mdash;and he looked again at the note&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      she&rsquo;ll be alone; but she won&rsquo;t. Everyone she sees before lunch she asks to
+      luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to dinner. I wish I
+      had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very long way than this
+      kind of business. There really seems no end to it when once you begin.
+      However, here goes,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, sitting down to write a letter at
+      the escritoire which had just served him as a bulwark and breastwork.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write and accept Probably she&rsquo;ll have no one with her, but some girl
+      from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from the Solomon Islands who never
+      heard of a heathen like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the clock
+      was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s house in
+      Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that lady, in
+      a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of beauty,
+      rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and
+      holding out both her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
+      hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
+      carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love in which thy hound has part,&rdquo; quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
+      rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
+      smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and, as I have put
+      off luncheon till two, <i>do</i> tell me that you know someone who will
+      suit me for my dear <i>Bun-house</i>. I know how much you have always been
+      interested in our little project.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew the
+      very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
+      respectable woman of great strength of character, &ldquo;of body, too, I
+      believe, which will not make her less fit for the position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; &ldquo;the dear girls are sometimes a
+      little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
+      went to one of the exhibitions with her <i>fiancé</i>, and the girls broke
+      all the windows and almost all the tea-things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not stand
+      anything of that kind,&rdquo; answered Mr. Cranley. &ldquo;She is quiet, but extremely
+      firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate character. At
+      one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a person of
+      treacherous and ungovernable disposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
+      fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
+      father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
+      bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to earn
+      her own livelihood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to tell
+      the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was strong
+      enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud and
+      indisposed to make confidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing I must ask,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, when he had quite
+      persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to her young
+      friends. &ldquo;How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when do you need
+      the services of the new-comers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
+      like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want to
+      rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank Holiday&mdash;in
+      a fortnight that is&mdash;and then they will go on their honeymoon of
+      three days to Yarmouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
+      impetuous wooer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No laggard in love,&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;Well, in a fortnight the two
+      women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
+      remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
+      recovered from the shock of her father&rsquo;s sudden death&mdash;a very sad
+      affair,&rdquo; added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor dear girl!&rdquo; cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears in
+      her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep with
+      those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to the
+      latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of this
+      entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, he&rsquo;s very late,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and yet it is not far to come from the
+      <i>Hit or Miss</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the <i>Hit or Miss</i>!&rdquo; cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
+      aware.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; you may well wonder, if you don&rsquo;t know about it, that I should have
+      asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be quite
+      in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome, nor very
+      amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness now. He is
+      very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the poor. He is a
+      Fellow of his College at Oxford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the terrier;
+      but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I tell you his name?&rdquo; Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. &ldquo;He is a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the door was opened, and the servant announced &ldquo;Mr. Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
+      found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
+      heart might have blanched at the encounter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
+      philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
+      fellow-revellers. What other things he had done&mdash;things in which
+      Maitland was concerned&mdash;the reader knows, or at least suspects. But
+      it was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
+      undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me introduce you&mdash;&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no need,&rdquo; interrupted Maitland. &ldquo;Mr. Cranley and I have known
+      each other for some time. I don&rsquo;t think we have met,&rdquo; he added, looking at
+      Cranley, &ldquo;since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not likely to
+      meet again, I&rsquo;m afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell Mrs. Si John
+      Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
+      the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be) with
+      private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the trouble
+      at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended to what he
+      might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he had the best
+      reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he was the secret
+      source of the information on which Maitland proposed to act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At luncheon&mdash;which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
+      was &ldquo;luscious and abundant&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than the
+      champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little philanthropic
+      misadventures of his own&mdash;cases in which he had been humorously
+      misled by the <i>Captain Wraggs</i> of this world, or beguiled by the
+      authors of that polite correspondence&mdash;begging letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to go
+      (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s company very much), Cranley, who
+      had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way with the
+      Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when are we likely to meet again?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;I have business in Paris, and I
+      cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more can I,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley to himself; &ldquo;but I hope you won&rsquo;t return
+      in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you have the
+      luck to return at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a good
+      voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a <i>comédienne</i>)
+      at the Palais Royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.&mdash;Traps.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the lady of
+      <i>The Bunhouse</i>, Barton, when he came home from a round of
+      professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted
+      lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there,
+      discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that he
+      was indeed &ldquo;moving about in worlds not realized.&rdquo; Keen as was the interest
+      which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend&rsquo;s affairs, he now and
+      again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever revolved round
+      the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Maitland; glad to see you,&rdquo; he observed, with some shade of
+      hypocrisy. &ldquo;Anything new to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;I really do think I have a clew at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles,&rdquo; said Barton, groaning as
+      the bell-rope came away in his hands. &ldquo;Bring lights, please, and tea, and
+      stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend,&rdquo; he remarked, when the blackened but
+      alert face of the little slavey appeared at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir,&rdquo; answered Jemima, who greatly admired
+      the Doctor, and in ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost
+      comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for your clew, old man,&rdquo; exclaimed Barton, as he handed Maitland a
+      cup of his peculiar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and no sugar.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clew of yours has been to the detective
+      mind! To think that, without the Minotaur, the police would probably never
+      have hit on that invaluable expression, &lsquo;the police have a clew.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland thought this was trifling with the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This advertisement,&rdquo; he said, gravely, &ldquo;appears to me undoubtedly to
+      refer to the miscreant who carried off Margaret, poor girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it, by Jove?&rdquo; cried Barton, with some eagerness this time. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s
+      have a look at it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was what he read aloud:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Bearskin Coat.&mdash;The gentleman travelling with a young lady,
+     who, on Feb. 19th, left a bearskin coat at the Hôtel Alsace
+     and Lorraine, Avenue de l&rsquo;Opéra, Paris, is requested to
+     remove it, or it will be sold to defray expenses.
+
+     &ldquo;Dupin.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This <i>may</i> mean business,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or it may not. In the first
+      place, is there such an hotel in Paris as the &lsquo;Alsace et Lorraine,&rsquo; and is
+      M. Dupin the proprietor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>That&rsquo;s</i> all right,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;I went at once to the Club, and
+      looked up the <i>Bottin</i>, the Paris Directory, don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good; and yet I don&rsquo;t quite see what you can make of it. It
+      does not come to much, you know, even if the owner of the coat is the man
+      you want And again, is he likely to have left such a very notable article
+      of dress behind him in an hotel? Anyway, can&rsquo;t you send some detective
+      fellow? Are you going over yourself in this awful weather?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be easily put off the hopeful
+      scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;the people at the hotel will at least
+      be able to give one a fuller description of the man than anything we have
+      yet. And they may have some idea of where he has gone to; and, at least,
+      they will have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and that, of course,
+      is what I am most anxious to learn. Again, he may have left other things
+      besides the coat, or there may be documents in the pockets. I have read of
+      such things happening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in &lsquo;Le Crime de l&rsquo;Opéra;&rsquo; and a very good story, too,&rdquo; answered the
+      incredulous Barton; &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t fancy that the villain of real life is
+      quite so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone knows that murderers are generally detected through some
+      incredible piece of carelessness,&rdquo; said Mait-land; &ldquo;and why should this
+      elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the rest? If he <i>did</i>
+      leave the coat, he will scarcely care to go back for it; and I do not
+      think the chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. Besides, I&rsquo;m
+      doing no good here, and I can do no harm there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was undeniably true; and though Barton muttered something about &ldquo;a
+      false scent,&rdquo; he no longer attempted to turn Maitland from his purpose. He
+      did, however, with some difficulty, prevent the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s
+      from purchasing a blonde beard, one of those wigs which simulate baldness,
+      and a pair of blue spectacles. In these disguises, Maitland argued, he
+      would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit any mischief planned
+      by the enemies of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but, on the other hand, you would look exactly like a German
+      professor, and probably be taken for a spy of Bismarck&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of disguise. He retained,
+      however, certain astute notions of his own about his plan of operations,
+      and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate to his friend. The fact
+      is, that the long dormant romance of Maitland&rsquo;s character was now
+      thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, to enjoy the adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His enjoyment did not last very long. The usual troubles of a winter
+      voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the
+      guardian of Margaret But everything&mdash;-even a period of waiting at the
+      Paris <i>salle d&rsquo;attente</i>, and a struggle with the <i>cochers</i> at
+      the station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare)&mdash;must
+      come to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the
+      glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l&rsquo;Opéra. At the Hôtel
+      Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too precipitate
+      eagerness. In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in the hotel book,
+      choosing, by an unlucky inspiration, the pseudonym of Buchanan. He then
+      ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of propitiation, it was a much
+      better dinner than usual that Maitland ordered. Bottles of the higher
+      Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful baskets, were brought at his
+      command; for he was determined favorably to impress the people of the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His conduct in this matter was partly determined by the fact that, for the
+      moment, the English were not popular in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, as the French newspapers declared, with more truth than they
+      suspected, &ldquo;Paris was not the place for English people, especially for
+      English women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In these international circumstances, then, Maitland believed he showed
+      the wisdom of the serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless old
+      fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords of the past But he had
+      reckoned without his appetite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon nor alarming, is the putting
+      away of all desire to eat and drink. As the waiter carried off the
+      untouched <i>hors d&rsquo;oeuvres</i> (whereof Maitland only nibbled the
+      delicious bread and butter); as he bore away the <i>huîtres</i>,
+      undiminished in number; as the <i>bisque</i> proved too much for the guest
+      of the evening; as he faltered over the soles, and failed to appreciate
+      the cutlets; as he turned from the noblest <i>crûs</i> (including the
+      widow&rsquo;s <i>crûs</i>, those of La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for <i>siphon</i>
+      and <i>fine champagne</i>, the waiter&rsquo;s countenance assumed an air of
+      owl-like sagacity. There was something wrong, the <i>garçon</i> felt sure,
+      about a man who could order a dinner like Maitland&rsquo;s, and then decline to
+      partake thereof. However, even in a republican country, you can hardly
+      arrest a man merely because his intentions are better than his appetite.
+      The waiter, therefore, contented himself with assuming an imposing
+      attitude, and whispering something to the hall porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, having dined with the Barmecide regardless of
+      expense, went on (as he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the <i>concierge</i>.
+      From that official he purchased two large cigars, which he did not dream
+      of attempting to enjoy; and he then endeavored to enter into conversation,
+      selecting for a topic the state of the contemporary drama. What would
+      monsieur advise him to go to see? Where was Mile. Jane Hading playing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule of
+      French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great matter&mdash;the
+      affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel? Had any of
+      his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he left England
+      a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article of dress&mdash;a
+      great-coat&mdash;which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab. Could
+      monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news about the
+      garment, a coat in <i>peau d&rsquo;ours</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been
+      loitering in the office of the <i>concierge</i>, moved to the neighborhood
+      of the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging
+      on the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well in
+      coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It had
+      been lost by a compatriot of monsieur&rsquo;s? Would monsieur give himself the
+      trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was kept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on the
+      trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty, thought
+      Maitland) followed <i>him</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter led them to a door marked &ldquo;private,&rdquo; and they all three
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;was the bearskin coat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his
+      own, or a friend&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted
+      that the garment only belonged to &ldquo;a man he knew something about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his name?&rdquo; asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to grow
+      worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember
+      the man&rsquo;s name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the first
+      time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and, finding
+      that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English gentlemen
+      usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first time on
+      board the steamer as their friends?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed
+      disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see
+      the play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his
+      deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a stately
+      way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely
+      unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar, <i>sans
+      phrase</i>, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the porter.
+      But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed a card,
+      containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and calmly
+      asked Maitland for &ldquo;his papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer
+      required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective assured him that passports &ldquo;spoil nothing.&rdquo; Had monsieur
+      nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had
+      artfully entered his name as &ldquo;Buchanan&rdquo; on the hotel book, produced his
+      card, on the lower corner of which was printed, <i>St. Gatien&rsquo;s College.</i>
+      This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name
+      did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to
+      accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice,
+      Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was
+      carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here he was
+      received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a decoration, who
+      (after some private talk with the detective) asked Maitland to explain his
+      whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In the first place, the
+      detective&rsquo;s notes on their conversation were read aloud, and it was shown
+      that Maitland had given a false name; had originally spoken of the object
+      of his quest as &ldquo;the coat of a friend;&rdquo; then as &ldquo;the coat of a man whom he
+      knew something about;&rdquo; then as &ldquo;the coat of a man whose name he did not
+      know;&rdquo; and that, finally, he had attempted to go away without offering any
+      satisfactory account of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not
+      unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.
+      What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a
+      matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this
+      fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller at
+      the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a <i>souricière</i>,
+      as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after the coat could
+      be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French dictionary),
+      Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police the whole story
+      of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery of Shields&rsquo; body
+      in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance (<i>enlèvement</i>),
+      and to a description of the costume (bearskin coat and all) of the villain
+      who had carried her away. Then he might have described his relations with
+      Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clew offered by the
+      advertisement in the <i>Times</i>, and his own too subtle and ingenious
+      attempt to follow up that clew. But it is improbable that this narrative,
+      had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the
+      suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced
+      that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s had
+      neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to
+      relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment&rsquo;s
+      notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell
+      back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador;
+      and that night Maitland of Gatien&rsquo;s passed, for the first time during his
+      blameless career, in a police-cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured by
+      Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments of the
+      British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental Justice? Are
+      not our countrymen the common butts of German, French, Spanish, and even
+      Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an Englishman appears, do not
+      the foreign police usually arrest him at a venture, and inquire afterward?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most of
+      these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably <i>louche</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hôtel Alsace et
+      Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
+      about the great-coat in the <i>Times</i>, for he made a study of &ldquo;the
+      journal of the City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
+      bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own hotel. A
+      bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite, stratagems,
+      and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which is, at present
+      and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave Irish. M. Dupin,
+      as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish in their noble
+      struggle for whatever they <i>are</i> struggling for; but he did not wish
+      his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of Freedom, and the
+      great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view to elucidating the
+      mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the police on his
+      premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its <i>affût</i>,
+      when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious circumstances.
+      M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied him the
+      distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete <i>Civis Romanus
+      sum!</i> He was an English citizen. He had written to the English
+      ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien&rsquo;s man, an <i>attaché</i> of the
+      embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced to
+      be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his interview
+      with the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his back to the
+      light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes, while the scribble
+      of the pen of the <i>greffier</i>, as he took down the Englishman&rsquo;s
+      deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; asked the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maitland,&rdquo; replied the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo; said the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. &ldquo;You entered the name of Buchanan
+      in the book of the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is on my cards, and on that letter,&rdquo; said Maitland, keeping his
+      temper wonderfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The documents in question lay on a table, as <i>pièces justificatives</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate
+      person, and have draped (<i>afflublé</i>) yourself in the trappings of
+      your victim! Where is his body?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction had formed
+      within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the
+      person under examination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is <i>whose</i> body?&rdquo; asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan,&rdquo; said the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry with
+      which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.)
+      &ldquo;Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not deceived
+      by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She is calm, stern,
+      but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely&rdquo; (<i>répandez franchement</i>), &ldquo;and
+      you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your interest to be
+      frank.&rdquo; (<i>Il est de votre intérêt d&rsquo;être franc</i>.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you want me to say?&rdquo; asked the prévenu, &ldquo;What is all this
+      pother about a great-coat?&rdquo; (<i>Tant de fracas pour un paletot?</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,&rdquo; said the
+      Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. &ldquo;Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me, Buchanan, why
+      did you ask for the coat at the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In answer to that advertisement in the Times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is false; you yourself inserted the advertisement. But, on your own
+      system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might
+      have found his tailor&rsquo;s name on the coat, and then have discovered for
+      whom the coat was made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the forged
+      advertisement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertisement, as you deny
+      having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertisement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at
+      this moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you that my name is not Buchanan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the moment; it was incorrect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you lie?&rdquo; (<i>Pourquoi avez vous menti?</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland made an irritable movement
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplorable. You are consigned <i>au
+      secret</i>, and will have an opportunity of revising your situation, and
+      replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So ended Maitland&rsquo;s first and, happily, sole interview with a Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction. Lord Walter Brixton, his old St Gatien&rsquo;s pupil, returned
+      from the country on the very day of Maitland&rsquo;s examination. An interview
+      (during which Lord Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach was not
+      refused to the <i>attaché</i>, and, in a few hours, after some formalities
+      had been complied with, Maitland was a free man. His <i>pièces
+      justificatives</i>, his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing
+      Cross, were returned to him intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privileges of the last-named
+      document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going straight to Constantinople and the Greek Islands,&rdquo; he wrote to
+      Barton. &ldquo;Do you know, I don&rsquo;t like Paris. My attempt at an investigation
+      has not been a success. I have endured considerable discomfort, and I fear
+      my case will get into the <i>Figaro</i>, and there will be dozens of
+      &lsquo;social leaders&rsquo; and &lsquo;descriptive headers&rsquo; about me in all the penny
+      papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Maitland gave his banker&rsquo;s address at Constantinople, relinquished
+      the quest of Margaret, and for a while, as the Sagas say, &ldquo;is out of the
+      story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.&mdash;The Night of Adventures.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of the <i>Hit
+      or Miss</i>. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there would
+      come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous woman;
+      then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same woman were
+      working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of rainy hail, mixed
+      with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting insult, on the
+      windows of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so <i>da capo</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?&rdquo; said
+      Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she perched on
+      the table in the parlor of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
+      Maitland&rsquo;s investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
+      near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still an
+      unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come from
+      the original centre of the troubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in no hurry to take an engagement,&rdquo; answered the resolute Eliza,
+      holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
+      close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
+      female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she looked
+      now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+      two or three managers in treaty with me,&rdquo; said Eliza. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the <i>Follies
+      and Frivolities</i> down Norwood way, and the <i>Varieties</i> in the
+      &lsquo;Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that&rsquo;s what I
+      ask for, and I&rsquo;ll get it too! Just now I&rsquo;m taking a vacation, and making
+      an honest penny with these things,&rdquo; and she nodded at a little basket full
+      of the wardrobe of dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?&rdquo; asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Eliza; &ldquo;I am doing well with them. I&rsquo;m not sure I shan&rsquo;t need
+      to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pm glad you are successful,&rdquo; answered Barton. &ldquo;I say, Eliza!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
+      sitting the night before he was found in the snow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had suddenly occurred to Barton&mdash;it might have occurred to him
+      before&mdash;that this room might be worth examining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain&rsquo;t using it now! Ill show you it,&rdquo; said Eliza, leading the way
+      up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton took hold of the handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies first,&rdquo; he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; came the child&rsquo;s voice, from half-way down the stairs; &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t come
+      in! They say he walks, I&rsquo;ve heard noises there at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
+      struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
+      been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an empty
+      bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors, blue
+      and red, part of Shields&rsquo; stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some very
+      sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized. They
+      were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the Southern
+      Seas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
+      needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined it
+      closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the others,
+      but of wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
+      carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
+      substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
+      instrument-case: &ldquo;the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see him?&rdquo; asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be childish, Eliza: there&rsquo;s no one to see. Why is the room left all
+      untidy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother dare not go in!&rdquo; whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
+      voice, &ldquo;Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the night
+      old Shields died in the snow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
+      should go on thinking about it,&rdquo; said Barton, rather sternly. &ldquo;You were
+      tired and ill, and you fancied it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the child, solemnly. &ldquo;I never say no more about it to
+      mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I remember
+      it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of the
+      curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
+      open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her hand
+      to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as to be
+      unrecognizable, flashed into the room. &ldquo;Oh, come! oh, come!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s killing her!&rdquo; Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she had
+      appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a face
+      maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that moment
+      Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run, after the
+      girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the bar, who were
+      besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, doctor, come!&rdquo; she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
+      crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
+      Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
+      her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
+      then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of the
+      old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following, found
+      himself for the first time within the portals of <i>The Old English
+      Bun-house</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
+      excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were pressed
+      so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could scarcely
+      thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering another: it
+      was a matter of life and death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s been at the drink, and she&rsquo;s killed her! she&rsquo;s killed her! I
+      heard her fall!&rdquo; one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
+      hysterical iteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me pass!&rdquo; shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
+      the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me room,&rdquo; he cried, and the patrons of <i>The Bun-house</i> yielding
+      place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
+      weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
+      crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
+      stress of the girls behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
+      the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame of
+      blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane), Barton
+      saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
+      unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
+      side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood on
+      the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further side
+      of this girl&mdash;who was dead, or seemingly dead&mdash;sat, on a low
+      stool, a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still.
+      The knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
+      noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment even Barton&rsquo;s rapidity of action and resolution were
+      paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
+      with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision, dreadful
+      even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit awoke in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch a policeman,&rdquo; he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened troop
+      of girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes,&rdquo; said Susan, the young
+      woman who had called Barton from the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the throng.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken girl
+      at her feet&mdash;as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a <i>tableau</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;I give that woman in charge for an attempt at
+      murder. Take her to the station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the looks of her,&rdquo; whispered the policeman. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d better get
+      her knife from her first, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can&rsquo;t look after
+      the wounded girl in this crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose
+      eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her
+      victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were just within arm&rsquo;s reach of the murderess when she leaped with
+      incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and
+      lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she
+      raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into
+      her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had
+      stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George, she&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo; cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him, and
+      laid his hand on the woman&rsquo;s heart. She stirred once, was violently shaken
+      with the agony of death, and so passed away, carrying into silence her
+      secret and her story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley&rsquo;s hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!&rdquo; remarked the policeman,
+      sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the wound
+      of the housekeeper&rsquo;s victim, and applying such styptics as he had within
+      reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The Bunhouse__
+      of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message (by the
+      direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed not devoid
+      of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was being expected,
+      the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was employed by Barton
+      in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in generally restoring
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine&rsquo;s house with
+      Barton&rsquo;s brief note, and with his own curt statement that &ldquo;murder was
+      being done at <i>The Bun-house</i>,&rdquo; he found the Lady Superior rehearsing
+      for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room
+      representation of &ldquo;Nitouche,&rdquo; and the terrible news found her in one of
+      the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously
+      misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      hurried off, &ldquo;just as she was,&rdquo; and astonished Barton (who had never seen
+      her before) by arriving at <i>The Bunhouse</i> as a rather conventional
+      shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig. The
+      versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all worlds
+      occasionally let her into <i>inconsequences</i> of this description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not
+      only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard the
+      tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled herself
+      as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl&rsquo;s wound, as Barton was
+      happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for the
+      point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part. But
+      the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene of
+      violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young
+      women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened by
+      sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most
+      responsible of <i>The Bun-house</i> girls, announced her intention to, sit
+      up all night with the patient. Barton&mdash;who was moved, perhaps, as
+      much by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by
+      professional duty&mdash;remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the
+      Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As the
+      danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of fever,
+      Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the morning,
+      he let himself out of <i>The Bunhouse</i>, and made sleepily for his
+      lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his share
+      of adventures&mdash;which, like sorrows, never &ldquo;come as single spies, but
+      in battalions&rdquo;&mdash;was by no means exhausted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
+      extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i>, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
+      tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the gray beginning, Zooks,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, in
+      half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps
+      along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind was
+      walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamplights
+      dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was just passing
+      the locked doors of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;for he preferred to go
+      homeward by the riverside&mdash;when a singular sound, or mixture of
+      sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
+      attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a <i>nuit
+      blanche</i>. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
+      traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make before
+      quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a great
+      whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
+      economy, and was laboring &ldquo;without a conscience or an aim.&rdquo; Whir, whir,
+      flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
+      the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
+      scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
+      whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his
+      might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms of
+      the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
+      palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
+      half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the accents
+      of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was heard,
+      and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only
+      to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats&mdash;the time during which the
+      torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation
+      of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple
+      of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place
+      where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken, and next moment, with
+      torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within the palisade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things&mdash;big, black, formless&mdash;were
+      dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of the waste open
+      ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were
+      winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors
+      fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the
+      revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to
+      earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth of the flying
+      wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, &ldquo;Hold on!&rdquo; or
+      some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of the sufferer.
+      But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old baskets, outworn
+      hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste land, the movement
+      of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran slowly down, and, with
+      a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased moving, as a heart stops
+      beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice came from the crumpled mass
+      of humanity in the centre of the hideous mechanism:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days
+      being over) at least to know <i>why</i> he is to be shot at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What on earth are you doing? How
+      can <i>you</i> talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time there was a full measure of the light &ldquo;which London takes the
+      day to be,&rdquo; and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this dialogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a victim
+      of the rack&mdash;scattered, so to speak&mdash;in a posture inconceivably
+      out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man&rsquo;s head was
+      lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a
+      beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the
+      other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a
+      close-fitting suit of cloth&mdash;something between the uniform of bicycle
+      clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell
+      back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about
+      his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to help you out of this?&rdquo; said the surgeon, carefully examining
+      his patient, as he might now be called. A little close observation showed
+      that the man&rsquo;s arms were strapped by buckles into the fans, while one of
+      his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the mechanism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled
+      groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that, as
+      far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries
+      done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there
+      were many contusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the
+      police-office and get men and a stretcher,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First hide all <i>this,</i>&rdquo; he murmured, moving his head so as to
+      indicate the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of
+      spars, cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of
+      mechanics. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let them know a word about it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Say I had an
+      accident&mdash;that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window&mdash;say
+      anything you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week,&rdquo; he murmured
+      dreamily, &ldquo;it would have been complete. It is the second time I have just
+      missed success and fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not an idea what your secret may be,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;but here goes
+      for the machine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes, he
+      rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among the
+      heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment,
+      meritorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you can find them all again?&rdquo; asked the victim of misplaced
+      ingenuity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, all right,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they
+      find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how on earth am I to get you to the street?&rdquo; Barton inquired, very
+      naturally. &ldquo;Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you
+      over the boarding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can bear anything&mdash;I will bear anything,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;Look in
+      my breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the sufferer by
+      a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of skeleton-key in
+      strong wire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street,&rdquo; said the
+      crushed man; &ldquo;but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is
+      passing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of silence
+      broken by groans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! one thing more,&rdquo; he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his
+      arms. &ldquo;I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson&rsquo;s Kents, hard by; my
+      name is Winter.&rdquo; Then, after a pause, &ldquo;I can pay for a private room at the
+      infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end in the
+      left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones (and
+      broken bones) as he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he dared
+      not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall. At last&mdash;it
+      seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to the sufferer&mdash;the
+      hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly, Barton opened the
+      door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear, deposited his burden on
+      the pavement, and flew to the not distant police-station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he
+      found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he had
+      left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or two
+      puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called up a
+      cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there were
+      riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky penny-a-liner
+      with his &ldquo;tissue&rdquo; and pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected, that
+      his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the
+      stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that
+      motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of the
+      case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last,
+      returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken
+      at breakfast, &ldquo;I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a
+      Flying-Machine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.&mdash;A Patient.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and
+      laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather
+      calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in suicide
+      or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a
+      flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused
+      by engines of a more familiar nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day
+      after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived
+      that the distress and confusion at <i>The Bunhouse</i> were very great.
+      The police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many
+      disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the
+      consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness
+      and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist,
+      and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due attention
+      to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking her very
+      much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of social
+      enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated manner,
+      though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the explanations
+      offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had made up her mind
+      to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece and companion. The
+      girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready young patronesses of
+      <i>The Bunhouse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the lady&rsquo;s mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the
+      hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead
+      woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient&mdash;not
+      that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton&rsquo;s fancy
+      did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those
+      &ldquo;amatorious&rdquo; young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who
+      cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was
+      not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he
+      went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more
+      apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had
+      been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered, and,
+      in Barton&rsquo;s private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a successful
+      inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting enough, apart
+      from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy absolutely free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no more than Barton&rsquo;s actual duty to call at <i>The Old English
+      Bunhouse</i> in the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night.
+      She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper
+      bearing a legend to the effect that <i>The Old English Bunhouse</i> was
+      closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was drawn
+      up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring at <i>The Bunhouse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with open
+      arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise of <i>Nitouche</i>,
+      and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Mr. Barton,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;your patient is doing very well
+      indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have
+      called.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he had
+      discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs. Si
+      John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think she is able to see me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll run to her room and inquire,&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine, fleeting
+      nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as described by
+      Charles Lamb&rsquo;s friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind her from the
+      chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady of <i>The Bunhouse</i>
+      returned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence of
+      the invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even
+      better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and
+      melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked
+      whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when
+      they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called
+      her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the girl
+      had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, &ldquo;it was through Mr. Cranley that
+      I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can&rsquo;t think of
+      without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is too
+      dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to one.
+      Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must admit
+      that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He gave her an
+      excellent character, <i>especially</i> for sobriety, and till yesterday I
+      had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she became quite wild
+      and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this is the first time she
+      yielded to that horrid temptation. Don&rsquo;t you think it was odd of Mr.
+      Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to his rooms, but it was
+      returned, marked, &lsquo;Has left; address not Known.&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t know what has
+      become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have told us, but the
+      unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard&rsquo;s, in Chelsea?&rdquo;
+       asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He was
+      a great friend of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Thomas Cranley!&rdquo; exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which
+      probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, please,&rdquo; cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a
+      pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter
+      the peccadillo of a favorite saint; &ldquo;please don&rsquo;t say you know anything
+      against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling
+      about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so unknown
+      in France; but, on the other side, <i>he</i> could scarcely think it right
+      to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a confirmed
+      scoundrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really,
+      if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley&rsquo;s enemies are of his own
+      making. I would not go to him for a girl&rsquo;s character, I&rsquo;m sure. But I
+      thought he had disappeared from society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that I
+      was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him. And I
+      never would. I never turn my back on my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there was a conspiracy,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;I am the ringleader in it; for,
+      as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr. Cranley
+      in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I would not
+      have mentioned it for the world,&rdquo; he added, almost alarmed at the
+      expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine&rsquo;s face; &ldquo;but you
+      wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief that
+      he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what all
+      who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you, in the
+      matter of that woman&rsquo;s character, was,&rdquo; cried Barton, growing indignant as
+      he thought of it, &ldquo;one of the very basest things I ever heard of. I had
+      seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted with the care of
+      girls. She was at one time very well known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s face had passed through every shade of
+      expression&mdash;doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air
+      of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret has always spoken so well of him,&rdquo; she said, half to herself.
+      &ldquo;He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter of
+      a humble acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;but as to his
+      general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap he
+      laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him get
+      the poor girl back into his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in her
+      voice; &ldquo;and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants anything.
+      Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne Walk? It is
+      not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best thing you can do,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;and be sure you send for me if
+      you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am quite
+      ready to meet him anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will call to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, about this time,&rdquo; said Barton; and he kept his promise
+      assiduously, calling often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in a
+      black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying
+      indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the
+      struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened,
+      and the servant announced &ldquo;Dr. Barton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She is at a
+      soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any
+      children, or had any fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she
+      should not attend soap-bubble parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m selfish enough to be glad you could not go,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;for then I
+      should have missed you. But why do you sigh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a good many things to make me unhappy,&rdquo; said Margaret, &ldquo;in
+      addition to my&mdash;to my accident. You must not think I am always
+      bewailing myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before
+      I entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s service, and then my whole course of
+      life was altered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry for you,&rdquo; said Barton, simply. He did not know what else
+      to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and
+      perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears
+      came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She was
+      on the point of breaking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl
+      crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton&rsquo;s
+      mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you.
+      Can&rsquo;t I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the troubles
+      of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are nearly
+      over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that they <i>were</i>
+      over, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have been going on so long,&rdquo; said Margaret &ldquo;I have had such a
+      wandering life, and such changes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but
+      more was not offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us think of the future,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Have you any idea about what you
+      mean to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her
+      always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don&rsquo;t know what he would
+      like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley&rsquo;s name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you known him long?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my father&rsquo;s,
+      and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from school, and
+      he gave me a start in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your
+      education,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can a girl do?&rdquo; answered Margaret. &ldquo;We know so little. I could
+      hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully
+      backward at school&mdash;at least, Miss&mdash;&mdash; I mean, the teachers
+      thought me backward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you know as much as anyone should,&rdquo; said Barton, indignantly.
+      &ldquo;Were you at a nice school?&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret&rsquo;s history. She
+      seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and knowledge
+      of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial position at a
+      philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent of Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady&rsquo;s character which
+      made her patronage not precarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were some nice girls at it,&rdquo; answered Margaret, without committing
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such
+      thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an
+      abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any
+      place of education is &ldquo;nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is really getting quite late,&rdquo; Barton observed, reluctantly. He liked
+      to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received just a
+      touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk to her;
+      in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It would be
+      miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying
+      patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty. The poor are
+      often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret noticed his reluctance
+      to go contending with a sense of what he owed to propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you must want tea; but I don&rsquo;t like to ring. It is so short a
+      time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i>, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me.
+      They must dislike me; it is very natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not natural at all,&rdquo; said Barton, with conviction; &ldquo;perfectly
+      monstrous, on the other hand.&rdquo; This little compliment eclipsed the effect
+      of fire-light on the girl&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Suppose I ring,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and then
+      you can say, when Mary says &lsquo;Did you ring, miss?&rsquo; &lsquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t ring; but
+      as you <i>are</i> here, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if that would be quite honest,&rdquo; said Margaret, doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pious fraud&mdash;a drawing-room comedy,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;have we
+      rehearsed it enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals was
+      played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as amateurs
+      often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, this is quite perfect,&rdquo; said Barton, when he had been accommodated
+      with a large piece of plum-cake. &ldquo;This is the very kind of cake which we
+      specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too!
+      There should be a new proverb, &lsquo;Physician, diet thyself.&rsquo; You see, we
+      don&rsquo;t all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry
+      toast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life,&rdquo; said
+      Margaret. &ldquo;She tries a good many new things,&rdquo; Barton remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;Oh, if
+      you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!&rdquo; And she shuddered
+      as she remembered her late chaperon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if some day&mdash;you won&rsquo;t think me very rude?&rdquo; asked Barton&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      would mind telling me a little of your history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it,&rdquo; answered Margaret; &ldquo;and
+      a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
+      everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
+      to think of things that have happened, or may happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They shall never happen, if you will trust me,&rdquo; cried Barton, when a
+      carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last,&rdquo; cried Margaret, starting to run
+      to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have fallen
+      had Barton not caught her lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how stupid you must think me!&rdquo; she said, blushing. And Barton thought
+      he had never seen anything so pretty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once for all, I don&rsquo;t think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
+      that you call yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
+      entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
+      hospitality and content with existence into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>you</i> are here!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;and I have almost missed you. Now
+      you <i>must</i> stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone,
+      Margaret and I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
+      (which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in vain.
+      It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours passed
+      lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all hours&mdash;good
+      and evil&mdash;abide, remembered or forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII.&mdash;Another Patient.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
+     Comme dans le chant de Ruckert.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;Théophile Gautier.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume, a
+      fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. &lsquo;Such an one,&rsquo; he says&mdash;meaning
+      me, and inventors like me&mdash;&lsquo;is a little crazed with the humors of
+      melancholy.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
+      and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested in
+      the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting in
+      hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in Paterson&rsquo;s
+      Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the conventional den
+      of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of such persons. They are
+      the Treasure Hunters of cities and of civilization&mdash;the modern
+      seekers for the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone. At the end of a vista of dreams they
+      behold the great Discovery made perfect, and themselves the winners of
+      fame and of wealth incalculable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with electricity.
+      They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and to
+      turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of Winter&rsquo;s den in
+      Paterson&rsquo;s Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was set on a more
+      ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made, which lined every
+      wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics, and especially on the
+      art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of the fourpenny box of cheap
+      bookvendors mixed with volumes in better condition, purchased at a larger
+      cost. Here&mdash;among the litter of tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed
+      &ldquo;Proceedings&rdquo; of the Linnean and the Aeronautic Society of Great Britain&mdash;here
+      were Fredericus Hermannus&rsquo; &ldquo;De Arte Volandi,&rdquo; and Cayley&rsquo;s works, and
+      Hatton Turner&rsquo;s &ldquo;Astra Castra,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Voyage to the Moon&rdquo; of Cyrano de
+      Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dædalus,&rdquo; and the same sanguine prelate&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Mercury, The Secret Messenger.&rdquo; Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a
+      shabby set of the classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of
+      lucubrations by French and other inventors&mdash;Ponton d&rsquo;Amocourt,
+      Borelli, Chabrier, Girard, and Marey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient&rsquo;s mind&mdash;(a
+      man is known by his books at least as much as by his companions, and
+      companions Winter had none)&mdash;even if the shelves had not spoken
+      clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have proclaimed
+      him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library, and as the
+      floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and periodicals, a
+      quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted by
+      big preserved wings of birds and other flying things&mdash;from the
+      sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
+      From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
+      materials; and here&mdash;a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a
+      kind of drill-bow&mdash;was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley.
+      The whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds&rsquo;
+      feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
+      mind was made up as to the nature of Winter&rsquo;s secret, or delusion; and
+      when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
+      either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt,&rdquo; Winter went on with his
+      eager talk. &ldquo;An acute man&mdash;rather <i>too</i> acute, don&rsquo;t you think,
+      for a Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the
+      arguments of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
+      matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such as flying?&rdquo; put in Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; such as our great aim&mdash;the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
+      What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
+      flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
+      artificer.) &lsquo;Diligent,&rsquo; I may say, I have been; as to &lsquo;ingenious,&rsquo; I leave
+      the verdict to others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?&rdquo; asked Barton, to humor his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of a
+      mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women&mdash;<i>Goories</i>
+      he calls them&mdash;endowed with the power of flight. But <i>they</i> were
+      born so. We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?&rdquo; remarked Barton,
+      leading him on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
+      face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh at
+      him. &ldquo;No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man. But
+      look at what he says about the <i>weight</i> of your flying machine! Can
+      anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent researches,
+      and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You remember the
+      iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The iron fly!&rdquo; murmured Barton. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
+      hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
+      guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose on
+      the finger of its maker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you believe <i>that</i>?&rdquo; asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato&rsquo;s
+      acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And the
+      same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
+      triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
+      at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus, because
+      the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in accordance with
+      the best modern authorities, that the weight is no hindrance whatever, if
+      proportional to the motive power. A flying machine, says Professor Bell,
+      in the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>&mdash;(you will not question the
+      authority of the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>?)&mdash;a flying machine
+      should be &lsquo;a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful structure.&rsquo; There,
+      you see, the Bishop was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours was deuced powerful,&rdquo; remarked Barton. &ldquo;I did not expect to see two
+      limbs of you left together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>is</i> powerful, or rather it <i>was</i>,&rdquo; answered Winter, with a
+      heavy sigh; &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s all to do over again&mdash;all to do over again! Yet
+      it was a noble specimen. &lsquo;The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,&rsquo;
+      as the learned author in the <i>Encyclopodia</i> recommends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. <i>You</i>
+      were the passive surface, as far as I could see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at me, please sir, after you&rsquo;ve been so kind. All the rest
+      laugh at me. You can&rsquo;t think what a pleasure it has been to talk to a
+      scholar,&rdquo; and there was a new flush on the poor fellow&rsquo;s cheek, and
+      something watery in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, my dear sir,&rdquo; cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
+      himself. &ldquo;Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
+      aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
+      success of this kind of experiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton&rsquo;s hand
+      in his own battered claw; &ldquo;thank you. But why should we run only to modern
+      authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been present to
+      men&rsquo;s minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization. Did not
+      Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the hypothesis
+      of natural selection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he <i>did</i> make a shot at it,&rdquo; admitted Barton, who remembered
+      as much as that from &ldquo;the old coaching days,&rdquo; and college lectures at St.
+      Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
+      Greece, we find Dædalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
+      pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for ships;
+      but I put it to you, is that probable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Obvious bosh,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the meteorological mycologists, sir, <i>they</i> maintain that
+      Dædalus is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing those fellows won&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; replied Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you are with me, sir. In Dædalus <i>I</i> see either a record of
+      a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
+      expression of an aspiration as old as culture. <i>You</i> wouldn&rsquo;t make
+      Dædalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting in
+      Sicily, in the west?&rdquo; added Winter anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of such nonsense,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
+      sir, if I may judge by his picture of Dædalus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every sensible man must be with you,&rdquo; answered Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I won&rsquo;t detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity, such
+      as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus. Doubtless the
+      arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant Scythians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>must</i> have been, indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I
+      admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian&rsquo;s,
+      who employed an eagle&rsquo;s wing and a vulture&rsquo;s in his flight, I take to be a
+      mere figment of the satirist&rsquo;s imagination. But what do you make of Simon
+      Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine in which, like myself,
+      he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be gathered from Arnobius, our
+      earliest authority. He mentions expressly <i>currum Simonis Magi et
+      quadrigas igneas</i>, the chariot of Simon Magus and his <i>vehicles of
+      flame</i>&mdash;clearly the naphtha is alluded to&mdash;which vanished
+      into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter circumstances being
+      miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly Simon Magus had overcome
+      the difficulties of aerial navigation. But, though Petrus Crinitus rejects
+      the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared to believe that Simon Magus
+      actually flew from the Capitol to the Aventine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The world knows nothing of its greatest men,&rsquo;&rdquo; quoted Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
+      character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
+      credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally, the
+      science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in secret,
+      through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at Constantinople
+      who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I mean), was
+      untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we tarry in the
+      past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in <i>Knowledge</i> and the <i>Cornhill</i>?
+      Does not the preeminent authority, Professor Pettigrew Bell, himself
+      declare, with the weight, too, of the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>, that
+      &lsquo;the number of successful flying models is considerable. It is not too
+      much to expect,&rsquo; he goes on, &lsquo;that the problem of artificial flight will
+      be actually solved, or at least much simplified.&rsquo; What less can we expect,
+      as he observes, in the land of Watt and Stephenson, when the construction
+      of flying machines has been &lsquo;taken up in earnest by practical men?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may indeed,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;hope for the best when persons of your
+      learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to my learning, you flatter me,&rdquo; said Winter. &ldquo;I am no scholar; but an
+      enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that the
+      great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a romance, it
+      is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan of the Happy
+      Valley expected to solve the problem in one year&rsquo;s time. &lsquo;If all men were
+      equally virtuous,&rsquo; said this artist, &lsquo;I should with equal alacrity teach
+      them all to fly.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson&rsquo;s artist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To <i>you</i> I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
+      machine describe elliptic figures of eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen them do <i>that</i>, said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
+      by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in air&mdash;which
+      I effected by starting from a height of six feet only&mdash;by a
+      combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By steam
+      alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar across two
+      fields. Penaud&rsquo;s machine, relying only on india rubber under torsion,
+      flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as Bishop Wilkins well
+      observes, a properly weighted and proportioned flying-machine, capable of
+      carrying a man, can do also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not carrying
+      you at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something had gone wrong with the mechanism,&rdquo; answered Winter, sighing.
+      &ldquo;It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against. Remember
+      Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling error in
+      the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had to give half
+      his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt would tell him
+      that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a coating of chalk
+      made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend on it, interfered
+      with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my experiments at night,
+      and in the dark, for fear of being discovered and anticipated. I have been
+      on the verge&mdash;nay, <i>over</i> the verge&mdash;of success. &lsquo;No
+      imaginable invention,&rsquo; Bishop Wilkins says, &lsquo;could prove of greater
+      benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.&rsquo; A few weeks ago
+      that glory was mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why a few weeks ago?&rdquo; asked Barton. &ldquo;Was your machine more advanced then
+      than when I met you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion,&rdquo; said Winter,
+      wearily; &ldquo;but a few weeks ago my <i>machine acted</i>, and I may say that
+      I knew the sensations of a bird on the wing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that you actually <i>flew</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought&mdash;one wild and
+      credulous, the other practical and professional&mdash;surged and met in
+      his brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I will
+      call again soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He <i>did</i> call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be
+      repeated in its proper place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV.&mdash;Found.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;All precious things, discovered late,
+     To those that seek them issue forth;
+     For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,
+     And draws the veil from hidden worth.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;The Sleeping Beauty.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could not,
+      of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She noticed
+      that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking only the
+      clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so light of heart
+      as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes men and women
+      poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of them. Margaret
+      was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence, a bad listener&mdash;all
+      of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine, but pardoned, in this
+      instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt to blush without
+      apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door, to leave the room
+      hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back, when Barton called. Nor
+      was Barton himself such good company as he had been. His manner was
+      uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be paid at longer
+      intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in fits and starts;
+      and yet he did not know how to go away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have
+      interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has
+      not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love with
+      her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings of inclination
+      in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an &ldquo;engagement.&rdquo; All
+      considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight melted away before the
+      ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first, to get engaged next, and
+      to be married as soon as possible afterward, without regard to
+      consequences of any kind, were, in this lady&rsquo;s mind, heroic actions, and
+      almost the whole duty of men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was to
+      be known about Margaret&rsquo;s affections, and also about Barton&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear,&rdquo; she said to
+      Margaret &ldquo;Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him?
+      Nonsense, Daisy; that is <i>his</i> affair. I know you are as good a girl
+      as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr.
+      Cranley&mdash;yes, he was a wretch&mdash;had a spite against you. I don&rsquo;t
+      know why, and you won&rsquo;t help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a
+      man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I&rsquo;m sure. You are afraid of
+      something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t
+      wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one&rsquo;s nerve. I could no more drive
+      now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to think <i>nothing</i>
+      of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who is there can
+      frighten you? And as to being poor,&rdquo; and Mrs. St. John Deloraine explained
+      her generous views as to arrangements on her part, which would leave
+      Margaret far from portionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend&rsquo;s
+      shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and
+      they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his
+      boots, and fidget with his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no patience with you, Mr. Barton,&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine at
+      last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation with
+      him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no patience with you. Why,
+      where is your courage? &lsquo;She has a history?&rsquo; She&rsquo;s been persecuted. Well,
+      where&rsquo;s your chivalry? Why don&rsquo;t you try your fortune? There never was a
+      better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she&rsquo;s not&mdash;when she&rsquo;s
+      not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don&rsquo;t
+      take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
+      voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I am
+      going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and looking
+      very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will get out
+      and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you will show
+      Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and when you
+      come back you will both have made up your minds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
+      carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
+      were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
+      pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish (&ldquo;coarse,&rdquo; but not
+      uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees&mdash;it was
+      the last week of May&mdash;were in the earliest freshness of their
+      foliage; the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How quiet and pretty it is!&rdquo; said Margaret &ldquo;Who would think we were in
+      London?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
+      Scott, he thought the more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Burnside!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly, &ldquo;we have known each other now for
+      some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
+      and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
+      of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
+      hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said at last; &ldquo;we have known each other for some time, and yet&mdash;you
+      know nothing about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the face.
+      There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen before,
+      though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a mark of
+      pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton felt his courage come back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love
+      you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Margaret, can&rsquo;t you care for me a little? Don&rsquo;t tell me
+      anything you think you should not say. I&rsquo;m not curious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its inmates,
+      grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into the waters,
+      so that he could not see her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said at last, in a very low voice; &ldquo;it would not be fair.&rdquo; Then,
+      after another pause, &ldquo;There is someone&mdash;&rdquo; she murmured, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for <i>him</i>,
+      he fancied she cared for nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like someone better&mdash;&rdquo; he was beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t like him at all,&rdquo; interrupted Margaret. &ldquo;He was very kind,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then can&rsquo;t you like <i>me</i>?&rdquo; asked Barton; and by this time he was
+      very near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was
+      still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know,&rdquo; murmured Margaret. And
+      yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and ashamed,
+      proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind but that
+      Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had surrendered. And
+      he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the honors and rewards of
+      war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is no covenant until it is
+      sealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently,
+      with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by the
+      iron railings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must tell you about myself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have promised never to tell,
+      but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many things
+      have happened.&rdquo; And she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there
+      should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself
+      (aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to
+      conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect
+      her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no
+      argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and, by
+      way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming an
+      affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still turning
+      toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The person&mdash;the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my
+      father&rsquo;s, who, at one time, wanted him&rdquo;&mdash;here Margaret paused&mdash;&ldquo;wanted
+      me to&mdash;to be his wife some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do
+      local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse
+      of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His name&mdash;but
+      perhaps I should not mention his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I dare say I never heard of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which
+      you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to tell
+      her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean to be
+      living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so many
+      terrible things back to mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Margaret,&rdquo; Barton whispered, taking her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the pathway,
+      and an observer might have thought that they were greatly interested in
+      the water-fowl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is not Burnside,&rdquo; Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder
+      across the gardens and toward the river; &ldquo;my name is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daisy Shields!&rdquo; cried a clear voice. &ldquo;Daisy, you&rsquo;re found at last, and
+      I&rsquo;ve found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the impassioned
+      embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady; while Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in a
+      pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. &ldquo;Oh, my
+      dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help her
+      to look for them; and I&rsquo;ve found <i>you!</i> It&rsquo;s like Stanley finding
+      Livingstone. &lsquo;How I Found Daisy.&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll write a book about it. And where <i>have</i>
+      you been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything was the
+      matter&mdash;only Miss Mariett and me! And I&rsquo;ve left for good; and she and
+      I are quite friends, and I&rsquo;m to be presented next Drawing Room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had
+      acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment
+      and concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret&rsquo;s past was about to be
+      dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it already <i>was</i> dispelled. The
+      names of Shields and Miss Marlett had told <i>him</i> all that he needed
+      to know. But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady&rsquo;s
+      lips; and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of
+      having interrupted a &ldquo;proposal,&rdquo; and spoiled a darling scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested
+      Margaret to return to the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as Miss Harman seems to have <i>a great deal</i> to say to you,
+      Margaret,&rdquo; added the philanthropic lady, &ldquo;you two had better walk on as
+      fast as you can; for <i>you</i> must be very careful not to catch cold! I
+      see Miss Harman&rsquo;s maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and
+      I, Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I&rsquo;m not a
+      good walker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Now</i>,&rdquo; said Barton&rsquo;s companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey,
+      about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond
+      earshot&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Now</i>, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I hope so&mdash;I&rsquo;m not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re not satisfactory&mdash;not at all satisfactory. Are you <i>still</i>
+      shilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?&rdquo; cried the veteran
+      of twenty-nine. &ldquo;Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like a cow in
+      a conservatory? She&rsquo;s a regular school-girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t that exactly, or at least that&rsquo;s not all. I hope&mdash;I think
+      she does care for me, or will care for me, a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the
+      world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she
+      knew of the state of Margaret&rsquo;s heart But she was highly provoked, and
+      showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is,&rdquo; Barton admitted, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m so taken by surprise I hardly
+      know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited,
+      that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to
+      tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at
+      school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking
+      anxiously at Barton, &ldquo;was it anything so very dreadful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She called her Daisy Shields,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened at <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i>, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false
+      name. It was not <i>her</i> fault. The question is, What was her reason
+      for keeping her real name concealed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m coming to,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I have a friend, a Mr.
+      Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien&rsquo;s?&rdquo; asked the widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have often heard him speak of you,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;Well, he had a
+      <i>protégée</i>&mdash;a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words&mdash;a
+      girl whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to
+      her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared
+      mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many
+      efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this
+      girl&rsquo;s name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret
+      Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called
+      Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if she <i>does</i> care for
+      me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom my
+      friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to find
+      his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and
+      annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Barton,&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine, &ldquo;perhaps you alarm yourself too
+      much. I think&rdquo;&mdash;here she dropped her voice a little&mdash;&ldquo;I think&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t think Mr. Maitland&rsquo;s <i>heart</i> is very deeply concerned about
+      Miss Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well&rdquo;&mdash;she gave a
+      little nervous laugh&mdash;&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s in <i>love</i> with
+      Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative
+      discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of
+      welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love
+      with each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an awfully good fellow, Maitland,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;But you are right;
+      I&rsquo;m <i>sure</i> you are right. You must know. He is <i>not</i> in love
+      with Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to Maitland&rsquo;s
+      unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite
+      safe; and I&rsquo;ll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from him&mdash;about
+      a charity, you know&mdash;a few days ago, and I have his address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces,
+      tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order &ldquo;Home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon,&rdquo; she cried to Barton; and no
+      offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts, when
+      he suddenly came to a dead halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said out loud; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go back and have it out with her at
+      once. I&rsquo;ve had enough of this shillyshally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few minutes
+      he was standing at the familiar door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you ask Miss&mdash;Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?&rdquo;
+       he said to the servant &ldquo;I have forgotten something she wished me to do for
+      her,&rdquo; he added in a mumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared, still
+      in her bonnet and furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t help coming back, Margaret,&rdquo; he said, as soon as she entered
+      the room. &ldquo;I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn&rsquo;t think&mdash;I
+      mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing, <i>nothing</i>
+      to prevent us&mdash;I mean» Margaret, if you <i>really</i> care for me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he came to a dead stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to
+      Margaret, &ldquo;My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He
+      does not care a pin for you; he&rsquo;ll be delighted at being released. He is
+      in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it could
+      not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have been
+      exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it, looking
+      at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was safe, but
+      embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a charge, as it were, at the position&mdash;a random, desperate
+      charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, can you trust me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about your
+      doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there is <i>nothing</i>
+      to prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you will only agree to
+      make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too. Can&rsquo;t you take it on
+      trust? Can&rsquo;t you believe me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton&rsquo;s shoulder. She <i>did</i>
+      believe him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was carried!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV.&mdash;The Mark of Cain.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and
+      took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying
+      little but, &ldquo;Come home at once. Margaret is found. She is going to be my
+      wife. You can&rsquo;t come too quickly, if you wish to hear of something very
+      much to your advantage.&rdquo; A load was off his mind, and he felt as <i>Romeo</i>
+      did just before the bad news about <i>Juliet</i> reached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his letters. The first was in a
+      hand he knew very well&mdash;that of a man who had been his fellow-student
+      in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a prosperous young physician. The
+      epistle ran thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Barton.&mdash;I&rsquo;m off to the West of Ireland, for a fortnight People
+      are pretty fit, as the season has not run far. Most of my patients have
+      not yet systematically overeaten themselves. I want you to do something
+      for me. Martin &amp; Wright, the lawyers, have a queer little bit of
+      medical jurisprudence, about which young Wright, who was at Oriel in our
+      time, asked my opinion. I recommended him to see you, as it is more in
+      your line; and <i>my</i> line will presently be attached to that eminent
+      general practitioner, &lsquo;The Blue Doctor.&rsquo; May he prosper with the Galway
+      salmon!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thine,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alfred Franks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky beggar!&rdquo; thought Barton to himself, but he was too happy to envy
+      even a man who had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next letter he opened was in a blue envelope, with the stamp of
+      Messrs. Martin &amp; Wright. The brief and and formal note which it
+      contained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day if possible, at the
+      chambers of the respectable firm, on &ldquo;business of great importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world can they want?&rdquo; thought Barton. &ldquo;Nobody can have left
+      <i>me</i> any money. Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical
+      jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I&rsquo;ll go down after breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along the sunny embankment, and that bright prospect of houses,
+      trees, and ships have never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he was in
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn Fields, and had shaken hands with young Wright, whom he
+      knew; had been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately man of
+      business, and had taken his seat in the chair sacred to clients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Barton,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, &ldquo;you are, I think, the author
+      of this book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, in its gray paper cover,
+      &ldquo;Les Tatouages Étude Médico-Légale&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I wrote it when I was in Paris I had plenty of
+      chances of studying tattooing in the military hospitals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not read it myself,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright, &ldquo;because I am not
+      acquainted with the French language; but my son tells me it is a work of
+      great learning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was glad Mr. Wright liked it. <i>Why</i>
+      he should like it, or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not even
+      imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are at present engaged in a very curious case, Dr. Barton,&rdquo; went on
+      the lawyer, &ldquo;in which we think your special studies may assist us. The
+      position is this: Nearly eight months ago a client of ours died, a Mr.
+      Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I seem
+      to be troubling you with a long story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton mentioned that he was delighted, and added, &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; in the
+      vague modern dialect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a somewhat singular character. He was
+      what is called a &lsquo;statesman&rsquo; in the North. He had a small property of
+      about four hundred acres, on the marches, as they say, or boarders of the
+      Earl of Birkenhead&rsquo;s lands. Here he lived almost alone, and in a very
+      quiet way. There was not even a village near him, and there were few
+      persons of his own position in life, because his little place was almost
+      embedded, if I may say so, in Lord Birkenhead&rsquo;s country, which is
+      pastoral. You are with me, so far?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, with an old housekeeper, dead
+      since his decease, and with one son, called Richard, like himself. The
+      young man was of an adventurous character, a ne&rsquo;er-do-weel in fact; and
+      about twenty years ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel with
+      his father. It was understood that he had run away to sea. Two years later
+      he returned; there was another quarrel, and the old man turned him out,
+      vowing that he would never forgive him. But, not long after that, a very
+      rich deposit of coal&mdash;a <i>very</i> rich deposit,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright,
+      with the air of a man tasting most excellent claret&mdash;&ldquo;was discovered
+      on this very estate of Linkheaton. Old Johnson, without much exertion on
+      his part, and simply through the payment of royalties by the company that
+      worked the coal, became exceedingly opulent, in what you call most
+      affluent circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether Barton was beginning to
+      understand the point of the narrative, which, it is needless to remark, he
+      was <i>not</i>. There is no marked connection between coal mines, however
+      lucrative, and &ldquo;Les Tatouages, Étude Médico-Légale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way changed his habits. He
+      invested his money carefully, under our advice, and he became, as I said,
+      an extremely warm man. But he continued to live in the old farmhouse, and
+      did not, in any way, court society. To tell the truth, except Lord
+      Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew anyone who was at all intimate
+      with the old man. Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him, as a neighbor and
+      a person of the old-fashioned type. Yes,&rdquo; Mr. Wright added, seeing that
+      his son was going to speak, &ldquo;and, as you were about to say, Tom, they were
+      brought together by a common misfortune. Like old Mr. Johnson, his
+      lordship has a son who is very, very&mdash;unsatisfactory. His lordship
+      has not seen the Honorable Mr. Thomas Cranley for many years; and in that
+      lonely country the two boys had been companions in wild amusements, long
+      before. He is <i>very</i> unsatisfactory, the Honorable Thomas Cranley;&rdquo;
+       and Mr. Wright sighed heavily, in sympathy with a client so noble and so
+      afflicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the beast,&rdquo; said Barton, without reflecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and horror. &ldquo;The beast!&rdquo; A son of
+      Lord Birkenhead&rsquo;s called &ldquo;The beast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To return to our case, Dr. Barton,&rdquo; he went on severely, with some stress
+      laid on the <i>doctor</i>. &ldquo;Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made on
+      his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son Richard, or, in case of
+      his decease, to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten. From that day to
+      this we have hunted everywhere for the man. We have traced him all over
+      the world; we have heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana, Smyrna, but
+      at Smyrna we lose sight of him. This advertisement,&rdquo; said the old
+      gentleman, taking up the outside sheet of the <i>Times</i>, and folding it
+      so as to bring the second column into view, &ldquo;remained for more than seven
+      months unanswered, or only answered by impostors and idiots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tapped his finger on the place as he handed the paper to Barton, who
+      read aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linkheaton.&mdash;If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, Durham, last heard
+      of at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln&rsquo;s
+      Inn Fields, he will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. His
+      father died, forgiving him. A reward of £1,000 will be paid to anyone
+      producing Richard Johnson, or proving his decease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a mixture of business with the home affections,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright
+      proudly (for the advertisement was of his own composition), &ldquo;I think that
+      leaves little ta be desired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is admirable,&rdquo; said Barton&mdash;&ldquo;admirable; but may I ask&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the tattooing comes in?&rdquo; said Mr. Wright. &ldquo;I am just approaching <i>that</i>.
+      The only person from whom we received any reliable information about
+      Richard Johnson was an old ship-mate of his, a wandering, adventurous
+      character, now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot readily
+      communicate with him. According to his account, Johnson was an ordinary
+      seafaring man, tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to be
+      recognized for an excellent reason. <i>He was tattooed almost all over his
+      whole body</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client&rsquo;s chair, so sudden a
+      light flashed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, Dr. Barton! I <i>thought</i> I should interest you;
+      but you seem quite excited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;It was automatic, I think;
+      besides, I <i>am</i> extremely interested in tattooing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears, from
+      what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable specimen. He
+      had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by Arabs, and, in a
+      peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the Dyacks of Borneo.
+      We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of his principal
+      decorations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on which
+      was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the breast,
+      thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized
+      the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any
+      exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is highly interesting,&rdquo; he said, as he examined the diagram; &ldquo;and I
+      am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a
+      claimant with such remarkable peculiarities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores of
+      sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before
+      yesterday&mdash;a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point;
+      asked if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they
+      were, and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify
+      the design, corresponded to that drawing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort, &ldquo;what
+      did you do with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an expert
+      before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things about old
+      Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that anyone but
+      the right man could have known, we put him off till we had seen you, and
+      could make an appointment for you to examine the tattooings. <i>They</i>
+      must be dealt with first, before any other identification.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say why he
+      was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for several
+      months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that is rather in his favor,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright. &ldquo;If he had been
+      an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago. But
+      he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way of
+      newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across it
+      three or four days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;Make an appointment with the man for any time
+      to-morrow, and I will be with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr.
+      Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With pleasure,&rdquo; answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger
+      partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer office
+      by young Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had something to say to me?&rdquo; asked the junior member of the firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several things,&rdquo; said Barton, smiling. &ldquo;And first, would you mind finding
+      out whether the coast is clear&mdash;whether any one is watching for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watching for you! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious
+      character is about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a cigarette
+      on the outer steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a soul in sight but lawyers&rsquo; clerks,&rdquo; he reported.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are
+      taking a turn with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton&rsquo;s friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some serious
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father,&rdquo; said the young
+      lawyer as they separated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger like
+      myself,&rdquo; said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent Garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers,
+      Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs. Aminadab,
+      and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a pretty bulky
+      parcel.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly,
+      mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat and
+      hat, appeared in Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill acquainted
+      with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before he reached the
+      door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened, and he was
+      admitted into the presence of the partners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter,&rdquo; he said with a
+      Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by
+      touching his forelock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners,
+      with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman&mdash;a
+      gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a tow-colored
+      beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty complexion, and
+      the air of one who smoked too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr.&mdash;h&rsquo;m&mdash;Mr. Johnson,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright. &ldquo;As
+      we told you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry,
+      requested Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect&mdash;h&rsquo;m&mdash;the
+      personal marks of which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great
+      authority on these matters&mdash;author of &lsquo;Die Tattuirung,&rsquo; a very
+      learned work, I am told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to meet you, sir,&rdquo; said the sailor-man gruffly, &ldquo;or any gentleman as
+      really knows what&rsquo;s what.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been a great traveller, sir?&rdquo; said the learned Professor, whose
+      Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. &ldquo;You have in many lands
+      travelled? So!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; I have seen the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by many
+      races been decorated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese&mdash;ah!
+      have you any little Burmese marks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder,&rdquo; replied the seafaring man.
+      &ldquo;Saving your presence, I&rsquo;ll strip to the buff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir,&rdquo; this was in reply to young
+      Mr. Wright &ldquo;The naked body! why, buff! &lsquo;Buff,&rsquo; the abstract word, the
+      actual stuff, the very <i>wesen</i> of man unclothed. &lsquo;Buffer,&rsquo; the
+      concrete man, in the &lsquo;buff,&rsquo; in the flesh; it is <i>sehr intéressant</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological
+      reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the Burmese style, sir,&rdquo; he said, pointing to his shoulders and
+      upper arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
+      series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
+      to the elbow-joints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Sehr schôn, sehr schôn</i>,&rdquo; exclaimed the delighted Professor. &ldquo;It is
+      very <i>hubsch</i>, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
+      Germans. Ach, it is mournful!&rdquo; and he sighed. &ldquo;And now, sir, have you to
+      show me any <i>moko</i>? A little <i>moko</i> would be very instructive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
+      look between my shoulders,&rdquo; and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
+      whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is right, that is right,&rdquo; whispered the Professor. &ldquo;<i>Moko,
+      schlange</i>, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better <i>moko</i>,
+      on an European man, have I never seen. You observe,&rdquo; he remarked to the
+      elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed lines&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extremely interesting,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
+      seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture,&rdquo; he added, comparing the
+      sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied now, governor?&rdquo; asked the sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
+      Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; here you are!&rdquo; and the voyager pointed to his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
+      of irregular form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, it is,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the <i>wasm</i>, the <i>sharat</i>,* the
+      Semitic tribal mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their
+      cattle! Of old time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr
+      Professor Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls
+      that very mark, my dear sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Sharat or Short.&mdash;&ldquo;The shart was in old times a tattooed
+     mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
+     of blood revenge is connected with a &lsquo;mark&rsquo; which Jehovah
+     appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
+     <i>sharat</i>, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
+     person?&rdquo;
+      &mdash;Robertson Smith, <i>Kinship in Ancient Arabia</i>, p.215.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; said the sailor; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no scholar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says it was&mdash;I do not say he is right,&rdquo; cried the Professor, in a
+      loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim&rsquo;s breast&mdash;&ldquo;he says it was
+      <i>the mark of cain</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped at
+      a bookcase by which he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; he cried, through his chattering teeth; &ldquo;what do you
+      mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark&rsquo;s all
+      right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain&rsquo;t it on that
+      chart of yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, good sir; it is,&rdquo; answered the Professor. &ldquo;Why do you so
+      agitate yourself? <i>The proof is complete!</i>&rdquo; he added, still pointing
+      at the sailor&rsquo;s breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll put on my togs, with your leave: it&rsquo;s none so warm!&rdquo; grumbled
+      the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and was
+      just looking round for his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; said the Professor. &ldquo;Hold Mr. Johnson&rsquo;s coat for a moment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be tired, sir,&rdquo; said the Professor, in a very soft voice. &ldquo;May I
+      offer you a leedle cigarette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly
+      English accent, he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left
+      at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor&rsquo;s eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the
+      ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold it, hold it!&rdquo; cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic accent&mdash;&ldquo;hold
+      it: there&rsquo;s a revolver in the pocket!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not
+      unconscious mass, on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call in the police!&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll have no difficulty in taking
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the man against whom you have the warrant,&rdquo; he went on, as young
+      Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. &ldquo;I charge the Honorable
+      Thomas Cranley with murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers lifted the fallen man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him be,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he&rsquo;s
+      better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart&rsquo;s weak. Bring some
+      brandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept
+      murmuring:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Honorable Thomas Cranley <i>was</i> always very unsatisfactory!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be
+      unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had <i>not</i> been informed
+      that the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
+      examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI.&mdash;The Verdict of Fate.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton&rsquo;s letter.
+      He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
+      he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
+      thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley&rsquo;s trial dragged on. Interest, as
+      usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
+      when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
+      himself &ldquo;Not Guilty,&rdquo; his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
+      pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
+      the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
+      whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
+      prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
+      condensed form:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
+      unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
+      relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast of
+      society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
+      circumstances of Johnson&rsquo;s early life, with his history and his home. His
+      plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A celebrated
+      case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved that a most
+      plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing man might be made
+      by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the minute local and
+      personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate Johnson, a sailor
+      whose body was known to have been indelibly marked by the tattooing of
+      various barbarous races, it was necessary that the prisoner should be
+      similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with unusual heartlessness, he
+      had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his body the distinctive marks of
+      Johnson, and then had destroyed him with fiendish ingenuity, in the very
+      act of assuming his personality. The very instrument, it might be said,
+      which stamped Cranley as Johnson, slew Johnson himself, and the process
+      which hallmarked the prisoner as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him
+      with the brand of Cain. The personal marks which seemed to establish the
+      claimant&rsquo;s case demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical
+      expert brought in to prove his identity, and was recognized by that
+      gentleman, Dr. Barton, who would be called, and who had once already
+      exposed him in a grave social offence&mdash;cheating at cards. The same
+      witness had made a <i>post-mortem</i> examination of the body of Richard
+      Johnson, and had then suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
+      committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor (the
+      disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of meeting
+      Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i> tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met him
+      there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
+      o&rsquo;clock, telling the landlady that &ldquo;his friend,&rdquo; as he called Johnson, had
+      fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady, Mrs.
+      Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening on the
+      roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson&mdash;or Shields, as she called
+      him&mdash;had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which led
+      to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often took, on
+      leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of Johnson,
+      with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart belonging to
+      the vestry&mdash;a cart which, during the night, had remained near a shed
+      on the piece of waste ground adjoining the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. A coroner&rsquo;s
+      jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had strayed into
+      the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door in the
+      palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down in the
+      cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But evidence derived
+      from a later medical examination would establish the presumption, which
+      would be confirmed by the testimony of an eye-witness, that death had been
+      wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a poison which it would be shown he
+      had in his possession&mdash;a poison which was not swallowed by the
+      victim, but introduced by means of a puncture into the system. The dead
+      man&rsquo;s body had then been removed to a place where his decease would be
+      accounted for as the result of cold and exhaustion. A witness would be put
+      in the box who, by an extraordinary circumstance, had been enabled to see
+      the crime committed by the prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at
+      the moment, he did not understand the meaning of what he saw. As the
+      circumstances by which this witness had been enabled to behold what was
+      done at dead of night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not
+      commanded from any neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly
+      peculiar, testimony would be brought to show that the witness really had
+      enjoyed the opportunity of observation which he claimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson, and
+      claimed Johnson&rsquo;s property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson,
+      unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for
+      the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical
+      evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed to
+      have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death, according
+      to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the prosecution
+      believed that the jury could find no other verdict than that the prisoner
+      had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of February 7th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the
+      evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the statements of
+      the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of Shields with
+      Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but Johnson&rsquo;s old
+      crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was at length
+      discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he collected,
+      the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course, most important
+      in another respect, as establishing Margaret&rsquo;s claims on the Linkheaton
+      estate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved
+      by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who
+      had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of the
+      difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of beard&mdash;for
+      Cranley was now clean shaved&mdash;Mrs. Gullick was positive as to his
+      voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and mobile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest
+      interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be
+      arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had known
+      as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length, and
+      need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard
+      Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the
+      tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an
+      ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many
+      curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks were
+      obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left blank&mdash;namely,
+      behind and under the right shoulder&mdash;he had discovered certain
+      markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an inexperienced
+      hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed, and were
+      slightly discolored. They could not, from their position, possibly have
+      been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations of these marks,
+      in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue, as on the rest of
+      the body, showed that this coloring matter was of a character familiar to
+      the witness as a physiologist and scientific traveller. It was the <i>Woorali</i>,
+      or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians of Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness said
+      that its &ldquo;principle&rdquo; (to use the term of the old medical writers) had not
+      yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded by
+      Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined the
+      juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with
+      certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the
+      whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown
+      paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their
+      arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal
+      results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison
+      would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to
+      sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles, and
+      the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed, death
+      followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the victim, man
+      or animal, and the strength of the dose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo
+      marks on Johnson&rsquo;s body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf of
+      the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson&rsquo;s tattooing
+      materials, in the upper chamber of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. This needle had
+      been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by
+      the Macoushi of Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument of
+      his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the
+      evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small
+      crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken
+      by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and
+      Wright. But crumbs of the poison&mdash;&ldquo;Woorali,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Ourali&rdquo;&mdash;perfectly
+      dry, remained in this réceptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself
+      a great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general
+      bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe
+      cross-examination, William Winter was called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was
+      borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you,&rdquo; asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the officer
+      had sworn the witness, &ldquo;at eleven o&rsquo;clock on the night of February 7th?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was on the roof of the <i>Hit or Miss</i> tavern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On which part of the roof?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house,
+      facing the waste ground behind the plank fence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winter&rsquo;s face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin, was
+      clear as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I was
+      lying, and I looked in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles and
+      glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you recognize either man if you saw him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at
+      that time he wore a beard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell the Court what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men were facing me. One of them&mdash;the prisoner&mdash;was naked to
+      the waist. His breast was tattooed. The other&mdash;the man who stood up&mdash;was
+      touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a saucer
+      on the table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you hear what they said?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there
+      was a slight chink open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You listened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with the
+      needle give a sigh of relief, and say, &lsquo;There, it&rsquo;s finished, and a pretty
+      job too, though I say it.&rsquo; The other said, &lsquo;You have done it beautifully,
+      Dicky; it&rsquo;s a most interesting art. Now, just out of curiosity, let <i>me</i>
+      tattoo <i>you</i> a bit.&rsquo; The other man laughed, and took off his coat and
+      shirt while the other dressed. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s scarce an inch of me plain,&rsquo; he
+      said, &lsquo;but you can try your hand here,&rsquo; pointing to the lower part of his
+      shoulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something
+      sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He
+      began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the time.
+      This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of the man
+      who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little, backward
+      and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man, and said,
+      in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m very cold; I can&rsquo;t
+      shiver!&rsquo; Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one or two
+      convulsive movements. That was all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did the prisoner do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked like death. He seized the bottle on the table, poured out half
+      a tumbler full of the stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell into a
+      chair, and laid his face between his hands. He appeared ill, or alarmed,
+      but the color came back into his cheek after a third or fourth glass. Then
+      I saw him go to the sleeping man and bend over him, listening apparently
+      to his breathing. Then he shook him several times, as if trying to arouse
+      him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about half-an-hour after what I
+      have described, he opened the door and went out. He soon returned, took up
+      the sleeping man in his arms&mdash;his weight seemed lighter than you
+      would expect&mdash;and carried him out. From the roof I saw him push the
+      door in the palisade leading into the waste land, a door which I myself
+      had left open an hour before. It was not light enough to see what he did
+      there; but he soon returned alone and walked away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the sum of Winter&rsquo;s evidence, which, if accepted, entirely
+      corroborated Barton&rsquo;s theory of the manner of the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In cross-examination, Winter was asked the very natural question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you come to find yourself on the roof of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>
+      late at night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn faced flushed, his eye
+      sparkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, I flew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a murmur and titter through the court, which was, of course,
+      instantly suppressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have
+      labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I was
+      experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land
+      bordering on the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, the machine actually worked, and I
+      was projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air,
+      coming down with à fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof
+      of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression
+      at the jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and the
+      significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of the
+      twelve good men and true, &ldquo;I may state that we are prepared to bring
+      forward a large mass of scientific evidence&mdash;including a well-known
+      man of science, the editor of <i>Wisdom</i>, a popular journal which takes
+      all knowledge for its province&mdash;to prove that there is nothing
+      physically impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at
+      present suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very
+      machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working
+      model, to the Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly requires corroboration,&rdquo; said the judge. &ldquo;At present, so far
+      as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can prove,
+      perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have only to take
+      one step further to become practical modes of locomotion. But <i>that</i>
+      is the very step <i>qui coûte</i>. Nothing but direct evidence that the
+      step has been taken&mdash;that a flying machine, on this occasion,
+      actually <i>flew</i> (they appear to be styled <i>volantes, a non volando</i>)&mdash;would
+      really help your case, and establish the credibility of this witness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your lordship&rsquo;s learned remarks,&rdquo; replied the counsel for the crown,
+      &ldquo;I am not the less ready to agree, because I <i>have</i> an actual
+      eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but
+      reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its
+      occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common talk
+      of the neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is another matter,&rdquo; said the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Eliza Gullick,&rdquo; said the counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but
+      perfect self-possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an
+      oath, Eliza was asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember the night of the 7th of February?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember it very well, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Becos such a mort o&rsquo; things happened, sir, that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell his lordship what happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at
+      the <i>Hilarity</i>; for he said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, it was about eleven o&rsquo;clock at night, and I was turning the
+      lane into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, when I heard an awful flapping and
+      hissing and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at
+      the side of the lane. And, as I was listening&mdash;oh, it frightens me
+      now to think of it&mdash;oh, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my head,
+      higher than the houses. And then&mdash;did you ever see them Japanese
+      toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber as
+      you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my girl, I have seen them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the bird&rsquo;s
+      wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all lighted,
+      quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. And
+      there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o&rsquo; the window,
+      but they wouldn&rsquo;t none o&rsquo; them believe me, my lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this extraordinary
+      confirmation of Winter&rsquo;s evidence, and wove the net inextricably round the
+      prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something
+      heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence
+      the sound had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner&rsquo;s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The
+      evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain
+      his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_EPIL" id="link2H_EPIL">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      EPILOGUE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      And what became of them all?
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He who does not tell, on the plea that he is &ldquo;competing with Life,&rdquo; which
+      never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are
+      visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the
+      unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy
+      Mrs. Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the
+      case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still hopes
+      to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine, which,
+      moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who once made
+      a diamond by chance, in Balzac&rsquo;s novel, has never recovered the creative
+      moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs. Barton&rsquo;s
+      little boy begins to take a lively interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with the
+      British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick
+      maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hear,&rdquo; says the <i>Athenæum</i>, &ldquo;that the long promised edition of
+      &lsquo;Demetrius of Scepsis,&rsquo; by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, is in the hands of
+      the delegates of the Clarendon Press.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement that
+      an Oxford Don has finished his <i>magnum opus!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXPLICIT. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21821-h.htm or 21821-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/2/21821/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&ldquo;the Foundation&rdquo;
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; appears, or with which the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo; is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+&ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original &ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, &ldquo;Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.&rdquo;
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+&ldquo;Defects,&rdquo; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &ldquo;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&rdquo; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &lsquo;AS-IS&rsquo; WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm&rsquo;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation&rsquo;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state&rsquo;s laws.
+
+The Foundation&rsquo;s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation&rsquo;s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/21821-h/images/cainTP.jpg b/21821-h/images/cainTP.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41c02d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-h/images/cainTP.jpg
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p001.png b/21821-page-images/p001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a88ba94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p001.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p002.png b/21821-page-images/p002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb07450
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p002.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p003.png b/21821-page-images/p003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..748c5b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p003.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p004.png b/21821-page-images/p004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8979890
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p004.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p005.png b/21821-page-images/p005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5103ec7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p005.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p006.png b/21821-page-images/p006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0a25fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p006.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p007.png b/21821-page-images/p007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6593a5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p007.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p008.png b/21821-page-images/p008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7197c67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p008.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p009.png b/21821-page-images/p009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ab7939
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p009.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p010.png b/21821-page-images/p010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3462c98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p010.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p011.png b/21821-page-images/p011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..226bc46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p011.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p012.png b/21821-page-images/p012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8c7694
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p012.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p013.png b/21821-page-images/p013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfcd161
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p013.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p014.png b/21821-page-images/p014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e3748d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p014.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p015.png b/21821-page-images/p015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4268624
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p015.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p016.png b/21821-page-images/p016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aee35a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p016.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p017.png b/21821-page-images/p017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a4c902
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p017.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p018.png b/21821-page-images/p018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e47832
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p018.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p019.png b/21821-page-images/p019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e926087
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p019.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p020.png b/21821-page-images/p020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3553e91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p020.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p021.png b/21821-page-images/p021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c8ef1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p021.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p022.png b/21821-page-images/p022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba59a0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p022.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p023.png b/21821-page-images/p023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02c2a6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p023.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p024.png b/21821-page-images/p024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0db03f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p024.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p025.png b/21821-page-images/p025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a303902
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p025.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p026.png b/21821-page-images/p026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35889da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p026.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p027.png b/21821-page-images/p027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12e02d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p027.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p028.png b/21821-page-images/p028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0561caa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p028.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p029.png b/21821-page-images/p029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..875f002
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p029.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p030.png b/21821-page-images/p030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..168c166
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p030.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p031.png b/21821-page-images/p031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59ebe55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p031.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p032.png b/21821-page-images/p032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e03210e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p032.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p033.png b/21821-page-images/p033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e73b3bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p033.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p034.png b/21821-page-images/p034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..145819e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p034.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p035.png b/21821-page-images/p035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fcbc02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p035.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p036.png b/21821-page-images/p036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ec59dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p036.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p037.png b/21821-page-images/p037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..740afb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p037.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p038.png b/21821-page-images/p038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29e25d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p038.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p039.png b/21821-page-images/p039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1a2ab9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p039.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p040.png b/21821-page-images/p040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d70a122
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p040.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p041.png b/21821-page-images/p041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ab3d34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p041.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p042.png b/21821-page-images/p042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6605d88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p042.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p043.png b/21821-page-images/p043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32e1864
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p043.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p044.png b/21821-page-images/p044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a10cc87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p044.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p045.png b/21821-page-images/p045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc6e8e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p045.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p046.png b/21821-page-images/p046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..216e9b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p046.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p047.png b/21821-page-images/p047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb2b33c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p047.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p048.png b/21821-page-images/p048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2060eee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p048.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p049.png b/21821-page-images/p049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cc0324
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p049.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p050.png b/21821-page-images/p050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15f7b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p050.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p051.png b/21821-page-images/p051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb2dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p051.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p052.png b/21821-page-images/p052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f390a5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p052.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p053.png b/21821-page-images/p053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14ef17c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p053.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p054.png b/21821-page-images/p054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..383221d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p054.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p055.png b/21821-page-images/p055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d83817a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p055.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p056.png b/21821-page-images/p056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74d1688
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p056.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p057.png b/21821-page-images/p057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..310e31a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p057.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p058.png b/21821-page-images/p058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3989cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p058.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p059.png b/21821-page-images/p059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3acc22f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p059.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p060.png b/21821-page-images/p060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2277fcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p060.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p061.png b/21821-page-images/p061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76d4a18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p061.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p062.png b/21821-page-images/p062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..979d919
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p062.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p063.png b/21821-page-images/p063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..445f3e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p063.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p064.png b/21821-page-images/p064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c465bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p064.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p065.png b/21821-page-images/p065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e3b66f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p065.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p066.png b/21821-page-images/p066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c73c0eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p066.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p067.png b/21821-page-images/p067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..add7327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p067.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p068.png b/21821-page-images/p068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..225b123
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p068.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p069.png b/21821-page-images/p069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ff64e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p069.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p070.png b/21821-page-images/p070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8aa3dd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p070.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p071.png b/21821-page-images/p071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abe4474
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p071.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p072.png b/21821-page-images/p072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..826c852
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p072.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p073.png b/21821-page-images/p073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f670c73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p073.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p074.png b/21821-page-images/p074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..258de39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p074.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p075.png b/21821-page-images/p075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89b4282
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p075.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p076.png b/21821-page-images/p076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..695eda5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p076.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p077.png b/21821-page-images/p077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..185af75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p077.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p078.png b/21821-page-images/p078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b12245
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p078.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p079.png b/21821-page-images/p079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..154b6e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p079.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p080.png b/21821-page-images/p080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e1906b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p080.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p081.png b/21821-page-images/p081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86c7e90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p081.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p082.png b/21821-page-images/p082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e03d362
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p082.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p083.png b/21821-page-images/p083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46d35a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p083.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p084.png b/21821-page-images/p084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec077a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p084.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p085.png b/21821-page-images/p085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..653b252
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p085.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p086.png b/21821-page-images/p086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f110638
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p086.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p087.png b/21821-page-images/p087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e683fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p087.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p088.png b/21821-page-images/p088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..931814e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p088.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p089.png b/21821-page-images/p089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32a068b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p089.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p090.png b/21821-page-images/p090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f08e79e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p090.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p091.png b/21821-page-images/p091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e9c116
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p091.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p092.png b/21821-page-images/p092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c2c309
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p092.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p093.png b/21821-page-images/p093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dffd576
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p093.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p094.png b/21821-page-images/p094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ee9eb0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p094.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p095.png b/21821-page-images/p095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..590eb9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p095.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p096.png b/21821-page-images/p096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..780a1cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p096.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p097.png b/21821-page-images/p097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86e7a4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p097.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p098.png b/21821-page-images/p098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dea86c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p098.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p099.png b/21821-page-images/p099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b45d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p099.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p100.png b/21821-page-images/p100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53c2193
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p100.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p101.png b/21821-page-images/p101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32346f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p101.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p102.png b/21821-page-images/p102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a32630
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p102.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p103.png b/21821-page-images/p103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be25c95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p103.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p104.png b/21821-page-images/p104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f623f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p104.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p105.png b/21821-page-images/p105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3a544b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p105.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p106.png b/21821-page-images/p106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebad067
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p106.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p107.png b/21821-page-images/p107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c884c5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p107.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p108.png b/21821-page-images/p108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55b5d96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p108.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p109.png b/21821-page-images/p109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7812f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p109.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p110.png b/21821-page-images/p110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76ab43d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p110.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p111.png b/21821-page-images/p111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9814eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p111.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p112.png b/21821-page-images/p112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6bdd384
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p112.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p113.png b/21821-page-images/p113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..711629d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p113.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p114.png b/21821-page-images/p114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bda6513
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p114.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p115.png b/21821-page-images/p115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0302156
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p115.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p116.png b/21821-page-images/p116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51e95a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p116.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p117.png b/21821-page-images/p117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e61f2a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p117.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p118.png b/21821-page-images/p118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af6b602
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p118.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p119.png b/21821-page-images/p119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5309c79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p119.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p120.png b/21821-page-images/p120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d93e7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p120.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p121.png b/21821-page-images/p121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fd16f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p121.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p122.png b/21821-page-images/p122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..060a289
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p122.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p123.png b/21821-page-images/p123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bff275
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p123.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p124.png b/21821-page-images/p124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46fb8f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p124.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p125.png b/21821-page-images/p125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd61234
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p125.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p126.png b/21821-page-images/p126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66f019f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p126.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p127.png b/21821-page-images/p127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59ab4d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p127.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p128.png b/21821-page-images/p128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e04dd23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p128.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p129.png b/21821-page-images/p129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e02d24c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p129.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p130.png b/21821-page-images/p130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..703dba6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p130.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p131.png b/21821-page-images/p131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d335e36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p131.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p132.png b/21821-page-images/p132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccc1c3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p132.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p133.png b/21821-page-images/p133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..213c9ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p133.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p134.png b/21821-page-images/p134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f35452
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p134.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p135.png b/21821-page-images/p135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f28f5ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p135.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p136.png b/21821-page-images/p136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..025543f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p136.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p137.png b/21821-page-images/p137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd8c8b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p137.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p138.png b/21821-page-images/p138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..111806a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p138.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p139.png b/21821-page-images/p139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53f4207
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p139.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p140.png b/21821-page-images/p140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01e42ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p140.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p141.png b/21821-page-images/p141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7317687
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p141.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p142.png b/21821-page-images/p142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da37d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p142.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p143.png b/21821-page-images/p143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42f6e55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p143.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p144.png b/21821-page-images/p144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f88ebc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p144.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p145.png b/21821-page-images/p145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9dfbc44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p145.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p146.png b/21821-page-images/p146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b11aef8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p146.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p147.png b/21821-page-images/p147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba8eac7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p147.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p148.png b/21821-page-images/p148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e99da1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p148.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p149.png b/21821-page-images/p149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c18517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p149.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p150.png b/21821-page-images/p150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c99be7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p150.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p151.png b/21821-page-images/p151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3db60d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p151.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p152.png b/21821-page-images/p152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11cb853
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p152.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p153.png b/21821-page-images/p153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc38928
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p153.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p154.png b/21821-page-images/p154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd5aa72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p154.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p155.png b/21821-page-images/p155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81b31a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p155.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p156.png b/21821-page-images/p156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5f8bc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p156.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p157.png b/21821-page-images/p157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3f2565
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p157.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p158.png b/21821-page-images/p158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b9268b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p158.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p159.png b/21821-page-images/p159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c44853a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p159.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p160.png b/21821-page-images/p160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6d1d41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p160.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p161.png b/21821-page-images/p161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6bd0140
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p161.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p162.png b/21821-page-images/p162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd96fe2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p162.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p163.png b/21821-page-images/p163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18b1419
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p163.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p164.png b/21821-page-images/p164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06ad0c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p164.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p165.png b/21821-page-images/p165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9883f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p165.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p166.png b/21821-page-images/p166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68edab7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p166.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p167.png b/21821-page-images/p167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0029d31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p167.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p168.png b/21821-page-images/p168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e97c64c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p168.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p169.png b/21821-page-images/p169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6db45b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p169.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p170.png b/21821-page-images/p170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca7da71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p170.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p171.png b/21821-page-images/p171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bff9da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p171.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p172.png b/21821-page-images/p172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca13ad6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p172.png
diff --git a/21821-page-images/p173.png b/21821-page-images/p173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6129fc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821-page-images/p173.png
diff --git a/21821.txt b/21821.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b98a2e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6952 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mark Of Cain
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21821]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+1886
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF CAIN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--A Tale of Two Clubs.
+
+     "Such arts the gods who dwell on high
+     Have given to the Greek."--_Lays of Ancient Rome._
+
+In the Strangers' Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with
+tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature
+was uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, and the guests, broken up into
+little groups, were chattering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of
+departing: no one had offered a welcome apology for the need of catching
+an evening train.
+
+Perhaps the civilized custom which permits women to dine in the presence
+of the greedier sex is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not
+for the excuse of "joining the ladies," dinner-parties (Like the
+congregations in Heaven, as described in the hymn) would "ne'er break
+up," and suppers (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) would never end.
+
+"Hang it all, will the fellows _never_ go?"
+
+So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien's, the founder of the feast. The
+inhospitable reflections which we have recorded had all been passing
+through his brain as he rather moodily watched the twenty guests he had
+been feeding--one can hardly say entertaining. It was a "duty dinner" he
+had been giving--almost everything Maitland did was done from a sense of
+duty--yet he scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward of an approving
+conscience. His acquaintances, laughing and gossipping round the
+half-empty wine-glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and "the ashes
+of the weeds of their delight," gave themselves no concern about the
+weary host. Even at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland felt
+like an outsider. He wakened from his reverie as a strong hand was laid
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+"Well, Maitland," said a man sitting down beside him, "what have _you_
+been doing this long time?"
+
+"What have I been doing, Barton?" Maitland answered. "Oh, I have been
+reflecting on the choice of a life, and trying to humanize myself!
+Bielby says I have not enough human nature."
+
+"Bielby is quite right; he is the most judicious of college dons and
+father-confessors, old man. And how long do you mean to remain his pupil
+and penitent? And how is the pothouse getting on?"
+
+Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever
+since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him.
+Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad,
+breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde,
+prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue
+eyes, and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other
+degrees at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was
+even what Captain Costigan styles "a scoientific cyarkter." He had
+written learnedly in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had
+made a cruise in a man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his _Les
+Tatouages, Etude Medico-Legale_, published in Paris, had been commended
+by the highest authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had
+not a home and practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in
+Chelsea.
+
+"How is your pothouse getting on?" he asked again.
+
+"The pothouse? Oh, the _Hit or Miss_ you mean? Well, I'm afraid it's not
+very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of doing
+some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the waterside
+won't go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink, and
+little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and
+looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to
+civilize them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves' Club in the
+East End. And then I fancied they might help to make _me_ a little more
+human. But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet
+blanket But the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with
+me about _that_. And she is a high authority."
+
+"Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I've heard of her. She is a lively widow,
+isn't she?"
+
+"She is a practical philanthropist," answered Maitland, flushing a
+little.
+
+"Pretty, too, I have been told?"
+
+"Yes; she is 'conveniently handsome,' as Izaak Walton says."
+
+"I say, Maitland, here's a chance to humanize you. Why don't you ask her
+to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich--what better would you
+ask?"
+
+"I wish everyone wouldn't bother a man to marry," Maitland replied
+testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
+pale and unwholesome.
+
+"What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what's the matter with you? Here
+you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements
+say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what
+you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with
+you?"
+
+"Well, you should know best What's the good of your being a doctor, and
+acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
+there is of it), if you can't tell what's the nature of my complaint?"
+
+"I don't diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side
+of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general
+practitioners. There is plenty of human nature _there!_"
+
+"And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
+splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
+roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
+or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
+sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good
+deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say," Barton went on, lowering his
+voice, "where on earth did you pick up----?"
+
+Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
+the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
+
+"Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the _Trumpet_ office. He was writing
+about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has been in
+the South Seas, like you."
+
+"Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,"
+answered the other, "and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
+dealt in them, I fancy."
+
+"I daresay," Maitland replied rather wearily. "He seems to have
+travelled a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever
+they may be."
+
+"Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or
+don't you?"
+
+"He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak," said
+Maitland; "but what does it matter?"
+
+"Then you don't know why he left his private tutor's; you don't know why
+he left the University; you don't know why he left the Ninety-second;
+you don't know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never
+heard of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?"
+
+"Well," Maitland replied, "about his ancient history I own I don't know
+anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself.
+He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was
+ridiculous."
+
+"They didn't take that view of it at Shephard's Hotel"
+
+"Well, it is not my affair," said Maitland. "One should see all sort
+of characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has
+been a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he
+is full of good stories. I rather like him, and he can't do my moral
+character any harm. _I'm_ not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of
+life, nor quarrel with warlike aliens."
+
+"No; but he's not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford,"
+Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up,
+surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
+
+The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in
+which he found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play
+Falstaff to every fresh heir's Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man,
+too obviously accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke
+of a prolonged youth. A large cat's-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed
+solitary in his shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of
+the contemporary reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face,
+though a good deal worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and
+of a purply bronze hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with
+the beverages of many peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous
+corners, were shaded by a small black mustache, and his twinkling
+bistre-colored eyes, beneath mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air
+of a jester and a good fellow. In manner he was familiar, with a kind of
+deference, too, and reserve, "like a dog that is always wagging his
+tail and deprecating a kick," thought Barton grimly, as he watched the
+other's genial advance.
+
+"He's going to say good-night, bless him," thought Maitland gratefully.
+"Now the others will be moving too, I hope!"
+
+So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley approached him. To stand
+up would show, he thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to detain
+the parting guest.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Maitland," said the senior, holding out his hand.
+
+"It is still early," said the host, doing his best to play his part.
+"Must you really go?"
+
+"Yes; the night's young" (it was about half-past twelve), "but I have a
+kind of engagement to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of your
+young friends here are anxious to come with me, and see how we keep it
+up round there. Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us." Here he
+bowed slightly in the direction of Barton.
+
+"There will be a little _bac_ going on," he continued--"_un petit bac
+de sante_; and these boys tell me they have never played anything more
+elevating than loo."
+
+"I'm afraid I am no good at a round game," answered Maitland, who had
+played at his Aunt's at Christmas, and who now observed with delight
+that everyone was moving; "but here is Barton, who will be happy to
+accompany you, I daresay."
+
+"If you're for a frolic, boys," said Barton, quoting Dr. Johnson, and
+looking rather at the younger men than at Cranley, "why, I will not balk
+you. Good-night, Maitland."
+
+And he shook hands with his host.
+
+"Good-nights" were uttered in every direction; sticks, hats, and
+umbrellas were hunted up; and while Maitland, half-asleep, was being
+whirled to his rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests made the
+frozen pavement of Piccadilly ring beneath their elegant heels.
+
+"It is only round the corner," said Cranley to the four or five men
+who accompanied him. "The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a
+fashionable slum off St. James's. We're just there."
+
+There was nothing either meretricious or sinister in the aspect of that
+favored resort, the Cockpit, as the Decade Club was familiarly called
+by its friends--and enemies. Two young Merton men and the freshman from
+New, who were enjoying their Christmas vacation in town, and had been
+dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed in the appearance of
+the place. They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a
+lane, and to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket,
+into a narrow staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light,
+full of blazing wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small
+mysterious man would point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages
+leading on to the roof or into the next house, in case of a raid by the
+police. Such was the old idea of a "Hell;" but the advance of Thought
+has altered all these early notions. The Decade Club was like any other
+small club. A current of warm air, charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed
+forth into the frosty night when the swinging door was opened; a sleepy
+porter looked out of his little nest, and Cranley wrote the names of the
+companions he introduced in a book which was kept for that purpose.
+
+"Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night," he said, genially.
+"It's a livelier place, in the small hours, than that classical Olympic
+we've just left."
+
+They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or two rooms, lit up but
+empty, except for two or three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable
+attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of the first floor, all the
+drawing-room of the house before it became a club, had been turned into
+a card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and a heavy odor of
+tobacco and alcohol poured out when the door was opened. A long green
+baize-covered table, of very light wood, ran down the centre of the
+room, while refreshments stood on smaller tables, and a servant out of
+livery sat, half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest corner.
+There were several empty chairs round the green baize-covered table, at
+which some twenty men were sitting, with money before them; while one,
+in the middle, dealt out the cards on a broad flap of smooth black
+leather let into the baize. Every now and then he threw the cards he had
+been dealing into a kind of well in the table, and after every deal he
+raked up his winnings with a rake, or distributed gold and counters
+to the winners, as mechanically as if he had been a croupier at Monte
+Carlo. The players, who were all in evening dress, had scarcely looked
+up when the strangers entered the room.
+
+"Brought some recruits, Cranley?" asked the Banker, adding, as he looked
+at his hand, "_J'en donne!_" and becoming absorbed in his game again.
+
+"The game you do not understand?" said Cranley to one of his recruits.
+
+"Not quite," said the lad, shaking his head.
+
+"All right; I will soon show you all about it; and I wouldn't play, if
+I were you, till you _know_ all about it. Perhaps, after you know _all_
+about it, you'll think it wiser not to play at all At least, you might
+well think so abroad, where very fishy things are often done. Here it's
+all right, of course."
+
+"Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, then--I mean, when people are
+inclined to cheat?"
+
+"Cheat! Oh, rather! There are about a dozen ways of cheating at
+baccarat."
+
+The other young men from Maitland's party gathered round their mentor,
+who continued his instructions in a low voice, and from a distance whence
+the play could be watched, while the players were not likely to be
+disturbed by the conversation.
+
+"Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at Nice or in Paris,"
+Cranley went on; "but to show you how it is done, in case you ever do
+play in foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see the men first
+put down their stakes within the thin white line on the edge of the
+tabla Then the Banker deals two cards to one of the men on his left, and
+all the fellows on that side stand by _his_ luck. Then he deals two to
+a chappie on his right, and all the punters on the right, back that
+sportsman. And he deals two cards to himself. The game is to get as
+near nine as possible, ten, and court cards, not counting at all. If the
+Banker has eight or nine, he does not offer cards; if he has less, he
+gives the two players, if they ask for them, one card each, and takes
+one himself if he chooses. If they hold six, seven, or eight, they
+stand; if less, they take a card. Sometimes one stands at five; it
+depends. Then the Banker wins if he is nearer nine than the players, and
+they win if _they_ are better than he; and that's the whole affair."
+
+"I don't see where the cheating can come in," said one of the young
+fellows.
+
+"Dozens of ways, as I told you. A man may have an understanding with
+the waiter, and play with arranged packs; but the waiter is always the
+dangerous element in _that_ little combination. He's sure to peach or
+blackmail his accomplice. Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at
+Ostend, one fellow, a big German; he wore spectacles, like all Germans,
+and he seldom gave the players anything better than three court cards
+when he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to
+go for his cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat
+pocket. He laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried
+them on. As soon as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out,
+'Here's a swindle! _Nous sommes voles!_' He could see, by the help of
+the spectacles, that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the
+spectacles were regular patent double million magnifiers."
+
+"And what became of the owner of the glasses?"
+
+"Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man wearing them, and didn't
+wait to say good-night. He just _went!_"
+
+Here Cranley chuckled.
+
+"I remember another time, at Nice: I always laugh when I think of it!
+There was a little Frenchman who played nearly every night. He would
+take the bank for three or four turns, and he almost always won. Well,
+one night he had been at the theatre, and he left before the end of
+the piece and looked in at the Cercle. He took the Bank: lost once, won
+twice; then he offered cards. The man who was playing nodded, to show he
+would take one, and the Frenchman laid down an eight of clubs, a greasy,
+dirty old rag, with _theatre francais de nice_ stamped on it in big
+letters. It was his ticket of readmission at the theatre that they
+gave him when he went out, and it had got mixed up with a nice little
+arrangement in cards he had managed to smuggle into the club pack. I'll
+never forget his face and the other man's when _Theatre Francais_ turned
+up. However, you understand the game now, and if you want to play, we
+had better give fine gold to the waiter in exchange for bone counters,
+and get to work."
+
+Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to the corner where the
+white, dissipated-looking waiter of the card-room sat, and provided
+themselves with black and red _jetons_ (bone counters) of various
+values, to be redeemed at the end of the game.
+
+When they returned to the table the banker was just leaving his post.
+
+"I'm cleaned out," said he, "_decave_. Good-night," and he walked away.
+
+No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The punters had been winning all
+night, and did not like to desert their luck.
+
+"Oh, this will never do," cried Cranley. "If no one else will open a
+bank, I'll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it
+is done!"
+
+Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver
+cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
+
+Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again
+Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered
+in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the
+direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were
+winning, thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly
+and amusing.
+
+"I must have one shy," said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto
+stood with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth
+with a diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds
+and won; he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time,
+and then said, "May I draw a cheque?"
+
+"Of course you may," Cranley answered. "The waiter will give you _tout
+ce qu'il faut pour ecrire_, as the stage directions say; but I don't
+advise you to plunge. You've lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil
+favors beginners, so you can't come to grief."
+
+The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks
+had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some
+paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles
+of the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he
+returned with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The
+luck turned again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice
+consecutively he lost.
+
+"Excuse me," said Barton suddenly to Cranley, "may I help myself to one
+of your cigarettes?"
+
+He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the
+silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
+
+"Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when
+you have done with it."
+
+He dealt again, and lost.
+
+"What a nice case!" said Barton, examining it closely. "There is an
+Arabic word engraved on it."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Cranley, rather impatiently, holding out his hand for
+the thing, and pausing before he dealt. "The case was given me by the
+late Khedive, dear old Ismail, bless him! The word is a talisman."
+
+"I thought so. The case seemed to bring you luck," said Barton.
+
+Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at him, as rapid and timid as
+the glance of a hare in its form.
+
+"Come, give me it back, please," he said.
+
+"Now, just oblige me: let me try what there is in luck. Go on playing
+while I rub up my Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the
+case. Is it the word of Power of Solomon?"
+
+Cranley glanced back again. "All right," he said, "as you are so
+curious---j'en donne!"
+
+He offered cards, and lost. Martin's face brightened up. His paper
+currency was coming back to him.
+
+"It's a shame," grumbled Cranley, "to rob a fellow of his fetich.
+Waiter, a small brandy-and-soda! Confound your awkwardness! Why do you
+spill it over the cards?"
+
+By Cranley's own awkwardness, more than the waiter's, a little splash of
+the liquid had fallen in front of him, on the black leather part of the
+table where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck altered again.
+The rake was stretched out over both halves of the long table; the gold
+and notes and counters, with a fluttering assortment of Martin's I O
+U's, were all dragged in. Martin went to the den of the money-changer
+sullenly, and came back with fresh supplies.
+
+"Banco?" he cried, meaning that he challenged Cranley for all the money
+in the bank. There must have been some seven hundred pounds.
+
+"All right," said Cranley, taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt
+two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and
+cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught him by
+the wrists.
+
+Cranley made one weak automatic movement to extricate himself; then he
+sat perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was
+white beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue.
+
+"Damn you!" he snarled. "What trick are you after now?"
+
+"Are you drunk, Barton?" cried some one.
+
+"Leave him alone!" shouted some of the players, rising from their seats;
+while others, pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder without
+seeing any excuse for his behavior.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Barton, in a steady voice, "I leave my conduct in the
+hands of the club. If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has been
+cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and at his. Let anyone who
+doubts what I say look here."
+
+"Well, I'm looking here, and I don't see what you are making such a fuss
+about," said Martin, from the group behind, peering over at the table
+and the cards.
+
+"Will you kindly---- No, it is no use." The last remark was addressed to
+the captive, who had tried to release his hands. "Will you kindly take
+up some of the cards and deal them slowly, to right and left, over that
+little puddle of spilt soda water on the leather? Get as near the table
+as you can."
+
+There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
+
+"By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!" cried Martin.
+
+"Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you
+could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to
+take a card or stand."
+
+"I didn't," said the wretched Cranley. "How on earth was I to know that
+the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you
+a chance against me?"
+
+"You spilt the liquor yourself," Barton answered coolly, "when I took
+away your cigarette-case. I saw you passing the cards over the surface
+of it, which anyone can see for himself is a perfect mirror. I tried
+to warn you--for I did not want a row--when I said the case 'seemed
+to bring you luck.' But you would not be warned; and when the
+cigarette-case trick was played out, you fell back on the old dodge with
+the drop of water. Will anyone else convince himself that I am right
+before I let Mr. Cranley go?"
+
+One or two men passed the cards, as they had seen the Banker do, over
+the spilt soda water.
+
+"It's a clear case," they said. "Leave him alone."
+
+Barton slackened his grip of Cranley's hands, and for some seconds they
+lay as if paralyzed on the table before him, white and cold, with livid
+circles round the wrists. The man's face was deadly pale, and wet
+with perspiration. He put out a trembling hand to the glass of
+brandy-and-water that stood beside him; the class rattled against his
+teeth as he drained all the contents at a gulp.
+
+"You shall hear from me," he grumbled, and, with an inarticulate
+muttering of threats he made his way, stumbling and catching at chairs,
+to the door. When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, like
+a drunken man, and then shambled across the landing into a reading-room.
+It was empty, and Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay
+crumpled up, rather than sat, for perhaps ten minutes, holding his hand
+against his heart.
+
+"They talk about having the courage of one's opinions. Confound it! Why
+haven't I the nerve for my character? Hang this heart of mine! Will it
+never stop thumping?"
+
+He sat up and looked about him, then rose and walked toward the table;
+but his head began to swim, and his eyes to darken; so he fell back
+again in his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. Mechanically he began
+to move the hand that hung over the arm of his low chair, and it
+encountered a newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He lifted it
+automatically and without thought: it was the _Times_. Perhaps to try
+his eyes, and see if they served him again after his collapse, he ran
+them down the columns of the advertisements.
+
+Suddenly something caught his attention; his whole lax figure grew
+braced again as he read a passage steadily through more than twice or
+thrice. When he had quite mastered this, he threw down the paper and
+gave a low whistle.
+
+"So the old boy's dead," he reflected; "and that drunken tattooed ass
+and his daughter are to come in for the money and the mines! They'll be
+clever that find him, and I shan't give them his address! What luck some
+men have!"
+
+Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and lips working eagerly.
+
+"I'll do it," he said at last, cutting the advertisement out of the
+paper with a penknife. "It isn't often a man has a chance to _star_ in
+this game of existence. I've lost all my own social Lives: one in
+that business at Oxford, one in the row at Ali Musjid, and the third
+went--to-night. But I'll _star_. Every sinner should desire a new Life,"
+he added with a sneer.*
+
+     * "Starring" is paying for a new "Life" at Pool.
+
+He rose, steady enough now, walked to the door, paused and listened,
+heard the excited voices in the card-room still discussing him, slunk
+down-stairs, took his hat and greatcoat, and swaggered past the porter.
+Mechanically he felt in his pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his
+cigarette-case; and he paused at the little fount of fire at the door.
+
+He was thinking that he would never light a cigarette there again.
+
+Presently he remembered, and swore. He had left his case on the table
+of the card-room, where Barton had laid it down, and he had not the
+impudence to send back for it.
+
+"_Vile damnum!_" he muttered (for he had enjoyed a classical education),
+and so disappeared in the frosty night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--In the Snow.
+
+The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
+after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
+falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
+earth--steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the streets,
+and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
+coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
+night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
+flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
+gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
+surface of the city. Drifts and "snow-wreathes," as northern folk say,
+were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they
+lie when sheep are "smoored" on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in
+the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her
+cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off
+a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The
+pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and
+molten ice. Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars
+the foot-passengers slipped, "ricked" their backs, and swore as they
+stumbled, if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who
+were in haste, and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in
+hansoms with two horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively
+white on the surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight
+shining black marks where wheels had cut their way.
+
+At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by
+the waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or
+coffee color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads
+straight to the stream, and here, in the afternoon--for a late start was
+made--the carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had
+choked up the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been
+unladen into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary
+modes of clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that
+recommended itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening
+the fog had lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so
+thick that the bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like
+the arches of that fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts
+of the vessels moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only
+a red lamp or two shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the
+public-house at the corner--the _Hit or Miss_--streamed a fan-shaped
+flood of light, soon choked by the fog.
+
+Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to
+the river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was
+faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came
+into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there
+upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the
+men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling
+on the side of the horses.
+
+One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
+backboard of the cart in its place.
+
+"Blarmme, Bill," he grumbled, "if the blessed pins ain't froze."
+
+Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
+smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
+
+The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
+the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the
+pin.
+
+"It won't budge," he cried at last. "Just run into the _Hit or Miss_ at
+the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o' hot
+beer when ye're at it. Here's fourpence. I was with three that found a
+quid in the _Mac_,* end of last week; here's the last of it."
+
+     * A quid in the _Mac_--a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
+     called _Mac_ from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
+     building eligible freehold tenements.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
+scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the "nimble fourpence"
+have the monopoly of agility?
+
+"I'm Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don't yer know," said Bill, with regretful
+sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
+badge of avowed and total abstinence.
+
+"Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I'll bring the bloomin'
+hammer myself."
+
+Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
+protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
+warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
+public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which
+he then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his
+body under his armpit.
+
+"A little hot beer would do yer bloomin' temper a deal more good than
+ten yards o' blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin's more in _my_ line,"
+observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment.
+Aid with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their
+sockets, and let down the backboard of the cart.
+
+Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the
+cart was tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow
+shore-water, partly on to the edge of the slope.
+
+"Ullo!" cried Tommy suddenly. "E're's an old coat-sleeve a sticking out
+o' the snow."
+
+"'Alves!" exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
+
+"'Alves! of course, 'alves. Ain't we on the same lay," replied the
+chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, "Lord preserve us, mate; _there's a
+cove in the coat!_"
+
+He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
+stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
+at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin
+was the arm he grasped within it.
+
+"Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!"
+
+"Is he dead?" asked Bill, leaving the horses' heads.
+
+"Dead! he's bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
+did he get into the cart? Guess we didn't shovel him in, eh; we'd have
+seen him?"
+
+By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow
+heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers,
+and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping
+ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in
+heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once
+been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of
+iron-gray hair, and a grizzled beard hung over the breast.
+
+The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched
+woman in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and
+shivered beside the body for a moment.
+
+"He's a goner," was her criticism. "I wish _I_ was."
+
+With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking
+on her unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from
+nowhere, and were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior
+of the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark,
+or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and
+souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were
+helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned.
+
+"Run and fetch a peeler, Bill," said Tommy at last.
+
+"Peeler be hanged! Bloomin' likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
+yourself."
+
+"Sulky devil you are," answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder
+mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of
+Temperance. It is true that he had only been "Blue Ribbon" since the end
+of his Christmas bout--that is, for nearly a fortnight--and Virtue, a
+precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
+
+Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night
+The crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might
+truly be said that "the more part knew not wherefore they had come
+together." The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure,
+otherwise the ring would have been swaying this way and that. Neither
+was it a dispute between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of
+angry repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a
+lost child. So the outer circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited,
+and patiently endured till the moment of revelation should arrive.
+Respectable people who passed only glanced at the gathering; respectable
+people may wonder, but they never do find out the mystery within a
+London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the mob were some amateurs who
+had just been drinking in the _Hit or Miss_. They were noisy, curious,
+and impatient.
+
+At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning,
+had brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead
+man was found in the cart-load of snow.
+
+Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the
+officers stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where
+the dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
+
+"Lord, it's old Dicky Shields!" cried a voice in the crowd, as the
+peaked still features were lighted up.
+
+The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived,
+after the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed
+into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the _Hit
+or Miss_.
+
+"You know him, do you?" asked the policeman with the lantern.
+
+"Know him, rather! Didn't I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
+this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at
+tattooing, bless you: he'd tattooed himself all over!"
+
+The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
+the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
+
+"Why, he was in the _Hit or Miss_," the speaker went on, "no later nor
+last night."
+
+"Wot beats me," said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
+corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, "Wot beats me
+is how he got in this here cart of ours."
+
+"He's light enough surely," added Tommy; "but I warrant _we_ didn't
+chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square."
+
+"Where do you put up at night?" asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
+had been ruminating on the mystery.
+
+"In the yard there, behind that there hoarding," answered Tommy,
+pointing to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the
+public-house.
+
+At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters
+of damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste
+ground. The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled
+down, probably as condemned "slums," in some moment of reform, when
+people had nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
+
+There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all
+the latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when
+something else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain
+sheds, with roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of
+lumber-room for the parish.
+
+At this time the scavengers' carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
+the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
+horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
+
+"Was this cart o' yours under the sheds all night or in the open?" asked
+the policeman, with an air of penetration.
+
+"Just outside the shed, worn't it, Bill?" replied Tommy.
+
+Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
+
+"If the cart was outside," said the policeman, "then the thing's
+plain enough. You started from there, didn't you, with the cart in the
+afternoon?"
+
+"Ay," answered Tommy.
+
+"And there was a little sprinkle o' snow in the cart?"
+
+"May be there wos. I don't remember one way or the other."
+
+"Then you _must_ be a stupid if you don't see that this here cove,"
+pointing to the dead man, "got drinking too much last night, lost
+hisself, and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the
+cart."
+
+"Snow do make a fellow bloomin' sleepy," one of the crowd assented.
+
+"Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
+when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He's light
+enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you
+started?"
+
+"One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,"
+grunted Tommy.
+
+"Well, then, it's as plain as--as the nose on your face," said the
+policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. "That's how it was."
+
+"Bravo, Bobby!" cried one of the crowd. "They should make you an
+inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves."
+
+The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
+shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
+and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
+which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead
+man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
+northward to the hospital.
+
+A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
+and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their
+eyes within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so,
+and at last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
+
+By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
+them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
+Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
+tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
+intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the
+heroes of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew
+all Tommy and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of
+emotional agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and
+making over and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these
+performances was sure to be particularly keen within the very walls
+where the dead man had probably taken his last convivial glass, and
+where some light was certain to be thrown, by the landlady or her
+customers, on the habits and history of poor Dicky Shields.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--An Academic Pothouse.
+
+The _Hit or Miss_ tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least)
+who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by
+the river's brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the
+picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the
+architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a
+romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have
+seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The _Hit
+or Miss_ was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its fortunes.
+Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a person
+as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien's, in the University of
+Oxford.
+
+It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this
+arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with
+"mine host" of the _Hit or Miss_, and found him to be by no means the
+rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland
+should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the _Hit or Miss_, was
+only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals,
+restorations, experiments--an age of dukes who are Socialists--an age
+which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end
+tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway--need not wonder at
+Maitland's eccentric choice in philanthropy.
+
+Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy
+at a public school, where he was known as a "sap," or assiduous student,
+and was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and
+rowing. At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less
+unpopular. His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien's,
+where his services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a
+great desire to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity,
+and to improve humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life
+and duty had been urged on him by his college "coach," philosopher, and
+friend, Mr. Joseph Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had
+made Maitland leave his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St.
+Gatien's and betake himself to practical philanthropy.
+
+"You tell me you don't see much in life," Bielby had said. "Throw
+yourself into the life of others, who have not much to live on."
+
+Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He
+once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had
+his own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the
+citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from
+the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John's, Baliol, and Wadham
+Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of
+having three "devils," or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters
+of the town between five and six o'clock every morning, that the
+artisans might be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
+
+As Maitland's schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby
+urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in
+town. He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a
+Palace of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing
+this ingenious idea in the columns of the _Daily Trumpet_, Maitland
+looked out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy
+notion of taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was
+acted upon at the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own
+bar-room he could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least
+sophisticated aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and
+adulterated stuff He would raise the tone of his customers, while he
+would insensibly gain some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake
+off the prig (which he knew to be a strong element in his nature), and
+would, at the same time, encourage temperance by providing good malt
+liquor.
+
+The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire
+a tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when
+aestheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while
+philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in,
+like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the
+old leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of
+"impressions" and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling
+against this "side," as he called it, of his "culture," and in his hours
+of reaction he was all for steam tramways, "devils," and Kindergartens
+standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old
+innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of
+those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease
+of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his
+opportunity. The _Hit or Miss_ was as attractive to an artistic as most
+public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the
+bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled
+old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near
+the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that
+way: the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished,
+till at last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces,
+and a dust-yard round it.
+
+The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so
+high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the
+attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls
+were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering
+projecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by huge
+wooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by a
+low-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. At
+one corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:
+
+     "Jack's Bridge House.
+     "_Hit or Miss_--Luck's All."
+
+But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way,
+over which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the
+plaster) lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building.
+From this door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house
+kept for its intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled
+roofs and dormer windows than that which faced the street. The passage
+led down to a slum, and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty
+space and the dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left
+beneath the sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
+
+Within, the _Hit or Miss_ looked cosey enough to persons entering out of
+the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide
+old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle.
+On these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place
+themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within
+a room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber
+by itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained
+admittance to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear,
+now and then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere
+presence, and without in the least intending it, an Early Closing
+Movement.
+
+But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed
+landlady, or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the
+finding of poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been.
+Again and again the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more
+began to take the place of assertion.
+
+"I wonder," asked one of the men, "how old Dicky got the money for a
+boose?"
+
+"The money, ay, and the chance," said another. "That daughter of his--a
+nice-looking girl she is--kept poor Dicky pretty tight."
+
+"Didn't let him get--" the epigrammatist of the company was just
+beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter
+burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
+
+"Didn't let him _get_ tight, you was a-goin' to say, Tommy," howled
+three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping
+of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like
+crackers.
+
+"Dicky 'ad been 'avin' bad times for long," the first speaker went on.
+"I guess he 'ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for
+tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful
+forever about here."
+
+"Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or
+else he was clean sold out, and hadn't no capital to renew his stock of
+hairy cats and young parrots."
+
+"The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky's shop, had got to
+look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the
+middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that 'ere
+shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer
+and t'other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o'
+a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does."
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the
+conversation, "why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A
+most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to
+meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used
+to do him a turn of his trade--tattooing him, like. 'I'm doing him to
+pattern, mum,' Dicky sez, sez he: 'a _facsimile_ o' myself, mum.' It
+wasn't much they drank neither--just a couple of pints; for sez the
+sailor gentleman, he sez, 'I'm afeared, mum, our friend here can't carry
+much even of _your_ capital stuff. We must excuse' sez he, 'the failings
+of an artis'; but I doesn't want his hand to shake or slip when he's a
+doin' _me_,' sez he. 'Might > spile the pattern,' he sez, 'also hurt'
+And I wouldn't have served old Dicky with more than was good for him,
+myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn't I promised that poor daughter
+of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school--years ago now--I
+promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of--A hangel,
+if here isn't Mr. Maitland his very self!"
+
+And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord,
+the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by
+one--some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced
+awkwardness--they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland's
+appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his
+tenant.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Gullick," said poor Maitland, ruefully, "I came here for
+a chat with our friends--a little social relaxation--on economic
+questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away."
+
+"Oh, sir, they're a rough lot, and don't think themselves company for
+the likes of you. But," said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly--with the delight of
+the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale--"you 've heard this hawful
+story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood--"
+
+What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about
+to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland,
+growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
+
+"What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!"
+
+"Nothing to _herself_, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir."
+
+Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
+
+"Well, what about her father?"
+
+"Gone, sir--gone! In a cartload o' snow, this very evening, he was
+found, just outside o* this very door."
+
+"In a cartload of snow!" cried Maitland. "Do you mean that he went away
+in it, or that he was found in it dead?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this
+very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir,
+I do assure you. He had been steady--oh, steady for weeks."
+
+Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to
+a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some
+relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had
+known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as
+a hopeless _mauvais sujet_. But Dicky's daughter, Margaret, had been a
+daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer
+transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was
+having her educated there, and after she was educated--why, then,
+Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the
+way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle;
+not that he objected--on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his
+views in writing. There were times--there had lately, above all, been
+times--when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in
+this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and
+pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an
+obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man's way;
+he was nobody's enemy now, not even his own.
+
+The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a
+sensation rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland's
+consciousness.
+
+"Tell me everything you know of this wretched business," he said, rising
+and closing the door which led into the outer room.
+
+"Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know
+that Dicky had found a friend lately--an old shipmate, or petty-officer,
+he called him--a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a
+merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at
+sea, and he'd bring him here 'to yarn with him,' he said, once or twice
+it might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old
+Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an
+honest penny by his trade--a queer trade it was. Never more than a
+pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most
+considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought
+him in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor
+comes in, rubbing his eyes, and 'Good-night, mum,' sez he. 'My friend's
+been gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I've been asleep by
+myself. If you please, I'll just settle our little score. It's the last
+for a long time, for I'm bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward.
+Oh, mum, a sailor's life!' So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a
+gentleman, and out he goes, and that's the last I ever see o' poor Dicky
+Shields till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart,
+cold and stiff, sir."
+
+"And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get _into_
+the cart?"
+
+"Well, that's just what they've been wondering at, though the cart
+was handy and uncommon convenient for a man as 'ad too much, if 'ad he
+'_ad_; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would
+not intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and
+never wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what's _that_?" screamed Mrs. Gullick,
+leaping to her feet in terror.
+
+The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst
+open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a
+cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick's bosom.
+
+"Well, if ever I '_ad_ a fright!" that worthy lady exclaimed, turning
+toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little
+animal in an affectionate clasp. "Well, if _ever_ there was such a child
+as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you _now_?"
+
+"Oh, mother," cried the bear, "I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the
+roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was 'arf awake, I was that horful
+frightened."
+
+"Well, you just go up-stairs again--and here's a sweet-cake
+for you--and you take this night-light," said Mrs. Gullick, producing
+the articles she mentioned, "and put it in the basin careful, and
+knock on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it wasn't for that
+bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind enough to let you keep, you'd get your
+death o' cold, you would, running about in the night. And look 'ere,
+Lizer," she added, patting the child affectionately on the shoulder, "do
+get that there Bird out o' your head. It's just nothing but indigestion
+comes o' you and the other children--himps they may well call you,
+and himps I'm sure you are--always wasting your screws on pasty and
+lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just-nothing but indigestion."
+
+Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace,
+about Mrs. Gullick's neck; and then, without lavishing attention on
+Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
+
+"I'm sure, sir, I ask your pardon," exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; "but
+Lizer's far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or
+else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has
+been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps."
+
+"But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?"
+
+"She's such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man,
+and all of them at the _Hilarity_, you can't _think_, sir," said Mrs.
+Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland's general capacity
+for abstract speculation. "A regular little genius that child is, though
+I says it as shouldn't. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father,
+sir." And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
+
+Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but,
+like too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial
+enjoyment. Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had
+appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after
+his property when he became landlord of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+"What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more
+than four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a
+little late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with
+the jug, he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing
+didn't drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would 'a
+died laughing, and him so thirsty, too."
+
+"Take the knap?" said Maitland, who imagined that "the knap" must be
+some malady incident to childhood.
+
+"Oh, sir, it's when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know,
+and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise
+of a box on the ear: that's what we call 'taking the knap' in the
+profession. And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all--Lizer
+was that clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp
+at the _Hilarity_ pantermime; and they're that good to her, they let her
+bring her bearskin home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the
+Little Bear in 'The Three Bears,' don't you know, sir."
+
+Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle
+Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned
+paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude
+of Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on
+the traditional narrative.
+
+"But what was the child saying about a big Bird?" he asked. "What was it
+that frightened her?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something
+hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things
+in pantermimes might put notions in a child's head. But when she came
+home last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and
+swore she had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim
+over the street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she
+flies, screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to
+get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre
+pantermime bearskin, that fits her like another skin--and she'll be too
+big for it next year--just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That's
+all about it, sir. She'll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer."
+
+"I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick," said Maitland; "and, as I am
+passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl.
+Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields,
+you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about
+her father's death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it
+happened."
+
+"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; "and being safe away at
+school, sir, we'll hope she won't be told no more than she needn't know
+about it."
+
+Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was
+filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
+
+He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the
+raw darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed
+at no great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen
+comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood
+reading his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and
+there to save threepence,
+
+     "From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     "The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     "Tiverton.
+     "I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do
+     not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.
+     Break news."
+
+This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to
+construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous
+badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the
+paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there
+was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was
+buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the despatch was
+stamped and delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.--Miss Marlett's.
+
+Girls' schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you
+chance to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold.
+Their noses (however charming these features may become in a year
+or two, or even may be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty
+temperature in the long dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of
+the fair pupils are apt to seem larger than common, inclined to blue
+in color, and, generally, are suggestive of inadequate circulation.
+A tendency to get as near the fire as possible (to come within the
+frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden), and to cower beneath shawls,
+is also characteristic of joyous girlhood--school-girlhood, that is. In
+fact, one thinks of a girls' school as too frequently a spot where no
+one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal procession is
+not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there is apt to be
+a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient clothing, and
+general unsatisfied tedium.
+
+Miss Marlett's Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more
+briefly known as "The Dovecot, Conisbeare," was no exception, on a
+particularly cold February day--the day after Dicky Shields was found
+dead--to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a
+girls' school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where "the fires
+wass coot," as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its
+lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little
+distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch
+pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett's were not good on this February
+morning. They never _were_ good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one
+of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for
+persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know
+what they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which,
+consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only
+revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of
+stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal
+had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads
+were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to
+be urged along the heavy ways.
+
+This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but
+it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were
+just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the
+pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
+
+"Oh dear," said one maiden--Janey Harman by name--whose blonde
+complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien
+and unbecoming hues, "_why_ won't that old Cat let us have fires to
+dress by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!"
+
+"Yes; and I cant get them clean," said Margaret, holding up two very
+pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
+
+     "Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,
+     Are not my _hands_ washed white?"
+
+"No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies," came a voice, accompanied by
+an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a
+fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
+
+"I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett," replied the maiden thus
+rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence--
+
+     "'Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,'"
+
+--and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether the
+best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as if
+"that Miss Shields" was laughing at her.
+
+"Old Cat!" the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. "But no wonder
+my hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it's my week to be
+Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut
+off some of the enemy's supplies."
+
+So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of
+coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
+
+"Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are something _like_ a stoker,"
+exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing: "we
+shall have a blaze to-night."
+
+Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett's school, by an unusual and
+inconsistent concession to comfort and saniitary principles, the elder
+girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter.
+But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked,
+inasmuch as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots,
+the girls were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it
+could be found. Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each
+other's fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their pockets. But this
+conduct--resembling what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands,
+that they "eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's
+washing"--led to strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week
+(as the girl appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to
+infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This
+week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore
+herself in her high office as to extort the admiration of the very
+housemaids.
+
+     "Even the ranks of Tusculum
+     Could scarce forbear to cheer,"
+
+if we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields'
+favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was
+mercifully unaware that not to detect the "pinchbeck" in the _Lays_ is
+the sign of a grovelling nature.
+
+Before she was sent to Miss Marlett's, four years ere this date,
+Margaret Shields' instruction had been limited. "The best thing that
+could be said for it," as the old sporting prophet remarked of his
+own education, "was that it had been mainly eleemosynary." The Chelsea
+School Board fees could but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields.
+But Robert Maitland, when still young in philanthropy, had seen the
+clever, merry, brown-eyed child at some school treat, or inspection, or
+other function; had covenanted in some sort with her shiftless parent;
+had rescued the child from the streets, and sent her as a pupil to
+Miss Marlett's. Like Mr. Day, the accomplished author of "Sandford and
+Merton," and creator of the immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had
+conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own
+intellectual standard, and made, or "ready-made," a helpmate meet for
+him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret
+Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know
+human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
+
+Maitland could "please himself," as people say; that is, in his choice
+of a partner he had no relations to please--no one but the elect young
+lady, who, after all, might not be "pleased" with alacrity.
+
+Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields
+was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates
+("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four
+hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and
+comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's
+shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle.
+This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with
+a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight
+knot, and with a smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful
+to her lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a
+heroine, "were rather too large for regular beauty." She was perfectly
+ready to face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her
+mistress) when the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o'clock exactly,
+and the drowsy girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the
+wintry class-rooms.
+
+Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat
+which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does
+anyone remember--can anyone forget--how horribly distasteful a slate
+can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold educational
+formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy
+slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for
+some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. "Tare an' 'ouns, _I_ call
+it," whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a "course"
+of Lever's Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory
+progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging
+herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso's engaging work which is
+most palpitating with actuality:
+
+"If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink
+twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire
+laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles
+in length, and four feet six in height?"
+
+This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret's mathematical
+endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest
+girls can be) she was playing at "oughts and crosses" with Janey Harman
+when the arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly,
+beside Miss Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and
+set himself vigorously to elucidate (by "the low cunning of algebra")
+the difficult sum from Colenso.
+
+"You see, it is like _this_," he said, mumbling rapidly, and scribbling
+a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to follow
+with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite dazed
+Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his topic
+so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make allowance
+for the benighted darkness of the learner.
+
+"Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it's quite
+simple," said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
+
+"Oh, thank you; I _see_," said Margaret, with the kind readiness of
+woman, who would profess to "see" the Secret of Hegel, or the
+inmost heart of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of
+cover-point, or the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon,
+rather than be troubled with prolonged explanations, which the
+expositor, after all, might find it inconvenient to give.
+
+Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar's _forte_; and no young
+lady in Miss Marlett's establishment was so hungry, or so glad when
+eight o'clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret
+Shields.
+
+Breakfast at Miss Marlett's was not a convivial meal. There was a
+long narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, or
+_dais_, being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals
+down the table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter--of extremely
+thick bread and surprisingly thin butter--each slice being divided into
+four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether
+this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at
+seven, till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps,
+the inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with
+confidence. But, if girls do not always learn as much at school as could
+be desired, intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every
+chance of acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if
+familiarity really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that
+Miss Marlett's establishment was a _Dothegirls Hall_, nor a school much
+more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has
+still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than,
+persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places;
+but boys have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their
+breakfasts, which would be considered horribly indelicate and
+insubordinate conduct in girls.
+
+"Est ce que vous aimez les tartines a l'Anglaise," said Janey Harman to
+Margaret.
+
+"Ce que j'aime dans la tartine, c'est la simplicite prime-sautiere da sa
+nature," answered Miss Shields.
+
+It was one of the charms of the "matinal meal" (as the author of "Guy
+Livingstone" calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled
+to talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
+
+"Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptee, sont Francaises, dans cet
+etablissement peu recreatif," went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
+
+"Je deteste le Francais," Margaret answered, "mais je le prefere
+infiniment a l'Allemand."
+
+"Comment accentuez, vous le mot prefere, Marguerite?" asked Miss
+Marlett, who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of
+conveying instruction.
+
+"Oh, two accents--one this way, and the other that," answered Margaret,
+caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct
+terminology.
+
+"Vous allez perdre dix marks," remarked the schoolmistress, if
+incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy
+to say, off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for
+"marks."
+
+"Voici les lettres qui arrivent," whispered Janey to Margaret, as the
+post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it
+with a key and withdrew the contents.
+
+This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first
+sorted out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and
+unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other
+letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could
+trust, and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were
+regarded with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman,
+whose letters Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before
+delivering them.
+
+"Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire," said poor Janey to her
+friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at
+stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about
+in her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the
+edges. Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the
+briefest and most decorous manner.
+
+"Qui est votre correspondent?" Margaret asked. We are not defending her
+French.
+
+"C'est le pauvre Harry Wyville," answered Janey. "Il est sous-lieutenant
+dans les Berkshires a Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas ecrire a moi, il
+est comme on diroit, mon frere."
+
+"Est il votre parent?"
+
+"Non, pas du tout, mais je l'ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans!
+Voici, elle a deux depeches telegraphiques," Janey added, observing
+two orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the
+letters.
+
+As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant
+Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
+
+"Jeanne je veux vous parler a part, apres, dans mon boudoir," remarked
+Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched,
+displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
+
+Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to
+one by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who
+is just like one's brother, is a trial to any girl.
+
+Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which,
+as Janey had noticed, included _two_ telegraphic despatches in
+orange-colored envelopes.
+
+That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the
+admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have
+done so, but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils'
+correspondence before attending to her own. "Business first, pleasure
+afterward," was the motto of this admirable woman.
+
+Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the
+day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
+
+"Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman," said the
+schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so
+unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious--unwonted moods
+for this careless maiden.
+
+"Janey, something must have happened," she whispered to her friend, who
+was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
+
+"Something's _going_ to happen, I'm sure," said poor Janey,
+apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
+
+Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what
+Miss Marlett, when she spoke French, called her "boudoir." The girl felt
+colder than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss
+Marietta door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the
+low white hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls
+was standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins
+and sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two
+blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of
+the ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray
+haze was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and
+the branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black
+holes in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish
+plash.
+
+Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came
+out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
+
+"What is it?" whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before
+her, and her own unformed misgivings.
+
+"She won't give me the letter. I'm to have it when I go home for good;
+and I'm to go home for good at the holidays," whimpered Janey.
+
+"Poor Janey!" said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
+
+"Margaret Shields, come here!" cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice,
+from the boudoir.
+
+"Come to the back music-room when she's done with you," the other
+girl whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss
+Marlett's chamber.
+
+"My dear Margaret!" said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was
+standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting
+grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she
+generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
+
+"My dear Margaret!" she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the
+school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could
+scarcely speak.
+
+"You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father----"
+
+"Was it an accident?" asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well
+what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no
+prophet to foretell. "Was it anything very dreadful?"
+
+"Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor
+Daisy!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!" the girl sobbed. Somehow she
+was kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady's lap. "I have
+been horrid to you. I am so wretched!"
+
+A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret
+Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college,
+with a sad and hungry heart, trying to "carry it off by her wild talk
+and her wit." "It was bitterness they mistook for frolic." She had known
+herself to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with
+the other girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret
+had not gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than
+they knew; she had been in the "best set" among the pupils, by dint of
+her cheery rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and
+knew, too, that she had been living, socially, in that little society at
+the expense of this kind queer old Miss Marlett's feelings.
+
+"I have been horrid to you," she repeated. "I wish I had never been
+born."
+
+The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl's
+beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
+
+"Don't mind me," at last Miss Marlett said. "I never thought hardly of
+you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you
+can have any of the girls you like to help you to pack."
+
+Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which
+of the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that
+it was the other culprit.
+
+Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her
+arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to
+select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though
+she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart
+and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word
+_legibus_ (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third
+declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this
+grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she
+had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had
+led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was
+honored as a goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages.
+But now Miss Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes
+of the past.
+
+Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold
+water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness
+seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again
+and again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this
+chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the
+traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey
+was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
+
+"Come to my room, Janey," she said, beckoning.
+
+Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was
+forbidden to the girls.
+
+"Why, well only get into another scrape," said Janey, ruefully.
+
+"No, come away; I've got leave for you. You're to help me to pack"
+
+"To pack!" cried Janey. "Why, _you're_ not expelled, are you? You've
+done nothing. You've not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy
+who is just like a brother to you and whom you've known for years."
+
+Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
+and intense curiosity.
+
+When they reached their room, where Margaret's portmanteau had already
+been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for
+a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she
+sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair "had
+a good cry," and comforted each other as well as they might.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" asked Janey, when, as Homer says, "they
+had taken their fill of chilling lamentations."
+
+"I don't know!"
+
+"Have you no one else in all the world?"
+
+"No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna.
+Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers,
+and we were at Marseilles, and then in London."
+
+"But you have a guardian, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he's been very kind, and done
+everything for me; but he's quite a young man, not thirty, and he's so
+stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like
+a book. And he's so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because
+he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides--"
+
+But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
+lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien's.
+
+"And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?"
+Janey asked.
+
+"There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
+been an officer in father's ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
+sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all."
+
+"And you don't know any of your father's family?"
+
+"No," said Margaret, wearily. "Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
+prayer-book." And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
+silver clasps. "This was a book my father gave me," she said. "It has a
+name on it--my grandfather's, I suppose--'Richard Johnson, Linkheaton,
+1837.'" Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.
+
+"Your mother's father it may have belonged to," said Janey.
+
+"I don't know," Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
+
+"I hope you won't stay away long, dear," said Janey, affectionately.
+
+"But _you_ are going, too, you know," Margaret answered, without much
+tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break
+down, when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the
+snow-laden drive.
+
+"Why, here's some one coming!" cried Janey, rushing to the window. "Two
+horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for
+you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--Flown.
+
+Maitland's reflections as, in performance of the promise he had
+telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted.
+The newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left
+unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made
+that they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering
+its effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard
+Shields affected Maitland's purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He
+had for some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the
+girl was concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had
+been dimly aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a
+new, rather painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady.
+Maitland, in fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit
+for, and a sign of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had
+greeted, some weeks before, Barton's casual criticism on Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his
+philanthropic entanglement--it was rather, he said to himself, an
+entanglement than an engagement--had become irksome to his fancy.
+Now that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the
+daughter would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations
+in which they stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men
+from seeing this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy
+conceit. A curious "aloofness" of nature permitted him to stand aside,
+and see himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This
+disposition is rare, and not a source of happiness.
+
+On the other hand, his future relations to Margaret formed a puzzle
+inextricable. He could not at all imagine how he was to dispose of so
+embarrassing a _protegee_. Margaret was becoming too much of a woman to
+be left much longer at school; and where was she to be disposed of?
+
+"I might send her to Girton," he thought; and then, characteristically,
+he began to weigh in his mind the comparative educational merits of
+Girton and Somerville Hall. About one thing only was he certain: he must
+consult his college mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien's, as soon as might
+be. Too long had this Rasselas--occupied, like the famous Prince
+of Abyssinia, with _the choice of life_--neglected to resort to his
+academic Imlac. In the meantime he could only reflect that Margaret must
+remain as a pupil at Miss Marlett's. The moment would soon be arriving
+when some other home, and a chaperon instead of a school-mistress, must
+be found for this peculiar object of philanthropy and outdoor relief.
+
+Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the nine o'clock train. The
+early dusk began to gather, gray and damp; the train was late, having
+made tardy progress through the half-melted snow. He had set out from
+Paddington by the half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh and
+crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the most sceptical that Maitland
+could not reach Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in anything
+but a happy temper, he engaged a fly, and drove off, along heavy
+miserable roads, to the Dovecot.
+
+Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment,
+Maitland's cabman "pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked" for a
+considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of
+Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected
+no visitors, though Maitland knew that he ought to be expected. "The
+bandogs bayed and howled," as they did round the secret bower of the
+Lady of Brauksome; and lights flitted about the windows. When a lantern
+at last came flickering up to the gate, the bearer of it stopped to
+challenge an apparently unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" said a female voice, in a strong
+Devonian accent.
+
+"I want Miss Marlett," answered Maitland.
+
+There was some hesitation. Then the porter appeared to reflect that a
+burglar would not arrive in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would
+not ask for the schoolmistress.
+
+The portals were at length unbarred and lugged apart over the gravel,
+and Maitland followed the cook (for she was no one less) and the candle
+up to the front door. He gave his card, and was ushered into the chamber
+reserved for interviews with parents and guardians. The drawing-room had
+the air and faint smell of a room very seldom occupied. All the chairs
+were so elegantly and cunningly constructed that they tilted up at
+intervals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted himself to their
+hospitality. Their backs were decorated with antimacassars wrought with
+glass beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone fitfully with
+a frosty lustre. On the round table in the middle were volumes of "The
+Mothers of England," "The Grandmothers of the Bible," Blair "On the
+Grave," and "The Epic of Hades," the latter copiously and appropriately
+illustrated. In addition to these cheerful volumes there were large
+tomes of lake and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded magenta
+bindings, shrouded from the garish light of day in drab paper covers.
+
+The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung with prize sketches, in
+water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former
+works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a
+mauve hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber
+rocks, touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an
+agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders
+by Somebody's Patent Dome-Blacklead, "increases the attractions of
+the fireside," according to the advertisements. Maitland knew all the
+blacklead caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. They were
+old acquaintances, and as he fidgeted about the room he became very
+impatient.
+
+At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett appeared, rustling in silks,
+very stiff, and with an air of extreme astonishment.
+
+"Mr. Maitland?" she said, in an interrogative tone.
+
+"Didn't you expect me? Didn't you get my telegram?" asked Maitland.
+
+It occurred to him that the storm might have injured the wires, that
+his message might never have arrived, and that he might be obliged to
+explain everything, and break his bad news in person.
+
+"Yes, certainly. I got _both_ your telegrams. But why have you come
+here?"
+
+"Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and consult you about her. But
+what do you mean by _both_ my telegrams?"
+
+Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down with unexpected suddenness.
+
+"Oh, what will become of the poor girl?" she cried, "and what will
+become of _me_? It will get talked about. The parents will hear of it,
+and I am ruined."
+
+The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief over her eyes, to the
+extreme discomfiture of Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman cry;
+and that Miss Marlett should cry--Miss Marlett, the least melting, as he
+had fancied, of her sex--was a circumstance which entirely puzzled and
+greatly disconcerted him.
+
+He remained silent, looking at a flower in the pattern of the carpet,
+for at least a minute.
+
+"I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, about what is to become
+of the poor girl; but I do not see how the parents of the other young
+ladies are concerned. Death is common to all; and Margaret's father,
+though his life was exposed to criticism, cannot be fairly censured
+because he has left it And what do you mean, please, by receiving _both_
+my telegrams? I only #sent _one_, to the effect that I would leave town
+by the 10.30 train, and come straight to you. There must be some mistake
+somewhere. Can I see Miss Shields?"
+
+"See Miss Shields! Why, she's _gone!_ She left this morning with your
+friend," said Miss Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and alarmed,
+and looking straight at her visitor.
+
+"She's _gone!_ She left this morning with my friend!" repeated Maitland.
+He felt like a man in a dream.
+
+"You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself,
+and in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her
+father's friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so
+she went with _him_."
+
+"My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow," cried Maitland;
+"and I sent no second telegram."
+
+"Then who _did_ send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both
+telegrams," cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left
+the room.
+
+While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had
+time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had
+become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her
+from school at the very moment of her father's accidental death? And by
+what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from
+himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one?
+The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched
+telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to
+Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been
+mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might
+have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem,
+might
+
+     "Have wrote it all by rote,
+     And never wrote it right."
+
+But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the
+recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse)
+had gone off with "his friend, Mr. Lithgow." Clearly, no amount of
+accident or mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and
+the disappearance of Margaret.
+
+It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly
+blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature--as he admitted,
+on the evidence of his old college tutor--that he was never able to
+see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his own
+interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command
+the whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for
+people, and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the
+right, and everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more
+full-blooded life, he would probably have lost his temper, and "spoken
+his mind," as the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should
+never have let Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a
+telegram from the girl's guardian.
+
+It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about
+finding the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour.
+At last she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch
+in her hand, but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated
+young lady, in whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have
+recognized Miss Janey Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely
+bowed vaguely.
+
+"This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have seen on other occasions,"
+said Miss Marlett, trying to be calm.
+
+Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than ever. It did occur to him,
+that the fewer people knew of so delicate a business the better for
+Margaret's sake.
+
+"I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Maitland, partly because she is
+Miss Shields' greatest friend" (here Janey sobbed), "but chiefly because
+she can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of what I have told you."
+
+"I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Marlett; but will you kindly let
+me compare the two telegrams? This is a most extraordinary affair,
+and we ought to lose no time in investigating it, and discovering
+its meaning. You and I are responsible, you know, to ourselves, if
+unfortunately to no one else, for Margaret's safety."
+
+"But I haven't got the two telegrams!" exclaimed poor Miss Marlett, who
+could not live up to the stately tone of Maitland. "I haven't got them,
+or rather, I only have one of them, and I have hunted everywhere, high
+and low, for the other."
+
+Then she offered Maitland a single dispatch, and the flimsy pink paper
+fluttered in her shaking hand.
+
+Maitland took it up and read aloud:
+
+     "Sent out at 7.45.    Received 7.51.
+     "From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     "The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     "Tiverton.
+     "I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train.
+     Do not let Margaret see the newspaper.
+     Her father dead. Break news."
+
+"Why, that is my own telegram!" cried Maitland; "but what have you done
+with the other you said you received?"
+
+"That is the very one I cannot find, though I had both on the escritoire
+in my own room this morning. I cannot believe anyone would touch it. I
+did not lock them away, not expecting to have any use for them; but I am
+quite sure, the last time I saw them, they were lying there."
+
+"This is very extraordinary," said Maitland. "You tell me, Miss Marlett,
+that you received two telegrams from me. On the strength of the later
+of the two you let your pupil go away with a person of whom you know
+nothing, and then you have not even the telegram to show me. How long an
+interval was there between the receipt of the two despatches?"
+
+"I got them both at once," said poor, trembling Miss Marlett, who felt
+the weakness of her case. "They were both sent up with the letters this
+morning. Were they not, Miss Harman?"
+
+"Yes," said Janey; "I certainly saw two telegraphic envelopes lying
+among your letters at breakfast. I mentioned it to--to poor Margaret,"
+she added, with a break in her voice.
+
+"But why were the telegrams not delivered last night?" Maitland asked.
+
+"I have left orders," Miss Marlett answered, "that only telegrams of
+instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings,
+and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about
+nothing in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams _were_
+very important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about
+them if they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning.
+I have had a great deal of annoyance and expense," the schoolmistress
+added, "with telegrams that had to be paid for."
+
+And here most people who live at a distance from telegraph offices, and
+are afflicted with careless friends whose touch on the wire is easy and
+light, will perhaps sympathize with Miss Marlett.
+
+"You might at least have telegraphed back to ask me to confirm the
+instructions, when you read the second despatch," said Maitland.
+
+He was beginning to take an argumentative interest in the strength
+of his own case. It was certainly very strong, and the excuse for the
+schoolmistress was weak in proportion.
+
+"But that would have been of no use, as it happens," Janey put in--an
+unexpected and welcome ally to Miss Marlett--"because you must have left
+Paddington long before the question could have reached you."
+
+This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact; and Miss Marlett could not
+repress a grateful glance in the direction of her wayward pupil.
+
+"Well," said Maitland, "it is all very provoking, and very serious. Can
+you remember at all how the second message ran, Miss Marlett?"
+
+"Indeed, I know it off by heart; it was directed exactly like that in
+your hand, and was dated half an hour later. It ran: 'Plans altered.
+Margaret required in town. My friend and her father's, Mr. Lithgow,
+will call for her soon after mid-day. I noticed there were just twenty
+words."
+
+"And did you also notice the office from which the message was sent
+out?"
+
+"No," said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with an effort at
+recollection. "I am afraid I did not notice."
+
+"That is very unfortunate," said Maitland, walking vaguely up and down
+the room. "Do you think the telegram is absolutely lost?"
+
+"I have looked everywhere, and asked all the maids."
+
+"When did you see it last, for certain?"
+
+"I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make
+sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started."
+
+"And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?"
+
+"He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he
+seemed very cold."
+
+"Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which
+he probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know
+anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had--"
+muttered Maitland to himself. "She has never been in any place, Miss
+Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man's
+acquaintance?"
+
+"It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage
+it, Mr. Maitland," said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
+
+"I am _sure_ Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have
+such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken
+me in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy;
+she had been crying. I said, 'Here's a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he
+must have come for you.' Then she looked out and said, 'It is not my
+guardian; it is the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.'"
+
+"What kind of a man was he to look at?"
+
+"He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black
+mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he
+was not a young man. He was a gentleman," said Janey, who flattered
+herself that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that
+grand old name--when she saw them.
+
+"Would you know him again if you met him?"
+
+"Anywhere," said Janey; "and I would know his voice."
+
+"He wore mourning," said Miss Marlett, "and he told me he had known
+Margaret's father. I heard him say a few words to her, in a very kind
+way, about him. That seemed more comfort to Margaret than anything. 'He
+did not suffer at all, my dear,' he said. He spoke to her in that way,
+as an older man might."
+
+"Why, how on earth could _he_ know?" cried Maitland. "No one was present
+when her poor father died. His body was found in a--," and Maitland
+paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for adding to
+the public information about the circumstances of Mr. Shields' decease.
+"He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of the great
+storm."
+
+"I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and
+fatigue is as painless as sleep," said Miss Marlett with some tact.
+
+"I suppose that is what the man must have meant," Maitland answered.
+
+There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered,
+trying to think over any circumstance which might lend a clew in the
+search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
+
+At last he said "Good-night," after making the superfluous remark that
+it would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or
+unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred,
+for excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she
+had taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it;
+and when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea),
+a kind of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the
+schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly)
+that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother
+was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts
+of contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had
+distinguished himself, and if it did end "Yours affectionately,"
+there was nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things
+considered. So the fair owner of the letter received it into her own
+keeping, only she was "never to do it again."
+
+Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret's
+inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient
+sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of
+her own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable
+estimate of her pupil's discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
+
+Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which
+was an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never
+doubted that, on the death of Miss Shields' father, she had been removed
+by one of her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pass the
+night at Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest
+reason for anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend
+and protector, and who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy. Nothing more practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of
+St. Gatien's occurred to his perplexed imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--At St. Gatien's.
+
+The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such
+inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients.
+He was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based
+his conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these
+"authorities." For example, he first went in search of the man who had
+driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the
+Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who
+plied at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he
+had driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady
+was ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took
+the up-train. That was all _he_ knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were
+asked, was "a scaly varmint." On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide
+moral generalization was based on the limited _pour-boire_ which Mr.
+Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
+Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took
+away with him on his return to town--not in the van, in the railway
+carriage. "What could he want with all that luggage?" Maitland wondered.
+
+The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which
+conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official
+had seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went
+on to London.
+
+The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start
+for Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as
+Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in
+novels, gentlemen often assume the _role_ of the detective with apparent
+relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too
+scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and
+station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered
+having seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a
+young lady, of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive
+description. The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly
+constructed, in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for
+all the circumstances--a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular
+part of the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
+
+What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur
+coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone
+together, one day, in a carriage marked "Engaged." Next day, another
+gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same
+route, asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat
+(bearskin, it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady.
+Clearly, the pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer
+represented the less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the
+Family. All the romance and all the popular interest were manifestly
+on the other side, not on Maitland's side. Even his tips were received
+without enthusiasm.
+
+Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the
+time nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he
+met that he was really the young lady's guardian, and that the gentleman
+in the fur coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a
+miscreant, he would not have been believed. His opinion would, not
+unjustly, have been looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer
+calls "the personal bias." He had therefore to put up with general
+distrust and brief discourteous replies.
+
+There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There
+they gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs--Doto, Proto, Doris,
+and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be
+instructed. But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative,
+pretending that their attention was engaged in their hospitable duties.
+Soup it was their business to minister to travellers, not private
+information. They _had_ seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to
+her he seemed. Yes, they were on the best terms: "very sweet on each
+other," one young lady averred, and then secured her retreat and
+concealed her blushes by ministering to the wants of a hungry and
+hurried public. All this was horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
+
+Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had
+telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering
+to the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had
+received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then,
+was a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects
+of his search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had
+been taken. There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not
+descended. Nobody had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be
+found at Paddington of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman
+travelling alone with a young lady.
+
+It was nearly nine o'clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and
+disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of
+interrogating the porters--all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle of
+passengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights,
+no one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland
+described. There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining
+all the cab-drivers who had taken up passengers by the late trains the
+night before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment,
+nor perhaps by an amateur.
+
+Maitland's time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at
+Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to
+Paddington, and, with brief enough space for investigations that yielded
+nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His
+whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien's, whom, in his
+heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these
+unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of
+Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to
+expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen
+species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence
+peaceful, if not well satisfied. "Adventures are to the adventurous." It
+is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
+adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby's,
+Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
+enterprise, he never would have taken the _Hit or Miss_ he never would
+have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would
+not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old
+wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
+Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
+what had befallen Margaret.
+
+His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the
+mystery of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland's
+confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not
+been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was
+trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not
+taken Bielby's advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
+
+So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts,
+in the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped
+into a hansom, and said, "Gatien's." Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the
+High Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got
+out and kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight)
+opened it with rather a scared face:
+
+"Horful row on in quad, sir," he said. "The young gentlemen 'as a
+bonfire on, and they're a larking with the snow. Orful A they're a
+making, sir."
+
+The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
+forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
+garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a
+huge Alp of snow against the door of the Master's lodge. Meanwhile,
+another band had carried into the quad all the light tables and
+cane chairs from a lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful
+pyramidal form, they introduced some of the fire-lighters, called
+"devils" by the College servants, and set a match to the whole.
+
+Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
+like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work
+for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass
+of St Ga-tien's seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough
+to waken the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a
+non-resident Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was
+known at all, as a "Radical," with any number of decorative epithets,
+according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he
+could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they
+would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to
+precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face
+the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of
+civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore,
+after a moment of irresolution, stole off under a low-browed old
+door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle;
+for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least
+mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his
+familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his
+footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door
+at which he had meant to knock.
+
+"Come in," said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
+most conventional manner.
+
+Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr.
+Bielby, Fellow of St. Gatien's, sitting by his fireside, attired in a
+gray shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had,
+on taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success
+at the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he
+threw up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired
+life among his "brown Greek manuscripts." He was a man of the world,
+turned hermit, and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known.
+He had "coached" Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and
+remained his friend and counsellor.
+
+"How are you, Maitland?" said the student, without rising. "I thought,
+from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
+coming to 'draw me,' as I think they call it."
+
+Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
+likely to "draw" him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
+old bear that "dwells among bones and blood."
+
+Mr. Bielby's own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
+mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
+in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
+beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had
+belonged to famous students of old--Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus--and
+before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new
+critical edition of "Demetrius of Scepsis."
+
+Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had
+not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become
+involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of
+circumstances.
+
+"The men are making a terrible riot in quad," he said, answering the
+other's remark.
+
+"Yes, yes," replied Bielby, genially; "boys will be boys, and so will
+young men. I believe our Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being
+celebrated."
+
+Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken
+glass.
+
+"There go some windows into their battels," said Mr. Bielby. "They will
+hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so
+unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is."
+
+"Well, sir," said Maitland, "I rather want to ask your advice on an
+important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long
+story, that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married."
+
+This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed
+gratified.
+
+"Ah-ha," replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. "Happy to hear it
+Indeed, I _had_ heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say,
+brought a hint of it--I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant woman
+of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your part,
+too, a little--if you will let me say so--is exactly what you need. I
+congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the young lady
+in Oxford? Where is she just now?"
+
+Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not
+the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of
+Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+"I'm sure I wish I knew," said Maitland at last, beginning to find this
+consulting of the oracle a little difficult. "The fact is, that's just
+what I wanted to consult you about. I--I'm afraid I've lost all traces
+of the young lady."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave,
+while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. "She has not eloped?
+You don't mean to tell me she has run away from you?"
+
+"I really don't know what to say," answered Maitland. "I'm afraid
+she has been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or
+conspiracy."
+
+"You surely can't mean what you say" (and now the voice was gruffer than
+ever). "People don't plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
+probably they didn't! And who are the young lady's people? Why don't
+they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have
+friends."
+
+"She is not a widow--she is an orphan," said Maitland, blushing
+painfully. "I am her guardian in a kind of way."
+
+"Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I'm sure I beg your
+pardon, but did you tell me her name?"
+
+"Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields"--("Not the name I was told,"
+muttered Bielby)--"and her father was a man who had been rather
+unsuccessful in life."
+
+"What was his profession, what did he do?"
+
+"He had been a sailor, I think," said the academic philanthropist; "but
+when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
+anything, a professional tattooer."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
+livelihood."
+
+Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
+could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
+level with the situation.
+
+"Has Miss--h'm, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan
+long?" he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most
+undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
+been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter's character.
+
+"I only heard of his death yesterday," said Maitland.
+
+"Was it sudden?"
+
+"Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
+was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
+George's, Hanover Square."
+
+"St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed!" said the don, and once more he
+relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. "Maitland,"
+he said at last, "how did you come to be acquainted with these people?
+The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can't,
+surely, have met them in society?"
+
+"He came a good deal to 'my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think
+I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
+tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something
+for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you
+know."
+
+"Good-night!" growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
+determination in his tone. "I am rather busy this evening. I think you
+had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever
+about the matter to anyone. Good-night!".
+
+So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
+caused by Maitland's avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
+himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
+school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
+try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
+where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots,
+with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was
+clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's experience.
+
+"And yet," thought Maitland, "if I had not taken his advice about trying
+to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
+would have been in this hole."
+
+All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
+called food. "He had eaten; he had not dined," to adopt the distinction
+of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
+hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now
+he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards,
+he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of
+potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian
+vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.
+Gatien's. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
+
+He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on
+philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left
+the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache,
+he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and
+tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o'clock he
+fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the
+steam-whooper, or "devil," a sweet boon with which his philanthropy
+had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of
+Oxford.
+
+"Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian," Maitland
+seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
+Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
+lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
+thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
+iteration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--After the Inquest.
+
+To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland's scout called
+him at half-past seven with the invariable question, "Do you breakfast
+out, sir?" If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in
+attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution
+with, "Do you breakfast out, sir?"
+
+"No," said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; "in common room
+as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o'clock train."
+
+Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever,
+his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just
+complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room,
+then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and
+cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets.
+Anywhere but in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the
+bell and called his servant; but in our conservative universities, and
+especially in so reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally,
+no bell to ring. Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his
+greatcoat, that he might crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his
+scout.
+
+But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a
+strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often
+had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition
+of his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so
+than that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to
+blow in quad.
+
+"Mrs. Trattles!" cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his
+ears. "Mrs. Trattles!"
+
+The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by
+sniffs, from the other side of the door:
+
+"Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?"
+
+"Call Dakyns, please," said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. "I
+don't feel very well."
+
+Dakyns appeared in due course.
+
+"Sorry to hear you're ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn't I
+better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?"
+
+Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger
+generation, delighted to honor.
+
+"No; I don't think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I'll be
+able to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters."
+
+"Very well, sir," answered Dakyns.
+
+Then with that fearless assumption of responsibility which always does
+an Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr.
+Whalley before he brought round Maitland's letters and his breakfast
+commons.
+
+There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret's
+disappearance; if any such had been addressed to him, they would
+necessarily be, as Maitland remembered after his first feeling of
+disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had
+aught to communicate, nor anyone else, could be expected to know that
+Mait-land's first act would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
+
+The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast
+commons; even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
+
+Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his
+door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for
+him; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, "there was a pain
+somewhere in the room," and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
+
+"A very bad feverish cold," was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call
+again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his
+room.
+
+He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the
+quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the
+scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow,
+and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien's.
+
+So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage,
+and each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach
+of the very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland's
+illness took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the
+lungs were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see
+him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the _Hit or Miss_, about the
+man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the
+hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of "Demetrius
+of Scepsis." He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real
+kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with Maitland's
+returning health.
+
+At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of
+what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there
+was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
+
+Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in
+Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after
+him.
+
+"Brown," said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness
+began, "would you mind giving me my things? I'll try to dress."
+
+The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare
+slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms,
+by a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved
+into the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris
+manner.
+
+"Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent
+to the post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can't howl yet for
+myself," whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph
+form.
+
+"Delighted to howl for you," said Brown, and presently the wires were
+carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at
+once, on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a
+reply: Barton would be with Maitland by dinner-time.
+
+The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and
+even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were
+drawn, and a monster of the deep--one of the famous Oxford soles, larger
+than you ever see them elsewhere--smoked between Maitland and Barton.
+Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of "strong," a
+reminiscence of "the old coaching days," when Maitland had read with
+Barton for Greats. The invalid's toast and water wore an air of modest
+conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who
+relied merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight
+The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton's
+lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he
+did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his
+thin, white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
+
+It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for
+Barton knew so much already, especially about the _Hit or Miss_; but
+when it came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind
+of prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to
+walk about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak
+places; and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down
+again, and steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien's
+port.
+
+Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the
+finding of poor Dick Shields' body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, "Why,
+you don't mean to say that was the man, the girl's father? By George,
+I can tell you something about _him_! At the inquest my partner, old
+Munby, made out--"
+
+"Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,"
+said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret's disappearance
+that he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough
+of late) to the death of her father.
+
+"Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since
+you were ill?"
+
+Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the _Times_ since the
+day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment
+But his reading, so far, had been limited to the "Agony Column" of the
+advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to
+all the paragraphs headed "Strange Occurrence" and "Mysterious
+Disappearance." None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of
+Margaret.
+
+"I have not seen anything about the inquest," he said. "What verdict did
+they bring in? The usual one, I suppose--'Visitation,' and all that kind
+of thing, or 'Death from exposure while under the influence of alcoholic
+stimulants.'"
+
+"That's exactly what they made it," said Barton; "and I don't blame
+them; for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other
+choice. You can see what he said for yourself in the papers."
+
+Barton had been turning over the file of the _Times_, and showed
+Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so
+common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped,
+with blanks for names and dates.
+
+"A miserable end," said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph.
+"And now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by
+saying you didn't 'blame' the coroner's jury?"
+
+"Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don't know that I should
+tell you; it is too horrid!"
+
+"Don't keep anything from me, please," said Maitland, moving nervously.
+"I must know everything."
+
+"Well," answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant
+horror--"well, your poor friend was _murdered!_ That's what I meant when
+I said I did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict
+than they did on the evidence of my partner."
+
+Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new
+thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As
+a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of
+the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends
+on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from
+some lost star, some wandering world that is Hell.
+
+"Murdered!" cried Maitland. "Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on
+earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was
+no one's enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had
+nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much--a
+small sum--paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he
+was--when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in
+the world!"
+
+"I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the
+same, and that by a very cunning and cautious villain--a man, I should
+say, of some education.
+
+"But how could it possibly have been done? There's the evidence before
+you in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the
+circumstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more
+than enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere
+sleeping in the snow--it's well known to be fatal Why," said Maitland,
+eagerly, "in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had
+to send back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite
+asleep, in a snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened."
+
+He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton
+had arrived at.
+
+The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
+
+"But how can you possibly know better than the jury," urged Maitland
+peevishly, "and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district,
+who were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural--that he got
+drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure?
+Why, you did not even hear the evidence. I can't make out," he went on,
+with the querulousness of an invalid, "why you should have come up just
+to talk such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been
+right."
+
+"Well, you see, it was not the coroner's business nor the jury's
+business, to know better than the medical officer for the district,
+on whose evidence they relied. But it is _my_ business; for the said
+officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very
+little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow
+as ever let a life slip out of his hands."
+
+"Then, if you knew so much, why didn't you keep him straight?"
+
+"Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a
+wedding, when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial
+examination of the deceased."
+
+"Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an
+extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only
+this printed evidence," said Maitland, waving a sheet of the _Times_,
+"to go by; and _this_ is dead against you. You're too clever."
+
+"But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return
+to town, the day after the inquest," said Barton, "and I found evidence
+enough _for me_--never mind where--to put the matter beyond the reach
+of doubt. The man was _murdered_, and murdered, as I said, very
+deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant scoundrel."
+
+"Still, I don't see how you got a chance to make your examination," said
+Maitland; "the man would be buried as usual--"
+
+"Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers--and there was no one to
+claim _his_--are reserved, if needed--"
+
+"I see--don't go on," said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling
+back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut "It is
+all the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine," he said, presently.
+"In my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no
+one to claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take
+no trouble or risk in a case like that." He was silent again for a few
+moments; then, "What do _you_ make out to have been tbe cause of death?"
+he asked.
+
+"Well," said Barton slowly, "I don't much care to go into details which
+you may say I can hardly prove, and I don't want to distress you in your
+present state of health."
+
+"Why don't you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or
+anything? He had been drinking with some one!"
+
+"No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing
+that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear
+fellow, there are venoms that leave _no_ internal trace. If I am
+right--and I think I am--he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a
+great traveller, had he not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Maitland.
+
+"Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller
+also. He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well
+acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing."
+
+"You won't be more explicit?"
+
+"No," he said; "you must take it on my word, after all."
+
+Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of
+Barton, and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his
+theory was no morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion
+which, as he said, he could no longer, prove--which was, indeed, now
+incapable of any proof. No one had seen the commission of tbe crime, and
+the crime was of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could
+not possibly be otherwise brought home to the murderer.
+
+Now Maitland, knowing the _Hit or Miss_, and the private room up-stairs
+with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if done at
+all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any eye-witness
+of the crime.
+
+"What shall you do?" he asked, "or have you done anything in consequence
+of your discovery? Have you been to the police?"
+
+"No," said Barton; "where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It
+is not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis.
+Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more
+likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret
+motive--and he must have had--he will act on that motive sooner or
+later. The quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is
+safe, the sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there
+may be a chance of detecting him; but it's an outside chance. Do you
+know anything of the dead man's past history?"
+
+"Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering
+life."
+
+"Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your
+care. What do you mean to do about _her?_"
+
+The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were
+now so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
+
+"I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
+Things were bad before; now they are awful," said Maitland. "_His
+daughter has disappeared!_ That was what I was coming to: that was the
+rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew
+what you tell me; now--great Heavens! what am I to do?"
+
+He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly
+on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
+
+"Tell me all about it, old boy?" asked Barton, at length.
+
+He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate
+friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no
+longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation
+of Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible,
+the tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure
+even to come upon her traces or those of her companion.
+
+"And you have heard nothing since your illness?"
+
+"Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?"
+
+"There is only one thing certain, to my mind," said Barton. "The
+seafaring man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his
+life, and the gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram
+in your name and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett's, are in the same
+employment, or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you
+any kind of suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way
+of tracking him or them?"
+
+"No," said Maitland; "my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never
+heard of the sailor till the woman at the _Hit or Miss_ mentioned him,
+the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of Shields',
+a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school."
+
+"Then all we can do at present is, _not_ to set the police at work--they
+would only prevent the man from showing--but to find out whether anyone
+answering to the description is 'wanted' or is on their books, at
+Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social
+position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would
+certainly have his _dossier_? They order these things better in France."
+
+"There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was
+drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost
+certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs.
+Gullick--that's the landlady of the _Hit or Miss_--saying that Shields
+had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in that way for
+sailors."
+
+"By Jove," said Barton, "if any fellow understands tattooing, and the
+class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion;
+but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are
+tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in
+our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on
+but these early decorative designs."
+
+This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a
+moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his _flair_ as a
+detective.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--The Jaffa Oranges.
+
+"Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_."
+
+Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
+embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali,
+in the "Arabian Nights." With his glass, it will be remembered, he could
+see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and,
+though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How
+often would one give Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, and the
+invisible Cap which was made of "a darkness that might be _felt_" to
+possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
+
+Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
+were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would
+have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured.
+Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they
+might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would
+have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor,
+indeed, in a den at all.
+
+The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far
+off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square,
+Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the
+drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn
+down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of
+witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she
+had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would
+have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring
+had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were
+half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so
+ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question
+which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of
+respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
+
+He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
+sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door,
+in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
+remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
+upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
+Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
+members of the less educated classes), "I won't put up with none of them
+goings on." Such an expression this woman wears.
+
+"I hope you feel better, my dear?" the dark gentleman asks again.
+
+"She's going on well enough," interrupted the woman with the beautiful
+dissatisfied face. "What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
+tonics as you might bathe in--"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"She _ought_ to get well," the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the
+invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
+
+"I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling," said the dark
+gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, "but to the young lady whom I
+have entrusted to your charge."
+
+"A pretty trust!" the woman replied, with a sniff
+
+"Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret,
+my dear--'--"
+
+The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a
+trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
+
+"Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?"
+
+"You are very kind," answered the girl at last. "I am sure I am better.
+I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon."
+
+"Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
+grapes; may I send you some oranges?"
+
+"Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
+rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep,
+just now."
+
+"Poor girl!" said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. "And what do
+you dream?"
+
+"There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place," said the
+girl, slowly, "where I am; and something I feel--something, I don't know
+what--drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself
+on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling
+in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel
+mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and
+chasing me in the dark--some one I can't see. Then I slide into the
+smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I _must_ get away from it.
+Oh, I don't know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I'm
+asleep, I suppose."
+
+"I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all _I_ can do is to
+get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me,
+Mrs. Darling" (he turned to the housekeeper), "by placing them in Miss
+Burnside's room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when
+she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret."
+
+The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
+street, where a hansom cab waited for him. "Covent Garden," he cried to
+the cabman.
+
+We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
+believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
+very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
+
+Mr. Cranley, "with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
+him" (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
+celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this
+been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
+difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest
+means, the nature of Maitland's telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had
+been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland's, and in which Cranley
+used Maitland's name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have
+seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following
+his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the "engaged" carriage
+at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
+previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne
+Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his
+portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed
+a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A
+gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means
+answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the
+porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland's
+inquiries.
+
+The success of Cranley's device was secured by its elementary
+simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his
+trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable
+garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of
+most who see him, "the man in the bearskin coat," or "the man in
+the jack-boots," or "the man with the white hat." His identity is
+practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and
+when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or
+to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this
+principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure
+reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in
+London.
+
+With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
+recognized him as an acquaintance of her father's, and he represented
+to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father
+had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his
+poverty--in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he
+declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with
+dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield's
+chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from
+Maitland's guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl
+away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his
+latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his
+old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the
+Fellow of St Gatien's.
+
+Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
+Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
+man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
+position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
+manner of her father's death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
+knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
+Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
+Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident
+had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
+guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
+politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
+school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
+the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
+had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had
+lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only
+really delicate point--Cranley's assumption of the name of "Mr.
+Lithgow"--he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of
+the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father's
+last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been
+necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a
+gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as
+philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a
+license and discretion not customary in common society.
+
+Finally, even had the girl's suspicions been awakened, her illness
+prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
+father's friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
+guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father's wish, and
+hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
+livelihood; and independence was Margaret's ideal.
+
+Her father's friend, her own protector--in that light she regarded
+Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
+no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
+undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
+perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct
+of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for
+a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the
+rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience.
+Cran-ley's temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first
+human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling
+in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them.
+Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied
+himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once
+tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so
+surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though
+a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
+
+Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which
+his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she
+should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley's
+original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the
+Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some
+kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should
+never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost
+forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan.
+For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting
+fool; and then Margaret's illness had occurred, and had caused delay,
+and given time for reflection.
+
+"After all," he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache
+in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed
+hansoms)--"after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no
+inconvenient claims."
+
+For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways
+of "removing" an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed
+across a not uninstructed intellect--a scheme which appeared open to the
+smallest number of objections.
+
+"She shall take a turn for the worse," he thought; "and the doctor will
+be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
+jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it."
+
+Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden,
+dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges.
+He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an
+eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked
+for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got
+what he wanted in a small phial, marked _poison_. Mr. Cranley then
+called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker's
+(also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the
+label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker's he complained
+of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine
+or some such anodyne into his arm. A fourth cab took him back to the
+house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered
+the dining-room, and locked the door.
+
+Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
+about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused
+and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief
+into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable
+chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom
+of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds,
+and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in
+order--the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
+
+Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the
+best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room
+cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table,
+in company with a biscuit or two.
+
+When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
+orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then
+drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and
+carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into
+the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately
+completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then
+tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit
+he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire;
+and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately
+turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened
+the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times,
+finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked
+through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this
+portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the
+glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from
+the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with
+the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper,
+within the basket, and closed the window.
+
+Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
+voice:
+
+"Now, Alice, you may come in!"
+
+The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
+
+"How is Miss Burnside?" he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
+told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
+at least.)
+
+"She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her?
+Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil's brew have you been
+making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?"
+
+"My dear girl," replied Mr. Cranley, "you put too many questions at
+once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care
+of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my
+housekeeper. As to the 'devil's brew' which you indicate in a style
+worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of
+positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you
+did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you
+have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any
+other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful
+curiosity?"
+
+The fair woman's blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
+like a baleful lightning.
+
+"I don't understand your chaff," she said, with a few ornamental
+epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to
+decorate her conversation.
+
+"I grieve to be obscure," he answered; "_brevis esse laboro_, the old
+story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she
+wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and
+leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer
+fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish
+Square, and leave this note at the doctor's."
+
+"Oh, nothing's too good for _her!_" growled the jealous woman, thinking
+of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges
+not used in his experiment.
+
+Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
+door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret's
+door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
+
+"Now, I'll give her a quarter of an hour to waken," said Mr. Cranley,
+and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced
+rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet "Still
+advertising for him," he said to himself; and he then turned to the
+sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for
+the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not
+yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he
+looked hastily at his watch.
+
+"Just twenty minutes gone," he said. "Time she wakened--and tried those
+Jaffa oranges."
+
+Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
+Margaret's door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not
+find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he
+chose a large and heavy _fauteuil_, took it up in his arms, and began
+to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret's chamber, he
+stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was
+dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He
+picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
+
+"That would have wakened the dead," he whispered to himself, "and she is
+not dead--yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them,
+and then--"
+
+The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
+mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
+being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
+remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
+frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and
+less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind
+of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was
+passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of
+Death.
+
+She has wakened--she has looked round--she has seen the poisoned
+fruit--she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it--she has
+tasted the oranges--she has turned to sleep again--and the unrelenting
+venom is at its work!
+
+Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
+hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
+right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the
+star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the
+grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning
+the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an
+unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.
+The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays,
+though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all
+things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of
+our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the
+accomplishment of our desires.
+
+It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that
+the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed
+actually to be present in Margaret's chamber, watching every movement
+and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips
+and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not
+therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
+
+It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection
+that he was musing.
+
+"Now it's done, it can't be undone," he said. "But is it so very safe,
+after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it's much
+more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any
+other way. And then there's all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there
+is not an inquest--as, of course, there won't be--they'll ask who the
+girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they'll, some of
+them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound
+her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries,
+perhaps."
+
+And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
+thumb-nail, and yawned.
+
+"By gad! I wish I had not risked it," he said to himself; and his
+complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to
+flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk
+back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the
+finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could
+scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.
+A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of
+reflections again.
+
+"That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out," he
+said; "and--" He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the "French
+fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then
+he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still,
+it's not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better.
+By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she
+hasn't. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are
+the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if she
+_has_ taken it. I _must_ go and see. I don't like the job."
+
+He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
+sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
+With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
+his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl's door
+he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All
+was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump:
+he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might
+wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
+
+Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it
+with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the
+door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful
+husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman's hard knock
+at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful
+visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound
+asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could
+make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her
+face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges!
+Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely--no! a
+sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of
+relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and,
+as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and
+cursing his own cowardice under his breath--he stole down stairs, opened
+the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
+
+"Now I'll settle with you!" came a voice out of the dimness; and the
+start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as
+they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was
+he trapped, and by whom?
+
+In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling,
+in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than
+anger, that stood before him.
+
+Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried
+to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
+observed:
+
+"Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
+to read."
+
+"What were you doing up-stairs just now?" she snarled. "Why did you send
+me off to the doctor's, out of the way?"
+
+"My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that
+invaluable curiosity of yours--curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew
+Arnold so justly views with high esteem--into wider and nobler channels.
+Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life
+as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of
+Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics."
+
+It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
+ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
+far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that
+lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being
+prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the
+success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat
+was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a
+drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:
+
+"No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
+you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
+every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
+your tongue and keep your hands off me--and off drink. Fetch the lamp!"
+
+She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
+silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
+on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
+letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
+bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
+been, with a strange device in gold and colors--a brown bun, in a glory
+of gilt rays.
+
+"Mrs. St John Deloraine," he said, taking it up. "How in the world did
+_she_ find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer
+than a brother--a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow."
+
+Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
+title of the family.
+
+"I don't suppose there is another woman in London," he thought to
+himself, "that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that
+would write to me."
+
+Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
+read the following epistle:
+
+     "Early English Bunhouse,
+
+     "Chelsea, Friday. "My dear Mr. Cranley,
+
+     "Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
+     hear nothing of you from anyone--nothing _good_, and you
+     know I never believe anything _else_. Do come and see me, at
+     the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about _yourself_"
+
+--("She _has_ heard," he muttered)
+
+     --"and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
+     know we are strictly _blue ribbon--a cordon bleu_, I call
+     her) has become engaged to a _plumber_, and she is leaving
+     us. _Can_ you recommend me another? I know how interested
+     you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
+     enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
+     housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
+     see me, whether you can advise me or not.
+
+     "Yours very truly,
+
+     "Mary St. John Deloraine"
+
+"Idiot!" murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
+then he added, "By Jove! it's lucky, too. I'll put these two infernal
+women off on _her_, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
+gets at the drink. She's dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
+Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
+waters."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
+privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
+aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
+caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
+or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
+seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a
+house in Cheyne Walk.
+
+The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
+she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
+county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
+woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
+County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
+Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor
+a kind of _morgue_ so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
+the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
+Meryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
+Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take,
+they take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are
+they to drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else,
+that even the Clergy are excluded, _ex officio_, and in their degrading
+capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As
+we all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the
+very being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
+inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
+sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
+
+Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession)
+one of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain
+Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson,
+being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At
+the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat,
+girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House
+and Parsonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+To this desirable home and opulent share of earth's good things did Mr.
+St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled
+a good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County
+matrons and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling
+on such heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this
+young man a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him
+from the society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys'
+daughters. Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping
+Carby, and there he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level
+turf, her "points" he counted, and he found that she, at least, could
+appreciate his somewhat apt quotation from _Chastelard_:
+
+     "Pray heaven, we make good Ends."
+
+Miss Widdicombe _did_ make good "Ends." She vanquished Mrs. Struggles,
+the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman who was
+now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost professionally,
+"rejoice in arrows," like the Homeric Artemis--why are they nearly
+always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at least before
+her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known band of
+Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
+
+This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
+contrast between Miss Widdicombe's vivacity and the deadly stolidity
+of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her
+vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John
+Deloraine. He saw--he loved her--he was laughed at--he proposed--he was
+accepted--and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss
+Widdicombe, the attorney's daughter, as _chatelaine_ (delightful word,
+and dear to the author of _Guy Livingstone_) of Wentley Deloraine.
+
+When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
+alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
+good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
+London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
+name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty
+of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County
+dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when
+they come to town.
+
+This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy
+in the earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her
+benevolence had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow.
+Never, surely, was there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine.
+
+She would go from a garden-party to a mothers' meeting; she was great
+at taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping
+them amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at
+least three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
+eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner
+hours.
+
+So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine,
+that she made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal
+sympathy, wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she
+has been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like
+Greek texts which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need
+of explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the
+old sense--that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune--pursued hotly or
+artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
+suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
+her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting
+them as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of
+music are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no
+joy in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next),
+so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a
+passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the
+world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless
+levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature.
+Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good
+things so successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+
+At this moment the lady's "favorite vanity," in the matter of good
+works, was _The Bunhouse_. This really serviceable, though quaint,
+institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland's enterprise of
+the philanthropic public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. In a slum of Chelsea
+there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
+coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
+sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was
+the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine's friends, an artist of the
+highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch
+and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, _The Bunhouse_
+did very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
+Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery
+of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the
+metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features
+at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen
+hours a day in shops--all these young female outlaws, not professionally
+vicious, found in _The Bunhouse_ a kind of charitable shelter and home.
+
+They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
+stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers
+and fathers. "Places" were found for them, in the rare instances when
+they condescended to "places." Sometimes they breakfasted at _The
+Bunhouse_, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a
+state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would
+arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than
+when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle
+of a door--they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the
+clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young
+patrons of _The Bunhouse_ were in a warlike humor. Then the stern
+housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds,
+_haec certamina tanta_, turning the more persistent combatants into the
+street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and
+try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls
+would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the
+Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a
+drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and
+presently disturbances would come again.
+
+For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
+housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
+told, had yielded to love, "which subdues the hearts of all female
+women, even of the prudent," according to Homer, and was going to share
+the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible
+innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas
+Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in
+her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
+
+No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. _He_
+could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
+left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that
+young lady's earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr.
+Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine's acquaintance who would have used her
+unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr.
+Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of
+his character.
+
+"Shall I go and lunch with her?" he asked himself, as he twisted her
+note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and
+gold. "I haven't shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not
+since--since I came back from Monte Carlo."
+
+Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit
+The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in
+the calendar withdrew his large words when asked "if he had ever cheated
+at cards."
+
+"Well," Mr. Cranley went on, "I don't know: I dare say it's safe enough.
+She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
+sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the
+day--not up to luncheon anyhow. She says"--and he looked again at the
+note--"that she'll be alone; but she won't. Everyone she sees before
+lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to
+dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very
+long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it
+when once you begin. However, here goes," said Mr. Cranley, sitting
+down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a
+bulwark and breastwork. "I'll write and accept Probably she'll have no
+one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from
+the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me."
+
+As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the
+clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine's house
+in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that
+lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of
+beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont
+terrier, and holding out both her hands.
+
+The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
+hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
+carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
+
+"Love in which thy hound has part," quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
+rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
+smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
+
+"Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley," she said; "and, as I have
+put off luncheon till two, _do_ tell me that you know someone who will
+suit me for my dear _Bun-house_. I know how much you have always been
+interested in our little project."
+
+Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew
+the very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
+respectable woman of great strength of character, "of body, too, I
+believe, which will not make her less fit for the position."
+
+"No," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; "the dear girls are sometimes
+a little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
+went to one of the exhibitions with her _fiance_, and the girls broke
+all the windows and almost all the tea-things."
+
+"The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not
+stand anything of that kind," answered Mr. Cranley. "She is quiet, but
+extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate
+character. At one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a
+person of treacherous and ungovernable disposition."
+
+This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
+fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
+father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
+bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to
+earn her own livelihood.
+
+So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to
+tell the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was
+strong enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud
+and indisposed to make confidences.
+
+"There is only one thing I must ask," said Mr. Cranley, when he had
+quite persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to
+her young friends. "How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when
+do you need the services of the new-comers?"
+
+"Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
+like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want
+to rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank
+Holiday--in a fortnight that is--and then they will go on their
+honeymoon of three days to Yarmouth."
+
+Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
+impetuous wooer.
+
+"No laggard in love," he said, smiling. "Well, in a fortnight the two
+women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
+remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
+recovered from the shock of her father's sudden death--a very sad
+affair," added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
+
+"Poor dear girl!" cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears
+in her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep
+with those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
+
+Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to
+the latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of
+this entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
+
+"Why, he's very late," she said; "and yet it is not far to come from the
+_Hit or Miss_."
+
+"From the _Hit or Miss_!" cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
+aware.
+
+"Yes; you may well wonder, if you don't know about it, that I should
+have asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be
+quite in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome,
+nor very amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness
+now. He is very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the
+poor. He is a Fellow of his College at Oxford."
+
+During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the
+terrier; but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
+
+"Did I tell you his name?" Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. "He is a--"
+
+Here the door was opened, and the servant announced "Mr. Maitland."
+
+When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
+found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
+
+His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
+heart might have blanched at the encounter.
+
+When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
+philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
+fellow-revellers. What other things he had done--things in which
+Maitland was concerned--the reader knows, or at least suspects. But it
+was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
+undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
+
+There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
+
+"Let me introduce you--" said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+
+"There is no need," interrupted Maitland. "Mr. Cranley and I have known
+each other for some time. I don't think we have met," he added, looking
+at Cranley, "since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not
+likely to meet again, I'm afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell
+Mrs. Si John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance."
+
+Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
+the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be)
+with private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the
+trouble at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended
+to what he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he
+had the best reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he
+was the secret source of the information on which Maitland proposed to
+act.
+
+At luncheon--which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
+was "luscious and abundant"--Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than
+the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little
+philanthropic misadventures of his own--cases in which he had been
+humorously misled by the _Captain Wraggs_ of this world, or beguiled by
+the authors of that polite correspondence--begging letters.
+
+When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to
+go (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine's company very much), Cranley,
+who had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way
+with the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+"And when are we likely to meet again?" he asked.
+
+"I really don't know," said Maitland. "I have business in Paris, and I
+cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent."
+
+"No more can I," said Mr. Cranley to himself; "but I hope you won't
+return in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you
+have the luck to return at all."
+
+But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a
+good voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a
+_comedienne_) at the Palais Royal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--Traps.
+
+The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the
+lady of _The Bunhouse_, Barton, when he came home from a round of
+professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted
+lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there,
+discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that
+he was indeed "moving about in worlds not realized." Keen as was the
+interest which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend's affairs,
+he now and again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever
+revolved round the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points.
+
+"Hullo, Maitland; glad to see you," he observed, with some shade of
+hypocrisy. "Anything new to-day?"
+
+"Yes," said Maitland; "I really do think I have a clew at last."
+
+"Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles," said Barton, groaning
+as the bell-rope came away in his hands. "Bring lights, please, and
+tea, and stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend," he remarked, when the
+blackened but alert face of the little slavey appeared at the door.
+
+"Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir," answered Jemima, who greatly
+admired the Doctor, and in ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost
+comfortable.
+
+"Now for your clew, old man," exclaimed Barton, as he handed Maitland
+a cup of his peculiar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and no
+sugar. "Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clew of yours has been to the
+detective mind! To think that, without the Minotaur, the police would
+probably never have hit on that invaluable expression, 'the police have
+a clew.'"
+
+Maitland thought this was trifling with the subject.
+
+"This advertisement," he said, gravely, "appears to me undoubtedly to
+refer to the miscreant who carried off Margaret, poor girl."
+
+"Does it, by Jove?" cried Barton, with some eagerness this time. "Let's
+have a look at it!"
+
+This was what he read aloud:
+
+     "Bearskin Coat.--The gentleman travelling with a young lady,
+     who, on Feb. 19th, left a bearskin coat at the Hotel Alsace
+     and Lorraine, Avenue de l'Opera, Paris, is requested to
+     remove it, or it will be sold to defray expenses.
+
+     "Dupin."
+
+"This _may_ mean business," he said, "or it may not. In the first place,
+is there such an hotel in Paris as the 'Alsace et Lorraine,' and is M.
+Dupin the proprietor?"
+
+"_That's_ all right," said Maitland. "I went at once to the Club, and
+looked up the _Bottin_, the Paris Directory, don't you know."
+
+"So far, so good; and yet I don't quite see what you can make of it. It
+does not come to much, you know, even if the owner of the coat is the
+man you want And again, is he likely to have left such a very notable
+article of dress behind him in an hotel? Anyway, can't you send some
+detective fellow? Are you going over yourself in this awful weather?"
+
+So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be easily put off the hopeful
+scent.
+
+"Why, don't you see," he exclaimed, "the people at the hotel will at
+least be able to give one a fuller description of the man than anything
+we have yet. And they may have some idea of where he has gone to; and,
+at least, they will have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and that,
+of course, is what I am most anxious to learn. Again, he may have left
+other things besides the coat, or there may be documents in the pockets.
+I have read of such things happening."
+
+"Yes, in 'Le Crime de l'Opera;' and a very good story, too," answered
+the incredulous Barton; "but I don't fancy that the villain of real life
+is quite so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction."
+
+"Everyone knows that murderers are generally detected through some
+incredible piece of carelessness," said Mait-land; "and why should this
+elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the rest? If he _did_ leave
+the coat, he will scarcely care to go back for it; and I do not think
+the chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. Besides, I'm doing
+no good here, and I can do no harm there."
+
+This was undeniably true; and though Barton muttered something about "a
+false scent," he no longer attempted to turn Maitland from his purpose.
+He did, however, with some difficulty, prevent the Fellow of St.
+Gatien's from purchasing a blonde beard, one of those wigs which
+simulate baldness, and a pair of blue spectacles. In these disguises,
+Maitland argued, he would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit
+any mischief planned by the enemies of Margaret.
+
+"Yes; but, on the other hand, you would look exactly like a German
+professor, and probably be taken for a spy of Bismarck's," said Barton.
+
+And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of disguise. He retained,
+however, certain astute notions of his own about his plan of operations,
+and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate to his friend. The
+fact is, that the long dormant romance of Maitland's character was now
+thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, to enjoy the adventure.
+
+His enjoyment did not last very long. The usual troubles of a winter
+voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the
+guardian of Margaret But everything---even a period of waiting at
+the Paris _salle d'attente_, and a struggle with the _cochers_ at the
+station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare)--must come
+to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the
+glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l'Opera. At the
+Hotel Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too
+precipitate eagerness. In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in
+the hotel book, choosing, by an unlucky inspiration, the pseudonym
+of Buchanan. He then ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of
+propitiation, it was a much better dinner than usual that Maitland
+ordered. Bottles of the higher Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful
+baskets, were brought at his command; for he was determined favorably to
+impress the people of the house.
+
+His conduct in this matter was partly determined by the fact that, for
+the moment, the English were not popular in Paris.
+
+In fact, as the French newspapers declared, with more truth than they
+suspected, "Paris was not the place for English people, especially for
+English women."
+
+In these international circumstances, then, Maitland believed he showed
+the wisdom of the serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless old
+fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords of the past But he had
+reckoned without his appetite.
+
+A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon nor alarming, is the
+putting away of all desire to eat and drink. As the waiter carried
+off the untouched _hors d'oeuvres_ (whereof Maitland only nibbled the
+delicious bread and butter); as he bore away the _huitres_, undiminished
+in number; as the _bisque_ proved too much for the guest of the evening;
+as he faltered over the soles, and failed to appreciate the cutlets; as
+he turned from the noblest _crus_ (including the widow's _crus_, those
+of La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for _siphon_ and _fine champagne_, the
+waiter's countenance assumed an air of owl-like sagacity. There was
+something wrong, the _garcon_ felt sure, about a man who could order a
+dinner like Maitland's, and then decline to partake thereof. However,
+even in a republican country, you can hardly arrest a man merely because
+his intentions are better than his appetite. The waiter, therefore,
+contented himself with assuming an imposing attitude, and whispering
+something to the hall porter.
+
+The Fellow of St. Gatien's, having dined with the Barmecide regardless
+of expense, went on (as he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the
+_concierge_. From that official he purchased two large cigars, which he
+did not dream of attempting to enjoy; and he then endeavored to enter
+into conversation, selecting for a topic the state of the contemporary
+drama. What would monsieur advise him to go to see? Where was Mile. Jane
+Hading playing?
+
+Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule
+of French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great
+matter--the affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel?
+Had any of his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he
+left England a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article
+of dress--a great-coat--which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab.
+Could monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news
+about the garment, a coat in _peau d'ours_?
+
+On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been
+loitering in the office of the _concierge_, moved to the neighborhood of
+the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging on
+the wall.
+
+The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well
+in coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It
+had been lost by a compatriot of monsieur's? Would monsieur give himself
+the trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was
+kept?
+
+Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on
+the trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty,
+thought Maitland) followed _him_.
+
+The porter led them to a door marked "private," and they all three
+entered.
+
+The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a
+chair.
+
+The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
+
+"Where," he asked, "was the bearskin coat?"
+
+"Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his
+own, or a friend's?"
+
+"A friend's," said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted
+that the garment only belonged to "a man he knew something about."
+
+"What is his name?" asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.
+
+His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to
+grow worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.
+
+Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember
+the man's name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the
+first time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and,
+finding that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make
+inquiries.
+
+Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English
+gentlemen usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first
+time on board the steamer as their friends?
+
+Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed
+disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see
+the play.
+
+Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his
+deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a
+stately way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the
+door.
+
+However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely
+unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar,
+_sans phrase_, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the
+porter. But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed
+a card, containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and
+calmly asked Maitland for "his papers."
+
+Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer
+required.
+
+The detective assured him that passports "spoil nothing." Had monsieur
+nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had
+artfully entered his name as "Buchanan" on the hotel book, produced his
+card, on the lower corner of which was printed, _St. Gatien's College._
+This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name
+did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to
+accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice,
+Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was
+carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here
+he was received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a
+decoration, who (after some private talk with the detective) asked
+Maitland to explain his whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In
+the first place, the detective's notes on their conversation were
+read aloud, and it was shown that Maitland had given a false name; had
+originally spoken of the object of his quest as "the coat of a friend;"
+then as "the coat of a man whom he knew something about;" then as "the
+coat of a man whose name he did not know;" and that, finally, he had
+attempted to go away without offering any satisfactory account of
+himself.
+
+All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not
+unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.
+What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a
+matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this
+fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller
+at the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a
+_souriciere_, as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after
+the coat could be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French
+dictionary), Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police
+the whole story of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery
+of Shields' body in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret's
+disappearance (_enlevement_), and to a description of the costume
+(bearskin coat and all) of the villain who had carried her away. Then
+he might have described his relations with Margaret, the necessity of
+finding her, the clew offered by the advertisement in the _Times_, and
+his own too subtle and ingenious attempt to follow up that clew. But
+it is improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever
+so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the
+Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official
+against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien's had neither the
+presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the
+whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment's notice, in a
+cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a
+demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador; and
+that night Maitland of Gatien's passed, for the first time during his
+blameless career, in a police-cell.
+
+It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured
+by Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments
+of the British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental
+Justice? Are not our countrymen the common butts of German, French,
+Spanish, and even Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an
+Englishman appears, do not the foreign police usually arrest him at a
+venture, and inquire afterward?
+
+Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most
+of these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the
+Juge d'Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably
+_louche_.
+
+In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hotel Alsace et
+Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
+about the great-coat in the _Times_, for he made a study of "the journal
+of the City."
+
+Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
+bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own
+hotel. A bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite,
+stratagems, and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which
+is, at present and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave
+Irish. M. Dupin, as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish
+in their noble struggle for whatever they _are_ struggling for; but he
+did not wish his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of
+Freedom, and the great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view
+to elucidating the mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the
+police on his premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its
+_affut_, when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious
+circumstances. M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied
+him the distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.
+
+When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
+d'Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete _Civis
+Romanus sum!_ He was an English citizen. He had written to the English
+ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien's man, an _attache_ of the
+embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced
+to be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his
+interview with the Juge d'Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his
+back to the light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes,
+while the scribble of the pen of the _greffier_, as he took down the
+Englishman's deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of
+the law.
+
+"Your name?" asked the Juge d'Instruction.
+
+"Maitland," replied the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
+
+"You lie!" said the Juge d'Instruction. "You entered the name of
+Buchanan in the book of the hotel."
+
+"My name is on my cards, and on that letter," said Maitland, keeping his
+temper wonderfully.
+
+The documents in question lay on a table, as _pieces justificatives_.
+
+"These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate
+person, and have draped (_affluble_) yourself in the trappings of your
+victim! Where is his body?"
+
+This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d'Instruction had formed
+within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the
+person under examination.
+
+"Where is _whose_ body?" asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.
+
+"Buchanan," said the Juge d'Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry
+with which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.)
+"Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not
+deceived by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She
+is calm, stern, but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely" (_repandez
+franchement_), "and you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your
+interest to be frank." (_Il est de votre interet d'etre franc_.)
+
+"But what do you want me to say?" asked the prevenu, "What is all this
+pother about a great-coat?" (_Tant de fracas pour un paletot?_)
+
+Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.
+
+"It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,"
+said the Juge d'Instruction. "Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me,
+Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the Hotel Alsace et Lorraine?"
+
+"In answer to that advertisement in the Times."
+
+"That is false; you yourself inserted the advertisement. But, on your
+own system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?"
+
+"It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn."
+
+"His name?"
+
+"I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might
+have found his tailor's name on the coat, and then have discovered for
+whom the coat was made."
+
+"You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the
+forged advertisement?"
+
+"So he says."
+
+"You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!"
+
+Maitland apologized.
+
+"Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertisement, as you deny
+having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?"
+
+"I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertisement."
+
+"That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?"
+
+"To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at
+this moment."
+
+"Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!"
+
+"I have told you that my name is not Buchanan."
+
+"Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?"
+
+"I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the moment; it was
+incorrect."
+
+"Why did you lie?" (_Pourquoi avez vous menti?_)
+
+Maitland made an irritable movement
+
+"You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplorable. You are consigned
+_au secret_, and will have an opportunity of revising your situation,
+and replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice."
+
+So ended Maitland's first and, happily, sole interview with a Juge
+d'Instruction. Lord Walter Brixton, his old St Gatien's pupil, returned
+from the country on the very day of Maitland's examination. An interview
+(during which Lord Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach
+was not refused to the _attache_, and, in a few hours, after some
+formalities had been complied with, Maitland was a free man. His _pieces
+justificatives_, his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing Cross,
+were returned to him intact.
+
+But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privileges of the last-named
+document.
+
+"I am going straight to Constantinople and the Greek Islands," he
+wrote to Barton. "Do you know, I don't like Paris. My attempt at an
+investigation has not been a success. I have endured considerable
+discomfort, and I fear my case will get into the _Figaro_, and there
+will be dozens of 'social leaders' and 'descriptive headers' about me in
+all the penny papers."
+
+Then Maitland gave his banker's address at Constantinople, relinquished
+the quest of Margaret, and for a while, as the Sagas say, "is out of the
+story."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--The Night of Adventures.
+
+A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of
+the _Hit or Miss_. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there
+would come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous
+woman; then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same
+woman were working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of
+rainy hail, mixed with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting
+insult, on the windows of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so _da
+capo_.
+
+"Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?"
+said Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she
+perched on the table in the parlor of the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
+Maitland's investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
+near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still
+an unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come
+from the original centre of the troubles.
+
+"I'm in no hurry to take an engagement," answered the resolute Eliza,
+holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
+close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
+female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she
+looked now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions.
+"There's two or three managers in treaty with me," said Eliza. "There's
+the _Follies and Frivolities_ down Norwood way, and the _Varieties_ in
+the 'Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that's
+what I ask for, and I'll get it too! Just now I'm taking a vacation, and
+making an honest penny with these things," and she nodded at a little
+basket full of the wardrobe of dolls.
+
+"Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?" asked Barton.
+
+"Yes," said Eliza; "I am doing well with them. I'm not sure I shan't
+need to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter
+orders."
+
+"Pm glad you are successful," answered Barton. "I say, Eliza!"
+
+"Yes, Doctor."
+
+"Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
+sitting the night before he was found in the snow?"
+
+It had suddenly occurred to Barton--it might have occurred to him
+before--that this room might be worth examining.
+
+"We ain't using it now! Ill show you it," said Eliza, leading the way
+up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
+
+Barton took hold of the handle.
+
+"Ladies first," he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
+
+"No," came the child's voice, from half-way down the stairs; "I won't
+come in! They say he walks, I've heard noises there at night."
+
+A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
+struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
+been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an
+empty bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors,
+blue and red, part of Shields' stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some
+very sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized.
+They were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the
+Southern Seas.
+
+Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
+needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined
+it closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the
+others, but of wood.
+
+Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
+carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
+substance.
+
+"I thought so," he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
+instrument-case: "the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!"
+
+Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
+
+"Did you see him?" asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
+
+"Don't be childish, Eliza: there's no one to see. Why is the room left
+all untidy?"
+
+"Mother dare not go in!" whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
+voice, "Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the
+night old Shields died in the snow?"
+
+"The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
+should go on thinking about it," said Barton, rather sternly. "You were
+tired and ill, and you fancied it."
+
+"No, I wasn't," said the child, solemnly. "I never say no more about
+it to mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I
+remember it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what's that?"
+
+She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of
+the curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the _Hit or
+Miss_.
+
+Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
+open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her
+hand to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as
+to be unrecognizable, flashed into the room. "Oh, come! oh, come!" she
+cried. "She's killing her!" Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she
+had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a
+face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that
+moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run,
+after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the
+bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
+
+"Come, doctor, come!" she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
+crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
+Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
+her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
+then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of
+the old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following,
+found himself for the first time within the portals of _The Old English
+Bun-house_.
+
+The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
+excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were
+pressed so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could
+scarcely thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering
+another: it was a matter of life and death.
+
+"Oh, she's been at the drink, and she's killed her! she's killed her!
+I heard her fall!" one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
+hysterical iteration.
+
+"Let me pass!" shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
+the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
+
+"Give me room," he cried, and the patrons of _The Bun-house_ yielding
+place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
+weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
+crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
+stress of the girls behind him.
+
+What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
+the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
+
+By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame
+of blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane),
+Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
+
+One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
+unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
+side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood
+on the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further
+side of this girl--who was dead, or seemingly dead--sat, on a low stool,
+a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still. The
+knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
+noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
+her.
+
+For a moment even Barton's rapidity of action and resolution were
+paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
+with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision,
+dreadful even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit
+awoke in him.
+
+"Fetch a policeman," he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened
+troop of girls.
+
+"There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes," said Susan, the
+young woman who had called Barton from the _Hit or Miss_.
+
+The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the
+throng.
+
+And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken
+girl at her feet--as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a
+_tableau_.
+
+"Policeman," said Barton, "I give that woman in charge for an attempt at
+murder. Take her to the station."
+
+"I don't like the looks of her," whispered the policeman. "I'd better
+get her knife from her first, sir."
+
+"Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can't look
+after the wounded girl in this crowd."
+
+Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose
+eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her
+victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
+
+They were just within arm's reach of the murderess when she leaped with
+incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and
+lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she
+raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into
+her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had
+stricken.
+
+"By George, she's gone!" cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him,
+and laid his hand on the woman's heart. She stirred once, was violently
+shaken with the agony of death, and so passed away, carrying into
+silence her secret and her story.
+
+Mr. Cranley's hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
+
+"Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!" remarked the policeman,
+sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the
+wound of the housekeeper's victim, and applying such styptics as he had
+within reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The
+Bunhouse__ of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message
+(by the direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed
+not devoid of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was
+being expected, the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was
+employed by Barton in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in
+generally restoring order.
+
+When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine's house with
+Barton's brief note, and with his own curt statement that "murder was
+being done at _The Bun-house_," he found the Lady Superior rehearsing
+for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room
+representation of "Nitouche," and the terrible news found her in one of
+the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously
+misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+hurried off, "just as she was," and astonished Barton (who had never
+seen her before) by arriving at _The Bunhouse_ as a rather conventional
+shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig.
+The versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all
+worlds occasionally let her into _inconsequences_ of this description.
+
+But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not
+only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard
+the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled
+herself as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl's wound, as Barton
+was happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for
+the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part.
+But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene
+of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young
+women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened
+by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most
+responsible of _The Bun-house_ girls, announced her intention to, sit up
+all night with the patient. Barton--who was moved, perhaps, as much
+by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by
+professional duty--remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the
+Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As
+the danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of
+fever, Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the
+morning, he let himself out of _The Bunhouse_, and made sleepily for
+his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his
+share of adventures--which, like sorrows, never "come as single spies,
+but in battalions"--was by no means exhausted.
+
+The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
+extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the _Hit or
+Miss_, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
+tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
+
+"There's the gray beginning, Zooks," he muttered to himself, in
+half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still
+steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind
+was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the
+lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was
+just passing the locked doors of the _Hit or Miss_--for he preferred to
+go homeward by the riverside--when a singular sound, or mixture of
+sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
+attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a _nuit
+blanche_. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
+traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make
+before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a
+great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
+economy, and was laboring "without a conscience or an aim." Whir, whir,
+flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
+the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
+scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
+whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all
+his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms
+of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
+palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
+half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the
+accents of pain.
+
+Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was
+heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though
+it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats--the time during
+which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung
+exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they
+were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught
+the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken,
+and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within
+the palisade.
+
+Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things--big, black,
+formless--were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of
+the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great
+fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed,
+flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached
+in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the
+ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the
+teeth of the flying wheel.
+
+Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, "Hold
+on!" or some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of
+the sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old
+baskets, outworn hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste
+land, the movement of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran
+slowly down, and, with a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased
+moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice
+came from the crumpled mass of humanity in the centre of the hideous
+mechanism:
+
+"Don't come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!"
+
+The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
+
+Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days
+being over) at least to know _why_ he is to be shot at.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he said. "What on earth are you doing? How
+can _you_ talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?"
+
+To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
+
+By this time there was a full measure of the light "which London takes
+the day to be," and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this
+dialogue.
+
+He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a
+victim of the rack--scattered, so to speak--in a posture inconceivably
+out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man's head was
+lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a
+beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the
+other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a
+close-fitting suit of cloth--something between the uniform of bicycle
+clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell
+back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about
+his beard.
+
+Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
+
+"How am I to help you out of this?" said the surgeon, carefully
+examining his patient, as he might now be called. A little close
+observation showed that the man's arms were strapped by buckles into the
+fans, while one of his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the
+mechanism.
+
+With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled
+groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
+
+Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that,
+as far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries
+done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there
+were many contusions.
+
+"Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the
+police-office and get men and a stretcher," said Barton.
+
+The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
+
+"First hide all _this,_" he murmured, moving his head so as to indicate
+the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of spars,
+cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of mechanics.
+"Don't let them know a word about it," he said. "Say I had an
+accident--that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window--say anything
+you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week," he murmured
+dreamily, "it would have been complete. It is the second time I have
+just missed success and fame."
+
+"I have not an idea what your secret may be," said Barton; "but here
+goes for the machine."
+
+And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes,
+he rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among
+the heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment,
+meritorious.
+
+"Are you sure you can find them all again?" asked the victim of
+misplaced ingenuity.
+
+"Oh yes, all right," said Barton.
+
+"Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they
+find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out."
+
+"But how on earth am I to get you to the street?" Barton inquired, very
+naturally. "Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you
+over the boarding."
+
+"I can bear anything--I will bear anything," said the man. "Look in my
+breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings."
+
+Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the
+sufferer by a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of
+skeleton-key in strong wire.
+
+"With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street," said the
+crushed man; "but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is
+passing."
+
+He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of
+silence broken by groans.
+
+"Wait! one thing more," he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his
+arms. "I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson's Kents, hard by;
+my name is Winter." Then, after a pause, "I can pay for a private room
+at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end
+in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!"
+
+Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones
+(and broken bones) as he was.
+
+The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he
+dared not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall.
+At last--it seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to
+the sufferer--the hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly,
+Barton opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear,
+deposited his burden on the pavement, and flew to the not distant
+police-station.
+
+He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he
+found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he
+had left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or
+two puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called
+up a cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there
+were riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky
+penny-a-liner with his "tissue" and pencil.
+
+Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected,
+that his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the
+stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that
+motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of
+the case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last,
+returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken
+at breakfast, "I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a
+Flying-Machine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--A Patient.
+
+A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and
+laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather
+calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in
+suicide or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a
+flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused
+by engines of a more familiar nature.
+
+Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day
+after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived
+that the distress and confusion at _The Bunhouse_ were very great. The
+police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many
+disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the
+consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness
+and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist,
+and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due
+attention to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking
+her very much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of
+social enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated
+manner, though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the
+explanations offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had
+made up her mind to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece
+and companion. The girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready
+young patronesses of _The Bunhouse_.
+
+If the lady's mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the
+hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead
+woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient--not
+that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton's
+fancy did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those
+"amatorious" young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who
+cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was
+not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he
+went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more
+apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had
+been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered,
+and, in Barton's private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a
+successful inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting
+enough, apart from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy
+absolutely free.
+
+It was no more than Barton's actual duty to call at _The Old English
+Bunhouse_ in the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John
+Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night.
+She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper
+bearing a legend to the effect that _The Old English Bunhouse_ was
+closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was
+drawn up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring at _The
+Bunhouse_.
+
+Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with
+open arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise
+of _Nitouche_, and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
+
+"My dear Mr. Barton," she exclaimed, "your patient is doing very well
+indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have
+called."
+
+Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he
+had discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs.
+Si John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
+
+"Do you think she is able to see me?" he asked.
+
+"I'll run to her room and inquire," said Mrs. St John Deloraine,
+fleeting nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as
+described by Charles Lamb's friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind
+her from the chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
+
+Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady of _The Bunhouse_
+returned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence
+of the invalid.
+
+A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even
+better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and
+melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked
+whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when
+they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called
+her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the
+girl had spoken.
+
+"Well," replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, "it was through Mr. Cranley
+that I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can't
+think of without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is
+too dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to
+one. Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must
+admit that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He
+gave her an excellent character, _especially_ for sobriety, and till
+yesterday I had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she
+became quite wild and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this
+is the first time she yielded to that horrid temptation. Don't you think
+it was odd of Mr. Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to
+his rooms, but it was returned, marked, 'Has left; address not Known.'
+I don't know what has become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have
+told us, but the unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions."
+
+"Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard's, in Chelsea?"
+asked Barton.
+
+"No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He
+was a great friend of mine."
+
+"Mr. Thomas Cranley!" exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which
+probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational
+character.
+
+"Now, please," cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a
+pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter
+the peccadillo of a favorite saint; "please don't say you know anything
+against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies."
+
+Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling
+about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so
+unknown in France; but, on the other side, _he_ could scarcely think
+it right to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a
+confirmed scoundrel.
+
+"Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really,
+if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley's enemies are of his own
+making. I would not go to him for a girl's character, I'm sure. But I
+thought he had disappeared from society."
+
+"So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that
+I was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him.
+And I never would. I never turn my back on my friends."
+
+"If there was a conspiracy," said Barton, "I am the ringleader in it;
+for, as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr.
+Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I
+would not have mentioned it for the world," he added, almost alarmed at
+the expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine's face; "but
+you wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief
+that he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what
+all who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you,
+in the matter of that woman's character, was," cried Barton, growing
+indignant as he thought of it, "one of the very basest things I ever
+heard of. I had seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted
+with the care of girls. She was at one time very well known."
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine's face had passed through every shade of
+expression--doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air of
+hope.
+
+"Margaret has always spoken so well of him," she said, half to herself.
+"He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter
+of a humble acquaintance."
+
+"Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once," said Barton; "but as to
+his general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap
+he laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him
+get the poor girl back into his hands."
+
+"Certainly not," said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in
+her voice; "and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants
+anything. Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne
+Walk? It is not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there."
+
+"The best thing you can do," said Barton; "and be sure you send for me
+if you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am
+quite ready to meet him anywhere."
+
+"You will call to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly, about this time," said Barton; and he kept his promise
+assiduously, calling often.
+
+A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in
+a black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying
+indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the
+struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened,
+and the servant announced "Dr. Barton."
+
+Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
+
+"I'm so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out," she said. "She is at
+a soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any
+children, or had any fun."
+
+So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she
+should not attend soap-bubble parties.
+
+"I'm selfish enough to be glad you could not go," said Barton; "for then
+I should have missed you. But why do you sigh?"
+
+"I have had a good many things to make me unhappy," said Margaret, "in
+addition to my--to my accident. You must not think I am always bewailing
+myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before I
+entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine's service, and then my whole course of
+life was altered."
+
+"I am very sorry for you," said Barton, simply. He did not know what
+else to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and
+perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
+
+Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears
+came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She
+was on the point of breaking down.
+
+There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl
+crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton's
+mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
+
+"I can't tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you.
+Can't I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the
+troubles of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are
+nearly over?"
+
+Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that they
+_were_ over, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
+
+"They have been going on so long," said Margaret "I have had such a
+wandering life, and such changes."
+
+Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but
+more was not offered.
+
+"Let us think of the future," he said. "Have you any idea about what you
+mean to do?"
+
+"Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her
+always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don't know what he would
+like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad."
+
+Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley's name.
+
+"Had you known him long?" he asked.
+
+"No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my
+father's, and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from
+school, and he gave me a start in life."
+
+"But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your
+education," said Barton.
+
+"What can a girl do?" answered Margaret. "We know so little. I could
+hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully
+backward at school--at least, Miss---- I mean, the teachers thought me
+backward."
+
+"I'm sure you know as much as anyone should," said Barton, indignantly.
+"Were you at a nice school?" he added.
+
+He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret's history.
+She seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and
+knowledge of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial
+position at a philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent
+of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady's
+character which made her patronage not precarious.
+
+"There were some nice girls at it," answered Margaret, without
+committing herself.
+
+Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such
+thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an
+abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any
+place of education is "nice."
+
+"It is really getting quite late," Barton observed, reluctantly. He
+liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received
+just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk
+to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It
+would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and
+non-paying patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty.
+The poor are often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret
+noticed his reluctance to go contending with a sense of what he owed to
+propriety.
+
+"I am sure you must want tea; but I don't like to ring. It is so short
+a time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at _The
+Bunhouse_, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me.
+They must dislike me; it is very natural."
+
+"It is not natural at all," said Barton, with conviction; "perfectly
+monstrous, on the other hand." This little compliment eclipsed the
+effect of fire-light on the girl's face. "Suppose I ring," he added,
+"and then you can say, when Mary says 'Did you ring, miss?' 'No, I
+didn't ring; but as you _are_ here, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?'"
+
+"I don't know if that would be quite honest," said Margaret, doubtfully.
+
+"A pious fraud--a drawing-room comedy," said Barton; "have we rehearsed
+it enough?"
+
+Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals
+was played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as
+amateurs often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
+
+"Now, this is quite perfect," said Barton, when he had been accommodated
+with a large piece of plum-cake. "This is the very kind of cake which we
+specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too!
+There should be a new proverb, 'Physician, diet thyself.' You see, we
+don't all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry
+toast."
+
+"Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life," said
+Margaret. "She tries a good many new things," Barton remarked.
+
+"Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!" answered the girl. "Oh,
+if you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!" And she
+shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon.
+
+"I wonder if some day--you won't think me very rude?" asked Barton--"you
+would mind telling me a little of your history?"
+
+"Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it," answered Margaret;
+"and a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
+everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
+to think of things that have happened, or may happen."
+
+"They shall never happen, if you will trust me," cried Barton, when a
+carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
+
+"Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last," cried Margaret, starting to
+run to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have
+fallen had Barton not caught her lightly.
+
+"Oh, how stupid you must think me!" she said, blushing. And Barton
+thought he had never seen anything so pretty.
+
+"Once for all, I don't think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
+that you call yourself."
+
+But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
+entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
+hospitality and content with existence into the room.
+
+"Oh, _you_ are here!" she cried, "and I have almost missed you. Now you
+_must_ stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone, Margaret
+and I."
+
+So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
+(which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in
+vain. It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs.
+St John Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours
+passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all
+hours--good and evil--abide, remembered or forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.--Another Patient.
+
+     "Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
+     Comme dans le chant de Ruckert."
+     --Theophile Gautier.
+
+"So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume,
+a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. 'Such an one,' he
+says--meaning me, and inventors like me--'is a little crazed with the
+humors of melancholy.'"
+
+The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
+and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested
+in the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting
+in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in
+Paterson's Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the
+conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of
+such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of
+civilization--the modern seekers for the Philosopher's Stone. At the end
+of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and
+themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.
+
+For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with
+electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every
+house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of
+Winter's den in Paterson's Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was
+set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made,
+which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics,
+and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of
+the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better
+condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here--among the litter of
+tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed "Proceedings" of the Linnean and the
+Aeronautic Society of Great Britain--here were Fredericus Hermannus' "De
+Arte Volandi," and Cayley's works, and Hatton Turner's "Astra Castra,"
+and the "Voyage to the Moon" of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins's
+"Daedalus," and the same sanguine prelate's "Mercury, The Secret
+Messenger." Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the
+classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations
+by French and other inventors--Ponton d'Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier,
+Girard, and Marey.
+
+Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient's
+mind--(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his
+companions, and companions Winter had none)--even if the shelves had
+not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have
+proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library,
+and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and
+periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the
+ceiling.
+
+Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted
+by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things--from the
+sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
+From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
+materials; and here--a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a kind
+of drill-bow--was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley. The
+whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds'
+feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
+mind was made up as to the nature of Winter's secret, or delusion; and
+when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
+either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
+
+"Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt," Winter went on with his
+eager talk. "An acute man--rather _too_ acute, don't you think, for a
+Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments
+of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
+matters."
+
+"Such as flying?" put in Barton.
+
+"Yes; such as our great aim--the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
+What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
+flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
+artificer.) 'Diligent,' I may say, I have been; as to 'ingenious,' I
+leave the verdict to others."
+
+"Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?" asked Barton, to humor his
+man.
+
+"Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of
+a mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women--_Goories_ he
+calls them--endowed with the power of flight. But _they_ were born so.
+We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer."
+
+"It doesn't seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?" remarked Barton,
+leading him on.
+
+"No, sir," cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
+face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh
+at him. "No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man.
+But look at what he says about the _weight_ of your flying machine!
+Can anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent
+researches, and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You
+remember the iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?"
+
+"The iron fly!" murmured Barton. "I can't say I do."
+
+"You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
+hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
+guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose
+on the finger of its maker."
+
+"You don't mean to say you believe _that_?" asked Barton.
+
+"Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato's
+acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And
+the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
+triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
+at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus,
+because the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in
+accordance with the best modern authorities, that the weight is no
+hindrance whatever, if proportional to the motive power. A flying
+machine, says Professor Bell, in the _Encyclopodia Britannica_--(you
+will not question the authority of the _Encyclopodia Britannica_?)--a
+flying machine should be 'a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful
+structure.' There, you see, the Bishop was right."
+
+"Yours was deuced powerful," remarked Barton. "I did not expect to see
+two limbs of you left together."
+
+"It _is_ powerful, or rather it _was_," answered Winter, with a heavy
+sigh; "but it's all to do over again--all to do over again! Yet it was
+a noble specimen. 'The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,' as the
+learned author in the _Encyclopodia_ recommends."
+
+"By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. _You_
+were the passive surface, as far as I could see."
+
+"Don't laugh at me, please sir, after you've been so kind. All the rest
+laugh at me. You can't think what a pleasure it has been to talk to
+a scholar," and there was a new flush on the poor fellow's cheek, and
+something watery in his eyes.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my dear sir," cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
+himself. "Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
+aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
+success of this kind of experiment."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton's
+hand in his own battered claw; "thank you. But why should we run only
+to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been
+present to men's minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization.
+Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the
+hypothesis of natural selection?"
+
+"Well, he _did_ make a shot at it," admitted Barton, who remembered as
+much as that from "the old coaching days," and college lectures at St.
+Gatien's.
+
+"Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
+Greece, we find Daedalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
+pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for
+ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?"
+
+"Obvious bosh," said Barton.
+
+"And the meteorological mycologists, sir, _they_ maintain that Daedalus
+is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!"
+
+"There's nothing those fellows won't say," replied Barton.
+
+"I'm glad you are with me, sir. In Daedalus _I_ see either a record of
+a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
+expression of an aspiration as old as culture. _You_ wouldn't make
+Daedalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting
+in Sicily, in the west?" added Winter anxiously.
+
+"I never heard of such nonsense," said Barton.
+
+"Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
+sir, if I may judge by his picture of Daedalus."
+
+"Every sensible man must be with you," answered Barton.
+
+"Well, sir, I won't detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity,
+such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus.
+Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant
+Scythians."
+
+"It _must_ have been, indeed."
+
+"Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he,
+I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of
+Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I
+take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do
+you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine
+in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be
+gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expressly
+_currum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas_, the chariot of Simon Magus
+and his _vehicles of flame_--clearly the naphtha is alluded to--which
+vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter
+circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly
+Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But,
+though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared
+to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the
+Aventine!
+
+"'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,'" quoted Barton.
+
+"Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
+character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
+credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally,
+the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in
+secret, through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at
+Constantinople who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I
+mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we
+tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in _Knowledge_
+and the _Cornhill_? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor
+Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of the
+_Encyclopodia Britannica_, that 'the number of successful flying models
+is considerable. It is not too much to expect,' he goes on, 'that the
+problem of artificial flight will be actually solved, or at least much
+simplified.' What less can we expect, as he observes, in the land of
+Watt and Stephenson, when the construction of flying machines has been
+'taken up in earnest by practical men?'"
+
+"We may indeed," said Barton, "hope for the best when persons of your
+learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause."
+
+"As to my learning, you flatter me," said Winter. "I am no scholar; but
+an enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that
+the great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a
+romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan
+of the Happy Valley expected to solve the problem in one year's time.
+'If all men were equally virtuous,' said this artist, 'I should with
+equal alacrity teach them all to fly.'"
+
+"And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson's artist?"
+
+"To _you_ I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
+machine describe elliptic figures of eight."
+
+"I've seen them do _that_, said Barton.
+
+"Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
+by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in
+air--which I effected by starting from a height of six feet only--by
+a combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By
+steam alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar
+across two fields. Penaud's machine, relying only on india rubber under
+torsion, flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as
+Bishop Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and proportioned
+flying-machine, capable of carrying a man, can do also."
+
+"But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not
+carrying you at all."
+
+"Something had gone wrong with the mechanism," answered Winter, sighing.
+"It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against.
+Remember Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling
+error in the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had
+to give half his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt
+would tell him that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a
+coating of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend
+on it, interfered with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my
+experiments at night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered
+and anticipated. I have been on the verge--nay, _over_ the verge--of
+success. 'No imaginable invention,' Bishop Wilkins says, 'could prove
+of greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.' A few
+weeks ago that glory was mine!"
+
+"Why a few weeks ago?" asked Barton. "Was your machine more advanced
+then than when I met you?"
+
+"I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion," said Winter,
+wearily; "but a few weeks ago my _machine acted_, and I may say that I
+knew the sensations of a bird on the wing."
+
+"Do you mean that you actually _flew_?"
+
+"For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!"
+
+Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought--one wild and
+credulous, the other practical and professional--surged and met in his
+brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
+
+"Good-night," he said. "You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I
+will call again soon."
+
+He _did_ call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be repeated
+in its proper place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.--Found.
+
+     "All precious things, discovered late,
+     To those that seek them issue forth;
+     For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,
+     And draws the veil from hidden worth."
+     --The Sleeping Beauty.
+
+That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could
+not, of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She
+noticed that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking
+only the clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so
+light of heart as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes
+men and women poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of
+them. Margaret was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence,
+a bad listener--all of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine,
+but pardoned, in this instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt
+to blush without apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door,
+to leave the room hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back,
+when Barton called. Nor was Barton himself such good company as he had
+been. His manner was uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be
+paid at longer intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in
+fits and starts; and yet he did not know how to go away.
+
+Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have
+interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
+
+Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has
+not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love
+with her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings
+of inclination in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an
+"engagement." All considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight
+melted away before the ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first,
+to get engaged next, and to be married as soon as possible afterward,
+without regard to consequences of any kind, were, in this lady's mind,
+heroic actions, and almost the whole duty of men and women.
+
+In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was
+to be known about Margaret's affections, and also about Barton's.
+
+"He's as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear," she said to
+Margaret "Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him?
+Nonsense, Daisy; that is _his_ affair. I know you are as good a girl
+as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr.
+Cranley--yes, he was a wretch--had a spite against you. I don't know
+why, and you won't help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a
+man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I'm sure. You are afraid of
+something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I'm sure I don't
+wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one's nerve. I could no
+more drive now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to think
+_nothing_ of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who
+is there can frighten you? And as to being poor," and Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine explained her generous views as to arrangements on her part,
+which would leave Margaret far from portionless.
+
+Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend's
+shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and
+they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his
+boots, and fidget with his hat.
+
+"I've no patience with you, Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+at last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation
+with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. "I've no patience with you.
+Why, where is your courage? 'She has a history?' She's been persecuted.
+Well, where's your chivalry? Why don't you try your fortune? There never
+was a better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she's not--when she's
+not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don't
+take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
+voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I
+am going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and
+looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will
+get out and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you
+will show Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and
+when you come back you will both have made up your minds!"
+
+With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
+carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
+were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
+pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish ("coarse," but not
+uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees--it was
+the last week of May--were in the earliest freshness of their foliage;
+the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
+
+"How quiet and pretty it is!" said Margaret "Who would think we were in
+London?"
+
+Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
+Scott, he thought the more.
+
+"Miss Burnside!" he exclaimed suddenly, "we have known each other now
+for some time."
+
+This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
+and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
+of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
+hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
+
+"Yes," she said at last; "we have known each other for some time, and
+yet--you know nothing about me."
+
+With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the
+face. There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen
+before, though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a
+mark of pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
+
+Barton felt his courage come back to him.
+
+"I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love
+you!" he said. "Margaret, can't you care for me a little? Don't tell me
+anything you think you should not say. I'm not curious."
+
+Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its
+inmates, grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into
+the waters, so that he could not see her face.
+
+"No," she said at last, in a very low voice; "it would not be fair."
+Then, after another pause, "There is someone--" she murmured, and
+stopped.
+
+This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for
+_him_, he fancied she cared for nobody.
+
+"If you like someone better--" he was beginning.
+
+"But I don't like him at all," interrupted Margaret. "He was very kind,
+but--"
+
+"Then can't you like _me_?" asked Barton; and by this time he was very
+near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was
+still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
+
+"Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know," murmured Margaret.
+And yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and
+ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind
+but that Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had
+surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the
+honors and rewards of war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is
+no covenant until it is sealed.
+
+But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently,
+with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by
+the iron railings.
+
+"I must tell you about myself," she said. "I have promised never to
+tell, but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many
+things have happened." And she sighed.
+
+However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there
+should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself
+(aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs.
+St. John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to
+conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect
+her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no
+argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and,
+by way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming
+an affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still
+turning toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
+
+"The person--the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my
+father's, who, at one time, wanted him"--here Margaret paused--"wanted
+me to--to be his wife some day."
+
+The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do
+local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse
+of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
+
+"I didn't like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His
+name--but perhaps I should not mention his name?"
+
+"Never mind," said Barton. "I dare say I never heard of him."
+
+"But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which
+you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to
+tell her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean
+to be living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so
+many terrible things back to mind."
+
+"Dear Margaret," Barton whispered, taking her hand.
+
+They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the
+pathway, and an observer might have thought that they were greatly
+interested in the water-fowl.
+
+"My name is not Burnside," Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder
+across the gardens and toward the river; "my name is--"
+
+"Daisy Shields!" cried a clear voice. "Daisy, you're found at last, and
+I've found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!"
+
+But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the
+impassioned embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady;
+while Mrs. St. John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in
+her eyes.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in
+a pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. "Oh,
+my dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John
+Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help
+her to look for them; and I've found _you!_ It's like Stanley finding
+Livingstone. 'How I Found Daisy.' I'll write a book about it. And where
+_have_ you been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything
+was the matter--only Miss Mariett and me! And I've left for good; and
+she and I are quite friends, and I'm to be presented next Drawing Room."
+
+While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had
+acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St.
+John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment
+and concern.
+
+They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret's past was about to be
+dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it already _was_ dispelled. The names
+of Shields and Miss Marlett had told _him_ all that he needed to know.
+But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady's lips;
+and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of having
+interrupted a "proposal," and spoiled a darling scheme.
+
+It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested
+Margaret to return to the carriage.
+
+"And as Miss Harman seems to have _a great deal_ to say to you,
+Margaret," added the philanthropic lady, "you two had better walk on as
+fast as you can; for _you_ must be very careful not to catch cold! I see
+Miss Harman's maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and I,
+Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I'm not a
+good walker."
+
+"_Now_," said Barton's companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey,
+about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond
+earshot--"_Now_, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?"
+
+Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
+
+"I don't know--I hope so--I'm not sure."
+
+"Oh, you're not satisfactory--not at all satisfactory. Are you _still_
+shilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?" cried the
+veteran of twenty-nine. "Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like
+a cow in a conservatory? She's a regular school-girl!"
+
+"It isn't that exactly, or at least that's not all. I hope--I think she
+does care for me, or will care for me, a little."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the
+world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she
+knew of the state of Margaret's heart But she was highly provoked, and
+showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
+
+"The fact is," Barton admitted, "that I'm so taken by surprise I hardly
+know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited,
+that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to
+tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at
+school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking
+anxiously at Barton, "was it anything so very dreadful?"
+
+"She called her Daisy Shields," said Barton.
+
+"Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened at _The
+Bunhouse_, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false
+name. It was not _her_ fault. The question is, What was her reason for
+keeping her real name concealed?"
+
+"That's what I'm coming to," said Barton. "I have a friend, a Mr.
+Maitland."
+
+"Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien's?" asked the widow.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I know him."
+
+"Yes, I have often heard him speak of you," said Barton. "Well, he had
+a _protegee_--a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words--a girl
+whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to
+her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared
+mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many
+efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this
+girl's name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret
+Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called
+Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if she _does_ care for
+me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom
+my friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to
+find his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and
+annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?"
+
+"Mr. Barton," said Mrs. St John Deloraine, "perhaps you alarm yourself
+too much. I think"--here she dropped her voice a little--"I think--I
+don't think Mr. Maitland's _heart_ is very deeply concerned about Miss
+Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well"--she gave a little
+nervous laugh--"and I don't think he's in _love_ with Margaret."
+
+By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative
+discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
+
+Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of
+welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love
+with each other!
+
+"He's an awfully good fellow, Maitland," he replied. "But you are
+right; I'm _sure_ you are right. You must know. He is _not_ in love with
+Margaret."
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to
+Maitland's unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
+
+"But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite
+safe; and I'll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from
+him--about a charity, you know--a few days ago, and I have his address."
+
+By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces,
+tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs.
+St John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order
+"Home."
+
+"We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon," she cried to Barton; and no
+offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
+
+He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts,
+when he suddenly came to a dead halt.
+
+"By George!" he said out loud; "I'll go back and have it out with her at
+once. I've had enough of this shillyshally."
+
+He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few
+minutes he was standing at the familiar door.
+
+"Will you ask Miss--Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?" he
+said to the servant "I have forgotten something she wished me to do for
+her," he added in a mumble.
+
+Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared,
+still in her bonnet and furs.
+
+"I couldn't help coming back, Margaret," he said, as soon as she entered
+the room. "I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn't
+think--I mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing,
+_nothing_ to prevent us--I mean" Margaret, if you _really_ care for
+me--"
+
+Then he came to a dead stop.
+
+It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to
+Margaret, "My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He
+does not care a pin for you; he'll be delighted at being released. He is
+in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine."
+
+That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it
+could not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have
+been exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
+
+The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it,
+looking at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was
+safe, but embarrassing.
+
+He made a charge, as it were, at the position--a random, desperate
+charge.
+
+"Margaret, can you trust me?" he asked.
+
+She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
+
+"Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about
+your doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there
+is _nothing_ to prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you
+will only agree to make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too.
+Can't you take it on trust? Can't you believe me?"
+
+Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton's shoulder. She
+_did_ believe him.
+
+The position was carried!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.--The Mark of Cain.
+
+Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and
+took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying
+little but, "Come home at once. Margaret is found. She is going to be my
+wife. You can't come too quickly, if you wish to hear of something very
+much to your advantage." A load was off his mind, and he felt as _Romeo_
+did just before the bad news about _Juliet_ reached him.
+
+In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his letters. The first was in
+a hand he knew very well--that of a man who had been his fellow-student
+in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a prosperous young physician. The
+epistle ran thus:
+
+"Dear Barton.--I'm off to the West of Ireland, for a fortnight People
+are pretty fit, as the season has not run far. Most of my patients have
+not yet systematically overeaten themselves. I want you to do something
+for me. Martin & Wright, the lawyers, have a queer little bit of medical
+jurisprudence, about which young Wright, who was at Oriel in our time,
+asked my opinion. I recommended him to see you, as it is more in your
+line; and _my_ line will presently be attached to that eminent general
+practitioner, 'The Blue Doctor.' May he prosper with the Galway salmon!
+
+"Thine,
+
+"Alfred Franks."
+
+"Lucky beggar!" thought Barton to himself, but he was too happy to envy
+even a man who had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him.
+
+The next letter he opened was in a blue envelope, with the stamp
+of Messrs. Martin & Wright. The brief and and formal note which it
+contained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day if possible, at
+the chambers of the respectable firm, on "business of great importance."
+
+"What in the world can they want?" thought Barton. "Nobody can have
+left _me_ any money. Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical
+jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I'll go down after breakfast."
+
+He walked along the sunny embankment, and that bright prospect of
+houses, trees, and ships have never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he
+was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and had shaken hands with young Wright,
+whom he knew; had been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately man
+of business, and had taken his seat in the chair sacred to clients.
+
+"Dr. Barton," said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, "you are, I think, the
+author of this book?"
+
+He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, in its gray paper cover,
+"Les Tatouages Etude Medico-Legale".
+
+"Certainly," said Barton. "I wrote it when I was in Paris I had plenty
+of chances of studying tattooing in the military hospitals."
+
+"I have not read it myself," said old Mr. Wright, "because I am not
+acquainted with the French language; but my son tells me it is a work of
+great learning."
+
+Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was glad Mr. Wright liked it.
+_Why_ he should like it, or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not
+even imagine.
+
+"We are at present engaged in a very curious case, Dr. Barton," went on
+the lawyer, "in which we think your special studies may assist us. The
+position is this: Nearly eight months ago a client of ours died, a Mr.
+Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I
+seem to be troubling you with a long story?"
+
+Barton mentioned that he was delighted, and added, "Not at all," in the
+vague modern dialect.
+
+"This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a somewhat singular character. He
+was what is called a 'statesman' in the North. He had a small property
+of about four hundred acres, on the marches, as they say, or boarders
+of the Earl of Birkenhead's lands. Here he lived almost alone, and in
+a very quiet way. There was not even a village near him, and there were
+few persons of his own position in life, because his little place was
+almost embedded, if I may say so, in Lord Birkenhead's country, which is
+pastoral. You are with me, so far?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Barton.
+
+"This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, with an old housekeeper,
+dead since his decease, and with one son, called Richard, like himself.
+The young man was of an adventurous character, a ne'er-do-weel in fact;
+and about twenty years ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel
+with his father. It was understood that he had run away to sea. Two
+years later he returned; there was another quarrel, and the old man
+turned him out, vowing that he would never forgive him. But, not long
+after that, a very rich deposit of coal--a _very_ rich deposit," said
+Mr. Wright, with the air of a man tasting most excellent claret--"was
+discovered on this very estate of Linkheaton. Old Johnson, without much
+exertion on his part, and simply through the payment of royalties by the
+company that worked the coal, became exceedingly opulent, in what you
+call most affluent circumstances."
+
+Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether Barton was beginning to
+understand the point of the narrative, which, it is needless to remark,
+he was _not_. There is no marked connection between coal mines, however
+lucrative, and "Les Tatouages, Etude Medico-Legale."
+
+"In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way changed his habits. He
+invested his money carefully, under our advice, and he became, as
+I said, an extremely warm man. But he continued to live in the old
+farmhouse, and did not, in any way, court society. To tell the truth,
+except Lord Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew anyone who was
+at all intimate with the old man. Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him,
+as a neighbor and a person of the old-fashioned type. Yes," Mr. Wright
+added, seeing that his son was going to speak, "and, as you were about
+to say, Tom, they were brought together by a common misfortune. Like old
+Mr. Johnson, his lordship has a son who is very, very--unsatisfactory.
+His lordship has not seen the Honorable Mr. Thomas Cranley for many
+years; and in that lonely country the two boys had been companions in
+wild amusements, long before. He is _very_ unsatisfactory, the Honorable
+Thomas Cranley;" and Mr. Wright sighed heavily, in sympathy with a
+client so noble and so afflicted.
+
+"I know the beast," said Barton, without reflecting.
+
+Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and horror. "The beast!" A son of
+Lord Birkenhead's called "The beast!"
+
+"To return to our case, Dr. Barton," he went on severely, with some
+stress laid on the _doctor_. "Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made
+on his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son Richard, or, in case
+of his decease, to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten. From that
+day to this we have hunted everywhere for the man. We have traced him
+all over the world; we have heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana,
+Smyrna, but at Smyrna we lose sight of him. This advertisement," said
+the old gentleman, taking up the outside sheet of the _Times_, and
+folding it so as to bring the second column into view, "remained for
+more than seven months unanswered, or only answered by impostors and
+idiots."
+
+He tapped his finger on the place as he handed the paper to Barton, who
+read aloud:
+
+"Linkheaton.--If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, Durham, last heard of
+at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln's
+Inn Fields, he will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. His
+father died, forgiving him. A reward of L1,000 will be paid to anyone
+producing Richard Johnson, or proving his decease."
+
+"As a mixture of business with the home affections," said old Mr. Wright
+proudly (for the advertisement was of his own composition), "I think
+that leaves little ta be desired."
+
+"It is admirable," said Barton--"admirable; but may I ask----"
+
+"Where the tattooing comes in?" said Mr. Wright. "I am just approaching
+_that_. The only person from whom we received any reliable information
+about Richard Johnson was an old ship-mate of his, a wandering,
+adventurous character, now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot
+readily communicate with him. According to his account, Johnson was an
+ordinary seafaring man, tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to
+be recognized for an excellent reason. _He was tattooed almost all over
+his whole body_."
+
+Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client's chair, so sudden a
+light flashed on him.
+
+"What is the matter, Dr. Barton! I _thought_ I should interest you; but
+you seem quite excited."
+
+"I really beg your pardon," said Barton. "It was automatic, I think;
+besides, I _am_ extremely interested in tattooing."
+
+"Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears,
+from what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable
+specimen. He had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by
+Arabs, and, in a peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the
+Dyacks of Borneo. We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of
+his principal decorations."
+
+Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on
+which was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the
+breast, thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
+
+The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized
+the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
+
+This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any
+exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
+
+"This is highly interesting," he said, as he examined the diagram; "and
+I am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a
+claimant with such remarkable peculiarities."
+
+"No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores
+of sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before
+yesterday--a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point; asked
+if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they were,
+and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify the
+design, corresponded to that drawing."
+
+"Well," asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort,
+"what did you do with him?"
+
+"We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an
+expert before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things
+about old Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that
+anyone but the right man could have known, we put him off till we had
+seen you, and could make an appointment for you to examine the
+tattooings. _They_ must be dealt with first, before any other
+identification."
+
+"I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say
+why he was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for
+several months."
+
+"Yes, and that is rather in his favor," said Mr. Wright. "If he had been
+an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago.
+But he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way
+of newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across
+it three or four days ago."
+
+"Very well," said Barton. "Make an appointment with the man for any time
+to-morrow, and I will be with you."
+
+As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr.
+Wright.
+
+"Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?"
+
+"With pleasure," answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger
+partner.
+
+He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer
+office by young Wright.
+
+"You had something to say to me?" asked the junior member of the firm.
+
+"Several things," said Barton, smiling. "And first, would you mind
+finding out whether the coast is clear--whether any one is watching for
+me?"
+
+"Watching for you! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious
+character is about."
+
+Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a
+cigarette on the outer steps.
+
+"Not a soul in sight but lawyers' clerks," he reported.
+
+"Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are
+taking a turn with me."
+
+Barton's friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some
+serious conversation.
+
+"I'll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father," said the
+young lawyer as they separated.
+
+"Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger
+like myself," said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent
+Garden.
+
+At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers,
+Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs.
+Aminadab, and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a
+pretty bulky parcel.
+
+                      *   *   *   *   *
+
+At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly,
+mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat
+and hat, appeared in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill
+acquainted with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before
+he reached the door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened,
+and he was admitted into the presence of the partners.
+
+"I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter," he said with a
+Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by
+touching his forelock.
+
+His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners,
+with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman--a
+gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a
+tow-colored beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty
+complexion, and the air of one who smoked too much.
+
+"Good morning, Mr.--h'm--Mr. Johnson," said old Mr. Wright. "As we told
+you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry, requested
+Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect--h'm--the personal marks of
+which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great authority on
+these matters--author of 'Die Tattuirung,' a very learned work, I am
+told."
+
+Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
+
+"Glad to meet you, sir," said the sailor-man gruffly, "or any gentleman
+as really knows what's what."
+
+"You have been a great traveller, sir?" said the learned Professor,
+whose Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. "You have in many
+lands travelled? So!"
+
+"Yes, sir; I have seen the world."
+
+"And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by
+many races been decorated?"
+
+"Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!"
+
+"How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese--ah!
+have you any little Burmese marks?"
+
+"Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder," replied the seafaring man.
+"Saving your presence, I'll strip to the buff."
+
+"The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir," this was in reply to young
+Mr. Wright "The naked body! why, buff! 'Buff,' the abstract word, the
+actual stuff, the very _wesen_ of man unclothed. 'Buffer,' the concrete
+man, in the 'buff,' in the flesh; it is _sehr interessant_."
+
+While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological
+reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
+
+"That's the Burmese style, sir," he said, pointing to his shoulders and
+upper arm.
+
+These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
+series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
+to the elbow-joints.
+
+"_Sehr schon, sehr schon_," exclaimed the delighted Professor. "It
+is very _hubsch_, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
+Germans. Ach, it is mournful!" and he sighed. "And now, sir, have you to
+show me any _moko_? A little _moko_ would be very instructive."
+
+"Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
+look between my shoulders," and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
+whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
+
+"That is right, that is right," whispered the Professor. "_Moko,
+schlange_, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better
+_moko_, on an European man, have I never seen. You observe," he remarked
+to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed
+lines--"you observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful."
+
+"Extremely interesting," said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
+seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
+
+"Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture," he added, comparing
+the sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
+
+"Are you satisfied now, governor?" asked the sailor.
+
+"One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
+Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?"
+
+"Oh, yes; here you are!" and the voyager pointed to his breast.
+
+The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
+of irregular form.
+
+"It is, it is," he cried, "the _wasm_, the _sharat_,* the Semitic tribal
+mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their cattle! Of old
+time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr Professor
+Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls that very
+mark, my dear sir?"
+
+     * Sharat or Short.--"The shart was in old times a tattooed
+     mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
+     of blood revenge is connected with a 'mark' which Jehovah
+     appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
+     _sharat_, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
+     person?"
+     --Robertson Smith, _Kinship in Ancient Arabia_, p.215.
+
+"Not I," said the sailor; "I'm no scholar."
+
+"He says it was--I do not say he is right," cried the Professor, in a
+loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim's breast--"he says it was
+_the mark of cain_!"
+
+The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped
+at a bookcase by which he stood.
+
+"What do you mean?" he cried, through his chattering teeth; "what do you
+mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark's all
+right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain't it on that
+chart of yours?"
+
+"Certainly, good sir; it is," answered the Professor. "Why do you so
+agitate yourself? _The proof is complete!_" he added, still pointing at
+the sailor's breast.
+
+"Then I'll put on my togs, with your leave: it's none so warm!" grumbled
+the man.
+
+He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and
+was just looking round for his coat.
+
+"Stop!" said the Professor. "Hold Mr. Johnson's coat for a moment!"
+
+This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
+
+"You must be tired, sir," said the Professor, in a very soft voice. "May
+I offer you a leedle cigarette?"
+
+He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly
+English accent, he went on:
+
+"I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left
+at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!"
+
+The sailor's eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the
+ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
+
+"Hold it, hold it!" cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic
+accent--"hold it: there's a revolver in the pocket!"
+
+But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
+
+The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not
+unconscious mass, on the floor.
+
+"Call in the police!" said Barton. "They'll have no difficulty in taking
+him."
+
+"This is the man against whom you have the warrant," he went on, as
+young Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. "I charge the
+Honorable Thomas Cranley with murder!"
+
+The officers lifted the fallen man.
+
+"Let him be," said Barton. "He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he's
+better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart's weak. Bring
+some brandy."
+
+Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept
+murmuring:
+
+"The Honorable Thomas Cranley _was_ always very unsatisfactory!"
+
+It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be
+unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had _not_ been informed that
+the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
+
+Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
+examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
+floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.--The Verdict of Fate.
+
+Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton's letter.
+He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
+he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
+
+Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
+thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
+
+Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley's trial dragged on. Interest, as
+usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
+
+But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
+when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
+
+When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
+himself "Not Guilty," his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
+pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
+the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
+whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
+
+The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
+prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
+condensed form:
+
+First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
+unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
+relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast
+of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
+circumstances of Johnson's early life, with his history and his
+home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A
+celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved
+that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing
+man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the
+minute local and personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate
+Johnson, a sailor whose body was known to have been indelibly marked
+by the tattooing of various barbarous races, it was necessary that the
+prisoner should be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with
+unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his
+body the distinctive marks of Johnson, and then had destroyed him with
+fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of assuming his personality. The
+very instrument, it might be said, which stamped Cranley as Johnson,
+slew Johnson himself, and the process which hallmarked the prisoner
+as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him with the brand of Cain.
+The personal marks which seemed to establish the claimant's case
+demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical expert brought in
+to prove his identity, and was recognized by that gentleman, Dr. Barton,
+who would be called, and who had once already exposed him in a
+grave social offence--cheating at cards. The same witness had made a
+_post-mortem_ examination of the body of Richard Johnson, and had then
+suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
+
+The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
+committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor
+(tbe disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of
+meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the
+_Hit or Miss_ tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met
+him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
+o'clock, telling the landlady that "his friend," as he called Johnson,
+had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady,
+Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening
+on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson--or Shields, as she
+called him--had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which
+led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often
+took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of
+Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart
+belonging to the vestry--a cart which, during the night, had remained
+near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the _Hit or Miss_. A
+coroner's jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had
+strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door
+in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down
+in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But
+evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish
+the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an
+eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a
+poison which it would be shown he had in his possession--a poison which
+was not swallowed by the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture
+into the system. The dead man's body had then been removed to a place
+where his decease would be accounted for as the result of cold and
+exhaustion. A witness would be put in the box who, by an extraordinary
+circumstance, had been enabled to see the crime committed by the
+prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at the moment, he did not
+understand the meaning of what he saw. As the circumstances by which
+this witness had been enabled to behold what was done at dead of
+night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not commanded from any
+neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony
+would be brought to show that the witness really had enjoyed the
+opportunity of observation which he claimed.
+
+On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson,
+and claimed Johnson's property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson,
+unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for
+the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical
+evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed
+to have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death,
+according to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the
+prosecution believed that the jury could find no other verdict than
+that the prisoner had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of
+February 7th.
+
+This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate
+the evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the
+statements of the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of
+Shields with Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but
+Johnson's old crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was
+at length discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he
+collected, the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course,
+most important in another respect, as establishing Margaret's claims on
+the Linkheaton estate.
+
+The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved
+by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
+
+The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who
+had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of
+the difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of
+beard--for Cranley was now clean shaved--Mrs. Gullick was positive as
+to his voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and
+mobile.
+
+Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest
+interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be
+arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had
+known as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length,
+and need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard
+Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the
+tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an
+ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many
+curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks
+were obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left
+blank--namely, behind and under the right shoulder--he had discovered
+certain markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an
+inexperienced hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed,
+and were slightly discolored. They could not, from their position,
+possibly have been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations
+of these marks, in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue,
+as on the rest of the body, showed that this coloring matter was of
+a character familiar to the witness as a physiologist and scientific
+traveller. It was the _Woorali_, or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians
+of Guiana.
+
+Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness
+said that its "principle" (to use the term of the old medical writers)
+had not yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded
+by Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined
+the juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with
+certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the
+whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown
+paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their
+arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal
+results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison
+would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to
+sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles,
+and the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed,
+death followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the
+victim, man or animal, and the strength of the dose.
+
+Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo
+marks on Johnson's body.
+
+The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf
+of the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson's tattooing
+materials, in the upper chamber of the _Hit or Miss_. This needle had
+been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by
+the Macoushi of Guiana.
+
+Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument
+of his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the
+evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small
+crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken
+by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and
+Wright. But crumbs of the poison--"Woorali," or "Ourali"--perfectly dry,
+remained in this receptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself a
+great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
+
+The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general
+bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe
+cross-examination, William Winter was called.
+
+There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was
+borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
+
+"Where were you," asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the
+officer had sworn the witness, "at eleven o'clock on the night of
+February 7th?"
+
+"I was on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ tavern."
+
+"On which part of the roof?"
+
+"On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house,
+facing the waste ground behind the plank fence."
+
+"Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?"
+
+Winter's face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin,
+was clear as he said:
+
+"There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I
+was lying, and I looked in."
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles
+and glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing."
+
+"Would you recognize either man if you saw him?"
+
+"I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at
+that time he wore a beard."
+
+"Tell the Court what happened."
+
+"The men were facing me. One of them--the prisoner--was naked to the
+waist. His breast was tattooed. The other--the man who stood up--was
+touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a
+saucer on the table."
+
+"Could you hear what they said?"
+
+"I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there
+was a slight chink open."
+
+"You listened?"
+
+"I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with
+the needle give a sigh of relief, and say, 'There, it's finished, and
+a pretty job too, though I say it.' The other said, 'You have done
+it beautifully, Dicky; it's a most interesting art. Now, just out of
+curiosity, let _me_ tattoo _you_ a bit.' The other man laughed, and took
+off his coat and shirt while the other dressed. 'There's scarce an inch
+of me plain,' he said, 'but you can try your hand here,' pointing to
+the lower part of his shoulder."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something
+sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He
+began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the
+time. This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of
+the man who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little,
+backward and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man,
+and said, in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, 'I'm very
+cold; I can't shiver!' Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one
+or two convulsive movements. That was all."
+
+"What did the prisoner do?"
+
+"He looked like death. He seized the bottle on the table, poured out
+half a tumbler full of the stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell
+into a chair, and laid his face between his hands. He appeared ill, or
+alarmed, but the color came back into his cheek after a third or
+fourth glass. Then I saw him go to the sleeping man and bend over him,
+listening apparently to his breathing. Then he shook him several times,
+as if trying to arouse him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about
+half-an-hour after what I have described, he opened the door and went
+out. He soon returned, took up the sleeping man in his arms--his weight
+seemed lighter than you would expect--and carried him out. From the roof
+I saw him push the door in the palisade leading into the waste land,
+a door which I myself had left open an hour before. It was not light
+enough to see what he did there; but he soon returned alone and walked
+away."
+
+Such was the sum of Winter's evidence, which, if accepted, entirely
+corroborated Barton's theory of the manner of the murder.
+
+In cross-examination, Winter was asked the very natural question:
+
+"How did you come to find yourself on the roof of the _Hit or Miss_ late
+at night?"
+
+Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn faced flushed, his eye
+sparkling.
+
+"Sir, I flew!"
+
+There was a murmur and titter through the court, which was, of course,
+instantly suppressed.
+
+"You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?"
+
+"I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have
+labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I
+was experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land
+bordering on the _Hit or Miss_, the machine actually worked, and I was
+projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air, coming
+down with a fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof of
+the _Hit or Miss_."
+
+Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression
+at the jury.
+
+"My lord," said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and
+the significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of
+the twelve good men and true, "I may state that we are prepared to bring
+forward a large mass of scientific evidence--including a well-known man
+of science, the editor of _Wisdom_, a popular journal which takes all
+knowledge for its province--to prove that there is nothing physically
+impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at present
+suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very
+machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working
+model, to the Court."
+
+"It certainly requires corroboration," said the judge. "At present,
+so far as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can
+prove, perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have
+only to take one step further to become practical modes of locomotion.
+But _that_ is the very step _qui coute_. Nothing but direct evidence
+that the step has been taken--that a flying machine, on this
+occasion, actually _flew_ (they appear to be styled _volantes, a non
+volando_)--would really help your case, and establish the credibility of
+this witness."
+
+"With your lordship's learned remarks," replied the counsel for the
+crown, "I am not the less ready to agree, because I _have_ an actual
+eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but
+reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its
+occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common
+talk of the neighborhood."
+
+"Ah! that is another matter," said the judge.
+
+"Call Eliza Gullick," said the counsel.
+
+Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but
+perfect self-possession.
+
+After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an
+oath, Eliza was asked:
+
+"You remember the night of the 7th of February?"
+
+"I remember it very well, sir."
+
+"Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?"
+
+"Becos such a mort o' things happened, sir, that night."
+
+"Will you tell his lordship what happened?"
+
+"Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at
+the _Hilarity_; for he said--"
+
+"Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming
+home."
+
+"Well, sir, it was about eleven o'clock at night, and I was turning the
+lane into the _Hit or Miss_, when I heard an awful flapping and hissing
+and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at the
+side of the lane. And, as I was listening--oh, it frightens me now to
+think of it--oh, sir--"
+
+"Well, don't be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?"
+
+"A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my
+head, higher than the houses. And then--did you ever see them Japanese
+toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber
+as you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly--"
+
+"Well, my girl, I have seen them."
+
+"Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the
+bird's wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all
+lighted, quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the _Hit or Miss_.
+And there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o' the
+window, but they wouldn't none o' them believe me, my lord."
+
+There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this
+extraordinary confirmation of Winter's evidence, and wove the net
+inextricably round the prisoner.
+
+Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something
+heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
+
+All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence
+the sound had come.
+
+The prisoner's head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
+
+One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
+
+The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The
+evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had
+slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+And what became of them all?
+
+He who does not tell, on the plea that he is "competing with Life,"
+which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts
+unfairly.
+
+Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are
+visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the
+unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy
+Mrs. Maitland.
+
+Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the
+case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still
+hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine,
+which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who
+once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac's novel, has never recovered
+the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs.
+Barton's little boy begins to take a lively interest.
+
+Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with
+the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick
+maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
+
+"We hear," says the _Athenaeum_, "that the long promised edition of
+'Demetrius of Scepsis,' by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien's, is in the hands
+of the delegates of the Clarendon Press."
+
+But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement
+that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_
+
+EXPLICIT.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21821.txt or 21821.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/2/21821/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/21821.zip b/21821.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b24217d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21821.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e52231f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #21821 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21821)
diff --git a/old/21821-h.htm.2019-03-25 b/old/21821-h.htm.2019-03-25
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98de250
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/21821-h.htm.2019-03-25
@@ -0,0 +1,8301 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Mark of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body { margin:5%; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    -->
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mark Of Cain
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2007 [EBook #21821]
+Last Updated: December 17, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="cainTP (22K)" src="images/cainTP.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE MARK OF CAIN
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Andrew Lang <br /> <br /> <br /> 1886
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>THE MARK OF CAIN.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I.&mdash;A Tale of Two Clubs. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II.&mdash;In the Snow. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III.&mdash;An Academic Pothouse. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV.&mdash;Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V.&mdash;Flown. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI.&mdash;At St. Gatien&rsquo;s. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII.&mdash;After the Inquest. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII.&mdash;The Jaffa Oranges. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX.&mdash;Mrs. St. John Deloraine </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X.&mdash;Traps. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI.&mdash;The Night of Adventures. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII.&mdash;A Patient. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII.&mdash;Another Patient. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV.&mdash;Found. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV.&mdash;The Mark of Cain. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI.&mdash;The Verdict of Fate. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_EPIL"> EPILOGUE. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE MARK OF CAIN.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.&mdash;A Tale of Two Clubs.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Such arts the gods who dwell on high
+     Have given to the Greek.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lays of Ancient Rome.</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the Strangers&rsquo; Room of the Olympic Club the air was thick with
+      tobacco-smoke, and, despite the bitter cold outside, the temperature was
+      uncomfortably high. Dinner was over, and the guests, broken up into little
+      groups, were chattering noisily. No one had yet given any sign of
+      departing: no one had offered a welcome apology for the need of catching
+      an evening train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the civilized custom which permits women to dine in the presence
+      of the greedier sex is the proudest conquest of Culture. Were it not for
+      the excuse of &ldquo;joining the ladies,&rdquo; dinner-parties (Like the congregations
+      in Heaven, as described in the hymn) would &ldquo;ne&rsquo;er break up,&rdquo; and suppers
+      (like Sabbaths, on the same authority) would never end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it all, will the fellows <i>never</i> go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So thought Maitland, of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, the founder of the feast. The
+      inhospitable reflections which we have recorded had all been passing
+      through his brain as he rather moodily watched the twenty guests he had
+      been feeding&mdash;one can hardly say entertaining. It was a &ldquo;duty dinner&rdquo;
+       he had been giving&mdash;almost everything Maitland did was done from a
+      sense of duty&mdash;yet he scarcely appeared to be reaping the reward of
+      an approving conscience. His acquaintances, laughing and gossipping round
+      the half-empty wine-glasses, the olives, the scattered fruit, and &ldquo;the
+      ashes of the weeds of their delight,&rdquo; gave themselves no concern about the
+      weary host. Even at his own party, as in life generally, Maitland felt
+      like an outsider. He wakened from his reverie as a strong hand was laid
+      lightly on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Maitland,&rdquo; said a man sitting down beside him, &ldquo;what have <i>you</i>
+      been doing this long time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I been doing, Barton?&rdquo; Maitland answered. &ldquo;Oh, I have been
+      reflecting on the choice of a life, and trying to humanize myself! Bielby
+      says I have not enough human nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bielby is quite right; he is the most judicious of college dons and
+      father-confessors, old man. And how long do you mean to remain his pupil
+      and penitent? And how is the pothouse getting on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever
+      since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him.
+      Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad,
+      breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde,
+      prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue eyes,
+      and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other degrees
+      at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was even what
+      Captain Costigan styles &ldquo;a scoientific cyarkter.&rdquo; He had written learnedly
+      in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had made a cruise in a
+      man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his <i>Les Tatouages, Étude
+      Médico-Lêgale</i>, published in Paris, had been commended by the highest
+      authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had not a home and
+      practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in Chelsea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is your pothouse getting on?&rdquo; he asked again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pothouse? Oh, the <i>Hit or Miss</i> you mean? Well, I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s
+      not very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of
+      doing some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the
+      waterside won&rsquo;t go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink,
+      and little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and
+      looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to civilize
+      them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves&rsquo; Club in the East End.
+      And then I fancied they might help to make <i>me</i> a little more human.
+      But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet blanket But
+      the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with me about <i>that</i>.
+      And she is a high authority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I&rsquo;ve heard of her. She is a lively widow, isn&rsquo;t
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a practical philanthropist,&rdquo; answered Maitland, flushing a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty, too, I have been told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she is &lsquo;conveniently handsome,&rsquo; as Izaak Walton says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Maitland, here&rsquo;s a chance to humanize you. Why don&rsquo;t you ask her
+      to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich&mdash;what better would
+      you ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish everyone wouldn&rsquo;t bother a man to marry,&rdquo; Maitland replied
+      testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
+      pale and unwholesome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what&rsquo;s the matter with you? Here you
+      are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements say, no
+      relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what you make by
+      writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you should know best What&rsquo;s the good of your being a doctor, and
+      acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
+      there is of it), if you can&rsquo;t tell what&rsquo;s the nature of my complaint?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side of the
+      water, among the hardy patients of Mundy &amp; Barton, general
+      practitioners. There is plenty of human nature <i>there!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
+      splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
+      roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
+      or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
+      sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good deal
+      about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say,&rdquo; Barton went on, lowering his voice,
+      &ldquo;where on earth did you pick up&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
+      the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the <i>Trumpet</i> office. He was
+      writing about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has
+      been in the South Seas, like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,&rdquo;
+       answered the other, &ldquo;and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
+      dealt in them, I fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daresay,&rdquo; Maitland replied rather wearily. &ldquo;He seems to have travelled
+      a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever they may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or don&rsquo;t
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak,&rdquo; said
+      Maitland; &ldquo;but what does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t know why he left his private tutor&rsquo;s; you don&rsquo;t know why
+      he left the University; you don&rsquo;t know why he left the Ninety-second; you
+      don&rsquo;t know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never heard
+      of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Maitland replied, &ldquo;about his ancient history I own I don&rsquo;t know
+      anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself.
+      He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was
+      ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t take that view of it at Shephard&rsquo;s Hotel&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is not my affair,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;One should see all sort of
+      characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has been
+      a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he is full of
+      good stories. I rather like him, and he can&rsquo;t do my moral character any
+      harm. <i>I&rsquo;m</i> not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of life, nor
+      quarrel with warlike aliens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but he&rsquo;s not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford,&rdquo;
+       Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up,
+      surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in which he
+      found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play Falstaff to
+      every fresh heir&rsquo;s Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man, too obviously
+      accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke of a prolonged
+      youth. À large cat&rsquo;s-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed solitary in his
+      shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of the contemporary
+      reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face, though a good deal
+      worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and of a purply bronze
+      hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with the beverages of many
+      peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous corners, were shaded by a
+      small black mustache, and his twinkling bistre-colored eyes, beneath
+      mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air of a jester and a good fellow.
+      In manner he was familiar, with a kind of deference, too, and reserve,
+      &ldquo;like a dog that is always wagging his tail and deprecating a kick,&rdquo;
+       thought Barton grimly, as he watched the other&rsquo;s genial advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to say good-night, bless him,&rdquo; thought Maitland gratefully.
+      &ldquo;Now the others will be moving too, I hope!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Maitland rose with much alacrity as Cranley approached him. To stand up
+      would show, he thought, that he was not inhospitably eager to detain the
+      parting guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Mr. Maitland,&rdquo; said the senior, holding out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is still early,&rdquo; said the host, doing his best to play his part. &ldquo;Must
+      you really go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the night&rsquo;s young&rdquo; (it was about half-past twelve), &ldquo;but I have a
+      kind of engagement to look in at the Cockpit, and three or four of your
+      young friends here are anxious to come with me, and see how we keep it up
+      round there. Perhaps you and your friend will walk with us.&rdquo; Here he bowed
+      slightly in the direction of Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be a little <i>bac</i> going on,&rdquo; he continued&mdash;&ldquo;<i>un
+      petit bac de santé</i>; and these boys tell me they have never played
+      anything more elevating than loo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I am no good at a round game,&rdquo; answered Maitland, who had
+      played at his Aunt&rsquo;s at Christmas, and who now observed with delight that
+      everyone was moving; &ldquo;but here is Barton, who will be happy to accompany
+      you, I daresay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re for a frolic, boys,&rdquo; said Barton, quoting Dr. Johnson, and
+      looking rather at the younger men than at Cranley, &ldquo;why, I will not balk
+      you. Good-night, Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he shook hands with his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-nights&rdquo; were uttered in every direction; sticks, hats, and umbrellas
+      were hunted up; and while Maitland, half-asleep, was being whirled to his
+      rooms in Bloomsbury in a hansom, his guests made the frozen pavement of
+      Piccadilly ring beneath their elegant heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only round the corner,&rdquo; said Cranley to the four or five men who
+      accompanied him. &ldquo;The Cockpit, where I am taking you, is in a fashionable
+      slum off St. James&rsquo;s. We&rsquo;re just there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing either meretricious or sinister in the aspect of that
+      favored resort, the Cockpit, as the Decade Club was familiarly called by
+      its friends&mdash;and enemies. Two young Merton men and the freshman from
+      New, who were enjoying their Christmas vacation in town, and had been
+      dining with Maitland, were a little disappointed in the appearance of the
+      place. They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a lane, and
+      to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket, into a narrow
+      staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light, full of blazing
+      wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small mysterious man would
+      point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages leading on to the roof
+      or into the next house, in case of a raid by the police. Such was the old
+      idea of a &ldquo;Hell;&rdquo; but the advance of Thought has altered all these early
+      notions. The Decade Club was like any other small club. A current of warm
+      air, charged with tobacco-smoke, rushed forth into the frosty night when
+      the swinging door was opened; a sleepy porter looked out of his little
+      nest, and Cranley wrote the names of the companions he introduced in a
+      book which was kept for that purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you are free of the Cockpit for the night,&rdquo; he said, genially. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      a livelier place, in the small hours, than that classical Olympic we&rsquo;ve
+      just left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went upstairs, passing the doors of one or two rooms, lit up but
+      empty, except for two or three men who were sleeping in uncomfortable
+      attitudes on sofas. The whole of the breadth of the first floor, all the
+      drawing-room of the house before it became a club, had been turned into a
+      card-room, from which brilliant lights, voices, and a heavy odor of
+      tobacco and alcohol poured out when the door was opened. A long green
+      baize-covered table, of very light wood, ran down the centre of the room,
+      while refreshments stood on smaller tables, and a servant out of livery
+      sat, half-asleep, behind a great desk in the remotest corner. There were
+      several empty chairs round the green baize-covered table, at which some
+      twenty men were sitting, with money before them; while one, in the middle,
+      dealt out the cards on a broad flap of smooth black leather let into the
+      baize. Every now and then he threw the cards he had been dealing into a
+      kind of well in the table, and after every deal he raked up his winnings
+      with a rake, or distributed gold and counters to the winners, as
+      mechanically as if he had been a croupier at Monte Carlo. The players, who
+      were all in evening dress, had scarcely looked up when the strangers
+      entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought some recruits, Cranley?&rdquo; asked the Banker, adding, as he looked
+      at his hand, &ldquo;<i>J&rsquo;en donne!</i>&rdquo; and becoming absorbed in his game again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The game you do not understand?&rdquo; said Cranley to one of his recruits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not quite,&rdquo; said the lad, shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I will soon show you all about it; and I wouldn&rsquo;t play, if I
+      were you, till you <i>know</i> all about it. Perhaps, after you know <i>all</i>
+      about it, you&rsquo;ll think it wiser not to play at all At least, you might
+      well think so abroad, where very fishy things are often done. Here it&rsquo;s
+      all right, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is baccarat a game you can be cheated at, then&mdash;I mean, when people
+      are inclined to cheat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheat! Oh, rather! There are about a dozen ways of cheating at baccarat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other young men from Maitland&rsquo;s party gathered round their mentor, who
+      continued his instructions in a low voice, and from a distance whence the
+      play could be watched, while the players were not likely to be disturbed
+      by the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheating is the simplest thing in the world, at Nice or in Paris,&rdquo;
+       Cranley went on; &ldquo;but to show you how it is done, in case you ever do play
+      in foreign parts, I must explain the game. You see the men first put down
+      their stakes within the thin white line on the edge of the tabla Then the
+      Banker deals two cards to one of the men on his left, and all the fellows
+      on that side stand by <i>his</i> luck. Then he deals two to a chappie on
+      his right, and all the punters on the right, back that sportsman. And he
+      deals two cards to himself. The game is to get as near nine as possible,
+      ten, and court cards, not counting at all. If the Banker has eight or
+      nine, he does not offer cards; if he has less, he gives the two players,
+      if they ask for them, one card each, and takes one himself if he chooses.
+      If they hold six, seven, or eight, they stand; if less, they take a card.
+      Sometimes one stands at five; it depends. Then the Banker wins if he is
+      nearer nine than the players, and they win if <i>they</i> are better than
+      he; and that&rsquo;s the whole affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see where the cheating can come in,&rdquo; said one of the young
+      fellows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dozens of ways, as I told you. A man may have an understanding with the
+      waiter, and play with arranged packs; but the waiter is always the
+      dangerous element in <i>that</i> little combination. He&rsquo;s sure to peach or
+      blackmail his accomplice. Then the cards may be marked. I remember, at
+      Ostend, one fellow, a big German; he wore spectacles, like all Germans,
+      and he seldom gave the players anything better than three court cards when
+      he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to go for his
+      cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat pocket. He
+      laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried them on. As soon
+      as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a swindle!
+      <i>Nous sommes volés!</i>&rsquo; He could see, by the help of the spectacles,
+      that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the spectacles were
+      regular patent double million magnifiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what became of the owner of the glasses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he just looked into the room, saw the man wearing them, and didn&rsquo;t
+      wait to say good-night. He just <i>went!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Cranley chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember another time, at Nice: I always laugh when I think of it!
+      There was a little Frenchman who played nearly every night. He would take
+      the bank for three or four turns, and he almost always won. Well, one
+      night he had been at the theatre, and he left before the end of the piece
+      and looked in at the Cercle. He took the Bank: lost once, won twice; then
+      he offered cards. The man who was playing nodded, to show he would take
+      one, and the Frenchman laid down an eight of clubs, a greasy, dirty old
+      rag, with <i>théâtre français de nice</i> stamped on it in big letters. It
+      was his ticket of readmission at the theatre that they gave him when he
+      went out, and it had got mixed up with a nice little arrangement in cards
+      he had managed to smuggle into the club pack. I&rsquo;ll never forget his face
+      and the other man&rsquo;s when <i>Théâtre Français</i> turned up. However, you
+      understand the game now, and if you want to play, we had better give fine
+      gold to the waiter in exchange for bone counters, and get to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two or three of the visitors followed Cranley to the corner where the
+      white, dissipated-looking waiter of the card-room sat, and provided
+      themselves with black and red <i>jetons</i> (bone counters) of various
+      values, to be redeemed at the end of the game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they returned to the table the banker was just leaving his post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m cleaned out,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;<i>décavé</i>. Good-night,&rdquo; and he walked
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one seemed anxious to open a bank. The punters had been winning all
+      night, and did not like to desert their luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this will never do,&rdquo; cried Cranley. &ldquo;If no one else will open a bank,
+      I&rsquo;ll risk a couple of hundred, just to show you beginners how it is done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley sat down, lit a cigarette, and laid the smooth silver
+      cigarette-case before him. Then he began to deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune at first was all on the side of the players. Again and again
+      Cranley chucked out the counters he had lost, which the others gathered
+      in, or pushed three or four bank-notes with his little rake in the
+      direction of a more venturesome winner. The new-comers, who were winning,
+      thought they had never taken part in a sport more gentlemanly and amusing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have one shy,&rdquo; said Martin, one of the boys who had hitherto stood
+      with Barton, behind the Banker, looking on. He was a gaudy youth with a
+      diamond stud, rich, and not fond of losing. He staked five pounds and won;
+      he left the whole sum on and lost, lost again, a third time, and then
+      said, &ldquo;May I draw a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you may,&rdquo; Cranley answered. &ldquo;The waiter will give you <i>tout
+      ce qu&rsquo;il faut pour écrire</i>, as the stage directions say; but I don&rsquo;t
+      advise you to plunge. You&rsquo;ve lost quite enough. Yet they say the devil
+      favors beginners, so you can&rsquo;t come to grief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young fellow by this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks
+      had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some
+      paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles of
+      the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he returned
+      with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The luck turned
+      again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice consecutively
+      he lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said Barton suddenly to Cranley, &ldquo;may I help myself to one of
+      your cigarettes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped as he spoke, over the table, and Cranley saw him pick up the
+      silver cigarette-case. It was a handsome piece of polished silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; help yourself. Give me back my cigarette-case, please, when
+      you have done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dealt again, and lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nice case!&rdquo; said Barton, examining it closely. &ldquo;There is an Arabic
+      word engraved on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Cranley, rather impatiently, holding out his hand for the
+      thing, and pausing before he dealt. &ldquo;The case was given me by the late
+      Khédive, dear old Ismail, bless him! The word is a talisman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. The case seemed to bring you luck,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley half turned and threw a quick look at him, as rapid and timid as
+      the glance of a hare in its form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, give me it back, please,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, just oblige me: let me try what there is in luck. Go on playing
+      while I rub up my Arabic, and try to read this ineffable name on the case.
+      Is it the word of Power of Solomon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley glanced back again. &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as you are so curious&mdash;-j&rsquo;en
+      donne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered cards, and lost. Martin&rsquo;s face brightened up. His paper
+      currency was coming back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a shame,&rdquo; grumbled Cranley, &ldquo;to rob a fellow of his fetich. Waiter,
+      a small brandy-and-soda! Confound your awkwardness! Why do you spill it
+      over the cards?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By Cranley&rsquo;s own awkwardness, more than the waiter&rsquo;s, a little splash of
+      the liquid had fallen in front of him, on the black leather part of the
+      table where he dealt. He went on dealing, and his luck altered again. The
+      rake was stretched out over both halves of the long table; the gold and
+      notes and counters, with a fluttering assortment of Martin&rsquo;s I O U&rsquo;s, were
+      all dragged in. Martin went to the den of the money-changer sullenly, and
+      came back with fresh supplies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Banco?&rdquo; he cried, meaning that he challenged Cranley for all the money in
+      the bank. There must have been some seven hundred pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cranley, taking a sip of his soda water. He had dealt
+      two cards, when his hands were suddenly grasped as in two vices, and
+      cramped to the table. Barton had bent over from behind and caught him by
+      the wrists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranley made one weak automatic movement to extricate himself; then he sat
+      perfectly still. His face, which he turned over his shoulder, was white
+      beneath the stains of tan, and his lips were blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn you!&rdquo; he snarled. &ldquo;What trick are you after now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you drunk, Barton?&rdquo; cried some one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him alone!&rdquo; shouted some of the players, rising from their seats;
+      while others, pressing round Barton, looked over his shoulder without
+      seeing any excuse for his behavior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said Barton, in a steady voice, &ldquo;I leave my conduct in the
+      hands of the club. If I do not convince them that Mr. Cranley has been
+      cheating, I am quite at their disposal, and at his. Let anyone who doubts
+      what I say look here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m looking here, and I don&rsquo;t see what you are making such a fuss
+      about,&rdquo; said Martin, from the group behind, peering over at the table and
+      the cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly&mdash;&mdash; No, it is no use.&rdquo; The last remark was
+      addressed to the captive, who had tried to release his hands. &ldquo;Will you
+      kindly take up some of the cards and deal them slowly, to right and left,
+      over that little puddle of spilt soda water on the leather? Get as near
+      the table as you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!&rdquo; cried Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you
+      could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to
+      take a card or stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the wretched Cranley. &ldquo;How on earth was I to know that
+      the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you a
+      chance against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You spilt the liquor yourself,&rdquo; Barton answered coolly, &ldquo;when I took away
+      your cigarette-case. I saw you passing the cards over the surface of it,
+      which anyone can see for himself is a perfect mirror. I tried to warn you&mdash;for
+      I did not want a row&mdash;when I said the case &lsquo;seemed to bring you
+      luck.&rsquo; But you would not be warned; and when the cigarette-case trick was
+      played out, you fell back on the old dodge with the drop of water. Will
+      anyone else convince himself that I am right before I let Mr. Cranley go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One or two men passed the cards, as they had seen the Banker do, over the
+      spilt soda water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a clear case,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;Leave him alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton slackened his grip of Cranley&rsquo;s hands, and for some seconds they
+      lay as if paralyzed on the table before him, white and cold, with livid
+      circles round the wrists. The man&rsquo;s face was deadly pale, and wet with
+      perspiration. He put out a trembling hand to the glass of brandy-and-water
+      that stood beside him; the class rattled against his teeth as he drained
+      all the contents at a gulp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall hear from me,&rdquo; he grumbled, and, with an inarticulate muttering
+      of threats he made his way, stumbling and catching at chairs, to the door.
+      When he had got outside, he leaned against the wall, like a drunken man,
+      and then shambled across the landing into a reading-room. It was empty,
+      and Cranley fell into a large easy-chair, where he lay crumpled up, rather
+      than sat, for perhaps ten minutes, holding his hand against his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They talk about having the courage of one&rsquo;s opinions. Confound it! Why
+      haven&rsquo;t I the nerve for my character? Hang this heart of mine! Will it
+      never stop thumping?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat up and looked about him, then rose and walked toward the table; but
+      his head began to swim, and his eyes to darken; so he fell back again in
+      his seat, feeling drowsy and beaten. Mechanically he began to move the
+      hand that hung over the arm of his low chair, and it encountered a
+      newspaper which had fallen on the floor. He lifted it automatically and
+      without thought: it was the <i>Times</i>. Perhaps to try his eyes, and see
+      if they served him again after his collapse, he ran them down the columns
+      of the advertisements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly something caught his attention; his whole lax figure grew braced
+      again as he read a passage steadily through more than twice or thrice.
+      When he had quite mastered this, he threw down the paper and gave a low
+      whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the old boy&rsquo;s dead,&rdquo; he reflected; &ldquo;and that drunken tattooed ass and
+      his daughter are to come in for the money and the mines! They&rsquo;ll be clever
+      that find him, and I shan&rsquo;t give them his address! What luck some men
+      have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he fell into deep thought, his brows and lips working eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it,&rdquo; he said at last, cutting the advertisement out of the paper
+      with a penknife. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t often a man has a chance to <i>star</i> in this
+      game of existence. I&rsquo;ve lost all my own social Lives: one in that business
+      at Oxford, one in the row at Ali Musjid, and the third went&mdash;to-night.
+      But I&rsquo;ll <i>star</i>. Every sinner should desire a new Life,&rdquo; he added
+      with a sneer.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &ldquo;Starring&rdquo; is paying for a new &ldquo;Life&rdquo; at Pool.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He rose, steady enough now, walked to the door, paused and listened, heard
+      the excited voices in the card-room still discussing him, slunk
+      down-stairs, took his hat and greatcoat, and swaggered past the porter.
+      Mechanically he felt in his pocket, as he went out of the porch, for his
+      cigarette-case; and he paused at the little fount of fire at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was thinking that he would never light a cigarette there again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he remembered, and swore. He had left his case on the table of
+      the card-room, where Barton had laid it down, and he had not the impudence
+      to send back for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Vile damnum!</i>&rdquo; he muttered (for he had enjoyed a classical
+      education), and so disappeared in the frosty night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.&mdash;In the Snow.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The foul and foggy night of early February was descending, some weeks
+      after the scene in the Cockpit, on the river and the town. Night was
+      falling from the heavens; or rather, night seemed to be rising from the
+      earth&mdash;steamed up, black, from the dingy trampled snow of the
+      streets, and from the vapors that swam above the squalid houses. There was
+      coal-smoke and a taste of lucifer matches in the air. In the previous
+      night there had been such a storm as London seldom sees; the powdery,
+      flying snow had been blown for many hours before a tyrannous northeast
+      gale, and had settled down, like dust in a neglected chamber, over every
+      surface of the city. Drifts and &ldquo;snow-wreathes,&rdquo; as northern folk say,
+      were lying in exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they lie
+      when sheep are &ldquo;smoored&rdquo; on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in the
+      desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her cold
+      winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off a heavy
+      white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The pavements
+      were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and molten ice.
+      Above the round glass or iron coverings of coal-cellars the
+      foot-passengers slipped, &ldquo;ricked&rdquo; their backs, and swore as they stumbled,
+      if they did not actually fall down, in the filth. Those who were in haste,
+      and could afford it, travelled, at fancy prices, in hansoms with two
+      horses driven tandem. The snow still lay comparatively white on the
+      surface of the less-frequented thoroughfares, with straight shining black
+      marks where wheels had cut their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At intervals in the day the fog had fallen blacker than night. Down by the
+      waterside the roads were deep in a mixture of a weak gray-brown or coffee
+      color. Beside one of the bridges in Chelsea, an open slope leads straight
+      to the stream, and here, in the afternoon&mdash;for a late start was made&mdash;the
+      carts of the Vestry had been led, and loads of slush that had choked up
+      the streets in the more fashionable parts of the town had been unladen
+      into the river. This may not be the most; scientific of sanitary modes of
+      clearing the streets and squares, but it was the way that recommended
+      itself to the wisdom of the Contractor. In the early evening the fog had
+      lightened a little, but it fell sadly again, and grew so thick that the
+      bridge was lost in mist half-way across the river, like the arches of that
+      fatal bridge beheld by Mirza in his Vision. The masts of the vessels
+      moored on the near bank disappeared from view, and only a red lamp or two
+      shone against the blackness of the hulks. From the public-house at the
+      corner&mdash;the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;streamed a fan-shaped flood of
+      light, soon choked by the fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the muddy twilight of a street that runs at right angles to the
+      river, a cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was faintly
+      visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view.
+      This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with
+      much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and
+      with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of the
+      horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men jumped down, and fumbled at the iron pins which kept the
+      backboard of the cart in its place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blarmme, Bill,&rdquo; he grumbled, &ldquo;if the blessed pins ain&rsquo;t froze.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward, and
+      smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood at
+      the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t budge,&rdquo; he cried at last. &ldquo;Just run into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>
+      at the corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o&rsquo; hot
+      beer when ye&rsquo;re at it. Here&rsquo;s fourpence. I was with three that found a
+      quid in the <i>Mac</i>,* end of last week; here&rsquo;s the last of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A quid in the <i>Mac</i>&mdash;a sovereign in the street-scrapings.
+     called <i>Mac</i> from Macadam, and employed as mortar in
+     building eligible freehold tenements.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
+      scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the &ldquo;nimble fourpence&rdquo;
+       have the monopoly of agility?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don&rsquo;t yer know,&rdquo; said Bill, with regretful
+      sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
+      badge of avowed and total abstinence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I&rsquo;ll bring the bloomin&rsquo;
+      hammer myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
+      protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
+      warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
+      public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, which he
+      then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to his body
+      under his armpit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little hot beer would do yer bloomin&rsquo; temper a deal more good than ten
+      yards o&rsquo; blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin&rsquo;s more in <i>my</i> line,&rdquo;
+       observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his refreshment. Aid
+      with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of their sockets, and
+      let down the backboard of the cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the cart was
+      tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow shore-water,
+      partly on to the edge of the slope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ullo!&rdquo; cried Tommy suddenly. &ldquo;E&rsquo;re&rsquo;s an old coat-sleeve a sticking out o&rsquo;
+      the snow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Alves!&rdquo; exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Alves! of course, &lsquo;alves. Ain&rsquo;t we on the same lay,&rdquo; replied the
+      chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, &ldquo;Lord preserve us, mate; <i>there&rsquo;s a
+      cove in the coat!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
+      stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have thought
+      at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and skin was
+      the arm he grasped within it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; asked Bill, leaving the horses&rsquo; heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead! he&rsquo;s bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the dickens
+      did he get into the cart? Guess we didn&rsquo;t shovel him in, eh; we&rsquo;d have
+      seen him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow heap.
+      A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, and two
+      broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping ruefully, were
+      all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy swathes and
+      folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once been a tall man. The
+      peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of iron-gray hair, and a
+      grizzled beard hung over the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A wretched woman
+      in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the bridge, and shivered
+      beside the body for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a goner,&rdquo; was her criticism. &ldquo;I wish <i>I</i> was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking on her
+      unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from nowhere, and
+      were standing in a tight ring round the body. The behavior of the people
+      was typical of London gazers. No one made any remark, or offered any
+      suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes and souls, absorbed in
+      the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They were helpless, idealess,
+      interested and unconcerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run and fetch a peeler, Bill,&rdquo; said Tommy at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peeler be hanged! Bloomin&rsquo; likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sulky devil you are,&rdquo; answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder mood;
+      whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of Temperance.
+      It is true that he had only been &ldquo;Blue Ribbon&rdquo; since the end of his
+      Christmas bout&mdash;that is, for nearly a fortnight&mdash;and Virtue, a
+      precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable in her new lodgings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into night The
+      crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and it might truly
+      be said that &ldquo;the more part knew not wherefore they had come together.&rdquo;
+       The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure, otherwise the ring
+      would have been swaying this way and that. Neither was it a dispute
+      between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of angry repartees. It
+      might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a lost child. So the outer
+      circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited, and patiently endured till
+      the moment of revelation should arrive. Respectable people who passed only
+      glanced at the gathering; respectable people may wonder, but they never do
+      find out the mystery within a London crowd. On the extreme fringe of the
+      mob were some amateurs who had just been drinking in the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+      They were noisy, curious, and impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning, had
+      brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead man
+      was found in the cart-load of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the officers
+      stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where the dead
+      face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, it&rsquo;s old Dicky Shields!&rdquo; cried a voice in the crowd, as the peaked
+      still features were lighted up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived, after
+      the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed into the
+      warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know him, do you?&rdquo; asked the policeman with the lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know him, rather! Didn&rsquo;t I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed
+      this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at tattooing,
+      bless you: he&rsquo;d tattooed himself all over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm,
+      the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, he was in the <i>Hit or Miss</i>,&rdquo; the speaker went on, &ldquo;no later
+      nor last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot beats me,&rdquo; said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light
+      corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, &ldquo;Wot beats me is
+      how he got in this here cart of ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s light enough surely,&rdquo; added Tommy; &ldquo;but I warrant <i>we</i> didn&rsquo;t
+      chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you put up at night?&rdquo; asked one of the policemen suddenly. He
+      had been ruminating on the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the yard there, behind that there hoarding,&rdquo; answered Tommy, pointing
+      to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the public-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters of
+      damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste ground.
+      The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled down,
+      probably as condemned &ldquo;slums,&rdquo; in some moment of reform, when people had
+      nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all the
+      latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when something
+      else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain sheds, with
+      roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of lumber-room for
+      the parish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the scavengers&rsquo; carts were housed in the sheds, or outside
+      the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the
+      horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was this cart o&rsquo; yours under the sheds all night or in the open?&rdquo; asked
+      the policeman, with an air of penetration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just outside the shed, worn&rsquo;t it, Bill?&rdquo; replied Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the cart was outside,&rdquo; said the policeman, &ldquo;then the thing&rsquo;s plain
+      enough. You started from there, didn&rsquo;t you, with the cart in the
+      afternoon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; answered Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there was a little sprinkle o&rsquo; snow in the cart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May be there wos. I don&rsquo;t remember one way or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you <i>must</i> be a stupid if you don&rsquo;t see that this here cove,&rdquo;
+       pointing to the dead man, &ldquo;got drinking too much last night, lost hisself,
+      and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the cart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snow do make a fellow bloomin&rsquo; sleepy,&rdquo; one of the crowd assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body
+      when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He&rsquo;s light
+      enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you started?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand,&rdquo;
+       grunted Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, it&rsquo;s as plain as&mdash;as the nose on your face,&rdquo; said the
+      policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, Bobby!&rdquo; cried one of the crowd. &ldquo;They should make you an
+      inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his
+      shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment,
+      and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher
+      which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead man,
+      and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way
+      northward to the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys
+      and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their eyes
+      within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half an hour or so, and at
+      last seemed to evaporate into the fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time Tommy and his mate had unharnessed their horses and taken
+      them to stable, the cart was housed (beneath the sheds this time), and
+      Bill had so far succumbed to the genial influences of the occasion as to
+      tear off his blue badge and follow Tommy into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few chance acquaintances, hospitable and curious, accompanied them,
+      intent on providing with refreshments and plying with questions the heroes
+      of so remarkable an adventure. It is true that they already knew all Tommy
+      and Bill had to tell; but there is a pleasure, in moments of emotional
+      agitation, in repeating at intervals the same questions, and making over
+      and again the same profound remarks. The charm of these performances was
+      sure to be particularly keen within the very walls where the dead man had
+      probably taken his last convivial glass, and where some light was certain
+      to be thrown, by the landlady or her customers, on the habits and history
+      of poor Dicky Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.&mdash;An Academic Pothouse.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Hit or Miss</i> tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least)
+      who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the
+      river&rsquo;s brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the
+      picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the
+      architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a
+      romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have
+      seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The <i>Hit
+      or Miss</i> was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its
+      fortunes. Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a
+      person as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, in the University
+      of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this
+      arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with
+      &ldquo;mine host&rdquo; of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, and found him to be by no means the
+      rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland
+      should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like the <i>Hit or Miss</i>,
+      was only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals,
+      restorations, experiments&mdash;an age of dukes who are Socialists&mdash;an
+      age which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end
+      tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway&mdash;need not wonder
+      at Maitland&rsquo;s eccentric choice in philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy at a
+      public school, where he was known as a &ldquo;sap,&rdquo; or assiduous student, and
+      was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and rowing.
+      At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less unpopular.
+      His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien&rsquo;s, where his
+      services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a great desire
+      to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity, and to improve
+      humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life and duty had been
+      urged on him by his college &ldquo;coach,&rdquo; philosopher, and friend, Mr. Joseph
+      Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had made Maitland leave
+      his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St. Gatien&rsquo;s and betake
+      himself to practical philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tell me you don&rsquo;t see much in life,&rdquo; Bielby had said. &ldquo;Throw yourself
+      into the life of others, who have not much to live on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He
+      once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had his
+      own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the
+      citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from
+      the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John&rsquo;s, Baliol, and Wadham
+      Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of having
+      three &ldquo;devils,&rdquo; or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters of the
+      town between five and six o&rsquo;clock every morning, that the artisans might
+      be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Maitland&rsquo;s schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby
+      urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in town.
+      He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a Palace
+      of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing this
+      ingenious idea in the columns of the <i>Daily Trumpet</i>, Maitland looked
+      out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy notion of
+      taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was acted upon at
+      the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own bar-room he
+      could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least sophisticated
+      aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and adulterated stuff
+      He would raise the tone of his customers, while he would insensibly gain
+      some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake off the prig (which he
+      knew to be a strong element in his nature), and would, at the same time,
+      encourage temperance by providing good malt liquor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire a
+      tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when
+      æstheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while
+      philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in,
+      like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the old
+      leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of
+      &ldquo;impressions&rdquo; and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling
+      against this &ldquo;side,&rdquo; as he called it, of his &ldquo;culture,&rdquo; and in his hours
+      of reaction he was all for steam tramways, &ldquo;devils,&rdquo; and Kindergartens
+      standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old
+      innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of
+      those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease
+      of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his opportunity.
+      The <i>Hit or Miss</i> was as attractive to an artistic as most
+      public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the
+      bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled
+      old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near
+      the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that way:
+      the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished, till at
+      last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces, and a
+      dust-yard round it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so
+high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the
+attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls
+were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering
+projecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by huge
+wooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by a
+low-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. At
+one corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:
+
+     &ldquo;Jack&rsquo;s Bridge House.
+     &ldquo;<i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;Luck&rsquo;s All.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way, over
+      which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the plaster)
+      lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building. From this
+      door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house kept for its
+      intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled roofs and dormer
+      windows than that which faced the street. The passage led down to a slum,
+      and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty space and the
+      dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left beneath the
+      sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within, the <i>Hit or Miss</i> looked cosey enough to persons entering out
+      of the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide
+      old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle. On
+      these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place
+      themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within a
+      room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber by
+      itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained admittance
+      to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear, now and
+      then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere presence, and
+      without in the least intending it, an Early Closing Movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed landlady,
+      or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the finding of
+      poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been. Again and again
+      the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more began to take the
+      place of assertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; asked one of the men, &ldquo;how old Dicky got the money for a
+      boose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money, ay, and the chance,&rdquo; said another. &ldquo;That daughter of his&mdash;a
+      nice-looking girl she is&mdash;kept poor Dicky pretty tight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t let him get&mdash;&rdquo; the epigrammatist of the company was just
+      beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter
+      burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t let him <i>get</i> tight, you was a-goin&rsquo; to say, Tommy,&rdquo; howled
+      three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping of
+      thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like crackers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dicky &lsquo;ad been &lsquo;avin&rsquo; bad times for long,&rdquo; the first speaker went on. &ldquo;I
+      guess he &lsquo;ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for
+      tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful
+      forever about here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or else
+      he was clean sold out, and hadn&rsquo;t no capital to renew his stock of hairy
+      cats and young parrots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky&rsquo;s shop, had got to look
+      real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the
+      long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that &lsquo;ere shiny old
+      rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t&rsquo;other
+      deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o&rsquo; a drain, let
+      alone a booze, beats me, it does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the
+      conversation, &ldquo;why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A
+      most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to
+      meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used to do
+      him a turn of his trade&mdash;tattooing him, like. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m doing him to
+      pattern, mum,&rsquo; Dicky sez, sez he: &lsquo;a <i>facsimile</i> o&rsquo; myself, mum.&rsquo; It
+      wasn&rsquo;t much they drank neither&mdash;just a couple of pints; for sez the
+      sailor gentleman, he sez, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m afeared, mum, our friend here can&rsquo;t carry
+      much even of <i>your</i> capital stuff. We must excuse&rsquo; sez he, &lsquo;the
+      failings of an artis&rsquo;; but I doesn&rsquo;t want his hand to shake or slip when
+      he&rsquo;s a doin&rsquo; <i>me</i>,&rsquo; sez he. &lsquo;Might > spile the pattern,&rsquo; he sez,
+      &lsquo;also hurt&rsquo; And I wouldn&rsquo;t have served old Dicky with more than was good
+      for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn&rsquo;t I promised that poor
+      daughter of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school&mdash;years ago
+      now&mdash;I promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of&mdash;A
+      hangel, if here isn&rsquo;t Mr. Maitland his very self!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord,
+      the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one&mdash;some
+      with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness&mdash;they
+      shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland&rsquo;s appearance had
+      produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Gullick,&rdquo; said poor Maitland, ruefully, &ldquo;I came here for a
+      chat with our friends&mdash;a little social relaxation&mdash;on economic
+      questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, they&rsquo;re a rough lot, and don&rsquo;t think themselves company for the
+      likes of you. But,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly&mdash;with the delight of
+      the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale&mdash;&ldquo;you &lsquo;ve heard this
+      hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to
+      ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland,
+      growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to <i>herself</i>, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what about her father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone, sir&mdash;gone! In a cartload o&rsquo; snow, this very evening, he was
+      found, just outside o* this very door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a cartload of snow!&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;Do you mean that he went away in
+      it, or that he was found in it dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this very
+      house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I do
+      assure you. He had been steady&mdash;oh, steady for weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to a
+      certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some
+      relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known
+      old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopeless
+      <i>mauvais sujet</i>. But Dicky&rsquo;s daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy
+      flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer
+      transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having
+      her educated there, and after she was educated&mdash;why, then, Maitland
+      had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of
+      their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle; not that
+      he objected&mdash;on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his views in
+      writing. There were times&mdash;there had lately, above all, been times&mdash;when
+      Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in this document
+      Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and pretty a girl
+      his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an obstacle; he was
+      no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man&rsquo;s way; he was nobody&rsquo;s
+      enemy now, not even his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a sensation
+      rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland&rsquo;s consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me everything you know of this wretched business,&rdquo; he said, rising
+      and closing the door which led into the outer room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know that
+      Dicky had found a friend lately&mdash;an old shipmate, or petty-officer,
+      he called him&mdash;a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a
+      merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at sea,
+      and he&rsquo;d bring him here &lsquo;to yarn with him,&rsquo; he said, once or twice it
+      might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old
+      Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an
+      honest penny by his trade&mdash;a queer trade it was. Never more than a
+      pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most
+      considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought him
+      in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor comes
+      in, rubbing his eyes, and &lsquo;Good-night, mum,&rsquo; sez he. &lsquo;My friend&rsquo;s been
+      gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I&rsquo;ve been asleep by myself. If
+      you please, I&rsquo;ll just settle our little score. It&rsquo;s the last for a long
+      time, for I&rsquo;m bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward. Oh, mum, a
+      sailor&rsquo;s life!&rsquo; So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a gentleman,
+      and out he goes, and that&rsquo;s the last I ever see o&rsquo; poor Dicky Shields till
+      he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart, cold and stiff,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get <i>into</i>
+      the cart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s just what they&rsquo;ve been wondering at, though the cart was
+      handy and uncommon convenient for a man as &lsquo;ad too much, if &lsquo;ad he &lsquo;<i>ad</i>;
+      as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would not
+      intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and never
+      wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what&rsquo;s <i>that</i>?&rdquo; screamed Mrs. Gullick,
+      leaping to her feet in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst
+      open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a
+      cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick&rsquo;s bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if ever I &lsquo;<i>ad</i> a fright!&rdquo; that worthy lady exclaimed, turning
+      toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little
+      animal in an affectionate clasp. &ldquo;Well, if <i>ever</i> there was such a
+      child as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you <i>now</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mother,&rdquo; cried the bear, &ldquo;I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the
+      roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was &lsquo;arf awake, I was that horful
+      frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you just go up-stairs again&mdash;and here&rsquo;s a sweet-cake for you&mdash;and
+      you take this night-light,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, producing the articles she
+      mentioned, &ldquo;and put it in the basin careful, and knock on the floor with
+      the poker if you want me. If it wasn&rsquo;t for that bearskin Mr. Toopny was
+      kind enough to let you keep, you&rsquo;d get your death o&rsquo; cold, you would,
+      running about in the night. And look &lsquo;ere, Lizer,&rdquo; she added, patting the
+      child affectionately on the shoulder, &ldquo;do get that there Bird out o&rsquo; your
+      head. It&rsquo;s just nothing but indigestion comes o&rsquo; you and the other
+      children&mdash;himps they may well call you, and himps I&rsquo;m sure you are&mdash;always
+      wasting your screws on pasty and lemonade and raspberry vinegar.
+      Just-nothing but indigestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace,
+      about Mrs. Gullick&rsquo;s neck; and then, without lavishing attention on
+      Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure, sir, I ask your pardon,&rdquo; exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; &ldquo;but
+      Lizer&rsquo;s far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or
+      else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has
+      been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man, and
+      all of them at the <i>Hilarity</i>, you can&rsquo;t <i>think</i>, sir,&rdquo; said
+      Mrs. Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland&rsquo;s general
+      capacity for abstract speculation. &ldquo;A regular little genius that child is,
+      though I says it as shouldn&rsquo;t. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father,
+      sir.&rdquo; And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but, like
+      too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial enjoyment.
+      Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had appointed Mrs.
+      Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after his property when
+      he became landlord of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more than
+      four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a little
+      late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with the jug,
+      he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing didn&rsquo;t
+      drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would &lsquo;a died
+      laughing, and him so thirsty, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the knap?&rdquo; said Maitland, who imagined that &ldquo;the knap&rdquo; must be some
+      malady incident to childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, it&rsquo;s when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know,
+      and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise of a
+      box on the ear: that&rsquo;s what we call &lsquo;taking the knap&rsquo; in the profession.
+      And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all&mdash;Lizer was that
+      clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp at the <i>Hilarity</i>
+      pantermime; and they&rsquo;re that good to her, they let her bring her bearskin
+      home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the Little Bear in &lsquo;The
+      Three Bears,&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle
+      Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned
+      paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude of
+      Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on the
+      traditional narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was the child saying about a big Bird?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What was it
+      that frightened her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something
+      hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things
+      in pantermimes might put notions in a child&rsquo;s head. But when she came home
+      last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and swore she
+      had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim over the
+      street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she flies,
+      screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to get her to
+      sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre pantermime
+      bearskin, that fits her like another skin&mdash;and she&rsquo;ll be too big for
+      it next year&mdash;just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That&rsquo;s all
+      about it, sir. She&rsquo;ll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;and, as I am
+      passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl.
+      Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields,
+      you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about her
+      father&rsquo;s death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it
+      happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; &ldquo;and being safe away at
+      school, sir, we&rsquo;ll hope she won&rsquo;t be told no more than she needn&rsquo;t know
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was
+      filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the raw
+      darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed at no
+      great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen
+      comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood reading
+      his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and there to
+      save threepence,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     &ldquo;Tiverton.
+     &ldquo;I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do
+     not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.
+     Break news.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to
+      construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous badness
+      of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the paper when
+      we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need for
+      haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was buying stamps, and,
+      finishing his bargain before the despatch was stamped and delivered, went
+      out into the fog, and was no more seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.&mdash;Miss Marlett&rsquo;s.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Girls&rsquo; schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you chance
+      to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold. Their noses
+      (however charming these features may become in a year or two, or even may
+      be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty temperature in the long
+      dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of the fair pupils are apt to
+      seem larger than common, inclined to blue in color, and, generally, are
+      suggestive of inadequate circulation. À tendency to get as near the fire
+      as possible (to come within the frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden),
+      and to cower beneath shawls, is also characteristic of joyous girlhood&mdash;school-girlhood,
+      that is. In fact, one thinks of a girls&rsquo; school as too frequently a spot
+      where no one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal
+      procession is not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there
+      is apt to be a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient
+      clothing, and general unsatisfied tedium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett&rsquo;s Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more
+      briefly known as &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,&rdquo; was no exception, on a
+      particularly cold February day&mdash;the day after Dicky Shields was found
+      dead&mdash;to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a
+      girls&rsquo; school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where &ldquo;the fires
+      wass coot,&rdquo; as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its lawn
+      sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little
+      distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch
+      pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s were not good on this February
+      morning. They never <i>were</i> good at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one
+      of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for
+      persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know what
+      they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which,
+      consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only
+      revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of
+      stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal
+      had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads
+      were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to be
+      urged along the heavy ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but
+      it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were
+      just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the
+      pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear,&rdquo; said one maiden&mdash;Janey Harman by name&mdash;whose blonde
+      complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien and
+      unbecoming hues, &ldquo;<i>why</i> won&rsquo;t that old Cat let us have fires to dress
+      by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and I cant get them clean,&rdquo; said Margaret, holding up two very
+      pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,
+     Are not my <i>hands</i> washed white?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies,&rdquo; came a voice, accompanied by
+      an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a
+      fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett,&rdquo; replied the maiden thus
+      rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;&lsquo;Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether
+      the best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as
+      if &ldquo;that Miss Shields&rdquo; was laughing at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Cat!&rdquo; the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. &ldquo;But no wonder my
+      hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it&rsquo;s my week to be
+      Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut
+      off some of the enemy&rsquo;s supplies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of
+      coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are something <i>like</i> a
+      stoker,&rdquo; exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing:
+      &ldquo;we shall have a blaze to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s school, by an unusual and
+      inconsistent concession to comfort and sanitary principles, the elder
+      girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter.
+      But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked, inasmuch
+      as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots, the girls
+      were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it could be found.
+      Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each other&rsquo;s fireplaces, and
+      concealed the coal in their pockets. But this conduct&mdash;resembling
+      what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands, that they &ldquo;eke out a
+      precarious livelihood by taking in each other&rsquo;s washing&rdquo;&mdash;led to
+      strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week (as the girl
+      appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to infringe a little
+      on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened,
+      Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore herself in her high
+      office as to extort the admiration of the very housemaids.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Even the ranks of Tusculum
+     Could scarce forbear to cheer,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      If we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields&rsquo;
+      favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was
+      mercifully unaware that not to detect the &ldquo;pinchbeck&rdquo; in the <i>Lays</i>
+      is the sign of a grovelling nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she was sent to Miss Marlett&rsquo;s, four years ere this date, Margaret
+      Shields&rsquo; instruction had been limited. &ldquo;The best thing that could be said
+      for it,&rdquo; as the old sporting prophet remarked of his own education, &ldquo;was
+      that it had been mainly eleemosynary.&rdquo; The Chelsea School Board fees could
+      but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields. But Robert Maitland, when
+      still young in philanthropy, had seen the clever, merry, brown-eyed child
+      at some school treat, or inspection, or other function; had covenanted in
+      some sort with her shiftless parent; had rescued the child from the
+      streets, and sent her as a pupil to Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. Like Mr. Day, the
+      accomplished author of &ldquo;Sandford and Merton,&rdquo; and creator of the immortal
+      Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had conceived the hope that he might have a
+      girl educated up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or
+      &ldquo;ready-made,&rdquo; a helpmate meet for him. He was, in a more or less formal
+      way, the guardian of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be expected (by
+      anyone who did not know human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland could &ldquo;please himself,&rdquo; as people say; that is, in his choice of
+      a partner he had no relations to please&mdash;no one but the elect young
+      lady, who, after all, might not be &ldquo;pleased&rdquo; with alacrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields was
+      extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates
+      (&ldquo;chamber-dekyns&rdquo; they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four
+      hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and
+      comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett&rsquo;s
+      shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This
+      young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy
+      glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight knot, and
+      with a smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful to her
+      lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a heroine,
+      &ldquo;were rather too large for regular beauty.&rdquo; She was perfectly ready to
+      face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her mistress) when
+      the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o&rsquo;clock exactly, and the drowsy
+      girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the wintry class-rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat
+      which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does
+      anyone remember&mdash;can anyone forget&mdash;how horribly distasteful a
+      slate can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold
+      educational formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy
+      slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for
+      some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. &ldquo;Tare an&rsquo; &lsquo;ouns, <i>I</i>
+      call it,&rdquo; whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a
+      &ldquo;course&rdquo; of Lever&rsquo;s Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory
+      progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging
+      herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso&rsquo;s engaging work which is
+      most palpitating with actuality:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink
+      twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire
+      laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles in
+      length, and four feet six in height?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret&rsquo;s mathematical
+      endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest girls
+      can be) she was playing at &ldquo;oughts and crosses&rdquo; with Janey Harman when the
+      arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly, beside Miss
+      Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and set himself
+      vigorously to elucidate (by &ldquo;the low cunning of algebra&rdquo;) the difficult
+      sum from Colenso.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, it is like <i>this</i>,&rdquo; he said, mumbling rapidly, and
+      scribbling a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to
+      follow with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite
+      dazed Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his
+      topic so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make
+      allowance for the benighted darkness of the learner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it&rsquo;s quite
+      simple,&rdquo; said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you; I <i>see</i>,&rdquo; said Margaret, with the kind readiness of
+      woman, who would profess to &ldquo;see&rdquo; the Secret of Hegel, or the inmost heart
+      of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of cover-point, or
+      the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon, rather than be
+      troubled with prolonged explanations, which the expositor, after all,
+      might find it inconvenient to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar&rsquo;s <i>forte</i>; and no young
+      lady in Miss Marlett&rsquo;s establishment was so hungry, or so glad when eight
+      o&rsquo;clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s was not a convivial meal. There was a long
+      narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, or <i>dais</i>,
+      being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals down the
+      table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter&mdash;of extremely thick
+      bread and surprisingly thin butter&mdash;each slice being divided into
+      four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether
+      this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at seven,
+      till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps, the
+      inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with confidence. But,
+      if girls do not always learn as much at school as could be desired,
+      intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every chance of
+      acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if familiarity
+      really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that Miss
+      Marlett&rsquo;s establishment was a <i>Dothegirls Hall</i>, nor a school much
+      more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has
+      still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than,
+      persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places; but boys
+      have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their breakfasts, which
+      would be considered horribly indelicate and insubordinate conduct in
+      girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Est ce que vous aimez les tartines à l&rsquo;Anglaise,&rdquo; said Janey Harman to
+      Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ce que j&rsquo;aime dans la tartine, c&rsquo;est la simplicité prime-sautière da sa
+      nature,&rdquo; answered Miss Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the charms of the &ldquo;matinal meal&rdquo; (as the author of &ldquo;Guy
+      Livingstone&rdquo; calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled to
+      talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptée, sont Françaises, dans cet
+      établissement peu recréatif,&rdquo; went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Je déteste le Français,&rdquo; Margaret answered, &ldquo;mais je le préfère
+      infiniment à l&rsquo;Allemand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comment accentuez, vous le mot préfère, Marguerite?&rdquo; asked Miss Marlett,
+      who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of conveying
+      instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, two accents&mdash;one this way, and the other that,&rdquo; answered
+      Margaret, caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct
+      terminology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vous allez perdre dix marks,&rdquo; remarked the schoolmistress, if
+      incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy to say,
+      off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for &ldquo;marks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voici les lettres qui arrivent,&rdquo; whispered Janey to Margaret, as the
+      post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it
+      with a key and withdrew the contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first sorted
+      out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and
+      unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other
+      letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could trust,
+      and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were regarded
+      with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman, whose letters
+      Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before delivering them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire,&rdquo; said poor Janey to her
+      friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at
+      stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about in
+      her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the edges.
+      Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the briefest
+      and most decorous manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Qui est votre correspondent?&rdquo; Margaret asked. We are not defending her
+      French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C&rsquo;est le pauvre Harry Wyville,&rdquo; answered Janey. &ldquo;Il est sous-lieutenant
+      dans les Berkshires à Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas écrire à moi, il
+      est comme on diroit, mon frère.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Est il votre parent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Non, pas du tout, mais je l&rsquo;ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans!
+      Voici, elle à deux dépêches télégraphiques,&rdquo; Janey added, observing two
+      orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant
+      Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeanne je veux vous parler à part, après, dans mon boudoir,&rdquo; remarked
+      Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched,
+      displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to one
+      by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who is
+      just like one&rsquo;s brother, is a trial to any girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which, as
+      Janey had noticed, included <i>two</i> telegraphic despatches in
+      orange-colored envelopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the
+      admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have done so,
+      but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils&rsquo; correspondence
+      before attending to her own. &ldquo;Business first, pleasure afterward,&rdquo; was the
+      motto of this admirable woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the
+      day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman,&rdquo; said the
+      schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so
+      unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious&mdash;unwonted
+      moods for this careless maiden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Janey, something must have happened,&rdquo; she whispered to her friend, who
+      was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something&rsquo;s <i>going</i> to happen, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; said poor Janey,
+      apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what Miss
+      Marlett, when she spoke French, called her &ldquo;boudoir.&rdquo; The girl felt colder
+      than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss Marietta
+      door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the low white
+      hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls was
+      standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins and
+      sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two
+      blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of the
+      ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray haze
+      was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and the
+      branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black holes
+      in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish plash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came
+      out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before
+      her, and her own unformed misgivings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t give me the letter. I&rsquo;m to have it when I go home for good; and
+      I&rsquo;m to go home for good at the holidays,&rdquo; whimpered Janey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Janey!&rdquo; said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret Shields, come here!&rdquo; cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice, from
+      the boudoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to the back music-room when she&rsquo;s done with you,&rdquo; the other girl
+      whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss Marlett&rsquo;s
+      chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Margaret!&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was
+      standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting
+      grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she
+      generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Margaret!&rdquo; she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the
+      school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could
+      scarcely speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it an accident?&rdquo; asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well what
+      was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no prophet to
+      foretell. &ldquo;Was it anything very dreadful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor Daisy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!&rdquo; the girl sobbed. Somehow she was
+      kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady&rsquo;s lap. &ldquo;I have been
+      horrid to you. I am so wretched!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret
+      Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college, with
+      a sad and hungry heart, trying to &ldquo;carry it off by her wild talk and her
+      wit.&rdquo; &ldquo;It was bitterness they mistook for frolic.&rdquo; She had known herself
+      to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with the other
+      girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret had not
+      gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than they knew;
+      she had been in the &ldquo;best set&rdquo; among the pupils, by dint of her cheery
+      rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and knew, too,
+      that she had been living, socially, in that little society at the expense
+      of this kind queer old Miss Marlett&rsquo;s feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been horrid to you,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;I wish I had never been born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl&rsquo;s
+      beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind me,&rdquo; at last Miss Marlett said. &ldquo;I never thought hardly of
+      you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you can
+      have any of the girls you like to help you to pack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which of
+      the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that it
+      was the other culprit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her
+      arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to
+      select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she
+      was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and
+      affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word <i>legibus</i>
+      (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension,
+      legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical
+      subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been
+      Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the
+      end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was honored as a
+      goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages. But now Miss
+      Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold
+      water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness
+      seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again and
+      again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this
+      chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the
+      traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey
+      was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to my room, Janey,&rdquo; she said, beckoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was
+      forbidden to the girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, well only get into another scrape,&rdquo; said Janey, ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, come away; I&rsquo;ve got leave for you. You&rsquo;re to help me to pack&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pack!&rdquo; cried Janey. &ldquo;Why, <i>you&rsquo;re</i> not expelled, are you? You&rsquo;ve
+      done nothing. You&rsquo;ve not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy
+      who is just like a brother to you and whom you&rsquo;ve known for years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
+      and intense curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they reached their room, where Margaret&rsquo;s portmanteau had already
+      been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for a
+      short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she sat
+      down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair &ldquo;had a
+      good cry,&rdquo; and comforted each other as well as they might.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are you going to do?&rdquo; asked Janey, when, as Homer says, &ldquo;they
+      had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no one else in all the world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna. Since
+      then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers, and we
+      were at Marseilles, and then in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a guardian, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he&rsquo;s been very kind, and done
+      everything for me; but he&rsquo;s quite a young man, not thirty, and he&rsquo;s so
+      stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like a
+      book. And he&rsquo;s so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because he
+      likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
+      lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?&rdquo;
+       Janey asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
+      been an officer in father&rsquo;s ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
+      sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t know any of your father&rsquo;s family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Margaret, wearily. &ldquo;Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
+      prayer-book.&rdquo; And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
+      silver clasps. &ldquo;This was a book my father gave me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It has a
+      name on it&mdash;my grandfather&rsquo;s, I suppose&mdash;&lsquo;Richard Johnson,
+      Linkheaton, 1837.&rsquo;&rdquo; Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling
+      cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother&rsquo;s father it may have belonged to,&rdquo; said Janey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you won&rsquo;t stay away long, dear,&rdquo; said Janey, affectionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>you</i> are going, too, you know,&rdquo; Margaret answered, without much
+      tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break down,
+      when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the snow-laden
+      drive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, here&rsquo;s some one coming!&rdquo; cried Janey, rushing to the window. &ldquo;Two
+      horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.&mdash;Flown.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maitland&rsquo;s reflections as, in performance of the promise he had
+      telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted. The
+      newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left
+      unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made that
+      they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering its
+      effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard Shields
+      affected Maitland&rsquo;s purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He had for
+      some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the girl was
+      concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had been dimly
+      aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a new, rather
+      painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady. Maitland, in
+      fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit for, and a sign
+      of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had greeted, some
+      weeks before, Barton&rsquo;s casual criticism on Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his
+      philanthropic entanglement&mdash;it was rather, he said to himself, an
+      entanglement than an engagement&mdash;had become irksome to his fancy. Now
+      that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the daughter
+      would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations in which they
+      stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men from seeing
+      this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy conceit. A
+      curious &ldquo;aloofness&rdquo; of nature permitted him to stand aside, and see
+      himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This disposition is
+      rare, and not a source of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, his future relations to Margaret formed a puzzle
+      inextricable. He could not at all imagine how he was to dispose of so
+      embarrassing a <i>protégée</i>. Margaret was becoming too much of a woman
+      to be left much longer at school; and where was she to be disposed of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might send her to Girton,&rdquo; he thought; and then, characteristically, he
+      began to weigh in his mind the comparative educational merits of Girton
+      and Somerville Hall. About one thing only was he certain: he must consult
+      his college mentor, Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, as soon as might be. Too long
+      had this Rasselas&mdash;occupied, like the famous Prince of Abyssinia,
+      with <i>the choice of life</i>&mdash;neglected to resort to his academic
+      Imlac. In the meantime he could only reflect that Margaret must remain as
+      a pupil at Miss Marlett&rsquo;s. The moment would soon be arriving when some
+      other home, and a chaperon instead of a school-mistress, must be found for
+      this peculiar object of philanthropy and outdoor relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was sorry he had not left town by the nine o&rsquo;clock train. The
+      early dusk began to gather, gray and damp; the train was late, having made
+      tardy progress through the half-melted snow. He had set out from
+      Paddington by the half-past ten express, and a glance at the harsh and
+      crabbed page of Bradshaw will prove to the most sceptical that Maitland
+      could not reach Tiverton much before six. Half frozen, and in anything but
+      a happy temper, he engaged a fly, and drove off, along heavy miserable
+      roads, to the Dovecot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arriving at the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment,
+      Maitland&rsquo;s cabman &ldquo;pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked&rdquo; for a
+      considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of Miss
+      Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected no visitors,
+      though Maitland knew that he ought to be expected. &ldquo;The bandogs bayed and
+      howled,&rdquo; as they did round the secret bower of the Lady of Brauksome; and
+      lights flitted about the windows. When a lantern at last came flickering
+      up to the gate, the bearer of it stopped to challenge an apparently
+      unlooked-for and unwelcome stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you? What do you want?&rdquo; said a female voice, in a strong Devonian
+      accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want Miss Marlett,&rdquo; answered Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was some hesitation. Then the porter appeared to reflect that a
+      burglar would not arrive in a cab, and that a surreptitious lover would
+      not ask for the schoolmistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portals were at length unbarred and lugged apart over the gravel, and
+      Maitland followed the cook (for she was no one less) and the candle up to
+      the front door. He gave his card, and was ushered into the chamber
+      reserved for interviews with parents and guardians. The drawing-room had
+      the air and faint smell of a room very seldom occupied. All the chairs
+      were so elegantly and cunningly constructed that they tilted up at
+      intervals, and threw out the unwary male who trusted himself to their
+      hospitality. Their backs were decorated with antimacassars wrought with
+      glass beads, and these, in the light of one dip, shone fitfully with a
+      frosty lustre. On the round table in the middle were volumes of &ldquo;The
+      Mothers of England,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Grandmothers of the Bible,&rdquo; Blair &ldquo;On the
+      Grave,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Epic of Hades,&rdquo; the latter copiously and appropriately
+      illustrated. In addition to these cheerful volumes there were large tomes
+      of lake and river scenery, with gilt edges and faded magenta bindings,
+      shrouded from the garish light of day in drab paper covers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The walls, of a very faint lilac tint, were hung with prize sketches, in
+      water colors or in pencil, by young ladies who had left. In the former
+      works of art, distant nature was represented as, on the whole, of a mauve
+      hue, while the foreground was mainly composed of burnt-umber rocks,
+      touched up with orange. The shadows in the pencil drawings had an
+      agreeably brilliant polish, like that which, when conferred on fenders by
+      Somebody&rsquo;s Patent Dome-Blacklead, &ldquo;increases the attractions of the
+      fireside,&rdquo; according to the advertisements. Maitland knew all the
+      blacklead caves, broad-hatted brigands, and pea-green trees. They were old
+      acquaintances, and as he fidgeted about the room he became very impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the door opened, and Miss Marlett appeared, rustling in silks,
+      very stiff, and with an air of extreme astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland?&rdquo; she said, in an interrogative tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you expect me? Didn&rsquo;t you get my telegram?&rdquo; asked Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to him that the storm might have injured the wires, that his
+      message might never have arrived, and that he might be obliged to explain
+      everything, and break his bad news in person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly. I got <i>both</i> your telegrams. But why have you come
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, to see Margaret Shields, of course, and consult you about her. But
+      what do you mean by <i>both</i> my telegrams?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett turned very pale, and sat down with unexpected suddenness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what will become of the poor girl?&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;and what will become
+      of <i>me</i>? It will get talked about. The parents will hear of it, and I
+      am ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate lady passed her handkerchief over her eyes, to the extreme
+      discomfiture of Maitland. He could not bear to see a woman cry; and that
+      Miss Marlett should cry&mdash;Miss Marlett, the least melting, as he had
+      fancied, of her sex&mdash;was a circumstance which entirely puzzled and
+      greatly disconcerted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent, looking at a flower in the pattern of the carpet, for
+      at least a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here to consult you, Miss Marlett, about what is to become of the
+      poor girl; but I do not see how the parents of the other young ladies are
+      concerned. Death is common to all; and Margaret&rsquo;s father, though his life
+      was exposed to criticism, cannot be fairly censured because he has left it
+      And what do you mean, please, by receiving <i>both</i> my telegrams? I
+      only #sent <i>one</i>, to the effect that I would leave town by the 10.30
+      train, and come straight to you. There must be some mistake somewhere. Can
+      I see Miss Shields?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See Miss Shields! Why, she&rsquo;s <i>gone!</i> She left this morning with your
+      friend,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, raising a face at once mournful and alarmed,
+      and looking straight at her visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s <i>gone!</i> She left this morning with my friend!&rdquo; repeated
+      Maitland. He felt like a man in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself, and
+      in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her
+      father&rsquo;s friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so
+      she went with <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow,&rdquo; cried Maitland;
+      &ldquo;and I sent no second telegram.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then who <i>did</i> send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both
+      telegrams,&rdquo; cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left
+      the room.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had
+time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had
+become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her
+from school at the very moment of her father&rsquo;s accidental death? And by
+what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from
+himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one?
+The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched
+telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to
+Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been
+mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might
+have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem,
+might
+
+     &ldquo;Have wrote it all by rote,
+     And never wrote it right.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the
+      recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse) had
+      gone off with &ldquo;his friend, Mr. Lithgow.&rdquo; Clearly, no amount of accident or
+      mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and the
+      disappearance of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly
+      blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature&mdash;as he
+      admitted, on the evidence of his old college tutor&mdash;that he was never
+      able to see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his
+      own interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command the
+      whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for people,
+      and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the right, and
+      everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more full-blooded
+      life, he would probably have lost his temper, and &ldquo;spoken his mind,&rdquo; as
+      the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should never have let
+      Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a telegram from the
+      girl&rsquo;s guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about finding
+      the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour. At last
+      she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch in her hand,
+      but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated young lady, in
+      whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have recognized Miss Janey
+      Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely bowed vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Miss Harman, whom I think you have seen on other occasions,&rdquo; said
+      Miss Marlett, trying to be calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland bowed again, and wondered more than ever. It did occur to him,
+      that the fewer people knew of so delicate a business the better for
+      Margaret&rsquo;s sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought Miss Harman here, Mr. Maitland, partly because she is Miss
+      Shields&rsquo; greatest friend&rdquo; (here Janey sobbed), &ldquo;but chiefly because she
+      can prove, to a certain extent, the truth of what I have told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never for a moment doubted it, Miss Marlett; but will you kindly let me
+      compare the two telegrams? This is a most extraordinary affair, and we
+      ought to lose no time in investigating it, and discovering its meaning.
+      You and I are responsible, you know, to ourselves, if unfortunately to no
+      one else, for Margaret&rsquo;s safety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t got the two telegrams!&rdquo; exclaimed poor Miss Marlett, who
+      could not live up to the stately tone of Maitland. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got them, or
+      rather, I only have one of them, and I have hunted everywhere, high and
+      low, for the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she offered Maitland a single dispatch, and the flimsy pink paper
+      fluttered in her shaking hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland took it up and read aloud:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Sent out at 7.45.    Received 7.51.
+     &ldquo;From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.
+     &ldquo;The Dovecot, Conisbeare,
+     &ldquo;Tiverton.
+     &ldquo;I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train.
+     Do not let Margaret see the newspaper.
+     Her father dead. Break news.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that is my own telegram!&rdquo; cried Maitland; &ldquo;but what have you done
+      with the other you said you received?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the very one I cannot find, though I had both on the escritoire
+      in my own room this morning. I cannot believe anyone would touch it. I did
+      not lock them away, not expecting to have any use for them; but I am quite
+      sure, the last time I saw them, they were lying there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is very extraordinary,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;You tell me, Miss Marlett,
+      that you received two telegrams from me. On the strength of the later of
+      the two you let your pupil go away with a person of whom you know nothing,
+      and then you have not even the telegram to show me. How long an interval
+      was there between the receipt of the two despatches?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got them both at once,&rdquo; said poor, trembling Miss Marlett, who felt the
+      weakness of her case. &ldquo;They were both sent up with the letters this
+      morning. Were they not, Miss Harman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Janey; &ldquo;I certainly saw two telegraphic envelopes lying among
+      your letters at breakfast. I mentioned it to&mdash;to poor Margaret,&rdquo; she
+      added, with a break in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why were the telegrams not delivered last night?&rdquo; Maitland asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have left orders,&rdquo; Miss Marlett answered, &ldquo;that only telegrams of
+      instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings,
+      and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about nothing
+      in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams <i>were</i> very
+      important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about them if
+      they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning. I have had a
+      great deal of annoyance and expense,&rdquo; the schoolmistress added, &ldquo;with
+      telegrams that had to be paid for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here most people who live at a distance from telegraph offices, and
+      are afflicted with careless friends whose touch on the wire is easy and
+      light, will perhaps sympathize with Miss Marlett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might at least have telegraphed back to ask me to confirm the
+      instructions, when you read the second despatch,&rdquo; said Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was beginning to take an argumentative interest in the strength of his
+      own case. It was certainly very strong, and the excuse for the
+      schoolmistress was weak in proportion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that would have been of no use, as it happens,&rdquo; Janey put in&mdash;an
+      unexpected and welcome ally to Miss Marlett&mdash;&ldquo;because you must have
+      left Paddington long before the question could have reached you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was unanswerable, as a matter of fact; and Miss Marlett could not
+      repress a grateful glance in the direction of her wayward pupil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Maitland, &ldquo;it is all very provoking, and very serious. Can
+      you remember at all how the second message ran, Miss Marlett?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I know it off by heart; it was directed exactly like that in your
+      hand, and was dated half an hour later. It ran: &lsquo;Plans altered. Margaret
+      required in town. My friend and her father&rsquo;s, Mr. Lithgow, will call for
+      her soon after mid-day. I noticed there were just twenty words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you also notice the office from which the message was sent out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, shaking her head with an effort at recollection.
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I did not notice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is very unfortunate,&rdquo; said Maitland, walking vaguely up and down the
+      room. &ldquo;Do you think the telegram is absolutely lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have looked everywhere, and asked all the maids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you see it last, for certain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make
+      sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he
+      seemed very cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which he
+      probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know
+      anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had&mdash;&rdquo;
+       muttered Maitland to himself. &ldquo;She has never been in any place, Miss
+      Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man&rsquo;s
+      acquaintance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage it,
+      Mr. Maitland,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am <i>sure</i> Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have
+      such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken me
+      in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy; she had
+      been crying. I said, &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he must have
+      come for you.&rsquo; Then she looked out and said, &lsquo;It is not my guardian; it is
+      the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind of a man was he to look at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black
+      mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he was
+      not a young man. He was a gentleman,&rdquo; said Janey, who flattered herself
+      that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that grand old
+      name&mdash;when she saw them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you know him again if you met him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere,&rdquo; said Janey; &ldquo;and I would know his voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wore mourning,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett, &ldquo;and he told me he had known
+      Margaret&rsquo;s father. I heard him say a few words to her, in a very kind way,
+      about him. That seemed more comfort to Margaret than anything. &lsquo;He did not
+      suffer at all, my dear,&rsquo; he said. He spoke to her in that way, as an older
+      man might.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how on earth could <i>he</i> know?&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;No one was
+      present when her poor father died. His body was found in a&mdash;,&rdquo; and
+      Maitland paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for
+      adding to the public information about the circumstances of Mr. Shields&rsquo;
+      decease. &ldquo;He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of
+      the great storm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and
+      fatigue is as painless as sleep,&rdquo; said Miss Marlett with some tact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that is what the man must have meant,&rdquo; Maitland answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered,
+      trying to think over any circumstance which might lend a clew in the
+      search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he said &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; after making the superfluous remark that it
+      would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or
+      unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred, for
+      excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she had
+      taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it; and
+      when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea), a kind
+      of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the
+      schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly)
+      that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother
+      was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts of
+      contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had
+      distinguished himself, and if it did end &ldquo;Yours affectionately,&rdquo; there was
+      nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things considered. So
+      the fair owner of the letter received it into her own keeping, only she
+      was &ldquo;never to do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret&rsquo;s
+      inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient
+      sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of her
+      own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable
+      estimate of her pupil&rsquo;s discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which was
+      an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never doubted
+      that, on the death of Miss Shields&rsquo; father, she had been removed by one of
+      her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pass the night at
+      Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest reason for
+      anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend and protector, and
+      who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or conspiracy. Nothing more
+      practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s occurred to
+      his perplexed imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.&mdash;At St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such
+      inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients. He
+      was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based his
+      conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these
+      &ldquo;authorities.&rdquo; For example, he first went in search of the man who had
+      driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the
+      Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who plied
+      at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he had
+      driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady was
+      ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took the
+      up-train. That was all <i>he</i> knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were
+      asked, was &ldquo;a scaly varmint.&rdquo; On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide
+      moral generalization was based on the limited <i>pour-boire</i> which Mr.
+      Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
+      Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took away
+      with him on his return to town&mdash;not in the van, in the railway
+      carriage. &ldquo;What could he want with all that luggage?&rdquo; Maitland wondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which
+      conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official had
+      seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went on to
+      London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start for
+      Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as
+      Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in
+      novels, gentlemen often assume the <i>rôle</i> of the detective with
+      apparent relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too
+      scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and
+      station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered having
+      seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a young lady,
+      of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive description.
+      The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly constructed,
+      in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for all the
+      circumstances&mdash;a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular part of
+      the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur
+      coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone
+      together, one day, in a carriage marked &ldquo;Engaged.&rdquo; Next day, another
+      gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same route,
+      asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat (bearskin,
+      it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady. Clearly, the
+      pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer represented the
+      less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the Family. All the
+      romance and all the popular interest were manifestly on the other side,
+      not on Maitland&rsquo;s side. Even his tips were received without enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the time
+      nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he met that
+      he was really the young lady&rsquo;s guardian, and that the gentleman in the fur
+      coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a miscreant, he
+      would not have been believed. His opinion would, not unjustly, have been
+      looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls &ldquo;the personal
+      bias.&rdquo; He had therefore to put up with general distrust and brief
+      discourteous replies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There they
+      gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs&mdash;Doto, Proto, Doris, and
+      Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be instructed.
+      But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative, pretending that their
+      attention was engaged in their hospitable duties. Soup it was their
+      business to minister to travellers, not private information. They <i>had</i>
+      seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to her he seemed. Yes, they
+      were on the best terms: &ldquo;very sweet on each other,&rdquo; one young lady
+      averred, and then secured her retreat and concealed her blushes by
+      ministering to the wants of a hungry and hurried public. All this was
+      horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had
+      telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering to
+      the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had
+      received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then, was
+      a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects of his
+      search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had been taken.
+      There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not descended.
+      Nobody had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be found at Paddington
+      of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman travelling alone with a
+      young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly nine o&rsquo;clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and
+      disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of
+      interrogating the porters&mdash;all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle
+      of passengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights, no
+      one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland described.
+      There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining all the
+      cab-drivers who had taken up passengers by the late trains the night
+      before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment, nor
+      perhaps by an amateur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland&rsquo;s time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at
+      Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to
+      Paddington, and, with brief enough space for investigations that yielded
+      nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His
+      whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, whom, in his
+      heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these
+      unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of
+      Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to
+      expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen
+      species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence
+      peaceful, if not well satisfied. &ldquo;Adventures are to the adventurous.&rdquo; It
+      is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
+      adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby&rsquo;s,
+      Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
+      enterprise, he never would have taken the <i>Hit or Miss</i> he never
+      would have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he
+      would not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated
+      old wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
+      Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
+      what had befallen Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the mystery
+      of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland&rsquo;s confidence
+      in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not been
+      responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was trying
+      to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not taken
+      Bielby&rsquo;s advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts, in
+      the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped into
+      a hansom, and said, &ldquo;Gatien&rsquo;s.&rdquo; Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the High
+      Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got out and
+      kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight) opened it
+      with rather a scared face:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horful row on in quad, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The young gentlemen &lsquo;as a bonfire
+      on, and they&rsquo;re a larking with the snow. Orful A they&rsquo;re a making, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
+      forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
+      garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a huge
+      Alp of snow against the door of the Master&rsquo;s lodge. Meanwhile, another
+      band had carried into the quad all the light tables and cane chairs from a
+      lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful pyramidal form, they
+      introduced some of the fire-lighters, called &ldquo;devils&rdquo; by the College
+      servants, and set a match to the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
+      like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work for
+      them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass of St
+      Ga-tien&rsquo;s seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough to waken the
+      dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a non-resident
+      Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was known at all, as a
+      &ldquo;Radical,&rdquo; with any number of decorative epithets, according to the taste
+      and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he could identify any of the
+      rioters, and he was not certain that they would not carry him to his room,
+      and there screw him up, according to precedent. Maitland had too much
+      sense of personal dignity to face the idea of owing his escape from his
+      chambers to the resources of civilization at the command of the college
+      blacksmith. He, therefore, after a moment of irresolution, stole off under
+      a low-browed old door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided
+      little quadrangle; for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle
+      should, in this least mathematical of universities, be quadrangular.
+      Groping and stumbling his familiar way up the darkest of spiral
+      staircases, Maitland missed his footing, and fell, with the whole weight
+      of his body, against the door at which he had meant to knock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
+      most conventional manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr. Bielby,
+      Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, sitting by his fireside, attired in a gray
+      shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had, on
+      taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success at
+      the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he threw
+      up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired life among
+      his &ldquo;brown Greek manuscripts.&rdquo; He was a man of the world, turned hermit,
+      and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known. He had &ldquo;coached&rdquo;
+       Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and remained his friend and
+      counsellor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you, Maitland?&rdquo; said the student, without rising. &ldquo;I thought,
+      from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
+      coming to &lsquo;draw me,&rsquo; as I think they call it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
+      likely to &ldquo;draw&rdquo; him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
+      old bear that &ldquo;dwells among bones and blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bielby&rsquo;s own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
+      mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
+      in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
+      beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had
+      belonged to famous students of old&mdash;Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus&mdash;and
+      before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new critical
+      edition of &ldquo;Demetrius of Scepsis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had
+      not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become
+      involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of
+      circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are making a terrible riot in quad,&rdquo; he said, answering the
+      other&rsquo;s remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; replied Bielby, genially; &ldquo;boys will be boys, and so will
+      young men. I believe our Torpid has bumped Keble, and the event is being
+      celebrated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There go some windows into their battels,&rdquo; said Mr. Bielby. &ldquo;They will
+      hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so
+      unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said Maitland, &ldquo;I rather want to ask your advice on an
+      important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long story,
+      that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed
+      gratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah-ha,&rdquo; replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. &ldquo;Happy to hear it
+      Indeed, I <i>had</i> heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say,
+      brought a hint of it&mdash;I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant
+      woman of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your
+      part, too, a little&mdash;if you will let me say so&mdash;is exactly what
+      you need. I congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the
+      young lady in Oxford? Where is she just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not
+      the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of
+      Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I wish I knew,&rdquo; said Maitland at last, beginning to find this
+      consulting of the oracle a little difficult. &ldquo;The fact is, that&rsquo;s just
+      what I wanted to consult you about. I&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve lost all
+      traces of the young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you mean?&rdquo; asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave,
+      while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. &ldquo;She has not eloped?
+      You don&rsquo;t mean to tell me she has run away from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know what to say,&rdquo; answered Maitland. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid she has
+      been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or conspiracy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You surely can&rsquo;t mean what you say&rdquo; (and now the voice was gruffer than
+      ever). &ldquo;People don&rsquo;t plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
+      probably they didn&rsquo;t! And who are the young lady&rsquo;s people? Why don&rsquo;t they
+      look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not a widow&mdash;she is an orphan,&rdquo; said Maitland, blushing
+      painfully. &ldquo;I am her guardian in a kind of way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I&rsquo;m sure I beg your
+      pardon, but did you tell me her name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her name is Shields&mdash;Margaret Shields&rdquo;&mdash;(&ldquo;Not the name I was
+      told,&rdquo; muttered Bielby)&mdash;&ldquo;and her father was a man who had been
+      rather unsuccessful in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was his profession, what did he do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had been a sailor, I think,&rdquo; said the academic philanthropist; &ldquo;but
+      when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
+      anything, a professional tattooer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
+      livelihood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
+      could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
+      level with the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Miss&mdash;h&rsquo;m, Spears&mdash;Shields? thank you; has she been an
+      orphan long?&rdquo; he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the
+      most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
+      been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter&rsquo;s character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only heard of his death yesterday,&rdquo; said Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it sudden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
+      was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
+      George&rsquo;s, Hanover Square.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;St. George&rsquo;s, Hanover Square, indeed!&rdquo; said the don, and once more he
+      relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. &ldquo;Maitland,&rdquo; he
+      said at last, &ldquo;how did you come to be acquainted with these people? The
+      father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can&rsquo;t, surely, have
+      met them in society?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came a good deal to &lsquo;my public-house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. I think
+      I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
+      tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something for
+      the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
+      determination in his tone. &ldquo;I am rather busy this evening. I think you had
+      better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever about
+      the matter to anyone. Good-night!&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
+      caused by Maitland&rsquo;s avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
+      himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
+      school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
+      try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
+      where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots, with a
+      feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was clearly
+      quite out of the path of Bielby&rsquo;s experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; thought Maitland, &ldquo;if I had not taken his advice about trying
+      to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
+      would have been in this hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
+      called food. &ldquo;He had eaten; he had not dined,&rdquo; to adopt the distinction of
+      Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
+      hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he
+      felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards, he could
+      find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of potted
+      shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian vintage
+      sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+      Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on philanthropic
+      business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left the
+      letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache, he tumbled
+      into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing during
+      the greater part of the night. About five o&rsquo;clock he fell into a sleep
+      full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the steam-whooper, or
+      &ldquo;devil,&rdquo; a sweet boon with which his philanthropy had helped to endow the
+      reluctant and even recalcitrant University of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian,&rdquo; Maitland
+      seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
+      Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
+      lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
+      thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
+      iteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.&mdash;After the Inquest.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland&rsquo;s scout called
+      him at half-past seven with the invariable question, &ldquo;Do you breakfast
+      out, sir?&rdquo; If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in
+      attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution
+      with, &ldquo;Do you breakfast out, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; &ldquo;in common room
+      as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o&rsquo;clock train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever, his
+      legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just
+      complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room, then
+      he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, he
+      covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets. Anywhere but
+      in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the bell and called his
+      servant; but in our conservative universities, and especially in so
+      reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally, no bell to ring.
+      Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his greatcoat, that he might
+      crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his scout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a
+      strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often
+      had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition of
+      his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so than
+      that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to blow in
+      quad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Trattles!&rdquo; cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his
+      ears. &ldquo;Mrs. Trattles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by
+      sniffs, from the other side of the door:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Dakyns, please,&rdquo; said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      feel very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dakyns appeared in due course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to hear you&rsquo;re ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn&rsquo;t I
+      better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger
+      generation, delighted to honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don&rsquo;t think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I&rsquo;ll be able
+      to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sir,&rdquo; answered Dakyns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with that fearless assumption of responsibility which always does an
+      Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr. Whalley
+      before he brought round Maitland&rsquo;s letters and his breakfast commons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance;
+      if any such had been addressed to him, they would necessarily be, as
+      Maitland remembered after his first feeling of disappointment, at his
+      rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had aught to communicate,
+      nor anyone else, could be expected to know that Mait-land&rsquo;s first act
+      would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast commons;
+      even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his
+      door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for him;
+      but he felt that, as an invalid once said, &ldquo;there was a pain somewhere in
+      the room,&rdquo; and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very bad feverish cold,&rdquo; was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call
+      again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the
+      quadrangle, where the men were snowballing a little, and, later, by the
+      scraping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow,
+      and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the time passed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its passage, and
+      each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach of the
+      very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland&rsquo;s illness
+      took a more severe form than Whalley had anticipated, and the lungs were
+      affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see him; but
+      Maitland talked so wildly about the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, about the man in
+      the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the hermit soon
+      withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of &ldquo;Demetrius of Scepsis.&rdquo;
+       He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real kindness; but the
+      old implicit trust never revived with Maitland&rsquo;s returning health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of
+      what had passed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there
+      was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in
+      Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brown,&rdquo; said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness
+      began, &ldquo;would you mind giving me my things? I&rsquo;ll try to dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare
+      slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms, by
+      a partition added to the large single room of old times), and moved into
+      the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent to the
+      post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can&rsquo;t howl yet for myself,&rdquo;
+       whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delighted to howl for you,&rdquo; said Brown, and presently the wires were
+      carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at once,
+      on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a reply: Barton
+      would be with Maitland by dinner-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and
+      even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were
+      drawn, and a monster of the deep&mdash;one of the famous Oxford soles,
+      larger than you ever see them elsewhere&mdash;smoked between Maitland and
+      Barton. Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of &ldquo;strong,&rdquo; a
+      reminiscence of &ldquo;the old coaching days,&rdquo; when Maitland had read with
+      Barton for Greats. The invalid&rsquo;s toast and water wore an air of modest
+      conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who relied
+      merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight The wing
+      of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton&rsquo;s lot) was
+      disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he did not
+      touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his thin,
+      white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for Barton
+      knew so much already, especially about the <i>Hit or Miss</i>; but when it
+      came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind of
+      prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to walk
+      about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak places;
+      and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down again, and
+      steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien&rsquo;s port.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the
+      finding of poor Dick Shields&rsquo; body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, &ldquo;Why,
+      you don&rsquo;t mean to say that was the man, the girl&rsquo;s father? By George, I
+      can tell you something about <i>him</i>! At the inquest my partner, old
+      Munby, made out&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,&rdquo;
+       said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance that
+      he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough of
+      late) to the death of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since
+      you were ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the <i>Times</i> since
+      the day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment But
+      his reading, so far, had been limited to the &ldquo;Agony Column&rdquo; of the
+      advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to all the
+      paragraphs headed &ldquo;Strange Occurrence&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mysterious Disappearance.&rdquo;
+       None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen anything about the inquest,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What verdict did
+      they bring in? The usual one, I suppose&mdash;&lsquo;Visitation,&rsquo; and all that
+      kind of thing, or &lsquo;Death from exposure while under the influence of
+      alcoholic stimulants.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what they made it,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t blame them;
+      for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other choice.
+      You can see what he said for yourself in the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton had been turning over the file of the <i>Times</i>, and showed
+      Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so
+      common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped,
+      with blanks for names and dates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A miserable end,&rdquo; said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph. &ldquo;And
+      now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by saying you
+      didn&rsquo;t &lsquo;blame&rsquo; the coroner&rsquo;s jury?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don&rsquo;t know that I should
+      tell you; it is too horrid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t keep anything from me, please,&rdquo; said Maitland, moving nervously. &ldquo;I
+      must know everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant horror&mdash;&ldquo;well,
+      your poor friend was <i>murdered!</i> That&rsquo;s what I meant when I said I
+      did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict than they
+      did on the evidence of my partner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new
+      thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a
+      meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of the
+      universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends on us,
+      when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from some lost
+      star, some wandering world that is Hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murdered!&rdquo; cried Maitland. &ldquo;Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on
+      earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was no
+      one&rsquo;s enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had
+      nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much&mdash;a
+      small sum&mdash;paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he
+      was&mdash;when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in
+      the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the same,
+      and that by a very cunning and cautious villain&mdash;a man, I should say,
+      of some education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could it possibly have been done? There&rsquo;s the evidence before you
+      in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the
+      circumstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more than
+      enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere sleeping
+      in the snow&mdash;it&rsquo;s well known to be fatal Why,&rdquo; said Maitland,
+      eagerly, &ldquo;in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had to send
+      back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite asleep, in a
+      snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton
+      had arrived at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can you possibly know better than the jury,&rdquo; urged Maitland
+      peevishly, &ldquo;and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district, who
+      were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural&mdash;that he got
+      drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure? Why,
+      you did not even hear the evidence. I can&rsquo;t make out,&rdquo; he went on, with
+      the querulousness of an invalid, &ldquo;why you should have come up just to talk
+      such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, it was not the coroner&rsquo;s business nor the jury&rsquo;s business,
+      to know better than the medical officer for the district, on whose
+      evidence they relied. But it is <i>my</i> business; for the said officer
+      is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very little.
+      He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow as ever let
+      a life slip out of his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if you knew so much, why didn&rsquo;t you keep him straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a wedding,
+      when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial examination of
+      the deceased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an
+      extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only
+      this printed evidence,&rdquo; said Maitland, waving a sheet of the <i>Times</i>,
+      &ldquo;to go by; and <i>this</i> is dead against you. You&rsquo;re too clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return to
+      town, the day after the inquest,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;and I found evidence
+      enough <i>for me</i>&mdash;never mind where&mdash;to put the matter beyond
+      the reach of doubt. The man was <i>murdered</i>, and murdered, as I said,
+      very deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant
+      scoundrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I don&rsquo;t see how you got a chance to make your examination,&rdquo; said
+      Maitland; &ldquo;the man would be buried as usual&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers&mdash;and there was no one to
+      claim <i>his</i>&mdash;are reserved, if needed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&mdash;don&rsquo;t go on,&rdquo; said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling
+      back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut &ldquo;It is all
+      the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine,&rdquo; he said, presently. &ldquo;In
+      my absence, and as nobody knew where I was, there was naturally no one to
+      claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take no trouble
+      or risk in a case like that.&rdquo; He was silent again for a few moments; then,
+      &ldquo;What do <i>you</i> make out to have been the cause of death?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Barton slowly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t much care to go into details which
+      you may say I can hardly prove, and I don&rsquo;t want to distress you in your
+      present state of health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect arsenic or
+      anything? He had been drinking with some one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing
+      that could be detected by the most skilled analysis. But, my dear fellow,
+      there are venoms that leave <i>no</i> internal trace. If I am right&mdash;and
+      I think I am&mdash;he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a great
+      traveller, had he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller also.
+      He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well
+      acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be more explicit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you must take it on my word, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of Barton,
+      and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his theory was no
+      morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion which, as he
+      said, he could no longer, prove&mdash;which was, indeed, now incapable of
+      any proof. No one had seen the commission of the crime, and the crime was
+      of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could not possibly be
+      otherwise brought home to the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Maitland, knowing the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, and the private room
+      up-stairs with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if
+      done at all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any
+      eye-witness of the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall you do?&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;or have you done anything in consequence
+      of your discovery? Have you been to the police?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It is
+      not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by analysis.
+      Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more
+      likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret motive&mdash;and
+      he must have had&mdash;he will act on that motive sooner or later. The
+      quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is safe, the
+      sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there may be a
+      chance of detecting him; but it&rsquo;s an outside chance. Do you know anything
+      of the dead man&rsquo;s past history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your
+      care. What do you mean to do about <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were now
+      so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
+      Things were bad before; now they are awful,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;<i>His
+      daughter has disappeared!</i> That was what I was coming to: that was the
+      rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew
+      what you tell me; now&mdash;great Heavens! what am I to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly
+      on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me all about it, old boy?&rdquo; asked Barton, at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very much interested, and most anxious to aid his unfortunate
+      friend. His presence, somehow, was full of help and comfort. Maitland no
+      longer felt alone and friendless, as he had done after his consultation of
+      Bielby. Thus encouraged, he told, as clearly and fully as possible, the
+      tale of the disappearance of Margaret, and of his entire failure even to
+      come upon her traces or those of her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have heard nothing since your illness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing to any purpose. What do you advise me to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing certain, to my mind,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;The seafaring
+      man with whom Shields was drinking on the last night of his life, and the
+      gentleman in the fur travelling-coat who sent the telegram in your name
+      and took away Margaret from Miss Marlett&rsquo;s, are in the same employment,
+      or, by George, are probably the same person. Now, have you any kind of
+      suspicion who they or he may be? or can you suggest any way of tracking
+      him or them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;my mind is a perfect blank on the subject. I never
+      heard of the sailor till the woman at the <i>Hit or Miss</i> mentioned
+      him, the night the body was found. And I never heard of a friend of
+      Shields&rsquo;, a friend who was a gentleman, till I went down to the school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then all we can do at present is, <i>not</i> to set the police at work&mdash;they
+      would only prevent the man from showing&mdash;but to find out whether
+      anyone answering to the description is &lsquo;wanted&rsquo; or is on their books, at
+      Scotland Yard. Why are we not in Paris, where a man, whatever his social
+      position might be, who was capable of that unusual form of crime, would
+      certainly have his <i>dossier</i>? They order these things better in
+      France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is just one thing about him, at least about the man who was
+      drinking with poor Shields on the night of his death. He was almost
+      certainly tattooed with some marks or other. Indeed, I remember Mrs.
+      Gullick&mdash;that&rsquo;s the landlady of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;saying
+      that Shields had been occupied in tattooing him. He did a good deal in
+      that way for sailors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;if any fellow understands tattooing, and the
+      class of jail-birds who practise it, I do. It is a clew after a fashion;
+      but, after all, many of them that go down to the sea in ships are
+      tattooed, even when they are decent fellows; and besides, we seldom, in
+      our stage of society, get a view of a fellow-creature with nothing on but
+      these early decorative designs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was only too obvious, and rather damping to Maitland, who for a
+      moment had been inclined to congratulate himself on his <i>flair</i> as a
+      detective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.&mdash;The Jaffa Oranges.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Letting <i>I dare not</i> wait upon <i>I would</i>.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most
+      embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali, in
+      the &ldquo;Arabian Nights.&rdquo; With his glass, it will be remembered, he could see
+      whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and, though
+      absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How often would
+      one give Aladdin&rsquo;s Lamp, and Fortunatus&rsquo; Purse, and the invisible Cap
+      which was made of &ldquo;a darkness that might be <i>felt</i>&rdquo; to possess for
+      one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they
+      were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would have
+      been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured. Yet there
+      was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they might have
+      expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would have shown.
+      Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor, indeed, in a den at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far off,
+      not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square, Pimlico, S.W.
+      There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the drawing-room
+      floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn down, Margaret
+      would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of witnesses, in the
+      form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she had for some time been
+      an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would have been seen to have
+      faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring had died out of her eyes.
+      The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were half-closed from sickness
+      and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so ready of speech, did not even
+      bestir herself to answer the question which a gentleman, who stood almost
+      like a doctor, in an attitude of respectful inquiry, was putting as to her
+      health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red,
+      sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door, in a
+      protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a
+      remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or
+      upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by
+      Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair
+      members of the less educated classes), &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t put up with none of them
+      goings on.&rdquo; Such an expression this woman wears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you feel better, my dear?&rdquo; the dark gentleman asks again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s going on well enough,&rdquo; interrupted the woman with the beautiful
+      dissatisfied face. &ldquo;What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and
+      tonics as you might bathe in&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She <i>ought</i> to get well,&rdquo; the dissatisfied woman continued, as if
+      the invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,&rdquo; said the dark
+      gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, &ldquo;but to the young lady whom I
+      have entrusted to your charge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty trust!&rdquo; the woman replied, with a sniff
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret, my
+      dear&mdash;&rsquo;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a trembling
+      lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very kind,&rdquo; answered the girl at last. &ldquo;I am sure I am better. I
+      am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and
+      grapes; may I send you some oranges?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or
+      rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, just
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor girl!&rdquo; said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. &ldquo;And what do you
+      dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,&rdquo; said the girl,
+      slowly, &ldquo;where I am; and something I feel&mdash;something, I don&rsquo;t know
+      what&mdash;drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find
+      myself on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness
+      falling in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till
+      I feel mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me,
+      and chasing me in the dark&mdash;some one I can&rsquo;t see. Then I slide into
+      the smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I <i>must</i> get away
+      from it. Oh, I don&rsquo;t know which is worst! And they go and come all the
+      while I&rsquo;m asleep, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all <i>I</i> can do is
+      to get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige
+      me, Mrs. Darling&rdquo; (he turned to the housekeeper), &ldquo;by placing them in Miss
+      Burnside&rsquo;s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she
+      wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the
+      street, where a hansom cab waited for him. &ldquo;Covent Garden,&rdquo; he cried to
+      the cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made
+      believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a
+      very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley, &ldquo;with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before
+      him&rdquo; (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more
+      celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this been,
+      to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great
+      difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest means,
+      the nature of Maitland&rsquo;s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had been
+      dear. The telegram which followed Maitland&rsquo;s, and in which Cranley used
+      Maitland&rsquo;s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have seen. By
+      the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following his track
+      to London. His housekeeper had entered the &ldquo;engaged&rdquo; carriage at
+      Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment
+      previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne Park
+      and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his portmanteau.
+      The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed a gentleman in a
+      bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A gentleman in a light
+      ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means answered to the
+      description Maitland gave in his examination of the porters. They,
+      moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland&rsquo;s inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The success of Cranley&rsquo;s device was secured by its elementary simplicity.
+      A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his trail, does
+      wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable garb at one
+      point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of most who see him,
+      &ldquo;the man in the bearskin coat,&rdquo; or &ldquo;the man in the jack-boots,&rdquo; or &ldquo;the
+      man with the white hat.&rdquo; His identity is practically merged in that of the
+      coat, or the boots, or the hat; and when he slips out of them, he seems to
+      leave his personality behind, or to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with
+      his rugs. By acting on this principle (which only requires to be stated to
+      win the assent of pure reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself
+      and Margaret in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She
+      recognized him as an acquaintance of her father&rsquo;s, and he represented to
+      her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father had
+      served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his poverty&mdash;in
+      poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he declared, had
+      spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with dislike and
+      distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield&rsquo;s chief desire
+      in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from Maitland&rsquo;s
+      guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl away from
+      school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his latest breath,
+      so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his old officer, and
+      had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the Fellow of St
+      Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for
+      Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young
+      man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his
+      position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the
+      manner of her father&rsquo;s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She
+      knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable.
+      Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which
+      Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident had
+      arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new
+      guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect
+      politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left
+      school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon,
+      the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley
+      had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had lodged
+      elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only really
+      delicate point&mdash;Cranley&rsquo;s assumption of the name of &ldquo;Mr. Lithgow&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of the Dovecot. He
+      represented that, for the fulfilment of her father&rsquo;s last wish, the ruse
+      of the telegram and the assumed name had been necessary, though highly
+      repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a gentleman. Poor Margaret had
+      seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philanthropists, and (as we know)
+      philanthropists permit themselves a license and discretion not customary
+      in common society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, even had the girl&rsquo;s suspicions been awakened, her illness
+      prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her
+      father&rsquo;s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable
+      guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father&rsquo;s wish, and hoped
+      soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own
+      livelihood; and independence was Margaret&rsquo;s ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father&rsquo;s friend, her own protector&mdash;in that light she regarded
+      Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be
+      no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do
+      undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a
+      perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct of
+      self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for a
+      week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the rest of
+      us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience. Cran-ley&rsquo;s
+      temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first human being who
+      ever found himself and other human beings struggling in a flood for a
+      floating log that will only support one of them. Everything must give way
+      to his desire; he had literally never denied himself anything that he
+      dared taka As certainly as the stone, once tossed up, obeys the only law
+      it knows, and falls back to earth, so surely Cranley would obtain what he
+      desired (if it seemed safe), though a human life, or a human soul, stood
+      between him and his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which his
+      greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she should
+      vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley&rsquo;s original
+      idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the Continent,
+      where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some kind had been
+      found for her, he would so arrange that England should never see her more,
+      and that her place among honest women should be lost forever. But there
+      were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan. For instance, the girl
+      knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting fool; and then Margaret&rsquo;s
+      illness had occurred, and had caused delay, and given time for reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache in
+      the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed hansoms)&mdash;&ldquo;after
+      all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no inconvenient
+      claims.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways of
+      &ldquo;removing&rdquo; an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed across
+      a not uninstructed intellect&mdash;a scheme which appeared open to the
+      smallest number of objections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She shall take a turn for the worse,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;and the doctor will be
+      an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal
+      jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden, dismissed
+      his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges. He then hailed
+      another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an eminent firm of
+      chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked for a certain
+      substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got what he wanted in
+      a small phial, marked <i>poison</i>. Mr. Cranley then called a third cab,
+      gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker&rsquo;s (also eminent), and
+      amused his leisure during the drive in removing the label from the bottle.
+      At the surgical-instrument maker&rsquo;s he complained of neuralgia, and
+      purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine or some such anodyne
+      into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the house in Victoria Square,
+      where he let himself in with a key, entered the dining-room, and locked
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs
+      about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused and
+      listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief into
+      the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable chink
+      which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom of the
+      door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds, and unpacked
+      his various purchases. He set them out on the table in order&mdash;the
+      oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the best,
+      and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard.
+      One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table, in company
+      with a biscuit or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another
+      orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then drew off
+      a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and carefully
+      punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit the
+      contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately completed in the
+      case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished their
+      coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit he had eaten. That portion
+      of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire; and, observing that a strong
+      odor remained in the room, he deliberately turned on the unlighted gas for
+      a few minutes. After this he opened the window, sealed his own seal in red
+      wax on paper a great many times, finally burning the collection, and lit a
+      large cigar, which he smoked through with every appearance of enjoyment.
+      While engaged on this portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to
+      sherry from the glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured
+      the liquid from the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his
+      pocket with the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in
+      delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Alice, you may come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Miss Burnside?&rdquo; he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had
+      told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present
+      at least.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why
+      are you keeping her in this house? What devil&rsquo;s brew have you been making
+      that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; replied Mr. Cranley, &ldquo;you put too many questions at once.
+      As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss
+      Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper.
+      As to the &lsquo;devil&rsquo;s brew&rsquo; which you indicate in a style worthy rather of
+      the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science,
+      did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of
+      the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my
+      knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can
+      enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair woman&rsquo;s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger,
+      like a baleful lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand your chaff,&rdquo; she said, with a few ornamental epithets,
+      which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grieve to be obscure,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;<i>brevis esse laboro</i>, the old
+      story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens,
+      she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on
+      a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my
+      dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave
+      this note at the doctor&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing&rsquo;s too good for <i>her!</i>&rdquo; growled the jealous woman,
+      thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the
+      oranges not used in his experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the
+      door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret&rsquo;s door,
+      come out again, and finally leave the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I&rsquo;ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, and
+      he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the <i>Times</i>. He glanced
+      rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet &ldquo;Still
+      advertising for him,&rdquo; he said to himself; and he then turned to the
+      sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the
+      reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet
+      come on. When he had read all that interested him in the <i>Times</i>, he
+      looked hastily at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just twenty minutes gone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Time she wakened&mdash;and tried
+      those Jaffa oranges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite
+      Margaret&rsquo;s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find
+      any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he chose a
+      large and heavy <i>fauteuil</i>, took it up in his arms, and began to
+      carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret&rsquo;s chamber, he stumbled
+      so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed
+      against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it
+      up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would have wakened the dead,&rdquo; he whispered to himself, &ldquo;and she is
+      not dead&mdash;yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of
+      them, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his
+      mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was
+      being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal
+      remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or
+      frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and less
+      perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity
+      possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was passing in the
+      chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She has wakened&mdash;she has looked round&mdash;she has seen the poisoned
+      fruit&mdash;she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it&mdash;she
+      has tasted the oranges&mdash;she has turned to sleep again&mdash;and the
+      unrelenting venom is at its work!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
+      hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
+      right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star
+      revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains
+      of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues&mdash;each
+      seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will.
+      Innocence, youth, beauty&mdash;that will spares them not. The rock falls
+      at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be
+      blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things&mdash;<i>mens
+      agitat molem</i>; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and
+      turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment
+      of our desires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the
+      intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually
+      to be present in Margaret&rsquo;s chamber, watching every movement and hearing
+      every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face,
+      from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late
+      ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that
+      he was musing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s done, it can&rsquo;t be undone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But is it so very safe,
+      after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it&rsquo;s much more
+      hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way.
+      And then there&rsquo;s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an
+      inquest&mdash;as, of course, there won&rsquo;t be&mdash;they&rsquo;ll ask who the girl
+      is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they&rsquo;ll, some of them,
+      recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It
+      may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
+      thumb-nail, and yawned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By gad! I wish I had not risked it,&rdquo; he said to himself; and his
+      complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter
+      painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his
+      chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He
+      took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew
+      the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth. A long pull at the
+      liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;and&mdash;&rdquo; He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the
+      &ldquo;French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But
+      then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally.
+      Still, it&rsquo;s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was
+      better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff.
+      Perhaps she hasn&rsquo;t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides,
+      there are the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room,
+      if she <i>has</i> taken it. I <i>must</i> go and see. I don&rsquo;t like the
+      job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a
+      sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.
+      With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of
+      his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl&rsquo;s door he
+      waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All was
+      silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump: he
+      heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might wake the
+      sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with
+      a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was
+      pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping
+      of his own heart. At this moment the postman&rsquo;s hard knock at the door
+      nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had
+      anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the
+      dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much.
+      He did not dare draw close enough to observe her face minutely, or bend
+      down and listen for her breath. And the oranges! Eagerly he looked at
+      them. There were only five of them. Surely&mdash;no! a sixth had fallen on
+      the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked up
+      all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and, as shrinkingly as he
+      had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice
+      under his breath&mdash;he stole down stairs, opened the dining-room door,
+      and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ll settle with you!&rdquo; came a voice out of the dimness; and the start
+      wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as they
+      were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was he
+      trapped, and by whom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling, in
+      bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than anger,
+      that stood before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried to
+      dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely
+      observed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want
+      to read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you doing up-stairs just now?&rdquo; she snarled. &ldquo;Why did you send
+      me off to the doctor&rsquo;s, out of the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that invaluable
+      curiosity of yours&mdash;curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold so
+      justly views with high esteem&mdash;into wider and nobler channels.
+      Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life as you
+      find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of Sociology
+      (pardon the term) or Metaphysics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an
+      ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too
+      far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that lay on
+      the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being prepared, he
+      was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the success of his plan
+      of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat was a breastwork
+      between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a drawer; produced a
+      revolver, and remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and
+      you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in
+      every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold
+      your tongue and keep your hands off me&mdash;and off drink. Fetch the
+      lamp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp
+      silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay
+      on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar
+      letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though
+      bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have
+      been, with a strange device in gold and colors&mdash;a brown bun, in a
+      glory of gilt rays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St John Deloraine,&rdquo; he said, taking it up. &ldquo;How in the world did <i>she</i>
+      find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer than a
+      brother&mdash;a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second
+      title of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose there is another woman in London,&rdquo; he thought to himself,
+      &ldquo;that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that would write
+      to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and
+      read the following epistle:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Early English Bunhouse,
+
+     &ldquo;Chelsea, Friday.
+
+     &ldquo;My dear Mr. Cranley,
+
+     &ldquo;Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can
+     hear nothing of you from anyone&mdash;nothing <i>good</i>, and you
+     know I never believe anything <i>else</i>. Do come and see me, at
+     the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about <i>yourself</i>&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;(&ldquo;She <i>has</i> heard,&rdquo; he muttered)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;&ldquo;and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you
+     know we are strictly <i>blue ribbon&mdash;a cordon bleu</i>, I call
+     her) has become engaged to a <i>plumber</i>, and she is leaving
+     us. <i>Can</i> you recommend me another? I know how interested
+     you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little
+     enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the
+     housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to
+     see me, whether you can advise me or not.
+
+     &ldquo;Yours very truly,
+
+     &ldquo;Mary St. John Deloraine&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Idiot!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and
+      then he added, &ldquo;By Jove! it&rsquo;s lucky, too. I&rsquo;ll put these two infernal
+      women off on <i>her</i>, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once
+      gets at the drink. She&rsquo;s dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking.
+      Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth
+      waters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.&mdash;Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
+      privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
+      aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
+      caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
+      or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
+      seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a house
+      in Cheyne Walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
+      she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
+      county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
+      woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
+      County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
+      Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor a
+      kind of <i>morgue</i> so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
+      the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
+      Méryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
+      Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take, they
+      take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are they to
+      drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else, that even
+      the Clergy are excluded, <i>ex officio</i>, and in their degrading
+      capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As we
+      all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the very
+      being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
+      inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
+      sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession) one
+      of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain Mr. St.
+      John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson, being at
+      once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At the head of the
+      quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat, girdled by beautiful
+      gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House and Parsonage (for it is
+      both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this desirable home and opulent share of earth&rsquo;s good things did Mr.
+      St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled a
+      good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County matrons
+      and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling on such
+      heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this young man
+      a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him from the
+      society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys&rsquo; daughters.
+      Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping Carby, and there
+      he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level turf, her &ldquo;points&rdquo;
+       he counted, and he found that she, at least, could appreciate his somewhat
+      apt quotation from <i>Chastelard</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Pray heaven, we make good Ends.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Miss Widdicombe <i>did</i> make good &ldquo;Ends.&rdquo; She vanquished Mrs.
+      Struggles, the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman
+      who was now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost
+      professionally, &ldquo;rejoice in arrows,&rdquo; like the Homeric Artemis&mdash;why
+      are they nearly always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at
+      least before her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known
+      band of Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
+      contrast between Miss Widdicombe&rsquo;s vivacity and the deadly stolidity of
+      the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her vanquished
+      competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John Deloraine. He saw&mdash;he
+      loved her&mdash;he was laughed at&mdash;he proposed&mdash;he was accepted&mdash;and,
+      oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss Widdicombe, the
+      attorney&rsquo;s daughter, as <i>châtelaine</i> (delightful word, and dear to
+      the author of <i>Guy Livingstone</i>) of Wentley Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
+      alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
+      good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
+      London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
+      name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty of
+      money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County dinners
+      which the County people of her district give to each other when they come
+      to town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy in the
+      earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her benevolence
+      had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow. Never, surely, was
+      there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would go from a garden-party to a mothers&rsquo; meeting; she was great at
+      taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping them
+      amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at least
+      three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
+      eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine, that she
+      made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal sympathy,
+      wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she has been seen
+      enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like Greek texts
+      which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need of
+      explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the old
+      sense&mdash;that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune&mdash;pursued hotly
+      or artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
+      suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
+      her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting them
+      as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of music
+      are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no joy in
+      popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next), so Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a passion for
+      virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the world, but she
+      insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless levity, as a
+      mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature. Thus, no one ever
+      combined a delight in good works with a taste for good things so
+      successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the lady&rsquo;s &ldquo;favorite vanity,&rdquo; in the matter of good works,
+      was <i>The Bunhouse</i>. This really serviceable, though quaint,
+      institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland&rsquo;s enterprise of the
+      philanthropic public-house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. In a slum of Chelsea
+      there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
+      coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
+      sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was the
+      work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine&rsquo;s friends, an artist of the highest
+      promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch and Irish
+      whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, <i>The Bunhouse</i> did
+      very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
+      Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery of
+      common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the metropolis.
+      Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features at sewing
+      machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen hours a day
+      in shops&mdash;all these young female outlaws, not professionally vicious,
+      found in <i>The Bunhouse</i> a kind of charitable shelter and home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
+      stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers and
+      fathers. &ldquo;Places&rdquo; were found for them, in the rare instances when they
+      condescended to &ldquo;places.&rdquo; Sometimes they breakfasted at <i>The Bunhouse</i>,
+      sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a state of
+      artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would arise such
+      a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than when boys,
+      having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle of a door&mdash;they
+      then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the clamor goes up to
+      heaven: so did the street resound when the young patrons of <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i> were in a warlike humor. Then the stern housekeeper would
+      intervene, and check these motions of their minds, <i>haec certamina tanta</i>,
+      turning the more persistent combatants into the street. Next day Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and try to be very severe, and
+      then would weep a little, and all the girls would shed tears, all would
+      have a good cry together, and finally the Lady Mother (Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine) would take a few of them for a drive in the Park. After that
+      there would be peace for a while, and presently disturbances would come
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
+      housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
+      told, had yielded to love, &ldquo;which subdues the hearts of all female women,
+      even of the prudent,&rdquo; according to Homer, and was going to share the home
+      and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible innocence,
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a
+      kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in her need of a
+      housekeeper and assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. <i>He</i>
+      could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
+      left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that young
+      lady&rsquo;s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr. Cranley.
+      Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds of Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine&rsquo;s acquaintance who would have used her unsuspicious
+      kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr. Cranley had (when
+      there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I go and lunch with her?&rdquo; he asked himself, as he twisted her note,
+      with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and gold. &ldquo;I
+      haven&rsquo;t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not since&mdash;since
+      I came back from Monte Carlo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit The
+      man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in the
+      calendar withdrew his large words when asked &ldquo;if he had ever cheated at
+      cards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Mr. Cranley went on, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know: I dare say it&rsquo;s safe enough.
+      She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
+      sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the day&mdash;not
+      up to luncheon anyhow. She says&rdquo;&mdash;and he looked again at the note&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      she&rsquo;ll be alone; but she won&rsquo;t. Everyone she sees before lunch she asks to
+      luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to dinner. I wish I
+      had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very long way than this
+      kind of business. There really seems no end to it when once you begin.
+      However, here goes,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, sitting down to write a letter at
+      the escritoire which had just served him as a bulwark and breastwork.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write and accept Probably she&rsquo;ll have no one with her, but some girl
+      from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from the Solomon Islands who never
+      heard of a heathen like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the clock
+      was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s house in
+      Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that lady, in
+      a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of beauty,
+      rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and
+      holding out both her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
+      hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
+      carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love in which thy hound has part,&rdquo; quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
+      rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
+      smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and, as I have put
+      off luncheon till two, <i>do</i> tell me that you know someone who will
+      suit me for my dear <i>Bun-house</i>. I know how much you have always been
+      interested in our little project.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew the
+      very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
+      respectable woman of great strength of character, &ldquo;of body, too, I
+      believe, which will not make her less fit for the position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; &ldquo;the dear girls are sometimes a
+      little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
+      went to one of the exhibitions with her <i>fiancé</i>, and the girls broke
+      all the windows and almost all the tea-things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not stand
+      anything of that kind,&rdquo; answered Mr. Cranley. &ldquo;She is quiet, but extremely
+      firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate character. At
+      one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a person of
+      treacherous and ungovernable disposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
+      fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
+      father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
+      bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to earn
+      her own livelihood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to tell
+      the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was strong
+      enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud and
+      indisposed to make confidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing I must ask,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley, when he had quite
+      persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to her young
+      friends. &ldquo;How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when do you need
+      the services of the new-comers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
+      like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want to
+      rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank Holiday&mdash;in
+      a fortnight that is&mdash;and then they will go on their honeymoon of
+      three days to Yarmouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
+      impetuous wooer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No laggard in love,&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;Well, in a fortnight the two
+      women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
+      remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
+      recovered from the shock of her father&rsquo;s sudden death&mdash;a very sad
+      affair,&rdquo; added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor dear girl!&rdquo; cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears in
+      her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep with
+      those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to the
+      latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of this
+      entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, he&rsquo;s very late,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and yet it is not far to come from the
+      <i>Hit or Miss</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the <i>Hit or Miss</i>!&rdquo; cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
+      aware.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; you may well wonder, if you don&rsquo;t know about it, that I should have
+      asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be quite
+      in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome, nor very
+      amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness now. He is
+      very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the poor. He is a
+      Fellow of his College at Oxford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the terrier;
+      but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I tell you his name?&rdquo; Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. &ldquo;He is a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the door was opened, and the servant announced &ldquo;Mr. Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
+      found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
+      heart might have blanched at the encounter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
+      philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
+      fellow-revellers. What other things he had done&mdash;things in which
+      Maitland was concerned&mdash;the reader knows, or at least suspects. But
+      it was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
+      undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me introduce you&mdash;&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no need,&rdquo; interrupted Maitland. &ldquo;Mr. Cranley and I have known
+      each other for some time. I don&rsquo;t think we have met,&rdquo; he added, looking at
+      Cranley, &ldquo;since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not likely to
+      meet again, I&rsquo;m afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell Mrs. Si John
+      Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
+      the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be) with
+      private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the trouble
+      at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended to what he
+      might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he had the best
+      reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he was the secret
+      source of the information on which Maitland proposed to act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At luncheon&mdash;which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
+      was &ldquo;luscious and abundant&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than the
+      champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little philanthropic
+      misadventures of his own&mdash;cases in which he had been humorously
+      misled by the <i>Captain Wraggs</i> of this world, or beguiled by the
+      authors of that polite correspondence&mdash;begging letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to go
+      (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s company very much), Cranley, who
+      had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way with the
+      Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when are we likely to meet again?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;I have business in Paris, and I
+      cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more can I,&rdquo; said Mr. Cranley to himself; &ldquo;but I hope you won&rsquo;t return
+      in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you have the
+      luck to return at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a good
+      voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a <i>comédienne</i>)
+      at the Palais Royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.&mdash;Traps.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The day before the encounter with Mr. Cranley at the house of the lady of
+      <i>The Bunhouse</i>, Barton, when he came home from a round of
+      professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted
+      lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there,
+      discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that he
+      was indeed &ldquo;moving about in worlds not realized.&rdquo; Keen as was the interest
+      which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend&rsquo;s affairs, he now and
+      again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever revolved round
+      the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Maitland; glad to see you,&rdquo; he observed, with some shade of
+      hypocrisy. &ldquo;Anything new to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Maitland; &ldquo;I really do think I have a clew at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, wait a bit till they bring the candles,&rdquo; said Barton, groaning as
+      the bell-rope came away in his hands. &ldquo;Bring lights, please, and tea, and
+      stir up the fire, Jemima, my friend,&rdquo; he remarked, when the blackened but
+      alert face of the little slavey appeared at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dr. Barton, in a minute, sir,&rdquo; answered Jemima, who greatly admired
+      the Doctor, and in ten minutes the dismal lodgings looked almost
+      comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now for your clew, old man,&rdquo; exclaimed Barton, as he handed Maitland a
+      cup of his peculiar mixture, very weak, with plenty of milk and no sugar.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Ariadne, what a boon that clew of yours has been to the detective
+      mind! To think that, without the Minotaur, the police would probably never
+      have hit on that invaluable expression, &lsquo;the police have a clew.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland thought this was trifling with the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This advertisement,&rdquo; he said, gravely, &ldquo;appears to me undoubtedly to
+      refer to the miscreant who carried off Margaret, poor girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it, by Jove?&rdquo; cried Barton, with some eagerness this time. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s
+      have a look at it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was what he read aloud:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Bearskin Coat.&mdash;The gentleman travelling with a young lady,
+     who, on Feb. 19th, left a bearskin coat at the Hôtel Alsace
+     and Lorraine, Avenue de l&rsquo;Opéra, Paris, is requested to
+     remove it, or it will be sold to defray expenses.
+
+     &ldquo;Dupin.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This <i>may</i> mean business,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or it may not. In the first
+      place, is there such an hotel in Paris as the &lsquo;Alsace et Lorraine,&rsquo; and is
+      M. Dupin the proprietor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>That&rsquo;s</i> all right,&rdquo; said Maitland. &ldquo;I went at once to the Club, and
+      looked up the <i>Bottin</i>, the Paris Directory, don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far, so good; and yet I don&rsquo;t quite see what you can make of it. It
+      does not come to much, you know, even if the owner of the coat is the man
+      you want And again, is he likely to have left such a very notable article
+      of dress behind him in an hotel? Anyway, can&rsquo;t you send some detective
+      fellow? Are you going over yourself in this awful weather?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Barton argued, but Maitland was not to be easily put off the hopeful
+      scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;the people at the hotel will at least
+      be able to give one a fuller description of the man than anything we have
+      yet. And they may have some idea of where he has gone to; and, at least,
+      they will have noticed how he was treating Margaret, and that, of course,
+      is what I am most anxious to learn. Again, he may have left other things
+      besides the coat, or there may be documents in the pockets. I have read of
+      such things happening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in &lsquo;Le Crime de l&rsquo;Opéra;&rsquo; and a very good story, too,&rdquo; answered the
+      incredulous Barton; &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t fancy that the villain of real life is
+      quite so innocent and careless as the monster of fiction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone knows that murderers are generally detected through some
+      incredible piece of carelessness,&rdquo; said Mait-land; &ldquo;and why should this
+      elaborate scoundrel be more fortunate than the rest? If he <i>did</i>
+      leave the coat, he will scarcely care to go back for it; and I do not
+      think the chance should be lost, even if it is a poor one. Besides, I&rsquo;m
+      doing no good here, and I can do no harm there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was undeniably true; and though Barton muttered something about &ldquo;a
+      false scent,&rdquo; he no longer attempted to turn Maitland from his purpose. He
+      did, however, with some difficulty, prevent the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s
+      from purchasing a blonde beard, one of those wigs which simulate baldness,
+      and a pair of blue spectacles. In these disguises, Maitland argued, he
+      would certainly avoid recognition, and so discomfit any mischief planned
+      by the enemies of Margaret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but, on the other hand, you would look exactly like a German
+      professor, and probably be taken for a spy of Bismarck&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Maitland reluctantly gave up the idea of disguise. He retained,
+      however, certain astute notions of his own about his plan of operations,
+      and these, unfortunately, he did not communicate to his friend. The fact
+      is, that the long dormant romance of Maitland&rsquo;s character was now
+      thoroughly awake, and he began, unconsciously, to enjoy the adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His enjoyment did not last very long. The usual troubles of a winter
+      voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the
+      guardian of Margaret But everything&mdash;-even a period of waiting at the
+      Paris <i>salle d&rsquo;attente</i>, and a struggle with the <i>cochers</i> at
+      the station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare)&mdash;must
+      come to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the
+      glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l&rsquo;Opéra. At the Hôtel
+      Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too precipitate
+      eagerness. In the first place, he wrote an assumed name in the hotel book,
+      choosing, by an unlucky inspiration, the pseudonym of Buchanan. He then
+      ordered dinner in the hotel, and, by way of propitiation, it was a much
+      better dinner than usual that Maitland ordered. Bottles of the higher
+      Bordeaux wines, reposing in beautiful baskets, were brought at his
+      command; for he was determined favorably to impress the people of the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His conduct in this matter was partly determined by the fact that, for the
+      moment, the English were not popular in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, as the French newspapers declared, with more truth than they
+      suspected, &ldquo;Paris was not the place for English people, especially for
+      English women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In these international circumstances, then, Maitland believed he showed
+      the wisdom of the serpent when he ordered dinner in the fearless old
+      fashion attributed by tradition to the Milords of the past But he had
+      reckoned without his appetite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A consequence of sea-travel, neither uncommon nor alarming, is the putting
+      away of all desire to eat and drink. As the waiter carried off the
+      untouched <i>hors d&rsquo;oeuvres</i> (whereof Maitland only nibbled the
+      delicious bread and butter); as he bore away the <i>huîtres</i>,
+      undiminished in number; as the <i>bisque</i> proved too much for the guest
+      of the evening; as he faltered over the soles, and failed to appreciate
+      the cutlets; as he turned from the noblest <i>crûs</i> (including the
+      widow&rsquo;s <i>crûs</i>, those of La Veuve Cliquot), and asked for <i>siphon</i>
+      and <i>fine champagne</i>, the waiter&rsquo;s countenance assumed an air of
+      owl-like sagacity. There was something wrong, the <i>garçon</i> felt sure,
+      about a man who could order a dinner like Maitland&rsquo;s, and then decline to
+      partake thereof. However, even in a republican country, you can hardly
+      arrest a man merely because his intentions are better than his appetite.
+      The waiter, therefore, contented himself with assuming an imposing
+      attitude, and whispering something to the hall porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, having dined with the Barmecide regardless of
+      expense, went on (as he hoped) to ingratiate himself with the <i>concierge</i>.
+      From that official he purchased two large cigars, which he did not dream
+      of attempting to enjoy; and he then endeavored to enter into conversation,
+      selecting for a topic the state of the contemporary drama. What would
+      monsieur advise him to go to see? Where was Mile. Jane Hading playing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule of
+      French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great matter&mdash;the
+      affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel? Had any of
+      his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he left England
+      a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article of dress&mdash;a
+      great-coat&mdash;which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab. Could
+      monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news about the
+      garment, a coat in <i>peau d&rsquo;ours</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been
+      loitering in the office of the <i>concierge</i>, moved to the neighborhood
+      of the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging
+      on the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well in
+      coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It had
+      been lost by a compatriot of monsieur&rsquo;s? Would monsieur give himself the
+      trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was kept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on the
+      trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty, thought
+      Maitland) followed <i>him</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter led them to a door marked &ldquo;private,&rdquo; and they all three
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;was the bearskin coat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his
+      own, or a friend&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted
+      that the garment only belonged to &ldquo;a man he knew something about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his name?&rdquo; asked the clerkly man, who was taking notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name, indeed! If Maitland only knew that! His French now began to grow
+      worse and worse in proportion to his flurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, he explained, it was very unlucky, but he did not exactly remember
+      the man&rsquo;s name. It was quite a common name. He had met him for the first
+      time on board the steamer; but the man was going to Brussels, and, finding
+      that Maitland was on his way to Paris, had asked him to make inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the clerkly person, laying down his notes, asked if English gentlemen
+      usually spoke of persons whom they had just met for the first time on
+      board the steamer as their friends?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, at this, lost his temper, and observed that, as they seemed
+      disposed to give him more trouble than information, he would go and see
+      the play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hereupon the clerkly person requested monsieur to remember, in his
+      deportment, what was due to Justice; and when Maitland rose, in a stately
+      way, to leave the room, he also rose and stood in front of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However little of human nature an Englishman may possess, he is rarely
+      unmoved by this kind of treatment. Maitland took the man by the collar, <i>sans
+      phrase</i>, and spun him round, amid the horrified clamor of the porter.
+      But the man, without any passion, merely produced and displayed a card,
+      containing a voucher that he belonged to the Secret Police, and calmly
+      asked Maitland for &ldquo;his papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had no papers. He had understood that passports were no longer
+      required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The detective assured him that passports &ldquo;spoil nothing.&rdquo; Had monsieur
+      nothing stating his identity? Maitland, entirely forgetting that he had
+      artfully entered his name as &ldquo;Buchanan&rdquo; on the hotel book, produced his
+      card, on the lower corner of which was printed, <i>St. Gatien&rsquo;s College.</i>
+      This address puzzled the detective a good deal, while the change of name
+      did not allay his suspicions, and he ended by requesting Maitland to
+      accompany him into the presence of Justice. As there was no choice,
+      Maitland obtained leave to put some linen in his travelling-bag, and was
+      carried off to what we should call the nearest police-station. Here he was
+      received in a chill bleak room by a formal man, wearing a decoration, who
+      (after some private talk with the detective) asked Maitland to explain his
+      whole conduct in the matter of the coat. In the first place, the
+      detective&rsquo;s notes on their conversation were read aloud, and it was shown
+      that Maitland had given a false name; had originally spoken of the object
+      of his quest as &ldquo;the coat of a friend;&rdquo; then as &ldquo;the coat of a man whom he
+      knew something about;&rdquo; then as &ldquo;the coat of a man whose name he did not
+      know;&rdquo; and that, finally, he had attempted to go away without offering any
+      satisfactory account of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this the philanthropist was constrained to admit; but he was, not
+      unnaturally, quite unable to submit any explanation of his proceedings.
+      What chiefly discomfited him was the fact that his proceedings were a
+      matter of interest and observation. Why, he kept wondering, was all this
+      fuss made about a coat which had, or had not, been left by a traveller at
+      the hotel? It was perfectly plain that the hotel was used as a <i>souricière</i>,
+      as the police say, as a trap in which all inquirers after the coat could
+      be captured. Now, if he had been given time (and a French dictionary),
+      Maitland might have set before the Commissaire of Police the whole story
+      of his troubles. He might have begun with the discovery of Shields&rsquo; body
+      in the snow; he might have gone on to Margaret&rsquo;s disappearance (<i>enlèvement</i>),
+      and to a description of the costume (bearskin coat and all) of the villain
+      who had carried her away. Then he might have described his relations with
+      Margaret, the necessity of finding her, the clew offered by the
+      advertisement in the <i>Times</i>, and his own too subtle and ingenious
+      attempt to follow up that clew. But it is improbable that this narrative,
+      had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the
+      suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced
+      that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s had
+      neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to
+      relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment&rsquo;s
+      notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell
+      back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English Ambassador;
+      and that night Maitland of Gatien&rsquo;s passed, for the first time during his
+      blameless career, in a police-cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It were superfluous to set down in detail all the humiliations endured by
+      Maitland. Do not the newspapers continually ring with the laments of the
+      British citizen who has fallen into the hands of Continental Justice? Are
+      not our countrymen the common butts of German, French, Spanish, and even
+      Greek and Portuguese Jacks in office? When an Englishman appears, do not
+      the foreign police usually arrest him at a venture, and inquire afterward?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland had, with the best intentions, done a good deal more than most of
+      these innocents to deserve incarceration. His conduct, as the Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction told him, without mincing matters, was undeniably <i>louche</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, the suspicions of M. Dupin, of the Hôtel Alsace et
+      Lorraine, had been very naturally excited by seeing the advertisement
+      about the great-coat in the <i>Times</i>, for he made a study of &ldquo;the
+      journal of the City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a notice purporting to be signed by himself, and referring to a
+      bearskin coat, said (quite untruly) to have been left in his own hotel. A
+      bearskin coat! The very words breathe of Nihilism, dynamite, stratagems,
+      and spoils. Then the advertisement was in English, which is, at present
+      and till further notice, the language spoken by the brave Irish. M. Dupin,
+      as a Liberal, had every sympathy with the brave Irish in their noble
+      struggle for whatever they <i>are</i> struggling for; but he did not wish
+      his hostelry to become, so to speak, the mountain-cave of Freedom, and the
+      great secret storehouse of nitro-glycerine. With a view to elucidating the
+      mystery of the advertisement, he had introduced the police on his
+      premises, and the police had hardly settled down in its <i>affût</i>,
+      when, lo! a stranger had been captured, in most suspicious circumstances.
+      M. Dupin felt very clever indeed, and his friends envied him the
+      distinction and advertisement which were soon to be his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Maitland appeared, as he did in due course, before the Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete <i>Civis Romanus
+      sum!</i> He was an English citizen. He had written to the English
+      ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien&rsquo;s man, an <i>attaché</i> of the
+      embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced to
+      be out of town, and his name availed Maitland nothing in his interview
+      with the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. That magistrate, sitting with his back to the
+      light, gazed at Maitland with steady, small gray eyes, while the scribble
+      of the pen of the <i>greffier</i>, as he took down the Englishman&rsquo;s
+      deposition, sounded shrill in the bleak torture-chamber of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; asked the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maitland,&rdquo; replied the Fellow of St. Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo; said the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. &ldquo;You entered the name of Buchanan
+      in the book of the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is on my cards, and on that letter,&rdquo; said Maitland, keeping his
+      temper wonderfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The documents in question lay on a table, as <i>pièces justificatives</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These cards, that letter, you have robbed them from some unfortunate
+      person, and have draped (<i>afflublé</i>) yourself in the trappings of
+      your victim! Where is his body?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the working hypothesis which the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction had formed
+      within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings of the
+      person under examination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is <i>whose</i> body?&rdquo; asked Maitland, in unspeakable surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan,&rdquo; said the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. (And to hear the gallantry with
+      which he attacked this difficult name, of itself insured respect.)
+      &ldquo;Buchanan, you are acting on a deplorable system. Justice is not deceived
+      by your falsehoods, nor eluded by your subterfuges. She is calm, stern,
+      but merciful. Unbosom yourself freely&rdquo; (<i>répandez franchement</i>), &ldquo;and
+      you may learn that justice can be lenient It is your interest to be
+      frank.&rdquo; (<i>Il est de votre intérêt d&rsquo;être franc</i>.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you want me to say?&rdquo; asked the prévenu, &ldquo;What is all this
+      pother about a great-coat?&rdquo; (<i>Tant de fracas pour un paletot?</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland was rather proud of this sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them,&rdquo; said the
+      Juge d&rsquo;Instruction. &ldquo;Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me, Buchanan, why
+      did you ask for the coat at the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In answer to that advertisement in the Times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is false; you yourself inserted the advertisement. But, on your own
+      system, bad as it is, what did you want with the coat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It belonged to a man who had done me an ill-turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know his name; that is just what I wanted to find out I might
+      have found his tailor&rsquo;s name on the coat, and then have discovered for
+      whom the coat was made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are aware that the proprietor of the hotel did not insert the forged
+      advertisement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You doubt his word? You insult France in one of her citizens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then whom do you suspect of inserting the advertisement, as you deny
+      having done it yourself, for some purpose which does not appear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe the owner of the coat put in the advertisement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is absurd. What had he to gain by it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To remove me from London, where he is probably conspiring against me at
+      this moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan, you trifle with Justice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you that my name is not Buchanan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did you forge that name in the hotel book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wrote it in the hurry and excitement of the moment; it was incorrect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you lie?&rdquo; (<i>Pourquoi avez vous menti?</i>)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland made an irritable movement
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You threaten Justice. Your attitude is deplorable. You are consigned <i>au
+      secret</i>, and will have an opportunity of revising your situation, and
+      replying more fully to the inquiries of Justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So ended Maitland&rsquo;s first and, happily, sole interview with a Juge
+      d&rsquo;Instruction. Lord Walter Brixton, his old St Gatien&rsquo;s pupil, returned
+      from the country on the very day of Maitland&rsquo;s examination. An interview
+      (during which Lord Walter laughed unfeelingly) with his old coach was not
+      refused to the <i>attaché</i>, and, in a few hours, after some formalities
+      had been complied with, Maitland was a free man. His <i>pièces
+      justificatives</i>, his letters, cards, and return ticket to Charing
+      Cross, were returned to him intact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Maitland determined to sacrifice the privileges of the last-named
+      document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going straight to Constantinople and the Greek Islands,&rdquo; he wrote to
+      Barton. &ldquo;Do you know, I don&rsquo;t like Paris. My attempt at an investigation
+      has not been a success. I have endured considerable discomfort, and I fear
+      my case will get into the <i>Figaro</i>, and there will be dozens of
+      &lsquo;social leaders&rsquo; and &lsquo;descriptive headers&rsquo; about me in all the penny
+      papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Maitland gave his banker&rsquo;s address at Constantinople, relinquished
+      the quest of Margaret, and for a while, as the Sagas say, &ldquo;is out of the
+      story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.&mdash;The Night of Adventures.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of the <i>Hit
+      or Miss</i>. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there would
+      come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous woman;
+      then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same woman were
+      working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of rainy hail, mixed
+      with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting insult, on the
+      windows of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so <i>da capo</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?&rdquo; said
+      Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she perched on
+      the table in the parlor of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
+      Maitland&rsquo;s investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
+      near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still an
+      unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come from
+      the original centre of the troubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in no hurry to take an engagement,&rdquo; answered the resolute Eliza,
+      holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
+      close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
+      female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she looked
+      now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+      two or three managers in treaty with me,&rdquo; said Eliza. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the <i>Follies
+      and Frivolities</i> down Norwood way, and the <i>Varieties</i> in the
+      &lsquo;Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that&rsquo;s what I
+      ask for, and I&rsquo;ll get it too! Just now I&rsquo;m taking a vacation, and making
+      an honest penny with these things,&rdquo; and she nodded at a little basket full
+      of the wardrobe of dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?&rdquo; asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Eliza; &ldquo;I am doing well with them. I&rsquo;m not sure I shan&rsquo;t need
+      to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pm glad you are successful,&rdquo; answered Barton. &ldquo;I say, Eliza!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
+      sitting the night before he was found in the snow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had suddenly occurred to Barton&mdash;it might have occurred to him
+      before&mdash;that this room might be worth examining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ain&rsquo;t using it now! Ill show you it,&rdquo; said Eliza, leading the way
+      up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton took hold of the handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies first,&rdquo; he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; came the child&rsquo;s voice, from half-way down the stairs; &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t come
+      in! They say he walks, I&rsquo;ve heard noises there at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
+      struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
+      been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an empty
+      bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors, blue
+      and red, part of Shields&rsquo; stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some very
+      sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized. They
+      were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the Southern
+      Seas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
+      needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined it
+      closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the others,
+      but of wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
+      carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
+      substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
+      instrument-case: &ldquo;the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see him?&rdquo; asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be childish, Eliza: there&rsquo;s no one to see. Why is the room left all
+      untidy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother dare not go in!&rdquo; whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
+      voice, &ldquo;Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the night
+      old Shields died in the snow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
+      should go on thinking about it,&rdquo; said Barton, rather sternly. &ldquo;You were
+      tired and ill, and you fancied it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the child, solemnly. &ldquo;I never say no more about it to
+      mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I remember
+      it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of the
+      curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
+      open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her hand
+      to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as to be
+      unrecognizable, flashed into the room. &ldquo;Oh, come! oh, come!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s killing her!&rdquo; Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she had
+      appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a face
+      maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that moment
+      Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run, after the
+      girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the bar, who were
+      besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, doctor, come!&rdquo; she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
+      crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
+      Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
+      her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
+      then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of the
+      old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following, found
+      himself for the first time within the portals of <i>The Old English
+      Bun-house</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
+      excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were pressed
+      so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could scarcely
+      thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering another: it
+      was a matter of life and death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s been at the drink, and she&rsquo;s killed her! she&rsquo;s killed her! I
+      heard her fall!&rdquo; one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
+      hysterical iteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me pass!&rdquo; shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
+      the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me room,&rdquo; he cried, and the patrons of <i>The Bun-house</i> yielding
+      place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
+      weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
+      crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
+      stress of the girls behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
+      the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame of
+      blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane), Barton
+      saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
+      unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
+      side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood on
+      the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further side
+      of this girl&mdash;who was dead, or seemingly dead&mdash;sat, on a low
+      stool, a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still.
+      The knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
+      noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment even Barton&rsquo;s rapidity of action and resolution were
+      paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
+      with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision, dreadful
+      even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit awoke in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch a policeman,&rdquo; he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened troop
+      of girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes,&rdquo; said Susan, the young
+      woman who had called Barton from the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the throng.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken girl
+      at her feet&mdash;as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a <i>tableau</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Policeman,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;I give that woman in charge for an attempt at
+      murder. Take her to the station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the looks of her,&rdquo; whispered the policeman. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d better get
+      her knife from her first, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can&rsquo;t look after
+      the wounded girl in this crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose
+      eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her
+      victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were just within arm&rsquo;s reach of the murderess when she leaped with
+      incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and
+      lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she
+      raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into
+      her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had
+      stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George, she&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo; cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him, and
+      laid his hand on the woman&rsquo;s heart. She stirred once, was violently shaken
+      with the agony of death, and so passed away, carrying into silence her
+      secret and her story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cranley&rsquo;s hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!&rdquo; remarked the policeman,
+      sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the wound
+      of the housekeeper&rsquo;s victim, and applying such styptics as he had within
+      reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The Bunhouse__
+      of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message (by the
+      direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed not devoid
+      of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was being expected,
+      the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was employed by Barton
+      in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in generally restoring
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine&rsquo;s house with
+      Barton&rsquo;s brief note, and with his own curt statement that &ldquo;murder was
+      being done at <i>The Bun-house</i>,&rdquo; he found the Lady Superior rehearsing
+      for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room
+      representation of &ldquo;Nitouche,&rdquo; and the terrible news found her in one of
+      the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously
+      misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      hurried off, &ldquo;just as she was,&rdquo; and astonished Barton (who had never seen
+      her before) by arriving at <i>The Bunhouse</i> as a rather conventional
+      shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig. The
+      versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all worlds
+      occasionally let her into <i>inconsequences</i> of this description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not
+      only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard the
+      tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled herself
+      as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl&rsquo;s wound, as Barton was
+      happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for the
+      point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part. But
+      the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene of
+      violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young
+      women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened by
+      sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most
+      responsible of <i>The Bun-house</i> girls, announced her intention to, sit
+      up all night with the patient. Barton&mdash;who was moved, perhaps, as
+      much by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by
+      professional duty&mdash;remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the
+      Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As the
+      danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of fever,
+      Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the morning,
+      he let himself out of <i>The Bunhouse</i>, and made sleepily for his
+      lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his share
+      of adventures&mdash;which, like sorrows, never &ldquo;come as single spies, but
+      in battalions&rdquo;&mdash;was by no means exhausted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
+      extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i>, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
+      tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the gray beginning, Zooks,&rdquo; he muttered to himself, in
+      half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps
+      along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind was
+      walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamplights
+      dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was just passing
+      the locked doors of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>&mdash;for he preferred to go
+      homeward by the riverside&mdash;when a singular sound, or mixture of
+      sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
+      attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a <i>nuit
+      blanche</i>. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
+      traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make before
+      quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a great
+      whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
+      economy, and was laboring &ldquo;without a conscience or an aim.&rdquo; Whir, whir,
+      flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
+      the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
+      scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
+      whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his
+      might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms of
+      the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
+      palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
+      half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the accents
+      of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was heard,
+      and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only
+      to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats&mdash;the time during which the
+      torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation
+      of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple
+      of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place
+      where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken, and next moment, with
+      torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within the palisade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things&mdash;big, black, formless&mdash;were
+      dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of the waste open
+      ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were
+      winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors
+      fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the
+      revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to
+      earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth of the flying
+      wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, &ldquo;Hold on!&rdquo; or
+      some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of the sufferer.
+      But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old baskets, outworn
+      hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste land, the movement
+      of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran slowly down, and, with
+      a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased moving, as a heart stops
+      beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice came from the crumpled mass
+      of humanity in the centre of the hideous mechanism:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days
+      being over) at least to know <i>why</i> he is to be shot at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What on earth are you doing? How
+      can <i>you</i> talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time there was a full measure of the light &ldquo;which London takes the
+      day to be,&rdquo; and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this dialogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a victim
+      of the rack&mdash;scattered, so to speak&mdash;in a posture inconceivably
+      out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man&rsquo;s head was
+      lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a
+      beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the
+      other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a
+      close-fitting suit of cloth&mdash;something between the uniform of bicycle
+      clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell
+      back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about
+      his beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to help you out of this?&rdquo; said the surgeon, carefully examining
+      his patient, as he might now be called. A little close observation showed
+      that the man&rsquo;s arms were strapped by buckles into the fans, while one of
+      his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the mechanism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled
+      groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that, as
+      far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries
+      done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there
+      were many contusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the
+      police-office and get men and a stretcher,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First hide all <i>this,</i>&rdquo; he murmured, moving his head so as to
+      indicate the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of
+      spars, cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of
+      mechanics. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let them know a word about it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Say I had an
+      accident&mdash;that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window&mdash;say
+      anything you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week,&rdquo; he murmured
+      dreamily, &ldquo;it would have been complete. It is the second time I have just
+      missed success and fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not an idea what your secret may be,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;but here goes
+      for the machine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes, he
+      rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among the
+      heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment,
+      meritorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you can find them all again?&rdquo; asked the victim of misplaced
+      ingenuity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, all right,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they
+      find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how on earth am I to get you to the street?&rdquo; Barton inquired, very
+      naturally. &ldquo;Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you
+      over the boarding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can bear anything&mdash;I will bear anything,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;Look in
+      my breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the sufferer by
+      a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of skeleton-key in
+      strong wire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street,&rdquo; said the
+      crushed man; &ldquo;but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is
+      passing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of silence
+      broken by groans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! one thing more,&rdquo; he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his
+      arms. &ldquo;I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson&rsquo;s Kents, hard by; my
+      name is Winter.&rdquo; Then, after a pause, &ldquo;I can pay for a private room at the
+      infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end in the
+      left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones (and
+      broken bones) as he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he dared
+      not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall. At last&mdash;it
+      seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to the sufferer&mdash;the
+      hoarding was reached, and, after listening earnestly, Barton opened the
+      door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear, deposited his burden on
+      the pavement, and flew to the not distant police-station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he
+      found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he had
+      left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or two
+      puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called up a
+      cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there were
+      riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky penny-a-liner
+      with his &ldquo;tissue&rdquo; and pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected, that
+      his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the
+      stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that
+      motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of the
+      case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last,
+      returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken
+      at breakfast, &ldquo;I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a
+      Flying-Machine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.&mdash;A Patient.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and
+      laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather
+      calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in suicide
+      or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a
+      flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused
+      by engines of a more familiar nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day
+      after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived
+      that the distress and confusion at <i>The Bunhouse</i> were very great.
+      The police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many
+      disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the
+      consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness
+      and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist,
+      and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due attention
+      to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking her very
+      much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of social
+      enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated manner,
+      though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the explanations
+      offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had made up her mind
+      to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece and companion. The
+      girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready young patronesses of
+      <i>The Bunhouse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the lady&rsquo;s mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the
+      hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead
+      woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient&mdash;not
+      that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton&rsquo;s fancy
+      did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those
+      &ldquo;amatorious&rdquo; young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who
+      cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was
+      not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he
+      went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more
+      apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had
+      been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered, and,
+      in Barton&rsquo;s private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a successful
+      inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting enough, apart
+      from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy absolutely free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no more than Barton&rsquo;s actual duty to call at <i>The Old English
+      Bunhouse</i> in the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night.
+      She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper
+      bearing a legend to the effect that <i>The Old English Bunhouse</i> was
+      closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was drawn
+      up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring at <i>The Bunhouse</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with open
+      arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise of <i>Nitouche</i>,
+      and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Mr. Barton,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;your patient is doing very well
+      indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have
+      called.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he had
+      discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs. Si
+      John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think she is able to see me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll run to her room and inquire,&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine, fleeting
+      nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as described by
+      Charles Lamb&rsquo;s friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind her from the
+      chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady of <i>The Bunhouse</i>
+      returned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence of
+      the invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even
+      better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and
+      melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked
+      whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine
+      answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when
+      they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called
+      her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the girl
+      had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, &ldquo;it was through Mr. Cranley that
+      I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can&rsquo;t think of
+      without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is too
+      dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to one.
+      Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must admit
+      that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He gave her an
+      excellent character, <i>especially</i> for sobriety, and till yesterday I
+      had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she became quite wild
+      and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this is the first time she
+      yielded to that horrid temptation. Don&rsquo;t you think it was odd of Mr.
+      Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to his rooms, but it was
+      returned, marked, &lsquo;Has left; address not Known.&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t know what has
+      become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have told us, but the
+      unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard&rsquo;s, in Chelsea?&rdquo;
+       asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He was
+      a great friend of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Thomas Cranley!&rdquo; exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which
+      probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, please,&rdquo; cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a
+      pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter
+      the peccadillo of a favorite saint; &ldquo;please don&rsquo;t say you know anything
+      against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling
+      about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so unknown
+      in France; but, on the other side, <i>he</i> could scarcely think it right
+      to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a confirmed
+      scoundrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really,
+      if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley&rsquo;s enemies are of his own
+      making. I would not go to him for a girl&rsquo;s character, I&rsquo;m sure. But I
+      thought he had disappeared from society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that I
+      was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him. And I
+      never would. I never turn my back on my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there was a conspiracy,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;I am the ringleader in it; for,
+      as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr. Cranley
+      in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I would not
+      have mentioned it for the world,&rdquo; he added, almost alarmed at the
+      expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine&rsquo;s face; &ldquo;but you
+      wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief that
+      he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what all
+      who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you, in the
+      matter of that woman&rsquo;s character, was,&rdquo; cried Barton, growing indignant as
+      he thought of it, &ldquo;one of the very basest things I ever heard of. I had
+      seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted with the care of
+      girls. She was at one time very well known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s face had passed through every shade of
+      expression&mdash;doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air
+      of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret has always spoken so well of him,&rdquo; she said, half to herself.
+      &ldquo;He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter of
+      a humble acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;but as to his
+      general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap he
+      laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him get
+      the poor girl back into his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in her
+      voice; &ldquo;and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants anything.
+      Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne Walk? It is
+      not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best thing you can do,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;and be sure you send for me if
+      you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am quite
+      ready to meet him anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will call to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, about this time,&rdquo; said Barton; and he kept his promise
+      assiduously, calling often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in a
+      black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying
+      indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the
+      struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened,
+      and the servant announced &ldquo;Dr. Barton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She is at a
+      soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any
+      children, or had any fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she
+      should not attend soap-bubble parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m selfish enough to be glad you could not go,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;for then I
+      should have missed you. But why do you sigh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a good many things to make me unhappy,&rdquo; said Margaret, &ldquo;in
+      addition to my&mdash;to my accident. You must not think I am always
+      bewailing myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before
+      I entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine&rsquo;s service, and then my whole course of
+      life was altered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry for you,&rdquo; said Barton, simply. He did not know what else
+      to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and
+      perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears
+      came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She was
+      on the point of breaking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl
+      crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton&rsquo;s
+      mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you.
+      Can&rsquo;t I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the troubles
+      of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are nearly
+      over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that they <i>were</i>
+      over, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have been going on so long,&rdquo; said Margaret &ldquo;I have had such a
+      wandering life, and such changes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but
+      more was not offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us think of the future,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Have you any idea about what you
+      mean to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her
+      always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don&rsquo;t know what he would
+      like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley&rsquo;s name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you known him long?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my father&rsquo;s,
+      and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from school, and
+      he gave me a start in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your
+      education,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can a girl do?&rdquo; answered Margaret. &ldquo;We know so little. I could
+      hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully
+      backward at school&mdash;at least, Miss&mdash;&mdash; I mean, the teachers
+      thought me backward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you know as much as anyone should,&rdquo; said Barton, indignantly.
+      &ldquo;Were you at a nice school?&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret&rsquo;s history. She
+      seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and knowledge
+      of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial position at a
+      philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent of Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady&rsquo;s character which
+      made her patronage not precarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were some nice girls at it,&rdquo; answered Margaret, without committing
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such
+      thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an
+      abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any
+      place of education is &ldquo;nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is really getting quite late,&rdquo; Barton observed, reluctantly. He liked
+      to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received just a
+      touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk to her;
+      in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It would be
+      miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying
+      patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty. The poor are
+      often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret noticed his reluctance
+      to go contending with a sense of what he owed to propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure you must want tea; but I don&rsquo;t like to ring. It is so short a
+      time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself at <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i>, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me.
+      They must dislike me; it is very natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not natural at all,&rdquo; said Barton, with conviction; &ldquo;perfectly
+      monstrous, on the other hand.&rdquo; This little compliment eclipsed the effect
+      of fire-light on the girl&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Suppose I ring,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and then
+      you can say, when Mary says &lsquo;Did you ring, miss?&rsquo; &lsquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t ring; but
+      as you <i>are</i> here, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if that would be quite honest,&rdquo; said Margaret, doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pious fraud&mdash;a drawing-room comedy,&rdquo; said Barton; &ldquo;have we
+      rehearsed it enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals was
+      played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as amateurs
+      often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, this is quite perfect,&rdquo; said Barton, when he had been accommodated
+      with a large piece of plum-cake. &ldquo;This is the very kind of cake which we
+      specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too!
+      There should be a new proverb, &lsquo;Physician, diet thyself.&rsquo; You see, we
+      don&rsquo;t all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry
+      toast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life,&rdquo; said
+      Margaret. &ldquo;She tries a good many new things,&rdquo; Barton remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;Oh, if
+      you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!&rdquo; And she shuddered
+      as she remembered her late chaperon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if some day&mdash;you won&rsquo;t think me very rude?&rdquo; asked Barton&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      would mind telling me a little of your history?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it,&rdquo; answered Margaret; &ldquo;and
+      a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and
+      everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me
+      to think of things that have happened, or may happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They shall never happen, if you will trust me,&rdquo; cried Barton, when a
+      carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last,&rdquo; cried Margaret, starting to run
+      to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have fallen
+      had Barton not caught her lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how stupid you must think me!&rdquo; she said, blushing. And Barton thought
+      he had never seen anything so pretty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once for all, I don&rsquo;t think you stupid, or backward, or anything else
+      that you call yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine
+      entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of
+      hospitality and content with existence into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>you</i> are here!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;and I have almost missed you. Now
+      you <i>must</i> stay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone,
+      Margaret and I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society
+      (which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in vain.
+      It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs. St John
+      Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours passed
+      lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all hours&mdash;good
+      and evil&mdash;abide, remembered or forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII.&mdash;Another Patient.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
+     Comme dans le chant de Ruckert.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;Théophile Gautier.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume, a
+      fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. &lsquo;Such an one,&rsquo; he says&mdash;meaning
+      me, and inventors like me&mdash;&lsquo;is a little crazed with the humors of
+      melancholy.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
+      and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested in
+      the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting in
+      hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in Paterson&rsquo;s
+      Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the conventional den
+      of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of such persons. They are
+      the Treasure Hunters of cities and of civilization&mdash;the modern
+      seekers for the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone. At the end of a vista of dreams they
+      behold the great Discovery made perfect, and themselves the winners of
+      fame and of wealth incalculable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with electricity.
+      They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and to
+      turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of Winter&rsquo;s den in
+      Paterson&rsquo;s Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was set on a more
+      ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made, which lined every
+      wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics, and especially on the
+      art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of the fourpenny box of cheap
+      bookvendors mixed with volumes in better condition, purchased at a larger
+      cost. Here&mdash;among the litter of tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed
+      &ldquo;Proceedings&rdquo; of the Linnean and the Aeronautic Society of Great Britain&mdash;here
+      were Fredericus Hermannus&rsquo; &ldquo;De Arte Volandi,&rdquo; and Cayley&rsquo;s works, and
+      Hatton Turner&rsquo;s &ldquo;Astra Castra,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Voyage to the Moon&rdquo; of Cyrano de
+      Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dædalus,&rdquo; and the same sanguine prelate&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Mercury, The Secret Messenger.&rdquo; Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a
+      shabby set of the classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of
+      lucubrations by French and other inventors&mdash;Ponton d&rsquo;Amocourt,
+      Borelli, Chabrier, Girard, and Marey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient&rsquo;s mind&mdash;(a
+      man is known by his books at least as much as by his companions, and
+      companions Winter had none)&mdash;even if the shelves had not spoken
+      clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have proclaimed
+      him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library, and as the
+      floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and periodicals, a
+      quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted by
+      big preserved wings of birds and other flying things&mdash;from the
+      sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
+      From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
+      materials; and here&mdash;a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a
+      kind of drill-bow&mdash;was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley.
+      The whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds&rsquo;
+      feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
+      mind was made up as to the nature of Winter&rsquo;s secret, or delusion; and
+      when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
+      either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt,&rdquo; Winter went on with his
+      eager talk. &ldquo;An acute man&mdash;rather <i>too</i> acute, don&rsquo;t you think,
+      for a Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the
+      arguments of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
+      matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such as flying?&rdquo; put in Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; such as our great aim&mdash;the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
+      What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
+      flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
+      artificer.) &lsquo;Diligent,&rsquo; I may say, I have been; as to &lsquo;ingenious,&rsquo; I leave
+      the verdict to others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?&rdquo; asked Barton, to humor his man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of a
+      mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women&mdash;<i>Goories</i>
+      he calls them&mdash;endowed with the power of flight. But <i>they</i> were
+      born so. We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?&rdquo; remarked Barton,
+      leading him on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
+      face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh at
+      him. &ldquo;No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man. But
+      look at what he says about the <i>weight</i> of your flying machine! Can
+      anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent researches,
+      and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You remember the
+      iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The iron fly!&rdquo; murmured Barton. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
+      hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
+      guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose on
+      the finger of its maker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you believe <i>that</i>?&rdquo; asked Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato&rsquo;s
+      acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And the
+      same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
+      triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
+      at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus, because
+      the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in accordance with
+      the best modern authorities, that the weight is no hindrance whatever, if
+      proportional to the motive power. A flying machine, says Professor Bell,
+      in the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>&mdash;(you will not question the
+      authority of the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>?)&mdash;a flying machine
+      should be &lsquo;a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful structure.&rsquo; There,
+      you see, the Bishop was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours was deuced powerful,&rdquo; remarked Barton. &ldquo;I did not expect to see two
+      limbs of you left together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>is</i> powerful, or rather it <i>was</i>,&rdquo; answered Winter, with a
+      heavy sigh; &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s all to do over again&mdash;all to do over again! Yet
+      it was a noble specimen. &lsquo;The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,&rsquo;
+      as the learned author in the <i>Encyclopodia</i> recommends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. <i>You</i>
+      were the passive surface, as far as I could see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at me, please sir, after you&rsquo;ve been so kind. All the rest
+      laugh at me. You can&rsquo;t think what a pleasure it has been to talk to a
+      scholar,&rdquo; and there was a new flush on the poor fellow&rsquo;s cheek, and
+      something watery in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, my dear sir,&rdquo; cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
+      himself. &ldquo;Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
+      aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
+      success of this kind of experiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir,&rdquo; said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton&rsquo;s hand
+      in his own battered claw; &ldquo;thank you. But why should we run only to modern
+      authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been present to
+      men&rsquo;s minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization. Did not
+      Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the hypothesis
+      of natural selection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he <i>did</i> make a shot at it,&rdquo; admitted Barton, who remembered
+      as much as that from &ldquo;the old coaching days,&rdquo; and college lectures at St.
+      Gatien&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
+      Greece, we find Dædalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
+      pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for ships;
+      but I put it to you, is that probable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Obvious bosh,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the meteorological mycologists, sir, <i>they</i> maintain that
+      Dædalus is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing those fellows won&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; replied Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you are with me, sir. In Dædalus <i>I</i> see either a record of
+      a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
+      expression of an aspiration as old as culture. <i>You</i> wouldn&rsquo;t make
+      Dædalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting in
+      Sicily, in the west?&rdquo; added Winter anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of such nonsense,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
+      sir, if I may judge by his picture of Dædalus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every sensible man must be with you,&rdquo; answered Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I won&rsquo;t detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity, such
+      as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus. Doubtless the
+      arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant Scythians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>must</i> have been, indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I
+      admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian&rsquo;s,
+      who employed an eagle&rsquo;s wing and a vulture&rsquo;s in his flight, I take to be a
+      mere figment of the satirist&rsquo;s imagination. But what do you make of Simon
+      Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine in which, like myself,
+      he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be gathered from Arnobius, our
+      earliest authority. He mentions expressly <i>currum Simonis Magi et
+      quadrigas igneas</i>, the chariot of Simon Magus and his <i>vehicles of
+      flame</i>&mdash;clearly the naphtha is alluded to&mdash;which vanished
+      into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter circumstances being
+      miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly Simon Magus had overcome
+      the difficulties of aerial navigation. But, though Petrus Crinitus rejects
+      the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared to believe that Simon Magus
+      actually flew from the Capitol to the Aventine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The world knows nothing of its greatest men,&rsquo;&rdquo; quoted Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
+      character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
+      credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally, the
+      science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in secret,
+      through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at Constantinople
+      who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I mean), was
+      untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we tarry in the
+      past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in <i>Knowledge</i> and the <i>Cornhill</i>?
+      Does not the preeminent authority, Professor Pettigrew Bell, himself
+      declare, with the weight, too, of the <i>Encyclopodia Britannica</i>, that
+      &lsquo;the number of successful flying models is considerable. It is not too
+      much to expect,&rsquo; he goes on, &lsquo;that the problem of artificial flight will
+      be actually solved, or at least much simplified.&rsquo; What less can we expect,
+      as he observes, in the land of Watt and Stephenson, when the construction
+      of flying machines has been &lsquo;taken up in earnest by practical men?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may indeed,&rdquo; said Barton, &ldquo;hope for the best when persons of your
+      learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to my learning, you flatter me,&rdquo; said Winter. &ldquo;I am no scholar; but an
+      enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that the
+      great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a romance, it
+      is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan of the Happy
+      Valley expected to solve the problem in one year&rsquo;s time. &lsquo;If all men were
+      equally virtuous,&rsquo; said this artist, &lsquo;I should with equal alacrity teach
+      them all to fly.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson&rsquo;s artist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To <i>you</i> I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
+      machine describe elliptic figures of eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen them do <i>that</i>, said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
+      by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in air&mdash;which
+      I effected by starting from a height of six feet only&mdash;by a
+      combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By steam
+      alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar across two
+      fields. Penaud&rsquo;s machine, relying only on india rubber under torsion,
+      flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as Bishop Wilkins well
+      observes, a properly weighted and proportioned flying-machine, capable of
+      carrying a man, can do also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not carrying
+      you at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something had gone wrong with the mechanism,&rdquo; answered Winter, sighing.
+      &ldquo;It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against. Remember
+      Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling error in
+      the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had to give half
+      his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt would tell him
+      that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a coating of chalk
+      made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend on it, interfered
+      with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my experiments at night,
+      and in the dark, for fear of being discovered and anticipated. I have been
+      on the verge&mdash;nay, <i>over</i> the verge&mdash;of success. &lsquo;No
+      imaginable invention,&rsquo; Bishop Wilkins says, &lsquo;could prove of greater
+      benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.&rsquo; A few weeks ago
+      that glory was mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why a few weeks ago?&rdquo; asked Barton. &ldquo;Was your machine more advanced then
+      than when I met you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion,&rdquo; said Winter,
+      wearily; &ldquo;but a few weeks ago my <i>machine acted</i>, and I may say that
+      I knew the sensations of a bird on the wing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that you actually <i>flew</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought&mdash;one wild and
+      credulous, the other practical and professional&mdash;surged and met in
+      his brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I will
+      call again soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He <i>did</i> call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be
+      repeated in its proper place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV.&mdash;Found.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;All precious things, discovered late,
+     To those that seek them issue forth;
+     For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,
+     And draws the veil from hidden worth.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;The Sleeping Beauty.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could not,
+      of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She noticed
+      that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking only the
+      clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so light of heart
+      as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes men and women
+      poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of them. Margaret
+      was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence, a bad listener&mdash;all
+      of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine, but pardoned, in this
+      instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt to blush without
+      apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door, to leave the room
+      hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back, when Barton called. Nor
+      was Barton himself such good company as he had been. His manner was
+      uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be paid at longer
+      intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in fits and starts;
+      and yet he did not know how to go away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have
+      interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has
+      not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love with
+      her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings of inclination
+      in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an &ldquo;engagement.&rdquo; All
+      considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight melted away before the
+      ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first, to get engaged next, and
+      to be married as soon as possible afterward, without regard to
+      consequences of any kind, were, in this lady&rsquo;s mind, heroic actions, and
+      almost the whole duty of men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was to
+      be known about Margaret&rsquo;s affections, and also about Barton&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear,&rdquo; she said to
+      Margaret &ldquo;Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him?
+      Nonsense, Daisy; that is <i>his</i> affair. I know you are as good a girl
+      as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr.
+      Cranley&mdash;yes, he was a wretch&mdash;had a spite against you. I don&rsquo;t
+      know why, and you won&rsquo;t help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a
+      man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I&rsquo;m sure. You are afraid of
+      something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t
+      wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one&rsquo;s nerve. I could no more drive
+      now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to think <i>nothing</i>
+      of! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who is there can
+      frighten you? And as to being poor,&rdquo; and Mrs. St. John Deloraine explained
+      her generous views as to arrangements on her part, which would leave
+      Margaret far from portionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend&rsquo;s
+      shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and
+      they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his
+      boots, and fidget with his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no patience with you, Mr. Barton,&rdquo; said Mrs. St. John Deloraine at
+      last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation with
+      him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no patience with you. Why,
+      where is your courage? &lsquo;She has a history?&rsquo; She&rsquo;s been persecuted. Well,
+      where&rsquo;s your chivalry? Why don&rsquo;t you try your fortune? There never was a
+      better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she&rsquo;s not&mdash;when she&rsquo;s
+      not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don&rsquo;t
+      take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting
+      voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I am
+      going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and looking
+      very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will get out
+      and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you will show
+      Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and when you
+      come back you will both have made up your minds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The
+      carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret
+      were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a
+      pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish (&ldquo;coarse,&rdquo; but not
+      uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees&mdash;it was
+      the last week of May&mdash;were in the earliest freshness of their
+      foliage; the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How quiet and pretty it is!&rdquo; said Margaret &ldquo;Who would think we were in
+      London?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter
+      Scott, he thought the more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Burnside!&rdquo; he exclaimed suddenly, &ldquo;we have known each other now for
+      some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming,
+      and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements
+      of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the
+      hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said at last; &ldquo;we have known each other for some time, and yet&mdash;you
+      know nothing about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the face.
+      There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen before,
+      though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a mark of
+      pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton felt his courage come back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love
+      you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Margaret, can&rsquo;t you care for me a little? Don&rsquo;t tell me
+      anything you think you should not say. I&rsquo;m not curious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its inmates,
+      grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into the waters,
+      so that he could not see her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said at last, in a very low voice; &ldquo;it would not be fair.&rdquo; Then,
+      after another pause, &ldquo;There is someone&mdash;&rdquo; she murmured, and stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for <i>him</i>,
+      he fancied she cared for nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like someone better&mdash;&rdquo; he was beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t like him at all,&rdquo; interrupted Margaret. &ldquo;He was very kind,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then can&rsquo;t you like <i>me</i>?&rdquo; asked Barton; and by this time he was
+      very near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was
+      still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know,&rdquo; murmured Margaret. And
+      yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and ashamed,
+      proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind but that
+      Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had surrendered. And
+      he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the honors and rewards of
+      war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is no covenant until it is
+      sealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently,
+      with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by the
+      iron railings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must tell you about myself,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have promised never to tell,
+      but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many things
+      have happened.&rdquo; And she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there
+      should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself
+      (aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to
+      conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect
+      her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no
+      argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and, by
+      way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming an
+      affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still turning
+      toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The person&mdash;the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my
+      father&rsquo;s, who, at one time, wanted him&rdquo;&mdash;here Margaret paused&mdash;&ldquo;wanted
+      me to&mdash;to be his wife some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do
+      local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse
+      of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His name&mdash;but
+      perhaps I should not mention his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I dare say I never heard of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which
+      you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to tell
+      her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean to be
+      living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so many
+      terrible things back to mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Margaret,&rdquo; Barton whispered, taking her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the pathway,
+      and an observer might have thought that they were greatly interested in
+      the water-fowl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is not Burnside,&rdquo; Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder
+      across the gardens and toward the river; &ldquo;my name is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daisy Shields!&rdquo; cried a clear voice. &ldquo;Daisy, you&rsquo;re found at last, and
+      I&rsquo;ve found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the impassioned
+      embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady; while Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear!&rdquo; Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in a
+      pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. &ldquo;Oh, my
+      dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John
+      Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help her
+      to look for them; and I&rsquo;ve found <i>you!</i> It&rsquo;s like Stanley finding
+      Livingstone. &lsquo;How I Found Daisy.&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll write a book about it. And where <i>have</i>
+      you been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything was the
+      matter&mdash;only Miss Mariett and me! And I&rsquo;ve left for good; and she and
+      I are quite friends, and I&rsquo;m to be presented next Drawing Room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had
+      acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St.
+      John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment
+      and concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret&rsquo;s past was about to be
+      dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it already <i>was</i> dispelled. The
+      names of Shields and Miss Marlett had told <i>him</i> all that he needed
+      to know. But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady&rsquo;s
+      lips; and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of
+      having interrupted a &ldquo;proposal,&rdquo; and spoiled a darling scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested
+      Margaret to return to the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as Miss Harman seems to have <i>a great deal</i> to say to you,
+      Margaret,&rdquo; added the philanthropic lady, &ldquo;you two had better walk on as
+      fast as you can; for <i>you</i> must be very careful not to catch cold! I
+      see Miss Harman&rsquo;s maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and
+      I, Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I&rsquo;m not a
+      good walker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Now</i>,&rdquo; said Barton&rsquo;s companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey,
+      about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond
+      earshot&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Now</i>, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I hope so&mdash;I&rsquo;m not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re not satisfactory&mdash;not at all satisfactory. Are you <i>still</i>
+      shilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?&rdquo; cried the veteran
+      of twenty-nine. &ldquo;Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like a cow in
+      a conservatory? She&rsquo;s a regular school-girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t that exactly, or at least that&rsquo;s not all. I hope&mdash;I think
+      she does care for me, or will care for me, a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the
+      world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she
+      knew of the state of Margaret&rsquo;s heart But she was highly provoked, and
+      showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is,&rdquo; Barton admitted, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m so taken by surprise I hardly
+      know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited,
+      that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to
+      tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at
+      school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking
+      anxiously at Barton, &ldquo;was it anything so very dreadful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She called her Daisy Shields,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened at <i>The
+      Bunhouse</i>, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false
+      name. It was not <i>her</i> fault. The question is, What was her reason
+      for keeping her real name concealed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m coming to,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I have a friend, a Mr.
+      Maitland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien&rsquo;s?&rdquo; asked the widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have often heard him speak of you,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;Well, he had a
+      <i>protégée</i>&mdash;a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words&mdash;a
+      girl whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to
+      her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared
+      mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many
+      efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this
+      girl&rsquo;s name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret
+      Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called
+      Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if she <i>does</i> care for
+      me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom my
+      friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to find
+      his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and
+      annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Barton,&rdquo; said Mrs. St John Deloraine, &ldquo;perhaps you alarm yourself too
+      much. I think&rdquo;&mdash;here she dropped her voice a little&mdash;&ldquo;I think&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t think Mr. Maitland&rsquo;s <i>heart</i> is very deeply concerned about
+      Miss Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well&rdquo;&mdash;she gave a
+      little nervous laugh&mdash;&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s in <i>love</i> with
+      Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative
+      discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of
+      welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love
+      with each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an awfully good fellow, Maitland,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;But you are right;
+      I&rsquo;m <i>sure</i> you are right. You must know. He is <i>not</i> in love
+      with Margaret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to Maitland&rsquo;s
+      unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite
+      safe; and I&rsquo;ll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from him&mdash;about
+      a charity, you know&mdash;a few days ago, and I have his address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces,
+      tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs. St
+      John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order &ldquo;Home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon,&rdquo; she cried to Barton; and no
+      offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts, when
+      he suddenly came to a dead halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; he said out loud; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go back and have it out with her at
+      once. I&rsquo;ve had enough of this shillyshally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few minutes
+      he was standing at the familiar door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you ask Miss&mdash;Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?&rdquo;
+       he said to the servant &ldquo;I have forgotten something she wished me to do for
+      her,&rdquo; he added in a mumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared, still
+      in her bonnet and furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t help coming back, Margaret,&rdquo; he said, as soon as she entered
+      the room. &ldquo;I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn&rsquo;t think&mdash;I
+      mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing, <i>nothing</i>
+      to prevent us&mdash;I mean» Margaret, if you <i>really</i> care for me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he came to a dead stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to
+      Margaret, &ldquo;My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He
+      does not care a pin for you; he&rsquo;ll be delighted at being released. He is
+      in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it could
+      not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have been
+      exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it, looking
+      at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was safe, but
+      embarrassing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a charge, as it were, at the position&mdash;a random, desperate
+      charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Margaret, can you trust me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about your
+      doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there is <i>nothing</i>
+      to prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you will only agree to
+      make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too. Can&rsquo;t you take it on
+      trust? Can&rsquo;t you believe me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton&rsquo;s shoulder. She <i>did</i>
+      believe him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position was carried!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV.&mdash;The Mark of Cain.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Barton entered his sitting-room in very high spirits, and
+      took up his letters. He had written to Maitland the night before, saying
+      little but, &ldquo;Come home at once. Margaret is found. She is going to be my
+      wife. You can&rsquo;t come too quickly, if you wish to hear of something very
+      much to your advantage.&rdquo; A load was off his mind, and he felt as <i>Romeo</i>
+      did just before the bad news about <i>Juliet</i> reached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this buoyant disposition, Barton opened his letters. The first was in a
+      hand he knew very well&mdash;that of a man who had been his fellow-student
+      in Paris and Vienna, and who was now a prosperous young physician. The
+      epistle ran thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Barton.&mdash;I&rsquo;m off to the West of Ireland, for a fortnight People
+      are pretty fit, as the season has not run far. Most of my patients have
+      not yet systematically overeaten themselves. I want you to do something
+      for me. Martin &amp; Wright, the lawyers, have a queer little bit of
+      medical jurisprudence, about which young Wright, who was at Oriel in our
+      time, asked my opinion. I recommended him to see you, as it is more in
+      your line; and <i>my</i> line will presently be attached to that eminent
+      general practitioner, &lsquo;The Blue Doctor.&rsquo; May he prosper with the Galway
+      salmon!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thine,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alfred Franks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky beggar!&rdquo; thought Barton to himself, but he was too happy to envy
+      even a man who had a fortnight of salmon-fishing before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next letter he opened was in a blue envelope, with the stamp of
+      Messrs. Martin &amp; Wright. The brief and and formal note which it
+      contained requested Dr. Barton to call, that very day if possible, at the
+      chambers of the respectable firm, on &ldquo;business of great importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world can they want?&rdquo; thought Barton. &ldquo;Nobody can have left
+      <i>me</i> any money. Besides, Franks says it is a point in medical
+      jurisprudence. That sounds attractive. I&rsquo;ll go down after breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked along the sunny embankment, and that bright prospect of houses,
+      trees, and ships have never seemed so beautiful. In an hour he was in
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn Fields, and had shaken hands with young Wright, whom he
+      knew; had been introduced to old Wright, a somewhat stately man of
+      business, and had taken his seat in the chair sacred to clients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Barton,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright, solemnly, &ldquo;you are, I think, the author
+      of this book?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He handed to Barton a copy of his own volume, in its gray paper cover,
+      &ldquo;Les Tatouages Étude Médico-Légale&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;I wrote it when I was in Paris I had plenty of
+      chances of studying tattooing in the military hospitals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not read it myself,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright, &ldquo;because I am not
+      acquainted with the French language; but my son tells me it is a work of
+      great learning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton could only bow, and mutter that he was glad Mr. Wright liked it. <i>Why</i>
+      he should like it, or what the old gentleman wanted, he could not even
+      imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are at present engaged in a very curious case, Dr. Barton,&rdquo; went on
+      the lawyer, &ldquo;in which we think your special studies may assist us. The
+      position is this: Nearly eight months ago a client of ours died, a Mr.
+      Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, in the North. You must excuse me if I seem
+      to be troubling you with a long story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton mentioned that he was delighted, and added, &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; in the
+      vague modern dialect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Mr. Richard Johnson, then, was a somewhat singular character. He was
+      what is called a &lsquo;statesman&rsquo; in the North. He had a small property of
+      about four hundred acres, on the marches, as they say, or boarders of the
+      Earl of Birkenhead&rsquo;s lands. Here he lived almost alone, and in a very
+      quiet way. There was not even a village near him, and there were few
+      persons of his own position in life, because his little place was almost
+      embedded, if I may say so, in Lord Birkenhead&rsquo;s country, which is
+      pastoral. You are with me, so far?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; said Barton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Mr. Johnson, then, lived quite alone, with an old housekeeper, dead
+      since his decease, and with one son, called Richard, like himself. The
+      young man was of an adventurous character, a ne&rsquo;er-do-weel in fact; and
+      about twenty years ago he left Linkheaton, after a violent quarrel with
+      his father. It was understood that he had run away to sea. Two years later
+      he returned; there was another quarrel, and the old man turned him out,
+      vowing that he would never forgive him. But, not long after that, a very
+      rich deposit of coal&mdash;a <i>very</i> rich deposit,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright,
+      with the air of a man tasting most excellent claret&mdash;&ldquo;was discovered
+      on this very estate of Linkheaton. Old Johnson, without much exertion on
+      his part, and simply through the payment of royalties by the company that
+      worked the coal, became exceedingly opulent, in what you call most
+      affluent circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Wright paused, as if to see whether Barton was beginning to
+      understand the point of the narrative, which, it is needless to remark, he
+      was <i>not</i>. There is no marked connection between coal mines, however
+      lucrative, and &ldquo;Les Tatouages, Étude Médico-Légale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of his wealth, Mr. Johnson in no way changed his habits. He
+      invested his money carefully, under our advice, and he became, as I said,
+      an extremely warm man. But he continued to live in the old farmhouse, and
+      did not, in any way, court society. To tell the truth, except Lord
+      Birkenhead, who is our client, I never knew anyone who was at all intimate
+      with the old man. Lord Birkenhead had a respect for him, as a neighbor and
+      a person of the old-fashioned type. Yes,&rdquo; Mr. Wright added, seeing that
+      his son was going to speak, &ldquo;and, as you were about to say, Tom, they were
+      brought together by a common misfortune. Like old Mr. Johnson, his
+      lordship has a son who is very, very&mdash;unsatisfactory. His lordship
+      has not seen the Honorable Mr. Thomas Cranley for many years; and in that
+      lonely country the two boys had been companions in wild amusements, long
+      before. He is <i>very</i> unsatisfactory, the Honorable Thomas Cranley;&rdquo;
+       and Mr. Wright sighed heavily, in sympathy with a client so noble and so
+      afflicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the beast,&rdquo; said Barton, without reflecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Wright looked at him in amazement and horror. &ldquo;The beast!&rdquo; A son of
+      Lord Birkenhead&rsquo;s called &ldquo;The beast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To return to our case, Dr. Barton,&rdquo; he went on severely, with some stress
+      laid on the <i>doctor</i>. &ldquo;Mr. Johnson died, leaving, by a will made on
+      his death-bed, all that he possessed to his son Richard, or, in case of
+      his decease, to the heirs of his body lawfully begotten. From that day to
+      this we have hunted everywhere for the man. We have traced him all over
+      the world; we have heard of him in Australia, Burmah, Guiana, Smyrna, but
+      at Smyrna we lose sight of him. This advertisement,&rdquo; said the old
+      gentleman, taking up the outside sheet of the <i>Times</i>, and folding it
+      so as to bring the second column into view, &ldquo;remained for more than seven
+      months unanswered, or only answered by impostors and idiots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tapped his finger on the place as he handed the paper to Barton, who
+      read aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Linkheaton.&mdash;If Richard Johnson, of Linkheaton, Durham, last heard
+      of at Smyrna in 1875, will apply to Messrs. Martin and Wright, Lincoln&rsquo;s
+      Inn Fields, he will hear of something very greatly to his advantage. His
+      father died, forgiving him. A reward of £1,000 will be paid to anyone
+      producing Richard Johnson, or proving his decease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a mixture of business with the home affections,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright
+      proudly (for the advertisement was of his own composition), &ldquo;I think that
+      leaves little ta be desired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is admirable,&rdquo; said Barton&mdash;&ldquo;admirable; but may I ask&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the tattooing comes in?&rdquo; said Mr. Wright. &ldquo;I am just approaching <i>that</i>.
+      The only person from whom we received any reliable information about
+      Richard Johnson was an old ship-mate of his, a wandering, adventurous
+      character, now, I believe, in Paraguay, where we cannot readily
+      communicate with him. According to his account, Johnson was an ordinary
+      seafaring man, tanned, and wearing a black beard, but easily to be
+      recognized for an excellent reason. <i>He was tattooed almost all over his
+      whole body</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton nearly leaped out of his chair, the client&rsquo;s chair, so sudden a
+      light flashed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, Dr. Barton! I <i>thought</i> I should interest you;
+      but you seem quite excited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;It was automatic, I think;
+      besides, I <i>am</i> extremely interested in tattooing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, sir, it is a pity you could not have seen Johnson. He appears, from
+      what our informant tells us, to have been a most remarkable specimen. He
+      had been tattooed by Australian blacks, by Burmese, by Arabs, and, in a
+      peculiar blue tint and to a particular pattern, by the Dyacks of Borneo.
+      We have here a rough chart, drawn by our informant, of his principal
+      decorations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the lawyer solemnly unrolled a great sheet of drawing-paper, on which
+      was rudely outlined the naked figure of a man, filled up, on the breast,
+      thighs, and arms, with ornamental designs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guess which made Barton leap up had not been mistaken: he recognized
+      the tattooings he had seen on the dead body of Dicky Shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This confirmation of what he had conjectured, however, did not draw any
+      exclamation or mark of excitement from Barton, who was now on his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is highly interesting,&rdquo; he said, as he examined the diagram; &ldquo;and I
+      am sure, Mr. Wright, that it should not be difficult to recognize a
+      claimant with such remarkable peculiarities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir; it is easy enough, and we have been able to dismiss scores of
+      sham Richard Johnsons. But one man presented himself the day before
+      yesterday&mdash;a rough sailor fellow, who went straight to the point;
+      asked if the man we wanted had any private marks; said he knew what they
+      were, and showed us his wrist, which exactly, as far as we could verify
+      the design, corresponded to that drawing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; asked Barton, controlling his excitement by a great effort, &ldquo;what
+      did you do with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We said to him that it would be necessary to take the advice of an expert
+      before we could make any movement; and, though he told us things about old
+      Johnson and Linkheaton, which it seemed almost impossible that anyone but
+      the right man could have known, we put him off till we had seen you, and
+      could make an appointment for you to examine the tattooings. <i>They</i>
+      must be dealt with first, before any other identification.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you have made some other necessary inquiries? Did he say why he
+      was so late in answering the advertisement? It has been out for several
+      months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that is rather in his favor,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright. &ldquo;If he had been
+      an impostor on the lookout he would probably have come to us long ago. But
+      he has just returned from the Cape, where he had been out of the way of
+      newspapers, and he did not see the advertisement till he came across it
+      three or four days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;Make an appointment with the man for any time
+      to-morrow, and I will be with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he said this he looked very hard and significantly at the younger Mr.
+      Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir; thank you. Shall we say at noon tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With pleasure,&rdquo; answered Barton, still with his eye on the younger
+      partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then said good-by, and was joined, as he had hoped, in the outer office
+      by young Wright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had something to say to me?&rdquo; asked the junior member of the firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several things,&rdquo; said Barton, smiling. &ldquo;And first, would you mind finding
+      out whether the coast is clear&mdash;whether any one is watching for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watching for you! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just take a look round the square, and tell me whether any suspicious
+      character is about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Wright, much puzzled, put on his hat, and stood lighting a cigarette
+      on the outer steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a soul in sight but lawyers&rsquo; clerks,&rdquo; he reported.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; just tell your father that, as it is a fine morning, you are
+      taking a turn with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton&rsquo;s friend did as he wished, and presently the pair had some serious
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do exactly as you suggest, and explain to my father,&rdquo; said the young
+      lawyer as they separated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks; it is so much easier for you to explain than for a stranger like
+      myself,&rdquo; said Barton, and strolled westward by way of Co vent Garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the noted establishment of Messrs. Aminadab, theatrical costumiers,
+      Barton stopped, went in, was engaged some time with the Messrs. Aminadab,
+      and finally had a cab called for him, and drove home with a pretty bulky
+      parcel.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      At five minutes to twelve on the following day, a tall, burly,
+      mahogany-colored mariner, attired, for the occasion, in a frock-coat and
+      hat, appeared in Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn Fields. He seemed to be but ill acquainted
+      with those coasts, and mooned about for some minutes before he reached the
+      door of Messrs. Wright Then he rang, the door was opened, and he was
+      admitted into the presence of the partners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come, gentlemen, in answer to your letter,&rdquo; he said with a
+      Northern burr, bowing awkwardly, and checking a disposition to salute by
+      touching his forelock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes wandered round the room, where he saw no one but the partners,
+      with whom he was already acquainted, and a foreign-looking gentleman&mdash;a
+      gentleman with hay-colored hair, a soft hat, spectacles, and a tow-colored
+      beard. He had a mild, short-sighted expression, a pasty complexion, and
+      the air of one who smoked too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr.&mdash;h&rsquo;m&mdash;Mr. Johnson,&rdquo; said old Mr. Wright. &ldquo;As
+      we told you, sir, we have, as a necessary preliminary to the inquiry,
+      requested Professor Lieblein to step in and inspect&mdash;h&rsquo;m&mdash;the
+      personal marks of which you spoke. Professor Lieblein, of Bonn, is a great
+      authority on these matters&mdash;author of &lsquo;Die Tattuirung,&rsquo; a very
+      learned work, I am told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus introduced, the Professor bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to meet you, sir,&rdquo; said the sailor-man gruffly, &ldquo;or any gentleman as
+      really knows what&rsquo;s what.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been a great traveller, sir?&rdquo; said the learned Professor, whose
+      Teutonic accent it is superfluous to reproduce. &ldquo;You have in many lands
+      travelled? So!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; I have seen the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are much tattooed: it is to me very interesting. You have by many
+      races been decorated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most niggers have had a turn at me, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How happy you are to have had such experiences! Now, the Burmese&mdash;ah!
+      have you any little Burmese marks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; from the elbow to the shoulder,&rdquo; replied the seafaring man.
+      &ldquo;Saving your presence, I&rsquo;ll strip to the buff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir,&rdquo; this was in reply to young
+      Mr. Wright &ldquo;The naked body! why, buff! &lsquo;Buff,&rsquo; the abstract word, the
+      actual stuff, the very <i>wesen</i> of man unclothed. &lsquo;Buffer,&rsquo; the
+      concrete man, in the &lsquo;buff,&rsquo; in the flesh; it is <i>sehr intéressant</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the learned Professor muttered these metaphysical and philological
+      reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the Burmese style, sir,&rdquo; he said, pointing to his shoulders and
+      upper arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
+      series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
+      to the elbow-joints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Sehr schôn, sehr schôn</i>,&rdquo; exclaimed the delighted Professor. &ldquo;It is
+      very <i>hubsch</i>, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
+      Germans. Ach, it is mournful!&rdquo; and he sighed. &ldquo;And now, sir, have you to
+      show me any <i>moko</i>? A little <i>moko</i> would be very instructive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
+      look between my shoulders,&rdquo; and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
+      whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is right, that is right,&rdquo; whispered the Professor. &ldquo;<i>Moko,
+      schlange</i>, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better <i>moko</i>,
+      on an European man, have I never seen. You observe,&rdquo; he remarked to the
+      elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed lines&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extremely interesting,&rdquo; said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
+      seemed nervous and uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture,&rdquo; he added, comparing the
+      sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied now, governor?&rdquo; asked the sailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
+      Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; here you are!&rdquo; and the voyager pointed to his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
+      of irregular form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, it is,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the <i>wasm</i>, the <i>sharat</i>,* the
+      Semitic tribal mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their
+      cattle! Of old time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr
+      Professor Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls
+      that very mark, my dear sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Sharat or Short.&mdash;&ldquo;The shart was in old times a tattooed
+     mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
+     of blood revenge is connected with a &lsquo;mark&rsquo; which Jehovah
+     appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
+     <i>sharat</i>, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
+     person?&rdquo;
+      &mdash;Robertson Smith, <i>Kinship in Ancient Arabia</i>, p.215.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; said the sailor; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m no scholar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says it was&mdash;I do not say he is right,&rdquo; cried the Professor, in a
+      loud voice, pointing a finger at his victim&rsquo;s breast&mdash;&ldquo;he says it was
+      <i>the mark of cain</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor, beneath his mahogany tan, turned a livid white, and grasped at
+      a bookcase by which he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; he cried, through his chattering teeth; &ldquo;what do you
+      mean with your damned Hebrew-Dutch and your mark of Cain? The mark&rsquo;s all
+      right! A Hadendowa woman did it in Suakim years ago. Ain&rsquo;t it on that
+      chart of yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, good sir; it is,&rdquo; answered the Professor. &ldquo;Why do you so
+      agitate yourself? <i>The proof is complete!</i>&rdquo; he added, still pointing
+      at the sailor&rsquo;s breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll put on my togs, with your leave: it&rsquo;s none so warm!&rdquo; grumbled
+      the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had so far completed his dressing that he was in his waistcoat, and was
+      just looking round for his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; said the Professor. &ldquo;Hold Mr. Johnson&rsquo;s coat for a moment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was to young Wright, who laid his hands on the garment in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be tired, sir,&rdquo; said the Professor, in a very soft voice. &ldquo;May I
+      offer you a leedle cigarette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew from his pocket a silver cigarette-case, and, in a thoroughly
+      English accent, he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have waited long to give you back your cigarette-case, which you left
+      at your club, Mr. Thomas Cranley!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor&rsquo;s eye fell on it. He dashed the silver box violently to the
+      ground, and trampled on it, then he made one rush at his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold it, hold it!&rdquo; cried Barton, laying aside his Teutonic accent&mdash;&ldquo;hold
+      it: there&rsquo;s a revolver in the pocket!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no need to struggle for the coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor had suddenly staggered and fallen, a crumpled but not
+      unconscious mass, on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call in the police!&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll have no difficulty in taking
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the man against whom you have the warrant,&rdquo; he went on, as young
+      Wright opened the door and admitted two policemen. &ldquo;I charge the Honorable
+      Thomas Cranley with murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The officers lifted the fallen man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him be,&rdquo; said Barton. &ldquo;He has collapsed. Lay him on the floor: he&rsquo;s
+      better so. He needs a turn of my profession: his heart&rsquo;s weak. Bring some
+      brandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Wright went for the spirits, while the frightened old lawyer kept
+      murmuring:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Honorable Thomas Cranley <i>was</i> always very unsatisfactory!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been explained to the old gentleman that an impostor would be
+      unmasked, and a criminal arrested; but he had <i>not</i> been informed
+      that the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
+      examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI.&mdash;The Verdict of Fate.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton&rsquo;s letter.
+      He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
+      he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
+      thoroughly human old-fashioned way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley&rsquo;s trial dragged on. Interest, as
+      usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
+      when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
+      himself &ldquo;Not Guilty,&rdquo; his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
+      pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
+      the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
+      whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
+      prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
+      condensed form:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
+      unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
+      relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast of
+      society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
+      circumstances of Johnson&rsquo;s early life, with his history and his home. His
+      plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A celebrated
+      case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved that a most
+      plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing man might be made
+      by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the minute local and
+      personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate Johnson, a sailor
+      whose body was known to have been indelibly marked by the tattooing of
+      various barbarous races, it was necessary that the prisoner should be
+      similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with unusual heartlessness, he
+      had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his body the distinctive marks of
+      Johnson, and then had destroyed him with fiendish ingenuity, in the very
+      act of assuming his personality. The very instrument, it might be said,
+      which stamped Cranley as Johnson, slew Johnson himself, and the process
+      which hallmarked the prisoner as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him
+      with the brand of Cain. The personal marks which seemed to establish the
+      claimant&rsquo;s case demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical
+      expert brought in to prove his identity, and was recognized by that
+      gentleman, Dr. Barton, who would be called, and who had once already
+      exposed him in a grave social offence&mdash;cheating at cards. The same
+      witness had made a <i>post-mortem</i> examination of the body of Richard
+      Johnson, and had then suspected the method by which he had been murdered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
+      committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor (the
+      disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of meeting
+      Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the <i>Hit or
+      Miss</i> tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met him
+      there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
+      o&rsquo;clock, telling the landlady that &ldquo;his friend,&rdquo; as he called Johnson, had
+      fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady, Mrs.
+      Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening on the
+      roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson&mdash;or Shields, as she called
+      him&mdash;had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which led
+      to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often took, on
+      leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of Johnson,
+      with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart belonging to
+      the vestry&mdash;a cart which, during the night, had remained near a shed
+      on the piece of waste ground adjoining the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. A coroner&rsquo;s
+      jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had strayed into
+      the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door in the
+      palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down in the
+      cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But evidence derived
+      from a later medical examination would establish the presumption, which
+      would be confirmed by the testimony of an eye-witness, that death had been
+      wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a poison which it would be shown he
+      had in his possession&mdash;a poison which was not swallowed by the
+      victim, but introduced by means of a puncture into the system. The dead
+      man&rsquo;s body had then been removed to a place where his decease would be
+      accounted for as the result of cold and exhaustion. A witness would be put
+      in the box who, by an extraordinary circumstance, had been enabled to see
+      the crime committed by the prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at
+      the moment, he did not understand the meaning of what he saw. As the
+      circumstances by which this witness had been enabled to behold what was
+      done at dead of night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not
+      commanded from any neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly
+      peculiar, testimony would be brought to show that the witness really had
+      enjoyed the opportunity of observation which he claimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson, and
+      claimed Johnson&rsquo;s property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson,
+      unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for
+      the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical
+      evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed to
+      have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death, according
+      to the medical theory, was caused, the counsel for the prosecution
+      believed that the jury could find no other verdict than that the prisoner
+      had wilfully murdered Richard Johnson on the night of February 7th.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This opened the case for the Crown. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the
+      evidence of all the witnesses who proved, step by step, the statements of
+      the prosecution. First was demonstrated the identity of Shields with
+      Johnson. To do this cost enormous trouble and expense; but Johnson&rsquo;s old
+      crony, the man who drew the chart of his tattoo marks, was at length
+      discovered in Paraguay, and, by his aid and the testimony he collected,
+      the point was satisfactorily made out. It was, of course, most important
+      in another respect, as establishing Margaret&rsquo;s claims on the Linkheaton
+      estate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery of the body of Johnson (or Shields) in the snow was proved
+      by our old friends Bill and Tommy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner was recognized by Mrs. Gullick as the sailor gentleman who
+      had been with Johnson on the last night of his life. In spite of the
+      difference of dress, and of appearance caused by the absence of beard&mdash;for
+      Cranley was now clean shaved&mdash;Mrs. Gullick was positive as to his
+      voice and as to his eyebrows, which were peculiarly black and mobile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton, who was called next, and whose evidence excited the keenest
+      interest, identified the prisoner as the man whom he had caused to be
+      arrested in the office of Messrs. Martin and Wright, and whom he had known
+      as Cranley. His medical evidence was given at considerable length, and
+      need not be produced in full detail On examining the body of Richard
+      Johnson, his attention had naturally been directed chiefly to the
+      tattooings. He had for some years been deeply interested, as an
+      ethnologist, in the tattooed marks of various races. He had found many
+      curious examples on the body of the dead man. Most of the marks were
+      obviously old; but in a very unusual place, generally left blank&mdash;namely,
+      behind and under the right shoulder&mdash;he had discovered certain
+      markings of an irregular character, clearly produced by an inexperienced
+      hand, and perfectly fresh and recent. They had not healed, and were
+      slightly discolored. They could not, from their position, possibly have
+      been produced by the man himself. Microscopic examinations of these marks,
+      in which the coloring matter was brown, not red or blue, as on the rest of
+      the body, showed that this coloring matter was of a character familiar to
+      the witness as a physiologist and scientific traveller. It was the <i>Woorali</i>,
+      or arrow poison of the Macoushi Indians of Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asked to explain the nature of this poison to the Court, the witness said
+      that its &ldquo;principle&rdquo; (to use the term of the old medical writers) had not
+      yet been disengaged by Science, nor had it ever been compounded by
+      Europeans. He had seen it made by the Macoushi Indians, who combined the
+      juice of the Woorali vine with that of certain bulbous plants, with
+      certain insects, and with the poison-fangs of two serpents, boiling the
+      whole amidst magical ceremonies, and finally straining off a thick brown
+      paste, which, when perfectly dry, was used to venom the points of their
+      arrows. The poison might be swallowed by a healthy man without fatal
+      results. But if introduced into the system through a wound, the poison
+      would act almost instantaneously, and defy analysis. Its effect was to
+      sever, as it were, the connection between the nerves and the muscles, and
+      the muscles used in respiration being thus gradually paralyzed, death
+      followed within a brief time, proportionate to the size of the victim, man
+      or animal, and the strength of the dose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Traces of this poison, then, the witness had found in the fresh tattoo
+      marks on Johnson&rsquo;s body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The witness now produced the sharp wooden needle, the stem of the leaf of
+      the coucourite palm, which he had found among Johnson&rsquo;s tattooing
+      materials, in the upper chamber of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. This needle had
+      been, he said, the tip of one of the arrows used for their blowpipes, by
+      the Macoushi of Guiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton also produced the Oriental silver cigarette-case, the instrument of
+      his cheating at baccarat, which Cranley had left in the club on the
+      evening of his detection. He showed that the case had contained a small
+      crystal receptacle, intended to hold opium. This crystal had been broken
+      by Cranley when he dashed down the case, in the office of Martin and
+      Wright. But crumbs of the poison&mdash;&ldquo;Woorali,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Ourali&rdquo;&mdash;perfectly
+      dry, remained in this réceptacle. It was thus clear that Cranley, himself
+      a great traveller, was possessed of the rare and perilous drug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The medical evidence having been heard, and confirmed in its general
+      bearing by various experts, and Barton having stood the test of a severe
+      cross-examination, William Winter was called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a flutter in the Court, as a pale and partly paralyzed man was
+      borne in on a kind of litter, and accommodated in the witness-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where were you,&rdquo; asked the counsel for the prosecution, when the officer
+      had sworn the witness, &ldquo;at eleven o&rsquo;clock on the night of February 7th?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was on the roof of the <i>Hit or Miss</i> tavern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On which part of the roof?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the ledge below the dormer window at the back part of the house,
+      facing the waste ground behind the plank fence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell the Court what you saw while you were in that position?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winter&rsquo;s face was flushed with excitement; but his voice, though thin, was
+      clear as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a light streaming through the dormer window beside which I was
+      lying, and I looked in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw a small room, with a large fire, a table, on which were bottles and
+      glasses, and two men, one seated, the other standing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you recognize either man if you saw him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recognize the man who was seated, in the prisoner at the bar; but at
+      that time he wore a beard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell the Court what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men were facing me. One of them&mdash;the prisoner&mdash;was naked to
+      the waist. His breast was tattooed. The other&mdash;the man who stood up&mdash;was
+      touching him with a needle, which he applied, again and again, to a saucer
+      on the table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you hear what they said?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could; for the catch of the lattice window had not caught, and there
+      was a slight chink open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You listened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help it; the scene was so strange. I heard the man with the
+      needle give a sigh of relief, and say, &lsquo;There, it&rsquo;s finished, and a pretty
+      job too, though I say it.&rsquo; The other said, &lsquo;You have done it beautifully,
+      Dicky; it&rsquo;s a most interesting art. Now, just out of curiosity, let <i>me</i>
+      tattoo <i>you</i> a bit.&rsquo; The other man laughed, and took off his coat and
+      shirt while the other dressed. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s scarce an inch of me plain,&rsquo; he
+      said, &lsquo;but you can try your hand here,&rsquo; pointing to the lower part of his
+      shoulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were both standing up now. I saw the prisoner take out something
+      sharp; his face was deadly pale, but the other could not see that. He
+      began touching him with the sharp object, and kept chaffing all the time.
+      This lasted, I should think, about five minutes, when the face of the man
+      who was being tattooed grew very red. Then he swayed a little, backward
+      and forward, then he stretched out his hands like a blind man, and said,
+      in a strange, thick voice, as if he was paralyzed, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m very cold; I can&rsquo;t
+      shiver!&rsquo; Then he fell down heavily, and his body made one or two
+      convulsive movements. That was all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did the prisoner do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked like death. He seized the bottle on the table, poured out half
+      a tumbler full of the stuff in it, drank it off, and then fell into a
+      chair, and laid his face between his hands. He appeared ill, or alarmed,
+      but the color came back into his cheek after a third or fourth glass. Then
+      I saw him go to the sleeping man and bend over him, listening apparently
+      to his breathing. Then he shook him several times, as if trying to arouse
+      him. But the man lay like a log. Finally, about half-an-hour after what I
+      have described, he opened the door and went out. He soon returned, took up
+      the sleeping man in his arms&mdash;his weight seemed lighter than you
+      would expect&mdash;and carried him out. From the roof I saw him push the
+      door in the palisade leading into the waste land, a door which I myself
+      had left open an hour before. It was not light enough to see what he did
+      there; but he soon returned alone and walked away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the sum of Winter&rsquo;s evidence, which, if accepted, entirely
+      corroborated Barton&rsquo;s theory of the manner of the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In cross-examination, Winter was asked the very natural question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you come to find yourself on the roof of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>
+      late at night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winter nearly rose from his litter, his worn faced flushed, his eye
+      sparkling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, I flew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a murmur and titter through the court, which was, of course,
+      instantly suppressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You flew! What do you mean by saying that you flew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the inventor of a flying machine, which, for thirty years, I have
+      labored at and striven to bring to perfection. On that one night, as I was
+      experimenting with it, where I usually did, inside the waste land
+      bordering on the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, the machine actually worked, and I
+      was projected in the machine, as it were, to some height in the air,
+      coming down with à fluttering motion, like a falling feather, on the roof
+      of the <i>Hit or Miss</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the learned counsel for the defence smiled with infinite expression
+      at the jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said the counsel for the prosecution, noting the smile, and the
+      significant grin with which it was reflected on the countenances of the
+      twelve good men and true, &ldquo;I may state that we are prepared to bring
+      forward a large mass of scientific evidence&mdash;including a well-known
+      man of science, the editor of <i>Wisdom</i>, a popular journal which takes
+      all knowledge for its province&mdash;to prove that there is nothing
+      physically impossible in the facts deposed to by this witness. He is at
+      present suffering, as you see, from a serious accident caused by the very
+      machine of which he speaks, and which can be exhibited, with a working
+      model, to the Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly requires corroboration,&rdquo; said the judge. &ldquo;At present, so far
+      as I am aware, it is contrary to scientific experience. You can prove,
+      perhaps, that, in the opinion of experts, these machines have only to take
+      one step further to become practical modes of locomotion. But <i>that</i>
+      is the very step <i>qui coûte</i>. Nothing but direct evidence that the
+      step has been taken&mdash;that a flying machine, on this occasion,
+      actually <i>flew</i> (they appear to be styled <i>volantes, a non volando</i>)&mdash;would
+      really help your case, and establish the credibility of this witness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your lordship&rsquo;s learned remarks,&rdquo; replied the counsel for the crown,
+      &ldquo;I am not the less ready to agree, because I <i>have</i> an actual
+      eye-witness, who not only saw the flight deposed to by the witness, but
+      reported it to several persons, who are in court, on the night of its
+      occurrence, so that her statement, though disbelieved, was the common talk
+      of the neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is another matter,&rdquo; said the judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Eliza Gullick,&rdquo; said the counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eliza was called, and in a moment was curtsying, with eagerness, but
+      perfect self-possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After displaying an almost technical appreciation of the nature of an
+      oath, Eliza was asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember the night of the 7th of February?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember it very well, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you remember it so well, Eliza?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Becos such a mort o&rsquo; things happened, sir, that night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell his lordship what happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my lord. Mr. Toopny gave us a supper, us himps, my lord, at
+      the <i>Hilarity</i>; for he said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what he said, tell us what happened as you were coming home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, it was about eleven o&rsquo;clock at night, and I was turning the
+      lane into the <i>Hit or Miss</i>, when I heard an awful flapping and
+      hissing and whirring, like wings working by steam, in the waste ground at
+      the side of the lane. And, as I was listening&mdash;oh, it frightens me
+      now to think of it&mdash;oh, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t be alarmed, my good child! What occurred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great thing like a bird, sir, bigger than a man, flew up over my head,
+      higher than the houses. And then&mdash;did you ever see them Japanese
+      toys, my lord, them things with two feathers and a bit of India-rubber as
+      you twist round and round and toss them up and they fly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my girl, I have seen them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just as if it had been one of them things settling down, the bird&rsquo;s
+      wings turned round and fluttered and shook, and at last it all lighted,
+      quite soft like, on the roof of our house, the <i>Hit or Miss</i>. And
+      there I saw it crouching when I went to bed, and looked out o&rsquo; the window,
+      but they wouldn&rsquo;t none o&rsquo; them believe me, my lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dead silence in the Court as Eliza finished this extraordinary
+      confirmation of Winter&rsquo;s evidence, and wove the net inextricably round the
+      prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something
+      heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence
+      the sound had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner&rsquo;s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The
+      evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain
+      his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_EPIL" id="link2H_EPIL">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      EPILOGUE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      And what became of them all?
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He who does not tell, on the plea that he is &ldquo;competing with Life,&rdquo; which
+      never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are
+      visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the
+      unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy
+      Mrs. Maitland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the
+      case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still hopes
+      to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine, which,
+      moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who once made
+      a diamond by chance, in Balzac&rsquo;s novel, has never recovered the creative
+      moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs. Barton&rsquo;s
+      little boy begins to take a lively interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with the
+      British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick
+      maintains, she has a hereditary genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hear,&rdquo; says the <i>Athenæum</i>, &ldquo;that the long promised edition of
+      &lsquo;Demetrius of Scepsis,&rsquo; by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien&rsquo;s, is in the hands of
+      the delegates of the Clarendon Press.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement that
+      an Oxford Don has finished his <i>magnum opus!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EXPLICIT. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mark Of Cain, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARK OF CAIN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21821-h.htm or 21821-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/8/2/21821/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&ldquo;the Foundation&rdquo;
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; appears, or with which the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo; is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+&ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original &ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, &ldquo;Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.&rdquo;
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+&ldquo;Defects,&rdquo; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &ldquo;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&rdquo; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &lsquo;AS-IS&rsquo; WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm&rsquo;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation&rsquo;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state&rsquo;s laws.
+
+The Foundation&rsquo;s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation&rsquo;s web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>