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+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
+
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